Chapter II
Charlotte Ponsonby continued to lean against the window in an abstraction which registered impressions very much as a flagellant’s ecstasy may note the pathway of his torment. The consciousness of her own perturbation made it exceedingly difficult to turn around. She was so unhappy that it seemed the fact must be evident to even a casual observer. She was afraid of a kindly word, or of a mere friendly glance, lest it should break through the self control she had been exerting.
When at length the National Anthem had been played, and lucent amber was fading into early dusk, the nurse had no further excuse for turning her back on the two patients in her ward. She did not glance at them as she moved away, but her quick return with a glass of milk showed that one of them, at least, was in her thoughts. She offered the refreshment to Collingwood with an explanation, in a dry, professional tone, for its being three minutes late.
He sipped it, looking over the rim with his steadfast brown eyes.
“I’m tired,” he said fretfully.
“I suppose you must be. I will move you when you have finished that.”
“I wonder,” Judge Barton mused, “if nurses do not sometimes feel like saying ‘So am I’ when we fellows complain of being tired, or nervous, or out of patience.”
Miss Ponsonby threw him a smile of recognition for the courtesy of the thought. “Very often they do,” she replied, “but that thought would not come in the case of Mr. Collingwood, because he is tired, and we know that he suffers. Nurses seldom think of themselves so long as they can reasonably think of their patients.” Her outstretched hand conveyed an intimation to the patient under discussion that he was taking an unusual time to consume a glass of milk.
Collingwood was not a man to be hurried when he had an object in taking time. He affected not to see her hand, when, in reality, he wanted to caress it; and he continued to sip his milk very slowly indeed.
“Christmas Eve,” he said lugubriously, “a bum Christmas if ever there was one.”
“Yes,” said Judge Barton. “Collingwood has an epoch now in life—a landmark. Hereafter he will class all events as before or after the Christmas he spent in hospital.”
“Oh, you,” Collingwood threw at him, “you can afford to smile. You have plenty of friends. It’s not the same with you as with a poor devil like me.”
“My dear fellow,” expostulated the Judge, “‘at night all cats are gray.’ Friends do not make a Christmas. When one is away from one’s home and family at this season, there are no gradations. Ask Miss Ponsonby.”
“Is it true, Miss Ponsonby, what he says?” inquired Collingwood with the air of one appealing to an infallible tribunal.
“I don’t know, Mr. Collingwood. Judge Barton must look for his support to someone who has passed through both experiences. I have passed Christmas away from my family, but I have not passed one surrounded by a host of friends.”
“Ah, but you understand so much,” the Judge murmured. Irritated by her unresponsiveness, he grew almost impertinent. “The keenness of your intelligence is only excelled by your kindness of heart.”
Miss Ponsonby’s cheek for an instant flew danger signals, but she said nothing. She looked at the Judge a moment and subdued him. Then—
“I do not believe you give me credit for any great kindness of heart,” she said simply.
“Then must I give you credit for the patience of Job.”
“That you may do.” She took the glass from Collingwood, who, after an ineffectual effort to convince himself that it was not empty, yielded it reluctantly.
The Judge, with a delicacy which he practised with almost ceremonial observance, turned on his pillow and gave them the benefit of a wealth of grizzled black hair, covering a massive head. He would not intrude upon the act of changing the young man’s wearied posture. His excess of delicacy robbed the act of its naturalness, made it seem personal and intimate.
Collingwood felt the nurse’s hesitation. His heart thumped in glad triumph. Let her rule her manner as she would, she could not make that service impersonal. He saw her teeth catch her underlip as she bent over him. Her eyes would not meet his, which glued themselves appealingly upon her face. She slipped her arm under him, however, while his own went about her neck.
In spite of her care, and the perfect training of her action, the slight change which she made in his position wrenched a groan from him. Yet as she laid him back and still stooped, drawing her arms from under him, his own clinging arms tightened, and he pressed his lips ardently against the cheek so near his own.
