"He whom thou fearest will, to ease its pain,
Lay his cold hand upon thy aching heart,
Soothe the terrors of thy troubled brain,
And bid the shadows of earth's griefs depart."
--_A Proctor_
"You had better watch him closely, Mrs. Pratt, his condition is
precarious, and as he has been thrown on your hands, do not treat him
shabbily--"
"You ken bet I'll not," said the matronly female, who stood half hidden
in the humble doorway, from which Dr. Belford had just made his exit.
"Lawks, doctor dear, I'll have an eye to him, jest as if he was my very
own. It'ud not be me 'at would neglec' any Christian that fate had
thrown on me hands."
"I thought so," said the doctor, half apologetically. "I'll call again
shortly," and then, gathering in the fringe of his carriage apron, Dr.
Belford bade Mrs. Pratt a temporary farewell, and was off.
The small shabby brown door closed gently enough, and separated Mrs.
Pratt from the whole moving mass of animate confusion that reigned in
the streets outside. As she stopped, on her way through the narrow
passage within, to straighten the rag mat at the door of the front room,
she sighed perplexedly and soliloquized resignedly:
"Fever! above all things else--bless the sickness--likely as not it
could be the death o' me, and yet, how could I send the lad away or go
back on him now."
A hissing noise from the kitchen, transported the meditative Mrs. Pratt
in a wonderful hurry from her philanthropic reasoning to a saucepan of
potatoes that were bubbling furiously in the water, over a good fire in
her cracked cooking stove; but though she busied herself with her daily
duties for the next hour, her face was unusually serious, and her mind
agitated. She was reflecting earnestly on the new charge that had been
thrust upon her, and wondering whether a tough old woman who had never
had the measles could escape the contagion of typhoid fever,
Mrs. Pratt had a small faded cottage all to herself, the substantial
token of the late John Pratt's esteem, before he left for his long
journey to the better land; and though the locality was a poor one, and
the neighbors noisy and rough, this particular dwelling impressed one
strongly with in idea of the "shabby genteel" in all its painful
gentility, and also filled the heart with a ready sympathy for the "old
decency" that yet survived within those paintless, sunburnt shutters,
and those faded, pitted walls.
But inside this uncomfortable appearance of washed-out brick and
well-ripened wood, there was comfort and cleanliness and quiet. The
front room, with its stiff cane rocker and chairs, its round table and
well-adorned mantelpiece, its cretonne-covered lounge and tapestry
carpet, was not a bad sample at all, of a drawing-room in a third-rate
boarding house.
Upstairs, on the first and highest story, were three small, but
scrupulously neat rooms, two of which looked out into the street, and
the other into the common yard of some dozen neighbors. In the largest
apartment of all, which was the aristocratic bedroom, was a narrow, iron
bedstead, a little square, antique bureau, an open wash-stand, with a
prim white basin set into a hole in it to fit, and a clean diaper towel,
folded respectably across the pitcher that did not match the bowl. The
boards, though bare, were yellow as gold. The faded shutters were
closed, and failing hooks were fastened to a nail in the shabby sill by
a piece of aged pink tape. On a small table by the bed-side, were
bottles and tumblers and remnants of rough delicacies, that bespoke
sickness.
The loud, heavy breathing of an invalid, was all that disturbed the
quiet of Mrs. Pratt's best room, and this came irregularly, but
oppressed and labored, from the prostrate form on the little iron bed
behind the door.
Over the spotless linen of the warm bed, two hot, washed hands were
lying, and buried in the small, soft pillows, was the flashed, feverish
face of a young man. His brow was contracted and every feature bore the
impress of the foul disease that had made him its victim. The dry,
parched lips moved eagerly at intervals, and the thin fingers clutched
one another in feverish excitement; the drowsy lids were only half
closed, and great drops of perspiration were standing out on the poor
flushed face.
Care and intense anxiety were legibly traced on the well carved
features. The mouth was drawn in at its corners, the brow was furrowed
by deep lines, and the black hair was well sprinkled with the grey dust
of a hard and a bitter experience acquired on the road of life's
fatiguing duties.
This sad, silent young man was well known in the neighborhood as "Mrs.
