JANE

I

Having retired to a hospital to sulk, Jane remained there. The

family came and sat by her bed uncomfortably and smoked, and finally

retreated with defeat written large all over it, leaving Jane to the

continued possession of Room 33, a pink kimono with slippers to

match, a hand-embroidered face pillow with a rose-coloured bow on

the corner, and a young nurse with a gift of giving Jane daily the

appearance of a strawberry and vanilla ice rising from a meringue of

bed linen.

Jane's complaint was temper. The family knew this, and so did

Jane, although she had an annoying way of looking hurt, a gentle

heart-brokenness of speech that made the family, under the

pretence of getting a match, go out into the hall and swear softly

under its breath. But it was temper, and the family was not

deceived. Also, knowing Jane, the family was quite ready to

believe that while it was swearing in the hall, Jane was biting

holes in the hand-embroidered face pillow in Room 33.

It had finally come to be a test of endurance. Jane vowed to stay

at the hospital until the family on bended knee begged her to emerge

and to brighten the world again with her presence. The family, being

her father, said it would be damned if it would, and that if Jane

cared to live on anaemic chicken broth, oatmeal wafers and massage

twice a day for the rest of her life, why, let her.

The dispute, having begun about whether Jane should or should not

marry a certain person, Jane representing the affirmative and her

father the negative, had taken on new aspects, had grown and

altered, and had, to be brief, become a contest between the

masculine Johnson and the feminine Johnson as to which would take

the count. Not that this appeared on the surface. The masculine

Johnson, having closed the summer home on Jane's defection and gone

back to the city, sent daily telegrams, novels and hothouse grapes,

all three of which Jane devoured indiscriminately. Once, indeed,

Father Johnson had motored the forty miles from town, to be told

that Jane was too ill and unhappy to see him, and to have a glimpse,

as he drove furiously away, of Jane sitting pensive at her window in

the pink kimono, gazing over his head at the distant hills and

clearly entirely indifferent to him and his wrath.

So we find Jane, on a frosty morning in late October, in triumphant

possession of the field--aunts and cousins routed, her father

sulking in town, and the victor herself--or is victor feminine?--and

if it isn't, shouldn't it be?--sitting up in bed staring blankly at

her watch.

Jane had just wakened--an hour later than usual; she had rung the

bell three times and no one had responded. Jane's famous temper

began to stretch and yawn. At this hour Jane was accustomed

to be washed with tepid water, scented daintily with violet,

alcohol-rubbed, talcum-powdered, and finally fresh-linened, coifed

and manicured, to be supported with a heap of fresh pillows and fed

creamed sweet-bread and golden-brown coffee and toast.

Jane rang again, with a line between her eyebrows. The bell was not

broken. She could hear it distinctly. This was an outrage! She would

report it to the superintendent. She had been ringing for ten

minutes. That little minx of a nurse was flirting somewhere with one

of the internes.

Jane angrily flung the covers back and got out on her small bare

feet. Then she stretched her slim young arms above her head, her

spoiled red mouth forming a scarlet O as she yawned. In her

sleeveless and neckless nightgown, with her hair over her shoulders,

minus the more elaborate coiffure which later in the day helped

her to poise and firmness, she looked a pretty young girl,

almost--although Jane herself never suspected this--almost an

amiable young person.

Jane saw herself in the glass and assumed immediately the two lines

between her eyebrows which were the outward and visible token of

what she had suffered. Then she found her slippers, a pair of

stockings to match and two round bits of pink silk elastic of

private and feminine use, and sat down on the floor to put them on.

The floor was cold. To Jane's wrath was added indignation. She

hitched herself along the boards to the radiator and put her hand on

it. It was even colder than Jane.

The family temper was fully awake by this time and ready for

business. Jane, sitting on the icy floor, jerked on her stockings,

snapped the pink bands into place, thrust her feet into her slippers

and rose, shivering. She went to the bed, and by dint of careful

manoeuvring so placed the bell between the head of the bed and the

wall that during the remainder of her toilet it rang steadily.

The remainder of Jane's toilet was rather casual. She flung on the

silk kimono, twisted her hair on top of her head and stuck a pin or

two in it, thus achieving a sort of effect a thousand times more

bewildering than she had ever managed with a curling iron and

twenty seven hair pins, and flinging her door wide stalked into the

hall. At least she meant to stalk, but one does not really stamp

about much in number-two, heelless, pink-satin mules.

At the first stalk--or stamp--she stopped. Standing uncertainly just

outside her door was a strange man, strangely attired. Jane clutched

her kimono about her and stared.

"Did--did you--are you ringing?" asked the apparition. It wore a

pair of white-duck trousers, much soiled, a coat that bore the words

"furnace room" down the front in red letters on a white tape, and a

clean and spotless white apron. There was coal dust on its face and

streaks of it in its hair, which appeared normally to be red.

