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A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches by Sarah Orne Jewett

S >> Sarah Orne Jewett >> A Country Doctor and Selected Stories and Sketches




The day was warm and the sunshine fell caressingly over the pastures
as if it were trying to call back the flowers. By afternoon there was
a tinge of greenness on the slopes and under the gnarled apple-trees,
that had been lost for days before, and the distant hills and
mountains, which could be seen in a circle from the high land where
the Thacher farmhouse stood, were dim and blue through the Indian
summer haze. The old men who came to the funeral wore their faded
winter overcoats and clumsy caps all ready to be pulled down over
their ears if the wind should change; and their wives were also warmly
wrapped, with great shawls over their rounded, hard-worked shoulders;
yet they took the best warmth and pleasantness into their hearts, and
watched the sad proceedings of the afternoon with deepest interest.
The doctor came hurrying toward home just as the long procession was
going down the pasture, and he saw it crossing a low hill; a dark and
slender column with here and there a child walking beside one of the
elder mourners. The bearers went first with the bier; the track was
uneven, and the procession was lost to sight now and then behind the
slopes. It was forever a mystery; these people might have been a
company of Druid worshipers, or of strange northern priests and their
people, and the doctor checked his impatient horse as he watched the
retreating figures at their simple ceremony. He could not help
thinking what strange ways this child of the old farm had followed,
and what a quiet ending it was to her wandering life. "And I have
promised to look after the little girl," he said to himself as he
drove away up the road.

It was a long walk for the elderly people from the house near the main
highway to the little burying-ground. In the earliest days of the farm
the dwelling-place was nearer the river, which was then the chief
thoroughfare; and those of the family who had died then were buried on
the level bit of upland ground high above the river itself. There was
a wide outlook over the country, and the young pine trees that fringed
the shore sang in the south wind, while some great birds swung to and
fro overhead, watching the water and the strange company of people who
had come so slowly over the land. A flock of sheep had ventured to the
nearest hillock of the next pasture, and stood there fearfully, with
upraised heads, as if they looked for danger.

John Thacher had brought his sister's child all the way in his arms,
and she had clapped her hands and laughed aloud and tried to talk a
great deal with the few words she had learned to say. She was very gay
in her baby fashion; she was amused with the little crowd so long as
it did not trouble her. She fretted only when the grave, kind man, for
whom she had instantly felt a great affection, stayed too long by that
deep hole in the ground and wept as he saw a strange thing that the
people had carried all the way, put down into it out of sight. When he
walked on again, she laughed and played; but after they had reached
the empty gray house, which somehow looked that day as if it were a
mourner also, she shrank from all the strangers, and seemed dismayed
and perplexed, and called her mother eagerly again and again. This
touched many a heart. The dead woman had been more or less unfamiliar
of late years to all of them; and there were few who had really
grieved for her until her little child had reminded them of its own
loneliness and loss.

That night, after the house was still, John Thacher wrote to acquaint
Miss Prince, of Dunport, with his sister's death and to say that it
was her wish that the child should remain with them during its
minority. They should formally appoint the guardian whom she had
selected; they would do their best by the little girl. And when Mrs.
Thacher asked if he had blamed Miss Prince, he replied that he had
left that to her own conscience.

In the answer which was quickly returned, there was a plea for the
custody of the child, her mother's and her own namesake, but this was
indignantly refused. There was no love lost between the town and the
country household, and for many years all intercourse was at an end.
Before twelve months were past, John Thacher himself was carried down
to the pasture burying-ground, and his old mother and the little child
were left to comfort and take care of each other as best they could in
the lonely farm-house.




