Sweetapple Cove Part 7

For a moment he stopped, and then went on again.

"I beg your pardon, Doctor. I'm afraid that all this is none of my business. I am sure you will take excellent care of me, and I don't see the need of sending for any one else."

"I will do my best for you, Mr. Jelliffe," I answered.

He held his hand out to me, in the friendliest way. I think we are going to get on together very well. It is pleasant to meet people who are so secure in their position that they do not feel the slightest need for sn.o.bbishness.

I soon left for Will's Island, where I remained for some hours. Frenchy's boy came with us. He's a lovable little fellow, and manifested his admiration for "_la belle dame_" as he calls Miss Jelliffe. He is an infant of discriminating taste.

It was very encouraging to note a real improvement in the fisherman's condition, and I returned in a cheerful state of mind. In the afternoon I again called on the Jelliffes, and was chatting with the old gentleman when Mrs. Barnett, with her two oldest clinging to her skirts, put her head in at the door and cheerfully asked how the invalid was getting on.

"I won't come in," she said, "my little chaps would soon turn the place upside down."

"Do bring them in," urged Miss Jelliffe. "Daddy is ever so fond of children."

The parson's wife accepted the invitation.

"I daresay I will be able to hold them in for a few minutes," she said.

Miss Jelliffe is certainly a bright girl. I am positive that she recognized at once in Mrs. Barnett a woman who would adorn any gathering of refined people. The homemade dress mattered nothing, nor the garb of the little ones, which showed infinite toil combined with scanty means for accomplishment. It was delightful to observe the positive deference and admiration that were mingled with the perfect ease of the young woman's manner.

At their mother's bidding the little fellows said their greeting very politely. Miss Jelliffe kissed them and at once insured their further behavior by sitting on the floor with them, armed with chocolates and magazine pictures.

"You are exceedingly kind to visit us, Mrs. Barnett," Mr. Jelliffe a.s.sured her. "I hope I may have the pleasure of meeting your husband soon."

"I expect him back to-morrow," she answered. "He's away on a short trip.

Sometimes he goes quite a distance up and down the coast, and occasionally it is--it is rather hard at home, when the weather gets very bad."

She looked out of the window, with a movement that was nearly mechanical, and which had become habitual during long hours of waiting.

"But he likes it," she continued. "He says it is a good work and makes one feel that one is worth one's bread and salt. And so, of course, we are very happy."

I noticed that Miss Jelliffe was studying her. A look of wonder seemed to be rising on the girl's face, as if it surprised her to find that this cultured, refined woman could be contented in such a place.

"Yes, I think I am getting along very well," said Mr. Jelliffe, in answer to a question. "This young man seems to know his business. I was just hinting to him, this morning, that such a village as this can offer but a poor scope for his ability."

"Gracious!" exclaimed Mrs. Barnett, laughingly. "Please don't let him hear you. I have no doubt that what you say is perfectly true, but we could never do without him now. He has only been here a short time, and it has made such a difference. Before that we had no doctor, and--and it was awful, sometimes. You can't realize how often Mr. Barnett and I have stood helplessly by some bedside, wringing our hands and wishing so hard, so dreadfully hard, for a man like Dr. Grant to help us. Once we sent for a doctor, far away, and he came as soon as he could, but my little Lottie was already..."

A spasm of pain pa.s.sed over her face, and there was a quickly indrawn breath. Then she was quiet again.

"I hope he will never leave us," she said. "He may miss many things here, but it is a man's work."

"I don't feel like leaving," I told her, and she rewarded me by one of those charming smiles of hers.

Presently she took leave, and Miss Jelliffe looked at her father.

"Isn't she wonderful!" she exclaimed. "I can hardly understand it at all."

"It isn't only in the big places that people do big things," he answered.

"What about that child she referred to, Doctor?"

I told him how the little one had been taken ill, and how they had been obliged to take her to the head of the cove, over the ice, until they were able to find a place where a pick could bite into the ground. Miss Jelliffe stared at me, as I spoke, and I could see her beautiful eyes becoming shiny with gathering tears.

On the next day, as I was doing something to the plaster dressing, she came into the room, hurriedly.

