Evening Star Newspaper, February 2, 1930, Page 94

12 WHEN IT HAP An Effort Is Made, in This Series of Stories Published Exclusively in Wash- ington in The Star’s Magazine, to Obtain the Most Unusual, Well Written Fiction of the Day—James Hopper’s Name Is Well Known to Fiction Lovers and This Story, “When It Happens,” Is Probably the Best From His Pen. S I came across Sam Nolan the other day he pounced upon me eagerly. “Just the man I want to see!” he cried. “I've been looking for you, I've got some- thing for you. Something you can use, something good this time. I've had my appendix cut out!” “Yes?” I said, a bit guardedly. Out of an unbounded admiration for my craft and a touching wistfulness to help, he is ever com- ing to me with subjects for my pen. “Oh, I've got a story for you,” he'll say. “You know the Grand Central Station? Lots of people swirling around—some arriving, some departing—trains tooting. Why don’t you write a story about that?” No, he is not quite that bad. But almost. “Come to lunch with me,” he said heartily. “I have an hour. I'll tell you all about it. All about my appendix and the hospital and every- So we sat at a small table in a quiet cor- ner of the club’s dining room, and he began to tell me about his appendix and the hospi- tal and everything. And after a while I found myself waking to the fact that he was really giving me something this time. A bit in spite of himself, as it were. Giving me more than he knew. Because, as he talked, weighing every detail in his painstaking desire to be of service to me, I was seeing what he did not see: I was seeing his wife, his terrible wife. He never sees her, of course (not as she is); but we, his friends, ever do. And we call her “terrible,” using the word not in the classical sense, but rather in the colloquial—which holds less meaning—and yet so much more. His ter- rible wife. She rides poor Sam; she sits upon his head; she weighs upon him, a mountain of unrelent- ing purpose. She it is who is.responsible for all these rows and rows of ugly houses with which assiduously he warts the plains, while plaintive somewhere within him still dwells the ghost of the dream of the House Beauti- ful. She it is who holds him to an undeviat- ing pursuit of the dollar, in a welter of affairs, in a deafening boiler factory of ignoble com- plications, while he, poor man, now and then still wistfully thinks that, with the children almost grown, the pressure relaxing, he might gradually reduce his business a little, and have leisure once in a while to read a book (he had a wistful respect for books), or once more to play the flute (he played it very well Dbefore marriage, and would like to play it @gain). Of course, we all know he will never, never play the flute again; that he is in for life. That is what I was seeing all the while as he conscientiously told me all about the cut- ting-out of his appendix; and that is what he was not seeing at all. the morning preceding the day set by D his surgeon for the operation he had slipped over to the hospital all alone, “with- out a soul knowing of it.” His family, his wife, were at the seaside for the Summer; he did not wish to worry them. Once in his room in the hospital, however, he had felt very lonely. “Every one seemed so far away,” he said, He had almost revolted, walked out. But by this time he was no longer owning himself, He was in a huge machine, things were being done to him as though he did not own him- self. At regular intervals he was made to swallow an unexplained pill. Lunch was brought and he was commanded to eat. He was ordered to bed. A barber came and shaved him. A steward scrubbed him with antisep- tics. He was caught in a machine, in a funnel, sliding down toward the thing awaiting him in the morning. He felt far, far from everybody, far, far from the mild sunshine of what had been his life, but he made no move; it did not even occur to him it was possible to get out of the funnel. Then in the morning they had placed him in a little low chair with casters and had swiftly rolled him along long halls to the white operating room. The feeling of being in the funnel had increased; he was now in the last little narrow part of the funnel., His loneli- ness had become a desolation; he felt like raising a shout, anything, toward the outside. Instead, he had carefully adopted an atti- tude of brisk jollity. Inside the operating room evely one was sheeted in white, with white turbans, and looked like fantastic giants, He was lifted to the table, the mask was Pplaced over his face. “And then,” he said, “I took a back-flip into eternity. That's just what it felt like— a prodigious back-flip down and through eternity.” When he returned from this interesting voy- age he was a dryad petrified in a tree. He was all of stone, and the only part of him he could move was the lid of one of his eyes, which he could just barely raise. And across this slit of vision something was passing to and fro like the wing of a gull.