Caleb’s door was unlocked. The dog came out of the shed evincing no desire to bark or bite. The kitchen was empty, and—she thanked the Lord silently, as she gave a hasty glance about—not as dreadful as she had anticipated. Untidy beyond words, bare, dreary, cheerless, but not repulsively dirty. She stole softly through the lower part of the house, and then with a beating heart went up the uncarpeted stairs. At the head was an open door that showed her all she expected and feared to find. The sun streamed in at the dusty, uncurtained window over the motionless body of Caleb Kimball, who lay in a strange, deep sleep, unconscious, on the bed. His hair was raven black against the pillow and the lashes on his cheeks looked more ’n a yard long, Amanda told Susan Benson. (She afterward confessed that this was a slight exaggeration due to extreme excitement.) She spoke his name three times, but he did not stir. She must get the doctor and send for William Benson, that was clear; but first she must try her hand at improving the immediate situation.
Stealing downstairs she tied on her apron and lighted a fire in the kitchen stove, with the view of making things respectable before gossipy neighbors came in. Her sister used to say that the minute Amanda tied on her apron things began to move and take a turn for the better, and it was so now. She poured a few drops of cologne into a basin of water, and putting the towel over her arm went upstairs to Caleb’s bedside.
“I’ve done him wrong,” she thought remorsefully as she noted his decent night-clothing and bedding. “He ain’t lost his self-respect in all these years, and every soul in Bonny Eagle thought he was living like an animal!”
She bathed his face and throat and hands, then moistened and smoothed his hair without provoking a movement or a sound. He seemed in a profound stupor, but there was no stertorous breathing. Straightening the bedclothes and giving a hasty wipe to the tops of the pine bureau and table, she opened the window and closed the blinds. At this moment she spied one of the Thatcher boys going along the road, and ran down to the gate to ask him to send William Benson and the doctor as soon as possible.
“Tell them Miss Dalton says please to come quick; Caleb Kimball’s very sick,” she said.
“Don’t you need mother, too?” asked the boy. “She’s wanted to git into his house for years, and she’d do most anything for the chance.”
“No, thank you,” said Amanda pitilessly. “I can do everything for the present, and Mr. Benson will probably want his wife, if anybody.”
“All right,” said the boy as he started off on a dog-trot. News was rare in Bonny Eagle, and Caleb Kimball was a distinguished and interesting figure in village gossip.
Amanda Dalton had never had to hurry in her life. That was one of her crosses, for there probably never was a woman who could do more in less time. It was an hour and a half before William Benson came, and in those ninety minutes she had swept the kitchen and poured a pail or two of hot soap-suds over the floor, that may have felt a mop, but certainly had not known a scrubbing-brush for years. She tore down the fly-specked, tattered, buff shades, and washed the three windows; blackened the stove; fed the dog and horse; milked the cow; strained the milk and carried it down cellar; making three trips upstairs in the meantime to find no change in the patient. His lids stayed down as though they were weighted with lead, his long arms lay motionless on the counterpane.
Amanda’s blood coursed through her veins like lightning. Here was work to her hand; blessed, healing work for days, perhaps weeks to come. In these first moments of emotional excitement I fear she hoped it would be a long case of helpless invalidism, during which it would be her Christian duty to clean the lower part of the house and perhaps make some impression on the shed; but this tempting thought was quickly banished as she reflected that Caleb Kimball was a bachelor, and the Widow Thatcher the person marked out by a just but unsympathetic Providence for sick-nurse and housekeeper.
“She shan’t come!” thought Amanda passionately. “I’ll make the doctor ask me to take charge. William Benson shall stay here nights an’ Susan will run in now an’ then daytimes, or I’ll get little Abby Thatcher to do the rough work an’ keep me company; then her mother won’t make talk.”
“I don’t know exactly what’s the matter with the man,” confessed the doctor, when he came. “There’s a mark and a swelling on the back of his head as if he might have fallen somewhere. He hasn’t got any pulse and he’s all skin and bone. He’s starved out, I guess, and his machinery has just stopped. He wants nursing and feeding and all the things a woman can do for him. The Lord never intended men-folks to live alone!”
“If they ain’t got wit enough to find that out for themselves it ain’t likely any woman’ll take the trouble to tell ’em!” exclaimed Amanda with some spirit.
“Don’t get stuffy, Amanda! Just be a good Christian and take hold here for a few days till we see whether we’ve got to have a nurse from Portland. Man’s extremity is God’s opportunity; maybe Caleb’ll come to his senses before he gets over this sickness.”
“I wonder if he ever had any senses?” said Amanda.
