The Senior Nurse was writing fresh labels for the medicine closet,
and for "tincture of myrrh" she wrote absently "tincture of mirth,"
and had to tear it up.
"He can't hear you," she said rather shortly. "How old? Oh, I don't
know. About a hundred, I should think."
This was, of course, because of his soul, which was all he had, and
which, having existed from the beginning, was incredibly old. The
little dead mother could have told them that he was less than
thirty.
The Probationer sat winding bandages. Now and then they went
crooked and had to be done again. She was very tired. The creaking
of the bandage machine made her nervous - that and a sort of
disillusionment; for was this her great mission, this sitting in a
silent, sunny ward, where the double row of beds held only querulous
convalescent women? How close was she to life who had come to soothe
the suffering and close the eyes of the dying; who had imagined that
her instruments of healing were a thermometer and a prayer-book; and
who found herself fighting the good fight with a bandage machine
and, even worse, a scrubbing brush and a finetooth comb?
The Senior Nurse, having finished the M's, glanced up and surprised
a tear on the Probationer's round young cheek. She was wise, having
trained many probationers.
"Go to first supper, please," she said. First supper is the Senior's
prerogative; but it is given occasionally to juniors and
probationers as a mark of approval, or when the Senior is not
hungry, or when a probationer reaches the breaking point, which is
just before she gets her uniform.
The Probationer smiled and brightened. After all, she must be doing
fairly well; and if she were not in the battle she was of it.
Glimpses she had of the battle - stretchers going up and down in the
slow elevator; sheeted figures on their way to the operating room;
the clang of the ambulance bell in the courtyard; the occasional cry
of a new life ushered in; the impressive silence of an old life
going out. She surveyed the bandages on the bed.
"I'll put away the bandages first," she said. "That's what you said,
I think - never to leave the emergency bed with anything on it?"
"Right-oh!" said the Senior.
"Though nothing ever happens back here - does it?'
"It's about our turn; I'm looking for a burned case." The
Probationer, putting the bandages into a basket, turned and stared.
"We have had two in to-day in the house," the Senior went on,
starting on the N's and making the capital carefully. "There will be
a third, of course; and we may get it. Cases always seem to run in
threes. While you're straightening the bed I suppose I might as well
go to supper after all."
So it was the Probationer and the Dummy who received the new case,
while the Senior ate cold salmon and fried potatoes with other
seniors, and inveighed against lectures on Saturday evening and
other things that seniors object to, such as things lost in the
wash, and milk in the coffee instead of cream, and women from the
Avenue who drank carbolic acid and kept the ambulance busy.
The Probationer was from the country and she had never heard of
the Avenue. And the Dummy, who walked there daily with the
superintendent's dog, knew nothing of its wickedness. In his soul,
where there was nothing but kindness, there was even a feeling of
tenderness for the Avenue. Once the dog had been bitten by a terrier
from one of the houses, and a girl had carried him in and washed the
wounds and bound them up. Thereafter the Dummy had watched for her
and bowed when he saw her. When he did not see her he bowed to the
house.
The Dummy finished the brass plates and, gathering up his rags and
polish, shuffled to the door. His walk was a patient shamble, but he
covered incredible distances. When he reached the emergency bed he
stopped and pointed to it. The Probationer looked startled.
"He's tellin' you to get it ready," shrilled Irish Delia, sitting up
in the next bed. "He did that before you was brought in," she called
to Old Maggie across the ward. "Goodness knows how he finds out - but
he knows. Get the spread off the bed, miss. There's something
coming."
* * * * *
The Probationer had come from the country and naturally knew nothing
of the Avenue. Sometimes on her off duty she took short walks there,
wondering if the passers-by who stared at her knew that she was a
part of the great building that loomed over the district, happily
ignorant of the real significance of their glances. Once a girl,
sitting behind bowed shutters, had leaned out and smiled at her.
"Hot to-day, isn't it?" she said.
The Probationer stopped politely.
"It's fearful! Is there any place near where I can get some soda
water?"
The girl in the window stared.
"There's a drug store two squares down," she said. "And say, if I
were you - - "
"Yes?"
"Oh, nothing!" said the girl in the window, and quite unexpectedly
slammed the shutters.
