In War Time

V.

SEVERAL days had elapsed since the rebel captain lay dying in the hospital. He had been buried quietly, with but two mourners, Miss Wendell and his child, and the world of events had gone by and left him. The child remained for the present at Dr. Wendell’s ; and now it was night in his house, and Hester was safe in bed in Ann’s room, while the brother and sister sat in the little library. The last few days had been full of unusual incidents, which were to be more fertile in consequences than they could guess; and the woman had been busy, and the man, for once, hardworked. The hospital was full to overflowing, and the largest affair in his life as a physician had come to him in the shape of a request to take charge of Major Morton, whose country home lay within a mile or two of the doctor’s house. Altogether Wendell was pleased and busy. The new call flattered and interested him, and was professionally a distinct lift. Ann herself regarded the matter as proof of her brother’s fitness, and, in her calm New England way, as a substantial gain, to be dealt with as a new duty, and used as a means to get on honestly. For Wendell it was more complicated. He felt, or believed himself, equal to any medical call upon his intelligence, — a feeling common enough among younger men, and apt to fade as years go on. But, besides all this, it had for him another value, which would have amazed his sister, could she have known it. He was naturally a refined and also a very sensitive man, cultivated, not deeply, but over much surface, and he felt the want of such appreciative and responsive companionship as makes talk about certain things possible. He liked sympathy, and, as is common with such natures, women pleased him more than men ; nor, indeed, was he well fitted, on account of his self-regard and his girllike tenderness, to contract strong and virile attachments to men. In the Morton household and its surrounding circles of friends and relatives, he felt himself in an air which he breathed, if not at once with ease, certainly with pleasure. The poor whom he attended he did not like, because their houses were often uncleanly and their ways rough. Indeed, he disliked all that belonged to poverty, as he did other unpleasing things. He saw this class of patients knowing that he must, but made brief visits, and found true interest impossible where his senses and taste were steadily in revolt.

Perhaps as a doctor of the rich alone he might have done better. It seems probable that he should never have been a doctor at all.

Copyright, 1884, by HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & Co.

What he had felt when he first saw Mrs. Morton he felt more and more as he came to be socially at ease in her circle. The quiet ways, the calm readiness for all social accidents, and the habitual automatic attention to the wants and feelings and even the prejudices of others struck him as comfortable ; and without distinct analysis of the cause, he came to recognize that he was thrown among people who, for some reason, were acceptable to him, and among whom it would be very agreeable to pursue his profession. Had he heard the conversation which led finally to his being asked to see Major Morton, he would have been less satisfied ; but perhaps could we hear all that is said behind our backs, existence would be nearly impossible except for the few, who would then make what was left of it intolerable.

Mrs. Morton had said a few words to Dr. Wendell as to her desire that he should see her husband at his country home ; but she had by no means looked on this as a finality, and indeed did not decide the matter until, in prospect of the major’s removal, she had a further talk with her old acquaintance, Dr. Lagrange.

She saw him at the hospital, and was accompanied by a friend, who was a somewhat inconstant companion, but who generally came usefully to the front, as was said in war slang, when no one expected to see her, or when there was some real need for her presence ; “ not,” as she remarked, “ that I am of the slightest value, my dear, but one’s friends become so interesting when they are in trouble.”

Mrs. Morton drove with Mrs. Westerley to the hospital; and when the second lady’s pleasant face appeared at the window of her friend’s light Germantown wagon, with its well-matched pair of Morgans, three men in uniform, lounging at the gate, rushed forward in a competitive effort to open the carriage door, and to anticipate the tardy descent of the footman.

“ Do you go at all to the hospitals ? ” said Mrs. Westerley, as they entered the doorway. “ I have been absent so much that I have scarcely seen you this summer, and I have n’t caught up to your present ways.”

“ No,” said Mrs. Morton, “the Sanitary is all I can attend to ; and what with Mrs. Grace and one or two other obstructives, it promises to be more than any one person ought to be called upon to manage. As long as it meant havelocks and tooth-brushes and pocket-handkerchiefs, it was dolls’ play ; but now it is very serious business, as you know, dear.”

“ For my part, I like the hospital work best. But I never was here before. How neat it is! What clever housekeepers these men make ! They told me at Chestnut Hill hospital that they made quite a good income out of the eggshells and coffee-grounds.”

At this moment an orderly approached, touched his cap, and asked if they would wait in the surgeon’s office. Dr. Lagrange would be at leisure in a few minutes.

“ Might we stand at the ward door, and hear the band ? ” said Mrs. Westerley.

