MORE TROUBLE
"It is a fine form of advertisement and comes cheap," thought Obadiah
as he read, with pleasure, certain laudatory references to himself and
his daughter, in an article regarding the concert at the Lucinda Home,
prominently displayed in the morning paper.
He told her about it. "There is a very nice account of your concert
at the Lucinda Home. They give you great credit." He glanced at her
proudly. "You made a Dale success of it, didn't you?"
His words as well as her own satisfaction at the outcome of the concert
made Virginia very happy. All that morning she sang as she went about
her various affairs in the big house until Serena smiled to herself
and muttered, "Dat chil' is a mekin mo'e noise an' er jay bird er
yellin' caze de cher'ies is ripe."
The joyous mood was yet upon the girl when she went to the hospital that
afternoon and found Joe Curtis sitting up in bed for the first time.
"You are looking fine," she told him.
"Don't make me blush. I am a modest youth," he protested.
Her cheeks flushed prettily. "I am not complimenting your looks but your
health."
"It is all due to the shave, anyway," he grinned. "The fatal symptoms
are not so apparent."
She observed his face with interest. "It does look smoother," she
admitted. "Who shaved you? Did Miss Knight?"
"Hush!" he whispered in mock terror. "Don't let her hear you. She
didn't shave me, but she might want to. That would be the last straw. My
proud spirit would never survive the outrage of that woman wielding a
razor over my tender skin."
"I will ask her to shave you. Perhaps she may let me help," giggled
Virginia.
"I have always looked forward to your visits."
"You wouldn't be glad to see me even if I came to shave you?" she
demanded with severity.
He closed his eyes.
"Answer me," she commanded in a stern voice.
"I suffer great pain," he groaned.
"You are pretending. Answer my question."
With closed eyes he pondered aloud. "If she shaved me, her hands would
touch my face. They would caress my cheeks, softly--"
Virginia blushed. "I wouldn't touch your face for--for--anything,"
she interrupted.
"How would you shave me then? Who ever heard of a barber who did not
touch the face of the people he shaved?"
"I won't do the shaving. I'll bring the hot water. It will be scalding
hot, too," she promised.
"Coward," he taunted her, "to scald a man with three ribs and a leg
broken."
She gave him a very friendly look for one supposed to harbor such brutal
intentions; but as he referred to his injuries the fun died out of her
face. "It is unfair for you to suffer while I bear no part of the
punishment for my own thoughtlessness." Her lips trembled.
Joe reached over and patted her hand. "It was my own fault, I tell
you," he argued. "I am all hunky dory now, anyway."
"I know that my father would be glad to help you. Won't you let him,
please?" she begged.
"I want no help." His reply was brusque. "I am able to take care of
myself."
Virginia viewed him with thoughtful eyes. "I am afraid, Joe," she
protested, "that you only look at this matter from your own point of
view. There is my side, too. I want my conscience cleared of that old
accident. Every time I think of it, I am miserable. Is it nice that I
should be unhappy every time I think of the first time I met you?"
His mood softened and his eyes showed it by their tenderness. "I want
every minute of your life to be happy," he said with warmth.
She reddened under his words but was quick to follow up her advantage.
"Help me to be, then," she pleaded.
"There should be a way to satisfy us both," he admitted. He dropped
his head back upon his pillow and studied the ceiling for a time. He made
a suggestion but she shook her head violently.
She urged something and watched him expectantly.
All at once he began to chuckle. "I have it," he cried.
She leaned towards him and for a long time they were engaged in a
conversation which gave them both great pleasure and aroused their
enthusiasm to the highest degree.
Miss Knight came along the aisle and stopped at Joe's bedside. "You
people are having such a good time that I have to come and get into it."
They welcomed her as an intimate friend.
"We'll have Joe out in a roller chair before long," the nurse boasted.
"That will be pleasanter because he can receive his visitors on the
lawn these fine days," she giggled. "After that it won't be long
until the hour of sad farewells, will it, Joe?"
"Don't you worry, there will be no tears in my farewell I can tell you.
I shall be so delighted to get from under your tyrannical sway that I
am afraid my joy will give me a relapse and keep me in your clutches."
Miss Knight shook her head at the depravity of men. "How's that for
ungratefulness? They bring him to me helpless with pain and I bring him
back to health. Now he calls me a tyrant. Is that the way to reward a
faithful and devoted nurse?"
"Listen a minute, Knightie," begged Joe.
Virginia laughed barefacedly.
Miss Knight squelched the motorcyclist with a look, and addressed her
remarks to Virginia. "Did you hear that, now? _Knightie_--what kind of
a way is that to address a lady? The minute you utter a kind word near
him, he gets gay. He's the freshest thing I ever had in this ward."
