Victory (Margaret Busbee Shipp)

by Margaret Busbee Shipp

“You are assigned to room 11, Miss Castleton.”

The girl went white and put out a hand blindly.

“Not the leper case!”

“You are aware that I have fixed a system of rotation,” said the superintendent of the nurses. “That room happened to fall to you. There has been unnecessary excitement over this case. Dr. Angler explained that there is very little danger of contagion—less, indeed, than Miss Turner faces in nursing diphtheria.”

“I can’t,” replied Cecilia, desperately. “I can’t.”

The superintendent’s face changed and hardened. She was not used to insubordination.

“As you choose, Miss Castleton. Of course, your failure to report for this duty in the morning means your dismissal from the hospital.”

Cecilia locked herself in when she reached the little white bedroom that had been hers for a year. She began to pack so hurriedly that soon her room was stripped bare of everything save the Winged Victory.

“I shall leave you here. You were mine if I won, and I have failed. Perhaps it is well that the years have defaced you and we see only your triumphant onward movement. Perhaps if we could look into your face you would not stir us so deeply. Perhaps it is lined and sharp; perhaps it is worn with past tears or the sweat of blood or the pock marks of disease!”

She shuddered and sat at her dressing table, where she could not see the figure that seemed a mute reproach.

The temptation to wire the situation to her father assailed her. She knew that he would come on the first train and that he would forbid her to take charge of a leper. The decision would he taken out of her hands: her father would shoulder the responsibility with the hospital authorities. Her dear, bluff father, how she yearned for him! Her mother with all a mother’s pride in her oldest daughter, how frantic she would be at the mere suggestion that Cecilia should come in contact with this loathsome disease.

Suddenly she leaned over and looked at herself in the mirror curiously, as if she were seeing herself for the first time.

Gray eyes looked at her, deep, starry, long-lashed, under brows dark and delicate, emphasizing their contrast to the pale gold of her hair. The mouth was sweet, grave, and spiritual; the skin of so soft and fine a texture that Nannie Despard declared that “Cecilia had stolen the complexion of a baby angel.”

Chaotic memories crowded her brain. She remembered the closing exercises of the school she had attended. There had Inn a picture gallery, each tableau of which was received with courteous but moderate applause. When the curtain rose on Cecilia as the Blessed Damozel, leaning out from a dark background, with the light thrown on her face and her heavy braids “yellow like ripe corn,” there was absolute stillness, and the young girl felt sorry for her mother’s disappointment. In another moment the house rocked with applause. Four times the curtain had to be raised to satisfy the audience, who appreciated beauty like true Kentuckians.

Her old minister had sought her out after it was over.

“Great beauty has been given you, daughter. Remember that it is a gift.”

Sometimes those words came into her mind during the triumphant two years that followed, in which she reigned among the undisputed belles in the Blue Grass region, at the New Orleans Mardi Gras festivities and at the Virginia White Sulphur in the summers. Just a year ago she had given up her social career, to her mother’s despair and her father’s amazement.

“Why on earth had you rather wait on strange sick folks than have a dozen fine young Kentuckians waiting on you?”

“Let me try!” she pleaded. “The work has always seemed to call me.”

There is nothing surer of itself than young idealism, and Col. Castleton’s consent was won on the same principle that he gave Cecilia fruit cake when she was two and a pony at five, “because she wanted it.”

There was a knock at the door, and Cecilia opened it to admit Nannie Despard.

“Dearest. We have only ten minutes before our lights are out. I heard that you were put on the leper case, and I went to the superintendent. I told her that I was just crazy to have that case from a professional point of view, and I begged to be allowed to exchange with whoever had it. She demurred, but finally consented on condition that you will signify your entire willingness to undertake that case or any other on which you may be put hereafter. Of course, it’s a mere formality, but you’ll have to do it. They will never repeat this mistake and admit another leper. It was almost dark when Dr. Chalmers examined her. She wore a light veil, and the symptoms she gave were entirely misleading. They tried to get her in at the United States quarantine station, but they refused to take her. There is no leper hospital in the State, and, of course, they can’t turn her into the streets, so that’s the quandary in which the poor dear hospital finds itself.”

Nannie had talked very fast, fearing an interruption. Cecilia’s eyes were full of tears.

“Nannie, I was about to run away. I was thinking only of myself. If I forsake my place some one will have to fill it, some one will have to do my work. You have made me see things as they are, you dear, unselfish heart! I will stay and do my own work.”

“Oh, Cecilia, if you should take that frightful disease!” sobbed Nannie. “It wouldn’t matter so much about a brown witch like me!”

