The Black Cat (magazine)/Volume 1/Number 5/The Prince Ward

by Claude M. Girardeau

The Prince Ward.

by Claude M. Girardeau.

THE hospital was almost finished, but, as there were several wards still unendowed, the board of managers gave a reception. Ostensibly, to enable a curious public to inspect the building; in reality, to obtain benefactions. Among the visitors was a Mr. Prince, a Southerner, and reputed wealthy. He seemed greatly interested in the hospital, and selected for endowment a single ward on the second floor, department of surgery. It was at once completed at his expense and christened with his name.

Its first occupant was his wife. She looked like a dying woman to the superintendent, but he entered her case on the new books without comment, and she was examined by the surgeons in charge. They advised an immediate operation as the only hope—and that a slight one—of saving her life. In fact, they knew she could not recover either with or without it; but the operation would be an interesting one.

"I did not think I was so ill," said Mrs. Prince pathetically, as the nurse took her back to her room.

"Guess she hasn't looked in a glass lately," was the attendant's unspoken comment.

"She looks for all the world like a starved cat," she said to another nurse, later on, "with her big green eyes and her black hair. Won't I have a sweet time combing all that hair? It's about two yards long. She's more hair than anything else."

The morning of the operation found Mrs. Prince cold with nervous terror.

"Do you think I will suffer much?" she inquired of the nurse tremulously.

"Oh, no, indeed," replied that functionary, with professional cheerfulness, plaiting away at the endless lengths of hair. "If I was you, I'd have about half of this cut off."

Mrs. Prince looked at the long, heavy plaits, then up at the nurse, her gray eyes darkening.

"If you cannot take care of it," she said quietly, "I will tell the superintendent to send me another woman."

The nurse colored.

"Oh, I don't mind," she said awkwardly.

When the toilet of the condemned was completed Mr. Prince came in with a huge handful of roses, smiling genially as his eyes fell on his wife.

"Why, P'tite, you look like John Chinaman in that funny shirt."

She smiled in return, but wanly.

"I suppose I do look absurd." She held out her arms; he filled them with the roses, and sat down by the narrow bed. She turned aside her head to hide the sudden tears. He drew her plaits of hair from neck to heel and bent to kiss her cheek as the doctors came in to administer ether.

"Madame Kanaris is here," he said softly, "and begs to see you. May she come in?"

"Madame Kanaris!" She stared up at him with dilating eyes. "When did she come to B—? What is she doing here?"

"The nurse said I might come in for one little moment," said an exquisitely melodious voice at the door directly facing the sick woman.

The men all looked up. A woman, young, beautiful as the day, stood on the threshold, her tender deep blue eyes fixed upon the patient with an expression of the liveliest emotion.

Her radiant hair, her dazzling complexion, her superb figure enveloped in furs, and the indescribable grace of her attitude made the sick woman appear grotesquely skeleton-like and ghastly.

It was Life confronting Death. Death raised itself upon an emaciated arm, and spoke to Life:—

"I cannot see you now, madame. The physicians have just come in, as you see. I beg that you will go away."

Prince sprang to his feet and approached the visitor.

"I did not know the physicians would be here," he murmured. "Shall I take you downstairs? Will you wait for me in the parlors?"

While he was speaking to Madame Kanaris his wife motioned to a surgeon. "I am ready. But, O doctor, are you sure it will make me quite dead? Are you sure I shall not be just iced over, with a frightful consciousness underneath? Are you sure?"

"Quite sure," said the surgeon pityingly, stealing a glance at the figures in the doorway. "You will be blotted out of existence during the operation. Do not be afraid."

He took her cold hand into a warm, compassionate palm. In a few seconds she was carried past her husband and Madame Kanaris, who were still talking in the corridor.

Prince was startled as the procession of doctors and nurses came out of the room.

His companion glanced at them, and her brilliant color faded.

"Do not leave me," she gasped, holding him by the arm. "Take me away. I should not have come."

Prince hesitated. The stretcher was being carried into the elevator. He turned to the beautiful, agitated woman beside him, drew her hand through his arm, and they went downstairs together.

The operation was long, difficult, and dangerous, taxing both nerve and skill. The operating-room was very hot. One of the nurses fainted, and a young doctor, sick at heart and stomach, helped her away, glad to get out himself.

