So the days passed. And the nights. And more days. And more nights.
July--August,--on and on and on.
Strenuous, nerve-racking, heart-breaking surgical days--broken maritally
only by the pleasant, soft-worded greeting at the gate, or the
practical, homely appeal of good food cooked with heart as well as
hands, or the tingling, inciting masculine consciousness of there being
a woman's--blush in the house!
Strenuous, house-working, child-nursing, home-making, domestic
days--broken maritally only by the jaded, harsh word at the gate, the
explosive criticism of food, the deadening, depressing, feminine
consciousness of there being a man's--vicious temper in the house!
Now and again in one big automobile or another the White Linen Nurse and
the Senior Surgeon rode out together, always and forever with the Little
Crippled Girl sitting between them,--the other woman's little crippled
girl. Now and again in the late summer afternoons the White Linen Nurse
and the Senior Surgeon strolled together through the rainbow-colored
garden, always and forever with the Little Crippled Girl,--the other
woman's little crippled girl, tagging close behind them with her little
sad, clanking leg. Now and again in the long sweet summer evenings the
White Linen Nurse and the Senior Surgeon sat on the clematis-shadowed
porch together, always and forever with the Little Crippled Girl,--the
other woman's little crippled girl, mocking them querulously from some
vague upper window.
Now and again across the mutually ghost-haunted chasm that separated
them flashed the incontrovertible signal of sex and sense, as once when
a new Interne, grossly bungling, stepped to the hospital window with a
colleague to watch the Senior Surgeon's car roll away as usual with its
two feminine passengers.
"What makes the Chief so stingy with that big handsome girl of his?"
queried the new Interne a bit resentfully. "He won't ever bring her into
the hospital!--won't ever ask any of us young chaps out to his house!
And some of us come mighty near to being eligible, too!--Who's he saving
her for, anyway?--A saint?--A miracle-worker?--A millionaire medicine
man?--They don't exist, you know!"
"I'm saving her for myself!" snapped the Senior Surgeon most
disconcertingly from the doorway. "She--she happens to be my wife, not
my daughter,--thank you!"
When the Senior Surgeon went home that night he carried a big bunch of
magazines and a box of candy as large as his head tucked courtingly
under his arm.
Now and again across the chasm that separated them flashed the
incontrovertible signal of mutual trust and appreciation, as when once,
after a particularly violent vocal outburst on the Senior Surgeon's
part, he sobered down very suddenly and said:
"Rae Malgregor,--do you realize that in all the weeks we've been
together you've never once nagged me about my swearing? Not a word,--not
a single word!"
"I'm not very used to--words," smiled the White Linen Nurse hopefully.
"All I know how to nag with is--is raw eggs! If we could only get those
nerves of yours padded just once, sir! The swearing would get well of
itself."
In August the Senior Surgeon suggested sincerely that the house was much
too big for the White Linen Nurse to run all alone, but conceded equally
sincerely, under the White Linen Nurse's vehement protest, that
servants, particularly new servants did creak considerably round a
house, and that maybe "just for the present" at least, until he finished
his very nervous paper on brain tumors perhaps it would be better to
stay "just by ourselves."
In September the White Linen Nurse wanted very much to go home to Nova
Scotia to her sister's wedding but the Senior Surgeon was trying a very
complicated and worrisome new brace on the Little Girl's leg and it
didn't seem quite kind to go. In October she planned her trip all over
again. She was going to take the Little Crippled Girl with her this
time. But with their trunks already packed and waiting in the hall, the
Senior Surgeon came home from the hospital with a septic finger--and it
didn't seem quite best to leave him.
"Well, how do you like being married _now?_" asked the Senior Surgeon a
bit ironically in his work-room that night, after the White Linen Nurse
had stood for an hour with evil-smelling washes, and interminable
bandages trying to fix that finger the precise, particular way that he
thought it ought to be fixed. "Well--how do you like--being married
_now?_" he insisted trenchantly.
"Oh, I like it all right, sir!" said the White Linen Nurse. A little bit
wanly this time she smiled her pluck up into the Senior Surgeon's
questioning face. "Oh, I like it all right, sir! Oh, of course, sir,"
she confided thoughtfully--"Oh, of course, sir--it isn't quite as fancy
as being engaged--or quite as free and easy as being--single. But
still--" she admitted with desperate honesty--"but still there's a sort
of--a sort of a combination importance and--and comfort about it, sir,
like a--like a velvet suit--the second year, sir."
