CHAPTER XXIII.
"God gives him painful bread, and for all wine
Doth feed him on sharp salt of simple tears,
And bitter fast of blood."
"Come—pain ye shall have and be blind to the ending!
Come—fear ye shall have 'mid the sky's overcasting!
Come—change ye shall have, for far are ye wending!
Come—no crown ye shall have for your thirst and your fasting!"
Myron Holder, in the blue garb of a professional nurse, stood one spring morning looking out of one of the high windows in the great hospital where she worked. Three years had passed since that daybreak when she turned her back on Jamestown. With what trembling steps she had made her way to town, to the house of the doctor who had attended old Mr. Carroll! He had suggested to her the vocation of professional nursing, having observed her natural aptitude for it when she was tending Mr. Carroll. He had given her his address, and bade her come to him if she decided to adopt the course he had indicated. She had done so, and, through his recommendation, she had obtained admittance to this hospital. Since then she had worked and studied hard, and had gained her certificate as a trained nurse.
She had gone forth from Jamestown "lonely as a cloud," and not without sorrow. The wild flower that grows by the bleakest roadside wilts and droops for a time, at least, when transplanted to even the most sheltered garden. The stunted cedar, clinging to a crevice in the granite, drawing its meagre juices hardly from the niggard soil, yellows and dies when rent by the resistless wind from its rocky resting-place. The barrenness of the mountain-side seems kinder to it than the green meadows to which it is hurled.
For some little time Myron was bewildered by the strange world which she had entered, but it did not remain long strange; it soon developed familiar phases.
She bore forever the burden of the hateful pledge the Reverend Mr. Fletcher had wrung from her. In the old, harsh days of Puritanical prudery and intolerance, the Evil Woman bore upon her breast a flamy insignia of shame—a beacon warning all not to trust their hopes or fears or joys to that perfidious bosom which had been false to its own womanhood, a something which could be seen afar off, a mute, yet eloquent, cry: "Unclean—Unclean!"
But the milder methods of modern Christianity were far different. They fastened no physical sign of degradation upon the object of their righteous wrath; no burning letter or brand. Hers was no torch of shame to light the beholder to other paths than that which lay by her side.
Hawthorne's stately Evil Woman bore an implacable face above that fatal mark; strode upon her way with "the stern step of vanquished will," defied by her mien her accusers and her judges. Upon her countenance was writ in all the varied hieroglyphics of tint and expression, line and curve, the story of her passion and her shame.
Not so this humble village outcast. Her mien showed rather the tender sorrow of a face created for tears—a face whose lips held pain enough prisoned behind their paleness to wail the woe of the whole world; eyes which had looked at death unflinchingly through the pangs of the sublimest torture womanhood knows rather than betray the coward who had forsaken her; eyes which had looked at misery and pain, suffering and death, so often that they seemed to have lost the power of reflecting aught else; eyes which held in their depths nothing but the resignation, despair, and the settled purpose of undeviating will. Sometimes, when the child was alive, there had shone in their depths varying shadows; then there were moments when she allowed herself to wish and hope and fear. But that was past, just as was her mad rebellion against his death.
Such was Myron Holder—meek, quiet, hopeless; bearing the burden imposed upon her by convention's unsparing, if righteous, hand. Men, looking at her, instinctively felt their own vileness; and women saw in her a refuge from their own weakness and sins until they knew of hers; then, rejoicing that they yet had power to wound something, crucified her afresh. Many a time her heart bled from stings implanted by lips she had moistened night after night. Many a time her face flushed before the scorn expressed in eyes that would have been forever darkened but for her untiring skill and patience.
Truly, to lay upon this woman the task of avowing her guilt to each human being who should ever look upon her with kindly tolerance was a measure that the old Puritans would not have adopted. The stake had not receded quite so far into the dim perspective of the past as it has now; and if they had deemed her worthy of the supremest torture, they would probably have chosen the more merciful flames.
Myron indeed stood within the shadow of the cross. But it must be remembered that whilst the cross has been the emblem of much mercy, it was also the symbol beneath which the Inquisition sat in council. It must be conceded that the Church is not very lenient with women. We remember its attitude when chloroform was introduced.
The mercy that the Reverend Mr. Fletcher had proffered Myron Holder was much like the salt that Eastern torturers rub into the wounds of their victims.
There was little to be seen from the high window where Myron stood—the topmost branches of a horse-chestnut tree just leafing out; a wide arch of gray-blue sky; and, far off, a confused mass of chimneys, where the city lay beneath its veil of smoke.
