TELEPHONES AND TENTS
"Hello, Jarve! This you?"
Over the telephone Jarvis Burnside recognized Max Lane's voice, eager and
cheerful. The last time he had heard it, it had been so despondent that
his own anxiety had been heavily increased. He answered eagerly:
"Yes. What is it?"
"There's a break in her temperature."
"A break! You mean--"
"A drop--a landslide--during the last twelve hours. She's sleeping
quietly. She's--"
But something suddenly interfered with the speaker's articulation.
Although Jarvis continued to listen with strained attention, a silence
succeeded. His imagination filled the gap. He essayed to offer
congratulations, but found something the matter with his own powers of
speech. After a moment's struggle, however, he was able to say, "I'll be
round as quick as I can get there."
Mrs. Burnside, passing the telephone closet at the back of the hall,
heard a rush therefrom, and found herself suddenly embraced by a pair of
long arms. Although blue goggles concealed her son's eyes from her look
of sympathetic inquiry, the smile which transformed his face was not to
be mistaken.
"Jarvis, dear--you've had good news!"
"Max couldn't say much, but his voice told. The fever's down--she's
sleeping!"
"Oh, I am glad--so glad! The dear child! I couldn't sleep last night,
after the discouraging news."
Her son did not say that he had not slept, but he looked it. His finely
cut features showed plainly that for more than one night he had been
suffering severe and increasing strain.
"We must tell Josephine," said his mother happily, proceeding on her way
with Jarvis's arm about her shoulders.
"You look her up, please. I'm going to bolt down to see Max and the
rest. Uncle Timothy was about all in last night when I met him. These
last five days--"
Jarvis released his mother, seized his hat from a tree they were passing,
and escaped out of a side door. Mrs. Burnside hurried away upstairs to
find her daughter. If the Burnside family had been bound to the Lanes by
ties of blood, each member of it could hardly have been more intimately
concerned with the issue of Sally's illness.
Away down town, at the Winona flats, Jarvis's ring brought an instant
response, and a minute later Bob was shaking his hand off at the half-way
landing. Then Alec was rushing to the top of the stairs, and Max was
shouting from the bath-room, where he was shaving. Uncle Timothy alone
remained quiet in his chair, but his worn face was bright.
"It's great news, Mr. Rudd, great news!" cried Jarvis, wringing Uncle
Timothy's out-stretched hand of welcome.
"Yes, Jarvis--yes. But--I must warn you all to make haste slowly in the
matter of assurance. It looks favourable, certainly, but the child has
been through a hard fight, and she is not out of danger yet. You know I
don't want to dampen your happiness, boys--" and Uncle Timothy looked
tenderly from one face to another, out of the wisdom of his greater
experience.
Their faces had sobered. "I understand, sir, of course," Jarvis
agreed. "But the drop in the fever and the quiet sleep surely mean a
promising change?"
"Very promising--no doubt of it. And we are thankful--thankful. It is a
wonderful relief after the reports we have been getting." He took off
his spectacles and wiped them. Then he wiped his eyes. "With care, now--"
he began again, cheerfully.
But Bob could not help interrupting. "She's getting splendid care," he
cried. He could not endure the thought that it was still necessary to
exercise caution lest they rejoice prematurely. He had taken the leap
from boyish despair to boyish confidence at a bound, and he had no mind
to drop back to a half-way point of doubt and depression.
"I suppose we ought to wait a few days before we run up any flags," Max
admitted, and the others reluctantly agreed.
During the following week they learned the reasons for respecting Mr.
Rudd's advice. Though Sally's bark had certainly rounded the most
threatening danger point, there yet remained seas by no means smooth to
be traversed, and more than once wind and waves rose again sufficiently
to cause a return of anxiety to those who watched but could not go to the
rescue. But, in due time, recovery became assured, convalescence was
established, and finally the great day was at hand, when she should come
home from the hospital. She looked still very pale and weak, as they saw
her lying in her high white bed in the long ward--how they had mourned
that they could not afford to give her a private room!--But she was Sally
herself once more, and looking so eagerly forward to being at home again
that it was a joy to see her smile at the thought of it.
"I wish it were not so excessively hot," said Uncle Timothy, regretfully.
He stood in the doorway of Sally's room. It had been put in order by Mary
Ann Flinders--or, to be more exact, Mary Ann Flinders had attempted to
put it in order for Sally's reception the next day.
Max looked in over his uncle's shoulder. "I don't know that it's any
hotter in here than anywhere else!" he demurred, irritably. He was in his
shirt-sleeves, and he had that moment removed his collar and neck-tie.
