The Primrose Ring by Ruth Sawyer

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The Executive Trustee slept heavily, after the fashion of a man
exhausted from hard labor.

In the house left by the Richest Trustee a little gray wisp of a woman
sat huddled in a great carved chair close to the hearth, thinking and
thinking and thinking. The fire was blazing high, trying its best to
burn away the heart-cold and loneliness that clung about everything
like a Dover fog. For years she had ceased to exist apart from her
husband--her thoughts, her wishes, her interests were of his creating;
she had drawn her very nourishment of life from his strong, dominant,
genial personality. It was parasitic--oh yes, but it had been
something rarely beautiful to them both--her great need of him. The
need had grown all the greater because no children had come to fill her
life; and the need of something to take care of had grown with him.
Their love, and her dependence, had become the greatest factors in his
life; in hers they were the only ones. Therefore, it was hardly
strange, now that he had died, that she should find it hard to take up
an individual existence again; to be truthful, she had found it
impossible--she had not even existed.

The habit of individual, separate thinking had grown rusty, and as she
sat before the hearth ideas came slowly. The room was dim--lighted
only by the firelight; and in that dimness her mind began to stir and
stretch and yawn itself awake, like a creature that had been
hibernating through a long, dark winter. Suddenly the widow of the
Richest Trustee broke out into a feeble little laugh--a convalescing
laugh that acted as if it was just getting about for the first time.

"I haven't the least idea what is the matter with me," she said,
addressing the fire, "but I think--I think--I'm becoming alive again."

The fire gave an appreciative chuckle--it even slapped one of the logs
on the back; then it sputtered and blazed the harder, just as if it
were ashamed of showing any emotion.

"It is funny," agreed the little gray wisp of a woman, "but I actually
feel as I used to when I was a little girl and Christmas Eve had come,
or Hallowe'en, and--and-- What other night in the year was it that I
used to feel creepy and expectant--as if something wonderful was going
to happen?"

The fire coughed twice, as if it would have liked to remind her that it
was May Eve, but felt it might be an intrusion.

"I believe," she continued, speculatively--"I believe I am going to
begin to think things and do them again; and what's more, I believe I
am going to like doing them."

The fire chuckled again, and danced about for a minute in an absurd
fashion; it was so absurd that one of the logs broke a sap-vessel.
After that the fire settled down to its intended vocation, that of
making dream-pictures out of red and gold flames, and black, charred
embers.

The widow of the Richest Trustee watched them happily for a long time,
until they became very definite and actual pictures. Then she got up,
went to her desk, and wrote two letters.

The first was addressed to "The Board of Trustees of Saint Margaret's
Free Hospital for Children"; the second was addressed to "Miss Margaret
MacLean." They were both sealed and mailed that night.

What befell the other trustees does not matter, either from the
standpoint of Fancy or of what happened afterward; moreover, it was
nearly midnight, and what occurs after that on May Eve does not count.

IX

THE LOVE-TALKER

All through the evening Saint Margaret's had been frankly miserable.
Nurses gathered in groups in the nurses' annex and talked about the
closing of the incurable ward and the going of Margaret MacLean. The
passing of the incurables mattered little to them, one way or another,
but they knew what it mattered to the nurse in charge, and they were
just beginning to realize what she had meant to them all. The
Superintendent felt so much concerned that she dropped her official
manner when she chanced upon Margaret MacLean on her way from supper.

"Oh, my dear--my dear"--and the Superintendent's voice had almost
broken--"what shall we do without you? You have kept Saint Margaret's
human--and wholesome for the rest of us."

The House Surgeon had been miserable unto the third degree. It had
forced him into doing all those things he had left undone for months
passed; and he bustled through the building--from pharmacy to
laboratory and from operating-room to supply-closets--giving the
impression of a very scientific man, while he was inwardly praying for
a half-dozen minutes alone with Margaret MacLean. He had passed her
more than once in the corridors, but she had eluded him each time,
brushing by him with a tightening of the lips and a little shake of the
head, half pleading, half commanding. At last, in grim despair, he
gave up appearances and patrolled the second-floor hall until the night
nurse fixed upon him such a greenly suspicious eye that he fled to his
quarters--vowing unspeakable things.

