Ethel Morton at Rose House by Mabell S. C. Smith

M >> Mabell S. C. Smith >> Ethel Morton at Rose House

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

"I have several bureau scarves that are in good condition but they have
been washed so many times that they're a little faded. If you'd like
those--?" she ended with an upward inflection.

"We would," replied Helen promptly.

"Could you use some prints of pictures--good paintings?" inquired yet
another, a person whose taste Helen knew could be trusted.

"We'd be glad of them. We can frame them in passepartout. We'd be
especially glad of madonnas."

"That's just what I was going to offer you. A club I once belonged to
studied celebrated paintings of madonnas one winter and I made this
collection. Many of them are only penny prints and some are cut from
magazines--".

"They're perfectly good for us," Helen reassured her, and made another
note in her book.

Most of the visitors went home with the falling dark, but some stayed
to see the rose lanterns lighted, and others, who had not been able to
come in the afternoon, drove or walked out from town in the evening and
were served with ice cream and strawberries from a supply that had been
wonderfully well calculated.

"Let us have just a week to spend this money and to make up the sheets
and pillow cases and curtains and you can tell Mr. Watkins to send out
the women," Helen announced triumphantly to Delia.

"I'm going to spend the week with Margaret so I can come over with her
every day and help," returned smiling Delia.

"Then we shan't need a whole week. When you go home to-night please
ask your father to be making his selection--four mothers with two
children apiece. You and Tom can escort them out on the Tuesday after
Fourth of July."

CHAPTER VI

FURNITURE MAKING

It did not take the women long to adjust themselves to life at Rose
House, and as for the children, they loved it from the first. It was a
great international gathering that was sheltered on the old farm. Mrs.
Schuler was German; Moya, Irish. Mrs. Peterson, a Swede, occupied the
rooster room with her baby and her flaxen-haired daughter of three;
Mrs. Paterno, an Italian, found good pasturage among the cows of the
violet room for her black-eyed boys of two and four; Mrs. Tsanoff, a
Bulgarian, told the Matron that her twin girl babies were too young to
pay attention to the kittens on the curtains of the yellow room; while
Mrs. Vereshchagin, a Russian, discovered that the puppies of the blue
room were a great help to her in holding the attention of her boys of
three and five when she was putting them to bed.

Mrs. Schuler shook her head doubtfully when she took down their names
and nationalities in her notebook on the day of their arrival.

"If we get through the summer without quarrels over the war it will be
a miracle!" she exclaimed to her husband.

But she found that the poor creatures were too weary, too sad, too
physically crushed to have spirit enough left to fight any battles,
even those of words. With almost every one of them there had been a
tragedy such as often comes to the immigrants who reach the United
States equipped for success only with strong muscles--a tragedy of
wasted hope and broken courage and failing vigor if not of death. Mrs.
Paterno was the only one of them who could sympathize with Moya's
widowhood; her husband had seen the Black Hand death sign a few months
before, had disregarded it and had been stabbed in the back one night
as he came home from his work.

Conversation was not carried on fluently among them. They met on the
common ground of English, but not one of them could speak it well, each
one translated phrases of her own tongue quite literally, and the
meaning of the whole talk was largely a matter of guesswork. What they
did understand was nature's language of motherhood. They were content
to sit for hours on the veranda or in the grove or behind the house,
preparing vegetables for Moya, chattering about their babies and
explaining their meaning by gestures that seemed to be perfectly
understood.

The women had daily duties to perform according to a schedule worked
out by Mrs. Schuler, who apportioned to each a share of the general
work of the house in addition to the care of her own room and the
washing for herself and her children. With so many fingers flying the
tasks were soon done, and then they sat on the porch or in the grove
among the sweet-smelling pines, or walked in the pasture or up and down
the lane leading to the main road. Once in a while they went to
Rosemont, but for the most part they were too languid to care to walk
far and too glad of the change and the rest and quiet to want to weary
themselves unnecessarily.

The boys had built a platform across the back of the house, and it was
here that they did their carpentry, an awning sheltering them from the
sun or rain. A cupboard at one end held their tools, and their partly
finished articles were neatly stacked in a corner. As they got out
their tools now James made a confession.

"To tell you the honest, unvarnished truth, I'm tired of making chairs.
It seems as if we'd never have enough."

