"Indeed!" said Jane, coldly polite. In Jane's circle people did not
discuss the interiors of other people's stomachs. The red-haired
person sat on the table with a cup of bouillon in one hand and a
cracker in the other.
"You know," he said genially, "it's awfully bully of you to come out
and keep me company like this. I never put in such a day. I've given
up fussing with the furnace and got out extra blankets instead. And
I think by night our troubles will be over." He held up the cup and
glanced at Jane, who was looking entrancingly pretty. "To our
troubles being over!" he said, draining the cup, and then found
that he had used the red pepper again by mistake. It took five
minutes and four cups of cold water to enable him to explain what he
meant.
"By our troubles being over," he said finally when he could speak,
"I mean this: There's a train from town at eight to-night, and if
all goes well it will deposit in the village half a dozen nurses, a
cook or two, a furnace man - good Heavens, I wonder if I forgot a
furnace man!"
It seemed, as Jane discovered, that the telephone wires being cut,
he had sent Higgins from the men's ward to the village to send some
telegrams for him.
"I couldn't leave, you see," he explained, "and having some small
reason to believe that I am _persona non grata_ in this vicinity I
sent Higgins."
Jane had always hated the name Higgins. She said afterward that she
felt uneasy from that moment. The red-haired person, who was not
bad-looking, being tall and straight and having a very decent nose,
looked at Jane, and Jane, having been shut away for weeks - Jane
preened a little and was glad she had done her hair.
"You looked better the other way," said the red-haired person,
reading her mind in a most uncanny manner. "Why should a girl with
as pretty hair as yours cover it up with a net, anyhow?"
"You are very disagreeable and - and impertinent," said Jane,
sliding off the table.
"It isn't disagreeable to tell a girl she has pretty hair," the
red-haired person protested - "or impertinent either."
Jane was gathering up the remnants of her temper, scattered by the
events of the day.
"You said I was a neurasthenic," she accused him. "It - it isn't
being a neurasthenic to be nervous and upset and hating the very
sight of people, is it?"
"Bless my soul!" said the red-haired man. "Then what is it?" Jane
flushed, but he went on tactlessly: "I give you my word, I think you
are the most perfectly" - he gave every appearance of being about to
say "beautiful," but he evidently changed his mind - "the most
perfectly healthy person I have ever looked at," he finished.
It is difficult to say just what Jane would have done under other
circumstances, but just as she was getting her temper really in hand
and preparing to launch something, shuffling footsteps were heard in
the hall and Higgins stood in the doorway.
He was in a sad state. One of his eyes was entirely closed, and the
corresponding ear stood out large and bulbous from his head. Also he
was coated with mud, and he was carefully nursing one hand with the
other.
He said he had been met at the near end of the railroad bridge by
the ex-furnace man and one of the ex-orderlies and sent back firmly,
having in fact been kicked back part of the way. He'd been told to
report at the hospital that the tradespeople had instituted a
boycott, and that either the former superintendent went back or the
entire place could starve to death.
It was then that Jane discovered that her much-vaunted temper was
not one-two-three to that of the red-haired person. He turned a sort
of blue-white, shoved Jane out of his way as if she had been a
chair, and she heard him clatter down the stairs and slam out of the
front door.
Jane went back to her room and looked down the drive. He was running
toward the bridge, and the sunlight on his red hair and his flying
legs made him look like a revengeful meteor. Jane was weak in the
knees. She knelt on the cold radiator and watched him out of sight,
and then got trembly all over and fell to snivelling. This was of
course because, if anything happened to him, she would be left
entirely alone. And anyhow the D.T. case was singing again and had
rather got on her nerves.
In ten minutes the red-haired person appeared. He had a
wretched-looking creature by the back of the neck and he alternately
pushed and kicked him up the drive. He - the red-haired person - was
whistling and clearly immensely pleased with himself.
Jane put a little powder on her nose and waited for him to come and
tell her all about it. But he did not come near. This was quite the
cleverest thing he could have done, had he known it. Jane was not
accustomed to waiting in vain. He must have gone directly to the
cellar, half pushing and half kicking the luckless furnace man, for
about four o'clock the radiator began to get warm.
At five he came and knocked at Jane's door, and on being invited in
he sat down on the bed and looked at her.
