Nurse Hilary

by Peggy Gaddis

  “Gosh almighty, Mr. Hodding!” Reid gasped and colored at the youthfulness of the exclamation. “Are you really levelling with me?”

  “Of course,” answered Mr. Hodding with convincing sincerity.

  Reid was startled, still for a moment, his thoughts whirling.

  “We’ll discuss the details at lunch tomorrow,” said Mr. Hodding smoothly. “And the amount of the yearly retainer. I paid Sanders twenty-five thousand a year ...”

  “Oh, good Lord, Mr. Hodding, I couldn’t expect anything like that,” Reid gasped.

  There was a friendly twinkle in Mr. Hodding’s eyes.

  “Well, I hadn’t intended to offer you that, my boy. Perhaps half, but no more for the first few years,” he answered firmly. “You’ll meet me for lunch at the Towers? Say about twelve-thirty?”

  “I should say I will, Mr. Hodding!” Reid’s voice was husky, his eyes blazing. “And I don’t know how to thank you.”

  “By giving me the kind of service Sanders gave me, Reid, no man could ask for better,” answered Mr. Hodding, and watched as the boy—he seemed no more than that to Mr. Hodding, though he was twenty-six—all but stumbled out into the night and Mr. Hodding went back to his bridge game, his eyes warm and reminiscent. What it was to be young, he thought. And felt no envy whatever for the boy.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Angela sat curled up on the big old divan, the cat, Minnie-Mike, near her but safely out of reach of her hand, for Minnie-Mike was a cat who disliked having his fur rumpled by a careless hand.

  Out in the kitchen, Nora was washing up the dinner dishes, the air booming one of her beloved old-fashioned hymns.

  There were flying footsteps along the flagstone walk, and the scarlet door burst open, as Reid practically threw himself into the house, panting, almost beyond speech, though he did manage a breathless, “Hi, Stinky!”

  Nora, in the kitchen doorway, cried, outraged, “ ‘Stinky’! Of all the awful names to call the girl you’re in love with!” Angela was on her feet and she and Reid stared at Nora as if they thought she had lost her mind.

  “The—girl he’s in love with?” Angela gasped, shocked.

  “Well, if he isn’t, then I’m a bigger fool than I ever thought I’d admit being,” snapped Nora. “And you’re plumb stomp-down crazy about him, but you’re both such dumb bunnies you haven’t even sense enough to realize it! Stinky, indeed! What’s wrong with ‘darling’ or ‘honey’ or even ‘sweetheart’ I’d like to know?”

  Angela and Reid were staring at each other, wide-eyed, caught by such simple astonishment and disbelief that Nora snorted and stalked back to the kitchen, leaving them alone with their amazement and dawning wonder.

  “Do you, Stinky?” Reid asked at last, so faintly that Angela had to strain her ears to be sure she had heard him.

  “Do I what?” she stammered, her eyes turned away from him.

  “I mean, are you, Stinky?”

  “Are I—I mean, am I—what?”

  “What Nora said, crazy about me?” His voice was low, shaken, as though he found it incredible.

  “She said you were in love with me.”

  “Oh, that.” Reid made a swift gesture of dismissal. “Of course. I have been almost from the first time I saw you. You must have known that.”

  “I didn’t!” she protested hotly. “How could I? You never let out a cheep about it. How could I guess?”

  Reid studied her, frowning, puzzled.

  “But zounds, girl! I thought all women knew when men were in love with them.” He sounded angry.

  “Well, I don’t see how they can know if the man is such a—such a stupe he never says so! My good gosh, Reid, how was I to know, if you didn’t say so?” she flamed indignantly.

  “All right then, I’m saying so—long and loud,” Reid burst out. “I love you! I’m crazy about you. And I don’t see how you could have helped knowing it’. Now what about you?”

  “Oh, sure,” said Angela. “It’s like that with me, too.”

  “Well, I’ll be hanged!”

  Reid’s whole expression, the tone of his voice, was so shocked, so incredulous, that Angela stared at him, young chin tilted defiantly.

  “So?” she demanded sharply.

  “So,” said Reid and reached for her and she was in his arms. For a moment she seemed on the verge of resisting his embrace, and then she relaxed in his arms, and there were happy tears on her cheeks, and her mouth was tremulous, faintly salty with her tears as she gave him back his kiss.

