Part 5

The nurse who had preceded me on night duty timidly contributed, “I always heard somebody. I didn’t want to say anything about it for fear you’d think I was queer.”

Towards morning of the very next night when I was in the second floor ward, I heard the patter again above my head. I ran upstairs to the nurses’ quarters as fast as I could and looked down the corridor. Every door was tight shut. I tore down two flights to the first floor. The noise came once more above me. Back to the second floor. All patients were in their beds. I asked the only wakeful one, “Did you get up just now?”

“No.”

“Did anybody else get up?”

“No.”

Some nights went by quietly. But I heard the noises often enough to become truly concerned for fear I might be imagining things. I said to one of the older nurses, “I’m going to wake you up and see whether you hear them too.”

“I’ll sit up with you,” she offered.

“No, I’ll call you. They never come until almost morning.”

The next time, at the first tap, I hurried to her room, shook her awake, led her to the floor below, “There, do you hear it?”

Her expression was confirmation enough.

Leaving her I raced down another flight, and waited. In a moment the “Tap, tap, tap, tap” came again from overhead. Up I went. She said she had heard it all right but it had come from over _her_ head. At least my senses were not playing me tricks. My accounts were given greater credence, and other nurses sometimes interrupted their slumbers to listen.

One of my companions told a young and intelligent doctor on the staff that I had better be taken off night duty before I had a nervous breakdown. Though he thought this was girlish nonsense, he could see I was being seriously affected, and anyhow the strain of three continuous months at such a hard task was far too much. Another nurse relieved me.

After my second glandular operation I was placed in one of the private rooms on the upper floor. I had not come through very well, and this same doctor remained in the hospital all night to be on call. Being restless, I woke up, only to hear the identical noises which had haunted me for so long. I called him and exclaimed, “There it is. Don’t you hear it?”

He did, but confidently he strode upstairs to the nurses’ floor. I knew he would find nothing. When he came back, I asked, “Did you see anyone?”

“No. Apparently everybody was asleep. I looked in all the rooms.”

Immediately the raps came again. He moved a little faster to get downstairs. In a few minutes he put his head back in the door. “You’re in bed? You haven’t been up?” I assured him I had not moved, knowing well he must have heard them as always I had, from above.

Though still believing somebody was walking around the place, the doctor by this time was determined to get to the bottom of the mystery, and returned every night for a week. But the sound was a will-o’-the-wisp. He never could catch up with it. He was so eager to exhaust every possibility that he even brought the matter before the board. One of them patronizingly explained that it was probably the echo from some rat in the walls; they were in the habit of dismissing thus lightly the superstitions which clung about the old house.

The doctor continued his detective work until one day he appeared in great good humor. From the rear windows he pointed to the roof which rose beyond the high back wall. “I’ve found it. That stable is built on the same timbers as this house. When some horse grows restless towards morning he stamps and the vibration is carried through them underground to this building. Now do you believe in ghosts?”

Life was by no means so serious as all this sounds. Amelia had followed me into the hospital and we continued our gay times together. For that matter nursing itself often presented amusing aspects. The supply of registered nurses was very small, and in our last year of training we were sent out on private cases, thus seeing both the highlights and lowlights of life, which prepared us well in experience.

One which had romantic overtones took place immediately after Howard Willett had transferred his house-party from Aiken, South Carolina, to Gedney Farms Manor in White Plains. The indisposition of young Eugene Sugney Reynal was pronounced scarlet fever. The contagion began spreading among the guests and servants, and Dr. Julius Schmid, old and honored, a noteworthy figure in the community and also our chief of staff, detailed three of us nurses for service there, practically turning the place into a hospital for five weeks.

My special charge was Adelaide Fitzgerald, Reynal’s fiancée, but as necessity arose we shifted around. Reynal’s condition grew steadily worse. One morning at daybreak when the patient was almost in a coma Dr. Schmid sent for the priest to administer extreme unction, and said to me, “You’d better get Miss Fitzgerald and tell her there’s very little hope.”

She knelt by his bed, “Gene,” she called to him, “Gene, we’re going to be married—right now.”

Reynal was as near death as a man could be, but her voice reached into his subconscious and summoned him back. Another nurse and I, hastily called upon to act as bridesmaids, stood in starched and rustling white beside the bed. It was extraordinary to watch; Reynal seemed to shake himself alive until he was conscious enough to respond “I do” to the priest who had arrived to perform quite a different office.

As an anti-climax to all the excitement, and to my intense disgust, I myself came down with a mild attack of scarlet fever. I was so embarrassed that I went right on working and did not take to my bed until I actually began to peel.

My usual cases offered drama of another sort. Often I was called in the middle of the night on a maternity case, perhaps ten miles away from the hospital, where I had to sterilize the water and boil the forceps over a wood fire in the kitchen stove while the doctor scrubbed up as best he could. Many times labor terminated before he could arrive and I had to perform the delivery by myself.