"Well, we've got the furnace going," he said.
"Then that was the - - "
"Furnace man? Yes."
"Aren't you afraid to leave him?" queried Jane. "Won't he run off?"
"Got him locked in a padded cell," he said. "I can take him out to
coal up. The rest of the time he can sit and think of his sins. The
question is - what are we to do next?"
"I should think," ventured Jane, "that we'd better be thinking about
supper."
"The beef capsules are gone."
"But surely there must be something else about - potatoes or things
like that?"
He brightened perceptibly. "Oh, yes, carloads of potatoes, and
there's canned stuff. Higgins can pare potatoes, and there's Mary
O'Shaughnessy. We could have potatoes and canned tomatoes and eggs."
"Fine!" said Jane with her eyes gleaming, although the day before
she would have said they were her three abominations.
And with that he called Higgins and Mary O'Shaughnessy and the four
of them went to the kitchen.
Jane positively shone. She had never realised before how much she
knew about cooking. They built a fire and got kettles boiling and
everybody pared potatoes, and although in excess of zeal the eggs
were ready long before everything else and the tomatoes scorched
slightly, still they made up in enthusiasm what they lacked in
ability, and when Higgins had carried the trays to the lift and
started them on their way, Jane and the red-haired person shook
hands on it and then ate a boiled potato from the same plate,
sitting side by side on a table.
They were ravenous. They boiled one egg each and ate it, and then
boiled another and another, and when they finished they found that
Jane had eaten four potatoes, four eggs and unlimited bread and
butter, while the red-haired person had eaten six saucers of stewed
tomatoes and was starting on the seventh.
"You know," he said over the seventh, "we've got to figure this
thing out. The entire town is solid against us - no use trying to get
to a telephone. And anyhow they've got us surrounded. We're in a
state of siege."
Jane was beating up an egg in milk for the D.T. patient, the
capsules being exhausted, and the red-haired person was watching her
closely. She had the two vertical lines between her eyes, but they
looked really like lines of endeavour and not temper.
She stopped beating and looked up.
"Couldn't I go to the village?" she asked.
"They would stop you."
"Then - I think I know what we can do," she said, giving the eggnog a
final whisk. "My people have a summer place on the hill. If you
could get there you could telephone to the city."
"Could I get in?"
"I have a key."
Jane did not explain that the said key had been left by her father,
with the terse hope that if she came to her senses she could get
into the house and get her clothes.
"Good girl," said the red-headed person and patted her on the
shoulder. "We'll euchre the old skate yet." Curiously, Jane did not
resent either the speech or the pat.
He took the glass and tied on a white apron. "If our friend doesn't
drink this, I will," he continued. "If he'd seen it in the making,
as I have, he'd be crazy about it."
He opened the door and stood listening. From below floated up the
refrain:
_I - love you o - own - ly,
I love - but - you._
"Listen to that!" he said. "Stomach's gone, but still has a heart!"
Higgins came up the stairs heavily and stopped close by the
red-haired person, whispering something to him. There was a second's
pause. Then the red-haired person gave the eggnog to Higgins and
both disappeared.
Jane was puzzled. She rather thought the furnace man had got out and
listened for a scuffle, but none came. She did, however, hear the
singing cease below, and then commence with renewed vigour, and she
heard Higgins slowly remounting the stairs. He came in, with the
empty glass and a sheepish expression. Part of the eggnog was
distributed over his person.
"He wants his nurse, ma'am," said Higgins. "Wouldn't let me near
him. Flung a pillow at me."
"Where is the doctor?" demanded Jane.
"Busy," replied Higgins. "One of the women is sick."
Jane was provoked. She had put some labour into the eggnog. But it
shows the curious evolution going on in her that she got out the
eggs and milk and made another one without protest. Then with her
head up she carried it to the door.
"You might clear things away, Higgins," she said, and went down the
stairs. Her heart was going rather fast. Most of the men Jane knew
drank more or less, but this was different. She would have turned
back halfway there had it not been for Higgins and for owning
herself conquered. That was Jane's real weakness - she never owned
herself beaten.
The singing had subsided to a low muttering. Jane stopped outside
the door and took a fresh grip on her courage. Then she pushed the
door open and went in.
