Enj'y yourselves, enj'y yourselvesBut don't do no disgrace!
Enj'y yourselves, enj'y yourselvesBut don't do no disgrace!
Meanwhile, his consciousness of in some way caring for the whole company held him a model of sobriety. In fact, he did take care of the company, secretly instructing the captain in the delicacies of military etiquette and primitive sanitary conditions, and openly showing the commissary sergeant how to make requisitions and barter his superfluous rations for acceptable canned goods at the groceries of the town. He explained all the regulars' artless devices for being comfortable; he mended the boys' morals and their blouses in the same breath; and he inculcated all the regular traditions and superstitions. But it is to be confessed again, that while Spruce was living laboriously up to his lights of righteousness under this new stimulus, the lights were rather dim; and, in particular, as regards the duty of a man to pick up outlying portable property for his company—they would have shocked a police magistrate. Neither did he rank among the martial virtues the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit. "A good captain is always a kicker," says Spruce firmly; "he's got to be. Look at this here camp, Captain; the mess tent's all under water; we're standing in the slush every damned meal we eat. Water's under our tent, water—"
"I know, I know, Sergeant," interrupts the perplexed and worried young captain, a clever young dandy bright enough to be willing to take wisdom without shoulder straps; "I've been to the colonel; he agrees with me, and he's been to Major Green, and that's all comes of it. I don't see what I can do further, if I did—"
"Begging your pardon, Captain, the men will be falling sick soon and dying. They're weakened by the climate and being fretted, expecting always to git off and never going."
"But what can I do? Oh, speak out, we're off here alone. Have you any idea?"
"Well, sir, if you was my captain in the old —th, you'd say to the colonel, 'Colonel, I've remonstrated and remonstrated. Now I'm desperate. I'm desperate,' says you. 'If there ain't something done to-morrow I'm going to march my company out and find a new camp, and you kin court-martial me if you please. I'd rather stand a court-martial than see my men die!' He'd talk real pleasant at first, so as to git in all his facts, and then he'd blaze away. And he'd do it, too, if they didn't listen."
The captain gave the sergeant a keen glance. "And that's your notion of discipline?" said he.
"There's a newspaper fellow asking for you, Captain, this morning. I see him a-coming now," was the sergeant's oblique response. But he chuckled, walking stiffly away, "He'll do it; I bet we won't be here two days longer." For which glee there was reason, since, inside the hour, the captain was in the colonel's tent, concluding an eloquent picture of his company's discomforts with "Somebody has to do something. If you are powerless, Colonel, I'm not. If they don't give some assurance of changing the camp to-morrow I shall march Company G out and pitch a camp myself, and stand a court-martial. I would rather risk a court-martial than see my men die—and that's what it has come to!"
The colonel looked the fiery young speaker sternly in the eye, and said something about unsoldierly conduct.
"It would be unmanly conduct for me to let the boys trusted to me die, because I was afraid to speak out," flung back the captain. "And I know one thing: if I am court-martialed the papers are likely to get the true story."
"You mean the reporter on the Chicago papers who is snooping around? Let me advise you to give him a wide berth."
"I mean nothing of the kind, sir. I only mean that the thing will not be done in a corner."
"Well, well, keep cool, Captain, you're too good a fellow to fling yourself away. Wait and see if I can't get something definite out of the major to-day."
Whereupon the captain departed with outward decent gloom and inward premonitions of rejoicing, for when he had hit a nail on the head he had eyes to see. And the colonel betook himself, hot-foot, to the pompous old soldier in charge of the camp, who happened to be a man of fixed belief in himself, but, if he feared anything, was afraid of a newspaper reporter. The colonel gave him the facts, sparing no squalid detail; indeed, adding a few picturesque embellishments from his own observations. He cut short the other's contemptuous criticism of boy soldiers, and his comparison with the hardships endured during the Civil War, with a curt "I know they fooled away men's lives then; that is no reason we should fool them away now. The men are sickening to-day—they will be dying to-morrow; I'm desperate. If that camp is not changed by to-morrow I shall march my regiment out myself and pitch my own camp, and you may court-martial me for it if you like. I would rather stand a court-martial than see my men die, because I was afraid to speak out! The camp we have now is murder, as the reporters say! I don't wonder that young fellow from Chicago talks hard!"
"You're excited, Colonel; you forget yourself."
"Iamexcited, Major; I'm desperate! Will you walk round the camp with me?"
The end of the colloquy was that the captain saw the major and the colonel and told the first-lieutenant, who told, the first-sergeant, whose name was Spruce. "Captain's kicked to the colonel, I guess," says Spruce, "and colonel's kicked to the major. That's the talk. Git ready, boys, and pack." True enough, the camp was moved the very next day.
"I guess captain will make an officer if he lives and don't git the big head," Spruce moralized. "It's mighty prevalent in the volunteers."
The captain wrote the whole account home to one single confidant—his father—and him he swore to secrecy. The captain's father was the man who had committed Company G to Spruce's good offices. He sent a check to the company and a special box of cigars to Spruce. And Spruce, knowing nothing of the intermediary, felt a more brilliant pride in his adopted town, and bragged of its virtues more vehemently than ever. The camp was not moved soon enough. Pneumonia and typhoid fever appeared. One by one the boys of the regiment sickened. Presently one by one they began to die.
Then Spruce suggested to the captain: "I guess I'd be more good in the hospital than I am here, Captain." And the captain (who was scared, poor lad, and had visions of the boys' mothers demanding the wasted lives of their sons at his hands) had his best sergeant put on the sick detail. If Spruce had been useful in camp he was invaluable in hospital. The head surgeon leaned on him, with a jest, and the young surgeon in charge with pretense of abuse. "You'll burst if you don't work off your steam, Spruce, so out with it. What is itnow?" In this fashion he really sought both information and suggestion. Nor was he above being instructed in the innumerable delicacies of requisitions by the old regular, and he did not, when requisitions were unanswered and supplies appeared in unusual form, ask any embarrassing questions. "I get 'em from the Red Cross, sir," was Spruce's invariable and unquestioned formula.
And the doctor in his reports accounted for what he had received and complained lustily because his requisitions were not honored, even as Spruce had desired, and, thereby, he obtained much credit, in the days to come. Spruce did not obtain any particular credit, but he saved a few lives, it is likely; and the sick men found him better than medicine. The captain always handed the committee letters over to him; and bought whatever he desired.
"Captain's going to distinguish himself, give him a chance," thought Spruce, "he's gotsense!"
And by degrees he began to feel for the young volunteer a reflection of the worship which had secretly been offered to a certain fat little bald-headed captain of the old —steenth. His picture of the great day when he should have his triumph—quite as dear to him, perhaps, as any Roman general's to the Roman—now always included a vision of the captain, slender and straight and bright-eyed, at the head of the line; and he always could see the captain, later in the day, presenting him to his father; "Here's Sergeant Spruce, who has coached us all!" He had overheard those very words once said to a girl visiting the camp, and they clung to his memory with the persistent sweetness of the odor of violets.
