good woman, "I wish to my heart I'd stepped right out o' the front
door and gone straight to meetin' and left them there beholdin' of me.
Course he hasn't had no supper, nor dinner neither like's not, and if
men are ever going to drop down on a family unexpected it's always
Friday night when everything's eat up that ever was in the house. I
s'pose, after I bake double quantities to-morrow mornin', he'll be
drivin' off before noon-time, and treasure it up that we never have
nothin' decent to set before folks. Anna, you've got to stir yourself
and help, while I get the fire started up; lay one o' them big dinner
napkins over the red cloth, and set a plate an' a tea-cup, for as for
laying the whole table over again, I won't and I shan't. There's water
to cart upstairs and the bed-room to open, but Heaven be thanked I was
up there dustin' to-day, and if ever you set a mug of flowers into one
o' the spare-rooms again and leave it there a week or ten days to
spile, I'll speak about it to the doctor. Now you step out o' my way
like a good girl. I don't know whether you or the cat's the worst for
gettin' before me when I'm in a drive. I'll set him out somethin' to
eat, and then I'm goin' to meetin' if the skies fall."
Nan meekly obeyed directions, and with a sense of guilt concerning the
deserted posies went to hover about the study door after the plates
were arranged, instead of braving further the stormy atmosphere of the
kitchen. Marilla's lamp had shone in so that there had been light
enough in the dining-room, but the study was quite dark except where
there was one spark at the end of the doctor's half-finished cigar,
which was alternately dim and bright like the revolving lantern of a
lighthouse.
At that moment the smoker rose, and with his most considerate and
conciliatory tone asked Marilla for the study lamp, but Nan heard, and
ran on tiptoe and presently brought it in from the kitchen, holding it
carefully with both hands and walking slowly. She apparently had no
thought beyond her errand, but she was brimful of eagerness to see the
unexpected guest; for guests were by no means frequent, and since she
had really become aware of a great outside world beyond the boundaries
of Oldfields she welcomed the sight of any messengers.
Dr. Leslie hastily pushed away some books from the lamp's place; and
noticing that his visitor looked at Nan with surprise, quickly
explained that this little girl had come to take care of him, and bade
Nan speak to Dr. Ferris. Whereupon her bravery was sorely tried, but
not overcome, and afterward she sat down in her own little chair,
quite prepared to be hospitable. As she heard a sound of water being
poured into a pitcher in the best room upstairs, she was ready to
laugh if there had been anybody to laugh with, and presently Marilla
appeared at the door with the announcement that there was some tea
waiting in the dining-room, after which and before anybody had thought
of moving, the side gate clacked resolutely, and Marilla, looking more
prim and unruffled than usual, sped forth to the enjoyment of her
Friday evening privileges.
Nan followed the gentlemen to the dining-room not knowing whether she
were wanted or not, but feeling quite assured when it was ascertained
that neither sugar nor teaspoons had been provided. The little feast
looked somewhat meagre, and the doctor spoke irreverently of his
housekeeper and proceeded to abstract a jar of her best strawberry jam
from the convenient store-closet, and to collect other articles of
food which seemed to him to be inviting, however inappropriate to the
occasion. The guest would have none of the jam, but Dr. Leslie cut a
slice of the loaf of bread for himself and one for Nan, though it had
already waned beyond its last quarter, and nobody knew what would
happen if there were no toast at breakfast time. Marilla would never
know what a waste of jam was spread upon these slices either, but she
was a miser only with the best preserves, and so our friends reveled
in their stolen pleasure, and were as merry together as heart could
wish.
Nan thought it very strange when she found that the doctor and his
guest had been at school together, for the stranger seemed so old and
worn. They were talking about other classmates at first, and she sat
still to listen, until the hour of Marilla's return drew near and Dr.