“ Of course, ma’am.” replied the orderly. “ The surgeon’s visit is over.” Accordingly, they lingered, looking across the vast ward, once an armory drill-room, while from the lower floor the strains of one well-known air after another floated upwards, and in far corners here and there roused memorial echoes in bosoms weary of war and camps. Evening band play was always a cheerful interruption of the grim monotony of sick life, and when, presently, with the neutral disregard of the raging contest far away found in hospitals, the band struck up Maryland, My Maryland, the rebel wounded roused themselves, and some bluecoat cried out cheerfully to a graycoat near by, “ Good for you, Johnny Reb! ” “ Ah,” said Alice Westerley, “ if we women kept hospitals, there would be no rebel music, my dear. We are too good haters.”

“ And there should be none,” returned Mrs. Morton, gravely.

“ I thought as much,” said her companion. “ But surely it is well. Perhaps we had better not wait any longer. How peaceful it is! I could stay an hour.”

Then they turned away, followed by pleased glances from beds near by, and were presently standing in the surgeon’s official waiting-room, the furnishings of which amused Mrs. Westerley immensely, as in fact few things failed to interest her, from an animal to a man.

“ What is this ? ” she asked. “ It looks like a diagram of a crab. Bless me, it is the plan of the Stump hospital! What in the world, Helen Morton, is a Stump hospital ? And here — do come here ! This is a diet table. ‘ Ordinary diet,’ ’ Extra diet,’ ‘ Number 4 diet ’ ! I think I shall introduce the system at home. And did you ever see such neatness ? Look at the table ; really, the man has three pen-wipers ! ”

At this moment Dr. Lagrange entered.

“ We were admiring the perfect order of your arrangements,” said Mrs. Morton.

“ It is simply a necessity, in a life like mine. I am glad you like it.”

“ But you must like it yourself.”

“ Yes, I do, and I wish others thought as much of it as I do. It would make life easier. Now I have the utmost trouble about letters: people write them on such different sizes of paper, and when you come to file them they don’t match. In the hospital and in the service generally we have the same difficulty.”

“ I see,” replied Mrs. Morton, “ how very vexatious it must be.”

“ One has a like annoyance about people’s opinions,” remarked Mrs. Westerley, with entire gravity.

The surgeon looked puzzled.

“ Yes, certainly,” he said, in some doubt, being a slow thinker, and not having time to consider the matter.

Mrs. Morton availed herself of his hesitation to say, “ I came to consult you as to whether you still think it will be wise for me to ask Dr. Wendell to see Mr. Morton. There seem to be reasons for and against it. What do you think, doctor ? ”

“ Hum ! ” replied Lagrange ; “ on the whole I should ask him. He knows the case and its needs. He lives within call, and I suspect will feel the summons so flattering that you will get from him — indeed can ask from him — more frequent visits than an older man would be apt to pay. I think I would put the case in his hands; and, if agreeable to you, I will myself see my old friend, now and then.”

“ Oh, that would remove all my objections.”

“ Wendell is older than he looks,” said Lagrange.

“ Of course,” returned Mrs. Morton, “ it is very, very absurd; but I have always had doctors whom I knew, and who have had a certain knowledge of one’s life and ways. You understand me, doctor ? ”

“Yes, I suppose I do. Wendell has been brought up among plain New England people.”

“ But he can’t put his manners into his pills, you know,” said Mrs. Westerley.

“It is his manner more than his manners,” explained her friend.

“ Oh, it’s the singular, not the plural, you object to ! ” laughed Mrs. Westerley. “ For my part, I would take him and educate him. I think, if I were ill, — which I never am, — I would like the task myself. He is very good looking, and if he dressed well would be presentable enough.”

Lagrange smiled approval. “ I think I would risk it; ” and so then and there it was settled that Dr. Wendell should become the medical adviser of Major Morton.

Meanwhile their talk had been interrupted a half dozen times by reports of contract physicians, orderlies, provost marshals, messengers, and the officer of the day. Lagrange disposed of each in turn with careful precision of well-considered reply.

“ Do you never lose your temper ? ” said Mrs. Westerley to him, as they descended the stairs together. “ You are a first-rate housekeeper. But pray tell me, what is the Stump hospital ? It must be a new one.”

“ It is for men who have lost limbs,” he replied.

“ How droll! ” said Mrs. Westerley. “ Where do they send generals who lose their heads ? ”

“ How absurd you are, Alice ! ” exclaimed Mrs. Morton.

The surgeon did not smile, and was still curiously examining the question when they left him at the hospital gate. He had himself what men call dry humor, and like persons so endowed was often slow in giving a jest the hospitality of mirthful acceptance. Perhaps it had to undergo a preliminary process of assimilative desiccation.

