CHAPTER XXI.
Doctor Laurens had a profound admiration and regard for his brother’s wife, and declared that Cecil, who had always been a lucky fellow, had capped the climax of his good fortune in securing such a beautiful and charming bride. It was therefore with the greatest consternation and distress that he beheld Molly’s condition, and heard from the indignant maid the cause of it—a cause which lost nothing in the telling, for Phebe had warmly espoused the side of her helpless young mistress.
Doctor Laurens ran his eyes hastily over his brother’s letter that lay where it had fallen by Molly’s side, and then he bent his attention to restoring her to life from the deep swoon that had enchained her consciousness.
“Poor little girl, poor little girl!” he sighed over and over as he lifted her in his strong young arms and bore her to her chamber preceded by the attentive maid, who turned down the covers of the white bed and deftly disrobed Molly’s slight form, while Doctor Laurens waited patiently outside.
“Now then, you may come in, sir,” she said, opening the door; and entering quickly the young physician exerted himself to the utmost limit of his skill in restoring Molly to consciousness.
Phebe, who was an intelligent, middle-aged woman, aided him all she could; but success came slowly, and the woman cried out in alarm that she feared her young mistress was dead.
“No, she is not dead. Her heart beats faintly. She will revive presently,” said Doctor Laurens, and he added something in an undertone at which the woman exclaimed, excitedly:
“I thought so myself, and I hinted it to the dear child sometime ago, but she was so bashful she would not believe me. Oh, this makes it all the worse for the poor creature, and Mr. Laurens was cruel to leave her, no matter what she had done.”
Doctor Laurens answered, gravely:
“I am sure my brother did not know this important fact or he would have acted differently, Phebe.”
“Yes, sir,” said the woman, dropping him a profound courtesy.
“Are any of the servants beside yourself aware of what has happened?”
The woman answered promptly in the negative.
“I saw Mr. Laurens bringing my mistress into the house in his arms and ran into the room to assist her—that is how I overheard all,” she said, with such a frank, truthful air that Doctor Laurens immediately enjoined:
“You seem to be a good, intelligent woman, Phebe, and I want you to keep this secret locked in your own breast. Will you do so?”
“It shall never pass my lips, sir; for I’m sure my poor young lady never did all them dreadful things that lady said.”
“Thank you, Phebe, for your confidence in my sister-in-law. She does not look like an arrant sinner, does she, with that sweet, innocent face? Any way, no matter how she has sinned, her condition gives her a claim on my brother that he can not in honor disregard. So we will try to patch up a reconciliation betweenthem, and a remarriage may be necessary. I speak frankly to you, Phebe, seeing what a good woman you are, and devoted to that poor girl,” said the young man.
“Devoted—yes indeed, sir, for no servant ever had a sweeter, kinder mistress,” said the woman, in tears.
“Then you understand the vital necessity of saving her name from scandal, and I need caution you no more about the strict keeping of her secret,” said the young physician as he again bent over his patient, in whom he detected signs of returning life.
In fact Molly’s eyes opened languidly a few minutes later with a puzzled air at finding herself in bed with the gas lighted in the room, whereas her last recollection had been of the sunset hour.
“Cecil,” she murmured, with a restless movement, and Phebe said, soothingly:
“He is not here just this moment, Mrs. Laurens. You have been sick, and here is your brother-in-law, the doctor, who has been attending to you.”
She met Charley Laurens’ compassionate blue eyes fixed on her, and instant consciousness returned to her mind. Burying her face in the pillow her slight form shook heavily with anguished sobs.
“Let her alone, Phebe. Let nature have its way, and she will feel better after weeping,” said the sympathetic young doctor.
He was right, for when the tempest of sobs and tears had exhausted itself Molly began to grow quiet, and at last turned her pathetic, wet eyes on his face, and said, with a sort of wistful anger:
“Why are you here when all the rest have turned against me and gone away?”
He answered, gently:
“I came and found you sick and alone save for your faithful maid. I stayed then to help to make you well.”
With a restless movement she rejoined:
“I do not want to get well! You ought to know that. I want to die!”
“That is nonsense, my dear little sister, and I do not want to hear any more of it,” was the cheerful response.
“Do you know all?” she asked, looking fixedly at him.
“Phebe has told me as well as she could, so I don’t want you to talk about it tonight, as you are in too excited a state to do so. I have a little powder here which I want you to take so that you may sleep well tonight, for I must go away in a little while and leave you in your good Phebe’s care,” he said, gently, like one speaking to a sick child.
“Then I shall be quite deserted,” she murmured, plaintively.
“No, for I shall come again.”
“When?” pleadingly.
“Tomorrow.”
She caught his arm as he bent down to hold the medicine glass to her lips.
“You do not look scornful like the rest,” she panted. “Ah, won’t you—won’t you—beghimto forgive me? I was wicked, I know, but I have suffered so much since that it almost seems as if my remorse and sorrow had washed out my sin. And—I loved him so! How could I help it when we loved each other so, and that secret would have parted us forever? Tell him, tell him—” her voice broke in hysterical sobs, and he pushed her gently back among the pillows as he said:
“I’ll see him. Only be quiet, dear, and I’ll tell him all you said and more, for he shall know the sweet secret you have been hiding from him—the secret that will surely bring him back to you.”
“No, no, he will not return; he has left me forever,” she sobbed, and turned her face from him so that it was hidden from sight. He sat down patiently until the heaving breast grew quiet in the stillness of a drugged sleep, then leaving her in Phebe’s watchful care, went in search of his brother.
It was only as he went down the steps of The Acacias and out into the gas-lighted street that he remembered that he had not the address to which his relatives had gone.
“But it is to the Langham, of course. They always go there when they have not taken a house in town,” he said to himself, and turned his steps thitherward.
“It is early, thank Heaven, so they will not have retired or gone out,” he thought, as he walked slowly along, pondering over the painful affair, and feeling profoundly sad at the thought of Molly’s treachery.
“Her youth is her only excuse, and yet it seems strange that one so young and seemingly guileless could have conceived and carried out such a clever, wicked plan,” he thought, in wonder, and knowing Cecil’s proud, honest nature as he did he could not feel surprised at the latter’s indignant action in deserting the girl who had thus deceived him.
“But according to Phebe’s description the real Louise Barry can not be one-half as charming as the pretended one,” he said to himself, recalling with some amusement the maid’s spiteful description of the latter as a “yellow-headed, yellow-eyed, deceitful cat.”
His musings brought him at last to the Langham,where he found as he had hoped and expected, his father, mother and brother registered.
He sent up his card, and his father sent down to him to come upstairs to their private parlor, where he found his parents looking pale and dejected as they sat together alone.