“And a voice said in mastery while I strove,
Guess now who holds thee?—
‘Death,’ I said;
But there the silver answer rang,
‘Not Death, but Love.’”
SONNETS FROM THE PORTUGUESE.
Some time elapsed ere I divined where we were, and then I discovered
that we had been carried to Mr. Everett’s house and were all lying in
the attic over the store. Mildred had been placed on his cot-bed by the
book-shelves, and he lay on a lounge a few feet distant.
After a time my straw bed, which had been borrowed from a neighbor, was
turned about so that I could see them. I was too weak to talk, but I
loved to lie and look at them when the terrible pain gave me a moment’s
respite to think of anything beside my own woes.
The little town was crowded; not a spare room but had been gladly given
up to the sufferers.
Little by little I learned all that had happened. A tree had been
uprooted in the wild storm and had fallen across the track. The engine,
the baggage car, and the first car had been derailed. The loss of life
had not been great. Poor Hélène, the little German woman and her baby
were the only ones who had not been rescued.
But in all the cottages around lay the helpless, wounded people, who had
come so far over land and sea only to meet this terrible fate.
The telegraph lines had been thrown down in the storm, and it was two
days before word could be sent and the débris cleared away so that
trains could come from the west. The little German doctor who had set my
bones while I was unconscious, and had left medicine for us all, did not
appear but once or twice after the first call, for there were a score or
more of poor, maimed creatures, some of them his own countrymen, who
needed him even more sorely than we.
What would have become of us during those three days of partial
unconsciousness and suffering and impatient waiting for our friends if
it had not been for “Jim”!
Jim was a character. Not even the pain could so wholly banish my sense
of humor as to prevent my seeing that.
I could not learn whether there was a woman in town or not, but I
afterwards heard that Jim had let it be understood that he was
commissioned by the “boss” to be his sole attendant, and warn every one
else to keep his distance. Half a dozen times a day the big, freckled,
red-haired fellow creaked up the stairs in his stocking feet, bringing
water and gruel and bouquets of gorgeous nasturtiums and crimson phlox
from his little garden patch across the way. Jim had an eye for the
beautiful, and thought it a pity that we should have nothing better to
look upon than the long rows of sombre books which lined one side of the
walls and formed Mr. Everett’s library.
Accordingly the poor man had stripped his own bachelor premises of all
the precious adornments sent him by his sweetheart for the last three
Christmases. There was a gilded sugar-scoop tied with pink ribbons, and
a remarkable landscape painted on the concave surface of the interior.
There was also a rolling-pin with a covering of French blue plush,
adorned with gilded handles, and bearing on its surface a large
thermometer surmounted by a gilded spread eagle.
These were especially devoted to my benefit, for which I was duly
appreciative. Over Mildred’s bed was hung a “God Bless Our Home,”
wonderfully worked in the national colors; and beside Mr. Everett’s sofa
was placed a gilded milking-stool of convenient height for holding vials
and glasses, the legs artistically interlaced with scarlet ribbons, and
the seat decorated with a painting, whether of Vesuvius in eruption or a
dish of crushed tomatoes, I was never quite sure.
From the low window near which my bed was drawn Jim proudly pointed out
to me his own quarters opposite. The house was an unpainted wooden
structure of one story, and evidently possessed a slanting roof with
gables, though the architect had erected a sham façade which gave the
appearance, when one took a front view, of a house with a flat roof.
Extending across the whole front of the house was a sign of unique
character painted in black on a pink ground, of which I subjoin an exact
copy.
1886.
FRANKLIN
PHILOSOPHIC
HERMITAGE
INDEPENDENT SCIENTIFIC REPAIR SHOP.
CLOCKS, COOPERING, CHAIN SAWS FILED
TIN WARE, POLITICS & THEOLOGY TINKERED
HUZZAH FOR
THE UNION
LABOR PARTY.
“Jim is an odd stick,” Mr. Everett once said with a feeble smile, as the
awkward fellow was heard anathematizing himself as he descended the
stairs after an accidental bang of the door, which made us all wince.
“Jim is odd, but he has mighty good stuff in him. There isn’t anything
that fellow would not do for me, though when I first came here he was
pretty fiery; a regular dynamiter you would have thought. But since I
started the debating club, and got him to reading history a little, he
has calmed down a good deal, and has come to find that hard facts are
worth more than all his former rhetorical pyrotechnics about the
down-trodden workingman.”
