Vignettes of Manhattan; Outlines in Local Color Part 37

"So this is the nurse," he began. "Miss Clement, isn't it? I'm glad you were able to follow my note so quickly. If you will come into the next room, where the patient is, as soon as you have changed your dress, I'll tell you what I wish you to do."

With that he left her; and in less than ten minutes she followed him into the large bedroom on the corner of the house. It was an unusually s.p.a.cious room, with a high ceiling and four tall windows.

There was a dull-red fire, which seemed insufficient to warm even the elaborate marble mantel. Almost in one corner stood a large bed, with thick curtains draped back from a canopy.

The doctor was sitting by the side of the bed as the nurse came into the room.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "SHE ALMOST s.h.i.+VERED, THE PLACE SEEMED TO HER SO CHEERLESS"]

"This is Miss Clement, Mr. Sw.a.n.k," he said, in a cheerful voice, to the old man, who lay in the bed motionless. "She will look after you during the night."

Mr. Sw.a.n.k made no answer, but he opened his eyes and looked at the woman who had come to nurse him. She used to say afterwards that she had never felt before so penetrating a gaze.

The doctor turned to her, and in the same professionally cheery tones he said: "I sent for you, nurse, because Mrs. Sw.a.n.k has an important dinner to-night, and it might therefore be difficult for her to give Mr. Sw.a.n.k 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 pa.s.sed 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. Sw.a.n.k 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. Sw.a.n.k 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.

When she came to this conclusion she was standing near the foot of the bed, looking at the man lying there asleep. It was on the stroke of half-past seven, and she had come to let him have his medicine again.

Then she noticed that his eyelids were parted, and that he was looking at her.

"It is time to take one of these capsules now," she said, gently moving to his side and offering it to him.

He took it without a word, and gulped it down with a swallow of water.

Then he sank back on the pillow, only to raise himself at once, as he was again shaken by a severe fit of coughing.

At last he lay back on the bed once more, still breathing heavily.

A fresh, young voice was heard at the door leading to the hall, saying, "May I come in, John?" and then a graceful young figure floated into the room with a birdlike motion.

The sick man opened his eyes wide as his wife came near him, and a smile illumined his face.

"How beautiful you are!" he said, faintly, but proudly.

"Am I?" she answered, laughing a little. "I _tried_ to be to-night, because there will be the smartest women in New York at Mrs. Jimmy Suydam's dance, and I wanted to be as good as any of them."

The nurse had withdrawn towards the window as the wife came forward, and she did not believe that any woman at Mrs. Jimmy Suydam's, wherever that might be, could well look more beautiful than the one who now stood smiling by the side of the sick husband.

She was a blonde, this young wife of an old man, a mere girl, and the vaporous blue dress was cut low on a slender neck girt about by a single strand of large pearls, while a diamond tiara high on her shapely head flashed light into every corner of the darkened sick-room.

"I thought I'd just run in and see how you were before anybody came,"

she said, lightly. "Dinner is at quarter to eight, you know. I do _wish_ you could be down. We shall miss you _dreadfully_. Of course I sent out at the last minute and got a man to fill your place, so we shall sit down with twenty-four all right; but then--"

Here she broke off, having caught sight of the third person in the room.

"So this is the nurse Dr. Cheever sent for?" she went on. "I'm sure she'll take good care of you, John--the doctor is always so careful. And if you hadn't had somebody with you I shouldn't have liked to leave you all alone--really I shouldn't!"

With that she circled about the bed again, turning towards the door.

"I must be off now," she explained. "I can't be _wasting_ my time on you in this way. I really ought to be down in the drawing-room _now_; and first, I've got to see if the flowers are all right on the table."

Her husband's eyes had followed her wistfully about the room, watching every one of her easy and graceful movements; and when at last she slipped out of the door, it was a moment before he turned an inquiring glance on the nurse, as though to discover what she thought of the brilliant vision.

The nurse came to the side of the bed with her clinical thermometer in her hand.

"You are awake now," she said, with a pleasant smile. "May I take your temperature?"

Five minutes later, when she was entering in her note-book the high degree shown by the thermometer, and when the patient had again dropped off to sleep, the first guests began to arrive for the wife's dinner party.

The thick snow made the wheels inaudible, but the nurse heard the doors of the carriages slam as those who had been invited pa.s.sed through the canvas tunnel one after another. In the room next to the dressing-room a.s.signed to her for her own use there was a rustling of silken stuffs, and there were fragments of conversation now and again so loudly pitched as to reach the ear of the young woman who sat silent in the sick-chamber. Then, when all the guests were come, the house sank again into silence, and a tall clock in a corner of the stairs chimed forth the hour of eight.

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 wis.h.i.+ng 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 s.h.i.+vering 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 companions.h.i.+p 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.