"I WANT TEACHER."
One low, weary, incessant cry in the shabby, sloping-roofed, whitewashed
room.
The place was scrupulously clean; there was not so much as a speck upon
the windows; but the chamber was miserably bare. One well-worn, damaged
rush-chair was beside the worm-eaten, stump bedstead, a box supported a
chipped white jug and basin, and an old sack unsewn and opened out
formed the carpet. The only other article of furniture was a thin, very
old, white scrap of dimity curtain half drawn across the lead
lattice-paned window upon a piece of tape.
And from the bed arose that one weary, constant cry from between the
fevered, cracked lips, night and day--
"I want teacher to come!"
For there was no mischief dancing in her unnaturally bright eyes; the
restless hands were not raised to play some trick; the face was not
drawn up in some mocking grimace: all was pitiful, and pinched, and sad;
for poor Feelier Potts lay sick unto death, and it seemed as if at any
moment the dark shadow would float forth from the open window, bearing
one more sleeping spirit away.
"I want teacher!--I want teacher!"--night and day that weary, weary
burden, ever in the same unreasoning strain; and it was in vain that the
poor rough mother, softened now in face of this terrible trouble, sought
to give comfort.
"But she can't come now, my bairn--she can't come. Oh, do be quiet--
do!"
"I want teacher--I want teacher to come."
Unreasoning ever--for poor Feelier was almost beyond reasoning--there
was one great want in her shadowed mind, and it found vent between her
lips for the first days loudly, then painfully low, and at last in a
hoarse murmur, but always the same--
"I want teacher to come."
"I won't come anigh you to speak, miss, for it wouldn't be right,"
sobbed poor, broken-down Mrs Potts, weak now and worn out, as she stood
at the cottage gate, after making signs for Hazel to come to the door.
For nights past she had been watching by her child's couch, while her
husband had kept watch at the public-house till it was shut, and then he
had slept in a barn. For he had only one body, and he was terribly
afraid lest it should be stricken by the sore disease.
"I am not afraid of the infection, Mrs Potts," said Hazel kindly. "You
look worn out; let me give you a cup of tea."
"My dear Hazel," said Mrs Thorne from the kitchen, where she was seated
at the evening meal, "what are you going to do?"
"Good, if I can, mother," said Hazel simply, and she filled a cup and
took it out to the half-fainting woman, who looked her thanks, for she
could not speak for some minutes.
"There, miss, and God bless you for it," she said, handing back the cup.
"I felt I must come and tell you, miss, for--for it seems as if she
couldn't die till you had been."
"Does she ask for me so?" said Hazel.
"She asks for nothing else, miss. It's always `I want teacher,' and--
and I thought miss--if you'd come to the house--if it was only to stand
on the other side of the road--the window's open, miss, and she could
hear you, and if you was just to say, `I'm here, Feelier!' or, `go to
sleep, there's a good girl!' it would quiet her like, and then she'd be
able to die."
"Oh, pray don't speak like that!" cried Hazel. "Let us hope that she
will live."
"I don't know what for, miss," said the wretched woman despondently.
"Only to live to have a master who'd beat and ill-use her, and make her
slave to keep his bairns. I did think I'd like her to live, but the
Lord knows best and He's going to take her away."
"I'll come on and see her," said Hazel quietly. "Poor child! I was in
hopes that she was going to amend. Wait for me here till I get my hat,
and I will come."
"What are you going to do, my dear?" exclaimed Mrs Thorne as Hazel
passed through the room.
"I am going to see one of my children, mother," she replied quietly.
"Not that dreadful Feelier Potts, Hazel?"
"Hush, dear! The child is dangerously ill, and her mother can hear your
words."
"But it would be madness to go. It is an infectious disease."
"I feel, dear, as if it is my duty to go," replied Hazel, with a
curious, far-off look in her eyes; and without another word she followed
to the little low cottage by the side of the road.
"There, miss, if you'd stand there I think you could hear her. You see
the window's open. I'll go upstairs and stir her up like, and then you
speak, and--"
"I want teacher! When will she come?"
The words came in a low, harsh tone plainly to Hazel's ears, and with a
sigh she walked straight up to the door. "But you hadn't better go
anigh her. The doctor said--"
"It will not hurt me," said Hazel quietly.
"Well, miss, if you wouldn't mind, it would do her a power of good, I'm
sure. This way, miss," and she led her visitor through the room where
she had been washing, to the awkward, well-worn staircase, and up this
to poor Feelier's blank-looking room.
"I want teacher!--I want teacher!" came the weary burden as Hazel walked
up to the bedside, shocked at the way in which the poor girl had
changed.
"I want teacher! When will she come?" came again from the cracked lips
as Hazel sank upon her knees by the bedside.
"I am here, my child," she said softly, as the burning head was tossed
wearily from side to side.
The effect was electrical. The thin arms that had been lying upon the
coverlet were raised, and with one ejaculation they were flung round the
visitor's neck, the poor child nestling to her with a cry of joy.
"My poor child!" cried Hazel tenderly. And the weary iteration was
heard no more.
"She never made that ado over me," said the mother discontentedly; but
no one seemed to heed her, and she stole downstairs to her work, but
came up from time to time to find poor Feelier sleeping softly in
Hazel's arms, her head upon her breast. And when Mrs Potts attempted
to unloose the clinging hands that were about "teacher's neck," the girl
uttered a passionate, impatient cry, and clung the tighter to one who
seemed to have come to bring her hope of life.
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"It was very imprudent of you to come, Miss Thorne," said the doctor.
"I heard you were here from Mr William Forth Burge. He is waiting
below. Suppose you try to lay her down; she seems to be asleep."
Asleep or awake, poor Feelier would not be separated from her friend,
and the doctor unwillingly owned at last that it would be undoing a
great deal of good to force her away.
"You have given her a calm sense of rest, for which in her delirium she
has been so long striving. I must confess that you have done her more
good than I."
"She will go to sleep soon, perhaps," said Hazel, "and then leave me of
her own accord."
"And then?" said the doctor.
"I can return home, and come again when she asks for me."
"I'm afraid, Miss Thorne, that you have not thought of the probable
consequences of returning home," said the doctor. "You have young
sisters there, and your mother. My dear young lady, it would be
exceedingly imprudent to go."
For the first time the consequences of her step occurred to Hazel, and
she looked aghast at the speaker.
"Then there is the school, Miss Thorne. I think, as a medical man, it
is my duty to forbid your going there again for some time to come. Yes,
I see you look at me, but I am only a hardened medical man. I go
everywhere, and somehow one escapes a great portion of the ills one goes
to cure."
There was no help for it, and after coming as an act of kindness to see
the poor girl who had cried for her so incessantly, Hazel found herself
literally a prisoner, and duly installed in the bedroom as her sick
scholar's nurse.