Penny (16 page)

The incident annoyed her, but only briefly. She crossed the field to the house. No one was there, not even the cat. The house was closed and shuttered. But instead of going back to the highway at once she crossed the field back of the house, came to the woodland, put up a rabbit and had a good run. Finally the rabbit ran in at an old stone wall and Penny, after sniffing the wonderful smells—the wall had been haven for many rabbits, a skunk or two, a fox and several raccoons—turned back. Hot from the chase, she wanted a drink. There was a brook near the house with the big, hairy cat. She went back there, drank, rested in the shade. Then she decided to go see Marion.

It was getting toward noon when she arrived at Marion's house, a good time to get there. She went to the kitchen door and barked politely. She was always the lady with Marion. Marion answered her bark, invited her in, rubbed her ears, said sweet nothings and told her to go lie down on the big, soft sofa till lunch was ready. And when lunch was ready Marion dished up a special plate for Penny. Not steak, but some kind of stew. Penny ate it, ladylike, not spattering one drop on the floor, and licked her chops and thanked Marion with her eyes. Then she went back to the sofa and went to sleep. She dreamed about her Connecticut People and wakened with a start. It was almost time for them to arrive at Sybil's. But she didn't leap down and dash to the door. She yawned and stretched and made it all seem very casual. But when Marion let her out she headed for the shortcut.

She hadn't taken the shortcut in months. It led across an old pasture and through a woodland, past a farm with two hounds, one old and grumpy, the other young and rather handsome. The last time she went that way the old hound had threatened to tear her to bits, and both of them had chased her. She had run, but just enough to make them feel important: then she had let them catch up and learn that she was a girl. She didn't often use her sex to put a dog in his place, but there were occasions when a touch of femininity came in handy.

As she crossed the field and went through the woodland she wondered if those hounds were still there. The young one, she remembered, had something—well, something that made her remember. She came to the farm and, as before, the hounds came charging out of the dooryard. And as before, she let them chase her a little way, then catch up. The old one was grizzled about the muzzle and stiff in the hocks, but the young one was even better looking than she remembered. He was all apologies. “Haven't I seen you before?” he asked. One of that kind. But she played his game. He nosed her and rubbed shoulders and danced around, and when she went on he accompanied her. The old hound grumbled, “Wasting your time on a nobody, a little bitch that came out of the woods.” But the young hound called him “an envious old has-been pooch” and strutted like a show dog. The two of them, Penny and the young hound—“Just call me Mack, darling”—went down the lane together.

Penny forgot all about her people from Connecticut. She pretended that she picked up a rabbit scent and went dashing off across a pasture, just to see if Mack would follow. He did. Then he pretended that he had a fox scent. She followed him. But he outdistanced her so far he had to have his imaginary fox circle back past her to give her a chance to catch him. They rolled in the grass. They nipped each other's ears. They yelped at each other. They chased each other into an old sheep pasture with a winding road at the foot of the hill. Mack became more and more insistent. Penny dodged and twisted and scrambled down the gravelly hillside. Mack, trying to turn and follow her, lost his footing, rolled into a clump of hardhack and was twenty yards behind when Penny darted through the hedgerow onto the winding blacktop road. She was looking back, watching for Mack, and didn't hear or see the low white car with red racing stripes.

Brakes squealed. Tires skidded. A girl screamed, “There's a dog!” Penny looked up just in time to see the black width of a tire and try to dodge. She didn't quite make it, but instead of being hit squarely and crushed like a bug under a thumb she got a glancing blow that caved in her ribs and knocked her into the roadside grass. The car came to a stop fifty yards beyond and a blonde girl leaped out, came running back, a young man right behind her. The girl knelt beside Penny, whispered, “Oh, you poor darling,” and began to cry.

The man asked, “Dead?”

The girl shook her head. “Very badly hurt, though. See those poor ribs? She's barely breathing.” Very gently, she picked Penny up in her arms.

The young man looked at Penny's collar, shook his head. “No tag. She doesn't belong to anyone. Just a stray.”

“I don't believe it!” the girl exclaimed. “It's an expensive collar. Besides, she's a beautiful dog. Somebody loves her. She has a home.”

“So what do we do now?”

