OLD KING COLE
Hennessy was feeding the swans. Sheila O'Leary leaned over the sill of the
diminutive rustic rest-house and watched him with a tired contentment. She
had just come off a neurasthenic case--a week of twenty-four-hour
duty--and she wanted to stretch her cramped sensibilities in the quiet
peace of the little house and invite her soul with a glimpse of Hennessy
and the swans.
All about her the grounds of the sanitarium were astir with its customary
crowd of early-summer-afternoon patients. How those first warm days called
the sick folks out-of-doors and held them there until the last beam of
sunshine had disappeared behind the foremost hill! The tennis-courts were
full; the golf-links were dotted about with spots of color like a cubist
picture; pairs of probationers, arm in arm, were strolling about, enjoying
a comparative leisure; old Madam Courot was at her customary place under
the juniper, watching the sun go down. Three years! Nothing seemed changed
in all that time but the patients--and not all of these, as Madame Courot
silently testified. The pines shook themselves above the rest-house in the
same lazy, vagabond fashion, the sun purpled the far hills and spun the
same yellow haze over the links, the wind brought its habitual afternoon
accompaniment of cow-bells from the sanitarium farm, and Hennessy threw
the last crumb of bread to Brian Boru, the gray swan, as he had done for
the fifteen years Sheila could remember.
She folded her arms across the sill and rested her chin on them. How good
it was to be back at the old San, to settle down to its kindly,
comfortable ways and the peace of its setting after the feverish
restlessness of city hospitals! She remembered what Kipling had said, that
the hill people who came down to the plains were always hungering to get
back to the hills again. That was the way she had felt about it--always a
hunger to come back. For months and months she had thought that she might
forever have to stay in those hospitals, have to make up her mind to the
eternal plains--and then had come her reprieve--she had been called back
to the San and the work she loved best.
Had the place been any other than the sanitarium, and the person any other
than Sheila O'Leary, this would never have happened. For she had left
under a cloud, and in similar cases a cloud, once gathered, grows until it
envelops, suffocates, and finally annihilates the person. As a graduate
nurse she would have ceased to exist. But in spite of the most blighting
circumstances, those who counted most believed in her and trusted her.
They had only waited for time to forget and tongues to stop wagging, and
then they had called her back. Perhaps the strangest thing about it was
that Sheila did not look like a person who could have had even the
smallest, fleeciest of clouds brushing her most distant horizon. In fact,
so vital, warm, and glowing was her personality, so radiant her nature,
that she seemed instead a permanent dispeller of clouds.
From across the pond Hennessy watched her with adoring eyes as he gave his
habitual, final bang to the bread-platter and the hitch to his corduroys
preparatory to leaving. To his way of thinking, there was no nurse
enrolled on the books of the old San who could compare with her. In the
beginning he had prophesied great things of her to Flanders, the
bus-driver. "Ye mind what I'm tellin' ye," he had said. "Afore she's
finished her trainin' she'll have more lads a-dandtherin' round her than
if she'd been the King of Ireland's only daughter. Ye can take my word for
it, when she leaves here, 'twill be a grand home of her own she'll be
goin' to an' no dirty hospital."
That had been three years ago, and Hennessy sighed now over the utter
futility of his words. "Sure, who could have been seein' that one o' the
lads would have turned blackguard? Hennessy knows. Just give the lass time
for that hurt to heal, an' she'll be winnin' a home of her own, after
all." This he muttered to himself as he took the path leading toward the
rest-house.
Sheila saw him coming, his lips shirred to the closeness of some emotional
strain. "Hello, Hennessy! What's troubling?" she called down the path.
"Faith, it's Mr. Peter Brooks that's troublin'. 'Tis a week, now, that
ye've been off that case--an' he's near cured. Another week now--"
"In another week he'll be going back to his work--and I'll be very glad."
Hennessy eyed the girl narrowly. "Will ye, then? Why did ye cure him up so
fast for, Miss Leerie? Why didn't ye give the poor man a chance?"
No one but Hennessy would have had sufficient temerity for such a
question, but had any one dared to ask it, upon their heads would have
fallen the combined anger and bitterness of Sheila's tongue. For having
had occasion once for bitterness, it was not over-hard to waken it when
men served as topics. But at Hennessy she smiled tolerantly. "Didn't I
give him a chance to get well? That was all he needed or wanted. And, now
he's well, he'll go about his business."
