Chapter 10

For several weeks the Adelaide was almost neglected, and puzzled tenants sought the janitor in vain. He was rarely home, but Dinah, dark-browed, sullen, red-lidded, and with a look of suffering on her plain face, responded to their demands and did, so far as she could, her husband's work and her own. She made no explanation of his absence, and the last one which would have been accepted was the truth--that day after day "Mistah Breckenridge" sat by the bedside of Hannah, talking to her, cheering her, nursing her, feeding her with the fruit he had brought her. He had almost superseded the nurse; and the doctors, watching the pair, let them do much as they pleased, on the dreary theory that nothing Hannah did could hurt her now. Sometimes she had hours of severe pain, during which he remained with her, holding her hand, soothing her, and lifting her still great bulk in his thin arms with unexpected strength. In her better hours she talked to him, telling him stories about the other patients, anecdotes of nurses and doctors, and mimicking several luckless victims to the life.

It was six weeks before Hannah died, very suddenly, and in one of her paroxysms of suffering. 'Rastus was with her at the end, as he had been during the hard weeks preceding it. When he realized that all was over, he left the room, sought an undertaker, had a brief but pregnant interview with him, and then disappeared from the hospital and from the city as well. Where he went no one knew, though Dinah, wellnigh frantic, strove distractedly to learn. On the morning of Hannah's funeral he returned and assumed a leading part in that melancholy procession, long after referred to as "de mos' scrumptuous bury-in'" in colored circles. Nothing had been omitted that she would have wished. Tall plumes nodded on the hearse, many carriages gathered in the mourners, and close behind the silver-trimmed coffin which held all that was left of Hannah. "Mistah Breckenridge" walked with leaden steps, his small face drawn with grief. Subsequently he drew most of his savings from the bank to pay the bills, and, having paid them, returned once more to his anxious family and the monotonous routine of life at the Adelaide.

Dinah welcomed him coldly, and went about her duties with her head high. She said no word of reproach, and it was not until several weeks had passed that it was borne in upon her that 'Rastus remained oblivious not only to her just wifely resentment, but to most other things and emotions in life as well. He did his work, but he ate little and slept less, and the flesh of his prosperous years seemed to drop from him even as the startled beholder gazed. In despair Dinah sought Haddon Brown and laid the case before him.

"Dat man am suttinly gwine lose his min'," she sobbed, "ef he keep on like he doin'. Den what gwine become of me and dat in'cen' chile!"

Young Brown casually and unostentatiously looked 'Rastus over, and was not satisfied with the survey. The janitor's lips were drawn, his eyes were glassy, his clothes hung loosely on his shrunken little figure. He did his work as a manikin wound up for the purpose might have done it. There was no spring, no energy, no snap. Mr. Brown waited a fortnight, expecting some change. None coming, one Sunday morning he urged 'Rastus to go with him on a fishing trip, carry bait, fish if he wanted to, and make himself generally useful. With unrelieved gloom "Mistah Breckenridge" accepted the invitation, and the two left the city behind them, and sought the peace of wood and stream and broad, overarching sky.

When he had found the shaded nook that seemed most promising, young Brown baited his hook, dropped it into the water, and gave himself up to pleasant reveries in which poor "Mistah Breckenridge" had no part. He had good-naturedly brought him out here for rest and change and sport and pure air, he told himself, but it was hardly to be expected that he should do more. He yawned, dozed, and surveyed his line without curiosity; beside him sat "Mistah Breckenridge," every muscle of him tense, and a light in his eyes that was not nice to see.

The spot they had chosen was a not infrequented one in the Bronx woods, and at intervals the sound of human voices came to them and the light colors of a woman's gown showed through the trees. Suddenly a laugh was borne to their ears--a woman's laugh; light, happy, irrepressible. Young Brown opened one eye. It sounded like the laugh of a nice girl. He looked lazily in the direction whence it came. Then close by his side he heard a thud, a groan. His companion had pitched full length on the ground, and lay there crying with great, gasping sobs, and tearing up the grasses by the roots. Brown gazed aghast, startled, sympathetic, understanding dimly, yet repelled by this unmasculine outburst. He began to speak, but changed his mind and waited, his eyes again on the bobbing cork of his line.