A few days afterwards, as I have said, in the late evening, Dr. Wendell sat at home with his sister. He was happy, as usual in an hour of leisure, over a family circle of rotiferæ, which he had found on the shore of Fisher’s mill-pond, and he only looked up now and then to reply to Ann, or murmur some result of his observations without taking his eye from the glass. Ann Wendell sat, meanwhile, busily sewing.

“ We have a great many things to talk over, brother,” she said.

“ Yes, I know. Go on ; I can hear yon.”

“ But I wish you would listen, really.”

“ Oh, I ’ll listen ! What is it? When I stir these fellows up they look very much as we must have looked to some higher intelligence at the beginning of this war. It’s almost laughable ! Hum ! what a curious representation of threes in the cilia, and the same in the allied species ! Certainly, Swedenborg was right about the mystical value of that numeral.”

A shade of vexation crossed Ann’s face. She altogether disapproved of Swedenborg and the New Jerusalem and all mystical numbers whatsoever. She said abruptly, “ I think that girl upstairs is more important.”

“ Yes, relatively, my dear.”

“What can we do with her? The school-mistress says in her letter that she has not been paid for a year, and cannot take the child back. No one in the South will claim her. She is on our hands, so far as I can see it. Who is to support her, I would just like to know ?”

“ Mrs. Morton,” replied Wendell, “ says ” —

“ ‘ Says ’ — yes, I know ; but do you suppose it will last ? It’s not reasonable to think it will last.”

“ Oh, well, we ’ll just keep her, and see. She is a nice child. Did you notice how interested she was about that emperor moth I caught last night ? ”

“ ’ Keep her ’ ! I suppose we must. We can’t turn her out into the street, or send her to the almshouse.”

“ Then why, my dear Ann, should we discuss it? Upon my word, there’s a queer rotifer. I don’t think I ever saw it before.”

Ann sighed. “You won’t think it worth while, or right, under the circumstances, to put the child in black ? It is only an added expense.”

“ Do just what you like, Ann.”

Ann’s needle flew nervously, and a little faster, until it broke, and there was a moment’s pause while she sought and threaded another, when, wise with woman’s wisdom, she changed the talk.

“ What did her father die of, brother ? ”

“ Pyæmia, we call it.”

“ There was a post mortem, was n’t there ?”

“ Yes, but it did not change the diagnos’s. And oh, by the bye,” he added, with sudden animation, “ such a droll thing! During the examination, yesterday, I found the ball. When Major Morton happened to speak of Gray’s death, I mentioned it casually, you know, thinking that he might feel an interest. When I did so, he asked if it was a minié. I said No; a pistol ball.”

Ann looked up, startled. “ A what ? ” she said.

“ A Colt, No. 6. I really begin to think Morton was troubled about what that poor fellow said in his wanderings, because he remarked to me how odd it was that it should turn out to be a pistol ball.”

“ Do you think he really shot him? ”

“ Stuff, Ann ! The notion was simply ridiculous ! But suppose, for a moment, that Morton had shot him. It was his duty. It was what he was there for.”

“I would n’t like to think it.”

“ No, I suppose not. No woman would. Just sharpen my pencil. I must draw this fellow while he is so lively. How these vibrios bother one! ”

Then Ann, having done as he desired, rose, and, putting aside her work, said, “ Good night, brother. I am sorry to trouble you about the child, but how can I help it ? ”

“Oh, it’s all right,” he returned. “ The thing settles itself. We must wait.”

In fact, waiting was a great resource in Wendell’s life; nor, in this case, did Ann’s homely sense help her to any more acceptable solution.

“ Well, good-night, brother. I am tired, — tired all over.”

Wendell looked up at her. “Yes, I was afraid you were doing too much. Can’t you keep a little more quiet ? There is no need for you to go to the hospitals. You look run down.”

“ I don’t know. I’m more weary than tired; and I miss the sea, and the old home, and — and — Ezra — the chickens — and at night I want to hear the rote of the water on the beach.”

“ We might manage a little visit up there, when Major Morton gets better.”

“I don’t think we could afford it.”

“ Oh, yes, we ’ll manage. Good-night. Now don’t worry yourself,” and he kissed her kindly. “ Good-night, again.”

There was on Ann Wendell’s mind another and a graver subject. She would have liked to speak out her regret that no minister had seen the sick soldier before he died, but she knew that on all such matters it was useless to look for sympathy from Wendell. She was firmly anchored, and he was carelessly adrift as to all spiritual beliefs.

VI.

