CHAPTER VIII.
Glenn Andrewswas unwearied in his visits, and held to an abiding faith in Esther’s future, and stronger and stronger grew his determination to be steadfastly loyal to her. He seemed to have an exhaustless reserve fund of nerve power. Stinted in sleep, as he was, and overwhelmed by his own work, yet he made time to look after her.
With an infinite patience he was cutting a niche for himself, and above it a name.
His admirable solicitude for Esther was at strange variance with his desire to wound her, bruise her, make her think and feel.
To her he was a mystery unfathomable. The heart within her was so delicate, it easily swayedfrom harmony to discord. She was so sensitive, she must needs be always responsible to the painful as well as the ecstatic emotions.
In her habit of telling him everything that happened in her life there was one thing that she had kept. The nearer it came, the more vivid grew her prescience of what awaited her. The strain of this fresh anxiety was consuming her. Would she have strength to hold out?
She was whiter, her cheeks had not quite that rose bloom she had brought with her out of the air and sunshine. Under this weight she went steadfastly on, in silence.
Glenn saw this. He had told her she was working too hard. He could see that her health was not up to the mark. When there was a cloud, or the shadow of a cloud upon her face, he saw it. She should see a doctor. He told her that repeatedly. Honest as she was, she could not bring herself to tell him that she was too poor. Already she had battled through the heat of the long summer, in need of medical assistance.She was living up to her income, and found it difficult to furnish the bare necessities and pay for just half the lessons she had counted on. There was no hope of shortening the three years except by increasing her practice. This she determined to do, six hours a day instead of three.
“I believe you would stay up in that room and mold,” Glenn said one day as they walked in the sun by the river. “You surely could find time for an outing once a day for an hour or two.” He was puzzled to know why she had declined to walk with him of late. It did not occur to him that lack of time was her excuse.
“You have your lessons but four days in the week,” he said.
“Only two now,” she corrected him.
“Then you have changed your plans!”
“Yes.”
“And how many hours a day do you devote to your practicing?”
“Oh, several; it depends upon my humor and strength.”
“I don’t think you consider the strength,” he said as he looked at her. “You are tired now, why didn’t you tell me? Sit here and rest a little before going back.”
As they took a seat on the high edge of the river, there was something like a sob of exhaustion in her breath.
“Oh, Esther! How could you?” seeing how faint she was. Her cheek fell in one hand.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were tired?”
“The air was so bracing, I kept thinking I would feel better directly. How stupid of me to give out so quickly.”
His tender little cares for her comfort, in small things, had often made her ashamed and afraid she was a burden to him.
“Did the doctor give you a tonic when you saw him?”
“I haven’t been to him yet.”
Glenn Andrews looked away across the bluewater. His heart understood. He knew by her face that the coldest thing on earth was clamping at her heart. Presently he turned back to her.
“How good a friend do you count me?”
“The best I have in the world.”
“Good enough to ask anything of me—everything?”
She sat in silence, taking her hand softly away from the support of her face.
“Will you answer me?”
“There are some things that I would ask of nobody that lives.”
Glenn slightly raised his broad shoulders and lowered them with a sigh.
“I am disappointed in our friendship. It has failed.”
She reflected a moment; “I don’t deserve that from you.”
“Nor do I deserve what you have just put upon me.” It had struck him like a pang. The sweet sense of her faith—her dependence upon him—had been the very dearest emotion of his life. Itstrengthened him, to feel that she might lean hard upon him. He was not willing that the pressure should be lessened.
“I don’t want to pass for more than I am worth. If I have fallen short of what you expected of me, I don’t blame you for putting me down on the common level with everybody.”
If her sorrow had been his own he could not have felt it more deeply. “Only I am disappointed, that’s all.”
She was distressed to the soul; his sympathy for her had been so courageously beautiful, so exquisitely true, that she could not bear the idea of disappointing him, or allowing him to feel that she underrated his value.
“I don’t know men very well, but I know you are not like the others. Nothing could be very hard to bear, because you are my friend. I welcome the days which bring you to me. You have been my fortification.”
“Then prove it,” the soft answer came back.“I know that something distresses you. Tell me of it, and let me help you.”
“It’s nothing that you could change.”
“How do you know? Let me judge that.”
“No, not now, sometime I will tell you if you can soften things for me.”
Her keen refinement would not let her talk to him of her poverty.