Love Stories

Love Stories Page 1

by Mary Roberts Rinehart

  THE WORKS OF MARY ROBERTS RINEHART

  LOVE STORIES

  THE REVIEW OF REVIEWS COMPANYPublishers NEW YORK

  PUBLISHED BY ARRANGEMENTWITH GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY.

  Copyright, 1919, By George H. Doran Company

  Copyright, 1912, 1913, 1916, by the Curtis Publishing CompanyCopyright, 1912, by The McClure Publications, Inc.Copyright, 1917, by The Metropolitan Magazine Co.

  CONTENTS

  I TWENTY-TWO

  II JANE

  III IN THE PAVILION

  IV GOD'S FOOL

  V THE MIRACLE

  VI "ARE WE DOWNHEARTED? NO!"

  VII THE GAME

  LOVE STORIES

  TWENTY-TWO

  I

  The Probationer's name was really Nella Jane Brown, but she wasentered in the training school as N. Jane Brown. However, she meantwhen she was accepted to be plain Jane Brown. Not, of course, thatshe could ever be really plain.

  People on the outside of hospitals have a curious theory aboutnurses, especially if they are under twenty. They believe that theyhave been disappointed in love. They never think that they mayintend to study medicine later on, or that they may think nursing isa good and honourable career, or that they may really like to carefor the sick.

  The man in this story had the theory very hard.

  When he opened his eyes after the wall of the warehouse dropped, N.Jane Brown was sitting beside him. She had been practising countingpulses on him, and her eyes were slightly upturned and very earnest.

  There was a strong odour of burnt rags in the air, and the mansniffed. Then he put a hand to his upper lip--the right hand. Shewas holding his left.

  "Did I lose anything besides this?" he inquired. His littlemoustache was almost entirely gone. A gust of fire had accompaniedthe wall.

  "Your eyebrows," said Jane Brown.

  The man--he was as young for a man as Jane Brown was for anurse--the man lay quite still for a moment. Then:

  "I'm sorry to undeceive you," he said. "But my right leg is off."

  He said it lightly, because that is the way he took things. But hehad a strange singing in his ears.

  "I'm afraid it's broken. But you still have it." She smiled. She hada very friendly smile. "Have you any pain anywhere?"

  He was terribly afraid she would go away and leave him, so, althoughhe was quite comfortable, owing to a hypodermic he had had, hegroaned slightly. He was, at that time, not particularly interestedin Jane Brown, but he did not want to be alone. He closed his eyesand said feebly:

  "Water!"

  She gave him a teaspoonful, bending over him and being careful notto spill it down his neck. Her uniform crackled when she moved. Ithad rather too much starch in it.

  The man, whose name was Middleton, closed his eyes. Owing to themorphia, he had at least a hundred things he wished to discuss. Thetrouble was to fix on one out of the lot.

  "I feel like a bit of conversation," he observed. "How about you?"

  Then he saw that she was busy again. She held an old-fashionedhunting-case watch in her hand, and her eyes were fixed on hischest. At each rise and fall of the coverlet her lips moved. Mr.Middleton, who was feeling wonderful, experimented. He drew fourvery rapid breaths, and four very slow ones. He was rewarded byseeing her rush to a table and write something on a sheet of yellowpaper.

  "Resparation, very iregular," was what she wrote. She was not aparticularly good speller.

  After that Mr. Middleton slept for what he felt was a day and anight. It was really ten minutes by the hunting-case watch. Justlong enough for the Senior Surgical Interne, known in the school asthe S.S.I., to wander in, feel his pulse, approve of Jane Brown, andgo out.

  Jane Brown had risen nervously when he came in, and had profferedhim the order book and a clean towel, as she had been instructed. Hehad, however, required neither. He glanced over the record, changedthe spelling of "resparation," arranged his tie at the mirror, tookanother look at Jane Brown, and went out. He had not spoken.

  It was when his white-linen clad figure went out that Middletonwakened and found it was the same day. He felt at once likeconversation, and he began immediately. But the morphia did acurious thing to him. He was never afterward able to explain it. Itmade him create. He lay there and invented for Jane Brown afictitious person, who was himself. This person, he said, was anewspaper reporter, who had been sent to report the warehouse fire.He had got too close, and a wall had come down on him. He inventedthe newspaper, too, but, as Jane Brown had come from somewhere else,she did not notice this.

  In fact, after a time he felt that she was not as really interestedas she might have been, so he introduced a love element. He was, ashas been said, of those who believe that nurses go into hospitalsbecause of being blighted. So he introduced a Mabel, suppressing herother name, and boasted, in a way he afterward remembered withhorror, that Mabel was in love with him. She was, he related,something or other on his paper.

  At the end of two hours of babbling, a businesslike person in acap--the Probationer wears no cap--relieved Jane Brown, and spilledsome beef tea down his neck.

  Now, Mr. Middleton knew no one in that city. He had been motoringthrough, and he had, on seeing the warehouse burning, abandoned hismachine for a closer view. He had left it with the engine running,and, as a matter of fact, it ran for four hours, when it died ofstarvation, and was subsequently interred in a city garage. However,he owned a number of cars, so he wasted no thought on that one. Hewas a great deal more worried about his eyebrows, and, naturally,about his leg.

  When he had been in the hospital ten hours it occurred to him tonotify his family. But he put it off for two reasons: first, itwould be a lot of trouble; second, he had no reason to think theyparticularly wanted to know. They all had such a lot of things todo, such as bridge and opening country houses and going to theSprings. They were really overwhelmed, without anything new, andthey had never been awfully interested in him anyhow.

  He was not at all bitter about it.

  That night Mr. Middleton--but he was now officially "Twenty-two," bythat system of metonymy which designates a hospital private patientby the number of his room--that night "Twenty-two" had rather a badtime, between his leg and his conscience. Both carried ondisgracefully. His leg stabbed, and his conscience reminded him ofMabel, and that if one is going to lie, there should at least be areason. To lie out of the whole cloth----!

  However, toward morning, with what he felt was the entirepharmacopoeia inside him, and his tongue feeling like a tar roof, hemade up his mind to stick to his story, at least as far as the younglady with the old-fashioned watch was concerned. He had a sort ofcreed, which shows how young he was, that one should never explainto a girl.

  There was another reason still. There had been a faint sparkle inthe eyes of the young lady with the watch while he was lying to her.He felt that she was seeing him in heroic guise, and the thoughtpleased him. It was novel.

  To tell the truth, he had been getting awfully bored with himselfsince he left college. Everything he tried to do, somebody elsecould do so much better. And he comforted himself with this, that hewould have been a journalist if he could, or at least have publisheda newspaper. He knew what was wrong with about a hundred newspapers.

  He decided to confess about Mabel, but to hold fast to journalism.Then he lay in bed and watched for the Probationer to come back.

  However, here things began to go wrong. He did not see Jane Brownagain. There were day nurses and night nurses and reliefs, and_internes_ and Staff and the Head Nurse and the First Assistantand--everything but Jane Brown. And at last he inquired for her.

  "The first day I was in here," he said to Miss Willoughby, "therewas a little girl here wi
thout a cap. I don't know her name. But Ihaven't seen her since."

  Miss Willoughby, who, if she had been disappointed in love, hadcertainly had time to forget it, Miss Willoughby reflected.

  "Without a cap? Then it was only one of the probationers."

  "You don't remember which one?"

  But she only observed that probationers were always coming andgoing, and it wasn't worth while learning their names until theywere accepted. And that, anyhow, probationers should never be sentto private patients, who are paying a lot and want the best.

  "Really," she added, "I don't know what the school is coming to.Since this war in Europe every girl wants to wear a uniform and beready to go to the front if we have trouble. All sorts of sillychildren are applying. We have one now, on this very floor, not aday over nineteen."

  "Who is she?" asked Middleton. He felt that this was the one. Shewas so exactly the sort Miss Willoughby would object to.

  "Jane Brown," snapped Miss Willoughby. "A little, namby-pamby,mush-and-milk creature, afraid of her own shadow."

  Now, Jane Brown, at that particular moment, was sitting in herlittle room in the dormitory, with the old watch ticking on thestand so she would not over-stay her off duty. She was aching withfatigue from her head, with its smooth and shiny hair, to her feet,which were in a bowl of witch hazel and hot water. And she wascrying over a letter she was writing.

  Jane Brown had just come from her first death. It had taken place inH ward, where she daily washed window-sills, and disinfected stands,and carried dishes in and out. And it had not been what she hadexpected. In the first place, the man had died for hours. She hadnever heard of this. She had thought of death as coming quickly--aglance of farewell, closing eyes, and--rest. But for hours and hoursthe struggle had gone on, a fight for breath that all the ward couldhear. And he had not closed his eyes at all. They were turned up,and staring.

  The Probationer had suffered horribly, and at last she had gonebehind the screen and folded her hands and closed her eyes, and saidvery low:

  "Dear God--please take him quickly."

  He had stopped breathing almost immediately. But that may have beena coincidence.

  However, she was not writing that home. Between gasps she wastelling the humours of visiting day in the ward, and of how kindevery one was to her, which, if not entirely true, was not entirelyuntrue. They were kind enough when they had time to be, or when theyremembered her. Only they did not always remember her.

  She ended by saying that she was quite sure they meant to accept herwhen her three months was up. It was frightfully necessary that shebe accepted.

  She sent messages to all the little town, which had seen her offalmost _en masse_. And she added that the probationers received theregular first-year allowance of eight dollars a month, and she couldmake it do nicely--which was quite true, unless she kept on breakingthermometers when she shook them down.

  At the end she sent her love to everybody, including even worthlessJohnny Fraser, who cut the grass and scrubbed the porches; and, ofcourse, to Doctor Willie. He was called Doctor Willie because hisfather, who had taken him into partnership long ago, was DoctorWill. It never had seemed odd, although Doctor Willie was nowsixty-five, and a saintly soul.

  Curiously enough, her letter was dated April first. Under that verydate, and about that time of the day, a health officer in a near-byborough was making an entry regarding certain coloured gentlemenshipped north from Louisiana to work on a railroad. Opposite thename of one Augustus Baird he put a cross. This indicated thatAugustus Baird had not been vaccinated.

  By the sixth of April "Twenty-two" had progressed from splints to aplaster cast, and was being most awfully bored. Jane Brown had notreturned, and there was a sort of relentless maturity about thenurses who looked after him that annoyed him.

