At length we learned the cost and requirements at the Home. She could manage the cost, but how were we to get her away, and keep her away all the months necessary, so that her family and friends should be blinded to the facts? Her already changing figure made it imperative that she go at once. Persuading a friend in the country to take her a few weeks to board, it was still necessary to devise some excuse for her going that would appeal to her family. As her mother knew that I had been treating her for an “anemic condition,” it would be, I thought, a simple matter to persuade her that her daughter needed to get away for a change of air, so I told her to bring her mother to the office.
The woman came, solicitous about her daughter. She rehearsed her daughter’s symptoms; was afraid she was going into a decline, or had a tumour growing, or some other serious condition. The mother was very deaf; I thought her blind also, for she evidently suspected nothing. Reassuring her as well as I could, I persuaded her to let Hetty go to my friend’s for two weeks, well knowing that after once getting her away, we must invent some other excuse for a longer stay. Right there in the mother’s presence, owing to her deafness, we perfected the plans. I shudder when I think of that hour; when necessary to talk at length about details, to avoid suspicion, I would go to a distant part of the room a little out of range of the mother’s vision, and, appearing to be busy there, would, in a low voice, give my directions.
Our scheme was for her to stay with my friend for two months, if possible, writing back home frequent encouraging letters as to her marked improvement in health, thus gaining consent to remain away. Later she was to state that my friend, Miss Hurd, a semi-invalid, had grown attached to her and had invited her to go on to New England for a little visit. If this worked, and she obtained permission to go so far from home, we were to have Miss Hurd become so ill while away as to require Hetty’s services as a nurse, thus accounting for her long stay in Providence.
It proved even a harder undertaking than I had bargained for. It was my first experience in downright, sustained deception; but there was much at stake, and I was bound to carry the thing through.
Hetty had been at Miss Hurd’s only three weeks when they felt they could keep her no longer—the neighbours were getting curious, and the family was uneasy about thewhole situation. So it was decided to have Hetty go on to Providence early. As a matter of fact, Miss Hurd came on to U—— to visit me, so they came that far together, Hetty going on to New England. Meeting her at the train, I could offer only a few hurried words of direction and encouragement, and the train bore her away in the darkness. Homesick and frightened, she could not get off that train and seek her home, but must journey on, alone, at night, to that strange city, suffering, dread, and wretchedness ahead of her!
About two weeks later her mother appeared at my office, this time in great distress. Miss Hurd opened the door for her—the very young woman with whom her daughter was supposed to be in Providence—but of course she had no suspicion as to who she was. The woman demanded that I write and tell Miss Hurd that her daughter must come home at once: people were thinking it queer that Hetty was staying away so long; someone had even intimated that she was married and was going to have a baby—they were saying all sorts of things. There that deluded mother sat and said to me: “You and I know that it isn’t so; we know the poor girl has been sick, and that she is taking care of this invalid friend of yours; but they have made these insinuations and her father is furious; he says she must come home at once and put a stop to such reports—he says that under the circumstances her duty is to herself and not to Miss Hurd.”
I used what persuasion and arguments I could, and assured her I would communicate immediately with Miss Hurd and Hetty, and tell them how matters stood here, though I hated to distress the poor child with such reports being circulated about her. She agreed it was a great shame, and, too, just as she was so happy and feeling so like herold self. As soon as she had gone, in the same room where she had been sitting, Miss Hurd sat and, heading the letter from Providence, wrote to the girl’s mother, begging her to let Hetty stay another month at least, pleading her need, and her physician’s opinion that a change of companions just then would be very prejudicial to her—a letter which the family could show to doubting friends, thus allaying suspicion. This letter, inclosed in one to Hetty, was sent back with the Providence post-mark, and the family quieted down.
This was near a month before the baby came—an anxious month for me, what must it have been for Hetty! The baby died in two weeks. I felt relieved; it simplified things; but Hetty’s grief was real and deep: “Oh, Doctor, my baby is dead!” she wrote. She was not a “Hetty Sorrel,” after all, as I had sometimes thought her, but a sorrowing mother, her shame and fear of detection—everything—forgotten in her anguish over the death of her illegitimate baby!
The night she came home, meeting her train, I went with her to her door. I longed to go in and help her face her family; but that could not be. She had brought back to me all the letters I had written her, with a lock of her baby’s hair—a tiny silken curl which the doctor had cut from the dead baby’s head. The pathos of it! the little curl was folded in a powder paper, and put in a tiny box marked “mourning-pins.”
“I don’t dare to take it home with me, but you will keep it for me,” she said.