The Probationer had puzzled over it quite a lot. More than once she
walked by the house, but she did not see the smiling girl - only,
curiously enough, one day she saw the Dummy passing the house and
watched him bow and take off his old cap, though there was no one in
sight.
Sooner or later the Avenue girls get to the hospital. Sometimes it
is because they cannot sleep, and lie and think things over - and
there is no way out; and God hates them - though, of course, there is
that story about Jesus and the Avenue woman. And what is the use of
going home and being asked questions that cannot be answered? So
they try to put an end to things generally - and end up in the
emergency bed, terribly frightened, because it has occurred to them
that if they do not dare to meet the home folks how are they going
to meet the Almighty?
Or sometimes it is jealousy. Even an Avenue woman must love some
one; and, because she's an elemental creature, if the object of her
affections turns elsewhere she's rather apt to use a knife or a
razor. In that case it is the rival who ends up on the emergency
bed.
Or the life gets her, as it does sooner or later, and she comes in
with typhoid or a cough, or other things, and lies alone, day after
day, without visitors or inquiries, making no effort to get better,
because - well, why should she?
And so the Dummy's Avenue Girl met her turn and rode down the street
in a clanging ambulance, and was taken up in the elevator and along
a grey hall to where the emergency bed was waiting; and the
Probationer, very cold as to hands and feet, was sending mental
appeals to the Senior to come - and come quickly. The ward got up on
elbows and watched. Also it told the Probationer what to do.
"Hot-water bottles and screens," it said variously. "Take her
temperature. Don't be frightened! There'll be a doctor in a minute."
The girl lay on the bed with her eyes shut. It was Irish Delia who
saw the Dummy and raised a cry.
"Look at the Dummy!" she said. "He's crying."
The Dummy's world had always been a small one. There was the
superintendent, who gave him his old clothes; and there was the
engineer, who brought him tobacco; and there were the ambulance
horses, who talked to him now and then without speech. And, of
course, there was his Father.
Fringing this small inner circle of his heart was a kaleidoscope of
changing faces, nurses, _internes_, patients, visitors - a wall of
life that kept inviolate his inner shrine. And in the holiest place,
where had dwelt only his Father, and not even the superintendent,
the Dummy had recently placed the Avenue Girl. She was his saint,
though he knew nothing of saints. Who can know why he chose her? A
queer trick of the soul perhaps - or was it super-wisdom? - to choose
her from among many saintly women and so enshrine her.
Or perhaps - - Down in the chapel, in a great glass window, the
young John knelt among lilies and prayed. When, at service on
Sundays, the sunlight came through on to the Dummy's polished choir
rail and candles, the young John had the face of a girl, with short
curling hair, very yellow for the colour scheme. The Avenue Girl had
hair like that and was rather like him in other ways.
And here she was where all the others had come, and where countless
others would come sooner or later. She was not unconscious and at
Delia's cry she opened her eyes. The Probationer was off filling
water bottles, and only the Dummy, stricken, round-shouldered,
unlovely, stood beside her.
"Rotten luck, old top!" she said faintly.
To the Dummy it was a benediction. She could open her eyes. The
miracle of speech was still hers.
"Cigarette!" explained the Avenue Girl, seeing his eyes still on
her. "Must have gone to sleep with it and dropped it. I'm - all in!"
"Don't you talk like that," said Irish Delia, bending over from the
next bed. "You'll get well a' right - unless you inhaled. Y'ought to
'a' kept your mouth shut."
Across the ward Old Maggie had donned her ragged slippers and a blue
calico wrapper and shuffled to the foot of the emergency bed. Old
Maggie was of that vague neighbourhood back of the Avenue, where
squalor and poverty rubbed elbows with vice, and scorned it.
"Humph!" she said, without troubling to lower her voice. "I've seen
her often. I done her washing once. She's as bad as they make 'em."
"You shut your mouth!" Irish Delia rose to the defence. "She's in
trouble now and what she was don't matter. You go back to bed or
I'll tell the Head Nurse on you. Look out! The Dummy - - "
The Dummy was advancing on Old Maggie with threatening eyes. As the
woman recoiled he caught her arm in one of his ugly, misshapen hands
and jerked her away from the bed. Old Maggie reeled - almost fell.
