pillow beneath it, and she and Prince left B⸺ the next day—as they
thought—forever.
* * * * *
The new hospital was a popular one, but for some reason the Prince Ward
remained vacant. There was nothing mysterious about this; it had been
bespoken many times for patients, but a change of mind would occur so
naturally that at first nothing was thought of it. In a year or so,
however, the continued vacancy began to be a subject of remark among the
nurses. But they were too busy and too practical to regard it in any
other light than that of a provoking pecuniary loss to the establishment.
One night in January the night nurse of the second floor, at one end of
which was the Prince Ward, sat drowsily waiting for medicine periods or
the sound of bells from the various rooms.
It was the last night of her watch, and she was worn out from a month’s
sleeplessness.
Toward midnight the tinkle of a bell roused her. She went from door to
door trying to place it. As she neared the Prince Ward it sounded again.
She paused at the door.
“Very strange,” she thought; “surely there is no one in here?”
But to make sure she went in. The room was icy cold.
A low moan came from the narrow bed.
“Water!” murmured a voice inarticulately. “Water!”
“Wait until I turn on the light,” said the nurse, going towards the
chimney-place. She stepped on something, tripped, would have fallen;
caught at the bed and grasped a long thick rope of hair. She lifted it
and laid it alongside the figure it evidently belonged to.
“Water, water!” moaned the inarticulate voice again, close to her ear.
The nurse went out, much puzzled, and returned with a glass. Two icy
hands touched hers as she held it to the lips.
“How cold you are!” she exclaimed, “and this room is like a frozen—frozen
tomb,” she added. “You must get warm.”
“No, no!” said the voice, ending in a low, wailing moan.
The nurse looked curiously down at the face on the pillow. Scarcely
anything was visible but two large dark eyes and two immensely long
snake-like plaits of hair.
“Did you come in to-night? Are you waiting for an operation?” asked the
perplexed nurse.
“Yes.” The voice was inarticulate again.
“How strange the day nurse or the head nurse did not tell me. I don’t
know what to make of it, at all. You are sure you do not want any light
or heat?”
The reply was so inarticulate that she bent down to listen. A faint odor
turned her quite sick. She went out hastily into the corridor, leaving
the door ajar. She was worried; nay, more, she was conscious of a feeling
a trained nurse has no excuse for. She had a crawly sensation along her
spine.
“I must be dreaming,” she said to herself angrily.
She went back to her chair and table, and, in spite of heaviness and
sleepiness, listened for the bells with a qualm of absolute fright
whenever the sound came from the end of the corridor.
At last, just before daybreak, the bell she was straining her ears for,
rang again.
She plunged her head into cold water, took a glass in her hand, and
approached the Prince Ward. For a second she paused at the door; a wild
impulse to dash down the glass of water and rush shrieking through the
corridor almost overpowered her for a heart-beat. Then her training
reasserted itself; she smiled satirically in her own face and went in,
leaving, nevertheless, the door wide open behind her. She paused beside
the bed.
“Thirsty again? I have brought some water for you.”
She slid a hand to lift the head. She bent over the pillow with a steady
glass.
The bed was empty. It was not even made up. There were no sheets on it,
no pillow-slip.
The room was like a frozen tomb. The glass dropped from her hand,
deluging the mattress with its contents.
She rushed from the room. Fortunately, her felt slippers made no sound.
The door swung to noiselessly behind her. She fled up the corridor, and
flattened her back against the wall at its furthest end, shaking as with
a mortal chill.
There she remained until the gray light of a snowy day crept through the
window at her side.
When the day nurse, rosy and refreshed, came to relieve her, she said,
eying the night nurse a little curiously:
“I guess you’d better tumble into bed as soon as you can, Miss Evans. You
look as if your month’s work had about finished you.”
The nurse whose turn came next was the one who had been with Mrs. Prince.
The last night of her watch was the twenty-seventh of February. She had
had an unusually hard month’s work, and was exceedingly tired and not a
little cross when, at midnight, a bell rang which she could not locate.
“Some plaguey wire out of gear again,” she said, provoked, after a
second, fruitless search for the elusive tinkle. She had turned at the
end of the corridor, and stood just by the Prince Ward. The bell rang
sharply.
“Well, I want to know!” she said aloud. “If it isn’t in this ward!”
She went in immediately and would have turned on the light, when she was
stopped by a curiously familiar, though indistinct, voice.
“Water—water!”
