The Nurse Novel

by Alice Brennan

  “I like it,” he told her firmly. “I can be very comfortable here while I’m working.”

  “I’m glad,” Lindsay told him, and added quite honestly, “I feel you are being shamelessly overcharged, but there’s nothing I can do about it, except to try to make you as comfortable as I can. You must tell me what you like best to eat so that we can feed you properly, Lucy-Mae and I.”

  Alden smiled warmly at her and said, “Now, don’t you worry your lovely head about me, Lindsay girl. I’ll have the time of my life and pick up enough copy to keep me busy for months. I’m a meat-and-potatoes kind of guy. Nothing fancy. No pâté de foie gras; no guinea-hen stuffed with whatever you stuff guinea-hens with!”

  Lindsay managed a laugh.

  “Chances are good that you’ll be fed mostly on ‘yaller-laiged’ chickens and fish and various kinds of sea food. I see a lot of fryin’-size chickens out back, so Lucy-Mae will probably be serving them,” she warned him.

  “Suits me!” He beamed at her happily. “Well, I’d better get unpacked. Will I see you at lunch?”

  Lindsay laughed. “You will, and at supper and at breakfast as well! That’s something you should have thought of before you moved in here.”

  Alden studied her with an odd glint in his eye and answered, very softly, “What makes you think I didn’t?”

  There was a breathless moment when Lindsay stared at him, meeting the level gaze of his unsmiling eyes and hating herself because she had never been able to lose the habit of blushing.

  Alden said softly, his eyes widening slightly, “Well, what do you know? A girl who can still blush!”

  “And did you ever hear of anything so ridiculous? A nurse, and I still break out in blushes like a woman in an old-fashioned novel!” she derided herself.

  “I don’t think it’s ridiculous at all,” Alden protested. “I think it’s charming and a most refreshing novelty. It intrigues me a whole lot.”

  Lindsay made a little laughing gesture of dismissal and said, “Oh, I’m sure it does. I’ll leave you to unpack now. Lunch will be ready in half an hour.”

  “I’ll be there, appetite under a small measure of control, but I’m not promising much,” he warned her.

  “I’m sure there will be plenty, such as it is; and very good, what there is of it,” she quoted the ancient country phrase.

  She went down the stairs, and as she reached the foot she heard the clamor of Miss Jennifer’s bell and moved to answer its raucous summons.

  Miss Jennifer was propped up against her pillows, her ruffled cap tied beneath her chin, her eyes bright and sharp.

  “He’s here, is he?” she demanded.

  “He’s here.”

  “Well, think he’s going to stay?”

  “For a week, at least, since he’s paid a week’s board.”

  Miss Jennifer nodded and looked very pleased.

  “And I hope he doesn’t have any hope of getting it back if he isn’t satisfied,” she retorted.

  “I’m sure he doesn’t expect to!”

  Miss Jennifer cocked her head on one side and studied Lindsay.

  “He say why he wants to stay here?” she demanded.

  “He told you—”

  Miss Jennifer’s thick-fingered hand made a little gesture of dismissal.

  “Oh, sure, he told me he was a writer and wanted to use this as his base of operations.” She obviously did not accept that explanation. “I don’t for a moment believe that. He’s got some other reason. And I’d surely like to know what it is.”

  “It seems to me that’s as good a reason as any,” Lindsay pointed out wearily. “He has a portable typewriter and an attaché case of papers and was busily getting his desk beside the window in working order when I left him just now.”

  “That’s just a ‘front,’” Miss Jennifer said firmly. “I don’t for a moment believe it. I just wonder. Do you suppose he’s hiding out from the law?”

  Lindsay’s brows went up above wide eyes.

  “Now, what in the world gave you that idea?” she protested.

  “Well, it makes sense, seems to me. Where could a man find a better hiding place than here at Bayou House? There isn’t a law enforcement officer in the county, from Sheriff Grimes right on down to his least important deputy, that would dare come here to search for any criminal.”

  Lindsay felt a small, crawling sensation, as though a bug had strolled across her arm.

  “Aunt Jennifer, are you saying that you control the law here at the Bayou?” she asked at last.

