CHAPTER VI
Headlong the Senior Surgeon pitched over on the grass,—his last vestige of self-control stripped from him,—horror unspeakable racking him sobbingly from head to toe.
Whimperingly the Little Girl came crawling to him, and settling down close at his feet began with her tiny lace handkerchief to make futile dabs at the mud-stains on his gray silk stockings. "Never mind, Father," she coaxed, "we'll get you clean sometime."
Nervously the White Linen Nurse bethought her of the brook. "Oh, wait a minute, sir—and I'll get you a drink of water!" she pleaded.
Bruskly the Senior Surgeon's hand jerked out and grabbed at her skirt.
"Don't leave me!" he begged. "For God's sake—don't leave me!"
Weakly he struggled up again and sat staring piteously at the blazing car. His unrelinquished clutch on the White Linen Nurse's skirt brought her sinking softly down beside him like a collapsed balloon. Together they sat and watched the gaseous yellow flames shoot up into the sky.
"It's pretty, isn't it?" piped the Little Girl.
"Eh?" groaned the Senior Surgeon.
"Father," persisted the shrill little voice. "Father,—do people ever burn up?"
"Eh?" gasped the Senior Surgeon. Brutally the harsh, shuddering sobs began to rack and tear again through his great chest.
"There! There!" crooned the White Linen Nurse, struggling desperately to her knees. "Let me get—everybody—a drink of water."
Again the Senior Surgeon's unrelinquished clutch on her skirt jerked her back to the place beside him.
"I said not to leave me!" he snapped out as roughly as he jerked.
Before the affrighted look in the White Linen Nurse's face a sheepish, mirthless grin flickered across one corner of his mouth.
"Lord! But I'm shaken!" he apologized. "Me—of all people!" Painfully the red blood mounted to his cheeks. "Me—of all people!" Bluntly he forced the White Linen Nurse's reluctant gaze to meet his own. "Only yesterday," he persisted, "I did a laparotomy on a man who had only one chance in a hundred of pulling through—and I—I scolded him for fighting off his ether cone,—scolded him—I tell you!"
"Yes, I know," soothed the White Linen Nurse. "But—"
"But nothing!" growled the Senior Surgeon. "The fear of death? Bah! All my life I've scoffed at it! Die? Yes, of course,—when you have to,—but with no kick coming! Why, I've been wrecked in a typhoon in the Gulf of Mexico. And I didn't care! And I've lain for nine days more dead than alive in an Asiatic cholera camp. And I didn't care! And I've been locked into my office three hours with a raving maniac and a dynamite bomb. And I didn't care! And twice in a Pennsylvania mine disaster I've been the first man down the shaft. And I didn't care! And I've been shot, I tell you,—and I've been horse-trampled,—and I've been wolf-bitten. And I've never cared! But to-day—to-day—" Piteously all the pride and vigor wilted from his great shoulders, leaving him all huddled up like a woman, with his head on his knees. "But to-day, I've got mine!" he acknowledged brokenly.
Once again the White Linen Nurse tried to rise. "Oh, please, sir, let me get you a—drink of water," she suggested helplessly.
"I said not to leave me!" jerked the Senior Surgeon.
Perplexedly with big staring eyes the Little Crippled Girl glanced up at this strange fatherish person who sounded so suddenly small and scared like herself. Jealous instantly of her own prerogatives she dropped her futile labors on the mud-stained silk stockings and scrambled precipitously for the White Linen Nurse's lap where she nestled down finally after many gyrations, and sat glowering forth at all possible interlopers.
"Don't leave any of us!" she ordered with a peremptoriness not unmixed with supplication.
"Surely some one will see the fire and come and get us," conceded the
Senior Surgeon.
"Yes—surely," mused the White Linen Nurse. Just at that moment she was mostly concerned with adjusting the curve of her shoulder to the curve of the Little Girl's head. "I could sit more comfortably," she suggested to the Senior Surgeon, "if you'd let go my skirt."
"Let go of your skirt? Who's touching your skirt?" gasped the Senior
Surgeon incredulously. Once again the blood mounted darkly to his face.
"I think I'll get up—and walk around a bit," he confided coldly.
"Do, sir," said the White Linen Nurse.
Ouchily with a tweak of pain through his sprained back the Senior Surgeon sat suddenly down again. "I sha'n't get up till I'm good and ready!" he attested.
"I wouldn't, sir," said the White Linen Nurse.
Very slowly, very complacently, all the while she kept right on renovating the Little Girl's personal appearance, smoothing a wrinkled stocking, tucking up obstreperous white ruffles, tugging down parsimonious purple hems, loosening a pinchy hook, tightening a wobbly button. Very slowly, very complacently the Little Girl drowsed off to sleep with her weazened little iron-cased legs stretched stiffly out before her. "Poor little legs! Poor little legs! Poor little legs!" crooned the White Linen Nurse.
"I don't know—as you need to—make a song about it!" winced the Senior Surgeon. "It's just about the crudest case of complete muscular atrophy that I've ever seen!"
Blandly the White Linen Nurse lifted her big blue eyes to his. "It wasn't her 'complete muscular atrophy' that I was thinking about!" she said. "It's her panties that are so unbecoming!"
"Eh?" jumped the Senior Surgeon.
"Poor little legs—poor little legs—poor little legs," resumed the
White Linen Nurse droningly.
Very slowly, very complacently, all around them April kept right on—being April.
Very slowly, very complacently, all around them the grass kept On growing, and the trees kept right on budding. Very slowly, very complacently, all around them the blue sky kept right on fading into its early evening dove-colors.
Nothing brisk, nothing breathless, nothing even remotely hurried was there in all the landscape except just the brook,—and the flash of a bird,—and the blaze of the crackling automobile.
The White Linen Nurse's nostrils were smooth and calm with the lovely sappy scent of rabbit-nibbled maple bark and mud-wet arbutus buds. The White Linen Nurse's mind was full of sumptuous, succulent marsh marigolds, and fluffy white shad-bush blossoms.
The Senior Surgeon's nostrils were all puckered up with the stench of burning varnish. The Senior Surgeon's mind was full of the horrid thought that he'd forgotten to renew his automobile fire-insurance,—and that he had a sprained back,—and that his rival colleague had told him he didn't know how to run an auto anyway—and that the cook had given notice that morning,—and that he had a sprained back,—and that the moths had gnawed the knees out of his new dress suit,—and that the Superintendent of Nurses had had the audacity to send him a bunch of pink roses for his birthday,—and that the boiler in the kitchen leaked,—and that he had to go to Philadelphia the next day to read a paper on "Surgical Methods at the Battle of Waterloo,"—and he hadn't even begun the paper yet,—and that he had a sprained back,—and that the wall-paper on his library hung in shreds and tatters waiting for him to decide between a French fresco effect and an early English paneling,—and that his little daughter was growing up in wanton ugliness under the care of coarse, indifferent hirelings,—and that the laundry robbed him weekly of at least five socks,—and that it would cost him fully seven thousand dollars to replace this car,—and that he had a sprained back!
"It's restful, isn't it?" cooed the White Linen Nurse.
"Isn't what restful?" glowered the Senior Surgeon.
"Sitting down!" said the White Linen Nurse.
