Part Five. In Which The Brook Becomes A River And Flows By Great Cities - Chapter 19. Fate Lands Me On The Rocks

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_ PART FIVE. IN WHICH THE BROOK BECOMES A RIVER AND FLOWS BY GREAT CITIES
CHAPTER XIX. FATE LANDS ME ON THE ROCKS

Long periods of time passed; days perhaps, perhaps years. Some one, I know, turned with difficulty on his side, so that the puddle did not choke his mouth and nostrils. Some one, by and by, felt something warm and wet and rough against his icy cheek and was grateful for the feeling. Some one was reading to me from a book which described the sensations of a man lifted up and carried in a broken balloon that could only ride a foot from the ground, bumping and jarring horribly, and I was that man, in some strange way, and at the same time I was the illustrations that accompanied the tale. I read the story myself finally, aloud and very shrilly, as that unfortunate man bumped along. After days of this cold journey, the man fell out of the balloon into a warm lake and was delighted with the change, for his very soul was chilled--until he realised, at first dimly, that the water was growing hotter every minute and that the intention was to torture him to death! I was that man, moreover, and I kicked and screamed wildly, though every motion in the boiling water was agony. Just at the point when my breath was failing and my heart slowed, they turned off the water in the lake from a tap, and as it slowly receded, I was safe again, and knew I could fall asleep.

Long I slept, and dreamed inexpressibly, and then I would feel the insidious lapping of the warm lake, rejoice a moment in the comforting heat, then realise with horror that the temperature was rising slowly but surely, and the inferno would begin all over again. Every joint and muscle was red-hot, each burning breath cut me like a knife.

I could not count how many times this happened, but I prayed loudly for the man to die (he had been confirmed, so he had a legal right to pray) and after a long time I began to have hopes that he would, for he discovered a way of drawing his face down under the boiling water and ceasing to breathe. Whenever he did this, a cold, smarting rain drove through the water on his face and forced him to breathe, but he managed to sink deeper and deeper, till at last he felt the throb of the great world on its axle going round, and saw the stars below him, and knew he was nearly free.

"More oxygen!" said a tiny, dry voice far off in infinite space, "more oxygen!"

I grew light and rose to the surface; the stars went out.

"More oxygen!" said the voice again, louder now and close to me. I fought to sink back again but it was useless; I burst up to the surface and breathed the sweet, icy air against my will.

"Now the mustard again, over the heart," said the voice, "and try the brandy."

Something ran like fire through my veins, I opened my eyes, stared into a black, bearded face and said distinctly:

"You nearly lost that man. He heard the thing going round."

Then I fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

I was very weak and tired when I woke, but quite composed. That feeling of gentleness and conscious pathos that floods the weak and empty and lately racked body was mine, and I looked pensively at the white, blue-veined hand that lay so lax on the counterpane. What a siege it had been for the poor devil that owned that hand! For I realised that I had been very, very ill indeed.

As I studied the hand it was lifted gently from the counterpane by another and clasped lightly but firmly at the wrist. The arm above this hand was clad in striped blue and white gingham; a full white apron fell just at the limit of my sidewise vision. I was far too weak to raise my eyes, but it occurred to me that this must be my landlady, for I recognised the footboard of my bed. And yet it was not at all like my room. The arm-chair was gone, the books were gone, the student lamp was gone, although it was my sitting-room. Then why was the bed there? I frowned impatiently and then the white apron lowered itself, a white collar appeared, and above it a face which was perfectly familiar to me, though I could not attach any name to it.

"What can I do for you, Mr. Jerrolds? a drink, perhaps?" said a clear, competent voice, and I knew at once who she was--the Professor's sister's trained nurse. For one dreadful moment I feared I was the Professor's sister--it seemed to me it must be so, that there was no other course open to me, for that was the person Miss Buxton nursed! Then, as she repeated my name quietly, it was as if a veil had been drawn, and I understood everything. My bed had been moved into the study; her bed was in my room. Doubtless the Professor had sent for her.

I felt thirsty, and hungry, too, a fact known to her, apparently, for in a moment she brought me a bowl of delicious broth, which she fed me very neatly by the spoonful. It made another man of me, that broth, and I watched her record it on a formidable chart, devoted to my important affairs, with great interest.

"Have I been ill long?" I asked, and my voice sounded hollow and rather high to my critical sense.