At last, with pale and terror-stricken faces, came aunt Madison and Will
and Alice with Dr. Ellsworth from Tacoma. Then ensued a new order of
things. Jim vanished, talking was forbidden, the noise everywhere
disappeared, and the clumsy carts passed silently beneath our window
over a thick bed of straw, while tall screens, improvised from sheets
and clothes-horses, separated us from each other the greater part of the
time. For there was not another room in town to be had, and the little
grocery below had been metamorphosed into sleeping apartments for our
four attendants. They alternately watched and slept.
The new physician threw away the old medicines, substituted new ones,
and looked with grave anxiety on Mildred’s flushed face and bounding
pulse. She had no bones broken and but a slight wound, and had insisted
that my broken bones be set first.
After the first shock, the excitement of meeting Mr. Everett and anxiety
for us all had sustained her, but now she was sinking fast. The delay in
attending to her at the beginning was telling upon her. Whether it was
the July heat, the sight of so many faces, and the necessary disturbance
when so many were forced to be in one room, I do not know, but as the
days went by none of us grew better.
Mildred was too ill to be moved to her car. Mr. Everett, though in a
fair way to recover, was too weak to stir after his terrible hemorrhage
and the strain upon his whole system; while I could not endure to be
touched without extreme pain. So during the July days we lay there
together in the unfinished attic room, watching the doctor come and go,
and tended by loving hands that divided their ministrations and the
delicacies that they brought with the suffering ones who lay not far
distant.
“Do everything for them that I would have had done,” were Mildred’s
words to cousin Will, which he understood as Mr. Everett did not. For no
one was allowed to tell him that this sweet girl lying there, who I
alone knew was his promised wife, was no longer the teacher whom he
thought her.
But the doctor’s face looked graver and graver as the days wore on. He
sat up half the night with us, performing the combined duties of nurse
and physician.
One morning, as he came in looking weary and jaded after but four hours’
rest, he sat down by Mildred’s bed, with a face that in spite of his
habitual professional attempt at gayety could not conceal the gravest
concern.
He felt her pulse and motioned furtively to aunt Madison, who stood with
brimming eyes studying his every motion. Mildred glanced up and read the
meaning of his look. She said nothing for a moment; then with an effort
to keep her voice steady she said, quietly, “Doctor, be honest with me:
shall I live?”
“My dear, I”—and the doctor coughed and turned away his head; “I—we”—he
glanced at Mr. Everett, who with eyes that were blazing like coals in
their sockets had half risen on his elbow and seemed devouring every
word,—“my dear, I hope so.”
“Yes, I understand,” replied Mildred calmly, after a searching look at
the physician’s half-averted face, “I understand, and I am not afraid;
but it is necessary that some things be done, and done quickly.”
She lay a few moments quietly thinking. No one stirred or spoke, and the
silence was broken only by aunt Madison’s half-stifled sobs, as she
turned away to hide her emotion. Presently Mildred looked up.
“Is there a lawyer in the village?” she asked. “I want to change my—that
is, I want to attend to a few little matters of business that must not
be left undone.”
“No,” replied Mr. Everett huskily; “there was one who did a little
business, but he died a month ago.”
Mildred said nothing for a few minutes, then looking up, with a pale
face and lips drawn tense, she said, “Auntie, I must be married to-day.”
We all gave an involuntary cry. Mr. Everett drew his hand over his eyes.
Dr. Ellsworth and aunt Madison exchanged looks of amazement as if to
say, “Is the girl beside herself?” I alone understood what it all meant.
“Yes, auntie,” Mildred continued. “I have not yet told you; I meant to,
by and by. I did not think it was to be here and now; I meant to have it
all so different; but my strength is going, I do not know whether I
shall—I dare not wait.”
She gave a little gasp of pain, and was silent a moment; then she added,
in a voice which I could scarcely hear, “I have told Mr. Everett that I
love him. I have promised to be his wife.”
No one spoke when Mildred had finished, and she lay with closed eyes,
while aunt Madison stood as if struck dumb, gazing incredulously from
one to the other. She had learned that they were old friends, that he
had saved her life; perhaps she had suspected more, but this sudden
announcement paralyzed her for a moment.