"Faith," and Hennessy closed a suggestive eye, "that depends on what he
takes to be his business. In my young days the choosin' an' courtin' of a
wife was the big part of a man's business. Now if he comes round askin' my
opinion--"
"Tell him, Hennessy"--and Sheila fixed him firmly with a glance--"that
the sanitarium does not encourage its cured patients to hang about
bothering its nurses. It is apt to make trouble for the nurses.
Understand?"
Again Hennessy closed one eye; then he laughed. "When ye talk of devils
ye're sure to smell brimstone. There comes Mr. Brooks now, an' he has his
head back like a dog trailin' the wind."
The girl turned and followed Hennessy's jerking thumb with her eyes.
Across the pine grove, coming toward them, was a young man above medium
height, square-shouldered and erect. There was nothing startlingly
handsome nor remarkable about his appearance; he was just nice, strong,
clean-looking. He waved to the two by the rest-house.
"And do ye mind his looks when he came!" Hennessy's tone denoted wonder
and admiration.
"A human wreck--haunted at that." There was a good deal more than mere
professional interest in Sheila's tone; there was pride and something
else. It was past Hennessy's perceptive powers to define what, but he
noticed it, nevertheless, and looked sharply up at the girl.
"For the love o' Mike, Miss Leerie! Why can't ye stop ticketin' each man
as a case an' begin thinkin' about them human-like? Ye might begin
practisin' wi' Mr. Brooks."
The line of Sheila's lips became fixed; the chin that could look so
demure, the eyes that could look so soft and gentle, both backed up the
lips in an expression of inscrutable hardness.
"In the name of your patron saint, Hennessy, what have you said to Miss
Leerie to turn her into that sphinx again?" The voice of Peter Brooks was
as nice as his appearance.
Hennessy looked foolish. "I was tellin' her, then," he moistened his lips
to allow a safer emigration of words--"I was tellin' her--that the gray
swan had the rheumatism in his left leg, an' I was askin' her, did she
think Doctor Willum would prescribe a thermo bath for him. I'd best be
askin' him meself, maybe," and with a sudden pull at his forelock Hennessy
backed away down the path.
Peter Brooks watched him depart with an admiration equal to that with
which Hennessy had welcomed him. "That man has a wonderful insight into
human nature. Now I was just wishing I could have you all alone for
about--"
Sheila interrupted him. "I hope you weren't counting on too many minutes.
I can see Miss Maxwell coming down the San steps, and I have a substantial
feeling that she's looking for me to put me on another case."
"Couldn't we escape? Couldn't we skip round by the farm to the garage and
get my car? You look fagged out. A couple of hours' ride would do wonders
for you, and--Good Lord! The San can run that long without your services.
What do you say? Shall we beat it?"
With a telltale, pent-up eagerness he noticed the girl's indecision and
flung himself with all his persuasive powers to turn the balance in his
favor. "Do come. You can work better and harder for a little time off now
and then. All the other nurses take it. Why under the heavens can't a man
ever persuade you to have a little pleasure?" Something in Sheila's face
stopped him and prompted the one argument that could have persuaded her.
"If you'll only come, Leerie, I'll promise to keep dumb--absolutely dumb.
I'll promise not to spoil the ride for you."
Sheila flung him a radiant smile; it almost unbalanced him and murdered
his resolve. "Then I'll come. You're the first man I ever knew who could
keep his word--that way. Hurry! we'll have to run for it." And taking the
lead, she ducked through the little door of the rest-house and ran,
straight as the crow flies, to the hiding shelter of the farm.
But her premonition was correct. When she returned two hours later in the
cool of a summer's twilight, with eyes that sparkled like iridescent pools
and lips that smiled generously her gratitude to the man who could keep
his word, she found the superintendent of nurses watching from the San
steps for their car.
"All right, Miss Maxwell," she nodded in response to the question that was
plainly stamped on the superintendent's face. "We've had supper--don't
even have to change my uniform." Then to Peter, "Thank you."
The words were meager enough, but Peter Brooks had already received his
compensation in the girl's glowing face. "It's 'off again, on again, gone
again,' in your profession, too. Well, here's looking forward to the next
escape." His laugh rang with health and good spirits.
Sheila stopped on her way up the steps, turned and looked back at him. The
wonder of his recovery often surprised even herself. It seemed incredible
that this pulsing, vitalized portion of humanity could have once been a
veritable husk, hounded by a haunting fear into a state of hopelessness
and loathing of existence. Life certainly tingled in Peter now, and every
time Sheila felt it, man or no man, she could not help rejoice with all
her heart at the thing she had helped to do.
