Some time after midnight Billy Grant roused out of a stupor. He was
quite rational; in fact, he thought he would get out of bed. But his
feet would not move. This was absurd! One's feet must move if one
wills them to! However, he could not stir either of them. Otherwise
he was beautifully comfortable.
Faint as was the stir he made the Nurse heard him. She was sitting
in the dark by the window.
"Water?" she asked softly, coming to him.
"Please." His voice was stronger than it had been.
Some of the water went down his neck, but it did not matter. Nothing
mattered except the Lindley Grants. The Nurse took his temperature
and went out into the hall to read the thermometer, so he might not
watch her face. Then, having recorded it under the nightlight, she
came back into the room.
"Why don't you put on something comfortable?" demanded Billy Grant
querulously. He was so comfortable himself and she was so stiffly
starched, so relentless of collar and cap.
"I am comfortable."
"Where's that wrapper thing you've been wearing at night?" The Nurse
rather flushed at this. "Why don't you lie down on the cot and take
a nap? I don't need anything."
"Not--not to-night."
He understood, of course, but he refused to be depressed. He was too
comfortable. He was breathing easily, and his voice, though weak,
was clear.
"Would you mind sitting beside me? Or are you tired? But of course
you are. Perhaps in a night or so you'll be over there again,
sleeping in a nice white gown in a nice fresh bed, with no querulous
devil----"
"Please!"
"You'll have to be sterilised or formaldehyded?"
"Yes." This very low.
"Will you put your hand over mine? Thanks. It's--company, you know."
He was apologetic; under her hand his own burned fire. "I--I spoke
to the Staff about that while you were out of the room."
"About what?"
"About your marrying me."
"What did he say?" She humoured him.
"He said he was willing if you were. You're not going to move--are
you?"
"No. But you must not talk."
"It's like this. I've got a little property--not much; a little." He
was nervously eager about this. If she knew it amounted to anything
she would refuse, and the Lindley Grants---- "And when I--you
know---- I want to leave it where it will do some good. That little
brother of yours--it would send him through college, or help to."
Once, weeks ago, before he became so ill, she had told him of the
brother. This in itself was wrong and against the ethics of the
profession. One does not speak of oneself or one's family.
"If you won't try to sleep, shall I read to you?"
"Read what?"
"I thought--the Bible, if you wouldn't mind."
"Certainly," he agreed. "I suppose that's the conventional thing;
and if it makes you feel any better---- Will you think over what
I've been saying?"
"I'll think about it," she said, soothing him like a fretful child,
and brought her Bible.
The clock on the near-by town hall struck two as she drew up her
chair beside him and commenced to read by the shaded light. Across
the courtyard the windows were dim yellowish rectangles, with here
and there one brighter than the others that told its own story of
sleepless hours. A taxicab rolled along the street outside, carrying
a boisterous night party.
The Nurse had taken off her cap and put it on a stand. The autumn
night was warm, and the light touch of the tulle had pressed her
hair in damp, fine curves over her forehead. There were purple
hollows of anxiety and sleeplessness under her eyes.
"The perfect nurse," the head of the training school was fond of
saying, "is more or less of a machine. Too much sympathy is a
handicap to her work and an embarrassment to her patient. A perfect,
silent, reliable, fearless, emotionless machine!"
Poor Junior Nurse!
Now Billy Grant, lying there listening to something out of Isaiah,
should have been repenting his hard-living, hard-drinking young
life; should have been forgiving the Lindley Grants--which story
does not belong here; should have been asking for the consolation of
the church, and trying to summon from the depths of his
consciousness faint memories of early teachings as to the life
beyond, and what he might or might not expect there.
What he actually did while the Nurse read was to try to move his
legs, and, failing this, to plan a way to achieve the final revenge
of a not particularly forgiving life.
At a little before three o'clock the Nurse telephoned across for an
interne, who came over in a bathrobe over his pajamas and shot a
hypodermic into Billy Grant's left arm. Billy Grant hardly noticed.
He was seeing Mrs. Lindley Grant when his surprise was sprung on
her. The interne summoned the Nurse into the hall with a jerk of his
head.
"About all in!" he said. "Heart's gone--too much booze probably. I'd
stay, but there's nothing to do."
