Chapter IV

When Miss Harriet woke the next morning the blue June day was flooding her room. At first she could not remember.... What was the something behind her consciousness? It came in an instant. "_Trapped_," she said, aloud, and turned her head to see Miss Annie at her bedside.

"What is trapped, sister?" said Miss Annie, her little old face crumpling with distress.

"I am," Harriet said; and laughed at the absurdity of telling Annie in such a fashion. But of course there was no use in telling Annie. She couldn't understand, and all that there was for her to know, the ultimate fact, she would find out soon enough. The younger sister felt a sick distaste of dealing with this poor mind; she wanted to be kind to Annie; she had always wanted to be kind to her--but she didn't want her round, that was all. And so she sent her off, patiently and not ungently: "Don't bother me, Annie, that's a good girl. No--I don't want any roses; take them away. No--I don't want to look at pictures. You go away now, that's a good girl."

And the wrinkled child obeyed meekly. But she told the deaf Augustine that Harriet was cross. "I'm the oldest, and she oughtn't to order me round," she whimpered.

Poor Miss Annie was constantly being told to be a good girl and go away, in the days that followed--days, to Miss Harriet, of that amazement and self-concentration which belong to such an experience as hers. There had been no leading up to this knowledge that had come to her--no gradual preparation of apprehension or suspicion. The full speed of living had come, _crash!_ against the fact of dying. The recoil, the pause, the terrible astonishment of that moment when Life, surging ahead with all his banners flying, flings himself in an instant against the immovable face of Death--leaves the soul dazed by the shock--dazed, and unbelieving. "_It cannot be._" That is the first clear thought. It is impossible; there is a mistake somewhere. A day ago, an hour ago, Death was lying hidden far, far off in the years. Sometime, of course, he would arrive--solemn, inevitable, but beneficent, or at least serene. He would send soft warnings before him--faint tollings of fatigue, vague mists of sunset shadows. The soul will be ready for him when he comes then; will even welcome him, for after a while Life grows a little tired and is ready to grasp that cool hand and rest. We all know how to meet Death then, with dignity and patience. But to meet him to-morrow--to-day, even, when we are full of our own business, of our own urgent affairs--the mere interruption of it is maddening. Across the solemnity of the thought comes with grotesque incongruity an irritated consciousness of the _inconvenience_ of dying.

As for Harriet Hutchinson--"I don't believe it," she said to herself, that first morning. And then, breathlessly, "Why, I can't--die!"

She was not afraid, as one counts fear, but she was absorbed; for there is a dreadful and curiously impersonal interest in the situation that takes possession of the mind in moments like this. No wonder she could not think about Annie. She could not think about anything except that that man in Mercer had said that in a very short time--

"Why, but it's perfectly ridiculous!" she told herself; "it _can't_ be. I'm not sick--"

As she lay there in her bed that morning, after she had sent Miss Annie away, she lifted her hand--a large hand, with strong, square fingers, brown with weather and rough with her work, and looked at it curiously. It was a little thin--she had not noticed that before; but there it was, eager, vital, quick to grip and hold, life in every line. And it would be--still? No; she did not believe it. And, besides, it couldn't be, it mustn't be. She had a hundred things to do. She must do them; she couldn't suddenly--_stop_. Life surged up in a great wave of passionate determination. She got up, eager to go on living, and to deny, deny, deny! It was the old human experience which is repeated and repeated until Life can learn the fulfilment of Death. Poor Life, beaten by the whips of pain, it takes so long sometimes to learn its lesson!

In those weeks that followed--weeks of refusal, and then struggle, and then acceptance, and last of all adjustment--Miss Harriet found old Annie's companionship almost intolerable. She was very unreasonable with her, very harsh even; but all she asked was solitude, and solitude Annie would not give. She ran at her sister's heels like a dog; sat looking at her with frightened eyes in the bad hours that came with relentlessly increasing frequency; came whimpering to her bedside on those exhausted mornings when Harriet would scourge her poor body onto its feet and announce that she was going out. "These four walls smother me," she used to say; "I must get out-of-doors."

Sometimes it seemed as if the big, kind nature that had borne the pin-pricks so patiently all these years had reached the breaking-point, and another day or another hour of poor old Annie's foolish love would cause it to burst out in frantic anger:

"It hurts, sister?"

