by Peggy Gaddis
“The top brass himself,” she confided. “You’d think sometimes that single-handed, armed with nothing but brute strength, he built this place, equipped it and staffed it, without a soul to help him. Come to think of it, he darned near did, at that. At least he raised the money—and believe me, that’s enough to entitle him to throw his weight around if he wants—which he does. Take a tip from me: if you come here to work, try to avoid ever asking him a question on any subject whatsoever, unless you have time to listen to a lecture complete with maps, blueprints and the artist’s preliminary sketches. He’s a self-elected authority on every subject under the sun—” Once more she broke off, color poured into her lovely face and she looked very abashed. “I talk too much. Maybe you’ve begun to suspect that?” she finished as she turned to answer the buzzing of the switchboard.
Hilary sat down and picked up a magazine.
Chapter Three
Hilary was so absorbed in taking in the details of the life that ebbed and flowed around her that she was scarcely conscious of the passing of time until she heard the crisp, familiar rattle of a stiffly starched uniform and looked up to see a plump, very competent-looking woman near her mother’s age coming briskly toward her, her plump face beaming with a friendly smile.
“Yes,” said Mrs. Middleton as she studied Hilary, “you’re Hilary. I haven’t seen you since you were fifteen, but I’d have known you anywhere. I’m so sorry I’ve kept you waiting this long—”
“It’s quite all right. I haven’t been a bit bored,” Hilary cut in sincerely. “This is a ... well, a fabulous place. I’ve been very interested.”
“Good!” said Mrs. Middleton, her blue eyes warm and friendly beneath her smartly dressed gray hair. “Come along and have some lunch and we’ll have a talk.”
“Goodness, is it lunch time already?” asked Hilary.
“You blessed child! It’s twelve o’clock, I’ve kept you waiting over an hour, and I am sorry,” Mrs. Middleton apologized as she slipped her hand through Hilary’s arm and guided her along the corridor to a vast room toward which most of the elderly men and women were now moving.
The dining-room was built out over the hillside, so that when one sat at one of the tables against the glass wall, it was almost like being at the prow of a ship. Below, the field sloped steeply to the green of the pines, and then beyond another hill rose up from the valley, dark with pines against which the bare-limbed trees were scarcely visible.
The table to which Mrs. Middleton guided Hilary was beside this glass wall. Mrs. Middleton sat down, facing the room, leaving the chair that faced the view to Hilary.
A waitress in daffodil-yellow and leaf-green served them. The room now was filling up. There was the chatter of guests as they exchanged greetings and squabbled amicably with the waitresses about their choice of food.
A tall woman came over to Mrs. Middleton, smiling, and was introduced as Mrs. Blake, the dietitian.
“My dear,” she bent low and murmured softly in Hilary’s ears. “You are a sight for sore eyes. I’d forgotten there was anybody so young in all the world.”
Hilary glanced around the room at the white heads, the wrinkled faces bent greedily above their food, and smiled up at Mrs. Blake.
“I’m trying to talk her into joining us, Bessie,” Mrs. Middleton confided. “That is, when I get the chance. Her mother is my oldest and best friend—you know her, Dr. Ellen Westbrook.”
“Know her? I just about worship her! My dear child, you have a great deal to live up to! Dr. Ellen is one of the saints of God!” said Mrs. Blake.
Hilary answered warmly, “She is pretty wonderful, isn’t she?”
Mrs. Middleton said in a swift undertone, “Bessie, there’s Dr. Marsden. Bring him over here and let him feed with us. I want Hilary to meet him. I want him to meet Hilary!”
Mrs. Blake nodded and moved across the room to where a tall, well-built man, whose dark hair looked slightly rumpled and whose blue eyes were scanning the room, scowled slightly as he sought an empty table.
He smiled briefly at Mrs. Blake and followed her across to the table where Hilary and Mrs. Middleton waited.
Mrs. Middleton made the introductions; Hilary smiled pleasantly; Dr. Marsden nodded and accepted the chair a waitress produced.