Contemptuously the Senior Surgeon's mind ignored the interruption and reverted precipitously to its own immediate problem concerning the gloomy, black-walnut shadowed entrance hall of his great house, and how many yards of imported linoleum at $3.45 a yard it would take to recarpet the "damned hole,"—and how it would have seemed anyway if—if he hadn't gone home—as usual to the horrid black-walnut shadows that night—but been carried home instead—feet first and—quite dead—dead, mind you, with a red necktie on,—and even the cook was out! And they wouldn't even know where to lay him—but might put him by mistake in that—in that—in his dead wife's dead—bed!
Altogether unconsciously a little fluttering sigh of ineffable contentment escaped the White Linen Nurse.
"I don't care how long we have to sit here and wait for help," she announced cheerfully, "because to-morrow, of course, I'll have to get up and begin all over again—and go to Nova Scotia."
"Go where?" lurched the Senior Surgeon.
"I'd thank you kindly, sir, not to jerk my skirt quite so hard!" said the White Linen Nurse just a trifle stiffly.
Incredulously once more the Senior Surgeon withdrew his detaining hand. "I'm not even touching your skirt!" he denied desperately. Nothing but denial and reiterated denial seemed to ease his self-esteem for an instant. "Why, for Heaven's sake, should I want to hold on to your skirt?" he demanded peremptorily. "What the deuce—?" he began blusteringly. "Why in—?"
Then abruptly he stopped and shot an odd, puzzled glance at the White Linen Nurse, and right there before her startled eyes she saw every vestige of human expression fade out of his face as it faded out sometimes in the operating-room when in the midst of some ghastly, unforeseen emergency that left all his assistants blinking helplessly around them, his whole wonderful scientific mind seemed to break up like some chemical compound into all its meek component parts,—only to reorganize itself suddenly with some amazing explosive action that fairly knocked the breath out of all on-lookers—but was pretty apt to knock the breath into the body of the person most concerned.
When the Senior Surgeon's scientific mind had reorganized itself to meet this emergency he found himself infinitely more surprised at the particular type of explosion that had taken place than any other person could possibly have been.
"Miss Malgregor!" he gasped. "Speaking of preferring 'domestic service,' as you call it,—speaking of preferring domestic service to—nursing,—how would you like to consider—to consider a position of—of—well,—call it a—a position of general—heartwork—for a family of two? Myself and the Little Girl here being the 'two,'—as you understand," he added briskly.
"Why, I think it would be grand!" beamed the White Linen Nurse.
A trifle mockingly the Senior Surgeon bowed his appreciation. "Your frank and immediate—enthusiasm," he murmured, "is more, perhaps, than I had dared to expect."
"But it would be grand!" said the White Linen Nurse. Before the odd little smile in the Senior Surgeon's eyes her white forehead puckered all up with perplexity. Then with her mind still thoroughly unawakened, her heart began suddenly to pitch and lurch like a frightened horse whose rider has not even remotely sensed as yet the approach of an unwonted footfall. "What—did—you—say?" she repeated worriedly. "Just exactly what was it that you said? I guess—maybe—I didn't understand just exactly what it was that you said."
The smile in the Senior Surgeon's eyes deepened a little. "I asked you," he said, "how you would like to consider a position of 'general heartwork' in a family of two,—myself and the Little Girl here being the 'two.' 'Heartwork' was what I said. Yes,—'Heartwork,'—not housework!"
"Heartwork?" faltered the White Linen Nurse. " Heartwork? I don't know what you mean, sir." Like two falling rose-petals her eyelids fluttered down across her affrighted eyes. "Oh, when I shut my eyes, sir, and just hear your voice, I know of course, sir, that it's some sort of a joke. But when I look right at you—I—don't know—what it is!"
"Open your eyes and keep them open then till you do find out!" suggested the Senior Surgeon bluntly.
Defiantly once again the blue eyes and the gray eyes challenged each other.
"'Heartwork' was what I said," persisted the Senior Surgeon. Palpably his narrowing eyes shut out all meaning but one definite one.
The White Linen Nurse's face went almost as blanched as her dress.
"You're—you're not asking me to—marry you, sir?" she stammered.
"I suppose I am!" acknowledged the Senior Surgeon.
"Not marry you!" cried the White Linen Nurse. Distress was in her voice,—distaste,—unmitigable shock, as though the high gods themselves had fallen at her feet and splintered off into mere candy fragments.
"Oh—not marry you, sir?" she kept right on protesting. "Not be—engaged, you mean? Oh, not be engaged—and everything?"
"Well, why not?" snapped the Senior Surgeon.
Like a smitten flower the girl's whole body seemed to wilt down into incalculable weariness.
"Oh—no—no! I couldn't!" she protested. "Oh, no,—really!" Appealingly she lifted her great blue eyes to his, and the blueness was all blurred with tears. "I've—I've been engaged—once—you know," she explained falteringly. "Why—I was engaged, sir, almost as soon as I was born, and I stayed engaged till two years ago. That's almost twenty years. That's a long time, sir. You don't get over it—easy." Very, very gravely she began to shake her head. "Oh—no—sir! No! Thank you—very much—but I—I just simply couldn't begin at the beginning and go all through it again! I haven't got the heart for it! I haven't got the spirit! Carvin' your initials on trees and—and gadding round to all the Sunday school picnics—"
Brutally like a boy the Senior Surgeon threw back his head in one wild hoot of joy. Infinitely more cautiously as the agonizing pang in his shoulder lulled down again he proceeded to argue the matter, but the grin in his face was even yet faintly traceable.
"Frankly, Miss Malgregor," he affirmed, "I'm infinitely more addicted to carving people than to carving trees. And as to Sunday school picnics? Well, really now—I hardly believe that you'd find my demands in that direction—excessive!"
Perplexedly the White Linen Nurse tried to stare her way through his bantering smile to his real meaning. Furiously, as she stared, the red blood came flushing back into her face.
"You don't mean for a second that you—that you love me?" she asked incredulously.
"No, I don't suppose I do!" acknowledged the Senior Surgeon with equal bluntness. "But my little kiddie here loves you!" he hastened somewhat nervously to affirm. "Oh, I'm almost sure that my little kiddie here—loves you! She needs you anyway! Let it go at that! Call it that we both—need you!"
"What you mean is—" corrected the White Linen Nurse, "that needing somebody—very badly, you've just suddenly decided that that somebody might as well be me?"
"Well—if you choose to put it—like that!" said the Senior Surgeon a bit sulkily.
"And if there hadn't been an auto accident?" argued the White Linen Nurse just out of sheer inquisitiveness, "if there hadn't been just this particular kind of an auto accident—at this particular hour—of this particular day—of this particular month—with marigolds and—everything, you probably never would have realized that you did need anybody?"
"Maybe not," admitted the Senior Surgeon.
"U—m—m," said the White Linen Nurse. "And if you'd happened to take one of the other girls to-day—instead of me,—why then I suppose you'd have felt that she was the one you really needed? And if you'd taken the Superintendent of Nurses—instead of any of us girls—you might even have felt that she was the one you most needed?"
With surprising agility for a man with a sprained back the Senior
Surgeon wrenched himself around until he faced her quite squarely.
"Now see here, Miss Malgregor!" he growled. "For Heaven's sake listen to sense, even if you can't talk it! Here am I, a plain professional man—making you a plain professional offer. Why in thunder should you try to fuss me all up because my offer isn't couched in all the foolish, romantic, lace-paper sort of flub-dubbery that you think such an offer ought to be couched in? Eh?"
