TATTERS TRANSFERS HIMSELF
Not even the insistent sense of responsibility and of the literal work of
hands that lay before her could keep Brooke awake that first night in the
homestead.
With the fact that the move was accomplished came a feeling of relief,
as if a heavy weight had suddenly slipped from her shoulders, while the
knowledge that Dr. Russell had elected to return there for the night
after supping with Robert Stead gave her a wonderful sense of security.
In future Adam would sleep in the small room that opened between his
father’s and the back entry, but for this one night Miss Keith insisted
upon occupying it herself, “So that you can all sleep with both eyes
shut, and naught but dreams to trouble you,” she insisted when Brooke,
after helping wash and put away the tea things, had proposed to discuss
certain domestic questions.
The combination of a jingle of sleigh bells and the whirr-r with which
the hall clock cleared its throat, preparatory to striking nine, were
the first sounds that Brooke heard when she opened her eyes upon the
new surroundings, and then suddenly came to herself, conscience-stricken
at her utter oblivion of the past ten hours. Going to the east window,
whence the sound of bells and voices came, she raised the shade and
peered between the curtains. This window faced the front road, and
consequently the Moosatuk, to which it was parallel, though on a much
higher level; but all that could now be seen of the river was a broad
roadway, smooth, white, and level, bounded on each side by rugged banks,
set thick with snow-draped hemlocks.
A light snow had fallen in the early hours of the night, not a
sufficient storm to drift and block the roads, but merely to “polish up
the sleighing,” as the country parlance has it, while its magic touch
lingered on every brier and roadside weed in fantastic crystals, which,
meeting the sunbeams, radiated dazzling prismatic colours.
Stopping outside the fence was Silent Stead, driving Manfred before an
odd-looking low-running sled, with seat in front and box for merchandise
in the rear. With him was Dr. Russell, engaged in earnest conversation,
and also Tatters, who, as usual, was receiving his share of attention, as
he stood paws on the edge of the seat, the expression of his face, ears,
and tail seeming to vary according to the conversation of the men.
Brooke stood there spellbound, the muslin draperies held together beneath
her chin like a garment, and, as she looked, the Cub came up the lane
road from the barn, carrying the beloved Pam held high on one shoulder.
At sight of Tatters, the pup struggled to free herself, and began to
bark wildly. Stead evidently said something to the Cub, for, lowering
Pam to the sleigh box, he stood back, and watched Tatters walk about the
box at a little distance, his tail stiffly erect, and the neck ruff that
belonged to the collie half of him bristling also. As he drew nearer,
Pam leaned forward on her outstretched paws, barked saucily, and before
the dignified old dog could think of a suitable reply, outflanked him
by giving him an enthusiastic lick on the nose, as he drew near. Next,
casting herself recklessly from the sleigh, she slid along sidewise,
landing on her back almost between his front feet, with her paws held up,
as if in sign of complete submission. Then, as the men laughed heartily
at these tactful feminine antics in a puppy of only six months, Pam began
running to and fro in the snow, making believe to eat large mouthfuls
of it, and kicking it into the air. For a moment Tatters hesitated, and
then bounded awkwardly after the pup as fast as his stiff hind leg would
let him. To and fro they ran in the ecstasy of puppy play until Miss
Keith, shawl over head, came out in amazement at the turn of things, and
Tatters, quite spent with his unusual exercise, lay panting in the snow,
Pam following suit. For there is one inflexible dog rule—that as soon as
a newcomer has received recognition, he must yield obedience to the dog
already in command; that is dog law. Thus it was that young life came
to Tatters with the new arrivals, even as it had come to the homestead
itself.
As Miss Keith returned to the house, she glanced up at Brooke’s window,
and, seeing the face between the curtains, she nodded and waved her hand
gayly, a totally different attitude from that with which a week or even a
day before she would have greeted any one who had stayed abed until nine
in the morning. Instantly Brooke turned to her dressing, and though at
first the very cold water made her gasp, the after glow more than made up
for it.
Brooke could not conceal her satisfaction at the fact that some breakfast
had been stored away for her in the “hot closet,” and the mere fact
placated Miss Keith more than a thousand apologies for oversleeping. Why
is it that people, women especially, feel it a special point of virtue
to suppress or deny the existence of natural appetites that to be truly
without would prove them abnormal?
