She was heroic; and these were the humble tributes paid by those
of grosser mould to that high quality. Certainly, she was heroic.
Yet her heroism was not of that simple sort so dear to the
readers of novels and the compilers of hagiologies-- the romantic
sentimental heroism with which mankind loves to invest its chosen
darlings: it was made of sterner stuff. To the wounded soldier on
his couch of agony, she might well appear in the guise of a
gracious angel of mercy; but the military surgeons, and the
orderlies, and her own nurses, and the 'Purveyor', and Dr. Hall,
and, even Lord Stratford himself, could tell a different story.
It was not by gentle sweetness and womanly self-abnegation that
she had brought order out of chaos in the Scutari hospitals,
that, from her own resources, she had clothed the British Army,
that she had spread her dominion over the serried and reluctant
powers of the official world; it was by strict method, by stern
discipline, by rigid attention to detail, by ceaseless labour,
and by the fixed determination of an indomitable will.
Beneath her cool and calm demeanour lurked fierce and passionate
fires. As she passed through the wards in her plain dress, so
quiet, so unassuming, she struck the casual observer simply as
the pattern of a perfect lady; but the keener eye perceived
something more than that-- the serenity of high deliberation in
the scope of the capacious brow, the sign of power in the
dominating curve of the thin nose, and the traces of a harsh and
dangerous temper--something peevish, something mocking, and yet
something precise--in the small and delicate mouth.
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