University of Virginia Library

14. CHAPTER XIV.
RICHARD CALLED TO NURSE A SICK MAN.

This was Bill Stonners, a man belonging to one of the
other saws. He was a person of rude manners, intemperate
habits, and solitary life. He practised log-booming in
summer, and sawing in winter. Richard knew but little of
him. His disease was malignant erysipelas, a fearful form
of St. Anthony's fire. Symptoms of this malady had appeared
in different parts of the city, and an impression prevailed
that it was infectious. Moreover, this case of Bill
Stonners' was represented as the most shocking imaginable;
and many who would not hesitate at a common instance
were intimidated by this. Bill had no family, and what was
worse, he had no friends; none were moved by affection or
love to look after him, and so deplorable was his condition,
that even the sense of duty in the strongest minds was
overborne. His home was a miserable hut on the bank of
the stream, within the woods, about half a mile above the
Dam. It had no comforts; none for the sick man, none for
his attendants, none even which the most indulgent benevolence
could find any satisfaction in applying in such an
emergency.

It may be that corporations have no souls; but the city
undertook what individual charity shrank from. It provided
a physician, medicine, emollients, and went in pursuit of
a nurse. The Overseer of the Poor came to the Mill on
this errand. He encountered great reluctance; — some had
watched with Bill, and were rightly excused. He addressed

Richard. But Captain Creamer interfered; he thought it
was flinging away a valuable life on a worthless one. Mr.
Gouch opposed even his tears to the idea, and said, with
extreme emotion, that he should never see Richard again.
Silver, who had become strongly attached to Richard,
planted a picaroon in his collar, and declared he should
not go.

But somebody must go; and the city would remunerate
Captain Creamer for the loss of Richard's time, and also
give Richard such compensation as was just.

So Richard went. “O God,” he said, “spare my life,
if it pleases thee; but if thou takest it, let it be in the
service of my fellow-men!”

He reached what, under the circumstances, was a dreary
place, and one sufficiently revolting. The house, a rude
shantee, was perched on a rock, overlooking the frozen
stream below. It might have been deemed a picturesque
spot, but only so to life and health. It was dismal to solitude,
and sickness, and death. The roof covered two
apartments, in one of which lay the sick man; the other
was the repository of his stuff and tools, comprising spikepoles,
raft-pins, raft-rigging, augers, a draw-shave, etc. But
the sick man, — we shall not describe him. He was past
consciousness when Richard arrived; his head was swollen
to a preternatural size; his features had all disappeared, and
were submerged in a chaos of whatever is most shocking in
the ravages or the deformities of disease. Bill was intemperate,
— he had been irregular every way; and his blood
was corrupt, and vicious humors in incredible quantity, and
with frightful swiftness, determined to his head.

Nor need we describe the room where such a man, without
culture, without piety, without a friend, had lived. We
have said he lived alone; — this is not quite true. There

was frequently with him one who was called Bill's Boy;
the soubriquet of this creature was Chuk. Richard found
this fellow sitting on a block before the fire, nursing his ears
with his fists. He did not rise when Richard entered, — he did
not speak; he only gave a sort of hunch with his head.
His dark visage — dark with hair, and beard, and grime
— was freaked by that dull redness which intemperance and
exposure impart; and intermixed with this were traces of
a huffy despair, — a state to which we might suppose a human
heart, uninfluenced by refined affection, unenlightened
by religious truth, would arrive. One might fancy that
Chuk had tended upon Bill, — that he had set up with
him all night, and had ministered to him there in the day;
that he had done this all alone; that he had continued to
do it till hope had fled, and his strength was gone, — and
out of sorts with himself and with all things, now surlily
grinning at and daring the issue, had gone to brooding over
the fire; and such a fancy would not be far out of the way.

Did he not speak? He did not employ much of what is
understood to be human speech; — he swore. His every
word seemed to be an oath; his sentences began and ended
and were sealed with oaths. He could only converse in
oaths. And he swore at Richard in the first reply he made
to him, when he asked what he should do; and he damned
Bill, soul and body, to hell; yet, if we shall be permitted
to say so, he loved Bill.

What should Richard do? There was little else to be
done, except to foment the blasted, bloated face of the patient
with alcohol. Richard thought cold water would be a
better lotion, and said as much to Chuk; who, having first
sent Richard to eternal perdition for intimating anything of
the sort, took a pail, and descending to a hole in the ice,
filled it, and brought it to Richard.

