Just as Anne emerged triumphantly from the cellar with her plateful of
russets came the sound of flying footsteps on the icy board walk outside
and the next moment the kitchen door was flung open and in rushed Diana
Barry, white-faced and breathless, with a shawl wrapped hastily around her
head. Anne promptly let go of her candle and plate in her surprise, and
plate, candle, and apples crashed together down the cellar ladder and were
found at the bottom embedded in melted grease, the next day, by Marilla,
who gathered them up and thanked mercy the house hadn’t been set on fire.
“Whatever is the matter, Diana?” cried Anne. “Has your mother relented at
last?”
“Oh, Anne, do come quick,” implored Diana nervously. “Minnie May is awful
sick—she’s got croup. Young Mary Joe says—and Father and
Mother are away to town and there’s nobody to go for the doctor. Minnie
May is awful bad and Young Mary Joe doesn’t know what to do—and oh,
Anne, I’m so scared!”
Matthew, without a word, reached out for cap and coat, slipped past Diana
and away into the darkness of the yard.
“He’s gone to harness the sorrel mare to go to Carmody for the doctor,”
said Anne, who was hurrying on hood and jacket. “I know it as well as if
he’d said so. Matthew and I are such kindred spirits I can read his
thoughts without words at all.”
“I don’t believe he’ll find the doctor at Carmody,” sobbed Diana. “I know
that Dr. Blair went to town and I guess Dr. Spencer would go too. Young
Mary Joe never saw anybody with croup and Mrs. Lynde is away. Oh, Anne!”
“Don’t cry, Di,” said Anne cheerily. “I know exactly what to do for croup.
You forget that Mrs. Hammond had twins three times. When you look after
three pairs of twins you naturally get a lot of experience. They all had
croup regularly. Just wait till I get the ipecac bottle—you mayn’t
have any at your house. Come on now.”
The two little girls hastened out hand in hand and hurried through Lovers’
Lane and across the crusted field beyond, for the snow was too deep to go
by the shorter wood way. Anne, although sincerely sorry for Minnie May,
was far from being insensible to the romance of the situation and to the
sweetness of once more sharing that romance with a kindred spirit.
The night was clear and frosty, all ebony of shadow and silver of snowy
slope; big stars were shining over the silent fields; here and there the
dark pointed firs stood up with snow powdering their branches and the wind
whistling through them. Anne thought it was truly delightful to go
skimming through all this mystery and loveliness with your bosom friend
who had been so long estranged.
Minnie May, aged three, was really very sick. She lay on the kitchen sofa
feverish and restless, while her hoarse breathing could be heard all over
the house. Young Mary Joe, a buxom, broad-faced French girl from the
creek, whom Mrs. Barry had engaged to stay with the children during her
absence, was helpless and bewildered, quite incapable of thinking what to
do, or doing it if she thought of it.
Anne went to work with skill and promptness.
“Minnie May has croup all right; she’s pretty bad, but I’ve seen them
worse. First we must have lots of hot water. I declare, Diana, there isn’t
more than a cupful in the kettle! There, I’ve filled it up, and, Mary Joe,
you may put some wood in the stove. I don’t want to hurt your feelings but
it seems to me you might have thought of this before if you’d any
imagination. Now, I’ll undress Minnie May and put her to bed and you try
to find some soft flannel cloths, Diana. I’m going to give her a dose of
ipecac first of all.”
Minnie May did not take kindly to the ipecac but Anne had not brought up
three pairs of twins for nothing. Down that ipecac went, not only once,
but many times during the long, anxious night when the two little girls
worked patiently over the suffering Minnie May, and Young Mary Joe,
honestly anxious to do all she could, kept up a roaring fire and heated
more water than would have been needed for a hospital of croupy babies.
It was three o’clock when Matthew came with a doctor, for he had been
obliged to go all the way to Spencervale for one. But the pressing need
for assistance was past. Minnie May was much better and was sleeping
soundly.
“I was awfully near giving up in despair,” explained Anne. “She got worse
and worse until she was sicker than ever the Hammond twins were, even the
last pair. I actually thought she was going to choke to death. I gave her
every drop of ipecac in that bottle and when the last dose went down I
said to myself—not to Diana or Young Mary Joe, because I didn’t want
to worry them any more than they were worried, but I had to say it to
myself just to relieve my feelings—‘This is the last lingering hope
and I fear ’tis a vain one.’ But in about three minutes she coughed up the
phlegm and began to get better right away. You must just imagine my
relief, doctor, because I can’t express it in words. You know there are
some things that cannot be expressed in words.”
“Yes, I know,” nodded the doctor. He looked at Anne as if he were thinking
some things about her that couldn’t be expressed in words. Later on,
however, he expressed them to Mr. and Mrs. Barry.
“That little redheaded girl they have over at Cuthbert’s is as smart as
they make ‘em. I tell you she saved that baby’s life, for it would have
been too late by the time I got there. She seems to have a skill and
presence of mind perfectly wonderful in a child of her age. I never saw
anything like the eyes of her when she was explaining the case out to me.”
Anne had gone home in the wonderful, white-frosted winter morning, heavy
eyed from loss of sleep, but still talking unweariedly to Matthew as they
crossed the long white field and walked under the glittering fairy arch of
the Lovers’ Lane maples.
