Ghosts of Graveyards Past (7 page)

Tears sprang in Nell's eyes, her hands clenching the fabric of her worn pinafore. She wanted only to watch, but their laughter forced her to turn back most times before the fun even started. One day, she followed them to a part of the wood where violets grew in thick clusters among the roots of the trees. Collecting a handful, she strung the blossoms together for a crown that quickly tangled in the coarse head of hair. She tugged at it desperately in an attempt to make it more pleasing, hearing the guffaws of a classmate as they cried, “Look there—Nell is trying to be a girl.”

“I didn't think she knew how,” teased Preston Cray, whose sisters were called the prettiest in the county by those who knew.

Blushing, Nell had ripped the flowers off and run back through the path. When she stopped to catch her breath, there was a rustling sound on the trail behind her. She gasped as a hand rested against her shoulder, dark eyes meeting hers with a look of apology when she turned around.

“They don't mean it, you know. It is only talk to them.” Arthur spoke with reassurance, twining the purple flowers around her wrist, a friendly grin forming at her look of surprise before he ran back to join the friends who called his name impatiently.

The chain of blossoms had lain on her bedside table until just a sprinkle of dust remained to blow away in the breeze of an open window. She thought of it whenever the flowers came back into bloom, sprouting in rich, velvet hues with the change of the seasons.

This season had not been kind to any but nature, it seemed. Already a poor farming community, Sylvan Spring had only grown poorer in the absence of its young men. The work was harder than before, slower as well, with children and elderly folk alike shouldering the burden.

Arthur, meanwhile, could take part in neither world. The illness that kept him from the regiment made it equally difficult to work his father's fields. A fevered look haunted the dark eyes, and more than one began to speculate that a grave waited for him in the cemetery in the woods.

 



 

There was no physician in Sylvan Spring at that time, and the apothecary was buried several summer's back, from an illness beyond the aid of his medicine cabinet. Healers would sometimes pass through, and traveling men boasted of miracles in a bottle from displays in the town square.

The town's reverend was among those who cast a wary eye at such claims. He had not always been among them. His younger days were passed in Mobile, where a relative's illness brought him in contact with a doctor's more refined practice. Anxious to provide for his flock—most of whom suffered the effects of old age—he was the one who sent a letter to that same clinic, inquiring if any who trained there might fill the position of doctor for a small farming community.

He shared its reply from the pulpit, a sheet of stationary in one hand as the other adjusted the spectacles balanced on his nose. “I regret to inform you of Dr. Moore's recent death,” he read from the paper, “and the subsequent closing of his clinic. However, I can promise to fulfill the request for a qualified physician set to begin practice in your community within the month.”

Signed M.R. Moore, it would seem the doctor's son had followed in his footsteps and would soon be among them to continue his medical trade.

It was Nell's family who would board the physician, a decision that gave her unease as she pictured a stranger moving into Henry's old room. Her discomfort grew when she learned the reason why, her mother's voice carrying through the window to the kitchen where Nell scrubbed the family's breakfast dishes.

“He is likely to be older, you know,” she said, crouched in the herb garden beside Nell's grandmother. “A man with no family but a skill to keep him busy when even the crops are bad. It may be he will take a shine to Nell, since no one else has spoken for her these past years. “

Her granny sounded less certain. “There can be no hurry to lose Nell. I would miss her terribly, and with her brother gone, you would find it hard to manage the house and farm both.”

“What else can she do, though?” her mother wondered. “I have urged her to think of teaching, but she will have no part of it.”

Mortified, Nell had almost dropped the plate she cleaned. Leaving it half-washed in the basin, she retreated quickly to her room, burying her face in a pillow as she prayed,
God, please don't let this be my future. A marriage made out of no other choice—I would rather be alone, or to teach at the school, as Mama so wants me to do.

The same thoughts ran through her head as she drove the family's cart to meet the stagecoach over in Woolwich. Her mother had insisted she be the one to go, since Mr. Darrow's smithy work kept him in town, and her hands were too stiff for guiding the reins. Really, though, it was just an excuse to push her daughter in the doctor's path as soon as might be.