Uncle Timothy had got as far as taking off his waistcoat and donning an
old alpaca coat, in which he had been striving to imagine himself
comfortable.
"I think it must be several degrees warmer in this small room than in the
dining-room," asserted Uncle Timothy. "And it is ninety-two there. It is
unfortunate that the poor child should have to come back to such an oven
as this. At the hospital a breeze circulates through the wards. Here
there seems to be none."
"She could sleep on the couch in the living-room." suggested Max.
"_Whew!_ It _is_ hot! What possesses the weather to start in like this,
before June's half over? I believe it was one hundred and twelve in the
office to-day."
He threw himself on the couch. After a moment of reclining upon it,
during which he mopped his brow and drew his handkerchief about his neck,
he rose and jerked the couch toward one of the two open windows. When he
had lain in this new situation for the space of two minutes more, he got
up again and sought the tiny kitchen, where he could be heard drawing
water from the tap. "Ugh--warm as dish water!" Uncle Timothy could hear
his distant splutter.
Bob and Alec were out somewhere--presumably cooling off in one of the
city parks or on the river front. Also, they were getting impatiently
through the hours before Sally's return. The entire Lane household had
reached the point where her coming home seemed a thing never to be
attained. To a man, they felt that one week more without her would be
unendurable.
But the next day--it was Sunday again--she came home. Josephine and Max,
with the Burnside carriage and horses, brought her to the door. Max and
Alec, making a "chair" of hands and wrists, carried the pitifully light
figure up the four flights of stairs, and Josephine hovered over the
convalescent as she was established upon the couch, among many pillows.
The rest of them stood about in a smiling circle.
"Oh, but it's good to be home!" sighed Sally, happily, looking from one
to another with eyes which seemed to them all as big as saucers, so deep
were the hollows about them and so thin her cheeks. "But how pale and
tired you all look! What in the world is the matter with you?"
"The truth is, I think, dear," explained Josephine, glancing from Max to
Uncle Timothy, "your family have been having typhoid." Then, at Sally's
startled expression, she added, gently, "It's almost as wearing, you
know, to have a fever of anxiety over somebody you love as to have the
real thing in the hospital."
"Oh!" exclaimed Sally, softly, and her eyes fell. Then she drooped
limply against her pillows. "It's--just a little hot to-day, isn't it?"
she murmured.
Alec consulted the thermometer. "It's ninety here now," he announced. "At
ten o'clock in the morning! About three this afternoon, Sally, you'll
see what we can do here. And no let-up promised by the weather man."
Bob brought a palm-leaf fan, and perching himself at the head of Sally's
couch, began to fan her. "I'll produce 'breezes from the north and
east,'" he promised. "Al, why don't you get her some ice-water? We began
to take ice yesterday."
"Only yesterday?" questioned Sally, with her eyes closed. But she forbore
to ask why they had delayed so long. Well she knew that illnesses are
expensive affairs.
"If you only had let us take you to our house!" cried Josephine, for the
tenth time since she had first proposed that plan. "We could have made
you so much more comfortable."
Sally opened her eyes again. "No, you couldn't, Joey," she said,
"unless you had taken all the rest of them. I couldn't spare my family
another day!"
"May we come in?"
It was Jarvis Burnside, bringing his mother to see Sally. Neither of them
had yet set eyes upon her since her illness. Sally had been at home for
two days now, two intemperately hot days. During this entire period she
had lain on the couch, which was drawn as close to the window as it
could be placed. Uncle Timothy had remained at hand with fans and iced
lemonade and every other expedient he could think of for mitigating the
perfervid temperature of the flat. Just now, at five o'clock in the
afternoon, with no breeze whatever entering at the window, the small
living-room was at its worst.
"Oh, I'm so glad to see you!" Sally held out a languid hand, but her face
lighted up with pleasure.
While his mother bent over Sally, Jarvis pushed up his goggles, then
pulled them off. The room was shaded, but even so, the daylight made him
blink painfully for a minute. But by the time he got his chance at
greeting the invalid, he was able to see clearly for himself just how
Sally was looking. He stared hard at her, noting with a contraction of
the heart all the evidences of the fight for life she had been through.
There was no doubt about it, it was as Josephine had said: she looked as
if a breath might blow her away.
"I look like a little boy now, don't I?" suggested Sally, smiling up at
him as his hand closed over hers. She put up her other hand to her head,
where the heavy masses of fair hair had given way to a short, curly crop
most childish in its clustering framing of her now delicate face. "It's
a blow to my vanity, but it's growing fast, and by the time I can hold my
head up good and strong, like a six-months-old baby, it will be long
enough to tie with a bow at my neck."