“Hurry back to your room, Nancy: the lights will be out in a minute. You shan’t call yourself names; you are my good angel,” said Cecilia, laying her soft cheek caressingly against her friend’s.

Alone again, she sat for a long time looking out into the darkness. The room grew cold and she shivered unconsciously. She tried to adjust her thoughts to the horror of the duty that lay before her, the loathsome contact, the possible contamination. When the dawn broke she put on her uniform again, without having touched her bed all night. As she pinned on her cap her lips quivered into a tremulous smile, and with a swift impulse she knelt and kissed the cold purity of Victory.

The superintendent had reported to the chief resident physician, Dr. Staples, that Miss Castleton had refused the leper case, and that Miss Despard, of course with Miss Castleton’s sanction, had volunteered for it. She was relieved at the turn of affairs, for otherwise Miss Castleton’s insubordination must have been punished with dismissal, but now the formality of an apology and a retraction could do away with that necessity. The leper case would he kept from the publicity—for many reasons to be deprecated—which might follow upon the dismissal of a nurse of so prominent a family.

Staples heard her through in silence.

“Don’t agitate yourself over the matter, Miss Hawkins.” he said, and the usual positive ring in his voice was unusually in evidence. “Miss Castleton will be sure to report for duty in the morning. Naturally she recoiled from the idea at first.”

Miss Hawkins lifted her brows somewhat incredulously, but left him without replying. “He’s like all the rest.” she thought. “Men always pin their faith to a pretty face. But he is so wrapped up in his work I didn’t know he would notice whether a nurse squinted or wore goggles. I’m sure he never speaks to one.”

There she was mistaken, for Staples had spoken to Miss Castleton twice.

A brickmason had been brought in, his face a bloody pulp from a fall. Cecilia, then a probationer, had been called upon to assist with the dressings for the first time. Staples noticed her increasing pallor and that she was biting her lip fiercely In the effort to regain her self-control. When the dressings were done she collapsed, though without losing consciousness.

Dr. Frost went at once to her assistance. “It’s all over,” he assured her soothingly.

Dr. Staples’ incisive voice cut in.

“It is never over. The boy in the next cot is asking for water.”

It was said of Staples that he gave his patients such unfailing gentleness that he had none left for any one else. If his creed for those who chose the life of service was stern, it was untainted by selfishness; if he exacted much from others, he was absolutely unsparing toward himself.

Cecilia made three efforts to rise before she could control her rebellious body and quivering nerves. As she went to bring the water she heard Dr. Frost say:

“You were pretty hard on her, weren’t you? She will never be able to hold out, in this work.”

“I prophesy her ultimate victory,” Staples replied.

She turned involuntarily and her eyes met his grave, kind ones. Gratitude and comprehension flashed into her own.

There was no intercourse between doctors and nurses at the hospital, except an occasional clandestine flirtation. Cecilia was often thrown with Dr. Staples in his professional capacity, and she appreciated his skill and his reserve. One day he was called in to an emergency case, and he found Cecilia there. Generally the very regularity of her beauty gave it a degree of coldness, but to-day she looked like an embarrassed girl instead of a calm goddess.

“I can’t do anything with him; he won’t let me touch him. He—he thinks that I am—”

The Irishman saved her the trouble of finishing.

“Howly Mother!” he exclaimed, crossing himself. “‘Tis too great honor ye’ve done me, intoirely! Iv ‘tis goin’ ter haven I am, enny wan iv yar decent young angels cud take me without throubliing yer blessed silf!”

Staples joined Cecilia in a good laugh that seemed to put a friendly understanding behind them.

On the happy day that Cecilia’s probation ended and the coveted nurses’s cap was given her some of the medical students sent her a clothes basket full of Parma violets. From her Kentucky home she received a lone telegram of congratulation and a “round robin” of regret.

But to Cecilia the day’s significance was embodied in the marble Victory that came with Staples’ card.

In spite of his assurance to Miss Hawkins, Staples felt a strange sinking at heart as he passed down the hall of the contagious pavilion in the gray morning. The door of room 11 was ajar, and its occupant had already dressed. When he saw that she was alone he caught his breath sharply, and then remembered with quick relief that it lacked a few minutes to 7. In another moment he heard a light footstep, and he stepped into the vacant room opposite.

Cecilia’s eyes had the wide, unseeing look that they wore the day she went for the little boy’s water. There was about her the unmistakable stamp of spiritual conflict, painfully won. At the door she paused for a tense instant.

