Poor Junior Nurse!
Now Billy Grant, lying there listening to something out of Isaiah,
should have been repenting his hard-living, hard-drinking young
life; should have been forgiving the Lindley Grants - which story
does not belong here; should have been asking for the consolation of
the church, and trying to summon from the depths of his
consciousness faint memories of early teachings as to the life
beyond, and what he might or might not expect there.
What he actually did while the Nurse read was to try to move his
legs, and, failing this, to plan a way to achieve the final revenge
of a not particularly forgiving life.
At a little before three o'clock the Nurse telephoned across for an
interne, who came over in a bathrobe over his pajamas and shot a
hypodermic into Billy Grant's left arm. Billy Grant hardly noticed.
He was seeing Mrs. Lindley Grant when his surprise was sprung on
her. The interne summoned the Nurse into the hall with a jerk of his
head.
"About all in!" he said. "Heart's gone - too much booze probably. I'd
stay, but there's nothing to do."
"Would oxygen - - "
"Oh, you can try it if you like. It's like blowing up a leaking
tire; but if you'll feel better, do it." He yawned and tied the cord
of his bathrobe round him more securely. "I guess you'll be glad to
get back," he observed, looking round the dingy hall. "This place
always gives me a chill. Well, let me know if you want me. Good
night."
The Nurse stood in the hallway until the echo of his slippers on the
asphalt had died away. Then she turned to Billy Grant.
"Well?" demanded Billy Grant. "How long have I? Until morning?"
"If you would only not talk and excite yourself - - "
"Hell!" said Billy Grant, we regret to record. "I've got to do all
the talking I'm going to do right now. I beg your pardon - I didn't
intend to swear."
"Oh, that's all right!" said the Nurse vaguely. This was like no
deathbed she had ever seen, and it was disconcerting.
"Shall I read again?"
"No, thank you."
The Nurse looked at her watch, which had been graduation present
from her mother and which said, inside the case: "To my little
girl!" There is no question but that, when the Nurse's mother gave
that inscription to the jeweller, she was thinking of the day when
the Staff Doctor had brought the Nurse in his leather bag, and had
slapped her between the shoulders to make her breathe. "To my little
girl!" said the watch; and across from that - "Three o'clock."
At half-past three Billy Grant, having matured his plans, remarked
that if it would ease the Nurse any he'd see a preacher. His voice
was weaker again and broken.
"Not" - he said, struggling - "not that I think - he'll pass me.
But - if you say so - I'll - take a chance."
All of which was diabolical cunning; for when, as the result of a
telephone conversation, the minister came, an unworldly man who
counted the world, an automobile, a vested choir and a silver
communion service well lost for the sake of a dozen derelicts in a
slum mission house, Billy Grant sent the Nurse out to prepare a
broth he could no longer swallow, and proceeded to cajole the man of
God. This he did by urging the need of the Nurse's small brother for
an education and by forgetting to mention either the Lindley Grants
or the extent of his property.
From four o'clock until five Billy Grant coaxed the Nurse with what
voice he had. The idea had become an obsession; and minute by
minute, panting breath by panting breath, her resolution wore away.
He was not delirious; he was as sane as she was and terribly set.
And this thing he wanted was so easy to grant; meant so little to
her and, for some strange reason, so much to him. Perhaps, if she
did it, he would think a little of what the preacher was saying.
At five o'clock, utterly worn out with the struggle and finding his
pulse a negligible quantity, in response to his pleading eyes the
Nurse, kneeling and holding a thermometer under her patient's arm
with one hand, reached the other one over the bed and was married in
a dozen words and a soiled white apron.
Dawn was creeping in at the windows - a grey city dawn, filled with
soot and the rumbling of early wagons. A smell of damp asphalt from
the courtyard floated in and a dirty sparrow chirped on the sill
where the Nurse had been in the habit of leaving crumbs. Billy
Grant, very sleepy and contented now that he had got his way,
dictated a line or two on a blank symptom record, and signed his
will in a sprawling hand.
"If only," he muttered, "I could see Lin's face when that's - sprung
on him!"
The minister picked up the Bible from the tumbled bed and opened it.
"Perhaps," he suggested very softly, "if I read from the Word of
God - - "
Satisfied now that he had fooled the Lindley Grants out of their
very shoebuttons, Billy Grant was asleep - asleep with the
thermometer under his arm and with his chest rising and falling
peacefully.
