by Helen Wells
Cherry’s cheeks turned very pink indeed at his praise. Hayseed, old fogy methods, or no, Cherry esteemed this wise and kindly old doctor. She also felt embarrassed enough to sink through the floor, right onto the table where they scrubbed Marietta.
“Rise and shine, Jess! Rise and shine!” said Dr. Birdwell. “And you, young lady, you can pack your duds any day now and get along home.”
Cherry felt genuinely sorry to be leaving them. In the week since that awful day she arrived, Cherry had grown into the Tucker clan and farm. John Tucker wrung her hand until it hurt and thanked her “for a bang-up job.” Jessie Tucker admitted she was sorry “for bein’ a mite cranky that first day—and you drive out for Sunday supper, hear?” The children all but went into mourning. For Cherry had understood they were not actually demons, could do valiant deeds like washing a baby, and were hollow to the toes.
One last, small problem was left. What was Cherry to charge the Tuckers for her services? She had not the heart to ask regular fees, for the crops which helped feed a nation barely kept these sprouting, button-bursting children in hand-me-downs and corn bread.
“I’ll tell you what,” she said finally to Mrs. Tucker. Her bag was packed and Susie was hanging on to her skirt. “I’d like to take some of the farm back to town with me. Pay me in produce.”
So John Tucker and the children loaded her down with jellies and jams, two hens and a bag of feed, and a bushel of cherries for pies. Dr. Birdwell squeezed all of this, and Cherry, and his plump self, into his ramshackle auto.
The whole Tucker family waved. Sam stood on his head. With a grand sputter, the auto jerked forward and Cherry was off.
CHAPTER III
Do, Re, Mi and Company
“WELL, DR. JOE? WELL? DID THE TUCKERS TEACH ME enough or do I—and some patient—have to suffer some more?”
They were in Dr. Joe’s laboratory at the clinic. It was a hot morning, with the atmosphere ready to burst. Cherry felt about to burst, herself—with curiosity and restlessness.
“Suffer to what purpose?” Dr. Joe inquired mildly, looking over his mail.
“You said I have to acquire experience—preparation—great wisdom and so on—before you pronounce me ready for that mysterious future!”
Dr. Joe peered at her over his reading glasses. “You’d see a mystery in anything, monkey. There’s nothing mysterious about the plan I have in mind for you.”
“Then what is it? Please!”
But Dr. Joe would not tell her, not yet. Cherry went home and worked on something new, cross but determined.
Since she was, really, in business for herself now, she had better behave like a business woman. Sitting cross-legged on her couch-bed in her red-and-white room, surrounded by a sea of papers, Cherry played business woman. She importantly printed CHERRY AMES, R.N., in her record book. The book looked impressively professional.
Then Cherry pondered what information her record book should include. After consulting the American Nurses’ Association leaflets, and learning in ten minutes what experienced private duty nurses had sifted out after being battered by many cases, Cherry lettered in these items:
DATE OF RECEIVING CALL AND DATE LEFT CASE: June 5–12
DIAGNOSIS: Pneumonia
LOCATION OF CASE: Patient’s home, outside Hilton
PATIENT’S NAME: Mrs. Jessie Tucker
DOCTOR’S NAME: Dr. Birdwell
SOURCE OF CALL:
Here Cherry paused. The leaflet read “called by registry, doctor, et cetera.” Well, she had not been engaged for this case through a registry nor through et cetera. She scribbled in. “Through Dr. Fortune,” and came to a decision. She had better get her name in at a nurses’ registry, if she wanted more calls—pending Dr. Joe’s “mysterious future” for her! She would have to ask Dr. Joe how a registry worked.
FEE EARNED: Cherry paused again. Heavens, she was budgeting not only her earnings but (when she came to think of it) her living expenses, savings, vacations—her whole life! Cocking her curly head, she said to the record book:
“You haven’t any love interest—you’re not even a glamorous memory book—but you certainly are exciting in your way! And you certainly are going to come in handy!”