We had been preparing her family for her altered appearance: she was supposed to be worn out from caring for the invalid, and, the last two weeks, to have had a severe attack of dysentery. By her manner of dress she was to arrange that her figure should appear much as when shewent away; but, oh, her face!—they must have been blind, indeed, if they could not see that it was not, and never would be again, the round girlish face they had known. It was the face of a saddened woman. Her grief for her baby was pitiful, and she was denied even the comfort of that little lock of hair!
Months later she told me her people never learned the truth, but I sometimes felt that they must have surmised more than they let her know; and yet, perhaps not. By a ruse I got from her subsequently the name of her child’s father, making her think I knew it when only suspecting it—a strange thing this—the woman’s loyalty in shielding the man! My little “Hetty Sorrel” began to show the more heroic traits of “Hester Prynne.” I kept in touch with her for several years.
When Dr. Wyeth learned of all this, she was frightened at the risks I had taken, and begged me never to undertake a case like that again, unless some other member of the family be taken into confidence. But the poor girl had said that it would kill her mother; that her father would kill her lover; and that, if they knew the truth, she might as well kill herself; so I had yielded to her entreaties for secrecy. Had she died in confinement, I knew my letters to her, and hers to me, would vindicate me, proving that there had been no crime—merely the attempt to help her to keep her secret.
Only a short time after this another girl came to me in the same trouble. Here the circumstances were different: She had no relatives in this country; she was English, twenty-three years old; her lover was Irish, and a Roman Catholic. She frankly told me his name and where he worked, and said he drank some, but she was willing to marry him if he would have her, but she doubted if hewould marry her. I told her to send him to me. When he paid no attention to this request, I wrote, asking him to call. This also he ignored; then I called at his boarding-place and left a note saying I should be under the necessity of calling upon him at his place of business, unless he came at once to see me. This brought him to the office. He was a factory hand. He had a dogged air. While sounding him, to see if he would marry the girl, I had spoken of seeing the priest, which evidently impressed him, for he said, “You can make me marry her, but I won’t live with her.” Then I took another tack: Of course I could make him marry her, but I wouldn’t do that if he was not man enough to marry her willingly—such marriages could only bring misery; and anyhow, I understood he was a drinking man, and Molly was too good a girl to be tied to a man with such habits. He sneered when I spoke of her as being a good girl; that roused my wrath. I told him he was a coward to get a girl in trouble and refuse to stand by her, then sneer at her in the bargain; that the least he could do was to help her financially, so she could go away and have her child where her acquaintances would be none the wiser, and she could take up her old life again, untrammelled by the stain and disgrace. I made him see that she had got to face all the pain and danger and disgrace, and that he certainly ought to make it easier for her by paying her board in a Home, and the expenses of her confinement.
He rose to the occasion, and went out of the office with more self-respect, and commanding more respect from me, than when he had come in; and in a few days, when he sent me money for several months’ board, I arranged for Molly’s admittance to the Providence Home. It was a much easier affair to manage than the other. But as Molly’s money began to give out, Mike’s manliness oozedout, too. As he ignored her appeals, I wrote for him to call on me again. The days went by and he made no sign. Meantime, a letter from the doctor told me that Molly’s son was born, was already adopted, and that Molly had a place as a wet nurse for a premature baby which was being raised in an incubator. Molly’s bills were still unsettled; if Mike was to help any more I must compass it then; she would need all she could earn for future necessities.
Calling at his boarding-place, I found he had just gone back to work. Hurrying toward the factory, I saw him ahead of me, sauntering along, all unconscious of who or what was overtaking him. Coming up behind him, I spoke his name. Turning, surprised and sheepish, he faltered, “I was going to come to the office to-night.” Looking in his eyes I announced, “Mr. Dagon, your son was born day before yesterday.” Conflicting emotions showed in his wretched face—astonishment, pride, joy, were quickly followed by shame and humiliation, as he realized he had no right to be proud of being a father. The words “your son” had roused the man and the father in him, but the painful feelings had quickly supervened. My anger melted as I saw his pitiable state; but, knowing him for a shifty fellow, I realized I must get him to commit himself in regard to the money. He promised to bring it that evening; then asked in a shamefaced way more about Molly and the boy. I told him of the baby being adopted by a childless couple almost before it was born.
The practice in that institution was to encourage the prospective mothers to keep their babies, face conditions, and live so correctly afterward that people would overlook the wrong-doing; but the girls were offered the alternative of giving up the child; the decision, however, had to be made before the child was born. Molly had decided togive up her baby. When it came, she wanted it back; but it was too late—it had been pledged to these people, who had immediately taken it away. They had taken Molly’s name, left her a name and address that would always reach them, and had agreed to let her hear from the child once a year, on his birthday; but she was not to see him, and he was never to learn that she was his mother.
As I explained all this to Mike, he listened in silence till I said she was to be a wet nurse for a feeble baby; then he fired up, looking black and angry. “I should think she’d be ashamed,” he said, “to nurse a strange baby, and let her own be brought up on a bottle.”