"Mistah Breckenridge" cried a long time--a very long time, indeed, it seemed to young Brown, ill at ease and wholly unused to such demonstrations. Then he sat up, pulled himself together, and turned a distorted face toward the young man who had been so good a friend to him.

"You-all know, Mr. Brown, ah sure is ashamed," he said, quietly, "but ah feel bettah, an' ah guess hit done me good. Ah felt like ah could kill someone when we come yeah, but ah feel differnt now."

His voice trailed into silence. He restlessly pulled up dandelions and blades of grass around him, but his face had relaxed and he seemed calm. Haddon Brown murmured something about a nervous strain, but the other did not seem to hear him.

"Hit wuz dat lady laffin'," he said, suddenly. "You-all know how mah Hannah use tuh laff. Mah gracious! Yuh could heah dat woman a mile! An' yuh know," he proceeded, slowly, "hit done me lots o' good, Mistah Brown, des to heah huh. Ahm a silen' man, an' ah doan laff much, but ah liked hit in Hannah, ah suttinly did--mighty well. Hit des made dis mo'nful ole wurl' seem a chee'ful place--hit did indeed."

Brown said nothing. There was nothing in his mind that quite fitted the occasion. "Mistah Breckenridge" ripped a few more dandelions off their stems and went on.

"W'y, when dat woman lef me--when mah Hannah went away--ah use tuh go aftah night to de place whah she lived, jes' to heah huh laff again. Ah'd stan' out in d' dahk, an' ah'd see huh shadow on de cu'tin, an' den ah'd heah huh laff an' laff lak she always done, an' den--ah'd come home! Ah done dat all dese yeahs sense mah Hannah lef me. Dinah's all right. Ah ain' complainin' none 'bout Dinah. Ah mah'd huh caze ah wuz lonesome, an' she suttinly bin a good wife to me. Ahm goin' to wuk foh huh tell ah git back all the money ah spent on Hannah. Hit wus Dinah's money, too. But"--he burst out again with a sudden long wail--"ah jes' doan see how ahm goin' tuh keep on livin in a worl' whah dey ain't no Hannah!"

His grief gathered force as he gave it rein. He hurled himself down on the ground again and tore at the grasses with his thin black hands. "Oh, ah want, ah want, _ah want tuh heah mah Hannah laff again!_" he cried, frenziedly.

A fish nibbled at the bait on Brown's hook, changed his mind, flirted his fins, and swam away--a proof of the proverb about second thoughts. A bird in the branches of the tree above the two men burst into ecstatic song. But neither heard him. "Mistah Breckenridge" had buried his black face in the cool grass, his hot tears falling fast upon it. Beside him young Brown, brought face to face with elemental conditions, sat silent and thought hard.

VIII

THE QUEST OF AUNT NANCY

It was in a stuffy compartment of a night train approaching Paris that Jessica and I were privileged to look upon Aunt Nancy for the first time. Her obvious age would soon have attracted our attention, no doubt, and certainly the gallantry with which she carried her eighty years could not long have escaped the observation of two such earnest students of humanity as we believed ourselves to be. But the characteristic in her which at once caught my eye was her expression--a look of such keen alertness, such intense vitality, that even in the mental stagnation that accompanies night travel I wondered what, in her surroundings, could explain it.

The dingy carriage in which we sat was vaguely illuminated by an oil lamp, the insufficient rays of which brought out effective high lights on the bald head of one audibly slumbering German on our side of the compartment, and on the heavy face of a stout Frenchwoman who sat opposite him, next to the old lady upon whom I was concentrating my attention. The latter, obviously an American, the two foreigners, and ourselves, were the sole occupants of the compartment; and certainly in the appearance of none of her four fellow-passengers was there justification of the wide-awake intentness of the kind old eyes that now beamed on us through heavy, steel-rimmed spectacles. Pensively, as befitted the weary wanderer, I marvelled. How could she look so alive, so wide awake, so energetic, at one o'clock in the morning?

