Kitabı oku: «Dorothy», sayfa 2

"Oh! the horrid beasts! How dare you – anybody – keep such dangerous creatures? I'll tell my father! He'll – he'll – " tears choked her further speech and, still suspiciously eyeing the Danes, she was edging cautiously down the steps when she felt herself stopped.

Mrs. Cecil had loosed her hold of Peter to lay her hand upon the girl's shoulder and she was saying, kindly but sternly:

"They are not dangerous but playful. They attack nobody upon whom they are not 'set.' It was an accident; and if any further apology is necessary it is from a little girl to the old gentlewoman – for an insolent suspicion. Now go. The dogs will not follow you."

Dorothy did not see how she had done wrong, yet she felt like a culprit dismissed as she lifted the pouch she had again dropped and started gateward, still keeping a wary eye upon the beautiful dogs, now lying beside their mistress in her beach-chair.

As she neared the entrance she cried:

"Here I am at last, father! I didn't mean to stay so long but that dreadful old woman – Why, father, father! Where are you, dearest father?"

He was nowhere to be seen. Nor anybody, either on the broad avenue or the narrow street around the corner; and when she came breathlessly to the dear home in which she hoped to find him it was empty.

CHAPTER III
AT JOHNS HOPKINS HOSPITAL

The door of No. 77 Brown Street stood wide open. Any of the burglars for whom its mistress was always on the watch might have raided the tiny parlor or made off with father John's Sunday overcoat, hanging upon the hat-rack. Now also, while Dorothy hurried from room to room of the six which were all the house contained, the wind of a rising thunderstorm whistled through them and their open windows. Nor was there any reply to her anxious calls:

"Mother! Father! Anybody – somebody! Oh! where are you? What has happened? Mother – dearest mother Martha! Won't you answer?"

Certainly, this was a strange, a terrifying state of things. It was amazing that so careful a housewife as Martha Chester should leave her home in this unprotected condition, but it was quite natural for the well-trained girl, even in the midst of her alarm, to close the sashes against the rain that now came dashing in.

Then she hurried below and out into the little yard, or garden, that was her own special delight. Nobody there; but the pail and brush which Mrs. Chester had been using to clean her back kitchen were still upon its floor, the pail overturned and the water puddling its bricks, and the sight made Dorothy's heart sink lower yet.

Hurrying back to the street, a neighbor shielded her own head from the downpour and called from a next-door window:

"Something has happened to your father. A boy saw him picked up on the street and a policeman called a Johns Hopkins ambulance, that took him to the hospital. The boy knew him, told your mother, and she's hurried there. Don't worry. Probably it's nothing serious."

"Not serious! Oh! you don't know what you're saying! And to think I left him only such a little while! If that hateful old woman – I must go to him, too, I must, I must!"

With that Dorothy was retreating indoors, but again the neighbor's voice detained her:

"'Tisn't likely you'd be admitted, even if you did go. You'd better stay here and be ready for your poor mother when she comes. It's worse trouble for her than for you."

This might be so and the advice excellent, but the excited girl was in no mood to profit by it. Once, in her early childhood, she had answered to an inquiry: "I love my mother a little the best, but I love my father the biggest the best!" and it was so still. Her father, her cheery, indulgent, ever-tender father, would always be "the biggest the best" of her earthly friends, and to be absent from him now, not knowing what had befallen, was impossible.

Glancing upward she observed that the neighbor had already withdrawn her head from the dashing rain and was glad of it. It left her free to bang the front door shut, to rush backward through the house and out at the alley gate, which she also shut, snapping its lock behind her. But she had caught up the key that opened it and, hanging this in a crevice of the fence known for a safe hiding place to each of the family, she started eastward for the great hospital.