Mr. Everett half rose again from his couch and leaned toward Mildred as
if to speak, but the words died on his lips, and he sank back exhausted
and lay motionless.
Aunt Madison softly left the room, but soon returned, and kneeling by
Mildred’s side they whispered together. What was said I never knew, but
I was certain that Mildred’s thought was for Ralph’s inheritance.
An hour later, another physician, who had been telegraphed for the
previous day, arrived. He stepped softly into the room, and for a long
time gazed intently at Mildred as she lay asleep, and then he slipped
out, and I heard faint murmurings of voices in the room below as the two
physicians held a consultation.
“Oh, Mildred, my more than sister,” I inwardly groaned; “must I lie here
helpless and see your precious life going from us? Were you snatched
from the jaws of death but to fall back again a helpless victim? If this
must be, oh that we had died together before rescue came!”
I had given my whole heart to this girl. I had loved her with a love
which made all other friendships of my life seem as nothing. In loving
her I felt that I had first learned what love meant, and my little,
petty life had been made deeper, broader, and full of hitherto
undreamed-of possibilities.
The hours wore away, the hours of Mildred’s wedding-day. “Send Jim for
Mr. Lightfoot,” Mr. Everett had said to Will. “He will know where to
find him. He is the only regular clergyman within fifty miles.”
He had been sent for post-haste, and that evening, just as the sun was
sinking in the west and lighting up in gorgeous splendor the little
attic where we lay, a tall, gray-haired man in a rusty, black
frock-coat, and with prayer-book in hand, climbed softly up the creaking
stairs and paused in the doorway, glancing in a tender, fatherly way at
the two pale faces which looked up to greet his coming.
The windows were opened, and the blue paper curtains had disappeared to
be replaced by white muslin ones. A dozen pitchers were placed around
the room containing the brilliant wild flowers of the neighborhood that
had been sent in by Jim and his friends. A wreath of golden-rod and
purple asters at Jim’s desire was laid upon the white counterpane at
Mildred’s feet. For the news that there was for some strange reason to
be a marriage had spread like wildfire, and many a rough, sunburned man
had tapped softly at the door of the little shop to ask what it meant,
and beg Alice, who stood on guard, to be allowed to come up and stand,
if only in the doorway, and see the “boss” married.
One day, a month later, Alice told me all about it. “You don’t suppose,
Miss, he’s agoin ter die?” asked one of them, as they stood around the
door in a quiet, awe-struck group. “I don’t know what we fellers ’ud
ever do without him,” he added huskily, as he drew the back of his grimy
hand across his eyes.
“I don’t go much on religion,” said another, who sat on the doorstep
leaning his head in his hands; “but I’ll be blamed ef that ere feller,
with all his college larnin’ and soft-spoken ways, a-comin’ out here and
roughin’ it with us, and a-nursin’ and a-teachin’ and a-helpin’ of us
all,—I’ll be blamed if that ain’t the Christianest thing I ever see.”
I did not wonder that these men loved their teacher.
Ralph—I learned to call him that afterwards, so I call him so now, for
it seems more natural—Ralph Everett had a face such as one sees only
once or twice in a lifetime. I did not wonder that Mildred loved it so
that she kept awake to look at it as he slept.
The forehead was broad and low, from which the brown hair rose thick and
abruptly, framing the strong, almost rugged face. The eyes—such eyes!
They were the frankest, truest eyes that ever glorified a human face.
Not even Mildred’s eyes were like those, although hers could sparkle or
command or grow wonderfully soft and tender. The chin and mouth were
hidden in a luxuriant blond beard, in which gleamed now and then a
silver thread. The broad chest, the sunburned face and hands which the
pallor of sickness was fast restoring to their pristine whiteness, all
evinced a strong, active life, strangely contrasting with the pitiful
helplessness which had now prostrated it.
But surely strength and health would soon return; surely love would
triumph; and these two, so strangely reunited in the very jaws of death,
would some day make all previous joys as nothing to that deep, full,
complete satisfaction with which heaven should crown their lives; these
two, who seemed of all the world the ones most worthy of such
blessedness.
I had dreamed it all out. Some beautiful day in the months to come I
should stand as bride’s-maid beside a happy, white-robed bride. There
would be flowers and music and smiles. There would be the strong,
gallant lover, the one man of all the world who was worthy to wed my
precious Mildred. The man whom she would always know had married her for
herself alone, a man whom wealth or happiness could not tempt, who
should nobly help her in the great work that she had set herself to do.
