Part 6

He was probably at that moment lying on the floor of the baggage-car, amid a litter of trunks and bags. Men were bending over him to see if he lived or died. Five minutes ago he had been as full of life and strength and breath as she. Now he lay stricken and maimed and ghastly, a huddle of bleeding flesh and torn sinew, perhaps never again to see the smile of the sunlight, or, perhaps, to live mutilated and broken and disfigured, his every breath a pain, his every pulse a pang. Perhaps he had loved ones--a _one_ loved one, who had hung about his neck and kissed him when he went away. What of that love when they should bring this object back to her?

A hideous question of the lastingness of human love flung itself from the darkness without in upon her brain. One could love when the face was fair, when the form was supple and straight, when the eyes were clear and the blood was young with the flush of life! One could still love when age had grayed the hair and the kindly years had bowed the back. Mutual love need not dim with time, but only mellow into the peaceful content of fruition.

But let that straight form be struck down in its prime: a misstep, a slip in the crowded street, a broken rail, an explosion in a chemist’s shop, and in an instant the beauty is scarred, the symmetrical limb is twisted, the tender face is seamed and gnarled. The loved form has gone, and in its place is left a shape of pain, of repulsion, of undelight. Ah! what of that love then?

Margaret shivered as if with cold. How could _she_ answer that? There was a love that did not live and die in the beating of the heart, which did not fade into darkness when its outer shell perished. That was the spirit love. That was the love of the mother for the child, of the soul for the kindred soul. That was the love that endured. It was the only love which justified itself. It was this that God intended when He put man and woman in the earth to cherish one another and gave them living souls which spoke a common language. Better a million times crush from the heart any lesser habitant! Better an empty soul, swept and garnished, than a chamber of banqueting for a fleshly guest!

* * * * *

Woman’s heart is the Great Questioner. When Doubt waves it from natural interrogation of the world about it, it turns with fearful and inevitable questionings upon itself, until the sky which had been thronged with quiring seraphim flocks thick with sneering devils. “Do you think,” insinuates the Tempter mockingly, “that this beautiful dove-eyed love of yours can stand the ultimate test? Have you tried it? You have seen loves just as beautiful, just as young, go down into the pit. Do you dream that yours can endure? Strip from your love the subtle magnetism of the body, take from it the hand-touch, the lip-caress, the pride of the eye, and what have you left? The hand grows palsied, the lips shrivel, the eye leadens, and love’s body dies. What then? Ah, what then!

* * * * *

The darkness had fallen more thickly without, and Margaret saw her face reflected from the window-pane, as in a tarnished and trembling mirror. Her own eyes gazed back at her. She put up her hands and rubbed them against the glass, as though to erase the image she saw.

“Don’t look so,” she said, half aloud. “What right have you to look so good? Don’t you know that if you had staid, if you had seen him again, you would have thought as he did? You couldn’t have helped it! You couldn’t! You had to run away! You didn’t want to come! You wish you were back again now! You--you do! You want him. You want him just as you did--then! That’s the worst of it.”

The face in the glass made her no answer. It angered her that those eyes would offer no glance of self-defence, and, with a quick impulse, she reached up and drew down the shade.

The whir and click of the flying wheels jarred through her brain. She had a sense of estrangement from herself. She felt almost as though she were two persons. The one Margaret riding in her pillowed chair, with her mind a turmoil of evil doubts, and the other Margaret rushing on by her side through the outer night, calm-eyed and untroubled, and these two almost touching and yet separated by an infinite distance. They could never clasp each other again. She had a vague feeling that there was a deeper purpose of punishment in this. She herself had raised the ghost which must haunt her.

She hardly noted the various stations as the train stopped and breathed a moment, and then dashed on. Try as she would, her thoughts recurred to the baggage-car and the burden it carried. She wondered whether they would put it off quickly at the terminal, and what it would look like. It was for such things that hospitals were built, and to a hospital with all that it implied, she was bound. New and torturing doubts of her own strength beset her. She was afraid. In her imagination she already smelled the sickening sweet halitus of iodoform and saw white-aproned nurses winding endless bandages upon bleeding gashes that would not be stanched.