Even old Cassie, the scrub-woman, shared in the general misery--Cassie,
who had brewed the egg-shell charm against Trustee Days. She had
stayed past her hours for a glimpse of "Miss Peggie," with the best
intention in the world of cheering her up. When the glimpse came,
however, she stood mute--tears channeling the old wrinkled face--while
the nurse patted her hands and made her laugh through the tears. In
fact, Margaret MacLean had been kept so busy doling out cheer and
consolation to others that she had had no time to remember her own
trouble--not until Saint Margaret's had gone to bed.

She was on her way for a final visit to her ward--the visit she had
told Bridget she would make to see if the promise had been kept--when a
line from Hauptman's faery play flashed through her mind: "At dawn we
are kings; at night we are only beggars."

How true it was of her--this day. How beggared she felt! The fact
that she was very nearly penniless troubled her very little; it was the
homelessness--friendlessness--that frightened her. She had never had
but two friends: the one who had gone so long ago was past helping her
now; the other--

No; she had made up her mind some hours before that she should slip
away in the morning without saying anything to the House Surgeon. It
would make it so much easier for him. Otherwise--he might--because of
his friendship--say or do something he would have to regret all his
life. She had been very much in earnest when she had told the Senior
Surgeon on the stairs that such as she laid no claim to the every-day
happiness that felt to the lot of others. That was why she had kept
persistently out of the House Surgeon's way all the evening.

She pushed back the door of Ward C. The night light in the hall
outside was shaded; only a glimmer came through the windows from the
street lamps below; consequently things could not be seen very clearly
or distinguishably in the room. Across the threshold her foot slid
over something soft and slippery; stooping, her hand closed upon a
flower, while she brushed another. Puzzled, she felt her way over to
the table in the center of the room, where she had put the green
Devonshire bowl. It was empty.

"That's funny," she murmured, her mind attempting to ferret out an
explanation. She dropped to her knees and scanned the floor closely.
There they were, the primroses, a curving trail of them stretching from
the head of Pancho's bed to the foot of Michael's. She choked back an
exclamation just as a shadow cut off the light from the hall. It was a
man's shadow, and the voice of the House Surgeon came over the
threshold in a whisper:

"What are you doing--burying ghosts?"

"Come and see, and let the light in after you."

The House Surgeon came and stood behind her where she knelt. She
looked so little and childlike there that he wanted to pick her up and
tell her--oh, such a host of things! But he was a wise House Surgeon,
and his experience on the stairs had not counted for nothing; moreover,
he was a great believer in the psychological moment, so he peered over
her shoulder and tried to make out what she was looking at.

"Faded flowers," he volunteered at last, somewhat doubtfully.

"A primrose ring," she contradicted. "But who ever heard of one in a
hospital? Take care--" For the surgeon's shoe was carelessly knocking
some of the blossoms out of place. "Don't you know that no one must
disturb a primrose ring? It's sacred to Fancy; and there is no telling
what is happening inside there to-night."

"What?" The House Surgeon asked it as breathlessly as any little boy
might have. Science had goaded him hard along the road of established
facts, thereby causing him to miss many pleasant things which he still
looked back upon regretfully, and found himself eager for, at times.
Of course, he had scoffed at them aloud and before Margaret MacLean,
but inwardly he adored them.

She did not answer; she was too busy wondering about something to hear
the House Surgeon's question. Her eyes looked very big and round in
the darkness, and her face wore the little-girl scarey look as she
reached up for his hand and clutched it tight, while her other hand
pointed across the primrose ring to the row of beds.

"See, they look empty, quite---quite empty."

"Just nerves." And he patted the hand in his reassuringly; he tried
his best to pat it in the old, big-brother way. "You've had an awfully
trying day--most women would be in their rooms having hysteria or
doldrums."

Still she did not hear. Her eyes were traveling from cot to crib and
on to cot again, as they had once before that night. "Every single bed
looks empty," she repeated. "The clothes tumbled as if the children
had slipped quietly out from under them." She shivered ever so
slightly. "Perhaps they have found out they are not wanted any longer
and have run away."

"Come, come," the House Surgeon spoke in a gruff whisper. "I believe
you're getting feverish." And mechanically his ringers closed over her
pulse. Then he pulled her to her feet. "Go over to those beds this
minute and see for yourself that every child is there, safe and sound
asleep."