At the station, Nell's voice shook when she asked for the passenger who came from Mobile, only for the clerk to point where a woman scarcely older than herself waited, a trunk and bag piled beside her on the bench. Seeing Nell, she rose with an expectant look on her face while the girl struggled to grasp the scene before her.

“We assumed the doctor was alone—unmarried,” Nell stammered, remembering her mother's words on this subject with fresh shame. How bitter that woman's disappointment would be upon learning the physician had a wife. Nell quickly banished the thought for one even more startling.

“I
am
alone,” the young woman replied, drawing her shoulders further back as she spoke. “My father, Dr. Moore, was the recipient of your minister's letter. I have answered the post in his stead.”

A woman doctor. The notion was unfamiliar to her. Nell stole glances at the figure beside her as the wagon bounced over narrow lanes. She was nothing like the herb women who peddled their plants in the square, or the diviner who dangled a wedding band over women's palms to tell whether it was boy or girl who formed inside their growing stomach.

The doctor's skin was untouched by harsh weather. Auburn tresses wound into a crown of neatly pinned braids. Nell brushed the strands of dingy yellow from her face, seeing dirt lodged beneath her fingernails from helping in the garden earlier. Dr. Moore—or Mariah as she was called—showed hands that were smooth and clean folded atop her medical bag.

“She's got no grit,” had been the estimate of Nell's father. Shaking his head in a wry motion, he watched the doctor set off on foot for a house in need of her skills as a midwife.

She had brought no money with her for buying a horse, the boots she wore broke down quickly under the rocky paths in the nearby wood.

Their neighbors viewed her with begrudging acceptance, coming to her for medicines that were sold by the former apothecary. Broken bones and gaping wounds—some of them belonging to livestock—made up the bulk of her work, among the few early patients who would trust a woman doctor. In between, she struggled to fill her time, and Nell wished fervently her talent might be applied to another case, as Arthur struggled even to plant the seed for his family's barley crop.

She heard the cough that stole his breath, felt the clammy nature of his skin when he offered her a carriage ride back from a neighbor's house one day. As they neared the Darrow homestead, the doctor passed them on one of the family's horses, saddlebag bulging with supplies for customers who lived in the stretch of woods beyond the spring.

“Have you seen the physician at work yet?” Arthur asked, his gaze following the woman with curiosity.

Her beauty was unmistakable, even in the plain clothes she wore to navigate the landscape's rough terrain. She had not returned his glance, posture ramrod straight as she followed the path that would take her to Crooked Wood.

“Miss Moore seems a good hand at medicine,” Nell told him, “though I have not seen her skill so much as heard about it. She receives few visits at the house, though anyone is welcome to call on her in the parlor.”

This was a hint, one she put forth timidly. To contradict his parents was something Nell would never dream of, though she feared they might be his undoing. She pressed his hand affectionately as he lowered her from the cart. “You are welcome to come inside for a cup of Granny Clare's tea.”

“Another day,” he promised, thoughts elsewhere as he released her fingers. Where, she did not have to guess, as he gazed back down the road where Mariah's horse had long since disappeared from sight.

At last, he sought the doctor's advice. Mr. Widlow gave him permission, since he was beginning to feel the loss of his son's strength in tending the crops. His arrival caught the family by surprise, Nell and her mother patching garments, while Mariah conducted inventory of her medicine cabinet.

Both women stayed present for the exam, although Mrs. Darrow's mouth formed a line of disapproval, and Nell tried in vain to concentrate on the shawl she was repairing for her grandmother.

“This illness has been upon you for some time,” Mariah guessed once the exam had commenced. Her stethoscope tested his chest and lungs as they sat on the bench by the parlor door. She kept her voice low, though not a word escaped the audience seated by the stone hearth.

“Weeks,” he agreed. “More than a month, I believe. I've lost track of the time, though it passes so slowly here at home.”

