Jane Field Part 7

"Lamb broth. I'm goin' to heat up some for her. She didn't eat hardly a mouthful of breakfast."

"That's jest the thing for her. I'll get out the kettle and put it on to heat. I dun'no' of anything that gits cold any quicker than lamb broth, unless it's love."

Amanda put on a cheerful air as she helped Mrs. Field. Presently the two women carried in the little repast to Lois.

"She's asleep," whispered Amanda, who went first with the tea.

They stood looking at the young girl, stretched out her slender length, her white delicate profile showing against the black arm of the sofa.

Her mother caught her breath. "She's got to be waked up; she's got to have some nourishment, anyhow," said she. "Come, Lois, wake up, and have your dinner."

Lois opened her eyes. All the animation and defiance were gone from her face. She was so exhausted that she made no resistance to anything. She let them raise her, prop her up with a pillow, and nearly feed her with the dinner. Then she lay back, and her eyes closed.

Amanda went home, and Mrs. Field went back to the kitchen to put away the dinner dishes. She had eaten nothing herself, and now she poured some of the broth into a cup, and drank it down with great gulps without tasting it. It was simply filling of a necessity the lamp of life with oil.

After her housework was done, she sat down in the kitchen with her knitting. There was no sound from the other room.

The latter part of the afternoon Amanda came past the window and entered the back door. She carried a gla.s.s of foaming beer. Amanda was famous through the neighborhood for this beer, which she concocted from roots and herbs after an ancient recipe. It was pleasantly flavored with aromatic roots, and instinct with agreeable bitterness, being an innocently tonic old-maiden brew.

"I thought mebbe she'd like a gla.s.s of my beer," whispered Amanda. "I came round the house so's not to disturb her. How is she?"

"I guess she's asleep. I ain't heard a sound."

Amanda set the gla.s.s on the table. "Don't you think you'd ought to have a doctor, Mis' Field?" said she.

It seemed impossible that Lois could have heard, but her voice came shrilly from the other room: "No, I ain't going to have a doctor; there's no need of it. I sha'n't like it if you get one, mother."

"No, you sha'n't have one, dear child," her mother called back. "She was always jest so about havin' a doctor," she whispered to Amanda.

"I'll take in the beer if she's awake," said Amanda.

Lois looked up when she entered. "I don't want a doctor," said she, pitifully, rolling her blue eyes.

"Of course you sha'n't have a doctor if you don't want one," returned Amanda, soothingly. "I thought mebbe you'd like a gla.s.s of my beer."

Lois drank the beer eagerly, then she sank back and closed her eyes.

"I'm going to get up in a minute, and sew on my dress," she murmured.

But she did not stir until her mother helped her to bed early in the evening.

The next day she seemed a little better. Luckily it was Sat.u.r.day, so there was no worry about her school for her. She would not lie down, but sat in the rocking-chair with her needle-work in her lap. When any one came in, she took it up and sewed. Several of the neighbors had heard she was ill, and came to inquire. She told them, with a defiant air, that she was very well, and they looked shocked and nonplussed. Some of them beckoned her mother out into the entry when they took leave, and Lois heard them whispering together.

The next day, Sunday, Lois seemed about the same. She said once that she was going to church, but she did not speak of it again. Mrs.

Field went. She suggested staying at home, but Lois was indignant.

"Stay at home with me, no sicker than I am! I should think you were crazy, mother," said she.

So Mrs. Field got out her Sunday clothes and went to meeting. As soon as she had gone, Lois coughed; she had been choking the cough back.

She stood at the window, well back that people might not see her, and watched her mother pa.s.s down the street with her stiff glide. Mrs.

Field's back and shoulders were rigidly steady when she walked; she might have carried a jar of water on her head without spilling it, like an Indian woman. Lois, small and slight although she was, walked like her mother. She held herself with the same resolute stateliness, when she could hold herself at all. The two women might, as far as their carriage went, have marched in a battalion with propriety.

Lois felt a certain relief when her mother had gone. Even when Mrs.

Field made no expression of anxiety, there was a covert distress about her which seemed to enervate the atmosphere, and hinder the girl in the fight she was making against her own weakness. Lois had a feeling that if n.o.body would look at her nor speak about her illness, she could get well quickly of herself.

As for Mrs. Field, she was no longer eager to attend meeting; she went rather than annoy Lois. She was present at both the morning and afternoon services. They still had two services in Green River.

Jane Field, sitting in her place in church through the long sermons, had a mental experience that was wholly new to her. She looked at the white walls of the audience-room, the pulpit, the carpet, the pews.

She noted the familiar faces of the people in their Sunday gear, the green light stealing through the long blinds, and all these accustomed sights gave her a sense of awful strangeness and separation. And this impression did not leave her when she was out on the street mingling with the homeward people; every greeting of an old neighbor strengthened it. She regarded the peaceful village houses with their yards full of new green gra.s.s and flowering bushes, and they seemed to have a receding dimness as she neared some awful sh.o.r.e. Even the click of her own gate as she opened it, the sound of her own feet on the path, the feel of the door-latch to her hand--all the little common belongings of her daily life were turned into so many stationary landmarks to prove her own retrogression and fill her with horror.

To-day, when people inquired for Lois, her mother no longer gave her customary replies. She said openly that her daughter was real miserable, and she was worried about her.

"I guess she's beginning to realize it," the women whispered to each other with a kind of pitying triumph. For there is a certain aggravation in our friends' not owning to even those facts which we deplore for them. It is provoking to have an object of pity balk.

Mrs. Field's a.s.sumption that her daughter was not ill had half incensed her sympathizing neighbors; even Amanda had marvelled indignantly at it. But now the sudden change in her friend caused her to marvel still more. She felt a vague fear every time she thought of her. After Lois had gone to bed that Sunday night, her mother came into Amanda's room, and the two women sat together in the dusk. It was so warm that Amanda had set all the windows open, and the room was full of the hollow gurgling of the frogs--there was some low meadow-land behind the house.

"I want to know what you think of Lois?" said Mrs. Field, suddenly; her voice was high and harsh.

"Why, I don't know, hardly, Mis' Field."

"Well, I know. She's runnin' down. She won't ever be any better, unless I can do something. She's dyin' for the want of a little money, so she can stop work an' go away to some healthier place an'

rest. She is; the Lord knows she is." Mrs. Field's voice was solemn, almost oratorical.

Amanda sat still; her long face looked pallid and quite unmoved in the low light; she was thinking what she could say.

But Mrs. Field went on; she was herself so excited to speech and action, the outward tendency of her own nature was so strong, that she failed to notice the course of another's. "She is," she repeated, argumentatively, as if Amanda had spoken, or she was acute enough to hear the voice behind silence; "there ain't any use talkin'."

There was a pause, a soft wind came into the room, the noise of the frogs grew louder, a whippoorwill called; it seemed as if the wide night were flowing in at the windows.

"What I want to know is," said Mrs. Field, "if you will take Lois in here to meals, an' look after her a week or two. Be you willin' to?"

"You ain't goin' away, Mis' Field?" There was a slow and contained surprise in Amanda's tone.

"Yes, I be; to-morrow mornin', if I live, on the early train. I be, if you're willin' to take Lois. I don't see how I can leave her any other way as she is now. You sha'n't be any loser by it, if you'll take her."

"Where be you goin', Mis' Field?"

"I don't want you to say anything about it. I don't want it all over town."

"I sha'n't say anything."

"Well, I'm goin' down to Elliot."

"You be?"

"Yes, I be. Old Mr. Maxwell's dead. I had a letter a night or two ago."

Amanda gasped, "He's dead?"

"Yes."