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.