Though she had never entered the famous place, she had seen it once from a street-car, and love guided her flying feet. But it was a long, long way from Brown Street, and the present storm was one of those deluging "gusts" familiar to the locality. Within the first five minutes the gutters were filled, the muddy streams pushing outward toward the very middle of the narrower alleys and quite covering her shoe-tops as she splashed through. At one or two of the older thoroughfares she came to the old-time "stepping stones," provided for just such emergencies, and still left standing because of the city's pride in their antiquity. Over these she leaped and was glad of them, but alas! the storm was having its will of her. Her gingham frock was soaked and clung about her with a hindering obstinacy that vexed her, and her wet shoes grew intolerable. She did not remember that she had ever gone barefoot, as some of her mates had done, but at last she sat down on a doorstep and took off her shoes and stockings. After a moment's contemplation of their ruined state, she threw them far aside and stepped upon the brick pavement, just as a policeman in oilskins came up and laid his hand on her shoulder, asking:

"Little girl, what are you doing?"

Dorothy sprang aside, frightened, and wriggled herself free. She forgot that she had never been afraid of such officers; that, indeed, the one upon her own home beat was the friend of all the youngsters on the block, and that this one could give her the shortest direction to the place she sought. She had long ago been taught that, if she were ever lost or in any perplexity upon the street, she should call upon the nearest policeman for aid and that it was his sworn duty to assist her. She remembered only that it was a policeman who had summoned the ambulance that had carried her father to that horrible place – a hospital! Well, she, too, was bound for it, but only to snatch him thence; and stretching out her small, drenched arms, she wondered if they and mother Martha's together would have strength to lift and seize him.

Then on and on and on! Could one city be so big as this? Did ever brick pavements hurt anybody else as they were hurting her? How many more blocks must she traverse before she came in sight of that wide Broadway with its pretty parks, on which the hospital stood?

Everybody had retreated indoors. Nobody who could escape the fury of the storm endured it, and she had left the officer who could have guided her far behind. But, at last, a slackening of the downpour; and as if by magic, people reappeared upon the street; though of the first few whom she addressed none paused to listen. Yet, finally, a colored boy came hurrying by, his basket of groceries upon his arm, and another empty basket inverted over his head, by way of an umbrella. Him she clutched, demanding with what little of breath she had left:

"The – way – to – Johns Hopkins' – hospital, please!"

"Hey? Horspittle? Wha' for?"

"To find my father, who's been taken there. Oh! tell me the shortest way, please – please – please! I am so tired! and I must be – I must be quick – quick!"

A look of pity and consternation stole into the negro's face, and he drew in his breath with a sort of gasp as he answered:

"Laws, honey, I reckon yo' mus' be 'quick'! But de quickes' yo' is ain' half quick enough. Know wha' dem horspittles is for? Jus' to cut up folkses in. Fac'. Dey goes in alibe, dey comes out deaders. Yo' jus' done cal'late yo' ain' got no paw no mo'. He's had his haid, or his laig, or both his arms sawed off 'fore you-all more'n got started a-chasin' of him. Po' li'l gal! Pity yo' got so wet in de rain jus' fo' nottin'! Wheah yo' live at? Yo' bettah go right home an' tell yo' folks take dem cloes off, 'fore you-all done get de pneumony."

Dorothy was shivering, partly from nervousness, partly from the chill of wet garments in the strong breeze. Though she had often heard the postman comment upon the superstitions of the negroes, who formed so large a part of the city's population, and knew that such ideas as this lad expressed were but superstition only, she could not help being impressed by his words. It was his honest belief that to enter a hospital meant giving himself up to death; and in this ignorance he reasoned that this forlorn child should be prevented from such self-destruction by any means whatever. So when she still pleaded to be directed, despite the fear he had raised in her, he whirled abruptly about and pointed his hand in a direction wholly different from that she had followed. Then he added with a most dramatic air:

"Well, honey, if you-all done daid-set to go get yo' laigs sawed off, travel jus' dat-a-way till yo' come to de place. Mebbe, if dey gibs yo' dat stuff what makes yo' go asleep, you-all won't know nottin' erbout de job."

With this cheerful assurance the grocer's boy went his way, musically whistling a popular tune, and Dorothy gazed after him in deep perplexity. Fortunately, the rain had almost ceased and the brief halt had restored her breath. Then came the reflection:

"He wasn't telling the truth! I know that isn't the way at all, for Johns Hopkins is on the east of the city, and that's toward the north. I'll ask somebody else. There are plenty of people and wagons coming out now; and – Oh! my!"

