Ghosts of Graveyards Past (33 page)

“The water,” Nell repeated, not understanding the claim. “We have always drank from the spring, and never had trouble.”

The doctor shook her head. Her fingers clutched at the girl's sleeve, drawing her close.

“Contaminated. It has been contaminated,” she said, slowly. “I read of it long ago in a medical journal...but somehow forgot. The water, not the air, is what makes us sick.” Her words thickened, stumbling over themselves as she spoke.

To Nell's ear this seemed nonsense; but then she knew too little of science to doubt it as others might. “What can be done?” she asked “Many have no other means of water aside from the spring. It is only a few that have a different source, and they are so far away, on the edges of town—”

“There can be no water consumed from the spring that has not been boiled first,” the doctor replied. “Your grandmother saved you all. She made tea because she loved it more than fresh water...even from the pump. I took her tea at mealtimes but drank the pump's water at the homesteads. That's why...why I am sick.”

Nell sank onto the bed. Taking the doctor's hand, she found its skin to be callused as her own. “You say this answer comes from God,” she said, softly, “yet I have heard you speak many times of His indifference to our troubles. Why do you think He has told you this? Why do you believe it?” She had to know the answer. Not just for the sake of explaining to others that the doctor condemned their water supply, but because the woman lying before her was a friend.

“Many things have changed my mind,” Mariah answered slowly. “Some of them from my life here and others from the life I knew as a girl.” She closed her eyes and drew a clearer breath. The cough in her chest was momentarily gone, it seemed, her hand remaining in Nell's clasp. “My mother's faith is what I remember most about her, even more so than the illness that took her from me. You have often spoken of things she believed, things she wanted
me
to believe.” Drawing another breath, she continued, “My doubt had been sealed with her death, my child's mind thinking she was misguided those times when she spoke of God's healing. It was despair that drove me to seek His aid last night, though I had wished for it many other times, but—but I did not know how—”

Nell let her talk without interruption, pressing her fingers in reassurance. Forgiveness was all she lacked it seemed, for the heart to make itself right.

“It is difficult,” she said, face still damp from crying. “The prayer I knew from childhood seems too simple for such a request.”

“Since we must believe as children do, nothing is wrong in such a prayer,” Nell answered. “If you wish to say it now, I will help. I will help in any way that I can.”

Gratitude flitted briefly over the doctor's worn features. They were so altered in such little time, Nell realized, from those of the young woman who had been waiting at the station. Pain and fatigue had made them older, yet this moment of confession had begun to ease those lines.

After a moment, Mariah closed her eyes again. Bowing her head, her lips moved to find the words of repentance. “My life I give to Your keeping—do with it as You see fit.” This whisper at the close of the prayer faltered, its words as quiet as the ones Nell had heard softly, brokenly spoken in the seconds before.

Tears escaped Nell's eyes. She let them fall unchecked, relief outweighing the sadness that led to this moment.

When Mariah had grown quiet after her prayer, they sat in silence, the clock chiming the hour from downstairs.

Five in the morning. Her family would return in another hour expecting to find breakfast ready. Across from her, the doctor leaned her head back against the pillows. “I can rest now,” Mariah spoke again, this time to Nell. She let go of the girl's hand with a faint smile. “Find Mr. Darrow. Tell him about the spring. He will know how best to tell others.”

Nell nodded. “After that, I will come back and sit with you,” she promised. The ashen features beneath the curls worried her, even with the doctor's expression once again calm. “There must be something more I can do to help. Something to bring down the fever.” She looked towards the vials of medicine on the nearby table.

“All that can be done for me has been,” Mariah said. She wasn't looking at the table, but the Bible tumbled open on the blankets. She closed the cover, fingers resting there.

She was no better when Nell returned.

Mariah did rest for a time, but her sleep was broken with bouts of sickness. Coughing left her unable to speak, the medicine Nell gave her impossible to keep down.