To-day he was thinking much more of the captain than of young Danvers, though Danvers ranked next in his good will. Danvers was a college lad who had begged and blustered his mother into letting him go. He would not let her know how ill he was, but had the captain write to his married sister, in the same town but not the same house. She, in sore perplexity, wrote to both the captain and Spruce and kept her trunk packed, expecting a telegram. Danvers used to talk of her and of his mother and of his little nephews and nieces to Spruce, at first in mere broken sentences—this was when he was so ill they expected that he might die any day—later in little happy snatches of reminiscence. He was perfectly aware that he owed his life to Spruce's nursing; and he gave Spruce the same admiration which he had used to give the great man who commanded the university football team. The social hiatus between them closed up insensibly, as it always does between men who are in danger and suffering together. Danvers knew Spruce's footfall and his thin face would lighten with a smile whenever the sergeant came in sight. He liked the strong, soft touch of his hand, the soothing cadence of his voice; he felt a gratitude which he was too boyish to express for the comfort of Spruce's baths and rubbings and cheerfulness. The other sick lads had a touch of the same feeling for the sergeant. As he passed from cot to cot, even the sickest man could make some little sign of relief at his return.
Spruce's heart, a simple and tender affair, as a soldier's is, oftener than people know, swelled within him, not for the first time.
"Well, I guess I done right to come here," thought he, "and I guess all the G boys will be out of the woods this week, and then I don't care how soon we git our orders."
Danvers stopped him when he returned. "I want to speak to you, Chris," he next said, and a new note in his voice turned Spruce about abruptly.
"What's the matter, Dick?"
"Oh, nothing, I only wanted to be sure you'd come back and say good-by before you got off. The regiment's got its orders, you know?"
"No!" cried Spruce. He swallowed a little gasp. "What are you giving me?"
"Oh, it's straight; I heard them talking. Colonel has the order; the boys are packing to-day."
Spruce's eyes burned, he was minded to make some exclamations of profane joy, but his mood fell at the sight of the boy's quivering smile.
"Great, isn't it?" said Danvers. "I wish they'd waited two weeks and given us fellows a show, but I dare say there won't be any show by that time, the way they are after the dons at Santiago. Can't you get off now, to pack? But—you'll be sure to come back and say good-by, Chris!"
"I ain't off yet," said Spruce, "and I ain't too sure I will be. They're always gitting orders and making an everlasting hustle to pack up, and then unpacking. You go to sleep."
He was about to move away, but Danvers detained him, saying that he wanted to be turned; and as the soldier gently turned him, the boy got one of his hands and gave it a squeeze. He tried to say something, but was barely able to give Spruce a foolish smile. "Spruce, you're a soldier and a gentleman!" he stammered. He turned away his head to hide the tears in his eyes. But Spruce had seen them. Of course he made no sign, stepping away briskly, with a little pat on the lean shoulder.
He came back softly in a little while. He looked at Danvers, who was simulating sleep, with his dark lashes fallen over red eyelids, and he shook his head. During his absence he had found that the orders were no rumor. The regiment was going to Porto Rico sure enough. Spruce stood a moment, before he sat down by Danvers' side. But he barely was seated ere he was on his feet again, in a nervous irritation which none had ever seen in Spruce. He walked to the door of the tent and gazed, in the same attitude that the nurse had gazed, an hour earlier, at the low, white streets. Two great buzzards were flying low against the hot, cloudless vault of blue.
"Them boys'll be all broke up if I go!" said Spruce.
He frowned and fidgeted. In fact, he displayed every symptom of a man struggling with a fit of furious temper. What really was buffeting Spruce's soul was not, however, anger, it was the temptation of his life. Spruce had known few temptations; at least, he had recognized few. His morality was the lenient, rough-hewn article which satisfies a soldier's conscience. He had no squeamishness about the sins outside his limited category; he fell into them blithely and had no remorse when he remembered them, wherefore he preserved a certain incongruous innocence even in his vices, as has happened to many a man before. It is, perhaps, the moral nature's own defense; and keeps untouched and ever fresh little nooks and corners of a sinner's soul, into which the conscience may retreat and from which sometimes she sallies forth to conquer the abandoned territory. What Spruce called his duty he had done quite as a matter of course. He had not wavered any more than he wavered when the war bonnets were swooping down on his old captain's crumpled-up form. But this—this was different. The boys needed him. But if he stayed with the boys, there was the regiment and the company and the captain and the chance to distinguish himself and march back in glory to his town.
"I guess most folks would say I'doughtto follow the colors," he thought; "raw fellers like them, they need a steady, old hand. Well, they've got Bates." (Bates was an old regular, also, of less enterprising genius than Spruce, but an admirable soldier.) "I s'pose,"—grudgingly—"that Bates would keep 'em steady. And captain can fight, and the colonel was a West Point man, though he's been out of the army ten years, fooling with the millish. I guess they don't need me so awful bad this week; and these 'ere boys—Oh, damn it all!" He walked out of the tent. There was a little group about a wagon, at which he frowned and sighed. "Poor Maxwell!" he said. Then he tossed his head and stamped his foot. "Oh, damn it all!" said he again, between his teeth.
But his face and manner were back on their old level of good cheer when he bent over Danvers, half an hour later.
"Sa—y! Dick!"
"Yes, Chris. You come to say good-by! Well, it's good luck to you and God bless you from every boy here; and we know what you've done for us, and we won't forget it; and we'll all hurry up to get well and join you!" Danvers' voice was steady enough now and a pathetic effort at a cheer came from all the cots.
Spruce lifted his fist and shook it severely. "You shut up! All of you! You'll raise your temperature! I ain't going, neither. Be quiet. It's all settled. I've seen captain, and he wants me to stay and see you boys through; all the G boys. Then we're all going together. I tell you, keep quiet."
Dick Danvers was keeping quiet enough, for one; he was wiping away the tears that rolled down his cheeks.
The others in general shared his relief in greater or less measure; but they were too ill to think much about anything except themselves. In some way, however, every one in the tent showed to Spruce that he felt that a sacrifice had been made.
"I know you hated it like the devil, and just stayed for fear some of your precious chickens would come to mischief if they got from under your wings, you old hen!" was Dick's tribute; "and I know why you went into town yesterday when the boys went off. Itisrough, Chris, and that's the truth!"
"Oh, it's only putting things off a bit; the captain told me so himself," said Spruce, very light and airy. But his heart was sore. The G boys understood; he wasn't so sure that all the others did understand. He caught his name on one gossiping group's lips, and was conscious that they gazed after him curiously. "Wonder if I'm scared that I stayed home, I guess," he muttered, being a sensitive fellow like all vain men. "I wish they'd see the things I've been in! Damn 'em!"
The men really were discussing his various Indian experiences and admiring him in their boyish hearts. But he was unluckily out of earshot. Unluckily, also, he was not out of earshot when a lieutenant of another regiment who had had a difference about a right of way with Spruce's captain and been worsted by Spruce's knowledge of military traditions freed his mind about that "bumptious regular who was so keen to fight, but (he noticed) was hanging on to his sick detail, now the regiment had a chance to see a few Spaniards." Spruce, in his properly buttoned uniform, his face red with the heat and something of the words, saluted rigorously and passed by, not a single muscle twitching. All the while he was thinking: "I'm glad he don't belong tomytown! God! If anybody was to write them things about me!"
