Sweetapple Cove Part 30

"Now you must go to our house," I told him, "and get Susie to give you something to eat. I am sure that you have had nothing since last night, and I won't have you falling ill too. I have arranged it all, so please don't say anything but just go, and don't hurry back. There is plenty of time and poor Daddy would be so glad to see you. I am sure it would do him a lot of good. I can watch both the patients perfectly well. And, Frenchy, you must go too and Susie will look after you. You look perfectly starved, and I'm sure you've forgotten to have any breakfast.

Make him go with you, Mr. Barnett!"

They protested a little, but finally went out, reluctantly.

Of course I have always looked after Daddy's comfort a good deal, but when you have plenty of servants it is very easy to do, especially when one has also an Aunt Jennie to come around from time to time and put fear in their hearts, when they don't behave. But it seemed to me that this was really the first time that I had tried to take charge of things, although it didn't really amount to anything. I suppose it comes quite naturally to a woman to boss things a little in a household.

But now all I could do was to sit down by the bed, with my hands folded in my lap. I have seen so many women do this for hours at a time, Aunt Jennie, and I could never understand how they did it without an awful attack of the fidgets. But now I think I have found the solution. I am persuaded that these women just sit down quietly, and that the strength flows back into them in some mysterious way, and presently they become as strong as ever, just as happens with those storage batteries of the automobile, which are all the time having to be recharged. I don't exactly know what the folded hands have to do with it, but they are certainly an indispensable part of the process.

Dr. Grant rested quietly enough, and sometimes, when he opened his eyes, I saw that he looked at me, in a strange, sad way. But he was exhausted by the malady and the hard work of the previous days, and seemed too utterly weary to be suffering much pain. At times the little boy would moan, and I would go to him. It would only take a pa.s.sing of my hand over the little forehead, or a drink of water, to quiet him again. The poor wee man loves me, I think, and I hope he will never know what a tragedy he is responsible for, but, indeed, I hope he will learn, some day, that this great, rough fisherman, Yves, has laid down all of his life for him.

When the child was quiet I would return and sit again by the doctor.

After a short time Mr. Barnett and Yves returned, and were soon followed by Daddy and Susie, whose st.u.r.dy arm supported him. Poor Dad! He was looking aged and worried, and I felt ever so sorry for him.

Susie's way of speaking to people is invariably to address them as if they were rather deaf, and as if no one else could possibly hear.

"Yis, sor," she was saying, "it's jist as you says, a real crazy, foolish thing. But fur as I kin see them kind o' things is what makes up the most o' folk's lives. They is some gits ketched all by theirselves, and others gits ketched tryin' ter help others, and some niver gits ketched at all an' dies peaceful in the beds o' they. If there didn't no one take chances th' world wouldn't hardly be no fit place ter live in."

I suppose that Daddy could find no reply to such philosophy. He was doubtless very angry on my account, and I am sure he had been giving Susie a piece of his mind, all the way down. He entered the shack, ordering Susie to remain outside.

"Don't you dare come in," he said, quite exasperated. "I have no doubt at all that you will have to look after all the rest of us when we get ill.

You can go back to your pots and pans or wait for me out of doors, just as you wish."

Then he came in, closing the door behind him, and looked around the room, profoundly disgusted. Mr. Barnett was again engaged in swabbing throats while Frenchy supported the patients and I held a bottle in whose neck a candle had been planted. No one could pay much attention to him just then. Poor old Dad! He thinks that because the first emigrant in our family dates back a couple of hundred years or so we are something rather special in the way of human beings, and I know very well that he thought it most degrading for a daughter of his to be in such a miserable place.

Of course it is really very clean, Aunt Jennie, because Yves has been trained on a man o' war, where the men spend nearly all of their time scrubbing things. I have seen them so often at Newport, where they wash down the decks even when it is pouring cats and dogs. The poor dear was rather red in the face, by which I recognized the fact that he was holding himself in for fear of an explosion.

But you know that there never was a better man than Dad, and he got all over this in a moment. Of course he had come with the firm intention of explaining to the poor doctor what a fine mess he had made of things, but as soon as he saw that poor, pinched face on the pillow he changed entirely. Quite a look of alarm came over his countenance, and he was certainly awfully sorry. I have an idea that people who have never been very ill, and who have never seen many sick people possess a little egotism which it takes experience to drive out of them. He had surely never thought that poor Dr. Grant would look so ill, and his bit of temper melted away at once. He forced himself to take the hand that was nearest to him.

"I hope you are doing very well," he said, with a queer accent of timidity that was really very foreign to his nature.

