Читать книгу Crescent City Courtship - Elizabeth White - Страница 12

A chill had sneaked across the river during the night, sending fog drifting across the graveyard, twining through Abigail’s hair and muting her and Dr. Laniere’s footsteps. The ground was soft, even on this elevated patch a mile or so away from the river, and she had to step over puddles of water in the shallow hollows of sunken graves.

Abigail carried the baby, dressed in a tiny white gown worn by Meg just a few months ago. Camilla would have attended the funeral service, but she’d had to remain with the feverish and itchy Diron. Tess was induced to remain in bed only by Abigail’s promise of writing down exactly what was said at her baby’s interment.

They were to call her Caroline.

“Here we are,” said Dr. Laniere, halting beside a tiny fresh grave, barely three feet long and a couple of feet wide. He opened the lid of the small wooden casket he’d carried from the house and looked across the top of it at Abigail. “It’s time to put her in the casket.” His deep-set dark eyes were somber, filled with sympathy. “Remember—”

“I know. She’s with the Father.” Abigail closed her mind against the instinct to pray. She’d been brought up to talk to God at every turn and the habit kicked in at moments of stress. But it was difficult to believe God was really interested in either her or this small wasted life.

Placing the baby in the box, she arranged the lacy white skirts in graceful folds. She was glad Tess couldn’t see this. She could remember Caroline cuddled in her arms like a white-capped doll.

Dr. Laniere placed the lid on the box and was about to lower it into the grave when pounding footsteps approached.

“Wait!” John Braddock ran out of the mist, panting. In one hand he carried his black medical bag. “Professor, I want to see her again before you bury her.”

Dr. Laniere straightened.

Abigail hadn’t expected the young doctor to actually come for the burial. She was even more surprised that he’d apparently already been on a medical call. “What are you doing here?” she blurted, sounding perhaps more defensive than she’d intended.

“I’ve a right to be here,” he said breathlessly. “I delivered this baby, and—” He swallowed. “Let me see her, please.”

When the professor opened the box, Braddock removed his hat, clutching it as he stared at the baby. “I’m so sorry,” he muttered. “I promise I’ll learn to do better.”

Abigail’s throat closed. She didn’t want to like this privileged rich boy. Pressing her lips together, she looked away.

She heard the lid go back on the box and then the gritty sound of wood landing on sand and clay. The two men picked up the shovels left by the grave diggers and began to fill in the small hole in the ground.

The job took less than a minute. She made herself look at the mound of fresh dirt, the only visible trace of Tess’s baby—except the scars on her friend’s body. She thought of her father’s pontifications on Scripture. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The Lord cherishing the death of his beloved.

She couldn’t find anything particularly precious about this stark moment.

“Oh, God, we know you’re here.” Dr. Laniere lifted his resonant voice. “We know you give and you take away and you are sovereign. We pray you’ll remind us of your presence even in the darkness of grief. We pray you’ll be ever near to Tess as she recovers. Please champion these young women and help them find real help as they seek you. Please use Camilla and the children and me to meet their needs. And I pray you’ll hear and meet young Braddock’s desire to be a healer, even as you heal his heart.”

What about my desire to be a healer? Abigail thought as the professor paused. What about my wounded heart? She opened her eyes and looked up just as a ray of sunshine broke through the patchy fog. An enormous rainbow soared from one end of the graveyard to the other. She caught her breath.

“In the name of our Lord, who takes our ashes and turns them to joy…Amen.”

The professor and John replaced their hats. Abigail, shivering in the cool morning dampness, hurried toward the cemetery entrance. She wanted to get back to Tess, to write down the words of the service before she forgot them. Ashes to joy…

“Wait, Abigail.” Shifting his medical bag to the other hand, John caught up with her, took her hand and pulled it through his elbow. “I thought you should know I went back to the District last night.”

“Did you?” Stumbling on the soggy, uneven ground, she reluctantly accepted the support of his arm. “Needed a bit of alcoholic sustenance?”

“No, I—” He gave her an exasperated look. “Must you assume the worst?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know many men who lead me to expect anything else.”

“Well, in this case you’re wrong. I went back there because I’d heard a child coughing in the apartment next to yours. The walls are so thin—”

“Yes, they are.” She didn’t need to be reminded. “That would be the McLachlin baby. He has chronic croup. I’ve tried to get Rose to move him out of that mildewy apartment, but she can’t afford anything better.”

