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!"