Chapter 22. In Which Anne Weighs The People Of Two Worlds

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_ CHAPTER XXII. In Which Anne Weighs the People of Two Worlds

"RICHARD!"

"Yes, mother, I'm here. Austin thinks I am crazy, and Eve won't speak to me. But--I came. And to think you have turned the house into a hospital!"

"It seemed the only thing to do. Francois' mother had no one to take care of her--and there were others, and the house is big."

"You are the biggest thing in it. Mother, if I ever pray to a saint, it will be one with gray hair in a nurse's cap and apron, and with shining eyes."

"They are shining because you are here, Richard."

Cousin Sulie, in the door, broke down and cried, "Oh, we've prayed for it."

They clung to him, the two little growing-old women, who had wanted him, and who had worked without him.

He had no words for them, for he could not speak with steadiness. But in that moment he knew that he should never go back to Austin. That he should live and die in the home of his fathers. And that his work was here.

He tried, a little later, to make a joke of their devotion. "Mother, you and Cousin Sulie mustn't. I shall need a body-guard to protect me. You'll spoil me with softness and ease."

"I shall buckle on your armor soon enough," she told him. "Did Eric meet you at the station?"

"Yes, I shall go straight to Beulah's. I stopped in to see old Peter before I came up. I can pull him through, but I shall have to have some nurses."

And now big Ben, at an even trot, carried Richard to the Playhouse. Toby, mad with gladness at the return of his master, raced ahead.

Up in the pretty pink and white room lay Beulah. No longer plump and blooming, but wasted and wan with dry lips and hollow eyes.

Eric had said to Richard, "If she dies I shall die, too."

"She is not going to die."

And now he said it again, cheerfully, to the wasted figure in the bed. "I have come to make you well, Beulah."

But Beulah was not at all sure that she wanted to be--well. She was too tired. She was tired of Eric, tired of her mother, tired of taking medicine, tired of having to breathe.

So she shut her eyes and turned away.

Eric sat by the bed. "Dear heart," he said, "it is Dr. Dicky."

But she did not open her eyes.

In the days that followed Richard fought to make his words come true. He felt that if Beulah died it would, in some way, be his fault. He was aware that this was a morbid state of mind, but he could not help the way he felt. Beulah's life would be the price of his self-respect.

But it was not only for Beulah's life that he fought, but for the lives of others. He had nurses up from Baltimore and down from New York. He had experts to examine wells and springs and other sources of water supply. He had a motor car that he might cover the miles quickly, using old Ben only for short distances. Toby, adapting himself to the car, sat on the front seat with the wind in his face, drunk with the excitement of it.

When Nancy spoke of the expense to which Richard was putting himself, he said, "I have saved something, mother, and Eric and the rest can pay."

Surely in those days St. Michael needed his sword, for the fight was to the finish. Night and day the battle waged. Richard went from bedside to bedside, coming always last to Beulah in the shadowed pink and white room at the Playhouse.

There were nurses now, but Eric Brand would not be turned out. "Every minute that I am away from her," he told Richard, "I'm afraid. It seems as if when I am in sight of her I can hold her--back."

So, night after night, Richard found him in the chair by Beulah's bed, his face shaded by his hand, rousing only when Beulah stirred, to smile at her.

But Beulah did not smile back. She moaned a little now and then, and sometimes talked of things that never were on sea or land. There was a flowered chintz screen in the corner of the room and she peopled it with strange creatures, and murmured of them now and then, until the nurse covered the screen with a white sheet, which seemed to blot it out of Beulah's mind forever.

There was always a pot of coffee boiling in the kitchen for the young doctor, and Eric would go down with him and they would drink and talk, and all that Eric said led back to Beulah.

"If there was only something that I could do for her," he said; "if I could go out and work until I dropped, I should feel as if I were helping. But just to sit there and see her--fade."

Again he said, "I had always thought of our living--never of dying. There can be no future for me without her."

So it was for Eric's future as well as for Beulah's life that Richard strove. He grew worn and weary, but he never gave up.

Night after night, day after day, from house to house he went, along the two roads and up into the hills. Everywhere he met an anxious welcome. Where the conditions were unfavorable, he transferred the patient to Crossroads, where Nancy and Sulie and Milly and a trio of nurses formed an enthusiastic hospital staff.

The mother of little Francois was the first patient that Richard lost. She was tired and overworked, and she felt that it was good to fall asleep. Afterward Richard, with the little boy in his arms, went out and sat where they could look over the river and talk together.

"I told her that you were to stay with me, Francois."

"And she was glad?"

"Yes. I need a little lad in my office, and when I take the car you can ride with me."

And thus it came about that little Francois, a sober little Francois, with a band of black about his arm, became one of the Crossroads household, and was made much of by the women, even by black Milly, who baked cookies for him and tarts whenever he cried for his mother.

