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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




It was during one of these early summer visits, and directly after a
tea-party which Marilla had proudly projected on Nan's account, that
Dr. Leslie suddenly announced that he meant to go to Boston for a few
days and should take Nan with him. This event had long been promised,
but had seemed at length like the promise of happiness in a future
world, reasonably certain, but a little vague and distant. It was a
more important thing than anybody understood, for a dear and familiar
chapter of life was ended when the expectant pair drove out of the
village on their way to the far-off railway station, as another had
been closed when the door of the Thacher farm-house had been shut and
padlocked, and Nan had gone home one snowy night to live with the
doctor. The weather at any rate was different now, for it was early
June, the time when doctors can best give themselves a holiday; and
though Dr. Leslie assured himself that he had little wish to take the
journey, he felt it quite due to his ward that she should see a little
more of the world, and happily due also to certain patients and his
brother physicians that he should visit the instrument-makers' shops,
and some bookstores; in fact there were a good many important errands
to which it was just as well to attend in person. But he watched Nan's
wide-open, delighted eyes, and observed her lack of surprise at
strange sights, and her perfect readiness for the marvelous, with
great amusement. He was touched and pleased because she cared most for
what had concerned him; to be told where he lived and studied, and to
see the places he had known best, roused most enthusiasm. An afternoon
in a corner of the reading-room at the Athenaeum library, in which he
had spent delightful hours when he was a young man, seemed to please
the young girl more than anything else. As he sat beside the table
where he had gathered enough books and papers to last for many days,
in his delight at taking up again his once familiar habit, Nan looked
on with sympathetic eyes, or watched the squirrels in the trees of the
quiet Granary Burying Ground, which seemed to her like a bit of
country which the noisy city had caught and imprisoned. Now that she
was fairly out in the world she felt a new, strange interest in her
mysterious aunt, for it was this hitherto unknown space outside the
borders of Oldfields to which her father and his people belonged. And
as a charming old lady went by in a pretty carriage, the child's gaze
followed her wistfully as she and the doctor were walking along the
street. With a sudden blaze of imagination she had wished those
pleasant eyes might have seen the likeness to her father, of which she
had been sometimes told, and that the carriage had been hurried back,
so that the long estrangement might be ended. It was a strange thing
that, just afterward, Dr. Leslie had, with much dismay, caught sight
of the true aunt; for Miss Anna Prince of Dunport had also seen fit to
make one of her rare visits to Boston. She looked dignified and
stately, but a little severe, as she went down the side street away
from them. Nan's quick eyes had noticed already the difference between
the city people and the country folks, and would have even recognized
a certain provincialism in her father's sister. The doctor had only
seen Miss Prince once many years before, but he had known her again
with instinctive certainty, and Nan did not guess, though she was most
grateful for it, why he reached for her hand, and held it fast as they
walked together, just as he always used to do when she was a little
girl. She was not yet fully grown, and she never suspected the sudden
thrill of dread, and consciousness of the great battle of life which
she must soon begin to fight, which all at once chilled the doctor's
heart. "It's a cold world, a cold world," he had said to himself.
"Only one thing will help her through safely, and that is her
usefulness. She shall never be either a thief or a beggar of the
world's favor if I can have my wish." And Nan, holding his hand with
her warm, soft, childish one, looked up in his face, all unconscious
that he thought with pity how unaware she was of the years to come,
and of their difference to this sunshine holiday. "And yet I never was
so happy at her age as I am this summer," the doctor told himself by
way of cheer.