"Fuss you all up, sir?" protested the White Linen Nurse with real anxiety.
"Yes—fuss me all up!" snarled the Senior Surgeon with increasing venom. "I'm no story-writer! I'm not trying to make up what might have happened a year from next February in a Chinese junk off the coast of—Nova Zembla—to a Methodist preacher—and a—and a militant suffragette! What I'm trying to size up is—just what's happened to you and me—to-day! For the fact remains that it is to-day! And it is you and I! And there has been an accident! And out of that accident—and everything that's gone with it—I have come out—thinking of something that I never thought of before! And there were marigolds!" he added with unexpected whimsicality. "You see I don't deny—even the marigolds!"
"Yes, sir," said the White Linen Nurse.
"Yes what?" jerked the Senior Surgeon.
Softly the White Linen Nurse's chin burrowed down a little closer against the sleeping child's tangled hair. "Why—yes—thank you very much—but I never shall love again," she said quite definitely.
"Love?" gasped the Senior Surgeon. "Why, I'm not asking you to love me!"
His face was suddenly crimson. "Why, I'd hate it, if you—loved me! Why,
I'd—"
"O—h—h," mumbled the White Linen Nurse in new embarrassment. Then suddenly and surprisingly her chin came tilting bravely up again. "What do you want?" she asked.
Helplessly the Senior Surgeon threw out his hands. "My goodness!" he said. "What do you suppose I want? I want some one to take care of us!"
Gently the White Linen Nurse shifted her shoulder to accommodate the shifting little sleepyhead on her breast.
"You can hire some one for that," she suggested with real relief.
"I was trying to hire—you!" said the Senior Surgeon quite tersely.
"Hire me?" gasped the White Linen Nurse. "Why! Why!"
Adroitly she slipped both hands under the sleeping child and delivered the little frail-fleshed, heavily ironed body into the Senior Surgeon's astonished arms.
"I—I don't want to hold her," he protested.
"She—isn't mine!" argued the White Linen Nurse.
"But I can't talk while I'm holding her!" insisted the Senior Surgeon.
"I can't listen—while I'm holding her!" persisted the White Linen
Nurse.
Freely now, though cross-legged like a Turk, she jerked herself forward on the grass and sat probing up into the Senior Surgeon's face like an excited puppy trying to solve whether the gift in your up-raised hand is a lump of sugar—or a live coal.
"You're trying to hire—me?" she prompted him nudgingly with her voice. "Hire me—for money?"
"Oh my Lord, no!" said the Senior Surgeon. "There are plenty of people I can hire for money! But they won't stay!" he explained ruefully. "Hang it all,—they won't stay!" Above his little girl's white, pinched face his own ruddy countenance furrowed suddenly with unspeakable anxiety.
"Why, just this last year," he complained, "we've had nine different housekeepers—and thirteen nursery governesses!" Skilfully as a surgeon, but awkwardly as a father, he bent to re-adjust the weight of the little iron leg-braces. "But I tell you—no one will stay with us!" he finished hotly. "There's—something the matter—with us! I don't seem to have money enough in the world to make anybody—stay with us!"
Very wryly, very reluctantly, at one corner of his mouth his sense of humor ignited in a feeble grin.
"So you see what I'm trying to do to you, Miss Malgregor, is to—hire you with something that will just—naturally compel you to stay!"
If the grin round his mouth strengthened a trifle, so did the anxiety in his eyes.
"For Heaven's sake, Miss Malgregor," he pleaded. "Here's a man and a house and a child all going to—rack and ruin! If you're really and truly tired of nursing—and are looking for a new job,—what's the matter with tackling us?"
"It would be a job!" admitted the White Linen Nurse demurely.
"Why, it would be a deuce-of-a-job!" confided the Senior Surgeon with no demureness whatsoever.
CHAPTER VII
Very soberly, very thoughtfully then, across the tangled, snuggling head of his own and another woman's child, he urged the torments—and the comforts of his home upon this second woman.
"What is there about my offer—that you don't like?" he demanded earnestly. "Is it the whole idea that offends you? Or just the way I put it? 'General Heartwork for a Family of Two?' What is the matter with that? Seems a bit cold to you, does it, for a real marriage proposal? Or is it that it's just a bit too ardent, perhaps, for a mere plain business proposition?"
"Yes, sir," said the White Linen Nurse.
"Yes what?" insisted the Senior Surgeon.
"Yes—sir," flushed the White Linen Nurse.
Very meditatively the Senior Surgeon reconsidered his phrasing. "'General Heartwork for a Family of Two'? U—m—m." Quite abruptly even the tenseness of his manner faded from him, leaving his face astonishingly quiet, astonishingly gentle. "But how else, Miss Malgregor," he queried, "How else should a widower with a child proffer marriage to a—to a young girl like yourself? Even under conditions directly antipodal to ours, such a proposition can never be a purely romantic one. Yet even under conditions as cold and business-like as ours, there's got to be some vestige of affection in it,—some vestige at least of the intelligence of affection,—else what gain is there for my little girl and me over the purely mercenary domestic service that has racked us up to this time with its garish faithlessness?"
"Yes, sir," said the White Linen Nurse.
"But even if I had loved you, Miss Malgregor," explained the Senior Surgeon gravely, "my offer of marriage to you would not, I fear, have been a very great oratorical success. Materialist as I am,—cynic—scientist,—any harsh thing you choose to call me,—marriage in some freak, boyish corner of my mind, still defines itself as being the mutual sharing of a—mutually original experience. Certainly whether a first marriage be instigated in love or worldliness,—whether it eventually proves itself bliss, tragedy, or mere sickening ennui, to two people coming mutually virgin to the consummation of that marriage, the thrill of establishing publicly a man-and-woman home together is an emotion that cannot be reduplicated while life lasts."
"Yes, sir," said the White Linen Nurse.
Bleakly across the Senior Surgeon's face something gray that was not years shadowed suddenly and was gone again.
"Even so, Miss Malgregor," he argued, "even so—without any glittering romance whatsoever, no woman I believe is very grossly unhappy in any—affectional place—that she knows distinctly to be her own place. It's pretty much up to a man then I think,—though it tear him brain from heart, to explain to a second wife quite definitely just exactly what place it is that he is offering her in his love,—or his friendship,—or his mere desperate need. No woman can ever hope to step successfully into a second-hand home who does not know from her man's own lips the measure of her predecessor. The respect we owe the dead is a selfish thing compared to the mercy we owe the living. In my own case—"
Unconsciously the White Linen Nurse's lax shoulders quickened, and the sudden upward tilt of her chin was as frankly interrogative as a French inflection. "Yes, sir," she said.
"In my own case," said the Senior Surgeon bluntly, "in my own case, Miss Malgregor, it is no more than fair to tell you that I—did not love my wife. And my wife did not love me." Only the muscular twitch in his throat betrayed the torture that the confession cost him. "The details of that marriage are unnecessary," he continued with equal bluntness. "It is enough perhaps to say that she was the daughter of an eminent surgeon with whom I was exceedingly anxious at that time to be allied, and that our mating, urged along on both sides as it was by strong personal ambitions was one of those so-called 'marriages of convenience' which almost invariably turn out to be marriages of such dire inconvenience to the two people most concerned. For one year we lived together in a chaos of experimental acquaintanceship. For two years we lived together in increasing uncongeniality and distaste. For three years we lived together in open and acknowledged enmity. At the last, I am thankful to remember, that we had one year together again that was at least an—armed truce."