For a breath, the very shortest breath a man ever drew, he could have sworn he felt a response to the caress, a womanly yielding to all that affection and dependence may imply. Then her eyes, startled, met his, and on the heels of a fawn-like timidity, a wave of fierceness sent the red blood dyeing her cheek, set the high arched nostril aquiver. The intuition flashed into his brain that it was the first man’s caress which had ever touched her soft cheek, and that she was no less frightened than indignant. The joy of the thought drove his blood leaping and stifled his cry of protest, as she drew hurriedly back and left him. She moved rapidly toward the corridor, whence the babble of a woman’s voice, which grew louder as the owner advanced, came floating in.
The lady, weighted with flowers, who had come to bring the season’s remembrances to the suffering dignitary, had paid him several previous visits, was known to Charlotte, and was an object of no little curiosity to Collingwood. She was a member of a very fashionable set, and bore its stamp in dress and mannerisms. She was tall and large-boned, with an ugly, intense face framed in a mass of the then fashionable chestnut-red hair. Save for its haughty demand for consideration, her countenance was not unlike those of her fallen sisters in the suburbs of Manila. There were the same suggestions of life drained to the dregs, the challenge, the hard look about the eyes. She had the manner of an actress, a kind of studied, feline grace which fell into postures and left the observer in doubt whether her next move would be a purr or the stroke of a treacherous paw.
The lady took Miss Ponsonby’s hand and held it during the course of several honeyed utterances. Yet the effect of her courtesy was an impression not of kindness, but of insolence. She managed to convey the idea that civility to one’s inferiors is an attribute of a great lady, and that she was living up to the demands of her position. When she passed to the bedside of the afflicted one, however, a warmth, a glow of the magnetism which she could exert diffused itself like an essence in the bare, ugly room. She addressed the Judge in the abusive strain of intimacy.
“You fraudulent creature!” she reproached him, “lying here, pretending to be ill when I want you at my dinner.”
“Dear lady, don’t.” The Judge gestured away the phantom of that dinner. Being shut out of paradise, he could not talk of its glories.
Mrs. Badgerly laughed in his face. Then she looked around the room for the nurse. She wished her flowers arranged just so in the bowl of old Chinese bronze which her husband and she hoped would keep them green in a dear friend’s memory. Would Miss Ponsonby put them in one by one as she directed? She herself was afraid of ruining her frock, which had already led to recrimination between herself and her husband.
“You do it beautifully, you know,” she purred, as the nurse’s deft fingers planted sprays of green and white. “You must not mind my comments. I am supposed to be a critic—really competent. I took lessons in Japan. Nothing is so satisfying as to lie face down on the floor, sticking cherry blossoms into a Satsuma vase.”
“Speaking of Japan,” remarked Judge Barton, “have those silks which you promised to get for me come yet?”
“You are not to mention those silks. They are on a navy boat.”
“Smuggling again,” said the Judge. “I believe you women do it for the sake of intrigue. You will never rest till you have gotten some poor wretch cashiered and have driven me off the bench. I did not mind the duty, and I do mind the delay. Why didn’t you have them sent down by mail?”
“I mind the duty. I shall oppose it on principle whenever I can. I delight in evading customs duties. It is the greatest pleasure I have in life.”
“Badgerly votes a Republican ticket, doesn’t he?”
“What ticket he votes is immaterial. So is what you say. Would you find me guilty and sentence me to imprisonment if I came up for trial in your august court?”
“I’ve no doubt I should cast about for extenuating circumstances, though you would not deserve my doing so. So I am to be the purveyor of smuggled goods, eh?”
“Oh, if you are too holy—” she rippled.
“Dear me, I hope I don’t set up for being holy. I should almost prefer the title of smuggler. Still, in my position, it might look awkward. However, I’ve always been a pliant fool in a woman’s hands, and I haven’t the backbone to rise up and protest. If you are determined to smuggle, I suppose you must, but don’t tell me about it.”
