LEARNING LIFE.
Jessica opened her eyes from a strangely pleasant dream. Angels had
been hovering around her, as it seemed; but, oddly enough, they had
not worn the traditional feathers and wings. Some of them were all in
white, with white caps on their heads, and some were clad in blue like
the sky from which they must have come. Presently, one of the white
angels bade a blue one:
“Hold that cup to her lips. She is reviving.”
When the cup was held, “Little Captain” obediently drank its contents,
which proved to be something warm and soothing. Then she drifted away
again into a sleep that was dreamless, this time; and from which she
again awoke to realize completely what had happened and in what sort of
place she was.
The “white angel” was a “head-nurse.” The blue one an undergraduate.
She recognized the hospital uniforms from those she had seen in Los
Angeles, while Ephraim lay recovering from his broken limb. She was in
the children’s ward. Rows of white beds lined each side of the long
room, and on each bed rested a child. On the very next cot to her own,
with some doctors and more nurses fussing about it, was Sophy Nestor.
She heard one of these saying:
“That is quite curable. It would be a most interesting case. After she
recovers from this shock I’ll investigate.”
Then that doctor went away and the rest soon followed him, leaving only
a sweet-faced woman in blue hovering between the two cots, whereon lay
these last “emergency” cases. To her Jessica spoke:
“Is Sophy awake?”
“She is waking. Try not to frighten nor disturb her. How are you
feeling?”
“All right. I want to get up and go home. Oh! I forgot! I haven’t
any now, but go to my Cousin Margaret, wherever she is. She must be
somewhere!”
“Don’t excite yourself, dear. You shall go soon, for you’ve had a
wonderful escape. Do you suffer at all?”
“Some. My hands, my face are smarty and queer. But--did Sophy get
burned instead? Oh! she was so good! So strong I couldn’t make her stop
hiding me with her own self, though I tried and tried. Until it got so
hot and I--I couldn’t think right. The darling girl! She--Why! What
makes her lie that way on her face?” demanded Jessica, rising on her
elbow and staring across to the other limp little figure whose hump
protruded under the light bed-covering.
The nurse knew it was better to appease one patient’s curiosity than to
arouse the other, more badly injured one.
“Lie still and I will tell you. She is a heroine. Her back is rather
badly scorched and burned, but not fatally so. It has been carefully
dressed and it is more comfortable for her to rest as she is doing
now than to lie in a more natural position. She was a brave little
creature and, practically, saved your life. Try to help her get well by
keeping very quiet.”
In ordinary, Jessica was not a crying girl, but the tears chased
themselves now down her own cheeks, white with applications to relieve
that “smarting” to which she had acknowledged but that already, in view
of Sophy’s greater hurt, seemed absurdly trivial.
Nor did the wise attendant try to stop this flood, a sure relief to
startled nerves and grieving heart. But after a brief time Jessica
ceased weeping and whispered:
“Do you know where my folks are?”
“There’s an old man in the waiting-room who came with you. He is almost
wild with anxiety and, if the head-nurse allows, I will bring him in to
see you for a moment. On condition that you will not excite yourself
nor the other child.”
“Oh! I will be as quiet as quiet! It’s Ephy! I’m sure it’s my darling
‘Forty-niner!’ Fetch him, please, right quick! I’ll be as good as you
want, only let him come.”
He came, half-blinded by his grateful tears, as he bent above this
darling of his old age, too thankful toward Heaven for speech, and only
able to clasp and unclasp her small hands in his own trembling ones,
till she asked in a whisper:
“Where is my Cousin Margaret?”
“I--I don’t exactly know. Some hotel, Tipkins was taking her. I’ll seek
her now and tell her the good news. Oh! my lamb, my lamb!”
“There, Ephy, dear! Be good. Now go and tell her I’m all right and
tell her, too, how splendid Sophy Nestor was. She covered me with her
own self so that I should not be burned,--she would rather be herself!
Go tell her, tell her quick! She thought Sophy wasn’t--a Waldron, but,
Ephy dear! She is more Waldron-y than any of us! Go tell her, and come
back soon. I guess I can be ‘discharged,’ maybe right away. I’m not the
hurt one, only Sophy. And I’ll stay just long enough to make her feel
how splendid a place a hospital really is and not that dreadful one she
used to think.”
Indeed, he had to go. He had stayed as long as the nurse thought wise,
but it was a far different old man who left that house of mercy from
him who had entered it, believing his darling done to death.
