Spice Box (13 page)

“Are you a nurse?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Janice, hoping he wouldn’t ask where.

“Well, all right, in that case we’ll let you get by this time. Have you a ticket?”

“Oh, no, the station was closed. What is the fare to Boston?”

He mumbled the price, and Janice, with thankfulness, handed out the money, leaving her little pocketbook much depleted. But then, she still had a little money pinned in her dress.

She put her head back on the seat and slept fitfully the rest of the journey. But a little before they reached the city the conductor came searching her out, putting a kindly hand on her shoulder.

“Did you tell me you were a nurse?” he asked with a note of anxiety in his voice.

Janice sprang up, startled.

“Yes,” she said. “I’m a nurse.”

“Well, there’s a woman in the drawing room back there in the parlor car who has been taken very sick. Her daughter saw you go through the car awhile ago, and she wants to know if you can come and help take care of her mother until we get to Boston and then go with them to their home and see her mother settled in bed. They had a nurse engaged to travel with them, but she didn’t turn up at the appointed time. They’ll pay you what you ask.”

To Janice the conductor looked like an angel from heaven sent to relieve her necessity. In the position of a nurse, she would be at least in a measure protected, and she would be relieved from that fearful feeling of being utterly alone in the world.

“Oh yes,” she said eagerly, “I’ll be glad to help anybody. I was going after a job.”

She rose at once and followed her grim guide to the second car ahead and was welcomed by a querulous little old lady and her anxious daughter.

She was frightened at first, lest her small skill and her sobrief training would not be equal to the case, but she found she was needed more to give confidence than anything else. The daughter was not used to looking after her mother and was bored and tired by the constant, fretful demands upon her, so Janice found it comparatively easy to drop into the ways she had learned at the hospital. And when at last the invalid was resting quietly, Janice was approached by the daughter about the possibility of coming to her mother permanently.

“I can see that Mother likes you,” she said.

And so Janice sat by the window and watched the train roll into Boston, with great relief in her heart. God was caring for her. He had not forgotten her. This seemed to be a way out from her troubles. At least for the present.

She had told the daughter, “Why, yes, I was coming to Boston to look for a job, and I have nothing definite in mind yet. I’ll come for a few days anyway, and you can see if you really want me. You know, I am a stranger to you.”

“Well, we are strangers to you, too,” said the woman, “but I’m sure we’re going to like you. You see, what Mother likes is the test, and she definitely likes you.”

So Janice, out of her distress, arrived at Boston, and was taken in a taxi to a great, luxurious house where there was every comfort. She went to work just as if she were still a probationer on training, only she had no head over her but the whims of an erratic old lady and her worldly daughter. That night when she lay down to rest at last, she was so weary that she had no time nor strength even to think it all over. God had cared for her, that was all. For the rest, she must not even think of Enderby or Dr. Sterling and the work she had left behind her, for Herbert was there, and she
had
to get away from Herbert.

But the next day and the next, and all the days that succeeded, brought vivid pictures of her life at Enderby. She tried to keep her thoughts from the young doctor who had been so kind to her and to make some plans for her future, but try as she would, his tender glances, the memory of his kindness, the gentleness of his tones, would keep coming back until tears would sting her eyes and overwhelm her. But her first waking thoughts would be of Sterling, till one day she realized that this must not be. Probably God took her away from Enderby because she was getting too fond of him, and he engaged to a beautiful wealthy girl! She must remember that and put him forever out of her thoughts. He was not for her, not even as a friend anymore. She would probably never see him again now, and she must cease to think of him.

So she filled her days with duties and made herself indispensable to the Whittiers.

Not that they allowed themselves to grow fond of her in the sense that they had much companionship together. She was in a position of an upper servant to them, and they were people who held themselves aloof from all who served them. So Janice was practically living her life alone, with no one to question or care about her. It was enough for the Whittiers that she was a good nurse and ready to meet all possible demands. Why should she have any life of her own, anyway? That was their attitude. And so Janice was lonely, and more and more her thoughts drifted back to her dear sister and the precious baby who had gone to heaven.

Back at the hospital, her flight was not generally discovered until morning. The nurse who was looking for her stole into her room about eleven o’clock in the evening and, finding the bed empty, concluded that Janice had felt better and gone back to her duties. She so reported it to the doctor. But the doctor, immediately on the alert, sent orders that Mary should go back to bed at once. The messenger asked the head nurse if she knew where Mary was, and she said with a cold sneer, “Oh no! She isn’t on duty. She’s gone to her room.” And so the messenger let it go at that and took no further pains to find out whether it was so or not.

But in the morning it was discovered that Mary was not anywhere about the place, and no one knew just when she had last been seen. The nurse who had been told to look after her was frightened when she saw the steely blue in the doctor’s eyes. It made her think of his flashing instruments when he had an operation to perform. She finally confessed that she had not gone back the second time to see if Mary had returned. She went away from the doctor’s eyes with a revised idea of duty.

The doctor, now thoroughly alarmed, began a quiet investigation, cross-examining every nurse and employee on the place, and finally reaching Sam.

He listened quietly as Sam told him his story, remembering the way gossip could fly through the institution, and when Sam’s story was told he said in a matter-of-fact tone, “That’s all right, Sam. I wasn’t sure whether she got off safely or not. I was busy in the office, and no one seemed to know whether she had succeeded in finding you.”

He asked a few questions about whether she had caught the train and exactly what time it left the station, and then thanked Sam.

