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Leerie
Ruth Sawyer
[Illustration: Leerie]
LEERIE
BY
RUTH SAWYER
AUTHOR OF
SEVEN MILES TO ARDEN, ETC.
ILLUSTRATED BY
CLINTON BALMER
"_And O! before you hurry by
With ladder and with light,
O Leerie, see a little child
And nod to him to-night!_"
GROSSET & DUNLAP
NEW YORK PUBLISHERS
Made in the United States of America
LEERIE
Copyright 1920, by Harper & Brothers
Printed in the United States of America
_To Lamplighters--the world over_
CONTENTS
Chap. Page
Foreword ix
I. The Man Who Feared Sleep 3
II. Old King Cole 40
III. The Changeling 77
IV. For the Honor of the San 116
V. The Last of the Surgical 155
VI. Monsieur Satan 191
VII. The Lad Who Outsang the Stars 232
VIII. Into Her Own 269
Afterword 306
ILLUSTRATIONS
Leerie _Frontispiece_
Holding him high for Peter to admire _Facing p._ 100
"The first look I had told me she had gone quite mad" " 216
"He will require more care, better dressing" " 302
Foreword
I like to write stories. Best of all I like to write stories about people
who help the world to go round with a little more cheer and good will than
is usual. You know--and I know--there are a few who put into life
something more than the bare ingredients. They add a plum here--extra
spice there. They bake it well--and then they trim it up like an
all-the-year-round birthday cake with white frosting, angelica, and red
cherries. Last of all they add the candles and light them so that it glows
warmly and invitingly for all; fine to see, sweet to taste.
Of course, there are not so many people with the art or the will to do
this, and, having done it, they have not always the bigness of heart to
pass it round for the others to share. But I like to make it my business
to find as many as I can; and when I am lucky enough to find one I pop
him--or her--into a book, to have and to hold always as long as books last
and memory keeps green.
Not long ago I was ill--ridiculously ill--and my doctor popped me into a
sanitarium. "Here's the place," I said, "where people are needed to make
the world go round cheerfully, if they are needed anywhere." And so I set
about to get well and find one.
She came--before I had half finished. The first thing I noticed was the
inner light in her--a light as from many candles. It shone all over her
face and made the room brighter for a long time after she had left. The
next thing I noticed was the way everybody watched for her to come
round--everybody turning child again with nose pressed hard against the
window-pane. It made me remember Stevenson's _Lamplighter_; and for many
days there rang in my ears one of his bits of human understanding:
And oh! before you hurry by with ladder and with light,
O Leerie, see a little child and nod to him to-night.
Before I knew it I had all the makings of a story. I trailed it through
the mud of gossip and scandal; I followed it to the highroad of adventure
and on to the hills of inspiration and sacrifice. It was all there--ripe
for the plucking; and with the good assistance of Hennessy I plucked it.
Before the story was half written I was well--so much for the healing
grace of a story and the right person to put in it.
This much I have told that you may know that _Leerie_ is as true as all
the best and finest things in the world are true. I am only the passer-on
of life as she has made it--spiced, trimmed, and lighted with many
candles. So if the taste pleases, help yourself bountifully; there is
enough for all. And if you must thank any one--thank _Leerie_.
RUTH SAWYER.
[Illustration]
LEERIE
Chapter I
THE MAN WHO FEARED SLEEP
Peter Brooks felt himself for a man given up. He had felt his physical
unfitness for some time in the silent, condemning judgment masked under
the too sympathetic gaze of his fellow-men; he had felt it in the
over-solicitous inquiries after his health made by the staff; and there
was his chief, who had fallen into the comfortable week-end habit of
telling him he looked first-rate, and in the same breath begging him to
take the next week off. For months past he had been conscious of the
sidelong glances cast by his brother alumni at the College Club when he
appeared, and the way they had of dropping into a contradictory lot of
topics whenever he joined a group unexpectedly showed only too plainly
that he had been the real subject under discussion. Yes, he felt that the
world at large had turned its thumb down as far as he was concerned, but
it had caused him surprisingly little worry until that last visit to
Doctor Dempsy.
There it was as if Peter's sensibilities concerning himself had suddenly
become acute. The doctor sounded too reassuring even for a combined friend
and physician; he protested too much that he had found nothing at all the
matter with him--nothing at all. When a doctor seems so superlatively
anxious to set a man right with himself, it is time to look out; therefore
the casual, just-happened-to-mention-it way that he finally broached the
question of a sanitarium came within an inch of knocking the last prop
from under Peter's resolve not to lose his grip. For the first time he
fully realized how it felt to be given up, and, characteristically, he
thanked the Almighty that there was no one to whom it would really matter.
