WARD C

A welcoming shout went up from Ward C as Margaret MacLean entered.  It was lusty enough to have come from the throats of healthy children, and it would have sounded happily to the most impartial ears; to the nurse in charge it was a very pagan of gladness.

“Wish you good morning, good meals, and good manners,” laughed Margaret MacLean; and then she went from crib to crib with a special greeting for each one.  Oh, she firmly believed that a great deal depended on how the day began.

In the first crib lay Pancho, of South American parentage, partially paralyzed and wholly captivating.  He had been in Saint Margaret’s since babyhood he was six now and had never worn anything but a little hospital shirt.

“Good morning, Brown Baby,” she said, kissing his forehead.  “It’s just the day for you out on the sun-porch; and you’ll hear birds lots of them.”

“Wobins?”

“Yes, and bluebirds, too.  I’ve heard them already.”

Next came Sandy merry of heart a humpback laddie from Aberdeen.  His parents had gone down with the steerage of a great ocean liner, and society had cared for him until the first horror of the tragedy had passed; then some one fortunately had mentioned Saint Margaret’s, and society was relieved of its burden.  In the year he had spent here his Aberdonian burr had softened somewhat and a number of American colloquialisms had crept into his speech; but for all that he was “the braw canny Scot” as the House Surgeon always termed him and he objected to kisses.  So the good-morning greeting was a hearty hand-shake between the two comrade fashion.

“It wad be a bonnie day i’ Aberdeen,” he reminded her, blithely.  “But ’tis no the robins there ’at wad be singin’.”

“Shall I guess?”

“Na, I’ll tell ye.  Laverocks!”

“Really, Sandy?” And then she suddenly remembered something.  “Now you guess what you’re going to have for supper to-night.”

“Porridge?”

“No; scones!”

“Bully!” And Sandy clapped his hands ecstatically.

Beside Sandy lay Susan smart, shrewd, and American, with braced legs and back, and a philosophy that failed her only on Trustee Days.  But as calendars are not kept in Ward C no one knew what this day was; and consequently Susan was grinning all over her pinched, gnome-like little face.  Margaret MacLean kissed her on both cheeks; the Susan-kind hunger for affection, but the world rarely finds it out and therefore gives sparingly.

“Guess yer couldn’t guess what I dreamt last night, Miss Peggie?”

“About the aunt?” This was a mythical relation of Susan’s who lived somewhere and who was supposed to turn up some day and claim Susan with open arms.  She was the source of many dreams and of much interested conversation and heated argument in the ward, and the children had her pictured down to the smallest detail of person and clothes.

“No, ‘tain’t my aunt this time.  I dreamt you was gettin’ married, Miss Peggie.”  And Susan giggled delightedly.

“An’ goin’ away?” This was groaned out in chorus from the two cots following Susan’s, wherein lay James and John fellow-Apostles of pain bound closely together in that spiritual brotherhood.  They were sitting up, holding hands and staring at Margaret with wide, anguish-filled eyes.

“Of course I’m not going away, little brothers; and I’m not going to get married.  Does any one ever get married in Saint Margaret’s?”

The Apostles thought very hard about it for a moment; but as it had never happened before, of course it never would now, and Miss Peggie was safe.

The whole ward smiled again.  But in that moment Margaret MacLean remembered what the House Surgeon had said, and wondered.  Was she building up for them an ultimate discontent in trying to make life happy and full for them now?  Could not minds like theirs be taught to walk alone, after all?  And then she laughed to herself for worrying.  Why should the children ever have to do without her unless unless something came to them far better like Susan’s mythical aunt?  The children need never leave Saint Margaret’s as long as they lived, and she never should; and she passed on to the next cot, content that all was well.

As she stooped over the bed a pair of thin little arms flew out and clasped themselves tightly about her neck; a head with a shock of red curls buried itself in the folds of the gray uniform.  This was Bridget daughter of the Irish sod, oldest of the ward, general caretaker and best beloved; although it should be added in justice to both Bridget and Margaret MacLean that the former had no consciousness of it, and the latter took great care to hide it.

It was Bridget who read to the others when no one else could; it was Bridget who remembered some wonderful story to tell on those days when Sandy’s back was particularly bad or the Apostles grew over-despondent; and it was Bridget who laughed and sang on the gray days when the sun refused to be cheery.  Undoubtedly it was because of all these things that her cot was in the center of Ward C.

Concerning Bridget herself, hers was a case of arsenical poisoning, slowly absorbed while winding daisy-stems for an East Broadway manufacturer of cheap artificial flowers.  She had done this for three years since she was five thereby helping her mother to support themselves and two younger children.  She was ten now and the Senior Surgeon had already reckoned her days.