Leslie prudently returned to his own uninvaded apartment. Nan was
told, to her sorrow, that it was past her bed-time and as she stopped
to say good-night, candle in hand, a few moments afterward, the doctor
stooped to kiss her with unusual tenderness, and a little later, when
she was safe in her small bedroom and under the coverlet which was
Marilla's glory, having been knit the winter before in an intricate
pattern, she almost shook with fear at the sound of its maker's
vengeful footsteps in the lower room. It is to be hoped that the
influence of the meeting had been very good, and that one of its
attendants had come home equal to great demands upon her fortitude and
patience. Nan could not help wishing she had thought to put away the
jam, and she wondered how Marilla would treat them all in the morning.
But, to do that worthy woman justice, she was mild and considerate,
and outdid herself in the breakfast that was set forth in the guest's
honor, and Dr. Ferris thought he could do no less than to add to his
morning greeting the question why she was not growing old like the
rest of them, which, though not answered, was pleasantly received.
The host and guest talked very late the night before, and told each
other many things. Dr. Leslie had somewhat unwillingly undertaken the
country practice which had grown dearer to him with every year, but
there were family reasons why he had decided to stay in Oldfields for
a few months at least, and though it was not long before he was left
alone, not only by the father and mother whose only child he was, but
by his wife and child, he felt less and less inclination to break the
old ties and transplant himself to some more prominent position of the
medical world. The leisure he often had at certain seasons of the year
was spent in the studies which always delighted him, and little by
little he gained great repute among his professional brethren. He was
a scholar and a thinker in other than medical philosophies, and most
persons who knew anything of him thought it a pity that he should be
burying himself alive, as they were pleased to term his devotion to
his provincial life. His rare excursions to the cities gave more
pleasure to other men than to himself, however, in these later years,
and he laughingly proclaimed himself to be growing rusty and behind
the times to Dr. Ferris, who smiled indulgently, and did not take the
trouble to contradict so untrue and preposterous an assertion.
If one man had been a stayer at home; a vegetable nature, as Dr.
Leslie had gone on to say, which has no power to change its locality
or to better itself by choosing another and more adequate or
stimulating soil; the other had developed the opposite extreme of
character, being by nature a rover. From the medical school he had
entered at once upon the duties of a naval appointment, and after he
had become impatient of its routine of practice and its check upon his
freedom, he had gone, always with some sufficient and useful object,
to one far country after another. Lately he had spent an unusual
number of consecutive months in Japan, which was still unfamiliar even
to most professional travelers, and he had come back to America
enthusiastic and full of plans for many enterprises which his shrewd,
but not very persistent brain had conceived. The two old friends were
delighted to see each other, but they took this long-deferred meeting
as calmly as if they were always next-door neighbors. It was a most
interesting thing that while they led such different lives and took
such apparently antagonistic routes of progression, they were pretty
sure to arrive at the same conclusion, though it might appear
otherwise to a listener who knew them both slightly.
"And who is the little girl?" asked Dr. Ferris, who had refused his
entertainer's cigars and produced a pipe from one pocket, after having
drawn a handful of curious small jade figures from another and pushed
them along the edge of the study table, without comment, for his
friend to look at. Some of them were so finely carved that they looked
like a heap of grotesque insects struggling together as they lay
there, but though Dr. Leslie's eyes brightened as he glanced at them,
he gave no other sign of interest at that time, and answered his
guest's question instead.
"She is a ward of mine," he said; "she was left quite alone by the
death of her grandmother some months ago, and so I brought her here."
"It isn't often that I forget a face," said Dr. Ferris, "but I have
been trying to think what association I can possibly have with that
child. I remember at last; she looks like a young assistant surgeon
who was on the old frigate Fortune with me just before I left the
service. I don't think he was from this part of the country though; I
never heard what became of him."
"I dare say it was her father; I believe he made a voyage or two,"
said Dr. Leslie, much interested. "Do you know anything more about
him? you always remember everything, Ferris."
"Yes," answered the guest, slowly puffing away at his pipe. "Yes, he
was a very bright fellow, with a great gift at doctoring, but he was
willful, full of queer twists and fancies, the marry in haste and
repent at his leisure sort of young man."
"Exactly what he did, I suppose," interrupted the host. "Only his
leisure was fortunately postponed to the next world, for the most
part; he died very young."
