Sweetapple Cove Part 2

CHAPTER II

_From John Grant's Diary_

Four weeks ago, this evening, I sat with Dora in that bright dining room at the Rochambeau. My description of that last meeting of ours is a rather flippant one, I fancy, but some feminine faces are improved by powder, and some men's sentiments by a veneer of a.s.sumed cheerfulness.

That cut of mine has not the slightest intention of healing by first intention; it is gaping as widely as ever, as far as I can judge. Yet I am glad I made no further effort. I suppose a man had better stop before he gets himself disliked.

Yesterday morning I came out of a dilapidated dwelling in which I had spent the whole night, and scrambled away over some rocks. When I sat down my legs were hanging over a chasm at the foot of which grandly rolling waves burst into foam, keeping up the warfare waged during a million years against our st.u.r.dy cliffs.

Rays of dulled crimson sought to penetrate, feebly, through the fog, as if the sun knew only too well how often it had been defeated in its contest against the murky vapors of this hazy land.

My meeting with Mr. Barnett on the _Rosalind_ was a most fortunate accident. The earnest little clergyman sat next to me at the table, and immediately engaged me in conversation. I gathered from him that he had been begging in the great city and had managed to collect a very few hundred dollars for his little church. He spoke most cheerfully of all that he meant to achieve with all this wealth.

"I am going to have the steeple finished," he said. "It will take but a few feet of lumber, and we still have half a keg of nails. Some day I expect to have a little reading room, and perhaps a magic lantern. I will try to give them some short lectures. I am ambitious, and hope that I am not expecting too much. We are really doing very nicely at Sweetapple Cove."

"Where is that?" I asked him.

The little parson gave me the desired geographical information and, finding me interested, began to speak of his work.

He was one of the small band of devoted men whose lives are spent on the coast, engaged in serving their fellow-men to the best of their abilities. The extent of his parish was scarcely limited by the ability of a fis.h.i.+ng boat to travel a day's journey, and he spoke very modestly of some rather narrow escapes from storm and ice.

"If we only had a doctor!" he sighed. "Mrs. Barnett and I do our best.

Things are sometimes just heartrending."

At once I manifested interest, and angled for further information. This was just the sort of place I had in mind. It appeared that the nearest doctor was more than a day's travel away, and that the population was rather too poor to afford the luxury of professional advice.

"We sometimes feel very hopeless," he told me.

"How do you reach Sweetapple Cove?" I asked him.

"There will be a little schooner in a few days," he answered.

"I am a physician," I announced, "and am looking for exactly that kind of a practice."

We were strolling on the deck at this time. Mr. Barnett turned quickly and grasped my arm.

"There is hardly a dollar there for you," he said. "No sane man would come to such a place to practice. And there is a little hards.h.i.+p in that sort of work. You don't realize it."

"I am under the impression that it is just the place for me," I told him.

"There is really good salmon fis.h.i.+ng in Sweetapple River," he began, excitedly, "and you can get caribou within a day's walk, and there are lots of trout, and..."

I could see that he was eager to find some redeeming points for Sweetapple Cove.

"Behold the tempter," I laughed.

"Dear me! Of course I did not mean to tempt you," he said, flus.h.i.+ng like a girl. "And I'm afraid you would have to live in some fisherman's house, and to furnish medicines as well as your services. Of course they might pay you something if the fis.h.i.+ng happened to be good. It sometimes is, you know."

As soon as we arrived in St. John's I made many and sundry purchases, with a proper discount for cash, and three days later we sailed out of the harbor on a tiny schooner laden with salt, barrels of flour and various other provisions. In less than forty-eight hours we arrived in Sweetapple Cove. The delighted reception I received from Mrs. Barnett, a sweet lovable woman, exalted my ideas of the value of my profession. She simply gloated over me and patted her husband on the back as if his superior genius had been the true cause of my arrival. At once she made arrangements for my living with Captain Sammy Moore, an ancient of the sea whose nice old wife accepted with tremulous pride the honor of sheltering me. The inhabitants and their offspring, the dogs and the goats, the fowls and the solitary cow, trooped about me for closer inspection, and my practice became at once established.

I have taken some formidable walks over the barrens back inland, and have angled with distinguished success. The days are becoming fairly crowded ones.

