Chapter XXIV: Storm

FOR the space of about one minute there was silence in the kitchen; then Mrs. Morgan, senior, advanced with swift steps and stern face, and caught the trembling Nellie by the arm and whirled her into the little bedroom near at hand, and closed the door with an ominous bang. Then, presently, there followed those sounds so absolutely unendurable to refined and sensitive nerves—rapid blows, mingled with pitiful pleadings for mercy.

I have often wondered whether, if those given to the administration of that sort of punishment could be lookers-on or listeners while another dealt the blows, it would not materially change their views of the entire question. Is it possible under those circumstances to avoid feeling a loss of respect for the administrator?—to escape from the notion that he or she is submitting to a self-degradation?

The two sisters looked at each other in dire dismay.

"Poor little Nellie!" gasped Dorothy at length. "She hadn't the least idea that she was doing anything wrong. How can mother punish her?"

Louise made no answer, because there seemed to her nothing that it was safe to say.

"Oh, mamma, don't, please don't!" wailed Nellie. "I didn't mean to do anything wrong."

Then did Dorothy's courage rise to the point of action.

She went swiftly over to that closed door, pushed it open, and spoke with eager, tremulous voice:—

"Oh, mother, don't whip Nellie; I know she didn't mean to do anything wrong."

"Dorothy Morgan!" said the firm, stern voice of her mother, never colder or firmer than at that moment, "Leave this room, and close the door immediately."

And Dorothy immediately obeyed. She always obeyed her mother; but is it probable that just at that moment she respected her?

Louise leaned her head against the rain-bespattered window-pane, and looked out into the dreariness, and waited; and Dorothy got back on her perch and leaned her head against the cupboard door, and wiped a distressed tear from her face with the back of her hand, and waited. It was not that either of those misery-stricken waiters feared injury to Nellie, at least not to the physical part of her. Mrs. Morgan was not in that sense cruel. They were well aware that the punishment would not be unduly severe; but, nevertheless, there was that miserable sense of degradation. Was it possible to avoid the conclusion that the mother was angry, and was venting the pent-up irritations of the day on her defenceless child? Each wail of Nellie's sank the mother lower in the estimation of daughter and daughter-in-law: the latter, realizing and struggling with the feeling, trying to reason herself into the belief that Mrs. Morgan must know what was best for her child, and with strange inconsistency trying to determine whether she could ever respect her again; Dorothy, not conscious of the name of the miserable feelings that held her in possession, but knowing that life seemed very horrid just then. All these phases of misery occupied little room in time—one's heart works rapidly. Quiet came to the little bedroom, broken only by an occasional sob, and presently the administrator of punishment came out, closing the door after her.

"Pick up those pieces and throw them away," was her first command to Dorothy. "One would have supposed you could have done that without waiting to be told. And don't climb up there again; I will finish the work myself. If I had done it in the first place, instead of setting you at it, I would have saved myself a great deal of trouble."

"Can't they be mended?" Dorothy asked, aghast at the idea of throwing away the bits of treasured blue china.

"No, they can't. I don't want my mother's china patched up—a continual eyesore; I would rather put it out of sight."

"Poor Nellie!" said Dorothy, stooping to gather the fragments, and astonished at her own courage; "she was so eager to help."

"It was not for trying to help that she was punished," explained the mother coldly—the very tones of her voice betraying the fact that she felt the need of self-justification. "She knows very well that she has been forbidden to touch any dishes without special permission; and the fact that she forgot it only proves that she pays very little attention to commands. And you, Dorothy, are trying to help her pay less attention. I was astonished at your interference! Don't let me ever see anything of that kind again."

And then Dorothy hated the blue china pieces, and would rather throw them away than not. Still Louise lingered in the kitchen, not because the atmosphere was pleasant, but because she pitied Dorothy, who was evidently much tried still; she could not go away and leave her, perhaps to be vanquished by the tempter.

It presently transpired that Dorothy had a new and fruitful source of anxiety. The early autumn night was closing in; the rain was increasing, so were the wind and the dampness. In the kitchen, Mother Morgan herself poked the fire and added another stick, and the glow and warmth that followed were agreeable; but the bedroom door was closed, and Dorothy was almost sure that the bedroom window was open, and occasionally there came a dry little cough from the little girl shut in there, that deepened the look of anxiety on the sister's face. Her mother grew more gloomy looking as the moments passed, but Dorothy ventured yet again.

"Mother, shall I shut the bedroom window?"

"No; let the bedroom window alone."

Presently the mother descended to the cellar, and Dorothy seized the opportunity to express her anxieties.

"Nellie will catch her death in there; she must be real chilly. It is growing damper every minute, and she has a cold now. What can mother be thinking of?"

