Collected Works of Booth Tarkington

by Booth Tarkington

  If she could play “all the way round” with a fine score before darkness stopped her, Lily felt that her irritations within might be a little soothed; but she found them, on the contrary, increasing. She might have passed the laggard player if she had chosen; but his figure bore an accurate resemblance to that of a gentleman named in her letter as Captain Williams. Lily had her own reasons for avoiding any conversation with Captain Williams, to whom she had been as enigmatic, six months earlier, as she had yesterday been to Henry. She was almost certain, in fact, that the languid golfer was Captain Williams, and so kept far behind him — a difficult matter for one who wished to play at all.

  She talked broodingly to herself, addressing him. “Old Thing!” she called him between her teeth. “Slow Poke! Aren’t you ever going to hit that ball! Oh, my heaven, what are you doing now? Writing your score or writing a book? Snail! Tortoise!” And as his procrastinations continued, she called him worse. “Mule!” she said, and corroborated herself vehemently. “Mule, mule, mule! You’re a mule once, you’re a mule twice, you’re a mule a hundred and eighty-seven times over — and that’s only commencing to tell you what you are!” For now, as she waited and waited, withholding her strokes intolerably as the late light waned and waned, she hated him with that great hatred most human beings feel for all things unconsciously and persistently in their way.

  But in the deepening twilight haze she felt safe to approach him more closely, until finally she was less than an arrow’s flight away. He was upon the last of the greens by this time, and she, unnoticed, stood waiting for him to leave it so that she might drive her ball upon it. But here he delayed interminably. He lay prone upon the ground to study a proper aim, though he studied it so long that his purpose might have been thought a siesta; and when he rose it was to examine the sod by inches. Finally, having completed all these preliminaries and benefited little by them in their consummation, he remained standing upon the green, preoccupied with his score card. “You go on!” Lily said, dangerously. “You aren’t writing a dictionary. Go on!”

  But he continued to stand, amending and editing his card as though eternity were at everyone’s disposal. The long red ribbons in the western sky merged with the general fog colour of the dusk, and he was but a hazy figure when at last he moved. And as he turned his back and lifted a slow foot to leave the green, Lily, impatient beyond all discretion, cut the air with her heaviest implement.

  “Mule!” she said, furiously, instead of “Fore!” and put that fury into her swing. Nevertheless, the ball sped true in direction, though in the thickened air it sped invisibly and would far have overshot the mark if nothing had stopped it. Straight to the short dark hair on the back of the languid player’s head the little white ball flew with fiercest precision, and being hard, and on its way to a place much farther on, it straightway rendered him more languid than ever. He dropped without a moan.

  XXVII. MIRACULOUS ACCIDENT

  OH, MURDER!” LILY gasped, not greatly exaggerating when she used that word. She stood gazing toward him miserably, waiting for him to rise; and then, as the stricken player’s inertia remained complete, she ran forward, screaming to the caddy, who was disappearing toward the clubhouse.

  He came back, and together they turned the prone figure over so that it lay upon its back, revealing an interesting young face of a disquieting pallor. “I guess you must of killed him this time,” the caddy said, unreasonably, and then seemed to wish to solace the assassin, for he added: “He ain’t a member though.”

  Lily was already on the ground beside her victim, rubbing his hands. “Run!” she cried. “Get a doctor! Run!”

  She failed to recognize the fallen player, and so did the steward and three waiters from the clubhouse, which was just then vacant of members. James Herbert McArdle’s features were not so well known as those of the President of the United States, nor, probably, as those of the more conspicuous actors in moving pictures; — nevertheless, his face was familiar to those who now sought to identify it; and as they worked to restore the expression of life to it they were aware of elusive clews.

  The steward said he was sure he knew the gentleman, who must often have been about the club, though he couldn’t quite place him. The waiters had the same impression and the same disability precisely, while the trembling Lily herself was troubled by stirrings of memory. Either she had once known her victim, she thought, or else he was like someone she knew; but a white face inanimate, upturned to the evening sky, is strange even to those who know it most intimately. The likeness remained evasive, and the prostrate young man both unconscious and unidentified.

