Leerie Part 9

The little figure crept up eagerly. Sheila put out an arm and led her into a room where a single candle burned beside the bed. There lay the atom, rosy and dimpling in his sleep.

It is to be doubted if the senora had ever dreamed of such a possession after the appalling reality of the original Francisco Enrique Manuel Machado y Rodriguez. In her ignorance and youth she had accepted ugliness, sickness, and peevish crying as the normal attributes of babyhood, and because of this she had loathed it. Therefore to be suddenly confronted with her awful mistake, to find that she had thrown away something that was beautiful and enchanting, to know she had forfeited what might have been hers, to feel in a small degree the first longing of motherhood and be denied it--all this was born into the slowly awakening consciousness of the senora. It almost transformed her face into homely holiness as she made her one supreme prayer and sacrifice. "You give me my babee--now--you give heem and not keep--and I give you all these. See?" She held out her hands that had been clasped under the heavy mantilla that covered her head and shoulders. Opening them, she thrust them close, that Sheila might look. They were filled with jewels--the jewels she adored, that had contributed a large part to the joy of her existence. Pins, rings, necklaces, bracelets--the senora had not kept back a single ornament.

"You--you and the blessed Maria will give heem back to me?"

"Get down and pray to the Maria," commanded Sheila. "Promise her that if she will give your baby back to you you will take care of him for ever and ever. Never neglect him, never shake nor slap him, never give him bad milk to make him sick. Promise you'll always love him and keep him laughing and pretty. And remember--break your promise, let anything happen to Pancho again, and Maria will not give him back to you another time."

The sanitarium never learned in detail how Senor Machado became reconciled to a live son, not being present when the news was conveyed to him. They saw him arrive, however, looking very much shaken with his bereavement, and they saw him depart with his son perched high upon his shoulder, wearing the expression of one who has come unexpectedly into a great possession, while the senora clung to them both. The sanitarium waved them off with gladness and satisfaction--all but four unsmiling outsiders. So great a hole can a departing atom sometimes leave behind that those four who had given him temporary care and guardianship went about for days with sorrow written plainly upon them. Hennessy fed the swans in bitter silence; Peter moped, with a laugh for no one; Doctor Fuller groaned whenever South America was mentioned; while all three knew they could not even fathom the deepness or the bigness of that hole for Sheila.

Peter took her for a twilight ride in his car the first empty night. "Go on and cry it out--I sha'n't mind," he urged as he speeded the car along a country road.

Sheila smiled faintly. "Thank you--can't. Just feel bruised and banged all over--feel as if I needed a plunge in that old pool of Bethesda."

They spun on in silence for a few miles more before Sheila spoke again. "I learned one wonderful thing from Pancho--something I never felt sure of before."

"What was that?"

"Sorry--can't tell. It's the sort of thing you tell only the man you marry, after you've discovered he's the only man you ever could have married."

Peter speeded the car ahead and smiled quietly into the gathering darkness. Fortunately he was not an impatient man.

There is one point concerning the atom that Hennessy and Doctor Fuller still wrangle over, neither of them having the slightest conception of the other's point of view.

"That was a case of good nursing and milk," the old doctor persists.

While Hennessy beats the air with his fists and shouts: "Nothing of the sort! 'Twas egg-sh.e.l.ls that done it."

Chapter IV

FOR THE HONOR OF THE SAN

Peter Brooks paced the sanitarium grounds like a man possessed. Hands thrust deep into pockets, teeth hard clenched, head bare, the raw October wind ruffling his heavy crop of hair like a c.o.c.k's comb. So suggestive was the resemblance that Hennessy, watching him from the willow stump by the pond, was forced to remark to Brian Boru, the gray swan, that Mr. Peter looked like a young rooster, after growing his spurs, looking for his first fight.

"Aye, an' for one I'm wishin' he'd be findin' it," continued Hennessy.

"He's bided peaceful an' patient till there is no virtue left in him. Ye can make believe women be civilized if ye like, but I'm knowin' that a woman's sure to go to the man that fights the hardest to get her, same as it was in the savage day o' the world. An' there's nothing that sets a man right quicker with himself than a good fight, tongues or fists."