By this time the town was not only his town, but he was sure that he was a figure in the conversation of the place. Thus his anxiety of mind increased daily. He kept it from his charges, who grew stronger all the week, and the next; and he read such papers as drifted out to the camp and such shreds of news about the fighting with frantic interest. Danvers was able to sit up at the end of three weeks, but most of the boys were further along, walking about the wards, or gone back to their regiment.
"You get out, Chris," said Danvers, "we all know you're on your head with aching to go.We'reall right; and I'm off home on furlough to-morrow; I'll get straightened out there quicker, and I'll be after you next week, see if I don't! I knew you'd be hanging on, so I won't give you the excuse. My sister's coming to-morrow."
"Really, Dick," gasped Spruce, "and you—you're sure the other boys are so's I can leave?"
"Well, you know there are going to be some women from the Red Cross, last of the week—Oh, by the time we are all out of it, this will be a swell hospital, with all the luxuries! Spruce, go, and don't get hurt, or I'll murder you!"
Spruce giggled like a happy girl. He was on his way to put in his application to join his regiment the next day—after Dick Danvers' sister had arrived, when something happened. He did not exactly know what it was himself, until he felt the water on his forehead and tried to lift himself up from the sand, catching the arm of the surgeon-in-chief. "Sunstroke, doctor?" he whispered.
"Just fainted," the surgeon answered cheerfully, "you've been overdoing it in this heat. Be careful."
"Oh, it's nothing, sir," Spruce grinned back; "had it lots of times, only not so bad. All the boys git giddy heads—"
Somehow the ready words faltered off his tongue; the surgeon had been fumbling at his blouse, under the pretext of opening it for air, he was looking in a queer, intent way at Spruce's chest.
Of a sudden the eyes of doctor and soldier, who had been nurse, met and challenged each other. There was a dumb terror in the soldier's eyes, a grave pity in the surgeon's. "I seen them spots yesterday," said Spruce, slowly, in a toneless voice, "but I wouldn't believe they was typhoid spots, nor theyain't!"
"You get inside and get a drink, Spruce, and go to bed," said the doctor. "Of course, I'm not certain, but as good a nurse as you knows that it isn't safe to try to bluff typhoid fever."
By this time Spruce was on his feet, able to salute with his reply: "That's all right, Major, but—I got to keep up till Danvers gits off with his folks, or he'd be kicking and want to stay. Jest let me see him off, and I'll go straight to bed."
"No walking about, mind, though," said the doctor, not well pleased, yet knowing enough of the two men to perceive the point of the argument.
Spruce saw Danvers off, with a joke and a grin, and an awkward bow for Danvers' sister. Then he went back to the hospital and went to bed, having written his aunt's address on a prescription pad (one of his acquirements in his foraging trips) with a remarkably spelled request that his pay be sent her, and his other property be given his friend, R. E. Danvers, to divide among his friends, giving the captain first choice.
"Lots of folks die of typhoid fever," he remarked quite easily, "and it don't hurt to be ready. I feel like I was in for a bad time, and I ain't stuck on the nursing here a little bit."
Before the week was out he recognized as well as the doctors that he was a very sick man.
"If you'd only gone off with your regiment three weeks ago," the doctor growled one day, "you'd have missed this, Spruce."
"That's all right," said Spruce, "but some of the boys are home that wouldn't be, maybe. I guess it's all right. Only, you know captain and Danvers; I wish you'd write back to the old town and tell the committee I done my duty. I can't be a credit to the company, but I done my duty, though I expect there's folks in town may think I was malingering."
"Stop talking!" commanded the doctor. "Did you know the women are coming to-morrow; you are to have a nurse of your own here?"
"Time," said Spruce; "if my town had its way they'd been here long ago. Ever been in my town, Major?"
"No. Good-by, Spruce; keep quiet."
"It's the bulliest town in the country, and the prettiest. And when G company goes back—Oh, Lord, I won't be with 'em!"
The surgeon's hand on his shoulder prevented the movement which he would have made, and he apologized; "I didn't mean to do that! Moving's so bad. Tell you, I'd a time keeping the boys still; theywouldturn when they got a little off. Say, I got to talk, Major, something's broke loose in me and Igotto talk. I don't want to, I just got to."
When the nurse came he was so light-headed as to have no control of his words, yet quite able to recognize her and welcome her with an apologetic politeness.
"I'd have had some lemonade for you if I'd been up myself, ma'am. We're glad to see you. All the G boys are convalescing; most of 'em's gone. We all come from the same city; it's an awful pretty town. I got a lot of friends there that maybe don't take it in why I'm here 'stead of with my regiment, with the old man. I got a good reason; only I can't remember it now."
The captain's father stood outside the telegraph office in Spruce's town. Beside him was the chairman of the relief committee.
"Too bad about that regular," said the chairman. "Spruce—isn't that his name? One of the boys telegraphed he couldn't live through the day. Better have him brought here for the funeral, I guess; he's been very faithful. Young Danvers wanted to go right down to Florida; but he had a relapse after he got home and he's flat on his back."
"I heard," said the captain's father; "I've just telegraphed, on my own responsibility, for them to send him here. It won't make any difference to him, poor fellow; but we owe it to him. I wish we could do something that would help him, but I don't see anything."
"We have told them to spare no expense, and he's got plenty of money. No, you have done everything. Well, good-by; remember me to the captain; we're all proud of him."
The captain's father thanked him with rather an absent air. "I wish we could do something for that fellow," he was thinking; "I don't suppose a message to him would—when a fellow's dying, messages are nonsense—it's a bit of sentiment—I don't care, I'll do it!" He turned and went back into the office.
"I am afraid there is not a chance," said the doctor; "too bad, he was a good fellow. Well, you can give him all the morphine he needs—and strychnine, though he's past strychnine, I fear; morphine's the one chance, and that's mighty little."
"He talked about wanting to see you," said the nurse. She had a sweet voice, plainly a lady's voice; and her slim figure, in the blue-striped gown and white surplice, had a lady's grace. Her face was not handsome, nor was it very young, but it had a touch of her voice's sweetness. The doctor found himself glad to look at her; and forgetting his patients in his interest in the nurse.
"Oh, yes,"—he roused himself—"I'll look 'round later; I suppose he is delirious?"
"Not so much that he does not recognize us. He talks all the time of his town, poor fellow, and seems to want to have them understand that he hasn't neglected his duty. He only once has spoken of any relations. It's all the town, and the captain and Danvers making it right there; and the boys going back—I suppose he has lived there all his life and—"
"Not a bit of it; Danvers told me he merely enlisted from there. But they are making a great time over him. Telegraphed to have his body sent there; and here's another telegram. See—"
"I'll let him see," said the nurse, taking it, "may I, Doctor?"
"Yes, but not the first part about sending him back; that's a little too previous."
The nurse's touch roused Spruce. "Dick," he murmured, "Dick, you tell the folks. I couldn't go with the regiment—you know why."
"They know why, too; here's a telegram from your captain's father: 'Tell Spruce he's the hero of Company G.'"
"Read it again!"
She read it. His hand tightened on hers. Her trained eyes were on his face.
"Ain't it the—thebulliesttown! I wisht I'd enough money to go back; but you see my folks got to have my pay. But I wisht—"
Her eyes, not the nurse's now, but a woman's, sought the doctor's in a glance of question and appeal. He nodded.
Her sweet voice said: "And the town has telegraphed that no expense must be spared to cure you; but if you don't recover you are to go back to them."
Spruce drew a long, ecstatic sigh. "Oh—didn't I tell you? Ain't it the bulliest town!"
A minute later he murmured, "Thank you, Dick," and, still holding the nurse's hand, Spruce went to see his town.
The widow Darter's house was set on a hill. It was a story-and-a-half cottage, of stucco, to which sun and wind and frost had offered their kind offices, mellowing pleasantly its original glare of white. In summer a trumpet-vine draped the ugly little piazza which Emmy's "art-needle work" had helped build, and which she and her mother admired with simple hearts. The big burr oak and the maples hid the house from the road, but the grassy knoll in front of the house was bare, and from this vantage-ground one could see the shallow curve of whitish-brown where the village street climbed the hill, the chimneys of the houses below, and, afar off, the trains roaring through the prairies. All the village was interested in the railway, but Emmy had an especial and intimate interest because her sweetheart was the local agent. He had been her sweetheart during five years, in any one of which he would have been proud and glad to marry her; yet this was the fifth year of their betrothal, and Emmy was drearily reflecting that they were no nearer the chance to spend their lives together the fifth than the first.
Emmy was hanging out clothes. It was four o'clock in the afternoon, but she had just brought out the large basket and was pinning the garments to the line, while Virginia, her sister, a little girl in short skirts and a blue checked apron, helped with the less cumbrous stockings and handkerchiefs. The child was pretty. She had a fresh color and curly yellow hair. Emmy's hair was black, and twisted in a braid about a shapely head. It shone like silk. But her eyes were gray, soft, and liquid. She was slender, with a youthful litheness in her motions, and her white arms flashed as they moved backward and forward in her work. The sleeves of her blue gown were rolled up; the gown itself was plainly her work-a-day garb, but there was a white lawn tie at her neck and the gown was both neat and becoming; in short, she was an attractive little creature who did not neglect her looks even of a wash-day.
The widow Darter sat on the piazza in a large rocking-chair. She rocked. As she rocked, she moaned piteously. At intervals she changed the sibilant moan into a hollow groaning sound. "Oh dear!Ohdear! Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear!" wailed the widow. "Um-m! um-m! um-m-m-m!"
The little girl flung a frown of impatience over her shoulder. "I don't see why mamma makes such anawfulracket!" she snapped.
"She suffers," said Emmy.
"Well, she needn't holler so if she does," cried Virginia, rebelliously. "I know she wouldn't letmeholler when I stubbed my toe. It hurt awful, too!"
Emmy said nothing.
"Say, are you going to the picnic with Bert to-morrow afternoon?" said the child.
"No, Jinny, I don't see how I can. Mother's so sick."
"Well, I told Bert I was willing to take care of mamma; and he said he'd buy me a new doll if I would. I guess he wants you to go awful."
"Oh-h dear! Oh-h dear!" droned the sufferer on the piazza.
"Well, I can't," said Emmy. "I wish you'd run and ask mother if she wants anything."
"She don't; she's been going on that way all the afternoon." But Jinny granted the request after the easy-going manner of her age; she turned on her heel and sent a shout at her mother—"Say, mamma! you want anything?"
Mrs. Darter shook her head. The din of woe swelled in volume.
"I s'pose she wants you to read to her; she says I don't read with expression," said the little girl. "But we're all read out; you put off the washing to read the end ofA Romance of Two Worlds, and we've got to wait until No. 9 comes in! Albert said he'd sent for a whooping big pile of books from Davenport; you can get 'em at the dry-goods stores for five cents a book. And Mrs. Conner'll bring them up, won't she, when she comes? She's got to go for her boarder." Emmy nodded. Mrs. Darter groaned more softly, a sign that she was distracted by something from her own griefs of mind or body. Jinny chattered on. "Miss Ann Bigelow told me Mrs. Conner's going to have a girl from the University of Chicago for a boarder this time, but she's only coming for a week. Sibyl Edmunds knows her well. And, Emmy, she takes pictures, and she's going to bring her camera."
"Emmy!Emmy!there comes Mrs. Conner!" screamed her mother.
Her words were accompanied by the vision of a white horse and an ancient phaeton (which had been newly washed for the occasion) just beyond the lilac-bushes at the gate. Mrs. Conner's comely presence filled the better part of the seat, but the eyes of all the Darters traveled at once to the slim girl in gray covert-cloth who sat beside her. The girl looked like hundreds of rather pretty American girls, with gray eyes and brown hair and dimples in their cheeks. She was pretty as youth and cheerfulness and dainty clothes are always pretty, but Emmy's gaze dwelt on her with reverence. "That's a camera she's holding—in that box," she said in a low tone to Jinny, "she's the girl that got the scholarship." Emmy sighed.
Mrs. Conner had stopped the horse. She responded to Emmy's greeting by presenting her to the girl in gray. "Miss Doris Keith; she's going to the Chicago University. She knows Sibyl." Then she fished out a package from the luggage heaped at their feet. "Here's the books. That your ma on the piazza?"
As if in response, a few hollow moans floated from the rocking-chair.
"She seems in great pain," said Miss Keith, sympathetically.
Emmy's fair skin reddened painfully. "No, she—she isn't well," she stammered.
Mrs. Conner coughed a dry, inexpressive cough.
"I do wish you would step in and see mother for a minute," Emmy begged, as much with her eyes as with her voice. "I can hitch the horse if Miss Keith minds—"
But Miss Keith did not mind; she was quite willing to hold the horse. And the horse sagging his elderly head, appeared of no mind to move, whether "held" or no.
"Well?" said Mrs. Conner, when they were out of earshot.
"Mother thinks she is threatened with pleurisy, and she is trying the starvation cure," answered Emmy. "She hasn't eaten a bite since yesterday. I'm ashamed to be so late about my washing, but I've been cooking things all day, trying to tempt her—"
"Oh dear! Oh dear! Ohdear!" moaned the figure on the piazza.
Mrs. Conner put her arms akimbo. She looked steadfastly at the swaying and moaning shape. Mrs. Conner was a woman who had been known to fry fresh griddle-cakes for tramps. She drew in her breath and exhaled it explosively, as one that has been shocked out of speech.
"I've made her postum cereal coffee and cooked her granum, and I went out and begged dewberries from the Bigelows—she used to be fond of them—and I don't know how many times I've made toast. She says I just torment her."
"Won't she drink a little beef tea?"
"Oh-h! Oh-h! U-r-r-r!Ug-h-h-h!" shuddered the invalid.
"Didn't you know she thinks meat wicked? And milk's robbing the cow, and eggs robbing the hen, who wants to have a family as much as we do," said Emily, rather incorrectly.
"More'n some of us do, I guess," retorted Mrs. Conner, "and more'n folksoughtto if they ain't prepared to do their duty by them when they've got 'em." She launched a fiery glance at Mrs. Darter, who was now groaning vehemently. "Got it all turned on this afternoon, ain't she?"
"Dr. Abbie Cruller told her that it wasn't natural to suppress ourselves. If you feel like groaning you ought to groan—"
"And she eats sech queer stuff she's hungry most of the time," Mrs. Conner interrupted, "so I expect she groans a lot. Say, Emmy, have you ever had anybody come in and give your ma a good hard—blowing up?"
The blood rushed to Emmy's face; her eyes sank. She answered, in a confused tone: "Aunt Lida Glenn was over yesterday. I don't know what she said to mother, but mother—mother told me the one thing she wanted on earth was to have me—send Albert away and have everything ended between us, for she never was so insulted in her life as she had been by Albert's mother."
"Albert's mother ain't Albert; though I don't blame her, Emmy, and Mrs. Glenn is a awful nice woman. But it ain't fair to hold Albert for her opinions, right or wrong. As I said, she ain't Albert, nor Albert ain't her."
"So I told mother," said Emmy. "I did hate to be disrespectful to her, but I told her so; and she answered that Mrs. Glenn said Albert thought so too. Then when I tried to question her she was in so much pain and groaned so I hadn't the heart to bother her. She let me put hot cloths on her, and give her a Turkish bath over the alcohol-lamp; and I hoped she'd let me make her some water gruel, but she wouldn't touch a spoonful. Mrs. Conner, you don't suppose she—she will keep it up much longer?" Emmy's eyes dilated with an unspoken fear as she lifted them to the kind woman before her. "She said she felt herself growing weaker this morning. I—I told her I wouldn't go to the picnic with Bert, if she would only eat something. But she said that she couldn't eat anything. One time—one time she went three days. I didn't let the neighbors know; but I was 'most crazy, and poor little Jinny cried. She isn't one to cry, either."
"No," Mrs. Conner agreed, glancing at Jinny who was chattering volubly with the girl in the phaeton—"no, I'd say she'd be more likely to be sassy."
"I'm afraid she was that, too," suggested Emmy, with a dim smile, "but at last she got scared. It was some new books Bert brought, got mother out of that time; she was so anxious to read them."
"Yes, I know your ma's a great reader. Always was. She told me she fairly revelled in stories of high life and detective stories. She said she'd read every one of The Duchess's books—I guess 'twas a hundred. And she said many and many a night she'd set up in bed reading half the night. 'It's so resting,' she says, 'to read 'bout murders and how they are tracked down.' It took up her mind from her sorrers, she says. And she told me she didn't know how she'd ever lived through losing your pa but forSherlock Holmes. If I was you I'd jest try to stir her up with these books. I'll fetch 'em to her. I read the one of Ouida's and it's real good—and, come to think of it, brimful of eating. Who knows but it'll git her to wanting to eat herself. Why, when I think what kind of cook she was, it don't seem possible! But now don't you worry, Emmy; she'll come all right and she'll come all right 'bout Mrs. Glenn, good friends as they've always been. Why, she always has liked Lida Glenn better than all her other friends together! She'llhaveto make up. Don't you fret a bit." She said the words in a hearty voice, and she strode vigorously across the grass to the piazza and presented her package with a breezy cheer. "Here's two new books by Ouida, and one by Bertha M. Clay, and two by Maria Corelly, Mrs. Darter; and Emmy'll be ready to read them to you soon."
Mrs. Darter had a delicate pale face, much like Emmy's in features, but etched with tiny wrinkles. The corners of her mouth dropped, and there was a habitual frown of pain on her pretty forehead. She did not look ungentle, only obstinate.
"Thank you," she murmured. Then she sighed.
Mrs. Conner opened her mouth, and shut it again, compressing the lips with unnecessary firmness.
Mrs. Darter laid her head back on her chair. She closed her eyes. A plaintive, sibilant noise hissed through her parted lips.
"Well, I'm real sorry you're sick," said Mrs. Connor, her voice again full of good-nature. "I guess what you need is a little nourishing food—"
Mrs. Darter screamed, and Mrs. Conner stood aghast. She was more aghast to behold all the apparent symptoms of a swoon in the invalid, and would have run for water—an act, however, prevented by the timely opening of Mrs. Darter's eyes. "Don't say the word!" she begged, shuddering. "I have to starve off a pleurisy. It wouldkillme! And the books are no good; I'm too sick to hear reading. Oh dear! Oh dear! Oh dear!"
Mrs. Conner backed off the piazza—she said she guessed she must go—and left Mrs. Darter moaning and rocking.
"And to tell you the truth, Miss Keith"—thus she ended a breathless narration to her new boarder—"I went quick, for I knew I couldn't hold in one minnit longer! And how'd it help poor Emmy to have her mother quarrel with Lida Glenn and me the same day? There's Susy Baker making eyes at Albert Glenn, this minnit; and if she ain't carrying Mrs. Glenn some of her ma's blueberry cake! Right by the Darters, too; and Emmy seeing her!"
"What is the matter with Mrs. Darter?"
"Well, old Dr. Potter says she's 'neurotic,' if you know whatthatis. I call it jest notions. What the doctors in my time called a hypo, that's what she is! She's always been the greatest hand to dose. Mr. Conner will have it she kep' old Captain Darter poor buying patent medicines. And she run after every new cure-all going. It was electricity one year, and 'nother year it was blue glass, and one time I remember she had a woman come of the sort that used to call themselves bone-doctors when I was a girl and this country wasn't much settled, but now they're osteologists, or some sech funny name, and give out they can rub everything on earth out of you. Mrs. Darter hadherfor a long spell, till she got pneumonia, and nigh died, and sickened of the osteologist; and I give her mustard plasters, good strong ones, myself. All this time Emmy was engaged to Albert Glenn; but the old captain was real feeble, and Emmy wouldn't leave him to git married. I will say Mrs. Darter was real devoted to him, though Emmy done all the night work and spared her all she could, give up her school, and spent every cent of the money she'd laid by school-teaching and working art embroidery for her clothes, when she'd be married—spent every cent on her pa. Got him a wheel chair, and if ever a man set the world by his daughter the captain done it. He liked Albert, too. I guess if captain had lived, sick's he was, he'd have found a way so's Emmy and Albert could git married. But he died. Then you'd 'a' s'posed they could marry, for his life waswellinsured, and they got enough for the widder to be comfortable and keep a girl. But the minnit he died poor Mrs. Darter got nervous prostration, and she was a nervous prostrate for a year, and they had to spend money traveling, and of course Emmy couldn't git married. Mrs. Darter went to Hot Springs, Arkansas, and she went to a sanitarium, and last she come home saying she was cured. But on the cars she made the acquaintance of a woman—well, I don't want to jedge—jedge not, and you won't git jedged, you know—and I know 'tis hard for a woman to make a living, but I guess that woman was a crank, and a designing one at that. But she went to Mrs. Darter's to board, and she never paid no board, but she preached to Mrs. Darter 'bout how all the diseases that we have come from eating wrong things; and she said we'd got to live 'cording to nature more; and eating meat made folks fierce like the carnivorous beasts, and things seasoned with salt was bad for you, and jest plain farnishous foods without salt—like we waschickens!—was best for us. I don't see how Mrs. Darter, who used to cook real well and liked to have the sewing society to tea, could stand sech sick stuff, but she did; and what's wuss, even after the fool critter ran away and married a magnetic healer who, they do say, has another wife, even to this day Abiel Darter believes in her and goes by what she says. And she ain't et any fit food for so long that if she ever does git coaxed to take a wholesome bite of beef or pie her stummick is so weak of course she cayn't stand it. Strong folks can eat strong vituals, and weak folks cayn't. Mrs. Glenn coaxed her in to a boiled dinner one day, and poor Mrs. Darter nearly died of it. Now you cayn't git her to budge from her grass and potato diet, as Conner calls it. And as for poor Emmy, when she can git married Lord only knows!"
Miss Keith had not interrupted the story by as much as a hum of assent. She looked up with a queer smile. "Has Mrs. Darter ever tried Christian Science?"
"No, she ain't," snorted Mrs. Conner; "we've been sparedthat. The Bigelow girls—they're two single ladies, real nice girls, too, who live in that big brown house with a cupola and a hip-roof there, 'bout two doors up—they tried to get her into that way of thinking; they're at everybody. And they used to go over and set with her and give her 'silent treatment,' they called it, and try to think the dyspepsia out of her; but one of 'em got a fish-bone in her throat and they had to come to me to pull it out with a pair of tweezers. That sorter dampened 'em for a while and Mrs. Darter says, 'Why didn't youthinkit out?' And then Ann—she's the oldest—says they wasn't far enough advanced yet, Mrs. Darter told 'em then they wasn't far enough advanced to doctorher. And I guess they ain't been there sense."
"All the same," insisted Miss Keith, smiling, "I think Mrs. Darter needs mental healing or Christian Science, I don't care which."
Emmy put her mother to bed. She gave her the soothing drops which the vanished but still reverenced healer had left—drops which she was almost certain owed their potency to some alias of opium. In the morning Mrs. Darter came out of her drugged sleep with a deadly nausea that swathed her muscles and laid her rigid in its limp, devil-fish clutch. The roof of her mouth was like leather; her head seemed to be pounded with hammers; she was burning with fever, and malign twitchings and itchings tormented her to rub her nose incessantly, when the least motion was fearsome to her. She had much more cause than ordinary to moan, and moan she did at every breath. Jinny had rushed away to a small chum the moment the dishes for her own breakfast had been washed; but Emmy couldn't run. She drank a cup of coffee; she had no heart to eat. Jinny, however had eaten the dainty little meal that Emmy had prepared—a forlorn hope to tempt the invalid.
"Oh, my nose! mynose!" wailed Mrs. Darter. "Emmy, you've got to leave off staring out of that window at the Glenns', and come and scratch my nose! Ah-uh! Ah-u-h!"
Emmy silently sat down by the bedside. If Albert passed the yard on his wheel, as he did every morning at half-past seven, he would not find her. Emmy had used no one knows how many devices to always be in the yard when Albert passed, or, at least, in sight by a window. Bert used to say that glimpse of Emmy "was a bracer for the whole day." Thursday night was his night to visit her, but last night he hadn't come.
"Emmy, you ain't any account at all as a scratcher!" fretted her mother. "You scratch where it ain't itching, and you don't scratch where it itches, and you're so mincing! Rub ithard! Oh-h!whymust I suffer so? It's hard enough to have a ungrateful child without having your nose itch!"
Emmy adventured a sentence long lurking in her mind, but which she never had the courage to push out into the air: "Mother, I think, I'm sure it is the soothing drops which make your nose itch so. There's opium—"
"There isn't a grain of opium in them," sobbed Mrs. Darter. "You know I always hated opium or morphine or anything of the sort; and doctor told me she wouldn't give the wicked drug. That's what Lida Glenn much as told me; much as told me, too, that I was putting on and wasn't real sick; and I told her—oh-h-h!—I told her—if she considered—me—that sort of woman she must feel awful bad to—oh-h-h!—to have her only child marry my daughter; and—I-thought—Oh-h! wuh-h-h! how awful sick I am!"
"You told Mrs. Glenn?" prompted Emmy, a flame in either cheek.
"I told her that—sss! sss!—I thought the sooner that engagement was broke the better it would be for—u-r-r-r!—all concerned—e-hee! ee-e! ee-e-e-e! Oh my head! my head! Oh, I got to scratch my nose again. You ain't rubbing the right place!"
"And what did Mrs. Glenn say?" asked Emmy. A ripple ran over her face, and she swallowed before she spoke.
"She said you wouldn't give Albert up, real spiteful. Ah-rr-r! Oh, Iamso sick! I said you would ruther than have your mother so insulted—and if you don't I guess I'll give up trying to live. She was so topping. Much as telling me it would be better for my own child if I died. Oh dear! oh dear! oh dear! And Albert looked as cross last night—"
"Did Albert come last night?"
"Yes, he did. You needn't jump out of the chair! I told him you wasn't home, and you had gone out to the Collins spring. He said when would you be home, and I said I didn't know. And he went off mad. Oh-h! oh-h-h! Jinny says Carrie March says she saw him down-town riding on his bicycle with Susan Baker. O-h-h-h-h! How can I talk when I'm so sick? Girls don't know about young men. Bert wouldn't like you to see him sometimes, be sure of that!" She paused to moan, and Emmy looked at her in a misery of doubt. Was she telling the truth? It had come to that, since Mrs. Darter had grown to take her soothing drops in every ailment—there was no surety that she either saw things straight or told them straight.
"I guess I'll go make you some coffee, mother," said Emmy; "you need it."
The girl's self-control was like tinder to the woman's fire. Mrs. Darter flared out: "You needn't make any coffee. I won't drink it. What's more, I won't eat one bite until you promise me to break with Bert Glenn—not if I starve to death! If you're willing to let those Glenns insult me and triumph over me, I ain't willing to live to see it." Her feeble accents shrilled to a scream, as she flung out her arms with a reminiscence of the behavior of her favorite heroines in novels. "Go, Emmeline Darter, marry him if you dare; but you will pass to the altar over your only mother's grave!" She had a confused sense that her syntax had played her false and that she had not gotten the words precisely right; but she covered any embarrassment by sinking back and moaning.
Emmy looked at her with a mounting terror in her heart. She told herself that it was impossible that her mother could carry out such a hideous threat; but she knew that mucilaginous obstinacy which had not a place firm enough for a reason to get a hold. "And she won't want to eat, either," mused Emmy, wretchedly, "for that nasty medicine has made her awful sick. She's got a fever now; that will burn away her strength. And if it comes to a choice between letting my mother starve and giving up Bert, I shall have to give him up!"
Emmy sprang out of her chair. The thought was like a lash on a raw wound.
She ran to the window; it seemed to her that she couldn't breathe; and her mother's whimpering irritated her past patience. She knew if she spoke that she would let the bars down for her anger, and if she were angry her mother would be upset physically, and grow so much worse that she would feel like a murderer. She felt the goading of that furious petulance which torments a woman often into sacrificing herself out of very anger. It was on her tongue to say, "I'd rather die myself than give up Bert, and you know it; and I'll never forgive you as long as I live, but rather than see you die before my eyes Iwillgive him up."
Neither to Emmy nor to her mother was there a doubt that any word passed would be kept. Mrs. Darter, in the lost days of peace, before her vagaries had corroded her affection, had said once, "Emmy never told me a lie in her life, nor she never broke a promise she made me!"
