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.