IN OLAKAH GLEN
And Mercy Curtis really came to the Red Mill. Perhaps it was because
of Doctor Davison, for it was notorious that when the good physician
set out to do a thing, or to have it done, it was accomplished.
Yet in this case it seemed as though the miller himself had as much to
do with the successful outcome of the plan as anybody. He had little
to say about it--or little to say at first to the crippled girl. But
he saw that Aunt Alvirah and Ruth had the east bedroom ready for
Mercy's occupancy before he started to town with his usual load of
flour and meal on Saturday afternoon; and he was at home in good
season for supper with the empty grain sacks, the fruits of his
Saturday's trading, and Mercy's wheel chair in the wagon. But before
he returned to the Red Mill the Camerons' big car, with Helen and Tom
and the chauffeur, flashed past the Red Mill on its way to town and in
a remarkably short time reappeared with Mercy sitting beside Helen in
the tonneau. Doctor Davison arrived at about the same time, too, and
superintended the removal of the cripple into the house.
Mercy was as excited as she could be. There was actually color in her
face. She was so excited that she forgot to be snappy, and thanked
them all for their kindness to her.
"Into bed you go at once, Mercy," commanded Doctor Davison; "and in
the morning you may get up as early as you please--or as early as
Ruth gets up." For Ruth was to sleep on the couch in the sick girl's
room during her visit to the Red Mill.
The doctor drove the Camerons away then, and adjured Mercy to be
quiet, leaving her to the tender nursing of Ruth and Aunt Alvirah.
Mercy was in a mood to be friendly with everybody--for once. She was
delighted with Aunt Alvirah. When Uncle Jabez arrived with the
wheelchair she actually made him do errands for her and talked to him
with a freedom that astonished both Ruth and Mrs. Alvirah Boggs.
"There! I knew you'd do it, Dusty Miller," Mercy said to the old man,
tartly. "You men are all alike--just as forgetful as you can be. It's
all very well to bring this old wheelchair; but where are my two
sticks? Didn't they give you my canes, Dusty Miller? I assure you I
have to move around a bit now and then without using this horseless
carriage. I've got to have something to hobble on. I'm Goody
Two-sticks, I am. You know very well that one of my legs isn't worth
anything at all."
"Ha!" croaked Jabez Potter, eyeing her with his usual frown, "I didn't
bring any canes; because why? There weren't any given me. They're not
in the wagon."
"My! do you always frown just like that?" demanded Mercy Curtis, in a
manner which would have been impertinent in any other person, but was
her natural way of speaking. "You don't waste your time in smiling and
smirking; do you?"
"I never saw any use in it--unless ye had something perticular to
smile for," admitted Mr. Potter.
"Then it won't spoil your smile if I tell you that you'll have to find
me canes somewhere if I'm to help myself at all," she said.
He gravely brought two rough staffs, measured them off at just the
right height for her, and spent the bulk of the evening in smoothing
the rough sticks and tacking on bits of leather at the small ends of
the canes in lieu of ferrules.
The east bedroom was at the end of the passage leading from the
kitchen. It was right next to Uncle Jabez's own room. They all sat in
the east room that evening, for its windows opened upon the wide,
honeysuckle-shaded porch, and the breeze was cool. It was the
beginning of many such evenings, for although Uncle Jabez sometimes
retired to his bedroom where a lamp burned, and made up his cash-book
and counted his money (or so Ruth supposed) not an evening went by
that the miller was not, for a time at least, in the cripple's room.
He did not talk much. Indeed, if he talked to anyone more than to
another it was to Ruth; but he seemed to take a quizzical interest in
watching Mercy's wry faces when she was in one of her ugly moods, and
in listening to her sharp speeches.
The outdoor air and sun, and the plentiful supply of fresh milk and
vegetables and farm cooking, began to make another girl of Mercy
before a week went over her head. She had actually some natural color,
her hands became less like bird-claws, and her hollow cheeks began to
fill out.