At that moment Peter would have gladly chosen either or both if fate could only have furnished him with a legitimate combatant. But a man cannot fight gossipy old ladies or jealous, petty-minded nurses, or a doctor whom he has never met and whose transgressions he cannot swear to. And yet Peter wanted to double up his fists and pitch into the whole community; he felt himself all brute and yearned for wholesale slaughter.

Peter had come to the sanitarium in the beginning to be cured of a temporal malady, only to rise from his bed stricken with an eternal one.

He had fallen desperately in love with Sheila O'Leary as only a man of Peter's sort can fall in love, once and for all time. Moreover, he believed in her as a man believes in the best and purest that is likely to come into his life. On the day of his convalescing, when she had been transferred from his case to another, he had sworn that he would not stir foot from the old San until he had won her. He had kept his word for four months. He would have been content to keep it for four more--or for four years, for that matter--had everything not turned suddenly topsy-turvy and sent his world of hopes crashing down about him.

For four months he had shared as much of Sheila's life and work as she would allow. He had let himself drift into the role of a comfortable and sympathetic companion whenever her hours for recreation gave him a chance.

His love had grown as his admiration and understanding of her had grown, until she had come to seem as necessary a part of his life as the air he breathed. Then he had been able to smile whimsically at those gossipy tales. What if she had been suspended and sent away from the sanitarium?

What if she had broken through some of the tight-laced rules with which all inst.i.tutions of this kind hedge in their nurses? Sheila's proclivity for breaking rules was a byword among the many who loved her, and the head of the inst.i.tution, the superintendent of nurses, the entire staff of doctors, down to Hennessy, the keeper of the walks and swans, only smiled and closed their eyes to all of Sheila's backsliding. For hadn't they all believed in her? And hadn't they sent for her to come back to them again?

And which one of them had ever allowed a word of scandal to pa.s.s his lips? So Peter smiled, too.

In those months he had come to read Sheila--so he thought--like an open book. He had learned by heart all her moods, the good and the bad, the sweet and the bitter. He knew she could be as divinely tender and compa.s.sionate as a celestial mother; he also knew that she could be as barren of sympathy and as relentless as fate itself. She could pour forth her whole throbbing soul, impulsive, warm, and radiant, as a true Celt, yet she could be as impersonal, terse, and cryptic as a marconigram. He loved these very extremes in her, her unmitigated hatred for the things she hated, and her unfailing love for the things she loved. She made no pretense or boast for herself; she was what she was for all the world to see. And Peter had found her the stanchest, sweetest, most vital--albeit the most stubborn--piece of womanhood he had ever known. Her very nickname of "Leerie" was her open letter of introduction to every one; her smile and the wonder-light in her eyes were her best credentials. Small wonder it was that her patients watched for her to come and that Peter felt he could snap his fingers at the scandalmongers.

But Peter wasn't snapping them now--or smiling. His fists were doubled tight in his pockets, and he clenched his teeth harder as he paced the walk from pond to rest-house. How the accursed tongues of the gossips rang in his head! "Rather odd the sanitarium should have sent for him, wasn't it? Don't you know he was the young surgeon who was mixed up in that affair with that popular nurse?"... "Oh yes, they hushed it up and sent them both away."... "Nothing definite was ever explained, but they were always together, just as they are now, and you can't get smoke without some burning."... "Yes, Doctor Brainard and Miss O'Leary. Didn't you ever hear about what happened three years ago?"

Peter's stride seemed to measure forth the length of each offending tongue, and when he reached the end of his beaten track he swung about as if to meet and silence them all, for all time. But instead he came face to face with the two who had caused them to wag. So absorbed were the surgeon and nurse in what they had to say to each other that they brushed by Peter without seeing him. He might have been one of the rustic posts of the rest-house or the pine-tree growing close by. As they pa.s.sed, Peter scanned narrowly the half-averted face of the girl he loved and found it pitifully changed in those few days. The luminous light had gone from her eyes; her lips no longer curved to the gracious, demure smile Peter had always called "cloistered." They were set to grim determination, as if the girl had gripped fast to a purpose and no amount of shaking or persuasion would induce her to let go. Her eyes were circled and anxious. Peter groaned unconsciously at his glimpse of her, while Hennessy from his vantage-point on the stump shook a vengeful fist at the retreating back of the surgeon.

