 7 Very soberly—very thoughtfully then—across the tangled, snuggling head of his own and another woman's child, he urged the torments and the comforts of his home upon this second woman. 8 What is there about my offer that you don't like? He demanded earnestly. 9 Is it the whole idea that offends you, or just the way I put it? General hard work for a family of two. What is the matter with that? Seems a bit cold to you, does it, for a real marriage proposal? Or is it that it's just a bit too ardent, perhaps, for a mere plain business proposition? 8 Yes, sir, said the white linen nurse. 9 Yes, what? Insisted the senior surgeon. 10 Yes, sir, flushed the white linen nurse. 11 Very meditatively the senior surgeon reconsidered his phrasing. 11 General hard work for a family of two. Hmm. 12 Quite abruptly even the tenseness of his manner faded from him, leaving his face astonishingly quiet, astonishingly gentle. 13 But how else, Miss Malgreger? He queried, how else should a widower with a child proffer marriage to a—to a younger like yourself, even under conditions directly antipodal to ours such a proposition can never be a purely romantic one, yet even under conditions as cold and business-like as ours there's got to be some vestige of affection in it, some vestige at least of the intelligence of affection, else what gain is there for my little girl and me over the purely mercenary domestic service that has racked us up to this time with its garish faithlessness? 12 Yes, sir, said the white linen nurse. 13 But even if I had loved you, Miss Malgreger, explained the senior surgeon gravely, my offer of marriage to you would not, I fear, have been a very great oratorical success. Materialist as I am, cynic, scientist, any harsh thing you choose to call me, marriage in some freak-boyish corner of my mind still defines itself as being the mutual sharing of a mutually original experience, certainly whether a first marriage to be instigated in love or worldliness whether it eventually proves itself bliss, tragedy or mere sickening ennui to two people coming mutually virgin to the consummation of that marriage, the thrill of establishing publicly a man and woman home together is an emotion that cannot be re-duplicated while life lasts. 12 Yes, sir, said the white linen nurse. 13 Bleakly across the senior surgeon's face, something grey that was not years shadowed suddenly and was gone again. 14 Even so, Miss Malgreger, he argued, even so, without any glittering romance whatsoever, no woman I believe is very grossly unhappy in any affectional place that she knows distinctly to be her own a place. It's pretty much up to a man, then, I think, if I would tear him brain from heart to explain to a second wife quite definitely just exactly what place it is that he is offering her in his love or his friendship or his mere desperate need. No woman can ever hope to step successfully into a second-hand home who does not know from her man's own lips the measure of her predecessor. The respect we owe the dead is a selfish thing compared to the mercy we owe the living. In my own case. 15 Unconsciously, the white linen nurse's lax shoulder has quickened, and the sudden upward tilt of her chin was as frankly interrogative as a French inflection. Yes, sir, she said. 15 In my own case, said the senior surgeon bluntly. In my own case, Miss MalGregor, it is no more than fair to tell you that I did not love my wife, and my wife did not love me. Only the muscular twitch in his throat betrayed the torture that the confession cost him. The details of that marriage are unnecessary. He continued with equal bluntness. It is enough, perhaps, to say that she was the daughter of an eminent surgeon with whom I was exceedingly anxious at that time to be allied, and that our mating, urged along on both sides as it was by strong personal ambitions, was one of those so-called marriages of convenience, which almost invariably turned out to be marriages of such dire inconvenience to the two people most concerned. For one year we lived together in a chaos of experimental acquaintanceship. For two years we lived together in increasing uncongeniality and distaste. For three years we lived together in open and acknowledged enmity. At the last I am thankful to remember that we had one year together again that was at least an armed truce. Darkly the grey shadow and the red flush chased each other once more across the man's haggard face. I had a theory. He said that possibly a child might bridge the chasm between us. My wife refuted the theory, but submitted herself reluctantly to the fact. And when she, in giving birth to my theory, the shock, the remorse, the regret, the merciless self-analysis that I underwent at that time almost convinced me that the whole miserable failure of our marriage lay entirely on my own shoulders. Like the stress of mid-summer the tears of sweat started suddenly on his forehead. But I am a fair man, I hope, even to myself, and the cooler-less torture judgment of the subsequent years has practically assured me that, for types as diametrically opposed as ours such a thing as mutual happiness never could have existed. Eventually he bent down and smoothed a tickly lock of hair away from the little girl's eyelids. And the child is the living physical image of her. He stammered. The violent hair, the ghost-white skin, the facile mouth, the arrogant eyes staring, staring, maddeningly reproachful, persistently accusing. My own stubborn will, my own hideous temper, all my own ill-favored mannerisms mocked back at me eternally in her mother's unloved features. Murthlessly as the grin of a skull the senior surgeon's mouth twisted up a little at one corner. Maybe I could have borne it better if she had been a boy. He acknowledged grimly, but to see all your virile, musculine vices come back at you so scissified in skirts. Yes, sir, said the white linen nurse. With an unmistakable gasp of relief the senior surgeon expanded his great chest. There! That's done! He said tersely. So much for the past, now for the present. Look at us pretty keenly and judge for yourself. A manned and a very little girl, not guaranteed, not even recommended, offered merely as is in the honest trade face of the day, offered frankly in an open package, accepted frankly if at all at your own risk. Not for an instant would I try to deceive you about us. Look at us closely, I ask, and decide for yourself. I am forty-eight years old, I am an excusably bad tempered, very quick to anger, and not I fear of great mercy. I am moody, I am selfish, I am most distinctly unsocial, but I am not, I believe, stingy nor ever intentionally unfair. My child is a cripple and equally bad tempered as myself. No one but a mercenary has ever coped with her, and she shows it. We have lived alone for six years. All of our clothes and most of our ways need mending. I am not one to mind smatters, Miss Malgreger, nor has your training, I trust, made you one from whom truths must be veiled. I am a man with only man's needs, mental, moral, physical. My child is a child with all of a child's needs, mental, moral, physical. Our house of life is full of cobwebs. The rooms of affection have long been closed. There will be a great deal of work to do, and it is not my intention, you see, that you should misunderstand, in any conceivable way, either the exact nature or the exact amount of work and worry involved. I should not want you to come to me afterwards with a whine, as other workers do, and say, Oh, but I didn't know you would expect me to do this. Oh, but I hadn't any idea you would want me to do that. And I certainly don't see why you should expect me to give up my Thursday afternoon just because you, yourself, happen to fall downstairs in the morning and break your back. Across the senior surgeon's face a real smile lightened suddenly. Really, Miss Mal Gregor? He affirmed. I'm afraid there isn't much of anything that you won't be expected to do. And as to your Thursdays out? Ha! If you have ever yet found a way to temper the wind of your obligations to the shorn lamb of your pleasures, you have discovered something that I myself have never yet succeeded in discovering. And as to wages? Yes, I want to talk everything quite frankly. In addition to my average yearly earnings, which are by no means small, I have a reasonably large private fortune. Within normal limits there is no luxury I think that you cannot hope to have. Also exclusive of the independent income which I would like to settle upon you, I should be very glad to finance for you any reasonable dreams that you may cherish concerning your family in Nova Scotia. Also, though the offer looks small and unimportant to you now, it is liable to loom pretty large to you later. Also I will personally guarantee to you, at some time every year, an unfettered perfectly independent two-months holiday. So the offer stands, my name and fame, if those mean anything to you, financial independence, an assured breathing spell for at least two months out of twelve, and at last but not least, my eternal gratitude. General hard work for a family of two, there have I made the task perfectly clear to you. Not everything to be done all at once, you know. But immediately where necessity urges it, gradually as confidence inspires it, ultimately if affection justifies it, every womanish thing that needs to be done in a man's and a child's neglected lives, do you understand? Yes, sir," said the white linen nurse. Oh, and there's one thing more—confidely the senior surgeon. It's something, of course, that I ought