"You all seen that!" she appealed to the ward. "I haven't even spoke
to him and he attacked me! I'll go to the superintendent about it.
I'll - - "
The Probationer hurried in. Her young cheeks were flushed with
excitement and anxiety; her arms were full of jugs, towels,
bandages - anything she could imagine as essential. She found the
Dummy on his knees polishing a bed plate, and the ward in
order - only Old Maggie was grumbling and making her way back to bed;
and Irish Delia was sitting up, with her eyes shining - for had not
the Dummy, who could not hear, known what Old Maggie had said about
the new girl? Had she not said that he knew many things that were
hidden, though God knows how he knew them?
The next hour saw the Avenue Girl through a great deal. Her burns
were dressed by an _interne_ and she was moved back to a bed at the
end of the ward. The Probationer sat beside her, having refused
supper. The Dummy was gone - the Senior Nurse had shooed him off as
one shoos a chicken.
"Get out of here! You're always under my feet," she had said - not
unkindly - and pointed to the door.
The Dummy had stood, with his faded old-young eyes on her, and had
not moved. The Senior, who had the ward supper to serve and beds to
brush out and backs to rub, not to mention having to make up the
emergency bed and clear away the dressings - the Senior tried
diplomacy and offered him an orange from her own corner of the
medicine closet. He shook his head.
"I guess he wants to know whether that girl from the Avenue's going
to get well," said Irish Delia. "He seems to know her."
There was a titter through the ward at this. Old Maggie's gossiping
tongue had been busy during the hour. From pity the ward had veered
to contempt.
"Humph!" said the Senior, and put the orange back. "Why, yes; I
guess she'll get well. But how in Heaven's name am I to let him
know?"
She was a resourceful person, however, and by pointing to the Avenue
Girl and then nodding reassuringly she got her message of cheer over
the gulf of his understanding. In return the Dummy told her by
gestures how he knew the girl and how she had bound up the leg of
the superintendent's dog. The Senior was a literal person and not
occult; and she was very busy. When the Dummy stooped to indicate
the dog, a foot or so from the ground, she seized that as the key of
the situation.
"He's trying to let me know that he knew her when she was a baby,"
she observed generally. "All right, if that's the case. Come in and
see her when you want to. And now get out, for goodness' sake!"
The Dummy, with his patient shamble, made his way out of the ward
and stored his polishes for the night in the corner of a
scrub-closet. Then, ignoring supper, he went down the stairs, flight
after flight, to the chapel. The late autumn sun had set behind the
buildings across the courtyard and the lower part of the silent room
was in shadow; but the afterglow came palely through the
stained-glass window, with the young John and tall stalks of white
lilies, and "To the Memory of My Daughter Elizabeth" beneath.
It was only a coincidence - and not even that to the Dummy - but
Elizabeth had been the Avenue Girl's name not so long ago.
The Dummy sat down near the door very humbly and gazed at the
memorial window.
II
Time may be measured in different ways - by joys; by throbs of pain;
by instants; by centuries. In a hospital it is marked by night
nurses and day nurses; by rounds of the Staff; by visiting days; by
medicines and temperatures and milk diets and fever baths; by the
distant singing in the chapel on Sundays; by the shift of the
morning sun on the east beds to the evening sun on the beds along
the west windows.
The Avenue Girl lay alone most of the time. The friendly offices of
the ward were not for her. Private curiosity and possible kindliness
were over-shadowed by a general arrogance of goodness. The ward
flung its virtue at her like a weapon and she raised no defence. In
the first days things were not so bad. She lay in shock for a time,
and there were not wanting hands during the bad hours to lift a cup
of water to her lips; but after that came the tedious time when
death no longer hovered overhead and life was there for the asking.
The curious thing was that the Avenue Girl did not ask. She lay for
hours without moving, with eyes that seemed tired with looking into
the dregs of life. The Probationer was in despair.
"She could get better if she would," she said to the _interne_ one
day. The Senior was off duty and they had done the dressing
together. "She just won't try."
"Perhaps she thinks it isn't worth while," replied the _interne_,
who was drying his hands carefully while the Probationer waited for
the towel.
She was a very pretty Probationer.
"She hasn't much to look forward to, you know."
The Probationer was not accustomed to discussing certain things with
young men, but she had the Avenue Girl on her mind.
