DR. TRENT.
IT was a cold, bleak night in November. There was a blazing wood-fire on
the library hearth. Bethany sat in a low chair in front of it, with a
large, flat book in her lap, which she was using as a desk for her
long-neglected letter-writing. An appetizing smell of pop-corn and
boiling molasses found its way in from the cozy kitchen, where the
sisters were treating Jack to an old-fashioned candy-pulling. The
occasional gusts that rattled the windows made Bethany draw closer to
the fire, with a grateful sense of warmth and comfort. She thoroughly
appreciated her luxurious surroundings, and was glad she had the long,
quiet evening ahead of her.
For half an hour the steady trail of her pen along the paper, and the
singing of the kettle on the crane, was all that was audible.
Then Jack came wheeling himself in, with a radiant, sticky face, and a
plate of candy.
"O, we're having such lots of fun!" he cried. "We're going to make some
chocolate creams now. Do come and help, sister?"
She pointed to the pile of unanswered letters on the table. "I must get
these out of the way first," she said. "Then I'll join you."
"I guess you can eat and write at the same time," he answered, holding
out the plate.
He waited only long enough for her to taste his wares, and hurried back
to the kitchen to report her opinion of their skill as confectioners.
Just as the dining-room door banged behind him, she thought she heard
some one coming up on the front porch with slow, uncertain steps. She
paused in the act of dipping her pen into the ink, and listened. Some
one certainly tried the bell, but it did not ring. Then the outside door
opened and shut. She started up slightly alarmed, and half way across
the room stopped again to listen. There was a momentary rustling in the
hall. She heard something drop on the hat-rack. Then there was a low
knock at the library door. She opened it a little way, and saw Dr. Trent
standing there.
"O, Uncle Doctor!" she cried, throwing the door wide open. "I never
once thought of its being you. I took you for a burglar."
Then she stopped, seeing the worn, haggard look on his face. He seemed
to have grown ten years older since the last time she had seen him.
Without noticing her proffered hand, he pushed slowly past her, and
stood shivering before the fire. He had taken off his overcoat in the
hall. He was bent and careworn, as if some unusual weight had been laid
upon his patient shoulders, already bowed to the limit of their
strength.
Bethany knew from his firmly set lips and stern face that he was in sore
need of comfort.
"What is it, Uncle Doctor?" she asked, following him to the fire, and
laying her hand lightly on his trembling arm. She felt that something
dreadful must have happened to unnerve him so. "What can I do for you?"
she asked with a tremble of distress in her voice.
He dropped into a chair and covered his face with his hands. When he
raised his head his eyes were blurred, and he had that helpless,
childish look that comes with premature age.
"I have been with Isabel all day," he said, huskily.
Although Bethany had never heard Mrs. Trent's given name before, she
knew that he was speaking of his wife.
There was a long pause, which she finally broke by saying, "Don't you
see her every day? I thought you were in the habit of going out to her
that often."
"O, I have gone there," he answered wearily, "day after day, and day
after day, all these long years; but I have never seen Isabel. It has
only been a poor, mad creature, who never recognized me. She was always
calling for me. The way she used to rave, and pray to be sent back to
her husband, would have touched a heart of flint; yet she never knew me
when I came. She would grow quiet when I put my arm around her, but she
would sit and stare at me in a dumb, confused way that was pitiful. I
always hoped that some day she might recognize me. I would sing her old
songs to her, and talk about our old home, although the thought of its
shattered happiness broke my heart. I tried in every way to bring her to
herself. She would listen awhile, and look up at me with a recognition
almost dawning in her eyes. Then the tears would begin to roll down her
cheeks, and she would beg me to go and find her husband. Yesterday she
knew me!" His voice broke. "She came back to me for the first time in
eight years,--my own little Isabel! I knew it was only because the frail
body was worn out with its terrible struggle, and I could not keep her
long. O, such a day as this has been! I have held her in my arms every
moment, with her poor, tired head against my heart. She was so glad and
happy to find herself with me at last, but the happiness was over so
soon."
He buried his face in his hands as before, with a groan. When he spoke
again, it was in a dull, mechanical way.
"She died at sundown!"
The tears were running down Bethany's face. She had been standing behind
his chair. Now she bent over him, lightly passing her hand over his gray
hair, with a comforting caress.
"If I could only do something," she exclaimed, in a voice tremulous with
sympathy.
"You can," he answered. "That is why I came. None of her relatives are
living. Only my most intimate friends know that she did not die eight
years ago, when she was taken away to a sanitarium. I want--" he stopped
with a choking in his throat. "The attendants have been very kind, but
I want some woman of her own station--some woman who would have been her
friend--to put flowers about her--and--smooth her hair, as she would
have wanted it done--and--and--see that everything is all fine and
beautiful when she is dressed for her last sleep."