"A million curses on him!" muttered Hennessy, his lips tight shirred.

"Sure, the la.s.s has the look of a soul possessed." The next instant his fist was descending not over-mercifully on Peter's back. "First I'm cursin' him an' then I'm cursin' ye. For the love o' Saint Patrick, are ye goin' to stand round like a blitherin' fool an' see that rascal of a docthor do harm again to our la.s.s? I'll come mortial close to wringin'

your neck if ye do."

Peter glared at his erstwhile friend and fellow-philosopher. "You're the fool, Hennessy. What under heaven can I do? What could any man do in my place?"

"Fight for her. Can't you see the man has her possessed? What an' how Hennessy hasn't the wits to make out, but ye have. Search out her throuble same as she searched out yours, an' make her whole an' sweet an' shinin'

again." Hennessy laid two gnarled, brown hands on Peter's shoulder while he peered up at him with eyes full of appeal. "Ye've heard naught to shake your faith in the la.s.s? Ye believe in her--aye?"

"Good G.o.d! man, of course I believe in her! I'd believe in her if all the tongues in the world wagged till doomsday. But what else can I do? Hang around this old hotbed of gossip and listen and listen, powerless to cram the truth down their throats because I don't know it?" Peter shot out a sudden hand and gripped Hennessy's. "For the love of your blessed Saint Patrick, stand up like a man there, Hennessy, and tell me what was the truth?"

For a moment Hennessy's eyes shifted; he whistled his breath in and out in staccato jerks; then his gaze came back to Peter and he eyed him steadily.

"Son, I'm knowin' no more than when I first saw ye."

"You believe in her?"

Hennessy pulled his hand free and shook his fist in Peter's face. "Bad scran to ye for thinkin' aught else. 'Tis G.o.d's truth I'm tellin' ye, Mr.

Peter. I'm knowin' no more than them blitherin' tongues say, but I'd pray our la.s.s into heaven wi' my dyin' breath if I could."

Peter smiled. "You'd be doing better to pray her out of this miserable little purgatory right here. If she belonged to me, Hennessy--"

"I wish to G.o.d she did, sir! But that's what ye can fight for--make her belong."

"Easier said than done. Since Doctor Brainard came I can't get her to see me. Read that!" Peter pulled out of his pocket a tiny folded note and handed it to the swan-keeper. It was deciphered with much labor and read with troubled seriousness.

Dear Mr. Brooks:

Thank you for the flowers, and the candy, and the many offers of the car, but I haven't time to enjoy any of these things just now. So please don't send me any more, or write, or try to see me. I think it would be better for every one, and far happier in the end for you, if you would go back to your work as soon as possible.

Faithfully yours,

SHEILA O'LEARY.

Hennessy snorted. "So that's what she thinks, is it? Well, don't ye do it.

'Twas betther advice I gave ye myself; hold fast here an' fight for her.

Mind that!" And with a farewell pull of his forelock Hennessy left him.

Peter watched him for an instant, then with a new purpose full-born in his mind he turned and walked swiftly back to the sanitarium. He knew why the management had sent for Brainard to come back to the San. The head surgeon had been taken with typhoid; the wards were full of his special operative cases, and Brainard, who had trained under him, was the most skilful man available to take his place. But why had they put Sheila O'Leary on as his surgical nurse? Why had they done this thing that was bound to revive the old scandal and set tongues wagging anew? Peter knew that upon the answer to this depended his decision. Would he take Sheila's advice and go, or Hennessy's advice and fight?

He went directly to the office of the superintendent of nurses, and, finding the door well ajar, he entered without knocking. Miss Maxwell was seated at her desk. Across the desk, with clasped hands, cheeks aflame, and lips compressed into a look of even greater determination than Peter had seen there a few minutes before, leaned Sheila O'Leary.

Peter colored at his unintentional intrusion. "Excuse me," he stammered.

"Not hearing voices, I thought you were alone. I'll come again later, Miss Maxwell," and he turned toward the door.