CHAPTER VI
The circus side-shows used to exhibit specimens of the human family who were nothing but head. They had been sliced off clean at the neck and rested comfortably with the stump on a parlor table. The underside had evidently healed over nicely without corns, for they were the most amiable and smiling people you would find in the whole show. Spectators were not allowed within six feet of these people in reduced circumstances, for it was plainly desirable that no one should kick the table over or playfully tap them to see if they were really alive. Sceptics in the crowd said that mirrors did it. A razor might have done it, for all I cared. It gave me joy as a boy to think how it would feel to be only head and decorate a table. Brains certainly counted with them—they were always on top. And if they trained their tongues to run out and wash their faces and comb their hair, a valet would not be necessary. I've seen a man with no legs find a way to jump on a Broadway car and a man without arms can't be kept from playing the piano with his toes. This is because human nature has such a persistent way of trying to do the difficult thing, usually with wonderful success. Man can't fly nor be a fish naturally, but he wants to know how it would feel, and so he makes some startling flights and dives at doing both.
Well, I never tried falling out of a five-story window before just to see how it felt, but I got the sensation by doing it without trying. My first knowledge after the act was the sensation of carbolic acid making an appeal to my best-educated sense. That is all I knew for a long, long time—probably a year or two; then I began to have larger ideas, but not very broad or deep. I began to feel that I was just a head, and from this I figured it was all over with me on earth, and I was starting in to be a young angel. At first, I was to be only a small angel, just a cherub, with nothing but a fat head and two little wings about as big as your hand spreading out from under each ear. I tried to bend an ear down or cast an eye to feel or see if the wings had started, for as I thought of my condition I imagined a couple of inflamed lumps were swelling where the wingroots ought to be. But the ears were stiff and the eyes would not reach around so far.
The wing-boils made me feel a little colicky; I don't know why, for there was no substantial excuse for a case of colic, as I was all gone below the collar. Winging, I concluded, was like teething. Infant angels naturally felt colicky for some time before they cut their ear-wings. By-and-by, the little wings would, no doubt, drop out, and the second wings would come in at the shoulder-blades, when I sprouted out below and took on shoulders with blades.
I slept, and slept, and the wings began to unfold and feather up nicely, but they were too sore to flap yet and the feathers were mostly pin size and very fluffy. Only at the top there were just a few that you might say had real quills on as yet. The carbolic acid kept getting stronger. I fancied it must be what young angels cry for. Why they should sprinkle so much of it around me, I didn't understand at first, but as I got to thinking about it I concluded that an Inspector of Offensive Trades would need it good and plenty, like Tescheron needed his cologne.
It must have been six months, so I then thought, after I had cut my first set of wings, that I began to think about getting weaned, for I was a bottle angel and I was getting almighty tired of watery victuals, and besides, I was losing my appetite for the rubber tap. The reason I didn't get a cookie or a chicken bone, I figured, was because I was now handling everything in my crop, and it wouldn't do to crowd it too hard or I might choke—the overload point being very close to the choker.
Well, I had never in all my worldly career wanted a cracker so badly. If they had thrown in some sweitzerkase or a Yankee sardine I would have been pleased; of course, I understood that it would be all out of order to call for a glass of beer. Still, if there were any soft drinks I would like a "horse's neck," promising to sip it so as not to get drowned in it.
By and by, I began to feel an awful thirst for something sour. Would it be in order for a small angel to have a pickle to cut his wings on? If so, I prayed, please let me have a jar of the mustard variety, full of red peppers and other emphatic food.
My eyesight began to improve, and after many years of craving for a pickle I began to see them in all sorts and sizes, dripping with delicious vinegar and aromatic of tasty cloves and cinnamon. There was no way for me to reach them. When I tired of trying I would drop into nothingness again. By-and-by these lapses seemed to give me strength. The floating pickles grew smaller and faded away and I began to discern the dim outline of pillows, bed-clothes and bed-posts, and the four walls of a narrow room. I burst the chains of bondage one morning by saying:
"Pickle, please; pickle, pickle!"
