The White Lady (20 page)

Then Jimmy arrived with his imperative summons.

“Come ’crost this here way,” said Jimmy doggedly as they passed a field on the other side of the street from the Bartlett house. “Thur’s a shortcut through the orchard. It’ll save a lot.” Jimmy in his secret soul wished to save the minister from the gaze of the street loungers. He had not fought his battle for his minister for nothing. He was learning how to protect him. This was not an occasion when there was time for fighting.

The minister, nothing loath, followed Jimmy through the meadow and down the orchard path.

“What did you say was the matter, Jimmy?” asked the minister, taking long strides beside Jimmy’s running trot. “Did you say they sent for me?”

“Guess she’s got a stroke,” said Jimmy wisely. “Looked like it to me. No, they didn’t send fer nobody; I just come myself. Thur ain’t nobody thur to hep ‘cept Norah, an’ Miss Constance, she oughter have someone ter kind of hep her out. I went fer the doctor, but he has to tend to Mis’ Weth’rill. I thought they oughter have you.”

Silently and gravely, like two engaged in the same important business, they walked across the orchard and skirted the pond, and so up to the house by the back path where John Endicott had first seen Constance in the moonlight. He looked kindly down on Jimmy’s earnest little freckled face and felt a warmth of kinship.

“Good work, old scout!” he said gravely.

Jimmy flushed under his tan and plodded along with only a flashing glance of gratitude toward the minister. But they walked together now as fellow laborers in one cause.

Confusion still reigned in Mrs. Wetherill’s apartments. The doctor had issued his orders, and Norah and Constance were doing their best to obey him, but they were both untrained in nursing and were so nervous that they could not accomplish things as rapidly as a stranger might have done. Jimmy, after a bit of reconnoitering, led the minister straight upstairs, where Mr. Endicott found he needed no announcement. Quietly, as if he had been told, he slipped into line and did the next things that nobody else knew how to do. He helped the doctor to lift the old lady into the next room to her own bed, where she could be made more comfortable at once; he arranged window shades to make the light just right and took the doctor’s orders for some things to be brought from the drugstore, with merely a grave bow of recognition toward Constance when he entered the room. It was as if he had come in answer to her summons, and somehow there came to her a strong sense of security in having him near.

It was the minister who volunteered to go for Miss Stokes, the village dependence for nursing. She was a plain-faced, amply proportioned woman with a kindly way and much experience; and when a couple of hours later, Endicott drove up to the Cedars in an old Ford he had hired and helped Miss Stokes out, Constance felt a relief that almost brought the tears. She felt so inexperienced and so troubled and alone!

When Miss Stokes was established under the doctor’s orders, Constance took time to speak to the minister and explain. Norah made them sit down in the stately dining room that had been fitted out for Mrs. Wetherill with all the old furnishings from home. There she brought them a most delicious supper. It was all very pleasant to the weary man, who fairly hungered for a bit of companionship, and to Constance it was like having a strong new friend. She wished she might keep him there till the time of stress was over, but she knew she could not do that.

“No, nothing happened that we know of to excite her, except the letter she was reading. It contained news of the sudden death of an old friend of Grandmother’s. Yes, they were deeply attached, and I suppose it startled her a good deal. It was careless of me to leave her with letters. I shall always blame myself. But I had been having a good many perplexities myself—you see, Grandmother knew nothing of my enterprises here. I think I shall have to tell you all about it. No one else in the world knows but Norah and my lawyer.”

Constance told her simple tale in few words, and John Endicott, listening, watching her changing face, marveled that she could speak so composedly of the great change that had come into her life. A tragedy it seemed to him, for he who had never known luxury had been wont to pity those who had and were suddenly called upon to give it up. His heart longed more and more to help her. He must have shown this longing in his face, for Constance felt the sympathy and was comforted by it. He spoke but few words of comfort, it is true, but he showed by a number of small acts that he felt deep sympathy and would do anything in his power to help her.

