A Village Ophelia and Other Stories Part 3

"O Lord!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the janitress, heaving a portentous sigh from the depths of her capacious, brown calico-covered bosom, "if I was the owner of these here flats, instead of the old miser that's got 'em, wouldn't I have a clearin' out! Wouldn't I root the vice and wickedness out of some of 'em! Old Lowder don't care what he gits in here, so long's they pay their rent!"

Druse did not reply. She felt sure that the janitress meant Miss De Courcy's drunken brother, and she was very glad that "old Lowder" was not so particular, for she shuddered to think how lonely she should be were it not for the back flat to the right. Even the janitress, who seemed so kind, was heartless to Miss De Courcy because she had a drunken brother!

Druse began to find the world very, very cruel. The days went on, and the two lives, so radically unlike, grew closer entwined. Druse lost none of her stern, angular little ways. She did not learn to lounge, or to desire fine clothing. If either changed, an observer, had there been one, might have noticed that Miss De Courcy did not need as much medicine as formerly, that the hard ring of her laugh was softened when Druse went by, and that never an oath--and we have heard that ladies of the highest rank have been known to swear under strong provocation--escaped the full red lips in Druse's presence.

One morning Druse went about the household duties with aching limbs and a dizzy head. For the first since she had acted as her uncle's housekeeper, she looked hopelessly at the kitchen floor, and left it unscrubbed: it was sweeping day, too, but the little rooms were left unswept, and she lay all the morning in her dark bedroom, in increasing dizziness and pain. For some days she had been languid and indisposed, and now real illness overcame her; her head was burning, and vague fears of sickness a.s.saulted her, and a dread of the loneliness of the black little room. She dragged herself down the hall. Miss De Courcy opened the door. Her own eyes were red and swollen as with unshed tears.

She pulled Druse in impetuously.

"I'm so glad you're come. I--Why, child, what is the matter with you?

What ails you, Druse?"

She took Druse's hot little hand in her's and led her to the mirror.

Druse looked at herself with dull, sick eyes; her usually pallid face was crimson, and beneath the skin, purplish angry discolorations appeared in the flesh.

"I guess I'm goin' to be sick," she said, with a despairing cadence. "I expect it's somethin' catchin'. I'll go home. Let me go home."

She started for the door, but her limbs suddenly gave way, and she fell, a limp little heap on the floor.

Miss De Courcy looked at her a moment in silence. Her eyes wandered about the room, and fell on a crumpled letter on the table. She paused a moment, then she turned decisively, and let down the folding-bed that stood in the corner by day. She lifted the half-conscious Druse in her strong young arms, and laid her on the bed. It was only a few minutes'

work to remove the coa.r.s.e garments, and wrap her in a perfumed, frilled nightdress, that hung loosely on the spare little form. Miss De Courcy surveyed the feverish face against the pillows anxiously. Druse half opened her dull eyes and moaned feebly; she lifted her thin arms and clasped them around Miss De Courcy's neck. "Ain't you good!" she said thickly, drawing the cool cheek down against her hot brow.

"I'm going for the doctor, Druse," said Miss De Courcy, coaxingly. "Now, you lay right still, and I'll be back in no time. Don't you move; promise, Druse!"

And Druse gave an incoherent murmur that pa.s.sed for a promise.

The doctor, who lived on the corner, a shabby, coa.r.s.e little man, roused her from a fevered dream. He asked a few questions perfunctorily, turned the small face to the light a moment, and cynically shrugged his shoulders.

"Small-pox," was his laconic remark, when he had followed Miss De Courcy into the next room.

"Then she's going to stay right here," said that young woman firmly.

"Well, I guess _not_" replied the doctor, looking her over. "How about your own complexion if you take it?" he added, planting a question he expected to tell.

Miss De Courcy's remark was couched in such forcible terms that I think I had better not repeat it. It ought to have convinced any doctor living that her complexion was her own affair.

"Oh! that's all right," replied the man of science, unoffended, a tardy recognition of her valor showing through his easy insolence. "But how about the Board of Health, and how about me? She's better off in a hospital, any way. You can't take care of her," with a scornful glance at the draggled finery and striking hat. "What do you want to try it for? I can't let the contagion spread all over the house, you know; how would you get anything to eat? No, it's no use. She's got to go. I'm not going to ruin my reputation as a doctor, and--"

Miss De Courcy smiled sweetly into the doctor's hard, common face. She drew a purse from her pocket, and selected several bills from a roll that made his small eyes light up greedily, and pressing the little packet into his not too reluctant fingers, she remarked significantly, as she sat down easily on the top of a low table:

"You're mistaken about what's the matter with her, doctor. She's got the chicken-pox. You just look at her again as you go out, and you'll see that I am right. But it's just as well to be careful. You might mail a note for me when you go out, and my wash-woman will buy things for me, and bring them up here to the door. I'll swear I won't go out till you say I may, or till you take me to the hospital. And then, as you go along, you can step into the front flat left, and tell her uncle she's took bad with chicken-pox. He's got a lot of young ones, and he'll be glad enough to let me do it, see? And of course, chicken-pox is quite serious sometimes. I should expect to pay a doctor pretty well to bring a patient out of it," she added, with a placid smile.

The doctor had turned, and was looking with deep interest at a chromo on the wall.

"I'll take another look at her. I may have been mistaken, doctors sometimes are--symptoms alike--and--m--m--you can get that letter ready for me to mail."

