Love Stories
Page 2
JANE
I
Having retired to a hospital to sulk, Jane remained there. Thefamily came and sat by her bed uncomfortably and smoked, and finallyretreated with defeat written large all over it, leaving Jane to thecontinued possession of Room 33, a pink kimono with slippers tomatch, a hand-embroidered face pillow with a rose-coloured bow onthe corner, and a young nurse with a gift of giving Jane daily theappearance of a strawberry and vanilla ice rising from a meringue ofbed linen.
Jane's complaint was temper. The family knew this, and so didJane, although she had an annoying way of looking hurt, a gentleheart-brokenness of speech that made the family, under thepretence of getting a match, go out into the hall and swear softlyunder its breath. But it was temper, and the family was notdeceived. Also, knowing Jane, the family was quite ready tobelieve that while it was swearing in the hall, Jane was bitingholes in the hand-embroidered face pillow in Room 33.
It had finally come to be a test of endurance. Jane vowed to stayat the hospital until the family on bended knee begged her to emergeand to brighten the world again with her presence. The family, beingher father, said it would be damned if it would, and that if Janecared to live on anaemic chicken broth, oatmeal wafers and massagetwice a day for the rest of her life, why, let her.
The dispute, having begun about whether Jane should or should notmarry a certain person, Jane representing the affirmative and herfather the negative, had taken on new aspects, had grown andaltered, and had, to be brief, become a contest between themasculine Johnson and the feminine Johnson as to which would takethe count. Not that this appeared on the surface. The masculineJohnson, having closed the summer home on Jane's defection and goneback 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 toldthat 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 inthe pink kimono, gazing over his head at the distant hills andclearly entirely indifferent to him and his wrath.
So we find Jane, on a frosty morning in late October, in triumphantpossession of the field--aunts and cousins routed, her fathersulking in town, and the victor herself--or is victor feminine?--andif it isn't, shouldn't it be?--sitting up in bed staring blankly ather watch.
Jane had just wakened--an hour later than usual; she had rung thebell three times and no one had responded. Jane's famous temperbegan to stretch and yawn. At this hour Jane was accustomedto be washed with tepid water, scented daintily with violet,alcohol-rubbed, talcum-powdered, and finally fresh-linened, coifedand manicured, to be supported with a heap of fresh pillows and fedcreamed sweet-bread and golden-brown coffee and toast.
Jane rang again, with a line between her eyebrows. The bell was notbroken. She could hear it distinctly. This was an outrage! She wouldreport it to the superintendent. She had been ringing for tenminutes. That little minx of a nurse was flirting somewhere with oneof the internes.
Jane angrily flung the covers back and got out on her small barefeet. Then she stretched her slim young arms above her head, herspoiled red mouth forming a scarlet O as she yawned. In hersleeveless and neckless nightgown, with her hair over her shoulders,minus the more elaborate coiffure which later in the day helpedher to poise and firmness, she looked a pretty young girl,almost--although Jane herself never suspected this--almost anamiable young person.
Jane saw herself in the glass and assumed immediately the two linesbetween her eyebrows which were the outward and visible token ofwhat she had suffered. Then she found her slippers, a pair ofstockings to match and two round bits of pink silk elastic ofprivate and feminine use, and sat down on the floor to put them on.
The floor was cold. To Jane's wrath was added indignation. Shehitched herself along the boards to the radiator and put her hand onit. It was even colder than Jane.
The family temper was fully awake by this time and ready forbusiness. Jane, sitting on the icy floor, jerked on her stockings,snapped the pink bands into place, thrust her feet into her slippersand rose, shivering. She went to the bed, and by dint of carefulmanoeuvring so placed the bell between the head of the bed and thewall that during the remainder of her toilet it rang steadily.
The remainder of Jane's toilet was rather casual. She flung on thesilk kimono, twisted her hair on top of her head and stuck a pin ortwo in it, thus achieving a sort of effect a thousand times morebewildering than she had ever managed with a curling iron andtwenty seven hair pins, and flinging her door wide stalked into thehall. At least she meant to stalk, but one does not really stampabout much in number-two, heelless, pink-satin mules.
