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123 pages

English

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In the nineteenth-century rural South, country doctors were often much more than just physicians. They played a part in the personal dramas, important milestones, and life-or-death decisions of virtually every family in a fifty-mile radius. In this charming novel, one such doctor reflects on his life over the past year as the holiday season approaches.

Informations

Publié par	The Floating Press
Date de parution	01 février 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781776530816
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0134€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

THE DOCTOR'S CHRISTMAS EVE
* * *
JAMES LANE ALLEN

*
The Doctor's Christmas Eve First published in 1910 Epub ISBN 978-1-77653-081-6 Also available: PDF ISBN 978-1-77653-082-3 © 2013 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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Preface PART I I - The Children of Desire II - When a Boy Finds Out About His Father III - The Books of the Year IV - The Book of the Years V - Evergreen and Thorn Tree PART II I - Two Other Winter Snowbirds at a Window II - Four in a Cage III - The Realm of Midnight IV - Time-Spirit and Eternal Spirit V - When a Father Finds Out About a Son VI - Living Out the Years
*
TO THE SOWER
Preface
*
THIS work now published under the title of "The Doctor's Christmas Eve"is the one earlier announced for publication under the title of "A Broodof the Eagle."
"The Doctor, Herbert and Elsie's father, our nearest neighbor, your closest friend now in middle life—do you ever tire of the Doctor and wish him away?"
"The longer I know him, the more I like him, honor him, trust him."
— The Bride of the Mistletoe.
PART I
*
I - The Children of Desire
*
THE morning of the twenty-fourth of December a quarter of a century agoopened upon the vast plateau of central Kentucky as a brilliant butbitter day—with a wind like the gales of March.
Out in a neighborhood of one of the wealthiest and most thickly settledcounties, toward the middle of the forenoon, two stumpy figures withmovements full of health and glee appeared on a hilltop of the treelesslandscape. They were the children of the neighborhood physician, a manof the highest consequence in his part of the world; and they had comefrom their home, a white and lemon-colored eighteenth-century manorhouse a mile in their rear. Through the crystalline air the chimneys ofthis low structure, rising out of a green girdle of cedar trees, couldbe seen emptying unusual smoke which the wind in its gambolling pouncedupon and jerked away level with the chimney-tops.
But if you had stood on the hill where the two children climbed intoview and if your eye could have swept round the horizon with adequateradius of vision, it would everywhere have been greeted by the samewondrous harmonious spectacle: out of the chimneys of all dwellingsscattered in comfort and permanence over that rich domestic land—a landof Anglo-Saxon American homes—more than daily winter smoke was pouring:one spirit of preparation, one mood of good will, warmed houses andhearts. The whole visible heaven was receiving the incense of KentuckyChristmas fires; the whole visible earth was a panorama of the commonpeace.
The two dauntless, frost-defying wayfarers—what Emerson, meeting themin the depths of a New England winter, might have called two scraps ofvalor—were following across fields and meadows and pastures one of thefootpaths which children who are friendly neighbors naturally make inorder to get to each other, as the young of wild creatures trace forthemselves upon the earth some new map of old hereditary traits andcravings. For the goal of their journey they were hurrying toward ahouse not yet in sight but hardly more than a mile ahead, where theywere to spend Christmas Day and share in an old people's and children'sChristmas-Tree party on Christmas Night—and where also they were to putinto execution a plot of their own: about which a good deal is to benarrated.
They were thus transferring the nation's yearly festival of the homefrom their own roof-tree to that of another family as the place where itcould be enacted and enjoyed. The tragical meaning of this arrangementwas but too well understood by their parents. To them the abandonment oftheir own fireside at the season when its bonds should have beenfreshened and deepened scarcely seemed an unnatural occurrence. Theother house had always been to them as a secondary home. It was theresidence of their father's friend, a professor in the State Universitysituated some miles off across fine country. His two surviving children,a boy and a girl of about their own ages, had always been their intimateassociates. And the woman of that household—the wife, the mother—alltheir lives they had been mysteriously impelled toward this gentlewomanby a power of which they were unconscious but by which they had beenswayed.
The little girl wore a crimson hood and a brown cloak and the boy acrimson skull cap and a brown overcoat; and both wore crimson mittens;and both were red-legged and red-footed; for stockings had been drawnover their boots to insure warmth and to provide safeguard againstslipping when they should cross the frozen Elkhorn or venture toofriskily on silvery pools in the valley bottoms.
The chestnut braids of the girl falling heavily from under her hood metin a loop in the middle of her broad fat back and were tied there with asnip of ribbon that looked like a feather out of the wing of a bluejay.Her bulging hips overreached the borders of the narrow path, so that theboy was crowded out upon the rough ground as he struggled forward closebeside her. She would not allow him to walk in front of her and hedisdained to walk behind.
"Then walk beside me or go back!" she had said to him, laughingcarelessly.
She looked so tight inside her wrappings, so like a jolly ambulatorysmall barrel well hooped and mischievously daubed here and there withvermilion, that you might have had misgivings as to the fate of thebarrel, were it to receive a violent jolt and be rolled over. No thoughtof such mishap troubled her as she trotted forward, balancing herself aslightly on her cushioned feet as though she were wind-carriedthistledown. Nor was she disturbed by her selfishness in monopolizingthe path and forcing her brother to encounter whatsoever the winterearth obtruded—stumps of forest trees, brambles of blackberry, sproutsof cane, or stalks of burdock and of Spanish needle. His footing wasespecially troublesome when he tried to straddle wide corn-rows with hisshort legs; or when they crossed a hemp-field where the butt-ends of thestalks serried the frost-gray soil like bayonet points. Altogether hisexertions put him out of breath somewhat, for his companion was fleetand she made no allowance for his delays and difficulties.
Her hands, deep in the fleece-lined mittens, were comfortably warm; butshe moreover kept them thrust into a muff of white fur, which alsolooked overfed and seemed of a gay harmony with its owner. This muff shenow and then struck against her flexed knees in a vixenish playfulnessas one beats a tambourine on a bent elbow; and at a certain point of thejourney, having glanced sidewise at him and remarked his breath on theicy air, she lifted it to her mouth and spoke guardedly from behindit:—
"Remember the last thing Papa told us at the window, Herbert: we were tokeep our mouths closed and to breathe through our noses. And rememberalso, my child, that we were to rely upon— especially to relyupon—the ribs and the diaphragm! I wonder why he thought it necessaryto tell us that! Did he suppose that as soon as we got by ourselves orarrived at the Ousleys', we'd begin to rely upon something else, andperhaps try to breathe with our spines and elbows?"
Her eyes sparkled with mischief, and her laughter had the audacity of achild's satire, often more terrible in its small world than a sage's inhis larger one. The instant she spoke, you recognized the pertness andprecocity of an American child—which, when seen at its best or at itsworst, is without precedent or parallel among the world's children. Shewas the image of a hard bold crisp newness. Her speech was new, herideas were new, her impertinence was new—except in this country. Sheappeared to have gathered newness during her short life, to be newerthan the day she was born. The air was full of frost spangles thatzigzagged about her as she danced along; they rather seemed likeparticles of salt especially provided to escort her character. If it hadbeen granted Lot's wife with tears of repentance to dissolve away thecrystals of her curiosity and resume the duties of motherhood,—thoughpossibly permeated by a mild saline solution as a warning,—thatsalt-cured matron might admirably have adapted herself to the decrees ofProvidence by producing Elsie.
The boy as she administered her caution stopped; and shutting his ownred mouth, which was like hers though more generous, he drew a longbreath through his nostrils; then, throwing back his head, he blew thisout with an open-mouthed puff, and a column of white steam shot up intothe blue ether and was whirled away by the wind. He stood studying itawhile as it disappeared, for he was a close observer always—aperpetual watcher of the thing that is—sometimes an observer fearful toconfront. Then he sprang forward to catch up with his sharp-tonguedmonitress, who had hurried on. As he came alongside, he turned his facetoward her and made his reply, which was certainly deliberate enough inarriving:—
"We have to be taught the best way to breathe, Elsie; as anythingelse!"
The defence only brought on a fresh attack:—
"I wonder who teaches the young of other animals how to breathe! Ishould like to know who teaches kittens and puppies and calves andlambs how to breathe! How do they ever manage to get along withoutcountry doctors among them! Imagine a middle-aged sheep—old Dr.Buck—assembling a flock of lambs and trying to show them how tobreathe!" Judging from Elsie's expression, the lambs in the case couldnot hav