On Sunday Mr. and Mrs. Curtis drove out to see her. The Red Mill had
not been so lively a place since Ruth came to it, she knew, and, she
could imagine; for many a long year before. Doctor Davison was there
every day. Other neighbors were continually running in to see Mercy,
or to bring something for the invalid. At first, in her old, snappy,
snarly way, Mercy would say:
"Old cat! just wanted to see how humpy and mean I look. Thought I was
as ugly as a bullfrog, I s'pose. I know what they're after!"
But as she really began to feel better, and slept long and sweetly at
night, and altogether to gain in health, she dropped such sharp
speeches and had a smile when visitors came and when they left.
Everybody who drove by and saw her sitting on the porch, or wheeling
herself, or being wheeled by Ruth, about the paths, had something to
say to her, or waved a hand at her, and Mercy Curtis began to be
pleasant mannered.
She hobbled around her room more on the "two-sticks" Uncle Jabez had
made for her; but she never liked to have even Ruth see her at these
exercises. She certainly did get about in a very queer manner--"just
like a crab with the St. Vitus dance," so she herself said.
The doctor watched her closely. He was more attentive than he had been
when she was much worse off in health; and finally, after Mercy had
been at the Red Mill for nearly a month, he brought a strange
physician to see her. This gentleman was a great surgeon from New
York, who asked Mercy a few questions, but who watched her with so
intent a look that the little crippled girl was half frightened at
him. He inspired confidence, however, and when he said to her, on
departing: "You are going to see me again before long," Mercy was
quite excited about it. She never asked a question of Doctor Davison,
or of anybody else, about the strange surgeon, or his opinion of her
case; but Ruth often heard her humming an odd little song (she often
made up little tunes and put words to them herself) of which Ruth did
not catch the burden for some days. When Mercy was singing it she
mumbled the words, or dropped her voice to a whisper whenever anybody
came near. But one morning Ruth was bringing the beaten egg and milk
that she drank as a "pick-me-up" between breakfast and dinner, and
Mercy did not hear her coming, and the odd little song came clearly to
the ears of the girl of the Red Mill:
"He's going to cure me! Oh, my back and oh, my bones!
He's going to cure me! Oh, my back and oh, my bones!"
Ruth knew instantly to what the little doggerel song referred. It is
true Mercy had filched Aunt Alvirah's phrase and made it her own--and
it applied to the poor child as well as to the rheumatic old woman.
But it was a song of joy--a song of expectation.
Ruth tried to be even more kind to Mercy after that. She was with her
almost all the time. But there were occasions when Helen and Tom
Cameron really made her come out with them on some little jaunt. Since
Mercy's arrival at the Red Mill the Camerons had fallen into the habit
of calling occasionally, and Uncle Jabez had said nothing about it.
Ostensibly they called on Mercy; but it was Ruth that they came for
with the pony carriage one day and took away for a visit to Olakah
Glen.
This beautiful spot was not so very far away, but it called for a
picnic lunch, and Tubby was quite two hours in getting them there. It
was a wild hollow, with great beech trees, and a noisy stream chaffing
in a rocky bed down the middle of the glen. There were some farms
thereabout; but many of the farmers were no more than squatters, for a
vast tract of field and forest, including the glen, belonged to an
estate which had long been in the courts for settlement.
Just before leaving all signs of civilization behind, Tom had pointed
out a shanty and several outbuildings on a high hillock overlooking
the road, and told the girls that that was where Jasper Parloe lived,
all alone.
"I came up here fishing with some of the other fellows once, and
Jasper tried to drive us out of the glen. Said he owned it. Likely
story! He won't trouble us to-day."
Indeed, wild as the spot was, there was little likelihood of anybody
troubling the young people, for they had Reno along. This faithful
creature watched over the trio most jealously and, as they were eating
on the grass, he found some sudden reason to become excited. He rose
up, stiffening his back, the hair rising on his neck, and a low growl
issuing from his throat. The girls were a little startled, but Tom
sprang up, motioned to Helen and Ruth to keep still, and ran to the
angry mastiff.
"What's the matter with you, Reno?" demanded Tom, softly, but putting
a restraining hand upon his collar.
Reno lurched forward, and Tom gripped the collar tightly as he was
dragged directly toward a thick dump of shrubbery not many yards away.