Pratt's boarder," and when, after defying a serious indisposition for
days, he came home one night to his little room, a helpless victim to
its ravages, everyone said they were truly sorry, and counselled Mrs.
Pratt to treat him "decent." Here he lay through long, sleepy, sultry
days, dozing and raving, and tossing in the madness and delirium of
fever, and suffering terribly, through endless nights of suffocation and
torment.
Poor Mrs. Pratt had done her best, nobly and well, she had called in the
doctor of best repute, and had advanced the "coppers" herself, such
trust had she placed in the young fellow, wherewith to provide him with
the necessary remedies and delicacies. When he was "real" bad she sat up
herself to watch, and invited the widow Brady or some other interesting
neighbor to keep her company.
Dr. Belford was a man of unrivalled skill in his profession, and to say
the best of him was a true friend to the needy and the poor. No hour of
the night was too late for him to answer their pleading cry, and hence
it was that he became the very idol of the destitute of a great city.
He had come into Chapel Alley, at Mrs. Pratt's anxious request, and had
pronounced her lodger, to be in the height of "typhoid fever." The case
was even more dangerous than he cared to pretend, and the circumstances
that had driven a respectable young fellow, such as his patient looked,
to seek lodgings in a dilapidated quarter like Chapel Alley were such as
engaged his sympathies at once.
The days were stretching into weeks, and still the poor suffering
victim, raved and tossed in mad fever on his narrow bed. Dr. Belford was
looking serious as he left the sickroom one afternoon, after watching
his patient attentively for nearly an hour: he cautioned Mrs. Pratt, in
an earnest voice to attend carefully to the invalid, impressing on her
how serious a crisis was approaching.
He left the house a little troubled, telling Mrs. Pratt to leave her
door unlocked, for he intended to return as often as possible through
the night, to the bed-side of the patient.
Noiselessly, almost breathlessly, the good woman stole around her little
house in stocking feet, as she journeyed with fresh or re-made
delicacies and medicines from the little kitchen below to the close
sick-room above.
She was faithful in moistening the parched lips, and in administering
the remedies, with an edifying punctuality, and in fact, all the major
and minor duties of a nurse were admirably attended to, by the
whole-souled creature, who had taken this heavy responsibility upon
herself.
It was close on ten o'clock of the night of this critical day on which
Dr. Belford had left Mrs. Pratt's house with such a troubled look, and
this charitable matron having completed all her arrangements for the
night, deposited a small lamp with a heavy green shade of paper, on the
bureau in the sick-room, and drawing a tall straight wooden rocker close
to the window, settled herself, stocking and needles in hand to "knit
out" the hours of her lonesome vigil.
* * * * *
On the heavily carved door of a square house on one of the most stylish
avenues of New York City, was a silver plate, bearing the familiar name
of "Dr. Belford." There was magnificence on all sides of this, his
splendid home, and yet this good man spent all his days, and most of his
nights in the squalid and repulsive quarters of the great city. He was a
man of untold wealth and cared but little, whether his profession
yielded him additional wealth or not, he had understood the great
misfortunes of life, and had toiled with an iron will, to benefit those
to whom an unfortunate fate had taught the bitter lessons of poverty and
destitution.
The mansion which bore his name on its elegant door, was now a blaze of
gas-light; the heavy curtains, shaded the grandeur of the spacious
drawing-room, but the apartment opposite had its tall windows thrown
open to the evening breeze. This was Dr. Belford's office, splendidly
furnished, and comfortably situated, countless rows of ponderous volumes
lined the walls, and over the rest of the spacious room were scattered
heavy pieces of office furniture, that lay around in solemn imposing
neatness.
Standing before a succession of bound volumes was a young man, with his
hands folded behind his back and his head raised enquiringly to the
books above him, he was passing over their titles in a quick review, and
had just laid his hand in evident gratification on one of them, when a
long shrill, silvery tinkle, made him start: "No use, I suppose," he
muttered to himself, "I must be on the 'go.'"
A tall, thin man, like an icicle in livery, appeared in the doorway at
this moment, and delivered a note into his expectant hand. The young
fellow tore it open and read.