In the shadow of Bridget’s cot was Rosita’s crib Rosita being the youngest, the most sensitive, and the most given to homesickness.  This last was undoubtedly due to the fact that she was the only child in the incurable ward blessed in the matter of a home.  Her parents were honest-working Italians who adored her, but who were too ignorant and indulgent to keep her alive.  They came every Sunday, and sat out the allotted time for visitors beside her crib, while the other children watched in a silent, hungry-eyed fashion.

Margaret MacLean passed her with a kiss and went on to Peter Peter seven years old congenital hip disease and all boy.

“Hello, you!” he shouted, squirming under the kiss that he would not have missed for anything.

“Hello, you!” answered back the administering nurse, and then she asked, solemnly, “How’s Toby?”

“He’s he’s fine.  That soap the House Surgeon give me cured his fleas all up.”

Toby was even more mythical than Susan’s aunt; she was based on certain authentic facts, whereas Toby was solely the creation of a dog-adoring little brain.  But no one was ever inconsiderate enough to hint at his airy fabrication; and Margaret MacLean always inquired after him every morning with the same interest that she bestowed on the other occupants of Ward C.

Last in the ward came Michael, a diminutive Russian exile with valvular heart trouble and a most atrocious vocabulary.  The one seemed as incurable as the other.  Margaret MacLean had wrestled with the vocabulary on memorable occasions to no avail; and although she had long since discovered it was a matter of words and not meanings with him, it troubled her none the less.  And because Michael came the nearest to being the black sheep of this sanitary fold she showed for him always an unfailing gentleness.

“Good morning, dear,” she said, running her fingers through the perpendicular curls that bristled continuously.

“Goot mornun, tear,” he mimicked, mischievously; and then he added, with an irresistible smile, “Und Got-tam-you.”

“Oh, Michael, don’t you remember, the next time you were going to say ’God bless you’?”

“Awright next time.”

Margaret MacLean sighed unconsciously.  Michael’s “next time” was about as reliable as the South American mañana; and he seemed as much an alien now as the day he was brought into the ward.  And then, because she believed that kindness was the strongest weapon for victory in the end, she did the thing Michael loved best.

Ward C was turned into a circus menagerie, and Margaret MacLean and her assistant were turned into keepers.  Together they set about the duties for the day with great good-humor.  Two seals, a wriggling hippopotamus, a roaring polar bear, a sea-serpent of surprising activities, two teeth-grinding alligators, a walrus, and a baby elephant were bathed with considerable difficulty and excitement.  It was Sandy who insisted on being the elephant in spite of a heated argument from the other animals that, having a hump, he ought to be a camel.  They forgave him later, however, when he squirted forth his tooth-brush water and trumpeted triumphantly, thereby causing the entire menagerie to squirm about and bellow in great glee.

At this point the head keeper had to turn them all back instantly into children, and she delivered a firm but gentle lecture on the inconsiderateness of soaking a freshly changed bed.

Sandy broke into penitent tears; and because tears were never allowed to dampen the atmosphere of Ward C when they could possibly be dammed, Margaret MacLean did the “best-of-all-things.”  She pushed the cribs and cots all together into a “special” with observation-cars; then, changing into an engineer, and with a call to Toby to jump aboard, she swung herself into the caboose-rocker and opened the throttle.  The bell rang; the whistle tooted; and the engine gave a final snort and puff, bounding away countryward where spring had come.

Those of you who live where you can always look out on pleasant places, or who can travel at will into them, may find it hard to understand how wearisome and stupid it grows to be always in one room with an encompassing sky-line of roof-tops and chimneys, or may fail to sound the full depths of wonder and delight over the ride that Ward C took that memorable day.

The engineer pointed out everything meadows full of flowers, trees full of birds, gardens new planted, and corn-fields guarded by scarecrows.  She slowed up at the barnyards that the children might hear the crowing cocks and clucking hens with their new-hatched broods, and see the neighboring pastures with their flocks of sheep and tiny lambs.

“A ken them weel hoo the wee creepits bleeted hame i’ Aberdeen!” shouted Sandy, bleeting for the whole pastureful.

And when they came to the smallest of mountain brooks the engineer followed it, down, down, until it had grown into a stream with cowslipped banks; and on and on until it had grown into a river with little boats and sandy shore and leaping fish.  Here the engineer stopped the train; and every one who wanted to and there were none who did not went paddling; and some went splashing about just as if they could swim.

