sorry, I should have released you hours ago.
I’ve done nothing to compare with what has been required of you this day.
He smiled and shook his head. We know so little. Our medical service is no less barbarous than the war that requires it. Someday we will have other means. We will have found botanical molds to reverse infection. We will replace lost blood. We will photograph through the body to the bones. And so on.
Wrede chose a room, nodded, and closed the door behind him.
Emily stood thinking of what he had said. She didn’t know if she had heard him correctly.
She went to her room, closed the door, undressed, and lay down in a soft bed for the first time in many nights. Yet she was far from sleep. She had never before known a man whose thoughts could startle her so. She was an educated woman. She had taken first prizes in Essays and French at St. Mary’s Junior College for Episcopal Young Women. After her mother’s death she sat as hostess at her father’s dinners. Distinguished jurists dined at their table. She’d always acquitted herself well in the conversation which was often philosophical. Yet it was as if this doctor put into her mind images of another world, one she could see only from afar, appearing and disappearing as through drifting clouds.
She lay staring into the darkness. The bed was cold. She shivered under the blankets. She did not like their smell. In time of war men in uniform could occupy a home with impunity. She herself had suffered such an invasion, had she not? But for a woman it was different. The old lady had simply assumed I was a trollop, Emily thought. I would have made the same assumption in her place. I have compromised myself. Never before in my life have I given anyone reason to question my respectability.
She sat up in bed. What would Father say? A wave of cold fear, like nausea, passed through her. What could have been in her mind, what had possessed her? To have chosen this vagabondage! She was truly frightened now, shaking and on the verge of tears. She lay back down and pulled the covers to her chin. In the morning, she must somehow find a way to get back home. Yes, that is exactly what she must do. She belonged nowhere else but home.
Her resolution had the effect of calming her. She thought of the man in the next room. She listened for any sound that might have suggested Wrede Sartorius was awake. She could believe of him that he did not require sleep. But she heard nothing. Nor was any light coming from his room or she would have seen it through her window, where she saw only the shadow of a large tree.
WREDE HAD PROCURED a mount for her, and on the march she rode beside him. The sun rose as they were passing through a forest of towering pines, straight as a rule and greened out only at the tops. Emily felt herself in a hallowed place, the footfalls of the horses and mules and even the creak of the rolling wagons hushed by the thick bed of brown pine needles covering the forest floor. As the day came on she could see, on either side of them off in the woods, the covering infantry drifting among the trees, disappearing and reappearing as if with discretion.
She found in the steady peaceful march through the pine forest a reason to admire men. As Northerners these soldiers were far from their homes and families. Yet they persisted and walked the earth as if the earth were their home. She became aware that Wrede was speaking and didn’t know if she had transferred his words into her own thoughts or if he had been reading her mind.
I confess I no longer find it strange to have no habitation, to wake up each morning in a different place, he said. To march and camp and march again. To meet resistance at a river or a hamlet and engage in combat. And then to bury our dead and resume the march.
You carry your world with you, Emily said.
Yes, we have everything that defines a civilization, Wrede said. We have engineers, quartermaster, commissary, cooks, musicians, doctors,
I’ve done nothing to compare with what has been required of you this day.
He smiled and shook his head. We know so little. Our medical service is no less barbarous than the war that requires it. Someday we will have other means. We will have found botanical molds to reverse infection. We will replace lost blood. We will photograph through the body to the bones. And so on.
Wrede chose a room, nodded, and closed the door behind him.
Emily stood thinking of what he had said. She didn’t know if she had heard him correctly.
She went to her room, closed the door, undressed, and lay down in a soft bed for the first time in many nights. Yet she was far from sleep. She had never before known a man whose thoughts could startle her so. She was an educated woman. She had taken first prizes in Essays and French at St. Mary’s Junior College for Episcopal Young Women. After her mother’s death she sat as hostess at her father’s dinners. Distinguished jurists dined at their table. She’d always acquitted herself well in the conversation which was often philosophical. Yet it was as if this doctor put into her mind images of another world, one she could see only from afar, appearing and disappearing as through drifting clouds.
She lay staring into the darkness. The bed was cold. She shivered under the blankets. She did not like their smell. In time of war men in uniform could occupy a home with impunity. She herself had suffered such an invasion, had she not? But for a woman it was different. The old lady had simply assumed I was a trollop, Emily thought. I would have made the same assumption in her place. I have compromised myself. Never before in my life have I given anyone reason to question my respectability.
She sat up in bed. What would Father say? A wave of cold fear, like nausea, passed through her. What could have been in her mind, what had possessed her? To have chosen this vagabondage! She was truly frightened now, shaking and on the verge of tears. She lay back down and pulled the covers to her chin. In the morning, she must somehow find a way to get back home. Yes, that is exactly what she must do. She belonged nowhere else but home.
Her resolution had the effect of calming her. She thought of the man in the next room. She listened for any sound that might have suggested Wrede Sartorius was awake. She could believe of him that he did not require sleep. But she heard nothing. Nor was any light coming from his room or she would have seen it through her window, where she saw only the shadow of a large tree.
WREDE HAD PROCURED a mount for her, and on the march she rode beside him. The sun rose as they were passing through a forest of towering pines, straight as a rule and greened out only at the tops. Emily felt herself in a hallowed place, the footfalls of the horses and mules and even the creak of the rolling wagons hushed by the thick bed of brown pine needles covering the forest floor. As the day came on she could see, on either side of them off in the woods, the covering infantry drifting among the trees, disappearing and reappearing as if with discretion.
She found in the steady peaceful march through the pine forest a reason to admire men. As Northerners these soldiers were far from their homes and families. Yet they persisted and walked the earth as if the earth were their home. She became aware that Wrede was speaking and didn’t know if she had transferred his words into her own thoughts or if he had been reading her mind.
I confess I no longer find it strange to have no habitation, to wake up each morning in a different place, he said. To march and camp and march again. To meet resistance at a river or a hamlet and engage in combat. And then to bury our dead and resume the march.
You carry your world with you, Emily said.
Yes, we have everything that defines a civilization, Wrede said. We have engineers, quartermaster, commissary, cooks, musicians, doctors,
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