CHAPTER VI.CONVALESCENCE.Had it not been for the presence of Dr. Holbrook, who, accepting Guy’s invitation to tea, rode back with him to Aikenside, Mrs. Agnes would have gone off into a passion when told that Jessie had been “exposed to fever and mercy knows what.”“There’s no telling what one will catch among the very poor,” she said to Dr. Holbrook, as she clasped and unclasped the heavy gold bracelets flashing on her white, round arm.“I’ll be answerable for any disease Jessie caught at Mr. Markham’s,” the doctor replied.“At Mr. Who’s? What did you call him?” Agnes asked, the bright color on her cheek fading as the doctor replied:“Markham—an old man who lives in Honedale. You never knew him, of course.”Involuntarily Agnes glanced at Guy, in whose eye there was, as she fancied, a peculiar expression. Could it be he knew the secret she guarded so carefully? Impossible, she said to herself; but still the white fingers trembled as she handled the china and silver, and for once she was glad when the doctor took his leave, and she was alone with Jessie.“What was that girl’s name?” she asked, “the one you went to see?”“Maddy, mother—Madeline Clyde. She’s so pretty. I’m going to see her again. May I?”Agnes did not reply directly, but continued to question the child with regard to the cottage which Jessie thought so funny, slanting away back, she said, so that the roof on one side almost touched the ground. The window panes, too, were so very tiny, and the room where Maddy lay sick was small and low.“Yes, yes, I know,” Agnes said at last, impatiently, weary of hearing of the cottage whose humble exterior and interior she knew so much better than Jessie herself.But this was not to be divulged; for surely the haughty Agnes Remington, who, in Boston, aspired to lead in society into which, as the wife of Dr. Remington, she had been admitted, and who, in Aikenside, was looked upon with envy, could have nothing in common with the red cottage or its inmates. So when Jessie asked again if she could not visit Maddy on the morrow, she answered decidedly: “No, daughter, no. I do not wish you to associate with such people,” and when Jessie insisted on knowing why she must not associate with such people as Maddy Clyde, the answer was: “Because you are a Remington,” and as if this of itself were of an unanswerable objection, Agnes sent her child from her, refusing to talk longer on a subject so disagreeable to her and so suggestive of the past. It was all in vain that Jessie, and even Guy himself, tried to revoke the decision. Jessie should not be permitted to come in contact with that kind of people, she said, or incur the risk of catching that dreadful fever.So day after day, while life and health were slowly throbbing through her veins, Maddy waited and longed for the little girl whose one visit to her sick room seemed so much like a dream. From her grandfather she had heard the good news of Guy Remington’s generosity, and that, quite as much as Dr. Holbrook’s medicines, helped to bring the color back to the pallid cheek and the brightness to her eyes.She was asleep the first time the doctor came after the occasion of Jessie’s visit, and as sleep, he said, would do her more good than anything he might prescribe, he did not awaken her; but for a long time, as it seemed to Grandma Markham, who stood very little in awe of the Boston doctor, he watched her as she slept, now clasping the blue-veined wrist as he felt for the pulse, and now wiping from her forehead the drops of sweat, or pushing back her soft, damp hair. It would be three days before he could see her again, for a sick father in Cambridge needed his attention, and after numerous directions as to the administering of sundry powders and pills, he left her, feeling that the next three days would be long ones to him. Dr. Holbrook did not stop to analyze the nature of his interest in Maddy Clyde—an interest so different from any he had ever felt before for his patients; and even if he had sought to solve the riddle, he would have said that the knowing how he had wronged her was the sole cause of his thinking far more of her and of her case than of the thirty other patients on his list. Dr. Holbrook was a handsome man, a thorough scholar, and a most skillful physician; but ladies who expected from him those little polite attentions which the sex value so highly generally expected in vain, for he was no ladies’ man, and his language and manners were oftentimes abrupt, even when both were prompted by the utmost kindness of heart. In his organization, too, there was not a quick perception of what would be exactly appropriate, and so, when, at last, he was about starting to visit Maddy again, he puzzled his brains until they fairly ached with wondering what he could do to give her a pleasant surprise and show that he was not as formidable a personage as her past experience might lead her to think.“If I could only take her something,” he said, glancing ruefully around his office. “Now, if she were Jessie, nuts and raisins might answer—but she must not eat such trash as that,” and he set himself to think again, just as Guy Remington rode up, bearing in his hand a most exquisite bouquet, whose fragrance filled the medicine-odored office at once, and whose beauty elicited an exclamation of delight even from the matter-of-fact Dr. Holbrook.“I thought you might be going down to Honedale, as I knew you returned last night, so I brought these flowers for your patient with my compliments, or if you prefer I give them to you, and you can thus present them as if coming from yourself.”