“Well, I went back to see about him. Stupid woman wouldn’t let me in, even though I told her I was a doctor.”

Abigail looked up at him. “To the contrary. For once she was using her head, not letting a strange man into her apartment.”

There was a brief silence. “I see your point.” John opened the graveyard gate and held it as Abigail passed through. “Then perhaps you’d agree to return with me this afternoon and persuade her of my good intentions. I’d like to look at the baby to see if anything can be done about that cough.”

Abigail hesitated. “She can’t afford to pay you.”

“I know that.” He let out an exasperated sigh. “Prof encourages us to see charity cases when we have time. It’s good practice.”

“Oh, well, then. For the sake of your education, I suppose I’d best come with you.”

He stiffened. “Miss Neal—”

“Mr. Braddock.” She squeezed his elbow. “I was only tweaking you.”

He looked at her for a moment before a slow grin curled his mouth. “Were you, indeed? Then for the sake of your education, I’ll allow you to observe a man who practices medicine for more than money. Perhaps you might learn something.”

His eyes held hers. Something shifted between them. Abigail looked over her shoulder to find the professor’s reassuring presence several paces back.

John followed her gaze. “Prof, I’m going back to Tchapitoulas Street with Miss Neal to look after a sick little boy.”

“Fine. Just bring her back before noon and you may stay for dinner, too.” Dr. Laniere waved them on and turned off toward Daubigny Street, where his family attended church.

For the next couple of blocks, Abigail maintained a tense silence. In the distance church bells began to ring. “Are you a church-going man, Mr. Braddock? Perhaps your family will wonder where you are.”

“My family would be quite astonished to see me at all on Sunday before late afternoon,” he said easily. “I don’t live at home.”

“Oh.” When he didn’t elaborate, she looked at him. “Then a wife or—or sweetheart?”

“I assure you I am quite unattached at the moment. Are you trying to get rid of me?”

“Of course not.” Abigail looked away, blushing, as they turned the corner at the saloon. “I agreed to come with you to check on the baby.” Her relief that he was unattached was absurd. There was nothing personal whatsoever in his escort.

“Yes, you did. And here we are.” He stood back as Abigail opened the outer front door and knocked on the door across the entryway from her old apartment with Tess.

She could hear the baby crying inside, Rose’s anxious voice, the other two children giggling and shrieking. “Rose?” She knocked again. “It’s Abigail.”

The door jerked open and Rose appeared with the baby on her hip. A little girl and a little boy of about four and five clung to her skirts, one on each side. “Abigail—what are you doing here? Is something wrong?”

Abigail glanced at John over her shoulder. “I brought Dr. Braddock with me. He wants to look at Paddy.”

Rose’s big blue eyes widened. “Paddy’s fine.”

Abigail laid a hand on the baby’s back and felt the rattle of his lungs as he breathed. He’d tucked his face into Rose’s shoulder, but Abigail could just see the curve of a feverish cheek. “Rose. Please let us in. Denying trouble never made it go away.”

Rose stared at John, one hand clasping the baby, the other protectively on her daughter’s head. Abigail knew she must be thinking of the drunken husband who had brought her and the children over from Ireland and abandoned them two months ago. As she’d told John earlier, Abigail herself had little reason to rely on any man’s trustworthiness. But some tiny part of her insisted on giving this one a chance to prove himself.

John seemed to realize he was here on sufferance. “Mrs. McLachlin, I think I know what’s causing Paddy’s cough. If you’ll just let me look at him for a minute, I can give him some medicine and he’ll feel much better tonight.” His tone was, if not exactly humble, moderate enough to reassure.

Baby Paddy suddenly erupted in one of his fits of croupy coughing. Rose took a flustered step back. “All right. Come in, both of you, but don’t look at the mess. The children have been playing all morning.”

Abigail would not have increased Rose’s embarrassment for the world, but she couldn’t help marveling that the young Irishwoman had survived this long on a laundress’s wage with three small children. Clearly she was in dire straights. Except for two dolls made from bits of yarn and a pile of rusty tin cans the children had been playing with in the center of the room, there was little difference between this apartment and the one Abigail had shared with Tess. Poverty had a way of leveling the ground.

