Читать книгу Anderson's Jo - Mary Grant Bruce - Страница 8

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The road to Summers’ Flat had never seemed so long, the holes and ruts so many. Anderson drove as carefully as he could, dismally conscious of the bumps he could not avoid: well aware that what he felt on the padded driving-seat must be much worse for the quiet passenger on the mattress on the truck floor. Evening was drawing near; he met other cars and buggies coming out from the township, and abused them in his heart when they forced him to take to a bad bit of track. Once they met a touring char-a-banc, loaded with singing passengers, who were greatly diverted by the look of fury cast upon them by the big stern-faced man who piloted the rattling truck. But he need not have been troubled. The woman at the back was far beyond the possibility of being disturbed by any loud-voiced tourists. She was conscious of one thing only—the small scrap of humanity in the red frock who crouched beside her, holding the blanket round her in a clutch that was both fierce and tender.

They came to the little town at sundown, and rattled up the main street. Already the shops were shuttered, and few people about; the scents of cooking floated out from the houses, and mothers called shrilly for children to come in to tea. John Anderson drove to the outer fringe of the houses, stopping at a bungalow with a wide veranda that bore the sign of Cottage Hospital. With a brief word to the child he went up the path to tell his story.

A Gippsland bush hospital is swift to help. Within a few minutes a nurse had helped him to carry his patient to a little empty room, clean and bare and airy; the child keeping close to her mother, in silent, suspicious watchfulness. John stood back in awkward silence when they had put the mother on the bed. His task was done, and he was free. Yet somehow, he did not feel free.

The sick woman settled the matter, for the moment. Her great eyes beckoned to him and he went forward, looking down on her silently.

“You—you won’t go away?” she said. “Not yet. Let me—speak—to you again.”

The words were broken and faint, but he heard them. There was only one reply possible.

“That’s all right, Mrs. Wilson,” he said, trying to put into his answer a heartiness he was far from feeling. “I’ll come back when you have had a little rest and the doctor has seen you. Don’t you worry about anything.” He did not know why he said the words. They seemed to come without any will on his part. A little flicker of contentment crossed her face, and she closed her eyes.

“Now, run along with the gentleman, dear.” The nurse put a kind hand on the little girl, standing straight and wary by her mother. “You shall see Mummy to-morrow.”

The child shot a fierce glance at her.

“Jo’s going to stay with my mother,” she spat back. She twisted her tiny shoulder from the compassionate hand.

“But you can’t. We must put Mummy to bed.”

“Jo can put her to bed. Don’t want any old women. You just go away!” The childish voice was shrill and terrified, and the mother stirred and opened her eyes.

“Don’t take her,” she begged, weakly. “She will be good. It—it won’t be—for long.”

Already so much was clear to the nurses. They looked at each other silently.

“Oh, for goodness sake let her stay,” John Anderson said. “The poor soul wants her. I’ll come back later on, and we’ll see what’s to be done.”

The matron shrugged her shoulders, eyeing the dirty red frock.

“Very well—we can’t drag her away. But she is really too dirty to go near her mother. Has she no other clothes?”

John Anderson shook his head helplessly—what did he know of angry small girls and their clothes? And yet the truth of the matron’s words was evident. No doctor in his senses would allow such a grimy little tatterdemalion near a patient. A bright idea came to him, and he stooped over the child.

“Look here, Josey—”

“Not Josey,” said the fierce voice. “Jo.”

“Well, Jo, then. You come with me while the nurses fix Mother up comfortably and I’ll get you all cleaned up and decent, so that the Doctor will let you stay with her. He won’t let you stay like that. Doctors are terribly particular about people being clean.”

“So’s Mother an’ Jo,” she flung at him. “Only Mother was too sick.”

“I know she was. Come along and I’ll get you fixed up the way Mother likes you. Then I’ll get you some tea and bring you back.”

At the word “tea” he saw her mouth tremble. She looked up at him eagerly, and John Anderson suddenly flushed with anger. The poor mite was hungry! When had those brutes of people fed her last? It was as well for Jim Harrap and his wife that they were beyond his reach at the moment.

