CHAPTER III
ANNE LINTON'S TEMPERATURE
"Is Doctor Burns in?"
"He's not in. He will be here from two till five this afternoon. Could you come then?" Miss Mathewson regarded the young stranger at the door with more than ordinary interest. The face which was lifted to her was one of quite unusual beauty, with astonishing eyes under resolute dark brows, though the hair which showed from under the small and close-fitting hat of black was of a wonderful and contradictory colour. It was almost the shade, it occurred to Amy Mathewson, of that which thatched the head of Red Pepper Burns himself, but it was more picturesque hair than his, finer of texture, with a hint of curl. The mass of it which showed at the back as the stranger turned her head away for a moment, evidently hesitating over her next course of action, had in it tints of bronze which were more beautiful than Burns's coppery hues.
"Would you care to wait?" inquired Miss Mathewson, entirely against her own principles.
It was not quite one o'clock, and Burns always lunched in the city, after his morning at the hospital, and reached home barely in time for those afternoon village office hours which began at two. His assistant did not as a rule encourage the arrival of patients in the office as early as this, knowing that they were apt to become impatient and aggrieved by their long wait. But something about the slightly drooping figure of the girl before her, in her black clothes, with a small handbag on her arm, and a look of appeal on her face, suggested to the experienced nurse that here was a patient who must not be turned away.
The girl looked up eagerly. "If I might," she said in a tone of relief. "I really have nowhere to go until I have seen the Doctor."
Miss Mathewson led her in and gave her the most comfortable chair in the room, a big, half shabby leather armchair, near the fireplace and close beside a broad table whereon the latest current magazines were arranged in orderly piles. The girl sank into the chair as if its wide arms were welcome after a weary morning. She looked up at Miss Mathewson with a faint little smile.
"I haven't been sitting much to-day," she said.
"This first spring weather makes every one feel rather tired," replied Amy, noting how heavy were the shadows under the brown eyes with their almost black lashes—an unusual combination with the undeniably russet hair.
From her seat at the desk, where she was posting Burns's day book, the nurse observed without seeming to do so that the slim figure in the old armchair sat absolutely without moving, except once when the head resting against the worn leather turned so that the cheek lay next it. And after a very short time Miss Mathewson realized that the waiting patient had fallen asleep. She studied her then, for something about the young stranger had aroused her interest.
The girl was obviously poor, for the black suit, though carefully pressed, was of cheap material, the velvet on the small black hat had been caught in more than one shower, and the black gloves had been many times painstakingly mended. The small feet alone showed that their owner had allowed herself one luxury, that of good shoes—and the daintiness of those feet made a strong appeal to the observer.
As for the face resting against the chair back, it was flushed after a fashion which suggested illness rather than health, and Miss Mathewson realized presently that the respiration of the sleeper was not quite what it should be. Whether this were due to fatigue or coming illness she could not tell.
Half-past one! The first early caller was slowing a small motor at the curb outside when Amy Mathewson gently touched the girl's arm. "Come into the other room, please," she said.
The brown eyes opened languidly. The black-gloved hand clutched at the handbag, and the girl rose. "I'm so sorry," she murmured. "I don't know how I came to go to sleep."
"You were tired out. If I had known I should have brought you in here before," Amy said, leading her into the consulting room. "It is still half an hour before Doctor Burns will be in, and you must lie here on his couch while you wait."
"Oh, thank you, but I ought not to go to sleep. I—have you just a minute to spare? I should like to show you a little book I am selling—"
Miss Mathewson suffered a sudden revulsion of feeling. So this girl was only a book agent. First on the list of what by two o'clock would be a good-sized assemblage of waiting patients, she must not be allowed to take Doctor Burns's time to exploit her wares. Yet, even as Amy regretted having brought a book agent into this inner sanctum, the girl looked up from searching in her handbag and seemed to recognize the prejudice she had excited.
"Oh, but I'm a patient, too," she said with a little smile. "I didn't expect to take the Doctor's time telling him about the book. But you—I thought you might be interested. It's a little book of bedtime stories for children. They are very jolly little tales. Would you care to see it?"
Now Amy Mathewson was the fortunate or unfortunate—as you happen to regard such things—possessor of a particularly warm heart, and the result of this appeal was that she took the book away with her into the outer office, promising to look it over if the seller of it would lie down upon the couch and rest quietly. She was convinced that the girl was much more than weary—she was very far from well. The revealing light of that consulting room had struck upon the upturned face and had shown Miss Mathewson's trained eyes certain signs which alarmed her.
So it came about that Red Pepper Burns, coming in ruddy from his twelve-mile dash home, and feeling particularly fit for the labours of the afternoon in consequence of having found every hospital patient of his own on the road to recovery—two of them having taken a right-about-face from a condition which the day before had pointed toward trouble—discovered his first office patient lying fast asleep upon the consulting room couch.
"She seemed so worn out I put her here," explained Miss Mathewson, standing beside him. "She falls asleep the moment she is off her feet."
"Hm—m," was his reply as he thrust his arms into his white office-jacket. "Well, best wake her up, though it seems a pity. Looks as if she'd been on a hunger strike, eh?" he added under his breath.
Miss Mathewson had the girl awake again in a minute, and she sat up, an expression of contrition crossing her face as she caught sight of the big doctor at the other side of the room, his back toward her. When Burns turned, at Amy's summons, he beheld the slim figure sitting straight on the edge of the broad couch, the brown eyes fixed on him.
"Tired out?" he asked pleasantly. "Take this chair, please, so I can see all you have to tell me—and a few things you don't tell me."
It did not take him long. His eyes on the face which was too flushed, his fingers on the pulse which beat too fast, his thermometer registering a temperature too high, all told him that here was work for him. The questions he asked brought replies which confirmed his fears. Nothing in his manner indicated, however, that he was doing considerable quick thinking. His examination over, he sat back in his chair and began a second series of questions, speaking in a more than ordinarily quiet but cheerful way.
"Will you tell me just a bit about your personal affairs?" he asked. "I understand that you come from some distance. Have you a home and family?"
"No family—for the last two years, since my father died."
"And no home?"
"If I am ill, Doctor Burns, I will look after myself."
He studied her. The brown eyes met the scrutinizing hazel ones without flinching. Whether or not the spirit flinched he could not be sure. The hazel eyes were very kindly.
