Part 16

"Well, old Dr. Potter says she's 'neurotic,' if you know what _that_ is. I call it jest notions. What the doctors in my time called a hypo, that's what she is! She's always been the greatest hand to dose. Mr. Conner will have it she kep' old Captain Darter poor buying patent medicines. And she run after every new cure-all going. It was electricity one year, and 'nother year it was blue glass, and one time I remember she had a woman come of the sort that used to call themselves bone-doctors when I was a girl and this country wasn't much settled, but now they're osteologists, or some sech funny name, and give out they can rub everything on earth out of you. Mrs. Darter had _her_ for a long spell, till she got pneumonia, and nigh died, and sickened of the osteologist; and I give her mustard plasters, good strong ones, myself. All this time Emmy was engaged to Albert Glenn; but the old captain was real feeble, and Emmy wouldn't leave him to git married. I will say Mrs. Darter was real devoted to him, though Emmy done all the night work and spared her all she could, give up her school, and spent every cent of the money she'd laid by school-teaching and working art embroidery for her clothes, when she'd be married--spent every cent on her pa. Got him a wheel chair, and if ever a man set the world by his daughter the captain done it. He liked Albert, too. I guess if captain had lived, sick's he was, he'd have found a way so's Emmy and Albert could git married. But he died. Then you'd 'a' s'posed they could marry, for his life was _well_ insured, and they got enough for the widder to be comfortable and keep a girl. But the minnit he died poor Mrs. Darter got nervous prostration, and she was a nervous prostrate for a year, and they had to spend money traveling, and of course Emmy couldn't git married. Mrs. Darter went to Hot Springs, Arkansas, and she went to a sanitarium, and last she come home saying she was cured. But on the cars she made the acquaintance of a woman--well, I don't want to jedge--jedge not, and you won't git jedged, you know--and I know 'tis hard for a woman to make a living, but I guess that woman was a crank, and a designing one at that. But she went to Mrs. Darter's to board, and she never paid no board, but she preached to Mrs. Darter 'bout how all the diseases that we have come from eating wrong things; and she said we'd got to live 'cording to nature more; and eating meat made folks fierce like the carnivorous beasts, and things seasoned with salt was bad for you, and jest plain farnishous foods without salt--like we was _chickens_!--was best for us. I don't see how Mrs. Darter, who used to cook real well and liked to have the sewing society to tea, could stand sech sick stuff, but she did; and what's wuss, even after the fool critter ran away and married a magnetic healer who, they do say, has another wife, even to this day Abiel Darter believes in her and goes by what she says. And she ain't et any fit food for so long that if she ever does git coaxed to take a wholesome bite of beef or pie her stummick is so weak of course she cayn't stand it. Strong folks can eat strong vituals, and weak folks cayn't. Mrs. Glenn coaxed her in to a boiled dinner one day, and poor Mrs. Darter nearly died of it. Now you cayn't git her to budge from her grass and potato diet, as Conner calls it. And as for poor Emmy, when she can git married Lord only knows!"

Miss Keith had not interrupted the story by as much as a hum of assent. She looked up with a queer smile. "Has Mrs. Darter ever tried Christian Science?"

"No, she ain't," snorted Mrs. Conner; "we've been spared _that_. The Bigelow girls--they're two single ladies, real nice girls, too, who live in that big brown house with a cupola and a hip-roof there, 'bout two doors up--they tried to get her into that way of thinking; they're at everybody. And they used to go over and set with her and give her 'silent treatment,' they called it, and try to think the dyspepsia out of her; but one of 'em got a fish-bone in her throat and they had to come to me to pull it out with a pair of tweezers. That sorter dampened 'em for a while and Mrs. Darter says, 'Why didn't you _think_ it out?' And then Ann--she's the oldest--says they wasn't far enough advanced yet, Mrs. Darter told 'em then they wasn't far enough advanced to doctor _her_. And I guess they ain't been there sense."

"All the same," insisted Miss Keith, smiling, "I think Mrs. Darter needs mental healing or Christian Science, I don't care which."

