Evening Star Newspaper, July 24, 1932, Page 60

THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. C, JULY 24 1932 Theie are different kinds of courage---but surely nome finer than John Helm's kind By ELINORE COWAN STONE HE nurse who came on slim, white-shod feet down the haspital corridor seemed to advance to inaudible strains of stirring music. She was tall, fair as a Viking’s daughter, vibrantly alive There was about her a suggestion of the epic, of the flash of sunlight on frost-bound fiords, of. cleansing north winds, of snow ban- ners tossed from ice-capped peaks. At sight of the two surgeons coming out of Number 11, she stood quietly at attention. Through t{he hall window behind her the fitful light from the steel mill across the: river played tricks in the dimmed corridor turning her cap and uniform to a helmet and sheath of gleaming silver. The men closed the door and exchanged glances of congratulation— oongratulation tinged, upon the part of the elder, with a reserve of thoughtfulness. “Well, Mayer——" he began, and broke off to sigh and stare ab- sently at the folded gloves in his hand. Erect and white-haired, he seemed a man cut from steel, save for his eyes—singularly warm, kindly brown eyes, somber now with weary speculation. “Well?” echoed the younger man. There was elation in his voice. “If he sticks the night, it's & reeccrd.” “A record—yes. Poor devil!” Dr. Mayer looked up frome the notes in his hand to stare. He was & solid young man, handsome. in a blunt, nerveless, bland way, with pale wide-open eyes, at omce visionary and a little hard. All sensitiveness seemed centered im his hands—the hands of a master musician or a. master surgeon. “It's a gruecome busimess, I'll' warrant ycu,” he said, “but’"—the pale eyes glowed—" if he weathers the next 12 hours. Dr: Bentham— think what it. means for the future.” “His future?” Dr: Bentham spoke gently. “Is it your opinion that such a future as his will be a desirable consummation—maimed, gripped to the end by grinding periods of pain—or at best, partialiy paralyzed?” “I was thinking——'' began the younger man stiffly. “Of the future of seienece. To be sure.” ‘The old surgeon still brooded: over hiis gloves. “Another triumphant proof that human life can be prolonged beyond the limits of human possibilities—and endurance. After all, that is the goal cf our efforts, is it net?* “Well, if it ism't——2" “What is? Ged knows! I used to think I did. . . . A strange conundrum, isn't it? If life is of the enormous importance we assume it to be, what becomes of it when it—eiudes us? “Do you know, Mayer, time and again, after I have worked my heart out, in vain—I have stood by some burnt-out-candle of a human body, taunted by a definite sense of —a mocking prescence—something that is free, triumphant at having escaped, lingering near me as if for a good laugh—at my expense. . . . Can it, after all, have been laughing at us all these years— life2" “Sorry. 1 don't quite follow.” Dr. Mayer's stiff smile did not hide his chagrin. “I am not a metaphysician—only a dull, commonplace sawbones.” Quickly Dr, Bentham looked up and placed a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t misunderstand, my beoy. You have done a magnificent piece of work. I don’t know another who could have done it. Just now I am too tired, perhaps, to be quite lucid—but I am inordinately proud of you. Bssides, it is your case.” The young surgeon grinned ruefully. “To tell the truth, I wculdn't give a whoop for what I've been able to do, if it weren't for his bulldog spirit behind it.” “You mean—he wants to live?” Dr. Bent- ham’s kind eyes were incredulous. The other considered, his brow wrinkled in a frown. “No, I shouldn’'t say that. | He knows what he’s up against. We haven't fooled him a bit. No. For some reason he feels that he has to live. “And that, Miss Restrom,” he turned to the waiting nurse, “is what we must not allow him to forget. Thank God we'll get a break, with you on the case! That weak sister coming off has done more harm than good, I'm afraid.” “As bad as possible,” he told her a little im- portantly. “Internal injuries—spine. He’ll never walk alone. Evidently been an active fel- low, too; body of an athlete at 60-odd. How- ever, I hope he’ll be good for some time, if we can keep his fighting blood up for another trip to the table tomcrrow. That's your job.” “I see,” said the girl quietly. “I hope so. I'm off to Greensburg on the next train—consultation—and Br. Bentham is worn out. For the next 12 hours the case is yours. Watch the heart. I'll call up when I get a minute.'