Margarita's Soul Part 19

"He is just outside," she said, "I will have him sent up at once. I thought you would want him soon, Mr. Jerrolds. And don't worry--he has never been neglected."

I clutched the sheet in my impatience. Very soon there was a scurrying through the hall, a little gasping snuffle, a small, sharp bark. Then he was on the bed before I saw his good brindled head, almost, and in my arms. I pressed my face against his dear, quivering coat, I surrendered my cheek to his warm, rough tongue, I translated each happy convulsive wriggle.

"Dear old Kitch--good fellow!" I muttered, none too steadily, for I was not strong yet, and he seemed suddenly the only friend on whom I could unreservedly count. Roger had wished to stay with me, I knew, but of course he must go with his wife, and I am glad that I never grudged his absence a moment. For this cause shall a man leave his life-long friend and cleave only to her, and there is no other way.

But nothing, nothing could separate Kitch and me!

Miss Buxton left us alone together and we discussed the situation gravely and thoroughly and a.s.sured each other that it was only a matter of patience, now, and then, away together!

My spirits rose from the day he came in, and in another week I had advanced to a deep cushioned chair in the window for an hour a day.

But it was not a very interesting window, commanding as it did my neighbour's eight-foot garden wall crowned with inhospitable broken gla.s.s, and though I appreciate the marvel of the spring as much, I suppose, as most of us, I could never occupy myself very long with natural beauties exclusively, and the trees and the gra.s.s could not satisfy my craving for human interest. Now that I was ready for them, all my friends were off for their Easter holiday, and I would not keep the Professor from his spring gardening, though he offered manfully. I have never cared for games, with the single exception of his beloved chess, and my eyes soon tired of reading.

And so at last, in default of something more to my mind, I turned to my nurse and determined to make that silent woman talk. At first it was difficult, for I tried to discover her feelings, her att.i.tude, her history. As to the first two of these I met only failure and the last was pathetically simple. An orphan she was, a bread-winner, an observer. I say it was pathetic, but not that _she_ was. Things are changing rapidly with women, I can see that plainly, but twenty years ago a man still felt, ridiculously perhaps, that a kindly, competent woman, however successful in her chosen profession, must needs be, in the very nature of the case, even more kindly and more competent with a child on her lap and an arm about her waist. If in the new doctrine of the Brotherhood of Man it is admitted that we owe each our debt to humanity and posterity, I, for one, have never been able to understand why women should not pay that debt in the coinage most obviously provided them for the purpose. The Brotherhood of Man is a great idea, but surely without the Motherhood of Woman it would grow a little shadowy and impractical. (I speak as a fool!)

And so, I repeat, there was something a little pathetic to me in Harriet Buxton's life, though nothing in the least pathetic in her personality or her actions. Do not turn on me too fiercely, dear ladies, and demand of me with your well-known remorseless logic, what would have become of me if Harriet Buxton had not been beside me in my delirium, with nothing but a clinical thermometer on her knee, and a white ap.r.o.n around her waist. Do not, I beg you, for I shall shock all your strict habits of mind by taking refuge in blind, illogical instinct and reiterating my firm conviction that though I perish, truth is so, and that Nature had a better use for Harriet's lap and waist. She had! (as you used to say in the old emotional era) she had!! _She had!!!_

Well, in despair of eliciting anything romantic from her, I languidly inquired as to her travels. They were not extensive: this was her first "trip abroad." It had been rather a failure, in a way, for although she had been engaged with the understanding that her pa.s.sage was to be paid both ways, her patient on recovery had decided to spend the summer abroad, and had made it very evident that she did not consider herself any longer responsible for her nurse under these circ.u.mstances!

"You should have taken legal advice," I expostulated, "the woman was dishonest. It was shocking, Miss Buxton--surely you could have done something?"

"Perhaps," she admitted, "but I had no friends here and it was hard enough to get my salary, anyway. I could have gone with Mrs. Bradley if I had been free. As it was, I sent them another American nurse I knew of in London, who was glad to go back."

"Why didn't you send her to me and go yourself?" I questioned curiously, "if you want to go so much?"

She looked at me in sincere surprise.

"Why, I had already accepted your case, Mr. Jerrolds," she said.

