If you drive along Tiverton Street, and then turn to the left, down the
Gully Road, you journey, for the space of a mile or so, through a
bewildering succession of damp greenery, with noisy brooks singing
songs below you, on either side, and the treetops on the level with
your horse's feet. Few among the older inhabitants ever take this
drive, save from necessity, because it is conceded that the dampness
there is enough, even in summer, to "give you your death o' cold;" and
as for the young, to them the place wears an eerie look, with its
miniature suggestion of impassable gulfs and roaring torrents. Yet no
youth reaches his majority without exploring the Gully. He who goes
alone is the more a hero; but even he had best leave two or three
trusty comrades reasonably near, not only to listen, should he call,
but to stand his witnesses when he afterwards declares where he has
been. It is a fearsome thing to explore that lower stratum of this
round world, so close to the rushing brook that it drowns your
thoughts, though not your apprehensions, and to go slipping about over
wet boulders and among dripping ferns; but your fears are fears of the
spirit. They are inherited qualms. You shiver because your grandfathers
and fathers and uncles have shivered there before you. If you are very
brave indeed, and naught but the topmost round of destiny will content
you, possibly you penetrate still further into green abysses, and come
upon the pool where, tradition says, an ancient trout has his
impregnable habitation. Apparently, nobody questions that the life of a
trout may be indefinitely prolonged, under the proper conditions of a
retired dusk; and the same fish that served our grandfathers for a
legend now enlivens our childish days. When you meet a youngster,
ostentatiously setting forth for the Gully Road, with bait-box and
pole, you need not ask where he is going; though if you have any human
sympathy in the pride of life, you will not deny him his answer:--
"Down to have a try for the old trout!"
The pool has been still for many years. Not within the memory of aged
men has the trout turned fin or flashed a speckled side; but he is to
this day an historical present. He has lived, and therefore he lives
always.
Those who do not pause upon the Gully Road, but keep straight on into
the open, will come into the old highway leading up and up to Horn o'
the Moon. It is an unshaded, gravelly track, pointing duly up-hill for
three long miles; and it has become a sober way to most of us, in this
generation: for we never take it unless we go on the solemn errand of
getting Mary Dunbar, that famous nurse, to care for our sick or dead.
There is a tradition that a summer visitor once hired a "shay," and
drove, all by herself, up to Horn o' the Moon, drawn on by the elusive
splendor of its name. But she met such a dissuading flood of comment by
the way as to startle her into the state of mind commonly associated
with the Gully Road. Farmers, haying in the field, came forward, to
lean on the fence, and call excitedly,--
"Where ye goin'?"
"Horn o' the Moon," replied she, having learned in Tiverton the value
of succinct replies.
"Who's sick?"
"Nobody."
"Got any folks up there?"
"No. Going to see the place."
The effect of this varied. Some looked in amazement; one ventured to
say, "Well, that's the beater!" and another dropped into the cabalistic
remark which cannot be defined, but which has its due significance,
"Well, you _must_ be sent for!" The result of all this running
commentary was such that, when the visitor reached the top of the hill
where Horn o' the Moon lies, encircled by other lesser heights, she was
stricken by its exceeding desolation, and had no heart to cast more
than a glance at the noble view below. She turned her horse, and
trotted, recklessly and with many stumblings, down again into friendly
Tiverton.
Horn o' the Moon is unique in its melancholy. It has so few trees, and
those of so meagre and wind-swept a nature, that it might as well be
entirely bald. No apples grow there; and in the autumn, the inhabitants
make a concerted sally down into Tiverton Street, to purchase their
winter stock, such of them as can afford it. The poorer folk--and they
are all poor enough--buy windfalls, and string them to dry; and so
common is dried-apple-pie among them that, when a Tivertonian finds
this makeshift appearing too frequently on his table, he has only to
remark, "I should think this was Horn o' the Moon!" and it disappears,
to return no more until the slur is somewhat outworn.
There is very little grass at the top of the lonely height, and that of
a husky, whispering sort, in thin ribbons that flutter low little songs
in the breeze. They never cease; for, at Horn o' the Moon, there is
always a wind blowing, differing in quality with the season. Sometimes
it is a sighing wind from other heights, happier in that they are sweet
with firs. Sometimes it is exasperating enough to make the March
breezes below seem tender; then it tosses about in snatching gusts,
buffeting, and slapping, and excoriating him who stands in its way.