“As if I would do that,” the doctor answered, taking the bouquet in his hand the better to examine and admire it. “Did you arrange it, or your gardener?” he asked, and when Guy replied that the merit of arrangement, if merit there were, belonged to himself, he began to deprecate his own awkwardness and want of tact. “Here I have been cudgeling my head this half hour trying to think what I could take her as a peace offering, and could think of nothing, while you—Well, you and I are different entirely. You know just what is proper—just what to say, and when to say it—while I am a perfect bore, and without doubt shall make some ludicrous blunder in delivering the flowers. To-day will be the first time really that we meet, as she was sleeping when I was there last, while on all other occasions she has paid no attention whatever to me.”For a moment Guy regarded his friend attentively, noticing now that extra care had been bestowed upon his toilet, that the collar was fresh from the laundry, and the new cravat tied in a most unexceptionable manner, instead of being twisted into a hard knot, with the ends looking as if they had been chewed.“Doc,” he said, when his survey was completed, “how old are you—twenty-five or twenty-six?”“Twenty-five—just your age—why?” and the doctor looked with an expression so wholly innocent of Guy’s real meaning that the latter, instead of telling why, replied:“Oh! nothing; only I was wondering if you would do to be my father. Agnes, I verily believe, is more than half in love with you; but, on the whole, I would not like to be your son; so I guess you’d better take some one younger—say Jessie. You are only eighteen years her senior.”The doctor stared at him amazed, and when he had finished said with the utmost candor: “What has that to do with Madeline? I thought we were talking of her.” “Innocent as the newly-born babe,” was Guy’s mental comment, as he congratulated himself on his larger and more varied experience.And truly Dr. Holbrook was as simple-hearted as a child, never dreaming of Guy’s meaning, or that any emotion save a perfectly proper one had a lodgment in his breast as he drove down to Honedale, guarding carefully Guy’s bouquet, and wishing he knew just what he ought to say when he presented it.Maddy had gained rapidly the last three days. Good nursing and the doctor’s medicines were working miracles, and on the morning when the doctor, with Guy’s bouquet, was riding rapidly toward Honedale, she was feeling so much better that in view of his coming she asked if she could not be permitted to receive him sitting in the rocking-chair, instead of lying there in bed, and when this plan was vetoed as utterly impossible, she asked, anxiously:“And must I see him in this nightgown? Can’t I have on my pink gingham wrapper?”Hitherto Maddy had been too sick to care at all about her personal appearance, but it was different now. She did care, and thoughts of meeting again the handsome, stylish-looking man who had asked her to conjugateamoand whom she fully believed to be Dr. Holbrook, made her rather nervous. Dim remembrances she had of some one gliding in and out, and when the pain and noise in her head was at its highest, a hand, large, and, oh! so cool had been laid upon her temples, quieting their throbbings and making the blood course less madly through the swollen veins. They had told her how kind, how attentive he had been, and to herself she had said: “He’s sorry about that certificate. He wishes to show me that he did not mean to be unkind. Yes; I forgive him: for I really was very stupid that afternoon.”And so, in a most forgiving frame of mind, Maddy submitted to the snowy robe which grandma brought in place of the coveted gingham wrapper, and which became her well, with its daintily-crimped ruffles about the neck and wrists. Those wrists and hands! How white and small they had grown! and Maddy sighed, as her grandmother buttoned together the wristbands, to see how loose it was.“I have been very sick,” she said. “Are my cheeks as thin as my arms?”They were not, though they had lost some of their symmetrical roundness. Still there was much of childish beauty in the young, eager face, and the hair had lost comparatively none of its glossy brightness.“That’s him,” grandma said, as the sound of a horse’s gallop was heard, and in a moment the doctor reined up before the gate.From Mrs. Markham, who met him in the door, he learned how much better she was; also how “she has been reckoning on this visit, making herself all a-sweat about it.”Suddenly the doctor felt returning all his old dread of Maddy Clyde. Why should she wrong herself into a sweat? What was there in that visit different from any other? Nothing, he said to himself, nothing; and yet he, too, had been more anxious about it than any he had ever paid. Depositing his hat and gloves upon the table, he followed Mrs. Markham up the stairs, vaguely conscious of wishing she would stay down, and very conscious of feeling glad; when just at Maddy’s door and opposite a little window, she espied the hens busily engaged in devouring the yeast cakes, with which she had taken so much pains, and which she had placed in the hot sun to dry. Finding that they paid no heed to her loud “Shoo, shoos,” she started herself to drive them away, telling the doctor to go right on and to help himself.The perspiration was standing under Maddy’s hair by this time, and when the doctor stepped across the threshold, and she knew he really was coming near her, it oozed out upon her forehead