The White Linen Nurse Part 7

"Don't say 'There! There!'" wailed the Little Girl peevishly. Her body was suddenly stiff as a ram-rod. "Don't say 'There! There!' If you've got to make any noise at all, say 'Here! Here!'"

"Here! Here!" droned the White Linen Nurse. "Here! Here! Here! Here!" On and on and interminably on, "Here! Here! Here! Here!"

At the end of about the three-hundred-and-forty-seventh "Here!" the Little Girl's body relaxed, and she reached up two fragile fingers to close the White Linen Nurse's mouth. "There! That will do," she sighed contentedly. "I feel better now. Father does tire me so."

"Father tires--_you_?" gasped the White Linen Nurse. The giggle that followed the gasp was not in the remotest degree professional. "Father tires _you_?" she repeated accusingly. "Why, you silly Little Girl!

Can't you see it's you that makes Father so everlastingly tired?"

Impulsively with her one free hand she turned the Little Girl's listless face to the light. "What makes you call your nice father 'Fat Father'?"

she asked with real curiosity. "What makes you? He isn't fat at all.

He's just big. Why, what ever possesses you to call him 'Fat Father,' I say? Can't you see how mad it makes him?"

"Why, of course it made him mad!" said the Little Girl with plainly reviving interest. Thrilled with astonishment at the White Linen Nurse's apparent stupidity she straightened up perkily with inordinately sparkling eyes. "Why, of course it makes him mad!" she explained briskly. "That's why I do it! Why, my Parpa--never even looks at me--unless I make him mad!"

"S--sh!" said the White Linen Nurse. "Why, you mustn't ever say a thing like that! Why, your Marma wouldn't like you to say a thing like that!"

Jerking b.u.mpily back against the White Linen Nurse's unprepared shoulder the Little Girl prodded a pallid finger-tip into the White Linen Nurse's vivid cheek. "Silly--Pink and White--Nursie!" she chuckled, "Don't you know there _isn't_ any Marma?" Cackling with delight over her own superior knowledge she folded her little arms and began to rock herself convulsively to and fro.

"Why, stop!" cried the White Linen Nurse. "Now you stop! Why, you wicked little creature laughing like that about your poor dead mother! Why, just think how bad it would make your poor Parpa feel!"

With instant sobriety the Little Girl stopped rocking, and stared perplexedly into the White Linen Nurse's shocked eyes. Her own little face was all wrinkled up with earnestness.

"But the Parpa--didn't like the Marma!" she explained painstakingly.

"The Parpa--_never_ liked the Marma! That's why he doesn't like me! I heard Cook telling the Ice Man once when I wasn't more than ten minutes old!"

Desperately with one straining hand the White Linen Nurse stretched her fingers across the Little Girl's babbling mouth. Equally desperately, with the other hand, she sought to divert the Little Girl's mind by pushing the fur cap back from her frizzly red hair, and loosening her sumptuous coat, and jerking down vainly across two painfully obtrusive white ruffles, the awkwardly short, hideously bright little purple dress.

"I think your cap is too hot," she began casually, and then proceeded with increasing vivacity and conviction to the objects that worried her most. "And those--those ruffles," she protested, "they don't look a bit nice being so long!" Resentfully she rubbed an edge of the purple dress between her fingers. "And a little girl like you,--with such bright red hair,--oughtn't to wear--purple!" she admonished with real concern.

"Now whites and blues--and little soft p.u.s.s.y-cat grays--"

Mumblingly through her finger-muzzled mouth the Little Girl burst into explanations again.

"Oh, but when I wear gray," she persisted, "the Parpa--never sees me!

But when I wear purple he cares,--he cares--most awfully!" she boasted with a bitter sort of triumph. "Why when I wear purple and frizz my hair hard enough,--no matter who's there, or anything,--he'll stop right off short in the middle of whatever he's doing--and rear right up so perfectly beautiful and mad and glorious--and holler right out 'For Heaven's sake, take that colored Sunday supplement away!'"