"She has a home - she admits it." She coloured bravely. "Why - why
cannot she go back to it, even now?"
The _interne_ poured a little rosewater and glycerine into the palm
of one hand and gave the Probationer the bottle. If his fingers
touched hers, she never knew it.
"Perhaps they'd not want her after - well, they'd never feel the
same, likely. They'd probably prefer to think of her as dead and let
it go at that. There - there doesn't seem to be any way back, you
know."
He was exceedingly self-conscious.
"Then life is very cruel," said the Probationer with rather shaky
lips.
And going back to the Avenue Girl's bed she filled her cup with ice
and straightened her pillows. It was her only way of showing
defiance to a world that mutilated its children and turned them out
to die. The _interne_ watched her as she worked. It rather galled
him to see her touching this patient. He had no particular sympathy
for the Avenue Girl. He was a man, and ruthless, as men are apt to
be in such things.
The Avenue Girl had no visitors. She had had one or two at
first - pretty girls with tired eyes and apologetic glances; a
negress who got by the hall porter with a box of cigarettes, which
the Senior promptly confiscated; and - the Dummy. Morning and evening
came the Dummy and stood by her bed and worshipped. Morning and
evening he brought tribute - a flower from the masses that came in
daily; an orange, got by no one knows what trickery from the
kitchen; a leadpencil; a box of cheap candies. At first the girl had
been embarrassed by his visits. Later, as the unfriendliness of the
ward grew more pronounced, she greeted him with a faint smile. The
first time she smiled he grew quite pale and shuffled out. Late that
night they found him sitting in the chapel looking at the window,
which was only a blur.
For certain small services in the ward the Senior depended on the
convalescents - filling drinking cups; passing milk at eleven and
three; keeping the white bedspreads in geometrical order. But the
Avenue Girl was taboo. The boycott had been instituted by Old
Maggie. The rampant respectability of the ward even went so far as
to refuse to wash her in those early morning hours when the night
nurse, flying about with her cap on one ear, was carrying tin basins
about like a blue-and-white cyclone. The Dummy knew nothing of the
washing; the early morning was the time when he polished the brass
doorplate which said: Hospital and Free Dispensary. But he knew
about the drinking cup and after a time that became his
self-appointed task.
On Sundays he put on his one white shirt and a frayed collar two
sizes too large and went to chapel. At those times he sat with his
prayer book upside down and watched the Probationer who cared for
his lady and who had no cap to hide her shining hair, and the
_interne_, who was glad there was no cap because of the hair. God's
fool he was, indeed, for he liked to look in the _interne's_ eyes,
and did not know an _interne_ cannot marry for years and years, and
that a probationer must not upset discipline by being engaged. God's
fool, indeed, who could see into the hearts of men, but not into
their thoughts or their lives; and who, seeing only thus, on two
dimensions of life and not the third, found the Avenue Girl holy and
worthy of all worship!
* * * * *
The Probationer worried a great deal.
"It must hurt her so!" she said to the Senior. "Did you see them
call that baby away on visiting day for fear she would touch it?"
"None are so good as the untempted," explained the Senior, who had
been beautiful and was now placid and full of good works. "You
cannot remake the world, child. Bodies are our business here - not
souls." But the next moment she called Old Maggie to her.
"I've been pretty patient, Maggie," she said. "You know what I mean.
You're the ringleader. Now things are going to change, or - you'll go
back on codliver oil to-night."
"Yes'm," said Old Maggie meekly, with hate in her heart. She loathed
the codliver oil.
"Go back and straighten her bed!" commanded the Senior sternly.
"Now?"
"Now!"
"It hurts my back to stoop over," whined Old Maggie, with the ward
watching. "The doctor said that I - - "
The Senior made a move for the medicine closet and the bottles
labelled C.
"I'm going," whimpered Old Maggie. "Can't you give a body time?"
And she went down to defeat, with the laughter of the ward in her
ears - down to defeat, for the Avenue Girl would have none of her.
"You get out of here!" she said fiercely as Old Maggie set to work
at the draw sheet. "Get out quick - or I'll throw this cup in your
face!"
The Senior was watching. Old Maggie put on an air of benevolence and
called the Avenue Girl an unlovely name under her breath while she
smoothed her pillow. She did not get the cup, but the water out of
it, in her hard old face, and matters were as they had been.
