CHAPTER IV
DOROTHY GAINS IN WISDOM
"Why, mother! Why--why--_mother_!" cried the astonished Dorothy, sittingup in her cot and smiling back into the happy face before her, yetwondering at its happiness and her own heartlessness, in being gladwhile her father was so ill. Then she realized that her neck was verystiff and that when she tried to turn her head it moved with a painfulwrench, so sank back again, but still gazed at Mrs. Chester with agrieved amazement.
Seeing which, the lady bent over the cot and kissed the little girl,then promptly explained:
"You needn't be troubled, dearie, this is the very best thing that couldhave happened to us. Your father tired of waiting for you, his head wasdizzy, and when he tried to walk home he fell. They hurried himhere--his uniform showed he was somebody important--and into thatemergency place. There the doctors examined him and they say, O DorothyC.! they say that there is a chance, a chance of his sometime _gettingwell_! Think of that! John may get well! All those other outsidedoctors, that he paid so much to, told him he never could. He'd justgrow worse and worse till--till he died. These don't. They say he has achance. He's to stay here and be built up on extra nourishments, forawhile, and then he's to go into the country and live. Oh! I'm thehappiest woman in Baltimore, this day! And how is my little girl? Thoughthe nurse tells me there's nothing much the matter with you, and thatyou'll be able to go home with me as soon as you have had yourbreakfast. Such a late breakfast, Dorothy C., for a schoolgirl! Luckyit's a Saturday!"
Dorothy had never seen her mother like this. At home, when trifles wentwrong, she was apt to be a bit sharp-tongued and to make lifeuncomfortable for father John and their daughter, but now, that thisreal trouble had befallen, she was so gay! For, even if there was hopethat the postman might sometime recover, was he not still helpless in ahospital? And had she forgotten that they had no money except hissalary? which would stop, of course, since he could no longer earn it.It was certainly strange; and seeing the gravity steal into the childishface which was so dear to her, mother Martha stooped above it and, nowherself wholly grave, explained:
"My dear, don't think I'm not realizing everything. But, since I've beenonce face to face with the possibility that death--_death_--was comingto our loved one and now learn that he will still live, as long as I do,maybe, I don't care about anything else. God never shuts one door but Heopens another; and we'll manage. Some way we'll manage, sweetheart, tocare for father John who has so long cared for us. Now, enough of talk.Here comes a maid with your breakfast; and see. There are your clothes,as fresh and clean as if I had laundered them myself. Maybe you shoulddress yourself before you eat. Then you are to see your father for a fewminutes; and then we'll go home to pack up."
It was long since Mrs. Chester had helped Dorothy to dress, except onsome rare holiday occasion, but she did so now, as if the girl werestill the baby she had found upon her doorstep. She, also, made suchplay of the business that the other became even more gay than herself,and chattered away of all that had befallen her, from her discovery ofthe deserted home till now.
Then came the nice breakfast, so heartily enjoyed that the nurse smiled,knowing there could be nothing seriously amiss with so hungry a patient.Afterward, a quiet walk through long corridors and spacious halls, fromwhich they caught glimpses of cots with patients in them, and passed bywheeled chairs in which convalescents were enjoying a change.
"It's so still! Does nobody ever speak out loud?" whispered Dorothy toher mother, half-afraid of her own footfalls, though she now wore a pairof felt slippers in place of the shoes she had yesterday discarded."It's the biggest, cleanest, quietest place I could even dream of!"
But Mrs. Chester did not answer, save by a nod and a finger upon lip;and so following the guide assigned them, they came to one of the openbridges connecting two of the hospital buildings, and there was fatherJohn, in a rolling chair, wearing a spotless dressing-gown, and holdingout both hands toward them, while his eyes fairly shone with delight. Anorderly, in a white uniform, was pushing the chair along the bridge,which was so wide and looked down upon such beautiful grounds that itreminded Dorothy of Bellevieu, and he stopped short at their approach.He even stepped back a few paces, the better to leave them free fortheir interview.
But if there was any emotion to be displayed at that meeting, it was notof a gloomy sort; and it was almost in his wife's very words that thepostman exclaimed:
"To think I should get impatient, lose my head, tumble down, and--upinto this fine place! Where I've heard the best of news and live like alord! Who wouldn't give his legs a rest, for a spell, if he could havesuch a chair as this to loll in while another man does his walking forhim! Well, how's the girl? Why, since when have you taken to wearingslippers so much too big for you? I should think they'd bother you inwalking as much as my limpsy feet did me."
Nothing escaped this cheery hospital patient even now, and before Mrs.Chester could interpose, Dorothy had told her own tale and how she hadbeen a hospital patient herself. How now she had been "discharged" andwas ready to go home with all her legs and arms intact, a thing she hadfeared might not be the case when she had ventured thither.
"To think I should have been so silly as to believe that poor boy! Orthat, if I had followed his wrong directions, I shouldn't have gottenhere at all. Oh! isn't it beautiful! What makes some of the women dressall in white and some in blue? When I grow up I believe I'll be ahospital nurse myself."
