HEAVY LOCAL MAILS
Anne Linton lifted her head ever so little from the allowed incline of
her pillow in the Good Samaritan Hospital. She peered anxiously at the
tray being borne toward her by Selina Arden, most scrupulously
conscientious of all trained nurses, and never more rigidly exact than
when the early diet of patients in convalescence was concerned.
"Is that all?" murmured Anne in a tone of anguish.
"All!" replied Miss Arden firmly. But she smiled, showing her perfect
white teeth--and showing also her sympathy by the tone in which she
added: "Poor child!"
"Shall I never, never, never," asked the patient, hungrily surveying the
tray at close range, "have enough just to dull these pangs a little? Not
enough to satisfy me, of course, but just enough to take the edge off?"
"Very soon now," replied Miss Arden cheerily, "you shall have a pretty
good-sized portion of beefsteak, juicy and tender, and you shall eat it
all up--"
"And leave not a wrack behind," moaned Anne Linton, closing her eyes.
"But you are wrong, Miss Arden--I shall not eat it, I shall _gulp_
it--the way a dog does. I always wondered why a dog has no manners about
eating. I know now. He is so hungry his eyes eat it first, so his mouth
has no chance. Well, I'm certainly thankful for the food on this tray.
It's awfully good--what there is of it."
She consumed it, making the process as lingering as was consistent with
the ravaging appetite which was a real torture. When the last mouthful
had vanished she set her eyes upon the clock--the little travelling
clock which was Miss Arden's and which had ticked busily and cheerfully
through all those days of illness when Anne's eyes had never once lifted
to notice the passage of time.
"I was so long about it," said the girl gleefully, "that now it's only
two hours and forty minutes to the next refreshment station. I expect I
can keep on living till then if I use all my will power."
"And here's something to make you forget how long two hours and forty
minutes are."
Miss Arden went to the door and, returning, laid suddenly in Anne's arms
a great, fragrant mass of white bloom, at the smell and touch of which
she gave a half-smothered cry of rapture, and buried her face in the
midst of it. "White lilacs--oh, white lilacs! The dears--the loves! Oh,
where _did_ they come from?"
"There's a note that came with them," admitted Miss Arden presently,
when she had let the question go unanswered for some time, while Anne,
seeming to forget that she had asked it, smelled and smelled of the cool
white and green branches as if she could never have enough of them. Into
her eyes had leaped a strange look, as if some memory were connected
with these outdoor flowers which made them different for her from the
hothouse blooms, or even from the daffodils and tulips that had
alternated with the roses which had come often since her convalescence
began.
Anne reached up an eager hand for the note, a look of surprise on her
face. Miss Arden, looking back at her, noted how each day was helping to
remove the pallor and wanness from that face. At the moment, under the
caress of the lilacs and the surprise of the impending note, it was
showing once more a decided touch of its former beauty. Also she was
wearing a little invalid's wrap of lace and pink silk, given her by Mrs.
Burns, and this helped the effect.
Anne unfolded the note. Miss Arden went away with the empty tray, and
remained away some time. Miss Arden, as has been said before, was a
most remarkable nurse.
The note read thus:
The Next Corridor, 10:30 A.M.
DEAR MISS LINTON:
The time has come, it seems to me, for two patients who have
nothing to do but while away the hours for a bit longer, to
help each other out. What do you say? I suppose you don't know
that I've been lying flat on my back now for a fortnight,
getting over a rather bad spill from my car. I'm pretty
comfortable now, thank you, so don't waste a particle of
sympathy; but the hours must certainly drag for you as they do
for me, and my idea is that we ought to establish some sort of
system of intercommunication. I have an awfully obliging
nurse, and a young man with a fiddle here besides, and I'd
like to send you a short musicale when you feel up to it. Are
you fond of music? I have a notion you are. Franz will come
and play for you whenever you say. But besides that I'd
awfully like to have a note from you as soon as you are able
to write. I'll answer it, you know--and then you'll answer
that, perhaps--and so the hours will go by. I know this is a
rather free-and-easy-sounding proposition from a perfect
stranger, as I suppose you think me, but circumstances do
alter cases, you know, and if our circumstances can't alter
our cases, then it's no good being laid up!
Hearty congratulations on that raging appetite. You see Doctor
Burns is good enough to keep me informed as to how you come
on. You certainly seem to be coming on now. Please keep it up.
