by Helen Wells
Turning down quieter, leafy residential streets, Cherry’s feet and not her volition brought her home. The last thing she remembered was a very sleepy lunch, then shooing a neighbor’s kitten out of the hammock and tumbling into it herself.
The next thing Cherry knew, her mother was standing over her, hat and gloves on, murmuring:
“Poor baby, you’re so tired out. I was going to ask you to come along to the séance—or at least come for the drive—but if you’re too tired—”
Cherry announced that she was never too tired for nonsense, climbed into the back seat of Mrs. Pritchard’s car, pondered where her early morning ambition had disappeared to, and promptly went to sleep again on Mrs. Ames’s shoulder.
Her mother shook her gently, thirty miles later. They were pulling into Bluewater. This was a resort town, known for its restful lake and its music festivals. Plump Mrs. Pritchard, driving, and Mrs. McClay beside her welcomed Cherry back into their midst. Cherry apologized for having fallen asleep.
“Not sleep, dear. Call it a trance,” her mother said smiling coyly. “Isn’t that what we’re going to see?”
“Heaven knows what claptrap we’re going to see,” Mrs. Pritchard joked back over her shoulder. “I expect to be swindled and enjoy it.”
Mrs. McClay murmured that “there might be something in it,” but the others laughed her down. In a mood of frank foolishness, the women parked before a shabby frame house and trooped in, like skylarking students. Cherry, bringing up the rear, felt herself the one staid and sensible member of their group.
She blinked on the darkened threshold. A stout, dignified woman of about forty came out of the shadows to meet them.
“I’m Mrs. Crawford,” she said in a pleasant voice. She repeated their names: apparently they were expected. “Won’t you come in and take seats, ladies? The room is closed off for quiet, but my landlady has electric fans going, so it should be cool. Yes, I’m in Bluewater for only a few weeks. Do come in.”
Cherry stared at the woman. She had vaguely expected purple robes and turbans, but this fortuneteller was just an average-looking woman, with no hocus-pocus about her. She was quietly dressed, well-mannered, sympathetic—if anything, she was a shade too genteel. The only faintly gaudy thing about her was her fading, touched-up blonde hair. Even that, Cherry decided, was merely a pathetic effort to keep presentable.
“Please come in,” she repeated. “The other ladies are waiting.”
They groped their way into the darkened parlor. Cherry dimly saw three other women sitting around a bare table, in a circle of chairs. Mrs. Crawford seated Cherry next to an erect figure who, hat and all, in silhouette, bristled with efficiency. Then the fortuneteller closed the door, and they were in utter darkness.
The figure beside Cherry flashed a radium-dialed wrist watch. “We’re seventeen minutes late in getting started. My word, that isn’t practical!”
Cherry squelched a desire to inquire what a practical person thought she was doing at a ghost-raising party. But the woman added unexpectedly:
“Oh, well, maybe the spirits are still out to lunch.”
Cherry giggled. Mrs. Crawford made a little disapproving sound. Cherry could feel the woman beside her holding back laughter.
But when Mrs. Crawford sat down at the table in creaking, ponderous stillness, they all quieted. The séance had started. Cherry knew that Mrs. Crawford had closed her eyes and was going into a trance, a sort of waking sleep in which she passively surrendered up her own will and identity to whatever might take possession of her. Ghosts?—not likely—or ideas floating up from the woman’s subconscious. The trance was, Cherry knew, either a form of self-induced hypnosis or sheer fake.
They waited in solemn silence, Cherry dubious. The fortuneteller’s breathing in the hot dark room grew louder, labored. They waited.
Mrs. Crawford rustled in her chair, and sighed heavily. “Eda—Eda—?” she gasped, in a high voice not at all like her own. “Wait—it’s coming clearer—Edith.”
Cherry heard her mother stir in her chair. The fortuneteller breathed noisily. The high, strained voice seemed torn out of her.
“Edith—Edith An—An—Yes, I’ll speak for you, I’ll speak!—Edith—Anderly!” Then, in her normal voice, the medium said, “Is there anyone here named Edith Anderly?” The voice shifted back to the high, choked tones. “Charity Anderly—trying to get through—to—my daughter.”
