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Title: The Sick-a-Bed Lady

And Also Hickory Dock, The VeryTired Girl, The Happy-Day, SomethingThat Happened in October, The AmateurLover, Heart of The City, The Pink Sash,Woman's Only Business

Author: Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

Release Date: January 3, 2011 [eBook

#34829]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1

GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BED LADY***

SICK-A-E-text prepared by Suzanne Shell and the Online Distributed

Proofreading Team

(http://www.pgdp.net)

from page images generously made

available by Internet Archive/American Libraries

Note:

Images of the original pages are available through

Internet Archive/American Libraries See

http://www.archive.org/details/sickabedlady00abborich

SICK-A-BED

LADY

"That will help you remember where your

mouth is"

THE SICK-A-BED

LADY

AND ALSOHICKORY DOCK, THE VERY TIRED

GIRL,THE HAPPY-DAY, SOMETHING

THATHAPPENED IN OCTOBER, THEAMATEUR LOVER, HEART OFTHE CITY, THE PINK SASH,WOMAN'S ONLY BUSINESS

NEW YORKTHE CENTURY CO.

1911

Copyright, 1911, by The Century Co.

Copyright, 1905, 1907, by P F Collier & Son Copyright, 1905, by J B Lippincott Company Copyright, 1906, 1907, 1908, 1909, 1910, by The Ridgway

Company Copyright, 1910, by The Success Company

Published, October, 1911

THE MEMORY OFTWO FATHERS

Something that Happened in October 161

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

"That will help you

remember where your

mouth is"

Frontispiece

facingpageWith no other object, except

The blue ocean was the

most wonderful thing of all 96Instinctively she clasped it

The four of us who

remained huddled very

close around the fire

"Oh, I wish I had a sister,"

THE SICK-A-BED

LADY

HE Sick-A-Bed Lady lived in a huge fashioned mahogany bedstead, with solidsilk sheets, and three great squashy silkpillows edged with fluffy ruffles On a

old-table beside the Sick-A-Bed Lady was atiny little, shiny little bell that tinkledexactly like silver raindrops on a goldenroof, and all around this Lady and thisBedstead and this Bell was a big, square,shadowy room with a smutty fireplace,four small paned windows, and a chintzywall-paper showered profusely with high-handled baskets of lavender flowers overwhich strange green birds hoveredlanguidly.

The Sick-A-Bed Lady, herself, was asold as twenty, but she did not look morethan fifteen with her little wistful whiteface against the creamy pillows and her

soft brown hair braided in two thickpigtails and tied with great pink bowsbehind each ear.

When the Sick-A-Bed Lady felt likesitting up high against her pillows, shecould look out across the footboardthrough her opposite window Nowthrough that opposite window was amarvelous vista—an old-fashionedgarden, millions of miles of ocean, andthen—France! And when the wind was injust the right direction there was aperfectly wonderful smell to be smelled—part of it was Cinnamon Pink and part of itwas Salt-Sea-Weed, but most of it, ofcourse, was—France There were daysand days, too, when any one with sensecould feel that the waves beat perkily

against the shore with a very strongFrench accent, and that all one's French

verbs, particularly "J'aime, Tu aimes, Il

aime," were coming home to rest What

else was there to think about in bed butfunny things like that?

It was the Old Doctor who had broughtthe Sick-A-Bed Lady to the big whitehouse at the edge of the Ocean, and placedher in the cool, quaint room with its frontwindows quizzing dreamily out to sea, andits side windows cuddled close to thecurving village street It was a long,tiresome, dangerous journey, and the Sick-A-Bed Lady in feverish fancy hadmoaned: "I shall die, I shall die, I shall

die," every step of the way, but, after all,

it was the Old Doctor who did the dying!

Just like a snap of the finger he went at theend of two weeks, and the Sick-A-BedLady rallied to the shock with a plaintive:

"Seems to me he was in an awful hurry,"

and fell back on her soft bed into days ofunconsciousness that were broken only byriotous visions day and night of an oldman rushing frantically up to a great whitethrone yelling: "One, two, three, forMyself!"