Cherry’s imagination immediately darted from the prosaic business uses of her record book to more dramatic ways it might figure: as evidence in a trail over a mysterious death, its causes disputed—as a clue in tracking down a poisoning—She caught herself and laughed, and went on to setting up such businesslike papers as statements (or bills, to be presented to her patients), receipts, and a small file for keeping track of her total earnings. Cherry fairly bristled with efficiency and importance during these operations.
Finally Dr. Joe telephoned. “Cherry, it’s all arranged.”
“What’s all arranged?”
“You’re going with Scott Owens.”
“Scott O—Just like that, Dr. Joe?”
“Yes, just like that, my dear. Can you come over here?”
Now Cherry found out what her new adventure was to be and why Dr. Fortune had pressed her to go to that unscheduled recital. That evening he had made an engagement, far in advance, for Nurse Ames to take Scott Owens’s case. Delays, last-minute changes in the musician’s plans, had kept Dr. Joe from telling Cherry about it until he was sure. Now Scott Owens wanted her, tomorrow. Not in Bluewater but in Owens’s big midwest city.
The pianist was not sick-abed but he often did have heart attacks and fall ill. His chronic heart condition required more watchful and expert care than Miss Kitty, his sister, could give him. Cherry would act as nurse companion to the pianist and his sister, watching Scott Owens for symptoms of acute attack, giving medication, trying to keep her patient physically quiet and emotionally undisturbed. Also, the Owenses traveled a great deal on concert tours, and Cherry would go along.
“It isn’t the soft job it sounds,” Dr. Joe said, “for Owens is an artist and a highly nervous, active person. You will be called upon to use all your tact.”
Next morning, Cherry raced around her room packing her medical instruments in their kit. Another suitcase stood open for her clothes. Her mother checked over Cherry’s wardrobe, pressing, tightening a loose button, rejecting a faded blouse. Midge was downtown having all Cherry’s shoes shined and reheeled. Her father was getting her railroad ticket. Cherry had two last-minute chores which no one else could do for her. One was to get herself immaculately bathed, shampooed, groomed, and dressed with a little style. The other was to register at the central nurses’ directory. Dr. Joe had said the Owens case might not last. If Cherry wanted more calls for private duty work, she had better register.
Cherry hastened downtown in the blistering heat. The nurses’ registry was a businesslike office with a huge switchboard. Doctors telephoned here to engage private duty nurses, taking whichever nurse was next on the registry’s waiting list. Or a doctor or a patient could ask the registry to send his own favorite nurse. Cherry paid a fee, reported herself ready for duty after the Owens case, agreed to obey the directory’s rules, and to answer willingly and promptly any calls they telephoned to her. She had the privilege of registering for or against any certain class of cases—maternity or pneumonia or long heart cases—but decided not to specialize. The middle-aged nurse who ran the registry told her, “You’ll have dry spells of telephone watching. But don’t let a dull season throw you into a panic. Five days of work this month—twenty days next month—it evens up in the end.”
At home her mother had completed the packing for her. Mr. Ames and Midge returned for a hasty farewell lunch. But since Cherry would be near Hilton, no elaborate good-byes were said. Besides, her thoughts strained forward to the colorful people, the unknown house, which would fill her life.
It was a tall narrow city house, of stone, on a bustling city street. Cherry stood before it, a few hours later, in the hot afternoon, and wondered what lay behind the tall curtained windows on each of its four floors. From somewhere on an upper fl
oor came the sound of a piano, fitful, stopping, starting again.
Cherry stood listening. An organ grinder with a monkey came around the corner, mopping his brow. He set down his hand organ before the Owens house and started to grind. An off-key, squeaky version of I Love You shrilled out.
The piano stopped. A window flew up. A man’s agitated face peered out.
“Go away! Please go away! How often must I tell you that noise drives me mad?”
The organ grinder grinned blandly, looked up. Cherry looked up too. The clamorous hand organ ground on. The man at the window was replaced by the reddish haired woman Cherry had seen at the séance. She called down calmly:
“If I give you a dollar will you go away?”
“Two dollars.”
“For two dollars you stay away.”
“A’ right.” The music stopped. The organ grinder winked at Cherry. “Poor fella. He don’t like music.”
