Chapter 14

"All right--that'll be good business." He swung Allison's bed around so that his right arm rested easily on the window sill, requested the nurse to wheel the drug store within easy reach, and rapidly uncorked bottle after bottle with his own hands.

"Now then, get busy."

He sat by, smiling, while Allison poured the varying contents of the drug store on the ground below and listened for the sound of breaking glass when the bottle swiftly followed the last gurgling drop. When all had been disposed of, the nurse took out the table, and the young man smiled expansively at Allison.

"Feel better?"

"I--think so."

"Good. Now, look here. How much does your hand mean to you?"

"How much does it mean?" repeated Allison, pitifully. "It means life, career--everything."

"Enough to make a fight for it then, I take it."

Dull colour surged by waves into Allison's white face. "What do you mean?" he asked, in a broken voice. "Tell me what you mean!"

But the young man was removing his coat. "Hot day," he was saying, "and the young lady won't mind my negligee as long as the braces don't show. Strange--how women hate nice new braces. Say," he said to the nurse as she returned, "get somebody to go up to the station and bring down my trunk, will you?"

"Trunk?" echoed Allison.

"Sure," smiled the young man. "My instructions were to stay if I saw any hope, so I brought along my trunk. I'm always looking for a chance to hope, and I've discovered that it's one of the very best ways to find it."

The nurse had hastened away upon her errand. The new element in the atmosphere of the sick room had subtly affected her, also.

"Don't fence," Allison was saying, huskily. "I've asked so much that I've quit asking."

The young man nodded complete understanding. "I know. The moss-backs sit around and look wise, and expect to work miracles on a patient who doesn't know what they're doing and finally gets the impression that he isn't considered fit to know. Far be it from me to disparage the pioneers of our noble profession, but I'm modest enough to admit that I need help, and the best help, every time, comes from the patient himself."

He drew up his chair beside the bed and sat down. Allison's eager eyes did not swerve from his face.

"Mind you," he went on, "I don't promise anything--I can't, conscientiously. In getting a carriage out of the mud, more depends upon the horse than on the driver. Nature will have to do the work--I can't. All I can do is to guide her gently. If she's pushed, she gets balky. Maybe there's something ahead of her that I don't see, and there's no use spurring her ahead when she's got to stop and get her breath before she can go up hill.

"That hand can't heal itself without good blood to draw upon, and good material to make bone and nerve of, so we'll begin to stoke up, gradually, and meanwhile, I'll camp right here and see what's doing. And if you can bring yourself to sort of--well, sing at your work, you know, it's going to make the job a lot easier."

Allison drew a long breath of relief. "You give me hope," he said.

"Sure," returned the young man, with an infectious laugh. "A young surgeon never has much else when he starts, nor for some time to come. Want to sit up?"

"Why," Allison breathed, in astonishment, "I can't."

"Who said so?"

"Everybody. They all said I must lie perfectly still."

"Of course," mused the young man, aloud, "blood may move around all right of itself, and then again, it may not. Wouldn't do any harm to stir it up a bit and remind the red corpuscles not to loaf on the job."

The nurse came back, to say that the trunk would be up immediately.

"Good. Can I have a bunk in the next room?" Without waiting for her answer, he requested raw eggs and milk, beaten up with a little cream and sherry.

While Allison was drinking it, he moved a big easy chair up near the window, opened every shutter wide, and let the hot sun stream into the room. He expeditiously made a sling for the injured hand, slipped it painlessly into place, put a strong arm under Allison's shoulders, and lifted him to a sitting posture on the edge of the bed. "Now then, forward, march! Just lean on me."

Muscles long unused trembled under the strain but finally he made the harbour of the easy chair, gasping for breath. "Good," said the young man. "At this rate, we'll soon have clothes on us and be outdoors."

"Really?" asked Allison, scarcely daring to believe his ears.

"Sure," replied the marvellous young man, confidently. "What's the use of keeping a whole body in the house on account of one hand? I'm going to tell you just one thing more, then we'll quit talking shop and proceed to politics or anything else you like.

