Cape Cod Folks Part 34

"Certainly I will go and see her," I said; "why should I be afraid?"

"I was only thinkin' it was fair to say," said the Captain; "she was took so sudden and so violent like, it might be--might be--suthin'--suthin'

kitchin', perhaps. They was a case or two o' scarlet fever up to Wallen, but she wasn't exposed no way that we know on. She wasn't exposed."

The Captain, regarding me intently, repeated the words, thrusting his neck out with a pitiful gulp, his hand on the latch. Observing him, the expression of my face changed; he groaned as he went out, closing the door silently.

My first impulse then was to pack my trunk and start for home, but the wailing of Mrs. Philander, and of the other women who had followed the Captain in, lamenting one with another in an agony of helpless fear, appealed to my courage and presence of mind, and had a strangely sustaining and quieting effect upon me. I suggested after a few moments'

reflection, that very likely the case was not so bad as Captain Sartell supposed. I determined to have no school that day, and advised the women what they should do, in case their children had been already exposed to a contagious disease. Then a happy thought struck me. I went out in the other part of the Ark to seek Grandma Keeler. I wondered why we had not thought of her, before.

She entered the room where the women sat. Calm and sunshine was Grandma Keeler--calm and sunshine breaking through a storm.

If it was scarlet fever, she knew just what to do. She and pa had it years ago, and they'd lived through it; but she didn't believe that it was nothin' half so bad, and "What if it is, you poor critturs, you,"

said Grandma, in such a tone as she would have used to soothe a frightened child; "every time there's a squall must we go to takin' on as though it was our doin's? The Lord, He makes the squalls, and he don't put it on us to manage 'em; but up thar' in His fa'r weather, He looks down on the storms that we know not whither, but are only drivin' of us landward safe, and 'Keep ye still,' He says, 'Jest keep ye still!' No need o' strainin' eyes, but fix 'em thar', on Him, I've seen a many times when no words but them would do."

The tears stood in Grandma's eyes. Beautiful soul! Whatever storms she might have known in her life's voyage, she only seemed to lie at anchor now, in a sure haven; and all the while, her heart was going out in the tenderest sympathy to those still tossing on the seas and striving to make perilous pa.s.sages, even to those watching false harbor lights in the distance. She had had an experience wide enough for all. She had found where it was still. She longed to draw all others into that stillness.

Soon Grandma was on her way to give help and consolation where it was most needed--in Captain Sartell's household. She did not come back until near mid-day.

Mrs. Philander's children were kept carefully out of the room when she entered.

"The Lord is a goin' to take that little one to Himself, teacher," she said to me, very impressively.

Captain Sartell had not yet returned with the doctor. Possibly he had been obliged to drive to the next town. Poor Mrs. Sartell was nearly distracted. Bessie's fever had gone to the brain.

"We couldn't quiet her, no way," Grandma continued; "and she's a growin'

weak, but when them spells come on, she's ravin', first about one thing and then another, but mostly it's school, school. 'It's a gittin' so late in school and the teacher not there'--and then she screams and moans so!

Poor, sufferin' darlin'! ye can't ease her no way."

With a desperate determination not to yield myself to my own thoughts, I informed Mrs. Philander that I was going to live with Grandma a while, that I should not go through that part of the Ark where she and the children were, and she must keep the little door at the foot of the stairway locked, and not let the children follow me; and I sprinkled myself with camphor and went back with Grandma to Captain Sartell's house.

Mrs. Sartell was alone in the room with Bess. I expected that she would meet me with an almost reproachful look, but there was only sorrow in her face, a sorrow that seemed intensified by the smile she lifted to us as we entered. The air in the room was very pure and sweet. The bed on which Bess lay was as white as snow. But what a change a day had wrought in the little face pressed against the pillow.

"Teacher's come," said Grandma Keeler, with soft; pathetic cheer, bending over the child.

"Would she care now?" I thought. "Would she know me?"

Just once she opened her eyes wide, smiled, and threw her arms towards me feebly. I would have taken her then, I thought, if it had been my death.

