REAL TROUBLE
“THE lion is the beast to fight,
He leaps along the plain:
And if you run with all your might,
He runs with all his mane.
I’m glad I’m not a Hottentot,
But if I were, with outward cal-lum
I’d either faint upon the spot,
Or hie me up a leafy pal-lum,”
sang Jack, in a clear baritone that made up in volume what it lacked in
quality. “I don’t know but I’ll _have_ to take to the tall timber, if
I don’t find my school-books. Barberry, have you seen anything of my
Greek since the twenty-sixth of last June?”
“All the school-books are piled on the rubber-box in the vestibule,”
said Barbara. “I suppose your Greek is among them. Hurry, David; you’ll
have to put on a clean blouse before you start, and it’s after eight,
now.”
David’s voice came from the pillows of the couch, where he had curled
himself into a disconsolate little ball,—“I’m not going to school
to-day, Barbara.”
“Why not?” asked his sister.
“I’ve got a headache, and my shoulders are tired.”
“First symptoms of the nine o’clock disease,” commented Jack; “David
has it every year.”
“I don’t think you feel so very bad,” said Barbara. “You’ve been so
much better lately. And you’ll have to make up all the lessons that you
miss, you know.”
“Wish I didn’t have to go to school,” said David, in a petulant voice
that was most unusual with him; “I hate it.”
“I can’t understand why you don’t like to study when you so love to
read,” remarked Barbara. “You ought to do much better work in school;
you’re not a bit stupid at home.”
“I have ideas in my head,” said David, plaintively. “But when I get
them out, they aren’t ideas.”
“You do too much dreaming and too little studying. I can’t pull you
away from books at home, but you don’t seem to be able to concentrate
your mind on your school work.”
“Lessons are so unint’resting,” said David. “If I was in history or
mythology, now, I’d like those; but I only have reading and ’rithmetic
and language and g’ography. I’ve read everything in my reader a million
times, and every time we come to a beauteous sentence in our language
lesson we have to chop it up into old parts of speech. I can’t do
numbers at all, and I just hate g’ography!”
“You like to read it at home.”
“Yes, but that’s diff’runt. I always read about the people, and the
animals, and what’s in the country, and what the inhabitants do, and
how they live. But at school they make you tell all the mountain ranges
from the northeast to the southwest of Asia, and the names are awful
hard to learn. They’re just like eight times seven, and seven times
nine: there doesn’t seem to be anything to make you remember them, but
there’s a whole lot of things to make you forget them!”
“Wait until you get into fractions,” said Gassy. “_Then_ you’ll see!
’Rithmetic is just planned to keep you guessing. When I was beginning
addition, I thought that was all there was to learn, but afterwards I
found that I’d only learned it so I could do subtraction. Everything
you find out about just makes more things for you to study. I wish I’d
stayed with my mind a blank,—like the Everett baby.”
“Don’t worry about that,” said Jack, consolingly. “You haven’t strayed
so far from that condition that you can’t find your way back.”
There was a crackle of stiff white apron, a flash of thin, black legs,
and Whiting’s Language Lessons went sailing through the air, its pages
falling as it struck Jack’s head.
“Now see what you’ve done, Spitfire!” said Jack.
Two months before, this exhibition of temper would have been made the
subject of a moral lecture from Barbara. Now she only looked sober
as she bent to help Gassy pick up the leaves. “Poor book,” she said;
“you’ve given it what Jack deserved. That’s hardly fair, is it? Come,
Boy, help repair the damage that you caused. No, David, you needn’t
help; I want you to go and get ready for school.”
“Must I?” pleaded David.
“I think you had better.”
The little boy raised himself from the couch with a long-drawn sigh
that Barbara remembered days afterward. “All right, if you say so,” he
said: “I’ll change my waist now.”
The house seemed very still after the children had trooped out to
swell the procession of young people headed toward the school. Barbara
reflected with relief that their departure would lighten her labors.
With the Kid at kindergarten, and the others away from home, she could
count on a tidy house and an unbroken opportunity for work.
“It doesn’t seem very affectionate to be glad that they are gone,” she
said to herself. “Mother always seemed to be sorry when our vacation
was over. But it _is_ a relief to have a quiet house, and a chance to
work without a dozen interruptions an hour. Perhaps, after I get things
into running order, I shall have time to do a little writing every
morning while they are out of the way. Then—”
The thought of the pile of rejected manuscripts lying upstairs in the
corner of her desk stopped her dreams. “I can’t even write any more,”
she thought bitterly. “This kitchen drudgery takes the life out of my
brain as well as my body. I _must_ find time to put the early morning
freshness into something besides dishes.”
