THE ADVANTAGES OF BEING SHOT
Under proper conditions, being wounded in the shoulder may have its
pleasant features. They were not so obvious to Monte in the early part
of the evening, because he was pretty much befuddled with ether; but
sometime before dawn he woke up feeling fairly normal and clear-headed
and interested. This was where fifteen years of clean living counted
for something. When Marcellin and his assistant had first stripped
Monte to the waist the day before, they had paused for a moment to
admire what they called his torso. It was not often, in their city
practice, that they ran across a man of thirty with muscles as clearly
outlined as in an anatomical illustration.
Monte was conscious of a burning pain in his shoulder, and he was not
quite certain as to where he was. So he hitched up on one elbow. This
caused a shadow to detach itself from the dark at the other end of the
room--a shadow that rustled and came toward him. It is small wonder
that he was startled.
"Who the deuce are you?" he inquired in plain English.
"Monsieur is not to sit up," the shadow answered in plain French.
Monte repeated his question, this time in French.
"I am the nurse sent here by Dr. Marcellin," she informed him.
"Monsieur is not to talk."
She placed her hand below his neck and helped him to settle down again
upon his pillow. Then she rustled off again beyond the range of the
shaded electric light.
"What happened?" Monte called into the dark.
Then he thought he heard a door open, and further rustling, and a
whispered conversation.
"Who's that?" he demanded.
It sounded like a conspiracy of some sort, so he tried again to make
his elbow. Mademoiselle appeared promptly, and, again placing her hand
beneath his neck, lowered him once more to his pillow.
"Turn up the light, will you?" requested Monte.
"But certainly not," answered the nurse. "Monsieur is to lie very
quiet and sleep."
"I can't sleep."
"Perhaps it will help monsieur to be quiet if he knows his fiancée is
in the next room."
Momentarily this announcement appeared to have directly the opposite
effect.
"My what?" gasped Monte.
"Monsieur's fiancée. With her maid, she is occupying the next
apartment in order to be near monsieur. If you are very quiet
to-night, it is possible that to-morrow the doctor will permit you to
see her."
"Was that she who came in and whispered to you?"
"Yes, monsieur."
Monte remained quiet after that--but he was not sleeping. He was
thinking.
In the first place, this was enough to make him recall all that had
happened. This led him to speculate on all that might be about to
happen--how much he could not at that moment even imagine. Neither
line of thought was conducive to sleep.
Marjory was in the next room, awake, and at the sound of his voice had
come in. In the dark, even with this great night city of Paris asleep
around him, she had come near enough so that he heard the rustle of her
skirt and her whispering voice. That was unusual--most unusual--and
rather satisfactory. If worse came to worse and he reached a point
where it was necessary for him to talk to some one, he could get her in
here again in spite of this nurse woman. He had only to call her name.
Not that he really had any intention in the world of doing it. The
idea rather embarrassed him. He would not know what to say to a young
lady at this hour of the night--even Marjory. But there she was--some
one from home, some one he knew and who knew him. It was like having
Edhart within reach.
In this last week he had sometimes awakened as he was now awake, and
the silence had oppressed him. Ordinarily there was nothing morbid
about Monte, but Edhart's death and the big empty space that was left
all about Nice, the silence where once he had been so sure of hearing
Edhart's voice, the ghostly reminders of Edhart in those who clicked
about in Edhart's bones without his flesh--all these things had given
Monte's thoughts an occasional novel trend.
Once or twice he had gone as far as to picture himself as upon the
point of death here in this foreign city. It was a very sad, a
melancholy thing to speak about. He might call until he was hoarse,
and no one would answer except possibly the night clerk or a gendarme.
And they would look upon him only as something of a nuisance. It is
really pathetic--the depths of misery into which a healthy man may, in
such a mood, plunge himself.
All around him the dark, silent city, asleep save for the night clerks,
the gendarmes, the evildoers, and the merrymakers. And these last
would only leer at him. If he did not join them, then it was his fault
if he lay dying alone.
