CHAPTER XX
THE doctors who instructed the classes at the Alliance were young practicing physicians of the best training and reputation in the city, and they offered their services to the Red Cross Society without remuneration. Reba had been in awe of them at first. For a week or so she invariably selected a certain button on their waistcoats to gaze at before she replied to their requests or inquiries, as they stood expectant before her desk, as if by keeping her eyes steadfast she could thereby control her voice and manner. Rarely did her eyes sweep their faces, and only when her glance was on a journey somewhere else—to reference book, clock, or insisting telephone.
She knew the doctors' names, but she hadn't the courage to use them. They "Miss Jeromed" her repeatedly.
"O Miss Jerome, will you send some arm-splints and bandages to room 20," or, "Miss Jerome, messenger-boy, please, to resuscitate," or "Miss Jerome, be so kind as to call the roll for me, will you?"
Reba wished with all her heart that she might reply in the same easy off-hand manner, but she couldn't. Words stuck. Her answers were always brief, "Yes," and, "Certainly," or "Very well."
But beneath that short businesslike air of hers, which many a man would mistake for indifference, her heart was hammering and pounding a half a dozen times an evening. She experienced the keenest delight at being addressed by these fine young professionals in such free and friendly fashion. Her delight at first was a vague, conglomerate thing, no more alarming than the pleasure she had felt, still did feel, over recognitions from her women associates. It was not until one of the doctors abruptly stood out from the others, separate and distinct, that the cause of the hammering and the pounding became a definite enough thing for her to build air-castles upon.
Dr. Booth was very popular among the members of his Red Cross classes. Young—thirty-five or so—close-cropped mustache, tall and spare, with a tautness of manner and speech that betokened an over-supply of high-strung nerves held in rigorous control. And behind the curt, crisp bearing a fascinating inconsistency. For Dr. Booth, however imperious and severe he might appear when lecturing, was never anything but kind and considerate to the girls and women in his classes when he asked them questions, even if the answers were lacking in comprehension.
He appeared an aristocrat—every inch of him—to the members of his classes at the Women's Alliance. He was always scrupulously dressed. The heavily-wrought, little-finger seal-ring on his right hand (they were gentleman's hands—nicely manicured), the watch, strapped about his bony wrist, made him a subject of frequent discussion and admiration.
Reba, of course, had observed Dr. Booth—the wrist-watch, seal-ring, the black opal scarf-pin (she always did observe such details about a man), but not until the night that he summoned her to his classroom, near the close of one of his lectures, was he of any more interest to her (or much more, anyway) than the other half-dozen doctors on her record-book.
"Would you be so kind, Miss Jerome," he had asked her in his quick crisp manner that night, approaching her desk where she sat knitting, "as to come to Room 20 and allow me to demonstrate on you a moment? I won't keep you long."
"Certainly," replied Reba.
"My pupils, none of them seem inclined to volunteer, though I could have managed any one of them easily enough," he explained, once back in his lecture-room.
One of the pupils tittered at that, and all of them smiled. Reba glanced with questioning eyes around the little group of half a dozen women gathered about the demonstration-bed. This class was composed of older women—ten or a dozen rather solidly built matrons, who had formed their own group and applied for an instructor. There was not one of them present to-night who weighed under one hundred and seventy-five pounds.
"Will you please lie down on the bed, Miss Jerome?" asked Dr. Booth. "I am going to lift you."
Reba swallowed at that, but made fast a hairpin or two, then obeyed; sitting down first on the edge of the high hospital bed, tucking her skirts about her ankles, and swinging both her feet up onto it; then lying back flat, with her hands folded across her chest, and at a loss to know where to look.
"She's not absolutely helpless," Dr. Booth explained in his professional manner. "Has the use of her arms partially, as most invalids do. The idea is: you must let your body and chest carry part of the weight, after the first lift. I'll show you." He leaned over Reba. "Put your right arm over my shoulder, back of my neck, please," he instructed.
Reba did exactly as she was bidden. Dr. Booth slipped his arms beneath her.
"A little firmer grasp with the right arm, please, Miss Jerome."
His face was very close to hers. She could see the brown flecks in his steely blue eyes.
"That's better. Now!" he said, and with apparently little effort, Reba felt her one hundred and eighteen pounds lifted in firm, skillful arms; supported against a strong, solid, softish wall, a little warm; carried across the room, and back; while the lecturer continued his explanations, as if she had been so much merchandise, laid her skillfully back upon the bed without a jar or jolt, and straightening himself afterward, made flawless again, with little masculine motions, slightly disarranged sleeve, cuff, and coat-collar.
"Oh, it looked so easy," exclaimed one of the elderly women.
"Let me see if I can do it," twittered another.
"And me, too," said a third, slipping off a tight jacket, and laying aside notebook and pencil.
How the old ladies tugged and pulled, exerted and strained, and the one who did succeed finally in getting Reba up off the bed into her arms (she was full-busted and short-armed), how she wheezed and panted!
"Oh, do show us again, Dr. Booth," she pleaded. "There's a knack to it."