“I’m glad you looked after her, Sam,” he said pleasantly.

But after Sam had gone back to the garage, he went to the telephone and asked a few questions of the station agent at the Junction. The agent told him the train was always closed after the seven o’clock train went down, and he went right home. He couldn’t say whether anybody from the hospital went on that train or not. He saw Sam drive up just before the train came, but he didn’t take notice whether any nurses got on the train or not. The doctor thanked him and hung up. This, of course, confirmed Sam’s story as far as it went.

The doctor told the head nurse that Mary had been called away suddenly, and it would be necessary for her to put someone else in her place. It was very possible that she might not return for some time. He spoke as if he had just received a message to that effect. The head nurse eyed him suspiciously but asked no questions. She knew that he expected her to take this information to the other nurses, and she did so. It was a great relief to her to have “Mary” out of her way. Mary was entirely too conscientious to suit her purposes, also the doctor never seemed to see
her
when Mary was about. But she suspected that there was something more behind this than appeared on the surface.

So the doctor silenced the brief excitement about Janice’s disappearance, but the tumult in his own heart grew as the day passed by and no word came from her. He had hoped against hope that she would send him a telegram or a note or perhaps telephone, though something warned him that she would not.

And more and more he was convinced that this all connected in some way with the patient who was an alcohol addict.

So that afternoon he made a visit to Herbert Stuart’s room, satisfied that he was the cause of Janice’s flight.

The man was nervous and irritable, complaining that his old hallucinations of vision were upon him. He constantly saw a face that he knew to be dead. Once he querulously inquired what had become of the nurse who had fainted on his arrival, and when told she had left, he drew a sigh of relief. Said he was glad, that her face looked like someone he used to know.

Sterling stayed by him an hour, trying to soothe him, talking with him of his home, gradually getting bits of information that made him more and more sure that this man was somehow connected with his probationer.

When the day passed and no word from Mary arrived, he placed Brownleigh in charge of the hospital and took a short trip on his own account. The nurses said among themselves that he had gone to see Rose Bradford, and it was high time for him to show a little belated devotion, now that his pretty little nurse who had turned his head completely was out of sight.

However, Dr. Sterling did not go to Bradford Gables, but to Willow Croft, where his new patient owned to having lived at one time. He took a room at the hotel and plied the landlord with a few judicious questions, which helped out the information he had gotten from the unsuspecting patient.

It was not hard to get the landlord started. He spoke glibly of the Stuart family, although he said the man, Herbert Stuart, was “no good!” and bled his lovely wife until she died. He bewailed the fact that her beautiful sister, Janice Whitmore, went away to visit friends on the Pacific Coast as soon as the funeral was over. Poor thing! She was just wrapped up in her sister, who had been more than a mother to her. Yes, Mrs. Stuart was buried up in the cemetery. The hotel cab was at his service if he wanted to go anywhere. They had a pretty cemetery, it was really worth seeing. The town was proud of it.

Sterling thanked him, declined the cab, but a little later wended his way on foot to the hill where in front of the great stone entrance gateway he had found the girl in the snow. It was a very different scene now from that stormy night when he had brought the little white girl back to the hospital. The trees were in full foliage, and the hillside was covered with well-kept grass. There were flowers planted everywhere, and nothing about the place suggested death.

He wandered in among the graves and was not long in discovering an ostentatious monument, the kind the new patient would be likely to put up, ornate and showy, with the words:

L
OUISE
W
HITMORE
W
IFE OF
H
ERBERT
S
TUART
I
N THE THIRTIETH YEAR OF HER AGE.

And close at hand a simple but beautiful white stone bearing the words:

C
ARYL
,
D
AUGHTER OF
L
OUISE AND
H
ERBERT
S
TUART
A
GED THREE YEARS.

After that it was easy to piece the whole story together as he turned away and walked down the road to the hotel. The doctor was relieved beyond measure to know that the man at the hospital fighting drunkenness was neither the husband nor the father of the girl he had now come to know he loved. But why had she turned so deathly pale at sight of him, and why had she fled from his home in that awful storm, the night her sister was buried? He must be an awful beast.

When he returned to the hospital and found there was still no word from Janice, he engaged one of the best detectives he could find to search out information concerning the Stuart family, and especially as to the present whereabouts of Miss Whitmore, the sister.

In due time there came back plenty of information about Herbert Stuart, his activities, crooked and otherwise, including his several marriages, or near marriages. But there was not a word as to the whereabouts of his sister-in-law Janice Whitmore, except the rumor originating with Herbert Stuart, that she had gone west to visit with relatives.

So days passed with no word from Janice. And sometimes the doctor would waken from a dream of her, the look in her lovely eyes, the softness of her white hand when he had taken her pulse, the frightened look in her white face! And it seemed to him he could not bear it. He must go somewhere and find her. He must be able to tell her how he loved her.

Finally there came a time when he felt he must do something to get away from the thought of the girl, and so he accepted an invitation to a house party at Bradford Gables, for Rose Bradford had besieged him with invitations all summer.

It did not take long to show him that Rose Bradford’s power over him was gone, and the second day of the house party he knew that the only thing he wanted in the world was to go out and hunt for the girl he loved. She might not love him, of course, for she had seldom given him any encouragement, but at least he must know that she was safe, or he could never again go on with his work.

So he went back to the hospital and arranged for a prolonged absence, planning to search for Janice until he should find her.