To tell the truth, I had thought also, with almost a pang of jealousy,
what this would mean to me, and what my life would be without her.
I could scarcely realize that now, here, in this brown, unplastered
attic room, in a dreary frontier mining town, with no music but the
chirping of the August crickets in the little field behind us, without
wedding-robe or wedding guests, my Mildred was to become a bride.
They bolstered me up to see it all, as well as could be done with my
splintered leg and arm. I was trembling violently, and the doctor gave
me a sedative powder and sat by me with hand on my pulse. Ralph’s lounge
had been moved beside Mildred’s cot. His face was as deadly pale as her
own.
“Mildred,” he whispered hoarsely,—they had not spoken to each other
since in the morning when she had said she would marry him,—“Mildred,
have you counted the cost? Think, darling, you may get well; do you
realize what you are doing?”
“Yes, far better than you do,” she replied with a faint smile.
The clergyman quietly took his place at the foot of the bed, and as the
solemn words of the Episcopal marriage service broke the silence,
Mildred, who had been lying with closed eyes, started visibly. She had
not before observed that the clergyman had a prayer-book. I could see
that she was greatly agitated, and instantly divined the cause.
She had always declared that she would never under any conditions allow
herself to be married by that service.
I knew her reasons for this and how strongly she felt about it, so I
understood what her consternation must be now. All this flashed through
my brain before the clergyman had read three lines.
Then Mildred gave a little gasp. A crimson flush leaped into her cheeks,
and I knew her mind was made up. Instantly her voice broke in, strangely
clear and strong.
“Please wait, sir,” she said. “I beg your pardon. I did not know this
service was to be used. I cannot be married by it. Can you not
substitute some other?”
Every one but Ralph was thunderstruck; but they were getting inured to
surprises, and no one spoke while the clergyman, for a moment too
shocked to reply, gazed in blank amazement into Mildred’s earnest eyes.
But Ralph understood, and said calmly, “No, dear, he cannot. I should
have thought of this before. I am not willing that you should promise
what this service contains. So, in the presence of God and of these
witnesses, we two alone will bind ourselves lawfully in the marriage
bond.”
Then, holding Mildred’s right hand in his, while the minister stood
wonderingly aside, he said with clear, unshaken voice:
“I take thee, Mildred, to be my lawful, wedded wife, to love and to
serve, to comfort and cherish, to honor and keep, so long as we both
shall live; and thereto, God helping, I plight thee my troth.”
A deathly pallor had crept over Mildred’s face. Just then the last rays
of the setting sun for a moment streamed into the little room,
irradiating its bare walls, and transfiguring with magic light those two
faces on which we were gazing with breathless silence.
Then, after a moment’s pause, Mildred with a great effort leaned an inch
nearer, and gently taking Ralph’s brown hand in both her slender white
ones, said, with blanched lips:
“I take thee, Ralph, to be my lawful, wedded husband, to love and to
serve, to comfort and cherish, to honor and keep, so long as we both
shall live; and thereto, God helping, I plight thee my troth.”
After the last words had died tremblingly away on Mildred’s lips, the
clergyman at a sign from her lifted his voice in prayer, while Alice
kneeled sobbing by the bedside, and over my eyes there came a mist. My
senses reeled, and I remember no more.
Weeks afterward Alice told me that Mr. Lightfoot had gone away with a
fatherly benediction, and a purse the richer by a thousand dollars for
the marriage service which he did not perform.
The days went by, and I knew but little. The tall, white screen shut out
everything from me. I was too weak to ask about Mildred, but I knew that
she had not left us. Surely God had been merciful. She was still to live
and love and bless the world.
At last came a day,—it was the first day of September, I recall,—the
very day when we had planned to reach San Francisco on our return from
the Alaskan trip which we had contemplated; the screen was removed, and
Mildred and Ralph, still pale and wan, but with the glow of returning
health lighting up their happy faces, sat beside me and whispered words
of farewell.
“Oh, Mildred, you did not die, you are alive,” I sobbed weakly, too
happy to keep the tears back.
“Yes, darling,” she said, “for it was love that saved me. I had
something to live for, and I fought hard. Now I am to leave you for a
while. My husband and I” (how proudly she said that), “my husband and I
are going away.”
