The Little Blue Devil/Alison Spreads Her Net

The Straines lived in Philadelphia, probably the happiest couple in the whole of that city. Alison Straine after six years of married life was still, the Professor told her, a mere child in looks and ways; but a child with a good deal of common sense secreted somewhere, despite her many impulses—with more than a child’s gravity lurking behind the brightness which seemed to ripple and flow from eyes and hair and quick, light movements. She adored her husband, and he, Professor Winthrop Straine, Lecturer in Greek and German to the Philadelphian University, fourteen years her senior, had never quite ceased to feel a sense of surprise that this young, sweet, and altogether desirable Alison should have consented to become Mrs. Professor Straine.

Given so warm and tender-hearted a couple, it is not very surprising to learn that when the Professor’s automobile knocked down and badly hurt a small, shabby boy, not a hundred yards from the Straines’ door, Winthrop should refuse all suggestions of public or even private hospitals made by friendly policemen, and should have the unconscious victim carried straightway home and lodged in a spare room, where, an hour later, doctors and an austere-faced nurse had made the boy as comfortable as a badly fractured thigh would permit. He had only recovered consciousness in time to be given an anæsthetic while the bone was set, and now lay silent and dazed, a pathetic small figure in the smooth white bed. ​His thin brown cheeks were exaggeratedly thin and brown against the pillows; his straight black brows drawn together in a frown of pain. The grey eyes, staring fiercely out upon a strange world, told of the struggle to realise the circumstances of this new disaster, and one rough hand grasped convulsively the edge of the neatly folded sheet, in the effort to repress the faintest cry.

Was it any wonder that Alison’s pitiful heart went out in one warm rush to this desolate Tony, looking so much younger than his real age in his worn-out, half-starved state, tucked away in bed? She was obliged to restrain her longing to take the poor waif in her arms and kiss and weep over the little pinched face, but her mother’s heart enfolded him then and there, never to let him go again, so long as life should last. What of Bill Hooker with his warning to Tony?—“Keep clear of women. Never let them see you with buttons off or holes in your socks, or they’ll grab you and never let you go.” Tony, groping his way back to consciousness, was very far from remembering any such warning; possibly it would not have helped him much, in any case.

Alison had been out when the procession of Winthrop and Peters the chauffeur, bearing Tony, and followed by an officious and totally useless constable had invaded the house. Winthrop met her in the hall on her return, soon after the doctor’s departure, and she greeted him with an intuitive “Something has happened!”

Winthrop confessed in as few words as possible.

“Yes. We were only a few yards from home when we ran into and knocked down a little chap who seemed suddenly to appear out of nowhere. I don’t think he knew where he was going.”

“Oh, Winthrop, is he badly hurt?”

“Not desperately, but a fractured thigh which will keep him on his back for six weeks at least, and a general ​bruising and knocking about. He’s more than half starved too, I should think, poor little wretch!”

“Oh, the poor child! What have you done with him?”

“Why, I brought him here. He’s in the little guestroom now. Dr. Wakeham came, and Fanning. They got a nurse at once and she’s fixed him. It’ll be a good long job, Kitten, but I thought———”

“I should think not, Winthrop!” Alison was halfway upstairs by this time, pulling off her gloves as she went. “Oh, poor baby! Suppose you had killed him! Did you find out where he belongs?” she paused to ask.

“He hasn’t come to himself enough to be questioned yet. There was a letter in his pocket addressed to St. Croix at some place in New Zealand—that was all. He’s got a waif-and-stray look about him, somehow.”

Alison disappeared round the bend. The Professor retired to his library, smiling, and Alison opened the door of the little room, shadowy now in the late afternoon, nodded to the tall nurse in the background, and sat down by the bedside.

The severe grey eyes looked at her unwinking. She was no more strange than all the other strange things that had been happening, but he felt he could speak to her. The nurse, he had realised, though invested with authority which had sponged him, brushed his hair, and insisted on the swallowing of something in a cup which he did not want, yet was not a person who should be questioned as to the immediate past and future. Besides, his head had been aching too confoundedly and his tongue wouldn’t work properly. But this lady with the furs and soft cheeks and the violets in her little hat or whatever it was, she evidently belonged; he would speak to her. (I hope to God my voice isn’t going to shake.)

​“What has happened? Will you tell me what has happened?”

(It was slightly tremulous and much lower than he had meant to speak; however, she had heard. She went straight to the point too, this lady who belonged—that was something.)

“You were knocked down by an automobile. You were crossing the street, and somehow it ran into you. It was my husband’s car and he was nearly home, so he brought you in here, and the doctor has just been fixing you.”

“Where am I hurt?” (He really couldn’t be polite. It was disgustingly difficult to speak at all.)

“It’s your leg—the thigh is broken; but they’ve set it now, and it won’t hurt so much by and by.”

“Is it badly smashed?”

“Yes, pretty bad. Don’t talk any more now.”

“How long will it take to mend?”

