burden lightened, and into her own cave-like house and her little neat
bedroom.
"Lay him down jest as he is," she said to Jacob. "We won't try to shift
him to-day. Let him get over this."
Jacob stretched himself, after his load, put his hands in his pockets,
and made up his mouth into a soundless whistle.
"Yes! well!" said he. "Guess I better finish milkin'."
Mary put her patient "to-rights," and set some herb drink on the back of
the stove. Presently the little room was filled with the steamy odor of
a bitter healing, and she was on the battlefield where she loved to
conquer. In spite of her heaven-born instinct, she knew very little
about doctors and their ways of cure. Earth secrets were hers, some of
them inherited and some guessed at, and luckily she had never been
involved in those greater issues to be dealt with only by an exalted
science. Later in her life, she was to get acquainted with the young
doctor, down in Tiverton Street, and hear from him what things were
doing in his world. She was to learn that a hospital is not a slaughter
house incarnadined with writhing victims, as some of us had thought. She
was even to witness the magic of a great surgeon; though that was in her
old age, when her attitude toward medicine had become one of humble
thankfulness that, in all her daring, she had done no harm. To-day, she
thought she could set a bone or break up a fever; and there was no doubt
in her mind that, if other deeds were demanded of her, she should be led
in the one true way. So she sat down by her patient, and was watching
there, hopeful of moisture on his palm, when Mattie broke into the front
room, impetuous as the wind. Mary rose and stepped out to meet her,
shutting the door as she went. Passing the window, she saw the
selectmen, in the vehicle known as a long-reach, waiting at the gate.
"Hush, Mattie!" said she, "you'll wake him."
Mattie, in her ill-assorted respectabilities of dress, seemed to have
been involved but recently in some bacchanalian orgie. Her shawl was
dragged to one side, and her bonnet sat rakishly. She was intoxicated
with her own surprise.
"Mary Dunbar!" cried she, "I'd like to know the meanin' of all this
go-round!"
"There!" answered Mary, with a quietude like that of the sea at ebb, "I
can't stop to talk. I'll settle it with the selec'men. You come, too."
Mattie's eyes were seeking the bedroom. Leave her alone, and her feet
would follow. "You come along," repeated Mary, and Mattie came.
When the three selectmen saw Mary Dunbar stepping down the little slope,
they gathered about them all their official dignity. Ebenezer Tolman sat
a little straighter than usual, and uttered a portentous cough. Lothrop
Wilson, mild by nature, and rather prone to whiffling in times of
difficulty, frowned, with conscious effort; but that was only because he
knew, in his own soul, how loyally he loved the under-dog, let justice
go as it might. Then there was Eli Pike, occupying himself in pulling a
rein from beneath the horse's tail. These two hated warfare, and were
nervously conscious that, should they fail in firmness, Ebenezer would
deal with them. Mary went swiftly up to the wagon, and laid one hand
upon the wheel.
"I've got John Veasey in my house," she began rapidly. "I can't stop to
talk. He's pretty sick."
Ebenezer cleared his throat again.
"We understood his folks had put him on the town," said he.
Mattie made a little eager sound, and then stopped.
"He ain't on the town yet," said Mary. "He's in my bedroom. An' there
he's goin' to stay. I've took this job." She turned away from them,
erect in her decision, and went up the path. Eli Pike looked after her,
with an understanding sympathy. He was the man who had walked two
miles, one night, to shoot a fox, trapped, and left there helpless with
a broken leg. Lothrop gazed straight ahead, and said nothing.
"Look here!" called Ebenezer. "Mary! Mary! you look here!"
Mary turned about at the door. She was magnificent in her height and
dignity. Even Ebenezer felt almost ashamed of what he had to say; but
still the public purse must be regarded.
"You can't bring in a bill for services," he announced. "If he's on the
town, he'll have to go right into the Poorhouse with the rest."
Mary made no answer. She stood there a second, looking at him, and he
remarked to Eli, "I guess you might drive on."
But Mattie, following Mary up to the house, to talk it over, tried the
door in vain.
"My land!" she ejaculated, "if she ain't bolted it!" So the nurse and
her patient were left to themselves.
As to the rest of the story, I tell it as we hear it still in Tiverton.
At first, it was reckoned among the miracles; but when the new doctor
came, he explained that it accorded quite honestly with the course of
violated nature, and that, with some slight pruning here and there, the
case might figure in his books. What science would say about it, I do
not know; tradition was quite voluble.
