Читать книгу Rutledge - Miriam Coles Harris - Страница 4

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"The brightest rainbows ever play

Above the fountains of our tears."

MACKAY.

How long after it was that consciousness returned, I cannot tell; if indeed that bewildered dizzy realization of things present that gradually forced itself upon me, can be called consciousness. I was lying on the ground, and looked, upon opening my eyes, up at the clear evening sky. It could not have been long after sunset, and all the scene around me, when at last I tried to comprehend it, was distinct enough. Some distance from where I lay, there was a bridge and an embankment, perhaps thirty feet high. Between that and me, a horrid mass loomed up against the sky, black and shapeless, one car piled above another in an awful wreck. Dark figures lay around me on the ground, some writhing in agony, others motionless and rigid; groans and cries the most appalling smote my ear. But my ear and all my senses were so stunned and bewildered, that to see and hear was not to feel alarm or awe or pity, only dull stupor and discomfort. I did not feel the least desire to move or speak, the least solicitude about my fate. Half unconsciously I lay watching the fading light in the sky, and the dark figures that soon were swarming around, bending over and raising up the wounded, and thrusting lanterns into the faces of such as lay stiff and still and did not heed their ejaculations.

At last two men came up to where I lay, and one, from the exclamation of recognition he made as they bent over me, I knew to be Mr. Rutledge. The effect of the lantern glaring so suddenly in my face, was to make me start up, with some broken exclamation; but the words had hardly left my lips, when an acute pain and then a giddy blindness rushed over me, and I sunk back, and with a horrible sensation of falling down, down, to unfathomable darkness, I was again insensible.

I suppose I must have remained in that state all night, for it was daylight when I was again sufficiently conscious to know what was going on around me. Mr. Rutledge was sitting by me and was saying to the physician, whose entrance had, I think, first aroused me, that he considered me doing very well, the fever was evidently abating, and that he thought the doctor would agree with him that I might soon be moved to more comfortable quarters.

"If any such can be found," the doctor answered; "but every house in the town, as well as both the hotels, are crowded with the sufferers, and I think your chance of comfort is as good here as it will be anywhere else; for, sir, it is a wretched little town at the best. I wish we could boast better accommodations for strangers."

"Then doctor," said Mr. Rutledge, "I am sure you will consent to what I have been thinking of as the most feasible plan. You know it is but eight miles to Norbury, and my country place is only three miles beyond. The house, to be sure, is closed for the winter; I little expected to be visiting it so soon. But there are several servants in it, and it can quickly be made comfortable, and Mrs. Roberts, my housekeeper, is an excellent nurse. Don't you agree with me that any or all of these reasons are sufficient to make it wise to try to get there as soon as possible? For it is not going to be any joke to stay in this dingy place for a fortnight, and that child will not be fit to travel any sooner; and this arm of mine does not feel much like bearing the motion of those accursed cars again very soon."

Mr. Rutledge's arm was bound up, and an occasional expression of pain crossed his face, though that was the only time he alluded to it. The doctor made an unequivocal opposition to Mr. Rutledge's proposition, and raised innumerable objections to it, all of which he quietly put aside and overruled. It was easy to see who would carry the day; but the doctor did not give over for a long while. When at length he had been unwillingly brought to say that it might do no harm to be moved in the course of the morning to Rutledge, he started another unanswerable objection—a suitable vehicle could not be obtained in the town for love or money, he declared.

"I will manage that," said Mr. Rutledge, and left the room.

The doctor shook his head as the door closed, and said, partly to himself, and partly to the woman who seemed to be officiating as nurse:

"He goes at his own risk; it may do or it may not."

"He's a gentleman what's used to doing as he wants to, I guess," remarked the woman, "and don't think any too much of other people's opinions."

"You are very correct," said the doctor, with importance. "A little learning is a dangerous thing, and Mr. Rutledge knows just enough of medicine to be confident of his own judgment. I only hope his imprudence may not be visited upon this poor child. So young!" he continued, shaking his head.

The woman shook hers, and looked at him with reverence, while he went on to describe my case at great length, and in such alarmingly long words, that I was in danger of being frightened back into a high fever, had not the return of Mr. Rutledge saved me from any further display of Dr. Sartain's scientific knowledge.

