The Turn of the Balance
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The thin crackled shade was down at the front window, but the light shone behind it. Gusta pushed open the front door and rushed in. She took in the front room at a glance, seeking the evidence of change; but all was unchanged, familiar–the strips of rag carpet on the floor, the cheap oak furniture upholstered in green and red plush, the rough, coarse-grained surface of the wood varnished highly; the photograph of herself in the white dress and veil she had worn to her first communion, the picture of Archie sent from the Presidio, the colored prints of Bismarck and the battle of Sedan–all were there. The room was just as it had always been, clean, orderly, unused–save that some trinkets Archie had brought from Manila were on the center-table beside the lamp, which, with its round globe painted with brown flowers, gave the room its light.
Gusta had taken all this in with a little shock of surprise, and in the same instant the children, Katie and little Jakie, sprang forth to meet her. They stood now, clutching at her skirts; they held up their little red, chapped faces, all dirty and streaked with tears; their lips quivered, and they began to whimper. But Gusta, with her wild eyes staring above their little flaxen heads, pressed on in, and the children, hanging on to her and impeding her progress, began to cry peevishly.
Gusta saw her mother sitting in the kitchen. Two women of the neighborhood sat near her, dull, silent, stupid, their chins on their huge breasts, as if in melancholia. Though the room was stiflingly warm with the heat from the kitchen stove, the women kept their shawls over their heads, like peasants. Mrs. Koerner sat in a rocking-chair in the middle of her clean white kitchen floor. As she lifted her dry eyes and saw Gusta, her brows contracted under her thin, carefully-parted hair, and she lifted her brawny arms, bare to the elbows, and rocked backward, her feet swinging heavily off the floor.
"Where's father?" Gusta demanded, starting toward her mother.
Mrs. Koerner's lips opened and she drew a long breath, then exhaled it in a heavy sigh.
"Where is he?" Gusta demanded again. She spoke so fiercely that the children suddenly became silent, their pale blue eyes wide. One of the neighbors looked up, unwrapped her bare arms from her gingham apron and began to poke the kitchen fire. Mrs. Koerner suddenly bent forward, her elbows on her knees, her chin in her hands, and began to cry, and to mumble in German. At this, the two neighbor women began to speak to each other in German. It always irritated Gusta to have her mother speak in German. She had learned the language in her infancy, but she grew ashamed of it when she was sent to the public schools, and never spoke it when she could help it. And now in her resentment of the whole tragic situation, she flew into a rage. Her mother threw her apron over her face, and rocked back and forth.
"Aw, quit, ma!" cried Gusta; "quit, now, can't you?"
Mrs. Koerner took her apron from her face and looked at Gusta. Her expression was one of mute appealing pain. Gusta, softened, put her hand on her mother's head.
"Tell me, ma," she said softly, "where is he?"
Mrs. Koerner rocked again, back and forth, flinging up her arms and shaking her head from side to side. A fear seized Gusta.
"Where is he?" she demanded.
"He goes on der hospital," said one of the women. "He's bad hurt."
The word "hospital" seemed to have a profound and sinister meaning for Mrs. Koerner, and she began to wail aloud. Gusta feared to ask more. The children were still clinging to her. They hung to her skirts, tried to grasp her legs, almost toppling her over.
"Want our supper!" Jakie cried; "want our supper!"
"Gusta," said Katie, "did the pretty lady send me something good?"
Gusta still stood there; her cheeks were glowing red from their exposure to the wind that howled outside and rattled the loose sash in the window. But about her bluish lips the skin was white, her blue eyes were tired and frightened. She dropped a hand to each of the children, her knees trembled, and she gave little lurches from side to side as she stood there, with the children tugging at her, in their fear and hunger.
"Where's Archie?" she asked.
"He's gone for his beer," said one of the neighbors, the one who had not spoken. As she spoke she revealed her loose teeth, standing wide apart in her gums. "Maybe he goes on der hospital yet."
