Chapter XI: The Village Doctor—his Two Patients

It was the doctor from Norwich, who left his horse tied to the fence knee deep in snow while he went up to the cabin with a pair of leathern saddle-bags swung over his arm and a riding-whip in his hand.

Mrs. Leonard met him at the door, ready with a broom to sweep the snow from his boots.

“Oh, bother: never mind the snow. What of my patients, ha? drowned or froze to death,—which?”

“They are both alive and comfortable, I reckon,” said Mrs. Leonard, with the air of one who felt conscious of deserving praise and meant to have it.

“What have you done for ’em, ha?”

“Rolled ’em in blankets before the fire at first; heated the bed with burnt sugar till it smoked again, and tucked ’em in.”

“All right, as if I’d been here myself. Pure good sense,—good sense, Mrs. Leonard. Only what on earth did you send after me for?”

“It’s best to be sure one is doing right, you know, doctor. Besides, the old man wouldn’t a been contented without you. He thinks nobody don’t know nothing that hasn’t been to college: so just step in and let me shut the door. The young lady is in the next room,—Amy is up-stairs.”

“I’ll go to her first, poor girl!” said the doctor. “I mustn’t let her suffer, whatever comes of it. If your husband hadn’t hurried on after young Arnold, I shouldn’t have known that Amy was under the mill at all. The young chap only spoke of the French girl.”

“Never mind about that jest now, doctor,” said Mrs. Leonard, quickly, while she rattled the great iron tongs about the fire, that Amy might not hear; “but just go in and see the young lady. I’ll make a mug of hot flip agin you come out.”

The doctor took his saddle-bags from behind the door, where he had placed them, and went into the inner room, talking cheerfully.

Laura had been aroused from sleep by his entrance; for there was an outbreak of cheerfulness in his voice that carried an idea of warmth with it. She looked out from among the blankets as he came in, and her eyes shone with pleasant astonishment. The grand symmetrical head,—that voice, so full of genial intelligence,—the brusque benevolence of his address, gave a glow to the heart that had hitherto rested like ice in her bosom. All unconsciously she smiled as the face beamed upon her.

“Well, my dear, and so you have had a ducking, eh! Wonder you ever got out of that bottomless pit under the saw-mill. Narrow chance,—narrow chance, I can tell you.”

“I know it,” said Laura, gratefully. “If the young lady—Miss Leonard, I mean—hadn’t been courageous as a lion and good as an angel, I must have perished!”

“Then it was Amy, my pet of pets, that got you out? Just like her,—just like her! The goodness that is, but I’d no idea she had so much strength. So little Amy saved your life, my girl! Have you thanked God for that? Will you continue to thank him all the days of your life?”

“I have only remembered to thank her as yet,” said Laura, a little disturbed. “The shock was so great, the chill so cutting, I have hardly felt the power to think till your voice awoke me.”

“Well, well, with life gratitude should come, and I dare say it will, for you seem a sensible girl, and it would have been a pity to have lost you under the ice. Cold yet, ha? give me your wrist.”

Laura drew her delicate hand out from its shelter in the blankets, and laid it in the doctor’s broad palm.

“Soft as a silk-weed pod,” he said, holding the hand in one palm while he smoothed it down with the other tenderly, as if it had been a pet dove. “Never knew what it was to work, I dare say?”

“No,” said Laura, smiling: “it is not necessary. I am only a useless, spoiled girl, doctor, with no one but my brother to love me very much.”

“And, of course, no one to control you?” said the doctor.

“Control? oh no, I shouldn’t like that,” said the girl with an impatient movement of the head.

The doctor pressed her hand in his, shook it with an anxious sort of sympathy, exclaimed once or twice, “Poor thing! poor thing!” and then began his professional part of the visit in good earnest.

“Cold yet?”

“Not exactly,—a shuddering sort of chill creeping through and through me, but not that horrible icy feel.”

“Pain?”