The light was shaded, and at first the tossing figure on the bed was
only a misty outline of greys and whites. She walked over, expecting
a pillow at any moment and shielding the glass from attack with her
hand.
"I have brought you another eggnog," she began severely, "and if you
spill it - - "
Then she looked down and saw the face on the pillow.
To her everlasting credit, Jane did not faint. But in that moment,
while she stood staring down at the flushed young face with its
tumbled dark hair and deep-cut lines of dissipation, the man who had
sung to her over the piano, looking love into her eyes, died to her,
and Jane, cold and steady, sat down on the side of the bed and fed
the eggnog, spoonful by spoonful, to his corpse!
When the blank-eyed young man on the bed had swallowed it all
passively, looking at her with dull, incurious eyes, she went back
to her room and closing the door put the washstand against it. She
did nothing theatrical. She went over to the window and stood
looking out where the trees along the drive were fading in the dusk
from green to grey, from grey to black. And over the transom came
again and again monotonously the refrain:
_I - love you o - own - ly,
I love - but - you._
Jane fell on her knees beside the bed and buried her wilful head in
the hand-embroidered pillow, and said a little prayer because she
had found out in time.
III
The full realisation of their predicament came with the dusk. The
electric lights were shut off! Jane, crawling into bed tearfully at
half after eight, turned the reading light switch over her head, but
no flood of rosy radiance poured down on the hand-embroidered pillow
with the pink bow.
Jane sat up and stared round her. Already the outline of her dresser
was faint and shadowy. In half an hour black night would settle down
and she had not even a candle or a box of matches. She crawled out,
panicky, and began in the darkness to don her kimono and slippers.
As she opened the door and stepped into the hall the convalescent
typhoid heard her and set up his usual cry.
"Hey," he called, "whoever that is come in and fix the lights.
They're broken. And I want some bread and milk. I can't sleep on an
empty stomach!"
Jane padded on past the room where love lay cold and dead, down the
corridor with its alarming echoes. The house seemed very quiet. At a
corner unexpectedly she collided with some one going hastily. The
result was a crash and a deluge of hot water. Jane got a drop on her
bare ankle, and as soon as she could breathe she screamed.
"Why don't you look where you're going?" demanded the red-haired
person angrily. "I've been an hour boiling that water, and now it
has to be done over again!"
"It would do a lot of good to look!" retorted Jane. "But if you
wish I'll carry a bell!"
"The thing for you to do," said the red-haired person severely, "is
to go back to bed like a good girl and stay there until morning. The
light is cut off."
"Really!" said Jane. "I thought it had just gone out for a walk. I
daresay I may have a box of matches at least?"
He fumbled in his pockets without success.
"Not a match, of course!" he said disgustedly. "Was any one ever in
such an infernal mess? Can't you get back to your room without
matches?"
"I shan't go back at all unless I have some sort of light,"
maintained Jane. "I'm - horribly frightened!"
The break in her voice caught his attention and he put his hand out
gently and took her arm.
"Now listen," he said. "You've been brave and fine all day, and
don't stop it now. I - I've got all I can manage. Mary O'Shaughnessy
is - - " He stopped. "I'm going to be very busy," he said with half a
groan. "I surely do wish you were forty for the next few hours. But
you'll go back and stay in your room, won't you?"
He patted her arm, which Jane particularly hated generally. But Jane
had altered considerably since morning.
"Then you cannot go to the telephone?"
"Not to-night."
"And Higgins?"
"Higgins has gone," he said. "He slipped off an hour ago. We'll have
to manage to-night somehow. Now will you be a good child?"
"I'll go back," she promised meekly. "I'm sorry I'm not forty."
He turned her round and started her in the right direction with a
little push. But she had gone only a step or two when she heard him
coming after her quickly.
"Where are you?"
"Here," quavered Jane, not quite sure of him or of herself perhaps.
But when he stopped beside her he didn't try to touch her arm again.
He only said:
"I wouldn't have you forty for anything in the world. I want you to
be just as you are, very beautiful and young."
Then, as if he was afraid he would say too much, he turned on his
heel, and a moment after he kicked against the fallen pitcher in the
darkness and awoke a thousand echoes. As for Jane, she put her
fingers to her ears and ran to her room, where she slammed the door
and crawled into bed with burning cheeks.