MY DEAR BOY,--
The case I have been summoned to attend here is a
matter of life or death, I cannot possibly leave the house before
morning. Will you, therefore, attend to the "typhoid fever" case, I
spoke to you of, in Chapel Alley, for to-night, and oblige,
J. D. BELFORD.
"Humph!" said he, as he finished the last words, "I need to smarten up a
little, it is now after ten: something serious must be up," he
soliloquized, "or Doctor would never neglect that 'fever' patient, he is
so interested in."
Slipping his feet, clad in their red silk hose, from the daintiest of
velvet slippers, the young doctor drew on his fine walking-shoes, turned
down the gas a little, closed the office window, and taking his hat from
the rack behind the door, hurried out.
In a moment, the carriage was around, and stepping in he ordered Barnes
to drive him quickly to Mrs. Pratt's humble abode in Chapel Alley.
The dark, close by-ways and lanes impressed the young doctor forcibly,
after leaving the broad, paved thoroughfares flooded with electric
light, and used, though he was, to those sights, the repetition caused
him invariably to shrink within himself and close his eyes upon their
repulsiveness.
At length they drew in towards the solitary house; from whose small
upper window came the faint glimmer, cast through the slits in the
shutter, by the dim light of the lonely watcher.
As the young doctor stood at the door, he could hear the loud talk and
wild cries of the invalid above, he laid his hand on the shabby handle,
when yielding to his touch, the door opened with a little creaking
noise--Mrs. Pratt, leaning over the rickety balustrade above, whispered:
"Come straight up, doctor, he's awful bad!"
The lively young doctor took all of Mrs. Prate's stairway in two
moderate leaps and was at her side instantly. A moment of explanation
consoled the troubled looking woman for the appearance of a stranger in
Dr. Belford's stead, and then on tip toe they turned into the sick room.
"He's been a fright altogether doctor," said Mrs. Pratt, raising her
withered hands in an attitude of wonder "sich ravin' an' shoutin' and
kerryings on I never see before--and I thought you'd ha' never come."
When the door of the sick-room was opened an expression of extreme pity
crossed the young man's face: that anyone should burn with a merciless
fever in the close confines of this narrow little space, touched him
deeply. He turned and looked at the restless invalid, but the light of
the small hand lamp was dim and he could not see very distinctly.
"Hold the lamp nearer, my good woman," he said in the most earnest
professional manner, and as obedient Mrs. Pratt raised it high above her
frilled cap, the doctor turned his eager glance on the prostrate figure
before him.
The light now fell upon the flushed features of the sick man. His
agitation had all ceased, and there lingered but a little expression of
peevishness and anxiety, but his whole condition bespoke sickness and
suffering.
A change, sudden and wonderful, flashed over the stern features of the
doctor, he staggered just a step, and then bent lower over the face of
the invalid--there--within the close narrow limits of a poor sick-room,
in a squalid locality, one stricken down by a loathsome disease, the
other there to alleviate his pain, did two fellow students meet for the
first time since the long years ago when they had crossed the threshold
of their school-room as boyish "chums" each to take his road in the
great thoroughfare of life--yes--there was no mistaking it--those were
the well remembered features of Nicholas Bencroft and no other. The
doctor was lost in reflections when Mrs. Pratt impatiently interrupted
him with--
"Well doctor--he ain't much worse, I hope?"
"He is no better," the doctor answered seriously, "he is at the crisis
of his disease now. I will wait and watch with you to-night," he added,
"go down like a good woman and tell my driver he can leave, I will watch
until morning."
Mrs. Pratt was a very scrupulous woman, for a widow, and thought it
quite hazardous enough to watch a sick man all alone, besides
encumbering her mind with one that was very alive and well--and so she
took upon herself to insinuate something of her alarm to the young
doctor. But a little persuasion went a long way with susceptible Mrs.
Pratt, and when the doctor had told her that he recognized an old friend
in her sick lodger, she begged a thousand pardons and became very
submissive.
