Tales of the South Pacific - James A. Michener [70]
At that moment Dinah Culbert entered the room. "Made up your mind?"
"Yep! I'm going to get married!"
"Good! Nellie, that's a fine decision!" Dinah's enthusiasm upset Nellie a bit.
"But to Charlie Benedict back home!" She bit her lip and laid the pen down. "Oh, Dinah!" she cried. "I couldn't marry a man who had lived with a nigger!"
"Of course not," Dinah said dryly. She didn't live in Arkansas and wouldn't understand. "Hello! What's this?" She picked up from Nellie's desk a picture from an Arkansas newspaper. "Why, Nellie!" she cried. "This is you!" Dinah looked at the picture approvingly. Then she read the caption, "Our heroine!" She repeated the words, "Our heroine!" Then she looked at Nellie, tears in her eyes, nose red, mouth drooping. "Our heroine!" she shouted, waving the picture in Nellie's wet face.
Nurse Forbush caught a fleeting glimpse of herself in the clipping. She thought of the afternoon the picture arrived in Otolousa. "I want to see the world, Charlie. I want to live with people!" The ridiculousness of her situation amused her. She started laughing at Dinah. Then she laughed at herself. The two nurses caught one another by the arms and started dancing.
"Our little heroine!" Dinah repeated over and over again until her chuckling became uncontrolled. Then she sat in Nellie's chair. In doing so, she knocked the letter to Charlie Benedict on the floor. With a grand sweep Nellie picked it up and crumpled it into a little ball.
"So long Charlie!" she cried, tossing the ball into a corner.
"Nellie!" Dinah cried. "Where did you get this?"
"What?" the now half-hysterical Nellie answered.
"This picture. It was on the floor by your jacket." It was the picture of the four De Becque girls.
"Oh!" Nellie cried in astonishment. "Emile must have..."
"What lovely girls!" Dinah said.
Nellie stopped laughing. She looked over Dinah's shoulder. They were lovely girls. Look at Latouche! Winsome and confident. Her three sisters, too. Calm, happy, cocky young girls. They seemed to be afraid of nothing. They seemed like their father.
"They are like De Becque!" Nellie said in a whisper.
"What did you say?" Dinah asked.
"Look, Dinah! Look at them! How much fun they seem to have!"
"You'd never have a bored moment around them," Dinah replied sagaciously.
"And the four little girls! Dinah, they're sweet. And so well behaved. Oh damn it all!" Nurse Forbush walked up and down. She saw her letter to Charlie in the corner. "Damn it all!" she cried again, kicking at the letter.
"Very reasonable behavior!" Dinah laughed. "For a little heroine!"
"What's the use of bluffing, Dinah?" Nellie confessed. She ran over to the older nurse. "Now I have made up my mind. I want to marry him... so very much!" She started crying and sank her head on Dinah's shoulder. Dinah thereupon consoled her by crying, too. In mutual happiness they blubbered for a while.
"I think your mind is made up the right way this time," Dinah whispered.
"Quick!" Nellie cried. "See if you can get a jeep! We've got to get one right away! I've got to tell him, tonight!" She hurried about the room getting her clothes together. "Oh, Dinah!" she chortled. "Think what it will be like! A big family in a big house! Eight daughters, and they're darlings. I don't care who he's lived with. I got me a man! My mind's made up. Mom was right. Wait till the last minute!"
In great joy she dressed and hurried downstairs with Dinah. While they waited for the jeep the guard asked, "Changed your mind, ensign?"
"Yep!" she laughed. "I did!" He made a circle with his