V

A SUNDAY VISIT


In the gray house on the hill, one spring went by and another, and it
seemed to the busy doctor only a few months from the night he first
saw his ward before she was old enough to come soberly to church with
her grandmother. He had always seen her from time to time, for he had
often been called to the farm or to the Dyers and had watched her at
play. Once she had stopped him as he drove by to give him a little
handful of blue violets, and this had gone straight to his heart, for
he had been made too great a bugbear to most children to look for any
favor at their hands. He always liked to see her come into church on
Sundays, her steps growing quicker and surer as her good grandmother's
became more feeble. The doctor was a lonely man in spite of his many
friends, and he found himself watching for the little brown face that,
half-way across the old meeting-house, would turn round to look for
him more than once during the service. At first there was only the top
of little Nan Prince's prim best bonnet or hood to be seen, unless it
was when she stood up in prayer-time, but soon the bright eyes rose
like stars above the horizon of the pew railing, and next there was
the whole well-poised little head, and the tall child was possessed by
a sense of propriety, and only ventured one or two discreet glances at
her old friend.

The office of guardian was not one of great tasks or of many duties,
though the child's aunt had insisted upon making an allowance for her
of a hundred dollars a year, and this was duly acknowledged and placed
to its owner's credit in the savings bank of the next town. Her
grandmother Thacher always refused to spend it, saying proudly that
she had never been beholden to Miss Prince and she never meant to be,
and while she lived the aunt and niece should be kept apart. She would
not say that her daughter had never been at fault, but it was through
the Princes all the trouble of her life had come.

Dr. Leslie was mindful of his responsibilities, and knew more of his
ward than was ever suspected. He was eager that the best district
school teacher who could be found should be procured for the Thacher
and Dyer neighborhood, and in many ways he took pains that the little
girl should have all good things that were possible. He only laughed
when her grandmother complained that Nan would not be driven to
school, much less persuaded, and that she was playing in the brook, or
scampering over the pastures when she should be doing other things.
Mrs. Thacher, perhaps unconsciously, had looked for some trace of the
father's good breeding and gentlefolk fashions, but this was not a
child who took kindly to needlework and pretty clothes. She was
fearlessly friendly with every one; she did not seem confused even
when the minister came to make his yearly parochial visitation, and as
for the doctor, he might have been her own age, for all humility she
thought it necessary to show in the presence of this chief among her
elders and betters. Old Mrs. Thacher gave little pulls at her
granddaughter's sleeves when she kept turning to see the doctor in
sermon-time, but she never knew how glad he was, or how willingly he
smiled when he felt the child's eyes watching him as a dog's might
have done, forcing him to forget the preaching altogether and to
attend to this dumb request for sympathy. One blessed day Dr. Leslie
had waited in the church porch and gravely taken the child's hand as
she came out; and said that he should like to take her home with him;
he was going to the lower part of the town late in the afternoon and
would leave her then at the farm-house.

"I was going to ask you for something for her shoulder," said
Grandmother Thacher, much pleased, "she'll tell you about it, it was a
fall she had out of an apple-tree,"--and Nan looked up with not a
little apprehension, but presently tucked her small hand inside the
doctor's and was more than ready to go with him. "I thought she looked
a little pale," the doctor said, to which Mrs. Thacher answered that
it was a merciful Providence who had kept the child from breaking her
neck, and then, being at the foot of the church steps, they separated.
It had been a great trial to the good woman to give up the afternoon
service, but she was growing old, as she told herself often in those
days, and felt, as she certainly looked, greatly older than her years.

"I feel as if Anna was sure of one good friend, whether I stay with
her or not," said the grandmother sorrowfully, as she drove toward
home that Sunday noon with Jacob Dyer and his wife. "I never saw the
doctor so taken with a child before. 'Twas a pity he had to lose his
own, and his wife too; how many years ago was it? I should think he'd
be lonesome, though to be sure he isn't in the house much. Marilla
Thomas keeps his house as clean as a button and she has been a good
stand-by for him, but it always seemed sort o' homesick there ever
since the day I was to his wife's funeral. She made an awful sight o'
friends considering she was so little while in the place. Well I'm
glad I let Nanny wear her best dress; I set out not to, it looked so
much like rain."

