Part 4

The terrible disease whose presence had sent such a thrill of horror through the quiet little town had been raging for two weeks, and though the inevitable rebound from the first pressure of dread was making itself universally felt, as a topic of conversation it had lost none of its charms.

On a wild, wet afternoon, Lilly O'Connell sat in the stuffy work-room sacred to the mysteries of making and trying on the wonderful productions of Miss Bullins's scissors and needle. She was sewing the folds upon a dress of cheap mourning, while Miss Bullins sat opposite with lap-board and scissors, her nimble tongue outrunning the latter by long odds.

"What's friends _for_," she was saying, "if they aint goin' to stand by you when the pinch comes? Folks that's got husbands and lovers and friends a plenty don't realize their blessin's. As for Florence Fairfield, it makes me ashamed of bein' a woman--the way that girl did! They say she wouldn't even see Roger Horton to bid him good-by. I never heard the like!"

Lilly turned her head toward the window, perhaps because the dress in her hands was black, and the light dull.

"They say he's workin' himself to death for all them poor people, and he aint got nobody--no sister nor mother--to nurse him up when he comes home all tuckered out; though Nancy Swift thinks a sight of him, and she'll do her duty by him, I make no doubt. He's just like his father, and he _was_ a good man. Florence Fairfield don't deserve her privileges, I'm afeard."

The street door opened, and with a gust of cold wind entered Widow Gatchell, the village "Sairey Gamp." She was an elderly woman, tall, stiff and dry as a last year's mullein-stalk. Her dark, wrinkled face was fixed and inexpressive, but the small black eyes were full of life. She was clothed in rusty garments, and carried a seedy carpet-sack in her hand.

"How d'ye do?" she said, in a dry voice, dropping on to the edge of a chair. "I jest come in to tell ye, if ye was _drove_, 'taint no matter about my bunnit. I sha'n't want it right away."

"Why not?" said Miss Bullins, looking up.

"I'm goin' to the pest-house nussin' to-morrow," returned the old woman, in the same quiet tone.

"Good land! Sarah Gatchell!" cried Miss Bullins, upsetting her lap-board. "Aint you 'most afraid?"

A quaint smile flitted across the widow's face.

"What'd I be afeared of," she said, "'s old 'n' homely 's I be? The small-pox aint agoin' to touch _me_. I'd 'a' gone a week ago, but I couldn't leave Mis' Merrill, an' her baby not a week old. I've jess been a-talkin' with Dr. Horton," she went on. "He says they're sufferin' for help. They's three sick women an' two children, an' not a woman in the house to do a thing for 'em. They've been expectin' two nusses from the city, but they aint come. Seems to me 'taint jest right fur men-folks to be fussin' 'round sick women an' childern."

"Oh my, it's awful!" sighed Miss Bullins, pinning her pattern crooked in her distress.

"Not a woman there?" said Lilly O'Connell, who had been listening with her hands idle in her lap.

"There'll _be_ one there in the mornin'," said the widow, rising to go. "I'd 'a' gone to-night, but I couldn't be o' much use till I'd gone 'round the house by daylight, an' got the hang o' things."

"Wall, you've got good grit, Sarah," said the milliner, with enthusiasm. "You're as good as half a dozen common women. I declare, I'd go myself, but I shouldn't be a bit o' use. I should catch it in a day. I was always a great one for catchin' diseases."

"Aint ye well?" said Mrs. Gatchell, turning suddenly toward Lilly. "Ye look kind o' peakèd. I guess ye set still too much."

"I am perfectly well," said Lilly.

"Ye be? Wall, sewin' _is_ confinin'. Good-by."

Lilly had no appetite for her tea, and immediately after she put on her cloak and hat, and went out. The wind had gone down as the sun set, the rain had ceased, and a few pale stars were struggling through the thin, vapory clouds.

The streets were very quiet, and she met but few people. The choir in the Orthodox Church were rehearsing, their voices ringing out clear and not inharmonious in a favorite hymn. She stopped, and bowing her head upon one of the square wooden posts, waited until the hymn closed. Then she went on her way. It was quite dark when she reached the end of her walk--the residence of Dr. Starkey. She seized the brass knocker with a firm hand, and was shown into the office. In a few moments Dr. Starkey entered.