Darkly the gray shadow and the red flush chased each other once more across the man's haggard face.
"I had a theory," he said, "that possibly a child might bridge the chasm between us. My wife refuted the theory, but submitted herself reluctantly to the fact. And when she—in giving birth to—my theory,—the shock, the remorse, the regret, the merciless self-analysis that I underwent at that time almost convinced me that the whole miserable failure of our marriage lay entirely on my own shoulders." Like the stress of mid-summer the tears of sweat started suddenly on his forehead. "But I am a fair man, I hope,—even to myself, and the cooler, less-tortured judgment of the subsequent years has practically assured me that, for types as diametrically opposed as ours, such a thing as mutual happiness never could have existed."
Mechanically he bent down and smoothed a tickly lock of hair away from the little girl's eyelids.
"And the child is the living physical image of her," he stammered. "The violent hair,—the ghost-white skin,—the facile mouth,—the arrogant eyes,—staring—staring—maddeningly reproachful, persistently accusing. My own stubborn will,—my own hideous temper,—all my own ill-favored mannerisms—mocked back at me eternally in her mother's—unloved features." Mirthless as the grin of a skull, the Senior Surgeon's mouth twisted up a little at one corner. "Maybe I could have borne it better if she'd been a boy," he acknowledged grimly. "But to see all your virile—masculine vices come back at you—so sissified—in skirts!"
"Yes, sir," said the White Linen Nurse.
With an unmistakable gasp of relief the Senior Surgeon expanded his great chest.
"There! That's done!" he said tersely. "So much for the Past! Now for the Present! Look at us pretty keenly and judge for yourself! A man and a very little girl,—not guaranteed,—not even recommended,—offered merely 'As Is' in the honest trade-phrase of the day,—offered frankly in an open package,—accepted frankly,—if at all—'at your own risk.' Not for an instant would I try to deceive you about us! Look at us closely, I ask, and—decide for yourself! I am forty-eight years old. I am inexcusably bad-tempered,—very quick to anger, and not, I fear, of great mercy. I am moody. I am selfish. I am most distinctly unsocial. But I am not, I believe, stingy,—nor ever intentionally unfair. My child is a cripple,—and equally bad-tempered as myself. No one but a mercenary has ever coped with her. And she shows it. We have lived alone for six years. All of our clothes, and most of our ways, need mending. I am not one to mince matters, Miss Malgregor, nor has your training, I trust, made you one from whom truths must be veiled. I am a man with all a man's needs,—mental, moral, physical. My child is a child with all a child's needs,—mental, moral, physical. Our house of life is full of cobwebs. The rooms of affection have long been closed. There will be a great deal of work to do! And it is not my intention, you see, that you should misunderstand in any conceivable way either the exact nature or the exact amount of work and worry involved. I should not want you to come to me afterwards with a whine, as other workers do, and say 'Oh, but I didn't know you would expect me to do this! Oh, but I hadn't any idea you would want me to do that! And I certainly don't see why you should expect me to give up my Thursday afternoon just because you, yourself, happened to fall down stairs in the morning and break your back!'"
Across the Senior Surgeon's face a real smile lightened suddenly.
"Really, Miss Malgregor," he affirmed, "I'm afraid there isn't much of anything that you won't be expected to do! And as to your 'Thursdays out'? Ha! If you have ever yet found a way to temper the wind of your obligations to the shorn lamb of your pleasures, you have discovered something that I myself have never yet succeeded in discovering! And as to 'wages'? Yes! I want to talk everything quite frankly! In addition to my average yearly earnings,—which are by no means small,—I have a reasonably large private fortune. Within normal limits there is no luxury I think that you cannot hope to have. Also, exclusive of the independent income which I would like to settle upon you, I should be very glad to finance for you any reasonable dreams that you may cherish concerning your family in Nova Scotia. Also,—though the offer looks small and unimportant to you now, it is liable to loom pretty large to you later,—also, I will personally guarantee to you—at some time every year, an unfettered, perfectly independent two months' holiday. So the offer stands,—my 'name and fame,'—if those mean anything to you,—financial independence,—an assured 'breathing spell' for at least two months out of twelve,—and at last but not least,—my eternal gratitude! 'General Heartwork for a Family of Two'! There! Have I made the task perfectly clear to you? Not everything to be done all at once, you know. But immediately where necessity urges it,—gradually as confidence inspires it,—ultimately if affection justifies it,—every womanish thing that needs to be done in a man's and a child's neglected lives? Do you understand?"
"Yes, sir," said the White Linen Nurse.
"Oh, and there's one thing more," confided the Senior Surgeon. "It's something, of course, that I ought to have told you the very first thing of all!" Nervously he glanced down at the sleeping child, and lowered his voice to a mumbling monotone. "As regards my actual morals you have naturally a right to know that I've led a pretty decent sort of life,—though I probably don't deserve any special credit for that. A man who knows enough to be a doctor isn't particularly apt to lead any other kind. Frankly,—as women rate vices I believe I have only one. What—what—I'm trying to tell you—now—is about that one." A little defiantly as to chin, a little appealingly as to eye, he emptied his heart of its last tragic secret. "Through all the male line of my family, Miss Malgregor, dipsomania runs rampant. Two of my brothers, my father, my grandfather, my great grandfather before him, have all gone down as the temperance people would say into 'drunkards' graves.' In my own case, I have chosen to compromise with the evil. Such a choice, believe me, has not been made carelessly or impulsively, but out of the agony and humiliation of—several less successful methods." Hard as a rock, his face grooved into its granite-like furrows again. "Naturally, under these existing conditions," he warned her almost threateningly, "I am not peculiarly susceptible to the mawkishly ignorant and sentimental protests of—people whose strongest passions are an appetite for—chocolate candy! For eleven months of the year," he hurried on a bit huskily, "for eleven months of the year,—eleven months,—each day reeking from dawn to dark with the driving, nerve-wracking, heart-wringing work that falls to my profession, I lead an absolutely abstemious life, touching neither wine nor liquor, nor even indeed tea or coffee. In the twelfth month,—June always,—I go way, way up into Canada,—way, way off in the woods to a little log camp I own there,—with an Indian who has guided me thus for eighteen years. And live like a—wild man for four gorgeous, care-free, trail-tramping, salmon-fighting,—whisky-guzzling weeks. It is what your temperance friends would call a—'spree.' To be quite frank, I suppose it is what—anybody would call a 'spree.' Then the first of July,—three or four days past the first of July perhaps,—I come out of the woods—quite tame again. A little emotionally nervous, perhaps,—a little temperishly irritable,—a little unduly sensitive about being greeted as a returned jail-bird,—but most miraculously purged of all morbid craving for liquor, and with every digital muscle as coolly steady as yours, and every conscious mental process clamoring cleanly for its own work again."