"Yes, Annie; but never mind. If I could only get out-of-doors I wouldn't mind."

"Oh, sister, don't let it hurt."

"Can't help it, Annie. Now, don't think about it, that's a good girl. Maybe I can get out to-morrow a little while."

"But I can't bear it."

"Got to, my dear. Come, now, run away. Go and see your chickens."

"Sister, I can't bear it."

"Annie, you drive me wild. Augustine--oh, she can't hear. _Augustine!_ you must take Miss Annie away. Annie, if you say another word--"

"I'm the oldest and I have a right to talk. Why don't you smell your big bottle? When the squirrels smell it they are not hurt."

"Well, I'm not a squirrel. Annie, if you stay another minute, I'll--I'll-- Oh, for Heaven's sake, let me alone!"

She could stand it, she told herself, if she was alone. For though she finally accepted the fact, her own weakness she could not accept. "I am ashamed," she told William King, angrily.

"But there's nothing to be ashamed of," Willy King protested, in his kind way. "Dear Miss Harriet--"

"Hold your tongue. Nothing to be ashamed of? I guess if your body had put your soul in a corner, with its face to the wall--I guess you'd be ashamed. Yesterday I--I-- Well, never mind. But my body got me down, I tell you--got my soul down. Isn't that something to be ashamed of? Don't be an ass, William. I'm ashamed."

It was this consciousness of her own weakness that made her hold herself aloof from her friends.

In those days people did not have trained nurses; they nursed one another. It was not skilful nursing; it frequently was not wise, as we count wisdom to-day; but it was very tender and loving, and it was very bracing. In these softer times, when we run so easily to relief from pain, we do not feel the presence of the professional nurse a check upon our weakness; if we suffer, we are willing that this skilful, noiseless machine, who will know exactly how to relieve us, shall see the suffering. We are neither mortified nor humiliated by our lack of endurance or of courage. But in Old Chester, when we were ill, and some friend or relative came to sit by our bedside, we had--for their sakes--to make an effort to control ourselves. If the effort failed, our souls blushed. Miss Harriet would not run the risk of failure; her body, as she said, got the better of her soul when she was alone; it should not have the chance to humiliate her publicly; so, roughly, she refused the friendly assistance so eagerly offered: "Thank you; Augustine can look after me. I don't want anybody. And besides, I'm perfectly comfortable. (William, I won't have anybody. Do you understand? It's bad enough to disgrace myself in my own eyes; I won't have Matty Barkley sit and look on.)"

And William King put people off as well as he could: "I go in two or three times a day, just to say how do you do; and Miss Annie is about and can bring her anything she needs. And Augustine is very faithful. Of course, she is deaf as a post, but she seems to know what Miss Harriet wants."

So the situation was accepted. "Here I am," she told the doctor, grimly, "dying like a rat in a hole. If I could only get out-of-doors!--or if I had anything to do!--I think it's the having nothing to do that is the worst. But I'll tell you one thing, Willy--I won't be pitied. Don't have people mourning over me, or pretending that I'm going to get well. They know better, and so do I."

Those who dared to pity her or who ventured some futile friendly lie about recovery were met by the fiercest impatience. "How do I feel? Very well, thank you. And if I didn't, I hope I wouldn't say so. I hope I'm well enough bred not to ask or answer questions about feelings. There is nothing in the world so vulgar," she said, and braced herself to one or another imprudence that grieved and worried all the kind hearts that stood by, eager to show their love.

"It breaks my heart to see her, and there's nothing anybody can do for her," Mrs. Barkley told Dr. Lavendar, snuffling and wiping her eyes. "She positively turned Rachel King out of the house; and Maria Welwood cried her eyes out yesterday because she was so sharp with her when Maria said she was sorry she had had a bad night and hoped she'd soon feel better."

The old man nodded silently. "Poor Miss Harriet!" he said.

"Don't say 'poor Miss Harriet!' to her. Dr. Lavendar, Harriet and I have been friends since we were put into short dresses--and she spoke to me to-day in a way--! Well, of course, I shall go back; but I was ready to say I wouldn't. And she treats poor old Annie outrageously."