By the very next morning Jessica was up and dressed; her scorched
clothing replaced by an outfit Madam had promptly sent, with the
request that the little girl be taken to her at her hotel as soon as
the authorities deemed it safe. That, they decided, might be almost
at once. The hospital was overcrowded, there was no room for those
who did not really need attention, and Jessica’s healthy frame had
promptly recovered from the shock of her frightful experience. There
remained only the bit of talk that was to be allowed between her and
her rescuer. Sitting with her own blistered hands resting on that part
of Sophy’s body which was least covered by bandages, Jessica said:
“I’ve got to go away now, darling, but I shall come back. You’re going
to get well right soon, the doctors say, and oh! Sophy, I heard one of
them say, too, that your back could be made as straight as mine! Think
of that! Never to have to be afraid of people looking at you, never to
be weak and tired there, any more! Oh! aren’t you glad you came? It
isn’t a real hunchback, you know; only you were let to fall when you
were little and got twisted somehow. I think it’s like a fairy story.
Anyhow, it’s just what my darling mother says: ‘Life is a chain.’ One
thing after another form the links of it and none of them happen except
God wills. I don’t see why He willed that my Cousin Margaret should
lose her beautiful old home that seemed more to her than anything in
this world. All her pretty clothes and old, old ‘antiques,’ and just
had her life saved. Why, it seems as if all those hunting people on
that carpet in the back drawing-room must have felt the flames and
suffered!
“Never mind. That’s past. What she will do next I don’t know; only this
I’m sure of, she’ll let me come to see you every day; and maybe--maybe,
she’ll come, too. Now, I’m going. Ephraim is here with the carriage and
I must. If you’d like it better, maybe my Cousin Margaret will let me
pay for having you in a ‘private’ room away from----”
“No, no, no! I don’t want to be private! I want to feel there are heaps
and slathers of folks all around me, just as there used to be in Aveny
A. I’d die to be alone with nobody but them doctors waitin’ to cut me
up.”
“Now, Sophy Nestor, you quit that! I’ve told you before that you didn’t
know a thing about hospitals. I do. I’ve lived in one once, away home
in California. They’re the blessedest places are. Your Granny Briggs
is coming to see you this morning. Ephraim is to fetch her in the
carriage, after he takes me to my old lady first. Isn’t that funny?
Each of us has our own old lady that we think is the nicest in the
world! Now, I’m going. Hear me say! Before you’ve been in this pleasant
place even another day you’ll think it’s just as nice as I do. See if
you don’t. Now, good-by. I can’t begin to thank you. Words couldn’t do
it. Maybe deeds can, and I’ll try _them_. Good-by. Try to be happy and
you’ll get well quick. Good-by, good-by!”
Jessica found her Cousin Margaret deep in consultation with Madam
Melanie and that other dressmaker from the side street. But the Madam
instantly ceased speaking to these waiting modistes, to clasp the girl
in her arms and to hold her close, close. In that one firm embrace
was a world of meaning, from this undemonstrative old dame. Then
she released the child, merely retaining one small hand in her own,
while she continued her conference concerning the replenishing of the
wardrobes so completely destroyed by fire. Neither she nor Jessica had
anything left save what they had escaped in; and the simple ready-made
suit purchased to leave the hospital in that morning.
The discussion was short. Both these women who had charge of Mrs.
Dalrymple’s attire knew readily what she would require and undertook
that part of the order should be put into the “hurry” department, and
be forthcoming almost immediately. That business over, they departed
and the two descendants of the race of Waldron were left to themselves,
the younger of them scarcely daring to look at the elder, dreading her
distress. She need not have feared, in the least.
“Well, my dear, this is unexpected, indeed. But we are very comfortable
here until we can get away out of town. We will go as soon as possible.
As soon as we have clothes fit to go in. It’s early for Newport but
I think we’d better settle there at once. I’ve been looking over an
agent’s list of furnished ‘cottages’ and fancy one of them will do. I
must send for my man of business first. I think it rather strange he
has not already called upon me.”
Madam had taken one of the prettiest suites in the hotel, with its
comfortable privacy, and already seemed so much at home and so
outwardly content that Jessica wondered. Only for a moment, when a
servant came to announce a caller, did a spasm of pain cross the fine
old features, and give a touch of sharpness to the quiet voice, as she
repeated:
“I have already given orders that I can receive no visitors at present.
Kindly see that these orders are attended to.”
Then Jessica was bidden to relate again the story Madam had already
learned from other lips and the girl was delighted to hear her
kinswoman announce:
“I will make my first call upon that child, Sophy. We must befriend
her. Mr. Hale has been here and has telegraphed your mother of--of
everything. Now, my dear, hand me the morning paper; and make your own
self comfortable. If you wish to write to your mother, there are the
materials on that desk in the corner.”
So Jessica wrote:
“MY DEAREST MOTHER:
“I am alive. That’s about the first thing I can think to say. So is
our Cousin Margaret. So is everybody else. It was all Barnes’s fault.