Mrs. Ames said in a subdued voice, “My name before my marriage was Edith Anderly. My mother’s name was Charity.”
Cherry’s back tingled with gooseflesh, despite her disbelief. Her grandmother, Charity, had been dead for ten years.
From Mrs. Crawford came strained breathing. “Oh—oh—it’s coming now—” The voice abruptly changed again, grew high and severe. “Edith. Edith. Don’t sell your house. Don’t do it. Stay where you are. Heed me. I can see more than you can.”
A hush followed. Then the medium groaned and said exhaustedly, “She’s gone.” There was the tinkle of glass and ice as Mrs. Crawford apparently refreshed herself with a glass of water. In this interim, everyone relaxed a bit. Mrs. Pritchard whispered:
“Edith, I didn’t know you were thinking of selling your home?”
“Yes, we were, vaguely,” Mrs. Ames murmured back, to Cherry’s surprise. Even Cherry had not known of it.
Mrs. Crawford asked, “Did you recognize your mother’s voice, dear?”
“N-no. My mother’s voice was pitched quite low.”
“Oh? Well, of course, you see, the spirit voices are distorted in coming from the spirit world to this world, through the medium. Through me. I can only do my best, dear. Well, ladies! Shall we try again?”
The practical woman beside Cherry said solicitously, “If you feel rested enough to go into another trance?”
“You’re always so considerate, Miss Owens. You’re the most understanding of all my clients. Yes, I’m ready. Now let’s all be quiet, while I concentrate.”
Cherry slumped down in her chair, trying to decide what she thought of this shivery performance. Her common sense, her education, cried “Absurd!” Yet it was impressive and eerie, all the same.
Again the medium was still, then struggled to breathe, struggled to speak. Only broken syllables came. Cherry could see nothing, nothing, in this somber shadow. The tension mounted. The laboring woman in trance cried out sharply.
“Matthew! Matthew Austin—Yes—yes—” Then suddenly a deep voice, gruff as a man’s, ripped out of her throat. “He’s not here—no, no—But she’s here! Dear, he’s calling you! He wants to say—to tell—Matthew! He says—he never meant to—”
The woman beside Cherry screamed. A chair crashed to the floor. Running footsteps rang out, then the lights snapped on. The room was brightly visible in all its shabbiness. Miss Owens was standing near the door, her hand still trembling on the light switch. Cherry had her first look at her now: a badly scared woman, who might have appeared pleasant and capable, even rather distinguished, at another moment. She held her other hand across her mouth, in a gesture of panic.
The expression on the other women’s faces said plainly: “Silly woman—to take this seriously.” Cherry summed up her reaction in one word: “Gullible.” She felt rather sorry for the woman, too.
The medium was moaning, eyes half opening, startled out of her trance. Even to Cherry’s trained, nurse’s scrutiny, it was difficult to tell whether she was or was not faking that strange state. At any rate, she was nervous and shaken.
“How could you do such a thing?” she said indignantly to Miss Owens. “You of all people know how sensitive this work is—Dear, how could you play such havoc with my nerves?”
Miss Owens made apologies. Mrs. Crawford declared that after such a shock, she could not continue this afternoon. The other women paid her her fees, and left.
Out in the street and the sunshine, Cherry took a good, deep breath of fresh air. Nonsense or super-sense, she was relieved to escape from that dingy, stuf
fy place. Fortunetelling might be called entertainment, Cherry supposed, some people might take it seriously, and it was typical of an idle resort town like Bluewater. “But as for me, Bluewater can keep its vacationers and fortunetellers and music festivals!”
And so Cherry said later to Dr. Joe. He telephoned to invite her to a concert, that evening.
“What! Drive to Bluewater twice in the same day! Abandon our cool front porch? No, thank you, sir! Not even to hear the finest musician!” Cherry said heatedly into the telephone.
“Scott Owens is one of the finest musicians in this country,” came back Dr. Joe’s deep voice over the wire. “You don’t want to miss him.”
“Owens?” Cherry echoed. “I met a Miss Owens this afternoon. A nice-looking lady with—with an air. Lively. Reddish hair.”