"Two weeks, Mr. Jerrolds," she said promptly, "quite long enough, wasn't it? It has been most interesting: a very pretty case, indeed."

"What was it?"

"Inflammatory rheumatism," she said, with a gratifying absence of doubt or delay (such a relief to a sick person!) "and a great deal of fever, very high. You ran a remarkable temperature, Mr. Jerrolds."

I received this information with the peculiar complacence of the invalid. It seemed to me to denote marked ability and powers beyond the common, that fever!

"How did I get here?"

She sat in a low chair by the bed and regarded me pleasantly out of the kind, wise, brown eyes.

"I will tell you all about it," she said, "because I am sure you will be easier, but after I am through I want you to try to compose yourself and go off to sleep, because this will be enough talking for now, and I want you to be fresh for the doctor. Do you understand?"

I dropped my eyelids in token of agreement and she went on.

"You remember that you complained of feeling unwell in Paris at Mr. Bradley's house. You probably had quite a temperature then, though you might not have known it. You came directly back to Oxford, but for forty-eight hours no one knew where you were, for the people here supposed you there. Finally, when Mr. Bradley telegraphed, they grew anxious here, and while they were wondering what to do, your dog ran in, acting so strangely that they suspected something and followed him. He led them directly to you and they found you unconscious in a marshy old lane about six miles out from the town. They brought you here in a horse blanket, the Professor sent for me, and we have been taking care of you ever since. Mr. Bradley has been here twice, but you were too ill to see anybody; he saw that everything possible was being done. I shall write him directly that you are on the uphill road now, and that care and patience are all you need.

"Now, take this medicine, Mr. Jerrolds, and repay me for this long story by going directly to sleep."

I took it, lay for a moment in a dreamy wonder, and drifted off. As she had said, the uphill journey had begun.

That afternoon I saw the doctor, a grizzled, kindly man, and it was he who told me what I had already somehow divined--that I owed my life to Harriet Buxton.

"I never saw such nursing," he said frankly; "the woman has a real genius. It was nip and tuck with you, Mr. Jerrolds, and she simply set her teeth and wouldn't give up! One can't wonder the American nurses get such prices--they're worth it. Now it's hold hard and cultivate your patience, and get back that two or three stone we lost during the siege, and then good-bye to me!"

But oh, how long it was! Day after day, and night after night, and day after day again I counted the pieces of furniture in the bare, dull room and read faces into the hideous wall-paper and stared into the empty window. The little night-light punctuated the dark; the feeble sunlight struggled through the rain. The few kindly friends who called upon me I could not see; their sympathetic commonplaces were unendurable to my weakened nerves. Had it not been for the return, now and then, of the pains I had suffered in my delirium, mercifully less and less violent, which made the periods of their absence hours of comparative pleasure, I think I should have grown into a hopeless nervous invalid from sheer ennui. I had never been ill that I remember since the days of my childish maladies, and I fretted as only such an one can and must fret under the irksome novelty of pain, weakness and irritation.

How Harriet Buxton bore with my whims and fads and downright rudeness, I cannot tell. When in a fit of contrition I asked her this, she smiled and said that men were generally irritable.

"But I should go mad if I were obliged to humour the caprices of such a bear as I!"

"But you are not a nurse!" she answered quietly.

After ten days of steady convalescence, when I was propped up a little upon my pillows and could feed myself very handily from an ever-increasingly varied menu, I asked suddenly if she had heard from Roger lately.

"Yes," she said promptly, "only yesterday. I was waiting till you asked. Before I give you the letter I must tell you that they are no longer in Paris: they have gone back to America."

"America?" I echoed vaguely, with a half-shocked consciousness that I did not care very much one way or the other where they were.

"Yes, Mr. Bradley came in the day before they sailed, but you were far too ill to see him. At the same time I saw no reason why you should not pull through, and told him so. Mrs. Bradley suddenly expressed a wish to go to her old home, and though for some reasons they did not like to let her begin a sea voyage, for other reasons they wanted to gratify her. She grew quite determined and they decided to allow it. You know she expects her baby in June."

