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Page 69
"The only person in the world who believes in me!" said the girl
bitterly. "And he's a fool!"
The Dummy smiled into her eyes. In his faded, childish eyes there
was the eternal sadness of his kind, eternal tenderness, and the
blur of one who has looked much into a far distance. Suddenly he
bent over and placed the man's hand over the girl's.
The last wall was down! Jerry buried his face in the white
coverlet.
* * * * *
The _interne_ was pacing the roof anxiously. Golden sunset had faded
to lavender--to dark purple--to night.
The Probationer came up at last--not a probationer now, of course;
but she had left off her cap and was much less stately.
"I'm sorry," she explained; "but I've been terribly busy. It went
off so well!"
"Of course--if you handled it."
"You know--don't you?--it was the lover who came. He looks so strong
and good--oh, she is safe now!"
"That's fine!" said the _interne_ absently. They were sitting on the
parapet now and by sliding his hand along he found her fingers.
"Isn't it a glorious evening?" He had the fingers pretty close by
that time; and suddenly gathering them up he lifted the hand to his
lips.
"Such a kind little hand!" he said over it. "Such a dear, tender
little hand! My hand!" he said, rather huskily.
Down in the courtyard the Dummy sat with the parrot on his knee. At
his feet the superintendent's dog lay on his side and dreamed of
battle. The Dummy's eyes lingered on the scar the Avenue Girl had
bandaged--how long ago!
His eyes wandered to the window with the young John among the
lilies. In the stable were still the ambulance horses that talked to
him without words. And he had the parrot. If he thought at all it
was that his Father was good and that, after all, he was not alone.
The parrot edged along his knee and eyed him with saturnine
affection.
THE MIRACLE
I
Big Mary was sweeping the ward with a broom muffled in a white bag.
In the breeze from the open windows, her blue calico wrapper
ballooned about her and made ludicrous her frantic thrusts after the
bits of fluff that formed eddies under the beds and danced in the
spring air.
She finished her sweeping, and, with the joyous scraps captured in
her dust-pan, stood in the doorway, critically surveying the ward.
It was brilliantly clean and festive; on either side a row of beds,
fresh white for the day; on the centre table a vase of Easter
lilies, and on the record-table near the door a potted hyacinth. The
Nurse herself wore a bunch of violets tucked in her apron-band. One
of the patients had seen the Junior Medical give them to her. The
Eastern sun, shining across the beds, made below them, on the
polished floor, black islands of shadow in a gleaming sea of light.
And scattered here and there, rocking in chairs or standing at
windows, enjoying the Sunday respite from sewing or the
bandage-machine, women, grotesque and distorted of figure, in
attitudes of weariness and expectancy, with patient eyes awaited
their crucifixion. Behind them, in the beds, a dozen perhaps who had
come up from death and held the miracle in their arms.
The miracles were small and red, and inclined to feeble and
ineffectual wrigglings. Fists were thrust in the air and brought
down on smiling, pale mother faces. With tight-closed eyes and open
mouths, each miracle squirmed and nuzzled until the mother would
look with pleading eyes at the Nurse. And the Nurse would look
severe and say:
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