“Yes, the pianist’s sister, Miss Kitty. His secretary and manager.” Dr. Fortune explained that the celebrated pianist, a nervous man in precarious health, was resting for several weeks at Bluewater, under his sister’s watchful eye. His recital tonight was unscheduled, a surprise performance to help raise benefit funds.
“And it’s an event, Cherry, when Owens plays. People are coming down from Chicago on very short notice, for this recital. The big newspapers are flying their music critics down. Don’t you want to come? I know him slightly and could introduce you.”
“Dr. Joe, I’m sure it’s worth while, because you aren’t ordinarily so persistent. But please, please, let me off. I’ve had enough of Bluewater for one day!”
“Very well, child. But you might tune him in on your radio. Part of the program is being broadcast. I had planned—” Silence rang over the telephone wire.
“Planned what, Dr. Joe?”
“Nothing, nothing. Good night.”
Cherry carelessly dismissed the whole matter.
An hour later she turned on the radio. Leaving her parents reading in the blue-and-mahogany living room, with the doors open to the summer night, she sauntered out to the porch. The porch, with its flowering clematis and honeysuckle vines, was like an island of fragrance in the evening world of shadows. Cherry curled up in the swing.
For a few moments she half listened to radio voices, blurred announcements, enjoying her seclusion. Then a torrent of ravishing music burst on the night air. Cherry lay transfixed, listening, overwhelmed. Never had she heard such gorgeousness—such full-throated violins and cellos, such deep and insistent horns, such rich weavings of melody, or—singing pure and alone above all the rest—such crystalline waterfall notes of piano. Cascades of music swelled and dreamed and soared around her.
Cherry listened, bewitched and transported, and completely forgot such mundane things as nursing.
CHAPTER II
R.F.D.
THE PHONE RANG EARLY IN THE MORNING. IT WAS DR. JOE.
“Cherry, you have to take that farm case. The patient is worse. We can’t locate a registered nurse to send out there. Get packed. I’ll be over in ten minutes to explain.”
Cherry’s black curls were still tousled, her face still flushed from sleep. She hopped into a cold shower to wake up, and dressed at top speed, thinking furiously. She knew nothing about private duty nursing! But she was a nurse—a sick woman needed her—and nursing was nursing, whether Cherry did it in a hospital or made a specialty of it in someone’s home. As she scampered about her room, getting out a small suitcase and thermometers and a white uniform, she felt real excitement. This would be the first time she nursed on her own, without ranks of doctors and nursing supervisors and superintendents to guide her! The whole responsibility for a woman’s life and health fell on her alone. Cherry vowed that, even though no one but the single doctor on the case would drop by occasionally to check up on her work, her private duty nursing, in some obscure bedroom, would be every bit as good as in the finest hospital.
What equipment to take along, to care for her patient? Cherry hurriedly dug in her closet through professional magazines and leaflets from the American Nurses’ Association of which she was a member. Here! Here was just the information she needed! Blessings on the ANA for coming to her rescue.
“PRIVATE DUTY NURSES PLEASE NOTE—
Instruments
Watch with second hand
Probe
Glass hypodermic syringe
Tissue forceps
Large needles
Grooved director
Small needles
Scissors
Thermometers
Hemostat
Uniform
Flashlight
Patient’s record blanks”
Yes, Cherry believed she had all these items but she would have to locate them. In the future, she would keep her kit already packed for instant readiness! She slammed drawers open and shut. The doorbell rang downstairs. Dr. Joe already! Her mother was calling:
“For goodness’ sake, what’s happening here?”
Cherry raced out to the staircase and called down, “Mother, you just aren’t used to having a nurse in the household! I’m going out on a case!”
Dr. Joe, coming in, smiled. “Never a dull moment in a medical household, Mrs. Ames. May I go upstairs? While Cherry packs, I can talk to her about the case. It will save us precious time.”
The unceremonious doctor climbed up to Cherry’s topsy-turvy room. Mrs. Ames brought a pot of coffee. Cherry flew about getting her bag packed, but listened carefully to Dr. Fortune.