The operating surgeon, a keen, self-possessed practitioner, looked at the patient when all was over, with a deep breath of relief.

"The very worst case of its kind I ever saw," he remarked to a colleague." It will be a miracle if she recovers, although I would give one of my ears to make it possible."

After three days of delirium and torture the woman died.

It was the twenty-eighth day of February.

Madame Kanaris came into the ward alone, and stood for a few moments looking down at the face on the narrow pillow.

"She could never have recovered in any event?" she said questioningly to the nurse.

"I don't see how she could," was the calm reply.

Madame put out a flashing hand.

"May I see?" she said with delicate curiosity.

The nurse lifted a layer of batting.

The beautiful visitor gave a cry of dismay and clapped the hand to her face.

"I thought it would make you sick," said the nurse quietly. "I guess you had better go to the window."

Madame stood with her lace handkerchief pressed to her lips and gazed upon the ice and snow without.

Presently she said:—

"Mr. Prince desires the hair of his wife. Will you kindly cut off the plaits close to the head."

"It does seem a pity," observed the nurse, snipping at the plaits stolidly, "to take the only thing from her she seemed to care much about. I guess they can bury my hair with me."

"She is not to be buried," replied madame softly, still gazing upon the whiteness without. "It would be a pity to burn such splendid hair, would it not?"

"Oh!" said the nurse, "I see. Going to send her to the new crematory?"

"Are you a New Englander?" gently inquired the lady, turning her dark blue eyes upon the inquisitive attendant.

"I guess I am. Why?"

"I have always heard that New Englanders asked a great many questions."

The nurse colored and snapped the scissors vigorously through the last strands of hair. The thick, short locks stuck out stiftly behind the dead woman's ears. The nurse held out the snakelike braids to Madame Kanaris, who drew back a little.

"Please put them in this box for me," she said quickly. "Mr. Prince will send for it."

In leaving the room she touched the dead forehead lightly with a finger, crossed herself, and murmured something in a strange tongue.

"Catholic, I guess," sniffed the nurse, watching her as she went down the corridor, with that mingling of envy and unwilling admiration that the beautiful Greek always succeeded in implanting in the bosoms of her less-favored sisters.

In a few days' time Prince and Madame Kanaris returned to the hospital with a picture they desired hung in the ward. It might have been an idealized portrait of Mrs. Prince,—the face of a saint against a background of sunset, or the head of a martyr dark against flame, as the imagination of the beholder should suggest.

The frame was oval with an inscription below the head. It was also heavy, of plaited bronze, with a boxlike backing. It was the work of a finished artist, however, and, being idealized, the portrait was beautiful. It was hung above the bed, as the other wall spaces were occupied with cheerful landscapes.

Madame Kanaris laid a loose bunch of pomegranate flowers on the pillow beneath it, and she and Prince left B——the next day—as they thought—forever.

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The new hospital was a popular one, but for some reason the Prince Ward remained vacant. There was nothing mysterious about this; it had been bespoken many times for patients, but a change of mind would occur so naturally that at first nothing was thought of it. In a year or so, however, the continued vacancy began to be a subject of remark among the nurses. But they were too busy and too practical to regard it in any other light than that of a provoking pecuniary loss to the establishment.

One night in January the night nurse of the second floor, at one end of which was the Prince Ward, sat drowsily waiting for medicine periods or the sound of bells from the various rooms.

It was the last night of her watch, and she was worn out from a month's sleeplessness.

Toward midnight the tinkle of a bell roused her. She went from door to door trying to place it. As she neared the Prince Ward it sounded again.

She paused at the door.

"Very strange," she thought; "surely there is no one in here?"

But to make sure she went in. The room was icy cold. A low moan came from the narrow bed.

"Water!" murmured a voice inarticulately. " Water!"

"Wait until I turn on the light," said the nurse, going towards the chimney-place. She stepped on something, tripped, would have fallen; caught at the bed and grasped a long thick rope of hair. She lifted it and laid it alongside the figure it evidently belonged to.

"Water, water!" moaned the inarticulate voice again, close to her ear. The nurse went out, much puzzled, and returned with a glass. Two icy hands touched hers as she held it to the lips.

