Performing acts of charity was one of Blanche's most cherished tenets, a personal belief that had been inculcated in her at a young age. Her mother had been famous for her philanthropy and selfless generosity. And Blanche had always prided herself in carrying on that tradition. But she realized now, as she stood facing her greatest fear, that it was easy being charitable when it involved putting on dances and picnics and art shows. But had she ever truly been charitable? Because now she was faced with a test of true charity—going to those who were suffering inside this building and helping them in their time of need.
Thinking of her mother, and thinking of her own dream to find her purpose in life—thinking also of Marcus Iverson who deserved an explanation of why she had never set foot inside the hospital he so loved—Blanche drew in another deep, bracing breath and, squaring her shoulders, reached out and placed her hand on the door.
Hannah was about to collect her father's notes and the slides when she glanced into the lobby and saw a familiar face come through the hospital's front doors.
"Alice!" she cried.
Hannah ran to her friend and was further surprised to see Margaret Lawrence come through the door behind her. "What are you two doing here?"
"We four," Alice corrected as Martha Barlow-Smith stepped through the double doors and behind her, to Hannah's shock, Blanche. "When we got your message canceling lunch," Alice said, "saying that you were alone with all these patients, Blanche and I knew we had to do something to help. Margaret and Martha insisted upon coming with us."
Dr. Iverson emerged from his office at that moment and stared across the lobby at the four visitors. He recognized Alice and her companion, Margaret. Standing with them was Martha Barlow-Smith, a full-figured society matron whose corset stays always creaked beneath her bodice. And then he saw the fourth member of the group.
Blanche seemed to be hanging back at the door as she glanced this way and that, her hand pressed to her bosom. Was she ill? Marcus strode across the lobby and as he drew near, saw that she was white-faced and breathing rapidly. "Mrs. Sinclair," he said, "Blanche, is something wrong?" He gave her companions a puzzled look.
"They have come to help," Hannah explained.
He scrutinized Blanche. "You do not look well," he said, taking her elbow. "Come into my office."
Blanche could barely breathe. This hospital smelled the same as the one of years ago—the stench of smoke, chlorine, vomit. A patient was hobbling by on crutches, and another sat with his arm bound in a sling. The same visitors with the same food baskets were here. And from where she stood, Blanche could glimpse into the men's ward where she saw the same rows of beds occupied by the same broken, emaciated, ailing bodies.
She started to swoon. When she felt a strong grip on her arm, she looked down at the hand that steadied her. Lifting her eyes, she saw a handsome face etched with worry and genuine concern framed by black hair with silver at the temples.
Marcus.
She blinked. Blanche had never seen him in shirtsleeves. Gone was the impeccable frock coat, and his tie was undone. Shadow covered his jaw. It alarmed her, because it spoke of the gravity of the situation here in the hospital. But in the next instant she was reassured and comforted by the way he looked, for it meant he was giving singular attention to what must be done here, with no thought to himself.
"I'm sorry," she whispered, pressing her hand to her forehead.
"Come to my office," he said gently, then said to Hannah, "Please see to our visitors."
Inside Iverson's office, Blanche struggled to pull herself together. When Marcus offered her brandy, she declined it, and when he suggested she sit down, Blanche remained standing and said, "Marcus, I am mortally terrified of hospitals! There. I have said it."
"A lot of people are afraid of hospitals," he said in a reassuring tone. "It is nothing to be ashamed of."
"But my fear runs deep. It cripples me."
He waited, dark eyes filled with expectation and concern. But no disappointment, Blanche was relieved to see. No disapproval or silent recrimination. Remaining on her feet, struggling for strength and composure, she related the incident from her childhood, ending with, "That is why I could not organize your charity tour. I could not set foot inside your hospital once it was occupied by patients. I feel so cowardly."
He stepped closer and said in a low voice, "And yet you are here now, aren't you?"
"I am not being very brave about it."
