CHAPTER XXIII.
Thetrained nurse had gone out of the room, leaving Octave in charge of the patient.
“You are patient and the patient, both, dear Melville,” said the girl, affectionately laying her warm hand on the lad’s thin one. “You are a hero! I’ve been wanting to say it ever since—three days ago; but that ever-watchful nurse hasn’t given me a chance. I’m as proud of you as proud!”
Melville smiled. “I am not much of a hero, dear; but I ought to be patient. Indeed, there doesn’t seem to be any need for that virtue now. Only think, in a very few weeks the surgeon said I could begin to try my limbs. Think! when I’ve lain here so many years, without the shadow of a hope that I should ever be any better! A fellow ought to be willing to bear anything for such a gain.”
Octave’s eyes filled. It had, strangely enough, never seemed half so pitiful to her that Melvilleshould be a cripple till this possibility of his cure arose to cheer them on. “Laddie, if it had been me, I should have been perfectly horrid. I—I think I should have had to be shut up in a cage.”
“Nonsense! You would have been just the same happy, cheering-up body that you are now.”
“Pooh! don’t be silly. I never did like flattery.”
“But, it isn’t flattery, Octave. You don’t know how much you have done for me—”
“I do, beg pardon; I have laughed at you and scolded you and tormented you into doing things till you hated me and everybody. But, my son, I did it for your good. That is what the grown-up people remark when they are especially disagreeable. And isn’t it splendid? That great doctor says he can cure Paula Pickel of traipsing around as a spook, at all hours of the night. He says he considers it only a nervous disorder, and that a prescription he gave me will help her. I told him about her while he was waiting to have Rosetta make him a cup of coffee,that other day, after—after he’d fixed you up. I thought I’d make a clean business of everything, and get everybody patched up who needed mending. One I forgot, though. That was Luke. He declares that he has something the matter with his arms which keeps him from doing certain things he ought to do. He—Lukey Tewky—called me aside and asked me: ‘What did he say about me?’ ‘Say about you! He did not even dream of your existence,’ said I. ‘Oh! do tell him about my arms, won’t you?’ and just then along came Abry-ham, and he caught hold of his son and shook him so that if anything ailed him it was shaken out.”
Melville laughed as gaily as his entertainer desired, at this picture of the farmer and his son. “Keep his spirits up,” the great surgeon had bidden her; “there is more healing in an unaffected laugh than in the wholemateria medica.” Which statement the wise man may not have intended to be taken as literally as Octave took it. However, it was certain that the girl who had devoted herself so unselfishly to her crippled cousin did him more good than any other companion;and Melville would have had her in his sick-room all the time had he been allowed.
“Let’s talk about the discovery; that is part mine, you know, if the surgeon part does belong to Fritzy Nunky. Nobody but just Octave would ever have dared to go and see such a wonderful creature as my dear old professor has turned out to be. I don’t thinkIwould dare do it again, after all Aunt Ruth’s remarks about the boldness of it. I suppose it was dreadful, but I am awfully glad I did it, all the same. Aren’t you?”
“Octave, it is almost too splendid to be true. Read this letter.” The sick boy drew out from under his pillow a brief note from the great scientist, whose every written word had so genuine a value. If brief, it was also enthusiastic. The writer had seen the famous specialist, Dr. Karl Ettmüller, had learned that not only was the operation eminently successful but that the anæsthetic of Melville’s discovery had been thoroughly and happily tested first in Melville’s own case. He wrote to congratulate: “He who has reduced the burden of physical agony is a philanthropist, and he who discovers one ofGod’s own cures is a genius. My lad, I hold you to be both; and when you shall be physically able, I ask you to come and take a position in my laboratory. It will give the old man new vigor to feel that such an one as you is beside him.”
“O Melville! Is it true? Is it really true? I shall have to pinch myself to make myself believe it.” Octave’s eyes were shining, and her cheeks glowed with delight.
“It is, it must be, true, Octave; since here it is in black and white. I have to take it out from under my pillow a dozen times a day to read it over, since I haven’t your felicitous method of convincing myself. Octave, I’d rather have that letter, that offer, than all the money in the world!”
“So would I!” cried the girl, responsively; then paused to purse up her merry lips in a doubtful fashion. “I don’t know about that, though, laddie; all the money in all the world would be a ‘purty consid’able of a pile,’ as Abry-ham would say. One could do a heap of good with all that money.”
“Well, don’t be disagreeable, Octave. It is splendid, and you can’t deny it.”
“Who wishes to? See here, my friend, you may be a hero now, as I remarked a few minutes since, but you are not yet an angel. You are still quite—Capersy!”