To see a baby born is one of the greatest experiences that a human being can have. Birth to me has always been more awe-inspiring than death. As often as I have witnessed the miracle, held the perfect creature with its tiny hands and tiny feet, each time I have felt as though I were entering a cathedral with prayer in my heart.

There is so little knowledge in the world compared with what there is to know. Always I was deeply affected by the trust patients, rich or poor, male or female, old or young, placed in their nurses. When we appeared they seemed to say, “Ah, here is someone who can tell us.” Mothers asked me pathetically, plaintively, hopefully, “Miss Higgins, what should I do not to have another baby right away?” I was at a loss to answer their intimate questions, and passed them along to the doctor, who more often than not snorted, “She ought to be ashamed of herself to talk to a young girl about things like that.”

All such problems were thus summarily shoved aside. We had one woman in our hospital who had had several miscarriages and six babies, each by a different father. Doctors and nurses knew every time she went out that she would soon be back again, but it was not their business or anybody’s business; it was just “natural.”

To be polished off neatly, the nurses in training were assigned to one of the larger city hospitals in which to work during the last three or six months of our course. Mine was the Manhattan Eye and Ear at Forty-first Street and Park Avenue, across the street from the Murray Hill Hotel, and I welcomed the chance to see up-to-date equipment and clockwork discipline. My new environment was considerably less harsh and intense, more comfortable and leisurely.

At one of the frequent informal dances held there my doctor partner received a message—not a call, but a caller. His architect wanted to go over blueprints with him. “Come along,” he invited. “See whether you think my new house is going to be as fine as I do.”

The architect was introduced. “This is William Sanger.”

The three of us bent over the plans. The doctor was the only one unaware of the sudden electric quality of the atmosphere.

At seven-thirty the next morning when I went out for my usual “constitutional,” Bill Sanger was on the doorstep. He had that type of romantic nature which appealed to me, and had been waiting there all night. We took our walk together that day and regularly for many days thereafter, learning about each other, exploring each other’s minds, and discovering a community of ideas and ideals. His fineness fitted in with my whole destiny, if I can call it such, just as definitely as my hospital training.

I found Bill’s mother a lovely person—artistic, musical, and highly cultured. His father had been a wealthy sheep rancher in Australia. When you travel anywhere from there, you practically have to go round the world, and on his way to San Francisco he had passed through Central Europe. In a German town he had fallen in love with the Mayor’s youngest daughter, then only fourteen. When she was of marriageable age he had returned for her, and it was from this talented mother that Bill had derived his fondness for music and desire to paint.

Bill was an architect only by profession; he was pure artist by temperament. Although his heart was not in mechanical drawing, he did it well. Stanford White once told me he was one of the six best draftsmen in New York. He confided to me his dream of eventually being able to leave architecture behind and devote himself to painting, particularly murals. I had had instilled in me a feeling for the natural relationship between color and symmetry of line, and sympathized not merely with his aspirations but was intensely proud of his work. Some day we were going to be married, and as soon as we had saved enough we would go to Paris, whither the inspiration of the great French painters was summoning artists from all over the world.

These plans were nebulous and had nothing to do with my abrupt departure from New York. One afternoon, about four o’clock, I was standing under a skylight putting drops in the eyes of a convalescent patient. Unexpectedly, inexplicably, the glass began to fall apart. Almost by instinct I pulled my patient under the lintel of the door. A great blast followed and pandemonium was let loose; the ruined skylight went crashing down the stairs, plaster and radiators tumbled from the walls, doors fell out, windows cracked.

I rushed to the bed of the man who needed my first attention. He had been operated on for a cataract only a few hours previously and my orders had been not to let him move too soon lest the fluid in his eye run out and damage his sight permanently. But he with the other terrified patients was already on his feet.

Rounding up all those under my care and checking their names took several minutes, and while I was still trying to quiet them, ambulances from other hospitals came clanging up. By the time I had ushered my charges down to the ground floor, a way had been cleared through the debris of fallen brick and wood. Since mine were not stretcher cases I was able to crowd ten of them into one ambulance, and we were taken to the New York Hospital. Not until I had them all safely installed did I learn what had happened to our building. A tremendous explosion in the new Park Avenue subway had practically demolished it, and it had to be evacuated.

I returned to White Plains, where Bill came up frequently to see me. On one of our rambles he idly pulled at some vines on a stone wall, and then, with his hands, tilted my face for a kiss. The next morning, to my mortification, four telltale finger marks were outlined on my cheek by poison ivy blisters. The day after that, my face was swollen so that my eyes were tight shut, and I was sick for two months; since my training was finished, I was sent home to convalesce.

