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Page 17
"Good Lord! She'll throw herself at his head until he loses
consciousness, and then she'll marry him."
"I think," said she, beaming in the direction of the Senior Surgeon,
"that it would be perfectly wonderful to be the means of discovering
some great new thing in surgery. And as our own great surgeon has just
said, it is really ridiculous to let a few perfectly incurable cases
stand in the way of science."
The House Surgeon looked from the beaming profile to the tense, drawn
outline of mouth and chin belonging to the nurse in charge of Ward C,
and he found himself wondering if art had ever pictured a crucified
Madonna, and, if so, why it had not taken Margaret MacLean as a model.
That moment the President called his name.
[Illustration: The House Surgeon looked from the beaming profile to the
tense, drawn outline of mouth and chin belonging to the nurse in charge
of Ward C.]
The House Surgeon was still young and unspoiled enough to blush
whenever he was consulted. Moreover, he hated to speak in public,
knowing, as he did, that he lacked the cultured manner and the polished
speech of the Senior Surgeon. He always crawled out of it whenever he
could, putting some one else more ready of tongue in his place. He was
preparing to crawl this time when another look at the white profile in
front of him brought him to his feet.
"See here," he burst out, bluntly, "we all know the chief is as clever
as any surgeon in the country, and that he can do anything in the world
he sets out to do, even to turning Saint Margaret's into a surgical
laboratory. But you ought to stop him--you've got to stop him--that is
your business as trustees of this institution. We don't need any more
surgical laboratories just yet--they are getting along fast enough at
Rockefeller, Johns Hopkins, and the Mayo clinic. What we scientific
chaps need to remember--and it ought to be hammered at us three times a
day, and then some--is that humanity was never put into the world for
the sole purpose of benefiting science. We are apt to forget this and
get to thinking that a few human beings more or less don't count in the
face of establishing one scientific fact."
He paused just long enough to snatch a breath, and then went racing
madly on. "Institutions are apt to forget that they are taking care of
the souls and minds of human beings as well as their bodies. It seems
to me that the man who founded this hospital intended it for humane
rather than scientific purposes. His wishes ought to be considered
now; and I wager he would say, if he were here, to let science go hang
and keep the incurables."
The House Surgeon sat down, breathing heavily and mopping his forehead.
It was the longest speech he had ever made, and he was painfully
conscious of its inadequacy. The Senior Surgeon excused himself and
left the room, not, however, until he had given the House Surgeon a
look pregnant with meaning; Saint Margaret's would hardly be large
enough to hold them both after the 30th of April.
The trustees moved restlessly in their chairs. The unexpected had
happened; there was an internal rupture at Saint Margaret's; and for
forty years the trustees had boasted of its harmonious behavior and
kindly feelings. In a like manner do those dwellers in the shadow of a
volcano continue to boast of their safety and the harmlessness of the
crater up to the very hour of its eruption. And all the while the gray
wisp of a woman by the door sat silent, her hands still folded on her
lap.
At last the President rose; he coughed twice before speaking. "I think
we will call upon the hospital committee now for their reports.
Afterward we will take up the question of the incurable ward among the
trustees--hmm--alone."
Every one sat quietly, almost listlessly, during the reading until
Margaret MacLean rose, the report for Ward C in her hand. Then there
came a raising of heads and a stiffening of backs and a setting of
chins. She was very calm, the still calm of the China Sea before a
typhoon strikes it; when she had finished reading she put the report on
the chair back of her and faced the President with clasped hands and--a
smile.
"It's funny," she said, irrelevantly, "for the first time in my life I
am not afraid here."
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