--White, light, flitting, like the wing of a gull. It became a cap. The cap passed to and fro. It vanished, returned, vanished. Sudden- ly it reappeared, very large now, quite near, and a voice “sweet as & chime of low bells” (that is the expression he used, Mr. Sam Nolan) sounded a phrase, “Are you in pain?” Immediately he tried to reassume the pose which had been his last effort. “Is it out?” he asked, in a manner jolly and brisk—and was shocked to hear only a sort of dismal mur- muring. “Yes,” sald the voice sweet as chimes, “It’s all over. But are you in pain?” A gentle solicitude was about him like a haze; he did not want to show off at all now; he wished to answer with faith and with truth. Was he in pain? Was this pain he was feeling? One fact was evident; he was stretched out like the four points of the compass in the exact center of a clearing, under a broiling sun, pinned there by a stake driven through his body. A long moment of fixed thinking rid him at length of the clear- ing and the sun. He was not in a clearing, beneath the sun; he was in the hospital, be- neath a roof. Back in his bed. But to that bed he was pinned like a butterfly; nailed by a spike that went through him, the mattress, and down into the floor. “Not so much pain,” he answered, “as some sort of very certain discomfort.” He immediately became very proud of that phrase. Ye had pronounced it just right; with an English accent. WHENSmNoh.nhndnachedthispolnth ¢ the recital of his adventure (men get their adventure as they may) be abruptly stopped and looked at me with hi. good, honest, slightly bulging eyes. We had begun lunch late, so that by now we were nearly alone in the big darkish room. *“Is all this any good to you?” he asked anxiously. “Are you get- ting anything you can use? Shall I go on?” And I saw that what he had told me so far was not what he had been eager to tell me. He had thrown it in for good measure, out of & desire that I should miss nothing—perhaps, also, as a delay. What he really had been eager to tell me he had come to now. But he had fallen into the throes of a doubt, of an embarrassment. His honest face was flushed; he smiled in a forced way. “Why, you are giving me a lot,” I cried en- couragingly. “Please go on!” It was hard, I could see that. But finally he had leaped the hurdle. “Well,” he said, “I found out something else which might be of use to you. It's—you know, how in the papers, every now and then, you read about a man falling in love—in love with his nurse. Well, that's it. I think I know pretty well how it happens, when it does happen——" I was looking at him steadily, and he made & sudden little gesture of denial, half fright- ened, half violent. “Not that I did, of course!” he cried stoutly. “I didn’t fall in love with my nurse. No! I'm an old married man. You know, John, how close Clare and I are. But you understand that I mean—jyou see it in the paper every once in a while—how some man falls in love with his nurse. Well, while I was in the hospital a little thing occurred which gave me somewhat of an idea as to how that sort of thing might happen! “It's partly the dope,” he went on hurriedly. “The dope, of course, has a lot to do with it, You see, you're pretty full of morphine after an operation. And it’s also the temperature; you nearly always have a temperature. You're sort of out of your head, you're not normal— that’s how it happens! Oh, I've got a pretty good idea of how it happens, when it does happen!” “Go on,” I said. He went on. That first day after the opera- tion had been a hard one. He had suffered dis- comfort and pain and semi-delirium, “I kept making a rule in my head, over and over again. A rule for future guidance. Do you know what it was? ‘No operation, how- ever successful, is worth the trouble’ I kept saying that to myself over and over again. “I kept doing something clse, too. My watch '\ \\:‘\“‘ . \:\\\‘ \ \) ) S was on the stand at my side. I'd look at it, then lie back. Then when I thought two hours had gone by, I'd look at the watch again —and only two minutes would have passed. Two minutes, not hours! “Then I'd say to myself, ‘I won't stand it. Each minute is just like an hour, and there are so many minutes! I'm going to throw myself out of the window!’ “But then I wouldn't throw myself out of the window, but just lie there. And after a while I'd think, ‘Now, surely two hours have gone by, and I'd look, and again it would be two minutes. ‘I won’t stand it,’ I'd say. ‘I'm going to throw myself out of the window.’ But I wouldn’t.” It was during the interminable stretching of this burning, tossing, enfevered misery that her coolness slowly established itself about him and filtered into him., Her coolness. The coolness of her voice “sweet as chimes.” Of her white starched garments, of her light hands. Of her efficiency. Hm efficiency! He waxed quite lyric over that, I wish I could remember all he said; but I was so stupefied by this spectacle of my business man suddenly run poetically amuck that I sat there staring, marveling at the miracle without registering. One of his phrases I still recall—‘“The beauty of efficiency.” It seems that she had that to an extraor- dinary degree. It had never occurred to him before that simple efficiency had beauty; now he knew it. He assured me that it did. A beauty cool, pure and white, which aroused in the beholder a tenderness! Throughout the length of that long, hot, miserable day this had sifted to him, eooling his fever, smoothing his tortured nerves, but it was when evening came, he said, that something peculiarly charming had occurred. “A little thing,” he said, “something, I un- derstand, quite customary to nursing routine— rather to be expected—but which somehow took on with me that night the most unreason- able emphasis. The most unreasonable!” It had been announced by a series of small preparations, but even at that he had not believed it possible. A cot had been brought in and set up. Later blankets, sheets, a pillow. ‘Then, suddenly, she had vanished. “And when she returned,” he said, “she had been transformed, she was another being. You see, all day she had gone about in her uniform, white, starched, gleaming, like a light armor, But now she had on soft gar- ments. And on her head, instead of the stiff white cap, was one all soft and smoky-blue, with just one little rose. I can’t tell you how enchanting the change seemed to me, all doped up as I was. It was as if while she had been gone she had stepped into fairyland.” Even then, he had not really believed possi- ble what was about to take place., She went about the room in a last ordering of things already well ordered, then bent over him. “Now, is there anything more I can do for you?” she asked. THE SUNDAY STAR, WASH G One of the O. “She curled up like a little kitten, and He answered there wasn't, that he was all right. “You are sure there is nothing you want?” she repeated, with gentle insistence. “You know,” he said to me now, “with all her efficiency, there was something a little childish about her. Childish and innocent. It —well, it drew the heart. « “‘If there is anything,’ she said very earnestly—and she seemed such a little girl— ‘vou won't be afraid to call me, will you? You'll call me?’ “Then I saw that it was true, really true. That the couch, the blankets, the pillows had been brought for her; that she was going to remain here, in my room. “Looking back now, I don’t see why I should have felt that way about it. It’s done regu- larly in hospitals, I suppose I was light in the head. But I can’t tell you what a won- der and a delight filled me now at the thought. This seemed to me the most incredibly charm- ing thing—that little Efficiency should remain in the same room with me—the prettiest thing! “She slipped about and put out all the lights, all but one; she shaded this low. Then she slid herself out on the couch and composed herself for sleep. There was a big white pillow at the head; she took it into her arms and drew it to herself; she curled up like a littlé kitten and in a jiffy was asleep. Sleeping very quietly, without a sound—just like a little kit ten!” He halted. He was searching in his head for a better expression than the one he had used. But he came back to it. “It was the pretties thing, John,” he said penetratingly. " “I couldn't believe it,” he went on. “Every now and then I'd raise myself on my elbow to make sure. ‘She really is there,’ I'd whisper to myself. But as soon as I'd get tired and fall back out of sight I'd begin to doubt again; I'd have to get up on my elbow again. I'd stay up that way as long as I could, looking at her over there, curled up on the couch so cutely, hugging that pillow. Even as I looked I would not quite believe. ‘Incredible, I kept saying to myself, It was too wonderful. I couldn’t realize such a beautiful thing could be given to me, an old drab like me. I'd keep raising up to make sure. It wasn't a very good exer-- cise for a man who's just lost his appendix, was 1t?” I murmured that it very probably was not. 66 A LL the same,” he said, with something like a defiant exultation in his tone, “that is how I spent the night! Getting up on my elbow to look, falling back when too tired, get- ting up on my elbow again. And I remember it as the most delicious night! The mocon came up outside after a while and shone in through the window. It touched her, it made her littlé™ corner of the room a little cave filled with fairy light. And she was so pretty and so cute in there, little Efficlency at her rest! So sweet! She was so sweet there in that light, sleeping so quietly, curled up like a little cat