Strange days and nights ensued. Druse had a dim knowledge of knocks at the door at night, of curses and oaths muttered in the hall, of Miss De Courcy's pleading whispers, of a final torrent of imprecations, and then of a comparative lull; of days and nights so much alike in their fevered dull monotony that one could not guess where one ended and another began; of an occasional glimpse that melted into the general delirium, of Miss De Courcy's face, white, with heavy, dark-ringed eyes, bending over her, and of Miss De Courcy's voice, softened and changed, with never a harsh note; of her hand always ready with cooling drink for the blackened, dreadful mouth. Yes, in the first few days Druse was conscious of this much, and of a vague knowledge that the rocking ship on which she was sailing in scorching heat, that burnt the flesh from the body, was Miss De Courcy's bed; and then complete darkness closed in upon the dizzy little traveller, sailing on and on in the black, burning night, further and further away from the world and from life.

How could she guess how many days and nights she sailed thus? The ship stopped, that was all she knew; but still it was dark, so dark; and then she was in a strange land where the air was fire, and everything one touched was raging with heat, and her hands, why had they bandaged her hands, so that she could not move them?

"I can't see," said Druse, in a faint, puzzled whisper. "Is it night?"

And Miss De Courcy, bending over the bed, haggard and wan, and years older in the ghostly gray dawn, said soothingly:

"Yes, Druse, it's night," for she knew Druse would never see the light again.

"Miss De Courcy!"

"Yes, Druse."

"I expect I've kept your brother out all this time. I hope he won't be mad."

"No, no, Druse; be quiet and sleep."

"I can't sleep. I wish it would be morning. I want to see you, Miss De Courcy. Well, never mind. Somehow, I guess I ain't goin' to get better.

If what I've had--ain't catchin'--I suppose you wouldn't want to--to kiss me, would you?"

Without hesitation, the outcast bent her face, purified and celestial with love and sacrifice; bent it over the dreadful Thing, loathsome and decaying, beyond the semblance of human form or feature, on the bed,--bent and kissed, as a mother would have kissed.

The gray dawn crept yet further into the room, the streets were growing noisier, the Elevated trains rushed by the corner, the milkmen's carts rumbled along the Avenue, the sparrows twittered loudly on the neighboring roofs. And yet it seemed so solemnly silent in the room.

"Well, now!" said Druse, with pleased surprise, "I didn't expect you would. What a long time it is gettin' light this mornin'. To think of you, a-takin' care of _me_, like this! An' I ain't never done a thing for you excep' the headaches and sweepin', an' even that was nicer for me than for you. I knew you was awful good, but I never knew you was religious before, Miss De Courcy. n.o.body but folks that has religion does such things, they say. I wish I could remember my prayers. Ain't it strange, I've forgot them all? Couldn't you say one? Just a little one?"

And Miss De Courcy, her face buried in her hands, said, "Lord, have mercy upon us," and said no more.

"Thank you," said Druse, more feebly, and quite satisfied. "We won't forget each other, an' you'll promise to come by'm'by. Won't you? I'll be so pleased when you come!"

"Yes, Druse," whispered Miss De Courcy, "I promise."

And then the terrible form that had been Druse sat up in bed with a mighty effort, and turned its sightless eyes joyfully toward Miss De Courcy's tear-stained face.

"It's morning! I can see you!" it said, and fell back into the faithful arms and upon the faithful breast.

And so Druse, not having lived and died in vain, pa.s.sed away forever from the Vere De Vere.

A LAMENTABLE COMEDY.

I stood one July noon on the platform of the desolate station at Wauchittic, the sole pa.s.senger waiting for the stage. The heat was quivering in the air. I watched the departing train, whirling like a little black ball down the narrow yellow road, cut between the green fields, and was vaguely glad that I was not going to the end of the Island on it. This was somewhere near the middle, and it was quite far enough from civilization.

The village, like so many Long Island villages, was distant from the railroad. Only one or two farm-houses were in sight. There was hardly a sound in the hot noonday air, now that the train had gone, except the whistling of a cheerful station agent, who sat in the window of the little oven-like Queen Anne structure, in his shirt sleeves, looking out at me with lively interest. I had sought for a quiet country place in which to finish my novel, the book which would decide beyond doubt whether I had a future as a writer, or whether I was doomed to sink to the level of the ordinary literary hack, for into it I had put, I knew, all that was my best.

As I looked absently down the track, I reviewed the past winter months, the long days and evenings spent at my desk in the stuffy little lodgings to which I was limited by my narrow income, interrupted frequently by invasions on various pretexts of the ill-fed chambermaid, who insisted on telling me her woes, or by my neighbor from the next room, the good little spinster, who always knocked to ask if she might heat a flat-iron at my grate when I was in the midst of a bit of minute description. She would sit down, too, would poor withered Miss Jane, in my little rocking-chair to wait while the iron heated, and she said she often told the landlady she did not know how I could write, I had so many interruptions.

I had come to a place now, I thought, trying to quell the sense of loneliness that oppressed me, as I looked around at the expanse of stunted wood and scrub-oaks, where I could be perfectly undisturbed. If the farmer's family with whom I was to board, were noisy or intrusive, one could take one's writing materials and go--well, somewhere--into the woods, perhaps. I was only twenty-two, and I was sanguine.

I saw a cloud of white dust down the road--nothing more, but the station-agent, with a certainty born of long experience, shouted encouragingly: "Thar she comes!" and presently I found myself in a large, sombre and warm conveyance, very like the wagon known to the New York populace familiarly, if not fondly, as "the Black Maria."