Out of this trouble the Sick-A-BedLady woke one day to find herself quitealone and quite alive She had often feltalone before, but it was a long time sinceshe had felt alive The world seemed verypleasant The flowers on the wall-paperwere still unwilted, and the green paperbirds hung airily without fatigue The

room was full of the most enticing odor ofcinnamon pinks, and by raising herself up

in bed the merest trifle she could get asmell of good salt, a smell whichsomehow you couldn't get unless you

actually saw the Ocean, but just as she

was laboriously tugging herself up anatom higher, trying to find the teeniest,weeniest sniff of France, everything wentsuddenly black and silver before her eyes,and she fell down, down, down, as much

as forty miles into Nothing At All

When she woke up again all limp andwappsy there was a Young Man's Face onthe Footboard of the bed; just an isolated,unconnected sort of face that might haveblossomed from the footboard, or mighthave been merely a mirage on the horizon

Whatever it was, though, it kept staring ather fixedly, balancing itself all the whilemost perfectly on its chin It was a funnysight, and while the Sick-A-Bed Lady waspuckering her forehead trying to think outwhat it all meant the Young Man's Face

smiled at her and said "Boo!" and the

Sick-A-Bed Lady tiptilted her chin weakly

and said—"Boo yourself!" Then the

Sick-A-Bed Lady fell into her fearful stuporagain, and the Young Man's Face ran home

as fast as it could to tell its Best Friendthat the Sick-A-Bed Lady had spoken herfirst sane word for five weeks He thought

it was a splendid victory, but when hetried to explain it to his friend, he found

that "Boo yourself!" seemed a fatuous

proof of so startling a truth, and wasobliged to compromise with considerable

dignity on the statement: "Well, of course,

it wasn't so much what she said as the way

she said it."

For days and days that followed, theSick-A-Bed Lady was conscious ofnothing except the Young Man's Face onthe footboard of the bed It never seemed

to wabble, it never seemed to waver, butjust stayed there perfectly balanced on thepoint of its chin, watching her gravelywith its blue, blue eyes There was a cleft

in its chin, too, that you could havestroked with your finger if—you couldhave Of course, there were some timeswhen she went to sleep, and some times

when she just seemed to go out like a

candle, but whenever she came back from

anything there was always the Young

Man's Face for comfort.

The Sick-A-Bed Lady was so sick thatshe thought all over her body instead of inher head, so that it was very hard toconcentrate any particular thought in hermouth, but at last one afternoon with amighty struggle she opened her half-closedeyes, looked right in the Young Man'sFace and said: "Got any arms?"

The Young Man's Face noddedperfectly politely, and smiled as he raisedtwo strong, lean hands to the edge of thefootboard, and hunched his shouldersobligingly across the sky line

"How do you feel?" he asked verygently

Then the Sick-A-Bed Lady knew atonce that it was the Young Doctor, andwondered why she hadn't thought of itbefore.

"Am I pretty sick?" she whispereddeferentially

"Yes—I think you are very pretty—

sick," said the Young Doctor, and hetowered up to a terrible, leggy height andlaughed joyously, though there was almost

no sound to his laugh Then he went over

to the window and began to jingle smallbottles, and the Sick-A-Bed Lady lay andwatched him furtively and thought abouthis compliment, and wondered why whenshe wanted to smile and say "Thank you"her mouth should shut tight and her leftfoot wiggle, instead

When the Young Doctor had finishedjingling bottles, he came and sat downbeside her and fed her something wet out

of a cool spoon, which she swallowedand swallowed and swallowed, feelingall the while like a very sick brown-eyeddog that couldn't wag anything but the far-away tip of its tail When she got throughswallowing she wanted very much tostand up and make a low bow, but insteadshe touched the warm little end of hertongue to the Young Doctor's hand Afterthat, though, for quite a few minutes herbrain felt clean and tidy, and she talkedquite pleasantly to the Young Doctor:

"Have you got any bones in your arms?"she asked wistfully

"Why, yes, indeed," said the Young

Doctor, "rather more than the usualnumber of bones Why?"

"I'd give my life," said the Sick-A-BedLady, "if there were bones in my silkypillows." She faltered a moment and thencontinued bravely: "Would you mind—holding me up stiff and strong for asecond? There's no bottom to my bed,there's no top to my brain, and if I can'tfind a hard edge to something I shalltopple right off the earth So would you

mind holding me like an edge for a

moment—that is—if there's no lady tocare? I'm not a little girl," she addedconscientiously—"I'm twenty years old."

So the Young Doctor slipped overgently behind her and lifted her limp form

up into the lean, solid curve of his arm and

shoulder It wasn't exactly a sumptuouscorner like silken pillows, but it felt asglad as the first rock you strike on a life-swim for shore, and the Sick-A-Bed Ladydropped right off to sleep sitting boltupright, wondering vaguely how shehappened to have two hearts, one thatfluttered in the usual place, and one thatpounded rather noisily in her backsomewhere between her shoulder-blades.

