'Smiles' by Eliot H. Robinson (ebook reader for laptop .TXT) 📕

The call came for the morning prayer, and she handed the paper back without a word; but for once the simple exercises, which, on this morning, should have meant so much more than usual, wholly failed to bring their customary peace. Her lips formed the words of the prayer, and joined in the singing of the hymn, but her mind was far away in France, and her heart rebellious within her.

Her thoughts did not harbor a doubt of Donald's love for the woman, who, it was said on "apparently unimpeachable" authority, had now discarded him for another and wealthier suitor. To be sure, he had not married her, as he might have, before he went away; but this was not strange, under the conditions; indeed, she thought it to his credit, since he had left to be away so long in the performance of a hard and hazardous duty. And surely Donald had remained true! Anything else was unthinkable, and, besides, Ethel often spoke of her sister-in-law-to-be, and of the marriage which would quickly follow her brother's return. That Miss Treville had apparently remained so faithful, also, had helped to banish some of Smiles' uncertain feelings concerning her, and she had begun to hope that some day she might succeed in finding the key to the city woman's heart and enter the fold of her friendship, for she could not bear the idea that Donald's marriage might result in Donald's being estranged from her, or cause a break in their wonderful friendship. Now her thoughts railed against the woman who had been so unstable, at a time when keeping faith with those who went, perhaps to die, had become a nation's watchword. This thought completely superseded the one that had sometimes been hers—that the woman was not worthy the love of the man whom she, herself, worshipped. It was like a mother, suffering for her hurt child, and her lips quivered with suppressed hate. It passed, and left her almost frightened.

"I guess that I'm still a mountaineer at heart," she whispered, as she mechanically bowed her head with the others. "I almost feel as though I could kill her. Poor Donald! He has always been so blindly trusting where his heart was concerned.... Perhaps Dorothy is right, perhaps he is better off, if it is true; but if this embitters him, if it spoils his faith in womankind, I shall hate her as long as I live." Then came the reflection that the report might not be true. "I shall go and ask her, myself, this afternoon!"

Smiles arose from her knees, aged in soul.

She had looked forward to this morning with all the eager anticipation of a child; but now, as she donned the white uniform of a graduate nurse—the costume which represented the full attainment of the hard-won goal,—no smile greeted her as she looked at her own reflection in the glass.

"Donald was right," she murmured. "I am just beginning to realize that even this fulfilment of my dream is not going to bring me happiness. It is born of the heart, or not at all." And her mind travelled back to the letter which she had tearfully penned him after Big Jerry's death. "Things never happen just as we plan. When we look forward to something pleasant which we want very much to happen, we never stop to think that there may be unhappiness mixed with it." A solitary tear ran down her cheek, and made a moist spot on the front of her new uniform.

The smile, usually spontaneous, had to be forced to her lips when she went to take her place, with the score of other happy graduating nurses, in the amphitheatre of the Harvard Medical School, next door, where the exercises were to be held.

"What is the matter with my Rose?" wondered Miss Merriman, who had managed to be present. And, "What is the matter with my Rose?" thought Dr. Bentley. He had seen her for just a moment that morning, and, through the warm, lingering pressure of her hand, received the thanks which she could not speak.

It was, in truth, a very sober Smiles who only half-heard the words of the impressively simple exercises, during which the newly made laborers in the Lord's vineyard received the diplomas which bore the seal of the hospital—a Madonna-like nurse, holding a child. Its original, cast in bronze—the work of a famous modern sculptor—hung in the administration building of the hospital, and she had often stood before it with tender dreams. And it was a very sober Smiles upon whose dress was pinned the blue and gold cross, the emblem alike of achievement and service.

Miss Merriman spoke her thought aloud, as she took the girl into her arms, afterwards. "You looked too sweet for words, dear. But, tell me, why that woe-begone expression on this, of all days? One would think that all the worries of the world lay on your young heart."

"Perhaps they do," was the non-committal answer. And Rose pleaded a previous engagement when the older nurse begged her company for the afternoon, and Dr. Bentley for the evening.

The happy laughter, the parting words, both grave and gay, which were spoken by those who had been her companions during the long journey, fell on ears which heard, but transmitted them to her mind vaguely, and her answers were inconsequential, so much so, that more than one friend regarded her with troubled surprise and whispered to another that Rose was either not well, or was dazed with happiness. And when Dorothy ventured to hint at the latter alternative, the girl acknowledged it with a strained imitation of her usual smile, and straightway found her thoughts scourging her because of this new deception.

It seemed to her that the day, for which she had builded so long, was tumbling about its foundations, and yet, when she now and again brought her runaway thoughts up with a round turn, she could not assign any logical reason for her feeling as she did.

"After all, what is it to me?" she would ask herself, logically, one moment. And at the next her heart would reply, "Everything. He is all that you have in the world in the way of 'family,' for he is more than friend to you." "Yes," Rose would admit, "I am afraid for him, I could not be more so if he were really my brother. She isn't worthy of him—I've known that, somehow, since the first day that he tried to tell me about her. But that isn't the point. Love is blind, and, if her faithlessness hurts him, I will hate her always. I hate her now. She has spoiled my day, and I know that I have hurt Gertrude and Philip, for they can't understand what the trouble is."

The idea passed over and over through the endless labyrinth of her brain and found no escape, while she ate the noonday meal, and later changed from her white uniform to a plain blue serge walking dress, and black sailor hat. Ever with it went the