"Is that--all?" quizzed the Senior Surgeon bluntly.
"That's all--so far, sir," said the White Linen Nurse.
In November the White Linen Nurse caught a bit of cold that pulled her
down a little. But the Senior Surgeon didn't notice it specially among
all the virulent ills he lived and worked with from day to day. And then
when the cold disappeared, Indian Summer came like a reeking sweat after
a chill! And the house _was_ big! And the Little Crippled Girl _was_
pretty difficult to manage now and then! And the Senior Surgeon, no
matter how hard he tried not to, did succeed somehow in creating more or
less of a disturbance--at least every other day or two!
And then suddenly, one balmy gold and crimson Indian Summer morning,
standing out on the piazza trying to hear what the Little Crippled Girl
was calling from the window and what the Senior Surgeon was calling from
the gate, the White Linen Nurse fell right down in her tracks, brutally,
bulkily, like a worn-out horse, and lay as she fell, a huddled white
heap across the gray piazza.
"Oh, Father! Come quick! Come quick! Peach has deaded herself!" yelled
the Little Girl's frantic voice.
Just with his foot on the step of his car the Senior Surgeon heard the
cry and came speeding back up the long walk. Already there before him
the Little Girl knelt raining passionate, agonized kisses on her beloved
playmate's ghastly white face.
"Leave her alone!" thundered the Senior Surgeon. "Leave her alone, I
say!"
Bruskly he pushed the Little Girl aside and knelt to cradle his own ear
against the White Linen Nurse's heart.
"Oh, it's all right," he growled, and gathered the White Linen Nurse
right up in his arms--she was startlingly lighter than he had
supposed--and carried her up the stairs and put her to bed like a child
in the great sumptuous guest-room, in a great sumptuous nest of all the
best linens and blankets, with the Little Crippled Girl superintending
the task with many hysterical suggestions and sharp staccato
interruptions. For once in his life the Senior Surgeon did not stop to
quarrel with his daughter.
Rallying limply from her swoon the White Linen Nurse stared out with
hazy perplexity at last from her dimpling white pillows to see the
Senior Surgeon standing amazingly at the guest-room bureau with a glass
and a medicine-dropper in his hand, and the Little Crippled Girl hanging
apparently by her narrow peaked chin across the foot-board of the bed.
Gazing down worriedly at the lace-ruffled sleeve of her night-dress the
White Linen Nurse made her first public speech to the--world at large.
"Who--put--me--to--bed?" whispered the White Linen Nurse.
Ecstatically the Little Crippled Girl began to pound her fists on the
foot-board of the bed.
"Father did!" she cried in unmistakable triumph. "All the little hooks!
All the little buttons!--_wasn't_ it cunning?"
The Senior Surgeon would hardly have been human if he hadn't glanced
back suddenly over his shoulder at the White Linen Nurse's precipitously
changing color. Quite irrepressibly, as he saw the red, red blood come
surging home again into her cheeks, a little short chuckling laugh
escaped him.
"I guess you'll live--now," he remarked dryly.
Then because a Senior Surgeon can't stay home on the mere impulse of the
moment from a great rushing hospital, just because one member of his
household happens to faint perfectly innocently in the morning, he
hurried on to his work again. And saved a little boy, and lost a little
girl, and mended a fractured thigh, and eased a gun-shot wound, and came
dashing home at noon in one of his thousand-dollar hours to feel the
White Linen Nurse's pulse and broil her a bit of tenderloin steak with
his own thousand-dollar hands,--and then went dashing off again to do
one major operation or another, telephoned home once or twice during the
afternoon to make sure that everything was all right, and finding that
the White Linen Nurse was comfortably up and about again, went sprinting
off fifty miles somewhere on a meningitis consultation, and came
dragging home at last, somewhere near midnight, to a big black house
brightened only by a single light in the kitchen where the White Linen
Nurse went tiptoeing softly from stove to pantry in deft preparation of
an appetizing supper for him.
Quite roughly again without smile or appreciation the Senior Surgeon
took her by the shoulders and turned her out of the kitchen, and started
her up the stairs.
"Are you an--idiot?" he said. "Are you an--imbecile?" he came back and
called up the stairs to her just as she was disappearing from the upper
landing.