An engulfing rumbling told her that they were entering the city tunnel, and near-by passengers began a deliberate assortment of wraps and parcels. The porter passed through the train, loudly announcing the last stop. There was almost a relief to Margaret’s overwrought sensibilities in his sophisticated utterance. It was a part of the great cube-jumbled, fish-ribbed metropolis, with its clanging noises and its swirl of cañoned living for which during the past weeks she had thirsted feverishly. She felt, without putting it into actual mental expression, that surcharged thought might find relief in simple things.

Lois would be waiting there to meet her. She would be glad to see her. It was pleasant to be loved and looked for. A moment or two more and the white, smoky haze that blotted the car windows lifted, and in place of the milky opaque squares appeared glimpses of wide-lit spaces and springing ironwork. The car hesitated, shocked itself with a succession of gentle jars, and came heavily to a halt. They were in the station.

Margaret alighted on the platform with limbs numb and tired. The strain of the day had given her a yearning for quiet, for the abandon of a deep chair with soft cushions, and a cup of tea. She met Lois with outstretched arms and a wan and uncertain smile against which her lips feebly protested.

“Why, Margaret, dear, how tired you look!” said Lois, kissing her. “Come, and we’ll get a cab just outside. Your train was very late. I thought you never _would_ get here at all!”

Margaret clung to Lois’s hands. “O--h,” she said, falteringly, “do we have to go up the whole length of the train?”

“Why, yes; are you so very tired?”

“No--but----” she stopped, ashamed of her weakness. She was coming to be a nurse--to learn to care for sick people and to dress wounds. What would Lois think of her? “Do--do they unload the baggage-car now?”

“Oh,” said Lois, cheerfully, “we’ll leave your checks here; it won’t be necessary to wait for the trunks. Come, dear!” She led the way up the thronged platform. “Hurry!” she said suddenly, “there is a case in the baggage-car. I wonder where it’s going! Oh, you poor darling!”

Margaret had turned very pale and leaned against a waiting truck for support.

“I forgot. That _is_ a rather stiff beginning for you, isn’t it? I’m _so_ sorry! I hope you didn’t see; it looks like a bad one. Don’t watch it, dear. That’s right! You won’t mind it a bit after a while. You’re quite worn out now. Come, we’ll go around this other way.”

“It happened at Warne,” said Margaret, tremulously. “I saw them take him on.”

“Poor dear! and you must have been worrying about it all the way in. Do you see the ambulance at the curb? That’s ours. You see, they telegraphed, and now he will be cared for sooner than you get your tea. There goes the ambulance gong! They’re off. And now here’s the cab.”

XIV.

An hour later, Margaret, somewhat composed from her ride, waited in the homelike bedroom for Lois to come and take her to Mrs. Goodno, the Superintendent of Nurses. From her post at the window she could look down upon the street.

It had begun to rain, and the electric lights hurled misshapen Swedish-yellow splotches on the wet asphalt. The wind had risen, rending the clouds into shaggy lines and made a dreary, disconsolate singing in the web of telephone wires bracketed beneath the window. Margaret felt herself to be in a state of unnatural tension. She gazed out into the swathing darkness, trying desperately to make out the landscape. Her eyes wandered from the clumps of wet and glistening foliage to the starting lights in a far-off apartment house, which thrust its massive top, fortress-like, and, with proportions exaggerated by the lowering scud, up into the air. Do what she would, her mind recurred, as though from some baleful necessity, to the details of the long train-ride. The never-ending clack of the wheels was in her ears. She clenched her hands as the landscape resolved itself into the dim station at Warne, and she saw again the grimy brakemen carrying something by covered with a dirty canvas.