I shouldn't dare ask you to write to me if the Doctor hadn't
said you could--if you wouldn't do it enough to tire you.
So--I'm hoping.
Yours, under the same roof,
JORDAN KING.
"Good morning!" said a beloved voice from the doorway. Anne looked up
eagerly from her letter.
"Oh, Mrs. Burns--good morning! And won't you please stand quite still
for a minute while I look at you?"
Ellen laughed. To other people than Anne Linton she was always the
embodiment of quiet charm in her freshness of attire and air of general
daintiness. In the pale gray and white of her summer clothing, with a
spray of purple lilac tucked into her belt, she was a vision to rest the
eye upon. "You are looking ever so well yourself to-day," Ellen said as
she sat down close beside Anne, facing her. "Another week and you will
be showing us what you really look like."
"The little pink cover-up does me as much good as anything," declared
Anne. "I never thought I could wear pink with my carroty hair. But Miss
Arden says I can wear anything you say I can, and I believe her."
"Your hair is bronze, not carroty, and that apricot shade of pink tones
in with it beautifully. What a glorious mass of white lilacs! I never
saw any so fine."
"They're wonderful. I insisted on keeping them right here, I'm so fond of
the fragrance. They came from Mr. King," said Anne frankly. "And a note
from him says he's here in the hospital with an injured back. I'm so
sorry. Please tell me how badly he is hurt."
"He will have to be patient for some weeks longer, I believe, but there
is no permanent injury. Meanwhile, he is like any man confined, restless
for want of occupation. Still, he keeps his time pretty full." And Ellen
proceeded to recount the story of Franz, and of how Jordan King was
continuing here in the hospital to teach him to speak English, finding
him the quickest and most grateful of pupils.
"How splendid of him! He's going to send Franz to play for me. I can't
think of anything--except beefsteak--I should like so much!" and Anne
laughed, her face all alight with interest. But the next instant it
sobered. "Mrs. Burns," she said, "there's something I want to say very
much, and so far the Doctor hasn't let me. But I'm quite strong enough
now to begin to make plans, and one of them is this: The minute I'm able
to leave the hospital I want to go to some inexpensive place where I can
stay without bothering anybody. You have all been so wonderful to me I
can never express my gratitude, but I'm beginning to feel--oh, can't you
guess how anxious I am to be taking care of myself again? And I want you
to know that I have quite money enough to do it until I can go on with
my work."
Mrs. Burns looked at her. In the excitement of talking the girl's face
looked rounder and of a better colour than it had yet shown, and her
eyes were glowing, eyes of such beauty as are not often seen. But for
all that, she seemed like some lovely child who could no more take care
of itself than could a newborn kitten. Ellen laid one hand on hers.
"You are not to think about such things yet, dear," she said. "Do you
imagine we have not grown very fond of you, and would let you go off
into some place alone before you are fully yourself again? Not a bit of
it. As soon as you can leave here you are coming to me as my guest. And
when you are playing tennis with Bob, on our lawn, you may begin to talk
about plans for the future."
Anne stared back at her, a strange expression on her face. "Oh, no!" she
breathed.
"Oh, yes! You can't think how I am looking forward to it. Meanwhile--you
are not to tire yourself with talking. I only stopped for a minute, and
the Doctor is waiting by now. Good-bye, my dear." And before Anne could
protest she was gone, having learned, by experience, that the way to
terminate useless argument with the one who is not strong enough to be
allowed to argue is by making early escape.
That afternoon, having recovered from the two surprises of the morning,
Anne asked for pencil and paper. Miss Arden, supplying them, stipulated
that their use should cover but five minutes.
"It is one of the last things we let patients do," she said, "though it
is the thing they all want to do first. There is nothing so tiring as
letter writing."
"I'm not going to write a letter," Anne replied, "just a hail to a
fellow sufferer. Only I'm no sufferer, and I'm afraid he is."
She wrote her note, and it was presently handed to Jordan King. He had
wondered very much what sort of answer he should have, feeling that
nothing could reveal the sort of person this girl was so surely as a
letter, no matter how short. He had been sure he recognized education in
her speech, breeding in her manner, high intelligence as well as beauty
in her face, but--well, the letter would reveal. And so it did, though
it was written in a rather shaky hand, in pencil, on one of Miss Arden's
hospital record blanks--of all things!
DEAR MR. KING:
It is the most wonderful thing in the world to be sitting up
far enough to be able to write and tell you how sorry I am
that you are lying down. But Mrs. Burns assures me that you
are fast improving and that soon you will be about again.
