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The Lady in Black (By Eleanor H. Porter)

Source of the picture: Wikipedia

Our story today is called "The Lady in Black."  It was written by Eleanor H. Porter.  Here is Faith Lapidus with the story.

The house was very still.  In the little room over the porch, the Lady in Black sat alone.  Near her, a child's white dress lay across a chair.  On the floor at her feet lay a tiny pair of shoes.  A doll hung over a chair and a toy soldier occupied the little stand by the bed.

And everywhere was silence—the strange silence that comes only to a room where the clock has stopped ticking.

The clock stood on the shelf near the end of the bed.  The Lady in Black looked at it.  She remembered the wave of anger that had come over her when she had reached out her hand and silenced the clock that night three months before.

It had been silent ever since and it should remain silent, too.  Of what possible use were the hours it would tick away now?  As if anything mattered, with little Kathleen lying out there white and still under the black earth!

"Muvver!"

The Lady in Black moved restlessly and looked toward the closed door.  Behind it, she knew, was a little boy with wide blue eyes who wanted her.  But she wished he would not call her by that name.  It only reminded her of those other little lips--silent now.

"Muvver!"  The voice was more demanding.

The Lady in Black did not answer. He might go away, she thought, if she did not answer.

There was a short silence, and then the door opened slowly.

"Pe-eek!" It was a cry of joyful discovery, but it was followed almost immediately by silence.  The unsmiling woman did not invite him to come near.  The boy was unsteady at his first step.  He paused, then spoke carefully, "I's--here."

It was maybe the worst thing he could have said.  To the Lady in Black it was a yet more painful reminder of that other one who was not there. She gave a sharp cry and covered her face with her hands.

"Bobby, Bobby" she cried out, in a release of unreasoning sadness.  "Go away!  Go away!  I want to be alone--alone!"

All the brightness fled from the boy's face.  His eyes showed a feeling of deep hurt.  He waited, but she did not move.  Then, with a half-quieted cry, he left the room.

(MUSIC)

Long minutes afterward, the Lady in Black raised her head and saw him through the window.  He was in the yard with his father, playing under the apple tree.

Playing!

The Lady in Black looked at them with serious eyes, and her mouth hardened at the corners.

Bobby had someone to play with him, someone to love him and care for him, while out there on the hillside Kathleen was alone--all alone.

With a little cry the Lady in Black sprang to her feet and hurried into her own room. Her hands shook as she pinned on her hat and covered herself with her black veil.  But her step was firm as she walked downstairs and out through the hall.

The man under the apple tree rose hurriedly and came forward.

"Helen, dearest,--not again, today!" he begged.  "Darling, it can't do any good!"

"But she's alone--all alone.  You don't seem to think!  No one thinks--no one knows how I feel.  You don't understand.  If you did, you'd come with me.  You wouldn't ask me to stay--here!" choked the woman.

"I have been with you, dear," said the man gently.  "I've been with you today, and every day, almost, since--since she left us.  But it can't do any good--this continuous mourning over her grave.  It only makes more sadness for you, for me, and for Bobby.  Bobby is--here, you know, dear!"

"No, no, don't say it," cried the woman wildly.  "You don't understand!  You don't understand!" And she turned and hurried away, followed by the worried eyes of the man, and the sad eyes of the boy.

(MUSIC)

It was not a long walk to the burial place.  The Lady in Black knew the way.  Yet, she stumbled and reached out blindly.  She fell before a little stone marked "Kathleen."  Near her a gray-haired woman, with her hands full of pink and white roses, watched her sympathetically.  The gray-haired woman paused and opened her lips as if she would speak.  Then she turned slowly and began to arrange her flowers on a grave nearby.

The Lady in Black raised her head.  For a time she watched in silence.  Then she threw back her veil and spoke.

"You care, too," she said softly.  "You understand.  I've seen you here before, I'm sure.  And was yours--a little girl?"

The gray-haired woman shook her head.

No, dearie, it's a little boy--or he was a little boy forty years ago."

"Forty years--so long!  How could you have lived forty years--without him?"

Again the little woman shook her head.

"One has to--sometimes, dearie, but this little boy wasn't mine.

"But you care.  You understand.  I've seen you here so often before."

"Yes.  You see, there's no one else to care. But there was once, and I'm caring now, for her sake."

"For her?"

"His mother."

"Oh-h!"  It was a tender little cry, full of quick sympathy.  The eyes of the Lady in Black were on the stone marked "Kathleen."

"It ain't as if I didn't know how she'd feel," said the gray-haired woman.  "You see, I was nurse to the boy when it happened, and for years afterward I worked in the family.  So I know.  I saw the whole thing from the beginning, from the very day when the little boy here met with the accident."

"Accident!"  It was a cry of concern and sympathy from Kathleen's mother.

"Yes.  It was a runaway and he didn't live two days."

"I know!  I know!" choked the Lady in Black.  Yet she was not thinking of the boy and the runaway horse accident.