While they watched by the bed-side of the unfortunate man, Mrs. Pratt
grew communicative, and told the doctor how this sad young man came to
her one hot Saturday evening and asked her for lodgings--how she had
thought him "sort o' nice" and "took to him" and had had him now for
near a twelve-month--that he had paid "reglar" and gave no trouble until
the night the fever "struck him down"--his name was Bencroft, she knew,
and his linen was well marked with a N. an' a B. in "real good
writin"--and finally, how she hoped he'd soon get better, for his own
sake and other peoples, "so she did."
When they looked at the sleeper again, he was peaceful and unoppressed,
his breathing was feebler and less labored, and while they stood
whispering at the foot of his bed, he gave a great sigh and opened his
heavy lids languidly.
The doctor hastened to his side: the wild delirium had passed away,
leaving the worried face of the sufferer calmer and quieter, he opened
up his large lustrous eyes and said in a plaintive tone.--
"Thirsty--so thirsty!"
Mrs. Pratt raised the glass to his parched lips, and clutching her hands
in his own feverish grasp, he pressed the goblet to his mouth and drank
a devouring draught.
It was true that his wanderings and delirium had ceased. Mrs. Pratt
looked meaningly at the doctor and whispered hopefully: "he is better?"
but, professional-like, the doctor remained silent, and only looked very
seriously on. The invalid dropped back again among his pillows, and fell
into a deep sleep.
The night was now well nigh spent: outside in the leaden dawn, an odd,
faint, sleepy twitter disturbed the silence, and an odd pedestrian's
footsteps echoed, through the still street.
When this natural sleep stole over the weak and wornout invalid, the
doctor bade Mrs. Pratt a "good morning" for a while, telling her she
might expect him back in four or five hour's time.
"If your patient should wake," he added, "question him a little to
ascertain whether he is entirely free from the illusions of his delirium
or not--" and then with a puzzled wondering look upon his handsome face,
the young doctor passed out of Mrs. Pratt's close, shabby house into the
deserted street.
Thoughts and memories of the past, he had stowed so resignedly away,
flooded his mind as he strode onward, he had dreamed until last night
that the ghost of his by-gone days would haunt him no more, and when he
had learned to live without his memories on the associations of the
frequent past, he was brought forward again to meet, face to face, a
forcible reminder of his yesterdays. "Poor Nicholas!" he soliloquized,
"what can have befallen him, that this should be his end? I thought
there was nothing left in life that could surprise me, and yet here is
something that really does."
The days and scenes of his college life passed in a sorrowful panorama
before the misty eyes of the young man as he strode along the silent
street in the gray of the early morning, and as the beginning and the
close of this happy period were reviewed before him, they passed into
another phase of his life and clouded the frank young, face with a
shadow of regret and pain--"at least"--he muttered to himself--"I might
have spared myself this, after I had taught myself that it was madness
to remember and wisdom to forget."
A trio of midnight revelers, deserting their haunt of debauchery on a
dilapidated street corner, here interrupted the strain of his
meditation, and as he raised his eyes to look upon the ragged figures,
and bloated, forbidden countenances of these men, there passed over his
pensive features, a look of contentment and resignation which said--"At
least, if my life has been a bitter and an unfortunate one, I have been
spared these rags and this degradation. And yet," he continued, as he
walked rapidly along the by-ways and thoroughfares of the great city,
"it is a wonder that I escaped it, for in my time we were just as
degraded, only we disguised our hideousness under the garb of
respectability." Then a look of bitter, almost hopeless disappointment
came over his face, as he told himself secretly, "And I struggled
against all these propensities, fought with and overcame all these
follies for the sake of _her_, who has cast me so easily, so willingly
out of her life." He was turning the broad paved corner that led to Dr
Belford's house, and quickening his step he reached the door just as the
old doctor himself was passing out into the hall.
"Hallo!" said the old gentleman in genuine surprise, "where have you
been carousing until such an hour?"
There was evidently a familiarity between these two that spoke of strong
regard on the part of the younger, and of a fatherly fondness and
interest in that of the elder doctor. An explanation followed which
gratified Dr. Belford immensely.
"Since the danger looks less, my boy," he said, "and that you wish to
attend him, I see no reason why you shouldn't. I've trusted you with as
serious cases already."
With this they parted, each tired and weary with his midnight vigils,
repaired to rest until the full stir of the morning that was just
breaking.