have been curious to watch how unconsciously the boys were influenced
by my little gentleman,--how their manners grew more gentle,--how
they avoided coarse or unclean or profane words in his presence, as
if he had been a woman. He led his classes, easily, in their studies.
The teacher had never to reprove him for carelessness in his duties,
or for broken rules. His father had said, "A true gentleman belongs
everywhere;" and he was quietly proving it.
The scholars liked him,--they could not help it, for his manner was
as courteous as his nature was unselfish and kindly; and yet in
their feeling for him there was a little strain of envy,--a slight
disposition to blame him for the luxury and elegance to which he was
born; and, because of his very courtesy, to underrate his courage and
the real manliness of his character.
But there was one in whose eyes he was, from first to last, a hero.
Jamie Strong was yet more delicate than young Shaftsbury. He had
something the matter with one of his ankles, and could not join in the
rough sports of the others. He was the only son of his mother, and she
was a widow. Her husband and her other three children had all died of
typhoid fever, and been, one after another, carried out of the little,
lonesome cottage at the foot of the hill, where the sun seldom came,
and now Jamie was the last.
He would never be strong enough to do hard work. Sowing, ploughing,
mowing, harvesting,--he could never manage any of these; so for
his weak limbs his quick brain must make up; and Widow Strong had
determined that he should be a scholar,--a minister, if it pleased the
Lord to call him to that; if not a teacher.
So she quietly struggled on to keep him at school, and to earn money to
provide for future years of academy and college. She sewed, she washed,
she picked berries,--she did any thing by which she could add a dollar
to her hoard.
Jamie understood and shared her ambition, and studied with might and
main. He was used to harshness and rudeness from stronger boys, and he
had grown shy and shrunk into himself. To him the coming of my little
gentleman was as grace from heaven. Here was one who never mocked at
his feebleness, or his poverty,--who was always kind, always friendly,
and who did many a little thing to make him happy. Young Shaftsbury on
his part was quick to perceive the tender and loyal admiration of the
other; and there grew between them the tie of an interest which had
never been put into words.
It had been a damp and strange summer, intensely warm, even in that
hilly region. It had rained continually, but the rains, which kept
the fields green and made vegetation so unusually lush and ripe, had
seemed scarcely to cool at all the fervid heat of the air. Wiseacres
predicted much sickness. Indeed, several cases of slow fever were in
the town already.
One day my little gentleman looked about in vain for his friend Jamie,
and finally asked for him anxiously, and found that the boy was ill of
typhoid fever. At recess he heard the boys talking of it.
"He'll never get well," one said. "His father died just that way, and
his three brothers. You see it's damp, down in that hollow, and the sun
hardly ever touches the house. I heard Dr. Simonds say it was ten to
one against anybody who was sick there."
When school was over Robert Shaftsbury hurried home. He found his
mother sitting, dressed all in white, in the music-room, playing a
symphony on the piano, while his father sat a little distance off,
listening with half-closed eyes. He waited until the piece was over,
and then he told his story and preferred his request.
The doctor had said it was ten to one against any one who was sick
in that little damp house in the hollow; and he wanted Jamie brought
up the hill to their own home. He watched the faces of his father and
mother as he spoke; and it seemed to him that a refusal was hovering
upon their lips, and he said, earnestly,--
"Don't speak, just yet. Remember that he is his mother's only son, as
I am yours. If I lay sick where there was no hope for me, and some one
else might, perhaps, save me by taking me in, would you think they
ought to try it, or to let me die?"
Mr. Shaftsbury looked into his wife's eyes.
"Robert is right," she said, with the sudden, sweet smile which always
seemed to make the day brighter when it came to her lips. "If the poor
boy can be helped by being brought here, we must bring him."
"I will go and see," Mr. Shaftsbury answered, at once.
"And I, too, papa," said my little gentleman.
"Not you, I think. I fear contagion for you."
"I think there is no danger for me, living on this bright hill-top, in
these great, airy rooms,--but even if there were, I am sure you would
let me go if you knew how much Jamie loves me."
"Come, then," his father said, quietly. He had been, all his son's
life, preaching to him of heroism and self-sacrifice and devotion. He
dared not interfere with almost his first opportunity for any real
exercise of them. So the two went down the hill together.
