"I have only a few moments to stay," the young man said, after a slight pause. "I have to attend a citizens' meeting. Is not Florence well?"
"Y-yes, she is well," came in hesitating and muffled accents from behind the handkerchief. "She is notill, but she is terribly upset by the state of things, poor child! She hassucha horrorof disease! Why, she can't bear to come near me when I have one of my sick headaches. So sensitive, you know. So——"
A light had gradually been breaking upon Horton's mind. He colored, and stepped forward a little. He had not been asked to sit down, and was still in overcoat and gloves.
"I think," he said, slowly, looking Mrs. Fairfield full in the face,—"IsupposeI know what you mean. Florence will not come down. She is afraid to—to see me."
Mrs. Fairfield fidgeted in her chair, and a red spot burned in her sallow cheek.
"You must not think strange of it, Roger," she began, volubly. "You know how delicately organized Florence is. So nervous and excitable. And it would besucha misfortune—with her complexion!"
Dr. Horton took one or two turns across the room. He was not apt to speak on impulse, and he waited now. He stopped before a portrait of Florence, which hung over the piano. The tender face looked out upon him with the soft, beguiling smile about the small, curved lips, which had become so dear to him. Above it was a bunch of gorgeous sumac, which he had gathered for her one heavenly day, not long ago; and on the piano-rack stood the song she had taught him to believe the sweetest song in all the world:
"Du bist wie eine Blume,So schön, so hold, so rein."
"Du bist wie eine Blume,So schön, so hold, so rein."
"Du bist wie eine Blume,So schön, so hold, so rein."
"Du bist wie eine Blume,
So schön, so hold, so rein."
He looked at the face again. Shewas"like a flower." How could he have found it in his heart to blame her, even by the remotest thought?
"I'm sure," came the plaintive voice again, "you ought not to blame her. I think it's perfectly natural."
Dr. Horton turned toward her, with a cheerful smile.
"Yes, it is quite natural. Of course I have taken every precaution; but it was wrong of me to come without finding out how she felt. Tell her I will not come again until"—he paused, with an unpleasant feeling in his throat—"until she wishes me to come."
"Well, I am sure," said Mrs. Fairfield, rising with an alacrity which betrayed how great was her relief, "you must know what a trial it is to her, Roger. The poor girl feelssobadly. You are not angry?" giving her hand, but holding the camphorated handkerchief between them.
"No," Dr. Horton said, taking the reluctant fingers a moment, "not at all angry."
He went away into the outer darkness, walking a little heavily. The house-door shut behind him with a harsh, inhospitable clang, and as he went down the steps the wind blew a naked, drippingwoodbine-spray sharply against his cheek, giving him a curiously unpleasant thrill.
When he was part way down the walk, he looked back. At the upper window the girlish figure was still visible, the face still pressed against the pane. His heart bounded at the sight, and then sank with a sense of remoteness and loss for which, a moment later, he chided himself bitterly.
Mrs. Fairfield waited only until she believed Roger was off the grounds, when she threw open all the windows in the room, sprinkled everything liberally with carbolic acid, and went up-stairs to her daughter.
She found Florence standing at the window where she had left her.
"What did he say?" she asked, without looking around.
"Oh, he was very reasonable," Mrs. Fairfield answered, seizing the camphor-bottle from the bureau, "very, indeed. He said it was wrong in him to have come under such circumstances, and he would not come again until the danger was over. Roger always was so sensible."
Tears rolled from the girl's eyes down over her blue cashmere wrapper, and she bit her lips to keep back the sobs which threatened to break out.
"Hannah says three more cases were reported to-night," said her mother, re-entering, after a short absence.
An exclamation escaped the girl's lips, and she wrung her fingers nervously.
"We'd better go, hadn't we?" said Mrs. Fairfield.
"No!" cried the girl. "Yes! Oh, I don't know! I don't know!" and she threw herself upon the bed, crying hysterically.
The evil news being corroborated by the milkman next morning, led to another conference between mother and daughter, the result of which was that the following notes awaited Dr. Horton on his return from an exhausting day's work:
"My Dearest Roger: Do not betoomuch hurt or shocked to hear that mother and I have left town on the 3.30 train. We think it best. It is hard, of course; but the separation will be easier than if we were in the same place. I assure you, dear Roger, it pains me to go,dreadfully; but I cannot bear such a strain upon my nerves. Do, dearest, take care of yourself—though, of course, you won't take the disease. Doctors never do, I believe. I don't see why, I'm sure.
"Oh, how I wish you had settled in Boston, or some large place, where your practice would have been among first-class people only. Those low mill people are always breaking out with some horrid thing or other. It is too bad. We are going to stay with Aunt Kitty, in Boston. She has been wanting me to spend the winter with her. She is very gay, but of course, dearest, I shall have no interest inanything. Of course you will write.
