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Horn O’ The Moon
by
“You can’t bring in a bill for services,” he announced. “If he’s on the town, he’ll have to go right into the Poorhouse with the rest.”
Mary made no answer. She stood there a second, looking at him, and he remarked to Eli, “I guess you might drive on.”
But Mattie, following Mary up to the house, to talk it over, tried the door in vain.
“My land!” she ejaculated, “if she ain’t bolted it!” So the nurse and her patient were left to themselves.
As to the rest of the story, I tell it as we hear it still in Tiverton. At first, it was reckoned among the miracles; but when the new doctor came, he explained that it accorded quite honestly with the course of violated nature, and that, with some slight pruning here and there, the case might figure in his books. What science would say about it, I do not know; tradition was quite voluble.
It proved a very long time before Johnnie grew better, and in all those days Mary Dunbar was a happy woman. She stepped about the house, setting it in order, watching her charge, and making delicate possets for him to take. When the “herb-man” came, she turned him away from the door with a regal courtesy. It was not so much that she despised his knowledge, as that he knew no more than she, and this was her patient. The young doctor in Tiverton told her afterwards that she had done a dangerous thing in not calling in some accredited wearer of the cloth; but Mary did not think of that. She went on her way of innocence, delightfully content. And all those days, Johnnie Veasey, as soon as he came out of his fever, lay there and watched her with eyes full of a listless wonder. He was still in that borderland of helplessness where the unusual seems only a part of the new condition of things. Neighbors called, and Mary refused them entrance, with a finality which admitted no appeal.
“I’ve got sickness here,” she would say, standing in the doorway confronting them. “He’s too weak to see anybody; I guess I won’t ask you in.”
But one day, the minister appeared, his fat gray horse climbing painfully up from the Gully Road. It was a warm afternoon; and as soon as Mary saw him, she went out of her house, and closed the door behind her. When he had tied his horse, he came toward her, brushing the dust of the road from his irreproachable black. He was a new minister, and very particular. Mary shook hands with him, and then seated herself on the step.
“Won’t you set down here?” she asked. “I’ve got sickness, an’ I can’t have talkin’ any nearer. I’m glad it’s a warm day.”
The minister looked at the step, and then at Mary. He felt as if his dignity had been mildly assaulted, and he preferred to stand.
“I should like to offer prayer for the young man,” he said. “I had hoped to see him.”
Mary smiled at him in that impersonal way of hers.
“I don’t let anybody see him,” said she. “I guess we shall all have to pray by ourselves.”
The minister was somewhat nettled. He was young enough to feel the slight to his official position; and moreover, there were things which his rigid young wife, primed by the wonder of the town, had enjoined upon him to say. He flushed to the roots of his smooth brown hair.
“I suppose you know,” said he, “that you’re taking a very peculiar stand.”
Mary turned her head, to listen. She thought she heard her patient breathing, and her mind was with him.
“You seem,” said the minister, “to have taken in a man who has no claim on you, instead of letting him stay with his people. If you are going to marry him, let me advise you to do it now, and not wait for him to get well. The opinion of the world is, in a measure, to be respected,–though only in a measure.”