"DISTRICT NURSE"

Wairarapa Times-Age, 17 January 1939, Page 10

"DISTRICT NURSE"

PUBLISHED BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT. COPYRIGHT.

BY

FAITH BALDWIN.

CHAPTER IV—Continued. Yes. Pete would come back to the neighbourhood: Pete would live and die there and do his work there, brusque and thorough and more understanding than any one, even Doc Travers, beloved by all. Coral thought . . if they’d let me go away again, and find work. So I wouldn't have to see him. But I can’t go. Not again.

She lacked the will, the stamina. No. she couldn’t go. She was caught here, for life, caged in their tenderness, their love.

But she would never forget. Opening her eyes to the ward, hearing the sounds of it, sombre, distressing. Seeing Pete’s face, young severe. Feeling his hand on her wrist. Hearing his too casual voice. “Coral —it's Pete . . .” Had she ever forgotten him really, except during that brief insanity, that past madness, which had ended so abruptly . . ? No, she had never forgotten him. She wished that she might. He wouldn’t come, she told herself. She didn't, she said to herself, want him to come. But he did come. Ellen saw him first. Her vacation was over and she had started back to work. “Not much of a vacation —for me," Frank told her ruefully on that last evening, taking her out to dinner. The thing I had planned! But I’ve hardly seen you." “I had to get Coral back on her feet.” She looked at him levally. “She’s had a pretty hard time, you sec.” His pleasant, attractive face was grave with an unspoken sympathy.

“So I fancied. I didn’t even know you had another sister,” he said. ‘.‘She’s been away from us for a long while,” Ellen murmured. She said something vague enough about a family estrangement. Frank nodded. “I imagined that,” he admitted. “Once or twice she’s said little things, to me. Nothing very much. But I gathered she had been on her own for some' time. She's a pretty fine person, isn’t she?” Ellen looked at him, radiant. She said, “I’m glad you feel that. She’s — flippant, now and then. She might give the wrong impression. But that’s not the real Coral. Underneath, she’s so loyal, and . . and . . “Her voice broke, and her shining eyes filled. She said, after a moment during which his hand reached out and covered hers, “Well, that’s all' over now. The loneliness, I mean; and the wandering. She’s anxious to get work, and I think she'd be happier if she could find something she liked to do. But mother won’t let her out of her sight.” “Your mother's changed,” he remarked shrewdly. “I know. You've noticed, too?” asked Ellen. “I suppose that was all she needed. Some one to fuss over. We never thought of that. We fussed over her. She hasn’t been so well or so active in years. And she’s so grateful.” “To Providence, to Fate, to God, she’d say, for bringing Coral home again. She believes,” said Ellen, “so she’s prayed, every .day, every night . . .” It was on the following day, the first day of returning to work, that Ellen saw Pete. He telephoned her at the office.

“My night off, tonight,” he told her. “I want to talk to you, Ellen.” Her heart leaped against her side, in happiness for Coral or in fear for her. she did not know which. She asked, “Come to the house, will you?” He said, “No, I’d rather not. Not till' I've seen you, if you don’t mind. Will you have dinner with me somewhere? I’ll get you home early. I’ve got to go see the folks.” Now 'that Coral was home and comparatively well, Ellen and Nancy were freer, less bound to consult each other about their evening plans. Ellen said, instantly, “All right. Where?" He set the time and the place; a funny little Italian restaurant in the neighbourhood. At home she said she was going out, and made no further explanations. Her mother sighed. “Two evenings, hand running?” she murmured. Coral smiled. Her unhappy, pretty mouth was pink with health once more and touched to a brighter shade with the lipstick Ellen had brought her. “Somehow,” she had said, regarding the lipstick and rouge,” these gadgets restore my self-respect. .A cockeyed way to figure, isn’t it? But mine.'' “Ellen," she told her mother, "knows what she's doing. That's more than can be said for most of us.”

Nancy lifted a dark eyebrow. Ellen spoke to her briefly, alone. “It's Pete. I'm not saying anything to mother and Coral. He has —something on his mind.” “Coral?" “Perhaps.” CHAPTER XV. ■ Ellen met Pete, his sandy hair ruffled into a crest, at the basement, restaurant, and they went into the back room, which was decorated with violent murals representing the Bay of Naples, and Como, and Vesuvius in. it appeared, eruption. The proprietor hurried up. He knew Pete. He took the order, put a fat. straw protected bottle of red wine on the table, in bland defiance of law, smiled, “Buono appetito." and scurried away.

“Decent of you," said Pete, to Ellen, “to come. But I had to see you. Look here, I haven't been able to sleep, or eat—"

She suggested. “Then eat. at least Later, we’ll talk. You do look thin Pete.”

“I feel thin," he said glumly, "and I'm liable at any moment to diagnosis a clear case of measles as phlebitis. That's how shot I am.” She laughed at him

"Nonsense. Eat your anti pasto and pass me the funny stuff, which looks

like celery and tastes like paragoric. And tell me about the hospital." It was clear to him that she had no intention of ruining a meal with serioiik or emotional conversation.

