The Best of Mary Roberts Rinehart

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  "I was feeling for my handkerchief," she explained.

  "Have I made you cry again?"

  "Again?'

  "I saw you last night in your room. I didn't intend to; but I was trying to stand, and——"

  She was very dignified at this, with her eyes still wet, and tried unsuccessfully to take her hand away.

  "If you are going to get up when it is forbidden I shall ask to be relieved."

  "You wouldn't do that!"

  "Let go of my hand."

  "You wouldn't do that!!"

  "Please! The head nurse is coming."

  He freed her hand then and she wiped her eyes, remembering the "perfect, silent, reliable, fearless, emotionless machine."

  The head of the training school came to the door of the pavilion, but did not enter. The reason for this was twofold: first, she had confidence in the Nurse; second, she was afraid of contagion—this latter, of course, quite sub rosa, in view of the above quotation.

  The Head Nurse was a tall woman in white, and was so starchy that she rattled like a newspaper when she walked.

  "Good morning," she said briskly. "Have you sent over the soiled clothes?" Head nurses are always bothering about soiled clothes; and what becomes of all the nailbrushes, and how can they use so many bandages.

  "Yes, Miss Smith."

  "Meals come over promptly?"

  "Yes, Miss Smith."

  "Getting any sleep?"

  "Oh, yes, plenty—now."

  Miss Smith peered into the hallway, which seemed tidy, looked at the Nurse with approval, and then from the doorstep into the patient's room, where Billy Grant sat. At the sight of him her eyebrows rose.

  "Good gracious!" she exclaimed. "I thought he was older than that!"

  "Twenty-nine," said the Nurse; "twenty-nine last Fourth of July."

  "H'm!" commented the Head Nurse. "You evidently know! I had no idea you were taking care of a boy. It won't do. I'll send over Miss Hart."

  The Nurse tried to visualise Billy Grant in his times of stress clutching at Miss Hart's hand, and failed.

  "Jenks is here, of course," she said, Jenks being the orderly.

  The idea of Jenks as a chaperon, however, did not appeal to the head nurse. She took another glance through the window at Billy Grant, looking uncommonly handsome and quite ten years younger since the shave, and she set her lips.

  "I am astonished beyond measure," she said. "Miss Hart will relieve you at two o'clock. Take your antiseptic bath and you may have the afternoon to yourself. Report in L Ward in the morning."

  Miss Smith rattled back across the courtyard and the Nurse stood watching her; then turned slowly and went into the house to tell Billy Grant.

  Now the stories about what followed differ. They agree on one point: that Billy Grant had a heart-to-heart talk with the substitute at two o'clock that afternoon and told her politely but firmly that he would none of her. Here the divergence begins. Some say he got the superintendent over the house telephone and said he had intended to make a large gift to the hospital, but if his comfort was so little considered as to change nurses just when he had got used to one, he would have to alter his plans. Another and more likely story, because it sounds more like Billy Grant, is that at five o'clock a florist's boy delivered to Miss Smith a box of orchids such as never had been seen before in the house, and a card inside which said: "Please, dear Miss Smith, take back the Hart that thou gavest."

  Whatever really happened—and only Billy Grant and the lady in question ever really knew—that night at eight o'clock, with Billy Grant sitting glumly in his room and Miss Hart studying typhoid fever in the hall, the Nurse came back again to the pavilion with her soft hair flying from its afternoon washing and her eyes shining. And things went on as before—not quite as before; for with the nurse question settled the craving got in its work again, and the next week was a bad one. There were good days, when he taught her double-dummy auction bridge, followed by terrible nights, when he walked the floor for hours and she sat by, unable to help. Then at dawn he would send her to bed remorsefully and take up the fight alone. And there were quiet nights when both slept and when he would waken to the craving again and fight all day.

  "I'm afraid I'm about killing her," he said to the Staff Doctor one day; "but it's my chance to make a man of myself—now or never."

  The Staff Doctor was no fool and he had heard about the orchids.

