LITTLE EVA
I come to tell you that my mother's sick," Moses said. "She's hollering
something awful. She said to tell Miss Laury Ann, but I can't find her
nowhere."
"She's out with Grandfather," Elizabeth said, "and I don't know when
she'll be back."
"Maybe Marmer'll be dead by that time. She's kind of turned green
already."
"She can't be going to die."
"I arsked her was she going to die, and she said she guessed she was. I
dunno nothing about it."
"I'll go home with you," Elizabeth resolved suddenly. "I'll get Judidy,
and we'll go and see what we can do."
"Marmer didn't tell me to get no girls," Moses said, doubtfully, "she
told me to get Miss Laury Ann."
"I'll be better than nobody, Moses."
"Well, if you do come over to my house, I ain't agoing to wear no
bloomer suit."
"Oh, I shan't expect you to," Elizabeth said, hastily.
Judidy was nowhere to be found, so leaving word with Zeckal, the
good-natured hired man, to send either Judidy or her grandmother to the
rescue as soon as possible, Elizabeth followed Moses to the tumbledown
little red house that was his home. On an old horsehair sofa in the
middle of the kitchen, which was the first room they entered, a young
woman with her blonde hair straggling into blue eyes swimming with pain
was lying in a huddled heap. In the middle of the floor was a wash-tub
full of dirty water and half-submerged, grimy garments.
"I was trying to git some washing done when the pain struck me," a weak
voice said. "I ain't in no condition to receive visitors."
"I didn't come to visit," Elizabeth said, gently. "I came to help."
A spasm of pain racked the sick woman. Elizabeth was down on her knees
beside her in an instant.
"You're all corseted up!" she said. "I'm going to rip these things off,"
for under the trailing, ragged garments that overlaid Mrs. Steppe she
was wearing a corset like a board. Elizabeth tore at the strings until
she released her.
"You shouldn't lace like that," she said, in horror.
"I don't lace," the sick woman breathed, "my waist is
only--eighteen--inches--around. It's naturally--small. I guess if I
could only get a little hot water to drink I would feel better."
Elizabeth found a one-wick kerosene stove so begrimed and choked with
soot that she could scarcely light the sputtering wick, but thanks to
her recent investigations in her grandmother's kitchen, she was able to
heat a little water over it.
"A month ago I didn't even know there was such a thing as a one-wick
kerosene stove," she thought. She caught sight of what at first glance
looked like a small gray animal on the floor under the table. "It's
nothing but a piece of moldy bread, the kind that poor Madget was afraid
would crawl out on her. Oh, dear!"
"Where are the little girls?" she asked, as the sufferer sat up and
drank the steaming water in the cracked blue cup that was the only china
receptacle of any kind that Elizabeth could find.
"I wasn't able to get them any breakfast, so they went out to see if
they could pick some blue berries."
"Madget is so little she ought to have milk in the morning." Elizabeth
could not refrain from making this superfluous suggestion.
"Milk sours so." The spasm of pain that attacked her was of longer
duration this time. Elizabeth began rubbing the afflicted area, and
calling to Moses, who presently appeared, and gazed at his mother
speculatively as she winced and writhed in agony.
"Go and get a doctor, Moses. Any doctor you know about."
"I don't believe in doctors," Mrs. Steppe breathed. "I--I believe in
spirit healing. Get a medium."
"You get a doctor, Moses," Elizabeth said. "Tell him that I--Captain
John Swift's granddaughter--will settle the bill."
"Oh, all right," Moses said.
"I don't know much about mediums," she explained to the sick woman, "but
I know that a doctor would be able to help you right away."
"I--I don't believe in medical healing," the woman moaned, "but if you
want to spend your money that way--the last time--I had a sick spell,
Mis' Abithy Hawes, she's a fine medium, she--come here and went into a
trance--and had me cured in half an--hour. No doctor--could do--do like
that. Her control is--Little Eva."
"Don't try to talk," Elizabeth said, mystified.
The next half hour was one that she remembered all her life. The spasms
of pain increased. Elizabeth's experience of acute illness was so
limited that she earnestly believed she had a dying woman on her hands.
Madget and Mabel came in whimpering and hungry, and Madget cried
steadily and consistently from the moment when she caught her first
glimpse of her mother's tortured face. Mrs. Steppe continued to call for
Mis' Abithy Hawes, and Elizabeth finally thought of sending Mabel to
look for that lady. Mabel returned from this quest with amazing
promptitude.
"She had her hands in the flour dough," Mabel explained, "and she can't
come. She sent word that she couldn't have no trances till she got her
work done up, and then she'd see. She give me a cookie."