He smiled. "It isn't bravery if you aren't afraid."
"Marcus, I should have been honest with you, but it sounded so foolish, and I didn't want you to think badly of me, what with your hospital being so important to you. I made such a mess of things. Marcus, I had no idea I offended you by declining to take on the charity tour. I didn't think that my being involved was so important."
"It was. You have a gift for organizing things, and I knew I would have had a successful event with you chairing it." He placed his hands on her arms and a thrill went through her. Suddenly the office was warm and intimate, the hospital and its horrors miles away. "Blanche, I have acted the fool! I told myself that I was affronted by your refusal to help me and my hospital, but the plain truth is that I learned the next day you had agreed to help Clarence Beechworth raise public support for his railway and I was infuriated. It was old-fashioned male jealousy, plain and simple. I have treated you cruelly and abominably. I don't know how you can ever forgive me."
"I should have told you the truth about my fear," she said, breathless at his nearness, the feel of his hands on her arms. Marcus stood a head taller, looking down at her with burning dark eyes, his black hair shining in the lamplight. Blanche thought she was going to swoon again, but this time for a different reason.
"And I should have pursued the issue," he said with passion, "but pride kept me from asking you precisely why you would not organize my event." He lowered his voice, his hands tightening on her arms. "I have missed our friendship, my dear Blanche. I have missed you."
"Oh Marcus," she whispered, giddy with desire.
He brought his face close to hers. "I realize now, my dear, that it was more than just having the most capable hostess in Melbourne organizing the event. I wanted you to be part of my hospital. I wanted you at my side as I showed off my great achievement. But you are here now."
"Yes I am," she whispered, captivated by his eyes. "And I shall stay."
He frowned. "Perhaps you should go home. You almost fainted."
"I am regaining my composure." And indeed she was. As the initial onslaught of sensations and memories began to subside, she felt strength return to her body and soul. She also felt Marcus's touch, the power of his voice, revitalize her. "The first step was the hardest. That was the one that I had to get past. From now on it will get easier, I am certain of it."
"You are an amazing woman, Blanche Sinclair," he murmured, wishing they were in another place, another time. "But now we must get to work."
"Tell me what to do."
47
A
LICE! ALICE, WHERE ARE YOU?"
She snapped her head up, Blanche and Martha spun around, and a few of the patients cried out. They turned toward the doorway at the end of the ward where they heard heavy footfall running up the stairs. Who was making such a commotion at this late hour?
When a young man burst in, wearing an evening frock coat and a top hat—a very handsome young man, many noted as he rushed down the length of the ward—the patients drew blankets up to their chins, and visitors in the aisle got out of his way.
Fintan shouted again for Alice.
She stepped out of a cubicle formed by three hanging sheets where she had been feeding a patient.
"There you are!" he said, and seized her by the arms, looking her up and down. "Are you all right? Are you sick? Are you hurt?"
Before Alice could respond, Blanche Sinclair stepped forward and said crisply, "Young man, you are frightening the patients."
"Oh! Sorry," he said quickly, bl
ushing and collecting himself. "Miss Star, they told me at the theater that you were in the hospital."
"I'm helping out."
He gave her a puzzled look, then finally noticed the others who stood around him. He recognized Margaret Lawrence, Alice's lady's companion, and he knew Blanche Sinclair from the gala at Addison's. The fourth was also clearly a lady, although he did not know her name. What was strange about Alice and her friends was their attire. They wore homely aprons over their gowns, their sleeves were rolled up to expose bare arms, and each of the ladies had her hair gathered up in a the sort of scarf scullery maids wore.
Aware of other eyes watching him, Fintan gave closer look to his surroundings, now that the panic of thinking Alice was hurt or ill had passed, and in the light of lanterns and candles, he saw the rows of beds occupied by women, and women in the coarse dresses shawls of the lower classes, sitting at bedsides, offering cups of water, brushing patients' hair. The atmosphere was hazy, thick with pungent smells, and illuminated by the glows of lamps and candles.