Shortly after sunrise, the day before yesterday, I was called upon to go to a little island several miles out at sea. Captain Sammy and a man called Frenchy took me out there. Their little fis.h.i.+ng smack is the cab I use for running my remoter errands. I found a man nearly dying from a bad septic wound of his right arm. I judged that he might possibly survive an amputation, but that the loss of the breadwinner's limb would have been just as bad, as far as his family was concerned, as the death of the patient. There was nothing to do but grit one's teeth and take chances. I remained with him throughout the night, and in the morning was glad to detect some slight improvement.

The keen breeze that expanded my lungs as I sat on the rocks did me a great deal of good. It rested me after the dreary vigil and presently I returned to my patient. I'm afraid that we men are poor nurses. We can keep on fighting and struggling and trying, but when we have to sit still and watch with folded arms the iron enters our souls, while the consciousness of helpless waiting is after all the bitterest thing we can contend against. Women are far more patient and enduring.

Constantly I renewed the dressings, and bathed the limb in antiseptics, and gave a few stimulating drugs. Then I would watch the man's hurried breathing and feverish pulse. But I could not remain with idle hands very long at a time, and frequently strolled out to breathe the sea-scented air, in some place well to windward of the poor little fishhouses that reeked infamously with the scattered offal of cod. A disconsolate man was trying to mend a badly frayed net and a few ragged children, gaunt and underfed, followed me about, curiously, whispering among themselves.

The sick man's wife sat most of the time, near the bed, hour after hour, a picture of intense, stolid misery. From time to time she wailed because there was no more tea. Always she hastened to obey my slightest request, clumsily, faithfully, like some humble dog to which some hard and scarcely understood task might have been given. One could see that she really had no hope. The usual way was for the men to fail to return, some day, when they went out and were caught in a bad storm, or when the ice-floes drifted out to sea, and then the women would wait, patiently, until the certainty of their bereavement had entered their souls. This one had the sad privilege of witnessing the tragedy. It was all happening in the little house of disjointed planks, and perhaps she took some comfort in the idea that she would be there at the last moment. It was easy to see, however, that she considered my efforts as some sort of rite which, at most, might comfort the dying.

Before noon, when the haze had lifted before the sweep of a north east wind, one of the children called. The mother went out, hurriedly, while I stood at the open door. About a mile away a stunning white schooner was steaming towards the entrance of Sweetapple Cove.

"I'm a-wonderin' what she be doin' here," said the woman, dully. "She ain't no s.h.i.+p of our parts. I never seen the like o' she."

There was a glinting of light cast forth by bright bra.s.ses, and I could see a red spot which appeared to indicate the presence of a woman on board, clad perhaps in a crimson cape or shawl.

We kept on staring at her for some time, as people do in forsaken places when a stranger pa.s.ses by, and we returned to the bedside.

The day stretched out its interminable length, but the night was longer still. The children had been put to bed in dark corners, after a meal of fish and hard bread. The smallest had clamored for some tea.

"There ain't no more," said the mother.

I had noticed that she had put aside a very small package of this luxury, on a high shelf.

"Why don't you give them some?" I asked. "You forget that you have a little laid aside."

"There won't be none left fer you," she answered.

I ordered her to put the kettle on the fire at once and make tea for her young ones, and bade her take some also.

"I told Sammy Moore to bring some to-morrow," I told her.

I am afraid that I dozed a good many times, that night, on the little low stool near the bed. There was not much to be done. Gradually it dawned upon me that the man was getting better. The stimulants had produced some reaction, and the hot dry skin was becoming moister. I feared it might be but a temporary improvement, and hardly dared mention it. Yet the man was no longer delirious. Several times he asked for water, and once looked at me curiously, with a faint attempt at a smile, before his head again sank down on the pillow.

Finally the sunlight came again, shortly after the smoky lamp had been extinguished, and I went out of the house, when the chill of the early morning seized me so that for a moment my teeth chattered. The woman followed me.

"He do be a dreadful long time dyin'," she said, miserably.

I suppose that I was nervous and weary with the two long nights of watching, and lost mastery over myself. To me those words sounded heartless, although now I realize they came from the depth of her woe.

"You have no right to say such things," I reproved her sharply. "I don't think he is going to die. I believe that we have saved him."

Then she sank on the ground, grasping one of my chilly hands and weeping over it. These were the first tears she had shed and I saw how grievously I had erred. As gently as I could I lifted her to her feet.

"I'm sorry I spoke so gruffly," I said. "But I really believe that we are going to pull him through, and that we shall save his arm."

At noon-time we saw the white yacht coming out of Sweetapple Cove. She was speeding away in the direction of St. John's. The weather was beginning to spoil, and at the foot of the seaward cliffs the great seas, smooth and oily, boomed with great crashes that portended a coming storm.