"It takes an awful lot to furnish a house," commented Roger wisely,
"and you know we had very few given us so if we want enough we have to
make them."

"We've got all the chairs you've done upholstered all they're going to
be," said Ethel Brown. "Why can't Ethel Blue and I each make a high
chair?"

"No reason at all," agreed Roger quickly. "You've watched James and me
and seen our really superior workmanship; imitate it, my child!"

The girls were already turning over the boys' supply of boxes to select
those suitable for the chairs for the children. They took four that
had held lemons or other fruit and were tall and narrow when stood on
end. The boards they were made of were very light but quite solid
enough to hold the weight of a small child. To make it firm upon the
ground, however, they sawed a piece of heavy plank a little larger than
the end upon which the box was to stand and nailed it on from the
inside.

When the high chair was done the boys complimented their co-workers on
the success of their first experiment.

"I hardly could have done it better myself," said Roger grandly.

All the high chairs were covered with blue and white cretonne to match
the blue and white of the dining room and the girls set to work to tack
on the outside covering and to cut out the covers of the small cushions
that were to make the seat and back comfortable. The cushions
themselves they had made from ticking filled with excelsior when they
had calculated the number of high chairs they must have.

The boys, meanwhile were constructing two chairs of quite different
build. One was a heavy chair for the hall or the veranda, its original
condition being a packing box a foot and a half deep, about twenty
inches wide and three or four feet long. This also was set on end, and
the other end and the cover were laid aside to be used in making the
seat and in shutting in the openings below the seat.

"How are you going to fasten that seat so it won't let the sitter down
on the floor?" inquired Ethel Blue, as James explained what he was
going to do.

"Do you see these cleats, ma'am? These are each a foot long. I nail
one of these standing up straight at each edge of the sides and the
back--six of them altogether. Then I lay three other cleats across
their tops--thusly."

"O, you've made a sort of framework that will support the seat! I get
that!" exclaimed Ethel Blue.

"All you have to do now is to nail your seat boards on to those
horizontal cleats and it's as firm as firm can be."

"Aren't you going to do something with those sides--those arms, or
whatever you call them?" inquired Ethel Brown. "They seem sharp and
uncomfortable and in the way to me."

Both boys studied the chair seriously before answering. Then they took
a pencil and paper and consulted.

"I should think it would look pretty well to cut out a right angle on
each aide," suggested James. "That would leave a sort of wing effect
like a hall porter's chair, only not so high, and at the same time it
would make an arm to rest your elbow on. How does that strike you ?"

Roger nodded. "It hits me all right. I was thinking of a curve
instead of a right angle, but the right angle will be easier to make.
Go ahead."

So the right angle was decided on and James proceeded to cut it.

Roger, meanwhile, had been sorting out the wood he needed for a chair
of another pattern.

"I wish Dorothy would heave in sight," he growled as he piled some half
inch thick strips in one heap. "She told me she'd tell me all she knew
about chair legs when I reached this stage of proceedings."

"She will," answered a cheerful voice, and gray-eyed Dorothy appeared
from the house. "I felt in my bones that you'd be beginning this lot
this afternoon, so I ambled over to see if I could help in any way."

"Keep right on ambling till you reach this end of the platform and tell
me whether you said that chair legs could be made of this stripping or
whether I'll have to get solid pieces, square-ended, you know, joist or
scantling or whatever it's called."

"Strips will do, only you'll have to use two for each leg. Nail them
together at right angles. It will make a two-sided leg, but it will be
plenty strong enough, though perhaps not truly handsome."

"If handsomeness means solidity--no. Still, they'll do. Can you give
me the lengths for these strips?" and Roger waved his saw at his cousin
as if he were so impatient to begin that he could not wait to study out
the lengths for himself.

"For the one I made for the attic," replied his cousin, "I cut four
strips each two inches wide and twenty-one inches long for the front
legs and four strips each two inches wide and twenty-five inches long
for the back legs. Then there were two two-inch strips seventeen
inches long to go under the seat to strengthen it front and back, and
two two-inch strips each thirteen inches long to go under the seat and
strengthen it on the sides. That's all the stock you need except the
box."

"I suppose you've got a particular box in mind to fit those sizes."

"Those sizes fit the box, rather. Yes, I got a grocery box that was
about eighteen inches long and thirteen wide and eleven deep. I saw
one here just like it before I gave you those measurements, so you can
go ahead sawing while I pull off one side of the box--the cover has
gone already but we don't need it."

