Love Stories

Roberts Rinehart Mary

Description

For fans who love classic romance fiction, but are tired of the sappy dialogue and saccharine sentiments that characterize many works in the genre, Mary Roberts Rinehart's collection Love Stories strikes just the right balance. These witty, fast-paced tales often focus on heartfelt romantic connections that develop alongside humorous, mysterious or puzzling narrative elements, so the story pace never gets bogged down by an excess of purple prose or maudlin emotion.

Sujets

• Romance

Informations

• Publié par: The Floating Press
• Date de parution: 01 février 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781776529995
• Langue: English

Extrait

LOVE STORIES
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MARY ROBERTS RINEHART
 
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Love Stories First published in 1919 Epub ISBN 978-1-77652-999-5 Also available: PDF ISBN 978-1-77653-000-7 © 2013 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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Twenty-Two Jane In the Pavilion God's Fool The Miracle "Are We Downhearted? No!" The Game
Twenty-Two
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I
The Probationer's name was really Nella Jane Brown, but she wasentered in the training school as N. Jane Brown. However, she meantwhen she was accepted to be plain Jane Brown. Not, of course, thatshe could ever be really plain.
People on the outside of hospitals have a curious theory aboutnurses, especially if they are under twenty. They believe that theyhave been disappointed in love. They never think that they mayintend to study medicine later on, or that they may think nursing isa good and honourable career, or that they may really like to carefor the sick.
The man in this story had the theory very hard.
When he opened his eyes after the wall of the warehouse dropped, N.Jane Brown was sitting beside him. She had been practising countingpulses on him, and her eyes were slightly upturned and very earnest.
There was a strong odour of burnt rags in the air, and the mansniffed. Then he put a hand to his upper lip—the right hand. Shewas holding his left.
"Did I lose anything besides this?" he inquired. His littlemoustache was almost entirely gone. A gust of fire had accompaniedthe wall.
"Your eyebrows," said Jane Brown.
The man—he was as young for a man as Jane Brown was for anurse—the man lay quite still for a moment. Then:
"I'm sorry to undeceive you," he said. "But my right leg is off."
He said it lightly, because that is the way he took things. But hehad a strange singing in his ears.
"I'm afraid it's broken. But you still have it." She smiled. She hada very friendly smile. "Have you any pain anywhere?"
He was terribly afraid she would go away and leave him, so, althoughhe was quite comfortable, owing to a hypodermic he had had, hegroaned slightly. He was, at that time, not particularly interestedin Jane Brown, but he did not want to be alone. He closed his eyesand said feebly:
"Water!"
She gave him a teaspoonful, bending over him and being careful notto spill it down his neck. Her uniform crackled when she moved. Ithad rather too much starch in it.
The man, whose name was Middleton, closed his eyes. Owing to themorphia, he had at least a hundred things he wished to discuss. Thetrouble was to fix on one out of the lot.
"I feel like a bit of conversation," he observed. "How about you?"
Then he saw that she was busy again. She held an old-fashionedhunting-case watch in her hand, and her eyes were fixed on hischest. At each rise and fall of the coverlet her lips moved. Mr.Middleton, who was feeling wonderful, experimented. He drew fourvery rapid breaths, and four very slow ones. He was rewarded byseeing her rush to a table and write something on a sheet of yellowpaper.
"Resparation, very iregular," was what she wrote. She was not aparticularly good speller.
After that Mr. Middleton slept for what he felt was a day and anight. It was really ten minutes by the hunting-case watch. Justlong enough for the Senior Surgical Interne, known in the school asthe S.S.I., to wander in, feel his pulse, approve of Jane Brown, andgo out.
Jane Brown had risen nervously when he came in, and had profferedhim the order book and a clean towel, as she had been instructed. Hehad, however, required neither. He glanced over the record, changedthe spelling of "resparation," arranged his tie at the mirror, tookanother look at Jane Brown, and went out. He had not spoken.
It was when his white-linen clad figure went out that Middletonwakened and found it was the same day. He felt at once likeconversation, and he began immediately. But the morphia did acurious thing to him. He was never afterward able to explain it. Itmade him create. He lay there and invented for Jane Brown afictitious person, who was himself. This person, he said, was anewspaper reporter, who had been sent to report the warehouse fire.He had got too close, and a wall had come down on him. He inventedthe newspaper, too, but, as Jane Brown had come from somewhere else,she did not notice this.
