The doctor found me "over-treated" this morning and advised a day of
quiet, with a couple of hours on the roof-garden or under the trees.
I have heard at various times sighs of weariness or discontent or pain
issuing from the room opposite mine, and this afternoon when Miss
Blossom had gone into Number 19 to sit with the haughty Mrs.
Chittenden-Ffollette I stole across the corridor and glanced in at the
half-open door of Number 18.
The quaintest girl raised herself from a mound of sofa-pillows and
exclaimed: "Why, you beautiful thing! Are you Number 17? I didn't know
you looked like that!"
"It's very kind of you," I answered, blushing at this outspoken
greeting; "but I am not beautiful in the least; it is because you do
not expect much from a person who has just crept out of bed. I don't
look any better when I am dressed for a party."
"You don't need to," she said. "Now get on my bed and cuddle under the
afghan and we'll talk till Miss Blossom comes back. Won't she beat you
for being out of your room? Why are you here? You haven't the least
resemblance to a rest cure! What is the matter with you?"
"Backache, sideache, shoulderache, headache, sensation of handcuffs on
wrists, balls and chains on ankles, lack of appetite, and insomnia."
"Is that all? Haven't you any disease?"
"I believe not," I answered humbly, "but the effect is the same as if
I had. Why are you here?" I asked in return, as I looked admiringly at
her shining brown hair, plump, rosy cheeks, and dancing eyes.
"I came here, so to speak, in response to an ideal; not my ideal--I
never have any--but Laura Simonds's. She is my dearest friend and one
of the noblest girls you ever knew. She said the separation from the
world would do us both good, and so it might if she could have stayed
to keep me company. Now she has the world and I have the separation."
"She isn't here, then?"
"No, worse luck! She is always working and planning for the good of
others, but she is constantly meeting with ingratitude and
misunderstanding. She had just brought me here when she was
telegraphed for to turn about and go home. You see she had sent two
ailing slum children to be taken care of at her house, and it proved
to be scarlet fever, and, of course, her stepmother took it the first
thing--she's a hateful person and takes everything she can get--and
then the cook followed suit. Now they blame Laura and she has to find
trained nurses and settle everything before she comes back to me."
"Then you're not an invalid? I thought you were in pain and couldn't
reach the bell. That's the reason I looked in."
"Oh, dear, no, I was only yawning! I came for what Laura calls the
healing influence of solitude, but Laura thought as the place was so
expensive, and treatment was included, we'd better take Turkish baths,
massage, and electricity, they're so good for the complexion. I have a
little table to myself in the convalescents' dining-room and haven't
made any acquaintances. I can't stand their sweetbread complexions and
their double chins. The patients are all so fat they might sing Isaac
Watts' hymn in unison: 'Much of my time has run to waist.'"
"It is not an inspiring assemblage," I agreed, "though I haven't seen
them all together, as you have."
"And they think of nothing but themselves, which is exactly what I
want to think about--myself, I mean. There's one charming girl on this
floor. Something's the matter with her solar plexus and they won't
allow her to talk, so we have had some nice conversations in the
silent hour. They've told me now I mustn't call again; it seems that I
was too exciting. Tell me something about yourself, Vashti--I am sure
that's your name, or Semiramis or Zenobia or Judith, and if it isn't
one or another of those I don't want to hear what it is, for you
wouldn't look like it."
Just here a page brought in a letter which she glanced through with an
"Excuse me, please."
"Oh, dear! Now Laura can't come to-morrow! She is certainly the most
unfortunate being in the universe. She became very much interested in
a deaf man that she met in her settlement work, and so as to give the
poor thing employment she appointed him Superintendent of the Working
Boys' Club. Now the working boys refuse to play with him and the
directors have had a meeting asking Laura to remove him at once. I do
think they might have endured him one season when I gave him a
twenty-dollar ear-trumpet, but some people are utterly unreasonable;
and here I am, in need of advice every moment, and Laura kept in the
city!"
"Haven't you any family?"
"Not a soul; have you?"
"No one but a cousin."
"I believe nobody nice and interesting has a family nowadays. Laura
has no one but an uncongenial stepmother, and that is the reason we
are so intimate. I am so giddy and frivolous, and Laura is so noble
and self-sacrificing that I try to form myself on her now and then,
when I'm not too busy."
"You live with her, do you?"
"Oh, no! I don't live anywhere in particular. Of course I have a house
and a lady housekeeper, but she doesn't count. I've been staying
mostly with a Mrs. Beckett, an old friend of my mother's. She is the
dearest and loveliest woman in the world and I can't bear to be away
from her."
"Why can't she join forces with you if you are so alone in the
world?"
"Because there's a son."
"Is he too young, or too old, to join forces?"
"No, he's just right, and he'd be only too glad to join forces, or
anything else that had me in it, but he mustn't, and that's the reason
Laura made me come here!" And with this she punched the sofa-pillows
rebelliously, looking more like an enraged Angora kitten than anything
else.
"It's your hour for cold spray," said Jimmy, the page-boy, peeping in
at the crack of the door.
"I'll come!" she responded unwillingly. "Now do steal in again," she
whispered, turning to me, "for I must talk to somebody, and if Laura
could see you I know she would think you safer than anybody here."
That afternoon, as I swung in my hammock in the grove below the
sanitarium, I looked up at its three stories of height and its rows
upon rows of windows, and wondered how many cases of neurasthenia
under its roof were traceable to a conflict between love and
conscience. "I begin to have an interest in that chatterbox neighbor
of mine," I thought drowsily, "and that, after vowing not to make an
acquaintance in this place. Love will be a side dish, not the roast,
in her bill of fare, if I am any judge of character, and why does her
Laura attempt to stem the natural tide of events? It is almost wicked
of the Fates to give such a featherhead any problems to solve; she
ought to have her what's-his-name, Beckett, if she wants him,
particularly if he wants her. As for the noble Laura, I long to make
her acquaintance. I can almost hear the uncongenial stepmother, the
feverish cook, and the infuriated directors, clamoring for a
providence to remove her from their field of vision, and substitute
some thoroughly practical and ignoble person in her stead."
* * * * *