“Oh, Matthew, isn’t it a wonderful morning? The world looks like something
God had just imagined for His own pleasure, doesn’t it? Those trees look
as if I could blow them away with a breath—pouf! I’m so glad I live
in a world where there are white frosts, aren’t you? And I’m so glad Mrs.
Hammond had three pairs of twins after all. If she hadn’t I mightn’t have
known what to do for Minnie May. I’m real sorry I was ever cross with Mrs.
Hammond for having twins.”
29 July 2020
from Still Life, chapter 12, Behold the Child (A.S. Byatt)
It was agreed that Stephanie should have some time to herself, to work. It was agreed, largely by Daniel, that Daniel's Mum and Marcus would mind William whilst she did an hour or two in Blesford public library ... Stephanie felt that she was being accused of desertion by some powerful representative of motherhood ...
Stephanie found it physically hard to pedal her bicycle away from the house. She felt held as by a long linen binder, such as mill children had worn to work machinery, to the shape of her son in his woven basket, one fist in his small ear. She seemed to hear, to feel, to smell powerful calling sounds, rufflings of the air, odours, which wanted her back, insisted that she must return. She put down rational foot after rational foot, with difficulty.
-
In the library, Stephanie laid out her books. Never before had she attempted to work without the outside sanction of an essay to write, an exam to pass, a class to prepare ...
She decided to read the 'Immortality Ode', just to read, clearly ... She felt panic. She had with some pain cleared this small space and time to think in and now thought seemed impossible. She remembered from what now seemed the astonishing free and spacious days of her education the phenomenon of the first day's work on a task. One had to peel one's mind from its run of preoccupations: coffee to buy, am I in love, the yellow dress needs cleaning, Tim is unhappy, what is wrong with Marcus, how shall I live my life? It took time before the task in hand seemed possible, and more before it came to life, and more still before it became imperative and obsessive. There had to be a time before thought, a wool-gathering time when nothing happened, a time of yawning, of wandering eyes and feet, of reluctance to do what would finally become delightful and energetic. Threads of thought had to rise and be gathered and catch on other threads of old thought, from some unused memory store. She had snatched from Marcus and Daniel's Mum, worse, from William whose physical being filled her inner eye and almost all her immediate memory, barely time for this vacancy, let alone for the subsequent concentration. She told herself she must learn to do without the vacancy if she was to survive. She must be cunning. She must learn to think in bus queues, in buses, in lavatories, between table and sink. It was hard. She was tired. She yawned. Time moved on.
-
... And yet her mind lifted: she had thought, she had seen clearly the relation between the parts played by the child-player and the confinement and depth. She felt a moment of freedom, looked at her watch, saw that there was no more time to write this down or work it out ...
-
Stephanie, her mind on the platonic aspects of the 'Immortality Ode', her body extremely anxious about William, came through the front door.
There was a terrible silence and then Stephanie, books flung down, had scooped up her still son, who, simply winded, began to scream ...
-
Stephanie kissed the graze and wept. There is something peculiarly distressing about the first wound on new skin.
Stephanie found it physically hard to pedal her bicycle away from the house. She felt held as by a long linen binder, such as mill children had worn to work machinery, to the shape of her son in his woven basket, one fist in his small ear. She seemed to hear, to feel, to smell powerful calling sounds, rufflings of the air, odours, which wanted her back, insisted that she must return. She put down rational foot after rational foot, with difficulty.
-
In the library, Stephanie laid out her books. Never before had she attempted to work without the outside sanction of an essay to write, an exam to pass, a class to prepare ...
She decided to read the 'Immortality Ode', just to read, clearly ... She felt panic. She had with some pain cleared this small space and time to think in and now thought seemed impossible. She remembered from what now seemed the astonishing free and spacious days of her education the phenomenon of the first day's work on a task. One had to peel one's mind from its run of preoccupations: coffee to buy, am I in love, the yellow dress needs cleaning, Tim is unhappy, what is wrong with Marcus, how shall I live my life? It took time before the task in hand seemed possible, and more before it came to life, and more still before it became imperative and obsessive. There had to be a time before thought, a wool-gathering time when nothing happened, a time of yawning, of wandering eyes and feet, of reluctance to do what would finally become delightful and energetic. Threads of thought had to rise and be gathered and catch on other threads of old thought, from some unused memory store. She had snatched from Marcus and Daniel's Mum, worse, from William whose physical being filled her inner eye and almost all her immediate memory, barely time for this vacancy, let alone for the subsequent concentration. She told herself she must learn to do without the vacancy if she was to survive. She must be cunning. She must learn to think in bus queues, in buses, in lavatories, between table and sink. It was hard. She was tired. She yawned. Time moved on.
-
... And yet her mind lifted: she had thought, she had seen clearly the relation between the parts played by the child-player and the confinement and depth. She felt a moment of freedom, looked at her watch, saw that there was no more time to write this down or work it out ...
-
Stephanie, her mind on the platonic aspects of the 'Immortality Ode', her body extremely anxious about William, came through the front door.
There was a terrible silence and then Stephanie, books flung down, had scooped up her still son, who, simply winded, began to scream ...
-
Stephanie kissed the graze and wept. There is something peculiarly distressing about the first wound on new skin.
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