"I used to think it a great pity that he had not settled himself
ashore in a good city practice," continued Dr. Ferris. "He had a great
knack at pleasing people and making friends, and he was always
spoiling for want of work. I was ready enough to shirk my part of
that, you may be sure, but if you start with a reasonably healthy set
of men, crew and officers, and keep good discipline, and have no
accidents on the voyage, an old-fashioned ship-master's kit of
numbered doses is as good as anything on board a man-of-war in time of
peace. You have mild cases that result from over-heating or
over-eating, and sometimes a damaged finger to dress, or a tooth to
pull. I used to tell young Prince that it was a pity one of the men
wouldn't let himself be chopped to pieces and fitted together again to
give us a little amusement."
"That's the name," announced Nan's guardian with great satisfaction.
"This is a very small world; we are all within hail of each other. I
dare say when we get to Heaven there will not be a stranger to make
friends with."
"I could give you more wonderful proofs of that than you would be
likely to believe," responded the surgeon. "But tell me how you
happened to have anything to do with the child; did Prince wander into
this neighborhood?"
"Not exactly, but he fell in love with a young girl who was brought up
on one of the farms just out of the village. She was a strange
character, a handsome creature, with a touch of foolish ambition, and
soon grew impatient of the routine of home life. I believe that she
went away at first to work in one of the factories in Lowell, and
afterward she drifted to Dunport, where young Prince's people lived,
and I dare say it was when he came home from that very voyage you knew
of that he saw her and married her. She worked in a dressmaker's shop,
and worked very well too, but she had offended his sister to begin
with, one day when she was finding fault with some work that had been
done for her, and so there was no end of trouble, and the young man
had a great battle at home, and the more he was fought the less
inclined he was to yield, and at last off he went to be married, and
never came home again until he died. It was a wretched story; he only
lived two years, and they went from one place to another, and finally
the end came in some Western town. He had not been happy with his
wife, and they quarreled from time to time, and he asked to be brought
back to Dunport and buried. This child was only a baby, and the
Princes begged her mother to give her up, and used every means to try
to make friends, and to do what was right. But I have always thought
there was blame on both sides. At any rate the wife was insolent and
unruly, and went flinging out of the house as soon as the funeral was
over. I don't know what became of them for a while, but it always
seemed to me as if poor Adeline must have had a touch of insanity,
which faded away as consumption developed itself. Her mother's people
were a fine, honest race, self-reliant and energetic, but there is a
very bad streak on the other side. I have heard that she was seen
begging somewhere, but I am not sure that it is true; at any rate she
would neither come here to her own home nor listen to any plea from
her husband's family, and at last came back to the farm one night like
a ghost, carrying the child in her arms across the fields; all in rags
and tatters, both of them. She confessed to me that she had meant to
drown herself and little Nan together. I could never understand why
she went down so fast. I know that she had been drinking. Some people
might say that it was the scorn of her husband's relatives, but that
is all nonsense, and I have no doubt she and the young man might have
done very well if this hadn't spoiled all their chances at the outset.
She was quite unbalanced and a strange, wild creature, very handsome
in her girlhood, but morally undeveloped. It was impossible not to
have a liking for her. I remember her when she was a baby."
"And yet people talk about the prosaic New England life!" exclaimed
Dr. Ferris. "I wonder where I could match such a story as that, though
I dare say that you know a dozen others. I tell you, Leslie, that for
intense, self-centred, smouldering volcanoes of humanity, New England
cannot be matched the world over. It's like the regions in Iceland
that are full of geysers. I don't know whether it is the inheritance
from those people who broke away from the old countries, and who ought
to be matched to tremendous circumstances of life, but now and then
there comes an amazingly explosive and uncontrollable temperament that
goes all to pieces from its own conservation and accumulation of
force. By and by you will have all blown up,--you quiet descendants of
the Pilgrims and Puritans, and have let off your superfluous
wickedness like blizzards; and when the blizzards of each family have
spent themselves you will grow dull and sober, and all on a level, and
be free from the troubles of a transition state. Now, you're neither a
new country nor an old one. You ought to see something of the older
civilizations to understand what peace of mind is. Unless some
importation of explosive material from the westward stirs them up, one
century is made the pattern for the next. But it is perfectly
wonderful what this climate does for people who come to it,--a south
of Ireland fellow, for instance, who has let himself be rained on and
then waited for the sun to dry him again, and has grubbed a little in
a bit of ground, just enough to hint to it that it had better be
making a crop of potatoes for him. I always expect to see the gorse
and daisies growing on the old people's heads to match the cabins. But
they come over here and forget their idleness, and in a week or two
the east winds are making them work, and thrashing them if they are
slow, worse than any slave-driver who ever cracked his whip-lash. I
wonder how you stand it; I do, indeed! I can't take an afternoon nap
or have my coffee in bed of a morning without thinking I must put into
port at the next church to be preached at."