“Jo will come back to Mother?” she begged. “Promise, Man.”

“I promise—faithfully,” he said. “See, Mother’s gone to sleep; we’ll hurry and come back before she wakes.”

At that, after a shrewd glance at her mother’s quiet face, she came to him. He took the small hand in his big palm, and they went out together, while the nurses sighed with relief and fell upon their patient.

In the hall lay the battered suit-case a nurse had brought from the truck. John Anderson conquered a feeling of reluctance at meddling with other people’s belongings and peeped inside it, hoping to find what his small companion needed. But the merest glance was sufficient to show him that his hope was vain. The few miserable rags it contained would certainly fail to make Jo either clean or decent. He snapped the cheap lock and stood up with a puzzled frown. What did a lonely man do to clothe a child who had no clothes—and with all the shops shut? Then a thought struck him, and his brow cleared.

“Tarrant lives next door to his shop, and he’s a decent chap,” he said, aloud. “Come along, Jo, and we’ll throw ourselves on his mercy.” He took her hand again, and they went out.

Tarrant, the draper, who was wont to say that the selling of “rag” was a far more certain way of arriving at fortune than either sheep or dairying could furnish, was mowing his lawn in his shirt-sleeves, while his pretty wife watered her rose-bushes close by. They looked with some amazement at the big man who came into the garden, holding the hand of a tattered elf in a red frock.

“Good evening.” He greeted them awkwardly. “I’ve come to beg a favour, Mr. Tarrant.” Favour-begging was not in John Anderson’s line, and he spoke stiffly. “This youngster wants clothes pretty badly, and I’d be awfully obliged if you wouldn’t mind selling me something after hours.”

“Why, certainly, Mr. Anderson.” Tarrant looked his bewilderment. “Where on earth did you pick her up?”

“I’d better tell you how the case stands.” He drew them aside, and explained briefly—telling his story badly enough. But Mrs. Tarrant’s own baby slept on the veranda porch, sweet and warm under his snowy blankets, and it did not matter to her that the story was badly told.

“The poor mite!” she breathed. “But indeed, she needs more than clothes, Mr. Anderson.”

“That’s true enough—she needs that hose of yours turned on her, Mrs. Tarrant,” he said, ruefully. “I thought that if I could get her new clothes I’d take her to the hotel and manage to tub her somehow.” He looked very large and helpless as he spoke. “The poor youngster’s hungry, too: I don’t know how long it is since she had a meal. I believe she has been sticking to her mother all day.”

“Then you’ll just leave her to me,” said Mrs. Tarrant firmly. “Go off and get your own tea, Mr. Anderson, and when you come back she’ll be fit for her poor mother to see. It’s no work for a man, and a helpless bachelor at that.” She took Jo’s hand. “You come with me, dearie, and have a lovely hot bath.”

“Jo can bath herself,” said that lady, decidedly, twitching away her hand. “Man will take Jo. Man promised.”

“Man can’t make you nearly as pretty for Mother as I can,” said the wily Mrs. Tarrant. “He will take you back to her, because he promised. But he hasn’t got nice clothes for you and I have. If you come with me there will be first a big glass of milk, and then the very biggest hot bath, and new clothes, and then tea. And then Man shall have you.”

The baby lips quivered. Jo had arrived at a stage when the very mention of food was almost more than she could bear. “Jo firsty,” she said, uncertainly. And Mrs. Tarrant picked her up, rags and all.

“Hurry up, Mr. Anderson,” she said, cheerfully. “You mustn’t keep Jo waiting as soon as she’s ready to go back to Mother.”

John Anderson stood looking after her, silently. Tarrant, watching his face, laughed.

“You needn’t worry, Mr. Anderson. I never saw the child my wife couldn’t manage. We’ll have her fitted out for you when you come back.”

