"Have you heard from Mary lately, Belle?"

"Not for a week, and I'm quite worried about her. Before that, she wrote to me dutifully every two or three days, telling me all about her work.

I've kept on writing to her just the same, making excuses for her to herself, and never doubting her for a minute; but to tell you the truth, Dave, I'm getting dreadfully anxious."

Then I told her what I had heard.

"Don't you believe it, David! I never shall till I hear it from herself. I know now for a certainty that I love that girl! I'll believe her before all the world! I'll stick by her through thick and thin! I'll not insult her by writing to the Hospital! What now matters the little inconveniences of living with her? What have a few clothes and toilet articles, more or less, to do with it? If she has failed, she shall come _home_, and we'll begin the three years' fight all over again. I'll sit down now and write her the nicest letter I can write."

That sounded very brave, but inwardly I knew that my wife suffered agonies the next few days.

"Perhaps if I had done this," she would say, "or if I had done that--it seems precisely like a death, and I've killed her."

Tuesday morning, two letters came from Mary. They were hurriedly and excitedly written.

"My dear good mother, I am accepted! It is the happiest day of my life; it will be a red letter day for you! I love you. I have tried so hard for your sake; I have tried to make my life hear one long prayer and the dear Lord helps me. I did not write because the exam. was delaid, and I wanted to wait untill I had something _good_ to tell you. I look nice in the unniform. It is pink and a white cap, ap.r.o.n and cuffs. Oh I am so contented; this work is so filling. I never get lonely or homesick. _We_ nurses had a party, and we danced and served ice cream, and there was some lovely doctors here, and the Princippal is so kind to us we have lots of fun"--and so the letters ran on.

The reaction was too much for Belle. She cried, then she laughed, then she fell on her knees and thanked G.o.d, and she told me she added that, for pity's sake, He _must_ set His angels to guard Mary, for she was a poor, frail child, who had got lost in coming this time, and many persecuted her because she was pretty, and might find a resting place and get a little of what rightfully (?) belonged to them.

After a while she went down to see Mr. Armstrong, and read him the letters. He turned very white.

"Oh, the pity of it!" said he.

"I wish I could gather her slanderers into one room and read them these letters," said Belle.

For days afterward she b.u.t.ton-holed people in the street to tell them about Mary, or to read them sc.r.a.ps of her letters. If they had said she was vain and idle, and selfish and incompetent, just like the half of their own daughters, Belle could have forgiven them. It was their determination to shove her into the gutter which made my wife her valiant champion.

"Whatever that girl amounts to, Dave, will be born of our faith in her, and we must never go back on her. She writes me that whenever she has a hard task, such as attending fits, there I stand at her back and help."

"Just between ourselves, though, you must confess that it is a great relief to have her away."

"You can't begin to feel that as I do. I live again! I read my own books, think my own thoughts. I belong to myself. No one says, 'What's the matter?' 'Where are you going?' 'What makes you grave--or gay?' I sit and chat with my 'odd-fish.' I go to all kinds of meetings and discuss all kinds of 'isms, and have no tag-tail constantly asking 'Why?' 'Why?' or 'Tell me!' It's the little things that grind. The next time I try to help a young girl, I'll not risk losing my influence with her by taking her into my house. Do you know, Dave, I sometimes feel that Mary must have been my own child in a previous incarnation, and I neglected and abused her; that's why she was thrust back upon me this time, whether I liked it or not."

After Christmas Isabel decided that she must go up to Chicago to see Mary, and on her return thrilling was the account she gave of her experiences, which included an attendance at an autopsy--but upon that I shall not enlarge.

Introducing herself to the Superintendent of the School, she said:

"Can I have Miss Gemmell for two days at my hotel?"

"Indeed, no, madam. We are short of help, and it would be entirely against the rules."

"Then I'll stay here with her."

The Lady Superintendent looked distressed.

"Don't think us inhospitable, but there is absolutely no provision for guests in all this great building."

"Oh!" said Belle, unabashed. "I seem to be unfortunate in breaking, or wanting to break, the rules of this house. Now, will you kindly tell me what I can do? How can I see the very most of my Mary while I am in Chicago?"

After some thought the answer came:

"You may have Miss Gemmell to-morrow afternoon, and two hours on Sunday."

