Pembroke: A Novel

by Mary Eleanor Wilkins Freeman

Charlotte, with a little bundle under her arm, hastened down the hill. When she reached Barney's house she went around and knocked at the side door. As she went into the yard she could see dimly a white-capped woman's head in a south window of the Thayer house farther down the road, and she knew that Rebecca's nurse was watching her. Rebecca's second baby was a week old, so she could do nothing for her brother.

Charlotte knocked softly and waited. She heard a loud clamping step across the floor inside, and a whistle. A boy opened the door and stood staring at her, half abashed, half impudently important, his mouth still puckered with the whistle.

“Is there anybody here but you, Ezra?” asked Charlotte.

The boy shook his head.

“I have come to take care of Mr. Thayer now,” said Charlotte.

She entered, and Ezra Ray stood aside, rolling his eyes after her as she went through the kitchen. He whistled again half involuntarily, a sudden jocular pipe on the brink of motion, like a bird. Charlotte turned and shook her head at him, and he stopped short. He sat down on a chair near the door, and dangled his feet irresolutely.

Charlotte went into the bedroom where Barney lay, a rigidly twisted, groaning heap under a mass of bed-clothing, which Ezra Ray had kept over him with energy. She bent over him. “I've come to take care of you, Barney,” said she. His eyes, half dazed in his burning face, looked up at her with scarcely any surprise.

Charlotte laid back some of the bedclothes whose weight was a torture, and straightened the others. She worked about the house noiselessly and swiftly. She was skilful in the care of the sick; she had had considerable experience. Soon everything was clean and in order; there was a pleasant smell of steeping herbs through the house. Charlotte had set an old remedy of her mother's steeping over the fire—a harmless old-wives' decoction, with which to supplement the doctor's remedies, and give new courage to the patient's mind.

Barney came to think that this remedy which Charlotte prepared was of more efficacy than any which the doctor mixed in his gallipots. That is, when he could think at all, and his mind and soul was able to reassert itself over his body. He had a hard illness, and after he was out of bed he could only sit bent miserably over in a quilt-covered rocking-chair beside the fire. He could not straighten himself up without agonizing pain. People thought that he never would, and he thought so himself. His grandfather, his mother's father, had been in a similar condition for years before his death. People called that to mind, and so did Barney. “He's goin' to be the way his grandfather Emmons was,” the men said in the store. Barney could dimly remember that old figure bent over almost on all-fours like a dog; its wretched, grizzled face turned towards the earth with a brooding sternness of contemplation. He wondered miserably where his grandfather's old cane was, when he should be strong enough in his pain-locked muscles to leave his rocking-chair and crawl about in the spring sunshine. It used to be in the garret of the old house. He thought that he would ask Rebecca or William to look for it some day. He hesitated to speak about it. He half dreaded to think that the time was coming when he would be strong enough to move about, for then he was afraid Charlotte would leave him and go home. He had been afraid that she would when he left his bed. He had a childishly guilty feeling that he had perhaps stayed there a little longer than was necessary on that account. One Sunday the doctor had said quite decisively to Charlotte, “It won't hurt him any to be got up a little while to-morrow. It will be better for him. You can get William to come in and help.” Charlotte had come back from the door and reported to Barney, and he had turned his face away with a quivering sigh.