Vignettes of Manhattan; Outlines in Local Color

by Brander Matthews

The doctor turned to her, and in the same professionally cheery tones he said: "I sent for you, nurse, because Mrs. Swank has an important dinner to-night, and it might therefore be difficult for her to give Mr. Swank the attention he may require."

The physician was addressing the nurse, but it seemed to her that his words were really intended for the patient, whose eyes were still fixed on her.

All at once the sick man sat up in bed and began to cough violently. When the paroxysm had passed he sank back on the pillow again and closed his eyes wearily.

"I think that was not as severe as the last one," the doctor remarked; "I can leave you in Miss Clement's hands now. Perhaps, if I happen to be up this way about midnight, I may drop in again just to see that you are getting on all right. In the mean time, nurse, you will see that he takes these capsules every two hours—he had the last at half-past five. And you will take his temperature every hour if he is awake."

He said good-night to Mr. Swank in the same cheering tone, and then he went to the door. The nurse knew that she was to follow him.

When they stood alone in the hall, the doctor said to her: "If there is any change in the pulse or the temperature, send for me at once. Ring for the butler, and tell him I am to be sent for; he will know what to do. Mr. Swank has influenza only, but his heart is weak, and he needs careful attention. I shall be here again the last thing to-night."

When the nurse returned to the corner room the patient had fallen into a heavy doze, and she took advantage of this to prepare for the long vigil. She arranged her own belongings ready to her hand in the dressing-room set aside for her use. In that room she did not lower the shade, and she even stood at the window for a minute, trying to look out over Central Park, hidden from her by a swaying veil of swirling snow. The workmen had completed the canvas tunnel down the stoop to the edge of the sidewalk, and the lanterns hung inside the frame-work revealed grotesquely its striped contortions. As the nurse gazed down on it an old man without any overcoat sought a temporary shelter from the storm in the mouth of the awning, only to be ordered away almost immediately by the servant in charge.

The nurse went back into the larger room. She looked at her patient asleep in the warm bed. She wondered why life was so unequal; why the one man should spend the night in the snowy street, while the other had all that money could buy—shelter, warmth, food, attendance. She recalled how her father used to declare that the inequalities we see all around us are superficial only, and that there are compensations, did we but know them, for all deprivations, and that all apparent advantages are to be paid for, somehow, sooner or later. More than ever to-night she doubted the wisdom of her father's saying. How could there be anything but inequality between the old man in the street there below and the old man here in the bed? The thing seemed to her impossible.

As she became accustomed to the dim light of the room she was able to note that the furniture was heavy and black, that the carpet was unusually thick, that the walls had large paintings hanging on them, that the ceiling was frescoed in sombre tints. On all sides of her she saw the evidences of wealth and of the willingness to spend it; and yet the room and the house seemed to her strangely uninviting, and almost repellent. She asked herself why the sick man lying there asleep in the huge bed had not used his money to better advantage, and had not at least made cheerful his own sick-room. Then she smiled at her own foolishness. Of course the owner of the room had not expected to be stricken down; of course he had no thought of illness when he had furnished.

She moved gently about the room and tried to look at the pictures, but the illumination was insufficient. All that she could make out clearly were the names of the artists carved on tiny tablets attached to the broad frames; and although she knew little about painting, she had read the newspapers enough to be aware that pictures by these artists must have cost a great deal of money—thousands of dollars each, very likely. If she had thousands to spend, she believed that she could lay them out to better advantage than the owner of the house had done here. It struck her again as though the sick man had more than his share of the good things of life. She had not yet heard him speak, and she had not really had a good look at him; but she could not help thinking that a man who had so much, who had the means of doing so much, who was absolutely his own master, and who could spend a large fortune just as he pleased—she could not help thinking that he ought to be happy. It was true that he was ill now, but the influenza wears itself out at last; and when he was well he had so much money that he must be happier than other men—far happier than poor men, certainly.