Read Online The Magnificent Spinster by May Sarton - Free Book Online Page A

it did not even talk about in letters, but in 1918 something did happen at home: an epidemic of influenza raced through the army camps. Two acquaintances of the Reids died in their tents, without ever getting to France. It seemed so useless and unbearable. James Reid had gone to Minnesota when a call went out for volunteer nurses for the Boston hospitals, packed with the ill and dying.
    Jane, who had been reading the headlines by the fire in the Cambridge house, laid the paper down and glanced across at her mother. They exchanged a look of instant rapport and understanding.
    â€œYou want to volunteer.… I’ll go with you. We’ll do it together.”
    â€œOh Mamma!”
    Never since the episode of Maurice’s dismissal had Jane felt the barriers go down between herself and her mother. There had always been constraint, but now she felt that she and her mother were truly united. Of course if James had been at home, he would never have allowed his wife to take such a risk. But fortunately he was away and would not be back for two or three weeks. There were business and family problems to be seen to in St. Paul after the death of one of his brothers.
    So the next morning they took the trolley in to the Massachusetts Memorial Hospital, where one of Allegra’s cousins was a doctor. They were whisked into white gowns and set to work making beds in a former office that was being turned into a ward; then Allegra was summoned to help in one ward feeding the very weak with a spoon while in another Jane went about with a basin of warm water washing faces and hands, throwing each small cloth she used on a patient into a pail and reaching for a fresh one. The fear of infection was everywhere. So many nurses were themselves sick that volunteers had to do many things without much help. The doctors looked close to exhaustion. Jane was startled when Cousin Philip’s familiar voice behind her said, “Good heavens, Jane, what are you doing here?”
    â€œMamma is here, too … I don’t know where. They asked for volunteers.”
    He seemed very upset and looked ill himself.
    â€œBut why should we be safe when everyone else is in danger?”
    â€œAs soon as you get home, wash thoroughly, take off everything you have worn, and see that it is washed,” he said severely.
    Just then, the old woman Jane had been washing threw up and there was no time for conversation. “I’m sorry,” the old woman murmured.
    â€œIt’s all right, just rest.” Jane laid a hand on the burning forehead. Then, after a moment, when the crisis appeared to be over, she ran down the hall to the nurses’ room to get a clean sheet and another basin. There, a nurse was in tears of frustration and exhaustion.
    â€œThere isn’t a clean sheet,” she said angrily. “You’ll just have to do what you can. Three dead on this ward this morning.… It’s becoming a morgue.”
    Jane stood there for a moment catching her breath and then went back to what seemed now a kind of war in itself. She was very very glad to be there, strong and alive and able to help. However awful this was to witness, it was real. She was at last doing something needed. And she and her mother were very close during the month of long, exhausting days, so tired when they climbed onto the trolley for Cambridge after dark that Jane sometimes fell asleep. Allegra never did. She sat upright and could still manage a smile at a baby in a woman’s arms. Jane had never had a chance until then to feel Allegra’s strength, her unfailing spirit. So much, she realized, had been taken for granted, partly because they had been spared any ordeals such as serious illness. Terrible as it was, the war called out courage and endurance that were not tapped in “ordinary” life. That is what William James meant about “the moral equivalent of war,” Jane thought, recognizing that she was finding strength in