The White Linen Nurse Part 10

A little twitch of defiance flickered across the White Linen Nurse's face. "All the same," she a.s.serted stubbornly, "if some one would only tell me what to do--I know I could do it!"

Horridly from some unlocatable quarter of the engine an alarming little tremor quickened suddenly and was hushed again.

"Get out of here--quick!" stormed the Senior Surgeon's ghastly face.

"I won't!" said the White Linen Nurse's face. "Until you tell me--what to do!"

Brutally for an instant the ingenuous blue eyes and the cynical gray eyes battled each other.

"_Can_ you do what you're told?" faltered the Senior Surgeon.

"Oh, yes," said the White Linen Nurse.

"I mean can you do exactly--what you're told?" gasped the Senior Surgeon. "Can you follow directions, I mean? Can you follow them--explicitly? Or are you one of those people who listens only to her own judgment?"

"Oh, but I haven't got any--judgment," protested the White Linen Nurse.

Palpably in the Senior Surgeon's blood-shot eyes the leisurely seeming diagnosis leaped to precipitous conclusions.

"Then get out of here--quick--for G.o.d's sake--and get to work!" he ordered.

Cautiously the White Linen Nurse jerked herself back into freedom and crawled around and stared at the Senior Surgeon through the wheel-spokes again. Like one worrying out some intricate mathematical problem his mental strain was pulsing visibly through his closed eyelids.

"Yes, sir?" prodded the White Linen Nurse.

"Keep still!" snapped the Senior Surgeon. "I've got to think," he said.

"I've got to work it out! All in a moment you've got to learn to run the car. All in a moment! It's awful!"

"Oh, I don't mind, sir," affirmed the White Linen Nurse serenely.

Frenziedly the Senior Surgeon rooted one cheek into the mud again. "You don't--_mind_?" he groaned. "You don't--_mind_? Why, you've got to learn--everything! Everything--from--the very beginning!"

"Oh, that's all right, sir," crooned the White Linen Nurse.

Ominously from somewhere a horrid sound creaked again. The Senior Surgeon did not stop to argue any further.

"Now come here," ordered the Senior Surgeon. "I'm going to--I'm going to--" Startlingly his voice weakened,--trailed off into nothingness,--and rallied suddenly with exaggerated bruskness. "Look here now! For Heaven's sake use your brains! I'm going to dictate to you--very slowly--one thing at a time--just what to do!"

Quite astonis.h.i.+ngly the White Linen Nurse sank down on her knees and began to grin at him. "Oh, no, sir," she said. "I couldn't do it that way,--not 'one thing at a time.' Oh, no indeed, sir! No!" Absolute finality was in her voice,--the inviolable stubbornness of the perfectly good-natured person.

"You'll do it the way I tell you to!" roared the Senior Surgeon struggling vainly to ease one shoulder or stretch one knee-joint.

"Oh, no, sir," beamed the White Linen Nurse. "Not one thing at a time!

Oh, no, I couldn't do it that way! Oh, no, sir, I won't do it that way--one thing at a time," she persisted hurriedly. "Why, you might faint away or something might happen--right in the middle of it--right between one direction and another--and I wouldn't know at all--what to turn on or off next--and it might take off one of your legs, you know, or an arm. Oh, no,--not one thing at a time!"

"Good-by--then," croaked the Senior Surgeon. "I'm as good as dead now."

A single shudder went through him,--a last futile effort to stretch himself.

"Good-by," said the White Linen Nurse. "Good-by, sir.--I'd heaps rather have you die--perfectly whole--like that--of your own accord--than have me run the risk of starting the car full-tilt and chopping you up so--or dragging you off so--that you didn't find it convenient to tell me--how to stop the car."

"You're a--a--a--" spluttered the Senior Surgeon indistinguishably.

"Crinkle-crackle," went that mysterious, horrid sound from somewhere in the machinery.

"Oh my G.o.d!" surrendered the Senior Surgeon. "Do it your own--d.a.m.ned way! Only--only--" His voice cracked raspingly.

"Steady! Steady there!" said the White Linen Nurse. Except for a sudden odd pucker at the end of her nose her expression was still perfectly serene. "Now begin at the beginning," she begged. "Quick! Tell me everything--just the way I must do it! Quick--quick--quick!"

Twice the Senior Surgeon's lips opened and shut with a vain effort to comply with her request.

"But you can't do it," he began all over again. "It isn't possible. You haven't got the mind!"

"Maybe I haven't," said the White Linen Nurse. "But I've got the memory.

Hurry!"

"Creak," said the funny little something in the machinery.

"Creak--drip--bubble!"

"Oh, get in there quick!" surrendered the Senior Surgeon. "Sit down behind the wheel!" he shouted after her flying footsteps. "Are you there? For G.o.d's sake--are you there? Do you see those two little levers where your right hand comes? For G.o.d's sake--don't you know what a lever is? Quick now! Do just what I tell you!"

A little jerkily then, but very clearly, very concisely, the Senior Surgeon called out to the White Linen Nurse just how every lever, every pedal should be manipulated to start the car!

Absolutely accurately, absolutely indelibly the White Linen Nurse visualized each separate detail in her abnormally retentive mind!

"But you can't--possibly remember it!" groaned the Senior Surgeon.

"You can't--possibly! And probably the d.a.m.n car's _bust_ and won't start--anyway--and--!" Abruptly the speech ended in a guttural snarl of despair.

"Don't be a--blight!" screamed the White Linen Nurse. "I've never forgotten anything yet, sir!"

Very tensely she straightened up suddenly in her seat. Her expression was no longer even remotely pleasant. Along her sensitive, fluctuant nostrils the casual crinkle of distaste and suspicion had deepened suddenly into sheer dilating terror.

"Left foot--press down--hard--left pedal!" she began to sing-song to herself.

"No! _Right_ foot!--_right_ foot!" corrected the Little Girl blunderingly from somewhere close in the gra.s.s.

"Inside lever--pull--way--back!" persisted the White Linen Nurse resolutely as she switched on the current.

"No! _Outside_ lever! _Outside! Outside_!" contradicted the Little Girl.

"Shut your darned mouth!" screeched the White Linen Nurse, her hand on the throttle as she tried the self starter.

Bruised as he was, wretched, desperately endangered there under the car the Senior Surgeon could almost have grinned at the girl's terse, unconscious mimicry of his own most venomous tones.

Then with all the forty-eight l.u.s.ty, ebullient years of his life s.n.a.t.c.hed from his lips like an untasted cup, and one single noxious, death-flavored second urged,--forced,--crammed down his choking throat, he felt the great car quicken and start.

"G.o.d!" said the Senior Surgeon. Just "G.o.d!" The G.o.d of mud, he meant!

The G.o.d of brackish gra.s.s! The G.o.d of a man lying still hopeful under more than two tons' weight of unaccountable mechanism, with a novice in full command.