It chanced that they met Dr. Simonds coming away from the house, and
proposed to him the question of the removal. It would not do, the
doctor declared at once,--the disease had made too much progress. To
remove him now would be more dangerous than to leave him where he was.
"Then I must go and see him," Robert said, resolutely. "You know he has
only his mother, and I must spend all the time I can spare from school
with him."
"But I will send an excellent nurse, my son. Do you not see that I
cannot have you expose yourself?"
"Send the nurse, too, please, papa; but do not keep me from going. He
will not care for the nurse, and he does care very much for me. I do
not believe in the danger, and I know how glad he will be to see me."
Mr. Shaftsbury hesitated. This boy was as the apple of his eye. Must
he indeed begin so soon to look danger in the face, for the sake of
others? But dared he withhold him, when the boy felt that honor and
duty called? It ended by his walking in with him quietly.
It was something to see how Jamie's face brightened. He had been very
dull and stupid all day, his mother said, and some of the time his mind
had been wandering. But now a glad, eager light came into his eyes, and
a smile curved his parched lips. He put out his hot hands.
"Oh! is it you, my little gentleman?" he said: "I had rather see you
than any thing else in the world."
"Well, then, I will come every day as soon as I am through school,"
Robert Shaftsbury answered.
"Do you know what you have done?" his father asked, when, at last, they
stood outside the house together.
"Yes, papa. I have promised that poor, sick, helpless little fellow
all the comfort I can give him. I have promised to do by him as I
should want him to do by me if I were Jamie Strong, and he was Robert
Shaftsbury."
Mr. Shaftsbury was silenced. This, indeed, was the rule of living he
had taught. Should he venture to interfere with its observance?
So my little gentleman had his way. He took every precaution which his
mother's anxiety suggested, such as going home to lunch before he went
to the little cottage where the sick boy lay and longed for him. But
he went regularly. And no matter how wild Jamie might be, his presence
would bring calmness. The dim eyes would kindle; the poor, parched lips
would smile; and Mrs. Strong said the visit did Jamie more good than
his medicines.
At school the boys looked upon my little gentleman with a sort
of wondering reverence. They all knew of his daily visits to the
fever-haunted place, which they themselves shunned, and they marvelled
at his courage. This was the boy they had fancied to be lacking in
manliness, because he was slight and fair,--because he was carefully
dressed and tenderly nurtured! They said nothing; but in a hundred
subtile ways they showed their changed estimate.
The days went on, and with them Jamie Strong's life went toward its
end. The doom of his house had come upon him; and love and prayers
and watching were all, it seemed, of none avail. One night the fever
reached its crisis, and the doctor, who watched him through it, knew
that the end was near. Jamie knew it, also. When the morning dawned he
whispered faintly to his mother,--
"I shall never see another morning; but oh, if I can only live till
night, and see my little gentleman!"
She proposed to send for him; but that was not what the boy wished.
"No," he said, feebly, "I want to see him coming in, at the old time,
with some flowers in his hand, 'and make a sunshine in a shady place.'
Somebody said that, mother, I forget who; I forget every thing now; but
that's what _he_ does; he makes a sunshine in this shady place."
A dozen times that day it seemed as if the breath coming so faintly
must be his last; but he clung to life with a strange, silent tenacity.
At last, just a few moments before it was time for the accustomed
visit, he said,--
"Kiss me good-by, mother. I want to save the rest of my strength for
him."
She kissed him, with her bitter tears falling fast. He put up a hand so
thin that you could almost see through it, and brushed the tears away.
"Don't cry," he said; "it hurts me. Life here was hard, and up above
Christ says it will be all made easy."
Then he was silent, and presently Robert came with a great bunch of
white lilies in his hand.
"The lilies of heaven," murmured Jamie, in a low, strange tone. Then
into his eyes broke once more the light which never failed to respond
to Robert's coming, and a wan smile fluttered over his lips, as a soul
might flutter before it flies away.
"I am going now," he said. "I waited to say good-by, my little
gentleman. Do you think they are all gentlemen up there?"
With this question his life went out, and voices we could not hear made
answer.
This was the beginning of Robert Shaftsbury's career. No harm came
to him through his presence in the fever-tainted house,--but he had
learned a lesson there. The one thing for which he has striven in life
is to be a gentleman; and his interpretation of that much-abused phrase
he finds in the Book which tells us to do unto others as we would that
they should do unto us.
