Nurse in White (16 page)

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Mrs. Hartley was
young and beautiful. Ellen remembered that she was a Brentwood girl who two years before had married some man from St. Louis and had gone there to live. She remembered it had been a brilliant affair—one the town talked of for days before and after the event.

Flowers filled every available space in the room and more arrived hourly. Ellen wondered why she didn’t send some of them to the wards, and made up her mind she would suggest it when they were better acquainted.

“Dr. MacGowan told me I was to have a new nurse. Are you Miss Gaylord?” Mrs. Hartley asked as Ellen began her morning ministrations.

“Yes, Mrs. Hartley. I’m Ellen Gaylord, very much at your service.”

“I’m so glad you’re pretty,” the other said frankly. “I’m sick of looking at plain girls. What a lot of them you have here!”

“I hadn’t noticed,” Ellen answered. “They are all so wonderful!”

“Are they?” Mrs. Hartley spoke indifferently. “When flowers or fruit arrive, please give me the cards. You may pass on the fruit to anyone you wish—I can’t eat it. I enjoy flowers, though.”

“What a lot you have!” Ellen exclaimed as she picked up a huge vase of American Beauties. “I’ll just change the water in them—”

“Don’t bother. There will be dozens more. If they’re wilted, throw them out. And those carnations—throw them out, too. Carnations! He would send carnations—they last longest. Dad’s a thrifty soul, poor lamb!”

Ellen made a promise to herself that the carnations should go up to Pediatrics—children always liked carnations, they stood a lot of handling. She dutifully removed the offending floral offerings and put fresh water in the vases of those still in favor. During the morning more flowers arrived and Ellen saw that her patient’s peevishness increased with the reading of each succeeding card.

Dr. Dent dropped in about ten o’clock and he and Mrs. Hartley met like old friends. To Ellen he was professional and impersonal—even a little stiff. Mrs. Hartley teased him about some mutual friend—a Gladys Mason, who was about due to arrive any minute. Ellen thought Dr. Dent lingered a bit longer than was necessary, but at last he departed with scarcely a glance in her direction.

Mrs. Hartley eyed Ellen, her glance speculative. At last she asked with disarming candor, “Is it you Cy Dent is crazy over? Oh, don’t mind me,” at Ellen’s start and flush of annoyance. “I’m brutally frank—always was. I heard he was enamored of some girl in Anthony Ware and you’re the only one I’ve seen so far he’d look at twice.”

“Well,” Ellen answered coldly, “I assure you it isn’t I.”

“Why, don’t you like him—Ellen, isn’t it? You might just as well tell me, for I shall find out sooner or later. I always do.”

“I didn’t say I disliked him, Mrs. Hartley. Perhaps—shall we say it’s just that I’m not interested in men?” Ellen was furious. What right had this girl to catechise her.

“How unnatural and how perfectly absurd! You remind me of an ostrich—oh, for heaven’s sake, don’t get peeved!” as Ellen stiffened. “It’s your own affair, of course, but I still think you’re putting on an act. Maybe you’ll land a bigger fish because of it—men are a queer lot. I thought I knew all there was to know about them when I married Sam Hartley, but—” her voice grew suddenly husky and Ellen looked at her in surprise “—he fooled me.”

Ellen hoped she wasn’t going to make a confidant of her, but apparently she had said all she intended saying then, for she turned over and was so quiet that Ellen thought she slept.

Gladys Mason arrived sometime later.

“Don’t go Ellen,” Mrs. Hartley said. “This is my new nurse, Glad—Ellen Gaylord—Gladys Mason, my best friend and worst enemy. I like having you around, Ellen—you’re decorative, isn’t she, Glad? And let me tell you something, I won’t give two cents for your chances with doc—not while she’s unshackled.”

Ellen tried not to listen. Her cheeks burned with anger and humiliation. She busied herself with a fresh box of flowers and over and
over
to herself she repeated a formula from her adolescent days, when, shy and deeply emotional, she had been susceptible to the spitefulness and jealousy of her plainer schoolmates.

She can’t hurt me—no one can hurt me
—
I
refuse to be hurt!

Gradually her anger faded and she turned her usual lovely, serene face toward them, but they had already forgotten her existence.