"You have relatives somewhere whom we might let know of this?"
She shook her head determinedly. Her head lifted ever so little.
"You are quite alone in the world?"
"For all present purposes—yes, Doctor Burns."
"I can't just believe," he said gently, "that it is not very important to somebody to know if you are ill."
"It is just my affair," she answered with equal courtesy of manner but no less finally. "Believe me, please—and tell me what to do. Shall I not be better to-morrow—or in a day or two?"
He was silent for a moment. Then, "It is not a time for you to be without friends," said Red Pepper Burns. "I will prove to you that you have them at hand. After that you will find there are others. I am going to take you to a pleasant place I know of, where you will have nothing to do but to lie still and rest and get well. The best of nurses will look after you. You will obey orders for a little—my orders, if you want to trust me—"
"Where is this place?" The question was a little breathless.
"Where do you guess?"
"In—a hospital?"
"In one of the best in the world."
"I am—pretty ill then?"
"It's a bit of a wonder," said Burns in his quietest tone, "how you have kept around these last four days. I wish you hadn't."
"If I hadn't," said the girl rather faintly, "I shouldn't have been in this town and I shouldn't have come to Doctor Burns. So—I'm glad I did."
"Good!" said Burns, smiling. "It's fine to start with the confidence of one's patient. I'm glad you're going to trust me. Now we'll take you to another room where you can lie down again till my office hours are over and I can run into the city with you."
He rose, beckoning. But his patient protested: "Please tell me how to get there. I can go perfectly well. My head is better, I think."
"That's lucky. But the first of my orders Miss Linton, is that you come with me now."
He summoned Miss Mathewson, gave her directions, and dismissed the two. In ten minutes the heavy eyes were again closed, while their owner lay motionless again upon a bed in an inner room which was often used for such purposes.
"I'm sorry I can't take her in now," Burns said to Amy presently in an interval between patients. "I don't want to call the ambulance out here for a walking case, and there's no need of startling her with it, anyhow. I wish I had some way to send her."
"Mr. Jordan King just came into the office. His car is outside. Couldn't he take her in?"
"Of course he could—and would, I've no doubt. He's only after his mother's prescription. Send him in here next, will you, please?"
To the tall, well-built, black-eyed young man who answered this summons in some surprise at being admitted before his turn, Burns spoke crisply:
"Here's the prescription, Jord, and you'll have to take it to Wood's to get it filled. I hope it'll do your mother a lot of good, but I'm not promising till I've tried it out pretty well. Now will you do me a favour?"
"Anything you like, Doctor."
"Thanks. I'm sending a patient to the hospital—a stranger stranded here ill. She ought not to be out of bed another hour, though she walked to the office and would walk away again if I'd let her—which I won't. I can't get off for three hours yet. Will you take her in to the Good Samaritan for me? I'll telephone ahead, and some one will meet her at the door. All right?"
He looked up. Jordan King—young civil engineer of rising reputation in spite of the family wealth which would have made him independent of his own exertions, if he could possibly have been induced by an adoring, widowed mother to remain under her wing—stood watching him with a smile on his character-betraying lips.
"You ought to have an executive position of some sort, Doctor Burns," he observed, "you're so strong on orders. I've got mine. Where's the lady? Do I have to be silent or talkative? Is she to have pillows? Am I to help her out?"
"She'll walk out—but that and the walk in will be the last she'll take for some time. Talk as much as you like; it'll help her to forget that she's alone in the world at present except for us. Go out to your car; I'll send her out with Miss Mathewson."
Burns turned to his desk, and King obediently went out. Five minutes later, as he stood waiting beside his car, a fine but hard-used roadster of impressive lines and plenty of power, the office nurse and her patient emerged. King noted in some surprise the slender young figure, the interest-compelling face with its too vivid colour in cheeks that looked as if ordinarily they were white, the apparel which indicated lack of means, though the bearing of the wearer unmistakably suggested social training.
"I thought she'd be an elderly one somehow," he said in congratulation of himself. "Jolly, what hair! Poor little girl; she does look sick—but plucky. Hope I can get her in all right."
Outwardly he was the picture of respectful attention as Miss Mathewson presented him, calling the girl "Miss Linton," and bidding him wrap her warmly against the spring wind.
"I'll take the best care of her I know," he promised with a friendly smile. He tucked a warm rug around her, taking special pains with her small feet, whose well-chosen covering he did not fail to note. "All right?" he asked as he finished.
"Very comfortable, thank you. It's ever so kind of you."
"Glad to do anything for Doctor Burns," King responded, taking his place beside her. "Now shall we go fast or slow?"
"Just as you like, please. I don't feel very ill just now, and this air is so good on my face."
CHAPTER IV
TWO RED HEADS
Jordan King set his own speed in the powerful roadster, reflecting that Miss Linton, to judge from her worn black clothes, was probably not accustomed to motoring and so making the pace a moderate one. Fast or slow, it would not take long to cover the twelve miles over the macadamized road to the hospital in the city, and if it was to be her last bath in the good outdoors for some time, as the doctor had said—King drew a long breath, filling his own sturdy lungs with the balmy yet potent April air, feeling very sorry for the unknown little person by his side.
"Would you rather I didn't talk?" he inquired when a mile or two had been covered in silence.
She lifted her eyes to his, and for the first time he got a good look into them. They were very wonderful eyes, and none the less wonderful because of the fever which made them almost uncannily brilliant between their dark lashes.
"Oh, I wish you would talk, if you don't mind!" she answered—and he noted as he had at first how warmly pleasant were the tones of her voice, which was a bit deeper than one would have expected. "I've heard nobody talk for days—except to say they didn't care to buy my book."
"Your book? Have you written a book?"
"I'm selling one." This astonished him, but he did not let it show. It was certainly enough to make any girl ill to have to go about selling books. He wondered how it happened. She opened her handbag and took out the small book. "I don't want to sell you one," she said. "You wouldn't have any use for it. It's a little set of stories for children."
"But I do want to buy one," he protested. "I've a lot of nieces and nephews always coming at me for stories."
She shook her head. "You can't buy one. I'd like to give you one if you would take it, to show you how I appreciate this beautiful drive."
"Of course I'll take it," he said quickly, "and delighted at the chance." He slipped the book into his pocket. "As for the drive, it's much jollier not to be covering the ground alone. I wish, though—" and he stopped, feeling that he was probably going to say the wrong thing.