When both Mrs. Lawton and Brooke had duly learned where every dish,
pot, and pan belonged, and had seen the empty closet with its shelves
edged with scalloped paper that had been prepared for the china they had
brought,—one complete set, a Christmas present from Mr. Dean a few years
before, having been retained,—Mrs. Lawton returned to her husband, and
Brooke cornered Miss Keith for the necessary business conversation which,
though inevitable, the older woman for some reason was seemingly trying
to avoid.
“In a minute I’ll be there, and we’ll have it all out,” she said, rushing
out the back door toward the chicken houses with a dish-pan of scraps
that she had deftly made into a sort of stew, while she talked, by the
addition of some corn meal, red pepper, and hot water, returning in a
very few minutes with the empty receptacle.
“That reminds me, Brooke, it’s best the next three months to feed them
their hot meal in the morning, and not to let them out to exercise before
eleven, and shut them up tight, sharp at three, even on clear days. If
you don’t, they get so cold it sort of discourages the eggs at the time
you most want them. I’ve made out a list of my steady customers, and put
it here in the drawer along with the farm book, in case you have enough
eggs to peddle, and mind! forty cents a dozen is my steady price from
December to March. Don’t let ’em cheat you. After March you must follow
market rates. The farm book tells just what I plant, and when, and what
I naturally expect to get back. You see the place has run itself fairly
well, hired man and all, though you won’t expect it to now, because
you’ll need eggs to eat, and pretty much all the milk and butter output,
while your father’s on slop food.
“If you’ll take my advice, you’ll tend the fowls yourself, and don’t
trust the hired help. And I don’t think you’d best start the incubator
this year,—you’ll have enough on your hands. There are eight or ten hens
that have been working overtime this winter, so I expect they will be
thankful to rest their legs, and set the first week in March. By the way,
there’s spring latches on the doors of the roosting and laying houses,—my
idea to trap light-fingered folk if they get in, and to keep the fowls
from straying. Best be careful not to get shut in without the keys (they
lie in the box by the clock with all the others, plainly labelled). What
money there is to be had from poultry in these parts comes from caring
for it yourself, and you can’t trust hired female help, ’specially when
it comes from the city.”
“But, Cousin Keith,” said Brooke, as soon as she could be heard, and
struggling not to laugh at the outpouring of words, which, when the farm
was the topic, she soon found flowed as steadily as Niagara, “I do not
expect to keep female help from the city.”
“Oh, you relied on getting them from about here, then? Well, I’m afraid
you’ll find it a scant market, unless you’ll put up with coloured; the
American girls won’t live out in families where they set them at separate
tables, and I don’t blame them. There’s old Mrs. Peck, she sometimes
accommodates for a month or so, as a working housekeeper in confinement
cases, but she is old-fashioned New England and wouldn’t take to city
ways. Why, she would think her soul lost if she used prepared flour for
her buckwheat cakes instead of setting them with yeast, and she sticks to
soda and cream of tartar, which she understands the workings of, for all
baking, as she claims that baking powder isn’t plain and above board and
so is to be avoided, though I must say her tea biscuits took the prize
over mine at the Gordon fair.”
Once again Brooke shook her head, this time not trying to suppress her
laughter,—“I have no intention of keeping any household help whatsoever,”
she managed to say at last.
Miss Keith stopped short with a gasp, as if a pail of ice-water had been
poured upon her head, and then said: “No hired help! then who is to do
the cooking, and what will you eat? If this was Stonebridge, you could
get table board at the Inn, though it is expensive, and the people that
often stop here in driving, to buy my fresh cake, complain that it isn’t
satisfactory.”
“Cousin Keith, you must take me seriously. I do not think you understood
the letter that I wrote, telling you we were coming here. _I_ am going
to do the work; fifty dollars a month is our present income, and I do
not mean to touch the little principal we have, but keep it in case of
accident,—at least until I am in working order and have devised some plan
for earning more. All I hope to do is to get some good woman, like your
Mrs. Peck, to come here for a few weeks and teach me how to cook plain
food and be economical, for it is the other part that I understand, and
learned at Lucy Dean’s cooking class, to make cake, and candy, and all
the little supper dishes in a chafing-dish. Adam has already promised
that he will make the fires and do the heavy things, so you see I’m not
so badly off after all. You mustn’t look so discouragingly at me, Cousin
Keith. You see the only way for us to earn money in the very beginning is
by not spending it.”
