The Primrose Ring Part 13

The President sat up very straight in his chair. "The children--the children." He remembered now--they were the children from the incurable ward at Saint Margaret's.

He sank back with a feeling of great helplessness, and closed his eyes again. And there he sat, immovable, his finger still marking his place in the report of the United Charities.

The Oldest Trustee sat alone, knitting comforters for the Preventorium patients. Like many another elderly person, her usual retiring hour was later than that of the younger members of her household, undoubtedly due to the frequent cat-naps s.n.a.t.c.hed from the evening.

The Oldest Trustee had a habit of knitting the day's events in with her yarn. What she had done and said and heard were all thought over again to the rhythmic click of her needles. And the results at the end of the evening were usually a finished comforter and a comfortable feeling. This night, however, the knitting lagged and the thoughts were unaccountably dissatisfying; she could not even settle down to a cat-nap with the habitual serenity.

"I don't know why I should feel disturbed," and the Oldest Trustee prodded her yarn ball with a disquieting needle, "but I certainly miss the usual gratification of a day well spent."

She closed her eyes, hoping thereby to lose herself for the s.p.a.ce of a moment, but instead-- She was startled to hear voices at her very elbow; a number of persons must have entered the room, but how they could have done so without her knowing it she could not understand. Of course they thought her asleep; it was just as well to let them think so. She really felt too tired to talk.

"Mother's undoubtedly growing old. Have you noticed how much she naps in the evening, now?" It was the voice of her youngest daughter.

"I heard her telling some one the other day she was five years younger than she is. That's a sure sign," and her son laughed an amused little chuckle.

"I can tell you a surer one." This time it was her oldest daughter--her first-born. "Haven't you noticed how all mother's little peculiarities are growing on her? She is getting so much more dictatorial and preachy. Of course, we know that mother means to be kind and helpful, but she has always been so--tactless--and blunt; and it's growing worse and worse."

"I have often wondered how all her charity people take her; it must come tough on them, sometimes. Gee! Can't you see her raising those lorgnettes of hers and saying, 'My good boy, do you read your Bible?'

or, 'My little girl, I hope you remember to be grateful for all you receive.' Say, wouldn't you hate to have charity stuffed down your throat that way?" and the oldest and favorite grandson groaned out his feelings.

"That isn't what I should mind the most." It was the youngest daughter speaking again. "I've been with mother when she has made remarks about the patients in the hospital, loud enough for them to hear, and I was so mortified I wanted to sink through the floor, And you simply can't shut mother up. Of course she doesn't realize how it sounds; she doesn't believe they hear her, but I know they do. I wonder how mother would like to have us stand around her--and we know her and love her--and have us say she was getting deaf, or her hair was coming out, or her memory was beginning to fail, or--"

The Oldest Trustee smiled grimly. "Oh, don't stop, my dear. If there is any other failing you can think of--" She opened her eyes with a start. "Goodness gracious!" she exclaimed. "My grandson is in college five hundred miles away, and my daughter is abroad. Have I been dreaming?"

The Meanest Trustee unlocked the drawer of his desk and took out a cigar. He did not intend that his sons or his servants should smoke at his expense; furthermore, it was well not to spread temptation before others. He took up the evening paper and examined the creases carefully. He wished to make sure it had not been unfolded before; being the one to pay for the news in his house, he preferred to be the first one to read it. The creases proved perfectly satisfactory; so he lighted his cigar, crossed his feet, and settled himself--content in his own comfort. The smoke spun into spirals about his head; and after he had skimmed the cream of the day's events he read more leisurely, stopping to watch the spirals with a certain lazy enjoyment. They seemed to grow increasingly larger. They spun themselves about into all kinds of shapes, wavering and illusive, that defied the somewhat atrophied imagination of the Meanest Trustee.

"Hallucinations," he barked to himself. "I believe I understand now what is implied when people are said to have them."

Suddenly the spirals commenced to lengthen downward instead of upward.

