MARCIA WAY.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXV, Issue 2191, 21 September 1907, Page 3 (Supplement)

MARCIA WAY.

(By Richard Washburn Child.)

My friend Leo Borgliese, the specialist, sleek with professional eminence big in forehead and girth ami chop-bearded, faced me as I came in through the waiting room; when he laid his tortoise-shell spectacles oil a largo, unfolded architect’s plan and leaned back from his desk, lie looked liked an unshaven B’uddlia. He shook a little white card at mo. “There’s a lucky one,” he said, slipping it into an indexed drawer,

file with his fat fingers. “A case of bronchitis. Examination of sputum negative. No need for eggs and milk, high altitudes and hopes! That patient' has no Carsli!” The last vague word came out through his teeth, which showed between tightdrawn lips, and was prolonged unprettily into a snarl, a hiss, a cough, and a suggestion of the last nostril breath of a dying beast. “Where among decent men did you get that nasty sound for it?” I cried. The doctor got up, peering out from under his thicket of eyebrows. Ho waddled to the waiting room and looked in. It was filled with the soft gloom of the late afternoon and a dozen suggestive shadows, but. no pa-

tients of flesh and bones were there. The onyx clock chimed five. He waddled back again. i “This is as good as the club at this hour,” said he, offering me his cigaretttes, which were as large and long as fountain pens and rolled in black paper. Having dropped back into liis chair, be exhaled a great pyramid of smoke that suddenly broke and then slowly formed a billowing phantom blanket, hanging in mid-air with its. edges lost in the puckering darkness at the far corners of the room and waving along the bookcased walls. “That word?” I suggested behind the glare of my match. “Certainly,” lie returned. “It was the name given to tuberculosis by Marcia Way. She looked at a photograph of the germ and said it; and she was a little girl, too—ten or twelve—a wonderful case professionally ; tubercular hip-joint, necrosis, and so on. Bacillus-eaten across the middle. Rather more wonderful, though, in another way. I think you’ll admit it.” 1 “Borgliese,” said I suspiciously, 1 “none of your hospital horrors.” ; “Pooli !” He shook the rattling architect’s plan at me. “This i= not ‘ about death or suffering; it was u i matter- of will and victory. “The facts—?” 1 settled into flic i leather chair. 1 “Yes; the frets,” he repeitod. “By 1 all means, nothing but the facts 'I he t hones of the p ctless story—disjunceci i —you can wire them up an l build 3 your own creature on them.” r He reached toward the elec 1,-, a i light, changed liis mind, and for «cvv oral moments fiddled on his nose with • ' one finger.

“Marcia Way came to the children's ward in the City Hospital when I was a visiting physician,” sail lie. “She was brought up by her mother i lid such a mother! A great, round-headed, matted-haired creattuio with a lj.oliead only the u jr-li of her own lips. And the child half walked and half crept witli a. white, thin hand lent in its mother’s red paw. When 'o one heljied her, she scuttled ale on all fours, like a spiritual ape. hit.when you saw her faco you w. v blind to the other things. AVliy, a nurse wo discharged

for theft came back the noxt week. I met hor on tho steps. Said she hud come back to seo Marcia’s eyes. Either lying or hysterical. But it was true that the child’s face was old and white and perfect—liko the idea you might have of. a death-mask of some great and powerful man. “In tho natural course of tilings we got as much of tho history of the case as her mother could furnish. No ono know her exact age—perhaps ten, perhaps twelve. At' two, her father, in a drunken fury, had thrown her against a table. Tuberculosis fairly leaped into the places where bone and cartilage were injured. Natural enough, but some interesting features. One curious tiling was that though tlio child knew of the incident and had talked about it to her mother—probably even remembered it vividly —she always denied it to us at the hospital.-

“Miss Sykes, tho head nurse, got her stripped of all tho wretched c'othing and put her between clean sheets hut there was one thing that she wouldn’t give up—a bent and scratched tintype of a man in sailor clothes leaning with one arm on a photographer’s ship-rail. She admitted it was hor fathor and kept it under her pillow jealously. The face was like hers—a remarkable face—hut the mouth! There was the difference. His was weak. “ ‘Ho was a Great,’ she would say, if pressed with questions. ‘And now, long ago, but ho is dead, but he was strong and must not have any other way. My mother lias told it liko that. So he was a Great.’ Then her. hands would go up, her fingers spread taut and stretching painfully apart, and yet the lids of her eyes twitch.

