Daphne Deane (25 page)

He turned to Doctor Morgan and said a few words in technical terms that neither Daphne nor Anne understood, and Doctor Morgan turned to Anne: "He is quite right," he said. "It would be nothing short of criminal to move the patient."

"But you have not seen him!" gasped Anne angrily. "I brought you here to take full charge, and you have nothing but the word of this other man to judge by. I insist that you take charge."

"The word of Doctor McKenna is not to be doubted," said Doctor Morgan decidedly. "Besides, my dear little lady, I could not think of taking over a case of so eminent a doctor as Patrick McKenna. It is not professional etiquette, anyway. As you depicted the matter to me, the man in charge was inexperienced and
wanted
me to come. Now I must withdraw entirely from the matter and hasten back to my work. Don't be worried. You have the best doctor I know on the job, and if anybody can save the life of your friend, he will."

"Indeed, I do not wish him to have anything to do with the matter," said Anne stamping her foot childishly. "They told me at the hospital that you were a great doctor, but I don't think much of you if you would let a man die for the sake of professional etiquette. If you don't take charge at once, I shall tell the men from the ambulance to carry Mr. Morrell to the hospital and find some other doctor when we get there."

"Well, the men wouldn't do it," grinned Doctor Morgan. "I should tell them not to. They know me."

"
I'm
paying them!" said Anne haughtily.

"Yes, but, you see,
I'm
bossing them. Now, come, little lady, sit down and let me tell you a thing or two."

"I shall not sit down!"

"Oh, very well, stand then," he said in perfect good nature. "You see it's this way. You couldn't have a better physician to care for your friend if you were to search the world over. What he says goes, and you might as well understand it now. You'll save yourself a lot of trouble and mortification."

"Look here, Dick, I want you to go up and see the patient and satisfy the lady," spoke Doctor McKenna. "Besides, I'd like your advice."

"Very well, I'll go. No, you must stay here, Miss Casper. I'll come down in a few minutes and tell you just what I think."

"I'm going with you. I have a right."

"I'm not so sure of that. Not if it makes the patient worse." Doctor Morgan looked at his friend.

"Let her come," said Doctor McKenna. "It may open her eyes. That is, if she knows how to keep her mouth shut and not make a fuss."

Anne Casper flashed her brilliant eyes at him in contempt and followed the doctors up the stairs. Daphne watched them go with a sinking heart. Would that heartless self-willed girl gain her point after all, and perhaps kill Keith? Well, perhaps he would be just as well off as married to her. How could he ever have cared for a girl like that? Then she resolutely put such thoughts away from her. Perhaps this determined girl really loved him and wanted to help him. Perhaps she was only blind and foolish, not knowing what wonderful doctors these were, and how wise and skillful.

So Anne Casper had her way and entered that quiet room where Keith Morrell lay turning his head restlessly and moaning in a rising delirium. But in the doorway she stood riveted to the spot, staring at the man she thought she wanted. Was that the handsome Keith Morrell, that white-faced man with the bloody bandages covering his head and with cuts and bruises about his eyes? Across one cheek was an ugly cut strapped up with adhesive. Perhaps he would be scarred. Horrible! They had cut his hair away, his wonderful dark hair. How ghastly! And there was blood on his scalp. Blood always made her ill.

She watched him in horror for a long minute, saw his fingers restlessly picking at the bed covers, heard his low moaning, and suddenly turned away and leaned against the door frame.

"Take me away!" she commanded. "I--never could stand----the sight of blood!" Her childish complaining voice make the sick man moan the more.

Doctor McKenna signed to the nurse and she came and led Anne downstairs. Daphne, sitting on guard below with her troubled thoughts, heard her talking to the nurse.

"I'm
very
sensitive," she explained loftily. "I never could bear to see anybody suffer! It makes me quite ill!"

The nurse established her on the couch in the living room and gave her a glass of water, though she said she preferred wine and looked at her in contempt when Daphne told her they hadn't any wine in the house.

