Leerie Part 4

The wail broke out afresh: "How can I tell if I can stand her? They all look alike--all of 'em. You're the fourth, ain't you?" He turned to the nurse at his bedside for corroboration.

"Then I'm the fifth," announced Sheila, "and there's luck in odd numbers."

"Five's my number." The mammoth man looked a fraction less distracted as he stated this important fact. "Born fifth day of the fifth month, struck it rich when I was twenty-five, married in 'seventy-five, formed the American Coal Trust December fifth, eighteen ninety-five. How's that for a number?"

"And I'm twenty-five, and this is June fifth." Sheila smiled.

"Say, honest?" A glimmer of cheerfulness filtered through. The man beckoned the superintendent of nurses closer and whispered in a perfectly audible voice: "Can't you take it away now? I'd like to ask the other some questions before you leave her for keeps."

Miss Maxwell nodded a dismissal to the nurse who had been, and called Sheila to the bedside. "Look her over well, Mr. Brandle. Miss O'Leary isn't a bit sensitive."

"O'Leary? That's not a bad name. Had a shaft boss up at my first anthracite-mine by that name--got on with him first-cla.s.s. Say"--this direct to Sheila--"can you pray?"

"Not unless I have to."

"Not a bad answer. Now what--er--form of--literatoore do you prefer?"

"Things with pep--punch--go!"

"Say, shake." The mammoth man smiled as he held out a giant fist. Sheila had the feeling she was shaking hands with some prehistoric animal. It was almost repellent, and she had to summon all her sympathy and control to be able to return the shake with any degree of cordiality.

"All right, ma'am. You can leave us now to thrash it out man to man. You'd better get back to managing your little white angels," and he swept a dismissing hand toward Miss Maxwell and the door.

Oddly enough, there was nothing rude nor affronting in the man's words.

There was too much of underlying good nature to permit it. With the closing of the door behind the superintendent he turned to Sheila. "Now, boss, we might as well understand each other--it'll save strikes or hurt feelings. Eh?"

Sheila nodded.

"All right. I'm dying, and I know it. May burst like a paper bag or go up like a penny balloon any minute. Now praying won't keep me from bursting a second sooner, or send me up a foot higher, so cut it out."

Again Sheila nodded.

"That isn't all. Had two nurses who agreed, kept their word, but they hadn't the nerve to keep the parson from praying, and when he was off duty they just sat--twiddled their thumbs and waited for me to quit. Couldn't stand that--got on my nerves something fearful."

"Wanted to murder them, didn't you?" Sheila laughed. "Well, Mr. Brandle, suppose we begin with supper and the baseball news. After that we'll hunt up a thriller--biggest thriller they've got in the book-store."

"You're boss," was the answer, but a look of relief--almost of contentment--spread over the rubicund face.

As Sheila was leaving for the supper-tray she paused. "How would you like company for supper?"

"Company? Good Lord, not the parson!"

"No, me. If you are willing to sign for two, I could bring my supper up with yours."

"And not eat alone! By Jehoshaphat! Give me that slip quick."

They had not only a good supper, they had a noisy one. The coal magnate roared over Sheila's descriptions of some of the bath treatments and their victims. In the midst of one particularly noisy explosion he suddenly stopped and looked accusingly at her. "Why don't you stop me? Don't you know doctor's orders? Had 'em dinged into my head until I could say 'em backwards: no exertion, no excitement, avoid all undue movement, keep quiet. Darn it all! As if I won't have to keep quiet long enough!

Well--why don't you repeat those fool orders and keep me quiet?"

Sheila looked at him with a pair of steady gray eyes. "Do you know, Mr.

Brandle, it isn't a half-bad way to go out of this world--to go laughing."

The mammoth man beamed. He looked for all the world like the full moon suddenly grown beatific. "And I'd just about made up my mind that I'd never find a blamed soul who would feel that way about it. Shake again, boss."

After the baseball news and a fair start in the thriller, he indulged further in past grievances. "Hadn't any more'n settled it for sure I was done for than the parson came and the nurse took to looking mournful. Lord Almighty! ain't it bad enough to be carted off in a hea.r.s.e once without folks putting you in beforehand? That's not my notion of dying. I lived pleasant and cheerful, and by the Lord Harry, I don't see why I can't die that way! And look-a-here, boss, I don't want any of that repenting stuff.

I don't need no puling parson to tell me I'm a sinner. Any idiot couldn't look at me without guessing that much. Say!" He leaned forward with sudden earnestness. "Take a good look at me yourself. See any halo or angel trappings about me?"