"Your Father's nervous," suggested the White Linen Nurse.

Almost tenderly the Little Girl reached up and drew the White Linen Nurse's ear close down to her own snuggling lips.

"d.a.m.ned nervous!" she confided laconically.

Quite against all intention the White Linen Nurse giggled. Floundering to recover her dignity she plunged into a new error. "Poor little dev--," she began.

"Yes," sighed the Little Girl complacently. "That's just what the Parpa calls me." Fervidly she clasped her little hands together. "Yes, if I can only make him mad enough daytimes," she a.s.serted, "then at night when he thinks I'm all asleep he comes and stands by my cribby-house like a great black shadow-bear and shakes and shakes his most beautiful head and says, 'Poor little devil--poor little devil.' Oh, if I can only make him mad enough daytimes!" she cried out ecstatically.

"Why, you naughty little thing!" scolded the White Linen Nurse with an unmistakable catch in her voice. "Why, you--naughty--naughty--little thing!"

Like the brush of a b.u.t.terfly's wing the child's hand grazed the White Linen Nurse's cheek. "I'm a lonely little thing," she confided wistfully. "Oh, I'm an awfully lonely little thing!" With really shocking abruptness the old malicious smile came twittering back to her mouth. "But I'll get even with the Parpa yet!" she threatened joyously, reaching out with pliant fingers to count the b.u.t.tons on the White Linen Nurse's dress. "Oh, I'll get even with the Parpa yet!" In the midst of the pa.s.sionate a.s.sertion her rigid little mouth relaxed in a most mild and innocent yawn.

"Oh, of course," she yawned, "on wash days and ironing days and every other work day in the week he has to be away cutting up people 'cause that's his lawful business. But Sundays, when he doesn't really need to at all, he goes off to some kind of a green, gra.s.sy club--all day long--and plays golf."

Very palpably her eyelids began to droop. "Where was I?" she asked sharply. "Oh, yes, 'the green, gra.s.sy club.' Well, when I die," she faltered, "I'm going to die specially on some Sunday when there's a big golf game,--so he'll just naturally have to give it up and stay home and--amuse me--and help arrange the flowers. The Parpa's crazy about flowers. So am I," she added broodingly. "I raised almost a geranium once. But the Parpa threw it out. It was a good geranium, too. All it did was just to drip the tiniest-teeniest bit over a book and a writing and somebody's brains in a dish. He threw it at a cat. It was a good cat, too. All it did was to--"

A little jerkily her drooping head bobbed forward and then back again.

Her heavy eyes were almost tight shut by this time, and after a moment's silence her lips began moving dumbly like one at silent devotions. "I'm making a little poem, now," she confided at last. "It's about--you and me. It's a sort of a little prayer." Very, very softly she began to repeat.

Now I sit me down to nap All curled up in a Nursie's lap, If _she_ should die before I wake--

Abruptly she stopped and stared up suspiciously into the White Linen Nurse's eyes. "Ha!" she mocked, "you thought I was going to say 'If I should die before I wake,'--didn't you? _Well, I'm not_!"

"It would have been more generous," acknowledged the White Linen Nurse.

Very stiffly the Little Girl pursed her lips. "It's plenty generous enough--when it's all done!" she said severely. "And I'll thank you,--Miss Malgregor,--not to interrupt me again!" With excessive deliberateness she went back to the first line of her poem and began all over again,

Now I sit me down to nap, All curled up in a Nursie's lap, If _she_ should die before I wake, Give her--give her ten cents--for Jesus' sake!

"Why that's a--a cunning little prayer," yawned the White Linen Nurse.

Most certainly of course she would have smiled if the yawn hadn't caught her first. But now in the middle of the yawn it was a great deal easier to repeat the "very cunning" than to force her lips into any new expression. "Very cunning--very cunning," she kept crooning conscientiously.