Then the nurse went back upstairs, but Daphne did not stay with Anne Casper. She went into the kitchen and busied herself about, getting supper ready for those who could eat it. Till she heard a call from the living room: "Where
are
you? Isn't there
any
one about?" And she went back to see what the unpleasant guest wanted now. She found her standing by the front window looking out across the road and down through the Morrell garden toward the old house.

"Isn't the Morrell house near here somewhere?" she asked when Daphne came in, never turning her head to look at her.

"Yes," said Daphne, with difficulty controlling her voice. "That is it right across there."

"Heavens! Not that shabby old barracks! You don't mean it? Why it's hideously ugly and old-fashioned. It hasn't a bit of smartness about it. I should think he would want to sell it as quickly as he could. I can't imagine anyone wanting to keep that!"

"It is almost two hundred years old," said Daphne with all her love and reverence for the old house in her voice.

"It certainly looks it," laughed the other girl contemptuously. "It ought to have been pulled down long ago."

Daphne wanted to cry out against this injustice and was glad to hear the doctors coming downstairs. She escaped to the kitchen without reply and found tears in her eyes when she got there. This girl seemed to have torn down all the beautiful things in connection with the old Morrell house and the dear lives that had been lived there. She had ruthlessly tried to destroy with a word something that was precious. It was as if the fairy tale that had been going on so many beautiful young years had suddenly ended in a hideous nightmare.

She never knew just what Doctor Morgan said to the petulant little heiress that made her decide at last to go home and not return until she was sent for, but she went. A few minutes later as Daphne came into the living room bearing a tray with coffee and sandwiches for Doctor Morgan, who would have no time now to get his dinner, she heard him saying to Doctor McKenna: "So that's his fiancée, is it? Poor fellow! He might better die than come back to that!"

The tone he said it in not only expressed contempt for Anne Casper but also implied a grave doubt as to whether the young man would ever come back, and Daphne went back to the kitchen with a heavy heart.

But Daphne had not long to indulge in anxiety, for there came a knock at the back door. It had just turned dusk, and Mrs. Gassner stood there. She hadn't even stopped for her excuse of a cup of sugar. She was breathless with haste.

"I just stepped over to find out what has happened," she said as she came puffing into the kitchen. "He isn't dead yet, is he? I couldn't make out whether they took him away in that ambulance or not; it wasn't turned the right way for me to see. Those syringa bushes hid the entrance where it was standing. And I just couldn't wait to know. You know a lot of people will phone me, hesitating to disturb you. They'll think I'm the next-door neighbor and ought to know."

Daphne realized that she was under scrutiny and that whatever this ferret-eyed woman saw or heard would be reported verbatim, and highly illuminated. So she tried her best to look calm and casual.

"Of course," she said. "It's kind of you, and we appreciate your wanting to help." She gave a little fleeting smile. "Of course, everybody is anxious to know about Mr. Morrell. They all loved his mother and father so much. But there isn't much change since morning, I'm afraid. The doctor thinks it may be several days more before we can hope for any, that is, if he lives that long. We'll just have to be patient."

Mrs. Gassner looked disappointed. Almost any change would have been good news to her.

"But the ambulance. Did they take him away to a hospital?"

"No," said Daphne coolly. "When it got out here, the doctor didn't think it was wise to move him."

"Oh, my goodness!" said Mrs. Gassner appalled. "Now who will have to pay for that? You won't, will you? I've heard ambulances cost a lot. Who ordered it, anyway? You folks or the doctor? I should think the one who ordered it would be responsible."

"I really don't know," said Daphne coldly. "Certainly we did not send for it. It doesn't matter, does it, a little thing like that? The thing that concerns us is to have Mr. Morrell get well."

"Well, I s'pose you could look at it that way, too, of course. But say, who was that girl? What did she have to do with it? She wasn't another nurse, was she? She seemed too well dressed for that."

"One of his friends, probably. I really didn't inquire whether she was a nurse or not. I've been too busy."

"Well, she didn't come from around here, did she? I don't think I ever saw her before. Did she come from New York?"

"I didn't ask."