Miss Owens came running down the narrow house steps. For a tall and buxom middle-aged woman, she was surprisingly light and quick. She seemed as calm as the man had been disturbed, and disposed of the organ grinder with firmness.
“He’ll be back next week,” she said to Cherry with a laugh. “Oh, hello!” she exclaimed, suddenly aware of Cherry’s presence. “Aren’t you our nurse? A fine way to receive you, Miss Cherry Ames—on the street. And we’ve been looking forward so eagerly to your arrival!” All the while she was talking, she was intently studying Cherry’s face. “I just know I’ve met you before,” she rattled on. “Now, let me see. Where could it have been?”
Cherry started to recall to her the séance at Bluewater, when the realization of where they had met suddenly dawned on the woman. Cherry was startled by the look of agitation that swept over her face.
“Oh, dear!” she exclaimed. “Now I know. It was at Mrs. Crawford’s séance—that horrible day when Uncle Matthew—” she shuddered. “But never mind that now,” she shrugged off the feeling of horror abruptly.
Linking her arm through Cherry’s, she picked up one of Cherry’s bags, and cordially shoved her into the house. She talked the whole time, about the séance, the heat, her brother, Cherry’s fabulous red cheeks. Cherry grinned and liked Miss Kitty Owens.
They entered a long, high-ceilinged living room, dominated by a concert grand piano. In the wide archway leading to a similar room beyond, stood another grand piano which backed up to the first.
“For two-piano scores,” Miss Kitty said. “Is it awfully warm in here? I’ve kept the house darkened all day. Do sit down and I’ll have Jen bring us iced tea or something. Oh, Jen! Jen! There, Scott’s playing again—he has a practice room upstairs, I was afraid the organ grinder had stopped him. Sit down on the couch, there aren’t any chairs, just couches.”
Cherry groped through the half light to the nearest big divan, littered with pillows of all colors. She sat down, settling herself against the pillows. They felt much too warm and solid, then suddenly they snapped at her. They were three dirty-white poodles.
“That’s Do, Re, Mi,” said Miss Kitty. “Everybody sits down on them sooner or later. Ignore them.”
Cherry patted the three indignant poodles. They glared at her. Suddenly she felt someone watching her and whirled around to face a pair of deep, brooding eyes. She blinked in the shadows and refocused. The eyes seemed to stare at her from the white marble mantel, from between marble busts of Beethoven and Mozart.
“That’s Octave the cat,” said Miss Owens. “Can’t very well call him Kitty, ha, ha! A yellow Persian. Don’t ignore him, you’ll hurt his catly pride. Ah, Jen. That looks refreshing.”
A motherly gray-haired woman had come up from the basement kitchen with a tray of iced drinks. She nodded at Cherry as Miss Owens introduced them, and said candidly:
“I hope you like music and don’t mind musicians. Otherwise you’ll never survive here. But once you get used to it, it’s not bad.”
“Go ’long with you, Jen,” Miss Kitty said affectionately.
“Miss Kitty and I have managed to preserve our sanity,” the woman said to Cherry. “I can’t say as much for my husband. Do you know what Lucien has been doing all afternoon?”
“Seeing to that repair on the car?” Miss Owens asked hopefully.
“Over in the park practicing on the flute. He must think he’s Pan. At his age! That’s your brother’s doing. Mr. Scott told him a flute had best be played in the open air.” She picked up the tray and smiled dryly at Cherry. “Good luck, young lady.”
Miss Kitty chuckled as Jen left. Cherry was still recovering from her amusement when her employer plunged into a discussion of practical details. Cherry would have a room on the third floor, the guest floor. In fact, Cherry was welcome to the whole third floor just now, if she could think of anything to do with it. The ample basement housed Jen and Lucien; here were the living rooms on the street floor. Miss Kitty’s bedroom, her office, and Mr. Scott’s bedroom, were on the second floor. The third was Cherry’s. On the fourth floor, the pianist had his practice room and a study. Cherry was curious to see those. In back of the house, Miss Kitty showed her from the big rear windows, was a small, city back yard, carpeted with green grass, ornamented with one showering mulberry tree.
And throughout all this conversation ran like water the limpid, precise percussion of the piano upstairs. It punctuated everything, their talk, their mood, their breathing, even the walls seemed faintly to ring with music. Echoes went singing on after the music itself had ceased.