Quiet reigned for a few minutes while they all worked briskly.

"Now I'm ready to put this superb article together," announced Roger.
"How high from the ground does the seat go?"

"Nail your cleats across with their top edges fifteen inches from the
ground and nail the bottom of the box on to the cleats. See how these
two-sided legs protect the edges of the box as well as make it decent
looking?"

"So they do," admitted Roger. "They aren't so bad after all."

"I think those sides are going to be too high," decided Dorothy after
examining the chair carefully and sitting down in it. "Don't you think
it pushes your elbows up too high?"

Roger tried it and thought it did.

"Suppose you saw those sides down about five inches."

Roger obeyed and Dorothy tried the chair again and pronounced it much
improved.

"It's comfy enough now, but these arms don't look very well, and they'd
be liable to tear your sleeves," she said. "Let's put on some strip
covers. They'll give a finish to the whole thing, and hide the end of
the two-sided legs and be smooth."

"Plenty of reason for having them. How many inches?"

"Twelve," answered Dorothy after measuring. "The top of the back needs
a strip cover, too. Cut another nineteen inches long. There, _I_
think that's not such a bad looking chair!'"

"Do you want cushions for those chairs?" inquired Ethel Brown,
appearing at the door with a piece of cretonne in her hand. "We've got
material enough for at least seat cushions for both of them."

"They'll be lots more comfy," admitted James, "if the excelsior crop is
still holding out."

"It is. I'll make them right off, and Ethel Blue can help you out
there."

She retired from view and sent out her cousin, and until the sun set
the two boys and Dorothy and Ethel measured and sawed and nailed, with
results that satisfied them so well that they did not mind being tired.

CHAPTER VII

TROUBLE AT ROSE HOUSE

"If it weren't that I could come out here and see you every day or so I
should be wild to get back to work in Oklahoma."

Edward Watkins was the speaker. He and Miss Merriam were walking
through a wooded path that ran from Rosemont to Rose House. The day
was warm and the shade of the trees was grateful.

"How is your patient?" asked Gertrude.

"Getting on very well, but the doctors won't let him travel yet."

"Have you heard lately from your doctor in Oklahoma?"

"I hear about every day! I was with him just long enough for him to
find that I was useful and he's wild to have me there again. I wired
him that I'm ready to go, but that the sick man is nervous about making
the return trip alone. Of course he wants to keep on the good side of
a good patient, so he answered, 'Stay on'."

"Are you able to do anything for your patient? He's still in the
hospital, isn't he?"

"I go there every day and he sends me on errands all over town. I'm
getting to know almost as much about oil as I do about medicine! But
I'm rather tired of playing errand boy."

"You have a chance to see your family."

"And you. But I'm supposed to stay at the hotel, much to Mother's
disgust. I'm doing a little medical inspection among Father's poor
people, though. That whiles away a few hours every day, and of course,
every time I go to the hospital the doctors there tell me about any
interesting new cases, so I'm not 'going stale' entirely."

"As if you could!" exclaimed Gertrude admiringly. "You're just storing
up ideas and information to startle the Oklahoman natives with."

"The 'natives' in Oklahoma are all too young to be startled," laughed
Edward, "but of course I'm stowing away everything new I hear about
methods of treatment and operations and so on to tell Dr. Billings when
I get back. Now let me hear what you've been doing. How are these
kiddies at Rose House?"

"I want you to look them over and talk with the mothers. Dr. Hancock
comes over when we send for him, but all these people are so delicate
that I feel that they ought to have a physician's eye on them all the
time."

"They have you pretty often, don't they?"

"I go over every day either in the morning or the afternoon, and I give
them advice about the babies, and teach them and Moya how to prepare
their food, but they do such strange things that you can't forestall
because you never had the wildest idea that any woman in her senses
would treat a baby so."

Edward laughed.

"Russian and Bulgarian peasant customs, I suppose. I never shall
forget the first time I saw a two-day old negro baby sucking a bit of
fat bacon. I nearly had a chill."

"Didn't the child have a chill?"

"Not the slightest! If they get ahead of you with some pleasing little
trick like that you can console yourself with the thought that
generally there is some basis of old-time experience that has shown it
to be not so harmful as we are apt to think."

