Saxe Holm's Stories Part 18

Draxy watched them until their figures became dim, black specks, and finally faded out of sight. Then she listened dreamily to the notes of the slow-tolling bell; when it ceased she closed her eyes, and her thoughts ran back, far back to the days when she was "little Draxy" and Elder Kinney was only her pastor. Slowly she lived her life since then over again, its joy and its sorrow alike softened in her tender, brooding thoughts. The soft whirring sound of a bird's wings in the air roused her: as it flew past the window she saw that it was one of the yellow-hammers, which still built their nests in the maple-grove behind the house.

"Ah," thought she, "I suppose it can't be one of the same birds we saw that day. But it's going on errands just the same. I wonder, dear Seth, if mine are nearly done."

At that instant a terrible pain shot through her left side and forced a sharp cry from her lips. She half rose exclaiming, "Reuby, oh, darling!"

and sank back in her chair unconscious.

Just as Elder Williams was concluding the communion service, the door of the church was burst open, and old Ike, tottering into the aisle, cried out in a shrill voice:--

"Mis' Kinney's dead! Mis' Kinney's dead!"

The scene that followed could not be told. With flying feet the whole congregation sped up the steep hill--Angy Plummer half lifting, half dragging Reuby, and the poor grandparents supported on each side by strong men. As they drew near the house, they saw Draxy apparently sitting by the open window.

"O mamma! why that's mamma," shrieked Reuby, "she was sitting just so when we came away. She isn't dead."

Elder Williams reached the house first, Hannah met him on the threshold, tearless.

"She dead, sir. She's cold as ice. She must ha' been dead a long time."

Old Ike had been rambling around the house, and observing from the outside that Draxy's position was strange, had compelled Hannah to go into the room.

"She was a smilin' just's you see her now," said Hannah, "'n' I couldn't ha' touched her to move her more'n I could ha' touched an angel."

There are griefs, as well as joys, to which words offer insult. Draxy was dead!

Three days later they laid her by the side of her husband, and the gray-haired, childless old people, and the golden-haired, fatherless and motherless boy, returned together broken-hearted to the sunny parsonage.

On the village a terrible silence, that could be felt, settled down; a silence in which sorrowing men and women crept about, weeping as those who cannot be comforted.

Then week followed after week, and soon all things seemed as they had seemed before. But Draxy never died to her people. Her hymns are still sung in the little lonely church; her gospel still lives in the very air of those quiet hills, and the people smile through their tears as they teach her name to little children.

Whose Wife Was She?

I was on my knees before my chrysanthemum-bed, looking at each little round tight disk of a bud, and trying to believe that it would be a snowy flower in two weeks. In two weeks my cousin Annie Ware was to be married: if my white chrysanthemums would only understand and make haste! I was childish enough to tell them so; but the childishness came of love,--of my exceeding, my unutterable love for Annie Ware; if flowers have souls, the chrysanthemums understood me.

A sharp, quick roll of wheels startled me. I lifted my head. The wheels stopped at our gate; a hurried step came down the broad garden-path, and almost before I had had time to spring to my feet, Dr. Fearing had taken both my hands in his, had said,--"Annie Ware has the fever,"--had turned, had gone, had shut the garden gate, and the same sharp quick roll of wheels told that he was far on his way to the next sufferer.

I do not know how long I stood still in the garden. A miserable sullenness seemed to benumb my faculties. I repeated,--

"Annie Ware has the fever." Then I said,--

"Annie Ware cannot die; she is too young, too strong, and we love her so."

Then I said again,--

"Annie Ware has the fever," and all the time I seemed not to be thinking about her at all, but about the chrysanthemums, whose tops I still idly studied.

For weeks a malignant typhus fever had been slowly creeping about in the lower part of our village, in all the streets which had been under water in the spring freshet.

These streets were occupied chiefly by laboring people, either mill-operatives, or shopkeepers of the poorer cla.s.s. It was part of the cruel "calamity" of their "poverty" that they could not afford to have homesteads on the high plateau, which lifted itself quite suddenly from the river meadow, and made our village a by-word of beauty all through New England.

Upon this plateau were laid out streets of great regularity, shaded by grand elms, many of which had been planted by hands that had handled the ropes of the _Mayflower_. Under the shade of these elms stood large old-fashioned houses, in that sort of sleepy dignity peculiar to old New England. We who lived in these houses were also sleepy and dignified. We knew that "under the hill," as it was called, lived many hundreds of men and women, who were stifled in summer for want of the breezes which swept across our heights, cold in winter because the wall of our plateau shut down upon them the icy airs from the frozen river, and cut off the afternoon sun. We were sorry for them, and we sent them cold meat and flannels sometimes; but their life was as remote from our life as if they never crossed our paths; it is not necessary to go into large cities to find sharp lines drawn between the well-to-do and the poverty-stricken.