The Physician, Dr. Chassford, called. He was a quiet
man, of few words, but gifted with pleasant manners,
great professional fidelity, and much flavor of gentle feelings.
His replies extinguished expectation, and provided for
a speedy termination of the sickness; Bill could not live
twenty-four hours longer. Chuk did not swear at the Doctor;
he bit at him, he touseled him, he burnt him alive with
oaths.

The Overseer brought candles, food, and such things as
the living might require, but which could have no pertinence
to the dying.

Chuk laid a large heap of drift-wood on the hearth, and
then bestowed his wonted blessing on what he had done.
Richard ventured to expostulate with him; but it was like
spitting against the wind, — rather like raising sail in a
hurricane.

Having drained a flask of liquor, the Boy doubled himself
into a coarse blanket on the floor, and went to sleep.

Richard was left alone with that sick man, and that Boy,
in that room, for the night. He needed no candle, for the
resinous stuff that Chuk provided emitted an illumination
quite sufficient. The sick man breathed hard and hoarsely;
but he made no motion as if he were in pain. He could
not speak, nor hear, nor understand. Richard's employment
was wringing out the rags afresh in the water, whenever
they became hot; and this was very often. He could
hardly pray for mercy on the soul before him, — he could
commend that soul to the Infinite Mercy.

If there was anything to qualify the gloom of the hours,
it was the roaring of the Dam. All the winds played on it,
and it took advantage of all the winds to exhibit its peculiar
powers. The sound rose and fell, — it was plaintive and it
was harsh; it died away in the distance, and directly it

reäppeared under the windows of the house, and filled the
adjacent high-embanked stream with its tempestuous clamor.
Anon, as it were breaking away from its proper source, the
fall of the water, it leaped into the woods, — it fled through
the forest like a detached volume of smoke; it whispered
miniardly to the hills, — it howled, goblin-like, in the gullies;
it trapsed out of hearing, to strike up some new and
strange vagary, in an unexpected quarter of the heavens.

It was now the beginning of spring, and the crows
attempted the poetic office of heralding the dawn; and
from many a tall pine, and many a bleak rock — and occasionally
facilitating the matter by a short bout on the wing
— they shrieked the pleasant news.

Their noise awakened Chuk, who, with such utensils and
in such way as he was accustomed to, went about getting
breakfast.

The eastern sky was bland, prismatic, reviving; and the
sun came into the room with warmth and peace, if not
healing, in its beams, and Richard was tempted to the
window.

“Don't look out there!” said Chuk; “that is Bill's window;
eat, if you want to, and go to the dogs, but don't sit
there! The city gives the vittles, — it did n't give that!
Don't you see Bill's boom, just below, norward of the Pint?
No, — he can't see it, and you shan't!”

Richard drew up to the rude table. Chuk poured out
the coffee, and handed him the sugar and milk; and while
Richard was eating, the boy tended his master, and chowtered
about the room.

“There is not a boom on the river like that,” he said,
“and there'll never be another; for Bill will be dead, and
in the lake, where no timber grows. In three weeks the ice
will be out, and the logs will run; and they will all curse

Bill, as they go by, for not catching them. He knew the
marks as far as he could see them; and he never beckoned
with his picaroon at a stick, though it was big as thunder,
that it did not mind him and come in. None could manage
a rip as he could; and the logs were proud of him, — wan't
they, though? and they would n't quit him, though every
infernal rock in the River was tearing at their bellies! He
ought not to die; he is an old fool to die, after such a winter
as this, when there has been such a cramming of the
Lake, and such jobs are laid out for us!”

All at once the Boy seemed to soften; he changed his
tone, and leaning over the bed, he said, “Did you speak,
Bill? It's Chuk, — Chuk is here. For God's sake, don't
die, Bill! Shan't I caulk the boat? Shan't I overhaul the
rigging? Swear at me, Bill! knock me down! once, only
once, before you can't!”

Richard had been to the Lakes; he had hauled timber to
the head-waters of the stream; he had once, in a stress,
helped “drive the River,” as the idiom is, and knew about
the catching of logs in booms; and he understood a little
of the Boy's feelings, and truly commiserated him, and tried
to cheer his heart. But Chuk would listen to nothing, —
he would be persuaded by nothing.

