Chapter 3

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.

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."