  "Fight it out, boy!" he said. "Pretty soon you'll quit peeling and cease being a menace to the public health, and you'd better get it over before you are free again."

  So, after a time, it grew a little easier. Grant was pretty much himself again—had put on a little flesh and could feel his biceps rise under his fingers. He took to cold plunges when he felt the craving coming on, and there were days when the little pavilion was full of the sound of running water. He shaved himself daily, too, and sent out for some collars.

  Between the two of them, since her return, there had been much of good fellowship, nothing of sentiment. He wanted her near, but he did not put a hand on her. In the strain of those few days the strange, grey dawn seemed to have faded into its own mists. Only once, when she had brought his breakfast tray and was arranging the dishes for him—against his protest, for he disliked being waited on—he reached over and touched a plain band ring she wore. She coloured.

  "My mother's," she said; "her wedding ring."

  Their eyes met across the tray, but he only said, after a moment: "Eggs like a rock, of course! Couldn't we get 'em raw and boil them over here?"

  It was that morning, also, that he suggested a thing which had been in his mind for some time.

  "Wouldn't it be possible," he asked, "to bring your tray in here and to eat together? It would be more sociable."

  She smiled.

  "It isn't permitted."

  "Do you think—would another box of orchids——"

  She shook her head as she poured out his coffee. "I should probably be expelled."

  He was greatly aggrieved.

  "That's all foolishness," he said. "How is that any worse—any more unconventional—than your bringing me your extra blanket on a cold night? Oh, I heard you last night!"

  "Then why didn't you leave it on?"

  "And let you freeze?"

  "I was quite warm. As it was, it lay in the hallway all night and did no one any good."

  Having got thus far from wedding rings, he did not try to get back. He ate alone, and after breakfast, while she took her half-hour of exercise outside the window, he sat inside reading—only apparently reading, however.

  Once she went quite as far as the gate and stood looking out.

  "Jenks!" called Billy Grant.

  Jenks has not entered into the story much. He was a little man, rather fat, who occupied a tiny room in the pavilion, carried meals and soiled clothes, had sat on Billy Grant's chest once or twice during a delirium, and kept a bottle locked in the dish closet.

  "Yes, sir," said Jenks, coming behind a strong odour of spiritus frumenti.

  "Jenks," said Billy Grant with an eye on the figure at the gate, "is that bottle of yours empty?"

  "What bottle?"

  "The one in the closet."

  Jenks eyed Billy Grant, and Billy eyed Jenks—a look of man to man, brother to brother.

  "Not quite, sir—a nip or two."

  "At," suggested Billy Grant, "say—five dollars a nip?"

  Jenks smiled.

  "About that," he said. "Filled?"

  Billy Grant debated. The Nurse was turning at the gate.

  "No," he said. "As it is, Jenks. Bring it here."

  Jenks brought the bottle and a glass, but the glass was motioned away. Billy Grant took the bottle in his hand and looked at it with a curious expression. Then he went over and put it in the upper bureau drawer, under a pile of handkerchiefs. Jenks watched him, bewildered.

  "Just a little experiment, Jenks," said Billy Grant.

  Jenks understood then and stopped sm
iling.

  "I wouldn't, Mr. Grant," he said; "it will only make you lose confidence in yourself when it doesn't work out."

  "But it's going to work out," said Billy Grant. "Would you mind turning on the cold water?"

  Now the next twenty-four hours puzzled the Nurse. When Billy Grant's eyes were not on her with an unfathomable expression in them, they were fixed on something in the neighbourhood of the dresser, and at these times they had a curious, fixed look not unmixed with triumph. She tried a new arrangement of combs and brushes and tilted the mirror at a different angle, without effect.

  That day Billy Grant took only one cold plunge. As the hours wore on he grew more cheerful; the look of triumph was unmistakable. He stared less at the dresser and more at the Nurse. At last it grew unendurable. She stopped in front of him and looked down at him severely. She could only be severe when he was sitting—when he was standing she had to look so far up at him, even when she stood on her tiptoes.