It proved a very long time before Johnnie grew better, and in all those
days Mary Dunbar was a happy woman. She stepped about the house, setting
it in order, watching her charge, and making delicate possets for him to
take. When the "herb-man" came, she turned him away from the door with a
regal courtesy. It was not so much that she despised his knowledge, as
that he knew no more than she, and this was her patient. The young
doctor in Tiverton told her afterwards that she had done a dangerous
thing in not calling in some accredited wearer of the cloth; but Mary
did not think of that. She went on her way of innocence, delightfully
content. And all those days, Johnnie Veasey, as soon as he came out of
his fever, lay there and watched her with eyes full of a listless
wonder. He was still in that borderland of helplessness where the
unusual seems only a part of the new condition of things. Neighbors
called, and Mary refused them entrance, with a finality which admitted
no appeal.
"I've got sickness here," she would say, standing in the doorway
confronting them. "He's too weak to see anybody. I guess I won't ask you
in."
But one day, the minister appeared, his fat gray horse climbing
painfully up from the Gully Road. It was a warm afternoon; and as soon
as Mary saw him, she went out of her house, and closed the door behind
her. When he had tied his horse, he came toward her, brushing the dust
of the road from his irreproachable black. He was a new minister, and
very particular. Mary shook hands with him, and then seated herself on
the step.
"Won't you set down here?" she asked. "I've got sickness, an' I can't
have talkin' any nearer. I'm glad it's a warm day."
The minister looked at the step, and then at Mary. He felt as if his
dignity had been mildly assaulted, and he preferred to stand.
"I should like to offer prayer for the young man," he said. "I had hoped
to see him."
Mary smiled at him in that impersonal way of hers.
"I don't let anybody see him," said she. "I guess we shall all have to
pray by ourselves."
The minister was somewhat nettled. He was young enough to feel the
slight to his official position; and moreover, there were things which
his rigid young wife, primed by the wonder of the town, had enjoined
upon him to say. He flushed to the roots of his smooth brown hair.
"I suppose you know," said he, "that you're taking a very peculiar
stand."
Mary turned her head, to listen. She thought she heard her patient
breathing, and her mind was with him.
"You seem," said the minister, "to have taken in a man who has no claim
on you, instead of letting him stay with his people. If you are going to
marry him, let me advise you to do it now, and not wait for him to get
well. The opinion of the world is, in a measure, to be
respected,--though only in a measure."
Mary had risen to go in, but now she turned upon him.
"Married!" she repeated; and then again, in a hushed voice,--"married!"
"Yes," replied the minister testily, standing by his guns, "married."
Mary looked at him a moment, and then again she moved away. She glanced
round at him, as she entered the door, and said very gently, "I guess
you better go now. Good-day."
She closed the door, and the minister heard her bolt it. He told his
wife briefly, on reaching home, that there wasn't much chance to talk
with Mary, and perhaps the less there was said about it the better.
But as Mary sat down by her patient's bed, her face settled into
sadness, because she was thinking about the world. It had not,
heretofore, been one of her recognized planets; now that it had swung
her way, she marveled at it.
The very next night, while she was eating her supper in the kitchen, the
door opened, and Mattie walked in. Mattie had been washing late that
afternoon. She always washed at odd times, and often in dull weather
her undried clothes hung for days upon the line. She was "all beat out,"
for she had begun at three, and steamed through her work, to have an
early supper at five.
"There, Mary Dunbar!" cried she; "I said I'd do it, an' I have. There
ain't a neighbor got into this house for weeks, an' folks that want you
to go nussin' have been turned away. I says to Adam, this very
afternoon, 'I'll be whipped if I don't git in an' see what's goin' on!'
There's some will have it Johnnie's got well, an' drove away without
saying good-by to his own folks, an' some say he ain't likely to live,
an' there he lays without a last word to his own brother! As for the
childern, they've got an idea suthin' 's been done to uncle Johnnie, an'
you can't mention him but they cry."
Mary rose calmly and began clearing her table. "I guess I wouldn't
mention him, then," said she.
A muffled sound came from the bedroom. It might have been laughter. Then
there was a little crack, and Mary involuntarily looked at the lamp
chimney. She hurried into the bedroom, and stopped short at sight of her
patient, lying there in the light of the flickering fire. His face had
flushed, and his eyes were streaming.