  Lily was relieved of her first horror; — at least he was not dead On the other hand, certainly he was not well. And when she drove that ball she had hated him. Of course she had not intended this dolorous stroke, yet when she made it, had she really cared whether or not it laid him low? She had not — and now regret shook her. Perhaps she would have felt it less profoundly had the maddening player proved indeed to be Captain Williams; but with the lifeless head of this well-favoured and unoffending stranger upon her lap, her remorse was an anguish.

  She would not leave him or cease to do what she could in every humble way. She chafed his hands and bathed his forehead; — she helped to carry him to the clubhouse; and, when the hospital ambulance came, she went in it to the hospital with him. She stood in the corridor outside the door of the room to which they carried him there, and waited while a surgeon examined him. Indeed, she waited, weeping.

  She knew the surgeon, and when he came out of the room she rushed to him. “Doctor Waite, tell me! Don’t spare me!”

  “He’s got a concussion. It’s no joke, but anyhow it isn’t a fracture. Funny about nobody knowing who he is; — I’m sure I’ve met him, or else he reminds me of somebody, I can’t think who.”

  “Doctor, he isn’t — he isn’t going to—”

  The surgeon looked upon her reassuringly. “No. We’ll pull him through. You quit thinking about him and go home and get your dinner and then go to bed and go to sleep.”

  “I couldn’t,” Lily said, choking. “I couldn’t do any of those things.”

  He laughed sympathetically. “Then I guess I’ll have to call up your mother and tell her to come and make you.”

  But when not only her mother but her father, too, arrived in hurried response to the telephone, they could not get the tearful Lily to leave the hospital; and they remained with her, engaging in intermittent argument, until midnight. At that time Doctor Waite informed them that the unknown patient was in a torpid but not critical condition; he had mumbled a few words to the effect that he wanted to be let alone.

  “And as that’s just what we’re doing with him,” the surgeon said to Lily rather sharply, “and as you can’t do any possible good to anybody in the world by staying here, I suggest that you take his advice, too, and obey your father and mother.”

  Not until then would the suffering girl allow them to lead her away; but so far as sleep was concerned, she might as yell have stayed at the hospital. So might her father and mother, almost; for she was at their door in her nightdress three times — three separated times, the last being at four o’clock in the morning. “Papa, do you think he’ll die?”

  Mrs. Dodge wearily conducted her to bed again; but Lily only wept upon her pillow, and in whispers begged it to forgive her for not calling “Pore.” Sunrise found her dressed; and in the chilly November early morning she slipped out of the house, crossed the suburban park to the hospital, and immediately heard news indeed. Doctor Waite was already there, and with him were three other surgeons and a physician, all of them important. He came to speak to Lily.

  “All this distinguishedness for your unknown patient,” he said, with a gesture toward the group he had just left; and, as her expression began to be grievous, he added hastily, “He’s perfectly all right. At least he’s going to be. The importance yonder is only because he turns out to be so unexpectedly important himself.”


  “You’ve found out who he is?”

  “Somewhat!” he returned with humorous emphasis. “We’ve managed to keep your name out of the papers — so far.”

  “What papers?”

  “All of them. Take your choice,” he said — and he offered her two; but one at a time was enough for Lily.

  Headlines announced that a “Mysterious Accident” at the Blue Hills Country Club had “resulted in grave injury” to James Herbert McArdle. The illustrious youth had lain unconscious and unrecognized until a short time after midnight, the more sober text of the report informed her. Mr. H. H. Huston, the McArdle representative, had been alarmed by Mr. McArdle’s disappearance and continued absence, subsequent to the reception of an address by the suburban welcoming committee, and in the course of an exhaustive search Mr. Huston had caused inquiries to be made at the Blue Hills Country Club. Here it was learned that an unknown gentleman had been struck in the head by a golf ball driven with such force as to cause a concussion of the brain. The club’s employees had withheld the name of the person responsible for the injury; but a reporter had ascertained that it was a lady and that she had accompanied the wounded man— “wounded man” was the newspaper’s phrase — in the ambulance, and had “insisted upon remaining at the hospital until a late hour.” Mr. H. H. Huston had reached the hospital not long after midnight; Mr. McArdle had just become conscious and revealed his identity to the nurse in charge. Mr. Huston had said to a reporter that Mr. McArdle “positively declared himself ignorant of the name of the person who had caused his injury.” Altogether, there was “an air of mystery about the affair”; and Mr. McArdle’s condition was still grave, though the surgeons said that he would “probably recover.”