. . . Oh, and here’s a pleasant thought to dwell on—he doesn’t respond to opiates.” He detailed his instructions briefly, caught up his bag, and hurried off down the hall. THE girl squared her slencer shoulders, and turned with a gallant lift of her head to- ward the door of Number 11. If Christine Restrom had any doubts as to what she was facing, she understood when she stepped into the darkened room. Grace Brown, the nurse she was to relieve, almost stumbled to meet her, her face white with strain, her hands shaking. “Gosh, Restrom, I thought you'd never come!” she quavered. Then, with a glance toward the bed. “He's quiet for the moment; but it won't last long—ether jag. And that isn't the half of it. I never saw such suffer- ing.” She fled, leaving Christine alone with the patient. Consulting the temperature chart, Christine rang for more ice. As she turned from the bell, she picked up an envelope from the floer under the bed table. It was a long, legal en- velope, addressed to Mr. John Helm, bearing the business heading of a well known firm of lawyers, Joyce & Joyce. It had not been opened, but somehow it had become wet; the moistened glue had given, so that. the seams were about to fall apart—John Helm. So that was his name. Now where had she seen it before? Well, he was in no condi- tion for reading letters. She placed the envelope on the dresser with the newspaper she had brought for a chance idle moment. : It was not a movement that drew her atten- tion to the bed, nor an outcry. Her patient lay as she had left him, rigid, with eyes shut. But when she stood by his side she realized that the whole bed shook with the momentum of agony. . . . It was going to be pretty awful, worse even than she had feared. And there was so little that she could do. Suddenly Christine bent closer. A thin trickle of red wound its way across his shoulder to the bed. Hemorrhage? But no. Nothing in her notes suggested such a possibility. Breathlessly she leaned over him, His teeth were set in the arm that covered his face. “But this won't do, you know,” she said crisply. He made no sign as she moved his arm, dis- infected and dressed the wound, and bathed his face. But when she had finished and stood thoughtfully beside him, she found him watching her with a speculative intensity in his deep, pain-sunken eyes. He must be, as Dr. Mayer had said, sixty- odd, but there was in his stalwart frame no suggestion of the flabbiness of age. It was lean and hard looking. In the face the brow and eyes of a dreamer were coupled with the tenacious jaw of a fighter. “Won't—do it—again.” He spoke suddenly, in labored jerks. “Dumb thing to do. Can't possibly—help. Lost sight—of that—for a mo- ment.” “Gets pretty bad sometimes, does it?” Chris- tine spoke with just the right touch of con- trolled sympathy. “Damnable! Nothing to what it’s going to be, I guess.” There was an echoing attempt at the matter- of-fact in his painful utterance, but his gaunt eyes begged for reassurance. “They’ll get you fixed up soon if you'll help,” she told him. He uttered a short, barking sound, half groan, half laugh. “Patched up, you mean. . . . See here, you look like a girl even a high-priced surgeon might let slip the truth to. They've promised me—well, let’s call it a reprieve, if I stick around till they finish the job tomorrow. “I gather—from what they didn’'t say—that it’s going to be— particular hades, now, and— afterward. All right. I'm facing that, I've got to have time. . “What I want to be sure of is this—if I make goed on my end, do I get that reprieve— signed, sealed and delivered?” “It depends,” said Christine, “entirely on you.” Looking into her level blue eyes, he closed bhis own with a slight nod of satisfaction. HRISTINE did what she could for him. Then she stood, looking down at him in troubled silence. Presently, as if he sensed her presence, and was grateful for it, he un- clenched one shaking hand and turned it, palm upward, toward her, in mute, wretched appeal. Christime drew a chair to the side of the bed and took the hand in both of her slim, cool ones. . He spoke through dry lips. “Pretty soon—I'm likely to want to—let go. I almost did—a while back. Don’t let me. Got to—have time.” Again and again in the terrible half hour that followed, as she did her pitiful best for the patient named John Helm, Christine mar- veled that against what he was enduring, months—years—a lifetime could weigh with importance There were intervals—brief, inexplicable is- lands of partial relief in the whirlpools of pain. In one of these the man opened his eyes and spoke. “I know what you're thinking.” Now that the pain had momentarily sub- sided, he was talking on doggedly; as if to out- wit the next assault by a counter-attack of words. “You're thinking, ‘Here’s an old feol who's outlived his best usefulness anyhow, hanging on like a dog with a bone, to a problematical few months of life—because he’s afraid to take a plunge in the dark.’ “You're dead wrong, girl. That plunge is going to be the greatest adventure life has to’ offer me—now. This old earth loses a good deal of its star dust by the time you're 63.” “I' know,” said Christine. I mean,” she plunged on, appalled at the enormity of her betrayal, “you get to wondering when you're all alone in a ward at night, with everything going wrong and suffering all about you. Life is such a ruthless business sometimes, at best. Why struggle and suffer, just = “Ah, but it's the fight that makes it worth while. That's why your milk and honey heaven has so little pull for some of us. My whole life has been a fight, of a sort. I'm hoping that the plunge, when it comes, will land me in the plumb middle of the sweetest scrap ever. “That fellow Browning had the idea—'Speed —fight on—fare ever there as here!” Only it will be a new kind of fight. Life in new, undreamed-of dimensions is my bet. “Say! Columbus