Meanwhile you are turning your time of waiting to a glorious
account in teaching poor Franz to speak English. Surely he
must have been longing to speak it, so that he might tell you
the things in his heart--about that dreadful night. But I know
you don't want me to write of that, and I won't.
Of course I should care to have him play for me, and I hope
he may do it soon--to-morrow, perhaps. I wonder if he knows
the Schubert "_Frühlingstraum_"--how I should love to hear it!
As for your interesting plan for relieving the passing hours,
I should hardly be human if I did not respond to it! Only
please never write when you don't feel quite like it--and
neither will I.
The white lilacs were even more beautiful than the roses and
the daffodils. There was a long row of white lilac trees at
one side of a garden I used to play in--I shall never, never
forget what that fragrance was like after a rain! And now that
my sun is shining again--after the rain--you may imagine what
those white lilacs breathe of to me.
With the best of good wishes,
ANNE LINTON.
Jordan King read this note through three times before he folded it back
into its original creases. Then he shut it away in a leather-bound
writing tablet which lay by his side. "Franz," he said, addressing the
youth who was at this hour of the day his sole attendant, "can you play
Schubert's '_Frühlingstraum_'?"
He had to repeat this title several times, with varying accents, before
he succeeded in making it intelligible. But suddenly Franz leaped to an
understanding.
"Yess--yess--yess--yess--sair," he responded joyously, and made a dive
for his violin case.
"Softly, Franz," warned his master. As this was a word which had thus
far been often used in his education, on account of the fact that the
hospital did not belong exclusively to King--strange as that might seem
to Franz who worshipped him--it was immediately comprehended. Without
raising the tones of his instrument, Franz was able presently to make
clear to King that the music he was asked to play was of the best at his
command.
"No wonder she likes that," was King's inward comment. "It's a strange,
weird thing, yet beautiful in a haunting sort of way, I imagine, to a
girl like her, and I don't know but it would be to me if I heard it many
times--while I was smelling lilacs in the rain," he added, smiling to
himself.
That hint of a garden had rather taken hold of his imagination. More
than likely, he said to himself, it had been her own garden--only she
would not tell him so lest she seem to try to convey an idea of former
prosperity. A different sort of girl would have said "our garden."
* * * * *
Next morning, at the time of Mrs. Burns's visit to the hospital, King
sent Franz to play for Miss Linton. With her breakfast tray had come his
second note telling her of this intention, so she had two hours of
anticipation--a great thing in the life of a convalescent. With every
bronze lock in shining order, with the little wrap of apricot pink silk
and lace about her shoulders, with an extra pillow at her back, Miss
Anne Linton awaited the coming of the "Court Musician," as King had
called him.
"It's a very good thing Jord can't see her at this minute," observed
Burns to his wife as he met her in the hall outside the door. "The
prettiest convalescent has less appeal for a doctor than a young woman
of less good looks in strapping health--naturally, for he gets quite
enough of illness and the signs thereof. But to a lusty chap like King
Miss Anne's present frail appearance would undoubtedly enlist his
chivalry. Those are some eyes of hers, eh?"
"I think I have never seen more beautiful eyes," Ellen agreed heartily.
Her husband laughed. "I have," he said, and went his way, having no time
for morning musicales.
That afternoon Anne Linton, having had all her pillows removed and
having obediently lain still and silent for two long hours, was
permitted to sit up again and write a note to King to tell him of the
joy of the morning:
DEAR MR. KING:
It was as if the twilight were falling, with the stars coming
out one by one. By and by they were all shining, and I was on
a mountain top somewhere, with the wind blowing softly
against my face. It was dark and I was all alone, but I
didn't mind, for I was strong, strong again, and I knew I
could run down by and by and be with people. Then a storm came
on, and I lifted my face to if and loved it, and when it died
away the stars were shining again between the clouds.
Somewhere a little bird was singing--I opened my eyes just
there, and your Franz was looking at me and smiling, and I
smiled back. He seemed so happy to be making me happy--for he
was, of course. After a while it was dawn--the loveliest dawn,
all flushed with pink and silver, and I couldn't keep my eyes
shut any more for looking at the musician's face. He is a real
musician, you know, and the music he makes comes out of his
soul.