"I've been out there," she said. "What a poor desolate place in which to leave one's loved ones. Won't you let me help? I think I am getting on very well with my untrained nursing. I want as much practice as I can get."

"I am bound hand and foot," complained the patient. "These women are taking all sorts of unfair advantages of me. And, by the way, Helen, I want you to go out more. You are remaining indoors so much that you are beginning to lose all your fine color."

"I look like an Indian," she protested laughing.

"Then I don't want you to get bleached out. You must go out walking more, or try some fishing, but be careful about those slippery rocks. I can play no other part now than that of a dreadful example."

"I am not going to budge from this room," declared Miss Jelliffe. "You know that you can't get along without me. Besides, there are no places that one can walk to."

"I insist that you must get plenty of fresh air," persisted her father.

"There is no fresh air here," she objected. "It is a compound of oxygen, nitrogen and fish, mostly very ripe fish. One has to breathe cod, and eat it, and quintals are the only subjects of conversation. Codfish of a.s.sorted sizes flop up in one's dreams. Last night one of them, about the length of a whale, apparently mistook me for a squid, or some such horrid thing, and was in the very act of swallowing me when I awoke. I'm afraid, Daddy dear, that the fresh air of Sweetapple Cove is a dreadful fiction.

But it must be lovely outside."

She was looking through the door, which stood widely opened, towards the places where the long smooth rollers broke upon the rocks, and beyond them at brown sails and screaming birds darting about in quest of prey.

"You are hungering for a breath of the sea, Miss Jelliffe," I told her.

"Sammy and Frenchy are waiting for me to go to Will's Island again. With this wind it will be only a matter of three or four hours there and back.

Could you stand a trip in a fishing boat?"

"Just the thing for her. No danger, is there, Doctor?" asked Mr.

Jelliffe.

"Not on a day like this," I replied. Miss Jelliffe made a few further objections, which were quickly overruled. Finally she gave Susie all sorts of directions, kissed her father affectionately, and was ready to go.

"We'll be back soon, Daddy. You are a dear to be always thinking about me. I know I am very mean to leave you."

"The young lady'll be well took care of, sir," declared Captain Sammy, who had come in to say that the boat was ready.

So we went down to the cove where Frenchy, already apprised that such a distinguished pa.s.senger was coming, was feverishly scrubbing the craft and soaking the footboards, endeavoring, with scant success, to remove all traces of fish and bait.

"It's dreadful, isn't it?" said Miss Jelliffe as we pa.s.sed by the fishhouses. "I know that when I get back home I shall never eat another fish-cake. And just look at the awful swarms of flies and blue-bottles.

And the smell of it all! It is all undoubtedly picturesque, but it is unspeakably smelly."

The men were busily working, and girls and boys of all sizes, and one heard the sound of sharp knives ripping the fish, and the whirring of grindstones, and the flopping of offal in the water. These people were clad in ancient oilskins, stiff and evil with blood and slime, but they lifted gruesome hands to their forelocks as Miss Jelliffe went by and she did her best to smile in answer.

"Couldn't they be taught to be a little cleaner?" she asked me. "Isn't it awfully unhealthy for them?"

"It is rather bad," I admitted, "and they are always cutting their hands and fingers and getting abominably infected sores. They only come to me when they are in a more or less desperate condition. Yet one can hardly blame them for following the ways of their fathers, when you consider the lack of facilities. They can't clean the fish on board their little boats, as the bankers do on the larger schooners, and there is no place in which they can dispose of the refuse save in the waters of the cove.

They don't even have any cultivable land where they could spread it to fertilize the ground. It must drift here and there, to go out with the ebb of the tide or be devoured by other fishes, or else it gets cast up on the shingle. The smell is a part of their lives, and I am nearly sure that they are usually quite unconscious of it. Moreover, they are always hara.s.sed for time. If the fishing is good the men at work in the fish-houses ought to be out fishing, and the girls should be out upon the flakes. They often work at night till they are ready to drop. And then perhaps comes a spell of rain, days and weeks of it, during which the fish spoils and all their work goes for nothing. Then they have to try again and again, with hunger and debt spurring them on. And the finest part of it is that they never seem to lose courage."

"I wonder they don't go elsewhere and try some other kind of work,"