  "What is wrong with me?" she demanded. "You look so queer! Is my cap crooked?"

  "It is a wonderful cap."

  "Is my face dirty?"

  "It is a won—— No, certainly not."

  "Then would you mind not staring so? You—upset me."

  "I shall have to shut my eyes," he replied meekly, and worried her into a state of frenzy by sitting for fifty minutes with his head back and his eyes shut.

  So—the evening and the morning were another day, and the bottle lay undisturbed under the handkerchiefs, and the cold shower ceased running, and Billy Grant assumed the air of triumph permanently. That morning when the breakfast trays came he walked over into the Nurse's room and picked hers up, table and all, carrying it across the hall. In his own room he arranged the two trays side by side, and two chairs opposite each other. When the Nurse, who had been putting breadcrumbs on the window-sill, turned round Billy Grant was waiting to draw out one of the chairs, and there was something in his face she had not seen there before.

  "Shall we breakfast?" he said.

  "I told you yesterday——"

  "Think a minute," he said softly. "Is there any reason why we should not breakfast together?" She pressed her hands close together, but she did not speak. "Unless—you do not wish to."

  "You remember you promised, as soon as you got away, to—fix that——"

  "So I will if you say the word."

  "And—to forget all about it."

  "That," said Billy Grant solemnly, "I shall never do so long as I live. Do you say the word?"

  "What else can I do?"

  "Then there is somebody else?"

  "Oh, no!"

  He took a step toward her, but still he did not touch her.

  "If there is no one else," he said, "and if I tell you that you have made me a man again——"

  "Gracious! Your eggs will be cold." She made a motion toward the egg-cup, but Billy Grant caught her hand.

  "Damn the eggs!" he said. "Why don't you look at me?"

  Something sweet and luminous and most unprofessional shone in the little Nurse's eyes, and the line of her pulse on a chart would have looked like a seismic disturbance.

  "I—I have to look up so far!" she said, but really she was looking down when she said it.

  "Oh, my dear—my dear!" exulted Billy Grant. "It is I who must look up at you!" And with that he dropped on his knees and kissed the starched hem of her apron.

  The Nurse felt very absurd and a little frightened.

  "If only," she said, backing off—"if only you wouldn't be such a silly! Jenks is coming!"

  But Jenks was not coming. Billy Grant rose to his full height and looked down at her—a new Billy Grant, the one who had got drunk at a club and given a ring to a cabman having died that grey morning some weeks before.

  "I love you—love you—love you!" he said, and took her in his arms.

  Now the Head Nurse was interviewing an applicant; and, as the H.N. took a constitutional each morning in the courtyard and believed in losing no time, she was holding the interview as she walked.

  "I think I would make a good nurse," said the applicant, a trifle breathless, the h.n. being a brisk walker. "I am so sympathetic."

  The H.N. stopped and raised a reproving forefinger.

  "Too much sympathy is a handicap," she orated. "The perfect nurse is a silent, reliable, fearless, emotionless machine—this little building here is the isolation pavilion."

  "An emotionless machine," repeated the applicant. "I see—an e——"

  The words died on her lips. She was looking past a crowd of birds on the windowsill to where, just inside, Billy Grant and the Nurse in a very mussed cap were breakfasting together. And as she looked Billy Grant bent over across the tray.

  "I adore you!" he said distinctly and, lifting the Nurse's hands, kissed first one and then the other.

  "It is hard work," said Miss Smith—having made a note that the boys in the children's ward must be restrained from lowering a pasteboard box on a string from a window—"hard work without sentiment. It is not a romantic occupation."

  She waved an admonitory hand toward the window, and the box went up swiftly. The applicant looked again toward the pavilion, where Billy Grant, having kissed the Nurse's hands, had buried his face in her two palms.

  The mild October sun shone down on the courtyard, with its bandaged figures in wheel-chairs, its cripples sunning on a bench, their crutches beside them, its waterless fountain and dingy birds.