“For the land’s sake,” ejaculated the Down-Easter, going toward the bed.
“What’s this?”
Her foot slipped on something; she tripped and came near falling. She
stooped and lifted from the floor a long, heavy plait of black hair. She
stood stupidly, holding it in her hands, staring down at the bed.
“If I was you,” she said mechanically, “I’d have about half of this cut
off.”
Two large dark eyes stared up at her.
“Why!” she stammered, too stupid to know when she was frightened, too
trained a nurse to understand, “Why, you died!”
A low laugh echoed in the room.
“How cold you are in here,” the nurse went on. “What will you have?”
“Water,” said the thick voice inarticulately.
The nurse went out. As she closed the door behind her she was seized with
a sudden cold shaking.
She went to the room of the head nurse and woke her.
“Say, Mrs. Waxe, who’s the patient in the Prince Ward? Why wasn’t I told
about her?” Mrs. Waxe was wide awake instantly.
“Prince Ward? There’s nobody in the Prince Ward, Miss Hall.”
“Yes, there is, too. I’ve just seen her and spoke to her. Seems to me
I’ve seen the woman before. But the one I knew died after the operation.”
“What?” asked Mrs. Waxe keenly. She had been in the hospital only six
months, but she was a personal friend of Miss Evans. “Who was she?” Miss
Hall gave a brief account of the case.
“What was her name?” inquired Mrs. Waxe, sitting up, large and alert.
“Why, it was Prince,” said the night nurse. “She was the wife of the man
who endowed the ward.”
Mrs. Waxe gazed for a moment into the stolid face before her.
“I think you have had a dream,” she said calmly.
“I don’t sleep on duty, whatever the others may do,” retorted Miss Hall.
Mrs. Waxe lumbered out of bed, untying her cap strings.
“Go back to the floor,” she said quietly. “I’ll be coming to you after a
bit.”
She dressed quickly and presently waddled into the corridor.
“Now, you go and get to sleep in my room, Miss Hall, and I’ll be taking
your place to-night.”
The hospital was filled to overflowing with grippe cases. The epidemic
was raging in the city, and the Prince Ward was the only vacant spot in
the place. Its defective register had prevented its use. It could be but
insufficiently heated from the fireplace.
Mrs. Waxe went to it at once and turned on the electric light. She then
stripped the bed of everything except the springs, carried the small
table to the other side of the room, put out the light, took up the hand
bell, and locked the door as she went out.
She then sat down at the table in the corridor, opened a Bible, and began
to read.
She had read perhaps fifteen minutes when a bell tinkled. Her long
experience enabled her to locate it almost immediately. She went to the
ward adjoining the Prince.
No; the patient there had not rung for her, but was awake and sure the
bell next her on the right was the one. It had rung before.
The Prince Ward was on the right. As Mrs. Waxe stepped into the corridor
the bell sounded again.
It was in the Prince Ward. The Englishwoman was convinced that an ugly
trick was being played.
Thoroughly indignant, she unlocked the door and stepped within. A low
moaning and a peculiar unpleasant odor arrested her progress towards the
electric button. The first turned her ruddiness pale; the second made
her sick. Her foot slipped; she stumbled, twisted her ankle, and, being
a heavy woman, she fell on her knees, catching at the bed-rail. A hand
crept upon her shoulder, striking cold through her gingham dress.
“Water!” breathed a hoarse voice at her ear inarticulately. “Water!”
In spite of the strained ankle, the head nurse got upon her feet. She
staggered out of the room, followed by the moaning cry of “Water—water.”
She shut the door behind her and crept along the corridor, holding to the
wall; then called one of the private nurses and bade her light up the
Prince Ward. The woman did so, remained in the room a few moments, then
came back leisurely.
“Well?” said Mrs. Waxe.
“Well,” returned the nurse, “I opened the window. Did not know the ward
had been used lately. Pretty bad case, wasn’t it?”
“Bad case?” repeated Mrs. Waxe, a light shining through her nostrils to
her brain. “Yes; perhaps.”
“Perhaps?” repeated the private nurse satirically. “I guess I ought to
know by this time. I should say there hadn’t been much left of that case
to put under ground.”
She went back to her case, wondering at the stupidity of the English
generally and in particular.
Mrs. Waxe put her aching foot into hot water and meditated.
* * * * *
The twenty-eighth of February dawned dark, for a blizzard from the
northwest was blowing. It was the worst storm of the last half of the
century.