to have told you the very first thing of all. Nervously, he glanced down at the sleeping child and lowered his voice to a mumbling monotone. As regards my actual morals, you have naturally right to know that I have led a pretty decent sort of life, though I probably don't deserve any special credit for that—a man who knows enough to be a doctor is in particularly apt to lead any other kind. Frankly, as women rate vices, I believe I have only one—what—what I'm trying to tell you now is about that one. A little defiantly as to chin, a little appealingly as to eye, he emptied his heart of its last tragic secret. Through all the male line of my family, Miss Malgreger, Dipsomnia runs rampant, to my brothers, my father, my grandfather, my great-grandfather before him, have all gone down as the temperance people would say into drunkard's graves. In my own case, I have chosen to compromise with the evil. Such a choice, believe me, has not been made carelessly or impulsively, but out of the agony and humiliation of it several less successful methods. Hard as a rock, his face grooved into its granite like furrows again. Naturally under these existing conditions, he warned her almost threateningly. I am not peculiarly susceptible to the mockishly ignorant and sentimental protests of people whose strongest passions are an appetite for chocolate candy. For eleven months of the year, he hurried on a bit huskly. For eleven months of the year, eleven months each day reeking from dawn to dark with a driving, nerve-wracking, heart-ringing work that falls to my profession, I lead an absolutely abstinence life, touching neither wine nor liquor, nor even indeed tea or coffee. In the twelfth month, June always, I go way, way up into Canada, way, way off in the woods to a little log-camp I own there, with an Indian who has guided me thus for eighteen years, and live like a wild man for four gorgeous carefree trail-tramping, salmon-fighting, whiskey-guzzling weeks. It is what your temperance friends would call a spree. To be quite frank, I suppose it is what anybody would call a spree. Then, the first of July, three or four days past, the first of July perhaps, I come out of the woods quite tame again, a little emotionally nervous perhaps, a little temperschly irritable, a little unduly sensitive about being greeted as a return jailbird, but most miraculously purged of all morbid craving for liquor, and with every digital muscle as coolly steady as yours, and every conscious mental process clamoring cleanly for its own work again. Fertively, under his glowering brows, he stopped and searched the white linen nurse's imperturbable face. It's an established custom, you understand? He re-warned her. I'm not advocating it, you understand. I'm not defending it. I'm simply calling your attention to the fact that it is an established custom. If you decide to come to us, I—I couldn't, you know, at forty-eight begin all over again to—to have someone waiting for me on the top step, the first of July, to tell me what a low beast I am, till I go down the steps again the following June. No, of course not. Conceited the white linen nurse, blandly she lifted her lovely eyes to his. Fathers like that. She confided amably. Once a year, just Easter Sunday only, he always buys him a brand new suit of clothes and goes to church, and he does something to him. I don't know exactly what, but Easter afternoon he always gets drunk—oh, mad, fighting drunk is what I mean, and goes out and tries to tear up the whole county. Wordly two black thoughts puckered between her eyebrows. And always, she said, he makes mother and me go up to Halifax before hand to pick out the suit for him. It's pretty hard sometimes, she said, to find anything dressy enough for the morning that's serviceable enough for the afternoon. Eh? Jerked the senior surgeon. Then suddenly he began to smile again like a stormy sky from which the last cloud has just been cleared. Well, it's all right, then, is it? You'll take us? He asked, abridely. Oh, no! Said the white linen nurse. Oh, no, sir! Oh, no, indeed, sir! But perceptibly she jerked her way backward a little on the grass. Thank you very much. She persisted courteously. It's been very interesting. I thank you very much for telling me, but— But what? Snapped the senior surgeon. But it's too quick. Said the white linen nurse. No man could tell like that, just between one eyewink and another, what he wanted about anything, let alone marrying a perfect stranger. Suddenly the senior surgeon bridled. I assure you, my dear young lady—he retorted—that I am entirely and completely accustomed to deciding between one wink and another, just exactly what it is that I want. Indeed, I assure you that there are a good many people living today who wouldn't be living if it had taken me even as long as a wink and three-quarters to make up my mind. Yes, I know, sir. Acknowledged the white linen nurse. Yes, of course, sir. She acquiesced with most commendable humility. But all the same, sir, I couldn't do it. She persisted with inflexible positiveness. Why, I haven't enough education. She confessed quite shamelessly. You had enough, I noticed, to get into the hospital. Draw the senior surgeon a bit grumpily. That's quite as much as most people have, I assure you—a high school education or its equivalent. That is the hospital requirement, I believe. You question, tartly. A high school education or its equivocation is what we girls call it? Confessed the white linen nurse demulally. But even so, sir—she pleaded—it isn't just my lack of education, it's my brains. I tell you, sir, I haven't got enough brains to do what you suggest. I don't mean at all to belittle your brains. You're in this senior surgeon in spite of himself. Oh, not at all, Miss Malgrigger, but you see it isn't especially brains that I'm looking for—really, what I need most—he acknowledged, frankly—is an extra pair of hands to go with the brains I already possess. Yes, I know, sir—persisted the white linen nurse. Yes, of course, sir—she conceded—yes, of course, sir, my hands work awfully well with your face, but all the same—she kindled suddenly—all the same, sir, I can't, I won't. I tell you, sir, I won't. Why, I'm not in your world, sir, why, I'm not in your class, why, my folks aren't like your folks. Oh, we're just as good as you, of course, but we aren't as nice. Oh, we're not nice at all, really, and truly we're not. Desperately, through her mind, she rummaged up and down for some one conclusive fact that would close this torturing argument for all time. Why, my, father eats with his knife? She asserted triumphantly. Would he be apt to eat with mine? Asked the senior surgeon with extravagant gravity. Precipitously, the white linen nurse jumped to the defence of her father's intrinsic honour. Oh, no! She denied with some vehemence, father's never cheeky like that, father's simple sometimes, plain I mean, or he might be a bit sharp, but I'm sure he'd never be cheeky. Oh, no, sir. No. Oh, very well, then. Grand, this senior surgeon, we can't consider everything all comfortably settled, then, I suppose. No, we can't! Screamed the white linen nurse. A little awkwardly, with cramped limbs, she struggled partly upward from the grass and knelt there defying the senior surgeon from her temporarily superior height. No, we can't! She reiterated wildly. I tell you, I can't, sir. I won't. I won't. I've been engaged once and it's enough. I tell you, sir, I'm all engaged out. What become of the man you were engaged to? quizzed the senior surgeon sharply. Why, he's married, said the white linen nurse, and they've got a kid. She added tempestuously. Good. I'm glad of it. Smiled the senior surgeon quite amazingly. Now, he surely won't bother us any more. But I was engaged so long. Protested the white linen nurse. Almost ever since I was born, I said, It's too long. You don't get over it. He got over it. Remarked the senior surgeon laconically. Yes. Admitted the white linen nurse. But I tell you, doesn't seem decent. Not after being engaged twenty years. With a little helpless gesture of appeal she threw out her hands. Oh, can't I make you understand, sir? Why, of course I understand. Said the senior surgeon briskly. You mean that you and John. His name was Joe. Corrected the white linen nurse. With astonishing amiability the senior surgeon acknowledged the correction. You mean, he said, You mean that you and Joe have been cradled together so familiarly, all your babehood, that on your wedding night you could most naturally have said, Let me see Joe, it's two pillows that you always have, isn't it? And a double fold of blanket at the foot. You mean that you and Joe have been washed and scrubbed together so familiarly all your young childhood that you could identify Joe's headless body twenty years hence You mean that you and Joe have played house together so familiarly all your young tindish days that even your ragdolls called Joe Father. You mean that since your earliest memory until a year or so ago life hasn't ever once been just you and life but always you and life and Joe. You and spring and Joe. You and summer and Joe. You and autumn and Joe. You and winter and Joe till every conscious nerve in your body has been so everlastingly Joe'd Joe's Jonas that you don't believe there's any experience left in life powerful enough to eradicate that original impression, eh? Yes, sir. Flushed, the white linen nurse. Good, I'm glad of it. Snapped the senior surgeon. It doesn't make you seem quite so alarmingly innocent and remote for a widower to offer