And he did show them again, not once—but twice. It was the fatal third time that Reba, who had succeeded thus far in keeping herself under control, blushed when Dr. Booth leaned over her, and again asked her to place her arm over his shoulder. There was no more cause to blush this third time than before; nor so much, for she was prepared now. But Reba's blushes were often unaccountable. It was no slight blush. Her face grew scarlet. The bright glow spread to her very ear-tips.
Dr. Booth observed it, of course. He would have been blind indeed if he hadn't. But naturally it was necessary to complete the demonstration once begun—lift her up, and put her down again gently.
Afterward he mercifully turned immediately away from her with a brief, "Thank you very much, Miss Jerome. That's all." And Reba got out of the room somehow.
During the following fortnight she suffered horribly from chagrin when she recalled that blush. But Dr. Booth's unchanged and impersonal attitude toward her, after the episode, was proof to her that her blush was of small significance to him, and the experience was just beginning to lose its grasp upon her when something else happened to make its details flash up bright and vital again.
One night, unaware that he would be inconveniencing any one, Dr. Booth remained in his lecture-room after he had dismissed his class at the usual hour of nine-thirty, in order to correct some papers (he had given his pupils a short quiz), and after he had finished with the papers, he glanced through a typewritten manuscript of his own—a report on a recent investigation—that should be mailed that night.
When he emerged into the large outer room, into which the smaller classrooms all opened, he observed that it had a deserted appearance. There was only one light burning in a far corner. He glanced at his watch. Nearly eleven! Had he stayed so long? Oh, well! He put on his hat, and then lit a fresh cigarette. Suddenly he observed that beneath the light in the far corner Miss Jerome was seated at her desk as usual. She was knitting.
"You here still?" he exclaimed, instinctively removing his hat and cigarette at sight of her, and approaching her desk. "I'm sorry. Were you waiting till I cleared out?"
Reba kept on knitting.
"Oh, I didn't mind."
"I had no idea I was keeping any one," he told her.
"Oh, you weren't," she assured him, her eyes still downcast.
"Nor that it was so late, either. Haven't they a janitor around this place? What is it you have to do, anyhow?"
Reba still kept her eyes safely on her amber needles.
"Just turn out a few lights, and lock a few doors. That's all."
"Well, look here, you must let me help," he said, and tossed his cigarette into the basket by Reba's desk.
"Oh, no—please don't bother," replied Reba. "I don't mind. Really. But it's very kind of you," she added, glancing up, and hastily dropping her eyes again.
They were all alone in the big, hollow-sounding room—absolutely alone in this section of the building. The color began mounting to Reba's cheeks. Dr. Booth surveyed her a moment in silence. By George, how pretty the little secretary was, blushing slowly like that!
Chadwick Booth enjoyed pretty girls, when he had nothing else to enjoy, and he certainly had nothing else to-night.
"Nonsense," he laughed. "Didn't you help me the other night?" He recalled now the vivid blush of that occasion. "I wouldn't have tried to lift one of those two-hundred pounders for a good deal," he smiled, looking straight at Reba and forcing the blush that was but a faint one, so far, to a deep rose. "You must let me reciprocate a little, after such a service. Come, let's lock up, or whatever it is you have to do. And then you must let me take you wherever you want to go. I've my car at the door."
Reba swept him another flickering glance. How like he was to the young god in the white flannels who had asked her to go sailing so many years ago, standing before her like this, offering to take her in his car somewhere—she wasn't quite sure where—in such chivalrous fashion, tossing away whole cigarettes out of politeness to her. She wished she knew if a young lady of Dr. Booth's own circle would accept his invitation, and if so, just how. But she didn't know, so she replied, shaking her head, and keeping her needles in action, and her eyes upon them, "Oh, no thank you."
"But you've got to get home some way, haven't you?"
"Oh, you mean home!" she exclaimed.
Yes, he meant home, of course. But—he surveyed Reba with awakening interest. Had he been mistaken? Was that shy little manner of hers assumed?
"We could take the long way round home," he said.
Reba didn't know why the sudden change of Dr. Booth's voice sent such a thrill of pleasure through her. But it did!
"I'm sorry. I'm home already. I live here," she told him.
"Live here!" he repeated, gazing at her critically. "In this place!" He was still in doubt. She was dressed rather expensively—wore to-night a silk sweater (Chadwick Booth knew silk sweaters when he saw them, and their prices too). Reba's was a blue and gold changeable affair. "Live here! You! Exotic young lady!" he said, shaking his head. Then, "Well," he resumed with a sigh, "if you insist upon it—and won't come joy-riding with me—" he left the sentence unfinished for several seconds, but she simply kept on knitting rather exasperatingly. "If you won't accept my invitation—" he gave her still a second opportunity, but she didn't take it, "then, good-night," he finished.
"Good-night," said Reba, glancing up once again from under her lashes, and, this time, daring to let her gaze linger a second or two.
"Pretty eyes she has. Brownish," thought Chadwick Booth three minutes later as he stepped into his car.
And as he sped away Reba, left behind in the deserted Red Cross rooms, two stories up in the Alliance building, was gravely brushing the pile of cigarette ashes Dr. Booth had left behind on a corner of his desk, into the palm of her hand and depositing them in the waste-basket.
Afterward, in her room, she cooped up her palm over her nose and drew in a deep breath of the faint fragrance.
"I wonder what 'exotic' means," she said.