CHAPTER XIV.
LEARNING AND TEACHING.
From the swoon into which she had fallen on that New Year’s Night Susan Price was slow in reviving. But it was nothing, she said, when she had at last regained consciousness; she was only stupid and tired. So the ball went on undisturbed, the dancers being only too ready to accept any theory that would not mar their enjoyment. But Sally went about her work with dry eyes and set lips. It was all over, she thought, as she rapidly served the ice-cream; Susan was struck with death, she would never live through a year that had opened so.
“An’ after all we’ve went through together,” thought Sally, “to die jest as things is growin’ brighter. Well, the Lord knows best, and she’ll be took care of up there; but how I am to live without her I s’pose He knows, but it’s more than I do. You, Polly,” she added aloud, “you ain’t got no call to slice that cake so thin. Give the folks the worth of their money, do. And take a sharper knife to it, for a good half goes in crumbs, and I despise crumbs. They are jest clear sinful waste, specially cake crumbs, that can’t even be fed to the birds.”
“I’ll eat ‘em,” said Heinz Schaefer, who had, with several other boys of his age, volunteered as waiters for the new caterer.
“You carry that coffee straight, without spillin’ none of it, and we’ll talk about cake afterwards,” answered Sally severely. “Polly,” she continued, “seems to me we’ll come out pretty fair on expenses to-night; and by the next ball we’ll be makin’ our own ices, and do even better. Run now for just a minute and see how your Aunt Susan is, that’s a good girl. Laws! what a thing Providence is, to be sure. To think Dr. Richards should be so ill just at this minute! But there!” she thought within herself a moment later, “what call have I got to be talkin’ about Providence like that? The angel Gabriel himself couldn’t do her no good ef she’s struck with death.”
A day or two after this, Susan was sitting alone in the bedroom which was shared by all three. It was scarcely a luxurious apartment; but there was a rag carpet on the floor and a fire in the little grate, which was more like luxury than any of Susan’s surroundings for many years. There were patchwork cushions, too, lining the great wooden rocker that gave so grateful a support to her tired frame; her calico dress was clean and whole, and a soft, warm shawl was folded round the thin shoulders. Yet there was no sign of pleasure in Susan’s face, no look of basking in creature comforts; she was very white and worn, and from time to time a large tear escaped from under her closed eyelid, and wandered down over the withered cheek.
A little hand fumbling at the lock, the sound of small feet upon the floor, made her brush away these tokens of inward disturbance, and turn with a smile to greet Louis and his friend and accompanying shadow, George, the uninteresting.
“Aunt Susan, we’ve come to amuse you a little,” said Louis half timidly; for there was something beyond his comprehension in the smile on that white face.
“I’ve come to jest that,” said Susan quietly, without a shadow of bitterness; “not as I ever was much to brag about, specially compared with Sally; but now I ain’t even fit to amuse a child, he has to amuse me.”
Louis seated himself cross-legged on the floor at her feet, George imitating him to the letter, and looked up gravely into her face. “My papa says,” he continued, “that he hopes you are better, and if you could take a little walk it would do you good.”
“Nothin’ won’t ever do me no good no more, Louis, not in this world.”
“And Aunt Sally says,” continued the boy, so anxious for the accurate transmission of his message as to pass by this remark, “Aunt Sally says, if you feel strong enough, you could take a walk with me and George, and if you don’t, we can ’muse you a little bit.”
“Bless your sweet eyes,” said Susan, “I ain’t strong enough hardly to walk across this room, Louis, let alone goin’ out o’ doors.”
Louis pondered over this for a moment pitifully; it was quite incomprehensible to his childish vigor. Then, his mind reverting to his own concerns, he brought out, as most of us do, the subject which lay uppermost.
“I want to ask you, Aunt Susan, how do boys learn to read?”
Susan laughed. “Same way girls do, I s’pose,” she said. “I learned out of a spellin’-book. But you must learn your letters first.”
“What’s letters?” asked the child.
Susan lifted the large Bible that lay on the table beside her,—a treasure inherited from their mother, to which the sisters had clung all through their days of destitution. It opened of itself at the eleventh chapter of Isaiah.
“That’s a letter,” said Susan, pointing to the large capital that headed the chapter; “that’s A, and A stands for Anna.”
“Does it, really?” cried Louis, while George grinned delightedly, and pressed nearer to see for himself. “There’s another A,” he went on, glancing down the page, “and another, and—oh, lots of ‘em! What stands for George?”
It took some little while to find a G, and L, for Louis was even more difficult; but by dinner-time the child had learned the initials of most of his acquaintances, and Susan’s eyes were bright with pleasurable excitement.