A consultation of the house staff and the leading members of the advisory corps was called immediately, and grouped around my bed they formally voted that this was excellent for so young an angel. The vote was not unanimous, as one of the doctors present gallantly led a strong opposition. He tried hard to have his motion carried. His motion was to lay the subject on the table (in the operating room) and take time to go into it deeper before deciding.
When the learned men had gone away, my mother angel (angel is the only word good enough for her), in a starchy blue and white uniform, leaned over close to my lips and I saw her smile in such a lovely way, shake her head and press a finger to her lips as she gently lifted me and drew a smooth, cool pillow under my tired head. But she did not speak. She placed a screen before the window and I fell asleep.
The next time I saw my mother angel she was laughing at me softly while looking over the foot of the bed. I was able to respond by raising my eyebrows and turning my creaking neck on its rusty hinge toward the sunshine that brought the glory of life into the room through a broad window.
"Good morning, ma'am," I said, not venturing to be too familiar with the lady, for I was at once struck with my inferiority to this saintly vision.
"Good morning, sir. Do you feel well to-day?"
"Yes, ma'am," said I; "I have never been ill."
A low, pleasant laugh, like the soft trill of a muffled music box, greeted my statement.
"I believe you," she said. "You will soon be out again."
"Am I in? Where am I in?"
"This is Bellevue Hospital," said she. "But you'll soon be gone from here. You're as tough and strong as rawhide and wrought iron."
Here was a woman who could size me up. I took her word for it and tried to turn over and get up, but nothing happened.
"Tush, tush! Don't get lively now! Think what you've been through. Take it easy. Dr. Hanley says you are a wonderful fellow; that he will always be proud of you."
"Is the pickle coming?" I asked expectantly, as if I had heard it knock on the door.
"Yes, it's coming," she laughed. "But it won't get here this week. Here's something that is a good deal better."
She squeezed out a thimbleful of orange juice and placed it in a low cup with a long snout like a locomotive oil can, designed to poke in out-of-the-way places. With this device she was able to get through my beard and find my mouth. As she gently tipped it, the goodly nectar trickled upon my desert tongue, to be quickly evaporated in that arid area before it reached far along the parched wastes. I wanted to swim in it, but these hospitals provide poor entertainment for their patrons.
"Pretty flowers there," said I, pointing to a great mass of roses and orchids, showing the freshness of recent arrival.
"Oh, she hasn't forgotten you"; and her large blue eyes danced playfully as she said it. I could see that those blue eyes would aggravate me yet, but I wanted to linger forever under the spell of their teasing.
"Who sent them?" I asked in surprise.
"Miss Tescheron."
I was about to say that I didn't know the lady, but I decided that the plot was too thick for a brain foddered on orange juice by the drop through a dripper, so I just threw the complications all over, willing to bide my time. Some accident had tossed me upon this bed of bruises, but I was pulling out and I gritted my bridge-work, determined to get out as quickly as possible and pick up my tasks again.
The following morning I felt like a new man. I could actually reach out for my food. Eighteen hours of sound sleep had put abundant life, hope and courage into me.
"What a fine color you have!" said the cheery nurse.
"That braces me," said I. "But what I want to get at is this: How did I come to get here? How long have I been here? How long must I stay here?"
And she laughed joyously, jacking me up several notches in spirits and at the back with the pillows.
"The doctor says I may tell you," she began. "He left just before you awoke. The three upper stories of your house were burned out early that morning, six weeks ago, and the house next door was also damaged. You must be strong while I tell you this, will you? You were thrown out of the fifth-story window while you were unconscious. You fell on the outspread net held by the firemen, but you were badly injured by striking against the ironwork of the fire-escapes that were rendered useless because the flames were so great; it was a quick fire. I got the story from the ambulance doctors. You have been wavering between life and death ever since, almost, although about the third week you seemed to begin to mend slowly. Are you comfortable now?"