The minister looked across at the Nurse, who was still holding the
thermometer in place. She had buried her face in the white
counterpane.
"You are a good woman, sister," he said softly. "The boy is happier,
and you are none the worse. Shall I keep the paper for you?"
But the Nurse, worn out with the long night, slept where she knelt.
The minister, who had come across the street in a ragged
smoking-coat and no collar, creaked round the bed and threw the edge
of the blanket over her shoulders.
Then, turning his coat collar up over his unshaved neck, he departed
for the mission across the street, where one of his derelicts, in
his shirtsleeves, was sweeping the pavement. There, mindful of the
fact that he had come from the contagious pavilion, the minister
brushed his shabby smoking-coat with a whiskbroom to remove the
germs!
III
Billy Grant, of course, did not die. This was perhaps because only
the good die young. And Billy Grant's creed had been the honour of a
gentleman rather than the Mosaic Law. There was, therefore, no
particular violence done to his code when his last thoughts - or what
appeared to be his last thoughts - were revenge instead of salvation.
The fact was, Billy Grant had a real reason for hating the Lindley
Grants. When a fellow like that has all the Van Kleek money and a
hereditary thirst, he is bound to drink. The Lindley Grants did not
understand this and made themselves obnoxious by calling him "Poor
Billy!" and not having wine when he came to dinner. That, however,
was not his reason for hating them.
Billy Grant fell in love. To give the devil his due, he promptly set
about reforming himself. He took about half as many whisky-and-sodas
as he had been in the habit of doing, and cut out champagne
altogether. He took up golf to fill in the time, too, but gave it up
when he found it made him thirstier than ever. And then, with
things so shaping up that he could rise in the morning without
having a drink to get up on, the Lindley Grants thought it best to
warn the girl's family before it was too late.
"He is a nice boy in some ways," Mrs. Lindley Grant had said on the
occasion of the warning; "but, like all drinking men, he is a broken
reed, eccentric and irresponsible. No daughter of mine could marry
him. I'd rather bury her. And if you want facts Lindley will give
them to you."
So the girl had sent back her ring and a cold little letter, and
Billy Grant had got roaring full at a club that night and presented
the ring to a cabman - all of which is exceedingly sordid, but rather
human after all.
The Nurse, having had no sleep for forty-eight hours, slept for
quite thirty minutes. She wakened at the end of that time and
started up with a horrible fear that the thing she was waiting for
had come. But Billy Grant was still alive, sleeping naturally, and
the thermometer, having been in place forty minutes, registered a
hundred and three.
At eight o'clock the interne, hurrying over in fresh ducks, with a
laudable desire to make the rounds before the Staff began to drop
in, found Billy Grant very still and with his eyes closed, and the
Nurse standing beside the bed, pale and tremulous.
"Why didn't you let me know?" he demanded, aggrieved. "I ought to
have been called. I told you - - "
"He isn't dead," said the Nurse breathlessly. "He - I think he is
better."
Whereon she stumbled out of the room into her own little room across
the hall, locking the door behind her, and leaving the interne to
hunt the symptom record for himself - a thing not to be lightly
overlooked; though of course internes are not the Staff.
The interne looked over the record and whistled.
"Wouldn't that paralyse you!" he said under his breath. "'Pulse very
weak.' 'Pulse almost obliterated.' 'Very talkative.' 'Breathing hard
at four A.M. Cannot swallow.' And then: 'Sleeping calmly from five
o'clock.' 'Pulse stronger.' Temperature one hundred and three.' By
gad, that last prescription of mine was a hit!"
So now began a curious drama of convalescence in the little
isolation pavilion across the courtyard. Not for a minute did the
two people most concerned forget their strange relationship; not for
worlds would either have allowed the other to know that he or she
remembered. Now and then the Nurse caught Billy Grant's eyes fixed
on her as she moved about the room, with a curious wistful
expression in them. And sometimes, waking from a doze, he would find
her in her chair by the window, with her book dropped into her lap
and a frightened look in her eyes, staring at him.
He gained strength rapidly and the day came when, with the orderly's
assistance, he was lifted to a chair. There was one brief moment in
which he stood tottering on his feet. In that instant he had
realised what a little thing she was, after all, and what a cruel
advantage he had used for his own purpose.