* * * * *

Emmy put her mother to bed. She gave her the soothing drops which the vanished but still reverenced healer had left--drops which she was almost certain owed their potency to some alias of opium. In the morning Mrs. Darter came out of her drugged sleep with a deadly nausea that swathed her muscles and laid her rigid in its limp, devil-fish clutch. The roof of her mouth was like leather; her head seemed to be pounded with hammers; she was burning with fever, and malign twitchings and itchings tormented her to rub her nose incessantly, when the least motion was fearsome to her. She had much more cause than ordinary to moan, and moan she did at every breath. Jinny had rushed away to a small chum the moment the dishes for her own breakfast had been washed; but Emmy couldn't run. She drank a cup of coffee; she had no heart to eat. Jinny, however had eaten the dainty little meal that Emmy had prepared--a forlorn hope to tempt the invalid.

"Oh, my nose! my _nose_!" wailed Mrs. Darter. "Emmy, you've got to leave off staring out of that window at the Glenns', and come and scratch my nose! Ah-uh! Ah-u-h!"

Emmy silently sat down by the bedside. If Albert passed the yard on his wheel, as he did every morning at half-past seven, he would not find her. Emmy had used no one knows how many devices to always be in the yard when Albert passed, or, at least, in sight by a window. Bert used to say that glimpse of Emmy "was a bracer for the whole day." Thursday night was his night to visit her, but last night he hadn't come.

"Emmy, you ain't any account at all as a scratcher!" fretted her mother. "You scratch where it ain't itching, and you don't scratch where it itches, and you're so mincing! Rub it _hard_! Oh-h! _why_ must I suffer so? It's hard enough to have a ungrateful child without having your nose itch!"

Emmy adventured a sentence long lurking in her mind, but which she never had the courage to push out into the air: "Mother, I think, I'm sure it is the soothing drops which make your nose itch so. There's opium--"

"There isn't a grain of opium in them," sobbed Mrs. Darter. "You know I always hated opium or morphine or anything of the sort; and doctor told me she wouldn't give the wicked drug. That's what Lida Glenn much as told me; much as told me, too, that I was putting on and wasn't real sick; and I told her--oh-h-h!--I told her--if she considered--_me_--that sort of woman she must feel awful bad to--oh-h-h!--to have her only child marry my daughter; and--I-thought--Oh-h! wuh-h-h! how awful sick I am!"

"You told Mrs. Glenn?" prompted Emmy, a flame in either cheek.

"I told her that--sss! sss!--I thought the sooner that engagement was broke the better it would be for--u-r-r-r!--all concerned--e-hee! ee-e! ee-e-e-e! Oh my head! my head! Oh, I got to scratch my nose again. You ain't rubbing the right place!"

"And what did Mrs. Glenn say?" asked Emmy. A ripple ran over her face, and she swallowed before she spoke.

"She said you wouldn't give Albert up, real spiteful. Ah-rr-r! Oh, I _am_ so sick! I said you would ruther than have your mother so insulted--and if you don't I guess I'll give up trying to live. She was so topping. Much as telling me it would be better for my own child if I died. Oh dear! oh dear! oh dear! And Albert looked as cross last night--"

"Did Albert come last night?"

"Yes, he did. You needn't jump out of the chair! I told him you wasn't home, and you had gone out to the Collins spring. He said when would you be home, and I said I didn't know. And he went off mad. Oh-h! oh-h-h! Jinny says Carrie March says she saw him down-town riding on his bicycle with Susan Baker. O-h-h-h-h! How can I talk when I'm so sick? Girls don't know about young men. Bert wouldn't like you to see him sometimes, be sure of that!" She paused to moan, and Emmy looked at her in a misery of doubt. Was she telling the truth? It had come to that, since Mrs. Darter had grown to take her soothing drops in every ailment--there was no surety that she either saw things straight or told them straight.

"I guess I'll go make you some coffee, mother," said Emmy; "you need it."

The girl's self-control was like tinder to the woman's fire. Mrs. Darter flared out: "You needn't make any coffee. I won't drink it. What's more, I won't eat one bite until you promise me to break with Bert Glenn--not if I starve to death! If you're willing to let those Glenns insult me and triumph over me, I ain't willing to live to see it." Her feeble accents shrilled to a scream, as she flung out her arms with a reminiscence of the behavior of her favorite heroines in novels. "Go, Emmeline Darter, marry him if you dare; but you will pass to the altar over your only mother's grave!" She had a confused sense that her syntax had played her false and that she had not gotten the words precisely right; but she covered any embarrassment by sinking back and moaning.

