Friday after New Year's found Sergeant Graham again flat on his back at
the Base Hospital, facing sentence of three additional weeks in bed. In
vain had he risked a reprimand by hotly protesting the point with the
Captain; in vain had he declared to the nurse that he would rather live
on his feet than die on his back. Judgment was passed, and he lay with an
ice-bag on his head and a thermometer in his mouth and hot rage in his
heart.
What made matters worse was that Cass Martel had come over from the
Convalescent Barracks only that morning to announce that he had received
his discharge and was going home. To Quin it seemed that everybody but
himself was going home--that is, everybody but the incurables. At that
thought a dozen nameless fears that had been tormenting him of late all
seemed to get together and rush upon him. What if the doctors were
holding him on from month to month, experimenting, promising,
disappointing, only in the end to bunch him with the permanently disabled
and ship him off to some God-forsaken spot to spend the rest of his life
in a hospital?
He gripped his hands over his chest and gave himself up to savage
rebellion. If they would let him alone he might get well! In France it
had been his head. Whenever the wound began to heal and things looked a
bit cheerful, some saw-bones had come along and thumped and probed and
X-rayed, and then it had been ether and an operation and the whole
blooming thing over again. Then, when they couldn't work on his head any
longer, they'd started up this talk about his heart. Of course his heart
was jumpy! All the fellows who had been badly gassed had jumpy hearts.
But how was he ever going to get any better lying there on his back? What
he needed was exercise and decent food and something cheerful to think
about. He wanted desperately to get away from his memories, to forget the
horrors, the sickening sights and smells, the turmoil and confusion of
the past two years. In spite of his most heroic efforts, he kept living
over past events. This time last year he had been up in the Toul sector,
where half the men he knew had gone west. It was up there old Corpy had
got his head shot off....
He resolutely fixed his attention on a spider that was swinging directly
over his head and tried to forget old Corpy. He thought instead of
Captain Phipps, but the thought did not calm him. What sense was there in
his ordering more of this fool rest business? Well, he told himself
fiercely, he wasn't going to stand for it! The war was over, he had done
his part, he was going to demand his freedom. Discipline or no
discipline, he would go over Phipps' head and appeal to the Colonel.
Throwing aside the ice-bag, he looked around for his uniform. But the
nurse had evidently mistrusted the look in his eyes when she gave him the
Captain's orders, for the hook over his bed was empty. He raised himself
in his cot and glared savagely down the ward, sniffing the air
suspiciously. Two orderlies were wheeling No. 17 back from the
operating-room, and Quin already caught the faint odor of ether. The
first whiff of it filled him with loathing.
Thrusting his bare feet into slippers and his arms into a shabby old
bath-robe, he flung himself out of bed and slipped out on the porch. The
air was cold and bracing and gloriously free from the hospital
combination of wienerwürst, ether, and dried peaches that had come to be
a nightmare odor to him. He sat on the railing and drew in deep,
refreshing breaths, and as he did so things began to right themselves.
Fair play to Quin amounted almost to a religion, and it was suddenly
borne in upon him that he would not be where he was had he observed the
rules of the game. But then again, if he had not danced, he never would
have----
At that moment something so strange happened that he put a hot hand to a
hotter brow and wondered if he was delirious. The singularly vibrant
voice that had been echoing in his memory since New Year's eve was saying
directly behind him:
"I shall give them all the chocolate they want, Captain Harold Phipps,
and you may court-martial me later if you like!"
Quin glanced up hastily, and there, framed in the doorway, in a Red Cross
uniform, stood his dream girl, looking so much more ravishing than she
had before that he promptly snatched the blue and gray vision from its
place of honor and installed a red, white, and blue one instead. So
engrossed was he in the apparition that he quite failed to see Captain
Phipps surveying him over her shoulder.
"Number 7!" said the Captain with icy decision, "weren't you instructed
to stay in bed?"
"I was, sir," said Quin, coming to attention and presenting a decidedly
sorry aspect.
"Go back at once, and add three days to the time indicated. This way,
Miss Bartlett."
Now, it is well-nigh impossible to preserve one's dignity when suffering
a reprimand in public; but when you are handicapped by a shabby
bath-robe, a three days' growth of beard, and a grouch that gives you the
expression of a bandit, and the public happens to be the one being on
earth whom you are most anxious to please, the situation becomes tragic.
Quin set his jaw and shuffled ignominiously off to bed, thankful for once
that he had been considered unworthy a second glance from those luminous
brown eyes. His satisfaction, however, was short-lived. A moment later
the young lady appeared at the far end of the ward, carrying an absurd
little basket adorned with a large pink bow, from which she began to
distribute chocolates.
A feminine presence in the ward always created a flutter, but the
previous flutters were mere zephyrs compassed to the cyclone produced by
the new ward visitor. Some one started the phonograph, and Michaelis, who
had been swearing all day that he would never be able to walk again,
actually began to dance. Witticisms were exchanged from bed to bed, and
the man who was going to be operated on next morning flung a pillow at an
orderly and upset a vase of flowers. Things had not been so cheerful for
weeks.