At the first stalk--or stamp--she stopped. Standing uncertainly justoutside her door was a strange man, strangely attired. Jane clutchedher kimono about her and stared.
"Did--did you--are you ringing?" asked the apparition. It wore apair 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 aclean and spotless white apron. There was coal dust on its face andstreaks 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," heasserted, 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 hereyebrows. In the family this was generally a signal for a retreat,but of course the young man could not know this, and, besides, hewas red-headed. "Look here," said Jane, "I don't know who you areand I don't care either, but that bell is going to ring until I getmy bath and some breakfast. And it's going to ring then unless Istop it."
The young man in the coal dust and the white apron looked at Janeand smiled. Then he walked past her into the room, jerked the bedfrom the wall and released the bell.
"Now!" he said as the din outside ceased. "I'm too busy to talk justat present, but if you do that again I'll take the bell out of theroom altogether. There are other people in the hospital besidesyourself."
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 atJane reflectively.
"Do you know anything about cooking?" he asked.
"I know more about cooking than you do about politeness," sheretorted, white with fury, and went into her room and slammed thedoor. She went directly to the bell and put it behind the bed andset it to ringing again. Then she sat down in a chair and picked upa book. Had the red-haired person opened the door she was perfectlyprepared to fling the book at him. She would have thrown a hatchethad she had one.
As a matter of fact, however, he did not come back. The bell rangwith a soul-satisfying jangle for about two minutes and then diedaway, and no amount of poking with a hairpin did any good. It wasclear that the bell had been cut off outside!
For fifty-five minutes Jane sat in that chair breakfastless, verycasually washed and with the aforesaid Billie Burkeness of hair.Then, hunger gaining over temper, she opened the door and peeredout. From somewhere near at hand there came a pungent odor ofburning toast. Jane sniffed; then, driven by hunger, she made ashort sally down the hall to the parlour where the nurses on dutymade their headquarters. It was empty. The dismantled bell registerwas on the wall, with the bell unscrewed and lying on the mantelbeside it, and the odour of burning toast was stronger than ever.
Jane padded softly to the odour, following her small nose. It ledher to the pantry, where under ordinary circumstances the patients'trays were prepared by a pantrymaid, the food being shipped therefrom the kitchen on a lift. Clearly the circumstances were notordinary. The pantrymaid was not in sight.
Instead, the red-haired person was standing by the window scrapingbusily at a
blackened piece of toast. There was a rank odour ofboiling tea in the air.
"Damnation!" said the red-haired person, and flung the toast into acorner where there already lay a small heap of charred breakfasthopes. Then he saw Jane.
"I fixed the bell, didn't I?" he remarked. "I say, since you claimto know so much about cooking, I wish you'd make some toast."
"I didn't say I knew much," snapped Jane, holding her kimono roundher. "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 hoursince. Say but the word and I replace the bell."
"I won't make any toast," said Jane, looking at the bread withfamished eyes.
"Oh, very well," said the red-haired person with a sigh. "On yourhead be it!"
"But I'll tell you how to do it," conceded Jane, "if you'll explainwho you are and what you are doing in that costume and where thenurses are."
The red-haired person sat down on the edge of the table and lookedat her.
"I'll make a bargain with you," he said. "There's a convalescenttyphoid in a room near yours who swears he'll go down to the villagefor something to eat in his--er--hospital attire unless he's fedsoon. He's dangerous, empty. He's reached the cannibalistic stage.If he should see you in that ravishing pink thing, I--I wouldn'tanswer for the consequences. I'll tell you everything if you'll makehim six large slices of toast and boil him four or five eggs, enoughto hold him for a while. The tea's probably ready; it's been boilingfor an hour."
Hunger was making Jane human. She gathered up the tail of herkimono, and stepping daintily into the pantry proceeded to spreadherself a slice of bread and butter.
"Where is everybody?" she asked, licking some butter off her thumbwith 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, thestaff, the training school, the cooks, the furnace man and theambulance driver."
Jane was pouring herself a cup of tea, and she put in milk and sugarand took a sip or two before she would give him the satisfaction ofasking 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 thepantry girl's chair and, what with the tea inside and somebody toquarrel with, feeling more like herself. "My father's one of thedirectors, and somebody gets it."
