Vignettes of Manhattan; Outlines in Local Color

by Brander Matthews

So long as her patient slept the nurse had little or nothing to do; but though her body was motionless, her thoughts were busy. She was country-bred herself; she had left her home in a little New England village by the sea to make her way in the world. She had now been a trained nurse for nearly two years; and yet, as it happened, her work had been either in hotels or in families of only moderate means. This was the first time she had been in so handsome a house or with people of so much wealth. She could not help being conscious of her surroundings, and she caught herself wishing that she too were rich. She confessed that she would like to be a guest at the dinner below. She wondered what a dinner-table for twenty-four must be. To be able to entertain as lavishly as that, and not to have to worry about the arrangement, or the cost, or anything—well, that would be an existence any woman must delight in. She felt herself capable of expanding, and of being equal to the enjoyment of any degree of luxury. She liked her occupation, for she had chosen her own calling. She had been successful in it too; and yet she was beginning to be a little afraid that she had miscalculated her strength. The work was very laborious and confining, and more than once of late she had felt overtaxed. It might be that in a year or two her reserve force would be exhausted, and she would have to give up the struggle and go back home, where she would be welcome, of course, but where she would add to the burdens her mother was already laden with.

There was an alternative, and never before had it seemed to her so tempting as when she was sitting there alone with the sick man in the darkened corner room of his great house. She might marry. More than once she had been asked in marriage; and one man had asked her more than once. He was persistent, and he still declined to accept her refusal as final. He was not an old man yet, although he was twice her age. He was a rich man, even if he was not as wealthy as the owner of the splendid but depressing home where she now sat silently musing. She did not love him, that was true, and there was no doubt about it; but she did respect him, and she had heard that sometimes love comes after marriage. He could let her have all she longed for, and he was ready to give her everything he had. If she married him she too could have dinners of twenty-four, and wear a rope of pearls and a diamond tiara; and then, too, she could do so much good with money if she had it.

In the course of her services in the hospital, and afterwards among the poor, she had seen many a case of sore distress which she had been unable to relieve. If she had riches she could accomplish much that was now impossible; she could do good in many ways; she could relieve suffering and aid the impoverished and help the feeble far more adroitly and skilfully than could any woman who had always been wealthy, and who had not had her experience of life and of its misfortunes and its miseries. She thought that she knew her own character, and she believed that she had strength to withstand the temptations which beset the rich. Thinking herself unselfish, she held herself incapable of keeping for herself alone any good fortune that might come to her. And she made a solemn resolve that if she should marry the man who stood ready to take her to wife she would devote to good works the greater part of her money and of her time. She would dress as became her station, of course, and she would entertain sumptuously too; but no old man should ever be turned shivering from her door when she was giving a dinner of twenty-four.

Her revery was interrupted half a dozen times by the fits of coughing which shook her patient, and which seemed to her to become more and more frequent and more violent. At half-past nine she gave him his medicine again, and took his temperature once more. Then she made up the fire, which burned badly; and she straightened the sheets on his bed, and turned the pillows.

He soon sank to slumber again, breathing heavily and turning uneasily in his sleep. The house was singularly still, and no sound of the dinner party below reached the nurse in the corner room above. When she happened to go into the dressing-room she found there awaiting her a tray with several dishes from the dinner table. She was glad to have something to eat, and she sat down by the window to enjoy it. The thick, soft snow had silenced nearly all the usual street sounds. The carriages that went up and down the avenue were as inaudible as though they were rolling on felt. But sleighing parties became more frequent, and she found a suggestion of pleasant companionship and of human activity in the jingle of the bells. Once a fire-engine sped swiftly past the house, its usual roar deadened by the heavy snow, and its whistle shrilling forth as it neared the side streets, one after another; ten minutes later it came slowly back. The nurse was glad that there was only a false alarm, for she knew how terrible a fire would be in a crowded tenement-house on such a night.

She finished her belated dinner a few minutes after the deep tones of the clock in the hall had told her that it was ten, and that there were left of the old year but two hours more. Except when the sick man waked with a cough, the next hour was wholly eventless.

And yet, when it had drawn to an end, the nurse thought that it would count in her life as important beyond most others, for it was between ten and eleven that she made up her mind to marry the rich man who wanted her for his wife, and whom she did not love. The resolution once determined, she let her mind play about the possibilities of the future. She would not be married till the spring, of course, and they would go to Europe for their wedding-trip. Then, in the fall, she would persuade him to move to New York. He was fond of his own town, but he would get used to the city in time; and they could buy a new house, overlooking Central Park—perhaps in the same neighborhood as the one where she was sitting in the hazy light of the sick-room. She smiled unconsciously as she found herself wondering whether her patient's beautiful young wife would call on her if she purchased the house next door.

It was a little after eleven o'clock when she again heard a rustling of silken stuffs in the room by the side of hers, followed shortly by the voice of the servant in the street below calling the carriages of the departing guests. But some of the diners still lingered, for it was nearly half an hour later before the door of the sick-room opened and the sick man's wife came gliding in again with her languorous grace.

He fixed his eyes upon her at once, and smiled with contentment as she came towards him.

"You've been asleep, haven't you?" she began. "I'm so glad, for of course that's so good for you. We all missed you down-stairs, and everybody asked about you and said they were so sorry you were not there. You must hurry up and get well; and I'll give another dinner like this, for it was a great success. The flowers were superb—and I don't think any of the women had a handsomer gown than I did. And I know all of them together hadn't as elegant diamonds. I don't believe anybody at the dance will have as many either."