"How cold you are!" she exclaimed, "and this room is like a frozen—frozen tomb," she added. "You must get warm."

"No, no!" said the voice, ending in a low, wailing moan.

The nurse looked curiously down at the face on the pillow. Scarcely anything was visible but two large dark eyes and two immensely long snake-like plaits of hair.

"Did you come in to-night? Are you waiting for an operation?" asked the perplexed nurse.

"Yes." The voice was inarticulate again.

"How strange the day nurse or the head nurse did not tell me. I don't know what to make of it, at all. You are sure you do not want any light or heat?"

The reply was so inarticulate that she bent down to listen. A faint odor turned her quite sick. She went out hastily into the corridor, leaving the door ajar. She was worried; nay, more, she was conscious of a feeling a trained nurse has no excuse for. She had a crawly sensation along her spine.

"I must be dreaming," she said to herself angrily.

She went back to her chair and table, and, in spite of heaviness and sleepiness, listened for the bells with a qualm of absolute fright whenever the sound came from the end of the corridor.

At last, just before daybreak, the bell she was straining her ears for, rang again.

She plunged her head into cold water, took a glass in her hand, and approached the Prince Ward. For a second she paused at the door; a wild impulse to dash down the glass of water and rush shrieking through the corridor almost overpowered her for a heart-beat. Then her training reasserted itself; she smiled satirically in her own face and went in, leaving, nevertheless, the door wide open behind her. She paused beside the bed.

"Thirsty again? I have brought some water for you."

She slid a hand to lift the head. She bent over the pillow with a steady glass.

The bed was empty. It was not even made up. There were no sheets on it, no pillow-slip.

The room was like a frozen tomb. The glass dropped from her hand, deluging the mattress with its contents.

She rushed from the room. Fortunately, her felt slippers made no sound. The door swung to noiselessly behind her. She fled up the corridor, and flattened her back against the wall at its furthest end, shaking as with a mortal chill.

There she remained until the gray light of a snowy day crept through the window at her side.

When the day nurse, rosy and refreshed, came to relieve her, she said, eying the night nurse a little curiously:

"I guess you'd better tumble into bed as soon as you can, Miss Evans. You look as if your month's work had about finished you."

The nurse whose turn came next was the one who had been with Mrs. Prince. The last night of her watch was the twenty-seventh of February. She had had an unusually hard month's work, and was exceedingly tired and not a little cross when, at midnight, a bell rang which she could not locate.

"Some plaguey wire out of gear again," she said, provoked, after a second fruitless search for the elusive tinkle. She had turned at the end of the corridor, and stood just by the Prince Ward. The bell rang sharply.

"Well, I want to know!" she said aloud. "If isn't in this ward!"

She went in immediately and would have turned on the light, when she was stopped by a curiously familiar, though indistinct, voice.

"Water—water!"

"For the land's sake," ejaculated the Down-Easter, going toward the bed. "What's this?"

Her foot slipped on something; she tripped and came near falling. She stooped and lifted from the floor a long, heavy plait of black hair. She stood stupidly, holding it in her hands, staring down at the bed.

"If I was you," she said mechanically, "I'd have about half of this cut off."

Two large dark eyes stared up at her.

"Why!" she stammered, too stupid to know when she was frightened, too trained a nurse to understand, "Why, you died!"

A low langh echoed in the room.

"How cold you are in here," the nurse went on. "What will you have?"

"Water," said the thick voice inarticulately.

The nurse went out. As she closed the door behind her she was seized with a sudden cold shaking.

She went to the room of the head nurse and woke her.

"Say, Mrs. Waxe, who's the patient in the Prince Ward? Why wasn't I told about her?" Mrs. Waxe was wide awake instantly.

"Prince Ward? There's nobody in the Prince Ward, Miss Hall."

"Yes, there is, too. I've just seen her and spoke to her. Seems to me I've seen the woman before. But the one I knew died after the operation."

"What?" asked Mrs. Waxe keenly. She had been in the hospital only six months, but she was a personal friend of Miss Evans. "Who was she?" Miss Hall gave a brief account of the case.

"What was her name?" inquired Mrs. Waxe, sitting up, large and alert.

