THE SERPENT OF REMORSE
The day that followed on the party and the storm was unlike any day that
Jacqueline had known in her short life, and the week that followed was
unlike any week that she had ever expected to live.
Grandma Conway was very, very ill. She had not been struck by lightning,
as the younger children believed, nor had she slipped and fallen, as
Aunt Martha had thought at first. She had had a stroke of apoplexy, so
the old doctor said, when he came plowing through the mud to the farm,
on that ghastly night. She would get well, he hoped, but she would never
be so active again. And she might be ill for a long time.
Grandma's bed was set up in the parlor, across the hall from the dining
room. It was a big room, almost square, with windows to the north and
the east. In one corner was a little old square piano, with yellow keys,
on which Freddie's and Annie's mother used to play, when she was a girl.
There were horsehair armchairs, with white crocheted tidies on their
backs, and a horsehair sofa, and a marble-topped table. All this
furniture was pushed aside, to make place for Grandma's bed and the old
couch from the dining room on which Aunt Martha slept so that she could
be near her.
Upstairs, in Aunt Martha's room over the dining room, Annie's crib now
stood beside Freddie's. Jacqueline and Nellie slept in Aunt Martha's
bed, and it was their job to care for the younger children. Above all
they had to see that the children did not cry in the night and disturb
Grandma's fitful sleep.
Jacqueline saw these arrangements made, with honest bewilderment. She
thought somewhat of her own discomfort, packed in a room with two
babies, who woke at the first cock-crow, but to do her justice, she
thought also of Aunt Martha, who worked hard all day long and was now
planning to watch all night. She remembered, when Auntie Blair was ill
with the flu at Buena Vista, how two stern young women, in crisp white
clothes, had instantly appeared, and like the lesser and the greater
lights in Genesis, had ruled the day and the night.
"But Aunt Martha," suggested Jacqueline, "aren't you going to hire a
nurse?"
Aunt Martha's lips twisted into a smile that wasn't the least bit
mirthful.
"I expect I am, Jackie," she answered, "'bout the time I swap the Lizzie
for a seven-seated high class touring car, and shed my old sweater for a
sealskin coat."
By this time Jacqueline had learned enough about Aunt Martha's funny way
of talking, to understand that Aunt Martha meant she was too poor to
hire a nurse. Jacqueline felt as if she had been slapped in the face by
the hard hand of a creature called Poverty, that up to now she had
looked upon as little more than an amusing playfellow.
"But Aunt Martha," she urged, "it's an awful stunt, nursing sick people.
You've got the outdoor work to see to--and the cooking--and the
children. You just can't do it, Aunt Martha."
Again Aunt Martha gave her little twisted smile.
"No such word in the dictionary, Jackie. Besides, as old Abe Lincoln
said, this is a case of 'Root, hog, or die!'"
Then her twisty smile grew kind, and her anxious eyes softened.
"Lucky I've got you, Jackie," she said. "I just felt when I saw you at
Baring Station you were going to be a help and a comfort some day, but I
didn't dream 'twould be so soon."
It wasn't just empty praise, either. Jacqueline knew she was a great
help--much more help, she told herself proudly, than little Caroline,
afraid of boys and cows, could ever have been. With Nellie's assistance,
Jacqueline washed and dressed the babies, and made the beds, and swept
and tidied up the rooms. She saw to it that Nellie kept the little ones
quite out of earshot through the long day. She cooked--no pretty-pretend
cooking at all, but great pans of her famous Johnny-cake, and stacks of
toast, and quarts of apple-sauce, platters of scrambled eggs, and mounds
of mashed potato, crocks full of sugar cookies, and when Aunt Martha
found her the place in the recipe book, big sheets of soft gingerbread.
She couldn't make pie crust or white bread, but she stirred up Graham
bread, after Aunt Martha had shown her how, and she had good luck with
it.
"You're a born cook, Jackie," Aunt Martha told her.
Neil and Dickie were called upon to wash the dishes. That was their
share of the extra work, caused by Grandma's illness, so Aunt Martha
said. Ralph for his part had to take on many outdoor jobs and
responsibilities which had been Aunt Martha's, and Aunt Martha meantime
was doing night and day the work of two nurses, and half of her own
outdoor work and of Grandma's indoor work besides.
Life at the farm in those days was strenuous, you may well believe.
Jacqueline hadn't dreamed that any one could take in a day as many steps
as she now took in Caroline's old sneakers, nor could be so tired at
night. But she went about her tasks uncomplaining, with a subdued manner
which all the young folk shared. For Grandma, dear little spry Grandma,
who had worked so hard, as Jacqueline realized, now that Grandma's
chores in part were hers, might never step-step it round the kitchen
again. The doctor came twice a day, and Aunt Martha's face had not even
a twisted smile.
At first Jacqueline hadn't time to think. She just did the things that
had to be done. But as the days passed, and she grew tired and saw Aunt
Martha growing tired, too, she asked herself: what's the use? Money to
hire nurses would relieve them both, and she had money--quite a lot of
money. At least she had heard people at the school say she was an
heiress, and she knew she had always been given plenty of money when she
asked for it. She could ask for it now. She would go to the
Gildersleeves.