Nell bathed her brow, pushing back the curls she had sometimes envied.

Granny Clare brewed her healing tea, while Mrs. Darrow heated bricks and wrapped them in rags to warm the foot of the bed.

Mariah seemed not to notice these attempts at soothing, her mind roaming as freely as the gaze that searched the four pine walls. Mostly, she looked for Arthur, his name escaping her lips more than once as she woke from sleep. Other times, she called for her mother. There was no distress in her voice to Nell's ear, her tone hopeful as she peered at the growing light from the window. The clock chimed the hour of six, then seven. Five minutes to eight, the hands were stopped to mark the moment her struggle ceased.

Mirrors were covered, the curtains drawn so that candles burned at mid-morning. Granny Clare rang the hand bell from the old country twenty-one times in reference to the doctor's short life. Its mournful sound carried through the house, reaching Nell's ears as she stretched a sheet across the lifeless form.

 

Papa has agreed to speak in Mariah's stead at the town meeting this afternoon. He and mama set off directly after lunch, and I sit alone in the parlor, since Granny has retired for a nap. Never has the house felt so still, with the doctor's poor body lying upstairs.

Tomorrow, we prepare her for burial, a task I can bear only by knowing she found her faith those final hours. It amazes me still how she let the Savior guide her to the solution for our troubles. This dream of water she described, and her realization that our wooded spring has caused this sickness among us, is the closest thing to a miracle I have witnessed my entire life.

 

Even now, she could hardly believe such a thing had happened in this place, and to people that she knew and cared about. She tried to imagine what the doctor's mind understood so readily from the vision of the dead beneath the water and found nothing except pain in the picture.

What if no one believed Mariah's final piece of advice? Superstition ran strong in these parts, the wandering spirit of the plat-eye more likely to gain credence than a young woman's theory of water being polluted. What if nothing was found, or could ever be found to prove it was so? Would people keep drinking the water and dying?

Anxious, she glanced to the window. It was a pointless gesture since the curtains were drawn and blocked the outside view. Her parents had been gone for roughly an hour, long enough to deliver their news to those who gathered at the meeting in town.

 

It is useless to worry, I know, when already God has seen fit to reveal this piece of information. He worked in the heart of a skeptic, a woman as firm in her disbelief as my own heart has been in its faith all this time. Yet I continue to question His ability to implement His Will—to believe He will make a way for our neighbors to receive this message that even Mariah herself accepted without delay. I must shake this doubt, and learn to trust no matter the outcome of this crisis we face.

 

The sound of the front door banging shut made her push away from the desk and her half-finished journal entry. Her family had returned from the meeting, and with them brought the answer she wrestled with even now. Bracing herself for what might be said, she passed quickly through the hall, where a tall shadow was cast from the person standing in the entryway.

She was almost upon them when she saw her mistake.

The figure that lingered in the hall was not her father, or, for that matter, any other member of the Darrow household.

It was someone Nell did not recognize at all.

 

 

 

 

26

 

A ragged youth clutched the wooden bench by the door, face half-hidden by a dingy hat. His jaw was unshaved, his clothes far too big for the scarecrow frame beneath. A cloth bundle rested on his back, a knife sheathed in the belt looped through his trousers.

Nell's thoughts flew to stories of deserters and enemy soldiers who broke into homes in search of food and other goods. Scream frozen in her lungs, she stumbled backwards, accidentally knocking a candlestick from the hall table.

At the sound, a pair of eyes—coal black and instantly familiar—rose to meet hers.

“
Arthur
,” she said, breathless with the realization. Frozen, she stared as if a phantom of the convict hung in Crooked Wood, who used to haunt her dreams, had materialized—the plat-eye or the washerwoman from tales of old. After a moment, her common sense returned to the soldier's obvious distress.

