Pearl was quite disappointed in Tom's appearance the morning after the party. Egbert always wore a glorified countenance after he had seen Edythe; but Tom looked sleepy and somewhat cross.
He went to his work discontentedly. His mother's moroseness annoyed him. His father's hard face had never looked so forbidding to him as it did that morning. Mrs. Slater's hearty welcome, her good-natured motherly smiles, Mr. Slater's genial and kindly ways, contrasted sharply with his own home life, and it rankled in him.
"It's dead easy for them Slater boys to be smart and good, too," he thought bitterly; "they are brought right up to it. They may not have much money, but look at the fun they have. George and Fred will be off to college soon, and it must be fun in the city,—they're dressed up all the time, ridin' round on street cars, and with no chores to do."
The trees on the poplar bluff where he had made his toilet the evening before were beginning to show the approach of autumn, although there had been no frost. Pale yellow and rust coloured against the green of their hardier neighbours, they rippled their coin-like leaves in glad good-will as he drove past them on his way to the hayfield.
The sun had risen red and angry, giving to every cloud in the sky a facing of gold, and long streamers shot up into the blue of the mid-heaven.
There is no hour of the day so hushed and beautiful as the early morning, when the day is young, fresh from the hand of God. It is a new page, clean and white and pure, and the angel is saying unto us "Write!" and none there be who may refuse to obey. It may be gracious deeds and kindly words that we write upon it in letters of gold, or it may be that we blot and blur it with evil thoughts and stain it with unworthy actions, but write we must!
The demon of discontent laid hold on Tom that morning as he worked in the hayfield. New forces were at work in the boy's heart, forces mighty for good or evil.
A great disgust for his surrounding filled him. He could see from where he worked the big stone house, bare and gray. It was a place to eat in, a place to sleep in, the same as a prison. He had never known any real enjoyment there. He knew it would all be his some day, and he tried to feel the pride of possession, but he could not—he hated it.
He saw around him everywhere the abundance of harvest—the grain that meant money. Money! It was the greatest thing in the world. He had been taught to chase after it—to grasp it—then hide it, and chase again after more. His father put money in the bank every year, and never saw it again. When money was banked it had fulfilled its highest mission. Then they drew that wonderful thing called interest, money without work—and banked it—Oh, it was a great game!
It was the first glimmerings of manhood that was stirring in Tom's heart that morning, the new independence, the new individualism.
Before this he had accepted everything his father and mother had said or done without question. Only once before had he doubted them. It was several years before. A man named Skinner had bought from Tom's father the quarter section that Jim Russell now farmed, paying down a considerable sum of money, but evil days fell upon the man and his wife; sickness, discouragement, and then, the man began to drink. He was unable to keep up his payments and Tom's father had foreclosed the mortgage. Tom remembered the day the Skinners had left their farm, the woman was packing their goods into a box. She was a faded woman in a faded wrapper, and her tears were falling as she worked. Tom saw her tears falling, and he had told her with the awful cruelty of a child that it was their own fault that they had lost the farm. The woman had shrunk back as if he had struck her and cried "Oh, no! No! Tom, don't say that, child, you don't know what you say," then putting her hands on his shoulders she had looked straight into his face—he remembered that she had lost some teeth in front, and that her eyes were sweet and kind. "Some day, dear," she said, "when you are a man, you will remember with shame and sorrow that you once spoke hard to a broken-hearted, homeless woman." Tom had gone home wondering and vaguely unhappy, and could not eat his supper that night.
He remembered it all now, remembered it with a start, and with a sudden tightening of his heart that burned and chilled him. The hot blood rushed into his head and throbbed painfully.
He looked at the young Englishman who was loading the hay on the rack, with a sudden impulse. But Arthur was wrapped in his own mask of insular reserve, and so saw nothing of the storm that was sweeping over the boy's soul.
Then the very spirit of evil laid hold on Tom. When the powers of good are present in the heart, and can find no outlet in action, they turn to evil. Tom had the desire to be kind and generous; ambition was stirring in him. His sullenness and discontent were but the outward signs of the inward ferment. He could not put into action the powers for good without breaking away, in a measure at least, from his father and mother.
He felt that he had to do something. He was hungry for the society of other young people like himself. He wanted life and action and excitement.
There is one place where a young man can always go and find life and gaiety and good-fellowship. One door stands invitingly open to all. When the church of God is cold and dark and silent, and the homes of Christ's followers are closed except to the chosen few, the bar-room throws out its evil welcome to the young man on the street.
Tom had never heard any argument against intemperance, only that it was expensive. Now he hated all the petty meanness that he had been so carefully taught.
The first evening that Tom went into the bar-room of the Millford hotel he was given a royal welcome. They were a jolly crowd! They knew how to enjoy life, Tom told himself. What's the good of money if you can't have a little fun with it?
Tom had never had much money of his own, he had never needed it or thought anything about it. Now the injustice of it rankled in him. He had to have money. It was his. He worked for it. He would just take it, and then if it was missed he would tell his father and mother that he had taken it—taking your own is not stealing—and he would tell them so and have it out with them.
Thus the enemy sowed the tares.
While Pearl was writing her experiences in her little red book, Mr. and Mrs. Motherwell were in the kitchen below reading a letter which Mr. Motherwell had just brought from the post office. It read as follows:
BRANDON HOSPITAL, August 10th.
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Motherwell: I know it will be at least some slight comfort for you to know that the poppies you sent Polly reached her in time to be the very greatest comfort to her. Her joy at seeing them and holding them in her hands would have been your reward if you could have seen it, and although she had been delirious up to that time for several days, the sight of the poppies seemed to call her mind back. She died very peacefully and happily at daybreak this morning. She was a sweet and lovable girl and we had all grown very fond of her, as I am sure you did, too.