Furtively under his glowering brows he stopped and searched the White Linen Nurse's imperturbable face. "It's an—established custom, you understand," he rewarned her. "I'm not advocating it, you understand,—I'm not defending it. I'm simply calling your attention to the fact that it is an established custom. If you decide to come to us, I—I couldn't, you know, at forty-eight—begin all over again to—to have some one waiting for me on the top step the first of July to tell me—what a low beast I am—till I go down the steps again—the following June."
"No, of course not," conceded the White Linen Nurse. Blandly she lifted her lovely eyes to his. "Father's like that!" she confided amiably. "Once a year,—just Easter Sunday only,—he always buys him a brand new suit of clothes and goes to church. And it does something to him,—I don't know exactly what, but Easter afternoon he always gets drunk,—oh mad, fighting drunk is what I mean, and goes out and tries to tear up the whole county." Worriedly two black thoughts puckered between her eyebrows. "And always," she said, "he makes Mother and me go up to Halifax beforehand to pick out the suit for him. It's pretty hard sometimes," she said, "to find anything dressy enough for the morning, that's serviceable enough for the afternoon."
"Eh?" jerked the Senior Surgeon. Then suddenly he began to smile again like a stormy sky from which the last cloud has just been cleared. "Well, it's all right then, is it? You'll take us?" he asked brightly.
"Oh, no!" said the White Linen Nurse. "Oh, no, sir! Oh, no indeed, sir!" Quite perceptibly she jerked her way backward a little on the grass. "Thank you very much!" she persisted courteously. "It's been very interesting! I thank you very much for telling me, but—"
"But what?" snapped the Senior Surgeon.
"But it's too quick," said the White Linen Nurse. "No man could tell like that—just between one eye-wink and another what he wanted about anything,—let alone marrying a perfect stranger."
Instantly the Senior Surgeon bridled. "I assure you, my dear young lady," he retorted, "that I am entirely and completely accustomed to deciding between 'one wink and another' just exactly what it is that I want. Indeed, I assure you that there are a good many people living to-day who wouldn't be living, if it had taken me even as long as a wink and three-quarters to make up my mind!"
"Yes, I know, sir," acknowledged the White Linen Nurse. "Yes, of course, sir," she acquiesced with most commendable humility. "But all the same, sir, I couldn't do it!" she persisted with inflexible positiveness. "Why, I haven't enough education," she confessed quite shamelessly.
"You had enough, I notice, to get into the hospital," drawled the Senior Surgeon a bit grumpily. "And that's quite as much as most people have, I assure you! 'A High School education or its equivalent,'—that is the hospital requirement, I believe?" he questioned tartly.
"'A High School education or its—equivocation' is what we girls call it," confessed the White Linen Nurse demurely. "But even so, sir," she pleaded, "it isn't just my lack of education! It's my brains! I tell you, sir, I haven't got enough brains to do what you suggest!"
"I don't mean at all to belittle your brains," grinned the Senior Surgeon in spite of himself. "Oh, not at all, Miss Malgregor! But you see it isn't especially brains that I'm looking for! Really what I need most," he acknowledged frankly, "is an extra pair of hands to go with the—brains I already possess!"
"Yes, I know, sir," persisted the White Linen Nurse. "Yes, of course, sir," she conceded. "Yes, of course, sir, my hands work—awfully—well—with your face. But all the same," she kindled suddenly, "all the same, sir, I can't! I won't! I tell you sir, I won't! Why, I'm not in your world, sir! Why, I'm not in your class! Why—my folks aren't like your folks! Oh, we're just as good as you—of course—but we aren't as nice! Oh, we're not nice at all! Really and truly we're not!" Desperately through her mind she rummaged up and down for some one conclusive fact that would close this torturing argument for all time. "Why—my father—eats with his knife," she asserted triumphantly.
"Would he be apt to eat with mine?" asked the Senior Surgeon with extravagant gravity.
Precipitously the White Linen Nurse jumped to the defense of her father's intrinsic honor. "Oh, no!" she denied with some vehemence. "Father's never cheeky like that! Father's simple sometimes,—plain, I mean. Or he might be a bit sharp. But, oh, I'm sure he'd never be—cheeky! Oh, no, sir! No!"
"Oh, very well then," grinned the Senior Surgeon. "We can consider everything all comfortably settled then I suppose?"
"No, we can't!" screamed the White Linen Nurse. A little awkwardly with cramped limbs she struggled partly upward from the grass and knelt there defying the Senior Surgeon from her temporarily superior height. "No, we can't!" she reiterated wildly. "I tell you I can't, sir! I won't! I won't! I've been engaged once and it's enough! I tell you, sir, I'm all engaged out!"
"What's become of the man you were engaged to?" quizzed the Senior
Surgeon sharply.
"Why—he's married!" said the White Linen Nurse. "And they've got a kid!" she added tempestuously.
"Good! I'm glad of it!" smiled the Senior Surgeon quite amazingly. "Now he surely won't bother us any more."
"But I was engaged so long!" protested the White Linen Nurse. "Almost ever since I was born, I said. It's too long. You don't get over it!"
"He got over it," remarked the Senior Surgeon laconically.
"Y-e-s," admitted the White Linen Nurse. "But I tell you it doesn't seem decent. Not after being engaged—twenty years!" With a little helpless gesture of appeal she threw out her hands. "Oh, can't I make you understand, sir?"
"Why, of course, I understand," said the Senior Surgeon briskly. "You mean that you and John—"
"His name was 'Joe,'" corrected the White Linen Nurse.
With astonishing amiability the Senior Surgeon acknowledged the correction. "You mean," he said, "you mean that you and—Joe—have been cradled together so familiarly all your babyhood that on your wedding night you could most naturally have said 'Let me see—Joe,—it's two pillows that you always have, isn't it? And a double-fold of blanket at the foot?' You mean that you and Joe have been washed and scrubbed together so familiarly all your young childhood that you could identify Joe's headless body twenty years hence by the kerosene-lamp scar across his back? You mean that you and Joe have played house together so familiarly all your young tin-dish days that even your rag dolls called Joe 'Father'? You mean that since your earliest memory,—until a year or so ago,—Life has never once been just You and Life, but always You and Life and Joe? You and Spring and Joe,—You and Summer and Joe,—You and Autumn and Joe,—You and Winter and Joe,—till every conscious nerve in your body has been so everlastingly Joed with Joe's Joeness that you don't believe there 's any experience left in life powerful enough to eradicate that original impression? Eh?"
"Yes, sir," flushed the White Linen Nurse.
"Good! I'm glad of it!" snapped the Senior Surgeon. "It doesn't make you seem quite so alarmingly innocent and remote for a widower to offer marriage to. Good, I say! I'm glad of it!"
"Even so—I don't want to," said the White Linen Nurse. "Thank you very much, sir! But even so, I don't want to."
"Would you marry—Joe—now if he were suddenly free and wanted you?" asked the Senior Surgeon bluntly.
"Oh, my Lord, no!" said the White Linen Nurse.
"Other men are pretty sure to want you," admonished the Senior Surgeon. "Have you made up your mind—definitely that you'll never marry anybody?"
"N—o, not exactly," confessed the White Linen Nurse.
An odd flicker twitched across the Senior Surgeon's face like a sob in the brain.
"What's your first name, Miss Malgregor?" he asked a bit huskily.
"Rae," she told him with some surprise.
The Senior Surgeon's eyes narrowed suddenly again.
"Damn it all, Rae," he said, "I—want you!"
