Clergy -- Fiction; Iowa -- Fiction; Mississippi River Valley -- Fiction
“You!” he shouted. “Go to your house! I'd let you all rot first, the
whole lot of you. Go get your Martin, you called him quick enough.
I wouldn't go if you got on your knees to me. You and your dog-faced
father-in-law and your Hardcomes, trying to drive this poor girl out of
town! If this was my house I'd throw you out. I will anyway! Get out!”
Poor Derling--harmless enough creature--did all but get on his knees.
He went away haggard, and looking twenty years older, to find some other
physician. He got Wagenheim, a poor substitute. In fact there was no
substitute for Benedict. It may have been that luck favored him, but the
old doctor seemed able to wrest children from the clutches of the awful
disease far oftener than other physicians. Derling felt that the angry
old doctor had condemned his son to death. With the witlessness of
a distracted man he tried to find Rose Hinch at her room on the main
street, thinking Rose might plead for him with Benedict. He might have
known Rose would be with 'Thusia in such an hour of trial. He went home,
dreading to face Mary, and found Wagenheim doing what he could, which
was little enough. Mary was not there.
When Wagenheim came Mary had guessed that Derling had not got Benedict,
and she guessed why. She ran, half dressed and hatless as she was, all
the way to the manse. In her agony she still thought clearly; Benedict
would be there, and if he was not there David would be, and in
David--calm and faithful to all his people even when they turned against
him--she placed her hope. In the dark she could not find the bell and
she was fumbling at the door when it opened and 'Thusia stood before
her, silhouetted against the light. With the impulse of one suffering
mother in the presence of another, Mary grasped 'Thusia's arms.
“'Thusia!” she cried. “My boy is dying and Benedict won't come. Can't
you make him come? He knows, and he won't come!”
'Thusia drew back in horror.
“He knows? And he won't go?” she exclaimed. “But Mary, he must
go! Why--why--but he must go, Mary! I don't understand!
Benedict--won't--go?”
She turned and flew to the study where Benedict had usurped David's
easy-chair. She stood before him, one mother pleading for another. No
one but the three--Benedict and 'Thusia and Mary--will ever know what
she said, but when she had said it old Benedict drew himself out of the
chair and went with Mary.
A week later little Davy, 'Thusia's child, died. Mary was more
fortunate; her boy recovered and although it was long before he was
strong again Mary treasured him all the more. Rose Hinch, her work at
David's ended, went to her and for many weeks was like another mother to
the sick child.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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