"That will not suit me at all! Now, please forget all that has been said, and I will tell you that I Mrs. David Gemmell of Lake City, Michigan, am a poor tired woman, threatened with nervous prostration, have already chills of apprehension running down my back, coupled with flushes of expectation to my head." By this time Mary, the Lady Superintendent, and two other nurses present were all attention, and Belle added gravely:

"I want one of your best private rooms on Corridor B, where Miss Gemmell is on duty, and I should like to see the House Surgeon at once."

So Belle was comfortably and luxuriously established in the hospital, and the only drawback was that she had to be served with her meals in her room.

"What feasts we had--Mary and I," she said. "What fun! Before I left I had demoralized that whole hospital staff, and broken every rule in the inst.i.tution. It did them all good."

"I hope you haven't been indiscreet," said I.

"Indiscreet?"

"You must remember that Mary braced herself up to go to the hospital when she was 'out' with you. Now you've gone and made so much of her that she'll think, whenever things become too hot for her, she has only to march straight back here again."

"She a.s.sures me she _will_ graduate."

"There should never be any question of that."

"David, I've only told you the one side. If that girl were my very own I should pluck her out of that particular fire. I'd get down on my knees and beg her pardon for having thrown her into it. It burns up their youth, their bloom, their originality, their modesty. It thrusts the girls into a charnel house of sin, sickness, and death. It shatters the nervous system of nine out of ten, or it leaves them calm, steady, burnt-out women, who have been behind the scenes of life and are disillusioned. When that little pink and white thing sat there and told me of some of the awful situations that she'd been placed in, and over which she was made responsible, the tears rolled down my face. I forgave her lots of things."

"Plenty of refined, educated women with a very different bringing up from Mary's go through the same."

"Well, I advised her to go on and finish the course, if only to show her friends, and enemies, the stuff she's made of. When I think of those free wards, and the menial, disgusting offices that frail little girl has to perform! What did she sow that she should reap this fighting in the thickest of the fight, so poorly equipped?"

"I dare say there are alleviations."

"Oh, yes! She flirts--says she'd die if she didn't--with every man in the place, from the elevator boy to the head doctor, and, really, I excused her. The head nurse in Mary's ward is very harsh with her, but I let her and everyone in the place understand that Miss Gemmell is no stray waif without influence to back her. Every day I send out thought-waves--hypnotism--whatever you like to call it--to compel that Dean woman to think of something else than the making of trained nurses, and physical wrecks at the same time. People are greater than inst.i.tutions."

"The discipline will be the making of Mary."

CHAPTER VIII.

DURING the famous Pullman strike of last summer, duty bade me cross to Chicago in the interests of the _Echo_. On Sat.u.r.day afternoon, July the 7th, I was at the pulse of the Anarchist movement, near the corner of Loomis and Forty-ninth Streets. Taking up my stand in the deep entry of a "House to Let," I watched the operations of a body of strikers gathered round a box car close to the Grand Trunk crossing. They had set it afire, and were trying to overturn it upon the railway track, encouraged by the cheers of a mob numbering about two thousand men, women, and children.

The incendiaries were so much engrossed that they did not observe, backing swiftly down upon them, the wrecking train it was their purpose to block. While still in motion, the cars disgorged Captain Kelly and his company, who had been guarding the Pan Handle tracks all day, but had not yet, it seemed, earned their night's repose.

The crowd greeted the soldiers with stones, brickbats, and pieces of old iron, but the car burners proceeded with their little job, paying no attention at all to the approach of the military.

A pistol bullet out of the mob swished in among his men, and then Captain Kelly gave the order to fire. When the smoke of the volley cleared away, I saw the people stand still, shocked and dumb with surprise. A second later, realizing that the worm had had the audacity to turn, they vented a medley of shrieks and roars, and closed round the handful of soldiers, to be met by the points of bayonets.

The yelling ma.s.s of humanity scattered, took refuge in lanes and houses, but regaining courage, appeared here and there in sections, to be a.s.sailed once more by soldiers and police. The latter had to fight it out by themselves after a while, for the military boarded the wrecking train again, and the engineer, completely "rattled," opened the throttle, and whisked them away to the West, leaving a dozen revolver-armed policemen to meet the a.s.saults of a mob that had now increased to five thousand.