“Plenty,” the doctor answered as he prepared the medicines; “but he hasn’t used them for twenty years.—I’ll come back in an hour and fetch Bill Benson with me. Then I’ll stay till I can bring Caleb back to consciousness. We shall have to get him downstairs as soon as he can be moved; it will be much easier to take care of him there.”
The details of Caleb Kimball’s illness would be such as fill a nurse’s bedside record book. The mainspring of life had been snapped and the machinery refused to move for a long time. When he recovered consciousness his solemn black eyes followed Amanda Dalton’s movements as if fascinated, but he spoke no word save a faltering phrase or two at night to William Benson.
Meantime much had been happening below-stairs, where Amanda Dalton reigned supreme, with Susan Benson and Abby Thatcher taking turns in housework or nursing. William Benson was a painter by trade, and Amanda’s ingenious idea was to persuade him to paint and paper the Kimball kitchen before Caleb was moved downstairs.
This struck William as a most extraordinary and unnecessary performance.
“Israel in Egypt!” he exclaimed. “What’s the matter with you women? I never heard o’ such goin’s-on in my life! I might lay abed a thousand years an’ nobody’d paint my premises. Let Caleb git his strength back an’ then use a little elbow grease on his own house—you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, Susan!”
“’Pends on how old the dog is, an’ what kind o’ tricks you want to teach him,” Susan replied. “It’d be a queer dog that wouldn’t take to a clean kennel, or three good meals a day ’stead o’ starvation vittles. Amanda says it may be a kind of a turnin’-point in Caleb’s life, an’ she thinks we’d ought to encourage him a little.”
“Ain’t I encouragin’ him by sleepin’ on his settin’-room lounge every night an’ givin’ him medicine every two hours by the alarm clock? I’ve got my own day’s work to do; when would I paint his kitchen, I’d like to know?”
“We thought probably you’d like to do it nights,” suggested his wife timidly.
“Saul in Tarsus! Don’t that beat the devil?” ejaculated William. “Caleb Kimball ain’t done a good day’s work for years, an’ I’m to set up nights paintin’ his kitchen!” Nevertheless the magnificent impertinence of the idea so paralyzed his will that he ended by putting on twelve single rolls of fawn-colored paper and painting the woodwork yellow to harmonize, working from eight to twelve several nights and swearing freely at his own foolishness.
By this time Amanda had made the downstairs chamber all tidy and comfortable for the patient. She had contributed a window shade and dimity curtains; Susan a braided rug and a chair cushion. The chamber (the one in which Caleb’s mother had died) opened from the kitchen and commanded an enticing view of the fresh yellow walls and shining cook-stove. On the day before Caleb’s removal Amanda sat on the foot of the bed and looked through the doorway with silent joy, going to and fro to move a bright tin dipper into plainer view or retire a drying dish-cloth to greater privacy.
Even Abby Thatcher was by this time a trifle exhilarated. She did not understand the situation very well, being of a sternly practical nature herself, but she caught the enthusiasm of the two women and scrubbed the kitchen floor faithfully every morning in order to remove the stains of years of neglect.
“You wouldn’t think your old hen ’d be such a fool, Miss Dalton,” she said; “but I kind o’ surmised the reason she’s been missin’, an’ I found her to-day in a corner o’ the haymow sittin’ on five eggs. Now, wouldn’t you s’pose at her age she’d know better than to try an’ raise chickens in October?”
“I’m afraid they’ll die if it should be a cold fall, with nobody to look after ’em; but maybe I can take ’em home to my shed an’ lend Mr. Kimball another hen.” (Amanda’s tone was motherly.) “I never like to break up a hen’s nest, somehow; it seems as if they must have feelin’s like other folks.”
“I’d take her off quicker’n scat, an’ keep takin’ her off, till she got some sense,” said Abby, with the Chinese cruelty of sixteen.
“Well, you let her be till Mr. Kimball gets well enough to ask; an’ I think, Abby, you might clean up the dooryard just a little mite this mornin’,” suggested Amanda. “If you could straighten up the fence an’ find a couple of old hinges to hang the gate with, it would kind o’ put new heart into Mr. Kimball when he’s sittin’ up an’ lookin’ out the window.”
“Why didn’t he put heart into hisself by hangin’ his own gate, before he took sick?” grumbled Abby, reducing Amanda to momentary silence by her pitiless logic.
“Why didn’t he, indeed?” echoed her heart gloomily, receiving nothing in the way of answer from her limited experience of men.
Caleb had spoken more frequently the last few days. When by the combined exertions of the Bensons and the doctor he had been brought down into his mother’s old room, Amanda closed the kitchen door, thinking one experience at a time was enough for a man in his weak and exhausted condition. William Benson couldn’t see any sense in this precaution, but he never did see much sense in what women-folks did. He wanted to show Caleb the new paint and paper immediately, and remark casually that he had done all the work while he was “night-nursin’.”