"I've done enough tenement house work to know that the babies certainly
survive extraordinary treatment, but these babies here are so delicate
that they ought to have the most careful diet. Most of them need real
nursing."

"Do you think your talks are making any impressions on the mothers?"

"Sometimes Mrs. Schuler and I think so, and just then it almost always
happens that one of them does something totally unexpected that gives
our hopes a terrible blow."

"Let's trust that this is a good day; I'd rather talk to you than work
over a case this fine afternoon."

Gertrude smiled at his tone and they walked on in silence out of the
wood and across the brook and down the lane that brought them to the
back of Rose House where the Club boys and girls were busy making a
piece of furniture of some sort. Mrs. Schuler was talking to Moya in
the kitchen.

"I've brought Dr. Watkins to see everybody," announced Miss Merriam
gayly. "Where are they all?"

"The ones who are at home are up in the pine grove, but Moya has just
told me that Mrs. Paterno and her older boy and Mrs. Tsanoff and one of
the twins have gone to town."

"Walked?"

"Walked by the road on this scorching day!"

Miss Merriam turned to the doctor.

"This is one of the unexpected events we were just talking about.
Little Paterno is four and too large for that little woman to carry,
and far too small and weak to take that long walk on his own legs even
on a more suitable day than this, and the Tsanoff twins are just
holding on to life by the tips of their fingers!"

She sat down in despair. Dr. Watkins looked serious.

"Is there any way of heading them off or bringing them back. Can we
reach them anywhere by telephone?"

"No one knows where they can have gone. It seems it must have been
about an hour and a half ago that they started and I should think
they'd be back before long if they're able to come back--"

"--under their own steam!" finished the doctor with a doubtful smile.

"Let's go to the grove and see the women and children there and perhaps
the others will be in sight by the time you've finished your
examination."

They turned toward the pines whose thick needles cast a heavy shade
upon the ground and gave forth a delicious fragrance under the rays of
the sun. As they disappeared Mrs. Schuler went out on the platform
where the carpentering operations were going on.

"I'm so disturbed about those women," she said, "I've come to see what
you're doing to divert my mind from them."

"We're going to make two of these seats, one for your office and the
other for the veranda," said Ethel Brown, standing erect and putting a
hand upon her weary back. The rest of the young carpenters stopped
their work and wiped their perspiring foreheads while they explained
the construction of the piece of furniture to their friend.

"This long narrow box is the seat, you see. It's a shoe case, and it's
just the right height for comfort. Roger has put hinges on the cover,
so you can use it for a chest and keep rugs and cushions inside."

"That's about as simple as it could be. Does it take all of you to
help Roger do that?"

"O, that's only a part of the entire affair. We're making these two
sets of shelves to go at the ends of the seat."

"I see. A great light breaks on me!"

"They're to be fastened to the ends of the seat."

"Not for keeps. That's Ethel Blue's patent. She said it would be
awkward to move about if it were all built together, so we're making it
in three parts, and we're going to lock them together with hooks and
screw eyes."

"That is clever! Then if you want to you can use these sets of shelves
for little bookcases in another room or you can fasten on one of them
and not the other."

"Ethel Blue and I thought we'd make pink cushions for your office if
you'd like them."

"I think they'd be charming. That pink room raises my spirits when--"

"--when you get _blue_?" suggested Roger.

"I'll have to go there now to get revived if those women who walked to
town don't turn up soon," and the Matron went to the corner of the
house whence she could see the lane that led from the road. "If they
come home ill I'll have to ask you to make two bed trays," she
suggested as she peered across the grass.

"How do you make them?"

"Ask Ethel Blue."

"Merely put legs on a light board so that the weight of the plates will
be lifted from the sick person's legs as he sits up in bed."

"What's to prevent the plates sliding off?"

"Nothing if he's much of a kicker, I should say," laughed Roger; "but
you could put a little fence an inch or two high at the back and sides
and keep them on board."

"You'd better begin them right off," said Mrs. Schuler dryly, "for here
they come."

She disappeared around the corner and the young people followed to see
what was the matter.