To the amazement of the Meanest Trustee he discovered them shifting into human shapes: here was the form of a child, here a youth, here a lover and his la.s.s, here a little old dame, and scores more; while into the corners of the room drifted others that turned into the drollest of droll pipers--with kilt and brata and cap. It made him feel as if he had been dropped into the center of a giant kaleidoscope, with thousands of pieces of gray smoke turning, at the twist of a hand, into form and color, motion and music. The pipers piped; the figures danced, whirling and whirling about him, and their laughter could be heard above the pipers' music.

"Stop!" barked the Meanest Trustee at last; but they only danced the faster. "Stop!" And he shook his fist at the pipers, who played louder and merrier. "Stop!" And he pounded the arms of his chair with both hands. "I hate music! I hate children! I hate noise and confusion! Stop! I say."

Still the pipers played and the figures danced on; and the Meanest Trustee was compelled to hear and see. To him it seemed an interminable time. He would have stopped his ears with his fingers and shut his eyes, only, strangely enough, he could not. But at last it all came to an end--the figures floated laughing away, and the pipers came and stood about him, their caps in their hands out-stretched before him.

He eyed them suspiciously. "What's that for?"

"It is time to pay the pipers," said one.

"Let those who dance pay; that's according to the adage," and he smiled caustically at his own wit.

"It's a false adage," said a second, "like many another that you follow in your world. It is not the ones who dance that should pay, but the ones who keep others from dancing--the ones who help to rob the world of some of its joy. And the ones who rob the most must pay the heaviest. Come!" And he shook his cap significantly.

A sudden feeling of helplessness overpowered the Meanest Trustee.

Muttering something about "pickpockets" and "hold-ups," he ferreted around in his pocket and brought out a single coin, which he dropped ungraciously into the insistent cap.

"What's that?" asked the head piper, curiously.

"It looks to me like money--good money--and I'm throwing it away on a parcel of rascals."

"Come, come, my good man," and the piper tapped him gently on the shoulder, in the fashion of a professional philanthropist when he remonstrates with a professional vagrant; "don't you see you are not giving your soul any room to grow in? A great deal of joy might have reached the world across your open palm. Instead, you have crushed it in a hard, tight fist. You must pay now for all the souls you've kept from dancing. Come--fill all our caps."

"Fill!" There was something akin to actual terror in the voice of the Meanest Trustee. He could feel himself growing pale; his tongue seemed to drop back in his throat, choking him. "That would take a great deal of money," he managed to wheeze out at last; and then he braced himself, his hands clutched deep in his pockets. "I will never pay; never, never, never!"

"Oh yes, you will!" and the piper's smile was insultingly cheerful.

"It was a great deal of joy, you know," he reminded him. "Come, lads"--to the other pipers--"hold out your caps, there."

The Meanest Trustee had the strange experience of feeling himself worked by a force outside of his own will; it was as if he had been a marionette with a master-hand pulling the wires. Quite mechanically he found himself taking something out of his pocket and dropping it into the caps thrust under his very nose, and at the same time his pockets began to fill with money--his money. In and out, in and out, his hands flew like wooden members, until there was not a coin left and the last piper turned away satisfied. He closed his eyes, for he was feeling very weak; then he became conscious of the touch of a warm, friendly hand on his wrist and he heard the voice of the old family doctor--the one who had set his leg when he was a little shaver and had fallen off the banisters, sliding downstairs.

"You will recover," it was saying. "A good rest is all you need.

Sometimes there is nothing so beneficial and speedy as the old-fashioned treatment of bleeding a patient."

Some warm ashes dropped across the wrist of the Meanest Trustee and scattered on the floor; his cigar had gone out.

The Executive Trustee dozed at his study table. For months he had been working his brain overtime; he had still more to demand of it, and he was deliberately detaching it from immediate executive consciousness for a few minutes that he might set it to work again all the harder.