He was an old-school physician, and an old-school gentleman as well. He would have considered it indecent to appear before the world in any other garb than a broadcloth swallow-tail coat of ancient date, and with his long neck wrapped in white lawn nearly to the point of suffocation. He entered the room, and bowed with courtly gallantry on seeing a feminine figure standing by the table; but, as Lilly looked up and the lamp-light fell upon her face and hair, there was a perceptible congealing of his manner.

"Miss--a----" he began.

"I am Lilly O'Connell," she said, simply.

"Oh--a--yes! Miss O'Connell. Hm! Sit down, Miss O'Connell,--sit down!" he added, observing her closely from under his shaggy brows.

The girl remained standing, but the doctor seated himself before the glowing grate, and placed himself in an attitude of professional attention.

"You are--indisposed?" he asked, presently, as she remained silent.

"No; I am quite well," she answered; and then, after a little pause, during which her color mounted and faded, she continued: "I have heard that there is need of more help at the hospital, and I came to ask you to take me as nurse, or anything you most need."

Her voice trembled a little, and her eyes were fixed eagerly upon the doctor's face.

He turned square about, the withered, purple-veined hands clutching the arms of his chair tightly, a kind of choking sound issuing from his bandaged throat.

"Will you say that again?" he asked abruptly, staring with raised eyebrows at the pale, earnest face.

Lilly repeated what she had said, more firmly.

"Good heavens!" ejaculated the old man, measuring the girl from head to foot slowly.

"Child," he said, after a pause, "do you know what you are talking about?"

"I think so," the girl answered, quietly.

"No, you do not!" the old man said, almost brusquely. "It is a place to try the nerves of the strongest man, to say nothing of a woman's. It is no place for a girl--no place."

"I am not afraid," the girl said, her voice breaking. "They say I am good in sickness, and I will do any kind of work. It is dreadful to think of those poor little children and women, with no one to do anything for them but men. Oh, do not refuse!" she cried, coming nearer and holding out her hands entreatingly.

The doctor had fidgeted in his chair, uttering a variety of curious, inarticulate exclamations while she was speaking.

"But, child," he repeated, earnestly, "it would be as much as your life is worth to enter the house. You would come down in a week. You might die!"

Lilly looked up into the mottled old face, and smiled sadly.

"I am not afraid," she said again, "and there is no one to care very much. Even if I should die, it would not matter."

Dr. Starkey reflected, rubbing one shrivelled finger up and down the bridge of his nose. He knew how woman's help was needed in that abode of pestilence and death. He looked at the white, supple hands clasped over the gray cloak before him, and thought of the work which they would be required to perform, then shook his head slowly, and rose.

"No," he said, "I cannot consent."

Lilly made a motion as if to speak, but he raised his hand deprecatingly.

"It would be as bad as murder," he went on. "I respect your motive, Miss O'Connell, I do, indeed; but you are too young and too--a--delicate for the undertaking. Don't think of it any more."

He took one of the hands which dropped at her side and held it in his glazed palm, looking kindly into the downcast face. He knew the girl's whole history. He had been one of the fiercest opponents of her application for a teacher's place, and from conscientious motives solely, as he believed; but he remembered it now with sharp regret. There was nothing in this fair and womanly figure to inspire antipathy, surely. For the first time, a realizing sense of her solitary life came to him, and he was pained and sorry. He wanted to be very kind to her, but felt strangely unable to express himself.

"Don't say no one would care what befell you," he began, his gruff voice softening. "A young woman of your--a--attractions should have many friends. Consider _me_ one, Miss O'Connell," he continued, with a blending of the sincere and the grandiose in his manner,--"consider _me_ a friend from this day, and let me thank you again for your offer. It was very praiseworthy of you, very."

Lilly bowed--she could not trust herself to speak--and went away.

Dr. Starkey walked up and down his office several times, raised and lowered the flame of the lamp, poked the fire, looked out into the starlit night, and, with a fervent "Bless my soul! how extraordinary!" settled himself for his customary nap over the Boston paper.

Lilly hurried home through the silent streets. Miss Bullins's shop was empty of customers, and she herself, her hair bristling with crimping-pins and curl-papers, was putting things in order for the night. She studied Lilly's face with watchful anxiety, as she joined in her labors.

