"David, I'm afraid you'll have to talk to that girl. She's sitting up in the bow there flirting with one of the waiters, and though I've sent Watty twice after her, she won't stir."

As majestically as my five feet four would permit, I moved to the front of the boat.

"Mary, Mrs. Gemmell wants you right away."

She took time to exchange a laughing farewell with the good-looking waiter, and explained to me en route:

"That's Bill Moreland. I knew him quite well in Lake City. I've met him at balls."

In the morning before we reached Chicago, she managed to get in a long confabulation with another waiter, whom I am sure she had never met in Lake City, nor anywhere else.

"See here, Mary! If this is the way you're going to behave, you go straight back to Lake City on that boat, and don't see one bit of the Fair."

Her manners were mended till we were actually in Jackson Park, but then:

"She's a philanthropist, Belle, a lover of mankind—Columbian Guard, Gospel Charioteer, Turk in the bazaar. The creed or the color doesn't matter so long as he calls himself a man."

I am afraid I was cross, for it did not take one day to realize what an undertaking it was going to be to keep track of my family, who had never before seemed too numerous. Daily at 10 A. M., in the Michigan Building, did I hand over to Will Axworthy the most troublesome of the lot, and daily did I wish he would keep her for better or worse.

On the Fourth of July cannonading began at daybreak, and for once I sympathized in my mother's objection to the license accorded to young Americans. They set off firecrackers, not by the bunch but by the bushel; kerosene and dynamite were their ambrosia and nectar. What with fighting for lunch in overcrowded restaurants, and then retaliating by stealing chairs out of the same, hunting through the various booths in the Midway to collect my three younger sons when it was time to send them home, and rescuing my two little girls from an over-supply of ice cream sodas and chocolate drops, I did not specially enjoy the glorious Fourth.

Toward evening there was not a foot of Fair ground undecorated by a banana skin, a crust of bread, or a flying paper. Belle considered the signs "Keep off the Grass" quite superfluous, and pulling one up by the roots she sat down on it, thereby keeping the letter, if not the spirit of the law.

"Now, Dave," said she, "the family are all safe off the grounds, and you can go and get a gondola to come and take us for a sail before dark. Everybody is moving toward the lake front to wait for the fireworks, and the lagoons are not so crowded as they were. Let's pretend we're on our honeymoon."

So seldom does Belle wax sentimental over me, I hailed her proposition with outward indifference but inward joy. Securing a gondola to ourselves, in it we were gently swayed through canal and under bridge in the mystical evening light.

The distant rumble of a train on the Intramural, or a quack from a sleepy duck among the rushes, alone broke the stillness.

"This is where I belong!" exclaimed Belle. "I've seen before those Eastern-looking towers and minarets, with the sunset glow on the cloud masses behind them. Look! there's a Turk and a Hindoo crossing the bridge. This is the region, this the soil, the clime. I always knew I wasn't meant for Western America."

"You must have been very naughty last time to have been raised in Michigan this trip. Still this is only Chicago!"

"It's not Chicago! It's the world! Listen to that now—the music of the spheres!"

We approached another gondola that had withdrawn itself from the center of the channel close in to a small island. The man at the stern was doing nothing very picturesquely, but the man at the bow, a swarthy Venetian, was pouring out his soul in an aria from "Cavalleria Rusticana." His voice might not have passed muster at Covent Garden, but in the unique stage setting, which included a group of eager listeners on abridge behind him, one could forgive a break on a high note or two.

The singer threw himself into the spirit of the composition, cast his eyes upward with hand on his heart, and bent them to earth again for the approval of his passengers. There were but two, a young man and a young lady, and to the latter was the hero in costume directing his amorous glances.

"There's romance for you!" said I to Belle, who is notoriously on the lookout for it. I directed our gondolier to draw nearer to his enamoured compatriot. My wife replied uneasily:

"I don't know the man, or boy, for that's all he is, but if that isn't Mary's hat——"

"Mary! Phew! What's become of Axworthy?"

As we approached the comfortable-looking pair, Mary bowed to us smilingly, and called the attention of her companion to her "father and mother"—darn her impudence!

The boat ride was spoiled for Belle and me, our white elephant having arisen to haunt us once more. We landed and walked over to the lake front, where the whole slope was packed with people waiting for the fireworks to begin.

Someone started to sing "Way Down upon the Swanee Ribber," and everybody joined in. "Nearer, my God, to Thee" was also most impressive from the vast impromptu chorus. In the foreground Lake Michigan lay darkly expectant, with a large black cloud upon its horizon, though the stars shone overhead. A half-circle of boats extended from the long Exhibition Wharf on the right, round to the warship Illinois on the left, and from the latter a search light, an omnipresent eye, swept the crowd with rapidly veering glance, till it concentrated its gaze on the dark balloon which rose so mysteriously from the water. Suddenly from this balloon was suspended the Stars and Stripes in colored lights. The crowd cheered like mad, the boats whistled, and sent up rockets galore.

On went the programme. Bombs tested the strength of our wearied ear-drums, fiery snakes sizzled through the air, big wheels spurted brilliant marvels, and along the very edge of the lake, to the great discomfort of the front rows of the stalls, a line of combustibles behaved like gigantic footlights on a spree.

"David, who do you suppose that was with Mary?"

I had been up in the air with George Washington, surrounded by "First in War, First in Peace, etc.," in letters of fire, and I was unwillingly recalled to earth.