"Yes I know," I said quietly. I remembered the man who had tramped the wet lanes, but to-day he seemed to me a wicked fool, justly punished for his folly. For I knew, though no one had told me, that I should never be the same after this sickness. The very fibres of my soul had been twisted and burned in that white-hot furnace of my delirium, and though Nature might forgive me, she could never forget. Every winter she would take her toll, every damp season she would audit my account, after every exposure or fatigue she would lightly tap some shrinking nerve and whisper "Remember!" A passion whose strength I had never suspected had brought me to this bed, and in this bed that same passion had struggled and shrivelled and died. It was with no mock philosophy that I thought of Margarita. No, the fool knew his folly now. But it was a folly of which I had no need, I verily believe, to feel ashamed. It was not that I was the sort of monk we are told the Devil would be, when he was sick, although my physical weakness may have lain--God knows!--at the root of it, once. No, I had changed. Those who have gone through some such change (and I wonder, sometimes, how many of the passive, unremarkable people I pass on the street, in the fields, in hotels, have gone through such) know how well I knew the truth of this matter and how little likely I was to deceive myself. I loved her, yes, and shall love her while consciousness remains with me, but it would never again be bitter in my mouth and black in my heart.

"Let me see the letter, please, Miss Buxton," I asked, and she brought it, cutting it for me with her neat accuracy of motion and conservation of energy. I spread the single sheet open and began, but I never read more than one line of that letter.

For it began,

Dear old Jerry:

Ever since Kitchener found you, I have changed--

"Kitch! Kitch!" I cried, overcome with shame and penitence. "Oh, Miss Buxton, do you--does anybody--"

"He is just outside," she said, "I will have him sent up at once. I thought you would want him soon, Mr. Jerrolds. And don't worry--he has never been neglected."

I clutched the sheet in my impatience. Very soon there was a scurrying through the hall, a little gasping snuffle, a small, sharp bark. Then he was on the bed before I saw his good brindled head, almost, and in my arms. I pressed my face against his dear, quivering coat, I surrendered my cheek to his warm, rough tongue, I translated each happy convulsive wriggle.

"Dear old Kitch--good fellow!" I muttered, none too steadily, for I was not strong yet, and he seemed suddenly the only friend on whom I could unreservedly count. Roger had wished to stay with me, I knew, but of course he must go with his wife, and I am glad that I never grudged his absence a moment. For this cause shall a man leave his life-long friend and cleave only to her, and there is no other way. But nothing, nothing could separate Kitch and me!

Miss Buxton left us alone together and we discussed the situation gravely and thoroughly and assured each other that it was only a matter of patience, now, and then, away together!

My spirits rose from the day he came in, and in another week I had advanced to a deep cushioned chair in the window for an hour a day. But it was not a very interesting window, commanding as it did my neighbour's eight-foot garden wall crowned with inhospitable broken glass, and though I appreciate the marvel of the spring as much, I suppose, as most of us, I could never occupy myself very long with natural beauties exclusively, and the trees and the grass could not satisfy my craving for human interest. Now that I was ready for them, all my friends were off for their Easter holiday, and I would not keep the Professor from his spring gardening, though he offered manfully. I have never cared for games, with the single exception of his beloved chess, and my eyes soon tired of reading.

And so at last, in default of something more to my mind, I turned to my nurse and determined to make that silent woman talk. At first it was difficult, for I tried to discover her feelings, her attitude, her history. As to the first two of these I met only failure and the last was pathetically simple. An orphan she was, a bread-winner, an observer. I say it was pathetic, but not that she was. Things are changing rapidly with women, I can see that plainly, but twenty years ago a man still felt, ridiculously perhaps, that a kindly, competent woman, however successful in her chosen profession, must needs be, in the very nature of the case, even more kindly and more competent with a child on her lap and an arm about her waist. If in the new doctrine of the Brotherhood of Man it is admitted that we owe each our debt to humanity and posterity, I, for one, have never been able to understand why women should not pay that debt in the coinage most obviously provided them for the purpose. The Brotherhood of Man is a great idea, but surely without the Motherhood of Woman it would grow a little shadowy and impractical. (I speak as a fool!)

And so, I repeat, there was something a little pathetic to me in Harriet Buxton's life, though nothing in the least pathetic in her personality or her actions. Do not turn on me too fiercely, dear ladies, and demand of me with your well-known remorseless logic, what would have become of me if Harriet Buxton had not been beside me in my delirium, with nothing but a clinical thermometer on her knee, and a white apron around her waist. Do not, I beg you, for I shall shock all your strict habits of mind by taking refuge in blind, illogical instinct and reiterating my firm conviction that though I perish, truth is so, and that Nature had a better use for Harriet's lap and waist. She had! (as you used to say in the old emotional era) she had!! She had!!!

