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White Linen Nurse

<h2 id="id00406" style="margin-top: 4em">CHAPTER V</h2> When the White Linen Nurse found anything again she found herself lying perfectly flat on her back in a reasonably comfortable nest of grass and leaves. Staring inquisitively up into the sky she thought she noticed a slight black and blue discoloration towards the west, but more than that, much to her relief, the firmament did not seem to be seriously injured. The earth, she feared had not escaped so easily. Even way off somewhere near the tip of her fingers the ground was as sore—as sore—as could be—under her touch. Impulsively to her dizzy eyes the hot tears started, to think that now, tired as she was, she should have to jump right up in another minute or two and attend to the poor earth. Fortunately for any really strenuous emergency that might arise there seemed to be nothing about her own body that hurt at all except a queer, persistent little pain in her cheek. Not until the Little Crippled Girl's dirt-smouched face intervened between her own staring eyes and the sky did she realize that the pain in her cheek was a pinch. "Wake up! Wake up!" scolded the Little Crippled Girl shrilly. "Naughty—Pink and White Nursie! I wanted to hear the bump! You screamed so loud I couldn't hear the bump!" With excessive caution the White Linen Nurse struggled up at last to a sitting posture, and gazed perplexedly around her. It seemed to be a perfectly pleasant field,—acres and acres of mild old grass tottering palsiedly down to watch some skittish young violets and bluets frolic in and out of a giggling brook. Up the field? Up the field? Hazily the White Linen Nurse ground her knuckles into her incredulous eyes. Up the field, just beyond them, the great empty automobile stood amiably at rest. From the general appearance of the stone-wall at the top of the little grassy slope it was palpably evident that the car had attempted certain vain acrobatic feats before its failing momentum had forced it into the humiliating ranks of the back-sliders. Still grinding her knuckles into her eyes the White Linen Nurse turned back to the Little Girl. Under the torn, twisted sable cap one little eye was hidden completely, but the other eye loomed up rakish and bruised as a prizefighter's. One sable sleeve was wrenched disastrously from its arm-hole, and along the edge of the vivid little purple skirt the ill-favored white ruffles seemed to have raveled out into hopeless yards and yards and yards of Hamburg embroidery. A trifle self-consciously the Little Girl began to gather herself together. "We—we seem to have fallen out of something!" she confided with the air of one who halves a most precious secret. "Yes, I know," said the White Linen Nurse. "But what has become of—your Father?" Worriedly for an instant the Little Girl sat scanning the remotest corners of the field. Then abruptly with a gasp of real relief she began to explore with cautious fingers the geographical outline of her black eye. "Oh, never mind about Father," she asserted cheerfully. "I guess—I guess he got mad and went home." "Yes—I know," mused the White Linen Nurse. "But it doesn't seem—probable." "Probable?" mocked the Little Girl most disagreeably. Then suddenly her little hand went shooting out towards the stranded automobile. "Why, there he is!" she screamed. "Under the car! Oh, Look—Look—Lookey!" Laboriously the White Linen Nurse scrambled to her knees. Desperately she tried to ram her fingers like a clog into the whirling dizziness round her temples. "Oh, my God! Oh, my God! What's the dose for anybody under a car?" she babbled idiotically. Then with a really herculean effort,—both mental and physical, she staggered to her feet, and started for the automobile. But her knees gave out, and wilting down to the grass she tried to crawl along on all-fours, till straining wrists sent her back to her feet again. Whenever she tried to walk the Little Girl walked,—whenever she tried to crawl the Little Girl crawled. "Isn't it fun!" the shrill childish voice piped persistently. "Isn't it just like playing ship-wreck!" When they reached the car both woman and child were too utterly exhausted with breathlessness to do anything except just sit down on the ground and—stare. Sure enough under that monstrous, immovable looking machine the Senior Surgeon's body lay rammed face-down deep, deep into the grass. It was the Little Girl who recovered her breath first. "I think he's dead!" she volunteered sagely. "His legs