Wendell was about thirty when he came to Germantown, and his years and some previous experience had made his way easier than is usual with new-comers ; while at the same time his comparative maturity rendered the up-hill toil among the lower social classes difficult to bear. He had once before gone through the same sharp test of character, — the test which makes or mars, degrades or ennobles, every physician in degrees which are determined by the nature of the moral capital with which he starts, and also more or less by the intellectual interest with which he regards his profession .

As to this alone, Wendell was more fortunate than many others. His work attracted him, but not continuously ; and, as I have said, the contact which he began to have with the refined classes made him more comfortable in his circumstances, and better pleased with himself and his surroundings. Thus far he had cared little about children, save in a mildly sentimental way. They exacted sacrifices, and as a rule did not seem to give much in return. His own unusual culture lifted him so much above the range of the somewhat hard, practically educated school-mistresses of his New England home that he had found in the women he had known little that was attractive, and had been merely repelled by their business-like, over-active conscientiousness. Now, with the prolonged stay of Hester Gray under his roof, and the novel world opened to him through the Mortons, an unread leaf of the life book was turned over before him, and pleasant enough he found it.

The child had few memories of home or family, and in childhood the wounds of grief or losses heal as readily as do those of the physical frame. Very soon the rather monotonous school-days and the sudden and strange hospital scenes faded, along with the shyness born of contact with strangers. Then the little bud of active, alert, maidenly life began to put forth rosy petals with modest coyness, one by one, and to take with instinctive eagerness delight in life.

To his surprise, Wendell became gradually interested in the girl, while to his sister she was a constant and often a bewildering phenomenon. Nevertheless, Ann looked carefully after her dress and food, and soon found it not unpleasant to resume, with an apt and clever pupil, her old work of teaching ; so that the new charge was in no way a weight or a cause of anxiety to Wendell. Like most men of his type, he got at first a mere sentimental pleasure out of the child, and either shirked all care of her, or gave her mere material life no thought whatsoever.

The last days of October had come, and one afternoon, as was now quite often the case, Dr. Wendell called cheerfully for Hester. Ann appeared at the head of the stairs. “ She has yet an hour to finish her lessons. I would n’t take her away from them,” she said. “ It is so difficult to form regular habits, if you always insist on her going to walk just when it is most inconvenient. I can’t give her the time in the morning, because of the house, and the afternoons you are all the time spoiling.”

“ I am not always insisting, Ann. I want her to see the Mortons as often as possible. It is an excellent lesson for any girl to see such a woman as Mrs. Morton.”

“ Don’t talk so loud ; she will hear you,” replied his sister, descending the stairs half-way. “ I am not sure that a poor orphan like Hester is at all the better for such folks. It may not do much harm now, but when she gets older she will see a great many ” —

“ Oh, yes, my dear sister,” he said, interrupting her, “ perhaps so, perhaps not! All questions have two sides. I must have her to-day, anyhow.”

Had Ann persisted, he would have yielded, as all but merely brutal men do yield to gently urgent women in their own homes; but it was not in Ann to deny her brother any pleasure.

“ Well, this once,” she said ; and so Hester, joyous as a bird at the relief from confinement, was presently at the doctor’s side, in the street.

These afternoon walks had become more and more frequent, as the summer waned and the tempered heats of September prevailed. It was still needful for Wendell to visit Major Morton twice a day, and whenever his duties permitted escape from the afternoon round at the hospital he was apt to secure Hester as his companion, and start early enough to allow of a rambling walk, ending in a call on his patient.

The question of a horse and carriage had become a subject of discussion between the brother and sister ; but despite some need for them, too much immediate expenditure was involved for more than mere thought at present, and the Mortons were as yet the only patients at any distance. These walks at this pleasant season were to Wendell a great delight, and the intelligent little companion, so strangely cast into his life, made them a yet more agreeable and varied source of happiness.

Far up the main street the sunlight shone on the gray and dusty turnpike, and lit the maples, aglow with red and gold, and caressed the mottled boles of the few stately buttonwoods, still erect in front of some grave-looking houses with Doric portals and green window blinds, standing back from the street., as if shunning the common line of lesser stone dwellings, the gray fronts of which were half covered to their hipped roofs with the gorgeous autumn blazonry of the Virginia creeper. At last, with the child at his side, he turned into School Lane, where he lingered a moment to show her the old schoolhouse, with the royal crown still shining on its little spire ; and so along past modern villas to the Township Line road, where, turning to the right, down the hill, they soon found their way into the wooded valley of the Wissahickon. At the little old covered crossing, long known as the Red Bridge, they passed over the brown, still stream.