She seemed to know what it would have been. "You're sorry to be taking me to the hospital?" she suggested. "You needn't be. I didn't want to go, just at first, but then—I felt I could trust the Doctor. He was so kind, and his hair was so like mine, he seemed like a sort of big older brother."
"Red Pepper Burns seems like that to a lot of people, including myself. I don't look like much of a candidate for illness, but I've had an accident or two, and he's pulled me through in great shape. You're right in trusting him and you can keep right on, to the last ditch—" He stopped short again, with an inward thrust at himself for being so blundering in his suggestions to this girl, who, for all he knew, might be on her way to that "last ditch" from which not even Burns could save her.
But the girl herself seemed to have paused at his first phrase. "What did you call the Doctor?" she asked, turning her eyes upon him again.
"What did I—oh! 'Red Pepper.' Yes—I've no business to call him that, of course, and I don't to his face, though his friends who are a bit older than I usually do, and people speak of him that way. It's his hair, of course—and—well, he has rather a quick temper. People with that coloured hair—But you're wrong in saying yours is like his," he added quickly.
For the first time he saw a smile touch her lips. "So he has a quick temper," she mused. "I'm glad of that—I have one myself. It goes with the hair surely enough."
"It goes with some other things," ventured Jordan King, determined, if he made any more mistakes, to make them on the side of encouragement. "Pluck, and endurance, and keeping jolly when you don't feel so—if you don't mind my saying it."
"One has to have a few of those things to start out into the world with," said Miss Linton slowly, looking straight ahead again.
"One certainly does. Doctor Burns understands that as well as any man I know. And he likes to find those things in other people." Then with tales of some of the Doctor's experiences which young King had heard he beguiled the way; and by the time he had told Miss Linton a story or two about certain experiences of his own in the Rockies, the car was approaching the city. Presently they were drawing up before the group of wide-porched, long buildings, not unattractive in aspect, which formed the hospital known as the Good Samaritan.
"It's a pretty good place," announced King in a matter-of-fact way, though inwardly he was suffering a decided pang of sympathy for the young stranger he was to leave within its walls. "And the Doctor said he'd have some one meet us who knew all about you, so there'd be no fuss."
He leaped out and came around to her side. She began to thank him once more, but he cut her short. "I'm going in with you, if I may," he said. "Something might go wrong about their understanding, and I could save you a bit of bother."
She made no objection, and he helped her out. He kept his hand under her arm as they went up the steps, and did not let her go until they were in a small reception room, where they were asked to wait for a minute. He realized now more than he had done before her weakness and the sense of loneliness that was upon her. He stood beside her, hat in hand, wishing he had some right to let her know more definitely than he had ventured to do how sorry he was for her, and how she could count on his thinking about her as a brother might while she was within these walls.
But Burns's message evidently had taken effect, as his messages usually did, for after a very brief wait two figures in uniform appeared, one showing the commanding presence of a person in authority, the other wearing the pleasantly efficient aspect of the active nurse. Miss Linton was to be taken to her room at once, the necessary procedure for admittance being attended to later.
Miss Linton seemed to know something about hospitals, for she offered instant remonstrance. "It's a mistake, I think," she said, lifting her head as if it were very heavy, but speaking firmly. "I prefer not to have a room. Please put me in your least expensive ward."
The person in authority smiled. "Doctor Burns said room," she returned. "Nobody here is accustomed to dispute Doctor Burns's orders."
"But I must dispute them," persisted the girl. "I am not—willing—to take a room."
"Don't concern yourself about that now," said the other. "You can settle it with the Doctor when he comes by and by."
Jordan King inwardly chuckled. "I wonder if it's going to be a case of two red heads," he said to himself. "I'll bet on R.P."
The nurse put her arm through Miss Linton's. "Come," she said gently. "You ought not to be standing."
The girl turned to King, and put out her small hand in its mended glove. He grasped it and dared to give it a strong pressure, and to say in a low tone: "It'll be all right, you know. Keep a stiff upper lip. We're not going to forget you." He very nearly said "I."
"Good-bye," she said. "I shall not forget how kind you've been."
Then she was gone through the big door, the tall nurse beside her supporting steps which seemed suddenly to falter, and King was staring after her, feeling his heart contract with sympathy.
Four hours later Anne Linton opened her eyes, after an interval of unconsciousness which had seemed to the nurse who looked in now and then less like a sleep than a stupor, to find a pair of broad shoulders within her immediate horizon, and to feel the same lightly firm pressure on her wrist that she had felt before that afternoon. She looked up slowly into Burns's eyes.
"Not so bad, is it?" said his low and reassuring voice. "Bed more comfortable than doctor's office chairs? Won't mind if you don't ring any door bells to-morrow? Just let everything go and don't worry—and you'll be all right."
"This room—" began the weary young voice—she was really much more weary now that she had stopped trying to keep up than seemed at all reasonable—"I can't possibly—"
"It's just the place for you. Don't do any thinking on that point. You know you agreed to take my orders, and this is one of them."
"But I can't possibly—"
"I said they were my orders," repeated Burns. "But that was a misstatement. They're the orders of some one else, more powerful than I am under this roof—and that's saying something, I assure you. I think you'll have to meet my wife. She's come on purpose to see you. She was away when you were at the office."
He beckoned, and another figure moved quietly into range of the brown eyes which were smoldering with the first advances of the fever. This figure came around to the other side of the narrow high bed and sat down beside it. Miss Linton looked into the face, as it seemed to her, of one of the most attractive women she had ever seen. It was a face which looked down at her with the sweetest sympathy in its expression, and yet with that same high cheer which was in the face of the man on the other side of the bed.
"My dear little girl," said a low, rich voice, "this is my room, and I often have the pleasure of seeing my special friends use it. And I come to see them here. When you are getting well, as you will be by and by, I can have much nicer talks with you than if you were in a ward. Now that you understand, you will let me have my way?".
The burning brown eyes looked into the soft black ones for a full minute, then, with a long-drawn breath, the tense expression in the stranger's relaxed. "I see," said the weary voice. "You are used to having your way—just as he is. I'll have to let you because I haven't any strength left to fight with. You are wonderfully kind. But—I'm not a little girl."
