THE DAYS WHICH FOLLOWED.
Miss Hansford had sat below listening to the splashing of water
overhead, hoping Elithe would not get much on the floor, as it might
come through into the kitchen, and that she would not leave the soap in
the tub when she was through with her bath. She heard her next in the
white room moving about, and hoped she would not slat her things around,
but hang them in the closet.
“I couldn’t bear to see that room all littered up, though Elithe’s
litter wouldn’t be so bad as some. I begin to like the girl and feel
like a mother already,” she thought, as she listened to the steps
overhead until they ceased, and she waited for Elithe to come down.
As she did not appear she finally decided that she was resting and she
would not disturb her until supper was ready. Never had she taken more
pains with a meal than she did that afternoon. The rolls were light; the
strawberries and cream were fresh, while the custards in the blue china
cups were the crowning of the feast prepared for Elithe. Why didn’t she
come down, Miss Hansford wondered as the time slipped by and she began
herself to feel the pangs of hunger.
“Elithe!” she called at last at the foot of the stairs. “Elithe!” but
Elithe was wrapped in oblivion to everything around her, and it would
take more than a call to waken her. “I b’lieve she’s asleep,” Miss
Hansford said, going up the stairs and glancing first into the bath
closet. Everything was right there. The bar of soap was in the saucer on
the wooden chair and the towels on the rack. Turning next to the white
room, she stood for a moment in the door which jutted back a little into
the hall or entry so that she could not at once see the bed and the
young girl sleeping there. She could only see the confusion, which
filled her with dismay. Elithe was as orderly, and more so, perhaps,
than most girls. _Slatting_ was not her custom, and she had meant to put
everything away after finishing her toilet. But sleep had overtaken her,
and the whole room was bearing frightful evidence against the Potter
blood. Her trunk was open, with various articles in a huddle, as she had
left them when hunting for her linen. Her best dress, her second best
and her gingham were on exhibition; a part of the bathing suit hung over
one side of the trunk and a white apron on the other. On the floor at
intervals lay her traveling clothes, boots and stockings and skirts,
which she had left where she dropped them. Miss Hansford stepped over
some of them and kicked others aside as she advanced into the room with
stern disapproval on her face.
“I’ll give up if she hasn’t slatted in good earnest. Her mother all
over!” she thought, just as her eye fell upon the figure by the bedside.
Elithe’s head was on one side, disclosing a part of her face, which was
very pale, except for a red spot on her cheek. Through the window a bar
of sunshine fell across her hair like a halo bringing out its golden
tints and reminding Miss Hansford of a picture she once saw of the
Virgin when a girl of fifteen.
“Fell asleep saying her prayers, poor, tired child!” Miss Hansford said
to herself, all her discomposure at the _slatted_ room vanishing as she
picked up the soiled articles and put them away. Then she awoke Elithe,
who started to her feet suddenly, but sank back quickly upon the bed.
She was not hungry, she said. She could not eat if she went down. All
she wanted was to sleep, and her head fell heavily upon her breast. Miss
Hansford told her of the strawberries and cream and the rolls and the
custards, dwelling at length upon the latter and the cups they were
baked in. Elithe could surely eat a custard if nothing else.
“No, auntie, not even a custard to-night, if it were baked in a cup five
hundred years old,” Elithe said. “I can’t eat anything. I’ve had too
much already. That sandwich was dreadful.”
A moment later she parted company with the stale sandwich eaten in
Springfield and the lemonade taken on the boat. With her stomach thus
relieved, she felt better, but begged so hard to be left alone that her
aunt did not urge her further.
“Hop right into bed, and I’ll cover you up. It gets chilly here at
night,” she said, turning back the sheet and shaking up the pillow.
Elithe needed no second bidding, and before her aunt left the room she
was again sleeping soundly. Miss Hansford ate her supper alone,
lamenting over the custards, which stood untouched in the little cups
until Paul came whistling up the walk. He was on his way to see Clarice,
and had called to enquire for Elithe. She had seemed so tired on the
boat and on the wharf that her face had haunted him ever since, and he
wished to know if she were rested.
“Hello, taking your supper alone?” he said, as he saw Miss Hansford
sitting in solitary state with what he knew to be her _best things_.
She welcomed him warmly, thanked him for his kindness to Elithe, who,
she told him, was dead beat and had fallen asleep saying her prayers. “I
couldn’t get her to eat a thing,—not even a custard, and I made ’em for
her. I never touch ’em. There’s four of ’em, and I’m afraid they’ll sour
unless you help me out,” she said, offering him a little blue cup.
He had just finished his dinner, but he expressed himself willing to
help in the emergency, and ate the two custards intended for Elithe. He
was very solicitous about her, hoping she would be quite well in the
morning and saying he would come round in his cart and take her for a
drive. Then he shook himself down,—a habit he had,—straightened his hat
and said he must go and see Clarice.
“Elithe saw her on the boat, I b’lieve. Tell her to call,” Miss Hansford
said, jerking the last words out with an effort, and hating herself for
caring whether Clarice called or not.