The red-haired person sat on the radiator and eyed Jane. He lookedslightly stunned, as if the presence of beauty in a Billie Burkechignon and little else except a kimono was almost too much for him.From somewhere near by came a terrific thumping, as of some onepounding a hairbrush on a table. The red-haired person shifted alongthe radiator a little nearer Jane, and continued to gloat.
"Don't let that noise bother you," he said; "that's only theconvalescent typhoid banging for his breakfast. He's been shoutingfor 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 readyyou'd better fix him something."
Jane had finished her bread and tea by this time and remembered herkimono.
"I'll go back and dress," she said primly. But he wouldn't hear ofit.
"He's starving," he objected as a fresh volley of thumps came alongthe hall. "I've been trying at intervals since daylight to make hima piece of toast. The minute I put it on the fire I think ofsomething 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-hairedperson told his story.
"You see," he explained, "although I appear to be a furnace man fromthe waist up and an interne from the waist down, I am really the newsuperintendent."
"I hope you'll do better than the last one," she said severely. "Hewas 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 leftlast night and took with him everything portable except theambulance--nurses, staff, cooks. I wish to Heaven he'd taken thepatients! 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," hedeclared. "It's a factional fight--the village against thefashionable summer colony on the hill. I cannot telephone from thevillage--the telegraph operator is deaf when I speak to him; thevillage 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 thered-haired person. "Shall I let old Sheets come back?"
"If you do," said Jane fiercely, "I shall hate you the rest of mylife."
And as it was clear by this time that the red-haired person couldimagine nothing more horrible, it was settled then and there that heshould stay.
"There are only two wards," he said. "In the men's a man namedHiggins is able to be up and is keeping things straight. And in thewoman's ward Mary O'Shaughnessy is looking after them. The furnacesare the worst. I'd have forgiven almost anything else. I've sat upall night nursing the fires, but they breathed their last at sixthis morning and I guess there's nothing left but to call thecoroner."
Jane had achieved a tolerable plate of toast by that time and foureggs. Also she had a fine flush, a combination of heat from the gasstove and temper.
"They ought to be ashamed," she cried angrily, "leaving a lot ofsick people!"
"Oh, as to that," said the red-headed person, "there aren't anyvery sick ones. Two or three neurasthenics like yourself and aconvalescent typhoid and a D.T. in a private room. If it wasn'tthat Mary O'Shaughnessy----"
But at the word "neurasthenics" Jane had put down the toaster, andby the time the unconscious young man had reached the O'Shaughnessyshe was going out the door with her chin up. He called after her,and finding she did not turn he followed her, shouting apologies ather back until she went into her room. And as hospital doors don'tlock from the inside she pushed the washstand against the knob andwent to bed to keep warm.
He stood outside and apologised again, and later he brought a trayof bread and butter and a pot of the tea, which had been boiling fortwo 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 ofcandied ginger that some one had sent her, and read "Lorna Doone."
Now and then a sound of terrific hammering would follow thesteampipes and Jane would smile wickedly. By noon she had finishedthe ginger and was wondering what the person about whom she and thefamily had disagreed would think when he heard the way she was beingtreated. And by one o'clock she had cried her eyes entirely shut andhad pushed the washstand back from the door.
II
Now a hospital full of nurses and doctors with a bell to summon foodand attention is one thing. A hospital without nurses and doctors,and with only one person to do everything, and that person mostly inthe cellar, is quite another. Jane was very sad and lonely, and toadd to her troubles the delirium-tremens case down the hall began tosing "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 f
ortified she started out to find the red-haired person.She intended to say that she was paying sixty-five dollars a weekand belonged to a leading family, and that she didn't mean toendure for a moment the treatment she was getting, and beingcalled a neurasthenic and made to cook for the other patients.
She went slowly along the hall. The convalescent typhoid heard herand called.
"Hey, doc!" he cried. "Hey, doc! Great Scott, man, when do I getsome dinner?"
Jane quickened her steps and made for the pantry. From somewherebeyond, 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 interestedand 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 hereyes.
Jane's nose led her again to the pantry. There was a sort of soupyodour in the air, and sure enough the red-haired person was there,very immaculate in fresh ducks, pouring boiling water into threetea-cups out of a kettle and then dropping a beef capsule into eachcup.