Then up and down, round and round, on and on and on, the Senior Surgeon
began suddenly to pace again.
Only, for some unexplainable reason to the White Linen Nurse upstairs,
his work-room didn't seem quite large enough for his pacing this night
Along the broad piazza she heard his footsteps creak. Far, far into the
morning, lying warm and snug in her own little bed, she heard his
footsteps crackling through the wet-leafed garden paths.
Yet the Senior Surgeon didn't look an atom jaded or forlorn when he came
down to breakfast the next morning. He had on a brand new gray suit that
fitted his big, powerful shoulders to perfection, and the glad glow of
his shower-bath was still reddening faintly in his cheeks as he swung
around the corner of the table and dropped down into his place with an
odd little grin on his lips directed intermittently towards the White
Linen Nurse and the Little Crippled Girl who already waited him there at
either end of the table.
"Oh, Father, isn't it lovely to have my darling--darling Peach all well
again!" beamed the Little Crippled Girl with unusual friendliness.
"Speaking of your--'darling Peach,'" said the Senior Surgeon quite
abruptly. "Speaking of your 'darling Peach,'--I'm going to--take her
away with me to-day--for a week or so."
"Eh?" jumped the Little Crippled Girl.
"What? What, sir?" stammered the White Linen Nurse.
Quite prosily the Senior Surgeon began to butter a piece of toast. But
the little twinkle around his eyes belied in some way the utter
prosiness of the act.
"For a little trip," he confided amiably. "A little holiday!"
A trifle excitedly the White Linen Nurse laid down her knife and fork
and stared at him, blue-eyed and wondering as a child.
"A holiday?" she gasped. "To a--beach, you mean? Would there be a--a
roller-coaster? I've never seen a roller-coaster!"
"Eh?" laughed the Senior Surgeon.
"Oh, I'm going, too! I'm going, too!" piped the Little Crippled Girl.
Most jerkily the Senior Surgeon pushed back his chair from the table
and swallowed half a cup of coffee at one single gulp.
"Going _three_, you mean?" he glowered at his little daughter. "Going
_three_?" His comment that ensued was distinctly rough as far as diction
was concerned, but the facial expression of ineffable peace that
accompanied it would have made almost any phrase sound like a
benediction. "Not by a--damned sight!" beamed the Senior Surgeon. "This
little trip is just for Peach and me!"
"But--sir?" fluttered the White Linen Nurse. Her face was suddenly
pinker than any rose that ever bloomed.
With an impulse absolutely novel to him the Senior Surgeon turned and
swung his little daughter very gently to his shoulder.
"Your Aunt Agnes is coming to stay with _you_--in just about ten
minutes!" he affirmed. "That's--what's going to happen to _you!_ And
maybe there'll be a pony--a white pony."
"But Peach is so--pleasant!" wailed the Little Crippled Girl. "Peach is
so pleasant!" she began to scream and kick.
"So it seems!" growled the Senior Surgeon. "And she's--dying of it!"
Tearfully the Little Girl wriggled down to the ground, and hobbled
around and thrust her finger-tip into the White Linen Nurse's blushiest
cheek.
"I don't want--Peach--to--die," she admitted worriedly. "But I don't
want anybody to take her away!"
"The pony is--very white," urged the Senior Surgeon with a diplomacy
quite alien to him.
Abruptly the Little Girl turned and faced him. "What color is Aunt
Agnes?" she asked vehemently.
"Aunt Agnes is--pretty white, too," attested the Senior Surgeon.
With the faintest possible tinge of superciliousness the Little Girl
lifted her sharp chin a trifle higher.
"If it's just a perfectly plain white pony," she said, "I'd rather have
Peach. But if it's a white pony with black blots on it, and if it can
pull a little cart, and if I can whip it with a little switch, and if it
will eat sugar-lumps out of my hand,--and if its name is--is--'Beautiful
Pretty-Thing'--"
"Its name has always been--'Beautiful Pretty-Thing,' I'm quite sure!"
insisted the Senior Surgeon. Inadvertently as he spoke he reached out
and put a hand very lightly on the White Linen Nurse's shoulder.
Instantly into the Little Girl's suspicious face flushed a furiously
uncontrollable flame of jealousy and resentment. Madly she turned upon
her father.