"Haven't the remotest idea. Hope she hasn't given Axworthy the slip."

"I'm only hoping that he has not given her the slip. I'd never have brought her to the Fair if he hadn't agreed to look after her."

At that moment there was a surging of the mighty crowd, caused by a band of college students pushing their way through, shoulder to shoulder, singing one of their rousing ditties. Some people who had been standing on their hired rolling chairs had narrow escapes from being flung upon the shoulders of those in front. Some did not escape—Mary for instance, who landed between us as if shot from a catapult.

"I knew I was going to fall, so I just jumped to where I seen you two," said she, with her customary calmness, and then she turned to assure her escort of the gondola, who was anxiously elbowing his way to her, that she was entirely unhurt.

Blushing prettily, she introduced the lad as "Mr. Tom Axworthy—cousin of the Mr. Axworthy you know."

Mr. Tom talked to Mrs. Gemmell with the ease and assurance of ninety rather than nineteen, while I exchanged a few words aside with the maiden:

"Where is the Mr. Axworthy that we know?"

"He had some business to do in town to-night, so he left me in charge of this cousin of his—just a lovely fellow!"

"Humph! Introduced you to any more of his relations?"

"Oh, yes—an uncle; quite an old bachelor, but lovely too!"

"And I suppose you've been round with the uncle as well."

"Not very much. He was to have taken me up in the balloon yesterday, but the cyclone burst it."

"We're going home now, and I think you'd better say 'Good-night' to Mr. Tom Axworthy and come with us."

After waiting two hours and a half for standing room on a suburban train, we reached the hotel at an early hour on July the 5th, dusty, smoke-stained, and powder-scented, like veterans from a field of battle.

That was not by any means the last of Mr. Tom Axworthy. During the remainder of our stay in Chicago it was he quite as frequently as his more mature and eligible cousin who exchanged a lingering farewell with Mary at the ladies' entrance to our hotel, and a great fear arose in the heart of Belle that the young woman was fooling away her time with this impecunious boy, instead of making the most of her opportunities to come to a satisfactory understanding with his cousin. Every morning did she gaze pathetically into my face, saying:

"I do hope Axworthy will propose to-day!" and once she added:

"I cannot face another winter in the same house with that girl and your mother. Grandma has taken it into her head that Mary is my pet lamb, the idol of my heart, for whom she, and you too, have been set aside. She doesn't see that it worries me half to death to have Mary tagging round after me the whole time, and overrunning the house with her beaux. Neither of our own girls is old enough yet, thank goodness, to consider herself my companion and equal, to wear my gloves, my boots, my best hairpins, and to use my favorite perfume; to come and plant herself down beside me whenever I'm talking confidentially to anyone, to be determined to have her finger into every pie, to know what I'm reading or thinking about. She'll insist on knowing my dreams next!"

"Perhaps you mesmerize her."

"If I did, I'd make her keep away from me! I could stand it all better if I thought she really cared a straw for me, but I have the feeling that she regards me merely as a basis for supplies."

"We can only trust, then, that the basis may be speedily transferred to Axworthy!"

On our return from the World's Fair, the family stopped off at Interlaken, but I had to go on into town to the Echo office. To my surprise, Mary joined me at my solitary dinner at the "House of the Seven Gables," where Margaret, as usual, was in charge, and she remained there for the rest of the week.

"Where's Mary?" was Belle's greeting, when I joined her on Saturday.

"She's in town."

"Why didn't you bring her out with you?"

"Didn't know you wanted her. She said she'd like to stay in Lake City over Sunday, to take the Communion."

"Take the Communion indeed! She wants to be left there alone with Margaret, so that she'll have a chance to flirt with every man in town. I thought you had more sense, David."

I pulled my soft felt hat further over my diminished head.

"Did she get any letters?"

"One or two."

"Wretch! I told her to come out here with you to-night for certain."

Monday morning, mother, who had been spending the summer with my married sister in Lake City, came out to stay for a week with us at Interlaken.

She could hardly wait till the youngsters were out of hearing to pour her story into my ears. I had to take back to town the train by which she had come out, but she made the most of her time.

"There's been great doin's in yer hoose in yer absence. Marg'et 's been tellin' yer sister's servant a' aboot Mary's luv affairs. Mary tell't her 'at Eesabelle bade her write Willum Axworthy an' spier his intentions; that if she didna, Mrs. Davvit said she'd d'it hersel'. An' a' the time she's correspondin' wi' a yunger ane, an Axworthy tae, 'at she tells Marg'et she likes a hape better. Yer sister's sair affronted to think o' the w'y the fem'ly name's bein' cairted thro' the mire."

Belle came out on the veranda, her broad hat in her hand, ready to walk down to the train with me.

"So Axworthy didn't propose at the Fair?" said I, when we were out of earshot of the cottage.

"No; and I think it's a crying shame, too, after the way he appropriated the girl all last winter, and in Chicago too."

"A great relief to you! Well, I guess the whole town knows by this time that you made Mary write and ask his intentions."

"This is too much! Has your mother——"

"Mary's been making a confidante of Margaret, that's all. That inestimable domestic is so much one of ourselves, it was hard for the unsophisticated mind to know exactly where to draw the line."

"I hope she has drawn the line at showing Margaret his reply. I haven't seen that myself."

"What can you expect it to be? If he had wanted to marry the girl there was nothing to prevent him asking her, and if he did not, no letter of yours would make him want to."

"She wrote it herself, and all she said was that she would like to know definitely how she stood with him. I did nothing but correct the spelling."