Men were lost and frozen to death in the streets while going from their
business houses to their homes.
A lady attempting to alight from a carriage at one of the railroad
stations, in order to make an outgoing train, slipped, or was blown down
upon the icy pavement. She was taken up insensible and carried to the
nearest hospital.
“I do not think we have even a corner vacant,” said the superintendent;
“but of course she cannot leave the building now.”
She sent for Mrs. Waxe.
“The Prince Ward is unoccupied?”
The head nurse glanced at the stretcher and hesitated.
“Yes; but it is next to impossible to heat it, you know, doctor.”
“Do the best you can,” replied the superintendent. “The woman should have
been taken to the Emergency, but you see what the weather is.”
Mrs. Waxe divested the traveler of her velvet and furs, her lace and
linen, the bag of diamonds secreted in her bosom, her long perfumed
gloves, her silk underwear, her jeweled garters and hairpins. She left
nothing on her but the black pearls in her ears and the magnificent rings
on her fingers; then slipped a hospital shirt on her fair body, and
tucked her shining curls into a cap. The fall had fractured the bone of
one leg and several ribs.
The ward surgeon, entering, started at the sight of the beautiful face
on the narrow pillow. Instantly the scene of two years before renewed
its living colors on the sensitive film of memory. He even recalled the
name of the woman before him, so deeply had that scene and her beauty
impressed him.
“It is Madame Kanaris,” he said.
The patient opened her dark blue eyes.
“I am Mrs. Prince,” she corrected; “I wish to send a telegram to New York
at once.”
She turned white; fainted again. The broken bones were attended to with
expedition.
Before night the telegram was sent. There had been some delay of letters,
some misunderstanding that had sent Mrs. Prince to B⸺ by mistake.
That lady’s brilliant eyes examined her surroundings.
“I am in the ⸺ Hospital, in the Prince Ward?” she said presently.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Waxe, disturbed by the coincidence of names.
“I selected the fittings and furniture for it,” Mrs. Prince went on
softly. “But I did not think, at the time, of myself.” She looked at the
picture above the bed.
“You must have that picture taken down for me, Mrs. Waxe. I do not
like to have anything ‘hanging over me,’ even if it is the counterfeit
presentment of a saint.”
An ugly sneer disfigured her delicate lips for a moment.
“I will have it taken down as soon as possible,” said the head nurse;
“but it cannot be done immediately, my dear. We have sent out all the
nurses we can spare, and extra beds have been put in nearly every
ward. I am too heavy to risk myself on a ladder, but I will see the
superintendent about it after a bit. It is well fastened up, I assure
you.”
Towards night, not hearing from Mr. Prince, madame grew nervous, then
feverish.
In a sick-bed for the first time in her life, strapped immovably to
its narrow confines, her head beginning to throb with agony, she lay
suffocating with impatience, suspense, and apprehension, she,—the spoiled
darling of every good fortune.
The raging storm shrieked unceasingly about the House of Pain like a
legion of infernal spirits.
There were so many others more critically ill than herself, and the
number of nurses was so reduced, that she was of necessity left alone
much of the time.
Just before midnight Mrs. Waxe came in, weary, but the embodiment of
strength and kindness.
“I think,” she said coaxingly, “you must try and get to sleep. I shall
give you something to quiet you, and then turn off the light, and I hope
you will soon drop off. I shall be near you in the corridor. If you want
anything just tinkle the bell. Close to hand, you see, my dear.”
She administered a draught, straightened the pillow, then bent down
impulsively and kissed the lovely, disquieted face maternally. Two
beautiful arms closed about her ample neck, and the patient was sobbing
on her generous bosom.
“Come, come, you must be brave. They did not want me to tell you, but
a telegram came half an hour since for you. Your husband will be here
sometime toward morning. Will you go to sleep now, like a good child? Ah!
I thought so.”
She turned off the light and went out, leaving the door half open. After
making the round of the corridor she dropped into a chair. Her head fell
forward on the table before her. In all her experience as a nurse she had
never done such a thing before,—she fell asleep at her post.
She was roused by the sharp, continued ringing of a bell. She sat up,
dazed, rubbing her eyes.
The superintendent, the resident physician, and a stranger were coming up
the wide staircase. The bell had never ceased its imperious, insistent
summons.
Without stopping to think, the head nurse ran, ponderously but swiftly,
to the Prince Ward. As she stepped within the threshold the bell suddenly
ceased, but the air was vibrating. She ran to the mantelpiece, reached
up, and turned on the light.
