BELINDA OF THE RED CROSS

BY ROBERT W. HAMILTON

FRONTISPIECE BY A. O. SCOTT

NEW YORK SULLY AND KLEINTEICH

Copyright, 1917, by SULLY AND KLEINTEICH

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

BELINDA

CONTENTS

CHAPTER I

A YOUNG MAN OUT OF THE AIR

Two white-uniformed orderlies guided the stretcher on its rubber-tired wheels into the corridor—the corridor which was all white tile, marble, enameled steel and glass.

The military-looking surgeon stalking ahead had not adjusted his mask; the jetty, cropped beard he wore on his full chin gave his countenance an especially sinister expression. His black eyes—their glance of a peculiarly penetrating quality—embraced the two immaculately dressed nurses on the settee beside the door of the operating room. Sue Blaine and Belinda Melnotte had just been speaking of the Herr Doktor; perhaps they looked conscious under his swift, keen scrutiny.

Sue Blaine had begun tragically: "Belinda, I hear the elevator creaking again. It's either you or me to assist the Herr Doktor. And I'm so tired of it all!"

"Yet you took upon yourself the novitiate of a trained nurse for two years." Belinda Melnotte's laugh was low, full, delicious. It was no saccharine giggle, but came from a splendid chest in a robust body with a bell-like tone to it that delighted the ear. "Two whole years, Sue! Still, I wish I were just entering, after all."

"What?" gasped the other. "Why! when I am through here I shall incinerate my apron, cap and first-aid kit with appropriate ceremonies in our back-yard. I'll refuse even to do up my little brother's finger if he cuts it. No, I am through—through!"

"Hush! The Herr Doktor!" Belinda Melnotte breathed.

The black-browed surgeon arrived.

"You will please to act with me, Miss Belinda. It is perhaps an important case."

Belinda Melnotte's cheeks burned warmly. It secretly angered her that she should blush when Doctor Herschall looked at her or spoke to her. But she almost always betrayed that mark of confusion. He was the only member of the great hospital's medical staff who called her by her given name.

He was quite a wonderful man, she knew, this tall and broad-shouldered surgeon. Many of the nurses admired him immensely, for he was not unsocial in spite of his stern and aggressive appearance.

He was a keen and analytical surgeon, with ten years of practice in the city to add to his first fame gained in his own country. He was but thirty-five. Others of the medical staff of the hospital, ten years his senior, were of sprightlier manner than Doctor Herschall and seemed to Belinda far younger. Then there were his personal peculiarities—the boring glance of his black eyes, the almost feline touch of his hand—which were obnoxious to the nurse.

Having been called into consultation as a specialist in her father's case, Doctor Herschall had met Belinda in her own home. Therefore he assumed a familiar manner toward her from the very beginning of her hospital training that incensed her, yet it was too indefinite for her to show open resentment.

Had she wished to do so, this was not a time to display her private distaste for the Herr Doktor, as he was called throughout the hospital. The rolling stretcher was at hand. Under the canvas sheet was a still form; but a high, querulous voice—the unmistakable tones of delirium—babbled like a running brook:

"What d'you think of her, Doc? And after all I'd done for the old girl! Talk about ingratitude! Nursing her along all this way—clear from the Hempstead grounds; and then, when I had to land her, doing it as though I were putting her to sleep in a feather-bed—cranky old thing! I hopped out to see what was wrong with the propeller, and what does she do to me? Slapped me! That's what she did. Slapped me—and I never did a thing to her——"

His shaking, querulous voice trailed off into indistinct mutterings. The two nurses looked curiously at the face of the man on the stretcher while the surgeon was opening the door and the wheeled conveyance was rolled into the spotless operating room.

The nurses were not usually curious regarding the cases brought in by the ambulances. There were so many each day that Belinda Melnotte, with all her interest in the work, thought of them only in numbers. There is little variety in city accident cases.

But the babbling of this young man, whose strained, flushed face appeared at one end of the ambulance sheet, caught her attention. It suggested something out of the ordinary; the victim might be an extraordinary person.

"Oh, Belinda!" whispered Sue Blaine, suddenly seizing Belinda's arm. "I know who he is. Sandy Sanderson!"

Belinda repeated the name questioningly. "You know him?" she asked.

"From his pictures in the papers. Don't you remember? The flying man—Sandy Sanderson they call him. He won one of the flying events at the Sheepshead Bay maneuvers only last month. Surely you remember?"