At last Mrs. Gassner took her leave, realizing that she was pretty well baffled and would be obliged to draw on her imagination for most of her information. And Daphne plunged into hasty preparation of the evening meal. It was to be a very simple affair, eaten in the kitchen, to keep the house as quiet as possible. Broiled steak and roasted potatoes, peas that the children had shelled. It didn't take long to prepare, but Daphne's heart was heavy as she went about setting the kitchen table. The days stretched long ahead, filled with anxiety. Where would they end? In death and sorrow, after all? And would that unspeakable girl return? She seemed the one drop too much in the bitter cup of the days. In fact, her existence seemed to take the joy out of a good many things that had been dear to them all. She seemed to have taken away their right to call Keith Morrell their friend.

It was just after the evening meal was concluded that there came another caller. Daphne, as she went on weary feet to the door, glanced out and was glad that it would be too dark for Mrs. Gassner to keep tabs on this one, anyway. But she reckoned without her host, for the taxi that took the visitor away hadn't reached the corner before Mrs. Gassner telephoned.

"Is that you, Daphne? Say, I heard a car drive up. That wasn't the undertaker, was it? I've been so worried I had to call up."

"No," giggled Daphne hysterically, "it was Mr. Sawyer of New York, the head of the firm where Mr. Morrell is employed. He merely called to inquire how he was."

"Good night! Let me answer that old hag next time she calls," said Donald. "I'll tell her where to get off! Does she think you haven't anything to do but sit around and answer her nosy questions?"

Daphne turned from the phone and wiped the tears from her eyes, still laughing nervously.

"Donald, dear, if this keeps on I'm afraid your kindly disposition is going to be utterly ruined," she said.

"I'll say it is!" muttered Donald, frowning. "Such a lot of old hens, so curious they can't wait a minute for things to happen."

But night settled down at last, and Daphne, too weary to think, lay down upon her bed and prayed: "Oh, Father, don't let him die!" She opened her eyes and looked across to her window from which she could just glimpse Emily Lynd's light shining, and she knew that the dear old saint would be praying, too, for the child of her beloved friend.

The papers were giving daily bulletins now of Keith Morrell's condition. It had become an affair of wide interest. If Keith Morrell died, Gowney and his associates would be indicted for murder. A federal case! Public menace Gowney tried for murder! Newspapermen were hot on the case. There was scarcely an hour of the day when reporters did not call at the house or on the telephone. The Deanes had to have the telephone bell muffled and the instrument put in the kitchen, for every time it was used in the lower hall the patient grew restless and moaned.

It came to be necessary for the doctor to write a brief line of a daily bulletin each time he came, and leave it on the telephone stand. Daphne had learned to save herself by sending Ranse or Beverly to the telephone to give the doctor's word and no more.

But among others who made friendly telephone calls of inquiry each day was Mr. Dinsmore. He said he was a friend of Keith's father and wanted to come out as soon as there was a chance he might see the invalid, and Daphne always answered him gently and went more into detail about the invalid than when others called. She told the children always to call her when he was on the telephone. He seemed a kindly, fatherly man.

Then one morning there was a change. The fever had abated somewhat, the wound was draining nicely, the cerebral condition seemed decidedly better, and the patient had dropped into what seemed like a normal sleep for the first time since the shooting.

Doctor McKenna came and went several times that day, and toward evening he brought Doctor Morgan out with him for a few minutes. When they went away they seemed almost cheerful.

"We may have some good news for you now in a day or so, if the cerebral symptoms don't return," he told Daphne, and wrote on the telephone pad that the condition of the patient was slightly more hopeful. Daphne went about as if walking on air. Her heart almost felt like singing, though it had to be a silent song, for the doctor had cautioned special quiet during the next few hours. It was possible that full consciousness might return at any time, and there must be nothing to startle or weary the sick man.

That evening just as Daphne was about to retire, the nurse came through the hall elated. The patient had opened his eyes and asked for a drink of water. He had taken several spoonfuls and then dropped off to sleep like a baby.

"He'll be better in the morning, I'm sure," said the nurse. "I know the signs.

And Daphne went to sleep, her heart full of thanksgiving.