Sheila laughed. "I'm afraid not. What you really ought to have--what I miss about you--is the pipe, and the bowl, and the fiddlers three."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Don't you remember? It's an old nursery rhyme; probably you heard it hundreds of times when you were a little boy:

"Old King Cole was a merry old soul And a merry old soul was he.

He called for his pipe and he called for his bowl, And he called for his fiddlers three."

The coal magnate threw back his head on the pillows and laughed long and loud. He laughed until he grew purple and gasped for breath, and he laughed while he choked, and Sheila flew about for stimulants. For a few breathless moments Sheila thought she had whipped up the hea.r.s.e--to use the mammoth man's own metaphor--but after a panting half-hour the heart subsided and the breath came easier.

"You nearly did for me that time, boss. But it fits; Jehoshaphat, it fits me like a B. V. D.! The only difference you might put down to simplified spelling. Eh?" And he cautiously chuckled at his joke.

While Sheila was making ready for the night he chuckled and lapsed into florid, heliotrope studies by turns. "It's straight, what I told you about being a sinner," he gave verbal expression to his thoughts at last.

"That's why I don't leave a cent to charity--not a cent. Ain't going to have any peaked-faced, oily-tongued jacka.s.ses saying over my coffin that I tried to buy my entrance ticket into the Lord Almighty's kingdom. No, sirree! I know I've lived high, eaten well, and drunk some. I've made the best of every good bargain that came within eyeshot. I treated my own handsome--and I let the rest of the world go hang. Went to church Easter Sunday every year and put a bill in the plate; you can figure for yourself about how much I've given to charity. Never had any time to think of it, anyway--probably wouldn't have given if I had. Always thought Mother'd live longer'n me and she'd take care of that end of it. But she didn't."

For a moment Sheila thought the man was going to cry; his lower lip quivered like a baby's, and his eyes grew red and watery. There was no denying it, the man was a caricature; even his grief was ludicrous. He wiped his eyes with the back of his heliotrope sleeve and finished what he had to say. "Don't it beat all how the pious vultures croak over you the minute you're done for--reminding you you can't take your money away with you? Didn't the parson--first time he came--sit in that chair and open up and begin about the rich man's squeezing through a needle's eye and a lot about putting away temporal stuff? I don't aim to do any squeezing into heaven, I can tell you. And I fixed him all right. Ha, ha! I told him as long as the money wouldn't do me and Mother any more good I'd settle it so's it couldn't benefit any one else. And that's exactly what I've done.

Left it all for a monument for us, fancy marble, carved statues, and the whole outfit. It'll beat that toadstool-looking tomb of that prince somewhere in Asia all hollow. Ha, ha!"

He leaned back to enjoy to the full this humorous legacy to himself, but the expression of Sheila's face checked it. "Say, boss, you don't like what I've done, do you? Run it out and dump it; I can stand for straight talk from you."

Sheila felt repelled even more than she had at first. To have a man at the point of death throw his money into a heap of marble just to keep it from doing good to any one seemed horrible. And yet the man spoke so consistently for himself. He had lived in the flesh and for the flesh all his days; it was not strange that there was no spirit to interpret now for him or to give him the courage to be generous in the face of what the world would think.

"It's yours to spend as you like--only--I hate monuments. Rather have the plain green gra.s.s over me. And don't you think it's queer yourself that a man who had the grit to make himself and a pile of money hasn't the grit to leave it invested after he goes, instead of burying it? Supposing you can't live and use it yourself! That's no reason for not letting your money live after you. I'd want to keep my money alive."

"Alive? Say, what do you mean?"

"Just what I say--alive. Charity isn't the only way to dispose of it.

Leave it to science to discover something new with; give it to the laboratories to study up typhoid or cancer. Ever think how little we know about them?"

"Why should I? I don't owe anything to science."

"Yes, you do. What developed the need of coal--what gave you the facilities for removing it from your mines? Don't tell me you or anybody else doesn't owe something to science."

"Bosh!" And the argument ended there.

The old man had a good night. He dozed as peacefully as if he had not required propping up and occasional hypodermics to keep his lungs and heart going properly, and when the house doctor made his early rounds this sad and shocking spectacle met his eye: the dying coal magnate, arrayed in a fresh and more vivid suit of heliotrope pajamas, smoking a brierwood and keeping a violent emotional pace with the hero in the thrillingest part of the thriller. Even Sheila's cheeks were tinged with excitement.

"Miss O'Leary!" All the outraged sensibilities of an orthodox, conscientious young house physician were plainly manifested in those two words.

Out shot the brierwood like a projectile, and a giant finger wagged at the intruder. "Look-a-here, young man, the boss and I are running this--er--quitting game to suit ourselves, and we don't need no suggestions from the walking delegate, or the board of directors, or the gang. See? Now if you can't say something pleasant and cheerful, get out!"