TEACHER HAS THE FEVER.--DEATH OF LITTLE BESSIE.
There were oppressive days in Wallencamp, when no fresh winds were borne
to us from the ocean. The sun shone hot on the stunted cedars. The tides
crept in lazily. All one weary afternoon, in the hum and stir of the
dusty school-room, little Bessie Sartell--Captain Sartell's youngest, and
his darling--sat stringing lilac blossoms together in a chain. She was
such a cunning edition of the big Captain. She had the same strong Saxon
physique in miniature, the same clear pink and white complexion, eyes
hardly more limpidly blue than his, and hair that was sunniest flax, like
the ends of the Captain's beard. And how patient the chubby little
fingers were at their task. What small, charmingly despairing sighs
escaped the child when some link fell out in the chain of purple flowers!
I was struck with her air of weary, patient endeavor--so important it
seemed--so important that the chain should be finished before school was
out. And, at last, little Bessie lifted it to wear upon her neck, and it
broke and fell in pieces on the floor.
Then there was a look of gentle dismay in the blue eyes, a tear or two,
and Bessie folded her arms on the desk, her head sank slowly down on
them, and she fell asleep.
She was still sleeping when I dismissed the school. The sound of the
others going out did not wake her; the Phenomenon, disappearing through
the door, pointed a finger at her, his face full of scornful
merriment--so incredible was it to him that any one should sleep when
school was out.
I went down to Bessie and woke her gently. She looked at me, at first,
with startled, feverish eyes, as though she did not know me, and screamed
in pain or terror. I noticed then that the color of her cheeks was
unnaturally bright. I put my hand on her pulse. It was throbbing
violently. I was thoroughly frightened.
"Come, Bess," I said, as winningly and soothingly as I could; "come home
with teacher, now. Teacher will lead you, all the way."
For answer, the child's head fell heavily on one side. I tried to take
her in my arms, but she was very heavy. I found one of the small boys
lingering outside the school-house and sent him for Bessie's father.
I shall never forget the look with which Captain Sartell lifted his baby
in his arms. He had seven other children; he was a poor man, a
Wallencamper, but one would have thought him a king, and that the only
hope of his line lay treasured in the mass of flaxen curls pressed
against his shoulder, as he carried her home.
The next morning, early, Captain Sartell appeared at the Ark with a
blanched face. Bess had been growing worse, he said. They feared it was a
fever. He was going to West Wallen for a doctor. "She thinks," he
continued, with absolute white bewilderment on his features, "that she's
in school all the while, and it's a gettin' late, and the teacher ain't
there, and so she keeps a callin' for the teacher; and I wouldn't ask ye
to go up, teacher, if you was anyways afeard, but it 'ud break your heart
to hear her."
For one of my years, I knew singularly little, either of sickness or
death, so I was the more readily susceptible to the slight disrespect the
Captain seemed to have cast on my wisdom and fortitude.
"Certainly I will go and see her," I said; "why should I be afraid?"
"I was only thinkin' it was fair to say," said the Captain; "she was took
so sudden and so violent like, it might be--might be--suthin'--suthin'
kitchin', perhaps. They was a case or two o' scarlet fever up to Wallen,
but she wasn't exposed no way that we know on. She wasn't exposed."
The Captain, regarding me intently, repeated the words, thrusting his
neck out with a pitiful gulp, his hand on the latch. Observing him, the
expression of my face changed; he groaned as he went out, closing the
door silently.
My first impulse then was to pack my trunk and start for home, but the
wailing of Mrs. Philander, and of the other women who had followed the
Captain in, lamenting one with another in an agony of helpless fear,
appealed to my courage and presence of mind, and had a strangely
sustaining and quieting effect upon me. I suggested after a few moments'
reflection, that very likely the case was not so bad as Captain Sartell
supposed. I determined to have no school that day, and advised the women
what they should do, in case their children had been already exposed to a
contagious disease. Then a happy thought struck me. I went out in the
other part of the Ark to seek Grandma Keeler. I wondered why we had not
thought of her, before.