“And now for a scramble, Hester,” he exclaimed, and led the way up a shady hill, taking a short woodland path to Morton’s house, which stood on a bluff looking down on a long reach of quiet water overhung by trees. A slight breeze was stirring the hazy atmosphere of the October woods, and the air was full of leaves, red and brown and yellow, sauntering lazily downward to help make up the brown gaps in the rustling carpet of red and gold. It was alike new and delightful to the bright little maid, this gorgeous mask of autumn. Wendell went along supremely happy, all his sensuous being alive to the color of the leaves, the plumed golden-rods, the autumn primrose, and the cool woodland odors.

“ See, dear,” he said: “ this is the sumach, and it turns crimson ; and that is a gum-tree, always first to get red, and now nearly all its beauties are gone. And are n’t the ferns a nice brown? Let us get all the colors, and see how many we can find. Look at this sugar maple: the leaves are red and bordered with yellow. And here on the wood verge,” he added, halting, “I found some aphids yesterday. They are rather late. Oh, here they are! Do you know, they are the cows which the ants keep ; ” and he told her all the queer story of the ants’ domestic economy, while the little fellows made incomprehensibly tortuous journeys, vast to them as that of Columbus.

Meanwhile, the child listened with rapt attention, gathering the leaves in her hands, and presently she flitted away in chase of a splendid moth, which she stored in her handkerchief, gathered into a bag, where it found itself in queer company with a beetle or two, and a salamander captured in a rill which crossed the path.

“ Won’t the long red thing get hurt?” asked the child. “ Won’t the beetle eat him ? ”

“ No ; if you even cut off his tail, it would grow again.”

“ But his legs ? ”

“If he were a crab, even his legs would grow again.”

“ But would mine ? ”

“No, I rather think not.”

“ Why would n’t they ? ”

“ I don’t know.”

“ Oh ! ” The child was silent. It seemed to her strange that there should be anything that he did not know.

“Is n’t it getting late?” she then said.

“Bless me, — yes!” cried Wendell. “ Come along. It is nearly six, and I have to meet Dr. Lagrange. How came you to think it was late ? ”

“ Miss Ann said I was to remind you ; and I remembered, did n’t I?” she added, with a quaint little triumphant sense of having fulfilled her small duty.

“ Women are queer things,” murmured Wendell ; “ big and little, they are queer! ”

The girl overheard him.

“ What is queer, sir ? Am I queer ? ”

“ No,” he cried, “ you are only nice,” and he kissed the attentive, earnest face looking up at him. His own very natural act gave him a moment’s shock of surprise. It was the first time that he had thus caressed her, and the small personage was somehow pleased ; but she still recalled her office, and said, “ We must hurry, or we ’ll be so late.”

“ Yes, come along,” he replied. “ Forward march.”

By and by they came out on the crest of the hill, and looked back on the wonder of the autumn woods.

He paused again in thought. “ Some people fancy colors are like sounds of music, Hester.”

“ Like music, sir ? I don’t understand. Will I understand some day ? ”

“ Perhaps. Now if each color was to become a sound, and all these trees were to sing, what a music that would be!”

“Wouldn’t the birds be frightened?”

“ Rather,” said Wendell, laughing. He delighted to talk a little over the child’s head, to see what answers he would get. “ Oh, there is Mrs. Westerley ! ” he exclaimed, as they climbed a fence, and began to walk over the lawn towards the house. He knew Hester was timid and shy, owing to her want of frequent contact with the outside world of men and women, so he said quietly, “ Don’t be afraid, Hester.”

“ No, sir.”

“ And this is the little girl I have heard about,” said Mrs. Westerley, cool and handsome in white muslin, for the day was warm, and holding her straw hat swinging in her hand. “ Dr. Lagrange is waiting for you, but I know you will have some delightful excuse. He has been here half an hour. I envy you doctors your wealth of excuses ! I would like to join an apology class. I think, with time and practice, I could learn to fib quite agreeably.”

Wendell was not yet up to the matter of small social badinage. It embarrassed him, and he hated to be embarrassed. “ I was delayed,” he said, gravely, “ and ” —

Hester felt stirred with some sort of vague consciousness that her pleasant companion was being taken to task. “ I wanted him to stop too long in the woods for the leaves,” she explained, and then proceeded to display as evidence a handful of her treasures.

“Oh, terrible infant !” laughed the lady. “ A dangerous advocate, doctor. She was just in time to save your conscience.”

Wendell flushed almost imperceptibly. “ I was detained,” he said. “ If you will take care of Hester, I will go to the house.”

