Chapter 15 #2
She looked at them, saw them staring back in various states of fascination, bewilderment and bemusement, and found she couldn’t care.
“If you’re going to argue about how best to change the world,” she told them fiercely, “you should understand the people who live in it. Not as specimens, or as sorry cases, but as people. People just like you.” She broke off, embarrassed as well as emotional, and raised her napkin to her lips to hide how they trembled.
No one said a word for a long, long moment.
Maggie kept her napkin to her face, now to hide her scorching flush of embarrassment.
Why on earth had she been so outspoken? Why had she spoken of Mrs. Cater, and Ireland, and being a servant?
She was trying to leave that all behind, be someone different and better, and here she’d laid all her sorry experiences at the Browns’ feet.
Then, finally, Charlotte said softly, “Bravo, Maggie, bravo.”
While Maggie turned to give her a startled look, Philip clapped his hands together as he beamed at her. “We should be thoroughly ashamed of ourselves,” he stated. “And so we are.”
Adelaide’s lips twitched. “I shall never ask Mary her opinion again,” she said solemnly, and Charlotte let out a bark of laughter.
“Oh, Adelaide, really,” she exclaimed, and the moment passed, thankfully, because the last thing Maggie wanted was to make even more a spectacle of herself. When Charlotte bid them to retire to the drawing room for tea and coffee, she vowed not to say a single word for the rest of the evening.
“I have taken to heart what you said,” Philip told her in a low voice as they headed into the drawing room. “You speak from experience, whereas we speak only from education.”
“Are they so opposed?” Maggie asked, a little stung by the implication that she was not educated. She may not have gone to medical school or even high school, but she was studying hard now, that was for certain.
“One is surely more valuable than the other,” Philip replied with a smile as he took her arm to lead her into the room. “And it is not education.”
Maggie nodded, somewhat appeased, although she still wished she had not differentiated herself from her hosts quite so drastically. Yet even so, she knew she wasn’t sorry she’d done it. She couldn’t be.
It was past ten o’clock before the evening broke up, and Maggie had to face the long walk back to the nurses’ residence—and another ten-hour day on the wards tomorrow.
“Philip, we cannot let Maggie walk the streets of San Francisco unaccompanied,” Charlotte exclaimed as Maggie began to make her goodbyes. “You must escort her home.”
“Of course,” Philip agreed with smooth alacrity, before Maggie even had time to protest.
“I’m sorry to inconvenience you so,” she said as they started the mile-long walk back to Sacramento Street.
“It is no inconvenience at all,” Philip assured her. “But rather a pleasure and a privilege.”
Maggie couldn’t help but laugh at that, shaking her head. “You flatter me.”
“I don’t,” he insisted as he took her arm. “I assure you, Miss O’Halloran—Maggie, as you bid me to call you—I mean it.”
Maggie fell silent, having no idea how to respond. The evening had challenged and invigorated her in so many ways—the stimulating conversation, the way she’d spoken out, how she’d been treated as an equal even after she’d done so. It all felt overwhelming, as well as gratifying—and exciting.
As they walked along, she glanced at Philip, his dark hair swept back from his forehead, handsome profile slanted with moonlight, and she felt a tremor of—what?
Not the heady yet uneasy sense of expectation she’d felt so often with Theo Stein, where she hadn’t truly known what she’d felt—or what he’d felt.
No, this was a far more comfortable sensation, one of satisfaction as well as friendship, respect as well as camaraderie.
It was novel, and that was what was exciting—that after all her searching and striving, at last she’d arrived at a place where she could be honest and be listened to, that a man like Philip or a woman like Adelaide, elegant and educated, could listen to what she had to say and consider it seriously.
She wasn’t a nonentity or an amusement, the way she had been even at the height of her business, the women who frequented her boutique seeing her as no more than a novelty.
“There’s a lecture on public sanitation at the Pacific Hall next week,” Philip told her as they drew near the nurses’ residence. “Adelaide and I were planning to attend. I wonder if you might like to join us?”
“It depends on whether I have any lectures at the hospital,” Maggie told him. “But I thank you kindly for the invitation. I’d like to attend if I may.”
“Good.” Philip smiled at her, his teeth flashing in the moonlight, his eyes crinkled at the corners, and then he tipped his hat as he stepped away from the door of the nurses’ residence. “Goodnight then, Maggie O’Halloran,” he said with a whimsical smile.
After bidding him goodnight, Maggie stood there, watching his dashing figure disappear into the darkness. She felt as if she’d touched another world tonight, a world she’d forgotten had existed, of a welcoming home and interesting conversation and the warm, admiring gaze of a handsome man.
Smiling faintly, Maggie turned to go inside.