CHAPTER XIV.
“And a voice said in mastery while I strove,Guess now who holds thee?—‘Death,’ I said;But there the silver answer rang,‘Not Death, but Love.’”Sonnets from the Portuguese.
“And a voice said in mastery while I strove,Guess now who holds thee?—‘Death,’ I said;But there the silver answer rang,‘Not Death, but Love.’”Sonnets from the Portuguese.
“And a voice said in mastery while I strove,Guess now who holds thee?—‘Death,’ I said;But there the silver answer rang,‘Not Death, but Love.’”Sonnets from the Portuguese.
“And a voice said in mastery while I strove,
Guess now who holds thee?—
‘Death,’ I said;
But there the silver answer rang,
‘Not Death, but Love.’”
Sonnets from the Portuguese.
Some time elapsed ere I divined where we were, and then I discovered that we had been carried to Mr. Everett’s house and were all lying in the attic over the store. Mildred had been placed on his cot-bed by the book-shelves, and he lay on a lounge a few feet distant.
After a time my straw bed, which had been borrowed from a neighbor, was turned about so that I could see them. I was too weak to talk, but I loved to lie and look at them when the terrible pain gave me a moment’s respite to think of anything beside my own woes.
The little town was crowded; not a spare room but had been gladly given up to the sufferers.
Little by little I learned all that had happened. A tree had been uprooted in the wild storm and had fallen across the track. The engine, the baggage car, and the first car had been derailed. The loss of life had not been great. Poor Hélène, the little German woman and her baby were the only ones who had not been rescued.
But in all the cottages around lay the helpless, wounded people, who had come so far over land and sea only to meet this terrible fate.
The telegraph lines had been thrown down in the storm, and it was two days before word could be sent and the débris cleared away so that trains could come from the west. The little German doctor who had set my bones while I was unconscious, and had left medicine for us all, did not appear but once or twice after the first call, for there were a score or more of poor, maimed creatures, some of them his own countrymen, who needed him even more sorely than we.
What would have become of us during those three days of partial unconsciousness and suffering and impatient waiting for our friends if it had not been for “Jim”!
Jim was a character. Not even the pain could so wholly banish my sense of humor as to prevent my seeing that.
I could not learn whether there was a woman in town or not, but I afterwards heard that Jim had let it be understood that he was commissioned by the “boss” to be his sole attendant, and warn every one else to keep his distance. Half a dozen times a day the big, freckled, red-haired fellow creaked up the stairs in his stocking feet, bringing water and gruel and bouquets of gorgeous nasturtiums and crimson phlox from his little garden patch across the way. Jim had an eye for the beautiful, and thought it a pity that we should have nothingbetter to look upon than the long rows of sombre books which lined one side of the walls and formed Mr. Everett’s library.
Accordingly the poor man had stripped his own bachelor premises of all the precious adornments sent him by his sweetheart for the last three Christmases. There was a gilded sugar-scoop tied with pink ribbons, and a remarkable landscape painted on the concave surface of the interior. There was also a rolling-pin with a covering of French blue plush, adorned with gilded handles, and bearing on its surface a large thermometer surmounted by a gilded spread eagle.
These were especially devoted to my benefit, for which I was duly appreciative. Over Mildred’s bed was hung a “God Bless Our Home,” wonderfully worked in the national colors; and beside Mr. Everett’s sofa was placed a gilded milking-stool of convenient height for holding vials and glasses, the legs artistically interlaced with scarlet ribbons, and the seat decorated with a painting, whether of Vesuvius in eruption or a dish of crushed tomatoes, I was never quite sure.
From the low window near which my bed was drawn Jim proudly pointed out to me his own quarters opposite. The house was an unpainted wooden structure of one story, and evidently possessed a slanting roof with gables, though the architect had erected a sham façade which gave the appearance, when one took a front view, of a house with a flat roof.
Extending across the whole front of the house was a sign of unique character painted in black on a pink ground, of which I subjoin an exact copy.
1886.FRANKLINPHILOSOPHICHERMITAGEIndependent Scientific Repair Shop.Clocks, Coopering, Chain Saws FiledTin Ware, Politics & Theology TinkeredHuzzah forThe UnionLABOR PARTY.
1886.FRANKLINPHILOSOPHICHERMITAGEIndependent Scientific Repair Shop.Clocks, Coopering, Chain Saws FiledTin Ware, Politics & Theology TinkeredHuzzah forThe UnionLABOR PARTY.
