The White Linen Nurse Part 13

"You can hire some one for that," she suggested with real relief.

"I was trying to hire--you!" said the Senior Surgeon quite tersely.

"Hire me?" gasped the White Linen Nurse. "Why! Why!"

Adroitly she slipped both hands under the sleeping child and delivered the little frail-fleshed, heavily ironed body into the Senior Surgeon's astonished arms.

"I--I don't want to hold her," he protested.

"She--isn't mine!" argued the White Linen Nurse.

"But I can't talk while I'm holding her!" insisted the Senior Surgeon.

"I can't listen--while I'm holding her!" persisted the White Linen Nurse.

Freely now, though cross-legged like a Turk, she jerked herself forward on the gra.s.s and sat probing up into the Senior Surgeon's face like an excited puppy trying to solve whether the gift in your up-raised hand is a lump of sugar--or a live coal.

"You're trying to hire--_me_?" she prompted him nudgingly with her voice. "Hire me--for money?"

"Oh my Lord, no!" said the Senior Surgeon. "There are plenty of people I can hire for money! But they won't stay!" he explained ruefully. "Hang it all,--they won't stay!" Above his little girl's white, pinched face his own ruddy countenance furrowed suddenly with unspeakable anxiety.

"Why, just this last year," he complained, "we've had nine different housekeepers--and thirteen nursery governesses!" Skilfully as a surgeon, but awkwardly as a father, he bent to re-adjust the weight of the little iron leg-braces. "But I tell you--no one will stay with us!" he finished hotly. "There's--something the matter--with us! I don't seem to have money enough in the world to make anybody--stay with us!"

Very wryly, very reluctantly, at one corner of his mouth his sense of humor ignited in a feeble grin.

"So you see what I'm trying to do to you, Miss Malgregor, is to--hire you with something that will just--naturally compel you to stay!"

If the grin round his mouth strengthened a trifle, so did the anxiety in his eyes.

"For Heaven's sake, Miss Malgregor," he pleaded. "Here's a man and a house and a child all going to--rack and ruin! If you're really and truly tired of nursing--and are looking for a new job,--what's the matter with tackling us?"

"It would be a job!" admitted the White Linen Nurse demurely.

"Why, it would be a deuce-of-a-job!" confided the Senior Surgeon with no demureness whatsoever.

CHAPTER VII

Very soberly, very thoughtfully then, across the tangled, snuggling head of his own and another woman's child, he urged the torments--and the comforts of his home upon this second woman.

"What is there about my offer--that you don't like?" he demanded earnestly. "Is it the whole idea that offends you? Or just the way I put it? 'General Heartwork for a Family of Two?' What is the matter with that? Seems a bit cold to you, does it, for a real marriage proposal? Or is it that it's just a bit too ardent, perhaps, for a mere plain business proposition?"

"Yes, sir," said the White Linen Nurse.

"Yes what?" insisted the Senior Surgeon.

"Yes--_sir_," flushed the White Linen Nurse.

Very meditatively the Senior Surgeon reconsidered his phrasing.

"'General Heartwork for a Family of Two'? U--m--m." Quite abruptly even the tenseness of his manner faded from him, leaving his face astonishingly quiet, astonishingly gentle. "But how else, Miss Malgregor," he queried, "How else should a widower with a child proffer marriage to a--to a young girl like yourself? Even under conditions directly antipodal to ours, such a proposition can never be a purely romantic one. Yet even under conditions as cold and business-like as ours, there's got to be some vestige of affection in it,--some vestige at least of the _intelligence_ of affection,--else what gain is there for my little girl and me over the purely mercenary domestic service that has racked us up to this time with its garish faithlessness?"

"Yes, sir," said the White Linen Nurse.

"But even if I had loved you, Miss Malgregor," explained the Senior Surgeon gravely, "my offer of marriage to you would not, I fear, have been a very great oratorical success. Materialist as I am,--cynic--scientist,--any harsh thing you choose to call me,--marriage in some freak, boyish corner of my mind, still defines itself as being the mutual sharing of a--mutually original experience. Certainly whether a first marriage be instigated in love or worldliness,--whether it eventually proves itself bliss, tragedy, or mere sickening ennui, to two people coming mutually virgin to the consummation of that marriage, the thrill of establishing publicly a man-and-woman home together is an emotion that cannot be reduplicated while life lasts."