"Your own, as ever,
"F. F."
Doctor Horton read this letter twice before opening the other, which was from Mrs. Fairfield herself, and ran as follows:
"My Dear Roger: I am sure you will not blame me for taking our darling Flossie out of harm's way, nor her for going. As I told her last night, you always were so sensible. The poor child has been in such a state, you've no idea! We feel real anxious about you. Do take every precaution, for Flossie's sake, though they say doctors never take diseases. Do wear a camphor-bag somewhere about you. I always did wish you had chosen the law—it is so much nicer. Of course Flossie will expect letters, but don't you think you had better soak the paper and envelopes in carbolic acid beforehand? They say it's very efficacious.
"Yours, affectionately,
"A. Fairfield.
"P. S.—You have no idea how the darling child's spirits have risen since we began packing. She is quite another creature.
"A. F."
Doctor Horton smiled as he read, but as he put both notes away in his desk, his face became grave and sad again.
"It is perfectly natural," he said to himself, as he went down to his lonely tea. "Perfectly so, and I am glad she has gone. But——"
The terrible disease whose presence had sent such a thrill of horror through the quiet little town had been raging for two weeks, and though the inevitable rebound from the first pressure of dread was making itself universally felt, as a topic of conversation it had lost none of its charms.
On a wild, wet afternoon, Lilly O'Connell sat in the stuffy work-room sacred to the mysteries of making and trying on the wonderful productionsof Miss Bullins's scissors and needle. She was sewing the folds upon a dress of cheap mourning, while Miss Bullins sat opposite with lap-board and scissors, her nimble tongue outrunning the latter by long odds.
"What's friendsfor," she was saying, "if they aint goin' to stand by you when the pinch comes? Folks that's got husbands and lovers and friends a plenty don't realize their blessin's. As for Florence Fairfield, it makes me ashamed of bein' a woman—the way that girl did! They say she wouldn't even see Roger Horton to bid him good-by. I never heard the like!"
Lilly turned her head toward the window, perhaps because the dress in her hands was black, and the light dull.
"They say he's workin' himself to death for all them poor people, and he aint got nobody—no sister nor mother—to nurse him up when he comes home all tuckered out; though Nancy Swift thinks a sight of him, and she'll do her duty by him, I make no doubt. He's just like his father, and hewasa good man. Florence Fairfield don't deserve her privileges, I'm afeard."
The street door opened, and with a gust of cold wind entered Widow Gatchell, the village "Sairey Gamp." She was an elderly woman, tall, stiff and dry as a last year's mullein-stalk. Her dark, wrinkled face was fixed and inexpressive, but the smallblack eyes were full of life. She was clothed in rusty garments, and carried a seedy carpet-sack in her hand.
"How d'ye do?" she said, in a dry voice, dropping on to the edge of a chair. "I jest come in to tell ye, if ye wasdrove, 'taint no matter about my bunnit. I sha'n't want it right away."
"Why not?" said Miss Bullins, looking up.
"I'm goin' to the pest-house nussin' to-morrow," returned the old woman, in the same quiet tone.
"Good land! Sarah Gatchell!" cried Miss Bullins, upsetting her lap-board. "Aint you 'most afraid?"
A quaint smile flitted across the widow's face.
"What'd I be afeared of," she said, "'s old 'n' homely 's I be? The small-pox aint agoin' to touchme. I'd 'a' gone a week ago, but I couldn't leave Mis' Merrill, an' her baby not a week old. I've jess been a-talkin' with Dr. Horton," she went on. "He says they're sufferin' for help. They's three sick women an' two children, an' not a woman in the house to do a thing for 'em. They've been expectin' two nusses from the city, but they aint come. Seems to me 'taint jest right fur men-folks to be fussin' 'round sick women an' childern."
"Oh my, it's awful!" sighed Miss Bullins, pinning her pattern crooked in her distress.
"Not a woman there?" said Lilly O'Connell,who had been listening with her hands idle in her lap.
"There'llbeone there in the mornin'," said the widow, rising to go. "I'd 'a' gone to-night, but I couldn't be o' much use till I'd gone 'round the house by daylight, an' got the hang o' things."
"Wall, you've got good grit, Sarah," said the milliner, with enthusiasm. "You're as good as half a dozen common women. I declare, I'd go myself, but I shouldn't be a bit o' use. I should catch it in a day. I was always a great one for catchin' diseases."
"Aint ye well?" said Mrs. Gatchell, turning suddenly toward Lilly. "Ye look kind o' peakèd. I guess ye set still too much."
"I am perfectly well," said Lilly.
"Ye be? Wall, sewin'isconfinin'. Good-by."