The Girl did not improve as she should. The _interne_ did the
dressing day after day, while the Probationer helped him - the Senior
disliked burned cases - and talked of skin grafting if a new powder
he had discovered did no good. _Internes_ are always trying out new
things, looking for the great discovery.
The powder did no good. The day came when, the dressing over and the
white coverings drawn up smoothly again over her slender body, the
Avenue Girl voiced the question that her eyes had asked each time.
"Am I going to lie in this hole all my life?" she demanded.
The _interne_ considered.
"It isn't healing - not very fast anyhow," he said. "If we could get
a little skin to graft on you'd be all right in a jiffy. Can't you
get some friends to come in? It isn't painful and it's over in a
minute."
"Friends? Where would I get friends of that sort?"
"Well, relatives then - some of your own people?"
The Avenue Girl shut her eyes as she did when the dressing hurt her.
"None that I'd care to see," she said. And the Probationer knew she
lied. The _interne_ shrugged his shoulders.
"If you think of any let me know. We'll get them here," he said
briskly, and turned to see the Probationer rolling up her sleeve.
"Please!" she said, and held out a bare white arm. The _interne_
stared at it stupefied. It was very lovely.
"I am not at all afraid," urged the Probationer, "and my blood is
good. It would grow - I know it would."
The _interne_ had hard work not to stoop and kiss the blue veins
that rose to the surface in the inner curve of her elbow. The
dressing screens were up and the three were quite alone. To keep his
voice steady he became stern.
"Put your sleeve down and don't be a foolish girl!" he, commanded.
"Put your sleeve down!" His eyes said: "You wonder! You beauty! You
brave little girl!"
Because the Probationer seemed to take her responsibilities rather
to heart, however, and because, when he should have been thinking of
other things, such as calling up the staff and making reports, he
kept seeing that white arm and the resolute face above it, the
_interne_ worked out a plan.
"I've fixed it, I think," he said, meeting her in a hallway where
he had no business to be, and trying to look as if he had not known
she was coming. "Father Feeny was in this morning and I tackled him.
He's got a lot of students - fellows studying for the priesthood - and
he says any daughter of the church shall have skin if he has to flay
'em alive."
"But - is she a daughter of the church?" asked the Probationer. "And
even if she were, under the circumstances - - "
"What circumstances?" demanded the _interne_. "Here's a poor girl
burned and suffering. The father is not going to ask whether she's
of the anointed."
The Probationer was not sure. She liked doing things in the open and
with nothing to happen later to make one uncomfortable; but she
spoke to the Senior and the Senior was willing. Her chief trouble,
after all, was with the Avenue Girl herself.
"I don't want to get well," she said wearily when the thing was put
up to her. "What's the use? I'd just go back to the same old thing;
and when it got too strong for me I'd end up here again or in the
morgue."
"Tell me where your people live, then, and let me send for them."
"Why? To have them read in my face what I've been, and go back home
to die of shame?"
The Probationer looked at the Avenue Girl's face.
"There - there is nothing in your face to hurt them," she said,
flushing - because there were some things the Probationer had never
discussed, even with herself. "You - look sad. Honestly, that's all."
The Avenue Girl held up her thin right hand. The forefinger was
still yellow from cigarettes.
"What about that?" she sneered.
"If I bleach it will you let me send for your people?"
"I'll - perhaps," was the most the Probationer could get.
Many people would have been discouraged. Even the Senior was a bit
cynical. It took a Probationer still heartsick for home to read in
the Avenue Girl's eyes the terrible longing for the things she had
given up - for home and home folks; for a clean slate again. The
Probationer bleached and scrubbed the finger, and gradually a little
of her hopeful spirit touched the other girl.
"What day is it?" the Avenue Girl asked once.
"Friday."
"That's baking day at home. We bake in an out-oven. Did you ever
smell bread as it comes from an out-oven?" Or: "That's a pretty
shade of blue you nurses wear. It would be nice for working in the
dairy, wouldn't it?"
"Fine!" said the Probationer, and scrubbed away to hide the triumph
in her eyes.