May God abundantly bless you, dear Mr. and Mrs. Motherwell, for your kind thoughtfulness to this poor lonely girl. "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these, ye have done it unto Me."
Yours cordially,(Nurse) AGNES HUNT.
"By Jinks."
Sam Motherwell took the letter from his wife's hand and excitedly read it over to himself, going over each word with his blunt forefinger. He turned it over and examined the seal, he looked at the stamp and inside of the envelope, and failing to find any clue to the mystery he ejaculated again:
"By Jinks! What the deuce is this about poppies. Is that them things she sowed out there?"
His wife nodded.
"Well, who do you suppose sent them? Who would ever think of sending them?"
Mrs. Motherwell made no reply.
"It's a blamed nice letter anyway," he said, looking it over again, "I guess Polly didn't give us a hard name to them up there in the 'ospital, or we wouldn't ha' got a letter like this; and poor Polly's dead. Well, she was a kind of a good-natured, willin' thing too, and not too slow either."
Mrs. Motherwell was still silent. She had not thought that Polly would die, she had always had great faith in the vitality of English people. "You can't kill them," she had often said; but now Polly was dead. She was sick, then, when she went around the house so strangely silent and flushed. Mrs. Motherwell's memory went back with cruel distinctness—she had said things to Polly then that stung her now with a remorse that was new and terrible, and Polly had looked at her dazed and wondering, her big eyes flushed and pleading. Mrs. Motherwell remembered now that she had seen that look once before. She had helped Sam to kill a lamb once, and it came back to her now, how through it all, until the blow fell, the lamb had stood wondering, pleading, yet unflinching, and she had run sobbing away—and now Polly was dead—and those big eyes she had so often seen tearful, yet smiling, were closed and their tears forever wiped away.
That night she dreamed of Polly, confused, troubled dreams; now it was Polly's mother who was dead, then it was her own mother, dead thirty years ago. Once she started violently and sat up. Someone had been singing—the echo of it was still in the room:
Over my grave keep the green willers growing.
The yellow harvest moon flooded the room with its soft light. She could see through the window how it lay like a mantle on the silent fields. It was one of those glorious, cloudless nights, with a hint of frost in the air that come just as the grain is ripening. From some place down the creek a dog barked; once in a while a cow-bell tinkled: a horse stamped in the stable and then all was still. Numberless stars shone through the window. The mystery of life and death and growing things was around her. As for man his days are as grass; as a flower of the field so he flourisheth—for it is soon cut off and we fly away—fly away where?—where?—her head throbbed with the question.
The eastern sky flushed red with morning; a little ripple came over the grain. She watched it listlessly. Polly had died at daybreak—didn't the letter say? Just like that, the light rising redder and redder, the stars disappearing, she wondered dully to herself how often she would see the light coming, like this, and yet, and yet, some time would be the last, and then what?
We shall be where suns are not,A far serener clime.
came to her memory she knew not from whence. But she shuddered at it. Polly's eyes, dazed, pleading like the lamb's, rose before her; or was it that Other Face, tender, thorn-crowned, that had been looking upon her in love all these long years!
She spoke so kindly to Pearl when she went into the kitchen that the little girl looked up apprehensively.
"Are ye not well, ma'am?" she asked quickly.
Mrs. Motherwell hesitated.
"I did not sleep very well," she said, at last.
"That's the mortgage," Pearl thought to herself.
"And when I did sleep, I had such dreadful dreams," Mrs. Motherwell went on, strangely communicative.
"That looks more like the cancer," Pearl thought as she stirred the porridge.
"We got bad news," Mrs. Motherwell said. "Polly is dead."
Pearl stopped stirring the porridge.
"When did she die," she asked eagerly.
"The morning before yesterday morning, about daylight."
Pearl made a rapid calculation. "Oh good!" she cried, "goody—goody—goody! They were in time."
She saw her mistake in a moment, and hastily put her hand over her mouth as if to prevent the unruly member from further indiscretions. She stirred the porridge vigorously, while her cheeks burned.
"Yes, they were," Mrs. Motherwell said quietly.
Pearl set the porridge on the back of the stove and ran out to where the poppies nodded gaily. Never before had they seemed so beautiful. Mrs. Motherwell watched her through the window bending over them. Something about the poppies appealed to her now. She had once wanted Tom to cut them down, and she thought of it now.
She tapped on the window. Pearl looked up, startled.
"Bring in some," she called.
When the work was done for the morning, Mrs. Motherwell went up the narrow stair way to the little room over the kitchen to gather together Polly's things.
She sat on Polly's little straw bed and looked at the dismal little room. Pearl had done what she could to brighten it. The old bags and baskets had been neatly piled in one corner, and quilts had been spread over them to hide their ugliness from view. The wind blew gently in the window that the hail had broken. The floor had been scrubbed clean and white—the window, what was left of it—was shining.
She was reminded of Polly everywhere she looked. The mat under her feet was one that Polly had braided. A corduroy blouse hung at the foot of the bed. She remembered now that Polly had worn it the day she came.
In a little yellow tin box she found Polly's letters—the letters that had given her such extravagant joy. She could see her yet, how eagerly she would seize them and rush up to this little room with them, transfigured.
Mrs. Motherwell would have to look at them to find out Polly's mother's address. She took out the first letter slowly, then hurriedly put it back again in the envelope and looked guiltily around the room. But it had to be done. She took it out again resolutely, and read it with some difficulty.
It was written in a straggling hand that wandered uncertainly over the lines. It was a pitiful letter telling of poverty bitter and grinding, but redeemed from utter misery by a love and faith that shone from every line:
My dearest polly i am glad you like your plice and your misses is so kind as wot you si, yur letters are my kumfit di an nit. bill is a ard man and says hif the money don't cum i will ave to go to the workus. but i no you will send it der polly so hi can old my little plice hi got a start todi a hoffcer past hi that it wos the workhus hoffcer. bill ses he told im to cum hif hi cant pi by septmbr but hi am trustin God der polly e asn't forgot us. hi 'm glad the poppies grew. ere's a disy hi am sendin yu hi can mike the butonoles yet. hi do sum hevry di mrs purdy gave me fourpence one di for sum i mide for her hi ad a cup of tee that di. hi am appy thinkin of yu der polly.