“Sure I’m not crowding you?” he asked courteously, his strong, brown face touched briefly by a smile. He looked tired, harassed, and Hilary sensed that he would much have preferred to eat alone.
“Of course not, Doctor,” said Mrs. Middleton smoothly. “I thought perhaps you’d rather join us than some of the others. And I’m hoping that I can persuade Hilary to join the staff. She’s Dr. Ellen Westbrook’s daughter and a very fine nurse.”
Dr. Marsden accepted the food placed before him and began to eat, simply because he was hungry and not at all as though he found the food particularly appealing. He asked Hilary questions about her training, her interests; the sort of interview she would have expected from any doctor under whose authority she hoped to work.
Mrs. Middleton listened, smiling, her eyes approving. And when, as soon as he decently could, Dr. Marsden excused himself and went away, she turned to Hilary.
“Well? What do you think?” she asked.
“About what?” asked Hilary.
“About Dr. Marsden,” answered Mrs. Middleton. “Could you work under him, do you think? I admit he’s not always the easiest person in the world to get along with, but he’s a very fine doctor and dedicated to his work. He was in the Army Medical Corps for some years; I suppose that’s where he lost his ‘bedside manner’—if he ever had one, which I am afraid I find hard to believe. He became interested in problems and diseases of the aged, and devoted himself to their research. I don’t know how Himself ever managed to persuade him to come here; I’d have thought Dr. Marsden would have preferred some place where the charity patients in his field were housed. Anyway, he’s here, and he’s doing a fine job, and the Senior Citizens adore him, even when he bullies them and scolds them.”
“They all seem quite happy and well cared for,” said Hilary.
“He won’t stand for their being ‘coddled,’ as he calls it; claims that induces self-pity, which he insists is one of their most dangerous ailments,” explained Mrs. Middleton, watching Hilary anxiously.
Hilary nodded slowly.
“Who’s Himself?” she asked.
“Our Administrator, Mr. Ramsey.”
“Oh, yes, I’ve met him.”
“When?”
“While I was waiting for you in the lobby. The receptionist introduced me.”
Mrs. Middleton eyed her thoughtfully.
“And I suppose Ethel gave you a run-down on the gentleman?” she observed cautiously.
“She only told me that he had just about built the place singlehanded, and that he was terribly proud of it,” Hilary answered even more cautiously.
“Which is perfectly true,” answered Mrs. Middleton. “The Town and Country Retirement Club for Senior Citizens is a dream come true for Himself. He worked for twenty years to raise the capital for it, and he takes such an enormous pride in it that—well, sometimes we get a bit fed up with him. But he’s really a very nice guy, and we try to understand his feeling and not get too annoyed with him. Usually, in a place like this, the doctor is top brass; but here it’s Himself, and don’t ever forget it. If he says black is white, we always agree with him. Unless, of course, it affects the welfare of a patient, in which case we ‘gang up’ on him. I must say he’s very decent about it when we do.”
She broke off suddenly and looked anxiously at Hilary. “I’m being shockingly unprofessional, aren’t I?” she apologized. “But, after all, you are my dear Ellen’s daughter, and I don’t feel I could possibly let you step in here without having at least some faint idea of what you’ll be letting yourself in for. Am I scaring you?”
Hilary laughed joyously, a gay, infectious laugh that made many heads turn toward them.
“Goodness, I didn�
��t mean to make such a noise,” Hilary apologized, blushingly aware of the attention being turned her way. “But it was so funny, your thinking you were scaring me. Heavens. Mrs. Middleton—”
“Middy to you, Hilary, when we’re not on duty, though I suppose Dr. Marsden would go into a tizzy if he heard you address me that way,” said Mrs. Middleton.
“Well, it sounds like a perfectly fabulous job, and I’m sure I would enjoy it,” said Hilary.
“Then you’ll come?”
Hilary hesitated and looked about the room, and then she looked back at Mrs. Middleton, and there was a depth of sincerity in her eyes that added emphasis to her words.
“I’ll come, but I won’t promise to stay more than a few months,” she said frankly. “I became a nurse because I wanted to help sick, hurt, ailing people; not to live a life of luxury in a place like this.”
