THE DOCTOR.
After the young people had departed on the morning of that eventful day,
Miss Helen Campbell settled herself in a hammock on the upper porch with
a novel and two new magazines. She loved the "children," as she called
them, and the sound of their voices and laughter was as music to her
ears, but occasionally she enjoyed a peaceful morning to herself without
any chatter to disturb her quietude.
Who would have imagined as she sat there idly swinging in the hammock,
that the dainty little lady was all the way to sixty years old? Her eyes
were as blandly blue and clear as a child's; her complexion had never
lost its peach blossom glow, and the fine network of wrinkles around her
eyes and at the corners of her mouth was only faintly visible.
"But I'm getting old," she thought. "Those long trips have rejuvenated
my spirits but my body is tired. I haven't the physique for adventuring
any longer. I don't think I could stand a shock of any kind, great or
small."
Her thoughts broke off at this point and she idly touched the railing of
the porch with one of her little feet and set the hammock to a gentle
motion like a rocking cradle.
"No, I shall not put myself in the way of shocks. I am glad we are not
touring this summer; just taking life peacefully----"
Again her thoughts broke off. Her eyes wandered across the wide vista of
valley flanked by a range of mountains. The landscape was flecked by
great shadows cast by lazily moving ribbons of cloud. The foliage of the
trees and the undergrowth on the opposite mountains were like rugs of
velvet. One might imagine a gigantic figure stretched out on the soft
green patches of forest. There were no harsh outlines to the mountains.
Their rugged edges were veiled and softened by the shadows of the
passing clouds. Miss Campbell closed her eyes.
"Life is very pleasant," she thought, "even at sixty."
After a long dreamy period as untroubled as a summer sea, some instinct
compelled her to open her eyes, and she found herself looking straight
into the eyes of Mrs. Lupo who was standing at the foot of the hammock.
Mrs. Lupo held her hands behind her back. Miss Campbell noticed at once
that the woman's expression had changed. She had lost that look of a shy
gentle animal. Her eyes had narrowed into little slits and her upper lip
was drawn back showing an even row of glistening teeth. Without taking
her eyes off Mrs. Lupo's, Miss Campbell sat up very straight and stiff.
"Well, what do you want?" she demanded, always holding the woman's gaze
with hers.
Mrs. Lupo moved a step nearer, still with her hands behind her back.
"Stand where you are," ordered Miss Campbell, fired with superhuman
courage and never once shifting her gaze. "Stand where you are," she
repeated. There was not a tremor in her voice. "Now, give me what you
are hiding behind you."
For at least a moment the two women stood looking at each other. If Miss
Campbell had flinched, there is no telling what the half-savage
creature, insane with rage, might have done.
And even now, with a swift movement, Mrs. Lupo brandished a long carving
knife in Miss Campbell's face.
"Drop that instantly," thundered Miss Campbell in a voice that did not
seem to be her own.
But the force of her splendid will and courage struck home. The carving
knife slipped from Mrs. Lupo's hand and stood upright between them in
the board floor of the porch.
"Get down on your knees," ordered Miss Campbell, and all this time she
had never taken her eyes off Mrs. Lupo's.
The knife was still swaying on the point of its blade, as the woman sank
to the floor in a quivering, sobbing heap.
"What do you mean by coming to me like this?" demanded Miss Campbell.
"Your daughter, she try cut my throat this morning with same. I take
revenge," answered Mrs. Lupo between her sobs.
"Nonsense! Absurd!"
"She have dislike me from first," went on Mrs. Lupo, who seemed to
eliminate all articles from her conversation. "She joke at me. She buy
berries of girl I hate."
Miss Campbell leaned against the rail and watched the woman crouched at
her feet like a whipped dog. Only an instant did she allow the thought
to come to her that she was alone in camp with a half-crazed savage.
"She is a very weak, pitiable object," she said to herself. "I must
manage her and I shall. I am not afraid."
Suddenly she leaned over and put her hand very softly on the woman's
shoulder.
"I am so sorry for you," she said. "Won't you let me help you? I think
you are much too fine and capable to fly into rages like this. What is
the reason of it?"
"Not know," answered Mrs. Lupo. "When they come, I see red. I wish to
break up--kill."
"Do you love your husband?"
"Yes," answered the other with so much eloquence of expression that Miss
Campbell knew she spoke the truth.
"And he loves you?"
"He loves me, but not so much. He leaves me for long time,--alone."
"Has he ever seen you in a rage?"