Jane was never sure whether it was five minutes later or five
seconds when somebody in the room spoke - from a chair by the window.
"Do you think," said a mild voice - "do you think you could find me
some bread and butter? Or a glass of milk?"
Jane sat up in bed suddenly. She knew at once that she had made a
mistake, but she was quite dignified about it. She looked over at
the chair, and the convalescent typhoid was sitting in it, wrapped
in a blanket and looking wan and ghostly in the dusk.
"I'm afraid I'm in the wrong room," Jane said very stiffly, trying
to get out of the bed with dignity, which is difficult. "The hall is
dark and all the doors look so alike - - "
She made for the door at that and got out into the hall with her
heart going a thousand a minute again.
"You've forgotten your slippers," called the convalescent typhoid
after her. But nothing would have taken Jane back.
The convalescent typhoid took the slippers home later and locked
them away in an inner drawer, where he kept one or two things like
faded roses, and old gloves, and a silk necktie that a girl had made
him at college - things that are all the secrets a man keeps from his
wife and that belong in that small corner of his heart which also
he keeps from his wife. But that has nothing to do with Jane.
Jane went back to her own bed thoroughly demoralised. And sleep
being pretty well banished by that time, she sat up in bed and
thought things over. Before this she had not thought much, only
raged and sulked alternately. But now she thought. She thought about
the man in the room down the hall with the lines of dissipation on
his face. And she thought a great deal about what a silly she had
been, and that it was not too late yet, she being not forty and
"beautiful." It must be confessed that she thought a great deal
about that. Also she reflected that what she deserved was to marry
some person with even a worse temper than hers, who would bully her
at times and generally keep her straight. And from that, of course,
it was only a step to the fact that red-haired people are
proverbially bad-tempered!
She thought, too, about Mary O'Shaughnessy without another woman
near, and not even a light, except perhaps a candle. Things were
always so much worse in the darkness. And perhaps she might be going
to be very ill and ought to have another doctor!
Jane seemed to have been reflecting for a long time, when the church
clock far down in the village struck nine. And with the chiming of
the clock was born, full grown, an idea which before it was sixty
seconds of age was a determination.
In pursuance of the idea Jane once more crawled out of bed and began
to dress; she put on heavy shoes and a short skirt, a coat, and a
motor veil over her hair. The indignation at the defection of the
hospital staff, held in subjection during the day by the necessity
for doing something, now rose and lent speed and fury to her
movements. In an incredibly short time Jane was feeling her way
along the hall and down the staircase, now a well of unfathomable
blackness and incredible rustlings and creakings.
The front doors were unlocked. Outside there was faint starlight,
the chirp of a sleepy bird, and far off across the valley the
gasping and wheezing of a freight climbing the heavy grade to the
village.
Jane paused at the drive and took a breath. Then at her best
gymnasium pace, arms close to sides, head up, feet well planted, she
started to run. At the sundial she left the drive and took to the
lawn gleaming with the frost of late October. She stopped running
then and began to pick her way more cautiously. Even at that she
collided heavily with a wire fence marking the boundary, and sat on
the ground for some time after, whimpering over the outrage and
feeling her nose. It was distinctly scratched and swollen. No one
would think her beautiful with a nose like that!
She had not expected the wire fence. It was impossible to climb and
more difficult to get under. However, she found one place where the
ground dipped, and wormed her way under the fence in most
undignified fashion. It is perfectly certain that had Jane's family
seen her then and been told that she was doing this remarkable thing
for a woman she had never seen before that day, named Mary
O'Shaughnessy, and also for a certain red-haired person of whom it
had never heard, it would have considered Jane quite irrational. But
it is entirely probable that Jane became really rational that night
for the first time in her spoiled young life.
Jane never told the details of that excursion. Those that came out
in the paper were only guess-work, of course, but it is quite true
that a reporter found scraps of her motor veil on three wire fences,
and there seems to be no reason to doubt, also, that two false curls
were discovered a week later in a cow pasture on her own estate. But
as Jane never wore curls afterward anyhow - -
Well, Jane got to her own house about eleven and crept in like a
thief to the telephone. There were more rustlings and creakings and
rumblings in the empty house than she had ever imagined, and she
went backward through the hall for fear of something coming after
her. But, which is to the point, she got to the telephone and called
up her father in the city.
