Miss McDonald Part 9

"Never mind the lecture now. Vaccinate me quick and let me go."

It was soon done, the doctor saying as he put away his vial:

"You were safe without it, I think, and with it you may have no fears whatever."

He looked at her curiously again as if asking what she knew or feared, and, observing the look, Daisy said to him:

"Do you attend the lady at the hotel?"

He bowed affirmatively and glanced uneasily at Sarah, who was looking on in surprise.

"Is she very sick?" was the next inquiry.

"Yes, very sick."

"And does no one care for her but her husband?"

"No one."

"Has she suffered for care--a woman's care, I mean?"

"Well, not exactly, and yet she might be more comfortable with a woman about her. Women are naturally better nurses than men, and Mr. Thornton is quite worn out, but it does not make much difference now; the lady--"

Daisy did not hear the last part of the sentence, and, bidding him good-night, she went back to the hotel as swiftly as she had left it, while the doctor stood watching the flutter of her white dress, wondering how she found it out, and if she would "tell and raise thunder generally."

"Of course not. I know her better than that," he said to himself. "Poor woman [referring then to Julia], nothing, I fear, can help her now."

Meanwhile Daisy reached the hotel, and without going to her own room, bade Sarah tell her the way to No. ----.

"What! Oh, Miss McDonald! You surely are not--" Sarah gasped, clutching at the dress, which her mistress took from her grasp, saying:

"Yes, I am going to see that lady. I know her, or of her, and I'm not afraid. Must we let her die alone?"

"But your face--your beautiful face," Sarah said, and then Daisy did hesitate a moment, and, glancing into a hall mirror, wondered how the face she saw there, and which she knew was beautiful, would look scarred and disfigured as she had seen faces in New York.

There was a momentary conflict, and then, with an inward prayer that Heaven would protect her, she pa.s.sed on down the narrow hall and knocked softly at No. ----, while Sarah stood wringing her hands in genuine distress, and feeling as if her young mistress had gone to certain ruin.

CHAPTER XII

IN THE SICK-ROOM

Julia had the smallpox, not varioloid, but the veritable thing itself, in its most aggravated form. Where she took it, or when, she did not know, nor did it matter. She had it, and for ten days she had seen no one but her husband and physician, and had no care but such as Guy could give her. He had been unremitting in his attention. Tender and gentle as a woman, he had nursed her night and day, with no thought for himself and the risk he ran. It was a bad disease at the best, and now in its worst type it was horrible, but Julia bore up bravely, thinking always more of others than of herself, and feeling so glad that Providence had sent them to those out-of-the-way rooms, where she had at first thought she could not pa.s.s a night comfortably. Her children were in the room adjoining, and she could hear their little voices as they played together, or asked for their mamma and why they must not see her. Alas!

they would never see her again; she knew it now, and Guy knew it, too.

The doctor had told them so when he left them that night, and between the husband and wife words had been spoken such as are only said when hearts which have been one are about to be severed forever.

To Julia there was no terror in death, save as it took her from those she loved, her husband and her little ones, and these she had given into G.o.d's keeping, knowing his promises are sure. To Guy she had said:

"You have made me so happy. I want you to remember that when I am gone; I would not have one look or act of yours changed if I could, and yet, forgive me, Guy, for saying it, but I know you must often have thought of that other one whom, you loved first, and it may be best."

Guy could not say no to that, but he smoothed her hair tenderly, and his tears dropped upon the scarred, swollen face he could not kiss, as Julia went on.

"But if you did you never showed it in the least, and I bless you for it. Take good care of my children; teach them to remember their mother, and if in time there comes another in my place, and other little ones than mine call you father, don't forget me quite, because I love you so much. Oh, Guy, my darling, it is hard to say good-by and know that after a little this world will go on the same as if I had never been. Don't think I am afraid. I am not, for Jesus is with me, and I know I am safe, but still there's a clinging to life, which has been so pleasant to me.

Tell your sister how I loved her. I know she will miss me and be good to my children, and if you ever meet that other one tell her--tell her--I--"

The faint voice faltered here, and when it spoke again, it said:

"Lift me up, Guy, so I can breathe better while I tell you."

He lifted her up and held her in his arms, while through the open window the summer air and the silver moonlight streamed, and in the distance was heard the sound of music as the dance went merrily on. And just then, when she was in the minds of both, Daisy came, and her gentle knock broke the silence of the room and startled both Guy and Julia.

Who was it that sought entrance to that death-laden and disease-poisoned room? Not the doctor, surely, for he always entered unannounced, and who else dared to come there? Thus Guy questioned, hesitating to answer the knock, when to his utter surprise the door opened and a little figure, clad in airy robes of white, with its bright hair wreathed with flowers and gems, came floating in, the blue eyes shining like stars and the full red lips parted with the smile, half pleased, half shy, which Guy remembered so well.