For a year he had been slowly going to pieces; for a year he had been
dropping in for Dempsy to patch him up. There had been a host of miserable
puny ailments which in themselves meant nothing, but combined and in a
young man meant a great deal. Of late his memory had failed him
outrageously; he had had frequent attacks of vertigo, and these of
themselves had rendered him unreliable and unfit for newspaper work.
Irresponsible! Unfit! Peter snorted the words out honestly to himself.
Under these conditions, and with no one to care, he could see no plausible
reason for trying to coax a mere existence out of life.
To those who knew him best--to Doctor Dempsy most of all--his condition
seemed unexplainable. Here was a man who never drank, who never overfed,
who smoked in moderation, whose life stood out conspicuously decent and
clean against the possibilities of his environment. What lay back of this
going to pieces? Doctor Dempsy had tried for a year to find out and had
failed. To Peter, it was not unexplainable at all--he knew. Possessed of a
constitution above the average, he had forced it to do the work of a mind
far above the average, while he had denied it one of the three necessities
of life and sanity. His will and reason had been powerless to help
him--and now?
Because he had hated himself for hiding this knowledge from the man who
had tried to do so much for him and wanted to make amends in some way--and
because it was the easiest thing, after all, to agree--he let Doctor
Dempsy pick out a sanitarium, make all arrangements, buy his ticket, and
see him off. He drew the line at being personally conducted, however.
Whether he went to a sanitarium or not did not matter; what mattered was
how long would he stay and where would he go afterward. Or would there be
an afterward? These were the questions that mulled through Peter's mind on
the train, and, coupled with the memory of the worried kindliness on
Doctor Dempsy's face, they were the only traveling companions Peter had.
It was not to be wondered, therefore, that as he left the car and boarded
the sanitarium omnibus he felt indescribably old, weary, and finished with
things.
At first he thought he was the only passenger, but as the driver leisurely
gathered up his reins and gave a cluck to the horses a girl's voice rang
out from the station, "Flanders--Flanders! Why, I believe you're
forgetting me." And the next instant the girl herself appeared, suitcase
in hand.
The driver grinned down a sheepish apology and Peter turned to hold the
door open. She stood framed in the doorway for a moment while she lifted
in her case, and for that moment Peter had conflicting impressions. He was
conscious of a modest, nun-like appearance of clothes; the traveling-suit
was gray, and the small gray hat had an encircling breast of white
feathers. The lips had a quiet, demure curve; but the chin was determined,
almost aggressive, while the gray eyes positively emitted sparks. The girl
was not beautiful, she was luminous--and all the gray clothing in the
world could not quench her. Peter found himself instantly wondering how
anything so vitally alive and fresh to look at could be headed for a
sanitarium with broken-down hulks like himself.
She caught Peter's eye upon her and smiled. "If Flanders will hurry we'll
be there in time to see Hennessy feeding the swans," she announced.
There was no response. Peter had suddenly lost the knack of it, along with
other things. He could only look bewildered and a trifle more tired. But
the girl must have understood it was only a temporary lack, for she did
not draw in like a snail and dismiss Peter from her conscious horizon. She
smiled again.
"I see. Newcomer?" And, nodding an affirmative to herself, she went
sociably on: "Hennessy and the swans are symbolical. Couldn't tell you
why--not in a thousand years--but you'll feel it for yourself after you've
been here long enough. Hennessy hasn't changed in fifteen years--maybe
longer for those who can reckon longer. Same old blue jumper, same old
tawny corduroys; if he ever had a new pair he's kept them to himself. And
the swans have changed less than Hennessy. If anything gets on your nerves
here--treatment, doctors, nurses, anything--go and watch Hennessy. He's
the one sure, universal cure."
The bus swung round the corner and brought the ivy-covered building into
sight. The girl's face grew lighter and lighter; in the shadow of the bus
it seemed to Peter actually to shine. "Dear old San," she said under her
breath. "Heigh-ho! it's good to get back!"
Before Peter could fathom any reason for this unaccountable rejoicing, the
bus had stopped and the girl and suitcase had vanished. Wearily he came
back to his own reason for being there, and docilely he allowed the porter
to shoulder his luggage and conduct him within.
Three days passed--three days in which Peter thought little and felt much.
He had been passed about among the staff of doctors very much like a
delectable dish, and sampled by all. Half a dozen had taken him in hand.
He had been apportioned a treatment, a diet, a bath hour, and a nurse.
Looking back on those three days--and looking forward to a continuous
protraction of the same--he could see less reason than ever for coaxing an
existence out of life. Life meant to him work--efficient, telling
work--and companionship--sharing with a congenial soul recreation,
opinions, and meals--and some day, love. Well--what of these was left him?
It was then that he remembered the gray girl's advice in the omnibus and
went out to find Hennessy and the swans.