She put her stethoscope aside to make notes in the daybook she always carried. “You compare it to the regiment, I suppose. That is where you wish to be, if not for this affliction?”

“Of course. It is all anyone talks of and all I think about.”

Without glancing up, she told him, “I have not corresponded with anyone from the camps, but heard many letters from those who do. There seems an equally restless spirit among those in the regiment as there is here.”

“They spend much time waiting for their orders,” he admitted. “And there is illness among their quarters far worse than what I suffer now. Still, I can't help envying their sense of purpose.”

A look of sympathy flitted across the doctor's face. “To be helpless is unbearable,” she agreed. Raising a hand, she felt his forehead, saying, “You are not feverish at present. Have you suffered any confusion when the chill comes over you?”

“It troubles my dreams,” he admitted.

She rose and went to the medicine cabinet with its collection of glass vials. “I wish to start you on a quinine dosage for the bronchial inflammation,” she told him, selecting a bottle from the upper shelf. “It will help with the cough and the fever both and has proven itself many times for my father's patients.”

“Then I will take it right away if you will tell me the proper dosage.”

“Such faith.” A smile stirred the doctor's lips. “You have benefited from a physician's care before, Mr. Widlow?”

“No—that is, never a qualified one. When I was a boy, a traveling man beseeched the audience members to provide him a lock of their hair. In exchange, he mixed a special elixir to cure their woes.”

“And this worked?” Mariah raised her brows at the story.

“For a time.” He leaned closer. “I suspect the chief ingredient was rum, you see.”

Jealousy rippled through Nell as she witnessed their playful exchange. Never had she seen anyone threaten the doctor's taciturn demeanor so effortlessly. Every smile, every blush he drew from the other woman's reserved exterior was like a stab to her own carefully concealed feelings.

With mixed emotions, she listened as they arranged to meet again within the week. “This illness has been allowed to take firm root,” Mariah explained, seeing her patient to the door. “It may be many weeks before the medicine dissolves its hold on you.”

Consultations like this one in the parlor were beginning to cause anxiety among the Darrows for fear of gossip. As a result, Nell was quietly appointed as chaperone. Placed in the background, she performed such household tasks as hanging the wash or scrubbing the plank floor that never came clean while trying to be as unnoticed and unobvious as possible.

How painful this became—watching the boy she loved grow to love another—was not to be thought of in comparison with the relief of seeing his strength return. His spirit improved even before the quinine and other treatments took their miraculous effect on his body. Obviously caught by the doctor's beauty, he showed even greater admiration for her knowledge.

Their conversations, which spanned everything from politics to science, fell on Nell's unwilling ears with a sting. She could hear the undertones that laced their voices, the things left unsaid as they traded looks and ideas. Emotions pushed their way to the surface when the doctor's touch lingered too long, her patient reaching to brush her hand in return.

One day, looking up to dust the mirror above the mantel, she saw the couple reflected past her own plain features, standing in the hall, their heads bent close together, as Arthur pressed a kiss to the doctor's upturned mouth.

It was not their first, judging by the way it lingered. Mariah's hand reached to trace his jaw, a smile forming as she told him something in a whisper.

Nell quickly moved out of sight, hands clutching the rag close to her chest. Her heart beat wildly, her mind reeling from the image in the glass. She had not meant to see it, but soon learned it was hardly being kept a secret.

The couple was seen together in town and sometimes walking by the spring on a Sunday afternoon. Mariah never attended church, else word of their courtship might have spread faster.

As it was, the doctor showed no sign of relinquishing her agnostic beliefs, though Arthur's staunchly devout family would surely approve less of this practice than of the medical one she ran from the Darrow's parlor.

But they continued to plan for a future that was uncertain in more ways than one. With Arthur's improved health came also his chance to enlist. Six weeks after his first visit to the doctor, he came to see her wearing the coat and trousers his mother had dyed a dark gray with the help of walnut oil. He left with his hat in his hands, eyes full of regret as they met with Nell's ahead on the path.