To her surprise, as she and Rose seated themselves on the two wooden chairs, John took off his hat, sat down cross-legged on the floor and opened his bag. He produced a couple of splinters of peppermint candy wrapped in waxed paper and smiled at the two older children, who stared at him from behind Rose’s chair. “Look what I’ve got here, widgets. I’ll give it to you, but you have to open your mouths wide and let me see if there’s room for it to go in.”

The little girl, Stella, glanced at her brother. “It’s candy,” she whispered.

“I want it,” he whispered back. The first to conquer his shyness, he edged toward John, who held the candy just out of reach. Apparently seduced by the twinkle in John’s eyes, he dropped his jaw and stuck out his tongue. “’ee? ’ere’s ’oom.”

John laughed and deftly plied a tongue depressor as he peered down the little boy’s throat. “There is, indeed. Here you go.” He laid the candy on the boy’s tongue. “What’s your name?”

“Sean.” The boy danced backward, eliminating any chance of the candy being snatched away. His eyes closed in ecstasy. “Marmee, I like this.”

“Me! Me!” Stella gaped wide as she crowded close to John, gagging slightly as he depressed her tongue. But she patiently held still to let him look at her throat. When she received her candy, she sucked on it furiously, gazing at John with adoration. “Can Paddy have some too?”

John shook his head. “Paddy’s too little. But maybe he’d let me look at his throat anyway?”

By this time, Rose was thoroughly disarmed and handed over the baby without further protest. John took him with a gentle competence that reminded Abigail of the way he’d held poor little Caroline that morning. Her throat closed as Paddy blinked up at the doctor’s handsome young face.

John examined the baby thoroughly, laying his ear against Paddy’s chest and back to listen, gently moving his arms and legs, palpating the glands beneath the soft little chin. He tracked the movement of Paddy’s eyes by moving his finger back and forth, grinning when the baby grabbed it and tried to suck on it. “No, no, boo. Dirty.” He looked at Rose as he lifted Paddy onto his shoulder and patted his back. “Definitely teething, which causes fever. But the cough worries me. It means there’s mucus draining into his stomach, maybe collecting fluid in his lungs. You’ll need to suction out as much of it as you can, keep him at a comfortable temperature, wash everything that goes in his mouth. Keep him fed—which means taking care of yourself.” His eyes softened as he looked around at the bare room. “Do you get enough to eat?”

Distress took over Rose’s worn young face. “I do the best I can, but there aren’t many vegetables available this time of year, and meat…” She swallowed. “I can’t afford—”

“Fish,” Abigail blurted. “Tess and I used to go to the docks early in the morning and ask for whatever wasn’t quite good enough to send to the market. You can make stews and gumbo, rich in good stuff.”

Rose blinked back tears. “Maybe I could ask Tess to bring back extra…in return for laundry service.”

Abigail exchanged a smile with John. “I’m sure she’d be happy to when she’s back on her feet.”

John handed the baby back to his mother and began to repack his bag. “Yes, that’s a good idea. And meantime, wrapping the baby up and taking him outside for cool night air will ease his breathing and help him sleep. Just be sure he doesn’t get too cold.”

Rose stood up and swayed with Paddy clasped to her bosom. “Dr. Braddock, thank you for coming back. I shouldn’t have been rude to you last night.” She hesitated as John rose and dusted the seat of his trousers. “I’m sorry I can’t…I don’t have the money to pay you for your trouble.”

He stared at her, a hint of the old arrogance drawing his brows together. Or perhaps, Abigail thought, it was simple embarrassment. “I don’t need your money,” he said.

“Then perhaps you’d care to bring your laundry by.” Rose’s soft chin went up. “I’m considered the best in the neighborhood.”

Catching Abigail’s warning look, John shrugged. “I’ve no doubt you are. We’ll see. But I promised to return Miss Neal to the clinic before noon, so we’d best hurry. I or one of the other fellows will stop by here tomorrow to check on Paddy. I’ll send some bleach to wipe down the floors and ceiling. Some say that keeps down the spread of croup.” He gave Rose a quick nod and offered his hand to little Sean. “Help your marmee out by playing quietly when the baby’s asleep, won’t you, old man?”

Sean nudged his sister. “Would you bring more candy when you come back?”

John winked. “I’ll see what I can do.”

“Goodbye, Rose.” Abigail smiled at her neighbor as she followed John out to the entryway. “Don’t forget about the fish.”