“Not absolute pain, but—but vague aches, as if I had been bruised.”

“Have, no doubt. Mrs. Leonard?”

“Well, doctor,” cried the good woman, coming to the bedroom with a pair of red-hot tongs in her hand, which she had just drawn from the mug of hissing flip.

“Any wormwood in the house?”

“Wormwood? Whoever heard of a house without wormwood in it, not to say catnip, pennyroyal, and wild turnip? Of course I’ve got plenty of wormwood, doctor.”

“Steep some in hot water then, and lay it all over this young lady’s chest,—put something warm to her feet. And then, my dear, go to sleep again; for that is all I can do just now.”

“But when shall I be well enough to get up, doctor?”

“Well enough? Why to-morrow, I dare say. One good ducking shouldn’t keep you in bed longer than that.”

Laura turned her cheek contentedly to the pillow and closed her eyes. The doctor laid her hand softly into the bed, as he would have returned a bird to its nest, and went out smiling benignly as he entered the outer room.

“Here,” said Mrs. Leonard, lifting a brown earthen mug foaming over with the drink she had been brewing, and bearing it towards him; “here’s a mug of flip that’ll do your heart good, doctor.”

Dr. Blake took the brown mug from her hands, looked into its depths with a smiling countenance, lifted it to his mouth and drank. Slowly the bottom of the mug rose in sight, and then with a deep, deep sigh, mellow as the wind which sweeps over an orchard of ripe apples, he returned the mug to its level, and looked into Mrs. Leonard’s face with a glance of sunny approval that went to her heart.

“Capital flip, Mrs. Leonard. There isn’t another woman in Norwich that could offer one a treat like that!”

“Supposing you take another drink,” said Mrs. Leonard, coloring with honest vanity. “I’ve got the tongs heating agin, and can have a fresh mug ready before the old man comes in.”

“Supposing I do!” said the doctor, eyeing the drink with a side glance, and shaking it gently in the mug before he lifted it to his moist lips again. “There, Mrs. Leonard, I feel like another man. Don’t forget to fill up for my friend Joshua, while I go to little Amy. A noble girl that, Mrs. Leonard,—one in a thousand,—gentle as a dove, and brave as a warrior. Some fine stuff in the young French girl yonder, but nothing to Amy! The ladder is quite safe, I suppose. Why didn’t the child stay down-stairs: there was room enough in the bed for two?”

“But Amy wanted to be alone. She didn’t quite seem to take to her,” said Mrs. Leonard, nodding her head towards the inner room.

“I understand,” cried the doctor, looking over his shoulder as he mounted the rude steps; “natural enough too.”

Amy was very ill, and shivered painfully when the doctor came to her bed. There was a sort of terror in her eyes, which reminded him of a poor little rabbit that he had seen taken from a box-trap that morning, whose soft glance was turned imploringly on its captor. It seemed as if Amy were begging him to spare her, and he laughed at the idea; for the pretty little animal, whose only fault had been a love of sweet apples, seemed to him no more innocent than the young girl.

“And so, Amy, you have been in the mill-race, like a precious, darling little dunce, have you? Why, child, it’s a miracle you ever came out. Do you know that I’ve a great mind to keep you in bed a week for it? How can you look me in the face after such work?”

“I—I couldn’t help it, doctor. It all happened before I had time to be afraid. She was sinking, you know, and, and——”

“You jumped in, like a brave girl. I wouldn’t have believed it of you, Amy Leonard.”

“Oh, if you had seen her eyes,—those great, wild eyes pleading upward, and her poor hands slipping away from the log! Indeed, indeed, I could not help it.”

“Couldn’t help it? Of course you couldn’t,—but come, come. Let’s see if you have been hurt by this crazy leap: give me your hand.”

Amy reached out her little brown hand, which the doctor took with far more tender reverence than had marked his conduct with Laura. He felt the pulse, exclaiming,

“Child, what is this? Your pulse beats like a trip-hammer. Is it fever or fright? Why, how this poor little hand shakes: don’t snatch it away yet.”