The three men were at the door, the fur-clad stranger, a tall and
handsome apparition, carrying a huge handful of roses. They all stared at
the figure of the head nurse.
Petrified in position, her fingers on the key of the electric bulb, she
stood with her usually florid face, now paper white, turned over her
shoulder, her starting eyes fixed upon the bed.
Mr. Prince entered quickly, then drew back with a loud cry of fear and
horror. The roses fell from his hands upon the edge of the bed and over
the floor.
The heavy picture had dropped like a stone from its anchor in the
cornice. Its edge had struck the sick woman on breast and forehead, but
it had fallen painting upward. From beneath it uncoiled on either side
two immensely long, ropelike plaits of black hair, between which the
painted face smiled upon the white faces by the bedside.
The superintendent was the first to recover his wits. He sprang forward,
lifted the picture, wondering at its weight. As he did so, the back,
loosened by the fall, fell to pieces; a heavy bronze jar rolled from
the face on the pillow, scattering a thin, fine, dust-like ashes that
powdered the luxuriant curls, and floated above the stiff, stripped
figure in a fine, impalpable cloud.
Then the ashes settled slowly upon the lifeless body, upon the scattered
roses on the floor, and upon the splendid furs of the man who shrank
against the wall and put up his hands against the dreadful sight.
[Illustration]
A Meeting of Royalty.
BY MARGARET DODGE.
It was not according to the schedule that the special train, consisting
of a locomotive, an empty baggage car, and the regally equipped private
car, Priscilla, should stop for three quarters of an hour at Mayville
Junction. Indeed, in his instructions, the Great Man who was the car’s
sole occupant had provided for a wait of only five minutes. It is a
matter of record, however, that for forty-five minutes the official
train waited at the lonesome little station on the Indiana prairie. What
happened in those forty-five minutes is now for the first time given to
the public.
After the Great Man—who was no other than the president of the A. M. &
P. Trunk Line, which joins the Atlantic Ocean with the Great Lakes—after
the Great Man had taken a perfunctory turn about the little station and
had asked a few stereotyped questions of the station agent, he went back
to his seat in the Priscilla’s white-and-gold drawing-room, and sat down
to a game of solitaire. Being a very young president—not over forty—the
Great Man was not specially fond of solitaire. But he was still less fond
of the thoughts engendered by a two weeks’ solitary tour of inspection
through the flat, drab, malarial country of the middle West. After
prolonging his luncheon to the latest possible hour, and extracting all
the comfort to be obtained from a single mild cigar, he found himself
longing to exchange his gold-and-white grandeur for even the plebeian red
velvet of a day coach, where he could observe the vagaries of country
bridal couples, and invite the confidence of smudgy small boys with prize
packages of magenta lozenges.
It was while the Great Man was indulging in these vain visions, much to
the detriment of his success at solitaire, that he was startled by these
words, spoken in a shrill little voice, apparently just at his back:
“If you please, sir, are you the king?”
The moment that elapsed before the Great Man could whirl about in
the direction of the voice was long enough for several detached bits
of “Alice in Wonderland” to flit through his brain. What he saw,
however, when faced around, was simply a very solemn, very pale little
girl who stood with one thin hand on the door knob, and one small
scarlet-stockinged leg well advanced, while her hazel eyes gleamed at him
anxiously from under a fuzzy brown hat.
“Really,” said the Great Man, good humoredly, “I don’t know—why, yes, now
that you speak of it—I suppose I am a sort of king. At least, I believe
newspapers call me a railroad king. Won’t you come here and sit down?”
The small girl shut the door and slid to his side in a gait that combined
a hop and a glide. “I suppose it isn’t just the thing to sit down in—in
the presence of royalty,” she said, as she perched on the edge of a big
tapestry-cushioned Turkish chair. “But, you see, I am a princess myself—a
fairy princess,”—she added, with an emphatic shake of her fluffy yellow
locks.
“Indeed.” The “Alice in Wonderland” memories suddenly revived. “That’s
very interesting, and I don’t like to doubt the word of a lady. But all
the fairy princesses of my acquaintance have had wings and spangles, and
carried star-tipped wands—and—and all that,” concluded the Great Man
vaguely.
