CHAPTER XVIIITHE TRAINED NURSE
“Lord Harry! what am I to do, with fever in the house, and Giles gone and Miss Frye no more good than a setting hen, and I, who was never sick a day in my life worse than Mrs. Frye,” Colin thought, as he stood looking at Rex, who seemed in a heavy sleep, although he kept muttering about the well, and the broken glass, and the letter, and the sick brother, and Claremont, and the will, which he said he was going to contest and break.
“Confound that will! It’s bothering him to death,” Colin thought, “and will until the thing is decided. I wonder if he posted the letter he was writing. If so that will settle it. Rex,” he said, screaming as if the fever-tossed man, whose eyes were now wide open and staring at him, were deaf as a stone. “Have you sent the letter to Irene, you know?”
For a moment Rex looked at him as if in doubt of his meaning; then, as the past came back to him, he answered briskly, “Oh, yes, the letter you helped me write, with something about her pulse beating inunison with mine. I didn’t put that in, but I wrote the letter. It’s all right;” then he dozed off again and Colin did not dream that the letter was still in Rex’s pocket where he had put it when he started to see Rena and ask Irene’s address. It was on its way to New York, or soon would be, Colin thought, and felt relieved on that score. If Rex should get very sick it might, perhaps, be proper to send for Irene, and what was it the doctor said about a trained nurse? and where was he to get one? For a man strong as he was in some respects, he was weak and helpless in others. The household matters he left mostly with his housekeeper, Mrs. Frye, and as he was never sick himself, he had but little idea what he ought to do for Rex, who, now that he was in bed, had let go of himself and given up to the disease making rapid inroads upon him. Suddenly it occurred to Colin that Mrs. Parks would know what to do and where he could find a nurse. She knew everything and kept hold of everybody’s business. It would be some comfort to talk with her anyway, he thought, and just as we were sitting down to tea he appeared at the front door, on the brass knocker of which he made thunderous raps as if he were in a hurry.
“For land’s sake!” Mrs. Parks exclaimed, almostdropping the teapot in her surprise. “Go, Charlotte Ann, and see who is there and what he wants.”
“I want to see Mrs. Parks,” he said. “I want to see all the women-folks,” he continued, walking straight through the hall into the dining-room, the door of which was open. “There’s the old Harry to pay up at our house. Giles is gone, and Mrs. Frye—well, she’s great on soups and welch rabbits and salads and sweet breads, but is no more good where there is sickness than a hen with its head cut off, and we’ve got to have a trained nurse, the doctor says, and he’s out of his head—crazy as a loon—talking about half of a face and one eye which he sees all the time—and the will and the lookin’ glass. Demnation! I’m glad the thing is broke and sunk! Such infernal nonsense, and to think he, of all men, should try it! Great Scott! Who can I get to nurse him? I’m so wet with worry that there isn’t a dry thread on me.”
He sank into a chair looking the picture of distress while we sat staring at him.
“What’s the matter? Who is sick?” Mrs. Parks asked, and he replied:
“Lord Harry! haven’t I told you? Rex, to be sure. Who else should be, with Giles gone and me here. He has been taken sudden with fever, though the doctor says it has been coming on for days, andour cellar and drains all right and no smells anywhere. Why should he have a fever?” After a little direct questioning we managed to learn that Mr. Travers was very ill, and that the doctor had recommended a nurse, for whom Mr. McPherson was in search. “A trained one,” he said. “And where am I to find her, the right kind, I mean? I can’t have no second-class truck in the house.”
“Mr. Travers got the fever!” Mrs. Parks exclaimed. “That is sudden. Why, he was here this morning to see Miss Burdick off. But come to think on’t, he did look rather pimpin’. Want a nuss! There’s Sally Ann Ross, lazy as the rot, and Mary Jane Moore, stupid and shiffless, and the Widder Jones, pretty fair—but none of ’em is trained. We hain’t that kind in Oakfield, and they cost awful—fifteen or twenty dollars a week.”
“What do I care how much she costs? If Rex needs a trained nurse, he is going to have her, if there’s one this side of Boston,” Colin replied, and by the merest chance his eyes rested on me, who had sat thinking while Mrs. Parks descanted on the merits and demerits of Sally Ann and Mary Jane and the Widow Jones.
Before taking up stenography, I had studied for a trained nurse in a New York hospital and had passed a creditable examination, and for nearly two yearshad practised almost constantly until my health failed and I was obliged to abandon my profession and seek another employment where the responsibility and strain upon my nerves were not so great. I was very well now. Rest and Oakfield air had done me a great deal of good. I had still three weeks’ vacation and the thought entered my mind, Why not offer my services? I had had a great deal of experience with fever in its worst form and had never lost a case. In a few words I told him that I had once been a trained nurse, and offered to go to Mr. Travers until something better could be done.