Peter's smile met hers half-way in the dusk. "It may be another week
before I see you again. In case--I'd like to tell you that I'm staying on
indefinitely. The chief has pushed me out of my Sunday section and has
sent me a lot of special articles to do up here. He thinks I had better
not come back until I'm all fit."
"You're perfectly fit now." There was a brutal frankness in the girl's
words.
Peter had grown used to these moments. They no longer troubled or hurt
him. He had begun to understand. "Maybe I am; I feel so, but you can never
tell. Then there's always the danger of one's heart going back on one.
That's why I've decided to stay on and coddle mine. Rather good plan?"
Sheila O'Leary vouchsafed no answer. She disappeared through the entrance
of the sanitarium, leaving Peter Brooks still smiling. Neither his
expression nor position had changed a few seconds later when Miss Jacobs
touched him on the arm.
"Oh, Mr. Brooks! Were you the guilty party--running away with Leerie? For
the last two hours we've been combing the San grounds for her." The green
eyes of the flirtatious nurse gleamed peculiarly catlike in the dusk. "Of
course I don't suppose my opinion counts so very much with you," there was
a honeyed, self-deprecatory quality in the girl's tone, "but if I were
you, I wouldn't go about so awfully much with Leerie. She's a dear girl--I
don't suppose it's really her fault--but she had such a record. And you
know it's my creed that girls of that kind can compromise poor men far
oftener than men compromise girls. Oh, I do hope you understand what I
mean!"
Peter still wore a smile, but it was a different smile. It was as much
like the old one as a search-light is like sunshine. He focused it full on
Miss Jacobs's face. "I'm a shark at understanding. And don't worry about
me. I'm more of a shark in deep water with--with sirens." He chuckled
inwardly at the look of blank incomprehension on the nurse's face. "By the
way, just what did you want Miss Leary for? Not another accident?"
The girl gave her head a disgusted toss. "Oh, they want her to help an old
man die. He came up here a week ago. I saw him then, and he looked ready
to burst. Doctor MacByrn said he weighed over three hundred and had a
blood pressure of two hundred and ten. They can't bring it down, and his
heart is about done for. Leerie always gets those dying cases. Ugh!" The
girl shuddered. "Guess they wouldn't put me on any of those sure-dead
cases; it's bad enough when you happen on them."
Peter shot her a pitying glance and walked back to his car. He was just
climbing in when the girl's voice chirped back to him. "Just the night
for a ride, isn't it? I couldn't think of letting you go all alone and be
lonesome. Isn't it lucky I'm off duty till ten!"
"Lucky for the patient!" Peter mumbled under his breath; then aloud:
"Sorry, but I'm unlucky. Only enough gasoline to get her back to the
garage. Good night." He swung the car free of the curb, leaving little
red-headed, green-eyed Miss Jacobs in the process of gathering up her
skirts and mounting into thin air.
Meanwhile Sheila had followed the superintendent to her office. "It's a
case of cerebral hemorrhages. The man is no fool; he knows his condition,
and he's been getting increasingly hard to take care of every minute since
he found out. Maybe you've heard of him. He's Brandle, the coal magnate.
Quite alone in the world; no children, and his wife died some few years
ago. He's very peculiar, and no one seems to know what to say to him or do
for him. I'm a little afraid--" and the superintendent paused to consider
her words before committing herself. "I think perhaps there have been too
many offers of prayers and scriptural readings for his taste."
"Probably he'd prefer the last _Town Topics_ or the latest detective
story." Sheila shook her head violently. "Why can't a man be allowed to
die the way he chooses--instead of your way, or my way, or the Reverend
Mr. Grumble's way?"
"Miss Barry is on the case now, and I'm afraid he's shocked her into--"
"Perpetual devotion." Sheila grinned sympathetically as she completed the
sentence. They had called her Prayer-Book Barry her probation year because
of her unswerving religious point of view, and her years of training had
only served to increase it. The picture of anything as sensitively pious
as Prayer-Book Barry helping a coal magnate to depart this temporal world
in his own chosen fashion was too much for Sheila's sense of the
grotesque. She threw back her head and laughed. Peal after peal rang out
and over the transom of the superintendent's office just as Miss Jacobs
passed.
