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.