“Take her to a vet. Or to a hospital. Somewhere where they will take care of her.”

They carried Penny back to the car and the girl held her in her lap as they drove on. Penny drifted off into her own dreams.

She had been hurrying back to Sybil's, to meet her people from Connecticut. Being careful, as she always was, watching and listening for cars and trucks. And suddenly, out of nowhere, this great big fearful monster, a monster that could blow an eagle right out of the air with one breath, appeared and swished its tail at her as it passed. And just like that, with one swish of its tail, she was knocked clear off the road, fearfully hurt.

Then the ambulance had come, the big white ambulance, and a beautiful young blonde nurse named Gloria and a taciturn young intern named Dr. Fairfield. They put her on the stretcher and the nurse held Penny's paw and smoothed her forehead with her cool hand. The intern checked her heart with his stethoscope and said, “Plasma. She needs plasma,” and he inserted the needle, connected the tubing, hung the bottle of plasma on the hook. Gloria said Penny's pulse was fluttery, so the intern gave her an injection.

Gloria said, “I wish we knew who she is. But there's not a scrap of identification. What is your name, dear? Can you hear me?”

Penny tried to rouse from the merciful coma but couldn't speak.

“Try hard, darling. Tell me your name.”

Penny finally managed to whisper, “Penny … royal … prin—”

“Pennyroyal!” Gloria exclaimed. “Not the Princess Pennyroyal!”

Penny nodded slightly, but even that movement hurt dreadfully.

“Dr. Fairfield,” Gloria said to the intern in an awed voice, “this is the Princess Pennyroyal!”

“Not—not the—Are you
sure?
”

“Positive. Haven't you seen her picture? I have, in
Life
and
Time
and
Newsweek
. And she just told me! Oh, Dr. Fairfield, we
must
save her!”

Dr. Fairfield gave Penny two more injections, then told the driver of the ambulance, “Call the hospital and rally all hands. We have Princess Pennyroyal with internal injuries and in an advanced state of shock from a car accident!” There was a series of squawks and squeals from the closed-circuit radio. The driver increased his speed to 60, 70, then 80 miles an hour. His siren screamed. Penny twitched, tried to howl, had to be quieted by Gloria's gentle, loving hands.

The nurses and two interns were waiting at the emergency entrance. They slid the stretcher out of the ambulance and in no time they were in the elevator, on the way up to the operating room. Dr. Bornemann and Dr. Smith had been waiting at the elevator. Dr. Bornemann held his stethoscope to her chest, listened intently. Dr. Smith took her pulse, nodded to Dr. Bornemann, who nodded in answer.

Out of the elevator, into the operating room. Dr. Lovallo was there, in his green suit. “How is her heart?” he asked Dr. Bornemann, still listening to his stethoscope. Dr. Bornemann nodded slowly, gravely. “Shall we operate?” Dr. Lovallo asked.

Dr. Smith said, “Operate, or she'll die like a dog.” His voice was gruff with emotion.

Penny rallied and swam momentarily into consciousness. Lights everywhere, blinding lights overhead. Nurses and doctors around her, in green robes, all with masks over their mouths. “Please,” Penny whispered, and everyone in the room was instantly silent. “If I should not survive—” One of the nurses began to sob, quickly stifled it. “If,” Penny went on, “I am unable to respond to your best efforts, please notify my family.”

“Yes!” said Dr. Smith, bending close. “Yes! What address?”

“Just—just The Farm. My family on the farm—” Penny's voice faded away and she lapsed into unconsciousness again.

The anesthetist glanced at Dr. Lovallo, who nodded. The needle was inserted, the mask adjusted. A few minutes later Dr. Lovallo said, “The scalpel, please,” and began the operation.

It was a long and difficult operation, but at last all the doctors agreed that everything possible had been done. They sighed and looked solemn, and one of them said, “Now it is out of our hands.” Penny was taken to the recovery room, and from there to the private room.

It was a big corner room known as the Queen's Room. There Penny swam up through the mists and was vaguely aware of her surroundings. The room was warm, airy, full of sweet scents. The big windowsill was banked with flowers. Two nurses were there, a floor nurse named Diane and a private nurse named Rose.