"Good idea. Excellent. Stick to it. See if you can make that notion lastas long as that other one about being a great artist; or, yes, the nextscheme was to write books--books that didn't 'preach' but kept folkslaughing all the way through."
"Now, father! You needn't tease, and you haven't answered, about thedifferent dresses. Do you know, already?" protested Dorothy, kissing hishand that rested on the arm of his chair.
"Oh! yes, I know. The orderly explained, for I wasn't any wiser than youbefore he did. The blue girls are 'probationers,' or under-graduates.They have to study and take care of cranky sick folks for three wholeyears before they can wear those white clothes. Think of that, littleMiss Impatience, before you decide on the business! Three years. That'sa long time to be shut up with aches and pains and groans. But a noblelife. One that needs patience; even more than the Peabody course!"
They all laughed, even Dorothy who was being teased. After any newexperience, it was her propensity immediately to desire to continue thedelightful novelty. After a visit to a famous local picture gallery, shehad returned home fully intent upon becoming an artist who should be,also, famous. To that end she had wasted any number of cheap pads andpencils, and had littered her mother's tidy rooms with "sketches"galore. When she had gone with a schoolmate to a Peabody recital, shehad been seized with the spirit of music and had almost ruined anaturally sweet voice--as well as the hearers' nerves--by aself-instructed course of training, which her teasing father hadsometimes likened to a cat concert on a roof. However, upon learningthat it required many years of steady practise and that her life must befilled with music--music alone--if she ever hoped to graduate from theInstitute, she abandoned the idea and aspired to literature.
So from one ambition to another, her almost too active mind veered; buther wise guardians allowed it free scope, believing that, soon or late,it would find the right direction and that for which nature had reallyfitted her. The greatest disappointment the postman had felt, concerningthese various experiments, was about the music. He was almostpassionately fond of it, and rarely passed even a street organ withouta brief pause to listen. Except, of course, when he had been upon hisrounds. Then he forced himself past the alluring thing, even if he hadhimself to whistle to keep it out of mind. This habit of his had gainedfor him the nickname, along his beat, of the "whistling postman"; and,had he known it, there were many regrets among those who had respondedto his whistle as promptly as to his ring of the bell that they shouldhear the cheerful sound no more.
The news of his collapse had quickly spread, for a n
ew postman wasalready on his route, and it was only at Bellevieu, where "Johnnie"would be most missed, that it was not known.
The eagle-gate was shut. Ephraim was not to drive his fat horses throughit that morning, nor for many more to come. During the night Mrs. Cecilhad been taken ill with one of her periodical bronchial attacks, ofwhich she made so light, but her physician and old Dinah so much. Tothem her life seemed invaluable; for they, better than anybody else,knew of her wide-spread yet half-hidden charities, and they would keepher safely in her room, as long as this were possible.
After a time, the invalid would take matters into her own hands andreturn to her beloved piazza; for she was the only one not frightened byher own condition, and was wont to declare:
"I shall live just as long, and have just as many aches, as the dearLord decrees. When He's through with me here He'll let me know, and allyour fussing, Dinah, won't avail. My father was ninety, my motherninety-seven when they died. We're tough old Maryland stock, not easilykilled."
Indeed, frail though Mrs. Cecil looked, it was the fragility of extremeslenderness rather than health; and it was another pride of Dinah's thather Miss Betty had still almost the figure of a girl. Occasionally, evenyet, the lady would sit to read with a board strapped across hershoulders, as she had been used when in her teens, to keep them erect;and it was her boast that she had kept her "fine shape" simply becausenever, in all her life, had she suffered whalebone or corset tointerfere with nature.
This Saturday morning, therefore, a colored boy waited beneath theeagles, to receive his mistress's mail and to prevent the ringing of thegate-bell, which might disturb her. In passing him, on her way home,Dorothy noticed the unusual circumstance and thought how much thegossip-loving dame would miss her ever-welcome "Johnnie." But she wasnow most fully engrossed by her own affairs and did not stop toenlighten him.
After leaving the hospital, Mrs. Chester and she had gone downtown toreplace the shoes and stockings so recklessly discarded the day before;Dorothy hobbling along in the felt slippers and declaring that she wouldsuffer less if she were barefooted. But her mother had answered:
"No, indeed! I'd be ashamed to be seen with such a big girl as you inthat condition. Besides, I must get some new things for John. So, whileI select the nightshirts and wrapper he needs, you go into the shoedepartment and buy for yourself."
"Oh, mother! May I? I never bought any of my clothes alone. How niceand grown-up I feel! May I get just what I like?"
"Yes. Only, at the outside, you must not pay more than two dollars forthe shoes, nor above a quarter for the stockings. I could scold you forspoiling your old ones, if I were not too thankful about your father toscold anybody."