The bald-headed man slept on. The stout woman removed a shell comb from her back hair and composed herself for deeper slumber. Jessica presented to my lambent gaze a visage which besought unspoken sympathy, and mutely breathed a protest against travel in general and this phase of it in particular. Jessica in the "still small hours" was never really gay. It was dimly comforting to one of my companionable nature to turn from her to the little old woman opposite me. In figure and dress she might have posed for one of Leech's drawings of ancient dames, so quaintly prim was she, so precise in their folds were her little black mantle and her simple black gown, so effective a frame to her wrinkled face was the wide black bonnet she wore. On her hands, demurely crossed in her lap, were black lace mitts. Moreover, she was enveloped, so to speak, in a dim aroma of peppermint, the source of which was even then slightly distending one faded cheek. Irrepressibly I smiled at her, and at once a long-drawn sigh of pleasure floated across to me. In spontaneous good-fellowship she leaned forward.

"It's a real comfortable journey, ain't it?" she whispered, so evidently torn between a passionate desire to talk and consideration for the sleepers that my heart went out to her.

"Well, if you mean this especial journey--" I hesitated.

"Yes, I do," she insisted. "The seats are real comfortable. Everything is." She threw out her mittened hands with a gesture that seemed to emphasize a demand for approval. "I wouldn't change a single thing. Some say it's hot; I don't think 'tis. I wouldn't mind, though, if 'twas. We're gettin' a nice draught."

I looked through the open window at the French landscape, bathed in the glory of an August moon.

"That, at least, is very satisfactory," I admitted, cheerfully.

She looked a little blank as she glanced around, and a queer expression of responsibility settled over her features, blurring their brightness like a veil.

"I see," she said, slowly. "You mean France. Yes, 'tis nice, an' they's certainly a great deal to see in it." She hesitated a moment, and then went on more rapidly. "You know," she continued, in her high-keyed, sibilant whisper, "it's some different with me from what 'tis with you. You can speak French. I heard you talkin' to the conductor. An' I suppose you've been here often, an' like it. But this is the first time _I've_ come over to Europe. I've always meant to, sometime, but things ain't been just so's I _could_ come. Now't I'm here, I can't stay long, an' I must say I feel kind of homesick. There's so much to see it jest makes my head swim. I come for a purpose--a purpose of my own--but now't I'm here, I want to do my duty an' see things. I declare," she added, shamefacedly, "I most hate to go to sleep nights, I'm so afraid I'll miss something an' hear about it when I git back."

I asked a conventional question, which evoked a detailed report of her journeyings. By this time Jessica had opened one eye; the two foreigners slept on peacefully. She had landed at Naples, the old lady told me; and from her subsequent remarks I gathered that she had found the Italians as a people deficient in the admirable qualities of cleanliness and modesty. She lamented, also, an over-preponderance of art galleries, and the surprising slowness of the natives to grasp intelligent remarks made in the English tongue. Aside from these failings, however, she had found Italy somewhat interesting, and she mentioned especially the grotto at Capri and the ascent of Vesuvius. She added, casually, that few of her fellow-tourists had made this latter excursion, as it was just after the severest eruptions, and the air had been full of dust and cinders. Jessica opened the other eye. I began to experience vivid interest in the conversation.

Rome, she further revealed, meant to her the Campagna and the Catacombs. On the former she had taken walks, and in the very bowels of the latter she had seemingly burrowed for days, following some mysterious purpose of her own. Her favorite time for a promenade on the Campagna, and one she paused to recommend to me, was at dusk, the place then being quiet and peaceful, owing to the fact that tourists, foolishly fearing the fever, kept away from it after sunset.

At this point Jessica sat up, arranged a pillow comfortably behind her back, and gave her undivided attention to the monologue. At last she put a question. Was the lady travelling alone? The lady hastened to explain that she was not.

"My, no," she said, briskly. "I'm a tourist--that's what they call 'em, you know, when they're with a man. They's eighteen in our party, and the man that is takin' us is Mr. James George Jackson. He's real nice. He's in one of the other cars on this train, an' they's three gentlemen with him that belong to us, too. All the rest stayed in Paris because they was tired. You see," she added, explanatorily, "we done Lourdes in two days, an' we took it off our time in Paris. We ain't got much time in Paris, anyhow, so we went an' come back at night. I s'pose the rest thought it might be tryin' in the heat, so they stayed behind an' went to Fontingblow yesterday an' up the Seen to-day. But I saw the Black Forest when we was in Germany, an' the Rhine, too, an' some of us walked from Binjen to Cooblens, so's we could git the view real well. So I thought I'd let the French river an' forest go, an' see Lourdes instead."