"There's something the matter with your bell," said the young man.

"It keeps on ringing."

"I intend it to," said Jane coldly.

"You can't make a racket like that round here, you know," he

asserted, looking past her into the room.

"I intend to make all the racket I can until I get some attention."

"What have you done--put a book on it?"

"Look here"--Jane added another line to the two between her

eyebrows. In the family this was generally a signal for a retreat,

but of course the young man could not know this, and, besides, he

was red-headed. "Look here," said Jane, "I don't know who you are

and I don't care either, but that bell is going to ring until I get

my bath and some breakfast. And it's going to ring then unless I

stop it."

The young man in the coal dust and the white apron looked at Jane

and smiled. Then he walked past her into the room, jerked the bed

from the wall and released the bell.

"Now!" he said as the din outside ceased. "I'm too busy to talk just

at present, but if you do that again I'll take the bell out of the

room altogether. There are other people in the hospital besides

yourself."

At that he started out and along the hall, leaving Jane speechless.

After he'd gone about a dozen feet he stopped and turned, looking at

Jane reflectively.

"Do you know anything about cooking?" he asked.

"I know more about cooking than you do about politeness," she

retorted, white with fury, and went into her room and slammed the

door. She went directly to the bell and put it behind the bed and

set it to ringing again. Then she sat down in a chair and picked up

a book. Had the red-haired person opened the door she was perfectly

prepared to fling the book at him. She would have thrown a hatchet

had she had one.

As a matter of fact, however, he did not come back. The bell rang

with a soul-satisfying jangle for about two minutes and then died

away, and no amount of poking with a hairpin did any good. It was

clear that the bell had been cut off outside!

For fifty-five minutes Jane sat in that chair breakfastless, very

casually washed and with the aforesaid Billie Burkeness of hair.

Then, hunger gaining over temper, she opened the door and peered

out. From somewhere near at hand there came a pungent odor of

burning toast. Jane sniffed; then, driven by hunger, she made a

short sally down the hall to the parlour where the nurses on duty

made their headquarters. It was empty. The dismantled bell register

was on the wall, with the bell unscrewed and lying on the mantel

beside it, and the odour of burning toast was stronger than ever.

Jane padded softly to the odour, following her small nose. It led

her to the pantry, where under ordinary circumstances the patients'

trays were prepared by a pantrymaid, the food being shipped there

from the kitchen on a lift. Clearly the circumstances were not

ordinary. The pantrymaid was not in sight.

Instead, the red-haired person was standing by the window scraping

busily at a blackened piece of toast. There was a rank odour of

boiling tea in the air.

"Damnation!" said the red-haired person, and flung the toast into a

corner where there already lay a small heap of charred breakfast

hopes. Then he saw Jane.

"I fixed the bell, didn't I?" he remarked. "I say, since you claim

to know so much about cooking, I wish you'd make some toast."

"I didn't say I knew much," snapped Jane, holding her kimono round

her. "I said I knew more than you knew about politeness."

The red-haired person smiled again, and then, making a deep bow,

with a knife in one hand and a toaster in the other, he said:

"Madam, I prithee forgive me for my untoward conduct of an hour

since. Say but the word and I replace the bell."

"I won't make any toast," said Jane, looking at the bread with

famished eyes.

"Oh, very well," said the red-haired person with a sigh. "On your

head be it!"

"But I'll tell you how to do it," conceded Jane, "if you'll explain

who you are and what you are doing in that costume and where the

nurses are."

The red-haired person sat down on the edge of the table and looked

at her.

"I'll make a bargain with you," he said. "There's a convalescent

typhoid in a room near yours who swears he'll go down to the village

for something to eat in his--er--hospital attire unless he's fed

soon. He's dangerous, empty. He's reached the cannibalistic stage.

If he should see you in that ravishing pink thing, I--I wouldn't

answer for the consequences. I'll tell you everything if you'll make

him six large slices of toast and boil him four or five eggs, enough

to hold him for a while. The tea's probably ready; it's been boiling

for an hour."

Hunger was making Jane human. She gathered up the tail of her

kimono, and stepping daintily into the pantry proceeded to spread

herself a slice of bread and butter.

"Where is everybody?" she asked, licking some butter off her thumb

with a small pink tongue.

_Oh, I am the cook and the captain bold,

And the mate of the Nancy brig,

And the bosun tight and the midshipmite,

And the crew of the captain's gig._

recited the red-haired person.

"You!" said Jane with the bread halfway to her mouth.

"Even I," said the red-haired person. "I'm the superintendent, the

staff, the training school, the cooks, the furnace man and the

ambulance driver."

