The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Primrose Ring, by Ruth Sawyer
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Title: The Primrose Ring
Author: Ruth Sawyer
Release Date: March 27, 2005 [eBook #15482]
Language: English
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE PRIMROSE RING***
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THE PRIMROSE RING
by
RUTH SAWYER
Illustrated
Harper & Brothers Publishers
New York & London
1915
To
The Little Mother
this book in memory of the
Primrose Ring
she wove for me once on a time
FOREWORD
DEAR PEOPLE,--Whoever you are and wherever you may be when you take up
this book--I beg of you not to feel disturbed because I have let Fancy
and a faery or two slip in between the covers. You will find them
quite harmless and friendly--and very eager to become acquainted.
Furthermore, please do not search about for Saint Margaret's; it does
not exist. I shamelessly confess to the building of it myself, using
my right of authorship to bring a stone from this place, and a cornice
from that, to cap the foundation I discovered long ago--when I was a
child. In a like manner have I furnished its board of trustees. Do
not misjudge them; remember that when one is so careless as to let
Fancy and faeries into a book she is forced to let the stepmothers be
unkind and the giants cruel.
I should like to remind those who may be forgetting that Tir-na-n'Og is
the land of eternal youth and joyousness--the Celtic "Land of Heart's
Desire." It is a country which belongs to us all by right of natural
heritage; but we turned our backs to it and started journeying from it
almost the instant we stepped out of our cradles.
As for the primrose ring--reach across it to Bridget and let her give
you back again the heart of a child which you may have lost somewhere
along the road of Growing-Old-and-Wise.
R. S.
THE PRIMROSE RING
I
CONCERNING FANCY AND SAINT MARGARET'S
Would it ever have happened at all if Trustee Day had not fallen on the
30th of April--which is May Eve, as everybody knows?
This is something you must ask of those wiser than I, for I am only the
story-teller, sitting in the shadow of the market-place, passing on the
tale that comes to my ears. But I can remind you that May Eve is one
of the most bewitched and bewitching times of the whole year--reason
enough to account for any number of strange happenings; and I can point
out to your notice that Margaret MacLean, in charge of Ward C at Saint
Margaret's, found the flower-seller at the corner of the street that
morning with his basket full of primroses. Now primroses are "gentle
flowers," as everybody ought to know--which means that the faeries have
been using them for thousands of years to work magic; and Margaret
MacLean bought the full of her hands that morning.
And this brings us back to Trustee Day at Saint Margaret's--which fell
on the 30th of April--and to the beginning of the story.
Saint Margaret's Free Hospital for Children does not belong to the
city. It was built by a rich man as a memorial to his son, a little
crippled lad who stayed just long enough to leave behind as a legacy
for his father a great crying hunger to minister to all little ailing
and crippled bodies. There are golden tales concerning those first
years of the hospital--tales passed on by word of mouth alone and so
old as to have gathered a bit of the misty glow of illusion that hangs
over all myths and traditions. They made of Saint Margaret's an
arcadian refuge, where the Founder wandered all day and every day like
a patron saint. Tradition endowed him with all the attributes of all
saints belonging to childhood: the protectiveness of Saint Christopher,
the tenderness of Saint Anthony, the loving comradeship of Saint
Valentine, and the joyfulness of Saint Nicholas.
But that was more than fifty years ago; and institutions can change
marvelously in half a century. Time had buried more than the Founder.
The rich still support Saint Margaret's. Society gives bazars and
costumed balls for it annually; great artists give benefit concerts;
bankers, corporation presidents, and heiresses send liberal checks once
a year--and from this last group are chosen the trustees. They have
made of Saint Margaret's the best-appointed hospital in the city. It
is supplied with everything money and power can obtain; leading
surgeons are listed on its staff; its nurses rank at the head. It has
outspanned the greatest dream of the Founder--professionally. And
twelve times a year--at the end of every month--the trustees hold their
day; which means that all through the late afternoon, until the
business meeting at five-thirty, they wander over the building.
Now it is the business of institutional directors to be thorough, and
the trustees of Saint Margaret's, previous to the 30th of April, never
forgot their business. They looked into corners and behind doors to
see what had not been done; they followed the work-trails of every
employee--from old Cassie, the scrub-woman, to the Superintendent
herself; and if one was a wise employee one blazed conspicuously and
often. They gathered in little groups and discussed methods for
conservation and greater efficiency, being as up to date in their
charities as in everything else. Also, they brought guests and showed
them about; for when one was rich and had put one's money into
collections of sick and crippled children instead of old ivories and
first editions, it did not at all mean that one had not retained the
same pride of exhibiting.
There are a few rare natures who make collections for the sheer love of
the objects they collect, and if they can be persuaded to show them off
at all it is always with so much tenderness and sympathy that even the
feelings of a delicately wrought Buddha could not be bruised. But
there were none of these natures numbered among the trustees of Saint
Margaret's. And because it was purely a matter of charity and pride
with them, and because they never had any time left over from being
thorough and business-like to spend on the children themselves, they
never failed to leave a shaft of gloom behind them on Trustee Day. The
contagious ward always escaped by virtue of its own power of
self-defense; but the shaft started at the door of the surgical ward
and went widening along through the medical and the convalescent until
it reached the incurables at an angle of indefinite radiation. There
was a reason for this--as Margaret MacLean put it once in paraphrase:
"Children come and children go, but we stay on for ever."
Trustee Day was an abiding memory only with the incurables; which meant
that twelve times a year--at the end of every month--Ward C cried
itself to sleep.
Spring could not have begun the day better. She is never the
spendthrift that summer is, but once in a while she plunges recklessly
into her treasure-store and scatters it broadcast. On this last day of
April she was prodigal with her sunshine; out countryward she garnished
every field and wood and hollow with her best. Everywhere were flowers
and pungent herby things in such abundance that even the city folk
could sense them afar off.
Little cajoling breezes scuttled around corners and down
thoroughfares, blowing good humor in and bad humor out. Birds of
passage--song-sparrows, tanagers, bluebirds, and orioles--even a pair
of cardinals--stopped wherever they could find a tree or bush from
which to pipe a friendly greeting. Yes, spring certainly could not
have begun the day better; it was as if everything had said to itself,
"We know this is a very special occasion and we must do our share in
making it fine."
So well did everything succeed that Margaret MacLean was up and out of
Saint Margaret's a full half-hour earlier than usual, her heart singing
antiphonally with the birds outside. Coatless, but capped and in her
gray uniform, she jumped the hospital steps, two at a time, and danced
the length of the street.
Now Margaret MacLean was small and slender, and there was nothing
grotesque in the dancing. It had become a natural means of expressing
the abundant life and joyousness she had felt ever since she had been
free of crutches and wheeled chairs; and an impartial stranger, had he
been passing, would have watched her with the same uncritical delight
that he might have bestowed on any wood creature had it suddenly
appeared darting along the pavement. She reached the corner just in
time to bump into the flower-seller, who was turning about like some
old tabby to settle himself and his basket.
"Oh!" she cried in dismay, for the flower-seller was wizened and
unsteady of foot, and she had sent him spinning about in a dizzy
fashion. She put out a steadying hand. "Oh . . . !" This time it was
in ecstasy; she had spied the primroses in the basket just as the
sunshine splashed over the edge of the corner building straight down
upon them. Margaret MacLean dropped to one knee and laid her cheek
against them. "The happy things--you can hear them laugh! I want
all--all I can carry." She looked up quizzically at the flower-seller.
"Now how did you ever happen to think of bringing these--to-day?"
A pair of watery old eyes twinkled, thereby becoming amazingly young in
an instant, and he wagged his head mysteriously while he raised a
significant finger. "Sure, wasn't I knowin', an' could I be afther
bringin' anythin' else? But the rest that passes--or stops--will see
naught but yellow flowers in a basket, I'm thinkin'." And the
flower-seller set to shaking his head sorrowfully.
"Perhaps not. There are the children--"
"Aye, the childher; but the most o' them be's gettin' too terrible
wise."
"I know--I know--but mine aren't. I'm going to take my children back
as many as I can carry." She stretched both hands about a mass of
stems--all they could compass. "See"--she held up a giant bunch--"so
much happiness is worth a great deal. Feel in the pocket of my apron
and you will find--gold for gold. It was the only money I had in my
purse. Keep it all, please." With a nod and a smile she left him,
dancing her way back along the still deserted street.
"'Tis the faeries' own day, afther all," chuckled the flower-seller as
he eyed the tiny gold disk in his palm; then he remembered, and called
after the diminishing figure of the nurse: "Hey, there! Mind what ye
do wi' them blossoms. They be's powerful strong magic." And he
chuckled again.
The hall-boy, shorn of uniform and dignity, was outside, polishing
brasses, when Margaret MacLean reached the hospital door. She stopped
for an interchange of grins and greetings.
"Mornin', Miss Peggie."
"Morning, Patsy."
He was "Patrick" to the rest of Saint Margaret's; no one else seemed to
realize that he was only about one-fifth uniform and the other fifths
were boy--small boy at that.
She eyed his work critically. "That's right--polish them well, Patsy.
They must shine especially bright to-day."
"Why, what's happenin' to-day?"
"Oh--everything, and--nothing at all."
And she passed on through the door with a most mysterious smile,
thereby causing Patsy to mentally comment:
"My, don't she beat all! More'n half the time a feller don't know what
she's kiddin' about; but, gee! don't he like it!"
As it happened the primroses did not get as far as Ward C then.
Margaret MacLean found the door of the board-room ajar, and, glancing
in, looked square into the eyes of the Founder of Saint Margaret's,
where he hung in his great gold frame--silent and questioning.
"If all the tales they tell about you are true, you must wonder what
has happened to Saint Margaret's since you turned it over to a board of
trustees."
She went in and stood close to him, smiling wistfully. "Perhaps you
would like me to leave you the primroses until after the meeting--they
would be sure to cheer you up; and they might--they might--" Laughing,
she went over to the President's desk and put the flowers in the green
Devonshire bowl.
She was sitting in the President's chair, coaxing some of the hoydenish
blossoms into place, when the House Surgeon looked in a moment later.
"Hello! What are you doing? I thought you detested this room." He
spoke in a teasing, big-brother way, while his eyes dwelt pleasurably
on the small gray figure in the President's chair. For, be it said
without partiality or prejudice, Margaret MacLean was beautiful, with a
beauty altogether free from self-appraisement.
"I do--I hate it!" Then she wagged her head and raised a significant
finger in perfect imitation of the flower-seller. "I am dabbling
in--magic. I am starting here a terrible and insidious campaign
against gloom."
The House Surgeon looked amused. "You make me shiver, all right; but I
haven't the smallest guess coming. Would you mind putting it into
scientific American?"
"I'm afraid I couldn't. But I can make a plain statement in
prose--this is Trustee Day."
"Hell!" The House Surgeon walked over to the calendar on the desk to
verify the fact. "Well, what are you going to do about it?"
Margaret MacLean spread her hands over the primroses, indicatively. "I
told you--magic." She wrinkled up her forehead into a worrisome frown.
"Let me see; I counted them, up last night, and I have had two hundred
and twenty-eight Trustee Days in my life. I have tried about
everything else--philosophy, Christianity, optimism, mental sclerosis,
and missionary fever; but never magic. Don't you think it
sounds--hopeful?"
The House Surgeon laughed. "You are the funniest little person I ever
knew. On duty you're as old as Methuselah and as wise as Hippocrates,
but the rest of the time I believe your feet are eternally treading the
nap off antique wishing-carpets. I wonder how many you've worn out.
As for that head of yours, it bobs like a penny balloon among the
clouds looking for--"
"Faeries?" suggested Margaret MacLean.
"That just about hits it. Will you please tell me how you, of all
people, ever evolved these--ideas--out of Saint Margaret's?"
A grim smile tightened the corners of her mouth while she looked across
the room to the portrait that hung opposite the Founder's--the portrait
of the Old Senior Surgeon. "I had to," she said at last. "When a
person is born with absolutely nothing--nothing of the human things a
human baby is entitled to--she has to evolve something to live in; a
sort of sea-urchin affair with spines of make-believe sticking out all
over it to keep prodding away life as it really is. If she didn't the
things she had missed would flatten her out into a flabby pulp--just
skin and feelings."
"And so you make believe that Trustee Day isn't really bad?"
"Oh dear, no! But I keep believing it's going to be much better. Did
you ever think what it could be like--if the trustees would only make
it something more than--a matter of business? Why, it could be as good
as any faery-tale come true, with a dozen god-parents instead of one;
and think of the wonderful things they could do it they tried.
Think--think--and, oh, the fun of it!"
She broke off with a little shivering ache. When the picture became so
alive that it pulled at one's heart-strings, it was time to stop. But
the next moment she was laughing merrily.
"Do you know, when I was a little tad and couldn't sleep at night with
the pain, I used to make believe I was a 'truster' and say over to
myself all the nice, comforting things I wished they would say. It
began to sound so real that one day I answered--just as if some one had
said something pleasant."
"Well?" interrogated the House Surgeon, much amused.
"Well, it was the Oldest Trustee, of course; and she raised those
lorgnettes and reminded me that a good child never spoke unless she was
spoken to. I suppose it will take lots and lots of magic to turn them
into god-parents."
"Look here," and the House Surgeon reached across the desk and took a
firm, big-brother grip of her hands, "faery-tales have to have
stepmothers as well as godmothers--think of it that way. And remember
that those kiddies of yours were never born to ride in pumpkin coaches."
"But I'm not reaching out for faery luxuries for them. I want them to
be children--plain, happy, laughing children--with as normal a heritage
as we can scrape together for them. All it needs is the magic of a
little human understanding. That's the most potent magic in the whole
world. Why, it can do anything!"
A little-girl look came into Margaret MacLean's face. It always did
when she was wanting anything very much or was thinking about something
very intensely. It was the hardest kind of a look to resist. She had
often threshed this subject out with the House Surgeon before; for it
was her theory that when a body's material condition was rather poor
and meager there was all the more reason for scraping together what one
could of a spiritual heritage and living thereby.
"And don't you see," she had urged, at least a score of times,
"if we could only teach all the cripples to let their minds
run--free-limbed--over hilltops and pleasant places, their natures
would never need to warp and wither after the fashion of their poor
bodies. And the time to begin is in childhood, when the mind is
learning to walk alone."
Usually the House Surgeon was easily convinced to the Margaret MacLean
side of any argument; but this time, for reasons of his own, he turned
an unsympathetic and stubborn ear. He was coming to believe very
strongly that all this fanciful optimism was so much laughing-gas, with
only a passing power, and when the effect wore off there would be the
Dickens to pay. He did not want to see Margaret MacLean turn into a
bitter-minded woman of the world--stripped of her trust and her dreams.
He--all of them--had need of her as she was. Her belief in the
ultimate good of things and persons, however, was beyond power of human
achievement; and the surest cure for disappointments was to amputate
all expectations. So the House Surgeon hardened his heart and became
as professionally severe as he knew how to be.
"It's absolutely impossible to expect a group of incurable children in
an institution to be made as normal and happy as other children. It
can't be done. Those kiddies are up against a pretty hard proposition,
I know; but the kindest thing you can do for them is to toughen them
into not feeling--"
The nurse in charge of Ward C wrenched away her hands fiercely.
"You're just like the Senior Surgeon. He thinks the whole dependent
world--the sick and the poor and the incompetent--have no business with
ideas or feelings of their own. He's always saying, 'Train it out of
them; train it out of them; and it will make it easier for institutions
to take care of them.' It's for ever the 'right of the strong' with
him. Unless you are able to take care of yourself you are not entitled
to the ordinary privileges of a human being."
"I'm not at all like the Senior Surgeon. I don't mean that, and you
know it. What I am trying to make you understand is that these kiddies
can't keep you always; some time they will have to learn to do without
you. When that happens it will come tough on them. It would come
tough on anybody; and the square thing for you to do is to stop
being--so all-fired adorable." The House Surgeon flung back his head
and marched out of the board-room, slamming the door.
Behind the slammed door Margaret MacLean eyed the primroses
suspiciously. "I wonder--is your magic working all right to-day?
Please--please don't weave any charms against him, little faery people.
He is the only other grown-up person who has ever understood the least
bit; and I couldn't bear to lose him, too."
For the second time that morning she nestled her cheek against the
blossoms. Then the clock on the hospital tower struck eight. She
jumped with a start. "Time to go on duty." Once again her eyes met
the eyes of the Founder and sparkled witchingly. She raised high the
green Devonshire bowl from the President's desk as for a toast.
"Here's to Saint Margaret's--as you founded her; and the children--as
you meant them to be; and here's to the one who first understood!" She
turned from the Founder to the portrait hanging opposite, and bowed
most worshipfully to the Old Senior Surgeon.
II
IN WHICH MARGARET MACLEAN REVIEWS A MEMORY
As Margaret MacLean climbed the stairs to Ward C--she rarely took the
lift, it was too remindful of the time when she could not climb
stairs--her mind thought back a step for each step she mounted. When
she had reached the top of the first flight she was a child again, back
in one of the little white iron cribs in her own ward; and it was the
day when the first stringent consciousness came to her that she hated
Trustee Day.
The Old Senior Surgeon--the present one, of whom Saint Margaret's felt
inordinately proud, was house surgeon then--had come into Ward C for a
peep at her, and had called out, according to a firmly established
custom, "Hello, Thumbkin! What's the news?"
She had been "Thumbkin" to him ever since the night he had carried her
into the hospital, a tiny mite of a baby; and he had woven out of her
coming a marvelous story--fancy-fashioned. This he had told her at
least twice a week, from the time she was old enough to ask for it,
because it had popped into his head quite suddenly that this morsel of
humanity would some day insist on being accounted for.
The bare facts concerning her were rather shabby ones. She had been
unceremoniously dumped into his arms by a delegate from the Foundling
Asylum, who had found him the most convenient receptacle nearest the
door; and he had been offered the meager information that she belonged
to no one, was wrong somehow, and a hospital was the place for her.
One hardly likes to pass on shabby garments, much less shabby facts, to
cover another's past. So the Old Senior Surgeon had forestalled her
inquisitiveness with a tale adorned with all the pretty imaginings that
he, "a clumsy-minded old gruffian," could conjure up.
Margaret MacLean remembered the story--word for word--as we remember
"The House That Jack Built." It began with the Old Senior Surgeon
himself, who heard a pair of birds disputing in one of the two trees
which sentineled the hospital. They had built a nest therein; it was
bedtime, and they wished to retire, only something prevented. Upon
investigation he discovered the cause--"and there you were, my dear, no
bigger than my thumb!"
This was the nucleus of the story; but the Old Senior Surgeon had
rolled it about, hither and yon, adding adventure after adventure,
until it had assumed gigantic proportions. As she grew older she took
a hand in the adventure-making herself, he supplying the bare plot, she
weaving the threads therefrom into a detailed narrative which she
retold to him later, with a few imaginings of her own added. This is
what had established the custom for the Old Senior Surgeon to take a
peep into Ward C at day's end and call across to her: "Hello, Thumbkin!
What's the news?" or, "What's happened next?" And until this day the
answer had always been a joyous one.
Margaret MacLean, grown, could look back at tiny Margaret MacLean and
see her very clearly as she straightened up in the little iron crib and
answered in a shrill, tense voice: "I'm not Thumbkin. I'm a foundling.
I don't belong to anybody. I never had any father or mother or
nothing, but just a hurt back; they said so. They stood right
there--two of them; and one told the other all about me."
This was the end of the story, and the beginning of Trustee Days for
Margaret MacLean.
She soon made the discovery that she was not the only child in the ward
who felt about it that way. Her discovery was a matter of intuition
rather than knowledge; for--as if by silent consent--the topic was
carefully avoided in the usual ward conversation. One does not make it
a rule to talk about the hobgoblins that lurk in the halls at night, or
the gray, creeping shapes that come out of dark corners and closets
after one has gone to bed, if one is so pitifully unfortunate as to
possess these things in childhood. Instead one just remembers and
waits, shivering. Only to old Cassie, the scrub-woman, who was young
Cassie then, did she confide her fear. From her she received a
charm--compounded of goose eggshells and vinegar--which Cassie claimed
to be what they used in Ireland to unbewitch changelings. She kept the
charm hidden for months under her pillow. It proved comforting,
although absolutely ineffectual.
