The Stolen Singer Part 17

Agatha went back to her couch, feeling that the heavens had opened.

Here was a friend come to her from she knew not where, whose right it was to a.s.sume responsibility for the sick man. He was kind and good, and he loved her rescuer with the boyish devotion of their school-days.

He would surely help; he would work with her to keep death away.

Whatever love and professional skill could do, should be done; there had been no question as to that, of course, from the beginning. But here was some one who would double, yes, more than double her own efforts; some one who was strong and well and capable. Her heart was thankful.

Before Aleck returned from the sick-room, Doctor Thayer's step sounded on the stairs, followed by the mildly complaining voice of Sallie Kingsbury. Presently the two men were in a low-voiced conference in the hall. Agatha waited while they talked, feeling grateful afresh that Doctor Thayer's grim professional wisdom was to be reinforced by Mr. Van Camp's resources. When the doctor entered Agatha's room, her face had almost the natural flush of health.

"Ah, Miss Agatha Redmond"--the doctor continued frequently to address her by her full name, half in affectionate deference and half with some dry sense of humor peculiar to himself--"Miss Agatha Redmond, so you're beginning to pick up! A good thing, too; for I don't want two patients in one house like the one out yonder. He's a very sick man, Miss Agatha."

"I know, Doctor. I have seen him grow worse, hour by hour, ever since we came. What can be done?"

"He needs special nursing now, and your man in there will be worn out presently."

"Oh, that can be managed. Send to Portland, to Boston, or somewhere.

We can get a nurse here soon. Do not spare any trouble. Doctor. I can arrange--"

Doctor Thayer squared himself and paced slowly up and down Agatha's room. He did not reply at once, and when he did, it was with one of his characteristic turns toward an apparently irrelevant topic.

"Have you seen Sister Susan?" he inquired, stopping by the side of Agatha's couch and looking down on her with his shrewd gaze. It was a needless question, for he knew that Agatha had not seen Mrs. Stoddard.

She had been too weak and ill to see anybody. Agatha shook her head.

"Well, Miss Agatha Redmond, Susan's the nurse we need for that young gentleman over there. It's constant care he must have now, day and night; and if he gets well, it will be good nursing that does it.

There isn't a nurse in this country like Susan, when she once takes hold of a case. That Mr. Hand in there is all right, but he can't sit up much longer night and day, as he has been doing. And he isn't a woman. Don't know why it is, but the Lord seems bent on throwing sick men into women's hands--as if they weren't more than a match for us when we're well!"

Agatha's humorous smile rewarded the doctor's grim comments, if that was what he wanted.

"No, Doctor," she said, with a fleeting touch of her old lightness, "we're never a match for you. We may entertain you or nurse you or feed you, or possibly once in a century or two inspire you; but we're never a match for you."

"For which Heaven be praised!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed the doctor fervently.

Agatha watched him as he fumbled nervously about the room or clasped his hands behind him under his long coat-tails. The greenish-black frock-coat hung untidily upon him, and his white fringe of hair was anything but smooth. She perceived that something other than medical problems troubled him.

"Would your sister--would Mrs. Stoddard--be willing to come here to take care of Mr. Hambleton?" she ventured.

"Ask me _that_," snapped the doctor, "when no man on earth could tell whether she'll come or not. She says she won't. She's hurt and she's outraged; or at least she thinks she is. But if you could get her to think that it was her duty to take care of that poor boy in there, she'd come fast enough."

Agatha was puzzled. She felt as if there were a dozen ways to turn and only one way that would lead her aright; and she could not find the clue to that one right way. At last she attacked the doctor boldly.

"Tell me, Doctor Thayer," she said earnestly, "just what it is that causes Mrs. Stoddard to feel hurt and outraged. Is it simply because I have inherited the money and the house? She can not possibly know anything about me personally."

The old doctor thrust his under jaw out more belligerently than ever, while turning his answer over in his mind. He took two lengths of the room before stopping again by Agatha's side and looking down on her.

"She says it isn't the money, but that it's the slight Hercules put upon her for leaving the place, our old home, out of the family.

That's one thing; but that isn't the worst. Susan's orthodox, you know, very orthodox; and she has a prejudice against your profession--serving Satan, she calls it. She thinks that's what actresses and opera singers do, though how she knows anything about it, I don't see." The grim smile shone in the doctor's eyes even while he looked, half anxiously, to see how Agatha was taking his explanation of Mrs. Stoddard's att.i.tude. Agatha meditated a moment.