Taking his arm, she helped him to the bench, seeing he all but clung to the nearest support to hold himself upright. “You are here,” she cried in disbelief. She sank down beside him, still holding onto him. “We thought—that is, I was so afraid you would not come back to us. That you would stay at the hospital or—”

He shook his head, returning the touch with gentle pressure from his calloused fingers. “Nothing could keep me from leaving that place,” he said, voice hoarse with exhaustion. “Even if I had not been given a furlough, I would have come home.” This was said with a colder manner. Eyes narrowing, he asked, “Do you think it wrong of me to admit it?”

“I think all that matters is you are here now,” she said, faltering under the bitterness in his tone. Clearly, he expected her to scold him; perhaps he even wanted her to, knowing deep down that such a sentiment was mistaken.

She noticed the stain on his shirt, the mark of an open sore. “Your wound should be tended,” she said. “There are bandages and also some of Granny's herbs that I can mix into a poultice.”

“The stain is an old one,” he assured her, pulling at the fabric with a thoughtful expression. “It is still painful, of course, and slows me down a little, as you see. None of that is important, though. Not when I have a proper physician to look after it for me.”

Fear trickled through her at the thought of telling him something so painful. “You should at least take something to eat after your journey,” she said, starting to rise. “It seems there was a little bread and pork left from last night's supper—”

“Where is she, Nell?” He gripped her arm with a force that scarcely seemed possible from the starving frame. “They told me people have been sick here. Dying, even. Mariah has cared for them. She is in danger, perhaps.” He ran a hand through tangled curls, the frayed hat balanced on his knees. “Has she called at a patient's house? I can go to her on foot if it is not too far. Otherwise, I should have to trouble your father for his second-best mare.”

“Rest awhile,” Nell encouraged, avoiding both his question and his glance as she spoke. “Your injury shouldn't be tested this way. I am sure the doctor would agree.”

“Forget my injury,” he snapped, pushing away the hand that encouraged him to stay seated. “Mariah can advise me after we are reunited. That is all I care about and feel I will go mad with waiting. Surely
that
can do my health no good.” This was said with a spark of the old humor, sending a pang through her conscience.

Sitting beside him again, Nell placed her fingers firmly over his hand. “It is true there has been much sickness and death here these past weeks.” She bit her lip, searching for any way to lessen the blow. “Mariah cared for all who would let her,” she began softly, “sometimes going without sleep or food for days. She grew ill, but continued to work, with no thought for herself. I don't know how she did it, how anyone could have unless God Himself gave them the strength.”

“Stop,” he said, voice cold with warning. “Don't talk this way. Tell me what has happened to her, where to find her.”

Nell sobbed, unable to hold it back any longer. “She is gone from us. This morning, she succumbed to the illness. I was with her and held her hand.” Her tears were coming freely now, for she could not stop them. Before her vision blurred, she saw the pain in Arthur's hollow face.

“It isn't true.” Disbelief flared in the coal eyes. “After what I've gone through, everything I've lost…it can't be. It can't.” His words died away in a whisper of despair, hands clutching his head.

She reached to comfort him, feeling him shrug away from her.

He struggled to his feet, his steps lost for direction. “I have nothing left,” he said. “My faith, my dearest friend, the girl I loved—all taken from me. There can be no reason, no possible good to come from such loss.”

“You have friends, still,” she reminded him gently. “You have parents who love you, and a God Who never forsakes you, whatever your heart says right now.”

There was no response to this, except a faint groan. He moved to the parlor, hands resting against the desk where Mariah used to conduct her business. Shoulders stooped, he hung his head in something that resembled defeat more than a prayer.

Nothing she said at this time would be heard—that much Nell realized from her own experience with grief. For this reason she, too, rose.

“I will make you something to eat,” she said, gently. “Sit down and rest. You need your strength—Mariah would want you to take care of yourself.” With that, she went to the kitchen, preparing what few comforts she could offer Arthur, who mourned his love. Maybe when he was ready, he would find her there, and agree to hear the truth of Mariah's sacrifice.