[Illustration: RUTHY'S COUNTRY.--PAGE 191.]
RUTHY'S COUNTRY.
It was such a strange, sad, old face to be on such a young, slight
form, that you could not help looking at it again and again. Otherwise
there was nothing remarkable about her. She was just a girl sweeping a
crossing, in a bustling, dirty street, on a muddy, sloppy March day.
She was thinly clothed, but not more so than others of her class;
and there was nothing in particular to make me notice her except
this queer, expressive, melancholy, unyouthful countenance. She wore
a worsted hood which left the whole face visible. You could see the
forehead, broad and low, and lined with puzzled thinking; the dusky,
tumbled hair; the wishful, pathetic mouth with its drooping corners;
and the great, strange, olive-colored eyes, which looked as if they
had asked for something they could never find for such a weary while
that now they would never ask again,--eyes dark with despair, and yet
with a suggestion of something else in them which set you questioning.
Patiently she swept on. Sometimes she had to spring aside from the
rapid passage of cart or carriage, sometimes she made clean the way
of some dainty foot passenger, who rewarded her with a penny; but all
the time the hopeless, unchildlike visage never betrayed the slightest
gleam of interest. I was dabbling in art a little, just then; and
I stood in the window of a picture store and watched her, thinking
that her strange, impassive face ought to fit, somewhere, in the
illustrations I was making for a book of ballads, but not knowing quite
how to use it.
All at once, as I watched, I saw a singular change pass over her. She
held her broom motionless, her lips parted, a light as if at midnight
the sun should rise, lighted the darkness of her eyes, her whole
expression kindled with something,--interest, surprise, expectation,--I
hardly knew what, but something that transformed it as by a spell. I
stepped to the door then, and followed her eyes up the street.
It takes ten times as long to tell this as it was in happening. It
all came in an instant,--the change in her face, my going out to look
for its cause, and the sight which, following her eyes, I saw,--a
carriage coming swiftly down street, an elegant open barouche, in
which sat a lady dressed in furs and velvet, and a wonderfully
beautiful, golden-haired child. It was at the child that my little
crossing-sweeper was looking, with a gaze which seemed to me to say,--
"So this, then, is childhood? _This_ is what we ought to be when we are
young; and how beautiful it is!"
She looked so intently that she forgot she was standing in the way,
until the coachman shouted out to her, while he tried with all his
strength to pull up his horses. She had looked one moment too long.
Somehow the pole knocked her down, and the horses stepped over or on
her, which I could not see; but in another moment they were drawn up a
rod farther on, the lady was getting out of her carriage, and I myself
was in the heart of the crowd which gathered at once, as usual. "Her
arm is broken," one cried. "She has fainted," said another.
"Where is her home; can any one tell?" asked the lady in the furs and
the velvet, standing now beside her.
A ragged little newsboy stepped from the ranks and pulled at some
ghost of a cap. "Please, ma'am, I know," he said. "It's down here in
Moonstone Court, with old Sally."
"Hey for Sally, in our alley," sang another little limb of evil, vexed
that he had not been the one who knew the local habitation aforesaid.
Newsboy No. 1 was elevated to the coachman's box, and was desired to
show the way. The lady got into the carriage herself, and received
the injured and swooning girl, whom there were strong arms enough to
lift,--the golden-haired child looked on with the compassion of an
angel in her angelic face,--newsboy No. 2 hung on behind dexterously,
making sure that his offence would pass unnoticed in the general
_mêlée_, and the carriage rolled away toward Moonstone Court. Presently
the golden-haired child spoke.
"What if they haven't any good place for her there, mamma?"
Mrs. Brierly, for that was the lady's name, bent forward and addressed
newsboy No. 1, on the box.
"Is the old Sally you spoke of the girl's mother?"
"No, ma'am. She ain't no relation to her. I've heard folks say, Ruthy's
father and mother died, and old Sally took her in to beg for her; to be
a sufferin' orphin, you know; and lately Ruthy won't beg any more, and
they say the old un do beat her awful."
"O mamma!" It was all the pitiful, childish lips said; but the blue
eyes full of tears finished the prayer.