"Why, it was Prince," said the night nurse. "She was the wife of the man who endowed the ward."

Mrs. Waxe gazed for a moment into the stolid face before her.

"I think you have had a dream," she said calmly.

"I don't sleep on duty, whatever the others may do," retorted Miss Hall.

Mrs. Waxe lumbered out of bed, untying her cap strings.

"Go back to the floor," she said quietly. "I'll be coming to you after a bit."

She dressed quickly and presently waddled into the corridor.

"Now, you go and get to sleep in my room, Miss Hall, and I'll be taking your place to-night."

The hospital was filled to overflowing with grippe cases. The epidemic was raging in the city, and the Prince Ward was the only vacant spot in the place. Its defective register had prevented its use. It could be but insufficiently heated from the fireplace.

Mrs. Waxe went to it at once and turned on the electric light. She then stripped the bed of everything except the springs, carried the small table to the other side of the room, put out the light, took up the hand bell, and locked the door as she went out.

She then sat down at the table in the corridor, opened a Bible, and began to read.

She had read perhaps fifteen minutes when a bell tinkled. Her long experience enabled her to locate it almost immediately. She went to the ward adjoining the Prince.

No; the patient there had not rung for her, but was awake and sure the bell next her on the right was the one. It had rung before.

The Prince Ward was on the right. As Mrs. Waxe stepped into the corridor the bell sounded again.

It was in the Prince Ward. The English woman was convinced that an ugly trick was being played.

Thoroughly indignant, she unlocked the door and stepped within. A low moaning and a peculiar unpleasant odor arrested her progress towards the electric button. The first turned her ruddiness pale; the second made her sick. Her foot slipped; she stumbled, twisted her ankle, and, being a heavy woman, she fell on her knees, catching at the bed-rail. A hand crept upon her shoulder, striking cold through her gingham dress.

"Water!" breathed a hoarse voice at her ear inarticulately. "Water!"

In spite of the strained ankle, the head nurse got upon her feet. She staggered out of the room, followed by the moaning cry of "Water—water."

She shut the door behind her and crept along the corridor, holding to the wall; then called one of the private nurses and bade her light up the Prince Ward. The woman did so, remained in the room a few moments, then came back leisurely.

"Well?" said Mrs. Waxe.

"Well," returned the nurse, "I opened the window. Did not know the ward had been used lately. Pretty bad case, wasn't it?"

"Bad case?" repeated Mrs. Waxe, a light shining through her nostrils to her brain. "Yes; perhaps."

"Perhaps?" repeated the private nurse satirically. "I guess I ought to know by this time. I should say there hadn't been much left of that case to put under ground."

She went back to her case, wondering at the stupidity of the English generally and in particular.

Mrs. Waxe put her aching foot into hot water and meditated.

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The twenty-eighth of February dawned dark, for a blizzard from the northwest was blowing. It was the worst storm of the last half of the century.

Men were lost and frozen to death in the streets while going from their business houses to their homes.

A lady attempting to alight from a carriage at one of the railroad stations, in order to make an outgoing train , slipped, or was blown down upon the icy pavement. She was taken up insensible and carried to the nearest hospital.

"I do not think we have even a corner vacant," said the superintendent; "but of course she cannot leave the building now."

She sent for Mrs. Waxe.

"The Prince Ward is unoccupied?"

The head nurse glanced at the stretcher and hesitated.

"Yes; but it is next to impossible to heat it, you know, doctor."

"Do the best you can," replied the superintendent. "The woman should have been taken to the Emergency, but you see what the weather is."

Mrs. Waxe divested the traveler of her velvet and furs, her lace and linen, the bag of diamonds secreted in her bosom, her long perfumed gloves, her silk underwear, her jeweled garters and hairpins. She left nothing on her but the black pearls in her ears and the magnificent rings on her fingers; then slipped a hospital shirt on her fair body, and tucked her shining curls into a cap. The fall had fractured the bone of one leg and several ribs.

The ward surgeon, entering, started at the sight of the beautiful face on the narrow pillow. Instantly the scene of two years before renewed its living colors on the sensitive film of memory. He even recalled the name of the woman before him, so deeply had that scene and her beauty impressed him.

"It is Madame Kanaris," he said.

The patient opened her dark blue eyes.