"I knew a man once who was a trapeze performer in a circus and he was training his son in the same lofty profession. The boy insisted that he couldn't do it, and finally the man said to him: 'Look here, kid, if you'll put your heart over the bar, your body will follow all right,' and sure enough it did. Now you get your heart over the bar, and trust your hand to follow. Get the idea?"

The sound of the piano below chimed in with the answer. A rippling, laughing melody danced up the stairs and into the room. The young man listened a moment, then asked, "Who?"

"A friend of mine--my very dearest friend."

"More good business. I think I'll go down and talk to her. What's her name?"

"Rose."

"What's the rest of it? I can't start in that way, you know. Bad form."

"Bernard--Rose Bernard."

As quickly and silently as he did everything else, the young man went down-stairs, and the piano stopped, but only for a moment, as he requested her, with an airy wave of the hand, not to mind him. When she finished the old song she was playing, he called her by name, introduced himself, and invited her out into the garden, because, as he said, "walls not only have ears, but telephones."

"Say," he began, by way of graceful preliminary, "you look to me as though you had sense."

"Thank you," she replied, demurely.

"Sense," he resumed, "is lamentably scarce, especially the variety misnamed common--or even horse. I'm no mental healer, nor anything of that sort, you know, but it's reasonable to suppose that if the mind can control the body, after a fashion, when the body is well, it's entitled to some show when the body isn't well, don't you think so?"

Rose assented, though she did not quite grasp what he said. His all pervading breeziness affected her much as it had Allison.

"Now," he continued, "I'm not unprofessional enough to knock anybody, but I gather that there's been a procession of undertakers down here making that poor chap upstairs think there's no chance. I'm not saying that there is, but there's no reason why we shouldn't trot along until we have to stop. It isn't necessary to amputate just yet, and until it is necessary, there's nothing to hinder us from working like the devil to save him from it, is there?"

"Surely not."

"All right. Are you in on it?"

"I'm 'in,'" replied Rose, slowly, "on anything and everything that human power can do, day or night, until we come to the last ditch."

"Good for you. I'll appoint you first lieutenant. I guess that nurse is all right, though she doesn't seem to be unduly optimistic."

"She's had nothing to make her so. Everything has been discouraging so far."

"Plenty of discouragement in the world," he observed, "handed out free of charge, without paying people to bring it into the house when you're peevish."

"Very true," she answered, then her eyes filled. "Oh," she breathed, with white lips, "if you can--if you only can--"

"We'll have a try for it," he said, then continued, kindly: "no salt water upstairs, you know."

"I know," she sighed, wiping her eyes.

"Then 'on with the dance--let joy be unconfined.'"

Rose obediently went back to the piano. The arrival of the trunk and the composition of a hopeful telegram to Colonel Kent occupied the resourceful visitor for ten or fifteen minutes. Then he went back to his patient, who had already begun to miss him.

"You forgot to tell me your name," Allison suggested.

"Sure enough. Call me Jack, or Doctor Jack, when I'm not here and have to be called."

"But, as you said yourself a few minutes ago, I can't begin that way. What's the rest of it?"

"If you'll listen," responded the young man, solemnly, "I will unfold before your eyes the one blot upon the 'scutcheon of my promising career. My full name is Jonathan Ebenezer Middlekauffer."

"What--how--I mean--excuse me," stammered Allison.

The young man laughed joyously. "You can search me," he answered, with a shrug. "The gods must have been in a sardonic mood about the time I arrived to gladden this sorrowful sphere. I've never used more of it than I could help, and everybody called me 'Jem' until I went to college, the initials making a shorter and more agreeable name. But before I'd been there a week, I was 'Jemima' or 'Aunt Jemima' to the whole class. So I changed it myself, though it took a thrashing to make two or three of 'em remember that my name was Jack."

"How did you happen to come here?" queried Allison, without much interest.

"The man who was down here on the fifth sent me. He told me about you and suggested that my existence might be less wearing if I had something to do. He just passed along his instructions and faded gracefully out of sight, saying: 'You'd better go, Middlekauffer, as your business seems to be the impossible,' so I packed up and took the first train."