As if in answer to her thought, there came the clang of an electric bell, the hurrying delivery wagons drew out of the way, and past her, over the clear space thus given, dashed another ambulance, hastening to the relief of some poor sufferer within. On its side she saw the name of the hospital she sought and with frantic speed dashed after this trustworthy guide.

Though she could by no means keep up with its speed she did keep it well in sight, to the very entrance of the wide grounds themselves, and there she lost it. But it didn't matter now. Her journey was almost done, and the building loomed before her, behind whose walls was hidden her beloved father John.

From the gateway up the incline to the broad hospital steps she now dragged her strangely reluctant feet. How, after all, could she enter and learn some dreadful truth? But she must, she must! and with a final burst of courage she rushed into the great entrance hall, which was so silent, so beautiful after the storm outside; and there appeared before her half-blinded eyes a figure as of one coming to meet her.

All alone the figure stood, with nothing near to detract from its majestic tenderness; so large and powerful looking; as if able to bear all the burdens of a troubled world and still smile peace upon it. Slowly, Dorothy crept now to the very feet of the statue and read that this was: "Christ the Healer."

Ah! then! No hospital could be a wicked, murderous place in which He dwelt! and with a sigh of infinite relief, the exhausted child sank down and laid her head upon Him. And then all seemed to fade from view.

The next Dorothy knew she was lying on a white cot; a blue-gowned, white-capped nurse was bending over her, and a pleasant voice was saying:

"Well, now that's good! You've had a splendid rest and must be quite ready for your supper. Here's a fine bowl of broth, and some nice toast. Shall I help you to sit up?"

"Why – why – what's the matter with me? Where am I? Have – " began the astonished child; then, suddenly remembering the colored boy's assertions concerning this dreadful place, she instinctively thrust her hands below the light bed covering and felt of her legs. They were still both there! So were her arms; and, for a matter of fact, she was delightfully rested and comfortable. Again lying back upon her pillow, she smiled into the nurse's face and asked:

"What am I doing here, in a bed? Is this the hospital?"

"Yes, dear, it is; and you are in bed because you fainted in the entrance hall, exhausted by exposure to the terrible storm. That is all – we trust. Now, drink your broth and take another nap if you can."

There was authority, as well as gentleness, in the tone and the patient tried to obey; but this time there was a sharp pain at the back of her head and her neck seemed strangely stiff. With a little exclamation of distress, she put her hand on the painful spot, and the attendant quickly asked:

"Does that hurt you? Can you remember to have had a blow, or a fall, lately?"

"Why, yes. The big dogs knocked me down over at Bellevieu. It made me blind for a few minutes, but I was too mad to stay blind! If it hadn't been for that – Oh! please, where is my father?" answered Dorothy.

"Your father? I don't know. Have you lost, or missed, him, dear?" returned the other, understanding now why such a healthy child should have collapsed as she had, there at the feet of the beautiful statue. Excitement, exposure, and the blow; these accounted for the condition in which a house doctor had found her. Also, there was nothing to hinder prompt recovery if the excitement could be allayed; and to this end the nurse went on:

"Tell me about him, little girl. Maybe I can help you, and don't worry about being here. It is the very loveliest place in the world for ailing people and nothing shall hurt you."

So Dorothy told all she knew; of the long weeks past when the postman's active feet had become more and more troublesome; of his sudden disappearance; and of her now terrible fear that, since the poor feet were of so little use, these hospital surgeons would promptly "saw" them off and so be rid of them.

Ripples of amusement chased themselves across the nurse's fair face as she listened, yet beneath them lay a sympathetic seriousness which kept down Dorothy's anger, half-roused by the fleeting smiles.

"Well, my dear, neither he nor you could have come to a better place to get help. The very wisest doctors in the country are here, I believe. It's a disease with a long name, I fancy – "

"Yes, yes! I know it! He told me. It's 'locomort' – 'loco' something, 'at' – 'at' something else. It's perfectly horrible just to hear it, and what must it be to suffer it? But he never complains. My father John is the bravest, dearest, best man in the world!"

"Indeed? Then you should be the 'bravest, dearest, best' little daughter as well. And we'll hope some help, some cure, can be found for him. Now, will you go to sleep?"

"No. If you please I will go home. But I don't see my clothes anywhere. Funny they should take away a little girl's clothes just 'cause she forgot and went to sleep in the wrong place!"