They paid some visits together to Dr. Leslie's much-neglected friends,
and it was interesting to see how, for the child's sake, he resumed
his place among these acquaintances to whom he had long been linked
either personally in times past, or by family ties. He was sometimes
reproached for his love of seclusion and cordially welcomed back to
his old relations, but as often found it impossible to restore
anything but a formal intercourse of a most temporary nature. The
people for whom he cared most, all seemed attracted to his young ward,
and he noted this with pleasure, though he had not recognized the fact
that he had been, for the moment, basely uncertain whether his
judgment of her worth would be confirmed. He laughed at the
insinuation that he had made a hermit or an outlaw of himself; he
would have been still more amused to hear one of his old friends say
that this was the reason they had seen so little of him in late years,
and that it was a shame that a man of his talent and many values to
the world should be hiding his light under the Oldfields bushel, and
all for the sake of bringing up this child. As for Nan, she had little
to say, but kept her eyes and ears wide open, and behaved herself
discreetly. She had ceased to belong only to the village she had left;
in these days she became a citizen of the world at large. Her horizon
had suddenly become larger, and she might have discovered more than
one range of mountains which must be crossed as the years led her
forward steadily, one by one.


There is nothing so interesting as to be able to watch the change and
progress of the mental and moral nature, provided it grows eagerly
and steadily. There must be periods of repose and hibernation like the
winter of a plant, and in its springtime the living soul will both
consciously and unconsciously reach out for new strength and new
light. The leaves and flowers of action and achievement are only the
signs of the vitality that works within.




XII

AGAINST THE WIND


During the next few years, while Nan was growing up, Oldfields itself
changed less than many country towns of its size. Though some faces
might be missed or altered, Dr. Leslie's household seemed much the
same, and Mrs. Graham, a little thinner and older, but more patient
and sweet and delightful than ever, sits at her parlor window and
reads new books and old ones, and makes herself the centre of much
love and happiness. She and the doctor have grown more and more
friendly, and they watch the young girl's development with great
pride: they look forward to her vacations more than they would care to
confess even to each other; and when she comes home eager and gay, she
makes both these dear friends feel young again. When Nan is not there
to keep him company, Dr. Leslie always drives, and has grown more
careful about the comfort of his carriages, though he tells himself
with great pleasure that he is really much more youthful in his
feelings than he was twenty years before, and does not hesitate to say
openly that he should have been an old fogy by this time if it had not
been for the blessing of young companionship. When Nan is pleased to
command, he is always ready to take long rides and the two saddles are
brushed up, and they wonder why the bits are so tarnished, and she
holds his horse's bridle while he goes in to see his patients, and is
ready with merry talk or serious questions when he reappears. And one
dark night she listens from her window to the demand of a messenger,
and softly creeps down stairs and is ready to take her place by his
side, and drive him across the hills as if it were the best fun in the
world, with the frightened country-boy clattering behind on his
bare-backed steed. The moon rises late and they come home just before
daybreak, and though the doctor tries to be stern as he says he cannot
have such a piece of mischief happen again, he wonders how the girl
knew that he had dreaded for once in his life the drive in the dark,
and had felt a little less strong than usual.

Marilla still reigns in noble state. She has some time ago accepted a
colleague after a preliminary show of resentment, and Nan has little
by little infused a different spirit into the housekeeping; and when
her friends come to pay visits in the vacations they find the old home
a very charming place, and fall quite in love with both the doctor and
Mrs. Graham before they go away. Marilla always kept the large east
parlor for a sacred shrine of society, to be visited chiefly by
herself as guardian priestess; but Nan has made it a pleasanter room
than anybody ever imagined possible, and uses it with a freedom which
appears to the old housekeeper to lack consideration and respect. Nan
makes the most of her vacations, while the neighbors are all glad to
see her come back, and some of them are much amused because in summer
she still clings to her childish impatience at wearing any head
covering, and no matter how much Marilla admires the hat which is
decorously worn to church every Sunday morning, it is hardly seen
again, except by chance, during the week, and the brown hair is sure
to be faded a little before the summer sunshine is past. Nan goes
about visiting when she feels inclined, and seems surprisingly
unchanged as she seats herself in one of the smoke-browned Dyer
kitchens, and listens eagerly to whatever information is offered, or
answers cordially all sorts of questions, whether they concern her own
experiences or the world's in general. She has never yet seen her
father's sister, though she still thinks of her, and sometimes with a
strange longing for an evidence of kind feeling and kinship which has
never been shown. This has been chief among the vague sorrows of her
girlhood. Yet once when her guardian had asked if she wished to make
some attempt at intercourse or conciliation, he had been answered,
with a scorn and decision worthy of grandmother Thacher herself, that
it was for Miss Prince to make advances if she ever wished for either
the respect or affection of her niece. But the young girl has clung
with touching affection to the memory and association of her
childhood, and again and again sought in every season of the year the
old playgrounds and familiar corners of the farm, which she has grown
fonder of as the months go by. The inherited attachment of generations
seems to have been centred in her faithful heart.