But she held back, laughing nervously. "No, no; we mustn't spoil the
magic of the ring." Her voice trailed off into a dreamy, wistful
monotone. "Who knows--Cinderella's godmother came to her when it was
only a matter of ragged clothes and a party; the need here was far
greater. Who knows?" She caught her breath with a sudden in-drawn
cry. "Why, to-night is May Eve!"

"Why, of course it is!" agreed the House Surgeon, as if he had known it
from the beginning.

"And who knows but the faeries may have come and stolen them all away?"

Now the House Surgeon was old in understanding, although he was young
in years; and he knew it was wiser sometimes to give in to the whims of
a tired, overwrought brain. He knew without being told--for Margaret
MacLean would never have told--how tired and hopelessly heart-sick and
mind-sick she was to-night. What he did not know, however, was how
pitifully lonely and starved her life had always been; and that this
was the hour for the full conscious reckoning of it.

She had often said, whimsically, "Those who are born with wooden
instead of golden spoons in their mouths had better learn very young to
keep them well scoured, or they'll find them getting so rough and
splintered that they can't possibly eat with them." She had followed
her own advice bravely, and kept happy; but now even the wooden spoon
had been taken from her.

The House Surgeon lifted her up and put her gently into the rocker,
while he sat down on the corner of the table, neighbor to the green
Devonshire bowl.

Perhaps Margaret MacLean was not to find bitterness, after all; perhaps
it would be his glad good fortune to keep it from her. It was
surprising the way he felt his misery dwindling, and instantly he
pulled up his courage--another hole.

"I think you said 'faeries,'" he suggested, seriously. "Why not
faeries?"

She nodded in equal seriousness. "Why not? They always come May Eve
to the lonely of heart; and even a hospital might have faeries once in
a generation. Only--only why couldn't they have taken me with the
children? It wasn't exactly fair to leave me behind, was it?"

Her lips managed to keep reasonably steady, but she was wishing all the
time that the House Surgeon would go and leave her free to be foolishly
childish and weak. She wanted to drop down beside Bridget's bed and
sob out her trouble.

But the House Surgeon had a very permanent look as he went on soberly
talking.

"Well, you see, they took the children first because they were all
ready. Probably, very probably, they are sending for you
later--special messenger. It's still some minutes before midnight; and
that's the time things like that happen. Isn't it?"

"Perhaps." A little amused smile crept into the corners of her mouth
while she rummaged about in some old memories for something she had
almost forgotten. "Perhaps"--she began again--"they will send the
Love-Talker."

"The what?"

"The Love-Talker. Old Cassie used to tell us about him, when I was an
'incurable.' He's a faery youth who comes on May Eve in the guise of
some well-appearing young man and beguiles a maid back with him into
faeryland. He's a very ardent wooer--so Cassie said--and there's no
maid living who can resist him."

"Wish I'd had a course with him," muttered the House Surgeon under his
breath. Then he gripped the table hard with both hands while the
spirit of mischief leaped, flagrant, into his eyes. "Would you go with
him--if he came?" he asked, intensely.

"If he came--if he came--" she repeated, dreamily. "How do I know what
I would do? It would all depend upon the way he wooed."

Unexpectedly the House Surgeon jumped to his feet, making a
considerable clatter.

"Hush! you'll waken the children."

"But they're not here," he reminded her.

"Yes, I know; but you might waken them, just the same."

Instead of answering, the House Surgeon stepped behind the rocker and
lifted her out of it bodily; then his hands closed over hers and he
lifted them to her eyes, thereby blind-folding them. "Now," he
commanded, "take two steps forward."

She did it obediently; and then stood waiting for further orders.

"You are now inside this magical primrose ring; and you said yourself,
a moment ago, there was no telling what might happen inside. Keep very
still; don't move, don't speak. Remember you mustn't uncover your
eyes, or the spell will be broken. Hark! Can you hear something--some
one coming nearer and nearer and nearer?"

For the space of a dozen breaths nothing could be heard in Ward C; that
is--unless one was tactless enough to mention the sound of two
throbbing hearts. One fluttered, frightened and hesitating; the other
thumped, steady and determined. Then out of the darkness came the
striking of the hospital clock on the tower--twelve long, mournful
tolls--and one of the House Surgeon's arms slipped gently about the
shoulders of Margaret MacLean.