"Better if you had written in your own name, and without her knowledge. No daughter of the house would ever have been put in such a position. So far as I can judge, Mary and Mr. Will Axworthy are quits. If he has had a good time in her society, she has had an equally good time in his, and he does not enjoy her letters so much as he did her propinquity."

"He's a cold-hearted, cowardly——"

"Tut! tut! my dear!"

By this time we were on the platform, and the engine was backing its one car down to receive me and the other unhappy toilers compelled to go away and leave that sapphire-blue lake behind.

"Don't you think, Isabel, that it's about time you quit trying to play Providence and gave God a chance?"

"Dave! you're blasphemous!"

"No, I'm not. I only wish to remark that in your schemes for the welfare of one particular person, you are apt to overlook the comfort and happiness of everyone else concerned. That's the worst of not being omniscient. You're only an amateur sort of a deity after all."

"Send that girl out here by the very next train." And I obeyed.



CHAPTER VII.

ANOTHER week of night work, and then the sunniest of Sundays on the shore of old Lake Michigan.

I noticed that Mary was in deep disgrace with my wife, who would hardly speak to her, and I judged therefore that Mr. Will Axworthy had not been brought to time.

I am not a venturesome boatman, and generally confine my aquatic outings to the smaller lake, but that Saturday night there was not a breath of wind, and the water was placidity personified, so I drifted in my small skiff through the channel that connects the smaller with the larger body of water. On the sandy point jutting out at the mouth, upon an old stump, sat a solitary maiden, the picture of woe.

"Hello, Mary!" said I, ignoring the tears; "want to go for a boat ride?"

"I don't care if I do," she replied, seating herself in the stern, which I turned toward her.

Silently I pulled out into the big lake, where the copper-colored sun going down in a haze near the horizon bade us beware of a hot day on the morrow. Out of the lake to the right rose the full moon, failing as yet to make her gentle influence felt against the radiant glow the sun was leaving behind him.

"So Axworthy's gone back on you, Mary?"

The fountains played again.

"Yes; and it aint the first time I've got left, neither."

With Mrs. Mason, the Ferguson Family, Lincoln Todd, and young Flaker on the tablets of my mind, I could truthfully assent to that remark.

"Still, it may be just the making of you in the long run."

"I'm not breakin' my heart over Will Axworthy; didn't care nothing 'tall 'bout him, on'y I'd got used havin' him round, and I'd have married him if he asked me. I think a sight more of his cousin."

"The boy we saw at the Fair?"

"Yes. He's written me a lovely letter. Would you mind reading it aloud to me? Some of the big words I couldn't make out, and neither could Margaret. I wrote him all myself!"

Never before had it fallen to my lot to play father confessor to a lady in love difficulties, but the editorial mind is equal to any emergency, so I let my oars slide and adjusted my reading-glasses to peruse Mary's precious epistle.

When I had read on to the signature. "Your devoted lover 'Tom,'" Mary's face was radiant.

"Aint he smart? You know he was at the Fair, reporting for a newspaper."

"That explains his glibness. Don't have anything to do with him, Mary. He's just trying to draw you on. The burnt dog should dread the fire."

"But he admires me, don't he?"

"He says so, but he is much more anxious that you should admire him. Why, it's part of his business to keep his hand in by being in love, or rather by having some silly little fool of a girl in love with him. You'll just get left again if you encourage this young scamp."

April showers once more.

"I think the best thing I can do is to jump overboard here into Lake Michigan. It don't seem to me I'm wanted anywheres."

"That might do very well, but you're too good a swimmer to drown easily, and you'd catch on to my boat and upset me. I can't swim a stroke, and there'd be five—six young Gemmells and a widow and a mother cast upon the world. No, we'll have to think of something better than that."

Mary's laughter was always quick an the heels of her tears.

"What do you think I'm good for, anyhow?"

"I can testify that you're not a success as a housekeeper."

"Nor a nursemaid."

"And as a lady's companion you're not all that could be desired, even if there were a demand for the article in West Michigan."

"As a gentleman's companion I am all right," and the girl showed her perfect teeth in a smile.

"It's no joking matter, Mary. You're not very happy in our house, and things will be worse for you next winter, with no Will Axworthy coming to see you, and no engagement to him in prospect. What do you think yourself that you're fit for—putting reciting and cornet playing out of the question?"

The young lady rested her chin on the palm of her hand and composed her face into a bewitching expression of profound meditation.

"I can't teach, and I can't sew, and I can't cook. I couldn't bear sitting still all day at a typewriter, and there's no room in the telephone office. You know quite well that there aint a thing for girls like me to do but to get married. That's why God made us pretty, so's we'd have a good chance."

"Don't be flippant, miss. How do you think you'd like to be an hospital nurse?"

"I dunno; I wouldn't mind trying. I'm generally good to folks—when they're sick—and I aint a bit scared of dirty nor of dead ones. I laid out an old woman that died in the Refuge."

"You're not particularly thin-skinned, that's a fact; but it's the educational qualification I'd be afraid of. There's some sort of an examination to be passed before you can get into any of these Training Schools nowadays. I'll write for some forms of application, and we'll see. If once you were able to support yourself, you'd think very differently about marrying anybody that turned up, just for the sake of a home. Ours mayn't be much of a one for you, but marry to get out of it, and you'll perhaps find yourself out of the frying-pan into the fire."

