IN WHICH MARGARET MACLEAN REVIEWS A MEMORY

As Margaret MacLean climbed the stairs to Ward C she rarely took the lift, it was too remindful of the time when she could not climb stairs her mind thought back a step for each step she mounted.  When she had reached the top of the first flight she was a child again, back in one of the little white iron cribs in her own ward; and it was the day when the first stringent consciousness came to her that she hated Trustee Day.

The Old Senior Surgeon the present one, of whom Saint Margaret’s felt inordinately proud, was house surgeon then had come into Ward C for a peep at her, and had called out, according to a firmly established custom, “Hello, Thumbkin!  What’s the news?”

She had been “Thumbkin” to him ever since the night he had carried her into the hospital, a tiny mite of a baby; and he had woven out of her coming a marvelous story fancy-fashioned.  This he had told her at least twice a week, from the time she was old enough to ask for it, because it had popped into his head quite suddenly that this morsel of humanity would some day insist on being accounted for.

The bare facts concerning her were rather shabby ones.  She had been unceremoniously dumped into his arms by a delegate from the Foundling Asylum, who had found him the most convenient receptacle nearest the door; and he had been offered the meager information that she belonged to no one, was wrong somehow, and a hospital was the place for her.

One hardly likes to pass on shabby garments, much less shabby facts, to cover another’s past.  So the Old Senior Surgeon had forestalled her inquisitiveness with a tale adorned with all the pretty imaginings that he, “a clumsy-minded old gruffian,” could conjure up.

Margaret MacLean remembered the story word for word as we remember “The House That Jack Built.”  It began with the Old Senior Surgeon himself, who heard a pair of birds disputing in one of the two trees which sentineled the hospital.  They had built a nest therein; it was bedtime, and they wished to retire, only something prevented.  Upon investigation he discovered the cause “and there you were, my dear, no bigger than my thumb!”

This was the nucleus of the story; but the Old Senior Surgeon had rolled it about, hither and yon, adding adventure after adventure, until it had assumed gigantic proportions.  As she grew older she took a hand in the adventure-making herself, he supplying the bare plot, she weaving the threads therefrom into a detailed narrative which she retold to him later, with a few imaginings of her own added.  This is what had established the custom for the Old Senior Surgeon to take a peep into Ward C at day’s end and call across to her:  “Hello, Thumbkin!  What’s the news?” or, “What’s happened next?” And until this day the answer had always been a joyous one.

Margaret MacLean, grown, could look back at tiny Margaret MacLean and see her very clearly as she straightened up in the little iron crib and answered in a shrill, tense voice:  “I’m not Thumbkin.  I’m a foundling.  I don’t belong to anybody.  I never had any father or mother or nothing, but just a hurt back; they said so.  They stood right there two of them; and one told the other all about me.”

This was the end of the story, and the beginning of Trustee Days for Margaret MacLean.

She soon made the discovery that she was not the only child in the ward who felt about it that way.  Her discovery was a matter of intuition rather than knowledge; for as if by silent consent the topic was carefully avoided in the usual ward conversation.  One does not make it a rule to talk about the hobgoblins that lurk in the halls at night, or the gray, creeping shapes that come out of dark corners and closets after one has gone to bed, if one is so pitifully unfortunate as to possess these things in childhood.  Instead one just remembers and waits, shivering.  Only to old Cassie, the scrub-woman, who was young Cassie then, did she confide her fear.  From her she received a charm compounded of goose eggshells and vinegar which Cassie claimed to be what they used in Ireland to unbewitch changelings.  She kept the charm hidden for months under her pillow.  It proved comforting, although absolutely ineffectual.

And for months there had been a strained relationship between the Old Senior Surgeon and herself, causing them both much embarrassment.  She resented the story he had made for her with all her child soul; he had cheated her fooled her.  She felt much as we felt toward our parents when we made our first discovery concerning Santa Claus.

But after a time a long time the story came to belong to her again; she grew to realize that the Old Senior Surgeon had told it truthfully only with the unconscious tongue of the poet instead of the grim realist.  She found out as well that it had done a wonderful thing for her:  it had turned life into an adventure a quest upon which one was bound to depart, no matter how poorly one’s feet might be shod or how persistently the rain and wind bit at one’s marrow through the rags of a conventional cloak.  More than this it had colored the road ahead for her, promising pleasant comradeship and good cheer; it would keep her from ever losing heart or turning back.

A day came at last when she and the Old Senior Surgeon could laugh a little foolishly, perhaps over the child-story; and then, just because they could laugh at it and feel happy, they told it together all over again.  They made much of Thumbkin’s christening feast, and the gifts the good godmothers brought.

“Let me see,” said the Old Senior Surgeon, cocking his head thoughtfully, “there was the business-like little party on a broomstick, carrying grit plain grit.”

“And the next one brought happiness didn’t she?” asked little Margaret MacLean.

He nodded.  “Of course.  Then came a little gray-haired faery with a nosegay of Thoughts-for-other-folks, all dried and ready to put away like sweet lavender.”

“And did the next bring love?”

Again he agreed.  “But after her, my dear, came a comfortable old lady in a chaise with a market-basket full of common-sense.”

“And then then  Oh, couldn’t the one after her bring beauty?  Some one always did in the book stories.  I think I wouldn’t mind the back and other things so much if my face could be nice.”

Margaret MacLean, grown, could remember well how tearfully eager little Margaret MacLean had been.

The Old Senior Surgeon looked down with an odd, crinkly smile.  “Have you never looked into a glass, Thumbkin?”

She shook her head.

Children in the wards of free hospitals have no way of telling how they look, and perhaps it is better that way.  Only if it happens as it does sometimes that they spend a good share of their life there, it seems as if they never had a chance to get properly acquainted with themselves.