"I laughed so," he said chokingly. "She always makes me. And something
snapped into place in my neck. I don't know what it was,--but _I can
move_!"
He held out his hand to her. Mary did not touch it; she only stood
looking at him with a wonderful gaze of pride and recognition, and yet a
strange timidity. She, too, flushed, and tears stood in her eyes.
"I'll go and tell Mattie," said she, turning toward the door. "You want
to see her?"
"For God's sake, no! not till I'm on my feet." He was still laughing. "I
guess I can get up to-morrow."
Mary went swiftly out, and shut the door behind her.
"I guess you better not see him to-night," she said. "You can come in
to-morrer. I shouldn't wonder if he'd be up then."
"I told Adam"--began Mattie, but Mary put a hand on her thin little arm,
and held it there.
"I'd rather talk to-morrer," said she gently. "Don't you come in before
'leven; but you come. Tell Adam to, if he wants. I guess your brother'll
be gettin' away before long." She opened the outer door, and Mattie had
no volition but to go. "It's a nice night, ain't it?" called Mary
cheerfully, after her. "Seems as if there never was so many stars."
Then she went back into the kitchen, and with the old thrift and
exactitude prepared her patient's supper. He was sitting upright,
bolstered against the head of the bed; and he looked like a great
mischievous boy, who had, in some way, gained a long-desired prize.
"See here!" he called. "Tell me I can't get up to-morrow? Why, I could
walk!"
They had a very merry time while he ate. Mary remembered that
afterwards, with a bruised wonder that laughter comes so cheap. Johnnie
talked incessantly, not any more of the wonders of the deep, but what he
meant to do when he got into the world again.
"How'd I come here in your house, any way?" he asked. "Mattie and Adam
put me here to get rid of me? Tell me all over again."
"I take care of folks, you know," answered Mary briefly. "I have, for
more'n two years. It's my business."
Johnnie looked at her a moment, crimsoning as he tried to speak.
"What you goin' to ask?"
Mary started. Then she answered steadily,--
"That's all right. I don't ask much, anyway; but when folks don't have
ready money, I never ask anything. There, you mustn't talk no more, even
if you are well. I've got to wash these dishes."
She left him to his meditations, and only once more that evening did
they speak together. When she came to the door, to say good-night, he
was flat among his pillows, listening for her.
"Say!" he called, "you come in. No, you needn't unless you want to; but
if ever I earn another cent of money, you'll see. And I ain't the only
friend you've got. There's a girl down in Southport would do anything in
the world for you, if she only knew."
Next morning, Johnnie walked weakly out of doors, despite his nurse's
cautions; for, not knowing what had happened to him, she was in a
wearying dark as to whether it might not happen again. After his
breakfast, he got a ride with Jacob Pease, who was going down Sudleigh
way, and Jacob came back without him. He bore a message, full of
gratitude, to Mary. At Sudleigh, Johnnie had telegraphed, to find out
whether the ship Firewing was still in port; and he had heard that he
must lose no time in joining her. He should never forget what Mary had
done for him. So Jacob said; but he was a man of tepid words, and
perhaps he remembered the message too coldly.
When Mattie came over, that afternoon, to make her call, she found the
house closed. Mary had gone on foot down into Tiverton, where old Mrs.
Lamson, who was sick with a fever, lay still in need. It was many weeks
before she came home again to Horn o' the Moon; and then Grandfather
Sinclair had broken his leg, so that interest in her miracle became
temporarily inactive.
Two years had gone when there came to her a little package, through the
Tiverton mail. It was tied with the greatest caution, and directed in a
straggling hand. Mary opened it just as she struck into the Gully Road,
on her way home. Inside was a little purse, and three gold pieces. She
paused there, under the branches, the purse in one hand, and the gold
lying within her other palm. For a long time she stood looking at them,
her face set in that patient sadness seen in those whose only holding is
the past. It was all over and done, and yet it had never been at all.
She thought a little about herself, and that was very rare, for Mary.
She was not the poorer for what her soul desired; she was infinitely the
richer, and she remembered the girl at Southport, not with the pang that
once afflicted her heart, but with a warm, outrushing sense of womanly
sympathy. If he had money, perhaps he could marry. Perhaps he was
married now. Coming out of the Gully Road, she opened the purse again,
and the sun struck richly upon the gold within. Mary smiled a little,
wanly, but still with a sense of the good, human kinship in life.