And for months there had been a strained relationship between the Old
Senior Surgeon and herself, causing them both much embarrassment. She
resented the story he had made for her with all her child soul; he had
cheated her--fooled her. She felt much as we felt toward our parents
when we made our first discovery concerning Santa Claus.
But after a time--a long time--the story came to belong to her again;
she grew to realize that the Old Senior Surgeon had told it
truthfully--only with the unconscious tongue of the poet instead of the
grim realist. She found out as well that it had done a wonderful thing
for her: it had turned life into an adventure--a quest upon which one
was bound to depart, no matter how poorly one's feet might be shod or
how persistently the rain and wind bit at one's marrow through the rags
of a conventional cloak. More than this--it had colored the road ahead
for her, promising pleasant comradeship and good cheer; it would keep
her from ever losing heart or turning back.
A day came at last when she and the Old Senior Surgeon could laugh--a
little foolishly, perhaps--over the child-story; and then, just because
they could laugh at it and feel happy, they told it together all over
again. They made much of Thumbkin's christening feast, and the gifts
the good godmothers brought.
"Let me see," said the Old Senior Surgeon, cocking his head
thoughtfully, "there was the business-like little party on a
broomstick, carrying grit--plain grit."
"And the next one brought happiness--didn't she?" asked little Margaret
MacLean.
He nodded. "Of course. Then came a little gray-haired faery with a
nosegay of Thoughts-for-other-folks, all dried and ready to put away
like sweet lavender."
"And did the next bring love?"
Again he agreed. "But after her, my dear, came a comfortable old lady
in a chaise with a market-basket full of common-sense."
"And then--then-- Oh, couldn't the one after her bring beauty? Some
one always did in the book stories. I think I wouldn't mind the back
and--other things so much if my face could be nice."
Margaret MacLean, grown, could remember well how tearfully eager little
Margaret MacLean had been.
The Old Senior Surgeon looked down with an odd, crinkly smile. "Have
you never looked into a glass, Thumbkin?"
She shook her head.
Children in the wards of free hospitals have no way of telling how they
look, and perhaps it is better that way. Only if it happens--as it
does sometimes--that they spend a good share of their life there, it
seems as if they never had a chance to get properly acquainted with
themselves.
For a moment he patted her hand; after which he said, very solemnly:
"Wait for a year and a day--then look. You will find out then just
what the next faery brought."
Margaret MacLean had obeyed this command to the letter. When the year
and a day came she had been able to stand on tiptoe and look at herself
for the first time in her life; and she would never forget the gladness
of that moment. It had appeared nothing short of a miracle to her that
she should actually possess something of which she need not be
ashamed--something nice to share with the world. And whenever Margaret
MacLean thought of her looks at all, which was rare, she thought of
them in that way.
She took up the memory again where she had dropped it on the second
flight of stairs, slowly climbing her way to Ward C, and went on with
the story.
They came to the place where Thumbkin was pricked by the wicked faery
with the sleeping-thorn and put to sleep for a hundred years, after the
fashion of many another story princess; and the Old Senior Surgeon
suddenly stopped and looked at her sharply.
"Some day, Thumbkin, I may play the wicked faery and put you to sleep.
What would you say to that?"
She did not say--then.
More months passed, months which brought an ashen, drawn look to the
face of the Old Senior Surgeon, and a tired-out droop to his shoulders
and eyes. She began to notice that the nurses eyed him pityingly
whenever he came into the ward, and the house surgeon shook his head
ominously. She wondered what it meant; she wondered more when he came
at last to remind her of his threatened promise.
"You remember, Thumbkin, about that sleep? Would you let an old faery
doctor put you to sleep, for a little while, if he was very sure you
would wake up to find happiness--and health--and love--and all the
other gifts the godmothers brought?"
She tried her best to keep the frightened look out of her eyes. By the
way he watched her, however, she knew some of it must have crept in.
"Operation?" she managed to choke out at last.
Operation was a fairly common word in Ward C, and not an over-hopeful
one.
"It's this way, Thumbkin; and let's make a bargain of it. I think
there's a cure for that back of yours. It hasn't been tried very much;
about often enough to make it worth while for us to take a chance.
I'll be honest with you and tell you the house surgeon doesn't think it
can be done; but that's where the bargain comes in. He thinks he can
mend my trouble, and I don't; and we're both dreadfully greedy to prove
we're right. Now if you will give me my way with you I will give him
his. But you must come first."
"A hundred years is a long time to be asleep," she objected.
"Bless you, it won't be a hundred minutes."
"And does your back need it, too?"
"Not my back; my stomach. It's about the only chance for either of us,
Thumbkin."
"And you won't unless I do?"
The Old Senior Surgeon gave his head a terrific shake; then he caught
her small hands in his great, warm, comforting ones. "Think. It means
a strong back; a pair of sturdy little legs to take you anywhere; and
the whole world before you!"
"And you'll have them, too?"
He smiled convincingly.
"All right. Let's." She gave his hand a hard, trustful squeeze.
She liked to remember that squeeze. She often wondered if it might not
have helped him to do what he had to do.
Her operation was record-making in its success; and after he had seen
her well on the mend he gave himself over to the house surgeon and a
fellow-colleague, according to the bargain. He proved the house
surgeon wrong, for he never rallied. Undoubtedly he knew this would be
the way of it; for he stopped in Ward C before he went up to the
operating-room and said to her:
"I shall be sleeping longer than you did, Thumbkin; but, never fear, I
shall be waking some time, somewhere. And remember this: Never grow so
strong and well that you forget how tiresome a hospital crib can be.
Never be so happy that you grow blind to the heartaches of other
children; and never wander so far away from Saint Margaret's that you
can't come back, sometimes, and make a story for some one else."
She puzzled a good bit over this, especially the first part of it; but
when they told her the next day, she understood. Probably she grieved
for him more than had any one else; even more than the members of his
own family or profession. For, whereas there are many people in the
world who can give life to others, there are but few who can help
others to possess it.
What childhood she had had she left behind her soon after this, along
with her aching back, her helpless limbs, and the little iron crib in
Ward C.
On the first Trustee Day following her complete recovery she appeared,
at her own request, before the meeting of the board. In a small,
frightened voice she asked them to please send her away to school. She
wanted to learn enough to come back to Saint Margaret's and be a nurse.
The trustees consented. Having assumed the responsibility of her
well-being for over fifteen years, they could not very easily shirk it
now. Furthermore, was it not a praise-worthy tribute to Saint
Margaret's as a charitable institution, and to themselves as trustees,
that this child whom they had sheltered and helped to cure should
choose this way of showing her gratitude? Verily, the board pruned and
plumed itself well that day.
All this Margaret MacLean lived over again as she climbed the stairs to
Ward C on the 30th of April, her heart glowing warm with the memory of
this man who had first understood; who had freed her mind from the
abnormality of her body and the stigma of her heritage; who had made it
possible for her to live wholesomely and deeply; and who had set her
feet upon a joyous mission. For the thousandth time she blessed that
memory.
It had been no disloyalty on her part that she had closed her lips and
said nothing when the House Surgeon had questioned her about her
fancy-making. She could never get away from the feeling that some of
the sweetness and sacredness might be lost with the telling of the
memory. One is so apt to cheapen a thing when one tries hastily to put
it into words, and ever afterward it is never quite the same.
On the second floor she stopped; and by chance she looked over, between
spiral banisters, to the patch of hallway below. It just happened that
the House Surgeon was standing there, talking with one of the internes.
Margaret MacLean smiled whimsically. "If there is a soul in the wide
world I could share it with, it is the House Surgeon." And then she
added, aloud, softly apostrophizing the top of his head, "I think some
day you might grow to be very--very like the Old Senior Surgeon; that
is, if you would only stop trying to be like the present one."
[Illustration: "If there is a soul in the wide world I could share it
with, it is the House Surgeon."]
III
WARD C
A welcoming shout went up from Ward C as Margaret MacLean entered. It
was lusty enough to have come from the throats of healthy children, and
it would have sounded happily to the most impartial ears; to the nurse
in charge it was a very pagan of gladness.
"Wish you good morning, good meals, and good manners," laughed Margaret
MacLean; and then she went from crib to crib with a special greeting
for each one. Oh, she firmly believed that a great deal depended on
how the day began.
In the first crib lay Pancho, of South American parentage, partially
paralyzed and wholly captivating. He had been in Saint Margaret's
since babyhood--he was six now--and had never worn anything but a
little hospital shirt.
"Good morning, Brown Baby," she said, kissing his forehead. "It's just
the day for you out on the sun-porch; and you'll hear birds--lots of
them."
"Wobins?"
"Yes, and bluebirds, too. I've heard them already."
Next came Sandy--merry of heart--a humpback laddie from Aberdeen. His
parents had gone down with the steerage of a great ocean liner, and
society had cared for him until the first horror of the tragedy had
passed; then some one fortunately had mentioned Saint Margaret's, and
society was relieved of its burden. In the year he had spent here his
Aberdonian burr had softened somewhat and a number of American
colloquialisms had crept into his speech; but for all that he was "the
braw canny Scot"--as the House Surgeon always termed him--and he
objected to kisses. So the good-morning greeting was a hearty
hand-shake between the two--comrade fashion.
"It wad be a bonnie day i' Aberdeen," he reminded her, blithely. "But
'tis no the robins there 'at wad be singin'."
"Shall I guess?"
"Na, I'll tell ye. Laverocks!"
"Really, Sandy?" And then she suddenly remembered something. "Now you
guess what you're going to have for supper to-night."
"Porridge?"
"No; scones!"
"Bully!" And Sandy clapped his hands ecstatically.
Beside Sandy lay Susan--smart, shrewd, and American, with braced legs
and back, and a philosophy that failed her only on Trustee Days. But
as calendars are not kept in Ward C no one knew what this day was; and
consequently Susan was grinning all over her pinched, gnome-like little
face. Margaret MacLean kissed her on both cheeks; the Susan-kind
hunger for affection, but the world rarely finds it out and therefore
gives sparingly.
"Guess yer couldn't guess what I dreamt last night, Miss Peggie?"
"About the aunt?" This was a mythical relation of Susan's who lived
somewhere and who was supposed to turn up some day and claim Susan with
open arms. She was the source of many dreams and of much interested
conversation and heated argument in the ward, and the children had her
pictured down to the smallest detail of person and clothes.
"No, 'tain't my aunt this time. I dreamt you was gettin' married, Miss
Peggie." And Susan giggled delightedly.
"An' goin' away?" This was groaned out in chorus from the two cots
following Susan's, wherein lay James and John--fellow-Apostles of
pain--bound closely together in that spiritual brotherhood. They were
sitting up, holding hands and staring at Margaret with wide,
anguish-filled eyes.
"Of course I'm not going away, little brothers; and I'm not going to
get married. Does any one ever get married in Saint Margaret's?"
The Apostles thought very hard about it for a moment; but as it had
never happened before, of course it never would now, and Miss Peggie
was safe.
The whole ward smiled again. But in that moment Margaret MacLean
remembered what the House Surgeon had said, and wondered. Was she
building up for them an ultimate discontent in trying to make life
happy and full for them now? Could not minds like theirs be taught to
walk alone, after all? And then she laughed to herself for worrying.
Why should the children ever have to do without her--unless--unless
something came to them far better--like Susan's mythical aunt? The
children need never leave Saint Margaret's as long as they lived, and
she never should; and she passed on to the next cot, content that all
was well.
As she stooped over the bed a pair of thin little arms flew out and
clasped themselves tightly about her neck; a head with a shock of red
curls buried itself in the folds of the gray uniform. This was
Bridget--daughter of the Irish sod, oldest of the ward, general
caretaker and best beloved; although it should be added in justice to
both Bridget and Margaret MacLean that the former had no consciousness
of it, and the latter took great care to hide it.
[Illustration: As she stooped over the bed a pair of thin little arms
flew out and clasped themselves tightly about her neck.]
It was Bridget who read to the others when no one else could; it was
Bridget who remembered some wonderful story to tell on those days when
Sandy's back was particularly bad or the Apostles grew over-despondent;
and it was Bridget who laughed and sang on the gray days when the sun
refused to be cheery. Undoubtedly it was because of all these things
that her cot was in the center of Ward C.
Concerning Bridget herself, hers was a case of arsenical poisoning,
slowly absorbed while winding daisy-stems for an East Broadway
manufacturer of cheap artificial flowers. She had done this for three
years--since she was five--thereby helping her mother to support
themselves and two younger children. She was ten now and the Senior
Surgeon had already reckoned her days.
In the shadow of Bridget's cot was Rosita's crib--Rosita being the
youngest, the most sensitive, and the most given to homesickness. This
last was undoubtedly due to the fact that she was the only child in the
incurable ward blessed in the matter of a home. Her parents were
honest-working Italians who adored her, but who were too ignorant and
indulgent to keep her alive. They came every Sunday, and sat out the
allotted time for visitors beside her crib, while the other children
watched in a silent, hungry-eyed fashion.
Margaret MacLean passed her with a kiss and went on to
Peter--Peter--seven years old--congenital hip disease--and all boy.
"Hello, you!" he shouted, squirming under the kiss that he would not
have missed for anything.
"Hello, you!" answered back the administering nurse, and then she
asked, solemnly, "How's Toby?"
"He's--he's fine. That soap the House Surgeon give me cured his fleas
all up."
Toby was even more mythical than Susan's aunt; she was based on certain
authentic facts, whereas Toby was solely the creation of a dog-adoring
little brain. But no one was ever inconsiderate enough to hint at his
airy fabrication; and Margaret MacLean always inquired after him every
morning with the same interest that she bestowed on the other occupants
of Ward C.
Last in the ward came Michael, a diminutive Russian exile with valvular
heart trouble and a most atrocious vocabulary. The one seemed as
incurable as the other. Margaret MacLean had wrestled with the
vocabulary on memorable occasions--to no avail; and although she had
long since discovered it was a matter of words and not meanings with
him, it troubled her none the less. And because Michael came the
nearest to being the black sheep of this sanitary fold she showed for
him always an unfailing gentleness.
"Good morning, dear," she said, running her fingers through the
perpendicular curls that bristled continuously.
"Goot mornun, tear," he mimicked, mischievously; and then he added,
with an irresistible smile, "Und Got-tam-you."
"Oh, Michael, don't you remember, the next time you were going to say
'God bless you'?"
"Awright--next time."
Margaret MacLean sighed unconsciously. Michael's "next time" was about
as reliable as the South American _mañana_; and he seemed as much an
alien now as the day he was brought into the ward. And then, because
she believed that kindness was the strongest weapon for victory in the
end, she did the thing Michael loved best.
Ward C was turned into a circus menagerie, and Margaret MacLean and her
assistant were turned into keepers. Together they set about the duties
for the day with great good-humor. Two seals, a wriggling
hippopotamus, a roaring polar bear, a sea-serpent of surprising
activities, two teeth-grinding alligators, a walrus, and a baby
elephant were bathed with considerable difficulty and excitement. It
was Sandy who insisted on being the elephant in spite of a heated
argument from the other animals that, having a hump, he ought to be a
camel. They forgave him later, however, when he squirted forth his
tooth-brush water and trumpeted triumphantly, thereby causing the
entire menagerie to squirm about and bellow in great glee.
At this point the head keeper had to turn them all back instantly into
children, and she delivered a firm but gentle lecture on the
inconsiderateness of soaking a freshly changed bed.
Sandy broke into penitent tears; and because tears were never allowed
to dampen the atmosphere of Ward C when they could possibly be dammed,
Margaret MacLean did the "best-of-all-things." She pushed the cribs
and cots all together into a "special" with observation-cars; then,
changing into an engineer, and with a call to Toby to jump aboard, she
swung herself into the caboose-rocker and opened the throttle. The
bell rang; the whistle tooted; and the engine gave a final snort and
puff, bounding away countryward where spring had come.
Those of you who live where you can always look out on pleasant places,
or who can travel at will into them, may find it hard to understand how
wearisome and stupid it grows to be always in one room with an
encompassing sky-line of roof-tops and chimneys, or may fail to sound
the full depths of wonder and delight over the ride that Ward C took
that memorable day.
The engineer pointed out everything--meadows full of flowers, trees
full of birds, gardens new planted, and corn-fields guarded by
scarecrows. She slowed up at the barnyards that the children might
hear the crowing cocks and clucking hens with their new-hatched broods,
and see the neighboring pastures with their flocks of sheep and tiny
lambs.
"A ken them weel--hoo the wee creepits bleeted hame i' Aberdeen!"
shouted Sandy, bleeting for the whole pastureful.
And when they came to the smallest of mountain brooks the engineer
followed it, down, down, until it had grown into a stream with
cowslipped banks; and on and on until it had grown into a river with
little boats and sandy shore and leaping fish. Here the engineer
stopped the train; and every one who wanted to--and there were none who
did not--went paddling; and some went splashing about just as if they
could swim.
Back in the "special," they climbed a hilltop, slowly, so that the
engineer could point out each farm and pasture and stream in miniature
that they had seen close by.
"That's the wonder of a hilltop," she explained; "you can see
everything neighboring each other." And when they reached the crest
she clapped her hands. "Oh, children dear, wouldn't it be beautiful to
build a house on a hilltop just like this to live in always!"
Afterward they rode into deep woods, where the sunlight came down
through the trees like splashes of gold; and here the engineer
suggested they should have a picnic.
As Margaret MacLean stepped out into the hall to look up the
dinner-trays she met the House Surgeon.
"Dreading it as much as usual?" he asked, in the teasing, big-brother
tone; but he looked at her in quite another way.
She laughed. "I'm hoping it isn't going to be as bad as the time
before--and the time before that--and the time before that." She
pushed back some moist curls that had slipped out from under her
cap--engineering was hard work--and the little-girl look came into her
face. She looked up mischievously at the House Surgeon. "You couldn't
possibly guess what I've been doing all morning."
The House Surgeon wrinkled his forehead in his most professional
manner. "Precautionary disinfecting?"
Margaret MacLean laughed again. "That's an awfully good guess, but
it's wrong. I've been administering antitoxin for trusteria."
In spite of her gay assurance before the House Surgeon, however, it was
rather a sober nurse in charge of Ward C who sat down that afternoon
with a book of faery-tales on her knee open to the story of "The
Steadfast Tin Soldier." As for Ward C, it was supremely happy; its
beloved "Miss Peggie" was on duty for the afternoon with the favorite
book for company; moreover, no one had discovered as yet that this was
Trustee Day and that the trustees themselves were already near at hand.
A shadow fell athwart the threshold that very moment. Margaret MacLean
could feel it without taking her eyes from the book, and, purposefully
unmindful of its presence, she kept reading steadily on:
"'The paper boat was rocking up and down; sometimes it turned round so
quickly that the Tin Soldier trembled; but he remained firm, he did not
move a muscle, and looked straight forward, shouldering his musket.'"
"Ah, Miss MacLean, may I speak with you a moment?" It was the voice of
the Meanest Trustee.
The nurse in charge rose quickly and met him half-way, hoping to keep
him and whatever he might have to say as far from the children as
possible.
The Meanest Trustee continued in a little, short, sharp voice: "The
cook tells me that the patients in this ward have been having extra
food prepared for them of late, such as fruit and jellies and scones
and even ice-cream. I discovered it for myself. I saw some pineapples
in the refrigerator when I was inspecting it this afternoon, and the
cook said it was your orders."
Margaret MacLean smiled her most ingratiating smile. "You see," she
said, eagerly, "the children in this ward get fearfully tired of the
same things to eat; it is not like the other wards where the children
stay only a short time. So I thought it would be nice to have
something different--once in a while; and then the old things would
taste all the better--don't you see? I felt sure the trustees would be
willing."
"Well, they are not. It is an entirely unnecessary expense which I
will not countenance. The regular food is good and wholesome, and the
patients ought to feel grateful for it instead of finding fault."
The nurse looked anxiously toward the cots, then dropped her voice half
an octave lower.
"The children have never found fault; it was just my idea to give them
a treat when they were not expecting it. As for the extra expense,
there has been none; I have paid for everything myself."
The Meanest Trustee readjusted his eye-glasses and looked closer at the
young woman before him. "Do you mean to say you paid for them out of
your own wages?"