"You can't hold your head up yet?" questioned Jarvis anxiously.
"Oh, yes, I can," declared Sally, cheerfully. "I just don't seem to want
to--not when there's a convenient pillow to lay it on. But I shall get
strong pretty soon now. When the weather changes--why, even to-day, if I
were lying down on the bank of a brook somewhere, or in the woods--or
almost anywhere out-doors--I believe I'd feel quite a lot stiffer in my
backbone."
"And still you won't come to us and let us make you comfortable?" Mrs.
Burnside looked as if she would enjoy doing it.
But Sally looked over at Uncle Timothy, and her shake of the head was
as decided as ever. "Not while Uncle Timmy and the boys stay here. Have
you seen Max and Alec lately, Mrs. Burnside? I don't believe I'm a bit
paler than they are, working in those hot offices in the artificial
light. I shall grow strong fast enough--the nurse told me people always
feel like this after typhoid. And when I do get strong I shall be a
Trojan--just wait."
"We don't like to wait," said Jarvis, still watching Sally, although his
eyes were feeling the adverse influences of the white daylight which beat
into the room underneath the shades. He put up his hand for an instant to
shield them, and Sally was quick to notice.
"I thought you were wearing goggles, Jarvis," she said. Mrs. Burnside
turned with a reproachful expression, and with a laugh Jarvis drew the
goggles out of his pocket and replaced them.
"A fellow gets tired of viewing life through these things," he explained.
"And I've been seeing you in imagination through blue spectacles, so to
speak, for five weeks now. I thought I'd like a glimpse of your true
complexion."
Sally put up two thin hands and pinched her cheeks fiercely. "I believe I
must resemble a tallow candle," she complained. "What can you people
expect of a patient just out of the hospital?"
"We'd like to get you where nature would attend to putting on the
rouge--eh, mother?" and Jarvis thought of his friend Max with a strong
desire to take that refractory young man by the collar and argue with him
with his fists. If it had not been for Max's stubbornness, Sally would
not now be suffering the discomfort of this unspeakable apartment.
When he and his mother had reached the outer air again and were driving
away, Jarvis burst out: "Something must be done! If Sally won't let you
and Jo have her--and that wouldn't be getting her out of the city, only
into a more bearable in-door atmosphere--she must be taken into the
country. Jo's plan is perfectly feasible. A tent in that pine grove would
do the business. Mother, I'm going to put one there. If Max doesn't like
it, he can stay away."
"Jarvis, dear, how can you do that? Max would resent that high-handed way
of managing his affairs."
"I dare say he would. What of that? If ever a frail child needed to get
out-doors, Sally does. Aren't we old friends enough to take things into
our own hands?"
"Max won't accept a tent from you--or Sally, either."
"Won't they? They won't have to. It'll be my tent; I'll lend it to them."
Jarvis grinned, his white teeth making a striking contrast to the sombre
effect of his big goggles.
"Hold on, Cheney," he said to the coachman. "Let me out at the corner of
Seventeenth. I will look up the tent business right here and now."
His mother looked after his tall figure as he hurried away through the
down town crowds, his straw hat a little pushed back, as it was wont
to be in moments of excitement. She herself felt like heartily aiding
and abetting his friendly schemes, for Sally was very dear to her
motherly heart, and it had seemed to her impossible that the girl
should recover her strength while shut up in the little flat. If the
heat lasted--and there were no indications of any near break in the
high temperature--it would certainly be a severe test on the young
convalescent, and might seriously retard her in the important business
of getting back her old vigour.
Within an hour Jarvis was at home again, in time for dinner. He came to
the table with a catalogue in his hand. Determination was written large
upon his face. Josephine had heard from her mother of his expressed
intention, and she eyed the catalogue eagerly.
"Are you really going to do it, Jarve?" she cried.
"Of course I'm going to do it--with your help."
"Help! I'll do any thing. Have you told Max?"
"I'll tell him nothing till the tent's up--and furnished. Here, look at
this list, and advise me as to size. Would an eighteen by twenty-four
wall-tent--of the heaviest duck--be about right?"
"Eighteen by twenty-four! Why, that's--how big would that be?"
"About the size of this dining-room. I could get an eighteen by
thirty-four--"
Josephine interrupted him with a burst of delighted laughter.
"You might get Sally a circus tent," she cried. "As big as this
dining-room! Why, Jarve--"
"She wants the whole family with her," explained Jarvis, with composure.
