II

Now a hospital full of nurses and doctors with a bell to summon food

and attention is one thing. A hospital without nurses and doctors,

and with only one person to do everything, and that person mostly in

the cellar, is quite another. Jane was very sad and lonely, and to

add to her troubles the delirium-tremens case down the hall began to

sing "Oh Promise Me" in a falsetto voice and kept it up for hours.

At three Jane got up and bathed her eyes. She also did her hair,

and thus fortified she started out to find the red-haired person.

She intended to say that she was paying sixty-five dollars a week

and belonged to a leading family, and that she didn't mean to

endure for a moment the treatment she was getting, and being

called a neurasthenic and made to cook for the other patients.

She went slowly along the hall. The convalescent typhoid heard her

and called.

"Hey, doc!" he cried. "Hey, doc! Great Scott, man, when do I get

some dinner?"

Jane quickened her steps and made for the pantry. From somewhere

beyond, the delirium-tremens case was singing happily:

_I--love you o--own--ly,

I love--but--you._

Jane shivered a little. The person in whom she had been interested

and who had caused her precipitate retirement, if not to a nunnery,

to what answered the same purpose, had been very fond of that song.

He used to sing it, leaning over the piano and looking into her

eyes.

Jane's nose led her again to the pantry. There was a sort of soupy

odour in the air, and sure enough the red-haired person was there,

very immaculate in fresh ducks, pouring boiling water into three

tea-cups out of a kettle and then dropping a beef capsule into each

cup.

Now Jane had intended, as I have said, to say that she was being

outrageously treated, and belonged to one of the best families, and

so on. What she really said was piteously:

"How good it smells!"

"Doesn't it!" said the red-haired person, sniffing. "Beef capsules.

I've made thirty cups of it so far since one o'clock--the more they

have the more they want. I say, be a good girl and run up to the

kitchen for some more crackers while I carry food to the

convalescent typhoid. He's murderous!"

"Where are the crackers?" asked Jane stiffly, but not exactly caring

to raise an issue until she was sure of getting something to eat.

"Store closet in the kitchen, third drawer on the left," said the

red-haired man, shaking some cayenne pepper into one of the cups.

"You might stop that howling lunatic on your way if you will."

"How?" asked Jane, pausing.

"Ram a towel down his throat, or--but don't bother. I'll dose him

with this beef tea and red pepper, and he'll be too busy putting out

the fire to want to sing."

"You wouldn't be so cruel!" said Jane, rather drawing back. The

red-haired person smiled and to Jane it showed that he was actually

ferocious. She ran all the way up for the crackers and down again,

carrying the tin box. There is no doubt that Jane's family would

have promptly swooned had it seen her.

When she came down there was a sort of after-dinner peace reigning.

The convalescent typhoid, having filled up on milk and beef soup,

had floated off to sleep. "The Chocolate Soldier" had given way to

deep-muttered imprecations from the singer's room. Jane made herself

a cup of bouillon and drank it scalding. She was making the second

when the red-haired person came back with an empty cup.

"I forgot to explain," he said, "that beef tea and red pepper's the

treatment for our young friend in there. After a man has been

burning his stomach daily with a quart or so of raw booze----"

"I beg your pardon," said Jane coolly. Booze was not considered good

form on the hill--the word, of course. There was plenty of the

substance.

"Raw booze," repeated the red-haired person. "Nothing short of red

pepper or dynamite is going to act as a substitute. Why, I'll bet

the inside of that chap's stomach is of the general sensitiveness

and consistency of my shoe."

"Indeed!" said Jane, coldly polite. In Jane's circle people did not

discuss the interiors of other people's stomachs. The red-haired

person sat on the table with a cup of bouillon in one hand and a

cracker in the other.

"You know," he said genially, "it's awfully bully of you to come out

and keep me company like this. I never put in such a day. I've given

up fussing with the furnace and got out extra blankets instead. And

I think by night our troubles will be over." He held up the cup and

glanced at Jane, who was looking entrancingly pretty. "To our

troubles being over!" he said, draining the cup, and then found

that he had used the red pepper again by mistake. It took five

minutes and four cups of cold water to enable him to explain what he

meant.

"By our troubles being over," he said finally when he could speak,

"I mean this: There's a train from town at eight to-night, and if

all goes well it will deposit in the village half a dozen nurses, a

cook or two, a furnace man--good Heavens, I wonder if I forgot a

furnace man!"