It took no great powers of penetration to identify the laugh; a look of
satisfaction crept into the green eyes. "Quite dramatic and brutally
unfeeling I call it," she murmured. "But it will make an entertaining
story to tell Mr. Brooks. He thinks Leerie is such a little tinseled
saint."
Ten minutes later Sheila O'Leary followed Miss Maxwell into the large
tower room of the sanitarium to relieve Miss Barry from duty. As she took
her first look from the doorway she almost forgot herself and laughed
again. The room might have been a scene set for a farce or a comic opera.
Propped up in bed, with multitudinous pillows about him, was a very
mammoth of a man in heliotrope-silk pajamas. His face was as round and
full and bucolic as a poster advertising some specific brew of beer.
Surmounting the face was a sparse fringe of white hair standing erect,
while an isolated lock mounted guard over a receding forehead. It was
evident that the natural expression of the face was good-natured,
indulgent, easygoing, but at the moment of Sheila's entrance it was
contorted into something that might have served for a cartoon of a
choleric full moon. The eyes were rolling frantically in every direction
but that from which the presumable infliction came, for seated at the
bedside, with a booklet of evening prayer open on her lap, was Miss Barry,
reading aloud in a sweet, gentle voice.
Miss Barry did not stop until she had finished her paragraph. The
cessation of her voice brought the roving eyes to a standstill; then they
flew straight to Miss Maxwell in abject appeal. "Take it away, ma'am.
Don't hurt it--but take it away!" The articulation was thick, but it did
not mask the wail in the voice, and a gigantic thumb jerked indicatively
toward the patient, asserting figure of Miss Barry.
"All right, Mr. Brandle." Miss Maxwell's tone showed neither conciliation
nor pity; it was plainly matter-of-fact. "As it happens, I've brought you
a new nurse. Suppose you try Miss O'Leary for the next day or two."
The wail broke out afresh: "How can I tell if I can stand her? They all
look alike--all of 'em. You're the fourth, ain't you?" He turned to the
nurse at his bedside for corroboration.
"Then I'm the fifth," announced Sheila, "and there's luck in odd numbers."
"Five's my number." The mammoth man looked a fraction less distracted as
he stated this important fact. "Born fifth day of the fifth month, struck
it rich when I was twenty-five, married in 'seventy-five, formed the
American Coal Trust December fifth, eighteen ninety-five. How's that for a
number?"
"And I'm twenty-five, and this is June fifth." Sheila smiled.
"Say, honest?" A glimmer of cheerfulness filtered through. The man
beckoned the superintendent of nurses closer and whispered in a perfectly
audible voice: "Can't you take it away now? I'd like to ask the other some
questions before you leave her for keeps."
Miss Maxwell nodded a dismissal to the nurse who had been, and called
Sheila to the bedside. "Look her over well, Mr. Brandle. Miss O'Leary
isn't a bit sensitive."
"O'Leary? That's not a bad name. Had a shaft boss up at my first
anthracite-mine by that name--got on with him first-class. Say"--this
direct to Sheila--"can you pray?"
"Not unless I have to."
"Not a bad answer. Now what--er--form of--literatoore do you prefer?"
"Things with pep--punch--go!"
"Say, shake." The mammoth man smiled as he held out a giant fist. Sheila
had the feeling she was shaking hands with some prehistoric animal. It was
almost repellent, and she had to summon all her sympathy and control to be
able to return the shake with any degree of cordiality.
"All right, ma'am. You can leave us now to thrash it out man to man. You'd
better get back to managing your little white angels," and he swept a
dismissing hand toward Miss Maxwell and the door.
Oddly enough, there was nothing rude nor affronting in the man's words.
There was too much of underlying good nature to permit it. With the
closing of the door behind the superintendent he turned to Sheila. "Now,
boss, we might as well understand each other--it'll save strikes or hurt
feelings. Eh?"
Sheila nodded.
"All right. I'm dying, and I know it. May burst like a paper bag or go up
like a penny balloon any minute. Now praying won't keep me from bursting a
second sooner, or send me up a foot higher, so cut it out."
Again Sheila nodded.
"That isn't all. Had two nurses who agreed, kept their word, but they
hadn't the nerve to keep the parson from praying, and when he was off duty
they just sat--twiddled their thumbs and waited for me to quit. Couldn't
stand that--got on my nerves something fearful."
"Wanted to murder them, didn't you?" Sheila laughed. "Well, Mr. Brandle,
suppose we begin with supper and the baseball news. After that we'll hunt
up a thriller--biggest thriller they've got in the book-store."