Mr. Rutledge saw in a moment the state of the case, for he looked at me attentively as he came in, and I heard him mutter in a low tone as he felt my pulse, "This won't do." Then aloud, he told the doctor that the carriage he had been fortunate enough to engage would be at the door in about an hour and a half, and that he would not detain him any longer at present, but would recommend his taking a little rest, for he should be obliged to ask him to accompany his patient during the drive; it would be safer, he thought, and as he could return in the carriage, it would involve no great loss of time; though he well knew Dr. Sartain could hardly spare a moment from the demands of his extensive practice, etc.

The doctor, somewhat mollified, consented and retired. Mr. Rutledge then sent the woman off, and telling me, cheerfully and kindly, that I was doing very nicely, and that he thought a little sleep would strengthen me for the journey, darkened the windows, and throwing himself into an easy-chair, seemed inclined to set me the example. The lounge or settee on which I was placed, had been made as comfortable as the circumstances would permit, but still was painfully far from easy; and I tossed about, excited and restless, for some time. But, gradually reassured by Mr. Rutledge's quiet composure and cheerfulness, and soothed by the stillness of the room, I fell into a very refreshing sleep.

It was about noon when we started, the doctor being in the carriage with me, Mr. Rutledge, I am sorry to remember, going in a much less comfortable vehicle. It did not trouble me seriously at the time, however. Dr. Sartain's opinion to the contrary notwithstanding, I was by no means injured by the ride, and when we drove under the gateway that conveyed to my listless intellect the knowledge that we had reached Rutledge, besides a little increased languor and weariness, I felt no worse than when we left the town.

Mr. Rutledge, who was in advance, reached the house first, and in a moment the excitement that our arrival had produced became apparent; two or three maids rushed out from a side-door as Mr. Rutledge ascended the steps, and, overcome with alarm at the sight of two carriages, and their master with his arm in a sling, rushed back again wringing their hands, and displaying many symptoms of consternation. Mr. Rutledge in the mean time had entered the house, and soon appeared at the door accompanied by a tall, elderly woman, in a black bombazine dress, and a lace cap with white ribbons, to whom he was explaining, in a concise and forcible manner, the state of affairs, and what was to be done. They came down to the carriage, and Mr. Rutledge introduced "Mrs. Roberts" to the doctor and to me, and then assisting me to alight, we ascended the broad stone steps to the piazza, and thence into a wide hall.

Mr. Rutledge told the housekeeper that it would, he thought, be best for me to go immediately up to her room, where I could lie on the sofa till my apartment could be made ready.

Accordingly I went upstairs, and took possession of Mrs. Roberts' sofa and Mrs. Roberts' room, both sombre and stiff enough, but infinitely more easy and prepossessing than the lady herself. I cannot imagine that at that very early stage of our acquaintance, she could have entertained any personal resentment toward me, and yet I was entirely possessed of that belief from the first moment that I saw her. But I have since discovered that she invariably impressed all strangers with a similar conviction, and from that, and from subsequent knowledge of her character, I have concluded that it was merely "a way she had," and was by no means to be regarded as an expression of her sentiments toward any one. Unhappily, I did not have this light upon her, and soon began to feel myself in the hands of a grim tyrant, whose only motive in exertions made ostensibly for my benefit, was to get possession of me, soul and body, and render, me, if possible, more wretched than she found me.

I lay quietly on the sofa where she had placed me, with no ungentle hand to be sure, but without the slightest relaxing of her blue lips, or the smallest indication of pity in her uncompromising eyes; and watched her as she pursued her plan of operations, steadily and energetically. She certainly knew what she was about, and for precision and promptness must have been a treasure in Mr. Rutledge's eyes. There was an incredible amount of work accomplished in that house within the next hour; rooms were opened, fires were lighted, beds were aired; sounds of sweeping and dusting and beating of mattresses, filling of pitchers, and crackling of fires, reached my indolent ears. Mrs. Roberts, standing before a huge open wardrobe, dealt out sheets, pillow-cases, towels, table-cloths and napkins to the maids, who bustled about with distressing activity, not unfrequently goaded on by a few sharp words from their mistress, who ruled them, I could see, with a rod of iron. The threat, however, that stirred up their flagging energies most effectually, seemed to be, the wrath of Mr. Rutledge. I began to feel myself drawn sympathizingly toward the maids, and could not help wondering whether they were as much afraid of the master, and as much averse to the mistress of the house as I was, and whether they wished themselves away as much; and if they did, why they didn't go; or whether, indeed, people ever got away who once came in it. The gloom of the great hall, with its broad, stone staircase, on which the servants' steps echoed drearily, and the dark glimpses of shut-up rooms that I had caught on my way up, seemed to favor this latter idea—I would write for my aunt to come for me immediately; I would ask the doctor to take me back with him. I should die if they left me in this gloomy place. Perhaps I might die here—who could tell? The doctor had said I was very ill.