"You're a liar!" she screamed. "There _is_ no white pony! You're a
robber! You're a--a--drunk! You shan't have my darling Peach!" And threw
herself frenziedly into the White Linen Nurse's lap.
Impatiently the Senior Surgeon disentangled the little clinging arms,
and raising the White Linen Nurse to her feet pushed her emphatically
towards the hall.
"Go to my work-room," he said. "Quickly! I want to talk with you!"
A moment later he joined her there, and shut and locked the door behind
him. The previous night's loss of sleep showed plainly in his face now,
and the hospital strain of the day before, and of the day before that,
and of the day before _that_.
Heavily, moodily, he crossed the room and threw himself down in his desk
chair with the White Linen Nurse still standing before him as though she
were nothing but a--white linen nurse. All the splendor was suddenly
gone from him, all the radiance, all the exultant purpose.
"Well, Rae Malgregor," he grinned mirthlessly. "The little kid is right,
though I certainly don't know where she got her information. I _am_ a
Liar. The pony's name is not yet 'Beautiful Pretty-Thing'! I _am_
a--Drunk. I was drunk most of June! I _am_ a Robber! I have taken you
out of your youth--and the love-chances of your youth,--and shut you up
here in this great, gloomy old house of mine--to be my slave--and my
child's slave--and--"
"Pouf!" said the White Linen Nurse. "It would seem--silly--now, sir,--to
marry a boy!"
"And I've been a beast to you!" persisted the Senior Surgeon. "From the
very first day you belonged to me I've been a--beast to you,--venting
brutally on your youth, on your sweetness, on your patience,--all the
work, the worry, the wear and tear, the abnormal strain and stress of
my disordered days--and years,--and I've let my little girl vent also on
you all the pang and pain of _her_ disordered days! And because in this
great, gloomy, rackety house it seemed suddenly like a miracle from
heaven to have service that was soft-footed, gentle-handed,
pleasant-hearted, I've let you shoulder all the hideous drudgery,--the
care,--one horrid homely task after another piling up-up-up--till you
dropped in your tracks yesterday--still smiling!"
"But I got a good deal out of it, even so, sir!" protested the White
Linen Nurse. "See, sir!" she smiled. "I've got real lines in my
face--now--like other women! I'm not a doll any more! I'm not a--"
"Yes!" groaned the Senior Surgeon. "And I might just as kindly have
carved those lines with my knife! But I was going to make it all up to
you to-day!" he hurried. "I swear I was! Even in one short little week I
could have done it! You wouldn't have known me! I was going to take you
away,--just you and me! I would have been a Saint! I swear I would! I
would have given you such a great, wonderful, child-hearted holiday--as
you never dreamed of in all your unselfish life! A holiday all
_you--you--you!_ You could have--dug in the sand if you'd wanted to!
Gad! I'd have dug in the sand--if you'd wanted me to! And now it's all
gone from me, all the will, all the sheer positive self-assurance that I
could have carried the thing through--absolutely selflessly. That little
girl's sneering taunt? The ghost of her mother--in that taunt? God! When
anybody knocks you just in your decency it doesn't harm you specially!
But when they knock you in your Wanting-To-Be-Decent it--it undermines
you somewhere. I don't know exactly how! I'm nothing but a man
again--now, just a plain, every day, greedy, covetous, physical man--on
the edge of a holiday, the first clean holiday in twenty years,--that he
no longer dares to take!"
A little swayingly the White Linen Nurse shifted her standing weight
from one foot to the other.
"I'm sorry, sir!" said the White Linen Nurse. "I'd like to have seen a
roller-coaster, sir!"
Just for an instant a gleam of laughter went brightening across the
Senior Surgeon's brooding face, and was gone again.
"Rae Malgregor, come here!" he ordered quite sharply.
Very softly, very glidingly, like the footfall of a person who has never
known heels, the White Linen Nurse came forward swiftly and sliding in
cautiously between the Senior Surgeon and his desk, stood there with her
back braced against the desk, her fingers straying idly up and down the
edges of the desk, staring up into his face all readiness, all
attention, like a soldier waiting further orders.
So near was she that he could almost hear the velvet heart-throb of
her,--the little fluttering swallow,--yet by some strange, persistent
aloofness of her, some determinate virginity, not a fold of her gown,
not an edge, not a thread, seemed to even so much as graze his knee,
seemed to even so much as shadow his hand,--lest it short-circuit
thereby the seething currents of their variant emotions.
