CURABLES AND INCURABLES

No one who entered the board-room that late afternoon remembered that it was May Eve; and even had he remembered, it would have amounted to nothing more than the mental process of association.  It would not have given him the faintest presentiment that at that very moment the Little People were busy pressing their cloth-o’-dream mantles and reblocking their wishing-caps; that the instant the sun went down the spell would be off the faery raths, setting them free all over the world, and that the gates of Tir-na-n’Og would be open wide for mortals to wander back again.  No, not one of the board remembered; the trustees sat looking straight at the primroses and saw nothing, felt nothing, guessed nothing.

They were not unusual types of trustees who served on the board of Saint Margaret’s.  You could find one or more of them duplicated in the directors’ book of nearly any charitable institution, if you hunted for them; the strange part was, perhaps, that they were gathered together in a single unit of power.  Besides the Oldest and the Meanest Trustees, there were the Executive, the Social, the Disagreeable, the Busiest, the Dominating, the Calculating, the Petty, and the Youngest and Prettiest.  She came fluttering in a minute late from her tea; and right after her came the little gray wisp of a woman, who sat down in a chair by the door so unpretentiously as to make it appear as though she did not belong among them.  When the others saw her they nodded distantly:  they had just been talking about her.

It seemed that she was the widow of the Richest Trustee.  The board had elected her to fill her husband’s place lest the annual check of ten thousand a necessary item on Saint Margaret’s books might not be forthcoming; and this was her first meeting.  It was, in fact, her first visit to the hospital.  She could never bear to come during her husband’s trusteeship because, children having been denied her, she had wished to avoid them wherever and whenever she could, and spare herself the pain their suggestion always brought her.  She would not have come now, but that her husband’s memory seemed to require it of her.

For years gossip had been busy with the wife of the Richest Trustee as the widow she did not relax her hold.  What the trustees said that day they only repeated from gossip:  the little gray wisp of a woman was a nonentity nothing more with the spirit of a mouse.  She held no position in society, and what she did with her time or her money no one knew.  The trustees smiled inwardly and reckoned silently with themselves; at least they would never need to fear opposition from her on any matter of importance.

The last person of all to enter the boardroom was the Senior Surgeon.  The President had evidently waited for him, for he nodded to the House Surgeon to close the doors the moment he came.

Now the Senior Surgeon was a man who used capitals for Surgery, Science, and Self, unconsciously eliminating them elsewhere.  He had begun in Saint Margaret’s as house surgeon; and he had grown to be considered by many of his own profession the leading man of his day.  The trustees were as proud of him as they were of the hospital, and it has never been recorded in the traditions of Saint Margaret’s that the Senior Surgeon had ever asked for anything that went ungranted.  He seldom attended a board meeting; consequently when he came in at five-thirty there was an audible rustle of excitement and the raising of anticipatory eyebrows.

When the President called the meeting to order every trustee was present, as well as the heads of the four wards, the Superintendent, and the two surgeons.  The Senior Surgeon sat next to the President; the House Surgeon sat where he could watch equally well the profiles of the Youngest and Prettiest Trustee and Margaret MacLean.  His heart had always been inclined to intermit; or as he put it to himself he adored them both in quite opposite ways; and which way was the better and more endurable he had never been able to decide.

“In view of the fact,” said the President, rising, “that the Senior Surgeon can be with us but a short time this afternoon, and that he has a grave and vital issue to present to you, we will postpone the regular reports until the end of the meeting and take up at once the business in hand.”  He paused a moment, feeling the dramatic value of his next remark.  “For some time the Senior Surgeon has seriously questioned the hmm advisability of continuing the incurable ward.  He wishes very much to bring the matter before you, and he is prepared to give you his reasons for so doing.  Afterward, I think it would be wise for us to discuss the matter very informally.”  He bowed to the Senior Surgeon and sat down.

The Meanest Trustee snapped his teeth together in an expression of grim satisfaction.  “That ward is costing a lot of unnecessary expense, I think,” he barked out, sharply, “and it’s being run with altogether too free a hand.”  And he looked meaningly toward Margaret MacLean.

No one paid any particular attention to his remark; they were too deeply engrossed in the Senior Surgeon.  And the House Surgeon, watching, saw the profile of the Youngest and Prettiest Trustee become even prettier as it blushed and turned in witching eagerness toward the man who was rising to address the meeting.  The other profile had turned rigid and white as a piece of marble.