marriage to. Good, I say, I'm glad of it. Even so, I don't want to. Said the white linen nurse. Thank you very much, sir. But even so, I don't want to. Would you marry Joe now if he were suddenly free and wanted you? Asked the senior surgeon bluntly. Oh, my lord, no! Said the white linen nurse. Other men are pretty sure to want you. Admonished the senior surgeon. Have you made up your mind definitely that you'll never marry anybody? No, not exactly. Confessed the white linen nurse. An odd flicker twitched across the senior surgeon's face like a sob in the brain. What's your first name, Miss McGregor? He asked a bit huskily. Ray? She told him with some surprise. The senior surgeon's eyes narrowed suddenly again. Damn it all, Ray! He said. I want you! Precipitously the white linen nurse scrambled to her feet. If you don't mind, sir. She cried. I'll run down to the brook and get myself a drink of water. Impicially like a child, muscularily like a man, the senior surgeon clutched out at the flapping corner of her coat. No, you don't. He laughed. Till you've given me my definite answer, yes or no. Breathlessly the white linen nurse spun round in her tracks. Her breast was heaving with ill-suppressed sobs. Her eyes were blurred with tears. You've no business to hurry me so. She protested passionately. It isn't fair. It isn't kind. Sluggishly, in the senior surgeon's jolted arms the little girl woke from her feverish nip and peered up perplexedly through the gray dusk into her father's face. Where's my kitty? She asked hazily. Eh? Jerked the senior surgeon. Harshly the little iron leg braces clanked together. In an instant the white linen nurse was on her knees in the grass. You don't hold her, right, sir? She expostulated. Deftly with little soft darting touches interrupted only by rubbing her knuckles into her own tears. She reached out and eased successively the bruise of a buckle dragging weight on a little cramped hip. Still drowsily, still hazily, with little smacking gasps and gulping swallows, the child worried her way back again into consciousness. All the birds were there, father. She droned forth feebly from her sweltering mink furnace. All the birds were there with yellow feathers instead of hair and bumblebees and bumblebees and bumblebees. Friendsedly she began to burrow the back of her head into her father's shoulder and bumblebees and bumblebees. Oh, for heaven's sake! Buzzed in the trees! Interpolated the senior surgeon. Rigidly from head to foot the little body in his arms stiffened suddenly as one who saw a supreme achievement of a lifetime swapped away by someone careless juggle of an infinitesimal part the little girl stared up agonizingly into her father's face. Oh, I don't think Buzzed was the word. She began convulsively. Oh, I don't think. Startlingly through the twilight the senior surgeon felt the white linen nurse's rose-red lips come smack against his ear. Darn you! Can't you say crucheted in the trees? Sobbed the white linen nurse. Grotesquely for an instant the senior surgeon's eyes and the white linen nurse's eyes glared at each other in frank antagonism. Then suddenly the senior surgeon burst out laughing. Oh, very well! he surrendered. Crucheted in the trees. Precipitously the white linen nurse sank back on her heels and began to clap her hands. Oh, now I will, now I will! She cried exultantly. Will what? frowned the senior surgeon. Ureply the white linen nurse stopped clapping her hands and began to ring them nervously in her lap instead. Why, will, will! She confessed demurely. Oh! jumped the senior surgeon. Oh! Then equally jercally he began to poke her's eyebrows. But for heaven's sake what's the crucheted in the trees got to do with it? He asked perplexedly. Nothing much. Mused the white linen nurse very softly. With sudden alertness she turned her curly blonde head towards the road. There's somebody coming! She said, I hear a team. Overcome by a bashfulness to escape in jocosity the senior surgeon gave an odd little choking chuckle. Well, I never thought I should marry a trained nurse. He acknowledged with somewhat hectic blightness. Impulsively the white linen nurse reached for her watch and lifted it close to her twilight-blinded eyes. A sense of ineffable peace crept suddenly over her. You won't, sir! She said amably. It's twenty minutes of nine now and the graduation was at eight. End of chapter seven. Chapter eight of the white linen nurse This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org The White Linen Nurse by Illinois Hallowell Abbott Chapter eight 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 salad forth upon her extremely hazardous adventure of marrying the senior surgeon and his naughty little cripple 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 his 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 everyday silken cloth lady of any color she chose wore something rather cody and grand and bluish and actingly 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 a wonderful green and gold cafe all built of marble and lined with music and had a little lunch. What I really mean, of course, was 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 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 smiling and snarling and swearing and looked up at the white linen nurse for confirmation of his opinion the white linen nurse smiled perfectly amuably 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 amuably 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, she dared 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 blushed and said I was only marrying you, sir, too. Accommodate you, sir. And if June doesn't accommodate you I'd rather go to Japan with that monodeic somnambulism case. It's very interesting and it sails June 2nd. Then Oh, hell with a monodeic 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 hordely 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 gal or bust. Conceited 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. And she looked as sick as a young undertaker. I can't imagine what ailed her. A? 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 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 repressings. 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 wallpaper now. Tragically she pointed to some figuring in her notebook. It's got peacocks on it. Lifesize in a queen's garden and I wanted it for the dining room. Maybe it would fade. Maybe it would get tired of it. Maybe it would poison us. Slam it on one week and slash it 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 fiancés. 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 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 damn 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 he 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 joked, though 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 ingeniously the white linen nurse met and parrot the glare a gentleman and a red-haired kitty 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 kitty to like me and then there's a green-tiled paper with floppy seagulls on it that I want to try for the bathroom 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 shhh 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 Malgreger 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's 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 he faltered he doesn't ever go around mournful like with his head hanging telling folks about his wonderful trotter that's just the littlest, tiniest, tiniest bit lame oh no what father does is to call up everyone he knows within 20 miles and tell him 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 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 at the senior surgeon incisively the white linen nurse's lashes fringe 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 preemptorily 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 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 eleven 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, you're a good little girl Raymah Gregor 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 damned 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 gasp of relief the senior surgeon stopped his eternal pacing off the floor bully for you and then we'll be married some time in July after I get back for 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 surge 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 had lunged through the land warm days sweet and lush as a greenhouse vapor crisp nights faintly metallic like the scent of stars hurdy-gurdy is romping tunefully on every street corner even the ash men flushing frankly pink across his dusty cheekbones 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 with all 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 regreaning one or two Baytree 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 dingy or plasterings when the white linen nurse wasn't busy renovating the big house or the little stepdaughter she was writing to the senior surgeon she wrote twice Dear Dr. Faber the first letter said Dear Dr. Faber 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 kitty and I fixed up the most scrumptious light blue sweet for ourselves in the L pink was wrong for the front hall but it cost me only twenty nine dollars to find out and now that 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 grey she was nice it was your sister-in-law I like being married to Dr. Faber I like it lots better than I thought I would it's fun being the biggest person in