Quin, lying in the last bed in the ward, alternated between rapture and
despair as he watched the progress of the visitor. Would she recognize
him? Would she speak to him if she did, when he looked like that? Perhaps
if he turned his face to the wall and pretended to be asleep she would
pass him by. But he did not want her to pass him by. This might be the
only chance he would ever have to see her again!
Back in his fringe of consciousness he was frantically groping for the
name the Captain had mentioned: Barnet? Barret? Bartlett? That was it!
And with the recovery of the name Quin's mind did another somersault.
Bartlett? Where had he heard that name? Eleanor Bartlett? Some nonsense
about "Solomon's baby." Why, Rose Martel, of course.
Then all thought deserted him, for the world suddenly shrank to five feet
two of femininity, and he heard a gay, impersonal voice saying:
"May I put a cake of chocolate on your table?"
For the life of him, he could not answer. He only lay there with his
mouth open, looking at her, while she straightened the contents of her
basket. One more moment and she would be gone. Quin staked all on a
chance shot.
"Thank you, Miss Eleanor Bartlett," he said, with that ridiculous blush
that was so out of keeping with his audacity.
She looked at him in amazement; then her face broke into a smile of
recognition.
"Well, bless my soul, if it isn't Sergeant Slim! What are you doing
here?"
"Same thing I been doing for six months," said Quin sheepishly; "counting
the planks in the ceiling."
"But I thought you had got well. Oh, I hope it wasn't the dancing----"
"Lord, no," said Quin, keeping his hand over his bristly chin. "I'm
husky, all right. Only they've got so used to seeing me laying around
that they can't bear to let me go."
"Do you have to lie flat on your back like that, with no pillow or
anything?"
"It ain't so bad, except at mess-time."
"And you can't even sit up to eat?"
"Not supposed to."
Miss Bartlett eyed him compassionately.
"I am coming out twice a week now--Mondays and Fridays--and I'm going to
bring you something nice every time I come. How long will you be here?"
"Three weeks," said Quin--adding, with a funny twist of his lip, "three
weeks and three days."
"Oh! Were you the boy on the porch? How funny I didn't recognize you! I'm
going to ask Captain Phipps to let you off those extra days."
"No, you mustn't." Quin objected earnestly; "I'll take what's coming to
me. Besides," he added, "one of those days might be a Monday or a
Friday!"
This seemed to amuse her, for she smiled as she wrote his name and bed
number in a small notebook, with the added entry: "Oyster soup,
cigarettes, and a razor."
Just as she was leaving, she remembered something and turned back.
"How did you know my name?" she asked with lively curiosity.
"Didn't the Captain call it on the porch?"
"Did he? But not my first name. How on earth _did_ you know that?"
"Perhaps I guessed it," Quin said, looking mysterious. And just then a
nurse came along and thrust the thermometer back in his mouth, and the
conversation was abruptly ended.
Of course the calendar must have been right about the three weeks that
followed; there probably were seven days in each week and twenty-four
hours in each day. But Quin wasn't sure about it. He knew beyond doubt
that there were three Mondays and four Fridays and one wholly gratuitous
and never-to-be-forgotten Sunday when Miss Bartlett brought his dinner
from town, and insisted upon cutting his chicken for him and feeding him
custard with a spoon. The rest of the days were lost in abstract time,
during which Quin had his hair cut and his face shaved, and did
bead-work.
Until now he had sturdily refused to be inveigled into occupational
therapy. Those guys that were done for could learn to knit, he said, and
to make silly little mats, and weave things on a loom. If he couldn't do
a man's work he'd be darned if he was going to do a woman's. But now all
was changed. He announced his intention of making the classiest bead
chain that had ever been achieved in 2 C. He insisted upon the instructor
getting him the most expensive beads in the market, regardless of size or
color.
Now, for Quin, with his big hands and lack of dexterity, to have worked
with beads under the most favorable conditions would have been difficult,
but to master the art lying flat on his back was a _tour de force_. He
pricked his fingers and broke his thread; he upset the beads on the
floor, on the bed, in his tray; he took out and put in with infinite
patience, "each bead a thought, each thought a prayer."
"Don't you think you had better give it up?" asked the instructor, in
despair, after the fourth lesson.
"You don't know me," said Quin, setting his jaw. "You been trying to get
me into this for two weeks--now you've got to see me through."
It did not take long for the other patients to discover Quin's state of
mind.
"How about your heart disease, Graham?" they inquired daily; "think it's
going to be chronic?"
But Quin had little time for them. The distinction he had enjoyed as the
champion poker-player in 2 C. began to wane as his popularity with the
new ward visitor increased.
"I like your nerve!--keeping her up there at your bed all the time,"
complained Michaelis.
"She's an old friend of mine," Quin threw off nonchalantly.
"Aw, what you tryin' to put over on us?" scoffed Mike. "Where'd you ever
git to know a girl like that?"
"Well, I know her all right," said Quin.
The little mystery about Miss Bartlett's first name had been a fruitful
topic of conversation between a couple whose topics were necessarily
limited. She had teased Quin to tell her how he knew, and also how he
knew she wanted to go on the stage; and Quin had teased back; and at last
it had resolved itself into a pretty contest of wits.