With extraordinary intentness for a moment the Senior Surgeon sat
staring into the girl's eyes, the blue, blue eyes too full of childish
questioning yet to flinch with either consciousness or embarrassment.
"After all, Rae Malgregor," he smiled at last, faintly--"After all, Rae
Malgregor,--Heaven knows when I shall ever get--another holiday!"
"Yes, sir?" said the White Linen Nurse.
With apparent irrelevance he reached for his ivory paper-cutter and
began bending it dangerously between his adept fingers.
"How long have you been with me, Rae Malgregor?" he asked quite
abruptly.
"Four months--actually with you, sir," said the White Linen Nurse.
"Do you happen to remember the exact phrasing of my--proposal of
marriage to you?" he asked shrewdly.
"Oh, yes, sir!" said the White Linen Nurse. "You called it 'general
heartwork for a family of two'!"
A little grimly before her steady gaze the Senior Surgeon's own eyes
fell, and rallied again almost instantly with a gaze as even and direct
as hers.
"Well," he smiled. "Through the whole four months I seem to have kept my
part of the contract all right--and held you merely as a--drudge in my
home. Have you then decided, once and for all time,--whether you are
going to stay on with us--or whether you will 'give notice' as other
drudges have done?"
With a little backward droop of one shoulder the White Linen Nurse began
to finger nervously at the desk behind her, and turning half way round
as though to estimate what damage she was doing, exposed thus merely the
profile of her pink face, of her white throat, to the Senior Surgeon's
questioning eyes.
"I shall never--give notice, sir!" fluttered the white throat.
"Are you perfectly sure?" insisted the Senior Surgeon.
The pink in the White Linen Nurse's profiled cheek deepened a little.
"Perfectly sure, sir!" attested the carmine lips.
Like the crack of a pistol the Senior Surgeon snapped the ivory paper
cutter in two.
"All right then!" he said. "Rae Malgregor, look at me! Don't take your
eyes from mine, I say! Rae Malgregor, if I should decide in my own mind,
here and now, that it was best for you--as well as for me--that you
should come away with me now--for this week,--not as my guest as I had
planned,--but as my wife,--even if you were not quite ready for it in
your heart,--even if you were not yet remotely ready for it,--would you
come because I told you to come?"
Heavily under her white, white eyelids, heavily under her black, black
lashes, the girl's eyes struggled up to meet his own.
"Yes, sir," whispered the White Linen Nurse.
Abruptly the Senior Surgeon pushed back his chair from the desk, and
stood up. The important decision once made, no further finessing of
words seemed either necessary or dignified to him.
"Go and pack your suit-case quickly then!" he ordered. "I want to get
away from here within half an hour!"
But before the girl had half crossed the room he called to her suddenly,
his whole bearing and manner miraculously changed, and his face in that
moment as haggard as if a whole lifetime's struggle was packed into it.
"Rae Malgregor," he drawled mockingly. "This thing shall be--barter way
through to the end,--with the credit always on your side of the account.
In exchange for the gift--of yourself--your--wonderful self--and the
trust that goes with it, I will give you,--God help me,--the ugliest
thing in my life. And God knows I have broken faith with myself once or
twice but--never have I broken my word to another! From now on,--in
token of your trust in me,--for whatever the bitter gift is worth to
you,--as long as you stay with me,--my Junes shall be yours--to do
with--as you please!"
"What, sir?" gasped the White Linen Nurse. "_What_, sir?"
Softly, almost stealthily, she was half way back across the room to him,
when she stopped suddenly and threw out her arms with a gesture of
appeal and defiance.
"All the same, sir!" she cried passionately, "all the same, sir,--the
place is too hard for the small pay I get! Oh, I will do what I
promised!" she attested with increasing passion. "I will never leave
you! And I will mother your little girl! And I will servant your big
house! And I will go with you wherever you say! And I will be to you
whatever you wish! And I will never flinch from any hardship you impose
on me--nor whine over any pain,--on and on and on--all my days--all my
years--till I drop in my tracks again and--die--as you say 'still
smiling'! All the same!" she reiterated wildly, "the place is too hard!
It always was too hard! It always will be too hard--for such small pay!"
"For such small pay?" gasped the Senior Surgeon.