"Don't be afraid, Gracie," the lady answered, smiling; "she shall not
go there." Then she turned to newsboy No. 1. "Here is some money for
you. You can tell old Sally that the girl got hurt, and has been taken
to the hospital. You had better go and let her know at once."
So newsboy No. 1 got down from his unwonted elevation, pulled again
at the phantom of a cap, and, looking curiously at the fresh, crisp
currency in his hand, walked away. Newsboy No. 2, correctly divining
that nothing was to be gained by remaining, while, by following his
comrade he might perhaps come in for a treat, let go his hold on the
carriage, and went after the other.
"Now, James," Mrs. Brierly said to the coachman, "you may drive to the
Children's Hospital, on Rutland Street."
"We shall go right by home, shan't we, mamma?"
"Yes, dear."
"I suppose we couldn't be a hospital, could we?"
"Not very conveniently, I think. It is better to help keep up a
hospital outside than to turn our own house into one."
"Yes'm," Gracie said, thoughtfully, "only this once, when we did the
hurting, I didn't know but it would be nice if we did the curing."
Just then, before Mrs. Brierly answered, the swooning girl revived,
and opened for an instant her curious, olive-colored eyes. There was
something in their look, perhaps, which went farther than Gracie's
argument. At any rate, the lady said,--
"After all, James, you may as well leave us at home, and go at once for
Dr. Cheever."
In five minutes more the carriage had stopped before a substantial,
prosperous-looking house, the coachman had carried the poor, suffering
little waif upstairs in his arms, and Mrs. Brierly had summoned Mrs.
Morris, the good, motherly woman who had been Gracie's nurse, to her
councils.
When Dr. Cheever came, he found his patient in clean, pure clothes, in
a fresh, lovely room, waiting for him with a piteous, silent patience
which it was pathetic to see. She suffered cruelly from her hurt, a
compound fracture of the wrist, but she was not used to making moans
or receiving sympathy; and it would have seemed to her a sort of
sacrilege to cry out with human pain in this paradise to which she had
been brought. One could only guess at her suffering by her compressed
lips, with the white pallor round them, and the dark rings about her
eyes.
Dr. Cheever listened to the account of the accident, while he dressed
the poor hurt wrist with a gentleness which soothed the pain his touch
caused. When he had done all he could, he followed Mrs. Brierly from
the room.
"This will be an affair of several weeks," he said. "Would it not have
been better to take the girl to one of the hospitals?"
"I thought so, at first; but, as Gracie said, we did the hurting, and
it seemed right we should do the healing. Besides, the child's face
interested me strangely, and I think it will not be a bad thing for us
to have a little experience of this sort."
Meantime Ruthy lay and looked about her, as we have all fancied
ourselves looking when, the death sleep over, we shall open our eyes
to a new morning in some one of the Father's "many mansions." To a
denizen of Moonstone Court this peaceful spot in which Ruthy found
herself might well seem no unworthy heaven. The walls were tinted a
soft, delicate gray, with blue borderings. On the drab carpet blue
forget-me-nots blossomed. Blue ribbons tied back the white muslin
curtains, and all the little china articles for use or ornament were
blue and gilt.
Only one picture was in the room, and that hung over the mantel,
directly opposite the pure white bed where Ruthy lay. It was a
landscape by Gifford,--one of those glorified pictures of his which
paint nature as only a poet sees her. Soft meadows sloped away into
dreamy distance on one side, and, on the other, into the green
enchantment of a wood a winding path beguiled you. In the centre, with
her raised foot upon a stile by which she was about to cross into the
peaceful meadows, a young girl stood with morning in her eyes. Just
as she raised her foot she had paused and turned her head to look over
her shoulder, as if she heard a voice calling her, and was hesitating
whether to go on her appointed way or back into the green wood's
enchantment. There was a wonderful suggestion for a story in the girl's
face, her attitude, her questioning eyes. But if Ruthy felt this at
all, it was very vaguely and unconsciously; yet the picture revealed to
her a new world. Somewhere, then, meadows bloomed like these meadows,
and woods were green, and light flickered through tender leaves, and
over all the great, glorious blue sky arched and smiled. Somewhere!