And after he had eaten the tender chops that Norah had broiled, the delicious salad, flaky bread and butter, and fragrant coffee, ending with some frozen dainty and delicate sponge cake, he went home to Mrs. Bartlett’s meager supper, well knowing that if he did not, he would have to give account of himself. The meagerness of it did not trouble him that night, and she wondered that he took but one slice of bread and ate but half of that. It was unaccountable. And he actually refused a second piece of gingerbread, a thing she had never known him to do since he boarded with her. She set her lips grimly and reported to Ellen Sauters, her next-door confidante, that he must be sick, that her gingerbread was “as good as anybody ever made—the sour milk was extra nice this time.”

For although Mr. Endicott had promised to go back to the Cedars that evening to see whether there was anything further he could do to help, he yet saw no reason why Mrs. Bartlett should learn of Mrs. Wetherill’s condition until the next day, so he went out without saying anything about it. But he had reckoned without knowledge of his landlady’s resources. He had not been gone from the house more than ten minutes when Ellen Sauters entered the kitchen door with a quick glance, without the ceremony of a knock, and sat down to tell all about it.

“Say, what did Jimmy Watts come here for this afternoon when you was out?” she began.

“Was Jimmy Watts here? Nobody told me,” said Mrs. Bartlett, sitting down with the butter plate in her hand.

“Yes, I was lookin’ out the kitchen winder, an’ I see Jimmy scootin’ in the side way, an’ knockin’, and presently the minister come down to the door, an’ he never went back in, only just reached up to the hall rack an’ took down his hat, an’ he went off with Jimmy. They must’uv been in a nawful hurry, fer they jumped the fence, both of ’em, and went ’crost lots, down by the old pond. I couldn’t make out where they was goin’ till George cum home fer his supper. Then I put two an’ two together. He said Mr. Endycut came over there to the garage, an’ hired a car an’ was gone two hours; an’ when he cum back, he seen Miss Stokes settin’ beside him, an’ they druv into the hanted house; an’ then Jimmy Watts brought the car back an’ the money fer it. I told George he didn’t know much that he didn’t ast Jimmy what was the matter, but he said he never thought till after he was gone, an’ then he happened to remember he’d seen Dr. Randall’s car standin’ in front of the station; so es soon’s I got George’s supper on I hurried an’ run over to Mis’ Randall’s to borrow her sleeve-pattern, an’ ast her ef anybody was sick to the hanted house, and she said the old lady hed hed a stroke.”

Mrs. Bartlett set her lips firmly. Undoubtedly the minister had known all about it and had told her nothing. This was treason. When he first came to board with her, she had told him she would be a mother to him, and she had made a great deal of studying his tastes, but he had not rewarded her properly. People came to her expecting to find out all about every marriage and death and birth and church quarrel, and she never knew as much as they, headquarters of the minister though this was. It was mortifying in the extreme to be considered the source of all church information, and yet have none to give. She decided not to have custard pie the next day as she had planned. She would give the minister what was left of today’s bread pudding.

Constance was glad to have Mr. Endicott return that evening, for the doctor was there, and his grave face troubled her. She dared not ask him again what he thought, for he had told her that it was impossible to say positively what would be the outcome. It might be that her grandmother would recover and be herself again to a certain extent, and it might be that she would slip away without ever coming back to the use of her faculties.

When Constance heard this, she was in despair. If her grandmother should die now, she would feel that she had killed her by bringing her away from home and allowing her to be so excited. She wanted to ask someone about this doctor. Was he skillful? And ought she not to send for a physician from home? Or perhaps some noted man in Chicago, if she only knew for whom to send. Then she remembered that she no longer had an unlimited bank account, and she must go cautiously in the matter of expensive doctors’ fees and traveling expenses, unless it was a matter of life and death, though she resolved that every cent she had should be spent to save her grandmother’s life, even though it was but a possibility.

When Mr. Endicott came, she put her trouble before him.