"Did you explain to her how sick your mother was?"
"Yes, she said she couldn't have no trances now. She said Little Eva was
cranky to-day."
By the time Moses appeared, with the word that the doctor would follow
him shortly, Elizabeth was at the limit of her endurance and her
ingenuity. She had been heating water in a leaky lard pail, and
stripping off her own white petticoat to make hot compresses to relieve
the increasing pain of her patient, quieting the ubiquitous Madget for a
few seconds at a time only to provoke the din again as soon as she set
her down from her lap; and trying in the intervals to reduce the
slovenly room to something like order.
"Is she dead yet?" Moses inquired, solemnly.
Elizabeth shook her head.
"Moses, dear," she said, "you mustn't talk like that. It's unfeeling."
"All right," he said with unexpected docility, "I won't. I just wanted
to make some plans, that's all. I thought I might come to live with you,
if Marmer died."
Elizabeth put her arms around the forlorn little figure.
"She isn't going to die," she said, "at least, I don't think she is."
"Well, you can't tell," said Moses, skeptically.
The doctor, who proved to be a portly being with a red beard and the
kindest eyes Elizabeth had ever seen, as she told Peggy afterward,
explained that the seizure was nothing more serious than neuralgia
complicated with a slight gastric attack.
"Lack of nourishment, lack of exercise, lack of any sort of proper care
for mind or body," he said.
"What is neuralgia?" Elizabeth asked.
"Starved nerves in revolt is one way of putting it."
"I thought she had appendicitis or pleurisy or something."
"She has nothing that a week's care won't bring her out of. If she isn't
looked out for at least for that length of time the trouble is likely to
increase. There isn't anybody to take care of her, is there?"
"Well, there is nobody but me," said Elizabeth.
The doctor looked at her under quizzical eyebrows with an expression
that reminded her of her grandfather.
"Give her this medicine regularly," he said, as if he found nothing
remarkable in her statement, "and see that she has three nourishing
meals a day and keep her quiet."
"It's easier to keep her quiet when you are here," Elizabeth said,
indicating the awestruck Madget, Moses, and Mabel, who stood in a
respectful row, at a respectful distance from the great man.
"I understand these children are always quiet when they're asleep or
when the doctor comes."
"Well," Elizabeth said, "the better they feel that they know you the
more noise they make. They treat me like an old friend now."
"I used to live in New York myself," the doctor observed, "and I miss it
a good deal more than most people suspect. I know all about you, you
see. I know pretty well all the news of the comings and goings in town."
"You're a New Yorker, and yet you stay down here all the year round,"
Elizabeth said. "I don't see how you can, if you really liked New York."
"I liked New York," he said, "but you can't be a country doctor on
Broadway. I'd rather take care of these people than those."
"Oh, why?"
"They need it more," he said, simply. "In a big city you don't get the
same chance to find out what people do need. It isn't always sick bodies
a doctor is called in to look out for, you know. A doctor down here has
to be a kind of a lawyer and a justice of the peace and a plumber, into
the bargain. In New York he doesn't get that kind of an opportunity."
"That seems a funny kind of thing to call an opportunity, I think."
"It is one, though," the doctor said. "Where is these children's
father?"
"He's on a coal barge. He only gets home once in a while."
"He must make pretty good money."
"He does, only she--" Elizabeth, who had walked to the door with him,
and was standing just outside it as they talked, indicated the woman in
the room beyond--"spends it on candy and novels and things, and then he
gets discouraged, and doesn't send it to her, or drinks."
"Well, call me again if you need me. No, I won't send you the bill.
There isn't any bill. I'm paid already."
"I hope he didn't mean that it paid him just to see me here doing good,"
Elizabeth thought, when she realized that that was what he did mean. "I
don't want him thinking I'm always looking after the poor when this is
the first time I ever did it."
The children crowded around her when the doctor left.
"Your mother is going to be well in a week," she told Moses. "I'm going
to wash your face, Mabel--and Madget, if you don't stop crying, do you
know what I'm going to do to you?"
"Spank me!" wailed Madget.
"No, I'm not. I'm going to kiss you, but I guess it would be more to the
purpose to feed you. What does your mother make oatmeal in when she
makes it?"
"She don't make none," Mabel said. "Can you make oatmeal?"
"I could follow the directions on the package, I guess. I can make
cake."
"I want some cake," cried Madget, promptly.
Elizabeth was trying to get some water "boiling, foaming, scalding hot,"
according to directions, when Judidy appeared at the door, her moon face
beaming over various pails and packages.
