Chapter XI: A Wild Revolt

BERTHA stared at the doctor in speechless horror, but he was stirring his coffee again and frowning at the tablecloth as if it had offended him. Then she turned and walked out-of-doors, feeling her way with her hands because she could not see.

It was awful, too awful for words! Busy, active Grace, with her tribe of little children, a hopeless, helpless invalid! Why, surely sudden death would have been kinder! What would they do? Who would nurse Grace and mother the children, wash, cook, and mend for the household? Who would do all these things?

“I shall have to do them myself,” she groaned, then realizing all that it would mean to her cherished prospects and the tremendous giving up that it would involve, she muttered between her set teeth as she clutched at the post of the veranda to keep herself from falling, “I can’t do it, and I won’t! Oh, I won’t!”

How long she stood there she had no idea. She knew that the doctor went past her on his way to the barn; she heard Eunice come to the door and call softly to Bill Humphries and then go back again. But mercifully no one took the slightest notice of her, so she clung fast to her post, while the whirling revolt in her heart grew blacker and wilder, until she felt as if she would go off her head.

It was the cry of a child which brought her to her senses again. Baby Noll had come to grief again, and was yelling in the whole-hearted fashion in which he always voiced his woes. Tom must not hear him, and the crying of the child would be sure to rouse him. Bertha remembered how Grace had often said that Tom always heard the children cry at night long before they roused her.

Moving slowly, because she felt so weak and spent, Bertha went to pick up the crying child, and comforted him, as she had often done before, until he was soon laughing again; for happily his griefs did not last long. Then she went back to the house. It was all very well to make up her mind that she would accept no responsibility with regard to this distressful family in the immediate future, but to save her own self-respect, and because her heart was kinder than she believed it to be, she had got to do her duty by them at the present. She was clearing up the kitchen, moving in a dull, mechanical fashion because of her dreadful weariness, when Eunice came out of the bedroom and laid forcible hands upon her.

“You must have some rest or you will break down, and you have been such a dear, brave child,” said the little woman kindly.

“I can’t rest yet; I have to call the doctor at three o’clock, and this muddle must be cleared up,” said Bertha, stoutly resisting any attempt to make her rest, but secretly wincing at the words of praise from Eunice, because she knew herself unworthy of them.

“I can call the doctor, or I can rouse you to go and do it at the proper time. Come in with me and lie on the children’s bed for a little rest, then you will feel so much better, more fit to help everyone who needs you,” said the little woman in her gentle, persuasive fashion.

Bertha yielded then because she had no more strength to hold out, only when she went into the room where Grace lay unconscious she glanced fearfully at the still white face, as if fearing that the mute lips would upbraid her for the wild revolt which was tearing at her heart. Then she dropped on to the little bed where the twins slept at night, and for a brief spell her troubles were forgotten in the slumber which comes so easily when one is young.

It was Eunice who called the doctor, for Bertha was so very fast asleep. Then he came stealing into the room, looked at Grace, gave a curt order or two under his breath, and then rode away. He would come again to-morrow. Meanwhile, there was nothing to be done but to watch and wait.

It was six o’clock when Bertha woke, and she was dreadfully ashamed of herself for having slept so long. She went out to get supper then and to bring in the tired children, who had played out-of-doors the whole day long. Bill Humphries wanted her to say that he might take Dicky and Molly back with him for a while, so that they should be off her hands, but Bertha, remembering how useful those two had been in looking after the three babies that day, said that she could not spare them. It was a little puzzling to know where to put them to bed that night, but finally the three youngest were put into their mother’s room as usual, and if their father did not rouse later on, Dicky and Molly would have to sleep on the sofa which stood in the kitchen. But she and Eunice would watch in the sickroom; for who could say what the turn of the night might bring to the white-faced woman on the bed?

Young Humphries rode Pucker home in the evening. He brought medicine from the doctor with him, and he had also discovered the two horses feeding by the side of the trail through the wheatfields, had managed to catch them, and had brought them along also. He told Eunice that her brother had come home, so that the post office need not trouble her, and that someone would come out next morning to relieve her as nurse for a few hours. Then he helped his father hitch the frisky horses to the wagon, and the two drove away in the twilight, and darkness dropped softly over the wide stretches of wheat and over the little house with its burden of pain.

Tom Ellis was still asleep, and the two elder children, to their great delight, were put to bed on the couch, where they lay in rapturous enjoyment of the novelty of the situation, giggling ecstatically until they went to sleep.

It was at the turn of the night, that weird hour between one day and another, when so many sufferers slip their fetters, that the eyes of Grace came open, and in a tone of surprise she asked: “Where am I?”

“At home in bed,” replied Bertha, making her voice sound as natural as she could, though she was trembling in every limb.

“Was it a bad dream that I have been having, then?” Grace asked. “I thought that I was hurt, or was it Tom? Oh, Bertha, where is Tom?”

“He is asleep on the bed in the other room,” said Bertha soothingly, while Eunice sank farther back in the shadows, fearing to excite Grace with her presence just then.