Belinda shook her head negatively; but her eyes remained fixed upon the face of the victim of the accident. "He is feverish," she murmured, following the stretcher into the operating room. This was indeed no ordinary case. She half understood already the meaning of the young man's muttered phrases. He might be seriously injured. An aviator!

"This way," said the surgeon gutturally, speaking to the men who lifted the patient. The latter screamed weakly as he was moved; then he fell silent and into a syncope.

"Much fever here. Hum!" muttered Doctor Herschall, straightening the limbs of the young man on the high table. The attendants departed. The nurse had been arranging the stand of instruments, and now wheeled it to the doctor's hand. The cone, sponge, and can of ether were ready. The surgeon continued to examine deftly the body before him.

"The left shoulder blade. Hum! Much laceration—scraped to the bone. Hum! Fine physique. An athlete, this fellow, though he won't weigh a hundred and twenty pounds. Hum! We must save this torn cuticle if we can. If we must graft—hum!—well, we must."

He had removed the ambulance surgeon's bandages. Those over the left shoulder and the bandage about the victim's head seemed to indicate all the injuries the young man had suffered. Yet Doctor Herschall was thorough in his examination. His attention to detail in even the least important case was characteristic of the man. He possessed the exact German mind, as well as the Prussian bearing and look.

"Fever—fever," he repeated. "Much fever. And not entirely induced by these wounds. He has only just now been brought in from Van Cortlandt Park and, the interne tells me, could not have been long injured when he was found beside his fallen machine."

Doctor Herschall had this habit of talking while at work—even after adjusting his mask. At first, when Belinda chanced to assist him, he had addressed his remarks directly to her. She never replied if she could help it; therefore of late he merely carried on a monologue of comment as though he were addressing a class in the operating auditorium. His final words on this occasion startled the nurse into speaking.

"A flying machine, Doctor? Did he fall?"

"He came down, at least," growled Doctor Herschall. "Ach, these American airmen are mere amateurs! No training. Everything is haphazard in this country. Anybody reckless and bold enough is allowed to ascend in an aeroplane. Not like European methods—especially our own army methods. In Germany a man must be trained for his work ere he is allowed to pilot even a taube."

The deft-handed nurse made no further comment, feeling that she had already been unwise in opening the way for his direct address. Doctor Herschall went skilfully about his work; nor did the nurse fail in the least of her duties. A murmured word—even a gesture—brought the required instrument, or whatever was needed. She watched the doctor closely, rather than looked at the raw wound he was at work upon. She had never got over that first feeling of creeping horror that clutched her when she beheld a gory wound. Yet she possessed such splendid control that few suspected Belinda Melnotte even owned nerves. She approached almost every operation with reluctance and aversion. Abundant physical health and perfect mental poise enabled her to hide her real feelings.

The shoulder was dressed. The cut upon the head just at the roots of the hair, where the scar might easily be hidden, was superficial. The head bandage being removed, the nurse gained a better view of the airman's countenance.

There was a roach of reddish, sandy hair over the broad brow; but the eyebrows and lashes were dark enough to lend to his features a certain dignity. These features were sharp rather than noble of outline; yet he possessed a good mouth and a firm chin. The twenty-four hours' growth of beard gave unmistakable reason for his being dubbed "Sandy" by his friends and admirers.

Belinda thought him a particularly interesting-looking young man. It was seldom that she so quickly felt concern in the personality of a patient.

"This fever, superinduced by the wounds, has a deeper foundation, however," muttered Doctor Herschall. "Watch his temperature, Miss Belinda. Speak to Doctor Potter—although I shall make a note of the case myself."

The attendants were summoned and the Herr Doktor went away to wash his hands and remove the spotted rubber apron. The superintendent of nurses—by courtesy "matron"—bustled in as the still unconscious patient was lifted to the stretcher.

"Let Miss Blaine clean up here and boil the instruments," said the brisk little woman. "I want you to take this patient, Miss Melnotte. Room A-a. He's just been telephoned in about. Why, he's quite a public character!"

"I understand," Belinda said, "that he is a flying-man."

"Yes. Mr. Frank Sanderson. Quite famous, in a way. He fell with his plane over Van Cortlandt Park in the night. There must be something behind it—more than a mere practice flight, it would seem to me. They do not usually go up at night, do they?"

