THE WRECK OF HIS HOUSE OF CARDS
Sanderson awoke with the sun streaming in through the high window and
lying like a golden mantle flung across the floor and bed. Otherwise
everything in the room seemed glaringly white. It was mid-afternoon,
and the westering orb had full command of this side of the hospital
wing.
He knew at once where he was. There was no wild start and "Where am
I?" cry. He merely looked up at the rather sturdy figure in voluminous
apron and cap standing within the range of his vision, and grinned.
"I say," he croaked, "that must have been some bump. How hot I am! Can
I have a drink, Nurse?"
She seemed to have foreseen this first request. In a moment the glass
and tube were at his lips. She would not allow him to raise his head
from the pillow. As he drank slowly the refreshing contents of the
glass he examined her face with deeper appreciation than Belinda
Melnotte imagined.
"I say," he sighed finally, "that was great! When did they bring me
in?"
"This morning."
"I--I can't remember it," he murmured. "But I must have come down
before daylight."
"You were brought downtown at nine o'clock," she told him cheerfully.
"They found you and your machine in Van Cortlandt Park."
"Is _that_ as far as I got?"
"And quite far enough, I should say," she quickly commented, and with
disapproval. "Flying at night! What reckless creatures you airmen are!"
His face was suddenly twisted into a grimace of pain, but he managed to
chuckle.
"Oh, some of us expect soon to be regular 'fly-by-nights.'" Then,
quickly: "Ah, I remember. By jove, she slapped me!"
The nurse recalled his babblings when he was brought in, and laughed
her low, delicious laugh.
"I suppose it was only a lover's quarrel," she suggested.
His eyes twinkled, too. "She's a cranky old thing. I ought to jilt
her. And after this--well, she slapped me with that propeller good and
plenty. How much will it set me back, Nurse? How long must I lie here?
Is that shoulder seriously hurt?"
"Nothing is broken," she assured him cheerfully.
"Except my head," and he felt the bandage tenderly.
"Oh, that's nothing."
"Ow! I bet that hurt me," he grinned. "So complimentary----"
"Now I must take your temperature. You may talk no longer," she said
severely.
He watched her with a rather quizzical gaze as she moved about the room
while he "smoked the glass pipe." If she apprehended his scrutiny she
was so careless of it--or so well balanced of mind--that she displayed
not the slightest self-consciousness.
He found himself cataloging in his rather hazy thoughts the several
attributes of person and manner that made Belinda Melnotte an
attractive and most refreshing personality to him. Her calm was
matronly; but her exquisite complexion, her ripe lips, the tendrils of
hair that clustered about the edge of her cap, her full and brilliant
eyes, were all virginal.
She moved with an air of perfect self-confidence. Her hand was not
small, but was very soft, very beautifully formed, and had the firm
clasp of a man's. Her bared forearm and wrist, tapering from the elbow,
was worthy of being modeled. The shadows that lay in the curves of her
neck lent the appearance of ivory to the flesh.
Sanderson was distinctly not given to worship of the feminine; but
this very capable-looking and particularly beautiful nurse held his
interest from his first conscious moment. It was not mere prettiness
or sex-charm; she was, in truth, downright beautiful.
"Magnificent!" the patient told himself, and then wandered off into a
feverish state of half-slumber in which the nurse was only one of many
characters that flitted across the screen of his imagination.
He was conscious at one time of a grave-looking man standing at the
foot of the bed and pulling his Vandyke beard while he talked in jerky
sentences to the calm-faced nurse.
"Yes, it is malarial without doubt. I know what those aviation grounds
are like. A swamp on one side--all undrained land thereabout. Full
of malaria. He likely had a high temperature when he went up in his
machine."
Sanderson thought he burst out laughing. He tried to tell the doctor
that going up in a cranky aeroplane would give anybody a high
temperature.
"With the complication of his wounds he is likely to have a siege of
it," the physician said to the nurse. "Are you in charge?"
"Day duty for the present, Doctor Potter."
"Ah--yes. When you are relieved, impress upon the night nurse that she
is to call the doctor on duty if there is the least change. I fancy he
is quite out of his head."
He was out of his head. He next awoke in the night and a plain-featured
nurse endeavored to give him his medicine.
"Say," he demanded, "where's the peach?"
"Still hanging on the tree, boy, as far as you are concerned, I fancy,"
she replied, and tried again to give him his medicine. He knocked the
spoon and glass to the far side of Room A-a.
But Miss Trivett was a very capable nurse, if lacking in personal
pulchritude. She patiently prepared the draught again and, seizing his
nose suddenly between thumb and finger, forced the dose down his throat.