"Dearest, the Love-Talker has turned so completely human that he has to
say at the outset he's not half good enough for you, But he wants
you--he wants you, just the same, to carry back with him to his
faery-land. It will be rather a funny little old faery-land, made up
of work and poverty--and love; but, you see, the last is so big and
strong it can shoulder the other two and never know it's carrying a
thing. If you'll only come, dearest, you can make it the finest, most
magical faeryland a man ever set up home-making in."

Another silence settled over Ward C.

"Well--" said the House Surgeon, breaking it at last and sounding a
trifle nervous. "Well--"

"I thought you said I wasn't to move or speak, or the spell would be
broken?"

"That's right, excellent nurse--followed doctor's orders exactly." He
was smiling radiantly now, only no one could see. Slowly he drew her
hands away from her eyes and kissed the lids. "You can open them if
you solemnly promise not to be disappointed when you see the
Love-Talker has stepped into an ordinary house surgeon's uniform and
looks like the--devil." With a laugh the House Surgeon gathered her
close in his arms.

"The devil was only a rebelling angel," she murmured, contentedly.

"But I'm not rebelling. Bless those trustees! If they hadn't put us
both out of the hospital we might be jogging along for the next ten
years on the wholesome, easily digested diet of friendship, and never
dreamed of the feast we were missing--like this--and this--and--"

Margaret MacLean buried her face in the uniform with a sob.

"What is it, dearest? Don't you like them?"

"I--love--them. Don't you understand? I never belonged to anybody
before in all my life, so no one ever wanted to--"

The rest was unintelligible, but perfectly satisfactory to the House
Surgeon. He held her even closer while she sobbed out the tears that
had been intended for the edge of Bridget's bed; and when they were
spent he wiped away all traces with some antiseptic gauze that happened
to be in his pocket.

"I will never be foolish again and remember what lies behind to-night,"
said Margaret MacLean, knowing full well that she would be, and that
often, because of the joy that would lie in remembering and comparing.
"Now tell me, did they make you go, too?"

"The President told me, very courteously, that he felt sure I would be
wishing to find another position elsewhere better suited to my rising
abilities; and if an opportunity should come--next month, perhaps--they
would not wish in any way to interfere with my leaving."

"Ugh! I--"

"No, you don't, dearest. You couldn't expect them to want us around
after the things we magnanimously refrained from saying--but so
perfectly implied."

"All right, I'll love them instead, if you want me to, only--" And she
puckered her forehead into deep furrows of perplexity. "I have kept it
out of my mind all through the evening, but we might as well face it
now as to-morrow morning. What is going to happen to us?"

The House Surgeon turned her about until she was again looking across
the line of scattered blossoms--into the indistinguishable darkness
beyond. He laughed joyously, as a man can laugh when everything lies
before him and there are no regrets left behind. "Have you forgotten
so soon? We are to cross the primrose ring--right here; and follow the
road--there--into faeryland after the children."

"The beds really do look empty."

"They certainly do."

"And we'll find the children there?"

"Of course."

"And I'll not have to give them up?"

"Of course not."

"And we'll all be happy together--somewhere?"

"Yes, somewhere!"

She turned quickly and reached out her arms to him hungrily. "I know
now why a maid always follows the Love-Talker when he comes a-wooing."

"Why, dearest?"

"Because he makes her believe in him and the country where he is taking
her, and that's all a woman asks."

X

WHAT HAPPENED AFTERWARD

Everybody woke with a start on the morning following the 30th of April;
things began to happen even before the postman had made his first
rounds. The operators at the telephone switchboards were rushed at an
unconscionably early hour, considering that their station compassed the
Avenue. The President was trying to get the trustees, Saint
Margaret's, and the Senior Surgeon; the trustees were trying to get one
another; while the Senior Surgeon was rapidly covering the distance
between his home and the hospital--his mind busy with a multitude of
things, none of which he had ever written with capitals.

Saint Margaret's was astir before its usual hour; there was a tang of
joyousness in the air, and everybody's heart and mind, strangely
enough, seemed to be in festal attire, although nobody was outwardly
conscious of it. It was all the more inexplicable because Saint
Margaret's had gone to bed miserable, and events naturally pointed
toward depression: Margaret MacLean's coming departure, the abandoning
of Ward C, the House Surgeon's resignation, and Michael's empty crib.

