Читать книгу Leerie - Ruth Sawyer - Страница 9

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Hennessy was feeding the swans. Sheila O’Leary leaned over the sill of the diminutive rustic rest-house and watched him with a tired contentment. She had just come off a neurasthenic case—a week of twenty-four-hour duty—and she wanted to stretch her cramped sensibilities in the quiet peace of the little house and invite her soul with a glimpse of Hennessy and the swans.

All about her the grounds of the sanitarium were astir with its customary crowd of early-summer-afternoon patients. How those first warm days called the sick folks out-of-doors and held them there until the last beam of sunshine had disappeared behind the foremost hill! The tennis-courts were full; the golf-links were dotted about with spots of color like a cubist picture; pairs of probationers, arm in arm, were strolling about, enjoying a comparative leisure; old Madam Courot was at her customary place under the juniper, watching the sun go down. Three years! Nothing seemed changed in all that time but the patients—and not all of these, as Madame Courot silently testified. The pines shook themselves above the rest-house in the same lazy, vagabond fashion, the sun purpled the far hills and spun the same yellow haze over the links, the wind brought its habitual afternoon accompaniment of cow-bells from the sanitarium farm, and Hennessy threw the last crumb of bread to Brian Boru, the gray swan, as he had done for the fifteen years Sheila could remember.

She folded her arms across the sill and rested her chin on them. How good it was to be back at the old San, to settle down to its kindly, comfortable ways and the peace of its setting after the feverish restlessness of city hospitals! She remembered what Kipling had said, that the hill people who came down to the plains were always hungering to get back to the hills again. That was the way she had felt about it—always a hunger to come back. For months and months she had thought that she might forever have to stay in those hospitals, have to make up her mind to the eternal plains—and then had come her reprieve—she had been called back to the San and the work she loved best.

Had the place been any other than the sanitarium, and the person any other than Sheila O’Leary, this would never have happened. For she had left under a cloud, and in similar cases a cloud, once gathered, grows until it envelops, suffocates, and finally annihilates the person. As a graduate nurse she would have ceased to exist. But in spite of the most blighting circumstances, those who counted most believed in her and trusted her. They had only waited for time to forget and tongues to stop wagging, and then they had called her back. Perhaps the strangest thing about it was that Sheila did not look like a person who could have had even the smallest, fleeciest of clouds brushing her most distant horizon. In fact, so vital, warm, and glowing was her personality, so radiant her nature, that she seemed instead a permanent dispeller of clouds.

From across the pond Hennessy watched her with adoring eyes as he gave his habitual, final bang to the bread-platter and the hitch to his corduroys preparatory to leaving. To his way of thinking, there was no nurse enrolled on the books of the old San who could compare with her. In the beginning he had prophesied great things of her to Flanders, the bus-driver. “Ye mind what I’m tellin’ ye,” he had said. “Afore she’s finished her trainin’ she’ll have more lads a-dandtherin’ round her than if she’d been the King of Ireland’s only daughter. Ye can take my word for it, when she leaves here, ’twill be a grand home of her own she’ll be goin’ to an’ no dirty hospital.”

That had been three years ago, and Hennessy sighed now over the utter futility of his words. “Sure, who could have been seein’ that one o’ the lads would have turned blackguard? Hennessy knows. Just give the lass time for that hurt to heal, an’ she’ll be winnin’ a home of her own, after all.” This he muttered to himself as he took the path leading toward the rest-house.

Sheila saw him coming, his lips shirred to the closeness of some emotional strain. “Hello, Hennessy! What’s troubling?” she called down the path.

“Faith, it’s Mr. Peter Brooks that’s troublin’. ’Tis a week, now, that ye’ve been off that case—an’ he’s near cured. Another week now—”

“In another week he’ll be going back to his work—and I’ll be very glad.”

Hennessy eyed the girl narrowly. “Will ye, then? Why did ye cure him up so fast for, Miss Leerie? Why didn’t ye give the poor man a chance?”

No one but Hennessy would have had sufficient temerity for such a question, but had any one dared to ask it, upon their heads would have fallen the combined anger and bitterness of Sheila’s tongue. For having had occasion once for bitterness, it was not over-hard to waken it when men served as topics. But at Hennessy she smiled tolerantly. “Didn’t I give him a chance to get well? That was all he needed or wanted. And, now he’s well, he’ll go about his business.”

