"DISTRICT NURSE"

Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 January 1939, Page 10

"DISTRICT NURSE"

PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT. COPYRIGHT.

BY

FAITH BALDWIN.

CHAPTER V. —Continued

She drifted into areams, wondering why she was wakeful over oh, over, anything. Perhaps it was just because young Bartlett had been a new man. She didn’t have much opportunity to meet new men. How did one? Working every day, in the neighbourhood familiar to her; going out little enough except with Jim or with some one she’d always known.

And now she slept lightly, easily, breathing like a child. The little insistent knocking on the wall beside her thudded into her fleeting dreams like a crash of thunder.

Her slippers were here, her robe there. ' She got into the practise, still half asleep physically, but wide awake mentally. Had all this silly talk of hers and Jim’s brought on another attack? The amyl nitrate . . . ?

Ellen was in her mother’s room now, quiet, capable. “What is it, darling?” ■ “A bad dream,” Mrs Adams was half in tears. Coral. She had seen her “plain as day.” Ellen, she’s in trouble.”

Ellen sat beside her for a long time, stroking her arm, helping her to relax. Another of the sugar pellets. “You’re all right,” she soothed her as if the older woman had been a child. It was nearly four' o’clock before she reached her room again, leaving her mother fast asleep. “Ellen, I saw her put out her hands tc\ me . . She was, little, she wore her haid in the two thick braids, remember, they always curled at the end? She wore the plaid jumper dress I made for her . . “Hush, darling, try to get to sleep.” “Oh, but where is she?” wailed Mrs Adams, “if I only knew where she was. If I knew—if I knew she was dead. Dead and safe. With your father, Ellen.”

Ellen stroked her mother’s arm, massaged the back of her neck where the nerves were sb tense. Presently she was back in her room again, sleeping deeply, sunk in sleep, drowned in it for the few hours left her until the new day began. Her mother was right. She did see Frank Bartlett again. On the very next day he telephoned her at the sub station. “Call for you,” said Jenny, the stenographer with a wide grin.

The conversation was brief. Ellen had her reports to make out and they were longer than usual. Bartlett, telephoning from his apartment said, pleadingly, “you won’t be sore at my calling up? Look here. I’m going to take young Bill to a ball game Saturday We’d like to take'you, too. Or do you hate baseball?” No, she liked it, she said. But she couldn’t come. She’d be working.

“Meet us,” 'suggested Bartlett, “for dinner afterwards. We’re going to make a day of it.” She had an engagement, she said.

Bartlett threw caution to the winds. “But I’ve got to see you again,” he told her, “I’ve —I’ve hundred of things to ask you. Would you have dinner with me the very first night you can? May I come to your house and call for you?”

She hesitated, palpably. On the other end of the wire he waited, listening, wondering why he was so disturbed, so anxious, wondering why he was praying, a very little, to Lady Luck.

There was only one thing to do according to the rules of the household if she wanted to see him again. Did she? She knew she did. So she answered, smiling, “suppose you come and have dinner with us, instead, Tuesday.”

“Gosh, that’s great,” sai Bartlett, “I’ll be there with whole carillions on. Where, and what time?”

She told him and presently hung up. Jenny viewed her with marked amusement. “New boy friends?" she inquired casually. “No—”

“Be yourself!” “Possibly,” admitted Ellen, and laughed aloud in sheer astonishment to find how very pleasant the thought could be. On Monday Dot Mather, now “Mrs” Brown by virtue of a marriage license, 'came home to Mrs Lenz’s back floor apartment. Her husband was seen, briefly, by the neighbourhood, a plain pleasant young man, stocky as a pony. A good many pairs of eyes watched her come to the front steps with him the first morning, watched her wave good-bye, regarded her trim girlish figure in the bungalow apron, the pert, painted little face and the eyes which were both frightened and happy. “He don’t look so much,” said some one, and some one else said, "what a bum break that guy got!” Women going marketing idled away some of their precious moments walking past hoping to see “her.” Some did. They all spoke to her carelessly. "Hello, Dot, hear you got hitched,” they said. She was very much on her guard, defiant, chin raised. "Hello, Mrs Lippi nsky,” said Dot, buying a paper, three two-cent stamp, a pad and envelopes, and a package of cigarettes, “did you see my husband this morning. Mrs Lippinsky looked her up and down. Mrs Lippinsky had eyes like shot buttons and about eight chins above a more than ample bosom. Mrs Lippinsky folded her small, fat hands and replied, “Sure I seen him.” And that was all. But her tone was one of grave commiseration whether for Dot or for young Mr Brown no one could fathom.

Dot flushed under the careful layer of rouge. Mrs Lippinsky relented. After all, she had to get her story out of this, not for nothing was her stationery shop known as the gossip clearing house of the neighbourhood.

“Where you meet him?” she asked, leaning across the counter. "I heard he’s from Noo Haven. Ain’t been married long, hev you?” she pursued, and then, “Sooch a nize young man, he seems.”

Dot said briefly. "Yeah, he’s from New Haven, Gee, the news travels,

don’t it? I met him there. I had a job in the town. No, we ain’t been married long. Two months.” Dot's eyes softened, remembering. A job in New Haven. She’d drifted there, a port of call. She’d been a waitress in a cafeteria, there's where she’d met Dan He knew al] about her, Dan did. Poor kid, he'd said, that first night when she'd told him, crying a little from self-pity, bad gin and something which resembled pure shame, “a girl has it damned hard,” Dan had said simply. Well, he’d married her, and she had gone straight. She’d stay straight, too. She was crazy about Dan. The whitest guy—the swellest. She had for Dan no vocabularly of words. She had for Dan merely the vocabulary of love, love that expressed itself in service, in anxiety, in broken murmurs, in terror . . .