She shook her head with weariness. "I've done my part. I have tried to
train him."
Joe attempted to smooth the ruffled feelings of the nurse. "Sister,"
he expostulated, "you don't get me--"
"Say," snapped Miss Knight, "if you don't cut out that 'sister'
habit I'll get you all right before I am done with you."
"Help!" groaned Joe. "What kind of a dump is this anyway? They cure
my leg but ruin my disposition. No one could ever be the same after two
months in this ward."
"I improve them in mind and body," Miss Knight boasted.
"You don't improve a thing," he retorted. "This place is a mad house.
I am kept awake by the voices of patients asking for poison to put them
out of their misery."
"Those voices are calling for cooling drinks these warm nights,
which," the nurse declared ruefully, "I have to prepare in the hot
afternoons." Determination seized her. "Joe Curtis," she exclaimed,
"you have had enough lemonade this week to bathe in and I have carried
it to you. Unless you apologize immediately you will get no more.
There now."
Before such a threat, Joe meekly surrendered and thus addressed the
stern-faced nurse. "Miss Knight, after listening to your bawling out,
I know that I should have called you 'Rapper' instead of 'Knightie,'
and I wouldn't have you as a sister at any price."
The nurse tossed her head in disdain. "I don't care to be related to a
motorcyclist," she announced.
Joe grinned at Virginia. "What did I tell you? No one cares for a
motorcyclist. They have no friends, even in a hospital."
"Why should any one care about them? Their troubles are due to their
own foolishness. They are a noisy pest in the streets and they get
themselves hurt and take up bed space in hospitals which might be
devoted to better uses." Miss Knight's seriousness gave way and her
eyes danced. "And they make their nurses like them in spite of it
all," she laughed as she hurried away to another patient.
Virginia watched Joe thoughtfully. "You take a strange way to show
Miss Knight that you like her," she told him. "You are always in an
argument with her."
"She starts the scrap, not I."
"But you make her do it!"
"No," he declared with earnestness, "she jumps on me to stir things up
and give her something to talk about."
"I don't understand you at all, Joe. You treat Miss Knight so
differently from the way you treat me. Yet, you like her," Virginia
urged.
"It's such great sport teasing her."
"Why don't you tease me?"
Joe considered the question. "I don't know," he answered frankly. "I
suppose it is because you are different."
Curiosity seized her. "How am I different?"
Great embarrassment held his tongue.
She was insistent. "Won't you answer my question?" she begged.
"It's a hard one. Perhaps I can't answer it."
"Oh, yes, you can. Try."
He made the attempt. "Perhaps it is because I have known girls like
Miss Knight all of my life. I played with them when I was a kid, went
to school with them, and, since I have been older, called on them and
took them to dances."
"Did you ever take them out on your motorcycle?" demanded Virginia
almost sharply.
The question surprised him. "No, I never had another seat on my wheel.
Why?"
"Oh, nothing." She was very indifferent now. "I don't think that I
approve of girls on motorcycles. Go on," she urged. "You were telling
about taking girls to dances. Where else did you take them?"
He thought a moment. "Sometimes I took them to Vivian's and had ice
cream or took them to a motion picture show."
"Oh, what fun." Virginia was thinking aloud.
"What?" he asked.
She very calmly disregarded his question. "You haven't told me how I
am different," she relentlessly persisted. "Please do."
"It was the way we met, I suppose--the way I saw you first," he
confessed, fighting back his embarrassment.
"Tell me about it, Joe," she pleaded softly.
"I was regaining consciousness after the accident. My whole body was a
great pain. I was trying to understand what had happened." He hesitated
and then went on. "I opened my eyes. For an instant everything was
blurred and indistinct. Things were whirling about in mists and billowy
clouds. They rolled apart and through them, constantly growing clearer,
came your face." He was almost whispering now. "You looked too
beautiful for this world and I believed that I was dead." A little
smile like a wavelet before a summer's zephyr swept over his face.
"You are a girl from the clouds to me," he said gently.
A very flushed Virginia leaned towards him. A great tenderness for this
big fellow held her, and for a moment she could not trust herself to
speak. She reached for his hand and held it in her own. "I must go,"
she murmured, as if driven away by her own timidity, and then, giving
him a smile of ineffable sweetness, she left him.
Joe Curtis was so tumultuously happy for the rest of that afternoon that
it was necessary for Miss Knight to reprove him on no less than three
occasions.