“I do not believe,” said he, “that you need send for any other physician. It is not as if it were an obscure case requiring great skill or surgery. Dr. Randall is an old man and has had a good many years’ experience. He may not be up in the latest methods, but I sometimes think that experience counts for more than new theories in any line. For years he has devoted his life to saving life, and he has succeeded, too. He does not spare himself. I have seen him sit up all night holding a dying baby for a mother who was near to death’s door herself and had no way of ever hoping to pay him for his services; and in the end he brought them both through, and they are living yet. I have seen him do the work of a physician and nurse for hours under the most trying circumstances, and I have seen him happy as a child when the crisis was past in some trying case, or broken utterly in spirit when someone died. He does not often lose a case. He is as much like the old doctor of ‘Bonnie-Brier-Bush’ renown as any you will find today. He tells me there is great hope, and he would not say so if he did not feel sure. I will speak to him about a consultation, and if it is necessary in the least, he will be the first to suggest it, I am sure.”

They went together into the sickroom, and the minister talked with the physician in low tones. Constance stood at the foot of the bed. The drawn, agonized expression of her grandmother’s face was heartbreaking. Instinctively she stooped over and spoke in gentle tones.

“Dear Grandmother,” she said, as if talking to a little child, “don’t be troubled. You will be better soon.”

Did she fancy it, or was it true that one side of the face seemed to soften and relax at her words? She felt she could not bear it. It seemed as if her grandmother were standing on the dark brink of the river of death and reaching to her to take her hand, to help her in some way. What could they do for her? Suppose she were dying? Suppose it were her own case? What would she want done? Someone to speak to her, someone to pray for her? Ah! That was it. But could she hear? Well, at least God would hear; and a sudden conviction came to the girl that God would take hold of the hand of this, His aged servant, and lead her gently.

She turned to the minister.

“I think I would like you to pray, if you will,” she said in a low tone. “That is, if the doctor thinks it wise.”

“There is no objection,” the doctor said.

“Can she hear me, Doctor?” inquired Mr. Endicott.

“It is quite possible, though not probable,” responded the man of few words. He was working with an electric battery as he spoke, and Constance watched his hands as they moved skillfully and surely through their work, and felt a confidence in him that made her thankful.

And so, going near the bed where his words could reach the ears that might be deaf but yet might hear, John Endicott prayed. The doctor went steadily forward with his work, and in her slow way Miss Stokes helped him, but they both held their heads reverently lowered, as if their hearts joined in with the prayer.

Constance, her face hidden in her handkerchief, stood a little to one side and listened, but as the words went on, like a great wave of comfort that bore them all into the presence of the Almighty and surrounded them with His mercy and loving-kindness, she leaned forward where she could look into her grandmother’s face. The troubled look had gone, and there was dawning a look of peace there. Words of Jesus the minister was repeating, words from the Psalms, and yet petitions that seemed to reach the very throne of God with their earnestness, for they were strong with the promises that belong to God’s children. Was it possible that the dim ears could hear the prayer and feel the comfort?

The doctor presently tiptoed over softly and looked at his patient and then stepped deferentially back and waited. He, too, had seen the change in the face, and hoped.

They went out presently at the doctor’s word, and Constance promised to lie down if they would call her at the slightest sign of change in her grandmother. When the minister bade her good night, she thanked him for the prayer and told him it had helped her, too.

John Endicott reached out his hand and took hers in an earnest, quick grasp as he said, “Oh, I wish you knew how to go to my Lord for comfort!”

It was only an instant that her hand lay in his strong grasp, but Constance felt that she had received help from that quick friendly touch. He had come to her in her trouble; he was strong, he had not turned away. Where was Morris Thayer now, who ought to have been by her side in this distress? To be sure, it was her own act that had put herself out of his reach, but womanlike, she blamed him that he had not found her in spite of it.

Her courage almost failed her that night. She dozed and then awoke to a realization of the suspense in the house. After a silent visit to the chamber of illness, she stole back to her couch. The memory of the minister’s prayer comforted her, but she felt that he was far away from her on a different plane, a man who had been brought up to godly things and who could not possibly know the common feelings of a soul like hers. Yet ever her spirit turned back to the words he had spoken, and once, as morning almost dawned, she slipped from her couch to her knees and prayed, “Our Father in heaven, help me find Thee.”