Jessica interrupted here.

"I beg your pardon," she asked, earnestly, "but--have you really been travelling two nights and sight-seeing two days in that fearful crush at Lourdes without any sleep?"

Our new friend nodded slowly, as one to whose attention the matter had just been directed. "Why, yes, that's so," she conceded. "But I ain't a bit tired. Old folks don't need much sleep, you know, an' I'm pretty old. I was eighty-one last June."

Jessica dropped her pillow and sat up very straight, a slight flush upon her face. Our new friend prattled on until the lights of Paris appeared in the distance, and Jessica and I began to collect the impressive array of impedimenta with which we had thoughtfully multiplied the discomfort of travel. As we pulled down packages of rugs and tightened various straps the bright eyes of the little old woman watched us unswervingly through her spectacles. Grasping firmly a stout and serviceable umbrella, she was ready to disembark. If she had brought any baggage with her, which I doubted, it was evidently in the fostering care of Mr. James George Jackson.

"What hotel are you goin' to?" she asked, suddenly. "I know a real good one."

I told her it was the St. James et D'Albany, and her wrinkled face grew radiant.

"Well, now, I declare," she cried, heartily, "ain't that nice! That's jest where we're stayin', an' I'm as comfor'ble as I can be. I got a room with a window that looks right into the Twilry Gardens. Mr. Jackson says that I must have the best they is, because I'm the oldest. 'Age before beauty,' he says, an' none of the other ladies minds a bit. They certainly are good to me. Of course, I don't say 't I wouldn't like a more relishin' breakfast, because I would; an' I ain't got used to that waiter man comin' right into my room with his trays before I'm out of my bed, an' I never expect to. But _'tis_ a good hotel, an' the lady that runs it is real nice, if she _is_ French."

The train swung into the great station as she spoke, and a round, perspiring, and very grimy masculine face presented itself at the door of our compartment.

"Well, Aunt Nancy," said the owner of this, with a sprightly effort at cheerfulness, "you alive yet? The rest of us are dead. You come right along with me now, and I'll whisk you up to the hotel in a cab. And if you take my advice, you'll go to bed and stay there for two days, after this experience."

He tucked the old lady under his arm as he spoke, and she trotted off with him in high good-humor, turning several times to nod and smile at us as she departed.

At eight o'clock the following morning I was awakened by Jessica, who stood at my bedside light-heartedly reminding me of my self-imposed duty of going early to the station to attend to the luggage, which we had omitted to do the night before. My replies to this suggestion, while they held Jessica's awe-struck attention for five minutes, would be of no interest here. Bitterly I rose, reluctantly and yawningly I dressed. At nine I stood at the entrance of our hotel signalling sleepily for a cab, and wilting already under the heat of the August sun. While I waited, a tourist coach drew up at the curb. It was gorgeous with red paint and conspicuous with large signs bearing the lettering "A VERSAILLES." The driver remained on the box. The guide, evidently there by appointment and sharply on time, leaped to the sidewalk, glanced at his watch, snapped the case shut with a satisfied nod, and stood with his eyes on the hotel entrance. One tiny black figure came forth, greeted him with a blithe "Bongjure," and intrepidly began the perilous ascent of the ladder he hastened to place against the side of the coach for her convenience. It was Aunt Nancy, dressed as she had been the night before, but immaculately neat, and reflecting in her face the brightness of the morning. I greeted her, and in her glad surprise at seeing me again she remained suspended between earth and heaven to talk to me, incidentally revealing the whole of two serviceable gaiters, the tiny ruffle of an alpaca petticoat, and a long, flat section of gray-striped cotton hose.