III
That was the day the Dummy stole the parrot. The parrot belonged to
the Girl; but how did he know it? So many things he should have
known the Dummy never learned; so many things he knew that he seemed
never to have learned! He did not know, for instance, of Father
Feeny and the Holy Name students; but he knew of the Avenue Girl's
loneliness and heartache, and of the cabal against her. It is one of
the black marks on record against him that he refused to polish the
plate on Old Maggie's bed, and that he shook his fist at her more
than once when the Senior was out of the ward.
And he knew of the parrot. That day, then, a short, stout woman with
a hard face appeared in the superintendent's office and demanded a
parrot.
"Parrot?" said the superintendent blandly.
"Parrot! That crazy man you keep here walked into my house to-day
and stole a parrot - and I want it."
"The Dummy! But what on earth - - "
"It was my parrot," said the woman. "It belonged to one of my
boarders. She's a burned case up in one of the wards - and she owed
me money. I took it for a debt. You call that man and let him look
me in the eye while I say parrot to him."
"He cannot speak or hear."
"You call him. He'll understand me!"
They found the Dummy coming stealthily down from the top of the
stable and haled him into the office. He was very calm - quite
impassive. Apparently he had never seen the woman before; as she
raged he smiled cheerfully and shook his head.
"As a matter of fact," said the superintendent, "I don't believe he
ever saw the bird; but if he has it we shall find it out and you'll
get it again."
They let him go then; and he went to the chapel and looked at a dove
above the young John's head. Then he went up to the kitchen and
filled his pockets with lettuce leaves. He knew nothing at all of
parrots or how to care for them.
Things, you see, were moving right for the Avenue Girl. The stain
was coming off - she had been fond of the parrot and now it was close
at hand; and Father Feeny's lusty crowd stood ready to come into a
hospital ward and shed skin that they generally sacrificed on the
football field. But the Avenue Girl had two years to account
for - and there was the matter of an alibi.
"I might tell the folks at home anything and they'd believe it
because they'd want to believe it," said the Avenue Girl. "But
there's the neighbours. I was pretty wild at home. And - there's a
fellow who wanted to marry me - he knew how sick I was of the old
place and how I wanted my fling. His name was Jerry. We'd have to
show Jerry."
The Probationer worried a great deal about this matter of the alibi.
It had to be a clean slate for the folks back home, and especially
for Jerry. She took her anxieties out walking several times on her
off-duty, but nothing seemed to come of it. She walked on the Avenue
mostly, because it was near and she could throw a long coat over her
blue dress. And so she happened to think of the woman the girl had
lived with.
"She got her into all this," thought the Probationer. "She's just
got to see her out."
It took three days' off-duty to get her courage up to ringing the
doorbell of the house with the bowed shutters, and after she had
rung it she wanted very much to run and hide; but she thought of the
girl and everything going for nothing for the want of an alibi, and
she stuck. The negress opened the door and stared at her.
"She's dead, is she?" she asked.
"No. May I come in? I want to see your mistress."
The negress did not admit her, however. She let her stand in the
vestibule and went back to the foot of a staircase.
"One of these heah nurses from the hospital!" she said. "She wants
to come in and speak to you."
"Let her in, you fool!" replied a voice from above stairs.
The rest was rather confused. Afterward the Probationer remembered
putting the case to the stout woman who had claimed the parrot and
finding it difficult to make her understand.
"Don't you see?" she finished desperately. "I want her to go
home - to her own folks. She wants it too. But what are we going to
say about these last two years?"
The stout woman sat turning over her rings. She was most
uncomfortable. After all, what had she done? Had she not warned them
again and again about having lighted cigarettes lying round.
"She's in bad shape, is she?"
"She may recover, but she'll be badly scarred - not her face, but her
chest and shoulders."
That was another way of looking at it. If the girl was scarred - -
"Just what do you want me to do?" she asked. Now that it was down
to brass tacks and no talk about home and mother, she was more
comfortable.
"If you could just come over to the hospital while her people are
there and - and say she'd lived with you all the time - - "
"That's the truth all right!"
"And - that she worked for you, sewing - she sews very well, she
says. And - oh, you'll know what to say; that she's been - all right,
you know; anything to make them comfortable and happy."
Now the stout woman was softening - not that she was really hard, but
she had developed a sort of artificial veneer of hardness, and good
impulses had a hard time crawling through.