Mrs. Middleton’s smile stopped her.
“Look around you, my dear,” she said quietly. “Can you think of a place where you are needed more? Unless, of course, it depresses you to be around elderly people.”
“Of course it doesn’t,” Hilary protested swiftly.
“You don’t dread the thought of growing old, Hilary?”
Hilary’s beautiful eyes widened as she stared at Mrs. Middleton.
“Dread age? Oh, for goodness sake,” she protested, “there’s only one way to avoid growing old, and that’s to die young. And that is a thought that has never appealed to me.”
“Good girl!” Mrs. Middleton applauded her. “Then you’ll come?”
“Thanks, yes, I’d love to!” Hilary answered without further ado, and Mrs. Middleton beamed at her in swift relief.
Chapter Four
Three days later, she had settled herself in the small but completely charming room assigned to her in the staff quarters on the second floor. All the guests, of course, were in rooms on the first floor, where there were no stairs to climb, no unexpected steps to be navigated, no smallest thing that could disturb them in any way.
Hilary had met the staff and had been accepted wholeheartedly. She had met some of the patients, and they had seemed as delighted with her as the staff had been.
“And now, just to prove that everything isn’t strawberries and cream and this a modern Shangri-La, I’ll introduce you to the Duchess,” said Mrs. Middleton on her fourth morning, as they finished breakfast and walked back along the corridor that ran from east to west in the long, handsome building.
Their feet sank deeply into the wall-to-wall carpeting, and Mrs. Middleton explained, “We wouldn’t dare have the tiled floors here that are customary in hospitals. Too much danger of breaking brittle old bones in a fall. The carpet is vacuumed twice daily, and kept as germ-free as possible. Anyway, this is not a hospital, you know, or even a nursing home; it’s what it claims to be—a retirement home for senior citizens where the word ‘aged’ is one that may cause you to get your mouth washed out with soap and water.”
“I’ll remember,” Hilary promised, laughing.
Mrs. Middleton paused in front of a door, winked at Hilary and rapped lightly.
“Come in. Don’t stand there banging on the door, for pity’s sake,” snarled an angry, thin feminine voice from the other side of the door.
Mrs. Middleton turned the knob and pushed open the door, her face wreathed with smiles, and her voice bright and cheery as she caroled, “Good morning, Mrs. Keenan.”
The old woman who sat propped up in bed, thin and angry-looking, wearing an old-fashioned, long-sleeved nightgown and a night-cap of lace and silk, glared at her.
“Good morning? What’s good about it? Rain and sleet and wind—I didn’t sleep a wink last night with all that howling gale,” she snapped. And then her eyes went past Mrs. Middleton to Hilary, who was still in the doorway, and a lively curiosity touched the cold gray eyes, though her voice was still sharp. “Well, don’t just stand there holding the door open and making a devil of a draft. Either come in and close the door, or go out and shut it.”
Mrs. Middleton shot Hilary an anxious glance, but Hilary only smiled and came inside the luxuriously appointed room, which seemed to her unbearably hot and stuffy.
“Mrs. Keenan, this is our new nurse, Hilary Westbrook,” said Mrs. Middleton pleasantly. “We hope we can persuade her to stay with us.”
Mrs. Keenan’s sharp old eyes swept Hilary from the top of the pert little cap that crowned the shining waves of her red-brown hair to the tips of her white shoes, missing nothing of the slender young body in its crisply immaculate white starched uniform.
“Humph!” she snapped. “So you’re the new girl.”
“I’m the new nurse, Mrs. Keenan,” said Hilary with gentle emphasis.
“Oh, you are, are you?” snapped Mrs. Keenan, ungracious and quite aware of the emphasis. “Well, you’d better make up your mind that you’ll have to get along with me if you want to stay here. And I’m not easy to get along with, I warn you.”
“No,” said Hilary gently, “I don’t imagine you are.”
For a moment the old woman glared at her furiously, and then she turned back to Mrs. Middleton.
“My breakfast this morning wasn’t fit to eat,” she snarled.
“I’m so sorry. What was wrong?” asked Mrs. Middleton.
“Everything! The coffee was dishwater, and cold besides; and the eggs were hard and fried, not poached as I ordered them; and there was no meat—I ordered sausage, but that fool of a maid said there wasn’t any, and I know that’s a lie...”
“I’m sorry about the coffee and the eggs,” said Mrs. Middleton gently, “but you know you aren’t supposed to have meat, especially sausage.”
“Why not? I certainly pay enough here to have everything I order,” the old woman complained furiously. “And I want sausage—and poached eggs, not fried eggs—and I want a decent cup of coffee—”
“Now, now, now,” Mrs. Middleton soothed her. Rather, she tried to, but Mrs. Keenan was working herself up into a rage and struck angrily at the hands that would have helped her back on her pillows.
“Keep your hands off me, woman!” she cried harshly. “I will not be mauled about! If I can’t have what I want to eat here, I can surely have it somewhere else. I won’t stay unless you feed me properly.”
“Shall I have one of the maids pack for you?” suggested Mrs. Middleton, and now the gentleness in her voice had a perceptible edge to it.
The old woman glared at her furiously.
“You’re a guest here, Mrs. Keenan, not a prisoner,” Mrs. Middleton reminded her firmly. “You’re perfectly free to go any time you like.”
“Oh, I am, am I? Well, we’ll just see about that! Where’s Drew Ramsey? I want to see him now—this minute. Get him here—and don’t lallygag! Get out, both of you!” screamed the old woman, and fell back on her pillows, exhausted.
“Now, you see? You’ve worked yourself up into a tantrum, and you know what that means.” Mrs. Middleton was once more the calmly professional nurse trained to cope with anything a patient might do. “You must have a nice nap, and as soon as Mr. Ramsey comes in I’ll send him to you.”
“I told you I won’t be mauled about by you.” The old woman’s voice was still furious but perceptibly weaker, as she thrust aside Mrs. Middleton’s hands and pulled herself away.
“You know what this will mean, Mrs. Keenan?” said Mrs. Middleton, and now her voice had the ring of authority Hilary had been expecting. “You know how you hate sedatives.”
“I won’t have one!”
“You will unless you behave yourself.”
And suddenly, to Hilary’s shocked pity, tears ran down the old woman’s face and she seemed to collapse.
“You’re trying to starve me to death,” she wailed. “But you won’t succeed. My nephew will be here today, and he’ll bring me food, and I’ll tell him how you are treating me, and he’ll take me away.”
“How would you like a nice big foamy eggnog?” Mrs. Middleton coaxed.
The old woman’s eyes lighted greedily.
“With brandy in it?” she asked eagerly.
“Of course, if that’s the way you want it.”
“What other way is there to make a decent eggnog? Yes, I’d like that,” the old woman all but purred.
“Then I’ll make it and send it right in,” Mrs. Middleton promised. “And I’ll see that you have a lovely lunch; just what you want to order. You be thinking about it and planning it, while I get the eggnog.”
“Mind you, I’m starving, so hurry the eggnog,” ordered the old woman, reviving appreciably at the prospect.
“Right away,” Mrs. Middleton promised, and guided Hilary out of the room.
The door safely closed behind them, Mrs. Middleton motioned to a ward maid, ordered the eggnog and grinned wryly at Hilary.
“That’s the worst one in the place, so I thought you should meet her first, because after the Duchess, anything would be pleasant,” she promised.
“Why do you call her the Duchess?”
“She’s by all odds the richest guest in the T. & C., and the first one, and she never lets anybody forget it,” answered Mrs. Middleton. “She’s so sure that people are after her money that she makes herself as unpleasant as she can, I suppose on the theory that they might as well work for it!”
“Poor soul!” said Hilary softly.
Mrs. Middleton looked at her swiftly.
“She doesn’t make you want to pack your bags and get the blazes out of here as fast as your two feet can take you?” she asked uneasily.
Hilary laughed.
“Far from it! She’s a challenge. And I never run away from challenges,” she answered. “Oh, I admit she probably gives everybody a fit, but—did you notice her eyes, Middy?”