“Thank you, Abigail.” Rose’s expression was considerably less troubled than when they’d first arrived. “I don’t know what else to—just thank you.” She shut the door hurriedly.

As they began the long walk back to the Lanieres’, Abigail took John’s proffered arm and sighed. “She’ll listen to you, I think.” She glanced at him. “You were very sweet to the children.”

She knew she’d used the wrong word when his fine eyes narrowed. “Perhaps you’d expected me to growl at them.”

Smiling, she shrugged. “You did surprise me a bit. I confess your motivations confuse me, John. People like Rose—and Tess and me, for that matter—cannot pay you in coin, and you seem to have a rather contemptuous attitude toward our entire class. Why do you want to be a doctor? Is it simple scientific hunger?”

He didn’t immediately answer. “Imperfections bother me,” he said slowly. “I suppose that could be considered a character flaw. But I see no reason for those little ones to suffer from hunger and disease if there’s anything I can do about it.” He glanced at her, cheeks reddened, she thought not entirely from the wind whipping off the river. “I don’t mean to be arrogant.”

An inappropriate urge to giggle made Abigail look down, pretending to watch her step. “Because imperfections annoy me as well, I’ll take it upon myself to correct you as needed.” She gave him a mischievous glance from under her lashes.

To his credit, John laughed. “Magnanimous of you, Miss Abigail. You’ll give me lessons in social intercourse, and I’ll keep your considerable predisposition for interference well occupied. We should get along famously.”

Almost lightheaded with the unexpected pleasure of intelligent repartee with an attractive—if slightly prickly—male, Abigail turned the conversation to his background with the Laniere family. John Braddock was like no man she’d met in her admittedly abnormal life. Perhaps she had more to learn than she’d thought.

“It’s got to be here somewhere,” John muttered to himself that evening as he skimmed through the last of six pharmaceutical books he’d borrowed from Marcus Girard. He sat on his unmade bed, his back propped against the wall, a cup of stout Creole coffee wobbling atop the tomes stacked at his elbow.

The cramped and exceedingly messy fifteen-by-fifteen-foot room on the second level of Mrs. Hanley’s Boarding House for Gentlemen was one of John’s greatest sources of personal satisfaction. It hadn’t been easy to endure his mother’s tearful accusations of ingratitude nor his father’s blustering threats of disinheritance. But in the end, John’s determination to live on his own had worn them both down. Two years ago, on his twenty-third birthday, he had packed his clothes and books into four sturdy trunks and had them carted to the boarding house. He then rode his black mare, Belladonna, to the livery stable around the corner on Rue St. John—another serendipitous circumstance which afforded him no end of amusement.

Mrs. Clementine Hanley insisted on absolute moral purity in her lodgers—the enforcing of which she took quite seriously and personally. She also set a fine table and could be counted upon to provide fresh linens daily.

Unfortunately, she was not so dependable in the matter of functioning locks.

John looked up in irritation when the doorknob rattled. The key worked its way loose and hit the floor with a clank. “Girard, if you come in here again, I’m going to souse every pair of drawers you own in kerosene and set them on fire.”

The door opened anyway and Marcus’s ingenuous, square-cut face insinuated itself in the opening.

John glared. “Go away!”

Marcus leaned over to pick up the fallen key and tossed it at John. The key plunked into the half-full coffee cup. “Oops.” He gave John an unrepentant grin. “A little iron supplement for your diet, old man.”

Snarling under his breath, John used his pillow case to mop up the sloshed coffee. “You’d better have a good reason for interrupting me again.” He fished the key out of his cup.

Marcus swaggered into the room with his usual banty-rooster strut, hands thrust into the enormous pockets of a peacock-blue satin dressing gown. He paused in front of the skeleton spraddled in a straight chair under the room’s tiny, solitary window.

“Hank, old bean.” Marcus bowed, sketching a salute. “I trust this evening finds you hale and hearty.”

John resisted the urge to laugh. Encouraged, Marcus could go on for hours in that oily false-British accent. He closed the book on his finger. “What do you want, Girard?”

“Stuck-up rotter, ain’t you?” Giving the skeleton a thump on the cranium, Marcus hopped onto the window sill and folded his arms across his barrel chest. “Came to rescue you.”

“Rescue me? The only way you can rescue me is to find me another pharmacy book.”

