, NURSES
By L. A. G. STRONG
WE were talking about a friend who, recovering from an operation in hospital, had become engaged to his Nurse.
Mr. Mangan removed his pipe. "I know quite a few lads," said he, "a sizable number, in fact, that married hospital Nurses." He did not sound the "h." "My private opinion is that the Nurses married them.
"Most of the hospital Nurses that came under my survey were good-looking, but in a cold and frosty fashion. As a type, they have good colouring, nice natural teeth, Greek noses, and a tendency to morbid cleanliness.
"One friend of mine who married a Nurse was a junior • bank-clerk, with a healthy appetite for drink and gambling. He was about twenty-two years old, and had no cares in the world other than those involved in the gratification of his appetites, when he encountered and married his Nurse. After exactly nine years of married life "—Mr. IVIangan's tone deepened impressively—" he became manager of the bank in a small country town, where he found himself refusing overdrafts to persuasive men with nicotine-stained moustaches and an aroma of alcohol. He was the pillar and ground of truth in the local church, he never said anything coarser than 'Come, come,' he never smoked, he never drank anything stronger than cocoa, and was never seen within an Irish mile of a racecourse, leave alone a betting-shop. When I add that his wife had two chins, was coldly handsome, terribly efficient, and bore him eleven handsome, healthy-looking boys and girls, you will accuse me of painting the lily or gilding the pill, or whatever it is one does—I tend to forget my classics.
"Another friend of mine who wed a Nurse was a pro- fessional boxer. He wooed and won her in hospital, where he lay unconscious for over a week after an encounter with a blacksmith who appeared to be ignorant of the Queens- berry rules. My friend informed me that he had no memory of proposing to the girl, but when he woke up and was fit to leave the hospital his Nurse accompanied him, and she never left his side for any appreciable length of time afterwards. She persuaded him that boxing was not only sinful but precarious, and under her guidance he went in for the dairying business, and, after a few years, attained to great riches. Like my friend the banker, he is very devout, wears a T.T. medal, and has not made above a dozen appearances at the local petty sessions in connexion with an alleged deficiency of vital fats in the milk he sells.
"Yet another friend was more persistent—the master of his fate, you might say, if not exactly the captain of his soul. He wooed his Nurse on the sands at Brighton in the year 1908, and at the Chine, or whatever it is, at Bournemouth in the year 1909. He kissed her at Kilkee in 1910, and finally placed the padlock of love on her finger at Ballyvary the year after.
"Practically the whole of his single life he spent in bookies' shops ; I never knew him to be without a racing form-book ; and the words of his mouth were of horses, fur- longs past the-post, and even money on the field. He swore pretty well, too, was addicted to beer and whiskey, and not only smoked but chewed tobacco. Delightful company when sober, but at other times belligerent, he was apt to wear dingy-looking, cream-coloured flannel shirts with collars that did not fit, and neglected to clean his nails. His religious observances were intermittent, and in inverse ratio, or what- ever it is—I forget my mathematics—in inverse ratio to the number of rats occasionally visible to him, but to no one else, upon his quilt.
"When his Nurse at last consented to wed him, he dis- appeared. It was not so much matrimony as hibernation. When he emerged some ten years afterwards, he was accompanied by a beaming wife with a face like the setting sun, and eight fat, smiling children. He wore a discreet dark tweed suit, a hard hat of nonconformist pattern, and carried an umbrella. He collects at our church nowadays, and his voice was heard last Sunday loudly exploring the easier parts of Adeste.
"I was sorry to see the man in this condition, and waited for him after service. He was pleasant enough, but omitted to introduce me to his wife, .who walked rather frigidly on the other side of the path with her offspring. We discussed old times, and he spoke of beer and bets and pretty girls with an air of detached, benign interest, as if we were talking about early Florentine art.
"Now the above instances," said Mr. Mangan, making a curious circular gesture with the stem of his pipe, "the above instances point all one way, indicating a tendency to joylessness—as most men understand it—to parsimony, to respectability: in fact, to the sort of improvement we may reluctantly admire but cannot like. Let me give you one final example of a man who wed a Nurse and was improved the other way.
"The man, whom I will call the Major, was the meanest single man I ever met. He led a very careful life, never drank or betted on horses, or did anything to make him feel a fool the morning after. He saved up every penny he could. I must have given him about a ton of tobacco in my time to fill his pipe, for he always left his pouch at home, and God alone knows how many times I paid his car-fare. No one was ever in his house, and he used to darn his own socks, and be for ever hunting for his spectacles.
"As a natural result of all this careful living, he found himself in hospital round about his fiftieth year, suffering from some obscure but painful form of anaemia. His Nurse, so he told me afterwards, whispered to him in the dark about a blazing fire, slippers on the fender, a white cat on a black rug, buttons on his linen, egg-flip with a small whiskey in it, warm sands in the summer, kisses under the moon, and other joys undreamt of in his philosophy. "He is normal now," said Mr. Mangan, "and quite human. In fact, he borrowed seven-and-six from me three weeks ago, and I had all my work cut out to prevent him paying me back ten shillings under the influence of alcohol and generous emotion.
"It would therefore appear," Mr. Mangan concluded, his voice once more taking on its deepest oracular tone, "that Nurses have more than their share of virtue, more than their share of persuasion, more than their share of good looks, and more than their share of good luck. Or— and this is perhaps more plausible—it may be that the teaching and the experience they get in continuous proximity to death endows them with some peculiar, invisible charm for the conversion, if not the happiness, of erring man."
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