Precipitously the White Linen Nurse scrambled to her feet. "If you don't mind, sir," she cried, "I'll run down to the brook and get myself a drink of water!"
Impishly like a child, muscularly like a man, the Senior Surgeon clutched out at the flapping corner of her coat.
"No you don't!" he laughed, "till you've given me my definite answer—yes or no!"
Breathlessly the White Linen Nurse spun round in her tracks. Her breast was heaving with ill-suppressed sobs. Her eyes were blurred with tears. "You've no business—to hurry me so!" she protested passionately. "It isn't fair!—It isn't kind!"
Sluggishly in the Senior Surgeon's jolted arms the Little Girl woke from her feverish nap and peered up perplexedly through the gray dusk into her father's face.
"Where's—my kitty?" she asked hazily.
"Eh?" jerked the Senior Surgeon.
Harshly the little iron leg-braces clanked together.
In an instant the White Linen Nurse was on her knees in the grass. "You don't hold her right, sir!" she expostulated. Deftly with little soft, darting touches, interrupted only by rubbing her knuckles into her own tears, she reached out and eased successively the bruise of a buckle or the dragging weight on a little cramped hip.
Still drowsily, still hazily, with little smacking gasps and gulping swallows, the child worried her way back again into consciousness.
"All the birds were there, Father," she droned forth feebly from her sweltering mink-fur nest.
All the birds were there
With yellow feathers instead of—hair,
And bumble bees—and bumble bees—
And bumble bees?—And bumble bees—?
Frenziedly she began to burrow the back of her head into her Father's shoulder. "And bumble bees?—And bumble bees—?"
"Oh, for Heaven's sake—'buzzed' in the trees!" interpolated the Senior
Surgeon.
Rigidly from head to foot the little body in his arms stiffened suddenly. As one who saw the supreme achievement of a life-time swept away by some one careless joggle of an infinitesimal part, the Little Girl stared up agonizingly into her father's face. "Oh, I don't think—'buzzed' was the word!" she began convulsively. "Oh, I don't think—!"
Startlingly through the twilight the Senior Surgeon felt the White Linen
Nurse's rose-red lips come smack against his ear.
"Darn you! Can't you say 'crocheted' in the trees?" sobbed the White
Linen Nurse.
Grotesquely for an instant the Senior Surgeon's eyes and the White Linen
Nurse's eyes glared at each other in frank antagonism.
Then suddenly the Senior Surgeon burst out laughing. "Oh, very well!" he surrendered. "'Crocheted in the trees'!"
Precipitously the White Linen Nurse sank back on her heels and began to clap her hands.
"Oh, now I will! Now I will!" she cried exultantly.
"Will what?" frowned the Senior Surgeon.
Abruptly the White Linen Nurse stopped clapping her hands and began to wring them nervously in her lap instead. "Why—will—will!" she confessed demurely.
"Oh!" jumped the Senior Surgeon. "Oh!" Then equally jerkily he began to pucker his eyebrows. "But for Heaven's sake—what's the 'crocheted in the trees' got to do with it?" he asked perplexedly.
"Nothing much," mused the White Linen Nurse very softly. With sudden alertness she turned her curly blonde head towards the road. "There's somebody coming!" she said. "I hear a team!"
Overcome by a bashfulness that tried to escape in jocosity, the Senior
Surgeon gave an odd little choking chuckle.
"Well, I never thought I should marry a—trained nurse!" he acknowledged with somewhat hectic blitheness.
Impulsively the White Linen Nurse reached for her watch and lifted it close to her twilight-blinded eyes. A sense of ineffable peace crept suddenly over her.
"You won't, sir!" she said amiably.
"It's twenty minutes of nine, now. And the graduation was at eight!"
CHAPTER VIII
For any real adventure except dying, June is certainly a most auspicious month.
Indeed it was on the very first rain-green, rose-red morning of June that the White Linen Nurse sallied forth upon her extremely hazardous adventure of marrying the Senior Surgeon and his naughty little crippled daughter.
The wedding was at noon in some kind of a gray granite church. And the Senior Surgeon was there, of course,—and the necessary witnesses. But the Little Crippled Girl never turned up at all, owing—it proved later,—to a more than usually violent wrangle with whomever dressed her, concerning the general advisability of sporting turquoise-colored stockings with her brightest little purple dress.
The Senior Surgeon's stockings, if you really care to know, were gray. And the Senior Surgeon's suit was gray. And he looked altogether very huge and distinguished,—and no more strikingly unhappy than any bridegroom looks in a gray granite church.
And the White Linen Nurse,—no longer now truly a White Linen Nurse but just an ordinary, every-day, silk-and-cloth lady of any color she chose, wore something rather coat-y and grand and bluish, and was distractingly pretty of course but most essentially unfamiliar,—and just a tiny bit awkward and bony-wristed looking,—as even an Admiral is apt to be on his first day out of uniform.
Then as soon as the wedding ceremony was over, the bride and groom went to a wonderful green and gold café all built of marble and lined with music, and had a little lunch. What I really mean, of course, is that they had a very large lunch, but didn't eat any of it!
Then in a taxi-cab, just exactly like any other taxi-cab, the White Linen Nurse drove home alone to the Senior Surgeon's great, gloomy house to find her brand new step-daughter still screaming over the turquoise colored stockings.
And the Senior Surgeon in a Canadian-bound train, just exactly like any other Canadian-bound train, started off alone,—as usual, on his annual June "spree."
Please don't think for a moment that it was the Senior Surgeon who was responsible for the general eccentricities of this amazing wedding day. No indeed! The Senior Surgeon didn't want to be married the first day of June! He said he didn't! He growled he didn't! He snarled he didn't! He swore he didn't! And when he finished saying and growling and snarling and swearing,—and looked up at the White Linen Nurse for a confirmation of his opinion, the White Linen Nurse smiled perfectly amiably and said, "Yes, sir!"
Then the Senior Surgeon gave a great gasp of relief and announced resonantly, "Well, it's all settled then? We'll be married some time in July,—after I get home from Canada?" And when the White Linen Nurse kept on smiling perfectly amiably and said, "Oh, no, sir! Oh, no, thank you, sir! It wouldn't seem exactly legal to me to be married any other month but June!" Then the Senior Surgeon went absolutely dumb with rage that this mere chit of a girl,—and a trained nurse, too,—should dare to thwart his personal and professional convenience. But the White Linen Nurse just drooped her pretty blonde head and blushed and blushed and blushed and said, "I was only marrying you, sir, to—accommodate you—sir,—and if June doesn't accommodate you—I'd rather go to Japan with that monoideic somnambulism case. It's very interesting. And it sails June second." Then "Oh, Hell with the 'monoideic somnambulism case'!" the Senior Surgeon would protest.
Really it took the Senior Surgeon quite a long while to work out the three special arguments that should best protect him, he thought, from the horridly embarrassing idea of being married in June.
"But you can't get ready so soon!" he suggested at last with real triumph. "You've no idea how long it takes a girl to get ready to be married! There are so many people she has to tell,—and everything!"
"There's never but two that she's got to tell—or bust!" conceded the
White Linen Nurse with perfect candor. "Just the woman she loves the
most—and the woman she hates the worst. I'll write my mother to-morrow.
But I told the Superintendent of Nurses yesterday."
