Anything Once by Isabel Ostrander (elon musk reading list TXT) 📕

116He was unconscious that he was praying aloud, unconscious of the words which issued sobbingly from his lips. He tugged and tore at the branches while the skin ripped like ribbons from his hands and the boughs whipped back to raise great welts upon his face.

He was unconscious, too, of a stir at the other side of the fallen tree and a rustle of sodden leaves, as, very much after the manner of a prairie dog emerging from his hole, Lou crawled out into the rain, and sitting up, sneezed.

At the sound of that meek sternutation Jim whirled about.

“Lou!”

“Jim! Oh, Jim! You’re not killed!” A muddy, bedraggled little figure that once had been pink and white flew straight to him, and two soft arms swept about him and clung convulsively. “I seen it comin’, an’–an’ I tried to shove you out of the way─”

“Thank God, little girl! Thank God you aren’t hurt!” he murmured brokenly. “I thought the tree had fallen on you!”

117“Only the boughs of it, but they held me down. Oh, Jim, if you’d been killed I wouldn’t ’a’ cared what happened to me!”

His heart leaped, and his own arms tightened about her at the naïve, unconscious revelation which had issued from her lips. Then all at once he realized what it had meant, that hideous feeling of loss when he thought that she lay buried beneath the tree. It had come to them both, revealed as by a flash of the lightning which was now traveling toward the east, and in the wonder and joy of it he held her close for a moment and then put her gently from him.

Sternly repressing the words which would have rushed from his heart, he said quietly:

“Thank God we were both spared. Come, little Lou, we must find shelter.”

The rain had ceased, and as they walked down the muddy road the sun came out even before the final mutterings of the thunder had died away in the distance, and so they came at last upon a little house which sat well back among a group of dripping trees.

“Take your coat, Jim,” Lou said, breaking a long silence which had fallen between them. “That porch is so wet now that we can’t get it any wetter an’ I’m goin’ to ask for a chance to get dry.”

But they had scarcely passed through the gate when the front door opened and a young woman rushed out.

“Oh! Will you run to the next house for me and telephone for the doctor?” she cried, 119all in one breath. Her eyes were staring and her breast heaved convulsively.

Jim quickened his pace.

“Where is the next house, and what doctor shall I send for?” he asked pleasantly.

“It’s just over the ridge there; the Colberts. They know Dr. Blair’s number. My husband would go himself but he can’t step on his hurt foot and I don’t dare leave. Tell the Colberts that it’s the baby! He’s dying, and I don’t know what to do!”

Jim turned, and hurried off over the ridge, but Lou took a step forward.

“Baby! I’ve been takin’ care of babies all my life, seems like. You let me look at it, ma’am.”

“Oh, do you think you could do anything, a little thing like you?”

The young woman eyed the forlornly drenched figure before her rather doubtfully, but something she read in Lou’s steady, confident gaze seemed to reassure her, and she threw wide the door. “Come in, please! He’s all blue.”

Lou unceremoniously pushed past her 120down the clean little hallway and paused for a moment upon the threshold of the room at its end. It was a kitchen, small, but as immaculately clean as the hall, and in a rocking-chair near the window sat an anxious-eyed young man with his bandaged foot up on another chair before him, and in his arms a tiny, rigid little form.

Lou went straight to him and unceremoniously possessed herself of the baby.

Its small face was waxen, with a bluish tinge about the mouth, and half-closed, glazing eyes.

“How long’s it been like this?” Lou demanded sharply.

“Only just a few minutes. It–it seemed like a sort of fit that he had.” The young woman turned to her husband. “Jack, this little girl stopped by and said she knew all about babies, and the man with her, he’s gone for─”

“I want some hot water, quick!” Lou interrupted the explanations brusquely. “Boiling hot, and a tub or a big pan. Have you got the kettle on?”

121“Y-yes, but I’m afraid I’ve let the fire go out,” the woman faltered. “I was so worried─”

With an exclamation of impatience Lou rewrapped the baby which she had been examining and thrust it into the man’s arms. Then turning to the woman with exasperation in her eyes and voice she demanded:

“I s’pose you can find some dry chips, somewhere, can’t you? If I don’t get this baby into a hot bath right away it’ll be all up with him.”

The woman gasped, and ran out of the back door while the young man in the chair groaned:

“It’s awful to sit here helpless and watch him suffer! If I could only put my foot to the floor─”

“How old is he, anyway?” Lou, who was busily searching the shelf of groceries, asked over her shoulder. “He looks to be under a year.”

“Ten months, miss,” he answered. “What do you think is the matter with him?”

“Convulsion,” Lou replied succinctly, as the 122woman rushed in once more with her apron full of chips. “Git some more, it don’t matter how you clog the stove with wood ashes; we gotta git boilin’ water as quick as we kin.”

Meanwhile Jim found the Colbert house, explained his mission, and having accomplished it, hastened back. He pulled the bell, but no one came, and knocking, found that the door yielded to his touch. Entering, he went down the hall and paused at the kitchen door just as the woman stammered:

“I d-don’t think there are any dry kindlings left.”