Dr. Lavendar nodded again. He himself had seen her several times, but she had never let him be personal: "Was Mrs. Drayton still gossiping about her soul?" "Wasn't it nearly time to get a new carpet for the chancel?" etc., etc. It was her way of defending herself--and Dr. Lavendar understood. So he only brought her his kindly gossip or his church news, and he never looked at her mournfully; but neither did he ever once refer to a possible recovery--that poor, friendly pretence that so tries the soul absorbed in its own solemn knowledge!

But in the afternoon, after his talk with Mrs. Barkley, the old man went plodding up the hill to the Stuffed-Animal House, with tender and relentless purpose in his face. It was a serene September day, full of pulsing light and fragrant with the late mowing. William King's mare was hitched to a post by the green gate in the hedge, and the doctor was giving her a handful of grass as Dr. Lavendar came up. "How is Miss Harriet, Willy?" the old man said.

William climbed into the buggy and flicked with his whip at the ironweed by the road-side. "Oh--about the same. Dr. Lavendar, it's cruel--it's cruel!"

"What's cruel, William?"

"I can't give her any opiate--to amount to anything."

"Why?"

"Her heart."

"But you can't let her suffer!"

"If I stopped the suffering," the doctor said, laconically, "it would be murder."

"You mean--"

"Depressants, to amount to anything, would kill her."

Dr. Lavendar looked up into the sky silently. Willy King gathered up the reins. "And Annie?" Dr. Lavendar said.

"She is just a poor, frantic child. I can't make her understand why Miss Harriet shouldn't have two powders, when one 'sugar,' as she calls it, gives her a little comfort for a little while. She says, 'Harriet wouldn't let a squirrel stay hurt.' Miss Harriet says she told her the other day that she wasn't a squirrel; but it didn't seem to make any difference to Miss Annie. She has a queer elemental reasonableness about her, hasn't she? Well, I must go. Dr. Lavendar, I--I hope you won't mind if I say that perhaps--I mean she doesn't want anybody to refer to--to anything religious."

"William," said the old man, mildly, "if you can mention anything which is not religious to a woman who is going to die within a very few weeks, I will consider it."

And William King had the grace to blush and stammer something about Miss Harriet's hating anything personal. Dr. Lavendar listened silently; then he went on up the path to the Stuffed-Animal House. Old Miss Annie let him into the darkened hall, a burst of western sunshine flooding in behind him and making the grim, dead creatures dart out of their shadows for a moment, and sink back into them again when the door was shut. The old child had been crying, for Miss Harriet had turned her out of her room, and so he had to sit there in the hall, under the shark, and try to comfort her and bid her go out and see her chickens. But for once Miss Annie would not be diverted:

"Harriet wants to go out-of-doors, and she can't. And she is hurt; and Willy King won't give her sugar in a paper to stop the hurting. He is wicked."

"By-and-by," said Dr. Lavendar, "Harriet will fall asleep and not be hurt any more."

"Not till she is dead," Miss Annie said; "Augustine told me so."

"I meant that," Dr. Lavendar said, stroking the poor, gray head grovelling against his knee.

"Then why didn't you say so? It is a story to say sleep when you mean dead."

"I ought to have said dead," he acknowledged, gently, "so that you could understand. But I want you to remember that death is a happy sleep. Will you remember that?"

"A happy sleep," Miss Annie repeated; "yes; I will remember. _A happy sleep._" She lifted her head from his knee and smiled. "I'll go and see my chickens," she said.

And Dr. Lavendar took his way up-stairs, past the cases of birds, to Miss Harriet's room. She received him with elaborate cheerfulness.

As for Dr. Lavendar, he lost no time in pretence. "Miss Harriet," he said, "I am not going to stay and talk and tire you. You've seen people enough to-day--"

"I'm not tired in the least."

"But I have a word to say to you."

She looked at him angrily. "I would rather not talk about myself, Dr. Lavendar, please."

"I don't want to talk about yourself," he said.

Her face cleared a little. "That's a relief. I was afraid you were going to talk to me about 'preparing,' and so forth."

A sudden smile twinkled into Dr. Lavendar's old eyes. "My dear Miss Harriet, you've been 'preparing' for fifty years--or is it fifty-one? I've lost count, Harriet. No; you haven't got anything to do about dying; dying is not your business. In fact, I sometimes think it never is our business. Our business is living. Dying is God's affair."