When he was settled in the chair and the orderly had gone she
brought an extra pillow to put behind him, and he dared the first
personality of their new relationship.
"What a little girl you are, after all!" he said. "Lying there in
the bed shaking at your frown, you were so formidable."
"I am not small," she said, straightening herself. She had always
hoped that her cap gave her height. "It is you who are so tall.
You - you are a giant!"
"A wicked giant, seeking whom I may devour and carrying off lovely
girls for dinner under pretence of marriage - - " He stopped his
nonsense abruptly, having got so far, and both of them coloured.
Thrashing about desperately for something to break the wretched
silence, he seized on the one thing that in those days of his
convalescence was always pertinent - food. "Speaking of dinner," he
said hastily, "isn't it time for some buttermilk?"
She was quite calm when she came back - cool, even smiling; but
Billy Grant had not had the safety valve of action. As she placed
the glass on the table at his elbow he reached out and took her
hand.
"Can you ever forgive me?" he asked. Not an original speech; the
usual question of the marauding male, a query after the fact and too
late for anything but forgiveness.
"Forgive you? For not dying?"
She was pale; but no more subterfuge now, no more turning aside from
dangerous subjects. The matter was up before the house.
"For marrying you!" said Billy Grant, and upset the buttermilk. It
took a little time to wipe up the floor and to put a clean cover on
the stand, and after that to bring a fresh glass and place it on the
table. But these were merely parliamentary preliminaries while each
side got its forces in line.
"Do you hate me very much?" opened Billy Grant. This was, to change
the figure, a blow below the belt.
"Why should I hate you?" countered the other side.
"I should think you would. I forced the thing on you."
"I need not have done it."
"But being you, and always thinking about making some one else happy
and comfortable - - "
"Oh, if only they don't find it out over there!" she burst out. "If
they do and I have to leave, with Jim - - "
Here, realising that she was going to cry and not caring to screw up
her face before any one, she put her arms on the stand and buried
her face in them. Her stiff tulle cap almost touched Billy Grant's
arm.
Billy Grant had a shocked second.
"Jim?"
"My little brother," from the table.
Billy Grant drew a long breath of relief. For a moment he had
thought - -
"I wonder - whether I dare to say something to you." Silence from the
table and presumably consent. "Isn't he - don't you think that - I
might be allowed to - to help Jim? It would help me to like myself
again. Just now I'm not standing very high with myself."
"Won't you tell me why you did it?" she said, suddenly sitting up,
her arms still out before her on the table. "Why did you coax so?
You said it was because of a little property you had, but - that
wasn't it - was it?"
"No."
"Or because you cared a snap for me." This was affirmation, not
question.
"No, not that, though I - - "
She gave a hopeless little gesture of despair.
"Then - why? Why?"
"For one of the meanest reasons I know - to be even with some people
who had treated me badly."
The thing was easier now. His flat denial of any sentimental reason
had helped to make it so.
"A girl that you cared about?"
"Partly that. The girl was a poor thing. She didn't care enough to
be hurt by anything I did. But the people who made the trouble - - "
Now a curious thing happened. Billy Grant found at this moment that
he no longer hated the Lindley Grants. The discovery left him
speechless - that he who had taken his hate into the very valley of
death with him should now find himself thinking of both Lindley and
his wife with nothing more bitter than contempt shocked him. A state
of affairs existed for which his hatred of the Lindley Grants was
alone responsible; now the hate was gone and the state of affairs
persisted.
"I should like," said Billy Grant presently, "to tell you a
little - if it will not bore you - about myself and the things I have
done that I shouldn't, and about the girl. And of course, you know,
I'm - I'm not going to hold you to - to the thing I forced you into.
There are ways to fix that."
Before she would listen, however, she must take his temperature and
give him his medicine, and see that he drank his buttermilk - the
buttermilk last, so as not to chill his mouth for the thermometer.
The tired lines had gone from under her eyes and she was very lovely
that day. She had always been lovely, even when the Staff Doctor
had slapped her between the shoulders long ago - you know about
that - only Billy Grant had never noticed it; but to-day, sitting
there with the thermometer in his mouth while she counted his
respirations, pretending to be looking out the window while she did
it, Billy Grant saw how sweet and lovely and in every way adorable
she was, in spite of the sad droop of her lips - and found it hard to
say the thing he felt he must.