in big, round drops, while her cheeks glowed with a feverish heat. Thinking he should get along with it better if he treated her just as he would Jessie, the doctor confronted her at once, and asked:“How is my little patient to-day?”A faint scream broke from Maddy’s lips, and she involuntarily raised her hands to thrust the stranger away. This black-eyed, black-haired, thick-set man was not Dr. Holbrook, for he was taller, and more slight, while she had not been deceived in the dark brown eyes which, even while they seemed to be mocking her, had worn a strange fascination for the maiden of fourteen and a half. The doctor fancied her delirious again, and this reassured him at once. Dropping the bouquet upon the bed, he clasped one of her hands in his, and without the slightest idea that she comprehended him, said, soothingly:“Poor child, are you afraid of me—the doctor, Dr. Holbrook?” Maddy did not try to withdraw her hand, but raising her eyes, swimming in tears, to his face, she stammered out:“What does it mean, and where is he—the one who—asked me—those dreadful questions? I thought that was Dr. Holbrook.”Here was a dilemma—something for which the doctor was not prepared, and with a feeling that he would not betray Guy, he said:“No; that was some one else—a friend of mine—but I was there in the back office. Don’t you remember me? Please don’t grow excited. Compose yourself, and I will explain all by and by. This is wrong. ’Twill never do,” and talking thus rapidly he wiped away the sweat, about which grandma had told him.Maddy was disappointed, and it took her some time to rally sufficiently to convince the doctor that she was not flighty, as he termed it; but composing herself at last, she answered all his questions, and then, as he saw her eyes wandering toward the bouquet, he suddenly remembered that it was not yet presented, and placing it in her hands, he said:“You like flowers, I know, and these are for you. I——”“Oh! thank you, thank you, doctor; I am so glad. I love them so much, and you are so kind. What made you think to bring them? I’ve wanted flowers so badly; but I could not have them, because I was sick and did not work in the garden. It was so good in you,” and in her delight Maddy’s tears dropped upon the fair blossoms.For a moment the doctor was sorely tempted to keep the credit thus enthusiastically given; but he was too truthful for that, and so watching her as her eyes glistened with pleased excitement, he said:“I am glad you like them, Miss Clyde, and so will Mr. Remington be. He sent them to you from his conservatory.”“Not Mr. Remington from Aikenside—not Jessie’s brother?” and Maddy’s eyes now fairly danced as they sought the doctor’s face.“Yes Jessie’s brother. He came here with her. He is interested in you, and brought these down this morning.”“It was Jessie, I guess, who sent them,” Maddy suggested, but the doctor persisted that it was Guy.“He wished me to present them with his compliments. He thought they might please you.”“Oh! they do, they do!” Maddy replied. “They almost make me well. Tell him how much I thank him, and like him too, though I never saw him.”The doctor opened his lips to tell her she had seen him, but changed his mind ere the words were uttered. She might not think as well of Guy, he thought, and there was no harm in keeping it back.So Maddy had no suspicion that the face she thought of so much belonged to Guy Remington. She had never seen him, of course; but she hoped she would some time, so as to thank him for his generosity to her grandfather and his kindness to herself. Then, as she remembered the message she had sent him, she began to think that it sounded too familiar, and said to the doctor:“If you please, don’t tell Mr. Remington that I said I liked him—only that I thank him. He would think it queer for a poor girl like me to send such word to him. He is very rich, and handsome, and splendid, isn’t he?”“Yes, Guy’s rich and handsome, and everybody likes him. We were in college together.”“You were?” Maddy exclaimed. “Then you know him well, and Jessie, and you’ve been to Aikenside often? There’s nothing in the world I want so much as to go to Aikenside. They say it is so beautiful.”“Maybe I’ll carry you up there some day when you are strong enough to ride,” the doctor answered, thinking of his light buggy at home, and wondering he had not used it more, instead of always riding on horseback.Dr. Holbrook looked much older than he was, and to Maddy he seemed quite fatherly, so that the idea of riding with him, aside from the honor it might be to her, struck her much as riding with Farmer Green would have done. The doctor, too, imagined that his proposition was prompted solely from disinterested motives, but he found himself wondering how long it would be before Maddy would be able to ride a little distance, just over the hill and back. He was tiring her all out talking to her; but somehow it was very delightful there in that sick room, with the summer sunshine stealing through the window and falling upon the soft reddish-brown head resting on the pillows. Once he fixed those pillows, arranging them so nicely that grandma, who had come in from her hens and yeast cakes, declared “he was as handy as a woman,” and after receiving a few general directions with regard to the future, “guessed, if he wasn’t in a hurry, she’d leave him with Maddy a spell, as there were a few chores she must do.”The doctor knew that at least a dozen individuals were waiting for him that moment; but still he was in no hurry, he said, and so for half an