"I think it would be just lovely to be a nurse! There was one came down from Chicago when Mrs. Wade was sick, and the uniform was awfully pretty. I'm sure it would suit me."

"It would be very becoming, I haven't any doubt of that; and when it's all settled that you are going to an hospital you can write in reply to Will Axworthy's last letter."

"He wanted me to keep on writing to him just the same; said he'd like always to be good friends with me."

"I wouldn't write him but once again, and do it all by yourself. Just say that the reason you wrote the other letter, asking how you stood with him, was that you had been thinking of leaving us altogether, but before taking the decided step of entering an hospital, you had thought it only fair to him to give him the chance to object, if he really had the objections he had led you to take for granted."

We heard a shouting and a blowing of tin horns upon the beach at this juncture. I took the oars and pulled in, seeing Belle and the boys waving their hats in the bright moonlight. My wife's face expressed the blankest astonishment when she saw who was my shipmate.

"We thought you must have fallen asleep out there. Didn't know you had company!"

Mary was still in the black books when I came down the next Saturday. Belle had a bitter complaint.

"She sat there the whole afternoon yesterday and part of the evening, writing and rewriting a letter before my very eyes. 'Are you replying to Will Axworthy?' I asked quite cordially, for I did want to have a hand in answering that letter—had some cutting sentences all ready for him. 'Yes, mawm,' said she very shortly; 'but I guess I can manage to get along by myself.'"

I did not dare own up to the advice I had given, but I saw that matters must be hastened. Having business in Chicago about that time, I visited almost every hospital in the city, telling Mary's story in my most dramatic newspaper style. I made it understood that it was very noble and self-sacrificing of the young woman, when she might live in the lap of luxury,—for thus did I unblushingly describe my own modest establishment,—to embrace a nurse's vocation and labor for the good of humanity, including herself, of course. The education—or the lack of it—was the drawback everywhere, and also the youth of the applicant, twenty-five being a more acceptable age than barely twenty-one.

But my perseverance was at last rewarded by finding the superintendent of a training school who still had some imagination left, and who became deeply interested in Mary's "tale of woe."

"Make her study her reading, spelling, and arithmetic as hard as she can for the next few months, and I'll get her in the very first opening."

The prospect roused Belle's old-time vigor, and she had spelling matches for Mary's benefit, made the girl read aloud to her, gave her dictation to write, and heard her the multiplication tables every forenoon—when she did not forget.

One delightful morning in October I had the honor of taking our protegee into Chicago and delivering her up to the lady superintendent. If she could only stand the month of probation, we flattered ourselves that she would be safe.

Three weeks later I met the Rev. Mr. Armstrong on the street.

"I think it is only right to tell you what people are saying," said he.

"It's my business to know," I replied.

"I mean about your adopted daughter. I have just been told by two reputable parties, one after the other, that she has been dismissed from the hospital for flirting, and that you and Mrs. Gemmell are hushing the matter up as well as you can, but that you don't know at all where she is."

When I reached home my first question was:

"Have you heard from Mary lately, Belle?"

"Not for a week, and I'm quite worried about her. Before that, she wrote to me dutifully every two or three days, telling me all about her work. I've kept on writing to her just the same, making excuses for her to herself, and never doubting her for a minute; but to tell you the truth, Dave, I'm getting dreadfully anxious."

Then I told her what I had heard.

"Don't you believe it, David! I never shall till I hear it from herself. I know now for a certainty that I love that girl! I'll believe her before all the world! I'll stick by her through thick and thin! I'll not insult her by writing to the Hospital! What now matters the little inconveniences of living with her? What have a few clothes and toilet articles, more or less, to do with it? If she has failed, she shall come home, and we'll begin the three years' fight all over again. I'll sit down now and write her the nicest letter I can write."

That sounded very brave, but inwardly I knew that my wife suffered agonies the next few days.

"Perhaps if I had done this," she would say, "or if I had done that—it seems precisely like a death, and I've killed her."

Tuesday morning, two letters came from Mary. They were hurriedly and excitedly written.

"My dear good mother, I am accepted! It is the happiest day of my life; it will be a red letter day for you! I love you. I have tried so hard for your sake; I have tried to make my life hear one long prayer and the dear Lord helps me. I did not write because the exam. was delaid, and I wanted to wait untill I had something good to tell you. I look nice in the unniform. It is pink and a white cap, apron and cuffs. Oh I am so contented; this work is so filling. I never get lonely or homesick. We nurses had a party, and we danced and served ice cream, and there was some lovely doctors here, and the Princippal is so kind to us we have lots of fun"—and so the letters ran on.

* * * * *

The reaction was too much for Belle. She cried, then she laughed, then she fell on her knees and thanked God, and she told me she added that, for pity's sake, He must set His angels to guard Mary, for she was a poor, frail child, who had got lost in coming this time, and many persecuted her because she was pretty, and might find a resting place and get a little of what rightfully (?) belonged to them.

After a while she went down to see Mr. Armstrong, and read him the letters. He turned very white.

"Oh, the pity of it!" said he.

"I wish I could gather her slanderers into one room and read them these letters," said Belle.

For days afterward she button-holed people in the street to tell them about Mary, or to read them scraps of her letters. If they had said she was vain and idle, and selfish and incompetent, just like the half of their own daughters, Belle could have forgiven them. It was their determination to shove her into the gutter which made my wife her valiant champion.

"Whatever that girl amounts to, Dave, will be born of our faith in her, and we must never go back on her. She writes me that whenever she has a hard task, such as attending fits, there I stand at her back and help."

