Chapter 3

Friday after New Year's found Sergeant Graham again flat on his back at the Base Hospital, facing sentence of three additional weeks in bed. In vain had he risked a reprimand by hotly protesting the point with the Captain; in vain had he declared to the nurse that he would rather live on his feet than die on his back. Judgment was passed, and he lay with an ice-bag on his head and a thermometer in his mouth and hot rage in his heart.

What made matters worse was that Cass Martel had come over from the Convalescent Barracks only that morning to announce that he had received his discharge and was going home. To Quin it seemed that everybody but himself was going home--that is, everybody but the incurables. At that thought a dozen nameless fears that had been tormenting him of late all seemed to get together and rush upon him. What if the doctors were holding him on from month to month, experimenting, promising, disappointing, only in the end to bunch him with the permanently disabled and ship him off to some God-forsaken spot to spend the rest of his life in a hospital?

He gripped his hands over his chest and gave himself up to savage rebellion. If they would let him alone he might get well! In France it had been his head. Whenever the wound began to heal and things looked a bit cheerful, some saw-bones had come along and thumped and probed and X-rayed, and then it had been ether and an operation and the whole blooming thing over again. Then, when they couldn't work on his head any longer, they'd started up this talk about his heart. Of course his heart was jumpy! All the fellows who had been badly gassed had jumpy hearts. But how was he ever going to get any better lying there on his back? What he needed was exercise and decent food and something cheerful to think about. He wanted desperately to get away from his memories, to forget the horrors, the sickening sights and smells, the turmoil and confusion of the past two years. In spite of his most heroic efforts, he kept living over past events. This time last year he had been up in the Toul sector, where half the men he knew had gone west. It was up there old Corpy had got his head shot off....

He resolutely fixed his attention on a spider that was swinging directly over his head and tried to forget old Corpy. He thought instead of Captain Phipps, but the thought did not calm him. What sense was there in his ordering more of this fool rest business? Well, he told himself fiercely, he wasn't going to stand for it! The war was over, he had done his part, he was going to demand his freedom. Discipline or no discipline, he would go over Phipps' head and appeal to the Colonel.

Throwing aside the ice-bag, he looked around for his uniform. But the nurse had evidently mistrusted the look in his eyes when she gave him the Captain's orders, for the hook over his bed was empty. He raised himself in his cot and glared savagely down the ward, sniffing the air suspiciously. Two orderlies were wheeling No. 17 back from the operating-room, and Quin already caught the faint odor of ether. The first whiff of it filled him with loathing.

Thrusting his bare feet into slippers and his arms into a shabby old bath-robe, he flung himself out of bed and slipped out on the porch. The air was cold and bracing and gloriously free from the hospital combination of wienerwürst, ether, and dried peaches that had come to be a nightmare odor to him. He sat on the railing and drew in deep, refreshing breaths, and as he did so things began to right themselves. Fair play to Quin amounted almost to a religion, and it was suddenly borne in upon him that he would not be where he was had he observed the rules of the game. But then again, if he had not danced, he never would have----

At that moment something so strange happened that he put a hot hand to a hotter brow and wondered if he was delirious. The singularly vibrant voice that had been echoing in his memory since New Year's eve was saying directly behind him:

"I shall give them all the chocolate they want, Captain Harold Phipps, and you may court-martial me later if you like!"

Quin glanced up hastily, and there, framed in the doorway, in a Red Cross uniform, stood his dream girl, looking so much more ravishing than she had before that he promptly snatched the blue and gray vision from its place of honor and installed a red, white, and blue one instead. So engrossed was he in the apparition that he quite failed to see Captain Phipps surveying him over her shoulder.

"Number 7!" said the Captain with icy decision, "weren't you instructed to stay in bed?"

"I was, sir," said Quin, coming to attention and presenting a decidedly sorry aspect.

"Go back at once, and add three days to the time indicated. This way, Miss Bartlett."

Now, it is well-nigh impossible to preserve one's dignity when suffering a reprimand in public; but when you are handicapped by a shabby bath-robe, a three days' growth of beard, and a grouch that gives you the expression of a bandit, and the public happens to be the one being on earth whom you are most anxious to please, the situation becomes tragic.

Quin set his jaw and shuffled ignominiously off to bed, thankful for once that he had been considered unworthy a second glance from those luminous brown eyes. His satisfaction, however, was short-lived. A moment later the young lady appeared at the far end of the ward, carrying an absurd little basket adorned with a large pink bow, from which she began to distribute chocolates.

A feminine presence in the ward always created a flutter, but the previous flutters were mere zephyrs compassed to the cyclone produced by the new ward visitor. Some one started the phonograph, and Michaelis, who had been swearing all day that he would never be able to walk again, actually began to dance. Witticisms were exchanged from bed to bed, and the man who was going to be operated on next morning flung a pillow at an orderly and upset a vase of flowers. Things had not been so cheerful for weeks.