In fact, after a time he felt that she was not as really interestedas she might have been, so he introduced a love element. He was, ashas been said, of those who believe that nurses go into hospitalsbecause of being blighted. So he introduced a Mabel, suppressing herother name, and boasted, in a way he afterward remembered withhorror, that Mabel was in love with him. She was, he related,something or other on his paper.
At the end of two hours of babbling, a businesslike person in acap—the Probationer wears no cap—relieved Jane Brown, and spilledsome beef tea down his neck.
Now, Mr. Middleton knew no one in that city. He had been motoringthrough, and he had, on seeing the warehouse burning, abandoned hismachine for a closer view. He had left it with the engine running,and, as a matter of fact, it ran for four hours, when it died ofstarvation, and was subsequently interred in a city garage. However,he owned a number of cars, so he wasted no thought on that one. Hewas a great deal more worried about his eyebrows, and, naturally,about his leg.
When he had been in the hospital ten hours it occurred to him tonotify his family. But he put it off for two reasons: first, itwould be a lot of trouble; second, he had no reason to think theyparticularly wanted to know. They all had such a lot of things todo, such as bridge and opening country houses and going to theSprings. They were really overwhelmed, without anything new, andthey had never been awfully interested in him anyhow.
He was not at all bitter about it.
That night Mr. Middleton—but he was now officially "Twenty-two," bythat system of metonymy which designates a hospital private patientby the number of his room—that night "Twenty-two" had rather a badtime, between his leg and his conscience. Both carried ondisgracefully. His leg stabbed, and his conscience reminded him ofMabel, and that if one is going to lie, there should at least be areason. To lie out of the whole cloth—!
However, toward morning, with what he felt was the entirepharmacopoeia inside him, and his tongue feeling like a tar roof, hemade up his mind to stick to his story, at least as far as the younglady with the old-fashioned watch was concerned. He had a sort ofcreed, which shows how young he was, that one should never explainto a girl.
There was another reason still. There had been a faint sparkle inthe eyes of the young lady with the watch while he was lying to her.He felt that she was seeing him in heroic guise, and the thoughtpleased him. It was novel.
To tell the truth, he had been getting awfully bored with himselfsince he left college. Everything he tried to do, somebody elsecould do so much better. And he comforted himself with this, that hewould have been a journalist if he could, or at least have publisheda newspaper. He knew what was wrong with about a hundred newspapers.
He decided to confess about Mabel, but to hold fast to journalism.Then he lay in bed and watched for the Probationer to come back.
However, here things began to go wrong. He did not see Jane Brownagain. There were day nurses and night nurses and reliefs, and internes and Staff and the Head Nurse and the First Assistantand—everything but Jane Brown. And at last he inquired for her.
"The first day I was in here," he said to Miss Willoughby, "therewas a little girl here without a cap. I don't know her name. But Ihaven't seen her since."
Miss Willoughby, who, if she had been disappointed in love, hadcertainly had time to forget it, Miss Willoughby reflected.
"Without a cap? Then it was only one of the probationers."
"You don't remember which one?"
But she only observed that probationers were always coming andgoing, and it wasn't worth while learning their names until theywere accepted. And that, anyhow, probationers should never be sentto private patients, who are paying a lot and want the best.
"Really," she added, "I don't know what the school is coming to.Since this war in Europe every girl wants to wear a uniform and beready to go to the front if we have trouble. All sorts of sillychildren are applying. We have one now, on this very floor, not aday over nineteen."
"Who is she?" asked Middleton. He felt that this was the one. Shewas so exactly the sort Miss Willoughby would object to.
"Jane Brown," snapped Miss Willoughby. "A little, namby-pamby,mush-and-milk creature, afraid of her own shadow."
Now, Jane Brown, at that particular moment, was sitting in herlittle room in the dormitory, with the old watch ticking on thestand so she would not over-stay her off duty. She was aching withfatigue from her head, with its smooth and shiny hair, to her feet,which were in a bowl of witch hazel and hot water. And she wascrying over a letter she was writing.
Jane Brown had just come from her first death. It had taken place inH ward, where she daily washed window-sills, and disinfected stands,and carried dishes in and out. And it had not been what she hadexpected. In the first place, the man had died for hours. She hadnever heard of this. She had thought of death as coming quickly—aglance of farewell, closing eyes, and—rest. But for hours and hoursthe struggle had gone on, a fight for breath that all the