look—awfully dead—to me!" Only excitement was in the statement. It took a second or two for her little mind to make any particularly personal application of such excitement. "I hadn't—exactly—planned—on having him dead!" she began with imperious resentment. A threat of complete emotional collapse zig-zagged suddenly across her face. "I won't have him dead! I won't! I won't!" she screamed out stormily. In the amazing silence that ensued the White Linen Nurse gathered her trembling knees up into the circle of her arms and sat there staring at the Senior Surgeon's prostrate body, and rocking herself feebly to and fro in a futile effort to collect her scattered senses. "Oh, if some one would only tell me what to do,—I know I could do it! Oh, I know I could do it! If some one would only tell me what to do!" she kept repeating helplessly. Cautiously the Little Girl crept forward on her hands and knees to the edge of the car and peered speculatively through the great yellow wheel-spokes. "Father!" she faltered in almost inaudible gentleness. "Father!" she pleaded in perfectly impotent whisper. Impetuously the White Linen Nurse scrambled to her own hands and knees and jostled the Little Girl aside. "Fat Father!" screamed the White Linen Nurse. "Fat Father! Fat Father! Fat Father!" she gibed and taunted with the one call she knew that had never yet failed to rouse him. Perceptibly across the Senior Surgeon's horridly quiet shoulders a little twitch wrinkled and was gone again. "Oh, his heart!" gasped the White Linen Nurse. "I must find his heart!" Throwing herself prone upon the cool meadowy ground and frantically reaching out under the running board of the car to her full arm's length she began to rummage awkwardly hither and yon beneath the heavy weight of the man in the desperate hope of feeling a heart-beat. "Ouch! You tickle me!" spluttered the Senior Surgeon weakly. Rolling back quickly with fright and relief the White Linen Nurse burst forth into one maddening cackle of hysterical laughter. "Ha! Ha! Ha!" she giggled. "Hi! Hi! Titter! Titter! Titter!" Perplexedly at first but with increasing abandon the Little Girl's voice took up the same idiotic refrain. "Ha-Ha-Ha," she choked. And "Hi-Hi-Hi!" And "Titter! Titter! Titter!" With an agonizing jerk of his neck the Senior Surgeon rooted his mud-gagged mouth a half inch further towards free and spontaneous speech. Very laboriously, very painstakingly, he spat out one by one two stones and a wisp of ground pine and a brackish, prickly tickle of stale golden-rod. "Blankety-blank-blank—BLANK!" he announced in due time, "Blankety-blank-blank-blank—BLANK! Maybe when you two—blankety-blank—imbeciles have got through your blankety-blank cackling you'll have the—blankety-blank decency to save my—my blankety-blank-blank—blank—blank-blank life!" "Ha! Ha! Ha!" persisted the poor helpless White Linen Nurse with the tears streaming down her cheeks. "Hi! Hi! Hi!" snickered the poor Little Girl through her hiccoughs. Feeling hopelessly crushed under two tons and a half of car, the Senior Surgeon closed his eyes for death. No man of his weight, he felt quite sure, could reasonably expect to survive many minutes longer the apoplectic, blood-red rage that pounded in his ear-drums. Through his tight-closed eyelids very, very slowly a red glow seemed to permeate. He thought it was the fires of Hell. Opening his eyes to meet his fate like a man he found himself staring impudently close instead into the White Linen Nurse's furiously flushed face that lay cuddled on one plump cheek staring impudently close at him. "Why—why—get out!" gasped the Senior Surgeon. Very modestly the White Linen Nurse's face retreated a little further into its blushes. "Yes, I know," she protested. "But I'm all through giggling now. I'm sorry—I'm—" In sheer apprehensiveness the Senior Surgeon's features crinkled wincingly from brow to chin as though struggling vainly to retreat from the appalling proximity of the girl's face. "Your—eyelashes—are too long," he complained querulously. "Eh?" jerked the White Linen Nurse's face. "Is it your brain that's hurt? Oh, sir, do you think it's your brain that's hurt?" "It's my stomach!" snapped the Senior Surgeon. "I tell you I 'm not hurt,—I'm just—squashed! I'm paralyzed! If I can't get this car off me—" "Yes, that's just it," beamed the White Linen Nurse's face. "That's just what I crawled in here to find out,—how to get the car off you. That's just what I want to find out. I could run for help, of course,—only I couldn't run, 'cause my knees are