"Just between ourselves, though, you must confess that it is a great relief to have her away."

"You can't begin to feel that as I do. I live again! I read my own books, think my own thoughts. I belong to myself. No one says, 'What's the matter?' 'Where are you going?' 'What makes you grave—or gay?' I sit and chat with my 'odd-fish.' I go to all kinds of meetings and discuss all kinds of 'isms, and have no tag-tail constantly asking 'Why?' 'Why?' or 'Tell me!' It's the little things that grind. The next time I try to help a young girl, I'll not risk losing my influence with her by taking her into my house. Do you know, Dave, I sometimes feel that Mary must have been my own child in a previous incarnation, and I neglected and abused her; that's why she was thrust back upon me this time, whether I liked it or not."

After Christmas Isabel decided that she must go up to Chicago to see Mary, and on her return thrilling was the account she gave of her experiences, which included an attendance at an autopsy—but upon that I shall not enlarge.

Introducing herself to the Superintendent of the School, she said:

"Can I have Miss Gemmell for two days at my hotel?"

"Indeed, no, madam. We are short of help, and it would be entirely against the rules."

"Then I'll stay here with her."

The Lady Superintendent looked distressed.

"Don't think us inhospitable, but there is absolutely no provision for guests in all this great building."

"Oh!" said Belle, unabashed. "I seem to be unfortunate in breaking, or wanting to break, the rules of this house. Now, will you kindly tell me what I can do? How can I see the very most of my Mary while I am in Chicago?"

After some thought the answer came:

"You may have Miss Gemmell to-morrow afternoon, and two hours on Sunday."

"That will not suit me at all! Now, please forget all that has been said, and I will tell you that I Mrs. David Gemmell of Lake City, Michigan, am a poor tired woman, threatened with nervous prostration, have already chills of apprehension running down my back, coupled with flushes of expectation to my head." By this time Mary, the Lady Superintendent, and two other nurses present were all attention, and Belle added gravely:

"I want one of your best private rooms on Corridor B, where Miss Gemmell is on duty, and I should like to see the House Surgeon at once."

So Belle was comfortably and luxuriously established in the hospital, and the only drawback was that she had to be served with her meals in her room.

"What feasts we had—Mary and I," she said. "What fun! Before I left I had demoralized that whole hospital staff, and broken every rule in the institution. It did them all good."

"I hope you haven't been indiscreet," said I.

"Indiscreet?"

"You must remember that Mary braced herself up to go to the hospital when she was 'out' with you. Now you've gone and made so much of her that she'll think, whenever things become too hot for her, she has only to march straight back here again."

"She assures me she will graduate."

"There should never be any question of that."

"David, I've only told you the one side. If that girl were my very own I should pluck her out of that particular fire. I'd get down on my knees and beg her pardon for having thrown her into it. It burns up their youth, their bloom, their originality, their modesty. It thrusts the girls into a charnel house of sin, sickness, and death. It shatters the nervous system of nine out of ten, or it leaves them calm, steady, burnt-out women, who have been behind the scenes of life and are disillusioned. When that little pink and white thing sat there and told me of some of the awful situations that she'd been placed in, and over which she was made responsible, the tears rolled down my face. I forgave her lots of things."

"Plenty of refined, educated women with a very different bringing up from Mary's go through the same."

"Well, I advised her to go on and finish the course, if only to show her friends, and enemies, the stuff she's made of. When I think of those free wards, and the menial, disgusting offices that frail little girl has to perform! What did she sow that she should reap this fighting in the thickest of the fight, so poorly equipped?"

"I dare say there are alleviations."

"Oh, yes! She flirts—says she'd die if she didn't—with every man in the place, from the elevator boy to the head doctor, and, really, I excused her. The head nurse in Mary's ward is very harsh with her, but I let her and everyone in the place understand that Miss Gemmell is no stray waif without influence to back her. Every day I send out thought-waves—hypnotism—whatever you like to call it—to compel that Dean woman to think of something else than the making of trained nurses, and physical wrecks at the same time. People are greater than institutions."

"The discipline will be the making of Mary."



CHAPTER VIII.

DURING the famous Pullman strike of last summer, duty bade me cross to Chicago in the interests of the Echo. On Saturday afternoon, July the 7th, I was at the pulse of the Anarchist movement, near the corner of Loomis and Forty-ninth Streets. Taking up my stand in the deep entry of a "House to Let," I watched the operations of a body of strikers gathered round a box car close to the Grand Trunk crossing. They had set it afire, and were trying to overturn it upon the railway track, encouraged by the cheers of a mob numbering about two thousand men, women, and children.

The incendiaries were so much engrossed that they did not observe, backing swiftly down upon them, the wrecking train it was their purpose to block. While still in motion, the cars disgorged Captain Kelly and his company, who had been guarding the Pan Handle tracks all day, but had not yet, it seemed, earned their night's repose.

The crowd greeted the soldiers with stones, brickbats, and pieces of old iron, but the car burners proceeded with their little job, paying no attention at all to the approach of the military.

A pistol bullet out of the mob swished in among his men, and then Captain Kelly gave the order to fire. When the smoke of the volley cleared away, I saw the people stand still, shocked and dumb with surprise. A second later, realizing that the worm had had the audacity to turn, they vented a medley of shrieks and roars, and closed round the handful of soldiers, to be met by the points of bayonets.