"What do you know about that?" sputtered Sanderson. "You--you are own
sister to that cranky old machine of mine! _She_ slapped me----" and he
rambled off into a repetition of the story of his accident.
His temperature was high, and Miss Trivett reported this to the doctor.
It was a fight then for the aviator's life; but he did not realize how
ill he was until, after a week or more, he came out of the Vale of
Delirium in which he had wandered and beheld Belinda Melnotte clearly
again.
"Say!"
The weakness of his voice so startled him that he almost lost
consciousness before he could express his desire. The nurse was quickly
at his side and, stooping, placed a firm hand upon his breast. Later he
realized that the gesture betrayed the fact that the strong, beautiful
hand had often held him down on his pillow while he was delirious.
"Say! I--I----When do I eat, Nurse?"
She smiled upon him, and Sanderson thought her face fairly glorified
thereby.
"You may eat now if you feel like it."
"Bully!" he whispered. "Porterhouse steak and a mug of musty----"
"In liquid and concentrated form," she interposed, and soon the glass
of milk and Vichy water was at his lips.
It wearied him even to swallow that. He lay and watched her moving
quietly about. When she laid a cool palm upon his brow to mark if the
fever had subsided, he could have asked her to keep it there.
He had never experienced such a sense of weakness before--at least,
within his adult remembrance. It was a curious thing--this sense of
dependence upon a woman. And a woman so much stronger physically than
himself.
Previous to this time many girls had seemed to Frank Sanderson soft
little things--rather useless "play-toys"--were the truth to be told.
He could not remember his mother. He was the youngest of a family of
boys brought up in a somewhat haphazard fashion by a father who had
loved their mother too well to bring another woman into his life.
The young man's social instincts were not well developed. He had
been sent to a boys' school, and then to college. The athletic field
had claimed his interest rather than fraternity life and social
entertainments. And he had always looked with scorn upon those of his
mates who allowed themselves to be lionized by silly women.
For two years now he had been devoted to aviation. With a moderate
income at his disposal, and no expensive tastes to gratify, he was able
to follow this bent. The elder Sanderson was dead. Frank's brothers
were scattered--all in business in various cities. Aside from his
fellow aviators, the members of the two or three clubs he belonged to,
and a few boyhood friends, he was a man alone.
Now began for him a series of incidents that were both strange and
delightful. He had never been so near, or so familiar with, such a girl
as this before.
"So different from Stella!" he murmured to himself. "Vastly different
from Stella!"
The wound in his shoulder was healing nicely; but as an aid to
this improvement he had to be moved with extreme care. Belinda
Melnotte's strength, as well as her unstinted attention, was of great
assistance--greater than the mere medical skill expended upon the case.
The black-bearded, black-eyed surgeon came occasionally and examined
the wound; but it was the nurse who always dressed it. The cut upon
Sanderson's forehead was of course soon healed.
"We might graft a bit on this shoulder," the surgeon suggested, "and so
leave a less puckered scar. But the wound heals nicely. Hum!"
"'Hum!' it is, Doc," quoted Sanderson with a grin. "That would keep me
here longer, wouldn't it?"
"Yes."
"And I've been here too long already. It is now a month. The other boys
must have sailed. I guess we'll let it go as it lies, Doc. I shall not
dress _décolleté_, so the scar won't show," and he grinned again.
He noted how this stern and rather sour-visaged surgeon treated the
nurse. It was with a measure of familiarity that seemed to betray an
association beyond daily intercourse in the wards of the hospital.
The nurse seldom spoke to the Herr Doktor; but the latter watched her
continually, and Sanderson was troubled in his mind.
Belinda Melnotte was the most companionable of nurses--bright, joyous,
kind. When she was alone with him, or if the matron or other nurses
or members of the medical staff were in the room, she was the life of
the company. But upon the entrance of Doctor Herschall she changed.
She seemed to droop, or close within herself. She listened to the Herr
Doktor respectfully, and had nothing to say to the patient. The latter
grew more and more puzzled.
"How came you to take up nursing, Miss Melnotte?" he asked her one day.
"Because I had nursed my father so long that, when he died, I was
lonely with nothing in particular to do. Besides, one must have some
occupation. Why did you take up aviation, Mr. Sanderson?"
"For somewhat the same reason," he said, smiling. "One must have some
occupation, as you say. But going up in the air--and falling down
again--seems to me a more exciting way of passing the time than this,"
and his gesture included the almost bare and rather cheerless room.
"Ah, but we nurses live the other side of it," and she laughed. "We
do not suffer the pain, or live altogether within these sanitary and
immaculate walls."