hour longer he sat there talking of Guy, and Jessie, and Aikenside, and wondering he had never before observed how very becoming a white wrapper was to sick girls like Maddy Clyde. Had he been asked the question, he could not have told whether his other patients were habited in buff, or brown, or tan color; but he knew all about Maddy’s garb, and thought the dainty frill around her slender throat the prettiest “puckered piece” that he had ever seen. How, then, was Dr. Holbrook losing his heart to that little girl of fourteen and a half? He did not think so. Indeed, he did not think anything about his heart, though thoughts of Maddy Clyde were pretty constantly with him, as after leaving her he paid his round of visits.The Aikenside carriage was standing at Mrs. Conner’s gate when he returned, and Jessie came running out to meet him, followed by Guy, while Agnes, in the most becoming riding habit, sat by the window looking as unconcerned at his arrival as if it were not the very event for which she had been impatiently waiting, Jessie was a great pet with the doctor, and, lifting her lightly in his arms, he kissed her forehead where the golden curls were clustering and said to her:“I have seen Maddy Clyde. She asked for you, and why you do not come to see her, as you promised.”“Mother won’t let me,” Jessie answered. “She says they are not fit associates for a Remington.”There was a sudden flash of contempt on the doctor’s face, and a gleam of wrath in Agnes’ eyes as she motioned Jessie to be silent, and then gracefully received the doctor, who by this time was in the room. As if determined to monopolize the conversation, and keep it from turning on the Markhams, Agnes rattled on for nearly fifteen minutes, scarcely allowing Guy a chance for uttering a word. But Guy bided his time, and seized the first favorable opportunity to inquire after Madeline.She was improving rapidly, the doctor said, adding: “You ought to have seen her delight when I gave her your bouquet.”“Indeed,” and Agnes bridled haughtily; “I did not know that Guy was in the habit of sending bouquets to such as this Clyde girl. I really must report him to Miss Atherstone.”Guy’s seat was very near to Agnes, and while a cloud overspread his fine features, he said to her in an aside:“Please say in your report that the worst thing about this Clyde girl is that she aspires to be a teacher, and possibly a governess.”There was an emphasis on the last word which silenced Agnes and set her to beating her French gaiter on the carpet; while Guy, turning back to the doctor, replied to his remark:“She was pleased, then?”“Yes; she must be vastly fond of flowers, though I sometimes fancied the fact of being noticed by you afforded almost as much satisfaction as the bouquet itself. She evidently regards you as a superior being, and Aikenside as a second Paradise, and asking innumerable questions about you and Jessie, too.”“Did she honor me with an inquiry?” Agnes asked, her tone indicative of sarcasm, though she was greatly interested as well as relieved by the reply:“Yes; she said she heard that Jessie’s mother was a beautiful woman, and asked if you were not born in England.”“She’s mixed me up with Lucy. Guy, you must go down and enlighten her,” Agnes said, laughing merrily and appearing more at ease than she had before since Maddy Clyde had been the subject of conversation.Guy did not go down to Honedale—but fruit and flowers, and once a bottle of rare old wine, found their way to the old red cottage, always brought by Guy’s man, Duncan, and always accompanied with Mr. Remington’s compliments. Once, hidden among the rosebuds, was a childish note from Jessie, some of it printed and some in the uneven hand of a child just commencing to write.It was as follows:“DEARMADDY: I think that is such a pretty name, and so does Guy, and so does the doctor, too. I want to come see you, but mamma won’t let me. I think of you ever so much, and so does Guy, I guess, for he sends you lots of things. Guy is a nice brother, and is most as old as mamma. Ain’t that funny? You know my first ma is dead. The doctor tells us about you when he comes to Aikenside. I wish he’d come oftener, for I love him a bushel—don’t you? Yours respectfully,“JESSIEAGNESREMINGTON.“P. S.—I am going to tuck this in just for fun, right among the buds, where you must look for it.”This note Maddy read and reread until she knew it by heart, particularly the part relating to Guy. Hitherto she had not particularly liked her name, greatly preferring that it should have been Eliza Ann, or Sarah Jane; but the knowing that Guy Remington fancied it made a vast difference, and did much toward reconciling her. She did not even see the clause, “and the doctor, too.” His attentions and concern she took as a matter of course, so quietly and so constantly had they been given. The day was very long now which did not bring him to the cottage; but she missed him much as she would have missed her brother, if she had had one, though her pulse always quickened and her cheeks glowed when she heard him at the gate. The inner power did not lie deeper than a great friendliness for one who had been instrumental in saving her life. They had talked over the matter of her examination, the doctor blaming himself more than was necessary for his ignorance as to what was required of a teacher; but when she asked who was his proxy, he had again answered, evasively: “A friend from Boston.”And this he did to shield Guy, whom he knew was enshrined in the little maiden’s heart as a paragon of all excellence.