Emmy shut her lips tight and looked out of the window. Her troubled gaze did not note the dewy freshness of the morning on turf and tree. The houses were brown cottages for the most part, built in the lean period of western rural architecture when a stunted cruciform effect and a bescrolled piazza was the model for every village. But the ugly lines of wood were veiled by a kindly wealth of wistarias and clematis royally flaunting, by Virginia-creeper and trumpet-vines splashed with vermilion and yellow; the grass was velvet, there was a gay company of geraniums prospering in every garden; and below the hills and the tree-tops lay the lovely, dimpled hill-sides, golden with wheat or shorn to a varnished silver like nothing so much as the hue of shining flax, and the waving fields of corn—all under a vault of burning blue, delicate, tender, innocent, with no sumptuous and threatening richness of cloud betokening storm, only high in the heavens the milky white cumuli, the "harvest clouds."
There were a thousand witcheries of light and shade, there was a radiant lavishness of color; it was a landscape like a multitude all over the Middle West, nevertheless a sight to make the heart beat the quicker for sheer delight. But it might have been a stone wall for anything poor Emmy, who loved each growing thing, saw in it this moment. To live without Bert, perhaps to learn that Susy Baker had the love which she would seem to have flung away—Emmy would have groaned if she had not heard Mrs. Darter's piteous din, and thought grimly that her mother did enough groaning for their small family!
Yet at this very instant of despair a minister of grace was lifting the latch of the Darter gate, and Emmy was unconsciously eying her. The minister of grace was short of stature and very plump. She had a round, fair, freckled face, which looked the rounder for its glittering spectacles. Her hair was a yellowish gray, but she covered it with a small white sailor hat. She wore a neat brown and white calico frock. To escape the dew she held her skirts high; one could see that her preference was for black alpaca slippers and white cotton stockings. The minister's name was Miss Ann Bigelow.
"Nowshecomes to stir mother up worse!" thought Emmy. So blind are we to the future. But she opened the door for Miss Ann Bigelow, and bade her welcome, and proffered her the best rocking-chair in the parlor and a palm-leaf fan.
Miss Bigelow's countenance was beaming like an electric light.
"I reallyhadto come!" she exclaimed so soon as she could take breath. "Have you heard about Mrs. Conner spraining her ankle?"
"Emmy, open the door!" moaned Mrs. Darter from within—her bed-room adjoined the parlor. Emmy opened the door, while she said: "I'm so sorry. When? How is she?"
"Oh, she's all right now!" said Miss Bigelow. "It's wonderful—a real miracle, I told sister. That's what I came to tell you. She sent over for us, and there she lay, flat on the kitchen floor. I begun to treat her in my mind the minute I saw her, for I saw she was in error. All her word was: 'Send for a doctor; it's sprained, if it ain't broke!' I didn't know whattodo. I didn't want to encourage her in error, and yet you know we arenotadvanced so far as sprains and broken bones, and it is usual to summon a doctor; and I don't feel I'm advanced enough myself to undertake serious cases; I'm too weak and timid, and I haven't the spiritual vision. Emmy, does your motheralwaysgroan that loud way? Is she in pain? I mean, does shethinkshe is in pain?"
"Yes'm," said Emmy; "but please go on; mother is listening."
"Well, I stood there dazed, you may say; and just then in came Miss Keith. She's a little slim thing, butsucheyes! They seem to look you through and through! I'd have known she was a healer even if Mrs. Conner hadn't told me the night before when she was over in our house. She stood there, just simply looking at Mrs. Conner, not saying a word for a minnit. Then she says in thekindestvoice—I can't tell you how soft and kind her voice was!—she says, 'Have you the impression of great pain, Mrs. Conner?' And Mrs. Conner—you know how—well abruptly—she speaks, she said: 'Impressionof pain? I only wish you had something jabbing you like a hot iron, I guess you'd beimpressed. Ain't anybody going to take off my stocking? It's swelling every minnit!' Miss Keith only looked at her, and lifted her hand for me and the girl to keep still. I expect she was giving her silent treatment, for in a moment or two she said: 'Well?' in such an inspiring, cheerful tone; and Mrs. Conner said, 'Why, it's better!' surprised as could be; and I had to clap my hands for joy. But Miss Keith told us both to go out for a while and so we did. We waited half an hour by the clock, and that girl was the most restless being you ever saw. I had all I could to keep her quiet. Then the door opened—" Miss Bigelow made a wave of her plump hands, indicating the opening of a door, and paused with hands and voice. Mrs. Darter had ceased to groan.
"What happened?" said Emmy.
Miss Bigelow's hands met in a clap. "Mrs. Conner came walking out with Miss Keith, that's what happened!" said she, in a low, solemn voice.
"On her sprained ankle?" cried Mrs. Darter.
"On her sprained ankle, her that couldn't move it without nearly fainting for the pain. She said it hardly pained her at all; and she's going right on with her preserving this minute. I said to sister it was simply mirac'lus. I can't find a better word."
"Maybe her ankle was not sprained so badly as she thought," Emmy suggested.
"Her face was white as a sheet," said Miss Bigelow; "and we all know Mrs. Conner isn't one to cry before she's hurt, or make a fuss; and we all know her prejudices about mental healing. She says she don't believe abitmore in it than she did, 'but,' says she, 'that girl's a wonder! I wish,' says she, 'Mrs. Darter could have her.' I never lisped, but I made up my mind to go and tell you right straight."
"She couldn't do mother any good," said Emmy, wearily. At which Mrs. Darter spoke for herself in a good, round voice of contradiction. "Whycouldn't she? How much does she charge, Miss Ann?"
"Not one cent!" replied Ann, with a thrill of triumph; "ifshe'll come, she'll come free; but I don't know whether she will come."
"Emmy, you go and ask Mrs. Conner to ask her to come; ask Mrs. Conner to come too," said Mrs. Darter, resuming her feeble voice. "I want to see if that ankleiscured. You'll stay with me, Miss Ann?"
So, almost too quickly for her to realize the position, Emmy found herself on her way to the Conners'. A fragrant odor wafted Mrs. Conner's occupation through the open kitchen door before Emmy crossed the threshold to behold her skimming a great kettle of plum jam. "Landy, land! it's Emmy Darter already!" she cried, with a jolly laugh. "I thought I could git that plum jam ready to take off before you'd come. I knew it wouldn't be long when I saw Miss Ann Bigelow trotting across lots. Your ma's sent for Miss Keith, I guess. Well, it's lucky Conner has the hosses hitched in the wagon, and he can take us right over. I'll call Hedwig to take off the jam, and Miss Keith—"
"But, Mrs. Conner, please tell me about yourself," urged Emmy. "Didshe cure you?"
Mrs. Conner's left eyelid twitched in company with the left corner of her shapely mouth. "You ask me no questions, Emmy, and I'll tell you no lies; but you can make up your mind Miss Keith can cure your ma—if she'slet!" These orphic sentences were dropped with a slow and ponderous nod of the head, and ceased at the entrance of Miss Keith. The young lady looked very pretty in a crisp pink and white dimity frock and a large white hat with pink roses. She had none of the airs of an adept or a seer. There was nothing occult or intruding on the imagination in her presence. She sat on the front seat beside Mr. Conner and talked about cantaloupe melons. Mrs. Conner was amazingly silent; it was plain, however, from no unkindly motives, since often she cast an affectionate glance on Emmy, and, as the wagon stopped in front of the Darter gate, she patted the girl's shoulder, saying: "It's all going to come right,Iguess. Jest you mind us and keep still."
