“Lois”--Mrs. Goodno, standing in the doorway, drew her favorite close
beside her--“look at the picture coming down the hall! Isn’t she
beautiful?” There was a spontaneous and genuine admiration in her tone
as she spoke.
A something indefinable, an atmosphere of loveliness, seemed to breathe
from Margaret’s every motion as she came toward them. Her cheeks had
a delicate flush, her glance was bright and roving, and her perfect
lips were tremulous. Her look had a new mystery in it--a brooding
tenderness, like the look of a young mother.
“All through the nurses’ lecture this morning,” said Lois, “I noticed
her. When she smiled it made one want to smile, too!”
As Margaret reached them and greeted Mrs. Goodno, Lois joined her, and
the two girls walked down the hall together to their room.
“Now,” said Lois, as she took a text-book from the drab-backed row on
the low corner shelf, and assumed a judicial demeanor, “I’m morally
certain that you haven’t studied your Weeks-Shaw this morning, and I’m
going to quiz you.”
Margaret broke into a laugh. “Try it,” she said gayly. “You’re going to
ask me to define health, and to show the difference between objective
and subjective symptoms, and tell you what is a mulberry-tongue. Health
is a perfect circulation of pure blood in a sound organism. How is
that?”
“Good!” Lois, sitting down by the window, was laughing, too. “When the
doctor quizzes you, you may not know it so well! Suppose you explain to
me the theory of counter-irritants.”
Margaret swooped down upon her, and kneeling by her chair, put both
hands over the page, looking up into her face. “Don’t!” she said.
“What do I care for it all to-day! Oh, Lois! Lois!” she whispered in
the hushed voice of a child about to tell a dear secret, “I am so
happy! I am so happy that I can’t tell it! To think that I can watch
him and nurse him, and take his temperature! I can help cure him and
see him get better and better every day. When he talks, he pronounces
queerly and his words get all jumbled up, and his sentences have no
ends to them, but I love to hear it--I know what they are trying to
say! He is so weak that I feel as if I were his mother. I know you’ve
told Mrs. Goodno; haven’t you, dear? Somehow I knew it just now when
she smiled at us! I don’t care if you did--not a bit--if she will only
let me stay by him.”
Lois patted the bronzing gloss of the uplifted head. “I did tell her,”
she said. “I thought I ought to--but she understands. Never fear about
that.”
“I wonder what makes me so happy! I love all the world, Lois! Did you
ever feel that way?”
The light wing of a shadow brushed the face above her, and deep in its
eyes darkled a something hidden there that was almost envy.
The voice went running on: “Suppose he should open his eyes suddenly
to-night--conscious! Do you know what I would do? I would slip off this
apron all in a minute, so he should see me and know me first of all. I
have my hair the way he likes it. I wish I could do more for him! Love
is service. I want to tire myself out doing things to help him. Why,
only think! It was my fault he was hurt. I sent him away when it was
breaking my heart to do it.”
“If he should know you to-day, dear,” Lois said, her face flashing into
a smile, “it ought to help him get well. There is joy bubbling out all
over you!”
“I’m so glad he’s not conscious now, for when he isn’t he doesn’t
suffer. Sometimes last night he seemed to, and then I ached all over
to suffer for him. I could laugh out loud through the pain, to think
that I was bearing it for him! Oh, Lois, I haven’t understood. I see
now what you love in this life here. It isn’t only bodies that you are
curing; it’s souls--that you’re making sound houses for.”
Drawing Lois’s arm through hers, Margaret pointed to where the huge
entrance showed, from the deep window. “Do you know, the first day we
came in there together, I was the unhappiest girl in the world. It
seemed as though I was being dragged into some dreadful black cave,
where there was no sun, no flowers, nothing but ghastly sights and
people that were dying! The first day I went with you through the wards
I hated it. I wanted to shut my eyes and run away as far as I could
from it!”
“I know that; I saw it.”
“But now that is all changed. I never shall see a body suffer again
without wanting to put my hands on it and soothe it. Life is so much
sweeter and deeper than I knew! It’s hard to be quiet. I’m walking to
music. I must go around all the time singing. It seems wicked of me
to be so happy when I know that it will be days and days yet before
he can even sit up and let me read to him. But I can’t help it. I was
so wretched all the time before, that the joy now seems to be a part
of me. It seems to be his joy, too. He would be glad if he could know
that, in spite of all I thought and everything I said, I love him now
as he wanted me to, and that nothing ever can come between us again!
Isn’t it time to go in yet? I can hardly wait for the hour!”
Lois looked at her watch. “It’s near enough,” she said. “Come. Dr.
Faulkner is somewhere in the ward now, and I must get instructions.”
* * * * *
Daunt lay perfectly quiet, his restless hand still. An orderly was
changing the phials upon the glass-topped table and nodded to them.
Lois darted a quick glance at the face on the pillow, and her own
changed. A stealthy fear crept over her. Margaret’s head was turned
away toward the cot. How should she tell her? How let her know that
subtle change of the last few hours that her own trained eye noted?
How let out for her the strenuous agony that waited in that room? The
pitiful unconsciousness of evil in the graceful posture went through
her with a start of anguish.
The soft footfall of the visiting surgeon drew near, and with swift
prescience she moved close to Margaret. He bent over the figure in
rapid professional inquiry and consulted the chart, nodding his head as
he tabulated his observations in a running, semi-audible comment.
“H--m! well-developed septic fever. Delirium comes on at night, you
say, nurse. Eh? H--m! Pulse very rapid and stringy--hurried and
shallow breathing--eyes dull, with inequality of pupils. H--m! Face
flushed--lips blue--extremities cold. Lips and teeth covered with
sordes--typical case. H--m! Complete lethargy--clammy sweat--face
assuming a hippocratic type. Temperature sub-normal. H--m! Yes. Nurse,
please preserve all notes of this case. It’s interesting. Very. Like to
see it in the ‘Record.’”
“What are the probabilities, doctor?” It was the sentence. Lois’s lips
were trembling, and she put a hand on Margaret’s arm.
“Probabilities? H--m! Give him about twelve hours and that’s generous.
Never any hope in a case of this kind. Why, the man’s dying now. Look
at his face.”
A piteous, chalky whiteness swept like a wave over Margaret’s cheeks,
but she had made no sound. When the doctor was quite gone, she swerved
a little on her feet, as though her limbs had weakened, and her lips
opened and shut voicelessly, as if whispering to herself. Lois dreaded
a cry, but there was none; she only shut her eyes, and covered her poor
face, gone suddenly pinched and pallid, with her two hands.
“Wait, Margaret.” Lois held out a hand whose professional coolness was
touched with an unwonted tremor. “Wait a moment, dear.” She ran to the
hall to see that no one was in sight. Then running back and putting her
arm around Margaret’s shoulders, she led her, blind and unresisting, to
the stair.