“Oh, she demanded interest. You foil' you o-.ved it! No one knew why. I remember one day when 1 was coming out of tho ward I met Miss Sykes in a hurry and adjusting her apron. She’d been helping on an operation I think. ‘Dr. Borgliese,’ she whispered to me, ‘here come some visitors. If you want to see something funny about Number Seven just watch them 1’ "

“Merely the facts, you understand. There were a man and a woman, treading into tho ward with tho usual hall'-sacred step—like all visitors. They went half-way down tho aisle with tho faces of every little brat in the room raised to return tile stare, and there they stopped. Then all three turned towards Marcia AYay, wlio had propped herself up on a shaky elbow against all rules; and the man stopped a few .feet forward and said to tho attendant ‘AYho is that child?’ in a voice. loud enough to startle his own senses. ‘AYhat is the matter with her?’ he said.

“ ‘lt always happens about that way,’ whispered the head nurse in my car.

“A minute afterwards when they passed us again, one of the women said, ‘I should have been sure I had seen that little deformed creature before, and the other looked hack over her shoulder nervously and answered, ‘So should I .’ Whereupon Miss Sykes informed me that they always said that too.

“It was strange that Marcia attracted so much attention ; she was irritable and cross, supremely selfish, and spoke only of herself. When Miss McTighe, the most sympathetic of the probationers, asked mo if Marcia suffered mHcli pain and I nodded, she said nervously, ‘I am sure it’s nothing to her!’ So you can see it was not pity.

“I often stopped beside the child’s cot to receive the half-contemptuous glance she always gave mo. She had black hair drawn tight from her forehead to lier little fiat- ears, a tliin-lipped mouth, and a complexion the color of skimmed milk. Sometimes when she saw me there she would complain of the mangement of tho ward, of the nurses, of the color of tho tinted walls, but never a word of her own pain. She spoke with perfect, unconscious, almost irritating assurance, like one who has tho patience to explain to an inferior

intellect; if you listened long enough, tho fascination of hor curious, cold, choppod-off sontoncos increased until you could foolishly boliovo that her words wore of groat weight and inclination to subject your individuality to hors came on with a strong compelling force liko tho fumes of a strong liquor. “ ‘I liato pooplo,’ she would say. ‘They are all fools. Tho nurses—also are fools. My father was not a fool. Ho was a Groat. You. do

not boliovo it—oh;’ Sho’d open her eyes into great, unsounded circles, peering into mine, and her voice would suddenly slide far away, just as a scene slides away when you look through tho wrong end of a telescope, only, sliding further, it disappeared altogether, and thou came hack again while she was saying, ‘But ono thing that is all wrong!’ “I asked lier what it was. “ ‘I am a girl and it is wrong—so!’ she would exclaim as if with absolute authority. This was peculiar. But I’m giving you merely the fact, you understand.”

Borgliese paused at this point as if to select from a large number of suggestive incidents ono which would best disclose tho personality of Marcia. Ho loaned forward over tho desk, pulled tho cork from a little bottle, wilich his fingers had found hidden in the litter of papers, and smelled of its contents critically. “Miss Curry was the night-nurse,” lie wont on. "Slio was my officenurse afterwards. A very sensible girl, or at any rate very silent. I have a scar under my heard where she ripped mo with a Semi’s tenaculum. But Miss Curry was afraid of Marcia Way. No ono ever found out just why; perhaps something had happened—you never can tell.

“I remembered ono night they telephoned for me on somo accident case* of remarkable interest and I stopped at the children’s ward afterwards for somo errand—it makes no difference what it was. Well, they toll me sometimes in a menagerie at night when one animal wakes from a bad dream and yells, another and another answers, till the lions, leopards, hyenas and all have turned up into a furious, roaring chorus. It’s often that way in a children’s ward. One restless case—one earache and a few cries—will start another, and so on until there’s no peace. Those who are afraid of the dark get nearly hysterical with the nameless terror of childhood, and sometimes the noise and the mob spirit—it you can call it that—drive even the nurses into a panic. The stampede has to he checked—excitement, loss of sleep are bad; it takes a good night-nurse to quiet a. ward, going from cot to cot with absolute patience and exerting all her mental strength through a single word or the touch of her fin-

ger-tips on a forehead here and -i hand there. The night performance, as we call it, is a very difficult thing to deal with. Sometimes the lights are tho only way to stop it. “I just tell you this so you can appreciate that when I was standing there whispering questions to Miss Curry and tho noise started, I supposed that she would hurry down the ward at once. But' she never moved and I • could see by the light iroin the liall that she was smiling dryly. “ ‘Better nip it in the hud,’ I