The first message that astonished gentleman got was that a
red-haired person at the hospital was very ill, having run into a
wire fence and bruised a nose, and that he was to bring out at once
from town two doctors, six nurses, a cook and a furnace man!
After a time, however, as Jane grew calmer, he got it straightened
out, and said a number of things over the telephone anent the
deserting staff that are quite forbidden by the rules both of the
club and of the telephone company. He gave Jane full instructions
about sending to the village and having somebody come up and stay
with her, and about taking a hot footbath and going to bed between
blankets, and when Jane replied meekly to everything "Yes, father,"
and "All right, father," he was so stunned by her mildness that he
was certain she must be really ill.
Not that Jane had any idea of doing all these things. She hung up
the telephone and gathered all the candles from all the candlesticks
on the lower floor, and started back for the hospital. The moon had
come up and she had no more trouble with fencing, but she was
desperately tired. She climbed the drive slowly, coming to frequent
pauses. The hospital, long and low and sleeping, lay before her,
and in one upper window there was a small yellow light.
Jane climbed the steps and sat down on the top one. She felt very
tired and sad and dejected, and she sat down on the upper step to
think of how useless she was, and how much a man must know to be a
doctor, and that perhaps she would take up nursing in earnest and
amount to something, and - -
It was about three o'clock in the morning when the red-haired
person, coming down belatedly to close the front doors, saw a
shapeless heap on the porch surrounded by a radius of white-wax
candles, and going up shoved at it with his foot. Whereat the heap
moved slightly and muttered "Lemme shleep."
The red-haired person said "Good Heavens!" and bending down held a
lighted match to the sleeper's face and stared, petrified. Jane
opened her eyes, sat up and put her hand over her mutilated nose
with one gesture.
"You!" said the red-haired person. And then mercifully the match
went out.
"Don't light another," said Jane. "I'm an alarming sight.
Would - would you mind feeling if my nose is broken?"
He didn't move to examine it. He just kept on kneeling and staring.
"Where have you been?" he demanded.
"Over to telephone," said Jane, and yawned. "They're bringing
everybody in automobiles - doctors, nurses, furnace man - oh, dear me,
I hope I mentioned a cook!"
"Do you mean to say," said the red-haired person wonderingly, "that
you went by yourself across the fields and telephoned to get me out
of this mess?"
"Not at all," Jane corrected him coolly. "I'm in the mess myself."
"You'll be ill again."
"I never was ill," said Jane. "I was here for a mean disposition."
Jane sat in the moonlight with her hands in her lap and looked at
him calmly. The red-haired person reached over and took both her
hands.
"You're a heroine," he said, and bending down he kissed first one
and then the other. "Isn't it bad enough that you are beautiful
without your also being brave?"
Jane eyed him, but he was in deadly earnest. In the moonlight his
hair was really not red at all, and he looked pale and very, very
tired. Something inside of Jane gave a curious thrill that was half
pain. Perhaps it was the dying of her temper, perhaps - -
"Am I still beautiful with this nose?" she asked.
"You are everything that a woman should be," he said, and dropping
her hands he got up. He stood there in the moonlight, straight and
young and crowned with despair, and Jane looked up from under her
long lashes.
"Then why don't you stay where you were?" she asked.
At that he reached down and took her hands again and pulled her to
her feet. He was very strong.
"Because if I do I'll never leave you again," he said. "And I must
go."
He dropped her hands, or tried to, but Jane wasn't ready to be
dropped.
"You know," she said, "I've told you I'm a sulky, bad-tempered - - "
But at that he laughed suddenly, triumphantly, and put both his arms
round her and held her close.
"I love you," he said, "and if you are bad-tempered, so am I, only I
think I'm worse. It's a shame to spoil two houses with us, isn't
it?"
To her eternal shame be it told, Jane never struggled. She simply
held up her mouth to be kissed.
That is really all the story. Jane's father came with three
automobiles that morning at dawn, bringing with him all that goes to
make up a hospital, from a pharmacy clerk to absorbent cotton, and
having left the new supplies in the office he stamped upstairs to
Jane's room and flung open the door.
He expected to find Jane in hysterics and the pink silk kimono.