“Faith,” and Hennessy closed a suggestive eye, “that depends on what he takes to be his business. In my young days the choosin’ an’ courtin’ of a wife was the big part of a man’s business. Now if he comes round askin’ my opinion—”

“Tell him, Hennessy”—and Sheila fixed him firmly with a glance—“that the sanitarium does not encourage its cured patients to hang about bothering its nurses. It is apt to make trouble for the nurses. Understand?”

Again Hennessy closed one eye; then he laughed. “When ye talk of devils ye’re sure to smell brimstone. There comes Mr. Brooks now, an’ he has his head back like a dog trailin’ the wind.”

The girl turned and followed Hennessy’s jerking thumb with her eyes. Across the pine grove, coming toward them, was a young man above medium height, square-shouldered and erect. There was nothing startlingly handsome nor remarkable about his appearance; he was just nice, strong, clean-looking. He waved to the two by the rest-house.

“And do ye mind his looks when he came!” Hennessy’s tone denoted wonder and admiration.

“A human wreck—haunted at that.” There was a good deal more than mere professional interest in Sheila’s tone; there was pride and something else. It was past Hennessy’s perceptive powers to define what, but he noticed it, nevertheless, and looked sharply up at the girl.

“For the love o’ Mike, Miss Leerie! Why can’t ye stop ticketin’ each man as a case an’ begin thinkin’ about them human-like? Ye might begin practisin’ wi’ Mr. Brooks.”

The line of Sheila’s lips became fixed; the chin that could look so demure, the eyes that could look so soft and gentle, both backed up the lips in an expression of inscrutable hardness.

“In the name of your patron saint, Hennessy, what have you said to Miss Leerie to turn her into that sphinx again?” The voice of Peter Brooks was as nice as his appearance.

Hennessy looked foolish. “I was tellin’ her, then,” he moistened his lips to allow a safer emigration of words—“I was tellin’ her—that the gray swan had the rheumatism in his left leg, an’ I was askin’ her, did she think Doctor Willum would prescribe a thermo bath for him. I’d best be askin’ him meself, maybe,” and with a sudden pull at his forelock Hennessy backed away down the path.

Peter Brooks watched him depart with an admiration equal to that with which Hennessy had welcomed him. “That man has a wonderful insight into human nature. Now I was just wishing I could have you all alone for about—”

Sheila interrupted him. “I hope you weren’t counting on too many minutes. I can see Miss Maxwell coming down the San steps, and I have a substantial feeling that she’s looking for me to put me on another case.”

“Couldn’t we escape? Couldn’t we skip round by the farm to the garage and get my car? You look fagged out. A couple of hours’ ride would do wonders for you, and—Good Lord! The San can run that long without your services. What do you say? Shall we beat it?”

With a telltale, pent-up eagerness he noticed the girl’s indecision and flung himself with all his persuasive powers to turn the balance in his favor. “Do come. You can work better and harder for a little time off now and then. All the other nurses take it. Why under the heavens can’t a man ever persuade you to have a little pleasure?” Something in Sheila’s face stopped him and prompted the one argument that could have persuaded her. “If you’ll only come, Leerie, I’ll promise to keep dumb—absolutely dumb. I’ll promise not to spoil the ride for you.”

Sheila flung him a radiant smile; it almost unbalanced him and murdered his resolve. “Then I’ll come. You’re the first man I ever knew who could keep his word—that way. Hurry! we’ll have to run for it.” And taking the lead, she ducked through the little door of the rest-house and ran, straight as the crow flies, to the hiding shelter of the farm.

But her premonition was correct. When she returned two hours later in the cool of a summer’s twilight, with eyes that sparkled like iridescent pools and lips that smiled generously her gratitude to the man who could keep his word, she found the superintendent of nurses watching from the San steps for their car.

“All right, Miss Maxwell,” she nodded in response to the question that was plainly stamped on the superintendent’s face. “We’ve had supper—don’t even have to change my uniform.” Then to Peter, “Thank you.”