His nurse was at supper, so he was mercifully free; moreover it was the
emptiest time of day for out-of-doors. A few straggling patients were
knocking prescribed golf-balls about the links, and a scattering of nurses
were hurrying in with their wheel-chairs. Half-way between the links and
the last building was the pond, shaded by pines and flanked by a miniature
rustic rest-house, and thither Peter went. On a willow stump emerging from
the pond he found Hennessy, as wrinkled as a butternut, with a thatch of
gray hair, a mouth shirred into a small, open ellipse, and eyes full of
irrepressible twinkles. He was seated tailor fashion on the stump, a tin
platter of bread across his knees and the swans circling about him. He
looked every whit as Irish as his name, and he was scolding and blarneying
the birds by turn.
"Go-wan, there, ye feathered heathen! Can't ye be lettin' them that has
good manners get a morsel once in a while? Faith, ye'll be havin' old Doc
Willum afther ye with his stomach cure if ye don't watch out." He looked
over his shoulder and caught Peter's gaze. "Sure, birds or humans, they
all have to be coaxed or scolded into keepin' healthy, I'm thinkin', and
Hennessy's head nurse to the swans," he ended, with a chuckle.
But there was something quite different on Peter's mind. "Has one of the
patients--a young person in gray--been here lately? I mean have you seen
her about any time?"
Hennessy shook a puzzled head. "A young gray patient, ye say? Sure there
might be a hundred--that's not over-distinguishin'. I leave it to ye, sir,
just a gray patient is not over-distinguishin'."
Peter reflected. "It was a quiet, cloister kind of gray, but her eyes were
not--cloistered. They were the shiningest--"
A chuckle from Hennessy brought him to an abrupt finish. "Eyes? Gray?
Patient? Ha, ha! Did ye hear that, Brian Boru?" and he flicked his cap at
a gray swan. "Sure, misther, that's no patient. 'Tis Leerie--herself."
"Leerie?" The name sounded absurd to Peter, and slightly reminiscent of
something, he could not tell what.
"Aye, Leerie. Real name, Sheila O'Leary--as good a name as Hennessy. But
they named her Leerie her probation year. In course she's Irish an' not
Scotch, an' I never heard tell of a lass afore that went 'round
a-lightin' street lamps, but for all that the name fits. Ye mind grown-ups
an' childher alike watch for her to come 'round."
"A nurse," repeated Peter, dully.
"Aye. An' she come back three days since, Heaven be praised! afther bein'
gone three years."
"Three years," repeated Peter again. "Why was she gone three years?"
Hennessy eyed him narrowly for a moment. "A lot of blitherin' fools sent
her away, that's what, an' she not much more than graduated. Suspension,
they called it."
"Suspension for what?"
The shirring in Hennessy's lips tightened, and he drew his breath in and
out in a sort of asthmatic whistle. This was the only sign of emotion ever
betrayed by Hennessy. When he spoke again he fairly whistled his words.
"If ye want to know what for--ye can ask some one else. Good night." And
with a bang to the platter Hennessy was away before Peter could stop him.
Alone with the swans, Peter lingered a moment to consider. A nurse. The
gray person a nurse! And sent away for some--some--Peter's mind groped
inadequately for a reason. Pshaw! He could smile at the absurdity of his
interest. What did it matter--or she matter--or anything matter? For a man
who has been given up, who has been sent away to a sanitarium to finish
with life as speedily and decently as he can, to stand on one leg by a
pond, for all the world like a swan himself, and wonder about a girl he
had seen but once, in a sanitarium omnibus, was absurd. And the name
Leerie? Of course they had taken it from Stevenson, but it suited. Yes,
Hennessy was right, it certainly suited.
A rustle of white skirts coming down the path attracted his attention. It
was his nurse, through supper, coming like a commandant to take him in
charge. Thirty-seven, in a sanitarium, with a nurse attendant! Peter
groaned inwardly. It was monstrous, a cowardly, blackguard attack of an
unthinking Creator on a human being--a decent human being--who might
be--who wanted to be--of some use in the world. For a breath he wanted to
roar forth blasphemy after blasphemy against the universe and its Maker,
but in the next breath he suddenly realized how little he cared. With a
smile almost tragically senile, he let the nurse lead him away.
And all the while a girl was leaning over the sill of the little
rest-house, watching him. It was a girl with a demure mouth, a determined
chin, and eyes that shone, who answered impartially to the names of
Sheila, Miss O'Leary, or Leerie. The gray was changed for the white
uniform and cap of a graduate nurse, and the change was becoming. She had
recognized him at first with casual amusement as she watched him fill her
prescription of Hennessy and the swans, but after Hennessy had gone she
watched him with all the intuitive sympathy of her womanhood and the
understanding of her profession. Not one of the emotions that swept
Peter's face but registered full on the girl's sensibilities: the
illuminating interest in something, bewilderment, hopelessness, despair,
agony, and a final weary surrender to the inevitable--they were all there.
