JOPPA'S MINISTRATIONS TO THE SICK.
All news, good, bad, and indifferent, flies equally fast in Joppa; and
had there been a town-crier deputed for the purpose, Phebe's accident
could not have sooner become a household tale in even the most distant
districts of the place. After a contradiction of the first rumor,
reporting her burned to a crisp and only recognizable by a ring of her
mother's on her left hand,--which ring by-the-way she never wore,--and
after a contradiction in due course of the second rumor, reporting Gerald
to be lying in the agonies of death and Phebe to have escaped without a
hair singed, followed a period of dire uncertainty, when nobody knew what
to believe, and felt only an obstinate conviction that everybody else had
got it entirely wrong. But at last the story straightened itself out into
something bearing a family resemblance to actual facts, and then Joppa
settled itself resolutely down to doing its duty. My duty toward my sick
neighbor in Joppa consists in calling twice a day, if not oftener, at his
house; in inquiring after his condition down to minutest and most sacred
details; in knowing accurately how many hours he slept last night, and
what he ate for breakfast, and what is paid the sick-nurse, and if it
includes her washing. My second duty toward my sick neighbor is to bring
him something to eat, on the supposition that "outside things taste
differently;" or something to look at; or, if nothing better, at least
something to refuse. My third and last duty toward my neighbor,--the well
neighbor who possesses the sick one,--is to narrate every somewhat
similar case on record, with all its circumstances and the ultimate
career of the sufferer; to prescribe remedies as infallible as the Pope;
to disapprove wholly, and on the best grounds, of those in actual use; to
offer every assistance in and out of my power; and to say at leaving that
I _hope_ it may all turn out well, but that _I_ should have called in the
other doctor. Joppa had learned by heart its duty toward its neighbor
from its earliest, stammering infancy, and it adhered strictly to the
path therein marked out. It inquired after Phebe diligently; it
thoroughly mastered all possible intricacies of her case; it made her
gifts digestible and indigestible; and it said that, by all odds, it was
Dr. Harrison who should have attended her from the first. Dr. Dennis took
very good care of her, nevertheless, and it was not long before he
pronounced that all she needed was quiet and rest to complete the cure.
"We shall have her out of bed in a few days now, Mrs. Lane; in a week or
so perhaps," he said, as he passed out at the front door where Mrs. Lane
was standing talking with Mrs. Hardcastle. "She is doing very well, as
well as I could wish. All she needs is rest. Keep her perfectly quiet."
And the doctor bowed himself off, first politely inquiring of Mrs.
Hardcastle after her husband's gout and her own dyspepsia.
"He is a fair-spoken man, certainly, very," said Mrs. Hardcastle, "though
I won't say that I shouldn't prefer Dr. Harrison in the long run as
surest to bring his patient through. I think I'll just go up with this
myself to Phebe, Mrs. Lane. I suppose she's longing for visitors by now,
poor soul!"
"Well, I dare say. You know her room,--just at the head of the stairs. Go
right up, and I'll step out to market."
"Now, my dear," said Mrs. Hardcastle, rustling into Phebe's room, "I
thought I would come up and have a look at you myself to make sure how
you were. No, don't move. You do look pale, but that's all. Glad to see
your pretty face isn't harmed. Why, I heard one whole side of it was
about burned off. I've brought you some wine-jelly, my dear."
"She had a lot yesterday, Pheeb did," said Olly, who was curled up with a
geography in a corner of the room and furtively cutting Europe out of the
maps. "She doesn't need any more."
"Oh, but this is some of my own make. This is quite different from
anybody else's," declared Mrs. Hardcastle. "Phebe remembers _my_ jelly of
old, don't you, dear?"
Phebe smiled faintly. All she remembered at the moment was being
invariably requested by the good lady to come and make it for her
whenever she gave a party.
"I thought I heard talking and so I ventured to come up too," said a
timid voice, and Miss Delano tiptoed softly in. "Phebe, my dear child, my
dear child!" and the soft-hearted little old maid stooped to kiss Phebe's
pale cheek, and straightway began to whimper.
"Come, none of that," said Mrs. Upjohn's peremptory tones, as that lady
swept into the little room, seeming to fill it all to overflowing. "I met
the doctor just now and he said Phebe was to be kept perfectly quiet.
Don't let's have any weeping over her. She wants cheering up, and she
isn't quite dead yet, you know, though really the evening before last,
Phebe, I heard that you weren't expected to live the night through."