"Where is Hosley? Is he in jail? Hasn't he been here to see me? Was he hurt? Was he killed? Hasn't he written to me?"
"My heavens! Why do you ask me is he in jail, and all those questions? Who is Hosley, pray? Is he a jail-bird? And are you only a jail-bird? Why do you begin to talk about jail so soon?"
She was born to nurse the ill and tease well folks, and she saw I was better and could stand it.
"How about those flowers?" I asked. "How is it she brings flowers to me?"
"Oh, my! Oh, my! Well, I never heard a man complain of the devotion of a beautiful woman. Dear me, you are a fortunate man; and she must have lots of money, too. Orchids like those are three dollars. You can get them for seventy-five cents each, but not that kind. Did you ever price roses like that? Just look at them! Um, how sweet—how I love them! A two-dollar bill blooms on every one of them. Isn't that devotion for you! And how does she come to send them to you? Well, now! What a hard shell there must be on your heart! What a pity the fall didn't crack it!"
As she talked she busied herself about the room; it was a bare, antiseptic spot, fragrant of carbolic and formaldehyde. I could see that she was chaffing me; but I let her have her way in this, just as she ruled the diet, the naps and the airings.
Why should I lie for six weeks in a hospital without Jim Hosley coming to see me? thought I. Why hadn't he insisted on sleeping on the mat just outside the door if they would not let him in? Why had he not sent notes hourly to learn of my condition? Why had I been left to strangers? There could be no excuse for this, even though he were in jail, for he could at least write me. If he were dead, killed in the fire, Miss Tescheron would have told the nurse, for had she not brought me flowers? Had he been injured she would certainly have told the nurse about us. He had not been near me. He must, therefore, have skipped. In that case he must be all that Tescheron had pictured him to me. But why had Tescheron placed such confidence in Smith, whom he had known for such a short time? That was certainly not like a shrewd business man. Of course, I understood how anxious Tescheron was to get damaging evidence against Hosley; but what had Smith shown him? Why had he taken no further interest in me? Hosley must have skipped and Tescheron must have settled down, believing that no more would be heard of him. Miss Tescheron was still devoted to Jim, because she was sending me flowers. She still hoped to reach him through me and prove him innocent. But I would discourage her. I would not let her throw herself away on that fellow. If he were not a wretch he would have been there to see me; and if he were helpless as I was, then Miss Tescheron would be devoted to him and would have told the nurse about us, as she was enough interested in me to send me these beautiful flowers—me, whom she had never spoken to. And so it wound around in my weak head.
It was hard to believe this of Jim Hosley, that great lumbering hulk of humanity. How had he been able to assume that childish air and play the part with me, a shrewd, calculating observer of men, whose advice he always sought? Such villainy seemed to me to be beyond the art of any actor, and it certainly seemed to be a superlative degree of crime and deception impossible in real life. I remembered that he had shown some uneasiness that night when I started for the Fifth Avenue Hotel, and there was the card of the notorious undertaker, the ally of some of our worst criminals. Still, this was not connected with him and could not be regarded as damaging. When two bachelors are so wedded, is it possible for one to deceive the other? Married men had before this deceived clever wives. Could this companion to whom I would have trusted my life have deserted me at the moment of danger when I lay there overcome by smoke? Who tossed me from the window? Quickly I put that question to the nurse.
"There now," she said with a cautioning shake of her pretty head; "if you are going to keep thinking about that and get all upset, we won't let you out of here for a year—it was a fireman, perhaps; but what matters it?"
The bravery of a plain fireman mattered not, I thought. They must save lives as a business; chums, friends, they may slink away and leave you to a horrible death.
Jim Hosley was all that Tescheron had painted him, and yet there were doubts in my mind. But these doubts were soon removed.