"In the very right-est place in all the world, dear child! At the Saviour's feet. Be sure nothing but goodness and kindness rule over the hospital whose entrance He guards. Your clothes are drying in the laundry. You will, doubtless, have them in the morning, and, so far as I can judge now, there'll be nothing to prevent your going home then," comforted the nurse, gently stroking Dorothy's brow and by her touch soothing the pain in it. Oddly enough, though her head had ached intensely, ever since that tumble on Mrs. Cecil's piazza, she had not paid any attention to it while her anxious search continued. She was fast drowsing off again, but roused for an instant to ask:

"Have you seen my father? Did he hurt himself when he fell? Did he fall? What did happen to him, anyway? Mayn't I see him just a minute, just one little minute, 'fore this – this queer sleepiness gets me?"

"My dear, you can ask as many questions as a Yankee! I'll tell you what I think: Your father was probably taken to the emergency ward. I have nothing to do with that. My place is here, in the children's ward; and the first thing nurses – or children – learn in this pleasant room is – obedience. I have my orders to obey and one of them is to prevent talking after certain hours."

"You – you a big, grown-up woman, have to 'obey'? How funny!" cried Dorothy, thinking that the face beneath the little white cap was almost the very sweetest she had ever seen. But to this the other merely nodded, then went softly away.

Dorothy lay in a little room off from the general ward, into which the nurse had disappeared, and where there was the sound of low-toned conversation, with an occasional fretful cry from some unseen baby. The doctor, or interne as he was called, making his night rounds, seeing that all his little charges were comfortable for their long rest, and discussing with the blue-gowned assistant their needs and conditions. It was he who had found Dorothy, unconscious on the tiles, and had ordered her to bed; and it was of herself, had she known it, that he and the nurse had just been talking. As a result of this he merely looked in at the door of the little room, blinked a good-night from behind his spectacles, which, like two balls of fire, reflected the electric light above the door, and passed on.

Dorothy intended to keep awake. For a long time her head had been full of various schemes by which she should rise to the support of her family, whenever that day foreseen by the postman should arrive when his own support should fail. The day had come! Very suddenly, after all, as even the best-prepared-for catastrophes have a way of doing; and now, despite her earnest desires – Dorothy was going to sleep! She was ashamed of herself. She must stay awake and think – think – think! She simply must– she —

"Well, Dorothy C., good morning! A nice, dutiful daughter, you, to run away and leave mother Martha alone all night!"

That was the next she knew! That was Mrs. Chester's voice, speaking in that familiar tone a reproof which was no reproof at all, but only a loving satisfaction. And there she sat, the tidy little woman, in her second-best hat and gown, smiling, smiling, as if there were no such thing as trouble in the world! as if both husband and child were not, at that very moment, lying in hospital beds!

CHAPTER IV
DOROTHY GAINS IN WISDOM

"Why, mother! Why – why —mother!" cried the astonished Dorothy, sitting up in her cot and smiling back into the happy face before her, yet wondering at its happiness and her own heartlessness, in being glad while her father was so ill. Then she realized that her neck was very stiff and that when she tried to turn her head it moved with a painful wrench, so sank back again, but still gazed at Mrs. Chester with a grieved amazement.

Seeing which, the lady bent over the cot and kissed the little girl, then promptly explained:

"You needn't be troubled, dearie, this is the very best thing that could have happened to us. Your father tired of waiting for you, his head was dizzy, and when he tried to walk home he fell. They hurried him here – his uniform showed he was somebody important – and into that emergency place. There the doctors examined him and they say, O Dorothy C.! they say that there is a chance, a chance of his sometime getting well! Think of that! John may get well! All those other outside doctors, that he paid so much to, told him he never could. He'd just grow worse and worse till – till he died. These don't. They say he has a chance. He's to stay here and be built up on extra nourishments, for awhile, and then he's to go into the country and live. Oh! I'm the happiest woman in Baltimore, this day! And how is my little girl? Though the nurse tells me there's nothing much the matter with you, and that you'll be able to go home with me as soon as you have had your breakfast. Such a late breakfast, Dorothy C., for a schoolgirl! Lucky it's a Saturday!"