“I don’t know exactly—some weeks. You mustn’t worry about that now. And don’t talk any more—it’s all right.”

(So she was a stupid sort of woman, after all. What was the sense of saying it was all right when everything was as wrong as possible?) The hoarse little voice persisted.

“If it’s a bad break it will take a long time to mend. I can’t stay here. You must let me go away, please.”

“My dear little boy, you can’t go away. Your leg is broken, and there is nothing for it but to lie still.”

“I can go to a hospital. If your husband hadn’t brought me here I should have been taken to a hospital. I’d much rather be there. Please let me go.”

“Listen, my boy! Don’t you see that it was my husband’s fault that you’ve been hurt like this? Since it was his car ​that knocked you down you must see that it is only common justice for us to look after you now———”

“I would rather go to a hospital,” the white lips reiterated. Then, lower still: “I must go, please. I haven’t any money.”

“Please don’t talk like that!” The tears were not far from Alison’s eyes by this time. She bent and took the hot hand that lay beside her in both her firm, cool ones.

“See here, little boy. My husband is most terribly distressed at having hurt you. He’s the kindest man in the world, and he feels dreadfully about it. So do I. And you don’t know how I love looking after sick people—but, first of all, tell me where you come from? Where are your folk? Is there anyone we can let know about you?”

More steadily came the answer:

“I haven’t any people belonging to me.”

“Then you’ve nothing to do but lie here and let us take care of you. As for money and all that, we’ll talk about it later, I promise you. Now I’m going to leave you. Try to sleep, and to-morrow we’ll talk some more. I shall love helping to nurse you.”

Alison disappeared. There was nothing to be done, and anyway, the room was going round and round in a horrible way and the noise in his ears was making him deaf. Tony closed his eyes, and knew very little of the night of pain and feverish dreams which followed. The nurse, an excellent machine, paid no attention to the broken sentences concerning “Bill,” “Baldwin,” and “Robertson,” or the illusions about sailing ships, droving, or nailing boxes. Morning brought full consciousness again, but pain and exhaustion continued for three or four days, and during that time Tony spoke scarcely at all.

Alison sat with him in the afternoons while the nurse was out, but the boy invariably lay with closed eyes, and very ​few words passed between them. He was, of course, too weak to talk, but often pretended a greater weakness and drowsiness than he really felt, dreading the idea of any conversation with this strange woman, so unlike anyone he had spoken to for so many years. Her very presence vaguely irritated him; he refused even to respond to the smile with which she greeted and left him; his one idea was to get well enough to leave this household which had taken possession of him—to get free of all the care to which he was forced to submit, yet resented from the bottom of his stubborn heart. In a way he felt as if he were trapped. If he had been tossed about before, at least circumstances had never closed on him unaware, forcing him to live a new life.

His resentment was plain enough to Alison, who longed for an occasional softening of the tightly closed lips or a pressure of the hand she patted once or twice in passing. She longed in vain, but attributed all his lack of response to illness, never dreaming, she who made friends with whom she would, that convalescence would not bring him to her feet.

“How are you getting on with that boy of yours?” the Professor asked her every evening.

“Oh, we haven’t begun to ‘get on’ exactly yet, Winthrop—we shall soon enough, but you know I’m not allowed to talk to him at present, and most of the time I’m there he’s asleep, or in such pain, poor, brave little boy!”

“Are you aware, madam, that this ‘little boy’ you speak of as if he were barely out of long clothes is every bit of fifteen years old—if not more?”

“Very possibly, dear, but I wish you wouldn’t remind me of it. He looks the merest baby most of the time, and I’m simply dying for him to be well enough for me to cuddle and mother—I’m sure he’s had little enough of it, poor mystery! Besides, Winthrop, aren’t you frightfully ​curious to know just what and who he is? He’s not an ordinary boy–I'm certain there's something extraordinarily interesting about him, and I’ll get it out of him presently.”

“I’m not perfectly sure that you’ll find him as easy to manage as you think,” remarked the Professor. However, he had unbounded faith in his wife’s powers of persuasion, and added, as she looked slightly downcast:

“If anyone can act Grand Inquisitor with absolute charm and discretion, Kitten, it’s certainly you. I’m quite sorry for that helpless young man upstairs.”

“You are pleased to be insulting, Winthrop–I won’t have it,” and Alison rumpled the Professor’s hair in a way he affected to dislike.

A week’s quiet, good food, and careful nursing did wonders for Tony. The fever departed, pain became almost a thing of the past, and the strain apparent in eyes and lips relaxed. Alison judged the time for conversation had come and chose a morning when she found the grey eyes, no longer drowsy or averted, but steadily fixed on her whenever she looked up from her sewing. She smiled at him by way of prefix, her brightest, most irresistible smile, and was sufficiently encouraged by the shadowy one she got in return.

What had he to do with her? Tony was reflecting ungraciously; she was thousands of miles from him really. But–he was in her house, worse luck, and he must bear up under this weight of obligation they had thrust on him. How many weeks had they been feeding and tending him already?