The patient was Mrs. Jessie Tucker, young wife of a farmer, and mother of several small children. She worked hard on the farm, had grown overtired, caught cold and neglected it. Result: pneumonia, even in the summertime. For a week, Mrs. Tucker had been in Hilton Hospital, attended by a private duty nurse. Dr. Joe paused to explain that most private nurses “specialed” individual cases in hospitals; only about ten per cent of them were called to nurse in patients’ homes. In the hospital, Mrs. Tucker had passed the crisis of her illness and improved enough to be sent home.
“They couldn’t afford the heavy expenses of hospital and private nurse,” Dr. Joe said. “We tried to get her home quickly for that reason. Also, she was worrying herself literally sick about those neglected children at home.”
“Then they can’t afford me either?”
“Not very well, Cherry. But they can’t afford not to have a nurse. Mrs. Tucker’s husband and neighbors have done their best in nursing her but she has had a relapse. There has to be a real nurse in charge.”
Cherry made a mental note to charge the Tuckers as little as possible for her services. Her sympathies for this young farm family were already aroused—and a houseful of youngsters should be fun!
“I’m glad you’re the doctor on the case, Dr. Joe.”
“But I’m not. I was merely one of the consulting doctors at the hospital. Dr. Birdwell is the one. He’s a real, old-fashioned, country doctor. Don’t underestimate him—”
Jogging out to Dr. Birdwell’s in the country, in an interurban streetcar, Cherry thought over all that Dr. Joe had said. She tried, too, to get straight in her mind exactly what her nursing responsibility would encompass. To carry out Dr. Birdwell’s orders—medication, treatment, diet. To watch her patient constantly and recognize any SOS change in her condition. To keep the sufferer as comfortable and cheerful as possible. “And probably,” Cherry thought, “to soothe and encourage the whole Tucker brood!”
“Lawrenceville!” the conductor sang out.
Cherry straightened her neat plaid cotton dress, clapped her big straw hat on the back of her head, and kit in hand, alighted. Lawrenceville consisted of a filling station, a grocery, and two chickens in the road. No Dr. Birdwell, no Mr. Tucker, was on hand to meet the nurse who had come to save them all. Not even the sauntering chickens were impressed.
Cherry gulped. A promising start to her new career! She went into the weather-beaten grocery. Three old men stared at her. Also present was a small dirty boy with a goat.
“I’m the nurse for Mrs. Tucker,” Cherry said. “Could
you tell me, please, how to get to Dr. Birdwell’s, and then to the Tucker farm?”
Silence. What they lacked in eloquence, Cherry thought, they certainly made up in suspicion. “Nurse” to them clearly meant something fancy and totally unnecessary.
Cherry tried again. “Which way to Dr. Birdwell’s?”
The small boy fidgeted. Then he bent down and twisted the goat’s tail. The goat protested. There was silence again, as the local deadpans stood like carved figures.
“See here,” Cherry demanded angrily, “there’s a sick woman to take care of! Are you going to direct me or not?”
“Two mile due north,” grudged the smallest of the old men, and limped off.
“Can I hire someone to drive me there?”
Several pairs of hostile eyes consulted one another. No one looked at Cherry. Finally a hatchet-faced man spoke to the ceiling.
“Five dollars. Pay in advance.”
Cherry walked. She arrived hot, dusty, and exasperated. But Dr. Birdwell’s house, perched in the middle of nowhere, cheered her up. Outside, it was rambling, shabby, and covered with flowering vines. Inside, the rooms were cool and primly old-fashioned. The doctor’s elderly wife gave her a glass of ice-cold buttermilk, to cool off with, and said:
“The doctor’ll be to home right soon. You jest set.”
So Cherry “jest set,” and chuckled at the foolish cuckoo bobbing out of the clock, and puzzled over backwoods ways. If people here did not welcome a nurse, preferring neighbors’ care and home remedies and even old superstitions to up-to-date medical techniques, what a job this country doctor must have on his hands!
He came bustling in, a rosy old man, a bit tired but in high good humor. His bushy white hair, his gold-rimmed spectacles, his worn black kit, were exactly what Cherry had expected. But she had not foreseen the shrewdness in his eyes.
“Yes, Miss Cherry, folks around here, some of ’em, distrust newfangled ideas. Not all the folks, only the older ones. You and I, we have a job to do, to educate ’em.” Cherry smiled at him for that “you and I,” for generously including her with himself, a doctor and a wise, experienced old man.