the house respectfully yours Ray Malgreger 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 smelled as though it had been forgotten I threw it out it was this letter that drew the only deft at message from the current bridegroom kindly refrain from rummaging in my Ulster pockets wrote the senior surgeon quite briefly the thing you'd threw out happened to be the cerebellum and medula 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 $12 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 Dr. Faber somehow I don't seem to care so much just now about being the biggest person in the house something awful has happened Zilla Forsythe is dead really dead I mean and she died in great heroism you remember Zilla Forsythe don't you she was one of my roommates not the gooder one you know not the swell that was Helen Churchill but Zilla oh you know Zilla 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 Zilla can't kiss anybody anymore 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 80 years old and they were in a sanitarium or something like that and there was a fire in that night and the old lady just put up and positively refused to escape and Zilla 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 Zilla right through the hand but Zilla wouldn't let go and the old lady tried to drown Zilla under a bursted water tank but Zilla wouldn't let go and everybody hollered to Zilla to cut loose and save herself but Zilla wouldn't let go and a wall fell and everything and oh it was awful but Zilla never let go and the old lady that wasn't any good to anyone not even herself got saved of course but Zilla oh Zilla got hurt bad sir we saw her at the hospital Helen 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 moaning 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 Zilla didn't seem to care so much there was a new intern there a Japanese and I guess she was sort of taken with him but my god Zilla I said your life was worth more than that old dames shut your noise says Zilla it was my job and there's no kick coming Helen burst right out crying she did shut your noise too says Zilla just as cool as you please bah there's other lives and other chances oh you do believe that now cries Helen oh you do believe that now what the bible promises you that was when Zilla shrugged her shoulders so funny the little ways she had gee but her eyes were huge I don't pretend to know what your old bible says she choked it was the Yale fellow who was telling me that's all doctor 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 Helen and I we both cried of course because Zilla was dead but after we got through crying for that Helen kept right on crying because she couldn't understand why a brave girl like Zilla had to be dead gee but Helen 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 papers 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 finally 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 goodbye for now from Ray p.s. don't tell your guide or anyone but Helen sent Zilla's mother a check for $1500 I saw it with my own eyes and all Zilla asked for that day was just a little blue surge suit it seems she had promised her kid sister a little blue surge suit for July and it sort of worried her Helen sent the little blue surge suit too and a hat the hat had blue bells 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 blue bells on it? excuse me for bothering you but you forgot to leave me enough money it was some indefinite pleasant time on Thursday the 25th of June that the senior surgeon received this second letter it was Friday the 26th of June exactly a dawn that the senior surgeon starred at homeward nobody looks very well in the dawn certainly the senior surgeon didn't heavily as a man waiting 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 a bed and a sleep for a long time the previous evening only the mountains and the forest and the lake had been out all night for 70 miles of Canadian wilderness only the mountains and the forest and the lakes 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 readily 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 a beach there was no romantic smell of red roses in this June landscape just tobacco smoke and the faint reminiscent fragrance of fried trout full sizzling pungent consciousness of a campfire quenched for a whole year with a tin full 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 ya boss quizzed the Indian guide out from his muffling Mackinaw collar the senior surgeon paired the question with an amazingly novel sense of embarrassment oh I don't know he answered with studded lightness there are one or two things at home that are bothering me a little a woman a said the Indian guide laconically a woman thundered the senior surgeon a woman oh gods no it's wallpaper then suddenly and unexpectedly in the midst of his passionate refutation the senior surgeon burst out laughing boisterously hilariously like a crazy schoolboy bluntly from an overhanging ledge of rock the echo of his laugh came mocking back at him down from some envisioned 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 fantasy of mist and dawn and inestimable, bosom centered spaces where little green ferns and little brown beasties and soft breasted birdlings froliced 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 hey boss shouted the Indian guide I ain't never heard you laugh before neither man spoke again more than once or twice during that 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 his couch shed I don't know what the senior surgeon was trying to figure out it was just four days later from a rolling musty cushion tack that the senior surgeon disembarked at his own front gate even though a man likes home no better than he likes tea he 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 a scent of June close at his right an effulgent white and gold syringe a bush flaunted its glowing sweetness into his senses close at his left a righteous bloom of flocks clamored red blue purple lavender pink into his dazzled vision multicolored pansies tiptoed velvet footed across the grass in soft murky mystery a flame tinted smoke tree loomed up here and there like a faintly rude to ghost over everything under everything through everything lurked a certain strange novel vibrating consciousness of occupancy bees in the rose bushes bobble links 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 a 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 doll 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 at 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 gooder i could be the cruel new stepmother 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 amably cause every night i put peach to bed at eight o'clock and she's so naughty always 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 picture oh she's out in the summer house with wallpaper men mumbled indifferently of chapter eight chapter nine of the white linen nurse this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org the white linen nurse by Illinois Hallowell Abbott chapter nine all together jerkily the senior surgeon started up the walk for his own perfectly formal and respectable brown stone mansion deep down in his lurching heart he felt a sudden most inordinate desire to reach that brown stone mansion just as quickly as possible but abruptly even to himself he swerved off instead at the yellow sassafras tree and plunged quite wildly the mass of broken sods towards the rickety no-account cedar summer house startled by the crackle and thud of his approach the two young figures in the summer house jumped precipitously to their feet and limply entwining their arms from each other's necks stood surveying the senior surgeon in unspeakable consternation the white linen nurse and a blue overalled lad cautionably mated in radiant youth and agonized confusion oh my lord sir gasped the white linen nurse oh my lord sir I wasn't looking for you for another week evidently not said the senior surgeon incisively this is the second time this evening that I have been led to infer that my homecoming was distinctly inopportune very slowly very methodically he put down first his precious rod case and then his grip his brain seemed fairly foaming with blood and confusion along the swelling veins of his arms a dozen primitive instincts once surging to his fists then quite brazenly before his eyes the white linen nurse reached out and took the lad's hand again oh forgive me doctor faber she faltered this is my brother your brother? what eh? choked the senior surgeon bluntly he reached out and crushed the young fellow's fingers in his own glad to see you son he muttered with a sickish sort of grin and turning abruptly picked up his baggage and started for the big house half a step behind him his white linen nurse followed softly at the edge of the piazza he turned for an instant and eyed her a bit quizzically with her big, credulous blue eyes and her great mob of yellow hair braided childishly down her back she looked inestimably more juvenile and innocent than his own little shrewd-faced six-year-old whom he had just left domestically ensconced in the middle of the broad gravel path for heaven's sake miss malgregor he asked for heaven's sake, why didn't you tell me that the wallpaper man was your brother? very contritely the white linen nurse's chin went burrowing down into the soft collar of her dress and as bashfully as a child one finger came stealing up to the edge of her red, red lips I was afraid you'd think I was cheeky