Little Vampire Women (9 page)

“Tell us about it.” “When did it come?” “When did you do it?” “What will Father say?” “Won’t Laurie laugh?” cried the family, all at once as they clustered about Jo, for these foolish, affectionate people made a jubilee of every little household joy.

“Stop jabbering, girls, and I’ll tell you everything,” said Jo, wondering if her uncle had felt the same excitement when he had gained admittance to the salon. “When I went for an interview, Gentleman Jackson said he liked my qualifications but he didn’t accept girls, only let them watch the men training. It was good practice, he said, and when the beginners improved, so did the observer. Well, I thought that was mightily unfair, so I let him know exactly how I felt. I told him
all about Uncle March and his library and the training sessions we have here and my job as protectress of my aunt and that it was absurd to exclude a girl whose qualifications he liked just because she was a girl. He listened patiently and said he’d think about it and he must have decided it was unfair because he accepted me, and I’m so happy, for in time, I may be able to support myself and help the girls.”

Jo’s triumphant tale ended here, and clutching the letter dearly, she pressed soft little kisses on it, for to be independent and earn the praise of those she loved were the dearest wishes of her heart, and this seemed to be the first step toward that happy end.

“N
ovember is the most agreeable month in the whole year,” said Amy, standing at the window one bright evening, looking out at the frostbitten garden, “for the nights last so long and one can finally finish all of one’s errands.”

“That’s the reason I was born in it,” observed Jo cheerfully.

“It’s one of those months in which pleasant things happen,” said Beth, who took a hopeful view of everything.

“Nothing pleasant ever does happen in this family,” said Meg, made suddenly out of sorts by her sister’s unfounded optimism. “We go grubbing along day after day, without a bit of change, and very little fun. We might as well be in a treadmill.”

“My patience, how blue you are!” cried Jo. “I don’t much wonder, poor dear, for you see other girls having splendid times, while you grind, grind, year in and year out. Oh, don’t I wish I could manage things for you! You’re pretty enough and good enough already, so if I could I’d have some rich relation leave you a fortune unexpectedly. Then you’d dash out as an heiress, scorn everyone who has slighted you, go abroad, and come home my Lady Something in a blaze of splendor and elegance.”

Meg laughed, and turned to the frostbitten garden again. Jo smiled and leaned both elbows on the table in a relaxed attitude, but Amy spatted
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away energetically, and Beth, who sat at the other window, said cheerfully, “Marmee is coming down the street, and Laurie is tramping through the garden as if he had something nice to tell.”

In they both came, Mrs. March with her usual question, “Any letter from Father, girls?” and Laurie to say in his persuasive way, “Won’t some of you come for a drive? I’ve been working away at mathematics till my head is in a muddle, and I’m going to freshen my wits by a brisk turn. It’s a dull night, but the air isn’t bad, and I’m going to take Brooke home, so it will be gay inside, if it isn’t out. Come, Jo, you and Beth will go, won’t you?”

“Of course we will.”

“Much obliged, but I’m busy.” And Meg whisked out her workbasket, for she had agreed with her mother that it was best, for her at least, not to drive too often with the young tutor, whose interest they’d both observed.

“We three will be ready in a minute,” cried Amy, running away to wash her hands.

“Can I do anything for you, Madam Mother?” asked Laurie, leaning over Mrs. March’s chair with the affectionate look and tone he always gave her.

“No, thank you, except call at the office, if you’ll be so kind, dear. It’s our day for a letter, and the postman hasn’t been. Father is as regular as the sun, but there’s some delay on the way, perhaps.”

A sharp ring interrupted her, and a minute after Hannah came in with a letter.

“It’s one of them telegraph things, Mum,” she said, handling it as if she was afraid it would explode and do some damage.

At the word “telegraph,” Mrs. March snatched it, read the two lines it contained, and dropped back into her chair as frail as if the little paper had sent a stake through her heart. Laurie dashed downstairs for pig’s blood, while Meg and Hannah supported her, and Jo read aloud, in a frightened voice…

How still the room was as they listened breathlessly, how strange the message, and how suddenly the whole world seemed to change, as the girls and their mother tried to comprehend the notion of a sick vampire, for never before in the long history of immortals had one fallen ill. Plenty died in the heat of battle or the sun, but none had ever been stricken with a disease.

“What does that mean?” asked Jo.

“Ill in what manner?” said Beth.

“What kind of sickness could he have caught?” Amy wondered.

“I’m sure we didn’t hear that right,” Meg insisted.

Mrs. March read the message over, and stretched out her arms to her daughters, saying, in a tone they never forgot, “I shall go at once.”