so wobbly. It would take hours—and the car might start or burn up or something while I was gone. But you don't seem to be caught anywhere on the machinery," she added more brightly, "it only seems to be sitting on you. So if I could only get the car off you! But it's so heavy. I had no idea it would be so heavy. Could I take it apart, do you think? Is there any one place where I could begin at the beginning and take it all apart?" "Take it apart—Hell!" groaned the Senior Surgeon. A little twitch of defiance flickered across the White Linen Nurse's face. "All the same," she asserted stubbornly, "if some one would only tell me what to do—I know I could do it!" Horridly from some unlocatable quarter of the engine an alarming little tremor quickened suddenly and was hushed again. "Get out of here—quick!" stormed the Senior Surgeon's ghastly face. "I won't!" said the White Linen Nurse's face. "Until you tell me—what to do!" Brutally for an instant the ingenuous blue eyes and the cynical gray eyes battled each other. "Can you do what you're told?" faltered the Senior Surgeon. "Oh, yes," said the White Linen Nurse. "I mean can you do exactly—what you're told?" gasped the Senior Surgeon. "Can you follow directions, I mean? Can you follow them—explicitly? Or are you one of those people who listens only to her own judgment?" "Oh, but I haven't got any—judgment," protested the White Linen Nurse. Palpably in the Senior Surgeon's blood-shot eyes the leisurely seeming diagnosis leaped to precipitous conclusions. "Then get out of here—quick—for God's sake—and get to work!" he ordered. Cautiously the White Linen Nurse jerked herself back into freedom and crawled around and stared at the Senior Surgeon through the wheel-spokes again. Like one worrying out some intricate mathematical problem his mental strain was pulsing visibly through his closed eyelids. "Yes, sir?" prodded the White Linen Nurse. "Keep still!" snapped the Senior Surgeon. "I've got to think," he said. "I've got to work it out! All in a moment you've got to learn to run the car. All in a moment! It's awful!" "Oh, I don't mind, sir," affirmed the White Linen Nurse serenely. Frenziedly the Senior Surgeon rooted one cheek into the mud again. "You don't—mind?" he groaned. "You don't—mind? Why, you've got to learn—everything! Everything—from—the very beginning!" "Oh, that's all right, sir," crooned the White Linen Nurse. Ominously from somewhere a horrid sound creaked again. The Senior Surgeon did not stop to argue any further. "Now come here," ordered the Senior Surgeon. "I'm going to—I'm going to—" Startlingly his voice weakened,—trailed off into nothingness,—and rallied suddenly with exaggerated bruskness. "Look here now! For Heaven's sake use your brains! I'm going to dictate to you—very slowly—one thing at a time—just what to do!" Quite astonishingly the White Linen Nurse sank down on her knees and began to grin at him. "Oh, no, sir," she said. "I couldn't do it that way,—not 'one thing at a time.' Oh, no indeed, sir! No!" Absolute finality was in her voice,—the inviolable stubbornness of the perfectly good-natured person. "You'll do it the way I tell you to!" roared the Senior Surgeon struggling vainly to ease one shoulder or stretch one knee-joint. "Oh, no, sir," beamed the White Linen Nurse. "Not one thing at a time! Oh, no, I couldn't do it that way! Oh, no, sir, I won't do it that way—one thing at a time," she persisted hurriedly. "Why, you might faint away or something might happen—right in the middle of it—right between one direction and another—and I wouldn't know at all—what to turn on or off next—and it might take off one of your legs, you know, or an arm. Oh, no,—not one thing at a time!" "Good-by—then," croaked the Senior Surgeon. "I'm as good as dead now." A single shudder went through him,—a last futile effort to stretch himself. "Good-by," said the White Linen Nurse. "Good-by, sir.