Modestly like some other successful authors the Little Girl flapped her eyelids languidly open and shut for three or four times before she acknowledged the compliment. "Oh, cunning as any of 'em," she admitted off-handishly. Only once again did she open either mouth or eyes, and this time it was merely one eye and half a mouth. "Do my fat iron braces--hurt you?" she mumbled drowsily.

"Yes, a little," conceded the White Linen Nurse.

"Ha! They hurt me--all the time!" gibed the Little Girl.

Five minutes later, the child who didn't particularly care about being held, and the girl who didn't particularly care about holding her, were fast asleep in each other's arms,--a naughty, nagging, restive little hornet all hushed up and a-dream in the heart of a pink wild-rose!

Stalking out of the house in his own due time the Senior Surgeon reared back aghast at the sight.

"Well--I'll be hanged!" he muttered. "Most everlastingly hanged! Wonder what they think this is? A somnolent kindergarten show? Talk about fiddling while Rome burns!"

Awkwardly, on the top step, he struggled alone into his c.u.mbersome coat.

Every tingling nerve in his body, every shuddering sensibility, was racked to its utmost capacity over the distressing scenes he had left behind him in the big house. Back in that luxuriant sickroom, Youth Incarnate lay stripped, root, branch, leaf, bud, blossom, fruit, of All its manhood's promise. Back in that erudite library, Culture Personified, robbed of all its fine philosophy, sat babbling illiterate street-curses into its quivering hands. Back in that exquisite pink and gold boudoir, Blonded Fashion, ravished for once of all its artistry, ran stumbling round and round in interminable circles like a disheveled hag. In shrill crescendos and discordant ba.s.ses, with heartpiercing jaggedness, with blood-curdling raspishness, each one, boy, father, mother, meddlesome relative, competent or incompetent a.s.sistant, indiscriminate servant, filing his separate sorrow into the Senior Surgeon's tortured ears!

With one of those sudden revulsions to materialism which is liable to overwhelm any man who delves too long at a time in the brutally unconventional issues of life and death, the Senior Surgeon stepped down into the subtle, hyacinth-scented sunshine with every latent human greed in his body clamoring for expression--before it, too, should be hurtled into oblivion. "Eat, you fool, and drink, you fool, and be merry,--you fool,--for to-morrow--_even you,--Lendicott R. Faber--may have to die_!"

brawled and re-brawled through his mind like a ribald phonograph tune.

At the edge of the bottom step a precipitous lilac branch that must have budded and bloomed in a single hour smote him stingingly across his cheek. "Laggard!" taunted the lilac branch.

With the first crunching grit of gravel under his feet, something transcendently naked and unashamed that was neither Brazen Sorrow nor Brazen Pain thrilled across his startled consciousness. Over the rolling, marshy meadow, beyond the succulent willow-hedge that hid the winding river, up from some fluent, slim canoe, out from a chorus of virile young tenor voices, a little pa.s.sionate Love Song--divinely tender--most incomparably innocent--came stealing palpitantly forth into that inflammable Spring world without a single vestige of accompaniment on it!

Kiss me, Sweet, the Spring is here, And Love is Lord of you and me, There's no bird in brake or brere, But to his little mate sings he, "Kiss me, Sweet, the Spring is here And Love is Lord of you--and me!"

Wrenched like a sob out of his own lost youth the Senior Surgeon's faltering college memories took up the old refrain.

As I go singing, to my dear, "Kiss me, Sweet, the Spring is here, And Love is Lord of you and me!"

Just for an instant a dozen long-forgotten pictures lanced themselves poignantly into his brain,--dingy, uncontrovertible old recitation rooms where young ideas flashed bright and futile as parade swords,--elm-shaded slopes where lithe young bodies lolled on green velvet gra.s.ses to expound their harshest cynicisms! Book-history, book-science, book-economics, book-love,--all the paper pa.s.sion of all the paper poets swaggering imperiously on boyish lips that would have died a thousand bashful deaths before the threatening imminence of a real girl's kiss! Magic days, with Youth the one glittering, positive treasure on the Tree of Life--and Woman still a mystery!