The yelling mass of humanity scattered, took refuge in lanes and houses, but regaining courage, appeared here and there in sections, to be assailed once more by soldiers and police. The latter had to fight it out by themselves after a while, for the military boarded the wrecking train again, and the engineer, completely "rattled," opened the throttle, and whisked them away to the West, leaving a dozen revolver-armed policemen to meet the assaults of a mob that had now increased to five thousand.

The Press abuses the police on principle, but, seeing that heroic encounter, I wavered in the keeping of my promise to Belle not to run into danger. Even as I hesitated, "hurry-up wagons" arrived with re-enforcements from neighboring police stations, and then the crowd could not disperse quickly enough. It was a desperate sight—men knocking each other down in their haste to get away, and the women who had been spurring them on, now shrieking and groaning like maniacs. One of the poor creatures was hit on the ankle by a bullet, and her falling over into the gutter was too much for my virtuous resolution. Even if she is a dirty, howling Polack, a man does not enjoy seeing a woman knocked down, so I left my doorstep and went to help the lady up. Constitutionally I am not a brave man, but I forgot all about the flying bullets till one took me in the knee, and I toppled over, hitting my head against the curbstone as I did so. I must have been stunned, for when I opened my eyes again the street was empty, except for a thundering vehicle that was bearing straight down upon me.

At first I thought it was a runaway, for the horse was foaming of mouth and bloodshot of eyeball; but no, there was a man, or fiend, with a similar wild gleam in his eye, urging the brute upon me, while he sounded a gong to keep everything out of his way. All this I saw in a flash, and in a flash too went through my mind the advice given by President Cleveland in his proclamation to non-combatants to keep out of harm's way.

I rolled over on my side with the sickening certainty that the next instant the hoofs and the wheels would be upon me, but the horse pulled up on his haunches at my very feet, the rattle and clanging ceased, and a doctor in his shirt sleeves appeared as if by magic.

It was an ambulance, of course.

I fainted when they lifted me, and only came to myself in the hospital—Mary's hospital, and her ward. Every one in Chicago was crowded that week and the next, but—the ruling principle strong in death—I declined to be put away out of eyeshot and earshot into a private room.

"D'ye want me to send word to Mis' Gemmell to come?" asked Mary, and I replied drowsily:

"No, don't. She's better to keep out of harm's way. She would be sure to sympathize with the strikers."

"But she'll wonder where you are."

"She can't get here safely, as things are now, and the mails are all upset. Don't write. Send a telegram in my name. Date it Chicago, and tell her I'm detained, but that I'll go home Monday, sure."

That same night I was off in a high fever. It was days and days before I came to myself, and then I was too weak to ask or to care how everything was going on at home. My whole interest in life was concentrated upon that hospital ward, and with half-closed eyes I lay there and took notes unconsciously.

An ideal life it may seem to outsiders, but there is as much wire-pulling, as much jealousy and scandal within the walls of one of those big institutions, as anywhere else on this planet. It is an epitome of the world battle, and the strugglers meet in hand-to-hand conflict.

Nurse Dean, the head of our ward, tall and angular in form, stern and cold in feature, was the dragon Belle had told me about, but she knew her business, and I, for one, preferred that she should regard me simply as a machine laid up for repairs. I did not even think her unduly severe upon Mary, after I heard her giving that damsel "Hail Columbia" for her carelessness in having administered the wrong medicine one whole forenoon to Number Nine—which was myself.

If I had not made a feeble protest in her favor, "Nurse Gemmell" would have been discharged on the spot.

I do not wish to leave the impression that Mary had not in her the making of a fairly good nurse. She was light of foot, as well as quick of hand, and I liked to have her do things for me; found her aura agreeable, as Belle would have expressed it. Like many half-educated people, she was very observant, but, so far as I could judge, she had one eye on her work and the other on the lookout for flirtations. I became quite interested in some of them.

There was the German fiddler in the next bed to mine, who could not keep his eyes off Mary whenever she came into the ward, and once when Nurse Dean was off duty, and she brought out her silver-plated cornet to "toot" a little for him, he declared it was the most ravishing music he had ever heard in his life!

I strongly suspected that the limp young artisan on the other side of me was perfectly well enough to be discharged, but he could not brace himself up to part from Mary. Then there was a young doctor whose face I dimly recognized, but it tired my poor head too much to try to think who he was. He and Mary had many a talk at my bedside about their own affairs. One evening I heard the unmistakable sound of a banjo, and managed to twist myself round far enough to see that this same doctor was playing an accompaniment to Mary's very fair imitation of a skirt dance out in the passage.

The sight revived me so much that I laughed aloud, and Mary came hastily forward, blushing, with finger on her lip. The pink and white uniform did indeed become her wonderfully well, and I was not surprised to notice hearty admiration in the sleepy blue eyes of the young house surgeon. Where had I seen that "Burne Jones' head" before?

"You don't seem to remember me, Mr. Gemmell," said the owner of it, holding out his hand. "My name's Flaker. I was at Interlaken summer before last."

"You're a full-fledged M. D. now?"

"Oh, yes, but I'm taking a year's practice in here, before I set up for myself."

Shades of the hotel matrons! They would probably say, if they heard this, that Mary had been sent here on purpose to catch him.

Poor Mary! She had her own row to hoe. She came to me in tears one evening because Nurse Dean had been after her that whole day about one thing or another.

"I am never particular 'nough to please her. If it wasn't for Dr. Flaker I wouldn't stay here another day."

