“well, mis’ lapham, i am sorry to hear it, i must say! it doos seem’s though you’d had your share of affliction!”
mrs. henry dodge always emphasised a great many of her words, which habit gave to her remarks an impression of peculiar sincerity and warmth; a perfectly correct impression, too, it must be admitted. her needle, moreover, being quite as energetic as her tongue, she was a valuable member of the sewing-circle, at which function she was now assisting with much spirit.
mrs. lapham accepted this tribute to her many trials with becoming modesty. she was a dull, colourless woman whose sole distinction lay in the visitations of 132 affliction, and it is not too much to affirm that she was proud of them. she was sewing, not too rapidly, on a very long seam, which occupation was typical of her course of life. she sighed heavily in response to her neighbour’s words of sympathy, and said:
“it did seem hard that it should have been dan, just as he was beginning to be a help to his uncle, and all. but i s’pose we’d ought to have been prepared for it.”
“there’s been quite a pause in the death-roll,” the widow criswell observed. she was engaged in sewing a button on a boy’s jacket with a black thread.
“how long is it since eliza went?” asked miss louisa bailey, pursuing the widow’s train of thought.
“seven years this month. she began to cough at christmas, and by washington’s birthday she was in her grave.”
“and jane? they didn’t go very far apart, did they?”
“no, jane died eleven months before eliza; and their mother went three years 133 before that, and their father when dan was a baby; that’s goin’ on sixteen years.”
“well, you have had a hard time, i will say!” exclaimed mrs. dodge. “your martha losing her little girl, and john’s wife breaking her collar-bone, and all, and now this to be gone through with! i should think you’d feel discouraged!”
“i do; real discouraged. but i s’pose it’s no more than i’d ought to expect, with such an inheritance.”
“have there been many cases of lung-trouble on your side of the family, mrs. lapham?” miss bailey inquired with respectful interest.
“no; sister fitch was the first case.”
for a few seconds, conversation languished, and only the snip of mrs. royce’s scissors could be heard, and the soft rustle of cotton cloth. the sewing-circle was going on in the church vestry where there was a faint odour from the kerosene lamps, which had just been lighted. the widow criswell was the first to break the silence. 134
“polly ain’t showed no symptoms yet, has she?” she asked, testing one of the buttons as if sceptical of her thread.
“well, no; not yet. but then dan seemed as smart as anybody six months ago, and just look at him to-day!”
the mental eyes of a score of women were turned upon dan, as he was daily seen, round-shouldered and hollow-chested, toiling along the snowy country roads to and from school, coughing as he went. the topic was not an uncongenial one to the members of the sewing-circle, who had really very little to talk about. so absorbed were they, indeed, in the discussion of poor dan’s fate, and of the long list of casualties that had preceded it, that no one noticed the entrance of a young girl, rosy-cheeked and bright-eyed, who had come to help with the supper. there was an air of peculiar freshness about her, and as she stood in her blue dress and white apron near the door, her ruddy brown hair shining in the lamp-light, the effect was like the opening of a window in a close room. her step was arrested in 135 the act of coming forward, and, as she paused to listen, the pretty colour was quite blotted out of her cheeks.
“i don’t think dan’s will be a lingering case,” mrs. lapham was saying. “the lingering cases are the most trying.”
polly stood motionless. was it true then, that which she had dreaded, that which she had shrunk from facing? was it more than a cold that dan had got? was dan really ill? her dan? really ill? her heart was beating like a trip-hammer, but no one seemed to hear it.
“queer that the doctors don’t find any cure for lung-trouble,” mrs. royce was saying. “seems as though there must be some way of stopping it, if you could only find it out.”
“have you tried kinderling’s certain cure?” asked mrs. dodge. “they do say that it’s very efficacious.”
“well, no,” said mrs. lapham; “i don’t hold much to medicines myself; but if i did i should think it just a wilful waste to try them for dan. the 136 boy’s doomed, to begin with, and there’s no help for it.”
“there is a help for it, there shall be a help for it!” cried a voice, vibrating with youthful energy and emotion. “i don’t see how you can talk so, aunt lucia! dan isn’t doomed! he sha’n’t die! i won’t let him die!”
the women looked at polly and then they looked at one another, fairly abashed by the girl’s spirit; all, that is, excepting aunt lucia, who was not impressionable enough to feel anything but the superficial rudeness of polly’s outbreak.