But Myron was not thinking of the busy city, of the tapping chestnut boughs, nor even of the overspan of pellucid sky. She was thinking of a cruel, sordid, babbling little village and of the silent, unkempt field wherein its dead lay. Her musings were interrupted by the ringing of a bell. She turned and hastened from the room—blue-clad, white-capped, capable—to find a new patient had arrived in her ward; a new patient, with thin, broad, stooped shoulders, overhanging pent-house brow, sad and secret, above sunken gray eyes that shone with unalterable love for mankind; a patient who, when he saw her coming, held out his hands and whispered "Myron—Myron!" and gave her such a look as banished all the bitterness of her barren belief and again bestowed the blessed benediction of peace.
Thus Philip Hardman and Myron Holder met again.
Philip Hardman was no longer a recognized minister of the Church. His doubts had grown too strong for his belief, or his beliefs had grown greater than his creed; and he had gone forth from the church to become an itinerant preacher, like the man Christ Jesus. He was miserably uncertain and unsettled.
Little bands of devotees gathered about him in every town he visited. They were those who were mentally maimed, or halt, or blind; those whose aspirations exceeded their capabilities; those in whose hearts a never-healing sore throbbed in unison with the suffering of mankind; those who were, like Philip Hardman, striving to flee from the wrath to come and found themselves bewildered amid the crossways. His followers were, in all places, strangely alike. They gathered to him gradually, and when he left they scattered. There was no unity of purpose among them, no common determination toward one end, to bind them together.
The Western worlds are not ready yet for those creedless, formless, Eastern doctrines of Universal Love. Poor Philip Hardman, in an Oriental world, would have made an excellent devotee, to dream away his years in spiritual abstraction with the best of them; nay, he might even have found courage to release his soul by fire from its earthly charnel like the old East Indians; but he made a poor minister; he was a good enough preacher, eloquent enough, and earnest enough, pitiful towards others, merciless to himself; but, constantly bewildered by the indefiniteness of his own aspirations, he could not minister any healing balm to the sorrows he deplored.
He never felt awkward nor constrained with his followers, only desperately unhappy. They looked to him for a message, and he had none to give them; he raised hopes in their breasts which he could not justify; held out a cup which proved empty when thirsty lips drew near.
When he left a town he was haunted for days by the yearning eyes he had left unlit by hope; yet he could not bring himself to desert the cross utterly, for
"Ever on the faint and flagging air
A doleful spirit with a dreary note
Cried in his fearful ear, 'Prepare—Prepare!'"
So he had stumbled on, the strong in him strong only to discern the needs, the wants, the sadness and cruelty of the world, not strong enough to evolve a creed of Truth to alleviate its misery; the weak in him only weak enough to make him shrink from giving up utterly the old dogmas that hampered his hands, not weak enough to permit him to steep himself in scriptural ease and spend all his time striving to save his own miserable soul.
Hardman had come to the charity ward of the hospital to be treated for that common and troublesome disease familiarly known as "preacher's sore throat." It was a very natural result of speaking night after night in all sorts of weathers in the open air. He had persisted in his preaching, however, until his voice had become attenuated almost to a whisper; then suddenly realizing the gravity of his case, he had fled to the hospital in a panic. Myron's post was in the charity ward, by far the most arduous department in the hospital. Thus Hardman came directly under her care.
Relieved from the nervous excitement of his occupation, Hardman's fictitious strength suddenly collapsed, and, having squandered his resources recklessly, he was now left with very little stamina to fall back upon. But Myron tended him night and day, throwing into her efforts all the determination of her strong nature; and, little by little, she conquered. Philip Hardman himself had been as passive during the struggle as a bone for which two dogs fight; but after the fever left him he began to realize how nearly his doubts and surmises had been all solved, and looking at Myron's weary face read in a moment all the meaning of its weariness. From that time her care was seconded by his eager desire for health.
Then there fell upon those two that strange enchantment which entered the world when the first bird sang its first love song, which will endure till "the last bird fly into the last night."
"What time the mighty moon was gathering light,
Love paced the thymy plots of Paradise."
What strange paths he has trodden since then! What devious ways he has threaded! What strait gates he has entered! Upon how many sandy shores he has left his immortal footprints! For all the oceans of human life, all its flood tides of hope, all its ebb tides of despair, cannot efface them. Let love once set his signet seal upon a brow, and all the gilding of glory, all the blackness of shame, the rose wreath nor the crown of thorns—nay, even Death itself—cannot blot it out.
