Kildares of Storm Part 42

Jacqueline hailed her with mingled feelings of relief and sisterly pleasure, complicated with certain misgivings as to her future freedom.

"Why, Jemmy! I thought you were going to stay with that Mrs. Lawton at least three weeks."

"Lucky I didn't," remarked her sister succinctly. "I had just got home when your telegram to mother came, telling about the accident, so of course I took charge of things. Mother wanted to come herself, but she seemed rather tired, so I made her stop at home. The doctor will be there to meet us."

Channing saw the improvised ambulance with thanksgiving. The journey back to civilization was a chapter in his experience which he had no wish to repeat....

It had started gaily enough, Channing quite comfortable in a sort of litter swung between two mules, led at a foot-pace by the versatile peddler and a silent young mountaineer, a son of their former host, Anse. The school-teacher rode with them to the foot of the mountain, to make sure of the bandages, and Jacqueline brought up the procession on her mule.

Before they started, Channing spoke a few appreciative if rather patronizing words to the school-master. "You've been awfully kind and clever about this. A surgeon could not have done better. You really ought to charge me a whopping big price, you know." He put his hand into his pocket, suggestively.

The other raised his eyebrows. "My services were not professional, Mr.

Channing. I make no charge for them. It is all part of my day's work."

"Oh, but really--" insisted the author.

"Of course if you've plenty of money, you may pay what you like," added the teacher indifferently, and went back into the schoolhouse for something he had forgotten.

Channing grinned. "Of course! I've never seen services yet, professional or otherwise, that could not be paid for. What do you think I ought to give him?"

It was to Jacqueline he spoke, but the Apostle answered: "You don't give him nothin', son. You puts what you kin in this here box for the Hospital."

He obligingly lifted down a box with a slit in it, that hung beside the schoolhouse door, bearing the inscription, "Hospital Fund." He rattled it as he did so. "It's gettin' real heavy," he commented with satisfaction. "Reck'n there must 'a' bin a lot of sick folks lately.

Teacher must be pleased."

Channing lifted his eyebrows at Jacqueline. "Do you mean to say he leaves a box of money hanging outside his door at the mercy of any pa.s.sing stranger?"

"Why not?" asked the teacher himself, reappearing.

"Very few strangers do pa.s.s, and though my neighbors have their failings, dishonesty is not one of them. Besides, it is their own money.

They have given it."

"Rather an ambitious idea of yours, isn't it, a hospital in these wilds?"

"The name is more ambitious than the idea, Mr. Channing. What I hope to build is merely another small cabin for women, on the other side of my schoolhouse, and perhaps later an isolated building for contagious cases."

"And who is to care for your patients?"

"Oh, I have plenty of a.s.sistance. Some of the women have become excellent nurses, and one or two of the boys show a distinct apt.i.tude for medicine. We shall make doctors of them yet." He broke off apologetically. "You will think that I have a partiality for hygienic matters, and perhaps I have. It is my theory that most crime is traceable to physical causes; to disease; and as most disease is the result of ignorance--" he shrugged. "You will see why I consider hygiene an important part of my school curriculum."

Channing was looking at him curiously. His manner had lost its patronage. "May I ask," he said, "whether the State finances this inst.i.tution of yours?"

"No. The nearest school supplied by the State is miles away, over roads which for part of the year are almost impa.s.sable. That is why I happened to settle here."

"Then who does finance it? Yourself?"

The teacher smiled. "It is not 'financed' at all, nor does it need to be. My pupils supply me with food and fuel and free labor, in return for which I share with them what 'book-larnin'' I happen to possess. And I wish there were more of it! What few books are needed I manage to provide. Mine is more a practical course than an academic one, you see."

Jacqueline had been listening with deep interest, her face a-glow. "And yet you think you are not a Christian!" she said softly. "Why, you are doing just such a thing as Christ might have done Himself."

"In a more up-to-date manner, I hope, young lady," shrugged the teacher.

"We have gone far in 1900 years."

Jacqueline subsided, shocked. She wished Philip were there to put this irreverent person in his place.