The woman was sitting on the floor, in the corner by the radiator, so that the high iron bed was between Cecilia and herself, and it gave one the impression of looking at an animal in a cage. Indeed the undefinable resemblance she bore to a lion struck Staples so forcibly that he felt as if she must roar. Her skin was a mottled brown; she had lost all eyebrows, the eyelashes were very long and thin, the lids saggy and bellowed out: the nose was flattened, the alae puffed out: the mouth elongated and heavily drooped at the corners.

“How could Saundrs have failed to recognize leprosy?” thought Staples, with the impatience of an accurate diagnostician over so palpable a mistake.

“Good morning: I hope you slept well.” said Cecilia. “I am your nurse.”

Though the words were forced and mechanical nothing could alter the sweetness of her voice.

“Ain’t there some mistake?” asked the patient wonderingly. “It don’t seem natural for a fine lady like you to be waitin’ on the likes of me. I should think you’d get hired somewheres else.”

“I hope she won’t,” said Staples, entering. “She is the best of nurses, so don’t you persuade her into some other work, Mrs. Long.”

He put out his hand and took hers in his firm, strong clasp. It touched him to feel how the slender fingers were trembling.

“But house girls don’t have such long hours, and they get Thursday and Sunday afternoons off,” persisted Mrs. Long.

A wan little smile crept to the girl’s lips. The doctor chattered for some time to Mrs. Long, and then beckoned to Cecilia to follow him out of the room. He had taken the precaution to write down the minutest instructions in regard to disinfectants and the proper sanitary precautions.

“There are more directions for me than for my patient.”

“Just make her as comfortable as you can, and carry out the orders concerning her. There is no cure for her, poor soul! I shall come in as often as I can, and help you all I can. Be careful, but don’t be afraid.”

Many times during that long morning the thought of his sympathy confronted her. She remembered how one of the doctors, a Kentuckian whom she had known at home, had characterized Staples:

“He’s the hundredth man, a man of his own peculiar kind. Professionally, I don’t know a man of his years who has done such brilliant work. Though there are men here whose names are known throughout the country, in a few years Staples will rank an easy first. Most men have two sides, I have known squares and even octagons; but Staples has just one side—the professional. He’s machine all the way through. I’ve watched the man with beautiful women, clever women, magnetic women, and they’re all one to him, and the whole bunch less interesting than a hobo with complicated symptoms. That’s why women are apt to be foolish about him. Let a man be impersonal, and the whole of womankind rises as a unit and resents it! A very charming woman told me that just after her operation, Staples was so gentle in his manner, so exquisitely considerate of her comfort, so watchful by night and by day, that she thought complacently that if he liked her so much when she was at her worst, how captivated he would be when she again had the advantage of her pretty gowns and her artistic maid. “But dear me!” she said, “‘when I was out of danger, and convalescing in becoming negligees, that abominable man turned into a bald-headed doctor who squinted. The first time I met him after I left the hospital he bowed vaguely, and had forgotten me utterly. He would make an attentive husband to a chronic invalid—her name might escape him now and then, but he would always remember her temperature!”

“Do you like music?” asked Mrs. Long, opening her trunk. “I think you’d admire to hear my hand organ.”

It played only three tunes, but how Cecilia blessed it! When the nervous tension seemed unbearable, there was always the organ to fall back upon, as Mrs, Long never tired of it.

“Seems to me tunes is like friends, you like the same ones and the old ones and the more you know em, the more company you find ‘em!”

Cecilia repeated this to the doctor, and nothing flattered the sick woman more than to have him ask for the organ’s entire repertory.

Very delicately Staples had made her understand the contagious nature of her disease, and it was touching to see how solicitous she was for Cecilia. She bathed herself and carefully avoided all personal contact, so far as it was possible. She began to fret for her husband and to beg Cecilia to send for him. The nurse tried in vain to comfort her, and she felt relieved when the doctor came in. She had learned that his coming always seemed to make the rough places plain, but she feared that he made a mistake when he told Mrs. Long in plain words that she was a leper, and that the hospital would not allow her husband to come to her. Instead of the outburst that Cecilia dreaded, the woman’s face was relieved and actually smiling.

“Doctor, what a load you’ve taken off me! ‘Course he can’t come, poor Sam! I was ‘fraid it was whisky. To think after all the care I’ve taken of him all these years (he’s a right delicate man for all he looks so hearty and has such a steady appetite), to think I’d be riskin’ him with leprosy: But I didn’t know I had it, doctor, she added apologetically, “I thought it was a Bible sickness.

“How did you know it was best to tell her?” asked Cecilia a few moments later, under cover of the music.