On his way home that day the YoungDoctor stopped for a long while at hisBest Friend's house to discuss somecurious features of the Case

"Anything new turned up?" asked theBest Friend

"Nothing," said the Young Doctor,

pulling moodily at his cigar.

"Well, it certainly beats me,"

exclaimed the Best Friend, "how any headed, shrewd old fellow like the OldDoctor could have brought a raving feverpatient here and installed her in his ownhouse under that clumsy Old Housekeeperwithout once mentioning to any one whothe girl was, or where to communicatewith her people Great Heavens, the OldDoctor knew what a poor 'risk' he was

long-He knew absolutely that that heart of hiswould burst some day like a firecracker."

"The Old Doctor never was verycommunicative," mused the Young Doctor,with a slight grimace that might havesuggested professional memories notstrictly pleasant "But I'll surely never

forget him as long as ether exists," headded whimsically "Why, you'd havethought the old chap invented ether—you'dhave thought he ate it, drank it, bathed in

it I hope the smell of my profession will

never be the only part of it I'm willing toshare."

"That's all right," said the Best Friend,

"that's all right If he wanted to go offevery Winter to the States and work in theHospitals, and come back every Springsmelling like a Surgical Ward, with a lot

of wonderful information which he kept tohimself, why, that was his own business

He was a plucky old fellow anyway to go

at all But what I'm kicking at is hiswicked carelessness in bringing this younggirl here in a critical illness without taking

a single soul into his confidence Herehe's dead and buried for weeks, and theGirl's people are probably worryingthemselves crazy about not hearing fromher But why don't they write? Why inthunder don't they write?"

"Don't ask me!" cried the YoungDoctor nervously "I don't know! I don'tknow anything about it Why, I don't evenknow whether the Girl is going to live Idon't even know whether she'll ever besane again How can I stop to quiz abouther name and her home, when, perhaps,her whole life and reason rests in myfoolish hands that have never doneanything yet much more vital than usher aperfectly willing baby into life, or tinkerwith croup in some chunky throat? There's

only one thing in the case that I'm sure of,and that is that she doesn't know herselfwho she is, and the effort to remembermight snap her utterly She's just a thread.

"I have an idea—" the Young Doctorshook his shoulders as though to shake offhis more somber thoughts—"I have anidea that the Old Doctor rather counted onbuilding up a sort of informal sanitariumhere He was daft, you know, about theclimate on this particular stretch of coast.You remember that he brought home someathlete last Summer—pretty bad case ofbreakdown, too, but the Old Doctor curedhim like a magician; and the Spring beforethat there was a little lad with epilepsy,wasn't there? The Old Doctor let me look

at him once just to tease me And before

that—I can count up half-a-dozen people

of that sort, people whom you would havesaid were 'gone-ers,' too Oh, the OldDoctor would have brought home a deadman to cure if any one had 'stumped' him.And I guess this present case was a'stump' fast enough Why, she was raginglike a prairie fire when they brought herhere No other man would have dared totravel And they put her down in a greatsilk bed like a fairy-story, and the OldDoctor sat and watched her night and daystudying her like a fiend, and she gotbetter after a while: not keen, you know,but funny like a child, cooing and crooningover her pretty room, and tickled to pieceswith the ocean, and vain as a kitten overher pink ribbons—the Old Doctorwouldn't let them cut her hair—and

everything went on like that, till in ahorrid flash the Old Doctor dropped deadthat morning at the breakfast table, thelittle girl went loony again, and everypossible clew to her identity was wipedoff the earth!"

"No baggage?" suggested the BestFriend

"Why, of course, there was baggage!"the Young Doctor exclaimed, "a greattrunk Haven't the Housekeeper and Irummaged and rummaged it till I can feelthe tickle of lace across my wrists even in

my sleep? Why, man alive! she's a rich

girl There never were such clothes in ourtown before She's no free hospital pauperwhom the Old Doctor obligingly took offtheir hands That is, I don't see how she

can be!

"Oh, well," he continued bitterly,

"everybody in town calls her just the A-Bed Lady, and pretty soon it will be theDeath-Bed Lady, and then it will be theDead-and-Buried Lady—and that's allwe'll ever know about it." He shiveredclammily as he finished and reached for ascorching glass of whisky on the table

Sick-But the Young Doctor did not feel solugubrious the next day and the next andthe next, when he found the Sick-A-BedLady rallying slowly but surely to the skill

of his head and hands To be frank, shestill lay for hours at a time in a sort ofgentle daze watching the world go bywithout her, but little by little her bodystrengthened as a wilted flower freshens

in water, and little by little she struggledharder for words that even then did notalways match her thoughts.