"Have you never," questioned Channing, "considered asking for help from outside? Rich people go in for this sort of thing a great deal nowadays.

It is quite a fas.h.i.+onable philanthropy."

"I have no acquaintance among rich people," said the other, "and I do not think my neighbors would care to accept philanthropy. They are proud."

Channing said, rather nicely, "If they are proud, they will understand that I prefer to pay for value received." He slipped into the box a bill whose denomination made the Apostle's eyes open wide.

"Fifty dollars!" he exclaimed in awe, "That's right, son--'Give up all thou hast and follow Me.' 'It is harder fer a rich man to enter into heaven than fer a camuel to go thoo the eye of a needle.' That's the way to git religion!--"

The teacher bowed, gravely. "The Woman's Ward is now an accomplished fact. Thank you, Mr. Channing."

For the first part of the journey down the mountain, the author had rather enjoyed the novel role of uncomplaining sufferer. The teacher's presence was both stimulating and rea.s.suring. After he turned back, however, with a final look at the bandages, reaction set in. The sufferer's cheerfulness relapsed into a wincing silence, broken occasionally by faint groans, when a stumble on the part of his bearers set loose all the various aches that racked his body.

These aches were the result of exhaustion rather than of his wound; but he did not know this, nor did Jacqueline. The literary imagination pictured him in the last stages of blood-poison, and groans became more frequent. He could have found no surer way of appealing to Jacqueline's tenderness. She was one of the women to whom weakness is a thing irresistible. Her moment of ugly doubt when her lover showed panic under fire had pa.s.sed instantly with a realization of his dependence upon her.

To give is the instinct of such natures, maternal in their very essence.

The fact that Channing seemed to need her had always been his chief hold on her fancy.

She walked beside him most of the way, leading her mule, so that she might hold his hand; yearning over him, suffering far more than he suffered, crooning tender words of encouragement.

"I wish," she said once, pa.s.sionately, "that you were littler, that you were small enough to carry in my arms, so that _nothing_ could hurt you!"--a sentiment which drew a glance of sympathy from even the stolid young mountaineer at the mule's head, and which set old Brother Bates to thinking wistfully of the long, long road that lay between him and the ministrations of his wife, Sally.

But the author was too far gone in anxiety and bone-weariness to care to linger just then in any primrose path of dalliance. He even wished heartily, if inaudibly, that the girl would be quiet and leave him alone.

Therefore, the final sight of Jemima and her business-like ambulance was a most welcome one.

He demurred politely when he heard where he was to be taken. "I ought not to impose on your mother's hospitality! Couldn't you get me to Farwell's house?"

"And who would take care of you there--men-servants? Nonsense!" said Jemima, briskly. "Mother wouldn't hear of it, and neither would I. Don't talk now. Just drink your coffee." (She had brought it hot in a thermos bottle.) "And thank your stars you weren't killed outright in those wild mountains. What an expedition!--f.e.c.kless Jacky, that dreamer Philip, and a mad peddler! It never would have happened if I'd been at home.--Get up in front with the driver, Jack."

But this usurpation of her rights and privileges was more than the younger one could bear.

"f.e.c.kless I may be, Jemmy Kildare," she cried hotly, "but it was me who defended Mr. Channing from bears and things, me who helped with the operation, me who brought him home all by myself! And it's me he wants now--don't you, dear? Sit up in front yourself, smarty!"

Jemima obeyed, lifting astonished eyebrows. All the way to Storm her eyebrows fluttered up and down like flags in a gale of wind. She listened with straining ears to certain whisperings behind her; to certain silences more pregnant than whispering.

"So-o!" she thought. "_That's_ what the child is up to! Calling him 'dear!' _That's_ why she wouldn't go visiting.--Have mother and I been blind?"

CHAPTER x.x.xI

Channing began to be aware, despite the hospitality and comfort which were provided for him in overflowing measure, that he was seeing very little of Jacqueline under her mother's roof. In the ten days he had been there they had managed hardly more than as many minutes alone together. It was as if the entire household were entered into a coalition against them.