Had it not been for the presence of Dr. Holbrook, who, accepting Guy’s invitation to tea, rode back with him to Aikenside, Mrs. Agnes would have gone off into a passion when told that Jessie had been “exposed to fever and mercy knows what.”
“There’s no telling what one will catch among the very poor,” she said to Dr. Holbrook, as she clasped and unclasped the heavy gold bracelets flashing on her white, round arm.
“I’ll be answerable for any disease Jessie caught at Mr. Markham’s,” the doctor replied.
“At Mr. Who’s? What did you call him?” Agnes asked, the bright color on her cheek fading as the doctor replied:
“Markham—an old man who lives in Honedale. You never knew him, of course.”
Involuntarily Agnes glanced at Guy, in whose eye there was, as she fancied, a peculiar expression. Could it be he knew the secret she guarded so carefully? Impossible, she said to herself; but still the white fingers trembled as she handled the china and silver, and for once she was glad when the doctor took his leave, and she was alone with Jessie.
“What was that girl’s name?” she asked, “the one you went to see?”
“Maddy, mother—Madeline Clyde. She’s so pretty. I’m going to see her again. May I?”
Agnes did not reply directly, but continued to question the child with regard to the cottage which Jessie thought so funny, slanting away back, she said, so that the roof on one side almost touched the ground. The window panes, too, were so very tiny, and the room where Maddy lay sick was small and low.
“Yes, yes, I know,” Agnes said at last, impatiently, weary of hearing of the cottage whose humble exterior and interior she knew so much better than Jessie herself.
But this was not to be divulged; for surely the haughty Agnes Remington, who, in Boston, aspired to lead in society into which, as the wife of Dr. Remington, she had been admitted, and who, in Aikenside, was looked upon with envy, could have nothing in common with the red cottage or its inmates. So when Jessie asked again if she could not visit Maddy on the morrow, she answered decidedly: “No, daughter, no. I do not wish you to associate with such people,” and when Jessie insisted on knowing why she must not associate with such people as Maddy Clyde, the answer was: “Because you are a Remington,” and as if this of itself were of an unanswerable objection, Agnes sent her child from her, refusing to talk longer on a subject so disagreeable to her and so suggestive of the past. It was all in vain that Jessie, and even Guy himself, tried to revoke the decision. Jessie should not be permitted to come in contact with that kind of people, she said, or incur the risk of catching that dreadful fever.
So day after day, while life and health were slowly throbbing through her veins, Maddy waited and longed for the little girl whose one visit to her sick room seemed so much like a dream. From her grandfather she had heard the good news of Guy Remington’s generosity, and that, quite as much as Dr. Holbrook’s medicines, helped to bring the color back to the pallid cheek and the brightness to her eyes.
She was asleep the first time the doctor came after the occasion of Jessie’s visit, and as sleep, he said, would do her more good than anything he might prescribe, he did not awaken her; but for a long time, as it seemed to Grandma Markham, who stood very little in awe of the Boston doctor, he watched her as she slept, now clasping the blue-veined wrist as he felt for the pulse, and now wiping from her forehead the drops of sweat, or pushing back her soft, damp hair. It would be three days before he could see her again, for a sick father in Cambridge needed his attention, and after numerous directions as to the administering of sundry powders and pills, he left her, feeling that the next three days would be long ones to him. Dr. Holbrook did not stop to analyze the nature of his interest in Maddy Clyde—an interest so different from any he had ever felt before for his patients; and even if he had sought to solve the riddle, he would have said that the knowing how he had wronged her was the sole cause of his thinking far more of her and of her case than of the thirty other patients on his list. Dr. Holbrook was a handsome man, a thorough scholar, and a most skillful physician; but ladies who expected from him those little polite attentions which the sex value so highly generally expected in vain, for he was no ladies’ man, and his language and manners were oftentimes abrupt, even when both were prompted by the utmost kindness of heart. In his organization, too, there was not a quick perception of what would be exactly appropriate, and so, when, at last, he was about starting to visit Maddy again, he puzzled his brains until they fairly ached with wondering what he could do to give her a pleasant surprise and show that he was not as formidable a personage as her past experience might lead her to think.
“If I could only take her something,” he said, glancing ruefully around his office. “Now, if she were Jessie, nuts and raisins might answer—but she must not eat such trash as that,” and he set himself to think again, just as Guy Remington rode up, bearing in his hand a most exquisite bouquet, whose fragrance filled the medicine-odored office at once, and whose beauty elicited an exclamation of delight even from the matter-of-fact Dr. Holbrook.
“I thought you might be going down to Honedale, as I knew you returned last night, so I brought these flowers for your patient with my compliments, or if you prefer I give them to you, and you can thus present them as if coming from yourself.”