Every time they spoke the word "hospital," Mrs. Koerner flung up her arms, and Gusta herself winced. But she saw that neither her mother nor these women who had come in to sit with her could tell her anything; to learn the details she would have to wait until Archie came. She had been drawing off her gloves as she stood there, and now she laid aside her hat and her jacket, and tied on one of her mother's aprons. Then silently she went to work, opened the stove door, shook the ashes down, threw in coal, and got out a skillet. The table spread with its red cloth stood against the window-sill, bearing cream pitcher and sugar bowl, and a cheap glass urn filled with metal spoons. She went to the pantry, brought out a crock of butter and put it on the table, then cut pieces of side-meat and put them in a skillet, where they began to swim about and sizzle in the sputtering grease. Then she set the coffee to boil, cut some bread, and, finding some cold potatoes left over from dinner, she set these on the table for the supper. It grew still, quiet, commonplace. Gusta bustled about, her mother sat there quietly, the neighbors looked on stolidly, the children snuffled now and then. The tragedy seemed remote and unreal.
Gusta took a pail and whisked out of the kitchen door; the wind rushed in, icy cold; she was back in a moment, her golden hair blowing. She poured some of the water into a pan, and called the children to her. They stood as stolidly as the women sat, their hands rigid by their sides, their chins elevated, gasping now and then as Gusta washed their dirty faces with the rag she had wrung out in the icy water. The odor of frying pork was now filling the room, and the children's red, burnished faces were gleaming with smiles, and their blue eyes danced as they stood looking at the hot stove. When the pork was fried, Gusta, using her apron to protect her hand, seized the skillet from the stove, scraped the spluttering contents into a dish and set it on the table. Then the children climbed into chairs, side by side, clutching the edge of the table with their little fingers. Mrs. Koerner let Gusta draw up her rocking-chair, leaned over, resting her fat forearms on the table, holding her fork in her fist, and ate, using her elbow as a fulcrum.
When the meal was done, Mrs. Koerner began to rock again, the children stood about and watched Gusta pile the dishes on the table and cover them with the red cloth, and then, when she told them they must go to bed, they protested, crying that father had not come home yet. Their eyes were heavy and their flaxen heads were nodding, and Gusta dragged them into a room that opened off the kitchen, and out of the dark could be heard their small voices, protesting sleepily that they were not sleepy.
After a while a quick, regular step was heard outside, some one stamped the snow from his boots, the door opened, and Archie entered. His face was drawn and flaming from the cold, and there was shrinking in his broad military shoulders; a shiver ran through his well-set-up figure; he wore no overcoat; he keenly felt the exposure to weather he was so unused to. He flung aside his gray felt soldier's hat–the same he had worn in the Philippines–strode across the room, bent over the stove and warmed his red fingers.
"It's a long hike over to the hospital this cold night," he said, turning to Gusta and smiling. His white teeth showed in his smile, and the skin of his face was red and parched. He flung a chair before the stove, sat down, hooked one heel on its rung, and taking some little slips of rice paper from his pocket, and a bag of tobacco, began rolling himself a cigarette. He rolled the cigarette swiftly and deftly, lighted it, and inhaled the smoke eagerly. Gusta, meanwhile, sat looking at him in a sort of suppressed impatience. Then, the smoke stealing from his mouth with each word he uttered, he said:
"Well, they've cut the old man's leg off."
Gusta and the neighbor women looked at Archie in silence. Mrs. Koerner seemed unable to grasp the full meaning of what he had said.
"Was sagst du?" she asked, leaning forward anxiously.
"Sie haben sein Bein amputiert," replied Archie.
"Sein Bein–was?" inquired Mrs. Koerner.
"What the devil's 'cut off'?" asked Archie, turning to Gusta.
She thought a moment.
"Why," she said, "let's see. Abgeschnitten, I guess."
"Je's," said Archie impatiently, "I wish she'd cut out the Dutch!"
Then he turned toward his mother and speaking loudly, as if she were deaf, as one always speaks who tries to make himself understood in a strange tongue:
"Sie haben sein Bein abgeschnitten–die Doctoren im Hospital."
Mrs. Koerner stared at her son, and Archie and Gusta and the two women sat and stared at her, then suddenly Mrs. Koerner's expression became set, meaningless and blank, her eyes slowly closed and her body slid off the chair to the floor. Archie sprang toward her and tried to lift her. She was heavy even for his strong arms, and he straightened an instant, and shouted out commands:
"Open the door, you! Gusta, get some water!"
One of the women lumbered across the kitchen and flung wide the door, Gusta got a dipper of water and splashed it in her mother's face. The cold air rushing into the overheated kitchen and the cool water revived the prostrate woman; she opened her eyes and looked up, sick and appealing. Archie helped her to her chair and stood leaning over her. Gusta, too, bent above her, and the two women pressed close.