"What did he mean by saying that your business was impossible?"

"Not impossible, but THE impossible. Good Heavens, man, don't things get mixed like that! All he meant was that such small reputation as I have been able to acquire was earned by doing jobs that the other fellows shirked. I'm ambidextrous," he added, modestly, "and I guess that helps some. Let's play piquet."

When Rose came up, an hour or so later, they were absorbed in their game, and did not see her until she spoke. She was overjoyed to see Allison sitting up, but, observing that she was not especially needed, invented a plausible errand and said good-bye, promising to come the next day.

"Nice girl," remarked Doctor Jack, shuffling the cards for Allison. "Mighty nice girl."

"My future wife," answered Allison, proudly, forgetting his promise.

"More good business. You'd be a brute if you didn't save that hand for her. She's entitled to the best that you can give her."

"And she shall have it," returned Allison.

Doctor Jack's quick ears noted a new determination in the voice, that only a few hours before had been weak and wavering, and he nodded his satisfaction across the card table.

That night, while Allison slept soundly, and the nurse also, having been told that she was off duty until called, the young man recklessly burned gas in the next room, with pencil and paper before him. First, he carefully considered the man with whom he had to deal, then mapped out a line of treatment, complete to the last detail.

"There," he said to himself, "by that we stand or fall."

The clocks struck three, but the young man still sat there, oblivious to his surroundings, or to the fact that even strong and healthy people occasionally need a little sleep. At last a smile lighted up his face. "What fun it would be," he thought, "for him to give a special concert, and invite every blessed moss-back who said 'impossible!' It wouldn't please me or anything, would it, to stand at the door and see 'em come in? Oh, no!"

There was a stir in the next room, and Allison called him, softly.

"Yes?" It was only a word, but the tone, as always, was vibrant with good cheer.

"I just wanted to tell you," Allison said, "that my heart is over the bar."

In the dark, the two men's hands met. "More good business," commented Doctor Jack. "Just remember what somebody said of Columbus: 'One day, with life and hope and heart, is time enough to find a world.' Go to sleep now. I'll see you in the morning."

"All right," Allison returned, but he did not sleep, even after certain low sounds usually associated with comfortable slumber came from the doctor's room. He lay there, waiting happily, while from far, mysterious sources, life streamed into him, as the sap rises into the trees at the call of Spring. Across the despairing darkness, a signal had been flashed to him, and he was answering it, in every fibre of body and soul.

XX

RISEN FROM THE DEAD

COLONEL KENT, in a distant structure which, by courtesy, was called "the hotel," had pushed away his breakfast untasted, save for a small portion of the nondescript fluid the frowsy waitress called "coffee." He had been delayed, missed his train at the junction point, and, fretting with impatience, had been obliged to pass the night there.

He had wired to Madame Francesca the night before, but, as yet, had received no answer. He had personally consulted every surgeon of prominence in the surrounding country, and all who would not say flatly, without further information than he could give them, that there was no chance, had been asked to go and see for themselves.

One by one, their reports came back to him, unanimously hopeless. Heartsick and discouraged, he rallied from each disappointment, only to face defeat again. He had spent weeks in fruitless journeying, following up every clue that presented itself, waited days at hospitals for chiefs of staff, and made the dreary round of newspaper offices, where knowledge of every conceivable subject is supposedly upon file for the asking.

One enterprising editor, too modern to be swayed by ordinary human instincts, had turned the Colonel over to the star reporter--a young man with eyes like Allison's. By well-timed questions and sympathetic offers of assistance, he dragged the whole story of his wanderings from the unsuspecting old soldier.

It made a double page in the Sunday edition, including the illustrations--a "human interest" story of unquestionable value, introduced by a screaming headline in red: "Old Soldier on the March to Save Son. Violinist about to Lose Hand."

When the Colonel saw it, his eyes filled so that he could not see the words that danced through the mist, and the paper trembled from his hands to the floor. He was too nearly heartbroken to be angry, and too deeply hurt to take heed of the last stab.