“As if I would do that,” the doctor answered, taking the bouquet in his hand the better to examine and admire it. “Did you arrange it, or your gardener?” he asked, and when Guy replied that the merit of arrangement, if merit there were, belonged to himself, he began to deprecate his own awkwardness and want of tact. “Here I have been cudgeling my head this half hour trying to think what I could take her as a peace offering, and could think of nothing, while you—Well, you and I are different entirely. You know just what is proper—just what to say, and when to say it—while I am a perfect bore, and without doubt shall make some ludicrous blunder in delivering the flowers. To-day will be the first time really that we meet, as she was sleeping when I was there last, while on all other occasions she has paid no attention whatever to me.”
For a moment Guy regarded his friend attentively, noticing now that extra care had been bestowed upon his toilet, that the collar was fresh from the laundry, and the new cravat tied in a most unexceptionable manner, instead of being twisted into a hard knot, with the ends looking as if they had been chewed.
“Doc,” he said, when his survey was completed, “how old are you—twenty-five or twenty-six?”
“Twenty-five—just your age—why?” and the doctor looked with an expression so wholly innocent of Guy’s real meaning that the latter, instead of telling why, replied:
“Oh! nothing; only I was wondering if you would do to be my father. Agnes, I verily believe, is more than half in love with you; but, on the whole, I would not like to be your son; so I guess you’d better take some one younger—say Jessie. You are only eighteen years her senior.”
The doctor stared at him amazed, and when he had finished said with the utmost candor: “What has that to do with Madeline? I thought we were talking of her.” “Innocent as the newly-born babe,” was Guy’s mental comment, as he congratulated himself on his larger and more varied experience.
And truly Dr. Holbrook was as simple-hearted as a child, never dreaming of Guy’s meaning, or that any emotion save a perfectly proper one had a lodgment in his breast as he drove down to Honedale, guarding carefully Guy’s bouquet, and wishing he knew just what he ought to say when he presented it.
Maddy had gained rapidly the last three days. Good nursing and the doctor’s medicines were working miracles, and on the morning when the doctor, with Guy’s bouquet, was riding rapidly toward Honedale, she was feeling so much better that in view of his coming she asked if she could not be permitted to receive him sitting in the rocking-chair, instead of lying there in bed, and when this plan was vetoed as utterly impossible, she asked, anxiously:
“And must I see him in this nightgown? Can’t I have on my pink gingham wrapper?”
Hitherto Maddy had been too sick to care at all about her personal appearance, but it was different now. She did care, and thoughts of meeting again the handsome, stylish-looking man who had asked her to conjugateamoand whom she fully believed to be Dr. Holbrook, made her rather nervous. Dim remembrances she had of some one gliding in and out, and when the pain and noise in her head was at its highest, a hand, large, and, oh! so cool had been laid upon her temples, quieting their throbbings and making the blood course less madly through the swollen veins. They had told her how kind, how attentive he had been, and to herself she had said: “He’s sorry about that certificate. He wishes to show me that he did not mean to be unkind. Yes; I forgive him: for I really was very stupid that afternoon.”
And so, in a most forgiving frame of mind, Maddy submitted to the snowy robe which grandma brought in place of the coveted gingham wrapper, and which became her well, with its daintily-crimped ruffles about the neck and wrists. Those wrists and hands! How white and small they had grown! and Maddy sighed, as her grandmother buttoned together the wristbands, to see how loose it was.
“I have been very sick,” she said. “Are my cheeks as thin as my arms?”
They were not, though they had lost some of their symmetrical roundness. Still there was much of childish beauty in the young, eager face, and the hair had lost comparatively none of its glossy brightness.
“That’s him,” grandma said, as the sound of a horse’s gallop was heard, and in a moment the doctor reined up before the gate.
From Mrs. Markham, who met him in the door, he learned how much better she was; also how “she has been reckoning on this visit, making herself all a-sweat about it.”
Suddenly the doctor felt returning all his old dread of Maddy Clyde. Why should she wrong herself into a sweat? What was there in that visit different from any other? Nothing, he said to himself, nothing; and yet he, too, had been more anxious about it than any he had ever paid. Depositing his hat and gloves upon the table, he followed Mrs. Markham up the stairs, vaguely conscious of wishing she would stay down, and very conscious of feeling glad; when just at Maddy’s door and opposite a little window, she espied the hens busily engaged in devouring the yeast cakes, with which she had taken so much pains, and which she had placed in the hot sun to dry. Finding that they paid no heed to her loud “Shoo, shoos,” she started herself to drive them away, telling the doctor to go right on and to help himself.
The perspiration was standing under Maddy’s hair by this time, and when the doctor stepped across the threshold, and she knew he really was coming near her, it oozed out upon her forehead in big, round drops, while her cheeks glowed with a feverish heat. Thinking he should get along with it better if he treated her just as he would Jessie, the doctor confronted her at once, and asked:
“How is my little patient to-day?”
