It was near the latter part of June, the season of roses, and pinks, and water lilies in New England, when she at last took Trixey to the old brown house under the shadow of the apple trees, where the mountain air was filled with perfume from the flowers blossoming on the borders by the door, and where Bunchie played in the soft summer sunshine under the snow-ball tree by the well. It was such a plain, but pleasant old house, with the rafters overhead showing in the kitchen, and the great box-like beams in the corners of the room,—for the old house claimed to have seen a hundred years, and to have heard the guns of the Revolution. But it was very cheerful and home-like, and neat as soap and sand and Aunt Nancy’s hands could make it. Aunt Nancy was the first to welcome Miss Belknap, looking a little askance at her style and manners, and wondering how they could ever entertain so fine a lady even for a few hours. Mrs. Morton was sick with a headache, and Mrs. Brown was still down with nervous prostration, having stoutly resisted all Mrs. Julia Hayden’s advice about making an effort, and hints which sometimes amounted to assertions that she could get up if she liked, and would diet on oatmeal and barley. In her last letter to Mrs. Morton, Beatrice had declined Mrs. Hayden’s offer, and said she should feel more independent at the hotel for the short time she should remain in Bronson, but within half an hour after her arrival at the parsonage, Mrs. Hayden was there also, in her handsome carriage, drawn by her shining black horses, and driven by a shining black coachman, in gloves and brass buttons, and she insisted so hard upon Beatrice stopping with her, that the latter finally accepted the invitation, but said she would remain for the day where she was and see if she could not be of some comfort and help to Mrs. Morton, who seemed better from the moment she came and laid her soft hands on her head.
“Nothing can help her or her mother, either, unless they make an effort,” Mrs. Hayden said, with a toss of her head, and a flash of her black eyes. “Spleeny and notional both of them as they can be; call it nervous, if you like; what’s nervousness but fidgets? I was never nervous; but if I’d give up every time the weather changes, or I felt a little weak, I might have prostration, too. There’s Harry, my husband, would have died long ago if I had not kept him up just by my own energy and will. I make him sleep with the windows open, and he takes a cold bath every morning at six o’clock, and eats oatmeal for his breakfast, with a cup of hot water instead of coffee or tea.”
“And does he thrive on that diet? Is he well and strong?” Bee asked, and Mrs. Hayden replied:
“Well and strong? No: he could not be that in the nature of things, he comes from a sickly stock; but he keeps about, which is better than lying in bed and moping all the time.”
How strong and full of life Mrs. Hayden was, and so unsympathetic that Beatrice did not wonder Mrs. Morton shivered and shrank away even from the touch of her large, powerful hands.
“I am sometimes wicked enough to wish she might be sick herself, or at least nervous, so as to know how it feels,” Mrs. Morton said, after her cousin had gone. “She thinks I can do as she does, and the thing is impossible. My health is destroyed, and I sometimes fear I shall never be well again.”
She had failed since Beatrice saw her, and her eyes looked so large and glassy as she lay upon the pillow, and her cough was so constant and irritating, that to talk of effort and oatmeal to her seemed preposterous and cruel. What she needed was rest, and nursing, and care, and change of thought and occupation, and these she could not have in their fullest extent at the parsonage, with poverty and a sick mother, and bustling, irritable Aunt Nancy to act as counter influences. She must be taken entirely away, and amused, and nursed, and petted, and Beatrice began to see the first step of that vague plan formed in Rothsay, and which she meant to carry out.
For a day or two she staid in Bronson, sleeping and eating in Mrs. Hayden’s grand house, and feeling all her sympathies enlisted for shriveled-up Mr. Hayden, who in the morning came shivering to the table from his cold bath, and swallowed his oatmeal and hot water dutifully, but with an expression on his thin, sallow face which showed how his stomach rebelled against it and craved the juicy steak and fragrant coffee with which his blooming wife regaled herself, because she was strong and could bear it. Once Bee ventured to suggest that steak and beef-tea might be a more nutritious diet even for a dyspeptic than oatmeal and barley, varied with dry toast and baked apples; but Mrs. Hayden knew. She had read up on stomachs, and nerves, and digestion, and knew every symptom of dyspepsia, and its cause, and what it needed, and how a person ought to feel; and her husband submitted quietly, and said, “Julie was right,” and grew thinner, and paler, and weaker every day with cold baths and starvation; but he kept the respect of his wife because he tried to be well, and that was a great thing to do, for in his estimation she was a wonderful woman, and represented the wisdom of the world.
On the third day Beatrice left Bronson, to look, she said, for some quiet, pleasant nook, where she could spend a few weeks during the hot weather. She found such a place in Holburton, whither she came one warm July afternoon, when the town was at its best. It was not an unheard-of thing for city people to pass a few weeks in Holburton during the hot weather, and no one was surprised when Miss Belknap registered her name on the hotel books, and said she was looking for some quiet and reasonable boarding-house for an invalid with two children. Several were recommended to her, and with the list in her hand she started out to reconnoiter.
Mrs. Roxie Fleming was the fourth name on her paper, but she went there first, and was pleased with the place at once, because it looked so cool and inviting under the wealth of hop vines which covered one side of it.