  “Well, that’s more like it,” snapped Nora from the kitchen doorway. “You two! I swear, I was just about out of patience with you. But of course I knew one of these days you’d wake up; I just hoped you wouldn’t wait until you were as old as some of those old folks up at the Club before you discovered it.”

  Angela smiled through her tears, still clinging to Reid.

  “You keep out of this,” she ordered unsteadily.

  “There’s gratitude for you,” said Nora disgustedly, though her eyes were brimming with tenderness. “If it hadn’t been for me, the two of you would still have been yapping ‘Stinky’ and ‘Butch’ at each other. I swear I don’t know what young people are coming to; what language they speak! Crazy talk, and not a ‘honey’ or ‘darling’ in the whole vocabulary.”

  “But don’t you understand why that is, Nora?” asked Reid anxiously. “It’s because those words of endearment have been so cheapened that they just don’t seem to mean anything any more. We have to find words that we understand. I guess it’s a sort of code. I call her ‘Stinky’ because she is so beautiful and so sweet and I’m so crazy about her that just to call her ‘darling’—well, I’d use that word to any girl I’d met casually and whose name I’d forgotten.”

  “Oh, you would, would you?” Angela flamed jealously, and Reid laughed and kissed her.

  “But I wouldn’t call any girl in the world but you ‘Stinky’!” he promised her, laughing.

  “And I’d never call anybody else ‘Butch’,” she echoed his promise.

  Nora eyed them fondly, and then she sighed, trouble riding into her eyes.

  “So now what do we do?” she mused aloud.

  Reid looked surprised.

  “Why, we get married. What else do two people do who fall in love?” he asked, puzzled that there should seem to be any doubt on that score.

  Nora eyed him ruefully.

  “Get married, is it? When you know perfectly well that—that Gorgon of an aunt of yours will have to be scraped off the ceiling she’ll hit it so hard when she finds you want to marry a girl who isn’t out of the top drawer socially?” she demanded.

  Angela said humbly, “I forgot. Of course the Duchess won’t approve, and Pop won’t approve of anything that disturbs the Duchess.”

  “Oh, but it’s me you’re marrying, Stinky, not my aunt,” said Reid firmly.

  “And your job is one your aunt can kick you out of—” Nora began.

  “Oh, yes, I knew there was something I’d come to tell you, but it got knocked right out of my mind,” Reid remembered. “I’m leaving Aunt Kate’s lawyers, I’m going to have my own office.”

  “So you and Angela can starve to death together while you build up a practice? That’ll be nice,” Nora commented dryly.

  “But I’m starting with a ready-made practice,” Reid explained. “Mr. Hodding is giving me charge of all his business affairs, at a yearly retainer of half of twenty-five grand. He paid Sanders Ridley twenty-five thousand, but he says he could only offer me half of that!”

  Angela and Nora were staring at him, wide-eyed and openmouthed as he explained swiftly; when he had finished, Angela and Nora exchanged glances of amazed delight, and then Angela hurled herself into Reid’s arms and clung to him, her cheek pressed hard against his own, happy tears spilling over her cheek, while Nora blew her nose violently, mopped angrily at her own tears and went away and left them alone.

  Chapter Sixteen

  “You’re doing sple
ndidly, Mrs. Keenan,” said Hilary briskly. “Don’t you want to get up and get dressed and go into the solarium, or the club room?”

  Mrs. Keenan glared furiously at her.

  “I do not!” she snapped. “1 don’t feel up to it. I’m weak as a kitten.”

  “Of course you are.” Hilary made her tone gentle and soothing. “But you won’t regain your strength in bed. And it’s such a lovely day ...”

  “I want to see Drew Ramsey, and call my nephew. I demand that he come out here, immediately,” Mrs. Keenan gave the order as she would to an unsatisfactory servant.

  “Mr. Ramsey is very busy.”

  “Oh, he is, is he? Well, I’m quite sure he’s not too busy to come and see me, nor Reid, either!” snarled Mrs. Keenan. And suddenly, to Hilary’s amazement, tears ran down the old woman’s face and her voice rose to a keening wail, “Everybody hates me! I won’t stay in a place where people—hate me.”

