The Storyteller

New Zealand Tablet, 5 August 1915, Page 3

The Storyteller

- ' - REJECTED ORCHIDS % 5 Paxton, in her bed on the sunny hospital verandah, was trying not to remember that tjiis was the morning when- the great doctor would decide whether she must undergo an operation, and have a special nurse ”to attend her. She pulled the frill of her boudoir cap low over her tearful eyes, so that the nurses could see nothing except a cheerful, tipped-up .nose and a chin dented with a dimple. Upon the doctor’s decision rested her hopes of college. She had already lost the joy of going through college with Eldie .and Myrtle, her chums in preparatory school. They had become freshmen the very week that Paxton had. become number thirty in the hospital. This / side trip,’ as Paxton termed it, had nibbled frightfully - into her only chance for college—Aunt Jane’s legacy— now, if she had to have the operation and the nurse, her chance would be completely gobbled up. Paxton turned to gaze at the smoke that curled fantastically out of a chimney on an adjoining roof, which she had dubbed the devil’s saucepan. Following the twisting column, her eyes caught a circle of pigeons far up in the clear sky,_ with their breasts flashing silver in the sun. Somehow those high, shining wings brought vividly back to her mind the loss of her college ambitions—the wings she had hoped to spread. Hot tears streamed past her cap frill and down her cheeks. At the same moment, a stir about her announced the arrival of the Pink Girl. The orderly was rolling her bed through the door. The Pink Girl’s entrance to the hospital verandah was always an event. Through her tears, Paxton saw the lady who lay flat in bed, the smart blonde propped in her chair, and other patients whom she did not know, all raising their heads to stare at a single spot —the Pink Girl’s boudoir cap. They’re as curious as I am,’ Paxton said to herself, ‘ to know whether the Pink Girl will be wearing the pink scarf she wore yesterday afternoon:, or the pink lace cap of last evening, or the pink silk one -of this morning. There ! It is not even the cap she wore two hours ago !’ It was an entirely new cap of white lace and pink buds. The patients settled back in their pillows with smiles of amused pity, but Paxton stared on at the Pink Girl, who was stretched flat in bed. Paxton wondered how, under the stress of such big pain and weariness, the girl could be vain enough to change her caps three times a day, and to keep her sweater sleeves rolled back so that her bracelets would just show. Then she saw the discouraged face of the special nurse who was following the Pink* Girl’s bed, and she guessed that the Pink Girl had not gained during the past week, and that the great doctor had just expressed his disapproval to the nurse. ‘ I could spank that Pink Girl !’ Paxton thought. ‘ Her nurse has enough hard work to do, without wearing herself out attending to those well-folk frills. How can a hospital patient be so vain?’ A nurse stopped beside Paxton’s bed. ‘ Your doctor will be here in a minute,’ she said. As the nurse turned to go, Paxton clutched at her apron. ‘Do you think he will be pleased with my gain? Oh, I forget you nurses can’t tell me anything!’ The nurse did riot answer, but only smiled. ‘ I can’t tell a thing by your face !’ Paxton grumbled. ‘ You had this radiant look when you came in with a covered tray that I thought contained a perfectly gorgeous meal, and when you lifted the cover, there wasn’t enough on the tray to feed a sparrow.’ At. that moment the great doctor came through the door with the head nurse. His height and his cleancut features distinguished • him from the group of doctors who followed him. They drew —four deep, as Paxton mentally phrased —at the. foot of her bed, and the great doctor took her hand. She felt his gaze pass through the mask of humor with which she had