"I hope to gracious she aint comin' down sick!" she reflected. "You aint got backache and pains in your limbs, have you?" she inquired, with thinly veiled anxiety.

Lilly laughed.

"No, Miss Bullins; nothing of the kind."

"I thought you looked kind o' _queer_," said the good creature, coloring.

"I am only a little tired; not sick."

She came and stood by the old maid's chair, as she sat warming her feet at the stove, and laid her hand on the thin gray hair.

"Good-night, Miss Bullins."

"Good-night, dear. Hadn't you better drink a cup of pepper-tea before you go to bed?"

"No, thank you; I am only tired."

She sat by the window of her little bedroom over the shop a long time before lighting her lamp. Dim and dark, the river wound along, its surface gleaming here and there faintly through the leafless branches of the willows. Overhead, the solemn stars shone coldly. The houses along its banks were already dark and silent. At some involuntary movement, her hand fell upon a soft white mass of needle-work which strewed the table near her, and the contact seemed to rouse her. She rose, lit the lamp, folded the dainty, lace-trimmed garment, and made it into a parcel with some others which she took from a drawer, and went to bed. It was long before she slept, but the early morning found her asleep, with a peaceful smile upon her face.

The next day, being Saturday, was a busy one, for let Death stalk as he will, people must have their Sunday gear. The little shop was full at times, and feminine tongues and fingers flew without cessation, mixing millinery and misery in strange confusion.

"You don't say that's Mis' Belden's bonnet, with all them flowers on it? Well, I never! And she a member!"

"Why, you're a member, too, ain't you, Mis' Allen?" says another, with a glance at the first speaker's head, where feathers of various hues waved majestically.

"Oh, you mean my feathers?" was the spirited answer. "Feathers an' _flowers_ is different things. You must draw the line somewhere, an' I draw it at feathers."

"They say one o' the women died up to the pest-house yesterday," said one woman, in the midst of an earnest discussion as to the comparative becomingness of blue roses and crimson pansies.

"Dear me!" said Miss Bullins, compassionately, "an' not a woman there to lay her out! Sarah Gatchell didn't go up till to-day."

"They don't lay 'em out," remarked the other, unconcernedly, holding a brilliant pansy against her bilious countenance. "They roll 'em up in the sheet they die on, and bury 'em in the pasture."

Lilly's hands trembled over the bonnet she was lining.

"Well, good-day, Miss Bullins. I guess I'd better take the roses. I'm most too old for red. Get it done if you can. Good-day."

It went on so all day. At one time there was a rush for the window.

"It's Doctor Horton!" cried a pretty girl. "Oh my! Ain't he sweet? He's handsomer than ever, since he got so pale. I don't see how in the world Flossie Fairfield could do as she did. They say she's afraid to have him write to her."

"She loves her good looks more'n she does him, I guess," said another.

"And they to be married in the spring," said Miss Bullins, pathetically. "Lilly, here, was making her underclo'se, and they're a sight to see,--all hand-made, and so much lace in 'em that it ain't modest, I do declare!"

"If she got her deserts she wouldn't have no use for weddin' clo'se," said another, with acerbity; "not if _I_ was Roger Horton."

"Wall, you ain't," said her companion, drily, "an' he ain't no different from other men, I guess."

Lilly worked on with feverish haste. About four o'clock she rose and went out, pausing an instant at the door, and looking back. Miss Bullins, intent upon some button-holes for which every moment of daylight was needed, did not look up. Lilly closed the door, and went up to her room.

It was small and simple, but it was the best she had known. There were some innocent efforts at decoration, a daintiness about the bed, a few books on hanging shelves, and a pretty drapery at the one window. She looked around with a sinking heart. There was a small writing-desk upon the table, and she went to it and wrote a few lines, which she sealed and directed. She packed a few articles in a satchel, put on her cloak and hat, and stole down the stairs.

Choosing the quietest street, she walked rapidly through the village until the last house was passed, and the open country lay before her, bare and brown and desolate, except for the blue hills in the distance, which, summer or winter, never lost their beauty.