"Things stopped then for my mistress," continued the little gray-haired woman, "and that was the beginning of the end.  She had a husband and a daughter, but they didn't seem to be important--not either of 'em.  Nothin' seemed important except this little grave out here.  She came and spent hours over it, bringin' flowers and talkin' to it."

The Lady in Black raised her head suddenly and quickly looked into the woman's face.  The woman went on speaking.

"The house got sadder and sadder, but she didn't seem to mind. She seemed to want it so.  She shut out the sunshine and put away many of the pictures.  She sat only in the boy's room.  And there, everything was just as it was when he left it.  She wouldn't let a thing be touched.  I wondered afterward that she didn't see where it was all leadin' to, but she didn't."

"'Leading to'?" The voice shook.

"Yes.  I wondered she didn't see she was losin' 'em--that husband and daughter; but she didn't see it."

The Lady in Black sat very still. Even the birds seemed to have stopped their singing.  Then the gray-haired woman spoke:

"So, you see, that's why I come and put flowers here.  It's for her.  There's no one else now to care," she sighed, rising to her feet.

"But you haven't told yet--what happened," said the Lady in Black, softly.

"I don't know myself really.  I know the man went away.  He got somethin' to do travelin' so he wasn't home much.  When he did come he looked sick and bad.  He come less and less, and he died.  But that was after she died.  He's buried over there beside her and the boy.  The girl--well, nobody knows where the girl is.  Girls like flowers and sunshine and laughter and young people, you know, and she didn't get any of them at home.  So she went--where she did get 'em, I suppose.

"There, and if I haven't gone and tired you all out with my talkin'!"  said the little gray-haired woman regretfully.

"No, no.  I was glad to hear it," said the Lady in Black, rising unsteadily to her feet. Her face had grown white, and her eyes showed a sudden fear.  "But I must go now. Thank you."  And she turned and hurried away.

(MUSIC)

The house was very still when the Lady in Black reached home.  She shivered at its silence.  She hurried up the stairs, almost with guilt.  In her own room she pulled at the dark veil that covered her face.  She was crying now, a choking little cry with broken words running through it.  She was still crying as she removed her black dress.

Long minutes later, the Lady--in black no longer--moved slowly down the stairway.  Her eyes showed traces of tears, but her lips were bravely curved in a smile.  She wore a white dress and a single white rose in her hair.  Behind her, in the little room over the porch, a tiny clock ticked loudly on its shelf near the end of the bed.

There came a sound of running feet in the hall below, then:

"Muvver!--it's Muvver come back!" shouted a happy voice.

And with a little sobbing cry Bobby's mother opened her arms to her son.

"The Lady in Black" was written by Eleanor H. Porter.  It was adapted for Special English by Lawan Davis who was also the producer.  The storyteller was Faith Lapidus.

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Elizabeth Blackwell, 1821-1910: Against Strong Opposition, She Became the First Western Woman in Modern Times to Become a Doctor

Source: Voice of America Special English www.manythings.org/voa/people 

Elizabeth Blackwell, 1821-1910: Against Strong Opposition, She Became the First Western Woman in Modern Times to Become a Doctor 

Every week we tell about someone important in the history of the United States.  Today, Shirley Griffith and Ray Freeman tell about the first western woman in modern times to become a doctor. Now, the story of Elizabeth Blackwell on the VOA Special English program PEOPLE IN AMERICA.

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Elizabeth Blackwell was born in Bristol, England in eighteen twenty-one. Her parents, Hannah and Samuel Blackwell, believed strongly that all human beings are equal. Elizabeth's father owned a successful sugar company. He worked hard at his job. He also worked to support reforms in England. He opposed the slave women to have the same chance for education as men.

He carried this out in his own home. Elizabeth had three brothers and four sisters. All followed the same plan of education. They all studied history, mathematics, Latin and Greek. These subjects were normally taught only to boys. Friends asked Samuel Blackwell what he expected the girls to do with all that education. He answered: "They shall do what they please".

In eighteen thirty-two, Samuel Blackwell's sugar factory was destroyed by fire. He and his wife decided to move the family to the United States. Elizabeth was eleven years old.

The Blackwells settled in New York City. But Mr. Blackwell's business there failed. The family moved west, to the city of Cincinnati, on the Ohio River.

Samuel Blackwell was sick for much of the trip. He died soon after arriving in Ohio. To help support the family, Elizabeth and her two older sisters started a school for girls in their home. Two younger brothers found jobs.

In the next few years, Elizabeth's brothers became successful in business. The girls continued operating their school. But Elizabeth was not happy. She did not like teaching.

Elizabeth began to visit a family friend who was suffering from cancer. The woman knew she was dying. She said women should be permitted to become doctors because they are good at helping sick people. The dying friend said that perhaps her sickness would have been better understood if she had been treated by a woman. And she suggested that Elizabeth study medicine.