“Oh, I’m not sick; but sometimes my heart beats fast, and then, of course, the pulse rises. I only want a little sleep to be quite well, doctor. Say that to mother, or she’ll be fretting about me.”

“But you are not well. You tremble, and have fallen away: your eyes are growing large. Tell me, Amy, were you quite well before this happened?”

“Quite well; yes, I—I don’t know!”

The doctor looked at her very gravely, and shook his head, at which she shrunk away, protesting that nothing was the matter.

“This will never do,” cried the doctor. “You are worse off a great deal than the young woman down-stairs. Your mother should have kept you there.”

“No, no, I could not stay. She is strange,—that young lady I mean. I could not breathe.”

“Poor little fawn, how earnest you look! Well, well, the young lady will be able to go home in the morning, and then we will have you down-stairs, while I ransack the old saddle-bags for something that will make you strong.”

“But I am strong.”

“My fawn, you are no such thing. I must have a talk with your mother about it. You’ve been pining about something, girl-like.”

“Oh, doctor, this is cruel!” cried the poor girl, turning more and more pallid, while her eyes filled with tears.

“Cruel, indeed! I only hope everybody will be as kind.”

“But what do you wish to frighten mother for? I am well. How could I have held that young lady up in the water if I hadn’t been strong?” pleaded the poor girl, piteously.

“That’s very true,” answered the doctor, with the tone and manner of a person who yields without conviction. “To-morrow you will be down-stairs, as smart as ever.”

“Yes—yes,” she answered, eagerly.

“But I will drop in now and then as I ride by the falls, just to see how you get along.”

“Yes.” The word came very faintly from those pale lips.

“So now good-by,” he said, pleasantly. “Keep your arms under the bedclothes, and drink what I shall send you without making faces. Do you hear?”

“Yes, doctor.”

Dr. Blake went down the steps backward, and thus entered the room where Mrs. Leonard was waiting.

“Well, doctor, has she got over the fright?”

“Oh, she’ll do well enough!” answered Dr. Blake, kneeling down by his saddle-bags, and preparing to open them. “Bring me a case-knife with a narrow point. That will answer. Now a scrap of paper. Not very strong lately,—the girl I mean?”

“What? My Amy?”

“Yes, Amy. Touch of the high-po, now and then, ha?”

“Why yes,” said the kind mother, drawing close to the doctor, as he measured some powders on the point of her case-knife and folded them in tiny bits of paper. “Yes: she’s been sort of down-hearted and good-for-nothing lately; yet nothing really seems to be the matter,—sort of feeble, that’s all.”

“Oh, ailing. A little restless, over and beyond any thing else, I dare say.”

“Jes’ so, doctor.”

“Anxious and watching, as if she expected some one, or was afraid of something?”

“Yes, sort of fidgety.”

“Starts when you speak to her suddenly?”

“Yes, that’s jest it.”

“Seems ready to burst out a-crying once in a while?”

“Yes, and does it, too.”

“Especially if you speak very kindly to her?”

“That has puzzled me, doctor. She can’t seem ter bear petting as she used ter.”

“That will do,” said the doctor, giving Mrs. Leonard the medicine, and buckling the straps of his saddle-bags. “Fine young woman in there,—visiting at the Arnolds, I believe? Your daughter has been in New Haven: I suppose she saw young Arnold there?”

“Why I reckon so,—of course. Why not?”

“Why not! Indeed he’s a smart chap,—too smart for these parts,—above visiting his old friends, I dare say.”

“Nothing of the sort, doctor,” cried Mrs. Leonard, blushing in her eagerness to defend the young man. “He was up here the second night after he came home. Jest as friendly as ever.”

“To see you and Joshua?”

“Why yes—he came to see us all, I reckon.”