Lilly had no appetite for her tea, and immediately after she put on her cloak and hat, and went out. The wind had gone down as the sun set, the rain had ceased, and a few pale stars were struggling through the thin, vapory clouds.
The streets were very quiet, and she met but few people. The choir in the Orthodox Church were rehearsing, their voices ringing out clear and not inharmonious in a favorite hymn. She stopped, and bowing her head upon one of the square wooden posts, waited until the hymn closed. Then shewent on her way. It was quite dark when she reached the end of her walk—the residence of Dr. Starkey. She seized the brass knocker with a firm hand, and was shown into the office. In a few moments Dr. Starkey entered.
He was an old-school physician, and an old-school gentleman as well. He would have considered it indecent to appear before the world in any other garb than a broadcloth swallow-tail coat of ancient date, and with his long neck wrapped in white lawn nearly to the point of suffocation. He entered the room, and bowed with courtly gallantry on seeing a feminine figure standing by the table; but, as Lilly looked up and the lamp-light fell upon her face and hair, there was a perceptible congealing of his manner.
"Miss—a——" he began.
"I am Lilly O'Connell," she said, simply.
"Oh—a—yes! Miss O'Connell. Hm! Sit down, Miss O'Connell,—sit down!" he added, observing her closely from under his shaggy brows.
The girl remained standing, but the doctor seated himself before the glowing grate, and placed himself in an attitude of professional attention.
"You are—indisposed?" he asked, presently, as she remained silent.
"No; I am quite well," she answered; and then, after a little pause, during which her color mounted and faded, she continued: "I have heardthat there is need of more help at the hospital, and I came to ask you to take me as nurse, or anything you most need."
Her voice trembled a little, and her eyes were fixed eagerly upon the doctor's face.
He turned square about, the withered, purple-veined hands clutching the arms of his chair tightly, a kind of choking sound issuing from his bandaged throat.
"Will you say that again?" he asked abruptly, staring with raised eyebrows at the pale, earnest face.
Lilly repeated what she had said, more firmly.
"Good heavens!" ejaculated the old man, measuring the girl from head to foot slowly.
"Child," he said, after a pause, "do you know what you are talking about?"
"I think so," the girl answered, quietly.
"No, you do not!" the old man said, almost brusquely. "It is a place to try the nerves of the strongest man, to say nothing of a woman's. It is no place for a girl—no place."
"I am not afraid," the girl said, her voice breaking. "They say I am good in sickness, and I will do any kind of work. It is dreadful to think of those poor little children and women, with no one to do anything for them but men. Oh, do not refuse!" she cried, coming nearer and holding out her hands entreatingly.
The doctor had fidgeted in his chair, uttering a variety of curious, inarticulate exclamations while she was speaking.
"But, child," he repeated, earnestly, "it would be as much as your life is worth to enter the house. You would come down in a week. You might die!"
Lilly looked up into the mottled old face, and smiled sadly.
"I am not afraid," she said again, "and there is no one to care very much. Even if I should die, it would not matter."
Dr. Starkey reflected, rubbing one shrivelled finger up and down the bridge of his nose. He knew how woman's help was needed in that abode of pestilence and death. He looked at the white, supple hands clasped over the gray cloak before him, and thought of the work which they would be required to perform, then shook his head slowly, and rose.
"No," he said, "I cannot consent."
Lilly made a motion as if to speak, but he raised his hand deprecatingly.
"It would be as bad as murder," he went on. "I respect your motive, Miss O'Connell, I do, indeed; but you are too young and too—a—delicate for the undertaking. Don't think of it any more."
He took one of the hands which dropped at herside and held it in his glazed palm, looking kindly into the downcast face. He knew the girl's whole history. He had been one of the fiercest opponents of her application for a teacher's place, and from conscientious motives solely, as he believed; but he remembered it now with sharp regret. There was nothing in this fair and womanly figure to inspire antipathy, surely. For the first time, a realizing sense of her solitary life came to him, and he was pained and sorry. He wanted to be very kind to her, but felt strangely unable to express himself.
"Don't say no one would care what befell you," he began, his gruff voice softening. "A young woman of your—a—attractions should have many friends. Considermeone, Miss O'Connell," he continued, with a blending of the sincere and the grandiose in his manner,—"considermea friend from this day, and let me thank you again for your offer. It was very praiseworthy of you, very."
Lilly bowed—she could not trust herself to speak—and went away.
Dr. Starkey walked up and down his office several times, raised and lowered the flame of the lamp, poked the fire, looked out into the starlit night, and, with a fervent "Bless my soul! how extraordinary!" settled himself for his customary nap over the Boston paper.
Lilly hurried home through the silent streets.Miss Bullins's shop was empty of customers, and she herself, her hair bristling with crimping-pins and curl-papers, was putting things in order for the night. She studied Lilly's face with watchful anxiety, as she joined in her labors.