Dr. Leslie laughed a little and shook his head gently. "It's very well
for you to talk, Ferris," he said, "since you have done more work than
any man I know. And I find this neighborhood entirely placid; one bit
of news will last us a fortnight. I dare say Marilla will let
everybody know that you have come to town, and have explained why she
was ten minutes late, even to the minister."
"How about the little girl herself?" asked the guest presently; "she
seems well combined, and likely, as they used to say when I was a
boy."
Dr. Leslie resumed the subject willingly: "So far as I can see, she
has the good qualities of all her ancestors without the bad ones. Her
mother's mother was an old fashioned country woman of the best stock.
Of course she resented what she believed to be her daughter's wrongs,
and refused to have anything to do with her son-in-law's family, and
kept the child as carefully as possible from any knowledge of them.
Little Nan was not strong at first, but I insisted that she should be
allowed to run free out of doors. It seems to me that up to seven or
eight years of age children are simply bundles of inheritances, and I
can see the traits of one ancestor after another; but a little later
than the usual time she began to assert her own individuality, and has
grown capitally well in mind and body ever since. There is an amusing
trace of the provincial self-reliance and self-respect and farmer-like
dignity, added to a quick instinct, and tact and ready courtesy, which
must have come from the other side of her ancestry. She is more a
child of the soil than any country child I know, and yet she would not
put a city household to shame. She has seen nothing of the world of
course, but you can see she isn't like the usual village school-girl.
There is one thing quite remarkable. I believe she has grown up as
naturally as a plant grows, not having been clipped back or forced in
any unnatural direction. If ever a human being were untrammeled and
left alone to see what will come of it, it is this child. And I will
own I am very much interested to see what will appear later."
The navy surgeon's eyes twinkled at this enthusiasm, but he asked
soberly what seemed to be our heroine's bent, so far as could be
discovered, and laughed outright when he was gravely told that it was
a medical bent; a surprising understanding of things pertaining to
that most delightful profession.
"But you surely don't mean to let her risk her happiness in following
that career?" Dr. Ferris inquired with feigned anxiety for his answer.
"You surely aren't going to sacrifice that innocent creature to a
theory! I know it's a theory; last time I was here, you could think of
nothing but hypnotism or else the action of belladonna in congestion
and inflammation of the brain;" and he left his very comfortable chair
suddenly, with a burst of laughter, and began to walk up and down the
room. "She has no relatives to protect her, and I consider it a
shocking case of a guardian's inhumanity. Grown up naturally indeed! I
don't doubt that you supplied her with Bell's 'Anatomy' for a
picture-book and made her say over the names of the eight little bones
of her wrist, instead of 'This little pig went to market.'"
"I only hope that you'll live to grow up yourself, Ferris," said his
entertainer, "you'll certainly be an ornament to your generation. What
a boy you are! I should think you would feel as old as Methuselah by
this time, after having rattled from one place to the next all these
years. Don't you begin to get tired?"