“It is easy to deal with unselfish people,” he answered, smiling down into her earnest eyes.

“It’s the poor souls who are wrapped up in themselves that shut all the gates of approach. Yesterday young fellow was brought in, mortally injured in that boiler explosion. I went to bring his mother. ‘Bob dyin’ and it rainin,’ and me such a bad cold!” she whimpered. It is a mercy we can give poor Mrs. Long a valid excuse for not seeing her husband. The brute has not even returned to inquire about her. Do give us that last tune over again, Mrs. Long. If I wear out your organ I’ll give you a new one for your Easter gift.”

“I had a present to-day,” answered she with childish pleasure, pointing to a row of flower pots. “I was fretting, foolish-like, over the flowers I’d left at home, and Miss Castleton ‘phoned to a flower shop and got me all these. Look at the teeny buds down in the hyacinth leaves. It beats all how she got the very kinds I like the best. Ain’t the red geranium a beauty?”

The doctor praised the indoor garden, and when the music began again he turned to Cecilia, the light of warm approval in his face.

“Don’t,” she whispered impetuously. “I don’t deserve it. You don’t know how I rebel against the work, or how afraid I grow—or how terrible, how increasingly terrible her disease is to me! I can’t get accustomed to it. Her voice, her poor hands, her marred face—they torture me! If I should become—what she is—cut off from my people—my poor mother—” She could not finish the disjointed sentence.

“To-morrow I shall send you a brochure on leprosy, which contains some interesting statistics. You are to read every word, remember. I’ll send some picture magazines to amuse your patient while you are reading.”

His quiet professional manner had its instant effect upon her.

“Forgive me,” she said regretfully. “You have enough cares of other people, always and always! Then you come here and I tax you with mine—I, who have never had a burden worth the name before

“To help you is my highest privilege, my deepest joy.” The honest reproach in his voice was the best emphasis.

“He does love to help people,” thought the girl. “The chronic invalid might be a very happy one, on those days when he remembered her name.”

The next day Staples brought the book on leprosy, and explained the technical terms to her. She was surprised to learn that statistics, carefully compiled through many years, support the claim of dermatologists that leprosy is but slightly contagious. Certain high authorities contend that the disease cannot be transmitted by touch, breath or even inoculation. She read of authenticated instances of lepers’ wives who tried in vain to inoculate themselves.

In the five weeks that followed, Cecilia gradually outgrew her fear that the disease would be communicated to her. But the instinctive physical shrinking was a torture that never lessened. Mrs. Long grew more and more repulsive in appearance. The sight of her piteous “leper claws” (no longer hands) hovering over the delicate flowers used to wring the girl’s heart.

The voix lepreuse, its likeness to the human voice made all the ghastlier by its unlikeness, was as if some anomalous creature, half man, half beast, were given the speech of one with the vocal chords of the other.

To help her to make the closing scene of the poor life comfortable and serene became the one object of Cecilia’s days. She lay awake at night thinking of ways to amuse or gratify her patient, and every sacrifice she made, every act of gentle kindness, brought the quick reward of gratitude.

“Did you ever know so grateful a heart as hers?” Cecilia asked the doctor.

He forgot to reply. He was thinking how pale the girl looked, and how deep were the shadows under her eyes.

“I have been anxious about her to-day. When I came in this morning she had opened the window to give her flowers the benefit of the rain. Her night dress was damp and she was chilled, though her sensations of heat or cold are so impaired that she did not realize her imprudence. I kept her in bed until you came, for I fear a deep, cold has settled.”

Very quickly it developed into pneumonia—the angel of quick release that often grows impatient with his slow course of leprosy.

“I’ve had a heap of worriting. I reckon the good Lord gave me this nice time at the last to make up for the rest. I’ve had the best time of my life since I’ve been here. You and the doctor have been so good to me, dearie.”

Later, with failing voice, she asked:

“Read it again—about the ten.”

Cecilia read the story of the ten lepers who were healed.

“If you had been there I know there would have been two who returned to give thanks,” said the girl, her face wet with tears. “And God sees and loves your grateful heart just as He did His lepers, so long ago.”

The poor, scarred face was for a moment irradiated with joyful awe. Husbanding her ebbing strength, she lay quiet until she could gasp out:

“Doctor—will you—look after—her?”

All his deep love, all his immeasurable tenderness, throbbed in his voice as he answered:

“Always—if she will bless me so.”

Perhaps on the borderland the unselfish, passing spirit was gladdened by a revelation of the beauty and fullness that life held for the two who had learned to love in its best school—self-sacrifice.