What he really saw was this: A coal fire was lighted in Jane's
grate, and in a low chair before it, with her nose swollen level
with her forehead, sat Jane, holding on her lap Mary O'Shaughnessy's
baby, very new and magenta-coloured and yelling like a trooper.
Kneeling beside the chair was a tall, red-headed person holding a
bottle of olive oil.
"Now, sweetest," the red-haired person was saying, "turn him on his
tummy and we'll rub his back. Gee, isn't that a fat back!"
And as Jane's father stared and Jane anxiously turned the baby, the
red-haired person leaned over and kissed the back of Jane's neck.
"Jane!" he whispered.
"Jane!!" said her father.
IN THE PAVILION
I
Now, had Billy Grant really died there would be no story. The story
is to relate how he nearly died; and how, approaching that bourne to
which no traveller may take with him anything but his sins - and this
with Billy Grant meant considerable luggage - he cast about for some
way to prevent the Lindley Grants from getting possession of his
worldly goods.
Probably it would never have happened at all had not young Grant,
having hit on a scheme, clung to it with a tenacity that might
better have been devoted to saving his soul, and had he not said to
the Nurse, who was at that moment shaking a thermometer: "Come
on - be a sport! It's only a matter of hours." Not that he said it
aloud - he whispered it, and fought for the breath to do even that.
The Nurse, having shaken down the thermometer, walked to the table
and recorded a temperature of one hundred and six degrees through a
most unprofessional mist of tears. Then in the symptom column she
wrote: "Delirious."
But Billy Grant was not delirious. A fever of a hundred and four or
thereabout may fuse one's mind in a sort of fiery crucible, but when
it gets to a hundred and six all the foreign thoughts, like seeing
green monkeys on the footboard and wondering why the doctor is
walking on his hands - all these things melt away, and one sees one's
past, as when drowning, and remembers to hate one's relations, and
is curious about what is coming when one goes over.
So Billy Grant lay on his bed in the contagious pavilion of the
hospital, and remembered to hate the Lindley Grants and to try to
devise a way to keep them out of his property. And, having studied
law, he knew no will that he might make now would hold against the
Lindley Grants for a minute, unless he survived its making some
thirty days. The Staff Doctor had given him about thirty hours or
less.
Perhaps he would have given up in despair and been forced to rest
content with a threat to haunt the Lindley Grants and otherwise mar
the enjoyment of their good fortune, had not the Nurse at that
moment put the thermometer under his arm.
Now, as every one knows, an axillary temperature takes five minutes,
during which it is customary for a nurse to kneel beside the bed, or
even to sit very lightly on the edge, holding the patient's arm
close to his side and counting his respirations while pretending to
be thinking of something else. It was during these five minutes that
the idea came into Billy Grant's mind and, having come, remained.
The Nurse got up, rustling starchily, and Billy caught her eye.
"Every engine," he said with difficulty, "labours - in a low - gear.
No wonder I'm - heated up!"
The Nurse, who was young, put her hand on his forehead.
"Try to sleep," she said.
"Time for - that - later," said Billy Grant. "I'll - I'll be a - long
time - dead. I - I wonder whether you'd - do me a - favour."
"I'll do anything in the world you want."
She tried to smile down at him, but only succeeded in making her
chin quiver, which would never do - being unprofessional and likely
to get to the head nurse; so, being obliged to do something, she
took his pulse by the throbbing in his neck.
"One, two, three, four, five, six - - "
"Then - marry me," gasped Billy Grant. "Only for an - hour or - two,
you know. You - promised. Come on - be a sport!"
It was then that the Nurse walked to the table and recorded
"Delirious" in the symptom column. And, though she was a Smith
College girl and had taken a something or other in mathematics, she
spelled it just then with two r's.
Billy Grant was not in love with the Nurse. She was a part of his
illness, like the narrow brass bed and the yellow painted walls,
and the thermometer under his arm, and the medicines. There were
even times - when his fever subsided for a degree or two, after a
cold sponge, and the muddled condition of mind returned - when she
seemed to have more heads than even a nurse requires. So sentiment
did not enter into the matter at all; it was revenge.
"You - promised," he said again; but the Nurse only smiled
indulgently and rearranged the bottles on the stand in neat rows.
