Chance of a Lifetime

by Grace Livingston Hill

  Her hand was trembling as she took down the receiver.

  “This is Dr. Grant, around the corner. Did you give an emergency call?”

  “Yes,” said Sherrill’s shaky voice. “My uncle, Mr. Washburn, has come home very sick, and there is no one in the house but myself. The servants have all gone out, and I am a stranger here. Won’t you come at once? I think he is terribly ill and I don’t know what to do.”

  The doctor asked one or two quick questions and then said, “I’ll come.”

  Half an hour later, Sherrill stood anxiously in the hall with the doctor.

  “He’s a very sick man,” he said. “He’s evidently been sick for several days, and he’s got a bad case of smallpox. Where are the family?”

  “Gone to a house party on Long Island.”

  “That’s good,” said the doctor. “They wouldn’t be much help. How long have you been near him? Well, I’m afraid you’re in for the quarantine, but we’ll try and keep you from getting the disease. You’d better get out of the house as quickly as possible, if you have any place to go. You’ll have to wash your hands with this antiseptic soap, and you’d better put those clothes you have on out in the sun tomorrow. There really isn’t much danger of contagion tonight as there will be a little later in the game. You’d better get out at once.”

  “But I can’t leave my uncle alone!” said Sherrill aghast.

  “Well, if you don’t go now you won’t be allowed to go, you know. I’d send him to the hospital, but I’m afraid it might be fatal. The weather has changed the last two hours, and it’s bitter cold and sleeting. I wouldn’t dare risk moving him now. Besides, it would take time to arrange to get him in anywhere. Not all hospitals will take a case like this. I can’t think where he picked it up. We haven’t had a case around New York that I know of for some time, at least nothing as bad as this. You say he’s been away? Well, you better get in touch with your aunt and find out what she wants done. She’ll probably want to come home right away and nurse him, but of course that wouldn’t be wise. However, she has the right to say. Of course, I’ll phone to the hospital and try to get an experienced nurse at once.”

  Sherrill searched through her uncle’s desk and, after great difficulty, found the invitation, which gave a clue on how to call her, and at last succeeded in getting Eloise Washburn on the wire.

  “This is Sherrill,” she began, and the querulous voice broke in.

  “Well, what do you want? I should say you had made trouble enough for one day, without interrupting me at a dinner. Don’t you know—”

  But Sherrill broke in. “Uncle Weston has come home, and he’s very sick!”

  There was a silence at the other end for an instant, and then the impatient voice said, “Well, I can’t do anything about it now. What’s the matter with him? What do you suppose I can do at this distance? Tell him to call a doctor.”

  “I have called a doctor,” said Sherrill, “the one around the corner. Uncle Weston is delirious. I couldn’t ask him who to call.”

  “How tiresome! Well, what does the doctor say is the matter?” demanded the aunt.

  “He says it’s a very bad case of smallpox!”

  “What nonsense!” said the wife sharply. “I don’t believe it. There’s no smallpox around here. However, you’d better be on the safe side and have him sent to the hospital. Any hospital the doctor suggests will be all right.”

  “The doctor says he is too sick to be moved. It might be fatal.”

  “For pity’s sake! I never heard of such a thing! They always take people to the hospital for everything. I have always heard it was the only safe way. Well, I’m sure I don’t know what to do. I am not there. You’ll have to do what you can. I suppose I can get a nurse. Of course, Carol and I can’t come back now, if that’s really true. But probably they’ll find out it’s a mistake by morning. Weston always does get awfully sick and thinks he’s going to die if he just scratches his fingers. You’d better call Dr. Grainger. He’s our doctor. He’ll know what to do. I’ll call up in the morning and find out what you’ve done. Meanwhile, don’t, for pity’s sake, let the contagion get through the house. Tell the servants to close up the rooms downstairs, and keep everyone out. This certainly is tiresome. I can’t think how it happened. Smallpox! The idea! How horrid! It seems, somehow, so plebeian. Weston ought to have been ashamed to come home with a thing like that.”