concealed her pain and weariness from the others T Was he going to order the special nurse" and the operating room? is . ‘ Yoji have gained in weight,’ he observed. - H Sometime patients are here weeks without gaining a pound.’ . , ‘ They are very unenterprising,’ Paxton murmured through dry lips; the doctors laughed. Paxton looked up at .the great doctor with an anxious smile. ‘May I sit up to-morrow she asked. Then, as. he did not answer, she said to herself, ‘He has turned, to stone.-- He is going to order the operating room!’ s - ‘ No—you must not be too smart.’ ‘ Smartbut not smart, Alecky"’ pleaded Paxton, in a frantic effort to hold the bad news, off for a moment. x Again the doctors laughed. ‘ That’s it, exactly,’ said the great doctor, beaming. He turned to the head nurse. ‘ I see you are going to get along without that special.’ The furious flutter in Paxton’s breast stopped short, and for a moment the sunshine seemed to darken. Then she gave a great breath of relief, and everything turned radiant round her. The doctor went on speaking to the head nurse; ‘ It’s not all your splendid nursing ; it’s her sense of humor. ,She keeps her spirits up. That other patient,’ — he dropped his voice, but Paxton was sure he meant the Pink Girl—‘ I ordered a special for her, and worked so hard with her, yet— ’ He shrugged his shoulders, and came back to Paxton with boyish enthusiasm. ‘ You have given us positive proof,’ he said to her, that our treatment in this case —a new treatment will cure without an operation. We couldn’t have done it without your help.’ He turned to the other doctors. ‘ She deserves a reward —’ Paxton knew he was going .to suggest something particularly nice, but the Pink Girl interrupted. She evidently had told her nurse that she must leave the verandah at once ; for with many apologies to the doctors, the nurse began to wheel the Pink girl’s bed toward them. In order to make room for the bed to pass the doctors had to move away; they went, bowing goodbye to Paxton. . ‘ Is that the vanity that can’t bear to see some one else the centre of things?’ Paxton asked herself. When the head nurse came back a moment later, Paxton asked, ‘ So you have a patient who doesn’t gain ?’ She was eager to know something more about the queer Pink Girl. The glow of the doctor’s approval had relaxed the nurse’s reserve, and she answered readily enough. ‘ The doctor was speaking of a patient who is really an incorrigible,’ she said, and her expression changed. Her eyes, hard and resentful, sought the spot where the Pink Girl’s bed had stood. Paxton winced inwardly, ‘My !’ she thought. ‘I am glad she doesn’t look at me like that.’ Then she asked, aloud, ‘ Why did he call me easy?’ ‘ Because you are docile, and try to get well. Your sense of humor makes the nurses enjoy you.’ ‘ The incorrigible has no sense of humor?’ ‘No more than a mummy!’ snapped the nurse; then she softened. ‘ Some flowers have come for you. I know they are lovely, though I did not see them. They’re in a big box.’ When Paxton saw the flowers," she realised that great moments have always treading on their heels the little ironies of life. On her table stood a huge funeral cross, evidently rescued from a grave, and refilled with red and purple dahlias. The card attached informed her that it was from distant cousins who lived in the city. This floral piece was both hideous and absurd, and showed utter lack of taste and thought in the senders, Paxton flushed. Compared with the satin slips and caps of other patients, her small belongings were poor enough, but at least they were refined and sincere. . She had not been ashamed of them. But the shame of this floral atrocity ! For Paxton it was harder to be absurd than -to face an operationr* ;; What would the nurses think of those ridiculous flowers ? -r In. a moment she knew. An ’ English nurse who never smiled ‘brought Paxton’s

dinner tray, and, after casting a glance at the flowers, fled from the room, laughing. Freda, the maid, came tor the tray. As she entered, her eyes were looking for the funeral piece, and at sight of it slip sniggered Paxton’s face crimsoned. So all the nurses knew; the joke of the funeral cross was buzzing, about the ward. Theglow of the doctor’s visit and her-sense hf humor died in her. She felt limp and desperate. - . ‘ You like my flowers, Freda ?, she asked, curtly. ‘ You have had lovely flowers that— came—by mail ’ Freda stammered; and then she tried to change the subject. ‘ Think if you be like the Pink Girl, as they call her. Nobody her a flower, and she been here three months. In her room she keep an artificial rose on her bed at all the time.’ ‘An artificial rose!’ Paxton exclaimed. ‘ Oh, she have many fine caps and things, but nobody send her flowers or come to see her since she been here. Her father is rich and live in the city, but he never come to see her Lives in the city, four miles away, and never comes to see her?’ Freda nodded. * Ho never write her a letter either. I bring all the mail, and I watch. All the nurses know. To-day he telegraph, “Glad you are all right. Stay as long as the doctor says.” She threw it on the floor. When I swept her room I ’took it out and read it, Freda concluded, shamelessly. Freda s right,’ Paxton said to herself, when the girl had gone ; ‘ no one has been to see her.’ In her mind she reviewed the Sunday visitors to the verandah. There was the fine young man whom the elderly blonde looked at in a way that made you know he was her son; the financier who came to comfort the lady on the pillow ; the very old man who sat silent all day by the very old lady the third cousins buzzing about her own bed; but—as Freda had saidno one ever came to see the Pink Girl. A father in the city too, who never wrote ! Paxton grasped the letters on hei table, the mere touch of which filled her with a sense of protection. And the nurses knew! Of course the Pink Girl was an incorrigible, and had no sense of humor. Doubtless she did not want to get well. ' The pathos of the artificial rose on her bed made Paxton’s eyes blur. Suddenly, from the adjoining window of the Pink Girl s room, came a sound of suppressed weeping. It was a little wail repeated over and over. Paxton herself almost wept as she listened. Why did not the nurses soothe her? Then she remembered that the special nurses were at dinner, and in a flash she understood why the Pink Girl had chosen this moment to cry. As suddenly as they had begun, the sobs ceased, and Paxton’s straining ears heard the nurses coming down the corridor. She could imagine the Pink Girl trying to wipe off the traces of tears. She heard the nuise enter the Pink Girl’s room, and a murmur of dialogue followed. Evidently the Pink Girl was demanding something; no doubt a fresh, vexatious toilet for an outing on the verandah. As Paxton listened with closed eyes, she stiffened with the surprise of a new idea. What if the Pink Girl’s caps were not vanity, but a pathetic effort to ‘appear gay and cared for, intended to hide her loneliness from the other patients ? N ... ‘Are you asleep?’ A nurse had entered softly, and stood beside the bed with an immense florist’s box. ‘ I thought you would like to open' the flowers yourself. I cut the string,’ she added, as she left the ro_pm.‘ A fresh odor Krae from the box. As Paxton lifted the lid, she saw, with a thrill, a glow of color under the snowy paper inside. She tore off the covering that concealed the flowers, and gave a cry of joy. A basket of orchids lay before her. Each blossom, in a cup-like paper, drooped with the round appeal of a baby’s cheek. They were a mass of rainbow color that seemed to light the room. Only one person in Paxton’s world was interested and rich enough to send them, and before she read the inclosed card, she knew that they had come, from" the great" doctor. This was what he had meant when he spoke of a reward. Pax-