Emmy looked at her with a mounting terror in her heart. She told herself that it was impossible that her mother could carry out such a hideous threat; but she knew that mucilaginous obstinacy which had not a place firm enough for a reason to get a hold. "And she won't want to eat, either," mused Emmy, wretchedly, "for that nasty medicine has made her awful sick. She's got a fever now; that will burn away her strength. And if it comes to a choice between letting my mother starve and giving up Bert, I shall have to give him up!"

Emmy sprang out of her chair. The thought was like a lash on a raw wound.

She ran to the window; it seemed to her that she couldn't breathe; and her mother's whimpering irritated her past patience. She knew if she spoke that she would let the bars down for her anger, and if she were angry her mother would be upset physically, and grow so much worse that she would feel like a murderer. She felt the goading of that furious petulance which torments a woman often into sacrificing herself out of very anger. It was on her tongue to say, "I'd rather die myself than give up Bert, and you know it; and I'll never forgive you as long as I live, but rather than see you die before my eyes I _will_ give him up."

Neither to Emmy nor to her mother was there a doubt that any word passed would be kept. Mrs. Darter, in the lost days of peace, before her vagaries had corroded her affection, had said once, "Emmy never told me a lie in her life, nor she never broke a promise she made me!"

Emmy shut her lips tight and looked out of the window. Her troubled gaze did not note the dewy freshness of the morning on turf and tree. The houses were brown cottages for the most part, built in the lean period of western rural architecture when a stunted cruciform effect and a bescrolled piazza was the model for every village. But the ugly lines of wood were veiled by a kindly wealth of wistarias and clematis royally flaunting, by Virginia-creeper and trumpet-vines splashed with vermilion and yellow; the grass was velvet, there was a gay company of geraniums prospering in every garden; and below the hills and the tree-tops lay the lovely, dimpled hill-sides, golden with wheat or shorn to a varnished silver like nothing so much as the hue of shining flax, and the waving fields of corn--all under a vault of burning blue, delicate, tender, innocent, with no sumptuous and threatening richness of cloud betokening storm, only high in the heavens the milky white cumuli, the "harvest clouds."

There were a thousand witcheries of light and shade, there was a radiant lavishness of color; it was a landscape like a multitude all over the Middle West, nevertheless a sight to make the heart beat the quicker for sheer delight. But it might have been a stone wall for anything poor Emmy, who loved each growing thing, saw in it this moment. To live without Bert, perhaps to learn that Susy Baker had the love which she would seem to have flung away--Emmy would have groaned if she had not heard Mrs. Darter's piteous din, and thought grimly that her mother did enough groaning for their small family!

Yet at this very instant of despair a minister of grace was lifting the latch of the Darter gate, and Emmy was unconsciously eying her. The minister of grace was short of stature and very plump. She had a round, fair, freckled face, which looked the rounder for its glittering spectacles. Her hair was a yellowish gray, but she covered it with a small white sailor hat. She wore a neat brown and white calico frock. To escape the dew she held her skirts high; one could see that her preference was for black alpaca slippers and white cotton stockings. The minister's name was Miss Ann Bigelow.

"Now _she_ comes to stir mother up worse!" thought Emmy. So blind are we to the future. But she opened the door for Miss Ann Bigelow, and bade her welcome, and proffered her the best rocking-chair in the parlor and a palm-leaf fan.

Miss Bigelow's countenance was beaming like an electric light.

"I really _had_ to come!" she exclaimed so soon as she could take breath. "Have you heard about Mrs. Conner spraining her ankle?"

"Emmy, open the door!" moaned Mrs. Darter from within--her bed-room adjoined the parlor. Emmy opened the door, while she said: "I'm so sorry. When? How is she?"

"Oh, she's all right now!" said Miss Bigelow. "It's wonderful--a real miracle, I told sister. That's what I came to tell you. She sent over for us, and there she lay, flat on the kitchen floor. I begun to treat her in my mind the minute I saw her, for I saw she was in error. All her word was: 'Send for a doctor; it's sprained, if it ain't broke!' I didn't know what _to_ do. I didn't want to encourage her in error, and yet you know we are _not_ advanced so far as sprains and broken bones, and it is usual to summon a doctor; and I don't feel I'm advanced enough myself to undertake serious cases; I'm too weak and timid, and I haven't the spiritual vision. Emmy, does your mother _always_ groan that loud way? Is she in pain? I mean, does she _think_ she is in pain?"

