Harriet T. Comstock

"Love, hope, fear, faith—these make humanity!"

The trip to New York was always marked in later years, to Joan, by the most trivial occurrences.

The passing to and fro to the baggage car where Cuff, a crumpled and quivering mass, seemed to ask her what it all meant; the sense of eagerness to get to The Gap before it was too late; the determination not to frighten any one she meant to telegraph from New York; she would leave her trunks in the station and take a bag to a little hotel where she and Pat had stayed the night before they fled from New York. So far, all was clear.

So she planned; forgot, and planned again. Between these wanderings and the care of Cuff there were long hours of forgetfulness and a sound of rushing water—or was it the train plunging through the dark?

Once in New York, with Cuff trotting behind, Joan seemed to gather strength—but not clear vision. She went to the small hotel and secured a room. She meant to telegraph and buy her ticket South—but instead she fed Cuff, took a little food herself, and fell asleep. It was late when she awakened to a realization of acute suffering that seemed confused and spasmodic. It was like being partially conscious. She was frightened and tried to fix upon some direct and immediate means of securing help for herself. She did not want to call assistance from the office, so she got up and dressed and half staggered downstairs. It needed all her effort to hold to one thought long enough to accomplish anything.

First there was Cuff. She must get Cuff, quiet his nervousness, and feed him. Then with that in mind she took food herself—as much as she could swallow. It was while she was forcing herself to this task that Doctor Martin came, like an actual presence, to her consciousness.

Why had she not thought of him before?

"Uncle Davey!" she murmured and her eyes filled with tears. Of course! She would take a cab to Doctor Martin's office and then everything would be solved. He would take care of her; send word to The Gap; protect Aunt Doris and Nancy from shock. She began to laugh quietly, tremblingly—she was safe at last. Safe!

It was after ten o'clock when she paid her taxi driver in front of Martin's office and dismissed him. Gathering Cuff in one aching arm and clutching her bag she slowly, painfully mounted the steps without noticing the sign bearing a new name.

If anything were needed to prove how detached Joan had been for the past year or two it was this ignorance concerning the arrangement between Martin and his nephew. Had she not been on the border of delirium she would have recalled certain things which would have guided her; as it was she felt, dazedly, for the bell, pressed the button, and to the maid who responded she faintly said:

"I—I want the doctor." She looked, indeed, as if this were shockingly true.

"It's past office hours," stammered the girl, a little scared; "but perhaps if you come in——"

Joan staggered in and, seeing a door open at the end of the hall, reached it, entered, and sank down in a chair with the astonished eyes of Clive Cameron upon her!

He was ready for his rounds—was on the way, then, to his hospital; it was Martin's pet institution and Cameron's first care in the morning.

"I'm—tired," Joan informed him. "Please take care of—Cuff!"

And then everything went black and quiet.

Never in all his life had Cameron had anything so surprising happen to him. He looked at the girl, whom he managed to carry to the couch; he turned to the dog whose faithful eyes rather steadied him, then he applied all the remedies that one does at such times. Eventually Joan revived, but she stared vacantly at the face above her and did not attempt to speak.

Presently Cameron called in his nurse.

"I think it is brain fever," he explained to the cool, capable woman who asked naturally:

"Who is she?"

"The Lord knows."

"Where did she come from? Where does she belong?"

"The Lord knows. She just came in with the dog and then dropped after asking me to care for—for Cuff—yes, that's what she called him—then she went off."

"It's a duck of a dog," the nurse remarked as one does make inane remarks at a critical time. Then:

"Have you looked in her bag?"

"Certainly not!"

"We had better." And they did.

There was a trunk key, seventy-five dollars, and a letter signed "Syl," and frivolously dilating upon a man named John and loads of love to Miss Lamb!

"Well!" said the nurse, "and as one might expect, no heading, date, or any sensible clue—and the envelope missing. We must label this patient, I suppose, as Miss Lamb. The articles of clothing are unmarked. Queer all around!"

"We must get her into the hospital at once," Cameron replied. The doctor in him was getting into action.

"Can we manage her in my car?"

"Yes, Doctor."

"Then get busy. Call her Miss Lamb when you have to answer questions. We can find out about her later. Where's that dog?"

Cuff was making himself invisible. He was under the couch.

"Have him fed and taken care of, Miss Brown—tell the maid."

Joan leaned against Cameron on the way to the hospital while Miss Brown kept a finger on her pulse. The girl's body acted mechanically, but the brain was clogged.

Day by day in the white, quiet hospital room the battle for her life went on; day by day outside effort was made to trace her and find her friends.

