IX
“Peg,” Archibald said, “let’s call on Ezra Watts.”
She looked surprised, a bit doubtful, but her sporting blood rose.
“All right,” she agreed promptly. “He won’t let us neighbor and I expect the dirt’s something terrible; but I’d just as soon.”
As they dismounted in front of the cottage, Ezra’s terrier came running out of the door. He was barking, but not angrily—urgently rather.
“You’d think he was inviting us in,” Pegeen said, as she watched the dog run toward the door, come back to bark eagerly, and run forward again.
“More hospitable than his master, I should say,” Archibald commented. “I wonder if the man is home.”
They reached the door which stood partly open, and rapped on it.
No sound came from within. Archibald rapped again. The terrier ran through the opening and barked encouragement across his shoulder.
“I believe something’s the matter,” said Pegeen suddenly. “Let’s go in.”
She pushed the door open and before Archibald could stop her stepped inside. He followed her and they stood in a filthy little room that had once been the parlor of the house. Moldy paper was hanging from the walls. Much of the plaster had fallen from the ceiling and lay where it fell. One or two rickety chairs were the only attempt at furnishing and the accumulated dirt of years littered the floor.
No one was in sight, but the dog ran on into a back room and from there the intruder heard a low mumbling voice.
“Stay here, Peg,” Archibald said authoritatively. “He’s drunk.”
But her instinct drove her quickly forward, in spite of his command.
“He’s sick,” she said.
Standing in the second doorway they looked into a room as dirty and neglected as the first, but they did not notice walls or ceiling or floor, for on a cot by the farther wall lay Ezra Watts, haggard, ghastly, purple-faced, unseeing, tossing restlessly on an unspeakably dirty bed and muttering meaningless things.
With a little cry of pity, Pegeen ran toward him, but Archibald caught her in his arms and lifting her bodily, carried her into the next room.
“Listen, Peg,” he said quietly, as he put her down. “The man has fever. There’s no telling what the disease is. I can’t have you taking chances. You can help most by getting on Zip and riding down to Miss Moran’s to telephone for Doctor Fullerton. Tell him what’s wrong and that I want him at once. Then ask Miss Moran for some old linen she can spare and some soap and bring them to me.”
“But you’re going to stay,” she protested.
“And who’ll take care of me if I get sick unless you keep in shape for it?”
The argument was overwhelming. She allowed him to lift her to the saddle and pelted away down the road at a breakneck pace, while Archibald went back into the house.
He found an old stove in the kitchen and made a fire in it Then he filled a kettle with fresh water and set it over the fire.
Whatever the doctor’s verdict was, hot water was sure to be needed in that house.
Pegeen was back in a few minutes.
“Miss Moran and Mr. Meredith have gone motoring,” she said breathlessly, as Archibald lifted her from the horse, “but Ellen’s coming. John’s going to bring her over in the cart. I’ve got some sheets and towels and a blanket and a cake of soap, but she’ll have more linen and scrubbing brushes and lots of cleaning things. There comes the doctor now. I hear his car.”
A muddy battered roadster came plunging up the crooked road at reckless speed and a tall, wiry, competent-looking man sprang out of it.
“Just caught me. I was rolling out of the yard when they yelled after me. Didn’t even have to crank up. So the germs have downed Ezra at last! Nature does get back at a man in time. Lord, what a hole!”
He went briskly through the front room, growling anathemas at the foulness, and bent over the tossing, muttering man on the bed with as lively an interest as though the patient had not been the black sheep of the Valley.
A body was a body to Dr. Fullerton, and his business was saving bodies. The harder the battle, the greater his interest and enjoyment. As to the value of the salvage to the community—that was the community’s business.
“I’ll patch up the tenements,” he said to the gentle, nervous, little Protestant minister in Pisgah. “It’s up to you and Father Rafferty to see that your people lead decent lives in them.”—But when the little man or the priest needed backing up with work or money, it was usually Dr. Fullerton who lent the hand or the dollars.
He was all doctor as he examined Ezra Watts, keen eyed, deft fingered, intent, but as he straightened himself and looked down at the dirty, unshaven face, the keenness gave way to kindliness in his eyes.
“Nothing contagious,” he said shortly. “Pneumonia with some complications. Not much show for him except in his tough constitution. He never did drink, for all his cussedness; and that’s in his favor now. Fed himself enough, such as it was and it was plain food with no knick-knacks. That counts for him too. It’s the high-living, robust fellows that wink out with pneumonia. Shouldn’t wonder if we’d pull him through provided we can get him clean without killing him. Got to have a scrubber and a nurse here and quick about it.”
“How about me?” Archibald asked. “Strong and willing at scrubbing and nursing but not a professional in either line.”
“Call Peggy,” ordered the doctor. “She’s one of my best nurses; but you and I’ll have to turn in and give him a bath before we hand him over to her.”