"I hope to gracious she aint comin' down sick!" she reflected. "You aint got backache and pains in your limbs, have you?" she inquired, with thinly veiled anxiety.
Lilly laughed.
"No, Miss Bullins; nothing of the kind."
"I thought you looked kind o'queer," said the good creature, coloring.
"I am only a little tired; not sick."
She came and stood by the old maid's chair, as she sat warming her feet at the stove, and laid her hand on the thin gray hair.
"Good-night, Miss Bullins."
"Good-night, dear. Hadn't you better drink a cup of pepper-tea before you go to bed?"
"No, thank you; I am only tired."
She sat by the window of her little bedroom over the shop a long time before lighting her lamp. Dim and dark, the river wound along, its surface gleaming here and there faintly through the leafless branches of the willows. Overhead, the solemn stars shone coldly. The houses along its banks were already dark and silent. At some involuntary movement, her hand fell upon a softwhite mass of needle-work which strewed the table near her, and the contact seemed to rouse her. She rose, lit the lamp, folded the dainty, lace-trimmed garment, and made it into a parcel with some others which she took from a drawer, and went to bed. It was long before she slept, but the early morning found her asleep, with a peaceful smile upon her face.
The next day, being Saturday, was a busy one, for let Death stalk as he will, people must have their Sunday gear. The little shop was full at times, and feminine tongues and fingers flew without cessation, mixing millinery and misery in strange confusion.
"You don't say that's Mis' Belden's bonnet, with all them flowers on it? Well, I never! And she a member!"
"Why, you're a member, too, ain't you, Mis' Allen?" says another, with a glance at the first speaker's head, where feathers of various hues waved majestically.
"Oh, you mean my feathers?" was the spirited answer. "Feathers an'flowersis different things. You must draw the line somewhere, an' I draw it at feathers."
"They say one o' the women died up to the pest-house yesterday," said one woman, in the midst of an earnest discussion as to the comparative becomingness of blue roses and crimson pansies.
"Dear me!" said Miss Bullins, compassionately, "an' not a woman there to lay her out! Sarah Gatchell didn't go up till to-day."
"They don't lay 'em out," remarked the other, unconcernedly, holding a brilliant pansy against her bilious countenance. "They roll 'em up in the sheet they die on, and bury 'em in the pasture."
Lilly's hands trembled over the bonnet she was lining.
"Well, good-day, Miss Bullins. I guess I'd better take the roses. I'm most too old for red. Get it done if you can. Good-day."
It went on so all day. At one time there was a rush for the window.
"It's Doctor Horton!" cried a pretty girl. "Oh my! Ain't he sweet? He's handsomer than ever, since he got so pale. I don't see how in the world Flossie Fairfield could do as she did. They say she's afraid to have him write to her."
"She loves her good looks more'n she does him, I guess," said another.
"And they to be married in the spring," said Miss Bullins, pathetically. "Lilly, here, was making her underclo'se, and they're a sight to see,—all hand-made, and so much lace in 'em that it ain't modest, I do declare!"
"If she got her deserts she wouldn't have no use for weddin' clo'se," said another, with acerbity; "not ifIwas Roger Horton."
"Wall, you ain't," said her companion, drily, "an' he ain't no different from other men, I guess."
Lilly worked on with feverish haste. About four o'clock she rose and went out, pausing an instant at the door, and looking back. Miss Bullins, intent upon some button-holes for which every moment of daylight was needed, did not look up. Lilly closed the door, and went up to her room.
It was small and simple, but it was the best she had known. There were some innocent efforts at decoration, a daintiness about the bed, a few books on hanging shelves, and a pretty drapery at the one window. She looked around with a sinking heart. There was a small writing-desk upon the table, and she went to it and wrote a few lines, which she sealed and directed. She packed a few articles in a satchel, put on her cloak and hat, and stole down the stairs.
Choosing the quietest street, she walked rapidly through the village until the last house was passed, and the open country lay before her, bare and brown and desolate, except for the blue hills in the distance, which, summer or winter, never lost their beauty.
Two or three farmers, jogging homeward with their week's supplies, passed her, and one offered her a lift as far as she was going, which she declined.
A mile from the village, a road turned off to theleft, winding through barren fields, until lost in the pine woods. As she turned into this, a man driving toward the village reined in and called to her, warningly:
"The pest-house is up yonder!"
She merely bowed and kept on. The man stared a moment, and whipped up his horse again. It was dark in the woods, and chilly, but she felt no fear, not even when the sere bushes by the way-side rustled, or twigs snapped as if beneath the tread of some living creature.
As she came out into comparative light she saw a buggy driven rapidly toward her. She recognized its occupant at once, and with a quick heart-throb sprang behind a clump of young pines, and dropped upon her knees.