“Of course she’ll call. We’ll come together,” Paul assured her, as he
ran down the steps and hurried off to make his peace with the young lady
who, he felt pretty sure, was aggrieved because he had sent Elithe home
in his carriage instead of herself.
Three or four times before her usual hour for retiring, Miss Hansford
went up to Elithe’s room, finding her always in the same position, her
head on one side, her hands crossed upon her bosom and her face very
white, except for the spots on her cheeks, which increased in size until
they spread down to her neck. Her hands were hot and her head was hot,
but she appeared to be sleeping quietly.
“Just tired, I guess. I’m not going to worry,” Miss Hansford thought.
But she did worry, and as soon as the first streak of dawn appeared she
was dressed and in Elithe’s room again. To all appearances there had not
been the slightest change of position during the night. The hands were
folded just the same, the head was turned on the pillow, and the bed
clothes exactly as Miss Hansford had left them.
“Elithe!” she said. “Elithe, wake up!”
But Elithe made no answer except to open her eyes for an instant and
close them again wearily. Her face was crimson now, and the perspiration
stood under her hair, which, with the dampness, curled closely on her
forehead.
Miss Hansford had never been ill herself, and did not believe much in
the ailments of other people. All they had to do was to make an effort
and brace up. But Elithe baffled her. She could not get her to brace up,
or wake up either, although she shook her and called her loudly by name.
“I hate a doctor like pisen, but I’ve got to have one,” she decided, and
the first man who passed the house was sent in quest of one.
He was a young practitioner, new in the place, and very full of his own
importance as an M. D. After asking a few questions and holding Elithe’s
hand longer than Miss Hansford thought there was any need of he began to
diagnose the case with so many long words that she lost her temper and
exclaimed: “For the land’s sake, quit the encyclopædia and talk common
sense. What’s the matter with her?”
“Nervous exhaustion, amounting almost to nervous prostration,
complicated with fever and some slight gastric derangement of the
stomach, brought on by too long fasting and eating improper food.
Nothing dangerous, I assure you. Nothing but what will yield readily to
treatment,” was the doctor’s reply, as he stirred his two glasses of
water and told how often to give it.
“What’s your price?” Miss Hansford asked, with her characteristic habit
of having things “on the square.”
The doctor looked at her a moment before he replied: “Two dollars a
visit.” Then he went away, saying he would come again in the afternoon.
Miss Hansford did not believe in homeopathy at all, and sniffed a good
deal at the water in the tumblers and the price she was to pay for it.
But she gave it religiously and watched Elithe very closely until the
doctor came again. If the case was not dangerous it was certainly
puzzling to him. For a few days Elithe lay in a kind of stupor, seldom
moving so much as her hand or opening her eyes. The doctor with the big
words and little pills was dismissed, and one called in his place from
Still Haven, a second from the Basin, and a third from a hotel. One was
an allopathist, another an eclectic, the third a Christian Scientist,
and all fools, Miss Hansford said, dismissing them one after another as
she had the homeopathist, and taking the case in her own hands. If
nothing ailed Elithe but nervous exhaustion, she’d get over it without
doctors, she said.
Those were very anxious days which followed when Miss Hansford stayed by
Elithe night and day, except when her duties called her below. She
washed Elithe’s clothes herself, finding in the pocket of the flannel
dress the box with the diamond ring in it. Once she thought to open it,
but a sense of honor forbade, and she put it carefully away in the trunk
from which she removed Elithe’s dresses, recognizing Lucy Potter’s
wedding gown and understanding in part the sacrifice the mother had made
for the daughter.
All of Miss Hansford’s acquaintances soon knew of the girl, who had come
so far and was lying unconscious and helpless, and everybody was kind,
especially the Ralstons. Two or three times a day Paul came to inquire
how she was, bringing fruit and flowers and asking if there was anything
he could do. Prayers were offered for her in the Tabernacle and the
Methodist church and the Episcopal. The last was at Paul’s request, and
his Amen was so fervent and loud that Clarice, who was sitting at some
distance from him, heard it distinctly above the others, and shrugged
her shoulders impatiently.
“Who was the person prayed for this morning? Some of your relations?”
she asked Paul, as they were leaving the church together.
“Why, Miss Hansford,” he replied, in some surprise.
“Miss Hansford!” she repeated. “She must have been taken suddenly. I saw
her on the street last night.”
“I mean Elithe, her niece. Don’t you know she has been very ill ever
since she reached here. I have certainly mentioned it to you,” Paul
said.
Clarice did know perfectly well of Elithe’s illness, and how often Paul
was at the cottage, and of the fruit and flowers sent there daily, and
was exceedingly annoyed. She would scorn to acknowledge it, but she was
jealous of Elithe and angry with Paul for his interest in her and his
democratic ideas generally. It would be her first duty to change some of
them when she was his wife, but for the present she contented herself
with occasional stings, which he either did not or would not understand.