Dorothy had never seen her mother like this. At home, when trifles went wrong, she was apt to be a bit sharp-tongued and to make life uncomfortable for father John and their daughter, but now, that this real trouble had befallen, she was so gay! For, even if there was hope that the postman might sometime recover, was he not still helpless in a hospital? And had she forgotten that they had no money except his salary? which would stop, of course, since he could no longer earn it. It was certainly strange; and seeing the gravity steal into the childish face which was so dear to her, mother Martha stooped above it and, now herself wholly grave, explained:

"My dear, don't think I'm not realizing everything. But, since I've been once face to face with the possibility that death —death– was coming to our loved one and now learn that he will still live, as long as I do, maybe, I don't care about anything else. God never shuts one door but He opens another; and we'll manage. Some way we'll manage, sweetheart, to care for father John who has so long cared for us. Now, enough of talk. Here comes a maid with your breakfast; and see. There are your clothes, as fresh and clean as if I had laundered them myself. Maybe you should dress yourself before you eat. Then you are to see your father for a few minutes; and then we'll go home to pack up."

It was long since Mrs. Chester had helped Dorothy to dress, except on some rare holiday occasion, but she did so now, as if the girl were still the baby she had found upon her doorstep. She, also, made such play of the business that the other became even more gay than herself, and chattered away of all that had befallen her, from her discovery of the deserted home till now.

Then came the nice breakfast, so heartily enjoyed that the nurse smiled, knowing there could be nothing seriously amiss with so hungry a patient. Afterward, a quiet walk through long corridors and spacious halls, from which they caught glimpses of cots with patients in them, and passed by wheeled chairs in which convalescents were enjoying a change.

"It's so still! Does nobody ever speak out loud?" whispered Dorothy to her mother, half-afraid of her own footfalls, though she now wore a pair of felt slippers in place of the shoes she had yesterday discarded. "It's the biggest, cleanest, quietest place I could even dream of!"

But Mrs. Chester did not answer, save by a nod and a finger upon lip; and so following the guide assigned them, they came to one of the open bridges connecting two of the hospital buildings, and there was father John, in a rolling chair, wearing a spotless dressing-gown, and holding out both hands toward them, while his eyes fairly shone with delight. An orderly, in a white uniform, was pushing the chair along the bridge, which was so wide and looked down upon such beautiful grounds that it reminded Dorothy of Bellevieu, and he stopped short at their approach. He even stepped back a few paces, the better to leave them free for their interview.

But if there was any emotion to be displayed at that meeting, it was not of a gloomy sort; and it was almost in his wife's very words that the postman exclaimed:

"To think I should get impatient, lose my head, tumble down, and – up into this fine place! Where I've heard the best of news and live like a lord! Who wouldn't give his legs a rest, for a spell, if he could have such a chair as this to loll in while another man does his walking for him! Well, how's the girl? Why, since when have you taken to wearing slippers so much too big for you? I should think they'd bother you in walking as much as my limpsy feet did me."

Nothing escaped this cheery hospital patient even now, and before Mrs. Chester could interpose, Dorothy had told her own tale and how she had been a hospital patient herself. How now she had been "discharged" and was ready to go home with all her legs and arms intact, a thing she had feared might not be the case when she had ventured thither.

"To think I should have been so silly as to believe that poor boy! Or that, if I had followed his wrong directions, I shouldn't have gotten here at all. Oh! isn't it beautiful! What makes some of the women dress all in white and some in blue? When I grow up I believe I'll be a hospital nurse myself."

"Good idea. Excellent. Stick to it. See if you can make that notion last as long as that other one about being a great artist; or, yes, the next scheme was to write books – books that didn't 'preach' but kept folks laughing all the way through."

"Now, father! You needn't tease, and you haven't answered, about the different dresses. Do you know, already?" protested Dorothy, kissing his hand that rested on the arm of his chair.

"Oh! yes, I know. The orderly explained, for I wasn't any wiser than you before he did. The blue girls are 'probationers,' or under-graduates. They have to study and take care of cranky sick folks for three whole years before they can wear those white clothes. Think of that, little Miss Impatience, before you decide on the business! Three years. That's a long time to be shut up with aches and pains and groans. But a noble life. One that needs patience; even more than the Peabody course!"