ton’s first ecstatic thought was of what the nurses would think -when they saw this glorious basket. It would extinguish the shame of the funeral cross as sunrise puts out a candle ! - ‘To think of its happening to me !’ she cried, as she sank in the pillow with both arms round the lovely basket. • . Then, Unaccountably, there came Tip before her mind the picture of an artificial rose on a sick bed. orchids,’ Paxton said to herself, with a sigh. 1 1 have letters from home and the girls, and a sense of humor that has saved my life.’ _ It would be easy to send the orchids to the Pink Girl, with the doctor’s card. She would merely have to change the address on the box, from Room 30 to Boom 32. _ At the thought of letting them go, it seemed to Paxton that the orchids’ baby faces drooped in reproach; but when she thought of what the flowers would mean to the Pink Girl, they seemed to flame in joyous sympathy. It would be a beautiful thing to do. As the full beauty of it burst on Paxton, she felt the same rapture that had thrilled her when she caught the first glorious glimpse,.of the orchids : but she knew that the enthusiasm that led her to make the sacrifice would wane, and that it would leave her just a sick girl, defending her right to keep the only orchids she had ever possessed in her life. ‘ If I could -only keep one!’ something cried within her ; and she knew that if she was to do the beautiful thing at all, she must do it’ at once. She heard a nurse coming down the corridor. A fine strength of spirit steadied her. She replaced the tissue paper, gazed for an instant at the orchids glowing through it, then pushed the lid over them, and seized a pencil from her table. As she sank on her pillows, with her heart leaping in her breast, the 30 stood 32. ’‘Did I make a mistake in the address?’ cried the nurse, when she entered and stared at the address on the unopened box. Concerned with her own carelessness, she did not notice Paxton’s face. The following week it rained, and the patients were not taken on the verandah. The great doctor was out of town, and did not visit the hospital. The first Paxton knew of. his return was when she heard his voice in the hall outside her door. Her door, guarded by a screen, was open, and Paxton heard in the doctor’s voice the same enthusiasm that had greeted her gain on the week before. She knew that he was talking to the other doctors. ‘I didn’t intend the flowers for her! But they have transformed her. She is trying to get well ! She was not an incorrigible : she was just too lonely to want to live! We were doing everything, except the one necessary thing of giving her a motive for wanting to get well. I am going to have her father come to sec her.’ The doctor moved on. The next day was sunny, and lying under her blanket, with the big pain wonderfully lessened, Paxton watched the Pink Girl’s bed roll out on the sunny verandah. The stir at her entrance was not followed by a smile. She wore the same cap she had worn the week before, and her sweater was comfortably disarranged. Over a battered’ orchid that she caressed, she smiled at Paxton in a friendly, girlish way. ‘ I have gained this week more than in the whole three months I have been in the hospital. You can’t help trying for such a grand doctor. My father will be here Sunday,’ she - concluded, as she passed Paxton. The second box of orchids was not so large as the first, but the great doctor handed it himself to Paxton, a few minutes later. " • ‘ I wanted you to have a reward,’ he said. ‘ You aretoo —good to me!’ Paxton choked. * I have had a greater reward ’ She turned her face to hide her happv tears, and saw above her the pigeons circling with silver breasts. In that moment she knew that there were wings—other than college wings—-that lifted to sunny heights. ‘ You mean splendid gain is your reward,’ said the doctor, gently. ‘lt means college for you when the mid-term comes!’ And his reassuring smile was prophetic.— -Youth’s Companion'.