by Helen Wells
“He really suffers,” his sister said. “It isn’t pretended temperament, and it isn’t lack of self-control, for he tries not to take things so hard. But small things which you or I would throw off can upset him for days. If he receives a discouraging notice from a critic, or has a tussle with a new composition, he may get too emotionally ‘paralyzed’ to work. Or he may even become physically ill. I know where those heart attacks come from—from emotional upsets.”
“So we have to protect him all we can. I see.”
“Yes. Keep him as quiet and calm as possible. Keep him out of crowds or big parties, away from any excessive excitement. Don’t let autograph seekers and telephone pests annoy him. No noise, above all! Be easygoing and humorous ourselves. He’s almost totally impractical. Knows nothing of business or money matters. He knows very little except music. I often wish—” Miss Owens sighed and changed her mind.
“I wish too we didn’t have to travel so much on concert tour. Scott’s so intense and impressionable that he soaks up travel impressions avidly and it wears him out.”
“But his American Landscape Suite must have been written out of travel impressions,” Cherry said.
“Yes. That’s how he functions. Can you imagine him in money dealings? But what really worries me—” She frowned and turned her head away from the strong light at the window. Cherry could not see Miss Kitty’s shadowed face, only the reddish hair. “What really worries me is what would happen to Scott if a real and big trouble hit him. I’m afraid his heart might—I try to take care of all practical things for him, yet—See here, Miss Cherry. Never—”
Cherry waited in the waning daylight. Now Miss Owens turned her face and Cherry could see the same panicky expression she had seen that day in Bluewater and again that very afternoon.
“Never mention Uncle Matthew in front of Scott. If anyone does, change the subject as fast as you can.”
“But at the séance—you—?”
Miss Kitty forced a laugh. “Oh, I adore all fortune-tellers. It’s only a harmless amusement. Forget that Mrs. Crawford, why don’t you? Forget the whole afternoon! I’m going to a better reader quite soon, you and Scott shall come along. It’s fun. This man has the most picturesque studio—”
She rattled along about unimportant details. Cherry’s attention was not sidetracked. It troubled her that the mere mention of an unexplained Uncle Matthew could throw her patient into a dangerous state. And Miss Kitty—so persistent, so anxious almost, in seeking out seers—She must be troubled, too, and seeking answers. What had gone wrong in this house?
Miss Owens was talking now about Cherry’s work here and Cherry had to pay attention. “We don’t expect you to wear a uniform or keep fixed hours, for resident nursing like this on a chronic case. Of course you’ll be on emergency call day and night, but we’ll manage four free hours every day for you. We want you to be like a member of the family—”
Cherry inquired tactfully about meals, about family visitors. A nurse was an outsider from the family circle, after all.
“Why, the idea! You’ll take your meals with us and when we have visitors, we certainly want you there too. That reminds me! A few close friends are dropping in for supper this evening.”
Cherry murmured her thanks. She was genuinely grateful. She suspected how lonely a nurse’s lot could be, in a less friendly household than this one.
“You won’t wear a uniform,” Miss Kitty rushed on, “that is, unless Scott has an attack and you have to do some actual nursing. And oh, yes, please watch out for the furniture. A lot of pieces are antiques and I’d hate to have medicine splashed on it, or a mark left from a hot-water bottle. Another thing. You’ll have to keep your eye on my brother to suit his schedule. He works very hard and won’t stand for interruptions. Please don’t be one of those officious nurses who flurries into a household, and is ‘obliged’ to rearrange and disrupt everything, and expects the whole family to wait on her, and keeps the place in an uproar!”
Cherry grinned and said there was not much danger of that. She asked when she could meet Scott Owens’s doctor, to secure his orders for the patient.
“He’ll be here for supper, too. Get dressed, now. Wear something pretty!” Miss Kitty flashed out of Cherry’s room, then poked her head back in. “Don’t tell Scott about this conversation. Don’t ever let him know I mentioned Uncle Matthew.”
“I promise.”
Cherry puzzled over their talk as she showered and changed. Miss Kitty was a bit inconsistent too.