"I haven't any business, that's the worst of it," Miss Harriet said, bitterly. "I've nothing to do--nothing to do but just lie here and wait. I don't mind dying; but to be here in this trap, waiting. And I've always been so busy, I don't know how to do nothing."

"That's what I wanted to say to you. There is something you can do. In fact, there's something you must do."

"Something I must do?" Miss Harriet said, puzzled.

"My dear friend, you must meet this affliction; you can't escape; we can't save you from it. But there is one thing you can do: you can try to spare the pain of it to other people. Set yourself, Miss Harriet, to make it as easy as you can for those who stand by."

Harriet Hutchinson looked at him in amazement. No pity? No condolences? Nothing but the high charge to spare others. "You mean my temper?" she said at last, slowly.

"Yes," said Dr. Lavendar.

Miss Harriet blushed hotly. "It is bad; I know it's bad. But--"

"Mine would be worse," said Dr. Lavendar, thoughtfully. "But look out for it, Harriet. It's getting ahead of you."

Miss Harriet nodded. "You're right."

"You see, when you are out of temper it shows you are suffering; and that's hard for us to bear--not the temper, of course, but the knowledge. So you've got to spare us, Harriet. Understand?"

"I understand."

"It will be hard work for you," he said, cheerfully; and somehow the words meant, not pity, but "_Shoulder arms!_"

For an instant they gazed, eye to eye--the woman devoured by pain, the old man with his calm demand; and then the soul of her rose with a shout. What! there was something left for her to do? She need not merely sit still and die? She need not wait idly for the end? It was a splendid summons to the mind--a challenge to the body that had dogged and humiliated the soul, that had wrung from her good-humored courage irritability and unjust anger, that had dragged her pride in the dust of shame, yes, even--even (alone, and in the dark), but even of tears.

"_Make it as easy as possible for those that stand by._"

Some might say that that austere command was the lash of the whip; but to Miss Harriet it was the rod and the staff. The Spartan old man had suddenly revealed to her that as long as the body does not compel the soul, there is no shame. As long as she could hold her tongue, she said to herself, she need not be ashamed. Let the body whimper as it may, if the soul is silent it is master. Miss Harriet saw before her, not humiliation and idleness and waiting, but fierce struggle.... And it was a struggle. It was no easy thing to be amiable when good Maria Welwood wept over her; or when Martha King told her, flatly and frankly, that she was doing very wrong not to make more effort to eat; or even when Mrs. Dale hoped that she had made her peace with Heaven.

"Heaven had better try to make its peace with me, considering," said Miss Harriet, grimly; but when she saw how she had shocked Mrs. Dale, she made haste to apologize. "I didn't mean it, of course. But I am nervous, and say things to let off steam." Such an admission meant much from Miss Harriet, and it certainly soothed Mrs. Dale.

But most of all, Harriet Hutchinson forbade her body to dictate to her soul when Miss Annie hung whimpering about her with frantic persistence of pity. Never in all their years together had Miss Harriet shown such tenderness to Annie as now, when the poor old child's mere presence was maddening to her. For Annie could think of nothing but the pain which could not be hidden, and her incessant entreaty was that it should be stopped. "Wouldn't you rather be dead, sister?"

"Yes, Annie."

"Well, then, be dead."

"I can't, Annie. Now let us talk of something else. Tell me what the black hen did when the speckled hen stole her nest."

Annie joyously told her story, as she had told it dozens of times before; while Harriet Hutchinson turned her face to the wall. Annie sat on her heels on the floor beside the bed, rocking back and forth, and talking: "And so the speckled hen flew off. Sister, I'll get you your big bottle?"

No answer.

"Sister, don't you want to smell the bottle?"

"No, Annie. No--no--_no_! Oh, Annie, don't you want to go and see your chickens?"

"Why not?"

"Because it wouldn't be right, Annie."

"Why wouldn't it be right, sister?"

"Because," said Harriet Hutchinson--"because I suppose that's one of the things that would 'make it harder for those that stand by.'"

"I don't understand," poor old Annie said, timidly.

"Well, Annie, that's the only reason I know of. Oh, Annie, Annie! it is the only reason there is; it is the root of its being wrong." ... And then the long moan. When Miss Annie heard that sound she shivered all over; it was the elemental protest of the flesh, which cannot understand the regal and unconquered soul.