The nurse nodded.
"Then all I have to say is that I consider it an extremely idiotic
performance which had better be stopped. Children should not be
indulged."
And he went away muttering something about the poor always remaining
poor with their foolish notions of throwing away money; and Margaret
MacLean went back to the book of faery-tales. But as she was looking
for the place Sandy grunted forth stubbornly:
"A'm no wantin' ony scones the nicht, so ye maun na fetch them."
And Peter piped out, "Trusterday, ain't it, Miss Peggie?"
"Yes, dear. Now shall we go on with the story?"
She had read to where the rat was demanding the passport when she
recognized the President's step outside the door. In another moment he
was standing beside her chair, looking at the book on her knee.
"Humph! faery-tales! Is that not very foolish? Don't you think, Miss
Margaret, it would be more suitable to their condition in life if you
should select--hmm--something like _Pilgrim's Progress_ or _Lives of
the Saints and Martyrs_? Something that would be a preparation--so to
speak--for the future." He stood facing her now, his back to the
children.
"Excuse me"--she was smiling up at him--"but I thought this was a
better preparation."
The President frowned. He was a much-tried man--a man of charitable
parts, who directed or presided over thirty organizations. It took him
nearly thirty days each month--with the help of two private secretaries
and a luxurious office--to properly attend to all the work resulting
therefrom; and the matters in hand were often so trying and perplexing
that he had to go abroad every other year to avoid a nervous breakdown.
"I think we took up this matter at one of the business meetings," he
went on, patiently, "and some arrangement was made for one of the
trustees to come and read the Bible and teach the children their
respective creeds and catechisms."
Margaret MacLean nodded. "There was; Miss N----"--and she named the
Youngest and Prettiest Trustee--"generally comes an hour before the
meeting and reads to them; but to-day she was detained by a--tango tea,
I believe. That's why I chose this." Her eyes danced unconsciously as
she tapped the book.
The President looked at her sharply. "I should think, my dear young
lady, that you, of all persons, would realize what a very serious thing
life is to any one in this condition. Instead of that I fear at times
that you are--shall I say--flippant?" He turned about and looked at
the children. "How do you do?" he asked, kindly.
"Thank you, sir, we are very well, sir," they chorused in reply. Saint
Margaret's was never found wanting in politeness.
The President left; and the nurse in charge of Ward C went on with the
reading.
"'The Tin Soldier stood up to his neck in water; deeper and deeper sank
the boat, and the paper became more and more limp; then the water
closed over him; but the Tin Soldier remained firm and shouldered his
musket.'"
A group filled the doorway; it was the voice of the Oldest Trustee that
floated in. "This, my dear, is the incurable ward; we are very much
interested in it."
They stood just over the threshold--the Oldest Trustee in advance, her
figure commanding and unbent, for all her seventy years, and her
lorgnette raised. As she was speaking a little gray wisp of a woman
detached herself from the group and moved slowly down the row of cots.
"Yes," continued the Oldest Trustee, "we have two cases of congenital
hip disease and three of spinal tuberculosis--that is one of them in
the second crib." Her eyes moved on from Sandy to Rosita. "And the
fifth patient has such a dreadful case of rheumatism. Sad, isn't it,
in so young a child? Yes, the Senior Surgeon says it is absolutely
incurable."
Margaret MacLean closed the book with a bang; for five minutes the
children had been looking straight ahead with big, conscious eyes,
hearing not a word. Rebellion gripped at her heart and she rose
quickly and went over to the group.
"Wouldn't you like to come in and talk to the children? They are
rather sober this afternoon; perhaps you could make them laugh."
"Yes, wouldn't you like to go in?" put in the Oldest Trustee. "They
are very nice children."
But the visitors shrank back an almost infinitesimal distance; and one
said, hesitatingly:
"I'm afraid we wouldn't know quite what to say to them."
"Perhaps you would like to see the new pictures for the nurses' room?"
the nurse in charge suggested, wistfully.
The Oldest Trustee glanced at her with a hint of annoyance. "We have
already seen them. I think you must have forgotten, my dear, that it
was I who gave them."
With flashing cheeks Margaret MacLean fled from Ward C. If she had
stayed long enough to watch the little gray wisp of a woman move
quietly from cot to cot, patting each small hand and asking, tenderly,
"And what is your name, dearie?" she might have carried with her a
happier feeling. At the door of the board-room she ran into the House
Surgeon.
"Is it as bad as all that?" he asked after one good look at her.
"It's worse--a hundred times worse!" She tossed her head angrily. "Do
you know what is going to happen some day? I shall forget who I
am--and who they are and what they have done for me--and say things
they will never forgive. My mind-string will just snap, that's all;
and every little pestering, forbidden thought that has been kicking its
heels against self-control and sense-of-duty all these years will come
tumbling out and slip off the edge of my tongue before I even know it
is there."
"They are some hot little thoughts, I wager," laughed the House Surgeon.
And then, from the far end of the cross-corridor, came the voice of the
Oldest Trustee, talking to the group:
". . . such a very sweet girl--never forgets her place or her duty.
She was brought here from the Foundling Asylum when she was a baby, in
almost a dying condition. Every one thought it was an incurable case;
the doctors still shake their heads over her miraculous recovery. Of
course it took years; and she grew up in the hospital."
With a look of dumb, battling anger the nurse in charge of Ward C
turned from the House Surgeon--her hands clenched--while the voice of
the Oldest Trustee came back to them, still exhibiting:
"No, we have never been able to find out anything about her parentage;
undoubtedly she was abandoned. We named her 'Margaret MacLean,' after
the hospital and the superintendent who was here then. Yes, indeed--a
very, very sad--"
When the Oldest Trustee reached the boardroom it was empty, barring the
primroses, which were guilelessly nodding in the green Devonshire bowl
on the President's desk.
IV
CURABLES AND INCURABLES
No one who entered the board-room that late afternoon remembered that
it was May Eve; and even had he remembered, it would have amounted to
nothing more than the mental process of association. It would not have
given him the faintest presentiment that at that very moment the Little
People were busy pressing their cloth-o'-dream mantles and reblocking
their wishing-caps; that the instant the sun went down the spell would
be off the faery raths, setting them free all over the world, and that
the gates of Tir-na-n'Og would be open wide for mortals to wander back
again. No, not one of the board remembered; the trustees sat looking
straight at the primroses and saw nothing, felt nothing, guessed
nothing.
They were not unusual types of trustees who served on the board of
Saint Margaret's. You could find one or more of them duplicated in the
directors' book of nearly any charitable institution, if you hunted for
them; the strange part was, perhaps, that they were gathered together
in a single unit of power. Besides the Oldest and the Meanest
Trustees, there were the Executive, the Social, the Disagreeable, the
Busiest, the Dominating, the Calculating, the Petty, and the Youngest
and Prettiest. She came fluttering in a minute late from her tea; and
right after her came the little gray wisp of a woman, who sat down in a
chair by the door so unpretentiously as to make it appear as though she
did not belong among them. When the others saw her they nodded
distantly: they had just been talking about her.
It seemed that she was the widow of the Richest Trustee. The board had
elected her to fill her husband's place lest the annual check of ten
thousand--a necessary item on Saint Margaret's books--might not be
forthcoming; and this was her first meeting. It was, in fact, her
first visit to the hospital. She could never bear to come during her
husband's trusteeship because, children having been denied her, she had
wished to avoid them wherever and whenever she could, and spare herself
the pain their suggestion always brought her. She would not have come
now, but that her husband's memory seemed to require it of her.
For years gossip had been busy with the wife of the Richest Trustee--as
the widow she did not relax her hold. What the trustees said that day
they only repeated from gossip: the little gray wisp of a woman was a
nonentity--nothing more--with the spirit of a mouse. She held no
position in society, and what she did with her time or her money no one
knew. The trustees smiled inwardly and reckoned silently with
themselves; at least they would never need to fear opposition from her
on any matter of importance.
The last person of all to enter the boardroom was the Senior Surgeon.
The President had evidently waited for him, for he nodded to the House
Surgeon to close the doors the moment he came.
Now the Senior Surgeon was a man who used capitals for Surgery,
Science, and Self, unconsciously eliminating them elsewhere. He had
begun in Saint Margaret's as house surgeon; and he had grown to be
considered by many of his own profession the leading man of his day.
The trustees were as proud of him as they were of the hospital, and it
has never been recorded in the traditions of Saint Margaret's that the
Senior Surgeon had ever asked for anything that went ungranted. He
seldom attended a board meeting; consequently when he came in at
five-thirty there was an audible rustle of excitement and the raising
of anticipatory eyebrows.
When the President called the meeting to order every trustee was
present, as well as the heads of the four wards, the Superintendent,
and the two surgeons. The Senior Surgeon sat next to the President;
the House Surgeon sat where he could watch equally well the profiles of
the Youngest and Prettiest Trustee and Margaret MacLean. His heart had
always been inclined to intermit; or--as he put it to himself--he
adored them both in quite opposite ways; and which way was the better
and more endurable he had never been able to decide.
"In view of the fact," said the President, rising, "that the Senior
Surgeon can be with us but a short time this afternoon, and that he has
a grave and vital issue to present to you, we will postpone the regular
reports until the end of the meeting and take up at once the business
in hand." He paused a moment, feeling the dramatic value of his next
remark. "For some time the Senior Surgeon has seriously questioned
the--hmm--advisability of continuing the incurable ward. He wishes
very much to bring the matter before you, and he is prepared to give
you his reasons for so doing. Afterward, I think it would be wise for
us to discuss the matter very informally." He bowed to the Senior
Surgeon and sat down.
The Meanest Trustee snapped his teeth together in an expression of grim
satisfaction. "That ward is costing a lot of unnecessary expense, I
think," he barked out, sharply, "and it's being run with altogether too
free a hand." And he looked meaningly toward Margaret MacLean.
No one paid any particular attention to his remark; they were too
deeply engrossed in the Senior Surgeon. And the House Surgeon,
watching, saw the profile of the Youngest and Prettiest Trustee become
even prettier as it blushed and turned in witching eagerness toward the
man who was rising to address the meeting. The other profile had
turned rigid and white as a piece of marble.
Now the Senior Surgeon could do a critical major operation in twenty
minutes; and he could operate on critical issues quite as rapidly.
Speed was his creed; therefore he characteristically attacked the
subject in hand without any prefatory remarks.
"Ladies and gentlemen of the board, the incurable ward is doing
nothing. I can see no possible reason or opportunity for further
observation or experimentation there. Every case in it at the present
time, as well as every Case that is likely to come to us, is as a
sealed document as far as science is concerned. They are
incurable--they will remain incurable for all time."
"How do you know?" The question came from the set lips of the nurse in
charge of Ward C.
"How do we know anything in science? We prove it by undeniable,
irrevocable facts."
"Even then you are not sure of it. I was proved incurable--but I got
well."
"That proves absolutely nothing!" And the Senior Surgeon growled as he
always did when things went against his liking. "You were a case in a
thousand--in a lifetime. Because it happened once--here in this
hospital--is no reason for believing that it will ever happen again."
"Oh yes, it is!" persisted Margaret MacLean. "There is just as much
reason for believing as for not believing. Every one of those
children, in the ward now might--yes, they might--be a case in a
thousand; and no one has any right to take that thousandth of a chance
away from them."
"You are talking nonsense--stupid, irrational nonsense." And the
Senior Surgeon glared at her.
The truth was that he had never forgiven her for getting well. To have
had a slip of a girl juggle with the most reliable of scientific data,
as well as with his own undeniable skill as a diagnostician, and grow
up normally, healthfully perfect, was insufferable. He had never quite
forgiven the Old Senior Surgeon for his share in it. And to have her
stand against him and his great desire, now, and actually throw this
thing in his face, was more than he could endure. He did not know that
Margaret MacLean was fighting for what she loved most on earth, the one
thing that seemed to belong to her, the thing that had been given into
her keeping by the right of a memory bequeathed to her by the man he
could not save. Truth to tell, Margaret MacLean had never quite
forgiven the Senior Surgeon for this, blameless as she knew him to be.
And so for the space of a quick breath the two faced each other,
aggressive and accusing.
When the Senior Surgeon turned again to the President and the trustees
his face wore a faint smile suggestive of amused toleration.
"I hope the time will soon come," he said very distinctly, "when every
training-school for nurses will bar out the so-called sentimental,
imaginative type; they do a great deal of harm to the profession. As I
was saying, the incurable ward is doing nothing, and we need it for
surgical cases. Look over the reports for the last few months and you
will see how many cases we have had to turn away--twenty in March,
sixteen in February; and this month it is over thirty--one a day. Now
why waste that room for no purpose?"
"Every one of those cases could get into, some of the other hospitals;
but who would take the incurables? What would you do with the children
in Ward C, now?" and Margaret MacLean's voice rang out its challenge.
The Senior Surgeon managed to check an angry explosive and turned to
the President for succor.
"I think," said that man of charitable parts, "that the meeting is
getting a trifle too informal for order. After the Senior Surgeon has
finished I will call on those whom I feel have something
of--hmm--importance to say. In the mean time, my dear young lady, I
beg of you not to interrupt again. The children, of course, could all
be returned to their homes."
"Oh no, they couldn't--" There was something hypnotic in the
persistence of the nurse in charge of Ward C.
Usually keenly sensitive, abnormally alive to impressions and
atmosphere, she shrank from ever intruding herself or her opinions
where they were not welcome; but now all personal consciousness was
dead. She was wholly unaware that she had worked the Senior Surgeon
into a state where he had almost lost his self-control--a condition
heretofore unknown in the Senior Surgeon; that she had exasperated the
President and reduced the trustees to open-mouthed amazement. The
lorgnette shook unsteadily in the hand of the Oldest; and, unmindful of
it all, Margaret MacLean went steadily on:
"Most of them haven't any homes, and the others couldn't live in theirs
a month. You don't know how terrible they are--five families in one
garret, nothing to eat some of the time, father drunk most of the time,
and filth and foul air all of the time. That's the kind of homes they
have--if they have any."
Her outburst was met with a complete silence, ignoring and humiliating.
After a moment the Senior Surgeon went on, as if no one had spoken.
"Am I not right in supposing that you wish to further, as far as it
lies within your power, the physical welfare and betterment of the poor
in this city? That you wish to do the greatest possible good to the
greatest number of children? Ah! I thought so. Well, do you not see
how continuing to keep a number of incurable cases for two or three
years--or as long as they live--is hindering this? You are keeping out
so many more curable cases. For every case in that ward now we could
handle ten or fifteen surgical cases each year. Is that not worth
considering?"
The trustees nodded approval to one another; it was as if they would
say, "The Senior Surgeon is always right."
The surgeon himself looked at his watch; he had three minutes left to
clinch their convictions. Clearly and admirably he outlined his
present scope of work; then, stepping into the future, he showed into
what it might easily grow, had it the room and beds. He showed
indisputably what experimental surgery had done for science--what a
fertile field it was; and wherein lay Saint Margaret's chance to plow a
furrow more and reap its harvest. At the end he intimated that he had
outgrown his present limited conditions there, that unless these were
changed he should have to betake himself and his operative skill
elsewhere.
A painfully embarrassing hush closed in on the meeting as the Senior
Surgeon resumed his seat. It was broken by an enthusiastic chirp from
the Youngest and Prettiest Trustee. She had never attempted to keep
her interest for him concealed in the bud, causing much perturbation to
the House Surgeon, and leading the Disagreeable Trustee to remark,
frequently:
"Good Lord! She'll throw herself at his head until he loses
consciousness, and then she'll marry him."
"I think," said she, beaming in the direction of the Senior Surgeon,
"that it would be perfectly wonderful to be the means of discovering
some great new thing in surgery. And as our own great surgeon has just
said, it is really ridiculous to let a few perfectly incurable cases
stand in the way of science."
The House Surgeon looked from the beaming profile to the tense, drawn
outline of mouth and chin belonging to the nurse in charge of Ward C,
and he found himself wondering if art had ever pictured a crucified
Madonna, and, if so, why it had not taken Margaret MacLean as a model.
That moment the President called his name.
[Illustration: The House Surgeon looked from the beaming profile to the
tense, drawn outline of mouth and chin belonging to the nurse in charge
of Ward C.]
The House Surgeon was still young and unspoiled enough to blush
whenever he was consulted. Moreover, he hated to speak in public,
knowing, as he did, that he lacked the cultured manner and the polished
speech of the Senior Surgeon. He always crawled out of it whenever he
could, putting some one else more ready of tongue in his place. He was
preparing to crawl this time when another look at the white profile in
front of him brought him to his feet.
"See here," he burst out, bluntly, "we all know the chief is as clever
as any surgeon in the country, and that he can do anything in the world
he sets out to do, even to turning Saint Margaret's into a surgical
laboratory. But you ought to stop him--you've got to stop him--that is
your business as trustees of this institution. We don't need any more
surgical laboratories just yet--they are getting along fast enough at
Rockefeller, Johns Hopkins, and the Mayo clinic. What we scientific
chaps need to remember--and it ought to be hammered at us three times a
day, and then some--is that humanity was never put into the world for
the sole purpose of benefiting science. We are apt to forget this and
get to thinking that a few human beings more or less don't count in the
face of establishing one scientific fact."
He paused just long enough to snatch a breath, and then went racing
madly on. "Institutions are apt to forget that they are taking care of
the souls and minds of human beings as well as their bodies. It seems
to me that the man who founded this hospital intended it for humane
rather than scientific purposes. His wishes ought to be considered
now; and I wager he would say, if he were here, to let science go hang
and keep the incurables."
The House Surgeon sat down, breathing heavily and mopping his forehead.
It was the longest speech he had ever made, and he was painfully
conscious of its inadequacy. The Senior Surgeon excused himself and
left the room, not, however, until he had given the House Surgeon a
look pregnant with meaning; Saint Margaret's would hardly be large
enough to hold them both after the 30th of April.
The trustees moved restlessly in their chairs. The unexpected had
happened; there was an internal rupture at Saint Margaret's; and for
forty years the trustees had boasted of its harmonious behavior and
kindly feelings. In a like manner do those dwellers in the shadow of a
volcano continue to boast of their safety and the harmlessness of the
crater up to the very hour of its eruption. And all the while the gray
wisp of a woman by the door sat silent, her hands still folded on her
lap.
At last the President rose; he coughed twice before speaking. "I think
we will call upon the hospital committee now for their reports.
Afterward we will take up the question of the incurable ward among the
trustees--hmm--alone."
Every one sat quietly, almost listlessly, during the reading until
Margaret MacLean rose, the report for Ward C in her hand. Then there
came a raising of heads and a stiffening of backs and a setting of
chins. She was very calm, the still calm of the China Sea before a
typhoon strikes it; when she had finished reading she put the report on
the chair back of her and faced the President with clasped hands and--a
smile.
"It's funny," she said, irrelevantly, "for the first time in my life I
am not afraid here."
And the House Surgeon muttered, under his breath: "Great guns! That
mind-string has snapped."
"There is more to the report than I had the courage to write down when
I was making it out; but I can give it very easily now, if you will not
mind listening a little longer. You have always thought that I came
back to Saint Margaret's because I felt grateful for what you had done
for me--for the food and the clothes and the care, and later for the
education that you paid for. This isn't true. I am grateful--very
grateful--but it is a dutiful kind of gratitude which wouldn't have
brought me back in a thousand years. I am so sorry to feel this way.
Perhaps I would not if, in all the years that I was here as a child,
one of you had shown me a single personal kindness, or some one had
thought to send me a letter or a message while I was away at school.
No, you took care of me because you thought it was your duty, and I am
grateful for the same reason; but it was quite another thing which
brought me back to Saint Margaret's."
The smile had gone; she was very sober now. And the House Surgeon,
still watching the two profiles, suddenly felt his heart settle down to
a single steady beat. He wanted to get up that very instant and tell
the nurse in charge of Ward C what had happened and what he thought of
her; but instead he dug his hands deep in his pockets. How in the name
of the seven continents had he never before realized that she was the
sweetest, finest, most adorable, and onliest girl in the world, and
worth a whole board-room full of youngest and prettiest trustees?