"After all," he remarked round the thermometer, "the thing is not
irrevocable. I can fix it up so that - - "
"Keep your lips closed about the thermometer!" she said sternly, and
snapped her watch shut.
The pulse and so on having been recorded, and "Very hungry" put down
under Symptoms, she came back to her chair by the window, facing
him. She sat down primly and smoothed her white apron in her lap.
"Now!" she said.
"I am to go on?"
"Yes, please."
"If you are going to change the pillows or the screen, or give me
any other diabolical truck to swallow," he said somewhat peevishly,
"will you get it over now, so we can have five unprofessional
minutes?"
"Certainly," she said; and bringing an extra blanket she spread it,
to his disgust, over his knees.
This time, when she sat down, one of her hands lay on the table near
him and he reached over and covered it with his.
"Please!" he begged. "For company! And it will help me to tell you
some of the things I have to tell."
She left it there, after an uneasy stirring. So, sitting there,
looking out into the dusty courtyard with its bandaged figures in
wheeled chairs, its cripples sunning on a bench - their crutches
beside them - its waterless fountain and its dingy birds, he told her
about the girl and the Lindley Grants, and even about the cabman and
the ring. And feeling, perhaps in some current from the small hand
under his, that she was knowing and understanding and not turning
away, he told her a great deal he had not meant to tell - ugly
things, many of them - for that was his creed.
And, because in a hospital one lives many lives vicariously with
many people, what the girl back home would never have understood
this girl did and faced unabashed. Life, as she knew it, was not all
good and not all bad; passion and tenderness, violence and peace,
joy and wretchedness, birth and death - these she had looked on, all
of them, with clear eyes and hands ready to help.
So Billy Grant laid the good and the bad of his life before her,
knowing that he was burying it with her. When he finished, her hand
on the table had turned and was clasping his. He bent over and
kissed her fingers softly.
After that she read to him, and their talk, if any, was impersonal.
When the orderly had put him back to bed he lay watching her moving
about, rejoicing in her quiet strength, her repose. How well she was
taking it all! If only - but there was no hope of that. She could go
to Reno, and in a few months she would be free again and the thing
would be as if it had never been.
At nine o'clock that night the isolation pavilion was ready for the
night. The lights in the sickroom were out. In the hall a nightlight
burned low, Billy Grant was not asleep. He tried counting the
lighted windows of the hospital and grew only more wakeful.
The Nurse was sleeping now in her own room across, with the doors
open between. The slightest movement and she was up, tiptoeing in,
with her hair in a long braid down her back and her wrapper sleeves
falling away loosely from her white, young arms. So, aching with
inaction, Billy Grant lay still until the silence across indicated
that she was sleeping.
Then he got up. This is a matter of difficulty when one is still
very weak, and is achieved by rising first into a sitting posture by
pulling oneself up by the bars of the bed, and then by slipping
first one leg, then the other, over the side. Properly done, even
the weakest thus find themselves in a position that by the aid of a
chairback may become, however shaky, a standing one.
He got to his feet better than he expected, but not well enough to
relinquish the chair. He had made no sound. That was good. He would
tell her in the morning and rally her on her powers as a sleeper. He
took a step - if only his knees - -
He had advanced into line with the doorway and stood looking through
the open door of the room across.
The Nurse was on her knees beside the bed, in her nightgown, crying.
Her whole young body was shaken with silent sobs; her arms, in their
short white sleeves, stretched across the bed, her fingers clutching
the counterpane.
Billy Grant stumbled back to his bed and fell in with a sort of
groan. Almost instantly she was at the door, her flannel wrapper
held about her, peering into the darkness.
"I thought I heard - are you worse?" she asked anxiously.
"I'm all right," he said, hating himself; "just not sleepy. How
about you?"
"Not asleep yet, but - resting," she replied.
She stood in the doorway, dimly outlined, with her long braid over
her shoulder and her voice still a little strained from crying. In
the darkness Billy Grant half stretched out his arms, then dropped
them, ashamed.
"Would you like another blanket?"
"If there is one near."
She came in a moment later with the blanket and spread it over the
bed. He lay very still while she patted and smoothed it into place.
He was mustering up his courage to ask for something - a curious
state of mind for Billy Grant, who had always taken what he wanted
without asking.
