第7章 My Cousin Fanny(7)

Several times as she was taking the wrong car men stopped her, and said to her, "Madam, yours is the red car." She said, sure enough it was, but she never could divine how they knew.She addressed the conductors as, "My dear sir", and made them help her not only off, but quite to the sidewalk, when she thanked them, and said "Good-by", as if she had been at home.

She said she did this on principle, for it was such a good thing to teach them to help a feeble woman.Next time they would expect to do it, and after a while it would become a habit.She said no one knew what terror women had of being run over and trampled on.

She was, as I have said, an awful coward.She used to stand still on the edge of the street and look up and down both ways ever so long, then go out in the street and stand still, look both ways and then run back;or as like as not start on and turn and run back after she was more than half way across, and so get into real danger.One day, as she was passing along, a driver had in his cart an old bag-of-bones of a horse, which he was beating to make him pull up the hill, and Cousin Fanny, with an old maid's meddlesomeness, pushed out into the street and caught hold of him and made him stop, which of course collected a crowd, and just as she was coming back a little cart came rattling along, and though she was in no earthly danger, she ran so to get out of the way of the horse that she tripped and fell down in the street and hurt herself.

So much for cowardice.

The doctor finally told her that she had nothing the matter with her, except something with her nerves and, I believe, her spine, and that she wanted company (you see she was a good deal alone).

He said it was the first law of health ever laid down, that it was not good for man to be alone; that loneliness is a specific disease.

He said she wanted occupation, some sort of work to interest her, and make her forget her aches and ailments.He suggested missionary work of some kind.This was one of the worst things he could have told her, for there was no missionary work to be had where she lived.Besides, she could not have done missionary work; she had never done anything in her life; she was always wasting her time pottering about the country on her old horse, seeing sick old darkies or poor people in the pines.

No matter how bad the weather was, nor how deep the roads, she would go prowling around to see some old "aunty" or "uncle", in their out-of-the-way cabins, or somebody's sick child.

I have met her on old Fashion in the rain, toiling along in roads that were knee-deep, to get the doctor to come to see some sick person, or to get a dose of physic from the depot.How could she have done any missionary work?

I believe she repaid the doctor for his care of her by sending him a charity patient to look after -- Scroggs's eldest girl, who was bedridden or something.Cousin Fanny had a fancy that she was musical.

I never knew how it was arranged.I think the doctor sent the money down to have the child brought on to New York for him to see.I suppose Cousin Fanny turned beggar, and asked him.I know she told him the child was the daughter of "a friend" of hers (a curious sort of friend Scroggs was, a drunken creature, who had done everything he could to pain her), and she took a great deal of trouble to get her to the train, lending old Fashion to haul her, which was a great deal more than lending herself; and the doctor treated her in New York for three months without any charge, till, I believe, the child got better.

Old maids do not mind giving people trouble.

She hung on at the old place as long as she could, but it had to be sold, and finally she had to leave it; though, I believe, even after it was sold she tried boarding for a while with Scroggs, the former tenant, who had bought it.He treated her so badly that finally she had to leave, and boarded around.I believe the real cause was she caught him ploughing with old Fashion.

After that I do not know exactly what she did.I heard that though the parish was vacant she had a Sunday-school at the old church, and so kept the church open; and that she used to play the wheezy old organ and teach the poor children the chants; but as they grew up they all joined another Church; they had a new organ there.I do not know just how she got on.I was surprised to hear finally that she was dead --had been dead since Christmas.It had never occurred to me that she would die.She had been dying so long that I had almost come to regard her as immortal, and as a necessary part of the old county and its associations.

I fell in some time afterwards with a young doctor from the old county, who, I found, had attended her, and I made some inquiries about her.