  Hilary studied her for a moment and then she spoke very quietly, “But I thought that was what you wanted, Mrs. Keenan, that people should hate you. Because you work so hard at it.”

  Mrs. Keenan sat bolt upright in bed, so astounded by Hilary’s words that, for a moment, her tears vanished beneath the red rage that flooded her whole being.

  “Why, you—you insulting creature!” she gasped. “How dare you speak to me like that? How dare you—”

  “Mrs. Keenan, I’m a nurse, not a psychiatrist,” Hilary pointed out levelly. “I’m delighted to do all that I can for you, physically and from a medical standpoint. But I can do nothing for your mental state.”

  “Are you saying I’m out of my mind?” shrieked Mrs. Keenan.

  “I really don’t know,” Hilary answered quite honestly. “All I know is that you bully people and ride roughshod over them, and are rude and insulting, and then you wonder why people hate you! It’s not that people hate you—it’s that you hate people.”

  “That’s not true...” Mrs. Keenan’s voice trailed off beneath the shock of that thought, and after a moment she went on hotly, “It’s just that I don’t like people taking advantage of me. They’re interested only in my money.”

  “Well,” argued Hilary, gently reasonable, “what else do you have to offer them that they could be interested in?”

  That, too, was obviously a thought completely foreign and extremely distasteful to Mrs. Keenan, who stared at Hilary, eyes wide and mouth agape.

  “Mrs. Keenan, haven’t you heard the old saying that we only get back from life what we put into it? That the world is like a big mirror, that shows us our own reflection? If we meet it smiling and friendly and pleasant, that’s the face it gives back to us.”

  “Oh, fiddle-faddle,” snorted Mrs. Keenan harshly. “Spare me your half-baked philosophies! I’m perfectly satisfied with myself.”

  “Are you really?” Hilary marveled. “How awful!”

  Mrs. Keenan caught her breath as though Hilary had struck her and for a moment she could only glare at Hilary, and then she dropped back on her pillows and said through her teeth, “Get out! Get out—and don’t ever come back in here again.”

  “As you wish, Mrs. Keenan,” said Hilary pleasantly, and let herself out of the room.

  Halfway down the corridor she met Dr. Marsden making his morning rounds and his lean, unhandsome face lighted with a smile at sight of her.

  “I’m afraid I’ve made Mrs. Keenan very angry,” she confessed, entirely unrepentant.

  Dr. Marsden laughed.

  “Well, don’t boast about it; it’s a very easy thing to accomplish,” he reminded her. “Would it be safe for me to have a look at her, do you think? Or would you say it was necessary?”

  “Physically, she’s fine, but mentally—well, it would no doubt please her if you’d go in and condole with her on some of her grievances,” answered Hilary. “I’m supposed to bring Mr. Ramsey to see her, and then I’m supposed to telephone that poor boy, her nephew, and order him to report for an extra-special drubbing.”

  “You sound a trifle bitter, nurse,” Dr. Marsden mocked her, his eyes holding an amused twinkle.

  “Oh, it’s just that it—well, it irritates me so to see a woman like that, who has everything in the world that money can buy, and who is such a—Tartar—when there are thousands upon thousands of women her age who are dependent on charity, and who rarely ever complain and who are so pathetically grateful for any crumbs of comfort—” she broke off, grimaced and said, “I’m detaining you on your rounds, Doctor, and neglecting my orders.”

  “I’ll see you at lunch and we can compare notes,” Dr. Marsden told her and Hilary nodded, a warm little glow in her heart as she went on her way.

  She delivered Mrs. Keenan’s message to Drew Ramsey in a carefully expressionless voice, saw his angry scowl as he dismissed his secretary and glanced, annoyed, at the sheaf of mail on his desk. But Hilary noted that he rose instantly and went down the corridor towards Mrs. Keenan’s room.

  She went to the telephone and put through the call to Mrs. Keenan’s attorneys, and heard the switchboard operator there say firmly, “I’m sorry, Mr. Keenan isn’t with us any longer. No, I’m afraid I don’t know where he can be found.”

  Hilary stared at the telephone for a long moment, puzzled. And then she reminded herself that she had work to do and that there was no point in wasting time wondering about Mrs. Keenan’s nephew.

  It was an hour or more later before Hilary was summoned to Mr. Ramsey’s office, and there he greeted her with an angry scowl.