  Lying there, he had a good deal of time to study them, and somehowhis recollection of the girl with the hunting-case watch did notseem to fit her in with these kindly and efficient women. He couldnot, for instance, imagine her patronising the Senior SurgicalInterne in a deferential but unmistakable manner, or good-naturedlybullying the First Assistant, who was a nervous person in shoes toosmall for her, as to their days off duty.

  Twenty-two began to learn things about the hospital. For instance,the day nurse, while changing his pillow slips, would observe thatNineteen was going to be operated on that day, and close her lipsover further information. But when the afternoon relief, whilegiving him his toothbrush after lunch, said there was a mostinteresting gall-stone case in nineteen, and the night nurse, inreply to a direct question, told Nineteen's name, but nothing else,Twenty-two had a fair working knowledge of the day's events.

  He seemed to learn about everything but Jane Brown. He knew when anew baby came, and was even given a glimpse of one, showing, heconsidered, about the colour and general contour of a maraschinocherry. And he learned soon that the god of the hospital is theStaff, although worship did not blind the nurses to theirweaknesses. Thus the older men, who had been trained before the dayof asepsis and modern methods, were revered but carefully watched.They would get out of scrubbing their hands whenever they could, andthey hated their beards tied up with gauze. The nurses, keen,competent and kindly, but shrewd, too, looked after these elderlyrecalcitrants; loved a few, hated some, and presented to the worldunbroken ranks for their defence.

  Twenty-two learned also the story of the First Assistant, who was inlove with one of the Staff, who was married, and did not care forher anyhow. So she wore tight shoes, and was always beautifullywaved, and read Browning.

  She had a way of coming in and saying brightly, as if to reassureherself:

  "Good morning, Twenty-two. Well, God is still in His heaven, andall's well with the world."

  Twenty-two got to feeling awfully uncomfortable about her. She usedto bring him flowers and sit down a moment to rest her feet, whichgenerally stung. And she would stop in the middle of a sentence andlook into space, but always with a determined smile.

  He felt awfully uncomfortable. She was so neat and so efficient--andso tragic. He tried to imagine being hopelessly in love, and tryingto live on husks of Browning. Not even Mrs. Browning.

  The mind is a curious thing. Suddenly, from thinking of Mrs.Browning, he thought of N. Jane Brown. Of course not by thatridiculous name. He had learned that she was stationed on thatfloor. And in the same flash he saw the Senior Surgical Interneswanking about in white ducks and just the object for a probationerto fall in love with. He lay there, and pulled the beginning of thenew moustache, and reflected. The First Assistant was pinning aspray of hyacinth in her cap.

  "Look here," he said. "Why can't I be put in a wheeled chair and getabout? One that I can manipulate myself," he added craftily.

  She demurred. Indeed, everybody demurred when he put it up to them.But he had gone through the world to the age of twenty-four, gettinghis own way about ninety-seven per cent. of the time. He got it thistime, consisting of a new cast, which he named Elizabeth, and aroller-chair, and he spent a full day learning how to steer himselfaround.

  Then, on the afternoon of the third day, rolling back toward theelevator and the _terra incognita_ which lay beyond, he saw a sign.He stared at it blankly, because it interfered considerably with aplan he had in mind. The sign was of tin, and it said:

  "No private patients allowed beyond here."

  Twenty-two sat in his chair and stared at it. The plaster caststretched out in front of him, and was covered by a grey blanket.With the exception of the trifling formality of trousers, he waswell dressed in a sack coat, a shirt, waistcoat, and a sort ofcollege-boy collar and tie, which one of the orderlies had purchasedfor him. His other things were in that extremely expensive Englishcar which the city was storing.

  The plain truth is that Twenty-two was looking for Jane Brown. Sinceshe had not come to him, he must go to her. He particularly wantedto set her right as to Mabel. And he felt, too, that that trickabout respirations had not been entirely fair.

  He
was, of course, not in the slightest degree in love with her. Hehad only seen her once, and then he had had a broken leg and aquarter grain of morphia and a burned moustache and no eyebrows leftto speak of.

  But there was the sign. It was hung to a nail beside the elevatorshaft. And far beyond, down the corridor, was somebody in a bluedress and no cap. It might be anybody, but again----

  Twenty-two looked around. The elevator had just gone down at itsusual rate of a mile every two hours. In the convalescent parlour,where private patients _en negligee_ complained about the hospitalfood, the nurse in charge was making a new cap. Over all thehospital brooded an after-luncheon peace.

  Twenty-two wheeled up under the sign and considered his average ofninety-seven per cent. Followed in sequence these events: (a)Twenty-two wheeled back to the parlour, where old Mr. Simond's caneleaned against a table, and, while engaging that gentleman inconversation, possessed himself of the cane. (b) Wheeled back to theelevator. (c) Drew cane from beneath blanket. (d) Unhooked sign withcane and concealed both under blanket. (e) Worked his way back alongthe forbidden territory, past I and J until he came to H ward.

  Jane Brown was in H ward.

  She was alone, and looking very professional. There is nothing quiteso professional as a new nurse. She had, indeed, reached a pointwhere, if she took a pulse three times, she got somewhat similarresults. There had been a time when they had run something likethis: 56--80--120----

  Jane Brown was taking pulses. It was a visiting day, and all thebeds had fresh white spreads, tucked in neatly at the foot. In theexact middle of the centre table with its red cloth, was a vase ofyellow tulips. The sun came in and turned them to golden flame.

  Jane Brown was on duty alone and taking pulses with one eye whileshe watched the visitors with the other. She did the watching betterthan she did the pulses. For instance, she was distinctly aware thatStanislas Krzykolski's wife, in the bed next the end, had just slida half-dozen greasy cakes, sprinkled with sugar, under his pillow.She knew, however, that not only grease but love was in those cakes,and she did not intend to confiscate them until after Mrs.Krzykolski had gone.

  More visitors came. Shuffling and self-conscious mill-workers,walking on their toes; draggled women; a Chinese boy; a girl with arouged face and a too confident manner. A hum of conversation hungover the long room. The sunlight came in and turned to glory, notonly the tulips and the red tablecloth, but also the brass basins,the fireplace fender, and the Probationer's hair.

  Twenty-two sat unnoticed in the doorway. A young girl, very lame,with a mandolin, had just entered the ward. In the little stir ofher arrival, Twenty-two had time to see that Jane Brown was wortheven all the trouble he had taken, and more. Really, to see JaneBrown properly, she should have always been seen in the sun. She wasthat sort.

  The lame girl sat down in the centre of the ward, and the buzz diedaway. She was not pretty, and she was very nervous. Twenty-twofrowned a trifle.

  "Poor devils," he said to himself. But Jane Brown put away herhunting-case watch, and the lame girl swept the ward with soft eyesthat had in them a pity that was almost a benediction.

  Then she sang. Her voice was like her eyes, very sweet and ratherfrightened, but tender. And suddenly something a little hard andselfish in Twenty-two began to be horribly ashamed of itself. And,for no earthly reason in the world, he began to feel like a cumbererof the earth. Before she had finished the first song, he wasthinking that perhaps when he was getting about again, he might runover to France for a few months in the ambulance service. A fellowreally ought to do his bit.

  At just about that point Jane Brown turned and saw him. And althoughhe had run all these risks to get to her, and even then had anextremely cold tin sign lying on his knee under the blanket, atfirst she did not know him. The shock of this was almost too muchfor him. In all sorts of places people were glad to see him,especially women. He was astonished, but it was good for him.

  She recognised him almost immediately, however, and flushed alittle, because she knew he had no business there. She was awfullybound up with rules.

  "I came back on purpose to see you," said Twenty-two, when at lastthe lame girl had limped away. "Because, that day I came in and youlooked after me, you know, I--must have talked a lot of nonsense."

  "Morphia makes some people talk," she said. It was said in an exactcopy of the ward nurse's voice, a frightfully professional andimpersonal tone.

  "But," said Twenty-two, stirring uneasily, "I said a lot that wasn'ttrue. You may have forgotten, but I haven't. Now that about a girlnamed Mabel, for instance----"

  He stirred again, because, after all, what did it matter what he hadsaid? She was gazing over the ward. She was not interested in him.She had almost forgotten him. And as he stirred Mr. Simond's canefell out. It was immediately followed by the tin sign, which onlygradually subsided, face up, on the bare floor, in a slowlydiminishing series of crashes.

  Jane Brown stooped and picked them both up and placed them on hislap. Then, very stern, she marched out of the ward into thecorridor, and there subsided into quiet hysterics of mirth.Twenty-two, who hated to be laughed at, followed her in the chair,looking extremely annoyed.

  "What else was I to do?" he demanded, after a time. "Of course, ifyou report it, I'm gone."

  "What do you intend to do with it now?" she asked. All herprofessional manner had gone, and she looked alarmingly young.

  "If I put it back, I'll only have to steal it again. Because I amabsolutely bored to death in that room of mine. I have played athousand games of solitaire."

  The Probationer looked around. There was no one in sight.

  "I should think," she suggested, "that if you slipped it behind thatradiator, no one would ever know about it."

  Fortunately, the ambulance gong set up a clamour below the windowjust then, and no one heard one of the hospital's most cherishedrules going, as one may say, into the discard.

  The Probationer leaned her nose against the window and looked down.A coloured man was being carried in on a stretcher. Although she didnot know it--indeed, never did know it--the coloured gentleman inquestion was one Augustus Baird.

  Soon afterward Twenty-two squeaked--his chair neededoiling--squeaked back to his lonely room and took stock. He foundthat he was rid of Mabel, but was still a reporter, hurt in doinghis duty. He had let this go because he saw that duty was a sort offetish with the Probationer. And since just now she liked him forwhat she thought he was, why not wait to tell her until she likedhim for himself?

  He hoped she was going to like him, because she was going to see hima lot. Also, he liked her even better than he had remembered that hedid. She had a sort of thoroughbred look that he liked. And he likedthe way her hair was soft and straight and shiny. And he liked theway she was all business and no nonsense. And the way she countedpulses, with her lips moving and a little frown between hereyebrows. And he liked her for being herself--which is, after all,the reason why most men like the women they like, and extremelyreasonable.

  The First Assistant loaned him Browning that afternoon, and he read"Pippa Passes." He thought Pippa must have looked like theProbationer.