For a moment he patted her hand; after which he said, very solemnly:  “Wait for a year and a day then look.  You will find out then just what the next faery brought.”

Margaret MacLean had obeyed this command to the letter.  When the year and a day came she had been able to stand on tiptoe and look at herself for the first time in her life; and she would never forget the gladness of that moment.  It had appeared nothing short of a miracle to her that she should actually possess something of which she need not be ashamed something nice to share with the world.  And whenever Margaret MacLean thought of her looks at all, which was rare, she thought of them in that way.

She took up the memory again where she had dropped it on the second flight of stairs, slowly climbing her way to Ward C, and went on with the story.

They came to the place where Thumbkin was pricked by the wicked faery with the sleeping-thorn and put to sleep for a hundred years, after the fashion of many another story princess; and the Old Senior Surgeon suddenly stopped and looked at her sharply.

“Some day, Thumbkin, I may play the wicked faery and put you to sleep.  What would you say to that?”

She did not say then.

More months passed, months which brought an ashen, drawn look to the face of the Old Senior Surgeon, and a tired-out droop to his shoulders and eyes.  She began to notice that the nurses eyed him pityingly whenever he came into the ward, and the house surgeon shook his head ominously.  She wondered what it meant; she wondered more when he came at last to remind her of his threatened promise.

“You remember, Thumbkin, about that sleep?  Would you let an old faery doctor put you to sleep, for a little while, if he was very sure you would wake up to find happiness and health and love and all the other gifts the godmothers brought?”

She tried her best to keep the frightened look out of her eyes.  By the way he watched her, however, she knew some of it must have crept in.  “Operation?” she managed to choke out at last.

Operation was a fairly common word in Ward C, and not an over-hopeful one.

“It’s this way, Thumbkin; and let’s make a bargain of it.  I think there’s a cure for that back of yours.  It hasn’t been tried very much; about often enough to make it worth while for us to take a chance.  I’ll be honest with you and tell you the house surgeon doesn’t think it can be done; but that’s where the bargain comes in.  He thinks he can mend my trouble, and I don’t; and we’re both dreadfully greedy to prove we’re right.  Now if you will give me my way with you I will give him his.  But you must come first.”

“A hundred years is a long time to be asleep,” she objected.

“Bless you, it won’t be a hundred minutes.”

“And does your back need it, too?”

“Not my back; my stomach.  It’s about the only chance for either of us, Thumbkin.”

“And you won’t unless I do?”

The Old Senior Surgeon gave his head a terrific shake; then he caught her small hands in his great, warm, comforting ones.  “Think.  It means a strong back; a pair of sturdy little legs to take you anywhere; and the whole world before you!”

“And you’ll have them, too?”

He smiled convincingly.

“All right.  Let’s.”  She gave his hand a hard, trustful squeeze.

She liked to remember that squeeze.  She often wondered if it might not have helped him to do what he had to do.

Her operation was record-making in its success; and after he had seen her well on the mend he gave himself over to the house surgeon and a fellow-colleague, according to the bargain.  He proved the house surgeon wrong, for he never rallied.  Undoubtedly he knew this would be the way of it; for he stopped in Ward C before he went up to the operating-room and said to her: 

“I shall be sleeping longer than you did, Thumbkin; but, never fear, I shall be waking some time, somewhere.  And remember this:  Never grow so strong and well that you forget how tiresome a hospital crib can be.  Never be so happy that you grow blind to the heartaches of other children; and never wander so far away from Saint Margaret’s that you can’t come back, sometimes, and make a story for some one else.”

She puzzled a good bit over this, especially the first part of it; but when they told her the next day, she understood.  Probably she grieved for him more than had any one else; even more than the members of his own family or profession.  For, whereas there are many people in the world who can give life to others, there are but few who can help others to possess it.

What childhood she had had she left behind her soon after this, along with her aching back, her helpless limbs, and the little iron crib in Ward C.

On the first Trustee Day following her complete recovery she appeared, at her own request, before the meeting of the board.  In a small, frightened voice she asked them to please send her away to school.  She wanted to learn enough to come back to Saint Margaret’s and be a nurse.

The trustees consented.  Having assumed the responsibility of her well-being for over fifteen years, they could not very easily shirk it now.  Furthermore, was it not a praise-worthy tribute to Saint Margaret’s as a charitable institution, and to themselves as trustees, that this child whom they had sheltered and helped to cure should choose this way of showing her gratitude?  Verily, the board pruned and plumed itself well that day.

All this Margaret MacLean lived over again as she climbed the stairs to Ward C on the 30th of April, her heart glowing warm with the memory of this man who had first understood; who had freed her mind from the abnormality of her body and the stigma of her heritage; who had made it possible for her to live wholesomely and deeply; and who had set her feet upon a joyous mission.  For the thousandth time she blessed that memory.

It had been no disloyalty on her part that she had closed her lips and said nothing when the House Surgeon had questioned her about her fancy-making.  She could never get away from the feeling that some of the sweetness and sacredness might be lost with the telling of the memory.  One is so apt to cheapen a thing when one tries hastily to put it into words, and ever afterward it is never quite the same.

On the second floor she stopped; and by chance she looked over, between spiral banisters, to the patch of hallway below.  It just happened that the House Surgeon was standing there, talking with one of the internes.

Margaret MacLean smiled whimsically.  “If there is a soul in the wide world I could share it with, it is the House Surgeon.”  And then she added, aloud, softly apostrophizing the top of his head, “I think some day you might grow to be very very like the Old Senior Surgeon; that is, if you would only stop trying to be like the present one.”