“Whose fault is it that she has to do this?” I retorted. “She wanted to keep her child; she would have borne the disgrace; would have come back openly with it in her arms, had you stood ready to support her and it; but you would have none of it; you wouldn’t even send her enough money to pay for her board and medical care. She couldn’t face the world, weak and sick, in disgrace, in debt, and out of work, with a helpless baby; she had to decide as she did that her child might have a good home, and she be free to support herself. And now, after it is too late, after you have neglected her, you dare to blame her for what she has done! Don’t you suppose she has suffered, and will suffer, more than you can ever know? Hasn’t she everything to bear, and alone; while you, who have gone scot-free, have the face to blame her for what you have forced her to do!”
He was man enough to be ashamed, and lamely said so, and then, of course, I pitied him. He came in the evening with the money, asked for more particulars, and showed the best there was in him.
In time Molly returned to her old work in U——. She had developed remarkably. Association with persons ofrefinement had helped her; she wanted to better herself; was full of plans for going to night-school, and for seeking worthier associates. She was hungry for news of her baby, and its adopted mother was soon better than her word, writing to her, and continuing to write every few months—letters full of his baby ways, which Molly would bring to me with all a mother’s pride in her boy, but with a cruel hunger that most mothers never know.
In a year’s time Molly came to me saying that a young carpenter wanted to marry her, a good steady fellow that she liked, but that she would not marry him and not tell him about the baby; and if she told him, she feared he would cease to care for her. We agreed that there was but the one right thing to do, and though feeling sure he would turn against her, she heroically promised to do it. A few days later she came to me with a radiant face: she had told him her story; he had “been good” to her; had even said they would take the baby to rear if she could get it; but, alas! she was pledged not to seek to do this. They soon married and had babies of their own.
The queer thing about the little “John Alden,” as Molly’s baby was called, is this: he had the same effect that adopted waifs have often had in childless homes—within a year or two the foster-parents had a child of their own, which naturally called out the mother’s strongest love; still she wrote Molly that the little John was as dear as ever. But after a second child came, and then reverses, Molly and I detected a change in the letters. I fancied the foster-parents would not be sorry to relinquish the care of the little fellow; but whether or not the question was ever really broached I cannot remember, if indeed I ever knew.
These were only two of several similar cases which fell into my hands during my years in U——. Dr. Wyeth toldme I had had more of them than she had had in all her years of practice. Nothing that has come into my professional life has yielded me such unalloyed satisfaction as the help I was able to give these girls. Sometimes I have had to go to parents and break the news, in one case, actually had to plead with the girl’s mother for mercy and kind treatment of the misguided girl. Much of my work as a physician has been inefficient and faulty—this I know better than any one else—but this work is the best I have ever done; and it is work that I was perhaps better prepared to do in the right spirit because of that regrettable personal experience during my first few months of practice.
After a year’s time I was cosily established in an office of my own across the hall from Dr. Wyeth. What a good time I had getting my furniture! Not a cent was spent without careful planning. My rooms were modestly but attractively furnished, and I was happy in the change. I had a small waiting room, a large private office, and a little room where I kept my gas-stove and household appliances—an improvised kitchenette. I could choose my own office hours now, so had better ones, and my practice steadily increased. Then I reduced expenses further by getting my own meals and caring for my rooms. What cosy suppers we had when Father came in town, or when friends came to see me! But I lived frugally, and accounted for every quart of milk, or pound of beef, or box of cocoa, every postage stamp, and carfare; I think, on the whole, there was little that I bought which I could have done without. If I purchased a book, or spent more than was absolutely necessary in some such way, I skimped in table supplies to even up matters. Eating alone, as I did most of the time, very little sufficed me; but once in a while I would getdownright hungry, then would buy a beefsteak, and was sometimes so ravenous I could hardly wait to get it cooked. It was worth the abstinence to have the appetite I occasionally had.
Dr. Wyeth’s kindness and helpfulness did not abate when I moved to my new office; she always left her keys with me, so I had the use of her books, and telephone, and her operating-chair for a bed for my occasional guests—a similar chair of my own now serving as bed for me.
One day, while sitting in my new office, a queer-looking old farmer came in. He blinked and stared around as I stepped out, and asked, “Where’s the Doctor?”
“I’m the doctor.”
“Oh—a woman doctor!”
He continued to stare; then, as he recovered himself, said musingly, “I never saw one before.”