"I came back," went on Margaret MacLean, slowly, "really because of the
Old Senior Surgeon, to stand, as he stood in the days long ago, between
you and the incurable ward; to shut out--if I could--the little,
thoughtless, hurting things that you are always saying without being in
the least bit conscious of them, and to keep the children from wanting
too much the friendship and loving interest that, somehow, they
expected from you. I wanted to try and make them feel that they were
not case this and case that, abnormally diseased and therefore objects
of pity and curiosity to be pointed out to sympathetic visitors, but
children--just children--with a right to be happy and loved. I wanted
to fill their minds so full of fun and make-believe that they would
have to forget about their poor little bodies. I tried to make you
feel this and help without putting it--cruelly--into words; but you
would never understand. You have never let them forget for a moment
that they are 'incurables,' any more than you have let me forget that I
am a--foundling."
She stopped a moment for breath, and the smile came back--a wistfully
pleading smile. "I am afraid that last was not in the report. What I
want to say is--please keep the incurable ward; take the time to really
know them--and love them a little. If you only could you would never
consider sending them away for a moment. And if, in addition to the
splendid care you have given their bodies, you would only help to keep
their minds and hearts sound and sweet, and shield them against curious
visitors, why--why--some of them might turn out to be 'a case in a
thousand.' Don't you see--can't you see--that they have as much right
to their scraps of life and happiness--as your children have to their
complete lives, and that there is no place for them anywhere if Saint
Margaret's closes her doors?"
With an overwhelming suddenness she became conscious of the attitude of
the trustees. She, who was nothing but a foundling and a charity
patient herself, had dared to pass judgment on them; it was
inconceivable--it was impertinent--it was beyond all precedent. Only
the gray wisp of a woman sat silent, seeming to express nothing.
Margaret MacLean's cheeks flamed; she shrank into herself, her whole
being acutely alive to their thoughts. The scared little-girl look
came into her face.
"Perhaps--perhaps," she stammered, pitifully, "after what I have said
you would rather I did not stay on--in charge of Ward C?"
The Dominating Trustee rose abruptly. "Mr. President, I suggest that
we act upon Miss MacLean's resignation at once."
"I second the motion," came in a quick bark from the Meanest Trustee,
while the Oldest Trustee could be heard quoting, "Sharper than a
serpent's tooth--"
The Executive Trustee rose, looking past Margaret MacLean as he spoke.
"In view of the fact that we shall possibly discontinue the incurable
ward, and that Miss MacLean seems wholly unsatisfied with our methods
and supervision here, I motion that her resignation be accepted now,
and that she shall be free to leave Saint Margaret's when her month
shall have expired,"
"I second the motion," came from the Social Trustee, while she added to
the Calculating, who happened to be sitting next: "So ill-bred. It
just shows that a person can never be educated above her station in
life."
The President rose. "The motion has been made and seconded. Will you
please signify by raising your hands if it is your wish that Miss
MacLean's resignation be accepted at once?"
Hand after hand went up. Only the little gray wisp of a woman in the
chair by the door sat with her hands still folded on her lap.
"It is, so to speak, a unanimous vote." There was a strong hint of
approval in the President's voice. He was a good man; but he belonged
to that sect which holds as one of the main articles of its faith, "I
believe in the infallibility of the rich."
"Can any one tell me when Miss MacLean's time expires?"
The person under discussion answered for herself. "On the last day of
the month, Mr. President."
"Oh, very well." He was extremely polite in his manner. "We thank you
for your very full and--hmm--comprehensive report. After to-night you
are excused from your duties at Saint Margaret's."
The President bowed her courteously out of the board-room, while the
primroses in the green Devonshire bowl on his desk still nodded
guilelessly.
V
ODDS AND ENDS
Margaret MacLean walked the length of the first corridor; once out of
sight and hearing, she tore up the stairs, her cheeks crimson and her
eyes suspiciously moist. Before she had reached the second flight the
House Surgeon overtook her.
"I wish," he panted behind her, trying his best to look the big-brother
way of old--"I wish you'd wait a moment. This habit of yours of always
walking up is a beastly one."
"Don't worry about it." There was a sharp, metallic ring in her voice
that made it unnatural. "That's one habit that will soon be broken."
The House Surgeon smiled rather helplessly; inside he was making one of
the few prayers of his life--a prayer to keep Margaret MacLean free of
bitterness. "There is something I want to say to you," he began.
She broke in feverishly: "No, there isn't! And I don't want to hear
it. I don't want to hear you're sorry. I don't want to hear they'll
be taken care of--somewhere--somehow. I think I should scream if you
told me it was bound to happen--or will all turn out for the best."
"I had no intention of saying any of those things--in fact, they hadn't
even entered my mind. What I was going to--"
"Oh, I know. You were going to remind me of what you said this
morning. Almost prophetic, wasn't it?" And there was a strong touch
of irony in her laugh. She turned on him crushingly. "Perhaps you
knew it all along. Perhaps it was your way of letting me down gently."
"See here," said the House Surgeon, bluntly, "that's the second
disagreeable thing you've said to-day. I don't think it's quite
square. Do you?"
"No!" Her lips quivered; her hands reached out toward his impulsively.
"I don't know why I keep saying things I know are not true. I'm
perfectly--unforgivably horrid."
As impulsively he took both hands, turned them palm uppermost, and
kissed them.
[Illustration: Impulsively he took both hands, turned them palm
uppermost, and kissed them.]
She snatched them away; the crimson in her cheeks deepened. "Don't,
please. Your pity only makes it harder. Oh, I don't know what has
happened--here--" And she struck her breast fiercely. "If--if they
send the children away I shall never believe in anything again; the
part of me that has believed and trusted and been glad will stop--it
will break all to pieces." With a hard, dry sob she left him, running
up the remaining stairs to Ward C. She did not see his arms reach
hungrily after her or the great longing in his face.
The House Surgeon turned and went downstairs again.
In the lower corridor he ran across the President, who was looking for
him. With much courtesy and circumlocution he was told the thing he
had been waiting to hear: the board, likewise, had discovered that
Saint Margaret's had suddenly grown too small to hold both the Senior
Surgeon and himself. Strangely enough, this troubled him little; there
are times in a man's life when even the most momentous of happenings
shrink into nothing beside the simple process of telling the girl he
loves that he loves her.
The President was somewhat startled by the House Surgeon's commonplace
acceptance of the board's decision; and he returned to the board-room
distinctly puzzled.
Meanwhile Margaret MacLean, having waited outside of Ward C for her
cheeks to cool and her eyes to dry, opened the door and went in.
Ward C had been fed by the assistant nurse and put to bed; that is, all
who could limp or wheel themselves about the room were back in their
cribs, and the others were no longer braced or bolstered up. As she
had expected, gloom canopied every crib and cot; beneath, eight small
figures, covered to their noses, shook with held-back sobs or wailed
softly. According to the custom that had unwittingly established
itself, Ward C was crying itself to sleep. Not that it knew what it
was crying about, it being merely a matter of atmosphere and unstrung
nerves; but that is cause enough to turn the mind of a sick child all
awry, twisting out happiness and twisting in peevish, fretful feelings.
She stood by the door, unnoticed, looking down the ward. Pancho lay
wound up in his blanket like a giant chrysalis, rolling in silent
misery. Sandy was stretched as straight and stiff as if he had been
"laid out"; his eyes were closed, and there was a stolid,
expressionless set to his features. Margaret MacLean knew that it
betokened much internal disturbance. Susan, ex-philosopher, was
sobbing aloud, pulling with rebellious fingers at the pieces of iron
that kept her head where nature had planned it. The Apostles gripped
hands and moaned in unison, while Peter hugged his blanket, seeking
thereby some consolation for the dispelled Toby. Toby persistently
refused to be conjured up on Trustee Days.
Only Bridget was alert and watchful. One hand was slipped through the
bars of Rosita's crib, administering comforting pats to the rhythmic
croon of an Irish reel. Every once in a while her eyes would wander to
the neighboring cots with the disquiet of an over-troubled mother; the
only moments of real unhappiness or worry Bridget ever knew were those
which brought sorrow to the ward past her power of mending.
To Margaret MacLean, standing there, it seemed unbearable--as if life
had suddenly become too sinister and cruel to strike at souls so little
and helpless as these. There were things one could never explain in
terms of God. She found herself wondering if that was why the Senior
Surgeon worshiped science; and she shivered.
The room had become repellent; it was a sepulchral place entombing all
she had lost. In the midst of the dusk and gloom her mind groped
about--after its habit--for something cheerful, something that would
break the colorless monotone of the room and change the atmosphere. In
a flash she remembered the primroses; and the remembrance brought a
smile.
"They're nothing but charlatans," she thought, "but the children will
never find that out, and they'll be something bright for them to wake
up to in the morning."
This was what sent her down the stairs again, just as the board meeting
adjourned.
Now the board adjourned with thumbs down--signifying that the incurable
ward was no more, as far as the future of Saint Margaret's was
concerned. The trustees stirred in their chairs with a comfortable
relaxing of joint and muscle, as if to say, "There, that is a piece of
business well despatched; nothing like methods of conservation and
efficiency, you know." Only the little gray wisp of a woman by the
door sat rigid, her hands still folded on her lap.
The Oldest Trustee had just remarked to the Social Trustee that all the
things gossip had said of the widow of the Richest Trustee were
undoubtedly true--she was a nonentity--when the Senior Surgeon dropped
in. This was according to the President's previous request. That
gentleman of charitable parts had implied that there would undoubtedly
be good news and congratulations awaiting him. This did not mean that
the board intended to slight its duty and fail to consider the matter
of the incurables with due conscientiousness--the board was as strong
for conscience as for conservation. It merely went to show that the
fate of Ward C had been preordained from the beginning; and that the
President felt wholly justified in requesting the presence of the
Senior Surgeon at the end of the meeting.
His appearance called forth such a laudatory buzzing of tongues and
such a cordial shaking of hands that one might have easily mistaken the
meeting for a successful political rally or a religious revival. The
Youngest and Prettiest Trustee fluttered about him, chirping ecstatic
expletives, while the Disagreeable Trustee watched her and growled to
himself.
"So splendid," she chirped, "the unanimous indorsement of the board--at
least, practically unanimous." And she eyed the widow of the Richest
Trustee accusingly.
"The incurable ward and Margaret MacLean have really been a terrible
responsibility, haven't they? I can't help feeling it will mean quite
a load off our minds." It was the Social Trustee who spoke, and she
followed it with a little sigh of relief.
The sigh was echoed twice--thrice--about the room. Then the Meanest
Trustee barked out:
"I hope it will mean a load off our purses. That ward and that nurse
have always wanted things, and had them, that they had no business
wanting. I hope we can save a substantial sum now for the endowment
fund."
The Oldest Trustee smiled tolerantly. "Of course it isn't as if the
cases were not hopeless. I can see no object, however, in making
concessions and sacrifices to keep in the hospital cases that cannot be
cured; and, no doubt, we can place them most satisfactorily in state
institutions for orphans or deficients."
At that moment the Youngest and Prettiest Trustee spied the primroses
on the President's desk--she had been too engrossed in the surgical
profession to observe much apart. "I believe I'm going to decorate
you." And she dimpled up at the Senior Surgeon, coquettishly.
Selecting one of the blossoms with great care, she drew it through the
buttonhole in his lapel. "See, I'm decorating you with the Order of
the Golden Primrose--for brilliancy." Whereupon she dropped her eyes
becomingly.
"Good Lord!" muttered the Disagreeable Trustee to the President, his
eye focused on the two. "She'll fetch him this time. And she'll have
him so hypnotized with all this chirping and dancing business that
he'll be perfectly helpless in a month, or I miss--"
The Youngest and Prettiest Trustee looked up just in time to intercept
that eye, and she attacked it with a saucy little stare. "I believe
you are both jealous," she flung over her shoulder. But the very next
moment she was dimpling again. "I believe I am going to decorate
everybody--including myself. I'm sure we all deserve it for our loyal
support of Science." She, likewise, always spelled it with a capital,
having acquired the habit from the Senior Surgeon.
She snatched a cluster of primroses from the green Devonshire bowl; and
one was fastened securely in the lapel or frill of every trustee, not
even omitting the gray wisp of a woman by the door.
And so it came to pass that every member of the board of Saint
Margaret's Free Hospital for Children went home on May Eve with one of
the faeries' own flowers tucked somewhere about his or her person.
Moreover, they went home at precisely three minutes and twenty-two
seconds past seven by the clock on the tower--the astronomical time for
the sun to go down on the 30th of April. Crack went all the
combination locks on all the faery raths, spilling the Little People
over all the world; and creak went the gates of Tir-na-n'Og, swinging
wide open for wandering mortals to come back.
As the trustees left the hospital the Senior Surgeon turned into the
cross-corridor for his case, still gay with his Order of the Golden
Primrose; and there, at the foot of the stairs, he ran into Margaret
MacLean. They faced each other for the merest fraction of a breath,
both conscious and embarrassed; then she glimpsed the flower in his
coat and a cry of surprise escaped her.
He smiled, almost foolishly. "I thought they--it--looked rather pretty
and--spring-like," he began, by way of explanation. His teeth ground
together angrily; he sounded absurd, and he knew it. Furthermore, it
was inexcusable of her to corner him in this fashion.
Now Margaret MacLean knew well enough that he would never have
discovered the prettiness of anything by himself--not in a century of
springtimes, and she sensed the truth.
"Did she decorate you?" she inquired, with an irritating little curl of
her lips. The Senior Surgeon's self-confessed blush lent speed to her
tongue. "I think I might be privileged to ask what it was for. You
see, I presented the flowers to the board meeting. Was it for
self-sacrifice?" Her eyes challenged his.
"You are capable of talking more nonsense and being more impertinent
than any nurse I have ever known. May I pass?" His eyes returned her
challenge, blazing.
But she never moved; the mind-string once broken, there seemed to be no
limit to the thoughts that could come tumbling off the end of her
tongue. Her eyes went back to the flower in his coat.
"Perhaps you would like to know that I bought those this morning
because they seemed the very breath of spring itself--a bit of promise
and gladness. I thought they would keep the day going right."
"Well, they have--for me." And the Senior Surgeon could not resist a
look of triumph.
"The trustees"--she drew in a quick breath and put out a steadying hand
on the banisters--"you mean--they have given up the incurable ward?"
He nodded. His voice took on a more genial tone. He felt he could
generously afford to be pleasant and patient toward the one who had not
succeeded. "It was something that was bound to happen sooner or later.
Can't you see that yourself? But I am sorry, very sorry for you."
Suddenly, and for the first time in their long sojourn together in
Saint Margaret's, he became wholly conscious of the girl before him.
He realized that Margaret MacLean had grown into a vital and vitalizing
personality--a force with which those who came in contact would have to
reckon. She stood before him now, frozen into a gray, accusing figure.
"Are you ill?" he found himself asking.
"No."
He shifted his weight uneasily to the other foot. "Is there anything
you want?"
Her face softened into the little-girl look. Her eyes brimmed with a
sadness past remedy. "What a funny question from you--you, who have
taken from me the only thing I ever let myself want--the love and
dependence of those children. Success, and having whatever you want,
are such common things with you, that you must count them very cheap;
but you can't judge what they mean to others--or what they may cost
them."
"As I said before, I am sorry, very sorry you have lost your position
here; but you have no one but yourself to blame for that. I should
have been very glad to have you remain in the new surgical ward; you
are one of the best operative nurses I ever had." He added this in all
justice to her; and to mitigate, if he could, his own feeling of
discomfort.
Margaret MacLean smiled grimly. "Thank you. I was not referring to
the loss of my position, however; that matters very little."
"It should matter." The voice of the Senior Surgeon became instantly
professional. "Every nurse should put her work, satisfactorily and
scientifically executed, before everything else. That is where you are
radically weak. Let me remind you that it is your sole business to
look after the physical betterment of your patients--nothing else; and
the sooner you give up all this sentimental, fanciful nonsense the
sooner you will succeed."
"You are wrong. I should never succeed that way--never. Some cases
may need only the bodily care--maybe; but you are a very poor doctor,
after all, if you think that is all that children need--or half the
grown-ups. There are more people ailing with mind-sickness and
heart-sickness, as well as body-sickness, than the world would guess,
and you've just got to nurse the whole of them. You will succeed,
whether you ever find this out or not; but you will miss a great deal
out of your life."
Anger was rekindling in the eyes of the Senior Surgeon; and Margaret
MacLean, seeing, grew gentle--all in a minute.
"Oh, I wish I could make you understand. You have always been so
strong and well and sufficient unto yourself, it's hard, I suppose, to
be able to think or see life through the iron slats of a hospital crib.
Just make believe you had been a little crippled boy, with nothing
belonging to you, nothing back of you to remember, nothing happy coming
to you but what the nurses or the doctors or the trustees thought to
bring. And then make believe you were cured and grew up. Wouldn't you
remember what life had been in that hospital crib, and wouldn't you
fight to make it happier for the children coming after you? Why, the
incurable ward was my whole life--home, family, friends, work;
everything wrapped up in nine little crippled bodies. It was all I
asked or expected of life. Oh, I can tell you that a foundling, with
questionable ancestry, with no birth-record or blood-inheritance to
boast of, claims very little of the every-day happiness that comes to
other people. And yet I was so glad to be alive--and strong and needed
by those children that I could have been content all my life with just
that."
The Senior Surgeon cleared his throat, preparatory to making some
comment, but the nurse raised a silencing finger.
"Wait! there is one thing more. What you have taken from me is the
smallest part. The children pay double--treble as much. I pay only
with my heart and faith; they pay with their whole lives. Remember
that when you install your new surgical ward--and don't reckon it too
cheap."
She left him still clearing his throat; and when she came out of the
board-room a few seconds later with the green Devonshire bowl in her
arms he had disappeared.
Margaret MacLean found Ward C as she had left it. As she was putting
down the primroses, on the table in the center of the room she caught
Bridget's white face beckoning to her eagerly. Softly she went over to
her cot.
"What is it, dear?"
"Miss Peggie darlin', if ye'd only give me leave to talk quiet I'd have
the childher cheered up in no time."
"Would you promise not to make any noise?"
"Promise on m' heart! I'll have 'em all asleep quicker 'n nothin'. Ye
see, just."
"Very well. I'll be back after supper to see if the promise has been
kept." She stooped, brushed away the curls, and kissed the little
white forehead. "Oh, Bridget! Bridget! no matter what happens, always
remember to keep happy!"
"Sure an' I will," agreed Bridget; and she watched the nurse go out,
much puzzled.
VI
THE PRIMROSE RING
Bridget, oldest of the ward, general caretaker and best beloved,
hunched herself up on her pillows until she was sitting reasonably
straight, and clapped her hands. "Whist!" she called, softly. "Whist
there, all o' ye! What's ailin'?"
Eight woebegone pairs of eyes turned in her direction.
"Ye needn't be afeared o' speakin'. Miss Peggie give us leave to talk
quiet."
"It's them trusters," wailed Peter. "They come a-peekin' round to see
we don't get well."
"They alters calls us 'uncurables,'" moaned Susan.
"Pig of water-drinking Americans!" came from the last cot.
"Ye shut up, Michael! Who did ye ever hear say that?"
"Mine fader." And Michael spat in a perfect imitation thereof.
"Well, don't ye ever say it ag'in--do ye hear? Miss Peggie's American,
and so's the House Surgeon, an' it's the next best thing to bein'
Irish--which every one can't be, the Lord knows. Now them trusters is
heathen, an' they don't know nothin' more'n heathen, an' we ought to be
easy on 'em for bein' so ignorant."
"They ken us 'll nae mair be gettin' weel," said Sandy, mournfully.
"Aw, ye're talkin' foolish entirely. What do ye think that C on the
door means?"
A silence, significant of much brain-racking, followed.
"C stands for children," announced Susan, triumphantly.
"Aye, it does that, but there be's somethin' more."
"Crutches," suggested Pancho, tentatively.
"Aw, go on wid ye," laughed Bridget. "Ye're 'way off." She paused a
moment impressively. "C means 'cured.' '_Childher Cured_,' that's
what! Now all we've got to do is to forget trusters an' humps an'
pains an' them disagreeable things, an' think o' somethin' pleasant."
"Ain't nothin' pleasant ter think of in er horspital," wailed John, the
present disheartenment clouding over all past happiness.