It was with this idea that she carried a writing-pad and her fountain
pen out to the side porch an hour later. An orderly house and an
undistracted mind seemed to make conditions favorable for writing,
and the scanty bits of philosophy that had sifted their way into the
gayeties of the past fortnight began to find utterance in best college
rhetoric. The lust of writing stole over the girl, and for two hours
she wrote steadily, utterly oblivious to everything.
The sound of the opening of the gate roused her. It was Jack, coming up
the gravel walk with David in his arms,—an inert little David, whose
arm hung heavily over his brother’s, and whose hand swung limply at the
end. The fountain pen rolled unheeded off the porch.
“What is it?” breathed Barbara.
“Where’s father?” asked Jack.
“Gone to see the Wemott baby. What’s the matter with David?”
“I wish I knew,” said Jack, hoarsely. “He’s sick, though. Call father
by ’phone, and then help me to get him to bed. I’ll tell you about it
when you come upstairs.”
Barbara’s heart stood still, but her feet flew. “Wemott’s residence,”
she said at the telephone. “Oh, I don’t _know_ the number, Central;
hurry, please, do hurry!”
It seemed hours before the answer came. “Is Dr. Grafton still
there? . . . No, don’t call him. . . . Tell him to come home at once.”
Even in her excitement she found thought to add the words that should
save him ten minutes of worry,—“There has been a hurry call.”
The limp little body lay stretched out on David’s bed. “I can’t find
his night-shirt,” said Jack, in the same hoarse voice. “Where do you
keep it, Barbara? He was taken sick at school. Bob Needham came running
over to the High School to tell me to come at once,—that David was
acting strangely. By the time I got there, he was lying just like this
across one of the recitation benches, and his teacher was trying to
make him swallow a little brandy. She told me that she had noticed
that he was not himself during a recitation; he began to talk loudly
and rather wildly, and to insist that his head _did_ ache; that”—Jack
seemed to force out the words—“that it _wasn’t_ the nine o’clock
disease. She tried to quiet him, and had just succeeded in getting him
to agree to go home, when he toppled over on the floor. Don’t wait to
unfasten that shoe-string, Barbara; cut it. Of course I brought him
right home. Willowby’s driver was just passing the school, and I hailed
him. When will father be here?”
Between the disjointed sentences brother and sister put the sick child
to bed. Then Jack hurried to call Dr. Curtis by telephone, while
Barbara hovered over the still form until her father’s step was heard
on the stair. In the ten minutes’ interval the girl learned what four
years of college had failed to teach,—the hardest lesson that Time
brings to Youth,—how to wait.
The two physicians arrived almost simultaneously. Then Barbara and Jack
were sent downstairs on errands that both felt were manufactured for
the occasion. When they came back, the bedroom door was shut and they
sat down in the hall outside, silent and aloof, and yet drawn together
by the same fear which struggled at each heart. After what seemed to
be hours, the door opened, and Dr. Curtis came out. Two white faces
questioned his.
“Probably brain fever,” said the doctor. “We hope that it won’t be
very serious,—if we’ve caught it in time. Jack, you come along to the
drug-store with me. Miss Barbara, you might go in and see your father
now.”
But the girl had not waited for his instructions, to push past him
into the bedroom. Dr. Grafton stood looking down at the little figure
outlined by the bed-clothes. He turned as Barbara came in, and the girl
received no encouragement from his face. When he spoke, however, it was
reassuringly. “Come in, Barbara; you can’t disturb him now. He’s had
some medicine, and he won’t rouse for some time. I want to talk with
you.”
“Is he dangerously sick?”
“We can’t tell just how sick he is, but we won’t think about danger
yet. His fever is pretty high. Has he complained about not feeling well
lately?”
“Not until this morning, and then not much. David never does really
complain. He wanted to stay away from school, though.”
“He ought never to have gone,” said her father.
Barbara winced as though she had been struck. “That was my fault,
father; I told him that I thought he had better go.”
Dr. Grafton did not seem to hear. “I’ve been trying to think what is
the best thing for us to do. I don’t dare to let your mother know yet.
I’ve sent for a nurse for the boy, but it’s going to make extra care
for you to have sickness in the house. I don’t know just what we’ll do
with the children; we must try to find some haven for Cecilia and the
Kid. You and Jack and I must hold the fort. Do you think we can manage
it? It may be a long siege.”
Barbara’s eyes overflowed, but her voice was steady as she answered
her father with a slang phrase that seemed, somehow, to carry more
assurance with it than college English would have done,—“Sure thing!”
“That’s all, then. The nurse will be here in twenty minutes. Try to
keep the children still when they get home from school. I know that I
can depend on you to keep things running, downstairs.”