Now Jane had intended, as I have said, to say that she was beingoutrageously treated, and belonged to one of the best families, andso 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 theyhave the more they want. I say, be a good girl and run up to thekitchen for some more crackers while I carry food to theconvalescent typhoid. He's murderous!"
"Where are the crackers?" asked Jane stiffly, but not exactly caringto raise an issue until she was sure of getting something to eat.
"Store closet in the kitchen, third drawer on the left," said thered-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 himwith this beef tea and red pepper, and he'll be too busy putting outthe fire to want to sing."
"You wouldn't be so cruel!" said Jane, rather drawing back. Thered-haired person smiled and to Jane it showed that he was actuallyferocious. She ran all the way up for the crackers and down again,carrying the tin box. There is no doubt that Jane's family wouldhave 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 todeep-muttered imprecations from the singer's room. Jane made herselfa cup of bouillon and drank it scalding. She was making the secondwhen the red-haired person came back with an empty cup.
"I forgot to explain," he said, "that beef tea and red pepper's thetreatment for our young friend in there. After a man has beenburning his stomach daily with a quart or so of raw booze----"
"I beg your pardon," said Jane coolly. Booze was not considered goodform on the hill--the word, of course. There was plenty of thesubstance.
"Raw booze," repeated the red-haired person. "Nothing short of redpepper or dynamite is going to act as a substitute. Why, I'll betthe inside of that chap's stomach is of the general sensitivenessand consistency of my shoe."
"Indeed!" said Jane, coldly polite. In Jane's circle people did notdiscuss the interiors of other people's stomachs. The red-hairedperson sat on the table with a cup of bouillon in one hand and acracker in the other.
"You know," he said genially, "it's awfully bully of you to come outand keep me company like this. I never put in such a day. I've givenup fussing with the furnace and got out extra blankets instead. AndI think by night our troubles will be over." He held up the cup andglanced at Jane, who was looking entrancingly pretty. "To ourtroubles being over!" he said, draining the cup, and then foundthat he had used the red pepper again by mistake. It took fiveminutes and four cups of cold water to enable him to explain what hemeant.
"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 ifall goes well it will deposit in the village half a dozen nurses, acook or two, a furnace man--good Heavens, I wonder if I forgot afurnace 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 sometelegrams for him.
"I couldn't leave, you see," he explained, "and having some smallreason to believe that I am _persona non grata_ in this vicinity Isent Higgins."
Jane had always hated the name Higgins. She said afterward that shefelt uneasy from that moment. The red-haired person, who was notbad-looking, being tall and straight and having a very decent nose,looked at Jane, and Jane, having been shut away for weeks--Janepreened 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 withas 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," thered-haired person protested--"or impertinent either."
Jane was gathering up the remnants of her temper, scattered by theevents of the day.
"You said I was a neurasthenic," she accused him. "It--it isn'tbeing a neurasthenic to be nervous and upset and hating the verysight of people, is it?"
"Bless my soul!" said the red-haired man. "Then what is it?" Janeflushed, but he went on tactlessly: "I give you my word, I think youare the most perfectly"--he gave every appearance of being about tosay "beautiful," but he evidently changed his mind--"the mostperfectly healthy person I have ever looked at," he finished.
It is difficult to say just what Jane would have done under othercircumstances, but just as she was getting her temper really in handand preparing to launch something, shuffling footsteps were heard inthe hall and Higgins stood in the doorway.
He was in a sad state. One of his eyes was entirely closed, and thecorresponding ear stood out large and bulbous from his head. Also hewas coated with mud, and he was carefully nursing one hand with theother.
He said he had been met at the near end of the railroad bridge bythe 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 toreport at the hospital that the tradespeople had instituted aboycott, and that either the former superintendent went back or theentire place could starve to death.
It was then that Jane discovered that her much-vaunted temper wasnot one-two-three to that of the red-haired person. He turned a sortof blue-white, shoved Jane out of his way as if she had been achair, and she heard him clatter down the stairs and slam out of thefront door.
