Leerie. Ruth Sawyer

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СКАЧАТЬ to be coaxed or scolded into keepin’ healthy, I’m thinkin’, and Hennessy’s head nurse to the swans,” he ended, with a chuckle.

      But there was something quite different on Peter’s mind. “Has one of the patients—a young person in gray—been here lately? I mean have you seen her about any time?”

      Hennessy shook a puzzled head. “A young gray patient, ye say? Sure there might be a hundred—that’s not over-distinguishin’. I leave it to ye, sir, just a gray patient is not over-distinguishin’.”

      Peter reflected. “It was a quiet, cloister kind of gray, but her eyes were not—cloistered. They were the shiningest—”

      A chuckle from Hennessy brought him to an abrupt finish. “Eyes? Gray? Patient? Ha, ha! Did ye hear that, Brian Boru?” and he flicked his cap at a gray swan. “Sure, misther, that’s no patient. ’Tis Leerie—herself.”

      “Leerie?” The name sounded absurd to Peter, and slightly reminiscent of something, he could not tell what.

      “Aye, Leerie. Real name, Sheila O’Leary—as good a name as Hennessy. But they named her Leerie her probation year. In course she’s Irish an’ not Scotch, an’ I never heard tell of a lass afore that went ’round a-lightin’ street lamps, but for all that the name fits. Ye mind grown-ups an’ childher alike watch for her to come ’round.”

      “A nurse,” repeated Peter, dully.

      “Aye. An’ she come back three days since, Heaven be praised! afther bein’ gone three years.”

      “Three years,” repeated Peter again. “Why was she gone three years?”

      Hennessy eyed him narrowly for a moment. “A lot of blitherin’ fools sent her away, that’s what, an’ she not much more than graduated. Suspension, they called it.”

      “Suspension for what?”

      The shirring in Hennessy’s lips tightened, and he drew his breath in and out in a sort of asthmatic whistle. This was the only sign of emotion ever betrayed by Hennessy. When he spoke again he fairly whistled his words. “If ye want to know what for—ye can ask some one else. Good night.” And with a bang to the platter Hennessy was away before Peter could stop him.

      Alone with the swans, Peter lingered a moment to consider. A nurse. The gray person a nurse! And sent away for some—some—Peter’s mind groped inadequately for a reason. Pshaw! He could smile at the absurdity of his interest. What did it matter—or she matter—or anything matter? For a man who has been given up, who has been sent away to a sanitarium to finish with life as speedily and decently as he can, to stand on one leg by a pond, for all the world like a swan himself, and wonder about a girl he had seen but once, in a sanitarium omnibus, was absurd. And the name Leerie? Of course they had taken it from Stevenson, but it suited. Yes, Hennessy was right, it certainly suited.

      A rustle of white skirts coming down the path attracted his attention. It was his nurse, through supper, coming like a commandant to take him in charge. Thirty-seven, in a sanitarium, with a nurse attendant! Peter groaned inwardly. It was monstrous, a cowardly, blackguard attack of an unthinking Creator on a human being—a decent human being—who might be—who wanted to be—of some use in the world. For a breath he wanted to roar forth blasphemy after blasphemy against the universe and its Maker, but in the next breath he suddenly realized how little he cared. With a smile almost tragically senile, he let the nurse lead him away.

      And all the while a girl was leaning over the sill of the little rest-house, watching him. It was a girl with a demure mouth, a determined chin, and eyes that shone, who answered impartially to the names of Sheila, Miss O’Leary, or Leerie. The gray was changed for the white uniform and cap of a graduate nurse, and the change was becoming. She had recognized him at first with casual amusement as she watched him fill her prescription of Hennessy and the swans, but after Hennessy had gone she watched him with all the intuitive sympathy of her womanhood and the understanding of her profession. Not one of the emotions that swept Peter’s face but registered full on the girl’s sensibilities: the illuminating interest in something, bewilderment, hopelessness, despair, agony, and a final weary surrender to the inevitable—they were all there. But it was the strange, haunting look in the deep-set eyes that made the girl sit up, alert and curious.

      “ ’Phobia,” she said, softly, under her breath. “Not over-fed liver or alcoholic heart, but ’phobia, I’ll wager, poor childman! Wonder how the doctors have diagnosed him!”

      She learned how a few days later when Miss Maxwell, the superintendent of nurses, stopped her in the second-floor corridor. “My dear, I should like to change you from Madam Courot to another case for a few days. Miss Jacobs is on now and—”

      “Coppy?” Sheila O’Leary broke in abruptly, a smile of amusement breaking the demureness of her lips. “Needn’t explain, Miss Max. I see. Young male patient, unattached. Frequent pulse-takings and cerebral massage, with late evening strolls in the pine woods. Business office takes notice and a change of nurse recommended. Poor Coppy—ripping nurse! If only she wouldn’t grow flabby every time a pair of masculine eyes are focused her way!”

      “But it wasn’t the business office this time.” Miss Maxwell herself smiled as she made the statement. “It was the patient himself. He asked for a change.”

      “A man that’s a man for all he’s a patient. God bless his soul!” and a look of sudden radiant delight swept the girl’s face. “What’s he here for? Jilting chorus-girl—fatty degeneration of his check-book?”

      The superintendent shook her head. “He doesn’t happen to be that kind. He’s a newspaper-man—a personal friend of Doctor Dempsy’s. Overwork, he thinks, and for a year he’s been trying to put him back on his feet. It’s a case of nerves, with nothing discoverable back of it so far as he can see, but he wants us to try. Doctor Nichols has analyzed him; teeth have been X-rayed; eyes, nose, and throat gone over. There’s nothing radically wrong with stomach or kidneys; heart shows nervous affection, nothing more. He ought to be fit physically and he isn’t. Miss Jacobs reports a maximum of an hour’s sleep in twenty-four. Doctor Dempsy writes it’s a case for a nurse, not a doctor, and the most tactful, intuitive nurse we have in the sanitarium. Please take it, Leerie.”

      The girl stiffened under the two hands placed on her shoulders, while something indescribably baffling and impenetrable took possession of her whole being. Her voice became almost curt. “Sorry, can’t. Bargain, you know. Wouldn’t have come back at all if you hadn’t promised I should not be asked to take those cases.”

      “I’ll not ask you to take another, but you know how I feel about any patient Doctor Dempsy sends to us. Anything I can do means paying back a little on the great debt I owe him, the debt of a wonderful training. That’s why I ask—this once.” A look almost fanatical came into the face of the superintendent.

      The girl smiled wistfully up at her. “Wish I could! Honest I do, Miss Max! I’d fight for the life of any patient under the old San roof—man, woman, or child; but I’ll not baby-tend unhealthy-minded young men. You know as well as I how it’s always been: they lose their heads and I my temper—results, the same. I end by telling them just what I think; they pay their bills and leave the same day. The San loses a perfectly good annual patient, and the business office feels sore at me. No, I’m no good at frequent pulses and cerebral massage; leave that to Coppy.”

      There was no stinging sarcasm in the girl’s voice. She reached out an impulsive hand and slipped it into one of the older woman’s, leaving it there long enough СКАЧАТЬ