"Land o' Liberty!" she said. "You up here a-tending the sick, and me out
skylarking with my feller. I brought some milk and sandwiches for the
children. I guess she ain't sick much, is she?"
"I'm dretful sick, Judidy," a voice from the couch said, weakly; "I had
the doctor."
"I thought you was a spiritualist, and didn't believe in no medicine."
"I don't believe that no doctor could doctor me as well as Little Eva
could, but Mis' Hawes she couldn't come. I was too sick to depend on a
contrary control, so we called the doctor, and he left me some kinder
dark stuff to take, and some light-coloured pills that's kind o'
quieting."
"_Do_ tell," said Judidy, politely. "Now you drink to where I've got my
finger," she instructed Madget, as she held out the milk bottle, which
the children were trying to reach, "then Mabel, then----"
"Pour a little out in this cup, and I'll feed Madget myself," Elizabeth
said. "I guess the other children had better drink out of the bottle."
Judidy looked at Elizabeth admiringly as she lifted the little girl on
her lap.
"My, ain't you a pretty picture," she said, heartily. "You was just as
stuck up, when you first came, with your ideas about having a demi-tassy
after you had et, and laffing at the pump in the kitchen, and never
eating anything between meals, and to see you now, a-taking up with the
town's poor as if they was own relations."
"Don't you call us town's poor," Mrs. Steppe said, sitting up suddenly,
and then falling back with a groan. "I ain't never been called such a
name, Judidy Eldredge."
"You just lay still," Judidy said, "and don't you worry. I'll stay now,
Elizabeth, and you can go home and get ready for your dinner. It's a
lucky thing I had it all arranged to have a day off on account of my
feller being home. Miss Laury Ann she told me to send you as soon as I
got here."
"But I don't want you to have to lose a day with your--feller,"
Elizabeth said, trying not to be guilty of the rudeness of correcting
Judidy's pronunciation. "I'll come back as soon as Grandma will let me."
Madget began to whimper as she set her down, but Moses assured her that
if his marmer died, he would "come over there right away and tell her
about it."
"I don't know whatever makes him so pleased to think of my dying," his
mother said, plaintively, "he has never known anybody that died or
anything, if he is always burying birds with regular funeral preaching."
"He doesn't want you to die," Elizabeth said, "he just gets ideas in his
mind."
"Well, they aren't very cheerful ideas for a sick woman to hear."
"No, they aren't," Elizabeth agreed.
"If I can get Mis' Hawes over here, Little Eva will tell me if I'm going
to die. I'd like to lick Moses once, anyway, whether I'm going to die or
not."
* * * * *
"I don't think anybody could 'a' done any better," her grandmother said,
when she told her the story. "Hot compresses is the thing that always
relieves pain, and what the whole situation needed was somebody to take
charge and send for the doctor. You was a pretty brave, practical girl,
I should say. The Swifts always had good contrivance, and come out
strong when there was anything real to be done."
"I don't think that I managed so very well. The children kept crying and
I couldn't stop them, and Mrs. Steppe kept asking for a medium that I
couldn't get for her. What does she mean by Little Eva being Mrs. Hawes'
control?"
To her surprise her grandmother began to laugh, and laughed until the
tears ran down her cheeks.
"I suppose it _is_ funny," Elizabeth said, "but I never thought of it
that way. I suppose it's funny about Moses keeping on asking if his
mother was going to die, but it didn't seem funny at the time, it just
seemed queer and--and awfully hard to manage. I--I----" to her chagrin,
her lip began to tremble. "What--what is a control, anyway?" she wailed.
"It ain't nothing that you got to bother with just at present," her
grandmother said, "you come here." She sank into one of the numerous
valanced rockers conveniently placed about the house, and held out her
arms. "You come here--to Grandma," she said.
"You'll think I'm an awful baby," Elizabeth sobbed on the comfortable
bosom, snuggling a little closer in the protecting embrace. "It isn't so
much what I've done that I mind, but what I've got to do. It isn't very
brave of me, but I dread taking care of that awful woman for a whole
week. She--she isn't very grateful, or anything. She'd rather have a
medium. But--but the children--they love me."
"Elizabeth," her grandmother said, "I ain't a-going to let you go there
for any week."
"But it's my duty, Grandmother. You aren't going to stop me doing my
duty, are you? You can't spare Judidy, and there isn't anybody else.
There aren't any real servants or charity organization societies here. I
don't see what there is to do but just what Doctor Hartly does, go
around and be anything that the people need you for."