Well, in despair of eliciting anything romantic from her, I languidly inquired as to her travels. They were not extensive: this was her first "trip abroad." It had been rather a failure, in a way, for although she had been engaged with the understanding that her passage was to be paid both ways, her patient on recovery had decided to spend the summer abroad, and had made it very evident that she did not consider herself any longer responsible for her nurse under these circumstances!

"You should have taken legal advice," I expostulated, "the woman was dishonest. It was shocking, Miss Buxton--surely you could have done something?"

"Perhaps," she admitted, "but I had no friends here and it was hard enough to get my salary, anyway. I could have gone with Mrs. Bradley if I had been free. As it was, I sent them another American nurse I knew of in London, who was glad to go back."

"Why didn't you send her to me and go yourself?" I questioned curiously, "if you want to go so much?"

She looked at me in sincere surprise.

"Why, I had already accepted your case, Mr. Jerrolds," she said.

Alas, Harriet! Why, why were you not teaching your simple code of honour to some sturdy, kilted Harry?

There seemed to be nothing more to be got from Miss Buxton, and we began to discuss the best winter climate for me, for I understood perfectly that for more years than the doctor cared to impress upon me just now I must avoid damp and chill. We discussed Nassau, Bermuda, Florida, and I mentioned North Carolina. Then Harriet Buxton opened her lips and spoke, and in a few amazed moments it became clear to me that I was in the presence of a fanatic.

For she had been in North Carolina, and this State that for me had spelled only a remarkably curative air and a deplorably illiterate population represented the hope of this woman's life, the ambition of her days and nights, the Macedonia that cried continually in her ears, "Come over and help us!"

For a year she had lived there in the western mountains, giving her duty's worth of hours to a wealthy patient, bargaining for so much free time to devote to that strange, pathetic race of pure-blooded mountaineers, tall, serious, shy Anglo-Saxons, our veritable elder brothers, ignorant appallingly, superstitious incredibly, grateful and generous to a degree. As she talked, rapidly now, with flushing cheeks and kindling eyes, she brought vividly before me these pale and patient people, welcoming her with eager hands, hanging on her wonderful skill, listening like chidden children to her horrified insistence upon long-forgotten decencies and sanitary measures never guessed. As my questions grew her confidence grew with them, and at last she went quickly to her room to return with a thick, black book, which she thrust into my hands.

"It's my diary," she explained. "If you are really interested you may read it. Oh Mr. Jerrolds, to think of the money that goes to Africa and India and slums full of Syrians and Russian Jews, when these Americans--our real kin, you know!--are putting an axe under the bed, with the blade up, to check a haemorrhage! If they were Zulus," she added, flashing, "some one might do something for them."

I could not keep myself from staring at her: with that flush, those kindling brown eyes and that heaving bosom, my nurse was near to being a handsome woman! And all because the natives of North Carolina had no adequate hospital service. Can you imagine anything more extraordinary? I opened the book curiously; not, of course, that I cared tuppence for the natives, but that I had actually begun to feel interested in Harriet Buxton.

I should never have thought of it again, probably, but for Harriet herself, for now that the magic string had been touched, her heart overflowed to its echoes, and my waking hours were filled with anecdotes touching, brutal or humourous, of her years of joy and labour. Her cottage rent had cost her forty dollars, her clothes nothing, her food had come largely from the grateful people. Over and over again she returned to her ridiculously pitiful calculations. She could live for one hundred dollars a year. She could have the use of a deserted schoolhouse, free. Two hundred dollars would fit up a tiny hospital and lending-closet, with linen, rubber articles, simple sick-room conveniences. If she had five hundred, she would start on that and trust to getting help to go on with. She could stay there a year, then nurse for a year, and go back with the money she had saved.

And so on, and so on, and so on! The floods of North Carolina needs that swept over my helpless head would have drowned a stronger brain than mine. In vain I tried to dam this tide of confidences and hopes and ha'penny economies: it was useless. After a week, during which actual photographs, hideous blue prints, the first advance guard of that flood of amateur photography destined to wash over the world, were brought out for my edification, I rebelled and declared myself cured.