But it was the strange, haunting look in the deep-set eyes that made the
girl sit up, alert and curious.
"'Phobia," she said, softly, under her breath. "Not over-fed liver or
alcoholic heart, but 'phobia, I'll wager, poor childman! Wonder how the
doctors have diagnosed him!"
She learned how a few days later when Miss Maxwell, the superintendent of
nurses, stopped her in the second-floor corridor. "My dear, I should like
to change you from Madam Courot to another case for a few days. Miss
Jacobs is on now and--"
"Coppy?" Sheila O'Leary broke in abruptly, a smile of amusement breaking
the demureness of her lips. "Needn't explain, Miss Max. I see. Young male
patient, unattached. Frequent pulse-takings and cerebral massage, with
late evening strolls in the pine woods. Business office takes notice and a
change of nurse recommended. Poor Coppy--ripping nurse! If only she
wouldn't grow flabby every time a pair of masculine eyes are focused her
way!"
"But it wasn't the business office this time." Miss Maxwell herself smiled
as she made the statement. "It was the patient himself. He asked for a
change."
"A man that's a man for all he's a patient. God bless his soul!" and a
look of sudden radiant delight swept the girl's face. "What's he here
for? Jilting chorus-girl--fatty degeneration of his check-book?"
The superintendent shook her head. "He doesn't happen to be that kind.
He's a newspaper-man--a personal friend of Doctor Dempsy's. Overwork, he
thinks, and for a year he's been trying to put him back on his feet. It's
a case of nerves, with nothing discoverable back of it so far as he can
see, but he wants us to try. Doctor Nichols has analyzed him; teeth have
been X-rayed; eyes, nose, and throat gone over. There's nothing radically
wrong with stomach or kidneys; heart shows nervous affection, nothing
more. He ought to be fit physically and he isn't. Miss Jacobs reports a
maximum of an hour's sleep in twenty-four. Doctor Dempsy writes it's a
case for a nurse, not a doctor, and the most tactful, intuitive nurse we
have in the sanitarium. Please take it, Leerie."
The girl stiffened under the two hands placed on her shoulders, while
something indescribably baffling and impenetrable took possession of her
whole being. Her voice became almost curt. "Sorry, can't. Bargain, you
know. Wouldn't have come back at all if you hadn't promised I should not
be asked to take those cases."
"I'll not ask you to take another, but you know how I feel about any
patient Doctor Dempsy sends to us. Anything I can do means paying back a
little on the great debt I owe him, the debt of a wonderful training.
That's why I ask--this once." A look almost fanatical came into the face
of the superintendent.
The girl smiled wistfully up at her. "Wish I could! Honest I do, Miss Max!
I'd fight for the life of any patient under the old San roof--man, woman,
or child; but I'll not baby-tend unhealthy-minded young men. You know as
well as I how it's always been: they lose their heads and I my
temper--results, the same. I end by telling them just what I think; they
pay their bills and leave the same day. The San loses a perfectly good
annual patient, and the business office feels sore at me. No, I'm no good
at frequent pulses and cerebral massage; leave that to Coppy."
There was no stinging sarcasm in the girl's voice. She reached out an
impulsive hand and slipped it into one of the older woman's, leaving it
there long enough to give it a quick, firm grip. "Remember, it's only
three years--and it takes so little to set tongues wagging again. So let's
stick fast to the bargain, dear; only nervous old ladies or the bad
surgical cases."
"Very well. Only--if you could change your mind, let me know. In the mean
time I'll put Miss Saunders on," and the superintendent turned away,
troubled and unsatisfied.
An hour later Sheila O'Leary came upon Miss Saunders with her new patient,
and the patient was the man of the omnibus--the man with the haunting,
deep-set eyes. Unnoticed, she watched them sitting on a bench by the pond,
the nurse droning aloud from a book, the man sagging listlessly, plainly
hearing nothing and seeing nothing. The picture set Sheila O'Leary
shuddering. If it was a case of 'phobia, God help the poor man with
Saunders coupled to his nerves! Cumbersome, big-hearted, and hopelessly
dull, Saunders was incapable of nursing with tactful insight a
nerve-racked man. In the whole wide realm of disease there seemed nothing
more tragic to Sheila than a victim of 'phobia. It turned normal men and
women into pitiful children, afraid of the dark, groping out for the hand
to reassure them, to put heart and courage back in them again--the hand
that nine cases out of ten never reaches them in time.
