IV

When Miss Harriet woke the next morning the blue June day was flooding

her room. At first she could not remember.... What was the something

behind her consciousness? It came in an instant. "_Trapped_," she

said, aloud, and turned her head to see Miss Annie at her bedside.

"What is trapped, sister?" said Miss Annie, her little old face

crumpling with distress.

"I am," Harriet said; and laughed at the absurdity of telling Annie in

such a fashion. But of course there was no use in telling Annie. She

couldn't understand, and all that there was for her to know, the

ultimate fact, she would find out soon enough. The younger sister felt

a sick distaste of dealing with this poor mind; she wanted to be kind

to Annie; she had always wanted to be kind to her--but she didn't want

her round, that was all. And so she sent her off, patiently and not

ungently: "Don't bother me, Annie, that's a good girl. No--I don't

want any roses; take them away. No--I don't want to look at pictures.

You go away now, that's a good girl."

And the wrinkled child obeyed meekly. But she told the deaf Augustine

that Harriet was cross. "I'm the oldest, and she oughtn't to order me

round," she whimpered.

Poor Miss Annie was constantly being told to be a good girl and go

away, in the days that followed--days, to Miss Harriet, of that

amazement and self-concentration which belong to such an experience as

hers. There had been no leading up to this knowledge that had come to

her--no gradual preparation of apprehension or suspicion. The full

speed of living had come, _crash!_ against the fact of dying. The

recoil, the pause, the terrible astonishment of that moment when Life,

surging ahead with all his banners flying, flings himself in an instant

against the immovable face of Death--leaves the soul dazed by the

shock--dazed, and unbelieving. "_It cannot be._" That is the first

clear thought. It is impossible; there is a mistake somewhere. A day

ago, an hour ago, Death was lying hidden far, far off in the years.

Sometime, of course, he would arrive--solemn, inevitable, but

beneficent, or at least serene. He would send soft warnings before

him--faint tollings of fatigue, vague mists of sunset shadows. The

soul will be ready for him when he comes then; will even welcome him,

for after a while Life grows a little tired and is ready to grasp that

cool hand and rest. We all know how to meet Death then, with dignity

and patience. But to meet him to-morrow--to-day, even, when we are

full of our own business, of our own urgent affairs--the mere

interruption of it is maddening. Across the solemnity of the thought

comes with grotesque incongruity an irritated consciousness of the

_inconvenience_ of dying.

As for Harriet Hutchinson--"I don't believe it," she said to herself,

that first morning. And then, breathlessly, "Why, I can't--die!"

She was not afraid, as one counts fear, but she was absorbed; for there

is a dreadful and curiously impersonal interest in the situation that

takes possession of the mind in moments like this. No wonder she could

not think about Annie. She could not think about anything except that

that man in Mercer had said that in a very short time--

"Why, but it's perfectly ridiculous!" she told herself; "it _can't_ be.

I'm not sick--"

As she lay there in her bed that morning, after she had sent Miss Annie

away, she lifted her hand--a large hand, with strong, square fingers,

brown with weather and rough with her work, and looked at it curiously.

It was a little thin--she had not noticed that before; but there it

was, eager, vital, quick to grip and hold, life in every line. And it

would be--still? No; she did not believe it. And, besides, it

couldn't be, it mustn't be. She had a hundred things to do. She must

do them; she couldn't suddenly--_stop_. Life surged up in a great wave

of passionate determination. She got up, eager to go on living, and to

deny, deny, deny! It was the old human experience which is repeated

and repeated until Life can learn the fulfilment of Death. Poor Life,

beaten by the whips of pain, it takes so long sometimes to learn its

lesson!

In those weeks that followed--weeks of refusal, and then struggle, and

then acceptance, and last of all adjustment--Miss Harriet found old

Annie's companionship almost intolerable. She was very unreasonable

with her, very harsh even; but all she asked was solitude, and solitude

Annie would not give. She ran at her sister's heels like a dog; sat

looking at her with frightened eyes in the bad hours that came with

relentlessly increasing frequency; came whimpering to her bedside on

those exhausted mornings when Harriet would scourge her poor body onto

its feet and announce that she was going out. "These four walls

smother me," she used to say; "I must get out-of-doors."

Sometimes it seemed as if the big, kind nature that had borne the

pin-pricks so patiently all these years had reached the breaking-point,

and another day or another hour of poor old Annie's foolish love would

cause it to burst out in frantic anger:

"It hurts, sister?"

"Yes, Annie; but never mind. If I could only get out-of-doors I

wouldn't mind."

"Oh, sister, don't let it hurt."

"Can't help it, Annie. Now, don't think about it, that's a good girl.

Maybe I can get out to-morrow a little while."