"I wish you would kiss me - just once!" he said wistfully. And then,
seeing her draw back, he took an unfair advantage: "I think that's
the reason I'm not sleeping."
"Don't be absurd!"
"Is it so absurd - under the circumstances?"
"You can sleep quite well if you only try."
She went out into the hall again, her chin well up. Then she
hesitated, turned and came swiftly back into the room.
"If I do," she said rather breathlessly, "will you go to sleep? And
will you promise to hold your arms up over your head?"
"But my arms - - "
"Over your head!"
He obeyed at that, and the next moment she had bent over him in the
darkness; and quickly, lightly, deliciously, she kissed - the tip of
his nose!
IV
She was quite cheerful the next day and entirely composed. Neither
of them referred to the episode of the night before, but Billy Grant
thought of little else. Early in the morning he asked her to bring
him a hand mirror and, surveying his face, tortured and disfigured
by the orderly's shaving, suffered an acute wound in his vanity. He
was glad it had been dark or she probably would not have - - He
borrowed a razor from the interne and proceeded to enjoy himself.
Propped up in his chair, he rioted in lather, sliced a piece out of
his right ear, and shaved the back of his neck by touch, in lieu of
better treatment. This done, and the ragged and unkempt hair over
his ears having been trimmed in scallops, due to the work being done
with curved surgical scissors, he was his own man again.
That afternoon, however, he was nervous and restless. The Nurse was
troubled. He avoided the subject that had so obsessed him the day
before, was absent and irritable, could not eat, and sat in his
chair by the window, nervously clasping and unclasping his hands.
The Nurse was puzzled, but the Staff Doctor, making rounds that day,
enlightened her.
"He has pulled through - God and you alone know how," he said. "But
as soon as he begins to get his strength he's going to yell for
liquor again. When a man has been soaking up alcohol for years - -
Drat this hospital cooking anyhow! Have you got any essence of
pepsin?"
The Nurse brought the pepsin and a medicine glass and the Staff
Doctor swallowed and grimaced.
"You were saying," said the Nurse timidly - for, the stress being
over, he was Staff again and she was a Junior and not even entitled
to a Senior's privileges, such as returning occasional badinage.
"Every atom of him is going to crave it. He's wanting it now. He has
been used to it for years." The Nurse was white to the lips, but
steady. "He is not to have it?"
"Not a drop while he is here. When he gets out it is his own affair
again, but while he's here - by-the-way, you'll have to watch the
orderly. He'll bribe him."
"I don't think so, doctor. He is a gentleman."
"Pooh! Of course he is. I dare say he's a gentleman when he's drunk
too; but he's a drinker - a habitual drinker."
The Nurse went back into the room and found Billy Grant sitting in a
chair, with the book he had been reading on the floor and his face
buried in his hands.
"I'm awfuly sorry!" he said, not looking up. "I heard what he said.
He's right, you know."
"I'm sorry. And I'm afraid this is a place where I cannot help."
She put her hand on his head, and he brought it down and held it
between his.
"Two or three times," he said, "when things were very bad with me,
you let me hold your hand, and we got past somehow - didn't we?"
She closed her eyes, remembering the dawn when, to soothe a dying
man, in the presence of the mission preacher, she had put her hand
in his. Billy Grant thought of it too.
"Now you know what you've married," he said bitterly. The bitterness
was at himself of course. "If - if you'll sit tight I have a fighting
chance to make a man of myself; and after it's over we'll fix this
thing for you so you will forget it ever happened. And I - - Don't
take your hand away. Please!"
"I was feeling for my handkerchief," she explained.
"Have I made you cry again?"
"Again?'
"I saw you last night in your room. I didn't intend to; but I was
trying to stand, and - - "
She was very dignified at this, with her eyes still wet, and tried
unsuccessfully to take her hand away.
"If you are going to get up when it is forbidden I shall ask to be
relieved."
"You wouldn't do that!"
"Let go of my hand."
"You wouldn't do that!!"
"Please! The head nurse is coming."
He freed her hand then and she wiped her eyes, remembering the
"perfect, silent, reliable, fearless, emotionless machine."
The head of the training school came to the door of the pavilion,
but did not enter. The reason for this was twofold: first, she had
confidence in the Nurse; second, she was afraid of contagion - this
latter, of course, quite _sub rosa_, in view of the above quotation.