"And Polly is dead!" burst from Mrs. Motherwell as something gathered in her throat. She laid the letter down and looked straight ahead of her.
The sloping walls of the little kitchen loft, with its cobwebbed beams faded away, and she was looking into a squalid little room where an old woman, bent and feeble, sat working buttonholes with trembling fingers. Her eyes were restless and expectant; she listened eagerly to every sound. A step is at the door, a hand is on the latch. The old woman rises uncertainly, a great hope in her eyes—it is the letter—the letter at last. The door opens, and the old woman falls cowering and moaning, and wringing her hands before the man who enters. It is the officer!
Mrs. Motherwell buried her face in her hands.
"Oh God be merciful, be merciful," she sobbed.
Sam Motherwell, knowing nothing of the storm that was passing through his wife's mind, was out in the machine house tightening up the screws and bolts in the binders, getting ready for the harvest. The barley was whitening already.
The nurse's letter had disturbed him. He tried to laugh at himself—the idea of his boxing up those weeds to send to anybody. Still the nurse had said how pleased Polly was. By George, it is strange what will please people. He remembered when he went down to Indiana buying horses, how tired he got of the look of corn-fields, and how the sight of the first decent sized wheat field just went to his heart, when he was coming back. Someway he could not laugh at anything that morning, for Polly was dead. And Polly was a willing thing for sure; he seemed to see her yet, how she ran after the colt the day it broke out of the pasture, and when the men were away she would hitch up a horse for him as quick as anybody.
"I kind o' wish now that I had given her something—it would have pleased her so—some little thing," he added hastily.
Mrs. Motherwell came across the yard bareheaded.
"Come into the house, Sam," she said gently. "I want to show you something."
He looked up quickly, but saw something in his wife's face that prevented him from speaking.
He followed her into the house. The letters were on the table, Mrs. Motherwell read them to him, read them with tears that almost choked her utterance.
"And Polly's dead, Sam!" she cried when she had finished the last one. "Polly's dead, and the poor old mother will be looking, looking for that money, and it will never come. Sam, can't we save that poor old woman from the poorhouse? Do you remember what the girl said in the letter, 'Inasmuch as ye have done it unto the least of these my little ones, ye have done it unto Me?' We didn't deserve the praise the girl gave us. We didn't send the flowers, we have never done anything for anybody and we have plenty, plenty, and what is the good of it, Sam? We'll die some day and leave it all behind us."
Mrs. Motherwell hid her face in her apron, trembling with excitement. Sam's face was immovable, but a mysterious Something, not of earth, was struggling with him. Was it the faith of that decrepit old woman in that bare little room across the sea, mumbling to herself that God had not forgotten? God knows. His ear is not dulled; His arm is not shortened; His holy spirit moves mightily.
Sam Motherwell stood up and struck the table with his fist.
"Ettie," he said, "I am a hard man, a danged hard man, and as you say I've never given away much, but I am not so low down yet that I have to reach up to touch bottom, and the old woman will not go to the poor house if I have money enough to keep her out!"
Sam Motherwell was as good as his word.
He went to Winnipeg the next day, but before he left he drew a check for one hundred dollars, payable to Polly's mother, which he gave to the Church of England clergyman to send for him. About two months afterwards he received a letter from the clergyman of the parish in which Polly's mother lived, telling him that the money had reached the old lady in time to save her from the workhouse; a heart-broken letter of thanks from Polly's mother herself accompanied it, calling on God to reward them for their kindness to her and her dear dead girl.
One morning when Tom came into the kitchen Pearl looked up with a worried look on her usually bright little face.
"What's up, kid?" he asked kindly. He did not like to see Pearl looking troubled.
"Arthur's sick," she said gravely.
"Go on!" he answered, "he's not sick. I know he's been feeling kind of used up for about a week, but he worked as well as ever yesterday. What makes you think he is sick?"
"I went out last night to be sure I had shut the henhouse door, and I heard him groanin', and I said, knockin' on the door, 'What's wrong, Arthur?' and he said, 'Oh, I beg your pardon, Pearl, did I frighten you?' and I said, 'No, but what's wrong?' and he said, 'Nothing at all, Pearl, thank you'; but I know there is. You know how polite he is—wouldn't trouble anybody. Wouldn't ask ye to slap 'im on the back if he was chokin'. I went out two or three times and once I brought him out some liniment, and he told me every time he would be 'well directly,' but I don't believe him. If Arthur groans there's something to groan for, you bet."
"Maybe he's in love," Tom said sheepishly.
"But you don't groan, Tom, do you?" she asked seriously.
"Maybe I ain't in love, though, Pearl. Ask Jim Russell, he can tell you."
"Jim ain't in love, is he?" Pearl asked anxiously. Her responsibilities were growing too fast. One love affair and a sick man she felt was all she could attend to.
"Well, why do you suppose Jim comes over here every second day to get you to write a note to that friend of yours?"
"Camilla?" Pearl asked open-mouthed. Tom nodded.
"Camilla can't leave Mrs. Francis," Pearl declared with conviction.
"Jim's a dandy smart fellow. He only stays on the farm in the summer. In the winter he book-keeps for three or four of the stores in Millford and earns lots of money," Tom said, admiringly.
After a pause Pearl said thoughtfully, "I love Camilla!"
"That's just the way Jim feels, too, I guess," Tom said laughing as he went out to the stable.
When Tom went out to the granary he found Arthur dressing, but flushed and looking rather unsteady.
"What's gone wrong with you, old man?" he asked kindly.