Elizabeth knew that no woman had ever been permitted to study in a medical school. But she began to think about the idea seriously after the woman who had suggested it died.

Elizabeth discussed it with the family doctor. He was opposed. But her family supported the idea. So Elizabeth took a teaching job in the southern state of North Carolina to earn money for medical school.

Another teacher there agreed to help her study the sciences she would need. The next year, she studied medicine privately with a doctor. He was also a medical school professor. He told Elizabeth that the best medical schools were in Philadelphia.

No medical school in Philadelphia would accept her. College officials told her she must go to Paris and pretend to be a man if she wanted to become a doctor. Elizabeth refused. She wrote to other medical colleges -- Harvard, Yale, and other, less well-known ones. All rejected her, except Geneva Medical College in the state of New York.

She went there immediately, but did not feel welcome. It was not until much later that she learned the reason: her acceptance was a joke. The teachers at the college decided not to admit a woman. But they did not want to insult the doctor who had written to support Elizabeth's desire to study medicine. So they let the medical students decide.

The male students thought it funny that a woman wanted to attend medical school. So, as a joke, they voted to accept her. They regretted their decision by the time Elizabeth arrived, but there was nothing they could do. She was there. She paid her money. She wanted to study.

Elizabeth Blackwell faced many problems in medical school. Some professors refused to teach her. Some students threatened her. But finally they accepted her. Elizabeth graduated with high honors from Geneva Medical School in eighteen forty-nine. She was the only woman in the western world to have completed medical school training.

Three months later, Doctor Elizabeth Blackwell went to Paris to learn to be a surgeon. She wanted to work in a hospital there to learn how to operate on patients. But no hospital wanted her. No one would recognize that she was a doctor.

A hospital for women and babies agreed to let her study there. But she had to do the tasks of a nursing student. At the hospital, Doctor Blackwell accidentally got a chemical liquid in her eye. It became infected. She became blind in that eye. So she was forced to give up her dreams of becoming a surgeon.

Instead, she went to London to study at Saint Bartholomew's Hospital. There, she met the famous nurse Florence Nightingale.

Elizabeth returned to the United States in eighteen fifty-one. She opened a medical office in New York City. But no patients came. So doctor Blackwell opened an office in a poor part of the city to help people who lived under difficult conditions. And she decided to raise a young girl who had lost her parents.

Elizabeth Blackwell had many dreams. One was to start a hospital for women and children. Another was to build a medical school to train women doctors. She was helped in these efforts by her younger sister Emily. Emily also had become a doctor, after a long struggle to be accepted in a medical school.

With the help of many people, the Blackwell sisters raised the money to open a hospital in a re-built house. The work of the two women doctors was accepted slowly in New York. They treated only three hundred people in their hospital in its first year. Ten times as many people were treated the second year.

Elizabeth Blackwell's work with the poor led her to believe that doctors could help people more effectively by preventing sickness. She started a program in which doctors visited patients in their homes. The doctors taught patients how to clean the houses and how to prepare food so sickness could be prevented.

News of Elizabeth's theories spread. Soon, she was asked to start a hospital in London. She spoke to groups in London about disease prevention. And she worked with her friend Florence Nightingale.

Elizabeth returned to the United States to start America's first training school for nurses. And in eighteen sixty-eight, she opened her medical college for women. She taught the women students about disease prevention. It was the first time the idea of preventing disease was taught in a medical school. Soon other medical schools for women opened in Boston and Philadelphia.

Elizabeth Blackwell felt her work in America was done. She returned to England. She started a medical school for women in London. She wrote books, and made speeches about preventing disease.

Doctor Blackwell talked of deaths that should never have happened, of sickness that should never have been suffered. She spoke about the dangers of working too hard, of eating poor food, of houses without light, of dirt and other causes of disease. And she told doctors that their true responsibility was to prevent pain and suffering from ever happening.

In eighteen seventy-one, she started the British National Health Society. It helped people learn how to stay healthy.

Elizabeth Blackwell never married. Neither did her sisters. They believed in treating men like equals. And they expected to be treated like equals themselves. Most men of that time did not accept such treatment. This belief caused problems for their brothers too. They had trouble finding wives who wanted to be considered as equals.

Two of Elizabeth's brothers did marry, however. Both their wives were famous workers for the cause of women's rights.

Elizabeth Blackwell died in England in nineteen ten. She was eighty-nine years old.

She was a very strong woman. She once wrote that she understood why no woman before her had done what she did. She said it was hard to continue against every kind of opposition. Yet she kept on because she felt the goal was very important. Toward the end of her life, she received many letters of thanks from young women. One wrote that doctor Blackwell had shown the way for women to move on.

(MUSIC)

This Special English program was written by Nancy Steinbach. I'm Shirley Griffith. And I'm Ray Freeman. Join us again next week for another PEOPLE IN AMERICAprogram on the Voice of America.