"Stand back!" shouted Archie peremptorily. "Give her some air, can't you?"
The two women slunk back–not without glances of reproach at Archie. He stood looking at his mother a moment, his hands resting on his hips. He was still smoking his cigarette, tilting back his head and squinting his eyes to escape the smoke. Gusta was fanning her mother.
"Do you feel better?" she asked solicitously.
"Ja," said Mrs. Koerner, but she began to shake her head.
"Oh, it's all right, ma," Archie assured her. "It's the best place for him. Why, they'll give him good care there. I was in the hospital a month already in Luzon."
The old woman was unconvinced and shook her head. Then Archie stepped close to her side.
"Poor old mother!" he said, and he touched her brow lightly, caressingly. She looked at him an instant, then turned her head against him and cried. The tears began to roll down Gusta's cheeks, and Archie squinted his eyes more and more.
"We'd better get her to bed," he said softly, and glanced at the two women with a look of dismissal. They still sat looking on at this effect of the disaster, not altogether curiously nor without sympathy, yet claiming all the sensation they could get out of the situation. When Archie and Gusta led Mrs. Koerner to her bed, the two women began talking rapidly to each other in German, criticizing Archie and the action of the authorities in taking Koerner to the hospital.
IV
Gusta cherished a hope of going back to the Wards', but as the days went by this hope declined. Mrs. Koerner was mentally prostrated and Gusta was needed now at home, and there she took up her duties, attending the children, getting the meals, caring for the house, filling her mother's place. After a few days she reluctantly decided to go back for her clothes. The weather had moderated, the snow still lay on the ground, but grimy, soft and disintegrating. The sky was gray and cold, the mean east wind was blowing in from the lake, and yet Gusta liked its cool touch on her face, and was glad to be out again after all those days she had been shut in the little home. It was good to feel herself among other people, to get back to normal life, and though Gusta did not analyze her sensations thus closely, or, for that matter, analyze them at all, she was all the more happy.
Before Nussbaum's saloon she saw the long beer wagon; its splendid Norman horses tossing their heads playfully, the stout driver in his leathern apron lugging in the kegs of beer. The sight pleased her; and when Nussbaum, in white shirt-sleeves and apron, stepped to the door for his breath of morning air, she smiled and nodded to him. His round ruddy face beamed pleasantly.
"Hello, Gustie," he called. "How are you this morning? How's your father?"
"Oh, he's better, thank you, Mr. Nussbaum," replied Gusta, and she hastened on. As she went, she heard the driver of the brewery wagon ask:
"Who's that?"
And Nussbaum replied:
"Reinhold Koerner's girl, what got hurt on the railroad the other day."
"She's a good-looker, hain't she?" said the driver.
And Gusta colored and felt proud and happier than before.
She was not long in reaching Claybourne Avenue, and it was good to see the big houses again, and the sleighs coursing by, and the carriages, and the drivers and footmen, some of whom she knew, sitting so stiffly in their liveries on the boxes. At sight of the familiar roof and chimneys of the Wards' house, her heart leaped; she felt now as if she were getting back home.
It was Gusta's notion that as soon as she had greeted her old friend Mollie, the cook, she would rush on into the dining-room; but no sooner was she in the kitchen than she felt a constraint, and sank down weakly on a chair. Molly was busy with luncheon; things were going on in the Ward household, going on just as well without her as with her, just as the car shops were going on without her father, the whistle blowing night and morning. It gave Gusta a little pang. This feeling was intensified when, a little later, a girl entered the kitchen, a thin girl, with black hair and blue eyes with long Irish lashes. She would have been called pretty by anybody but Gusta, and Gusta herself must have allowed her prettiness in any moment less sharp than this. The new maid inspected Gusta coldly, but none of the glances from her eyes could hurt Gusta half as much as her presence there hurt her; and the hurt was so deep that she felt no personal resentment; she regarded the maid merely as a situation, an unconscious and irresponsible symbol of certain untoward events.
"Want to see Mrs. Ward?" the maid inquired.
"Yes, and Miss Elizabeth, too," said Gusta.
"Mrs. Ward's out and Miss Ward's busy just now."
Mollie, whose broad back was bent over her table, knew how the words hurt Gusta, and, without turning, she said:
"You go tell her Gusta's here, Nora; she'll want to see her."