_Chapter Five_

CORALS TO CUT LIFE UPON

For a while I stayed at Corning, and then went back to New York to start nursing in earnest. On one of my free afternoons in August, Bill and I went for a drive, and he suggested we stop in at the house of a friend of his who was a minister. All had been prepared. License and rice were waiting. And so we were married.

The first year is half taken up with love and half with planning a future together which is to endure forever. These dreams feed youthful ambitions, but they seldom can come true in their entirety. In our case the obstacles arose with undue speed.

I was not well. I was paying the cost of long hours in mother’s closely confined room and of continuous overwork in the hospital. Medical advice was to go West to live, but I would not go without Bill, and he had a commission which kept him in New York. Accordingly, I was packed off to a small semi-sanitarium near Saranac where the great Dr. Trudeau, specialist in pulmonary tuberculosis, was consulted.

Existence there was depressing. A man might be talking to me one day, full of life and spirit and hope, and the next morning not appear. The dead were ordinarily removed in the quiet of the night, and the doctors made no comment. In this gloomy environment I rested, preparing myself for motherhood. The flood of treatises on child psychology had not yet started, and even the books on the care and feeding of infants were few. But I read whatever I could.

Just before it was time for the baby to be born I returned to the little apartment on St. Nicholas Avenue at 149th Street, then practically suburban. Taking every precaution, we had engaged four doctors in a row. Dr. Schmid had said he would perform the ceremony unless it came at night, in which case his assistant would have to take charge. The assistant had provided that, if he were not available, his assistant would be on call, and this assistant had another assistant to assist him.

When towards three o’clock one morning I felt the first thin, fine pains of warning, Bill tried one after the other of our obstetricians—not one could be located. He had to run around the corner to the nearest general practitioner. Due almost as much to this young doctor’s inexperience as to my physical state, the ordeal was unusually hard, but the baby Stuart, given Amelia’s family name, was perfectly healthy, strong, and sturdy. I looked upon this as a victory, although it was only partial, because I had to go right back to the mountains. It was a wrench to leave again so soon and at such a time, but I could not believe it would be for long.

With Stuart and a nurse I took rooms in a friendly farmhouse near a small Adirondack village; I did not want the baby in the midst of sick people, and, moreover, I was not welcome at Saranac itself, since Dr. Trudeau did not like to have in residence patients whose illness had progressed beyond a certain stage. One of the most important parts of the treatment was stuffing with food. I was being filled with the then recognized remedy, creosote, and gulped capsule after capsule, which broke my appetite utterly. Still I had to pour down milk and swallow eggs, and always I had to rest and rest and rest.

At the end of eight months I was worse instead of better, and had no interest in living. Nan and Bill’s mother were summoned, and two of Dr. Trudeau’s associates came to see me. They advised that I should go nearer Saranac and be separated from all personal responsibilities.

“What would you yourself like to do?” they asked.

“Nothing.”

“Where would you like to go?”

“Nowhere.”

“Would you like to have the baby sent to your brother, or would you rather have your mother-in-law take it?”

“I don’t care.”

To every suggestion I was negative. I was not even interested in my baby.

The two doctors left. The younger, however, apparently not satisfied with the professional attitude, returned almost immediately, not so much in a medical capacity as one of anxious friendliness. I was still sitting in the same state of listlessness. He laid his hand on my shoulder quietly, but I had all the feeling of being violently shaken. “Don’t be like this!” he exclaimed. “Don’t let yourself get into such a mental condition. Do something! Want something! You’ll never get well if you keep on this way.”

I could not sleep that night. I had been rudely jolted from my stupor by the understanding doctor. Obviously preparations were being made for a lingering illness which would terminate in death. But if I had to die I would rather be with those I loved than disappear in the night as a part of the cold routine.

As the first glimmer of dawn appeared through the curtains I got up and stared at the steadily ticking clock. It was not yet five. I dressed quickly, then tiptoed into the bedroom where the nurse and baby were slumbering soundly. I roused her and told her to pack up; we were going back to New York. She looked up in drowsy dismay, but obeyed meekly. The farmer hitched up his horse and we jogged along all the way to the station in the early summer morning, bright with sunshine and cheery with birds.

Bill was waiting at the Grand Central Terminal, quite naturally perplexed. He had that morning received two telegrams, one saying I was to be removed to Saranac at once, pending his approval as to the care of the baby by relatives, and the other from me asking him to meet me because I was coming home. I told him as best I could the reasons for my sudden decision. Though I probably sounded incoherent he understood and, instead of scolding, soothed me tenderly and exclaimed, “You did just the right thing. I won’t let you die.”

“And don’t make me eat! Don’t even mention food to me!” He promised to let me have my own way.

At the small family hotel in Yonkers in which we settled, I lived pretty much by myself, keeping the baby and everyone else away from me; I had by now learned the dangers of contact in spreading tuberculosis. Once free from the horrors of invalidism and comforted by love and devotion I began to regain a normal interest in life, and by the end of three weeks had recovered from my hysterical rejection of food.