The village continued to speculateabout her lost identity, but the YoungDoctor seemed to worry less and lessabout it as time went on If the sweetestlittle girl you ever saw knew perfectlywhom you meant when you said "Dear,"what was the use of hunting up such prosynames as May or Alice? And as to herfunny speeches, was there anything in theworld more piquant than to be called a

"beautiful horse," when she meant a "kinddoctor"? Was there anything dearer thanher absurd wrath over her blunders, or theway she shook her head like an angry littleheifer, when she occasionally forgot

altogether how to talk? It was at one ofthese latter times that the Young Doctor,watching her desperate struggle to focusher speech, forgot all about her twentyyears and stooped down suddenly andkissed her square on her mouth.

"There," he laughed, "that will help

you remember where your mouth is!" But

it was astonishing after that how manytimes he had to remind her

He couldn't help loving her No mancould have helped loving her She was solittle and dear and gentle and—lost

The Sick-A-Bed Lady herself didn'tknow who she was, but she would haveperished with fright if she had realizedthat no one in the village, and not even the

Young Doctor himself, could guess heridentity.

The Young Doctor knew everythingelse in the world; why shouldn't he knowwho she was? He knew all about Francebeing directly opposite the house; he hadknown it ever since he was a boy, and hadbeen glad about it He stopped her trying

to count the green birds on the wall-paperbecause he "knew positively" that therewere four hundred and seventeen wholebirds, and nineteen half birds cut off bythe wainscoting He never laughed at herwhen she slid down the side of her bed bythe village street window, and went tosleep with her curly head pillowed on thehard, white sill He never laughed,because he understood perfectly that if you

hung one white arm down over thesidewalk when you went to sleep,sometimes little children would come andput flowers in your hand, or, morewonderful still, perhaps, a yellow colliedog would come and lick your fingers.

Nothing could surprise the YoungDoctor Sometimes the Sick-A-Bed Ladytook thoughts she did have and mixed them

up with thoughts she didn't have, and

sprung them on the poor Young Doctor,

but he always said, "Why, of course," as

simply as possible

But more than all the other wise things

he knew was the wise one about smellythings He knew that when you were very,

very, very sick, nothing pleased you so

much as nice, smelly things He brought

wild strawberries, for instance, not somuch to eat as to smell, but when hewasn't looking she gobbled them down asfast as she could And he brought her allkinds of flowers, one or two at a time, andseemed so disappointed when she justsniffed them and smiled; but one day hebrought her a spray of yellow jasmine, andshe snatched it up and kissed it and cried

"Home," and the Young Doctor was so

pleased that he wrote it right down in alittle book and ran away to study upsomething He let her smell the fresh greenbank-notes in his pocketbook Oh, theywere good to smell, and after a while shesaid "Shops." He brought her a tiny phial

of gasoline from his neighbor'sautomobile, and she crinkled up her nose

in disgust and called it "gloves" and

slapped it playfully out of his hand Butwhen he brought her his riding-coat sherubbed her cheek against it and whisperedsome funny chirruppy things His pipe,though, was the most confusing symbol ofall It was his best pipe, too, and she

snuggled it up to her nose and cried "You,

y-o-u!" and hid it under her pillow and

wouldn't give it back to him, and though hetried her a dozen times about it, she neveracknowledged any association except that

joyous, "Y-o-u!"

So day by day she gained inconsecutive thought till at last she grew soreasonable as to ask: "Why do you call me

Dear?"

And the Young Doctor forgot all abouthis earliest reason and answered perfectly

simply: "Because I love you."

Then some of the evenings grew to bealmost sweetheart evenings, though theSick-A-Bed Lady's fragile childishnesskeyed the Young Doctor into an almostuncanny tenderness and restraint

Those were wonderful evenings,though, after the Sick-A-Bed Lady began

to get better and better A good deal of theYoung Doctor's practice was scattered upand down the coast, and after the dust andsweat and glare and rumble of his longday he would come back to the sleepyvillage in the early evening, plunge for afreshening swim into the salt water, donhis white clothes and saunter round to thequaint old house at the edge of the ocean.Here in the breezy kitchen he often sat for