Ellen thought Gladys Mason the most fascinating girl she had ever seen. Small, dark and vivacious, she flitted about the flower-filled room, examining each vase and basket, asking the name of the donor and relating something amusing about each one.

“Nothing from Sam, I see—yet, or is it too precious for display? I tell you, Jan, the boy’s mad with jealousy. Why don’t you make the first move?”

Ellen thought,
They talk and act as if I were deaf and blind. The
y
’ll be telling their most intimate secrets first thing they know. Oh, this is a grand life—this job of nursing, especially to the idle rich.

And that is just what happened. Within the short space of time Gladys Mason spent with her patient, Ellen learned that Sam Hartley had walked out on his wife and that she had come home forthwith and had started suit for divorce. She learned the cause, too. A certain Roland Emsden of polo fame had been spending rather a lot of time at the Hartley mansion, in fact, rumor had it that he was the man in the case.

“As if I would look twice at Roily Emsden,” scoffed Janet Hartley.

Gladys laughed. “But darling, you did look at him and many more times than twice.”

“Well, and what if I did!” the other demanded. “Was I to let Sam dictate to me where and how and with whom I spent my time? He’s gone all day—presumably on business. How do I know it’s always business? He may be having affairs with a dozen women, but do I act like an idiot about it? I ask you.”

Gladys shrugged and Ellen felt like telling her patient that she certainly did act like an idiot. The injured lady went on with her grievance.

“Sam was positively abusive—insulting. He’s so old-fashioned, Glad. Sometimes I wonder why I ever married him.”

“So do I,” Miss Mason murmured, and smiled disarmingly at the sudden offense in the other’s face. “Why did you?” she asked.

“You ask me that?” Mrs. Hartley demanded. “Why, you know very well that we were simply mad about each other—before we were married. Sometimes I wonder if that feeling ever lasts, Glad.”

“It doesn’t,” the other said flatly.

“How do you know, you’ve never—”

“Just the same, I know. In marriages that stick—it’s replaced by something better, or at least something saner.”

Mrs. Hartley moved restlessly. “But who wants a safe and sane life?”

Gladys shook her head at her and said nothing for a moment. Then she changed the subject entirely to people they both knew and places they both had visited.

Ellen thought that for all her inconsequential light chatter, Gladys Mason was much more of a woman than the supposedly poised and sophisticated Mrs. Hartley.

On the way down to lunch, Dr. Dent intercepted Ellen in the corridor.

“Don’t let Jan Hartley get under your skin, Nightingale,” he warned. “She’s a spoiled brat as the result of too much sparing the rod. I hope Sam holds out on her.”

“You would! How you men stick together! Probably she is well rid of him if only she could be made to see it, for he certainly can’t care a great deal for her.” Ellen didn’t know why she suddenly veered to the side of Mrs. Hartley when all along her sympathy had been with the husband.

“Why? Because he won’t let her continue to make a monkey out of him?”

“I doubt if she was responsible for that,” Ellen said coolly and attempted to pass him but he barred the way. His hand brushed lightly across her shoulder.

“Still carrying that chip, I see. Tell me, Nightingale, what has the charming Terry got that the rest of us males lack?”

“I wear no chip on my shoulder, Dr. Dent,” Ellen said stiffly, “and you can’t possibly be interested in my friends. Please let me pass.”

For a moment Ellen thought he was going to shake her. His blue eyes darkened and flashed dangerously. His hands reached for her, then dropped to his side. He shrugged as if in futility, turned abruptly and strode away. And if he heard Ellen’s quick and penitent, “Oh, Cy, I’m sorry!” he gave no sign.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

“You’ve been such
a grand pal, Ellen, that I’m going to tell you a secret.” Terry Morley and Ellen were resting between dances at the Cosmopolitan in Corinth one night in late March. The air was mild and Ellen felt excited and eager as the approach of spring always made her. And she had on a new gown—a hyacinth blue crepe with a long, very full skirt, snug-fitting bodice, tiny puffed sleeves and practically no back. It made her feel young and gay and sophisticated.

“I’m sure it’s a nice secret, Terry,” she laughed, “because your eyes sparkle and you seem just about ready to burst. So perhaps you’d better hurry before something really embarrassing happens.”