“Well, what do you think of It?” I felt like asking, but probably inquired in my politest professional manner what I could do for him. He told me about his wife. I made an appointment for an examination, and shortly after she came. The little woman, between fifty and sixty, was suffering from a long-standing cancer. I hated to tell her the truth; she caught eagerly at the slightest hope. There was but little to expect at that advanced stage from an operation, and I told her so, but she wanted the benefit of that little; so Dr. Wyeth and I operated, and for a time she was more comfortable; but later her symptoms became distressing; yet how she clung to life, even to the last!
One day, toward the end, her husband came for me to go out to their home and see her—one of the queerest drives I ever took. The man appeared elated, though from his report of her symptoms her death seemedimminent. I had told him that there was probably little that I could do if I went to see her, and he had seemed divided between pleasure at my going and miserliness at having to pay for the visit. While I was getting instruments and dressings ready, he looked about the office in undisguised interest and curiosity, commenting naïvely on what must have been the cost of various things; asking if I had a big practice; what I did when I had to go out at night; if I didn’t sometimes wish I had a man to help me; and if I wasn’t lonesome in the evening.
When we stepped into his buggy, he started up his fine horses with a flourish, proud to show them off. I must have spoken approvingly of them, for he said, “Youlike to ride fast, don’t you? So do I.Shedon’t; she says it hurts her.” Passing some children along the country road, when I waved a greeting to them, he observed, “Youlike children? So do I.Shedon’t—never could bear to have them around.”
I found the poor woman near the end, and told him it could be a question of only a few days at the most. His comments on the way had prepared me for his callousness at this news, but not for what followed. Instead of driving me right back, as I wished, he insisted on showing me all about the house and barns, and even out to the hill-meadow, where he had a fine view of the city. He acted like a boy. As we stood on the hill-top, he expatiated on the extent and value of his farm; on his stock and barns; on the improvements he meant to make; all of which was tiresome to me; but he finally arrested my attention by the remark.
“See what a fine place this would be for a doctor to live; she could come out here after office hours, and could drive into the city in no time with horses like mine.”
More of such talk followed—I hardly knew whether tobe angry or amused—the conceited, unfeeling old wretch was apparently making a tentative proposal to me there in his home, his wife within a few days of her death! (I learned some weeks afterward that he had for some time previous been in the habit of stopping at a neighbour’s and talking excitedly about the “little Doctor”; wondering what her practice amounted to, and whether she would want to give it up, if she married, or keep on with it.)
“What’s the damage?” he asked, as we were driving home; and when I named the charge for the visit, he sighed as, slowly drawing out his wallet, he said regretfully: “That’s just what I got for the last calf I sold.”
I don’t recall much about him after that, except that he dropped into the office a few times for prescriptions for himself, and once brought me some fruit and some Christmas greens; but if he pushed his hints further, I have forgotten about it.
It was during my years in U—— that Sister’s marriage took place; that Grandma died; and that Kate’s first baby was born—events of great moment to me. I recall the feeling of sadness and irrevocability that night as the train bore Sister away on her honeymoon. It was harder, though, to see her leave, a year later, after a summer spent at home, for she was then about to become a mother, and was going so far away; but, well and happy, she was full of plans for getting settled in her new home, and her chief regret was Grandma’s approaching death with the certainty that she could never see her baby.
When Grandma died we were all anxious to know just the nature of the heart trouble from which she had suffered so long. Our family physician had refused to do the autopsy; and, incredible as it seems to me now (soimportant did it seem then), I said, “I will do it since Dr. Hall will not.” I asked Dr. Campbell to be present; his right hand was disabled, or he would have spared me the ordeal. There, in that little bedroom, the Doctor and my father looking on, on my twenty-third birthday, I made the examination which revealed to us the cause of those agonizing attacks from which Grandma so long had suffered; but it was little more than a careful study of the case ought to have shown during life. In these later years I have thought with horror of the girl that stood there that afternoon and cut through the breast that had nourished her mother; through the dear breast that had pillowed so often her own childish head; down, down, into the poor, out-worn heart. It was a horrible thing to do. Now, try as I will, I can hardly see how the thing could have presented itself to me so as to make it seem imperative to take that unnatural step. Father, who was as tenderly attached to Grandma as an own son could be, had to leave the room before the work was done. A merciful something kept me from feeling about it then as I do now. Yet I knew then, and know now, that, hard as it was, it was easier to do the work myself—for it was done reverently, and from a rigid sense of duty—than it would have been to stand by and see even the most considerate of physicians lay the investigating hands of science upon the body of my grandmother.
As Sister’s husband was just starting in the practice of medicine in a little New England village, and as he had had no experience with such cases outside of his college work, both he and Sister wished me to be with them at the time of her confinement. I also wished to be there, and was planning my work accordingly when, to my consternation, I received a telegram saying: “Read Isaiah IX 6, and comeimmediately. Both doing well.” Rushing across the hall into the rooms of my neighbours, the Randolphs, I cried, “Give me a Bible, quick! I’m afraid my sister’s got her baby!” And so it was: “Unto us a Child is born; unto us a Son is given.”
