Leerie. Ruth Sawyer

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СКАЧАТЬ and mind, when the human will gives up the struggle if it gives it up at all. And Sheila O’Leary, being well aware of this, rubbed the tense nerves into a comfortable state of relaxation and talked.

      First she talked of the city, and found he was not city-born. Then she talked of the country—of South, East, and West—and located his birthplace in a small New England village. She talked of the outdoor freedom of a country boy, of the wholesome work and fun on a farm with a large family and good old-fashioned parents, and she found that he had been an only child, motherless, with a family consisting of a misanthropic, grief-stricken father and a hired girl. His voice sounded toneless and more tired than ever as he spoke of his childhood.

      “Lonely?” queried Sheila.

      “Perhaps.”

      “Neglected and—frightened?”

      “What do you mean?”

      The girl leaned over the bed and looked straight into the eyes that seemed to be daring her to find the way into his darkness and at the same time barring fast the door against her coming. She smiled gently. “Tell me—can you remember when you first began to fear sleep?”

      There was no denial, no protest. Peter sighed as a little worn-out boy might have sighed with the irksome concealment of some forbidden act. “I don’t know,” he said at last. “I can’t think back to a time when I wasn’t afraid—afraid of the dropping out, into the dark. God!” He turned his head away, and for the first time in two weary, wakeful nights Sheila saw him close his eyes.

      Off duty, instead of going to breakfast and bed, Sheila O’Leary went to the office of the superintendent of nurses. In her usual fashion she came straight to her point. “Put Saunders back on Number Three and give me a couple of days off. Please, Miss Max.”

      Her abruptness shook the almost unshakable calm of Miss Maxwell. She gazed at the girl in frank amazement. “May I ask why?” There was a kindly irony in the question.

      “Sounds queer, I know, but I’ve simply got to go. Lots depends on it, and no time now to explain. Want to catch that eight-thirty-five; Flanders is holding the bus. Tell you when I get back—please, Miss Max?” And taking consent for granted, Sheila started for the door.

      There was an odd look on the face of the superintendent as she watched her go—a look of amused, loving pride. She might hide it from their little world, but she could not deny it to herself, that of all the girls she had helped to train, none had come so close to her heart as this girl with her wonderful insight, her honesty, her plain speaking, and her heart of gold. A hundred times she had defied the rules of the sanitarium, had swept the superintendent’s dignity to the four winds. And she would continue to do so, and they would continue to overlook it. Such petty offenses are forgiven the Leeries the world over. And now, watching the gray, alive figure climbing into the omnibus, Miss Maxwell had no mind to resent her breach of discipline. She knew the girl had asked nothing for herself; she had gone to do something for somebody who needed it, and she would report for duty again when that was accomplished.

      And two days later, accordingly, she came, a luminous, ecstatic figure that flew into the office with arms outstretched to swing the superintendent almost off her feet in joyful triumph. “It was just what I thought! Found the girl—only she is an old woman now—got the whole miserable story from her, and—and—I think—I think—Good heart alive! I think I can pull him out of the beastly old hole!”

      “Meaning—? Remember, my dear, I haven’t the grain of an idea why you went, or where you went, or what the miserable story is about. Please shine your lantern this way and light up my intelligence.” Miss Maxwell was beaming.

      Sheila O’Leary laughed. “I began by jumping at conclusions—same as I always do—jumped at ’phobia in Number Three. Almost came and asked to be put on the case after you told me. But he isn’t Number Three any more—he’s a little boy named Peter—a little boy, almost a baby, frightened night after night for years and years into lying still in the dark under the eaves in a little attic room, deliberately frightened by a hired girl who wanted to be free to go off gadding with her young man. I got the place and her name from Peter—coaxed it out of him—and I made her tell me the story. The father paid her extra wages to stay at night so the little boy wouldn’t be lonely and miss his mother too much, and she didn’t want him to find out she had gone. So she’d put Peter to bed and tell him that if he stirred or cried out the walls would close in on him—or the floor would swallow him up—or the ghosts would come out of the corners and eat him up or carry him off. Can’t you see him there, a little quivering heap of a boy, awake in the dark, afraid to move? Can’t you feel how he would lie and listen to all the sounds about him—the squealing mice, the creaking rafters, the wind moaning in the eaves—too terrified to go to sleep? And when he did sleep—worn out—can’t you imagine what his dreams would be like? Oh, women like that—women who could frighten little sensitive children—ought to be burned as they burned the witches!” The girl’s eyes blazed and she shook a pair of clenched fists into the air. “And can you see the rest of it? How the fear grew and grew even as the memory of the tales faded, grew into a nameless, unexplainable fear of sleep? And because he was a boy he hid it; and because he was a man he fought it; but the thing nailed him at last. He fought sleep until he lost the habit of sleep. He couldn’t get along without it, and here he is!”

      “Well, what are you going to do?” The superintendent eyed her narrowly; her cheeks were as flushed as the girl’s.

      A little enigmatical smile curved up the corners of the usually demure mouth. “Going to play Leerie—going to play it harder than I ever did in my life before.”

      And that night as Peter turned his head wearily toward the door to greet the kindly, cumbersome Saunders, he found, to his surprise, the owner of the shining eyes come back. He felt so ridiculously glad about it that he couldn’t even trust himself to tell her so. Instead he repeated foolishly the same old thing, “Why, it’s—it’s Leerie!”

      When everything was ready for the night, Sheila turned the night-light out and lowered the curtain until it was quite dark. Then she drew her chair close to the bed and slipped her hand into the lean, clenched one on the coverlid. “Don’t think of me as a girl—a nurse—a person—at all, to-night,” she said, softly. “I’m just a piece of Stevenson’s poem come to life—a lamplighter for a little boy going to sleep all alone in a farm-house attic. It’s very dark. You can hear the mice squeal and the rafters creak, if you listen, and the window’s so small the stars can’t creep in. In the daytime the attic doesn’t seem far away or very strange, but at night it’s miles—miles away from the rest of the house, and it’s full of things that may happen. That’s why I’m here with my lamp.”

      Sheila stopped a moment. She could hear the man’s breath coming quick, with a catch in it—a child breathes that way when it is fighting down a cry or a sob. Then she went on: “Of course it’s a magical lamp I carry, and with the first sputter and spark it lights up and turns the attic inside out—and there we are, the little boy and I, hand in hand, running straight for the brook back of the house. The lamp burns as bright as the sun now, so it seems like day—a spring day. It isn’t the mice squealing at all that you hear, but the birds singing and the brook running. There are cowslips down by the brook, and ‘Jacks.’ Here by the big stone is a chance to build a bully good dam and sailboats made out of the shingles blown off from the barn roof. Want to stop and build it now?”

      “All right.” There was almost a suppressed laugh in the voice; it certainly sounded glad. And the hand on the coverlid was as relaxed as that of a child being led somewhere it wants to go.

      Sheila smiled happily in СКАЧАТЬ