“ I will look after her,” returned Mrs. Westerley. “ Come, Hester, I love little girls. Let us go into the garden. There must be some peaches yet.”

“ Oh, that will be nice ! ”

“ Well, come, and let us look for them; and as to pears, I will give you a wheelbarrow load.”

They were fast friends in ten minutes, and in a half hour returned to the house, Hester having eaten twice as much as was good for her.

Meanwhile there had been a consultation. Wendell had become uneasy about his patient’s condition, and it was yet more plain to the elder physician that the drain of so grave a wound was being badly borne, and that Morton’s increasing irritability and nervousness were the growing results of his condition.

“ What do you think of my husband? ” said Mrs. Morton to the two surgeons, as they met her at the foot of the staircase.

“ Dr. Wendell will tell you,” said Lagrange, who was precise in all the little matters of the rights and functions of the attending physician.

“ I hope that Dr. Lagrange will feel free to say what he thinks,” replied Wendell, not sorry to shift an unpleasant burden.

“ I am glad that one doctor, at least, can forget this eternal etiquette,” exclaimed Mrs. Morton, a woman much used to have her own way and to set aside all obstacles to her will, and now troubled out of her usual calm of manner.

“ You will pardon me, I am sure, if I say that it is good manners, not mere etiquette, my dear friend,” answered the surgeon, smiling; “ but with Dr. Wendell’s permission, I am wholly at your service. I don’t — I should say, we don’t quite like Morton’s condition. He does not come up as he should do.”

“ Is he in danger ? ”

“ No, he is in ni immediate danger.”

“ Do you think be will get well ? ”

“ We hope so.”

“ But what are his chances ? I had no idea he was so ill ! Why did you not tell me before ? ”

“ We have only of late felt so uneasy. It is a question of strength of constitution, of physical endurance, and of power to take food. How competent these will prove no one can tell.”

“ But I must know,” she said. “ Are you sure that you have told me the whole truth ? ”

“ Yes, so far as we know it.”

“ And you are certain ? ”

“ Physicians can rarely be certain. Those who are most wise are the least apt to be so. If you were not in great trouble, I am sure that you would not have asked me again.”

“You must excuse my impatience, doctor, but I wish I could have something more definite.”

“I wish I could also, my dear lady. That is just one of the miseries of our profession. If it would make you feel easier to have any one else to see him with us, I am sure nothing would be more agreeable to Dr. Wendell and myself.”

“ Of course,” said Wendell. This was not precisely true. He already had enough help in the way of sharing responsibility, and he distrusted in his inward consciousness the addition of some one of celebrity, who might possibly disturb his hold on an important case and family ; for already he had been consulted as to the condition of Mrs. Morton’s elder son, who was an invalid.

“ No,” returned Mrs. Morton wearily, “ I only want to be sure, and I don’t suppose any one can help us more than you. If you cannot make me sure, no one can.”

The younger man felt that he might reasonably have been included in this statement of confidence.

“ You will come often, and watch him closely ? ” she added.

“ You may rest assured that nothing will be left undone,” said Lagrange.

“ What with Mr. Morton’s state and Edward’s, I am worn out,” she returned.

“ I am sorry for you, Wendell,” said Lagrange, when they were parting. “You will probably have a losing fight to make. But it will not be the last one in your life. Good-by. See you on Thursday. And by the way,—and as I am an old fellow you won’t mind it, — I would be a little more punctual. I don’t mind it much myself, but these people think themselves important, and they will.”

Wendell was never very patient under advice, and disliked it always ; but he wisely thanked the elder man, and said good-by.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Westerley and Hester, laughing and happy, appeared on the back porch, which looked out on the garden, and extended along the back of a somewhat roomy and old-fashioned gray stone house.

As Mrs. Westerley looked up, she saw Mrs. Morton seated near the hall door gazing dreamily into distance. Arthur, her younger boy, knelt at her side, holding her hand, and her older son, a tall, broadly built, but pale young man of twenty, stood with one hand on her shoulder, his face disturbed and grave, and his eyes filling. As Mrs. Westerley came near, he left his mother, saying to the new-comer, “ Mother has just heard from the doctors that my father is not so well. In fact, they are very uneasy about him.”

“ Oh, Edward, this seems very sudden ! It can’t be so bad. Let me talk with her alone. There, Arty, take my young friend to Dr. Wendell.”

The younger lad, rising, kissed his mother’s cheek, took Hester’s hand, and followed by his brother, who moved with a certain feebleness of step, went into the house.

“ Is this really so, Helen ? ” said Mrs. Westerley.