A thin, almost gaunt man walked into the living room. He had one of the kindest, gentlest faces Cherry had ever seen.
“Oh, Scott!” his sister said. “I wanted you to welcome Miss Cherry, but I hated to interrupt your work.”
“How do you do, Miss Cherry,” he said and she looked up into bottomless eyes. His voice, like his slow walk, his uncompleted gestures, was weak. “There’s a frail person,” Cherry thought. “And a sweet one,” as his smile glowed from deep in his eyes and slowly lighted up his face. He sat down abstractedly, apologized because his trousers and jacket did not match, hoped Cherry would be happy here, and went off into a sort of waking dream. A second later he said shyly:
“May I ask you something?”
“Of course, anything, Mr. Owens.” She expected a question about his health or her nursing.
“Mr. Scott,” he corrected. “Do you play? You had a few lessons when you were a child? Very well, then, let’s hear you.”
Cherry opened her mouth to protest. Play before a concert artist! She had never played really well—had not practiced for years—But Miss Kitty was making faces at her, and her patient was waiting. Cherry went to the nearest piano.
“You’ll be sorry,” she muttered before she could stop the words. They both laughed.
She played, as best her fingers could remember it, a simple Chopin waltz.
“That’s awful,” said Scott Owens when she had finished. “You play like a butcher. Don’t ever play for me again.”
Cherry gasped. “No, Mr. Scott. I’d be glad not to!”
Miss Kitty broke out laughing. “Don’t feel hurt. My brother lives in and for music, and is a perfectionist besides. Awful!”
Scott Owens looked sheepish. “Perhaps you can sing?”
“I positively can’t sing!” Cherry said in terror.
“Sing Swanee River,” her patient commanded. “I’ll accompany you. Stand there. Breathe, now.”
He took Cherry’s place at the first piano. His hands softly strummed out the opening bars, and the piano sang like a voice. Cherry added a few indifferent notes of her own. One of the poodles started to bark.
“No,” he said sadly, “you can’t sing. But,” he looked up at her and that deep-down smile started all over again, “I like you very much just the same.”
“Thank you,” Cherry murmured. “I—I was watching your hands. On that magnificent piano.” His hands were marvels of flexibility, strength, and control. They reminded her of surgeons’ h
ands. The superb piano had been resonant and sensitive to his touch as if it were alive.
The musician looked pleased that she understood. “Go sit down and I’ll play the waltz for you. Then later,” his smile deepened, “you can revenge yourself by nursing me.”
On a divan Miss Kitty whispered to her, “You were a brave girl. Scott rarely plays for anybody. That’s a compliment. He likes you. Ssh, now.”
They paid him the courtesy of not talking but listening while he played. Cherry realized gradually that he played the Chopin waltz again, not to embarrass her, not even to teach her for he was not concerned with teaching, but to clear her jangled, faulty, tormenting notes out of his oversensitive hearing. Now it was loveliness come to life in the air.
Upstairs in her enormous new room, Cherry gathered together her impressions. How inconsistent Scott Owens was—timid yet tyrannical, withdrawn and over-sensitive but with a sense of humor, tactless and yet kindness itself, physically frail but summoning up the considerable stamina of body and mind which his work demanded of him. The whole clue to him, she guessed, was his devotion and drive to music. Cherry understood he was a very special person, not to be judged by usual standards. How could she be a good nurse to such a person?
Miss Kitty rapped and came in then, and talked to Cherry about this very thing.
“You know Scott is a cardiac case,” she said, settling her large frame into a large chair by the open windows. “But his heart condition bothers him less than the kind of temperament he is both cursed and blessed with.”
Earnestly she spoke for her brother, explaining, pleading for him, guarding him. Scott Owens had a highly keyed set of nerves, and painfully acute hearing. He reacted about ten times as intensely as a normal person to sounds and—unfortunately—to all experience. He was like an oversensitive instrument out of which the smallest incident drew a terrific response. Out of this extreme sensitivity, out of this boiling imagination, his music was created. It was the price of his great gift and joy in music.