The work excited her; she was striking a small but useful blow against the South. She also felt quite pleased with her appearance. Constance had loaned her a shawl and Brett a cameo brooch to pin it at the bosom of her dark brown dress. She had done her hair in a silk net and put on teardrop earrings of iridescent opal, also borrowed. Because of her speaking skills, polished by appearances at abolitionist rallies, she was by far the best demonstrator in the hall. She earned a compliment from her sector chairman and a more important one from a man she didn't know.
He was a major from the Forty-seventh. While Virgilia tore the shoddy apart verbally and literally, he watched from across the aisle, in front of the cologne booth; soldiers were begging for perfume to defend against the stench of camp sinks and open drains.
The officer studied Virgilia during the demonstration. She lost her train of thought and faltered when his eye dropped from her face to her breasts, then shifted back. He left supporting the arm of a woman, perhaps his wife, but those few moments in which he looked at Virgilia were immensely important to her.
Always before, feeling and looking ugly, she had never appealed to any men except outcasts, like poor Grady. But there had been a sea change, and the major of volunteers had found her, if not beautiful, at least worthy of notice. The profundity of the change couldn't be denied; realizing it left her euphoric.
Virgilia experienced a letdown following the final day of the fair. She roved the house and town, knowing she must leave, must find a direction for herself. The days passed, and still she couldn't.
Nearly two weeks after the fair, Constance brought a letter to the dinner table. "It's from Dr. Howe, of the Sanitary Commission. He's an old friend."
"Is he? From where?" Virgilia asked.
"Newport. He and his wife summered there when we did. Don't you remember?" Virgilia shook her head and bent to her plate; she had managed to forget almost everything about those years.
Brett spoke. "Does the doctor say anything about the fair?"
"Indeed he does. He says ours was one of the most successful thus far. At a dinner party, he reported the fact to Miss Dix herself — here, read it." She passed the letter to Brett, seated on her right.
Brett scanned the letter, then murmured, "Miss Dix. Is she the New England woman I've read about? The one who's worked so hard for reform of the asylums?"
Constance nodded. "You probably saw the long piece about her in Leslie's. She's very famous and very dedicated. The article said Florence Nightingale inspired her to go to Washington when war broke out. Miss Nightingale landed at Scutari, in the Crimea, with thirty-seven Englishwomen, and they saved scores of lives that might have been lost otherwise. Miss Dix has been superintendent of army nurses since the summer."
Virgilia looked up. "They are using women as nurses?"
"At least a hundred," Brett replied. "Billy told me. The women get a salary, a living allowance, transportation — and the privilege of bathing soldiers, most of whom are pretty unenthusiastic about the idea, Billy said."
"I understand the surgeons are violently opposed to the nurses," Constance added. "But that's a doctor for you — guarding his little scrap of territory like a dog." She hadn't missed Virgilia's sudden animation. She turned to her. "Would nursing work interest you?"
"I think it might — though I don't suppose I'd qualify."
Constance considered it a kindness to withhold certain details from the piece in Leslie's. Miss Dix required no medical or scientific training from her recruits; all she asked was that they be over thirty and not attractive. So Constance could truthfully say, "I disagree. You'd be perfect. Would you like me to write Dr. Howe for a letter of introduction?"
"Yes." Then, more strongly, "Yes, please."
That night, Virgilia was sleepless with excitement. Perhaps she had found a way to serve the Union cause and strike at those responsible for the death of her lover. When she finally closed her eyes, she dreamed lurid dreams.
Grady's grave opened. He rose from it, bits of earth falling from his eyes and nose and mouth as he held out his hand, pleading for someone to avenge him.
The picture blurred, replaced by an unfamiliar plantation where dreamy black figures bucked up and down, impregnating moaning colored girls to beget more human chattels.
Then, a long row of men in gray; she watched each being shot, shot again, shot a third and fourth time, blood spatters multiplying on the breasts of their tunics while one man in Union blue fired endlessly. She knew the slayer. She had nursed him in a field hospital till he was once more fit for duty.
She awoke sweating and excited.
In the note included with his letter of introduction, Dr. Howe offered two pieces of advice: Virgilia should not dress too elaborately for her interview with Miss Dix, and although the superintendent of nurses would be quick to detect raw flattery, a discreet bit of praise for Conversations on Common Things would not be out of order. Miss Dix's little book of household advice had sold steadily ever since its publication in 1824. It was in its sixtieth printing; the author was proud of her child.
Virgilia reached Washington during an early December warm spell. When she stepped down to the sunlit train platform, she wrinkled her nose at the odor arising from eight pine crates on a baggage wagon. Water stained the wood, seeped from the joints, and splashed on the platform. She asked a baggage man what the boxes contained.
"Soldiers. Weather like this, the ice don't hold."
"Has there been a battle?"
"Not any big ones that I know about. These boys likely died of the flux or something similar. You hang around a while, you'll see hundreds of them boxes."
Swallowing back something in her throat, Virgilia moved away, carrying her own portmanteau. No wonder the commission considered its work so necessary.
At ten the next morning, she entered the office of Dorothea Dix. Miss Dix, a spinster of sixty, was neat and orderly in her dress, her gestures, and her speech. "It is a pleasure to meet you, Miss Hazard. You have a brother in Secretary Cameron's department, do you not?"
"Two of them, actually. The second is a commissioned officer working for General Ripley. And my youngest brother is with the engineers in Virginia. It was his wife who recommended your book, which I thoroughly enjoyed." She prayed Miss Dix wouldn't ask a question about the contents, since she hadn't bothered to buy or borrow a copy.
"I am happy to hear it. Will you see your brothers during your stay in the city?"
"Oh, naturally. We're very close." Did it sound too exaggerated, making the lie apparent? "It's my hope that my stay will be permanent. I would like to be a nurse, though I'm afraid I have no formal training."
"Any intelligent female can quickly learn the technical aspects. What she cannot acquire, if she does not already possess it, is the one trait I consider indispensable."
Miss Dix folded her hands and regarded Virgilia with gray-blue eyes whose sternness seemed at odds with the femininity of her long neck and her soft voice.
"Yes?" Virgilia prompted.
"Fortitude. The women in my nurse corps confront filth, gore, depravity, and crudity that good breeding forbids me to describe. My nurses are subjected to hostility from patients and also from the doctors, who are, in theory, our allies. I have definite ideas about the work we do and how it must be done. I tolerate no disagreement — a characteristic that further alienates certain politicians and surgeons. Those are challenges we face. Yet the greatest one remains the challenge to human courage. What you will do if you join us, Miss Hazard, is what I have done for many years, because someone must. You will not merely look into hell; you will walk there."