Jane went back to her room and looked down the drive. He was runningtoward the bridge, and the sunlight on his red hair and his flyinglegs made him look like a revengeful meteor. Jane was weak in theknees. She knelt on the cold radiator and watched him out of sight,and then got trembly all over and fell to snivelling. This was ofcourse because, if anything happened to him, she would be leftentirely alone. And anyhow the D.T. case was singing again and hadrather got on her nerves.
In ten minutes the red-haired person appeared. He had awretched-looking creature by the back of the neck and he alternatelypushed and kicked him up the drive. He--the red-haired person--waswhistling and clearly immensely pleased with himself.
Jane put a little powder on her nose and waited for him to come andtell her all about it. But he did not come near. This was quite thecleverest thing he could have done, had he known it. Jane was notaccustomed to waiting in vain. He must have gone directly to thecellar, half pushing and half kicking the luckless furnace man, forabout four o'clock the radiator began to get warm.
At five he came and knocked at Jane's door, and on being invited inhe
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 tocoal up. The rest of the time he can sit and think of his sins. Thequestion is--what are we to do next?"
"I should think," ventured Jane, "that we'd better be thinking aboutsupper."
"The beef capsules are gone."
"But surely there must be something else about--potatoes or thingslike that?"
He brightened perceptibly. "Oh, yes, carloads of potatoes, andthere's canned stuff. Higgins can pare potatoes, and there's MaryO'Shaughnessy. We could have potatoes and canned tomatoes and eggs."
"Fine!" said Jane with her eyes gleaming, although the day beforeshe would have said they were her three abominations.
And with that he called Higgins and Mary O'Shaughnessy and the fourof them went to the kitchen.
Jane positively shone. She had never realised before how much sheknew about cooking. They built a fire and got kettles boiling andeverybody pared potatoes, and although in excess of zeal the eggswere ready long before everything else and the tomatoes scorchedslightly, still they made up in enthusiasm what they lacked inability, and when Higgins had carried the trays to the lift andstarted them on their way, Jane and the red-haired person shookhands 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 thenboiled another and another, and when they finished they found thatJane had eaten four potatoes, four eggs and unlimited bread andbutter, while the red-haired person had eaten six saucers of stewedtomatoes and was starting on the seventh.
"You know," he said over the seventh, "we've got to figure thisthing out. The entire town is solid against us--no use trying to getto a telephone. And anyhow they've got us surrounded. We're in astate of siege."
Jane was beating up an egg in milk for the D.T. patient, thecapsules being exhausted, and the red-haired person was watching herclosely. She had the two vertical lines between her eyes, but theylooked 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 afinal whisk. "My people have a summer place on the hill. If youcould 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 getinto the house and get her clothes.
"Good girl," said the red-headed person and patted her on theshoulder. "We'll euchre the old skate yet." Curiously, Jane did notresent either the speech or the pat.
He took the glass and tied on a white apron. "If our friend doesn'tdrink 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 therefrain:
_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 thered-haired person, whispering something to him. There was a second'spause. Then the red-haired person gave the eggnog to Higgins andboth disappeared.
Jane was puzzled. She rather thought the furnace man had got out andlistened for a scuffle, but none came. She did, however, hear thesinging cease below, and then commence with renewed vigour, and sheheard Higgins slowly remounting the stairs. He came in, with theempty glass and a sheepish expression. Part of the eggnog wasdistributed over his person.
"He wants his nurse, ma'am," said Higgins. "Wouldn't let me nearhim. 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 itshows the curious evolution going on in her that she got out theeggs and milk and made another one without protest. Then with herhead up she carried it to the door.
"You might clear things away, Higgins," she said, and went down thestairs. Her heart was going rather fast. Most of the men Jane knewdrank more or less, but this was different. She would have turnedback halfway there had it not been for Higgins and for owningherself conquered. That was Jane's real weakness--she never ownedherself beaten.
The singing had subsided to a low muttering. Jane stopped outsidethe door and took a fresh grip on her courage. Then she pushed thedoor open and went in.
The light was shaded, and at first the tossing figure on the bed wasonly a misty outline of greys and whites. She walked over, expectinga pillow at any moment and shielding the glass from attack with herhand.
"I have brought you another eggnog," she began severely, "and if youspill 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 itstumbled dark hair and deep-cut lines of dissipation, the man who hadsung 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 fedthe eggnog, spoonful by spoonful, to his corpse!