He tried to keep his voice steady as he talked; but his face was working
pitifully, and the tears were rolling down his face.
"She would have wished it so. She knew Richard Hallam. He was my best
friend. I do not know any one I could ask to do this for my little
Isabel, but Richard Hallam's daughter."
She leaned over and touched his forehead with her lips.
"Then let her have a daughter's place in helping you bear this," she
said. "Let her serve her father's dear, old friend as she would have
served that father."
He reached up and mutely took her hand, resting his face against it a
moment, as if the touch of its sympathy strengthened him. Then he rose,
saying, "I shall send for you in the morning."
"O, are you going home so soon?" she exclaimed. "You have hardly been
here long enough to get thoroughly warm."
"No, not home, but back to Isabel. It will be only a few hours longer
that I can sit beside her. I have staid away now longer than I intended,
but I had to come in town to see that Lee was all right."
"O, does he know?" asked Bethany.
"No, he was only two years old when they were separated. She has always
been dead to him. Poor, little fellow! Why should I shadow his life with
such a grief?"
Bethany helped him on with his overcoat, turned up the collar, and
buttoned it securely. Then she gave him his gloves; but instead of
putting them on, he stood snapping the clasps in an absent-minded way.
"I suppose Richard told you about that debt I have been wrestling with
so long," he said, finally. "I got that all paid off last week, the last
wretched cent. And now that Isabel is gone, I seem to have lost all my
old vigor and ambition. If it were not for Lee, it would be so good to
stop, and not try to take another step. I should like to lie down and go
to sleep, too."
He opened the door. A raw, cold wind, laden with snow, rushed in.
Bethany watched him out of sight, then went shivering back to the fire.
A deep snowstorm kept Jack at home next day, so no one questioned, or no
one knew why Bethany was excused from the office during the morning.
She carried out Dr. Trent's wishes faithfully. She stood beside him in
the dreary cemetery till the white snow was laid back over the
newly-made mound. Then she rode silently back to town with him. He sat
with his hands over his eyes all the way, never speaking until the
carriage stopped at the office, and the driver opened the door for
Bethany to alight.
Next day she saw him drive past on his usual round of professional
visits. No one else noticed any difference in him, except that he seemed
a little graver, and, if possible, more tender and thoughtful in his
ministrations, than he had been before.
To Bethany there was something very pathetic in the sudden aging of
this man, who had borne his burden so silently and bravely that few had
ever suspected he had one.
He was making a stern effort to keep on in the same old way. His
profession had brought him in contact with so much of the world's sorrow
and suffering that he would not lay even the shadow of his burden on
other lives, if he could help it.
Only Bethany noticed that his hair was fast growing white, that he
stooped more, and that he climbed slowly and heavily into the buggy,
instead of springing in as he used to, with a quick, elastic step. She
ministered to his comfort in all the little ways in her power, but it
was not much that any one could do.
It must have been nearly two weeks before he came again to the house.
This time it was to examine Jack.
"What would you say, my son," he asked, "if I should tell you I do not
want you to go to the office any more after this week?"
Jack's face was a study. The tears came to his eyes. "Why?" he asked.
"Because you will be strong enough then to go through a certain exercise
I want you to take many times during the day. If you keep it up
faithfully, I believe you will be walking by Christmas."
This was so much sooner than either Jack or Bethany had dared hope, that
they hardly knew how to express their joy. Jack gave a loud whoop, and
went wheeling out of the room at the top of his speed to tell Miss
Caroline and Miss Harriet.
Dr. Trent looked after him with a fatherly tenderness in his face. Then
he sighed and turned to Bethany. "I have another trouble to bring to
you, my dear. Lee has been getting into so much mischief lately. I never
knew till yesterday that he has not been attending school regularly this
term. You see every allowance ought to be made for the child--no home
but a boarding-house; no one to take an oversight--for I am called out
night and day. He is such a bright boy, so full of life and spirit. I am
satisfied that his teachers do not understand him. They have not been
fair with him. He has been transferred from one ward to another, and
finally expelled. He never told me until last night. He said he knew it
would grieve me, and that he put it off from day to day, because he did
not want to trouble me when I was so worried over several critical
cases. That showed a sweet spirit, Bethany. I appreciated it. He has
always been such an affectionate little chap. I wanted to go and
interview the superintendent; but he insisted it would do no good,
because they are all prejudiced against him. I know Lee is a good child.
They ought not to expect a growing boy, full of the animal spirits the
Creator has endowed him with, to always work like a prim little machine.
Maybe I am not acting wisely, but he begged so hard to be allowed to go
to work for awhile, instead of being sent to any other school, that I
gave my consent. It is little a ten-year old boy can do, but he has a
taking way with him, and he got a place himself. He is to be
elevator-boy in the same building where your office is. You will see him
every day, and I am giving you the true state of affairs, so you will
not misjudge the child. I hope you will look out a little for him,
Bethany."