  The Head was a bit querulous that evening. The Heads of TrainingSchools get that way now and then, although they generally reveal itonly to the First Assistant. They have to do so many irreconcilablethings, such as keeping down expenses while keeping up requisitions,and remembering the different sorts of sutures the Staff likes, andreceiving the Ladies' Committee, and conducting prayers andlectures, and knowing by a swift survey of a ward that the standshave been carbolised and all the toe-nails cut. Because it isamazing the way toe-nails grow in bed.

  The Head would probably never have come out flatly, but she had awretched cold, and the First Assistant was giving her a mustardfootbath, which was very hot. The Head sat up with a blanket overher shoulders, and read lists while her feet took on the blush ofripe apples. And at last she said:

  "How is that Probationer with the ridiculous name getting along?"<
br />
  The First Assistant poured in more hot water.

  "N. Jane?" she asked. "Well, she's a nice little thing, and sheseems willing. But, of course----"

  The Head groaned.

  "Nineteen!" she said. "And no character at all. I detest flutterypeople. She flutters the moment I go into the ward."

  The First Assistant sat back and felt of her cap, which was ofstarched tulle and was softening a bit from the steam. She felt athrill of pity for the Probationer. She, too, had once felt flutterywhen the Head came in.

  "She is very anxious to stay," she observed. "She works hard, too.I----"

  "She has no personality, no decision," said the Head, and sneezedtwice. She was really very wretched, and so she was unfair. "She ispretty and sweet. But I cannot run my training school on prettinessand sweetness. Has Doctor Harvard come in yet?"

  "I--I think not," said the First Assistant. She looked up quickly,but the Head was squeezing a lemon in a cup of hot water beside her.

  Now, while the Head was having a footbath, and Twenty-two was havinga stock-taking, and Augustus Baird was having his symptoms recorded,Jane Brown was having a shock.

  She heard an unmistakable shuffling of feet in the corridor.

  Sounds take on much significance in a hospital, and probationersstudy them, especially footsteps. It gives them a moment sometimesto think what to do next.

  _Internes_, for instance, frequently wear rubber soles on theirwhite shoes and have a way of slipping up on one. And the engineergoes on a half run, generally accompanied by the clanking of a toolor two. And the elevator man runs, too, because generally the bellis ringing. And ward patients shuffle about in carpet slippers, andthe pharmacy clerk has a brisk young step, inclined to be jaunty.

  But it is the Staff which is always unmistakable. It comes along thecorridor deliberately, inexorably. It plants its feet firmly andwith authority. It moves with the inevitability of fate, with thepride of royalty, with the ease of the best made-to-order boots. Thering of a Staff member's heel on a hospital corridor is the mostauthoritative sound on earth. He may be the gentlest soul in theworld, but he will tread like royalty.

  But this was not Staff. Jane Brown knew this sound, and it filledher with terror. It was the scuffling of four pairs of feet,carefully instructed not to keep step. It meant, in other words, astretcher. But perhaps it was not coming to her. Ah, but it was!

  Panic seized Jane Brown. She knew there were certain things to do,but they went out of her mind like a cat out of a cellar window.However, the ward was watching. It had itself, generally speaking,come in feet first. It knew the procedure. So, instructed by lowvoices from the beds around, Jane Brown feverishly tore the spreadoff the emergency bed and drew it somewhat apart from its fellows.Then she stood back and waited.

  Came in four officers from the police patrol. Came in the SeniorSurgical Interne. Came two convalescents from the next ward to starein at the door. Came the stretcher, containing a quiet figure undera grey blanket.

  Twenty-two, at that exact moment, was putting a queen on a ten spotand pretending there is nothing wrong about cheating oneself.

  In a very short time the quiet figure was on the bed, and the SeniorSurgical Interne was writing in the order book: "Prepare foroperation."

  Jane Brown read it over his shoulder, which is not etiquette.

  "But--I can't," she quavered. "I don't know how. I won't touch him.He's--he's bloody!"

  Then she took another look at the bed and she saw--Johnny Fraser.

  Now Johnny had, in his small way, played a part in the Probationer'slife, such as occasionally scrubbing porches or borrowing a halfdollar or being suspected of stealing the eggs from the henhouse.But _that_ Johnny Fraser had been a wicked, smiling imp, much givento sitting in the sun.

  Here lay another Johnny Fraser, a quiet one, who might never againfeel the warm earth through his worthless clothes on his worthlessyoung body. A Johnny of closed eyes and slow, noisy breathing.

  "Why, Johnny!" said the Probationer, in a strangled voice.

  The Senior Surgical Interne was interested.

  "Know him?" he said.

  "He is a boy from home." She was still staring at this quiet,un-impudent figure.

  The Senior Surgical Interne eyed her with an eye that was onlypartially professional. Then he went to the medicine closet andpoured a bit of aromatic ammonia into a glass.

  "Sit down and drink this," he said, in a very masculine voice. Heliked to feel that he could do something for her. Indeed, there wassomething almost proprietary in the way he took her pulse.

  Some time after the early hospital supper that evening Twenty-two,having oiled his chair with some olive oil from his tray, made aclandestine trip through the twilight of the corridor back of theelevator shaft. To avoid scandal he pretended interest in otherwards, but he gravitated, as a needle to the pole, to H. And therehe found the Probationer, looking rather strained, and mothering aquiet figure on a bed.

  He was a trifle puzzled at her distress, for she made no secret ofJohnny's status in the community. What he did not grasp was thatJohnny Fraser was a link between this new and rather terrible worldof the hospital and home. It was not Johnny alone, it was Johnnyscrubbing a home porch and doing it badly, it was Johnny in herfather's old clothes, it was Johnny fishing for catfish in thecreek, or lending his pole to one of the little brothers whosepictures were on her table in the dormitory.

  Twenty-two felt a certain depression. He reflected rather grimlythat he had been ten days missing and that no one had apparentlygiven a hang whether he turned up or not.

  "Is he going to live?" he inquired. He could see that the ward nursehad an eye on him, and was preparing for retreat.

  "O yes," said Jane Brown. "I think so now. The _interne_ says theyhave had a message from Doctor Willie. He is coming." There was abeautiful confidence in her tone.

  Things moved very fast with the Probationer for the next twenty-fourhours. Doctor Willie came, looking weary but smiling benevolently.Jane Brown met him in a corridor and kissed him, as, indeed, she hadbeen in the habit of doing since her babyhood.

  "Where is the young rascal?" said Doctor Willie. "Up to his oldtricks, Nellie, and struck by a train." He put a hand under herchin, which is never done to the members of the training school in ahospital, and searched her face with his kind old eyes. "Well, howdoes it go, Nellie?"

  Jane Brown swallowed hard.

  "All right," she managed. "They want to operate, Doctor Willie."

  "Tut!" he said. "Always in a hurry, these hospitals. We'll wait awhile, I think."

  "Is everybody well at home?"

  It had come to her, you see, what comes to every nurse once in hertraining--the thinness of the veil, the terror of calamity, the fearof death.

  "All well. And----" he glanced around. Only the Senior SurgicalInterne was in sight, and he was out of hearing. "Look here,Nellie," he said, "I've got a dozen fresh eggs for you in mysatchel. Your mother sent them."

  She nearly lost her professional manner again then. But she onlyasked him to warn the boys about automobiles and riding on the backsof wagons.

  Had any one said Twenty-two to her, she would not have known whatwas meant. Not just then, anyhow.

  In the doctors' room that night the Senior Surgical Interne lighteda cigarette and telephoned to the operating room.

  "That trephining's off," he said, briefly.

  Then he fell to conversation with the Senior Medical, who was ratherworried about a case listed on the books as Augustus Baird,coloured.

  Twenty-two did not sleep very well that night. He needed exercise,he felt. But there was something else. Miss Brown had been just ashade too ready to accept his explanation about Mabel, he felt, soready that he feared she had been more polite than sincere. Probablyshe still believed there was a Mabel. Not that it mattered, exceptthat he hated to make a fool of himself. He roused once in the nightand was quite sure he heard her voice down the corridor. He knewthis must be wrong, because they would no
t make her work all day andall night, too.

  But, as it happened, it _was_ Jane Brown. The hospital providedplenty of sleeping time, but now and then there was a slip-up andsomebody paid. There had been a night operation, following on a busyday, and the operating-room nurses needed help. Out of a sound sleepthe night Assistant had summoned Jane Brown to clean instruments.

  At five o'clock that morning she was still sitting on a stool besidea glass table, polishing instruments which made her shiver. Allaround were things that were spattered with blood. But she lookedanything but fluttery. She was a very grim and determined youngperson just then, and professional beyond belief. The other things,like washing window-sills and cutting toe-nails, had had nosignificance. But here she was at last on the edge of mercy. Someone who might have died had lived that night because of this room,and these instruments, and willing hands.

  She hoped she would always have willing hands.

  She looked very pale at breakfast the next morning, and ratherolder. Also she had a new note of authority in her voice when shetelephoned the kitchen and demanded H ward's soft-boiled eggs. Shewashed window-sills that morning again, but no longer was thererebellion in her soul. She was seeing suddenly how the hospitalrequired all these menial services, which were not menial at all butonly preparation; that there were little tasks and big ones, and onegraduated from the one to the other.

  She took some flowers from the ward bouquet and put them besideJohnny's bed--Johnny, who was still lying quiet, with closed eyes.

  The Senior Surgical Interne did a dressing in the ward that morning.He had been in to see Augustus Baird, and he felt uneasy. He ventedit on Tony, the Italian, with a stiletto thrust in his neck, byjerking at the adhesive. Tony wailed, and Jane Brown, who was the"dirty" nurse--which does not mean what it appears to mean, but isthe person who receives the soiled dressings--Jane Brown gritted herteeth.

  "Keep quiet," said the S.S.I., who was a good fellow, but had neverbeen stabbed in the neck for running away with somebody else's wife.

  "Eet hurt," said Tony. "Ow."

  Jane Brown turned very pink.

  "Why don't you let me cut it off properly?" she said, in a strangledtone.

  The total result of this was that Jane Brown was reprimanded by theFirst Assistant, and learned some things about ethics.