Two or three farmers, jogging homeward with their week's supplies, passed her, and one offered her a lift as far as she was going, which she declined.

A mile from the village, a road turned off to the left, winding through barren fields, until lost in the pine woods. As she turned into this, a man driving toward the village reined in and called to her, warningly:

"The pest-house is up yonder!"

She merely bowed and kept on. The man stared a moment, and whipped up his horse again. It was dark in the woods, and chilly, but she felt no fear, not even when the sere bushes by the way-side rustled, or twigs snapped as if beneath the tread of some living creature.

As she came out into comparative light she saw a buggy driven rapidly toward her. She recognized its occupant at once, and with a quick heart-throb sprang behind a clump of young pines, and dropped upon her knees.

Dr. Horton drove by, his face turned toward her place of concealment. He did not know that any human eye was upon him, and the heaviness of his spirit appeared unrepressed in every feature. His eyes followed listlessly the irregular outline of the way-side walls and bushes, but it was evident that his thoughts were not of surrounding things, otherwise he must have seen the crouching figure and the white face pressed against the rough bark of the tree whose trunk she clasped.

The girl's eyes followed him until he was lost to sight in the woods. Then she came out and pursued her way.

A curve in the road brought her in sight of the house now devoted to hospital uses. It was a two-story farm-house, black with age, shutterless and forsaken-looking. Over it hung the cloud of a hideous crime. A few years before, the owner, led on by an insane passion, had murdered his aged wife in her bed. The sequel had been a man's life ended in prison, a girl's name blasted, a dishonored family, a forsaken homestead,--for the son, to whom the property had fallen, had gone away, leaving no trace behind him. It had stood for years as the murderer had left it; its contents had been untouched by human hands; the hay had rotted in the barn; the fields were running waste. The very road itself was avoided, and the old wheel-ruts were almost effaced by grass and weeds. Swallows had possessed themselves of the cold, smokeless chimneys and sunken, mossy eaves; vagrant cats prowled about the moldering mows and empty mangers. The old well-sweep pointed like a gaunt, rigid finger toward heaven. The little strips of flower-beds beneath the front windows were choked with grass, but the red roses and pinks and columbines which the old woman had loved, still grew and bloomed in their season, and cast their petals about the sunken door-stone, and over the crooked path and neglected grass.

There were no flowers now,--only drifting masses of wet brown leaves. The setting sun had just turned the windows into sheets of blood, and down in the pasture could be seen the rough clods of several new-made graves. The silence was absolute. Faint columns of smoke, rising from the crumbling chimneys, were the only signs of human presence.

A tremor shook the girl from head to foot, and she ceased walking. After all, she was young and strong, and the world was wide; life might hold something of sweetness for her yet. It was not too late. She half turned,--but it was only for a moment, and her feet were on the door-step, and her hand on the latch.

She turned a last look upon the outer world,--the bare fields, the leafless woods, the blue hills, the fading sky. A desperate yearning toward it all made her stretch out her hands as if to draw it nearer for a last farewell. Then from within came the piteous cry of a sick child, and she raised the latch softly and entered the house. The air of the hall smote her like a heavy hand, coming as she did from the cool outer air; but guided by the cry, which still continued, she groped her way up the bare, worn stairs, pushed open a door, and entered.

The child's voice covered the sound of her entrance and, sickened by the foul air, she had leaned for some moments against the wall before Widow Gatchell, who was holding the child across her knee, turned and saw her. The old woman's hard, brown features stiffened with surprise, her lips parted without sound.

"I have come to help you," said Lilly, putting down her satchel and coming forward.

"Who sent ye?" the widow asked, shortly.

"Nobody. I offered my services, but Dr. Starkey refused to let me come. I knew you would not send me away if I once got here, and so I came."

"What was folks thinkin' of to _let_ ye come?" asked the old woman again.

"Nobody knew it," Lilly answered.

"Wall," the widow said, "ye had no sort o' business to come, though the Lord knows they's need enough of help."

"Perhaps _He_ sent me, Sarah," the girl said, gently. "Oh, the poor, poor baby! Let me take it."

Widow Gatchell's keen eyes swept the girl's compassionate face with a searching gaze. She rose stiffly and laid the child in her arms.