The Executive Trustee knew that he was dozing; but for all that it was unbearable--this feeling of being bound by coil after coil of rope until he could not stir a finger. A terrifying numbness began to creep over him--as if his body had died. The thought came to him like a shock that he had an active, commanding intelligence, still alive, and nothing for it to command. What did people do who had to live with dead, paralyzed bodies, dependent upon others to execute the dictates of their brains? Did not their brains go in the end, too, and leave just a breathing husk behind? The thought became a horror to him.

And yet people did live, just so. Yes, even children.

Somewhere--somewhere--he knew of hundreds of them--or were there only a few? He tried to remember, but he could not. He did remember, however, that he had once heard them laughing; and he found himself wondering now at the strangeness of it. He hoped there was some one who would always keep them laughing--they deserved that much out of life, anyway; and some one who could understand and could administer to them lovingly--yes, that was the word--lovingly! As for himself, there was no one who could supply for him that strength and power for action that he had always worshiped; he must exist for the rest of his life simply as a thinking, ineffective intelligence. The Executive Trustee forgot that he was dozing. He wrestled with the ropes that bound him like a crazed man; he called for help again and again, until his lips could make no sound. For the first time in his remembrance he tasted the bitterness of despair. Then it was that the door opened noiselessly and Margaret MacLean entered, her finger to her lips. Coil after coil she unwound until he was free once more and could feel the marvelous response of muscle and nerve impulse. With a cry--half sob, half thankfulness--he flung his arms across the table and buried his face in them.

The Executive Trustee slept heavily, after the fashion of a man exhausted from hard labor.

In the house left by the Richest Trustee a little gray wisp of a woman sat huddled in a great carved chair close to the hearth, thinking and thinking and thinking. The fire was blazing high, trying its best to burn away the heart-cold and loneliness that clung about everything like a Dover fog. For years she had ceased to exist apart from her husband--her thoughts, her wishes, her interests were of his creating; she had drawn her very nourishment of life from his strong, dominant, genial personality. It was parasitic--oh yes, but it had been something rarely beautiful to them both--her great need of him. The need had grown all the greater because no children had come to fill her life; and the need of something to take care of had grown with him.

Their love, and her dependence, had become the greatest factors in his life; in hers they were the only ones. Therefore, it was hardly strange, now that he had died, that she should find it hard to take up an individual existence again; to be truthful, she had found it impossible--she had not even existed.

The habit of individual, separate thinking had grown rusty, and as she sat before the hearth ideas came slowly. The room was dim--lighted only by the firelight; and in that dimness her mind began to stir and stretch and yawn itself awake, like a creature that had been hibernating through a long, dark winter. Suddenly the widow of the Richest Trustee broke out into a feeble little laugh--a convalescing laugh that acted as if it was just getting about for the first time.

"I haven't the least idea what is the matter with me," she said, addressing the fire, "but I think--I think--I'm becoming alive again."

The fire gave an appreciative chuckle--it even slapped one of the logs on the back; then it sputtered and blazed the harder, just as if it were ashamed of showing any emotion.

"It is funny," agreed the little gray wisp of a woman, "but I actually feel as I used to when I was a little girl and Christmas Eve had come, or Hallowe'en, and--and-- What other night in the year was it that I used to feel creepy and expectant--as if something wonderful was going to happen?"

The fire coughed twice, as if it would have liked to remind her that it was May Eve, but felt it might be an intrusion.

"I believe," she continued, speculatively--"I believe I am going to begin to think things and do them again; and what's more, I believe I am going to like doing them."

The fire chuckled again, and danced about for a minute in an absurd fashion; it was so absurd that one of the logs broke a sap-vessel.

After that the fire settled down to its intended vocation, that of making dream-pictures out of red and gold flames, and black, charred embers.

The widow of the Richest Trustee watched them happily for a long time, until they became very definite and actual pictures. Then she got up, went to her desk, and wrote two letters.

The first was addressed to "The Board of Trustees of Saint Margaret's Free Hospital for Children"; the second was addressed to "Miss Margaret MacLean." They were both sealed and mailed that night.

What befell the other trustees does not matter, either from the standpoint of Fancy or of what happened afterward; moreover, it was nearly midnight, and what occurs after that on May Eve does not count.