All news, good, bad, and indifferent,
flies equally fast in Joppa; and had there been a
town-crier deputed for the purpose, Phebe’s accident
could not have sooner become a household tale in even
the most distant districts of the place. After
a contradiction of the first rumor, reporting her
burned to a crisp and only recognizable by a ring of
her mother’s on her left hand, which
ring by-the-way she never wore, and after
a contradiction in due course of the second rumor,
reporting Gerald to be lying in the agonies of death
and Phebe to have escaped without a hair singed, followed
a period of dire uncertainty, when nobody knew what
to believe, and felt only an obstinate conviction that
everybody else had got it entirely wrong. But
at last the story straightened itself out into something
bearing a family resemblance to actual facts, and then
Joppa settled itself resolutely down to doing its
duty. My duty toward my sick neighbor in Joppa
consists in calling twice a day, if not oftener, at
his house; in inquiring after his condition down to
minutest and most sacred details; in knowing accurately
how many hours he slept last night, and what he ate
for breakfast, and what is paid the sick-nurse, and
if it includes her washing. My second duty toward
my sick neighbor is to bring him something to eat,
on the supposition that “outside things taste
differently;” or something to look at; or, if
nothing better, at least something to refuse.
My third and last duty toward my neighbor, the
well neighbor who possesses the sick one, is
to narrate every somewhat similar case on record,
with all its circumstances and the ultimate career
of the sufferer; to prescribe remedies as infallible
as the Pope; to disapprove wholly, and on the best
grounds, of those in actual use; to offer every assistance
in and out of my power; and to say at leaving that
I hope it may all turn out well, but that I
should have called in the other doctor. Joppa
had learned by heart its duty toward its neighbor
from its earliest, stammering infancy, and it adhered
strictly to the path therein marked out. It inquired
after Phebe diligently; it thoroughly mastered all
possible intricacies of her case; it made her gifts
digestible and indigestible; and it said that, by all
odds, it was Dr. Harrison who should have attended
her from the first. Dr. Dennis took very good
care of her, nevertheless, and it was not long before
he pronounced that all she needed was quiet and rest
to complete the cure.
“We shall have her out of bed
in a few days now, Mrs. Lane; in a week or so perhaps,”
he said, as he passed out at the front door where Mrs.
Lane was standing talking with Mrs. Hardcastle.
“She is doing very well, as well as I could
wish. All she needs is rest. Keep her perfectly
quiet.” And the doctor bowed himself off,
first politely inquiring of Mrs. Hardcastle after
her husband’s gout and her own dyspepsia.
“He is a fair-spoken man, certainly,
very,” said Mrs. Hardcastle, “though I
won’t say that I shouldn’t prefer Dr. Harrison
in the long run as surest to bring his patient through.
I think I’ll just go up with this myself to
Phebe, Mrs. Lane. I suppose she’s longing
for visitors by now, poor soul!”
“Well, I dare say. You
know her room, just at the head of the stairs.
Go right up, and I’ll step out to market.”
“Now, my dear,” said Mrs.
Hardcastle, rustling into Phebe’s room, “I
thought I would come up and have a look at you myself
to make sure how you were. No, don’t move.
You do look pale, but that’s all. Glad to
see your pretty face isn’t harmed. Why,
I heard one whole side of it was about burned off.
I’ve brought you some wine-jelly, my dear.”
“She had a lot yesterday, Pheeb
did,” said Olly, who was curled up with a geography
in a corner of the room and furtively cutting Europe
out of the maps. “She doesn’t need
any more.”
“Oh, but this is some of my
own make. This is quite different from anybody
else’s,” declared Mrs. Hardcastle.
“Phebe remembers my jelly of old, don’t
you, dear?”
Phebe smiled faintly. All she
remembered at the moment was being invariably requested
by the good lady to come and make it for her whenever
she gave a party.
“I thought I heard talking and
so I ventured to come up too,” said a timid
voice, and Miss Delano tiptoed softly in. “Phebe,
my dear child, my dear child!” and the soft-hearted
little old maid stooped to kiss Phebe’s pale
cheek, and straightway began to whimper.
“Come, none of that,”
said Mrs. Upjohn’s peremptory tones, as that
lady swept into the little room, seeming to fill it
all to overflowing. “I met the doctor just
now and he said Phebe was to be kept perfectly quiet.
Don’t let’s have any weeping over her.
She wants cheering up, and she isn’t quite dead
yet, you know, though really the evening before last,
Phebe, I heard that you weren’t expected to live
the night through.”
“How ridiculous!” said
Gerald, impatiently. “Miss Delano, will
you have a chair?”