"Is she in there now?" Monte called to the nurse in the dark.
"Certainly, monsieur. But I thought you were sleeping."
No, he was not sleeping; but he did not mind now the pain in his
shoulder. She had announced herself as his fiancée. Well,
technically, she was. He had asked her to marry him, and she had
accepted. At the time he had not seen much farther ahead than the next
few minutes; and even then had not foreseen what was to happen in those
few minutes. The proposal had given him his right to talk to Hamilton,
and her acceptance--well, it had given Marjory her right to be here.
Curious thing about that code of rights and wrongs! Society was a
stickler for form. If either he or Marjory had neglected the
preliminaries, then he might have lain here alone for a week, with
society shaking its Puritan head. This nurse woman might have come,
but she did not count; and, besides, he had to get shot before even she
would be allowed.
Now it was all right. It was all right and proper for her, all right
and proper for him, all right and proper for society. Not only that,
but it was so utterly normal that society would have frowned if she had
not hurried to his side in such an emergency. It forced her here,
willy-nilly. Perhaps that was the only reason she was here.
Still, he did not like to think that. She was too true blue to quit a
friend. It would be more like her to come anyway. He remembered how
she had stood by that old aunt to the end. She would be standing by
her to-day were she alive. Even Chic, who fulfilled his own
obligations to the last word, had sometimes urged her to lead her own
life, and she had only smiled. There was man stuff in her.
It showed when she announced to these people her engagement. He did
not believe she did that either because it was necessary or proper.
She did it because it was the literal truth, and she was not ashamed of
the literal truth in anything.
"Is Mademoiselle Stockton sitting up--there in the next room?"
"I do not know," answered the nurse.
"Do you mind finding out for me?"
"If monsieur will promise to sleep after that."
"How can a man promise to sleep?"
Even under normal conditions, that was a foolish thing to promise. But
when a man was experiencing brand-new sensations--the sensations of
being engaged--it was quite impossible to make such a promise.
"Monsieur can at least promise not to talk."
"I will do that," agreed Monte.
She came back and reported that mademoiselle was sitting up, and begged
to present her regards and express the hope that he was resting
comfortably.
"Please to tell her I am, and that I hope she will now go to bed," he
answered.
Nurse Duval did that, and returned.
"What did she say?" inquired Monte.
"But, monsieur--"
She had no intention of spending the rest of the night as a messenger
between those two rooms.
"Very well," submitted Monte. "But you might tell me what she said."
"She said she was not sleepy," answered the nurse.
"I'm glad she's awake," said Monte.
Just because he was awake. In a sense, it gave them this city for
themselves. It was as if this immediately became their city. That was
not good arithmetic. Assuming that the city contained a population of
three millions,--he did not have his Baedeker at hand,--then clearly he
could consider only one three millionth part of the city as his. With
her awake in the next room, that made only two of them, so that taken
collectively they had a right to claim only two three-millionths parts
as belonging to them. Yet that was not the way it worked out. As far
as he was concerned, the other two millions nine hundred and
ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-eight did not exist.
There was nothing sentimental about this conclusion. He did not think
of it as it affected her--merely as it affected him. It gave him
rather a comfortable, completed feeling, as if he now had within
himself the means for peacefully enjoying life, wherever he might be,
even at thirty-two. Under the influence of this soothing thought, he
fell asleep again.
After the doctors were through with Monte the next morning, they
decided, after a consultation, that there was no apparent reason why,
during the day, Miss Stockton, if she desired, should not serve as his
nurse while Miss Duval went home to sleep.
"My assistant will come in at least twice," said Dr. Marcellin.
"Besides, you have the constitution of a prize-fighter. It might well
be possible to place a bullet through the heart of such a man without
greatly discommoding him."
He spoke as if with some resentment.
After they had gone out, Marjory came in. She hesitated at the door a
moment, perhaps to make sure that he was awake; perhaps to make sure
that she herself was awake. Monte, from the bed, could see her better
than she could see him. He thought she looked whiter than usual, but
she was very beautiful.
