The White Linen Nurse by Abbott, Eleanor Hallowell - CHAPTER VII

The White Linen Nurse

CHAPTER VII

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.

“What is there about my offer--that you don't like?” he demanded earnestly. “Is it the whole idea that offends you? Or just the way I put it? 'General Heartwork 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?”

“Yes, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse.

“Yes what?” insisted the Senior Surgeon.

“Yes--_sir_,” flushed the White Linen Nurse.

Very meditatively the Senior Surgeon reconsidered his phrasing. “'General Heartwork for a Family of Two'? U--m--m.” Quite abruptly even the tenseness of his manner faded from him, leaving his face astonishingly quiet, astonishingly gentle. “But how else, Miss Malgregor,” he queried, “How else should a widower with a child proffer marriage to a--to a young girl 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?”

“Yes, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse.

“But even if I had loved you, Miss Malgregor,” 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 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 reduplicated while life lasts.”

“Yes, sir,” said the White Linen Nurse.

Bleakly across the Senior Surgeon's face something gray that was not years shadowed suddenly and was gone again.

“Even so, Miss Malgregor,” 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_ place. It's pretty much up to a man then I think,--though it 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--”

Unconsciously the White Linen Nurse's lax shoulders quickened, and the sudden upward tilt of her chin was as frankly interrogative as a French inflection. “Yes, sir,” she said.

“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 turn 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 gray 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-tortured 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.”

Mechanically 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.” Mirthless 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'd been a boy,” he acknowledged grimly. “But to see all your virile--masculine vices come back at you--so sissified--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 man and a very little girl,--not guaranteed,--not even recommended,--offered merely 'As Is' in the honest trade-phrase 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 inexcusably 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 mince matters, Miss Malgregor, nor has your training, I trust, made you one from whom truths must be veiled. I am a man with all a man's needs,--mental, moral, physical. My child is a child with all 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, happened to fall down stairs in the morning and break your back!'”

Across the Senior Surgeon's face a real smile lightened suddenly.

“Really, Miss Malgregor,” 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 Heartwork 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,” confided 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 a right to know that I've 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 isn't 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 Malgregor, dipsomania runs rampant. Two of my brothers, my father, my grandfather, my great grandfather before him, have all gone down as the temperance people would say into 'drunkards' 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--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 mawkishly 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 huskily, “for eleven months of the year,--eleven months,--each day reeking from dawn to dark with the driving, nerve-wracking, heart-wringing work that falls to my profession, I lead an absolutely abstemious 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, care-free, trail-tramping, salmon-fighting,--whisky-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 temperishly irritable,--a little unduly sensitive about being greeted as a returned jail-bird,--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.”

Furtively under his glowering brows he stopped and searched the White Linen Nurse's imperturbable face. “It's an--established custom, you understand,” he rewarned 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 some one 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,” conceded the White Linen Nurse. Blandly she lifted her lovely eyes to his. “Father's like that!” she confided amiably. “Once a year,--just Easter Sunday only,--he always buys him a brand new suit of clothes and goes to church. And it 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.” Worriedly two black thoughts puckered between her eyebrows. “And always,” she said, “he makes Mother and me go up to Halifax beforehand 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 brightly.

“Oh, no!” said the White Linen Nurse. “Oh, no, sir! Oh, no indeed, sir!” Quite 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 eye-wink and another what he wanted about anything,--let alone marrying a perfect stranger.”

Instantly 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 to-day 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 notice, to get into the hospital,” drawled the Senior Surgeon a bit grumpily. “And 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?” he questioned tartly.

“'A High School education or its--equivocation' is what we girls call it,” confessed the White Linen Nurse demurely. “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,” grinned the Senior Surgeon in spite of himself. “Oh, not at all, Miss Malgregor! 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 defense of her father's intrinsic honor. “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, oh, I'm sure he'd never be--cheeky! Oh, no, sir! No!”

“Oh, very well then,” grinned the Senior Surgeon. “We can 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's 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.

“Y-e-s,” admitted the White Linen Nurse. “But I tell you it 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 babyhood 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 by the kerosene-lamp scar across his back? You mean that you and Joe have played house together so familiarly all your young tin-dish days that even your rag dolls called Joe 'Father'? You mean that since your earliest memory,--until a year or so ago,--Life has never 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 Joed with Joe's Joeness 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?”

“N--o, 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 Malgregor?” he asked a bit huskily.

“Rae,” she told him with some surprise.

The Senior Surgeon's eyes narrowed suddenly again.

“Damn it all, Rae,” 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!”

Impishly like a child, muscularly 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 nap 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 or the 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-fur nest.

All the birds _were_ there With yellow feathers instead of--hair, And bumble bees--and bumble bees-- And bumble bees?--And bumble bees--?

Frenziedly she began to burrow the back of her head into her Father's shoulder. “And bumble bees?--And bumble bees--?”

“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 the supreme achievement of a life-time swept away by some one careless joggle 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 'crocheted' 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. “'Crocheted 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.

Abruptly the White Linen Nurse stopped clapping her hands and began to wring them nervously in her lap instead. “Why--will--will!” she confessed demurely.

“Oh!” jumped the Senior Surgeon. “_Oh!”_ Then equally jerkily he began to pucker his eyebrows. “But for Heaven's sake--what's the 'crocheted 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 that tried 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 blitheness.

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 amiably.

“It's twenty minutes of nine, now. And the graduation was at eight!”

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