"But I can't bear it."

"Got to, my dear. Come, now, run away. Go and see your chickens."

"Sister, I can't bear it."

"Annie, you drive me wild. Augustine--oh, she can't hear.

_Augustine!_ you must take Miss Annie away. Annie, if you say another

word--"

"I'm the oldest and I have a right to talk. Why don't you smell your

big bottle? When the squirrels smell it they are not hurt."

"Well, I'm not a squirrel. Annie, if you stay another minute,

I'll--I'll-- Oh, for Heaven's sake, let me alone!"

She could stand it, she told herself, if she was alone. For though she

finally accepted the fact, her own weakness she could not accept. "I

am ashamed," she told William King, angrily.

"But there's nothing to be ashamed of," Willy King protested, in his

kind way. "Dear Miss Harriet--"

"Hold your tongue. Nothing to be ashamed of? I guess if your body had

put your soul in a corner, with its face to the wall--I guess you'd be

ashamed. Yesterday I--I-- Well, never mind. But my body got me down,

I tell you--got my soul down. Isn't that something to be ashamed of?

Don't be an ass, William. I'm ashamed."

It was this consciousness of her own weakness that made her hold

herself aloof from her friends.

In those days people did not have trained nurses; they nursed one

another. It was not skilful nursing; it frequently was not wise, as we

count wisdom to-day; but it was very tender and loving, and it was very

bracing. In these softer times, when we run so easily to relief from

pain, we do not feel the presence of the professional nurse a check

upon our weakness; if we suffer, we are willing that this skilful,

noiseless machine, who will know exactly how to relieve us, shall see

the suffering. We are neither mortified nor humiliated by our lack of

endurance or of courage. But in Old Chester, when we were ill, and

some friend or relative came to sit by our bedside, we had--for their

sakes--to make an effort to control ourselves. If the effort failed,

our souls blushed. Miss Harriet would not run the risk of failure; her

body, as she said, got the better of her soul when she was alone; it

should not have the chance to humiliate her publicly; so, roughly, she

refused the friendly assistance so eagerly offered: "Thank you;

Augustine can look after me. I don't want anybody. And besides, I'm

perfectly comfortable. (William, I won't have anybody. Do you

understand? It's bad enough to disgrace myself in my own eyes; I won't

have Matty Barkley sit and look on.)"

And William King put people off as well as he could: "I go in two or

three times a day, just to say how do you do; and Miss Annie is about

and can bring her anything she needs. And Augustine is very faithful.

Of course, she is deaf as a post, but she seems to know what Miss

Harriet wants."

So the situation was accepted. "Here I am," she told the doctor,

grimly, "dying like a rat in a hole. If I could only get

out-of-doors!--or if I had anything to do!--I think it's the having

nothing to do that is the worst. But I'll tell you one thing, Willy--I

won't be pitied. Don't have people mourning over me, or pretending

that I'm going to get well. They know better, and so do I."

Those who dared to pity her or who ventured some futile friendly lie

about recovery were met by the fiercest impatience. "How do I feel?

Very well, thank you. And if I didn't, I hope I wouldn't say so. I

hope I'm well enough bred not to ask or answer questions about

feelings. There is nothing in the world so vulgar," she said, and

braced herself to one or another imprudence that grieved and worried

all the kind hearts that stood by, eager to show their love.

"It breaks my heart to see her, and there's nothing anybody can do for

her," Mrs. Barkley told Dr. Lavendar, snuffling and wiping her eyes.

"She positively turned Rachel King out of the house; and Maria Welwood

cried her eyes out yesterday because she was so sharp with her when

Maria said she was sorry she had had a bad night and hoped she'd soon

feel better."

The old man nodded silently. "Poor Miss Harriet!" he said.

"Don't say 'poor Miss Harriet!' to her. Dr. Lavendar, Harriet and I

have been friends since we were put into short dresses--and she spoke

to me to-day in a way--! Well, of course, I shall go back; but I was

ready to say I wouldn't. And she treats poor old Annie outrageously."

Dr. Lavendar nodded again. He himself had seen her several times, but

she had never let him be personal: "Was Mrs. Drayton still gossiping

about her soul?" "Wasn't it nearly time to get a new carpet for the

chancel?" etc., etc. It was her way of defending herself--and Dr.

Lavendar understood. So he only brought her his kindly gossip or his

church news, and he never looked at her mournfully; but neither did he

ever once refer to a possible recovery--that poor, friendly pretence

that so tries the soul absorbed in its own solemn knowledge!

But in the afternoon, after his talk with Mrs. Barkley, the old man

went plodding up the hill to the Stuffed-Animal House, with tender and

relentless purpose in his face. It was a serene September day, full of

pulsing light and fragrant with the late mowing. William King's mare

was hitched to a post by the green gate in the hedge, and the doctor

was giving her a handful of grass as Dr. Lavendar came up. "How is

Miss Harriet, Willy?" the old man said.