"There!" she said, drawing a long breath. "You're in for it now, Lilly O'Connell, and may the Lord have mercy on ye!"

When Dr. Horton entered the pest-house in the morning, the first person he encountered was Lilly O'Connell, coming through the hall with a tray in her hands. In her closely fitting print dress and wide apron, the sleeves turned back from her smooth, strong arms, her face earnest, yet cheerful, she was the embodiment of womanly charity and sweetness. He started as though he saw a spectre.

"Good heavens!" he said; "how came you here? Who--who permitted you to come here?"

"No one," said Lilly, supporting the waiter on the post at the foot of the stairs. "I just came. I asked Dr. Starkey to take me as nurse, but he refused."

"I know, I know," said the young man. He stepped back and opened the door, letting in the crisp morning air. "But why did you come? It is a terrible place for you."

"I came to be of use," she answered, smiling. "I hope I am useful. Ask Mrs. Gatchell. She will tell you that I am useful, I am sure."

Horton's face expressed pain and perplexity.

"It is wrong--all wrong," he said. "Where were your friends? Was there no one who cared for you, no one that you care for, enough to keep you from this wild step?"

She looked up into his face, and, for one brief moment, something in her deep, luminous eyes chained his gaze. A soft red spread itself over her cheeks and neck. She shook her head slowly, and taking up the tray, went on up the stairs.

Miss Bullins found the little note which Lilly had left for her, when, as no response came to her repeated summons to tea, she mounted the stairs to see what had happened.

She read the hastily written lines with gathering tears.

"You can get plenty of milliners and seamstresses; but those poor women and children are suffering for some one to take care of them. Forgive me for going this way, but it seemed the only way I _could_ go. May be I shall be sick; but if I do, there is no beauty to lose, you know, and if I die, there is nobody to break their heart about it. _You_ will be sorry, I know. I thank you, oh so much, for all your kindness to me, and I do love you dearly. May God bless you for all your goodness. If I should die, what I leave is for you to do what you please with.

"Your grateful and loving

"LILLY."

The good little woman's tears fell faster as she looked about the empty room.

"I never was so beat in my life," she confided to a dozen of her intimate friends many times over during the next week. "You could have knocked me down with a feather."

Dr. Starkey's amazement surpassed Miss Bullins's, if possible. He first heard of the step Lilly had taken from Dr. Horton. He saw her himself a day or two later, on making his tri-weekly visit to the hospital, and commended her bravery and self-sacrificing spirit in phrases something less stilted than usual.

He could not entirely banish an uneasy feeling when he looked at the fresh young face, but he became tolerably reconciled to the situation when he saw what her energy and tenderness, in cooperation with Widow Gatchell's skill and experience, were accomplishing.

As for the girl herself, the days and nights passed so rapidly, making such demands upon body and mind, as to leave no time for regret. The scenes she witnessed effaced the past entirely for the time. In the midst of all the pain, and loathsomeness, and delirium, and death, she moved about, strong, gentle and self-contained, so self-contained that the vigilant eyes of the old nurse followed her in mute surprise.

"I never see nothin' like it," she said to Dr. Horton one day. "I've known her since she was little, an' I never would 'a' believed it, though I knew she'd changed. Why, she used to be so high-strung an' techy, like, an' now she's like a lamb."

On the tenth day after her coming, Dr. Horton in making his round entered an upper chamber, where Lilly was standing by one of the three beds it contained. She had just drawn the sheet over the faces of two who had died that morning--mother and child.

The dead woman was the deserted wife of a man who had left her a year before, young, weak and ignorant, to certain want and degradation.

"I cannot feel sorry," Lilly said. "It is so much better for them than what was left for them here."

Dr. Horton hardly seemed to hear her words. He was leaning wearily against a chair behind him; his eyes were dull, and his forehead contracted as if with physical suffering.

"You are ill!" she said, with a startled gesture.

"No, only getting a little tired out. I hope the worst is over now, and I think I shall hold out."

He went about from room to room, and from bed to bed, attentive and sympathetic as ever, and then left the house. A half hour later, one of the men came into the kitchen where Mrs. Gatchell was stirring something over the fire.

"Got a spare bed?" he asked, laconically.

The widow looked up.