"Yes'm," said Emmy; "but please go on; mother is listening."

"Well, I stood there dazed, you may say; and just then in came Miss Keith. She's a little slim thing, but _such_ eyes! They seem to look you through and through! I'd have known she was a healer even if Mrs. Conner hadn't told me the night before when she was over in our house. She stood there, just simply looking at Mrs. Conner, not saying a word for a minnit. Then she says in the _kindest_ voice--I can't tell you how soft and kind her voice was!--she says, 'Have you the impression of great pain, Mrs. Conner?' And Mrs. Conner--you know how--well abruptly--she speaks, she said: '_Impression_ of pain? I only wish you had something jabbing you like a hot iron, I guess you'd be _impressed_. Ain't anybody going to take off my stocking? It's swelling every minnit!' Miss Keith only looked at her, and lifted her hand for me and the girl to keep still. I expect she was giving her silent treatment, for in a moment or two she said: 'Well?' in such an inspiring, cheerful tone; and Mrs. Conner said, 'Why, it's better!' surprised as could be; and I had to clap my hands for joy. But Miss Keith told us both to go out for a while and so we did. We waited half an hour by the clock, and that girl was the most restless being you ever saw. I had all I could to keep her quiet. Then the door opened--" Miss Bigelow made a wave of her plump hands, indicating the opening of a door, and paused with hands and voice. Mrs. Darter had ceased to groan.

"What happened?" said Emmy.

Miss Bigelow's hands met in a clap. "_Mrs. Conner came walking out with Miss Keith, that's what happened!_" said she, in a low, solemn voice.

"On her sprained ankle?" cried Mrs. Darter.

"On her sprained ankle, her that couldn't move it without nearly fainting for the pain. She said it hardly pained her at all; and she's going right on with her preserving this minute. I said to sister it was simply mirac'lus. I can't find a better word."

"Maybe her ankle was not sprained so badly as she thought," Emmy suggested.

"Her face was white as a sheet," said Miss Bigelow; "and we all know Mrs. Conner isn't one to cry before she's hurt, or make a fuss; and we all know her prejudices about mental healing. She says she don't believe a _bit_ more in it than she did, 'but,' says she, 'that girl's a wonder! I wish,' says she, 'Mrs. Darter could have her.' I never lisped, but I made up my mind to go and tell you right straight."

"She couldn't do mother any good," said Emmy, wearily. At which Mrs. Darter spoke for herself in a good, round voice of contradiction. "_Why_ couldn't she? How much does she charge, Miss Ann?"

"_Not one cent!_" replied Ann, with a thrill of triumph; "_if_ she'll come, she'll come free; but I don't know whether she will come."

"Emmy, you go and ask Mrs. Conner to ask her to come; ask Mrs. Conner to come too," said Mrs. Darter, resuming her feeble voice. "I want to see if that ankle _is_ cured. You'll stay with me, Miss Ann?"

So, almost too quickly for her to realize the position, Emmy found herself on her way to the Conners'. A fragrant odor wafted Mrs. Conner's occupation through the open kitchen door before Emmy crossed the threshold to behold her skimming a great kettle of plum jam. "Landy, land! it's Emmy Darter already!" she cried, with a jolly laugh. "I thought I could git that plum jam ready to take off before you'd come. I knew it wouldn't be long when I saw Miss Ann Bigelow trotting across lots. Your ma's sent for Miss Keith, I guess. Well, it's lucky Conner has the hosses hitched in the wagon, and he can take us right over. I'll call Hedwig to take off the jam, and Miss Keith--"

"But, Mrs. Conner, please tell me about yourself," urged Emmy. "_Did_ she cure you?"

Mrs. Conner's left eyelid twitched in company with the left corner of her shapely mouth. "You ask me no questions, Emmy, and I'll tell you no lies; but you can make up your mind Miss Keith can cure your ma--if she's _let_!" These orphic sentences were dropped with a slow and ponderous nod of the head, and ceased at the entrance of Miss Keith. The young lady looked very pretty in a crisp pink and white dimity frock and a large white hat with pink roses. She had none of the airs of an adept or a seer. There was nothing occult or intruding on the imagination in her presence. She sat on the front seat beside Mr. Conner and talked about cantaloupe melons. Mrs. Conner was amazingly silent; it was plain, however, from no unkindly motives, since often she cast an affectionate glance on Emmy, and, as the wagon stopped in front of the Darter gate, she patted the girl's shoulder, saying: "It's all going to come right, _I_ guess. Jest you mind us and keep still."