"If it's merely a prejudice in the abstract against my being an opera singer, I think she will overcome that. Besides, Mr. Hambleton is neither an actor nor an opera singer; he isn't 'serving Satan.'"

"Well--" the doctor hesitated, and then went on hastily with a great show of irritation, "Susan's a little set in her views. She disapproves of the way you came here; says you shouldn't have been out in a boat with two men, and that it's a judgment for sin, your being drowned, or next door to it. I'm only saying this, my dear Miss Agatha, to explain to you why Susan--"

But Agatha was enlightened at last, and roused sufficiently to cause two red spots, brighter than they had ever been in health, to burn on her cheeks. She sat up very straight, facing Doctor Thayer's worried gaze, and interrupted him in tones ringing with anger.

"Do you mean to tell me, Doctor Thayer, that your sister, the sister of my mother's lifelong friend, sits in her house and imagines scandalous stories about me, when she knows nothing at all about the facts or about me? That she thinks I was out in a boat alone with two men?

That she is mean enough to condemn me without knowing the first thing about this awful accident? Oh, I have no words!" And Agatha covered her burning face with her hands, unable, by mere speech, to express her outraged feelings. Doctor Thayer edged uneasily about Agatha's couch, with a manner resembling that of a whipped dog.

"Why, my dear Miss Agatha, Susan will come round in time. She's not so bad, really. She'll come round in time, only just now we haven't any time to spare. Don't feel so badly; Susan is too set in her views--"

"'Set!'" cried Agatha. "She's a horrid, un-Christian woman!"

"Oh, no," remonstrated the doctor. "Susan's all right, when you once get used to her. She's a trifle old-fashioned in her views--"

But Agatha was not listening to the doctor's feeble justification of Susan. She was thinking hard.

"Doctor Thayer," she urged, "do you want that woman to come here to take care of Mr. Hambleton? Isn't there any one else in this whole countryside who can nurse a sick man? Why, I can do it myself; or Mr.

Van Camp, his cousin, could do it. Why should you want her, of all people, when she feels so toward us?"

The moment his professional judgment came into question Doctor Thayer slipped out from the cloud of embarra.s.sment which had engulfed him in his recent conversation, and a.s.sumed the authoritative voice that Agatha had first heard.

"My dear Miss Agatha Redmond, that is foolish talk. You are half sick, even now; and it requires a strong person, with no nerves, to do what I desire done. Mr. Van Camp may be his cousin, but the chances are that he wouldn't know a bromide from a blister; and good nurses don't grow on bushes in Ilion, nor in Charlesport, either. There isn't one to be had, so far as I know, and we can't wait to send to Augusta or Portland. The next few days, especially the next twenty-four hours, are critical."

Agatha listened intently, and a growing resolution shone in her eyes.

"Would Mrs. Stoddard come, if it were not for what you said--about me?"

she asked.

"The Lord only knows, but I think she would," replied the poor, hara.s.sed doctor. "She's always been a regular Dorcas in this neighborhood."

"Dorcas!" cried Agatha, her anger again flaring up. "I should say Sapphira."

"Oh, now, Susan isn't so bad, when you once know her," urged the doctor.

Agatha got up and went to the window, trailing her traveling rug after her. "She shall come--I'll bring her. And sometime she shall mend her words about me--but that can wait. If she will only help to save James Hambleton's life now! Where does she live?" Suddenly, as she stood at the window, she saw her opportunity. "There's Little Simon down there now under the trees; and his buggy must be somewhere near. Will you stay here, Doctor Thayer, with Mr. Hambleton, while I go to see your sister?"

"Hadn't I better drive you over to see Susan myself?" feebly suggested the doctor.

"No, I'll go alone." There was anger, determination, gunpowder in Agatha's voice.

"But mind you, don't offer her any money," the doctor warned, as he watched her go down the hall and disappear for an instant in the bedroom where James Hambleton lay. She came out almost immediately and without a word descended the wide stairway, opened the dining-room door, and called softly to Sallie Kingsbury.

Doctor Thayer returned to the sick-room. Ten minutes later he heard the wheels of Little Simon's buggy rolling rapidly up the road in the direction of Susan Stoddard's place.

CHAPTER XIV

SUSAN STODDARD'S PRAYER

There was a wide porch, spotlessly scrubbed, along the front of the house, and two hydrangeas blooming gorgeously in tubs, one on either side of the walk. The house looked new and modern, shiny with paint and furnished with all the conveniences offered by the relentless progress of our day.

Little Simon had informed Agatha, during their short drive, that Deacon Stoddard had achieved this "residence" shortly before his death; and his tone implied that it was the pride of the town, its real treasure.