steering into the west couldn’t have conceived the thrill I'm going to get when my turn comes. . . . But it can't be yet.” He was speaking rapidly now, in a feverish race with the devastating tide of pain which was rushing in upon him. “There hasn’t been a day in the past six months when I couldn’t cheerfully have stepped over the edge—until now. “Perhaps you don't read the papers? It wouldn't make much of a noise, anyhow—this crash of ours. I wasn't swimming with the big fish. Our stockholders were the small investors. They—they trusted me with their little savings, and I—well, I fell down on them. “All my life I've -boasted that no one had ever lost a cent through me. You see, now, why I'm telling you this, girl, because I want you to give your mind to this job.” Gasping, he fell back into the black abyss of torment that yawned to engulf him. HRISTINE bent to her work with a frown of concentration. It was beginning to click now—John Helm—Helm & Maitland. There had been a headline in the paper on the dresser, barely glanced at before she laid it aside—the failure of the firm, the disap- pearance of Maitland with valuable securities, the prompt action of the elder partner in turn- ing his own private properties into the hands of the adjustors. She must glance at it by. an: :}:nzn times in the next few hours, she went down into the depths with the patient called John Helm, to come up, herself white and shaken. There were periods when he whispered and writhed like a suffering animal. There were times when he talked feverishly about his partner. Maitland, and about some bonds which had somehow disappeared, and which would” make everything right if they could only be found. “Punny where I put them. Twenty thou- sand would clean the slate. Right there some- how. Must be. Had them the day—I heard— “ It means,” Christine stood over him like a slim, white image of fate, “that you're free. There’s nothing to hold you now. You're about Maitland. Maitland didn’t take them, I tell you. “Didn’t know: I—had them. Some mistake about Maitland Turn—up—yet, right ss— rain. See if he doesn’t.” And again and again, “If I could omly— remember. Time. Get.to have time. Mustn’t —let—go.” He fell back, gasping forr breath. It hed come—that rebellion of the overtaxed heart - against which Dr. Mayer had warned her. Christine worked quickly and deftly, and as she worked, she hated the thing she did. Presently, when the labered bresthing ceased and the blue reeeded from his drawn lips;, the man grinned—that twisted, whimsical grin. “It would have been easy,” he gasped, “just to let go—that time. If I could! If I only could!” It was a cry of unutterable weariness. “Mustn’t let myseif—think about—that.” “Let go?” scoffed Christine. ‘“Not you! You don’t know how!" She thought, “If he only could, on his own terms—his own deggedly Quixotic terms!” A little later he slept from pure exhaustion. Christine stole from his side lest her breathing disturb him. Ten minutes—five minutes would do him a world of goed. She reached for the newspaper on the dresser; the forgotten letter from Jovce & Joyce fell to the floor, the envelope came apart. She picked up the wet letter, to dry it om the radiator. A phrase caught her eye—the letter was very brief—she read it. For a moment she stood motionless. Then she squared her shoulders in decision. The man on the bed stirred, cried out in ]pain. She crossed over to him, holding the etter. “Here’s an important message from Joyce & Joyce,” she said. “Can you hear me?” He nodded. She read: “ ‘We thought it might relieve your mind to know at once that the bonds you misiaid have turned up.’ . . . It means” Christine stood over him like a slim, white image of fate, “that you are free. There's nothing to hold you now. You're free. Understand?” There was a long silence. Then John Helm looked up—and smiled. “It's funny,” he said. “I hadn't thought of it—this way—before—but how can you be ready for the mext scrap unless you've fought this one—to the last ditch? I guess—after all —TI'll just hang on—a littl> longer.” Christine straightened up. In her eyes were humility, something like reverence. “Fight on,” she said softly. 1Llliteracy on IF ane HE public educational system of this country has gone far toward eliminating illiteracy in the United States, statistics gatherggr by the Bureau of Census indicates. The Bureau's standard of literacy requires that the person in question must be able to read and write either in the English or some other language, The number of illiterates over the age of 10 years now constitutes about 4.3 per :e‘t of the population in that age category, while tack in 1890 the total was 13.3 per cent. The decline has been steady with each census, that of 1900 showing 10.7 per cent, 1910 showing 7.7 per cent and 1920 showing 6 per cent, That conditions are improving rapidly is shown by the steady decrease in illiteracy as the age nears the 10-year-old minimum taken. For instance, illiteracy among those 65 years old or over is 9.7 per cent. This drops stead- ily to the class covering the ages of 10 to 14 inclusive, in which only 1.2 pcr cent are illiterate. The total number of illiterates is 4,283,753, with about 110,000 more male than female illiterates,