"You like him pretty well, eh?"

"Well enough, an' he's all broke up on me; says he was at Interlaken too, on'y he couldn't say anythin', 'cause he wasn't of age. His folks are awful high-toned."

"They'll have their discipline," thought I.

"By the way, Mary, how long is it since I was brought here?"

"Two weeks to-day."

I sprang almost out of bed in my surprise. "Why didn't you tell me? Has no word been sent to Lake City?"

"None since that first telegram. I don't write very often now to your wife, but when I did, I never said nothin' 'tall about your bein' here, 'cause you told me not to."

"And haven't you had an answer?"

"There's a letter lyin' there from Mis' Gemmell to you. I don't know how she could have found out your address. Nurse Dean said I wasn't to give it to you if you was a bit feverish."

"Fetch it this minute, Mary, or I'll get up and walk the floor," and the girl brought me this remarkable document. It had neither beginning nor end, but rushed to the point at once.

"I know all! You have laughed at my occult tendencies, sneered at my Theosophy, but I can now, alas! give you convincing proof of the penetrative power of the one, the sustaining power of the other. I became so nervous at your continued silence and absence that I did what I had promised you not to do—went out in my astral to hunt for you—and I found you! Would to God I had never tried! It is not my health that is ruined, but my heart and my happiness. To make assurance doubly sure, I psychometrized the only letter I have received from Mary in weeks. She was cunning enough not to mention your name, but the unspoken testimony was the same. To think that you of all men—but I do not blame you! I have gone down to the Echo office, my heart bursting with despair, and have told lies to account for your absence, to keep things moving until you see fit to send your own explanation. I have thrown dust too in the eyes of the family, till you tell me your will concerning them. No, I dare not blame you! Did not I myself thrust the girl into your life—and the best of us are but human. It is Karma! I have deserved this blow for some previous sin of my own, and I bow my head to the stroke. Your own harvest will be just as certain, however long delayed. O David, David! I can look back now and see the very beginning of your interest in Mary—but that it should end in this—that you should fly from me to her——'"

Having read so far, I burst into hysterical laughter, and it took Mary and her lover and Nurse Dean, and how many more I know not, to hold me in bed. Of course I had a relapse, and my life was despaired of, but I would not, in my sensible moments, allow Mary to write to, or send for Isabel. I pictured the streets still full of rioting strikers, and the mails and trains still disorganized. In waking and in delirium alike, "Keep her out of harm's way!" I cried, "I'll go home to-morrow, sure," but it was a long to-morrow that saw me on the boat bound for Lake City.

Mary wanted to accompany me, for I was still very weak, and had to walk with a stick on account of my knee, but I said brusquely, "You stay where you are, and keep an eye on Dr. Flaker, or you'll maybe get left again."

"No fear of that!" she said, holding up her left hand to show me a broad gold band with five diamonds in it, adorning her third finger.

"We'll be married as soon as his year is out, for he has plenty of money."

The stones in her ring caught the evening sunlight as she stood on the wharf waving her handkerchief to me, while the boat moved slowly out, and I lay in a steamer chair on the hurricane deck, prepared to enjoy a smoke and a gossip with my old friend, the captain.

I wished her well with all my heart, but I sincerely hoped that I had seen the last of Mary.

Judging the family to be at Interlaken as usual, I took the first train down there, and toiled in the sun from the depot up to the cottages, by way of the hill, which I had never considered steep before, to find my own house deserted, windows and doors boarded up, veranda unswept, hammocks removed. I would not give any of the neighbors the satisfaction of knowing I was surprised and disappointed, so I kept out of sight till they had all been to the hotel for dinner and dispersed. Then I went in for mine, and after it returned to the beach near the station, lay down on the sand, and waited for the next train.

There was not one back to town until late in the afternoon, and the evening being cloudy, it was quite dark by the time I left the electric car at the corner of our street. Even that little bit of a walk exhausted me, and I had to rest on my stick every few minutes, but what a relief it was to see, gleaming cheerfully as ever, the windows of the House of the Seven Gables.

I leaned against our iron railing for a minute or two to collect myself before making my appearance, and highly necessary was it for me to do so, because the attitude of the two ladies upon the veranda struck me dumb with amazement, and their conversation completely floored me. That sandy-haired little woman in the low rocker must be my mother, but could that regal figure on the edge of the veranda, with her head in my mother's lap, possibly be my wife? The light from the nursery window showed them to me distinctly, but I kept back in the shadow and listened to the voices.

"My puir lamb! Ye've grat eneugh! Gang awa' tae yer bed; ye're sair forfoughten."

As she stroked the wavy gray hair of the head on her knee, her tone changed.

"I canna thole to think 'at son o' mine has brocht a' this trouble upon ye."

"Not a word against him, mother! He's the best man that ever lived, and I didn't appreciate him, that's all. I can never think of him but as my dear, old, solid, yours-to-count-on Dave Gemmell. He was the silent partner, unpopular, getting no praise, paying all bills, backing me up in every fad, whether his judgment approved or not. He was just the square foundation I could lean away out on—could dance jigs on if I wanted to. Now that he is dead—or dead to me—I can only hope that he is happy. Oh! if I had but listened to you, mother, had never brought that girl into the house. My own vineyard have I not kept."

"Let by-ganes be by-ganes—but I wad jest like to hae Davvit by the lug."