With an impulsive toss of her head, Sheila O'Leary swung about in her
tracks. She would break her own bargain for this once. She would go to
Miss Max and ask to be put on the case. Here was a soul sick unto death
with a fear of something, and Saunders was nursing it! What did it matter
if it was a man or a dog, as long as she could get into the dark after him
and show him the way out! Her resolve held to the point of branching
paths, and there she stopped to consider again.
Peter's eyes were on the swans; there was nothing to the general droop of
the shoulders, the thrust-forward bend of the neck, the hollowing of the
smooth-shaven cheeks, and the graying of the hair above the temples to
write him other than an average overworked or habitually harassed business
man here for rest and treatment. If Sheila was mistaken--if there was no
abnormal mental condition back of it all, no legitimate reason for not
holding fast to the compact she had made three years before with herself
to leave men--young, old, or middle-aged--out of her profession, what a
fool she would feel! She balanced the paths and her judgment for a second,
then decided in favor of the bargain. So Peter was left to the
ministrations of Saunders.
That night the unexpected happened, unexpected as far as the sanitarium,
the superintendent of nurses, and Sheila O'Leary were concerned. How
unexpected it was to Peter depends largely on whether it was the result of
a decision on his part to stop coaxing existence--or a desire to escape
permanently from Saunders--or merely an accident. However, Sheila O'Leary
was called in the middle of the night, when she was sleeping so soundly
that it took the combined efforts of the superintendent and the head night
nurse to shake her awake. As she hurried into her uniform they gave her
the bare details. Somehow the doors of the sun-parlor had not been
fastened as usual, and a patient had stayed up there after lights were
out. He had tried to find his way to the lift, had slipped the fastenings
of the door in his effort to locate the bell, and had fallen four stories,
to the top of the lift itself. The whole accident was unbelievable,
unprecedented. They might find some plausible explanation in the
morning--but in the mean time the patient was in the operating-room and
Sheila O'Leary was to report at once for night duty.
As the girl pinned on her cap the superintendent whispered the last
instructions: "You'll find him in Number Three, Surgical. It's one of your
fighting cases, Leerie, and it's Doctor Dempsy's patient. Remember, your
best work this time, girl, for all our sakes!"
And it was a fighting case. Innumerable nights followed, all alike. The
temperature rose and fell a little, only to rise again; the pulse
strengthened and weakened by turns; delirium continued unbroken. As night
after night wore on and no fresh sign of internal injury developed, the
girl found herself forgetting the immediate condition of the patient and
going back to the thing that had brought him here. If she was right and he
was possessed by a fixed idea, the dread of some concrete thing or
experience, his delirium showed no evidence. It seemed more the delirium
of exhaustion than fever, and there was no raving. Consciousness, however,
might reveal what delirium hid, so, as the nights slipped monotonously by,
the girl found herself waiting with a growing eagerness for the man to
come back to himself.
The waiting seemed interminable, but a time came at last when Sheila
slipped through the door of No. 3 and found a pair of deep-set, haunting
eyes turned full upon her.
"It's--it's Leerie." The words came with some difficulty, but there was an
untold relief in Peter's voice.
For a moment the girl was taken aback, but only for a moment. She laughed
him a friendly little laugh while she put her hand down to the hand that
was still too weak to reach out in greeting. "Yes. Oh yes, it's Leerie.
Been getting pretty well acquainted with you these weeks, but rather a
surprise to find it so--so mutual."
"I got acquainted with you--beforehand," announced Peter.
"I see--omnibus, Hennessy, and the swans." She laughed again softly.
"You've been away a long time; hope you're glad to get back."
Peter reflected. "I'm afraid I'm not. But I'll not say it if it sounds too
much like a quitter."
"No, say it and get it out of your system. Getting well always seems a
terrible undertaking; and the stronger you've been the harder it seems."
Sheila turned to her chart and preparations for the night.
Lights out, she sat down by the open window to wait for Peter to sleep. An
hour passed, two hours, and sleep did not come. She fed him hot milk and
he still lay open-eyed, almost rigid, staring straight at the ceiling. At
midnight she stole out for her own supper in the diet-kitchen and found
him still awake when she returned, the haunting eyes looking more child's
than man's in the dimness of the night lamp. Had she been free to follow
her most vagrant impulse, she would have climbed on the head of the bed,
taken the bandaged head on her lap, and plunged into the most enthralling
tale of boy adventure her imagination could compass. But she hounded off
the impulse, after the fashion of treating all vagrants, and went back to
the window to wait and wonder. Peter was still awake when the gray of the
morning crept down the corridors of the Surgical.
Sheila questioned Tyler, the day nurse, as she came off duty the next
evening, "Number Three sleep any to boast of?"
"Why, no! Didn't he sleep well last night?"
She gave a non-committal shrug and passed into the room. He was watching
for her coming, and a ghost of a smile flickered at the corners of his
mouth. She couldn't remember having seen even so much of a smile before.