The words were meager enough, but Peter Brooks had already received his compensation in the girl’s glowing face. “It’s ‘off again, on again, gone again,’ in your profession, too. Well, here’s looking forward to the next escape.” His laugh rang with health and good spirits.

Sheila stopped on her way up the steps, turned and looked back at him. The wonder of his recovery often surprised even herself. It seemed incredible that this pulsing, vitalized portion of humanity could have once been a veritable husk, hounded by a haunting fear into a state of hopelessness and loathing of existence. Life certainly tingled in Peter now, and every time Sheila felt it, man or no man, she could not help rejoice with all her heart at the thing she had helped to do.

Peter’s smile met hers half-way in the dusk. “It may be another week before I see you again. In case—I’d like to tell you that I’m staying on indefinitely. The chief has pushed me out of my Sunday section and has sent me a lot of special articles to do up here. He thinks I had better not come back until I’m all fit.”

“You’re perfectly fit now.” There was a brutal frankness in the girl’s words.

Peter had grown used to these moments. They no longer troubled or hurt him. He had begun to understand. “Maybe I am; I feel so, but you can never tell. Then there’s always the danger of one’s heart going back on one. That’s why I’ve decided to stay on and coddle mine. Rather good plan?”

Sheila O’Leary vouchsafed no answer. She disappeared through the entrance of the sanitarium, leaving Peter Brooks still smiling. Neither his expression nor position had changed a few seconds later when Miss Jacobs touched him on the arm.

“Oh, Mr. Brooks! Were you the guilty party—running away with Leerie? For the last two hours we’ve been combing the San grounds for her.” The green eyes of the flirtatious nurse gleamed peculiarly catlike in the dusk. “Of course I don’t suppose my opinion counts so very much with you,” there was a honeyed, self-deprecatory quality in the girl’s tone, “but if I were you, I wouldn’t go about so awfully much with Leerie. She’s a dear girl—I don’t suppose it’s really her fault—but she had such a record. And you know it’s my creed that girls of that kind can compromise poor men far oftener than men compromise girls. Oh, I do hope you understand what I mean!”

Peter still wore a smile, but it was a different smile. It was as much like the old one as a search-light is like sunshine. He focused it full on Miss Jacobs’s face. “I’m a shark at understanding. And don’t worry about me. I’m more of a shark in deep water with—with sirens.” He chuckled inwardly at the look of blank incomprehension on the nurse’s face. “By the way, just what did you want Miss Leary for? Not another accident?”

The girl gave her head a disgusted toss. “Oh, they want her to help an old man die. He came up here a week ago. I saw him then, and he looked ready to burst. Doctor MacByrn said he weighed over three hundred and had a blood pressure of two hundred and ten. They can’t bring it down, and his heart is about done for. Leerie always gets those dying cases. Ugh!” The girl shuddered. “Guess they wouldn’t put me on any of those sure-dead cases; it’s bad enough when you happen on them.”

Peter shot her a pitying glance and walked back to his car. He was just climbing in when the girl’s voice chirped back to him. “Just the night for a ride, isn’t it? I couldn’t think of letting you go all alone and be lonesome. Isn’t it lucky I’m off duty till ten!”

“Lucky for the patient!” Peter mumbled under his breath; then aloud: “Sorry, but I’m unlucky. Only enough gasoline to get her back to the garage. Good night.” He swung the car free of the curb, leaving little red-headed, green-eyed Miss Jacobs in the process of gathering up her skirts and mounting into thin air.

Meanwhile Sheila had followed the superintendent to her office. “It’s a case of cerebral hemorrhages. The man is no fool; he knows his condition, and he’s been getting increasingly hard to take care of every minute since he found out. Maybe you’ve heard of him. He’s Brandle, the coal magnate. Quite alone in the world; no children, and his wife died some few years ago. He’s very peculiar, and no one seems to know what to say to him or do for him. I’m a little afraid—” and the superintendent paused to consider her words before committing herself. “I think perhaps there have been too many offers of prayers and scriptural readings for his taste.”

“Probably he’d prefer the last Town Topics or the latest detective story.” Sheila shook her head violently. “Why can’t a man be allowed to die the way he chooses—instead of your way, or my way, or the Reverend Mr. Grumble’s way?”

“Miss Barry is on the case now, and I’m afraid he’s shocked her into—”