What disappointment and anxiety I felt as I journeyed there! It seemed unbelievable that she could go through all that, and I not with her. I felt resentment toward the little being that had come so inopportunely—there she was in her new home, not yet settled, among strangers, all unprepared for what had been happening in the last twenty-four hours!
When I saw her, pale and weak, but smiling through her tears as she guarded the little bundle by her side, I felt an added resentment toward that bundle. I did not even feel drawn to it when I saw the tiny red face; but when he lifted up his voice and wept, the cry, so weak and helpless, went to my heart; from that instant I loved him.
During labour, when they had told my sister that the child would be there before morning, she had exclaimed, “It isn’t so—it can’t be so—Genie can’t get here—I won’t have my baby till Genie gets here!” They laughed at us both for our disappointment over the precipitate outcome.
I stayed with them two weeks—a strenuous, anxious time—and, the very day I left, was taken with what later proved to be gastric fever. Stopping over in Concord a day and a night to see Laidlaw, and have dinner with him and two other class-mates living near, I was so ill that evening that I had to leave the dining room, and that night Laidlaw and his landlady were up with me most of the night. Journeying next day as far as Worcester, I was detained there for two weeks at Dr. Carson’s, where she and Fenton (of the hospital days) took excellent care of me. It was thefirst time since childhood that I had been “down sick,” but, soon recuperating, I went back to my work in U——.
From that time onward my interests widened—two centres now—Home, and Sister’s home; everything that happened in that New England home was of great moment to me. The baby’s growth and development were topics of never-failing interest. When they came home the next year, how infinitely richer life was with that baby in our midst! How much more wonderful than ordinary babies—his winsome smile, his soft pansy eyes, and that first tooth! I suspect that for the next three years, at least, I taxed to the limit the tolerance of my friends with numerous little stories about my sister’s phenomenal child.
The most intimate, and certainly the most far-reaching, influence which came to me during my life in U—— came through the Randolphs—a physician and his wife who had their home, and the Doctor his office, on the same floor of the building where I had mine. Perhaps a little slow in making friends, they made up for that in steadfastness and helpfulness as time passed. The Doctor was then probably forty years of age—a tall, large-framed man, with a superb head, a fine brow, a firm mouth and chin, a face always pale, but eloquent with the determination to rise above suffering. Neurasthenic, crippled since youth from an injury to one knee, he was subject to frequent breakdowns, was seldom free from pain, and his work, confined to an office practice, was done under great disadvantage. I think he has the kindest eyes I have ever seen—eyes that look deep into the soul, seeing all its frailties and struggles, its triumphs and defeats. To the needs of all who came his comprehension and ready help were assured.
Of Mrs. Randolph’s friendliness one felt lesscertain; she had even a repellent manner with strangers; she must weigh them in the balance before acceptance, no taking on trust with her. A trim little body, keen of perception and sharp of tongue, she gave one, on meeting her, a sense of openly taking one’s measure. Sometimes you could fairly see her making up her mind; and her “Humph!” was eloquent of her unflattering conclusion. Although really kind-hearted, her range of sympathies, when I first met her, seemed narrow, her judgments harsh and often faulty; it seemed easy for her to condemn and sentence others before she had half the evidence. As time passed it was a study to see her growing and expanding under the Doctor’s more tolerant influence and example, and with her increasing knowledge of life and human sorrows. Sometimes it would be just a mild, “Oh, Ethel, Ethel!” as she would rail at something or somebody; sometimes he would laugh indulgently at her caustic and often accurate “sizing up” of persons who could not, as she would boast, “pull the wool” overhereyes, as they could over “Dearie’s”; again he would drop a word or two that would enlighten her—some extenuating explanation; some recital of good in the one she was condemning. If she pried about any of his patients, his lips would be sealed, but though replying to her abrupt, unwarrantable questions so as not to betray professional secrets, he would, in so doing, help her to view more charitably what she was so readily inclined to condemn. There were times, though, when she would close her lips with a snap, unconvinced, though silent; again she would say she did not believe he knew what he was talking about; or, if he knew, he himself did not believe what he was saying; but more often she would stop her tirade and make a wild dash at him, patting his benevolent face as she exclaimed, “You old Dearie!You think the whole world is as good as you are!” and sometimes she would include, “You and Dr. Arnold—she’s ’most as good as you, but not quite.” And he would smile at her as one would at a spoiled child.