  Miss Jennifer looked at her with contemptuous amusement.

  “What do you think?” she drawled. “As the biggest, almost the only taxpayer in the county, why wouldn’t I control the law officers, since it’s my taxes that pay their salaries? And believe me, they know it.”

  “Then they aren’t very much protection, are they?”

  “That’s a silly thing to say. I couldn’t possibly want better protection. Grimes stops by here once or twice a week. Somebody patrols the road out there every twenty-four hours—”

  “I didn’t mean protection for you; I meant for others at the Bayou.”

  Miss Jennifer sniffed disdainfully.

  “I’m not interested in protection for others,” she said coolly.

  Lindsay was quiet for a moment, and then she asked curiously, “But if you needed protection, Aunt Jennifer, you don’t have a telephone. Why don’t you have one installed?”

  “Because I don’t need it,” said Miss Jennifer. “It would be a useless expense, and I don’t believe in wasting money.”

  Lindsay sighed and turned toward the door.

  “I’ll get your lunch, Aunt Jennifer. I’m sure it’s ready by now,” she said, and left the room.

  Lucy-Mae had the tray ready, and Lindsay took it back to the old woman’s room, arranged it neatly for her and was dismissed. As she came out of the room, Alden was coming down the stairs, and she smiled at him.

  “You’re punctual. Lunch is ready,” she told him, and led the way to the big, old-fashioned dining room where Lucy-Mae had taken great pains to set the table nicely and to place the heaping platters of food at tempting angles.

  “Hey!” Alden said, wide-eyed, as he took in the variety of food. “All this for just the two of us?”

  “The four of us.” Lindsay laughed as he held her chair for her. “Lucy-Mae and her husband live here, too, you know.”

  Lucy-Mae appeared at the swinging door leading out to the covered runway with a wicker-basket filled with hot biscuits and carefully covered by a napkin.

  “Alden, this is Lucy-Mae,” Lindsay introduced the girl, who smiled shyly as she placed the biscuits on the table. “You met Jasper, her husband, when you arrived and he helped with your baggage.”

  “Howdy, Mr. Alden,” Lucy-Mae answered shyly, and scuttled out of the room.

  “She’s delighted to have a man to cook for,” Lindsay told Alden.

  Alden looked about the table, sniffed appreciatively at the savory odors and said happily, “Well, here’s a man who’s delighted to have Lucy-Mae cook for him! This should wipe out the memory of some pretty foul meals I’ve had at that little hick town on the mainland—what’s its name, Hooterville?”

  Lindsay laughed.

  “Of course not. It’s Haynieville. The hospital is in that town, and I thought there was a good hotel there.”

  “Hotel?” Alden wrinkled his nose in disgust. “Well, I suppose if you’d been lost in the wilderness for donkey’s years and that was the first place you came to when you escaped, it might serve the purpose. But it’s definitely not a place to endear itself to any who hasn’t been lost and starving in the wilderness.”

  Lindsay asked so quietly that for a moment he did not quite realize what she had said, “Alden, why are you really here at Bayou House?”


  He looked up at her, startled. And then he went on helping himself to green beans. With his eyes on the bowl, he said without expression, “Why, I told you, Lindsay girl. I’m here to do some articles.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? Why what?”

  “Why articles about Bayou House and Bayou Village and the swamp and Jay Hutchens and all the rest of them?”

  Alden put down the bowl of green beans and carefully selected a biscuit from the wicker basket in front of him. He just as carefully buttered it before he looked up at her, quietly and without expression.

  “Why? Because a free-lance writer finds his material where he can, and makes the most of it, as the good Lord gave him brains to do,” he told her. “I’ve heard some pretty tall tales about the Mallory Bayou and the Village and fellows like Jay Hutchens. It’s a section that hasn’t been written about, and I managed to get an editor of a slick magazine to give me a conditional assignment. The article about Jay was the first; the editor liked it, and now I’m in business. Whatever I can find to write about will be carefully read; if accepted, well paid for. What more could a free-lance writer ask for?”