“Why do you want to read so bad, all of a sudden, Louis?” she asked, during the course of the lesson.
“’Cause Freddy’s papa is sick, and his mamma ain’t got time to read ’bout the Christ-child to him,” said Louis. “And if I learned, then I could, you know, Aunt Susan.”
“I guess Freddy’s papa will be either well or dead before you learn to read,” said Susan thoughtfully; “but you can try, anyway. When was you there?”
“Yesterday. I’m goin’ again after dinner. Mrs. Richards says I ’muse Freddy and Miss Pinkie; and I ’muse you, too, don’t I, Aunt Susan?”
“You’re a real little Christ-child yourself,” said Susan fondly.
Louis’ little face beamed with quick pleasure. “I didn’t know I could be a Christ-child ’cept at Christmas,” he said.
“You can be a Christ-child any time, all the year round,” replied Susan earnestly; “whenever you make any one good or happy, Louis, that is being like Him.”
“Did He make everybody happy?” asked the child rather doubtfully, perhaps remembering the gaunt forms in his Christmas picture, for he added, “Some of their bones stick out awful.”
“Well, He ain’t never promised to make ‘em fat,” returned Susan dryly; “but as for happy—! Louis, I’ve been through a lot, and I know what I’m talkin’ about. Them that come to Him, He don’t never cast out, you remember that. He ain’t never forsook me yet, and He ain’t a-goin’ to. Ef I begin to doubt Him and fret about not bein’ of no use no more, then He sends an angel to visit with me; that’s what He does, Louis!”
“Does He really?” said George, who had listened open-mouthed to all this conversation.
“Well,” said Susan, laughing, though with the tears in her eyes, “p’raps I’d oughter said two angels; but, to tell you the truth, George, I forgot you slick and clean.”
Männerchor Hall stood about midway between Metzerott’s shop and the residence of Dr. Richards, which stood, as Mrs. Randolph had often regretfully remarked, in an old and unfashionable quarter of the town. Louis was therefore able to find his way thither alone; for, though he was but five and a half, children younger than he were left much more to their own guidance, all around him. In fact, one neighbor of the shoemaker’s, whose six-year-old daughter was nightly obliged to fetch him home from the corner saloon, had long ago prophesied that Metzerott would ruin that boy by over-care, and advised the inculcation of habits of self-reliance.
But there was no lack of self-reliance about the small figure in the fur cap and brown overcoat, with mittened hands rammed tightly into the pockets of the same, that stepped along so carefully over the icy sidewalks, and watched so keenly at the crowded crossings for a chance to get over. There was, indeed, even a tinge of self-importance; was he not the bearer of knowledge? For the idea had come to Louis that he could “’vide” the letters he had learned with Freddy, and that they could learn to read “togevver;” which plan was found to result admirably, assisted by a box of alphabetical blocks.
Learning to read was at least a quiet amusement; and Louis’ visits were found to conduce so greatly to the tranquillity necessary to Dr. Richards’s comfort as to be promoted not only by Alice, but even by Pinkie’s nurse, who had at first been inclined to consider the shoemaker’s son no fit playmate for her little charge. Yet Louis could be noisy enough with George; and was wont to storm in and out of his father’s shop in a way to rejoice his father’s heart, it was only that with Freddy, who was a cripple, and Pinkie, who was a girl, another side of his nature came into play. Besides, all of Freddy’s noisy toys had been put away,—drum, pop-gun, and toy locomotive stood together on a high shelf, with Pinkie’s beloved wheel (or feel, as she called it) leaning against the closet wall beneath it; its sharply, irritatingly, jingling little bell silent perforce. But there remained innumerable books, and the blocks before named, which were probably somewhat amazed at finding themselves considered from a literary rather than an architectural standpoint.
Among the books was a picture Bible for children, which was not without its influence upon the young minds that studied it; for, though the letter-press had only begun to wear a faint look of familiarity to their young eyes, the pictures were numerous; and most of the stories had been told or read to Freddy until he knew them by heart. Pinkie had never in her life been so good, the nurse said, as when she listened with all her eager little ears to the story of the Flood, illustrated by the toy Noah’s Ark; or personated Isaac to Louis’ sacrificial Abraham, while Freddy, aided by a pair of immense paper horns, represented the ram caught in the bushes. During Louis’ intervening absences, Pinkie was her spoilt, mischievous little self; and disputes between her and Freddy, whose spinal column predisposed him to fretfulness, and who was as unaccustomed to contradiction as Pinkie herself, were distressingly frequent; but when one o’clock brought Louis, smiling radiantly, and full of some new idea that he had picked up, or new word that he had learned from Susan Price or a street sign, and was eager to teach the others by means of Freddy’s blocks,—Pinkie’s naughtiness and wilfulness vanished like a dream, and she became the most docile little maid that ever invited the judgment of Solomon, or was slain, as Jephthah’s daughter, among the hills of Palestine.
