Martin Morley slept, in the clean loft over Marcia Lowe's living-room.
There was a good warm bed there, and before he had gone up the ladder
to his much-needed rest, the little doctor had fed him and given him
hot coffee to drink.
"You are safe," she had comforted him. "God has been good to you,
Martin Morley. Molly is with her mother and, sad as it is, we can do
nothing more for her. Forget it all, and to-morrow you and I will
consider the future."
So Martin slept and slept, and the front door of the cabin was kept
closed and locked.
Refreshed and humble, Martin, on the evening of the following day,
cautiously crept down the ladder from his loft-chamber and tapped upon
the outer door of the cabin.
It was a very smiling and trim little body that welcomed him and bade
him sit down to a table laid for an evening meal.
"You see I've waited for you, Mr. Morley; we have a slice of ham, some
hot biscuits, and baked potatoes. There's a loaf of cake, too, and
coffee and a try at a pudding for which my mother used to be famous."
Every nerve of Martin's starved stomach thrilled, but his eyes did not
meet Marcia Lowe's.
"You are feeling better, Martin Morley?"
"Yes, ma'am; thank you, ma'am."
"Well, then I want you to share my meal."
"I--I ain't worthy, ma'am. I can never pay you, ma'am, for what you've
done and meant to me. I'm ready to go now, ma'am."
"Where, Martin Morley?" The little doctor was pouring the coffee, and
the odour made Morley dizzy with longing.
"I ain't just settled in my mind as to that, ma'am. The world's big,
beyond The Hollow."
"Too big for you, Mr. Morley, until you are yourself--your best self
again. And you can pay me--I have my bill ready."
Martin eyed her furtively and tried to steady his hand as he reached
out for the plate of savoury food she was passing to him. They ate
silently for a while, then Marcia Lowe tried to cheer him by scraps of
gossip that had drifted to her during the day.
"They think you have gone with Teale," she said with a little laugh;
"the idea of your flying off in that company! Have another potato, Mr.
Morley; the staying power of a baked potato is simply marvellous."
When the meal was finished and the dishes put away, Marcia Lowe faced
her gloomy guest with deep, serious eyes.
"You feel you owe me something, Mr. Morley?" she asked. They were
sitting opposite each other by the hearth; a pouring rain dashed
against the window and a rising wind howled through the trees. A sleek
yellow cat turned around two or three times and then settled
comfortably at Marcia Lowe's feet and purred happily.
"I do that, mum."
"You are--willing to do something for me--for Sandy, but most of all
for yourself?"
Morley was becoming accustomed to the little doctor's quaint way of
putting questions, but her manner still puzzled him.
"Yes, ma'am," he answered confusedly.
"Then listen, Martin Morley. I want to save you, first of all for
yourself--next for that boy of yours, who, I somehow feel confident,
will come back to honour us all. I believe I can do what I have in
mind--there is a little risk, very little, but will you run it for me?"
Morley's thin face twitched. Many emotions swayed him. Doubt,
suspicion, superstition, the ingrained revolt of sex--the male
resenting this power of the female--all, all held part in Morley's
mind, weakened by trouble and malnutrition, but above all was the
innate yearning to prove himself for Sandy. Martin had the supreme
instinct of parenthood.
"You know you were willing to die for him, Mr. Morley. Are you not
willing to run the chance of a better, cleaner life?"
Marcia Lowe was bending forward now, her face radiant and inspired--she
looked young, lovely and compassionate.
"I--I--don't follow you, ma'am." Poor Martin was caught in the toils
of the enthusiast.