"You're boss," was the answer, but a look of relief--almost of
contentment--spread over the rubicund face.
As Sheila was leaving for the supper-tray she paused. "How would you like
company for supper?"
"Company? Good Lord, not the parson!"
"No, me. If you are willing to sign for two, I could bring my supper up
with yours."
"And not eat alone! By Jehoshaphat! Give me that slip quick."
They had not only a good supper, they had a noisy one. The coal magnate
roared over Sheila's descriptions of some of the bath treatments and their
victims. In the midst of one particularly noisy explosion he suddenly
stopped and looked accusingly at her. "Why don't you stop me? Don't you
know doctor's orders? Had 'em dinged into my head until I could say 'em
backwards: no exertion, no excitement, avoid all undue movement, keep
quiet. Darn it all! As if I won't have to keep quiet long enough!
Well--why don't you repeat those fool orders and keep me quiet?"
Sheila looked at him with a pair of steady gray eyes. "Do you know, Mr.
Brandle, it isn't a half-bad way to go out of this world--to go laughing."
The mammoth man beamed. He looked for all the world like the full moon
suddenly grown beatific. "And I'd just about made up my mind that I'd
never find a blamed soul who would feel that way about it. Shake again,
boss."
After the baseball news and a fair start in the thriller, he indulged
further in past grievances. "Hadn't any more'n settled it for sure I was
done for than the parson came and the nurse took to looking mournful. Lord
Almighty! ain't it bad enough to be carted off in a hearse once without
folks putting you in beforehand? That's not my notion of dying. I lived
pleasant and cheerful, and by the Lord Harry, I don't see why I can't die
that way! And look-a-here, boss, I don't want any of that repenting stuff.
I don't need no puling parson to tell me I'm a sinner. Any idiot couldn't
look at me without guessing that much. Say!" He leaned forward with sudden
earnestness. "Take a good look at me yourself. See any halo or angel
trappings about me?"
Sheila laughed. "I'm afraid not. What you really ought to have--what I
miss about you--is the pipe, and the bowl, and the fiddlers three."
"What do you mean by that?"
"Don't you remember? It's an old nursery rhyme; probably you heard it
hundreds of times when you were a little boy:
"Old King Cole was a merry old soul
And a merry old soul was he.
He called for his pipe and he called for his bowl,
And he called for his fiddlers three."
The coal magnate threw back his head on the pillows and laughed long and
loud. He laughed until he grew purple and gasped for breath, and he
laughed while he choked, and Sheila flew about for stimulants. For a few
breathless moments Sheila thought she had whipped up the hearse--to use
the mammoth man's own metaphor--but after a panting half-hour the heart
subsided and the breath came easier.
"You nearly did for me that time, boss. But it fits; Jehoshaphat, it fits
me like a B. V. D.! The only difference you might put down to simplified
spelling. Eh?" And he cautiously chuckled at his joke.
While Sheila was making ready for the night he chuckled and lapsed into
florid, heliotrope studies by turns. "It's straight, what I told you about
being a sinner," he gave verbal expression to his thoughts at last.
"That's why I don't leave a cent to charity--not a cent. Ain't going to
have any peaked-faced, oily-tongued jackasses saying over my coffin that I
tried to buy my entrance ticket into the Lord Almighty's kingdom. No,
sirree! I know I've lived high, eaten well, and drunk some. I've made the
best of every good bargain that came within eyeshot. I treated my own
handsome--and I let the rest of the world go hang. Went to church Easter
Sunday every year and put a bill in the plate; you can figure for yourself
about how much I've given to charity. Never had any time to think of it,
anyway--probably wouldn't have given if I had. Always thought Mother'd
live longer'n me and she'd take care of that end of it. But she didn't."
For a moment Sheila thought the man was going to cry; his lower lip
quivered like a baby's, and his eyes grew red and watery. There was no
denying it, the man was a caricature; even his grief was ludicrous. He
wiped his eyes with the back of his heliotrope sleeve and finished what he
had to say. "Don't it beat all how the pious vultures croak over you the
minute you're done for--reminding you you can't take your money away with
you? Didn't the parson--first time he came--sit in that chair and open up
and begin about the rich man's squeezing through a needle's eye and a lot
about putting away temporal stuff? I don't aim to do any squeezing into
heaven, I can tell you. And I fixed him all right. Ha, ha! I told him as
long as the money wouldn't do me and Mother any more good I'd settle it
so's it couldn't benefit any one else. And that's exactly what I've done.
