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God’s Fool
by
“You all seen that!” she appealed to the ward. “I haven’t even spoke to him and he attacked me! I’ll go to the superintendent about it. I’ll—-“
The Probationer hurried in. Her young cheeks were flushed with excitement and anxiety; her arms were full of jugs, towels, bandages–anything she could imagine as essential. She found the Dummy on his knees polishing a bed plate, and the ward in order–only Old Maggie was grumbling and making her way back to bed; and Irish Delia was sitting up, with her eyes shining–for had not the Dummy, who could not hear, known what Old Maggie had said about the new girl? Had she not said that he knew many things that were hidden, though God knows how he knew them?
The next hour saw the Avenue Girl through a great deal. Her burns were dressed by an interne and she was moved back to a bed at the end of the ward. The Probationer sat beside her, having refused supper. The Dummy was gone–the Senior Nurse had shooed him off as one shoos a chicken.
“Get out of here! You’re always under my feet,” she had said–not unkindly–and pointed to the door.
The Dummy had stood, with his faded old-young eyes on her, and had not moved. The Senior, who had the ward supper to serve and beds to brush out and backs to rub, not to mention having to make up the emergency bed and clear away the dressings–the Senior tried diplomacy and offered him an orange from her own corner of the medicine closet. He shook his head.
“I guess he wants to know whether that girl from the Avenue’s going to get well,” said Irish Delia. “He seems to know her.”
There was a titter through the ward at this. Old Maggie’s gossiping tongue had been busy during the hour. From pity the ward had veered to contempt.
“Humph!” said the Senior, and put the orange back. “Why, yes; I guess she’ll get well. But how in Heaven’s name am I to let him know?”
She was a resourceful person, however, and by pointing to the Avenue Girl and then nodding reassuringly she got her message of cheer over the gulf of his understanding. In return the Dummy told her by gestures how he knew the girl and how she had bound up the leg of the superintendent’s dog. The Senior was a literal person and not occult; and she was very busy. When the Dummy stooped to indicate the dog, a foot or so from the ground, she seized that as the key of the situation.
“He’s trying to let me know that he knew her when she was a baby,” she observed generally. “All right, if that’s the case. Come in and see her when you want to. And now get out, for goodness’ sake!”
The Dummy, with his patient shamble, made his way out of the ward and stored his polishes for the night in the corner of a scrub-closet. Then, ignoring supper, he went down the stairs, flight after flight, to the chapel. The late autumn sun had set behind the buildings across the courtyard and the lower part of the silent room was in shadow; but the afterglow came palely through the stained-glass window, with the young John and tall stalks of white lilies, and “To the Memory of My Daughter Elizabeth” beneath.
It was only a coincidence–and not even that to the Dummy–but Elizabeth had been the Avenue Girl’s name not so long ago.
The Dummy sat down near the door very humbly and gazed at the memorial window.
II
Time may be measured in different ways–by joys; by throbs of pain; by instants; by centuries. In a hospital it is marked by night nurses and day nurses; by rounds of the Staff; by visiting days; by medicines and temperatures and milk diets and fever baths; by the distant singing in the chapel on Sundays; by the shift of the morning sun on the east beds to the evening sun on the beds along the west windows.