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White Linen Nurse

<h2 id="id00703" style="margin-top: 4em">CHAPTER VIII</h2> For any real adventure except dying, June is certainly a most auspicious month. Indeed it was on the very first rain-green, rose-red morning of June that the White Linen Nurse sallied forth upon her extremely hazardous adventure of marrying the Senior Surgeon and his naughty little crippled daughter. The wedding was at noon in some kind of a gray granite church. And the Senior Surgeon was there, of course,—and the necessary witnesses. But the Little Crippled Girl never turned up at all, owing—it proved later,—to a more than usually violent wrangle with whomever dressed her, concerning the general advisability of sporting turquoise-colored stockings with her brightest little purple dress. The Senior Surgeon's stockings, if you really care to know, were gray. And the Senior Surgeon's suit was gray. And he looked altogether very huge and distinguished,—and no more strikingly unhappy than any bridegroom looks in a gray granite church. And the White Linen Nurse,—no longer now truly a White Linen Nurse but just an ordinary, every-day, silk-and-cloth lady of any color she chose, wore something rather coat-y and grand and bluish, and was distractingly pretty of course but most essentially unfamiliar,—and just a tiny bit awkward and bony-wristed looking,—as even an Admiral is apt to be on his first day out of uniform. Then as soon as the wedding ceremony was over, the bride and groom went to a wonderful green and gold café all built of marble and lined with music, and had a little lunch. What I really mean, of course, is that they had a very large lunch, but didn't eat any of it! Then in a taxi-cab, just exactly like any other taxi-cab, the White Linen Nurse drove home alone to the Senior Surgeon's great, gloomy house to find her brand new step-daughter still screaming over the turquoise colored stockings. And the Senior Surgeon in a Canadian-bound train, just exactly like any other Canadian-bound train, started off alone,—as usual, on his annual June "spree." Please don't think for a moment that it was the Senior Surgeon who was responsible for the general eccentricities of this amazing wedding day. No indeed! The Senior Surgeon didn't want to be married the first day of June! He said he didn't! He growled he didn't! He snarled he didn't! He swore he didn't! And when he finished saying and growling and snarling and swearing,—and looked up at the White Linen Nurse for a confirmation of his opinion, the White Linen Nurse smiled perfectly amiably and said, "Yes, sir!" Then the Senior Surgeon gave a great gasp of relief and announced resonantly, "Well, it's all settled then? We'll be married some time in July,—after I get home from Canada?" And when the White Linen Nurse kept on smiling perfectly amiably and said, "Oh, no, sir! Oh, no, thank you, sir! It wouldn't seem exactly legal to me to be married any other month but June!" Then the Senior Surgeon went absolutely dumb with rage that this mere chit of a girl,—and a trained nurse, too,—should dare to thwart his personal and professional convenience. But the White Linen Nurse just drooped her pretty blonde head and blushed and blushed and blushed and said, "I was only marrying you, sir, to—accommodate you—sir,—and if June doesn't accommodate you—I'd rather go to Japan with that monoideic somnambulism case. It's very interesting. And it sails June second." Then "Oh, Hell with the 'monoideic somnambulism case'!" the Senior Surgeon would protest. Really it took the Senior Surgeon quite a long while to work out the three special arguments that should best protect him, he thought, from the horridly embarrassing idea of being married in June. "But you can't get ready so soon!" he suggested at last with real triumph. "You've no idea how long it takes a girl to get ready to be married! There are so many people she has to tell,—and everything!" "There's never but two that she's got to tell—or bust!" conceded the White Linen Nurse with perfect candor. "Just the woman she loves the most—and the woman she hates the worst. I'll write my mother to-morrow. But I told the Superintendent of Nurses yesterday." "The deuce you did!" snapped the Senior Surgeon. Almost caressingly the White Linen Nurse lifted her big blue eyes to his. "Yes, sir," she said, "and she looked as sick as a young undertaker. I can't imagine what ailed her." "Eh?" choked the Senior Surgeon. "But the house now," he hastened to contend. "The house now needs a lot of fixing over! It's all run down! It's all—everything! We never in the world could get it into shape by the first of June! For Heaven's sake, now that we've got money enough to make it