She said so herself. She used benzine, that seems to be a catchy sort
of stuff, and a match near it and first she knew the flames were so
big she couldn’t stop them. She tried. Ephraim told me. She hasn’t
been near since and never will, but he saw her on the street outside
the hospital where they took Sophy and me, ’cause she was afraid that
her carelessness had made her a murderer as well as a house-burner.
She said she would have been a murderer if I had died, or Sophy, but
we didn’t and she isn’t. I hope I will never see her again, now,
because she would always make me feel angry for my Cousin Margaret.
“O mother dear! I think she is the wonderfullest woman ever could
be! I know and you know that she loved the home in Washington Square
beyond words, ’cause though it was all tumbling to pieces in spots
and the things inside were getting so worn-out, she wouldn’t sell it
even for heaps and heaps of money. I know her heart is just broken
inside of her but the break doesn’t show on the outside, in her face,
not the least littlest bit. She sits just as proud in her old ‘comfy’
wrapper as she used to in her beautifullest silk gown. Once I tried
to say something nice to her, to sort of comfort her if I could, and
she just looked at me so queer. ‘My dear, spare me. A Waldron never
whines, but accepts what comes of either good or ill, as it is meant
and sent.’ I’m so glad she doesn’t whine, nor complain. Granny Briggs
does. Granny isn’t a bit Waldron-y, though Sophy is--even more than
anybody I know. I think it must be the highest kind of aristocracy to
be willing to give up one’s life to save another’s, and that’s what
Sophy was. Oh! I love her, I love her!
“My Cousin Margaret is going to the hospital to visit Sophy the
very first place she does go after her clothes come. Till then she
stays in her rooms, there are several of them, and denies herself to
everybody who comes. She’s had lots and lots of calls and offers of
a temporary home but she doesn’t accept. She doesn’t need, she says;
yet if she did she _would_ accept very gratefully. Hasn’t she the
realest, best kind of pride? Oh! I should like to be just like her,
when I am old, only not so fond of putting on new clothes all the
time. I heard one the bell-boys tell another that she was: ‘The great
Madam Dalrymple, the highest-up there was in the world of fashion.
That it was a prestige for this hotel to have her live here so soon
after the accident, and would bring other patrons.’
“Cousin Margaret is going to take a cottage at Newport. That is a
place by the sea, if you don’t know. She says it will be a big house
with every ‘convenience’ in it, so I don’t see why they call it a
‘cottage.’ Cottages in California are so small and haven’t many rooms
in them. Never mind. I’m learning things all the time that astonish
me. I guess my education has begun already. I remember that Mr.
Ninian said that ‘Education meant learning how to live, to get the
best out of life.’ Seems if our Cousin Margaret has got a good deal
of the best, since she can stand such an awful sorrow as losing her
home and not ‘whine’ once.
“She seems more disturbed because her ‘man of business’ hasn’t called
than by anything else. She hasn’t any money, course, just getting
out of a burning house that way, not until he comes and brings her
some. She has lots of what she calls ‘credit’ and the hotel folks
are terrible polite to her, but she’d rather have the ‘cash in hand’
to pay in advance. She has never run in debt in her life. She says
that is very ‘plebeian’ and she dislikes plebeian-y things. She sent
Tipkins after that ‘man of business’ and he couldn’t get in. He said
the bank-office was closed and nobody answered. There were a lot of
folks standing around outside the office and he said maybe they had
scared the man of business by a ‘run’ on the bank. He must be a funny
kind of a man that would be scared by a few folks just running!
“Now I must stop for a few minutes. If there’s anything more to tell,
after we’ve had the dinner the waiter is bringing, I’ll write it
then. I’m so glad Mr. Hale telegraphed you, so you wouldn’t worry,
after reading about the fire in the telegraphic column of the paper.
Mr. Hale said that bad news traveled so fast that good news had to
hurry up and catch it. He is such a nice man. He is going to bring
his daughters to see me, soon as they are out of school for the year.
“Good-by, for a little while,
“JESSICA.”
The letter was to be resumed and a most important postscript added. As
the girl left the desk, eager for the tempting dinner being brought
into the room and feeling her blistered fingers sadly painful from her
writing, she was startled by the expression of Madam Dalrymple’s face.
The lady’s eyes were closed, she was very pale, the newspaper she had
been reading had fallen from her nerveless fingers to the floor, and
she looked as if, at last, the full force of the calamity that had
befallen had crushed her beneath its weight. She neither saw nor heard
the entrance of the waiter with his tray nor when Jessica anxiously
demanded: “Oh! what is the matter?” did she answer.