CROSSED WIRES
There was a tiny apartment not too far from the hospital that Belinda
Melnotte called home for these two years of her hospital training. It
was presided over by Aunt Roberta.
Aunt Roberta was a short woman of brown complexion, with a buxom figure
laced tightly into corsets that kept her very erect even in a "sleepy
hollow" chair. She was always neatly gowned, neatly shod, and displayed
well-kept hands and a spotless apron. She did the work of the apartment
herself.
One afternoon and evening in each fortnight Belinda spent at home.
There was a great contrast in character between aunt and niece. Aunt
Roberta was all French; her niece displayed some Teutonic traits of
character.
Grandfather Melnotte and Grandfather Genau had both come to America
as young men. Belinda, as a second generation American girl, held few
prejudices of either nation. But Aunt Roberta had no good word now for
the Genaus.
"_Alboche_," she frequently said. "A brutal, stupid people. Your
Grandfather Genau was a gross man--he ate and drank e-_nor_-mously. He
died of an apoplexy."
"Poor man!" sighed her niece.
"And your Grandmother Genau was _huge_--she suffered of an avoirdupois.
She would have won a prize for flesh in a street fair--cer-tain-lee!"
"I fear I may be too stout," Belinda would say mildly.
Aunt Roberta had spent all her girlhood in a French convent at
Montreal. Then, for many years, she had lived in Paris. Until of late
she had spoken English so seldom that she used the language in a way
all her own--not brokenly or with much accent, but with most amusing
transpositions. She would have gladly spoken French altogether, only
when she undertook to do so Belinda would not reply.
"I am American--American, I tell you, Auntie!" the girl would cry. "We
speak English here in New York. That I am both German and French by
blood is enough. I will speak neither of those languages _now_--unless
I am obliged to."
She had refused to listen to her aunt's diatribes against the Germans
since the war had begun; but in truth she felt the two nationalities
of her forebears warring within her heart. She pitied both peoples
with all her sympathetic nature. She thought much on the unfortunates
struggling in the battle lines. Her hospital work broadened her
sympathy for all suffering. It is not always so. Some it makes callous.
As the end of Belinda Melnotte's two years of hospital probation drew
near, she felt stronger cords drawing her toward those centers of
activity, the field hospitals of France and Belgium. But she had not
mentioned this feeling to any one.
Those related to her by ties of blood were fighting on both sides in
the great struggle. There were two young cousins in the German ranks in
Northern France whom she had known and played with when they were all
three children--Paul Genau and Carl Baum. Her mother had taken her to
Germany several times.
In America Belinda had few relatives now save Aunt Roberta. After
her father's death she would have been quite alone had it not been
for the brisk, taut little _tante_. Mr. Melnotte had left no great
fortune to his only child; merely a comfortable income from well-placed
investments, enough for her simple needs and to spare for Aunt Roberta.
Although Aunt Roberta's tendencies were strongly aristocratic, she
admired Belinda's independent and practical nature. She was proud of
her niece for taking up a profession. Not that she expected Belinda
would remain in the work after obtaining her diploma.
"If we were in our own suffering coun-tree," she sighed frequently,
"your training and experience might be of value--yes! The poor soldiers
of France! Ah, they need the nurses! This great and rich United States,
that owes so much to _la belle_ France, doles out a little money
and a few blankets to our _poilus_--like giving coals and bread to
beggarwomen while France fights the battles of the world!"
Between such opinions as these of Tante Roberta and those expressed by
Mrs. Blythe, the hospital matron, Belinda was puzzled. Practical as she
was, her temperament was not ordinarily assertive. She was not given to
forming logical opinions for herself, save on moral topics.
Aunt Roberta she knew would be delighted to return to France.
"This coun-tree, pah!" the taut little Frenchwoman would say, her
gestures vigorous, "is too commercial. There is little art here, nor do
the women even know how to dress. Their bonnets--pooh! They are built
by the tens of thousands to sell for ten dollars each. Oh, _oui_, and
their gowns! They are sold by the gross, all of one pattern. These
Americans have no air about them--no _chic_."
"I am an American," stoutly maintained Belinda in answer to this.
But she sometimes wondered if, after all, she was truly American. The
two hereditary natures within her seemed tugging in opposite ways. She
really had but small affiliation (so she thought) with America and its
citizenship.
The great milestones of history venerated by Americans of ancient
lineage meant little to her. She had journeyed with college friends to
Plymouth Rock and felt no thrill. The tall shaft of the Bunker Hill
Monument was to her merely an observatory point. The spot where the
first American blood was shed in the Revolution inspired her with no
pride of race.