"The deuce you did!" snapped the Senior Surgeon.
Almost caressingly the White Linen Nurse lifted her big blue eyes to his. "Yes, sir," she said, "and she looked as sick as a young undertaker. I can't imagine what ailed her."
"Eh?" choked the Senior Surgeon. "But the house now," he hastened to contend. "The house now needs a lot of fixing over! It's all run down! It's all—everything! We never in the world could get it into shape by the first of June! For Heaven's sake, now that we've got money enough to make it right, let's go slow and make it perfectly right!"
A little nervously the White Linen Nurse began to fumble through the pages of her memorandum book. "I've always had money enough to 'go slow and make things perfectly right,'" she confided a bit wistfully. "Never in all my life have I had a pair of boots that weren't guaranteed, or a dress that wouldn't wash, or a hat that wasn't worth at least three re-pressings. What I was hoping for now, sir, was that I was going to have enough money so that I could go fast and make things wrong if I wanted to,—so that I could afford to take chances, I mean. Here's this wall-paper now,"—tragically she pointed to some figuring in her note-book—"it's got peacocks on it—life size—in a queen's garden—and I wanted it for the dining-room. Maybe it would fade! Maybe we'd get tired of it! Maybe it would poison us! Slam it on one week—and slash it off the next! I wanted it just because I wanted it, sir! I thought maybe—while you were way off in Canada—"
Eagerly the Senior Surgeon jerked his chair a little nearer to his—fiancée's.
"Now, my dear girl," he said. "That's just what I want to explain!
That's just what I want to explain! Just what I want to explain!
To—er—explain!" he continued a bit falteringly.
"Yes, sir," said the White Linen Nurse.
Very deliberately the Senior Surgeon removed a fleck of dust from one of his cuffs.
"All this talk of yours—about wanting to be married the same day I start off on my—Canadian trip!" he contended. "Why, it's all damned nonsense!"
"Yes, sir," said the White Linen Nurse.
Very conscientiously the Senior Surgeon began to search for a fleck of dust on his other cuff.
"Why my—my dear girl," he persisted. "It's absurd! It's outrageous! Why people would—would hoot at us! Why they'd think—!"
"Yes, sir," said the White Linen Nurse.
"Why, my dear girl," sweated the Senior Surgeon. "Even though you and I understand perfectly well the purely formal, business-like conditions of our marriage, we must at least for sheer decency's sake keep up a certain semblance of marital conventionality—before the world! Why, if we were married at noon the first day of June—as you suggest,—and I should go right off alone as usual—on my Canadian trip—and you should come back alone to the house—why, people would think—would think that I didn't care anything about you!"
"But you don't," said the White Linen Nurse serenely.
"Why, they'd think," choked the Senior Surgeon. "They'd think you were trying your—darndest—to get rid of me!"
"I am," said the White Linen Nurse complacently.
With a muttered ejaculation the Senior Surgeon jumped to his feet and stood glaring down at her.
Quite ingenuously the White Linen Nurse met and parried the glare.
"A gentleman—and a red-haired kiddie—and a great walloping house—all at once! It's too much!" she confided genially. "Thank you just the same, but I'd rather take them gradually. First of all, sir, you see, I've got to teach the little kiddie to like me! And then there's a green-tiled paper with floppity sea gulls on it—that I want to try for the bath-room! And—and—" Ecstatically she clapped her hands together. "Oh, sir! There are such loads and loads of experiments I want to try while you are off on your spree!"
"S—h—h!" cried the Senior Surgeon. His face was suddenly blanched,—his mouth, twitching like the mouth of one stricken with almost insupportable pain. "For God's sake, Miss Malgregor!" he pleaded, "can't you call it my—Canadian trip?"
Wider and wider the White Linen Nurse opened her big blue eyes at him.
"But it is a 'spree,' sir!" she attested resolutely. "And my father says—" Still resolutely her young mouth curved to its original assertion, but from under her heavy-shadowing eyelashes a little blue smile crept softly out. "When my father's got a lame trotting horse, sir, that he's trying to shuck off his hands," she faltered, "he doesn't ever go round mournful-like with his head hanging—telling folks about his wonderful trotter that's just 'the littlest, teeniest, tiniest bit—lame.' Oh no! What father does is to call up every one he knows within twenty miles and tell 'em, 'Say Tom,—Bill,—Harry,'—or whatever his name is—'what in the deuce do you suppose I've got over here in my barn? A lame horse—that wants to trot! Lamer than the deuce, you know! But can do a mile in 2.40.'" Faintly the little blue smile quickened again in the White Linen Nurse's eyes. "And the barn will be full of men in half an hour!" she said. "Somehow nobody wants a trotter that's lame! But almost anybody seems willing to risk a lame horse—that's plucky enough to trot!"
"What's the 'lame trotting horse' got to do with—me?" snarled the
Senior Surgeon incisively.
Darkly the White Linen Nurse's lashes fringed down across her cheeks.
"Nothing much," she said, "Only—"
"Only what?" demanded the Senior Surgeon. A little more roughly than he realized he stooped down and took the White Linen Nurse by her shoulders, and jerked her sharply round to the light. "Only what?" he insisted peremptorily.
Almost plaintively she lifted her eyes to his. "Only—my father says," she confided obediently, "my father says if you've got a worse foot—for Heaven's sake put it forward—and get it over with!
"So—I've got to call it a 'spree'!" smiled the White Linen Nurse. "'Cause when I think of marrying a—surgeon—that goes off and gets drunk every June—it—it scares me almost to my death! But—" Abruptly the red smile faded from her lips, the blue smile from her eyes. "But—when I think of marrying a—June drunk—that's got the grit to pull up absolutely straight as a die and be a surgeon—all the other 'leven months in the year—" Dartingly she bent down and kissed the Senior Surgeon's astonished wrist. "Oh, then I think you're perfectly grand!" she sobbed.
Awkwardly the Senior Surgeon pulled away and began to pace the floor.
"You're a—good little girl, Rae Malgregor," he mumbled huskily. "A good little girl. I truly believe you're the kind that will—see me through." Poignantly in his eyes humiliation overwhelmed the mist. Perversely in its turn resentment overtook the humiliation. "But I won't be married in June!" he reasserted bombastically. "I won't! I won't! I won't! I tell you I positively refuse to have a lot of damn fools speculating about my private affairs! Wondering why I didn't take you! Wondering why I didn't stay home with you! I tell you I won't! I simply won't!"
"Yes, sir," stammered the White Linen Nurse.
With a real gasp of relief the Senior Surgeon stopped his eternal pacing of the floor.
"Bully for you!" he said. "You mean then we'll be married some time in
July after I get back from my—trip?"
"Oh, no, sir," stammered the White Linen Nurse.
"But Great Heavens!" shouted the Senior Surgeon.
"Yes, sir," the White Linen Nurse began all over again. Dreamily planning out her wedding gown, her lips without the slightest conscious effort on her part were already curving into shape for her alternate "No, sir."
"You're an idiot!" snapped the Senior Surgeon.
A little reproachfully the White Linen Nurse came frowning out of her reverie. "Would it do just as well for traveling, do you think?" she asked, with real concern.
"Eh? What?" said the Senior Surgeon.
"I mean—does Japan spot?" queried the White Linen Nurse. "Would it spot a serge, I mean?"