"I really do not know, Mrs. Blythe."

"Well, he is to have the best of everything. And so young a man!" sighed the matron, gazing down upon the face of the aviator. "Give him your best attention, Miss Melnotte. I really feel safe when I put a patient in your care. I wish you were not going to leave us so soon."

"I wish, too, that there might be an opening here," the girl said wistfully.

"Do you, really? It is always the way," sighed the matron. "We graduate so many more nurses than we can possibly use. But you will have small trouble in getting placed, my dear. So many are going into Red Cross work just now."

"I had thought of that," murmured Belinda dreamily.

"Not you!" the matron cried. "You have too much sense, I hope, my dear. Those who go to France for service on the battlefields take their lives in their hands."

"But so we do if we go into some of those East Side tenements to nurse contagious cases," the girl said quietly. "And the Red Cross nurses do such a noble work—don't you think so?"

"Sentimentalism!" snapped Mrs. Blythe. "I hope all my girls have too much sense."

Belinda shook her head, but made no rejoinder, although she could not subscribe to the matron's tenets.

At the moment, too, her mind was given to thoughts of the young man out of the air. She followed to the private room engaged for his comfort, and helped the attendant put him to bed.

CHAPTER II

THE WRECK OF HIS HOUSE OF CARDS

Sanderson awoke with the sun streaming in through the high window and lying like a golden mantle flung across the floor and bed. Otherwise everything in the room seemed glaringly white. It was mid-afternoon, and the westering orb had full command of this side of the hospital wing.

He knew at once where he was. There was no wild start and "Where am I?" cry. He merely looked up at the rather sturdy figure in voluminous apron and cap standing within the range of his vision, and grinned.

"I say," he croaked, "that must have been some bump. How hot I am! Can I have a drink, Nurse?"

She seemed to have foreseen this first request. In a moment the glass and tube were at his lips. She would not allow him to raise his head from the pillow. As he drank slowly the refreshing contents of the glass he examined her face with deeper appreciation than Belinda Melnotte imagined.

"I say," he sighed finally, "that was great! When did they bring me in?"

"This morning."

"I—I can't remember it," he murmured. "But I must have come down before daylight."

"You were brought downtown at nine o'clock," she told him cheerfully. "They found you and your machine in Van Cortlandt Park."

"Is that as far as I got?"

"And quite far enough, I should say," she quickly commented, and with disapproval. "Flying at night! What reckless creatures you airmen are!"

His face was suddenly twisted into a grimace of pain, but he managed to chuckle.

"Oh, some of us expect soon to be regular 'fly-by-nights.'" Then, quickly: "Ah, I remember. By jove, she slapped me!"

The nurse recalled his babblings when he was brought in, and laughed her low, delicious laugh.

"I suppose it was only a lover's quarrel," she suggested.

His eyes twinkled, too. "She's a cranky old thing. I ought to jilt her. And after this—well, she slapped me with that propeller good and plenty. How much will it set me back, Nurse? How long must I lie here? Is that shoulder seriously hurt?"

"Nothing is broken," she assured him cheerfully.

"Except my head," and he felt the bandage tenderly.

"Oh, that's nothing."

"Ow! I bet that hurt me," he grinned. "So complimentary——"

"Now I must take your temperature. You may talk no longer," she said severely.

He watched her with a rather quizzical gaze as she moved about the room while he "smoked the glass pipe." If she apprehended his scrutiny she was so careless of it—or so well balanced of mind—that she displayed not the slightest self-consciousness.

He found himself cataloging in his rather hazy thoughts the several attributes of person and manner that made Belinda Melnotte an attractive and most refreshing personality to him. Her calm was matronly; but her exquisite complexion, her ripe lips, the tendrils of hair that clustered about the edge of her cap, her full and brilliant eyes, were all virginal.

She moved with an air of perfect self-confidence. Her hand was not small, but was very soft, very beautifully formed, and had the firm clasp of a man's. Her bared forearm and wrist, tapering from the elbow, was worthy of being modeled. The shadows that lay in the curves of her neck lent the appearance of ivory to the flesh.

Sanderson was distinctly not given to worship of the feminine; but this very capable-looking and particularly beautiful nurse held his interest from his first conscious moment. It was not mere prettiness or sex-charm; she was, in truth, downright beautiful.

