Leerie

by Ruth Sawyer

FOR THE HONOR OF THE SAN

Peter Brooks paced the sanitarium grounds like a man possessed. Hands thrust deep into pockets, teeth hard clenched, head bare, the raw October wind ruffling his heavy crop of hair like a cock’s comb. So suggestive was the resemblance that Hennessy, watching him from the willow stump by the pond, was forced to remark to Brian Boru, the gray swan, that Mr. Peter looked like a young rooster, after growing his spurs, looking for his first fight.

“Aye, an’ for one I’m wishin’ he’d be findin’ it,” continued Hennessy. “He’s bided peaceful an’ patient till there is no virtue left in him. Ye can make believe women be civilized if ye like, but I’m knowin’ that a woman’s sure to go to the man that fights the hardest to get her, same as it was in the savage day o’ the world. An’ there’s nothing that sets a man right quicker with himself than a good fight, tongues or fists.”

At that moment Peter would have gladly chosen either or both if fate could only have furnished him with a legitimate combatant. But a man cannot fight gossipy old ladies or jealous, petty-minded nurses, or a doctor whom he has never met and whose transgressions he cannot swear to. And yet Peter wanted to double up his fists and pitch into the whole community; he felt himself all brute and yearned for wholesale slaughter.

Peter had come to the sanitarium in the beginning to be cured of a temporal malady, only to rise from his bed stricken with an eternal one. He had fallen desperately in love with Sheila O’Leary as only a man of Peter’s sort can fall in love, once and for all time. Moreover, he believed in her as a man believes in the best and purest that is likely to come into his life. On the day of his convalescing, when she had been transferred from his case to another, he had sworn that he would not stir foot from the old San until he had won her. He had kept his word for four months. He would have been content to keep it for four more—or for four years, for that matter—had everything not turned suddenly topsy-turvy and sent his world of hopes crashing down about him.

For four months he had shared as much of Sheila’s life and work as she would allow. He had let himself drift into the rôle of a comfortable and sympathetic companion whenever her hours for recreation gave him a chance. His love had grown as his admiration and understanding of her had grown, until she had come to seem as necessary a part of his life as the air he breathed. Then he had been able to smile whimsically at those gossipy tales. What if she had been suspended and sent away from the sanitarium? What if she had broken through some of the tight-laced rules with which all institutions of this kind hedge in their nurses? Sheila’s proclivity for breaking rules was a byword among the many who loved her, and the head of the institution, the superintendent of nurses, the entire staff of doctors, down to Hennessy, the keeper of the walks and swans, only smiled and closed their eyes to all of Sheila’s backsliding. For hadn’t they all believed in her? And hadn’t they sent for her to come back to them again? And which one of them had ever allowed a word of scandal to pass his lips? So Peter smiled, too.

In those months he had come to read Sheila—so he thought—like an open book. He had learned by heart all her moods, the good and the bad, the sweet and the bitter. He knew she could be as divinely tender and compassionate as a celestial mother; he also knew that she could be as barren of sympathy and as relentless as fate itself. She could pour forth her whole throbbing soul, impulsive, warm, and radiant, as a true Celt, yet she could be as impersonal, terse, and cryptic as a marconigram. He loved these very extremes in her, her unmitigated hatred for the things she hated, and her unfailing love for the things she loved. She made no pretense or boast for herself; she was what she was for all the world to see. And Peter had found her the stanchest, sweetest, most vital—albeit the most stubborn—piece of womanhood he had ever known. Her very nickname of “Leerie” was her open letter of introduction to every one; her smile and the wonder-light in her eyes were her best credentials. Small wonder it was that her patients watched for her to come and that Peter felt he could snap his fingers at the scandalmongers.

But Peter wasn’t snapping them now—or smiling. His fists were doubled tight in his pockets, and he clenched his teeth harder as he paced the walk from pond to rest-house. How the accursed tongues of the gossips rang in his head! “Rather odd the sanitarium should have sent for him, wasn’t it? Don’t you know he was the young surgeon who was mixed up in that affair with that popular nurse?”... “Oh yes, they hushed it up and sent them both away.”... “Nothing definite was ever explained, but they were always together, just as they are now, and you can’t get smoke without some burning.”... “Yes, Doctor Brainard and Miss O’Leary. Didn’t you ever hear about what happened three years ago?”

Peter’s stride seemed to measure forth the length of each offending tongue, and when he reached the end of his beaten track he swung about as if to meet and silence them all, for all time. But instead he came face to face with the two who had caused them to wag. So absorbed were the surgeon and nurse in what they had to say to each other that they brushed by Peter without seeing him. He might have been one of the rustic posts of the rest-house or the pine-tree growing close by. As they passed, Peter scanned narrowly the half-averted face of the girl he loved and found it pitifully changed in those few days. The luminous light had gone from her eyes; her lips no longer curved to the gracious, demure smile Peter had always called “cloistered.” They were set to grim determination, as if the girl had gripped fast to a purpose and no amount of shaking or persuasion would induce her to let go. Her eyes were circled and anxious. Peter groaned unconsciously at his glimpse of her, while Hennessy from his vantage-point on the stump shook a vengeful fist at the retreating back of the surgeon.

“A million curses on him!” muttered Hennessy, his lips tight shirred. “Sure, the lass has the look of a soul possessed.” The next instant his fist was descending not over-mercifully on Peter’s back. “First I’m cursin’ him an’ then I’m cursin’ ye. For the love o’ Saint Patrick, are ye goin’ to stand round like a blitherin’ fool an’ see that rascal of a docthor do harm again to our lass? I’ll come mortial close to wringin’ your neck if ye do.”