SUSQUEHANNA
Red Pepper Burns drove into the vine-covered old red barn behind his house which served as his garage, and stopped his engine with an air of finality.
"Johnny," said he, addressing the young man who was accustomed to drive with him—and for him when for any reason he preferred not to drive himself, which was seldom—and who kept the car in the most careful trim, "not for man or beast, angel or devil will I go out again to-night."
Johnny Carruthers grinned. "No, sir," he replied. "Not unless they happen to want you," he added.
"Not if they offer me a thousand dollars for the trip," growled his master.
"You would for a dead beat, though," suggested the devoted servant, who by virtue of five years of service knew whereof he spoke, "if he'd smashed his good-for-nothin' head."
"Not if he'd smashed his whole blamed body—so long as there was another surgeon in the county who could do the job."
"That's just the trouble," argued Johnny. "You'd think there wasn't."
Red Pepper looked at him. "Johnny, you're an idiot!" he informed him. Then he strode away toward the house.
As he went into his office the telephone rang. The office was empty, for it was dinner-time, and Miss Mathewson was having a day off duty on account of her mother's illness. So, unhappily for the person at the other end of the wire, the Doctor himself answered the ring. It had been a hard day, following other hard days, and he was feeling intense fatigue, devastating depression, and that unreasoning irritability which is born of physical weariness and mental unrest.
"Hello," shouted the victim of these disorders into the transmitter. "What?... No, I can't.... What?... No. Get somebody else.... What?... I can't, I say.... Yes, you can. Plenty of 'em.... What?... Absolutely no! Good-bye!"
"I ought to feel better after that," muttered Burns, slamming the receiver on the hook. "But somehow I don't."
In two minutes he was splashing in a hot bath, as always at the end of a busy day. From the tub he was summoned to the telephone, the upstairs extension, in his own dressing room. With every red hair erect upon his head after violent towelling, he answered the message which reached his unwilling ears.
"What's that? Worse? She isn't—it's all in her mind. Tell her she's all right. I saw her an hour ago. What?... Well, that's all imagination, as I've told her ten thousand times. There's absolutely nothing the matter with her heart.... No, I'm not coming—she's not to be babied like that.... No, I won't. Good-bye!"
The door of the room softly opened. A knock had preceded the entrance of Ellen, but Burns hadn't heard it. He eyed her defiantly.
"Do you feel much, much happier now?" she asked with a merry look.
"If I don't it's not the fault of the escape valve. I pulled it wide open."
"I heard the noise of the escaping steam." She came close and stood beside him, where he sat, half dressed and ruddy in his bathrobe. He put up both arms and held her, lifting his head for her kiss, which he returned with interest.
"That's the first nice thing that's happened to me to-day—since the one I had when I left you this morning," he remarked. "I'm all in to-night, and ugly as a bear, as usual. I feel better, just this minute, with you in my arms and a bath to the good, but I'm a beast just the same, and you'd best take warning.... Oh, the—"
For the telephone bell was ringing again. From the way he strode across the floor in his bathrobe and slippers it was small wonder that the walls trembled. His wife, watching him, felt a thrill of sympathy for the unfortunate who was to get the full force of that concussion. With a scowl on his brow he lifted the receiver, and his preliminary "Hello!" was his deepest-throated growl. But then the scene changed. Red Pepper listened, the scowl giving place to an expression of a very different character. He asked a quick question or two, with something like a most unaccustomed breathlessness in his voice, and then he said, in the businesslike but kind way which characterized him when his sympathies were roused:
"I'll be there as quick as I can get there. Call Doctor Buller for me, and let Doctor Grayson know I may want him."
Rushing at the completion of his dressing he gave a hurried explanation, in answer to his wife's anxious inquiry, "It isn't Anne Linton?"
"It's worse, it's Jord King. He's had a bad accident—confound his recklessness! I'm afraid he's made a mess of it this time for fair, though I can't be sure till I get there."
"Where is he?" Ellen's face had turned pale.
"At the hospital. His man Aleck is hurt, too. Call Johnny, please, and have him bring the car around and go with me."
Ellen flew, and five minutes later watched her husband gulp down a cup of the strong coffee Cynthia always made him at such crises when, in spite of fatigue, he must lose no time nor adequately reënforce his physical energy with food.