“ ‘Wait,’ she whispered. I thought her voice had a grain of fear in it. ‘Just listen to that.’ “One word had rung out through the ward. Just the word ‘Stop!’ and in a childish sort of scream—the voice of a cross child. It came sharply up above the tumult of the young children, but when it had gone the ward was as still as death—not a murmur 1 It was a wonderful contrast. “ 'You see,’ said the night-nurse, ‘the responsibility is taken off my shoulders.’ “I remember that I laughed and said, ‘lt; was a rather authoritative command. Who was it?’ “ ‘Number Seven,’ she answered uneasily, ‘Marcia AYay.’ She came a step nearer and looked up at me suspiciously. ‘Didn’t you know it?’ So I merely nodded and said, ‘I was not quite sure,’ which was only partly honest. “From that night I had an additional interest in the little brat. I remember that- I brought her a magazine a few days later. Slio had a disgust for any suggestion .that she should learn to read, but pictures were lier delight, and I approached her with the magazine for tho preconceived purpose of hearing lier comments about tho illustrations.

i 1 i ‘‘X was .saying that she showed pleasure because she had attracted my interest ; at last she said ‘Thank you.’ In her voice just then, and at no other time, I heard the same unexplained wrongness of her very existence. “ ‘You know it. ell?’ she asked me, and. as I could see no meaning at ad in her question, I said, ‘Know what ?’ “She leaned upon her elbow and looked at me with her big eyes in j great distress. “ ‘Know what?’ I asked again, and Txnow it !’ she said as if her means of expression were completely inadquate to the idea, but as if it were of vast importance to insist that I should understand. * ‘Know wliat?’ I ax'ked again, and she fell back on her pillows biting her lips and scratching at the sheets with her little talons. Out of her mouth came a torrent of detached words—perhaps it was the extent of her vocabulary, and she tried some of them over again, re-testing them to see if they would not do, and choking with girlish rage because they would not. I was leaning forward; it was natural enough that I should want

“So I drew up a chair hesicle the cot and had a screen brought to hide me from tho other children—the visiting doctor -can’t show preference or shower favors unequally, you know. Marcia was looking jialcr than ever, with the march of the disease, hut she keenly noted every movement I made, and when I handed her the magazine doubtfully and almost sheepishly, I confess, she took it with the first sign of pleasure I had over scon lier give in response to a kindness. Don’t mistake my meaning—she didn’t' look grateful—slio looked gratified 1 “For several moments she continued looking thoughtfully at me and on her face there appeared something which made me see for the first time that there was something tremendously wrong about her. It was not her blunder of a body—l had long ago got blind to physical outrages; then again it did not seem that was her mind. Maybe it was the combination. But I have got away from the mere facts, and that won’t do at

to hear, for I knew that I had come as close to her then as any one had ever been.. I didn’t earo why or how,' but I listened—and listened with a littlo of the same rage at the gulf that separated us as had taken possession of lior. She was like a cat—an animal—a chair—a watch-charm, if you like, with a human thought tearing about for utterance and tearing about in vain. She quieted down as soon as I spoke her name, and I loaned bank and drew a long breath, for it was clear that she had failed.

“After a moment slie opened the magazine and began to turn the pages slowly from picture to picture. No doubt remained that she had abandoned the attempt to speak to mo, for she was inspecting the finest details of the illustrations with her usual keenness of observation. I shifted my chair around so I could look down across her shoulder. And then—these are merely the facts you understand—she turned a page and gave a little hoarse cry. It seemed as if her eyes', her personality itself, had leaped out of her like a wild thing springing at its prey with a scream of certain triumph; her head stiffened forward from the - pillow with the cords at the back of her pitiful neck straining at the white, tightened skin. The picture that had caused all this was only a rather good reproduction of Meissonier’s painting of the French cavalry charging in review of their Emporor

“ ‘What is it Marcia?’ I exclaimed. “‘A Great!’ she cried, like that. ‘A great, a Great!’ And. the nurse, who had come around the corner of the screen with a flannel duster, looked from the child to mo and back again in blank surprise. Marcia glanced up quickly and suspiciously, pressed the magazine against her body with lier arms folded about it, as if she feared it would he taken from her; and then thrust it under her pillow. I heard the next day that tho head nurse had found the magazine in the hands of another child—a bad congenital hip case—but one page of it was missing. And later under a cot across tho ward they found the bent and tattered tintype of Marcia’s father—the man in sailor clothes. She had thrown it away.” Borgliese stopped to light another cigarette. Ho was smiling grimly. Tho room was otherwise very dark, but in the flaro of tho match lie reached forward, picked up the rolled architect’s drawing from his defek and held it above his head as if it were a weapon.