right, let's go slow and make it perfectly right!" A little nervously the White Linen Nurse began to fumble through the pages of her memorandum book. "I've always had money enough to 'go slow and make things perfectly right,'" she confided a bit wistfully. "Never in all my life have I had a pair of boots that weren't guaranteed, or a dress that wouldn't wash, or a hat that wasn't worth at least three re-pressings. What I was hoping for now, sir, was that I was going to have enough money so that I could go fast and make things wrong if I wanted to,—so that I could afford to take chances, I mean. Here's this wall-paper now,"—tragically she pointed to some figuring in her note-book—"it's got peacocks on it—life size—in a queen's garden—and I wanted it for the dining-room. Maybe it would fade! Maybe we'd get tired of it! Maybe it would poison us! Slam it on one week—and slash it off the next! I wanted it just because I wanted it, sir! I thought maybe—while you were way off in Canada—" Eagerly the Senior Surgeon jerked his chair a little nearer to his—fiancée's. "Now, my dear girl," he said. "That's just what I want to explain! That's just what I want to explain! Just what I want to explain! To—er—explain!" he continued a bit falteringly. "Yes, sir," said the White Linen Nurse. Very deliberately the Senior Surgeon removed a fleck of dust from one of his cuffs. "All this talk of yours—about wanting to be married the same day I start off on my—Canadian trip!" he contended. "Why, it's all damned nonsense!" "Yes, sir," said the White Linen Nurse. Very conscientiously the Senior Surgeon began to search for a fleck of dust on his other cuff. "Why my—my dear girl," he persisted. "It's absurd! It's outrageous! Why people would—would hoot at us! Why they'd think—!" "Yes, sir," said the White Linen Nurse. "Why, my dear girl," sweated the Senior Surgeon. "Even though you and I understand perfectly well the purely formal, business-like conditions of our marriage, we must at least for sheer decency's sake keep up a certain semblance of marital conventionality—before the world! Why, if we were married at noon the first day of June—as you suggest,—and I should go right off alone as usual—on my Canadian trip—and you should come back alone to the house—why, people would think—would think that I didn't care anything about you!" "But you don't," said the White Linen Nurse serenely. "Why, they'd think," choked the Senior Surgeon. "They'd think you were trying your—darndest—to get rid of me!" "I am," said the White Linen Nurse complacently. With a muttered ejaculation the Senior Surgeon jumped to his feet and stood glaring down at her. Quite ingenuously the White Linen Nurse met and parried the glare. "A gentleman—and a red-haired kiddie—and a great walloping house—all at once! It's too much!" she confided genially. "Thank you just the same, but I'd rather take them gradually. First of all, sir, you see, I've got to teach the little kiddie to like me! And then there's a green-tiled paper with floppity sea gulls on it—that I want to try for the bath-room! And—and—" Ecstatically she clapped her hands together. "Oh, sir! There are such loads and loads of experiments I want to try while you are off on your spree!" "S—h—h!" cried the Senior Surgeon. His face was suddenly blanched,—his mouth, twitching like the mouth of one stricken with almost insupportable pain. "For God's sake, Miss Malgregor!" he pleaded, "can't you call it my—Canadian trip?" Wider and wider the White Linen Nurse opened her big blue eyes at him. "But it is a 'spree,' sir!" she attested resolutely. "And my father says—" Still resolutely her young mouth curved to its original assertion, but from under her heavy-shadowing eyelashes a little blue smile crept softly out. "When my father's got a lame trotting horse, sir, that he's trying to shuck off his hands," she faltered, "he doesn't ever go round mournful-like with his head hanging—telling folks about his wonderful trotter that's just 'the littlest, teeniest, tiniest bit—lame.' Oh no! What father does is to call up every one he knows within twenty miles and tell 'em, 'Say Tom,—Bill,—Harry,'—or whatever his name is—'what in the deuce do you suppose I've got over here in my barn? A lame horse—that wants to trot! Lamer than the deuce, you know! But can do a mile in 2.40.'" Faintly the little blue smile quickened again in the White Linen Nurse's eyes. "And the barn will be full of men in half an hour!" she said. "Somehow nobody wants a trotter that's lame! But almost anybody seems willing to risk a lame horse—that's plucky enough to trot!" "What's the 'lame trotting horse' got to do with—me?" snarled the Senior Surgeon incisively. Darkly the White Linen Nurse's lashes fringed down across her