Instantly Keith West’s whole attitude changed. She not only ceased making
objections, but the distance that she herself had, in her imagination,
forced to be kept between herself and her kin disappeared, and practical
suggestions took the place of obstruction.
“That minute you spoke and looked just like your Grandma West, when
the outlying members of the family tried to argue her into giving up,
and going down to winter at Gilead, after grandpa died. Gentle, but set
as fast as bricks in Portland cement. Of course you can do the work for
a while anyway (I did the same, and more too, at your age), if you can
only get the knack of turning it off, and I don’t know of any one more
likely to help you out than Mrs. Peck. That is, unless I postpone my
going for a couple of weeks, and do it myself,” and Miss Keith paused
with an eager look that said she would ask nothing better; for the advent
of the family, instead of making her feel out of place, had already made
her reasons for the change grow vague and hazy, and the departure itself
seemed not an escape, but more like an eviction.
“You are very kind to offer, but that is impossible, you know,” answered
Brooke. “In the last letter you wrote me, regretting the delay, you said
that you must _absolutely_ leave on the 12th, and that will be to-morrow.
It is better too that we should begin at once before Adam and I grow lazy
from seeing you take the lead and being accustomed to our liberty. How
much does Mrs. Peck charge, and where does she live? I think I had best
go to see her to-day while you are here to be with mother.”
Thus Miss Keith, by no act but her own, had literally closed the door
upon herself, which fact she was clear-sighted enough to recognize,
and bore herself accordingly, making haste to reply: “Mrs. Peck has six
dollars a week when she cares for mother, child, and the house, but when
it is just ‘accommodating’ with a grown girl to help out and take steps,
she has three, and must be called for and returned home. She would jump
at the chance to come here for three dollars, for there have been next
to no births this winter, and she has either been at home most of the
time, or else at her daughter’s, where she is kept busy and, of course,
gets no pay. She is very intimate with Mrs. Enoch Fenton, who lives just
round the turn on the Windy Hill road, not half a mile from here. You can
go up there for a walk after dinner, as I suppose you’d rather settle
your own business. No, you can’t go this morning, no one disturbs Mrs.
Fenton before dinner; you see, situated as she is, she must have all
the forenoon uninterrupted for her work—she manages wonderfully, but if
any one comes in before it is done, it upsets her for the day. Why, the
neighbours would no more think of calling on Mrs. Fenton in the morning
than they would of visiting the minister on Saturday night!”
Brooke was about to ask how this particular woman was differently
circumstanced from her neighbours, when Miss Keith again took up the
domestic thread:—
“There’s hay and straw and corn fodder enough to last over until pasture
is growing again. I’d advise you to sell the two old cows, the two young
ones (one calves in April, the other in September) will be enough for you
to manage. _Of course_ you’ll keep Billy; you’d be stuck fast here on
the hill like moss on a rock but for him. There’s no earthly reason why
Adam can’t learn to curry him, and milk too after a spell; but Larsen is
engaged until April, when he expects to be married, and work on one of
the great estates in Gordon. He works for me three hours a day in winter,
just the milking and chores morning and night. I pay him ten dollars a
month; the Fentons keep him the rest of the time, and pay him fifteen
dollars and board, for, of course, I couldn’t board a man here!”
Brooke did not appreciate the exact reason, but did not say so, and Miss
Keith continued: “After the 1st of April, Adam ought to be well broken
in, and you can doubtless get a man to plot out the garden, and work the
corn lot, the potato, hay, and rye fields on shares. I’ll speak to Mr.
Bisbee and the blacksmith about that before I go, and tell them to keep
their eyes open for one.”
“Don’t you think that three dollars a week is very small pay for a
woman such as Mrs. Peck appears to be, from what you say?” said Brooke,
unthinkingly, her old habits of generosity being yet strong upon her.