"Ain't, neither," agreed James.
"Aye, there be," contradicted Sandy. "Dinna ye ken the wee gray woman
'at cam creepity round an' smiled?"
"She was nice," said Susan, with obvious approval. "Do ye think, now,
she might ha' been me aunt?"
A chorus of positive negation settled all further speculation, while
Bridget bluntly inquired. "Honest to goodness, Susan, do ye think the
likes o' ye could belong to the likes o' that?"
Pancho broke the painful silence by reverting to the original topic in
hand. "Mi' Peggie pleasant too," he suggested, smiling adorably.
"But we've not got either of 'em no longer, so they're no good now,"
Peter unfortunately reminded every one.
"Don't ye know there be's always somethin' pleasant to think about if
ye just hunt round a bit, an' things an' feelin's never get that bad ye
can't squeeze out some pleasantment. Don't ye mind the time the
trusters had planned to give us all paint-boxes for Christmas, an' half
of us not able to hold a brush, let alone paint things, an' Miss Peggie
blarneyed them round into givin' us books? Don't ye mind? Now we've
got somethin' pleasant here, right now--" And Bridget smiled.
"What?"
"May Eve."
"What's that?"
"'Tain't nothin'," said Susan, sliding back disappointedly on her
pillow.
"Sure an' it is," said Bridget; "it's somethin' grand."
"'Tain't nothin'," persisted Susan, "but a May party in Cen'ral Park.
Every one takes somethin' ter eat in a box, an' the boys play ball an'
the girls dance round, an' the cops let you run on the grass. I knows
all about it, fer my sister Katie was 'queen' onct."
"We couldn't play ball, ner run on the grass, ner anything," said
Peter, regretfully.
"'Tisn't what Susan says at all," said Bridget, by way of consolation.
"If ye'll harken to me a minute, just, I'll be afther tellin' ye what
it is."
Ward C became instantly silent--hopefully expectant; Bridget had led
them into pleasant places too often for them not to believe in her
implicitly and do what she said.
"May Eve," began Bridget, slowly, "is the night o' the year when the
faeries come throopin' out o' the ground to fly about on twigs o' thorn
an' dance to the music o' the faery pipers. They're all dthressed in
wee green jackets an' caps, an' 'tis grand luck to any that sees them.
And all the wishes good childher make on May Eve are sure to come
thrue." She stopped a moment. "Let's make believe; let's make
believe--" Her eyes fell on the primroses, and for the first time she
recognized them. "Holy Saint Bridget! them's faery primroses!"
Ward C was properly impressed. Eight little figures sat up as straight
as they could; eight pairs of eager eyes followed Bridget's pointing
finger and gazed in speechless wonder at the green Devonshire bowl.
"Do ye think, Sandy, that ye could scrooch out o' bed an' hump yerself
over to them? If Pether tries he's sure to tumble over, an' some one
might hear."
Sandy looked at the flowers without enthusiasm. "Phat are ye wantin'
wi' 'em?"
"I'll tell ye when ye get there. Just thry; ye'll be yondther afore ye
know it."
Cautiously Sandy rolled over on his stomach and pushed two shrunken
little legs out from the covers. Putting them gingerly to the floor,
he stood up, holding fast to the bed; then working his way from bed to
bed, he reached the table at last, spurred on by Bridget's irresistible
blarney:
"Sure ye're walkin' grand, Sandy. I never saw any one puttin' one leg
past another smarther than what ye are. Ye'd fetch up to Aberdeen i'
no time if ye kept on at the pace ye are goin'."
Pride lies above pain; and Sandy held his head very high as he steadied
himself by the table and looked toward Bridget for further orders.
[Illustration: Sandy held his head very high as he steadied himself by
the table and looked toward Bridget for further orders.]
"Phat wull a do the noo?" he asked.
In the excitement Bridget had pulled herself to the foot of the cot;
and there, eyes shining and cheeks growing pinker and pinker, she held
her breath while the pleasantest thought of all shaped itself somewhere
under the shock of red curls.
"Ye could never guess in a hundthred years what I was thinkin' this
minute," she burst forth, ecstatically.
Eight mouths opened wide in anticipated wonder; but no one thought of
guessing.
"I'm thinkin'--I'm thinkin' we could make a primrose ring the night.
Is there any knowledgeable one among ye that knows aught of a primrose
ring?"
Eight heads shook an emphatic negative.
"Aye, wasn't I sayin' so! Well, sure, a primrose ring is a faery ring;
an' any one that makes it an' steps inside, wishin' a wish, is like to
have anythin' at all happen them afore they steps out of it ag'in."
Eight breaths were drawn in and sighed out with the shivering delight
that always accompanies that feeling which lies between fear and
desire; likewise, eight delicious thrills zigzagged up eight cold
little spines. Then Bridget shook a commanding finger at Sandy.
"Ye take them flowers out o' the pot an' dthrop them, one by one, till
ye have the ground covered from the head of Pancho's bed to the tail o'
Michael's. 'Twon't make the whole of a ring, but if ye crook it out i'
the middle to the wall yondther, 'twill be like enough."
With a doubtful eye Sandy spanned the distance. "Na--na. Gien a
hustled a wud be a dee'd loonie afore a had 'em spilled."
"Aw, go on!" chorused the watchers.
"Thry, just," urged Bridget, "an' we'll sing 'Onward, Christian
Soldier' to hearten ye up."
Eight shrill voices piped out the tune; and Sandy, caught by its
martial spirit, before he knew it was limping a circle about the beds,
marking his trail with golden blossoms. Luckily for Ward C, the nurse
on duty during the dinner-hour was in the medical ward, with the door
closed. And when she came back to her listening post in the corridor
the last word had been sung, the last flower dropped, and Sandy was in
his cot again, stretching tired little legs under the covers.
Perhaps the geometrician, or the accurate-minded reader, will doubt
whether the primrose ring was made at all--seeing that the wall of Ward
C cut off nearly thirty degrees of it. But in the world of fancy
geometrical accuracy does not hold; and the only important thing is
believing that the ring has been made. I have known of a few who could
step inside the faery circle whenever they willed, and without a
visible primrose about; but for most of us the blossoms are needed to
make the enchantment.
This is one of the heritages that come to those who are lucky enough to
dwell much in the world of fancy. They can wish for things and possess
them, and enjoy them without actually grasping them with their two
hands and saying, "These are my personal belongings." Material things
are rather a nuisance, on the whole, for they have to be dusted and
kept in order, repatched or repainted; and if one wishes to carry them
about there are always the bother of packing and the danger of losing.
But these other possessions are different--they are with us wherever we
go and whenever we want them--to-day, to-morrow, or for eternity.
"If we had the wee red wishin'-cap," said Bridget, thoughtfully, "we'd
not have to be waitin' for what's likely to happen. We could just wish
ourselves into Tir-na-n'Og."
"What's that?" demanded Peter.
"Tis the place the faeries live in, an' 'tis in Irelan'. Sure, 'tis
easy gettin' the cap," continued Bridget, with conviction. "All ye
need do is to say afther me, 'I wish--I wish for the wee red cap,' an'
ye have it."
Bridget extended her hands, palms upward, and the others followed her
example; and together they whispered: "I wish--I wish for the wee red
cap."
Immediately Bridget's hands closed over a cubic inch of atmosphere, and
she cried, exultantly, "Hold on to it tight an' slip it on your head
quick--afore it gets from ye!"
Only seven pairs of hands obeyed--Michael protested.
"I have nothinks got," he said, disgustedly.
"Shut up!" And Bridget shook a menacing fist at him. "He's foolish
entirely. He thinks he hasn't anythin' foreby he can't see it. Now,
all together, 'We wish--'"
"Can we go 'thout any clothes?" interrupted Susan. "We'd feel awful
queer in nightshirts."
"Don't ye worry, darlin'. Like as not when we get there the queen
herself 'll open a monsthrous big chest where they keeps all the faery
clothes, an' let us choose anythin' at all we wants to wear."
"Pants?" queried Peter, eagerly.
"Sure, an' silk dresses an' straw hats wi' ribbon on them, an--"
"Will shoes in the chest be?" Pancho was very anxious; he had never
had a pair of shoes in all his six years.
Bridget beamed. "Not i' the chest; but I'll be tellin' ye how ye'll
come by them. When we get there we'll look about for a
blackthorn-bush--an' there--like as not--in undther it--will be a wee
man wi' a leather apron across his knee--the leprechaun, big as life!"
"What's him?"
"Faith I'm tellin' ye--'tis the faery cobbler. An' the minute he slaps
the tail of his eye on us he'll sing out: 'Hello, Pancho an' Sandy an'
Susan an' all o' yez. I've your boots finished, just.' An' wi' that
he'll fetch down the nine pairs an' hand them round."
A sigh of blissful contentment started from the cot by the door,
burbled down the length of the ward, and vanished out of the window.
Is there anything dearer to the pride of a child than boots--new boots?
Bridget took up the dropped thread and went on. "An' afther that the
leprechaun reaches for his crock o' gold an' pulls out a penny. Ye can
buy anythin' i' the whole world wi' a faery penny."
"Anythinks!" said Michael, skeptically.
"That's what I said."
"Could yer buy a dorg?" Peter asked, opening one renegade eye.
"Sure--a million dogs."
"Don't want a million. Want jus' one real live black dorg--named
Toby--wiv yeller spots an' half-legs--an' long ears--an' a stand-up
tail--an' legs--an' long--long--long--" The renegade eye closed tight
and Peter was smiling at something afar off.
An antiphonal chorus of yawns broke the hush that followed, while
Bridget worked herself back under the covers.
"A ken the penny micht be buyin' a hame," came in a drowsy voice from
Sandy's crib. "'Twad be a hame in Aberdeen--wi' trees an' flo'ers an'
mickle wee creepit things--an'--Miss Peggie--an'--us--"
"Sure, an' it could be buyin' a grand home in Irelan', the same,"
Bridget beamed; and then she added, struck forcibly with an
afterthought: "But what would be the sense of a home anywheres but
here--furninst--within easy reach of a crutch or a wheeled chair? Tell
me that!"
Sandy grunted ambiguously; and Bridget took up again the thread of her
recounting.
"Ye could never be guessin' half o' the sthrange adventures we'll be
havin'! Like as not Sandy 'll be gettin' his hump lifted off him. I
mind the story--me mother often told it me. There was a humpy back in
Irelan', once, who went always about wi' song in his heart an' another
on his lips; an' one day he fetched up inside a faery rath. The pipers
were pipin' an' the Wee People was dancin', an' while they was dancin'
they was singin' like this: 'Monday an' Tuesday--an' Monday an'
Tuesday--an' Monday an' Tuesday'--an' it sounded all jerky and bad.
'That's a terrible poor song,' says the humpy, speakin' out plain.
'What's that?' says the faeries, stoppin' their dance an' gatherin'
round him. ''Tis mortal poor music ye are making' says the humpy
ag'in. 'Can ye improve it any?' asked the faeries. 'I can that,' says
the humpy. 'Add Wednesday to it an' ye'll have double as good a song.'
An' when the faeries tried it it was so pretty, an' they was so
pleased, they took the hump off him."
Sandy had curled up like a kitten; his eyes were shut, and he was
smiling, too. Every one was very quiet; only Rosita moved, reaching
out a frightened hand to Bridget.
"Fwaid," she lisped. "All dark--fwaid to do."
"Whist, darlin', ye needn't be afeared. Bridget 'll hold tight to your
hand all the way. An' the stars will be out there makin' it bright--so
bright--foreby the stars are the faeries' old rush-lights. When
they're all burned out, just, they throw them up i' the sky--far as
ever they can--an' God reaches out an' catches them. Then He sets them
all a-burnin' ag'in, so's the wee angel babies can see what road to be
takin'. An' Sandy 'll lose his hump--an' Michael 'll get a new
heart--maybe--that won't bump--an' they'll put all the trusters in
cages--all but the nice Wee One--cages like they have in the circus--
An' they'll never get out to pesther us--never--never--no--more--"
Bridget's voice trailed off into the distance, carrying with it the
last of Rosita's fearing consciousness.
Ward C had suddenly become empty--empty except for a row of tumbled
beds and nine little tired-out, cast-off bodies. They had been shed as
easily as a boy slips out of his dusty, uncomfortable overalls on a
late sultry afternoon, and leaves them behind him on a shady bank,
while he plunges, head first, into the cool, dark waters of the
swimming-pool just below him, which have been calling and calling and
calling.
VII
AND BEYOND
What happened beyond the primrose ring is, perhaps, rather a
crazy-quilt affair, having to be patched out of the squares and
three-cornered bits of Fancy which the children remembered to bring
back with them. I have tried to piece them together into a fairly
substantial pattern; but, of course, it can be easily ripped out and
raveled into nothing. So I beg of you, on the children's account, to
handle it gently, for they believe implicitly in the durability of the
fabric.
Sandy remembered the beginning of it--the plunge straight across the
primrose ring into the River of Make-Believe; and how they paddled over
like puppies--one after another. It was perfectly safe to swim, even
if you had never swum before; and the only danger was for those who
might stop in the middle of the river and say, or think, "A dinna
believe i' faeries." Whoever should do this would sink like a stone,
going down, down, down until he struck his bed with a thud and woke,
crying.
It was starlight in Tir-na-n'Og--just as Bridget had said it would
be--only the stars were far bigger and brighter. The children stood on
the white, pebbly beach and shook themselves dry; while Bridget showed
them how to pull down their nightshirts to keep them from shrinking,
and how to wring out their faery caps to keep the wishes from growing
musty or mildewed. After that they met the faery ferryman,
who--according to Sandy--"wore a wee kiltie o' reeds, an' a tammie made
frae a loch-lily pad wi' a cat-o'-nine-tail tossel, lukin' sae ilk the
brae ye wad niver ken he was a mon glen ye dinna see his legs,
walkin'." He told them how he ferried over all the "old bodies" who
had grown feeble-hearted and were too afraid to swim.
It was Pancho who remembered best about the leprechaun--how they found
him sitting cross-legged under the blackthorn-bush with a leather apron
spread over his knees, and how he had called out--just as Bridget had
said he would:
"Hello, Pancho and Susan and Sandy and all!"
"Have you any shoes got?" Pancho shouted.
The faery cobbler nodded and pointed with his awl to the branches above
his head; there hung nine pairs of little green shoes, curled at the
toes, with silver buckles, all stitched and soled and ready to wear.
"Will they fit?" asked Pancho, breathlessly.
"Faery shoes always fit. Now reach them down and hand them round."
This Pancho did with despatch. Nine pairs of little white feet were
thrust joyously into the green shoes and buckled in tight. On looking
back, Pancho was quite sure that this was the happiest moment of his
life. The children squealed and clapped their hands and cried:
"They fit fine!"
"Shoes is grand to wear!"
"I feel skippy."
"I feel dancy."
Whereupon they all jumped to their feet and with arms wide-spread, hand
clasping hand, they ringed about the cobbler and the thorn-bush. They
danced until there was not a scrap of breath left in their bodies; then
they tumbled over and rolled about like a nest of young puppies, while
the cobbler laughed and laughed until he held his sides with the aching.
It was here that everybody remembered about the faery penny; in fact,
that was the one thing remembered by all. And this is hardly strange;
if you or I ever possessed a faery penny--even in the confines of a
primrose ring--we should never forget it.
It was Bridget, however, who reminded the leprechaun. "Ye haven't by
any chance forgotten somethin' ye'd like to be rememberin', have ye?"
she asked, diplomatically.
"I don't know," and the cobbler pulled his thinking-lock. "What might
it be?"
"Sure, it might be a faery penny," and Bridget eyed him anxiously.
The cobbler slapped his apron and laughed again. "To be sure it
might--and I came near forgetting it."
He reached, over and pulled up a tuft of sod at his side; for all one
could have told, it might have been growing there, neighbor to all the
other sods. Underneath was a dark little hole in the ground; and out
of this he brought a brown earthen crock.
"The crock o' gold!" everybody whispered, awesomely.
"Aye, the crock o' gold," agreed the cobbler. "But I keep it hidden,
for there is naught that can make more throuble--sometimes." He raised
the lid and took out a single shining piece. "Will one do ye?"
Nine heads nodded eloquently, while nine hands were stretched out
eagerly to take it.
"Bide a bit. Ye can't all be carrying it at the one time. I think ye
had best choose a treasurer."
Bridget was elected unanimously. She took the penny and deposited it
in the heel of her faery shoe.
"Mind," said the leprechaun as they were turning to go, "ye mind a
faery penny will buy but the one thing. See to it that ye are all
agreed on the same thing."
The children chorused an assent and skipped merrily away. And here is
where Peter's patch joins Pancho's.
They had not gone far over the silvery-green meadow--three
shadow-lengths, perhaps--when they saw something coming toward them.
It was coming as fast as half-legs could carry it; and it was wagging a
_long_, stand-up tail. Everybody guessed in an instant that it was
Peter's "black dorg wiv yeller spots."
"Who der thunk it? Who der thunk it?" shouted Peter, jumping up and
down; and then he knelt on the grass, his arms flung wide open, while
he called: "Toby, Toby! Here's me!"
Of course Toby knew Peter--that goes without saying. He barked and
wagged his tail and licked Peter's face; in fact, he did every
dog-thing Peter had longed for since Peter's mind had first fashioned
him.
"Well," and Bridget put both arms akimbo and smiled a smile of complete
satisfaction, "what was I a-tellin' ye, anyways? Faith, don't it beat
all how things come thrue--when ye think 'em pleasant an' hard enough?"
Peter remembered the wonderful way their feet skimmed over the
ground--"'most like flyin'." Not a blade of grass bent under their
weight, not a grain of sand was dislodged; and--more marvelous than
all--there was no tiredness, no aching of joint or muscle. All of
which was bound to happen when feet were shod with faery shoes.
"See me walk!" cried some one.
"See me run!" cried some one else.
"See me hop and jump!"
And Bridget added, "Faith, 'tis as easy as lyin' in bed."
They were no longer alone; hosts of Little People passed them, going in
the same direction. Peter said most of them rode "straddle-legs" on
night birds or moths, while some flew along on a funny thing that was
horse before and weeds behind. I judge this must have been the
buchailin buidhe or benweed, which the faeries bewitch and ride the
same as a witch mounts her broomstick.
And everybody who passed always called out in the friendliest way,
"Hello, Peter!" or "Hello, Bridget!" or "The luck rise with ye!" which
is the most common of all greetings in Tir-na-n'Og.
"Gee!" was Peter's habitual comment after the telling, "maybe it wasn't
swell havin' 'em know us--names an' all. Betcher life we wasn't cases
to them--no, siree!"
It was Susan who remembered best how everything looked--Susan, who had
never been to the country in all her starved little life--that is, if
one excepts the times Margaret MacLean had taken her on the Ward C
"special." She told so well how all the trees and flowers were
fashioned that it was an easy matter putting names to them.
In the center of Tir-na-n'Og towered a great hill; but instead of its
being capped with peak or rocks it was gently hollowed at the top, as
though in the beginning, when it was thrown up molten from the depths
of somewhere, a giant thumb had pressed it down and smoothed it round
and even. All about the brim of it grew hawthorns and rowans and
hazel-trees. In the grass, everywhere, were thousands and millions of
primroses, heart's-ease, and morning-glories; all crowded together, so
Susan said, like the patterns on the Persian carpet in the board-room.
It was all so beautiful and faeryish and heart-desired that "yer'd have
said it wasn't real if yer hadn't ha' knowed it was."
The children stood on the brink of the giant hollow and clapped their
hands for the very joy of seeing it all; and there--a little man
stepped up to them and doffed his cap. The queen wanted them--she was
waiting for them by the throne that very minute; and the little man was
to bring them to her.
Now that throne--according to Susan--was nothing like the thrones one
finds in stories or Journeys through palaces to see. It was not cold,
hard, or forbidding; instead, it was as soft and green and pillowy as
an inflated golf-bunker might be, and just high and comfortable enough
for the baby faeries to discover it and go to sleep there whenever they
felt tired. The throne was full of them when the children looked, and
some one was tumbling them off like so many kittens.
"That is the queen," said the little man, pointing.