They wrapped a shawl around her, and I took her in my arms, rocked her gently and sang to her, very softly, the songs she loved best. She moved a little restlessly, and then lay very still with her head on my breast.

So I rocked and sang to Bess, and the two women moved noiselessly about the room until Grandma Keeler came and looked down very intently into the little one's face.

"She's asleep," I murmured, placing a finger on my lips.

"Yes, she's asleep," said Grandma, in a trembling voice, solemnly.

"Sweet, purty little one," she went on, with tears running down her cheeks, and she turned to the mother--"Thank G.o.d, you!" she exclaimed, with sudden strength and firmness in her voice, that was yet thrilled with emotion; "from sorrowin' and from pain forevermore, the Lord has took His lamb!"

Ay, life's chain of dewy morning flowers was broken! The baby fingers had dropped those purple fragments without grief, now, or dismay--only the peace of some sweet unfolding mystery over the veiled blue eyes!

Still, she seemed to me asleep--only asleep. I felt no shrinking from the dead child in my arms. When they took her away from me and laid her on the bed, I looked at her tranquil face, and the mother's pa.s.sionate grief seemed out of place. Why should one wish to wake another from such repose? I could not comprehend the mother's aching sense of loss. But later, when we heard the sound of wheels and saw Captain Sartell and the doctor driving very fast up the lane, I went down the stairs and pa.s.sed out before them. I could not bear to watch the strong man's face when he should find his baby dead.

Little Bess was buried under the lilac blossoms. The fever which had so soon smitten her down was not properly a contagious one. I went on with my school again, missing the sweet face of the dead child more and more each succeeding day.

Not one of the children with whom she had played was taken sick, but it was scarcely two weeks after her death that I was taken sick as she had been. In the interval George Olver had come to me and I had written to Rebecca, but Rebecca had not come back to Wallencamp nor answered my letter. I was more anxious and troubled about her than I dared confess to any one. Then suddenly I ceased to care for any of those things. Of my last afternoon in school I could recall very little afterwards, except that the clock on the shelf back of me seemed to be ticking in my brain, and the voices in the room sounded indistinct. My own voice sounded to me like that of some one else speaking from a long way off.

And at evening, in the Ark, I put my little room in perfect order, my head growing heavy with pain. I felt that I must finish this task before I lay down, and there was another intention to which I clung with a painful pertinacity of mind.

I sat down at my table and wrote half a dozen or more brief letters home. These were filled with irrelevant anecdotes pertaining to my experience among the Wallencampers, a few desultory descriptions of character and scenery, with a philosophical digression or two.

To one not intimately acquainted with the epistolary products of my pen, these letters would have undoubtedly suggested the workings of a crazed and feverish brain, but they were not calculated to arouse any particular alarm in the minds of my friends at home, unless, indeed, it was by reason of the unusual care and painstaking evinced in their chirography and the punctilious manner in which they were dated. The first one I dated for the evening on which I was writing. The next for a time several days in advance of that, and so on, performing this strange act with utter indifference to the presumption of it.

When it was finished, I seemed to have forgotten what next to do. Grandma Keeler told me afterwards, that I went to the head of the stairs and called to her, that she came up, and I told her very gravely that I was going to be sick, but I knew I was not going to die, and adjured her with a look in my eyes which she said, "I couldn't go ag'inst, teacher, for it was more convincin' than health," not to write to my friends of my sickness, and instructed her how to send the letters which I had sealed, stamped, directed, and methodically arranged on the table, in their proper order to the post.

For the rest, all through the pain and impotence and vague mental wanderings of the days that followed, I had a restful, comforting consciousness that a kind, loving face, like the lamp of my salvation, was hanging ever over me--always it was Grandma Keeler's face, though it seemed to have grown strangely young and fair, and the eyes that followed me with such a loving, tireless, wistful expression in them were like other eyes that I had known, and the watcher's voice was clear and musical, with a youthful repression in it. Still, somehow, it was Grandma's face, _her_ eyes, _her_ voice--and when at last, I woke one morning very weak, but able to recognize clearly all the familiar objects in the room, it was Grandma Keeler indeed, who sat by my bed, beaming gloriously upon me.