Going straight. She’d never really wanted to be anything else. But you had jobs, and you lost them. You were pretty and wise cracking and hardboiled. Men said you’re a great girl. Men said you’re the berries. Men said how about a dinner and a show, kid, and—

She’d had a year of high school; even then she’d been pestered to death. Not so hot going home to the sodden mother sprawled sloppily across a table . . . Jobs. Shop girls in cheap shops, untrained jobs, all of them. Bringing the money, what little was of it, home and being screamed at because it was not more. Then an ambulance and a noisy ward and a grave somewhere. And Dot was free, astonished to find herself crying noisily. Poor Ma —oh, poor ma . . !”

Then New Haven and Dan. And now Mrs Lenz’s back flooi’ with the cute kitchenette, and the gingham curtains from the Five and Ten, and the silver and napery and cutlery and pots and pans from the same place. The neighbourhood watched her go shopping for the things. “Nu,” said Mrs Lippinsky, and rolled the words on her tongue, “it von’t last. Six month, I give it. Comes in here, bold as brass —“did you see my husband?” quoted Mrs Lippinsky in a high voice. The audience, all women, rocked with laughter. “Do you suppose he knows about her?” some one asked, leaning on the counter.

“You should ask me about that.” cried rs Lippinsky, rolling her shoe button eyes. “I should know! But of course he don't know.” CHAPTER VI.

Ellen went into Mrs Lippinsky’s stationery shop to buy a paper before going home. She was tired. Her day had been long and hard. At noon Accordian Al, the song stilled on his ashen lips, had come stumping in on his wooden leg. “Herman," he gasped, “he’s burned himself!”

She’d gone. A scalding kettle of water; Herman chasing the cat about the table.

Now she was through, buying the evening paper. Mrs Lippinsky greeted her heartily. Mrs Lippinskly leaned over and said, “A shame, ain’t it, dot girl, dot bumiker comes into your good neighbourhood?” The other women, who had been gossiping there, leaned closer. Jim O’Connor, hurtling his sinewy self past the *door, having caught a glimpse of Ellen through the windows, stopped, quite still, waiting, smiling a little. “Why?” asked Ellen, her clear grave eyes on the other woman’s. Some one giggled. Mrs Lippinsky shrugged. Her chins quivered like a bowl of jelly, her vast bosom heaved.

“Dot’s married.” Ellen said after a moment, “and the only mistake she’s made it to come back to a neighbourhood where people haven’t learned to be kind. God knows why,” said Ellen wearily. “They all need kindness more than anything in the world. If it had been your Shirley, Mrs Lippinsky ”

“My Shirley!” Mrs Lippinsky drew herself up to her full height of five foot two, and glowered angrily at Ellen. Her small dirty hands gesticulated wildly. “You should say not to me, dot my Shirley . . .?”

■ Words failed her. “Why not?” Ellen asked her quietly, “or any one else’s Shirley.” “My Shirley!” shrilled Mrs Lippinsky, “has a momma and a poppa, and a big good home . . We loin her to be good. She ” "Dot didn’t have either,” said Ellen. Ridiculously, she was near to tears. Poor Dot.

Jim stepped forward and put his arm through hers. She hadn’t seen him come in nor stand there waiting. She looked up at him. the sweet, fine mouth shaking a little. "Come on home,” said Jim, “you can’t fight Dot’s battles. That’s up to her.” Out in the clear evening air she said, trying to laugh. "I don’t know why I get so upset. Only—why are people so darned cruel, Jim?”

"Forget Dot," said Jim with his man of the world manner, “it’s a swell night. Haven't seen you really since last Saturday. How’s Nancy? If she’s not going out tomorrow, how about us, huh?" Tomorrow was Tuesday. Ellen remembered. The sombre curve of her lips lifted to a faint smile. She answered lightly, "Sorry, Jimmy, I’ve a date, at home.” “With me?” He pressed her arm closer to his hard firm side. “No,” she told him laughing, “company.”

When she was at home again, she told her mother and Nancy, “if people would only leave Dot alone. Can’t they see what they’re doing to her? Making it so much harder. Why on earth she ever came back here with that nice boy . . 1”

"I wonder, too,” said Nancy. “It’s pretty hard to buck those few kind friends who knew you when.” The conversation was very distasteful

to their mother. Mrs Adams flushed and then said sharply, "I wish you girls would have nothing to do with —that young person. If your father could know what this neighbourhood has come to—” she added in homely parlance, “he’d turn in his grave.” Ellen was silent, Nancy shrugged. After a short silence, Ellen braced herself, relying suddenly on Nancy to see her through, and said: “Mother, I’ve asked Mr Bartlett to dinner tomorrow night. I . . Nancy’s going out after, but I thought we could ] manage. I told him not till seven. “Mr Bartlett ?” Her mother’s hands were eloquent. “Bartlett?” She was being purposely stupid. Nancy slanted a look at Ellen. “Sure, why not?” she said. “Your lawyer boy friend. That’s swell. Let’s be reckless and have steak . . . and French fried . . and a salad and look here, how about an ice box cake from the bakery, made to order. “.You know my views,” Mrs Adams said, trembling, ignoring all this, “and yet you deliberately "

(To be Continued.)