She shut her eyes to drag them away from the window. How could she ever stand it! It had been a mistake--a horrible, ghastly mistake! She had turned cold and sick when they had carried it past the car window. How could she ever bear to see things like that? Lois did. Lois liked it! So did all of them. But they were different. There must be something hideously wrong about her--it was part of her unwomanliness--part of her guilty lack. The others saw the quivering soul beneath the sick flesh; she could never see within the bodily tenement. She was handcuffed to her lower side. She remembered the story of the criminal, chained by wrist and ankle to a comrade; how he woke one day to find the other dead--_dead_--and himself condemned to drag about with him, day and night, that horrible, inert thing. She, Margaret Langdon, was like this man. She must drag through life this corpse of a dead spirituality, this finer comrade soul of hers which had somehow died! Her life must be one long hypocrisy--one unending deceit. She was even there under false pretences. They would not want her if they knew.

She turned toward the fireplace. Over it hung a sepia print of the Madonna of the Garden. The glow touched the rounded chin and chubby knees of the little St. John with a soft flesh-tint, and left in shadow the quaint incongruity of the distant church-spire. Margaret’s whole spirit yearned toward its placid purity. She had had the same print hung in her bedroom at home, and it had looked down upon her when she prayed. She gazed at it now with eyes of wretchedness, filmed with tears. Her throat ached acutely with a repressed desire to sob. She fancied that the downcast lids lifted and that the luminous, wide eyes followed her wonderingly, reproachfully.

* * * * *

Lois came in smiling. “She is in now,” she said, “and we will go down.”

Margaret exerted herself and tried to chat bravely as they went along the corridor, and entered the cool silence of the room where Lois’s friend waited to meet her. There was a restfulness in Mrs. Goodno’s neat attire, and a dignity about her clear profile, full, womanly throat and strong, capable wrists, that seemed to be an inseparable part of her atmosphere. Her firm and unringed hands held Margaret’s with a suggestion of tried strength and assured poise that bore comfort. Her eyes were deep gray, smiling less with humor, one felt, than with a constant inward reflection of welcome thoughts. Her hair was a dull, toneless black, carried back under her lace cap in a single straight sweep that left the hollows of her neck in deep shadow.

“And you are Miss Langdon?” she said. “Lois has told me so much about you. Do sit down. Tea will be here directly, and I want to give you some, for I know you have had a long, dreary ride.”

She busied herself renewing the grate fire, while Margaret watched her with straying eyes.

“You know,” she said, returning, “we people who spend our lives taking care of broken human bodies have to be strong ourselves. You are strong; I see that, though your face has tired lines in it now. But we must be more than that--our minds must be healthy. We can’t afford to be morbid. We have to have cheerful hearts. We must see the beauty of the great pattern that depends on these soiled and tangled threads we keep straightening out here.”

“Oh,” said Margaret, “do you think we have to be happy to do any good in the world? How can we be happy unless we work? And if we start miserable----” she stopped, with an acute sense of wretchedness.

“No, not happy necessarily. There are things in some of our lives which make that impossible; but we can be cheerful. Cheerfulness depends not on our past acts, but on our wholesome view of life, and we get this by learning to understand it and to understand ourselves.”

“But, do you think,” questioned Margaret, “do you think we always do in the end?”

“Yes; I believe we do. It’s unfailing. I proved it to myself, for I began life by being a very unnatural girl, and a very unhappy one. I misunderstood my own emotions, as all young girls do. I didn’t know how to treat myself. I didn’t even know I was sick. I had been brought up in New England, and I tortured myself with religion. It wasn’t the wickedness of the world that troubled me; I expected too much of myself--we all do at a certain age. And, because I found weakness where I hadn’t suspected it, I thought I was all wrong. You know we New Englanders have a peculiar aptitude for self-torture, and I wore my hair-cloth shirt and pressed it down on the sores. It was the University Settlement idea that first drew me out of myself. I went into that and worked at first only for my own sake; but, after a while, for the work’s sake. It was only work I wanted, my dear, and contact with real things. Out of the turmoil and mixture and pain I got my first real satisfaction. In its misery and want and degradation I learned that an isolated grief is always selfish. I learned the part that our human bodies play in life. I began to see a meaning in the plan and to understand the part in it of what I had thought the lower things in us. Then I got into the hospital work, and you will soon see what that is. It has shown me humanity. It has taught me the nobility of the human side of us. It makes me broader to understand and quicker to feel; and it isn’t depressing. There is a great deal in it that is sunny. I hope you will like it. But we are not all made in the same mould, and we regard your coming, of course, merely as an experiment. So, if you feel at any time that it is not for you, come to me and tell me. Come to me any time and talk with me.