cheeks. "Nothing much," she said, "Only—" "Only what?" demanded the Senior Surgeon. A little more roughly than he realized he stooped down and took the White Linen Nurse by her shoulders, and jerked her sharply round to the light. "Only what?" he insisted peremptorily. Almost plaintively she lifted her eyes to his. "Only—my father says," she confided obediently, "my father says if you've got a worse foot—for Heaven's sake put it forward—and get it over with! "So—I've got to call it a 'spree'!" smiled the White Linen Nurse. "'Cause when I think of marrying a—surgeon—that goes off and gets drunk every June—it—it scares me almost to my death! But—" Abruptly the red smile faded from her lips, the blue smile from her eyes. "But—when I think of marrying a—June drunk—that's got the grit to pull up absolutely straight as a die and be a surgeon—all the other 'leven months in the year—" Dartingly she bent down and kissed the Senior Surgeon's astonished wrist. "Oh, then I think you're perfectly grand!" she sobbed. Awkwardly the Senior Surgeon pulled away and began to pace the floor. "You're a—good little girl, Rae Malgregor," he mumbled huskily. "A good little girl. I truly believe you're the kind that will—see me through." Poignantly in his eyes humiliation overwhelmed the mist. Perversely in its turn resentment overtook the humiliation. "But I won't be married in June!" he reasserted bombastically. "I won't! I won't! I won't! I tell you I positively refuse to have a lot of damn fools speculating about my private affairs! Wondering why I didn't take you! Wondering why I didn't stay home with you! I tell you I won't! I simply won't!" "Yes, sir," stammered the White Linen Nurse. With a real gasp of relief the Senior Surgeon stopped his eternal pacing of the floor. "Bully for you!" he said. "You mean then we'll be married some time in July after I get back from my—trip?" "Oh, no, sir," stammered the White Linen Nurse. "But Great Heavens!" shouted the Senior Surgeon. "Yes, sir," the White Linen Nurse began all over again. Dreamily planning out her wedding gown, her lips without the slightest conscious effort on her part were already curving into shape for her alternate "No, sir." "You're an idiot!" snapped the Senior Surgeon. A little reproachfully the White Linen Nurse came frowning out of her reverie. "Would it do just as well for traveling, do you think?" she asked, with real concern. "Eh? What?" said the Senior Surgeon. "I mean—does Japan spot?" queried the White Linen Nurse. "Would it spot a serge, I mean?" "Oh, Hell with Japan!" jerked the Senior Surgeon. "Yes, sir," said the White Linen Nurse. Now perhaps you will understand just exactly how it happened that the Senior Surgeon and the White Linen Nurse were married on the first day of June, and just exactly how it happened that the Senior Surgeon went off alone as usual on his Canadian trip, and just exactly how it happened that the White Linen Nurse came home alone to the Senior Surgeon's great, gloomy house, to find her brand new step-daughter still screaming over the turquoise-colored stockings. Everything now is perfectly comfortably explained except the turquoise-colored stockings. Nobody could explain the turquoise-colored stockings! But even a little child could explain the ensuing June! Oh, June was perfectly wonderful that year! Bud, blossom, bird-song, breeze,—rioting headlong through the Land. Warm days sweet and lush as a green-house vapor! Crisp nights faintly metallic like the scent of stars! Hurdy-gurdies romping tunefully on every street-corner! Even the Ash-Man flushing frankly pink across his dusty cheek-bones! Like two fairies who had sublet a giant's cave the White Linen Nurse and the Little Crippled Girl turned themselves loose upon the Senior Surgeon's gloomy old house. It certainly was a gloomy old house, but handsome withal,—square and brown and substantial, and most generously gardened within high brick walls. Except for dusting the lilac bushes with the hose, and weeding a few rusty leaves out of the privet hedge, and tacking up three or four scraggly sprays of English ivy, and re-greening one or two bay-tree boxes, there was really nothing much to do to the garden. But the house? Oh ye gods! All day long from morning till night,—but most particularly from the back door to the barn, sweating workmen scuttled back and forth till nary a guilty piece of black walnut furniture had escaped. All day long from morning till night,—but most particularly from ceilings to floors, sweltering workmen scurried up and down step-ladders stripping dingy papers from dingier plasterings. When the White Linen Nurse wasn't busy renovating the big house—or the little step-daughter, she was writing to the Senior Surgeon. She