“The rest—the main facts—have some concern with these plans,” he went on. “They are for a new children’s hospital— you know, of course, that we are building one. Onefourtli was contributed by Phipps, Airs. Sims, and the Bruce will, all under the condition that we raise the full amount within a certain time, and meanwhile the money was waiting in the hands of three trustees. I was one of them. It is necessary to explain that for somo reason we could get very little sympathy with the project. There seemed to be a general impression that another general hospital was needed even more than one for children alone, which was absurd. Even Bullock—who, by

OUR NEW SERIAL STORY “A TENDERFOOT’S WOOING.” Will Commence NEXT SATURDAY.

the way, is very much over-estimated as a surgeon, and I say it without any of your so-called professional jealousy—tried to block us. The other trustees and I were on our mettle to win, but by the time the eirl began to approach—when we could check off the days that were left on oue sheet of the calendar—it looked very much as if we were going to fail completely. You appreciate that the thing began to have an exeitment to it—like a game of chance.

“I remember about a week was ft wlieu Eastman, one of tbe other ustees, came into my office late one afternoon. ‘There’s just a chance in this/ lie said. ‘Henry S. Oxley is in town for a few days on the way t! his summer place.’ ' “ ‘Henry S. Oxley?’ said I. “ ‘Yes,’ Eastman answered, ‘Oxley of the Interocean Refining Company.’ “ ‘Oh,I know very' well who he is —everybody, ‘does,’ I said somewhat impatiently. ‘I even know him at close range. I had the pleasure of sending him to Florida after his big railroad fight. And did you ever hear of Henry Oxley shelling out for charity unless it was on some particular theory of his own—’ ‘Eastman shook his head. ‘He’s going to be at the University Club to-night with Britton,’ he persisted. ‘Get him to go with you to-morrow, show him the inadequate ward for children at the City Hospital, and strike him there.’ “I knew very well that I might as well be an alchemist as a solicitor from Henry S. But lie agreed to go out with me to the hospital, and 1 made up my mind to do my very best ; 1 knew that if I succeeded it would be a great feather in my call. “Before we got there next morning —I had called for Oxley' with my automobile—everybody in the hospital had heard in somo way that he was coining. I could tell at once that every nurse and attendant was not only anxious to catch a glimpse of the celebrity’, but also felt that his visit was of some large importance. Miss Sykes, the head nurse, whom you usually find going through life as smoothly as an electric automobilo, was decidedly nervous when Oxley came into the office of the children’s ward, and, having thrown his big fur coat and bat in the corner, was introduced to her. “I don’t tliink there is anything you could call terrifying in old Oxley’s appearance. He is ratlier broadshouldered, and a tremendous nose, which isn’t red, but oil the other hand gets whiter and whiter from the ridge to the tip. His mouth, all clean shaven, is large, too, and looks as if it was drawn tight from end to end and spiked down with wrinkles ; and the only liair on his head is grey and grows in a circle, all pointing up to a common centre, which is bald. It is like a shaven monk’s head, except that the circle of hair, on O: Icv’s looks a trifle more like a laurt wreath. He has a confident, superior bearing, and there is no doubt that there is a suggestion of gigantic will and power about bis eyes, which are as cold as the butt end of icicles, and in the muscles of his forehead. “Ho, bad strolled down the, ward ahead of me in bis independent way, and looked back at me over Ills shoulder whenever he spoke. Of course, I believe that sort of thing is put on

—bluff—but it is quit-o harmless

enough. “ ‘Wc’vo just built a hospital in my old birthplace. Everything modern,’ said lie. ‘I had my finger in it, and got rather interested in hospitals. I was glad to have you ask mo to come here.’