Ellen Burns smiled. "We'll play you are, for a while," she said. "And—I want you to know that, little or big, you are my friend. So now you have both Doctor Burns and me, and you are not alone any more."
The heavy lashes closed over the brown eyes, and the lids were held tightly shut as if to keep tears back. Seeing this, Ellen rose.
"Red," she said, "are you going to let us have Miss Arden?"
"Won't anybody else do?"
"Do you need her badly somewhere else?"
"If there were ten of her I could use them all!" declared her husband emphatically.
"Nevertheless—"
Red Pepper Burns got up. He summoned a nurse waiting just outside the door. "Please send Miss Arden here for a minute," he requested. Then he turned back. "Are you satisfied with your power?" he asked his wife.
She nodded. "Quite. But I think you feel, as I do, that this is one of the ten places where she will be better than another."
"She's a wonder, all right."
The patient in the bed presently was bidden to look at her new nurse, one who was to take care of her much of the time. She lifted her heavy eyes unwillingly, then she drew another deep breath of relief. "I would rather have you," she murmured to the serene brow, the kind eyes, the gently smiling lips of the girl who stood beside her.
"There's a tribute," laughed Burns softly. "They all feel like that when they look at you, Selina. And what Mrs. Burns wants she usually gets. You may special this case to-night, if you are ready to begin night duty again."
"I am quite ready," said Miss Arden.
Burns turned to the bed again. "You are in the best hands we have to give you," he said. "You are to trust everything to those hands. Good-night. I'll see you in the morning."
"Good-night, dear," whispered Mrs. Burns, bending for an instant over the bed.
"Oh you angels!" murmured the girl as they left her, her eyes following them.
It was ten days later, in the middle of a wonderful night in early May, that Miss Arden, beginning to be sure that the case which had interested her so much was going to give her a hard time before it should be through, listened to words which roused in her deeper wonder than she had yet felt for the most unusual patient she had had in a long time. Although there was as yet nothing that could be called real delirium, a tendency to talk in a light-headed sort of way was becoming noticeable. Sitting by the window, the one light in the room deeply shaded, she heard the voice suddenly say:
"This evens things up a little, doesn't it? I know a little more about it now—you must realize that, if you are keeping track of me—and I know you are—you would—even from another world. Things aren't fair—they aren't. That you should have to suffer all you did, to bring you to that pass—while I—But I know a good deal about it now—really I do. And I'm going to know more. I didn't sell a single book to-day. You had lots of such days, didn't you? Poor—pale—tired—heartsick—heartbroken girl!"
A little mirthless laugh sounded from the bed. "I wonder how many people ever let a person who is selling something at the door get into the house. And if they let her in, do they ever, ever ask her to sit down? The places where I've stood, telling them about the book, while they were telling me they didn't want it—stood and stood—and stood—with great easy chairs in sight! Oh, that chair in my doctor's office—it was the first chair I'd sat in that whole morning. I went to sleep in it, I think."
There followed a long silence, as if the thought of sleep had brought it on. But then the rambling talk began again.
"His hair is red—red, like mine. I think that's why his heart is so warm. Yet her heart is warm, too, and her hair is almost black. The other man's hair was pretty dark, too, and his heart seemed—well, not exactly cold. Did he send me some daffodils the other day? I can't seem to remember. It seems as if I had seen some—pretty things—lovely, springy things. Perhaps Mrs.—the red-headed doctor's wife—queer I can't think of their names—perhaps she sent them. It would be like her."
The nurse's glance wandered, in the faint light, to where a great jar of daffodils stood upon the farther window sill, their heads nodding faintly in the night breeze. Jordan King's card, which had come with them, was tucked away in a drawer near by with two other cards, bearing the same name, which had accompanied other flowers. Miss Arden doubted if her patient realized who had sent any of them. Afterward—if there was to be an afterward—she would show the cards to her. Miss Arden, like many other people, knew Jordan King by reputation, for the family was an old and established one in the city, and the early success of the youngest son in a line not often taken up by the sons of such families was noteworthy. Also he was good to look at, and Miss Arden, experienced nurse though she was and devoted to her profession, had not lost her appreciation of youth and health and good looks in those who were not her patients.
Unexpectedly, at this hour of the night—it was well toward one o'clock—the door suddenly opened very quietly and a familiar big figure entered. Springing up to meet Doctor Burns, Miss Arden showed no surprise. It was a common thing for this man, summoned to the hospital at unholy hours for some critical case, to take time to look in on another patient not technically in need of him.
The head on the pillow turned at the slight sound beside it. Two wide eyes stared up at Burns. "You've made a mistake, I think," said the patient's voice, politely yet firmly. "My doctor has red hair. I know him by that. Your hair is black."
"I presume it is, in this light," responded Burns, sitting down by the bed. "It's pretty red, though, by daylight. In that case will you let me stay a minute?" His fingers pressed the pulse. Then his hand closed over hers with a quieting touch. "Since you're awake," he said, "you may as well have one extra bath to send you back to sleep."
The head on the pillow signified unwillingness. "I'd take one to please my red-headed doctor, but not you."
"You'd do anything for him, eh?" questioned Burns, his eyes on the chart which the nurse had brought him and upon which she was throwing the light of a small flash. "Well, you see he wants you to have this bath; he told me so."
"Very well, then," she said with a sigh. "But I don't like them. They make me shiver."
"I know it. But they're good for you. They keep your red-headed doctor master of the situation. You want him to be that, don't you?"
"He'd be that anyway," said she confidently.
Burns smiled, but the smile faded quickly. He gave a few brief directions, then slipped away as quietly as he had come.
It was well into the next week when one morning he encountered Jordan King, who had been out of town for several days. King came up to him eagerly. Since this meeting occurred just outside the hospital, where Burns's car had been standing in its accustomed place for the last hour, it might not have been a wholly accidental encounter.
King made no attempt to maneuver for information. Maneuvering with Red Pepper Burns, as the young man was well aware, seldom served any purpose but to subject the artful one to a straight exposure. He asked his question abruptly.
"I want to hear how Miss Linton is doing. I'm just back from Washington—haven't heard for a week."
Burns frowned. No physician likes to be questioned about his cases, particularly if they are not progressing to suit him. But he answered, in a sort of growl: "She's not doing."
King looked startled. "You mean—not doing well?"
"She's fighting for existence—and—slipping."
"But—you haven't given her up?"