"Oh, Hell with Japan!" jerked the Senior Surgeon.
"Yes, sir," said the White Linen Nurse.
Now perhaps you will understand just exactly how it happened that the Senior Surgeon and the White Linen Nurse were married on the first day of June, and just exactly how it happened that the Senior Surgeon went off alone as usual on his Canadian trip, and just exactly how it happened that the White Linen Nurse came home alone to the Senior Surgeon's great, gloomy house, to find her brand new step-daughter still screaming over the turquoise-colored stockings. Everything now is perfectly comfortably explained except the turquoise-colored stockings. Nobody could explain the turquoise-colored stockings!
But even a little child could explain the ensuing June! Oh, June was perfectly wonderful that year! Bud, blossom, bird-song, breeze,—rioting headlong through the Land. Warm days sweet and lush as a green-house vapor! Crisp nights faintly metallic like the scent of stars! Hurdy-gurdies romping tunefully on every street-corner! Even the Ash-Man flushing frankly pink across his dusty cheek-bones!
Like two fairies who had sublet a giant's cave the White Linen Nurse and the Little Crippled Girl turned themselves loose upon the Senior Surgeon's gloomy old house.
It certainly was a gloomy old house, but handsome withal,—square and brown and substantial, and most generously gardened within high brick walls. Except for dusting the lilac bushes with the hose, and weeding a few rusty leaves out of the privet hedge, and tacking up three or four scraggly sprays of English ivy, and re-greening one or two bay-tree boxes, there was really nothing much to do to the garden. But the house? Oh ye gods! All day long from morning till night,—but most particularly from the back door to the barn, sweating workmen scuttled back and forth till nary a guilty piece of black walnut furniture had escaped. All day long from morning till night,—but most particularly from ceilings to floors, sweltering workmen scurried up and down step-ladders stripping dingy papers from dingier plasterings.
When the White Linen Nurse wasn't busy renovating the big house—or the little step-daughter, she was writing to the Senior Surgeon. She wrote twice.
"Dear Dr. Faber," the first letter said.
* * * * *
DEAR DR. FABER,
How do you do? Thank you very much, for saying you didn't care what in thunder I did to the house. It looks sweet. I've put white fluttery muslin curtains most everywhere. And you've got a new solid-gold-looking bed in your room. And the Kiddie and I have fixed up the most scrumptious light blue suite for ourselves in the ell. Pink was wrong for the front hall, but it cost me only $29.00 to find out. And now that's settled for all time.
I am very, very, very, very busy. Something strange and new happens every day. Yesterday it was three ladies and a plumber. One of the ladies was just selling soap, but I didn't buy any. It was horrid soap. The other two were calling ladies,—a silk one and a velvet one. The silk one tried to be nasty to me. Right to my face she told me I was more of a lady than she had dared to hope. And I told her I was sorry for that as you'd had one "lady" and it didn't work. Was that all right? But the other lady was nice. And I took her out in the kitchen with me while I was painting the woodwork, and right there in her white kid gloves she laughed and showed me how to mix the paint pearl gray. She was nice. It was your sister-in-law.
I like being married, Dr. Faber. I like it lots better than I thought I would. It's fun being the biggest person in the house. Respectfully yours, RAE MALGREGOR,—AS WAS.
P.S. Oh, I hope it wasn't wrong, but in your ulster pocket, when I went to put it away, I found a bottle of something that smelt as though it had been forgotten.—I threw it out.
* * * * *
It was this letter that drew the only definite message from the itinerant bridegroom.
"Kindly refrain from rummaging in my ulster pockets," wrote the Senior Surgeon quite briefly. "The 'thing' you threw out happened to be the cerebellum and medulla of an extremely eminent English Theologian!"
"Even so,—it was sour," telegraphed the White Linen Nurse in a perfect agony of remorse and humiliation.
The telegram took an Indian with a birch canoe two days to deliver, and cost the Senior Surgeon twelve dollars. Just impulsively the Senior Surgeon decided to make no further comments on domestic affairs,—at that particular range.
Very fortunately for this impulse the White Linen Nurse's second letter concerned itself almost entirely with matters quite extraneous to the home.
"Dear Dr. Faber," the second letter ran.
* * * * *
DEAR DR. FABER,
Somehow I don't seem to care so much just now about being the biggest person in the house. Something awful has happened. Zillah Forsyth is dead. Really dead, I mean. And she died in great heroism. You remember Zillah Forsyth, don't you? She was one of my room-mates,—not the gooder one, you know,—not the swell,—that was Helene Churchill. But Zillah? Oh you know! Zillah was the one you sent out on that Fractured Elbow case. It was a Yale student, you remember? And there was some trouble about kissing,—and she got sent home? And now everybody's crying because Zillah can't kiss anybody any more! Isn't everything the limit? Well, it wasn't a fractured Yale student she got sent out on this time. If it had been, she might have been living yet. What they sent her out on this time was a Senile Dementia,—an old lady more than eighty years old. And they were in a sanitarium or something like that. And there was a fire in the night. And the old lady just up and positively refused to escape. And Zillah had to push her and shove her and yank her and carry her—out the window—along the gutters—round the chimneys. And the old lady bit Zillah right through the hand,—but Zillah wouldn't let go. And the old lady tried to drown Zillah under a bursted water tank,—but Zillah wouldn't let go. And everybody hollered to Zillah to cut loose and save herself,—but Zillah wouldn't let go. And a wall fell, and everything, and oh, it was awful,—but Zillah never let go. And the old lady that wasn't any good to any one,—not even herself, got saved of course. But Zillah? Oh, Zillah got hurt bad, sir! We saw her at the hospital, Helene and I. She sent for us about something. Oh, it was awful! Not a thing about her that you'd know except just her great solemn eyes mooning out at you through a gob of white cotton, and her red mouth lipping sort of twitchy at the edge of a bandage. Oh it was awful! But Zillah didn't seem to care so much. There was a new Interne there,—a Japanese, and I guess she was sort of taken with him. "But my God, Zillah," I said, "your life was worth more than that old dame's!"
"Shut your noise!" says Zillah. "It was my job. And there's no kick coming." Helene burst right out crying, she did. "Shut your noise, too!" says Zillah, just as cool as you please. "Bah! There's other lives and other chances!"
"Oh, you do believe that now?" cries Helene. "Oh, you do believe that now,—what the Bible promises you?" That was when Zillah shrugged her shoulders so funny,—the little way she had. Gee, but her eyes were big! "I don't pretend to know—what—your old Bible says," she choked. "It was—the Yale feller—who was tellin' me."
That's all, Dr. Faber. It was her shrugging her shoulders so funny that brought on the hemorrhage.
Oh, we had an awful time, sir, going home in the carriage,—Helene and I. We both cried, of course, because Zillah was dead, but after we got through crying for that, Helene kept right on crying because she couldn't understand why a brave girl like Zillah had to be dead. Gee! But Helene takes things hard. Ladies do, I guess.
I hope you're having a pleasant spree.
Oh, I forgot to tell you that one of the wall-paperers is living here at the house with us just now. We use him so much it's truly a good deal more convenient. And he's a real nice young fellow, and he plays the piano finely, and he comes from up my way. And it seemed more neighborly anyway. It's so large in the house at night, just now, and so creaky in the garden.