Whatever Marilla Thomas's other failings might have been, she
certainly was kind that day to the doctor's little guest. It would
have been a hard-hearted person indeed who did not enter somewhat into
the spirit of the child's delight. In spite of its being the first
time she had ever sat at any table but her grandmother's, she was not
awkward or uncomfortable, and was so hungry that she gave pleasure to
her entertainers in that way if no other. The doctor leaned back in
his chair and waited while the second portion of pudding slowly
disappeared, though Marilla could have told that he usually did not
give half time enough to his dinner and was off like an arrow the
first possible minute. Before he took his often interrupted afternoon
nap, he inquired for the damaged shoulder and requested a detailed
account of the accident; and presently they were both laughing
heartily at Nan's disaster, for she owned that she had chased and
treed a stray young squirrel, and that a mossy branch of one of the
old apple-trees in the straggling orchard had failed to bear even so
light a weight as hers. Nan had come to the ground because she would
not loose her hold of the squirrel, though he had slipped through her
hands after all as she carried him towards home. The guest was proud
to become a patient, especially as the only remedy that was offered
was a very comfortable handful of sugar-plums. Nan had never owned so
many at once, and in a transport of gratitude and affection she lifted
her face to kiss so dear a benefactor.

Her eyes looked up into his, and her simple nature was so unconscious
of the true dangers and perils of this world, that his very heart was
touched with compassion, and he leagued himself with the child's good
angel to defend her against her enemies.

And Nan took fast hold of the doctor's hand as they went to the study.
This was the only room in the house which she had seen before; and was
so much larger and pleasanter than any she knew elsewhere that she
took great delight in it. It was a rough place now, the doctor
thought, but always very comfortable, and he laid himself down on the
great sofa with a book in his hand, though after a few minutes he grew
sleepy and only opened his eyes once to see that Nan was perched in
the largest chair with her small hands folded, and her feet very far
from the floor. "You may run out to see Marilla, or go about the house
anywhere you like; or there are some picture-papers on the table," the
doctor said drowsily, and the visitor slipped down from her throne and
went softly away.

She had thought the study a very noble room until she had seen the
dining-room, but now she wished for another look at the pictures there
and the queer clock, and the strange, grand things on the sideboard.
The old-fashioned comfort of the house was perfect splendor to the
child, and she went about on tiptoe up stairs and down, looking in at
the open doors, while she lingered wistfully before the closed ones.
She wondered at the great bedsteads with their high posts and dimity
hangings, and at the carpets, and the worthy Marilla watched her for a
moment as she stood on the threshold of the doctor's own room. The
child's quick ear caught the rustle of the housekeeper's Sunday gown;
she whispered with shining eyes that she thought the house was
beautiful. Did Marilla live here all the time?

"Bless you, yes!" replied Marilla, not without pride, though she added
that nobody knew what a sight of care it was.

"I suppose y'r aunt in Dunport lives a good deal better than this;"
but the child only looked puzzled and did not answer, while the
housekeeper hurried away to the afternoon meeting, for which the bell
was already tolling.

The doctor slept on in the shaded study, and after Nan had grown tired
of walking softly about the house, she found her way into the garden.
After all, there was nothing better than being out of doors, and the
apple-trees seemed most familiar and friendly, though she pitied them
for being placed so near each other. She discovered a bench under a
trellis where a grape-vine and a clematis were tangled together, and
here she sat down to spend a little time before the doctor should call
her. She wished she could stay longer than that one short afternoon;
perhaps some time or other the doctor would invite her again. But what
could Marilla have meant about her aunt? She had no aunts except Mrs.
Jake and Mrs. Martin; Marilla must well know that their houses were
not like Dr. Leslie's; and little Nan built herself a fine castle in
Spain, of which this unknown aunt was queen. Certainly her grandmother
had now and then let fall a word about "your father's folks"--by and
by they might come to see her!

The grape leaves were waving about in the warm wind, and they made a
flickering light and shade upon the ground. The clematis was in bloom,
and its soft white plumes fringed the archway of the lattice work. As
the child looked down the garden walk it seemed very long and very
beautiful to her. Her grandmother's flower-garden had been constantly
encroached upon by the turf which surrounded it, until the snowberry
bush, the London pride, the tiger-lilies, and the crimson phlox were
like a besieged garrison.

