Dr. Lavendar's People

"'Not more than six months;' God grant not! – I wish it might not be more than two."

"Willy, read what comes next," she said, shoving the programme at him; "I can't stop looking."

The canvas was darkening a little overhead, so that William had to put on his glasses and hold the printed sheet at arm's-length to decipher the blurred, smudged text sufficiently to say that "Mademoiselle Orinda, Queen of the Flying Trapeze, would give her marv – "

"William – what shall I do about Annie?" Miss Harriet said.

"You know we will all take care of Miss Annie," he said, tenderly; "and – "

"Oh, Willy, there's the red lemonade," she interrupted, standing up and beckoning with her crumpled programme. "Did you ever see so deadly a drink? You forgot the pea-nuts," she reminded him, reproachfully. And when William secured his hot, brown-paper bag, she ate the pea-nuts and watched the changing wonders of the ring with intent eyes. She laughed aloud at the clown's endeavors to ride a kicking donkey, and when the educated dogs carried one another about in a wheelbarrow she applauded generously. "They are wonderful!" she said.

William King looked at her keenly; it was all real. Miss Harriet was incapable of pretence.

The brilliant day, that had showed between lacings of the tent like strings of sapphires, had dimmed and dimmed; and by-and-by, unnoticed at first, there was the drip of rain. Here and there an umbrella was raised, and once or twice a bedraggled man or woman led out a reluctant child – "For I ain't a-goin' to have you catch your death of cold for no trained elephants," a mother said, decidedly, pulling a whining boy from beside Miss Harriet.

"Perhaps," ventured the doctor, "we really ought to go. I can't have you 'catch your death of cold,' Miss Harriet."

"I won't die of a cold, William," she said, her eyes narrowing.

And William swore at himself under his breath, but said, with clumsy jocularity: "Well, not if I can help it. But I don't know why you should be so sure; it might give you bronchitis for a year."

"I won't have bronchitis for a year," Miss Harriet said, gazing at the clowns.

And William King swore at himself again.

The rain increased to a downpour; little streams at first dripped, then poured, upon the thinning benches. The great centre pole was streaming wet; the clown stood in a puddle, and the red triangle on his chalk-white forehead melted into a pink smear.

"Really, Miss Harriet," William said, anxiously, "I'm afraid – "

"If you're afraid for yourself, I'll go," she said; "but we ought to wait for the grand concert. (Ah! there's the man with the red balloons. If you had a half-dozen children, Willy, as you ought to have, I'd buy him out.) Well, are you sugar or salt, to be so scared of a drop of rain?"

She did not look afraid of rain herself when she got up and pushed past the scattered spectators, her hair glistening with drops, her cheeks red, her eyes clear. "William," she said, when they got outside and were hurrying along to catch the stage for Old Chester – "William, that has done me good. I feel superbly. Do you know, I haven't had an instant's pain since I first spoke of the thing to you? That's three days entirely free. Why, such a thing hasn't happened in – in three months. Just think of that – entirely free. William, I'll cheat you doctor-men yet." She looked at him with glowing courage. "I feel so well," she said.

She held out her hand, there in the rain on the black cinder-path, and William King struck his into it with a sort of shout.

"Hurrah!" he said, as she had said when they had come out from hearing the sentence in the Mercer doctor's office.

The long ride home in the stage, in which they were the only passengers, was perhaps a descending scale… At first they talked of the circus. "I liked the man and the bear best," William said.

"Oh, he wasn't as fine as that beautiful lady in pink petticoats who rode the fat, white horse. Did you ever see a horse with so broad a back, Willy? Why, I could have ridden him myself."

"He would need a broad back," William said; and Miss Harriet told him to hold his tongue and not be impudent. The rain was pattering on the roof and streaming down the windows, and in the dark, damp cavern of the stage they could not see each other's face very well; but the stretches of tense silence in the circus talk made William King's heart beat heavily, although he burst out gayly that the afternoon had brought back his youth. "Miss Harriet, when you were a child, didn't you always want to poke around under the seats when it was over and find things? William Rives once found five cents. But William would find five cents in the Desert of Sahara. I never had his luck, but I was confident that watches were dropped freely by the spectators."

"Of course," cried Miss Harriet. "Or diamond-rings. My fancy led me towards diamond-rings. But I suppose you never knew the envy of the ladies' clothes? Dear me – those petticoats!"

"The ring-master's boots were very bitter to me; but my greatest desire was – "

"Willy," Miss Harriet said, hoarsely, "I don't want anybody to know."

"Of course not," William King said. "Why should they? We may hold this thing at bay for – "

"We will hold it at bay," she said, with passion. "I will! I will! Do you hear me?"

Willy King murmured something inarticulately; his eyes suddenly smarted.

The ride to Old Chester seemed to him interminable; and when, after wandering snatches of talk about the circus, the stage at last drew up at the green gate in Miss Harriet's privet hedge, his nerves were tense and his face haggard with fatigue.

At home, at his belated supper-table, his good Martha was very severe with him. "You oughtn't to allow yourself to get so tired; it's wrong. You could just as well as not have ordered your things by mail. I must say, William, flatly and frankly, that a doctor ought to have more sense. I hope there was nobody in the stage you knew to talk you to death?"

"Miss Harriet came down," William said, "but she hadn't much to say."

"I suppose she went to buy some of her horrid supplies?" Martha said. "I can't understand that woman – catching things in traps. How would she like to be caught in a trap? I asked her once – because I am always perfectly frank with people. 'How would you like to be caught in a trap, Miss Harriet?' I said. And she said, 'Oh, Annie would let me out.' You never can get a straight answer out of Harriet Hutchinson."

"My dear, I'll take another cup of tea. Stronger, please."

"My dear, strong tea isn't good for you," Martha said.

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?"