The newcomer asked no questions, then or afterwards, but busied himself
with a little satchel he carried. "Drink this, please," he said to
Jacqueline in a moment.
It was aromatic ammonia, and she spluttered over it and stopped crying.
Then he forced some between Channing's lips; and presently the wounded
man's eyes opened, to Jacqueline's almost sick relief.
"There! Now you will do nicely, though you will not feel like climbing
my hill, perhaps," the stranger said to him. He eyed Jacqueline
speculatively. "Are you a muscular young lady? I think so."
"Yes, indeed!" She doubled up her arm boyishly to exhibit the swelling
biceps.
He nodded. "Excellent. Then we must make him a ladies' chair, you and I.
Fortunately he is not a large man."
Channing, however, was heavier than he looked. He was only conscious
enough to keep his arms over their shoulders, otherwise unable to help
them at all. They made slow progress. Frequently they had to put him
down and rest, more for the stranger's sake than for Jacqueline's.
"I fear my biceps are less creditable than yours," he smiled once,
panting a little. "Or it is the breath, perhaps. One grows older,
unfortunately."
As he spoke he coughed slightly, and Jacqueline looked with quick
understanding at his thin face. She had heard such a cough before. The
White Plague was one of the enemies which Mrs. Kildare fought untiringly
and unceasingly in her domain.
"I am afraid this effort is not good for you," she murmured.
He shrugged deprecatingly, as if to say, "What does it matter?"
The gesture was oddly familiar to Jacqueline. She had seen Philip Benoix
shrug in just that way. Indeed, there were other things about this man
that seemed oddly familiar. She looked at him, puzzled. The lantern
showed him dressed in coarse jeans, unkempt, unshaven. Yet his clear,
well-modulated, slightly accented speech proved him no genuine
mountaineer. Perhaps the cough accounted for his presence in the
mountains.--But his appearance of familiarity?
Suddenly Jacqueline placed him. It was the man she had seen outside the
window of the meeting-house, listening so absorbedly to Philip's sermon.
"You're the school-teacher, aren't you?" she asked.
"At your service," he replied with a slight, courteous formality that
again reminded her of Philip.
"I saw you at church to-night, and wondered why you did not come in."
"I am not a Christian," he explained.
"Oh, but that doesn't matter! That is just why Philip--Mr. Benoix, I
mean--has come up here. To make Christians."
The other smiled faintly. "The few Christians of my acquaintance have
been born, and not made.--Now, shall we start again?"
They came at last to the first of two small cabins, whose door the man
kicked open. They deposited their now unconscious burden upon a bed, one
of several that stood in a neat, white row, each with curtains about it.
"Why, it's a regular dormitory! Is yours a boarding-school?"
He shook his head. "My hospital extension. It is easier to take care of
sick scholars here than at their homes, and I have often sick scholars.
None at present, however. We have room here for several patients, as you
see, and soon I hope to be able to build another house for women.
Obstetrical cases," he explained, rather absently. While he spoke he was
removing Channing's bandage. "Hum! The shot has fortunately missed the
patella, but it must come out." He rose and began to build a fire in a
small cook-stove at one end of the room. "When I have sterilized these
instruments, young lady, we shall have a try for that bullet."
Jacqueline paled. "You mean you are going to--to cut him? Are you sure
you know how?"
He smiled at her, "Quite sure. We mountain teachers have opportunity to
learn many things."
"Including cooking," she said, with a wan attempt at raillery,
remembering Brother Bates' gossip.
"Including cooking," he admitted gravely. "Wait until this coffee has
boiled, and you shall see that I know one branch, at least, of my
profession thoroughly."
He brought her a steaming cup in a moment, which she drained gratefully.
"It's heavenly! May I have some more? Where did you learn to cook--from
books?"
"From necessity. When I first came to the mountains, it seemed safer to
cook than to be cooked for."
The girl was paying little attention. She watched Channing fearfully. He
was still unconscious, livid; but the school-teacher appeared to feel no
alarm. He went deftly and quite unhurried about his preparations,
getting out a hypodermic syringe, a bottle of chloroform, placing
certain instruments in the oven, others in boiling water.
Jacqueline shivered; but she went on with the conversation gallantly,
striving to face the situation as her mother or Jemima would have faced
it.
"I know one other man who can cook, but he's a minister, and they're
always different, somehow. He learned in the mountains, too, by the way,
because there was nobody but himself and his father to take care of his
sick mother. He learned all sorts of things to help her ... how to sew
on buttons, and mend clothes, and sweep--He can even darn stockings! And
he's not a bit ashamed of it."
"I should think," murmured the other, "that he might be even proud of
it. You find him unmanly, perhaps?"
"Unmanly! Philip?" The tone of her voice answered him. "Why, he's the
manliest man I know!"