The children stood on tiptoes and craned their necks the better to see;
but it was not until they had come quite close that they saw that her
dress was gray, and her hair was gray, and she was small, and her face
was like--
"Bless me if it ain't!" shouted Susan in amazement. "It's Sandy's wee
creepity woman!"
The queen smiled when she saw them. She reached out her hands and
patted theirs in turn, asking, "Now what is your name, dearie?"
"Are ye sure ye're the queen?" gasped Bridget.
"Maybe I am--and maybe I'm not," was the answer.
"Then ye been't the wee gray woman--back yonder?" asked Sandy.
"Maybe I'm not--and maybe I am." And then she laughed. "Dear
children, it doesn't matter in the least who I am. I look a hundred
different ways to a hundred different people. Now let me see--I think
you wanted some--clothes."
A long, rapturous sigh was the only answer. It lasted while the queen
got down on her knees--just like an every-day, ordinary person--and
pulled from under the throne a great carved chest. She threw open the
lid wide; and there, heaped to the top and spilling over, were dresses
and mantles and coats and trousers and caps. They were all lengths,
sizes, and fashions--just what you most wanted after you had been in
bed for years and never worn anything but a hospital shirt; and
everything was made of cloth o' dreams and embroidered with pearls from
the River of Make-Believe.
"You can choose whatever you like, dearies," said the queen. And
that--according to Susan--was the best of all.
Next came the dancing; the Apostles remembered about that
co-operatively. They had donned pants of pink and yellow,
respectively, with shirts of royal purple and striked stockings, when
the pipers began to play. James said it sounded like soldiers
marching; John was certain that it was more like a circus; but I am
inclined to believe that they played "The Music of Glad Memories" and
"What-is-Sure-to-Come-True," for those are the two popular airs in
Tir-na-n'Og.
Away and away must have danced pairs of little feet that had never
danced before, and pairs of old feet that had long ago forgotten how;
and millions of faery feet, for no one can dance half as joyously as
when faeries dance with them. And I have heard it said that the pipers
there can play sadness into gladness, and tears into laughter, and old
age young again; and that those who have ever danced to the music of
faery pipes never really grow heavy-hearted again.
Needless to say, the Apostles danced together, and Peter danced with
Toby; and it must have been the maddest, merriest dance, for they never
told about it afterward without bursting into peal after peal of
laughter. Truth to tell, the Apostles' patch of fancy ended right
there--all raveling out into smiles and squirms of delight.
Another memory of Sandy's adjoins that of the Apostles'; and he told it
with great precision and regard for the truth.
Ever since crossing the River of Make-Believe Sandy had been able to
think of nothing but the story Bridget had told--the very last thing in
Ward C--and ever since he had left the leprechaun's bush behind he had
been wondering and scheming how he could get rid of his hump. He was
the only person in Tir-na-n'Og that night who did not dance.
Unnoticed, he climbed into a corner of the throne--among the sleeping
baby faeries--and there he thought hard. As he listened to the pipers'
music he shook his head mournfully.
"A canna make music mair bonny nor that--a canna," he said; and he set
about searching through the scraps of his memory for what music he did
know. There were the hymns they sang every Sunday at Saint Margaret's;
but he somewhat doubted their appropriateness here. Then there were
the songs his mother had sung to him home in Aberdeen. Long ago the
words had been forgotten; but often and often he had hummed the music
of them over to himself when he was going to sleep--it was good music
for that. One of the airs popped into his mind that very minute; it
was a Jacobite song about "Charlie," and he started to hum it softly.
Close on the humming came an idea--a braw one; it made him sit up in
the corner of the throne and clap his hands, while his toes wriggled
exultantly inside his faery shoes.
"A can do't--a can!" He shouted it so loud that the baby faeries woke
up and asked what he was going to do, and gathered about him to listen
the better.
The pipers played until there were no more memories left and everything
had come true; and the queen came back to her throne to find Sandy
waiting, eager-eyed, for her.
"A have a bonny song made for ye. Wull ye tak it frae me noo?"
"Take what?"
"The hump. Ye tuk it frae the ither loonie gien he made ye some guid
music; an' a ha' fetched ye mair--here." And he tapped his head to
signify that it was not written down.
"Is the song ready, now?"
Sandy nodded.
"Then turn about and sing it loud enough for all to hear; they must be
the judges if the song is worth the price of a hump." And the queen
smiled very tenderly.
Sandy did as he was bid; he clasped his hands tightly in front of him.
"'Tis no for the faeries," he explained. "Ye see--they be hardly
needin' ony music, wi' muckle o' their ain. 'Tis for the children--the
children i' horspitals--a bonny song for them to sleepit on." He
marked the rhythm a moment with his foot, and hummed it through once to
be sure he had it. Then he broke out clearly into the old Jacobite
air--with words of his own making:
"Ye weave a bonny primrose ring;
Ye hear the River callin';
Ye ken the Land whaur faeries sing--
Whaur starlicht beams are fallin'.
'Tis there the pipers play things true;
'Tis there ye'll gae--my dearie--
The bonny Land 'at waits for you,
Whaur ye'll be nae mair weary.
"A wee man by a blackthorn-tree
Maun stitchit shoes for dancin',
An' there's a pair for ye an' me--
To set our feet a-prancin'.
'Tis muckle gladness 'at ye'll find
In Tir-na-n'Og, my dearie;
The bonny Land 'at's aye sae kind,
Whaur ye'll be nae mair weary.
"Ye'll ken the birdeen's blithie song,
Ye'll hark till flo'ers lauchen;
An' see the faeries trippit long
By brook an' brae an' bracken.
Sae doon your heid--an' shut your een;
Gien ye'd be away, my dearie--
An' the bonny sauncy faery queen
Wull keep ye--nae mair weary."
You may think it uncommonly strange that Sandy could make a song like
this, by himself; but, you see, he was not entirely alone--there were
the baby faeries. They helped a lot; as fast as ever he thought out
the words they rhymed them for him--this being a part of the A B C of
faery education.
When the song was finished Sandy turned to the queen again.
"Aighe--wull it do?"
"If the faeries like it, and think it good enough to send down to the
children, they will have it all learned by heart and will sing it back
to you in a minute. Listen! Can you hear anything?"
For a moment only the rustle of the trees could be heard. Sandy
strained his ears until he caught a low, sobbing sound coming through
the hazel-leaves.
"'Tis but the wind--greetin'," he said, wistfully.
"Listen again!"
The sound grew, breaking into a cadence and a counter-cadence, and
thence into a harmony. "'Tis verra ilk the grand pipe-organ i' the
kirk, hame in Aberdeen."
"Listen again!"
Mellow and sweet came the notes of the Jacobite air--a bar of it; and
then the faeries began to sing, sending the song back to Sandy like a
belated echo:
"Ye weave a bonny primrose ring;
Ye hear the River callin';
Ye ken the Land whaur faeries sing--
Whaur starlicht beams are fallin'."
"For the love o' Mike!" laughed Sandy. "A'm unco glad--a am." He
dropped to his knees beside the queen and nestled his cheek in the hand
that was resting in her lap. "'Tis aricht noo." And he sighed
contentedly.
And it was. The queen leaned over and lifted off the hump as easily as
you might take the cover from a box. Sandy stretched himself and
yawned--after the fashion of any one who has been sleeping a long time
in a cramped position; and without being in the least conscious of it,
he sidled up to the arm of the throne and rubbed his back up and
down--to test the perfect straightness of it.
"'Tis gone--guid! Wull it nae mair coom back?" And he eyed the queen
gravely.
"Never to be burdensome, little lad. Others may think they see it
there, but for you the back will be straight and strong."
Rosita came back--empty-handed; she was so busy holding tight to
Bridget's hand and getting ready to be afraid that she forgot
everything else. As for Michael, he gave his patch into Bridget's
keeping; which brings us to what Bridget remembered.
From the moment that the penny had been given over to her she had been
weighed down with a mighty responsibility. The financier of any large
syndicate is bound to feel harassed at times over the outcome of his
investments; and Bridget felt personally accountable for the
forthcoming happiness due the eight other stockholders in her company.
She was also mindful of what had happened in the past to other persons
who had speculated heedlessly or unwisely with faery gifts. There was
the case of the fisherman and his wife, and the aged couple and their
sausage, and the old soldier; on the other hand, there was the man from
Letterkenny who had hoarded his gold and had it turn to dry leaves as a
punishment. She must neither keep nor spend foolishly.
"Sure I'll think all round a thing twict afore I have my mind made to
anythin'; then I'll keep it made for a good bit afore I give over the
penny."
She repeated this advice while she considered all possible investments,
but she found nothing to her liking. The children made frequent
suggestions, such as bagpipes and clothes-chests, and contrivances for
feast-spreading and transportation; and Susan was strongly in favor of
a baby faery to take back to Miss Peggie. But to all of these Bridget
shook an emphatic negative.
"Sure ye'd be tired o' the lot afore ye'd gone half-way back. Like as
not we'll never have another penny to spend as long as we live, an' I'm
goin' to see that ye'll all get somethin' that will last."
She was beginning to fear that theirs would be the fate of the man from
Letterkenny, when she chanced upon Peter and Toby performing for the
benefit of the pipers.
"Them trusters will never be lettin' Pether take that dog back to the
horspital," she thought, mindful of the sign in Saint Margaret's yard
that dogs were not allowed. "He'd have to be changin' him back into a
make-believe dog to get him in at all; an' Pether'd never be satisfied
wi' him that way, now--afther havin' him real."
Her trouble took her to the queen. "Is there any way of buyin' a dog
into a horspital?" she asked, solemnly.
"I think it would be easier to buy a home to put him in."
"Could ye--could ye get one for the price of a penny?" Bridget
considered her own question, and coupled it with something she
remembered Sandy had been wishing for back in Ward C. "Wait a minute;
I'll ask ye another. Could ye be buyin' a home for childher an' dogs
for the price of a penny?"
The queen nodded.
"Would it be big enough for nine childher--an' one dog; an' would it be
afther havin' all improvements like Miss Peggie an' the House Surgeon?"
Again the queen nodded.
Bridget lowered her voice. "An' could we put up a sign furninst, 'No
Trusters Allowed'?"
"I shouldn't wonder."
"Then," said Bridget, with decision, "I've thought all round it twict
an' my mind's been made to stay; we'll buy a home."
She made a hollow of her two hands and called, "Whist--whist there, all
o' yez! Pether an' Pancho--Michael--Susan--do ye hear!" And when she
had them rounded up, she counted them twice to make sure they were all
present. "Now ye listen." Bridget raised a commanding finger to the
circle about her while she exhibited the golden penny. "Is there any
one objectin' to payin' this down for a home?"
"What kind of a home?" asked Susan, shrewdly.
"Sure the kind ye live in--same as other folks have that don't live in
horspitals or asylums."
"Hurrah!" chorused everybody, and Bridget sighed with relief.
"Faith, spendin' money's terrible easy."
She put the penny in the queen's out-stretched hand. "Do I get a piece
o' paper sayin' I paid the money on it?" she demanded, remembering her
responsibility.
This time the queen shook her head. "No; I give you only my promise;
but a promise made across a primrose ring is never broken."
"And Toby?" Peter asked it anxiously.
"You must leave him behind. You see, if you took him back over the
River of Make-Believe he would have to turn back into a make-believe
dog again; but--I promise he shall be waiting in the home for you."
The queen led them down the hill to the shore again; and there they
found the ferry-man ready, waiting. It is customary, I believe, for
every one to be ferried home. The river, that way, is treble as wide,
and the sandman is always wandering up and down the brink, scattering
his sand so that one is apt to get too drowsy to swim the whole
distance. The children piled into the boat--all but Michael; he stood
clinging fast to the queen's gray dress.
"Don't you want to go back?" she asked, gently.
"Nyet; the heart by me no longer to bump--here," and Michael pointed to
the pit of his stomach.
"Aw, come on," called Peter.
But Michael only shook his head and clung closer to the gray dress.
"All right, ferryman; he may stay," said the queen.
"Good-by!" shouted the children. "Don't forget us, Michael."
"Nyet; goo'-by," Michael shouted back; and then he laughed. "You tell
Mi' Peggie--I say--Go' blees you!"
And this was Michael's patch.
The ferryman stood in the stem and swung his great oar. Slowly the
boat moved, scrunching over the white pebbles, and slipped into the
water. The children saw Michael and the queen waving their hands until
they had dwindled to shadow-specks in the distance; they watched the
wake of starshine lengthen out behind them; they listened to the
ripples lapping at the keel. To and fro, to and fro, swayed the
ferryman to the swing of his oar. "Sleep--sleep--sleep," sang the
river, running with them. Bridget stretched her arms about as many
children as she could compass and held them close while eight pairs of
eyes slowly--slowly--shut.
VIII
IN WHICH A PART OF THE BOARD HAS DISTURBING DREAMS
It is a far cry from a primrose ring to a disbanded board meeting; but
Fancy bridged it in a twinkling and without an effort. She blew the
trustees off the door-step of Saint Margaret's, homeward, with an
insistent buzzing of "ifs" and "buts" in their ears, and the faint
woodsy odor of primroses under their noses.
To each member of the board entering his own home, unsupported by the
presence of his fellow-members and the scientific zeal of the Senior
Surgeon, the business of the afternoon began to change its aspect. For
some unaccountable reason--unless we take Fancy into the
reckoning--this sudden abandoning of Ward C did not seem the simple
matter of an hour previous; while in perspective even Margaret
MacLean's outspokenness became less heinous and more human.
As they settled themselves for the evening, each quietly and alone
after his or her particular fashion of comfort, the "ifs" and "buts"
were still buzzing riotously; while the primroses, although forgotten,
clung persistently to the frills or coat lapels where the Youngest and
Prettiest Trustee had put them. There it was that Fancy slipped
unnoticed over the threshold of library, den, and boudoir in turn; and
with a glint of mischief in her eyes she set the stage in each place to
her own liking, while she summoned whatever players she chose to do her
bidding.
Now the trustees were very different from the children in the matter of
telling what they remembered of that May Eve. Of course they were
hampered with all the self-consciousness and skepticism of grown-ups,
which would make them quite unwilling to own up to anything strange or
out of the conventional path, not in a hundred years. Therefore I am
forced to leave their part of the telling to Fancy, and you may believe
or discredit as much or as little as you choose; only I am hoping that
by this time you have acquired at least a sprinkling of fern-seed in
your eyes. You may have forgotten that fern-seed is the most subtle of
eye-openers known to Fancy; and that it enables you to see the things
that have existed only in your imagination. It is very scarce
nowadays, and hard to find, for the bird-fanciers no longer keep
it--and the nursery-gardeners have forgotten how to grow it. In the
light of what happened afterward, I think you will agree that Fancy has
not been far wrong concerning the trustees; she has a way of putting
things a little differently, that is all.
To be sure, you may argue that it was all chance, conscience, or even
indigestion; because the trustees dined late they must have dined
heavily. But if you do, you know very well that Fancy will answer:
"Poof! Nothing of the kind. It was a simple matter of primrose magic
and--faeries; nothing else." And she ought to know, for she was there.
The President began it.
He sat in his den, yawning over the annual report of the United
Charities; he had already yawned a score of times, and the type had
commenced running together in a zigzagging line that baffled
deciphering. The President inserted a finger in the report to mark his
place, making a mental note to consult his oculist the following day;
after which he leaned back and closed his eyes for the space of a
moment--to clear his vision.
When he opened his eyes again his vision had cleared to such an extent
that he was quite positive he was seeing things that were not in the
room. Little shadowy figures haunted the dark places: corners, and
curtained recesses, and the unlighted hall beyond. They peered at him
shyly, with such witching, happy faces and eyes that laughed coaxingly.
The President found himself peering back at them and scrutinizing the
faces closely. Oddly enough he could recognize many, not by name, of
course, but he could place them in the many institutions over which he
presided. It was very evident that they were expecting something of
him; they were looking at him that way. For once in his life he was at
loss for the correct thing to say. He tried closing his eyes two or
three times to see if he could not blink them into vanishing; but when
he looked again there they were, more eager-eyed than before.
"Well," he found himself saying at last--"well, what is it?"
That was all; but it brought the children like a Hamlin troop to the
piper's cry--flocking about him unafraid. Never in all his charitable
life had he ever had children gather about him and look up at him this
way. Little groping hands pulled at his cuffs or steadied themselves
on his knee; more venturesome ones slipped into his or hunted their way
into his coat pockets. They were such warm, friendly, trusting little
hands--and the faces; the President of Saint Margaret's Free Hospital
for Children caught himself wondering why in all his charitable
experience he had never had a child overstep a respectful distance
before, or look at him save with a strange, alien expression.
He sat very still for fear of frightening them off; he liked the warmth
and friendliness of their little bodies pressed close to him; there was
something pleasantly hypnotic in the feeling of small hands tugging at
him. Suddenly he became conscious of a change in the children's faces;
the gladness was fading out and in its place was creeping a perplexed,
questioning sorrow.
"Don't." And the President patted assuringly as many little backs as
he could reach. "What--what was it you expected?"
He was answered by a quivering of lips and more insistent tugs at his
pockets. It flashed upon him--out of some dim memory--that children
liked surprises discovered unexpectedly in some one's pockets. Was
this why they had searched him out? He found himself frantically
wishing that he had something stowed away somewhere for them. His
hands followed theirs into all the numerous pockets he possessed;
trousers, coat, and vest were searched twice over; they were even
turned inside out in the last hope of disclosing just one surprise.
"I should think," said the President, addressing himself, "that a man
might keep something pleasant in empty pockets. What are pockets for,
anyway?"
The children shook their heads sorrowfully.
"Wouldn't to-morrow do?" he suggested, hopefully; but there was no
response from the children, and the weight that had been settling down
upon him, in the region of his chest, noticeably increased. He tried
to shake it off, it was so depressing--like the accruing misfortune of
some pending event.
"Don't shake," said a voice behind him; "that isn't your misfortune.
You will only shake it off on the children, and it's time enough for
them to bear it when they wake up in the morning and find out--"
"Find out what?" The President asked it fearfully.
"Find out--find out--" droned the voice, monotonously.
The President sat up very straight in his chair. "The children--the
children." He remembered now--they were the children from the
incurable ward at Saint Margaret's.
He sank back with a feeling of great helplessness, and closed his eyes
again. And there he sat, immovable, his finger still marking his place
in the report of the United Charities.
The Oldest Trustee sat alone, knitting comforters for the Preventorium
patients. Like many another elderly person, her usual retiring hour
was later than that of the younger members of her household,
undoubtedly due to the frequent cat-naps snatched from the evening.
The Oldest Trustee had a habit of knitting the day's events in with her
yarn. What she had done and said and heard were all thought over again
to the rhythmic click of her needles. And the results at the end of
the evening were usually a finished comforter and a comfortable
feeling. This night, however, the knitting lagged and the thoughts
were unaccountably dissatisfying; she could not even settle down to a
cat-nap with the habitual serenity.
"I don't know why I should feel disturbed," and the Oldest Trustee
prodded her yarn ball with a disquieting needle, "but I certainly miss
the usual gratification of a day well spent."
She closed her eyes, hoping thereby to lose herself for the space of a
moment, but instead-- She was startled to hear voices at her very
elbow; a number of persons must have entered the room, but how they
could have done so without her knowing it she could not understand. Of
course they thought her asleep; it was just as well to let them think
so. She really felt too tired to talk.
"Mother's undoubtedly growing old. Have you noticed how much she naps
in the evening, now?" It was the voice of her youngest daughter.
"I heard her telling some one the other day she was five years younger
than she is. That's a sure sign," and her son laughed an amused little
chuckle.
"I can tell you a surer one." This time it was her oldest
daughter--her first-born. "Haven't you noticed how all mother's little
peculiarities are growing on her? She is getting so much more
dictatorial and preachy. Of course, we know that mother means to be
kind and helpful, but she has always been so--tactless--and blunt; and
it's growing worse and worse."
"I have often wondered how all her charity people take her; it must
come tough on them, sometimes. Gee! Can't you see her raising those
lorgnettes of hers and saying, 'My good boy, do you read your Bible?'
or, 'My little girl, I hope you remember to be grateful for all you
receive.' Say, wouldn't you hate to have charity stuffed down your
throat that way?" and the oldest and favorite grandson groaned out his
feelings.
