Adam sat by the stove, where the ashes were still warm. It was not a day for fires, but he loved his accustomed corner. He was a middle-aged man, old with the suffering which is not of years, and the pathos of his stricken state hung about him, from his unkempt beard to the dusty black clothing which had been the Tiverton minister"s outworn suit. One would have said he belonged to the generation before his brother.
"That you, Mary?" he asked, in his shaking voice. "Now, ain"t that good?
Come to set a spell?"
"Where is he?" responded Mary, in a swift breathlessness quite new to her.
"In there. We put up a bed in the clock-room."
It was the unfinished part of the house. The Veaseys had always meant to plaster, but that consummation was still afar. The laths showed meagrely; it was a skeleton of a room,--and, sunken in the high feather-bed between the two windows, lay Johnnie Veasey, his buoyancy all gone, his face quite piteous to see, now that its tan had faded.
Mary went up to the bed-side, and laid one cool, strong hand upon his wrist. His eyes sought her with a wild entreaty; but she knew, although he seemed to suffer, that this was the misery of delirium, and not the conscious mind. Adam had come trembling to the door, and stood there, one hand beating its perpetual tattoo upon the wall. Mary looked up at him with that abstracted gaze with which we weigh and judge.
"He"s feverish," said she. "Mattie didn"t tell me that. How long"s he been so?"
"I dunno. I guess a matter o" two days."
"Two days?"
"Well, it might be off an" on ever sence he fell." Adam was helpless. He depended upon Mattie, and Mattie was not there.
"What did the doctor leave?"
Adam looked about him. ""T was the herb doctor," he said. "He had her steep some trade in a bowl."
Mary Dunbar drew her hand away, and walked two or three times up and down the bare, bleak room. The seeking eyes were following her. She knew how little their distended agony might mean; but nevertheless they carried an entreaty. They leaned upon her, as the world, her sick world, was wont to lean. Mary was, in many things, a child; but her att.i.tude had grown to be maternal. Suddenly she turned to Adam, where he stood, shaking and hesitating, in the doorway.
"You goin" to send him off?"
""Pears as if that"s the only way," shuffled Adam.
"To-day?"
"Well, I dunno"s they"ll come"--
Mary walked past him, her mind a.s.sured.
"There, that"ll do," said she. "You set down in your corner. I"ll be back byme-by."
She hurried out into the bleak world which was her home, and, at that moment, it looked very fair and new. The birds were singing, loudly as they ever sang up here where there were few leaves to nest in. Mary stopped an instant to listen, and lifted her face wordlessly to the clear blue sky. It seemed as if she had been given a gift. There, before one of the houses, she called aloud, with a long, lingering note, "Jacob!" and Jacob Pease rose from his milking-stool, and came forward.
Jacob was tall and snuff-colored, a widower of three years" standing.
There was a theory that he wanted Mary, and lacked the courage to ask her.
"That you, Mary Dunbar?" said he. "Anything on hand?"
"I want you to come and help me lift," answered Mary.
Jacob set down his milk pail, and followed her into the Veaseys"
kitchen. She drew out the tin basin, and filled it at the sink.
"Wash your hands," said she. "Adam, you set where you generally do.
You"ll be in the way."
Jacob followed her into the sick-room, and Adam weakly shuffled in behind.
"For the land"s sake!" he began, but Mary was at the head of the bed, and Jacob at the foot.
"I"ll carry his shoulders," she said, in the voice that admits no demur.
"You take his feet and legs. Sort o" fold the feather-bed up round him, or we never shall get him through the door."
"Which way?" asked Jacob, still entirely at rest on a greater mind.
"Out!" commanded Mary,--"out the front door."