Nan had already found plenty of wild flowers in the world; there were
no entertainments provided for her except those the fields and
pastures kindly spread before her admiring eyes. Old Mrs. Thacher had
been brought up to consider the hard work of this life, and though she
had taken her share of enjoyment as she went along, it was of a
somewhat grim and sober sort. She believed that a certain amount of
friskiness was as necessary to young human beings as it is to colts,
but later both must be harnessed and made to work. As for pleasure
itself she had little notion of that. She liked fair weather, and
certain flowers were to her the decorations of certain useful plants,
but if she had known that her grand-daughter could lie down beside the
anemones and watch them move in the wind and nod their heads, and
afterward look up into the blue sky to watch the great gulls above the
river, or the sparrows flying low, or the crows who went higher, Mrs.
Thacher would have understood almost nothing of such delights, and
thought it a very idle way of spending one's time.

But as Nan sat in the old summer-house in the doctor's garden, she
thought of many things that she must remember to tell her grandmother
about this delightful day. The bees were humming in the vines, and as
she looked down the wide garden-walk it seemed like the broad aisle in
church, and the congregation of plants and bushes all looked at her as
if she were in the pulpit. The church itself was not far away, and the
windows were open, and sometimes Nan could hear the preacher's voice,
and by and by the people began to sing, and she rose solemnly, as if
it were her own parishioners in the garden who lifted up their voices.
A cheerful robin began a loud solo in one of Dr. Leslie's
cherry-trees, and the little girl laughed aloud in her make-believe
meeting-house, and then the gate was opened and shut, and the doctor
himself appeared, strolling along, and smiling as he came.

He was looking to the right and left at his flowers and trees, and
once he stopped and took out his pocket knife to trim a straying
branch of honeysuckle, which had wilted and died. When he came to the
summer-house, he found his guest sitting there demurely with her hands
folded in her lap. She had gathered some little sprigs of box and a
few blossoms of periwinkle and late lilies of the valley, and they lay
on the bench beside her. "So you did not go to church with Marilla?"
the doctor said. "I dare say one sermon a day is enough for so small a
person as you." For Nan's part, no sermon at all would have caused
little sorrow, though she liked the excitement of the Sunday drive to
the village. She only smiled when the doctor spoke, and gave a little
sigh of satisfaction a minute afterward when he seated himself beside
her.

"We must be off presently," he told her. "I have a long drive to take
before night. I would let you go with me, but I am afraid I should
keep you too long past your bedtime."

The little girl looked in his kind face appealingly; she could not
bear to have the day come to an end. The doctor spoke to her as if she
were grown up and understood everything, and this pleased her. It is
very hard to be constantly reminded that one is a child, as if it were
a crime against society. Dr. Leslie, unlike many others, did not like
children because they were children; he now and then made friends with
one, just as he added now and then to his narrow circle of grown
friends. He felt a certain responsibility for this little girl, and
congratulated himself upon feeling an instinctive fondness for her.
The good old minister had said only that morning that love is the
great motive power, that it is always easy to do things for those whom
we love and wish to please, and for this reason we are taught to pray
for love to God, and so conquer the difficulty of holiness. "But I
must do my duty by her at any rate," the doctor told himself. "I am
afraid I have forgotten the child somewhat in past years, and she is a
bright little creature."

"Have you been taking good care of yourself?" he added aloud. "I was
very tired, for I was out twice in the night taking care of sick
people. But you must come to see me again some day. I dare say you and
Marilla have made friends with each other. Now we must go, I suppose,"
and Nan Prince, still silent,--for the pleasure of this time was
almost too great,--took hold of the doctor's outstretched hand, and
they went slowly up the garden walk together. As they drove slowly
down the street they met the people who were coming from church, and
the child sat up very straight in the old gig, with her feet on the
doctor's medicine-box, and was sure that everybody must be envying
her. She thought it was more pleasant than ever that afternoon, as
they passed through the open country outside the village; the fields
and the trees were marvelously green, and the distant river was
shining in the sun. Nan looked anxiously for the gray farmhouse for
two or three minutes before they came in sight of it, but at last it
showed itself, standing firm on the hillside. It seemed a long time
since she had left home in the morning, but this beautiful day was to
be one of the landmarks of her memory. Life had suddenly grown much
larger, and her familiar horizon had vanished and she discovered a
great distance stretching far beyond the old limits. She went gravely
into the familiar kitchen, holding fast the bits of box and the
periwinkle flowers, quite ready to answer her grandmother's questions,
though she was only too certain that it would be impossible to tell
any one the whole dear story of that June Sunday.