“How you politicians do juggle with your consciences,” she retorted. “You would have liked me so much better if I hadn’t told you. You would have known, but you could have pretended not to.” She glanced up in time to catch a flicker of distaste in Miss Ponsonby’s eyes, as that lady hastily withdrew them after a covert scrutiny of the Judge. “But how I run on!” she declared flippantly. “I am afraid we are shocking your good nurse.”
If Miss Ponsonby took note of the condescension in Mrs. Badgerly’s choice of adjectives, she did not betray the fact. She quite repudiated any inclination to be shocked. “You could not do it,” she declared ambiguously, planting the last spray.
Mrs. Badgerly took Miss Ponsonby’s measure deliberately. She had long before admitted the personality. She now divined the quarrel. It gave her a rapturous moment of triumph to realize that there was a woman pulled down by the weight of material circumstances which buoyed her up. The full flavor of her insolence rioted in her blood. What was character, what was personality, to power?
She carried a swagger stick of Philippine camagon wood, tipped with a rare piece of Chinese ivory carving. She swung one knee over the other, revealing a mass of dainty petticoats, and silken hose, and a pair of high-heeled slippers. She lolled back, her keen face supported by one slender gloved hand, while she swished her voluminous draperies with the swagger stick. Even Judge Barton, who knew her so well, was stunned by her audacity. He felt as if each blow were a lash on the shoulders of the woman facing her, who had turned to leave them. He felt that Mrs. Badgerly wanted them so interpreted.
“So glad you are not narrow,” said Mrs. Badgerly suavely, “I hate cats, old feminine cats. I lunched with six of them yesterday. I tried to propitiate them. ‘I’ve been just as bad as bad can be,’ I said, ‘but I am not going to be so any more. I’m going to be good as gold from now on. I’ve even told my husband so.’”
She paused to let the full audacity of her remarks sink into her auditors’ minds. Judge Barton held his breath. It was a masterly inspiration to flaunt her impudence in the other’s face. “What is your purity worth? your delicacy? your refinement? your fastidiousness?” she seemed to exult. “Will they win you notice or consideration? You are not the companion, the friend of this man; I am that. You are his menial. What does his secret opinion of either of us matter? His deference is for me.”
“Yes,” went on Mrs. Badgerly, still blocking Miss Ponsonby’s way with her theatrically shod feet. “I made my little confession—wasn’t it dear of me?—in public, and they looked shocked. Nothing is more vulgar than to be shocked. They sat and stared at one another in helpless bewilderment. They had not a word to say.”
If Mrs. Badgerly felt that the helpless indignation of six ladies whose commercial and official relations with her husband through the medium of their husbands had to be supported by civility to his wife; if she felt that their action formed any precedent for the young woman in a nurse’s cap and apron, she made her first error then and there. The very faintest suggestion of contempt swept across Miss Ponsonby’s aristocratic features. She made a little forward movement, just sufficient to force Mrs. Badgerly to draw back her French slipper.
“Probably they did not believe you,” she said gently; “and, as they could not possibly say so, there was nothing else to be said.”
The snigger with which Collingwood received this (he had been listening, but it was Mrs. Badgerly’s fault, she pitched her voice too high) was drowned in an exclamation from the Judge.
“Ah-ha, Mrs. Badgerly, there you have your riposte. You must not try fencing with Miss Ponsonby. Did I not tell you long ago that she was clever, far too clever for you or me? But she is kind, too. She is too generous to take you at your word, though she does not mind countering with you for the pure skill of it.”
Charlotte’s response was a somewhat drawn smile as she moved away. Mrs. Badgerly, though taken aback, was not routed. She still felt that the sinews of war were in her hands, and, until the close of her visit, she made a series of demands upon the nurse which could not courteously be refused, but which kept that unfortunate always waiting upon her. She reserved a few arrows till her departure.