There was something about her that distinguished her from other
women--from this nurse woman, for example, who was the only other woman
with whom it was possible to compare her in a like situation. With one
hand resting on the door, her chin well up, she looked more than ever
like Her Royal Highness Something or Other. She was dressed in
something white and light and fluffy, like the gowns he used to see on
Class Day. Around her white throat there was a narrow band of black
velvet.
"Good-morning, Marjory," he called.
She came at once to his side, walking graciously, as a princess might
walk.
"I did n't know if you were awake," she said.
It was one thing to have her here in the dark, and another to have her
here in broad daylight. The sun was streaming in at the windows now,
and outside the birds were chattering.
"Did you rest well last night?" she inquired.
"I heard you when you came in and whispered to the nurse woman. It was
mighty white of you to come."
"What else could I do?" She seated herself in a chair by his bed.
"Because we are engaged?" he asked.
She smiled a little as he said that.
"Then you have not forgotten?"
"Forgotten!" he exclaimed. "I'm just beginning to realize it."
"I was afraid it might come back to you as a shock, Monte," she said.
"But it is very convenient--at just this time."
"I don't know what I should have done without it," he nodded. "It
certainly gives a man a comfortable feeling to know--well, just to know
there is some one around."
"I'm glad if I've been able to do anything."
"It's a whole lot just having you here," he assured her.
It changed the whole character of this room, for one thing. It ceased
to be merely a hotel room--merely number fifty-four attached with a big
brass star to a key. It was more like a room in the Hôtel des Roses,
which was the nearest to home of any place Monte had found in a decade.
It was as if when she came in she completely refurnished it with little
things with which he was familiar. Edhart always used to place flowers
in his apartment; and it was like that.
"The only bother with the arrangement," he said, looking serious, "is
that it takes your time. Ought n't you to be at Julien's this morning?"
She had forgotten about Julien's. Yet for the last two years it had
been the very center of her own individual life. Now the crowded
studio, the smell of turpentine, the odd cosmopolitan gathering of
fellow students, the little pangs following the bitter criticisms of
the master, receded into the background until they became as a dream of
long ago.
"I don't think I shall ever go to Julien's again," she answered.
"But look here--that won't do," he objected. "If I'm to interfere with
all your plans--"
"It isn't that, Monte," she assured him. "Ever since I came back this
last time, I knew I did n't belong there. When Aunt Kitty was alive it
was all the opportunity I had; but now--" She paused.
"Well?"
"I have my hands full with you until you get out again," she answered
lightly.
"That's what I object to," he said; "If being engaged is going to pin
you down, then I don't think you ought to be engaged. You've had
enough of that in your life."
The curious feature of her present position was that she had no sense
of being pinned down. She had thought of this in the night. She had
never felt freer in her life. Within a few hours of her engagement she
had been able to do exactly what she wished to do without a single
qualm of conscience. She had been able to come here and look after him
in this emergency. She would have done this anyway, but she knew how
Marcellin and his assistant and even Nurse Duval would have made her
pay for her act--an act based upon nothing but decent loyalty and
honest responsibility. Raised eyebrows--gossip in the air--covert
smiles--the whole detestable atmosphere of intrigue with which they
would have surrounded her, had vanished as by a spell before the magic
word fiancée. She was breathing air like that upon the mountain-tops.
It was sweet and clean and bracing.
"Monte," she said, "I'm doing at this moment just exactly what I want
to do; and you can't understand what a treat that is, because you've
always done just exactly as you wanted. I 'm sure I 'm entirely
selfish about this, because--because I'm not making any sacrifice. You
can't understand that, either, Monte,--so please don't try. I think
we'd better not talk any more about it. Can't we just let it go on as
it is a little while?"
"It suits me," smiled Monte. "So maybe I'm selfish, too."
"Maybe," she nodded. "Now I'll see about your breakfast. The doctor
told me just what you must have."
So she went out--moving away like a vision in dainty white across the
room and out the door. A few minutes later she was back again with a
vase of red roses, which she arranged upon the table where he could see
them.