The gas lamps had been early lit and threw flaring streaks of white
across the dingy platform as Margaret reached the station. She had
stood on the top of the little slope, looking back across the fields,
grown dim and mysterious in the purpling dusk, with a tightening of
the throat. However unhappy she had been here, yet she had seen Daunt.
He had stood with her by those dwarfed hedges, he had pleaded with
her under the flaming boughs of those woods. She could still feel the
strong pressure of his lips upon her hand as he besought her for what
she could have given him so eagerly, so gladly, so joyously if she had
dared. She was leaving him there, and the parting now seemed so much
more than that other seaside flight, when she had been stung to action
by her own self-reproach. Making her mute farewell, she heard a shriek
of steam, as the train came shuddering into the station, drawing long,
labored breaths like some chained serpent monster, overtired, and she
hastened stumblingly, uncertainly over the stony road. When she reached
the platform, she was out of breath and panting, and did not notice the
knot of trainmen, with beckoning arms and dangling lanterns, by the
side of the track.
She sank into her Pullman seat wearily. Several windows were open and
inquiring heads were thrust forth. She was conscious of a subdued
excitement in the air. A conductor passed hurriedly through the coach
and swung himself deftly off the end. People about her asked each other
impatiently why the train did not start, and a sallow-faced woman with
a false front hoped nervously and audibly that nothing was the matter.
A sudden whisper spread itself from chair to chair, and a man came back
from the smoking compartment to seat himself beside his wife, and
pulled down the window-shade with low whisperings.
“An accident. A man hurt.”
Margaret heard it with a tremor. She tried to raise her window, but the
latch caught, and she placed her face close to the pane to peer out. Up
the platform tramped four trainmen, bloused and grimy with coal-dust,
carrying between them a board, covered with tarpaulin, under which
showed clearly the outlines of a human figure.
Margaret caught her breath and drew back with a sudden feeling of
faintness. There were a few tense moments of waiting. Then a quiver
ran through the heavy trucks, there was a sharp whistle, a snort of
escaping steam, and past her window moved slowly back the station
lamps. A porter went toward the baggage-car, his arms piled high with
white towels, which threw his ebony face into sharp contrast. The
forward conductor leaned over the occupant of the chair across from
Margaret to borrow his flask, and went out with it. She realized from
this that the injured one was on the train.
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.”