wrote twice. "Dear Dr. Faber," the first letter said. * * * * * <h5 id="id00767">DEAR DR. FABER,</h5> How do you do? Thank you very much, for saying you didn't care what in thunder I did to the house. It looks sweet. I've put white fluttery muslin curtains most everywhere. And you've got a new solid-gold-looking bed in your room. And the Kiddie and I have fixed up the most scrumptious light blue suite for ourselves in the ell. Pink was wrong for the front hall, but it cost me only $29.00 to find out. And now that's settled for all time. I am very, very, very, very busy. Something strange and new happens every day. Yesterday it was three ladies and a plumber. One of the ladies was just selling soap, but I didn't buy any. It was horrid soap. The other two were calling ladies,—a silk one and a velvet one. The silk one tried to be nasty to me. Right to my face she told me I was more of a lady than she had dared to hope. And I told her I was sorry for that as you'd had one "lady" and it didn't work. Was that all right? But the other lady was nice. And I took her out in the kitchen with me while I was painting the woodwork, and right there in her white kid gloves she laughed and showed me how to mix the paint pearl gray. She was nice. It was your sister-in-law. I like being married, Dr. Faber. I like it lots better than I thought I would. It's fun being the biggest person in the house. Respectfully yours, RAE MALGREGOR,—AS WAS. P.S. Oh, I hope it wasn't wrong, but in your ulster pocket, when I went to put it away, I found a bottle of something that smelt as though it had been forgotten.—I threw it out. * * * * * It was this letter that drew the only definite message from the itinerant bridegroom. "Kindly refrain from rummaging in my ulster pockets," wrote the Senior Surgeon quite briefly. "The 'thing' you threw out happened to be the cerebellum and medulla of an extremely eminent English Theologian!" "Even so,—it was sour," telegraphed the White Linen Nurse in a perfect agony of remorse and humiliation. The telegram took an Indian with a birch canoe two days to deliver, and cost the Senior Surgeon twelve dollars. Just impulsively the Senior Surgeon decided to make no further comments on domestic affairs,—at that particular range. Very fortunately for this impulse the White Linen Nurse's second letter concerned itself almost entirely with matters quite extraneous to the home. "Dear Dr. Faber," the second letter ran. * * * * * <h5 id="id00780">DEAR DR. FABER,</h5> Somehow I don't seem to care so much just now about being the biggest person in the house. Something awful has happened. Zillah Forsyth is dead. Really dead, I mean. And she died in great heroism. You remember Zillah Forsyth, don't you? She was one of my room-mates,—not the gooder one, you know,—not the swell,—that was Helene Churchill. But Zillah? Oh you know! Zillah was the one you sent out on that Fractured Elbow case. It was a Yale student, you remember? And there was some trouble about kissing,—and she got sent home? And now everybody's crying because Zillah can't kiss anybody any more! Isn't everything the limit? Well, it wasn't a fractured Yale student she got sent out on this time. If it had been, she might have been living yet. What they sent her out on this time was a Senile Dementia,—an old lady more than eighty years old. And they were in a sanitarium or something like that. And there was a fire in the night. And the old lady just up and positively refused to escape. And Zillah had to push her and shove her and yank her and carry her—out the window—along the gutters—round the chimneys. And the old lady bit Zillah right through the hand,—but Zillah wouldn't let go. And the old lady tried to drown Zillah under a bursted water tank,—but Zillah wouldn't let go. And everybody hollered to Zillah to cut loose and save herself,—but Zillah wouldn't let go. And a wall fell, and everything, and oh, it was awful,—but Zillah never let go. And the old lady that wasn't any good to any one,—not even herself, got saved of course. But Zillah? Oh, Zillah got hurt bad, sir! We saw her at the hospital, Helene and I. She sent for us about something. Oh, it was awful! Not a thing about her that you'd know except just her great solemn eyes mooning out at you through a gob of white cotton, and her red mouth lipping sort of twitchy at the edge of a bandage. Oh it was awful! But Zillah didn't seem to care so much. There was a new Interne there,—a Japanese, and I guess she was sort of taken with him. "But my God, Zillah," I said, "your life was worth more than that old dame's!" "Shut your noise!" says Zillah. "It was my job. And there's no kick coming." Helene burst right out crying, she did. "Shut your noise, too!" says Zillah, just as