“Don’t stint anything,” Anderson said. “I want her to have good things—the mother will like it. And burn the beastly rags she’s got on. And—thank you. I felt too big a fool to thank your wife.”

“She doesn’t want thanks; I bet you she’s thoroughly enjoying herself.” He laughed as he went off to break into his shop.

“Well, I knew I needed a draper,” mused John Anderson, as the Ford rattled its way down the hill. “What I didn’t know was that I needed a draper with a wife!”

There was no doubt that Mrs. Tarrant enjoyed the next hour thoroughly. Not that Jo entered into the occasion with anything of the spirit that her new friend brought to it; she was too tired and bewildered and hungry for that. But she was docile, realizing that she was in the grip of circumstances too strong for her. Moreover, being by nature a cleanly little person, accustomed to being daintily kept, it was rest and refreshment to find herself in a great tub of steaming water, after the promised glass of warm milk had put heart into her: to feel the delicious sense of soapy cleanliness again: to see her grimy clothes kicked contemptuously aside, while fresh new garments enveloped her tired little body. Before the toilet was completed she was wrapped in a shawl and fed with hot bread and milk, followed by a brown egg in the most enchanting little red egg-cup: so that she was better able to withstand the ordeal that followed, when the tangled mop of curls that had not been touched for nearly a week was clipped into order and brushed and combed until it shone. And then came a little blue frock that thoroughly pleased her, because it had two pockets, in one of which there was a new handkerchief with a rabbit worked in the corner, and in the other a bright new penny. After which Mrs. Tarrant brought her before a long mirror that reflected all her transfigured little form, and watched the amazed face in silence.

“Jo looks pretty,” said the small person. “Fank you. You made Jo awful nice. Wants to show my mother. Where’s Man?”

“Man will be here any moment—there, I believe that’s his car now! Come and we’ll see what he thinks of you.”

They came out upon the veranda as John Anderson strode up the path. For a moment he gaped at the transformation in silence.

“Well, you’re a magician, Mrs. Tarrant!” he said at length.

“Not at all: I had excellent material to work on,” responded that lady. “She’s all ready for you, Mr. Anderson, and very anxious, to go back to Mother.” She drew him aside, dropping her voice. “Bring her back here if you wish. I could easily keep her for a few days.”

“And I’ve been told to give her to the police,” said Anderson, grimly.

“You couldn’t!” was Mrs. Tarrant’s horrified rejoinder. “Why, they’d send her to the Neglected Childrens’ Department, or some such dreadful place.”

“They may not be dreadful at all, my dear,” said Mr. Tarrant, cautiously.

“Oh, I suppose not—but they aren’t mothers! And babies of six want mothers more than anything. Anyhow, you’re going to yours now, Jo darling, and mind you take care of her.” She hugged her small charge vigorously, and having watched her drive off in the truck, wept upon Mr. Tarrant’s bosom.

At the hospital the matron’s eyebrows went up.

“Have you a fairy wand, Mr. Anderson?”

“Mrs. Tarrant has, I fancy; I had nothing to do with it,” John answered. “How is Mrs. Wilson?”

The matron’s kind face was very grave.

“It won’t be long, poor soul,” she said. “She wants the child—and she wants you. Jo, will you be very quiet if you go to Mother?”

“Man promised,” Jo said, fiercely. “An’ you promised, too. Want to show Mother Jo’s new dress.”

“You shall show her, but you must be quiet. Mother is very sick. Will you promise, too, Jo?” Anderson’s voice was stern, as though he were speaking to another man. Indeed, from the first moment, in the wretched shed at the Harraps’ farm, they had looked at each other, not as man and little child, but as equals.

Jo nodded promptly.

“Jo will promise,” she said. “Come to Mother, Man.” She tugged at his hand.

The little room where Mrs. Wilson lay was very still. A nurse sitting by the bedside moved to give them room, and the man and the child came to her together. The mother’s eyes dwelt on the tiny form for a moment. They were growing dim, but the light came back to them. “Oh—you have been good,” she whispered to John. “Will you give her to me?”

