Lyddy Butterfield's hen turkey was of a roving disposition. She had
never appreciated her luxurious country quarters in Edgewood, and was
seemingly anxious to return to the modest back yard in her native city.
At any rate, she was in the habit of straying far from home, and the
habit was growing upon her to such an extent that she would even lead
her docile little gobblers down to visit Anthony Croft's hens and share
their corn.
Lyddy had caught her at it once, and was now pursuing her to that end
for the second time. She paused in front of the house, but there were
no turkeys to be seen. Could they have wandered up the hill road,--the
discontented, “traipsing,” exasperating things? She started in that
direction, when she heard a crash in the Croft kitchen, and then the
sound of a boy's voice coming from an inner room,--a weak and querulous
voice, as if the child were ill.
She drew nearer, in spite of her dread of meeting people, or above all
of intruding, and saw Anthony Croft standing over the stove, with an
expression of utter helplessness on his usually placid face. She had
never really seen him before in the daylight, and there was something
about his appearance that startled her. The teakettle was on the floor,
and a sea of water was flooding the man's feet, yet he seemed to be
gazing into vacancy. Presently he stooped, and fumbled gropingly for the
kettle. It was too hot to be touched with impunity, and he finally left
it in a despairing sort of way, and walked in the direction of a shelf,
from under which a row of coats was hanging. The boy called again in a
louder and more insistent tone, ending in a whimper of restless pain.
This seemed to make the man more nervous than ever. His hands went
patiently over and over the shelf, then paused at each separate nail.
“Bless the poor dear!” thought Lyddy. “Is he trying to find his hat,
or what is he trying to do? I wonder if he is music mad?” and she drew
still nearer the steps.
At this moment he turned and came rapidly toward the door. She looked
straight in his face. There was no mistaking it: he was blind. The
magician who had told her through his violin secrets that she had
scarcely dreamed of, the wizard who had set her heart to throbbing and
aching and longing as it had never throbbed and ached and longed before,
the being who had worn a halo of romance and genius to her simple mind,
was stone-blind! A wave of impetuous anguish, as sharp and passionate
as any she had ever felt for her own misfortunes, swept over her soul at
the spectacle of the man's helplessness. His sightless eyes struck her
like a blow. But there was no time to lose. She was directly in his
path: if she stood still he would certainly walk over her, and if she
moved he would hear her, so, on the spur of the moment, she gave a
nervous cough and said, “Good-morning, Mr. Croft.”
He stopped short. “Who is it?” he asked.
“I am--it is--I am--your new neighbor,” said Lyddy, with a trembling
attempt at cheerfulness.
“Oh, Miss Butterfield! I should have called up to see you before this
if it hadn't been for the boy's sickness. But I am a good-for-nothing
neighbor, as you have doubtless heard. Nobody expects anything of me.”
(“Nobody expects anything of me.” Her own plaint, uttered in her own
tone!)
“I don't know about that,” she answered swiftly. “You've given me, for
one, a great deal of pleasure with your wonderful music. I often hear
you as you play after supper, and it has kept me from being lonesome.
That isn't very much, to be sure.”
“You are fond of music, then?”
“I didn't know I was; I never heard any before,” said Lyddy simply; “but
it seems to help people to say things they couldn't say for themselves,
don't you think so? It comforts me even to hear it, and I think it must
be still more beautiful to make it.”
Now, Lyddy Ann Butterfield had no sooner uttered this commonplace speech
than the reflection darted through her mind like a lightning flash that
she had never spoken a bit of her heart out like this in all her life
before. The reason came to her in the same flash: she was not being
looked at; her disfigured face was hidden. This man, at least, could
not shrink, turn away, shiver, affect indifference, fix his eyes on
hers with a fascinated horror, as others had done. Her heart was divided
between a great throb of pity and sympathy for him and an irresistible
sense of gratitude for herself. Sure of protection and comprehension,
her lovely soul came out of her poor eyes and sat in the sunshine. She
spoke her mind at ease, as we utter sacred things sometimes under cover
of darkness.
“You seem to have had an accident; what can I do to help you?” she
asked.
“Nothing, thank you. The boy has been sick for some days, but he seems
worse since last night. Nothing is in its right place in the house, so I
have given up trying to find anything, and am just going to Edgewood to
see if somebody will help me for a few days.”
“Uncle Tony! Uncle To-ny! where are you? Do give me another drink, I'm
so hot!” came the boy's voice from within.
“Coming, laddie! I don't believe he ought to drink so much water, but
what can I do? He is burning up with fever.”
“Now look here, Mr. Croft,” and Lydia's tone was cheerfully decisive.
“You sit down in that rocker, please, and let me command the ship for
a while. This is one of the cases where a woman is necessary. First and
foremost, what were you hunting for?”