Archibald found Pegeen fairly dancing with eagerness and impatience on the doorstep. “Oh, my stars, I’m so glad it isn’t catching,” she said, darting past him into the sick room. “I couldn’t have stood it not to be able to see him. There’s such a splendid lot to do. It’s awful when there isn’t anything you can do but sit around and wait. This is the very best chance I ever had.”
“Well, you keep the fire roaring in the kitchen,” ordered the doctor, “and warm some of those towels and the blanket for us and see that there’s plenty of hot water. Archibald and I are going to give Ezra’s system the worst shock it has had since childhood. After that’s over, you can help us clean the front room a bit and move him in there.”
She flew into the kitchen with the towels and blanket, quick, noiseless, radiant.
Dr. Fullerton grinned as he watched her go.
“Funny what a passion for seeing to people that youngster has,” he said, “and what a corker she is at it, too. She’s helped me in some tight places, child as she is. Once it was sewing a man up—bad mowing-machine accident. His wife couldn’t stand by; but Peg could. White as a sheet, but never batted an eye until she’d done all I needed. Then she went away quietly into the yard and keeled over in a faint—but not till her job was done, mind you. That’s Peg.”
Ellen and John arrived during the progress of the bath, and, within an hour, the sick man lay between white, lavender-scented sheets in a room that, while forlorn, was amazingly clean.
“When he comes out of the fever, he’ll think he’s died and gone to hell,” Dr. Fullerton prophesied. “A clean eternity would be about the worst future Ezra could figure out. Who’s going to look after him, while I see to some of my other patients?”
“Me,” announced Peg, making up in enthusiasm what she lacked in grammer. “Boots is at Mrs. Neal’s and it won’t hurt Wiggles and Spunky and Peterkin to go without supper once, and Ellen’ll give you some supper, Mr. Archibald. Won’t you, Ellen?”
“Miss Nora would want me to be staying here,” protested Ellen.
Archibald settled the question.
“Peg and I will stay,” he said, “and maybe Ellen will send John over with a bite for us. We’ll have provisions in here by to-morrow and the back room fit to be lived in. He couldn’t be moved, I suppose, Doctor?”
Dr. Fullerton shook his head.
“Finish him,” he said. “I’ll have Miss Kirby down from Albany to-morrow morning. She’s the only nurse I know who likes cases of this sort—eats ’em up. Can’t be too bad for her. Only thing she balks at is a sick millionaire. Abnormal woman, but a rattling good nurse.”
“Couldn’t I—” began Pegeen. She looked woefully disappointed.
“You couldn’t.” The doctor was firm. “Not until after he’s over the ridge one way or the other. Then there’ll be enough for you and anybody that applies. Just shows what a frost virtue is. I’ve had highly respectable patients neglected and here’s a spirited contest for the privilege of taking care of Ezra, who’s as worthless a customer as you’d find in a day’s journey.”
“Oh, Doctor, he’s so sick!” Pegeen was distressed, shocked.
“But he’s not dead. It’s only after they’re dead that we can’t speak ill of them. I’m not going to let Ezra die, so I feel perfectly free to tell the truth about him. There’s the medicine. Nothing much to do at this stage of the game. I’ll be back in an hour and bring a tank of oxygen down to have it handy. Don’t you fret, Peggy. He’s going to rob many a hen-roost yet.”
He went away, driving in utter defiance of the speed laws. John and Ellen drove off home, and Peg and Archibald sat down in two of the rickety chairs near the bed upon which the transformed Ezra lay, breathing heavily.
“This, Miss Pegeen O’Neill, is what comes of neighboring,” said Archibald.
“Yes; isn’t it splendid?” Peg was important, shiny-eyed.
“Well, come to think of it, I don’t know but what it is,” admitted the man.
“Doesn’t he look different when he’s clean?”—Pegeen lowered her voice to sick-room pitch, but she was too excited to keep still and Ezra would not hear.
“Even so he’s not beautiful,”—Archibald studied the face on the pillow as he spoke. A weak, evil face it was even now when the man’s spirit did not look out through his eyes, but Peg’s tender heart could not find helplessness quite unbeautiful.
“I sort of think he was a good looking little boy,” she said. “His nose is straight and nice and his mouth could have been real sweet if he hadn’t spoiled it. I shouldn’t wonder a bit if his mother’d been awfully proud of him when she got him all fixed up to go somewhere.”
Her face was wistful, sweet with pity for the little boy of the long ago, whom life had wrecked, and the picture her words had called up made Archibald look at the sick man with kinder eyes.
“Oh, Peg! Peg!” he murmured softly, “what a friend to sinners and weaklings you are!”
“They’ve got to have friends,” said Pegeen.
The doctor came back after a while. The Smiling Lady and Richard Meredith came too, and Mrs. Benderby, after her day of ironing and her three-mile walk home, toiled up the Back Road to see if there was anything she could do to help. Mr. Neal rode over and offered to spend the night, but, in the end, Archibald and the doctor stayed. Pegeen, protesting stoutly, was carried off home by Miss Moran.