The Head Nurse was a tall woman in white, and was so starchy that
she rattled like a newspaper when she walked.
"Good morning," she said briskly. "Have you sent over the soiled
clothes?" Head nurses are always bothering about soiled clothes;
and what becomes of all the nailbrushes, and how can they use so
many bandages.
"Yes, Miss Smith."
"Meals come over promptly?"
"Yes, Miss Smith."
"Getting any sleep?"
"Oh, yes, plenty - now."
Miss Smith peered into the hallway, which seemed tidy, looked at the
Nurse with approval, and then from the doorstep into the patient's
room, where Billy Grant sat. At the sight of him her eyebrows rose.
"Good gracious!" she exclaimed. "I thought he was older than that!"
"Twenty-nine," said the Nurse; "twenty-nine last Fourth of July."
"H'm!" commented the Head Nurse. "You evidently know! I had no idea
you were taking care of a boy. It won't do. I'll send over Miss
Hart."
The Nurse tried to visualise Billy Grant in his times of stress
clutching at Miss Hart's hand, and failed.
"Jenks is here, of course," she said, Jenks being the orderly.
The idea of Jenks as a chaperon, however, did not appeal to the head
nurse. She took another glance through the window at Billy Grant,
looking uncommonly handsome and quite ten years younger since the
shave, and she set her lips.
"I am astonished beyond measure," she said. "Miss Hart will relieve
you at two o'clock. Take your antiseptic bath and you may have the
afternoon to yourself. Report in L Ward in the morning."
Miss Smith rattled back across the courtyard and the Nurse stood
watching her; then turned slowly and went into the house to tell
Billy Grant.
Now the stories about what followed differ. They agree on one point:
that Billy Grant had a heart-to-heart talk with the substitute at
two o'clock that afternoon and told her politely but firmly that he
would none of her. Here the divergence begins. Some say he got the
superintendent over the house telephone and said he had intended to
make a large gift to the hospital, but if his comfort was so little
considered as to change nurses just when he had got used to one, he
would have to alter his plans. Another and more likely story,
because it sounds more like Billy Grant, is that at five o'clock a
florist's boy delivered to Miss Smith a box of orchids such as never
had been seen before in the house, and a card inside which said:
"Please, dear Miss Smith, take back the Hart that thou gavest."
Whatever really happened - and only Billy Grant and the lady in
question ever really knew - that night at eight o'clock, with Billy
Grant sitting glumly in his room and Miss Hart studying typhoid
fever in the hall, the Nurse came back again to the pavilion with
her soft hair flying from its afternoon washing and her eyes
shining. And things went on as before - not quite as before; for with
the nurse question settled the craving got in its work again, and
the next week was a bad one. There were good days, when he taught
her double-dummy auction bridge, followed by terrible nights, when
he walked the floor for hours and she sat by, unable to help. Then
at dawn he would send her to bed remorsefully and take up the fight
alone. And there were quiet nights when both slept and when he would
waken to the craving again and fight all day.
"I'm afraid I'm about killing her," he said to the Staff Doctor one
day; "but it's my chance to make a man of myself - now or never."
The Staff Doctor was no fool and he had heard about the orchids.
"Fight it out, boy!" he said. "Pretty soon you'll quit peeling and
cease being a menace to the public health, and you'd better get it
over before you are free again."
So, after a time, it grew a little easier. Grant was pretty much
himself again - had put on a little flesh and could feel his biceps
rise under his fingers. He took to cold plunges when he felt the
craving coming on, and there were days when the little pavilion was
full of the sound of running water. He shaved himself daily, too,
and sent out for some collars.
Between the two of them, since her return, there had been much of
good fellowship, nothing of sentiment. He wanted her near, but he
did not put a hand on her. In the strain of those few days the
strange, grey dawn seemed to have faded into its own mists. Only
once, when she had brought his breakfast tray and was arranging the
dishes for him - against his protest, for he disliked being waited
on - he reached over and touched a plain band ring she wore. She
coloured.
"My mother's," she said; "her wedding ring."
Their eyes met across the tray, but he only said, after a moment:
"Eggs like a rock, of course! Couldn't we get 'em raw and boil them
over here?"
It was that morning, also, that he suggested a thing which had been
in his mind for some time.
"Wouldn't it be possible," he asked, "to bring your tray in here and
to eat together? It would be more sociable."