  "But," she protested, "it was both stupid and cruel. And if I know Iam right----"

  "How are you to know you are right?" demanded the First Assistant,crossly. Her feet were stinging. "'A little knowledge is a dangerousthing.'" This was a favorite quotation of hers, although notBrowning. "Nurses in hospitals are there to carry out the doctor'sorders. Not to think or to say what they think unless they areasked. To be intelligent, but----"

  "But not too intelligent!" said the Probationer. "I see."

  This was duly reported to the Head, who observed that it was merelywhat she had expected and extremely pert. Her cold was hardly anybetter.

  It was taking the Probationer quite a time to realise her own totallack of significance in all this. She had been accustomed to men whorose when a woman entered a room and remained standing as long asshe stood. And now she was in a new world, where she had to rise andremain standing while a cocky youth in ducks, just out of medicalcollege, sauntered in with his hands in his pockets and took a_boutonniere_ from the ward bouquet.

  It was probably extremely good for her.

  She was frightfully tired that day, and toward evening the littleglow of service began to fade. There seemed to be nothing to do forJohnny but to wait. Doctor Willie had seemed to think that naturewould clear matters up there, and had requested no operation. Shesmoothed beds and carried cups of water and broke anotherthermometer. And she put the eggs from home in the ward pantry andmade egg-nogs of them for Stanislas Krzykolski, who wasunaccountably upset as to stomach.

  She had entirely forgotten Twenty-two. He had stayed away all thatday, in a sort of faint hope that she would miss him. But she hadnot. She was feeling rather worried, to tell the truth. For a Staffsurgeon going through the ward, had stopped by Johnny's bed andexamined the pupils of his eyes, and had then exchanged a glancewith the Senior Surgical Interne that had perplexed her.

  In the chapel at prayers that evening all around her the nurses satand rested, their tired hands folded in their laps. They talked alittle among themselves, but it was only a buzzing that reached theProbationer faintly. Some one near was talking about something thatwas missing.

  "Gone?" she said. "Of course it is gone. The bath-room man reportedit to me and I went and looked."

  "But who in the world would take it?"

  "My dear," said the first speaker, "who _does_ take things in ahospital, anyhow? Only--a tin sign!"

  It was then that the Head came in. She swept in; her grey gown, hergrey hair gave her a majesty that filled the Probationer with awe.Behind her came the First Assistant with the prayer-book and hymnal.The Head believed in form.

  Jane Brown offered up a little prayer that night for Johnny Fraser,and another little one without words, that Doctor Willie was right.She sat and rested her weary young body, and remembered how DoctorWillie was loved and respected, and the years he had cared for thewhole countryside. And the peace of the quiet room, with the Easterlilies on the tiny altar, brought rest to her.

  It was when prayers were over that the Head made her announcement.She rose and looked over the shadowy room, where among the rows ofwhite caps only the Probationer's head was uncovered, and she said:

  "I have an announcement to make to the training school. One which Iregret, and which will mean a certain amount of hardship anddeprivation.

  "A case of contagion has been discovered in one of the wards, and ithas been considered necessary to quarantine the hospital. The doorswere closed at seven-thirty this evening."

  II

  Considering that he could not get out anyhow, Twenty-two took thenews of the quarantine calmly. He reflected that, if he was shut in,Jane Brown was shut in also. He had a wicked hope, at the beginning,that the Senior Surgical Interne had been shut out, but at nineo'clock that evening that young gentleman showed up at the door ofhis room, said "Cheer-o," came in, helped himself to a cigarette,gave a professional glance at Twenty-two's toes, which were all thatwas un-plastered of the leg, and departing threw back over hisshoulder his sole conversational effort:

  "Hell of a mess, isn't it?"

  Twenty-two took up again gloomily the book he was reading, which wason Diseases of the Horse, from the hospital library. He was in themidst of Glanders.

  He had, during most of that day, been making up his mind to let hisfamily know where he was. He did not think they cared, particularly.He had no illusions about that. But there was something about JaneBrown which made him feel like doing the decent thing. It annoyedhim frightfully, but there it was. She was so eminently the sort ofperson who believed in doing the decent thing.

  So, about seven o'clock, he had sent the orderly out for stamps andpaper. He imagined that Jane Brown would not think writing home onhospital stationery a good way to break bad news. But the orderlyhad stopped for a chat at the engine house, and had ended by playinga game of dominoes. When, at ten o'clock, he had returned to thehospital entrance, the richer by a quarter and a glass of beer, hehad found a strange policeman on the hospital steps, and the doorslocked.

  The quarantine was on.

  Now there are different sorts of quarantines. There is the sortwhere a trained nurse and the patient are shut up in a room andbath, and the family only opens the door and peers in. And there isthe sort where the front door has a placard on it, and the familygoes in and out the back way, and takes a street-car to the office,the same as usual. And there is the hospital quarantine, which isthe real thing, because hospitals are expected to do thingsthoroughly.

  So our hospital was closed up as tight as a jar of preserves. Therewere policemen at all the doors, quite suddenly. They locked thedoors and put the keys in their pockets, and from that time on theyopened them
only to pass things in, such as newspapers or milk orgroceries or the braver members of the Staff. But not to letanything out--except the Staff. Supposedly Staffs do not carrygerms.

  And, indeed, even the Staff was not keen about entering. It thoughtof a lot of things it ought to do about visiting time, andprescribed considerably over the telephone.

  At first there was a great deal of confusion, because quite a numberof people had been out on various errands when it happened. And theycame back, and protested to the office that they had only theiruniforms on under their coats, and three dollars; or their slippersand no hats. Or that they would sue the city. One or two of them gotquite desperate and tried to crawl up the fire-escape, but failed.

  This is of interest chiefly because it profoundly affected JaneBrown. Miss McAdoo, her ward nurse, had debated whether to wash herhair that evening, or to take a walk. She had decided on the walk,and was therefore shut out, along with the Junior Medical, thekitchen cat, the Superintendent's mother-in-law and six othernurses.

  The next morning the First Assistant gave Jane Brown charge of Hward.

  "It's very irregular," she said. "I don't exactly know--you haveonly one bad case, haven't you?"

  "Only Johnny."

  The First Assistant absent-mindedly ran a finger over the top of atable, and examined it for dust.

  "Of course," she said, "it's a great chance for you. Show that youcan handle this ward, and you are practically safe."

  Jane Brown drew a long breath and stood up very straight. Then sheran her eye over the ward. There was something vaguely reminiscentof Miss McAdoo in her glance.

  Twenty-two made three brief excursions back along the corridorthat first day of the quarantine. But Jane Brown was extremelyprofessional and very busy. There was an air of discipline over theward. Let a man but so much as turn over in bed and show an inch ofblanket, and she pounced on the bed and reduced it to the mosthorrible neatness. All the beds looked as if they had been made upwith a carpenter's square.

  On the third trip, however, Jane Brown was writing at the table.Twenty-two wheeled himself into the doorway and eyed her withdisapproval.

  "What do you mean by sitting down?" he demanded sarcastically."Don't you know that now you are in charge you ought to keepmoving?"

  To which she replied, absently:

  "Three buttered toasts, two dry toasts, six soft boiled eggs, andtwelve soups." She was working on the diet slips.

  Then she smiled at him. They were quite old friends already. It iscurious about love and friendship and all those kindred emotions.They do not grow nearly so fast when people are together as whenthey are apart. It is an actual fact that the growth of many anintimacy is checked by meetings. Because when people are apart it iswhat they _are_ that counts, and when they are together it is whatthey do and say and look like. Many a beautiful affair has beenruined because, just as it was going along well, the principals metagain.

  However, all this merely means that Twenty-two and Jane Brown wereinfinitely closer friends than four or five meetings reallyindicates.

  The ward was very quiet on this late afternoon call of his save forJohnny's heavy breathing. There is a quiet hour in a hospital,between afternoon temperatures and the ringing of the bell whichmeans that the suppers for the wards are on their way--a quiet hourwhen over the long rows of beds broods the peace of the ending day.

  It is a melancholy hour, too, because from the streets comes faintlythe echo of feet hurrying home, the eager trot of a horse boundstableward. To those in the eddy that is the ward comes at this timea certain heaviness of spirit. Poor thing though home may have been,they long for it.

  In H ward that late afternoon there was a wave of homesickness inthe air, and on the part of those men who were up and about, whoshuffled up and down the ward in flapping carpet slippers, aninclination to mutiny.

  "How did they take it?" Twenty-two inquired. She puckered hereyebrows.

  "They don't like it," she confessed. "Some of them were about readyto go home and it--_Tony!_" she called sharply.

  For Tony, who had been cunningly standing by the window leading to afire-escape, had flung the window up and was giving unmistakablesigns of climbing out and returning to the other man's wife.

  "Tony!" she called, and ran. Tony scrambled up on the sill. A sortof titter ran over the ward and Tony, now on the platform outside,waved a derisive hand through the window.

  "Good-bye, mees!" he said, and--disappeared.

  It was not a very dramatic thing, after all. It is chieflysignificant for its effect on Twenty-two, who was obliged to sitfrozen with horror and cursing his broken leg, while Jane Brownraced a brown little Italian down the fire-escape and caught him atthe foot of it. Tony took a look around. The courtyard gates wereclosed and a policeman sat outside on a camp-stool reading thenewspaper. Tony smiled sheepishly and surrendered.

  Some seconds later Tony and Jane Brown appeared on the platformoutside. Jane Brown had Tony by the ear, and she stopped long enoughoutside to exchange the ear for his shoulder, by which she shookhim, vigorously.

  Twenty-two turned his chair around and wheeled himself back to hisroom. He was filled with a cold rage--because she might have fallenon the fire-escape and been killed; because he had not been able tohelp her; because she was there, looking after the derelicts oflife, when the world was beautiful outside, and she was young;because to her he was just Twenty-two and nothing more.

  He had seen her exactly six times.

  Jane Brown gave the ward a little talk that night before the nightnurse reported. She stood in the centre of the long room, beside thetulips, and said that she was going to be alone there, and that shewould have to put the situation up to their sense of honour. If theytried to escape, they would hurt her. Also they would surely becaught and brought back. And, because she believed in a combinationof faith and deeds, she took three nails and the linen-roomflatiron, and nailed shut the window onto the fire-escape.

  After that, she brushed crumbs out of the beds with a whiskbroom andrubbed a few backs with alcohol, and smoothed the counterpanes, andhung over Johnny's unconscious figure for a little while, givingmotherly pats to his flat pillow and worrying considerably becausethere was so little about him to remind her of the Johnny she knewat home.