A faint scream broke from Maddy’s lips, and she involuntarily raised her hands to thrust the stranger away. This black-eyed, black-haired, thick-set man was not Dr. Holbrook, for he was taller, and more slight, while she had not been deceived in the dark brown eyes which, even while they seemed to be mocking her, had worn a strange fascination for the maiden of fourteen and a half. The doctor fancied her delirious again, and this reassured him at once. Dropping the bouquet upon the bed, he clasped one of her hands in his, and without the slightest idea that she comprehended him, said, soothingly:
“Poor child, are you afraid of me—the doctor, Dr. Holbrook?” Maddy did not try to withdraw her hand, but raising her eyes, swimming in tears, to his face, she stammered out:
“What does it mean, and where is he—the one who—asked me—those dreadful questions? I thought that was Dr. Holbrook.”
Here was a dilemma—something for which the doctor was not prepared, and with a feeling that he would not betray Guy, he said:
“No; that was some one else—a friend of mine—but I was there in the back office. Don’t you remember me? Please don’t grow excited. Compose yourself, and I will explain all by and by. This is wrong. ’Twill never do,” and talking thus rapidly he wiped away the sweat, about which grandma had told him.
Maddy was disappointed, and it took her some time to rally sufficiently to convince the doctor that she was not flighty, as he termed it; but composing herself at last, she answered all his questions, and then, as he saw her eyes wandering toward the bouquet, he suddenly remembered that it was not yet presented, and placing it in her hands, he said:
“You like flowers, I know, and these are for you. I——”
“Oh! thank you, thank you, doctor; I am so glad. I love them so much, and you are so kind. What made you think to bring them? I’ve wanted flowers so badly; but I could not have them, because I was sick and did not work in the garden. It was so good in you,” and in her delight Maddy’s tears dropped upon the fair blossoms.
For a moment the doctor was sorely tempted to keep the credit thus enthusiastically given; but he was too truthful for that, and so watching her as her eyes glistened with pleased excitement, he said:
“I am glad you like them, Miss Clyde, and so will Mr. Remington be. He sent them to you from his conservatory.”
“Not Mr. Remington from Aikenside—not Jessie’s brother?” and Maddy’s eyes now fairly danced as they sought the doctor’s face.
“Yes Jessie’s brother. He came here with her. He is interested in you, and brought these down this morning.”
“It was Jessie, I guess, who sent them,” Maddy suggested, but the doctor persisted that it was Guy.
“He wished me to present them with his compliments. He thought they might please you.”
“Oh! they do, they do!” Maddy replied. “They almost make me well. Tell him how much I thank him, and like him too, though I never saw him.”
The doctor opened his lips to tell her she had seen him, but changed his mind ere the words were uttered. She might not think as well of Guy, he thought, and there was no harm in keeping it back.
So Maddy had no suspicion that the face she thought of so much belonged to Guy Remington. She had never seen him, of course; but she hoped she would some time, so as to thank him for his generosity to her grandfather and his kindness to herself. Then, as she remembered the message she had sent him, she began to think that it sounded too familiar, and said to the doctor:
“If you please, don’t tell Mr. Remington that I said I liked him—only that I thank him. He would think it queer for a poor girl like me to send such word to him. He is very rich, and handsome, and splendid, isn’t he?”
“Yes, Guy’s rich and handsome, and everybody likes him. We were in college together.”
“You were?” Maddy exclaimed. “Then you know him well, and Jessie, and you’ve been to Aikenside often? There’s nothing in the world I want so much as to go to Aikenside. They say it is so beautiful.”
“Maybe I’ll carry you up there some day when you are strong enough to ride,” the doctor answered, thinking of his light buggy at home, and wondering he had not used it more, instead of always riding on horseback.
Dr. Holbrook looked much older than he was, and to Maddy he seemed quite fatherly, so that the idea of riding with him, aside from the honor it might be to her, struck her much as riding with Farmer Green would have done. The doctor, too, imagined that his proposition was prompted solely from disinterested motives, but he found himself wondering how long it would be before Maddy would be able to ride a little distance, just over the hill and back. He was tiring her all out talking to her; but somehow it was very delightful there in that sick room, with the summer sunshine stealing through the window and falling upon the soft reddish-brown head resting on the pillows. Once he fixed those pillows, arranging them so nicely that grandma, who had come in from her hens and yeast cakes, declared “he was as handy as a woman,” and after receiving a few general directions with regard to the future, “guessed, if he wasn’t in a hurry, she’d leave him with Maddy a spell, as there were a few chores she must do.”