"That isn't what I should mind the most." It was the youngest daughter
speaking again. "I've been with mother when she has made remarks about
the patients in the hospital, loud enough for them to hear, and I was
so mortified I wanted to sink through the floor, And you simply can't
shut mother up. Of course she doesn't realize how it sounds; she
doesn't believe they hear her, but I know they do. I wonder how mother
would like to have us stand around her--and we know her and love
her--and have us say she was getting deaf, or her hair was coming out,
or her memory was beginning to fail, or--"
The Oldest Trustee smiled grimly. "Oh, don't stop, my dear. If there
is any other failing you can think of--" She opened her eyes with a
start. "Goodness gracious!" she exclaimed. "My grandson is in college
five hundred miles away, and my daughter is abroad. Have I been
dreaming?"
The Meanest Trustee unlocked the drawer of his desk and took out a
cigar. He did not intend that his sons or his servants should smoke at
his expense; furthermore, it was well not to spread temptation before
others. He took up the evening paper and examined the creases
carefully. He wished to make sure it had not been unfolded before;
being the one to pay for the news in his house, he preferred to be the
first one to read it. The creases proved perfectly satisfactory; so he
lighted his cigar, crossed his feet, and settled himself--content in
his own comfort. The smoke spun into spirals about his head; and after
he had skimmed the cream of the day's events he read more leisurely,
stopping to watch the spirals with a certain lazy enjoyment. They
seemed to grow increasingly larger. They spun themselves about into
all kinds of shapes, wavering and illusive, that defied the somewhat
atrophied imagination of the Meanest Trustee.
"Hallucinations," he barked to himself. "I believe I understand now
what is implied when people are said to have them."
Suddenly the spirals commenced to lengthen downward instead of upward.
To the amazement of the Meanest Trustee he discovered them shifting
into human shapes: here was the form of a child, here a youth, here a
lover and his lass, here a little old dame, and scores more; while into
the corners of the room drifted others that turned into the drollest of
droll pipers--with kilt and brata and cap. It made him feel as if he
had been dropped into the center of a giant kaleidoscope, with
thousands of pieces of gray smoke turning, at the twist of a hand, into
form and color, motion and music. The pipers piped; the figures
danced, whirling and whirling about him, and their laughter could be
heard above the pipers' music.
"Stop!" barked the Meanest Trustee at last; but they only danced the
faster. "Stop!" And he shook his fist at the pipers, who played
louder and merrier. "Stop!" And he pounded the arms of his chair with
both hands. "I hate music! I hate children! I hate noise and
confusion! Stop! I say."
Still the pipers played and the figures danced on; and the Meanest
Trustee was compelled to hear and see. To him it seemed an
interminable time. He would have stopped his ears with his fingers and
shut his eyes, only, strangely enough, he could not. But at last it
all came to an end--the figures floated laughing away, and the pipers
came and stood about him, their caps in their hands out-stretched
before him.
He eyed them suspiciously. "What's that for?"
"It is time to pay the pipers," said one.
"Let those who dance pay; that's according to the adage," and he smiled
caustically at his own wit.
"It's a false adage," said a second, "like many another that you follow
in your world. It is not the ones who dance that should pay, but the
ones who keep others from dancing--the ones who help to rob the world
of some of its joy. And the ones who rob the most must pay the
heaviest. Come!" And he shook his cap significantly.
A sudden feeling of helplessness overpowered the Meanest Trustee.
Muttering something about "pickpockets" and "hold-ups," he ferreted
around in his pocket and brought out a single coin, which he dropped
ungraciously into the insistent cap.
"What's that?" asked the head piper, curiously.
"It looks to me like money--good money--and I'm throwing it away on a
parcel of rascals."
"Come, come, my good man," and the piper tapped him gently on the
shoulder, in the fashion of a professional philanthropist when he
remonstrates with a professional vagrant; "don't you see you are not
giving your soul any room to grow in? A great deal of joy might have
reached the world across your open palm. Instead, you have crushed it
in a hard, tight fist. You must pay now for all the souls you've kept
from dancing. Come--fill all our caps."
"Fill!" There was something akin to actual terror in the voice of the
Meanest Trustee. He could feel himself growing pale; his tongue seemed
to drop back in his throat, choking him. "That would take a great deal
of money," he managed to wheeze out at last; and then he braced
himself, his hands clutched deep in his pockets. "I will never pay;
never, never, never!"
"Oh yes, you will!" and the piper's smile was insultingly cheerful.
"It was a great deal of joy, you know," he reminded him. "Come,
lads"--to the other pipers--"hold out your caps, there."
The Meanest Trustee had the strange experience of feeling himself
worked by a force outside of his own will; it was as if he had been a
marionette with a master-hand pulling the wires. Quite mechanically he
found himself taking something out of his pocket and dropping it into
the caps thrust under his very nose, and at the same time his pockets
began to fill with money--his money. In and out, in and out, his hands
flew like wooden members, until there was not a coin left and the last
piper turned away satisfied. He closed his eyes, for he was feeling
very weak; then he became conscious of the touch of a warm, friendly
hand on his wrist and he heard the voice of the old family doctor--the
one who had set his leg when he was a little shaver and had fallen off
the banisters, sliding downstairs.
"You will recover," it was saying. "A good rest is all you need.
Sometimes there is nothing so beneficial and speedy as the
old-fashioned treatment of bleeding a patient."
Some warm ashes dropped across the wrist of the Meanest Trustee and
scattered on the floor; his cigar had gone out.
The Executive Trustee dozed at his study table. For months he had been
working his brain overtime; he had still more to demand of it, and he
was deliberately detaching it from immediate executive consciousness
for a few minutes that he might set it to work again all the harder.
The Executive Trustee knew that he was dozing; but for all that it was
unbearable--this feeling of being bound by coil after coil of rope
until he could not stir a finger. A terrifying numbness began to creep
over him--as if his body had died. The thought came to him like a
shock that he had an active, commanding intelligence, still alive, and
nothing for it to command. What did people do who had to live with
dead, paralyzed bodies, dependent upon others to execute the dictates
of their brains? Did not their brains go in the end, too, and leave
just a breathing husk behind? The thought became a horror to him.
And yet people did live, just so. Yes, even children.
Somewhere--somewhere--he knew of hundreds of them--or were there only a
few? He tried to remember, but he could not. He did remember,
however, that he had once heard them laughing; and he found himself
wondering now at the strangeness of it. He hoped there was some one
who would always keep them laughing--they deserved that much out of
life, anyway; and some one who could understand and could administer to
them lovingly--yes, that was the word--lovingly! As for himself, there
was no one who could supply for him that strength and power for action
that he had always worshiped; he must exist for the rest of his life
simply as a thinking, ineffective intelligence. The Executive Trustee
forgot that he was dozing. He wrestled with the ropes that bound him
like a crazed man; he called for help again and again, until his lips
could make no sound. For the first time in his remembrance he tasted
the bitterness of despair. Then it was that the door opened
noiselessly and Margaret MacLean entered, her finger to her lips. Coil
after coil she unwound until he was free once more and could feel the
marvelous response of muscle and nerve impulse. With a cry--half sob,
half thankfulness--he flung his arms across the table and buried his
face in them.
The Executive Trustee slept heavily, after the fashion of a man
exhausted from hard labor.
In the house left by the Richest Trustee a little gray wisp of a woman
sat huddled in a great carved chair close to the hearth, thinking and
thinking and thinking. The fire was blazing high, trying its best to
burn away the heart-cold and loneliness that clung about everything
like a Dover fog. For years she had ceased to exist apart from her
husband--her thoughts, her wishes, her interests were of his creating;
she had drawn her very nourishment of life from his strong, dominant,
genial personality. It was parasitic--oh yes, but it had been
something rarely beautiful to them both--her great need of him. The
need had grown all the greater because no children had come to fill her
life; and the need of something to take care of had grown with him.
Their love, and her dependence, had become the greatest factors in his
life; in hers they were the only ones. Therefore, it was hardly
strange, now that he had died, that she should find it hard to take up
an individual existence again; to be truthful, she had found it
impossible--she had not even existed.
The habit of individual, separate thinking had grown rusty, and as she
sat before the hearth ideas came slowly. The room was dim--lighted
only by the firelight; and in that dimness her mind began to stir and
stretch and yawn itself awake, like a creature that had been
hibernating through a long, dark winter. Suddenly the widow of the
Richest Trustee broke out into a feeble little laugh--a convalescing
laugh that acted as if it was just getting about for the first time.
"I haven't the least idea what is the matter with me," she said,
addressing the fire, "but I think--I think--I'm becoming alive again."
The fire gave an appreciative chuckle--it even slapped one of the logs
on the back; then it sputtered and blazed the harder, just as if it
were ashamed of showing any emotion.
"It is funny," agreed the little gray wisp of a woman, "but I actually
feel as I used to when I was a little girl and Christmas Eve had come,
or Hallowe'en, and--and-- What other night in the year was it that I
used to feel creepy and expectant--as if something wonderful was going
to happen?"
The fire coughed twice, as if it would have liked to remind her that it
was May Eve, but felt it might be an intrusion.
"I believe," she continued, speculatively--"I believe I am going to
begin to think things and do them again; and what's more, I believe I
am going to like doing them."
The fire chuckled again, and danced about for a minute in an absurd
fashion; it was so absurd that one of the logs broke a sap-vessel.
After that the fire settled down to its intended vocation, that of
making dream-pictures out of red and gold flames, and black, charred
embers.
The widow of the Richest Trustee watched them happily for a long time,
until they became very definite and actual pictures. Then she got up,
went to her desk, and wrote two letters.
The first was addressed to "The Board of Trustees of Saint Margaret's
Free Hospital for Children"; the second was addressed to "Miss Margaret
MacLean." They were both sealed and mailed that night.
What befell the other trustees does not matter, either from the
standpoint of Fancy or of what happened afterward; moreover, it was
nearly midnight, and what occurs after that on May Eve does not count.
IX
THE LOVE-TALKER
All through the evening Saint Margaret's had been frankly miserable.
Nurses gathered in groups in the nurses' annex and talked about the
closing of the incurable ward and the going of Margaret MacLean. The
passing of the incurables mattered little to them, one way or another,
but they knew what it mattered to the nurse in charge, and they were
just beginning to realize what she had meant to them all. The
Superintendent felt so much concerned that she dropped her official
manner when she chanced upon Margaret MacLean on her way from supper.
"Oh, my dear--my dear"--and the Superintendent's voice had almost
broken--"what shall we do without you? You have kept Saint Margaret's
human--and wholesome for the rest of us."
The House Surgeon had been miserable unto the third degree. It had
forced him into doing all those things he had left undone for months
passed; and he bustled through the building--from pharmacy to
laboratory and from operating-room to supply-closets--giving the
impression of a very scientific man, while he was inwardly praying for
a half-dozen minutes alone with Margaret MacLean. He had passed her
more than once in the corridors, but she had eluded him each time,
brushing by him with a tightening of the lips and a little shake of the
head, half pleading, half commanding. At last, in grim despair, he
gave up appearances and patrolled the second-floor hall until the night
nurse fixed upon him such a greenly suspicious eye that he fled to his
quarters--vowing unspeakable things.
Even old Cassie, the scrub-woman, shared in the general misery--Cassie,
who had brewed the egg-shell charm against Trustee Days. She had
stayed past her hours for a glimpse of "Miss Peggie," with the best
intention in the world of cheering her up. When the glimpse came,
however, she stood mute--tears channeling the old wrinkled face--while
the nurse patted her hands and made her laugh through the tears. In
fact, Margaret MacLean had been kept so busy doling out cheer and
consolation to others that she had had no time to remember her own
trouble--not until Saint Margaret's had gone to bed.
She was on her way for a final visit to her ward--the visit she had
told Bridget she would make to see if the promise had been kept--when a
line from Hauptman's faery play flashed through her mind: "At dawn we
are kings; at night we are only beggars."
How true it was of her--this day. How beggared she felt! The fact
that she was very nearly penniless troubled her very little; it was the
homelessness--friendlessness--that frightened her. She had never had
but two friends: the one who had gone so long ago was past helping her
now; the other--
No; she had made up her mind some hours before that she should slip
away in the morning without saying anything to the House Surgeon. It
would make it so much easier for him. Otherwise--he might--because of
his friendship--say or do something he would have to regret all his
life. She had been very much in earnest when she had told the Senior
Surgeon on the stairs that such as she laid no claim to the every-day
happiness that felt to the lot of others. That was why she had kept
persistently out of the House Surgeon's way all the evening.
She pushed back the door of Ward C. The night light in the hall
outside was shaded; only a glimmer came through the windows from the
street lamps below; consequently things could not be seen very clearly
or distinguishably in the room. Across the threshold her foot slid
over something soft and slippery; stooping, her hand closed upon a
flower, while she brushed another. Puzzled, she felt her way over to
the table in the center of the room, where she had put the green
Devonshire bowl. It was empty.
"That's funny," she murmured, her mind attempting to ferret out an
explanation. She dropped to her knees and scanned the floor closely.
There they were, the primroses, a curving trail of them stretching from
the head of Pancho's bed to the foot of Michael's. She choked back an
exclamation just as a shadow cut off the light from the hall. It was a
man's shadow, and the voice of the House Surgeon came over the
threshold in a whisper:
"What are you doing--burying ghosts?"
"Come and see, and let the light in after you."
The House Surgeon came and stood behind her where she knelt. She
looked so little and childlike there that he wanted to pick her up and
tell her--oh, such a host of things! But he was a wise House Surgeon,
and his experience on the stairs had not counted for nothing; moreover,
he was a great believer in the psychological moment, so he peered over
her shoulder and tried to make out what she was looking at.
"Faded flowers," he volunteered at last, somewhat doubtfully.
"A primrose ring," she contradicted. "But who ever heard of one in a
hospital? Take care--" For the surgeon's shoe was carelessly knocking
some of the blossoms out of place. "Don't you know that no one must
disturb a primrose ring? It's sacred to Fancy; and there is no telling
what is happening inside there to-night."
"What?" The House Surgeon asked it as breathlessly as any little boy
might have. Science had goaded him hard along the road of established
facts, thereby causing him to miss many pleasant things which he still
looked back upon regretfully, and found himself eager for, at times.
Of course, he had scoffed at them aloud and before Margaret MacLean,
but inwardly he adored them.
She did not answer; she was too busy wondering about something to hear
the House Surgeon's question. Her eyes looked very big and round in
the darkness, and her face wore the little-girl scarey look as she
reached up for his hand and clutched it tight, while her other hand
pointed across the primrose ring to the row of beds.
"See, they look empty, quite---quite empty."
"Just nerves." And he patted the hand in his reassuringly; he tried
his best to pat it in the old, big-brother way. "You've had an awfully
trying day--most women would be in their rooms having hysteria or
doldrums."
Still she did not hear. Her eyes were traveling from cot to crib and
on to cot again, as they had once before that night. "Every single bed
looks empty," she repeated. "The clothes tumbled as if the children
had slipped quietly out from under them." She shivered ever so
slightly. "Perhaps they have found out they are not wanted any longer
and have run away."
"Come, come," the House Surgeon spoke in a gruff whisper. "I believe
you're getting feverish." And mechanically his ringers closed over her
pulse. Then he pulled her to her feet. "Go over to those beds this
minute and see for yourself that every child is there, safe and sound
asleep."
But she held back, laughing nervously. "No, no; we mustn't spoil the
magic of the ring." Her voice trailed off into a dreamy, wistful
monotone. "Who knows--Cinderella's godmother came to her when it was
only a matter of ragged clothes and a party; the need here was far
greater. Who knows?" She caught her breath with a sudden in-drawn
cry. "Why, to-night is May Eve!"
"Why, of course it is!" agreed the House Surgeon, as if he had known it
from the beginning.
"And who knows but the faeries may have come and stolen them all away?"
Now the House Surgeon was old in understanding, although he was young
in years; and he knew it was wiser sometimes to give in to the whims of
a tired, overwrought brain. He knew without being told--for Margaret
MacLean would never have told--how tired and hopelessly heart-sick and
mind-sick she was to-night. What he did not know, however, was how
pitifully lonely and starved her life had always been; and that this
was the hour for the full conscious reckoning of it.
She had often said, whimsically, "Those who are born with wooden
instead of golden spoons in their mouths had better learn very young to
keep them well scoured, or they'll find them getting so rough and
splintered that they can't possibly eat with them." She had followed
her own advice bravely, and kept happy; but now even the wooden spoon
had been taken from her.
The House Surgeon lifted her up and put her gently into the rocker,
while he sat down on the corner of the table, neighbor to the green
Devonshire bowl.
Perhaps Margaret MacLean was not to find bitterness, after all; perhaps
it would be his glad good fortune to keep it from her. It was
surprising the way he felt his misery dwindling, and instantly he
pulled up his courage--another hole.
"I think you said 'faeries,'" he suggested, seriously. "Why not
faeries?"
She nodded in equal seriousness. "Why not? They always come May Eve
to the lonely of heart; and even a hospital might have faeries once in
a generation. Only--only why couldn't they have taken me with the
children? It wasn't exactly fair to leave me behind, was it?"
Her lips managed to keep reasonably steady, but she was wishing all the
time that the House Surgeon would go and leave her free to be foolishly
childish and weak. She wanted to drop down beside Bridget's bed and
sob out her trouble.
But the House Surgeon had a very permanent look as he went on soberly
talking.
"Well, you see, they took the children first because they were all
ready. Probably, very probably, they are sending for you
later--special messenger. It's still some minutes before midnight; and
that's the time things like that happen. Isn't it?"
"Perhaps." A little amused smile crept into the corners of her mouth
while she rummaged about in some old memories for something she had
almost forgotten. "Perhaps"--she began again--"they will send the
Love-Talker."
"The what?"
"The Love-Talker. Old Cassie used to tell us about him, when I was an
'incurable.' He's a faery youth who comes on May Eve in the guise of
some well-appearing young man and beguiles a maid back with him into
faeryland. He's a very ardent wooer--so Cassie said--and there's no
maid living who can resist him."
"Wish I'd had a course with him," muttered the House Surgeon under his
breath. Then he gripped the table hard with both hands while the
spirit of mischief leaped, flagrant, into his eyes. "Would you go with
him--if he came?" he asked, intensely.
"If he came--if he came--" she repeated, dreamily. "How do I know what
I would do? It would all depend upon the way he wooed."
Unexpectedly the House Surgeon jumped to his feet, making a
considerable clatter.
"Hush! you'll waken the children."
"But they're not here," he reminded her.
"Yes, I know; but you might waken them, just the same."
Instead of answering, the House Surgeon stepped behind the rocker and
lifted her out of it bodily; then his hands closed over hers and he
lifted them to her eyes, thereby blind-folding them. "Now," he
commanded, "take two steps forward."
She did it obediently; and then stood waiting for further orders.
"You are now inside this magical primrose ring; and you said yourself,
a moment ago, there was no telling what might happen inside. Keep very
still; don't move, don't speak. Remember you mustn't uncover your
eyes, or the spell will be broken. Hark! Can you hear something--some
one coming nearer and nearer and nearer?"
For the space of a dozen breaths nothing could be heard in Ward C; that
is--unless one was tactless enough to mention the sound of two
throbbing hearts. One fluttered, frightened and hesitating; the other
thumped, steady and determined. Then out of the darkness came the
striking of the hospital clock on the tower--twelve long, mournful
tolls--and one of the House Surgeon's arms slipped gently about the
shoulders of Margaret MacLean.
"Dearest, the Love-Talker has turned so completely human that he has to
say at the outset he's not half good enough for you, But he wants
you--he wants you, just the same, to carry back with him to his
faery-land. It will be rather a funny little old faery-land, made up
of work and poverty--and love; but, you see, the last is so big and
strong it can shoulder the other two and never know it's carrying a
thing. If you'll only come, dearest, you can make it the finest, most
magical faeryland a man ever set up home-making in."
Another silence settled over Ward C.
"Well--" said the House Surgeon, breaking it at last and sounding a
trifle nervous. "Well--"
"I thought you said I wasn't to move or speak, or the spell would be
broken?"