“Her aunt Madison has kindly offered us her beautiful, private car, and
we are going away for a long rest before we come back to our work,” said
Ralph innocently, and I saw that for some reason Mildred had still kept
him ignorant of the fact that he had married a great heiress instead of
a poor teacher. “This is to be our honey-moon, you know,” he added,
looking at her with the lovelight shining in his eyes. “We are going
quietly. No one but Jim is to know of it, for the doctor says we must
spare ourselves the excitement of the good-byes which would have to be
said if the people knew we were going. The men have been clamoring for a
month to see me, and it has been hard for me to keep quiet and not let
them come.”
“How would you feel,” asked his wife in a careless tone, “if you had
married a rich woman, who would ask you to go away and never come back
to work here again?” and Mildred, who was holding my hand, gave it a
mischievous little squeeze as she looked demurely out of the window and
awaited his reply.
“I don’t know. I am afraid I could not quite forgive her unless she gave
me better work to do elsewhere. I could not be idle, you know, even with
you, darling,” he answered, smiling at the bright face beside him.
“Ah, the world is large; there are many who need us; rich or poor, we
will find our work somewhere,” said Mildred softly, as if to herself.
Then as Jim’s steps were heard at the door she started.
“Come, Ralph, one last look at your books and room, it may be long
before we return. Kiss Ruby, too; you must be her brother now, you
know.”
Two warm kisses were on my cheek, then the door opened and shut, and
they were gone.
Everything had been arranged for my comfort, and a month later, when I
was able to travel in a private car which Mildred had sent us, aunt and
Alice, cousin Will and I, were on the Northern Pacific Road again, bound
eastward. And with us went the motherless little Karl and Annchen to
find a new home and many friends.
One day, as we were speeding along over the Dakota prairies, Alice and I
fell to talking as usual about the summer that was past and its strange,
strange ending. Suddenly Alice exclaimed, “But, Ruby, I never thought to
ask you before; _do_ you understand why Mildred, on her deathbed as we
supposed, should have stopped that minister? I thought I understood most
of her ideas, but _that_ was inexplicable to me.”
“Yes, I understand it, I suppose, for I once had an argument with her
about it,” I replied. “I remember we had been to a stylish wedding at
Trinity. There were ten bridesmaids, and the bride was dressed like a
princess, and I remember how, as we drove away, Mildred exclaimed that
she would rather have been married in a print dress in a log-cabin and
promise what was honorable and true, than to have had the beautiful
display which this bride had, and make such promises as she had done.
“‘It is the most beautiful service in the world,’ I stoutly maintained;
‘pray what can you object to in it?’
“‘In the first place, the giving away of the bride is a humiliating
thing,’ she said: ‘it is a relic of the feudal times, when a woman
actually _was_ given away. It implies dependence; a woman is thus simply
passed along from the guardianship of one man to that of another.’
“This was a novel idea which impressed me at first as being needlessly
crotchety. ‘Then, of course,’ I replied, ‘you object to the promise to
obey.’
“‘Certainly,’ said Mildred. ‘I should not respect myself if I could make
such a promise. Obedience implies authority, and a man and his wife are
equal. They do not stand in the relation of master and servant, employer
and employee, or parent and child.’
“‘Yes; but it doesn’t mean anything,’ I expostulated, ‘it is simply a
form.’
“‘So much the worse,’ was her uncompromising answer. ‘I will have no
idle forms, no humiliating promises which I should not intend to keep.
If I ever find the man whom I can marry, I think I shall love him enough
not to be selfish and willful, and he will love me enough to respect me
as his equal. There can be no question of authority and obedience in the
true marriage.
“‘Then, moreover,’ she said, ‘I object to the man’s making the promise,
“With all my worldly goods I thee endow.” In nine cases out of ten he
does nothing of the sort, and the wife usually asks for every dollar
that she gets!’
“So you perceive that after hearing her say this I was not so much
astounded as the rest of you were,” I concluded.
“Well,” said Alice, drawing a long breath and looking meditatively at
the diamond engagement-ring on her white finger, “I never in my life saw
such an extraordinary girl as Mildred.
“Now, I have vowed that I would never be married but by that beautiful
time-honored service. Dear me! if we all took everything to heart as
literally as she does, what would become of society?”
“It would probably learn to speak truth and not lies,” I answered.