“Now you have finished your tea, and I must go to the children’s ward. I have put you with Lois till the strangeness of it wears off, and you can have a separate room whenever you like.”

Leaning forward, she brushed Margaret’s cheek lightly with her lips and went quickly out of the room.

In spite of her misery, a shy feeling of comfort had come into Margaret’s heart. She rose and surveyed herself in the mirror over the mantel, drawing a deep breath and raising her shoulders as she did so. It was an unconscious trick of hers.

“Oh, no!” she said half aloud, “that is the temptation. I want to think it, and it can’t be true. I _want_ to! The want in me is bad! How _can_ it be true?” “The nobility of the human side of us”--ah, that had come from the calm poise of a wholesome understanding! It was noble--this human side--but not king. What of this strange mastery that overflowed her, the actual ache for the glow of his eyes, the pressure of his fingers? The mere memory of it was like a live coal to her cheeks. It burned her. The feel of his strong hair was in the fibrous touch of her gown. His mouth, smiling at the corners, warmed her shoulder. His bodily presence was all about her; it breathed upon her, and her soul reeled and shut its eyes like a drunken man!

Margaret tossed her hands above her head, the wrists dropping crosswise upon the shearing pillow of her flame-washed hair. In the mirror she saw the pale oval of her face in this living setting. As she gazed, the features warmed and changed; the eyes became Daunt’s eyes--the mouth, Daunt’s mouth. It was Daunt’s face, as she had looked up into it framed in her arms on the sun-brilliant beach. The wind was all about her, fresh and odorous, and his kisses were falling upon her seasalt lips!

Still holding her arms raised, she leaned to the mirror and kissed the glass hungrily. Her breath sighed the picture dim. The magic of it was gone, and Margaret, glancing fearfully behind her, turned and ran breathless to her room, where she locked the door and threw herself upon the bed, pressing her face down into the soft pillow gaspingly, to shut out the vivid passion-laden odor of bruised roses that seemed to pursue her, filling all her senses like a far-faint smell of musk.

XV.

Margaret passed along through the light-freshened ward, following Lois closely, and fighting desperately the active feeling of nausea which almost overcame her. All her sensitive nature cringed in this atmosphere. Through the brightness and cleanliness of wood and metal, the absolute whiteness of the stamped bed-linen and the fresh smell of antiseptics, she had a morbid sense of the ugliness of disease, of the loathsomeness of contact with physical decrepitude that is one of the selfishnesses of the artistic temperament. She felt the dread, incubus-like, pressing upon her and sucking from her what force and vitality she had. A feeling of despair of being able to cope with this thrusting melancholy beset her and she fought it off with her strongest strength.

At intervals, as they passed, was a cot shut off by screens of white linen, fluted and ironed, as high as the eyes. These spotless blanks stood out more awful to Margaret in intimation of hidden horror than any open physical convulsion. Behind these screens was more often silence, but sometimes came forth an indistinct and restless muttering, and once a sharp, panging groan. A sick apprehension gripped her, and she felt her palms growing moist with sweat. She was sickly sensible of the sweet, pungent smell of carbolic and ether, sharpened by a spicy odor of balsam-of-Peru. From the pillows curious eyes peered at her, set in faces sharp-featured and hectic, or a shambling figure in loose garments moved, bent and halting, across their path. She caught a sidewise view, through a swing door, of a tiled operating-room, with a glittering _mêlée_ of polished instruments. Here and there she thought the lapping folds of bandages moved, showing blue glimpses of gaping cuts and festering tissue. It seemed as if the long rows of white coverlids and iron bed-bars would go on eternally.

As they came to the extreme end of the room, Margaret suddenly stopped, gripping Lois’s arm with vise-close fingers. “What is that?” she whispered.

“What is what?”