When the blank-eyed young man on the bed had swallowed it allpassively, looking at her with dull, incurious eyes, she went backto her room and closing the door put the washstand against it. Shedid nothing theatrical. She went over to the window and stoodlooking out where the trees along the drive were fading in the duskfrom green to grey, from grey to black. And over the transom cameagain 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 inthe hand-embroidered pillow, and said a little prayer because shehad found out in time.
III
The full realisation of their predicament came with the dusk. Theelectric lights were shut off! Jane, crawling into bed tearfully athalf after eight, turned the reading light switch over her head, butno flood of rosy radiance poured down on the hand-embroidered pillowwith the pink bow.
Jane sat up and stared round her. Already the outline of her dresserwas faint and shadowy. In half an hour black night would settle downand she had not even a candle or a box of matches. She crawled out,panicky, and began in the darkness to don her kimono and slippers.As she opened the door and stepped into the hall the convalescenttyphoid heard her and set up his usual cry.
"Hey," he called, "whoever that is come in and fix the lights.They're broken. And I want some bread and milk. I can't sleep on anempty stomach!"
Jane padded on past the room where love lay cold and dead, down thecorridor with its alarming echoes. The house seemed very quiet. At acorner unexpectedly she collided with some one going hastily. Theresult was a crash and a deluge of hot water. Jane got a drop on herbare ankle, and as soon as she could breathe she screamed.
"Why don't you look where you're going?" demanded the red-hairedperson angrily. "I've been an hour boiling that water, and now ithas to be done over again!"
"It would do a lot of good to look!" retorted Jane. "But if youwish I'll carry a bell!"
"The thing for you to do," said the red-haired person severely, "isto go back to bed like a good girl and stay there until morning. Thelight is cut off."
"Really!" said Jane. "I thought it had just gone out for a walk. Idaresay I may have a box of matches at least?"
He fumbled in his pockets without success.
"Not a match, of course!" he said disgustedly. "Was any one ever insuch an infernal mess? Can't you get back to your room withoutmatches?"
"I sh
an't go back at all unless I have some sort of light,"maintained Jane. "I'm--horribly frightened!"
The break in her voice caught his attention and he put his hand outgently and took her arm.
"Now listen," he said. "You've been brave and fine all day, anddon't stop it now. I--I've got all I can manage. Mary O'Shaughnessyis----" He stopped. "I'm going to be very busy," he said with half agroan. "I surely do wish you were forty for the next few hours. Butyou'll go back and stay in your room, won't you?"
He patted her arm, which Jane particularly hated generally. But Janehad altered considerably since morning.
"Then you cannot go to the telephone?"
"Not to-night."
"And Higgins?"
"Higgins has gone," he said. "He slipped off an hour ago. We'll haveto manage to-night somehow. Now will you be a good child?"
"I'll go back," she promised meekly. "I'm sorry I'm not forty."
He turned her round and started her in the right direction with alittle push. But she had gone only a step or two when she heard himcoming after her quickly.
"Where are you?"
"Here," quavered Jane, not quite sure of him or of herself perhaps.
But when he stopped beside her he didn't try to touch her arm again.He only said:
"I wouldn't have you forty for anything in the world. I want you tobe just as you are, very beautiful and young."
Then, as if he was afraid he would say too much, he turned on hisheel, and a moment after he kicked against the fallen pitcher in thedarkness and awoke a thousand echoes. As for Jane, she put herfingers to her ears and ran to her room, where she slammed the doorand crawled into bed with burning cheeks.
Jane was never sure whether it was five minutes later or fiveseconds when somebody in the room spoke--from a chair by the window.
"Do you think," said a mild voice--"do you think you could find mesome bread and butter? Or a glass of milk?"
Jane sat up in bed suddenly. She knew at once that she had made amistake, but she was quite dignified about it. She looked over atthe chair, and the convalescent typhoid was sitting in it, wrappedin a blanket and looking wan and ghostly in the dusk.
"I'm afraid I'm in the wrong room," Jane said very stiffly, tryingto get out of the bed with dignity, which is difficult. "The hall isdark and all the doors look so alike----"
She made for the door at that and got out into the hall with herheart going a thousand a minute again.