"You wise-looking brute," Cameron often thought as he regarded Cuff at the day's end; "why can't you tell what you know?"

But Cuff simply wagged his stump and slunk off. Life was becoming too puzzling for him.

Cameron studied advertisements and certain columns in the papers, but no one seemed to have missed the pretty young creature in the Martin Sanatorium.

"It's the very devil of a case!" Cameron declared, and set about erecting some sort of foundation upon which "Miss Lamb" might repose without causing too much unhealthy curiosity.

Eventually, Joan was simply a bad case of Doctor Cameron's. One from out of town. Her folks trusted him, but were too distant to visit the girl.

Cameron considered telegraphing for Martin, who was at The Gap, but he knew that sooner or later he must rely upon himself alone, and so he began with "Miss Lamb."

The days and weeks dragged on. There were ups and downs, hopes and discouragements, but through them all Joan looked dazedly at Cameron, and if she ever showed intelligence it was when he spoke to her in a perfectly new set of tones that were being incorporated into his voice and which seemed to disturb her. To all questions, as to names, the girl in the dim room returned a dull stare and silence, but there were times when she deliriously rambled intimate confidences. When these times occurred, Cameron, if he chanced to be present, ordered the nurse from the room and listened alone. He was relieved to hear that the patient rarely spoke when he was not with her.

Joan dwelt upon her failure—her longing to go to Pat.

These items Cameron recorded in a small red book, for his memory was none too good and he was busy to a dangerous degree.

Then, again, the sick girl depicted the night of the storm—the shock and consequent flight.

"But," she pleaded piteously, holding the strong hand that anchored her to life, "he won! he won, and it is always going to be all right. Oh! if he could only know!"

There would be a pause always ending in: "I want Pat."

"Where is—Pat?" Cameron ventured.

"Home!" And then, weakly, but with a wrenching pathos, Joan sang—"I'll get to—Scotland—no! home—before you!"

"Come, come, now!" Cameron pressed the thin form down. "You know you've got to live—for Pat."

"Yes—for Pat." And then Joan would sleep.

It was a day in late May that Cameron noticed a change in his case. She was weaker, but steadier. She seemed to connect him with something in the recent past, and that encouraged him. All her previous conscious moments had been like detached flashes.

"What was it you said I must live for?" she asked Cameron. "I've forgotten."

"For everything," he replied, throwing off his coat and gripping the promising moment. "You're not the kind to slink out. Besides, you've got to tell me about your folks. Give them a chance to prove themselves and set things straight." Cameron watched the struggle on the thin face. "And there is—Pat!" he added.

Joan looked amazed and then quivered.

"Yes, Pat, of course!"

There was a long pause, the consciousness was seeking something to which it might cling. Something forever eluding it.

A day or two later Cameron brought the dog into the sick room. Joan turned as she heard steps.

"Cuff!" she cried and then, as the dog leaped on to her, she sobbed and murmured over and over: "Pat's little Cuff; Pat's little Cuff."

Her way on ahead was safer after that—safer but more secretive.

As Joan got control of her thoughts she became more silent and watchful. She questioned the nurse and found out where she was and how long she had been there; she smiled with her old touch of humour when she was called Miss Lamb but gave thanks that she had a name not her own!

She regarded Cameron with deep gratitude, but drove him to a corner by insisting that he tell her how much she owed him.

Cameron, having her purse under lock and key, at home, told her she owed the hospital fifty dollars.

At that Joan laughed, and the sound gave Cameron more hope than he had known for some time, but it seemed to mark, also, Joan's complete self-control.

Often she lay for hours with closed eyes and wondered with a bit of self-pity why she had not been discovered? Had she so completely dropped from the lives of those she loved that they had forgotten her? She did not know, for some time to come, of the letters to her that were returned to The Gap! She was never to know, fully, the anguish that Doris Fletcher was enduring in her mistaken determination not to hamper the girl who was testing her strength.

While David Martin rated her for ingratitude and carelessness; while Nancy's face set in resentment and disapproval, Doris smiled and insisted that she would not judge until Joan explained.

"Of course," she added, "if anything were really wrong Joan or Patricia would write. They are probably away on business—and at the worst they will soon let me know when to expect them. Joan was always a poor correspondent."

"Would you like to have me go to Chicago?" Martin asked.

"David, would you go if—it were your boy?" Doris hung on his answer.

"I jolly well wouldn't! I'd let the scamp learn the whole lesson."

"Very well, then I do not want you to go to Chicago!"