‘ ‘Well,’ said I, ‘we’re rather proud

of our management. It’s a good • training-school.’ Oxley had turned towards Marcia Way, who, propped ui> as usual on her elbow, was inspecting him as carefully and coolly as an officer would inspect a recruit. “ ‘We lade a sufficient accommodation for children,’ said I, going as directly as possible to my point. ‘ln fact, the city suffers a- great deal for the want of a hospital especially for children.’ “Oxley wheeled towards me as viciously as il lie had been some proud beast and I had pulled his tail.' “ ‘Yes, yes, I know, he said sharply. ‘That was brought to my attention some few months ago.’ “ ‘We already have nearly onehalt subscribed on condition,’ I went on.

“ ‘You would have me furnish the rest,’ he said, picking the words out of my mouth. ‘So I understood. I can’t do it!’

“He looked me straight in the eye, and then, holding up his large hands to his chest, he shot both sets of fingers at me and said in a low guttural explosion, ‘No!’ It was his famous ‘No,’ which is spoken of, even by his enemies, and I confess it is hard to tell whether it is a real exhibition of will-power, or merely a triumph of theatrical ability. “For a minute he played with his watch-chain, then spread liis palms outward towards me and said glibly: ‘You see, I am called on constantly for this kind of help—and every other kind. I almost need a secretary to attend to this kind of business alone. It is absolutely necessary, as you mustsee, to distribute along some definite

line. I have to do whatever seems best to me, and I can pay no more attention to one outside appeal than to another. I assure you it is rather more embarrassing to me to refuse than it is for you to be refused.’ “Having said this in the manner of a lecturer in a curio hall, he turned from me and found himself looking straight at Marcia Way, whose eyes, I believe, had never ceased their keen scrutiny and who was leaning forward as if she had sought to hear every word of our conversation. Oxley scowled slightly, and moved slowly towards the head of her cot, where a chart hung.

“ ‘Marcia Way ?’ he read aloud, and glancing down at her, he drew up the corners of his mouth into a forced smile and said, ‘Well, little girl, I guess you’ll be better soon.’ “Marcia stiffened herself up laboriously and caught the edge of his coat with her little hands, and through all the strength of his face there appeared a smile of weakness—a silly grin of vanity. But the girl, looking up at me, said, ‘Go away I’ and again ‘Go away!’ with great determination. Whereupon old Oxley, in a lialf-em-barrassed tone said, . ‘Doctor, the little girl wants to talk with me,’ and he leaned over and touched her on the forehead. As I started down the aisle, however, toward Miss Sykes and the other nurses at the office - end of the ward, it seemed to me that old Oxley suddenly drew back as if to loosen the oliild’6 grip - upon his coat—as if she had inspired -him with a superstitious fear.

“We never knew what they talked about—those two—-but ten minutes later, when I thought it was curious that- the chat had lasted so long, I looked out of the office and saw Oxley coming toward me down the ward. His steps—these are merely the facts, you understand—were lifeless and almost uncertain, and as he came nearer and passed into a slant of -the morning sunlight, I.could see sweat drops standing on his broad forehead, and his eyes were tired and his mouth drooped. I remember how liis fingers were crazily running back and forth) back and forth, at each side, along the bottom edge of his coat. “ ‘That’s a remarkable little girl, isn’t she, doctor?’ said he, trying to laugh pleasantly, and he went across the office and dropped into a chair, breathing hard and very white along the wrinkles under his eyes. “I started to ask him if he was ill, but he raised his hand in such a way that it seemed as if he was pleading for a moment’ silence. After a few seconds’ silence he said slowly with great care and precision: ‘My mind is changed. I will send you that- cheque for the children’s hospital either Thursday or Friday.’ “I looked at him in blank amazement, and once more I started to speak and once more lie stopped me with his hand. He put on liis .overcoat and hat, and then, turning on mo again in his old wild-animal way, ho slammed the office door and gave vent- to a roar of rage.

“‘My God!’ he bellowed. ‘Do you know what it was? A wilt! This is not a child! It is a thing that lias come bursting out on history—bigger than you—bigger than me. I’ve seen the soul of Napoleon!’”

Borglicse, with what might have been a fine sense of dramatic art, waited an instant and then reached forward and turned on the lights. His face was expressionless and he looked more than ever like an uusliaved Buddha. But I noticed that his fat fingers had squeezed the architect’s drawing beneath their grip. “Well,”, said I. “I suppose that sort of a tubercular case doesn’t last long—l suppose Marcia Way is dead.” “Ah!” said Borglicse, shrugging his chunky shoulders. “Assuming that Oxley was right in liis rather extraordinary conclusion, it is not likely that such a soul would be satisfied with such a body.”