"Oh, I'm so sorry you couldn't rest to-night," she said as he set down the cup and, pulling his hat over his eyes, picked up the heavy surgical bags.
"Couldn't, anyway, with the universe on my mind, so I might as well keep going," was Burns's gruff reply, though the kiss he left on her lips was a long one and spoke his appreciation of her tender comradeship.
She did not see him again till morning, though she lay awake many hours. He came in at daylight; she heard the car go in at the driveway, and, rising hurriedly, was ready to meet him when he came into the living room downstairs.
"Up so early?" questioned Burns as he saw her. The next minute he had folded her in one of those strong-armed embraces which speak of a glad return to one whose life is a part of one's own. "I wonder," he murmured, with his cheek pressed to hers, "if a man ever came back to sweeter arms than these!"
But she knew, in spite of this greeting, that his heart was heavy. Her own heart sank. But she waited, asking no questions. He would tell her when he was ready.
He drew her down upon the couch beside him and sat with his arm around her. "No, I don't want to lie down just yet," he said. "I just want you. I'm keeping you in suspense, I know; I oughtn't to do that. Jord's life is all right, and he'll be himself again in time, but—well, I've lost my nerve for a bit—I can't talk about it."
His voice broke. By and by it steadied again; and, his weariness partially lifted by the heartening little breakfast Ellen brought him on a tray, he told her the story of the night:
"Jord was coming in from the Coldtown Waterworks, forty miles out, late for dinner and hustling to make up time. Aleck, the Kings' chauffeur, was with him. They were coming in at a good clip, even for a back street, probably twenty-five or thirty. There wasn't much on the street except ahead, by the curb, a wagon, and coming toward him a big motor truck. When he was fifty feet from the wagon a fellow stepped out from behind it to cross the street. It was right under the arc light, and Jord recognized Franz—'Little Hungary' you know—with his fiddle under his arm, crossing to go in at the stage door of the Victoria Theatre, where he plays. The boy didn't see them at all.
"Neither Jord nor Aleck can tell much about it yet, of course, but from the little I got I know as well as if I had been there what happened. He slammed on the brakes—it was the only thing he could do, with the motor truck taking up half the narrow street. The pavement was wet—a shower was just over. Of course she skidded completely around to the left, just missing the truck, and when she hit the curb over she went. She jammed Jord between the car and the ground, injuring his back pretty badly but not permanently, as nearly as I can make out. But she crushed Aleck's right arm so that—"
He drew a long breath, a difficult breath, and Ellen, listening, cried out against the thing she instantly felt it meant.
"O Red! You don't mean—"
He nodded. "I took it off, an hour afterward—at the shoulder."
Ellen turned white, and in a moment more she was crying softly within the shelter of her husband's arm. He sat with set lips, and eyes staring at the empty fireplace before him. Presently he spoke again, and his voice was very low, as if he could not trust it:
"Aleck was game. He was the gamest chap I ever saw. All he said when I told him was, 'Go ahead, Doctor.' I never did a harder thing in all my life. I suppose army surgeons get more or less used to it, but somehow—when I knew what that arm meant to Aleck, and how an hour before it had been a perfect thing, and now—"
He did not try to tell her more just then, but later, when both were steadied, he added a few more important details to the story:
"Franz went to the hospital with them—wouldn't leave them—ran the risk of losing his position. Do you know, Jord has been teaching that boy English, evenings, and naturally Franz adores him. I suppose Jord would have taken that skid for any blamed beggar who got in his way, but of course it didn't take any force off the way he jammed on those brakes when he saw it was a friend he was going to hit. And a friend he was going to maim—pretty hard choice to make, wasn't it? But of course it was sure death to Franz if he hit him, at that pace, so there was nothing else to do but take the chance for himself and Aleck. Maybe you can guess, though, how he feels about Aleck. One wouldn't think he knew he'd been cruelly hurt himself."
"Jord's back will give him a lot of trouble for a while, but his spine isn't seriously injured, if I know my trade. Altogether—well—the nurses have got a couple of interesting cases on their hands for a while. No doubt Aleck will be well looked after. As for Jord—he'll be so much the more helpless of the two for a while, I'm afraid he'll prove a distraction that will demoralize the force."
