Only an Incident Part 13

Gerald put the wounded member behind her. "Thank you. I neither require nor desire a.s.sistance."

"Pardon me, you do require it, and if you refuse to see the doctor--"

"Is that any reason why I should resort to you--and kitchen soap?"

"I grant it is a very homely remedy, Miss Vernor, but it is an excellent one and the only one I know."

"I daresay. It is one more than I know of."

"You will not try it?"

"No."

"Perhaps you are afraid of the pain attending the dressing?"

It was a masterly stroke. Gerald gave him one look of intense scorn, almost of anger, and immediately reached out her hand. "I am afraid of nothing--not even of your lack of skill."

Denham took her hand without further ceremony, and holding it firmly, pushed back the hanging lace from her arm and began rubbing the soap over the burns, without so much as a word of pity for the pain he knew he was giving her. She winced involuntarily at the first touch, but set her teeth tightly lest she should cry out. It hurt her cruelly. "I was not aware before that the custody of souls extended to that of the temples they inhabit," she said, when she could command herself sufficiently to a.s.sume a supreme indifference of tone. "You believe in purely household remedies, I see."

"I believe always in doing what I can with what means I have. One moment more, please. I am not quite through."

Gerald held out her hand again. "Perhaps you had better try sandstone on it this time, or a little burning oil."

Halloway did not answer, but hastily tearing his handkerchief into strips, bound the arm as closely as he could. "There," he said, surveying the bandages critically, and inwardly well pleased with his success; "at least that will do till you can see the doctor."

"Are you sure you are quite through now?" asked Gerald, in mock submission. "You don't think it necessary to put the arm in a splint, or to fasten weights to it, or to amputate the first joint of the thumb?"

"I am sorry to say that is all I know how to do for you, Miss Vernor."

"Then I will go back to Miss Lydia. By the way, would you recommend soap also for hysterics?"

"Applied with a close bandage over the mouth? Certainly, it will be both effectual and immediate."

"Thank you. Good-night."

"Will you not shake hands with me?"

Gerald turned as she was moving off and held out her hand, more as a queen might have extended it in motion of dismissal than as friend to friend. Denham took it between both his. "Before you go, I want to thank you in the name of all Miss Phebe's friends," he said, earnestly. "You have saved her life to-night, and at the risk of your own."

"The table-cloth was her savior, not I," returned Gerald, lightly, but with a softened voice. "And anyway, is it not quite thanks enough only to know that Phebe is safe? Now good-night in earnest."

CHAPTER IX.

JOPPA'S MINISTRATIONS TO THE SICK.

All news, good, bad, and indifferent, flies equally fast in Joppa; and had there been a town-crier deputed for the purpose, Phebe's accident could not have sooner become a household tale in even the most distant districts of the place. After a contradiction of the first rumor, reporting her burned to a crisp and only recognizable by a ring of her mother's on her left hand,--which ring by-the-way she never wore,--and after a contradiction in due course of the second rumor, reporting Gerald to be lying in the agonies of death and Phebe to have escaped without a hair singed, followed a period of dire uncertainty, when n.o.body knew what to believe, and felt only an obstinate conviction that everybody else had got it entirely wrong. But at last the story straightened itself out into something bearing a family resemblance to actual facts, and then Joppa settled itself resolutely down to doing its duty. My duty toward my sick neighbor in Joppa consists in calling twice a day, if not oftener, at his house; in inquiring after his condition down to minutest and most sacred details; in knowing accurately how many hours he slept last night, and what he ate for breakfast, and what is paid the sick-nurse, and if it includes her washing. My second duty toward my sick neighbor is to bring him something to eat, on the supposition that "outside things taste differently;" or something to look at; or, if nothing better, at least something to refuse. My third and last duty toward my neighbor,--the well neighbor who possesses the sick one,--is to narrate every somewhat similar case on record, with all its circ.u.mstances and the ultimate career of the sufferer; to prescribe remedies as infallible as the Pope; to disapprove wholly, and on the best grounds, of those in actual use; to offer every a.s.sistance in and out of my power; and to say at leaving that I _hope_ it may all turn out well, but that _I_ should have called in the other doctor. Joppa had learned by heart its duty toward its neighbor from its earliest, stammering infancy, and it adhered strictly to the path therein marked out. It inquired after Phebe diligently; it thoroughly mastered all possible intricacies of her case; it made her gifts digestible and indigestible; and it said that, by all odds, it was Dr. Harrison who should have attended her from the first. Dr. Dennis took very good care of her, nevertheless, and it was not long before he p.r.o.nounced that all she needed was quiet and rest to complete the cure.

"We shall have her out of bed in a few days now, Mrs. Lane; in a week or so perhaps," he said, as he pa.s.sed out at the front door where Mrs. Lane was standing talking with Mrs. Hardcastle. "She is doing very well, as well as I could wish. All she needs is rest. Keep her perfectly quiet."