It must be confessed that the summer which followed the close of her
school-life was, for the most part, very unsatisfactory. Her
school-days had been more than usually pleasant and rewarding, in
spite of the sorrows and disappointments and unsolvable puzzles which
are sure to trouble thoughtful girls of her age. But she had grown so
used at last to living by rules and bells that she could not help
feeling somewhat adrift without them. It had been so hard to put
herself under restraint and discipline after her free life in
Oldfields that it was equally hard for a while to find herself at
liberty; though, this being her natural state, she welcomed it
heartily at first, and was very thankful to be at home. It did not
take long to discover that she had no longer the same desire for her
childish occupations and amusements; they were only incidental now and
pertained to certain moods, and could not again be made the chief
purposes of her life. She hardly knew what to do with herself, and
sometimes wondered what would become of her, and why she was alive at
all, as she longed for some sufficient motive of existence to catch
her up into its whirlwind. She was filled with energy and a great
desire for usefulness, but it was not with her, as with many of her
friends, that the natural instinct toward marriage, and the building
and keeping of a sweet home-life, ruled all other plans and
possibilities. Her best wishes and hopes led her away from all this,
and however tenderly she sympathized in other people's happiness, and
recognized its inevitableness, for herself she avoided unconsciously
all approach or danger of it. She was trying to climb by the help of
some other train of experiences to whatever satisfaction and success
were possible for her in this world. If she had been older and of a
different nature, she might have been told that to climb up any other
way toward a shelter from the fear of worthlessness, and mistake, and
reproach, would be to prove herself in most people's eyes a thief and
a robber. But in these days she was not fit to reason much about her
fate; she could only wait for the problems to make themselves
understood, and for the whole influence of her character and of the
preparatory years to shape and signify themselves into a simple chart
and unmistakable command. And until the power was given to "see life
steadily and see it whole," she busied herself aimlessly with such
details as were evidently her duty, and sometimes following the right
road and often wandering from it in willful impatience, she stumbled
along more or less unhappily. It seemed as if everybody had forgotten
Nan's gift and love for the great profession which was her childish
delight and ambition. To be sure she had studied anatomy and
physiology with eager devotion in the meagre text-books at school,
though the other girls had grumbled angrily at the task. Long ago,
when Nan had confided to her dearest cronies that she meant to be a
doctor, they were hardly surprised that she should determine upon a
career which they would have rejected for themselves. She was not of
their mind, and they believed her capable of doing anything she
undertook. Yet to most of them the possible and even probable marriage
which was waiting somewhere in the future seemed to hover like a
cloudy barrier over the realization of any such unnatural plans.