There are, in many small villages, "districts" separated from each other by as distinct a moral distance as divides Fifth Avenue from the Five Points.

And so it had come to pa.s.s that while for weeks this malignant fever had been creeping about on the river sh.o.r.e, we, in our clearer, purer air, had not felt even a dread of it. There had not been a single case of it west of the high water mark made by the terrible freshet of the previous spring. We sent brandy and wine and beef-tea into the poor, comfortless, grief-stricken houses; and we said at tea-time that it was strange, people would persist in living down under the bank: what could they expect? and besides, they were "so careless about drainage and ventilation."

Now, on the highest and loveliest spot, in the richest and most beautiful house, the sweetest and fairest girl of all our village lay ill of the deadly disease.

"Annie Ware has the fever." I wondered if some fiend were lurking by my side, who kept saying the words over and over in my ear. With that indescribable mixture of dulled and preternaturally sharpened sense which often marks the first moments of such distress, I walked slowly to my room, and in a short time had made all the necessary preparation for leaving home. I felt like a thief as I stole slowly down the stairs, with my travelling-bag in my hand. At the door I met my father.

"Hey-day, my darling, where now? Off to Annie's, as usual?"

He had not heard the tidings! Should I tell him? I might never see him again; only too well I knew the terrible danger into which I was going.

But he might forbid me.

"Yes, off to Annie's," I said in a gay tone, and kissing him sprang down the steps.

I did not see my father again for eighteen days.

On the steps of my uncle's house I met old Jane, a colored woman who had nursed Annie Ware when she was a baby, and who lived now in a little cottage near by, from whose door-steps she could see Annie's window, and in whose garden she raised flowers of all sorts, solely for the pleasure of carrying them to Annie every day.

Jane's face was positively gray with sorrow and fear. She looked at me with a strange sort of unsympathizing hardness in her eyes. She had never loved me. I knew what she thought. She was saying to herself: "Why not this one instead of the other?"

"O auntie!" I said, "I would die for Annie; you know I would."

At this she melted. "O honey! don' ye say that. The Lord"--but she could say no more. She threw her ap.r.o.n up over her head and strode away.

The doors of the house stood open. I walked through room after room, and found no human being. At last, at the foot of the stairs in the back part of the house, I came upon all the servants huddled together in a cowering, weeping group. Flat on the floor, with his face to the wall, lay black Caesar, the coachman. I put my hand on his shoulder. He jerked away impatiently.

"Yer jest lemme lone, will yer?" he said in a choking voice; then lifting up his head, and seeing it was I, he half sprang to his feet, with a look of shame and alarm, and involuntarily carrying his hand to his head, said:--

"O miss! who's gwine to think yer"--here he too broke down, and buried his face in his great hands.

I did not speak, but the little group instinctively opened to let me pa.s.s up the stairs. I had a vague consciousness that they said something as I turned into a little cross-hall which led to Annie's room; but without attending to their words I opened her door. The room was empty; the bed stripped of clothes; the windows wide open. I sank into a chair, and looked from side to side. I was too late, after all! That was why none of the servants dared speak to me. A little slipper of Annie's lay on the floor by the bed. I took it up and turned it over and over in my hands.

Then I became conscious that my Aunt Ann was speaking to me,--was calling me by name, earnestly, repeatedly, with terror in her voice.

"My dear, dear child; Helen, Helen, Helen, she is not dead. She is in my room. Come and see for yourself."

I had seen my Aunt Ann every day for nineteen years,--I never knew her until that moment; I never saw her real face until that moment.

I followed her slowly through rooms and pa.s.sageways till she reached her own chamber. The door was open; the room was very dark. On the threshold she paused, and whispered, "You must not be frightened, darling. She will not know you. She has not known any one for six hours."

I knelt down by the bed. In a few moments my eyes became used to the darkness, and I saw Annie's face lying motionless on the farther edge of the bed, turned to the wall. It was perfectly white except the lips, which were almost black, and were swollen and crusted over with the fearful fever. Her beautiful hair fell in tangled ma.s.ses, and half covered her face.

"She seems to be lying very uncomfortably," said Aunt Ann, "but the doctor ordered that she should not be disturbed in any way."