Читать книгу High Fences - Grace S. Richmond - Страница 10

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Visits to hospitals may be depressing, but what matter, if one can keep up a patient's courage by going? Quite frequently one brings away from such visits more than one takes.

Ross's friend at the Fifth Avenue Hospital was in a very bad way indeed. He had youth on his side, but it was his youth which had got him into these straits. Dodging through moving traffic in the rain, taking chances which no older man would, he had slipped on the wet pavement and gone down under a motor bus. He had been operated upon, but he was now having nip and tuck of it to pull through.

Ross's visit had to be short, but into it she put as much concentrated courage and will as she could muster--which was a good deal. She held Jimmy French's hand tight and told him she had an absolute conviction that he was going to come out as good as new, though it might take time. He looked into her intent face to see if she were speaking the truth and was obliged to believe her. It meant a good deal to him to have Ross Collins say that, for they had worked side by side in a magazine office, and had been of so much use to each other that a firm bond of friendship had been forged between them. He was much younger than she, but she knew he thought his eyes of her, and that if she could make him think he had a big chance for life it might really help to give him that chance. So she was planning to take time she couldn't spare to run up every day to see him, till he should be out of the woods--or have gone too deep into them to be rescued.

Those who know what it is to try to give of their own blood to keep another heart beating, if only in this intangible fashion, know that it is a spending of force which takes much out of themselves. So Ross came away from Jimmy French's ward feeling the need of air--air not soaked with the hospital odor, nor heavy with its infusion of dying flowers. She hated seeing the baskets and vases of them set outside the doors, waiting to be taken away. She wondered afresh why people send cut flowers to hospitals, instead of jolly-looking plants which suggest life rather than death. For herself, she meant to keep the gayest possible pots of growing plants with scarlet blossoms within sight of Jimmy's anxious eyes.

For the time being she had completely forgotten that David MacRoss was to be awaiting her outside. As she came out of the imposing entrance she was thinking of nothing in the world but Jimmy. David, walking up and down on the opposite side of the street, said to himself as he caught sight of her at last that that look of absorption was too real to be assumed. She must care a lot about this friend.

He crossed the street and appeared before her. "I take it the friend must be pretty sick," he said gently. His hat was in his hand, floating flakes of snow touched his brown hair.

Ross stood still, staring up at him. She really hadn't seen his full face enough on the evening before to be sure she recognized it now. It was only his voice which convinced her. He looked different to-day--taller, broader-shouldered, more virile. Billy's black dinner coat, fitting so closely, hadn't given him the same ruggedness of appearance as did the rough gray tweed topcoat he wore now. She could to-day much more easily believe that he came from the country, even though the tweed coat fitted him well, and the soft gray hat he was still holding was one of those hats which look their quality. He had the outdoor look--ruddy brown color, clear gray eyes, a certain eager yet restrained expression not at all akin to the nervously alert aspect of the city-bred man.

"Do I really know you?" Ross asked, as she gave him her hand.

"Not a bit. But I hope you will. I shouldn't be sure I recognized you, either, except that I saw you in that little black hat last night. Otherwise, not seeing your hair--which would give anyone a clue----"

"Do cover up your own hair. It'll be soaking in a minute. Shall we walk along? People seem to be going round us here with some annoyance."

He put on his hat and they walked on together.

"About the friend. I hope she's coming on, even though you're still worried about her?" He did want to know it was a woman's straits which had brought that look into Ross's eyes. Queer, that he should care--as it was queer that he should have minded last night about the man who had brought her home. He wasn't accustomed to jumping with such concern into the affairs of an acquaintance so new as this one.

"He's got to come on, poor boy. He was terribly hurt last evening--while I was at that awful dinner. But I can't talk about him. Thank you for being interested, though."

"I am--and sorry, too. All right, we've lots of things to talk of. First--how far down are you going to let me walk with you?"

"As far down as--well, I shall know when we reach the place. Sha'n't you? Besides, I haven't so long to spare."

"This is"--he glanced at the sign--"One Hundred and First Street." To himself he said that he'd like to mark the spot where they started on this walk. He added, aloud: "There's nothing like knowing afterward where history began."

"It began last night, didn't it?" she observed.

"Only the prelude, according to your own words. Just before you were called out you said, 'We've been talking ten minutes and----' I think you were going to add, 'and have barely made a beginning.' Wasn't that it?"

"I don't remember what I was going to say. But I should imagine it was probably that we had got nowhere."

"Do you really think we had got nowhere?"

"Well, Mr. Mac----Oh, I'm sorry, I have forgotten your name."

He smiled. "Remember it by your own. Mac--Ross."