"It's--it's Leerie." He said it just as he had the night before. But there
was a strange, wistful appeal in the voice which set Sheila wondering
afresh.
"Gorgeous night, full of stars, and air like wine. Smell the verbena and
thyme from the San gardens?" Sheila threw back her head and sniffed the
air like a wild thing. "Took me a month to trail that smell--be sure of
it. You only get it at night after a light rain. Take some long breaths of
it and you'll be asleep before lights are out."
But he was not. He lay rigid as the night before, his eyes staring
straight before him. Sheila remembered a description she had read once of
a mountain guide who had been caught on the edge of a landslide and hung
for hours over the abyss, clutching a half-felled tree and trying to keep
awake until help came. The man she was nursing might almost be living
through such an agony of mind and body, afraid to yield up his
consciousness lest he should go plunging off into some horrible abyss.
What did he fear? Was it sleep? Was somnophobia what lay behind the
wrecking of this fine, clean manhood? The thing seemed incredible, and
yet--and yet--
Before dawn crept again into the Surgical, the mind of Sheila O'Leary was
made up. Peter was suddenly aware that the nurse was close at his bedside,
chafing the clenched fingers free. It was that mysterious hour that hangs
between the going night and coming day, the most non-resisting time for
body and mind, when the human will gives up the struggle if it gives it up
at all. And Sheila O'Leary, being well aware of this, rubbed the tense
nerves into a comfortable state of relaxation and talked.
First she talked of the city, and found he was not city-born. Then she
talked of the country--of South, East, and West--and located his
birthplace in a small New England village. She talked of the outdoor
freedom of a country boy, of the wholesome work and fun on a farm with a
large family and good old-fashioned parents, and she found that he had
been an only child, motherless, with a family consisting of a
misanthropic, grief-stricken father and a hired girl. His voice sounded
toneless and more tired than ever as he spoke of his childhood.
"Lonely?" queried Sheila.
"Perhaps."
"Neglected and--frightened?"
"What do you mean?"
The girl leaned over the bed and looked straight into the eyes that seemed
to be daring her to find the way into his darkness and at the same time
barring fast the door against her coming. She smiled gently. "Tell me--can
you remember when you first began to fear sleep?"
There was no denial, no protest. Peter sighed as a little worn-out boy
might have sighed with the irksome concealment of some forbidden act. "I
don't know," he said at last. "I can't think back to a time when I wasn't
afraid--afraid of the dropping out, into the dark. God!" He turned his
head away, and for the first time in two weary, wakeful nights Sheila saw
him close his eyes.
Off duty, instead of going to breakfast and bed, Sheila O'Leary went to
the office of the superintendent of nurses. In her usual fashion she came
straight to her point. "Put Saunders back on Number Three and give me a
couple of days off. Please, Miss Max."
Her abruptness shook the almost unshakable calm of Miss Maxwell. She gazed
at the girl in frank amazement. "May I ask why?" There was a kindly irony
in the question.
"Sounds queer, I know, but I've simply got to go. Lots depends on it, and
no time now to explain. Want to catch that eight-thirty-five; Flanders is
holding the bus. Tell you when I get back--please, Miss Max?" And taking
consent for granted, Sheila started for the door.
There was an odd look on the face of the superintendent as she watched
her go--a look of amused, loving pride. She might hide it from their
little world, but she could not deny it to herself, that of all the girls
she had helped to train, none had come so close to her heart as this girl
with her wonderful insight, her honesty, her plain speaking, and her heart
of gold. A hundred times she had defied the rules of the sanitarium, had
swept the superintendent's dignity to the four winds. And she would
continue to do so, and they would continue to overlook it. Such petty
offenses are forgiven the Leeries the world over. And now, watching the
gray, alive figure climbing into the omnibus, Miss Maxwell had no mind to
resent her breach of discipline. She knew the girl had asked nothing for
herself; she had gone to do something for somebody who needed it, and she
would report for duty again when that was accomplished.
And two days later, accordingly, she came, a luminous, ecstatic figure
that flew into the office with arms outstretched to swing the
superintendent almost off her feet in joyful triumph. "It _was_ just what
I thought! Found the girl--only she is an old woman now--got the whole
miserable story from her, and--and--I think--I think--Good heart alive! I
think I can pull him out of the beastly old hole!"
"Meaning--? Remember, my dear, I haven't the grain of an idea why you
went, or where you went, or what the miserable story is about. Please
shine your lantern this way and light up my intelligence." Miss Maxwell
was beaming.
