The ground was covered with snow, and with the thermometer registering ten degrees below zero everything creaked, tingled, and snapped in the frosty air. A keen, cutting wind whistled down from the North and made the comfortably-housed mortal shiver with dread at thought of being exposed to its rude blast. In the little house at Idlewild the three drew around the stove and discussed, gravely apprehensive, Margaret’s dread trip to market in the morning.
“Don’t go!” exclaimed Elsie. “It will be so bitter cold that precious few will venture out to buy.”
“I wouldn’t if it were not so near Christmas, and I shall have no money for remembrance if I do not sell off the little produce we have.”
“Well, I’d rather forego a remembrance than have you frozen stiff in the act of presenting a cabbage-head to an indifferent public, while your very utterances crystallized on the frosty air and left you a touching monument to the ills of labor.”
“Let me go, sister,” exclaimed Gilbert. “I think it is time you let me bear a little hardship.”
“Indeed it is,” interposed Elsie. “You are spoiling the lad by forgetting that if he lives long enough he will be a man some time.”
“Never fear! He will live long enough to see you a sharp-tongued old maid,” ejaculated Gilbert, who occasionally winced under Elsie’s raillery.
“That doesn’t frighten me a bit! I never saw a sharp tongued old maid who didn’t have the right of way everywhere she went. Try again, Gilbert. Your picture is not half dismal enough.”
“Hush, children!” interferred Margaret, laying a hand on the hand of each. “Suppose I accept your proposition and let Gilbert take my place to-morrow!”
“Yes, and the rest of the winter,” said Gilbert earnestly. “It is too hard for you. I’ve noticed you were growing thin under it.”
“And I too,” added Elsie. “I should have said so before, but you have such a desperately calm heroism about you that it takes more than usual bravery to remonstrate with you.”
“Desperately calm is an admirable expression, Elsie,” said Margaret with a smile, “and now that you have exhibited so much bravery, I suppose there is nothing left for me but to succumb.”
“Exactly. It is refreshing to find you so docile.”
“I suspect it is because I am a coward physically. I have not much desire to stand in the front; in fact, I’d like to desert from the army of workers.”
“Margaret, I’m afraid you are going to be sick,” exclaimed Elsie, all the mischief dying out of her face.
“Nonsense, Rosebud. I never was sick in my life.”
“Everybody finds his Waterloo some time, and now, Margaret Murchison, I’m going to exert my long-reserved authority and insist that you put up that book—somehow I never see you of late without a book or a cabbage in your hand—and go to bed. You are completely tired out, I know, and there is no use in trying to make a martyr of yourself any longer.”
With gentle insistence Elsie took the book from her sister’s hand and dragged her off to bed, hovering over her with ostentatious airs of stern command that were as grateful to Margaret’s tired senses as they were amusing in the blithe-hearted girl.
Some moments later, though it was still early in the evening, the little household was wrapped in profound slumber.
Fire! Fire! shouted a belated passer-by as he ran hurriedly toward the Idlewild cottage.
Fire! Fire! first took up one voice and another, and Fire! Fire! they cried almost under the windows of the little house. No response came from the inside. “Pound on the doors!” shouted a voice.
“Maybe they are not at home,” responded another. “Pound away! wake them up! break in the door!”
Terrific blows were applied on the door, which yielded to the pressure and fell back splintered from top to bottom. Fire! Fire! yelled the foremost man of the party. Still no response from the inmates. By this time half a dozen men had gathered in the room, and were busily engaged in throwing out articles of furniture, hunting for water, and endeavoring to put out the fire, which, with the draft of the open door, was already encircling the room.
“Good God!” cried one of the men, opening a bedroom door and discovering Elsie and Margaret asleep. “Here are two women! Wake up! Wake up! The house is on fire!”
Elsie sprang up dazed and bewildered.
“On fire?” she cried as if dimly understanding. “O Meg! O Meg! wake up! We’ll burn!” and seizing Margaret by the shoulder she undertook to wake her. There was no response from Margaret, who lay like one dead.
“There ain’t no time to waste,” called the man. “Come, get up out of here,” and he shook her vigorously. So heavy a stupor was upon her she could make no reply, and the man finally lifted her by main force and called to Elsie, “Come on, girl—there ain’t no time to fool away.”
Just then arose the cry, “We can’t get a drop of water! Everything is frozen solid!”
“Let her go, boys! Throw out the things! No use trying to save her!”
At that moment Elsie appeared in the doorway. “My brother! My brother Gilbert! He’s in there!” pointing to a door that seemed barred by the flames. “Let me wake him,” and she was about to rush through the flames, clad only in her night-dress and with bare feet, when the little knot of men threw themselves in her way. One of them, axe in hand, dashed through the flames, and a moment later they heard the sound of shivering glass, while Gilbert awoke from a boy’s sound slumber on the snow outside of his room. The man with the axe followed the boy’s exit through the window, and appeared at the outer doorway a moment later. “Any one else in the house?” he asked.
“No,” said Elsie growing cooler as she realized the safety of Margaret and Gilbert. “Save the books, the organ, and the desk if everything else goes.”
“All right, but you better put for the neighbor’s. We’ll bring you some clothes and save the furniture too. Now, boys, pitch in!”
Elsie started out of the door at the word of command, and almost stumbled over Antoine on his knees in the snow. “O Elsie! O Elsie!” he cried. “I couldn’t stay in. I was so frightened. Thank God, you’re not burned!”
Elsie picked up the helpless lad in her arms and started as fast as the burden would permit her for the lad’s home. At the corner of the house she met Gilbert in his night clothes, dazed and stupid. “Come, Gilbert!” she cried, “help me take Antoine home. I can hardly carry him.”
“I want my clothes,” he shivered; “let me get my clothes.” He was just dodging into the door, when a hand seized him roughly by the shoulders and sent him flying into the snow again.
“Are you mad? The walls are just ready to fall. Get to the neighbor’s! Here, take this blanket!” and the fireman tossed the shivering boy a blanket. Elsie was barely half-way up the path leading to Antoine’s home, when she encountered Lizzette frantic with fear for Gilbert and Elsie. When she saw Elsie’s burden she snatched the lad up with a startled exclamation.
“Mon Dieu, Antoine! Que fait il? Ou va-t-il? I nevair know he leaves ze house, Elsie. Run, Elsie! Margaret ees in a faint. I no wake her! Gilbert, mon pauvre garçon! Que dire? que faire?”
Hastily along the icy way the three ran, Lizzette having taken Antoine from Elsie’s arms. They burst open the door of the little sitting-room, to find Margaret still and white on the lounge.
“Meg, darling,” cried Elsie, sinking on her knees beside her. “Oh, look up! Speak to me! What is it? Oh, somebody tell me what is the matter! She breathes—see! she moves a little! Meg, Meg, speak to me!”
Her wild importunities only caused a little tremor to run through Margaret’s frame. By this time Lizzette was at Elsie’s side with a glass of brandy. “Here, drink zis, Margaret! Non? A teaspoon, Elsie! Now zen, open her teeth! Zay are not set! C’est très-bon! She swallow? Oui! Her hands, zey are so cold! Ce n’est pas bien! Some hot cloths, Elsie. I go send for ze docteur!”
As Lizzette turned away there came a loud knocking at the door. Several men stood outside with clothing and furniture. “We have saved what we could. Where shall we store the things?”
“Oh, come in,” cried Lizzette. “I know not. I only know ze young lady ees seek. Vill not some one be so kind to get ze docteur? She faint all ze time.”
“Certainly,” exclaimed one of their number. “I’ll go at once.”
“Ze furniture!” exclaimed Lizzette, suddenly recollecting herself. “In ze little room in ze back zare, vot you can find ze place for. Ze rest in ze hennery—anywhere. I tank you, gentlemen! Zese young people so like my own eet break my heart,” and sobbing bitterly Lizzette sank into a chair.
Elsie and Gilbert, wrapped in blankets, still cowered, dumb with anguish, at Margaret’s side. Antoine lay back in his wheel chair as white as his pillows, but with eyes that glowed like caverns of light in his white face.
“It’s hard, mum,” said one of the men, as with quick glances he took in the scene, “but we’ve saved most of the stuff, and I guess the young lady will come to after a while. Pretty nearly frightened to death, I reckon.”
“This is not a faint from fright,” said the doctor half an hour later. “It is the lethargy of typhoid fever. Has she not seemed tired and languid for several days? Ah, I thought so! You could not wake her? No; it will be some time yet before she realizes her surroundings. A critical case; but not beyond cure. Now, my good madam, can you put her to bed?”
“Oui—oui, at vonce.”
Elsie and Gilbert, by this time aroused from the vague horror and stupefaction which had overtaken them, had managed to equip themselves in the various odds and ends of clothing which the men had dropped on the floor, and now sprang quickly to the aid of Lizzette. In a few moments Margaret was safely bestowed in Lizzette’s bed, and the doctor was pouring directions in Elsie’s ears.
“You are sure you are calm enough to remember instructions?” asked the doctor, intently observing her white face and darkly-circled eyes.
“I am perfectly calm, now that I have hope for my sister. She shall not suffer for want of attention.”
“Non, non,” said Lizzette excitedly. “She ees ze angel of our lives. We sall nevair leave her von moment.”
“It will be hard for you,” said the doctor sympathetically, “but her case is urgent, and depends largely upon care. I will call again to-morrow. Good-night!”
“Now for some beds,” said Lizzette, all her energy returning. “Antoine, mon garçon, venez avec moi! You sall sleep now, for ze great fear ees ovair. La fievre, eet sall be easy cure.”
With tenderest ejaculations Lizzette picked up Antoine and carried him to bed. “Le bon Dieu!” exclaimed the lad fervently as he clasped his arms around his mother’s neck.
“Oui,” said Lizzette, kissing him. “He make all sings even.”
For three weeks there was but one thought, one hope, one fear in Lizzette’s little home. Margaret’s fever was of that low, obstinate type which is all the more difficult of cure by reason of its seeming lack of violence. Day slipped into night and night into day again all unheeded by the quiet figure on the bed. She seemed neither to hear nor to see, and only responded to the care bestowed upon her as a new-born infant responds to the fulfilment of its needs. She lay like one sleeping peacefully, and seldom evinced restlessness unless this lethargy was broken by demands upon her attention. At the end of the twenty-first day there came a visible change. Her features grew drawn and sunken; her hands became more restless, now idly picking at the bedclothes and anon clutching vaguely at the air. Her breath grew hourly and hourly more irregular; now sinking almost away, and again growing labored and painful.
“Now,” said the doctor, “is the hour of trial. Keep her strength up and we shall save her. She has a magnificent physique to aid us.”
Heavily dragged the hours as the four—Lizzette, Elsie, Gilbert, and the doctor—watched Margaret’s painful struggle for life. There seemed to be so little to do to save her. It was like barbarism to sit there and watch the regular administering of the necessary stimulant, and realize that upon it, and the recuperative power in the frail body, depended hope and life. Elsie, worn as she was with watching, was nearly mad with the desire to do something worth while, to be active in rousing Margaret to recognition, and not to feel almost guilty in the passiveness with which she watched the approach of the dread crisis.
“I shall go wild with waiting, doctor. Is there nothing more I can do?” she moaned.
“Nothing, child,” he answered sympathetically. “We are doing all that can be done.”
“Waiting is such hard work.”
“For youth, yes; for old age, its time of greatest cheer. When you are silver-haired, as I am, you will have learned to wait patiently.”
“I never was patient; but God means to teach me, I see. It was Margaret who was always patient, always kind, always helpful. Dear God, we cannot live without her.”
Down upon her knees beside the doctor’s chair slipped broken-hearted Elsie, and grasping his hand she cried desolately: “Oh, may the good God strengthen you to save her, doctor! You don’t know all she has been to us, to everybody with whom she came in contact. She has been one of God’s good angels, sent by Him to make this selfish world more mindful of divine truth! He cannot mean to take her now with her work just begun. I know He will give you power to save her, and you will, you will, won’t you?”
With all of a childlike innocence and pleading she raised her tear-stained face to his.
“My dear child,” he replied, “all that I know I have so far applied to the case, and I am deeply interested in saving her. I have faith that I shall do it. Now, my little girl, it is not wise to give way to tears. You must keep up your strength to help me. The battle is only half-won when the crisis is passed.”
At that instant there was a timid knock at the middle door, which speedily opened to show Eph’s black face, as he whispered half-apologetically: “I don fotched some game, and reckon maybe I’s gwine ter heah some good news. Mammy’s out’n heah and we’s come ober ter help take cah of you’uns fo’ ter-night. Mammy says as how yer oughter hab some good strong coffee, an’ she don tol’ me ter ax yer should she make some ter hearten yer up a bit?”
“That’s right, Eph,” said the doctor, who knew Eph well. “Just tell Aunt Liza to go ahead; for that’s the very thing we need.”
“The world is full of kindness,” said the doctor when Eph’s black face had been withdrawn, “if one only knows how to strike the key-note.”
The interruption had been in the nature of a tonic; for the wave of intensified feeling subsided before the simple offer of the good-natured African. Elsie bent over Margaret’s bed with renewed faith and strength, and as the midnight hours grew slowly into early morning, she was as quick as the doctor to notice the least change in the symptoms.
“I think she is better, doctor,” she whispered half-questioningly.
“You are right,” was the answer. “She will live.”
Swiftly as an electric message went the glad news from eye to eye, and “Thank God!” welled up from anxious hearts and lifted eyes overflowing with tears.
Margaret had been convalescent two weeks before she was permitted an answer to the wonder in her eyes. It was a disjointed answer at best. No one knew how the fire had originated, why it had been impossible to make connections with the water-mains, or why they had been so deplorably incapable of action. One fact alone stood out distinct and clear: Margaret’s insensibility and the subsequent hard fight for life. Now that Margaret was recovering, the misfortune seemed to lighten. In fact, the old sunshine had come back to their faces, albeit the unpicturesque side of poverty stared them in the face. They had not as yet gone hungry, for Eph with the generosity and sympathy of his race had kept the table supplied with game; but Lizzette’s slender resources were being daily lessened. Of this, however, she gave no intimation, but cheerfully bore her increased expense and labor, thankful above all else for the boon of Margaret’s life, and the opportunity to repay a debt which it had seemed to her a life’s devotion could never obliterate. Elsie was quick to see how the slender means were being strained to their utmost, but while Margaret was still so weak and needing such careful nursing she could make no effort to earn anything to help out the scanty purse. She could only bide her time until Margaret was able to wait upon herself, and then something must be done. She and Gilbert must be bread-winners now. Gilbert, in the mean time, had gone from door to door, shovelling coal here, sweeping walks there, running occasional errands, and doing odd jobs of tinkering, in the hopeful effort to eke out the scanty income. It was a miserable pittance at best that he earned, but it bought the beef for Margaret’s tea and occasional bits of fruit to tempt the tardy appetite. If Margaret surmised the severity of the struggle, she saw no evidence of it in the serene faces about her. If the old gayety of Elsie’s laugh was a trifle subdued and Antoine’s violin had a more than usual plaintiveness, there had come a tenderer sympathy, a sweeter note of love, and a closer bond of union that were even more grateful. By tacit consent the old evenings had been resumed as Margaret’s convalescence progressed, Elsie “serene presidentess pro tem.,” as she styled herself, and Margaret an honorary member, from whom nothing was permitted except smiles and occasional applause. It was a great delight to Margaret to watch her Protean sister. How admirably the versatile little witch fitted into every niche! How beautiful she was in face and form, and more than beautiful in character! “God shield her!” was Margaret’s inward prayer. “The world is full of danger for such as she, and I must hasten to get well, rebuild the home nest, and keep the home ties strong.”
But Margaret’s recovery was very slow. It seemed as if the red blood of renewed strength would never come, and it was with a bitter heart-pang that she listened to the doctor’s statement that she would not be fitted to resume work of any kind before spring. The golden cord had been well-nigh snapped in the indomitable determination to conquer self and circumstances, and nature was taking her revenge. Gradually, sitting helpless and empty-handed in her chair, she began to notice the little evidences of desperate need which the others tried in vain to keep from her, and one morning, determined to try her strength, she crawled feebly into the kitchen to surprise them at breakfast with nothing on the table but potatoes and salt!
“We are waiting for the cook to bring in breakfast,” exclaimed Elsie, noticing the pain in Margaret’s eyes.
“O Margaret!” cried Lizzette, “zis ees too much. Here, sit down, and see what good appetite we haf. Ze pomme de terre, ze sel, bof of a superieur kind and so well served we eat and eat like ze epicure.”
The humorous twinkle in Lizzette’s eyes was lost on Margaret, for weak and disheartened she sank into a seat, bowed her head on the table, and sobbed like a child. In a second Antoine was out of his chair and his arms were around her neck.
“Don’t,” he whispered. “The potatoes are done to a turn and you will spoil them.”
The lad’s keenness had touched the right chord. To stand in the way of another’s need or pleasure, even in little things, was an ingrained abhorrence of Margaret’s nature. Instantly she raised a half-smiling face. “It is a good deal better than starving, after all,” she said.
“Vastly,” responded Elsie. “Just watch Gilbert stow ’em away! I’m not going to tell the result of my tally this morning, for fear he’ll take revenge on me. We are growing to be experts on potatoes, and can tell how they taste with our eyes shut.”
The ripple of laughter that greeted this statement chased the last tear from Margaret’s eyes.
“Hereafter,” she said resolutely, “there shall be no beef, fruit, and creams for me. I intend to become an expert too.”
Lizzette threw up her hands in protest. “Non, non, Margaret. Ze strength fail unless ze diet ees generous for you. Ze waste tissue must be repaired first. Non, non, cherie. Trust Lizzette to know ze best.”
“Well, I submit on one condition,” and Margaret threw a quick glance at Antoine’s pale face. “I must share with Antoine. He needs rebuilding as much as I do.”
“C’est vrai,” said Lizzette in a choked voice. “Il est très souffrant; but aujourdhui I make some famous potage de lapin for all, and we dine like ze empereur. Eph he bring ze lapin and say, ‘Game mighty shy somehow, Missis Minaud, but I don’t fergit Miss Margaret, nohow.’”
“Poor fellow! I am afraid he robs himself,” said Margaret sympathetically.
“If he does, other people make it up to him,” replied Elsie. “The community has had its usual call to feed him and his mother. I asked him one day when he was here with a brace of partridges if he shot enough game to support them. ‘Lawzee, missy!’ said he with a laugh that showed the whites of his eyes and the internal anatomy of a cavernous mouth, ‘not by a jugful. Dis yere game law jest doin’ a heep o’ mischuf to po’ men. I hez ter be mighty cahful.’ So, Miss Murchison, on the principle that the receiver is as bad as the thief, I mistrust you’ve been cheating your beloved country of its just dues whenever you have smacked your lips over a bit of partridge breast!”
“Let us be thankful that rabbits are not interdicted, and that Eph’s sense of kindness exceeds his respect for law.”
“‘How are the mighty fallen,’” quoted Elsie tragically. “I fully expected to see you rise in the might and majesty of insulted justice, and visit condign punishment upon poor Eph by refusing to be any longer a party to his crime.”
“Hunger is said to know no law, and while I feel inclined to forgive Eph for past sins, I shall have to try to impress upon him a fuller sense of his obligations as a law-abiding citizen.”
“A useless task, I fancy. Too many generations of dependent blood run in his veins. His liveliest sense seems to be gratitude for some little acts of kindness on your part.”
“I wonder what he did with the money he and his mother saved last summer,” said Margaret reflectively.
Elsie laughed. “I asked him one day, and he hung his head as sheepishly as a boy who is caught stealing apples. Finally after much coaxing I got the information—’Deed, missy, specs you think I’s nuffin but a po’ fool niggah; but I’s listened to you’uns playin’ music till I’s most dead, and I buyed a ’cawdion wid my part ob de cash and mammy she buyed a hat fur meetin’. I’s larned to play on it too, Missy Elsie!’ You see, Margaret, your idea of ‘culchah’ has taken deep root in unexpected soil.”
“Is Aunt Liza’s hat an outgrowth?”
“As an artistic idea I imagine it is; for more intensified reds and yellows never gleamed above a smiling black face. The poor old creature was so delighted with her ‘speriment,’ as she called it, in saving money for such an artistic triumph, that I hadn’t the heart to do more than enjoy it with her.”
“After all,” said Margaret thoughtfully, “my ‘speriment’ was not a failure, even if it missed its objective point. I have aroused ambition in their apathetic breasts. See if it does not bear good fruit.”