As soon as I was strong enough we started to explore Westchester County for a home site. We wanted something more than a mere house. We wanted space, we wanted a view, we wanted a garden. At Hastings-on-Hudson we found what we sought. There on fifty acres of hillside overlooking the river about ten families—doctors, teachers, college professors, scientists—had combined to construct the sort of dwellings they liked in the environment they considered best suited for their children. We too had in mind a family and a comfortable, serene, suburban existence, and we joined this Columbia Colony, as it was called, renting a small cottage until we could build our own.

The other wives and I spent our afternoons conferring over the momentous problems of servants, gardens, and schools. If we went to town, we took the children with us, fitting them with special shoes at Coward’s, introducing them to museums, libraries, or art galleries. Life centered around them. When Stuart and his little friends began to ask questions, “Where do babies come from?” I collected them and tried to answer, using the simple phenomena of nature as illustrations—flowers, frogs, fish, and animals. I still consider this approach has its place with many children, although modern sex educationists may smile at this method, thinking it old-fashioned.

None of the colony played cards. Instead, the women formed a literary club where we read papers on George Eliot, Browning, and Shakespeare, as well as on some current authors, and we had occasional political discussions. Out of this grew the Women’s Club of Hastings.

It was all very pleasant, and at first I was busy and contented. The endless details of housekeeping did not seem to me drudgery; conquering minor crises was exciting. Though I was never slavishly domestic, I was inclined to be slavishly maternal. Bill was a devoted husband. He took care of me in the little ways—starting for the train and coming back to put his head in the door and call, “It’s awfully cold. Don’t go out without your wrap,” or, if it were hot, he offered, “Give me your list and I’ll send up the groceries.”

I was again leading the life of an artist’s family. Bill was a hard worker; I can rarely remember one evening of just reading together. I did the reading and he drew or painted. But I was never quite sure whether we were rich or poor. He possessed the finest qualities of creative genius, and with them some of its limitations and liabilities. When he was paid for a big commission he brought me orchids and embroidered Japanese robes which I had no occasion to wear, and filled the house with luxuries. This did not go with my practical sense. If the grocery account were long unpaid, I protested, “They’re beautiful. Thank you, but can we afford them?”

“Certainly,” and out of his pocket came tickets for the opera or theater, his chief pleasures.

“But we shouldn’t,” I remonstrated as I ruffled a sheaf of bills before him.

Nevertheless, we used the tickets.

Every architect wants to embody his ideas at least once in his own home. Ours was “modern” in its square simplicity and unadorned surfaces of stuccoed hollow tile, even being called a show house; people came from afar to study it. It was designed to have a large nursery opening on a veranda overlooking the Hudson, a studio, a bath with each bedroom, fireplaces everywhere, and one especially capacious in the big library. From this room the open stairway, forking at the lower landing with a few steps leading down into the kitchen, reached up the wall to the second story.

The house took long to complete, but it was fun. The moment Bill finished his work in New York he was back at it. Theoretically he supervised at night and the builder built by day. But when an arch did not turn out to be a perfect arch, seizing an ax, he chopped out part of it, usually pounding his fingers in the process. The neighbors, careful of their pennies, held their ears at the clatter and clamor and exclaimed, “There goes another partition.” When the contractor returned in the morning he found his previous day’s work demolished. Some portions were entirely done over two or three times.

The color on the woodwork we applied ourselves by artificial light, plumped on our knees or stretching high overhead. If the effect were wrong, we had to match it all up again. Evening after evening we labored on the rose window which was to crown with radiance the head of the staircase. Far into the night we leaded and welded together every glowing petal. Our fingers were cut, our nerves were irritated, our eyes fatigued. But tireless love went into the composition of this rose window which symbolized the stability of our future. We were aiming at permanence and security, and our efforts seemed to be fused into indestructible unity. It was our keystone of beauty.

After the tedious worrying over details we suddenly became too impatient to wait any more, and, in spite of the raw condition of the house, late one February afternoon of half-sleet, half-rain, a moving van pulled up to our front door. Through the semi-twilight boxes, crates, and barrels were carted in.

The four-year-old Stuart was not well. We put him early to bed, and Bill stirred up a roaring fire in the furnace against the increasing cold. Then with hammer and claw we turned to our treasures, which we had not seen for such a time. It was like opening packages on Christmas morning. We had almost forgotten the tapestry Mary had sent from Persia, the rug from Egypt, Bill’s paintings. “What’s in this box? Oh, look here! See what I’ve found!” A flood of color inundated us. We tried out their warmth against our immaculate walls and floors. I was carrying my second baby and was tired hours before I wanted to stop. As I climbed up to bed I gazed down happily on the litter below.