“My hat and the butter,” said Anthony meekly, and at this unique
combination they both laughed. Lyddy's laugh was particularly fresh,
childlike, and pleased; one that would have astonished the Reynolds
children. She had seldom laughed heartily since little Rufus had cried
and told her she frightened him when she twisted her face so.
“Your hat is in the wood-box, and I'll find the butter in the twinkling
of an eye, though why you want it now is more than--My patience, Mr.
Croft, your hand is burned to a blister!”
“Don't mind me. Be good enough to look at the boy and tell me what ails
him; nothing else matters much.”
“I will with pleasure, but let me ease you a little first. Here's a rag
that will be just the thing,” and Lyddy, suiting the pretty action to
the mendacious worn, took a good handkerchief from her pocket and tore
it in three strips, after spreading it with tallow from a candle heated
over the stove. This done, she hound up the burned hand skillfully, and,
crossing the dining-room, disappeared within the little chamber door
beyond. She came out presently, and said half hesitatingly, “Would
you--mind going out in the orchard for an hour or so? You seem to be
rather in the way here, and I should like the place to myself, if you'll
excuse me for saying so. I'm ever so much more capable than Mrs. Buck;
won't you give me a trial, sir? Here's your violin and your hat. I'll
call you if you can help or advise me.”
“But I can't let a stranger come in and do my housework,” he objected.
“I can't, you know, though I appreciate your kindness all the same.”
“I am your nearest neighbor, and your only one, for that matter,” said
Lyddy firmly; “its nothing more than right that I should look after
that sick child, and I must do it. I haven't got a thing to do in my
own house. I am nothing but a poor lonely old maid, who's been used to
children all her life, and likes nothing better than to work over them.”
A calm settled upon Anthony's perturbed spirit, as he sat under the
apple-trees and heard Lyddy going to and fro in the cottage. “She isn't
any old maid,” he thought; “she doesn't step like one; she has soft
shoes and a springy walk. She must be a very handsome woman, with a hand
like that; and such a voice! I knew the moment she spoke that she didn't
belong in this village.”
As a matter of fact, his keen ear had caught the melody in Lyddy's
voice, a voice full of dignity, sweetness, and reserve power. His sense
of touch, too, had captured the beauty of her hand, and held it in
remembrance,--the soft palm, the fine skin, supple fingers, smooth
nails, and firm round wrist. These charms would never have been noted
by any seeing man in Edgewood, but they were revealed to Anthony Croft
while Lyddy, like the good Samaritan, bound up his wounds. It is these
saving stars that light the eternal darkness of the blind.
Lyddy thought she had met her Waterloo when, with arms akimbo, she gazed
about the Croft establishment, which was a scene of desolation for the
moment. Anthony's cousin from Bridgton was in the habit of visiting
him every two months for a solemn house-cleaning, and Mrs. Buck from
Pleasant River came every Saturday and Monday for baking and washing.
Between times Davy and his uncle did the housework together; and
although it was respectably done, there was no pink-and-white daintiness
about it, you may be sure.
Lyddy came out to the apple-trees in about an hour, laughing a little
nervously as she said, “I'm sorry to have taken a mean advantage of you,
Mr. Croft, but I know everything you've got in your house, and exactly
where it is. I couldn't help it, you see, when I was making things tidy.
It would do you good to see the boy. His room was too light, and the
flies were devouring him. I swept him and dusted him, put on clean
sheets and pillow slips, sponged him with bay rum, brushed his hair,
drove out the flies, and tacked a green curtain up to the window.
Fifteen minutes after he was sleeping like a kitten. He has a sore
throat and considerable fever. Could you--can you--at least, will you,
go up to my house on an errand?”
“Certainly I can. I know it inside and out as well as my own.”
“Very good. On the clock shelf in the sitting-room there is a bottle of
sweet spirits of nitre; it's the only bottle there, so you can't make
any mistake. It will help until the doctor comes. I wonder you didn't
send for him yesterday?”
“Davy wouldn't have him,” apologized his uncle.
“Wouldn't he?” said Lyddy with cheerful scorn. “He has you under pretty
good control, hasn't he? But children are unmerciful tyrants.”
“Couldn't you coax him into it before you go home?” asked Anthony in a
wheedling voice.
“I can try; but it isn't likely I can influence him, if you can't.
Still, if we both fail, I really don't see what 's to prevent our
sending for the doctor in spite of him. He is as weak as a baby,
you know, and can't sit up in bed: what could he do? I will risk the
consequences, if you will!”
There was a note of such amiable and winning sarcasm in all this, such
a cheery, invincible courage, such a friendly neighborliness and
cooperation, above all such a different tone from any he was accustomed
to hear in Edgewood, that Anthony Croft felt warmed through to the core.