"You've forgotten your slippers," called the convalescent typhoidafter her. But nothing would have taken Jane back.
The convalescent typhoid took the slippers home later and lockedthem away in an inner drawer, where he kept one or two things likefaded roses, and old gloves, and a silk necktie that a girl had madehim at college--things that are all the secrets a man keeps from hiswife and that belong in that small corner of his heart which alsohe keeps from his wife. But that has nothing to do with Jane.
Jane went back to her own bed thoroughly demoralised. And sleepbeing pretty well banished by that time, she sat up in bed andthought things over. Before this she had not thought much, onlyraged and sulked alternately. But now she thought. She thought aboutthe man in the room down the hall with the lines of dissipation onhis face. And she thought a great deal about what a silly she hadbeen, and that it was not too late yet, she being not forty and"beautiful." It must be confessed that she thought a great dealabout that. Also she reflected that what she deserved was to marrysome person with even a worse temper than hers, who would bully herat times and generally keep her straight. And from that, of course,it was only a step to the fact that red-haired people areproverbially bad-tempered!
She thought, too, about Mary O'Shaughnessy without another womannear, and not even a light, except perhaps a candle. Things werealways so much worse in the darkness. And perhaps she might be goingto be very ill and ought to have another doctor!
Jane seemed to have been reflecting for a long time, when the churchclock far down in the village struck nine. And with the chiming ofthe clock was born, full grown, an idea which before it was sixtyseconds of age was a determination.
In pursuance of the idea Jane once more crawled out of bed and beganto dress; she put on heavy shoes and a short skirt, a coat, and amotor veil over her hair. The indignation at the defection of thehospital staff, held in subjection during the day by the necessityfor doing something, now rose and lent speed and fury to hermovements. In an incredibly short time Jane was feeling her wayalong the hall and down the staircase, now a well of unfathomableblackness and incredible rustlings and creakings.
The front doors were unlocked. Outside there was faint starlight,the chirp of a sleepy bird, and far off across the valley thegasping and wheezing of a freight climbing the heavy grade to thevillage.
Jane paused at the drive and took a breath. Then at her bestgymnasium pace, arms close to sides, head up, feet well planted, shestarted to run. At the sundial she left the drive and took to thelawn gleaming with the frost of late October. She stopped runningthen and began to pick her way more cautiously. Even at that shecollided heavily with a wire fence marking the boundary, and sat onthe ground for some time after, whimpering over the outrage andfeeling her nose. It was distinctly scratched and swollen. No onewould think her beautiful with a nose like that!
She had not expected the wire fence. It was impossible to climb andmore difficult to get under. However, she found one place where theground dipped, and wormed her way under the fence in mostundignified fashion. It is perfectly certain that had Jane's familyseen her then and been told that she was doing this remarkable thingfor a woman she had never seen before that day, named MaryO'Shaughnessy, and also for a certain red-haired person of whom ithad never heard, it would have considered Jane quite irrational. Butit is entirely probable that Jane became really rational that nightfor the first time in her spoiled young life.
Jane never told the details of that excursion. Those that came outin the paper were only guess-work, of course, but it is quite truethat a reporter found scraps of her motor veil on three wire fences,and there seems to be no reason to doubt, also, that two false curlswere discovered a week later in a cow pasture on her own estate. Butas Jane never wore curls afterward anyhow----
Well, Jane got to her own house about eleven and crept in like athief to the telephone. There were more rustlings and creakings andrumblings in the empty house than she had ever imagined, and shewent backward through the hall for fear of something coming afterher. But, which is to the point, she got to the telephone and calledup her father in the city.
The first message that astonished gentleman got was that ared-haired person at the hospital was very ill, having run into awire fence and bruised a nose, and that he was to bring out at oncefrom town two doctors, six nurses, a cook and a furnace man!
After a time, however, as Jane grew calmer, he got it straightenedout, and said a number of things over the telephone anent thedeserting staff that are quite forbidden by the rules both of theclub and of the telephone company. He gave Jane full instructionsabout sending to the village and having somebody come up and staywith her, and about taking a hot footbath and going to bed betweenblankets, and when Jane replied meekly to everything "Yes, father,"and "All right, father," he was so stunned by her mildness that hewas certain she must be really ill.