“ Oh, I don’t know. They say so. I cannot understand how a man of his vigor and health could be so pulled down. It is n’t only his body, Alice, but he is irritable and exacting beyond belief.”

“ But you don’t mind that, dear, in a sick man.”

“Oh, no, I don’t mind it.” Yet she did. Sickness was to Mrs. Morton a sort of unreasonable calamity, and held for her always some sense of personal wrong. When her children were ill, and especially Edward, this feeling of being directly injured rose to a pitch of angry indignation, and she then showed, despite her admirable tact and good breeding, that curious, wild, halfanimal instinct of protective and defiant maternity which made the doctor’s task no easy one. If she had analyzed the matter, she would have seen what was clear to her shrewd friend, that her children were far more to her than her husband. He had disappointed the keen ambitions with which she had begun her life with him. He had sympathized with her early dream of a political career for him until they were married, when, by degrees, it became clear that the small disgusts and coarse contacts of such a life were amply sufficient to defeat any display of energy in that direction, and that his love of power was incompetent as a motive to do more than to make him a selfish, amiable, well-bred despot in his own home. Then, as he had never balked his tastes, he had had some unpleasant intimacies, quite too much talked about for Helen’s comfort. And so at last, having failed to arouse him to assert himself in any nobler fashion, the woman had come to feel that life was over so far as any aspirations for him were concerned, and to look to her two boys with anticipations which their young lives bade fair to fulfill. Then came the war, and Morton was drawn into that wild vortex, with a vague hope on his wife’s part that at last he would illustrate a name which in former days had won a brilliant reputation in the colonial and later history of his country. And now this hope, too, was gone. His career in the army had been successful. He was brave, as all his people had been ; and Helen Morton had felt a novel access of tenderness and seen new possibilities of happiness in his success. Two days before, she had learned that he was gazetted colonel of his regiment, and now it was all over ! There was for her some feeling of defeat in all this, some sense of a too malignant fate. Throughout her married life she had writhed under the humiliating sense of feebleness that strong women feel in the face of ineffective struggles to urge a lower masculine nature into activities which shall gratify the desires for position and a career denied to themselves by the thralldom of social usage.

Then of late her temper had been sorely taxed. All that was worst in Morton was being accentuated by sickness, and, like most people on the rack of pain and weakness, he was undergoing the process of minor moral degradation which chronic illness brings to so many. Acute brief disease may startle us to better and graver thoughts of our aims and our actions, but prolonged illness makes more noble but a rare and chosen few. Mrs. Morton sat some time in quiet, and at last said abruptly,—

“ Alice, this is the bitterest time of all these bitter years.”

Mrs. Westerley knew in a measure what this meant, but she felt that it was necessary, as a matter of good sense, to, ignore anything hidden in her friend’s complaint, and to deal only with the palpable present.

“ I don’t think you ought to say that, my dear. You have those two boys. They do seem to me two of the nicest, sweetest-mannered fellows ! It is touching to see how they hang around you. And as to the major, — we ought to call him ‘ colonel ’ now, I suppose, poor fellow!— he is only as yet an ill man. No one despairs about him.”

“ Oh, it is n’t only that, Alice; although,” she added, “ God knows that is bad enough.”

“ I think I understand, dear.”

“ No, you don’t. Indeed, how could you ? No one understands but myself.”

“ Well, perhaps not all, not everything. But here is the nurse.” Then Mrs. Morton went into the house, and Mrs. Westerley joined Hester and the doctor, who, having written his orders, was about to depart.

“ There is a bit of twilight yet,” said the lady. “ I will walk with you to the creek.”

“ Shall we take the road ? ” he asked, moodily.

“ If you please.”

Wendell was uncomfortable, and he hardly knew why it was so. As there are people who feel slight atmospheric changes or electric conditions of the air, so there are others who are exquisitely alive to the little annoyances of social life. They are like a musician, who automatically feels the defects of this or that player in a great orchestra, and is made unhappy by the keenness of that very appreciativeness which fits him to enjoy the perfection of harmony. If our eyes were microscopes and our ears audiphones, life would be one long misery ; and a too delicate sense of the moods and manner of those about us is an almost equal calamity. Wendell had learned that there was some sting possible for him in the ways and talk of even the best bred, when tormented by trouble into naturalness of speech. It surprised and hurt him ; nor could his reason prevent it now from causing one of those abruptly born senses of depression to which he was subject. Feebly yielding, as usual, to the mood, he walked beside the gay widow in silence.

“ You seemed troubled about Mr. Morton,” she began. “ Are you troubled ? ”

“ Yes,” he said, glad to accept any excuse for his speechlessness. “ Yes, I am a good deal troubled. It’s an awful thing to see death coming closer and closer, and to feel that you are in a measure held to be responsible.”