“Yes, father.”
News traveled fast in Auburn, and before the children had returned
from school, two visitors had cleared some of the difficulties from
Barbara’s path. The first was Mrs. Willowby, who stopped at the door
to tell Barbara that Gassy and the Kid were to be provided with a
temporary home. “I am on my way to school now,” she said; “and I’ll
explain it to them, and will take them home with me this noon. If you
can get together what clothing they will need, I’ll send Michael over
for it this afternoon. You know what a happiness it will be to me to do
anything for your mother’s children, and I’ll try to mother them enough
to keep them contented. In the mean time, dear, we are all at your
service.”
As Mrs. Willowby’s carriage left the door, Susan came hurrying up the
walk, a covered plate in her hand, and her face alive with sympathy.
She caught Barbara’s face and drew it down to her own, using the
childish name for her which had been dropped since college days. “Dear
old Bobby,” she said. “I’ve just heard about.”
Barbara’s face relaxed and the tears began to gather.
“I’ve come to stay,” said Susan, in a practical voice, which brought
more relief than pity would have done. “That is, to stay as long as you
need me. David may be all right in a day or two, and then I’ll only be
in the way. But in the mean time, I’m going to be Bridget.”
“Oh, no,” protested Barbara.
“Oh, yes,” mocked Susan. “You’ll have enough on your hands with all the
extra cares, let alone the cooking. You must save a part of yourself
for David, if he needs you. I don’t expect to do as well as you have
been doing, if Auburn gossip is to be trusted, but I shan’t poison your
family during your absence from the kitchen.”
“I can’t let you do it,” said Barbara. “You ought not to take so much
time away from home. What would your family do without you?”
“I have them trained so that they could get along without me for a
year,” answered Susan. “Brother Frank is as handy about the kitchen
as a woman, and he is not at work, now. Besides, I shan’t be away all
the time; I shall run back and forth, enough to have my fingers in
both pies. And speaking of pie, Barbara, here is a cherry one that I
had standing idle in my pantry; I felt sure that you hadn’t made any
dessert, yet.”
Barbara took the plate unsteadily. The two girls seemed to have changed
natures, and something of Susan’s former stiffness had fallen upon
Barbara. Of the two, Susan was far more at ease. “But I can’t take
favors from you,—now,” said Barbara, awkwardly, “after what—”
“Look here, Barbara Grafton,” answered Susan. “You’ve always been doing
favors for me,—all your life,—favors that I couldn’t return. It wasn’t
that I didn’t want to, but that I didn’t know how. You could always
_do_ things,—write, and draw, and sing, and entertain, and teach,—and
I’ve reaped the benefit. Don’t you suppose I’ve ever wished that I
could return the favors? Now there’s only one thing in all this world
that I can do for you, and that is cook. Do you mean to say that you’re
not going to let me do it?”
Over the little brown pie the two girls clasped hands. “Where do you
keep your potatoes?” said Susan. “It’s so late that I’ll have to boil
them.”
* * * * *
Somehow the long hours of the day dragged by, and ten o’clock at night
found Barbara in her room.
“Go to bed, now,” her father had said. “David’s stupor will last all
night, and I want you to be ready for to-morrow, when we shall need
you. Miss Graves can take care of him better than either of us, just
now. Our turn will come later.”
It was hard to stay in the sick-room, where the deathly silence was
broken only by the little invalid’s heavy breathing and the swish of
Miss Graves’s stiffly starched petticoats; harder still to go away,
beyond these sounds. Barbara went reluctantly, dreading the long night
when hands must lie idle, and feet still. Jack, too, had decided to
“turn in early,” and the house seemed very silent without the usual
uproar of the children’s bedtime. She had just fallen into an uneasy
sleep, when she was roused by a step upon the stair. In a moment she
was wide awake. Was it her father with bad news, or Miss Graves in
search of something? By the familiar squeak Barbara knew that the top
stair had been reached. The step sounded in the hallway, and the girl
sat up in bed as her door was pushed open and a shadowy little figure
entered the room.
“Cecilia Grafton!” exclaimed Barbara.
Gassy tiptoed toward the bed. “How’s David?” she demanded, in a whisper.
“How on earth did you get here?”
“Walked. How’s David?”
“Just about the same. Father says he is not suffering any pain. Did you
come alone at this time of night?”
“Yes,” said Gassy, defiantly, “I did. Mrs. Willowby thought we ought
to go to bed early. So we did. She let me sleep in the rose room, only
I couldn’t. Mr. Willowby went to bed early, too, in the room just
across the hall, and he snored awful. I stayed awake about two hours. I
knew I couldn’t get to sleep unless I knew, myself, how David was, so
I dressed and came. Is he going to be awful sick, Barbara? Tell me the
truth; please don’t fool me!” A pair of cold little hands found their
way to Barbara’s shoulders.