Somehow, all the peculiarities of Horn o' the Moon seem referable, in a
mysterious fashion, to the wind. The people speak in high, strenuous
voices, striving to hold their own against its wicked strength. Most of
them are deaf. Is that because the air beats ceaselessly against the
porches of their ears? They are a stunted race; for they have grown
into the habit of holding the head low, and plunging forward against
that battling element. Even the fowl at Horn o' the Moon are not of the
ordinary sort. Their feathers grow the wrong way, standing up in a
ragged and disorderly fashion; and they, too, have the effect of having
been blown about and disarranged, until nature yielded, and agreed to
their permanent roughness.
Moreover, all the people are old or middle-aged; and possibly that is
why, again, the settlement is so desolate. It is a disgrace for us
below to marry with Horn o' the Mooners, though they are a sober folk;
and now it happens that everybody up there is the cousin of everybody
else. The race is dying out, we say, as if we considered it a distinct
species; and we agree that it would have been wiped away long ago, by
weight of its own eccentricity, had not Mary Dunbar been the making of
it. She is the one righteous among many. She is the good nurse whom we
all go to seek, in our times of trouble, and she perpetually saves her
city from the odium of the world.
Mary was born in Tiverton Street. We are glad to remember that, we who
condemn by the wholesale, and are assured that no good can come out of
Nazareth. When she was a girl of eighteen, her father and mother died;
and she fell into a state of spiritual exaltation, wherein she dreamed
dreams, and had periods of retirement within her house, communing with
other intelligences. We said Mary had lost her mind; but that was
difficult to believe, since no more wholesome type of womanhood had
ever walked our streets. She was very tall, built on the lines of a
beauty transcending our meagre strain. Nobody approved of those broad
shoulders and magnificent arms. We said it was a shame for any girl to
be so overgrown; yet our eyes followed her, delighted by the harmony of
line and action. Then we whispered that she was as big as a moose, and
that, if we had such arms, we never'd go out without a shawl. Her
"mittins" must be wide enough for any man!
Mary did everything perfectly. She walked as if she went to meet the
morning, and must salute it worthily. She carried a weight as a goddess
might bear the infant Bacchus; and her small head, poised upon that
round throat, wore the crown of simplicity, and not of pride. But we
only told how strong she was, and how much she could lift. We loved
Mary, but sensibility had to shrink from those great proportions and
that elemental strength.
One snowy morning, Mary's spiritual vision called her out of our midst,
to which she never came back save as we needed her. The world was very
white that day, when she rose, in her still house, dressed herself
hastily, and roused a neighbor, begging him to harness, and drive her
up to Horn o' the Moon. Folks were sick there, with nobody to take care
of them. The neighbor reasoned, and then refused, as one might deny a
person, however beloved, who lives by the intuitions of an unseen
world. Mary went home again, and, as he believed, to stay. But she had
not hesitated in her allegiance to the heavenly voice. Somehow, through
the blinding snow and unbroken road, she ploughed her way up to Horn o'
the Moon, where she found an epidemic of diphtheria; and there she
stayed. We marveled over her guessing how keenly she was needed; but
since she never explained, it began to be noised abroad that some
wandering peddler told her. That accounted for everything; and Mary had
no time for talk. She was too busy, watching with the sick, and going
about from house to house, cooking delicate gruels and broiling chicken
for those who were getting well. It is said that she even did the barn
work, and milked the cows, during that tragic time. We were not
surprised. Mary was a great worker, and she was fond of "creatur's."
Whether she came to care for these stolid people on the height, or
whether the vision counseled her, Mary gave up her house in the
village, and bought a little old dwelling under an overhanging
hillside, at Horn o' the Moon. It was a nest built into the rock, its
back sitting snugly there. The dark came down upon it quickly. In
winter, the sun was gone from the little parlor as early as three
o'clock; but Mary did not mind. That house was her temporary shell; she
only slept in it in the intervals of hurrying away, with blessed feet,
to tend the sick, and hold the dying in untiring arms. I shall never
forget how, one morning, I saw her come out of the door, and stand
silent, looking toward the rosy east. There was the dawn, and there was
she, its priestess, while all around her slept. I should not have been
surprised had her lips, parted already in a mysterious smile, opened
still further in a prophetic chanting to the sun. But Mary saw me, and
the alert, answering look of one who is a messenger flashed swiftly
over her face. She advanced like the leader of a triumphal procession.