Her devotion to him was beautiful; she tried to keep him from going beyond his strength, for patients, recognizing his tolerant, helpful nature, made many demands upon him; his wife called it imposing upon him; and if she had dared, would often have berated soundly the “whining women” who came to him for help and stayed so long after office hours. I have seen her follow such persons with her scornful glance as they came out of the office, when I knew she was making a tremendous effort to keep her tongue between her teeth. All this, and much more, I could see or divine in my four years’ association with these friends. I saw, too, that as the years passed and sorrows came, she softened and broadened, never, however, losing her spiciness, and never judging either me or “Dearie” as critically as we deserved, however severe she might be with the rest of humanity. She has continued one of my staunchest friends through all the years, and somehow I am always the better for the thought of her unbounded belief in me.
Months before our intimacy grew, she knew of many of my makeshifts and economies, for she kept a sharp lookout upon everything going on in that vicinity—not only in her doctor’s practice, and in mine, but also in that of the other physicians in the huge office-building. I am sure she could have told any one of us what patients were in the habit of coming to our offices, how long they usually stayed, and many other facts gleaned in her numerous little journeys through the corridors.
I spent many evenings in their rooms, and borrowed books from the Doctor’s large library; looked after themwhen they were ill; and they looked after me that I should not get ill, she in practical ways, and he in help and counsel of an immaterial but quite as essential a nature. As we became better acquainted, she would scold me because I did not have a “decent bed”; would upbraid me for not going more regularly to my boarding-place; or not getting myself more substantial meals. Sometimes when I would come in, worn from a hard case, and too tired to think of supper, she would come and march me into their rooms and, in her brusque but kind way, insist on my taking a cup of tea, or some hot food: “I’ll get the beefsteak into your stomach first, and then Dearie can talk to you about your ‘case’—but not a word till I have my way”; thus would she domineer over me, chide me for neglecting myself, and scold Doctor for not scolding me. There was no nonsense about her; she had no patience with half measures, or with procrastination when promptness was indicated.
It was on a blustering evening in March, during my second year of practice, that something came to me through Dr. Randolph that was the beginning of one of the dearest and deepest joys of my life. And yet another decade was to pass before I was to experience the great friendship toward which a chance act of the Doctor’s on that wild March night so inevitably contributed.
I had been attending a case of puerperal fever, a patient of Dr. Wyeth’s—the Doctor having been suddenly called out of town shortly after the confinement. For two weeks or more it was an anxious time for me. The patient was in a serious condition; she belonged to an influential family; friends and relatives were solicitous, some officious. On my first visit I had found the condition disturbing, and it grew rapidly more so. Pressure was brought to bear on thehusband to dismiss “that girl doctor” and employ someone more experienced. My professional skin was painfully thin in those days—it seemed such a crime to be young. I felt such comments keenly, and though I could not have blamed the husband had he yielded to the requests of the friends, he did not. The case pulled through and was a real triumph for me, and later some who had sneered at “the girl doctor” came to her for treatment. But it was a strenuous time, and I was worn and anxious; and in the evening, on returning to the office, it was a great consolation to talk over the case with Dr. Randolph, and listen to his helpful suggestions, or his emphasis of the encouraging symptoms.
On that eventful night in March, though my patient had then passed the danger-point, I was in that overwrought state where I could bear to talk or think only of her. Recognizing this, Dr. Randolph discussed the case with me briefly, congratulating me on the patient’s assured safety, then said firmly: “Now we will dismiss this from our minds. You are going to rest while I read something to you that will make you forget Mrs. Leighton and her pulse and temperature; so lie down and be quiet.” I obeyed.
Seating himself in a big chair beside me, he opened a little olive-green volume and read to me an essay called “Strawberries.”
Jaded, anxious, and overwrought as I was, the crispness and freshness of that essay came to me as the most welcome and delicious restorative I have ever known. I forgot my cares, forgot the blustering March outside, I was transported to summer and sunshine, bobolink music, and the joy of life in heaping measure. My very soul was steeped in summer. I sniffed the clover-scented air of those high upland meadows where wild strawberries grew. I stooped low, parting the grass and daisies, gathering the fragrantberries, while the breath of June meadows came up in my face, and the light and warmth of June skies enveloped me.
The essay finished, Dr. Randolph wrote on the fly-leaf of the book my name and the date, and gave it to me. It was “Locusts and Wild Honey”—the first book of John Burroughs’s that I ever owned, or knew. Were there nothing else to be grateful to the Doctor for, the bestowal of that book, and of all that it later brought into my life, would make me forever deeply his debtor.
For two or more years it was the only book of this author that I owned; but as soon as I could indulge myself in book-buying, his were the first that I secured. I remember so well the three-quarters guilty feeling I had in ordering them; it was such unmitigated self-indulgence; they were so distinctly a purely personal pleasure, and I had so long schooled myself to regard self-indulgence as reprehensible. Here was a sober little Stoic taking almost her first dip into epicureanism; she had many qualms of conscience, but many thrills of pride as well, each time that another olive-green volume was added to the row. The “Strawberries” had done it! Doubtless Godmighthave created a more seductive and more delicious berry, but doubtless God never did!