Around his heart a horrid clammy chill began to settle. Sickeningly
through his brain a dozen recent financial transactions began to
rehearse themselves.
"You mean, Miss Malgregor," he said a bit brokenly. "You mean--that
I--haven't been generous enough with you?"
"Yes, sir," faltered the White Linen Nurse.
All the storm and passion died suddenly from her, leaving her just a
frightened girl again, flushing pink-white, pink-white, pink-white,
before the Senior Surgeon's scathing stare. One step, two steps, three,
she advanced towards him.
"Oh, I mean, sir," she whispered, "oh, I mean, sir,--that I'm just an
ordinary, ignorant country girl and you--are further above me than the
moon from the sea! I couldn't expect you to--love me, sir! I couldn't
even dream of your loving me! _But I do think you might like me just a
little bit with your heart!_"
"What?" flushed the Senior Surgeon. "_What?_"
Whacketty-bang against the window pane sounded the Little Crippled
Girl's knuckled fists! Darkly against the window pane squashed the
Little Crippled Girl's staring face.
"Father!" screamed the shrill voice. "Father! There's a white lady here
with two black ladies washing the breakfast dishes! Is it Aunt Agnes?"
With a totally unexpected laugh, with a totally unexpected desire to
laugh, the Senior Surgeon strode across the room and unlocked his door.
Even then his lips against the White Linen Nurse's ear made just a
whisper, not a kiss.
"God bless you!--_hurry!_" he said. "And let's get out of here before
any telephone message catches me!"
Then almost calmly he walked out on the piazza, and greeted his
sister-in-law.
"Hello, Agnes!" he said.
"Hello, yourself!" smiled his sister-in-law.
"How's everything?" he enquired politely.
"How's everything with you?" parried his sister-in-law.
Idly for a few moments the Senior Surgeon threw out stray crumbs of
thought to feed the conversation, while smilingly all the while from her
luxuriant East Indian chair his sister-in-law sat studying the general
situation. The Senior Surgeon's sister-in-law was always studying
something. Last year it was archaeology,--the year before,
basketry,--this year it happened to be eugenics, or something funny like
that,--next year again it might be book-binding.
"So you and your pink and white shepherdess are going off on a little
trip together?" she queried banteringly. "The girl's a darling,
Lendicott! I haven't had as much sport in a long time as I had that
afternoon last June when I came in my best calling-clothes and--helped
her paint the kitchen woodwork! And I had come prepared to be a bit
nasty, Lendicott! In all honesty, Lendicott, I might just as well 'fess
up that I had come prepared to be just a little bit nasty!"
"She seems to have a way," smiled the Senior Surgeon, "she seems to have
a way of disarming people's unpleasant intentions."
A trifle quizzically for an instant the woman turned her face to the
Senior Surgeon's. It was a worldly face, a cold-featured, absolutely
worldly face, with a surprisingly humorous mouth that warmed her nature
just about as cheer fully, and just about as effectually, as one open
fireplace warms a whole house. Nevertheless one often achieved much
comfort by keeping close to "Aunt Agnes's" humorous mouth, for Aunt
Agnes knew a thing or two,--Aunt Agnes did,--and the things that she
made a point of knowing were conscientiously amiable.
"Why, Lendicott Faber," she rallied him now. "Why, you're as nervous as
a school-boy! Why, I believe--I believe that you're going courting!"
More opportunely than any man could have dared to hope, the White Linen
Nurse appeared suddenly on the scene in her little blue serge
wedding-suit with her traveling-case in her hand. With a gasp of relief
the Senior Surgeon took her case and his own and went on down the path
to his car and his chauffeur leaving the two women temporarily alone.
When he returned to the piazza the Woman-of-the-World and the
Girl-not-at-all-of-the-World were bidding each other a really
affectionate good-by, and the woman's face looked suddenly just a little
bit old but the girl's cheeks were most inordinately blooming.
In unmistakable friendliness his sister-in-law extended her hand to him.
"Good-by, Lendicott, old man!" she said. "And good luck to you!" A
little slyly out of her shrewd gray eyes, she glanced up sideways at
him. "You've got the devil's own temper, Lendicott dear," she teased,
"and two or three other vices probably, and if rumor speaks the truth
you've run a-muck more than once in your life,--but there's one thing I
will say for you,--though it prove you a dear Stupid: you never were
over-quick to suspect that any woman could possibly be in love with
you!"