Emmy's bewilderment deepened, but she said, "Yes'm," in her docile way, and followed Mrs. Conner and Miss Keith down the walk, leaving Mr. Conner to chuckle over some unknown mirth of his own, in the wagon.

Mrs. Darter, so Miss Bigelow told them, had been dozing all the while Emmy was gone. Her greeting to Miss Keith was a feeble moan. But on Miss Keith's part there was an amazing transformation. She bent her brows above eyes which shone out of them in a level, intent gaze. Emmy recalled Miss Ann's description, and understood it with a thrill. For a few seconds Miss Keith stood motionless, shedding that steady, unblinking gaze at the drawn face on the pillow. Mrs. Darter appeared to feel it through her eyelids; she winced, she ceased whimpering. Miss Keith smiled gently. She spoke, and her voice was like silk. "You have suffered very much!"

Mrs. Darter opened her eyes; she gazed up at the eyes above her; her chin quivered and two tears slowly ran down her cheeks--the first tears seen on her cheeks during all her lamentations. "Oh, I have," she murmured, "and nobody believes it--not my oldest friend, not my own children!"

"_I_ believe it," said the girl; "yet it is all a mistake." Without turning her eyes, she made a little motion with her hands toward the door, and instantly Miss Ann marshaled the others out of the room. Mrs. Conner shut the door.

In spite of herself, Emmy began to feel her nerves twitch with the excitement and mystery. "Oh, Mrs. Conner," she entreated that stanch friend, "is it possible she _can_ cure mother?"

"Jest you keep quiet," said Mrs. Conner, "and set still. I'm going out to the kitchen to heat this beef tea." For the first time, Emmy observed that Mrs. Conner carried a glass jar insufficiently wrapped in newspaper. Directly she was heard clattering among the saucepans. Miss Ann stiffened into a rigid attitude, and her face assumed a rapt expression. Emmy locked her fingers and sat still. At this moment she was startled by a soft noise outside, and a young fellow pushed a handsome, flushed face into the triangle between the window curtains and beckoned with a look of entreaty. Emmy's heart jumped into her throat. It was Albert. She didn't care whether he rode with Susan Baker or not; it was Albert who loved her; she knew it. If she could only go out to him! But Miss Ann shook her head and laid a mystic finger on her lips. Emmy, too, laid a finger on her lips; but her finger trembled and her eyes swam in tears. Albert stood passive and bewildered. The moments dragged on. Really there were not so many of them; a scant half an hour covered the flight of time; but to Emmy, uncertain whether her greatly tried lover might not have to go back to an expected train at any one of them, and to Albert, who did have a train on his mind and had ridden swiftly up to his sweetheart's for the briefest of interviews, those minutes seemed an hour. Yet Albert knew better, having his watch in hand and waving it and pointing at it, the better to explain his hurry. Once Emmy mustered courage in an access of desperation to rise to her feet, but the look of horror on Miss Ann's features dropped her like a club.

Albert's mind darted blindly from one conjecture of disaster to another. At one minute he was ready to march in rashly before Miss Ann and demand what was the matter; at another he was cold at the thought of blundering in on a deathbed.

He gasped with relief when the door opened and Miss Keith came out, smiling and calling: "Mrs. Conner! Mrs. Conner! hurry up that beef tea, and make some strong coffee as soon as you can!"

Then he did venture to come into the room, essaying a general bow and smile.

"I hope Aunty Darter is better!" he stammered. The children of the old friends had always given them a brevet relationship. Mrs. Darter was "Aunty Darter" to Albert, and Mrs. Glenn "Aunty Lida" to the Darter girls.

"Mrs. Darter will be well to-morrow," said Miss Keith, quietly; "she is going to take some coffee--"

"And some toast and plum jam," interrupted Mrs. Darter herself. "I know Mrs. Conner has been making jam. The times I've hankered after jam these last months! I'm going to eat everything I didn't dast to--"

"By degrees," said Miss Keith, "as the mental power grows stronger."

"Is that Albert?" said Mrs. Darter. "Albert, lift me up while I drink that beef tea."