As if Philip's wish had materialized her, it was Jemima herself who met
Jacqueline and Channing at the Storm station late that night; Jemima,
fully equipped for the occasion, ambulance and all, brisk and important
and even sympathetic in a professional sort of way.
Jacqueline hailed her with mingled feelings of relief and sisterly
pleasure, complicated with certain misgivings as to her future freedom.
"Why, Jemmy! I thought you were going to stay with that Mrs. Lawton at
least three weeks."
"Lucky I didn't," remarked her sister succinctly. "I had just got home
when your telegram to mother came, telling about the accident, so of
course I took charge of things. Mother wanted to come herself, but she
seemed rather tired, so I made her stop at home. The doctor will be
there to meet us."
Channing saw the improvised ambulance with thanksgiving. The journey
back to civilization was a chapter in his experience which he had no
wish to repeat....
It had started gaily enough, Channing quite comfortable in a sort of
litter swung between two mules, led at a foot-pace by the versatile
peddler and a silent young mountaineer, a son of their former host,
Anse. The school-teacher rode with them to the foot of the mountain, to
make sure of the bandages, and Jacqueline brought up the procession on
her mule.
Before they started, Channing spoke a few appreciative if rather
patronizing words to the school-master. "You've been awfully kind and
clever about this. A surgeon could not have done better. You really
ought to charge me a whopping big price, you know." He put his hand into
his pocket, suggestively.
The other raised his eyebrows. "My services were not professional, Mr.
Channing. I make no charge for them. It is all part of my day's work."
"Oh, but really--" insisted the author.
"Of course if you've plenty of money, you may pay what you like," added
the teacher indifferently, and went back into the schoolhouse for
something he had forgotten.
Channing grinned. "Of course! I've never seen services yet, professional
or otherwise, that could not be paid for. What do you think I ought to
give him?"
It was to Jacqueline he spoke, but the Apostle answered: "You don't give
him nothin', son. You puts what you kin in this here box for the
Hospital."
He obligingly lifted down a box with a slit in it, that hung beside the
schoolhouse door, bearing the inscription, "Hospital Fund." He rattled
it as he did so. "It's gettin' real heavy," he commented with
satisfaction. "Reck'n there must 'a' bin a lot of sick folks lately.
Teacher must be pleased."
Channing lifted his eyebrows at Jacqueline. "Do you mean to say he
leaves a box of money hanging outside his door at the mercy of any
passing stranger?"
"Why not?" asked the teacher himself, reappearing.
"Very few strangers do pass, and though my neighbors have their
failings, dishonesty is not one of them. Besides, it is their own money.
They have given it."
"Rather an ambitious idea of yours, isn't it, a hospital in these
wilds?"
"The name is more ambitious than the idea, Mr. Channing. What I hope to
build is merely another small cabin for women, on the other side of my
schoolhouse, and perhaps later an isolated building for contagious
cases."
"And who is to care for your patients?"
"Oh, I have plenty of assistance. Some of the women have become
excellent nurses, and one or two of the boys show a distinct aptitude
for medicine. We shall make doctors of them yet." He broke off
apologetically. "You will think that I have a partiality for hygienic
matters, and perhaps I have. It is my theory that most crime is
traceable to physical causes; to disease; and as most disease is the
result of ignorance--" he shrugged. "You will see why I consider hygiene
an important part of my school curriculum."
Channing was looking at him curiously. His manner had lost its
patronage. "May I ask," he said, "whether the State finances this
institution of yours?"
"No. The nearest school supplied by the State is miles away, over roads
which for part of the year are almost impassable. That is why I happened
to settle here."
"Then who does finance it? Yourself?"
The teacher smiled. "It is not 'financed' at all, nor does it need to
be. My pupils supply me with food and fuel and free labor, in return for
which I share with them what 'book-larnin'' I happen to possess. And I
wish there were more of it! What few books are needed I manage to
provide. Mine is more a practical course than an academic one, you see."
Jacqueline had been listening with deep interest, her face a-glow. "And
yet you think you are not a Christian!" she said softly. "Why, you are
doing just such a thing as Christ might have done Himself."