"I guess I could do that much," she conceded. "She nursed me when I
was down and out with the grippe and that worthless nigger was drunk
in the kitchen. But you folks over there have got a parrot that
belongs to me. What about that?"
The Probationer knew about the parrot. The Dummy had slipped it
into the ward more than once and its profanity had delighted the
patients. The Avenue Girl had been glad to see it too; and as it sat
on the bedside table and shrieked defiance and oaths the Dummy had
smiled benignly. John and the dove - the girl and the parrot!
"I am sorry about the parrot. I - perhaps I could buy him from you."
She got out her shabby little purse, in which she carried her
munificent monthly allowance of eight dollars and a little money she
had brought from home.
"Twenty dollars takes him. That's what she owed me."
The Probationer had seventeen dollars and eleven cents. She spread
it out in her lap and counted it twice.
"I'm afraid that's all," she said. She had hoped the second count
would show up better. "I could bring the rest next month."
The Probationer folded the money together and held it out. The stout
woman took it eagerly.
"He's yours," she said largely. "Don't bother about the balance.
When do you want me?"
"I'll send you word," said the Probationer, and got up. She was
almost dizzy with excitement and the feeling of having no money at
all in the world and a parrot she did not want. She got out into the
air somehow and back to the hospital. She took a bath immediately
and put on everything fresh, and felt much better - but very
poor. Before she went on duty she said a little prayer about
thermometers - that she should not break hers until she had money for
a new one.
* * * * *
Father Feeny came and lined up six budding priests outside the door
of the ward. He was a fine specimen of manhood and he had asked no
questions at all. The Senior thought she had better tell him
something, but he put up a white hand.
"What does it matter, sister?" he said cheerfully. "Yesterday is
gone and to-day is a new day. Also there is to-morrow" - his Irish
eyes twinkled - "and a fine day it will be by the sunset."
Then he turned to his small army.
"Boys," he said, "it's a poor leader who is afraid to take chances
with his men. I'm going first" - he said fir-rst. "It's a small
thing, as I've told you - a bit of skin and it's over. Go in smiling
and come out smiling! Are you ready, sir?" This to the _interne_.
That was a great day in the ward. The inmates watched Father Feeny
and the _interne_ go behind the screens, both smiling, and they
watched the father come out very soon after, still smiling but a
little bleached. And they watched the line patiently waiting outside
the door, shortening one by one. After a time the smiles were rather
forced, as if waiting was telling on them; but there was no
deserter - only one six-foot youth, walking with a swagger to
contribute his little half inch or so of cuticle, added a sensation
to the general excitement by fainting halfway up the ward; and he
remained in blissful unconsciousness until it was all over.
Though the _interne_ had said there was no way back, the first step
had really been taken; and he was greatly pleased with himself and
with everybody because it had been his idea. The Probationer tried
to find a chance to thank him; and, failing that, she sent a
grateful little note to his room:
Is Mimi the Austrian to have a baked apple?
[Signed] WARD A.
P.S. - It went through wonderfully! She is so cheerful
since it is over. How can I ever thank you?
The reply came back very quickly:
Baked apple, without milk, for Mimi. WARD A.
[Signed] D.L.S.
P.S. - Can you come up on the roof for a little air?
She hesitated over that for some time. A really honest-to-goodness
nurse may break a rule now and then and nothing happen; but
a probationer is only on trial and has to be exceedingly
careful - though any one might go to the roof and watch the sunset.
She decided not to go. Then she pulled her soft hair down over her
forehead, where it was most becoming, and fastened it with tiny
hairpins, and went up after all - not because she intended to, but
because as she came out of her room the elevator was going up - not
down. She was on the roof almost before she knew it.
The _interne_ was there in fresh white ducks, smoking. At first they
talked of skin grafting and the powder that had not done what was
expected of it. After a time, when the autumn twilight had fallen on
them like a benediction, she took her courage in her hands and told
of her visit to the house on the Avenue, and about the parrot and
the plot.
The _interne_ stood very still. He was young and intolerant. Some
day he would mellow and accept life as it is - not as he would have
it. When she had finished he seemed to have drawn himself into a
shell, turtle fashion, and huddled himself together. The shell was
pride and old prejudice and the intolerance of youth. "She had to
have an alibi!" said the Probationer.