“Thank you, no, dear. I’ll
just sit here on the bed,” said the little old
dame, humbly, anxious not to make any one any trouble.
“O Phebe, my dear!”
Phebe smiled at her affectionately,
and Mrs. Hardcastle, who was on the point of leaving
when Mrs. Upjohn came in, sat down again to ask that
lady about the character of a servant whom she had
just engaged.
“I thought I should have died
when I heard it,” said Miss Delano, patting
Phebe’s cheek. “Poor dear, poor dear!
And they say you won’t ever be able to walk
again!”
“Who says that?” asked
Phebe, laughing. “I shall be a terrible
disappointment to them.”
“’Tain’t her legs
at all; it’s her shoulders,” said Olly,
as he emerged from his corner, chewing Europe into
a pasteboard bull. “What have you got in
that paper?”
“Oh, the blessed child, and
I was forgetting it. My dear, it’s just
a little sponge-cake I made free to bring you, it
turned out so light. Don’t you think you
could eat a bit perhaps?”
“My, but it looks good!”
said Olly, approaching a hungry finger and poking
at it softly. “I’ll get a knife.”
“I hope you don’t allow
any such trash as that about, Miss Vernor,” said
Mrs. Upjohn, sharply, in the middle of her discussion
of Jane’s demerits. “Phebe ought
to be exceedingly careful what she eats for a great
while to come. It’s doubtful, indeed, whether
her stomach ever recovers its tone after such a shock.
I knew one woman who died just of the shock alone
some two months after precisely such an accident as
this, when everybody thought she had got well, and
Phebe must be very careful. Her appetite
is not to be tempted, but guided.”
“Well, ladies, I must be going,”
announced Mrs. Hardcastle, rising. “You
really think I am safe, then, in engaging her, Mrs.
Upjohn?” But just then Mrs. Dexter came in with
two of her daughters, and Mrs. Hardcastle sat down
again.
“There was no one downstairs,
and as the doctor says Phebe is so much better, we
thought we might just come up,” said the new
comer. “Why, Phebe, you are as blooming
as a rose, and I understood you had lost all your
pretty hair. I’ve brought you some grapes,
my dear, and a jar of extra fine brandy peaches, and
little Maggie insisted on sending some molasses candy
she had just made.”
“Well, well, I did look for
more sense from you,” said Mrs. Upjohn,
tapping Mrs. Dexter rather smartly on the shoulder.
“Where’ll you sit? Oh, on the bed.
Yes, Phebe’s had a narrow escape, and one she’ll
likely bear the marks of to her dying day. Let
it be a warning to you, young ladies, to be prepared.
There’s no knowing how soon some one of you may
not be carried off in the same way, just
as you are dressed for a dance, maybe.”
Her tone implied that death could not overtake them
at a more sinful moment.
“Hullo, up there! I say!”
shouted a voice in the hall below, “how’s
Phebe?”
“Oh, it’s Dick!”
cried the Dexter girls in a breath. “You
can’t come up, Dick.”
“Ain’t a-going to.
But a fellow can speak, can’t he, without his
body a-following his voice? How’s Phebe?”
“She’s splendid.”
“What’s the doctor say?”
“He says she only needs to be kept perfectly
quiet.”
“Hooray!” said Dick, and
apparently executed a war-dance on the oil-cloth,
while Olly profited by the general hubbub created by
the entrance of two more ladies, to satisfactorily
investigate the sponge-cake.
“Why, quite a levee, isn’t
it, Phebe?” said one of the last arrivals, looking
in vain for a chair, and forced to seat herself on
a low table, accidentally upsetting Phebe’s
medicines as she did so.
“Yes, altogether too much of
one,” said Gerald, knitting her brows as she
rescued a bottle just in time, and darted an angry
glance around the crowded room. “Phebe
isn’t at all equal to it yet.”
“You are right, Miss Vernor,”
agreed Mrs. Upjohn, drawing out her tatting from her
pocket, and settling herself at it with an answering
frown. “There are quite too many here.
Some people never know when to stay away.”
“Oh, there’s Bell.
I hear her voice,” called Mattie, running to
look over the banisters. “She’s got
both Mr. De Forest and Mr. Moulton with her.”
There was a sound of many voices below,
a giggling, a rush for the stairs, and a playful scuffle.
“It’s me” (Bell’s voice);
“Dick won’t let me pass.”
“Me is Bell” (Dick’s
voice); “she wouldn’t pass if she could.
Too many fellows down here for her to want to leave
’em. Send us down a girl or two from up
there, can’t you?”