  In great disgust Sherrill hung up the receiver and turned away, sick with weariness and fear. Her dear home to which she had been going! And now she could not go! Her trunk was gone already! She had an instant of satisfaction that her beautiful things were at least out of contagion and would not have to go through fumigation. Oh, why hadn’t she left a few hours earlier?

  And then she turned from the thought as contemptible. Who then would have cared for her uncle? Who would have given the alarm to the family and sent for a doctor?

  Like a flash she suddenly knew why she had been sent to New York. This then was the opportunity, the “chance of a lifetime,” they had talked about. Well, if it was the chance that God had planned for her, then He had something for her to do here for Him, and she must not murmur.

  With new resignation she walked upstairs and talked with the doctor. Then she went to her room and took off her pretty dress, hanging it on a hanger in the open window. She took off her shoes and put on her Pullman slippers, donned the little close Pullman cap Grandmother had made to wear in the sleeper, and after an instant’s hesitation put on the china silk robe she had in her overnight bag. It was slippery and would wash, and was better than a heavy dress.

  Then she slipped down to the kitchen and hunted out a maid’s apron and was fixed for service. Coming back, she presented herself at the door of the sickroom.

  “Now! What shall I do? I can obey orders,” she said, with a brave look.

  The doctor was not a high and mighty specialist. He was just a plain, grave man with a genius for healing and his hard way to make in the world. He had done his best at the telephone to get in touch with Dr. Grainger, the great favorite of the wealthy, but was told that Dr. Grainger was up in Canada shooting things for his health and would not return for a month. Whereupon he turned his attention to getting a nurse, two nurses if possible, but it appeared there was suddenly a dearth of nurses for contagious diseases. There wouldn’t be one free until sometime the next day, possibly not until toward evening.

  “You’re just a child!” said the doctor, turning in despair from the telephone. “I can’t leave you here even to go out and look for someone.”

  “Tell me what to do,” said the child bravely, giving him a wan smile, “and don’t waste time worrying about me.”

  So at last the doctor left her for a time to go out and try to get a nurse. He suggested that probably the servants would return for some time that night, and she would warn them to come up the back stairs and observe certain precautions used in quarantine.

  “You’re a brave girl,” he said, unbending from his brusque manner. “Aren’t you afraid?”

  “No,” said Sherrill. “It will be all right. It must be what I was sent here for.”

  He went away wondering what she meant and determined to relieve her duty as soon as possible.

  It became apparent that the servants would not return that night. They had evidently gone away for the weekend also. So Sherrill sat alone in the great house filled with many strange noises that step abroad in silence of the midnight. She listened to her uncle’s moaning and his muttered words, and became filled with a great longing for him that he might know the Lord and have peace and rest in his heart; and while she sat there waiting, giving the medicine as the doctor had directed, applying all the means ordered, she was praying.

  Once in the night she realized that she had not eaten anything in a long time, so washing her hands very carefully in antiseptics, she went downstairs and found something to eat. And then she suddenly remembered her telegram to Keith. She must send another. They would be ala
rmed if she did not arrive in the morning. So she called up Western Union and sent another message.

  UNAVOIDABLY DELAYED. DON’T WORRY. WILL WIRE LATER. PLEASE GET TRUNK. CHECK NO 1021365 STARTED ON MIDNIGHT TRAIN.

  The doctor called up in the night to ask how things were going and report he had not found a nurse yet but was on track of one. The night wore on, the longest night of Sherrill Washburn’s life, and morning dawned at last, slowly creeping in grayly at the windows, throwing long, ghastly shadows on the sick man’s face.

  The doctor came presently and took her place beside the patient, ordering her to lie down, and blessed sleep enveloped her for a time. But she was too young and too anxious to sleep long, and came back again on the dot of an hour. And there began the slow monotony of another day.

  Sherrill knew her family would have been vaguely alarmed by her nonappearance and more so by her telegram, and later, after a talk with the doctor, she decided to tell the truth, at least part of the truth, and so she evolved another message.