“You a nuss! Well, I never! What will happen next?” Mrs. Parks exclaimed, and I think I sank a little in her estimation. “You a trained nuss! How did it happen, and why didn’t you stick to it?”
As well as I could I explained, while Mr. McPherson listened and finally said:
“I b’lieve you’ll do, and I’m glad, for I’m afraid he’s goin’ to be awful sick, it comes on so fast, and that quill or something the doctor put in his mouth registered over a hundred. Can you go to-night?”
It was rather sudden changing my quiet quarters to a sick-room, with the old care upon me; but the remuneration, I knew, would be sure and more than pay my expenses at Mrs. Parks’, and I said I would go.
All this time Rena had not spoken, but she was very pale as she listened to the conversation. She was thinking what if he should die and never know the truth, and she said at last to Mr. McPherson:
“You think he will get well, don’t you?”
“I hope so, but there’s no telling. If I thought he wouldn’t I s’pose I ought to send for Miss Irene. Maybe I ought to as it is, or let her know. They were the same as engaged, or would have been. What do you think?”
He looked at me, but it was Rena who answered quickly:
“No, oh, no, don’t send; don’t write at once. Wait and see. You know she has gone to her sick brother. She must not leave him or be troubled.”
We were a little surprised at Rena’s vehemence, which looked as if she did not wish to have Irene return even if there were no sick brother.
We had been a good deal puzzled about that brother, and Mrs. Parks had questioned Rena rather closely with regard to him, learning that he was not in New York, but in Claremont, a place of which she had never heard. Thinking that when Tom came back she would tell the whole truth and that until he came she would say as little as possible of Irene. Rena was so noncommittal and evidently sounwilling to discuss the matter that even Mrs. Parks gave it up, saying confidently to me:
“He’s some dissipated critter, I presume, that they are ashamed of.”
Now a new diversion had come up, and Irene’s brother was for the time forgotten in the excitement of Mr. Travers’ illness and my going to care for him.
“Beats all! You a nuss, and I never knew it! I’m that weak that you could knock me down with a feather,” Mrs. Parks said, as she followed me to my room and stayed there while I made the necessary preparations for going with Mr. McPherson.
The carriage was waiting at the gate and he was upon the piazza listening to Sam, who had come to the house and was telling of his interview with Mr. Travers in the grove only a few hours before. With a delicacy for which I had not given him credit, Sam said nothing of what he saw at the well the previous day when the glass was broken. That was reserved for Lottie’s ear, and he only told of meeting Mr. Travers, who complained of the heat and a pain in his head and walked shaky like, when he got up to go home.
“Why didn’t you go with him?” Rena asked, all her womanly instincts of pity roused for Rex, who might die and never know.
“I did offer and he wouldn’t let me,” Sam replied, and Rena continued to Mr. McPherson:
“Is he out of his head all the time? Would he understand if one were to tell him something?”
The idea had seized her that if Tom did not return at the end of the week she would confess everything to Rex. She could not have him die and leave that acted lie on her soul. It would be hard to tell him, but she must do it. She had been the instigator of the plot and ought to suffer for it. To her question as to whether Rex could understand if told something important Mr. McPherson’s answer was not reassuring.
“He is rambling mostly, and I don’t think he would sense much, but,” he added, as he saw the look of distress in Rena’s face, “he’ll pull through. Lean, lanky fellows like him generally do. It’s the strappers, full of blood like Giles, who die.”
Rena shuddered, and as I just then came out she walked with me to the carriage and said very low and earnestly:
“I am glad you are going to Mr. Travers. Don’t let him die, and if you want some one with you send for me. Aunt Mary says I am very nice with sick people, whose heads ache. There’s magnetism in my hands, small as they are.” She held them up and looked at them; then let them drop in a helplesskind of way, while I wondered at her manner, but promised to send for her if I needed her.
“And you will let us know how he is every day—twice a day, if possible?” she added.
I was in the carriage by this time, and Mr. McPherson was waiting to get in when Rena said again: “Remember and send if you want me. I am a pretty good nurse.”
“You?” Mr. McPherson said with a laugh. “You’d be no more good than a fly.”
“Try me and see,” Rena answered, looking up pleadingly at him as he took his seat beside me.
“All right,” he said. “Good-bye. Write to Irene to-night and tell her to keep a stiff upper lip. We’ll pull him through.”
Then Nixon started up the horses and I was on my way to the McPhersons as nurse to Reginald Travers.