"I feel a bit queer," Arthur replied, "that's all. I shall be well directly. Got a bit of a cold, I think."
"Slept in a field with the gate open like as not," Tom laughed.
Arthur looked at him inquiringly.
"You'll feel better when you get your breakfast," Tom went on. "I don't wonder you're sick—you haven't been eatin' enough to keep a canary bird alive. Go on right into the house now. I'll feed your team."
"It beats all what happens to our help," Mrs. Motherwell complained to Pearl, as they washed the breakfast dishes. "It looks very much as if Arthur is goin' to be laid up, too, and the busy time just on us."
Pearl was troubled. Why should Arthur be sick? He had plenty of fresh air; he tubbed himself regularly. He never drank "alcoholic beverages that act directly on the liver and stomach, drying up the blood, and rendering every organ unfit for work." Pearl remembered the Band of Hope manual. No, and it was not a cold. Colds do not make people groan in the night—it was something else. Pearl wished her friend, Dr. Clay, would come along. He would soon spot the trouble.
After dinner, of which Arthur ate scarcely a mouthful, as Pearl was cleaning the knives, Mrs. Motherwell came into the kitchen with a hard look on her face. She had just missed a two-dollar bill from her satchel.
"Pearl," she said in a strained voice, "did you see a two-dollar bill any place?"
"Yes, ma'am," Pearl answered quickly, "Mrs Francis paid ma with one once for the washing, but I don't know where it might be now."
Mrs. Motherwell looked at Pearl keenly. It was not easy to believe that that little girl would steal. Her heart was still tender after Polly's death, she did not want to be hard on Pearl, but the money must be some place.
"Pearl, I have lost a two-dollar bill. If you know anything about it I want you to tell me," she said firmly.
"I don't know anything about it no more'n ye say ye had it and now ye've lost it," Pearl answered calmly.
"Go up to your room and think about it," she said, avoiding Pearl's gaze.
Pearl went up the narrow little steps with a heart that swelled with indignation.
"Does she think I stole her dirty money, me that has money o' me own—a thief is it she takes me for? Oh, wirra! wirra! and her an' me wuz gittin' on so fine, too; and like as not this'll start the morgage and the cancer on her again."
Pearl threw herself on the hot little bed, and sobbed out her indignation and her homesickness. She could not put it off this time. Catching sight of her grief-stricken face in the cracked looking glass that hung at the head of the bed, she started up suddenly.
"What am I bleatin' for?" she said to herself, wiping her eyes on her little patched apron. "Ye'd think to look at me that I'd been caught stealin' the cat's milk"—she laughed through her tears—"I haven't stolen anything and what for need I cry? The dear Lord will get me out of this just as nate as He bruk the windy for me!"
She took her knitting out of the bird-cage and began to knit at full speed.
"Danny me man, it is a good thing for ye that the shaddah of suspicion is on yer sister Pearlie this day, for it gives her a good chance to turn yer heel. 'Sowin' in the sunshine, sowin' in the shaddah,' only it's knittin' I am instead of sewin', but it's all wan, I guess. I mind how Paul and Silas were singin' in the prison at midnight. I know how they felt. 'Do what Ye like, Lord,' they wur thinkin'. 'If it's in jail Ye want us to stay, we're Yer men.'"
Pearl knit a few minutes in silence. Then she knelt beside the bed.
"Dear Lord," she prayed, clasping her work-worn hands, "help her to find her money, but if anyone did steal it, give him the strength to confess it, dear Lord. Amen."
Mrs. Motherwell, downstairs, was having a worse time than Pearl. She could not make herself believe that Pearl had stolen the money, and yet no one had had a chance to take it except Pearl, or Tom, and that, of course, was absurd. She went again to have a look in every drawer in her room, and as she passed through the hall she detected a strange odour. She soon traced it to Tom's light overcoat which hung there. What was the smell? It was tobacco, and something more. It was the smell of a bar-room!
She sat down upon the step with a nameless dread in her heart. Tom had gone to Millford several times since his father had gone to Winnipeg, and he had stayed longer than was necessary, too; but no, no. Tom would not spend good money that way. The habit of years was on her. It was the money she thought of first.
Then she thought of Pearl.
Going to the foot of the stairway she called:
"Pearl, you may come down now."
"Did ye find it?" Pearl asked eagerly.
"No."
"Do ye still think I took it?"
"No, I don't, Pearl," she answered.
"All right then, I'll come right down," Pearl said gladly.
That night Arthur's condition was, to Pearl's sharp eyes, alarming.
He tried to quiet her fears. He would be well directly, it was nothing, nothing at all, a mere indisposition (Pearl didn't know what that was); but when she went into the granary with a pitcher of water for him, and found him writing letters in the feeble light of a lantern, she took one look at him, laid down the pitcher and hurried out to tell Tom.
Tom was in the kitchen taking off his boots preparatory to going to bed.
"Tom," she said excitedly, "get back into yer boots, and go for the doctor. Arthur's got the thing that Pa had, and it'll have to be cut out of him or he'll die."
"What?" Tom gasped, with one foot across his knee.
"I think he has it," Pearl said, "he's actin' just like what Pa did, and he's in awful pain, I know, only he won't let on; and we must get the doctor or he might die before mornin', and then how'd we feel?"
Tom hesitated.
"Remember, Tom, he has a father and a mother and four brothers, and a girl called Thursa, and an uncle that is a bishop, and how'd we ever face them when we go to heaven if we just set around and let Arthur die?"
"What is it, Pearl?" Mrs. Motherwell said coming into the room, having heard Pearl's excited tones.
"It's Arthur, ma'am. Come out and see him. You'll see he needs the doctor. Ginger tea and mustard plasters ain't a flea-bite on a pain like what he has."
"Let's give him a dose of aconite," Tom said with conviction; "that'll fix him."