"Magnificent!" the patient told himself, and then wandered off into a feverish state of half-slumber in which the nurse was only one of many characters that flitted across the screen of his imagination.

He was conscious at one time of a grave-looking man standing at the foot of the bed and pulling his Vandyke beard while he talked in jerky sentences to the calm-faced nurse.

"Yes, it is malarial without doubt. I know what those aviation grounds are like. A swamp on one side—all undrained land thereabout. Full of malaria. He likely had a high temperature when he went up in his machine."

Sanderson thought he burst out laughing. He tried to tell the doctor that going up in a cranky aeroplane would give anybody a high temperature.

"With the complication of his wounds he is likely to have a siege of it," the physician said to the nurse. "Are you in charge?"

"Day duty for the present, Doctor Potter."

"Ah—yes. When you are relieved, impress upon the night nurse that she is to call the doctor on duty if there is the least change. I fancy he is quite out of his head."

He was out of his head. He next awoke in the night and a plain-featured nurse endeavored to give him his medicine.

"Say," he demanded, "where's the peach?"

"Still hanging on the tree, boy, as far as you are concerned, I fancy," she replied, and tried again to give him his medicine. He knocked the spoon and glass to the far side of Room A-a.

But Miss Trivett was a very capable nurse, if lacking in personal pulchritude. She patiently prepared the draught again and, seizing his nose suddenly between thumb and finger, forced the dose down his throat.

"What do you know about that?" sputtered Sanderson. "You—you are own sister to that cranky old machine of mine! She slapped me——" and he rambled off into a repetition of the story of his accident.

His temperature was high, and Miss Trivett reported this to the doctor. It was a fight then for the aviator's life; but he did not realize how ill he was until, after a week or more, he came out of the Vale of Delirium in which he had wandered and beheld Belinda Melnotte clearly again.

"Say!"

The weakness of his voice so startled him that he almost lost consciousness before he could express his desire. The nurse was quickly at his side and, stooping, placed a firm hand upon his breast. Later he realized that the gesture betrayed the fact that the strong, beautiful hand had often held him down on his pillow while he was delirious.

"Say! I—I——When do I eat, Nurse?"

She smiled upon him, and Sanderson thought her face fairly glorified thereby.

"You may eat now if you feel like it."

"Bully!" he whispered. "Porterhouse steak and a mug of musty——"

"In liquid and concentrated form," she interposed, and soon the glass of milk and Vichy water was at his lips.

It wearied him even to swallow that. He lay and watched her moving quietly about. When she laid a cool palm upon his brow to mark if the fever had subsided, he could have asked her to keep it there.

He had never experienced such a sense of weakness before—at least, within his adult remembrance. It was a curious thing—this sense of dependence upon a woman. And a woman so much stronger physically than himself.

Previous to this time many girls had seemed to Frank Sanderson soft little things—rather useless "play-toys"—were the truth to be told. He could not remember his mother. He was the youngest of a family of boys brought up in a somewhat haphazard fashion by a father who had loved their mother too well to bring another woman into his life.

The young man's social instincts were not well developed. He had been sent to a boys' school, and then to college. The athletic field had claimed his interest rather than fraternity life and social entertainments. And he had always looked with scorn upon those of his mates who allowed themselves to be lionized by silly women.

For two years now he had been devoted to aviation. With a moderate income at his disposal, and no expensive tastes to gratify, he was able to follow this bent. The elder Sanderson was dead. Frank's brothers were scattered—all in business in various cities. Aside from his fellow aviators, the members of the two or three clubs he belonged to, and a few boyhood friends, he was a man alone.

Now began for him a series of incidents that were both strange and delightful. He had never been so near, or so familiar with, such a girl as this before.

"So different from Stella!" he murmured to himself. "Vastly different from Stella!"

The wound in his shoulder was healing nicely; but as an aid to this improvement he had to be moved with extreme care. Belinda Melnotte's strength, as well as her unstinted attention, was of great assistance—greater than the mere medical skill expended upon the case.

The black-bearded, black-eyed surgeon came occasionally and examined the wound; but it was the nurse who always dressed it. The cut upon Sanderson's forehead was of course soon healed.

"We might graft a bit on this shoulder," the surgeon suggested, "and so leave a less puckered scar. But the wound heals nicely. Hum!"

"'Hum!' it is, Doc," quoted Sanderson with a grin. "That would keep me here longer, wouldn't it?"

"Yes."