“that’ll do, polly,” she said, with a spiritless severity. “this is no place for a display of temper.”
the colour had come back into the girl’s face now, and there were hot tears in her eyes. she turned without a word and left the room, nor was she seen again among the waitresses who came to hand the tea.
polly was rather ashamed of having run away from the sewing-circle, and she had serious thoughts of going back. it was 137 the first time in her life that she had allowed herself to be routed by circumstances; but somehow she felt as if she could not find it in her heart to hand about tea and seed-cakes, sandwiches and quince-preserve, to people who could think such dreadful thoughts of dan. and then, besides, she knew what a pleasant surprise it would be for dan to have her all to himself for an evening. uncle seth would be sure to go for his weekly game of checkers with deacon white, and she could help dan with his algebra and latin, and see that he was warm and “comfy,” and perhaps find that he did not cough so much as he did the evening before.
they had a very cozy evening, she and dan, just as she had planned it in every particular but one, namely, the cough. there was no improvement in that since the night before, and for the first time the boy spoke of it.
“i say, polly! isn’t it stupid, the way this cold hangs on? do you remember how long it is since i caught it?” 138
“why, no, dan. it does seem a good while, doesn’t it? i guess it must be about over by this time. don’t you know how suddenly those things go?”
dan, who was on his way to bed, had stopped, close to the air-tight stove, to warm his hands.
“i wish it were summer, polly,” he said, with a wistful look in his great black eyes that cut polly to the heart. “it’s been such a cold winter; and a fellow gets kind of tired of barking all the time.”
“it’ll be spring before you know it, dan, you see if it isn’t, and you’ll forget you ever had a cold in your life.”
and when, half an hour later, the evening was over, and polly was safe in her bed, she buried her head in her pillow and cried herself to sleep.
but tears and bewailings were not a natural resource with polly, whose forte was action. her first thought in the morning was: what should she do about it? something must be done, of course, and she was the only one to do it. what it was she had not the faintest idea, but 139 then it was her business to find out. here was she, eighteen years old, strong and hearty, and with good practical common sense, the natural guardian and protector of her younger brother. it was time she bestirred herself!
as a first step, she got up with the sun and dressed herself, and then she slipped down-stairs to the parlour where such of her father’s books as had been rescued from auction were lodged; her father had been the village doctor. all the medical works had been sold, and many other volumes besides, but among those remaining was an old encyclop?dia which had proved to polly a mine of information on many subjects. as she took down the third volume, she heard a portentous meaouw! and there, outside the window, stood mufty, the grey cat, rubbing himself against the frosty pane. polly opened the window and mufty sprang in, bringing a puff of frosty air in his wake. without so much as a word of thanks he walked over to the stove. finding it, however, cold, as only an empty air-tight stove can be cold, he 140 strolled, with a disengaged air, beneath which lurked a very distinct intention, toward the only warm object in the room, namely, polly in her woollen gown. she had the volume open on the table before her, and was deep in its perusal, murmuring as she read.
“appears to have committed its ravages from the earliest time,” polly read, “and its distribution is probably universal, though far from equal.”
at this point mufty lifted himself lightly in the air, after the manner peculiar to cats, and landed in polly’s lap. after switching his tail across her eyes once or twice, and rubbing himself against the book in rather a disturbing way, he at last settled down, and began purring vigorously in token of satisfaction. the room was very cold, and polly, without interrupting her reading, was glad to bury her hands in the thick fur. presently the colour in her cheeks grew brighter and her breath came quicker. there was a way, after all! people had been saved, people a good deal sicker than dan,—saved by a 141 change of climate. what could be simpler? just to pick dan up and carry him off! and such fun, too!
“mufty,” she whispered, excitedly, “mufty, what should you say to dan and me going away and never coming back again?”
“brrrrr, brrrrr,” quoth mufty.
“i knew you would approve! you know how necessary it is, and you think it best to do it; don’t you, mufty?”
“brrrr, brrrrrrrrrr,” quoth mufty, again.