Practical, yet she sought out fortunetellers. Sensible as a pair of high shoes, yet rattlebrained. But on the whole, Cherry thought her a grand person and counted herself fortunate to be associated with two such up-and-doing, openhearted people. A third important person with whom she must succeed in her dealings was the unknown doctor. She wondered what he might be like, as she brushed out her coal-black curls and slipped into a cool white linen dress. She was fastening pearls around her throat when something leaped on her shoulder.
Cherry jumped. A small furry face looked questioningly into hers, tiny claws clung through her dress. It was Octave, the Persian.
“Hello, Octave,” Cherry ventured.
“Meow,” replied the cat, satisfied that he had been acknowledged and duly greeted. He proceeded to drape himself about Cherry’s neck like a fur piece. He felt soft and very warm and heavy, particularly on a summer’s evening, but such ecstatic purring should be respected. Cherry walked down the long flights of stairs, Octave clinging to her, and hoped the Owens’s physician would figuratively leap to greet her too.
Do, Re, and Mi appeared first in the living room door, yapping with jealousy. Octave waved his plumed tail, lightly leaped down, strolled majestically through and past the poodles, climbed into one of the open grand pianos, and curled up for a nap on the sounding board. The three poodles stood around looking routed.
Next in the living-room doorway came Miss Owens, in green now, and with her a comfortable-looking, middle-aged man.
“There you are! This is Miss Cherry Ames. Dr. Pratt.”
He and Cherry shook hands. Cherry liked him on sight: his bulk, his keen, honest, brown eyes, even the way his jacket carelessly fell open.
“Glad you’re here, Miss Ames. You have a patient who’s very precious to thousands of people. Drop in at my office any time tomorrow morning and we’ll talk over ways for you to pester him.” He chuckled.
“You can talk to her now, George, if you want to,” Miss Kitty said. “Scott is upstairs and the others won’t be here for a few minutes yet, and I must give Jen a hand.”
“Sure, all right, Kate.”
She left, and Dr. Pratt and Cherry sat down together.
“Well, now,” he said, frankly looking Cherry over. “You’re a little younger than I expected—But so much the better! You’ll be cheerful company for Scott. I don’t expect miracles of my nurses, anyhow—haven’t any illusions about ’em.” Cherry suspected he was joking in all seriousness.
“I’m a busy doctor, Miss Ames,” he went on. “I’ll give you my orders just once, and expect you to manage on that. But any time you’re not sure, or need me, I’ll do my utmost—or I should say, we’ll do our utmost together for Scott, won’t we?”
“We certainly will,” Cherry nodded eagerly. “I’ll work hard for you, Dr. Pratt.”
“Good girl. You drop by in the morning, as I said. I want to discuss this case with you privately and in detail. Let’s not ever talk too much here, where Scott might overhear and worry, mm? Whispering in the hall’s no good, either. When he’s sick, write any questions you may have on a slip of paper and hand it to me along with the chart.” “Our secret system, Cherry.”
They grinned at each other in friendly understanding. Cherry sent up a silent hurrah in favor of Dr. George Pratt.
They spent the next several moments in companionable silence while they waited for Miss Kitty to return. Soon, she entered the room carrying a big bowl of water which she set near the pi
anos, to supply needed moisture for the wood of their delicate sounding boards. Octave took a drink out of it. Jen, in a fresh white apron, followed with a tray full of silver and china and linens. Lucien, an elderly man with a completely happy, irresponsible air, lugged in a pile of folding chairs. No one spoke, simply worked. Cherry, after offering to help Miss Kitty and being refused, watched the preparations with interest.
Lucien pulled out four small tables from against the walls, placed them before the several divans, added folding chairs around them. Jen then set three of these tables for supper, and set up near by the fourth table, a long larger one, as a buffet. Presto, a dining room! Meanwhile, Miss Kitty was lighting dozens of candles. The two rooms glowed. A breeze stirred the curtains at the windows. From upstairs waves of music rippled from Scott Owens’s piano.
Cherry was just deciding this was all highly romantic and Bohemian, when there was a crash at the front door. A voice boomed mournfully:
“I am starving from hunger! All day to eat I forget it! Now up the steps I fall down! Please!”
