Men, Women, and Ghosts Part 4

"The WHAT?"

The poor little sparrow dropped from Dr. Sharpe's hand. He took a step backward, scanned our faces, sat down dizzily, and fell over upon the sand.

He is a man of good nerves and great self-possession, but he fell like a woman, and lay like the dead.

"It's no place for him," Hansom said, softly. "Get him home. Me and the neighbors can do the rest. Get him home, and put his baby into his arms, and shet the door, and go about your business."

I had left him in the dark on the office floor at last. Miss Dallas and I sat in the cold parlor and looked at each other.

The fire was low and the lamp dull. The rain beat in an uncanny way upon the windows. I never like to hear the rain upon the windows. I liked it less than usual that night, and was just trying to brighten the fire a little, when the front door blew open.

"Shut it, please," said I, between the jerks of my poker.

But Miss Dallas looked over her shoulder and shivered.

"Just look at that latch!" I looked at that latch.

It rose and fell in a feeble fluttering way,--was still for a minute,--rose and fell again.

When the door swung in and Harrie--or the ghost of her--staggered into the chilly room and fell down in a scarlet heap at my feet, Pauline bounded against the wall with a scream which pierced into the dark office where the Doctor lay with his face upon the floor.

It was long before we knew how it happened. Indeed, I suppose we have never known it all. How she glided down, a little red wraith, through the dusk and damp to her boat; how she tossed about, with some dim, delirious idea of finding Myron on the ebbing waves; that she found herself stranded and tangled at last in the long, matted gra.s.s of that muddy cove, started to wade home, and sunk in the ugly ooze, held, chilled, and scratched by the sharp gra.s.s, blinded and frightened by the fog, and calling, as she thought of it, for help; that in the first shallow wash of the flowing tide she must have struggled free, and found her way home across the fields,--she can tell us, but she can tell no more.

This very morning on which I write, an unknown man, imprisoned in the same spot in the same way overnight, was found by George Hansom dead there from exposure in the salt gra.s.s.

It was the walk home, and only that, which could have saved her.

Yet for many weeks we fought, her husband and I, hand to hand with death, seeming to _see_ the life slip out of her, and watching for wandering minutes when she might look upon us with sane eyes.

We kept her--just. A mere little wreck, with drawn lips, and great eyes, and shattered nerves,--but we kept her.

I remember one night, when she had fallen into her first healthful nap, that the Doctor came down to rest a few minutes in the parlor where I sat alone. Pauline was washing the tea-things.

He began to pace the room with a weary abstracted look,--he was much worn by watching,--and, seeing that he was in no mood for words, I took up a book which lay upon the table. It chanced to be one of Alger's, which somebody had lent to the Doctor before Harrie's illness; it was a marked book, and I ran my eye over the pencilled pa.s.sages. I recollect having been struck with this one: "A man's best friend is a wife of good sense and good heart, whom he loves and who loves him."

"You believe that?" said Myron, suddenly, behind my shoulder.

"I believe that a man's wife ought to be his best friend,--in every sense of the word, his _best friend,_--or she ought never to be his wife."

"And if--there will be differences of temperament, and--other things. If you were a man now, for instance, Miss Hannah--"

I interrupted him with hot cheeks and sudden courage.

"If I were a man, and my wife were _not_ the best friend I had or could have in the world, _n.o.body should ever know it,--she, least of all,--Myron Sharpe!_"

Young people will bear a great deal of impertinence from an old lady, but we had both gone further than we meant to. I closed Mr. Alger with a snap, and went up to Harrie.

The day that Mrs. Sharpe sat up in the easy-chair for two hours, Miss Dallas, who had felt called upon to stay and nurse her dear Harrie to recovery, and had really been of service, detailed on duty among the babies, went home.

Dr. Sharpe drove her to the station. I accompanied them at his request.

Miss Dallas intended, I think, to look a little pensive, but had her lunch to cram into a very full travelling-bag, and forgot it. The Doctor, with clear, courteous eyes, shook hands, and wished her a pleasant journey.