Joan, slowly recovering, could hardly have explained to herself why she was so secretive, but more and more she determined not to go to The Gap and open her heart to Doris until she was able to command the situation. Since she had, for some reason, dropped from their lives, she would wait. Meanwhile, her heart ached with the pity of it all.

She wondered how the name of Lamb had ever been attached to her, and finally she decided to ask Cameron about it.

It was Cameron's custom, now, to delay his call upon Joan until late afternoon. When he was on his way to dinner he took a half hour or more to sit beside her bed and indulge in various emotions.

So long as Joan had been a desperate case she had no individuality at all, except scientifically.

She was bathed, and eventually her hair was cut, not shaved—the nurse put in a plea at the cutting point—and she was fed and made to sleep; but gradually, as she emerged from the shadowy boundary, she assumed different proportions.

Cameron concluded that her reticence, now her brain was growing clearer, came from a determined effort to cover her tracks and perhaps those of a man—unworthy, undoubtedly, and Cameron believed this man to be the "Pat" to whom his patient had so frantically referred in her raving.

There had evidently been a strenuous scene in which Pat had figured and through which he and the girl had emerged rather deplorably.

Cameron also arrived at the conclusion that the young woman in his care must be made to take a keener interest in life than she seemed to be taking, or her recovery would be slower than it ought to be, according to physical indications. The growing silence worried him; he wished that he could gain her confidence, not in order to gratify curiosity, but to enable him to be of real service.

One afternoon he called at the hospital reinforced with a box of roses.

The flowers had an immediate effect upon Joan. She buried her face in them and closed her eyes, and then Cameron saw large, slow tears escaping the close-shut lids. He welcomed these. Presently Joan asked:

"How is—is—Cuff?"

"Oh! he's ripping," Cameron replied; "after seeing you he seemed to size up the situation and come to terms."

"How—how did you happen to know his name?" This had been a burning curiosity for the past week.

"You happened to mention it when you keeled over in my office. Cuff was apparently your one responsibility. We found your name in a letter—Miss Lamb."

The roses hid the quivering face while a new and hurting question for the first time entered in. Then:

"Did—did I go to your office? I thought I—was brought here from——"

"You were brought here, all right," Cameron felt his way slowly along the opening path; "Miss Brown and I had rather a vigorous trip with you—in my automobile."

"Cuff belonged to—to Pat!" Joan remarked, irrelevantly. She was forcing her thought back to the blank period lying between the hotel and the hospital. Gradually it brightened and a smothered sob found place in the roses.

"So that is why they have left me alone!" Joan reflected; "but oh! how frightened they must be!"

"I rather imagine Pat must be fairly well used up wondering about you," Cameron was saying as if the whole matter were an everyday affair, but rather annoying; "queer things happen in a big city. We've done our best to locate your friends; I think some of the officials I have consulted have their doubts as to my mental condition. I kept under cover as well as I could until you were well enough to act for yourself."

"Thank you—oh! thank you." This very faintly and brokenly.

"You see, you are one of the cases that prove that an impossibility is—possible. Truth-stronger-than-fiction idea. But if you would like me to communicate with Pat, I'll be glad to help you."

"No—I will wait now." Joan drew her lips close.

Cameron controlled his features while he listened, but he never referred to Pat again.

"I've sometimes thought," Cameron spoke calmly, "that you might have been looking for my uncle, Doctor Martin, when you stumbled into his old office. I could not flatter myself that you were bent upon obtaining my services."

At this Joan astonished Cameron almost as much as if she had sat up in her coffin.

She rose, as though propelled by a spring, she stared at him and then, as slowly, sank back, still holding him with her eyes that seemed preternaturally large.

"Oh! come now!" Cameron exclaimed. "What's up?" He took her hand and bent over her and to his amaze discovered that she was laughing! He touched the bell. Things were bewildering him—Miss Brown always managed trying situations by reducing them to normal. She responded at once; cool, serene, and capable.

"Nerves?" she asked. And then took command. She raised Joan and settled the pillows into new lines; she removed the roses almost sternly—she disliked the nuisance of flowers in a sick room.

"There, now!" she whispered to Joan, "take this drink and go to sleep like a good girl."

In the face of this sound common sense laughing was out of the question. Joan pretended sleep rather than risk another: "There, now!"

But her recovery was rapid after that day. Like a veil withdrawn she reflected upon the past as if it were, not a story that was told, but a preface to the real story that her life must be.

The folly, the irresponsibility, no longer dismayed her, but gave her reasons and arguments.

She wanted to live at last! She wanted to go home and separate herself forever from the cheap, theatrical thing she had believed was freedom! She saw the folly of it all; she seemed an old woman regarding the dangerous passage of a younger one.