Left it all for a monument for us, fancy marble, carved statues, and the
whole outfit. It'll beat that toadstool-looking tomb of that prince
somewhere in Asia all hollow. Ha, ha!"
He leaned back to enjoy to the full this humorous legacy to himself, but
the expression of Sheila's face checked it. "Say, boss, you don't like
what I've done, do you? Run it out and dump it; I can stand for straight
talk from you."
Sheila felt repelled even more than she had at first. To have a man at the
point of death throw his money into a heap of marble just to keep it from
doing good to any one seemed horrible. And yet the man spoke so
consistently for himself. He had lived in the flesh and for the flesh all
his days; it was not strange that there was no spirit to interpret now for
him or to give him the courage to be generous in the face of what the
world would think.
"It's yours to spend as you like--only--I hate monuments. Rather have the
plain green grass over me. And don't you think it's queer yourself that a
man who had the grit to make himself and a pile of money hasn't the grit
to leave it invested after he goes, instead of burying it? Supposing you
can't live and use it yourself! That's no reason for not letting your
money live after you. I'd want to keep my money alive."
"Alive? Say, what do you mean?"
"Just what I say--alive. Charity isn't the only way to dispose of it.
Leave it to science to discover something new with; give it to the
laboratories to study up typhoid or cancer. Ever think how little we know
about them?"
"Why should I? I don't owe anything to science."
"Yes, you do. What developed the need of coal--what gave you the
facilities for removing it from your mines? Don't tell me you or anybody
else doesn't owe something to science."
"Bosh!" And the argument ended there.
The old man had a good night. He dozed as peacefully as if he had not
required propping up and occasional hypodermics to keep his lungs and
heart going properly, and when the house doctor made his early rounds this
sad and shocking spectacle met his eye: the dying coal magnate, arrayed
in a fresh and more vivid suit of heliotrope pajamas, smoking a brierwood
and keeping a violent emotional pace with the hero in the thrillingest
part of the thriller. Even Sheila's cheeks were tinged with excitement.
"Miss O'Leary!" All the outraged sensibilities of an orthodox,
conscientious young house physician were plainly manifested in those two
words.
Out shot the brierwood like a projectile, and a giant finger wagged at the
intruder. "Look-a-here, young man, the boss and I are running
this--er--quitting game to suit ourselves, and we don't need no
suggestions from the walking delegate, or the board of directors, or the
gang. See? Now if you can't say something pleasant and cheerful, get out!"
"Good morning!" It was the best compromise the house physician could make.
But ten minutes after his speedy exit Doctor Greer, the specialist, and
Miss Maxwell were on the threshold, both looking unmistakably troubled.
The coal magnate winked at Sheila. "Here comes the peace delegates--or
maybe it's from the labor union. Well, sir?" This was shot straight at
the doctor.
"Mr. Brandle, you're mad. I refuse to take any responsibility."
"Don't have to. That's what's been the matter--too much responsibility. It
got on my nerves. Now we want to be as--as noisy and as happy as we can,
the boss and me. And if we can't do it in this little old medicated
brick-pile of yours, why, we'll move. See? Or I'll buy it with a few tons
of my coal and give it to the boss to run."
"When it's yours." The specialist was finding it hard to keep his temper.
The man had worn him out in the week he had been at the sanitarium. It had
been harder to manage him than a spoiled child or a lunatic. He had had to
humor him, cajole him, entreat him, in a way that galled his professional
dignity, and now to have the man deliberately and publicly kill himself in
this fashion was almost beyond endurance. He tried hard to make his voice
sound agreeable as well as determined when he launched his ultimatum. "But
in the mean time Miss O'Leary will have to be removed from the case."
"No, you don't!" With a sweep of the giant hand the bedclothes were jerked
from their roots, and a pair of heliotrope legs projected floorward. It
took the strength of all the three present to hold him back and replace
the covering. The magnate sputtered and fumed. "First nurse you put on
here after the boss goes--I'll die on her hands in ten minutes just to get
even with you. That's what I'll do. And what's more--I'll come back to
haunt the both of you. Take away my boss--just after we get things going
pleasantly. Spoil a poor man's prospects of dying cheerful! Haven't you
any heart, man? And you, ma'am?" this to the superintendent of nurses. "By
the Lord Harry! you're a woman--you ought to have a little sympathy!" The
aggressiveness died out of the voice, and it took on the old wail Sheila
had first heard.