my family come and live with us so soon she murmured almost inaudibly well, what did you think I'd think you were if he wasn't your brother? asked the senior surgeon, sardonically very economical I hoped beamed the white linen nurse all the same snapped the senior surgeon with an irrelevant surprising event to himself all the same do you think it sounds quite right and proper for a child to call her stepmother peach? again the white linen nurse's chin went burrowing down into the soft collar of her dress I don't suppose it is usual, she admitted reluctantly the children next door I notice called there's cross patch with a gesture of impatience the senior surgeon proceeded up the steps yanked to open the old fashioned shuttered door and burst quite breathlessly and unprepared upon his most amazingly reconstructed house all in one single second chintzes, muslins pale blonde maples riotous canary birds storm revolutionary upon his outraged eyes reeling back utterly aghast before the sight stood there staring dumbly for an instant at what he considered and rightly too the absolute wreck of his black walnut home it looks like hell he muttered feebly yes isn't it sweet conceded the white linen nurse with unmistakable joyousness and your library triumphantly she threw back the door to his grim workshop good god stammer the senior surgeon you've made it pink rapturously the white linen nurse began to clasp and unclasp her hands I knew you'd love it she said half dazed with bewilderment the senior surgeon started to brush an imaginary haze from his eyes but paused midway in the gesture and pointed back into a dapper little hall table that seemed to be exhausting its entire blonde strength in holding up a slender green vase with a single pink rose in it like a caged animal buffeting for escape against each successive bar that encased it the man's frenzied irritation hurled itself hopefully against this one more chance for explosive exit what have you done with the big black escritoire it stood there he demanded accusingly escritoire? escritoire worried the white linen nurse why why I'm afraid I must have mislaid it mislaid it thundered the senior surgeon mislaid it it weighed 300 pounds oh it did questioned the white linen nurse the white blue-eyed interest still mulling apparently over the fascinating weight of the escritoire she climbed up suddenly into a chair and with a fluffy broom-shaped end of her extraordinarily long braid of hair went angling wildly off into space after an elusive cobweb faster and faster the senior surgeon's temper began to search for a new point of exit what do you suppose the servants think of you he stormed running around like that with your hair in a pigtail like a kid servants coot the white linen nurse servants very quietly she jumped down from the chair and came and stood looking up into the senior surgeon's hectic face why there aren't any servants she explained patiently I've dismissed every one of them we are doing our own work now doing our own work gasped the senior surgeon quite wordly the white linen nurse stepped back a little why wasn't that right she pleaded wasn't it right why I thought people always did their own work when they were first married with sudden apprehensiveness she glanced round over her shoulder at the hall clock and darting out through a side door returned almost instantly with a fierce looking knife I'm so late now and everything she confided could you peel the potatoes for me no I couldn't said the senior surgeon equally shortly he turned on his heel and reaching out once more for his rod case and grip went on up the stairs to his own room one of the pleasantest things about arriving home very late in the afternoon is the excuse it gives you in your own room while other people are getting supper no existent domestic sound in the whole 24 hours is a soothing at the end of a long journey as the sound of other people getting supper stretched out full length in a big easy chair by his bedroom window with his favorite pipe bubbling rhythmically between his gleaming white teeth the senior surgeon studied his new solid gold bed and his new sage green wallpaper and his new dust colored rug to the faint far away accompaniment of soft thudding feet and a girl's laugh and a child's prattle and the tink tink tinkle of glass china silver all scurrying consciously to the service of one man and that man himself varies very slowly in that special half hour an inscrutable little smile printed itself experimentally across the right hand corner of the senior surgeon's upper lip while that smile was still in its infancy he jumped up suddenly and forced his way across the hall to his dead wife's room the one ghost room of his house and his life and there with his hand on the turning door knob tense with reluctance goose fleshed with strain his breath gasped out of him whether or no with the one word alice and behold there was no room there lurching back from the threshold as from the brink of an elevator well the senior surgeon found himself staring foolishly into a most sumptuous linen closet tiered like an Aztec cliff with home after home for pleasant prosy blankets and gaily fringed towels colorful wide sheets wreaking most conscientiously of cedar and lavender tiptoeing cautiously into the mystery he sensed at one astonished grateful glance how the change of a partition the readjustment of a proportion had purged like a draught of fresh air the stale gloom of an ill-favored memory yet so inevitable did it suddenly seem for a linen closet to be built right there so inevitable did it suddenly seem for the child's meager playroom to be enlarged just there that to save his soul he could not estimate whether the heavy plan had originated in a purely practical brain or a purely compassionate heart half proud of the brain half touched by the heart he passed on exploringly through the new playroom out into the hall again quite distinctly now through the aperture of the back stairs the kitchen voices came wafting up to him oh dear, oh dear wailed his little girl's peevish voice now that, that man's come back again I suppose we'll have to eat in the dining room all the time that man happens to be your darling father admonished the white linen nurse's laughing voice even so wailed the little girl I love you best even so laughed the white linen nurse I love you best just the same cried the little girl shrilly just the same let's put the cream pitcher way up high somewhere so he can't step in it as though from ahead tilted suddenly backward the white linen nurse's laugh joyous abandon impulsively the senior surgeon started to grin then equally impulsively the grin soured on his lips so they thought he was clumsy, eh resentfully he stared down at his hands those wonderfully dexterous yes ambidextrous hands that were the aching envy of all his colleagues interruptingly as he stared the voice of the young wall-paper man rose buoyantly to the lower hallway supper's already sir called the cordial voice for some inexplainable reason at that particular moment almost nothing in the world could have irritated the senior surgeon more keenly than to be invited to his own supper in his own house by a stranger fuming with a new sense of injury and injustice he started heavily down the stairs to the room standing patiently behind the senior surgeon's chair with a laudable desire to assist his carving in any possible emergency that might occur the white linen nurse experienced her first direct marital rebuff what do you think this is an autopsy demanded the senior surgeon tartly for heaven's sake sit down quite meekly the white linen nurse subsided into her place the meal that ensued could hardly have been called a success though the room was entrancing the cloth snow white the silver radiant the guinea chicken beyond reproach swept and garnished to an alarming degree the young wall-paper man presided over the gravy and did his uttermost innocent country best to make the senior surgeon feel perfectly at home as in the presence of a distinguished stranger the little crippled girl most palpably from time to time repressed her insatiable desire to build a towering pyramid out of all the salt and pepper shakers she could reach once when the young wall-paper man forgot himself to the extent of putting his knife in his mouth the white linen nurse jarred the whole table with the violence of her warning kick once when the little crippled girl piped out impulsively say peach what was the name of that bantam your father used to fight against the minister's bantam the white linen nurse choked piteously over her food twice someone spoke about this year's weather twice someone volunteered an illuminating remark about last year's weather except for these four diversions restraint indescribable hung like a horrid pall over the feast next to feeling unwelcome in your friends this house nothing certainly is more wretchedly disconcerting than to feel unwelcome in your own house grimly the senior surgeon longed to grab up all the knives within reach and ram them successively into his own mouth just to prove to the young wall-paper man what a what a devil of a good fellow he was himself grimly the senior surgeon longed to tell the white linen nurse about the pet bantam of his own boyhood days that he bet a dollar could lick any bantam her father ever dreamed of owning grimly the senior surgeon longed to talk dolls, dishes, kittens yes even cream pitchers to his little daughter to talk anything in fact to anyone to talk, sing, shout anything that should make