"Well, well," she beamed. "Ain't this nice? Yes, I'm goin'. The rest ain't ready yet, but I've been awake sence five, so I thought I'd come right down an' watch the coach fill up. The men ain't goin'--they're so tired, poor dears. Onri, my waiter, says every last one of 'em is in bed yit. But some of the ladies that went up the Seen yesterday is comin', so I guess we'll have a real nice party. We're goin' to see the palace an' the Treenon first, an' then I'm goin' to the fair in the village. Mr. Jackson says a French fair is real interestin', but he ain't goin'. He said last night he had a great deal of work to do in his room to-day, an' he guessed we wouldn't none of us see him till dinner. Do you know"--she lowered her voice mysteriously and cast an apprehensive eye about her as she went on--"Onri says Mr. Jackson's asleep this very minute, an' it's most nine o'clock in the mornin'!"

These startling revelations were checked by the appearance of two of her fellow-tourists, and I seized the opportunity afforded by this interruption to depart upon my uncongenial task.

We did not see Aunt Nancy again until the morning of our third day in Paris, when I ran across her in the galleries of the Luxembourg. She was settled comfortably in a bright-red upholstered seat near the main entrance, and on her wrinkled face was an expression of perfect peace.

"Well, I'm glad to see you resting at last," was my greeting.

"Yes, I'm restin'," she conceded. "I always do in the art galleries," she added, simply, as I sat down beside her. "They've got the comfort'blest chairs here of any, I think, though they was some nice ones in Florence, too; an' in one of the places in Rome they was a long seat where you could 'most lay down. I took a real nice nap there. You see," she continued, smoothing an imaginary wrinkle out of one lace mitt, "I don't know much about pictures, _anyway_, but I come right along with the others, an' when I git here I jest set down an' rest till they git through lookin' at 'em. I don't know what's Michelangelo an' what _ain't_, an' 't seems to me it's too late to find out now."

Jessica appeared at this moment, and further revelations were checked by greetings, followed almost immediately by our reluctant departure to keep an appointment. Before we left, however, we learned that the day at Versailles had been followed by an evening "at one of them French kafes where women sing," and that fourteen hours of sight-seeing in Paris itself had dispelled the threatened ennui of the second day.

Late that evening Mr. James George Jackson tottered to the side of Jessica in the corridor of the Hotel D'Albany and addressed her, wiping his brow as he did so.

"It's the old lady," he said--"Aunt Nancy Wheeler, you know. She asked me to ask you two ladies if you wouldn't like to join us in a drive this evening. She wants to see how Paris looks at night, an' I've got to show her."

He swayed languidly against a pillar when we had accepted the invitation, and groaned in reply to Jessica's tribute to the old lady's activity.

"She's active all right," he remarked, grimly. "If there's anything left of _me_ after she gets through, it'll be because I've inherited an iron constitution from my mother. She's worn out every other man in the party weeks ago. The worst of it is that I don't know why she does it. She really doesn't care about anything; I'm sure of that. But she's got some object; so she goes from early morn till dewy eve, and of course some one's got to go with her; we can't let her wander around alone. Besides, what I'm afraid of is that she'll go all to pieces some day--like the deacon's one-horse shay, you know, and there won't be anything left but a little heap of alpaca clothes and congress gaiters. She's worn out six pair of gaiters since we started," he added, with a wail. "I know, because I've had to buy them. _She_ hasn't had time." He shook his head mournfully as he wandered away.

Jessica and I bade Aunt Nancy an affecting farewell that night, as we were leaving Paris the next day. For several weeks we heard no more of her, but in Scotland we crossed her trail again. The Highlands were full of rumors of an intrepid old dame who had "done" the lakes and the Trossachs as apparently they had never been done before. Was she an American? She was. Eighty years old, dressed in black, with a big bonnet, steel-rimmed spectacles, and gaiters? All was correct but the gaiters. Seemingly the gaiter supply had been exhausted by the constant demand. She wore shoes with heavy soles and, our informant added, happily, gray, striped stockings. From the rumors of her achievements on land and water, Jessica and I glanced apprehensively over the surface of Scotland, fearing to see it strewn with exhausted boatmen, guides, and drivers; but apparently all her victims had survived, though they bore as a souvenir of their experience with her a haggard and hunted look which Jessica declared she could detect from the top seat of the loftiest coach.