Further Chronicles of Avonlea, Lucy Maud Montgomery [top ten ebook reader .TXT] 📗

firm step, Eunice went across the field foot-path she had not trodden for so long. She felt no fear—rather a sort of elation. Christopher needed her once more; the interloper who had come between them was not there. As she walked through the frosty twilight she thought of the promise made to Naomi Holland, years ago.

 

Christopher saw her coming and waved her back.

“Don’t come any nearer, Eunice. Didn’t Caroline tell you? I’m taking smallpox.”

Eunice did not pause. She went boldly through the yard and up the porch steps. He retreated before her and held the door.

“Eunice, you’re crazy, girl! Go home, before it’s too late.”

Eunice pushed open the door resolutely and went in.

“It’s too late now. I’m here, and I mean to stay and nurse you, if it’s the smallpox you’ve got. Maybe it’s not. Just now, when a person has a finger-ache, he thinks it’s smallpox. Anyhow, whatever it is, you ought to be in bed and looked after. You’ll catch cold. Let me get a light and have a look at you.”

Christopher had sunk into a chair. His natural selfishness reasserted itself, and he made no further effort to dissuade Eunice. She got a lamp and set it on the table by him, while she scrutinized his face closely.

“You look feverish. What do you feel like? When did you take sick?”

“Yesterday afternoon. I have chills and hot spells and pains in my back. Eunice, do you think it’s really smallpox? And will I die?”

He caught her hands, and looked imploringly up at her, as a child might have done. Eunice felt a wave of love and tenderness sweep warmly over her starved heart.

“Don’t worry. Lots of people recover from smallpox if they’re properly nursed, and you’ll be that, for I’ll see to it. Charles has gone for the doctor, and we’ll know when he comes. You must go straight to bed.”

She took off her hat and shawl, and hung them up. She felt as much at home as if she had never been away. She had got back to her kingdom, and there was none to dispute it with her. When Dr. Spencer and old Giles Blewett, who had had smallpox in his youth, came, two hours later, they found Eunice in serene charge. the house was in order and reeking of disinfectants. Victoria’s fine furniture and fixings were being bundled out of the parlor. There was no bedroom downstairs, and, if Christopher was going to be ill, he must be installed there.

The doctor looked grave.

“I don’t like it,” he said, “but I’m not quite sure yet. If it is smallpox the eruption will probably by out by morning. I must admit he has most of the symptoms. Will you have him taken to the hospital?”

“No,” said Eunice, decisively. “I’ll nurse him myself. I’m not afraid and I’m well and strong.”

“Very well. You’ve been vaccinated lately?”

“Yes.”

“Well, nothing more can be done at present. You may as well lie down for a while and save your strength.”

But Eunice could not do that. There was too much to attend to. She went out to the hall and threw up the window. Down below, at a safe distance, Charles Holland was waiting. The cold wind blew up to Eunice the odor of the disinfectants with which he had steeped himself.

“What does the doctor say?” he shouted.

“He thinks it’s the smallpox. Have you sent word to Victoria?”

“Yes, Jim Blewett drove into town and told her. She’ll stay with her sister till it is over. Of course it’s the best thing for her to do. She’s terribly frightened.”

Eunice’s lip curled contemptuously. To her, a wife who could desert her husband, no matter what disease he had, was an incomprehensible creature. But it was better so; she would have Christopher all to herself.

The night was long and wearisome, but the morning came all too soon for the dread certainty it brought. The doctor pronounced the case smallpox. Eunice had hoped against hope, but now, knowing the worst, she was very calm and resolute.

By noon the fateful yellow flag was flying over the house, and all arrangements had been made. Caroline was to do the necessary cooking, and Charles was to bring the food and leave it in the yard. Old Giles Blewett was to come every day and attend to the stock, as well as help Eunice with the sick man; and the long, hard fight with death began.

It was a hard fight, indeed. Christopher Holland, in the clutches of the loathsome disease, was an object from which his nearest and dearest might have been pardoned for shrinking. But Eunice never faltered; she never left her post. Sometimes she dozed in a chair by the bed, but she never lay down. Her endurance was something wonderful, her patience and tenderness almost superhuman. To and fro she went, in noiseless ministry, as the long, dreadful days wore away, with a quiet smile on her lips, and in her dark, sorrowful eyes the rapt look of a pictured saint in some dim cathedral niche. For her there was no world outside the bare room where lay the repulsive object she loved.

One day the doctor looked very grave. He had grown well-hardened to pitiful scenes in his lifetime; but he shrunk from telling Eunice that her brother could not live. He had never seen such devotion as hers. It seemed brutal to tell her that it had been in vain.

But Eunice had seen it for herself. She took it very calmly, the doctor thought. And she had her reward at last—such as it was. She thought it amply sufficient.

One night Christopher Holland opened his swollen eyes as she bent over him. They were alone in the old house. It was raining outside, and the drops rattled noisily on the panes.

Christopher smiled at his sister with parched lips, and put out a feeble hand toward her.