"Anybody want me?" she called. "I'll get my bunnit."
It was when she was twenty, and not more than settled in the little
house at Horn o' the Moon, that her story came to her. The Veaseys were
her neighbors, perhaps five doors away; and one summer morning, Johnnie
Veasey came home from sea. He brought no money, no coral from foreign
parts, nor news of grapes in Eshcol. He simply came empty-handed, as he
always did, bearing only, to vouch for his wanderings, a tanned face,
and the bright, red-brown eyes that had surely looked on things we
never saw. Adam Veasey, his brother; had been paralyzed for years. He
sat all day in the chimney corner, looking at his shaking hands, and
telling how wide a swathe he could cut before he was afflicted. Mattie,
Adam's wife, had long dealt with the problem of an unsupported
existence. She had turned into a flitting little creature with eager
eyes, who made it her business to prey upon a more prosperous world.
Mattie never went about without a large extra pocket attached to her
waist; into this, she could slip a few carrots, a couple of doughnuts,
or even a loaf of bread. She laid a lenient tax upon the neighbors and
the town below. Was there a frying of doughnuts at Horn o' the Moon? No
sooner had the odor risen upon the air, than Mattie stood on the spot,
dumbly insistent on her toll. Her very clothes smelled of food; and it
was said that, in fly-time, it was a sight to see her walk abroad,
because of the hordes of insects settling here and there on her
odoriferous gown. When Johnnie Veasey appeared, Mattie's soul rose in
arms. Their golden chance had come at last.
"You got paid off?" she asked him, three minutes after his arrival, and
Johnnie owned, with the cheerfulness of those rich only in hope, that
he did get paid, and lost it all, the first night on shore. He got into
the wrong boarding-house, he said. It was the old number, but new
folks.
Mattie acquiesced, with a sigh. He would make his visit and go again,
and, that time, perhaps fortune might attend him.. So she went over to
old Mrs. Hardy's, to borrow a "riz loaf," and the wanderer was feasted,
according to her little best.
Johnnie stayed, and Horn o' the Moon roused itself, finding that he had
brought the antipodes with him. He was the teller of tales. He
described what he had seen, and then, by easy transitions, what others
had known and he had only heard, until the intelligence of these
stunted, wind-blown creatures, on their island hill, took fire; and
every man vowed he wished he had gone to sea, before it was too late,
or even to California, when the gold craze was on. Johnnie had the
tongue of the improvisator, and he loved a listener. He liked to sit
out on a log, in the sparse shadow of the one little grove the hill
possessed, and, with the whispering leaves above him tattling
uncomprehended sayings brought them by the wind, gather the old men
about him, and talk them blind. As he sat there, Mary came walking
swiftly by, a basket in her hand. Johnnie came bolt upright, and took
off his cap. He looked amazingly young and fine, and Mary blushed as
she went by.
"Who's that?" asked Johnnie of the village fathers.
"That's only Mary Dunbar. Guess you ain't been here sence she moved
up."
Johnnie watched her walking away, for the rhythm of her motion
attracted him. He did not think her pretty; no one ever thought that.
It happened, then, that he spent two or three evenings at the Hardys',
where Mary went, every night, to rub grandmother and put her to bed;
and while she sat there in the darkened room, soothing the old woman
for her dreary vigil, she heard his golden tales of people in strange
lands. It seemed very wonderful to Mary. She had not dreamed there were
such lands in all the world; and when she hurried home, it was to hunt
out her old geography, and read it until after midnight. She followed
rivers to their sources, and dwelt upon mountains with amazing names.
She was seeing the earth and its fullness, and her heart beat fast.
Next day she went away for a long case, giving only one little sigh in
the going, to the certainty that, when she came back, Johnnie Veasey
would be off on another voyage to lands beyond the sea. Mary was not of
the sort who cry for the moon just because they have seen it. She had
simply begun to read a fairy tale, and somebody had taken it away from
her and put it high on the shelf. But on the very first morning after
her return, when she rose early, longing for the blissful air of her
own bleak solitude, Mattie Veasey stood there at her door. Mary had but
one first question for every comer:--
"Anybody sick?"
"You let me step in," answered Mattie, a determined foot on the sill.
"I want to tell you how things stand."