“Brooke Lawton, if you are going to bring your ideas of city wages and
charitable reforms up here, you’ll make trouble for others, as well as
for yourself,” snapped Miss Keith, vehemently. “That is her price, set
by herself, and you can’t afford to change it for one thing (you’re good
to eat on your principal these first three months anyhow); and suppose
you could, what good would it do her, but make her discontented with
what others could pay, and humble them? People ought to hesitate before
they upset the wages of a place they come into new. Half such charity is
selfish gratification, to my thinking. There was old John Selleck; he
used to do little garden chores for fifty cents a day and food,—light
work with frequent resting spells. Along comes a city man and hires
a cottage on the lower road for two months. Said it was a shame to
‘underpay the labourer,’ gives him a dollar and a half a day. When the
two months were over, and he left again, would John Selleck chore about
for fifty cents a day and food? Not he, so, as nobody would pay him more,
and he wouldn’t work for less, he nearly starved last autumn, and now
he’s working on the town farm for board without the fifty cents!”
It put matters in a different light to Brooke, and she was about to say
so when Dr. Russell thrust his head in at the door, and, catching only
a few words of Miss Keith’s oration on local political economy, judged
that Brooke was being unduly lectured, and would welcome release, which
he hastened to offer, by asking her to wrap up well and take a survey of
her property with him, saying that Adam had driven down to Gilead with
Stead, who had offered to show him the rounds of post-office, store, and
blacksmith’s shop.
As Dr. Russell opened the front door for Brooke to pass out, Tatters, who
for the past hour had been lying by Adam Lawton’s chair in the sitting
room, now rose, stretched himself, and prepared to follow, while as he
did so, Mrs. Lawton saw that her husband’s eyes followed the dog with
an expression very similar to the one that he had worn the last week
when either she or Brooke came into plain view. By thus reading his
expression, and by it guessing of his needs, she had already established
a certain means of communication, which Dr. Russell had explained to her
she might hope to develop day by day to the point when continuous memory
and coherent speech should return.
Once outside the door, Tatters sniffed at Brooke’s cloak, touched the
fingers of her ungloved hand lightly with his tongue, and then fell
behind, following her at a measured distance, pausing when she paused,
and straightway marching along as soon as she did.
“It appears to me,” said Dr. Russell, smiling, as he watched the old
dog’s soldier-like tread, “that Tatters has ‘transferred himself’ pretty
thoroughly, and Miss Keith will therefore have her last objection to
going to Boston removed.”
A path was shovelled from the front gate to the side lane above the
house, into which it turned, passing barn, cow, and chicken houses.
“How well our forebears knew how to build for winter convenience,” said
the doctor, tucking Brooke’s hand under his arm, as they walked, for
there was a layer of treacherous ice under the new snow. “Nowadays a
landscape architect would put all these outbuildings out of sight below
the slope, or else up behind that knot of cedars, where it would take a
day’s work to dig a road in snow time, while here all you have to do is
to look out the kitchen window, and see that all is safe and sound. It is
a compact little home, dear child, and in view of my practical knowledge,
as well as of the sentimental value of such things, I believe that under
any circumstances it is the best and most possible life for you all for
many years to come; only remember, do not be discouraged if you have some
blue days before the spring sun shines. There is a trite old saying,
‘Who loves the land in February loves for life.’ Simply keep working and
do not try to look too far ahead; even the Bearer of the World’s Burden
would only have us cope with evil day by day. There is where we often
make our error—by cutting off the vista to the good with the shadow of
borrowed trouble.”
Brooke looked up at him gratefully, and hesitated a moment before she
said: “There is only one thing about which I am troubling a little, and
that is Adam. How will dropping everything in the shape of books, and
turning into my assistant farmer, much as he likes the idea, affect his
future? You may not know how backward he is even now, and,” smiling
archly, “I’m afraid he’ll have to work for his board this first year
before I can even afford him an immigrant’s wages.”
“I’m glad that you have come straight to this point,” said Dr. Russell,
“for it is one where I can meet you halfway. I had a talk with your
brother on the train yesterday, and I am convinced that the practical,
and not the scholastic, is his forte. When he goes to college it should
be to the scientific, not to the academic school; that part of his
culture must come from good reading. His first need is out-of-door air
and life—so far, so good, that he can have. Last night at supper I
discussed this with Robert Stead, as his early training was both at the
School of Mines and the Polytechnic of Troy. The upshot,—‘Let him come
to me every day,’ said Stead, ‘for as many hours as he can spare, more
or less, and I will see what he lacks, and perhaps stimulate him by
companionship in study, or at any rate we can fight out the essentials
together. Perhaps it will warm my brain again, doctor, who knows?’”