"Is it most school time, Grandma?" I inquired, feebly, slowly concentrating my gaze on her face.

"Oh, laws, no!" said Grandma, with cheerful emphasis, and then continued talking in her quiet monotone. I hardly heard what she said. I was painfully endeavoring to pick up the lost thread of my consciousness where I had left it on that night when I put my room in order and went so wearily to bed. At last I inquired, still vaguely, "How long?"

Grandma understood. She smiled rea.s.suringly.

"Only a little while, teacher," she said. "You've only been sick a little while--a few days, maybe," and she immediately proffered me some broth which was a triumph of the good soul's art, and seemed to partake of her own comfortable and sustaining nature. I lay back on the pillows, contented to be very still for a little while.

When I next looked up and recognized that familiar figure sitting by the bed, I said, "Has Becky come back?"

"Yis, Becky's come back!" said Grandma, in a tone which seemed to imply, in the very best faith, that during my illness the world had been running on excellently well. "You take some more broth now, teacher, and keep r'al slow-minded and easy, and hev' a good night's rest, and to-morrer I'll tell ye all about it!"

But I persisted; so Grandma continued gently:--

"Wall, it wa'n't much to tell, only the doctor said ye wasn't to be talked to much, nor worked up; but I reckon a little pleasant news ain't a gonter hurt n.o.body. Ye see, when you was took sick, George Olver, he got a hold of where Becky was; he had a mistrustin' of it, somehow--and he went and told her, and it brought her, hearin' you was dangerous, and she calculated she might be o' use to ye now, for _some_, they _be_ sich friends!" said Grandma, making this observation with the most guileless enthusiasm. "And Becky, she wa'n't much brought up, and used to be as wild and harum-scarum as any of 'em; but I allus said that there was a good deal to Becky, after all. Wall, George Olver, he recognized where she was and he went down thar' and found her, and they wa'n't anybody ventured to say a word, and what need? for everybody respec's George Olver, knowin' he's uncommon ser'ous and high-minded; and the very same hour they came home, Becky, she come up here, and she turned me right out of the room, as ye might say. 'It's my place, Grandma,' says she, 'and I'm better able than you. I understand. It's my place.' And she wa'n't vary strong, but she wouldn't give up to n.o.body, and only run home a little while between spells to rest, and watched and tended ye as faithful as though she was keepin' count of every breath; and when the fever turned a Monday night, and you fell off into a kind of a natural sleep, the doctor, he says to her, what it ain't a very common thing for a doctor to say: 'It's you saved her life!' he says. 'She was vary sick.'

And he shook his head the way they do. 'You've tended vary faithful,' he says; and Becky, she hardly spoke, but I seen when she looked up that her eyes was a shinin', and that happy look that she's had somehow, sence she came back--I can't tell ye exactly, teacher, but it's most like as ef somebody should have a bad dream, and be wakin' up kinder surprised and thankful--but when the doctor said them words, I'll never forget how her eyes went a shinin', and she says to me, 'I'm goin' home now, and never you tell her, when she wakes up, for she thought it was you watchin' with her all the time, and kep' a callin "Grandma! Grandma!" says she; 'and don't you tell her! don't you; for it would seem as though I was obligin'

her, and if she forgives me and is friendly I don't want it to be for that,' And I didn't say as I should or shouldn't tell," said Grandma, smilingly unconscious of the two large tears that were stealing down her cheeks; "but I knowed pretty well what I had on my mind!"

Grandma ceased speaking, and began to busy herself about the room, humming softly her favorite refrain:--

"The Light of the World is Jesus."

I lay very still, thinking--

"Once I was blind but now I can see!"

That low, glad, tremulous murmur brought no peace to my troubled heart.

When Grandma Keeler looked at me again, I fancied she met a helpless, appealing, almost an aggrieved expression in my eyes.

"I want to see her," I said. "I want to see Becky, of course."

"Yis, yis," said Grandma, "to-morrer. You'd want to talk, and you've had enough for one day. I'll tell her, and she'll understand."