They assured themselves that their school-mate showed no sign of being
the sort of girl who tried to be mannish and to forsake her natural
vocation for a profession. She did not look strong-minded; besides she
had no need to work for her living, this ward of a rich man, who was
altogether the most brilliant and beautiful girl in school. Yet
everybody knew that she had a strange tenacity of purpose, and there
was a lack of pretension, and a simplicity that scorned the deceits of
school-girl existence. Everybody knew too that she was not a
commonplace girl, and her younger friends made her the heroine of
their fondest anticipations and dreams. But after all, it seemed as if
everybody, even the girl herself, had lost sight of the once familiar
idea. It was a natural thing enough that she should have become expert
in rendering various minor services to the patients in Dr. Leslie's
absence, and sometimes assist him when no other person was at hand.
Marilla became insensible at the sight of the least dangerous of
wounds, and could not be trusted to suggest the most familiar
household remedy, after all her years of association with the
practice of medicine, and it was considered lucky that Nan had some
aptness for such services. In her childhood she had been nicknamed
"the little doctor," by the household and even a few familiar friends,
but this was apparently outgrown, though her guardian had more than
once announced in sudden outbursts of enthusiasm that she already knew
more than most of the people who tried to practice medicine. They once
in a while talked about some suggestion or discovery which was
attracting Dr. Leslie's attention, but the girl seemed hardly to have
gained much interest even for this, and became a little shy of being
found with one of the medical books in her hand, as she tried to fancy
herself in sympathy with the conventional world of school and of the
every-day ideas of society. And yet her inward sympathy with a
doctor's and a surgeon's work grew stronger and stronger, though she
dismissed reluctantly the possibility of following her bent in any
formal way, since, after all, her world had seemed to forbid it. As
the time drew near for her school-days to be ended, she tried to
believe that she should be satisfied with her Oldfields life. She was
fond of reading, and she had never lacked employment, besides, she
wished to prove herself an intelligent companion to Dr. Leslie, whom
she loved more and more dearly as the years went by. There had been a
long time of reserve between her childish freedom of intercourse with
him and the last year or two when they had begun to speak freely to
each other as friend to friend. It was a constant surprise and
pleasure to the doctor when he discovered that his former plaything
was growing into a charming companion who often looked upon life from
the same standpoint as himself, and who had her own outlooks upon the
world, from whence she was able to give him by no means worthless
intelligence; and after the school-days were over he was not amazed to
find how restless and dissatisfied the girl was; how impossible it was
for her to content herself with following the round of household
duties which were supposed to content young women of her age and
station. Even if she tried to pay visits or receive them from her
friends, or to go on with her studies, or to review some text-book of
which she had been fond, there was no motive for it; it all led to
nothing; it began for no reason and ended in no use, as she exclaimed
one day most dramatically. Poor Nan hurried through her house
business, or neglected it, as the case might be, greatly to Manila's
surprise and scorn, for the girl had always proved herself diligent
and interested in the home affairs. More and more she puzzled herself
and everybody about her, and as the days went by she spent them out of
doors at the old farm, or on the river, or in taking long rides on a
young horse; a bargain the doctor had somewhat repented before he
found that Nan was helped through some of her troubled hours by the
creature's wildness and fleetness. It was very plain that his ward was
adrift, and at first the doctor suggested farther study of Latin or
chemistry, but afterward philosophically resigned himself to patience,
feeling certain that some indication of the right course would not be
long withheld, and that a wind from the right quarter would presently
fill the flapping sails of this idle young craft and send it on its
way.


One afternoon Nan went hurrying out of the house just after dinner,
and the doctor saw that her face was unusually troubled. He had asked
her if she would like to drive with him to a farm just beyond the
Dyers' later in the day, but for a wonder she had refused. Dr. Leslie
gave a little sigh as he left the table, and presently watched her go
down the street as he stood by the window. It would be very sad if the
restlessness and discord of her poor mother should begin to show
themselves again; he could not bear to think of such an inheritance.

But Nan thought little of anybody else's discomforts as she hurried
along the road; she only wished to get to the beloved farm, and to be
free there from questions, and from the evidences of her unfitness for
the simple duties which life seemed offering her with heartless irony.
She was not good for anything after all, it appeared, and she had been
cheating herself. This was no life at all, this fretful idleness; if
only she had been trained as boys are, to the work of their lives! She
had hoped that Dr. Leslie would help her; he used to talk long ago
about her studying medicine, but he must have forgotten that, and the
girl savagely rebuked society in general for her unhappiness. Of
course she could keep the house, but it was kept already; any one with
five senses and good health like hers could prove herself able to do
any of the ordinary work of existence. For her part it was not enough
to be waited upon and made comfortable, she wanted something more, to
be really of use in the world, and to do work which the world needed.