It was many years after I had grown to know and love the author through his books before I met him face to face. Through his writings I had learned to love all outdoors; to feel a kinship with Nature which had deeply enriched my life; and at length there came a day when I journeyed to his home, sat by his hearth, and felt a deepening of the sense of comradeship that I had felt in reading his books. He became my friend. Many years later I even gathered strawberries with him and Dr. Randolph from the upland meadows of which he had written in that essay which was the means of bringing this rare friendship into my life.
Dr. Randolph had a nickname for me which had grown out of our reading James’s “Psychology” together. There had been a good deal said in the early chapters about “psychosis,” and one day in my attempts to be funny I had said something about “psychosis” being undignified—that James should have said “psychosister”; hence he had dubbed me his “psychosister.”
There had been a time, when my intimacy with the Randolphs began, that I had felt uneasy at the growing friendship. There was charm in the companionship with him, and sympathy and congeniality between us; and when his hand rested on my shoulder in a kindly way I was moved by it, also by the gentleness and consideration he invariably showed me; but I soon began torturing myself with doubts and fears. The fact was, I was no longer innocent: one man, who had no right to, had grown to care for me more than he should, and I began to wonder if this friendship, too, might not turn out in that way. I shrank from such an ending to so beautiful a friendship, then blushed with shame at my unfounded fear. I was experiencing for the first time what, I think, is one of the saddest things about transgressions—the feeling of suspicion toward others that grows in us as soon as we have done wrong ourselves, or have even nibbled at the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. But I soon put aside this fear as unworthy of my friend, and enjoyed the intimacy of which I have written—a friendship with which I am still blessed, and which has been one of the most enlarging and ennobling of my life.
Interests outside of medicine claimed some of my time, of which activities in the Working Women’s League, emergency lectures to a Girls’ Friendly Society, and to nurses in one of the city hospitals, membership in a Germanclass, in a Browning club, even in a Plato club, were among the chief. The Browning club, especially, proved intensely interesting—three or four married couples, three spinsters (including myself) and one bashful bachelor. None of us, except Dr. Randolph, knew anything about Browning when we began; the club was not started in the reverential spirit that I fancy most Browning clubs are. At first we ridiculed ourselves and Browning not a little; but if we came to scoff, we remained to pray—or, if we first endured our poet, then pitied ourselves, we ended by embracing Browning. But the last stage was slow in coming; we struggled and puzzled and got entangled; we were helped out by Dr. Randolph, and amused by Mrs. Randolph, who would not stand—only up to a certain point—what she could not understand. She would blurt out, “Oh, mercy! let’s stop this moonshine, and read something wecanunderstand.” And we soon learned that hers was the sensible view—there was so much that was lucid in Browning that we came in time to pity the too-easily discouraged readers who stopped short at the stumbling-blocks.
The Plato Club, conducted by the Universalist minister, was an incongruous affair—the clergyman, a young lawyer, a factory girl who wrote poetry, a Vassar graduate, teachers in the seminary, two seamstresses, a choice assortment of “old maids,” and the “girl doctor.” They met at my office. I got very little from Plato as we read it, but the incongruous assembly was a perpetual delight. In a few months it petered out, but the young lawyer and I formed a club of two and read Emerson together Sunday evenings (until he became engaged), and thus cemented a friendship which has grown and strengthened with the years.
Another of the Browning Club friendships has also proved of lasting delight. Marion Rockwood, abachelor-maid who had a studio two floors above me, was a splendid, energetic creature with a glorious soprano voice. Both too occupied to see much of each other, we called a greeting in the morning and at night as we went through the halls. I loved to hear her trilling away up there in her sky-top, as she went about busy with household duties, as I with mine. In the years that followed, reverses and sorrows have come to her, but she has sung on when her heart was heavy; sung to supply losses that would have crushed one less stout of heart. Now a great happiness has come into her life; but whatever of joy or sorrow comes, she will always be the dauntless, inimitable creature I knew in the old Browning Club days.
The first taste of real wild life, the first taste of any woods life, since the camp-meeting days, came to me one summer while in U——, when, joining a jolly crowd of young people, with three elders, we camped on Lake Piseco in the Adirondacks for two happy weeks.
After leaving the outposts of civilization, driving over a rough corduroy road for many miles, we camped on that wild mountain lake in a log-camp; rowed, sailed, fished, swam, tramped, climbed mountains, and, one memorable night, having followed all day the T-lake trail (a blazed trail through the deep forest), slept on a bed of boughs in an open camp. Another night we paddled out with a jacklight and saw a deer feeding among the lily pads—a never-to-be-forgotten sight. How flat and cramped and artificial seemed the city life to which we returned after those care-free days in the woods! But I was soon again absorbed in the routine of practice, and in the human problems confronting me.