"But you forget my professional responsibility in the matter--my
principles as an honorable member of my profession. I cannot allow a
patient of mine wilfully to endanger his life--even shorten it. You must
understand that, Mr. Brandle."
A look of amused toleration spread over the rubicund face. "Bless your
heart, sonny, you're not allowing me to shorten it one minute. The boss
and I are prolonging it first-rate. Shouldn't wonder if it would get to be
so pleasant having her around I'd be working over union hours and
forgetting to quit at all. I'm old enough to be your granddaddy, so take a
bit of advice from me. When you can't cure a patient, let 'em die their
own way. Now run along, sonny. Good morning, ma'am." And then to Sheila:
"Get back to that locked door, the three bullet-holes, and the blood patch
on the floor. I've got to know what's on the other side before I touch one
mouthful of that finnan haddie you promised me for breakfast."
After that Old King Cole had his way. The doctors visited him as a matter
of form, and Sheila improvised a chart, for he would not stand for having
temperatures taken or pulses counted. "Cut it out, boss, cut it all out.
We're just going to have a good time, you and me." And he smiled
seraphically as he drummed on the spread:
"Old King Cole--diddy-dum-diddy-dum,
Was a merry old soul--diddy-dum-diddy-dum."
On the second day Sheila introduced Peter Brooks into the
"Keeping-On-Going Syndicate," as the mammoth man termed their temporary
partnership. Sheila had to take some hours off duty, and as the coal
magnate absolutely refused to let another nurse cross his threshold, Peter
seemed to be the only practical solution. She knew the two men would get
on admirably. Peter could be counted on to understand and meet any
emergency that might arise, while Old King Cole would be kept content. And
Sheila was right.
"Say, we hit it off first-rate--ran together as smooth as a parcel o'
greased tubs," the magnate confided to Sheila when she returned. "He told
me a whole lot about you--what you did for him--and the nickname they'd
given you--'Leerie.' I like that, but I like my name for you better. Eh,
boss?"
Once admitted, Peter often availed himself of his membership in the
syndicate. He made a third at their games, turned an attentive ear to the
thriller or added his bit to the enlightenment of the conversation. And
there wasn't a topic from war to feminine-dress reform that they did not
attack and thrash out among them with all the keenness and thoroughness
of three alive and original minds.
"Puts me thinking of the days when I was switch boss at the Cassie Maguire
Mine. Nothing but a shaver then, working up; nothing to do in the
God-forsaken hole, after work, but talk. We just about settled the affairs
of the world and gave the Lord Almighty advice into the bargain." The
mammoth man laughed a mammoth laugh. "And when we'd talked ourselves
inside out we'd have some fiddling--always a fiddle among some of the
boys. Never hear one of those old tunes that it don't take me back to the
Cassie Maguire and the way a fiddle would play the heart back into a
lonely, homesick shaver." He turned with a suspicious sniff to Sheila.
"Come, boss, the chessboard. Peter'n'me are going to have another Verdun
set-to. Only this time he's German. See? And if you don't mind, you might
fill up our pipes and bring us our four-forty bowl."
At one time of the day only did the merriment flag--that was at dusk.
"Don't like it--never did like it," he confessed. "Something about it that
gets onto my chest and turns me gloomy. Don't suppose you ever smelled
the choke-damp, did you? Well, that's the feeling. Say, boss, wouldn't be
a bad plan to shine up that old safety of yours and give us more light in
the old pit. Mother quit about this time o' day, and it seems like I can't
forget it."
The next day the coal magnate took a turn for the worse. The heart
specialist and the house doctor glowered ominously at Sheila as they came
to make their unwelcome rounds, and Sheila hurried them out of the room as
speedily as she could. Then it was that she thought of the fiddlers three.
An out-of-town orchestra played biweekly at the sanitarium. They were
young men, most of them, still apprentices at their art, and she knew they
would be glad enough for extra earnings. They were due that evening, and
she would engage the services of three violins for the dusk hour the old
man dreaded. She did not accomplish this without a protest from the
business office, warnings from the two physicians, and shocked comments
from the habitual gossips of the sanitarium. But Sheila held her ground
and fought for her way against their combined attacks. "Of course I know
he's dying. Don't care if the whole San faints with mortification. I'm
going to see he dies the way he wants to--keep it merry till the end."