It was evident that Mattie was going on a journey. She was an
exposition of the domestic resources of Horn o' the Moon. Her dress
came to the tops of her boots. It was the plaid belonging to Stella
Hardy, who had died in her teens. It hooked behind; but that was no
matter, for the enveloping shawl, belonging to old Mrs. Titcomb,
concealed that youthful eccentricity. Her shoes--congress, with
world-weary elastics at the side--were her own, inherited from an aunt;
and her bonnet was a rusty black, with a mourning veil. There was, at
that time, but one new bonnet at Horn o' the Moon, and its owner had
sighed, when Mattie proposed for it, brazenly saying that she guessed
nobody'd want anything that set so fur back. Whereupon the suppliant
sought out Mrs. Pillsbury, whose mourning headgear, bought in a brief
season of prosperity, nine years before, had become, in a manner,
village property. It was as duly in public requisition as the hearse;
and its owner cherished a melancholy pride in this official state. She
never felt as if she owned it,--only that she was the keeper of a
sacred trust; and Mattie, in asking for it, knew that she demanded no
more than her due, as a citizen should. It was an impersonal matter
between her and the bonnet; and though she should wear it on a secular
errand, the veil did not signify. She knew everybody else knew whose
bonnet it was; and that if anybody supposed she had met with a loss,
they had only to ask, and she to answer. So, in the consciousness of an
armor calculated to meet the world, she skillfully brought her congress
boots into Mary's kitchen, and sat down, her worn little hands clasped
under the shawl.
"You've just got home," said she. "I s'pose you ain't heard what's
happened to Johnnie?"
Mary rose, a hand upon her chair.
"No! no! He don't want no nussin'. You set down. I can't talk so--ready
to jump an' run. My! how good that tea does smell!"
Mary brought a cup, and placed it at her hand, with the deft manner of
those who have learned to serve. Mattie sugared it, and tasted, and
sugared again.
"My! how good that is!" she repeated. "You don't steep it to rags, as
some folks do. I have to, we're so nigh the wind. Well, you hadn't been
gone long before Johnnie had a kind of a fall. 'T wa'n't much of a one,
neither,--down the ledge. I dunno how he done it--he climbs like a
cat--seems as if the Old Boy was in it--but half his body he can't
move. Palsy, I s'pose; numb, not shakin', like Adam's."
Mary listened gravely; her hands on her knees.
"How long's he been so?"
"Nigh on to five weeks."
"Had the doctor?"
"Yes, we called in that herb-man over to Saltash, an' he says there
ain't no chance for him. He's goin' to be like Adam, only wuss. An'
I've been down to the Poor Farm, to tell 'em they've got to take him
in." Her little hands worked; her eager eyes ate their way into the
heart. Mary could see exactly how she had had her way with the
selectmen. "I told 'em they'd got to," she repeated. "He ain't got no
money, an' we ain't got nuthin', an' have two paraletics on my hands I
can't. So they told me they'd give me word to-day; an' I'm goin' down
to settle it. I'm in hopes they'll bring me back, an' take him along
down."
"Yes," answered Mary gravely. "Yes."
"Well, now I've come to the beginnin' o' my story." Mattie took that
last delicious sip of tea at the bottom of the cup. "He's layin' in
bed, an' Adam's settin' by the stove; an' I wanted to know if you
wouldn't run in, long towards noon, an' warm up suthin' for 'em."
"Yes, indeed," said Mary Dunbar. "I'll be there."
She rose, and Mattie, albeit she dearly loved to gossip, felt that she
must rise, too, and be on her way. She tried to amplify on what she had
already said, but Mary did not seem to be listening; so, treading
carefully, lest the dust and dew beset her precious shoes, she took her
way down the hill, like a busy little ant, born to scurry and gather.
Mary looked hastily about the room, to see if its perfect order needed
a farewell touch; and then she drank her cup of tea, and stepped out
into the morning. The air was fresh and sweet. She wore no shawl, and
the wind lifted the little brown rings on her forehead, and curled them
closer. Mary held a hand upon them, and hurried on. She had no more
thought of appearances than a woman in a desert land, or in the desert
made by lack of praise; for she knew no one looked at her. To be clean
and swift was all her life demanded.
