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The Trained Nurse’s Story
by
“Of course I was puzzled. There was no doubt in my mind that it was our little Josephine. Naturally I was discreet. Luckily. I spoke of her to several people who remembered her, and they all called her ‘dear little Josephine’ just as we had. I talked of her with the clergyman and his wife. I asked questions that were too natural to rouse suspicions, when I told them that I knew her, that the baby was the dearest and happiest child I knew, and what do you suppose I found out, more by inference than facts?”
No need to ask me. Didn’t I know?
Josephine had never been married. There had never been any “He.” It all seemed so natural. It did not shock me, as it had the Matron, and I was glad she had told no one but me. Dear little Josephine! Sitting there in the Association without family, with no friends but her patrons, and those girls whose little romances went on about her! No romances ever came her way. So she had made one all of her own. I proved to the Matron easily that what she had discovered by accident was not her affair, that to keep Josephine’s secret was a virtue, and not a sin. I was sure of that, for, as I watched her afterwards, I knew that Josephine had played her part in her dream romance so well, that she no longer remembered that it was not true. She had forgotten she had not really borne the child she carried so lovingly in her arms.
* * * * *
“Is that all?” asked the Journalist.
“That is all,” replied the Trained Nurse.
“By Jove,” said the Doctor, “that is a good story. I wish I had told it.”
“Thank you, Doctor,” laughed the Trained Nurse. “I thought it was a bit in your line.”
“But fancy the cleverness of the little thing to do all the details up so nicely,” said the Lawyer. “She dovetailed everything so neatly. But what I want to know is whether she planned the baby when she planned the make-believe husband?”
“I fancy not,” replied the Nurse. “One thing came along after another in her imagination, quite naturally.”
“Poor little Josephine–it seems to me hard luck to have had to imagine such an every day fate,” sighed the Divorcee.
“Don’t pity her,” snapped the Doctor. “Poor little Josephine, indeed! Lucky little Josephine, who arranged her own romance, and risked no disillusion. There have been cases where the joys of the imagination have been more dangerous.”
“You are sure she had no disillusion?” asked the Critic.
“I am,” said the Nurse.
“And her name was Josephine?” asked the Divorcee.
“It was not, and Utica was not the town,” replied the Nurse.
“Perhaps her disillusion is ahead of her,” said the Journalist. “‘Say no man’–or woman either–‘is happy until the day of his death.'”
“She is dead,” said the Nurse.
“I told you she was lucky little Josephine,” ejaculated the Doctor.
“And she died without telling the boy the truth?” asked the Journalist.
“The truth?” repeated the Nurse. “I’ve told you that she had forgotten it. No woman was ever so loved by a son. No mother ever so grieved for.”
“Then the son lives?” asked the Doctor.
The Nurse smiled quietly.
“Good-night,” said the Doctor. “I am going to bed to dream of that. It is a pity some of the rest of us childless slackers had not done as well as Josephine. She took her risk. She was lucky.”
“She did,” replied the Nurse, “but she did not realize anything of that. She was too simple, too unanalytic.”
“I wonder?” said the Critic.
“You need not, I know.” Her eyes fell on the Lawyer, and she caught a laugh in his eye. “What does that mean?” she asked.
“Well,” said the Lawyer, “I was only thinking. She was religious, that dear little Josephine?”
“At least she always went to church.”
“I know the type,” said the Violinist, gently. “Accepted what she was taught, believed it.”
“Exactly,” said the Lawyer, “that is what I was getting at. Well then, when her son meets her au dela –he will ask for his father–“
“Or,” interrupted the Violinist, “his own mother will claim him.”
“Don’t worry,” laughed the Critic. “It’s dollars to doughnuts that she was ‘dear little Josephine’ to all the Heavenly Host half an hour after she entered the ‘gates of pearl.’ Don’t look shocked. That is not sacrilegious. It is intentions–motives, that are immortal, not facts. Besides–“
“Don’t push that idea too far,” interrupted the Doctor from the door.
“Don’t be alarmed. I was only going to say–there are Ik Marvels au dela –“
“I knew that idea was in your head. Drop it!” laughed the Doctor.
“Anyway,” said the Violinist, “if Life is but a dream, she had a pretty one. Good night.” And he went up to bed, and we all soon followed him, and I imagine not one of us, as we looked out into the moonlit air, thought that night of war.