No word reached him until late at night, when he arrived at the metropolitan hotel that he had made his headquarters. When he registered, two telegrams were handed to him, and he tore them open eagerly. The first was from Madame Francesca:

"Slight change for the better. New man gives hope. Better return at once."

The second one was wholly characteristic:

"Willing to take chance. Am camping on job. Come home." It was signed: "J. E. Middlekauffer."

When he got to his room, the Colonel sat down to think. He knew no one of that name--had never even heard it before. Perhaps Francesca--it would have been like her, to work with him and say nothing until she had something hopeful to say.

His heart warmed toward her, then he forgot her entirely in a sudden realisation of the vast meaning of the two bits of yellow paper. Why, it was hope; it was a fighting chance presenting itself where hitherto had been only despair! He could scarcely believe it. He took the two telegrams closer to the light, and read the blessed words over and over again, then, trembling with weakness and something more, tottered back to his chair.

Until then, he had not known how weary he was, nor how the long weeks of anxiety and fruitless effort had racked him to the soul. As one may bear a burden bravely, yet faint the moment it is lifted, his strength failed him in the very hour that he had no need of it. He sat there for a long time before he was able to shut off the light and creep into bed, with his tear-wet cheek pillowed upon one telegram, and a wrinkled hand closely clasping the other, as though holding fast to the message meant the keeping of the hope it brought.

Utterly exhausted, he slept until noon. When he woke, it was with the feeling that something vitally important had happened. He could not remember what it was until he heard the rustling of paper and saw the two telegrams. He read them once more, in the clear light of day, fearing to find the message but a fantasy of the night. To his unbounded relief, it was still there--no dream of water to the man dying of thirst, but a living reality that sunlight did not change.

"Thank God," he cried aloud, sobbing for very joy, "Thank God!"

Meanwhile, the Resourceful One had shown the nurse how to cut a sleeve out of one of Allison's old coats, and open the under-arm seam. Having done this, she was requested to treat a negligee shirt in the same way. Then the village barber was sent for, and instructed to do his utmost.

"Funny," remarked Doctor Jack, pensively, "that nobody has thought of doing that before. If I hadn't come just as I did, you'd soon have looked like a chimpanzee, and, eventually, you'd have been beyond the reach of anything but a lawn-mower. They didn't even think to braid your hair and tie it with a blue ribbon."

The nurse laughed; so did Allison, but the pensive expression of the young man's face did not change.

"I've had occasion lately," he continued, "to observe the powerful tonic effect of clothes. A woman patient told me once that the moral support, afforded by a well-fitting corset was inconceivable to the mind of a mere man. She said that a corset is to a woman what a hat is to a man-- it prepares for any emergency, enables one to meet life on equal terms, and even to face a rebellious cook or janitor with 'that repose which marks the caste of Vere de Vere.'"

"I've often wondered," returned Allison, "why I felt so much--well, so much more adequate with my hat on."

"Clear case of inherited instincts. The wild dog used to make himself a smooth bed in the rushes of long grass by turning around several times upon the selected spot. Consequently, the modern dog has to do the same stunt before he can go to sleep. The hat is a modification of the helmet, which always had to be worn outside the house, in the days when hold-ups and murders were even more frequent than now, and the desire for a walking-stick comes from the old fashion of carrying a spear or a sword. If a man took off his helmet, it was equivalent to saying: 'In the presence of my friend, I am safe.' When he takes off his hat to a lady now, he merely means: 'You're not a voter.' You'll notice that in any gathering of men, helmets are still worn."

So he chattered, with apparent unconcern, but, none the less, he was keenly watching his patient. With tact that would have done credit to a diplomat, he kept the conversation in agreeable channels. By noon, Allison had his clothes on, the coat being pinned under the left arm with two safety pins that did not show, and was out upon an upper veranda.

Doctor Jack encouraged him to walk whenever he felt that he could, even though it was only to the other end of the veranda and back to his chair. Somewhat to his astonishment, Allison began to feel better.

"I believe you're a miracle-worker," he said. "Two days ago, I was in bed, with neither strength, ambition, nor hope. Now I've got all three."