“Then chop some! Ain’t you got any old boxes? Oh, Jim!” Lou caught sight of him in the doorway. “Find a hatchet and some light, dry wood, will you?”

The fire was roaring in the stove at last, but the water was long in boiling, and the little figure in the man’s arms seemed to be undergoing a subtle but inevitable change. His lips were still parted, but no faintest stir of breath emanated from them, and the rigidity had taken on a marble-like cast.

123The mother bent over him, moaning once more, but Lou turned upon her in swift scorn.

“For goodness’ sake, where’s that tub or pan I asked you for? He’s got a chance, a good chance if you don’t waste any more time! What you been givin’ him, anyway?” she added, as the woman flew to do her bidding.

“Nothing but a little green corn. He relishes it, and it’s so cute to see him try to chew it─”

“Green corn!” Lou repeated, as she seized the heavy kettle and began pouring its steaming contents into the tub. “Ain’t nobody in your family ever had any babies before?”

She hastily added to the tub a quantity of yellowish powder from a can which she had found upon the shelf of groceries, and marched determinedly over to the man who was seated in the chair.

“Give me that baby!” she demanded.

“But, miss, that water’s boiling!” he gasped.

“You’re not going to put my baby in that?” The woman came quickly from her apathy of dismay and sprang forward, while Jim, too, advanced, his anxiety for another reason.

124“Lou! You’ll blister yourself horribly─”

“Let me alone, all of you!” Lou turned upon them even as she stripped the wrappings from the child. “Haven’t I done this a hundred times? He ain’t even goin’ to feel the heat of the mustard, he’s so far gone! I guess I know what I’m doin’!”

The woman buried her face in her hands with a sob, and even Jim turned away his eyes, but no one thought to interfere further with the assured little nurse. There was a splash of water, a little gasp from Lou, and then after a period which seemed interminable her matter-of-fact voice remarked:

“He’s comin’ round.”

The tiny body was scarcely tinged with pink, but it had lost its dreadful rigidity, and a faint cry came from it as Lou wrapped it in a shawl and laid it in its mother’s arms.

“He’ll do now, anyway till that doctor comes.”

Amid the rejoicing of the parents Jim advanced to Lou and demanded:

“Let me see your arms.”

“They’re all right–” She tried to put 125them behind her as she spoke, but he drew them forward. A network of blisters covered them almost to the shoulders.

“Oh, Lou! Lou!” he murmured brokenly. “What won’t you do next?”

She smiled faintly.

“You said I’d do anything once, but I’ve done this lots of times before─”

“Well, well, good people! What’s going on here?” A kindly voice sounded from the doorway, and the woman turned with a little cry.

“Oh, Dr. Blair, she saved the baby! Put him down in that scalding water and held him right there with her hands, and she’s burned herself something terrible, but she saved him! I never saw a braver─”

“Let me see.”

The doctor examined the baby with professional gravity and then looked up.

“I should say you did save him, young woman! I couldn’t have done better for him myself! Now let me have a look at those arms of yours.”

After he had bandaged her blisters the 126woman prepared food and coffee for them all and then took Lou upstairs with her, while Jim dried his soaking clothes by the kitchen fire and the three men talked in a desultory way of the topics of the countryside.

Dr. Blair had just ascertained that Jim and his “sister” were strangers, traveling toward New York, and had offered to drive them both to the trolley line in his little car, when the woman of the house reappeared with Lou, and Jim stared with all his eyes.

Could this be the little scarecrow of a girl he had met on the road only five days before; this unbelievably tall, slender young woman in the dark blue silk gown with filmy ruffles falling about her neck and wrists, and soft puffs of blond hair over her ears?

“It’s me, though I kin hardly believe it myself!” Lou answered his unspoken thought. Then drawing him aside she added: “Mis’ Tooker–that’s her name–gave me a pair of shoes, too, an’ a hat an’ five whole dollars! Are we goin’ to a place called Pelton?”

Jim nodded.

“That is where I hoped we would be by 127to-night, but it must be at least twelve miles away.”

“Well, Mis’ Tooker says the trolley goes right into Pelton, and she gave me a letter to a friend of hers there who’ll take us in for the night─”

The doctor interrupted with an intimation of another patient to be visited, and they bade farewell to the grateful young couple and started away. The sun was still high, and save for the mud which splashed up with each turn of the wheels, all traces of the storm had vanished.

“Jennie Tooker always was a fool!” Dr. Blair grumbled. “How many babies have you taken care of, young woman?”

“More’n twenty, I guess, off an’ on,” Lou responded. “I–I used to work in an institootion up-State.”

Fearing further revelations, Jim hastily took a hand in the conversation, and he and the doctor chatted until the trolley line was reached. There, when they had descended from the little car Lou turned to Jim and asked a trifle shyly:

128“You–you’re goin’ to let me ask you to ride, aren’t you? You bought all the food in Riverburgh, you know.”

“And you seem to have financed all the rest of the