Trouble there was in very truth. Mrs. Paterno led the way stumbling
and running. Her face was flushed a deep, threatening crimson and her
breath came fast. By the arm she held little Pietro, who from
exhaustion had ceased to scream and merely gave a gulping moan when the
gravel scraped his bare knees as his mother jerked him along regardless
of whether he was on his feet or whether she dragged him. Behind them
at some distance came Mrs. Tsanoff carrying her baby in her arms--one
of the twins that always seemed to be merely "holding on to life by the
tips of its fingers," to use Gertrude's expression, and now seemed to
have lost even that frail hold. It lay in its mother's arms white and
with its eyes closed.

Mrs. Schuler ran to meet the Italian woman and lifted the worn child
into her arms where he sank against her shoulder as if in a faint.

"Run up in the grove and get Dr. Watkins and Miss Gertrude," Helen said
to Roger. "Ask them quietly to come here. Don't frighten the women."

Roger dashed away, his swift feet slowing to a walk as he neared the
bit of woods where he delivered his message in an undertone. Ethel
Blue meanwhile, had rushed into the house to tell Moya to heat plenty
of water and to crack some ice, and Margaret had opened Mrs. Schuler's
closet of simple remedies and found the bottle of aromatic spirits of
ammonia. Ethel Brown and James ran to meet Mrs. Tsanoff, Ethel taking
the baby from her and James steadying her shaking steps by a stout arm
under her elbow.

As Dr. Watkins ran around the corner of the house he came upon Helen
trying to help Mrs. Paterno, who was pushing her away with both hands,
while she kept looking over her shoulder and screaming hysterically.
Edward seized her hands and commanded her attention at once by speaking
to her in Italian. Although she did not know him she responded to his
command to tell him of what she was afraid, and poured out a story of
terror. "_Mano, nera, mano nera_--the Black Hand," she repeated over
and over again, and Edward, who had heard her history, realized that
something she had seen had set her mind in the old train of thought.
While Miss Merriam attended to the children he calmed the woman and
then turned her over to Mrs. Schuler with instructions to put her to
bed in a darkened room and to see that some one stayed with her or just
outside her door.

Fortunately for the doctor his experience with the people among whom
his father worked in his East Side chapel had given him a smattering of
many languages and he was able to make out from Mrs. Tsanoff, although
her fright and fatigue had made her forget almost all the English she
knew, what had terrified her companion. They had gone to the
stationery shop of the Englishman who also sold ice cream and soda, she
said, and they had had each a glass of soda and the children had each
had an ice cream cone.

Edward groaned and over his shoulder directed Delia to run and tell
Miss Merriam that both babies had had ice cream cones. "It will help
her to know what to do until I come," he explained.

Just as they were coming out of the store a dark man who looked like an
Italian had passed them.

So far as she noticed he had paid no attention to them, but Mrs.
Paterno had seized her arm, pointing after him, and then had picked up
Pietro and started to run toward home. Neither far nor fast could she
go in such heat with such a burden and the poor little chap was soon
tossed down and forced to run with giant strides all the rest of the
eternal mile that stretched between Rosemont and Rose House. Mrs.
Tsanoff herself had followed as fast as she could because she was
afraid that something, she knew not what, would happen to her friend.

She, too, was sent to bed, with Moya standing over her to lay cool
compresses on her eyes, to sponge her wrists and ankles with cool water
and to lay an occasional bit of cracked ice on her parched lips.

The condition of the two children was pitiable. The heat, the sudden
chill from the ice cream and the terrible homeward rush sent them both
so nearly into a collapse that the doctor, Mrs. Schuler and Miss
Merriam worked over them all night, resting only when Dr. Hancock, who
had heard the story from James and Margaret and came up to see the
state of affairs, relieved them for an hour.

"How are we ever going to teach them the madness of such behavior?"
Gertrude asked wearily as Dr. Watkins insisted that she and Mrs.
Schuler should go to bed as the dawn broke.

"The poor little Italian woman is almost mad already, thanks to this
Black Hand business. It will take her a long time to recover her
balance, but I think I can teach the others a lesson from this
experience of their friends. Wait till to-morrow comes and hear me
talk five languages at once," he promised cheerfully as he turned her
over to Mrs. Schuler.

CHAPTER VIII

SOME ENTERTAINMENT

The escapade of the Italian and Bulgarian women played havoc with the
calm of Rose House for several days. The women themselves had narrow
escapes from illness and the children were so seriously ill that a
trained nurse had to be sent up from the Glen Point Hospital, as
neither Miss Merriam nor Mrs. Schuler could undertake nursing in
addition to their other work.

Pages:
1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7