"You serve long enough hours, I fancy," Sanderson said, with
appreciation. "And the draft upon your sympathies! Or am I
exceptionally favored, Miss Melnotte? Do you treat all your patients so
sweetly and generously as you do me?"
A warmer color flooded into her cheeks; but she still smiled.
"That is a part of our trade, Mr. Sanderson. Cheerfulness is more
potent than drugs."
"Does Doctor Herschall say that?"
She had turned away so that he could not see her countenance. But
he knew she resented the remark, for she changed the topic of
conversation instantly.
"Tell me what it feels like to be up in the air, Mr. Sanderson."
"Just like that," he chuckled. "You know you're up in the air, and if
you think of how far below the earth is, you won't think of much else,
I assure you."
"Oh, it seems very dangerous."
"Not in every way. The driver of a racing auto is in much greater
danger. Little chance of collision up yonder, unless two pilots allow
their planes to draw so near to each other that the suction of the
propellers causes a catastrophe."
"Just as the suction of a passing train may draw one under the wheels?"
"Exactly. But I feared all manner of things when I first went up as
a passenger," he pursued. "The pilot was so matter-of-fact that I
thought him reckless. I was scarcely seated and my belt hooked when we
were off. I heard the wheels bounding along the ground. Then the noise
stopped--we were in the air."
"Oh!"
"Yes. I thought I should feel vertigo, as I often did when at an
altitude. I dared not look out of the machine until we were perhaps
five hundred feet up. Then, to my surprise, I felt not the least
sensation of height. The ground seemed merely moving slowly under and
away from me. We kept climbing. I could see the country for miles and
miles."
"How wonderful!"
As the days passed and Sanderson grew stronger, there was less danger
of his exhausting himself by talking. Nurse Melnotte was really having
an easy time.
"A soft snap," little Sue Blaine declared enviously. "And such an
interesting patient, too! You always _do_ have all the luck, Belinda."
"Do you think so?" came, with her quiet smile.
"He's an awfully nice fellow. Believe _me_--I'd set my cap for him if
I'd had the luck to be detailed on the case. Think! An aviator!"
"It's a very pretty cap--and on a very pretty head, dear," laughed
Belinda.
If she felt any interest in Sanderson other than interest in the young
man out of the air as a patient, she did not betray it to either her
fellow nurses or to the patient himself. But if she was out of the
young man's sight in the daytime, he missed her. Nor did he succeed in
hiding his admiration from other eyes. One evening when she left him
in Miss Trivett's care, the night nurse remarked his gaze fixed upon
Belinda as she departed.
Miss Trivett was a good nurse, but she was brusque. The patients never
made love to her.
"I often wonder," she scoffed on this occasion, "if all the
soft-headed men are brought to this hospital. Or does bringing them
here make them soft-headed?"
"Why for the slam?" Sanderson asked chuckling. The night nurse and her
caustic speeches amused him.
"Oh, I see you making sheep's-eyes," she declared. "You fall for a
pretty face like the rest of them."
"Oh! Miss Melnotte? But she possesses more attractions than a pretty
face," corrected the young man coolly.
"True. And do you suppose you are the first man to find it out?"
The thought had not before impressed him.
"I suppose if she is attractive in my sight, she must be in the sight
of others," he said slowly.
"I should say! She's probably made desperate love to by an average of
a patient a week. _That's_ the meaning of my 'slam,' as you call it.
It's just a bit of a warning, my boy," went on Miss Trivett cheerfully.
"Beauty is more of a liability than an asset to a nurse--a nurse who is
really in earnest, I mean. And Miss Melnotte does not scamp her work.
Why, she is the most popular of us all with the surgical staff!"
Sanderson was quick to seize the opportunity to ask a question that had
long been trembling on his lips. Yet he put it carelessly.
"That black-browed German seems to be mighty fond of her."
"The Herr Doktor? Now you've said something, boy. Anybody can see that."
"Are they engaged--or anything?"
"Shouldn't wonder," Miss Trivett said briskly. "She's almost through
here at the hospital, you know. The Powers That Be frown upon anything
sentimental between the doctors and members of the nursing force. So
they're very whist about it. She's likely to remove her cap and apron
for good in a few days--and become, perhaps, Frau Doktor."
Sanderson fell silent, and Miss Trivett shortly screened the night lamp
from his eyes, thinking he had fallen asleep. Behind the young airman's
closed lids a jumble of thoughts were beating in his brain. When Doctor
Potter came to read the chart at the head of his bed in the morning he
scrutinized it for a second time.
"Tut! tut!" he muttered. Then: "What is the meaning of this sudden rise
in temperature? Didn't you sleep well last night, Mr. Sanderson?"