“But that was because you saw them during the performance,” said the
small girl, clasping her thin little fingers over one scarlet-stockinged
knee. “I wear wings and spangles and carry a wand myself, in the
evenings, and at the Wednesday and Saturday matinées. I’m the Princess
Iris,” she explained, “in the Golden Crown Opera Company; and if I wore
my fairy clothes all the time my wings would fade and the spangles would
wear off.
“But you know,” said the small girl, “you don’t look a bit like the kings
of my acquaintance. They all wear gilt crowns and velvet and ermine
robes, and carry scepters. And, besides, you are a great deal too young.”
The Great Man laughed. “I am afraid you have me there; at least, I
mean, I suppose you are right,” said he, leaning back in his chair and
regarding the Princess Iris with twinkling eyes. “I don’t look my part.
But, then, I am not performing now myself. We are in the same boat—that
is—”
“Oh, you needn’t bother to explain,” said the small girl, “I understand
slang. Only I don’t talk it myself, now, except when I forget, because
the Queen doesn’t like it.”
“So there is a queen, too, is there?” said the Great Man, the merry lines
around his blue eyes growing deeper. “Dear me, we shall soon have the
entire royal family.”
“Yes, there is a queen, and she is not to be laughed at,” said the
child gravely. “In fact, it’s partly about her I’ve come. I—I wanted an
audience.”
“Well, really,” said the man nervously, “I should like to accommodate
you, but”—looking at his watch—“my train leaves in about one minute, and
I don’t see exactly how I can.”
“Oh, my!” said the small girl, “can’t you even make your own train wait
while a princess talks to you?”
“Well, since you put it that way, I suppose I can,” said the Great Man,
pressing an electric button. Then, as the black porter appeared, listened
deferentially to his whispered order and glided out again, the royal
personage continued:
“Very likely I don’t get half the fun out of being a king that I might.
You see, I sometimes forget the extent of my power.”
“Ah! yes, that’s the very thing I’ve come to speak to you about,” said
the child. “I—I hope you will excuse me if I hurt your feelings,” she
went on gently, “but sometimes it’s necessary, you know.”
Upon her hearer’s assurance that he would endeavor to bear up under
censure, the small girl continued:
“It’s like this: I s’pose you’ve such a big kingdom you don’t get a
chance to straighten out all the things that go wrong.”
“And something has gone wrong, now, has it?”
“Yes, as wrong as can be. But,” reassuringly, “of course I understand you
couldn’t have known about it. It’s the train to Washita. It was put down
on the time-table, you know, to go at four this afternoon, and we all
came down to the station to get it. And now they say it may be two hours
before it arrives; so, instead of getting to Washita at half-past six, it
will be long after nine, and we’ll be too late to give our performance.
And that will be a very d-r-eadful loss to the Queen.”
“How’s that?” said the Great Man. “One night can’t make very much
difference.”
“Oh, but this is Saturday night, and the whole house was sold long ago.
Washita’s the best show town in the State, you know, and the Queen was
counting on the money.
“You see, it’s been a dreadfully poor season in the profession, and even
the Queen has lost heaps. And just now when she found out we’d be late,
her face got all white, and she hung onto my hand, oh, so hard, and said—”
Here the child stopped suddenly and, digging her little fists into the
chair, blinked very fast and caught her breath. Then,
“It quite upsets me to think of it,” she said in a muffled little voice.
“The Queen said that she was afraid that the company would have to
disband now, and the season’s hardly begun.”
Two great tears rolled down the white little face.
The man stirred uneasily. There was a deep line between his eyebrows.
“That is hard luck!” he exclaimed. “But, then,” with an affected
hardihood, “after all she’s only a play queen, you know, and I presume
she’s—well—roughed it before. Anyway, you’ll probably all find nice
engagements soon, and be just as well off as you are now.”
“How can you say that?” the child flashed out. “Of course we can’t be so
happy with any one else. There never was any one half so sweet, and kind,
and beautiful as she is. And we all love her dearly. And, besides, if the
rest are make-believes, she isn’t; she is a real queen all the time!”
The child had risen. Her shabby hat had fallen to the floor and her big
hazel eyes blazed angrily out of her pale little face. The next moment,
with a shame-faced lowering of her head, she slid nearer to the Great
Man’s side.
“I—you must excuse me if I hurt your feelings,” she said humbly. “The
Queen wouldn’t like it if she thought I’d done that, and on her
account, too; but, you see, I really couldn’t bear to have her called
a make-believe. And now,” she continued, “I think I’ll go back to the
station. My auntie and the Queen will be wondering where I am.”