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Old Rose And Silver

<h1 id="id01980" style="margin-top: 6em">XIX</h1> <h5 id="id01981">OVER THE BAR</h5> As a flower may bloom in a night, joy returned to Madame Bernard's house after long absence. There was no outward sign, for Rose was still quiet and self-controlled, but her face was a shade less pale and there was a tremulous music in her voice. Isabel had ceased to limp, but still dwelt upon the shock and its lingering effects. She amused herself in her own way, reading paper- covered novels, feasting upon chocolates, teasing Mr. Boffin, and playing solitaire. Madame remarked to Rose that Isabel seemed to have a cosmic sense of time. The guest never came down-stairs till luncheon was announced, and did not trouble herself to make an elaborate, or even appropriate toilet. Madame began to wonder how long Isabel intended to remain and to see the wisdom of the modern fashion of appointing the hour of departure in the invitation. Yet, as she said to herself rather grimly, she would have invited Isabel to remain through the Summer, and perhaps, in the early Autumn she might return to town of her own accord. Moreover, there appeared to be no graceful way of requesting an invited guest to leave. Though Madame was annoyed by the mere fact of Isabel's presence, she had ceased to distress Rose, who dwelt now in a world apart from the others. She spent her afternoons at the other house, playing softly downstairs, reading to Allison, or talking to him of the brilliant future that she insisted was to be his. Neither of them spoke of the hour in which Rose had unwittingly revealed herself, nor did they seem to avoid the subject. Allison had taken her for granted, on a high plane of pure friendliness, and not for an instant did he translate her overpowering impulse as anything but womanly pity. She practised for an hour or two every morning that she might play better in the afternoon, she ransacked the library for interesting and cheerful things to read to him, and she even found a game or two that he seemed to enjoy. From Madame Francesca's spotless kitchen came many a dainty dish to tempt his capricious appetite, and all the flowers from both gardens, daily, made a bower of his room. Constantly, too, Rose brought the message of hopefulness and good cheer. From her abounding life and superb vitality he drew unconscious strength; the hidden forces that defy analysis once more exerted themselves in his behalf. So far as man is of the earth, earthy, by the earth and its fruits may he be healed, but the heavenly part of him may be ministered unto only by the angels of God. His old fear of the darkness had gone and the night light had been taken out into the hall. In the faint glow, he could see the objects in his room distinctly, during the brief intervals of wakefulness. A flower dropped from its vase, a book lying half open, a crumpled handkerchief upon his chiffonier, the pervading scent of attar of roses and dried petals—all these brought him a strange sense of nearness to Rose, as a perfume may be distilled from a memory. Day by day, Isabel became more remote. He thought of her without emotion when he thought of her at all, for only women may know the agony of love enduring after the foundation upon which it was built has been swept away. The strange men from distant places came less frequently. Days would pass, and bring no word. The country doctor who had first been called stopped occasionally when time permitted, and his faithful old horse needed a little rest, but he only shook his head. He admitted to the nurse that he was greatly surprised because the inevitable operation had not yet become imperative. Colonel Kent seemed to have been lost for almost a week. During that time no word had been received from him and Madame's daily bulletin: "No change for the worse," had been returned, marked "not found." She was vaguely troubled and uneasy, fearing that something might have happened to him, but forebore to speak of her fears. One morning, while Allison was still asleep, the nurse wakened him gently. "A new man, Mr. Allison; can you see him now?" "I don't care," he replied. "Bring him in." The newcomer was a young man—one would have guessed that the ink was scarcely dry on his diploma. He had a determined mouth, a square chin, kind eyes, and the buoyant youthful courage that, by itself, carries one far upon any chosen path. He smiled at Allison and Allison smiled back at him, in friendly fashion. "Now," said the young man, "let's see." His big fingers were astonishingly gentle, they worked with marvellous dexterity, and, for the first time, the dreaded examination was almost painless. He asked innumerable questions both of Allison and the nurse, and wanted to know who had been there previously. The nurse had kept no record, but she knew some of the men, and mentioned their names—names to conjure with in the professional world. Even the two great Germans had said it was of no use. The young man wrinkled his brows in deep thought. "What have you been using?" he inquired, of the nurse. "Everything. Come here." She led him into the next room, where a formidable array of bottles and boxes almost covered a large table. He looked them all over, carefully, scrutinising the names on the druggist's labels, sniffing here and there, occasionally holding some one bottle to the light, and finally, out of sheer youthful curiosity, counting them. Then he laughed—a cheery, hearty laugh that woke long-sleeping echoes in the old house and made Allison smile, in the next room. "It seems," he commented, "that a doctor has to leave a prescription as other men leave cards—just as a polite reminder of the call." "What shall I do with them?" "Dump 'em all out—I don't care. Or, wait a minute; there's no rush." He went back to Allison. "I see you've got quite a drug store here. Are you particularly attached to any special concoction?" "Indeed I'm not. Most of 'em have hurt—sinfully." "I don't know that anything has to be painful or disagreeable in order to be healing," remarked the young man, thoughtfully. "Would you like to throw 'em all out of the window?" "I certainly would." "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. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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