|
Old Mrs. HarrisXIII
Mandy had to manage the house herself that day, and she was not at all sorry. There wasn`t a great deal of variety in her life, and she felt very important taking Mrs. Harris`s place, giving the children their dinner, and carrying a plate of milk toast to Mrs. Templeton. She was worried about Mrs. Harris, however, and remarked to the children at noon that she thought somebody ought to "set" with their grandma. Vickie wasn`t home for dinner. She had her father`s office to herself for the day and was making the most of it, writing a long letter to Professor Chalmers. Mr. Rosen had invited her to have dinner with him at the hotel (he boarded there when his wife was away), and that was a great honour.
When Mandy said someone ought to be with the old lady, Bert and Del offered to take turns. Adelbert went off to rake up the grass they had been cutting all morning, and Albert sat down in the play-room. It seemed to him his grandmother looked pretty sick. He watched her while Mandy gave her toast-water with whisky in it, and thought he would like to make the room look a little nicer. While Mrs. Harris lay with her eyes closed, he hung up the caps and coats lying about, and moved away the big rocking-chair that stood by the head of Grandma`s bed. There ought to be a table there, he believed, but the small tables in the house all had something on them. Upstairs, in the room where he and Adelbert and Ronald slept, there was a nice clean wooden cracker-box, on which they sat in the morning to put on their shoes and stockings. He brought this down and stood it on end at the head of Grandma`s lounge, and put a clean napkin over the top of it.
She opened her eyes and smiled at him. "Could you git me a tin of fresh water, honey?"
He went to the back porch and pumped till the water ran cold. He gave it to her in a tin cup as she had asked, but he didn`t think that was the right way. After she dropped back on the pillow, he fetched a glass tumbler from the cupboard, filled it, and set it on the table he had just manufactured. When Grandmother drew a red cotton handkerchief from under her pillow and wiped the moisture from her face, he ran upstairs again and got one of his Sunday- school handkerchiefs, linen ones, that Mrs. Rosen had given him and Del for Christmas. Having put this in Grandmother`s hand and taken away the crumpled red one, he could think of nothing else to do-- except to darken the room a little. The windows had no blinds, but flimsy cretonne curtains tied back,--not really tied, but caught back over nails driven into the sill. He loosened them and let them hang down over the bright afternoon sunlight. Then he sat down on the low sawed-off chair and gazed about, thinking that now it looked quite like a sick-room.
It was hard for a little boy to keep still. "Would you like me to read Joe`s Luck to you, Gram`ma?" he said presently.
"You might, Bertie."
He got the "boy`s book" she had been reading aloud to them, and began where she had left off. Mrs. Harris liked to hear his voice, and she liked to look at him when she opened her eyes from time to time. She did not follow the story. In her mind she was repeating a passage from the second part of Pilgrim`s Progress, which she had read aloud to the children so many times; the passage where Christiana and her band come to the arbour on the Hill of Difficulty: "Then said Mercy, how sweet is rest to them that labour."
At about four o`clock Adelbert came home, hot and sweaty from raking. He said he had got in the grass and taken it to their cow, and if Bert was reading, he guessed he`d like to listen. He dragged the wooden rocking-chair up close to Grandma`s bed and curled up in it.
Grandmother was perfectly happy. She and the twins were about the same age; they had in common all the realest and truest things. The years between them and her, it seemed to Mrs. Harris, were full of trouble and unimportant. The twins and Ronald and Hughie were important. She opened her eyes.
"Where is Hughie?" she asked.
"I guess he`s asleep. Mother took him into her bed."
"And Ronald?"
"He`s upstairs with Mandy. There ain`t nobody in the kitchen now."
"Then you might git me a fresh drink, Del."
"Yes`m, Gram`ma." He tiptoed out to the pump in his brown canvas sneakers.
When Vickie came home at five o`clock, she went to her mother`s room, but the door was locked--a thing she couldn`t remember ever happening before. She went into the playroom,--old Mrs. Harris was asleep, with one of the twins on guard, and he held up a warning finger. She went into the kitchen. Mandy was making biscuits, and Ronald was helping her to cut them out.
"What`s the matter, Mandy? Where is everybody?"
"You know your papa`s away, Miss Vickie; an` your mama`s got a headache, an` Miz` Harris has had a bad spell. Maybe I`ll just fix supper for you an` the boys in the kitchen, so you won`t all have to be runnin` through her room."