"No miracle," replied the other modestly. "Merely sense."

That afternoon the Crosby twins telephoned to know whether they might call, and the nurse brought the query upstairs. "If they're amusing," said the doctor, "let 'em come."

Allison replied that the twins had been highly amusing--until they ran "The Yellow Peril" over his left hand. "Poor little devils," he mused; "they've got something on their minds."

"Mighty lucky for you that it wasn't a macadamised boulevard instead of a sandy country road," observed the doctor. "The softness underneath has given us a doubt to work on."

"How so?"

"It's easier, to crush anything on a hard surface than it is on a pillow, isn't it?"

"Of course--I hadn't thought of that. If there had been more sand--"

"I look to you to furnish that," returned the other with a quick twist of meaning. "You've got plenty of sand, if you have half a chance to show it."

"How long--when do you think you'll know?" Allison asked, half afraid of the answer.

"If I knew, I'd be glad to tell you, but I don't. I've found out that it's easier to say 'I don't know' straight out in plain English than it is to side-track. It used to be bad form, professionally, to admit ignorance, but it isn't now. People soon find it out and you might as well tell 'em at the start. You just go on and keep the fuel bins well supplied and the red corpuscles busy and pretty soon we'll see what's doing."

The twins were late in coming, because they had had a long discussion as to the propriety of wearing their sable garments. Romeo, disliking the trouble of changing, argued that Allison ought to see that their grief was sincere. Juliet insisted that the sight would prove depressing.

At the end of a lively hour, they compromised upon white, which was worn by people in mourning and was not depressing. Juliet donned a muslin gown and Romeo put on his tennis flannels, which happened to be clean. As they took pains to walk upon the grass and avoid the dusty places, they were comparatively fresh when they arrived, though very warm from the long walk.

Both had inexpressibly dreaded seeing Allison, yet the reality lacked the anticipated terror, as often happens. They liked Doctor Jack immensely from the start and were greatly relieved to see Allison up and outdoors, instead of lying in a darkened room.

Almost before they knew it, they were describing their sacrificial rites and their repentance, with a wealth of detail that left nothing to be desired. Doctor Jack was suddenly afflicted with a very bad cough, but he kept his back to them and used his handkerchief a great deal. Even Allison was amused by their austere young faces and the earnest devotion with which they had performed their penance.

"We've had your car fixed," said Romeo. "It's all right now."

"We've paid the bill," added Juliet.

"We want to pay everything," Romeo continued.

"Everything," she echoed.

"I don't know that I want the car," Allison answered, kindly. "If I had been a good driver, I could have backed into the turn before you got there and let you whiz by. I'm sorry yours is burned. Won't you take mine?"

"No," answered Romeo, with finality.

"We don't deserve even to ride in one," Juliet remarked. "We ought to have to walk all the rest of our lives."

"You people make me tired," interrupted Doctor Jack. "Just because you've been mixed up in an accident, you're about to get yourselves locoed, as they say out West, on the subject of automobiles. By careful cultivation, you could learn to shy at a baby carriage and throw a fit at the sight of a wheelbarrow. The time to nip that is right at the start."

"How would you do it?" queried Allison. His heart was heavy with dread of all automobiles, past, present, and to come."

"Same way they break a colt. Get him used to the harness, then to shafts, and so on. Now, I can run any car that ever was built--make it stand on its hind wheels if I want to and roll through a crowd without making anybody even wink faster. I think I'll go out and get that one and take the whole bunch of you out for a cure."

Juliet was listening attentively, with her blue eyes wide open and her scarlet lips parted. Doctor Jack was subtly conscious of a new sensation.

"I see," she said. "Romie made me hold snakes by their tails until I wasn't afraid of 'em, and made me kill mice and even rats. Only sissy girls are afraid of snakes and rats. And just because we were both afraid to go by the graveyard at night, we made ourselves do it. We can walk through it now, even if there isn't any moon, and never dodge a single tombstone."

"Was it hard to learn to do it?" asked the doctor. If he was amused, he did not show it now.