"To what woman do you particularly refer?" mocked the Senior Surgeon
impatiently.
Quite brazenly to her own heart which never yet apparently had stirred
the laces that enshrined it, his sister-in-law pointed with persistent
banter.
"Maybe I refer to--myself," she laughed, "and maybe to the only--other
lady present!"
"Oh!" gasped the White Linen Nurse.
"You do me much honor, Agnes," bowed the Senior Surgeon. Quite
resolutely he held his gaze from following the White Linen Nurse's
quickly averted face.
A little oddly for an instant the older woman's glance hung on his.
"More honor perhaps than you think, Lendicott Faber!" she said, and kept
right on smiling.
"Eh?" jerked the Senior Surgeon. Restively he turned to the White Linen
Nurse.
Very flushingly on the steps the White Linen Nurse knelt arguing with
the Little Crippled Girl.
"Your father and I are--going away," she pleaded. "Won't
you--please--kiss us good-by?"
"I've only got one kiss," sulked the Little Crippled Girl.
"Give it to your--father!" pleaded the White Linen Nurse.
Amazingly all in a second the ugliness vanished from the little face.
Dartlingly like a bird the Child swooped down and planted one large
round kiss on the Senior Surgeon's astonished boot.
"Beautiful Father!" she cried, "I kiss your feet!"
Abruptly the Senior Surgeon plunged from the step and started down the
walk. His cheek-bones were quite crimson.
Two or three rods behind him the White Linen Nurse followed falteringly.
Once she stopped to pick up a tiny stick or a stone. And once she
dallied to straighten out a snarled spray of red and brown woodbine.
Missing the sound or the shadow of her the Senior Surgeon turned
suddenly to wait. So startled was she by his intentness, so flustered,
so affrighted, that just for an instant the Senior Surgeon thought that
she was going to wheel in her tracks and bolt madly back to the house.
Then quite unexpectedly she gave an odd, muffled little cry, and ran
swiftly to him like a child, and slipped her bare hand trustingly into
his. And they went on together to the car.
With his foot already half lifted to the step the Senior Surgeon turned
abruptly around and lifted his hat and stood staring back bareheaded for
some unexplainable reason at the two silent figures on the piazza.
"Rae," he said perplexedly, "Rae, I don't seem to know just why--but
somehow I'd like to have you kiss your hand to Aunt Agnes!"
Obediently the White Linen Nurse withdrew her fingers from his and
wafted two kisses, one to "Aunt Agnes" and one to the Little Crippled
Girl.
Then the White Linen Nurse and the Senior Surgeon climbed up into the
tonneau of the car where they had never, never sat alone before, and the
Senior Surgeon gave a curt order to his man and the big car started off
again into--interminable spaces.
Mutely without a word, without a glance passing between them the Senior
Surgeon held out his hand to her once more, as though the absence of her
hand in his was suddenly a lonesomeness not to be endured again while
life lasted.
Whizz--whizz--whizz--whirr--whirr--whirr the ribbony road began to roll
up again on that hidden spool under the car.
When the chauffeur's mind seemed sufficiently absorbed in speed and
sound the Senior Surgeon bent down a little mockingly and mumbled his
lips inarticulately at the White Linen Nurse.
"See!" he laughed. "I've got a text, too, to keep my courage up! Of
course you look like an angel!" he teased closer and closer to her
flaming face. "But all the time to myself--to reassure myself--I just
keep saying--' Bah! She 's nothing but a Woman--nothing but a
Woman--nothing but a Woman'!"
Within the Senior Surgeon's warm, firm grasp the White Linen Nurse's
calm hand quickened suddenly like a bud forced precipitously into full
bloom.
"Oh, don't--talk, sir," she whispered. "Oh, don't talk, sir!
Just--listen!"
"Listen? Listen to what?" laughed the Senior Surgeon.
From under the heavy lashes that shadowed the flaming cheeks the Soul of
the Girl who was to be his peered up at the Soul of the Man who was to
be hers,--_and saluted what she saw!_
"Oh, my heart, sir!" whispered the White Linen Nurse. "Oh, my heart! My
heart! my _heart_!"
THE END
End of Project Gutenberg's The White Linen Nurse, by Eleanor Hallowell Abbott