He drove home in silence, and went directly to his wife's room. A bright blaze flickered on the old-fashioned fireplace, and the walls bowed with pretty dancing shadows. Harrie, all alone, turned her face weakly and smiled.

Well, they made no fuss about it, after all. Her husband came and stood beside her; a cricket on which one of the baby's dresses had been thrown, lay between them; it seemed, for the moment, as if he dared not cross the tiny barrier. Something of that old fancy about the lights upon the altar may have crossed his thought.

"So Miss Dallas has fairly gone, Harrie," said he, pleasantly, after a pause.

"Yes. She has been very kind to the children while I have been sick."

"Very."

"You must miss her," said poor Harrie, trembling; she was very weak yet.

The Doctor knocked away the cricket, folded his wife's two shadowy hands into his own, and said:--

"Harrie we have no strength to waste, either of us, upon a scene; but I am sorry, and I love you."

She broke all down at that, and, dear me! they almost had a scene in spite of themselves. For O, she had always known what a little goose she was; and Pauline never meant any harm, and how handsome she was, you know! only _she_ didn't have three babies to look after, nor a snubbed nose either, and the sachet powder was only American, and the very servants knew, and, O Myron! she _had_ wanted to be dead so long, and then--

"Harrie!" said the Doctor, at his wit's end, "this will never do in the world. I believe--I declare!--Miss Hannah!--I believe I must send you to bed."

"And then I'm SUCH a little skeleton!" finished Harrie, royally, with a great gulp.

Dr. Sharpe gathered the little skeleton all into a heap in his arms,--it was a very funny heap, by the way, but that doesn't matter,--and to the best of my knowledge and belief he cried just about as hard as she did.

The Tenth of January.

The city of Lawrence is unique in its way.

For simooms that scorch you and tempests that freeze; for sand-heaps and sand-hillocks and sand-roads; for men digging sand, for women shaking off sand, for minute boys crawling in sand; for sand in the church-slips and the gingerbread-windows, for sand in your eyes, your nose, your mouth, down your neck? up your sleeves, under your _chignon_, down your throat; for unexpected corners where tornadoes lie in wait; for "bleak, uncomforted" sidewalks, where they chase you, dog you, confront you, strangle you, twist you, blind you, turn your umbrella wrong side out; for "dimmykhrats" and bad ice-cream; for unutterable circus-bills and religious tea-parties; for uncleared ruins, and mills that spring up in a night; for jaded faces and busy feet; for an air of youth and incompleteness at which you laugh, and a consciousness of growth and greatness which you respect,--it--

I believe, when I commenced that sentence, I intended to say that it would be difficult to find Lawrence's equal.

Of the twenty-five thousand souls who inhabit that city, ten thousand are operatives in the factories. Of these ten thousand two thirds are girls.

These pages are written as one sets a bit of marble to mark a mound. I linger over them as we linger beside the grave of one who sleeps well; half sadly, half gladly,--more gladly than sadly,--but hushed.

The time to see Lawrence is when the mills open or close. So languidly the dull-colored, inexpectant crowd wind in! So briskly they come bounding out! Factory faces have a look of their own,--not only their common dinginess, and a general air of being in a hurry to find the wash-bowl, but an appearance of restlessness,--often of envious restlessness, not habitual in most departments of "healthy labor." Watch them closely: you can read their histories at a venture. A widow this, in the dusty black, with she can scarcely remember how many mouths to feed at home. Worse than widowed that one: she has put her baby out to board,--and humane people know what that means,--to keep the little thing beyond its besotted father's reach. There is a group who have "just come over." A child's face here, old before its time. That girl--she climbs five flights of stairs twice a day--will climb no more stairs for herself or another by the time the clover-leaves are green.

"The best thing about one's grave is that it will be level," she was heard once to say. Somebody muses a little here,--she is to be married this winter. There is a face just behind her whose fixed eyes repel and attract you; there may be more love than guilt in them, more despair than either.

Had you stood in some un.o.bserved corner of Ess.e.x Street, at four o'clock one Sat.u.r.day afternoon towards the last of November, 1859, watching the impatient stream pour out of the Pemberton Mill, eager with a saddening eagerness for its few holiday hours, you would have observed one girl who did not bound.