"How ridiculous!" said Gerald, impatiently. "Miss Delano, will you
have a chair?"
"Thank you, no, dear. I'll just sit here on the bed," said the
little old dame, humbly, anxious not to make any one any trouble. "O
Phebe, my dear!"
Phebe smiled at her affectionately, and Mrs. Hardcastle, who was on the
point of leaving when Mrs. Upjohn came in, sat down again to ask that
lady about the character of a servant whom she had just engaged.
"I thought I should have died when I heard it," said Miss Delano, patting
Phebe's cheek. "Poor dear, poor dear! And they say you won't ever be able
to walk again!"
"Who says that?" asked Phebe, laughing. "I shall be a terrible
disappointment to them."
"'Tain't her legs at all; it's her shoulders," said Olly, as he emerged
from his corner, chewing Europe into a pasteboard bull. "What have you
got in that paper?"
"Oh, the blessed child, and I was forgetting it. My dear, it's just a
little sponge-cake I made free to bring you, it turned out so light.
Don't you think you could eat a bit perhaps?"
"My, but it looks good!" said Olly, approaching a hungry finger and
poking at it softly. "I'll get a knife."
"I hope you don't allow any such trash as that about, Miss Vernor," said
Mrs. Upjohn, sharply, in the middle of her discussion of Jane's demerits.
"Phebe ought to be exceedingly careful what she eats for a great while
to come. It's doubtful, indeed, whether her stomach ever recovers its
tone after such a shock. I knew one woman who died just of the shock
alone some two months after precisely such an accident as this, when
everybody thought she had got well, and Phebe must be _very_ careful. Her
appetite is not to be tempted, but guided."
"Well, ladies, I must be going," announced Mrs. Hardcastle, rising. "You
really think I am safe, then, in engaging her, Mrs. Upjohn?" But just
then Mrs. Dexter came in with two of her daughters, and Mrs. Hardcastle
sat down again.
"There was no one downstairs, and as the doctor says Phebe is so much
better, we thought we might just come up," said the new comer. "Why,
Phebe, you are as blooming as a rose, and I understood you had lost all
your pretty hair. I've brought you some grapes, my dear, and a jar of
extra fine brandy peaches, and little Maggie insisted on sending some
molasses candy she had just made."
"Well, well, I did look for more sense from _you_," said Mrs. Upjohn,
tapping Mrs. Dexter rather smartly on the shoulder. "Where'll you sit?
Oh, on the bed. Yes, Phebe's had a narrow escape, and one she'll likely
bear the marks of to her dying day. Let it be a warning to you, young
ladies, to be prepared. There's no knowing how soon some one of you may
not be carried off in the same way,--just as you are dressed for a dance,
maybe." Her tone implied that death could not overtake them at a more
sinful moment.
"Hullo, up there! I say!" shouted a voice in the hall below,
"how's Phebe?"
"Oh, it's Dick!" cried the Dexter girls in a breath. "You can't come
up, Dick."
"Ain't a-going to. But a fellow can speak, can't he, without his body
a-following his voice? How's Phebe?"
"She's splendid."
"What's the doctor say?"
"He says she only needs to be kept perfectly quiet."
"Hooray!" said Dick, and apparently executed a war-dance on the
oil-cloth, while Olly profited by the general hubbub created by the
entrance of two more ladies, to satisfactorily investigate the
sponge-cake.
"Why, quite a levee, isn't it, Phebe?" said one of the last arrivals,
looking in vain for a chair, and forced to seat herself on a low table,
accidentally upsetting Phebe's medicines as she did so.
"Yes, altogether too much of one," said Gerald, knitting her brows as she
rescued a bottle just in time, and darted an angry glance around the
crowded room. "Phebe isn't at all equal to it yet."
"You are right, Miss Vernor," agreed Mrs. Upjohn, drawing out her
tatting from her pocket, and settling herself at it with an answering
frown. "There are quite too many here. Some people never know when to
stay away."
"Oh, there's Bell. I hear her voice," called Mattie, running to look over
the banisters. "She's got both Mr. De Forest and Mr. Moulton with her."
There was a sound of many voices below, a giggling, a rush for the
stairs, and a playful scuffle.
"It's me" (Bell's voice); "Dick won't let me pass."
"Me is Bell" (Dick's voice); "she wouldn't pass if she could. Too many
fellows down here for her to want to leave 'em. Send us down a girl or
two from up there, can't you?"