The next morning Amanda had seized a good opportunity to open the door between the two rooms, straightway retiring to the side entry to await developments. In a few moments she heard Caleb moving, and going in found him half sitting up in bed, leaning on his elbow.
“What’s the matter with the kitchen?” he asked feebly, staring with wide-open eyes at the unaccustomed prospect.
“Only fresh paint an’ paper; that’s William’s work.”
“O God, I ain’t worth it! I ain’t worth it!” he groaned as he hid his face in the pillow.
“Have you been here all the time?” he asked Amanda when she brought him his gruel later in the day.
“Yes, off an’ on, when I could get away from my own work.”
“Who found me?”
“I did. I knew by the looks somethin’ was wrong up here.”
“Somethin’ wrong, sure enough, an’ always was!” Amanda heard him mutter as he turned his face to the wall.
The next day he opened his eyes suddenly as she was passing through the room.
“Did you make that pie William Benson brought me last month?”
“What made you think I did?”
“Oh, I don’t know; it looked, an’ it tasted like one o’ yours,” he said, closing his eyes again. “If you know a woman, you can tell her pie, somehow!”
When had Caleb Kimball ever tasted any of her cooking? A mysterious remark, but everything he said sounded a trifle lightheaded.
His questions came back to her when she was waiting for William Benson at twilight that same day.
Caleb had been sleeping quietly for an hour or more. Amanda was standing at the stove stirring his arrowroot gruel. The kitchen was still.
A smothered “miaow” and the scratching of claws on wood arrested her attention, and she went hurriedly to the door.
“Tristram Dalton; what are you up here for, away from your own home?” she exclaimed.
Tristram vouchsafed no explanation of his appearance, but his demeanor spoke louder than words to Amanda’s guilty conscience, as he walked in.
“No shelter for me but the shed these days!” he seemed to say. “Instead of well-served meals, a cup of milk set here or there!”
He made the circuit of the kitchen discontentedly and finding nothing to his taste went into the adjoining room, and after walking over the full length of Caleb’s prostrate form curled himself up in a hollow at the foot of the bed.
“I’ve neglected him!” thought Amanda; “but his turn’ll come again soon enough,” and she bent her eyes on the gruel.
The blue bowl sat in the pan of hot water on the stove, and she stirred and stirred, slowly, regularly, continuously, in order that the arrowroot should be of a velvety smoothness.
The days were drawing in, and the October sun was setting very yellow, sending a flood of light over her head and shoulders. She wore her afternoon dress of alpaca, with a worked muslin collar and cuffs and a white apron tied round her trim waist. She was one of your wholesome shining women and her bright brown hair glistened like satin.
Caleb’s black eyes looked yearningly at her as she stood there all unconscious, doing one of her innumerable neighborly kindnesses for him.
She made a picture of sweet, strong, steady womanliness, although she did not know it. Caleb knew something extraordinary was going on inside of him, but under what impulse he was too puzzled and inexperienced to say.
“Amanda.”
Amanda turned sharply at the sound of his voice as she was lifting the steaming arrowroot out of the water.
“Whose cat is this?”
“Mine.—Come off that bed, Tristram!”
“Don’t disturb him; I like to have him there.—Where’s Abby Thatcher?”
“She’s gone home on an errand; she’ll be back in fifteen minutes now.”
“Where’s William?”
“It’s only five o’clock. He don’t come till six. What can I get for you? Have you had a good sleep?”
She set the gruel on the back of the stove and went in to his bedside.
“I don’t sleep much; I just lie an’ think … Amanda, … now, they’re all away, … if I get over this spell, … an’ take a year to straighten up an’ get hold o’ things like other folks, … do you think … you’d risk … marryin’ me?”
There was a moment’s dead silence; then Amanda said, turning pale: “Are you in your right mind, Caleb Kimball?”
“I am, but I don’t wonder at your askin’,” said the man humbly. “I’ve kind o’ fancied you for years; but you’ve always been way down there across the fields, out o’ reach!”
“I’m too amazed to think it out,” faltered Amanda.
“Don’t you think it out, for God’s sake, or you’ll never do it!” He caught at her hand as if it had been a life-line—her kind, smooth hand, the helpful hand with the bit of white cambric bound round a finger burned in his service.
“It was the kitchen that put the courage into me,” he went on feverishly. “I laid here an’ thought: ‘If she can make a house look so different in a week, what could she do with a man?’”
“I ain’t afraid but I could,” stammered Amanda; “if the man would help—not hinder.”
“Just try me, Amanda. I wouldn’t need a year—honest, I wouldn’t—I could show you in three months!”