Life—Love—Death—the true Trinity, teaching all things, could we but decipher them. Of Life we know the ending; of Death, the beginning; of Love, nothing. It springs without sowing, and bears many harvests. To these two lonely souls it brought a gift of "unhoped, great delight."
"Love, that all things doth redress," blotted out for a space the toil and moil of their lives. Hardman told Myron how he had loved her ever since he saw her; told her how her name had been mentioned in every prayer his lips had uttered since he left Jamestown; told her how he had written to her, and of how the letter had been, after many days, returned to him from the Dead Letter Office. Myron smiled a little at that; she understood so well the pang it must have cost Mrs. Warner to return it. Indeed, Mrs. Warner (who was postmaster in Jamestown) had suffered real tortures of curiosity and kept the letter twice the regulation time before she sent it to the Dead Letter Office. But "The Government" was a vague and awful power in Mrs. Warner's eyes, and, as she expressed it to her husband, "You never know what it knows, and what it don't."
Philip did not tell Myron about his doubts, nor that he had voluntarily forfeited his standing in the orthodox church. And she did not tell him of the promise that the Reverend Mr. Fletcher had exacted from her. Perhaps it was this mutual reticence that wrecked them. But for a short space they were indeed happy.
But as Philip grew stronger the inevitable problem of the future presented itself.
Philip asked Myron one day if she had attended the rest of the meetings after he left Jamestown.
"Yes," she said; "I am a Christian."
That calm statement of hers seemed to impose an impassable barrier between them. She had attained the peace he had lost. She held fast the hope that he was all but relinquishing. She was strong in the faith in which he was so weak.
She told him of her first struggle in the hospital; of the difficulty she had had in mastering the "book learning" of her profession; of the weariness she endured and the hopelessness she had overcome; and, listening, he thought his heart would break. How could he take from her the Faith that had made this possible? How deprive her of the inspiration that kept her worthy? Poor Philip Hardman thought he had alienated himself from his church utterly; but he had in no wise cast off its bonds; he still clung to the enervating doctrine of dependence upon supernatural help, and could not realize that in Myron's womanhood alone lay the strength, the purity of purpose, and the endurance that had brought her thus far upon her way.
Sometimes he wondered if it were possible that he could pass the cup from lip to lip, and the morsel from mouth to mouth, and yet be himself athirst and hungry. Now and then the thought came to him that he was but suffering from some spiritual sickness that would pass from him like a physical disease, and leave him weak, perhaps, but safe in his old beliefs. When he thought of this, he pictured himself in his old position as minister and wondered if to marry Myron would conserve the interests of his Faith. This was the one unworthy thought of which he was guilty. The man was weak, but this was shameful.
It seems incredible to us that this man, having, as he knew, this woman's happiness in the hollow of his hand, loving her as he undoubtedly did, should have hesitated. Had he fully understood the conditions of her life, it is impossible to believe he would have done so; but so few of us know each other "face to face."
And Philip Hardman was very humble in his estimate of himself. He did not allow himself to think that his life would compensate to Myron Holder for the spiritual benefits she might lose by marrying him. Indeed, this poor, tossed soul sometimes recalled with a shudder that mysterious Sin for which there is no forgiveness, and wondered if he had been guilty of it; then he trembled when Myron Holder approached lest she be contaminated.
It seems this poor man was incapable of understanding the true beauty of Love. So that now he would wonder if Myron Holder as his wife would stultify his efforts for the Faith, and presently tremble lest he drag her down to the perdition he feared. At this juncture he deliberately shifted the burden from his own shoulders to those of Myron Holder. He asked her to decide, expressing his own love for her and saying tenderly:
"And you, Myron, you love me?"
She only looked her answer, but the eloquence of her look seemed to argue and decide the whole case.
This conversation occurred in the morning. In the evening, just as dusk fell, Myron came to the ward and sat by him for a little space. Now that the burden was shifted off his own shoulders Philip felt calm and happy.
He lay long, and gazed upon her as she sat beside him, gathered the tender strength of her face, the sweet womanliness of her form, the resolution and patience that made bright her brow, and noted all the beauty of her eyes. He pictured their future life together; he thought of her sitting by him in the twilight; of her bidding him good-bye in the morning; of her welcoming him at night; he thought of her looking up at him in the pauses of some household task; he imagined her eyes as they would turn to him for guidance; he dreamed of their comfort when he looked to them for love. He thought of all these things, and then abased himself before the vision of a holy, patient face,—the face of the mother of his child.
'Mid these thoughts speech does not find ready way. They were together silent, hand in hand.
The time came for Myron to go. It was almost dark in the ward, and an angled screen hid them from view.