Sheila O'Leary laughed. "I began by jumping at conclusions--same as I
always do--jumped at 'phobia in Number Three. Almost came and asked to be
put on the case after you told me. But he isn't Number Three any
more--he's a little boy named Peter--a little boy, almost a baby,
frightened night after night for years and years into lying still in the
dark under the eaves in a little attic room, deliberately frightened by a
hired girl who wanted to be free to go off gadding with her young man. I
got the place and her name from Peter--coaxed it out of him--and I made
her tell me the story. The father paid her extra wages to stay at night so
the little boy wouldn't be lonely and miss his mother too much, and she
didn't want him to find out she had gone. So she'd put Peter to bed and
tell him that if he stirred or cried out the walls would close in on
him--or the floor would swallow him up--or the ghosts would come out of
the corners and eat him up or carry him off. Can't you see him there, a
little quivering heap of a boy, awake in the dark, afraid to move? Can't
you feel how he would lie and listen to all the sounds about him--the
squealing mice, the creaking rafters, the wind moaning in the eaves--too
terrified to go to sleep? And when he did sleep--worn out--can't you
imagine what his dreams would be like? Oh, women like that--women who
could frighten little sensitive children--ought to be burned as they
burned the witches!" The girl's eyes blazed and she shook a pair of
clenched fists into the air. "And can you see the rest of it? How the fear
grew and grew even as the memory of the tales faded, grew into a nameless,
unexplainable fear of sleep? And because he was a boy he hid it; and
because he was a man he fought it; but the thing nailed him at last. He
fought sleep until he lost the habit of sleep. He couldn't get along
without it, and here he is!"
"Well, what are you going to do?" The superintendent eyed her narrowly;
her cheeks were as flushed as the girl's.
A little enigmatical smile curved up the corners of the usually demure
mouth. "Going to play Leerie--going to play it harder than I ever did in
my life before."
And that night as Peter turned his head wearily toward the door to greet
the kindly, cumbersome Saunders, he found, to his surprise, the owner of
the shining eyes come back. He felt so ridiculously glad about it that he
couldn't even trust himself to tell her so. Instead he repeated foolishly
the same old thing, "Why, it's--it's Leerie!"
When everything was ready for the night, Sheila turned the night-light out
and lowered the curtain until it was quite dark. Then she drew her chair
close to the bed and slipped her hand into the lean, clenched one on the
coverlid. "Don't think of me as a girl--a nurse--a person--at all,
to-night," she said, softly. "I'm just a piece of Stevenson's poem come to
life--a lamplighter for a little boy going to sleep all alone in a
farm-house attic. It's very dark. You can hear the mice squeal and the
rafters creak, if you listen, and the window's so small the stars can't
creep in. In the daytime the attic doesn't seem far away or very strange,
but at night it's miles--miles away from the rest of the house, and it's
full of things that may happen. That's why I'm here with my lamp."
Sheila stopped a moment. She could hear the man's breath coming quick,
with a catch in it--a child breathes that way when it is fighting down a
cry or a sob. Then she went on: "Of course it's a magical lamp I carry,
and with the first sputter and spark it lights up and turns the attic
inside out--and there we are, the little boy and I, hand in hand, running
straight for the brook back of the house. The lamp burns as bright as the
sun now, so it seems like day--a spring day. It isn't the mice squealing
at all that you hear, but the birds singing and the brook running. There
are cowslips down by the brook, and 'Jacks.' Here by the big stone is a
chance to build a bully good dam and sailboats made out of the shingles
blown off from the barn roof. Want to stop and build it now?"
"All right." There was almost a suppressed laugh in the voice; it
certainly sounded glad. And the hand on the coverlid was as relaxed as
that of a child being led somewhere it wants to go.
Sheila smiled happily in the dark: "You must get stones, then--lots and
lots of them--and we'll pile them together. There's one stone--and two
stones--and three stones. Another stone here--another here--another
here--a big one there where the current runs swiftest, and little stones
for the chinks."
According to Sheila O'Leary's best reckoning the dam was only half built
when the little boy fell fast asleep over his work. And when the gray of
the morning stole down the corridors of the Surgical, No. 3 was sleeping,
with one arm thrown over his head as little boys sleep, and the other
holding fast to the nurse on night duty.
But it takes a long while to break down an old habit and build up a new
one, as it takes a long while to build a dam. No less than tons of stones
must have gone to the building of Peter's before the time came when he
could drop asleep alone and unguided. In all that time neither he nor the
girl ever spoke of what lay between the putting out of the night lamp and
the waking fresh and rested to a welcomed day.
With sleep came speedy recovery, and Peter was the most popular
convalescent in the Surgical. His laugh had suddenly grown contagious, his
humor irresistible, his outlook on life so optimistically bubbling that
less cheery patients turned their wheel-chairs to No. 3 for revitalizing.
