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The White Linen Nurse, a fiction by Eleanor Hallowell Abbott |
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CHAPTER VI |
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_ 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. _ |
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