"That means the tent must be divided off into rooms. And she must have
one section for a living-room. I'm going to have a floor made--the
carpenter will go out in the morning, if he keeps his word. By quick work
we ought to be able to take her out there to-morrow night, but allowing
for delays, the next evening will have to do. Mother, have we any cots?"
"I'm afraid we have no cots. There are two single-width white iron beds
in the attic--"
"All the better. May I have them?"
"I wonder you stop to ask permission of anybody for anything," observed
Josephine. "Mother, have you seen Jarvis look so waked up since he put
on goggles?"
Mrs. Burnside smiled. She was very glad to see her son so interested,
although she felt decidedly doubtful as to the way in which the Lanes
would take his interference in their affairs. Still, as Jarvis had
urged, people who have been friends from childhood, with an old family
friendship of fathers and grandfathers behind them, should have some
rights when it comes to matters so important. And if anybody could manage
Max's proud and intolerant temper, Jarvis, with his quiet firmness,
should be the one. Josephine, also, was of the make-up which can fight
for that which seems right. Between them, if they could not put the thing
through, it would be rather remarkable.
"Joey, will you and mother drive out with me this evening and decide on
where to put the tent?" Jarvis rose from the table, after having made a
hasty meal which did not include any superfluous courses.
"Of course I will." Josephine pushed aside her dessert.
"I will stay at home and look up blankets and bedding," announced Mrs.
Burnside. "Have you thought of the cooking question? Shall we try to
supply the utensils?"
"If you can spare them, mother. I'll buy what you can't contribute. I've
bargained for a little gasolene stove and a small tent for a kitchen. As
for the cooking, is that specimen they have in the flat now good enough
to import to the camp?"
"She's pretty poor. I had luncheon there yesterday with Sally."
Josephine's face spoke louder than her words.
"Mother, could you spare Joanna for a week or two, till they can find
somebody? She can cook almost as well as Sarah, you know. She cooked for
me last fall, when you were away and Sarah was taken ill."
Jarvis's mother looked at him doubtfully. "I think you had better not go
as far as that. Be content with supplying the tent and its equipment, and
see how Max and Alec take it. The young girl they have now will do for a
time, surely."
"All right--if you think that's the better plan. Ready, Sis?"
Jarvis put the gray mare through her paces, and there was still an hour
of daylight left when he and Josephine reached the pine grove.
"It's ten degrees cooler out here than it is in town at this hour,"
declared Jarvis, with satisfaction. He pushed up the goggles and lowered
them again quickly. Even the subdued light in the grove, at a point where
the setting sun did not penetrate, was too much for his eyes. "Confound
the things!" he exploded. "Shall I ever be anything again but an owl in
daylight? Well, where shall the tent go?"
"Over there," replied Josephine, promptly. "There's just one perfect
spot for it--on the top of that little rise, looking toward the south,
and away from the grove."
"Right you are. But the trees are too thick."
He pulled out a foot-rule and began to measure. Presently he announced
the result: "One tree, this little fellow, will have to come down."
"Do you dare?"
"Of course I dare. Where can I get an axe?"
Josephine glanced toward the house. Then she thought of the Ferry
cottage. "The little house beyond the hedge--I know the people--at least,
I've met one of them. Shall we go and ask?"
Jarvis was already hurrying toward a distant gap in the hedge. "I'll go!"
he called back.
In two minutes he reappeared. With him was a sturdy figure. Josephine
recognized the broad shoulders, the thick reddish-brown hair, the gleam
of the hazel eyes. She nodded at Donald Ferry, noting that he was not now
clad in a gray flannel shirt, but in one of white, with a low collar and
silk neck-tie, similar to Jarvis's--hot-weather dress with an urban air
about it. He carried an axe.
"Thank you," said Jarvis, when they had reached the spot which Josephine
had designated. He held out his hand for the axe.
Ferry shook his head, smiling. "Which is the tree?" he inquired.
"Give me the axe, please," repeated Jarvis. "There's no reason why you
should chop down trees for us on a sweltering night like this."
"It won't make me swelter as much as it will you," asserted Ferry
retaining his hold on the axe. "I'm an old woodman. Come, show me the
tree, or I'll chop at a venture. Miss Burnside?"
Josephine pointed out the tree. Ferry lifted the axe and swung it, and it
sank deeply into the trunk. Another blow; it struck the same spot.
Another and another, with an unerring aim. "You are a woodman," admitted
Jarvis, admiringly, watching the powerful swing and the telling blows.
Ferry laughed, without abating the vigour of his work. "There's no better
out-door fun that I know of," said he, "than chopping down a tree. I
couldn't think of missing this chance."