“Doc Travers wants me to go in with him.” he said, after a while, when -they had almost finished, and the coffee had been brought. “I’m keen about it. They tell me I'm crazy, that I'll never make any money. Well, what of it? I've have a chance to go in with Mallory —too —that’s the gastric man you know, on the avenue, carriage trade, and all that. But somehow —I told Doc Travers I'd take him up. I wonder," said Pete, “if I'm making a mistake.” “I don't think so.” Ellen answered. “What you can do down here—oh, the other isn't comparable! Besides, Pete, you know perfectly well that it would go hard with you to acquire the proper uptown bedside manner. You'd have to practice calling on patients in your soup and fish, with a gardenia in the buttonhole.” “Good Lord!" exclaimed Pete, genuinely horrified. They laughed together. “Mallory’s the man,” he said, “who gave me my chance, you see. Somehow I feel I owe it to him to —do as he wishes. Yet, I wouldn’t fit in. I mean, I’m more at home down here; I understand these people better. I have, perhaps more patience with them. Mallory’s decent. He understands. He wouldn’t hold rne back, he! says.” “Whatever hapened to that boy of his, the one you go out of the jam?” Ellen asked curiously. “Nothing. That’s literal. He sort of drifts about. Not very bad, not very good. In a broker’s office, nowadays. It just about cracked the big doc’s heart when he wouldn’t take up medicine. He married —some gal with money. They had me up to dinner once. She didn’t approve of me. Said, I believe, that I smelled like a dispensary or such. —Bert —that’s young Mallory —was apologetic. He sort of regards me as a rescuing angel, a little soiled as to wings. Dinner was over. They drank their coffee. Pete lighted a cigarette, apologising, “I always do things backward,” and offered his case to Ellen. She shook' her head, smiling, “No, thanks. I don’t like them, really. Now and then, if I have to. But if given my own preference, no. I leave hiding butts to Nancy.” And then, before she had thought, she went on. “You’ll be astonished, but we’ve actually accustomed mother to Coral's smoking now and then. I would never have believed it possible. But it was too hard on Coral; she’d smoked 1 so long, she was so nervous. Tve cut her down, for her health’s sake, but she actually has mother broken in to seeing her take a cigarette, after meals. It’s marvellous. I ”

.She stopped. Pete’s fair skin was scarlet; he was red to the roots of the untamable sandy hair. His steel grey eyes sifted nervously, came back to hers and held them.

“You guessed it was Coral I wanted to talk to you about?” “Of course, Pete.” Her tone was quiet, steadying. Gradually the hot colour receded, leaving him a little whiter than normal. “She hates'me,” he muttered. “Don’t be childish. Pete. She says that about you.” “About me? ?” His eyes were astonished . . “about me . . . what have 1 done?" he inquired, with marked bitterness.

“Nothing. Everything. Oh, she said you were good to her, in the hospital.” “Good to her . . ?” He laughed abruptly. “She hates me I tell you. She turned her face to the wall and cried every time she saw me."

“That doesn't sound like hate,” Ellen told him. "Perhaps it was—remembering." “Remembering? How much lias she remembered all these years? Do you think I’ve ever forgotten?” he asked, savagely. “I've tried. No one knows —by every possible means. Some of them weren’t so pretty. You know, you've heard. No good. I kept thinking of her, always, wondering . . till my mind was sore, as if it had been beaten, as if my thoughts tore their way through. I used to walk through the wards and look at the women—the dopes, the alcoholics, the " “Pete —Pete ...”

“Sorry. But it got me. What did I know . ? Just what the newspapers had. Just what your father said. Sometimes I dream of that night I went around to your place and he was there

. . . and talked to me. You see it had always been Coral for me since we were kids. I sound like a—radio crooner," he ended abruptly, disgusted. Ellen said, quietly, “Why don't you come to see Coral, Pete? Or don't you want to? Now —that you've seen her —are you trying to tell me you're —cured?" He said, violently. “No it's worse than ever.

When I saw her there —when f brushed by you, on that filthy landing." He stopped, and his face worked terribly.

“Please don't," Ellen said. We have to forget that, if we can, all of us." “You know we can't. Ellen.” He clenched his strong, nervous hand on the table. Words broke from him, isolated. ugly. She listened, unflinching. She said. "That's over, Pete. Over and done with, years and years ago.” “I know.” He had the grace to (lush. "I —I kept track'. I looked things up; I knew men who worked on newspapers. After a moment, during which Pete stared at her, Ellen said, bravely, |“I see no reason why I should defend her to you. She’s had a rotten time. A damnable time. Lonely. Lost. Hungry often. Cold." She saw him wince at that; was glad. “Earning her living, somehow, in ways she may have hated, but which were clean ways, Pete.

Laughing through it, hard-boiled —like you—” He was silent, remembering her dear response to his young, shy boy’s passion before he burst out. “You’re trying to tell me there wouldn't be a hundred men mad about her." He stopped. Ellen’s eyes were blazing."

“I believe her,” she said. “Listen, can’t you see this straight? She was nothing but a youngster, dazzled by promises, thinking of the stage, of the man who offered her opportunity, in the most extravagant terms. She was a little crazy . . you get like that when you’re young and want life and good times. She was brought up in a pretty strict household. Rules and routine. And father was alive then. He and mother—you know, you've, been with us enough. So wrapped up in each other there wasn't at that time much left over for us. except discipline and a sort of unexpressed affection. Father was absolutely puritanical in his ideas about us, you know that. And mother didn't fight for us, for the little freedom 'that might have contented Coral, who was older than Nancy or me. His word was law on her; she was dependant upon* him, for everything, even her opinions. So Coral ran away, not thinking, not, I suppose ever caring. But it didn't mean she couldn't come back." (To be Continued.)