Caleb’s strength was waning now. His head dropped forward and Amanda caught it on her breast. She put one arm round his shoulders to keep him from falling back, while her other hand supported his head. His cheek was wet and as she felt the tears on her palm, mutely calling to her strength, all the woman in her gathered itself together and rushed to meet the man’s need.
“If only … you could take me … now … right off,” he faltered; “before anything happens … to prevent? I’d be good to you … till the day I die!”
“I ain’t afraid to risk it, Caleb,” said Amanda. “I’ll take you now when you need me the most. We’ll just put our two forlorn houses together an’ see if we can make ’em into a home!”
Caleb gave one choking sob of content and gratitude. His hand relaxed its clasp of Amanda’s; his head dropped and he fainted.
William Benson came in just then.
“What’s the matter?” he cried, coming quickly toward the bed. “Has he had a spell? He was so much better last night I expected to see him settin’ up!”
“He’ll come to in a minute,” said Amanda. “Give me the palm-leaf fan. We’re goin’ to be married in a day or so, an’ he got kind of excited talkin’ it over.”
“Moses in the bulrushes!” ejaculated William Benson, sitting down heavily in the nearest chair.
William Benson was not a sentimental or imaginative person, and he confessed he couldn’t make head nor tail out o’ the affair; said it was the queerest an’ beatin’est weddin’ that ever took place in Bonny Eagle; didn’t know when they fixed it up, nor how, nor why, if you come to that. Amanda Dalton had never had a beau, but she was the likeliest woman in the village, spite o’ that, an’ Caleb Kimball was the onlikeliest man. Amanda was the smartest woman, an’ Caleb the laziest man. He kind o’ thought Amanda ’d married Caleb so ’t she could clean house for him; but it seemed an awful high price to pay for a job. He guessed she couldn’t bear to have his everlastin’ whiteweed seedin’ itself into her hayfield, an’ the only way she could stop it was to marry him an’ weed it out. He thought, too, that Caleb had kind o’ got int’ the habit o’ watchin’ Mandy flyin’ about down to her place. There’s nothin’ so fascinatin’ as to set still an’ see other folks work. The critter was so busy, an’ so diff’rent from him, mebbe it kind o’ tantalized him.
The Widow Thatcher was convinced that Mandy must have gone for Caleb hammer ’n’ tongs when he was too weak to hold out against her. No woman in her sober senses would paper a man’s kitchen for him unless she intended to get some use out of it herself. “We don’t know what the disciples would ’a’ done,” she said, “nor the apostles, nor the saints, nor the archangels; we only know what women-folks would ’a’ done, and there ain’t one above ground that would ’a’ cleaned Caleb Kimball’s house without she expected to live in it.”
Susan Benson had a vague instinct with regard to the real facts of the case, but even she mustered up courage to ask Amanda once how the wonderful matter came about.
Amanda looked at Mrs. Benson with some embarrassment, for she was not good at confidences.
“Susan, you an’ I’ve been brought up together, gone to school together, experienced religion an’ joined the church together, an’ I stood up with you an’ William when you was married, so ’t I’d speak out freer to you than I would to most.”
“I hope so, I’m sure.”
“Though I wouldn’t want you to repeat anything, Susan.”
“’Tain’t likely I would, Mandy.”
“Well, I’d no sooner got Caleb into a clean bed an’ a clean room an’ begun to feed him good food than I begun to like him. There’s things in human hearts that I ain’t wise enough to explain, Susan, an’ I ain’t goin’ to try. Caleb Kimball seemed to me like a man that was drownin’, all because there wa’n’t anybody near to put a hand under his chin an’ keep his head out o’ water. I didn’t suspicion he’d let me do it! I thought he’d just lie there an’ drown, but it didn’t turn out that way.”
“Well, it does kind o’ seem as if you’d gone through the woods o’ life to pick up a crooked stick at last,” sighed Susan; “though I will say, now I’ve been under Caleb Kimball’s roof, he’s an awful sight nicer man close to than he is fur off. So, take it all in all, life an’ men-folks bein’ so uncertain, an’ old age a-creepin’ on first thing you know, perhaps it’s for the best; an’ I do hope you’ll make out to be happy, Mandy.”
There was a quiver of real feeling in Susan Benson’s voice, though she made no movement to touch her friend’s hand.
“I’m goin’ to be happy!” said Amanda cheerfully. “I always did like plenty to do, an’ now I’ve got it for the rest o’ my life!”
“I only hope you can stan’ his ways, Amandy,” and Susan’s voice was still doubtful. “That’s all I’m afraid of; that you’re so diff’rent you can’t never stan’ his ways.”
“He won’t have so many ways when we’ve been married a spell,” said Amanda.