As he walked quickly along the road, he conjured up a vision of autumn
beauty from the few hints nature gave even to her sightless ones on this
glorious morning,--the rustle of a few fallen leaves under his feet, the
clear wine of the air, the full rush of the swollen river, the whisking
of the squirrels in the boughs, the crunch of their teeth on the nuts,
the spicy odor of the apples lying under the trees. He missed his mother
that morning more than he had missed her for years. How neat she was,
how thrifty, how comfortable, and how comforting! His life was so dreary
and aimless; and was it the best or the right one for Davy, with his
talent and dawning ambition? Would it not be better to have Mrs.
Buck live with them altogether, instead of coming twice a week, as
heretofore? No; he shrank from that with a hopeless aversion born of
Saturday and Monday dinners in her company. He could hear her pour her
coffee into the saucer; hear the scraping of the cup on the rim, and
know that she was setting it sloppily down on the cloth. He could
remember her noisy drinking, the weight of her elbow on the table, the
creaking of her calico dress under the pressure of superabundant flesh.
Besides, she had tried to scrub his favorite violin with sapolio. No,
anything was better than Mrs. Buck as a constancy.
He took off his hat unconsciously as he entered Lyddy's sitting-room.
A gentle breeze blew one of the full red curtains towards him till it
fluttered about his shoulders like a frolicsome, teasing hand. There was
a sweet, pungent odor of pine boughs, a canary sang in the window, the
clock was trimmed with a blackberry vine; he knew the prickles, and
they called up to his mind the glowing tints he had loved so well. His
sensitive hand, that carried a divining rod in every finger-tip, met a
vase on the shelf, and, traveling upward, touched a full branch of alder
berries tied about with a ribbon. The ribbon would be red; the woman
who arranged this room would make no mistake; for in one morning Anthony
Croft had penetrated the secret of Lyddy's true personality, and in a
measure had sounded the shallows that led to the depths of her nature.
Lyddy went home at seven o'clock that night rather reluctantly. The
doctor had said Mr. Croft could sit up with the boy unless he grew much
worse, and there was no propriety in her staying longer unless there was
danger.
“You have been very good to me,” Anthony said gravely, as he shook her
hand at parting,--“very good.”
They stood together on the doorstep. A distant bell, called to evening
prayer-meeting; the restless murmur of the river and the whisper of
the wind in the pines broke the twilight stillness. The long, quiet day
together, part of it spent by the sick child's bedside, had brought the
two strangers curiously near to each other.
“The house hasn't seemed so sweet and fresh since my mother died,” he
went on, as he dropped her hand, “and I haven't had so many flowers and
green things in it since I lost my eyesight.”
“Was it long ago?”
“Ten years. Is that long?”
“Long to bear a burden.”
“I hope you know little of burden-bearing?”
“I know little else.”
“I might have guessed it from the alacrity with which you took up
Davy's and mine. You must be very happy to have the power to make
things straight and sunny and wholesome; to breathe your strength into
helplessness such as mine. I thank you, and I envy you. Good-night.”
Lyddy turned on her heel without a word; her mind was beyond and above
words. The sky seemed to have descended upon, enveloped her, caught her
up into its heaven, as she rose into unaccustomed heights of feeling,
like Elijah in his chariot of fire. She very happy! She with power,
power to make things straight and sunny and wholesome! She able to
breathe strength into helplessness, even a consecrated, Godsmitten
helplessness like his! She not only to be thanked, but envied!
Her house seemed strange to her that night. She went to bed in the dark,
dreading even the light of a candle; and before she turned down her
counterpane she flung herself on her knees, and poured out her soul in
a prayer that had been growing, waiting, and waited for, perhaps, for
years:--
“O Lord, I thank Thee for health and strength and life. I never could do
it before, but I thank Thee to-night for life on any terms. I thank
Thee for this home; for the chance of helping another human creature,
stricken like myself; for the privilege of ministering to a motherless
child. Make me to long only for the beauty of holiness, and to be
satisfied if I attain to it. Wash my soul pure and clean, and let that
be the only mirror in which I see my face. I have tried to be useful.
Forgive me if it always seemed so hard and dreary a life. Forgive me
if I am too happy because for one short day I have really helped in a
beautiful way, and found a friend who saw, because he was blind, the
real me underneath; the me that never was burned by the fire; the me
that isn't disfigured, unless my wicked discontent has done it; the me
that has lived on and on and on, starving to death for the friendship
and sympathy and love that come to other women. I have spent my forty
years in the wilderness, feeding on wrath and bitterness and tears.
Forgive me, Lord, and give me one more vision of the blessed land of
Canaan, even if I never dwell there.”