"You may be sure I shall do that," she promised. "We are already great
friends. He used to often join us on his way to school, and wheel Jack
part of the distance."
Jack made as much as possible of the remaining time that he was allowed
to go to the office. He studied no lessons but the short Hebrew
exercises David still gave him. He called at all the different offices
where he had made friends, and spent a great deal of time in the hall,
talking to Lee, who was soon installed in the building as elevator-boy.
"My! but Lee has been fooling his father," exclaimed Jack to Bethany
after his first interview. "Dr. Trent thinks he is such a little angel,
but you ought to hear the things he brags about doing. He's tough, I can
tell you. He smokes cigarettes, and swears like a trooper. He showed me
an old horse-pistol he won at a game of 'seven up.' He shoots 'craps,'
too. He has been playing hooky half his time. One of the hostlers at the
livery-stable, where his father keeps his horse, used to write his
excuses for him. Lee paid him for it with tobacco he stole out of one of
the warehouses down by the river. You just ought to see the book he
carries around in his pocket to read when he isn't busy. It's called
'The Pirate's Revenge; or, A Murderer's Romance.' There is the awfulest
pictures in it of people being stabbed, and women cutting their throats.
I told him he showed mighty poor taste in the stuff he read; and asked
him how he would like to be found dead with such a thing in his pocket.
He told me to shut up preaching, and said the reason he has gone to work
is to save up money so's he could go to Chicago or New York, or some big
place, and have a 'howling good time.'"
It made Bethany sick at heart to think of the deception the boy had
practiced on his father. Much as she trusted Jack, she could not bear to
encourage any intimacy between the boys, and was glad when the time came
for him to stay at home from the office. But in every way she could she
strengthened her friendship with Lee. She brought him great, rosy
apples, and pop-corn balls that Jack had made. No ten-year-old boy could
be proof against the long twists of homemade candy she frequently
slipped into his pocket. Sometimes when the weather was especially
stormy and bleak outside, she stopped to put a bunch of violets or a
little red rose in his button-hole. She was so pretty and graceful that
she awakened the dormant chivalry within him, and he would not for
worlds have had her suspect that he was not all his father believed him
to be.
One day she told David enough of his history to enlist his sympathy.
After that the young lawyer began to take considerable notice of him,
and finally won his complete friendship by the gift of a little brown
puppy, that he brought down one morning in his overcoat pocket.
There was no more time to read "The Pirate's Revenge." The helpless,
sprawling little pup demanded all his attention. He kept it swung up in
a basket in the elevator, when he was busy, but spent every spare moment
trying to develop its limited intelligence by teaching it tricks. That
was one occupation of which he never wearied, and in which he never lost
patience. From the moment he took the soft, warm, little thing in his
arms, he loved it dearly.
"I shall call him Taffy," he said, hugging it up to him, "because he's
so sweet and brown."
Bethany had intended for Dr. Trent and Lee to dine with them on
Thanksgiving day, but the sisters were invited to Mrs. Dameron's, and
Mrs. Marion was so urgent for her and Jack to spend the day with them,
that she reluctantly gave up her plan.
"I shall certainly have them Christmas," she promised herself, "and a
big tree for Lee and Jack. Lois will help me with it."
It was a genuine Thanksgiving-day, with gray skies, and snow, to
intensify the indoor cheer.
"Didn't the altar look beautiful this morning with its decorations of
fruit and vegetables, and those sheaves of wheat?" remarked Miss
Harriet. She had just come home from Mrs. Dameron's, and was holding her
big mink muff in front of the fire to dry. She had dropped it in the
snow.
"Yes, and wasn't that salad-dressing fine?" chimed in Miss Caroline.
"Sally always did have a real talent for such things."
"It couldn't have been any better than we had," insisted Jack. "I don't
believe I'll want anything more to eat for a week."
"That's very fortunate," answered Miss Caroline, "for I gave Mena an
entire holiday. We'll only have a cup of tea, and I can make that in
here."
They sat around the fire in the gloaming, quietly talking over the happy
day. One of Bethany's greatest causes for thanksgiving was that these
two gentle lives had come in contact with her own. Their simple piety
and childlike faith sweetened the atmosphere around them, like the
modest, old-fashioned garden-flowers they loved so dearly. Well for
Bethany that she had the constant companionship of these loving sisters.
Happy for Jack that he found in them the gracious grandmotherly
tenderness, without which no home is complete. They were very proud of
their boy, as they called him. Between the Junior League and their
conscientious instruction, Jack was pretty firmly "rooted and grounded"
in the faith of his fathers. Night stole on so gradually, and the
firelight filled the room with such a cheerful glow, they did not notice
how dark it had grown outside, until a sudden peal of the door-bell
startled them.