"Lug along, mother! Here I am!" I managed to shout, and then I hung over that fence and laughed till my specs dropped off in the grass, and my stick fell away from me. I could not move without it, so I had to wait till the two women took pity on me and released me from my impalement.

Between them they got me into the house and on to my old sofa, and listened to what I had to say.

"I was share there must be some mistak'," said my mother, her self-respect restored, but, when I saw how affectionately her hand rested on the bowed head of her weeping daughter-in-law, I did not regret the bullet in my knee.

"We'll put it all down to your Theosophy, Belle—a collection of half-truths, more dangerous than lies, when you shove them too far."

"Don't let us talk about that now, David. It breaks my heart to see you so thin. Your clothes are just hanging on you. Oh! if I had only known the true state of the case and been there to nurse you!"

"Mary has been very good to me, I assure you."

"I don't want to think about that girl any more. I'm glad she's all right, but I hope never to lay eyes on her again."

"Oh, yes, she's all right, and when she marries Dr. Flaker she won't want to 'papa' and 'mamma' us, though she may condescend to patronize us a little."

"I'll be gled o' the day she draps the name o' Gemmell!"

* * * * *

My wife is still a theosophist. If it pleases her to think that she has ascertained the nature and method of existence, I have nothing to say. Sometimes I even look with envy upon her cheerful attitude toward the approach of old age, her conviction that we are to have another chance—many more chances—to do and to be that which we have failed in doing and being, this time.

To judge of a tree by its fruits, there is, of course, no doubt that Isabel, because of, or in spite of her Theosophy, has been

THE MAKING OF MARY.



EPILOGUE.

NURSE DEAN walked through the Pest House, adjoining the great hospital, with the independent mien of the woman who is confident that her skirt clears the ground. Her keen, light-colored eyes took in at a glance the condition of every patient, the occupation of every nurse.

There had been a smallpox epidemic in Chicago, and three of the nurses in —— Hospital had taken the disease, two of them lightly, one very heavily; but all were now convalescent. The two had gone home to their friends to recruit, but the third lay in an invalid chair in a darkened room, looking as if the desire of life had left her. Nurse Dean came in with a cheery smile, put on just outside the door, and proceeded to bathe the girl's eyes with warm water.

"When are you coming out to help me, Mary? I'm sure the light wouldn't hurt you now. I'm having too much night work, those other nurses being gone. I thought you might begin to ease me a little with the smallpox patients through the day."

"I don't know as I care to go on with the business," replied Mary, sometime called Mason.

"Nonsense! You're low-spirited just now because you're not quite better, but wait till you're on your feet and going around the wards again. There's nothing like work of this sort to make a person forget herself."

Nurse Dean's strong but gentle hands began to rub with oil the patient's neck and shoulders.

"I wish I could forget myself and everybody else too. I wish I had died of the smallpox. There aint anybody that cares whether I live or die."

"Hush! Mary, you forget Dr. Flaker."

"Aint it just him I'm thinkin' about? He came in to see me to-day for the first time. He hates smallpox, and he smelt so of iodoform he nearly made me sick. About all he had to say was that it was very foolish of me to meddle with the clothes of them patients, and he could hardly believe I was so crazy's not to be vaccinated when the other nurses were. Just as if it wasn't him that admired my lovely arms. Look at them now!"

"They won't be so bad when all these scales are off. There! Doesn't that feel better?"

"It feels all right enough, but you know I'll be a sight to be seen the rest of my days. I was glad the room was dark, so's Flaker couldn't get a good look at me. He'll know soon enough—and hate the sight of me. He was always so proud of my 'pearance."

"But I'm sure he likes you for something else too, Mary."

"I don't care whether he does or not, he's got to marry me just the same. I aint goin' to be left again," and the girl tried to make a blazing diamond ring keep in place upon her thin finger.

"You love him very much?"

"Don't know as I do—no more than lots of other fellows; but I won't have any more chances now. I didn't ask to be born into this world, and somebody in it owes me a living."

"See here, Mary!" said the nurse, in a suddenly energetic tone that made the girl look up at her with startled eyes. "You know, as well as I do, that you can't make that man marry you. Why not give him back his ring of your own free will?"

"Why should I? You think I aint in love?"

"Love? You don't know what the word means in any but its very lowest sense. Suppose you stop loving men, and take to loving women and children; you'll find them much more grateful, I can tell you."

Mary closed her eyes, but there were no eyelashes to keep the tears from trickling out upon the scarred face.

"My dear child!" said Nurse Dean, in a voice hardly recognizable, it was so sympathetic, "you've been fighting for yourself ever since you can remember, and you haven't made much of it, have you?"

The girl's lips shaped an inaudible "No."

"Wouldn't it be a good idea, then, to try a little fighting for other people?"

"I haven't any folks."

"Your 'folks' are whoever you can help in any way. What have you done yet to deserve a foothold on this earth? Instead of seeing how much you can get out of everybody, turn round and see how much you can do for them."

* * * * *

There was a long silence. When Nurse Dean thought her charge was falling asleep, she placed a shawl carefully over her, but Mary, without opening her eyes, drew something from her left hand to her right.

"You can give him back his ring," she said.

Nurse Dean closed the door softly behind her, and then paused for a moment to wipe an impertinent tear from her cold gray eye.

"I shouldn't be at all surprised if the smallpox were just The Making of Mary."

THE END.



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Transcriber's Note

Two minor changes were made during the transcription of this book:

* "the malone" was changed to "them alone" * two instances of "Gemmel" were changed to "Gemmell"