She entered the room where the women sat. Calm and sunshine was Grandma
Keeler--calm and sunshine breaking through a storm.
If it was scarlet fever, she knew just what to do. She and pa had it
years ago, and they'd lived through it; but she didn't believe that it
was nothin' half so bad, and "What if it is, you poor critturs, you,"
said Grandma, in such a tone as she would have used to soothe a
frightened child; "every time there's a squall must we go to takin' on as
though it was our doin's? The Lord, He makes the squalls, and he don't
put it on us to manage 'em; but up thar' in His fa'r weather, He looks
down on the storms that we know not whither, but are only drivin' of us
landward safe, and 'Keep ye still,' He says, 'Jest keep ye still!' No
need o' strainin' eyes, but fix 'em thar', on Him, I've seen a many times
when no words but them would do."
The tears stood in Grandma's eyes. Beautiful soul! Whatever storms she
might have known in her life's voyage, she only seemed to lie at anchor
now, in a sure haven; and all the while, her heart was going out in the
tenderest sympathy to those still tossing on the seas and striving to
make perilous passages, even to those watching false harbor lights in the
distance. She had had an experience wide enough for all. She had found
where it was still. She longed to draw all others into that stillness.
Soon Grandma was on her way to give help and consolation where it was
most needed--in Captain Sartell's household. She did not come back until
near mid-day.
Mrs. Philander's children were kept carefully out of the room when she
entered.
"The Lord is a goin' to take that little one to Himself, teacher," she
said to me, very impressively.
Captain Sartell had not yet returned with the doctor. Possibly he had
been obliged to drive to the next town. Poor Mrs. Sartell was nearly
distracted. Bessie's fever had gone to the brain.
"We couldn't quiet her, no way," Grandma continued; "and she's a growin'
weak, but when them spells come on, she's ravin', first about one thing
and then another, but mostly it's school, school. 'It's a gittin' so late
in school and the teacher not there'--and then she screams and moans so!
Poor, sufferin' darlin'! ye can't ease her no way."
With a desperate determination not to yield myself to my own thoughts, I
informed Mrs. Philander that I was going to live with Grandma a while,
that I should not go through that part of the Ark where she and the
children were, and she must keep the little door at the foot of the
stairway locked, and not let the children follow me; and I sprinkled
myself with camphor and went back with Grandma to Captain Sartell's
house.
Mrs. Sartell was alone in the room with Bess. I expected that she would
meet me with an almost reproachful look, but there was only sorrow in her
face, a sorrow that seemed intensified by the smile she lifted to us as
we entered. The air in the room was very pure and sweet. The bed on which
Bess lay was as white as snow. But what a change a day had wrought in the
little face pressed against the pillow.
"Teacher's come," said Grandma Keeler, with soft; pathetic cheer, bending
over the child.
"Would she care now?" I thought. "Would she know me?"
Just once she opened her eyes wide, smiled, and threw her arms towards me
feebly. I would have taken her then, I thought, if it had been my death.
They wrapped a shawl around her, and I took her in my arms, rocked her
gently and sang to her, very softly, the songs she loved best. She moved
a little restlessly, and then lay very still with her head on my breast.
So I rocked and sang to Bess, and the two women moved noiselessly about
the room until Grandma Keeler came and looked down very intently into the
little one's face.
"She's asleep," I murmured, placing a finger on my lips.
"Yes, she's asleep," said Grandma, in a trembling voice, solemnly.
"Sweet, purty little one," she went on, with tears running down her
cheeks, and she turned to the mother--"Thank God, you!" she exclaimed,
with sudden strength and firmness in her voice, that was yet thrilled
with emotion; "from sorrowin' and from pain forevermore, the Lord has
took His lamb!"
Ay, life's chain of dewy morning flowers was broken! The baby fingers had
dropped those purple fragments without grief, now, or dismay--only the
peace of some sweet unfolding mystery over the veiled blue eyes!