That must be country,--outside of the pavements and the tall, frowning
houses. Oh, if she _could_ go! Oh, but she _would_ go! Let her wrist
but get well, and then! She had never had these dreams before. The
vision of the country, the true country, had never dawned on her till
now. And yet she must have seen pictures of it in the windows of print
shops; but her eyes had not been anointed, or Gifford had not painted
the pictures.
All through the quiet weeks in which her sore hurt was healing, she
watched that painted landscape, and her longing to find it grew and
grew. But she never said a word about it. Indeed, she seldom spoke at
all except to answer some question.
Mrs. Brierly became strangely interested in her in spite of this
silence, which piqued and disappointed Gracie. The child could not
understand what the mother guessed at,--the sense of isolation which
tormented Ruthy. She was among them, but not of them, the girl felt.
She had been injured by an accident for which these people in some
wise held themselves responsible, and so they were good to her, and
gave her this glimpse of heaven. But they were of the chosen people,
and she a Gentile, an outcast at their gates. If she could but go away
from every thing she had ever known, and follow that winding path into
the still wood, she should be happy. Who knew what she might not find
there,--love, may be, and friends, and home,--perhaps, even, the father
and mother who, as old Sally said, were dead? Who knew?
One day Mrs. Brierly came in to sit with her. Ruthy could sit up now,
and she was in a low rocking-chair, still facing the picture. The lady
saw the direction of her eyes, and said, gently,--
"I think you must like pictures very much, Ruthy?"
The olive-colored eyes gleamed, and a flickering flush came and went in
the thin cheeks, but the girl answered shyly and guardedly, as her wont
was.
"I don't know, ma'am; I have never seen any. I like this one. It is the
country; isn't it?"
Mrs. Brierly smiled.
"Yes; it is the country as Gifford, the man who made the picture, saw
it. Country means ploughed fields and potatoes to some people, and
paradise to others. I think _you_ could find Gifford's country, Ruthy."
The girl's heart gave a great, sudden bound. That was just what she
meant to do; but she was silent. Soon Mrs. Brierly asked,--
"Do you remember your father and mother, Ruthy? I think they must have
been very different people from old Sally."
"Yes, ma'am, I remember my mother. Father died so long ago I have
forgotten all about him, and mother and I grew poorer and poorer, until
one day I woke up, as it seemed, from a long dream, with my hair all
gone, and very weak; and the neighbors said mother and I had both had
a fever, and she was dead. Then Sally took me and sent me out to beg,
until I wouldn't beg any more; and since then I've sold matches and
swept crossings, and done any thing else I could. My wrist is getting
so I can use it now, and I must go to work again. I am very thankful
to you, ma'am. I would have my wrist broke twenty times to come once
into this house and lie in this white bed, and see that picture. But
to-morrow I shall be well enough to put on my own clothes again and go
to work, and I will, please, ma'am."
"These are your own clothes that you have on, Ruthy, your very own. And
here are more changes for you in this drawer, and here in the closet
are your shawl and hat. You must not go away yet, till you are much
stronger; but when you do go, all these things are your own."
"My very own!" It was a sort of glad cry which came from the girl's
quivering lips. Her eyes filled, and the flickering color came into her
cheeks. Mrs. Brierly got up and went away. She had never heard Ruthy
speak so many words before, and she began to feel that she should get
to the girl's heart in time, but she would not let her excite herself
any more, now. And Ruthy sat and looked at the picture, and thought.
The next morning rose bright and clear,--a summer morning, which had
slipped away from its kindred and stolen on in advance to brighten the
last week in April. Nurse Morris went first into Ruthy's room, and
found the little white bed empty, and the room empty also. She called
the maid who had been sweeping down the steps and washing the sidewalk,
and asked if she had seen any one go out. No one, the girl said, but
she had left the door unfastened while she just chatted a bit with
Katy, next door, and some one might have gone, and she not know it.
Mrs. Morris went next to Mrs. Brierly with her tale, and Mrs. Briefly
came in dressing-gown and slippers to look at the empty room. The
hat and shawl she had put in the closet for Ruthy were gone, but the
changes of clothes in the drawer were untouched; and upon them lay a
piece of paper on which the girl had printed laboriously, in great
capital letters,--
"I AM GOING TO FIND THE COUNTRY. I DID NOT TELL, FOR FEAR I WOULD
NOT BE LET TO GO. GOD BLESS YOU, MA'AM, I'M VERY THANKFUL."