“Bertha, there was an accident then, and he was hurt! Is he still alive, oh, tell me, quick, quick?” she panted, her eyes moving with an expression of the keenest distress; but she did not lift a finger or attempt to move herself in any way.

Bertha stooped over her and gently stroked her face. “He is not hurt at all, dear, only he is very, very tired, for he brought you home in his arms. It took hours; he was fearfully exhausted, and the doctor said that we were not to wake him on any account.”

“The doctor? Then he is hurt? Oh, Bertha, Bertha, it is cruel, cruel to tell me falsehoods even in kindness!” exclaimed Grace, and there was such a pathos in her voice that Bertha shrank back affrighted, looking at Eunice for help.

The little woman stepped forward out of the shadows and gently thrust Bertha to one side.

“She is quite right, Mrs. Ellis, your husband was not hurt. It was you that were thrown, pitched on to your head, and it has made you dazed for a time. Mr. Ellis had to carry you so far that he was really knocked up, though I think it was his worry on your account that upset him as much as anything.”

“Why, it is Miss Long!” said Grace, in great surprise.

“Yes, I came over when I heard that you had had a fall. Bertha is not very much used to sickness, you see, and I knew that you would come to me if I were bad and needed you. Now, suppose you take this stuff the doctor left for you and then try to sleep, you will feel better when you wake again,” said Eunice, a kind of mesmeric soothing in her voice, as she held the medicine to the lips of Grace.

“I can’t move, and I can’t feel what is the matter with me. Shall I be better when I wake?” asked Grace, with such a look of terror in her face, that Eunice swallowed a sob and kept her voice steady with a great difficulty.

“You will be stronger when you wake. Go to sleep now, dear, go to sleep,” said the little woman gently, and then, under the influence of the medicine, which was a sleeping draught, Grace was speedily unconscious again.

“Her brain is all right, thank God!” said Eunice, in a low moved tone, as the two stood looking at the quiet figure in her deep slumber.

“But her body! Oh, Miss Long, did you hear what she said?” cried Bertha, with a sob.

“Yes; but the body is such a small matter compared with the brain, and in time who can say but what she may be quite well again. Stranger things have happened, and doctors are human and likely to make mistakes like the rest of us,” said Eunice, in a cheerful tone; then she added, with a graver note in her voice, “Meanwhile, she has you, and what a blessing you will be in the house! It will be your chance of paying back to your cousin the care she gave to you and your sisters when your mother died.”

Bertha drew a sharp breath and turned away without answering. This was a side of the question she had not looked at before. She had entirely ignored her own responsibility in the matter in that night’s wild revolt, and the recollection of it was like a fetter to bind her to the life from which she was so anxious to escape.

Tom did not wake until daylight, and then he was himself again, at least it was a comfort to know there was no fear of having him for an invalid also; and Bertha tried to rally her drooping spirits as the day wore on, telling herself that most probably things would not be so bad or so black as at first they had threatened.

It was late in the afternoon when the doctor came, and Grace was just rousing out of her deep, drug-induced sleep. Again it was Eunice and the doctor who were shut up with her, while Bertha waited in anxious dread outside the closed door, and Tom, who did not know that there was anything to dread, hovered round, so glad and thankful that his wife was still alive, that it made Bertha’s heart ache to watch him.

Why, oh why had Eunice not warned him of what might be in store? It seemed so cruel to let him hope when perhaps there was no hope.

“What a long time the doctor is in there! Was he as long yesterday?” Tom asked, coming restlessly into the kitchen and standing by the table where Bertha was busy breadmaking. To her it was like the grimmest irony of things that daily work had to be done, whatever issues were at stake. But she only nodded her head in reply, for at that moment the doctor came out of the room, and, crossing to the outer door, beckoned to Tom to follow him. Bertha heaved a great sigh of relief. At least she had been spared the heavy task of letting him know of the trouble which might be in store for him.

In about ten minutes he was back again with such a look on his face as she had never seen there before, and she caught her breath in a little gasp of amazement. It was a glorified expression that he wore, and it lifted him above the commonplace.

“Can I go in?” he asked, as Eunice at this moment appeared on the threshold of the inner room; and when the little woman nodded her head, he passed in and shut the door behind him.

If trouble could make a plain man look like that, surely it could not be unmixed disaster! That was the thought in Bertha’s mind for the remainder of the day, and though she tried to escape it she could not. All her life she had worshipped beauty wherever she could find it. Tom Ellis had seemed hitherto to be only a struggling unlettered farmer, more intent on making money than improving his intellectual standing; but the blow which might have felled a less noble soul had left him standing erect and strong, so surely the disaster had wrought him only good.

The question was, What would it do for her? Could she, too, rise above this crushing blow of fate and watch all her bright ambitions smitten to the dust, while only the satisfaction of duty done remained to her? Could she rise above it? Could she?

But meanwhile there was bread to bake, five little children to care for and feed, the housework to do, and all the thousand-and-one things that come to tax the strength and patience of the prairie housekeeper, so Bertha went straight on, leaving the question of what she could really do and bear to settle itself.