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Updated: May 31, 2025
Zerviah Holme did not like to be interrupted when he was reading Gibbon; and as he was always reading Gibbon, an interruption was always regarded by him as an insult. About two hours afterwards, he opened the letter, and learnt that his niece, Bernardine, had arrived safely in Petershof, and that she intended to get better and come home strong.
"She was telling me so the very morning when you came." Then, with a tenderness which was almost foreign to him, Zerviah told Robert Allitsen how Bernardine had opened her heart to him. She had never loved any one before: but she had loved the Disagreeable Man. "I did not love him because I was sorry for him," she had said. "I loved him for himself." Those were her very words.
He had never felt so lonely before. It seemed a hard place for a man to die in. Poor Scip! Zerviah clasped his thin hands and looked up at the purple sky. "Lord," he said, "it is my duty. I came South to do my duty. Because he told of me, had I ought to turn against him?
He, being a just man, flushed red with a noble rage. "Where is he? Where is Zerviah Hope? The man should be sent for. He should receive the thanks of the committee. He should receive the acknowledgments of the city. And we've set on him like detectives! hunted him down! Zounds! The city is disgraced. Find him for me!" "We have already done our best," replied the sub-committee, sadly.
Zerviah noticed those young Northern fellows among them, Frank and Remane, and saw how they had aged since they came South, brave boys, both of them, and had done a man's brave deed. Through her office window, as he walked past, he caught a glimpse of Dr. Dare's gray dress and blonde, womanly head of abundant hair. She was mixing medicines, and patients stood waiting.
He lavished himself like a lover over this black boatman; he leaned like a mother over this man who had betrayed him. But on Tuesday night, a little before midnight, Scip rose, struggling on his wretched bed, and held up his hands and cried out: "Mr. Hope! Mr. Hope! I never done mean to harm ye!" "You have not harmed me," said Zerviah, solemnly. "Nobody ever harmed me but myself.
Only, at long intervals, the Mercy, casting anchor far down the channel, sent up by Scip, the weak, black boatman, the signs of human fellowship food, physician, purse, medicine that spoke from the heart of the North to the heart of the South, and upheld her in those well-remembered days. Zerviah Hope, volunteer nurse, became quickly enough a marked man in Calhoun.
"We all have about as much as we can bear," thought Zerviah, as he went by. His own burden was lightened a little that morning, and he was going home to get a real rest. He had just saved his last patient the doctor gave him up. It was a young man, the father of five very little children, and their mother had died the week before. The nurse had looked at the orphans, and said: "He's got to live."
The murderer, the convict, the miserable, the mystery, Zerviah Hope, volunteer nurse, poor, friendless, discharged from Sing Sing, was proved to have surrendered to the public charities of Calhoun, every dollar which he had earned in the service of her sick and dying. The Committee on the Water Supply, and the Sub-Vigilance Committee stood, much depressed, before their superior officer.
"It is false!" cried the nurse, in a ringing voice. The doctor regarded him for a moment. "I may be wrong. Perhaps it was not so bad. I was in a cruel hurry, and so was Doctor Frank. Perhaps they said a discharged convict." "What else?" asked Zerviah, lifting his eyes to hers. "They said you were just out of a seven years' imprisonment for manslaughter.
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