Burns exploded with instant wrath. King might have known that question would make him explode. "Given her up! Don't you know a red-headed fiend like me better than that?"
"I know you're a bulldog when you get your teeth in," admitted Jordan King, looking decidedly unhappy and anxious. "If I'm just sure you've got 'em in, that's enough."
Burns grunted. The sound was significant.
King ventured one more question, though Red Pepper's foot was on his starter, and the engine had caught the spark and turned over. "If there's anything I could do," he offered hurriedly and earnestly. "Supply a special nurse, or anything—"
Burns shook his head. "Two specials now, and half the staff interested. It's up to Anne Linton and nobody else. If she can do the trick—she and Nature—all right. If not—well—Thanks for letting go the car, Jord. This happens to be my busy day."
Jordan King looked after him, his heart uncomfortably heavy. Then he stepped into his own car and drove away, taking his course down a side street from which he could get a view of certain windows. They were wide open to the May breeze and the sunshine, but no pots of daffodils or other flowers stood on their empty sills. He knew it was useless to send them now.
"But if she does pull through," he said to himself between his teeth, "I'll bring her such an armful of roses she can't see over the top of 'em. God send I get the chance!"
CHAPTER V
SUSQUEHANNA
Red Pepper Burns drove into the vine-covered old red barn behind his house which served as his garage, and stopped his engine with an air of finality.
"Johnny," said he, addressing the young man who was accustomed to drive with him—and for him when for any reason he preferred not to drive himself, which was seldom—and who kept the car in the most careful trim, "not for man or beast, angel or devil will I go out again to-night."
Johnny Carruthers grinned. "No, sir," he replied. "Not unless they happen to want you," he added.
"Not if they offer me a thousand dollars for the trip," growled his master.
"You would for a dead beat, though," suggested the devoted servant, who by virtue of five years of service knew whereof he spoke, "if he'd smashed his good-for-nothin' head."
"Not if he'd smashed his whole blamed body—so long as there was another surgeon in the county who could do the job."
"That's just the trouble," argued Johnny. "You'd think there wasn't."
Red Pepper looked at him. "Johnny, you're an idiot!" he informed him. Then he strode away toward the house.
As he went into his office the telephone rang. The office was empty, for it was dinner-time, and Miss Mathewson was having a day off duty on account of her mother's illness. So, unhappily for the person at the other end of the wire, the Doctor himself answered the ring. It had been a hard day, following other hard days, and he was feeling intense fatigue, devastating depression, and that unreasoning irritability which is born of physical weariness and mental unrest.
"Hello," shouted the victim of these disorders into the transmitter. "What?... No, I can't.... What?... No. Get somebody else.... What?... I can't, I say.... Yes, you can. Plenty of 'em.... What?... Absolutely no! Good-bye!"
"I ought to feel better after that," muttered Burns, slamming the receiver on the hook. "But somehow I don't."
In two minutes he was splashing in a hot bath, as always at the end of a busy day. From the tub he was summoned to the telephone, the upstairs extension, in his own dressing room. With every red hair erect upon his head after violent towelling, he answered the message which reached his unwilling ears.
"What's that? Worse? She isn't—it's all in her mind. Tell her she's all right. I saw her an hour ago. What?... Well, that's all imagination, as I've told her ten thousand times. There's absolutely nothing the matter with her heart.... No, I'm not coming—she's not to be babied like that.... No, I won't. Good-bye!"
The door of the room softly opened. A knock had preceded the entrance of Ellen, but Burns hadn't heard it. He eyed her defiantly.
"Do you feel much, much happier now?" she asked with a merry look.
"If I don't it's not the fault of the escape valve. I pulled it wide open."
"I heard the noise of the escaping steam." She came close and stood beside him, where he sat, half dressed and ruddy in his bathrobe. He put up both arms and held her, lifting his head for her kiss, which he returned with interest.
"That's the first nice thing that's happened to me to-day—since the one I had when I left you this morning," he remarked. "I'm all in to-night, and ugly as a bear, as usual. I feel better, just this minute, with you in my arms and a bath to the good, but I'm a beast just the same, and you'd best take warning.... Oh, the—"
For the telephone bell was ringing again. From the way he strode across the floor in his bathrobe and slippers it was small wonder that the walls trembled. His wife, watching him, felt a thrill of sympathy for the unfortunate who was to get the full force of that concussion. With a scowl on his brow he lifted the receiver, and his preliminary "Hello!" was his deepest-throated growl. But then the scene changed. Red Pepper listened, the scowl giving place to an expression of a very different character. He asked a quick question or two, with something like a most unaccustomed breathlessness in his voice, and then he said, in the businesslike but kind way which characterized him when his sympathies were roused:
"I'll be there as quick as I can get there. Call Doctor Buller for me, and let Doctor Grayson know I may want him."
Rushing at the completion of his dressing he gave a hurried explanation, in answer to his wife's anxious inquiry, "It isn't Anne Linton?"
"It's worse, it's Jord King. He's had a bad accident—confound his recklessness! I'm afraid he's made a mess of it this time for fair, though I can't be sure till I get there."
"Where is he?" Ellen's face had turned pale.
"At the hospital. His man Aleck is hurt, too. Call Johnny, please, and have him bring the car around and go with me."
Ellen flew, and five minutes later watched her husband gulp down a cup of the strong coffee Cynthia always made him at such crises when, in spite of fatigue, he must lose no time nor adequately reënforce his physical energy with food.
"Oh, I'm so sorry you couldn't rest to-night," she said as he set down the cup and, pulling his hat over his eyes, picked up the heavy surgical bags.
"Couldn't, anyway, with the universe on my mind, so I might as well keep going," was Burns's gruff reply, though the kiss he left on her lips was a long one and spoke his appreciation of her tender comradeship.
She did not see him again till morning, though she lay awake many hours. He came in at daylight; she heard the car go in at the driveway, and, rising hurriedly, was ready to meet him when he came into the living room downstairs.
"Up so early?" questioned Burns as he saw her. The next minute he had folded her in one of those strong-armed embraces which speak of a glad return to one whose life is a part of one's own. "I wonder," he murmured, with his cheek pressed to hers, "if a man ever came back to sweeter arms than these!"
But she knew, in spite of this greeting, that his heart was heavy. Her own heart sank. But she waited, asking no questions. He would tell her when he was ready.