“Braddock, I’ve lifted every book m’father has on the subject. If what you’re looking for ain’t there, it just—ain’t there. Come on, I know you’ve memorized the lists for the test. Let’s toddle over to the District and slum a little.”

The notorious red light district was located a few blocks from the medical college and Mrs. Hanley’s Boarding House. It also happened to be where John had encountered Tess and Abigail. Yesterday’s experience had destroyed whatever appeal the District once had. And going back with Abigail this morning to visit the McLachlin family had turned it rather into a source of conscience.

John opened the book again. “I’m busy. And if you had even half as many brains as Hank, you’d take one of these books down to your room and have a look yourself.”

Marcus gave John a puzzled look. “What’s got into you today? You didn’t go to church this morning, did you?”

John gave a bark of laughter. “Not exactly. I attended a funeral.”

Marcus sat up straight, his thin, sandy hair all but on end. “I’m sorry, Braddock! Who died?”

“Nobody you know.” John had no intention of exposing the life-changing experiences of the last two days to Marcus’s inanities. “I’m just—not in the mood. Comprendez-vous?”

Marcus pursed his lips. It was common knowledge that John’s family ties took him in directions that less well-connected students could only dream of. “Certainly. I understand. Death and all that.” He slid off the window seat and sidled toward the door. “You were my first choice of companion, but I guess I’ll head down to Weichmann’s room to see if he’d care to get his head out of the books for a bit.” He paused with his hand on the doorknob. “If Clem asks, tell her we’ve gone on a call.”

Mrs. Hanley would certainly ask, should John be so foolish as to stick his nose outside the room. He gave Marcus an absent wave as the brilliantly hued dressing gown disappeared into the hallway. There had better be no emergency calls tonight.

He took a sip of the stone-cold coffee, then propped the cup on his chest, dropping the book onto the floor. He’d been studying the composition and medicinal uses of opium for hours and there was still no conclusive evidence that Abigail Neal was wrong. It was true that opium and all its derivatives—including morphine and laudanum—could be addictive when consumed even once. Certainly the substance was effective as a painkiller, but were the side effects worth it?

John didn’t know. He was discovering there were a lot of things he didn’t know. The more he studied medicine, the more he realized its practice was largely in the realm of guesswork, intuition and trial and error. Frequently even mysticism. Even Dr. Laniere, his favorite professor and mentor, sometimes made fatal judgments. He had as good a record of success as any physician John had yet to meet, but…people did die under his care.

Why didn’t God just tell people how to go on? Why did they get ill and injured in the first place? If he could heal at all, why didn’t he heal everybody?

Irritated at the intrusion of such unscientific thoughts, John slung his coffee cup onto the bedside table and got up off the bed. He took a deep breath and bent to touch his toes a few times.

He’d been entertaining a lot of God-related meanderings ever since the delivery of that stillborn baby. All day he’d had a sense of someone looking into his mind, prodding his thoughts and feelings. One of the main reasons he’d taken Abigail back to visit that croupy baby was to escape the strong urge to go to church.

Just a bit spooked, he turned a full circle, taking in his familiar surroundings. Nothing out of order. The narrow, tumbled bed with the coffee stain on the pillow. The square table holding a pile of anatomy textbooks and the Tiffany lamp his mother had given him on his twenty-first birthday. Sepia-toned photographs of his parents and her sister Lisette on the mantel above the tiny fireplace. Hank holding court in the chair under the window. The plain mahogany chifforobe with its mirror reflecting his confusion back at him.

John thrust both hands through his hair and stared at his own reddened eyes. Not enough sleep lately. That was all it was.

Then he looked at his hands. They shook. The nails were immaculate, the signet ring on his left little finger dull gold with a garnet set into the family crest. Rich man’s hands? Healer’s hands?

He hurried to the window, leaned out and sucked in a draft of thick, clammy, November air. He’d lived in New Orleans all his life and the humidity had never bothered him before, but he found himself struggling for a breath. No wonder little Paddy McLachlin was so sick.

John looked down, watching passersby fading in and out of the pools of gaslight spotting the sidewalks. When had it gotten dark out? Maybe he should try to catch up to Girard and Weichmann after all.

He pulled his head back inside the room, banged down the window sash and yanked the curtain closed. He sat down to tug on his boots, decided against a coat and tore out of the room, slamming the door behind him. He pounded down the stairs, shoving the useless key into his pocket.

God couldn’t influence his thoughts if he wasn’t there.