Alas, Harriet! Why, why were you not teaching your simple code of honour to some st.u.r.dy, kilted Harry?

There seemed to be nothing more to be got from Miss Buxton, and we began to discuss the best winter climate for me, for I understood perfectly that for more years than the doctor cared to impress upon me just now I must avoid damp and chill. We discussed Na.s.sau, Bermuda, Florida, and I mentioned North Carolina. Then Harriet Buxton opened her lips and spoke, and in a few amazed moments it became clear to me that I was in the presence of a fanatic.

For she had been in North Carolina, and this State that for me had spelled only a remarkably curative air and a deplorably illiterate population represented the hope of this woman's life, the ambition of her days and nights, the Macedonia that cried continually in her ears, "Come over and help us!"

For a year she had lived there in the western mountains, giving her duty's worth of hours to a wealthy patient, bargaining for so much free time to devote to that strange, pathetic race of pure-blooded mountaineers, tall, serious, shy Anglo-Saxons, our veritable elder brothers, ignorant appallingly, superst.i.tious incredibly, grateful and generous to a degree. As she talked, rapidly now, with flushing cheeks and kindling eyes, she brought vividly before me these pale and patient people, welcoming her with eager hands, hanging on her wonderful skill, listening like chidden children to her horrified insistence upon long-forgotten decencies and sanitary measures never guessed. As my questions grew her confidence grew with them, and at last she went quickly to her room to return with a thick, black book, which she thrust into my hands.

"It's my diary," she explained. "If you are really interested you may read it. Oh Mr. Jerrolds, to think of the money that goes to Africa and India and slums full of Syrians and Russian Jews, when these Americans--our real kin, you know!--are putting an axe under the bed, with the blade up, to check a haemorrhage! If they were Zulus," she added, flashing, "some one might do something for them."

[Ill.u.s.tration: HER WEEKLY CHECK, PLUS A DRAFT FOR A HUNDRED POUNDS]

I could not keep myself from staring at her: with that flush, those kindling brown eyes and that heaving bosom, my nurse was near to being a handsome woman! And all because the natives of North Carolina had no adequate hospital service. Can you imagine anything more extraordinary? I opened the book curiously; not, of course, that I cared tuppence for the natives, but that I had actually begun to feel interested in Harriet Buxton.

I should never have thought of it again, probably, but for Harriet herself, for now that the magic string had been touched, her heart overflowed to its echoes, and my waking hours were filled with anecdotes touching, brutal or humourous, of her years of joy and labour. Her cottage rent had cost her forty dollars, her clothes nothing, her food had come largely from the grateful people. Over and over again she returned to her ridiculously pitiful calculations. She could live for one hundred dollars a year. She could have the use of a deserted schoolhouse, free. Two hundred dollars would fit up a tiny hospital and lending-closet, with linen, rubber articles, simple sick-room conveniences. If she had five hundred, she would start on that and trust to getting help to go on with. She could stay there a year, then nurse for a year, and go back with the money she had saved.

And so on, and so on, and so on! The floods of North Carolina needs that swept over my helpless head would have drowned a stronger brain than mine. In vain I tried to dam this tide of confidences and hopes and ha'penny economies: it was useless. After a week, during which actual photographs, hideous blue prints, the first advance guard of that flood of amateur photography destined to wash over the world, were brought out for my edification, I rebelled and declared myself cured.

"And to get rid of you," I added crossly, "I am going to give you this," and I handed her her weekly cheque, plus a draft for a hundred pounds. "Take it, and get off to those benighted natives, for heaven's sake!"

She stared at it, at me, at it again, then choked and fled to her room. I felt like a fool.

Later, when I saw what it really meant to the absurd creature, I surrept.i.tiously copied bits of the sordid little diary, and sent them to Roger with a slight account of her, and suggested that he mention this matter to Sarah (who had recently washed her hands of the American negro on the occasion of his having bitterly disappointed her hopes in a brutal race riot) and give that philanthropist's energies a new direction.

I saw Harriet off to her boat, tried in vain to get a half hour of rational conversation on topics unrelated to the western mountains of North Carolina, agreed hastily to all directions as to my health, held Kitch up to be kissed, and went back to my sunny garden-corner, for it was full May now, and my strength was growing with the flowers.