“Nothing you could do to-night, Peggy,” said the doctor. “Save your ammunition.”
Life and Death stood beside the bed in the little house on the Back Road that night; but it was Death who turned and went away in the gray of the morning.
“He’ll do now,” said the doctor, “but it was touch and go for a while. The oxygen held him. Sometimes I wonder—”
His strong jaw set once more in fighting grimness— “But it isn’t up to me to wonder. Beating Death, in a catch-as-catch-can, is my end of the job, and I rather think I’ve downed him this time. What life will do with the man is another story.”
“I’d like to help tell the story,”—Archibald had never stood by in such a fight as the doctor had fought that night and the experience had left him with a humble consciousness of his own uselessness, a strong desire to play a manlier part.
Dr. Fullerton looked at him sharply from under heavy eyebrows that gave his face a misleading fierceness.
“Don’t sentimentalize, man,” he said bluntly. “It takes people that way sometimes—running up against Death and barely slamming the door in his face—but don’t imagine the close shave will change Ezra any more than his bath will. He’ll be as mean and as dirty as ever in a few weeks. We’ve done our damnedest for him to-night, but we’re the ones benefited by it. Life’s a doubtful blessing to Ezra. Help him if you want to, but do it with your eyes open and because you want to, not because you expect to reform him. He isn’t the reforming kind.”
Archibald thought his words over after he had gone. Probably they were true—but on their heels came other words. “I believe there’s a decent scrap of Soul hidden away somewhere in Ezra, hidden so deep that he himself doesn’t suspect it’s there,” Nora Moran had said.
“I shouldn’t wonder a bit if his mother had been awfully proud of him.” It was Pegeen who had said that.
Who could tell? One needn’t sentimentalize, but one might as well give a man the benefit of the doubt. That was neighboring.
The nurse from Albany came and ate up the case, according to prophecy, but in a few days she went away to meet direr needs, and then Pegeen’s turn came. She was in her element, and Ezra, a limp edition of his former self, showed a flattering satisfaction in the change from Miss Kirby’s ministrations to Peggy’s. Surliness was as natural to him as breathing and he was no angel patient; but it was quite useless to be surly with Peg. She ignored it, and went her cheerful, tolerant way, coddling, coaxing, encouraging, tyrannizing, amusing, unmoved by stubbornness or rudeness or anger or ingratitude, obeying the doctor’s orders and, where the orders ended, “seeing to” Ezra according to her own ideas of the way the thing should be done.
Archibald, and Miss Moran, and Mrs. Benderby, stayed with her in turn, but the case was hers, and Dr. Fullerton always addressed her as “Nurse O’Neill,” to her profound satisfaction.
Archibald missed her miserably at the shack. Mrs. Benderby was looking after him. She had called the doctor in as he drove by one evening during the first week of Ezra’s illness; and after an examination he had told her kindly but frankly that her days for hard work were over.
“You may live for many years,” he said; “live comfortably, too, but no more washing and ironing and scrubbing, Mrs. Benderby. We’ll have to find something easier for you to do.”
He spoke as though finding it would be the simplest matter imaginable and indeed it proved so; for Archibald, temporarily bereft of Peggy and robbed of self-reliance through many weeks of being “seen to” by that young person, was desperately in need of feminine ministrations.
“Just the thing for you,” the doctor said heartily, as he told Mrs. Benderby of Archibald’s forlorn plight “When Peg gets through with Ezra we’ll have something else for you.” So there were good meals and cleanliness at the shack, but oh, the loneliness of the place! Mrs. Benderby was devoted, she was kind, but she had her limitations. Pegeen, so it seemed to Archibald as he sighed for her, had none. He was lonely without her, infernally lonely, and he told her so. She was distressed about it, but Ezra needed her most and that settled the matter so far as she was concerned.
“I’m homesick. I’m most crazy to go home,” she confessed, “but I wouldn’t for anything. Sometimes I think he most likes me; but he’s dreadfully ashamed of it. He’s dreadfully ashamed of any nice feeling he has. Isn’t that funny? After he says anything pleasant, he swears right off quick for fear you’ll think he meant it. I do wish I could get him used to being nice so it wouldn’t hurt him the way it does.”
Even Pegeen could not quite achieve that—Ezra progressed to the point of being nice occasionally but it always hurt him, and only to Peggy did he even make the concession of being very intermittently “nice.”
For Archibald and the doctor and all the rest he wore as lowering a face and as ungracious a manner as though they had been cruelly abusing him instead of saving his life and paying his expenses. Archibald found the thing rather discouraging, but Dr. Fullerton laughed over it unconcernedly.
“Great Scott, man,” he said, when they talked of it one day after a visit to the rapidly convalescing invalid, “I don’t pull my patients through because I expect gratitude. I do it because it’s playing the game. That’s the only satisfaction that amounts to anything. Pick out a white man’s game and play it for all there is in you. Then life’s worth living.”