Brooke clasped her hands with an expression of delight, and then dropped
them, saying, “But we cannot pay for such a favour as that would be, and
on the other hand we couldn’t put ourselves under an obligation.”
“My child,” said the doctor, stopping in the middle of the cow-house,
which they chanced to be investigating at the moment, and leaning
against a stall, while the gentle occupant pulled at his coat with
her inquisitive tongue, “there is another way in which we all make
grave mistakes. God forbid that I should advocate the shirking or
casting of responsibility upon others, but there is another extreme
that we are falling into in this twentieth century—an eye-for-an-eye,
tooth-for-a-tooth breed of independence, while the brotherhood that
should blend and sweeten all our daily actions is treated as a vocation,
a thing set apart, and labelled ‘Charity’ or ‘Social Service.’ It seems
to me that the Christian law of silent burden-bearing is far finer and
more subtle than this, in that it leaves no obligation in its wake.
“If Robert Stead, the man cursed with lack of motive, finds a fragment
of impulse in the stimulation of awakening his buried knowledge and in
contact with your brother, when your brother needs this knowledge, where
lies the obligation? No, the scales are evenly balanced; accept the
result, and do not draw a breath to jar the adjustment. Moreover, do not
judge Stead by the usual social standards, but bear with him. Perhaps
at times he may even seem discourteous, for what he thinks he suffered
by one woman, and a most remarkable one she was too, has made him curt
with all; for his great failing is that he can never judge except by the
personal measure, and unconsciously he has made a cult of selfishness.”
“I understand, oh, now I understand; how can I ever thank you for showing
me the way? Do you know, Dr. Russell,” Brooke said, clasping her hands
on his arm, “it seems to me I never began really to live until the day
that trouble came to us;”—while as Brooke spoke, the silent hour in the
Parkses’ gallery, and Marte Lorenz’ picture, stretched themselves as the
inseparable background to all that had followed, and deepened the colour
in her cheeks, that were already glowing with the keen air.
* * * * *
When Brooke and the Doctor finished their tour, and were returning to the
house, Tatters still following solemnly, Bisbee’s double-runner sled with
the baggage was seen coming from the lower road, while Stead’s cutter
turned into the yard from the hill way. The Cub being in a very happy
frame of mind as the result of his morning’s trip.
“Only think, Sis!” he cried, as soon as he was within speaking distance,
“the blacksmith has a registered dog bull pup, with just as good a
pedigree as Pam’s—a son of imported Black-eye who is owned over in
Gordon. He’s got a pedigree a mile long all written out, but it’s smudged
and mussy, and the blacksmith has offered me a dollar to copy it out on
a fan-shaped paper like mine. That will just come in handy to pay Pam’s
tax, too; it’s due up here the 1st of January. Then you see next year
we’ll go in partnership, and raise some pups, and fifty dollars apiece is
the very least we can get for them, and maybe a hundred for the dogs, if
they’re clever!”
The elder men smiled at each other, and the doctor said to Silent
Stead, “Enthusiasm is an element that can be ill spared from _materia
medica_,—it will do you good even to get a whiff of it.” To Brooke:
“Good-by for now, my child; your father will have all that can be done
for him. A sloping platform from the kitchen door will allow him to be
wheeled out in pleasant weather, and time and care alone will show the
result. Remember, do not hesitate to send for me if you are puzzled—and
courage! the courage that is always given to the world’s workers at their
need,” and the good physician, the spiritual son of St. Luke of old, took
his place by Stead, who turned Manfred in the direction of the Gilead
station.
Meanwhile Tatters had disappeared, and when Brooke went indoors again,
realizing too late that she had not yet thanked Silent Stead, she found
the dog stretched by her father’s chair, an indoor post he thereafter
occupied.
* * * * *
A little after two o’clock Brooke set out for Mrs. Fenton’s, leaving
her mother to superintend the unpacking of the simpler things, clothes,
books, and the little table furniture that they had deemed best to save
from the wreck and bring with them, a task in which Miss Keith seemed to
revel so unfeignedly that Brooke began her walk with an unusual sense of
freedom.