For several minutes there was nothing but the sound of sobbing in the room, mingled with broken words of comfort, tender assurances of help, and hopeful whispers that it may all yet be a mistake.

“Perhaps there’s another Mr. March in the army and they sent us his telegram,” suggested Jo.

This indeed seemed a rather likely explanation, for there could be as many as four or five Marches, and the family immediately fell into sympathizing for the poor
unidentified family who had unknowingly suffered such a devastating blow.

“We should send something,” insisted Meg.

“Flowers,” said Jo.

“Chocolates,” said Amy.

“Black veils,” said Beth. “We could sew them ourselves.”

“Be calm, girls, and let me think,” said Marmee.

They tried to be calm, poor things, as their mother sat up, looking distracted but steady, and put away her puzzlement to think and plan for them.

“Where’s Laurie?” she asked presently, when she had collected her thoughts and decided on the first duties to be done.

“Here, ma’am. Oh, let me do something!” cried the boy, hurrying from the next room whither he had withdrawn, feeling that their first sorrow was too sacred for even his friendly eyes to see.

“Send a telegram saying I will come at once to inspect the identity of this so-called Mr. March. The next train goes after midnight. I’ll take that.”

“What else? The horses are ready. I can go anywhere, do anything,” he said, looking ready to fly to the ends of the earth.

“Leave a note at Aunt March’s. Jo, give me that pen and paper.”

Tearing off the blank side of one of her newly copied pages, Jo drew the table before her mother, well knowing that money for the long, probably unnecessary
journey must be borrowed, and feeling as if she could do anything to add a little to the sum for the desperately ill stranger.

“Now go, dear, but don’t kill yourself driving at a desperate pace. There is no need of that.”

Mrs. March’s warning was evidently thrown away, for five minutes later Laurie tore by the window on his own fleet horse, riding as if for his life.

“Jo, get these things. I’ll put them down, they’ll be needed and I must go prepared for nursing, as it is my duty to care for whatever sad invalid human I find there. Hospital stores are not always good. Beth, go and ask Mr. Laurence for a couple of bottles of old wine. I’m not too proud to beg for this faceless stranger. Amy, tell Hannah to get down the black trunk, and Meg, come and help me find my things, for I’m half bewildered.”

Trying to comprehend how an immortal could suffer the illnesses of humanity might well bewilder the poor lady, and Meg begged her to sit quietly in her room for a little while, and let them work. Everyone scattered like leaves before a gust of wind, and the quiet, happy household was broken up as suddenly as if the paper had been an evil spell.

Mr. Laurence came hurrying back with Beth, bringing every comfort the kind old gentleman could think of for the invalid, and friendliest promises of protection for the girls during the mother’s absence, which comforted her very much. There was nothing he didn’t
offer, from his own dressing gown to himself as escort. But the last was impossible. Mrs. March would not hear of the novice vampire undertaking the trip, for he could not know the many challenges a creature of the night faced on a long journey. But he saw the look of relief when he spoke of it, knit his heavy eyebrows, rubbed his hands, and marched abruptly away, saying he’d be back directly. No one had time to think of him again till, as Meg ran through the entry, with a pair of rubbers in one hand and a cup of pig’s blood in the other, she came suddenly upon Mr. Brooke.

“I’m very sorry to hear of this, Miss March,” he said, in the kind, quiet tone which sounded very pleasantly to her perturbed spirit. “I came to offer myself as escort to your mother. Mr. Laurence has commissions for me in Washington, and it will give me real satisfaction to be of service to her there.”

Down dropped the rubbers, and the blood was very near following, as Meg put out her hand, with a face so full of gratitude that Mr. Brooke would have felt repaid for a much greater sacrifice than the trifling one of time and comfort which he was about to take.

“How kind you all are! Mother will accept, I’m sure, and it will be such a relief to know that she has someone to take care of her. Thank you very, very much!”

Meg spoke earnestly, and forgot herself entirely till something in the brown eyes looking down at her made her remember the cooling blood, and led the way into
the parlor, saying she would call her mother.

Everything was arranged by the time Laurie returned with a note from Aunt March, enclosing the desired sum, and a few lines repeating what she had often said before, that she had always told them it was absurd for March to go into the army, always predicted that no good would come of it, and she hoped they would take her advice the next time. Mrs. March put the note in the fire, the money in her purse, and went on with her preparations, with her lips folded tightly in a way which Jo would have understood if she had been there.