The chief came up with Doctor Dempsy from town, and both went away wearing
the look of men who have seen miracles. Life in its fullness had come to
Peter, the life he had dreamed of, as a lost crosser of the desert dreams
of water. Efficient work was to be his again, and companionship, and--yes,
for the first time he hoped for the third and best of life's
ingredients--he hoped for love.
And then, just as everything looked best and brightest, he was told that
he no longer needed a night nurse. Sheila O'Leary was put on the case of
an old lady with chronic dyspepsia. She told him herself, as she went off
duty in the Surgical for the last time.
"You've had the best sleep of all." She smiled at his efforts to pull
himself awake. "I'll drop in when I'm passing, to see how you're getting
on, but otherwise this is good-by and good luck." She held out her hand.
"Why--but--Hang it all! I can't get along without a night nurse. And if I
don't need one, why can't you take Miss Tyler's place in the day?"
"Orders." Sheila announced it as an unshakable fact.
"I'll see Miss Maxwell."
"No use. She wouldn't listen."
"Guess if I'm paying for it I can have--"
Sheila O'Leary's chin squared and her body stiffened. "There are some
things no one can pay for, Mr. Brooks."
Peter colored crimson. He reached quickly for the hand Sheila had pulled
away. "What an ungrateful cur you must think I am! And I've never said a
word--never thanked you."
"There was nothing to thank for. I was only undoing what another woman had
done long ago. That's one of the glad things about nursing; we so often
have a chance at just that sort of thing--the chance to make up for some
of the blind mistakes in life. Good-by. I'm late now."
"But--but--" Peter held frantically to the hand. "'Pon my soul, I can't
let you go until--until--" He broke off, crimsoning again. "Promise a
time when you will come back--just a minute I can count on and look
forward to. Please!"
"All right--I'll be back at four--just for a minute."
It happened, however, that Miss Jacobs--pink-cheeked, auburn-haired,
green-eyed little Miss Jacobs, the first nurse on Peter's case, blew into
No. 3 a few minutes before four. She had developed the habit of blowing in
at least once in the day and telling Peter how perfectly splendid it was
to see him getting along so well. But as he did not happen to look quite
so well this time, she condoled and wormed the reason out of Peter.
"Leerie off duty! Don't you think it's rather remarkable they let her stay
so long? Of course the management, as a rule, doesn't let her have cases
of--of this kind. A girl who's been sent away on account
of--of--questionable conduct isn't exactly safe to trust. Don't you think
so? And the San can't afford to risk its reputation." For an instant the
green eyes shimmered and glistened balefully, while she tossed her auburn
curls coyly at Peter. "It's really too bad, for she's a wonderful surgical
nurse. All the best surgeons want her on their cases. That's why they put
her on with you; that's really why they let her come back at all."
A look in Peter's eyes stopped her and made her look back over her
shoulder. Sheila O'Leary stood in the open doorway. For an instant the
perpetual assurance of Miss Jacobs was shaken, but only for an instant.
She smiled tolerantly. "Hello, Leerie! I've been telling Mr. Brooks what a
wonderful surgical nurse you are."
The gray eyes of the girl in the doorway looked steadily into the green
eyes of the girl by the bed. "Thank you, Coppy, I heard you." And she
stepped aside to let the other pass out.
"Well?" she asked when the two were alone.
"Well!" answered Peter, emphatically. "Everything is very, very well. Do
you know," and he smiled up at her like a happy small boy--"do you know
that all the while you were building that dam I was building something
else?"
"Were you?"
"I was building my life over again--building it fresh, with the fear gone
and everything sound and strong and fine. And into the chinks where all
the miserable empty places had been--the places where loneliness and
heartache eternally leaked through--I was fitting love, the love I never
dared dream of."
"Yes?"
The girl's lips looked strangely hard--almost bitter, Peter thought; and
this time he reached out both arms to her.
"Hang it all! It's tough on a man who's never dared dream of love to have
it take him, bandaged and tied to his bed. Leerie--Leerie! You wouldn't
have the heart to blow out the lamp now, would you?"
The lips softened, she gave a sad little shake of her head. "No, but
you've got to keep it burning yourself. You're a man; you can do it.
Sorry--can't help it. And please don't say anything more. Don't spoil it
all, and make me say things I wish I hadn't and send you off to pay your
bill and leave the San to-night." She smiled wistfully. "Dear, grown-up
boy! Don't you know that it's the customary thing for a man to think he's
fallen in love with his nurse when he's convalescing? Just get well and
forget it--as all the others do." She turned toward the door.
"I'm not going to pay my bill to-night, and I'm not going to forget it. I
guess all those chinks haven't been filled up yet. I'm going to stay until
they are. Good plan, don't you think?" And Peter Brooks smiled like a man
who had never been given up--nor ever intended giving up, now that life
had given him back the things for which he had a right to fight.