"Then listen. I have studied and--conquered to a certain extent--a
great and noble help for humanity--but I am hampered in my work because
I am a woman. Oh! no one--no man can understand how terrible it is for
us women to look beyond the man and woman part of life and see _human
beings_ needing us, crying out to us, and for us, to realize that often
we might help, in our own way best of all--if only something, over
which we have no control, did not bar us. You see, men have no right
to deprive human beings of any assistance the world can give. If we
women tell men of our hopes and our beliefs, they accept or decline as
they think best--and so much is lost! Why, I have been pleading with
The Forge doctor ever since I came, to work with me in doing what I
long to do, and he will not--he laughs! I am not rich enough or
important enough to bring a big doctor from my home to do this thing
for you, all that I could do alone. So here I stand with, I solemnly
believe, a precious gift and I--I--cannot give it to you because--you
won't trust a woman!"
Marcia Lowe was talking far and beyond Morley; he stared bewildered at
her, but something within himself was reaching out and touching, with
soul-intensity, the tragic appeal from the little woman opposite.
"Uncle Theodore Starr came here because he loved his kind and felt that
you all needed him most. Because you had no choice, he believed you
would accept him. Can you remember how he worked among you? served you
and died for you?"
"I--do, mum!" An old sense of gratitude gave force to the words.
"Well, I feel as he did, only I want to mend your poor, sick bodies;
make you strong enough to want to help yourselves like men and women!
I want you to know that you have _souls_."
But now Martin was lost again. The stare settled on his face and only
the hypnotism of the woman across the hearth guided him. Marcia Lowe
saw this, and grew desperate.
"Oh! dear, what shall I do?" she cried helplessly. "Can I say anything
that will make you understand? The thing I have is safe and sure. It
might go wrong with you--only _might_--but I want, I must have, your
consent. Just suppose it did go wrong with you, but that you knew it
would help hundreds of others--would you be willing to try?"
Morley did not attempt an answer.
"Let me put it another way!" and now the little doctor arose and stood
in the full glow of the fire, while the roar of the wind and the
flaring of the red light filled the room with sound and colour. The
slim, pale woman looked very weak and small to be the leading actor in
this tragic drama of the hills, and the big, stupidly staring man
opposite seemed very insignificant as a great sacrifice.
"See, I will put it this way. They call me the Cup-o'-Cold-Water Lady
because--I give them all a little drink of water and it makes them
better! I made the little Hope boy well; ask Liza, she knows. I gave
your Sandy a cup of cold water and it helped his throat--I could have
helped him more, poor boy, if he had not gone away. Martin Morley, I
want to give _you_ a cup of cold water--oh! please trust me! You must
do what I ask you to do--just for one little week. It will be hard,
but I will watch with you and share every suffering hour. I will nurse
you and care for you as a daughter might, and then, at the end, I
believe as truly as God hears me, that you win stand straight and take
your place--_your_ place--among men!"
"A charm?" Morley panted, for he was quite overcome by the power
exerted over him.
Full of zeal and trust, seizing upon anything to gain her end, Marcia
Lowe replied:
"Exactly--a charm! See!" and suddenly she turned to the closet beside
the chimney-place; taking out a small bottle she held it up to the
light with a glow of reverence upon her uplifted face. "Fifteen tiny
grains of this!"
Morley was fascinated.
"Fifteen grains," he repeated, like a man talking in his
sleep--"fifteen grains!"
"Yes, yes! and then you must have--faith! You know you always _must_
have faith in charms."
Morley assented to this.
"Will--you--will you try?"
"I--reckon I will, mum!"
"Will you promise? Oh! If I have ever done anything to make you
grateful, promise! promise!"
"I promise!"
From that night the cure began. Shut away against the mountain-world,
favoured by one of the hill storms, prolonged and depressing, the
little doctor tested her charm. She was nurse and companion as well as
physician. Willing to do battle and take the consequences for the
faith that was in her, she wrestled with her problem. Men had proven
the thing elsewhere--why not she, here among her dead uncle's people?
"You cannot eat until I tell you to, Martin Morley," she said.
For the first day or so the weakened man, used to deprivation, made no
demur; then his haggard face and imploring eyes pleaded for food, and
on the third day he asked for it, cried for it like a starving child.
This wrung Marcia Lowe's heart.
"Oh! we women," she whispered to herself scornfully; "I declare I must
put a watch upon myself or I will find myself going to the cupboard and
betraying the faith of Doctor Marcia Lowe!"