Adam sat by the stove, where the ashes were still warm. It was not a
day for fires, but he loved his accustomed corner. He was a middle-aged
man, old with the suffering which is not of years, and the pathos of
his stricken state hung about him, from his unkempt beard to the dusty
black clothing which had been the Tiverton minister's outworn suit. One
would have said he belonged to the generation before his brother.
"That you, Mary?" he asked, in his shaking voice. "Now, ain't that
good? Come to set a spell?"
"Where is he?" responded Mary, in a swift breathlessness quite new to
her.
"In there. We put up a bed in the clock-room."
It was the unfinished part of the house. The Veaseys had always meant
to plaster, but that consummation was still afar. The laths showed
meagrely; it was a skeleton of a room,--and, sunken in the high
feather-bed between the two windows, lay Johnnie Veasey, his buoyancy
all gone, his face quite piteous to see, now that its tan had faded.
Mary went up to the bedside, and laid one cool, strong hand upon his
wrist. His eyes sought her with a wild entreaty; but she knew, although
he seemed to suffer, that this was the misery of delirium, and not the
conscious mind. Adam had come trembling to the door, and stood there,
one hand beating its perpetual tattoo upon the wall. Mary looked up at
him with that abstracted gaze with which we weigh and judge.
"He's feverish," said she. "Mattie didn't tell me that. How long's he
been so?"
"I dunno. I guess a matter o' two days."
"Two days?"
"Well, it might be off an' on ever sence he fell." Adam was helpless.
He depended upon Mattie, and Mattie was not there.
"What did the doctor leave?"
Adam looked about him. "'T was the Herb doctor," he said. "He had her
steep some trade in a bowl."
Mary Dunbar drew her hand away, and walked two or three times up and
down the bare, bleak room. The seeking eyes were following her. She
knew how little their distended agony might mean; but nevertheless they
carried an entreaty. They leaned upon her, as the world, her sick
world, was wont to lean. Mary was, in many things, a child; but her
attitude had grown to be maternal. Suddenly she turned to Adam, where
he stood, shaking and hesitating, in the doorway.
"You goin' to send him off?"
"Pears as if that's the only way," shuffled Adam.
"To-day?"
"Well, I dunno 's they'll come"--
Mary walked past him, her mind assured.
"There, that'll do," said she. "You set down in your corner. I'll be
back byme-by."
She hurried out into the bleak world which was her home, and, at that
moment, it looked very fair and new. The birds were singing, loudly as
they ever sang up here where there were few leaves to nest in. Mary
stopped an instant to listen, and lifted her face wordlessly to the
clear blue sky. It seemed as if she had been given a gift. There,
before one of the houses, she called aloud, with a long, lingering
note, "Jacob!" and Jacob Pease rose from; his milking-stool, and came
forward. Jacob was tall and snuff-colored, a widower of three years'
standing. There was a theory that he wanted Mary, and lacked the
courage to ask her.
"That you, Mary Dunbar?" said he. "Anything on hand?"
"I want you to come and help me lift," answered Mary.
Jacob set down his milk pail, and followed her into the Veaseys'
kitchen. She drew out the tin basin, and filled it at the sink.
"Wash your hands," said she. "Adam, you set where you generally do.
You'll be in the way."
Jacob followed her into the sick-room, and Adam weakly shuffled in
behind.
"For the land's sake!" he began, but Mary was at the head of the bed,
and Jacob at the foot.
"I'll carry his shoulders," she said, in the voice that admits no
demur. "You take his feet and legs. Sort o' fold the feather-bed up
round him, or we never shall get him through the door."
"Which way?" asked Jacob, still entirely at rest on a greater mind.
"Out!" commanded Mary,--"out the front door."
Adam, in describing that dramatic moment, always declared that nobody
but Mary Dunbar could have engineered a feather-bed through the narrow
passage, without sticking midway. He recalled an incident of his
boyhood when, in the Titcomb fire, the whole family had spent every
available instant before the falling of the roof, in trying to push the
second-best bed through the attic window, only to leave it there to
burn. But Mary Dunbar took her patient through the doorway as Napoleon
marched over the Alps; she went with him down the road toward her own
little house under the hill. Only then did Adam, still shuffling on
behind, collect his intelligence sufficiently to shout after her,--
"Mary, what under the sun be you doin' of? What you want me to tell
Mattie? S'pose she brings the selec'men, Mary Dunbar!"
She made no reply, even by a glance. She walked straight on, as if her
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?"