Where the main road turned eastward up the hills, a footpath, already
familiar to the reader, shortened the distance to the farm, and the
young girl quickly crossed the rude stile and disappeared among the
underbrush, walking bareheaded with the swift steps of a creature
whose home was in some such place as this. Often the dry twigs, fallen
from the gray lower branches of the pines, crackled and snapped under
her feet, or the bushes rustled backed again to their places after she
pushed against them in passing; she hurried faster and faster, going
first through the dense woods and then out into the sunlight. Once or
twice in the open ground she stopped and knelt quickly on the soft
turf or moss to look at a little plant, while the birds which she
startled came back to their places directly, as if they had been quick
to feel that this was a friend and not an enemy, though disguised in
human shape. At last Nan reached the moss-grown fence of the farm and
leaped over it, and fairly ran to the river-shore, where she went
straight to one of the low-growing cedars, and threw herself upon it
as if it were a couch. While she sat there, breathing fast and glowing
with bright color, the river sent a fresh breeze by way of messenger,
and the old cedar held its many branches above her and around her most
comfortably, and sheltered her as it had done many times before. It
need not have envied other trees the satisfaction of climbing straight
upward in a single aspiration of growth.

And presently Nan told herself that there was nothing like a good run.
She looked to and fro along the river, and listened to the sheep-bell
which tinkled lazily in the pasture behind her. She looked over her
shoulder to see if a favorite young birch tree had suffered no harm,
for it grew close by the straight-edged path in which the cattle came
down to drink. So she rested in the old playground, unconscious that
she had been following her mother's footsteps, or that fate had again
brought her here for a great decision. Years before, the miserable,
suffering woman, who had wearily come to this place to end their
lives, had turned away that the child might make her own choice
between the good and evil things of life. Though Nan told herself that
she must make it plain how she could spend her time in Oldfields to
good purpose and be of most use at home, and must get a new strength
for these duties, a decision suddenly presented itself to her with a
force of reason and necessity the old dream of it had never shown. Why
should it not be a reality that she studied medicine?

The thought entirely possessed her, and the glow of excitement and
enthusiasm made her spring from the cedar boughs and laugh aloud. Her
whole heart went out to this work, and she wondered why she had ever
lost sight of it. She was sure this was the way in which she could
find most happiness. God had directed her at last, and though the
opening of her sealed orders had been long delayed, the suspense had
only made her surer that she must hold fast this unspeakably great
motive: something to work for with all her might as long as she lived.
People might laugh or object. Nothing should turn her aside, and a new
affection for kind and patient Dr. Leslie filled her mind. How eager
he had been to help her in all her projects so far, and yet it was
asking a great deal that he should favor this; he had never seemed to
show any suspicion that she would not live on quietly at home like
other girls; but while Nan told herself that she would give up any
plan, even this, if he could convince her that it would be wrong,
still her former existence seemed like a fog and uncertainty of death,
from which she had turned away, this time of her own accord, toward a
great light of satisfaction and certain safety and helpfulness. The
doctor would know how to help her; if she only could study with him
that would be enough; and away she went, hurrying down the river-shore
as if she were filled with a new life and happiness.

She startled a brown rabbit from under a bush, and made him a grave
salutation when he stopped and lifted his head to look at her from a
convenient distance. Once she would have stopped and seated herself on
the grass to amaze him with courteous attempts at friendliness, but
now she only laughed again, and went quickly down the steep bank
through the junipers and then hurried along the pebbly margin of the
stream toward the village. She smiled to see lying side by side a
flint arrowhead and a water-logged bobbin that had floated down from
one of the mills, and gave one a toss over the water, while she put
the other in her pocket. Her thoughts were busy enough, and though
some reasons against the carrying out of her plan ventured to assert
themselves, they had no hope of carrying the day, being in piteous
minority, though she considered them one by one. By and by she came
into the path again, and as she reached the stile she was at first
glad and then sorry to see the doctor coming along the high road from
the Donnell farm. She was a little dismayed at herself because she had
a sudden disinclination to tell this good friend her secret.

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