Fintan had never been inside a hospital. And as he realized he was the only man among so many females, he was suddenly self-conscious.
Alice took his arm. "Come with me, Mr. Rorke," she said. "I shall explain." To Mrs. Lawrence, Alice added, "I shall be all right, Margaret, we won't go far."
As they entered the corridor at the end of the ward, Alice turned and said, "Mr. Rorke, you should leave. There is contagion here."
"Ah, that explains it."
"Explains what?"
"I don't want to alarm you, but there is a crowd gathering out front of the hospital, people demanding to know if there loved ones are safe here. Dr. Iverson is trying to reassure them, but they seem agitated."
"All the more reason for you to leave. Please," Alice added with a hand on his arm.
Fintan's look darkened. "All the more reason for me to stay."
When Alice saw visitors staring at them, she said, "Let us get some air."
She took him downstairs and through a rear door that led into blessed fresh night air. Fintan could not believe the pungent smells in the ward. He had thought his throat would close forever. As Alice explained that what he had smelled was chlorine, and that the four friends had come to help Hannah during a crisis at the hospital, she and Fintan followed a narrow gravel walk that was illuminated by moonlight and the occasional glow from sparsely placed garden lanterns. They could see where a grid of flower beds had been laid out, with blooming shrubs sitting in sack cloth bags, waiting to be planted.
Alice told Fintan about the work she had been doing since arriving at the hospital that afternoon. "I have never nursed the sick before, and so I had no idea of what to do. Hannah showed us."
Fintan only half listened. He had been thinking about Alice all day, had been looking forward to seeing her again at the theater. And then when he had been told that she was at Victoria Hospital—
He had not understood the depths of his feelings for her until that moment. His angel hurt or sick, or possibly worse. It was unthinkable. But now she was all right, not sick at all, but performing charitable works, an angel truly, he thought in relief as he walked at her side. And he would stay, too, in case the crowd in front of the hospital decided to get unruly.
They paused on the path, and Fintan looked at her to say, "It's an admirable thing you are doing here, Alice Star."
She looked up into deep black eyes and felt her heart flutter. Fintan Rorke moved her in ways no man ever had. Was it his physical beauty? His endearing shyness? His gift for creating beauty out of prosaic wood? Or his tragic tale of Galagandra? It is all of that and more, she thought. Fintan is so many things, so many aspects.
And Alice yearned to explore them all.
"It's not just me. Blanche confessed that she has had a mortal fear of hospitals all her life. You should have seen her this afternoon, Fintan. Just stepping through the front doors took great courage. And then going up to the ward, facing the patients. Blanche has been bravely battling her fear all evening. In fact, when Hannah said the ward attendants had run off, it was Blanche's idea that we come and help. Especially as Hannah is helping Dr. Iverson to determine the cause of the fever."
"I thought bad air caused fever," Fintan said, wanting to speak of other things. Wanting to touch her, take her into his arms.
"There's talk that the hospital was built on sacred Aboriginal ground, and that it's haunted. They say that the hospital is cursed and that's why there is an outbreak of contagion. I don't believe it of course, but the ward attendants were Irish, and you know how superstitious they can be." Alice cast him a playful smile as she said this.
Fintan returned the smile, and then he grew serious. "You are even more beautiful in the moonlight, dear Alice. I cannot understand why you are not married. Or is there someone in your life and you don't make it public knowledge?"
"There is no one," she said, breathless at his unexpected presence—Fintan had been in her thoughts all day. How tall and elegant he was in his frock coat (although he had left the top hat in the hospital). "For a long time I convinced myself that my singing career was my life, that I didn't need a husband or children, that I could live without romantic love. It was easy to convince myself of this, Mr. Rorke, because no man ever stole my heart." She added silently: until now.
"Why would you want to convince yourself of such a thing? It sounds terribly lonely."