"Yes, sir," said the White Linen Nurse.

Bleakly across the Senior Surgeon's face something gray that was not years shadowed suddenly and was gone again.

"Even so, Miss Malgregor," he argued, "even so--without any glittering romance whatsoever, no woman I believe is very grossly unhappy in any--affectional place--that she knows distinctly to be her _own_ place.

It's pretty much up to a man then I think,--though it tear him brain from heart, to explain to a second wife quite definitely just exactly what place it is that he is offering her in his love,--or his friendship,--or his mere desperate need. No woman can ever hope to step successfully into a second-hand home who does not know from her man's own lips the measure of her predecessor. The respect we owe the dead is a selfish thing compared to the mercy we owe the living. In my own case--"

Unconsciously the White Linen Nurse's lax shoulders quickened, and the sudden upward tilt of her chin was as frankly interrogative as a French inflection. "Yes, sir," she said.

"In my own case," said the Senior Surgeon bluntly, "in my own case, Miss Malgregor, it is no more than fair to tell you that I--did not love my wife. And my wife did not love me." Only the muscular twitch in his throat betrayed the torture that the confession cost him. "The details of that marriage are unnecessary," he continued with equal bluntness.

"It is enough perhaps to say that she was the daughter of an eminent surgeon with whom I was exceedingly anxious at that time to be allied, and that our mating, urged along on both sides as it was by strong personal ambitions was one of those so-called 'marriages of convenience'

which almost invariably turn out to be marriages of such dire inconvenience to the two people most concerned. For one year we lived together in a chaos of experimental acquaintanceship. For two years we lived together in increasing uncongeniality and distaste. For three years we lived together in open and acknowledged enmity. At the last, I am thankful to remember, that we had one year together again that was at least an--armed truce."

Darkly the gray shadow and the red flush chased each other once more across the man's haggard face.

"I had a theory," he said, "that possibly a child might bridge the chasm between us. My wife refuted the theory, but submitted herself reluctantly to the fact. And when she--in giving birth to--my theory,--the shock, the remorse, the regret, the merciless self-a.n.a.lysis that I underwent at that time almost convinced me that the whole miserable failure of our marriage lay entirely on my own shoulders."

Like the stress of mid-summer the tears of sweat started suddenly on his forehead. "But I am a fair man, I hope,--even to myself, and the cooler, less-tortured judgment of the subsequent years has practically a.s.sured me that, for types as diametrically opposed as ours, such a thing as mutual happiness never could have existed."

Mechanically he bent down and smoothed a tickly lock of hair away from the little girl's eyelids.

"And the child is the living physical image of her," he stammered. "The violent hair,--the ghost-white skin,--the facile mouth,--the arrogant eyes,--staring--staring--maddeningly reproachful, persistently accusing.

My own stubborn will,--my own hideous temper,--all my own ill-favored mannerisms--mocked back at me eternally in her mother's--unloved features." Mirthless as the grin of a skull, the Senior Surgeon's mouth twisted up a little at one corner. "Maybe I could have borne it better if she'd been a boy," he acknowledged grimly. "But to see all your virile--masculine vices come back at you--so sissified--in _skirts_!"

"Yes, sir," said the White Linen Nurse.

With an unmistakable gasp of relief the Senior Surgeon expanded his great chest.

"There! That's done!" he said tersely. "So much for the Past! Now for the Present! Look at us pretty keenly and judge for yourself! A man and a very little girl,--not guaranteed,--not even recommended,--offered merely 'As Is' in the honest trade-phrase of the day,--offered frankly in an open package,--accepted frankly,--if at all--'at your own risk.'

Not for an instant would I try to deceive you about us! Look at us closely, I ask, and--decide for yourself! I am forty-eight years old. I am inexcusably bad-tempered,--very quick to anger, and not, I fear, of great mercy. I am moody. I am selfish. I am most distinctly unsocial.