Jane was pouring herself a cup of tea, and she put in milk and sugar

and took a sip or two before she would give him the satisfaction of

asking him what he meant. Anyhow, probably she had already guessed.

Jane was no fool.

"I hope you're getting the salary list," she said, sitting on the

pantry girl's chair and, what with the tea inside and somebody to

quarrel with, feeling more like herself. "My father's one of the

directors, and somebody gets it."

The red-haired person sat on the radiator and eyed Jane. He looked

slightly stunned, as if the presence of beauty in a Billie Burke

chignon and little else except a kimono was almost too much for him.

From somewhere near by came a terrific thumping, as of some one

pounding a hairbrush on a table. The red-haired person shifted along

the radiator a little nearer Jane, and continued to gloat.

"Don't let that noise bother you," he said; "that's only the

convalescent typhoid banging for his breakfast. He's been shouting

for food ever since I came at six last night."

"Is it safe to feed him so much?"

"I don't know. He hasn't had anything yet. Perhaps if you're ready

you'd better fix him something."

Jane had finished her bread and tea by this time and remembered her

kimono.

"I'll go back and dress," she said primly. But he wouldn't hear of

it.

"He's starving," he objected as a fresh volley of thumps came along

the hall. "I've been trying at intervals since daylight to make him

a piece of toast. The minute I put it on the fire I think of

something I've forgotten, and when I come back it's in flames."

So Jane cut some bread and put on eggs to boil, and the red-haired

person told his story.

"You see," he explained, "although I appear to be a furnace man from

the waist up and an interne from the waist down, I am really the new

superintendent."

"I hope you'll do better than the last one," she said severely. "He

was always flirting with the nurses."

"I shall never flirt with the nurses," he promised, looking at her.

"Anyhow I shan't have any immediate chance. The other fellow left

last night and took with him everything portable except the

ambulance--nurses, staff, cooks. I wish to Heaven he'd taken the

patients! And he did more than that. He cut the telephone wires!"

"Well!" said Jane. "Are you going to stand for it?"

The red-haired man threw up his hands. "The village is with him," he

declared. "It's a factional fight--the village against the

fashionable summer colony on the hill. I cannot telephone from the

village--the telegraph operator is deaf when I speak to him; the

village milkman and grocer sent boys up this morning--look here."

He fished a scrap of paper from his pocket and read:

I will not supply the Valley Hospital with any fresh

meats, canned oysters and sausages, or do any plumbing

for the hospital until the reinstatement of Dr. Sheets.

T. CASHDOLLAR, Butcher.

Jane took the paper and read it again. "Humph!" she commented.

"Old Sheets wrote it himself. Mr. Cashdollar couldn't think

'reinstatement,' let alone spell it."

"The question is not who wrote it, but what we are to do," said the

red-haired person. "Shall I let old Sheets come back?"

"If you do," said Jane fiercely, "I shall hate you the rest of my

life."

And as it was clear by this time that the red-haired person could

imagine nothing more horrible, it was settled then and there that he

should stay.

"There are only two wards," he said. "In the men's a man named

Higgins is able to be up and is keeping things straight. And in the

woman's ward Mary O'Shaughnessy is looking after them. The furnaces

are the worst. I'd have forgiven almost anything else. I've sat up

all night nursing the fires, but they breathed their last at six

this morning and I guess there's nothing left but to call the

coroner."

Jane had achieved a tolerable plate of toast by that time and four

eggs. Also she had a fine flush, a combination of heat from the gas

stove and temper.

"They ought to be ashamed," she cried angrily, "leaving a lot of

sick people!"

"Oh, as to that," said the red-headed person, "there aren't any

very sick ones. Two or three neurasthenics like yourself and a

convalescent typhoid and a D.T. in a private room. If it wasn't

that Mary O'Shaughnessy----"

But at the word "neurasthenics" Jane had put down the toaster, and

by the time the unconscious young man had reached the O'Shaughnessy

she was going out the door with her chin up. He called after her,

and finding she did not turn he followed her, shouting apologies at

her back until she went into her room. And as hospital doors don't

lock from the inside she pushed the washstand against the knob and

went to bed to keep warm.

He stood outside and apologised again, and later he brought a tray

of bread and butter and a pot of the tea, which had been boiling for

two hours by that time, and put it outside the door on the floor.

But Jane refused to get it, and finished her breakfast from a jar of

candied ginger that some one had sent her, and read "Lorna Doone."

Now and then a sound of terrific hammering would follow the

steampipes and Jane would smile wickedly. By noon she had finished

the ginger and was wondering what the person about whom she and the

family had disagreed would think when he heard the way she was being

treated. And by one o'clock she had cried her eyes entirely shut and

had pushed the washstand back from the door.