"They are taking splendid care of me," answered Dr. Grant, with an effort that made him cough.

Daddy smiled at him, in a puzzled sort of way, and then turned to the child's couch, gazing at it curiously. Mr. Barnett stood at his side.

"He doesn't look as ill as..."

He whispered this as he pointed to the bed where the doctor was lying.

"The boy is getting well," answered the parson, in a low voice. "He had a large dose of ant.i.toxine and it is beginning to show its effect."

"Ah? Just so," said Daddy, weakly.

Then he looked around the room again, quite helplessly.

"Is there anything that I could do?" he asked in a general way.

"Nothing, Daddy," I said. "Thank you ever so much for coming, but there is nothing you can do now. I would go home if I were you. I promise that I will return in time for supper."

Then Daddy looked around again, as if all his habitual splendid a.s.surance and decisiveness of manner had forsaken him. After this he tiptoed his way to the door, outside of which Susie was waiting. I followed him, because I knew he would feel better if I just put my hand on his arm for a moment and a.s.sured him that I was feeling perfectly well.

The girl pointed out at sea.

"It's a-comin' on dreadful foggy," she said, gloomily.

Daddy and I looked at one another, and we stared at the dark pall that was sweeping in, raw and chilly. Of course we at once knew its significance. It must surely detain the _s...o...b..rd_ on its return journey.

Just then an old fisherman came up, touching his cap.

"Beggin' yer pardon, sor," he said. "Is yer after findin' th' doctor gettin' any better?"

"I can hardly tell you," answered Daddy, impatiently. "I know very little about such things, but he looks very badly to me."

"Oh! The pity of it!" exclaimed the man. "I tells yer, sor, it's a sad day, a real sad day fer Sweetapple Cove."

"d.a.m.n Sweetapple Cove!" Daddy shouted right in the poor fellow's face with such energy that he leaped back in alarm.

But Susie had taken hold of Daddy's arm.

"Now you come erlong o' me, sor," she said, soothingly, as if she had spoken to a child. "Don't yer be gettin' excited. Yer needs a good cup o'

tea real bad, I'm a-thinkin', and a smoke. Yer ain't had a seegar to-day, and men folks is apt to get awful grumpy when they doesn't get ter smoke.

Come erlong now, there's a good man."

Strange to say, Daddy went with her, willingly enough, after I had kissed him. He didn't resent Susie's manner at all. As I watched he stopped after going a few yards, and looked out at sea, beyond the entrance of the cove. Everything was disappearing in a dull greyness that was beginning to blot out the rocky cliffs, and he turned to the girl.

"My boat will never get back to-night," he said, "and I suppose that to-morrow will be worse. It always is. I wonder whether there is another such beastly country in the world?"

"I've heerd tell," remarked Susie, sagaciously, "as how they is some places as has been fixed so them as lives in 'em will sure know what a good place Heaven is when they gits to it."

CHAPTER XIX

_Dr. Frank Johnson to Mrs. Charlotte Johnson_

_Dearest Mother_:

I had expected to sail away from St. John's on the twentieth to return to you before resuming the hard search for something to keep together the body and soul which struggling young doctors without means have so hard a time to maintain in their proper relation. Since the old _Chandernagore_ limped into St. John's with its bow stove in, after that terrible collision, and the underwriters decided that she was hopelessly damaged, my prospects have been those of a man living on a pittance and merely ent.i.tled to his pa.s.sage home and a trifle of salary.

A ship-surgeon utterly stranded can hardly be a very merry soul, and the day before yesterday I was strolling rather disconsolately about the docks, when I saw a stunning yacht come in. She was a sight to feast one's eyes on, and until the last moment was under a cloud of sail while her funnel belched black smoke. For a few minutes I saw some of the smartest handling of canvas it has ever been given me to behold. As she came on the great, silken, light sails fluttered, shrank and disappeared as if by magic; her headway stopped and the screw ceased its throbbing.

She was just like a grand, white bird folding its wings and going to sleep. But even before she had ceased to move a boat was overboard and four men were at the sweeps, pulling for sh.o.r.e. A few minutes later I was pa.s.sing in front of Simpson & Co., the big ship-chandlers who were the _Chandernagore's_ agents, when one of the clerks came out and ran towards me.

"Won't you come in?" he asked, excitedly. "There is the skipper of that white yacht that just came in who wants a doctor at once, and at any cost. We supplied that boat after she left dry-dock here, some weeks ago.

She belongs to regular swells, awfully rich people."

"Is the man hurt or ill?" I asked.

"No, he's all right. There is sickness at a little outport, diphtheria, I hear, and they want a man at once. Money's no object."