  After that she sat down and made up her records for the night nurse.The ward understood, and was perfectly good, trying hard not to mussits pillows or wrinkle the covers. And struggling, too, with a newidea. They were prisoners. No more release cards would brighten thedays. For an indefinite period the old Frenchman would moan atnight, and Bader the German would snore, and the Chinaman wouldcough. Indefinitely they would eat soft-boiled eggs and rice andbeef-tea and cornstarch.

  The ward felt extremely low in its mind.

  * * * * *

  That night the Senior Surgical Interne went in to play cribbage withTwenty-two, and received a lecture on leaving a young girl alone inH with a lot of desperate men. They both grew rather heated over thediscussion and forgot to play cribbage at all. Twenty-two lay awakehalf the night, because he had seen clearly that the Senior SurgicalInterne was interested in Jane Brown also, and would probably loafaround H most of the time since there would be no new cases now. Itwas a crowning humiliation to have the night nurse apply to theSenior Surgical Interne for a sleeping powder for him!

  Toward morning he remembered that he had promised to write out frommemory one of the Sonnets from the Portuguese for the FirstAssistant, and he turned on the light and jotted down two lines ofit. He wrote:

  "_For we two look two ways, and cannot shine With the same sunlight on our brow and hair._"--

  And then sat up in bed for half an hour looking at it because he wasso awfully afraid it was true of Jane Brown and himself. Not, ofcourse, that he wanted to shine at all. It was the looking two waysthat hurt.

  The next evening the nurses took their airing on the roof, which wasa sooty place with a parapet, and in the courtyard,
which was anequally sooty place with a wispy fountain. And because the wholesituation was new, they formed in little groups on the woodenbenches and sang, hands folded on white aprons, heads lifted, eyesupturned to where, above the dimly lighted windows, the stars peeredpalely through the smoke.

  The S.S.I. sauntered out. He had thought he saw the Probationer fromhis window, and in the new relaxation of discipline he saw a chanceto join her. But the figure he had thought he recognised proved tobe some one else, and he fell to wandering alone up and down thecourtyard.

  He was trying to work out this problem: would the advantage ofmarrying early and thus being considered eligible for certaincases, offset the disadvantage of the extra expense?

  He decided to marry early and hang the expense.

  The days went by, three, then four, and a little line of tensiondeepened around Jane Brown's mouth. Perhaps it has not beenmentioned that she had a fighting nose, short and straight, and awistful mouth. For Johnny Fraser was still lying in a stupor.

  Jane Brown felt that something was wrong. Doctor Willie came in onceor twice, making the long trip without complaint and without hope ofpayment. All his busy life he had worked for the sake of work, andnot for reward. He called her "Nellie," to the delight of the ward,which began to love him, and he spent a long hour each time byJohnny's bed. But the Probationer was quick to realise that theSenior Surgical Interne disapproved of him.

  That young man had developed a tendency to wander into H at oddhours, and sit on the edge of a table, leaving Jane Brown dividedbetween proper respect for an _interne_ and fury over the wrinklingof her table covers. It was during one of these visits that shespoke of Doctor Willie.

  "Because he is a country practitioner," she said, "you--youpatronise him."

  "Not at all," said the Senior Surgical Interne. "Personally I likehim immensely."

  "Personally!"

  The Senior Surgical Interne waved a hand toward Johnny's bed.

  "Look there," he said. "You don't think that chap's getting anybetter, do you?"

  "If," said Jane Brown, with suspicious quiet, "if you think you knowmore than a man who has practised for forty years, and saved morepeople than you ever saw, why don't you tell him so?"

  There is really no defence for this conversation. Discourse betweena probationer and an _interne_ is supposed to be limited to yea,yea, and nay, nay. But the circumstances were unusual.

  "Tell him!" exclaimed the Senior Surgical Interne, "and be calledbefore the Executive Committee and fired! Dear girl, I aminexpressibly flattered, but the voice of an _interne_ in a hospitalis the voice of one crying in the wilderness."

  Twenty-two, who was out on crutches that day for the first time, andwas looking very big and extremely awkward, Twenty-two looked backfrom the elevator shaft and scowled. He seemed always to see a flashof white duck near the door of H ward.

  To add to his chagrin, the Senior Surgical Interne clapped him onthe back in congratulation a moment later, and nearly upset him. Hehad intended to go back to the ward and discuss a plan he had, buthe was very morose those days and really not a companionable person.He stumped back to his room and resolutely went to bed.

  There he lay for a long time looking at the ceiling, and saying, outof his misery, things not necessary to repeat.

  So Twenty-two went to bed and sulked, refusing supper, and havingthe word "Vicious" marked on his record by the nurse, who hoped hewould see it some time. And Jane Brown went and sat beside astrangely silent Johnny, and worried. And the Senior SurgicalInterne went down to the pharmacy and thereby altered a number ofthings.

  The pharmacy clerk had been shaving--his own bedroom was dark--andhe saw the Senior Surgical Interne in the little mirror hung on thewindow frame.

  "Hello," he said, over the soap. "Shut the door."

  The Senior Surgical Interne shut the door, and then sniffed. "Smellslike a bar-room," he commented.

  The pharmacy clerk shaved the left angle of his jaw, and then turnedaround.

  "Little experiment of mine," he explained. "Simple syrup, grainalcohol, a dash of cochineal for colouring, and some flavouringextract. It's an imitation cordial. Try it."

  The Senior Surgical Interne was not a drinker, but he was willingto try anything once. So he secured a two-ounce medicine glass, andfilled it.

  "Looks nice," he commented, and tasted it. "It's not bad."

  "Not bad!" said the pharmacy clerk. "You'd pay four dollars a bottlefor that stuff in a hotel. Actual cost here, about forty cents."

  The Senior Surgical Interne sat down and stretched out his legs. Hehad the glass in his hand.

  "It's rather sweet," he said. "But it looks pretty." He took anothersip.

  After he had finished it, he got to thinking things over. He feltabout seven feet tall and very important, and not at all like avoice crying in the wilderness. He had a strong inclination to gointo the Superintendent's office and tell him where he went wrong inrunning the institution--which he restrained. And another to go upto H and tell Jane Brown the truth about Johnny Fraser--which heyielded to.

  On the way up he gave the elevator man a cigar.

  He was very explicit with Jane Brown.

  "Your man's wrong, that's all there is about it," he said. "I can'tsay anything and you can't. But he's wrong. That's an operativecase. The Staff knows it."

  "Then, why doesn't the Staff do it?"

  The Senior Surgical Interne was still feeling very tall. He lookeddown at her from a great distance.

  "Because, dear child," he said, "it's your man's case. You ought toknow enough about professional ethics for that."

  He went away, then, and had a violent headache, which he blamed onconfinement and lack of exercise. But he had sowed something in theProbationer's mind.

  For she knew, suddenly, that he had been right. The Staff had meantthat, then, when they looked at Johnny and shook their heads. TheStaff knew, the hospital knew. Every one knew but Doctor Willie. ButDoctor Willie had the case. Back in her little town Johnny's motherwas looking to Doctor Willie, believing in him, hoping through him.

  That night Twenty-two slept, and Jane Brown lay awake. And down in Hward Johnny Fraser had a bad spell at that hour toward dawn when thevitality is low, and men die. He did not die, however. But the nightnurse recorded, "Pulse very thin and iregular," at four o'clock.

  She, too, was not a famous speller.

  During the next morning, while the ward rolled bandages, havingcarefully scrubbed its hands first, Jane Brown wrote records--shedid it rather well now--and then arranged the pins in the wardpincushion. She made concentric circles of safety-pins outside andcommon pins inside, with a large H in the centre. But her mind wasnot on this artistic bit of creation. It was on Johnny Fraser.

  She made up her mind to speak to Doctor Willie.

  Twenty-two had got over his sulking or his jealousy, or whatever itwas, and during the early hours, those hours when Johnny was hardlybreathing, he had planned something. He thought that he did it tointerest the patients and make them contented, but somewhere in theback of his mind he knew it was to see more of Jane Brown. Heplanned a concert in the chapel.

  So that morning he took Elizabeth, the plaster cast, back to H ward,where Jane Brown was fixing the pincushion, and had a good minute offeasting his eyes on her while she was sucking a jabbed finger. Sheknew she should have dipped the finger in a solution, but habit isstrong in most of us.

  Twenty-two had a wild desire to offer to kiss the finger and make itwell. This, however, was not habit. It was insanity. He recognisedthis himself, and felt more than a trifle worried about it, becausehe had been in love quite a number of times before, but he had neverhad this sort of feeling.

  He put the concert up to her with a certain amount of anxiety. Ifshe could sing, or play, or recite--although he hoped she would notrecite--all would be well. But if she refused to take any part, hedid not intend to have a concert. That was flat.

  "I can play," she said, making a neat period after the H on thepinc
ushion.

  He was awfully relieved.

  "Good," he said. "You know, I like the way you say that. It'sso--well, it's so competent." He got out a notebook and wrote "MissBrown, piano selections."

  It was while he was writing that Jane Brown had a sort of mentalpicture--the shabby piano at home, kicked below by many childishfeet, but mellow and sweet, like an old violin, and herself sittingpractising, over and over, that part of Paderewski's Minuet where,as every one knows, the fingering is rather difficult, and outsidethe open window, leaning on his broom, worthless Johnny Fraser,staring in with friendly eyes and an extremely dirty face. ToTwenty-two's unbounded amazement she flung down the cushion and madefor the little ward linen room.

  He found her there a moment later, her arms outstretched on thetable and her face buried in them. Some one had been boiling arubber tube and had let the pan go dry. Ever afterward Twenty-twowas to associate the smell of burning rubber with Jane Brown, andwith his first real knowledge that he was in love with her.

  He stumped in after her and closed the door, and might have ruinedeverything then and there by taking her in his arms, crutch andall. But the smell of burning rubber is a singularly permeating one,and he was kept from one indiscretion by being discovered inanother.

  It was somewhat later that Jane Brown was reprimanded for beingfound in the linen room with a private patient. She made no excuse,but something a little defiant began to grow in her eyes. It was notthat she loved her work less. She was learning, day by day, theendless sacrifices of this profession she had chosen, itsunselfishness, its grinding hard work, the payment that may lie in asmile of gratitude, the agony of pain that cannot be relieved. Shewent through her days with hands held out for service, and at night,in the chapel, she whispered soundless little prayers to beaccepted, and to be always gentle and kind. She did not want tobecome a machine. She knew, although she had no words for it, thedifference between duty and service.