She smiled.
"It isn't permitted."
"Do you think - would another box of orchids - - "
She shook her head as she poured out his coffee. "I should probably
be expelled."
He was greatly aggrieved.
"That's all foolishness," he said. "How is that any worse - any more
unconventional - than your bringing me your extra blanket on a cold
night? Oh, I heard you last night!"
"Then why didn't you leave it on?"
"And let you freeze?"
"I was quite warm. As it was, it lay in the hallway all night and
did no one any good."
Having got thus far from wedding rings, he did not try to get back.
He ate alone, and after breakfast, while she took her half-hour of
exercise outside the window, he sat inside reading - only apparently
reading, however.
Once she went quite as far as the gate and stood looking out.
"Jenks!" called Billy Grant.
Jenks has not entered into the story much. He was a little man,
rather fat, who occupied a tiny room in the pavilion, carried meals
and soiled clothes, had sat on Billy Grant's chest once or twice
during a delirium, and kept a bottle locked in the dish closet.
"Yes, sir," said Jenks, coming behind a strong odour of _spiritus
frumenti_.
"Jenks," said Billy Grant with an eye on the figure at the gate, "is
that bottle of yours empty?"
"What bottle?"
"The one in the closet."
Jenks eyed Billy Grant, and Billy eyed Jenks - a look of man to man,
brother to brother.
"Not quite, sir - a nip or two."
"At," suggested Billy Grant, "say - five dollars a nip?"
Jenks smiled.
"About that," he said. "Filled?"
Billy Grant debated. The Nurse was turning at the gate.
"No," he said. "As it is, Jenks. Bring it here."
Jenks brought the bottle and a glass, but the glass was motioned
away. Billy Grant took the bottle in his hand and looked at it with
a curious expression. Then he went over and put it in the upper
bureau drawer, under a pile of handkerchiefs. Jenks watched him,
bewildered.
"Just a little experiment, Jenks," said Billy Grant.
Jenks understood then and stopped smiling.
"I wouldn't, Mr. Grant," he said; "it will only make you lose
confidence in yourself when it doesn't work out."
"But it's going to work out," said Billy Grant. "Would you mind
turning on the cold water?"
Now the next twenty-four hours puzzled the Nurse. When Billy Grant's
eyes were not on her with an unfathomable expression in them, they
were fixed on something in the neighbourhood of the dresser, and at
these times they had a curious, fixed look not unmixed with triumph.
She tried a new arrangement of combs and brushes and tilted the
mirror at a different angle, without effect.
That day Billy Grant took only one cold plunge. As the hours wore on
he grew more cheerful; the look of triumph was unmistakable. He
stared less at the dresser and more at the Nurse. At last it grew
unendurable. She stopped in front of him and looked down at him
severely. She could only be severe when he was sitting - when he was
standing she had to look so far up at him, even when she stood on
her tiptoes.
"What is wrong with me?" she demanded. "You look so queer! Is my cap
crooked?"
"It is a wonderful cap."
"Is my face dirty?"
"It is a won - - No, certainly not."
"Then would you mind not staring so? You - upset me."
"I shall have to shut my eyes," he replied meekly, and worried her
into a state of frenzy by sitting for fifty minutes with his head
back and his eyes shut.
So - the evening and the morning were another day, and the bottle lay
undisturbed under the handkerchiefs, and the cold shower ceased
running, and Billy Grant assumed the air of triumph permanently.
That morning when the breakfast trays came he walked over into the
Nurse's room and picked hers up, table and all, carrying it across
the hall. In his own room he arranged the two trays side by side,
and two chairs opposite each other. When the Nurse, who had been
putting breadcrumbs on the window-sill, turned round Billy Grant was
waiting to draw out one of the chairs, and there was something in
his face she had not seen there before.
"Shall we breakfast?" he said.
"I told you yesterday - - "
"Think a minute," he said softly. "Is there any reason why we should
not breakfast together?" She pressed her hands close together, but
she did not speak. "Unless - you do not wish to."
"You remember you promised, as soon as you got away, to - fix
that - - "
"So I will if you say the word."
"And - to forget all about it."
"That," said Billy Grant solemnly, "I shall never do so long as I
live. Do you say the word?"
"What else can I do?"
"Then there is somebody else?"