  It is to Lily’s credit that the strongest emotion roused in her by this reading concerned these final two words. She repeated them pathetically to Doctor Waite. “‘Probably recover’? ‘Probably’?” He laughed. “Don’t you know newspapers? Didn’t I tell you last night he’d be all right? We wired his family an hour ago that there was no reason for any of them to come on. All that surgical and medical impressiveness over yonder only represents old Hiram Huston’s idea of the right thing to do for a McArdle with a bump on his head. The young fellow may have to stay here quietly for a week or ten days possibly; but by that time he ought to be pretty nearly ready to stop a ball for you again.”

  “Don’t joke about it,” Lily said, huskily. “When can I see him?”

  “Think you better?”

  “Why not?”

  “The newspapers called it a ‘mystery,’ you know,” he explained. “They’ll probably be inquisitive. They might get your name.”

  “What do I care?” she cried. “Do you think I’d let that stop me from asking him to forgive me?”

  “So?” the doctor said, looking at her twinklingly. “So that’s why you want to see him?”

  She stared, not understanding his humorous allusion. “Why, what else could I do?”

  “Nothing,” he answered. “I was only thinking I’d heard that a good many young ladies were anxious to make his acquaintance. I imagine you’ll be the first, my dear.”

  “Well, oughtn’t I to be?” she demanded. “If you’d done as terrible a thing as that to anybody, wouldn’t you think you were entitled to ask his pardon about as soon as he was able to listen?”

  “Without doubt. In the meantime I think you’d better go home and to bed again.”

  She protested, but proved meeker under advice than she had the night before. She went home, though not directly, for she stopped half an hour at some greenhouses that were a mile out of her way.

  She sent to Mr. James Herbert McArdle at the hospital a prodigious sheaf of flowers — enough to cripple her rather moderate monthly allowance from her father — and the following morning, since the allowance was already so far gone, she did the same thing. Having thus fallen into the habit, she was as lavish upon the third morning after the accident, so that at three o’clock of this same day, when Doctor Waite took her into his patient’s room, he seemed to be conducting her into a conservatory.

  Like fair Elaine, James Herbert McArdle in a silken gown lay white and motionless, embowered among blooms; but his eyes glimmered in surprised appreciation when they beheld his serious visitor. Gray was becoming to the fair and slim Lily — her clothes didn’t depend upon her allowance — and she was never more charming than when she was serious.

  “My goodness!” said the frank convalescent, with a feeble kind of forcefulness. “I didn’t expect anybody like you! I was sure it would turn out to be some old hag.”

  Lily was a little given to the theatrical, though only when occasion warranted it, as this one did if any occasion could. She swept forward softly, her sensitive face all compassion and remorse. She knelt beside the iron bed.

  “Some day you may forgive me,” she said, tremulously, and her voice was always stirringly lovely when it trembled. “Some day you may be able even to forget what I’ve done to you — but I want you to be sure that I shall never forget it or forgive myself.”

  “Here!” he said. “There’s nothing to that. They tell me you came in the ambulance with me and hung around and did all sorts of things. And look at all these greenhouses you must have bought out! A person’s liable to get a clip on the head almost anywhere these days. Let’s shake hands — but not forget it.”

  “You can’t—”

  “I haven’t got anything to forgive you for, of course,” he said. “You don’t forgive accidents; you just forget ’em. What I mean is, I don’t want to forget this one — now I’ve seen you, I don’t.”

  “Well—” Lily said, vaguely. “But I’d like you just to say you forgive me. Won’t you?”

  “All right.” He moved his hand toward her and she took it for a moment. “I forgive you — but I think you ought to do something for me.”

  “What?”