"No, I don't believe I do," replied Dr. Ferris, lending himself to
this new turn of the conversation, but not half satisfied with the
number of his jokes. "I used to be afraid I should, and so I tried to
see everything I could of the world before my enthusiasm began to
cool. And as for rattling to the next place, as you say, you show
yourself to be no traveler by nature, or you wouldn't speak so
slightingly. It is extremely dangerous to make long halts. I could cry
with homesickness at the thought of the towns I have spent more than a
month in; they are like the people one knows; if you see them once,
you go away satisfied, and you can bring them to mind afterward, and
think how they looked or just where it was you met them,--out of doors
or at the club. But if you live with those people, and get fond of
them, and have a thousand things to remember, you get more pain than
pleasure out of it when you go away. And one can't be everywhere at
once, so if you're going to care for things tremendously, you had
better stay in one town altogether. No, give me a week or two, and
then I've something calling me to the next place; somebody to talk
with or a book to see, and off I go. Yet, I've done a good bit of work
in my day after all. Did you see that paper of mine in the 'Lancet'
about some experiments I made when I was last in India with those
tree-growing jugglers? and I worked out some curious things about the
mathematics of music on this last voyage home! Why, I thought it would
tear my heart in two when I came away. I should have grown to look
like the people, and you might have happened to find a likeness of me
on a tea plate after another year or two. I made all my plans one day
to stay another winter, and next day at eleven o'clock I was steaming
down the harbor. But there was a poor young lad I had taken a liking
for, an English boy, who was badly off after an accident and needed
somebody to look after him. I thought the best thing I could do was to
bring him home. Are you going to fit your ward for general practice
or for a specialty?"
"I don't know; that'll be for the young person herself to decide,"
said Dr. Leslie good-humoredly. "But she's showing a real talent for
medical matters. It is quite unconscious for the most part, but I find
that she understands a good deal already, and she sat here all the
afternoon last week with one of my old medical dictionaries. I
couldn't help looking over her shoulder as I went by, and she was
reading about fevers, if you please, as if it were a story-book. I
didn't think it was worth while to tell her we understood things
better nowadays, and didn't think it best to bleed as much as old Dr.
Rush recommended."
"You're like a hen with one chicken, Leslie," said the friend, still
pacing to and fro. "But seriously, I like your notion of her having
come to this of her own accord. Most of us are grown in the shapes
that society and family preference and prejudice fasten us into, and
don't find out until we are well toward middle life that we should
have done a great deal better at something else. Our vocations are
likely enough to be illy chosen, since few persons are fit to choose
them for us, and we are at the most unreasonable stage of life when we
choose them for ourselves. And what the Lord made some people for,
nobody ever can understand; some of us are for use and more are for
waste, like the flowers. I am in such a hurry to know what the next
world is like that I can hardly wait to get to it. Good heavens! we
live here in our familiar fashion, going at a jog-trot pace round our
little circles, with only a friend or two to speak with who understand
us, and a pipe and a jack-knife and a few books and some old clothes,
and please ourselves by thinking we know the universe! Not a soul of
us can tell what it is that sends word to our little fingers to move
themselves back and forward."
"We're sure of two things at any rate," said Dr. Leslie, "love to God
and love to man. And though I have lived here all my days, I have
learned some truths just as well as if I had gone about with you, or
even been to the next world and come back. I have seen too many lives
go to pieces, and too many dissatisfied faces, and I have heard too
many sorrowful confessions from these country death-beds I have
watched beside, one after another, for twenty or thirty years. And if
I can help one good child to work with nature and not against it, and
to follow the lines marked out for her, and she turns out useful and
intelligent, and keeps off the rocks of mistaking her duty, I shall be
more than glad. I don't care whether it's a man's work or a woman's
work; if it is hers I'm going to help her the very best way I can. I
don't talk to her of course; she's much too young; but I watch her and
mean to put the things in her way that she seems to reach out for and
try to find. She is going to be very practical, for her hands can
almost always work out her ideas already. I like to see her take hold
of things, and I like to see her walk and the way she lifts her feet
and puts them down again. I must say, Ferris, there is a great
satisfaction in finding a human being once in a while that has some
use of itself."
"You're right!" said Dr. Ferris; "but don't be disappointed when she's
ten years older if she picks out a handsome young man and thinks there
is nothing like housekeeping. Have you taken a look at my pocketful of
heathen idols there yet? I don't think you've ever seen their mates."