cool as you please. "Bah! There's other lives and other chances!" "Oh, you do believe that now?" cries Helene. "Oh, you do believe that now,—what the Bible promises you?" That was when Zillah shrugged her shoulders so funny,—the little way she had. Gee, but her eyes were big! "I don't pretend to know—what—your old Bible says," she choked. "It was—the Yale feller—who was tellin' me." That's all, Dr. Faber. It was her shrugging her shoulders so funny that brought on the hemorrhage. Oh, we had an awful time, sir, going home in the carriage,—Helene and I. We both cried, of course, because Zillah was dead, but after we got through crying for that, Helene kept right on crying because she couldn't understand why a brave girl like Zillah had to be dead. Gee! But Helene takes things hard. Ladies do, I guess. I hope you're having a pleasant spree. Oh, I forgot to tell you that one of the wall-paperers is living here at the house with us just now. We use him so much it's truly a good deal more convenient. And he's a real nice young fellow, and he plays the piano finely, and he comes from up my way. And it seemed more neighborly anyway. It's so large in the house at night, just now, and so creaky in the garden. With kindest regards, good-by for now, from RAE. <h5 id="id00789">P.S.</h5> Don't tell your guide or any one! But Helene sent Zillah's mother a check for fifteen hundred dollars. I saw it with my own eyes. And all Zillah asked for that day was just a little blue serge suit. It seems she'd promised her kid sister a little blue serge suit for July. And it sort of worried her. Helene sent the little blue serge suit too! And a hat! The hat had bluebells on it. Do you think when you come home—if I haven't spent too much money on wall-papers—that I could have a blue hat with bluebells on it? Excuse me for bothering you—but you forgot to leave me enough money. * * * * * It was some indefinite, pleasant time on Thursday, the twenty-fifth of June, that the Senior Surgeon received this second letter. It was Friday the twenty-sixth of June, exactly at dawn, that the Senior Surgeon started homeward. Nobody looks very well in the dawn. Certainly the Senior Surgeon didn't. Heavily as a man wading through a bog of dreams, he stumbled out of his cabin into the morning. Under his drowsy, brooding eyes appalling shadows circled. Behind his sunburn,—deeper than his tan, something sinister and uncanny lurked wanly like the pallor of a soul. Yet the Senior Surgeon had been most blamelessly abed and asleep since griddle-cake time the previous evening. Only the mountains and the forest and the lake had been out all night. For seventy miles of Canadian wilderness only the mountains and the forest and the lake stood actually convicted of having been out all night. Dank and white with its vaporous vigil the listless lake kindled wanly to the new day's breeze. Blue with cold a precipitous mountain peak lurched craggedly home through a rift in the fog. Drenched with mist, bedraggled with dew, a green-feathered pine tree lay guzzling insatiably at a leaf-brown pool. Monotonous as a sob the waiting birch canoe slosh-sloshed against the beach. There was no romantic smell of red roses in this June landscape. Just tobacco smoke, and the faint reminiscent fragrance of fried trout, and the mournful, sizzling, pungent consciousness of a camp-fire quenched for a whole year with a tinful of wet coffee grounds. Gliding out cautiously into the lake as though the mere splash of a paddle might shatter the whole glassy surface, the Indian Guide propounded the question that was uppermost in his mind. "Cutting your trip a bit short this year,—ain't you, Boss?" quizzed the Indian guide. Out from his muffling mackinaw collar the Senior Surgeon parried the question with an amazingly novel sense of embarrassment. "Oh, I don't know," he answered with studied lightness. "There are one or two things at home that are bothering me a little." "A woman, eh?" said the Indian Guide laconically. "A woman?" thundered the Senior Surgeon. "A—woman? Oh, ye gods! No! It's wall paper!" Then suddenly and unexpectedly in the midst of his passionate refutation the Senior Surgeon burst out laughing,—boisterously, hilariously like a crazy school-boy. Bluntly from an overhanging ledge of rock the echo of his laugh came mocking back at him. Down from some unvisioned mountain fastness the echo of that echo came wafting faintly to him. The Senior Surgeon's laugh was made of teeth and tongue and palate and a purely convulsive physical impulse. But the echo's laugh was a phantasy of mist and dawn and inestimable balsam-scented spaces where little green ferns and little brown beasties and soft-breasted birdlings frolicked eternally in pristine sweetness. Seven