  “How long did the doctor say you can stay here?”

  “Five or ten minutes.”

  “Well, then, I think you ought to come back tomorrow when you can stay half an hour or an hour.”

  “I will,” she said.

  But he had not finished. “And the next day, too. Maybe they’d let you read to me, or something. And as long as I’m laid up here — it won’t be long, at that — I think you ought to come every day and help me pass the time. I forgive you, but I think you do owe me that much. And as soon as they let me take a drive I think you ought to go along. How about it?”

  “I will,” Lily said. “I will, indeed. I’ll do anything in the world you think might make up a little for the pain I’ve brought you. Nothing could make me happier.”

  “That’s good news,” the young man told her, thoughtfully. “A clip on the head isn’t necessarily such a bad thing, after all.”

  More and more he seemed to incline to this opinion; — in fact, he went so far as to assure Doctor Waite, three days later, that he preferred the hospital to the apartment old Hiram Huston was preparing for him. “I think I’d like to sort of settle down to the life here,” he said. “It’s nice and private and suits me exactly.”

  “Yes,” said the doctor, thoughtfully. “It’s a pity you’re too important to do what you want to.” And lightly, as if to himself, he hummed a fragment of frivolous song:

  “I don’t want to get well,

  I don’t want to get well,

  I’m in love with a beautiful nurse!”

  The young man heeded neither the humming nor the remark about his unfortunate importance. He frowned, looking anxiously at his watch on the table beside his couch. ‘I wonder what’s keeping her,” he said, peevishly. “She said she’d be here with a book to read to me. When anybody does to another person what she did to me, I think the least they can do is to be punctual, especially when they’ve promised they would.”

  She of whom he complained was not far away, however. At that moment she had just been greeted and detained by two girl friends of hers who encountered her
in the park on her way to the hospital. Their manner did not please her.

  “Lill-lee!” they shouted from the distance, at sight of her. They whistled shrilly, and, as she looked toward them, they waved their arms at her; then came running, visibly excited and audibly uproarious.

  They seemed to be bursting with laughter; yet when they reached her, what they said was only, “Where you going, Lily?” And before she replied, they clutched each other, perishing of their mutual jocularity. From the first, Lily did not like their laughter; — it had not the sound of true mirth, but was the kind of mere vocal noise that hints of girlish malice.

  She looked at them disapprovingly. “I’m going to the hospital,” she said with some primness. “What’s so funny?”

  “What you going to do at the hospital, Lily?”

  “Read to Mr. McArdle,” she replied. “He’s better and—”

  But their immediate uproar cut her short. They clung together, shrieking. “That’s not your fault, is it, Lily?” one of them became coherent enough to inquire, whereupon they both doubled themselves, rocked, gurgled, screamed, and clung again.

  “What’s not my fault?” she asked.

  “That he’s better!”

  With that, they moved to be upon their way, still uproarious, still clutching each other; and as they went they looked back to shout at her.

  “He won’t get better very fast, will he, Lily?” one of them thus called back to her, and, without pausing, replied to herself: “Not if you have your way!”

  And the other: “Eleanor Gray and Harriet Joyce have nothing on you, have they, Lily?”

  They disappeared round a curving path, leaning upon each other from exhaustion; and Lily stood looking after them frowningly. There had been little good-nature in their raillery, and also there were mysterious and vaguely unpleasant implications in it — particularly in the final jibe about Eleanor Gray and Harriet Joyce. Miss Gray was the girl accused by rumour of having sought to put herself upon James Herbert McArdle’s train, and Miss Joyce was widely supposed to have fainted with the deliberate purpose of attracting his attention. The implication of the mirthful pair just encountered that Lily surpassed both Miss Gray and Miss Joyce was plain enough — as if going to a hospital to read to a patient were a mere manœuvre of the type to which the Gray and Joyce manœuvres belonged! And as if one wouldn’t gladly give a little of one’s time to a hospital patient who has become a patient through one’s own fault! But more than mere rallying upon the hospital readings seemed to have been implied; and as Lily thought the matter over, she felt that something of the teasing pair’s meaning evaded her.