She had gone only a few hundred yards when she remembered Tatters, and,
turning back to get him, found that he was already close behind, and
hurrying as if life or death depended upon his escort. “How did you know
I was coming? How did you get out?” she asked him, and then laughed at
herself for expecting a reply other than the short, joyous bark he gave,
as he circled around her, pawing up the snow, inviting her to play with
clumsy, stiff gestures that plainly said, “I know I am rather an old
fellow for this sort of thing, but I’m willing to do anything I can to
amuse you,” while he even raced after the snowballs she threw at random,
and rashly tried to retrieve one, dropping it hastily at her feet with a
comical expression, showing by a twist of his jaw and rubbing his nose
between his paws that it was too cold for his teeth.
The walk was up an almost straight hill, relieved by occasional
resting-places by which alone travel in such a country is made possible
to man or beast, so that when Brooke reached the gate of the Fenton house
she paused, both for breath and to get her bearings. No pathway had been
shovelled to the front door, and the beaten track led round the side of
the house to a wide porch at the south, which also held a well-house in
its shelter, and this Brooke followed.
Her knock at the door was followed by a rumbling sound from within, which
began in an opposite corner of the house, and drew rapidly nearer; then
the door opened outward, singularly enough, and just inside it sat a
little old lady in a wheel-chair that she both guided and propelled with
her own hands.
“I’m so sorry to have troubled you,” Brooke began. “I wished to see Mrs.
Enoch Fenton, and Miss Keith said that it was the first house before the
cross-roads, but I must have misunderstood.”
“And so it is, dear. I’m Mrs. Fenton.” Then, as she read Brooke’s puzzled
expression: “Oh, I see, Keith didn’t tell you that I use wheels instead
of feet. Come right in; see, Tatters is quite at home here, and he knows
where my cooky drawer is just as well as any child in the neighbourhood,”
and, jerking a strap that she held in her hand, which was also fastened
to the door handle, she closed it behind her guest even before Brooke
realized and apologized for not doing it herself.
Quick as a flash the chair was turned, and travelled across the square
hall, which also served as a summer sitting room, into a kitchen,
cheerful and neat as wax, while as Brooke followed, her senses now keyed
to the unusual, she noticed that not only had the door-ways been widened,
but that all the furniture, tables, dresser, chest of drawers, and even
the stove itself were below the usual level.
“Choose a chair,” said Mrs. Fenton, smiling brightly as she brought
herself to a stop close to the sunny southwest bay window, where a wide
shelf with a deep ledge, containing sewing materials and various garments
in process of manufacture, showed it to be her habitual nook.
As Brooke drew a splint-bottomed rocker nearer to her hostess, she
noticed that, though the white hair and thin face had at first given the
impression of greater age, Mrs. Fenton was not more than sixty-five,
while the intelligence of her expression and brightness of eye might well
belong to a woman of fifty, and although her lower limbs seemed small and
were wrapped in a shawl, her arms and chest were full and muscular.
“You don’t tell me your name, but I make it that you are Adam Lawton’s
daughter, whom Keith has been expecting and worrying about these ten
days past. She told me about your father’s money loss and shock, and how
he was coming back home; and I’ve been real interested to hear, because
you see, dearie, Adam and I went to school together fifty odd years
ago, and to the day he left we were always a tie in spelling matches,
and now here we are again, like as not matched together as cripples.
Tell me all about him, dear, if it don’t hurt you. I’ve found, these
eight years since I’ve had my discipline, that exchanging experiences
with others likely situated is apt to make one credit a lot of things
to the mercy side of the record that would never have been set down,
if we hadn’t been brought face to face with other folks’ misery, and
so forced to take count of stock, so to speak. And please, before we
begin and have a comfortable chat, give Tatters a sugar cooky out of the
drawer there (I never before set eyes on a dog so fond of sweet cake,—his
mouth is fairly watering),—no, not that little drawer, the peppermints
and maple candy are in there, though you might like a bit of that to
nibble on,—the second drawer;” and Brooke, after giving the expectant
dog his cake, drew still closer to the wheel-chair, and, such was the
spell of single-hearted sympathy, quite as a matter of course she told
Mrs. Fenton, naturally and frankly, of both her hopes and fears, ending
with her desire to get Mrs. Peck to “accommodate” until she should have
learned to manage alone.