She stood listening, her neck bent sideways, and a flush of excitement rising on her cheeks. “Didn’t you hear him call me?” she said.

“Hear him? Hear who?” said Lois.

But she did not answer. “Take me away; oh, take me away!” she said weakly. “I want to go back to the room. I--I can’t tell you what I thought I heard. It would sound such nonsense. I must have imagined it. Oh, of course I imagined it! Oh, Lois, I don’t believe I will ever be any good here, do you?”

Lois drew her into the outside corridor and up the hall. “I do believe you are sick yourself!” she said. “Why, you have quite a fever. There is something troubling you, dear, I’m sure. Can’t you tell me about it?”

“Oh, no! Indeed there is nothing!” cried Margaret. “Lois, I want to see _all_ the patients--the worst ones. Promise me you’ll take me with you when you go around to-night. Indeed, indeed, I must! You _must_ let me! I will be just as quiet! You will see! You think it wouldn’t be best--that I’m too fanciful and sensitive yet--but indeed, it isn’t that. Maybe it’s because I only look on from a distance. I don’t touch it, actually. I’m only a spectator. If I could go quite close, or do something to help with my hands, maybe they would seem more like people, and the sickness of it would leave me. Do, dear, say I may to-night!”

They had reached the room now, and Lois gently forced Margaret upon the lounge. “Very well,” she said, “I will. I’m going through at nine o’clock. I’m not afraid of your sensitiveness. It’s the sensitive ones who make the best nurses, Dr. Goodno says. They can _feel_ their diagnosis. But you must lie down till I can come for you.”

* * * * *

Left alone, Margaret pressed her head into the cushions and tried to think. She could not shake off the real impression of that cry. “Ardee! Ardee!” It had come to her with such suddenness that every nerve had jumped and jerked. Could she have dreamed it? Was the sound of that old intimate name of hers, breathed in that peculiar voice, only a trick of the imagination? Surely it must have been! Her nerves were overwrought and frayed. She was hysterical. It was only the muttering of some fever patient! And yet, she had felt that she must see. An indefinable impulse had urged her to beg Lois to take her with her. And now the same horror would seize her again, the same sickening repulsion, and she would have the same fight over.

* * * * *

When Lois came for her, Margaret prepared herself quickly and they passed down. At the door of the surgical ward they met the house surgeon, who nodded to Margaret at Lois’s introduction. “Just going in to see Faulkner’s trephine case,” he said. “It’s a funny sort.”

“Is he coming through all right?” asked Lois. “That’s the one that was brought in on your train the other night, Margaret,” she added.

“I’m afraid it’s going to be the very devil. He took a nasty temperature this afternoon, and the nurse got worried and called me up. I found we had a good old-fashioned case of sepsis--wound full of pus and all that. What makes it bad is that he has hemiplegia. The whole left side seems to be paralyzed. The operation didn’t relieve the brain pressure, and with his temperature where it is now, we’ll have to simply take care of that and let any further examination go. I’ve just telephoned to Faulkner. It won’t be a satisfactory case, anyway. There is possibly some deeper brain injury in the motor area, and if we beat the poison out, he stands to turn out a helpless cripple. Some people are never satisfied,” he continued, irritably. “When they start out to break themselves up, they have to do it in some confounded combination that’s the very devil to patch up. Coming in?”

He held the door open, and they followed him quickly to a nest of screens at the upper end of the ward, passing in with him.

Margaret forced her unwilling eyes to regard the patient as the doctor laid a finger upon his pulse, attentively examined the temperature chart, and departed. He lay with his left side toward them. The head was partly shaven, hideous with bandages, and in an ice-pack. The side-face was drawn, distorted and expressionless. His left hand lay quiet, but the fingers of the right picked and tumbled and drummed on the coverlid unceasingly. He was muttering to himself in peculiar, excitable monotone. On a sudden his voice rose to audible pitch:

“Now, then! you’ll come. Don’t say you won’t! Why--you can’t help it! You _will_! Do you hear? * * * * Take the straight pike to the crossroads, and then two miles further on. The Drennen place--yes, I know!”