him at least for the time being one at heart one at head one at table with this astonishingly offish bunch of youngsters but grimly instead out of his frazzled nerves out of his innate spiritual bashfulness he merely roared forth where are the potatoes potatoes gasped the white linen nurse potatoes oh potatoes she finished more blithely why yes of course don't you remember you didn't have time to peel them for me I was so disappointed you were so disappointed snapped the senior surgeon you, you janglingly the little crippled girl knelt right up in her chair and shook her tiny fist right in her father's face now lindicott paper she screamed don't you start in sassing my darling little peach peach snorted the senior surgeon with almost supernatural calm he put down his knife and fork and eyed his offspring with an expression of absolutely inflexible purpose don't you ever he warned her ever ever let me hear you call this woman peach again a trifle faint heartedly the little crippled girl reached up and straightened her absurdly diminutive little white cap and pursed her little mouth as nearly as possible into an expression of ineffable peace why lindicott paper she persisted heroically lindicott jumped the senior surgeon what are you lindicotting me for hilariously with her own knife and fork the little crippled girl began to beat upon the table why you dear silly she cried why if I'm the new mama I've got to call you lindicott and peach has got to call you fat father friends idly the senior surgeon pushed back his chair and jumped to his feet the expression on his face was neither smile nor frown nor war nor peace nor any other human expression that had ever puckered there before god he said this gives me the willies and strode tempestuously from the room out in his own workshop fortunately whatever the grotesque new pinkness whatever the grotesque new perkiness his great free walking spaces had not been interfered with slamming his door triumphantly behind him he resumed once more the monotonous pace pace pace that had characterized for eighteen years his first night's return to the obligations of civilization sharply around the corner of his old battered desk the little path started one way along the edge of his dingy bookshelves the little path furrowed wistfully at the deep bay window where his favorite lilac bush budded widely for his departure and rusted brownly for his return the little path faltered and went on again on and on and on into the alcove where his instruments glistened up to the fireplace where his college trophy cups tarnished listlessly the senior surgeon recommenced his yearly vigil up and down up and down round and round on and on and on through interminable dusks to unattainable dawns a glutted bacane alien soul sweating its own way back to sanctity and leanness nerves always were in that vigil raw rattling nerves clamoring forceforsely to be repacked in their sedatives thirst also was in that vigil no mere whimpering tickle of a pallet but a drought of the tissues a consuming fire of the bones pride was also there and festering humiliation but more rasping this particular night than nerves more poignant than thirst more dangerously excitative even that remorse hunger rioted in him hunger the one worst enemy of the senior surgeon's cause the simple silly no-account gnawing drink provocative hunger of an empty stomach and one other hunger was also there a sudden fierce new lust for life and living a passion bear of love yet pure of wantonness a passion primitive protective inexorably proprietary engendered strangely that one mad suspicious moment at the edge of the summer house when every outraged male instinct in him had leapt to prove that love or no love the woman was his up and down round and round eight o'clock found the senior surgeon still pacing at half past eight the young wallpaper man came to say goodbye to him as long as sister won't be alone anymore I guess I'll be moving on beamed the wallpaper man there's a dance at home saturday night and I've got a girl of my own he confided genially come again urged the senior surgeon come again when you can stay longer with one honest prayer in stock and at least two purely automatic social speeches of this sort no man needs to flounder altogether hopelessly for words in any ordinary emergency of life thus with no more mental interruption than the two minute break in time the senior surgeon then resumed his bitter-thoughted pacing at nine o'clock however patrolling his long-rangey bookshelves he sensed with a very different feeling through his heavy oak door the soft-woring swish of skirts and the breathy twitter of muffled voices faintly to his acute ears came the sound of his little daughter's temperish protest I won't, I won't and the white linen nurses fervid pleading oh you must you must and the little girls mumbled ultimatum well I won't unless you do irassibly he crossed the room and yanked the door open abruptly upon their surprise in confusion his nerves were very sore what in thunder do you want he snarled nervously for an instant the white linen nurse tugged at the little girl's hand nervously for an instant the little girl tugged at the white linen nurse's hand then with a swallow like a sob the white linen nurse lifted her glowing face to his kiss us goodnight said the white linen nurse telescopically all in that startling second vision after vision beat down like blows upon the senior surgeon's senses the pink pink flush of the girl the lure of her the amazing sweetness the physical docility oh ye gods the docility every trend of her birth of her youth of her training forcing her now if he chose it to unquestioning submission to his will and his judgment faster and faster the temptation surged through his pulses the path from her lips to her ear was such a little path the plea so quick to make so short I want you now kiss us goodnight urged the big girls on suspecting lips kiss us goodnight mocked the little girl's tremulous echo then explosively with a noblest rudeness of his life no I won't said the senior surgeon and slammed the door in their faces falteringly up the stairs he heard the two ascending speechless with surprise perhaps stunned by his roughness still hand in hand probably still climbing slowly bedward the soft smooth patient footfall of the white linen nurse and the jerky laborious clang clang clang of a little dragging iron braced leg up and down round and round on and on and on the senior surgeon resumed his pacing under his eyes great shadows darkened along the corners of his mouth the lines furrowed like gray scars up and down round and round on and on and on and on at ten o'clock sitting bolt upright in her bed with her worried eyes straining bluely out across the little girl's somnolent form into unfathomable darkness the white linen nurse in the throb of her own heart began to keep pace with that faint horrid thud thud thud in the room below was he passing the bouquets now had he reached the bay window was he dawdling over those glistening scalpels would his nerves remember the flask in that upper desk drawer up and down round and round on and on the harrowing sound continued resolutely at last she scrambled out of her snug nest and hurring into her great warm pussy-gray wrapper began at once very practically very unemotionally with matches and alcohol in a shiny glass jar to prepare a huge stimming cup of malted milk beef steak was infinitely better she knew, or eggs of course but if she should venture forth to the kitchen for real substantiate the senior surgeon she felt quite positive would almost certainly hear her very stealthily thus like the proverbial assassin she crept down the front stairs with the innocent malted milk cup in her hand and then with her knuckles just on the verge of wrapping against the grimly inhospitable door went suddenly paralyzed with uncertainty whether to advance or retreat once again through the somber inert wainscoting exactly as if a soul had creaked the senior surgeon sensed the threatening intrusive presence of an unseen personality once again he strode across the room and jerked the door open with terrifying anger and resentment as though frozen there on his threshold by her own little bare feet as though strangled there in his doorway by her own great mop of golden hair stolid and dumb as a pink cheeked graven image the white linen nurse thrust the cup out awkwardly at him absolutely without comment as though she trotted on purely professional business and the case involved was of mutual concern to them both the senior surgeon took the cup from her hand and closed the door again in her face at eleven o'clock she came again just as pink, just as blue just as gray, just as golden and the cup of malted milk she brought with her was just as huge just as hot, just as steaming only this time she had smuggled two raw eggs into it once more the senior surgeon took the cup without comment and shut the door in her face at twelve o'clock she came again the senior surgeon was unusually loquacious this time have you any more malted milk he asked tersely oh yes sir beamed the white linen nurse go and get it say the senior surgeon obediently the white linen nurse pattered up the stairs and returned with a half depleted bottle frankly interested she recrossed the threshold of the room and delivered her glass treasure into the hands of the senior surgeon as he stood by his desk raising herself to her tiptoes she noted with eminent satisfaction that the three big cups on the other side of the desk had all been drained