Still, she seemed to me asleep--only asleep. I felt no shrinking from the
dead child in my arms. When they took her away from me and laid her on
the bed, I looked at her tranquil face, and the mother's passionate grief
seemed out of place. Why should one wish to wake another from such
repose? I could not comprehend the mother's aching sense of loss. But
later, when we heard the sound of wheels and saw Captain Sartell and the
doctor driving very fast up the lane, I went down the stairs and passed
out before them. I could not bear to watch the strong man's face when he
should find his baby dead.
Little Bess was buried under the lilac blossoms. The fever which had so
soon smitten her down was not properly a contagious one. I went on with
my school again, missing the sweet face of the dead child more and more
each succeeding day.
Not one of the children with whom she had played was taken sick, but it
was scarcely two weeks after her death that I was taken sick as she had
been. In the interval George Olver had come to me and I had written to
Rebecca, but Rebecca had not come back to Wallencamp nor answered my
letter. I was more anxious and troubled about her than I dared confess to
any one. Then suddenly I ceased to care for any of those things. Of my
last afternoon in school I could recall very little afterwards, except
that the clock on the shelf back of me seemed to be ticking in my brain,
and the voices in the room sounded indistinct. My own voice sounded to me
like that of some one else speaking from a long way off.
And at evening, in the Ark, I put my little room in perfect order, my
head growing heavy with pain. I felt that I must finish this task before
I lay down, and there was another intention to which I clung with a
painful pertinacity of mind.
I sat down at my table and wrote half a dozen or more brief letters
home. These were filled with irrelevant anecdotes pertaining to my
experience among the Wallencampers, a few desultory descriptions of
character and scenery, with a philosophical digression or two.
To one not intimately acquainted with the epistolary products of my pen,
these letters would have undoubtedly suggested the workings of a crazed
and feverish brain, but they were not calculated to arouse any particular
alarm in the minds of my friends at home, unless, indeed, it was by
reason of the unusual care and painstaking evinced in their chirography
and the punctilious manner in which they were dated. The first one I
dated for the evening on which I was writing. The next for a time several
days in advance of that, and so on, performing this strange act with
utter indifference to the presumption of it.
When it was finished, I seemed to have forgotten what next to do. Grandma
Keeler told me afterwards, that I went to the head of the stairs and
called to her, that she came up, and I told her very gravely that I was
going to be sick, but I knew I was not going to die, and adjured her with
a look in my eyes which she said, "I couldn't go ag'inst, teacher, for it
was more convincin' than health," not to write to my friends of my
sickness, and instructed her how to send the letters which I had sealed,
stamped, directed, and methodically arranged on the table, in their
proper order to the post.
For the rest, all through the pain and impotence and vague mental
wanderings of the days that followed, I had a restful, comforting
consciousness that a kind, loving face, like the lamp of my salvation,
was hanging ever over me--always it was Grandma Keeler's face, though it
seemed to have grown strangely young and fair, and the eyes that followed
me with such a loving, tireless, wistful expression in them were like
other eyes that I had known, and the watcher's voice was clear and
musical, with a youthful repression in it. Still, somehow, it was
Grandma's face, _her_ eyes, _her_ voice--and when at last, I woke one
morning very weak, but able to recognize clearly all the familiar objects
in the room, it was Grandma Keeler indeed, who sat by my bed, beaming
gloriously upon me.
"Is it most school time, Grandma?" I inquired, feebly, slowly
concentrating my gaze on her face.
"Oh, laws, no!" said Grandma, with cheerful emphasis, and then continued
talking in her quiet monotone. I hardly heard what she said. I was
painfully endeavoring to pick up the lost thread of my consciousness
where I had left it on that night when I put my room in order and went so
wearily to bed. At last I inquired, still vaguely, "How long?"
Grandma understood. She smiled reassuringly.
"Only a little while, teacher," she said. "You've only been sick a little
while--a few days, maybe," and she immediately proffered me some broth
which was a triumph of the good soul's art, and seemed to partake of her
own comfortable and sustaining nature. I lay back on the pillows,
contented to be very still for a little while.
When I next looked up and recognized that familiar figure sitting by the
bed, I said, "Has Becky come back?"