“Vi is going to marry me after all.” He spoke with a sort of ecstatic awe.

“Vi? But—but—I thought she—oh, Terry, I think that’s grand!” Ellen wondered why the news should cause her such sudden lightness of heart. After all, they were neither of them especially intimate friends. She knew Terry much better and liked him far more than she did Lady Violet. But what about Cy? Where did he come into the picture? She thought it well not to ask.

“Oh, I know what you mean to say, Ellen,” Terry said without hesitation. “She had a fool idea that she owed her life to Dent, therefore he had a right to it. Just a crazy romantic notion girls get sometimes. When I told her that she had had a double dose of your blood and therefore owed you twice as much as she owed Dent, she saw the light. She sent word to you that she feared she had perhaps lacked appreciation of your kindness. I told her that she had sort of passed you up and I, for one, couldn’t understand why. It was then that she told me she hoped I hadn’t changed toward her for she had discovered it was me she loved—me after all. That’s the whole story.”

“I’m glad, Terry. She’s very lovely and I think you’re quite nice yourself.”

“Thank you kindly, lady. Since I hurt my knee, I can’t do some of the things I used to and so perhaps squiring won’t be so bad, after all. I’m not so keen about spending my life over there, but no doubt we’ll be back and forth a lot. One thing I hope is that you’ll come over and see us sometime.”

Ellen laughed, happiness bubbling up in her heart. Spring was such a wonderful season! No matter how tired one was and how dark things had looked—spring just sort of rejuvenated one—lifted one’s spirits so that the world became another place entirely. What would life be without its recurring springs? Oh, it was grand to be alive and young and—and not too hard on the eyes. To be wearing a brand-new and extremely becoming dress. To be sitting across from an attractive young man—who was engaged to another girl! Yes, that last was perhaps the grandest of all.

“I doubt if I shall ever have enough money to do much ocean traveling, Terry. Nurses can’t accumulate a great deal, you know, and every cent I do manage to save is going into a fund to help me through medical school.”

Terry shook his head positively. “Never. You’ll never get that far, gorgeous. If Vi hadn’t possessed every inch of my heart, your nursing days would end right here and now.”

“Oh, Terry, that doesn’t make any hit with me,” Ellen said calmly. “I hear so much of that sort of tommy rot! Like all males you take it for granted that you have only to beckon and we will follow.”

“Beckon nothing,” Terry retorted sharply. “I’d pick you up and set you down hard in some place where you would have to learn to love me, willy-nilly. I know women, beautiful.”

“Hmm. Caveman stuff,” scoffed Ellen.

“Sure. You’re the type that needs that sort of treatment. Sometimes I think I’ll put—no matter—skip it. Mind Your Own Business is my watchword. Come on let’s dance. I’m glad I told you about Vi and me.”

“And so am I, Terry, and I wish you both all the luck and happiness in the world!”

Ellen thought she never had spent a more enjoyable evening, and when Terry and she got out at the nurses’ home just after midnight, she was surprised to see Dr. Dent coming from the steps. Now, what was he doing here? Which of the girls was he rushing now? They passed with a simple cool “Good evening”. Terry unlocked the door, pressed her hand with a soft goodnight, and Ellen went quickly up the stairs to her room. The house was very quiet. Whoever Dr. Dent had been calling on must have made a rapid retreat for there wasn’t a sound as she closed her door. Of course it might have been Mrs. Drake he had come to see—she had been having trouble with a lame shoulder for the past day or two. If it was one of the girls, he was certainly a lightning change artist. Off with the old love and on with the new in record time. What a man!

She wondered just what, if anything, had happened between Lady Violet Terrill and him. He had intimated only the other day that he still heard from her. She had cared for him, Ellen was sure. Oh, well, what did it matter anyway? He was nothing in her young life. But just the same, she was glad he wasn’t going to marry her. Maybe this Gladys Mason was the real one. Mrs. Hartley had teased him about her. But what was he doing at the home? He must have been calling on one of the girls or perhaps had just brought her back from some place. Still, he had no car with him. No, he must just have been making a call. Now, which one of the girls had he shown particular admiration for? She couldn’t tell. That they all adored him she knew; but which one was the fortunate? Favorite, she corrected quickly.