The evening wore away. All other errands were done, and Meg and her mother were busy at some necessary needlework, while Beth and Amy got blood, and Hannah finished her ironing with what she called a “slap and a bang,” but still Jo did not come. They began to get anxious, and Laurie went off to find her, for no one knew what freak Jo might take into her head. He missed her, however, and she came walking in with a very queer expression of countenance, for there was a mixture of fun and fear, satisfaction and regret in it, which puzzled the family as much as did the roll of bills she laid before her mother, saying with a little choke in her voice, “That’s my contribution toward making Father or the unknown victim comfortable and bringing him home to us or the other Marches!”

“My dear, where did you get it? Twenty-five dollars!
Jo, I hope you haven’t done anything rash?”

“No, it’s mine honestly. I didn’t beg, borrow, or steal it. I earned it, and I don’t think you’ll blame me, for I only sold what was my own.”

As she spoke, Jo took off her bonnet, and a general outcry arose, for all her abundant hair was cut short.

“Your hair! Your beautiful hair!” “Oh, Jo, how could you? Your one beauty.” “My dear girl, there was no need of this.” “She doesn’t look like my Jo anymore, but I love her dearly for it!”

As everyone exclaimed, and Beth hugged the cropped head tenderly, Jo assumed an indifferent air, which did not deceive anyone a particle, and said, rumpling up the brown bush and trying to look as if she liked it, “It doesn’t affect the fate of the nation, so don’t wail, Beth. It will be good for my vanity, I was getting too proud of my wig. It will do my brains good to have that mop taken off. My head feels deliciously light and cool, and the barber said I could soon have a curly crop, which will be boyish, becoming, and easy to keep in order. I’m satisfied, so please take the money and let’s have supper.”

“Tell me all about it, Jo. I am not quite satisfied, but I can’t blame you, for I know how willingly you sacrificed your vanity, as you call it, to your love. But, my dear, it was not necessary, and I’m afraid you will regret it one of these days,” said Mrs. March.

“No, I won’t!” returned Jo stoutly, feeling much relieved that her prank was not entirely condemned.

“Didn’t you feel dreadfully when the first cut came?” asked Meg, with a shiver.

“I took a last look at my hair while the man got his things, and that was the end of it. I never snivel over trifles like that. I will confess, though, I felt queer when I saw the dear old hair laid out on the table, and felt only the short rough ends of my head. It almost seemed as if I’d lost an arm or leg off. The woman saw me look at it, and picked out a long lock for me to keep. I’ll give it to you, Marmee, just to remember past glories by, for a crop is so comfortable I don’t think I shall ever have a mane again.”

Mrs. March folded the wavy chestnut lock, and laid it away with a short gray one in her desk. She only said, “Thank you, deary,” but something in her face made the girls change the subject, and talk as cheerfully as they could about the good weather for traveling, Mr. Brooke’s kindness, and the happy times they would have when Marmee confirmed that the sick man wasn’t their father. “What do you mean, Mr. Brooke’s kindness?” Jo asked.

“He’s going to escort Mother to Washington, as Mr. Laurence has commissions for him to discharge there,” Meg explained.

Jo felt a sense of dread come over her and she ran to find her mother. “Marmee, you mustn’t do it,” she said. “You mustn’t.”

Her mother smiled softly at her, for she was a little
surprised to find her passionate Jo in a tizzy about something. “Mustn’t do what, dear?”

“Go with Brooke. He’s a vampire slayer, I just know it.”

Marmee ran a gentle hand over her daughter’s shorn locks. “My darling girl, it’s a distressing time and our thinking processes don’t always work as smoothly as they do during peaceful times. I know and have seen how unhappy the young gentleman’s courting of your sister has made you, and I understand. You don’t want to lose her and our happy family and so you’ve created a wild fiction in your head to justify this discomfort. It’s perfectly natural for someone with your exuberant spirit and nothing to fret about. It will pass soon enough.”

Jo protested violently that she wasn’t imagining things; that the Russellmacher Ruse No. 4,
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in which a slayer pretends to be an ardent human suitor, was a classic maneuver she’d read about a dozen times; and that even if one didn’t believe in the deadly Russellmacher Ruse, one had to admit there was something deeply suspicious about a human man who—

Here her mother cut her off before she could admit the evidence of the glove, for she knew her daughter’s
powerful imagination. “Go to sleep and don’t talk.”

The girls kissed Marmee quietly, and went silently to their coffins. Beth and Amy soon fell asleep in spite of the great trouble, but Meg lay awake, thinking the most serious thoughts she had ever known in her short life. Jo lay motionless, and her sister fancied that she was asleep, till a stifled sob escaped the casket.