"Yes," answered Mrs. Lupo in a low voice, her head sinking on her
breast.
"Of course, then, that is why he leaves you. Men like gentleness in a
woman. A violent-tempered wife never keeps her husband's love. If you
were gentle and quiet, your husband would take you with him to the
village. But you are jealous and uncontrolled. You make a spectacle of
yourself and of him. You look very ugly as you looked a while ago, like
an angry animal instead of a handsome young woman. Try being gentle and
always looking pretty and see how it works."
Mrs. Lupo looked up. Miss Campbell had captured her interest and she was
listening to that sage spinster's advice with entire attention.
"You think me handsome woman?"
"Very, when you are in a good temper."
"Suppose I can't keep back anger?"
"The next time your eyes see red, make a little prayer. It will always
be answered."
"To Christ?" asked Mrs. Lupo, who had been to a mission school as a
girl.
"Yes, to Christ, who never spoke a harsh word even when He was struck
in the face and spit upon and finally nailed to a cross."
"What shall I say?" asked the other, as interested as a child.
"When you feel the rage coming on, say over and over: 'Oh, Christ, take
my anger from me and make me gentle and kind.'"
Mrs. Lupo repeated the prayer several times.
"And it will come true?" she asked.
"Always, always. Try it and see."
At last the half-breed rose to her feet. The knife stood upright between
them swaying on its blade.
"You forgive?" she asked.
"I forgive."
"I will go away. I am afraid yet when the daughter comes. There is still
hate here," she pointed to her temples. "But it will be gone if I stay
away. When Lupo goes to village he stays long time. It is better for me
not to see him when he comes back. Until I learn, I will not see him no
more. Good-by. I'm thankful to you."
Mrs. Lupo departed, leaving the knife where it had fallen. It was on the
tip of Miss Campbell's tongue to say:
"You must not leave me alone." But she checked herself. She doubted if
she could exert her will another time like that. Already beads of
perspiration stood out on her brows. A feeling of extreme lassitude
crept over her and she slipped back into the hammock with a sensation of
nausea. Then unconsciousness bound her with invisible cords and the
brave little woman fainted dead away.
As Mrs. Lupo turned into the gallery, she glanced back but she only saw
the train of Miss Campbell's white wrapper fluttering from the hammock
in the breeze.
There had been several loud raps downstairs, but to Miss Campbell,
fighting her way slowly back to consciousness, it sounded hundreds of
miles away, like spirit rapping; or perhaps it was the pounding of her
own pulses. A man entered the living room. He was of medium height and
spare with a lean brown face, and he was dressed as men usually dress
for walking trips, in knickerbockers, heavy shoes laced well up the leg,
a gray flannel shirt open at the neck with a brown silk tie. He wore a
pith helmet; on his back was strapped a flat knapsack, and he carried a
cane and a telescope. As he hurried through the living room, he tossed
his helmet into a chair. There was a bald spot on his head fringed with
reddish hair turning gray. His features were distinguished and because
of a certain dignity with which he carried himself, a certain air of
command and confidence, people were apt to wonder who he was.
"It was upstairs, I am certain," the visitor remarked to himself,
glancing into the empty kitchen and then mounting the rustic steps to
the upper sleeping porch. With quick, comprehensive eyes he took in the
five white cots standing in a row, on the porch the group of wicker
chairs, the murderous looking knife, swaying on the tip of its shining
blade, and lastly the high-backed canvas sleeping hammock from which
trailed the train of a white muslin dress.
"Whew!" he exclaimed, under his breath.
For a moment it looked as if something unspeakably dreadful had happened
that beautiful morning, and his fears were not set at rest even when he
bounded past the knife and stood leaning over Miss Campbell's half
conscious form.
"Water," she gasped faintly.
"I wonder if there's a bathroom," he thought, running along the porch to
the nearest door after the one leading to the passage. "Of course they
always have them in these so-called camps," he added, catching the flash
of a porcelain tub beyond. In another moment he had wet Miss Campbell's
lips from a glass of water and was dabbing her temples with the end of
a wet towel. "Better now?" he asked, as she opened her heavenly blue
eyes.
She nodded with a faint smile and closed them again.
"Curious how a doctor is always finding work to do even in the
wilderness," he thought, feeling Miss Helen's pulse. With an
exclamation, he hurried back to the bathroom, and among a perfect army
of tooth powder and talcum powder boxes,--"enough for half a dozen
people," he thought,--he spied a bottle of aromatic spirits of ammonia.