Mrs. Motherwell and Pearl went over to the granary.
"Don't knock at the door," Pearl whispered to her as they went. "Ye can't tell a thing about him if ye do. Arthur'd straighten up and be polite at his own funeral. Just look in the crack there and you'll see if he ain't sick."
Mrs. Motherwell did see. Arthur lay tossing and moaning across his bed, his letter pad and pencil beside him on the floor.
Mrs. Motherwell did not want Tom to go to Millford that night. One of the harvesters' excursions was expected—was probably in—then—there would be a wild time. Besides, the two-dollar bill still worried her. If Tom had it he might spend it. No, Tom was safer at home.
"Oh, I don't think he's so very bad," she said. "We'll get the doctor in the morning if he isn't any better. Now you go to bed, Pearl, and don't worry yourself."
But Pearl did not go to bed.
When Mrs. Motherwell and Tom had gone to their own rooms, she built up the kitchen fire, and heated a frying-pan full of salt, with which she filled a pair of her own stockings and brought them to Arthur. She remembered that her mother had done that when her father was sick, and that it had eased his pain. She drew a pail of fresh water from the well, and brought a basinful to him, and bathed his burning face and hands. Arthur received her attentions gratefully.
Pearl knew what she would do. She would run over and tell Jim, and Jim would go for the doctor. Jim would not be in bed yet, she knew, and even if he were, he would not mind getting up.
Jim would go to town any time she wanted anything. One time when she had said she just wished she knew whether Camilla had her new suit made yet, Jim jumped right up and said he'd go and see.
Mrs. Motherwell had gone to her room very much concerned with her own troubles. Why should Tom fall into evil ways? she asked herself—a boy who had been as economically brought up as he was. Other people's boys had gone wrong, but she had alway thought that the parents were to blame some way. Then she thought of Arthur; perhaps he should have the doctor. She had been slow to believe that Polly was really sick—and had had cause for regret. She would send for the doctor, in the morning. But what was Pearl doing so long in the kitchen?—She could hear her moving around—Pearl must go to her bed, or she would not be able to get up in the morning.
Pearl was just going out of the kitchen with her hat and coat on when Mrs. Motherwell came in.
"Where are you going, Pearl," she asked.
"To git someone to go for the doctor," Pearl answered stoutly.
"Is he worse?" Mrs. Motherwell asked quickly.
"He can't git worse," Pearl replied grimly. "If he gits worse he'll be dead."
Mrs. Motherwell called Tom at once, and told him to bring the doctor as soon as he could.
"Where's my overcoat mother?" Tom called from the hall.
"Take your father's" she said, "he is going to get a new one while he is in Winnipeg, that one's too small for him now. I put yours outside to air. It had a queer smell on it I thought, and now hurry, Tom. Bring Dr. Barner. I think he's the best for a serious case. Dr. Clay is too young, Anyway, the old man knowns far more than he does, if you can only get him sober."
Pearl's heart sank.
"Arthur's as good as dead," she said as she went to the granary, crying softly to herself. "Dr. Clay is the only man who could save him, and they won't have him."
The sun had gone down and heavy clouds filled the sky. Not a star was to be seen, and the night was growing darker and darker.
A sound of wheels came from across the creek, coming rapidly down the road. The old dog barked viciously. A horse driven at full speed dashed through the yard; Pearl ran shouting after, for even in the gathering darkness she recognised the one person in all the world who could save Arthur. But the wind and the barking of the dog drowned her voice, and the sound of the doctor's wheels grew fainter in the distance.
Only for a moment was Pearl dismayed.
"I'll catch him coming back," she said, "if I have to tie binding twine across the road to tangle up Pleurisy's long legs. He's on his way to Cowan's, I know. Ab Cowan has quinsy. Never mind, Thursa, we'll get him. I hope now that the old doctor is too full to come—oh, no I don't either, I just hope he's away and Dr. Clay will have it done before he gets here."
When Tom arrived in Millford he found a great many people thronging the streets. One of the Ontario's harvesters' excursions had arrived a few hours before, and the "Huron and Bruce" boys were already making themselves seen and heard.
Tom went at once to Dr. Barner's office and found that the doctor was out making calls, but would be back in an hour. Not at all displeased at having some time to spend, Tom went back to the gaily lighted front street. The crowds of men who went in and out of the hotels seemed to promise some excitement.
Inside of the Grand Pacific, a gramophone querulously sang "Any Rags, Any Bones, Any Bottles To-day" to a delighted company of listeners.
When Tom entered he was received with the greatest cordiality by the bartender and others.
"Here is life and good-fellowship," Tom thought to himself, "here's the place to have a good time."
"Is your father back yet, Tom?" the bartender asked as he served a line of customers.
"He'll come up Monday night, I expect," Tom answered, rather proud of the attention he was receiving.
The bartender pushed a box of cigars toward him.
"Have a cigar, Tom," he said.
"No, thank you," Tom answered, "not any." Tom could not smoke, but he drew a plug of chewing tobacco from his pocket and took a chew, to show that his sympathies were that way.
"I guess perhaps some of you men met Mr. Motherwell in Winnipeg. He's in there hiring men for this locality," the bartender said amiably.
"That's the name of the gent that hired me," said one.
"Me too."
"And me," came from others. "I'd no intention of comin' here," a man from Paisley said. "I was goin' to Souris, until that gent got a holt of me, and I thought if he wuz a sample of the men ye raise here, I'd hike this way."
"He's lookin' for a treat," the bartender laughed. "He's sized you up, Tom, as a pretty good fellow."
"No, I ain't after no treat," the Paisley man declared. "That's straight, what I told you."
Tom unconsciously put his hand in his coat pocket and felt the money his father had put there. He drew it out wondering. The quick eyes of the bartender saw it at once.
"Tom's getting out his wad, boys," he laughed. "Nothin' mean about Tom, you bet Tom's goin' to do somethin'."