He drew her down upon the couch beside him and sat with his arm around her. "No, I don't want to lie down just yet," he said. "I just want you. I'm keeping you in suspense, I know; I oughtn't to do that. Jord's life is all right, and he'll be himself again in time, but—well, I've lost my nerve for a bit—I can't talk about it."
His voice broke. By and by it steadied again; and, his weariness partially lifted by the heartening little breakfast Ellen brought him on a tray, he told her the story of the night:
"Jord was coming in from the Coldtown Waterworks, forty miles out, late for dinner and hustling to make up time. Aleck, the Kings' chauffeur, was with him. They were coming in at a good clip, even for a back street, probably twenty-five or thirty. There wasn't much on the street except ahead, by the curb, a wagon, and coming toward him a big motor truck. When he was fifty feet from the wagon a fellow stepped out from behind it to cross the street. It was right under the arc light, and Jord recognized Franz—'Little Hungary' you know—with his fiddle under his arm, crossing to go in at the stage door of the Victoria Theatre, where he plays. The boy didn't see them at all.
"Neither Jord nor Aleck can tell much about it yet, of course, but from the little I got I know as well as if I had been there what happened. He slammed on the brakes—it was the only thing he could do, with the motor truck taking up half the narrow street. The pavement was wet—a shower was just over. Of course she skidded completely around to the left, just missing the truck, and when she hit the curb over she went. She jammed Jord between the car and the ground, injuring his back pretty badly but not permanently, as nearly as I can make out. But she crushed Aleck's right arm so that—"
He drew a long breath, a difficult breath, and Ellen, listening, cried out against the thing she instantly felt it meant.
"O Red! You don't mean—"
He nodded. "I took it off, an hour afterward—at the shoulder."
Ellen turned white, and in a moment more she was crying softly within the shelter of her husband's arm. He sat with set lips, and eyes staring at the empty fireplace before him. Presently he spoke again, and his voice was very low, as if he could not trust it:
"Aleck was game. He was the gamest chap I ever saw. All he said when I told him was, 'Go ahead, Doctor.' I never did a harder thing in all my life. I suppose army surgeons get more or less used to it, but somehow—when I knew what that arm meant to Aleck, and how an hour before it had been a perfect thing, and now—"
He did not try to tell her more just then, but later, when both were steadied, he added a few more important details to the story:
"Franz went to the hospital with them—wouldn't leave them—ran the risk of losing his position. Do you know, Jord has been teaching that boy English, evenings, and naturally Franz adores him. I suppose Jord would have taken that skid for any blamed beggar who got in his way, but of course it didn't take any force off the way he jammed on those brakes when he saw it was a friend he was going to hit. And a friend he was going to maim—pretty hard choice to make, wasn't it? But of course it was sure death to Franz if he hit him, at that pace, so there was nothing else to do but take the chance for himself and Aleck. Maybe you can guess, though, how he feels about Aleck. One wouldn't think he knew he'd been cruelly hurt himself."
"Jord's back will give him a lot of trouble for a while, but his spine isn't seriously injured, if I know my trade. Altogether—well—the nurses have got a couple of interesting cases on their hands for a while. No doubt Aleck will be well looked after. As for Jord—he'll be so much the more helpless of the two for a while, I'm afraid he'll prove a distraction that will demoralize the force."
He smiled faintly for the first time, but his face sobered again instantly.
"Anne Linton's pretty weak, but she took a little nourishment sanely this morning just before I came away. Miss Arden feels a trifle encouraged. I confess this thing of Jord's has knocked the girl out of my mind for the time being, though I shall get her back again fast enough, if I don't find things going right when I see her. Well"—he turned his wife's face toward him, with a hand against her cheek—"it's all out now, and I'm eased a bit by the telling. I wish I could get forty winks, just to make a break between last night and this morning."
"You shall. Lie down and I'll put you to sleep."
He did not think it possible, in spite of his exhaustion, but presently under her quieting touch he was over the brink, greatly to Ellen's relief. Her heart contracted with love and sympathy as she watched his face. It was a weary face, now in its relaxation, and there were heavy shadows under the closed eyes. Every now and then a frown crossed the broad brow, as if the sleeper were not wholly at ease, could not forget, even in his dreams, what he had had to do a few hours ago. She thought of young Aleck with his manly, smiling face, his pride in keeping Jordan King's car as fine and efficient beneath its hood—mud-splashed though it often was without—as he did the shining limousine he drove for Mrs. Alexander King, Jordan's mother. She thought of what it must be to him now to know that he was maimed for life. As for King himself, she knew him well enough to understand how his own injuries would count for little beside his distress in having had to deal the blow which had crushed that strong young arm of Aleck's. Her heart ached for them both—and even for poor Franz, weeping at having been the innocent cause of all this havoc.
Two hours' sleep did his wife secure for Burns before he woke, stoutly avowing himself fit for anything again, and setting off, immediately breakfast was over, for the place to which his thoughts had leaped with his first return to consciousness.
"Can't rest till I see old Jord. Did I tell you that he insisted on Aleck's having the room next his, precisely as big and airy as his own? There's a door between, and when it's open they can see each other. When I left Jord the door was open, and he was staring in at Aleck, who was still sleeping off the anesthetic, and a big tear was running down Jord's cheek. He can't stir himself, but that doesn't seem to bother him any. He's going to suffer a lot of pain with his back, but he'll suffer ten times more looking at that bandaged shoulder of Aleck's."
It was four days later that Ellen saw King. She was prepared to find him, as Burns had called him, "game," but she had not known just all that term means among men when it is applied to such a one as he. If he had been receiving her after having suffered a bad wrench of the ankle he could not have treated the occasion more simply.
"This is mighty good of you," he said, reaching up a well-developed right arm from his bed, where he lay flat on his back without so much as a pillow beneath his head. His hair was carefully brushed, his bandages were concealed, his lips were smiling, and altogether he was, except for his prostrate position, no picture of an invalid.
"I've just been waiting to come," she said, returning the firm pressure of his hand with that of both her own.
"And meanwhile you've kept me reminded of you by these wonderful flowers," he said with a nod toward the ranks on ranks of roses which crowded table and window sills.
"Oh, but not all those!" she denied. "I might have known you would be deluged with them. Daisies and buttercups out of the fields would have been better."
