.. unfinished ... tried to do ...'
and they could hear no more.
When the onward rush of a powerful spirit sweeps a weaker one to
its destruction, the commonplaces of the moral judgment are
better left unmade. If Miss Nightingale had been less ruthless,
Sidney Herbert would not have perished; but then, she would not
have been Miss Nightingale. The force that created was the force
that destroyed. It was her Demon that was responsible. When the
fatal news reached her, she was overcome by agony. In the
revulsion of her feelings, she made a worship of the dead man's
memory; and the facile instrument which had broken in her hand
she spoke of forever after as her 'Master'. Then, almost at the
same moment, another blow fell on her. Arthur Clough, worn out by
labours very different from those of Sidney Herbert, died too:
never more would he tie up her parcels. And yet a thirddisaster
followed. The faithful Aunt Mai did not, to be sure, die; no, she
did something almost worse: she left Miss Nightingale. She was
growing old, and she felt that she had closer and more imperative
duties with her own family. Her niece could hardly forgive her.
She poured out, in one of her enormous letters, a passionate
diatribe upon the faithlessness, the lack of sympathy, the
stupidity, the ineptitude of women. Her doctrines had taken no
hold among them; she had never known one who had appris a
apprendre; she could not even get a woman secretary; 'they don't
know the names of the Cabinet Ministers--they don't know which of
the Churches has Bishops and which not'.
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