In the confusion that followed Tom heard himself saying:
"All right boys, come along and name yer drinks."
Tom had a very indistinct memory of what followed. He remembered having a handful of silver, and of trying to put it in his pocket.
Once when the boys were standing in front of the bar at his invitation he noticed a miserable, hungry looking man, who drank greedily. It was Skinner. Then someone took him by the arm and said something about his having enough, and Tom felt himself being led across a floor that rose and fell strangely, to a black lounge that tried to slide away from him and then came back suddenly and hit him.
The wind raged and howled with increasing violence around the granary where Arthur lay tossing upon his hard bed. It seized the door and rattled it in wanton playfulness, as if to deceive the sick man with the hope that a friend's hand was on the latch, and then raced blustering and screaming down to the meadows below. The fanning mill and piles of grain bags made fantastic shadows on the wall in the lantern's dim light, and seemed to his distorted fancy like dark and terrible spectres waiting to spring upon him.
Pearl knelt down beside him, tenderly bathing his burning face.
"Why do you do all this for me, Pearl?" he asked slowly, his voice coming thick and painfully.
She changed the cloth on his head before replying.
"Oh, I keep thinkin' it might be Teddy or Jimmy or maybe wee Danny," she replied gently, "and besides, there's Thursa."
The young man opened his eyes and smiled bravely.
"Yes, there's Thursa," he said simply.
Pearl kept the fire burning in the kitchen—the doctor might need hot water. She remembered that he had needed sheets too, and carbolic acid, when he had operated on her father the winter before.
Arthur did not speak much as the night wore on, and Pearl began to grow drowsy in spite of all her efforts. She brought the old dog into the granary with her for company. The wind rattled the mud chinking in the walls and drove showers of dust and gravel against the little window. She had put the lantern behind the fanning mill, so that its light would not shine in Arthur's eyes, and in the semi-darkness, she and old Nap waited and listened. The dog soon laid his head upon her knee and slept, and Pearl was left alone to watch. Surely the doctor would come soon...it was a good thing she had the dog...he was so warm beside her, and...
She sprang up guiltily. Had she been asleep...what if he had passed while she slept...she grew cold at the thought.
"Did he pass, Nap?" she whispered to the dog, almost crying. "Oh Nap, did we let him go past?"
Nap yawned widely and flicked one ear, which was his way of telling Pearl not to distress herself. Nobody had passed.
Pearl's eyes were heavy with sleep.
"This is not the time to sleep," she said, yawning and shivering. Arthur's wash-basin stood on the floor beside the bed, where she had been bathing his face. She put more water into it.
"Now then," she said, "once for his mother, once for his father, a big long one for Thursa," holding her head so long below the water that it felt numb, when she took it out. "I can't do one for each of the boys," she shivered, "I'll lump the boys, here's a big one for them."
"There now," her teeth chattered as she wiped her hair on Arthur's towel, "that ought to help some."
Arthur opened his eyes and looked anxiously around him. Pearl was beside him at once.
"Pearl," he said, "what is wrong with me? What terrible pain is this that has me in its clutches?" The strength had gone out of the man, he could no longer battle with it.
Pearl hesitated. It is not well to tell sick people your gravest fears. "Still Arthur is English, and the English are gritty," Pearl thought to herself.
"Arthur," she said, "I think you have appendicitis."
Arthur lay motionless for a few moments. He knew what that was.
"But that requires an operation," he said at length, "a very skilful one."
"It does," Pearl replied, "and that's what you'll get as soon as Dr. Clay gets here, I'm thinking."
Arthur turned his face into his pillow. An operation for appendicitis, here, in this place, and by that young man, no older than himself perhaps? He knew that at home, it was only undertaken by the oldest and best surgeons in the hospitals.
Pearl saw something of his fears in his face. So she hastened to reassure him. She said cheerfully:
"Don't ye be worried, Arthur, about it at all at all. Man alive! Dr. Clay thinks no more of an operation like that than I would o' cuttin' your nails."
A strange feeling began at Arthur's heart, and spread up to his brain. It had come! It was here!
From lightning and tempest; from plague, pestilence and famine; from battle and murder and sudden death;—Good Lord, deliver us!
He had prayed it many times, meaninglessly. But he clung to it now, clung to it desperately. As a drowning man. He put his hand over his eyes, his pain was forgotten:
Other lights are paling—which for long years we have rejoiced to see...we would not mourn them for we go to Thee!
Yes it was all right; he was ready now. He had come of a race of men who feared not death in whatever form it came.
Bring us to our resting beds at night—weary and content and undishonoured—and grant us in the end the gift of sleep.
He repeated the prayer to himself slowly. That was it, weary and content, and undishonoured.
"Pearl," he said, reaching out his burning hand until it rested on hers, "all my letters are there in that black portmanteau, and the key is in my pocket-book. I have a fancy that I would like no eye but yours to see them—until I am quite well again."
She nodded.
"And if you...should have need...to write to Thursa, tell her I had loving hands around me...at the last."
Pearl gently stroked his hand.
"And to my father write that I knew no fear"—his voice grew steadier—"and passed out of life glad to have been a brave man's son, and borne even for a few years a godly father's name."
"I will write it, Arthur," she said.
"And to my mother, Pearl" his voice wavered and broke—"my mother...for I was her youngest child...tell her she was my last...and tenderest thought."
Pearl pressed his hand tenderly against her weather-beaten little cheek, for it was Danny now, grown a man but Danny still, who lay before her, fighting for his life; and at the thought her tears fell fast.
"Pearl," he spoke again, after a pause, pressing his hand to his forehead, "while my mind holds clear, perhaps you would be good enough, you have been so good to me, to say that prayer you learned. My father will be in his study now, and soon it will be time for morning prayers. I often feel his blessing on me, Pearl. I want to feel it now, bringing peace and rest...weary and content and undishonoured, and...undishonoured...and grant us..." His voice grew fainter and trailed away into incoherency.