"Oh, sure," said Nora, yielding to a superior. "I'll tell her."
Almost before Nora could return, Elizabeth stood in the swinging door, beaming her surprise and pleasure. And Gusta burst into tears.
"Why Gusta," exclaimed Elizabeth, "come right in here!"
She held the door, and Gusta, with a glance at Nora, went in. Seated by the window in the old familiar dining-room, with Elizabeth before her, Gusta glanced about, the pain came back, and the tears rolled down her cheeks.
"You mustn't cry, Gusta," said Elizabeth.
Gusta sat twisting her fingers together, in and out, while the tears fell. She could not speak for a moment, and then she looked up and tried to smile.
"You mustn't cry," Elizabeth repeated. "You aren't half so pretty when you cry."
Gusta's wet lashes were winking rapidly, and she took out her handkerchief and wiped her face and her eyes, and Elizabeth looked at her intently.
"Poor child!" she said presently. "What a time you've had!"
"Oh, Miss Elizabeth!" said Gusta, the tears starting afresh at this expression of sympathy, "we've had a dreadful time!"
"And we've missed you awfully," said Elizabeth. "When are you coming back to us?"
Gusta looked up gratefully. "I don't know, Miss Elizabeth; I wish I did. But you see my mother is sick ever since father–"
"And how is your father? We saw in the newspaper how badly he had been hurt."
"Was it in the paper?" said Gusta eagerly, leaning forward a little.
"Yes, didn't you see it? It was just a little item; it gave few of the details, and it must have misspelled–" But Elizabeth stopped.
"I didn't see it," said Gusta. "He was hurt dreadfully, Miss Elizabeth; they cut his leg off at the hospital."
"Oh, Gusta! And he's there still, of course?"
"Yes, and we don't know how long he'll have to stay. Maybe he'll have to go under another operation."
"Oh, I hope not!" said Elizabeth. "Tell me how he was hurt."
"Well, Miss Elizabeth, we don't just know–not just exactly. He had knocked off work and left the shops and was coming across the yards–he always comes home that way, you know–but it was dark, and the snow was all over everything, and the ice, and somehow he slipped and caught his foot in a frog, and just then a switch-engine came along and ran over his leg."
"Oh, horrible!" Elizabeth's brows contracted in pain.
"The ambulance took him right away to the Hospital. Ma felt awful bad 'cause they wouldn't let him be fetched home. She didn't want him taken to the hospital."
"But that was the best place for him, Gusta; the very best place in the world."
"That's what Archie says," said Gusta, "but ma doesn't like it; she can't get used to it, and she says–" Gusta hesitated,–"she says we can't afford to keep him there."
"But the railroad will pay for that, won't it?"
"Oh, do you think it will, Miss Elizabeth? It had ought to, hadn't it? He's worked there thirty-seven years."
"Why, surely it will," said Elizabeth. "I wouldn't worry about that a minute if I were you. You must make the best of it. And is there anything I can do for you, Gusta?"
"No, thank you, Miss Elizabeth. I just came around to see you,"–she looked up with a fond smile,–"and to get my clothes. Then I must go. I want to go see father before I go back home. I guess I'll pack my things now, and then Archie'll come for my trunk this afternoon."
"Oh, I'll have Barker haul it over; he can just as well as not. And, Gusta,"–Elizabeth rose on the impulse–"I'll drive you to the hospital. I was just going out. You wait here till I get my things."
Gusta's face flushed with pleasure; she poured out her thanks, and then she waited while Elizabeth rang for the carriage, and ran out to prepare for the street, just as she used to.
It was a fine thing for Gusta to ride with Elizabeth in her brougham. She had often imagined how it would be, sitting there in the exclusion of the brougham's upholstered interior, with the little clock, and the mirror and the bottle of salts before her, and the woven silk tube through which Elizabeth spoke to Barker when she wished to give him directions. The drive to the hospital was all too short for Gusta, even though Elizabeth prolonged it by another impulse which led her to drive out of their way to get some fruit and some flowers.
