Leerie. Ruth Sawyer
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Название: Leerie
Автор: Ruth Sawyer
Издательство: Bookwire
Жанр: Языкознание
isbn: 4064066143879
isbn:
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—”
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