It seemed, as Jane discovered, that the telephone wires being cut,

he had sent Higgins from the men's ward to the village to send some

telegrams for him.

"I couldn't leave, you see," he explained, "and having some small

reason to believe that I am _persona non grata_ in this vicinity I

sent Higgins."

Jane had always hated the name Higgins. She said afterward that she

felt uneasy from that moment. The red-haired person, who was not

bad-looking, being tall and straight and having a very decent nose,

looked at Jane, and Jane, having been shut away for weeks--Jane

preened a little and was glad she had done her hair.

"You looked better the other way," said the red-haired person,

reading her mind in a most uncanny manner. "Why should a girl with

as pretty hair as yours cover it up with a net, anyhow?"

"You are very disagreeable and--and impertinent," said Jane,

sliding off the table.

"It isn't disagreeable to tell a girl she has pretty hair," the

red-haired person protested--"or impertinent either."

Jane was gathering up the remnants of her temper, scattered by the

events of the day.

"You said I was a neurasthenic," she accused him. "It--it isn't

being a neurasthenic to be nervous and upset and hating the very

sight of people, is it?"

"Bless my soul!" said the red-haired man. "Then what is it?" Jane

flushed, but he went on tactlessly: "I give you my word, I think you

are the most perfectly"--he gave every appearance of being about to

say "beautiful," but he evidently changed his mind--"the most

perfectly healthy person I have ever looked at," he finished.

It is difficult to say just what Jane would have done under other

circumstances, but just as she was getting her temper really in hand

and preparing to launch something, shuffling footsteps were heard in

the hall and Higgins stood in the doorway.

He was in a sad state. One of his eyes was entirely closed, and the

corresponding ear stood out large and bulbous from his head. Also he

was coated with mud, and he was carefully nursing one hand with the

other.

He said he had been met at the near end of the railroad bridge by

the ex-furnace man and one of the ex-orderlies and sent back firmly,

having in fact been kicked back part of the way. He'd been told to

report at the hospital that the tradespeople had instituted a

boycott, and that either the former superintendent went back or the

entire place could starve to death.

It was then that Jane discovered that her much-vaunted temper was

not one-two-three to that of the red-haired person. He turned a sort

of blue-white, shoved Jane out of his way as if she had been a

chair, and she heard him clatter down the stairs and slam out of the

front door.

Jane went back to her room and looked down the drive. He was running

toward the bridge, and the sunlight on his red hair and his flying

legs made him look like a revengeful meteor. Jane was weak in the

knees. She knelt on the cold radiator and watched him out of sight,

and then got trembly all over and fell to snivelling. This was of

course because, if anything happened to him, she would be left

entirely alone. And anyhow the D.T. case was singing again and had

rather got on her nerves.

In ten minutes the red-haired person appeared. He had a

wretched-looking creature by the back of the neck and he alternately

pushed and kicked him up the drive. He--the red-haired person--was

whistling and clearly immensely pleased with himself.

Jane put a little powder on her nose and waited for him to come and

tell her all about it. But he did not come near. This was quite the

cleverest thing he could have done, had he known it. Jane was not

accustomed to waiting in vain. He must have gone directly to the

cellar, half pushing and half kicking the luckless furnace man, for

about four o'clock the radiator began to get warm.

At five he came and knocked at Jane's door, and on being invited in

he sat down on the bed and looked at her.

"Well, we've got the furnace going," he said.

"Then that was the----"

"Furnace man? Yes."

"Aren't you afraid to leave him?" queried Jane. "Won't he run off?"

"Got him locked in a padded cell," he said. "I can take him out to

coal up. The rest of the time he can sit and think of his sins. The

question is--what are we to do next?"

"I should think," ventured Jane, "that we'd better be thinking about

supper."

"The beef capsules are gone."

"But surely there must be something else about--potatoes or things

like that?"

He brightened perceptibly. "Oh, yes, carloads of potatoes, and

there's canned stuff. Higgins can pare potatoes, and there's Mary

O'Shaughnessy. We could have potatoes and canned tomatoes and eggs."

"Fine!" said Jane with her eyes gleaming, although the day before

she would have said they were her three abominations.

And with that he called Higgins and Mary O'Shaughnessy and the four

of them went to the kitchen.

