Actors and actresses -- Fiction; Courtship -- Fiction; World War, 1914-1918 -- Veterans -- Fiction
Two weeks later, when Quin struggled back to consciousness, he labored
under the delusion that he was still in the army and back in the camp
hospital. Eleanor, who scarcely left his bedside, was once more Miss
Bartlett, the ward visitor, and he was Patient Number 7. He tried to
explain to all those dim figures moving about the darkened room that he
was making her a bead chain, and unless they got him more beads he could
not finish it in time. When they reassured him and tried to get him to
take food, he invariably wanted to know if Miss Bartlett had brought it,
and which was her day to come again. Then the doctor and the nurse would
argue with him, and try to make him remember things he was sure had never
happened, and his mental distress would become acute. At such times
somebody, who of course could not be Miss Bartlett, but who had her voice
and eyes, would take his hand and tell him to go to sleep, then the
tangles would all come straight.
One day he was startled out of a stupor by the sound of a querulous old
voice saying:
"I guess if he could get out of bed to come across the city to me, I can
come across the hall to him. Wheel me closer!"
Quin was drifting off again, when a hand gripped his wrist.
"Open your eyes, boy! Look at me. Do you know who this is?"
He lifted his heavy lids, and wondered dully what Madam was doing at the
camp hospital.
"Put the blinds up," she commanded to some one back of her. "Let him see
the wall-paper, the furniture. Move that fool screen away."
For the first time, Quin brought his confused attention to bear on his
surroundings, and even glanced at the space over the mantel to see if a
certain picture was at its old place.
"You are in my house," said Madam, with a finality that was not to be
disputed. "Do you remember the first time you came here?"
He shook his head.
"Yes, you do. I fell down the steps and broke my leg, and you came in off
the street to tie me up with an umbrella and the best table napkins. What
are you smiling about?"
"Smelling salts," Quin murmured, as if to himself.
"You don't need any smelling salts!" cried Madam, missing his allusion.
"All you need is to rouse yourself and put your mind on what I am saying.
Do you remember living in this house?"
He could not truthfully say that he did, though familiar objects and
sounds seemed to be all around him.
"Well, I'll make you," said Madam, nothing daunted. "You stayed in this
very room for three months to keep the burglars from stealing Isobel and
Enid, and every night you walked me up and down the hall on my crutches."
She paused and looked at him expectantly; but things were still a blur to
him.
"You surely remember the Easter party?" she persisted. "If you can forget
the way your shirt kept popping open that night, and the way your jaw
swelled up, it's more than I can!"
Quin winced. Even concussion of the brain had failed to deaden the memory
of that awful night.
"I sort of remember," he admitted.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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