William climbed into the buggy and flicked with his whip at the

ironweed by the road-side. "Oh--about the same. Dr. Lavendar, it's

cruel--it's cruel!"

"What's cruel, William?"

"I can't give her any opiate--to amount to anything."

"Why?"

"Her heart."

"But you can't let her suffer!"

"If I stopped the suffering," the doctor said, laconically, "it would

be murder."

"You mean--"

"Depressants, to amount to anything, would kill her."

Dr. Lavendar looked up into the sky silently. Willy King gathered up

the reins. "And Annie?" Dr. Lavendar said.

"She is just a poor, frantic child. I can't make her understand why

Miss Harriet shouldn't have two powders, when one 'sugar,' as she calls

it, gives her a little comfort for a little while. She says, 'Harriet

wouldn't let a squirrel stay hurt.' Miss Harriet says she told her the

other day that she wasn't a squirrel; but it didn't seem to make any

difference to Miss Annie. She has a queer elemental reasonableness

about her, hasn't she? Well, I must go. Dr. Lavendar, I--I hope you

won't mind if I say that perhaps--I mean she doesn't want anybody to

refer to--to anything religious."

"William," said the old man, mildly, "if you can mention anything which

is not religious to a woman who is going to die within a very few

weeks, I will consider it."

And William King had the grace to blush and stammer something about

Miss Harriet's hating anything personal. Dr. Lavendar listened

silently; then he went on up the path to the Stuffed-Animal House. Old

Miss Annie let him into the darkened hall, a burst of western sunshine

flooding in behind him and making the grim, dead creatures dart out of

their shadows for a moment, and sink back into them again when the door

was shut. The old child had been crying, for Miss Harriet had turned

her out of her room, and so he had to sit there in the hall, under the

shark, and try to comfort her and bid her go out and see her chickens.

But for once Miss Annie would not be diverted:

"Harriet wants to go out-of-doors, and she can't. And she is hurt; and

Willy King won't give her sugar in a paper to stop the hurting. He is

wicked."

"By-and-by," said Dr. Lavendar, "Harriet will fall asleep and not be

hurt any more."

"Not till she is dead," Miss Annie said; "Augustine told me so."

"I meant that," Dr. Lavendar said, stroking the poor, gray head

grovelling against his knee.

"Then why didn't you say so? It is a story to say sleep when you mean

dead."

"I ought to have said dead," he acknowledged, gently, "so that you

could understand. But I want you to remember that death is a happy

sleep. Will you remember that?"

"A happy sleep," Miss Annie repeated; "yes; I will remember. _A happy

sleep._" She lifted her head from his knee and smiled. "I'll go and

see my chickens," she said.

[Illustration: "'A HAPPY SLEEP,' MISS ANNIE REPEATED"]

And Dr. Lavendar took his way up-stairs, past the cases of birds, to

Miss Harriet's room. She received him with elaborate cheerfulness.

As for Dr. Lavendar, he lost no time in pretence. "Miss Harriet," he

said, "I am not going to stay and talk and tire you. You've seen

people enough to-day--"

"I'm not tired in the least."

"But I have a word to say to you."

She looked at him angrily. "I would rather not talk about myself, Dr.

Lavendar, please."

"I don't want to talk about yourself," he said.

Her face cleared a little. "That's a relief. I was afraid you were

going to talk to me about 'preparing,' and so forth."

A sudden smile twinkled into Dr. Lavendar's old eyes. "My dear Miss

Harriet, you've been 'preparing' for fifty years--or is it fifty-one?

I've lost count, Harriet. No; you haven't got anything to do about

dying; dying is not your business. In fact, I sometimes think it never

is our business. Our business is living. Dying is God's affair."

"I haven't any business, that's the worst of it," Miss Harriet said,

bitterly. "I've nothing to do--nothing to do but just lie here and

wait. I don't mind dying; but to be here in this trap, waiting. And

I've always been so busy, I don't know how to do nothing."

"That's what I wanted to say to you. There is something you can do.

In fact, there's something you must do."

"Something I must do?" Miss Harriet said, puzzled.

"My dear friend, you must meet this affliction; you can't escape; we

can't save you from it. But there is one thing you can do: you can try

to spare the pain of it to other people. Set yourself, Miss Harriet,

to make it as easy as you can for those who stand by."

Harriet Hutchinson looked at him in amazement. No pity? No

condolences? Nothing but the high charge to spare others. "You mean

my temper?" she said at last, slowly.

"Yes," said Dr. Lavendar.