Virginia called again upon Mr. Wilkins after leaving the hospital. Her
business with the lawyer was speedily dispatched, and upon her departure
for home, Hezekiah presented himself before Obadiah for conference.
The manufacturer glanced at his counsel and indicated a seat. "I
was on the point of sending for you," he told Hezekiah, and in a
characteristic way went right to the matter upon his mind. "The river
water is bothering somebody again. They have started that old row about
the chemicals and dyes in the waste from the dye-house at the mill
poisoning the water. The State Board of Health is trying to tell me that
it makes the water unfit for consumption in the towns below and is
responsible for certain forms of sickness which have appeared."
"That's bad." Hezekiah looked at the ceiling.
"What's bad?" demanded Obadiah with asperity.
"The sickness," the lawyer explained thoughtfully.
"Oh, I thought you meant the waste from the dye-house," snarled Obadiah.
"Well, isn't that bad, too? I certainly am glad that South Ridgefield
doesn't take the water for its supply below your mill. I shouldn't care
to drink it, would you?" Hezekiah could be frank.
"What I want to drink is not the question," snapped Obadiah, raising
his voice a tone. The attitude of his attorney had aroused his
displeasure.
"No," Hezekiah went on, "it's what you can make the other fellow
drink which interests you."
Obadiah considered the lawyer's remarks unfortunate even if true. "I
am not trying to make anybody drink. These people have been drinking
the same water for years and now some troublemaker stirs up a hornets'
nest," he stormed. "They want to force me to build three thousand feet
of sewer to connect up with the city system and its new fangled sewage
disposal plant. I suppose this town would want rent for that, too. Did
you ever hear of such foolishness?"
The lawyer cast a keen glance at his employer. "Don't forget," he
suggested, "that you have doubled the capacity of your mill in the
last few years and are running twice as much waste into the river as
formerly."
"I don't care," roared Obadiah, in a high key. "It will cost several
thousand dollars to do what they want. Let those towns take care of
themselves. They must mistake me for a philanthropist trying to give my
money away."
Hezekiah removed his glasses and closed his eyes as if desirous that no
point, in the interesting thought of Obadiah giving anything away, might
perchance escape him.
"I won't do it," bleated Obadiah, striking the desk a resounding thump
which made Hezekiah open his eyes with a start. "I have been running
waste into that river for years and I intend to keep on doing it." He
glared at the lawyer. "You look up the decisions and be prepared to make
those people drink ink if I want to put it into the river."
Hezekiah arose and moved over to the window. Possibly the ascertainment
of a legal method to force citizens to accept writing fluid as a
beverage perplexed him. Yet, it couldn't have been that, because his
eyes danced with the glee of a mischievous school boy, and he seemed to
have difficulty in suppressing inward mirth, as one wishing to perpetrate
a huge joke with appropriate gravity.
In a moment he came back and faced Obadiah. "You will be glad to know
that a settlement has been reached with young Curtis," he announced
impressively.
"You have kept Virginia out of court proceedings?"
Hezekiah nodded.
Obadiah appeared relieved. "That is fine. I would look like a fool with
my own daughter testifying against me in court."
Hezekiah was trying to catch Obadiah's eye. "It is going to cost you
some money," he explained. "I warned you that young people have no
idea of the value of money. Remember, you authorized me to make the best
settlement that I could," he sternly reminded the mill owner.
Obadiah shrugged his shoulders irritably. "Yes, I am bound by any
nonsensical agreement you have made."
The attorney's voice was cold, and there was a glint of steel in his
eyes as he answered, "If you don't care to accept the compromise for
which I accept sole responsibility, it is your privilege to reject it
and take--the consequences."
Obadiah leaped to his feet and rushing to his lawyer patted him upon the
shoulder. "Don't be so touchy, Hezekiah," he exclaimed. "Have I ever
failed to support you?"
"No," Hezekiah admitted, "and you never will--but once."
Obadiah was desirous of placating his counsel. "You misunderstand me."
"I probably understand you better than any one else on earth."
The remark made the manufacturer uncomfortable. "Forget it," he
pleaded. "I agree to any arrangement which you have made, because of
my friendship, if for no other reason." He shook the lawyer's hand.
"Explain the agreement. I consent."
Hezekiah's manner was too calm. It was like the lull before a storm.
"You pay no money to the injured man," he announced.
Obadiah's face registered his surprise. "What the devil?" he cried.
Hezekiah gave no heed to this remark but went on with the solemnity
of a judge sentencing a prisoner. "You have agreed to furnish and to
endow for a period of five years, a private room at the South Ridgefield
Hospital to be used exclusively for the care and treatment of injured
motorcyclists."