To the Reverend Mr. Grumble, who requested--nay, demanded--admittance, she
turned a deaf ear while she held the door firmly closed behind her. "Can't
come in. Sorry, he doesn't want you. If you must say a last prayer to
comfort yourself, say it in some other room. It will do Old King Cole just
as much good and keep him much happier. Now, please go!"
So it happened that only Peter was present when the musicians arrived.
Sheila ushered them in with a flourish. "Old King Cole, your fiddlers
three. Now what shall they play?"
Lucky for the indwellers of the sanitarium that the magnate's room was in
the tower and therefore little sound escaped. It is improbable if the
final ending would ever have been known to any but those present, whose
discretion could have been relied upon, but for the fact that Miss Jacobs
stood with her ear to the keyhole for fully ten minutes. It was surprising
how quickly everybody knew about it after that. It created almost as much
scandal as Sheila's own exodus had three years before. Many had the
temerity to take the lift to the third floor and pace with attentive ears
the corridor that led to the tower. These came back to fan the flame of
shocked excitement below. The doctors and Mr. Grumble came to Miss Maxwell
to interfere and put an end to this ungodly and unprofessional humoring of
one departing soul. But the superintendent of nurses refused. She had put
the case in Sheila's hands, and she had absolute faith in her. So all that
was left to the busybodies and the scandalmongers was to hear what they
could and give free rein to their tongues.
There was, however, one mitigating fact: they could listen, and they could
talk, but they could not look beyond the closed door of the tower room.
That vivid, appalling picture was mercifully denied them. With a heaping
bowl of egg-nog beside him, and his brierwood between his lips, the coal
magnate beat time on the bedspread with a fast-failing strength, while he
grinned happily at Sheila. Beside him Peter lounged in a wheel-chair,
smoking for company, while grouped about the foot of the bed in the
attitude of a small celestial choir stood the fiddlers three.
All the good old tunes, reminiscent of younger days of mining-camps and
dance-halls, they played as fast as fingers could fly and bows could
scrape. "Dan Tucker," "Money Musk," "The Irish Washerwoman," and "Pop Goes
the Weasel" sifted in melodic molecules through the keyhole into the
curious and receptive ears outside. And after them came "Captain Jinks"
and "The Blue Danube," "Yankee Doodle" and "Dixie."
"Some boss!" muttered the magnate, thickly, the brierwood dropping on the
floor. "Just one solid streak of anthracite--clear through. Now give us
something else--I don't care--you choose it, boss."
So Leerie chose "The Star-spangled Banner" and "Marching Through Georgia,"
and as dusk crept closer about them, "Suwanee River" and "The Old Kentucky
Home."
"Nice, sleepy old tunes," mumbled the coal magnate. "Guess I've napped
over-time." He opened one eye and looked at Sheila, half amused, half
puzzled. "Say, boss, light up that little old lamp o' yours and take me
down; the shaft's growing pretty black."
The fiddlers played a hymn as their own final contribution. Sheila smiled
wistfully across the dusk to Peter. She knew it wouldn't matter now, for
Old King Cole was passing beyond the reach of hymns, prayers, or
benedictions.
"It's over as far as you or I or he are concerned," she whispered,
whimsically. "When I come down, by and by, would you very much mind taking
me on one of those rides you promised? I want to forget that white-marble
monument."
It was not until a week later that Sheila O'Leary met with one of the big
surprises of her rather eventful existence. A lawyer came down from New
York and asked for her. It seemed that the coal magnate had left her a
considerable number of thousands to spend for him and ease her feelings
about the monument. The codicil was quaintly worded and stated that
inasmuch as "Mother" had gone first, he guessed she would do the next best
by him.
Sheila took Peter Brooks into her immediate confidence. "Half of it goes
for typhoid research and half for a nurses' home here. We've needed one
dreadfully. What staggers me is when did he do it?"
Peter grinned. "When I happened to be on duty. We fixed it up, and I was
to keep the secret. He had lots of fun over it--poor old soul!"
"Merry old soul," corrected Sheila.
And when the nurses' home was built Sheila flatly ignored all the
suggestions of a memorial tablet with appropriate scriptural verses to
grace the cornerstone or hang in the entrance-hall.
"Won't have it--never do in the world! Just going to have his picture over
the living-room fireplace."
And there it hangs--a gigantic reproduction of Old King Cole, done by the
greatest poster artist of America.