Dr. Horton drove by, his face turned toward her place of concealment. He did not know that any human eye was upon him, and the heaviness of his spirit appeared unrepressed in every feature. His eyes followed listlessly the irregular outline of the way-side walls and bushes, but it was evident that his thoughts were not of surrounding things, otherwise he must have seen the crouching figure and the white face pressed against the rough bark of the tree whose trunk she clasped.
The girl's eyes followed him until he was lost to sight in the woods. Then she came out and pursued her way.
A curve in the road brought her in sight of the house now devoted to hospital uses. It was a two-story farm-house, black with age, shutterless and forsaken-looking. Over it hung the cloud of a hideous crime. A few years before, the owner, led on by an insane passion, had murdered his aged wife in her bed. The sequel had been a man's life ended in prison, a girl's name blasted, a dishonored family, a forsaken homestead,—for the son, to whom the property had fallen, had gone away, leaving no trace behind him. It had stood for years as the murderer had left it; its contents had been untouched by human hands; the hay had rotted in the barn; the fields were running waste. The very road itself was avoided, and the old wheel-ruts were almost effaced by grass and weeds. Swallows had possessed themselves of the cold, smokeless chimneys and sunken, mossy eaves; vagrant cats prowled about the moldering mows and empty mangers. The old well-sweep pointed like a gaunt, rigid finger toward heaven. The little strips of flower-beds beneath the front windows were choked with grass, but the red roses and pinks and columbines which the old woman had loved, still grew and bloomed in their season, and cast their petals about the sunken door-stone, and over the crooked path and neglected grass.
There were no flowers now,—only drifting masses of wet brown leaves. The setting sun had justturned the windows into sheets of blood, and down in the pasture could be seen the rough clods of several new-made graves. The silence was absolute. Faint columns of smoke, rising from the crumbling chimneys, were the only signs of human presence.
A tremor shook the girl from head to foot, and she ceased walking. After all, she was young and strong, and the world was wide; life might hold something of sweetness for her yet. It was not too late. She half turned,—but it was only for a moment, and her feet were on the door-step, and her hand on the latch.
She turned a last look upon the outer world,—the bare fields, the leafless woods, the blue hills, the fading sky. A desperate yearning toward it all made her stretch out her hands as if to draw it nearer for a last farewell. Then from within came the piteous cry of a sick child, and she raised the latch softly and entered the house. The air of the hall smote her like a heavy hand, coming as she did from the cool outer air; but guided by the cry, which still continued, she groped her way up the bare, worn stairs, pushed open a door, and entered.
The child's voice covered the sound of her entrance and, sickened by the foul air, she had leaned for some moments against the wall before Widow Gatchell, who was holding the child acrossher knee, turned and saw her. The old woman's hard, brown features stiffened with surprise, her lips parted without sound.
"I have come to help you," said Lilly, putting down her satchel and coming forward.
"Who sent ye?" the widow asked, shortly.
"Nobody. I offered my services, but Dr. Starkey refused to let me come. I knew you would not send me away if I once got here, and so I came."
"What was folks thinkin' of toletye come?" asked the old woman again.
"Nobody knew it," Lilly answered.
"Wall," the widow said, "ye had no sort o' business to come, though the Lord knows they's need enough of help."
"PerhapsHesent me, Sarah," the girl said, gently. "Oh, the poor, poor baby! Let me take it."
Widow Gatchell's keen eyes swept the girl's compassionate face with a searching gaze. She rose stiffly and laid the child in her arms.
"There!" she said, drawing a long breath. "You're in for it now, Lilly O'Connell, and may the Lord have mercy on ye!"
When Dr. Horton entered the pest-house in the morning, the first person he encountered was Lilly O'Connell, coming through the hall with a tray in her hands. In her closely fitting print dress andwide apron, the sleeves turned back from her smooth, strong arms, her face earnest, yet cheerful, she was the embodiment of womanly charity and sweetness. He started as though he saw a spectre.
"Good heavens!" he said; "how came you here? Who—who permitted you to come here?"
"No one," said Lilly, supporting the waiter on the post at the foot of the stairs. "I just came. I asked Dr. Starkey to take me as nurse, but he refused."
"I know, I know," said the young man. He stepped back and opened the door, letting in the crisp morning air. "But why did you come? It is a terrible place for you."
"I came to be of use," she answered, smiling. "I hope I am useful. Ask Mrs. Gatchell. She will tell you that I am useful, I am sure."
Horton's face expressed pain and perplexity.
"It is wrong—all wrong," he said. "Where were your friends? Was there no one who cared for you, no one that you care for, enough to keep you from this wild step?"
She looked up into his face, and, for one brief moment, something in her deep, luminous eyes chained his gaze. A soft red spread itself over her cheeks and neck. She shook her head slowly, and taking up the tray, went on up the stairs.