“We hope not, dear.”
“I wish I could sleep here to-night. I hate to be sent away.”
“But Mrs. Willowby will worry, if she finds that you have gone.”
“Can’t you telephone her that I’m here? I’ll go back to-morrow,
Barbara, and I’ll be awful good if you’ll just let me sleep with you
to-night. I always thought heaven was like that rose room, but I can’t
sleep in it. Please let me stay here.”
Barbara slipped on her bath-robe and tiptoed down to the telephone.
All was quiet in the sick-room as she passed. When she reached her own
chamber, Gassy was cuddled down between the sheets. She snuggled close
to her older sister with a little sob. “Even rose rooms can’t keep you
from worrying, can they?” she said.
* * * * *
In the three weeks that followed, Barbara discovered that nothing can
“keep you from worrying” when the dark shadow that men call Dread of
Death stands on the threshold. She marveled constantly that one frail
little body could withstand such desperate onslaughts of fever and
pain. David’s illness was quick of development: the drowsiness was
followed by days of high fever, and these were succeeded by nights of
unconsciousness which plainly showed the strain to which the little
frame was being subjected. He wasted greatly under the suffering, and
although her father and Dr. Curtis said, “About the same,” each day,
it seemed to Barbara’s eyes that the little brother grew less human
and more shadowy with every succeeding twenty-four hours. Mrs. Grafton
had not been told, both physicians deciding that the shock might cause
a relapse, and Barbara’s hardest duty was to keep the news from her
mother. In the cheery letters that continued to go to the sanitarium at
regular intervals, there was not a word of the tragedy at home, but the
writing was more of a strain than the watching in the sick-room.
As Dr. Grafton had predicted to Barbara, her turn came later. David
took a most unaccountable dislike to Miss Graves, whose devotion
to starch was the only thing in her disfavor, and he objected to
her presence in the sick-room with the unreasoning vehemence of the
delirious. It was impossible to dismiss Miss Graves without some valid
excuse, and equally impossible to secure another nurse in Auburn. So
most of the care devolved upon Barbara, much to David’s satisfaction,
for he called constantly for his sister, and seemed most contented when
her hands smoothed the hot pillow or gave the sleeping-draught.
To the management of the housework, Barbara gave little thought. Meals
were scarcely an incident in those days of waiting. Little by little,
as conditions grew graver in the invalid’s room, Barbara gave up more
and more of her household duties, yet she was vaguely aware that things
went on like clockwork downstairs. The meals that appeared upon the
table were delicious, and yet Susan’s part in them was not obvious. She
slipped in and out of the house at all hours, always bringing comfort
with her, and yet bestowing it so quietly that it seemed the gift of a
beneficent fairy.
Every critical thing that Barbara had ever said of the provincialism
and officiousness of Auburn folk came back to her during these days of
trouble. When Mrs. Willowby came with advice or encouragement, when the
Enderby children brought home David’s school-books, when Miss Pettibone
came running “across lots” with beef tea or a plate of doughnuts, when
Mr. Ritter pressed his telephone into service, and agreed to carry all
messages, that the sick child might not be disturbed, when even Miss
Bates stopped at the door to inquire affectionately about the invalid,
and when all the town combined to keep the news from Mrs. Grafton,
Barbara’s conscience was stricken. Her heart warmed with gratitude,
and the meaning of the word neighborliness was, for the first time,
made clear to her.
And yet, with all the kindliness and helpfulness that Auburn could
bestow, there was plenty left for the girl to do. It was Barbara who
answered the door, who took the messages, who encouraged the children,
who cheered Jack, who comforted her father, who assisted the nurse, who
was brave when conditions were most discouraging, and sunny when the
clouds hung lowest. And it was Barbara, too, who sat beside the bed,
ready to rub the aching side or smooth the feverish brow, and who met,
with a sinking heart, the discouragement that each day brought.
* * * * *
It was the middle of October before the crisis came. An early frost had
stripped the flower beds, withered the vines, and left the yard bare.
Barbara, looking out of the window through a blur of rain, on the day
when David’s fever was highest, was vaguely relieved by the desolation
outside. Sunshine out of doors would have been a mockery. She stood
with her back toward the bed and her face toward the street, but her
eyes saw nothing but the wasted little form that tossed restlessly to
and fro, and her ears heard only the heavy breathing, broken, now and
then, by a moan. Miss Graves had gone to get a few hours’ sleep to
fortify herself for the vigil of the night, and Dr. Grafton, in the
next room, was consulting with Dr. Curtis. The house was so still that
their low voices were plainly audible. The words were not distinct,
but the discouraged note in her father’s speech fell heavily upon the
girl’s heart. “_They_ are afraid,” she said to herself.