This served to keep her beside him often as long as four minutes. Then he
would gain an additional two minutes by showing her what progress he had
made with his chain, and consulting her preference for an American flag
or a Red Cross worked in the medallion.
When every other means of detaining her had been exhausted, he sometimes
resorted to strategy. Constitutionally he was opposed to duplicity; he
was built on certain square lines that disqualified him for many a
comfortable round hole in life. But under the stress of present
circumstances he persuaded himself that the end justified the means.
Ignoring the fact that he was as devoid of relations as a tree is of
leaves in December, he developed a sudden sense of obligation to an
imaginary cousin whom he added, without legal authority, to the
population of Peru, Indiana. By means of Miss Bartlett's white hand he
frequently informed her that she was not to worry about him, because he
was "doing splendid," and that a hospital "wasn't so worse when you get
used to it." And while he dictated words of assurance to his "Cousin Sue"
his eyes feasted upon a dainty profile with long brown lashes that swept
a peach-blow cheek. Once he became so demoralized by this too pleasing
prospect that he said "tell him" instead of "tell her," and the lashes
lifted in instant inquiry.
"I mean--er--her husband," Quin gasped.
"But you had me direct the other letters to Miss Sue Brown."
"Yes, I know," said Quin, with an embarrassment that might have been
attributed to skeletons in family closets; "but, you see--she--er--she
took back her own name."
The one cloud that darkened Quin's horizon these days was Captain Phipps.
His visits to the ward always coincided with Miss Bartlett's, and he
seemed to take a spiteful pleasure in keeping the men at attention while
he engaged her in intimate conversation. He was an extremely fastidious,
well groomed young man, with an insolent hauteur and a certain lordly air
of possession that proclaimed him a conqueror of the sex. Quin regarded
him with growing disfavor.
When the three weeks were almost over, Quin was allowed to sit up, and
even to walk on the porch. Miss Bartlett found him there one day when she
arrived.
"Aha!" she cried, "I've found you out, Sergeant Slim! You are Cass
Martel's hero, and that's where you heard about me and found out my first
name."
Quin pleaded guilty, and their usual five minutes together lengthened
into fifteen while she gave him all the news of the Martel family. Cass
had taken his old position at the railroad office, and, dear knows, it
was a good thing! And Rose was giving dancing lessons. And what did he
think little old Myrna had done? Adopted a baby! Yes, a baby; wasn't it
too ridiculous! An Italian one that the washwoman had forsaken. And Papa
Claude had given up his lectures at the university in order to write the
great American play. Weren't they the funniest and the dearest people he
had ever known?
It was amazing how intimate Quin and Miss Bartlett got on the subject of
the Martels. He had to tell her in detail just what a brick her cousin
Cass was, and she had to tell him what a really wonderful actor Papa
Claude used to be.
"Captain Phipps says he knows more about the stage than any man in the
country."
"What does the Captain know about it?" asked Quin.
"Captain Phipps? Why, he's a playwright. He means to devote all his time
to the stage as soon as he gets out of the army. You may not believe it,
but he is an even better dramatist than he is a doctor."
"Oh, yes, I do," said Quin; "that's easy to believe."
The sarcasm was lost upon Miss Bartlett, who was intent upon delivering
her message from the Martels. They had sent word that they expected Quin
to come straight to them when he got his discharge, and that his room was
waiting for him.
"And you?" asked Quin eagerly. "You'll be there every Sunday?"
Her face, which had been all smiles, underwent a sudden change. She said
with something perilously like a pout:
"No, I shan't; I'm to be shipped off to school next week."
"School?" repeated Quin incredulously. "What do you want to be going back
to school for?"
"I _don't_ want to. I hate it. It's the price I am paying for that dance
I had with you at the Hawaiian Garden--that and other things."
"What do you mean?"
"Some old tabby of a chaperon saw me there and came and told my
grandmother."
"But what could she have told? You didn't do anything you oughtn't to."
Miss Bartlett shook her head. It was evidently something she could not
explain, for she sat staring gloomily at the wall above the bed, then she
said abruptly: "Well, I must be going. Good-by if I don't see you again!"
"But you will," announced Quin fiercely. "You are going to see me next
Sunday at the Martels'. I'll be there if I land in the guard-house for
it."
"Why, your time's up Saturday, isn't it? Oh! I forgot those three extra
days. Captain Phipps has got to let you off. He will if I tell him to."
At this something quite unexpected and elemental surged up in Quin. He
forgot the amenities that he had taken such pains to observe in Miss
Bartlett's presence, he entirely lost sight of the social gap that lay
between them, and blurted out with deadly earnestness:
"Say, are you his girl?"
This had the effect of bringing Miss Bartlett promptly to her feet, and
the next instant poor Quin was saying in an agony of regret:
"I'm sorry, Miss Bartlett. I didn't mean to be nervy. Honest, I didn't.
Wait a minute--_please_----"
But she was gone, leaving him to spend the rest of the afternoon searching
for a phrase sufficiently odious to express his own opinion of himself.