“o mufty, what a darling you are, to approve! and there isn’t really any one’s opinion that i care more about!”
she got up and went to the window, while mufty, not to be dislodged, hastily established himself across her shoulder, his fore paws well down her back, his tail contentedly waving before her eyes. the picture which he thus turned his back upon was a wintry one.
“cold morning, isn’t it, mufty?” said polly. “no kind of a climate for a delicate person.” 142
“brrrr, brrrrrr!” mufty was digging a claw into her shoulder to adjust himself more comfortably.
“ow!” cried polly. then, lifting him down: “mufty, you’re a very intelligent cat, and i haven’t a doubt that your judgment is as penetrating as your claws. all the same, i guess you’d better get down and come with me and help susan get the breakfast. don’t you hear her shaking down the kitchen stove?”
whereupon mufty, finding himself dropped upon the coldly unsympathetic ingrain carpet, desisted from further encouraging remarks.
polly was a schoolgirl still, though she was nearing the dignity of graduation. she had no special taste for study, but she cherished the yankee reverence for education, and although it was not quite clear to her how latin declensions and algebraic symbols were to help her in after-life, she committed them to memory with a very good grace, and enjoyed all the satisfaction of work for work’s sake.
it happened, therefore, that the pursuit of learning interfered for several hours with the far more important object which she had at heart to-day; and it was not until two o’clock that she found herself at liberty to do what every nerve and fibre of her young organism was straining to accomplish.
“mufty hastily established himself across her shoulder.”
143
“i’m not going right home,” she said to dan; “i’ve got an errand to do.”
“polly’s got an idea,” dan said to himself, struck with the eagerness in her face, and the haste with which she walked away. “what a girl she is for ideas, any way!” and he trudged along the snowy road with the other boys, getting rather out of breath in the effort to keep up with them.
polly, meanwhile, stepped swiftly on her way. she was thinking of dan. he at least was a natural student and had always led his class. she was not only fond of dan, but proud of him, too. he was a handsome boy, with those clear, dark eyes of his in which a less partial observer than polly might have read the promise of fine things. 144
“yes,” polly said to herself, as she sped along the road that glittering winter’s day: “dan isn’t just an ordinary boy. he’s an unusual boy. why, the world couldn’t afford to lose dan!” and she looked into the faces of the passers-by, as if to challenge their acquiescence in this bold statement.
whether dan was all that polly thought him, only the future could prove,—that future that polly was about to secure to him. if she idealised him a bit, why, all the better for dan, and all the better for polly, too. one thing is sure, that no one who could have looked into the sister’s heart that winter’s day would have doubted her for an instant when she said to herself:
“he sha’n’t die! i won’t let him die! but, oh! how i wish that cough were mine!”
from her interview with the doctor, polly brought away with her only one word, “colorado”; and with that word shining like a great snowy peak in her imagination, she took another swift walk 145 to a farmhouse on the outskirts of the village, where dwelt a man whose son had gone to colorado three years ago.
“great place!” he told her; “great place, colorado! mile up in the air! prairie-dogs and rocky mountains! big cattle ranches that could put all fieldham in their vest pockets! cold as thunder, hot as thunder! blizzards and cyclones and water-spouts! wind! blow you right out of your boots! cures sick folks? oh, yes. better than all the doctors. braces ’em right up—stands ’em on their legs! nothing like it, so bill says. costs a sight to get out there; oh, yes! fifty dollars and fifteen cents! queer about that fifteen cents. seems as though they might ha’ throwed that in on such a long trip’s that; but them railroads ain’t got no insides any way; and when you once git out there, why, there you are!”
the philosophy of that last remark appealed particularly to polly. “when you once git out there, why, there you are!” somehow it seemed to make everything 146 perfectly simple and easy. blizzards and cyclones? yes, to be sure. but then it was the air that you went out for, polly reasoned, that was what was going to cure you; and perhaps the more you got of it the quicker you would get cured. and polly hurried home from her last visit, flushed and eager for the fray. she found her uncle in the barn putting up his horses.
mr. seth lapham was a good man; there could be no doubt about that. nothing but a sincere and very efficient conscience could have so tempered his natural penuriousness as to cause him to receive into his family a mere sister-in-law’s children and allow them to “want for nothing”; that, too, at a time when his own children, john and martha, were still a bill of expense to him, before their respective marriages. for many years, uncle seth had conscientiously, if not lavishly, fed and clothed the little orphans, whose entire patrimony in the savings bank scarcely yielded interest enough to pay for their boots and shoes; but it remained 147 for the present crisis to prove him as open-minded as he was conscientious. for, no sooner had polly finished the rapid exposition of her great plan—how they were to draw the money from the bank to pay for their tickets and start them in their new life, and how they were to earn their own living when once they got started—than he was ready to admit the reasonableness of it.