Now the Senior Surgeon could do a critical major operation in twenty minutes; and he could operate on critical issues quite as rapidly.  Speed was his creed; therefore he characteristically attacked the subject in hand without any prefatory remarks.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the board, the incurable ward is doing nothing.  I can see no possible reason or opportunity for further observation or experimentation there.  Every case in it at the present time, as well as every Case that is likely to come to us, is as a sealed document as far as science is concerned.  They are incurable they will remain incurable for all time.”

“How do you know?” The question came from the set lips of the nurse in charge of Ward C.

“How do we know anything in science?  We prove it by undeniable, irrevocable facts.”

“Even then you are not sure of it.  I was proved incurable but I got well.”

“That proves absolutely nothing!” And the Senior Surgeon growled as he always did when things went against his liking.  “You were a case in a thousand in a lifetime.  Because it happened once here in this hospital is no reason for believing that it will ever happen again.”

“Oh yes, it is!” persisted Margaret MacLean.  “There is just as much reason for believing as for not believing.  Every one of those children, in the ward now might yes, they might be a case in a thousand; and no one has any right to take that thousandth of a chance away from them.”

“You are talking nonsense stupid, irrational nonsense.”  And the Senior Surgeon glared at her.

The truth was that he had never forgiven her for getting well.  To have had a slip of a girl juggle with the most reliable of scientific data, as well as with his own undeniable skill as a diagnostician, and grow up normally, healthfully perfect, was insufferable.  He had never quite forgiven the Old Senior Surgeon for his share in it.  And to have her stand against him and his great desire, now, and actually throw this thing in his face, was more than he could endure.  He did not know that Margaret MacLean was fighting for what she loved most on earth, the one thing that seemed to belong to her, the thing that had been given into her keeping by the right of a memory bequeathed to her by the man he could not save.  Truth to tell, Margaret MacLean had never quite forgiven the Senior Surgeon for this, blameless as she knew him to be.

And so for the space of a quick breath the two faced each other, aggressive and accusing.

When the Senior Surgeon turned again to the President and the trustees his face wore a faint smile suggestive of amused toleration.

“I hope the time will soon come,” he said very distinctly, “when every training-school for nurses will bar out the so-called sentimental, imaginative type; they do a great deal of harm to the profession.  As I was saying, the incurable ward is doing nothing, and we need it for surgical cases.  Look over the reports for the last few months and you will see how many cases we have had to turn away twenty in March, sixteen in February; and this month it is over thirty one a day.  Now why waste that room for no purpose?”

“Every one of those cases could get into, some of the other hospitals; but who would take the incurables?  What would you do with the children in Ward C, now?” and Margaret MacLean’s voice rang out its challenge.

The Senior Surgeon managed to check an angry explosive and turned to the President for succor.

“I think,” said that man of charitable parts, “that the meeting is getting a trifle too informal for order.  After the Senior Surgeon has finished I will call on those whom I feel have something of hmm importance to say.  In the mean time, my dear young lady, I beg of you not to interrupt again.  The children, of course, could all be returned to their homes.”

“Oh no, they couldn’t ” There was something hypnotic in the persistence of the nurse in charge of Ward C.

Usually keenly sensitive, abnormally alive to impressions and atmosphere, she shrank from ever intruding herself or her opinions where they were not welcome; but now all personal consciousness was dead.  She was wholly unaware that she had worked the Senior Surgeon into a state where he had almost lost his self-control a condition heretofore unknown in the Senior Surgeon; that she had exasperated the President and reduced the trustees to open-mouthed amazement.  The lorgnette shook unsteadily in the hand of the Oldest; and, unmindful of it all, Margaret MacLean went steadily on: 

“Most of them haven’t any homes, and the others couldn’t live in theirs a month.  You don’t know how terrible they are five families in one garret, nothing to eat some of the time, father drunk most of the time, and filth and foul air all of the time.  That’s the kind of homes they have if they have any.”

Her outburst was met with a complete silence, ignoring and humiliating.  After a moment the Senior Surgeon went on, as if no one had spoken.

“Am I not right in supposing that you wish to further, as far as it lies within your power, the physical welfare and betterment of the poor in this city?  That you wish to do the greatest possible good to the greatest number of children?  Ah!  I thought so.  Well, do you not see how continuing to keep a number of incurable cases for two or three years or as long as they live is hindering this?  You are keeping out so many more curable cases.  For every case in that ward now we could handle ten or fifteen surgical cases each year.  Is that not worth considering?”

The trustees nodded approval to one another; it was as if they would say, “The Senior Surgeon is always right.”