Miss Bullins found the little note which Lillyhad left for her, when, as no response came to her repeated summons to tea, she mounted the stairs to see what had happened.
She read the hastily written lines with gathering tears.
"You can get plenty of milliners and seamstresses; but those poor women and children are suffering for some one to take care of them. Forgive me for going this way, but it seemed the only way Icouldgo. May be I shall be sick; but if I do, there is no beauty to lose, you know, and if I die, there is nobody to break their heart about it.Youwill be sorry, I know. I thank you, oh so much, for all your kindness to me, and I do love you dearly. May God bless you for all your goodness. If I should die, what I leave is for you to do what you please with.
"Your grateful and loving
"Lilly."
The good little woman's tears fell faster as she looked about the empty room.
"I never was so beat in my life," she confided to a dozen of her intimate friends many times over during the next week. "You could have knocked me down with a feather."
Dr. Starkey's amazement surpassed Miss Bullins's, if possible. He first heard of the step Lilly had taken from Dr. Horton. He saw her himself a day or two later, on making his tri-weekly visit to the hospital, and commended her bravery and self-sacrificing spirit in phrases something less stilted than usual.
He could not entirely banish an uneasy feelingwhen he looked at the fresh young face, but he became tolerably reconciled to the situation when he saw what her energy and tenderness, in cooperation with Widow Gatchell's skill and experience, were accomplishing.
As for the girl herself, the days and nights passed so rapidly, making such demands upon body and mind, as to leave no time for regret. The scenes she witnessed effaced the past entirely for the time. In the midst of all the pain, and loathsomeness, and delirium, and death, she moved about, strong, gentle and self-contained, so self-contained that the vigilant eyes of the old nurse followed her in mute surprise.
"I never see nothin' like it," she said to Dr. Horton one day. "I've known her since she was little, an' I never would 'a' believed it, though I knew she'd changed. Why, she used to be so high-strung an' techy, like, an' now she's like a lamb."
On the tenth day after her coming, Dr. Horton in making his round entered an upper chamber, where Lilly was standing by one of the three beds it contained. She had just drawn the sheet over the faces of two who had died that morning—mother and child.
The dead woman was the deserted wife of a man who had left her a year before, young, weak and ignorant, to certain want and degradation.
"I cannot feel sorry," Lilly said. "It is so much better for them than what was left for them here."
Dr. Horton hardly seemed to hear her words. He was leaning wearily against a chair behind him; his eyes were dull, and his forehead contracted as if with physical suffering.
"You are ill!" she said, with a startled gesture.
"No, only getting a little tired out. I hope the worst is over now, and I think I shall hold out."
He went about from room to room, and from bed to bed, attentive and sympathetic as ever, and then left the house. A half hour later, one of the men came into the kitchen where Mrs. Gatchell was stirring something over the fire.
"Got a spare bed?" he asked, laconically.
The widow looked up.
"'Cause we've got another patient."
"Who is it?" she asked, quickly.
"Come and see."
She followed the man to the rear of the house, where, upon a stone which had fallen from the wall, Dr. Horton was sitting, his head bent in slumber. She listened a moment to his heavy breathing, laid her hand upon his forehead, and turned silently away.
A bed was made ready, and the young doctor, still wrapped in the heavy sleep of disease, waslaid upon it, and one of the men was sent for Dr. Starkey.
In the delirium which marks the first stages of the disease, young Horton would allow no one but Lilly O'Connell to minister to him. Sometimes he imagined himself a boy, and called her "mother," clinging to her hand, and moaning if she made the least effort to withdraw. At other times, another face haunted him, and another name, coupled with endearing words or tender reproaches, fell from the half-unconscious lips.
Who but a woman can comprehend the history of those days and nights of watching and waiting? Each morning found her more marble-pale; purple rings formed themselves about the large eyes, but a deep, steady light, which was not born of pain and suffering, shone in their clear depths.
At last, one night, the crisis, whose result no human judgment could foretell, was at hand. No delirium, no restlessness now—only a deep sleep, in which the tense muscles relaxed and the breath came as softly as a child's.
Widow Gatchell shared the young girl's watch, but the strain of the last month had told upon her, and toward morning she fell asleep, and Lilly kept her vigil alone. Only the ticking of the old clock in the hall and the breathing of the sleepers broke the deep silence which filled the house. The lamp threw weird shadows across the ceiling and overthe disfigured face upon the pillow. Of all manly beauty, only the close-clustering chestnut hair remained, and the symmetrical hands which lay nerveless and pale, but unmarred, upon the spread.