Tears came but too easily in those foolish days, and burying my throbbing temples in the pillow, I cried as if my heart would break, or as if it had indeed broken. My emotion was none the lighter because it was imaginary, nor none the easier to bear because it was absurd. Children's troubles and terrors are only less severe than those of maturer minds, as they are shorter lived; while they last they are, if possible, more violent and less bearable. And at that time I was, to all intents and purposes, a child, and a sick, nervous, excited one besides.

By and by Mrs. Roberts came up to where I lay motionless with my face hidden in the pillows, and, leaning over me, said in her chilling tones, "Are you comfortable? Will you have anything?"

I did not move. She listened for a moment, then going to the door said to some one outside:

"She's asleep, sir, and doing well. You had better take some rest yourself."

The door closed, and I suppressed my sobs to listen. In a few minutes Mrs. Roberts came again to look at me, then noiselessly left the room. I could endure it no longer, and throwing back the blankets, raised myself and sat upright. I cried for a long while; every minute the prison feeling seemed to grow stronger, till at last it drove me to that climax of desperation which, in actual prisoners, results in knocking down turnkeys, and (according to the newspapers) doing many frantic and atrocious acts, to reach "the blessed sun and air," from which they have been "banned and barred."

I had reached that climax, I say; I had dried my tears, and sat still, with clenched hands, some wild plan of escape arranging itself in my brain, when the door suddenly opened, and Mrs. Roberts reappeared.

"Oh, you're awake, are you? I'll call the doctor; he's got through setting Mr. Rutledge's arm, and was just going."

I hurriedly pushed the hair from my flushed face, and tried to look composed as the doctor entered with Mrs. Roberts, and followed soon by Mr. Rutledge, who came, he said, to get the doctor's directions, and to see if Mrs. Roberts was doing everything for me that I required. The doctor sat down by me, and taking hold of my wrist, asked me if I felt better for my sleep.

Mr. Rutledge, looking at me, said, "Not much sleep, I am afraid. How is it?"

I pressed my lips very tight together to keep from crying, and shook my head. Mrs. Roberts, who did not probably notice the gesture, said, "Oh, yes, she's slept nicely for three-quarters of an hour."

Then she and the doctor talked about me as if I were in the next room, and no way interested in the affair. After many directions given and received, and many injunctions and much emphasis, the doctor rose to go, saying that he should not be able to come again until the day after to-morrow (unless, of course, I should be taken with any unexpected symptoms); in the mean time he hoped he left me in safe hands (with a look direct at Mrs. Roberts). Mr. Rutledge smothered a smile, accompanied him to the door, and parted from him very courteously, then returned to me. He hoped, he said, that I did not mind trusting myself to him during the doctor's absence, and Mrs. Roberts would, he knew, take as good care of me as the doctor himself could. He then went on to say that he had telegraphed my aunt last evening to prevent her feeling any alarm on hearing of the accident, and that he had written to her more fully by mail to-day, telling her of my improvement, and assuring her that it would not be necessary for her to come on, as I could have every care here.

"In two or three weeks," he continued, "I trust you will be perfectly well and entirely fit to travel."

Two or three weeks! The thought was too dreadful and bursting into tears, I exclaimed:

"I am well enough to go now! I had rather go home with the doctor!"

Mr. Rutledge was silent for a moment, then sitting down beside me, in the doctor's vacated seat, said, as if he were speaking to a very little child:

"You are not well enough to start now; it might do you a great deal of harm. Possibly you may be able to go much sooner than the doctor thinks; only be patient a day or two, and depend upon it, I will let you go the very minute you can bear it."

I shook my head and sobbed convulsively.

"My dear little girl," he said, "you are too nervous now to be reasonable, but you must try and be quiet and not cry, for that is the very worst thing for you, and will keep you here longer than anything else. Your head aches, doesn't it?"

"Yes, dreadfully," I sobbed.