An enormously fat and funny man puffed into the room. Everybody laughed, they couldn’t help it. Miss Owens gasped out:
“Bébé, did you hurt yourself?”
Bébé—or Baby—shook his large bald head. He caught sight of Cherry, and waddled over to her.
“Who is this beautiful?” He beamed at her. “I like your smell.”
Cherry almost leaped off the couch. Dr. Pratt roared.
“Smell, no?” Bébé perspired earnestly. “Smill? Ah—I catch it—smile.” He turned to Cherry and bowed from his rubber-tire waist. Then he enunciated laboriously, “I like your smile, no smell. Smell is with the nose? Ha, I think so.”
Miss Owens came over, laughing. “Miss Cherry Ames, Mr. Franz Walter, the composer. Franz—Bébé—is Viennese. What he cannot say in English, he says superbly in music.”
The fat man murmured acknowledgments and demanded if Scott had yet played through his, Franz’s, new work for piano and orchestra.
“Already no, hah?” He waddled to the stairs and shouted. “Scott! Quick you should be down-coming!”
Scott yelled back some happy, indistinguishable insult. The doorbell tinkled. Lucien admitted a dignified elderly couple. Everyone rose to greet them.
“Dr. and Mrs. Richard White. I believe you know everyone, except Miss Ames here. Bertha, let me have your gloves and bag. So glad you felt well enough to come.”
Cherry waited until the couple were seated and chatting with Bébé and the doctor. Then she sat down too, beside Miss Kitty. “Who are they?” she whispered. They were both very quiet: serious, gray-haired, rather formal. Mrs. White wore a long dark dinner frock.
“He’s one of the best American conductors.” Miss Owens named the symphony orchestra of this midwest city. “That’s his orchestra. Mrs. White is a darling but terribly shy. You see how subdued they are? They lost their son, their only child, in the war.”
Cherry looked at them sympathetically, looked away. Lucien passed apéritifs and canapés, on which Bébé pounced. Cherry was exploring the delights of icy tomato juice accompanied by salty red caviar, when the doorbell chimed again. Cherry realized that it played “Do, Re, Mi”—probably in honor of those ridiculous poodles. Then a tragically beautiful woman strode into the room.
She walked exactly like Octave as she moved among the friends, and she had the same brooding eyes. But where Octave was golden, she was stark black and white—hair brushed flat like black satin, and moon-white skin. All the people in the room crowded around this tall slender woman in her long gown, adoring her, somehow protecting her.
The hostess took Cherry by the arm. “Miss Carmela Wheeler, our new nurse and mentor, Miss Cherry Ames.”
The woman looked at Cherry thoughtfully and said, “If I had ever had a daughter, perhaps she would have looked like you.”
Cherry stammered a response. There was something electric in this woman’s presence. A few moments later, in another part of the room, Cherry managed to ask Miss Owens about her.
“Contralto. Not opera. Song recitals. Scott writes for her. So does Bébé and every composer I know—they’re all in love with her. Half Italian, half American.”
“But that—that look? That almost tragic—?”
“It’s a long story. Nobody really knows the whole story. Tell you about it sometime. Oh, here’s our dinner!”
Jen sent up the first tray of food, they found places at the several small tables, and Lucien started to serve a chilled consommé. The supper was rather hectic.
“Move over!” Miss Kitty demanded and plopped down beside Cherry on the couch.
“I play now for the soup, I play!” Bébé boomed and rushed to the piano.
Scott came slowly down the stairs. Dr. Pratt shook his head at him: Scott should have used the small stairwell elevator provided for him. But Scott made a face at the doctor, drank his soup standing and in one gulp, and strode toward the second piano. He and Bébé playing together made the candles waver, china tremble, walls ring.
Lucien disappeared with emptied soup cups and reappeared with laden platters for the buffet table. The eight people milled around, serving themselves, sitting now at this table or that so they could visit. Miss Kitty announced loudly that she would tell their fortunes, whether they liked it or not. Dr. White and Dr. Pratt became two immovable figures frozen over a chess game. Talk swirled learnedly of music, books, politics, trade, people. The moon shone in through the windows. The beautiful Carmela sang.
