Manners and customs -- Fiction; Short stories, American
Miss Bergen halted beside the cot of the Lieutenant and asked, “Is this
the fever case you spoke about, Doctor--the one you want moved to the
officers’ ward?” She slipped her hand up under his sleeve and felt his
wrist.
“His pulse is very high,” she said to the steward. “When did you take
his temperature?” She drew a little morocco case from her pocket and
from that took a clinical thermometer, which she shook up and down,
eying the patient meanwhile with a calm, impersonal scrutiny. The
Lieutenant raised his head and stared up at the white figure beside his
cot. His eyes opened and then shut quickly, with a startled look, in
which doubt struggled with wonderful happiness. His hand stole out
fearfully and warily until it touched her apron, and then, finding it
was real, he clutched it desperately, and twisting his face and body
toward her, pulled her down, clasping her hands in both of his, and
pressing them close to his face and eyes and lips. He put them from him
for an instant, and looked at her through his tears.
“Sweetheart,” he whispered, “sweetheart, I knew you’d come.”
As the nurse knelt on the deck beside him, her thermometer slipped from
her fingers and broke, and she gave an exclamation of annoyance. The
young Doctor picked up the pieces and tossed them overboard. Neither of
them spoke, but they smiled appreciatively. The Lieutenant was looking
at the nurse with the wonder and hope and hunger of soul in his eyes
with which a dying man looks at the cross the priest holds up before
him. What he saw where the German nurse was kneeling was a tall, fair
girl with great bands and masses of hair, with a head rising like a lily
from a firm, white throat, set on broad shoulders above a straight back
and sloping breast--a tall, beautiful creature, half-girl, half-woman,
who looked back at him shyly, but steadily.
“Listen,” he said.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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