And now, oh thou dignified rector of St. Agnes, in thy home beyond the sea, lay aside the "Appendix to the Apology of St. Perpetua," over which thou porest, for under all thy dignity and formalism there beats a loving father's heart. The shadows are gathering, dear sir, around thy fifth son in a far country, and in the gathering shadows there stalks, noiselessly, relentlessly, that grim, gray spectre, Death. On thy knees, then, oh Rector of St. Agnes, and blend thy prayers with the feeble petitions of her who even now, for thy house, entreats the Throne of Grace. Pray, oh thou on whom the bishop's hands have been laid, that the golden bowl be not broken nor the silver cord loosed, for the breath of thy fifth son draws heavily, and the things of time and sense are fading, fading, fading from his closing eyes.
Pearl repeated the prayer.
—And grant, oh most merciful Father for His sake; That we may hereafter lead a godly, righteous and a sober life—
She stopped abruptly. The old dog lifted his head and listened. Snatching up the lantern, she was out of the door before the dog was on his feet; there were wheels coming, coming down the road in mad haste. Pearl swung the lantern and shouted.
The doctor reined in his horse.
She flashed the lantern into his face.
"Oh Doc!" she cried, "dear Doc, I have been waitin' and waitin' for ye. Git in there to the granary. Arthur's the sickest thing ye ever saw. Git in there on the double jump." She put the lantern into his hand as she spoke.
Hastily unhitching the doctor's horse she felt her way with him into the driving shed. The night was at its blackest.
"Now, Thursa," she laughed to herself, "we got him, and he'll do it, dear Doc, he'll do it." The wind blew dust and gravel in her face as she ran across the yard.
When she went into the granary the doctor was sitting on the box by Arthur's bed, with his face in his hands.
"Oh, Doc, what is it?" she cried, seizing his arm.
The doctor looked at her, dazed, and even Pearl uttered a cry of dismay when she saw his face, for it was like the face of a dead man.
"Pearl," he said slowly, "I have made a terrible mistake, I have killed young Cowan."
"Bet he deserved it, then," Pearl said stoutly.
"Killed him," the doctor went on, not heeding her, "he died in my hands, poor fellow! Oh, the poor young fellow! I lanced his throat, thinking it was quinsy he had, but it must have been diphtheria, for he died, Pearl, he died, I tell you!"
"Well!" Pearl cried, excitedly waving her arms, "he ain't the first man that's been killed by a mistake, I'll bet lots o' doctors kill people by mistake, but they don't tell—and the corpse don't either, and there ye are. I'll bet you feel worse about it than he does, Doc."
The doctor groaned.
"Come, Doc," she said, plucking his sleeve, "take a look at Arthur."
The doctor rose uncertainly and paced up and down the floor with his face in his hands, swaying like a drunken man.
"O God!" he moaned, "if I could but bring back his life with mine; but I can't! I can't! I can't!"
Pearl watched him, but said not a word. At last she said:
"Doc, I think Arthur has appendicitis. Come and have a look at him, and see if he hasn't."
With a supreme effort the doctor gained control of himself and made a hasty but thorough examination.
"He has," he said, "a well developed case of it."
Pearl handed him his satchel. "Here, then," she said, "go at him."
"I can't do it, Pearl," he cried. "I can't. He'll die, I tell you, like that other poor fellow. I can't send another man to meet his Maker."
"Oh, he's ready!" Pearl interrupted him. "Don't hold back on Arthur's account."
"I can't do it," he repeated hopelessly. "He'll die under my knife, I can't kill two men in one night. O God, be merciful to a poor, blundering, miserable wretch!" he groaned, burying his face in his hands, and Pearl noticed that the back of his coat quivered like human flesh.
Arthur's breath was becoming more and more laboured; his eyes roved sightlessly around the room; his head rolled on the pillow in a vain search for rest; his fingers clutched convulsively at the bed-clothes.
Pearl was filled with dismay. The foundations of her little world were tottering.
All but One. There was One who had never failed her. He would not fail her now.
She dropped on her knees.
"O God, dear God," she prayed, beating her hard little brown hands together, "don't go back on us, dear God. Put the gimp into Doc again; he's not scared to do it, Lord, he's just lost his grip for a minute; he's not scared Lord; it looks like it, but he isn't. You can bank on Doc, Lord, he's not scared. Bear with him, dear Lord, just a minute—just a minute—he'll do it, and he'll do it right, Amen."
When Pearl rose from her knees the doctor had lifted his head.
"Do you want hot water and sheets and carbolic?" she asked.
He nodded.
When she came back with them the doctor was taking off his coat. His instruments were laid out on the box.
"Get a lamp," he said to Pearl.
Pearl's happy heart was singing with joy. "O Lord, dear Lord, You never fail," she murmured as she ran across to the kitchen.
When she came back with the lamp and a chair to set it on, the doctor was pinning a sheet above the bed. His face was white and drawn, but his hand was firm and his mouth was a straight line.
Arthur was tossing his arms convulsively.
The doctor listened with his ear a minute upon the sick man's heart, then the gauze mask was laid upon his face and the chloroform soon did its merciful work.
The doctor handed Pearl the bottle. "A drop or two if he moves," he said.
Then Horace Clay, the man with a man's mistakes, his fears, his heart-burnings, was gone, and in his place stood Horace Clay, the doctor, keen, alert, masterful, indomitable, with the look of battle on his face. He worked rapidly, never faltering; his eyes burning with the joy of the true physician who fights to save, to save a human life from the grim old enemy, Death.
"You have saved his life, Pearl," the doctor said two hours later. Arthur lay sleeping easily, the flush gone from his face, and his breath coming regularly.
The doctor put his hand gently on her tumbled little brown head.