  But--a little spirit of rebellion was growing in her breast. She didnot understand about Johnny Fraser, for one thing. And the matter ofthe linen room hurt. There seemed to be too many rules.

  Then, too, she began to learn that hospitals had limitations. JaneBrown's hospital had no social worker. Much as she loved the work,the part that the hospital could not do began to hurt her. Beforethe quarantine women with new babies had gone out, without an ideaof where to spend the night. Ailing children had gone home to suchplaces as she could see from the dormitory windows, where the workthe hospital had begun could not be finished.

  From the roof of the building at night she looked out over a citythat terrified her. The call of a playing child in the street beganto sound to her like the shriek of accident. The very grinding ofthe trolley cars, the smoke of the mills, began to mean theoperating room. She thought a great deal, those days, about thelittle town she had come from, with its peace and quiet streets. Thecity seemed cruel. But now and then she learned that if cities arecruel, men are kind.

  Thus, on the very day of the concert, the quarantine was broken fora few minutes. It was broken forcibly, and by an officer of the law.A little newsie, standing by a fire at the next corner, for thespring day was cold, had caught fire. The big corner man had seen itall. He stripped off his overcoat, rolled the boy in it, and ran tothe hospital. Here he was confronted by a brother officer, who wasforbidden to admit him. The corner man did the thing that seemedquickest. He laid the newsie on the ground, knocked out thequarantine officer in two blows, broke the glass of the door with athird, slipped a bolt, and then, his burden in his arms, stalked in.

  It did not lessen the majesty of that entrance that he was cryingall the time.

  The Probationer pondered that story when she heard it. After all,laws were right and good, but there were higher things than laws.She went and stood by Johnny's bed for a long time, thinking.

  In the meantime, unexpected talent for the concert had developed.The piano in the chapel proving out of order, the elevator manproved to have been a piano tuner. He tuned it with a bone forceps.Strange places, hospitals, into which drift men from every walk oflife, to find a haven and peace within their quiet walls. Old Tonyhad sung, in his youth, in the opera at Milan. A pretty young nursewent around the corridors muttering bits of "Orphant Annie" toherself. The Senior Surgical Interne was to sing the "Rosary," andwent about practising to himself. He came into H ward and sang itthrough for Jane Brown, with his heart in his clear young eyes. Hesang about the hours he had spent with her being strings of pearls,and all that, but he was really asking her if she would be willingto begin life with him in a little house, where she would have toanswer the door-bell and watch telephone calls while he was out.

  Jane Brown felt something of this, too. For she said: "You sing itbeautifully," although he had flatted at least three times.

  He wrote his name on a medicine label and glued it to her hand. Itlooked alarmingly possessive.

  Twenty-two presided at the concert that night. He was extravagantlyfunny, and the sort of creaking solemnity with which things beganturned to uproarious laughter very soon.

  Everything went off wonderfully. Tony started his selection toohigh, and was obliged to stop and begin over again. And the twoSilversteins, from the children's ward, who were to dance a Highlandfling together, had a violent quarrel at the last moment and had tobe scratched. But everything else went well. The ambulance drivergave a bass solo, and kept a bar or two ahead of the accompaniment,dodging chords as he did wagons on the street, and fetching up witha sort of garrison finish much as he brought in the ambulance.

  But the real musical event of the evening was Jane Brown's playing.She played Schubert without any notes, because she had been taughtto play Schubert that way.

  And when they called her back, she played little folk songs of thefar places of Europe. Standing around the walls, in wheeled chairs,on crutches, pale with the hospital pallor, these aliens in theireddy listened and thrilled. Some of them wept, but they smiled also.

  At the end she played the Minuet, with a sort of flaming look inher eyes that puzzled Twenty-two. He could not know that she wasplaying it to Johnny Fraser, lying with closed eyes in the wardupstairs. He did not realise that there was a passion of sacrificethrobbing behind the dignity of the music.

  Doctor Willie had stayed over for the concert. He sat, beamingbenevolently, in the front row, and toward the end he got up andtold some stories. After all, it was Doctor Willie who was the realhit of the evening. The convalescents rocked with joy in theirroller chairs. Crutches came down in loud applause. When he sat downhe slipped a big hand over Jane Brown's and gave hers a heartysqueeze.

  "How d'you like me as a parlour entertainer, Nellie?" he whispered.

  She put her other hand over his. Somehow she could not speak.

  The First Assistant called to the Probationer that night as she wentpast her door. Lights were out, so the First Assistant had a candle,and she was rubbing her feet with witch hazel.

  "Come in," she called. "I have been looking for you. I have somenews for you."

  The exaltation of the concert had died away. Jane Brown, in thecandle light, looked small and tired and very, very young.

  "We have watched you carefully," said the First Assistant, who hadher night garments on but had forgotten to take off her cap."Although you are young, you have shown ability, and--you are to beaccepted."

  "Thank you, very much," replied Jane Brown, in a strangled tone.

  "At first," said the First Assistant, "we were not sure. You werevery young, and you had such odd ideas. You know that yourself now."

  She leaned down and pressed a sore little toe with her forefinger.Then she sighed. The mention of Jane Brown's youth had hurt her,because she was no longer very young. And there were times when shewas tired, when it seemed to her that only youth counted. She feltthat way to-night.

  When Jane Brown had gone on, she blew out her candle and went tobed, still in her cap.

  Hospitals do not really sleep at night. The elevator
man dozes inhis cage, and the night watchman may nap in the engineer's room inthe basement. But the night nurses are always making their sleeplessrounds, and in the wards, dark and quiet, restless figures turn andsigh.

  Before she went to bed that night, Jane Brown, by devious ways,slipped back to her ward. It looked strange to her, this cavernousplace, filled with the unlovely noises of sleeping men. By the onelow light near the doorway she went back to Johnny's bed, and satdown beside him. She felt that this was the place to think thingsout. In her room other things pressed in on her; the necessity ofmaking good for the sake of those at home, her love of the work, andcowardice. But here she saw things right.

  The night nurse found her there some time later, asleep, herhunting-case watch open on Johnny's bed and her fingers still on hisquiet wrist. She made no report of it.

  Twenty-two had another sleepless night written in on his record thatnight. He sat up and worried. He worried about the way the SeniorSurgical Interne had sung to Jane Brown that night. And he worriedabout things he had done and shouldn't have, and things he shouldhave done and hadn't. Mostly the first. At five in the morning hewrote a letter to his family telling them where he was, and that hehad been vaccinated and that the letter would be fumigated. He alsowrote a check for an artificial leg for the boy in the children'sward, and then went to bed and put himself to sleep by reciting the"Rosary" over and over. His last conscious thought was that thehours he had spent with a certain person would not make much of astring of pearls.

  The Probationer went to Doctor Willie the next day. Some of theexuberance of the concert still bubbled in him, although he shookhis head over Johnny's record.

  "A little slow, Nellie," he said. "A little slow."

  Jane Brown took a long breath.

  "Doctor Willie," she said, "won't you have him operated on?"

  He looked up at her over his spectacles.

  "Operated on? What for?"

  "Well, he's not getting any better," she managed desperately."I'm--sometimes I think he'll die while we're waiting for him to getbetter."

  He was surprised, but he was not angry.

  "There's no fracture, child," he said gently. "If there is a clotthere, nature is probably better at removing it than we are. Thetrouble with you," he said indulgently, "is that you have come here,where they operate first and regret afterward. Nature is the bestsurgeon, child."

  She cast about her despairingly for some way to tell him the truth.But even when she spoke she knew she was foredoomed to failure.

  "But--suppose the Staff thinks that he should be?"

  Doctor Willie's kindly mouth set itself into grim lines.

  "The Staff!" he said, and looked at her searchingly. Then his jawsset at an obstinate angle.

  "Well, Nellie," he said, "I guess one opinion's as good as anotherin these cases. And I don't suppose they'll do any cutting andhacking without my consent." He looked at Johnny's unconsciousfigure. "He never amounted to much," he added, "but it's surprisingthe way money's been coming in to pay his board here. Your mothersent five dollars. A good lot of people are interested in him. Ican't see myself going home and telling them he died on theoperating table."

  He patted her on the arm as he went out.

  "Don't get an old head on those young shoulders yet, Nellie," hesaid as he was going. "Leave the worrying to me. I'm used to it."

  She saw then that to him she was still a little girl. She probablywould always be just a little girl to him. He did not take herseriously, and no one else would speak to him. She was quitedespairing.

  The ward loved Doctor Willie since the night before. It watched himout with affectionate eyes. Jane Brown watched him, too, his fineold head, the sturdy step that had brought healing and peace to awhole county. She had hurt him, she knew that. She ached at thethought of it. And she had done no good.

  That afternoon Jane Brown broke another rule. She went to Twenty-twoon her off duty, and caused a mild furore there. He had been drawinga sketch of her from memory, an extremely poor sketch, with one eyelarger than the other. He hid it immediately, although she could notpossibly have recognised it, and talked very fast to cover hisexcitement.

  "Well, well!" he said. "I knew I was going to have some luck to-day.My right hand has been itching--or is that a sign of money?" Then hesaw her face, and reduced his speech to normality, if not his heart.

  "Come and sit down," he said. "And tell me about it."

  But she would not sit down. She went to the window and looked outfor a moment. It was from there she said:

  "I have been accepted."

  "Good." But he did not, apparently, think it such good news. He drewa long breath. "Well, I suppose your friends should be glad foryou."

  "I didn't come to talk about being accepted," she announced.

  "I don't suppose, by any chance, you came to see how I am gettingalong?" he inquired humbly.

  "I can see that."

  "You can't see how lonely I am." When she offered nothing to thisspeech, he enlarged on it. "When it gets unbearable," he said, "Isit in front of the mirror and keep myself company. If that doesn'tmake your heart ache, nothing will."

  "I'm afraid I have a heart-ache, but it is not that." For aterrible moment he thought of that theory of his which referred to adisappointment in love. Was she going to have the unbelievablecruelty to tell him about it?

  "I have to talk to somebody," she said simply. "And I came to you,because you've worked on a newspaper, and you have had a lot ofexperience. It's--a matter of ethics. But really it's a matter oflife and death."