Back in the “special,” they climbed a hilltop, slowly, so that the engineer could point out each farm and pasture and stream in miniature that they had seen close by.

“That’s the wonder of a hilltop,” she explained; “you can see everything neighboring each other.”  And when they reached the crest she clapped her hands.  “Oh, children dear, wouldn’t it be beautiful to build a house on a hilltop just like this to live in always!”

Afterward they rode into deep woods, where the sunlight came down through the trees like splashes of gold; and here the engineer suggested they should have a picnic.

As Margaret MacLean stepped out into the hall to look up the dinner-trays she met the House Surgeon.

“Dreading it as much as usual?” he asked, in the teasing, big-brother tone; but he looked at her in quite another way.

She laughed.  “I’m hoping it isn’t going to be as bad as the time before and the time before that and the time before that.”  She pushed back some moist curls that had slipped out from under her cap engineering was hard work and the little-girl look came into her face.  She looked up mischievously at the House Surgeon.  “You couldn’t possibly guess what I’ve been doing all morning.”

The House Surgeon wrinkled his forehead in his most professional manner.  “Precautionary disinfecting?”

Margaret MacLean laughed again.  “That’s an awfully good guess, but it’s wrong.  I’ve been administering antitoxin for trusteria.”

In spite of her gay assurance before the House Surgeon, however, it was rather a sober nurse in charge of Ward C who sat down that afternoon with a book of faery-tales on her knee open to the story of “The Steadfast Tin Soldier.”  As for Ward C, it was supremely happy; its beloved “Miss Peggie” was on duty for the afternoon with the favorite book for company; moreover, no one had discovered as yet that this was Trustee Day and that the trustees themselves were already near at hand.

A shadow fell athwart the threshold that very moment.  Margaret MacLean could feel it without taking her eyes from the book, and, purposefully unmindful of its presence, she kept reading steadily on: 

“’The paper boat was rocking up and down; sometimes it turned round so quickly that the Tin Soldier trembled; but he remained firm, he did not move a muscle, and looked straight forward, shouldering his musket.’”

“Ah, Miss MacLean, may I speak with you a moment?” It was the voice of the Meanest Trustee.

The nurse in charge rose quickly and met him half-way, hoping to keep him and whatever he might have to say as far from the children as possible.

The Meanest Trustee continued in a little, short, sharp voice:  “The cook tells me that the patients in this ward have been having extra food prepared for them of late, such as fruit and jellies and scones and even ice-cream.  I discovered it for myself.  I saw some pineapples in the refrigerator when I was inspecting it this afternoon, and the cook said it was your orders.”

Margaret MacLean smiled her most ingratiating smile.  “You see,” she said, eagerly, “the children in this ward get fearfully tired of the same things to eat; it is not like the other wards where the children stay only a short time.  So I thought it would be nice to have something different once in a while; and then the old things would taste all the better don’t you see?  I felt sure the trustees would be willing.”

“Well, they are not.  It is an entirely unnecessary expense which I will not countenance.  The regular food is good and wholesome, and the patients ought to feel grateful for it instead of finding fault.”

The nurse looked anxiously toward the cots, then dropped her voice half an octave lower.

“The children have never found fault; it was just my idea to give them a treat when they were not expecting it.  As for the extra expense, there has been none; I have paid for everything myself.”

The Meanest Trustee readjusted his eye-glasses and looked closer at the young woman before him.  “Do you mean to say you paid for them out of your own wages?”

The nurse nodded.

“Then all I have to say is that I consider it an extremely idiotic performance which had better be stopped.  Children should not be indulged.”

And he went away muttering something about the poor always remaining poor with their foolish notions of throwing away money; and Margaret MacLean went back to the book of faery-tales.  But as she was looking for the place Sandy grunted forth stubbornly: 

“A’m no wantin’ ony scones the nicht, so ye maun na fetch them.”

And Peter piped out, “Trusterday, ain’t it, Miss Peggie?”

“Yes, dear.  Now shall we go on with the story?”

She had read to where the rat was demanding the passport when she recognized the President’s step outside the door.  In another moment he was standing beside her chair, looking at the book on her knee.

“Humph! faery-tales!  Is that not very foolish?  Don’t you think, Miss Margaret, it would be more suitable to their condition in life if you should select hmm something like Pilgrim’s Progress or Lives of the Saints and Martyrs?  Something that would be a preparation so to speak for the future.”  He stood facing her now, his back to the children.

“Excuse me” she was smiling up at him “but I thought this was a better preparation.”