A girl or two, however, apparently appeared from outside, greetings were
called up to Phebe, offerings of flowers and delicacies transmitted _via_
Dick on the stairs to Olly at the top (who took toll by the way), and the
liveliest kind of a time went on. It was quite like a party, Dick shouted
up, only that there was no ice-cream and a singular scarcity of girls.
"It's a shame," said Mrs. Upjohn, severely, in her chair, while Gerald
held her peace, too wrathful to speak, and conscious of her inability to
mend matters. "I should think people might have sense enough not to crowd
all the air out of a sick-room in this fashion."
"It's exceedingly inconsiderate of them, I am sure," answered Mrs.
Hardcastle, drawing a sofa cushion behind her back. "She ought to be
so quiet."
"Phebe!" shouted Dick. "Here's the parson. He wants to know if you're
dead yet. Shan't I send him up? It will be all right, you know, quite
the thing. He's a parson, and wears a gown on Sundays."
"Dick, Dick!" screamed his mother. "Was there ever such a lad!"
"He's coming. Get ready for him. Have out your Prayer-books,"
called Dick.
Phebe flushed crimson, and looked imploringly at Gerald. An indignant
murmur ran through the room. Mrs. Upjohn drew herself up to her severest
height. "What shameless impertinence! How dare he intrude!" A shout of
unholy laughter downstairs followed Dick's sally.
"Mr. Halloway isn't there at all," cried Olly, his fine, clear-voice
pitched high above the rest, "He only asked about Pheeb at the door, and
went right off."
"Well, he left this for her with his compliments, and this, and this,"
called Dick, rummaging in his pockets, and tossing up an apple, and then
a hickory nut, and last a good-sized and dangerously ripe tomato. Olly
caught them dexterously with a yell of delight, and was immediately
rushed at by three of the nearest ladies and ordered not to make a noise,
for Phebe was to be kept perfectly quiet.
"Such doings would never be permitted a moment if she had only been in
Dr. Harrison's hands," said Mrs. Upjohn, in denunciatory tones. "He would
have forbidden her to see any one. It is scandalous."
"It is outrageous," added Mrs. Hardcastle. "Most inconsiderate."
"Ah, I can't get over it that it isn't your legs, poor dear!" murmured
Miss Delano, still plaintively overcome. "And you will walk, after all?"
"Dr. Dennis is an excellent physician," said Mrs. Dexter, somewhat
defiantly. It was impossible not to enter the lists against Mrs. Upjohn.
This last lady was immediately up in arms, and a heated discussion as to
the respective skill of the two practitioners took place, everybody
gradually taking sides with one or the other of the leaders, and
forgetting both poor exhausted Phebe and the noise downstairs, which
finally culminated in a rousing lullaby led by Bell, and lustily seconded
by half a dozen others:
"Slumber on, Phebe dear;
Do not hear us fellows sigh!"
The song, however, suddenly stopped in the midst. Some one seemed
speaking very low and softly, and neither the chorus nor the laughter nor
the tumult was resumed. Phebe drew a deep breath. Was relief really
coming at last? Yes. Soeur Angélique stood in the door-way.
"Will you excuse me, ladies," she said, in that soft, irresistible voice
of hers, as she laid aside bonnet and shawl in a quiet, business-like
way. "I came to relieve Miss Vernor and play nurse for a while, and I
think Phebe looks as if she needed a little sleep. If you will kindly
take leave of her, I will darken the room at once."
She stood so evidently waiting for them to go, that in a few moments they
all found themselves somehow or other outside the door, with Gerald
politely escorting them down-stairs, and Olly dancing joyously ahead,
crying that Mr. Halloway had sent for him to the rectory. Left mistress
of the situation, Mrs. Whittridge proceeded to draw down the shades,
straighten the chairs, smooth the bedclothes and rearrange the pillows,
all with the noiseless, graceful movements peculiar to her. Then she drew
a low chair up to the bedside, and laid her cool hand soothingly on
Phebe's forehead. A great peace seemed suddenly to fill the room.
"Now, my darling, you must sleep. Between them they have quite
worn you out."
"Who told you I needed you?" asked Phebe, drawing the gentle hand down to
her lips. "How did you happen to come just when I wanted you so?"
"Denham sent me over," answered Soeur Angélique. "He thought perhaps I
could make it a little quieter for you."
"Ah," murmured Phebe. A faint tinge crept up into her white cheeks.
She turned her head away and closed her eyes. "I knew it was he who
sent you."