Those were hard days for Willy King, what with his affection and his sympathy and his daily struggles with Miss Annie; "for she is frantic," he told Dr. Lavendar. They were walking up the hill together in the late afternoon. Miss Harriet had sent for the old man, on whom now she leaned even more than on William King, for Dr. Lavendar gave her granite words instead of Willy's tenderer sympathy. "She insists that I shall give Miss Harriet something--'stuff out of Harriet's bottle,' she says. I suppose she means chloroform. I wish to God I could."

"God will do His own work, William."

"Yes, sir; but it's such a waste--this courage that fairly breaks our hearts."

"Waste! William, what are you talking about? We are every one of us richer for it. I told her so yesterday."

"Well," said William King, thoughtfully, "perhaps so; in this case we are richer, I admit. But suppose it were a baby that was suffering--or a dog? Only, we wouldn't let the dog suffer. Dr. Lavendar, one of these days--you and I won't live to see it, but one of these days--"

"There is Miss Annie now," said Dr. Lavendar. "Why--look at her!"

The old woman came fluttering down the path towards the green gate in the privet hedge; she was smoothing her hair back from her temples, with her strange, girlish gesture, and she was smiling, but there was a new and solemn age in her face that made the two men look at each other, startled and wondering.

"Dr. Lavendar! Willy!" she said, her voice breaking with joy, "Harriet is dead--oh, Harriet is dead!"

They stopped short in the pathway. "What--what?" stammered William King.

"Oh, Harriet is dead!" the old woman said; "and I'm so happy." She came and leaned on the closed gate at the foot of the path, smiling up into their faces. "She isn't hurt any more. Oh, I can breathe, I can breathe, now," said Miss Annie, laying her withered hands upon her throat and drawing a deep breath.

"When?" said the doctor.

"Oh, just a little while ago. As soon as she got dead I opened the windows and let the air blow in; she likes the wind when she isn't hurt."

William King said, suddenly, "_My God!_" and turned and ran up the path, into the house, into the room, where, indeed, there was no more hurting.

"Annie," Dr. Lavendar said, "were you with her?"

"Yes," Miss Annie said. "Harriet was hurt very much. But when she smelled her bottle she stopped being hurt."

Dr. Lavendar leaned against the gate, his breath wavering; then he sat down on the grass, and rested his forehead on his hands clasped on the top of his stick. He was unable to speak. Miss Annie came out into the road and looked at him curiously. After a while he said, feebly, "Annie, tell me about it."

"Willy wouldn't give Harriet sugar in a paper to stop the hurting. And Harriet said she couldn't get her bottle. She said it would be wrong for her to get it."

Dr. Lavendar lifted his head with a quick gesture of relief. "What! Harriet, didn't get it herself?"

"Oh no," Miss Annie said. "I got it. And I went into Harriet's room. Harriet's eyes were shut, and she was--was moaning," said Miss Annie, shivering. "So I put some stuff out of the bottle on a towel and held it for Harriet to smell. And Harriet opened her eyes and looked frightened, and she said, 'No, no!' And I said, 'Yes; I'm the oldest and you must do what I say.' And she said, 'Augustine! Augustine!' But Augustine can't hear. And I held it down and I said, 'You won't be hurt any more.' And Harriet pushed it away and said 'No.' And then she shut her eyes. And after a while she didn't say anything more. And I held it, oh, a long time. And then I looked, and Harriet's eyes were shut. And now she's dead! And it doesn't hurt any more. You come and look at her, and you'll see it doesn't hurt any more. Now she wouldn't thank King George to be her uncle! Oh, she's dead," said Miss Annie, nodding her head and laughing; "a happy sleep." She was standing there in the dusty road in front of him, telling the story, her hands behind her, rocking slightly backward and forward, like a child repeating a lesson. The long afternoon shadows stretched from the trees across the road, and, swaying lightly, flecked her gray head with sunshine.

"Annie," said Dr. Lavendar, "come here and sit beside me."

She came, happily enough, and let him take her hand and hold it, patting it softly for a moment before he spoke.

"Annie, it was not right to give Harriet the stuff out of the bottle; our Heavenly Father stops the hurting when He thinks best. So it does not please Him for us to do it when we think best."