"No, because those you sent look like you. Doctor Burns won't grudge me the pleasure of saying now what I like to his wife—and it's the first time I've really dared tell you what I thought."
"What a charming compliment! But I'm going to send you something much more substantial now—good things to eat, and books to read, if I can just find out what you like—and even games to play, if you care for them."
"I'll be delighted, if they're something Aleck and I can play together. You see when that door is open we aren't far apart, and it won't be long, Doctor Burns says, before he'll be walking in here to keep me company—till he gets out."
"He is doing well, I hear. I'm so glad."
"Yes, that husky young constitution of his is telling finely—plus your husband's surgery. My poor boy!" He shut his lips upon the words, and kept them closely pressed together for an instant. "My word, Mrs. Burns—he's the stuff that heroes are made of! His living to earn for the rest of his life—with one arm—and you'd think he'd lost the tip of one finger. If ever I let that boy go out of my employ—why, he's worth more as a shining example of pluck than other men are worth with two good arms!"
"I must go and see him—if he'd care to have me."
"He'd take it as the honour of his life. He's crazy over the flowers you sent him."
"Would he care for books? And what sort? I'm going to bring both of you books."
"Stories of adventure will suit Aleck—the wilder the better. Odd choice—for such a peaceable-looking fellow, isn't it? As for me—something I'll have to work hard to listen to, something to keep an edge on my mind. I've counted the cracks in the ceiling till I have a map of them by heart. I've worked out a system by which I can drain that ceiling country and raise crops there. There isn't much else in this room that I can count or lay out—worse luck! So I've named all the roses, and have wagers with myself as to which will fade first. I'm betting on Susquehanna, that big red one, to outlast all the rest."
When Red Pepper looked in half an hour later, it was to find the door open between the two rooms, and his wife listening, smiling, to an incident of the night just past, as told by first one patient and then the other. The two young men might have been two comrades lying beside a campfire, so gay was their jesting with each other, so light their treatment of the wakeful hours both had spent.
"No, there's nothing the matter with either of them," observed Burns, looking from one bedside to the other. "Franz is the chap with the heavy heart; these two are just enjoying a summer holiday. But I'm not going to keep the communication open long at a time, as yet."
He went in to see Aleck, closing the door again. When he returned he took up a position at the foot of King's bed, regarding him in silence. Ellen looked up at her husband. There was something in his face which had not been there of late—a curiously bright look, as if a cloud were lifted. She studied him intently, and when he returned the scrutiny she raised her eyebrows in an interrogation. He nodded, smiling quizzically.
"Jord," he said, "if you want to keep your secrets to yourself, beware of letting any woman come within range. My wife has just read me as if I were an open book in large black type."
"Bound in scarlet and gold," added Ellen. "Tell us, Red. You really have good news?"
"The best. I am pretty confident Anne Linton has turned the corner. I hoped it yesterday, but wasn't sure enough to say so. Did you know that, too?"
"Of course. But you were in small type yesterday. To-day he who runs may read. You would know it yourself, wouldn't you, Jordan?"
The man in the bed studied the man who stood at its foot. The two regarded each other as under peculiar circumstances men do who have a strong bond of affection and confidence between them.
"He's such a bluffer," said King. "I hadn't supposed anybody could tell much about what he was thinking. But I do see he looks pretty jolly this morning, and I don't imagine it's all bluff. I'm certainly glad to hear Miss Linton is doing well."
"Doing well isn't exactly the phrase even now," admitted Red Pepper. "There are lots of things that can happen yet. But the wind and waves have floated her little craft off the rocks, and the leaks in the boat are stopped. If she doesn't spring any more, and the winds continue favourable, we'll make port."
Jordan King looked as happy as if he had been the brother of this patient of Burns's, whom neither of them had known a month ago, and whom one of them had seen but once.
"That's great," he said. "I haven't dared to ask since I came here myself, knowing how poor the prospects were the last time I did ask. I was afraid I should surely hear bad news. When can we begin to send her flowers again? Couldn't I send some of mine? I'd like her to have Susquehanna there, and Rappahannock—and I think Arapahoe and Apache will run them pretty close on lasting. Would you mind taking them to her when you go?" His eyes turned to Mrs. Burns.
"I'd love to, but I shall not dare to tell her you are here, just yet. She is very weak, isn't she, Red?"
"As a starved pussy cat. The flowers won't hurt her, but we don't want to rouse her sympathies as yet."
"I should say not. Don't mention me; just take her the posies," instructed King, his cheek showing a slight access of colour.
"You won't know whether Susquehanna wins your wager or not," Ellen reminded him as she obediently separated the indicated blooms, magnificent great hothouse specimens with stems like pillars. That the finest of all these roses, not excepting those she had sent herself, had come from private greenhouses, she well knew. The Kings lived in the centre of the wealthiest quarter of the city, though not themselves possessed of more than moderate riches. Their name, however, was an old and honoured one, Jordan himself was a favourite, and none in the city was too important to be glad to be admitted at his home.
"Anything more I can do for you before I go?" inquired Burns of his patient when Ellen had gone, smiling back at King from over the big roses and promising to keep track of Susquehanna for him in her daily visits.
"Nothing, thank you. You did it all an hour ago, and left me more comfortable than I expected to be just yet. I'm not sure whether it was the dressing or the visit that did me the most good."
"You're a mighty satisfactory sort of patient. That good clean blood of yours is telling already in your recovery from shock. It tells in another way, too."
"What's that?"
"Sheer pluck."
King's eyelids fell. It meant much to him to stand well in the estimation of this man, himself distinguished for the cool daring of his work, his endurance of the hard drudgery of his profession as well as the brilliant performance on occasion. "I'm glad you think so—Red Pepper Burns," King answered daringly. Then, as the other laughed, he added: "Do you know what would make me the most docile patient you could ask?"
"Docile doesn't seem just the word for you—but I'd be glad to know, in case of emergency."
"Let me call you that—the name your best friends have for you. It's a bully name. I know I'm ten years younger—but—"
"Good lack! Jordan King, call me anything you like! I'll appreciate it."
"You've no idea how long I've wanted to do it—Red," vowed the younger man, with the flush again creeping into his cheek.
"Why didn't you long ago?" Burns demanded. "Surely dignity's no characteristic of mine. If Anne Linton can call me 'Red Head' on no acquaintance at all—"
"She didn't do that!" King looked a little as if he had received a blow.