"Really? Of course, I can't forget it now."

"I believe you can't. I'm going to repeat that question. Do you really think we had got nowhere? If we hadn't got anywhere at all would you be letting me meet you this very next afternoon for a walk down upper Fifth Avenue?"

She considered it before she answered. He looked down at her interesting profile, as he had the evening before, while she was considering. The smallest hint of a red curl had worked out over her ear and showed at the edge of her hat brim. It was not a daring curl like the one of last evening, which had nearly touched her shoulder, but enough of one to remind him of it, and show its fascinating color. He recalled that in his schooldays the only girl he had really liked much had had hair of exactly that shade. And a peppery temper to go with it--which was why he had liked her, he supposed. He had no doubt that Ross Collins had a peppery temper too. It showed plainly in some of her biting little paragraphs.

"I suppose I shouldn't have been letting you meet me, this very next day," she now answered with frankness, "if I hadn't seen something in you. Would you mind very much if I called it possible 'copy'? Because I warn you I'm quite ruthless. Anything interesting or stimulating you say will very likely be used against you."

"Notebook and pencil along, eh?"

"I've a remarkably good memory. And I don't deny the notebook."

He put his hand inside his inner breast pocket. He produced a much-worn small leather book, and flipped its pages to show closely written lines packing it.

"Here too," he confessed.

Her glance came up at him, sharply surprised. "Do you mean that--oh, yes, I do remember! 'Extraordinary phenomenon.' You caught me up on that last night. I charged you with being a writer--or a teacher--but what happened? It never came out which you were. I suppose my own egoism bore me past the finding-out point."

"Not at all. It was just then that you were taken away from me--and brought back by another man."

He hoped she would explain that, but she didn't. Instead she asked him if he were a writer. He admitted it.

"But not the sort of thing you would be interested in," he explained. "Stuff dull as ditchwater, to a person of dreams, like you."

"Dreams!" she repeated, in a tone he didn't quite understand. The corners of her lips curled slightly. "Tell me what name you write under."

"I write under two names. One, my own--David MacRoss. The other--I think I won't tell you, just yet."

This brought a smile to her face--the first real smile he had seen since he caught sight of her, looking so unhappy as she came out of the hospital. "Then we're even," she said. "I do that too. Which is the real you? Or don't you tell that, either?"

"You know," said David MacRoss thoughtfully, "it occurs to me it might be interesting if we left it to time for each of us to discover the other's real self."

"Oh! But I thought you lived up in the country, a hundred or so miles away, and were going back to-night, or to-morrow."

"I do--and am. But what's a hundred or so miles between friends? We are friends, aren't we?"

"We're not friends," said Ross Collins, very positively. "Not in the least friends. I don't make friends like that, all in ten minutes. Do you?"

"Well, I admit I don't, as a rule."

"It's a rule to which there should be no exceptions. You seem to be a little bit interested in me. I don't mind saying I'm a little bit interested in you. But--friends!" She made a gesture with her little gray-gloved hands. "Why--it's a friend I'm leaving, back up there in the hospital. Tied to me by ropes of steel. I didn't make him that in an hour, in a day, in a year. We grew--and grew--to be friends. If he dies I----" There was a long pause. "The world will be darker for me." And though her voice was perfectly steady as she said it, he could see that she had had to steady that voice with an iron will.

He gave this avowal the respect of silence for the space of several rods. Meanwhile he discovered that it had deeply depressed him. Plainly he was not getting on very fast, after all. Did she mean him to understand--what did she mean him to understand? That the man she cared for beyond others was lying up there in the hospital, while she had agreed to meet himself merely because, as she had plainly said, there was a chance of her getting the always-necessary-to-be-hunted-down "copy" out of him?

Well, even so, he couldn't stop wanting to know her. Even if he could come to know only the outside edges of her, that would be worth the time and trouble it might take. Something about her personality was proving infinitely attractive to him. It wasn't only that she was unusual in looks, in voice, in manner; it wasn't only that in her severe little black suit and hat and furs, with her perfectly gloved hands, her beautifully shod feet, she gave the lie to his ideas about the average woman writer's carelessness of attire; it wasn't only that he liked the clear whiteness of her cheek set off by that hint of a red curl. It was, he told himself, that he knew, by the things of hers he had read, that beyond this gratifying exterior was to be found a spirit not of the ordinary. Come and find me, it seemed to challenge him, even while it put him off. Why, tucked away in that notebook of his at this very moment lay a clipping he had placed there months ago. If he should show her that, she would understand why he wanted so to know her. Or--would she? Did she possibly not realize how much she had revealed of herself in those fourteen lines?