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Page 31
But at the word "neurasthenics" Jane had put down the toaster, and
by the time the unconscious young man had reached the O'Shaughnessy
she was going out the door with her chin up. He called after her,
and finding she did not turn he followed her, shouting apologies at
her back until she went into her room. And as hospital doors don't
lock from the inside she pushed the washstand against the knob and
went to bed to keep warm.
He stood outside and apologised again, and later he brought a tray
of bread and butter and a pot of the tea, which had been boiling for
two hours by that time, and put it outside the door on the floor.
But Jane refused to get it, and finished her breakfast from a jar of
candied ginger that some one had sent her, and read "Lorna Doone."
Now and then a sound of terrific hammering would follow the
steampipes and Jane would smile wickedly. By noon she had finished
the ginger and was wondering what the person about whom she and the
family had disagreed would think when he heard the way she was being
treated. And by one o'clock she had cried her eyes entirely shut and
had pushed the washstand back from the door.
II
Now a hospital full of nurses and doctors with a bell to summon food
and attention is one thing. A hospital without nurses and doctors,
and with only one person to do everything, and that person mostly in
the cellar, is quite another. Jane was very sad and lonely, and to
add to her troubles the delirium-tremens case down the hall began to
sing "Oh Promise Me" in a falsetto voice and kept it up for hours.
At three Jane got up and bathed her eyes. She also did her hair,
and thus fortified she started out to find the red-haired person.
She intended to say that she was paying sixty-five dollars a week
and belonged to a leading family, and that she didn't mean to
endure for a moment the treatment she was getting, and being
called a neurasthenic and made to cook for the other patients.
She went slowly along the hall. The convalescent typhoid heard her
and called.
"Hey, doc!" he cried. "Hey, doc! Great Scott, man, when do I get
some dinner?"
Jane quickened her steps and made for the pantry. From somewhere
beyond, the delirium-tremens case was singing happily:
_I--love you o--own--ly,
I love--but--you._
Jane shivered a little. The person in whom she had been interested
and who had caused her precipitate retirement, if not to a nunnery,
to what answered the same purpose, had been very fond of that song.
He used to sing it, leaning over the piano and looking into her
eyes.
Jane's nose led her again to the pantry. There was a sort of soupy
odour in the air, and sure enough the red-haired person was there,
very immaculate in fresh ducks, pouring boiling water into three
tea-cups out of a kettle and then dropping a beef capsule into each
cup.
Now Jane had intended, as I have said, to say that she was being
outrageously treated, and belonged to one of the best families, and
so on. What she really said was piteously:
"How good it smells!"
"Doesn't it!" said the red-haired person, sniffing. "Beef capsules.
I've made thirty cups of it so far since one o'clock--the more they
have the more they want. I say, be a good girl and run up to the
kitchen for some more crackers while I carry food to the
convalescent typhoid. He's murderous!"
"Where are the crackers?" asked Jane stiffly, but not exactly caring
to raise an issue until she was sure of getting something to eat.
"Store closet in the kitchen, third drawer on the left," said the
red-haired man, shaking some cayenne pepper into one of the cups.
"You might stop that howling lunatic on your way if you will."
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