While we stood in the little recess, such of the other patients as were
convalescent gathered near the foot of the bed; and the nurse came and
looked on, and hovered about us,--a sharp-eyed, intelligent woman of
middle age, with a careful and kind expression, neglecting nothing that
was for the patient's good, yet taking his death as coolly as any other
incident in her daily business. Certainly, it was a very forlorn
death-bed; and I felt--what I have heretofore been inclined to doubt--
that it might, be a comfort to have persons whom one loves, to go with us
to the threshold of the other world, and leave us only when we are fairly
across it. This poor fellow had a wife and two children on the other
side of the water.
At first he did not utter any sound; but by and by he moaned a little,
and gave tokens of being more sensible to outward concerns,--not quite so
misty and dreamy as hitherto. We had been talking all the while--myself
in a whisper, but the surgeon in his ordinary tones--about his state,
without his paying any attention. But now the surgeon put his mouth down
to the man's face and said, "Do you know that you are dying?" At this
the patient's head began to move upon the pillow; and I thought at first
that it was only the restlessness that he had shown all along; but soon
it appeared to be an expression of emphatic dissent, a negative shake of
the head. He shook it with all his might, and groaned and mumbled, so
that it was very evident how miserably reluctant he was to die.
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