"But Willy gave Harriet one sugar in a paper, and that stopped it a little," Miss Annie said, puzzled; "and if he stopped it a little, why shouldn't it all be stopped?" The obvious logic of the poor mind admitted of no answer--certainly no argument.

Dr. Lavendar said, gravely, stroking the hand, as wrinkled as his own: "It was not right, my child. You will believe me when I say so? And I do not want any one to know that you did a thing that was not right. So I want you to promise me now that you will not tell any one that you did it. Will you promise me?"

"Willy knows it, I guess," Miss Annie said.

Dr. Lavendar was silent. Just what had William heard her say? Only that Miss Harriet was "dead." "I am pretty sure that Willy doesn't know it," he said, slowly. "And I am quite sure he would prefer not to know it; so you mustn't tell him. But you can't understand about that, Annie. You'll just have to believe me. Will you promise me?"

"Why, yes," Miss Annie said, indifferently, smiling up at the moving leaves. "Oh, Harriet isn't hurt now!"

Dr. Lavendar trembled with anxiety. "I want a solemn promise, Annie. What do the children do when they make a solemn promise?"

Miss Annie was instantly interested. "Why, they cross their breast and say 'honest and true'; don't you know?" ...

"Well, then," said Dr. Lavendar, slowly, "you will make a promise to me in that way." He stood up and took her hand, his face very pale. "Promise me that never, so long as you live, will you tell any one--any one, Annie--that you made Harriet fall asleep by giving her the big bottle to smell. Now, make the promise, Annie."

Miss Annie slowly crossed her breast. "I promise," she said, in a low voice; her eyes, widening with awe, were fixed on his face. "I promise:

"Honest and true,
Black and black and blue,
Lay me down
And cut me in two--

if I do."

"_Amen!_" said Dr. Lavendar; and took off his hat, and stood looking up into the sky, his lip trembling. "Father," he said, "I don't even say 'forgive her!' She is Thy little child." And then they stood for a moment hand in hand in the sunny silence.

THE END

BY ONOTO WATANNA

A JAPANESE NIGHTINGALE. A love story of Japan. Full-page Drawings in Color and unique Decorative Color Borders on every page, by the well-known Japanese artist GENJIRO YETO. Crown 8vo, Ornamented Cloth, Deckel Edges, Gilt Top (in a box), $2.00 net.

There could not easily be a more charming volume to look at than this, nor a more delightfully appealing romance to read.--_New York World_.

An idyl of the author's homeland, delicate in fancy and dainty in expression.--_Public Opinion_.

The author and the artist together have produced a charming work of art, as thoroughly imbued with the Japanese spirit as a bit of old Satsuma.--_Buffalo Express_.

"A Japanese Nightingale" is one of the daintiest and most exquisite of love stories; ... indeed, so exquisite is her art, and so delightful the humor of her pages, that more than one critic has spoken of the story as "A Japanese Kentucky Cardinal."--_New York Journal_.

It is full of poetry and charm.--_Current Literature_.

A delicious vein of humor runs through the story, especially in the love scenes, and the style is distinct with the lyrical delicacy of Japanese thought.--_Brooklyn Eagle_.

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS

NEW YORK AND LONDON

_The above work will be sent by mail to any part of the United States, Canada, or Mexico, on receipt of the price_. (_Postage 15 cents._)

BY ROBERT W. CHAMBERS

THE MAID-AT-ARMS. Illustrated by Howard Chandler Christy. Post 8vo, Ornamented Cloth, $1.50.

Mr. Chambers has long since won a most enviable position among contemporary novelists. The great popular success of "Cardigan" makes this present novel of unusual interest to all readers of fiction. It is a stirring novel of American life in days just after the Revolution. It deals with the conspiracy of the great New York land-owners and the subjugation of New York Province to the British. It is a story with a fascinating love interest, and is alive with exciting incident and adventure. Some of the characters of "Cardigan" reappear in this new novel.

HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS

NEW YORK AND LONDON

_The above work will be sent by mail, postage prepaid, to any part of the United States, Canada, or Mexico, on receipt of the price_.

End of Project Gutenberg's Dr. Lavendar's People, by Margaret Deland

<pre id="pg-footer">