"Well, the more you cry, the more it will ache, and the more it aches, the more fever you will have, and that is just what you must get rid of before you can be fit to start for home. You will feel very differently, I assure you, to-morrow morning, after you have had a good night's sleep."

"I can't sleep!" I exclaimed.

"Oh yes, you can! The doctor has left you some powders that will make that all right, and I will give you one now."

He mixed it in a glass that Mrs. Roberts had brought for the purpose, and I drank it, then followed his advice and lay my hot and throbbing head on the pillow. He sat down again, and continued, speaking soothingly, and in a manly, kind voice, still as if I were about eight years old.

"Your room will be ready in a few moments, and I think you will be more comfortable there than in this old-fashioned retreat of Mrs. Roberts'. Hair-cloth and mahogany are rather dismal for sensitive nerves, it must be acknowledged," glancing with a smile around the apartment. "The room you are to have is on the other side of the hall, and looks out on the park, and is quite cheerful and pleasant. And if you do not like to be alone, Mrs. Roberts shall come and sleep on the sofa by you."

The expression of my face was probably unmistakable; much as I dreaded solitude, I dreaded Mrs. Roberts more, and was immensely relieved when my companion added, "Perhaps, though, on the whole, Kitty had better come and wait on you. Kitty is one of the maids, and is very pleasant, and I think you will like her. I will send her to you now. She will give you your medicine, and sit by you for company. You must send her to me if there is anything more I can do for you to night. I hope the headache will all be gone by to-morrow morning."

And with a few more kind words the master left me, and the maid soon appeared, whose bright face and cheerful care helped along very considerably the cure that was already begun. It was a pleasure to be waited on by Kitty; it was a pleasure to hear her clear young voice and to be served by her strong young arms. She must, I think, have had strict orders not to leave me; for after everything in the way of arranging the pillows and smoothing the blankets, and adjusting everything in the neighborhood of the sofa, had been accomplished, she still lingered beside me, asking if I was comfortable, if she shouldn't get me a glass of water, if I wouldn't like the curtains drawn back a little, etc.

Mrs. Roberts, who had returned, was sitting by the window, a huge basket of work beside her, over which she was straining her eyes, economical of every ray of the rapidly fading daylight. She was too utilitarian in her turn of mind to submit quietly to the sight of Kitty's idleness, and very soon suggested to her that she had better go downstairs to her work. Kitty said, "Yes ma'am," but didn't go. Again Mrs. Roberts suggested, and again Kitty cleverly evaded. The third time, the mistress laid down her work, and any one less stout-hearted than the young person before her would have trembled at the sharp tone in which she repeated her order. If it had been addressed to me, I am sure I should have submitted in trepidation; as it was, I trembled for Kitty, who, however, was nothing daunted, and turning round, said, in a tone just one remove from pert:

"Mr. Rutledge, ma'am, sent me up, and told me to stay with the young lady, and to wait on her; and, also, he says that's to be my duty while she's here, ma'am."

A genuine thundercloud lowered on Mrs. Roberts' face, but a portentous "Umph" was all the rejoinder she made to this decisive speech. Kitty reassured me with a little nod, and I quite rejoiced in our apparent victory.

Before long, a servant knocked at the door, and announced that my room was ready. Then succeeded a pleasant bustle and excitement incident to my removal to it. Kitty insisted upon considering me a perfectly helpless invalid, and would have carried me, if I had not remonstrated, and Mrs. Roberts had not sneered at the idea. As it was, she wrapped me up so that I could hardly move, and supporting me with her arm, preceded by Mrs. Roberts, we crossed the hall, and stopped at the door of the apartment assigned to me.

"Oh, what a pretty room!" I exclaimed, as we entered it. Kitty was charmed that I liked it, and proceeded with great satisfaction to do the honors. Wheeling toward me an easy-chair, and settling me in it before the bright fire that blazed on the hearth, she said with animation:

"Isn't it a pretty room, miss? I've always said, that though the others were bigger and finer, there wasn't one that had such a sweet pretty look about it as the blue room had. It's just fit for a young lady like you."