"Yis, Becky's come back!" said Grandma, in a tone which seemed to imply,
in the very best faith, that during my illness the world had been running
on excellently well. "You take some more broth now, teacher, and keep
r'al slow-minded and easy, and hev' a good night's rest, and to-morrer
I'll tell ye all about it!"
But I persisted; so Grandma continued gently:--
"Wall, it wa'n't much to tell, only the doctor said ye wasn't to be
talked to much, nor worked up; but I reckon a little pleasant news ain't
a gonter hurt nobody. Ye see, when you was took sick, George Olver, he
got a hold of where Becky was; he had a mistrustin' of it, somehow--and
he went and told her, and it brought her, hearin' you was dangerous, and
she calculated she might be o' use to ye now, for _some_, they _be_ sich
friends!" said Grandma, making this observation with the most guileless
enthusiasm. "And Becky, she wa'n't much brought up, and used to be as
wild and harum-scarum as any of 'em; but I allus said that there was a
good deal to Becky, after all. Wall, George Olver, he recognized where
she was and he went down thar' and found her, and they wa'n't anybody
ventured to say a word, and what need? for everybody respec's George
Olver, knowin' he's uncommon ser'ous and high-minded; and the very same
hour they came home, Becky, she come up here, and she turned me right out
of the room, as ye might say. 'It's my place, Grandma,' says she, 'and
I'm better able than you. I understand. It's my place.' And she wa'n't
vary strong, but she wouldn't give up to nobody, and only run home a
little while between spells to rest, and watched and tended ye as
faithful as though she was keepin' count of every breath; and when the
fever turned a Monday night, and you fell off into a kind of a natural
sleep, the doctor, he says to her, what it ain't a very common thing for
a doctor to say: 'It's you saved her life!' he says. 'She was vary sick.'
And he shook his head the way they do. 'You've tended vary faithful,' he
says; and Becky, she hardly spoke, but I seen when she looked up that her
eyes was a shinin', and that happy look that she's had somehow, sence she
came back--I can't tell ye exactly, teacher, but it's most like as ef
somebody should have a bad dream, and be wakin' up kinder surprised and
thankful--but when the doctor said them words, I'll never forget how her
eyes went a shinin', and she says to me, 'I'm goin' home now, and never
you tell her, when she wakes up, for she thought it was you watchin' with
her all the time, and kep' a callin "Grandma! Grandma!" says she; 'and
don't you tell her! don't you; for it would seem as though I was obligin'
her, and if she forgives me and is friendly I don't want it to be for
that,' And I didn't say as I should or shouldn't tell," said Grandma,
smilingly unconscious of the two large tears that were stealing down her
cheeks; "but I knowed pretty well what I had on my mind!"
Grandma ceased speaking, and began to busy herself about the room,
humming softly her favorite refrain:--
"The Light of the World is Jesus."
I lay very still, thinking--
"Once I was blind but now I can see!"
That low, glad, tremulous murmur brought no peace to my troubled heart.
When Grandma Keeler looked at me again, I fancied she met a helpless,
appealing, almost an aggrieved expression in my eyes.
"I want to see her," I said. "I want to see Becky, of course."
"Yis, yis," said Grandma, "to-morrer. You'd want to talk, and you've had
enough for one day. I'll tell her, and she'll understand."
"But I want to see her now," I persisted.
"They's some folks just come in to inquire," continued Grandma, giving an
easeful touch to the pillows. "They's been a good many in to inquire. May
be, she's amongst 'em. I'll go down and see."
Soon I heard the old, girlish, familiar step on the stairs. Rebecca
hesitated, standing an instant on the threshold. In spite of the new and
loftier soul looking out of her eyes, in spite of the new and womanly
dignity which she bore so reposefully, she read my face with that quick,
intuitive glance I had learned to know so well.
Then coming towards me, she put her arm gently around my neck, kissed me,
understanding all, hushing all, forgiving all; and smiling a tender
prohibition in her eyes, put her finger on my lips.
Sobbing inwardly, I accepted this divine retaliation in silence, and
rested a while in that loving, warm embrace.