Then Louise began to give attention to the dry little cough, and to grow anxious also. Debating the question for a while as to whether she would help or hinder by speaking, she finally determined to try; so she said, in as indifferent a tone as she could assume,—

"Shall I open the bedroom door, mother? Nellie seems to be coughing."

The mother faced round on her from the cupboard, where she was still working, and these were the words she said,—

"Mrs. Lewis Morgan, can I be allowed to manage my own family, or must I give it up to you?"

Then Louise went upstairs, and shut her door and locked it, and sat down in the little rocker so lately vacated by Nellie, and gave herself up to the luxury of tears. It was not merely this event, it was a good many little events that had been piling up during many trying days; and the night was chill, and the world outside was in gloom, and Lewis was away, to be gone all night, and for two nights to come, and it seemed to the young wife as though two nights represented years, and it seemed a long time since she had seen her mother, and she was sorry for poor, little, banished Nellie—and so she cried. She had some vindictive thoughts also; she told herself that this struggle to belong to the family, and be one of them, was perfect nonsense; and she had borne it quite as long as any human being could be expected to; Lewis would insist on a separate home whenever she gave the hint; what was the use in trying to endure this sort of thing longer? Mrs. Morgan had insulted her; why should she bear it? She would not go down to supper; she would not go down again to-night; she would send word that, at least so long as her husband was absent, she would remain in her room, and not irritate the mistress of the house by her presence. She would write to her mother, and tell her just what a hateful world this was, and how disagreeable a person named "mother" could be. She would go home, would start to-morrow morning, and telegraph Lewis to take the westward train instead of the eastern, and meet her there; and they would stay until Father Morgan was willing to give them, what was her husband's right, a spot for himself. To be sure, she meant to do none of these dire things; but it was a sort of luxury to go over them in her heart, and imagine what she could do, the sensation that she could create, if she chose.

This is one of the miserable snares with which Satan trips the feet of unwary saints, leading them to feel that to luxuriate in bitter thoughts, which they really do not intend to carry out, is no harm; letting them forget that by just so much is their spirituality weakened, and their communion with Christ cut off. It was in this case but a partial victory, for Louise, presently feeling the gloom of heart too much for her to struggle under, looked about for relief, and being used to seeking it but in one place, dropped on her knees and carried the whole dreary scene to Him who bears our sorrows and carries our griefs; and when, almost an hour afterward, she answered Dorothy's summons to tea, her face was serene and her heart at rest.

Nellie was at the table, a trifle more quiet than usual—albeit she was always a meek and quiet little mouse—her face a shade paler than usual, and her eyes disposed to seek Louise's with a questioning gaze, as if she would determine whether she had been considered naughty; but when Louise answered the question by a tender, reassuring smile, the little face became radiant.

I want you to do Mother Morgan justice. She was by no means cruel intentionally; she would not have kept Nellie in the cold five minutes had her nature realized the situation. Her own blood was fairly boiling in her veins; she could not have conceived of the possibility of anybody being chilled that day. She honestly believed Dorothy to be a simpleton, and Louise to be trying to interfere with her duties as the mistress of the family. Therefore she had no self-accusing spirit with which to meet her family at the tea-table; so she was self-poised and dignified. But Louise, in her half-hour of communion in the chamber of peace, had found strength enough to bear any amount of dignity, and carried herself sweetly and helpfully through the hour.

Into the gloom of that rainy night came a guest that dispelled all the dignity, and made each member of the unfortunately constructed household feel of kin. Louise was the first to hear it, even before Dorothy, that strange, hoarse cough, which has fallen in so many a household almost like the sound of earth-clods on a coffin, and which too often has been but the forerunner of that very sound. Louise had heard it from the little sister at home often enough, and understood the signal so well that it brought her to her feet with a bound; so that when Dorothy, a few moments later, knocked hesitatingly at her door, she answered with a quick "Yes, dear," and threw it wide-open, herself nearly dressed.

"O Louise! Do you hear Nellie? Isn't she very sick?"

"She has the croup, Dorrie. I am going right down."

And Louise searched rapidly, yet with the air of one who knew what she wanted and where it was, in her trunk for a package.

Dorothy shivered.

"O Louise! What if mother doesn't think there is much the matter with her, and will not do things?"

"I wouldn't borrow trouble, dear. Your poor mother is more likely to be overwhelmed with anxiety. Come down; we can find something to do." And she sped swiftly downstairs.

Whereupon Dorothy's courage returned. She followed suit, and immediately attacked the stove, and arranged kindlings with skilled fingers, and applied her match, and lifted on the large kettle, and filled it with water; while Louise pushed boldly into the bedroom, none too soon, for the white-faced mother sorely needed help.

It was a rapid and very severe form of that terrible disease, and there were no young men to hasten for a doctor, though anxiety lent haste to the old father's fingers, and he was even then saddling a horse with what speed he could.

"Have you tried hot water?" was Louise's first question, as she hastened to raise the head of the struggling, suffering child.

"No," said Mrs. Morgan, her voice expressing an anxiety that she could not conceal. "There is no hot water; and there isn't anything; and the doctor will never get here. There is no fire."

"Yes, there is," said Louise, who already caught its brisk snapping. "Dorrie is there; we will have hot water in five minutes," and she hurried to the kitchen.

"That's right, Dorrie; just a little water, so we can have it at once; then set the other kettle on, and fill it half full, and as soon as it heats fill up. And, Dorrie, get a tub; run for blankets. But, first, where's a spoon?"

"Have you the medicine that you use?" This to the mother, for she was back again beside her.

"No," said Mrs. Morgan again in that same distressed tone; "I haven't anything."

Then Louise produced her package, and untied it with rapid fingers.

"This is what my mother uses for my little sister."

Mrs. Morgan, senior, seized the bottle, gave one glance at the label, and returned it with a brief, decisive sentence, "Give her some."

And the already secured spoon was promptly produced and the medicine dropped, none too soon, for it was growing momently harder for Nellie to swallow anything.

Don't you know just how they worked, those three women, for the next hour, over that child? If I write for those who have had no experience in such suffering, where there is such dire need of haste, and where all remedies at times are utter failures, blessed are they, although Louise blessed the past hours of experience that had given her knowledge and skill for this night. Both were needed, for Mrs. Morgan's usually cold nerves were trembling, and a terrible fear of what might be coming blanched her face, and made her limbs tremble beneath her. She gave herself unresistingly to the lead of Louise and Dorothy; for Dorothy, the moment she found something to do, sprung into action and energy, and the hot water bath was ready almost before it had seemed possible.

Nellie, in the midst of her sufferings, had strength to greet Louise's coming with a smile; and, although it was hard work to speak at all, murmured, as the face of her sister recalled the earlier events of the afternoon, "He took me."

"What does she say?" asked the mother, her voice sharpened with pain.

Louise hesitated a moment; then, struggling to keep back the tears, answered steadily, smiling on Nellie,—

"She is referring to a little conversation which she and I had this afternoon. She gave herself away to Jesus, and she is telling me that he took her.—Yes, darling; I know he did."

A sharp cry, almost as from a wounded animal, escaped the drawn lips of the mother; then she gave herself with renewed energy to the work of fighting disease.

And the clock was watched eagerly, and the drops administered at just such moments; and the bath was replenished, and the rubbing of feet and hands went on, and the compresses were changed constantly; and, just as Dorothy, with a little gasp of relief, said, "There's the doctor!" as the sound of voices was heard in the hall, Louise and her mother-in-law said, in the same breath, "She breathes easier!"

"Well," said the doctor, after the patient had been examined, and the drops from Louise's bottle looked into, and the questions had been answered, "you have really done all there was to be done, and the little woman is past the crisis for to-night; but it was a tough case, I guess. That medicine works like a charm sometimes, and sometimes it doesn't. It helps, though, where there is hot water, and speed and good judgment to supplement it."

The Morgan family were not likely to forget the experiences of that night. To each member of it they had been peculiar. No one knows, or at least can describe, the emotions which tugged at the heart of the father, as he galloped through the gloom of that night, not knowing but that the death angel, who evidently hovered near, would have gone away with his youngest born before he could get back to her. No one, perhaps, but the Searcher of hearts will ever know what the mother felt as she strained every nerve to hold back the destroyer, and yet thought she saw his grim steps approaching. Through all the swift working and swift thinking, the strongest feeling of Louise's heart had been pity for that mother. All the events of the dreary afternoon photographed themselves before her with startling distinctness. What must they be to the mother? Swiftly as she worked, and entirely as she seemed to give her mind to the needs of the hour, with every motion there went up a prayer that the Great Physician would, for the mother's sake, speak the word of healing; and presently there went up the prayer of grateful acknowledgment. Fair little Nellie, as she lay back at last, white and exhausted with her hard hours of suffering, seemed possessed with something like the same feeling of pity for the mother, but she gave it expression in a way that almost broke that mother's heart. Putting up her weak little hand as the mother bent over her, she patted tenderly the white, wrinkled cheek, and said, in the most loving and penitent of tones,—

"Dear mamma, I didn't mean to be naughty."

Then, indeed, the strain that had been upon the mother's heart, not only for that afternoon, but for days and weeks, gave way suddenly, and with the bitter cry, "O Nellie, don't!" she burst into a passion of tears.