One of the saddest things in connection with my practicewas the loss of a little patient with capillary bronchitis, a lovely child of three. I had done all I could to save her, had had good counsel, and had fought desperately. The defeat came to me as a terrible blow. I reproached myself for not having relinquished the case, feeling sure it was my incompetency that was at fault; that some other physician might have saved her. The continued confidence which the family showed in me was consoling, but I think many such experiences would have tempted me to abandon medicine entirely.
After the third year of practice, my outlook as a physician, though by no means brilliant, was encouraging. My practice was steadily growing, my interests widening, friends and acquaintances increasing. Economy was still necessary, but I had passed through the trying time when expenses far exceeded income, through that when the income crept up till it equalled expenses, and on to that when it exceeded them. Now each month when Father looked over my books he nodded satisfactorily. To him my success was assured.
At this juncture came an urgent call to leave all that I had gained and engage in an entirely new field of medical work—the care of the insane in a distant part of the state—a branch of medicine toward which I had had a strong leaning in College.
I found myself in an unenviable state of indecision, but the seductive letters of the genial Superintendent at the institution at M—— decided me to go to Albany and take the Civil Service examination, and, that being satisfactorily passed, to go on to M—— on a visit of investigation. The visit was most enjoyable; the new life and work drew me powerfully; the assured salary was a great temptation,promising freedom from financial strain; the friendly physicians I met there—all conspired to make me consent to return there for a trial month, as soon as I could arrange matters in U——.
The weeks that followed were busy and exciting. I cleared up my work as well as I could for the month’s absence, but, not willing to burn my bridges, retained my office. It was gratifying to see that patients and friends were unreconciled, even rebellious, at the possibility of my leaving. My evenings at this time were spent mostly with the Randolphs. I knew I should never meet friends like them again. As the days passed we drew nearer in sympathy; we had grown so in the habit of one another that the thought of separation was painful. Sometimes we sat long together saying little, not daring to trust ourselves to speak; then perhaps she would make a dash at me, hug and kiss me vigorously, and rush from the room, only to rush back again, angry at herself for this betrayal of emotion. Popping her head in the door, she would call to the Doctor:
“Come, Dearie, you better come home, too—before you get to snivelling,”—thus saving the situation.
When we said good-bye, the Doctor told me, haltingly, that he could never hope to express what a help I had been to both of them, and to him in particular—“I think you know it, and have known it, and I don’t know just how I am going to get on without my little ‘psychosister.’”
Although my leaving was ostensibly for a trial month, I felt it was probably the termination of my life in U——. Toward the last, one of the surgeons gave me a farewell dinner, and there were luncheons and teas and cosy little suppers among my intimates. And at length came the night for leaving. I took my last supper in the home of Dr. Wyeth where I had always been so warmly welcomed; andshe and a jolly crowd of the Adirondack campers went to the train to see me off. With Dr. Wyeth I parted with the keenest regret; her help and loyalty had been a steady light along my path. I knew I was leaving her the lonelier for my going, but she would say no word to keep me from what looked like increasing good fortune for me.
Alone in the train I gave myself up to a good cry. I could get no sleeper till half the journey was made. As I sat, forlorn and disconsolate, the sole occupant of the car, the train-man came in and sat down at the farther end to eat his midnight lunch. He must have pitied my loneliness, for presently he came toward me carrying his piece of pie on the cover of his dinner-pail, and half-shyly, half-gruffly, placed it on my lap. The act touched me, and the pie seemed to take the lump from my aching throat. And when I carried back the cover, I felt so much lighter hearted that I sat and chatted with him till we came to the junction where I took the sleeper for M——. Early in the morning, on reaching the city, I was welcomed to the large institution where my work has since been for so many years.
Here my life has gone on—a busy, eventful, and, I trust, a useful one, among persons grievously afflicted, hampered as they are by vagaries and abnormalities, yet capable of tender affection, of keen appreciation for services rendered, and of a degree of companionship it would be hard for an outsider to comprehend. It has been a life rich in compensations, whatever of deprivation and of limitation it has held; above all, a life rich in friendships—friendships staunch and leal and priceless. And it has been crowned in the later years with a signal friendship which has yielded a measureless satisfaction—a friendship and comradeship with one whom the world calls great, yet who made a placein his heart and life for the “Child of the Drumlins,” as he was wont to name her.
The termination of this record at the beginning of a new epoch in the writer’s life—an epoch when all the lines of character were converging to maturity—gives the reader of necessity a sense of incompleteness. The whole record, as I try to see it from the reader’s point of view, seems to be like