“Dear nurse,” she said, laying a hand on Miss Ponsonby’s arm, “I have been a dreadful nuisance, but I must be forgiven. People are so good to me. They always do forgive me. You will—I know you will. You look so tired, dear nurse. Won’t you let me send the carriage for you some evening when I am not going out? I am sure you ought to be rewarded in Heaven for the sacrifices you make on earth. Are you always occupied at this hour?—the only time when Manila is agreeable?”
Martin Collingwood, who was even more obtuse than the generality of men in matters where women’s finesse is concerned, took these feminine taunts at their face value. They moderated the resentment which, at first, the obvious prosperity and self-confidence of the visitor had aroused. He had anathematized her with the favorite adjective of democracy: he had mentally labelled her “stuck up.” But the tenor of the conversation went far to remove that impression. Its delicate thrusts, its cruel taunts, he missed; but the unvarnished effrontery of it reminded him, save for a flavor of smartness which he relished but could not define, of the frankness of some of the young ladies who had contributed to his discarded philosophy.
Nevertheless, he gloried somewhat inconsistently in Miss Ponsonby’s ill concealed reprobation. Her spunkiness (his own word, dear reader) delighted him as a further evidence of that holiness which was essential to his madonna. The remembrance of his stolen kiss flowed back to him, and he lay alternately quaking and enraptured at the thought of his own boldness.
Miss Ponsonby put aside Mrs. Badgerly’s thanks and declined her carriage. She went about her evening duties with a kind of startled grace like some nerve-tense creature, ready to leap at a sound. Not a single glance fell Collingwood’s way.
But at nine o’clock, when lights were to go out, the necessity of administering medicine to Judge Barton made her bear down on their little ward with a tray. She was very self-possessed, so much so that the keen man of the world guessed that her late encounter had been more trying than she was willing for him to know.
Still, the motive which made him utter a word or two of apology for his guest was not wholly kind. Miss Ponsonby had snubbed his friend, and to do that was to impugn the greatness of the man himself.
“I am afraid that my caller gave you a great deal of trouble,” he said.
Charlotte smiled. “It mattered little. I am here for that.”
“A great deal of trouble,” he repeated, detaining her by holding his medicine untasted. “But, as she said, she must be forgiven. Ah! there is nothing so perfect as the assurance of spoiled women!”
That hurt. It drew a contrast. She, Charlotte Ponsonby, was not spoiled, and she had no assurance, and he could not forgive her for it. Pain jarred an injudicious reply from her.
“Why are they spoiled?”
“My dear lady! Why is the earth scattered with the records of man’s folly? Because he feels, and they prey upon his miserable feelings. I am not sure that you are mundane enough to understand.”
“I am not certain that I do understand. But I am certain that my stupidity does not originate in any ultramundane flights.”
“Ah, you’re clever,” said the Judge, “dangerously clever.”
“No woman is dangerously clever till she uses her wits for evil purposes,” she said, flushing. “I resent your choice of adjectives.”
“A thousand pardons,” he cried. “I was thinking of the effect of your cleverness upon yourself, not upon others, and I cannot retract. It is dangerous for any woman’s happiness to analyze herself and all the world as you do.”
She gave a little shrug, and held out her hand for the glass.
“Bear with me,” he pleaded. “I am not sleepy, and you wish to turn out the lights and leave me in the darkness to ponder my sins.”
“It is my solemn duty to turn them out at once if you are going to do that.”
“I protest. Hold on just a minute, and I’ll swallow the nauseous stuff. Seriously, Miss Ponsonby, don’t you think—all advantages and disadvantages taken into consideration—that it is a good thing for a woman to be spoiled?”
“I am not certain. What do you mean by spoiled?”
“Oh, womanly will do for a definition.”
“Is Mrs. Badgerly womanly?”
“Not in the completest sense, but womanly enough to be spoiled—to base all her demands upon her charms, and not upon her rights.”
“I will think that over. It presents a field for interesting thought. But do drink your medicine.”