"Oh, no!"
He took a step toward her, but still he did not touch her.
"If there is no one else," he said, "and if I tell you that you have
made me a man again - - "
"Gracious! Your eggs will be cold." She made a motion toward the
egg-cup, but Billy Grant caught her hand.
"Damn the eggs!" he said. "Why don't you look at me?"
Something sweet and luminous and most unprofessional shone in the
little Nurse's eyes, and the line of her pulse on a chart would have
looked like a seismic disturbance.
"I - I have to look up so far!" she said, but really she was looking
down when she said it.
"Oh, my dear - my dear!" exulted Billy Grant. "It is I who must look
up at you!" And with that he dropped on his knees and kissed the
starched hem of her apron.
The Nurse felt very absurd and a little frightened.
"If only," she said, backing off - "if only you wouldn't be such a
silly! Jenks is coming!"
But Jenks was not coming. Billy Grant rose to his full height and
looked down at her - a new Billy Grant, the one who had got drunk at
a club and given a ring to a cabman having died that grey morning
some weeks before.
"I love you - love you - love you!" he said, and took her in his arms.
* * * * *
Now the Head Nurse was interviewing an applicant; and, as the H.N.
took a constitutional each morning in the courtyard and believed in
losing no time, she was holding the interview as she walked.
"I think I would make a good nurse," said the applicant, a trifle
breathless, the h.n. being a brisk walker. "I am so sympathetic."
The H.N. stopped and raised a reproving forefinger.
"Too much sympathy is a handicap," she orated. "The perfect nurse is
a silent, reliable, fearless, emotionless machine - this little
building here is the isolation pavilion."
"An emotionless machine," repeated the applicant. "I see - an e - - "
The words died on her lips. She was looking past a crowd of birds on
the windowsill to where, just inside, Billy Grant and the Nurse in a
very mussed cap were breakfasting together. And as she looked Billy
Grant bent over across the tray.
"I adore you!" he said distinctly and, lifting the Nurse's hands,
kissed first one and then the other.
"It is hard work," said Miss Smith - having made a note that the boys
in the children's ward must be restrained from lowering a pasteboard
box on a string from a window - "hard work without sentiment. It is
not a romantic occupation."
She waved an admonitory hand toward the window, and the box went up
swiftly. The applicant looked again toward the pavilion, where
Billy Grant, having kissed the Nurse's hands, had buried his face in
her two palms.
The mild October sun shone down on the courtyard, with its bandaged
figures in wheel-chairs, its cripples sunning on a bench, their
crutches beside them, its waterless fountain and dingy birds.
The applicant thrilled to it all - joy and suffering, birth and
death, misery and hope, life and love. Love!
The H.N. turned to her grimly, but her eyes were soft.
"All this," she said, waving her hand vaguely, "for eight dollars a
month!"
"I think," said the applicant shyly, "I should like to come."
GOD'S FOOL
I
The great God endows His children variously. To some He gives
intellect - and they move the earth. To some He allots heart - and the
beating pulse of humanity is theirs. But to some He gives only a
soul, without intelligence - and these, who never grow up, but remain
always His children, are God's fools, kindly, elemental, simple, as
if from His palette the Artist of all had taken one colour instead
of many.
The Dummy was God's fool. Having only a soul and no intelligence, he
lived the life of the soul. Through his faded, childish old blue
eyes he looked out on a world that hurried past him with, at
best, a friendly touch on his shoulder. No man shook his hand in
comradeship. No woman save the little old mother had ever caressed
him. He lived alone in a world of his own fashioning, peopled by
moving, noiseless figures and filled with dreams - noiseless because
the Dummy had ears that heard not and lips that smiled at a
kindness, but that did not speak.
In this world of his there was no uncharitableness - no sin. There
was a God - why should he not know his Father? - there were brasses to
clean and three meals a day; and there was chapel on Sunday, where
one held a book - the Dummy held his upside down - and felt the
vibration of the organ, and proudly watched the afternoon sunlight
smiling on the polished metal of the chandelier and choir rail.
* * * * *
The Probationer sat turning the bandage machine and watching the
Dummy, who was polishing the brass plates on the beds. The plates
said: "Endowed in perpetuity" - by various leading citizens, to whom
God had given His best gifts, both heart and brain.
"How old do you suppose he is?" she asked, dropping her voice.