She turned from the desolate window to the bed, and with pale lips and
dry eyes gazed down at the little brother. David tossed restlessly upon
his pillow, and called aloud for Barbara.
“I’m here, dear,” said the girl, taking the small, hot hand in hers;
but the boy flung it away with a strange strength.
“I want _Barbara_,” he cried.
At the sound of the hoarse voice, Dr. Grafton hurried back into the
room, followed by Dr. Curtis. And then began a fight with death that
Barbara never forgot. Pushed aside as merely an onlooker, the girl
watched, with a sort of curiosity, the man that she saw for the first
time in her life. The father she had always known had vanished; in
his place was the skilled physician, who seemed to have thought for
the patient rather than the son. The two doctors worked like one
machine,—fighting the fever back step by step, beating it, choking it,
quenching it; pitting against it strength and science and skill. And
when it finally succumbed, and David was snatched from the burning, a
poor little wasted wraith of life, Barbara understood the worship that
Dr. Grafton’s patients gave him.
“We’ve won out,” he said. “The fever’s left the boy. Now if we can only
keep him alive to-night—”
* * * * *
The shadows of evening were heavy in the room as Miss Graves’s
starchiness sounded along the hall. She went at once to the bedside,
and laid her hand on the boy’s forehead. Then she looked quickly up
at the doctor. In that glance Barbara read the whole story,—it was a
question, now, of vitality.
Susan herself brought up the tray of supper to Barbara, who tried to
eat it in order to seem appreciative. But the rolls and the creamed
chicken were sent back untasted, and she could not even find words to
reply to the unworded sympathy in Susan’s good-night. The old habit
of gesture comes back in times of deepest emotion, and both girls
understood, without need of words, Susan’s reassuring pat of the
shoulder, and Barbara’s tight grasp of the hand.
“Go to bed, children,” said Dr. Grafton, as he came out of the
sick-room to the hall where Barbara and Jack stood together. “We need
absolute quiet and plenty of air for the boy. There’ll be no change for
several hours, and you want all the sleep you can get.”
“I can’t sleep,” protested Jack.
“But you can _rest_, and you must do it,” answered his father. “We may
need you both—later.”
“You’ll call us,” said Jack, “if—”
“Yes,” said his father, “I will.”
Jack turned, without a word, to his own room, and Barbara heard him
throw himself on the bed with a half-stifled moan. She herself opened
her bedroom door and went in. Sleep was out of the question. She fell
upon her knees beside her couch and prayed,—an inarticulate, broken cry
for the help that is beyond human power. Then she lighted her little
night lamp, and sat down before her desk with a volume of Emerson in
her hand. She turned to the essay on Compensation, and read, her eyes
seeking and finding the detached sentences that seemed written for her:—
We cannot part with our friends. We cannot let our
angels go. We do not see that they only go out that
archangels may come in. . . . We cannot again find
aught so dear, so sweet, so graceful. But we sit
and weep in vain. . . . The death of a dear . . .
brother . . . breaks up a wonted occupation, or a
household. . . . But . . . the man or woman who would
have remained a sunny garden flower with no room for
its roots and too much sunshine for its head, by the
falling of the walls and the neglect of the gardener is
made the banian of the forest, yielding shade and fruit
to wide neighborhoods of men.
Barbara dropped the book hastily. “There’s no compensation in that!”
she said bitterly. Then she picked up a bit of paper, and put the cry
of her heart into a few crude words.
Her father, coming into the room two hours later, found her there at
her desk, her tear-stained face bowed on her arms. The pencil was still
in her hand. Dr. Grafton touched her shoulder gently, but the girl did
not waken. He hesitated for a moment, hoping for the right words to
tell her, and as he did so his eyes fell upon the crumpled paper before
him. It read:—
THE BANIAN TREE
The flower grows beside the wall,—
A little, sheltered thing,
And over it the sunbeams fall
And merry linnets sing.
No usefulness it has in life
So weak it is, and small,
And yet how happily it grows
Beside the shielding wall.
The banian tree grows tall and straight,
It sends its branches wide;
Beneath its shade the pilgrims wait,
The travelers abide.
They praise it, lying on the sward;
But what is that to me?
Forgive me, Lord; but it is hard
To be a banian tree!
The doctor’s eyes filled. “Thank God,” he said, “she won’t have to be,
this time!”