“Well,” Diane said, “we are waking up, are we?”

And Rose said, “We are very glad to see you, your Highness.”

Diane brought a glass of cool water, with a sipper. Rose brought a cool, damp washcloth and gently washed her face. Word spread that Penny was awake, and others came: Alma with her gentle smile, Nancy to see that everything possible was done to make her comfortable. Penny had a dreadful headache and there was nothing in her abdomen but a huge, throbbing mass of pain. It hurt to breathe. Diane saw her wince and immediately gave her an injection.

Dusk came, and darkness. Dr. Lovallo appeared, now in a brown tweed suit, Dr. Bornemann in gray. They examined her, sent word for Dr. Smith. He came in, dapper in tweed jacket, weskit and slacks. They conferred.

“If she can hold on through the night,” Dr. Smith finally said, “She has a chance.”

Dr. Bornemann said, “It's touch and go.”

And Dr. Lovallo said, “It could go either way.”

Dr. Smith checked the intravenous needles and ordered another round when this one was gone. They stood at the bedside, watching her and looking grave. Then they left.

She was fretful, briefly conscious from time to time. Diane had left and Patricia had come. Rose left and Elsie took her place. The night wore on, the lights low and the nurses hushed and hurrying from room to room in silence. Finally there were the first streaks of dawn.

Penny had slept without waking almost two hours. Now she roused with more clarity than she had had since the accident. “Nurse,” she called, and Elsie was at her bedside.

“Yes?”

“You have been very kind,” Penny said. “Everyone has. Please tell them for me, when I am—”

“There, there, dear. You can tell them later.”

“No,” Penny said. “I am going away. I have had a good life, even though a brief one. Excitement, love, joy, the whole wonderful experience of living. I have lived!”

“Yes, dear. And you will go on—”

Penny's eyelids fluttered. Her throat choked and she caught a shallow breath. “Yes,” she said, “I am going on … on … on …” Her voice faded. Her eyes closed. And the last thing she heard was the muffled sobbing of Elsie, the nurse.

For a little while she seemed to be nowhere, floating in a vast blue infinity of sky. Not moving, just floating, but somehow going somewhere. She didn't know where, and she didn't know how, and it didn't matter in the least. There was no more pain, and there was nothing to trouble her in any way. Then she was aware of something under her, something soft as down, soft as the softest cushion she ever slept on. All around her was this softness, a gleaming kind of cloud that seemed to be carrying her somewhere. And there was a sense of peace, of a sunlit meadow with a quiet brook and butterflies. She fell asleep.

Later, how much later she did not know, she was crossing that meadow and the cushiony cloud was gone. The grass was soft underfoot. The brook water, when she paused there for a drink, was the sweetest, coolest, clearest water she ever saw. Then she followed a path to a big red farmhouse at the far side of the meadow, and as she came close she saw a man and two dogs sitting on the front steps. He was an old man, with white hair and a long white beard, and he looked very friendly. One dog was a big brown and white Saint Bernard. The other was a black and white hound who looked like a cross between a beagle and a foxhound.

Penny hesitated at the edge of the dooryard, but the man said, “Hello, Penny. We've been expecting you. Come on up and see us.”

Penny wondered how he knew her name. But lots of people knew who she was. She liked his voice. She went closer and hesitated again.

The man held out his hand. “Come on,” he urged. “We want to talk to you.” And at last she went right up to him and he rubbed her ears and she licked his hand. “My name is Peter,” he said. “And these are my two special assistants for canine affairs. This big fellow is Saint Bernard, whom you may have heard of. And this young strutter,” he said with a laugh as he turned to the black and white hound, “is—well, I
call
him Saint Pat. Not really a saint, but he deserves a title. Just call him Pat, if you like.… And now, young lady, account for yourself.”

Penny hardly knew what to say, but she sensed that she must tell the truth, that Peter and his assistants would know if she told even the tiniest falsehood. So she told them the truth, or a reasonable approximation, with only a few tall tales thrown in. Peter shook a finger at her once, and Saint Bernard huffed once, but Saint Pat just sat there and smiled when she called the road sweeper a prehistoric dog-eater. She decided she liked Saint Pat best of all of them.