  The applicant thrilled to it all—joy and suffering, birth and death, misery and hope, life and love. Love!

  The H.N. turned to her grimly, but her eyes were soft.

  "All this," she said, waving her hand vaguely, "for eight dollars a month!"

  "I think," said the applicant shyly, "I should like to come."

  GOD'S FOOL

  I

  The great God endows His children variously. To some He gives intellect—and they move the earth. To some He allots heart—and the beating pulse of humanity is theirs. But to some He gives only a soul, without intelligence—and these, who never grow up, but remain always His children, are God's fools, kindly, elemental, simple, as if from His palette the Artist of all had taken one colour instead of many.

  The Dummy was God's fool. Having only a soul and no intelligence, he lived the life of the soul. Through his faded, childish old blue eyes he looked out on a world that hurried past him with, at best, a friendly touch on his shoulder. No man shook his hand in comradeship. No woman save the little old mother had ever caressed him. He lived alone in a world of his own fashioning, peopled by moving, noiseless figures and filled with dreams—noiseless because the Dummy had ears that heard not and lips that smiled at a kindness, but that did not speak.

  In this world of his there was no uncharitableness—no sin. There was a God—why should he not know his Father?—there were brasses to clean and three meals a day; and there was chapel on Sunday, where one held a book—the Dummy held his upside down—and felt the vibration of the organ, and proudly watched the afternoon sunlight smiling on the polished metal of the chandelier and choir rail.

  The Probationer sat turning the bandage machine and watching the Dummy, who was polishing the brass plates on the beds. The plates said: "Endowed in perpetuity"—by various leading citizens, to whom God had given His best gifts, both heart and brain.

  "How old do you suppose he is?" she asked, dropping her voice.

  The Senior Nurse was writing fresh labels for the medicine closet, and for "tincture of myrrh" she wrote absently "tincture of mirth," and had to tear it up.

  "He can't hear you," she said rather shortly. "How old? Oh, I don't know. About a hundred, I should think."

  This was, of course, because of his soul, which was all he had, and which, having existed from the beginning, was incredibly old. The little dead mother could have told them that he was less than thirty.

  The Probationer sat winding bandages. Now and then they went crooked and had to be done again. She was ve
ry tired. The creaking of the bandage machine made her nervous—that and a sort of disillusionment; for was this her great mission, this sitting in a silent, sunny ward, where the double row of beds held only querulous convalescent women? How close was she to life who had come to soothe the suffering and close the eyes of the dying; who had imagined that her instruments of healing were a thermometer and a prayer-book; and who found herself fighting the good fight with a bandage machine and, even worse, a scrubbing brush and a finetooth comb?

  The Senior Nurse, having finished the M's, glanced up and surprised a tear on the Probationer's round young cheek. She was wise, having trained many probationers.

  "Go to first supper, please," she said. First supper is the Senior's prerogative; but it is given occasionally to juniors and probationers as a mark of approval, or when the Senior is not hungry, or when a probationer reaches the breaking point, which is just before she gets her uniform.

  The Probationer smiled and brightened. After all, she must be doing fairly well; and if she were not in the battle she was of it. Glimpses she had of the battle—stretchers going up and down in the slow elevator; sheeted figures on their way to the operating room; the clang of the ambulance bell in the courtyard; the occasional cry of a new life ushered in; the impressive silence of an old life going out. She surveyed the bandages on the bed.

  "I'll put away the bandages first," she said. "That's what you said, I think—never to leave the emergency bed with anything on it?"

  "Right-oh!" said the Senior.

  "Though nothing ever happens back here—does it?'

  "It's about our turn; I'm looking for a burned case." The Probationer, putting the bandages into a basket, turned and stared.

  "We have had two in to-day in the house," the Senior went on, starting on the N's and making the capital carefully. "There will be a third, of course; and we may get it. Cases always seem to run in threes. While you're straightening the bed I suppose I might as well go to supper after all."