“and when you once get out there, why, there you are!” polly declared, in her most convincing tone.
as she stood before him, flushed and breathless, prepared to do battle for dan to the very last extremity, her uncle gave old dick a slap that sent him tramping into his stall, and then said, with the drawling accent peculiar to him:
“well, polly, you’re a pretty sensible girl. if the doctor says so, i guess it’s wuth trying.”
then polly, who had so courageously braced herself for the contest, experienced an overwhelming revulsion of feeling, and a great wave of gratitude and compunction 148 swept over her. to uncle seth’s speechless astonishment she flung her arms around his big neck, and, with some thing very like a sob, she cried:
“oh, uncle seth, i never loved you half enough!”
uncle seth bore it very well, all things considered. he got pretty red in the face, but happily a full grizzly beard kept the secret of his blushes.
“why, polly!” he said, pounding away on her shoulder in an attempt to be consolatory; “you’ve always ben a good girl; not a mite of trouble, not a mite!”
they walked up to the house, polly holding the rough, hairy hand as tightly as if it had been a solid chunk of gold. before the short walk to the kitchen door was finished they had become sworn conspirators, and uncle seth was so entirely in the spirit of the piece that he held polly back a minute to say, in a sepulchral whisper,
“just you leave your aunt lucia to me. i’ll fix her.”
polly never knew all the pains uncle 149 seth was at to “fix” aunt lucia, but by hook or crook the “fixing” was accomplished, and aunt lucia had given a mournful consent.
“i shouldn’t feel it right,” she declared, “to let you suppose i thought there was any hope of its curing dan. that boy’s doomed, if ever a boy was, and i don’t know how you’ll ever manage with the funeral and all, way out there in colorado, far from kith and kin. but your uncle seth says you’d better try it, and i ain’t one to oppose just for the sake of opposin’. i’ve been through too much for that. only i warn you; mind, you don’t forget i warned you.”
polly listened to aunt lucia’s lugubrious views with scarcely a twinge of alarm, and in five minutes she had plunged into preparations for the journey.
as for dan, the mere thought of colorado seemed to revive him. “larks” of any description had always been very much to his taste, but the unending “lark” of an escape into the big world with polly filled him with a fairly riotous joy. 150
and so it happened that by the time the march thaws were setting in and the march winds were getting ready for their boisterous attack, polly and dan had slipped away, and were travelling as fast as steam could carry them toward the high, health-giving region of the rocky mountains.
“a harebrained venture as ever was!” miss louisa bailey declared when she heard of it. “i don’t see what mr. and mrs. lapham were thinking of, to countenance such a step!”
the monthly sewing-circle had come round again, and mrs. lapham, whose turn it was to look after the supper, had stepped out of the room for a moment.
“well, i don’t know but it’s about as well,” the widow criswell rejoined, sighing profoundly. she was more out of spirits than usual to-day, for circumstances, otherwise known as mrs. royce, the president of the sewing-circle, had forced into her hands a baby’s pinafore, the cheerful suggestiveness of which could only serve to deepen her gloom. “the 151 boy’s doomed, wherever he is, and sister lapham never had any real taste for sick-nursing. she’s spared a sight o’ trouble and expense.”
“well,” said mrs. henry dodge, winding a needleful of no. 20 thread off the spool, with the hissing sound familiar to the ears of the seamstress, and breaking it off with a snap, “i think it’s the very best thing that could have been done. the minute i saw that girl’s face last sewing-circle, i knew she’d make out to save that boy. mark my words, he’ll outlive us all yet! i declare, i always did like polly fitch. she reminds me of myself when i was a girl!”