A little later, as Marilla came sedately home, she noticed in the
driveway some fresh hoofmarks which pointed toward the street, and
quickly assured herself that they could not have been made very long
before. "I wonder what the two of 'em have been doing all the
afternoon?" she said to herself. "She's a little lady, that child is;
and it's a burnin' shame she should be left to run wild. I never set
so much by her mother's looks as some did, but growin' things has
blooms as much as they have roots and prickles--and even them Thachers
will flower out once in a while."




VI

IN SUMMER WEATHER


One morning Dr. Leslie remembered an old patient whom he liked to go
to see now and then, perhaps more from the courtesy and friendliness
of the thing than from any hope of giving professional assistance. The
old sailor, Captain Finch, had long before been condemned as
unseaworthy, having suffered for many years from the effects of a bad
fall on shipboard. He was a cheerful and wise person, and the doctor
was much attached to him, besides knowing that he had borne his
imprisonment with great patience, for his life on one of the most
secluded farms of the region, surrounded by his wife's kinsfolk, who
were all landsmen, could hardly be called anything else. The doctor
had once made a voyage to Fayal and from thence to England in a
sailing-vessel, having been somewhat delicate in health in his younger
days, and this made him a more intelligent listener to the captain's
stories than was often available.

Dr. Leslie had brought his case of medicines from mere force of habit,
but by way of special prescription he had taken also a generous
handful of his best cigars, and wrapped them somewhat clumsily in one
of the large sheets of letter-paper which lay on his study table near
by. Also he had stopped before the old sideboard in the carefully
darkened dining-room, and taken a bottle of wine from one of its
cupboards. "This will do him more good than anything, poor old
fellow," he told himself, with a sudden warmth in his own heart and a
feeling of grateful pleasure because he had thought of doing the
kindness.

Marilla called eagerly from the kitchen window to ask where he was
going, putting her hand out hastily to part the morning-glory vines,
which had climbed their strings and twisted their stems together until
they shut out the world from their planter's sight. But the doctor
only answered that he should be back at dinner time, and settled
himself comfortably in his carriage, smiling as he thought of
Marilla's displeasure. She seldom allowed a secret to escape her, if
she were once fairly on the scent of it, though she grumbled now, and
told herself that she only cared to know for the sake of the people
who might come, or to provide against the accident of his being among
the missing in case of sudden need. She found life more interesting
when there was even a small mystery to be puzzled over. It was
impossible for Dr. Leslie to resist teasing his faithful hand-maiden
once in a while, but he did it with proper gravity and respect, and
their friendship was cemented by these sober jokes rather than torn
apart.

The horse knew as well as his master that nothing of particular
importance was in hand, and however well he always caught the spirit
of the occasion when there was need for hurry, he now jogged along the
road, going slowly where the trees cast a pleasant shade, and paying
more attention to the flies than to anything else. The doctor seemed
to be in deep thought, and old Major understood that no notice was to
be taken of constant slight touches of the whip which his master held
carelessly. It had been hot, dusty weather until the day and night
before, when heavy showers had fallen; the country was looking fresh,
and the fields and trees were washed clean at last from the white dust
that had powdered them and given the farms a barren and discouraged
look.

They had come in sight of Mrs. Thacher's house on its high hillside,
and were just passing the abode of Mrs. Meeker, which was close by the
roadside in the low land. This was a small, weather-beaten dwelling,
and the pink and red hollyhocks showed themselves in fine array
against its gray walls. Its mistress's prosaic nature had one most
redeeming quality in her love for flowers and her gift in making them
grow, and the doctor forgave her many things for the sake of the
bright little garden in the midst of the sandy lands which surrounded
her garden with their unshaded barrenness. The road that crossed these
was hot in summer and swept by bitter winds in winter. It was like a
bit of desert dropped by mistake among the green farms and spring-fed
forests that covered the rest of the river uplands.

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