"Myron," whispered Philip, and looked at her pleadingly.
She looked at him—her head sank near his—he kissed her—her lips were trembling. He passed an arm about her shoulder and gave her a tender, reassuring pressure.
"I will know in the morning?" he said.
"Yes," she answered, and turned to leave him. She hesitated at the foot of the bed and then turned toward him again. "Good-night," she said. "Good-night, Philip."
Then she turned and went swiftly from the ward, passing the night nurse at the door.
Hardman felt a moisture on his hand, the hand she had held as she said "Good-night."
"She was crying, bless her, and I never knew it," he thought.
He soon slept. It would seem that he was content so long as Myron made the decision and thus relieved him from the responsibility and consequences of doing so. Well, we cannot tell. "The heart knoweth its own bitterness," and it is not for us to judge Hardman. But whilst withholding judgment upon him we need not spare to pity Myron, who, prone upon the narrow couch in the bare dormitory, was face to face with her own soul.
Whilst Hardman slept, having cast off his burden, she was tasting the bitterness of death. Myron Holder's agony would have indeed bewildered him could he have witnessed it. It was in such strong contrast to the peace of that perfect hour just past. He could not have realized the battle Myron had done with herself, her tears, her fears, whilst she sat by him; and he comforted himself with visions of an illusive future. Alas! Poor Myron—poor Hardman! Not for them was "The House of Fulfillment of Craving," not for them the "Cup with the roses around it."
We cannot trace step by step the progress of the struggle.
"A sign—a sign!" she cried in her pain. "Oh, what shall I do?"
It was at midnight when the sign was given her and the path pointed out. The clock in her room had just struck twelve when the electric bell at her bedside rang, summoning her downstairs. She rose hastily, and quickly dashing a little cold water in her face, assumed her cap and hurried out. She found the entire staff of nurses assembling. They were gathering about the medical officer in charge of the hospital. He held a telegram in his hand. When they had all come, he read it aloud. It was brief. An urgent appeal from a quarantine station asking for volunteer nurses for cholera patients. The doctor read it and waited. The little crowd of women before him murmured confusedly. Some faces reddened, some paled. The doctor read the telegram again, and said quietly:
"The need is urgent, but I advise no one. If, however, any of you will go, she must be ready in an hour. The express leaves then."
He paused. There was no answer. His face paled a little. He had been very proud of his intrepid nurses, this doctor, and somehow, in this time of trial, they seemed about to be found wanting.
"As soon as each one makes up her mind," he said, "she will return to her duties or acquaint me with her determination to go."
The group before him parted as if by a single impulse, each seeking to escape unseen to her place. Only one came forward quietly, and said steadily:
"I will go, sir, if you will let me."
The departing ones stayed their steps and listened.
"It is Nurse Myron," they said to each other.
"Yes," said the doctor, catching one of these remarks, "it is Nurse Myron, of whom you have made a pariah. Go back to your duties, please." His voice, usually so gentle, was stern and peremptory. They went.
An hour later, Myron Holder left the hospital. As she came down from the dormitory, clad in the blue serge gown with its cape and close-fitting hat, she went into the charity ward. Quietly she stole along its length until she came to the bed in the corner. A straight shaft of moonlight fell upon the pillow. It made visible all the strength and beauty of Hardman's brow and showed all the sweetness of his mouth, all the kindly expression of his face. His brow was placid; his lips smiled. To the woman's eyes there was nothing weak, nothing cowardly, in the man before her. He was her saint among men.
"He will know in the morning," she said. The doctor beckoned from the door. She murmured again, "He will know in the morning," and so bade him an eternal farewell.
"HE WILL KNOW IN THE MORNING."
* * * * * *
Next morning Philip Hardman learned from the doctor of Myron's act.
"The nurses say you are a minister, and that she loved you," said the doctor. "If praying is your trade, pray for her, man; she has need of it." Then he passed on. He was a little bitter and stern, the good doctor, that morning.
There comes a time to some of us,
"When happy dreams have just gone by
And left us without remedy
Within the unpitying hands of life."
Those of us who have lived through such an hour can understand what had come to Philip Hardman. He saw now clearly what he ought to have done, but it was too late. He tried to comfort himself with the hope that she would come back, and then, he told himself, no power in earth or heaven should come between them.
How vain this hope was the event proved; but it was well he had it at the moment, else his self-reproach would have been too poignant. As it was, his fever returned and it was many days before his last tidings of Myron Holder. He was told, and lived. That is all we need say or care to hear of Philip Hardman.
"Perplext in faith, but pure in deeds,
At last he beat his music out."