"I hear that Bessie is to get a divorce from Falkner. I wonder if it can be true.... I saw Steve in the street last week. From what I learn the lumber business isn"t flourishing.... Pity he didn"t swallow his scruples and stay with us where he would be safe!"
Poor Alice--if Steve should fail now, with all those children! And then she remembered what Alice Johnston had said to Vickers, "You see we have been poor so much of the time that we know what it is like." It would take a good deal to discourage Alice and Steve. But John must keep an eye on them, and try to help Steve. John, it occurred to her then for the first time, was that kind,--the substantial sort of man that never needed help himself, on which others might lean.
So Isabelle stayed in the mountain village through the winter months. Molly came with her governess, and both endeavored to suppress politely their wonder that any one could imprison herself in this dreary, cold place. The regular nurses came back to the hospital, but Isabelle, once having been drawn in, was not released.
"He"s a hard master," Margaret said of the doctor. "If he once gets his hand on you, he never lets go--until he is ready to."
Apparently Renault was not ready to let go of Isabelle. Without explaining himself to her, he kept her supplied with work, and though she saw him often every day, they rarely talked, never seriously. He seemed to avoid after that first night any opportunity for personal revelation. The doctor was fond of jokes and had the manner of conducting his affairs as if they were a game in which he took a detached and whimsical interest. If there was sentiment in his nature, an emotional feeling towards the work he was doing, it was well concealed, first with drollery, and then with scientific application. So far as any one could observe the daily routine, there was nothing, at least in the surgical side of the hospital, that was not coldly scientific. As Renault had said, "We do what we can with every instrument known to man, every device, drug, or pathological theory." And his mind seemed mostly engrossed with this "artisan" side of his profession, in applying his skill and learning and directing the skill and learning of others. It was only in the convalescent ward that the other side showed itself,--that belief in the something spiritual, beyond the physical, to be called upon. One of the doctors, a young Norwegian named Norden, was his a.s.sistant in this work. And every one in the place felt that Norden was closest of all to the doctor. Norden in his experiments with nervous diseases used hypnotism, suggestion, psychotherapy,--all the modern forms of supernaturalism. His att.i.tude was ever, as he said to Isabelle, "It might be--who knows?"--"There is truth, some little truth in all the ages, in all the theories and beliefs." Isabelle had a strong liking for this uncouth Northman with his bony figure and sunken eyes that seemed always burning with an unattained desire, an inexpressible belief. Norden said to her, the only way is "to recognize both soul and body in dealing with the organism. Medicine is a Religion, a Faith, a great Solution. It ought to be supported by the state, free to all.... The old medicine is either machine work or quackery, like the blood-letting of barbers." ...
It was an exhilarating place to live in, Renault"s hospital,--an atmosphere of intense activity, mental and physical, with a spirit of some large, unexpressed truth, a pa.s.sionate faith, that raised the immediate finite and petty task to a step in the glorious ranks of eternity. The personality of Renault alone kept this atmosphere from becoming hectic and sentimental. He held this ship that he steered so steadily in the path of fact that there was no opportunity for emotional explosions. But he himself was the undefined incarnate Faith that made the voyage of the last importance to every one concerned. Small wonder that the doctors and nurses--the instruments of his will--"could not be driven away"! They had caught the note, each one of them, of that unseen power and lived always in the hope of greater revelations to come.
As the order of the days settled into a rhythmic routine with the pa.s.sing of the weeks, Isabelle Lane desired more and more to come closer to this man who had touched her to the quick, to search more clearly for her personal Solution which evaded her grasp. There were many questions she wished to have answered! But Renault had few intimate moments. He avoided personalities, as if they were a useless drain upon energy. His message was delivered at casual moments. One day he came up behind Isabelle in the ward, and nodding towards Molly, who was reading a story to one of the little girl patients, said:--
"So you have put daughter to some use?"
"Yes!" Isabelle exclaimed irritably. "I found her going over her dresses for the tenth time and brought her along.... However does she get that air of condescension! Look at her over there playing the grand lady in her pretty frock for the benefit of these children. Little Sn.o.b! She didn"t get _that_ from me."
"Don"t worry. Wait a day or two and you will see the small girl she is reading to hand her one between the eyes," Renault joked. "She"s on to Miss Molly"s patronage and airs, and she has Spanish blood in her. Look at her mouth now. Doesn"t it say, "I am something of a swell myself?"
"They say children are a comfort!" Isabelle remarked disgustedly. "They are first a care and then a torment. In them you see all that you dislike in yourself popping up--and much more besides. Molly thinks of nothing but clothes and parties and etiquette. She has twice the social instinct I ever had. I can see myself ten years hence being led around by her through all the social stuff I have learned enough to avoid."
"You can"t be sure."
"They change, but not the fundamentals. Molly is a little _mondaine_,--she showed it in the cradle."
"But you don"t know what is inside her besides that tendency, any more than you know now what is inside yourself and will come out a year hence."
"If I don"t know myself at my age, I must be an idiot!"
"No one knows the whole story until the end. Even really aged people develop surprising qualities of character. It"s a Christmas box--the inside of us; you can always find another package if you put your hand in deep enough and feel around. Molly"s top package seems to be finery. She may dip lower down."
"So I am dipping here in Grosvenor," thought Isabelle, "and I may find the unexpected!" ... This was an empty quarter of an hour before dinner and Renault was talkative.