Jenks, the orderly, carried her supper to the isolation pavilion at
six o'clock - cold ham, potato salad, egg custard and tea. Also, he
brought her an evening paper. But the Nurse was not hungry. She went
into the bathroom, washed her eyes with cold water, put on a clean
collar, against the impending visit of the Staff Doctor, and then
stood at the window, looking across at the hospital and feeling very
lonely and responsible. It was not a great hospital, but it loomed
large and terrible that night. The ambulance came out into the
courtyard, and an interne, in white ducks, came out to it, carrying
a surgical bag. He looked over at her and waved his hand. "Big
railroad wreck!" he called cheerfully. "Got 'em coming in bunches."
He crawled into the ambulance, where the driver, trained to many
internes, gave him time to light a cigarette; then out into the
dusk, with the gong beating madly. Billy Grant, who had lapsed into
a doze, opened his eyes.
"What - about it?" he asked. "You're not - married already - are you?"
"Please try to rest. Perhaps if I get your beef juice - - "
"Oh, damn - the beef juice!" whispered Billy Grant, and shut his eyes
again - but not to sleep. He was planning how to get his way, and
finally, out of a curious and fantastic medley of thoughts, he
evolved something. The doctor, of course! These women had to do what
the doctor ordered. He would see the doctor! - upon which, with a
precision quite amazing, all the green monkeys on the footboard of
the bed put their thumbs to their noses at him.
The situation was unusual; for here was young Grant, far enough from
any one who knew he was one of the Van Kleek Grants - and, as such,
entitled to all the nurses and doctors that money could
procure - shut away in the isolation pavilion of a hospital, and not
even putting up a good fight! Even the Nurse felt this, and when the
Staff Man came across the courtyard that night she met him on the
doorstep and told him.
"He doesn't care whether he gets well or not," she said
dispiritedly. "All he seems to think about is to die and to leave
everything he owns so his relatives won't get it. It's horrible!"
The Staff Man, who had finished up a hard day with a hospital supper
of steak and fried potatoes, sat down on the doorstep and fished out
a digestive tablet from his surgical bag.
"It's pretty sad, little girl," he said, over the pill. He had known
the Nurse for some time, having, in fact, brought her - according to
report at the time - in a predecessor of the very bag at his feet,
and he had the fatherly manner that belongs by right to the man who
has first thumped one between the shoulder-blades to make one
breathe, and who had remarked on this occasion to some one beyond
the door: "A girl, and fat as butter!"
The Nurse tiptoed in and found Billy Grant apparently asleep.
Actually he had only closed his eyes, hoping to lure one of the
monkeys within clutching distance. So the Nurse came out again, with
the symptom record.
"Delirious, with two r's," said the Staff Doctor, glancing over his
spectacles. "He must have been pretty bad."
"Not wild; he - he wanted me to marry him!"
She smiled, showing a most alluring dimple in one cheek.
"I see! Well, that's not necessarily delirium. H'm - pulse,
respiration - look at that temperature! Yes, it's pretty sad - away
from home, too, poor lad!"
"You - - Isn't there any hope, doctor?"
"None at all - at least, I've never had 'em get well."
Now the Nurse should, by all the ethics of hospital practice, have
walked behind the Staff Doctor, listening reverentially to what he
said, not speaking until she was spoken to, and carrying in one hand
an order blank on which said august personage would presently
inscribe certain cabalistic characters, to be deciphered later by
the pharmacy clerk with a strong light and much blasphemy, and in
the other hand a clean towel. The clean towel does not enter into
the story, but for the curious be it said that were said personage
to desire to listen to the patient's heart, the towel would be
unfolded and spread, without creases, over the patient's
chest - which reminds me of the Irishman and the weary practitioner;
but every one knows that story.
Now that is what the Nurse should have done; instead of which, in
the darkened passageway, being very tired and exhausted and under a
hideous strain, she suddenly slipped her arm through the Staff
Doctor's and, putting her head on his shoulder, began to cry softly.
"What's this?" demanded the Staff Doctor sternly and, putting his
arm round her: "Don't you know that Junior Nurses are not supposed
to weep over the Staff?" And, getting no answer but a choke: "We
can't have you used up like this; I'll make them relieve you. When
did you sleep?"
"I don't want to be relieved," said the Nurse, very muffled.