Quin, lying in the last bed in the ward, alternated between rapture and despair as he watched the progress of the visitor. Would she recognize him? Would she speak to him if she did, when he looked like that? Perhaps if he turned his face to the wall and pretended to be asleep she would pass him by. But he did not want her to pass him by. This might be the only chance he would ever have to see her again!

Back in his fringe of consciousness he was frantically groping for the name the Captain had mentioned: Barnet? Barret? Bartlett? That was it! And with the recovery of the name Quin's mind did another somersault. Bartlett? Where had he heard that name? Eleanor Bartlett? Some nonsense about "Solomon's baby." Why, Rose Martel, of course.

Then all thought deserted him, for the world suddenly shrank to five feet two of femininity, and he heard a gay, impersonal voice saying:

"May I put a cake of chocolate on your table?"

For the life of him, he could not answer. He only lay there with his mouth open, looking at her, while she straightened the contents of her basket. One more moment and she would be gone. Quin staked all on a chance shot.

"Thank you, Miss Eleanor Bartlett," he said, with that ridiculous blush that was so out of keeping with his audacity.

She looked at him in amazement; then her face broke into a smile of recognition.

"Well, bless my soul, if it isn't Sergeant Slim! What are you doing here?"

"Same thing I been doing for six months," said Quin sheepishly; "counting the planks in the ceiling."

"But I thought you had got well. Oh, I hope it wasn't the dancing----"

"Lord, no," said Quin, keeping his hand over his bristly chin. "I'm husky, all right. Only they've got so used to seeing me laying around that they can't bear to let me go."

"Do you have to lie flat on your back like that, with no pillow or anything?"

"It ain't so bad, except at mess-time."

"And you can't even sit up to eat?"

"Not supposed to."

Miss Bartlett eyed him compassionately.

"I am coming out twice a week now--Mondays and Fridays--and I'm going to bring you something nice every time I come. How long will you be here?"

"Three weeks," said Quin--adding, with a funny twist of his lip, "three weeks and three days."

"Oh! Were you the boy on the porch? How funny I didn't recognize you! I'm going to ask Captain Phipps to let you off those extra days."

"No, you mustn't." Quin objected earnestly; "I'll take what's coming to me. Besides," he added, "one of those days might be a Monday or a Friday!"

This seemed to amuse her, for she smiled as she wrote his name and bed number in a small notebook, with the added entry: "Oyster soup, cigarettes, and a razor."

Just as she was leaving, she remembered something and turned back.

"How did you know my name?" she asked with lively curiosity.

"Didn't the Captain call it on the porch?"

"Did he? But not my first name. How on earth _did_ you know that?"

"Perhaps I guessed it," Quin said, looking mysterious. And just then a nurse came along and thrust the thermometer back in his mouth, and the conversation was abruptly ended.

Of course the calendar must have been right about the three weeks that followed; there probably were seven days in each week and twenty-four hours in each day. But Quin wasn't sure about it. He knew beyond doubt that there were three Mondays and four Fridays and one wholly gratuitous and never-to-be-forgotten Sunday when Miss Bartlett brought his dinner from town, and insisted upon cutting his chicken for him and feeding him custard with a spoon. The rest of the days were lost in abstract time, during which Quin had his hair cut and his face shaved, and did bead-work.

Until now he had sturdily refused to be inveigled into occupational therapy. Those guys that were done for could learn to knit, he said, and to make silly little mats, and weave things on a loom. If he couldn't do a man's work he'd be darned if he was going to do a woman's. But now all was changed. He announced his intention of making the classiest bead chain that had ever been achieved in 2 C. He insisted upon the instructor getting him the most expensive beads in the market, regardless of size or color.

Now, for Quin, with his big hands and lack of dexterity, to have worked with beads under the most favorable conditions would have been difficult, but to master the art lying flat on his back was a _tour de force_. He pricked his fingers and broke his thread; he upset the beads on the floor, on the bed, in his tray; he took out and put in with infinite patience, "each bead a thought, each thought a prayer."

"Don't you think you had better give it up?" asked the instructor, in despair, after the fourth lesson.

"You don't know me," said Quin, setting his jaw. "You been trying to get me into this for two weeks--now you've got to see me through."

It did not take long for the other patients to discover Quin's state of mind.

"How about your heart disease, Graham?" they inquired daily; "think it's going to be chronic?"

But Quin had little time for them. The distinction he had enjoyed as the champion poker-player in 2 C. began to wane as his popularity with the new ward visitor increased.

"I like your nerve!--keeping her up there at your bed all the time," complained Michaelis.

"She's an old friend of mine," Quin threw off nonchalantly.

"Aw, what you tryin' to put over on us?" scoffed Mike. "Where'd you ever git to know a girl like that?"

"Well, I know her all right," said Quin.

The little mystery about Miss Bartlett's first name had been a fruitful topic of conversation between a couple whose topics were necessarily limited. She had teased Quin to tell her how he knew, and also how he knew she wanted to go on the stage; and Quin had teased back; and at last it had resolved itself into a pretty contest of wits.