They all laughed, even Dorothy who was being teased. After any new experience, it was her propensity immediately to desire to continue the delightful novelty. After a visit to a famous local picture gallery, she had returned home fully intent upon becoming an artist who should be, also, famous. To that end she had wasted any number of cheap pads and pencils, and had littered her mother's tidy rooms with "sketches" galore. When she had gone with a schoolmate to a Peabody recital, she had been seized with the spirit of music and had almost ruined a naturally sweet voice – as well as the hearers' nerves – by a self-instructed course of training, which her teasing father had sometimes likened to a cat concert on a roof. However, upon learning that it required many years of steady practise and that her life must be filled with music – music alone – if she ever hoped to graduate from the Institute, she abandoned the idea and aspired to literature.

So from one ambition to another, her almost too active mind veered; but her wise guardians allowed it free scope, believing that, soon or late, it would find the right direction and that for which nature had really fitted her. The greatest disappointment the postman had felt, concerning these various experiments, was about the music. He was almost passionately fond of it, and rarely passed even a street organ without a brief pause to listen. Except, of course, when he had been upon his rounds. Then he forced himself past the alluring thing, even if he had himself to whistle to keep it out of mind. This habit of his had gained for him the nickname, along his beat, of the "whistling postman"; and, had he known it, there were many regrets among those who had responded to his whistle as promptly as to his ring of the bell that they should hear the cheerful sound no more.

The news of his collapse had quickly spread, for a new postman was already on his route, and it was only at Bellevieu, where "Johnnie" would be most missed, that it was not known.

The eagle-gate was shut. Ephraim was not to drive his fat horses through it that morning, nor for many more to come. During the night Mrs. Cecil had been taken ill with one of her periodical bronchial attacks, of which she made so light, but her physician and old Dinah so much. To them her life seemed invaluable; for they, better than anybody else, knew of her wide-spread yet half-hidden charities, and they would keep her safely in her room, as long as this were possible.

After a time, the invalid would take matters into her own hands and return to her beloved piazza; for she was the only one not frightened by her own condition, and was wont to declare:

"I shall live just as long, and have just as many aches, as the dear Lord decrees. When He's through with me here He'll let me know, and all your fussing, Dinah, won't avail. My father was ninety, my mother ninety-seven when they died. We're tough old Maryland stock, not easily killed."

Indeed, frail though Mrs. Cecil looked, it was the fragility of extreme slenderness rather than health; and it was another pride of Dinah's that her Miss Betty had still almost the figure of a girl. Occasionally, even yet, the lady would sit to read with a board strapped across her shoulders, as she had been used when in her teens, to keep them erect; and it was her boast that she had kept her "fine shape" simply because never, in all her life, had she suffered whalebone or corset to interfere with nature.

This Saturday morning, therefore, a colored boy waited beneath the eagles, to receive his mistress's mail and to prevent the ringing of the gate-bell, which might disturb her. In passing him, on her way home, Dorothy noticed the unusual circumstance and thought how much the gossip-loving dame would miss her ever-welcome "Johnnie." But she was now most fully engrossed by her own affairs and did not stop to enlighten him.

After leaving the hospital, Mrs. Chester and she had gone downtown to replace the shoes and stockings so recklessly discarded the day before; Dorothy hobbling along in the felt slippers and declaring that she would suffer less if she were barefooted. But her mother had answered:

"No, indeed! I'd be ashamed to be seen with such a big girl as you in that condition. Besides, I must get some new things for John. So, while I select the nightshirts and wrapper he needs, you go into the shoe department and buy for yourself."

"Oh, mother! May I? I never bought any of my clothes alone. How nice and grown-up I feel! May I get just what I like?"

"Yes. Only, at the outside, you must not pay more than two dollars for the shoes, nor above a quarter for the stockings. I could scold you for spoiling your old ones, if I were not too thankful about your father to scold anybody."

So they parted by the elevator in the great store, and with even more than her native enthusiasm Dorothy plunged into these new delights of shopping. The clerk first displayed a substantial line of black shoes, as seemed most suitable to a young girl in the plainest of gingham frocks; but the small customer would have none of these. Said she: