Flint Part 22

"You know," she said, "I just _adore_ Wordsworth. I think 'Lucy Grey'

and 'Peter Bell' are too sweet for anything, and the 'Picnic'--no, I mean the 'Excursion' is my favorite of them all. So light and cheerful; I'm glad the dear man did take a day off once in a while."

Flint gravely promised a Life of Wordsworth, to be sent to the "Etruria" to-morrow, and then, bidding his companions adieu, he pa.s.sed out into the night.

His mood, as he strolled up the avenue, was far from complacent. He felt a contempt for himself, as the sport of every pa.s.sing impression.

It was not enough, it seemed, that he should have cut short a summer vacation, and come hurrying back to the city at Winifred Anstice's behest. He must vibrate to every whim about him. He had found, with inward disgust, that he was raising his elbow to shake hands with the Grahams, instead of holding his hand at the customary, self-respecting angle; and that he might be still further convicted of weak mindedness, he had a sense of being in some inexplicable fas.h.i.+on dominated by the vision of Nora Costello and her comrades. Not that he experienced any sudden drawing to the Salvation Army; he felt, to the core, its crudeness, its limitations, its social dangers. His reason a.s.sured him that its methods threatened socialism and anarchy. He could have demolished all General Booth's pet theories by an appeal to the simplest logical processes, but that it seemed absurd to apply logic to so crude a scheme. "Nevertheless," said conscience, "these people are striving, however blunderingly, to better the condition of the forlorn, the wicked, and the wretched. What are _you_ doing about it?" He had almost framed a defence, when it suddenly occurred to him that he was under no accusations, except from his own soul, and such thoughts and impulses as had arisen at sight of Nora Costello, moving in the world outside the social wall behind which he had intrenched himself.

"I suppose," he said to himself, with a shrug, "if I were living in the Ma.s.sachusetts of a hundred years ago, I should be considered in a hopeful way to conversion. Now, we have learned just how far we may indulge an emotion, without allowing it to eventuate in action."

Yet the pa.s.sing of Nora Costello, like the pa.s.sing of Pippa in the poem, had left its light, ineffaceable touch on at least one life that night.

CHAPTER XIII

A SOLDIER

"'T was August, and the fierce sun overhead Smote on the squalid streets of Bethnal Green; And the pale weaver, through his windows seen In Spitalfields, look'd thrice dispirited.

"I met a preacher there I knew, and said: 'Ill and o'erworked, how fare you in this scene?'

'Bravely!' he said; 'for I of late have been Much cheered with thoughts of Christ, the _living bread_.'"

Nora Costello was even more moved than Flint by their chance meeting, if meeting it could be called, under the white light of the lamps of Madison Square. On leaving Nepaug, she had resolutely shut out of her mental horizon the acquaintances that she had made in her few days there. She felt instinctively that any further continuance of the a.s.sociations would be fraught with embarra.s.sing complications, if not actual perils. These people belonged to a world to which she was as dead as though she had taken the black veil in a convent.

As the daughter of the manse, in her young girlhood she had come in contact with people of refinement and some wealth; people of keen perceptions if somewhat p.r.o.nounced limitations; and she realized that in enlisting in the Salvation Army, she had not only shocked their prejudices beyond repair, but had wrenched herself out of their sympathies in a degree which could not have been exceeded by an actual crime on her part.

Time had in some measure healed the sensitiveness which had been sorely wounded by the withdrawal and disapproval of these early friends; but she seemed to feel all reflected and renewed in her brief acquaintance with the strangers at Nepaug, especially in her intercourse with Miss Standish. There is a curious resemblance, which lies deeper than outward circ.u.mstances, between New England and Scotland. The same outward environment of frugal poverty, the same inward experience of intense religious exaltation, continued from generation to generation, produced in early New England a type closely allied to the Scotch Covenanters, and many resemblances still linger among their descendants, widely as they may be removed from the primitive conditions which formed their ancestors.

Miss Standish's manner was marked by all the old Covenanters'

directness, and in spite of her prepossession in Nora Costello's favor, showed clearly that she looked upon her as an extremist, if not a fanatic.

"What took you into that Salvation Army?" she had asked, as she sat by Nora's bedside in the upper front chamber of the White-House.

"A divine call, I hope," Nora had answered.

"Couldn't you have done just as much good in some of the churches?"

"Very likely, but there's many will be doing that work, and there's no over-crowding among us highway-and-hedgers."

Nora remembered a curious little look on Miss Standish's face, as if she thought the answer savored of sarcasm. This expression had led her on to further explanation:--

"I know just how folk will be feeling about the Army. I know how I felt myself before I signed the Articles of War,--as if it was much like joining a circus-troop, going about so with a bra.s.s band."

"Well, isn't it?" asked Miss Standish, bluntly.

Nora colored, but answered amiably: "No, it does not look so to me now,--whiles there's things in the Army work for which I've no liking myself, the noise and a'; but such things are not for you and me. We can get our spiritual aid and comfort somewhere else; but these are like a snare spread for the souls we are hunting, and when you see the rough men come round us like those in the London streets, it's fair wonderfu' how they be taken wi' the drums and torches."

"Humph!" sniffed Miss Standish, "it is as easy to gather converts with a drum as to collect flies round a lump of sugar,--men will always come buzzing about where there is any excitement. The question is, Have you got the fly-paper to make 'em stick?"

At Nepaug Nora had smiled at Miss Standish's blunt questions; but here, in the depression of spirits caused by overwork and the deadened atmosphere, the words came back to her with overwhelming force. When she rose on the morning after seeing Flint standing in the window at Delmonico's, she found more than one importunate question arising in her mind. Was it worth while after all--the sacrifice she was making, the work, the worry, and above all the contact with so much that offended her taste and judgment?

Were not those people behind the curtains, with their purple and fine linen, more nearly right than she? They at least found and gave pleasure for the moment--while she--? Then there swept over her the recollection of the drunkard who had shouted loudest in the hallelujah chorus and reeled home drunk after the meeting, of the penitent girl whom she had seen one night dissolved in tears, the next out on the streets again at her old calling,--"Yes," she admitted sadly, "Miss Standish is right. It is one thing to catch them, but another to keep them." If it had been only the sinners, she would not have minded so much, but there were some things about her fellow-officers-- Here she stopped, for her loyalty would not allow her to go on, even in thought. This mood of depression was not an uncommon thing in Nora Costello's life, but she sought the antidote in prayer and work.

After her morning devotions, she spent an hour in setting her room to rights; watering the plants on the window-sill, feeding the bird in the cage, and then, after a breakfast of the most frugal sort, she started on her way to her post. Although it was not yet eight o'clock when she emerged from the door of the tenement-house where she lodged, a haze of heat hung over the city like a pall, the sun was already beating with a sickening glare upon the sidewalk, which still showed signs of having been made a sleeping place by those who found their crowded quarters within too suffocating for endurance. On the doorstep, worn with the feet of the frequent pa.s.sers, sat a weary woman, nursing her baby. Nora's heart sank as she noticed the deathly pallor of the little thing. She stopped, bent over, and listened to its breathing. Then she lifted the eyelid streaked with blue, and looked into the fast dimming eye.

"That bairn needs a doctor," she said to the mother. "Come with me; there is a dispensary on the next block."

Rising stupidly, with her infant in her arms, the woman in dull obedience followed her down the sun-baked block to the door marked:

"DISPENSARY.

"PATIENTS TREATED FREE FROM TEN TO TWELVE O'CLOCK."

Nora looked at the sign in discouragement; instinct told her that two hours of delay would be fatal. The child was evidently nearing a state of collapse. Turning about entirely baffled, Nora's eyes fell upon an elderly man coming down the street at a brisk trot, a travelling bag in one hand and a large white umbrella in the other. He was evidently a gentleman,--which was strange, for gentlemen did not often appear in Bayard Street. What was stranger still, he looked up at the numbers of the houses as if he were seeking a friend, and, strangest of all, at the sight of herself he took off his hat, and her astonished gaze rested upon Dr. Cricket.

"Well, well, Captain," the little Doctor cried, peering at her with his near-sighted frown. "I _am_ in luck. I came down on the night boat, and hurried over here right away; but we were so late I was afraid you might have got off to headquarters to report for duty. I promised Miss Standish when I left Nepaug that I would surely see you on my way through New York. She felt so worried about your coming back so soon to this town, which is like a bake-oven,--or would be if it smelled better."

All this the good Doctor poured forth so rapidly that Nora could not get in a word edgewise. When at length she found s.p.a.ce to utter a reply, she cried out, "Oh, Doctor, never mind me, but take pity on this bairn! It's in an awfu' way."

"Pooh, Pooh, nothing of the sort!" answered the Doctor, with professional cheerfulness, before he had fairly glanced at the child.

Then aside to Nora: "We must get into the dispensary somehow. Water, hot and cold, are what the child needs. It is near a convulsion."

At this juncture, as eight o'clock was striking, the dispensary clerk arrived, key in hand, and, seeing the emergency, put all the resources of the building at the disposal of Dr. Cricket, who soon brought a better color to the little face, and handing the child, rolled in a blanket, to the mother, bade her keep it cool. The woman looked blankly at the rising wave of heat outside; Dr. Cricket too looked out, and felt the shadow of her hopelessness fall on himself. "Here,"

he said suddenly, pressing a bill into her hand, "take that; get your baby dressed and onto the Coney Island boat as quick as you can."

The woman took the bill and crumpled it in her fingers; but she turned away without uttering either thanks or protest.

"You must na mind the ongraciousness o' the puir mither," Nora said, as they turned away. "She is too fashed and clear worn out to have any sense o' grat.i.tude left." In her excitement the girl dropped into a nearer approach to dialect than marked her ordinary speech.

"My dear young lady," said the Doctor, "do you suppose I hold you responsible for the manners of Bayard Street? You won't be here to be held responsible for anything long if this heat lasts. I wish to the devil (excuse me!) I could get you out of the hole. We need just such a person as you at our Sanatorium in Germantown. What do you say to coming to try it for two months at least?"

The offer chimed in so with her morning thoughts that it seemed to Nora a direct temptation of the devil, and she thrust it away almost angrily.

"Never be speaking o' such a thing! Do you think I would desert now when the war is raging?"

"I don't know anything about your Salvation Army jargon," answered the Doctor, with equal brusqueness; "if it's the war with sin you're talking about, you needn't be afraid of lack of fighting wherever you go--I'll wager Philadelphia can furnish as lively service as New York."

Nora laughed, showing her white teeth in genuine amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Well, I'm fearing you're richt, Doctor, and you must na fancy I dinna recognise your kindness in wanting to get me out of 'this hole;' but I'm called to work right here, and I must 'stay by the stuff,' like the men in the Bible."

"Then my taking the trouble to come here without any breakfast goes for nothing," said the Doctor, a little crossly. He liked his own way, and he liked to help people, and this girl was balking him in both desires.

"Good for nothing!" cried Nora. "You must na say so. You dare na say so, when G.o.d put it into your hands to save a life! Dinna ye remember the story of Abdallah, and how the golden leaf of his clover, the most precious leaf he found on earth, was the life which it was given to him to save?"

Nora stopped in her words, as in her walk, for they had reached the corner where her division headquarters stood. Dr. Cricket made no answer to her little sermon--only put out his hands in response to hers, and gave her a grip like a freemason's. "Maybe you're right after all," he said, "and I like your pluck, right or wrong. Only remember, if you want help, or think better of my offer, just drop a line to Dr. Alonzo Cricket at the Sanatorium."