"Who knows?" he resumed whimsically. "You might have a good sense of humor somewhere, Mrs. Lane, pretty well buried."
Isabelle flushed with mortification.
"You are witty enough, young woman. But I mean real humor, not the rattle of dry peas in the pod that goes for humor at a dinner party. Do you know why I keep Sam about the place,--that fat lazy beggar who takes half an hour to fetch an armful of wood? Because he knows how to laugh. He is a splendid teacher of mirth. When I hear him laugh down in the cellar, I always open the door and try to get the whole of it. It shakes my stomach sympathetically. The old cuss knows it, too, which is a pity! ... Well, young mademoiselle over there is play-acting to herself; she thinks she will be a grand lady like mamma. G.o.d knows what she will find more interesting before she reaches the bottom of the box. Don"t worry! And did you ever think where they catch the tricks, these kids? If you went into it, you could trace every one down to some suggestion; it wouldn"t take you long to account for that high and mighty air in your child that you don"t fancy. If you don"t want her to pick up undesirable packages, see that they aren"t handed out to her."
"But she has had the best--"
"Yes, of course. Lord! the best! Americans are mad for the best. Which means the highest priced. I"ve no doubt, Mrs. Lane, you have given Molly all the disadvantages.... Did you ever sit down for five minutes and ask yourself seriously what is the best, humanly speaking, for that child? What things _are_ best any way? ... Do you want her to end where you are at your age?"
Isabelle shook her head sadly:--
"No,--not that!"
"Cultivate the garden, then.... Or, to change the figure, see what is handed out to her.... For every thought and feeling in your body, every act of your will, makes its trace upon her,--upon countless others, but upon her first because she is nearest."
Molly, having closed her book and said good-evening to the little patient, came up to her mother.
"It is time, I think, mamma, for me to go home to dress for dinner." She looked at the little watch pinned to her dress. Renault and Isabelle laughed heartily.
"What pebble that you tossed into the pool produced that ripple, do you think?" the doctor quizzed, twirling Molly about by her neck, much to her discomfort.
"He treats me like a child, too," Isabelle complained to Margaret; "gives me a little lesson now and then, and then says "Run along now and be a good girl.""
"It is a long lesson," Margaret admitted, "learning how to live, especially when you begin when we did. But after you have turned the pages for a while, somehow it counts."
CHAPTER LXI
The first of March was still deep winter in Grosvenor, but during the night the southwest wind had begun to blow, coming in at Isabelle"s window with the cool freshness of antic.i.p.ated spring. The day was calm and soft, with films of cloud floating over the hills, and the indefinable suggestion of change in the air, of the breaking of the frost. The southwest wind had brought with it from the low land the haze, as if it had come from far warm countries about the Gulf, where the flowers were already blooming and the birds preparing for the northward flight. It touched the earth through the thick mantle of ice and snow, and underneath in the rocky crust of frozen ground there was the movement of water. The brooks on the hills began to gurgle below the ice.
Up there in the north the snow had come early in the autumn, covering as with a warm blanket this rocky crust before the frost could strike deep.
"An early spring," Sol Short announced at dinner, a dreamy look in his eyes, like the soft sky outside, the look of unconscious gladness that rises in man at the thought of the coming year, the great revival of life.... That afternoon Margaret and Isabelle drove over the snowy upland, where the deep drifts in the fields had shrivelled perceptibly, sucked by the warm sun above and the opening earth beneath. The runners of the sleigh cut into the trodden snow, and in the sheltered levels of the road the horse"s feet plashed in slush. The birches and alders lifted their bare stems hardily from the retreating drifts. Soft violet lights hovered in the valleys.
"It is coming, Spring!" Margaret cried.
"Remember, Mr. Short said there would be many a freeze before it really came to stay!"
"Yes, but it is the first call; I feel it all through me."
The week before Ned had left the hospital, and for the first time in three years had sat at the table with his brother and sister. His face had lost wholly the gray look of disappointed childhood. Spring, arrested, was coming to him at last....
As they climbed upward into the hills the stern aspect of winter returned, with the deep drifts of snow, the untracked road. When they topped the Pa.s.s and looked down over the village and beyond to the northern mountains, the wind caught the sharp edges of the drifts and swept a snowy foam in their faces. But the sun was sinking into a gulf of misty azure and gold, and the breath of awakening earth was rising to meet the sun.
Up here it was still winter, the Past; beneath was the sign of change, the coming of the New. And as Isabelle contemplated the broad sweep below, her heart was still, waiting for whatever should come out of the New.
The sun fell behind the Altar, as they called the flat top of Belton"s Mountain, and all about the hills played the upward radiance from its descending beams.... Margaret touched the loafing horse with the whip, and he jogged down into the forest-covered road.
"Rob Falkner lands to-day in New York," Margaret remarked with a steady voice.
Isabelle started from her revery and asked:--
"Does he mean to go back to Panama?"
"I don"t believe he knows yet. The life down there is, of course, terribly lonely and unfruitful. The work is interesting. I think he would like to go on with it until he had finished his part. But there are changes; the man he went out with has resigned."
Margaret wanted to talk about him, apparently, for she continued:--
"He has done some very good work,--has been in charge of a difficult cut,--and he has been specially mentioned several times. Did you see the ill.u.s.trated article in the last _People"s_? There were sketches and photographs of his section.... But he hasn"t been well lately, had a touch of fever, and needs a rest."