—I'd heaps rather have you die—perfectly whole—like that—of your own accord—than have me run the risk of starting the car full-tilt and chopping you up so—or dragging you off so—that you didn't find it convenient to tell me—how to stop the car." "You're a—a—a—" spluttered the Senior Surgeon indistinguishably. "Crinkle-crackle," went that mysterious, horrid sound from somewhere in the machinery. "Oh my God!" surrendered the Senior Surgeon. "Do it your own—damned way! Only—only—" His voice cracked raspingly. "Steady! Steady there!" said the White Linen Nurse. Except for a sudden odd pucker at the end of her nose her expression was still perfectly serene. "Now begin at the beginning," she begged. "Quick! Tell me everything—just the way I must do it! Quick—quick—quick!" Twice the Senior Surgeon's lips opened and shut with a vain effort to comply with her request. "But you can't do it," he began all over again. "It isn't possible. You haven't got the mind!" "Maybe I haven't," said the White Linen Nurse. "But I've got the memory. Hurry!" "Creak," said the funny little something in the machinery. "Creak—drip—bubble!" "Oh, get in there quick!" surrendered the Senior Surgeon. "Sit down behind the wheel!" he shouted after her flying footsteps. "Are you there? For God's sake—are you there? Do you see those two little levers where your right hand comes? For God's sake—don't you know what a lever is? Quick now! Do just what I tell you!" A little jerkily then, but very clearly, very concisely, the Senior Surgeon called out to the White Linen Nurse just how every lever, every pedal should be manipulated to start the car! Absolutely accurately, absolutely indelibly the White Linen Nurse visualized each separate detail in her abnormally retentive mind! "But you can't—possibly remember it!" groaned the Senior Surgeon. "You can't—possibly! And probably the damn car's bust and won't start—anyway—and—!" Abruptly the speech ended in a guttural snarl of despair. "Don't be a—blight!" screamed the White Linen Nurse. "I've never forgotten anything yet, sir!" Very tensely she straightened up suddenly in her seat. Her expression was no longer even remotely pleasant. Along her sensitive, fluctuant nostrils the casual crinkle of distaste and suspicion had deepened suddenly into sheer dilating terror. "Left foot—press down—hard—left pedal!" she began to sing-song to herself. "No! Right foot!—right foot!" corrected the Little Girl blunderingly from somewhere close in the grass. "Inside lever—pull—way—back!" persisted the White Linen Nurse resolutely as she switched on the current. "No! Outside lever! Outside! Outside!" contradicted the Little Girl. "Shut your darned mouth!" screeched the White Linen Nurse, her hand on the throttle as she tried the self starter. Bruised as he was, wretched, desperately endangered there under the car the Senior Surgeon could almost have grinned at the girl's terse, unconscious mimicry of his own most venomous tones. Then with all the forty-eight lusty, ebullient years of his life snatched from his lips like an untasted cup, and one single noxious, death-flavored second urged,—forced,—crammed down his choking throat, he felt the great car quicken and start. "God!" said the Senior Surgeon. Just "God!" The God of mud, he meant! The God of brackish grass! The God of a man lying still hopeful under more than two tons' weight of unaccountable mechanism, with a novice in full command. Up in her crimson leather cushions, free-lunged, free-limbed, the White Linen Nurse heard the smothered cry. Clear above the whirr of wheels, the whizz of clogs, the one word sizzled like a red-hot poker across her chattering consciousness. Tingling through the grasp of her fingers on the vibrating wheel, stinging through the sole of her foot that hovered over the throbbing clutch, she sensed the agonized appeal. "Short lever—spark—long lever—gas!" she persisted resolutely. "It must be right! It must!" Jerkily then, and blatantly unskilfully, with riotous puffs and spinning of wheels, the great car started,—faltered,—balked a bit,—then dragged crushingly across the Senior Surgeon's flattened body, and with a great wanton burst of speed tore down the sloping meadow into the brook—rods away. Clamping down the brakes with a wrench and a racket like the smash of a machine-shop the White Linen Nurse jumped out into the brook, and with one wild terrified glance behind her staggered back up the long grassy slope to the Senior Surgeon. Mechanically through her wooden-feeling lips she forced the greeting that sounded most cheerful to her. "It's not much fun, sir,—running an auto," she gasped. "I don't believe I'd like it!" Half propped up on one elbow,—still dizzy with mental chaos, still paralyzed with physical inertia,—the Senior Surgeon lay staring blankly all around him. Indifferently for an instant his stare included the White Linen Nurse. Then glowering suddenly at something way beyond her, his face went perfectly livid. "Good God! The—the car's on fire!" he mumbled. "Yes, sir," said the White Linen Nurse. "Why! Didn't you know it, sir?" <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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