  UNCLE WESTON HAS THE SMALLPOX. HE IS VERY SICK. AM UNDER QUARANTINE. CANNOT GET AWAY AT PRESENT. DOCTOR IS WATCHING OUT FOR ME AND SAYS YOU NEED NOT BE ALARMED. DON’T WORRY. I’M ALL RIGHT, ONLY DISAPPOINTED, BUT I GUESS THIS IS WHY I HAD TO COME. CAN’T WRITE AT PRESENT, BUT WILL TELEGRAPH ANY CHANGE. PRAY FOR UNCLE WESTON. LOVINGLY, SHERRILL.

  Two hours later the telephone began to ring, and long distance took a part in the proceedings. Keith called up from the store, guardedly, to know the whole truth and not to worry the rest. Sherrill laughed for sheer relief to hear his dear voice. Grandmother called up while her daughter was down doing the marketing, and told Sherrill she might tell her everything and she would keep it to herself. Sherrill laughed again and told Grandmother all the funny things she could think of but gave no hint that she was the head nurse still.

  Mother called up, almost at once, from the grocery so Grandmother wouldn’t hear her, and said precious things as mothers can, and gave good cheer she didn’t feel herself, and made Sherrill promise she would take care for herself and run no risks. Made her promise to wire at once or phone, if she felt the least bit sick, and all the other things that mothers make you promise at times of great distress.

  Then Alan called up, dear Alan, and made her laugh and cry, and got to know the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth about the case.

  “Well, I knew you would. It’s like you, kid. Well, I’ll pray! Oh sure. I’ve been doing it. And I won’t let on. But if you don’t get a real nurse before tomorrow night, I’m coming, see? I may not be experienced, but I can take orders, and I’m not going to have you get sick. It’s all right, kid, I can get somebody to take my place in the store. Or something. But if you don’t get somebody else right away, I’m coming.”

  Somehow, the day went easier after that, and by night the nurse arrived, a capable, experienced elderly woman who had had the smallpox and bore its marks on her face. But she was motherly and knew her business and sent Sherrill to bed at once.

  However, before she went, Sherrill called Alan and told him the news.

  Monday morning the servants arrived, stealthily, as if they had not been gone, but when they saw the sign upon the door, and when they heard the news Sherrill had to tell them, calling it down the back stairs, they vanished like the morning dew upon the mountains. They stole fearsomely up the stairs, it is true, and claimed their worldly goods, throwing them out of the area window and gathering them up below. But they left en masse and completely, without so much as a word of apology or offer of help to the frail girl who stood at the top of the stairs and watched them depart.

  Then Sherrill set to work in earnest and began to lay out a daily routine, for now she had a house to run and meals to prepare.

  She prayed much in those days, as the sick man lay between life and death, hour after hour pleaded with God to save him and to bring him back to life if possible. Then after long days of waiting, he began to get a little better, and at last the doctor told her that he would.

  Telegrams were common things in those days, flying back and forth between New York and home; Alan extravagantly used long distance almost every night. It was a great comfort to Sherrill, in her exile, to talk with him a few minutes before she slept. Christmas came and the telephone was her only celebration—except the flowers that Alan sent, and a box of good things to eat from Mother, and a check from Keith. But there came a day when Uncle Weston was so much better that he wanted Sherrill to read to him.

  She sat behind an antiseptic curtain, which the nurse had established as soon as she was installed, and read snatches of things to him, little bits of books, occasionally something bright or exciting from the newspaper. But finally she ventured to read a story from the Bible, then a psalm, to him every night, and he grew to seem to like it. At such times she began to see what chance had been given her to reach this dear member of her father’s family with the Word of God.

  Then one notable day, her uncle began to talk with her about the scripture she had been reading, and she had an opportunity to make it all plain to him about the way of salvation.

  He lay a long time thinking after she had ceased to talk, and at last he said, “Little girl, you’ve been wonderful to your old uncle. You’ve stuck by and saved my life. I shall never be able to repay you—”

  “I don’t want pay, dear Uncle Weston,” she said eagerly.

