A NICHE IN LIFE, AND A WOMAN TO FILL IT.
"A Traveller between Life and Death."
WORDSWORTH.
Miss Sampson was at home this evening. It was not what one would have
pictured to oneself as a scene of home comfort or enjoyment; but Miss
Sampson was at home. In her little room of fourteen feet square, up a
dismal flight of stairs, sitting, in the light of a single lamp, by her
air-tight stove, whereon a cup of tea was keeping warm; that, and the
open newspaper on the little table in the corner, being the only things
in any way cheery about her.
Not even a cat or a canary bird had she for companionship. There was no
cozy arrangement for daily feminine employment; no workbasket, or litter
of spools and tapes; nothing to indicate what might be her daily way of
going on. On the broad ledges of the windows, where any other woman
would have had a plant or two, there was no array of geraniums or
verbenas--not even a seedling orange tree or a monthly rose. But in one
of them lay a plaid shawl and a carpet bag, and in the other that
peculiar and nearly obsolete piece of feminine property, a paper
bandbox, tied about with tape.
Packed up for a journey?
Reader, Miss Sampson was _always_ packed up. She was that much-enduring,
all-foregoing creature, a professional nurse.
There would have been no one to feed a cat, or a canary bird, or to
water a rose bush, if she had had one. Her home was no more to her than
his station at the corner of the street is to the handcart man or the
hackney coachman. It was only the place where she might receive orders;
whence she might go forth to the toilsomeness and gloom of one sick room
after another, returning between each sally and the next to her
cheerless post of waiting--keeping her strength for others, and living
no life of her own.
There was nothing in Miss Sampson's outer woman that would give you, at
first glance, an idea of her real energy and peculiar force of
character. She was a tall and slender figure, with no superfluous weight
of flesh; and her long, thin arms seemed to have grown long and wiry
with lifting, and easing, and winding about the poor wrecks of mortality
that had lost their own vigor, and were fain to beg a portion of hers.
Her face was thin and rigid, too--molded to no mere graces of
expression--but with a strong outline, and a habitual compression about
the mouth that told you, when you had once learned somewhat of its
meaning, of the firm will that would go straight forward to its object,
and do, without parade or delay, whatever there might be to be done.
Decision, determination, judgment, and readiness were all in that
habitual look of a face on which little else had been called out for
years. But you would not so have read it at first sight. You would
almost inevitably have called her a "scrawny, sour-looking old maid."
A creaking step was heard upon the stair, and then a knock of decision
at Miss Sampson's door.
"Come in!"
And as she spoke, Miss Sampson took her cup and saucer in her hand. That
was to be kept waiting no longer for whatever visitor it might chance to
be. She was taking her first sip as Dr. Gracier entered.
"Don't move, Miss Sampson; don't let me interrupt."
"I don't mean to! What sends you here?"
"A new patient."
"Humph! Not one of the last sort, I hope. You know my kind, and 'tain't
any use talking up about any others. Any old woman can make gruel, and
feed a baby with catnip tea. Don't offer me any more such work as that!
If it's work that _is_ work, speak out!"
"It's work that nobody else can do for me. A critical case of typhoid,
and nobody in the house that understands such illness. I've promised to
bring you."
"You knew I was back, then?"
"I knew you would be. I only sent you at the pinch. I warned them you'd
go as soon as things were tolerably comfortable."
"Of course I would. What business should I have where there was nothing
wanted of me but to go to bed at nine o'clock, and sleep till daylight?
That ain't the sort of corner I was cut out to fill."
"Well, drink your tea, and put on your bonnet. There's a carriage at the
door."
"Man? or woman?" asked Miss Sampson.
"A man--Mr. Henderson Gartney, Hickory Street."
"Out of his head?"
"Yes--and getting more so. Family all frightened to death."
"Keep 'em out of my way, then, and let me have him to myself. One crazy
patient is enough, at a time, for any one pair of hands. I'm ready."
In fifteen minutes more, they were in Hickory Street; and the nurse was
speedily installed, or rather installed herself, in her office. Dr.
Gracie hastened away to another patient, promising to call again at
bedtime.
"Now, ma'am," said Miss Sampson to Mrs. Gartney, who, after taking her
first to the bedside of the patient, had withdrawn with her to the
little dressing room adjoining, and given her a _résumé_ of the
treatment thus far followed, with the doctor's last directions to
herself--"you just go downstairs to your supper. I know, by your looks,
you ain't had a mouthful to-day. That's no way to help take care of sick
folks."
Mrs. Gartney smiled a little, feebly; and an expression of almost
childlike rest and relief came over her face. She felt herself in strong
hands.
"And you?" she asked. "Shall I send you something here?"
"I've drunk a cup of tea, before I started. If I see my way clear, I'll
run down for a bite after you get through. I don't want any special
providings. I take my nibbles anyhow, as I go along. You needn't mind,
more'n as if I wasn't here. I shall find my way all over the house. Now,
you go."
"Only tell me how he seems to you."
"Well--not so terrible sick. Just barely bad enough to keep me here. I
don't take any easy cases."
The odd, abrupt manner and speech comforted, while they somewhat
astonished Mrs. Gartney.
"Leave the bread and butter and cold chicken on the table," said she,
when the tea things were about to be removed; "and keep the chocolate
hot, downstairs. Faithie--sit here; and if Miss Sampson comes down by
and by, see that she is made comfortable."
It was ten o'clock when Miss Sampson came down, and then it was with Dr.
Gracie.
"Cheer up, little lady!" said the doctor, meeting Faith's anxious,
inquiring glance. "Not so bad, by any means, as we might be. The only
difficulty will be to keep Nurse Sampson here. She won't stay a minute,
if we begin to get better too fast. Yes--I will take a bit of chicken, I
think; and--what have you there that's hot?" as the maid came in with
the chocolate pot, in answer to Faith's ring of the bell. "Ah, yes!
Chocolate! I missed my tea, somehow, to-night." The "somehow" had been
in his kindly quest of the best nurse in Mishaumok.
"Sit down, Miss Sampson. Let me help you to a scrap of cold chicken.
What? Drumstick! Miss Faithie--here is a woman who makes it a principle
to go through the world, choosing drumsticks! She's a study; and I set
you to finding her out."
Last night, as he had told Miss Sampson, the family had been "frightened
to death." He had found Faith sitting on the front stairs, at midnight,
when he came in at a sudden summons. She was pale and shivering, and
caught him nervously by both hands.
"Oh, doctor!"
"And oh, Miss Faithie! This is no place for you. You ought to be in
bed."
"But I can't. Mother is all alone, except Mahala. And I don't dare stay
up there, either. What _shall_ we do?"
For all answer, the doctor had just taken her in his arms, and carried
her down to the sofa in the hall, where he laid her, and covered her
over with his greatcoat. There she stayed, passively, till he came back.
And then he told her kindly and gravely, that if she could be _quite_
quiet, and firm, she might go and lie on the sofa in her mother's
dressing room for the remainder of the night, to be at hand for any
needed service. To-morrow he would see that they were otherwise
provided.
And so, to-night, here was Miss Sampson eating her drumstick.
Faith watched the hard lines of her face as she did so, and wondered
what, and how much Dr. Gracie had meant by "setting her to find her
out."
"I'm afraid you haven't had a vary nice supper," said she, timidly. "Do
you like that best?"
"Somebody must always eat drumsticks," was the concise reply.
And so, presently, without any further advance toward acquaintance, they
went upstairs; and the house, under the new, energetic rule, soon
subsided into quiet for the night.