"For a little trip," he confided amiably. "A little holiday!"
A trifle excitedly the White Linen Nurse laid down her knife and fork and stared at him, blue-eyed and wondering as a child.
"A holiday?" she gasped. "To a--beach, you mean? Would there be a--a roller-coaster? I"ve never seen a roller-coaster!"
"Eh?" laughed the Senior Surgeon.
"Oh, I"m going, too! I"m going, too!" piped the Little Crippled Girl.
Most jerkily the Senior Surgeon pushed back his chair from the table and swallowed half a cup of coffee at one single gulp.
"Going _three_, you mean?" he glowered at his little daughter. "Going _three_?" His comment that ensued was distinctly rough as far as diction was concerned, but the facial expression of ineffable peace that accompanied it would have made almost any phrase sound like a benediction. "Not by a--d.a.m.ned sight!" beamed the Senior Surgeon. "This little trip is just for Peach and me!"
"But--sir?" fluttered the White Linen Nurse. Her face was suddenly pinker than any rose that ever bloomed.
With an impulse absolutely novel to him the Senior Surgeon turned and swung his little daughter very gently to his shoulder.
"Your Aunt Agnes is coming to stay with _you_--in just about ten minutes!" he affirmed. "That"s--what"s going to happen to _you!_ And maybe there"ll be a pony--a white pony."
"But Peach is so--pleasant!" wailed the Little Crippled Girl. "Peach is so pleasant!" she began to scream and kick.
"So it seems!" growled the Senior Surgeon. "And she"s--dying of it!"
Tearfully the Little Girl wriggled down to the ground, and hobbled around and thrust her finger-tip into the White Linen Nurse"s blushiest cheek.
"I don"t want--Peach--to--die," she admitted worriedly. "But I don"t want anybody to take her away!"
"The pony is--very white," urged the Senior Surgeon with a diplomacy quite alien to him.
Abruptly the Little Girl turned and faced him. "What color is Aunt Agnes?" she asked vehemently.
"Aunt Agnes is--pretty white, too," attested the Senior Surgeon.
With the faintest possible tinge of superciliousness the Little Girl lifted her sharp chin a trifle higher.
"If it"s just a perfectly plain white pony," she said, "I"d rather have Peach. But if it"s a white pony with black blots on it, and if it can pull a little cart, and if I can whip it with a little switch, and if it will eat sugar-lumps out of my hand,--and if its name is--is--"Beautiful Pretty-Thing"--"
"Its name has always been--"Beautiful Pretty-Thing," I"m quite sure!"
insisted the Senior Surgeon. Inadvertently as he spoke he reached out and put a hand very lightly on the White Linen Nurse"s shoulder.
Instantly into the Little Girl"s suspicious face flushed a furiously uncontrollable flame of jealousy and resentment. Madly she turned upon her father.
"You"re a liar!" she screamed. "There _is_ no white pony! You"re a robber! You"re a--a--drunk! You shan"t have my darling Peach!" And threw herself frenziedly into the White Linen Nurse"s lap.
Impatiently the Senior Surgeon disentangled the little clinging arms, and raising the White Linen Nurse to her feet pushed her emphatically towards the hall.
"Go to my work-room," he said. "Quickly! I want to talk with you!"
A moment later he joined her there, and shut and locked the door behind him. The previous night"s loss of sleep showed plainly in his face now, and the hospital strain of the day before, and of the day before that, and of the day before _that_.
Heavily, moodily, he crossed the room and threw himself down in his desk chair with the White Linen Nurse still standing before him as though she were nothing but a--white linen nurse. All the splendor was suddenly gone from him, all the radiance, all the exultant purpose.
"Well, Rae Malgregor," he grinned mirthlessly. "The little kid is right, though I certainly don"t know where she got her information. I _am_ a Liar. The pony"s name is not yet "Beautiful Pretty-Thing"! I _am_ a--Drunk. I was drunk most of June! I _am_ a Robber! I have taken you out of your youth--and the love-chances of your youth,--and shut you up here in this great, gloomy old house of mine--to be my slave--and my child"s slave--and--"
"Pouf!" said the White Linen Nurse. "It would seem--silly--now, sir,--to marry a boy!"