"Only when she was off her head, of course. She took me for a wildcat once, poor child. No, no—when she was sane she addressed me very properly. She's back on the old decorous ground now. Made me a beautiful little speech this morning, informing me that I had to stop calling her 'little girl,' for she was twenty-four years old. As she looks about fifteen at the present, and a starved little beggar at that, I found it a bit difficult to begin on 'Miss Linton,' particularly as I have been addressing her as 'Little Anne' all the time."
"Starved?" King seemed to have paused at this significant word.
"Oh, we'll soon fill her out again. She's really not half so thin as she might be under the old-style treatment. It strikes me you have a good deal of interest in my patients, Jord. Shall I describe the rest of them for you?"
Burns looked mischievous, but King did not seem at all disturbed.
"Naturally I am interested in a girl you made me bring to the hospital myself. And at present—well—a fellow feeling, you know. I see how it is myself now. I didn't then."
"True enough. Well, I'll bring you daily bulletins from Miss Anne. And when she's strong enough I'll break the news to her of your proximity. Doubtless your respective nurses will spend their time carrying flowers back and forth from one of you to the other."
"More than likely," King admitted. "Anything to fill in the time. I'm sorry I can't take her out in my car when she's ready. I've been thinking, Doctor—Red," he went on hastily, "that there's got to be some way for Aleck to drive that car in the future. I'm going to work out a scheme while I lie here."
"Work out anything. I'll prophesy right now that as soon as you get fairly comfortable you'll think out more stuff while you're lying on your back than you ever did in a given period of time before. It won't be lost time at all; it'll be time gained. And when you do get back on your legs—no, don't ask me when that'll be, I can't tell nor any other fellow—but when you do get back you'll make things fly as they never did before—and that's going some."
"You are a great bluffer, but I admit that I like the sound of it," was King's parting speech as he watched Burns depart.
On account of this latest interview he was able to bear up the better under the immediately following visit of his mother, an aristocratic-looking, sweet-faced but sad-eyed lady, who could not yet be reconciled to that which had happened to her son, and who visited him twice daily to bring hampers of fruit, food, and flowers, in quantity sufficient to sustain half the patients in a near-by ward. She invariably shed a few quiet tears over him which she tried vainly to conceal, addressed him in a mournful tone, and in spite of his efforts to cheer her managed to leave behind her after each visit an atmosphere of depression which it took him some time and strength to overcome.
"Poor mother, she can't help it," philosophized her son. "What stumps me, though, is why one who takes life so hard should outlive a man like my father, who was all that is brave and cheerful. Perhaps it took it out of him to be always playing the game boldly against her fears. But even so—give me the bluffers, like Red Pepper—and like Mrs. Red. Jove! but she's a lovely woman. No wonder he adores her. So do I—with his leave. And so does Anne Linton, I should imagine. Poor little girl—what does she look like, I wonder?"
If he could have seen her at that moment, holding Susquehanna against her hollow young cheek, the glowing flower making the white face a pitiful contrast, he would have been even more touched than he could have imagined. Also—he would have felt that his wager concerning Susquehanna was likely to be lost. It is not conducive to the life of a rose to be loved and caressed as this one was being. But since it was the first of her flowers that Anne Linton had been able to take note of and enjoy, it might have been considered a life—and a wager—well lost.
CHAPTER VI
HEAVY LOCAL MAILS
Anne Linton lifted her head ever so little from the allowed incline of her pillow in the Good Samaritan Hospital. She peered anxiously at the tray being borne toward her by Selina Arden, most scrupulously conscientious of all trained nurses, and never more rigidly exact than when the early diet of patients in convalescence was concerned.
"Is that all?" murmured Anne in a tone of anguish.
"All!" replied Miss Arden firmly. But she smiled, showing her perfect white teeth—and showing also her sympathy by the tone in which she added: "Poor child!"
"Shall I never, never, never," asked the patient, hungrily surveying the tray at close range, "have enough just to dull these pangs a little? Not enough to satisfy me, of course, but just enough to take the edge off?"
"Very soon now," replied Miss Arden cheerily, "you shall have a pretty good-sized portion of beefsteak, juicy and tender, and you shall eat it all up—"
"And leave not a wrack behind," moaned Anne Linton, closing her eyes. "But you are wrong, Miss Arden—I shall not eat it, I shall gulp it—the way a dog does. I always wondered why a dog has no manners about eating. I know now. He is so hungry his eyes eat it first, so his mouth has no chance. Well, I'm certainly thankful for the food on this tray. It's awfully good—what there is of it."
She consumed it, making the process as lingering as was consistent with the ravaging appetite which was a real torture. When the last mouthful had vanished she set her eyes upon the clock—the little travelling clock which was Miss Arden's and which had ticked busily and cheerfully through all those days of illness when Anne's eyes had never once lifted to notice the passage of time.
"I was so long about it," said the girl gleefully, "that now it's only two hours and forty minutes to the next refreshment station. I expect I can keep on living till then if I use all my will power."
"And here's something to make you forget how long two hours and forty minutes are."
Miss Arden went to the door and, returning, laid suddenly in Anne's arms a great, fragrant mass of white bloom, at the smell and touch of which she gave a half-smothered cry of rapture, and buried her face in the midst of it. "White lilacs—oh, white lilacs! The dears—the loves! Oh, where did they come from?"
"There's a note that came with them," admitted Miss Arden presently, when she had let the question go unanswered for some time, while Anne, seeming to forget that she had asked it, smelled and smelled of the cool white and green branches as if she could never have enough of them. Into her eyes had leaped a strange look, as if some memory were connected with these outdoor flowers which made them different for her from the hothouse blooms, or even from the daffodils and tulips that had alternated with the roses which had come often since her convalescence began.
Anne reached up an eager hand for the note, a look of surprise on her face. Miss Arden, looking back at her, noted how each day was helping to remove the pallor and wanness from that face. At the moment, under the caress of the lilacs and the surprise of the impending note, it was showing once more a decided touch of its former beauty. Also she was wearing a little invalid's wrap of lace and pink silk, given her by Mrs. Burns, and this helped the effect.
Anne unfolded the note. Miss Arden went away with the empty tray, and remained away some time. Miss Arden, as has been said before, was a most remarkable nurse.
The note read thus: