Many Kingdoms Part 16

The doctor hesitated. "In about a month, I think," he said, finally.

'Rastus carried the memory of the words into the ward where she lay, and then felt a quick sense of reaction. Die? Why, this was the old-time Hannah, the Hannah of his youth, the Hannah he had married.

She was thinner, but the lines had smoothed out of her face and her big black eyes looked up at him as confidingly as the eyes of a baby. She laughed, too, a little--a ghost of the old, fat, comfortable chuckle; but there was nothing of death nor even of suffering about Hannah that day. Her spirit was not yet overthrown.

"Ahm awful glad tuh see yuh, honey," she said. "Ah knew yuh'd c.u.m."

'Rastus sat down on the wooden chair beside her and fixed his little black eyes unwinkingly upon her face. In his hands he held his hat, which he twisted nervously between his knees at first, but finally forgetfully dropped on the floor as his embarra.s.sment pa.s.sed. Propped up on her pillows, Hannah chatted incessantly, telling him the small details of her hospital life and such few facts of her illness as she had been permitted to know.

"I ain' got no pain," she a.s.sured him--"des now, I mean. Bimeby hit'll c.u.m, like hit do ebery aftahnoon, but doctah he come, too, an' he git de better ub hit, ebery time. He sure am good to me, dat man!"

Her white teeth flashed in a smile as she talked, but the eyes she kept on the man's face had a curious look of wonder in them.

"Yuh look well, honey," she said, finally, "an' yit yuh doan look well.

How come dat? You-all ain' got nuffin' tuh trouble yuh, is yuh?"

'Rastus hurriedly a.s.sured her that he had not. He did not mention his wife nor child, of whose existence she was, of course, perfectly aware; but he dilated on the glories of his position, the size of his income, and the gift of the watch. He pulled the last from his pocket as he spoke of it, and she wagged her head proudly over it and shamelessly boasted to the nurse who happened to come to her side.

"Dey give dat to mah husban'," she said. Then she mentioned casually, with all her old naivete, "Leaseways, he wuz mah husban' oncet."

"Mistah Breckenridge" ignored this little incident. His mind was on practical things.

"Yuh got all yuh want, Hannah?" he asked. "'Caze ahm gwine tuh git hit foh yuh ef yuh ain't."

Hannah, who seemed prepared for this inquiry, responded to it with much promptness. She needed a wrapper, she said, and some cologne, and three new night-gowns, and "a lil chicking." 'Rastus wrote down each item painstakingly and somewhat ostentatiously in a hand suited to unruled paper. Then he bowed to the nurse, touched Hannah's hand with his sinewy little paw, and trotted out with an air of vast importance.

For several weeks the Adelaide was almost neglected, and puzzled tenants sought the janitor in vain. He was rarely home, but Dinah, dark-browed, sullen, red-lidded, and with a look of suffering on her plain face, responded to their demands and did, so far as she could, her husband's work and her own. She made no explanation of his absence, and the last one which would have been accepted was the truth--that day after day "Mistah Breckenridge" sat by the bedside of Hannah, talking to her, cheering her, nursing her, feeding her with the fruit he had brought her. He had almost superseded the nurse; and the doctors, watching the pair, let them do much as they pleased, on the dreary theory that nothing Hannah did could hurt her now. Sometimes she had hours of severe pain, during which he remained with her, holding her hand, soothing her, and lifting her still great bulk in his thin arms with unexpected strength. In her better hours she talked to him, telling him stories about the other patients, anecdotes of nurses and doctors, and mimicking several luckless victims to the life.

It was six weeks before Hannah died, very suddenly, and in one of her paroxysms of suffering. 'Rastus was with her at the end, as he had been during the hard weeks preceding it. When he realized that all was over, he left the room, sought an undertaker, had a brief but pregnant interview with him, and then disappeared from the hospital and from the city as well. Where he went no one knew, though Dinah, wellnigh frantic, strove distractedly to learn. On the morning of Hannah's funeral he returned and a.s.sumed a leading part in that melancholy procession, long after referred to as "de mos' scrumptuous bury-in'" in colored circles. Nothing had been omitted that she would have wished.

Tall plumes nodded on the hea.r.s.e, many carriages gathered in the mourners, and close behind the silver-trimmed coffin which held all that was left of Hannah. "Mistah Breckenridge" walked with leaden steps, his small face drawn with grief. Subsequently he drew most of his savings from the bank to pay the bills, and, having paid them, returned once more to his anxious family and the monotonous routine of life at the Adelaide.

Dinah welcomed him coldly, and went about her duties with her head high. She said no word of reproach, and it was not until several weeks had pa.s.sed that it was borne in upon her that 'Rastus remained oblivious not only to her just wifely resentment, but to most other things and emotions in life as well. He did his work, but he ate little and slept less, and the flesh of his prosperous years seemed to drop from him even as the startled beholder gazed. In despair Dinah sought Haddon Brown and laid the case before him.

"Dat man am suttinly gwine lose his min'," she sobbed, "ef he keep on like he doin'. Den what gwine become of me and dat in'cen' chile!"

Young Brown casually and unostentatiously looked 'Rastus over, and was not satisfied with the survey. The janitor's lips were drawn, his eyes were gla.s.sy, his clothes hung loosely on his shrunken little figure. He did his work as a manikin wound up for the purpose might have done it.

There was no spring, no energy, no snap. Mr. Brown waited a fortnight, expecting some change. None coming, one Sunday morning he urged 'Rastus to go with him on a fis.h.i.+ng trip, carry bait, fish if he wanted to, and make himself generally useful. With unrelieved gloom "Mistah Breckenridge" accepted the invitation, and the two left the city behind them, and sought the peace of wood and stream and broad, overarching sky.

When he had found the shaded nook that seemed most promising, young Brown baited his hook, dropped it into the water, and gave himself up to pleasant reveries in which poor "Mistah Breckenridge" had no part.

He had good-naturedly brought him out here for rest and change and sport and pure air, he told himself, but it was hardly to be expected that he should do more. He yawned, dozed, and surveyed his line without curiosity; beside him sat "Mistah Breckenridge," every muscle of him tense, and a light in his eyes that was not nice to see.

The spot they had chosen was a not infrequented one in the Bronx woods, and at intervals the sound of human voices came to them and the light colors of a woman's gown showed through the trees. Suddenly a laugh was borne to their ears--a woman's laugh; light, happy, irrepressible.

Young Brown opened one eye. It sounded like the laugh of a nice girl.

He looked lazily in the direction whence it came. Then close by his side he heard a thud, a groan. His companion had pitched full length on the ground, and lay there crying with great, gasping sobs, and tearing up the gra.s.ses by the roots. Brown gazed aghast, startled, sympathetic, understanding dimly, yet repelled by this unmasculine outburst. He began to speak, but changed his mind and waited, his eyes again on the bobbing cork of his line.

"Mistah Breckenridge" cried a long time--a very long time, indeed, it seemed to young Brown, ill at ease and wholly unused to such demonstrations. Then he sat up, pulled himself together, and turned a distorted face toward the young man who had been so good a friend to him.

"You-all know, Mr. Brown, ah sure is ashamed," he said, quietly, "but ah feel bettah, an' ah guess. .h.i.t done me good. Ah felt like ah could kill someone when we come yeah, but ah feel differnt now."

His voice trailed into silence. He restlessly pulled up dandelions and blades of gra.s.s around him, but his face had relaxed and he seemed calm. Haddon Brown murmured something about a nervous strain, but the other did not seem to hear him.

"Hit wuz dat lady laffin'," he said, suddenly. "You-all know how mah Hannah use tuh laff. Mah gracious! Yuh could heah dat woman a mile! An'

yuh know," he proceeded, slowly, "hit done me lots o' good, Mistah Brown, des to heah huh. Ahm a silen' man, an' ah doan laff much, but ah liked hit in Hannah, ah suttinly did--mighty well. Hit des made dis mo'nful ole wurl' seem a chee'ful place--hit did indeed."

Brown said nothing. There was nothing in his mind that quite fitted the occasion. "Mistah Breckenridge" ripped a few more dandelions off their stems and went on.

"W'y, when dat woman lef me--when mah Hannah went away--ah use tuh go aftah night to de place whah she lived, jes' to heah huh laff again.

Ah'd stan' out in d' dahk, an' ah'd see huh shadow on de cu'tin, an'

den ah'd heah huh laff an' laff lak she always done, an' den--ah'd come home! Ah done dat all dese yeahs sense mah Hannah lef me. Dinah's all right. Ah ain' complainin' none 'bout Dinah. Ah mah'd huh caze ah wuz lonesome, an' she suttinly bin a good wife to me. Ahm goin' to wuk foh huh tell ah git back all the money ah spent on Hannah. Hit wus Dinah's money, too. But"--he burst out again with a sudden long wail--"ah jes'

doan see how ahm goin' tuh keep on livin in a worl' whah dey ain't no Hannah!"

His grief gathered force as he gave it rein. He hurled himself down on the ground again and tore at the gra.s.ses with his thin black hands.

"Oh, ah want, ah want, _ah want tuh heah mah Hannah laff again!_" he cried, frenziedly.

A fish nibbled at the bait on Brown's hook, changed his mind, flirted his fins, and swam away--a proof of the proverb about second thoughts.

A bird in the branches of the tree above the two men burst into ecstatic song. But neither heard him. "Mistah Breckenridge" had buried his black face in the cool gra.s.s, his hot tears falling fast upon it.

Beside him young Brown, brought face to face with elemental conditions, sat silent and thought hard.

VIII

THE QUEST OF AUNT NANCY

It was in a stuffy compartment of a night train approaching Paris that Jessica and I were privileged to look upon Aunt Nancy for the first time. Her obvious age would soon have attracted our attention, no doubt, and certainly the gallantry with which she carried her eighty years could not long have escaped the observation of two such earnest students of humanity as we believed ourselves to be. But the characteristic in her which at once caught my eye was her expression--a look of such keen alertness, such intense vitality, that even in the mental stagnation that accompanies night travel I wondered what, in her surroundings, could explain it.

The dingy carriage in which we sat was vaguely illuminated by an oil lamp, the insufficient rays of which brought out effective high lights on the bald head of one audibly slumbering German on our side of the compartment, and on the heavy face of a stout Frenchwoman who sat opposite him, next to the old lady upon whom I was concentrating my attention. The latter, obviously an American, the two foreigners, and ourselves, were the sole occupants of the compartment; and certainly in the appearance of none of her four fellow-pa.s.sengers was there justification of the wide-awake intentness of the kind old eyes that now beamed on us through heavy, steel-rimmed spectacles. Pensively, as befitted the weary wanderer, I marvelled. How could she look so alive, so wide awake, so energetic, at one o'clock in the morning?

The bald-headed man slept on. The stout woman removed a sh.e.l.l comb from her back hair and composed herself for deeper slumber. Jessica presented to my lambent gaze a visage which besought unspoken sympathy, and mutely breathed a protest against travel in general and this phase of it in particular. Jessica in the "still small hours" was never really gay. It was dimly comforting to one of my companionable nature to turn from her to the little old woman opposite me. In figure and dress she might have posed for one of Leech's drawings of ancient dames, so quaintly prim was she, so precise in their folds were her little black mantle and her simple black gown, so effective a frame to her wrinkled face was the wide black bonnet she wore. On her hands, demurely crossed in her lap, were black lace mitts. Moreover, she was enveloped, so to speak, in a dim aroma of peppermint, the source of which was even then slightly distending one faded cheek. Irrepressibly I smiled at her, and at once a long-drawn sigh of pleasure floated across to me. In spontaneous good-fellows.h.i.+p she leaned forward.

"It's a real comfortable journey, ain't it?" she whispered, so evidently torn between a pa.s.sionate desire to talk and consideration for the sleepers that my heart went out to her.

"Well, if you mean this especial journey--" I hesitated.

"Yes, I do," she insisted. "The seats are real comfortable. Everything is." She threw out her mittened hands with a gesture that seemed to emphasize a demand for approval. "I wouldn't change a single thing.

Some say it's hot; I don't think 'tis. I wouldn't mind, though, if 'twas. We're gettin' a nice draught."

I looked through the open window at the French landscape, bathed in the glory of an August moon.

"That, at least, is very satisfactory," I admitted, cheerfully.

She looked a little blank as she glanced around, and a queer expression of responsibility settled over her features, blurring their brightness like a veil.

"I see," she said, slowly. "You mean France. Yes, 'tis nice, an' they's certainly a great deal to see in it." She hesitated a moment, and then went on more rapidly. "You know," she continued, in her high-keyed, sibilant whisper, "it's some different with me from what 'tis with you.

You can speak French. I heard you talkin' to the conductor. An' I suppose you've been here often, an' like it. But this is the first time _I've_ come over to Europe. I've always meant to, sometime, but things ain't been just so's I _could_ come. Now't I'm here, I can't stay long, an' I must say I feel kind of homesick. There's so much to see it jest makes my head swim. I come for a purpose--a purpose of my own--but now't I'm here, I want to do my duty an' see things. I declare," she added, shamefacedly, "I most hate to go to sleep nights, I'm so afraid I'll miss something an' hear about it when I git back."

I asked a conventional question, which evoked a detailed report of her journeyings. By this time Jessica had opened one eye; the two foreigners slept on peacefully. She had landed at Naples, the old lady told me; and from her subsequent remarks I gathered that she had found the Italians as a people deficient in the admirable qualities of cleanliness and modesty. She lamented, also, an over-preponderance of art galleries, and the surprising slowness of the natives to grasp intelligent remarks made in the English tongue. Aside from these failings, however, she had found Italy somewhat interesting, and she mentioned especially the grotto at Capri and the ascent of Vesuvius.

She added, casually, that few of her fellow-tourists had made this latter excursion, as it was just after the severest eruptions, and the air had been full of dust and cinders. Jessica opened the other eye. I began to experience vivid interest in the conversation.