"I'll go," said Miss Caroline, adjusting the spectacles that had slipped
down when the sudden sound made her start nervously up from her chair.
She waited to light the gas, and hastily arrange the disordered chairs.
When she opened the door she saw David Herschel patiently awaiting
admittance. It was the first time he had ever called. She was all in a
flutter of surprise as she ushered him into the library. He declined to
take a seat.
"I have just come home from Dr. Trent's," he said. "You know he boards
across the street from Rabbi Barthold's, where I have been spending the
day. He was called out to see a patient last night, and came home late,
with a hard chill. Lee saw me coming out of the gate a little while ago,
and came running over to tell me. He had been out skating all morning.
After dinner, when he went up-stairs, he found his father delirious, and
had telephoned for Dr. Mills. He was very much frightened, and wanted me
to stay with him until the doctor came. As soon as Dr. Mills examined
him, he called me aside and asked me to get into his buggy and drive out
to the Deaconess Home. I have just come from there," he said, "and Miss
Carleton has no case on hands. Tell her if ever she was needed in her
life, she is needed now. He has pneumonia, and it has been neglected too
long, I'm afraid. It may be a matter of only a few hours."
Bethany started up, looking so white and alarmed that David thought she
was going to faint. He arose, too.
"I must go over there at once," she said.
"It is quite dark," answered David. "I am at your service, if you want
me to wait for you."
"O, I shall not keep you waiting a moment," she answered. "Jack, I'll be
back in time to help you to bed."
As she spoke she began putting on her wraps, which were still lying on
the chair, where she had thrown them off on coming in, a little while
before.
David offered his arm as they went down the icy steps.
"It was so good of you to come at once," she said, as she accepted his
assistance. "Is Miss Carleton there now?"
"Yes," he answered, "she was ready almost instantly. She is the same
nurse that I met early one morning in that laundry office. She told me
on the way back that Dr. Trent has done so much for the Home and for the
poor. She says she owes her own life to his skill and care, and that no
service she could render him would be great enough to express her
gratitude. They all feel that way about him at the Home."
Belle Carleton met them at the bedroom door. "Dr. Trent has just spoken
about you," she said in a low tone to Bethany. "He has had several
lucid intervals. Take off your hat before you go to him."
Lee sat curled up in a big chair in a dark corner of the room, with
Taffy hugged tight in his arms. An undefinable dread had taken
possession of him. He looked up at Bethany, with a frightened, tearful
expression, as she patted him on the cheek in passing.
Dr. Trent opened his eyes when she sat down beside him, and took his
hand. He smiled brightly as he recognized her.
"Richard's little girl!" he said in a hoarse whisper, for he could not
speak audibly. "Dear old Dick."
Then he grew delirious again. It was only at intervals he had these
gleams of consciousness.
After awhile his eyes closed wearily. He seemed to sink into a heavy
stupor. Bethany sat holding his hand, with the tears silently dropping
down into her lap as she looked at the worn fingers clasped over hers.
What a world of good that hand had done! How unselfishly it had toiled
on for others, to wipe out the brother's disgrace, to surround the
little wife with comforts, to provide the boy with the best of
everything! Besides all that, it had filled, as far as lay in its power,
every other needy hand, stretched out toward its sympathetic clasp.
She sat beside him a long time, but he did not waken from the heavy
sleep into which he had fallen, even when she gently withdrew her
fingers, and moved away to let Dr. Mills take her place. He had just
come in again.
"Will you need me here to-night, Belle?" asked Bethany.
The nurse turned to Dr. Mills inquiringly. He shook his head. "Miss
Carleton can do all that is necessary," he said. "I shall come again
about midnight, and stay the rest of the night, if I am needed. He will
probably have no more rational awakenings while this fever keeps at such
a frightful heat. If we can subdue that soon, he has such great vitality
he may pull through all right."
"You'd better go back, dear," urged the nurse. "You have your work ahead
of you to-morrow, and you look very tired."
"I have an almost unbearable headache," admitted Bethany, "or I would
not think of leaving. I would not go even for that, if I thought he
would have conscious intervals of any length; but the doctor thinks that
is hardly probable to-night. I'll come back early in the morning. Maybe
he will know me then."
"Are you going, too?" asked Lee, clinging wistfully to David's hand, as
Bethany put on her hat.
"Would you like me to stay?" he asked, kindly.
Lee swallowed hard, and winked fast to keep back the tears.
"Everybody else is strangers," he said, with his lip trembling.
David put his arm around him caressingly. His sympathies went out
strongly to the little lad, who might so soon be left fatherless.
"Then I'll come back and stay with you till you go to sleep, after I
take Miss Hallam home," he promised.