"Daisy, Daisy!" he cried, and his voice rang like a bell through the room, as, laying Julia's head back upon the pillow, he sprang to Daisy's side, and, taking her by the shoulder, pushed her gently toward the door, saying:

"Why have you come here? Leave us at once; don't you see? don't you know?" and he pointed toward Julia, whose face showed so plainly in the gaslight.

"Yes, I know, and I came to help you take care of her. I am not afraid,"

Daisy said, and, freeing herself from his grasp, she walked straight up to Julia and laid her soft, white hand upon her head. "I am Daisy," she said, "and I've come to take care of you. I just heard you were here; how hot your poor head is! let me bathe it; shall I?"

She went to the bowl, and wringing a cloth in ice water, bathed and rubbed the sick woman's head, and held the cool cloth to the face and wiped the parched lips, and rubbed the feverish hands, while Guy stood, looking on, bewildered and confounded, and utterly unable to say a word or utter a protest to this angel, as it seemed to him, who had come unbidden to his aid, forgetful of the risk she ran and the danger she incurred. Once as she turned her beautiful face to him and he saw how wondrously fair and lovely it was, lovely with a different expression from any he had ever seen there, it came over him with a thrill of horror that that face must not be marred and disfigured with the terrible pestilence, and he made another effort to send her away. But Daisy would not go.

"I am not afraid," she said. "I have just been vaccinated, and there was already a good scar on my arm; look!" and she pushed back her sleeve and showed her round, white arm with the mark upon it.

Guy did not oppose her after that, but let her do what she liked, and when, an hour later, the doctor came he found his recent visitor sitting on Julia's bed, with Julia's head lying against her bosom and Julia herself asleep. Some word which sounded very much like "thunderation"

escaped his lips, but he said no more, for he saw in the sleeping woman's face a look he never mistook. It was death, and ten minutes after he entered the room Julia Thornton lay dead in Daisy's arms.

There was a moment or so of half-consciousness, during which they caught the words. "So kind in you; it makes me easier; be good to the children; one is called for you, but Guy loved me, too. Good-by. I am going to Jesus."

That was the last she ever spoke, and a moment after she was gone. In his fear lest the facts should be known to his guests, the host insisted that the body should be removed under cover of the night, and as Guy knew the railway officials would object to taking it on any train, there was no alternative except to bury it in town, and so before the morning broke there was brought up to the room a closely sealed coffin and box, and Daisy helped lay Julia in her last bed, and put a white flower in her hair and folded her hands upon her bosom, and then watched from the window the little procession which followed the body out to the cemetery, where, in the stillness of the coming day, they buried it, together with everything which had been used about the bed, Daisy's party dress included; and when at last the full morning broke, with stir and life in the hotel, all was empty and still in the fumigated chamber of death, and in the adjoining room, clad in a simple white wrapper, with a blue ribbon in her hair, Daisy sat with Guy's little boy on her lap and her namesake at her side, amusing them as best she could and telling them their mamma had gone to live with Jesus.

"Who'll be our mamma now? We must have one. Will oo?" little Daisy asked, as she hung about the neck of her new friend.

She knew it was Miss McDolly, her "sake-name," and in her delight at seeing her and her admiration of her great beauty, she forgot in part the dead mamma on whose grave the summer sun was shining.

The Thorntons left the hotel that day and went back to the house in Cuylerville, which had been closed for a few weeks, Miss Frances being away with some friends in Connecticut. But she returned at once when she heard the dreadful news, and was there to receive her brother and his motherless little ones. He told her of Daisy when he could trust himself to talk at all, of Julia's sickness and death, and Miss Frances felt her heart go out as it had never gone before toward the woman about whom little Daisy talked constantly.

"Most bootiful lady," she said, "an' looked des like an 'ittle dirl, see was so short, an' her eyes were so hue an' her hair so turly."

Miss McDonald had won Daisy's heart, and, knowing that made her own happier and lighter than it had been since the day when the paper came to her with the marked paragraph which crushed her so completely. There had been but a few words spoken between herself and Guy, and these in the presence of others, but at their parting he had taken her soft little hand in his and held it a moment, while he said, with a choking voice: "G.o.d bless you, Daisy. I shall not forget your kindness to my poor Julia, and if you should need--but no, that is too horrible to think of; may G.o.d spare you that. Good-by."

And that was all that pa.s.sed between him and Daisy with regard to the haunting dread which sent her in a few days to her own house in New York, where, if the thing she feared came upon her, she would at least be at home and know she was not endangering the lives of others. But G.o.d was good to her, and though there was a slight fever, with darting pains in her back and a film before her eyes, it amounted to nothing worse, and might have been the result of fatigue and over-excitement; and when at Christmas time, yielding to the importunities of her little namesake, there was a picture of herself in the box sent to Cuylerville, the face which Guy scanned even more eagerly than his daughter, was as smooth and fair and beautiful as when he saw it at Saratoga, bending over his dying wife.