Cousin Sulie rose nobly to meet the new demands upon her. "It is a feeling I never had before," she said to Richard, as she helped him pack his bag before going on his rounds, "that what I am doing is worth while. I know I should have felt it when I was darning stockings, but I didn't."

She gloried in the professional aspect which she gave to everything. She installed little Francois at a small table in the Garden Room. He answered the telephone and wrote the messages on slips of paper which he laid on the doctor's desk. Cousin Sulie at another table saw the people who came in Richard's absence.

"Nancy can read to the patients up-stairs and cut flowers for them and cook nice things for them," she confided, "but I like to be down here when the children come in to ask for medicine, and when the mothers come to find out what they shall feed the convalescents. Richard, I never heard anything like their--hungriness--when they are getting well."

Beulah, emerging slowly from among the shadows, began to think of things to eat. She didn't care about anything else. She didn't care for Eric's love, or her mother's gladness, or Richard's cheerfulness, or the nurses' sympathy. She cared only to think of every kind of food that she had ever liked in her whole life, and to ask if she might have it.

"But, dear heart, the doctor doesn't think that you should," Eric would protest.

She would cry, weakly, "You don't love me, or you would let me."

She begged and begged, and at last he couldn't stand it.

"You are starving her," he told the nurses fiercely.

They referred him to the doctor.

Eric telephoned Richard.

"My dear fellow," was the response, "her appetite is a sign that she is getting well."

"But she is so hungry."

"So are they all. I have to steel my heart against them, especially the children. And half of the convalescents are reading cook books."

"Cook books!"

"Yes. In that way they get a meal by proxy. I tell them to pick out the things they are going to have when they are well enough to eat all they want. Their choice ranges from Welsh rarebits to plum puddings."

He laughed, but Eric saw nothing funny in the matter. "I can't bear to see her--suffer."

Richard was sobered at once. "Don't think that I am not sympathetic. But--Brand, I don't dare-_feel_. If I did, I should go to pieces."

Slowly the weeks passed. Besides Francois' mother, two of Richard's patients died. Slowly the pendulum of time swung the rest of the sick ones toward recovery. Nancy and Sulie and Milly changed the rooms at Crossroads back to their original uses. The nurses, no longer needed, packed their competent bags, and departed. Beulah at the Playhouse had her first square meal, and smiled back at Eric.

The strain had told fearfully on Richard. Yet he persisted in his efforts long after it seemed that the countryside was safe. He tried to pack into twelve short weeks what he would normally have done in twelve long months. He spurred his fellow physicians to increased activities, he urged authorities to unprecedented exertions. He did the work of two men and sometimes of three. And he was so exhausted that he felt that if ever his work was finished he would sleep for a million years.

It was in September that he began to wonder how he would square things up with Eve. At first she had written to him blaming him for his desertion. But not for a moment did she take it seriously. "You'll be coming back, Dicky," was the burden of her song. He wrote hurried pleasant letters which were to some extent bulletins of the day's work. If Eve was not satisfied she consoled herself with the thought that he was tearingly busy and terribly tired.

In her last letter she had said, "Austin doesn't know what to do without you. He told Pip that you were his right hand."

Austin had said more than that to Anne. He had found her one hot day by the fountain. Nancy had written to her of the death of Francois' mother. The letter was in her hand.

Austin had also had a letter. "Brooks is a fool. He writes that he is going to stay."

Anne shook her head. "He is not a fool," she said; "he is doing what he _had_ to do. You would know if you had ever lived at Crossroads. Why, the Brooks family belongs there, and the Brooks doctors."

"So you have encouraged him?" Austin said.

"I have had nothing to do with it. I haven't heard from him since he left, and I haven't written."

"And you think he is--right to--bury--himself?"

Anne sat very still, her hands folded quietly. Her calm eyes were on the golden fish which swam in the waters at the base of the fountain.

"I am not sure," she said; "it all has so much to do with--old traditions--and inherited feelings--and ideals. He could be just as useful here, but he would never be happy. You can't imagine how they look up to him down there. And here he looked up to you."

"Then you think I didn't give him a free hand?"

"No. But there he is a Brooks of Crossroads. And it isn't because he wants the honor of it that he has gone back, but because the responsibility rests upon him to make the community all that it ought to be. And he can't shirk it."

"Eve Chesley says that he is tied to his mother's apron strings."

"She doesn't understand, I do. I sometimes feel that way about the Crossroads school--as if I had shirked something to have--a good time."

"But you have had a good time."

"Yes, you have all been wonderful to me," her smile warmed him, "but you won't think that I am ungrateful when I say that there was something in my life in the little school which carried me--higher--than this."

"Higher? What do you mean?"

"I was a leader down there. And a force. The children looked to me for something that I could give and which the teacher they have isn't giving. She just teaches books, and I tried to teach them something of life, and love of country, and love of God."