  Lindsay asked quietly, her eyes meeting his, “Is that the truth, Alden?”

  He looked mildly annoyed and said with a trace of irritation, “You are harder to convince than your aunt.”

  Lindsay smiled faintly.

  “But you see, I’m not making money off your being here. She is,” she pointed out.

  Alden grinned wryly.

  “So she is!” he agreed. “But she’s welcome to it. Any free-lance writer expects to spend money in order to make money.”

  “And of course, as Aunt Jennifer pointed out to me earlier, it really isn’t any of my business, is it?” Lindsay said quietly.

  Alden scowled. “I wouldn’t have put it so brutally, Lindsay girl,” he protested. “It is your business, provided it irks you to have me here. If it does, I’ll leave, of course. I don’t want to stay here and make things awkward or uncomfortable for you.”

  “It’s Aunt Jennifer’s house, and I am merely a guest here myself, so it’s really none of my business who else is here,” Lindsay responded.

  “That’s not what I asked you, Lindsay,” Alden protested earnestly. “I asked if it bothered you to have me here. If it does, all you need do is say so, and I’ll pack up and leave.”

  “It doesn’t bother me a bit to have you here,” Lindsay answered impulsively. “To be honest about it, I like having you here.”

  Alden’s eyes lit up.

  “Do you really, Lindsay? Hey, that’s swell of you!” He beamed.

  “After all,” Lindsay told him demurely, “it’s much less lonely, having somebody here to talk to. That is, of course, when you aren’t working.”

  “Well, no writer works twenty-four hours a day,” Alden told her happily. “That’s probably one reason the country is practically overrun with writers. We’re a lazy bunch, I suppose, and like putting in just a few hours a day at our trade! Or do I dare call it a profession?”

  Lindsay laughed. “Well, if you don’t, you’ll be the first writer I’ve ever met who didn’t!”

  Alden grinned.

  “Well, I’m not one of the ‘lit’ry’ writers, the creative artistes who have to be indulged in fits of temperament that usually are just bad temper! I’m a workin’ writer. I suppose the other kind, those who get their names on ‘best-sellers’ and make a pile of money from movie sales, would call me a hack writer. That doesn’t disturb me in the least! I’m strictly from the commercial side of the field; if it doesn’t sell, and earn me a living, then the heck with it. I’ll take up some other profession, like ditch-digging or brick-laying.”

  “Sounds like a sensible idea.” Lindsay smiled at him as Lucy-Mae came into the room with dessert plates of hot apple pie, each with a thin wedge of cheese softening on top of it.

  “Lucy-Mae, you’re a culinary genius!” said Alden happily as he dug a fork into the pie. Lucy-Mae beamed happily at him as she left the room.

  Lindsay had the feeling that Alden had welcomed the interruption and that he was relieved to be finished, for the time being at least, with the discussion of his real purpose in becoming a boarder at Bayou House.

  After lunch he went back upstairs, and a little later she heard the sound of his typewriter. And when she went in to get Miss Jennifer’s tray, the old woman nodded at the faint sound from upstairs.

  “Running the typewriter, is he?” she mused aloud. “Still determined to make us believe he’s a writer, is he? Well, no matter. If he wants to stay here a couple of weeks, who are we to stop him?”

  Lindsay asked, “Would you like me to go in to the bank for you, Aunt Jennifer?”

  Miss Jennifer stared at her.

  “What bank?” she asked.

  “Well, surely there’s some sort of bank in the Village,” Lindsay protested.

  “Why should there be? And why should I want you to go, even if there was?” demanded Miss Jennifer suspiciously.

  “I only thought, Aunt Jennifer, that you shouldn’t keep much money here at the house. Alden’s fifty dollars and whatever Pete brought you—”

  “You mind your own business,” snapped Miss Jennifer, “and I’ll mind mine. What right have you got to go sticking your nose into my affairs? I’ve managed mighty well since you left here, and I see no reason for you to start telling me what I can do or what I can’t do.”

  “I had no such intention—” Lindsay began.

  “Well, you’d better not!”