  “I’m very disappointed in you, Miss Westbrook,” he motioned her curtly to a chair. “You upset Mrs. Keenan shockingly this morning and she demands that I discharge you.” Hilary stiffened slightly, her eyes chilling.

  “I’ll spare you the task, Mr. Ramsey, I’ll offer my resignation, immediately, here and now,” she told him.

  Mr. Ramsey made an impatient little gesture, scowling at her accusingly.

  “It’s all so uncalled for, Miss Westbrook,” he complained. “Surely one of the essential parts of a nurse’s training is in how to maintain friendly relations with her patients.”

  “Of course, Mr. Ramsey, but that presupposes that the patient wants friendly relations with her nurse,” Hilary pointed out, feeling her color rise beneath the heat of her anger. “But it’s silly to discuss the situation, since I am more than willing to resign. Shall I leave immediately? Or will Mrs. Keenan permit me to stay on until you find a replacement?”

  Mr. Ramsey’s scowl deepened.

  “The T. & C. is my place, Miss Westbrook,” he told her sourly. “Mrs. Keenan has nothing to do with its operation. She is merely one of our best-paying guests, the first one to be installed here, and I feel that—well, that we owe it to her to keep her as happy and as comfortable as possible.”

  Hilary stood up.

  “I quite understand, Mr. Ramsey,” she told him coolly. “I can leave before lunch if you like.”

  “Oh, of course not,” he snapped. “Finish out the week, and we’ll try to find somebody to replace you. I’m sorry to lose you, Miss Westbrook, but you don’t seem to have much tact for dealing with the class of patients we have here, now, do you?”

  “I’m afraid not, Mr. Ramsey,” she told him coolly, and walked out.

  Her feeling was one of acute relief. She hadn’t been at all happy here in the work that seemed to her unworthy of her years of training; her work was the care of the ill, the hurt, the lame, the halting, the blind—not people whose only disease was one of age, thickly carpeted and made snug by a lot of money. She would be glad to go, she told herself, and tried not to think how much she would miss some of the people here; especially, said something deep down in her heart, Dr. Marsden. But she put that thought indignantly away from her; rather, she tried to. After all, she’d worked before in complete sympathy with doctors whom she’d admired tremendously; Dr. Marsden was just another such doctor.

  But then she looked up from her table in the dining room and saw him come towards h
er, pausing here and there to speak to guests who greeted him warmly.

  When he reached the table where she sat, he beamed at her happily.

  “This is an unexpected treat,” he told her as he sat down and unfolded his napkin.

  “I can imagine having a nice hot meal in the middle of the day must be quite a novelty for you,” she smiled at him, deliberately misunderstanding.

  His eyes met and held hers.

  “Oh, I frequently have a hot lunch,” he told her. “I rarely have the privilege of sharing it with someone so charming.”

  Hilary fluttered her eyelashes, mockingly impressed. “Why, Doctor!” she murmured.

  The waitress came, bringing his soup, and as he dipped a spoon into it, he grinned across the small table at Hilary. “What did you do to the Duchess? She was raving!”

  “Not half as much as the Duchess did to me,” Hilary admitted wryly. “She had me fired.”

  Dr. Marsden put down his spoon, all hint of raillery gone, his eyes shocked.

  “Oh, come now ...” he protested.

  “Well, she ordered Mr. Ramsey to fire me, so I helped him by resigning,” said Hilary. “And don’t think it won’t be a pleasure to get out of this luxuriously padded and very elegant cell.”

  “I won’t permit this,” said Dr. Marsden, his tone low so that it reached no further than her own ears. “A nurse of your qualifications—”

  “Who is shockingly lax in tact, and who insists on telling a woman like the Duchess the truth,” Hilary finished for him.

  “You gave your resignation?”

  “With vast pleasure,” Hilary assured him.

  “Then I shall hand in mine immediately after lunch.”

  Hilary gasped a startled protest, “Oh, no, Dr. Marsden, you mustn’t do that! Why, this is such a wonderful place for you to study gerontology—”

  “I refuse to stay unless you do,” he insisted firmly.

  Hilary met the level gaze of his eyes, and felt color pour into her cheeks, and her eyes turned away from his probing, searching gaze.