She got into bed and expected to fall asleep immediately. But that question kept recurring and played havoc with her dreams. She tossed and turned and at last got up and walked around the room on her toes, stood before the open window and breathed deeply of the clear, cold spring air, then determinedly got into bed again and composed herself for slumber. But the first faint gray of mo
rn
ing marked her windows before she fell into an exhausted sleep from which Marcella Harris wakened her, it seemed, but a moment later. However, a quick shower did wonders for her and she was ready with the others to go down to breakfast.

Mrs. Hartley was in an irritable mood again this mo
rn
ing. She was sleeping badly and Ellen knew she was not convalescing as she should. Sam Hartley persisted in his complete silence and Ellen felt she would like to take them both and knock their heads together in the hope that a little sense might be jarred loose. And even if it was none of her business, she was glad she had taken a hand in the straightening out of their foolish difficulty. Mind Your Own Business was Terry Morley’s motto and it was a good one for everyone to follow ordinarily, but just the same—

The lady wanted no breakfast although Ellen had prepared an especially attractive tray. The room was stuffy and when the windows were opened, she complained of freezing
to death
. She wanted to see no one this morning—they all bored her to tears. When Dr. MacGowan stopped in on his rounds, she snubbed him unmercifully so that he was more dour and more Scottish than ever. Ellen was at her wit’s end when the first box of flowers arrived. The patient brightened for a moment and reached for them, read the accompanying card and threw box and flowers across the room. Then she turned over on her face and wept.

Ellen picked up the flowers and put them in water. Poor girl! Ellen knew what the matter was and wished she had the courage to tell Janet Hartley to brace up—everything was going to be fine. But of course that was entirely outside her province. She was a nurse, not a mender of broken marriages, and while she might take it upon herself in a way to occasionally assist Providence, it was a risky business and not to be made a practice of. She wished people had more sense—especially people in love. It was a great nuisance!

Dr. Dent came in at eleven and attempted his usual pleasantry, only to be snapped at and told to get out. He stared quizzically at the back of the dark head buried in the pillow, then turned to Ellen.

“Weil have a No Visitors sign on the door tomorrow Gaylord. I agree with Mac—too many callers.” He raised one eyebrow as Mrs. Hartley flounced over on the bed.

“Don’t you dare!” she stormed, and Ellen saw that her face was streaked with tears, “I’ll go mad if I’m left alone here!”

“You won’t be alone. Your nurse will be right here within call. Now be a good girl and relax and rest. You’ll be out of this place before you know it if you will only cooperate a bit.”

“Cooperate a bit!” she mimicked. “Why should I cooperate? No one ever has cooperated with me. Oh, I—I’m so unhappy!” Down went the head once more and the slight frame shook with sobs.

“Here, here, this will never do,” Dr. Dent said, and Ellen resented what she thought was his impatience. “Come on, Jan,” he wheedled, “tell me all about it. Maybe I can help. Or maybe you’d rather tell Gaylord—she will understand, I’m sure. She’s the understandingest female on the staff.” He grinned at Ellen and patted the weeping girl.

“It’s S-Sam,” she whimpered. “He—he hasn’t been near me and he hasn’t even—not one flower! O-oh, I—I—hate him for hurting me s-so! Why doesn’t he come?”

Cy stared wide-eyed at Ellen, who couldn’t repress a smile at Janet Hartley’s inconsistency. “Oh, is that all?” he asked her as she burrowed deeper into her pillow. “I thought you and Sam—or was it just you—had come to the parting of the ways, decided to call it a day. Isn’t that why you came home to mother, Jan?”

“Shut up, you—you—! Oh, why did he ever let me go? I’m his wife and he ought to have prevented me from leaving him!”

“For heaven’s sake, Jan be your age and generation! This is 1938, woman! Husbands don’t use the iron hand anymore—I doubt if men have any iron in their systems the way you women wind us ’round your fingers. Sam probably thought you were fed up and rarin’ to get out, and so, wanting you to keep happy, he let you go.”

“But I’m not happy, Cy. I—I’m mis-er-able!”