Jane positively shone. She had never realised before how much she

knew about cooking. They built a fire and got kettles boiling and

everybody pared potatoes, and although in excess of zeal the eggs

were ready long before everything else and the tomatoes scorched

slightly, still they made up in enthusiasm what they lacked in

ability, and when Higgins had carried the trays to the lift and

started them on their way, Jane and the red-haired person shook

hands on it and then ate a boiled potato from the same plate,

sitting side by side on a table.

They were ravenous. They boiled one egg each and ate it, and then

boiled another and another, and when they finished they found that

Jane had eaten four potatoes, four eggs and unlimited bread and

butter, while the red-haired person had eaten six saucers of stewed

tomatoes and was starting on the seventh.

"You know," he said over the seventh, "we've got to figure this

thing out. The entire town is solid against us--no use trying to get

to a telephone. And anyhow they've got us surrounded. We're in a

state of siege."

Jane was beating up an egg in milk for the D.T. patient, the

capsules being exhausted, and the red-haired person was watching her

closely. She had the two vertical lines between her eyes, but they

looked really like lines of endeavour and not temper.

She stopped beating and looked up.

"Couldn't I go to the village?" she asked.

"They would stop you."

"Then--I think I know what we can do," she said, giving the eggnog a

final whisk. "My people have a summer place on the hill. If you

could get there you could telephone to the city."

"Could I get in?"

"I have a key."

Jane did not explain that the said key had been left by her father,

with the terse hope that if she came to her senses she could get

into the house and get her clothes.

"Good girl," said the red-headed person and patted her on the

shoulder. "We'll euchre the old skate yet." Curiously, Jane did not

resent either the speech or the pat.

He took the glass and tied on a white apron. "If our friend doesn't

drink this, I will," he continued. "If he'd seen it in the making,

as I have, he'd be crazy about it."

He opened the door and stood listening. From below floated up the

refrain:

_I--love you o--own--ly,

I love--but--you._

"Listen to that!" he said. "Stomach's gone, but still has a heart!"

Higgins came up the stairs heavily and stopped close by the

red-haired person, whispering something to him. There was a second's

pause. Then the red-haired person gave the eggnog to Higgins and

both disappeared.

Jane was puzzled. She rather thought the furnace man had got out and

listened for a scuffle, but none came. She did, however, hear the

singing cease below, and then commence with renewed vigour, and she

heard Higgins slowly remounting the stairs. He came in, with the

empty glass and a sheepish expression. Part of the eggnog was

distributed over his person.

"He wants his nurse, ma'am," said Higgins. "Wouldn't let me near

him. Flung a pillow at me."

"Where is the doctor?" demanded Jane.

"Busy," replied Higgins. "One of the women is sick."

Jane was provoked. She had put some labour into the eggnog. But it

shows the curious evolution going on in her that she got out the

eggs and milk and made another one without protest. Then with her

head up she carried it to the door.

"You might clear things away, Higgins," she said, and went down the

stairs. Her heart was going rather fast. Most of the men Jane knew

drank more or less, but this was different. She would have turned

back halfway there had it not been for Higgins and for owning

herself conquered. That was Jane's real weakness--she never owned

herself beaten.

The singing had subsided to a low muttering. Jane stopped outside

the door and took a fresh grip on her courage. Then she pushed the

door open and went in.

The light was shaded, and at first the tossing figure on the bed was

only a misty outline of greys and whites. She walked over, expecting

a pillow at any moment and shielding the glass from attack with her

hand.

"I have brought you another eggnog," she began severely, "and if you

spill it----"

Then she looked down and saw the face on the pillow.

To her everlasting credit, Jane did not faint. But in that moment,

while she stood staring down at the flushed young face with its

tumbled dark hair and deep-cut lines of dissipation, the man who had

sung to her over the piano, looking love into her eyes, died to her,

and Jane, cold and steady, sat down on the side of the bed and fed

the eggnog, spoonful by spoonful, to his corpse!

When the blank-eyed young man on the bed had swallowed it all

passively, looking at her with dull, incurious eyes, she went back

to her room and closing the door put the washstand against it. She

did nothing theatrical. She went over to the window and stood

looking out where the trees along the drive were fading in the dusk

from green to grey, from grey to black. And over the transom came

again and again monotonously the refrain:

_I--love you o--own--ly,

I love--but--you._

Jane fell on her knees beside the bed and buried her wilful head in

the hand-embroidered pillow, and said a little prayer because she

had found out in time.