The White Linen Nurse Part 19

Stretched out full length in a big easy chair by his bed-room 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 wall-paper 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 gla.s.s,--china,--silver,--all scurrying consciously to the service of one man,--and that man,--_himself_.

Very, 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 k.n.o.b,--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, and cheerful white sheets reeking most conscientiously of cedar and lavender. Tiptoeing cautiously into the mystery he sensed at one astonished, grateful glance how the change of a part.i.tion, the re-adjustment of a proportion, had purged like a draft 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 play-room to be enlarged just there, that to save his soul he could not estimate whether the happy plan had originated in a purely practical brain or a purely compa.s.sionate heart.

Half proud of the brain, half touched by the heart, he pa.s.sed on exploringly through the new play-room 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 a head tilted suddenly backward the White Linen Nurse's laugh rang out in 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, ambidexterous hands that were the aching envy of all his colleagues. Interruptingly as he stared the voice of the young Wall Paper Man rose buoyantly from the lower hallway.

"Supper's all ready, 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 dining-room.

Standing patiently behind the Senior Surgeon's chair with a laudable desire to a.s.sist 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.

Conscientiously, 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 some one spoke about this year's weather.

Twice some one 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 friend's 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 _any one_,--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 astonis.h.i.+ngly 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, Lendicott Paber!" she screamed. "Don't you start in--sa.s.sing--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--Lendicott Faber!" she persisted heroically.

"_Lendicott?_" jumped the Senior Surgeon. "What are _you_--'Lendicotting' _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 Marma, I've got to call you 'Lendicott'! And Peach has got to call you 'Fat Father'!"

Frenziedly 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.

"G.o.d!" he said. "This gives me the _w.i.l.l.i.e.s_!" and strode tempestuously from the room.

Out in his own work-shop fortunately,--whatever the grotesque new pinkness,--whatever the grotesque new perkiness--his great free walking-s.p.a.ces 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,--wanly along the edge of his dingy book-shelves the little path furrowed,--wistfully at the deep bay-window where his favorite lilac bush budded whitely 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 re-commenced 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, baccha.n.a.lian Soul sweating its own way back to sanct.i.ty and leanness! Nerves always were in that vigil,--raw, rattling nerves clamoring vociferously to be repacked in their sedatives. Thirst also was in that vigil,--no mere whimpering tickle of the palate, but a drought of the tissues,--a consuming fire of the bones! Hurt pride was also there, and festering humiliation!

But more rasping, this particular night, than nerves, more poignant than thirst, more dangerously excitative even than 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 l.u.s.t for Life and Living,--a pa.s.sion bare of love yet pure of wantonness,--a pa.s.sion primitive,--protective,--inexorably proprietary,--engendered strangely in that one mad, suspicious moment at the edge of the summer house when every outraged male instinct in him had leaped to prove that--love or no love--the woman was--_his_. Up and down,--up and down,--round and round,--eight o'clock found the Senior Surgeon still pacing.

At half past eight the young Wall Paper Man came to say good-by to him.

"As long as Sister won't be alone any more, I guess I'll be moving on,"

beamed the Wall Paper Man. "There's a dance at home Sat.u.r.day 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.