Joan and Co.
go round in circles.
And all during this process Nichols wound him in bandages until he felt
as tied up as a mummy. Whenever they gave him a chance, he protested:
“Look here. Can’t get round in—these things.”
“I don’t intend to have you get round for some little time,” replied
Nichols. “Don’t talk.”
Then how the deuce was he going to see Sawyer? How the deuce was he
going—?
But it was not possible to keep a thought very long at a time. There
were two of them against him, and they did whatever they pleased.
Even when they were all through, he was not any more comfortable than
before. He was in a strait-jacket, and the after-effects of the ether
were the usual after-effects.
After a while Nichols went off. The nurse remained. He was glad of
that. She was the one sane thing in a world grown chaotic.
He must have slept at intervals during the night, because all of a
sudden he was aware that it was morning. The shaded electric light had
gone out and the room was suffused with the white light of day. The
nurse was still there, and when he spoke to her she came over and asked
how he felt.
“Punk,” he answered.
He was all tied up, for one thing. He was faint, for another. And he
still tasted and smelled ether, for another.
“I’d like a cup of coffee,” he said.
“I’ll get you something better,” she answered.
After an interval out of the room she returned with the something
better. Apparently their tastes differed, for it was not better. It
was a hot, flabby drink, like gruel. However, he swallowed it, and it
took away some of the faint feeling. Shortly he went to sleep again;
and this time when he awoke he found that the nurse had grown slighter
and taller and had changed the color of her hair. Or maybe it was a
different nurse.
“What time is it?” he asked.
“Eleven o’clock,” she replied.
“You’re a new one?”
“I’m the day nurse.”
That was encouraging, because it proved that he was seeing things in a
clearer and more normal way. He felt emboldened now to examine his room
more in detail. It was an extremely satisfactory apartment. Everything
in it was quite perfect and fresh. The wall-paper had little roses in
it and looked as though it had been put on within a day. The bed was
of mahogany with a dull finish. The dresser in the corner was new, and
all the odds and ends of other things were new also. It looked like one
of those windows along Fifth Avenue where such articles are displayed
for sale. Only he had the feeling that on these there had never been
any price tag. If ever they were paid for it had been done quietly and
privately.
The linen covering him was choice. He felt it. It gave him a sense of
clean luxury. It sank into him and made him wish he were shaved. If he
had his razor with him he would have shaved right then, if he could
manage it with his left hand. He put his fingers to his rough face to
see if it could be done.
When Nichols came in, Devons asked him if he did not think it could be
managed.
“I’ll have them send Jeffrey up to you,” nodded Nichols.
“Jeffrey?”
“Mr. Fairburne’s man.”
“I don’t want to put the family to any more trouble than I have. I
could do it myself.”
“I doubt it. Besides, it isn’t necessary.”
“How long am I going to be here?”
“A month. Perhaps longer?”
Devons frowned.
“That’s impossible,” he replied firmly.
“Miss Fairburne is feeling very badly about you. Naturally, she wants
to do everything she can under the circumstances.”
“It wasn’t her fault. You’ll tell her that and—thank her for me?”
“Certainly.”
After feeling his pulse and taking his temperature and asking a hundred
or so questions, Nichols declared his patient was doing very well.
“Give him within reason all he wants to eat,” he ordered the nurse.
Devons heard him say that, or he would not have believed it. He could
not remember ever having had all he wanted to eat—except in his
dreams. The time Reed gave him that ten thousand dollars he had gone
to Delmonico’s and ordered oysters on the half-shell, a soup, a bit
of fish, a big steak with hashed-brown potatoes, and asparagus, and
an ice, and concluded with coffee and cheese. Only something happened
before it got to him. Probably something would happen this time.
Jeffrey came up with a “Good-morning, sir,” and several towels over his
arm and a pitcher of hot water. While Devons lay on his back without
moving and with his eyes closed, Jeffrey bent over him and lathered
his face and shaved him as he had never been shaved before. Then he
washed off the soap and applied hot towels—steaming hot towels that
made him catch his breath in the joy of the tingly feeling of them.
Then Jeffrey put on cold cream and rubbed it in, and after that dusted
his cheeks with a sweet-scented powder. Jeffrey even combed his hair.
Then quietly, softly, he stole out, leaving Devons with the hazy notion
that it had all been done by magic. Feeling so fine and having nothing
better to do, he went to sleep.
It was one o’clock when he awoke, and he was hungry. Now was the time
to test if what Nichols had said about food was true, or not. He did
not even have a chance to tell the nurse he was ready, because at that
point she opened the door and came in with a tray. She placed this near
him. It contained eggs on toast, little triangle pieces of toast—and a
cup of cocoa with frothy whipped cream on the top of it. He tried for a
moment to serve himself with his left hand; but he made such a bungling
job of it that the nurse said:
“You’d better let me help you.”
So she did. He had nothing to do but open his mouth like an overgrown
robin. It was absurd. Also it was deliciously effortless. And he had
enough—all he wanted.