to their drags then very bluntly before her eyes the senior surgeon took the malted milk bottle and poured its remaining contents out quite wantonly into his waist basket then equally bluntly he took the white linen nurse by the shoulders and marched her out of the room for God's sake he said get out of this room and stay out bang the big door slammed behind her like a snarling fang the lock bit into its catch yes sir said the white linen nurse even just to herself all alone there in the big black hall she was perfectly polite yes sir she repeated softly with a slightly sardonic grin on his face the senior surgeon resumed his pacing up and down, round and round on and on and on at one o'clock in the dull clammy chill of earliest morning he stopped long enough to light his hearth fire at two o'clock he stopped again to pile on a trifle more wood at three o'clock he dallyed for an instant to close a window the new day seemed strangely cold at four o'clock dawned the wonder the miracle the long despaired of quickened wandly across the east then suddenly more like a phosphorescent breeze than a glow the pale, pale yellow sunshine came wafting through the green gleam of the garden the vigil was over stumbling out into the shadowy hall to greet the new day and the new beginning the senior surgeon almost tripped and fell over the white linen nurse sitting all huddled up in drowsy hide in a little grey heap on his outer threshold stepping upon a human body is not a pleasant one it smote the senior surgeon nauseously through the nerves of his stomach what are you doing here he fairly screamed at her just keeping you company sir you're on the white linen nurse before her hand could reach her mouth again another great child as she on overwhelmed her just watching with you sir she finished more or less inarticulately watching with me snarled the senior surgeon resentfully why should you watch with me like the frightened flash of a bird the heavy lashes went swooping down across the pink cheeks and lifted us suddenly again because you're my man yawned the white linen nurse almost roughly the senior surgeon reached down and pulled the white linen nurse to her feet God said the senior surgeon in his strained husky voice the word sounded like an oath grotesquely a little smile when scutting zigzag across his haggard face with an impulse absolutely alien to him he reached out abruptly again and raised the white linen nurse's hand to his lips good God was what I meant he grinned a bit sheepishly quite brusquely then he returned and looked at his watch I'd like my breakfast just as soon now as you can possibly get it he ordered preemptorily in his own morbid pathological emergency no more stopping to consider the white linen nurse's purely normal fatigue than he in any pathological emergency of hers would have stopped to consider his own comfort safety or even perhaps life joyously then like a prisoner just turned loose he went swinging up the stairs to recreate himself with a smoke and a shave and a great splashing cold shower bath only one thing seemed to really trouble him now at the top of the stairs he stopped for an instant and cocked his head a bit wordly towards the drawing room where from some slow brightening alcove left a bird carol when floating shrilly up into the morning is that those blasted canaries he asked briefly very companiably the white linen nurse cocked her own tousaled head on one side and listened with him for half a moment only four of them are blasted canaries she corrected very gently the fifth one is a parakeet that I got at a markdown it was a widowed bird and wouldn't mate again eh jerked to the senior surgeon yes sir said the white linen nurse and started for the kitchen no one but the senior surgeon himself breakfasted in state at five o'clock that morning snug and safe in her crib upstairs the little crippled girl slumbered peacefully on through the general disturbance and as for the white linen nurse herself what with chilling and rechilling melons and broiling and unbroiling steaks and making and remaking coffee and hunting frantically for a different sized water glass or a prettier coloured plate there was no time for anything except an occasional herd surreptitious nibble halfway between the stove and the table yet in all that raucous early morning hour together neither man nor girl suffered towards the other the slightest personal sense of contrition or resentment for each mind was trained equally fairly whether reacting on its own case or in others to differentiate pretty readily between mean nerves and a mean spirit only once in fact across the intervening chasm of crankiness did the senior surgeon hurl a smile that was even remotely self-conscious or conciliatory glancing up suddenly from a particularly sharp and disagreeable speech he noted the white linen nurse's red lips mumbling softly one to the other are you specially religious miss malgregor he grinned quite abruptly no not specially sir said the white linen nurse why sir oh it's only grinned the senior surgeon dourly it's only that every time I'm especially ugly to you I see your lips moving as though in silent prayer as they call it and I was just wondering if there was any special formula you used with me that kept you so everlastingly damned serene is there yes sir said the white linen nurse what is it demanded the senior surgeon quite bluntly do I have to tell gasped the white linen nurse a little tremulously in her hand the empty cup she was carrying rattled against its saucer do I have to tell she repeated pleadingly a delirious little thrill of power went fluttering through the senior surgeon's heart yes you have to tell me he announced quite seriously in absolute submission to his demand though with very palpable reluctance the white linen nurse came forward to the table put down the cup and saucer and began to finger a trifle nervously at the cloth oh I'm sure I didn't mean any harm sir she stammered but all I say is honestly and truly all I say is but he's nothing but a man nothing but a man over and over and over just that sir uproariously the senior surgeon pushed back his chair and jumped to his feet I guess after all I'll have to let the little kid call you peach one day a week he acknowledged jacosly with infinite seriousness then he tossed back his great splendid head shook himself free apparently from all unhappy memories and started for his workroom a great gorgeously vital extraordinarily talented gray-haired boy lusting joyously for his own work and play again after a month's distressing illness from the edge of the hall he turned round and made a really boyish grimace at her now if I only had the horns or the cloven hoof that you think I have he called what an easy time I'd make of it all the letters and ads that are stacked up on my desk yes sir so the white linen nurse only once did he come back into the kitchen or dining room for anything it was at seven o'clock and the white linen nurse was still washing dishes as radiant as a gray-haired god he towered up in the doorway the boyish rejuvenation in him was even more startling than before I'm feeling so much like a fighting cock this morning he said I think I'll tackle that paper on surgical diseases of the pancreas that I have to read at Baltimore next month a little startlingly the gray lines furrowed into his cheeks again for heaven's sake see that I'm not disturbed by anything he admonished her warningly it must have been almost eight o'clock when the ear-splitting scream from upstairs sent the white linen nurse plunging out panic-stricken into the hall oh peach, peach yelled the little girl's frenzied voice come quick and see what my father's doing now out on the piazza jerkily the white linen nurse swerved off through the French door that opened directly on the piazza had the singer surgeon hung himself she tortured in some wild temporary aberration of the morning after but staunchly and reassuringly from the farther end of the piazza the singer surgeon's broad back billowed her horrid terror quite prosely and in apparently perfect health he was standing close to the railing of the piazza on a table directly beside him rested four empty bird cages just at that particular moment he was inordinately busy releasing the last canary from the fifth cage both hands were smooched with ink and behind his left ear a fountain pen dally it daringly at the very first sound of the white linen nurse's step the singer surgeon turned and faced her with a sheepish sort of defiance well now I imagine he said well now I imagine I've really made you mad no not mad sir faltered the white linen nurse no not mad sir but very far from well coaxingly with a perfectly futile hand she tried to lure one astonished yellow songster back from a swaying yellow bush why they'll die sir she protested savage cats will get them it's a choice of their lives or mine said the senior surgeon tersley yes sir drowned the white linen nurse quite snappishly the singer surgeon turned upon her for heaven's sake do you think canary birds are more valuable than I am he demanded stentoriously most disconcertingly before his glowering eyes a great sad round tear rolled suddenly down the white linen nurse's flush cheek no not more more valuable conceded the white linen nurse but more cunning up to the roots of the senior surgeon's hair a flush of real contrition spread hotly why ray he stammered why what a beast I am why why in sincere perplexity he began to rack his brains for some adequate excuse some adequate explanation why I'm sure I didn't