"And to get rid of you," I added crossly, "I am going to give you this," and I handed her her weekly cheque, plus a draft for a hundred pounds. "Take it, and get off to those benighted natives, for heaven's sake!"

She stared at it, at me, at it again, then choked and fled to her room. I felt like a fool.

Later, when I saw what it really meant to the absurd creature, I surreptitiously copied bits of the sordid little diary, and sent them to Roger with a slight account of her, and suggested that he mention this matter to Sarah (who had recently washed her hands of the American negro on the occasion of his having bitterly disappointed her hopes in a brutal race riot) and give that philanthropist's energies a new direction.

I saw Harriet off to her boat, tried in vain to get a half hour of rational conversation on topics unrelated to the western mountains of North Carolina, agreed hastily to all directions as to my health, held Kitch up to be kissed, and went back to my sunny garden-corner, for it was full May now, and my strength was growing with the flowers.

I thought that chapter ended, and was startled and not a little shaken by the thick letter that found me planning my lonely summer early in June. It was from Harriet, a curious, incoherent screed; tiresomely detailed as to her plans, painfully brief as to important issues. She had found a letter from Mr. Bradley awaiting her arrival, she had followed his suggestions and interested Miss Sarah Bradley, his cousin, in her schemes, with the result that the Episcopal organisation had sent a deaconess for a year to work under Harriet's direction and a contribution toward fitting out the little hospital. She had gone to see Roger and thank him personally and found him on an island, with Mrs. Bradley in sudden and acute need of both nurse and physician, the former with a broken leg, the latter gone to New York for the day, as his prospective patient was supposed to be in no immediate need of him. She had hastily set the nurse's leg, telegraphed for the doctor, then devoted herself to Mrs. Bradley, who, though beautifully strong and well, developed sudden complications and gave her quite a little trouble. Things were rather doubtful and hard for five or six hours, but fortunately the doctor had left full supplies for the occasion and the other nurse was able to give the anaesthetic--she was dragged on a sofa by a deaf and dumb man, who ran five miles to the village just before. It ended triumphantly at dawn and Mrs. Bradley had a lovely little girl--the image of her father. Both were doing well.

Mr. Bradley had overestimated her services, and as she could not dream of accepting the fee he offered her, he had insisted upon paying a salary for three years to a young physician (selected by the doctor, who arrived at noon) who was to give his entire time and strength to the mountain hospital and superintend the affair, now grown into a real institution, since Mr. Elder had volunteered to supply a young fellow from his club, anxious to act as orderly and assistant for the sake of the training, and Mrs. Paynter, a friend of Mr. Bradley's, had managed to get a full dispensary supply at cost prices from connections of hers in the wholesale drug line.

"And it all comes from you, Mr. Jerrolds," the letter ended, "all owing to your wonderful, your noble interest, in this work! You told Mr. Bradley, and though he is not justified in thinking I saved her life, it is perfectly true that those cases give us a great deal of trouble sometimes, and I was very fortunate in having had a great deal of maternity work in the mountains, when I had to act all alone and do rather daring things. But I got the practice there, and so if I did save your friend's life (or the baby's, which is nearer the truth, I confess to you, Mr. Jerrolds!) you have amply rewarded the cause that gave me the training to do what I did!

"Your grateful

"HARRIET BUXTON."

I sat under the glass-topped wall, the letter between my knees, staring at the brick walk bordered with green turf. How strange it was, how incredibly strange! A curious sense of watchful, relentless destiny grew in me. Truly it slumbered not nor slept! I, who had cursed that child unborn, had reached over seas and helped it into the world! I, who had been jealous of my friend, had sent him a friend indeed! I, who had grudged Margarita husband and child (for in my black, cruel fever I did this) had given her back to both!

I pondered these things long (as if the thread in the tapestry should marvel at its devious windings) and then summoned my landlady.

"Mrs. Drabbit," said I, "I am thinking of going to America."

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Read next: Part Six. In Which You Are Shown The River's Very Sources, Far Underground: Chapter 20. A Garden Glimpse Of Eden

Read previous: Part Five. In Which The Brook Becomes A River And Flows By Great Cities: Chapter 18. My Pearl Of Too Great Price

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