1886.
FRANKLIN
PHILOSOPHIC
HERMITAGE
Independent Scientific Repair Shop.
Clocks, Coopering, Chain Saws Filed
Tin Ware, Politics & Theology Tinkered
Huzzah for
The Union
LABOR PARTY.
“Jim is an odd stick,” Mr. Everett once said with a feeble smile, as the awkward fellow was heard anathematizing himself as he descended the stairs after an accidental bang of the door, which made us all wince.
“Jim is odd, but he has mighty good stuff in him. There isn’t anything that fellow would not do for me, though when I first came here he was pretty fiery; a regular dynamiter you would have thought. But since I started the debating club, and got him to reading history a little, he has calmed down a good deal, and has come to find that hard facts are worth more than all his former rhetorical pyrotechnics about the down-trodden workingman.”
At last, with pale and terror-stricken faces, cameaunt Madison and Will and Alice with Dr. Ellsworth from Tacoma. Then ensued a new order of things. Jim vanished, talking was forbidden, the noise everywhere disappeared, and the clumsy carts passed silently beneath our window over a thick bed of straw, while tall screens, improvised from sheets and clothes-horses, separated us from each other the greater part of the time. For there was not another room in town to be had, and the little grocery below had been metamorphosed into sleeping apartments for our four attendants. They alternately watched and slept.
The new physician threw away the old medicines, substituted new ones, and looked with grave anxiety on Mildred’s flushed face and bounding pulse. She had no bones broken and but a slight wound, and had insisted that my broken bones be set first.
After the first shock, the excitement of meeting Mr. Everett and anxiety for us all had sustained her, but now she was sinking fast. The delay in attending to her at the beginning was telling upon her. Whether it was the July heat, the sight of so many faces, and the necessary disturbance when so many were forced to be in one room, I do not know, but as the days went by none of us grew better.
Mildred was too ill to be moved to her car. Mr. Everett, though in a fair way to recover, was too weak to stir after his terrible hemorrhage and the strain upon his whole system; while I could not endure to be touched without extreme pain. So during the July days we lay there together in the unfinishedattic room, watching the doctor come and go, and tended by loving hands that divided their ministrations and the delicacies that they brought with the suffering ones who lay not far distant.
“Do everything for them that I would have had done,” were Mildred’s words to cousin Will, which he understood as Mr. Everett did not. For no one was allowed to tell him that this sweet girl lying there, who I alone knew was his promised wife, was no longer the teacher whom he thought her.
But the doctor’s face looked graver and graver as the days wore on. He sat up half the night with us, performing the combined duties of nurse and physician.
One morning, as he came in looking weary and jaded after but four hours’ rest, he sat down by Mildred’s bed, with a face that in spite of his habitual professional attempt at gayety could not conceal the gravest concern.
He felt her pulse and motioned furtively to aunt Madison, who stood with brimming eyes studying his every motion. Mildred glanced up and read the meaning of his look. She said nothing for a moment; then with an effort to keep her voice steady she said, quietly, “Doctor, be honest with me: shall I live?”
“My dear, I”—and the doctor coughed and turned away his head; “I—we”—he glanced at Mr. Everett, who with eyes that were blazing like coals in their sockets had half risen on his elbow and seemed devouring every word,—“my dear, I hope so.”
“Yes, I understand,” replied Mildred calmly, after a searching look at the physician’s half-averted face, “I understand, and I am not afraid; but it is necessary that some things be done, and done quickly.”
She lay a few moments quietly thinking. No one stirred or spoke, and the silence was broken only by aunt Madison’s half-stifled sobs, as she turned away to hide her emotion. Presently Mildred looked up.
“Is there a lawyer in the village?” she asked. “I want to change my—that is, I want to attend to a few little matters of business that must not be left undone.”
“No,” replied Mr. Everett huskily; “there was one who did a little business, but he died a month ago.”
Mildred said nothing for a few minutes, then looking up, with a pale face and lips drawn tense, she said, “Auntie, I must be married to-day.”
We all gave an involuntary cry. Mr. Everett drew his hand over his eyes. Dr. Ellsworth and aunt Madison exchanged looks of amazement as if to say, “Is the girl beside herself?” I alone understood what it all meant.