Alison put down her sewing and seated herself very close to the boy, propped up a little on his pillows to-day.

“Now you really are getting well,” she began.

“Yes, I’m much better, thank you”–coldly and politely.

​“You poor old thing! It’s been a horribly bad time, and you have been so good and brave. It’s only a question of waiting now, and we’ll try not to let it be a very tedious time.”

The only response she got to this was:

“Don’t you think I’m well enough to be moved to a hospital now? I think the doctor would say so———”

“Tony!” (His name was the only information acquired or vouchsafed so far.) “I thought we had talked all that out before. Perhaps you don’t remember, though—you were so ill at the time. Don’t you realise that since it is our fault that you were hurt at all, it is only right for us to help you to get well again?”

“I don’t know that it was your fault. I expect it was mine for getting in the way.”

“You can’t possibly prove that, my dear little boy. And in any case you couldn’t be moved—you absolutely must lie quiet for some weeks yet; so won’t you be nice about it and only remember how I love fussing over sick people?—do!”

She put her hand on his and was hurt, though not discouraged, when he drew it sharply away. In fact, this solicitude and friendliness was almost more than the boy could endure. He did not like or understand it; he distrusted this woman—smiles, pretty ways, soft speeches and all. What was she to him? How could she possibly enjoy nursing him? Did he want any woman’s ministrations, anyway? He wished, since he had to be smashed up like this, that he had been killed outright, or at least sent to a place where he would have been treated simply as a case, to be healed and sent away as soon as possible, with no personal element in the matter to embarrass and burden him. Besides, with all his soul he dreaded being made a soft,” unfit to fight when he was thrown out again—or let loose, which was it? God knew it had been grim ​enough, that hardening process; he did not want it all over again. No wild woodland thing ever struggled more fiercely in a silken net; no bird ever beat more hopeless wings against the gilded bars of a cage. Alison, conscious of this feeling, though not of its intensity, proceeded with her tactics.

“What are we to do, to make the time go more quickly for you? Do you care for books? I’m so fond of reading aloud, and Winthrop, my husband, never wants to listen to me! Will it bother you if I bring some books up and read to you sometimes?—we must fill in the days some way.”

“I don’t want you to waste any time over me at all, thank you. You’re—very kind”—this with an effort—“but I don’t like having to owe things to people, and I shan’t ever be able to pay you back.”

“Tony, I thought we had agreed that———”

“No, I don’t agree at all about your being under such a great obligation to me. I had just come to an end of my money”—Oh, how he was loathing every minute of this!)—“and if I must be here for weeks I don’t see how I shall be able to repay you.”

Alison said, very quietly:

“If you feel like that so strongly, even though I think your point of view is wrong, I’ll speak to the Professor and I’m sure he will be able to arrange some way of your earning money presently, or there may be something you can do for him. We’ll see.”

“Thank you.” He heaved a little sigh of relief, and there was silence for awhile. Tony lay and stared at the ceiling; Alison covertly studied the face before her—the mouth, too hard for such a child; the hollow cheeks; the lines where no lines should be till age furrowed them; the scar so dangerously near his eye.

“Poor proud darling!” she thought, tears in her eyes. ​“How I should love to take him in my arms and kiss him, the baby! But I suppose I daren’t do anything of the sort. . . . Tony,” she began, after a little time. The grey eyes turned to her.

“Won’t you tell me a little about yourself? Don’t think I’m curious, or tell more than you want to, but tell me—had you been long in Philadelphia, and were you quite alone? And what do you generally do for a living?”

Tony had been expecting this. He answered as briefly as possible.

“I only came here the day before I—the accident. I’d been in California and Illinois before that, and worked my way East. I was in Australia before that, droving, and worked my way over in a sailing ship. I’ve done just anything that happened to turn up always.”

“Always? But you’re not so very old now.”

“No; but I’ve mostly had to look out for myself.”

“But there must be some relations———”

“None to do anything for me.”

Alison was leaning forward, her elbows on the bed. Her eyes, shadowy and soft, were on a level with the boy’s, which gazed straight into hers for what seemed a long time. Then Alison’s suddenly grew misty, a queer little thrill ran through Tony, and the next minute her arms were round him and she was murmuring loving words that mothers use through her kisses. For one wild moment he clung to her desperately, even kissed the soft cheek pressed to his—then both heard the nurse’s footstep outside the door, Alison went hastily to open it, and Tony heard her exclamation of “Jelly-time, is it, nurse? Don’t you think we might vary that a little now?”

She talked on for a few moments, to give the boy time to recover himself; already she regretted having yielded to the temptation to “mother” him, knowing it was a ​mistake and that the boy would find it hard to forgive her. Then with a light “good-bye” she disappeared, while Tony, furious with himself, angry with Alison, with Fate, with all the world, turned his shamed boy’s face to the wall and heartily cursed his luck.