Ward C had wakened with a laugh. Margaret MacLean, who had been moving
noiselessly about the room for some time, picking up the withered
remains of the primrose ring, looked up with apprehension. The tears
she had shed over Michael's crib were quite dry, and she had a brave
little speech on the end of her tongue ready for the children's
awakening. Eight pairs of sleepy eyes were rubbed open, and then
unhesitatingly turned in the direction of the empty crib in the corner.

"Michael has gone away." she said, softly, steadying her voice with
great care. "He has gone where he will be well--and his heart sound
and strong."

She was wholly unprepared for the children's response. It was so
unexpected, in fact, that for the moment she tottered perilously near
the verge of hysterics. The children actually grinned; while Bridget
remarked, with a chuckle:

"Ye are afther meanin' that he didn't come back--that's what!" And
then she added, as an afterthought, "He said to tell ye 'God bless ye,'
Miss Peggie."

Margaret MacLean did not know whether to be shocked or glad that the
passing of a comrade had brought no sign of grief. Instead of being
either, she went on picking up the primroses and wondering. As for the
children, they lay back peacefully in their beds, their eyes laughing
riotously. And every once in a while they would look over at one
another, giving the funniest little expressive nods, which seemed to
say: "I know what you're thinking about, and you know what I'm thinking
about, so what's the need of talking. But when is it going to happen?"

The House Surgeon brought up her mail; it was an excuse to see her
again before his official visit. "Are the children very much broken up
over it?" he asked, anxiously, outside the door.

For answer Margaret MacLean beckoned him and pointed to the eight
occupied cots--unquestionably serene and happy.

"Well, I'll be--" began the House Surgeon, retiring precipitously back
to the door again; but the nurse put a silencing finger over his lips.

"Hush, dear! The children are probably clearer visioned than we are.
I have the distinct feeling this morning of being very blind and
stupid, while they seem--oh, so wise."

The House Surgeon grunted expressively. "Well, perhaps they won't take
your going away so dreadfully to heart--now; or theirs, for that
matter."

"I hope not," and then she smiled wistfully. "But I thought you told
me last night we were all going together? At any rate, I am not going
to tell them anything. If it must be it must be, and I shall slip off
quietly, when the children are napping, and leave the trustees to tell."

She looked her mail over casually; there were the usual number of
advertisements, a letter from one of the nurses who had gone South, and
another in an unfamiliar hand-writing. She tore off the corner of the
last, and, running her finger down the flap, she commented:

"Looks like quality. A letter outside the profession is a very rare
thing for me."

She read the letter through without a sound, and then she read it
again, the House Surgeon watching, the old big-brother look gone for
ever from his face, and in its place a worshipful proprietorship. The
effect of the letter was undeniably Aprilish; she looked up at the
House Surgeon with the most radiant of smiles, while her eyes spilled
recklessly over.

"How did you know it? How did you know it?" she repeated.

He was trying his best to find out what it was all about when one of
the nurses came hurrying down the corridor.

"You are both wanted down in the board-room. They have called a
special meeting of the trustees for nine o'clock; everybody's here and
acting decidedly peculiar, I think. Why, as I passed the door I am
sure I saw the President slapping the Senior Surgeon on the back. I
never heard of anything like this happening before."

"Come," said Margaret MacLean to the House Surgeon. "If we walk down
very slowly we will have time enough to read the letter on the way."

As the nurse had intimated, it was an altogether unprecedented meeting.
Formality had been gently tossed out of the window; after which the
President sat, not behind his desk, but upon it--an open letter in his
hand. His whole attitude suggested a wish to banish, as far as it lay
within his power, the atmosphere of the previous afternoon.

"Here is a letter to be considered first," he said, a bit gravely. "It
makes rather a good prologue to our reconsideration of the incurable
ward," and the ghost of a smile twitched at the corners of his mouth.
"This is from the widow of the Richest Trustee." He read, slowly:

"MESDAMES AND GENTLEMEN OF THE BOARD,--I thank you for your courtesy in
asking me to fill my husband's place as one of the trustees of Saint
Margaret's. Until this afternoon I had every intention of so doing;
but I cannot think now that my husband would wish me to continue his
support of an institution whose directors have so far forgotten the
name under which they dispense their charity as to put science and
pride first. As for myself--I find I am strongly interested in
incurables--your incurables.
Yours very truly"

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