"There is something you must know." Reaching into the waistband of her skirt, she drew out a handkerchief. While Fintan watched in puzzlement, with the night wind whispering around them in the garden, rustling the branches and leaves of newly planted elm trees, Alice rubbed the linen over her right eye. She then folded the handkerchief and wiped it up and down her cheek and temple, back to her right ear. Then she faced him, giving him a good view of her face in the light of a garden lantern, and said. "Do you wish to see more?"
His thick black brows came together. "More of what?"
"Fintan, I am showing you my real face, something no one else sees." She held out the handkerchief. "This is a façl;ade."
He looked down. "All I see is a very clean handkerchief."
Alice brought the handkerchief closer to her face and saw, in the moonlight, an unblemished square of linen.
"The makeup probably wore off," Fintan said with a smile, "while you were working in that very warm building. No doubt you wiped your face a few times."
She stared up at him. She had dabbed her face with a towel, not thinking that her carefully placed cosmetics were coming off.
"Alice," he said, taking her by the shoulders. "Last night in your dressing room, while we talked, I noticed you kept bringing your hand up to the side of your face. It was as if you were trying to hide something."
"I haven't done that in years!"
"It made me wonder. I looked more closely and realized your makeup was concealing something. And that was when I understood the truth about your singing, why it moves so many hearts. I realized that you don't sing from your throat, Alice, but from your soul. You don't just sing lyrics or musical notes, you sing your own pain. And I wondered if perhaps what you are hiding here," he said as he tenderly touched her temple and cheek, "is a personal anguish."
She spoke quickly, while she had the courage, about the fire at the farm, the rescue that disfigured her face, being on the streets, her life with Lulu Forchette—"But I was never with the customers, I never even sang for them."—until it was all out and Fintan Rorke was the second person in the world to know Alice's secret.
"It makes sense now, dear Alice. This is what you are singing about. And your audience hears this. They feel that you are singing directly to them, each man and woman thinks that your voice touches just them and no one else. You reach into their sorrows, Alice, you touch their fears and bring them peace, because most of us have a Lulu Forchette or a Galagandra in our lives. It is a wonderful, and powerful, gift that you have."
He laid a hand on her cheek and said, "Did y
ou truly think I would leave you once I saw this?"
She looked into his eyes and understood a new truth. "No," she said.
Alice realized now that she had thought at first that she was testing Fintan, to see if his feelings for her could withstand her hidden scars. But now she realized it wasn't Fintan she had doubted, but herself. All the new selfconfidence she had gained since her first audition at Sam Glass's music hall had been an illusion, built upon a foundation of cosmetics, hair pieces and tiaras. Alice had never put her new self-confidence to a test. But now she had, and she had learned a truth about herself. That her self-confidence was genuine. The scars didn't matter any more. She no longer had anything to hide.
Fintan cupped her face in his hands and said, "Alice, you are a very pretty woman. Has no one ever told you that? Your eyes are captivating. I have never seen such a shade of blue. This lovely nose and delicate mouth. You are so much more than a few hidden scars. You have a face that is the envy of many women."
"Oh, Fintan," she said.
"Dearest Alice," he whispered, placing his hand at the back of her head.
She lifted her face to his and met his kiss with tears—her first kiss, a perfect kiss.
Fintan drew back and said with passion, "You inspire me to want to create beautiful things, Alice Star. I will carve your loveliness out of the finest wood God has created, and it will last for eternity, testament to my undying love for you."
They came together again in a deep kiss, bodies entwined in the moonlight, casting a single shadow on the garden path. And as they explored their new love and desire, and expressed it with their bodies, Fintan and Alice were unaware of ghosts moving nearby in the shadows—the "haunts" of this sacred ground who paid no attention to the lovers in the garden.
Stark white apparitions that moved on silent feet, their bodies spectral in the moonlight, as they advanced upon the stone building with hands clutching boomerangs and woomeras, and deadly spears.
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