Melville laughed. “I do not pose either as a hero or an angel; it is yourself who gives me the attributes of such. I only aspire—”
“Bless the lad! Don’t begin to talk too booksy, just because you are a genius-philanthropist! But we did have a Mystery! Even Aunt Ruth will have to admit that; and we did keep it all to our two selves, with a few necessary others like Fritzy Nunky and the specialist and the scientist and the attendants, and—”
But the mutual-congratulation meeting was speedily broken up. Outside the house a strange uproar had arisen. Don brayed; Rosetta cried: “To goodness knows!” Fritzy set up a shout that could have been heard a long distance; Abraham gave the peculiar whistle that with him indicated intense and pleased surprise; doors slammed, even the well-trained doors of TheSnuggery, which had missed Aunt Ruth’s frequent “oily feather”; feet sounded in a rush over the gravel walks. But none of these unwonted if joyful sounds could drown the cheery rumble of wheels, nor the “Hoa! halloa!” which only one hearty German throat could give.
“Fritzy Nunky! Fritzy Nunky!” shouted Octave, and started to run away.
Suddenly something stayed her speeding feet. Three months ago the something would have had no effect; but now she stopped, and going back to the bed-side sat down and laid her hand again on that of Melville.
Weak and shaken yet, by the ordeal he had so lately and so manfully passed through, he could not subdue the tremor which seized him at sound of the well-known voice. Unspeakable thoughts of pride and humility, affection and loneliness, stole through the invalid’s mind. After all his achievements, after all his endurance—he was still alone. Aunt Ruth had her mother, the Pickels had their beloved guardian, but he—had only a memory of a love which had neverfailed him, but which he had despised till it was lost. “Genius” and “philanthropist” others might call him; but at that moment of others’ reunion, Melville remembered only that he was a sick and orphaned lad.
Then he felt the touch of sympathy upon his hand, and brought round his eyes from the wall where he had turned them to Octave’s face.
“Why don’t you go and meet your uncle?” he asked, pettishly.
“Because I would rather stay here,” answered Octave, quietly.
“You needn’t make a martyr of yourself!”
“Nor you a bear of yourself!”
“I would rather you went. I don’t mind being left alone. I’m used to it.”
“That’s a—a fib; two fibs.”
“You told one, too.”
“I didn’t, I told the truth; I want to stay.”
“Then when he comes in, if he should come in, he—”
“Why should you mind seeing him now, since you have seen him once since—hush! he iscoming in now; so is Aunt Ruth; so is grandmother; so—”
“Well, my precious lambs! So I have found you together,” said the sweet voice of Amy Kinsolving. “They have all told me what thee has done for Melville, little Octave. I knew thee had a good heart, dear!”
“Yes, together; and at our old occupation,—quarrelling,” replied Octave, so demurely that everybody laughed, and any dangerous flood of sentiment was happily averted.
Then, how the tongues flew! How gay and how glad was everybody! And, how the silliest little speeches made everybody smile, only those who have been parted and happily reunited can fancy.
After grandmother had been put into Melville’s easiest corner on the old lounge, which he boasted he had vacated forever, the “Mystery” was taken out of its hiding-place, and all that had been dimly understood made plain. The project of the surgeon’s visit, and the project of the anæsthetic being tested by its discoverer in his own proper person, before he let it be on anyother human being—that was what the “Mystery” resolved itself into, when all was said and done.
But the greatest events of the world’s history may be told in a few words; why, then, not these? Though the far-reaching effects of those events neither words which have been nor words which shall be said can ever half depict. So thought these loving hearts, it may be, under God’s blessing, with Melville’s discovery; a discovery he had doubtless never made had he not been laid upon a bed of physical helplessness, and left to observe and make his world out of the trivial happenings which went on before his one window. And the wisest know that in the wonderful economy of nature there is nothing trivial or beneath their notice.
A peaceful quietude fell on them all for a little while, and no one cared to speak or mar it. Grandmother Amy’s face took on that look it always wore when her soul was moved by the Spirit. She was far away, just then, from her material surroundings, in that higher world which seemed to those who loved and watched her as her native air.
The silence might have continued much longer had not little Fritz been suddenly moved to “speak in meeting.” He was opposed to sentiment in any shape, and he had borne as much of it as he could well endure. So, from his throne in Fritzy Nunky’s arms, he stooped and whispered with startling distinctness: “I’m awful hungry!”
With a relief that proved how close, after all, is the bond between flesh and spirit, every other member of the group promptly remembered that he or she was hungry, too.