"Would oxygen----"
"Oh, you can try it if you like. It's like blowing up a leaking
tire; but if you'll feel better, do it." He yawned and tied the cord
of his bathrobe round him more securely. "I guess you'll be glad to
get back," he observed, looking round the dingy hall. "This place
always gives me a chill. Well, let me know if you want me. Good
night."
The Nurse stood in the hallway until the echo of his slippers on the
asphalt had died away. Then she turned to Billy Grant.
"Well?" demanded Billy Grant. "How long have I? Until morning?"
"If you would only not talk and excite yourself----"
"Hell!" said Billy Grant, we regret to record. "I've got to do all
the talking I'm going to do right now. I beg your pardon--I didn't
intend to swear."
"Oh, that's all right!" said the Nurse vaguely. This was like no
deathbed she had ever seen, and it was disconcerting.
"Shall I read again?"
"No, thank you."
The Nurse looked at her watch, which had been graduation present
from her mother and which said, inside the case: "To my little
girl!" There is no question but that, when the Nurse's mother gave
that inscription to the jeweller, she was thinking of the day when
the Staff Doctor had brought the Nurse in his leather bag, and had
slapped her between the shoulders to make her breathe. "To my little
girl!" said the watch; and across from that--"Three o'clock."
At half-past three Billy Grant, having matured his plans, remarked
that if it would ease the Nurse any he'd see a preacher. His voice
was weaker again and broken.
"Not"--he said, struggling--"not that I think--he'll pass me.
But--if you say so--I'll--take a chance."
All of which was diabolical cunning; for when, as the result of a
telephone conversation, the minister came, an unworldly man who
counted the world, an automobile, a vested choir and a silver
communion service well lost for the sake of a dozen derelicts in a
slum mission house, Billy Grant sent the Nurse out to prepare a
broth he could no longer swallow, and proceeded to cajole the man of
God. This he did by urging the need of the Nurse's small brother for
an education and by forgetting to mention either the Lindley Grants
or the extent of his property.
From four o'clock until five Billy Grant coaxed the Nurse with what
voice he had. The idea had become an obsession; and minute by
minute, panting breath by panting breath, her resolution wore away.
He was not delirious; he was as sane as she was and terribly set.
And this thing he wanted was so easy to grant; meant so little to
her and, for some strange reason, so much to him. Perhaps, if she
did it, he would think a little of what the preacher was saying.
At five o'clock, utterly worn out with the struggle and finding his
pulse a negligible quantity, in response to his pleading eyes the
Nurse, kneeling and holding a thermometer under her patient's arm
with one hand, reached the other one over the bed and was married in
a dozen words and a soiled white apron.
Dawn was creeping in at the windows--a grey city dawn, filled with
soot and the rumbling of early wagons. A smell of damp asphalt from
the courtyard floated in and a dirty sparrow chirped on the sill
where the Nurse had been in the habit of leaving crumbs. Billy
Grant, very sleepy and contented now that he had got his way,
dictated a line or two on a blank symptom record, and signed his
will in a sprawling hand.
"If only," he muttered, "I could see Lin's face when that's--sprung
on him!"
The minister picked up the Bible from the tumbled bed and opened it.
"Perhaps," he suggested very softly, "if I read from the Word of
God----"
Satisfied now that he had fooled the Lindley Grants out of their
very shoebuttons, Billy Grant was asleep--asleep with the
thermometer under his arm and with his chest rising and falling
peacefully.
The minister looked across at the Nurse, who was still holding the
thermometer in place. She had buried her face in the white
counterpane.
"You are a good woman, sister," he said softly. "The boy is happier,
and you are none the worse. Shall I keep the paper for you?"
But the Nurse, worn out with the long night, slept where she knelt.
The minister, who had come across the street in a ragged
smoking-coat and no collar, creaked round the bed and threw the edge
of the blanket over her shoulders.
Then, turning his coat collar up over his unshaved neck, he departed
for the mission across the street, where one of his derelicts, in
his shirtsleeves, was sweeping the pavement. There, mindful of the
fact that he had come from the contagious pavilion, the minister
brushed his shabby smoking-coat with a whiskbroom to remove the
germs!