“You dear child!” exclaimed the lame woman, laying her work-hardened hand
on Brooke’s soft, shapely one as she ended, and looking at her through
the reminiscent tears that would gather on her lashes, “I take it a
special thought of Providence, your coming to me, for who has had to
learn, more than I, how to keep housework in hand?—and as to Mrs. Peck,
she will be here to-night, as Enoch, being Deacon, must sleep over at
Gordon, where the Con-Association meets.
“Listen, and I’ll tell you of my trouble quickly as may be, because
what’s over and gone best not be dug too deep, except for the planting
of future seeds of grace. Eight years ago this winter I was down at my
daughter’s house in Gilead (she being the only one of six left me outside
God’s Acre), tending her first-born. All around the well was laid with
great cobbles, I slipped, and having a heavy pail in hand could not save
myself, and hurt my spine, and it paralyzed my legs.
“They brought me home, and weeks and months went by. Enoch had the best
doctors that summer over from Gordon, but nothing could be done to liven
me; and then I knew that I must lie there bed-ridden, or be propped
in a sick-chair for life, and leave my work undone for others. Oh, it
was bitter, and I sorely rebelled to see a hired woman in my place, and
father only half cared for. Then came fall of the year, and one day
father brought in Doctor Russell, who had come up to stop on Windy Hill
with Robert Stead for the shooting. He asked father to go away and leave
him alone with me. Then he looked me over, bent all my joints that would
bend, and, after listening to my heart, sat in the big chair by the bed
(I can see him now just as plain), and said: ‘What troubles you the most,
Mrs. Fenton? What is your worst suffering, and what do you most wish?’
“‘To do something, to get to work, and not lie dead in the midst
of life.’ He sat quite still for ten minutes or more, matching his
finger-tips together in thought, and then he said, ‘If you have will
enough, and courage, as I believe, we’ll have you downstairs and back
at work again within a year.’ Then he told me of the chair, and how I
could be fastened in it to keep from falling, and learn to use the wheels
for legs, as a child does how to walk. Bless him! it all came true. At
first, to be sure, I was afraid, and banged about, and my arms were tired
to aching, and I often cried. But Enoch took such comfort, seeing me at
table even, that it was a nerve tonic. And gradually, as I strengthened,
he had the doors widened, and the sills done away with, and everything
set within my reach, until, when the year was up and a little more, I
turned off all my work except the washing, and cooked the dinner for the
doctor the next time he chanced in.
“When the weather is seasonable, too, I get all about the yard, and now
I really feel ambitious to go down to see your father when the roads are
settled. You see it was a special Providence that I hit my back just the
spot I did, for if it had been higher up, or on my head, it might have
paralyzed my arms. Yes, there’s always something to the mercy side, if we
only stop to reckon up.”
The sun was setting when Brooke left Mrs. Fenton, for she had been there
for two hours. The south-western sky was all aglow as the sun broke its
way through the dusky clouds of falling night, and like it, the heart of
the young woman glowed within her breast. Free of health and of limb,
what might she not will and do, ah, if only she could become, even as
that woman in the wheel-chair, one of the world’s workers!
As she walked swiftly down the road, the long shafts of light and the
wind gusts also, sinking to rest, played with her hair; and at the
turn she met Silent Stead, who was returning from Gilead. Thinking the
opportunity had come to recognize his kindness, she stopped, half turning
to the roadway; but he, either through offishness or suspecting her
design, passed on with a mere greeting.
Not piqued, because she remembered Dr. Russell’s warning, Brooke went her
way, smiling to herself in amusement; and when she neared the farm she
broke into a run, Tatters barking and gambolling about her, so that Miss
Keith, who came to the door at the sound, was forced to confess, though
much against her will, that, in spite of his years of service to herself,
Tatters had “transferred himself.”
Meanwhile, by a strange perversity of fate, the radiant face of the girl
whom Robert Stead had passed by so curtly on the road, turned homeward
with him, all unbidden, now smiling at him from between Manfred’s mobile
ears, sitting opposite him at his table, and even permeating the smoke
wreaths from his pipe that coiled, as in a vision, around her head in
fantastic tresses.