mean to make you feel badly he persisted only I've lived alone so long that I suppose I've just naturally drifted into the way of having a thing if I wanted it and throwing it away if I didn't and canary birds now well really he began to glower all over again oath thunder he finished abruptly I guess I'll go on down to the hospital where I belong thankfully the white linen nurse stepped forward the hospital she said oh the hospital do you think that perhaps you could come home a little bit earlier than usual tonight and and help me catch just one of the canaries what gasped the senior surgeon incredulously with a very inky finger he pointed at his own breast what I he demanded I come home early from the hospital to help you catch a canary disgustedly without further comment he turned and stalked back again into the house the disgust was still in his walk as he left the house an hour later watching his exit down the long gravel path the little crippled girl commented audibly on the matter peach peach called the little crippled girl what makes fat father walk so surprised people at the hospital also commented upon him gee giggled the new nurses we bet he's a tartar but isn't his hair cute and say gossiped the new nurses isn't really true that the malgregor girl was pinned down perfectly helpless under the car and he wouldn't let her out till she had promised to marry him isn't it awful why doctor favors back fluttered the senior nurses isn't he wonderful isn't he beautiful but oh say they worried what do you suppose ray ever finds to talk with him about would she ever dare talk things to him just plain everyday things hats and going to the theater and whatever breakfast they gasped why yes of course they reasoned more sanely steak meal why people had to eat no matter how wonderful they were but evenings they speculated more darkly but evenings in the whole range of human experience was it even so much as remotely imaginable that evenings the senior surgeon and ray malgregor sat in the hammock and held hands oh gee blanched the senior nurses good morning doctor favor greeted the superintendent of nurses from behind her austere office desk good morning miss hartson said the senior surgeon have you had a pleasant trip quizzed the superintendent of nurses exceptionally so thank you said the senior surgeon and mrs favor is she well persisted the superintendent of nurses conscientiously mrs favor gasped the senior surgeon mrs favor oh yes of course yes indeed she's extraordinary well I never saw her better she must have been very lonely without you this past month rasped the superintendent of nurses perfectly politely yes she was flushed the senior surgeon she she suffered keenly and you too trawled the superintendent of nurses it must have been very hard for you yes it was sweated the senior surgeon I suffered keenly too distractedly he glanced back at the open door an extraordinarily large number of nurses, interns orderlies seemed to be having errands up and down the corridor that allowed them a peculiarly generous length of neck and stretch into the superintendent's office great heavens snapped the senior surgeon what's the matter with everybody this morning tempestuously he started for the door hurry up my cases please mrs he ordered sent them to the operating room and let me get to work at eleven o'clock absolutely calm absolutely cool pure as a girl in his fresh clothes cleaner skin hair teeth hands than any girl who ever walked the face of the earth in a white tiled room as surgically clean as himself with three or four small glistening instruments still boiling steaming hot and half a dozen breathless assistants almost as immaculatus himself with his gown cap and mask adjusted his gloves finally on and the faintest possible little grin twitching oddly at the corner of his mouth he went in as they say to a newborn baby's tortured twisted spine and took out fifty years perhaps of hunched back pain and shame and morbid passions flourishing banefully in the dark shades of a disordered life at half past twelve he did an appendix operation on the only son of his best friend at one o'clock he did another appendix operation whom it was on didn't matter it couldn't worse on anyone at half past one no one remembered to feed him at two in another man's operation he saw the richest merchant in the city go wafted out into eternity on the fumes of ether taken for the lancing of his die at three o'clock passing the open door of one of the public waiting rooms an Italian peasant woman rushed out and spat in his face because her tubercular daughter had just died at the sanitarium where the man's money had sent her only this one wild defiling moment did the lust for alcohol search up in him again search clamorously brutally absolutely mercilessly as though in all the known cousins of the world only interminable raw whiskey was hot enough to cauterize a polluted consciousness at half past three as soon as he could change his clothes again he rebroke and reset an acrobat's priceless leg at five o'clock more to rest himself than anything else he went up to the autopsy amphitheater to look over an exhibit of enlarged hearts whose troubles were permanently over at six o'clock just as he was leaving the great building with all its harrowing sights sounds and smells a preemptory telephone call from one of the younger surgeons of the city summoned him back into the stuffy inn doctor favor yes this is merkley yes can you come immediately and help me with that fractured skull case i was telling you about this morning we'll have to tripan it right away tripan nothing grunted the senior surgeon i've got to go home early tonight and help catch a canary catch a what gasped the younger surgeon a canary and the senior surgeon merthlessly a what roared the younger man oh shut up you damned fool of course i'll come to the senior surgeon there was no boy left in the senior surgeon when he reached home that night gray with road travel haggard with strain and fatigue it was long long after the rosy sunset time long long after the yellow supper light that he came dragging up through the sweet scented dusk of the garden and threw himself down without greeting of any sort on the top step of the piazza where the white linen nurses' skirts glowed palely through the gloom well i put a canary bird back into its cage for you he confided laconically it was a little chapped soul it sure would have gotten away before morning who was the man that tried to turn it loose this time asked the white linen nurse i didn't say that anybody did growl the senior surgeon oh said the white linen nurse oh quite palpably a little shiver of flesh and starch went rustling through her i've had a wonderful day too she confided softly i've cleaned the attic and darned nine pairs of your stockings and body sewing machine and started to make you a white silk negligee shirt for a surprise eh jerked the senior surgeon the jerk seemed to liberate suddenly the faint vibration of dishes and the sound of ice knockingliciously against a glass oh have you had any supper sir asked the white linen nurse with a prodigious sigh the senior surgeon threw his head back against the piazza railing and stretched his legs a little further out along the piazza floor supper he groaned no nor dinner nor breakfast nor any other blankety blank meal as far back as i can remember janglingly in his voice fatigue hunger nerves crashed together like the slammed notes of a piano but i wouldn't move now he snarled blankety blank blank foods in christendom were piled blankety blank blank high on all the blankety blank blank blank tables in this whole blankety blank blank house ecstatically the white linen nurse clapped her hands oh that's just exactly what i hoped you'd say she cried cause the supper's right here here snapped the senior surgeon tempestuously began all over again i tell you i wouldn't lift my little finger if all the blankety blank blank blank oh goody then said the white linen nurse cause now i can feed you i sort of miss fussing with the canary birds she added wistfully feed me roared the senior surgeon again something started a lump of ice tinkling faintly nithing glass feed me he began all over again yet with a fragrant strawberry half as big as a peach held out suddenly under his nose just from sheer irresistible instinct he bit out at it and nipped the white linen nurse's finger instead ouch sir said the white linen nurse mumblingly down from an upstairs window as from a face flattered smoochingly against a wire screen the peremptory summons issued peach peach called an angry little voice if you don't come to bed now i'll say my curses instead of my prayers a trifle nervously the white linen nurse scrambled to her feet maybe i'd better go she said maybe you had said the senior surgeon quite definitely at the edge of the threshold the white linen nurse turned for an instant good night doctor faber she whispered good night ray mal greger faber said the senior surgeon good night what gasped the white linen nurse good night ray mal greger faber repeated the senior surgeon clutching at her skirt says though a mouse or after her the white linen nurse went scuttling up the stairs very late on into the night the senior surgeon lay there on his piazza floor staring out into his garden very companiably from time to time like a tame firefly a little bright spark covered and glowed for an instant above the bowl of his pipe puff puff puff dose dose dose throb throb throb on and on and on and on into the sweet scented night end of chapter 9