"Oh, very well," said Vickie bitterly, and she went upstairs. Wasn`t it just like them all to go and get sick, when she had now only two weeks to get ready for school, and no trunk and no clothes or anything? Nobody but Mr. Rosen seemed to take the least interest, "when my whole life hangs by a thread," she told herself fiercely. What were families for, anyway?
After supper Vickie went to her father`s office to read; she told Mandy to leave the kitchen door open, and when she got home she would go to bed without disturbing anybody. The twins ran out to play under the electric light with the neighbour boys for a little while, then slipped softly up the back stairs to their room. Mandy came to Mrs. Harris after the house was still.
"Kin I rub your legs fur you, Miz` Harris?"
"Thank you, Mandy. And you might get me a clean nightcap out of the press."
Mandy returned with it.
"Lawsie me! But your legs is cold, ma`am!"
"I expect it`s about time, Mandy," murmured the old lady. Mandy knelt on the floor and set to work with a will. It brought the sweat out on her, and at last she sat up and wiped her face with the back of her hand.
"I can`t seem to git no heat into `em, Miz` Harris. I got a hot flat-iron on the stove; I`ll wrap it in a piece of old blanket and put it to your feet. Why didn`t you have the boys tell me you was cold, pore soul?"
Mrs. Harris did not answer. She thought it was probably a cold that neither Mandy nor the flat-iron could do much with. She hadn`t nursed so many people back in Tennessee without coming to know certain signs.
After Mandy was gone, she fell to thinking of her blessings. Every night for years, when she said her prayers, she had prayed that she might never have a long sickness or be a burden. She dreaded the heart-ache and humiliation of being helpless on the hands of people who would be impatient under such a care. And now she felt certain that she was going to die tonight, without troubling anybody.
She was glad Mrs. Rosen was in Chicago. Had she been at home, she would certainly have come in, would have seen that her old neighbour was very sick, and bustled about. Her quick eye would have found out all Grandmother`s little secrets: how hard her bed was, that she had no proper place to wash, and kept her comb in her pocket; that her nightgowns were patched and darned. Mrs. Rosen would have been indignant, and that would have made Victoria cross. She didn`t have to see Mrs. Rosen again to know that Mrs. Rosen thought highly of her and admired her--yes, admired her. Those funny little pats and arch pleasantries had meant a great deal to Mrs. Harris.
It was a blessing that Mr. Templeton was away, too. Appearances had to be kept up when there was a man in the house; and he might have taken it into his head to send for the doctor, and stir everybody up. Now everything would be so peaceful. "The Lord is my shepherd" she whispered gratefully. "Yes, Lord, I always spoiled Victoria. She was so much the prettiest. But nobody won`t ever be the worse for it: Mr. Templeton will always humour her, and the children love her more than most. They`ll always be good to her; she has that way with her."
Grandma fell to remembering the old place at home: what a dashing, high-spirited girl Victoria was, and how proud she had always been of her; how she used to hear her laughing and teasing out in the lilac arbour when Hillary Templeton was courting her. Toward morning all these pleasant reflections faded out. Mrs. Harris felt that she and her bed were softly sinking, through the darkness to a deeper darkness.
Old Mrs. Harris did not really die that night, but she believed she did. Mandy found her unconscious in the morning. Then there was a great stir and bustle; Victoria, and even Vickie, were startled out of their intense self-absorption. Mrs. Harris was hastily carried out of the play-room and laid in Victoria`s bed, put into one of Victoria`s best nightgowns. Mr. Templeton was sent for, and the doctor was sent for. The inquisitive Mrs. Jackson from next door got into the house at last,--installed herself as nurse, and no one had the courage to say her nay. But Grandmother was out of it all, never knew that she was the object of so much attention and excitement. She died a little while after Mr. Templeton got home.
Thus Mrs. Harris slipped out of the Templetons` story; but Victoria and Vickie had still to go on, to follow the long road that leads through things unguessed at and unforeseeable. When they are old, they will come closer and closer to Grandma Harris. They will think a great deal about her, and remember things they never noticed; and their lot will be more or less like hers. They will regret that they heeded her so little; but they, too, will look into the eager, unseeing eyes of young people and feel themselves alone. They will say to themselves: "I was heartless, because I was young and strong and wanted things so much. But now I know."
New Brunswick, 1931
|