  “No, I know you don’t,” said the uncle. “That’s the best of all. Little girl, you’ve made me see what Jesus Christ is. I never believed much before in the Bible or religion, but now I have seen him in a human life. And if it’s anything to you, I want you to know that you brought me to a place where I know that I need Jesus, your Jesus, and I am going to serve Him the rest of my days.”

  Wasn’t that reason enough for Sherrill to rejoice? Hadn’t she seen at last why she had to go to New York and go through all the hard things? Oh, God was great!

  At last Uncle Weston was well enough to walk about his room, to read to himself, and to take a hand in the planning of life again. The weeks had been long, but they were over and finished.

  A day came when the doctor signed her release, gave her a clean bill of health, took the quarantine sign off the door, and sent Sherrill home.

  Joyously, with a full heart, she gathered up her letters—there was not much left of her own but letters, a few plain garments they had sent her through the mail, and a few dried rosebuds from the multitudes Alan had sent her almost daily—and started home.

  Aunt Eloise and Carol were wintering in Florida, and Aunt Eloise called up on long distance, sweetly, almost every day to know how things were going. She was negotiating plans whereby they could sell the Riverside house and live abroad for a time, as soon as the husband and father was well enough to leave. Aunt Eloise said she would never be able to enter that pestilential house again. Smallpox was so devastating to a complexion, and really, Carol was growing up and needed foreign advantages.

  “You will pray for your old uncle, little girl?” said Weston Washburn with a tired, patient look upon his face. “You know it won’t be easy for an old worldling like me to keep steady under fire. Pray that I might not fail. Pray for my little girl, too, Sherrill. I wish she were like you. Then pray for my wife. I know she’s been hard on you, child, but pray for her. She needs it. And don’t forget your old uncle needs you. Good-bye, little nurse. My little precious missionary!”

  And with these words ringing in her ears, Sherrill went home. Back to the dear hometown and the dear home folks. Back to new opportunities and new understandings, back from the chance of a lifetime.

  The first evening Sherrill spent at home, Alan came to dinner, and after the family had been gathered, listening to hear many stories of her visit, often gently softened to hide some of the hardest places, by and by they all stole out into the other room on one excuse and another, and left Alan and Sherrill alone.

  “There isn’t any such thing as the chance of a lifetime, Alan,” Sherrill said
, lifting her eyes with a shining look. “Every opportunity is the great chance, and the only thing is to find out where God is leading.”

  “You’re right,” said the young man with an answering look. “I’ve been learning that all winter. If through nothing else, Bob’s letters would have been enough. You ought to see how he’s changed and grown. He loves the Bible. He simply eats it up! And now that he’s got there, he’s beginning to take a deep interest in hunting out things that prove the Bible stories. I declare I never saw anything like it. But you must read his letters.”

  “Yes,” said Sherrill. “I heard a little bit about it this afternoon from Lancey Kennedy. Do you know he’s been writing to her? I didn’t know they were friends, did you? But she came over this afternoon a few minutes and told me about it. She said he had been telling her how he found Christ, and he said he wished she would give herself to Him, too. So she had come to me to find out what to do. It was pitiful almost, she was so eager. She’s a lovely girl, and she was ready to kneel down with me and surrender herself. Why, Alan, it choked me all up so I could hardly pray with her, it was wonderful! And I was thinking, Alan, do you know if you had gone to Egypt, maybe none of these things would have happened? Maybe Bob would have gone to the dogs, and Lancey would never have wanted to find the Lord Jesus. So it was really the chance of a lifetime that you were offered that telegram, don’t you see?”

  “I sure do!” answered Alan with a ringing in his voice. “The biggest chance I could have asked. And there are other things, too, not as important, but still worthwhile, connected with Dad’s business, things I’ll tell you later. But there’s something else. Sherrill”—Alan got up, came around, and sat beside her on the couch.