Not that Jane had any idea of doing all these things. She hung upthe telephone and gathered all the candles from all the candlestickson the lower floor, and started back for the hospital. The moon hadcome up and she had no more trouble with fencing, but she wasdesperately tired. She climbed the drive slowly, coming to frequentpauses. The hospital, long and low and sleeping, lay before her,and in one upper window there was a small yellow light.
Jane climbed the steps and sat down on the top one. She felt verytired and sad and dejected, and she sat down on the upper step tothink of how useless she was, and how much a man must know to be adoctor, and that perhaps she would take up nursing in earnest andamount to something, and----
It was about three o'clock in the morning when the red-hairedperson, coming down belatedly to close the front doors, saw ashapeless heap on the porch surrounded by a radius of white-waxcandles, and going up shoved at it with his foot. Whereat the heapmoved slightly and muttered "Lemme shleep."
The red-haired person said "Good Heavens!" and bending down held alighted match to the sleeper's face and stared, petrified. Janeopened her eyes, sat up and put her hand over her mutilated nosewith one gesture.
"You!" said the red-haired person. And then mercifully the matchwent out.
"Don't light another," said Jane. "I'm an alarming sight.Would--would you mind feeling if my nose is broken?"
He didn't move to examine it. He just kept on kneeling and staring.
"Where have you been?" he demanded.
"Over to telephone," said Jane, and yawned. "They're bringingeverybody in automobiles--doctors, nurses, furnace man--oh, dear me,I hope I mentioned a cook!"
"Do you mean to say," said the red-haired person wonderingly, "thatyou went by yourself across the fields and telephoned to get me outof this mess?"
"Not at all," Jane corrected him coolly. "I'm in the mess myself."
"You'll be ill again."
"I never was ill," said Jane. "I was here for a mean disposition."
Jane sat in the moonlight with her hands in her lap and looked athim calmly. The red-haired person reached over and took both herhands.
"You're a heroine," he said, and bending down he kissed first oneand then the other. "Isn't it bad enough that you are beautifulwithout your also being brave?"
Jane eyed him, but he was in deadly earnest. In the moonlight hishair was really not red at all, and he looked pale and very, verytired. Something inside of Jane gave a curious thrill that was halfpain. Perhaps it was the dying of her temper, perhaps----
"Am I still beautiful with this nose?" she asked.
"You are everything that a woman should be," he said, and droppingher hands he got up. He stood there in the moonlight, straight andyoung and crowned with despair, and Jane looked up from under herlong lashes.
"Then why don't you stay where you were?" she asked.
At that he reached down and took her hands again and pulled her toher feet. He was very strong.
"Because if I do I'll never leave you again," he said. "And I mustgo."
He dropped her hands, or tried to, but Jane wasn't ready to bedropped.
"You know," she said, "I've told you I'm a sulky, bad-tempered----"
But at that he laughed suddenly, triumphantly, and put both his armsround her and held her close.
"I love you," he said, "and if you are bad-tempered, so am I, only Ithink I'm worse. It's a shame to spoil two houses with us, isn'tit?"
To her eternal shame be it told, Jane never struggled. She simplyheld up her mouth to be kissed.
That is really all the story. Jane's father came with threeautomobiles that morning at dawn, bringing with him all that goes tomake up a hospital, from a pharmacy clerk to absorbent cotton, andhaving left the new supplies in the office he stamped upstairs toJane's room and flung open the door.
He expected to find Jane in hysterics and the pink silk kimono.
What he really saw was this: A coal fire was lighted in Jane'sgrate, and in a low chair before it, with her nose swollen levelwith her forehead, sat Jane, holding on her lap Mary O'Shaughnessy'sbaby, very new and magenta-coloured and yelling like a trooper.Kneeling beside the chair was a tall, red-headed person holding abottle of olive oil.
"Now, sweetest," the red-haired person was saying, "turn him on histummy and we'll rub his back. Gee, isn't that a fat back!"
And as Jane's father stared and Jane anxiously turned the baby, thered-haired person leaned over and kissed the back of Jane's neck.
"Jane!" he whispered.
"Jane!!" said her father.