  He felt most horribly humble before her, and he hated the lie,except that it had brought her to him. There was something so directand childlike about her. The very way she drew a chair in front ofhim, and proceeded, talking rather fast, to lay the matter beforehim, touched him profoundly. He felt, somehow, incredibly old andexperienced.

  And then, after all that, to fail her!

  "You see how it is," she finished. "I can't go to the Staff, andthey wouldn't do anything if I did--except possibly put me out.Because a nurse really only follows orders. And--I've got to stay,if I can. And Doctor Willie doesn't believe in an operation andwon't see that he's dying. And everybody at home thinks he is right,because--well," she added hastily, "he's been right a good manytimes."

  He listened attentively. His record, you remember, was his own waysome ninety-seven per cent of the time, and at first he would notbelieve that this was going to be the three per cent, or a part ofit.

  "Well," he said at last, "we'll just make the Staff turn in and doit. That's easy."

  "But they won't. They can't."

  "We can't let Johnny die, either, can we?"

  But when at last she was gone, and the room was incredibly emptywithout her,--when, to confess a fact that he was exceedinglyshame-faced about, he had wheeled over to the chair she had sat inand put his cheek against the arm where her hand had rested, when hewas somewhat his own man again and had got over the feeling that hisarms were empty of something they had never held--then it was thatTwenty-two found himself up against the three per cent.

  The hospital's attitude was firm. It could not interfere. It was anoutside patient and an outside doctor. Its responsibility ended withproviding for the care of the patient, under his physician's orders.It was regretful--but, of course, unless the case was turned over tothe Staff----

  He went back to the ward to tell her, after it had all beenexplained to him. But she was not surprised. He saw that, after all,she had really known he was going to fail her.

  "It's hopeless," was all she said. "Everybody is right, andeverybody is wrong."

  It was the next day that, going to the courtyard for a breath ofair, she saw a woman outside the iron gate waving to her. It wasJohnny's mother, a forlorn old soul in what Jane Brown recognised asan old suit of her mother's.

  "Doctor Willie bought my ticket, Miss Nellie," she said nervously."It seems like I had to come, even if I couldn't get in. I've beenwaiting around most all
afternoon. How is he?"

  "He is resting quietly," said Jane Brown, holding herself verytense, because she wanted to scream. "He isn't suffering at all."

  "Could you tell me which window he's near, Miss Nellie?"

  She pointed out the window, and Johnny Fraser's mother stood,holding to the bars, peering up at it. Her lips moved, and JaneBrown knew that she was praying. At last she turned her eyes away.

  "Folks have said a lot about him," she said, "but he was always agood son to me. If only he'd had a chance--I'd be right worried,Miss Nellie, if he didn't have Doctor Willie looking after him."

  Jane Brown went into the building. There was just one thing clear inher mind. Johnny Fraser must have his chance, somehow.

  In the meantime things were not doing any too well in the hospital.A second case, although mild, had extended the quarantine.Discontent grew, and threatened to develop into mutiny. Six menfrom one of the wards marched _en masse_ to the lower hall, and werepreparing to rush the guards when they were discovered. The SeniorSurgical Interne took two prisoners himself, and became an emergencycase for two stitches and arnica compresses.

  Jane Brown helped to fix him up, and he took advantage of herholding a dressing basin near his cut lip to kiss her hand, veryrespectfully. She would have resented it under other circumstances,but the Senior Surgical Interne was, even if temporarily, a patient,and must be humoured. She forgot about the kiss immediately, anyhow,although he did not.

  Her three months of probation were drawing to a close now, and hercap was already made and put away in a box, ready for the day sheshould don it. But she did not look at it very often.

  And all the time, fighting his battle with youth and vigour, butwith closed eyes, and losing it day by day, was Johnny Fraser.

  Then, one night on the roof, Jane Brown had to refuse the SeniorSurgical Interne. He took it very hard.

  "We'd have been such pals," he said, rather wistfully, after he sawit was no use.

  "We can be, anyhow."

  "I suppose," he said with some bitterness, "that I'd have stood abetter chance if I'd done as you wanted me to about that fellow inyour ward, gone to the staff and raised hell."

  "I wouldn't have married you," said Jane Brown, "but I'd havethought you were pretty much of a man."

  The more he thought about that the less he liked it. It almost kepthim awake that night.

  It was the next day that Twenty-two had his idea. He ran true toform, and carried it back to Jane Brown for her approval. But shewas not enthusiastic.

  "It would help to amuse them, of course, but how can you publish anewspaper without any news?" she asked, rather listlessly, for her.

  "News! This building is full of news. I have some bits already.Listen!" He took a notebook out of his pocket. "The stork breaksquarantine. New baby in O ward. The chief engineer has developed aboil on his neck. Elevator Man arrested for breaking speed limit.Wanted, four square inches of cuticle for skin grafting in W. How'sthat? And I'm only beginning."

  Jane Brown listened. Somehow, behind Twenty-two's lightness of tone,she felt something more earnest. She did not put it into words, evento herself, but she divined something new, a desire to do his bit,there in the hospital. It was, if she had only known it, amilestone in a hitherto unmarked career. Twenty-two, who had alwaysbeen a man, was by way of becoming a person.

  He explained about publishing it. He used to run a typewriter incollege, and the convalescents could mimeograph it and sell it.There was a mimeographing machine in the office.

  The Senior Surgical Interne came in just then. Refusing to marry himhad had much the effect of smacking a puppy. He came back, a trifletimid, but friendly. So he came in just then, and elected himself tothe advertising and circulation department, and gave the Probationerthe society end, although it was not his paper or his idea, and satdown at once at the table and started a limerick, commencing:

  "_We're here in the city, marooned_"

  However, he never got any further with it, because there are,apparently, no rhymes for "marooned." He refused "tuned" whichseveral people offered him, with extreme scorn.

  Up to this point Jane Brown had been rather too worried to thinkabout Twenty-two. She had grown accustomed to seeing him comingslowly back toward her ward, his eyes travelling much faster than hedid. Not, of course, that she knew that. And to his being, in a way,underfoot a part of every day, after the Head had made rounds andwas safely out of the road for a good two hours.

  But two things happened that day to turn her mind in onto her heart.One was when she heard about the artificial leg. The other was whenshe passed the door of his room, where a large card now announced"Office of the _Quarantine Sentinel_." She passed the door, and shedistinctly heard most un-hospital-like chatter within. Judging fromthe shadows on the glass door, too, the room was full. It soundedjoyous and carefree.

  Something in Jane Brown--her mind, probably--turned right around andlooked into her heart, and made an odd discovery. This was that JaneBrown's heart had sunk about two inches, and was feeling very queer.

  She went straight on, however, and put on a fresh collar in herlittle bedroom, and listed her washing and changed her shoes,because her feet still ached a lot of the time. But she was a braveperson and liked to look things in the face. So before she went backto the ward, she stood in front of her mirror and said:

  "You're a nice nurse, Nell Brown. To--to talk about duty and bragabout service, and then to act like a fool."

  She went back to the ward and sat beside Johnny. But that night shewent up on the roof again, and sat on the parapet. She could see,across the courtyard, the dim rectangles of her ward, and around acorner in plain view, "room Twenty-two." Its occupant was sitting atthe typewriter, and working hard. Or he seemed to be. It was too faraway to be sure. Jane Brown slid down onto the roof, which was notvery clean, and putting her elbows on the parapet, watched him for along time. When he got up, at last, and came to the open window, shehardly breathed. However, he only stood there, looking toward herbut not seeing her.

  Jane Brown put her head on the parapet that night and cried. Shethought she was crying about Johnny Fraser. She might have feltsomewhat comforted had she known that Twenty-two, being tired withhis day's work, had at last given way to most horrible jealousy ofthe Senior Surgical Interne, and that his misery was to hers as fiveis to one.

  The first number of the _Quarantine Sentinel_ was a great success.It served in the wards much the same purpose as the magazinespublished in the trenches. It relieved the monotony, brought thedifferent wards together, furnished laughter and gossip. Twenty-twowrote the editorials, published the paper, with the aid of a coupleof convalescents, and in his leisure drew cartoons. He drew verywell, but all his girls looked like Jane Brown. It caused a rippleof talk.

  The children from the children's ward distributed them, and wentback from the private rooms bearing tribute of flowers and fruit.Twenty-two himself developed a most reprehensible habit ofconcealing candy in the _Sentinel_ office and smuggling it to hiscarriers. Altogether a new and neighbourly feeling seemed tofollow in the wake of the little paper. People who had sulkedin side-by-side rooms began, in the relaxed discipline ofconvalescence, to pay little calls about. Crotchety dowagers knittedsocks for new babies. A wave of friendliness swept over every one,and engulfed particularly Twenty-two.

  In the glow of it he changed perceptibly. This was the firstpopularity he had ever earned, and the first he had ever cared afi-penny bit about. And, because he valued it, he felt more and moreunworthy of it.

  But it kept him from seeing Jane Brown. He was too busy for manyexcursions to the ward, and when he went he was immediately thecentre of an animated group. He hardly ever saw her alone, and whenhe did he began to suspect that she pretended duties that might havewaited.

  One day he happened to go back while Doctor Willie was there, andafter that he understood her problem better.

  Through it all Johnny lived. His thin, young body was now hardly anoutline under
the smooth, white covering of his bed. He swallowed,faintly, such bits of liquid as were placed between his lips, butthere were times when Jane Brown's fingers, more expert now, couldfind no pulse at all. And still she had found no way to give him hischance.

  She made a last appeal to Doctor Willie that day, but he only shookhis head gravely.

  "Even if there was an operation now, Nellie," said Doctor Williethat day, "he could not stand it."

  It was the first time that Twenty-two had known her name was Nellie.

  That was the last day of Jane Brown's probation. On the next day shewas to don her cap. The _Sentinel_ came out with a congratulatoryeditorial, and at nine o'clock that night the First Assistantbrought an announcement, in the Head's own writing, for the paper.

  "The Head of the Training School announces with much pleasure theacceptance of Miss N. Jane Brown as a pupil nurse."

  Twenty-two sat and stared at it for quite a long time.

  That night Jane Brown fought her battle and won. She went to herroom immediately after chapel, and took the family pictures off herlittle stand and got out ink and paper. She put the photographs outof sight, because she knew that they were counting on her, and shecould not bear her mother's eyes. And then she counted her money,because she had broken another thermometer, and the ticket home wasrather expensive. She had enough, but very little more.