"I am Mrs. Prince," she corrected; "I wish to send a telegram to New York at once."

She turned white; fainted again. The broken bones were attended to with expedition.

Before night the telegram was sent. There had been some delay of letters, some misunderstanding that had sent Mrs. Prince to B——by mistake.

That lady's brilliant eyes examined lier surroundings.

"I am in the——Hospital, in the Prince Ward?" she said presently.

"Yes," said Mrs. Waxe, disturbed by the coincidence of names.

"I selected the fittings and furniture for it," Mrs. Prince went on softly. "But I did not think, at the time, of myself." She looked at the picture above the bed.

"You must have that picture taken down for me, Mrs. Waxe. I do not like to have anything 'hanging over me,' even if it is the counterfeit presentment of a saint."

An ugly sneer disfigured her delicate lips for a moment.

"I will have it taken down as soon as possible," said the head nurse; "but it cannot be done immediately, my dear. We have sent out all the nurses we can spare, and extra beds have been put in nearly every ward. I am too heavy to risk myself on a ladder, but I will see the superintendent about it after a bit. It is well fastened up, I assure you."

Towards night, not hearing from Mr. Prince, madame grew nervous, then feverish.

In a sick-bed for the first time in her life, strapped immovably to its narrow confines, her head beginning to throb with agony, she lay suffocating with impatience, suspense, and apprehension, she,—the spoiled darling of every good fortune.

The raging storm shrieked unceasingly about the House of Pain like a legion of infernal spirits.

There were so many others more critically ill than herself, and the number of nurses was so reduced , that she was of necessity left alone much of the time.

Just before midnight Mrs. Waxe came in, weary, but the embodiment of strength and kindness.

"I think," she said coaxingly, "you must try and get to sleep. I shall give you something to quiet you, and then turn off the liglit, and I hope you will soon drop off. I shall be near you in the corridor. If you want anything just tinkle the bell. Close to hand, you see, my dear."

She administered a draught, straightened the pillow, then bent down impulsively and kissed the lovely, disquieted face maternally. Two beautiful arms closed about her ample neck, and the patient was sobbing on her generous bosom.

"Come, come, you must be brave. They did not want me to tell you, but a telegram came half an hour since for you. Your husband will be here sometime toward morning. Will you go to sleep now, like a good child? Ah! I thought so."

She turned off the light and went out, leaving the door half open. After making the round of the corridor she dropped into a chair. Her head fell forward on the table before her. In all her experience as a nurse she had never done such a thing before,—she fell asleep at her post.

She was roused by the sharp, continued ringing of a bell. She sat up, dazed, rubbing her eyes.

The superintendent, the resident physician, and a stranger were coming up the wide staircase. The bell had never ceased its imperious, insistent summons.

Without stopping to think, the head nurse ran, ponderously but swiftly, to the Prince Ward. As she stepped within the threshold the bell suddenly ceased, but the air was vibrating. She ran to the mantelpiece, reached up, and turned on the light.

The three men were at the door, the fur-clad stranger, a tall and handsome apparition, carrying a huge handful of roses. They all stared at the figure of the head nurse.

Petrified in position, her fingers on the key of the electric bulb, she stood with her usually florid face, now paper white, turned over her shoulder, her starting eyes fixed upon the bed.

Mr. Prince entered quickly, then drew back with a loud cry of fear and horror. The roses fell from his hands upon the edge of the bed and over the floor.

The heavy picture had dropped like a stone from its anchor in the cornice. Its edge had struck the sick woman on breast and forehead, but it had fallen painting upward. From beneath it uncoiled on either side two immensely long, ropelike plaits of black hair, between which the painted face smiled upon the white faces by the bedside.

The superintendent was the first to recover his wits. He sprang forward, lifted the picture, wondering at its weight. As he did so, the back, loosened by the fall, fell to pieces; a heavy bronze jar rolled from the face on the pillow, scattering a thin, fine, dust-like ashes that powdered the luxuriant curls, and floated above the stiff, strapped figure in a fine, impalpable cloud.

Then the ashes settled slowly upon the lifeless body, upon the scattered roses on the floor, and upon the splendid furs of the man who shrank against the wall and put up his hands against the dreadful sight.