He lifted Jo, and put her on the bed, and the child snuggled down beside her with a sigh of utter content.

“Jo got new clothes, Mother,” she murmured. “Right to Jo’s skin!”

“Mother sees, dear heart.” The weak arm stole round the dark, curly head, drawing it close. The nurse gave John a chair; he sat down, not knowing what to do or say. The slow minutes ticked away.

“Is there any message you would like sent?” he asked, at length. It was hard to bear the steady gaze of the dying eyes that searched his face unceasingly.

“Nothing—there is no one. She has no one at all.”

“Nothing I can do for you?”

“Yes—everything. Tell me you will not let her go to—to the police. Not my baby. She has always had—love.”

What could he say? He looked at her with all a man’s helplessness—silent, friendless John Anderson, who knew nothing of children.

“Say you will not.” The weak voice held all a mother’s agony. “Find her some one who will love her. She—she is such a naughty baby.”

Surely it was the strangest reason that ever gave weight to a plea; and yet it moved John Anderson more than a hundred claims of goodness. A naughty baby: to be disciplined and brought into line with a hundred others in some rigid Home. There came to him some realization of what it must mean to be going down into the Shadows, leaving a child helpless to the careless mercy of a hurrying world. Death itself was a small matter: but surely therein lay the very bitterness of death. And one might leave a good baby easily enough—not a naughty one.

He put his big hand over the restless one on the bed. Jo had fallen asleep; across her little relaxed body their eyes met.

“I won’t let her go,” he said. “If I cannot find her a good home I will keep her myself. You can be easy about her.”

The passion of gratitude that suddenly illuminated her face almost startled him. She caught weakly at his hand.

“When you came first I knew you would be kind,” she said—the words scarcely audible. “I had prayed so hard that I would not die until some one kind should come. You—you will remember how easy it is for her to be naughty? She is so small!”

“I will remember,” he said. “I expect I was pretty naughty myself. Jo and I are friends already. Don’t worry about her.”

She gave a little contented sigh, just as Jo had sighed as she cuddled down beside her. Then her eyes drooped, and her breath came more faintly. Whatever thoughts filled her dying mind, whatever questions she longed to ask, he could only guess at; she had made her last great effort, and now she was too tired to fight any more. Once her lips parted, and he heard her whisper, “Philip—Philip.” It was a happy whisper, for the ghost of a smile was on her lips as she drifted into sleep. Perhaps she had already reached the country where broken dreams are mended.

The nurse touched John’s shoulder presently.

“Can you take the child away?”

He questioned her with a look, and she nodded gravely. As he stooped and very gently lifted the sleeping child his hand touched the still fingers that yet rested on her curls. Already they had grown cold, and the touch seemed to linger on his hand for hours afterwards, as if it were her last message—reminding him that he had promised.

He carried Jo into the hall and stood irresolutely: no unfortunate man ever more bewildered by new responsibilities. Somewhere near him a clock struck, and he counted the chimes mechanically. Ten. What on earth did a fellow do with a sleeping six-year-old at ten o’clock at night, when he had no bed in which to drop her?

The matron appeared before he had found any way out of his perplexities.

“We can keep the child for the night, Mr. Anderson,” she said.

“Thank the Lord for that!” said John Anderson, explosively.

“But of course I’ll have to ask you to get her away early in the morning. We have at least three patients very ill: no one will have time to look after her. And there will be trouble when the poor child asks for her mother and cannot have her.”

Too well John Anderson knew that. He groaned in spirit over the certainty of it. The matron, after a compassionate glance at his troubled face, took Jo from his arms and gave her to a passing nurse, with a word of instruction. Then she beckoned him into her little sitting-room.

“Do sit down, Mr. Anderson. May I say that you have undertaken a great responsibility. And is it wise?”

“I’m hanged if I know why I did it,” John said. “But what could a man do?—and the poor soul dying—keeping alive to put up a fight for her child. I like a fighter.”