Statue-like, the young girl sat by the bed-side, her whole soul concentrated in the unwavering gaze which rested upon the sleeper's face. A faint—ever so faint—murmur came at last from the hot, swollen lips, and one languid hand groped weakly, as if seeking something. She took it gently and held it between her own soft palms. It seemed to her fine touch that a light moisture was discernible upon it. She rose and bent over the pillow with eager eyes. A storm of raptured feeling shook her. She sank upon her knees by the bed, and pressed the hand she held close against her breast, whispering over it wild words which no ear might hear.
All at once, the fingers which had lain so inert and passive in her grasp seemed to her to thrill with conscious life, to return faintly the pressure of her own. She started back.
A ray of dawning light crept under the window-shade and lay across the sick man's face. His eyes were open, and regarding her with a look of perfect intelligence.
The girl rose with a smothered cry, and laid the drooping hand upon the bed. The dark, gentleeyes followed her beseechingly. It seemed as if he would have spoken, but the parched lips had lost their power.
She went to the sleeping woman and touched her shoulder.
"Sarah, I think he is better," she said, her voice trembling.
Instantly, the old nurse was on the alert. She went to the bed, and laid her hand upon the sick man's forehead and wrist, then turned toward Lilly, with a smile.
"Go and take some rest," she said in a whisper. "The crisis has passed. He will live."
Dr. Horton's recovery was not rapid, but it was sure.
From the hour of his return to consciousness, Lilly O'Connell had not entered his room.
When a week had passed, he ventured to question his faithful attendant, Widow Gatchell, in regard to her. For twenty-four hours he had missed the step and voice he had believed to be hers, passing and repassing the hall outside his door. The old woman turned her back abruptly and began stirring the already cheerful fire.
"She ain't quite so well to-day," she answered, in a constrained voice.
The young man raised his head.
"Do you mean that she is sick?" he asked hastily.
"She was took down last night," the widow answered, hesitating, and would have left the room; but the young man beckoned her, and she went to his side.
"Let everything possible be done for her," he said. "You understand—everything thatcanbe done. Let Mason attend to me."
"I'll domypart," the old nurse answered, in the peculiarly dry tone with which she was accustomed to veil her emotions.
Dr. Starkey, who, since the young doctor's illness, had been, perforce, in daily attendance, was closely questioned. His answers, however, being of that reserved and non-committal nature characteristic of the profession, gave little satisfaction, and Horton fell into a way of noticing and interpreting, with the acute sense of the convalescent, each look of his attendant, each sound which came to him, keeping himself in a state of nervous tension which did much toward retarding his recovery.
Three or four days had passed in this way, when one morning, just at daybreak, Dr. Horton was roused from his light sleep by sounds in the hall outside his door—hushed voices, shuffling footsteps, and the sound of some object striking with a heavy thud against the balusters and wall. He raised himself, his heart beating fast, and listened intently. The shuffling steps moved on, down the creaking stairs and across the bare floor below. Adoor opened and shut, and deep silence filled the house again. He sank back upon his pillow, faint and bewildered, but still listening, and after some moments, another sound reached his ears faintly from a distance—the click of metal against stones and frozen mold.
He had already been able, with some assistance, to reach his chair once or twice a day; now he rose unaided, and without consciousness of pain or weakness, found his way to the window, and pushed aside the paper shade with a shaking hand.
It was a dull, gray morning, and a light snow was falling, but through the thin veil he could see the vague outlines of two men in the pasture opposite, and could follow their stiff, slow motions. They were filling in a grave.
He went to his bed and lay back upon it with closed eyes. When he opened them, Widow Gatchell was standing by him with his breakfast on a tray.
Her swarthy face was haggard, but her eyes were tearless, and her lips set tightly together. He put his hand out and touched hers.
"I know," he said, softly.
The woman put the tray on the table, and sank upon a chair. She cleared her throat several times before speaking.
"Yes," she said, at last, in her dry, monotonous voice. "She is gone. We did all we couldfor her, but 'twarn't no use. She was all wore out when she was took. Just afore she died she started up and seized hold o' my hand, her eyes all soft an' shinin', an' her mouth a-smilin'. 'Sarah,' says she, 'I shall know the meaning of it now!' The good Lord only knows what she meant—her mind was wanderin', most likely—but them was her last words, 'I shall know the meanin' of it now, Sarah!'"
The old woman sat a while in silence, with the strange repressed look which watching by so many death-beds had fixed upon her face; then, arranging the breakfast upon the stand, went out again.
It snowed persistently all day. From the chair by the window, Doctor Horton watched it falling silently, making everything beautiful as it fell,—rude wall, and gnarled tree, and scraggy, leafless bush,—and covering those low, unsightly mounds with a rich and snowy pall. He watched it until night fell and shut it from his sight.
Lilly O'Connell's was the last case. The disease seemed meantime to have spent its force, and in a few weeks the unbroken silence of midwinter rested over the drear and forlorn spot.