The surgeon himself looked at his watch; he had three minutes left to clinch their convictions.  Clearly and admirably he outlined his present scope of work; then, stepping into the future, he showed into what it might easily grow, had it the room and beds.  He showed indisputably what experimental surgery had done for science what a fertile field it was; and wherein lay Saint Margaret’s chance to plow a furrow more and reap its harvest.  At the end he intimated that he had outgrown his present limited conditions there, that unless these were changed he should have to betake himself and his operative skill elsewhere.

A painfully embarrassing hush closed in on the meeting as the Senior Surgeon resumed his seat.  It was broken by an enthusiastic chirp from the Youngest and Prettiest Trustee.  She had never attempted to keep her interest for him concealed in the bud, causing much perturbation to the House Surgeon, and leading the Disagreeable Trustee to remark, frequently: 

“Good Lord!  She’ll throw herself at his head until he loses consciousness, and then she’ll marry him.”

“I think,” said she, beaming in the direction of the Senior Surgeon, “that it would be perfectly wonderful to be the means of discovering some great new thing in surgery.  And as our own great surgeon has just said, it is really ridiculous to let a few perfectly incurable cases stand in the way of science.”

The House Surgeon looked from the beaming profile to the tense, drawn outline of mouth and chin belonging to the nurse in charge of Ward C, and he found himself wondering if art had ever pictured a crucified Madonna, and, if so, why it had not taken Margaret MacLean as a model.  That moment the President called his name.

The House Surgeon was still young and unspoiled enough to blush whenever he was consulted.  Moreover, he hated to speak in public, knowing, as he did, that he lacked the cultured manner and the polished speech of the Senior Surgeon.  He always crawled out of it whenever he could, putting some one else more ready of tongue in his place.  He was preparing to crawl this time when another look at the white profile in front of him brought him to his feet.

“See here,” he burst out, bluntly, “we all know the chief is as clever as any surgeon in the country, and that he can do anything in the world he sets out to do, even to turning Saint Margaret’s into a surgical laboratory.  But you ought to stop him you’ve got to stop him that is your business as trustees of this institution.  We don’t need any more surgical laboratories just yet they are getting along fast enough at Rockefeller, Johns Hopkins, and the Mayo clinic.  What we scientific chaps need to remember and it ought to be hammered at us three times a day, and then some is that humanity was never put into the world for the sole purpose of benefiting science.  We are apt to forget this and get to thinking that a few human beings more or less don’t count in the face of establishing one scientific fact.”

He paused just long enough to snatch a breath, and then went racing madly on.  “Institutions are apt to forget that they are taking care of the souls and minds of human beings as well as their bodies.  It seems to me that the man who founded this hospital intended it for humane rather than scientific purposes.  His wishes ought to be considered now; and I wager he would say, if he were here, to let science go hang and keep the incurables.”

The House Surgeon sat down, breathing heavily and mopping his forehead.  It was the longest speech he had ever made, and he was painfully conscious of its inadequacy.  The Senior Surgeon excused himself and left the room, not, however, until he had given the House Surgeon a look pregnant with meaning; Saint Margaret’s would hardly be large enough to hold them both after the 30th of April.

The trustees moved restlessly in their chairs.  The unexpected had happened; there was an internal rupture at Saint Margaret’s; and for forty years the trustees had boasted of its harmonious behavior and kindly feelings.  In a like manner do those dwellers in the shadow of a volcano continue to boast of their safety and the harmlessness of the crater up to the very hour of its eruption.  And all the while the gray wisp of a woman by the door sat silent, her hands still folded on her lap.

At last the President rose; he coughed twice before speaking.  “I think we will call upon the hospital committee now for their reports.  Afterward we will take up the question of the incurable ward among the trustees hmm alone.”

Every one sat quietly, almost listlessly, during the reading until Margaret MacLean rose, the report for Ward C in her hand.  Then there came a raising of heads and a stiffening of backs and a setting of chins.  She was very calm, the still calm of the China Sea before a typhoon strikes it; when she had finished reading she put the report on the chair back of her and faced the President with clasped hands and a smile.

“It’s funny,” she said, irrelevantly, “for the first time in my life I am not afraid here.”

And the House Surgeon muttered, under his breath:  “Great guns!  That mind-string has snapped.”