When he was through she brought from somewhere a large vase of roses
and placed them on a little table by his head.
“These are from Miss Fairburne with her compliments,” said the nurse.
“She hopes you are feeling comfortable.”
“Oh, Lord!” gasped Devons.
CHAPTER VI
WHOSE FAULT?
This went on for three or four days; and, with nothing to do but eat
and sleep and in between whiles to lie at languid ease, Devons grew
stronger and stronger, and all the minor sore spots vanished. He was
even able to sit up and read. All the magazines he ever heard of were
sent to him, and a brand-new book every day. Yet he did not read very
much. There was too much here to live.
For the time being he was as well off personally—except for the
inconvenience of being half-swathed in bandages—as though all his
dreams had come true. It gave him an opportunity to compare the
actuality with the vision. He resolutely barred his thoughts from the
future. He refused for a little while to ask himself how this was going
to end, and what was to become of him as soon as he was able to leave.
After all, there was not much he could do about that, anyway. There was
not even any one whom it was necessary to inform as to his whereabouts.
The few at Mullen Court who were aware of his existence would presume
that he had gone away on a business trip. They did not worry much
there about where men came from or where they went.
The sheer material comforts surrounding Devons were as balm to his
soul. There are those who seem able to find on a cot in a garret
everything they crave. Arkwright with his drawing set was more or
less of this sort, though he had more than some others. Prescott was
another—Prescott, the slight young fellow just back from Paris, who
lived at the top of the next house across the alley and who used to
call to him out of his window. Prescott painted wonderful things in
oil, and appeared content with doing that, whether he sold them or not.
He went over to see him one night, and in the course of the evening
several young ladies in queer, unconventional costumes came in, and by
the light of a single candle Prescott read to them from the plays of
Maeterlinck. It was a weird performance, with a great deal of smoke and
not much to eat. Yet every one but himself was satisfied. He returned
to his room with something of a headache and dreamed of blind children
all night.
Frankly he liked where he was now much better. For years he had tried
to make dreams, tried to make the future take the place of reality and
the present. This, instead of growing easier with passing time, became
increasingly more difficult. At Technology he had seen men doing the
same work he was doing, and at the same time enjoying the comforts of
life to a reasonable degree while they were at it. He had no advantage
over them even in dreams. And, after all, clean linen was clean linen
and decent garments were decent garments, and good food was good food,
and money was a conjurer’s wand.
Then there were the others—his father and mother and sisters. But here
they did not count. It disturbed him when he thought of them. If only
they could come on and be pummeled by an automobile—
He forced himself back to the present. He must avoid even the past. He
informed the nurse that he was thirsty and she brought him a glass of
milk—rich milk in a glass that sparkled from its many cut facets. It
tasted like nectar.
It was on the fifth day, in the afternoon, that the nurse informed him
that Miss Fairburne expressed a desire to visit him if he thought he
had the strength to see any one.
“I’d like to see her,” answered Devons.
And yet, he faced the prospect uneasily. It made him realize, for
one thing, how self-centered he had been. Except remotely, he had
not associated her either with the accident or with his present
surroundings. The mere fact that she had been in the car when he was
struck was an important detail, to be sure; but, not having seen her at
the time, it was as vague as hearsay evidence. That he was indebted to
her for all that he had recently been enjoying was also an undeniable
fact; but as long as she had been embodied to him no more concretely
than through the fragrance of the roses she sent him daily, she had not
played a vital part in his thoughts. Now he was a little afraid that
with her actual presence would come disillusionment. She would bring
him back to actual work-a-day conditions.
The few times he had seen her with Mildred, it had been with a sort of
resentment. He had thought of her as having in excess all the choice
things of life that Mildred lacked—as completely as he himself did.
Even to her physical beauty. It seemed as though if justice had held
the balance true, Mildred should at least have been the one to possess
that abundant silken black hair, those dark eyes that set a man to
wondering, the fine nose and mouth that were so subtly distinctive.
In every line and feature she revealed her tender nurture. It was as
though she had taken on something from all the beautiful things for
which the four corners of the earth had been searched. Beside her, poor
Mildred’s blunt, irregular nose and mouth appeared plainer than ever.
Knowing as he did the woman beneath, he felt something to be unjust
there.
But he must remember that Miss Fairburne herself had found the real
Mildred and clung to her and been faithful to her to the end. It was
Miss Fairburne who had held Mildred’s hand at the last—the thin,
pitiful little hand—and it was Miss Fairburne whom Mildred had trusted
to send home the bitter news. Those few moments when he had seen her in
the infirmary reception-room, her eyes moist, he remembered that she
had seemed to him like another Mildred. She had been almost like one of
the home folks—just an ordinary body who had lost a sister.
Then she had gone out of his mind. His own affairs had preempted all
his thoughts. Besides, she vanished shortly into her own world, which
to him then was as though she had been whisked to some distant planet.