The teacher said nothing further; but she got the impression that he was
listening, waiting for her to go on.
"Do you know," she said, "I feel as if I knew you, as if I might have
known you all my life. Have I never seen you before?"
"I think not," he replied, in a low voice.--Who can tell how much is
seen by little eyes newly opened upon the world? Perhaps vision is
clearer then than afterwards, when speech and sound and crowding
thoughts come to obscure it.
"Have you always lived in these mountains?"
He answered with a slight hesitation. "I came here seventeen years ago."
"And do you never go down to the lowlands?"
"No."
"Then I can't have known you before," she said disappointedly, "because
I am only seventeen myself."
A shrewder observer--Jemima for instance--might have noted his
hesitancy, might have realized that coming to a place does not imply
remaining there continuously.
But Jacqueline was not shrewd. She took people literally, and understood
just what they intended her to understand. The art of prevarication was
unknown to her; though, as has been seen, she could lie upon occasion,
with a large and primitive simplicity.
"Now then," said the teacher briskly. "If you are ready, young lady, we
shall go after that bullet."
She shrank away, quivering, all her fine pretense at composure
shattered. "O-oh, but you don't expect _me_ to help you? I can't, I
never can help with things like that! I'm not like mother and Jemmy. I
couldn't bear it. He might groan! I can't stand it when they groan!"
The other frowned. "You are not a coward, I think, afraid of a little
blood?"
"It's not the blood--though I don't like that a bit. It's the pain. It's
when they groan. Please, please!--It's horrible enough when you don't
care for them, but when you do--"
His face softened wonderfully. "Ah!--Yes. It is worse when you care, my
dear; but all the more reason for helping. Come, I have no one else. You
shall keep me from hurting him by holding this little cone over his
face--see, how simple. He will certainly groan, and you will certainly
bear it. Come, then!"
Jacqueline, sick and shivering, stuck to her post. "If Jemmy could only
see me now!" was the thought with which she stiffened herself. She tried
not to listen to the moaning voice--"They're killing me! Take it away.
Oh, _don't_ hurt me any more--"
"You said it wouldn't hurt him!" she muttered once, fiercely.
"And it does not--only his imagination. He has a vivid imagination, this
chap."
"Of course he has!" She scented disrespect, and was quick to resent it.
"He's a very famous author,--Mr. Percival Channing."
"So?" But the school-teacher did not appear to be greatly impressed. "A
healthy-looking author, at least, which is in his favor. This should not
give him any trouble.--Aha! Now we have it."
He held up the bullet for her to see.
"Now then," he added in a moment, "you shall go into my little
guest-room there while I watch over our patient, and sleep like the
heroine you are for many hours."
Jacqueline demurred indignantly. "Leave him? Indeed I won't! It's my
place to nurse him, not yours. Go to sleep yourself!"
He did not venture to drive Woman out of her natural sphere.
"As you like. Just rest on one of these cots, then, while I attend to
some further matters. I shall rouse you when I am ready to leave."
"You won't go far?"
"Oh, no. I shall be within call."
Jacqueline stretched herself luxuriously. The cot was very comfortable.
"I shan't go to sleep, of course," she said....
Once during the night she stirred suddenly. "Philip will be worried,"
she murmured.
A quiet voice answered beside her, "No, I shall send word to him."
She lifted her heavy lids. "Oh, is that you, Phil?" she muttered
contentedly, and dozed off again....
It was not such an odd mistake. The school-teacher, sitting there beside
her, had taken off his spectacles, and the eyes she met when hers
opened, were eyes she had known and trusted all her life; gleaming,
kindly, quizzical eyes, astonishingly blue by contrast with a dark face.
He tried not to cough for fear of disturbing her. Until dawn and
afterwards he sat there between the two beds, sometimes rising quietly
to minister to Channing's needs, but for the most part gazing at the
sleeping girl, hungrily, wistfully, often through a mist of tears;
searching for resemblances, and finding them.
"Her child!" he whispered to himself. "Her little girl, the babe that
was on her breast!--So like, and yet unlike. A hint of pliancy here, of
weakness perhaps, that is not Kate. Wilfulness with Kate, never
weakness--And already a woman, already come to the time of sacrifice.
Her little girl!--"
He leaned over Channing, studying intently and anxiously the nervous,
sensuous, intelligent face in its betraying relaxation of slumber. He
shook his head presently, as if in doubt.
"But she will not see; perhaps she will never see. Yes, she is Kate's
own child!" He sighed, and shrugged.
"At least there is Philip on guard," he said to himself, finally. "My
sturdy, pious young Atlas, with the world so heavy on his shoulders!--"
The smile on the teacher's lips was mocking and sad, and very tender.