CHAPTER XIII.
IfFritz had not heard the appeals which the frantic Melville made to him, they had reached other ears, and summoned the help which the crippled lad was so impotent to render.
Rosetta Perkins, “mistress of the interior,” as Octave called her when Aunt Ruth had reported her mother’s decision concerning the household heads, during the sea-shore sojourn,—Rosetta Perkins had come to Melville’s quarter of the house for the express purpose of hearing his capricious desires concerning his supper.
Rosetta was conscientious in the discharge of her duties, and had already done more cooking than would have sufficed a family twice as large, in her fear lest these young charges of hers should not get enough to eat. Eat! How they did eat! All except Melville; and because he did not, the good Rosetta was worried and full of self-blame.
But, for the first time, his fitful appetite proveda blessing, since it brought upon the scene, in their extremity of need, a person to rescue the two boys.
“To the land sakes! What on airth is Melville a-hollerin’ so fer!”
Rosetta quickened her footsteps, but as the cries died for a moment, loitered for an instant to set straight a misplaced chair, and tidy the furniture which showed the careless fingers of youth.
The cries, that were almost shrieks in their intensity of terror, recommenced.
“Why, that ain’t spunk! That’s something worse ’an that! What can have happened to him!” Mrs. Perkins flew to the door, wondering to find it closed, and rebounding, as she threw her force against it, from its unyielding surface. She tried the latch, and found the bolt had been slipped. The cries ceased again.
“I’m a-comin’, Melville. I’ll run around to the other door.”
Only to meet with fresh disappointment; and, in her wonder and distress, Mrs. Perkins began to shake the door vigorously. “Ain’t there nobodyin there with ye? How did ye get locked in? Never mind; I’ll get it open somehow. I warrant it’s some o’ them childern’s pranks,” she added, under her breath. Then she tried the latch anew.
She began to be seriously alarmed. She ran to the hall window, and saw Luke mowing the lawn. After repeated efforts, she made her voice audible above that of the noisy little machine so close to his ear. He looked up and saw her frantic motions even before he heard her summons.
Luke had a soul above lawn-mowers, and always on the alert for excitement. He was at the hall window in a trice.
“Come into the house as quick as ye kin, Luke! Melville’s doors is both locked fast, an’ he’s been a-hollerin’ like all possessed. Now he’s stopped; but say—don’t you smell nothin’ kinder queer?”
Luke sniffed, and made up such a horrid face in doing so that Christina, who had appeared behind Mrs. Perkins, laughed. “What is the matter, Rosetta? Octave made me come andsee. She says somebody has been holloaing this ever so long, but I thought it was somebody out in the field.”
“Then ain’t you ner Octavy in Melville’s room?”
“Why, no! Abraham carried Octave out to the hammock after dinner, and I have been with her.”
“Where’s Content? An’ Pauly?”
“Gone to the post-office in the pony-cart.”
“Little Fritzy?”
“I don’t know, I’m sure,” answered poor Christina, her gentle face growing very pale and terrified.
“Then there’s sunthin’ turrible to pay! Smash that door open, Luke!”
“Smash the door? I dassent!”
“Smash it, I tell ye! I’ll bear the blame, if there is any!”
Luke tried an ineffective blow, and Mrs. Perkins grew more excited. “Luke Tewksbury! Smash it! That there smell’s chloroform! I know it; I kin almost taste it! I hain’t handled the stuff as many times as I have, a-rubbin’Melville’s poor body, ’ithout lamin’ the smell. Sunthin’s happened to the bottle on it, an’ one, mebbe both, o’ them boys is shet up behind thet door!Now—will ye smash it?”
A terrific blow of his mighty fist was Luke’s effective answer, and the panel gave way.
With a swiftness and coolness one would scarcely have looked for in Rosetta Perkins’s case, since Ruth had called her a “good woman without any head-piece,” the housekeeper thrust her hand through the break in the wood, and unfastened the bolt. Every movement she made told in effect, as she almost flew across the apartment, dashed open the windows, drew the bolt and opened the bedroom door, and caught up a pitcher of water to throw it upon Melville’s face.
The air was nauseous with fumes of the drug, but it was less that which had overcome the invalid than horror at his own deed, and its awful result. With the thought that little Fritz had been the victim of his would-be scientific experiment, his weak nerves had given way; but his last conscious thought had been: “Cripple or not, I must save him!”
It seemed that the power of this determination was already bringing him out of his swoon, for the water had scarcely reached his face before he opened his eyes. Instantly they filled with terror. “The closet! The closet! Open the closet!”
“What—which closet?” asked Rosetta, trembling.
“Open it—open it, quick! Maybe he isn’t dead!”
Mrs. Perkins’s sight swam. The reality seemed worse than she had feared. But Christina had heard and understood the appeal, and flew to the inner door.
“The other—the other!” directed Melville’s agonized voice.
Luke was beforehand with her, and even his strong physique was for an instant overcome by the pungency of the odor which filled his nostrils. He staggered for a step or two, and then, as the little girl was darting forward, he put her gently aside and stooped down to lift the small figure, which the light now made visible, from its resting-place upon the closet floor.
There was one brief word of command: “The doctor”; and Luke had flown to obey it. Then, forgetting utterly for that terrible moment the suffering boy upon the lounge, the housekeeper bore her inert burden straight out of doors, and to the old well in the garden.
She could not have done better; but she was still working and chafing the rounded little limbs, which had before seemed all too active, and praying over her task with the devout fervor of her warm, believing heart, when Luke reappeared with the doctor.
“Oh! how glad I am! I didn’t dream you would get here so quick!”
“I was just driving down the road. And well that I was,” added the physician gravely.
It was three hours after that when he went away, even then promising to return again before midnight; but, when he did leave The Snuggery for a brief time, it was with the hopeful assurance that “if nothing unforeseen occurred,” the little fellow would be none the worse for his dangerous experience.
“Such a world of joy or pain hangs on thatlittle ‘if!’” exclaimed poor Paula, between her sobs.
For once, Content’s ready word of comfort failed her; and she could not utter that “it is all for the best,” which seemed such a truism in the presence of this anxiety. She could see no “best” which might be extracted from that afternoon’s misfortune; and she could only fold her sympathetic arms about the cousin whom, till now, she had thought so cold of heart, and let her tears mingle with Paula’s.
It was the wisest and kindest thing she could have done. Paula had nourished a mistaken notion that her “perfect Cousin Content” considered herself infinitely superior to the worldly and frivolous “Miss Pickel,” whose main interests in life appeared to be dress and the supervision of her neighbors’ manners.
The truth was simply that each girl was to the other a new and uncomprehended type. Octave had early nicknamed the one “Beauty,” the other “Duty”; and, unlike as they were, it took just such a sorrow to break away the outer form of habit and training, and show the warm, friendly hearts beneath.
The lonely, only child, Content, had become very fond of little Fritz, and the genuineness of her feeling touched the sister who watched so anxiously beside him. A half-hour of this common grief did more to make them know and love each other than had all their previous weeks of daily intercourse.
But the “best” was still in it all, even if hidden from sight just then; and it was destined to work a blessed change not only in that household but in many another, to which its after effects should reach.