“Gosh, girl, don’t begin that again! Quit weeping. Sam’ll probably be tickled pink to know you haven’t quit. Why not tell him so?”

“Tell him? You mean he is—”

“No. He isn’t just outside. That only happens in the movies. He’s probably still in St. Louis, if he hasn’t gone to South America as he talked of doing,” he said brutally. “There—there! Lord, Ellen, do something! She’s started again!” He got to his feet and bolted for the door. Ellen had a hard time to keep from laughing aloud. It was all so childish and ridiculous! He opened the door the barest crack to whisper, “Call MacGowan if she doesn’t quit. Give her a bromide. I’m no good at this sort of thing.”

“I’ll say you’re not,” Ellen murmured, and grinned at him as he withdrew.

Mrs. Hartley had stopped crying. She mopped her eyes with a sodden handkerchief. Ellen bathed the flushed, tearstained face very gently.

“My head aches frightfully,” the patient moaned.

“I’ll bring you an ice pack and fix you something quieting, and then you can have a little nap. Things are bound to improve soon. You’ll see.”

“You’re sweet,” Mrs. Hartley murmured.

The room grew very quiet. Ellen received boxes of flowers and took care of them without disturbing the patient. But she saw that none of them came from Sam Hartley. Suppose he should prove to be one of the stubborn sort? Suppose he didn’t want to “continue being a monkey” for his wife’s amusement? Oh, but he must come!

It was nearly five o’clock when Cy Dent poked his head in at the door and beckoned Ellen. “Sam is downstairs.” he whispered. “How is she?”

“Sleeping. Have him come up. I’ll slip out as soon as he gets here.”

Sam Hartley was a big, red-haired, boyish young fellow, with eyes like a spaniel and a hesitant way of speaking. Ellen smiled at him and motioned him to enter. She closed the door softly and . sat down in the corridor nearby. Cy Dent came to her there.

“So you wired him, too, did you, Nightingale?” he said, his eyes quizzical.

“Too? Then you—”

“ ‘Two minds with but a single thought, two hearts—’ Who was it said that?”

“I haven’t the least idea. Someone terribly sentimental,” Ellen answered? “But I do hope they patch up their differences. I think it’s too bad when two people marry that they can’t pull together and be willing to give and take.”

“Ain’t it the truth?” Cy agreed. “What’s that—Lord! I never knew it to fail,” as the eerie hollow sound of a loudspeaker broke into what he hoped might be a friendly chat. “Dr. Dent—Emergency—calling Dr. Dent—Emergency—calling Dr. Dent—”

Ellen watched him hurry down the corridor and take the stairs four at a time. She smiled to herself. It was queer that they both had the same idea. Of course she had no business butting into the Hartleys’ private affairs; but just the same, Mrs. Hartley was making herself ill over their quarrel and just one look at Sam Hartley told Ellen she had made no mistake. Just two silly, spoiled children who had not yet found the real meaning of life. Ellen felt very mature and wise.

It was some time before she received a summons to return to her patient, and what a change she found! Mrs. Hartley was sitting up in bed, her hands held tightly in those of her husband, who wore a fatuous and slightly shamefaced grin as she introduced him to Ellen.

“I’m glad I’m going home soon, Sam,” she said after a moment when she watched her husband with adoring eyes. “Ellen’s so pretty that it might be too much of a temptation if you saw her every day. And darling, she thinks she doesn’t care for men—isn’t that a scream? Sort of a nasty blow to your vanity, eh, what? Of course, I don’t believe her—not with her face. And listen, darling, I think Cy Dent—well, doesn’t exactly hate her.” She laughed gleefully. “See her blush, Sam? Isn’t she delicious?”

“Oh, have a heart, Jan! You’re not being fair—quite rude, in fact. After all, m’dear, personalities aren’t exactly good form, you know. Miss Gaylord has a perfect right to her inhibitions, an’ all that.”

Ellen wondered if he were English and decided he must be. An Englishman from St. Louis! Later she found that he had had a year at Oxford—only a year, and it had done that to him! She wished she could watch Cy while he listened to him talk. Cy had such a keen sense of humor—And suddenly she felt herself blushing, and refused to acknowledge to herself that it was because she was feeling kindly toward him.