He had not meant to go so far, but his depression colored his talk.

“ Surely,” she returned, “ you do not mean that he will die? ”

“ No, not surely, — of course, not that exactly ; only that he is ill, very ill.”

“ Is n’t it rather sudden ? ”

“ It is always so, you know. A patient gets worse, and the time comes when you have to say so. Then it always seems to be sudden.”

“ I don’t believe that he will die. You don’t know these Mortons, doctor. They have such constitutions ! I am sure he will get well.”

Mrs. Westerley had no belief in anybody’s dying. Generally the people she knew were alive, and she herself was too much so to feel death at all as a common and relentless factor, getting, as time went on, increasing value in the complicated equation of being.

The conviction somehow singularly comforted Wendell, who, like other doctors, felt deeply the tone of those about him who held relation to the sick.

“ You are very good to say so,” he replied. “ I find it often as hard to believe in life as you do in death.”

“ I do not wonder at that,” she said. “ But it is rather grim talk for the child ! There, run on, Hester, and get me a bunch of those red ash berries. What a charming little woman she is ! I would like to know who her people are. She has a pleasant, quiet flavor of the old manners about her, — such as used to scare me in my grandmamma Evelyn. I once knew a Mr. Gray from Edisto. I wonder if she belongs to that family? They were very blue blood, indeed, and I dare say did their wicked best to get us into this present muddle. I wish, for my part, we could tow Massachusetts and South Carolina out to sea, and anchor them together, and let them settle their difficulties ! ”

Wendell laughed. “ It’s well you ’re not a man. You would soon get into Fort Lafayette.”

“ Oh, that ’s just one of the many advantages of being a woman ! Don’t you think I am horribly disloyal? I talked so to old Wilmington, the other night, that he says I am dangerous, and to-day he would hardly speak to me ; but then he had been taking a great deal of the major’s madeira, and his nose shone like a cheerful lighthouse ! ”

Wendell could not help being amused. He wished faintly in his heart that Ann Wendell, who was always good-humored in a level, even way, had some of this woman’s gayety.

“ I shall not inform on you,” he said, smiling.

“ It would n’t be of any use. I gave a whole regiment tooth-brushes, once, and when I get very bad I discipline myself and comfort my friends by sending a check to the sanitary commission.”

“ Rather dear penitence,” he returned. “ Yes, is n’t it? But one must do something, in these days. Now if I only were a man ” —

“ A man ! Why ? ”

“ How can you ask ? I should be in it, in the war, at the front, I mean. I hate to see a man about the streets, when I know that we could crush it all out so easily if we just put forth our strength. I pity that boy, Edward Morton. He does so want to join the army, and is so wretched over his weak health.”

“ He is certainly much broken,” said Wendell, “and I am afraid has little else than a life of invalidism before him ; and what is worse, he cares for nothing really but out-of-door life, — to shoot, fish, or ride, —and simply yearns after that wild cattle ranche in Texas.”

“Yes, I pity him,” she said, with sudden softness, wondering a little that the strong, healthy man at her side did not seem to quite take in the sadness of this broken life. “I pity the disappointed ! Life has been so sweet and soft for me, and so joyous, every breath of it. Oh, I could build a very nice heaven out of this earth’s possibilities!” “ Would n’t it lack something ?” “Yes, it might; surely it would. But you must not put my gay moods to serious question. You have been so pleasant that I have come twice as far as I meant to. I hope you feel it to be your fault. Where are my mountain ash berries ? Thank you, you dear child! How nicely you have tied the stems together ! Good-night! And by the bye, I want to call on Miss Wendell. Pray tell her that I hope she will be at home to me, whether she is out to others or not. I must see that child again. Good-night ! ”

Wendell was flattered, amused, and puzzled. This was a new creature to him. The odd recklessness of statement, the sudden changes of position in regard to questions discussed, the touch of malice in her talk at times when she sketched a friend, these all bewildered the doctor. Mr. Wilmington said of her that she dealt little in amiable phrases and never did an unkind thing; and that to be her friend was a frightful risk of character, and as good assurance of mild calumny as running for Congress.

“ But then, my dear Mr. Wilmington,” said the widow to that old gentleman, when in a moment of utter exasperation he betrayed his annoyance in this satirical sentence, “ it is of no use to abuse my enemies ; besides, I have none but you. I think my friends must like it, for they do not desert me; and I never abuse you, Mr. Wilmington, — never! ”

S. Weir Mitchell .