He lunched with her on the Sunday when prayers were said for Elithe, and
then sat with her for an hour or two on the piazza, listening to the
band and talking as young people will talk when in love with each other.
And Paul was very much in love. Clarice’s pride and hauteur, which he
could not appreciate, he looked upon as something she would overcome in
time. To him she was always gentle and sweet, and, dazzled by the
glamour of her beauty, he thought himself the most fortunate of men in
having won her. In Elithe he felt a great interest, and after leaving
Clarice that Sunday afternoon, he went to Miss Hansford’s cottage to
inquire for her.
“Better since I sent the doctors adrift. Come up and see for yourself.
She won’t know you,” Miss Hansford continued, as Paul hesitated. “She
lies just the same, but seems to me there’s a change.”
The room was partly in shadow, but Paul could see the face upon the
pillow, thinner and whiter than when he last saw it, but exceedingly
lovely, with a faint flush where the fever stains had been and the damp
rings of hair about the forehead. Her hands were folded and she seemed
to be sleeping quietly.
“Poor little girl! She’s had a hard time,” Paul said aloud, as he stood
looking at her.
At the sound of his voice her eyes opened suddenly, and rested upon him,
with a questioning look in them. “The lemonade was so good. I wish I had
some more. I am very thirsty,” she said.
Evidently she thought herself on the hot boat taking the lemonade Paul
had brought her. With a cry of delight, Miss Hansford exclaimed: “Thank
God! It’s the first word she has spoken. She shall have the lemonade if
it kills her!”
She was down the stairs in a moment, leaving Paul alone and standing
awkwardly in the middle of the room, wondering if he, too, ought not to
go. Elithe decided for him. Lifting up her hand and reaching it towards
him she said: “You are Mr. Ralston and I am Elithe. Don’t you remember?”
She was introducing herself to him, and he took her hand and kept it
while he replied: “Yes, I am Paul Ralston, and you are Elithe. I am glad
you are better. You have been very ill.”
“Ill!” Elithe repeated, with a startled look in her eyes, which went
rapidly around the room, taking in all its appointments and their
meaning. “I didn’t know I was ill. How long is it, and where is auntie?”
“Here, child,” and Miss Hansford appeared with the lemonade, finding
Paul holding Elithe’s hand in one of his and smoothing her hair with the
other.
He was a natural nurse, and she looked and seemed so like a child in her
helplessness that he caressed her as if she were one, and held the glass
to her lips while she drank eagerly. She was decidedly better, but a
good deal bewildered with regard to her illness, which she could not
understand.
“Don’t try to now. We’ll talk of it by and by when you are stronger,”
Paul said, as he bade her good-bye and went below, followed by Miss
Hansford.
During the days and nights she had watched by Elithe the little girl had
crept a long ways into her heart, melting the frost of years and
awakening in her all the instincts of loving motherhood.
“I never b’lieved I could care for anybody as I do for her,” she said to
Paul. “Why, only think that I, an old maid of sixty-five, who never had
an offer, and only now and then a beau home from spellin’ school or
singin’ school, should actually feel as if I was several mothers. I
don’t see through it.”
Paul laughed merrily at her idea of several mothers, and then went to
telegraph the glad news to Samona that Elithe was better. This was his
third telegram, for after he knew Miss Hansford’s letter telling of
Elithe’s illness must have reached there, he had sent a message every
day, knowing how anxious the family would be. Miss Hansford had tried
not to alarm them, and had only said Elithe was worn out with the
journey and sick in bed from its effects. The telegrams, “Is about the
same,” or “No worse,” frightened them more than the letter, and if the
prayers in Oak City for her recovery were fervent and heartfelt, they
were doubly so in Samona and at Deep Gulch.
“If I ever prayed in my life I’d do so now,” one of the toughest of the
miners said, wiping his eyes with his grimy hand. “I should s’pose
Stokes, who has been through the mill, would go at it. Hallo, Stokes!
Ain’t there a prayer for the sick in that book of yourn you read so
much?” he called to Stokes, coming slowly from his cabin.
Stokes nodded, and the rough continued: “Well, you’d better say it for
Miss Elithe, and lively, too. No time to fool round now.”
“I am saying it all the time,” was Stokes’s reply, as he passed on to
his work.
Every day a boy was sent to Samona for news, and when at last Paul’s
telegram, “She is better,” flashed across the continent and was carried
to the camp a loud huzza went up from the miners, the tough leading the
yell and getting drunker that night than he had ever been before in his
life by way of celebrating Elithe’s recovery. Mr. Pennington did not
return from Helena for a week or more, consequently he knew nothing of
Elithe’s illness until the worst was over and Paul’s telegrams came
every day, signed sometimes Paul Ralston and sometimes P. R.
“He is awful good to take so much interest in Elithe, isn’t he?” Rob
said to Mr. Pennington, when communicating the last telegram to him. “I
wonder who he is.”
There was no reply, but Mr. Pennington’s face was dark, as he turned
away with something akin to jealousy stirring in his heart and a half
resolve to start at once for Oak City and assert his claim to Elithe
against all the world.