"No-nobody else would know wh-what he wanted. I just - I just can't
bear to see him - to see him - - "
The Staff Doctor picked up the clean towel, which belonged on the
Nurse's left arm, and dried her eyes for her; then he sighed.
"None of us likes to see it, girl," he said. "I'm an old man, and
I've never got used to it. What do they send you to eat?"
"The food's all right," she said rather drearily. "I'm not
hungry - that's all. How long do you think - - "
The Staff Doctor, who was putting an antiseptic gauze cap over his
white hair, ran a safety pin into his scalp at that moment and did
not reply at once. Then, "Perhaps - until morning," he said.
He held out his arms for the long, white, sterilised coat, and a
moment later, with his face clean-washed of emotion, and looking
like a benevolent Turk, he entered the sick room. The Nurse was just
behind him, with an order book in one hand and a clean towel over
her arm.
Billy Grant, from his bed, gave the turban a high sign of greeting.
"Allah - is - great!" he gasped cheerfully. "Well, doctor - I guess
it's all - over but - the shouting."
II
Some time after midnight Billy Grant roused out of a stupor. He was
quite rational; in fact, he thought he would get out of bed. But his
feet would not move. This was absurd! One's feet must move if one
wills them to! However, he could not stir either of them. Otherwise
he was beautifully comfortable.
Faint as was the stir he made the Nurse heard him. She was sitting
in the dark by the window.
"Water?" she asked softly, coming to him.
"Please." His voice was stronger than it had been.
Some of the water went down his neck, but it did not matter. Nothing
mattered except the Lindley Grants. The Nurse took his temperature
and went out into the hall to read the thermometer, so he might not
watch her face. Then, having recorded it under the nightlight, she
came back into the room.
"Why don't you put on something comfortable?" demanded Billy Grant
querulously. He was so comfortable himself and she was so stiffly
starched, so relentless of collar and cap.
"I am comfortable."
"Where's that wrapper thing you've been wearing at night?" The Nurse
rather flushed at this. "Why don't you lie down on the cot and take
a nap? I don't need anything."
"Not - not to-night."
He understood, of course, but he refused to be depressed. He was too
comfortable. He was breathing easily, and his voice, though weak,
was clear.
"Would you mind sitting beside me? Or are you tired? But of course
you are. Perhaps in a night or so you'll be over there again,
sleeping in a nice white gown in a nice fresh bed, with no querulous
devil - - "
"Please!"
"You'll have to be sterilised or formaldehyded?"
"Yes." This very low.
"Will you put your hand over mine? Thanks. It's - company, you know."
He was apologetic; under her hand his own burned fire. "I - I spoke
to the Staff about that while you were out of the room."
"About what?"
"About your marrying me."
"What did he say?" She humoured him.
"He said he was willing if you were. You're not going to move - are
you?"
"No. But you must not talk."
"It's like this. I've got a little property - not much; a little." He
was nervously eager about this. If she knew it amounted to anything
she would refuse, and the Lindley Grants - - "And when I - you
know - - I want to leave it where it will do some good. That little
brother of yours - it would send him through college, or help to."
Once, weeks ago, before he became so ill, she had told him of the
brother. This in itself was wrong and against the ethics of the
profession. One does not speak of oneself or one's family.
"If you won't try to sleep, shall I read to you?"
"Read what?"
"I thought - the Bible, if you wouldn't mind."
"Certainly," he agreed. "I suppose that's the conventional thing;
and if it makes you feel any better - - Will you think over what
I've been saying?"
"I'll think about it," she said, soothing him like a fretful child,
and brought her Bible.
The clock on the near-by town hall struck two as she drew up her
chair beside him and commenced to read by the shaded light. Across
the courtyard the windows were dim yellowish rectangles, with here
and there one brighter than the others that told its own story of
sleepless hours. A taxicab rolled along the street outside, carrying
a boisterous night party.
The Nurse had taken off her cap and put it on a stand. The autumn
night was warm, and the light touch of the tulle had pressed her
hair in damp, fine curves over her forehead. There were purple
hollows of anxiety and sleeplessness under her eyes.
"The perfect nurse," the head of the training school was fond of
saying, "is more or less of a machine. Too much sympathy is a
handicap to her work and an embarrassment to her patient. A perfect,
silent, reliable, fearless, emotionless machine!"