“Not until you have told me what you really think.”
“I think you leave no place for the women with no charms. Has she no rights either?”
“The proper sort of woman does not want any rights. She values her charms infinitely higher than all the rights that can be given her.”
“That must be exceedingly pleasant for the women who are born charming. But I insist that a sensible woman should value the attainable more than the unattainable. Charm is unattainable by any conscious process. The woman born without it had better make few claims if, to use a commercial metaphor, she wants her drafts honored. There is nothing for her to do but philosophically to make the best of the situation, and to accept those things which are the commonly admitted rights of her sex.”
“Ah! you reason so clearly and practically. But don’t be a philosopher. Don’t let philosophy creep upon you. Resist it. You know the quotation, I am sure, ‘That unloveliest of things in women, a philosopher.’”
He set the glass to his lips, so that he did not see how she paled under the thrust, nor how one hand went to her throat quickly as if a sudden pain had gripped her. When he had finished drinking and had set the empty glass upon her tray, she switched off the light without her usual “good-night,” and left him.
“Nurse—Miss Ponsonby,” said a small voice in the gloom, a most abject voice to issue from six feet of recumbent manhood, “won’t you come here a minute?”
Miss Ponsonby paused, but did not look back. “Are you awake?” she inquired evenly. “I thought you were asleep hours ago. You must be dreadfully tired. The attendant is here now, the one who handles you so nicely. I will send him to you immediately.”
A man cannot lie in the dark and cry for a nurse who will not come. Collingwood submitted, though fear had taken possession of him. His late audacity seemed madness.
The night wore on. Clouds obscured the sky, and a hot, choking darkness blocked the windows, with solid blackness. The sounds of traffic grew intermittent. Occasionally a carriage went past, full of drunken soldiers or marines, shouting and singing. Once the ambulance went out and came back with an emergency case.
Collingwood’s bed commanded the door which opened into the main ward, so that he had a perfect view of Miss Ponsonby, sitting at her desk and working at her report. A thick green shade cut the light from the room, but centred it like a halo around her shapely head.
By and by, though her features were composed, the watcher saw a glisten of light which flashed at recurrent intervals as a tear dropped downward. The sight filled him with repentance and perplexity. He associated the tears, though he could not tell why, with his stolen kiss. He had kissed more young women in his life than he had energy at that moment to remember; and no one before had felt his caresses a reasonable pretext for weeping. Here again was that mysterious goodness mixing up a situation which ought to have been simple as day, and yet he was glad that it was there to mix.
A faint sound from Judge Barton’s couch told him that the Judge, too, was wakeful and had seen the sparkling drops; but he could not hear what that gentleman was saying to himself.
“Not a philosopher,” he murmured, “not a philosopher, but uncompromising. Why isn’t she attractive! She ought to be attractive.” Then, quite gently, “Poor creature! Why doesn’t she surrender? Why doesn’t she accept the situation and compromise with life?”
There was no one to answer. Presently Miss Ponsonby, as if realising that there might be wakeful eyes among the patients, got up and went out into the corridor. A few minutes afterwards, the bells, the whistles, and the revolvers of enthusiastic exiles flung out a Christmas greeting, and her relief came.
Each man took unto himself a partial responsibility for her tears. Judge Barton planned to wipe out the memory of his unchivalrous conduct by his most deferential manner and his very best conversation. Collingwood dreamed of abasing himself, and of settling without delay all doubts as to his attitude. If he saw a rosy vision of Miss Ponsonby reconciled to him and forgiving, he was not altogether conceited. He had been a man decidedly popular with women. But when the sixteen weary hours had passed away, and the afternoon shift of nurses brought not Miss Ponsonby but the red-haired lady of cheerful temperament, Judge Barton’s instinctive sigh was speedily followed by a rapt interest in Collingwood. That young man had allowed his disappointment to express itself by an involuntary twist in bed, so that he yelled in agony.