It was the funniest, wackiest, most brilliant evening Cherry had ever lived through. It ended finally with the candles guttering, the guests crowding the door, and Bébé waving his arms and shouting in farewell:
“I have come to tell you that I am no longer here!”
CHAPTER IV
The Fortunetellers
THE DAY BEFORE THE THREE OF THEM WERE TO LEAVE on concert tour, Miss Kitty insisted they all go consult a fortuneteller. Her brother called it silly, Cherry protested as much as she could—but Miss Owens bundled them into the car and off they went.
“I made this appointment a week in advance,” she sputtered. “This is my favorite reader! Usually Gregory Carroll won’t see anyone without two weeks’ advance appointment! He’s taking us as a special favor, because I’m one of his best clients—I rely on him for everything—that is, since I’ve known him. I found out about him only just before we left for Bluewater. He’s marvelous. Today’s sitting really is a special favor to me—he’s awfully sought after and busy.”
“As a special favor to you,” Scott Owens grunted, “for a big, fat fee.”
And Cherry wondered why a fortuneteller, of all people, insisted on advance appointments.
They drove to a residential hotel in one of the most expensive sections of the city, and went up to the Carroll suite. There were no mystic trappings here, only large, beautifully furnished rooms: Chippendale chairs, paintings and prints, walls lined with books. It looked to Cherry like a movie set of what a rich gentleman’s apartment should be, ultracorrect, too perfect, too studied, not quite genuine. Or perhaps, Cherry thought, she was overly suspicious.
The Owens party was admitted by an elderly man who seemed to know Miss Kitty. He was a dried-up, drab little man, in spectacles and a dust-colored jacket such as librarians wear. His air was precise and pedantic. Cherry suspected he was stuffed with sawdust. He seemed to be a sort of employee or upper servant.
“Please come in. I am Mr. Thatch, the secretary.” His voice was humdrum, but he was trying to be amiable. “Please sit down. Mr. Carroll is occupied on the telephone. May I offer you coffee while you are waiting?”
They took seats around the handsome room and Mr. Thatch fussed about, pouring coffee for them. He set the silver pot back on his neatly littered desk.
“I must apologize for the appearance of my desk. We have so much work to do. I tell Mr. Carroll that if he accepts any more clients, he will have a nervous breakdown.” He not
iced Scott’s and Cherry’s disdainful looks. “You don’t believe we work hard, sir? You don’t give credence to prognostication? Neither do many people until they have met Gregory Carroll. Please forgive me for pressing the point, but he is extraordinary—beyond explanation—I venture to say you will find him strangely gifted.”
Cherry sipped her coffee and wondered. The secretary chatted obediently with Miss Owens of trivia. Scott Owens’s attention wandered to a fine harpsichord that stood along the wall.
“Let me open it for you,” Mr. Thatch offered. He walked stiffly to the antique piano. “Would you care to try it, sir? We keep it in tune, to preserve it—you see the construction?” he said with a professor’s air. “The upper octave is shrill but on the whole, the tone is acceptable.”
Cherry saw how quickly the musician was disarmed of his suspicions, by this talk of music. Clever of Mr. Thatch. He seemed to know a great deal about music, antiques, many things—he seemed to be a highly educated, if a tiresome, man.
An inner door opened and a man of about forty-five stood there. Gregory Carroll was striking for his grave and spiritual look. Small-boned, intensely quiet, with a taut cameo face, he might have been an early friar. Or an artist listening with an almost religious dedication to the inner voices of beauty. He might have been wearing simple robes instead of his dark blue business suit.
He smiled at Miss Owens. “You look much happier today, Miss Kitty. Mr. Owens”—they shook hands “—I hope I can be of service to you. And Miss—?”
“Miss Cherry Ames,” Mr. Thatch presented her. “Mr. Owens’s nurse.”
Gregory Carroll turned on her eyes of a cold blue that seemed to be both transparent and full of light. They were extraordinary eyes. “Miss Ames. How do you do. Will you wait here, please?” He ushered the Owenses into the next room and shut the door.
Mr. Thatch puttered around refilling Cherry’s cup. He sat down, prim and dutiful, to entertain her. “Have you known the Owenses long, Miss Ames?”