Their favorite characters, however, were taken from the New Testament; and though nurse—a devout Romanist—averred that “it gave her a turn, to see thim childer playin’ at bein’ the blessed Mother and the dear Saviour,” she was too learned in the ways of children, and of Pinkie in particular, to risk an interruption, when Dr. Richards lay asleep and the house was holding its breath for fear of disturbing him. So the precedent was established, and after that she was powerless to interfere, except at the expense of a general mutiny.
The rôle of the Christ was always taken by Louis; why, it seemed difficult to explain, for he was never unwilling to resign to the others any character to which they specially inclined. Freddy might be Elijah, fed with cake crumbs by wingless ravens at an imaginary Cherith, or King Solomon to Pinkie’s Queen of Sheba; or Pinkie herself might choose any impersonation she liked, regardless of sex and size; from Adam or Noah, to Goliath of Gath. But, without argument or controversy, the part of the Christ invariably fell to Louis. Perhaps he cared more for it than they did; perhaps they felt it was less alien to his nature than to theirs. For indeed the thought of “being a little Christ-child himself,” which his father had half carelessly planted, and Susan Price had watered, had—whether by a Great First Cause or Fors Fortuna—been given increase.
“Would the Christ-child do that?” he sometimes asked. “How did the Christ-child do?” he would say. And in his mornings spent with George, amusing Aunt Susan, or his afternoons passed in keeping Freddy and Pinkie good and quiet, he was living out that holy Life which he had been taught to believe only a fairy-tale.
As Dr. Richards slowly grew better, and again became alive to sensations other than purely and painfully subjective,—he found some amusement in watching these amateur miracle-plays. One afternoon they were in the full tide of a new story, which he could hardly at first make out, as he lay on his couch, observing them through the open door.
Freddy sat alone in the room impersonating ten lepers, so there was little wonder his father failed to take in the situation. Then the door opened, and Louis entered, followed by all the disciples in the person of Pinkie. A blue broché shawl, belonging to nurse, with a bright gold and red border, was draped about him in a very tolerable imitation of the pictures; his head was bare, and his childish face upturned with so sweet and solemn a look that one might almost have fancied him indeed on his way to Jerusalem and Calvary. Then came the cry from Freddy, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!”
Louis stopped, and turned slowly. His whole countenance changed and softened into tenderness and pity; he stretched out one hand with a gesture full of authority.
“Go, show yourselves to the priests,” he said.
“Now dey’s gone,” cried Pinkie, who seemed inclined to add the part of Greek chorus to her other characters, “now, dey’s all well adain, and here turns one of ‘em, yunnin, yunnin fasht. Now, Feddy, you tan dowify Dod.”
But just as Freddy began obediently to clap his hands and shout, “Glory, glory,” Louis, who had stood all the while motionless, regarding him fixedly, suddenly laid that small outstretched hand on the arm of his little friend.
“Stop, Freddy,” he said, still with the same tone of strange authority, “stop, I’m going to cure you.”
Freddy looked up surprised and half frightened. Alice rose from her seat by the window, and the nurse quietly began to put by her sewing as though to be ready for any emergency, for there was something in the child’s manner that showed him to be in awful earnest.
“Freddy, arise and walk!”
The childish tones rang through the room like the notes of a silver flute; there was a pause; Dr. Richards in the next room raised himself on his elbow to see the better, Alice made one step forward, and the nurse stood quietly watching, all unconscious of the tears that followed each other silently down her cheeks. Even Pinkie was hushed with expectation, and I think no one would have been at that moment surprised if the command had been obeyed. But, alas! the two little hands upon the arms of Freddy’s chair, the helpless feet concealed by the gay, embroidered skirt, were powerless to raise or to sustain even so slight a weight as that small figure. There was an effort, a struggle perceptible but vain; then Freddy’s voice cried out, “O Louis, I can’t, I can’t! my legs aren’t strong enough,” and broke into bitter, childish weeping.
The look of authority and confident power on Louis’ face changed to incredulity, doubt, and blank hopelessness. His hand fell from Freddy’s shoulder—Freddy, who was already in his mother’s arms—and he began to unfasten the shawl draped about him.