Doctor Horton was again at home. He was thin, and his face showed some traces of the disease from which he had just recovered, but they were slight, and such as would pass away in time. The pleasant chamber where he was sitting wasfilled with evidences of care and attention, for every woman in Ridgemont, old or young, desired to show in some way her admiration and esteem for the young physician. Fruit and jellies and flowers and books filled every available place.
He was seated before a cheerful fire. Upon the table by his side lay many papers and letters, the accumulation of several weeks. One letter, of a recent date, was open in his hand. A portion of it ran thus:
"* * * It has been very gay here this season, and mother and Aunt Kitty have insisted upon my going out a great deal. But I have had no heart in it, dearest, especially since I knew that you were ill. I assure you, I was almost ill myself when I heard of it. How thankful I am that you are convalescent. I long to see you so much, but Aunt Kitty does not think I ought to return before spring. Oh Roger,doyou think you are much changed? * * *"
Shading his eyes with his thin hand, he sat a long time in deep thought. At last, rousing himself, he went to his desk and wrote as follows:
"My Dear Florence: Iamchanged; so much that you would not know me; so much that I hardly know myself; so much, indeed, that it is better we do not meet at present.
R. H."
With a smile so bitter that it quite transformed his genial, handsome face, he read and re-read these lines.
"Yes," he said aloud, "it is the right way, theonly way," and he sealed and directed the letter, and went back to his reverie by the fire.
Lilly O'Connell's death made a deep impression in the village. That which her life, with all its pain and humiliation and loneliness, its heroic struggles, its quiet, hard-won victories, had failed to do, the simple story of her death accomplished. It was made the subject of at least two eloquent discourses, and for a time her name was on every tongue. But it was only for a time, for when, in the course of years, the graves in the pasture were opened, and the poor remains of mortality removed by surviving friends to sacred ground, her grave remained undisturbed.
It was not forgotten, however. One day in June, when the happy, teeming earth was at her fairest, Dr. Horton drove out of the village, and turning into the grass-grown, untraversed road, went on to the scene of the past winter's tragedy of suffering and death. The old house was no longer in existence. By consent of the owner (whose whereabouts had been discovered), and by order of the selectmen of the town, it had been burned to the ground. Where it had stood, two crumbling chimneys rose from the mass of blackened bricks and charred timbers which filled the cellar, the whole draped and matted with luxuriant woodbine and clinging shrubs. Birds brooded over their nests in every nook and cranny of the ruin, and redroses flaunted in the sunshine and sprinkled the gray door-stone with splashes of color. The air was as sweet about it, the sky as blue above it, as if crime and plague were things which had no existence.
Dr. Horton left his horse to browse on the tender leaves of the young birches which grew along the wall, and went down into the pasture. The sod above the graves was green, and starred with small white flowers. There were fifteen graves in all, distinguished only by a number rudely cut upon rough stakes driven into the ground at their heads.
He went slowly among them until he came to one a little apart from the others, in the shadow of the woods which bordered the field. A slender young aspen grew beside it, its quivering leaves shining in the sun. Soft winds blew out from the fragrant woods, and far off in their green depths echoed the exquisite, melancholy note of the wood-thrush. At the foot of the grave, where the grass, nourished by some hidden spring, grew long and lush, a single tiger-lily spread its glowing chalice.
The young man stood there with uncovered head a long, long time. Then, laying his hand reverently upon the sod for one instant, he went away.
Several years have passed since these events. Dr. Horton is still unmarried. This is a source of great regret in the community with which he hasbecome so closely allied, and by which he is held in universal regard and honor. There are some prematurely whitened locks upon his temples, and two or three fine straight lines just above his warm, steadfast eyes, but he is neither a morose nor a melancholy man, and there are those who confidently hope that the many untenanted rooms in the old homestead may yet open to the sunshine of a wife's smile, and echo to the music of childish voices.
It was two years before he met Miss Fairfield, she having spent that time in Europe with her mother and "Aunt Kitty." It was a chance meeting, upon Tremont Street, in Boston. He was in the act of leaving a store as she entered, accompanied by her mother. He recognized them with a friendly and courteous bow, and passed on.
Miss Fairfield leaned against the counter with a face white as snow.
"He is not—changed—so very much," she whispered to her mother.
Mrs. Fairfield, who had had her own ideas all along, kept a discreet silence.
The Fairfields spend a part of their time in Ridgemont, and the elegant little phaeton and the doctor's buggy often pass each other on the street; the occupants exchange greetings, and that is all.
Miss Fairfield is Miss Fairfield still. Always elegant and artistic in her dress, she is not quitethe same, however. The porcelain tints have faded, and there is a sharpness about the delicate features, and a peevishness about the small pink lips. She is devoted to art. She paints industriously, and with fair result. Her tea-sets are much sought after, and she "spends her winters in Boston."