When it was all over and he and Mrs. Burns were gone, my tray
came in. This is a frightful confession, but I am not a real
musician; I merely love good music with some sort of
understanding of what it means to those who really care, as
Franz does. To me, after all the emotion, my tray looked like
a sort of solid rock that I could cling to. And I had a piece
of wonderful beefsteak--ah, now you are laughing! Never
mind--I'll show you the two scenes.
Upon the second sheet was something which made Jordan King open his
eyes. There were two little drawings--the simplest of pencil sketches,
yet executed with a spirit and skill which astonished him. The first was
of Franz himself, done in a dozen lines. There was no attempt at a
portrait, yet somehow Franz was there, in the very set of the head, the
angle of the lifted brow, the pose of the body, most of all in the
indication of the smiling mouth, the drooping eyelids. The second
picture was a funny sketch of a big-eyed girl devouring food from a
tray. Two lines made the pillows behind her, six outlined the tray, a
dozen more demonstrated plainly the famishing appetite with which the
girl was eating. It was all there--it was astonishing how it was all
there.
"My word!" he said as he laid down the sheets--and took them up again,
"that's artist work, whether she knows it or not. She must know it,
though, for she must have had training. I wonder where and how."
He called Miss Arden and showed her the sketches.
"Dear me, but they're clever," she said. "They look like a child's
work--and yet they aren't."
"I should say not," he declared very positively. "That sort of thing is
no child's work. That's what painters do when they're recording an
impression, and I've often looked in more wonder at such sketchy
outlines than at the finished product. To know how to get that
impression on paper so that it's unmistakable--I tell you that's
training and nothing else. I don't know enough about it to say it's
genius, too, yet I've had an artist friend tell me it cost him more to
learn to take the right sort of notes than to enlarge upon those notes
afterward."
When he wrote to Anne next morning--he was not venturing to ask more of
her than one exchange a day--he told her what he thought about those
sketches:
I've had that sheet pinned up at the foot of my bed ever since
it came, and I'm not yet tired of looking at it. You should
have seen Franz's face when I showed it to him. "Ze arteeste!"
he exclaimed, and laughed, and made eloquent gestures, by
means of which I judged he was trying to express you. He
looked as if he were trying to impress me with his own hair,
his eyes, his cheeks, his hands; but I knew well enough he
meant you. I gathered that he had been not ill pleased with
his visit to you, for he proposes another; in fact, I think he
would enjoy playing for you every day if you should care to
hear him so often. He does not much like to perform in the
wards, though he does it whenever I suggest it. He has
discovered that though they listen respectfully while he plays
his own beloved music, mostly they are happier when he gives
them a bit of American ragtime, or a popular song hit. His
distaste for that sort of thing is very funny. One would think
he had desecrated his beloved violin when he condescends to
it, for afterward he invariably gives it a special polishing
with the old silk handkerchief he keeps in the case--and Miss
Arden vows he washes his hands, too. Poor Franz! Your real
artist has a hard time of it in this prosaic world doesn't he?
The note ended by saying boldly that King would like another sketch
sometime, and he even ventured to suggest that he would enjoy seeing a
picture of that row of white lilac trees at the edge of the garden where
Anne used to play. It was two days before he got this, and meanwhile a
box of water colours had come into requisition. When the sheet of heavy
paper came to King he lay looking at it with eyes which sparkled.
At first sight it was just a blur of blues and greens, with irregular
patches of white, and gay tiny dashes of strong colour, pinks and
purples and yellows. But when, as Anne had bidden him, he held it at
arm's length he saw it all--the garden with its box-bordered beds full
of tall yellow tulips and pink and white and purple hyacinths--it was
easy to see that this was what they were, even from the dots and dashes
of colour; the hedge--it was a real hedge of white lilac trees, against
a spring sky all scudding clouds of gray. Like the sketch of Franz, its
charm lay entirely in suggestion, not in detail, but was none the less
real for that.
There was one thing which, to King's observant eyes, stood out plainly
from the little wash drawing. This garden was a garden of the rich, not
of the poor. Just how he knew it so well he could hardly have told,
after all, for there was no hint of house, or wall, or even
summer-house, sundial, terrace, or other significant sign. Yet it was
there, and he doubted if Anne Linton knew it was there, or meant to have
it so. Perhaps it was that lilac hedge which seemed to show so plainly
the hand of a gardener in the planting and tending. The question
was--was it her own garden in which she had played, or the garden of her
father's employer? Had her father been that gardener, perchance? King
instantly rejected this possibility.