I thought that chapter ended, and was startled and not a little shaken by the thick letter that found me planning my lonely summer early in June. It was from Harriet, a curious, incoherent screed; tiresomely detailed as to her plans, painfully brief as to important issues. She had found a letter from Mr. Bradley awaiting her arrival, she had followed his suggestions and interested Miss Sarah Bradley, his cousin, in her schemes, with the result that the Episcopal organisation had sent a deaconess for a year to work under Harriet's direction and a contribution toward fitting out the little hospital.

She had gone to see Roger and thank him personally and found him on an island, with Mrs. Bradley in sudden and acute need of both nurse and physician, the former with a broken leg, the latter gone to New York for the day, as his prospective patient was supposed to be in no immediate need of him. She had hastily set the nurse's leg, telegraphed for the doctor, then devoted herself to Mrs. Bradley, who, though beautifully strong and well, developed sudden complications and gave her quite a little trouble. Things were rather doubtful and hard for five or six hours, but fortunately the doctor had left full supplies for the occasion and the other nurse was able to give the anaesthetic--she was dragged on a sofa by a deaf and dumb man, who ran five miles to the village just before. It ended triumphantly at dawn and Mrs. Bradley had a lovely little girl--the image of her father.

Both were doing well.

Mr. Bradley had overestimated her services, and as she could not dream of accepting the fee he offered her, he had insisted upon paying a salary for three years to a young physician (selected by the doctor, who arrived at noon) who was to give his entire time and strength to the mountain hospital and superintend the affair, now grown into a real inst.i.tution, since Mr. Elder had volunteered to supply a young fellow from his club, anxious to act as orderly and a.s.sistant for the sake of the training, and Mrs. Paynter, a friend of Mr. Bradley's, had managed to get a full dispensary supply at cost prices from connections of hers in the wholesale drug line.

"And it all comes from you, Mr. Jerrolds," the letter ended, "all owing to your wonderful, your n.o.ble interest, in this work! You told Mr. Bradley, and though he is not justified in thinking I saved her life, it is perfectly true that those cases give us a great deal of trouble sometimes, and I was very fortunate in having had a great deal of maternity work in the mountains, when I had to act all alone and do rather daring things. But I got the practice there, and so if I did save your friend's life (or the baby's, which is nearer the truth, I confess to you, Mr. Jerrolds!) you have amply rewarded the cause that gave me the training to do what I did!

"Your grateful

"HARRIET BUXTON."

I sat under the gla.s.s-topped wall, the letter between my knees, staring at the brick walk bordered with green turf. How strange it was, how incredibly strange! A curious sense of watchful, relentless destiny grew in me. Truly it slumbered not nor slept! I, who had cursed that child unborn, had reached over seas and helped it into the world! I, who had been jealous of my friend, had sent him a friend indeed! I, who had grudged Margarita husband and child (for in my black, cruel fever I did this) had given her back to both!

I pondered these things long (as if the thread in the tapestry should marvel at its devious windings) and then summoned my landlady.

"Mrs. Drabbit," said I, "I am thinking of going to America."

PART SIX

IN WHICH YOU ARE SHOWN THE RIVER'S VERY SOURCES, FAR UNDERGROUND

And is it I that must sit and spin?

And is it I that my hair must bind?

I hear but the great seas rolling in, I see but the great gulls sail the wind.

Who sang the grey monk out o' the cell?

Who but my mother that rode the sea!

She stole a son o' the church to h.e.l.l, And out of h.e.l.l shall the church steal me?

_Sir Hugh and the Mermaiden._

CHAPTER XX

A GARDEN GLIMPSE OF EDEN

It was mid-August, however, before I reached that part of America that was destined to mean so much to me. A visit to Mrs. Upgrove, my mother's old friend, extended itself beyond my plans, largely because of the pleasant acquaintance I formed there with her son, then Captain, now Major Upgrove, one of the most charming men I have ever encountered. Next to Roger he has become my best friend, incidentally disproving a theory of mine that warm friendships between men are not likely to be formed after thirty. Even as I write this chapter I am looking forward to his visit, and the slim Hawaiian girls are looking forward, too, I promise you, with wonderful, special garlands, and smiles that many a handsome young sailor may jingle his pockets in vain to win!