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Page 39
"Then why don't you stay where you were?" she asked.
At that he reached down and took her hands again and pulled her to
her feet. He was very strong.
"Because if I do I'll never leave you again," he said. "And I must
go."
He dropped her hands, or tried to, but Jane wasn't ready to be
dropped.
"You know," she said, "I've told you I'm a sulky, bad-tempered----"
But at that he laughed suddenly, triumphantly, and put both his arms
round her and held her close.
"I love you," he said, "and if you are bad-tempered, so am I, only I
think I'm worse. It's a shame to spoil two houses with us, isn't
it?"
To her eternal shame be it told, Jane never struggled. She simply
held up her mouth to be kissed.
That is really all the story. Jane's father came with three
automobiles that morning at dawn, bringing with him all that goes to
make up a hospital, from a pharmacy clerk to absorbent cotton, and
having left the new supplies in the office he stamped upstairs to
Jane's room and flung open the door.
He expected to find Jane in hysterics and the pink silk kimono.
What he really saw was this: A coal fire was lighted in Jane's
grate, and in a low chair before it, with her nose swollen level
with her forehead, sat Jane, holding on her lap Mary O'Shaughnessy's
baby, very new and magenta-coloured and yelling like a trooper.
Kneeling beside the chair was a tall, red-headed person holding a
bottle of olive oil.
"Now, sweetest," the red-haired person was saying, "turn him on his
tummy and we'll rub his back. Gee, isn't that a fat back!"
And as Jane's father stared and Jane anxiously turned the baby, the
red-haired person leaned over and kissed the back of Jane's neck.
"Jane!" he whispered.
"Jane!!" said her father.
IN THE PAVILION
I
Now, had Billy Grant really died there would be no story. The story
is to relate how he nearly died; and how, approaching that bourne to
which no traveller may take with him anything but his sins--and this
with Billy Grant meant considerable luggage--he cast about for some
way to prevent the Lindley Grants from getting possession of his
worldly goods.
Probably it would never have happened at all had not young Grant,
having hit on a scheme, clung to it with a tenacity that might
better have been devoted to saving his soul, and had he not said to
the Nurse, who was at that moment shaking a thermometer: "Come
on--be a sport! It's only a matter of hours." Not that he said it
aloud--he whispered it, and fought for the breath to do even that.
The Nurse, having shaken down the thermometer, walked to the table
and recorded a temperature of one hundred and six degrees through a
most unprofessional mist of tears. Then in the symptom column she
wrote: "Delirious."
But Billy Grant was not delirious. A fever of a hundred and four or
thereabout may fuse one's mind in a sort of fiery crucible, but when
it gets to a hundred and six all the foreign thoughts, like seeing
green monkeys on the footboard and wondering why the doctor is
walking on his hands--all these things melt away, and one sees one's
past, as when drowning, and remembers to hate one's relations, and
is curious about what is coming when one goes over.
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