"In a more up-to-date manner, I hope, young lady," shrugged the teacher.
"We have gone far in 1900 years."
Jacqueline subsided, shocked. She wished Philip were there to put this
irreverent person in his place.
"Have you never," questioned Channing, "considered asking for help from
outside? Rich people go in for this sort of thing a great deal nowadays.
It is quite a fashionable philanthropy."
"I have no acquaintance among rich people," said the other, "and I do
not think my neighbors would care to accept philanthropy. They are
proud."
Channing said, rather nicely, "If they are proud, they will understand
that I prefer to pay for value received." He slipped into the box a bill
whose denomination made the Apostle's eyes open wide.
"Fifty dollars!" he exclaimed in awe, "That's right, son--'Give up all
thou hast and follow Me.' 'It is harder fer a rich man to enter into
heaven than fer a camuel to go thoo the eye of a needle.' That's the way
to git religion!--"
The teacher bowed, gravely. "The Woman's Ward is now an accomplished
fact. Thank you, Mr. Channing."
For the first part of the journey down the mountain, the author had
rather enjoyed the novel role of uncomplaining sufferer. The teacher's
presence was both stimulating and reassuring. After he turned back,
however, with a final look at the bandages, reaction set in. The
sufferer's cheerfulness relapsed into a wincing silence, broken
occasionally by faint groans, when a stumble on the part of his bearers
set loose all the various aches that racked his body.
These aches were the result of exhaustion rather than of his wound; but
he did not know this, nor did Jacqueline. The literary imagination
pictured him in the last stages of blood-poison, and groans became more
frequent. He could have found no surer way of appealing to Jacqueline's
tenderness. She was one of the women to whom weakness is a thing
irresistible. Her moment of ugly doubt when her lover showed panic under
fire had passed instantly with a realization of his dependence upon her.
To give is the instinct of such natures, maternal in their very essence.
The fact that Channing seemed to need her had always been his chief hold
on her fancy.
She walked beside him most of the way, leading her mule, so that she
might hold his hand; yearning over him, suffering far more than he
suffered, crooning tender words of encouragement.
"I wish," she said once, passionately, "that you were littler, that you
were small enough to carry in my arms, so that _nothing_ could hurt
you!"--a sentiment which drew a glance of sympathy from even the stolid
young mountaineer at the mule's head, and which set old Brother Bates to
thinking wistfully of the long, long road that lay between him and the
ministrations of his wife, Sally.
But the author was too far gone in anxiety and bone-weariness to care to
linger just then in any primrose path of dalliance. He even wished
heartily, if inaudibly, that the girl would be quiet and leave him
alone.
Therefore, the final sight of Jemima and her business-like ambulance was
a most welcome one.
He demurred politely when he heard where he was to be taken. "I ought
not to impose on your mother's hospitality! Couldn't you get me to
Farwell's house?"
"And who would take care of you there--men-servants? Nonsense!" said
Jemima, briskly. "Mother wouldn't hear of it, and neither would I. Don't
talk now. Just drink your coffee." (She had brought it hot in a thermos
bottle.) "And thank your stars you weren't killed outright in those wild
mountains. What an expedition!--feckless Jacky, that dreamer Philip, and
a mad peddler! It never would have happened if I'd been at home.--Get up
in front with the driver, Jack."
But this usurpation of her rights and privileges was more than the
younger one could bear.
"Feckless I may be, Jemmy Kildare," she cried hotly, "but it was me who
defended Mr. Channing from bears and things, me who helped with the
operation, me who brought him home all by myself! And it's me he wants
now--don't you, dear? Sit up in front yourself, smarty!"
Jemima obeyed, lifting astonished eyebrows. All the way to Storm her
eyebrows fluttered up and down like flags in a gale of wind. She
listened with straining ears to certain whisperings behind her; to
certain silences more pregnant than whispering.
"So-o!" she thought. "_That's_ what the child is up to! Calling him
'dear!' _That's_ why she wouldn't go visiting.--Have mother and I been
blind?"