And the doctor bowed himself off, first politely inquiring of Mrs.

Hardcastle after her husband's gout and her own dyspepsia.

"He is a fair-spoken man, certainly, very," said Mrs. Hardcastle, "though I won't say that I shouldn't prefer Dr. Harrison in the long run as surest to bring his patient through. I think I'll just go up with this myself to Phebe, Mrs. Lane. I suppose she's longing for visitors by now, poor soul!"

"Well, I dare say. You know her room,--just at the head of the stairs. Go right up, and I'll step out to market."

"Now, my dear," said Mrs. Hardcastle, rustling into Phebe's room, "I thought I would come up and have a look at you myself to make sure how you were. No, don't move. You do look pale, but that's all. Glad to see your pretty face isn't harmed. Why, I heard one whole side of it was about burned off. I've brought you some wine-jelly, my dear."

"She had a lot yesterday, Pheeb did," said Olly, who was curled up with a geography in a corner of the room and furtively cutting Europe out of the maps. "She doesn't need any more."

"Oh, but this is some of my own make. This is quite different from anybody else's," declared Mrs. Hardcastle. "Phebe remembers _my_ jelly of old, don't you, dear?"

Phebe smiled faintly. All she remembered at the moment was being invariably requested by the good lady to come and make it for her whenever she gave a party.

"I thought I heard talking and so I ventured to come up too," said a timid voice, and Miss Delano tiptoed softly in. "Phebe, my dear child, my dear child!" and the soft-hearted little old maid stooped to kiss Phebe's pale cheek, and straightway began to whimper.

"Come, none of that," said Mrs. Upjohn's peremptory tones, as that lady swept into the little room, seeming to fill it all to overflowing. "I met the doctor just now and he said Phebe was to be kept perfectly quiet.

Don't let's have any weeping over her. She wants cheering up, and she isn't quite dead yet, you know, though really the evening before last, Phebe, I heard that you weren't expected to live the night through."

"How ridiculous!" said Gerald, impatiently. "Miss Delano, will you have a chair?"

"Thank you, no, dear. I'll just sit here on the bed," said the little old dame, humbly, anxious not to make any one any trouble. "O Phebe, my dear!"

Phebe smiled at her affectionately, and Mrs. Hardcastle, who was on the point of leaving when Mrs. Upjohn came in, sat down again to ask that lady about the character of a servant whom she had just engaged.

"I thought I should have died when I heard it," said Miss Delano, patting Phebe's cheek. "Poor dear, poor dear! And they say you won't ever be able to walk again!"

"Who says that?" asked Phebe, laughing. "I shall be a terrible disappointment to them."

"'Tain't her legs at all; it's her shoulders," said Olly, as he emerged from his corner, chewing Europe into a pasteboard bull. "What have you got in that paper?"

"Oh, the blessed child, and I was forgetting it. My dear, it's just a little sponge-cake I made free to bring you, it turned out so light.

Don't you think you could eat a bit perhaps?"

"My, but it looks good!" said Olly, approaching a hungry finger and poking at it softly. "I'll get a knife."

"I hope you don't allow any such trash as that about, Miss Vernor," said Mrs. Upjohn, sharply, in the middle of her discussion of Jane's demerits.

"Phebe ought to be exceedingly careful what she eats for a great while to come. It's doubtful, indeed, whether her stomach ever recovers its tone after such a shock. I knew one woman who died just of the shock alone some two months after precisely such an accident as this, when everybody thought she had got well, and Phebe must be _very_ careful. Her appet.i.te is not to be tempted, but guided."

"Well, ladies, I must be going," announced Mrs. Hardcastle, rising. "You really think I am safe, then, in engaging her, Mrs. Upjohn?" But just then Mrs. Dexter came in with two of her daughters, and Mrs. Hardcastle sat down again.

"There was no one downstairs, and as the doctor says Phebe is so much better, we thought we might just come up," said the new comer. "Why, Phebe, you are as blooming as a rose, and I understood you had lost all your pretty hair. I've brought you some grapes, my dear, and a jar of extra fine brandy peaches, and little Maggie insisted on sending some mola.s.ses candy she had just made."

"Well, well, I did look for more sense from _you_," said Mrs. Upjohn, tapping Mrs. Dexter rather smartly on the shoulder. "Where'll you sit?

Oh, on the bed. Yes, Phebe's had a narrow escape, and one she'll likely bear the marks of to her dying day. Let it be a warning to you, young ladies, to be prepared. There's no knowing how soon some one of you may not be carried off in the same way,--just as you are dressed for a dance, maybe." Her tone implied that death could not overtake them at a more sinful moment.