The doctor knew that at least a dozen individuals were waiting for him that moment; but still he was in no hurry, he said, and so for half an hour longer he sat there talking of Guy, and Jessie, and Aikenside, and wondering he had never before observed how very becoming a white wrapper was to sick girls like Maddy Clyde. Had he been asked the question, he could not have told whether his other patients were habited in buff, or brown, or tan color; but he knew all about Maddy’s garb, and thought the dainty frill around her slender throat the prettiest “puckered piece” that he had ever seen. How, then, was Dr. Holbrook losing his heart to that little girl of fourteen and a half? He did not think so. Indeed, he did not think anything about his heart, though thoughts of Maddy Clyde were pretty constantly with him, as after leaving her he paid his round of visits.
The Aikenside carriage was standing at Mrs. Conner’s gate when he returned, and Jessie came running out to meet him, followed by Guy, while Agnes, in the most becoming riding habit, sat by the window looking as unconcerned at his arrival as if it were not the very event for which she had been impatiently waiting, Jessie was a great pet with the doctor, and, lifting her lightly in his arms, he kissed her forehead where the golden curls were clustering and said to her:
“I have seen Maddy Clyde. She asked for you, and why you do not come to see her, as you promised.”
“Mother won’t let me,” Jessie answered. “She says they are not fit associates for a Remington.”
There was a sudden flash of contempt on the doctor’s face, and a gleam of wrath in Agnes’ eyes as she motioned Jessie to be silent, and then gracefully received the doctor, who by this time was in the room. As if determined to monopolize the conversation, and keep it from turning on the Markhams, Agnes rattled on for nearly fifteen minutes, scarcely allowing Guy a chance for uttering a word. But Guy bided his time, and seized the first favorable opportunity to inquire after Madeline.
She was improving rapidly, the doctor said, adding: “You ought to have seen her delight when I gave her your bouquet.”
“Indeed,” and Agnes bridled haughtily; “I did not know that Guy was in the habit of sending bouquets to such as this Clyde girl. I really must report him to Miss Atherstone.”
Guy’s seat was very near to Agnes, and while a cloud overspread his fine features, he said to her in an aside:
“Please say in your report that the worst thing about this Clyde girl is that she aspires to be a teacher, and possibly a governess.”
There was an emphasis on the last word which silenced Agnes and set her to beating her French gaiter on the carpet; while Guy, turning back to the doctor, replied to his remark:
“She was pleased, then?”
“Yes; she must be vastly fond of flowers, though I sometimes fancied the fact of being noticed by you afforded almost as much satisfaction as the bouquet itself. She evidently regards you as a superior being, and Aikenside as a second Paradise, and asking innumerable questions about you and Jessie, too.”
“Did she honor me with an inquiry?” Agnes asked, her tone indicative of sarcasm, though she was greatly interested as well as relieved by the reply:
“Yes; she said she heard that Jessie’s mother was a beautiful woman, and asked if you were not born in England.”
“She’s mixed me up with Lucy. Guy, you must go down and enlighten her,” Agnes said, laughing merrily and appearing more at ease than she had before since Maddy Clyde had been the subject of conversation.
Guy did not go down to Honedale—but fruit and flowers, and once a bottle of rare old wine, found their way to the old red cottage, always brought by Guy’s man, Duncan, and always accompanied with Mr. Remington’s compliments. Once, hidden among the rosebuds, was a childish note from Jessie, some of it printed and some in the uneven hand of a child just commencing to write.
It was as follows:
“DEARMADDY: I think that is such a pretty name, and so does Guy, and so does the doctor, too. I want to come see you, but mamma won’t let me. I think of you ever so much, and so does Guy, I guess, for he sends you lots of things. Guy is a nice brother, and is most as old as mamma. Ain’t that funny? You know my first ma is dead. The doctor tells us about you when he comes to Aikenside. I wish he’d come oftener, for I love him a bushel—don’t you? Yours respectfully,
“JESSIEAGNESREMINGTON.
“P. S.—I am going to tuck this in just for fun, right among the buds, where you must look for it.”
This note Maddy read and reread until she knew it by heart, particularly the part relating to Guy. Hitherto she had not particularly liked her name, greatly preferring that it should have been Eliza Ann, or Sarah Jane; but the knowing that Guy Remington fancied it made a vast difference, and did much toward reconciling her. She did not even see the clause, “and the doctor, too.” His attentions and concern she took as a matter of course, so quietly and so constantly had they been given. The day was very long now which did not bring him to the cottage; but she missed him much as she would have missed her brother, if she had had one, though her pulse always quickened and her cheeks glowed when she heard him at the gate. The inner power did not lie deeper than a great friendliness for one who had been instrumental in saving her life. They had talked over the matter of her examination, the doctor blaming himself more than was necessary for his ignorance as to what was required of a teacher; but when she asked who was his proxy, he had again answered, evasively: “A friend from Boston.”
And this he did to shield Guy, whom he knew was enshrined in the little maiden’s heart as a paragon of all excellence.