“There is more to the report than I had the courage to write down when I was making it out; but I can give it very easily now, if you will not mind listening a little longer.  You have always thought that I came back to Saint Margaret’s because I felt grateful for what you had done for me for the food and the clothes and the care, and later for the education that you paid for.  This isn’t true.  I am grateful very grateful but it is a dutiful kind of gratitude which wouldn’t have brought me back in a thousand years.  I am so sorry to feel this way.  Perhaps I would not if, in all the years that I was here as a child, one of you had shown me a single personal kindness, or some one had thought to send me a letter or a message while I was away at school.  No, you took care of me because you thought it was your duty, and I am grateful for the same reason; but it was quite another thing which brought me back to Saint Margaret’s.”

The smile had gone; she was very sober now.  And the House Surgeon, still watching the two profiles, suddenly felt his heart settle down to a single steady beat.  He wanted to get up that very instant and tell the nurse in charge of Ward C what had happened and what he thought of her; but instead he dug his hands deep in his pockets.  How in the name of the seven continents had he never before realized that she was the sweetest, finest, most adorable, and onliest girl in the world, and worth a whole board-room full of youngest and prettiest trustees?

“I came back,” went on Margaret MacLean, slowly, “really because of the Old Senior Surgeon, to stand, as he stood in the days long ago, between you and the incurable ward; to shut out if I could the little, thoughtless, hurting things that you are always saying without being in the least bit conscious of them, and to keep the children from wanting too much the friendship and loving interest that, somehow, they expected from you.  I wanted to try and make them feel that they were not case this and case that, abnormally diseased and therefore objects of pity and curiosity to be pointed out to sympathetic visitors, but children just children with a right to be happy and loved.  I wanted to fill their minds so full of fun and make-believe that they would have to forget about their poor little bodies.  I tried to make you feel this and help without putting it cruelly into words; but you would never understand.  You have never let them forget for a moment that they are ‘incurables,’ any more than you have let me forget that I am a foundling.”

She stopped a moment for breath, and the smile came back a wistfully pleading smile.  “I am afraid that last was not in the report.  What I want to say is please keep the incurable ward; take the time to really know them and love them a little.  If you only could you would never consider sending them away for a moment.  And if, in addition to the splendid care you have given their bodies, you would only help to keep their minds and hearts sound and sweet, and shield them against curious visitors, why why some of them might turn out to be ’a case in a thousand.’  Don’t you see can’t you see that they have as much right to their scraps of life and happiness as your children have to their complete lives, and that there is no place for them anywhere if Saint Margaret’s closes her doors?”

With an overwhelming suddenness she became conscious of the attitude of the trustees.  She, who was nothing but a foundling and a charity patient herself, had dared to pass judgment on them; it was inconceivable it was impertinent it was beyond all precedent.  Only the gray wisp of a woman sat silent, seeming to express nothing.  Margaret MacLean’s cheeks flamed; she shrank into herself, her whole being acutely alive to their thoughts.  The scared little-girl look came into her face.

“Perhaps perhaps,” she stammered, pitifully, “after what I have said you would rather I did not stay on in charge of Ward C?”

The Dominating Trustee rose abruptly.  “Mr. President, I suggest that we act upon Miss MacLean’s resignation at once.”

“I second the motion,” came in a quick bark from the Meanest Trustee, while the Oldest Trustee could be heard quoting, “Sharper than a serpent’s tooth

The Executive Trustee rose, looking past Margaret MacLean as he spoke.  “In view of the fact that we shall possibly discontinue the incurable ward, and that Miss MacLean seems wholly unsatisfied with our methods and supervision here, I motion that her resignation be accepted now, and that she shall be free to leave Saint Margaret’s when her month shall have expired,”

“I second the motion,” came from the Social Trustee, while she added to the Calculating, who happened to be sitting next:  “So ill-bred.  It just shows that a person can never be educated above her station in life.”

The President rose.  “The motion has been made and seconded.  Will you please signify by raising your hands if it is your wish that Miss MacLean’s resignation be accepted at once?”

Hand after hand went up.  Only the little gray wisp of a woman in the chair by the door sat with her hands still folded on her lap.

“It is, so to speak, a unanimous vote.”  There was a strong hint of approval in the President’s voice.  He was a good man; but he belonged to that sect which holds as one of the main articles of its faith, “I believe in the infallibility of the rich.”

“Can any one tell me when Miss MacLean’s time expires?”

The person under discussion answered for herself.  “On the last day of the month, Mr. President.”

“Oh, very well.”  He was extremely polite in his manner.  “We thank you for your very full and hmm comprehensive report.  After to-night you are excused from your duties at Saint Margaret’s.”

The President bowed her courteously out of the board-room, while the primroses in the green Devonshire bowl on his desk still nodded guilelessly.