He mixed a dose in the glass with professional dexterity and hurried
back.
"Just as well I happened along," he thought, moistening her lips with
the mixture. "That does the trick," he added, as she presently opened
her eyes again and swallowed a little of the ammonia and water.
The white, pinched look left her face, the color crept back to her
cheeks, and she gave a sigh of relief as she shifted her position in
the hammock.
"My pillows?" she asked, feeling for the pillows which he had slipped
from under her head to the floor.
"Better lie flat for a while," he ordered in a tone of authority. "I
wonder where her people are?" the doctor added to himself, glancing
again at the five cot beds. Then he drew up a chair and watched Miss
Helen Campbell as she dropped into a doze.
In a little while she exclaimed in a much stronger tone of voice:
"Please take me out of this wobbly thing; I want to lie on my own bed."
The walking-doctor promptly lifted her in his arms like a little child
and deposited her on one of the cots. Her hands were cold, and he
covered her with a Roman blanket that lay on the foot of the bed. Then
he found two hot water bottles, marched down stairs, heated a kettle of
water on the kerosene stove, searched for beef tea in the ice chest and
by good luck found half a jar. With the water bottles at her feet and a
little beef tea to nourish her, Miss Campbell at last fell into a deep
sleep, while the doctor, sitting near at hand, read one of the magazines
and, occasionally tip-toeing to her bedside, listened to her breathing
and felt her pulse.
Toward late afternoon, he descended into the lower regions of the log
house and foraged for food. He found crackers and cheese, a tin of beans
and a bottle of ginger ale. Having refreshed himself, he was about to
return to his patient when Mr. Lupo staggered into the kitchen with a
market basket on his arm.
"Where is my wife?" he asked in a thick voice.
"She is not here and you'd better go, too, quick," answered the doctor.
Mr. Lupo looked at him with an ugly expression, his eyes narrowing, as
his wife's had done when she had approached Miss Campbell with the
carving knife.
"Who are you?" he asked.
"I am a doctor."
"Has anything happened? My wife, she is crazy when she is mad. Is that
the reason why she ran away?"
"Does your wife flourish carving knives?"
Mr. Lupo retreated with a terrified expression.
"She has--?" he was too frightened to finish.
"No," replied the doctor. "The lady was too strong for her here." He
touched his forehead with his finger.
"She was not touched--the lady?"
"No, but she has collapsed from fright,--she is very ill,--I could not
answer for her recovery if you gave her another shock."
Without a word, Mr. Lupo rushed out of doors, jumped into a rickety
wagon drawn by an old mountain-climbing horse and in another instant was
clattering down the road.
Toward evening Miss Campbell grew stronger. The doctor raised her head
and fed her by the spoonful a cup of malted milk, also found in the ice
chest.
"Billie?" she said.
"That's my name," answered the doctor. "William for long."
"Nice boy," she added, patting him on the shoulder, with a very small
limp hand. "Have the children got back?"
"They will be here pretty soon, now," he answered, frowning and glancing
at his watch.
"Ben is a safe guide. They are safe with him. Wake me when they arrive,"
and turning over on her side, Miss Campbell went back to sleep.
Occasionally the doctor scanned the side of the mountain with his
telescope.
"The children are taking a long time," he said to himself. "They had
better look alive, if they want to make it before nightfall."
But night fell and there was no sign of the wanderers. The doctor lit a
cigar and watched the shadows creep up the side of the mountains. He
listened to the last twittering of the birds and then a silence,
profound and deep, settled on the camp.
Again he descended to the living room of the camp now in darkness.
Presently he lighted the green shaded lamp and two lanterns, hanging one
at the front of the house and the other at the back. He unpacked the
market basket and cooked himself some supper, and finally with a glass
of milk and a slice of bread for Miss Campbell when she waked, returned
to the upper sleeping porch.
"A telescope is an excellent thing," he observed, settling himself in a
steamer chair, a lamp on the floor beside him with a tin protector to
keep draughts from the flame. "I saw the woman plainly enough
flourishing the carving knife. It must have been sheer force of will on
the part of this little lady that made her drop it."
And now the darkness had indeed fallen, a black, impenetrable curtain.
Only the outline of the opposite range could be seen. It seemed to have
closed in on the camp, and like a gigantic wall, to shut it off from the
outer world. An owl hooted in a tree not far away and from a cleft in
the mountains came the weird song of the whippoorwill.