"And I"ve been a beast to you!" persisted the Senior Surgeon. "From the very first day you belonged to me I"ve been a--beast to you,--venting brutally on your youth, on your sweetness, on your patience,--all the work, the worry, the wear and tear, the abnormal strain and stress of my disordered days--and years,--and I"ve let my little girl vent also on you all the pang and pain of _her_ disordered days! And because in this great, gloomy, rackety house it seemed suddenly like a miracle from heaven to have service that was soft-footed, gentle-handed, pleasant-hearted, I"ve let you shoulder all the hideous drudgery,--the care,--one horrid homely task after another piling up-up-up--till you dropped in your tracks yesterday--still smiling!"
"But I got a good deal out of it, even so, sir!" protested the White Linen Nurse. "See, sir!" she smiled. "I"ve got real lines in my face--now--like other women! I"m not a doll any more! I"m not a--"
"Yes!" groaned the Senior Surgeon. "And I might just as kindly have carved those lines with my knife! But I was going to make it all up to you to-day!" he hurried. "I swear I was! Even in one short little week I could have done it! You wouldn"t have known me! I was going to take you away,--just you and me! I would have been a Saint! I swear I would! I would have given you such a great, wonderful, child-hearted holiday--as you never dreamed of in all your unselfish life! A holiday all _you--you--you!_ You could have--dug in the sand if you"d wanted to!
Gad! I"d have dug in the sand--if you"d wanted me to! And now it"s all gone from me, all the will, all the sheer positive self-a.s.surance that I could have carried the thing through--absolutely selflessly. That little girl"s sneering taunt? The ghost of her mother--in that taunt? G.o.d! When anybody knocks you just in your decency it doesn"t harm you specially!
But when they knock you in your Wanting-To-Be-Decent it--it undermines you somewhere. I don"t know exactly how! I"m nothing but a man again--now, just a plain, every day, greedy, covetous, physical man--on the edge of a holiday, the first clean holiday in twenty years,--that he no longer dares to take!"
A little swayingly the White Linen Nurse shifted her standing weight from one foot to the other.
"I"m sorry, sir!" said the White Linen Nurse. "I"d like to have seen a roller-coaster, sir!"
Just for an instant a gleam of laughter went brightening across the Senior Surgeon"s brooding face, and was gone again.
"Rae Malgregor, come here!" he ordered quite sharply.
Very softly, very glidingly, like the footfall of a person who has never known heels, the White Linen Nurse came forward swiftly and sliding in cautiously between the Senior Surgeon and his desk, stood there with her back braced against the desk, her fingers straying idly up and down the edges of the desk, staring up into his face all readiness, all attention, like a soldier waiting further orders.
So near was she that he could almost hear the velvet heart-throb of her,--the little fluttering swallow,--yet by some strange, persistent aloofness of her, some determinate virginity, not a fold of her gown, not an edge, not a thread, seemed to even so much as graze his knee, seemed to even so much as shadow his hand,--lest it short-circuit thereby the seething currents of their variant emotions.
With extraordinary intentness for a moment the Senior Surgeon sat staring into the girl"s eyes, the blue, blue eyes too full of childish questioning yet to flinch with either consciousness or embarra.s.sment.
"After all, Rae Malgregor," he smiled at last, faintly--"After all, Rae Malgregor,--Heaven knows when I shall ever get--another holiday!"
"Yes, sir?" said the White Linen Nurse.
With apparent irrelevance he reached for his ivory paper-cutter and began bending it dangerously between his adept fingers.
"How long have you been with me, Rae Malgregor?" he asked quite abruptly.
"Four months--actually with you, sir," said the White Linen Nurse.
"Do you happen to remember the exact phrasing of my--proposal of marriage to you?" he asked shrewdly.
"Oh, yes, sir!" said the White Linen Nurse. "You called it "general heartwork for a family of two"!"
A little grimly before her steady gaze the Senior Surgeon"s own eyes fell, and rallied again almost instantly with a gaze as even and direct as hers.
"Well," he smiled. "Through the whole four months I seem to have kept my part of the contract all right--and held you merely as a--drudge in my home. Have you then decided, once and for all time,--whether you are going to stay on with us--or whether you will "give notice" as other drudges have done?"
With a little backward droop of one shoulder the White Linen Nurse began to finger nervously at the desk behind her, and turning half way round as though to estimate what damage she was doing, exposed thus merely the profile of her pink face, of her white throat, to the Senior Surgeon"s questioning eyes.
"I shall never--give notice, sir!" fluttered the white throat.