“Yes. But you didn’t know anything about her, you said: she was just a farm servant out at those awful Harrap people’s place. A stray woman and child from a Melbourne slum, perhaps. What are orphanages and institutions for, Mr. Anderson, if not to take charge of a child like that?”

“I don’t know—and I suppose they’re all right,” he muttered. “But as for being a farm servant—well, you could see she was something different. There was breeding about her—did you notice her hands? They weren’t common hands. And the youngster is not a common child.” He smiled faintly. “She’s a fighter, too.”

“She is—which does not make things any easier for her. The mother told me she was quite alone in the world: that her husband was dead. But other women have told that story, and it has not always been true. Mr. Anderson, if you are wise you will let me send the child to the proper authorities. She will be quite well treated.”

“That means the Neglected Children’s Department, I suppose? Then they’ll board her out to some one.”

“They choose good homes.”

“Oh, they do their best. But—” Memories of newspaper reports came to him: of boarded-out children badly treated. He frowned heavily. “There’s always a chance of things going wrong.”

“Oh, not often, Mr. Anderson. And very probably you could arrange to keep an eye on her—if you were anxious.”

He pondered the matter. It was the easy way out of his difficulties; after all, who was he to undertake the future of an unknown child? What did he know of a child? What could he offer one, solitary and silent and grim as he was? And then came a memory of Jo’s small, clear voice, “Man promised:” and he knew that having promised he could not draw back.

“It’s no good, Matron. Very kind of you, I know, to want to take the trouble off my hands. But I gave my word, and I’ve got to see the thing through somehow.”

“Well, if you will—” she said, with a shrug. “But you are making a mistake. What will your housekeeper say?”

“That’s what I’ve got to find out,” he answered, smiling ruefully. “But I know she won’t let me down. After all, I am at liberty to give the child to anyone who would adopt her; I am not bound to keep her myself, so long as I don’t hand her over to an institution. There must be plenty of lonely people who would be glad to adopt a child as attractive as Jo; if you hear of anyone you might let me know, Matron.” He stood up, looming tall and broad in the little hospital room. “Well, I’ll be back early in the morning. Good night—and thank you.”

“It’s very foolish,” the matron finished later on, having told the story to the nurses over supper. To which they agreed: all but the youngest nurse, who being only a probationer, had not yet acquired sense. “Oh, but what a nice fool!” breathed the youngest nurse.

John Anderson, driving the Ford home in the moonlight, called himself many varieties of a fool, none of them “nice.” To think that only that morning he had been placid and comfortable, with nothing to trouble either himself or Mrs. Collins; nothing to interrupt the peaceful routine in which their days glided by, year after year. And now, instead of that placid current he had suddenly turned them into a whirlpool—and had done it for the sake of an unknown woman with pleading eyes and an unknown child who was “a fighter.” Well, if she were a fighter he was certainly a lunatic. He wondered for the hundredth time what Mrs. Collins would say, and failed to find any answer.

The housekeeper was still up; supper waited for him, and she had freshly-brewed tea. He told her his story before he ate, telling it as badly as he had told the first part to the Tarrants; standing on the hearth-rug with his hands dug deep into his pockets, and looking rather like a boy caught stealing apples.

“I’m afraid it’s frightfully rough on you, Mrs. Collins,” he floundered to a finish. “All very well for me, but I know the trouble falls on you. But I’ll see that it’s for as short a time as possible. It won’t be difficult to get the youngster adopted: she’s a good-looking kid, with plenty of brains. And a fighter, too; you could see she’d fight tooth and claw for the poor mother. I’ll take her off your hands as much as possible if you won’t mind doing what I can’t do, for the present. A man’s pretty helpless with a six-year-old.”

Mrs. Collins had not spoken at all, and when she did answer her words were few, but decisive.

“What’s done can’t be undone,” she said, “and I don’t know that either of us would want it undone. No, neither of us. Don’t you get fussed, Mr. John. I’ll give you a list of little clothes to bring out to-morrow. And some treacle. We’re right out, and my poor mother always said never to spare treacle with children.”