"Oh, of course," very stiffly.
"I cannot see why you disapprove. Something had to be done."
"I cannot see that you had to do it; but it's your own affair, of
course. Only - - "
"Please go on."
"Well, one cannot touch dirt without being soiled."
"I think you will be sorry you said that," said the Probationer
stiffly. And she went down the staircase, leaving him alone. He was
sorry, of course; but he would not say so even to himself. He
thought of the Probationer, with her eager eyes and shining hair and
her warm little heart, ringing the bell of the Avenue house and
making her plea - and his blood ran hot in him. It was just then
that the parrot spoke on the other side of the chimney.
"Gimme a bottle of beer!" it said. "Nice cold beer! Cold beer!"
The _interne_ walked furiously toward the sound. Must this girl of
the streets and her wretched associates follow him everywhere? She
had ruined his life already. He felt that it was ruined. Probably
the Probationer would never speak to him again.
The Dummy was sitting on a bench, with the parrot on his knee
looking rather queer from being smuggled about under a coat and fed
the curious things that the Dummy thought a bird should eat. It had
a piece of apple pie in its claw now.
"Cold beer!" said the parrot, and eyed the _interne_ crookedly.
The Dummy had not heard him, of course. He sat looking over the
parapet toward the river, with one knotted hand smoothing the bird's
ruffled plumage and such a look of wretchedness in his eyes that it
hurt to see it. God's fools, who cannot reason, can feel. Some
instinct of despair had seized him for its own - some conception,
perhaps, of what life would never mean to him. Before it, the
_interne's_ wrath gave way to impotency.
"Cold beer!" said the parrot wickedly.
IV
The Avenue Girl improved slowly. Morning and evening came the Dummy
and smiled down at her, with reverence in his eyes. She could smile
back now and sometimes she spoke to him. There was a change in the
Avenue Girl. She was less sullen. In the back of her eyes each
morning found a glow of hope - that died, it is true, by noontime;
but it came again with the new day.
"How's Polly this morning, Montmorency?" she would say, and give him
a bit of toast from her breakfast for the bird. Or: "I wish you
could talk, Reginald. I'd like to hear what Rose said when you took
the parrot. It must have been a scream!"
He brought her the first chrysanthemums of the fall and laid them on
her pillow. It was after he had gone, while the Probationer was
combing out the soft short curls of her hair, that she mentioned the
Dummy. She strove to make her voice steady, but there were tears in
her eyes.
"The old goat's been pretty good to me, hasn't he?" she said.
"I believe it is very unusual. I wonder" - the Probationer poised the
comb - "perhaps you remind him of some one he used to know."
They knew nothing, of course, of the boy John and the window.
"He's about the first decent man I ever knew," said the Avenue
Girl - "and he's a fool!"
"Either a fool or very, very wise," replied the Probationer.
The _interne_ and the Probationer were good friends again, but they
had never quite got back to the place they had lost on the roof.
Over the Avenue Girl's dressing their eyes met sometimes, and there
was an appeal in the man's and tenderness; but there was pride too.
He would not say he had not meant it. Any man will tell you that he
was entirely right, and that she had been most unwise and needed a
good scolding - only, of course, it is never the wise people who make
life worth the living.
And an important thing had happened - the Probationer had been
accepted and had got her cap. She looked very stately in it, though
it generally had a dent somewhere from her forgetting she had it on
and putting her hat on over it. The first day she wore it she knelt
at prayers with the others, and said a little Thank You! for getting
through when she was so unworthy. She asked to be made clean and
pure, and delivered from vanity, and of some use in the world. And,
trying to think of the things she had been remiss in, she went out
that night in a rain and bought some seed and things for the parrot.
Prodigal as had been Father Feeny and his battalion, there was more
grafting needed before the Avenue Girl could take her scarred body
and soul out into the world again. The Probationer offered, but was
refused politely.
"You are a part of the institution now," said the _interne_, with
his eyes on her cap. He was rather afraid of the cap. "I cannot
cripple the institution."
It was the Dummy who solved that question. No one knew how he knew
the necessity or why he had not come forward sooner; but come he did
and would not be denied. The _interne_ went to a member of the staff
about it.