miles further down the lake, at the beginning of the rapids, the Indian Guide spoke again. Racking the canoe between two rocks,—paddling, panting, pushing, sweating, the Indian Guide lifted his voice high,—piercing, above the swirling roar of waters. "Eh, Boss!" shouted the Indian Guide. "I ain't never heard you laugh before!" Neither man spoke again more than once or twice during the long, strenuous hours that were left to them. The Indian Guide was very busy in his stolid mind trying to figure out just how many rows of potatoes could be planted fruitfully between his front door and his cow-shed. I don't know what the Senior Surgeon was trying to figure out. It was just four days later from a rolling, musty-cushioned hack that the Senior Surgeon disembarked at his own front gate. Even though a man likes home no better than he likes—tea, few men would deny the soothing effect of home at the end of a long fussy railroad journey. Five o'clock, also, of a late June afternoon is a peculiarly wonderful time to be arriving home,—especially if that home has a garden around it so that you are thereby not rushed precipitously upon the house itself, as upon a cup without a saucer, but can toy visually with the whole effect before you quench your thirst with the actual draught. Very, very deliberately, with his clumsy rod-case in one hand, and his heavy grip in the other, the Senior Surgeon started up the long, broad gravel path to the house. For a man walking as slow as he was, his heart was beating most extraordinarily fast. He was not accustomed to heart-palpitation. The symptom worried him a trifle. Incidentally also his lungs felt strangely stifled with the scent of June. Close at his right an effulgent white and gold syringa bush flaunted its cloying sweetness into his senses. Close at his left a riotous bloom of phlox clamored red-blue-purple-lavender-pink into his dazzled vision. Multi-colored pansies tiptoed velvet-footed across the grass. In soft murky mystery a flame-tinted smoke tree loomed up here and there like a faintly rouged ghost. Over everything, under everything, through everything, lurked a certain strange, novel, vibrating consciousness of occupancy. Bees in the rose bushes! Bobolinks in the trees! A woman's work-basket in the curve of the hammock! A doll's tea set sprawling cheerfully in the middle of the broad gravel path! It was not until the Senior Surgeon had actually stepped into the tiny cream pitcher that he noticed the presence of the doll's tea set. It was what the Senior Surgeon said as he stepped out of the cream pitcher that summoned the amazing apparition from a ragged green hole in the privet hedge. Startlingly white, startlingly professional,—dress, cap, apron and all,—a miniature white linen nurse sprang suddenly out at him like a tricky dwarf in a moving picture show. Just at that particular moment the Senior Surgeon's nerves were in no condition to wrestle with apparitions. Simultaneously as the clumsy rod-case dropped from his hand, the expression of enthusiasm dropped from the face of the miniature white linen nurse. "Oh, dear—oh, dear—oh, dear! Have you come home?" wailed the familiar, shrill little voice. Sheepishly the Senior Surgeon picked up his rod-case. The noises in his head were crashing like cracked bells. Desperately with a boisterous irritability he sought to cover also the lurching pound-pound-pound of his heart. "What in Hell are you rigged out like that for?" he demanded stormily. With equal storminess the Little Girl protested the question. "Peach said I could!" she attested passionately. "Peach said I could! She did! She did! I tell you I didn't want her to marry us—that day! I was afraid, I was! I cried, I did! I had a convulsion! They thought it was stockings! So Peach said if it would make me feel any gooderer, I could be the cruel new step-mother. And she'd be the unloved offspring—with her hair braided all yellow fluffikins down her back!" "Where is—Miss Malgregor?" asked the Senior Surgeon sharply. Irrelevantly the Little Girl sank down on the gravel walk and began to gather up her scattered dishes. "And it's fun to go to bed—now," she confided amiably. "'Cause every night I put Peach to bed at eight o'clock and she's so naughty always I have to stay with her! And then all of a sudden it's morning—like going through a black room without knowing it!" "I said—where is Miss Malgregor?" repeated the Senior Surgeon with increasing sharpness. Thriftily the Little Girl bent down to lap a bubble of cream from the broken pitcher. "Oh, she's out in the summer house with the Wall Paper Man," she mumbled indifferently. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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