Dr. Blake swung the saddle-bags over his arm, and went out rather abruptly, and with a cloud on his fine features. As he trotted off through the snow, the anxious expression grew deeper on his face.

“I wonder,” he said, looking back upon the cabin, “I wonder if there has ever been a spot so remote that this one cause of heartache could not penetrate it. The child is too deep in love for any medicine of mine to bring her out, and jealous, too, poor thing. No wonder. The young scoundrel dragged out the showy French girl, and left the little one to help herself,—the hound!”

All unconsciously the doctor lashed out with his whip, which gave energy to his thought, and set his horse off into a floundering gallop that flung a storm of snow all around him. Just then he met Benedict Arnold coming back in the little cutter at a rapid pace, with his mother muffled up in the furs by his side. The doctor’s fingers tingled with their tight pressure on the whip-handle as the cutter dashed towards him.

“Stop! son, stop!” cried Mrs. Arnold, laying her hand on the reins, which her son handled with jockey-like ability. “Here is the doctor!”

Arnold drew his horse up with a sudden crash of the bells; and his mother called out, in her sweet, low voice,

“Doctor! doctor! How are they? Is there any danger?”

The doctor drew his horse close by the cutter, and without looking at Arnold addressed his mother.

“Not if they are left in peace, Mrs. Arnold; but you must not go up there now.”

“But—but they will want care, and my son is so anxious. I could hardly persuade him to stay at home long enough to change his wet clothes.”

“Anxious! what about?” cried the doctor, looking full at the young man. “Is it the French girl, with her frippery and her airs; or Amy Leonard, the poor girl whom he left to sink or swim as she could.”

“I am responsible to you neither for my actions nor my feelings, Dr. Blake,” said Arnold, insolently.

“But you will be responsible to God for this day’s work, young man, and for that of many another day that has gone before,” said the doctor, with a sternness that was almost solemn.

Arnold did not speak at once, but quick rage flamed into his eyes, and left his quivering lips pale as the snow that lay around him. He lifted the long whip, as if to lash at the doctor, but curved his hand promptly, broke into a defiant laugh, and the blow fell with stinging violence on the spirited horse attached to the cutter. The horse gave a wild leap sideways: and then the ferocious courage of the young man broke forth with brutal violence. Drawing the reins tight with one hand, he stood up, and the long lash curled and quivered like a snake around the generous beast, who reared, plunged, and fought against the strain upon his mouth till his limbs shook, and drops of blood fell from his torn lips upon the snow. Still, such was the strength of anger in the young man, that he held the animal firmly, rave and tear as he would. Mrs. Arnold grew pale in the face of this brutal strife, and now and then cried out, in a plaintive way:

“Benedict! Oh! Benedict, don’t!” which her son heeded no more than a tempest stops to hear the whispered complaint of a snow-drop.

At last the horse stood, tamed and trembling, in his tracks; then Arnold turned fiercely on the doctor, and demanded what he meant by attempting to stop them on the way.

Dr. Blake, who had been gravely watching the contest between the poor brute and the brutal man, simply replied that the strange young lady had good nursing, and was getting along well,—so well that he did not wish her disturbed, even by her friends, who could not fail to be in the way in a small house already overfull. The doctor looked at Mrs. Arnold as he spoke; and she, in her gentle way, which had a kind of sweet authority in it, said at once that it was best to return home. For the world she would not intrude herself into neighbor Leonard’s house, unless she could be of use.

This decision, gently as it was given, Arnold was obliged to respect; for his mother had yet a strong influence over his wayward nature: so, wheeling the horse, he drove sullenly back, without a word or bow for the doctor.

Mrs. Arnold looked back, and bowed two or three times, as if to atone for this rudeness,—at which the doctor muttered.

“Poor woman! unhappy mother! there is deeper sorrow for you yet.”

With these words the good man turned into a cross-road which led to another patient, ruminating, as he trotted along, upon the cases he had left behind in the log cabin.