The President frowned.  He was a much-tried man a man of charitable parts, who directed or presided over thirty organizations.  It took him nearly thirty days each month with the help of two private secretaries and a luxurious office to properly attend to all the work resulting therefrom; and the matters in hand were often so trying and perplexing that he had to go abroad every other year to avoid a nervous breakdown.

“I think we took up this matter at one of the business meetings,” he went on, patiently, “and some arrangement was made for one of the trustees to come and read the Bible and teach the children their respective creeds and catechisms.”

Margaret MacLean nodded.  “There was; Miss N “ and she named the Youngest and Prettiest Trustee “generally comes an hour before the meeting and reads to them; but to-day she was detained by a tango tea, I believe.  That’s why I chose this.”  Her eyes danced unconsciously as she tapped the book.

The President looked at her sharply.  “I should think, my dear young lady, that you, of all persons, would realize what a very serious thing life is to any one in this condition.  Instead of that I fear at times that you are shall I say flippant?” He turned about and looked at the children.  “How do you do?” he asked, kindly.

“Thank you, sir, we are very well, sir,” they chorused in reply.  Saint Margaret’s was never found wanting in politeness.

The President left; and the nurse in charge of Ward C went on with the reading.

“’The Tin Soldier stood up to his neck in water; deeper and deeper sank the boat, and the paper became more and more limp; then the water closed over him; but the Tin Soldier remained firm and shouldered his musket.’”

A group filled the doorway; it was the voice of the Oldest Trustee that floated in.  “This, my dear, is the incurable ward; we are very much interested in it.”

They stood just over the threshold the Oldest Trustee in advance, her figure commanding and unbent, for all her seventy years, and her lorgnette raised.  As she was speaking a little gray wisp of a woman detached herself from the group and moved slowly down the row of cots.

“Yes,” continued the Oldest Trustee, “we have two cases of congenital hip disease and three of spinal tuberculosis that is one of them in the second crib.”  Her eyes moved on from Sandy to Rosita.  “And the fifth patient has such a dreadful case of rheumatism.  Sad, isn’t it, in so young a child?  Yes, the Senior Surgeon says it is absolutely incurable.”

Margaret MacLean closed the book with a bang; for five minutes the children had been looking straight ahead with big, conscious eyes, hearing not a word.  Rebellion gripped at her heart and she rose quickly and went over to the group.

“Wouldn’t you like to come in and talk to the children?  They are rather sober this afternoon; perhaps you could make them laugh.”

“Yes, wouldn’t you like to go in?” put in the Oldest Trustee.  “They are very nice children.”

But the visitors shrank back an almost infinitesimal distance; and one said, hesitatingly: 

“I’m afraid we wouldn’t know quite what to say to them.”

“Perhaps you would like to see the new pictures for the nurses’ room?” the nurse in charge suggested, wistfully.

The Oldest Trustee glanced at her with a hint of annoyance.  “We have already seen them.  I think you must have forgotten, my dear, that it was I who gave them.”

With flashing cheeks Margaret MacLean fled from Ward C. If she had stayed long enough to watch the little gray wisp of a woman move quietly from cot to cot, patting each small hand and asking, tenderly, “And what is your name, dearie?” she might have carried with her a happier feeling.  At the door of the board-room she ran into the House Surgeon.

“Is it as bad as all that?” he asked after one good look at her.

“It’s worse a hundred times worse!” She tossed her head angrily.  “Do you know what is going to happen some day?  I shall forget who I am and who they are and what they have done for me and say things they will never forgive.  My mind-string will just snap, that’s all; and every little pestering, forbidden thought that has been kicking its heels against self-control and sense-of-duty all these years will come tumbling out and slip off the edge of my tongue before I even know it is there.”

“They are some hot little thoughts, I wager,” laughed the House Surgeon.

And then, from the far end of the cross-corridor, came the voice of the Oldest Trustee, talking to the group: 

“. . . such a very sweet girl never forgets her place or her duty.  She was brought here from the Foundling Asylum when she was a baby, in almost a dying condition.  Every one thought it was an incurable case; the doctors still shake their heads over her miraculous recovery.  Of course it took years; and she grew up in the hospital.”

With a look of dumb, battling anger the nurse in charge of Ward C turned from the House Surgeon her hands clenched while the voice of the Oldest Trustee came back to them, still exhibiting: 

“No, we have never been able to find out anything about her parentage; undoubtedly she was abandoned.  We named her ‘Margaret MacLean,’ after the hospital and the superintendent who was here then.  Yes, indeed a very, very sad

When the Oldest Trustee reached the boardroom it was empty, barring the primroses, which were guilelessly nodding in the green Devonshire bowl on the President’s desk.