CHAPTER V.THE RESULT.
It was Farmer Green’s new buggy and Farmer Green’s bay colt which, three days later, stopped before Dr. Holbrook’s office, and not the square-boxed wagon, with old Sorrel attached, for the former was standing quietly in the chip-yard, behind the low red house, while the latter, with his nose over the barn-yard fence, was neighing occasionally, as if he missed the little hands which had daily fed him the oatmeal he liked so much, and which now lay hot and parched and helpless upon the white counterpane which Grandma Markham had spun and woven herself.
Maddy might have been just as sick as she was if the examination had never occurred, but it was natural for those who loved her to impute it all to the effects of excitement and cruel disappointment, so there was something like indignation mingling with the sorrow gnawing at the hearts of the old couple as they watched by their fever-stricken darling. FarmerGreen, too, shared the feeling, and numerous at first were his animadversions against thatprig of a Holbrook, who was not fit to doctor acat, much less “examine aschool-marm.” But when Maddy grew so sick as not to know him or his wife, he laid aside his prejudices, and suggested to Grandpa Markham that Dr. Holbrook be sent for.
“He’s great on fevers,” he said, “and is good on curin’ sick folks, I s’pose;” so, though he would have preferred some one else should have been called, confidence in the young doctor’s skill won the day, and grandpa consented, and Farmer Green was sent for the physician, to whom he said, with his usual bluntness:
“Well, you nigh about killed our little Maddy t’other day, when you refused the stifficut, and now we want you to cure her.”
The doctor looked up in surprise, but Farmer Green soon explained his meaning, making out a most aggravated case, and representing Maddy as wild with delirium.
“Keeps talkin’ about the big books, the Latin and the Hebrew, and even Catechism, as if such like was ’lowed in our school. I s’pose you didn’t know no better; but if Maddy dies, you’ll have it to answer for, I reckon.”
The doctor did not try to excuse himself, but hastily took down the medicines he thought he might need, and stowed them carefully away.
He had expected to hear from that examination, but not in this way, and rather nervously he made some inquiries, as to how long she had been ill, and so forth.
Maddy’s case lost nothing by Mr. Green’s account, and by the time the doctor’s horse was ready, and he on his way to the cottage, he had arrived at the conclusion that of all the villainous men outside the walls of the State’s Prison he was the most villainous, and Guy Remington next.
What a cozy little chamber it was where Maddy lay,—just such a room as a girl like her might be supposed to occupy, and the young doctor felt like treading upon forbidden ground as he entered the room which told so plainly of girlish habits, from the fairy slippers hung on a peg, to the fanciful little work-box made of cones and acorns. Maddy was asleep, and sitting down beside her the doctor asked that the shawl which had been pinned before the window to exclude the light might be removed, so that he could see her,and thus judge better of her condition. They took the shawl away, and the sunlight came streaming in, disclosing to the doctor’s view the face never before seen distinctly, or thought much about, if seen. It was ghastly pale now, save where the hot blood seemed bursting through the cheeks, while the beautiful brown hair was brushed back from the brow where the veins were swollen and full. The lips were slightly apart, and the hot breath came in quick, panting gasps, while occasionally a faint moan escaped them, and once the doctor heard, or thought he heard, the sound of his own name. One little hand lay upon the bed-spread, but the doctor did not touch it. Ordinarily he would have grasped it as readily as if it had been a piece of marble, but the sight of Maddy, lying there so sick, and the fear that he had helped to bring her where she was, awoke to life a curious state of feeling with regard to her, making him almost as nervous as on the day when she appeared before him as candidate No. 1.
“Feel her pulse, doctor; it is faster most than you can count,” Grandma Markham whispered; and thus entreated, the doctor took the hot, soft hand in his own, its touch sending through his frame a thrill such as the touch of no other hand had ever sent.
But somehow the act reassured him. All fear ofMaddy vanished, leaving behind only an intense desire to help, if possible, the young girl whose fingers seemed to cling round his own as he felt for and found the rapid pulse.
“If she would waken,” he said, laying the hand softly down and placing his other upon her burning forehead.
And, after a time, Maddy did awaken, but in the eyes fixed, for a moment, so intently on him, there was no look of recognition, and the doctor was half glad that it was so. He did not wish her to associate him with her late disastrous failure; he would rather she should think of him as some one come to cure her, for cure her he would, he said to himself, as he gazed into her childish face and thought how sad it was for such as she to die. When he first entered the cottage he had been struck with the extreme plainness of the furniture, betokening the poverty of its inmates; but now he forgot everything except the sick girl, who grew more and more restless, and kept talking of him and the Latin verb which meantto love, and which was not in the grammar.
“Guy was a fool and I was a brute,” the doctor mattered, as he folded up the bits of paper whosecontents he hoped might do much toward saving Maddy’s life.
Then, promising to come again, he rode rapidly away, to visit other patients, who that afternoon were in danger of being sadly neglected, so constantly was their physician’s mind dwelling upon the little, low chamber where Maddy Clyde was lying. As night closed in she awoke to partial consciousness, and heard that Dr. Holbrook had been there prescribing for her. Turning her face to the wall, she seemed to be thinking; then calling her grandmother to her she asked “Did he smooth my hair and say, ‘poor child?’”
Her grandmother hardly thought he did, though she was not in the room all the time. “He had staid a long while and was greatly interested,” she said.
Maddy had a vague remembrance of such an incident, and in her heart forgave the doctor for his rejection, and thought only how handsome he had looked, even while tormenting her with such unheard-of questions, and how kind he was to her now. The sight of her grandfather, who came in to see her, awoke a new train of ideas, and bidding him to sit beside her, she asked if their home must be sold. Maddy was not to be put off with an evasion, and sograndpa told her honestly at last that Slocum would probably foreclose and the place be sold.
“But never you mind, Maddy,” he said, cheerily, when he saw how excited she seemed; “we shall manage somehow. I can rent two or three rooms cheap of Mr. Green—he told me so—and with old Sorrel I can work on the road, and fetch things from the depot, and in the winter I can shovel snow, and clean roofs. We shall not starve—not a bit of it—so don’t you worry, it will make you wus, and I’d rather lose the old homestead a thousand times over than lose you.”
Maddy did not reply, but the great tears poured down her flushed cheeks, as she thought of her feeble old grandfather working on the road and shoveling snow to earn his bread; and the fever, which had seemed to be abating, returned with double force, and when next morning the doctor came, there was a look of deep anxiety upon his face as he watched the alarming symptoms of his delirious patient, who talked incessantly, not of the examination now, but of the mortgage and the foreclosure, begging him to see that the house was not sold; to tell them she was earning thirty-six dollars by teaching school; thatBeautyshould be sold to save their dear old home. All thiswas strange at first to the doctor, but the rather voluble Mrs. Green, who had come to Grandma Markham’s relief, enlightened him, dwelling with a kind of malicious pleasure upon the fact that Maddy’s earnings, had she been permitted to get a “stifficut,” were to be appropriated toward paying the debt.
If the doctor had hated himself the previous day when he rode from the red cottage gate, he hated himself doubly now as he went dashing down the road, determined to resign his office of school inspector that very day. And he did.
Summoning around him those who had been most active in electing him, he refused to officiate again, assuring them that if any more candidates came he should either turn them from his door or give them a certificate without asking a question.
“Put anybody you like in my place,” he said; “anybody but Guy Remington. Don’t,for thunder’s sake, take him.”
There was no probability of this, as Guy lived in another town, and could not have officiated had he wished. But the doctor was too much excited to reason clearly about anything, save Madeline Clyde’s case; and during the next few weeks his other patients waited many times in vain for his coming, whilehe sat by Maddy’s side, watching every change, whether for the worse or better. Even Agnes Remington was totally neglected; and so one day she sent Guy to Devonshire to say that asJessieseemed more than usually delicate, she wished the doctor to take her under his charge and visit her at least once a week. The doctor was not at home, but Tom said he expected him every moment. So, seating himself in the arm-chair, Guy waited until he came.
“Well, Hal,” he began, jocosely, but the joking words he would have uttered next died on his lips as he noticed the strange look of excitement and anxiety on the doctor’s face. “What is it?” he asked. “Are all your patients dead?”
“Guy,” and the doctor came closely to him, whispering huskily, “you and I are murderers in the first degree, and both deserve to be hung. Do you remember that Madeline Clyde whom you insulted with your logic, and the Catechism, and Latin verbs? She’d set her heart on that certificate. She wanted the money, not for new gowns and fooleries, mind, but to help her old grandfather pay his debts. His place is mortgaged. I don’t understand it; but he asked some old hunks to lend him the money, and the miserly rascal, whoever he was, refused. I wish I hadit. I’d give it to him out and out. But there’s nothing to do with the girl—Maddy, they call her. The disappointment killed her, and she’s dying—is raving crazy—and keeps talking of that confounded examination. I tell you, Guy, I get terribly mixed up when I hear her talk, and my heart thumps like a triphammer. That’s the reason I have not been up to Aikenside. I wouldn’t leave Maddy so long as there was hope, but there is none now. I did not tell them this morning. I couldn’t make that poor couple feel worse than they were feeling; but when I looked at her, tossing from side to side, and picking at the bedclothes, I knew it would soon be over—that when I saw her again the poor little arms would be still enough, and the bright eyes shut forever. Guy, I couldn’t seeherdie—I don’t like to see anybody die, buther, Maddy, of all others—and so I came away. If you stay long enough, you’ll hear the bell toll, I reckon. There is none at Honedale Church, which they attend. They are Episcopalians, you see, and so they’ll come up here, maybe. I hope I shall be deafer than an adder.”
Here the doctor stopped, wholly out of breath, while Guy for a moment sat without speaking a word. Jessie, in his hearing, had told her mother what thesick girl in the doctor’s office had said about being poor and wanting the money for grandpa; while Mrs. Noah had given him a rather exaggerated account of Mr. Markham’s visit; but he had not associated the two together until now, when he saw the matter as it was, and almost as much as the doctor himself regretted the part he had had in Maddy’s illness and her grandfather’s distress.
“Doc,” he said, laying his hand on the doctor’s arm, “I am theold hunks, the miserly rascal who refused the money. I met the old man going home that day, and he asked me for help. You say the place must be sold. It never shall, never. I’ll see to that, and you must save the girl.”
“I can’t, Guy. I’ve done all I can, and now, if she lives, it will be wholly owing to the prayers that old saint of a grandfather says for her. I never thought much of these things until I heard him pray; not that she should liveany way, but that if it were right Maddy might not die. Guy, there’s something in such a prayer as that. It’s more powerful than all my medicine swallowed at one grand gulp.”
Guy didn’t know very much experimentally about praying, and so he did not respond, but he thought of Lucy Atherstone, whose life was one act of prayer andpraise, and he wishedshecould know of Maddy, and join her petitions with those of the grandfather. Starting suddenly from his chair, he exclaimed, “I’m going down there. I cannot endure to sit here doing nothing to make amends. It will look queer, too, to go alone. Ah, I have it! I’ll drive back to Aikenside for Jessie, who has talked so much of the girl that her mother, forgetting thatshewas once a teacher, is disgusted. Yes, I’ll take Jessie with me, butyoumust order it; you must say it is good for her to ride, and, Hal, give me some medicine for her, just to quiet Agnes, no matter what, provided it is notstrychnine.”
Contrary to Guy’s expectations, Agnes did not refuse to let Jessie go for a ride, and the little girl was soon seated by her brother’s side, chatting merrily of the different things they passed upon the road. But when Guy told her where they were going, and why they were going there, the tears came at once into her eyes, and hiding her face in Guy’s lap she sobbed bitterly.
“I did like her so much that day,” she said, “and one looked so sorry, too. It’s terrible to die!”
Then she plied Guy with questions, concerning Maddy’s probable future. “Would she go to heaven,sure?” and when Guy answered at random, “Yes,”she asked, “Howdid heknow? Had he heard that Maddy was that kind ofgoodwhich lets people in heaven? Because, brother Guy,” and the little preacher nestled closely to the young man, fingering his coat buttons as she talked, “because, brother Guy, folks can be good—that is, not do naughty things—and still God won’t love them unless they—I don’t exactly know what, I wish I did.”
Guy drew her closer to him, but to that childish yearning for knowledge he could not respond, so he said:
“Who taught you all this, little one?—not your mother, surely.”
“No, not mamma, but Miriam, the waiting-maid we left in Boston. She told me about it, and taught me to pray different from mamma, who sometimes keeps her eyes open in church when she is on her knees, and looks at the bonnets near us. Do you pray, brother Guy?”
The question startled the young man, who did not know what to answer, and who was glad that his coachman spoke to him just then, asking if he should drive through Devonshire village, or go direct to Honedale by a shorter route.
They would go to the village, Guy said, hopingthat the doctor might be persuaded to accompany them. They found the doctor at home and willing to go with them. Indeed, so impatient had he become listening for the first stroke of the bell which was to herald the death he deemed so sure, that he was the point of mounting his horse and galloping off alone, when Guy drove up with Jessie. It was five miles from Devonshire to Honedale, and when they reached a hill which lay half way between, they stopped for a few moments to rest the tired horses. Suddenly, as they sat waiting, a sharp, ringing sound fell on their ears, and grasping Guy’s knee, the doctor said, “I told you so; Madeline Clyde is dead.”
It was the Devonshire bell, and its twice three strokes betokened that it tolled for somebody youthful, somebody young, like Maddy Clyde. Jessie wept silently, but there were no tears in the eyes of the young men, as with beating hearts they sat listening to the slow, solemn sounds which came echoing up the hill. There was a pause; the sexton’s task was nearly done, and it only remained for him to strike the age, and tell how many years the departed one had numbered.
“One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten;” Jessie counted aloud, while every stroke felllike a heavy blow upon the hearts of the young men, who a few weeks ago did not know that Maddy Clyde had ever had existence.
How long it seemed before another stroke, and Guy was beginning to hope they had heard the last when again the sound came floating on the air, and Dr. Holbrook’s lip quivered ashenow counted aloud, “one, two, three, four, five.”
That was all; the bell stopped; and vain were all their listenings to catch another sound. Fifteen years only had passed over the form now forever still.
“She was fifteen,” Guy whispered, remembering distinctly to have heard that number from Maddy herself.
“I thought they told me fourteen, but of course it’s she,” the doctor rejoined. “Poor child, I would have given much to have saved her.”
Jessie did not speak but once, when she asked Guy “If it was very far to heaven, and if he supposed Maddy had got there by this time?”
“Hush, Jessie; don’t ask such questions,” Guy said; then turning to his companion, he continued: “We’ll go just the same. I will do what I can for the old man;” and so the carriage drove on,down the hill, across the meadow land, and passed a low-roofed house, whose walls inclosed the stiffened form of the boy for whom the bell had tolled, and who had been the patient of another than Dr. Holbrook.
Maddy was not dead, but the paroxysm of restlessness had passed, and she lay now in a heavy sleep so nearly resembling death that those who watched by her waited expectantly to see the going out of her last breath. Never before had a carriage like that from Aikenside stopped at that humble cottage, but the neighbors thought it came merely to bring the doctor, whom they welcomed with a glad smile, making way for him to pass to Maddy’s bedside. Guy preferred waiting outside until such time as Grandpa Markham could speak with him, but Jessie went with the doctor into the sick-room, startling even the grandmother, and causing her to wonder who the richly-dressed child could be.
“She is dying, doctor,” said one of the women; but the doctor shook his head, and holding in one hand his watch, he counted the faint pulse-beats, as with his eye he measured off the minutes.
“There are too many here,” he said. “Sheneeds the air you are breathing,” and in his authoritative way he cleared the crowded room of the mistaken friends who were unwittingly breathing up Maddy’s very life.
The grandparents and Jessie he suffered to remain, and sitting down by Maddy he watched till the long sleep was ended. Silently and earnestly the aged couple prayed for their darling, asking that if possible she might be spared, and God heard their prayers, lifting, at last, the heavy lethargy from Maddy’s brain, and waking her to partial consciousness. It was Jessie who first caught the expression of the opening eyes, and darting forward, she exclaimed, “She’s waked up, Dr. Holbrook. She will live.”
Wonderingly Maddy looked at her, and then, as a confused recollection of where they had met before crossed her mind, she smiled faintly, and said:
“Where am I now? Have I never come home, and is this Dr. Holbrook’s office?”
“No, no; it’s home, your home, and you are getting well,” Jessie cried, bending over the bewildered girl. “Dr. Holbrook has cursed you, and Guy is here, and I, and——”
“Hush, you disturb her,” the doctor said, gentlypushing Jessie away, and himself asking Maddy how she felt.
She did not recognize him. She only had a vague idea that he might besomedoctor, but not Dr. Holbrook; not the one who had so puzzled and tortured her on a day which seemed now so far behind. From the white-haired man kneeling by the bedside there was a burst of thanksgiving for the life restored, and then Grandpa Markham tottered from the room, out into the open air, which had never fallen so refreshingly on his tried frame as it fell now, when he first knew that Maddy would live. He did not care for his homestead; that might go, and he still be happy with Maddy left. But He who had marked that aged disciple’s every sigh, had another good in store for him, ordering it so that both should come together, just as the two disappointments had come hand in hand.
From the soft cushions of his carriage, where he sat reclining, Guy Remington saw the old man as he came out, and alighting at once, he accosted him pleasantly, and then walked with him to the garden, where, on a rustic bench, built for Maddy beneath the cherry-trees, Grandpa Markham sat down to rest. From speaking of Madeline it was easyto go back to the day Guy had first met grandpa, and refused his application for money.
“I have thought better of it since,” he said, “and am sorry I did not accede to your proposal. One object of my coming here to-day was to say that my purse is at your disposal. You can have as much as you wish, paying me whenever you like, and the house shallnotbe sold.”
Guy spoke rapidly, determined to make a clean breast of it, but grandpa understood him, and bowing his white head upon his bosom, the big tears dropped like rain upon the turf, while his lips quivered, first with thanks to the Providence who had truly done all things well, and next with thanks to his benefactor.
“Blessings on your head, young man, for making me so happy. You are worthy of your father, and he was the best of men.”
“My father—did you know him?” Guy asked, in some surprise, and then the story came out, how, years before, when a city hotel was on fire, and one of its guests in imminent danger from the locality of his room, and his own nervous fear, which made him powerless to act, another guest had braved the hissing flame, and scaling the tottering wall, had dragged outone who, until that hour, was to him an utter stranger.
Pushing back his snowy hair, Grandfather Markham showed upon his temple a long white scar of a wound received the night when he periled his own life to save that of another. There was a doubly warm pressure now of the old man’s hand, as Guy replied, “I’ve heard that story from father himself, but the name of his preserver had escaped me. Why didn’t you tell me who you were?”
“I thought ’twould look too much like demanding it as a right—too much like begging, and I s’pose I felt too proud. Pride is my besetting sin—the one I pray most against.”
Guy looked keenly now at the man whose besetting sin was pride, and as he saw the cheapness of his attire, his pantaloons faded and short, his coat worn threadbare and shabby, his shoes both patched at the toes, his cotton shirt minus a bosom, and then thought of the humble cottage, with its few rocky acres, he wondered of what he could be proud.
Meantime for Maddy Dr. Holbrook had prescribed perfect quiet, bidding them darken the windows from which the shade had been removed, and ordering all save the grandmother to leave the room and let thepatient sleep, if possible. Even Jessie was not permitted to stay, though Maddy clung to her as to a dear friend. In a few whispered words Jessie had told her name, saying she came from Aikenside, and that her brother Guy was there too, in the carriage. “He heard how sick you were at Devonshire, this morning, and drove right home for me to come to see you. I told him of you that day in the office, and that’s why he brought me, I guess. You’ll likeGuy, I know—he’s so good.”
Sick and weary as she was, and unable as yet to comprehend the entire meaning of all she heard, Maddy was conscious of a thrill of pleasure in knowing that Guy Remington from Aikenside was interested in her, and had brought his sister to see her. Winding her arms around Jessie’s neck, she kissed the soft, warm cheek, and said, “You’ll come again, I hope.”
“Yes, every day, if mamma will let me. I don’t mind it a bit, if you are poor.”
“Come, come,” and Dr. Holbrook, who had all the while been standing near, took Jessie by the arm and led her out to where Guy was waiting for her.