Adam, in describing that dramatic moment, always declared that n.o.body but Mary Dunbar could have engineered a feather-bed through the narrow pa.s.sage, without sticking midway. He recalled an incident of his boyhood when, in the t.i.tcomb fire, the whole family had spent every available instant before the falling of the roof, in trying to push the second-best bed through the attic window, only to leave it there to burn. But Mary Dunbar took her patient through the doorway as Napoleon marched over the Alps; she went with him down the road toward her own little house under the hill. Only then did Adam, still shuffling on behind, collect his intelligence sufficiently to shout after her,--
"Mary, what under the sun be you doin" of? What you want me to tell Mattie? S"pose she brings the selec"men, Mary Dunbar!"
She made no reply, even by a glance. She walked straight on, as if her burden lightened, and into her own cave-like house and her little neat bedroom.
"Lay him down jest as he is," she said to Jacob. "We won"t try to shift him to-day. Let him get over this."
Jacob stretched himself, after his load, put his hands in his pockets, and made up his mouth into a soundless whistle.
"Yes! well!" said he. "Guess I better finish milkin"."
Mary put her patient "to-rights," and set some herb drink on the back of the stove. Presently the little room was filled with the steamy odor of a bitter healing, and she was on the battlefield where she loved to conquer. In spite of her heaven-born instinct, she knew very little about doctors and their ways of cure. Earth secrets were hers, some of them inherited and some guessed at, and luckily she had never been involved in those greater issues to be dealt with only by an exalted science. Later in her life, she was to get acquainted with the young doctor, down in Tiverton Street, and hear from him what things were doing in his world. She was to learn that a hospital is not a slaughter house incarnadined with writhing victims, as some of us had thought. She was even to witness the magic of a great surgeon; though that was in her old age, when her att.i.tude toward medicine had become one of humble thankfulness that, in all her daring, she had done no harm. To-day, she thought she could set a bone or break up a fever; and there was no doubt in her mind that, if other deeds were demanded of her, she should be led in the one true way. So she sat down by her patient, and was watching there, hopeful of moisture on his palm, when Mattie broke into the front room, impetuous as the wind. Mary rose and stepped out to meet her, shutting the door as she went. Pa.s.sing the window, she saw the selectmen, in the vehicle known as a long-reach, waiting at the gate.
"Hush, Mattie!" said she, "you"ll wake him."
Mattie, in her ill-a.s.sorted respectabilities of dress, seemed to have been involved but recently in some baccha.n.a.lian orgie. Her shawl was dragged to one side, and her bonnet sat rakishly. She was intoxicated with her own surprise.
"Mary Dunbar!" cried she, "I"d like to know the meanin" of all this go-round!"
"There!" answered Mary, with a quietude like that of the sea at ebb, "I can"t stop to talk. I"ll settle it with the selec"men. You come, too."
Mattie"s eyes were seeking the bedroom. Leave her alone, and her feet would follow. "You come along," repeated Mary, and Mattie came.
When the three selectmen saw Mary Dunbar stepping down the little slope, they gathered about them all their official dignity. Ebenezer Tolman sat a little straighter than usual, and uttered a portentous cough. Lothrop Wilson, mild by nature, and rather p.r.o.ne to whiffling in times of difficulty, frowned, with conscious effort; but that was only because he knew, in his own soul, how loyally he loved the under-dog, let justice go as it might. Then there was Eli Pike, occupying himself in pulling a rein from beneath the horse"s tail. These two hated warfare, and were nervously conscious that, should they fail in firmness, Ebenezer would deal with them. Mary went swiftly up to the wagon, and laid one hand upon the wheel.
"I"ve got John Veasey in my house," she began rapidly. "I can"t stop to talk. He"s pretty sick."
Ebenezer cleared his throat again.
"We understood his folks had put him on the town," said he.
Mattie made a little eager sound, and then stopped.
"He ain"t on the town yet," said Mary. "He"s in my bedroom. An" there he"s goin" to stay. I"ve took this job." She turned away from them, erect in her decision, and went up the path. Eli Pike looked after her, with an understanding sympathy. He was the man who had walked two miles, one night, to shoot a fox, trapped, and left there helpless with a broken leg. Lothrop gazed straight ahead, and said nothing.
"Look here!" called Ebenezer. "Mary! Mary! you look here!"