  After that she went to work.

  It took her rather a long time, because she had a great deal toexplain. She had to put her case, in fact. And she was not strong oneither ethics or logic. She said so, indeed, at the beginning. Shesaid also that she had talked to a lot of people, but that no oneunderstood how she felt--that there ought to be no professionalethics, or etiquette, or anything else, where it was life or death.That she felt hospitals were to save lives and not to save feelings.It seemed necessary, after that, to defend Doctor Willie--withoutnaming him, of course. How much good he had done, and how he came torely on himself and his own opinion because in the country there wasno one to consult with.

  However, she was not so gentle with the Staff. She said that it wasstanding by and letting a patient die, because it was too polite tointerfere, although they had all agreed among themselves that anoperation was necessary. And that if they felt that way, would theyrefuse to pull a child from in front of a locomotive because it wasits mother's business, and she didn't know how to do it?

  _Then she signed it._

  She turned it in at the _Sentinel_ office the next morning whilethe editor was shaving. She had to pass it through a crack in thedoor. Even that, however, was enough for the editor in question tosee that she wore no cap.

  "But--see here," he said, in a rather lathery voice, "you'reaccepted, you know. Where's the--the visible sign?"

  Jane Brown was not quite sure she could speak. However, she managed.

  "After you read that," she said, "you'll understand."

  He read it immediately, of course, growing more and more grave, andthe soap drying on his chin. Its sheer courage made him gasp.

  "Good girl," he said to himself. "Brave little girl. But it finishesher here, and she knows it."

  He was pretty well cut up about it, too, because while he wasgetting it ready he felt as if he was sharpening a knife to stab herwith. Her own knife, too. But he had to be as brave as she was.

  The paper came out at two o'clock. At three the First Assistant,looking extremely white, relieved Jane Brown of the care of H wardand sent her to her room.

  Jane Brown eyed her wistfully.

  "I'm not to come back, I suppose?"

  The First Assistant avoided her eyes.

  "I'm afraid not," she said.

  Jane Brown went up the ward and looked down at Johnny Fraser. Thenshe gathered up her bandage scissors and her little dressing forcepsand went out.

  The First Assistant took a step after her, but stopped. There weretears in her eyes.

  Things moved very rapidly in the hospital that day, while the guardssat outside on their camp-stools and ate apples or read thenewspapers, and while Jane Brown sat alone in her room.

  First of all the Staff met and summoned Twenty-two. He went down inthe elevator--he had lost Elizabeth a few days before, and was usinga cane--ready for trouble. He had always met a fight more thanhalfway. It was the same instinct that had taken him to the fire.

  But no one wanted to fight. The Staff was waiting, grave andperplexed, but rather anxious to put its case than otherwise. Itfelt misunderstood, aggrieved, and horribly afraid it was going toget in the newspapers. But it was not angry. On the contrary, it wastrying its extremely intelligent best to see things from a newangle.

  The Senior Surgical Interne was waiting outside. He had smokedeighteen cigarettes since he received his copy of the _Sentinel_,and was as unhappy as an _interne_ can be.

  "What the devil made you publish it?" he demanded.

  Twenty-two smiled.

  "Because," he said, "I have always had a sneaking desire to publishan honest paper, one where public questions can be discussed. Ifthis isn't a public question, I don't know one when I see it."

  But he was not smiling when he went in.

  An hour later Doctor Willie came in. He had brought some flowers forthe children's ward, and his arms were bulging. To his surprise,accustomed as he was to the somewhat cavalier treatment of thecountry practitioner in a big city hospital, he was invited to theStaff room.

  To the eternal credit of the Staff Jane Brown's part in that painfulhalf hour was never known. The Staff was careful, too, of DoctorWillie. They knew they were being irregular, and were mostwretchedly uncomfortable. Also, there being six of them against one,it looked rather like force, particularly since, after the first twominutes, every one of them liked Doctor Willie.

  He took it so awfully well. He sat there, with his elbows on a tablebeside a withering mass of spring flowers, and faced thewhite-coated Staff, and said that he hoped he was man enough toacknowledge a mistake, and six opinions against one left him nothingelse to do. The Senior Surgical Interne, who had been hating himfor weeks, offered him a cigar.

  He had only one request to make. There was a little girl in thetraining school who believed in him, and he would like to go to theward and write the order for the operation himself.

  Which he did. But Jane Brown was not there.

  Late that evening the First Assistant, passing along the corridor inthe dormitory, was accosted by a quiet figure in a blue uniform,without a cap.

  "How is he?"

  The First Assistant was feeling more cheerful than usual. Theoperating surgeon had congratulated her on the way things had movedthat day, and she was feeling, as she often did, that, after all,work was a solace for many troubles.

  "Of course, it is very soon, but he stood it well." She looked up atJane Brown, who was taller than she was, but who always, somehow,looked rather little. There are girls like that. "Look here," shesaid, "you must not sit in that room and worry. Run up to theoperating-room and help to clear away."

  She was very wise, the First Assistant. For Jane Brown went, andwashed away some of the ache with the stains of Johnny's operation.Here, all about her, were the tangible evidences of her triumph,which was also a defeat. A little glow of service revived in her.If Johnny lived, it was a small price to pay for a life. If he died,she had given him his chance. The operating-room nurses were verykind. They liked her courage, but they were frightened, too. She,like the others, had been right, but also she was wrong.

  They paid her tribute of little kindnesses, but they knew she mustgo.

  It was the night nurse who told Twenty-two that Jane Brown was inthe operating-room. He was still up and dressed at midnight, but thesheets of to-morrow's editorial lay blank on his table.

  The night nurse glanced at her watch to see if it was time for thetwelve o'clock medicines.

  "There's a rumour going about," she said, "that the quarantine's tobe lifted to-morrow. I'll be rather sorry. It has been a change."

  "To-morrow,"
said Twenty-two, in a startled voice.

  "I suppose you'll be going out at once?"

  There was a wistful note in her voice. She liked him. He had been anoasis of cheer in the dreary rounds of the night. A very littlemore, and she might have forgotten her rule, which was never to besentimentally interested in a patient.

  "I wonder," said Twenty-two, in a curious tone, "if you will give memy cane?"

  He was clad, at that time, in a hideous bathrobe, purchased by theorderly, over his night clothing, and he had the expression of aperson who intends to take no chances.

  "Thanks," said Twenty-two. "And--will you send the night watchmanhere?"

  The night nurse went out. She had a distinct feeling that somethingwas about to happen. At least she claimed it later. But she foundthe night watchman making coffee in a back pantry, and gave him hermessage.

  Some time later Jane Brown stood in the doorway of theoperating-room and gave it a farewell look. Its white floor andwalls were spotless. Shining rows of instruments on clean towelswere ready to put away in the cabinets. The sterilisers glowed inwarm rectangles of gleaming copper. Over all brooded the peace oforder, the quiet of the night.

  Outside the operating-room door she drew a long breath, and facedthe night watchman. She had left something in Twenty-two. Would shego and get it?

  "It's very late," said Jane Brown. "And it isn't allowed, I'm sure."

  However, what was one more rule to her who had defied them all? Aspirit of recklessness seized her. After all, why not? She wouldnever see him again. Like the operating-room, she would stand in thedoorway and say a mute little farewell.

  Twenty-two's door was wide open, and he was standing in the centreof the room, looking out. He had heard her long before she came insight, for he, too, had learned the hospital habit of classifyingfootsteps.

  He was horribly excited. He had never been so nervous before. He hadmade up a small speech, a sort of beginning, but he forgot it themoment he heard her, and she surprised him in the midst of trying,agonisingly, to remember it.

  There was a sort of dreadful calm, however, about Jane Brown.

  "The watchman says I have left something here."

  It was clear to him at once that he meant nothing to her. It was inher voice.

  "You did," he said. And tried to smile.

  "Then--if I may have it----"

  "I wish to heaven you could have it," he said, very rapidly. "Idon't want it. It's darned miserable."

  "It's--what?"

  "It's an ache," he went on, still rather incoherent. "A pain. Amisery." Then, seeing her beginning to put on a professional look:"No, not that. It's a feeling. Look here," he said, rather moreslowly, "do you mind coming in and closing the door? There's a manacross who's always listening."

  She went in, but she did not close the door. She went slowly,looking rather pale.

  "What I sent for you for is this," said Twenty-two, "are you goingaway? Because I've got to know."

  "I'm being sent away as soon as the quarantine is over. It's--it'sperfectly right. I expected it. Things would soon go to pieces ifthe nurses took to--took to doing what I did."

  Suddenly Twenty-two limped across the room and slammed the doorshut, a proceeding immediately followed by an irritated ringing ofbells at the night nurse's desk. Then he turned, his back againstthe door.

  "Because I'm going when you do," he said, in a terrible voice. "I'mgoing when you go, and wherever you go. I've stood all the waitingaround for a glimpse of you that I'm going to stand." He glared ather. "For weeks," he said, "I've sat here in this room and listenedfor you, and hated to go to sleep for fear you would pass and Iwouldn't be looking through that damned door. And now I've reachedthe limit."

  A sort of band which had seemed to be fastened around Jane Brown'shead for days suddenly removed itself to her heart, which becameextremely irregular.

  "And I want to say this," went on Twenty-two, still in a savagetone. He was horribly frightened, so he blustered. "I don't carewhether you want me or not, you've got to have me. I'm so much inlove with you that it hurts."

  Suddenly Jane Brown's heart settled down into a soft rhythmicbeating that was like a song. After all, life was made up of loveand work, and love came first.

  She faced Twenty-two with brave eyes.

  "I love you, too--so much that it hurts."

  The gentleman across the hall, sitting up in bed, with an angrythumb on the bell, was electrified to see, on the glass door across,the silhouette of a young lady without a cap go into the arms of avery large, masculine silhouette in a dressing-gown. He heard, too,the thump of a falling cane.

  Late that night Jane Brown, by devious ways, made her way back to Hward. Johnny was there, a strange Johnny with a bandaged head, butwith open eyes.

  At dawn, the dawn of the day when Jane Brown was to leave the littleworld of the hospital for a little world of two, consisting of a manand a woman, the night nurse found her there, asleep, her fingersstill on Johnny's thin wrist.

  She did not report it.

 

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