He smiled faintly for the first time, but his face sobered again instantly.
"Anne Linton's pretty weak, but she took a little nourishment sanely this morning just before I came away. Miss Arden feels a trifle encouraged. I confess this thing of Jord's has knocked the girl out of my mind for the time being, though I shall get her back again fast enough, if I don't find things going right when I see her. Well"—he turned his wife's face toward him, with a hand against her cheek—"it's all out now, and I'm eased a bit by the telling. I wish I could get forty winks, just to make a break between last night and this morning."
"You shall. Lie down and I'll put you to sleep."
He did not think it possible, in spite of his exhaustion, but presently under her quieting touch he was over the brink, greatly to Ellen's relief. Her heart contracted with love and sympathy as she watched his face. It was a weary face, now in its relaxation, and there were heavy shadows under the closed eyes. Every now and then a frown crossed the broad brow, as if the sleeper were not wholly at ease, could not forget, even in his dreams, what he had had to do a few hours ago. She thought of young Aleck with his manly, smiling face, his pride in keeping Jordan King's car as fine and efficient beneath its hood—mud-splashed though it often was without—as he did the shining limousine he drove for Mrs. Alexander King, Jordan's mother. She thought of what it must be to him now to know that he was maimed for life. As for King himself, she knew him well enough to understand how his own injuries would count for little beside his distress in having had to deal the blow which had crushed that strong young arm of Aleck's. Her heart ached for them both—and even for poor Franz, weeping at having been the innocent cause of all this havoc.
Two hours' sleep did his wife secure for Burns before he woke, stoutly avowing himself fit for anything again, and setting off, immediately breakfast was over, for the place to which his thoughts had leaped with his first return to consciousness.
"Can't rest till I see old Jord. Did I tell you that he insisted on Aleck's having the room next his, precisely as big and airy as his own? There's a door between, and when it's open they can see each other. When I left Jord the door was open, and he was staring in at Aleck, who was still sleeping off the anesthetic, and a big tear was running down Jord's cheek. He can't stir himself, but that doesn't seem to bother him any. He's going to suffer a lot of pain with his back, but he'll suffer ten times more looking at that bandaged shoulder of Aleck's."
It was four days later that Ellen saw King. She was prepared to find him, as Burns had called him, "game," but she had not known just all that term means among men when it is applied to such a one as he. If he had been receiving her after having suffered a bad wrench of the ankle he could not have treated the occasion more simply.
"This is mighty good of you," he said, reaching up a well-developed right arm from his bed, where he lay flat on his back without so much as a pillow beneath his head. His hair was carefully brushed, his bandages were concealed, his lips were smiling, and altogether he was, except for his prostrate position, no picture of an invalid.
"I've just been waiting to come," she said, returning the firm pressure of his hand with that of both her own.
"And meanwhile you've kept me reminded of you by these wonderful flowers," he said with a nod toward the ranks on ranks of roses which crowded table and window sills.
"Oh, but not all those!" she denied. "I might have known you would be deluged with them. Daisies and buttercups out of the fields would have been better."
"No, because those you sent look like you. Doctor Burns won't grudge me the pleasure of saying now what I like to his wife—and it's the first time I've really dared tell you what I thought."
"What a charming compliment! But I'm going to send you something much more substantial now—good things to eat, and books to read, if I can just find out what you like—and even games to play, if you care for them."
"I'll be delighted, if they're something Aleck and I can play together. You see when that door is open we aren't far apart, and it won't be long, Doctor Burns says, before he'll be walking in here to keep me company—till he gets out."
"He is doing well, I hear. I'm so glad."
"Yes, that husky young constitution of his is telling finely—plus your husband's surgery. My poor boy!" He shut his lips upon the words, and kept them closely pressed together for an instant. "My word, Mrs. Burns—he's the stuff that heroes are made of! His living to earn for the rest of his life—with one arm—and you'd think he'd lost the tip of one finger. If ever I let that boy go out of my employ—why, he's worth more as a shining example of pluck than other men are worth with two good arms!"
"I must go and see him—if he'd care to have me."
"He'd take it as the honour of his life. He's crazy over the flowers you sent him."
"Would he care for books? And what sort? I'm going to bring both of you books."