But I am not, I believe, stingy,--nor ever intentionally unfair. My child is a cripple,--and equally bad-tempered as myself. No one but a mercenary has ever coped with her. And she shows it. We have lived alone for six years. All of our clothes, and most of our ways, need mending. I am not one to mince matters, Miss Malgregor, nor has your training, I trust, made you one from whom truths must be veiled. I am a man with all a man's needs,--mental, moral, physical. My child is a child with all a child's needs,--mental, moral, physical. Our house of life is full of cobwebs. The rooms of affection have long been closed. There will be a great deal of work to do! And it is not my intention, you see, that you should misunderstand in any conceivable way either the exact nature or the exact amount of work and worry involved. I should not want you to come to me afterwards with a whine, as other workers do, and say 'Oh, but I didn't know you would expect me to do _this!_ Oh, but I hadn't any idea you would want me to do _that!_ And I certainly don't see why you should expect me to give up my Thursday afternoon just because you, yourself, happened to fall down stairs in the morning and break your back!'"

Across the Senior Surgeon's face a real smile lightened suddenly.

"Really, Miss Malgregor," he affirmed, "I'm afraid there isn't much of anything that you won't be expected to do! And as to your 'Thursdays out'? Ha! If you have ever yet found a way to temper the wind of your obligations to the shorn lamb of your pleasures, you have discovered something that I myself have never yet succeeded in discovering! And as to 'wages'? Yes! I want to talk everything quite frankly! In addition to my average yearly earnings,--which are by no means small,--I have a reasonably large private fortune. Within normal limits there is no luxury I think that you cannot hope to have. Also, exclusive of the independent income which I would like to settle upon you, I should be very glad to finance for you any reasonable dreams that you may cherish concerning your family in Nova Scotia. Also,--though the offer looks small and unimportant to you now, it is liable to loom pretty large to you later,--also, I will personally guarantee to you--at some time every year, an unfettered, perfectly independent two months' holiday.

So the offer stands,--my 'name and fame,'--if those mean anything to you,--financial independence,--an a.s.sured 'breathing spell' for at least two months out of twelve,--and at last but not least,--my eternal grat.i.tude! 'General Heartwork for a Family of Two'! _There!_ Have I made the task perfectly clear to you? Not everything to be done all at once, you know. But immediately where necessity urges it,--gradually as confidence inspires it,--ultimately if affection justifies it,--every womanish thing that needs to be done in a man's and a child's neglected lives? Do you understand?"

"Yes, sir," said the White Linen Nurse.

"Oh, and there's one thing more," confided the Senior Surgeon. "It's something, of course, that I ought to have told you the very first thing of all!" Nervously he glanced down at the sleeping child, and lowered his voice to a mumbling monotone. "As regards my actual morals you have naturally a right to know that I've led a pretty decent sort of life,--though I probably don't deserve any special credit for that. A man who knows enough to be a doctor isn't particularly apt to lead any other kind. Frankly,--as women rate vices I believe I have only one.

What--what--I'm trying to tell you--now--is about that one." A little defiantly as to chin, a little appealingly as to eye, he emptied his heart of its last tragic secret. "Through all the male line of my family, Miss Malgregor, dipsomania runs rampant. Two of my brothers, my father, my grandfather, my great grandfather before him, have all gone down as the temperance people would say into 'drunkards' graves.' In my own case, I have chosen to compromise with the evil. Such a choice, believe me, has not been made carelessly or impulsively, but out of the agony and humiliation of--several less successful methods." Hard as a rock, his face grooved into its granite-like furrows again. "Naturally, under these existing conditions," he warned her almost threateningly, "I am not peculiarly susceptible to the mawkishly ignorant and sentimental protests of--people whose strongest pa.s.sions are an appet.i.te for--chocolate candy! For eleven months of the year," he hurried on a bit huskily, "for eleven months of the year,--eleven months,--each day reeking from dawn to dark with the driving, nerve-wracking, heart-wringing work that falls to my profession, I lead an absolutely abstemious life, touching neither wine nor liquor, nor even indeed tea or coffee. In the twelfth month,--June always,--I go way, way up into Canada,--way, way off in the woods to a little log camp I own there,--with an Indian who has guided me thus for eighteen years. And live like a--wild man for four gorgeous, care-free, trail-tramping, salmon-fighting,--whisky-guzzling weeks. It is what your temperance friends would call a--'spree.' To be quite frank, I suppose it is what--anybody would call a 'spree.' Then the first of July,--three or four days past the first of July perhaps,--I come out of the woods--quite tame again. A little emotionally nervous, perhaps,--a little temperishly irritable,--a little unduly sensitive about being greeted as a returned jail-bird,--but most miraculously purged of all morbid craving for liquor, and with every digital muscle as coolly steady as yours, and every conscious mental process clamoring cleanly for its own work again."