Emmy's bewilderment deepened, but she said, "Yes'm," in her docile way, and followed Mrs. Conner and Miss Keith down the walk, leaving Mr. Conner to chuckle over some unknown mirth of his own, in the wagon.
Mrs. Darter, so Miss Bigelow told them, had been dozing all the while Emmy was gone. Her greeting to Miss Keith was a feeble moan. But on Miss Keith's part there was an amazing transformation. She bent her brows above eyes which shone out of them in a level, intent gaze. Emmy recalled Miss Ann's description, and understood it with a thrill. For a few seconds Miss Keith stood motionless, shedding that steady, unblinking gaze at the drawn face on the pillow. Mrs. Darter appeared to feel it through her eyelids; she winced, she ceased whimpering. Miss Keith smiled gently. She spoke, and her voice was like silk. "You have suffered very much!"
Mrs. Darter opened her eyes; she gazed up at the eyes above her; her chin quivered and two tears slowly ran down her cheeks—the first tears seen on her cheeks during all her lamentations. "Oh, I have," she murmured, "and nobody believes it—not my oldest friend, not my own children!"
"Ibelieve it," said the girl; "yet it is all a mistake." Without turning her eyes, she made a little motion with her hands toward the door, and instantly Miss Ann marshaled the others out of the room. Mrs. Conner shut the door.
In spite of herself, Emmy began to feel her nerves twitch with the excitement and mystery. "Oh, Mrs. Conner," she entreated that stanch friend, "is it possible shecancure mother?"
"Jest you keep quiet," said Mrs. Conner, "and set still. I'm going out to the kitchen to heat this beef tea." For the first time, Emmy observed that Mrs. Conner carried a glass jar insufficiently wrapped in newspaper. Directly she was heard clattering among the saucepans. Miss Ann stiffened into a rigid attitude, and her face assumed a rapt expression. Emmy locked her fingers and sat still. At this moment she was startled by a soft noise outside, and a young fellow pushed a handsome, flushed face into the triangle between the window curtains and beckoned with a look of entreaty. Emmy's heart jumped into her throat. It was Albert. She didn't care whether he rode with Susan Baker or not; it was Albert who loved her; she knew it. If she could only go out to him! But Miss Ann shook her head and laid a mystic finger on her lips. Emmy, too, laid a finger on her lips; but her finger trembled and her eyes swam in tears. Albert stood passive and bewildered. The moments dragged on. Really there were not so many of them; a scant half an hour covered the flight of time; but to Emmy, uncertain whether her greatly tried lover might not have to go back to an expected train at any one of them, and to Albert, who did have a train on his mind and had ridden swiftly up to his sweetheart's for the briefest of interviews, those minutes seemed an hour. Yet Albert knew better, having his watch in hand and waving it and pointing at it, the better to explain his hurry. Once Emmy mustered courage in an access of desperation to rise to her feet, but the look of horror on Miss Ann's features dropped her like a club.
Albert's mind darted blindly from one conjecture of disaster to another. At one minute he was ready to march in rashly before Miss Ann and demand what was the matter; at another he was cold at the thought of blundering in on a deathbed.
He gasped with relief when the door opened and Miss Keith came out, smiling and calling: "Mrs. Conner! Mrs. Conner! hurry up that beef tea, and make some strong coffee as soon as you can!"
Then he did venture to come into the room, essaying a general bow and smile.
"I hope Aunty Darter is better!" he stammered. The children of the old friends had always given them a brevet relationship. Mrs. Darter was "Aunty Darter" to Albert, and Mrs. Glenn "Aunty Lida" to the Darter girls.
"Mrs. Darter will be well to-morrow," said Miss Keith, quietly; "she is going to take some coffee—"
"And some toast and plum jam," interrupted Mrs. Darter herself. "I know Mrs. Conner has been making jam. The times I've hankered after jam these last months! I'm going to eat everything I didn't dast to—"
"By degrees," said Miss Keith, "as the mental power grows stronger."
"Is that Albert?" said Mrs. Darter. "Albert, lift me up while I drink that beef tea."
Albert and Emmy held her while Mrs. Conner fed her a cup of the tea. They laughed hysterically, with tears in their eyes, as Mrs. Darter sighed weakly. "Oh, but that's good!" while Mrs. Conner radiated satisfaction and Miss Ann rocked to and fro, announcing that it was "mirac'lus!" They did not comprehend what had happened; they could not look into the future and a time when Mrs. Darter should throw herself with energy into preparing for Emmy's marriage; they only dimly foresaw her recovery and reconciliation with the common pleasures of life; but it was enough for Emmy that her mother's black hour had passed, and for Albert that he was close to Emmy, and that there was a vague omen of happiness in the atmosphere.
Mrs. Darter took her tea. She went to sleep, as Miss Keith directed her; and she partook with relish of coffee, toast, and jam that selfsame day, so rapidly had her state improved by evening. It was after this last meal, she being vastly strengthened by the food and drink, that she received Albert's messages from his mother—rather, that she cut them short.
"No, Albert, your ma shan't keep on feeling bad. She was right. It was all in my mind. All disease is in the mind, I guess. But I wasn't putting it on—"
"Oh, sheknows; she didn't mean—"
"We didn't, either of us, mean all we said; the truth is, I felt so bad and so hungry I couldn't see straight, anyway; and as to Dr. Abbie Cruller, I guess your mother wasn't far out. She said I never had had a well day since I knew that woman, and I do believe that's so; but I've got a wonderful new doctor now; don't charge a cent; and you tell your mother to come over and see me and stay to tea. My hand's out making blueberry cake, but I'm going to try."
But this interview was hours after Doris Keith and the Conners had driven away. Mrs. Conner gave her husband a graphic account of the "miracle." "Ann Bigelow will have it's no less," says she.
"Thing pleased me," chuckles Conner, wrinkling his eyes out of sight in his ironic enjoyment—"thing pleased me was the way she'd go on 'bout Miss Keith's eyes piercing her right through, after Miss Keith had practysed them eyes on you 'n' me all the evening, jest from my description of that Indian doctor. Well, she done it well; but I wish I could have seen it!"
"Will Mrs. Darter keep right on and not back-slide, think?" said Mrs. Conner.
"I think she will," said Doris; "I hope she will. And there's one thing: after I'm gone (I shall have to run away from my reputation) you must own up about your ankle—andmeto Miss Darter and poor, trusting Miss Bigelow. She's such a good soul! Mrs. Darter—well, you will know when it's safe to tell Mrs. Darter."
"Humph!" said Conner, "Emmy'll be grateful! I guess we'll go slow on the Widow Darter; and as to Ann Bigelow—"
"I do feel sneaky about her," sighed Doris. "It's touching, her faith. She's a simple-hearted creature. I hate to uproot her."
"Oh, you needn't be afraid," said Conner, grinning; "she won't be uprooted. She will say it's jest as much mental healing as if you done it in earnest. And ain't Mrs. Darter healed? she'll say."
"Well," Doris mused aloud, "I dare say she's right. It certainly was a mental healing, and how far the power of the mind to heal goes none of us can say. Perhaps, after all, she is right, and itisa bit of a miracle, although it was only a miracle play!"