So they parted by the elevator in the great store, and with even morethan her native enthusiasm Dorothy plunged into these new delights ofshopping. The clerk first displayed a substantial line of black shoes,as seemed most suitable to a young girl in the plainest of ginghamfrocks; but the small customer would have none of these. Said she:
"No, I don't like that kind. Please show me the very prettiest ties youhave for two dollars a pair," and she nodded her head suggestivelytoward a glass case wherein were displayed dainty slippers of varyinghues. There were also white ones among them, and Dorothy remembered thather chum, Mabel Bruce, had appeared at Sunday school the week before,wearing such, and had looked "too lovely for words." But then, ofcourse, Mabel's frock and hat were also white and her father was theplumber. When Dorothy had narrated the circumstance to father John, andhad sighed that she was "just suffering for white shoes," he had laughedand declared that:
"Plumbers were the only men rich enough to keep their daughters shodthat way!"
But she saw now that he was mistaken. These beauties which the rathersupercilious clerk was showing her didn't cost a cent more than thelimit she had been allowed. Indeed, they were even less. They weremarked a "special sale," only one dollar ninety-seven cents. Why, shewas saving three whole cents by taking them, as well as pleasingherself.
The transaction was swiftly closed. White stockings were added to thepurchase, on which, also, the shopper saved another two cents, so thatshe felt almost a millionaire as she stepped out of the shoe departmentand around to the elevator door, where she was to meet her mother. Thelady promptly arrived but had not finished her own errands; nor, in thecrowd, could she see her daughter's feet and the manner of theirclothing. She simply held out her front-door key to the girl and badeher hurry home, to put the little house in order for the coming Sabbath.
Thus Dorothy's fear that her mother might disapprove her choice wasallayed for the time being. She would not be sent back to that clerk,who had jested about the felt slippers in a manner the young shopperfelt was quite ill-bred, to ask him to exchange the white shoes forblack ones. So she stepped briskly forth, keeping her own gaze fixedadmiringly upon the snowy tips which peeped out from beneath her shortskirts, and for a time all went well. She managed to avoid collisionwith the bargain-morning shoppers all about her and she wholly failed tosee the amused faces of those who watched her.
On the whole, Dorothy C. was as sensible a girl as she was a bright one;but there's nobody perfect, and she was rather unduly vain of hershapely hands and feet. They were exceedingly small and well-formed, andthough the hands had not been spared in doing the rough tasks of life,which fall to the lot of humble bread-earners, her father John hadinsisted that his child's feet should be well cared for. He, more thanMartha, had seen in their adopted daughter traces of more aristocraticorigin than their own; and he had never forgotten the possibility thatsometime she might be reclaimed.
Usually Dorothy walked home from any downtown trip, to market orotherwise, and set out briskly to do so now. But, all at once, ahorrible pain started in the toes of her right foot! She shook the toes,angrily, as if they were to blame for the condition of things; and thusresting all her weight upon her left foot that, likewise, mutinied andsent a thrill of torture through its entire length. Did white shoesalways act that way?
She stopped short and addressed the misbehaving members in her sternesttones:
"What's the matter with you to make you hurt so? Never before has a newshoe done it; I've just put them on and walked out of the store ascomfortably as if they were old ones. Hmm! I guess it's all imagination.They aren't quite, not _quite_ so big as my old ones were, but they fitex-quis-ite-ly! Ouch!"
"Excruciatingly" would have been the better word, as Dorothy presentlyrealized; but, also, came the happy thought that she had "saved" enoughmoney on her purchases to pay her car-fare home. She knew that motherMartha would consider her extravagant to ride when she had no marketbasket to carry but--Whew! Ride she must! That pain, it began to makeher feel positively ill! Also, it rendered her entrance of the car adifficult matter; so that, instead of the light spring up the step shewas accustomed to give, she tottered like an old woman and was mostgrateful for the conductor's help as he pulled her in. She sank into thecorner seat with a look of agony on her pretty face and her aching toesthrust straight out before her, in a vain seeking for relief; nor did itadd to her composure to see the glances of others in the car follow hersto the projecting feet while a smile touched more faces than one.
Poor Dorothy never forgot her first purchase, "all alone"; and hervanity received a pretty severe lesson that day. So severe that as shefinally limped to the steps of No. 77 she sat down on the bottom one,unable to ascend them till she had removed her shoes. The misery whichfollowed this act was, at first, so overpowering that she closed hereyes, the better to endure it; and when she opened them again therestood a man before her, looking at her so sharply that she wasfrightened; and who, when she would have risen, stopped her by a gestureand a smile that were even more alarming than his stare.
"Well, what is it?" demanded the little girl, suddenly realizing that inthis broad daylight, upon an open street, nobody would dare to hurt her.
The stranger's unlovely smile deepened into a gruff laughter, as heanswered:
"Humph!
You don't appear to know me. But I know you. I know you betterthan the folks who've brought you up. I can help you to a great fortuneif you'll let me. Hey?"
"You--can? Oh! how!" cried Dorothy, springing up, and in her amazementat this statement forgetting her aching feet. "A fortune!" And that wasthe very thing that father John now needed.