"But here you have Marie-Louise, and you know how grateful we are for what you have done for her."

"I have only developed what was in her. What a flaming little genius she is!"

"With a poem accepted by an important magazine, and Fox believing that she can write more of them."

Anne spoke quietly: "And now I am really not needed. Marie-Louise can go on alone."

He stopped her. "We want you to stay--my wife wants you--Marie-Louise can't do without you. And I want you to get Brooks back."

She looked her amazement. "Get him back?"

"He will come if you ask it. I am not blind. Eve Chesley is. The things she says make him stubborn. But you could call him back. You could call to life anything in any man if you willed it. You are inspirational--a star to light the way."

His voice was shaken. After a pause he went on: "Will you help me to get Brooks back?"

She shook her head. "I shall not try. He is among his own people. He has found his place."

Yet now that Richard was gone, Anne found herself missing him more than she dared admit. She was, for the first time, aware that the knowledge that she should see him now and then had kept her from loneliness which might otherwise have assailed her. The thought that she might meet him had added zest to her engagements. His week-ends at Rose Acres had been the goal toward which her thoughts had raced.

And now the great house was empty because of his absence. The city was empty--because he had left it--forever. She had no hope that he would come back. Crossroads had claimed him. He had, indeed, come into his own.

When the rest of his friends spoke of him, praised or blamed, she was silent. Geoffrey Fox, who came often, complained, "You are always sitting off in a corner somewhere with your work, putting in a million stitches, when I want you to talk."

"You can talk to Marie-Louise. She is your ardent disciple. She burns candles at your altar."

"She is a charming--child."

"She is more than that. When her poem was accepted she cried over the letter. She thinks that she couldn't have done it except for your help and criticism."

"She will do more than she has done."

When Marie-Louise joined them, Anne was glad to see Geoffrey's protective manner, as if he wanted to be nice to the child who had cried.

She had to listen to much criticism of Richard. When Eve and the Dutton-Ames dined one night in the early fall at Rose Acres, Richard's quixotic action formed the theme of their discourse.

Eve was very frank. "Somebody ought to tie Dicky down. His head is in the clouds."

Marie-Louise flashed: "I like people whose heads are in the clouds. He is doing a wonderful thing and a wise thing--and we are all acting as if it were silly."

Anne wanted to hug Marie-Louise, and with heightened color she listened to Winifred's defense.

"I think we should all like to feel that we are equal to it--to give up money and fame--for the thing that--called."

"There is no better or bigger work for him there than here," Austin proclaimed.

"No," Winifred agreed, and her eyes were bright, "but it is because he is giving up something which the rest of us value that I like him. Renunciation isn't fashionable, but it is stimulating."

"The usual process is to 'grab and git,'" her husband sustained her. "We always like to see some one who isn't bitten by the modern bacillus."

After dinner Anne left them and made her way down in the darkness to the river. The evening boat was coming up, starred with lights, its big search-light sweeping the shores. When it passed, the darkness seemed deeper. The night was cool, and Anne, wrapped in a white cloak, was like a ghost among the shadows. Far up on the terrace she could see the big house, and hear the laughter. She felt much alone. Those people were not her people. Her people were of Nancy's kind, well-born and well bred, but not smart in the modern sense. They were quiet folk, liking their homes, their friends, their neighbors. They were not so rich that they were separated by their money from those about them. They had time to read and to think. They were perhaps no better than the people in the big house on top of the terrace, but they lived at a more leisurely pace, and it seemed to her at this moment that they got more out of life.

She wanted more than anything in the world to be to-night with that little group at Crossroads, to meet Cousin Sulie's sparkling glance, to sit at Nancy's knee, to hear Richard's big laugh, as he came in and found the women waiting for the news of the outside world that he would bring.

She knew that she could have the little school if she asked for it. But a sense of dignity restrained her. She could not go back now. It would seem to the world that she had followed Richard. Well, her heart followed him, but the world did not know that.

She heard voices. Geoffrey and Marie-Louise were at the river's edge.

"It is as if there were just the two of us in the whole wide world," Marie-Louise was saying. "That's what I like about the darkness. It seems to shut everybody out."

"But suppose the darkness followed you into the day," Geoffrey said, "suppose that for you there were no light?"

A rim of gold showed above the blackness of the Jersey hills.

"Oh," Marie-Louise exulted, "look at the moon. In a moment there will be light, and you thought you were in the dark."

"You mean that it is an omen?"

"Yes."

"What a small and comfortable person you are," Geoffrey said, and now Anne could see the two of them silhouetted against the brightening sky, one tall and slim, the other slim and short. They walked on, and she heard their voices faintly.

"Do I really make you comfortable, Geoffrey Fox?"

"You make me more than that, Marie-Louise." _

Read next: Chapter 23. In Which Richard Rides Alone

Read previous: Chapter 21. In Which St. Michael Hears A Call

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