A low tapping was heard at the door. “That's Mysie,”
said Chuk. “Plagues light on her old pate! why does
she come asking after Bill? She knows he an't any better;
she knows he never will be!”

Mysie entered the room; and as Chuk did not tell Richard
about her, and as Richard, when he afterwards knew her,
was interested in her, we will venture a word or two for her.

She was called Mysie; but Mysie what, or what Mysie,
nobody knew. She was quite old; she might have been
near the allotted period of human life. She was wrinkled,

even beyond the extremest age; yet her face had a fresh
and vigorous look, and her wrinkles did not seem to be so
much a symptom of natural waste as a part of her constitution.
She was tall, straight, and bony, yet she had nothing
of the Meg Merrilies stamp, nor of any other but her own.
Her costume was shabby and neglected. She wore an old
and dirty straw bonnet, with an immense rim, and a green
plaid cloak, of a kind that was common twenty years before;
and she towed hereself through the mud and splosh in a huge
flaring pair of India-rubbers, like a small boat. She was
not stern, or sharp, or prying, or malevolent; her reigning
expression was that of quiet good-nature, and innocent self-complacency.

Mysie, too, like those upon whom she called, lived alone.
She occupied the spare end of a tumble-down house, not far
from the Point. Nor was she wholly alone; she kept cows
and cats; having five or six of the former, and a dozen of
the latter. In the summer it was her vocation to wait on
these cows; and having no regular pasture-ground, she
drove them into the woods, and led them by the road-side,
wherever she could find grass. The cats constituted her
immediate domestic circle.

Mysie was never at church. She never entered a house,
she was never known to change her dress; she claimed
no relatives. She sometimes went into the city to sell
butter.

She was never sick, and though always exposed, she was
never injured. She would be out all day in the rain, tending
her cows, but she took no cold; she frequented the
loneliest woods, and sauntered in the most out-of-the-way
fields and lanes; — she was not afraid.

She had led such a life forty years, as she was wont to
say, and was never hurt yet.

The children saw her as a grotesque, bug-bearish, sprawling-looking
woman; a kind of ogress, emerging from the
depths of the forest, or traversing, with an idle, vacant step,
the sludgy swales and courses of the brooks, and were
afraid of her; yet, when they came near enough for her to
speak to them, so pleasant was her smile, so soft her voice,
she easily composed them, and sometimes made them love
her.

She had a fondness for trees and wild-flowers, and some
taste for natural beauty; and she did all her worship beneath
the sun and the open sky, which she used to say was as
good as a Meeting-house.

In a cold and dry winter, springs of water fail, and the
domestic supply of that essential aliment of life is cut off;
aqueducts freeze, and brooks and wells give out. This misfortune
befell Mysie, and she was obliged to take her cows
to the River to drink.

For such a purpose had she come down this morning, and
for such a purpose had she come a good many mornings, by
Bill's.

We have said she had no relatives. Nobody knew that
she had any; there were not five persons, out of eighteen
thousand in the city, to whom she appeared otherwise than
of Melchisidechian origin, without father or mother. She
seemed like a rural anchorite, a social fungus, a tame
female Orson. Yet it was sometimes said, — not that there
was any reason for saying it, or any malice in saying it, but
merely because something must be said — a sort of buzzing
conjecture, that a man must lift his hand and brush away,
— that Bill was her son, and that Chuk was Bill's son; but
of this nobody knew, and nobody will know.

Chuk swore at Mysie when she entered, and branded
her with many abominable names; but she did not mind it,

and it neither quickened nor slackened her wonted heavy,
slow-forward gait, nor did it disturb the placid folds of her
wrinkles.

She brought a mug of milk, which Chuk, of course,
damned when he took and emptied; and she poured from
her apron a quantity of poppy-seeds, which, she said, were
for poultices. She turned from the bedside, and, as if it
were a foregone conclusion, said, “He is past being better;
he is gone too far for that! He would like to have seen the
red heifer when she changed her coat; but he 'll not care;
and there are not many to care. Everything is best when
it is ended. This going on so without stopping is the only
thing to care about.”

Mysie took her mug, and was going, when Chuk caught
at her cloak, as if he would rend it from her shoulders.
“Don't pull so,” she said, very gently. “Mother!” he
cried; he did not cry it at once, or as if he was used to crying
it. He strangled with it; he wharled it out; he yelped
it, as we might suppose a wolf to do in some attempt at
filial ogganition. “I would n't call for mothers,” replied
Mysie; “there an't any mothers now, and no children.
We are alone. There is Line-back, that had as pretty calf
as ever you see —”

“Give me something!” replied the Boy. “He is gone,
and the business is gone, and all is gone. Who was a
child? Who got into somebody's lap? Who kissed him?
Did n't she die? Did n't they put her in a grave? Where
is that? who is that? Don't tell me nobody cares! don't
call me Chuk! Had n't he another name? Did she
swear?”

“I would n't speak so, if I was you,” replied Mysie. “It
is a big world we live in, and God Almighty has n't made
us for nothing, I guess.”

Had n't the creature any emotion? She did n't express
any. She was inflexibly bland. Had she no hopes, no
regrets, no memories, no sympathies? She called after
her cows, — each of whom had a name, and knew her
name, — who, having come up from the water, were nuzzling
amid the seared herbage that appeared about the doorway.

Three ladies approached the house, who addressed Mysie
with a friendly freedom, as if she were an old acquaintance.
These ladies were Ada Broadwell, Barbara Dennington,
and Mrs. Judge Burp. When the Boy saw them, he
retreated from the door, blaspheming like the screech of a
steam-whistle. “More to kill Bill,” he said; “more to tell
me he can't live; more stuff to help him die!”

Richard went to the door to answer the inquiries of the
ladies. He thought Barbara was Melicent, and spoke to
her as a friend, and extended his hand to her; but she did
not know him, and her manner showed that she did not.
But Ada knew them both, and set them to rights with each
other. Barbara said she had heard of Mr. Edney, and was
glad to see him; and Mrs. Judge Burp, or the Lady
Caroline, as she was generally called, said the same. The
Lady Caroline was very glad he had come to Bill Stonners'.
“Poor wretch!” she said; “he is rejected by all; and, what
is worse, he rejected himself. He has no friends abroad,
and none in his own soul. But it is a Christian duty to
minister to him, and make his situation as comfortable as
may be.”

They had brought cordials, and fruit, and rolls of linen;
but, except as to the last, they were too late, Richard replied.

They would go in. The Boy had flung himself into the
chimney-corner. The Lady Caroline did not hesitate to

apply the fomentation to the sick man's face with her own
hands. Richard feared she was exposing herself; but she
would do it. Richard beheld her, shall we say, with astonishment.
She had thrown off her bonnet, and seemed to
act as if she were the chosen nurse of the hour.

And there were other reasons why Richard should regard
her with interest: the Lady Caroline was a noble woman
to look to; she completed the idea of what is called an elegant
woman; and she exceeded it, in that she added thereto
great beauty of spirit, and the charms of religious self-denial.
She was tall and proportionate, with hazel eyes and hair,
arched brows, and a very perfect mouth; and in the excitement
of action, her face kindled with the hues of spiritual
and deep sensibility.

Barbara turned to the Boy, whose distress startled her
tenderness. She spoke kindly to him, — he did not look up;
she laid her hand on his head, — he hunched it off; she
offered him an orange, — he hunched at that.

Ada talked with Richard; she ventured to say the room
seemed lacking in comforts and care. Chuk let fly at her
a salvo of oaths. “Bill could n't live anywhere else,” he
said; “and you want to bring in your handyjingledoms
here, and kill him before his time! If you touch a thing,
he 'll die! That block is where he used to set; that coat is
just where he threw it off, when he took to his bed; there is
where he spit his tobacco, — he could spit against any man
living; them shavings he whittled from a new paddle: but
he 'll never want it, — he 'll never ask where it is; and its
there, — there, in the corner, right before his eyes, and,
curse him, he can't see it!” He swore himself into a sort of
blubbering yex, and brayed his eyes with his fingers, as if
he was angry with them for their ability to see, and would
grind them to powder.

It was easier to minister to the dying than the living.
The ladies did all they could do, and left. Richard was
not detained in that place a great while. The disease ran
its course that night; and Bill Stonners died, and was
buried.

The Boy clung with fang-like tenacity to the old spot.
Bill had no other heirs, and Chuk became sole proprietor
of the estate and the business. Every day, Mysie carried
him a mug of milk.