"Stories of adventure will suit Aleck—the wilder the better. Odd choice—for such a peaceable-looking fellow, isn't it? As for me—something I'll have to work hard to listen to, something to keep an edge on my mind. I've counted the cracks in the ceiling till I have a map of them by heart. I've worked out a system by which I can drain that ceiling country and raise crops there. There isn't much else in this room that I can count or lay out—worse luck! So I've named all the roses, and have wagers with myself as to which will fade first. I'm betting on Susquehanna, that big red one, to outlast all the rest."
When Red Pepper looked in half an hour later, it was to find the door open between the two rooms, and his wife listening, smiling, to an incident of the night just past, as told by first one patient and then the other. The two young men might have been two comrades lying beside a campfire, so gay was their jesting with each other, so light their treatment of the wakeful hours both had spent.
"No, there's nothing the matter with either of them," observed Burns, looking from one bedside to the other. "Franz is the chap with the heavy heart; these two are just enjoying a summer holiday. But I'm not going to keep the communication open long at a time, as yet."
He went in to see Aleck, closing the door again. When he returned he took up a position at the foot of King's bed, regarding him in silence. Ellen looked up at her husband. There was something in his face which had not been there of late—a curiously bright look, as if a cloud were lifted. She studied him intently, and when he returned the scrutiny she raised her eyebrows in an interrogation. He nodded, smiling quizzically.
"Jord," he said, "if you want to keep your secrets to yourself, beware of letting any woman come within range. My wife has just read me as if I were an open book in large black type."
"Bound in scarlet and gold," added Ellen. "Tell us, Red. You really have good news?"
"The best. I am pretty confident Anne Linton has turned the corner. I hoped it yesterday, but wasn't sure enough to say so. Did you know that, too?"
"Of course. But you were in small type yesterday. To-day he who runs may read. You would know it yourself, wouldn't you, Jordan?"
The man in the bed studied the man who stood at its foot. The two regarded each other as under peculiar circumstances men do who have a strong bond of affection and confidence between them.
"He's such a bluffer," said King. "I hadn't supposed anybody could tell much about what he was thinking. But I do see he looks pretty jolly this morning, and I don't imagine it's all bluff. I'm certainly glad to hear Miss Linton is doing well."
"Doing well isn't exactly the phrase even now," admitted Red Pepper. "There are lots of things that can happen yet. But the wind and waves have floated her little craft off the rocks, and the leaks in the boat are stopped. If she doesn't spring any more, and the winds continue favourable, we'll make port."
Jordan King looked as happy as if he had been the brother of this patient of Burns's, whom neither of them had known a month ago, and whom one of them had seen but once.
"That's great," he said. "I haven't dared to ask since I came here myself, knowing how poor the prospects were the last time I did ask. I was afraid I should surely hear bad news. When can we begin to send her flowers again? Couldn't I send some of mine? I'd like her to have Susquehanna there, and Rappahannock—and I think Arapahoe and Apache will run them pretty close on lasting. Would you mind taking them to her when you go?" His eyes turned to Mrs. Burns.
"I'd love to, but I shall not dare to tell her you are here, just yet. She is very weak, isn't she, Red?"
"As a starved pussy cat. The flowers won't hurt her, but we don't want to rouse her sympathies as yet."
"I should say not. Don't mention me; just take her the posies," instructed King, his cheek showing a slight access of colour.
"You won't know whether Susquehanna wins your wager or not," Ellen reminded him as she obediently separated the indicated blooms, magnificent great hothouse specimens with stems like pillars. That the finest of all these roses, not excepting those she had sent herself, had come from private greenhouses, she well knew. The Kings lived in the centre of the wealthiest quarter of the city, though not themselves possessed of more than moderate riches. Their name, however, was an old and honoured one, Jordan himself was a favourite, and none in the city was too important to be glad to be admitted at his home.
"Anything more I can do for you before I go?" inquired Burns of his patient when Ellen had gone, smiling back at King from over the big roses and promising to keep track of Susquehanna for him in her daily visits.
"Nothing, thank you. You did it all an hour ago, and left me more comfortable than I expected to be just yet. I'm not sure whether it was the dressing or the visit that did me the most good."
"You're a mighty satisfactory sort of patient. That good clean blood of yours is telling already in your recovery from shock. It tells in another way, too."
"What's that?"