Kitty was not wrong about its being a pretty room; I never saw a prettier myself. It was not large, but well-proportioned and airy. Opposite the door there was a bay window, with white curtains trimmed with blue, and the same at the other two windows. The bed at the end of the room stood in a recess, curtained in the same manner. The walls were papered with a delicate blue paper, the wood-work about the room was oak, and all the furniture was oak and light blue. The carpet, which was in itself a study, was an arabesque pattern of oak upon a light-blue ground. The slender vases on the mantel, the pictures in their carved oak frames, had an inexpressible charm for eyes so long accustomed to the bare walls and wooden presses of a boarding school dormitory. And even to a maturer taste, I think it would have been pleasing; for I do not remember ever to have seen a room more entirely in keeping, and in which there was less out of place and inharmonious. Indeed, this impression was so strong, that I involuntarily begged Kitty to put away my dark plaid shawl, the sight of which, upon the delicate blue sofa, annoyed me exceedingly; and I thought with satisfaction of a certain blue morning dress in my trunk, that I could put on to-morrow, by way of being in keeping with the room. And the white lava pin and earrings, Agnes' parting gift, which I had never worn yet, and admired beyond expression, would come in play exactly.

While Kitty made herself delightfully busy in unpacking my trunk, which stood in the little dressing-room at the right, and bestowing my modest wardrobe in the drawers and closets thereof, I lay nestling in the soft depths of that marvellous Sleepy Hollow of a chair, that holding me lovingly in its capacious arms, seemed to perform every office of a good old nurse, even to the singing of lullabies. Though that kind attention, I think, really emanated from the glowing, merry fire, which sung, crackled, and blazed most hospitably at my feet.

The headache that an hour ago had seemed so insupportable, had now subsided to a dull throbbing that was comparatively ease and comfort; and to lie there, and look at the fire, and think about nothing, and speak to nobody, and be sure that Kitty was near me, and Mrs. Roberts and "the master" very far away, was all I asked or desired.

This negative sort of bliss found a temporary interruption in the necessary departure of Kitty to the kitchen, to procure my tea and bring up candles. I felt rather babyishly about it, and nothing but shame kept me from telling Kitty that I had rather do without my tea, and go to bed by firelight, than have her leave me. She did not stay away very long, however, and the nice cup of tea and crisp thin slice of toast, that she brought back with her, quite compensated me for the self-denial I had had to exercise in letting her go. These edibles, Kitty, with all the pomp and circumstance of war, arranged upon the little table beside me, placing the tall wax candles in the centre, and distributing the diminutive pieces of the dainty little tête-à-tête set in the most advantageous manner. The tea tasted very nicely out of the thin china cup, that felt like a play-thing when I lifted it, accustomed as I was to the heavy bluish-white crockery of boarding-school, and though I lacked the vigorous appetite, that had made the primitive meals of that establishment enjoyable, still, the delicate food before me had a decided relish. Kitty very much enjoyed my appreciation of it, and was very sorry she could not go down and bring me another slice of toast, but Mr. Rutledge had said I must not have any more.

"I couldn't eat any more, thank you," I said, rather haughtily, though Mr. Rutledge, and not the kind Kitty, inspired the hauteur. Mrs. Roberts made us a call soon after this, and said it was high time I went to bed, and told Kitty sharply, she knew it was her work, keeping me up so long, and hurried up the preparations for retiring, with energy. Kitty looked saucy, but did not dare to rebel, and only indulged in defiance after the door was closed behind the intruder. She again returned, however, on a final tour of inspection, after I was comfortably arranged in the fair white delicious bed, that seemed to be a special partner of tired nature's sweet restorer, who was good for any amount on its demand. She "poked in every corner" as Kitty expressed it, and found a dozen things to object to in her arrangements, pulled open drawers, and set Kitty poutingly at work to settle them properly, and made my temples throb again with alarm lest she should find something objectionable among my clothes, some rent in my school frock, or an undarned stocking smuggled through the vigilant scrutiny of last week's wash. She sent Kitty for her mattress and blankets, and superintended the arrangement of them, though I could see she did not enter cordially into the plan; but as Mr. Rutledge had ordered that Kitty should sleep beside me, I was sure she would not dare to oppose it.

At last there was no excuse for a longer tarry, and she withdrew; Kitty, with a triumphant gesture, slid the bolt upon her, and we "settled our brains for a long winter's nap." A nap not altogether uninterrupted on my part, by troubled dreams, and sudden starts, and foolish fears; but my waking was always met by Kitty's ready care and soothing sympathy; and toward morning quieted into a long refreshing sleep.