A girl or two, however, apparently
appeared from outside, greetings were called up to
Phebe, offerings of flowers and delicacies transmitted
via Dick on the stairs to Olly at the top (who
took toll by the way), and the liveliest kind of a
time went on. It was quite like a party, Dick
shouted up, only that there was no ice-cream and a
singular scarcity of girls.
“It’s a shame,”
said Mrs. Upjohn, severely, in her chair, while Gerald
held her peace, too wrathful to speak, and conscious
of her inability to mend matters. “I should
think people might have sense enough not to crowd
all the air out of a sick-room in this fashion.”
“It’s exceedingly inconsiderate
of them, I am sure,” answered Mrs. Hardcastle,
drawing a sofa cushion behind her back. “She
ought to be so quiet.”
“Phebe!” shouted Dick.
“Here’s the parson. He wants to know
if you’re dead yet. Shan’t I send
him up? It will be all right, you know, quite
the thing. He’s a parson, and wears a gown
on Sundays.”
“Dick, Dick!” screamed
his mother. “Was there ever such a lad!”
“He’s coming. Get
ready for him. Have out your Prayer-books,”
called Dick.
Phebe flushed crimson, and looked
imploringly at Gerald. An indignant murmur ran
through the room. Mrs. Upjohn drew herself up
to her severest height. “What shameless
impertinence! How dare he intrude!” A shout
of unholy laughter downstairs followed Dick’s
sally.
“Mr. Halloway isn’t there
at all,” cried Olly, his fine, clear-voice pitched
high above the rest, “He only asked about Pheeb
at the door, and went right off.”
“Well, he left this for her
with his compliments, and this, and this,” called
Dick, rummaging in his pockets, and tossing up an apple,
and then a hickory nut, and last a good-sized and
dangerously ripe tomato. Olly caught them dexterously
with a yell of delight, and was immediately rushed
at by three of the nearest ladies and ordered not to
make a noise, for Phebe was to be kept perfectly quiet.
“Such doings would never be
permitted a moment if she had only been in Dr. Harrison’s
hands,” said Mrs. Upjohn, in denunciatory tones.
“He would have forbidden her to see any one.
It is scandalous.”
“It is outrageous,” added
Mrs. Hardcastle. “Most inconsiderate.”
“Ah, I can’t get over
it that it isn’t your legs, poor dear!”
murmured Miss Delano, still plaintively overcome.
“And you will walk, after all?”
“Dr. Dennis is an excellent
physician,” said Mrs. Dexter, somewhat defiantly.
It was impossible not to enter the lists against Mrs.
Upjohn. This last lady was immediately up in
arms, and a heated discussion as to the respective
skill of the two practitioners took place, everybody
gradually taking sides with one or the other of the
leaders, and forgetting both poor exhausted Phebe
and the noise downstairs, which finally culminated
in a rousing lullaby led by Bell, and lustily seconded
by half a dozen others:
“Slumber on, Phebe dear;
Do not hear us fellows sigh!”
The song, however, suddenly stopped
in the midst. Some one seemed speaking very low
and softly, and neither the chorus nor the laughter
nor the tumult was resumed. Phebe drew a deep
breath. Was relief really coming at last?
Yes. Soeur Angelique stood in the door-way.
“Will you excuse me, ladies,”
she said, in that soft, irresistible voice of hers,
as she laid aside bonnet and shawl in a quiet, business-like
way. “I came to relieve Miss Vernor and
play nurse for a while, and I think Phebe looks as
if she needed a little sleep. If you will kindly
take leave of her, I will darken the room at once.”
She stood so evidently waiting for
them to go, that in a few moments they all found themselves
somehow or other outside the door, with Gerald politely
escorting them down-stairs, and Olly dancing joyously
ahead, crying that Mr. Halloway had sent for him to
the rectory. Left mistress of the situation,
Mrs. Whittridge proceeded to draw down the shades,
straighten the chairs, smooth the bedclothes and rearrange
the pillows, all with the noiseless, graceful movements
peculiar to her. Then she drew a low chair up
to the bedside, and laid her cool hand soothingly on
Phebe’s forehead. A great peace seemed suddenly
to fill the room.
“Now, my darling, you must sleep.
Between them they have quite worn you out.”
“Who told you I needed you?”
asked Phebe, drawing the gentle hand down to her lips.
“How did you happen to come just when I wanted
you so?”
“Denham sent me over,”
answered Soeur Angelique. “He thought perhaps
I could make it a little quieter for you.”
“Ah,” murmured Phebe.
A faint tinge crept up into her white cheeks.
She turned her head away and closed her eyes.
“I knew it was he who sent you.”