"Sheer pluck."
King's eyelids fell. It meant much to him to stand well in the estimation of this man, himself distinguished for the cool daring of his work, his endurance of the hard drudgery of his profession as well as the brilliant performance on occasion. "I'm glad you think so—Red Pepper Burns," King answered daringly. Then, as the other laughed, he added: "Do you know what would make me the most docile patient you could ask?"
"Docile doesn't seem just the word for you—but I'd be glad to know, in case of emergency."
"Let me call you that—the name your best friends have for you. It's a bully name. I know I'm ten years younger—but—"
"Good lack! Jordan King, call me anything you like! I'll appreciate it."
"You've no idea how long I've wanted to do it—Red," vowed the younger man, with the flush again creeping into his cheek.
"Why didn't you long ago?" Burns demanded. "Surely dignity's no characteristic of mine. If Anne Linton can call me 'Red Head' on no acquaintance at all—"
"She didn't do that!" King looked a little as if he had received a blow.
"Only when she was off her head, of course. She took me for a wildcat once, poor child. No, no—when she was sane she addressed me very properly. She's back on the old decorous ground now. Made me a beautiful little speech this morning, informing me that I had to stop calling her 'little girl,' for she was twenty-four years old. As she looks about fifteen at the present, and a starved little beggar at that, I found it a bit difficult to begin on 'Miss Linton,' particularly as I have been addressing her as 'Little Anne' all the time."
"Starved?" King seemed to have paused at this significant word.
"Oh, we'll soon fill her out again. She's really not half so thin as she might be under the old-style treatment. It strikes me you have a good deal of interest in my patients, Jord. Shall I describe the rest of them for you?"
Burns looked mischievous, but King did not seem at all disturbed.
"Naturally I am interested in a girl you made me bring to the hospital myself. And at present—well—a fellow feeling, you know. I see how it is myself now. I didn't then."
"True enough. Well, I'll bring you daily bulletins from Miss Anne. And when she's strong enough I'll break the news to her of your proximity. Doubtless your respective nurses will spend their time carrying flowers back and forth from one of you to the other."
"More than likely," King admitted. "Anything to fill in the time. I'm sorry I can't take her out in my car when she's ready. I've been thinking, Doctor—Red," he went on hastily, "that there's got to be some way for Aleck to drive that car in the future. I'm going to work out a scheme while I lie here."
"Work out anything. I'll prophesy right now that as soon as you get fairly comfortable you'll think out more stuff while you're lying on your back than you ever did in a given period of time before. It won't be lost time at all; it'll be time gained. And when you do get back on your legs—no, don't ask me when that'll be, I can't tell nor any other fellow—but when you do get back you'll make things fly as they never did before—and that's going some."
"You are a great bluffer, but I admit that I like the sound of it," was King's parting speech as he watched Burns depart.
On account of this latest interview he was able to bear up the better under the immediately following visit of his mother, an aristocratic-looking, sweet-faced but sad-eyed lady, who could not yet be reconciled to that which had happened to her son, and who visited him twice daily to bring hampers of fruit, food, and flowers, in quantity sufficient to sustain half the patients in a near-by ward. She invariably shed a few quiet tears over him which she tried vainly to conceal, addressed him in a mournful tone, and in spite of his efforts to cheer her managed to leave behind her after each visit an atmosphere of depression which it took him some time and strength to overcome.
"Poor mother, she can't help it," philosophized her son. "What stumps me, though, is why one who takes life so hard should outlive a man like my father, who was all that is brave and cheerful. Perhaps it took it out of him to be always playing the game boldly against her fears. But even so—give me the bluffers, like Red Pepper—and like Mrs. Red. Jove! but she's a lovely woman. No wonder he adores her. So do I—with his leave. And so does Anne Linton, I should imagine. Poor little girl—what does she look like, I wonder?"
If he could have seen her at that moment, holding Susquehanna against her hollow young cheek, the glowing flower making the white face a pitiful contrast, he would have been even more touched than he could have imagined. Also—he would have felt that his wager concerning Susquehanna was likely to be lost. It is not conducive to the life of a rose to be loved and caressed as this one was being. But since it was the first of her flowers that Anne Linton had been able to take note of and enjoy, it might have been considered a life—and a wager—well lost.