She realized her own selfishness in her demand for self-expression. What had she expressed while others fixed their faithful eyes on duty?

Nancy shone high and clear in those dull hospital days. Nancy who demanded so little, but who trod, with divine patience, the truer course.

"Well, Nan shall have her own!" Joan thought, and gripped her thin hands under the bedclothes. "I'll strive for Nan as I never have for myself."

Out of the dÉbris of the feverish past Joan held alone to Patricia. Strange, it seemed to her, that the dead girl should have grown to such importance, but so it was. Patricia was the real, the sacred thing, and she planned the home-bringing of the dear body and the placing of it on the hillside in The Gap.

And through the convalescing days Cameron had his place, like a fixed star.

Often worn by the day's silent remorse and earnest promise as to the future, Joan looked to that hour when Cameron, calm, serious but cheerful, sat by her bedside—a strong link between the folly of the past and the hope of the times on ahead.

Vaguely she recalled the blurred weeks of fever and pain, and always his quiet voice and cool touch held part.

"And to think," Joan could but smile, "that he does not know me—but I know who he is just as I knew about——" She could not name Raymond yet—she could only think kindly of him when she held to the days before that last, tragic night.

And Cameron, meanwhile, was drawing wrong conclusions. Not that they changed his personal attitude toward the girl whose life he had helped save. To him she was a human creature whose faith in her future must be restored as her body was in the process of being. Cameron believed in stepping-stones and was utterly opposed to waste of any kind.

"She's paid her debt and his, too, I wager," Cameron often muttered; "that's the devil of it all, and she'll go on and perhaps down—if she doesn't get a start up. If I could only get hold of her folks—it would help!"

But Joan held him at bay when he ventured on that line.

"When I am quite well," she said with gentle dignity, "I am going home and do my own explaining."

"Are you considering—them?" Cameron frowned at her.

"I am—as I never have before!"

To this silence was the only reply.

Presently Joan made her first big stride toward complete recovery. She forsook her bed during the day and, in pink gown and dainty cap—procured by Miss Brown—she passed from a "case" to an individual.

The twilight hour now became something of a function and Cameron dropped his professional manner with his outdoor trappings and appeared, often, as a tired but very humanly interesting young man.

He talked of safe, ordinary things, he brought books and flowers, and while Miss Brown kept a rigid appearance, she inwardly sniffed—or the equivalent.

And then came the Sunday before Joan was to leave the hospital. It happened to be Easter, and a woman was singing in the little chapel down the hall. The room doors were open and the sweet words and melody floated in to the silent listeners—Joan pictured them as she sat and felt her tears roll down her cheeks.

"Some—are going out!" she thought, "and others, like me, must go on. And here we all are with walls between, but our doors open to:

"He weaves the shining garments
Unceasingly and still
Along the quiet waters
In niches of the hills."

The words seemed to paint, in the narrow room, the dim Gap. The sound of the river was in Joan's ears and she knew that the niches of the safe hills where her loved ones waited, were full of the spring blossoms.

No leaf that dawns to petal,
But hints the Angel-plan.

Joan looked up and saw Cameron at the doorway. He almost filled it, and his eyes grew troubled as he noted the thin, white, tear-wet face.

"Shall I close the door?" he asked.

"No. Please do not. I like to think that all the others, down the corridor, and I are together—listening, growing better!"

"Oh! I see." Cameron tossed aside his coat and sat down.

"I—I don't think you do," Joan smiled at him; "I think I puzzle you terribly, but some day I am going to explain everything. All my life I have been, as I am now, in a narrow little room—peeping out and never touching others any more than I am touching"—she pointed to the right and left—"my neighbours, here. But we were all listening to much the same thing then as now.

"I am going"—here Joan dashed her tears off—"I am going somehow to pull the walls down and know really!"

"Bully!" Cameron had a peculiar feeling in his throat. Then added: "I cut something out of a paper the other day that seemed to me to hold all the philosophy necessary for this tug-of-war we call life. Here it is!"

"Read it, please," Joan dropped her eyes.

"A shipwrecked sailor, buried here, bids you set sail.
Full many a gallant bark, when he was lost, weathered the gale."

"Isn't that good, gripping stuff? I've caught the sense of it, and when I get to thinking—well, of such as lie in many of these little rooms, I'm glad—you're—setting sail!"

"Thank you, Doctor Cameron. I am setting sail! I thought I was before—I see the difference now. And to-morrow——"

"And to-morrow—where are you going—to-morrow?"

Cameron was ill at ease.

"To a little hotel—I will give you the address in the morning. It is from there that I will set sail."