"I won't ever spend 'em," she said to herself. "I'll keep 'em to bury
me."
A STOLEN FESTIVAL
David Macy's house stood on the spur of a breezy upland at the end of a
road. The far-away neighbors, who lived on the main highway and could
see the passin', often thanked their stars that they had been called to
no such isolation; you might, said they, as well be set down in the
middle of a pastur'. They wondered how David's Letty could stand it. She
had been married 'most a year, and before that she was forever on the
go. But there! if David Macy had told her the sun rose in the west,
she'd ha' looked out for it there every identical mornin'.
The last proposition had some color in it; for Letty was very much in
love. To an impartial view, David was a stalwart fellow with clear gray
eyes and square shoulders, a prosperous yeoman of the fibre to which
America owes her being. But according to Letty he was something
superhuman in poise and charm. David had no conception of his heroic
responsibilities; nothing could have puzzled him more than to guess how
the ideal of him grew and strengthened in her maiden mind, and how her
after-worship exalted it into something thrilling and passionate, not
to be described even by a tongue more facile than hers. Letty had a
vivid nature, capable of responding to those delicate influences which
move to spiritual issues. There were throes of love within her, of
aspiration, of an ineffable delight in being. She never tried to
understand them, nor did she talk about them; but then, she never tried
to paint the sky or copy the robin's song. Life was very mysterious; but
one thing was quite as mysterious as another. She did sometimes brood
for a moment over the troubled sense that, in some fashion, she spoke in
another key from "other folks," who did not appear to know that joy is
not altogether joy, but three-quarters pain, and who had never learned
how it brings its own aching sense of incompleteness; but that only
seemed to her a part of the general wonder of things. There had been one
strange May morning in her life when she went with her husband into the
woods, to hunt up a wild steer. She knew every foot of the place, and
yet one turn of the path brought them into the heart of a picture
thrillingly new with the unfamiliarity of pure and living beauty. The
evergreens enfolded them in a palpable dusk; but entrancingly near,
shimmering under a sunny gleam, stood a company of birches in their
first spring wear. They were trembling, not so much under the breeze as
from the hurrying rhythm of the year. Their green was vivid enough to
lave the vision in light; and Letty looked beyond it to a brighter vista
still. There, in an opening, lay a bank of violets, springing in the
sun. Their blue was a challenge to the skyey blue above; it pierced the
sight, awaking new longings and strange memories. It seemed to Letty as
if some invisible finger touched her on the heart and made her pause.
Then David turned, smiling kindly upon her, and she ran to him with a
little cry, and put her arms about his neck.
"What is it?" he asked, stroking her hair with a gentle hand. "What is
it, little child?"
"Oh, it's nothin'!" said Letty chokingly. "It's only--I like you so!"
The halting thought had no purple wherein to clothe itself; but it meant
as much as if she had read the poets until great words had become
familiar, and she could say "love." He was the spring day, the sun, the
blue of the sky, the quiver of leaves; and she felt it, and had a pain
at her heart.
Now, on an autumn morning, David was standing within the great space in
front of the barn, greasing the wheels preliminary to a drive to market;
and Letty stood beside him, bareheaded, her breakfast dishes forgotten.
She was a round thing, with quick movements not ordinarily belonging to
one so plump; her black hair was short, and curled roughly, and there
were freckles on her little snub nose. David looked up at her red cheeks
and the merry shine of her eyes, and smiled upon her.
"You look pretty nice this mornin'," he remarked.
Letty gave a little dancing step and laughed. The sun was bright; there
was a purple haze over the hills, and the nearer woods were yellow. The
world was a jewel newly set for her.
"I _am_ nice!" said she. "David, do you know our anniversary's comin'
on? It's 'most a year since we were married,--a year the fifteenth."
David loosened the last wheel, and rose to look at her.
"Sho!" said he, with great interest. "Is that so? Well, 't was a good
bargain. Best trade I ever made in _my_ life!"
"And we've got to celebrate," said Letty masterfully. "I'll tell you
how. I've had it all planned for a month. We'll get up at four, have our
breakfast, ride over to Star Pond, and picnic all day long. We'll take a
boat and go out rowin', and we'll eat our dinner on the water!"