In the street before the hospital, and along the driveway that led to the suggestively wide side door, carriages were being slowly driven up and down, denoting that the social leaders who were patronesses of the hospital were now inside, patronizing the superintendent and the head nurse. Besides these there were the high, hooded phaetons of the fashionable physicians. It was the busy hour at the hospital. The nurses had done their morning work, made their entries on their charts, and were now standing in little groups about the hall, waiting for their "cases" to come back from the operating-rooms. There was the odor of anesthetics in the air, and the atmosphere of the place, professional and institutional though it was, was surcharged with a heavy human suspense–the suspense that hung over the silent, heavily breathing, anesthetized human forms that were stretched on glass tables in the hot operating-rooms up-stairs, some of them doomed to die, others to live and prolong existence yet a while. The wide slow elevators were waiting at the top floor; at the doors of the operating-rooms stood the white-padded rubber-tired carts, the orderlies sitting on them swinging their legs off the floor, and gossiping about the world outside, where life did not hover, but throbbed on, intent, preoccupied. In private rooms, in vacant rooms, in the office down-stairs, men and women, the relatives of those on the glass tables above, waited with white, haggard, frightened faces.
As Elizabeth and Gusta entered the hospital they shuddered, and drew close to each other like sisters. Koerner was in the marine ward, and Gusta dreaded the place. On her previous visits there, the nurses had been sharp and severe with her, but this morning, when the nurses saw Elizabeth bearing her basket of fruit and her flowers–which she would not let Gusta carry, feeling that would rob her offering of the personal quality she wished it to assume–they ran forward, their starched, striped blue skirts rustling, and greeted her with smiles.
"Why, Miss Ward!" they cried.
"Good morning," said Elizabeth, "we've come to see Mr. Koerner."
"Oh, yes," said Koerner's nurse, a tall, spare young woman with a large nose, eye-glasses, and a flat chest. "He's so much better this morning." She said this with a patronizing glance aside at Gusta, who tried to smile; the nurse had not spoken so pleasantly to her before.
The nurse led the girls into the ward, and they passed down between the rows of white cots. Some of the cots were empty, their white sheets folded severely, back, awaiting the return of their occupants from the rooms up-stairs. In the others men sprawled, with pallid, haggard faces, and watched the young women as they passed along, following them with large, brilliant, sick eyes. But Elizabeth and Gusta did not look at them; they kept their eyes before them. One bed had a white screen about it; candles glowed through the screen, silhouetting the bending forms of a priest, a doctor and a nurse.
Koerner was at the end of the ward. His great, gaunt, heavy figure was supine on the bed; the bandaged stump of his leg made a heavy bulk under the counterpane; his broad shoulders mashed down the pillow; his enormous hands, still showing in their cracks and crevices and around the cuticle of his broken nails the grime that all the antiseptic scrubbings of a hospital could not remove, lay outside the coverlid, idle for the first time in half a century. His white hair was combed, its ragged edges showing more obviously, and his gaunt cheeks were covered by a stubble of frosty beard. His blue eyes were unnaturally bright.
Elizabeth fell back a little that Gusta might greet him first, and the strong, lusty, healthy girl bent over her father and laid one hand on his.
"Well, pa, how're you feeling to-day?"
"Hullo, Gustie," said the old man, "you gom' again, huh? Vell, der oldt man's pretty bad, I tel' you."
"Why, the nurse said you were better."
"Why, yes," said the nurse, stepping forward with a professional smile, "he's lots better this morning; he just won't admit it, that's all. But we know him here, we do!"
She said this playfully, with a lateral addition to her smile, and she bent over and passed her hand under the bed-clothes and touched his bandages here and there. Elizabeth and Gusta stood looking on.
"Isn't the pain any better?" asked the nurse, still smilingly, coaxingly.
"Naw," growled the old German, stubbornly refusing to smile. "I toldt you it was no besser, don't I?"
The nurse drew out her hand. The smile left her face and she stood looking down on him with a helpless expression that spread to the faces of Elizabeth and Gusta. Koerner turned his head uneasily on the pillow and groaned.
"What is it, pa?" asked Gusta.
"Der rheumatiz'."
"Where?"
"In my leg. In der same oldt blace. Ach!"
An expression of puzzled pain came to Gusta's face.
"Why," she said half-fearfully, "how can it–now?" She looked at the nurse. The nurse smiled again, this time with an air of superior knowledge.
"They often have those sensations," she said, laughing. "It's quite natural." Then she bent over Koerner and said cheerily: "I'm going now, and leave you with your daughter and Miss Ward."
"Yes, pa," said Gusta, "Miss Elizabeth's here to see you."