"You saved him from death, Pearl, and me—from something worse."
And then Pearl took the doctor's hand in both of hers, and kissed it reverently.
"That's for Thursa," she said, gravely.
Tom was awakened by some one shaking him gently.
"Tom, Tom Motherwell, what are you doing here?"
A woman knelt beside him; her eyes were sweet and kind and sad beyond expression.
"Tom, how did you come here?" she asked, gently, as Tom struggled to rise.
He sat up, staring stupidly around him. "Wha' 's a matter? Where's this?" he asked thickly.
"You're in the sitting-room at the hotel," she said. He would have lain down again, but she took him firmly by the arm.
"Come Tom," she said. "Come and have a drink of water."
She led him out of the hotel to the pump at the corner of the street. Tom drank thirstily. She pumped water on his hands, and bathed his burning face in it. The cold water and the fresh air began to clear his brain.
"What time is it?" he asked her.
"Nearly morning," she said. "About half-past three, I think," and Tom knew even in the darkness that she had lost more teeth. It was Mrs. Skinner.
"Tom," she said, "did you see Skinner in there? I came down to get him—I want him—the child is dead an hour ago." She spoke hurriedly.
Tom remembered now. Yes, he had seen Skinner, but not lately; it was a long, long time ago.
"Now Tom, go home," she said kindly. "This is bad work for you, my dear boy. Stop it now, dear Tom, while you can. It will kill you, body and soul."
A thought struggled in Tom's dull brain. There was something he wanted to say to her which must be said; but she was gone.
He drank again from the cup that hung beside the pump. Where did he get this burning thirst, and his head, how it pounded! She had told him to go home. Well, why wasn't he at home? What was he doing here?
Slowly his memory came back—he had come for the doctor; and the doctor was to be back in an hour, and now it was nearly morning, didn't she say?
He tried to run, but his knees failed him—what about Arthur? He grew chill at the thought—he might be dead by this time.
He reached the doctor's office some way. His head still throbbed and his feet were heavy as lead; but his mind was clear.
A lamp was burning in the office but no one was in. It seemed a month ago since he had been there before. The air of the office was close and stifling, and heavy with stale tobacco smoke. Tom sat down, wearily, in the doctor's armchair; his heart beat painfully—he'll be dead—he'll be dead—he'll be dead—it was pounding. The clock on the table was saying it too. Tom got up and walked up and down to drown the sound. He stopped before a cabinet and gazed horrified at a human skeleton that grinned evilly at him. He opened the door hastily, the night wind fanned his face. He sat down upon the step, thoroughly sober now, but sick in body and soul.
Soon a heavy step sounded on the sidewalk, and the old doctor came into the patch of light that shone from the door.
"Do you want me?" he asked as Tom stood up.
"Yes," Tom answered; "at once."
"What's wrong?" the doctor asked brusquely.
Tom told him as well as he could.
"Were you here before, early in the evening?"
Tom nodded.
"Hurry up then and get your horse," the doctor said, going past him into the office.
"Yes, I thought so," the doctor said gathering up his instruments. "I ought to know the signs—well, well, the poor young Englishman has had plenty of time to die from ten in the evening till four the next morning, without indecent haste either, while this young fellow was hitting up the firewater. Still, God knows, I shouldn't be hard on him. I've often kept people waiting for the same reason and," he added grimly, "they didn't always wait either."
When Tom and the old doctor drove into the yard everything was silent. The wind had fallen, and the eastern sky was bright with morning.
The old dog who lay in front of the granary door raised his head at their approach and lifted one ear, as if to command silence.
Tom helped the doctor out of the buggy. He tried to unhitch the horse, but the beating of his heart nearly choked him—the fear of what might be in the granary. He waited for the exclamation from the doctor which would proclaim him a murderer. He heard the door open again—the doctor was coming to tell him—Tom's knees grew weak—he held to the horse for support—who was this who had caught his arm—it was Pearl crying and laughing.
"Tom, Tom, it's all over, and Arthur's going to get well," she whispered. "Dr. Clay came."
But Pearl was not prepared for what happened.
Tom put his head down upon the horse's neck and cried like a child—no, like a man—for in the dark and terrible night that had just passed, sullied though it was by temptations and yieldings and neglect of duty, the soul of a man had been born in him, and he had put away childish things forever.
Dr. Clay was kneeling in front of the box cleaning his instruments, with his back toward the door, when Dr. Barner entered. He greeted the older man cordially, receiving but a curt reply. Then the professional eye of the old doctor began to take in the situation. A half-used roll of antiseptic lint lay on the floor; the fumes of the disinfectants and of the ansthetic still hung on the air. Tom's description of the case had suggested appendicitis.
"What was the trouble?" he asked quickly.
The young doctor told him, giving him such a thoroughly scientific history of the case that the old doctor's opinion of him underwent a radical change. The young doctor explained briefly what he had attempted to do by the operation; the regular breathing and apparently normal temperature of the patient was, to the old doctor, sufficient proof of its success.
He stooped suddenly to examine the dressing that the young doctor was showing him, but his face twitched with some strong emotion—pride, professional jealousy, hatred were breaking down before a stronger and a worthier feeling.
He turned abruptly and grasped the young doctor's hand.
"Clay!" he cried, "it was a great piece of work, here, alone, and by lamplight. You are a brave man, and I honour you." Then his voice broke. "I'd give every day of my miserable life to be able to do this once more, just once, but I haven't the nerve, Clay"; the hand that the young doctor held trembled. "I haven't the nerve. I've been going on a whiskey nerve too long."
"Dr. Barner," the young man replied, as he returned the other's grasp, "I thank you for your good words, but I wasn't alone when I did it. The bravest little girl in all the world was here and shamed me out of my weakness and," he added reverently, "I think God Himself steadied my hand."
The old man looked up wondering.
"I believe you, Clay," he said simply.