“It’s no use,” he said quietly, his manner recalling vividly to the looker-on in the next room Karl Metzerott’s stern, self-contained grief at the bedside of his dying wife,—“It’s no use; I don’t want to be the Christ any more!”
“Den I’ll be bad,” cried Pinkie; and, suddenly lapsing into one of her naughtiest fits, she threw herself on the floor and screamed in a manner that Louis’ composure was not proof against; the tears rose to his eyes and his breast heaved.
“I think I’ll go home now,” he said with quivering lip.
“No, no, don’t ye now, alanna,” said nurse hastily, in the intervals of picking up Pinkie—who made herself very stiff indeed—from the floor, and assuring her that she should be sent up to the nursery for the rest of the day, if she cried and made her poor uncle ill again. “Don’t go yet, Louis astore, Miss Pinkie’ll never be good without ye. Stop yer cryin’, all of yez, and I’ll tell ye somethin’ now.”
“A story?” asked Pinkie, breaking off a roar in the middle, and speaking in a composed and cheerful tone.
“Not a story, darlint, but”—as Pinkie picked up her roar at the very point where she had dropped it, “somethin’ nice, very nice, that’ll make Louis play with you and Master Freddy again.”
Freddy, at this, raised his head from his mother’s shoulder, Louis dried his eyes and drew near, and Pinkie condescended to put aside her intended “badness,” pending further developments.
Alice stood erect, very white and still.
“I will leave them all to you, nurse,” she said, “though it is bitter to feel that any one but his mother can comfort my boy. But if you can make them happy again, do so; I cannot; one must say what one really believes to children, and I do not believe that—any one—could have cured Freddy any better than Louis did.”
“God help you, ma’am,” said nurse fervently. Then Alice went away into the next room, sat down beside her husband, and laid her hand in his.
“You may be wrong about one thing, dearest,” he said softly. “Harrison was talking to me to-day about a new kind of treatment he wants to try for Freddy. It won’t cure him, that is impossible; but it may help him very materially. Harrison hopes more from it than I do; but if he is even able to get about with crutches, that will be something.”
“Will it be painful?” she asked, mother-like.
“A little, perhaps; but you can bear even to see him suffer, can you not, if it will add to his happiness in the end?”
“If, yes; but hush, what is nurse telling them?”
“Sure, ye don’t think the blessed Saviour came on earth just to cure sick people, do ye?” asked the mellow Irish voice. “He did heal the lepers, of course, and He raised the dead; but what He come for, you childer, was to make people good. It was just last Sunday our praste was tellin’ us that pain is nothing at all at all, and no more is death, compared with sin. You childer can’t understand that yet; but ye know the blessed Jesus died, don’t ye? and in such pain—why, look here!” and she pulled a crucifix out of her bosom, and showed it to the children, explaining and painting so vividly the pain of such a death that Freddy was ready to cry again, and Pinkie to do battle with His murderers.
“So ye see,” continued nurse, “that He suffered pain and death too, but not sin. Nobody ever heard of His doing wrong; and, as Father McClosky said, that shows which He thought the worst of. So, though you childer can’t expect to do miracles like He did, you can help each other to be good, and that’s what He likes much better.”
“If I was dare,” said Pinkie, “I’d made yose bad mens yun avay fasht, an’ pull yose nails out and say, ‘Tum down, dear Saviour!’”
“Sure, there was onct a little bird thought that same,” said nurse, availing herself of the opening to change the subject of conversation; and she proceeded to tell them the legend of the Redbreast, to their great delight.
“But he didn’t get the nail out,” said Louis rather mournfully, as the story ended.
“No; but, sure, he got the Saviour’s blood on his breast, and wears it there to this day, and that was honor enough for him.”
“Want to shee blood on his bweast,” said Pinkie; so nurse put down her sewing, and looked for a picture of a robin, and, by the time she had succeeded, the children were eager for play again, and Freddy’s wheeled chair became the Ark of the Covenant, with Pinkie dancing before it as King David, while Louis and his mouth-harp represented all the priests and Levites.
That same night Susan Price quietly and peacefully faded out of life. She had borne sorrow and pain enough; had she helped any one to be good? It would have been hard to judge of so blank and colorless a life. She had never seemed other than a pale reflection of her sister, even her love and loyalty to whom had been too instinctive and shadow-like to appear other than a thing of course.
“I’ll try to live without you, Sue,” said Sally, looking down on the cold, placid face. “I’ll try to live without you, and, since the Lord has taken you, I s’pose I kin,—now! But when we was poor and starvin’, Sue, I couldn’t of, I know I couldn’t; and it’ll be a long day, sister, until I see you again.”
And this was Susan Price’s sole funeral oration.