This served to keep her beside him often as long as four minutes. Then he would gain an additional two minutes by showing her what progress he had made with his chain, and consulting her preference for an American flag or a Red Cross worked in the medallion.

When every other means of detaining her had been exhausted, he sometimes resorted to strategy. Constitutionally he was opposed to duplicity; he was built on certain square lines that disqualified him for many a comfortable round hole in life. But under the stress of present circumstances he persuaded himself that the end justified the means. Ignoring the fact that he was as devoid of relations as a tree is of leaves in December, he developed a sudden sense of obligation to an imaginary cousin whom he added, without legal authority, to the population of Peru, Indiana. By means of Miss Bartlett's white hand he frequently informed her that she was not to worry about him, because he was "doing splendid," and that a hospital "wasn't so worse when you get used to it." And while he dictated words of assurance to his "Cousin Sue" his eyes feasted upon a dainty profile with long brown lashes that swept a peach-blow cheek. Once he became so demoralized by this too pleasing prospect that he said "tell him" instead of "tell her," and the lashes lifted in instant inquiry.

"I mean--er--her husband," Quin gasped.

"But you had me direct the other letters to Miss Sue Brown."

"Yes, I know," said Quin, with an embarrassment that might have been attributed to skeletons in family closets; "but, you see--she--er--she took back her own name."

The one cloud that darkened Quin's horizon these days was Captain Phipps. His visits to the ward always coincided with Miss Bartlett's, and he seemed to take a spiteful pleasure in keeping the men at attention while he engaged her in intimate conversation. He was an extremely fastidious, well groomed young man, with an insolent hauteur and a certain lordly air of possession that proclaimed him a conqueror of the sex. Quin regarded him with growing disfavor.

When the three weeks were almost over, Quin was allowed to sit up, and even to walk on the porch. Miss Bartlett found him there one day when she arrived.

"Aha!" she cried, "I've found you out, Sergeant Slim! You are Cass Martel's hero, and that's where you heard about me and found out my first name."

Quin pleaded guilty, and their usual five minutes together lengthened into fifteen while she gave him all the news of the Martel family. Cass had taken his old position at the railroad office, and, dear knows, it was a good thing! And Rose was giving dancing lessons. And what did he think little old Myrna had done? Adopted a baby! Yes, a baby; wasn't it too ridiculous! An Italian one that the washwoman had forsaken. And Papa Claude had given up his lectures at the university in order to write the great American play. Weren't they the funniest and the dearest people he had ever known?

It was amazing how intimate Quin and Miss Bartlett got on the subject of the Martels. He had to tell her in detail just what a brick her cousin Cass was, and she had to tell him what a really wonderful actor Papa Claude used to be.

"Captain Phipps says he knows more about the stage than any man in the country."

"What does the Captain know about it?" asked Quin.

"Captain Phipps? Why, he's a playwright. He means to devote all his time to the stage as soon as he gets out of the army. You may not believe it, but he is an even better dramatist than he is a doctor."

"Oh, yes, I do," said Quin; "that's easy to believe."

The sarcasm was lost upon Miss Bartlett, who was intent upon delivering her message from the Martels. They had sent word that they expected Quin to come straight to them when he got his discharge, and that his room was waiting for him.

"And you?" asked Quin eagerly. "You'll be there every Sunday?"

Her face, which had been all smiles, underwent a sudden change. She said with something perilously like a pout:

"No, I shan't; I'm to be shipped off to school next week."

"School?" repeated Quin incredulously. "What do you want to be going back to school for?"

"I _don't_ want to. I hate it. It's the price I am paying for that dance I had with you at the Hawaiian Garden--that and other things."

"What do you mean?"

"Some old tabby of a chaperon saw me there and came and told my grandmother."

"But what could she have told? You didn't do anything you oughtn't to."

Miss Bartlett shook her head. It was evidently something she could not explain, for she sat staring gloomily at the wall above the bed, then she said abruptly: "Well, I must be going. Good-by if I don't see you again!"

"But you will," announced Quin fiercely. "You are going to see me next Sunday at the Martels'. I'll be there if I land in the guard-house for it."

"Why, your time's up Saturday, isn't it? Oh! I forgot those three extra days. Captain Phipps has got to let you off. He will if I tell him to."

At this something quite unexpected and elemental surged up in Quin. He forgot the amenities that he had taken such pains to observe in Miss Bartlett's presence, he entirely lost sight of the social gap that lay between them, and blurted out with deadly earnestness:

"Say, are you his girl?"

This had the effect of bringing Miss Bartlett promptly to her feet, and the next instant poor Quin was saying in an agony of regret:

"I'm sorry, Miss Bartlett. I didn't mean to be nervy. Honest, I didn't. Wait a minute--_please_----"

But she was gone, leaving him to spend the rest of the afternoon searching for a phrase sufficiently odious to express his own opinion of himself.