  For a moment Lindsay’s eyes met the bitter, marble-like eyes of the old woman. Then she lifted her shoulders in a slight shrug and said politely, “Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable, Aunt Jennifer?”

  “Yes, you can get out and leave me alone,” Miss Jennifer snapped.

  “It will be a pleasure,” Lindsay told her, and walked out.

  She stood on the old verandah for a long moment, looking out over the lawn that was responding reluctantly to Jasper’s casual attentions.

  Suddenly she stiffened and listened. A car was winding its way down the weed-grown drive, and as it came in sight her heart gave a small, happy leap, for it was Dr. Corbett’s car. She went quickly down the steps and out to the drive to meet him.

  “Well, hello.” She beamed at him. “This is a pleasant surprise.”

  Dr. Corbett eyed her unsmilingly.

  “Is it?” he asked deliberately.

  Puzzled and strangely hurt, Lindsay asked, “Is anything wrong?”

  “Suppose you tell me!”

  “I haven’t the faintest notion what’s gotten you wrought up,” she protested.

  “Something I’ve been hearing about Bayou House in the Village made me drive out here to find out if it’s true, because I can scarcely believe it,” he told her. And now the anger in his voice made her stare at him, bewildered and disturbed.

  “Suppose you tell me what you’ve heard, and I’ll tell you whether or not it’s true,” she suggested stiffly.

  “That you have allowed a strange man to move in here.”

  “Oh, that!” She smiled in relief. “Yes, that’s quite true. Aunt Jennifer accepted him as a boarder for a week or two.”

  “What do you know about him?”

  Bewildered, she answered, “Only that he’s a writer.”

  “You mean that he told you he was a writer!” he cut in swiftly. “Who is he? Where did he come from? What are his references? What’s the purpose of his stay out here?”

  “I don’t know anything about him,” Lindsay answered, “He talked to Aunt Jennifer, and she accepted him. After all, that’s her privilege. It is her house, you know.”

  “Two lone women, one of them a helpless cripple, out here in this wilderness, without even a telephone to call for help, and you open
the house to a rank stranger about whom you know absolutely nothing. Lindsay, I thought you had more sense than that!”

  “I told you, Doctor! It was Aunt Jennifer’s idea. He offered her fifty dollars a week for room and board, and she snapped at it. I had nothing to do with it!” she protested with considerable heat. “And anyway, I can’t see that it is any affair of yours.”

  Dr. Corbett studied her for a moment, and there was that in his eyes that brought color to her cheeks and widened her eyes, even as her heart beat a little faster.

  “Haven’t you realized yet, Lindsay, that anything that concerns you is my affair?” he asked, and she caught her breath at the tone of his voice.

  “I don’t see why it should be,” she said inanely.

  “Then you’re not as smart a girl as I’ve been thinking you are,” said Dr. Corbett, and swung out of his car. “Where is this man? I’ll find out who he is and what he wants here, or he’ll be out on his neck before you can say scalpel-and-suture! Lead me to him!”

  “But he’s working,” Lindsay objected even as Dr. Corbett swung past her and up the steps and into the house.

  The sound of the typewriter seemed to draw him up the stairs, and Lindsay, standing at the foot of the stairs, watched him worriedly as he rapped sharply on the closed door.

  The typewriter’s clacking stopped, there was the sound of a chair thrust back, and the door opened at the head of the stairs. Lindsay heard Dr. Corbett say in a sharply startled tone, “Oh, it’s you!” Then the door closed on whatever Alden Mayhew’s answer might have been.

  Lindsay turned and went back to the verandah, more puzzled than ever. Obviously Dr. Corbett knew Alden Mayhew; and what did that mean? she wondered.

  Some little time elapsed before Dr. Corbett came back down the stairs. She heard a murmur of voices at the top of the stairs, and Alden laughed as the door closed behind him. By the time Dr. Corbett reached the verandah, the typewriter had once more begun its clacking, and when Dr. Corbett came out on the verandah he was grinning. The grin vanished as Lindsay faced him anxiously.

  “Well?” she demanded.

  “Oh, he’s quite all right,” Dr. Corbett told her briskly. “He’s a writer here to do some articles—”