“Eunice,” he said faintly, “you’ve been the best sister ever a man had. I haven’t treated you right; but you’ve stood by me to the last. Tell Victoria—tell her—to be good to you—”

His voice died away into an inarticulate murmur. Eunice Carr was alone with her dead.

They buried Christopher Holland in haste and privacy the next day. The doctor disinfected the house, and Eunice was to stay there alone until it might be safe to make other arrangements. She had not shed a tear; the doctor thought she was a rather odd person, but he had a great admiration for her. He told her she was the best nurse he had ever seen. To Eunice, praise or blame mattered nothing. Something in her life had snapped—some vital interest had departed. She wondered how she could live through the dreary, coming years.

Late that night she went into the room where her mother and brother had died. The window was open and the cold, pure air was grateful to her after the drug-laden atmosphere she had breathed so long. She knelt down by the stripped bed.

“Mother,” she said aloud, “I have kept my promise.”

When she tried to rise, long after, she staggered and fell across the bed, with her hand pressed on her heart. Old Giles Blewett found her there in the morning. There was a smile on her face.

 

XIII. THE CONSCIENCE CASE OF DAVID BELL

Eben Bell came in with an armful of wood and banged it cheerfully down in the box behind the glowing Waterloo stove, which was coloring the heart of the little kitchen’s gloom with tremulous, rose-red whirls of light.

“There, sis, that’s the last chore on my list. Bob’s milking. Nothing more for me to do but put on my white collar for meeting. Avonlea is more than lively since the evangelist came, ain’t it, though!”

Mollie Bell nodded. She was curling her hair before the tiny mirror that hung on the whitewashed wall and distorted her round, pink-and-white face into a grotesque caricature.

“Wonder who’ll stand up to-night,” said Eben reflectively, sitting down on the edge of the wood-box. “There ain’t many sinners left in Avonlea—only a few hardened chaps like myself.”

“You shouldn’t talk like that,” said Mollie rebukingly. “What if father heard you?”

“Father wouldn’t hear me if I shouted it in his ear,” returned Eben. “He goes around, these days, like a man in a dream and a mighty bad dream at that. Father has always been a good man. What’s the matter with him?”

“I don’t know,” said Mollie, dropping her voice. “Mother is dreadfully worried over him. And everybody is talking, Eb. It just makes me squirm. Flora Jane Fletcher asked me last night why father never testified, and him one of the elders. She said the minister was perplexed about it. I felt my face getting red.”

“Why didn’t you tell her it was no business of hers?” said Eben angrily. “Old Flora Jane had better mind her own business.”

“But all the folks are talking about it, Eb. And mother is fretting her heart out over it. Father has never acted like himself since these meetings began. He just goes there night after night, and sits like a mummy, with his head down. And almost everybody else in Avonlea has testified.”

“Oh, no, there’s lots haven’t,” said Eben. “Matthew Cuthbert never has, nor Uncle Elisha, nor any of the Whites.”

“But everybody knows they don’t believe in getting up and testifying, so nobody wonders when they don’t. Besides,” Mollie laughed—“Matthew could never get a word out in public, if he did believe in it. He’d be too shy. But,” she added with a sigh, “it isn’t that way with father. He believes in testimony, so people wonder why he doesn’t get up. Why, even old Josiah Sloane gets up every night.”

“With his whiskers sticking out every which way, and his hair ditto,” interjected the graceless Eben.

“When the minister calls for testimonials and all the folks look at our pew, I feel ready to sink through the floor for shame,” sighed Mollie. “If father would get up just once!”

Miriam Bell entered the kitchen. She was ready for the meeting, to which Major Spencer was to take her. She was a tall, pale girl, with a serious face, and dark, thoughtful eyes, totally unlike Mollie. She had “come under conviction” during the meetings, and had stood up for prayer and testimony several times. The evangelist thought her very spiritual. She heard Mollie’s concluding sentence and spoke reprovingly.

“You shouldn’t criticize your father, Mollie. It isn’t for you to judge him.”

Eben had hastily slipped out. He was afraid Miriam would begin talking religion to him if he stayed. He had with difficulty escaped from an exhortation by Robert in the cow-stable. There was no peace in Avonlea for the unregenerate, he reflected. Robert and Miriam had both “come out,” and Mollie was hovering on the brink.

“Dad and I are the black sheep of the family,” he said, with a laugh, for which he at once felt guilty. Eben had been brought up with a strict reverence for all religious matters. On the surface he might sometimes laugh at them, but the deeps troubled him whenever he did so.

Indoors, Miriam touched her younger sister’s shoulder and looked at her affectionately.

“Won’t you decide to-night, Mollie?” she asked, in a voice tremulous with emotion.

Mollie crimsoned and turned her face away uncomfortably. She did not know what answer to make, and was glad that a jingle of bells outside saved her the necessity of replying.

“There’s your beau, Miriam,” she said, as she darted into the sitting room.

Soon after, Eben brought the family pung and his chubby red mare to the door for Mollie. He had not as yet attained to the dignity of a cutter of his own. That was