“Yes, auntie,” Mildred continued. “I have not yet told you; I meant to, by and by. I did not think it was to be here and now; I meant to have it all so different; but my strength is going, I do not know whether I shall—I dare not wait.”
She gave a little gasp of pain, and was silent amoment; then she added, in a voice which I could scarcely hear, “I have told Mr. Everett that I love him. I have promised to be his wife.”
No one spoke when Mildred had finished, and she lay with closed eyes, while aunt Madison stood as if struck dumb, gazing incredulously from one to the other. She had learned that they were old friends, that he had saved her life; perhaps she had suspected more, but this sudden announcement paralyzed her for a moment.
Mr. Everett half rose again from his couch and leaned toward Mildred as if to speak, but the words died on his lips, and he sank back exhausted and lay motionless.
Aunt Madison softly left the room, but soon returned, and kneeling by Mildred’s side they whispered together. What was said I never knew, but I was certain that Mildred’s thought was for Ralph’s inheritance.
An hour later, another physician, who had been telegraphed for the previous day, arrived. He stepped softly into the room, and for a long time gazed intently at Mildred as she lay asleep, and then he slipped out, and I heard faint murmurings of voices in the room below as the two physicians held a consultation.
“Oh, Mildred, my more than sister,” I inwardly groaned; “must I lie here helpless and see your precious life going from us? Were you snatched from the jaws of death but to fall back again a helpless victim? If this must be, oh that we had died together before rescue came!”
I had given my whole heart to this girl. I had loved her with a love which made all other friendships of my life seem as nothing. In loving her I felt that I had first learned what love meant, and my little, petty life had been made deeper, broader, and full of hitherto undreamed-of possibilities.
The hours wore away, the hours of Mildred’s wedding-day. “Send Jim for Mr. Lightfoot,” Mr. Everett had said to Will. “He will know where to find him. He is the only regular clergyman within fifty miles.”
He had been sent for post-haste, and that evening, just as the sun was sinking in the west and lighting up in gorgeous splendor the little attic where we lay, a tall, gray-haired man in a rusty, black frock-coat, and with prayer-book in hand, climbed softly up the creaking stairs and paused in the doorway, glancing in a tender, fatherly way at the two pale faces which looked up to greet his coming.
The windows were opened, and the blue paper curtains had disappeared to be replaced by white muslin ones. A dozen pitchers were placed around the room containing the brilliant wild flowers of the neighborhood that had been sent in by Jim and his friends. A wreath of golden-rod and purple asters at Jim’s desire was laid upon the white counterpane at Mildred’s feet. For the news that there was for some strange reason to be a marriage had spread like wildfire, and many a rough, sunburned man had tapped softly at the door of the littleshop to ask what it meant, and beg Alice, who stood on guard, to be allowed to come up and stand, if only in the doorway, and see the “boss” married.
One day, a month later, Alice told me all about it. “You don’t suppose, Miss, he’s agoin ter die?” asked one of them, as they stood around the door in a quiet, awe-struck group. “I don’t know what we fellers ’ud ever do without him,” he added huskily, as he drew the back of his grimy hand across his eyes.
“I don’t go much on religion,” said another, who sat on the doorstep leaning his head in his hands; “but I’ll be blamed ef that ere feller, with all his college larnin’ and soft-spoken ways, a-comin’ out here and roughin’ it with us, and a-nursin’ and a-teachin’ and a-helpin’ of us all,—I’ll be blamed if that ain’t the Christianest thing I ever see.”
I did not wonder that these men loved their teacher.
Ralph—I learned to call him that afterwards, so I call him so now, for it seems more natural—Ralph Everett had a face such as one sees only once or twice in a lifetime. I did not wonder that Mildred loved it so that she kept awake to look at it as he slept.
The forehead was broad and low, from which the brown hair rose thick and abruptly, framing the strong, almost rugged face. The eyes—such eyes! They were the frankest, truest eyes that ever glorified a human face. Not even Mildred’s eyes werelike those, although hers could sparkle or command or grow wonderfully soft and tender. The chin and mouth were hidden in a luxuriant blond beard, in which gleamed now and then a silver thread. The broad chest, the sunburned face and hands which the pallor of sickness was fast restoring to their pristine whiteness, all evinced a strong, active life, strangely contrasting with the pitiful helplessness which had now prostrated it.
But surely strength and health would soon return; surely love would triumph; and these two, so strangely reunited in the very jaws of death, would some day make all previous joys as nothing to that deep, full, complete satisfaction with which heaven should crown their lives; these two, who seemed of all the world the ones most worthy of such blessedness.
I had dreamed it all out. Some beautiful day in the months to come I should stand as bride’s-maid beside a happy, white-robed bride. There would be flowers and music and smiles. There would be the strong, gallant lover, the one man of all the world who was worthy to wed my precious Mildred. The man whom she would always know had married her for herself alone, a man whom wealth or happiness could not tempt, who should nobly help her in the great work that she had set herself to do.
To tell the truth, I had thought also, with almost a pang of jealousy, what this would mean to me, and what my life would be without her.
I could scarcely realize that now, here, in this brown, unplastered attic room, in a dreary frontier mining town, with no music but the chirping of the August crickets in the little field behind us, without wedding-robe or wedding guests, my Mildred was to become a bride.
They bolstered me up to see it all, as well as could be done with my splintered leg and arm. I was trembling violently, and the doctor gave me a sedative powder and sat by me with hand on my pulse. Ralph’s lounge had been moved beside Mildred’s cot. His face was as deadly pale as her own.
“Mildred,” he whispered hoarsely,—they had not spoken to each other since in the morning when she had said she would marry him,—“Mildred, have you counted the cost? Think, darling, you may get well; do you realize what you are doing?”
“Yes, far better than you do,” she replied with a faint smile.
The clergyman quietly took his place at the foot of the bed, and as the solemn words of the Episcopal marriage service broke the silence, Mildred, who had been lying with closed eyes, started visibly. She had not before observed that the clergyman had a prayer-book. I could see that she was greatly agitated, and instantly divined the cause.
She had always declared that she would never under any conditions allow herself to be married by that service.
I knew her reasons for this and how stronglyshe felt about it, so I understood what her consternation must be now. All this flashed through my brain before the clergyman had read three lines.
Then Mildred gave a little gasp. A crimson flush leaped into her cheeks, and I knew her mind was made up. Instantly her voice broke in, strangely clear and strong.
“Please wait, sir,” she said. “I beg your pardon. I did not know this service was to be used. I cannot be married by it. Can you not substitute some other?”
Every one but Ralph was thunderstruck; but they were getting inured to surprises, and no one spoke while the clergyman, for a moment too shocked to reply, gazed in blank amazement into Mildred’s earnest eyes.
But Ralph understood, and said calmly, “No, dear, he cannot. I should have thought of this before. I am not willing that you should promise what this service contains. So, in the presence of God and of these witnesses, we two alone will bind ourselves lawfully in the marriage bond.”
Then, holding Mildred’s right hand in his, while the minister stood wonderingly aside, he said with clear, unshaken voice:
“I take thee, Mildred, to be my lawful, wedded wife, to love and to serve, to comfort and cherish, to honor and keep, so long as we both shall live; and thereto, God helping, I plight thee my troth.”
A deathly pallor had crept over Mildred’s face.Just then the last rays of the setting sun for a moment streamed into the little room, irradiating its bare walls, and transfiguring with magic light those two faces on which we were gazing with breathless silence.
Then, after a moment’s pause, Mildred with a great effort leaned an inch nearer, and gently taking Ralph’s brown hand in both her slender white ones, said, with blanched lips:
“I take thee, Ralph, to be my lawful, wedded husband, to love and to serve, to comfort and cherish, to honor and keep, so long as we both shall live; and thereto, God helping, I plight thee my troth.”
After the last words had died tremblingly away on Mildred’s lips, the clergyman at a sign from her lifted his voice in prayer, while Alice kneeled sobbing by the bedside, and over my eyes there came a mist. My senses reeled, and I remember no more.
Weeks afterward Alice told me that Mr. Lightfoot had gone away with a fatherly benediction, and a purse the richer by a thousand dollars for the marriage service which he did not perform.
The days went by, and I knew but little. The tall, white screen shut out everything from me. I was too weak to ask about Mildred, but I knew that she had not left us. Surely God had been merciful. She was still to live and love and bless the world.
At last came a day,—it was the first day ofSeptember, I recall,—the very day when we had planned to reach San Francisco on our return from the Alaskan trip which we had contemplated; the screen was removed, and Mildred and Ralph, still pale and wan, but with the glow of returning health lighting up their happy faces, sat beside me and whispered words of farewell.
“Oh, Mildred, you did not die, you are alive,” I sobbed weakly, too happy to keep the tears back.
“Yes, darling,” she said, “for it was love that saved me. I had something to live for, and I fought hard. Now I am to leave you for a while. My husband and I” (how proudly she said that), “my husband and I are going away.”
“Her aunt Madison has kindly offered us her beautiful, private car, and we are going away for a long rest before we come back to our work,” said Ralph innocently, and I saw that for some reason Mildred had still kept him ignorant of the fact that he had married a great heiress instead of a poor teacher. “This is to be our honey-moon, you know,” he added, looking at her with the lovelight shining in his eyes. “We are going quietly. No one but Jim is to know of it, for the doctor says we must spare ourselves the excitement of the good-byes which would have to be said if the people knew we were going. The men have been clamoring for a month to see me, and it has been hard for me to keep quiet and not let them come.”
“How would you feel,” asked his wife in acareless tone, “if you had married a rich woman, who would ask you to go away and never come back to work here again?” and Mildred, who was holding my hand, gave it a mischievous little squeeze as she looked demurely out of the window and awaited his reply.
“I don’t know. I am afraid I could not quite forgive her unless she gave me better work to do elsewhere. I could not be idle, you know, even with you, darling,” he answered, smiling at the bright face beside him.
“Ah, the world is large; there are many who need us; rich or poor, we will find our work somewhere,” said Mildred softly, as if to herself. Then as Jim’s steps were heard at the door she started.
“Come, Ralph, one last look at your books and room, it may be long before we return. Kiss Ruby, too; you must be her brother now, you know.”
Two warm kisses were on my cheek, then the door opened and shut, and they were gone.
Everything had been arranged for my comfort, and a month later, when I was able to travel in a private car which Mildred had sent us, aunt and Alice, cousin Will and I, were on the Northern Pacific Road again, bound eastward. And with us went the motherless little Karl and Annchen to find a new home and many friends.
One day, as we were speeding along over the Dakota prairies, Alice and I fell to talking as usual about the summer that was past and its strange,strange ending. Suddenly Alice exclaimed, “But, Ruby, I never thought to ask you before;doyou understand why Mildred, on her deathbed as we supposed, should have stopped that minister? I thought I understood most of her ideas, butthatwas inexplicable to me.”
“Yes, I understand it, I suppose, for I once had an argument with her about it,” I replied. “I remember we had been to a stylish wedding at Trinity. There were ten bridesmaids, and the bride was dressed like a princess, and I remember how, as we drove away, Mildred exclaimed that she would rather have been married in a print dress in a log-cabin and promise what was honorable and true, than to have had the beautiful display which this bride had, and make such promises as she had done.
“‘It is the most beautiful service in the world,’ I stoutly maintained; ‘pray what can you object to in it?’
“‘In the first place, the giving away of the bride is a humiliating thing,’ she said: ‘it is a relic of the feudal times, when a woman actuallywasgiven away. It implies dependence; a woman is thus simply passed along from the guardianship of one man to that of another.’
“This was a novel idea which impressed me at first as being needlessly crotchety. ‘Then, of course,’ I replied, ‘you object to the promise to obey.’
“‘Certainly,’ said Mildred. ‘I should not respect myself if I could make such a promise. Obedienceimplies authority, and a man and his wife are equal. They do not stand in the relation of master and servant, employer and employee, or parent and child.’
“‘Yes; but it doesn’t mean anything,’ I expostulated, ‘it is simply a form.’
“‘So much the worse,’ was her uncompromising answer. ‘I will have no idle forms, no humiliating promises which I should not intend to keep. If I ever find the man whom I can marry, I think I shall love him enough not to be selfish and willful, and he will love me enough to respect me as his equal. There can be no question of authority and obedience in the true marriage.
“‘Then, moreover,’ she said, ‘I object to the man’s making the promise, “With all my worldly goods I thee endow.” In nine cases out of ten he does nothing of the sort, and the wife usually asks for every dollar that she gets!’
“So you perceive that after hearing her say this I was not so much astounded as the rest of you were,” I concluded.
“Well,” said Alice, drawing a long breath and looking meditatively at the diamond engagement-ring on her white finger, “I never in my life saw such an extraordinary girl as Mildred.
“Now, I have vowed that I would never be married but by that beautiful time-honored service. Dear me! if we all took everything to heart as literally as she does, what would become of society?”
“It would probably learn to speak truth and not lies,” I answered.