Tap came back from Winchester, but he came alone. Doctor Clavenger had been called to Berryville to do a critical operation which the local doctor dared not undertake. Mrs. Clavenger, his wife, sent a letter to Mrs. Colbert, promising that as soon as her husband got home he would mount a fresh horse and start for Back Creek. She thought, indeed she felt sure, that he would be there by midday tomorrow. To the miller and Fairhead, who were awaiting him at Mrs. Blake’s, tomorrow seemed a long way off.
It was heart-breaking to see the children suffer, and to hear them beg for water. Their grandfather could not bear it. He went home, and digging down into the sawdust of the icehouse under his mill, he found some lumps of last year’s ice. It was going soft, maybe a little wormy, but he brought it over and let the girls hold bits of it in their mouths. He was not afraid of Doctor Brush, and he had authority as the head of his family. The ice helped them through the long afternoon.
Fairhead insisted on sitting up with the patients that night. Mrs. Blake would relieve him at four o’clock in the morning. The two had an early supper together in the kitchen. As Mrs. Blake went up the back stairs, she called down: “I’ve made a chicken broth for you, David, and left it there on the table to cool. Put some hickory sticks in the stove to hold the fire, and you can warm it up any time in the night you feel the need of it.”
Fairhead went out into the yard to get the cool air into his lungs. Sick-rooms were kept tightly closed in those days. The blue evening was dying into dusk, and silvery stars were coming out faintly over the pines on the hill. Fairhead was deeply discouraged. He believed Doctor Clavenger would know just what to do; but tomorrow might be too late.
Clavenger was everything that poor old Brush was not: intelligent, devoted to his profession — and a gentleman. He had come to practise in Frederick County by accident. While he was on the staff of a hospital in Baltimore, he fell in love with a Winchester girl who was visiting in the city. After he found that she would never consent to live anywhere but in her native town, he gave up the promise of a fine city practice and settled in Winchester. A foolish thing to do, but Clavenger was like that.
While Fairhead was walking up and down the yard, he kept an eye on the windows of Mrs. Blake’s upstairs bedroom. As soon as the candlelight shone there, it would be time for him to go to his patients. He circled the house, picked up some sticks from the wood-pile, and was about to go into the kitchen when he saw through the window something which startled him. A white figure emerged from the stairway and drifted across the indoor duskiness of the room. It was Mary, barefoot, in her nightgown, as if she were walking in her sleep. She reached the table, sank down on a wooden chair, and lifted the bowl of broth in her two hands. (She must have smelled the hot soup up in her bedroom; the stair door had been left open.) She drank slowly, resting her elbows on the table. Streaks of firelight from the stove flickered over her and over the whitewashed walls and ceiling. Fairhead knew he ought to go in and take the soup from her. But he was unable to move or to make a sound. There was something solemn in what he saw through the window, like a Communion service.
After the girl had vanished up the stairway, he still stood outside, looking into the empty room, wondering at himself. He remembered how sometimes in dreams a trivial thing took on a mysterious significance one could not explain. He might have thought he had been dreaming now, except that, when at last he went inside, he found his soup bowl empty.
Fairhead climbed the stairs slowly and went to Betty’s room. After he had washed out her throat with a clumsy thing called a swab, he got the last morsel of ice (wrapped in sacking on the window sill) and put it in her mouth. She looked up at him gratefully and tried to smile. He whispered that he would soon come back to her, took the candle, and crossed the hall to Mary’s room. He did not know what he might find there. He listened at the crack of the door; dead silence. Shading the light with his hand, he went in softly and approached the bed. Mary was lying on her side, fast asleep. Last night she had not slept at all, but tossed and begged for water. Her mother, who had sat up with her, said she was delirious and had to be held down in bed. Fairhead leaned over her; yes, the evil smell was on her breath, but anyhow he was not going to waken her to wash her throat. He went back to Betty, who liked to have him turn her pillow and sit near her.
Mary slept all night. When Mrs. Blake came in at four in the morning and held her candle before the girl’s face, she knew that she was better.
Doctor Clavenger rode up to the hitch-block about noon. He had dismounted and tied his horse before Fairhead could cross the yard to greet him. The doctor looked as fresh as if he had not been without sleep for more than thirty hours. He said the ride out had rested him, adding: “It’s beautiful country.” There was even a flush of colour in his swarthy cheeks, and as he shook hands he gave David a warm, friendly look from his hazel eyes, which in some lights were frankly green.
“I am glad to find you here, David. You will be a great help to me, as you were when Doctor Sellers had pleurisy. Now, in the first place, can you get word to the mill and ask Mr. Colbert to send over a fresh horse for me? I am hoping he can take my mare to his stable and rest her overnight. I will ride her back to town tomorrow.”
“Yes, sir. Till is in the kitchen. She will carry the message.”
“Good.” He took the young man’s arm and walked slowly toward the house. At the front door he stopped, turned round, and stood looking back at the blue slopes of the North Mountain. “How much better the line of the mountain is from here than from Mrs. Colbert’s yard!” He traced the long backbone of the ridge in the air with his finger. After taking a deep breath, he went inside.
When he greeted Mrs. Blake in the hallway, he asked very courteously for a pitcher of fresh water and two glasses; his ride, he said, had made him thirsty. David dropped the saddle-bags he was carrying and ran out to the springhouse for cold water. Doctor Clavenger thanked him and drank with evident gratification. Then he delicately waved Mrs. Blake to the stairway and followed her, carrying the pitcher and the two glasses, which she supposed were to be used for medicines. But the first thing he did was to lift Mary on his arm and hold a glass one-third full to her lips. She swallowed it eagerly and easily. He laid her down, crossed the hall, and did the same for Betty. When she choked and gurgled, he said soothingly: “That’s very good. Some of it went down; enough for this time.”
Mrs. Blake and Fairhead both stood by while he examined his patients, but he asked few questions of them. He was deliberate and at ease. He looked at the children, even at their throats, very much as he had looked at the mountain — sympathetically, almost admiringly, David thought. If Mrs. Blake spoke up to give him information about the course of their illness, he raised his hand in gentle rebuke. He talked to the children, however, while he was working over them, talked soothingly, as if he had come to make things pleasant for them. Even when they saw the swabs coming, they felt no dread. His swabs were very different from Dr. Brush’s, and he did not use sulphur and molasses. He stayed with them nearly two hours, and as he left he blew a kiss to each with: “Be good girls for me, until I come tomorrow.”
When he went downstairs, he gave Mrs. Blake and Fai............