"That's right, excellent nurse--followed doctor's orders exactly." He
was smiling radiantly now, only no one could see. Slowly he drew her
hands away from her eyes and kissed the lids. "You can open them if
you solemnly promise not to be disappointed when you see the
Love-Talker has stepped into an ordinary house surgeon's uniform and
looks like the--devil." With a laugh the House Surgeon gathered her
close in his arms.
"The devil was only a rebelling angel," she murmured, contentedly.
"But I'm not rebelling. Bless those trustees! If they hadn't put us
both out of the hospital we might be jogging along for the next ten
years on the wholesome, easily digested diet of friendship, and never
dreamed of the feast we were missing--like this--and this--and--"
Margaret MacLean buried her face in the uniform with a sob.
"What is it, dearest? Don't you like them?"
"I--love--them. Don't you understand? I never belonged to anybody
before in all my life, so no one ever wanted to--"
The rest was unintelligible, but perfectly satisfactory to the House
Surgeon. He held her even closer while she sobbed out the tears that
had been intended for the edge of Bridget's bed; and when they were
spent he wiped away all traces with some antiseptic gauze that happened
to be in his pocket.
"I will never be foolish again and remember what lies behind to-night,"
said Margaret MacLean, knowing full well that she would be, and that
often, because of the joy that would lie in remembering and comparing.
"Now tell me, did they make you go, too?"
"The President told me, very courteously, that he felt sure I would be
wishing to find another position elsewhere better suited to my rising
abilities; and if an opportunity should come--next month, perhaps--they
would not wish in any way to interfere with my leaving."
"Ugh! I--"
"No, you don't, dearest. You couldn't expect them to want us around
after the things we magnanimously refrained from saying--but so
perfectly implied."
"All right, I'll love them instead, if you want me to, only--" And she
puckered her forehead into deep furrows of perplexity. "I have kept it
out of my mind all through the evening, but we might as well face it
now as to-morrow morning. What is going to happen to us?"
The House Surgeon turned her about until she was again looking across
the line of scattered blossoms--into the indistinguishable darkness
beyond. He laughed joyously, as a man can laugh when everything lies
before him and there are no regrets left behind. "Have you forgotten
so soon? We are to cross the primrose ring--right here; and follow the
road--there--into faeryland after the children."
"The beds really do look empty."
"They certainly do."
"And we'll find the children there?"
"Of course."
"And I'll not have to give them up?"
"Of course not."
"And we'll all be happy together--somewhere?"
"Yes, somewhere!"
She turned quickly and reached out her arms to him hungrily. "I know
now why a maid always follows the Love-Talker when he comes a-wooing."
"Why, dearest?"
"Because he makes her believe in him and the country where he is taking
her, and that's all a woman asks."
X
WHAT HAPPENED AFTERWARD
Everybody woke with a start on the morning following the 30th of April;
things began to happen even before the postman had made his first
rounds. The operators at the telephone switchboards were rushed at an
unconscionably early hour, considering that their station compassed the
Avenue. The President was trying to get the trustees, Saint
Margaret's, and the Senior Surgeon; the trustees were trying to get one
another; while the Senior Surgeon was rapidly covering the distance
between his home and the hospital--his mind busy with a multitude of
things, none of which he had ever written with capitals.
Saint Margaret's was astir before its usual hour; there was a tang of
joyousness in the air, and everybody's heart and mind, strangely
enough, seemed to be in festal attire, although nobody was outwardly
conscious of it. It was all the more inexplicable because Saint
Margaret's had gone to bed miserable, and events naturally pointed
toward depression: Margaret MacLean's coming departure, the abandoning
of Ward C, the House Surgeon's resignation, and Michael's empty crib.
Ward C had wakened with a laugh. Margaret MacLean, who had been moving
noiselessly about the room for some time, picking up the withered
remains of the primrose ring, looked up with apprehension. The tears
she had shed over Michael's crib were quite dry, and she had a brave
little speech on the end of her tongue ready for the children's
awakening. Eight pairs of sleepy eyes were rubbed open, and then
unhesitatingly turned in the direction of the empty crib in the corner.
"Michael has gone away." she said, softly, steadying her voice with
great care. "He has gone where he will be well--and his heart sound
and strong."
She was wholly unprepared for the children's response. It was so
unexpected, in fact, that for the moment she tottered perilously near
the verge of hysterics. The children actually grinned; while Bridget
remarked, with a chuckle:
"Ye are afther meanin' that he didn't come back--that's what!" And
then she added, as an afterthought, "He said to tell ye 'God bless ye,'
Miss Peggie."
Margaret MacLean did not know whether to be shocked or glad that the
passing of a comrade had brought no sign of grief. Instead of being
either, she went on picking up the primroses and wondering. As for the
children, they lay back peacefully in their beds, their eyes laughing
riotously. And every once in a while they would look over at one
another, giving the funniest little expressive nods, which seemed to
say: "I know what you're thinking about, and you know what I'm thinking
about, so what's the need of talking. But when is it going to happen?"
The House Surgeon brought up her mail; it was an excuse to see her
again before his official visit. "Are the children very much broken up
over it?" he asked, anxiously, outside the door.
For answer Margaret MacLean beckoned him and pointed to the eight
occupied cots--unquestionably serene and happy.
"Well, I'll be--" began the House Surgeon, retiring precipitously back
to the door again; but the nurse put a silencing finger over his lips.
"Hush, dear! The children are probably clearer visioned than we are.
I have the distinct feeling this morning of being very blind and
stupid, while they seem--oh, so wise."
The House Surgeon grunted expressively. "Well, perhaps they won't take
your going away so dreadfully to heart--now; or theirs, for that
matter."
"I hope not," and then she smiled wistfully. "But I thought you told
me last night we were all going together? At any rate, I am not going
to tell them anything. If it must be it must be, and I shall slip off
quietly, when the children are napping, and leave the trustees to tell."
She looked her mail over casually; there were the usual number of
advertisements, a letter from one of the nurses who had gone South, and
another in an unfamiliar hand-writing. She tore off the corner of the
last, and, running her finger down the flap, she commented:
"Looks like quality. A letter outside the profession is a very rare
thing for me."
She read the letter through without a sound, and then she read it
again, the House Surgeon watching, the old big-brother look gone for
ever from his face, and in its place a worshipful proprietorship. The
effect of the letter was undeniably Aprilish; she looked up at the
House Surgeon with the most radiant of smiles, while her eyes spilled
recklessly over.
"How did you know it? How did you know it?" she repeated.
He was trying his best to find out what it was all about when one of
the nurses came hurrying down the corridor.
"You are both wanted down in the board-room. They have called a
special meeting of the trustees for nine o'clock; everybody's here and
acting decidedly peculiar, I think. Why, as I passed the door I am
sure I saw the President slapping the Senior Surgeon on the back. I
never heard of anything like this happening before."
"Come," said Margaret MacLean to the House Surgeon. "If we walk down
very slowly we will have time enough to read the letter on the way."
As the nurse had intimated, it was an altogether unprecedented meeting.
Formality had been gently tossed out of the window; after which the
President sat, not behind his desk, but upon it--an open letter in his
hand. His whole attitude suggested a wish to banish, as far as it lay
within his power, the atmosphere of the previous afternoon.
"Here is a letter to be considered first," he said, a bit gravely. "It
makes rather a good prologue to our reconsideration of the incurable
ward," and the ghost of a smile twitched at the corners of his mouth.
"This is from the widow of the Richest Trustee." He read, slowly:
"MESDAMES AND GENTLEMEN OF THE BOARD,--I thank you for your courtesy in
asking me to fill my husband's place as one of the trustees of Saint
Margaret's. Until this afternoon I had every intention of so doing;
but I cannot think now that my husband would wish me to continue his
support of an institution whose directors have so far forgotten the
name under which they dispense their charity as to put science and
pride first. As for myself--I find I am strongly interested in
incurables--your incurables.
Yours very truly"
The President laid the letter behind him on the desk, while the entire
board gasped in amazement.
"Well, I'll be hanged!" muttered the Disagreeable Trustee.
"But just think of _her_--writing it!" burst forth the Oldest Trustee.
The Meanest Trustee barked out an exclamation, but nothing followed it;
undoubtedly that was due to the President's interrupting:
"I think if we had received this yesterday we should have been
very--exceedingly--indignant; we should have censured the writer
severely. As it is--hmm--" The President stopped short; it was as if
his mind had refused to tabulate his feelings.
"As it is"--the Executive Trustee took up the dropped thread and went
on--"we have decided to reconsider the removal of the incurable ward
without any--preaching--or priming of conscience."
"I am so glad we really had changed our minds first. I should so hate
to have that insignificant little woman think that we were influenced
by anything she might write. Wouldn't you?" And the Youngest and
Prettiest Trustee dimpled ravishingly at the Senior Surgeon.
"Wouldn't you two like to go into the consulting-room and talk it over?
We could settle the business in hand, this time, without your
assistance, I think." The voice of the Disagreeable Trustee dripped
sarcasm.
"I should suggest," said the President, returning to the business of
the meeting, "that the ward might be continued for the present, until
we investigate the home condition of the patients and understand
perhaps a little more thoroughly just what they need, and where they
can be made most--comfortable."
"And retain Margaret MacLean in charge?" The Meanest Trustee gave it
the form of a question, but his manner implied the statement of a
disagreeable fact.
"Why not? Is there any one more competent to take charge?" The
Executive Trustee interrogated each individual member of the board with
a quizzical eye.
"But the new surgical ward--and science?" The Youngest and Prettiest
threw it, Jason-fashion, and waited expectantly for a clash of steel.
Instead the Senior Surgeon stepped forward, rather pink and
embarrassed. "I should like to withdraw my request for a new surgical
ward. It can wait--for the present, at least."
And then it was that Margaret MacLean and the House Surgeon entered the
board-room.
The President nodded to them pleasantly, and motioned to the chairs
near him. "We are having what you professional people call a reaction.
I hardly know what started it; but--hmmm--" For the second time that
morning he came to a dead stop.
Everybody took great pains to avoid looking at everybody else; while
each face wore a painful expression of sham innocence. It was as if so
many naughty children had been suddenly caught on the wrong side of the
fence, the stolen fruit in their pockets. It was gone in less time
than it takes for the telling; but it would have left the careful
observer, had he been there, with the firm conviction that, for the
first time in their conservative lives, the trustees of Saint
Margaret's had come perilously near to giving themselves away.
In a twinkling the board sat at ease once more, and the President's
habitual composure returned. "Will some one motion that we adopt the
two measures we have suggested? This is not parliamentary, but we are
all in a hurry."
"I motion that we keep the incurables for the present, and that Miss
MacLean be requested to continue in charge." There was a note of
relieved repression in the voice of the Executive Trustee as he made
the motion; and he stretched his shoulders unconsciously.
"But you mustn't make any such motion." Margaret MacLean rose,
reaching forth protesting hands. "You would spoil the very best thing
that has happened for years and years. Just wait--wait until you have
heard."
As she unfolded her letter the President's alert eye promptly compared
it with the one behind him on the desk. "So--you have likewise heard
from the widow of the Richest Trustee?"
She looked at him, puzzled. "Oh, you know! She has written you?"
"Not what she has written you, I judge. One could hardly term our
communication 'the best thing that has happened in years.'" And again
a smile twitched at the corners of the President's mouth.
"Then listen to this." Margaret MacLean read the letter eagerly:
"DEAE MARGARET MACLEAN,--There is a home standing on a hilltop--an
hour's ride from the city. It belongs to a lonely old woman who finds
that it is too large and too lonely for her to live in, and too full of
haunting memories to be left empty. Therefore she wants to fill it
with incurable children, and she would like to begin with the discarded
ward of Saint Margaret's."
"That's a miserable way to speak of a lot of children," muttered the
Disagreeable Trustee; but no one paid any attention, and Margaret
MacLean went on:
"There is room now for about twenty beds; and annexes can easily be
added as fast as the need grows. This lonely old woman would consider
it a great kindness if you will take charge; she would also like to
have you persuade the House Surgeon that it is high time for him to
become Senior Surgeon, and the new home is the place for him to begin.
Together we should be able to equip it without delay; so that the
children could be moved direct from Saint Margaret's. It is the whim
of this old woman to call it a 'Home for Curables'--which, of course,
is only a whim. Will you come to see me as soon as you can and let us
talk it over?"
Margaret MacLean folded the letter slowly and put it back in its
envelope. "You see," she said, the little-girl look spreading over her
face--"you see, you mustn't take us back again. I could not possibly
refuse, even if I wanted to; it is just what the children have longed
for--and wished for--and--"
"We are not going to give up the ward; she would have to start her home
with other children." The Dominant Trustee announced it flatly.
Strangely enough, the faces of his fellow-directors corroborated his
assertion. Often the value of a collection drops so persistently in
the estimate of its possessor that he begins to contemplate exchanging
it for something more up to date or interesting. But let a rival
collector march forth with igniting enthusiasm and proclaim a desire
for the scorned objects, and that very moment does the possessor
tighten his grip on them and add a decimal or two to their value. So
was it with the trustees of Saint Margaret's. For the first time in
their lives they desired the incurable ward and wished to retain it.
"Not only do we intend to keep the children, but there are many
improvements I shall suggest to the board when there is more time. I
should like to insist on a more careful supervision of--curious
visitors." And the Oldest Trustee raised her lorgnette and compassed
the gathering with a look that challenged dispute.
Margaret MacLean's face became unaccountably old and tired. The vision
that had seemed so close, so tangible, so ready to be made actual, had
suddenly retreated beyond her reach, and she was left as empty of heart
and hand as she had been before. For a moment her whole figure seemed
to crumple; and then she shook herself together into a resisting,
fighting force again.
"You can't keep the children, after this. Think, think what it means
to them--a home in the country, on a hilltop, trees and birds and
flowers all about. Many of them could wheel themselves out of doors,
and the others could have hammocks and cots under the trees. Forget
for this once that you are trustees, and think what it means to the
children."
"But can't you understand?" urged the President, "we feel a special
interest in these children. They are beginning to belong to us--as you
do, yourself, for that matter."
The little-girl look came rushing into Margaret MacLean's face,
flooding it with wistfulness. "It's a little hard to believe--this
belonging to anybody. Yesterday I seemed to be the only person who
wanted me at all, and I wasn't dreadfully keen about it myself." Then
she clapped her hands with the suddenness of an idea. "After all, it's
the children who are really most concerned. Why shouldn't we ask them?
Of course I know it is very much out of the accustomed order of things,
but why not try it? Couldn't we?"
Anxiously she scanned the faces about her. There was surprise,
amusement, but no dissent. The Disagreeable Trustee smiled secretly
behind his hand; it appealed to his latent sense of humor.
"It would be rather a Balaam and his ass affair, but, as Miss MacLean
suggests, why not try it?" he asked.
Margaret MacLean did not wait an instant longer. She turned to the
House Surgeon. "Bring Bridget down, quickly."
As he disappeared obediently through the door she faced the trustees,
as she had faced them once before, on the day previous. "Bridget will
know better than any one else what will make the children happiest.
Now wouldn't it be fun"--and she smiled adorably--"if you should all
play you were faery godparents, for once in your lifetime, and give
Bridget her choice, whatever it may be?"
This time the entire board smiled back at her; somehow, in some strange
way, it had caught a breath of Fancy. And then--the House Surgeon
re-entered with Bridget in his arms, looking very scared until she
spied "Miss Peggie."
The President did the nicest thing, proving himself the good man he
really was. He crossed hands with the House Surgeon, thereby making a
swinging chair for Bridget, and together they held her while Margaret
MacLean explained:
"It's this way, dear. Some one has offered you--and all the
children--a home in the country--a home of your very own. But the
trustees of Saint Margaret's hardly want to give you up; they think
they can take as good care of you--and make you just as happy here."
"But--sure--they'll have to be givin' us up. Weren't we afther givin'
a penny to the wee one yondther for the home?" and Bridget pointed a
commanding finger toward the door.
Everybody looked. There on the threshold stood the widow of the
Richest Trustee.
"What do you mean, dear? How could you have given her a penny?"
Margaret MacLean asked it in bewilderment.
"'Twas all the doin's o' the primrose ring." And then Bridget shouted
gaily across to the gray wisp of a woman. "Ye tell them. Weren't ye
afther givin' us the promise of a home?"
"And haven't I come to keep the promise?" she answered, as gaily. But
in an instant she sobered as her eyes fell on the open letter on the
President's desk. "I am so sorry I wrote it--that is why I have come;
not that I don't think you deserved it, for you do," and the widow of
the Richest Trustee looked at them unwaveringly.
If she was conscious of the surprised faces about, she gave no sign for
others to reckon by. Instead, she walked the length of the board-room
to the President's desk and went on speaking hurriedly, as if she
feared to be interrupted before she had said all she had come to say.
"I wish I had written in another way, a more helpful way. Why not add
your second surgical ward to Saint Margaret's and do all the good work
you can, as you had planned? Only let me have these children to start
a home which shall be a future harbor for all the cases you cannot mend
with your science and which you ought not to set adrift. You can send
me all the convalescing children, too, who need country air and
building up. In return for this, and because you deserve to be
punished--just a little--for yesterday--I shall try my best to take
with me Margaret MacLean and your House Surgeon."
She laid a hand on both, while she added, softly: "Suppose we three go
home together and talk things over. Shall we?"
So the "Home for Curables" has come true. It crests a hilltop, and is
well worth the penny that Bridget gave for it. As the children
specified, there are no "trusters"; and it has all the modern
improvements, including Margaret MacLean, who is still "Miss Peggie,"
although she is married to their new Senior Surgeon.
There is one very particular thing about the Home which ought to be
mentioned. When the children arrived Toby was on the steps, barking a
welcome. No one was surprised; in fact, everybody acted as though he
belonged there. Perhaps the surprising thing would have been not
having the promise kept. Toby is allowed right of way, everywhere; and
rumor has it that he often sneaks in at night and sleeps on Peter's
bed. But, of course, that is just rumor.
The children are supremely happy; which means that no one is allowed to
cross the threshold who cannot give the password of a friend. And you
might like to know that many of the trustees of Saint Margaret's come
as often as anybody, and are always welcomed with a shout. The
President, in particular, has developed the habit of secreting things
in his pockets until he comes looking very bulgy.
Margaret MacLean always puts the children to sleep with Sandy's song;
she said it was written by a famous poet who loved children, and the
children have never told her the truth about it. And if it happens, as
it does once in a great while, that some one is missing in the morning,
there is no sorrowing for him, or heavy-heartedness. They miss him, of
course; but they picture him running, sturdy-limbed, up the slope to
the leprechaun's tree, with Michael waiting for him not far off.
To the children Tir-na-n'Og is the waiting-place for all child-souls
until Saint Anthony is ready to gather them up and carry them away with
him to the "Blessed Mother"; and Margaret MacLean, having nothing
better to tell them, keeps silent. But she has thought of the nicest
custom: A new picture is hung in the Home after a child has gone. It
bears his name; and it is always something that he liked--birds or
flowers or ships or some one from a story. Peter has his chosen
already; it is to be--a dog.
Whenever Saint Margaret's Senior Surgeon finds a hip or a heart or a
back that he can do nothing for, he sends it to the Home; and he always
writes the same thing:
"Here is another case in a thousand for you, Margaret MacLean. How
many are there now?"
He has married the Youngest and Prettiest Trustee, as the Disagreeable
Trustee prophesied, and gossip says that they are very happy. This
much I know--there are two more words which he now writes with
capitals--Son and Sympathy.
Margaret MacLean often says with the Danish faery-man: "My life, too,
is a faery-tale written by God's finger." And the House Surgeon always
chuckles at this, and adds:
"Praise Heaven! He wrote me into it."
As for the widow of the Richest Trustee, she has found a greater
measure of contentment than she thought the world could hold--with love
to brim it; for Margaret MacLean has adopted her along with the
children. The children still regard her, however, as a very mysterious
person; and she has taken the place of Susan's mythical aunt in the
ward conversation. It has never been argued out to the complete
satisfaction of every one whether she is really the faery queen or just
the "Wee Gray Woman," as Sandy calls her. The arguments wax hot at
times, and it is Bridget who generally has to put in the final
silencing word:
"Faith, she kept her promise, didn't she? and everything come thrue,
hasn't it? Well, what more do ye want?"
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