David smiled back at her, and then, with a sudden recollection, pursed
his lips.
"I'm awful sorry, Letty," he said honestly, "but I've got to go over to
Long Pastur' an' do that fencin', or I can't put the cattle in there
before we turn 'em into the shack. You know that fence was all done up
in the spring, but that cussed breachy cow o' Tolman's hooked it down;
an' if I wait for him to do it--well, you know what he is!"
"Oh, you can put off your fencin'!" cried Letty. "Only one day! Oh, you
can!"
"I could 'most any other time," said David, with reason, "but here it is
'most Saturday, an' next week the thrashin'-machine's comin'. I'm awful
sorry, Letty. I am, honest!"
Letty turned half round like a troubled child, and began grinding one
heel into the turf. She was conscious of an odd mortification. It was
not, said her heart, that the thing itself was so dear to her; it was
only that David ought to want immeasurably to do it. She always put
great stress upon the visible signs of an invisible bond, and she would
be long in getting over her demand for the unreason of love.
David threw down the monkey-wrench, and put an arm about her waist.
"Come, now, you don't care, do you?" he asked lovingly. "One day's the
same as another, now ain't it?"
"Is it?" said Letty, a smile running over her face and into her wet
eyes. "Well, then, le's have Fourth o' July fireworks next Sunday
mornin'!"
David looked a little hurt; but that was only because he was puzzled.
His sense of humor wore a different complexion from Letty's. He liked a
joke, and he could tell a good story, but they must lie within the logic
of fun. Letty could put her own interpretation on her griefs, and twist
them into shapes calculated to send her into hysterical mirth.
"You see," said David soothingly, "we're goin' to be together as long as
we live. It ain't as if we'd got to rake an' scrape an' plan to git a
minute alone, as it used to be, now is it? An' after the fencin' 's
done, an' the thrashin', an' we've got nothin' on our minds, we'll take
both horses an' go to Star Pond. Come, now! Be a good girl!"
The world seemed very quiet because Letty was holding silence, and he
looked anxiously down at the top of her head. Then she relented a little
and turned her face up to his--her rebellious eyes and unsteady mouth.
But meeting the loving honesty of his look, her heart gave a great bound
of allegiance, and she laughed aloud.
"There!" she said. "Have it so. I won't say another word. _I_ don't
care!"
These were David's unconscious victories, born, not of his strength or
tyranny, but out of the woman's maternal comprehension, her lavish
concession of all the small things of life to the one great code. She
had taken him for granted, and thenceforth judged him by the intention
and not the act.
David was bending to kiss her, but he stopped midway, and his arm fell.
"There's Debby Low," said he. "By jinks! I ain't more'n half a man when
she's round, she makes me feel so sheepish. I guess it's that eye o'
her'n. It goes through ye like a needle."
Letty laughed light-heartedly, and looked down the path across the lot.
Debby, a little, bent old woman, was toiling slowly along, a large
carpet-bag swinging from one hand. Letty drew a long breath and tried to
feel resigned.
"She's got on her black alpaca," said she. "She's comin' to spend the
day!"
David answered her look with one of commiseration, and, gathering up his
wrench and oil, "put for" the barn.
"I'd stay, if I could do any good," he said hastily, "but I can't. I
might as well stan' from under."
Debby threw her empty carpet-bag over the stone wall, and followed it,
clambering slowly and painfully. Her large feet were clad in congress
boots; and when she had alighted, she regarded them with deep affection,
and slowly wiped them upon either ankle, a stork-like process at which
David, safe in the barn, could afford to smile.
"If it don't rain soon," she called fretfully, "I guess you'll find
yourselves alone an' forsaken, like pelicans in the wilderness. Anybody
must want to see ye to traipse up through that lot as I've been doin',
an' git their best clo'es all over dirt."
"You could ha' come in the road," said Letty, smiling. Letty had a very
sweet temper, and she had early learned that it takes all sorts o' folks
to make a world. It was a part of her leisurely and generous scheme of
life to live and let live.
"Ain't the road dustier 'n the path?" inquired Debby contradictorily.
"My stars! I guess 't is. Well, now, what do you s'pose brought me up
here this mornin'?"
Letty's eyes involuntarily sought the bag, whose concave sides flapped
hungrily together; but she told her lie with cheerfulness. "I don't
know."