Then she resorted to subterfuge, and playfully bullied poor Morley.
"See! If I do not eat, can you not keep me company? What manners have
you, Martin Morley, to eat while a lady starves?"
The wretched fellow tried to smile, but wept instead.
After that, Marcia Lowe rarely left the room; never unless Morley
slept. She stole like a thief to her closet and ate her food when, and
as she could.
"It's the nurse of Martin Morley who refreshes herself," she thought
comfortingly.
It was on the fifth evening of the battle with the deadly foe of the
mountain poor-whites, that Marcia Lowe heard a knock upon her cabin
door. So alone and absorbed had she been for the past few days that a
demand from the outer world startled and annoyed her. Martin was
sleeping--he lay in the lean-to chamber--so on tiptoe the little doctor
went to answer the summons.
The storm had passed unnoticed by Marcia Lowe, and a bright starry
heaven lay behind the tall figure of Tod Greeley on the doorstep.
"Oh! Come in, come in!" whispered Marcia--and oddly enough she felt a
glow of relief and welcome. Greeley came in and grimly took a chair by
the cheerful fire on the ashless hearth.
"I've come on a mighty unpleasant errand, ma'am," he said; "and I ain't
one as can pass around sweets before the bitters."
All the way to Trouble Neck Greeley had arranged this speech, and the
medical flavour of it had given him courage.
"You're very kind to come yourself, Mr. Greeley," Marcia Lowe was
smiling; "another might not have been so welcome. And now for the
bitter! I'll gulp it bravely, for I like sweets better."
She sat down in her own rough little rocker, and swayed calmly to and
fro.
"Well, mum, the County Club, in session down to the store, delegated me
to call on you. Leastway, I done told them I reckoned no one else
_but_ me should come first!"
"Thank you again, Mr. Greeley."
"Since the raid on Teale's----" Tod drawled uncomfortably--"there's
them as is scared. I ain't standing up or setting down for them Speak
Easies back o' The Hollow, but business is business, and no man knows
who's going to get struck so long as----" Greeley glanced cautiously
about--"so long as--you're hiding what you _are_ hiding!"
For a moment Marcia Lowe tried to readjust her thoughts and get them
into some sort of connection; finally she laughed, laughed so long and
so noiselessly that Greeley grew nervous.
"Lord, ma'am!" he faltered, "you can't afford to take it that-er-way
lest you've got your place _full_ of 'em!"
"Oh! Mr. Greeley. They think, the club thinks I have something to do
with the raid? Why I did not know, until some one told me, that there
had been one. Come, I want you to see what I am hiding!"
She motioned her guest to the doorway of the lean-to.
"Look!" she whispered.
For a moment Greeley did not recognize the wan, helpless creature
huddled on the bed; so small, so pitiful was the unconscious man that
he seemed a stranger. Then in amaze and half terror, Tod breathed:
"Mart Morley! What you--doing--to--him?"
Marcia Lowe's eyes were full of tears, and her trembling lips were
hardly able to frame the words:
"I'm helping him to lead his people back to their heritage! Oh! you do
not understand; but he and I--with God on our side, are fighting--just
plain fighting a--a worm!"
At that moment Morley stirred and opened his hollow, starving eyes.
"Food," he gasped in a voice Greeley never forgot; "God-a'mighty--food!"
Then Greeley beheld a miracle. He saw Marcia Lowe run to the fire in
the living-room and bring to the bedside of the sick man a tiny kettle
of some smooth liquid; he saw her dip a spoon in and then hold it to
the lips of Morley. She had forgotten Greeley; forgotten all but the
man upon the bed.
"Slowly, slowly!" she whispered; "we've won! we've won! There! there!
It's going to be all right from now on--the charm's worked!"
Awed and afraid, Greeley tiptoed from the house, and all the way back
to the waiting County Club he muttered like a half-wit:
"Fighting a worm! Fighting a worm!"