All that had followed in the later decades of United States history
after all seemed of small moment to Belinda Melnotte. The years of
struggle to maintain the Union and to free from slavery the whites as
well as the blacks of the South were merely incidents she had read
about in school. Her two grandfathers had come to the country while
the Civil War was in progress; but the struggle had meant nothing to
them save as it offered greater opportunity to make money. And it meant
little now to Belinda.
This country--these United States of ours--is indeed a melting pot for
the nations of the earth; but the fire under the pot sputters like a
handful of green thorns and the brew of citizenship infuses slowly.
Love of country seldom develops solely from gratitude; it is when one
is called upon to give that one learns to love. And Belinda Melnotte
had never given much of even her thought to this, her native land.
She felt a strange and growing unrest as the time of her graduation
from the hospital drew near. She secretly feared, however, that this
uncertainty and indecision had something to do with her interest in the
private patient she was nursing.
The Aero Club had ordered everything done for Sanderson that could be
done to make comfortable a person in his situation. When he was well
enough to have visitors there were several men who came to see the
aviator who were either fellow-airmen or were interested in flying.
Belinda suspected that Sanderson was one of a number of courageous
young men who were schooling themselves for aviation work of a
particular character and for a particular purpose. Just what this
special work was she did not know, for Sanderson and his friends were
secretive.
She found these visitors to Room A-a very interesting, however; and
they made much of Sandy's pretty nurse. Gay as she was with them,
Belinda kept a sharp oversight of her patient; and if she saw him
growing tired she hurried the visitors out without much ado.
One of the young aviator's brothers, who lived near enough to visit
the patient on more than one occasion, intimated he suspected Frank of
feeling more than a passing interest in the nurse. She, however, was
not supposed to overhear the observation.
"Who wouldn't?" Frank Sanderson stoutly responded.
"Look out!" his brother warned him. "If Stella hears of it----"
"Stella! What Stella doesn't know will never trouble her," the man in
bed said quickly, and in no very pleasant tone. "By the way, how is
she--and the kiddies?"
"All right. Hasn't she been to see you?"
"I should hope _not_!" The nurse at the window, busy with the work in
her lap, covertly glanced at her patient. His face was flushed and
beclouded. "I won't have her come here--now remember that, Jim! But you
might assure her that I am all right."
"Humph! Play buffer for you, is it?"
"Well, give a look in at the kiddies, anyway. They are not to blame."
"Right-o!" agreed Jim, and soon departed.
From that hour Sanderson found his nurse not quite the same as she had
been. He soon recovered his usual cheery manner. Not so Belinda. She
had raised a certain barrier between them, and that barrier he was
unable to surmount.
Still sick, he peevishly laid it to the influence of the black-browed
surgeon. Or was it that, now he was better, the nurse was merely
following her usual method of "freezing" a too ardent patient?
He ventured a query to Miss Trivett one night; for although one could
not really like the night nurse, she was trustworthy.
"I don't know what I've done to offend Miss Melnotte," Sanderson said
honestly. "But she keeps me at a distance----"
"Oh, my! Little-boy-crying-for-the-moon!" the nurse said, half in scorn
and half in sympathy. "Are you going to prove yourself no wiser than
the rest of them? And you an aviator! Bah!"
"Well, I'm hanged if that ugly Dutchman's half good enough for her,
even if he did fix me up!" Sanderson growled.
"Of course he isn't. What man is ever good enough for a woman?" was the
tart rejoinder.
"The Lord help the fellow who gets you, Miss Trivett!" Sanderson said
with feeling.
"No. You are wrong. I know my own weakness," sighed the wise, if plain,
nurse. "If I _should_ marry, I would love him so much that he might
walk upon me if he wished."
It was not by any determined and set method that Belinda Melnotte kept
Sanderson at a distance. She merely followed the calm path of her duty
as usual, betraying nothing to her fellow-nurses of what fretted her
spirit.
A few days more and The Head would put into her hand the certificate
for which she had served two hard years. A dozen besides Sue Blaine
and herself were to be graduated.
As there was some operating-room work to be done, Belinda was excused
from attendance on the convalescent in Room A-a. Sanderson discovered
this when another nurse came to his call in the morning. She was a
probationer and had a year yet to serve.
"Say, where's Miss Melnotte?" he demanded.
"She's busy." The nurse told him why.
"Isn't she coming back to me?"
"I don't suppose so. She's not going to work in this hospital any more."
The aviator spent a gloomy forenoon. Then he wrote some letters, called
for Mrs. Blythe, and arranged with her for his departure from the
hospital the next day.
When Belinda stopped at Room A-a the second evening to learn how he was
getting on, the room was empty save for the attendant who was cleaning
up. Sanderson had been gone an hour.