No, she couldn't go to the Gildersleeves, for there was her promise to
Caroline. She wished she had never given it. She had known when she gave
it, like a silly, that she was going to regret it. But just the same, a
promise was a promise. It wouldn't be fair now, when things were so hard
at the farm, to ask Caroline to give up the piano, and the cool rooms,
and the pretty frocks that she so loved, and never would have again,
poor kid! and come and take her rightful place with the Conways.
Well, she wouldn't go to the Gildersleeves, but she'd write home for
money--a lot of money! She couldn't write to Uncle Jimmie and Aunt Edie,
for they were honeymooning all over the surface of Alaska, nor to Auntie
Blair, for she was somewhere on the shores of the Great Lakes. But she
could write to Auntie Blair's father, Judge Blair, who with Aunt Edie
shared her guardianship. Only he would address his reply--and the
money!--to Jacqueline Gildersleeve, and Caroline would get them, because
in Longmeadow Caroline was Jacqueline. That wouldn't do at all. He must
address his letter to Caroline Tait and then Jacqueline would receive
it. But in order to get him to do such an extraordinary thing, she would
have to explain to him how she happened to have become Caroline. Oh,
shivering chimpanzees, and also woolly rhinoceroses! For Jacqueline was
afraid of Judge Blair, if she was afraid of anybody, and besides, like a
blundering grown-up, he would probably write straight off to the
Gildersleeves and tell them everything that she had told him.
At last she decided that whatever she did, she would see Caroline first.
Perhaps they could arrange something between them. Why couldn't Judge
Blair send the money to Jacqueline (that is, to Caroline), and Caroline
take it, and give it to the real Jacqueline? Why, of course, that was
the way out of her difficulties, and she need only see Caroline right
straight off, and tell her about it.
It took Jacqueline some time to think this all out. She hadn't had to do
a great deal of thinking for herself in her life, and this problem was
what her new Uncle Jimmie would have called "intrikut." Besides she had
to give a great many of her thoughts just now to the children, and the
cooking, and Aunt Martha, who kept forgetting to eat, and poor Grandma,
who was always there in the back of her mind, and the depth of her
heart.
But the day came, after a week of dragging days that seemed a year, when
the doctor looked quite cheerful after his morning visit, and said he
wouldn't need to come again until to-morrow. Aunt Martha turned from
seeing him out at the door, with a smile that wasn't a bit twisted, and
when Jacqueline saw that smile, her head began to swim for joy, and her
eyes went misty.
"She's going to get well! Grandma's going to get well!" Jacqueline
chanted under her breath, while she jumped up and down softly in her
sneakers.
"Glad you've spunk enough left to hop," said Aunt Martha.
"Hop?" beamed Jacqueline. "I could run a mile. Oh, Aunt Martha, can't I
go to the village this afternoon? I won't be long. I'll run most of the
way----"
Then she stopped. For she saw, by Aunt Martha's face, that she was no
more going to Longmeadow that afternoon than she was going to Timbuctoo.
"I'd like to let you go right well, Jackie," said Aunt Martha, "but I
don't see how I can spare you. I've got to get over to East Baring and
see about selling the wood lot. It's a piece of business Ralph can't
tend to. I was counting on leaving you to sit with Grandma."
Jacqueline shivered a little. Honestly she was afraid of the strange,
white, withered woman who lay helpless in Grandma's bed. And for all
their sakes she wanted to see Caroline and arrange about getting that
money just as quickly as possible. But she had no choice in the matter.
She couldn't explain to Aunt Martha why she wanted to go to Longmeadow
and she couldn't expect Aunt Martha to alter business plans just on
account of what must seem to her a child's desire to take a holiday.
So Aunt Martha drove away that afternoon in the Ford, and took Freddie
with her, to relieve Jacqueline of one care, and Jacqueline settled
herself by the north window in the parlor, ready to be of service, if
Grandma so much as whispered. Jacqueline might have read story papers
while she sat there, but she hated even the thought of those story
papers. If she hadn't sat reading, all that hot day before the day of
the party, and left the work to Grandma, perhaps Grandma wouldn't have
been taken ill. She didn't dare ask Aunt Martha if this were so. She
kept the thought to herself, and was tortured with it. She never wanted
to see that pile of story papers again, as long as she lived. In their
place she got out the big, overflowing mending basket (Grandma's
basket!) and darned stockings patiently through the long afternoon.
She had hoped that Aunt Martha would be home at four o'clock to give
Grandma her cup of broth. But there was never a sign of Aunt Martha,
when four o'clock struck. "Root, hog, or die!" as old Abe Lincoln said
of a disagreeable job. Jacqueline went into the kitchen, and warmed the
broth, and put it into a thick white cup, and carried it to Grandma.
The feeble old white head shifted itself on the pillow, as Jacqueline
slipped an arm beneath it, as she had seen Aunt Martha do, and gently
raised it. The pale old lips approached the thick edge of the coarse
cup.
"No--no," Grandma muttered, and turned away her head. "Not that. Cup."
"Drink it, Grandma dear," begged Jacqueline. "I warmed it up real nice.
Do, please drink it and get well."
"My cup," whispered Grandma. "No--no."
She shut her eyes and her lips, with the obstinacy of the very feeble,
and turned her head away. Jacqueline looked down at her helplessly. From
beneath the pale eyelids she saw two tears course slowly.
"Oh, Grandma! Don't!" begged Jacqueline.
"Cup," murmured Grandma. "Want--green cup."
Then Jacqueline understood.