"You can't be all things to all men, Elizabeth," her grandmother said,
sagely. "If you can be like that Holland boy I've heard tell of, that
put his hand through a hole in the wall and kept the water from
destroying a whole town, that's one thing, but the kind of a hole that
the water'll roll through forever, the minute you take your arm out, is
another. The Steppe family is going to be in need of any person's full
strength as long as Mis' Steppe continues to breathe, and we can't wish
anybody's breath to stop, in spite of Moses. The best you can do for any
set o' people in that condition is just what you went and done to-day.
Look out for 'em when they get way down, give 'em what extry strength
and vittles you got at all times, but don't try to lift 'em up unless
you can lift 'em all the way out. Mis' Steppe will always sag back from
her own weight."
"Oh, dear," Elizabeth sighed. "Don't you think she could be reformed?"
"She might, and then again she mightn't. I should say she couldn't be.
She's always trying to get something for nothing, that woman is. This
business of getting a medium to get her control to fix up things she's
too lazy to fix for herself that's Mis' Steppe all over."
"But what is a control?"
"A control is a spirit guide that takes possession of a medium when she
goes into a trance. Somebody that has lived and died, usually somebody
kind o' tricky, that has a hard time getting into communication with
whoever 'tis they want to talk to."
"But that's just pure faking, isn't it?"
"I don't know whether 'tis or not. I don't understand it. My idea is,
never to make too light of a thing that I don't understand."
"You don't think there is a Little Eva, do you, Grandma?"
"No, I don't, but Mis' Hawes does."
"I shouldn't think there was anything to do but laugh at Little Eva."
"So wouldn't anybody, first off, but spiritualism is some people's
religion. It ain't mine, but in general it ain't a good idea to laugh at
anybody's religion, not even the cannibals'."
"What shall we do about the Steppes, then?"
"I'm going to get Judidy's sister to go over there and stay what she
can. What she can't, you and me and Judidy'll make up between us. We'll
have a kind of general care of 'em till they get out o' this particular
patch o' woods. Then they'll have to go on their own gait again."
"It does seem sort of awful, not to really do anything."
"Yes, it does, but the thing to do is to keep people like that in the
back of your mind, and when any chance comes that might benefit 'em, not
to be too lazy to pass it along. I'm kind of arguing with your
grandfather about taking Moses to come and live with us. I ain't pushing
the matter, but kind o' working along easy. I've got an idea of getting
Mis' Steppe interested in a different class o' books. Any woman that'll
get the notion out of a book that she can wear a eighteen-inch corset
around her waist under her rags and stick to it can get some other more
practical notion through her head in time. Anyhow, that's one thing to
work on. I ain't very hopeful, but I thought of it. I keep at the
Steppes, and little by little I hope to get something accomplished. I
see that the children is fed up about once a day anyway, but I don't
stick my wrist through the hole o' their shiftlessness, I just bail out
a little water as often as I can."
"That _is_ the way, isn't it?" said Elizabeth. "I just thought I'd have
to go there and practically live for weeks. It--it seemed like a
bottomless pit."
"There ain't really no such thing as a bottomless pit," Grandmother
said, sagely; "there are only pits that we can't plumb the bottom of."
* * * * *
She told the story of Elizabeth's activities to Grandfather that night
and this time she did not laugh, even in recapitulating the difficulties
the little girl had encountered in relation to Mrs. Steppe's religious
convictions and her constant demand for Little Eva. On the contrary, she
wiped her eyes quite openly.
"She was calculating to go there," she said, "and take entire charge of
that miserable Steppe family without any help from anybody, nurse that
sick woman and feed those children for a week and longer if it was
required of her. She would have done it, too, if I hadn't put a stop to
it. I wish you could have seen that pretty, anxious little face, and
those great eyes of hers brim full o' tears but game as a fightin' cock.
I do wish you could have seen her, Father."
"I wish I could of," said Grandfather, gravely.
"Just one thought come into my mind as I set there talking to her, and
it come so strong I almost up and said it aloud before I caught myself.
I was thinking o' that first night she come, and the dejected way you
sat in that chair there, after she had gone up to bed, and I said to
myself, holding her there in my lap all exhausted and quivering, after a
whole forenoon spent doing battle with the slothfulness of the Steppe
family, 'Father Swift,' I said to myself, 'what do you think o' John's
girl now?' I said."
"Didn't you hear what I spoke up and answered? Well, you couldn't 'a'
been listening very hard. When you said that, I had my answer ready to
the dot. 'I think a whole lot better of her,' that's what I said, 'and I
have been doing so for some time back'."