Red Pepper's Patients Part 10

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."

"Oh! I thought--"

"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 s.h.i.+ning 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 b.u.t.tercups 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 const.i.tution 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 circ.u.mstances 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 p.u.s.s.y 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.