Part 8

“Then let me tell you, my dear child, that I feel very certain that I can help him and relieve him of much of the pain, but I have no certainty of curing him. The most that I can do is to help nature out, and wait for results. The treatment will be long, but will inevitably do much good and relieve the pain; I ask nothing, but that you will leave the case to me. Will you?”

“How can you ask? How can I be anything but glad and thankful to do it?” said Ethel, the tears springing to her eyes. “But I have told you--”

“Yes, I know,” he interrupted her, “we needn’t speak about that now. If you leave the matter to me, you must leave it to me wholly. All that is my affair. I often wait indefinitely for my pay, and it really isn’t such an expensive matter as you may suppose. But, as I said before, you must do your part. You must stay here with Bobby, and take care of and amuse him. That will do away with the need of a special nurse.”

“Of course I will--until my school begins,” said Ethel. “Then I will be obliged to go. That is a matter of life and death to Bobby, and me, too.”

“And how long before that does begin?”

“Three weeks,” said Ethel, in a tone that was half desperate.

“Three weeks!” said the doctor, quickly. “That is plenty of time to arrange for the future; and now all you have got to do is to be as happy as you can, say your prayers, and leave the rest to me. Now, you can go and see Bobby. I told Lawson to stay with him until you came.”

He got up and opened the door for her, as he spoke, and, without knowing why, she carried away a strong impression of charm and strength from the pose of his figure, as he held the door open for her. He was a trained athlete, and not the least part of his personal attractiveness was in his exceptionally handsome figure.

The next day, Bobby was put under chloroform, and an operation was performed. Ethel was sent to Mrs. Mills’ room during this time, and when at last a message arrived for her to come, she found her little brother stretched out very straight and stiff upon a bed, waiting for the plaster jacket, in which he had been cased, to harden. He was still unconscious, but the doctor, who met her at the door, prepared her for a comprehension of everything, by telling her that it was “all right,” and that he was more convinced than ever of being able to do Bobby good. The doctor himself was in his working clothes of immaculate white linen, a costume in which those who had been privileged to see him, declared that he looked his very best; and when he bent over Bobby, and took the trouble to explain to Ethel what he had done in the way of straightening and righting things, she felt as if he were a sort of strong good spirit, who had both power and will to lessen the woes of life.

Ethel had feared that the effect of the plaster would be to make the boy, at first, at least, more uncomfortable; but to her delight, she found that the support which it gave was an intense relief to him, and that he seemed every hour to be growing better in body and in mind. The doctor’s influence over him was simply unbounded, and a tremendous reformation had evidently begun in temper and disposition.

One afternoon, a few days later, Ethel was sitting telling Bobby a story, when there came a knock at the door. She called “Come in,” and to her surprise it was the doctor who entered, although it was out of his usual hospital hours. He wore a long overcoat of tan-colored cloth, had a flower in his button-hole, and held an immaculate top-hat in his gloved hand. Ethel quite started. She had never seen such an imposing gentleman as this, outside of a picture, before.

“I have come to give you a little airing,” he said; “you need it, I am sure. Will you put on your wraps and come down as soon as you are ready? I want to take you to the park.”

Then he turned and put his gloved thumb on the button of the electric bell, and, in a moment, a tidy nurse appeared.

“Are you on special duty, this afternoon?” he asked; and having a negative reply, went on: “Then find some storybooks or toys and come and amuse this child, if you please. I am going to take Miss Duncan for a little airing.”

When Ethel, five minutes later, came downstairs, she found the doctor waiting in the hall, while several people--nurses, patients, etc.--were trying to get a word with him.

But he waved them off, shaking his head and shutting his eyes, with a smile of obstinate dismissal of their claims.

“I am off duty now,” he said; “all these things must wait, or you must go to the other doctors. Come, Miss Duncan,” and he led the way down the long hall. As he opened the door for Ethel to go out, she saw, drawn up before the pavement, a handsome drag, with a pair of superb horses, glittering with their heavy harnesses, and with a groom in top-boots standing at their heads.

As she was helped into this imposing equipage, which was as far removed from anything in her former experience as the coach and six was from Cinderella’s, the doctor gathered up the reins, while the groom sprang into his place behind, and they started off over the noisy cobblestones at a swinging pace.

Very soon, however, they had left the city streets behind, and were bowling along at ease over the smooth roads of the beautiful park. And then what delightful talk they had! How her companion drew her out, and provoked her to charming and spontaneous chatter! She was a rather countrified little creature, in spite of her beauty, and perhaps some of the fashionable people, who bowed to Dr. Hubert in passing, wondered at the shape of her little black hat, and the cut of her dark cloth jacket. If they did, she never suspected it; and if her companion did, it must have troubled him very little, for he had a gleam of positive exultation in his eyes.

It was a memorable drive to them both, and there was such a feeling of spontaneous freedom and confidence in the girl’s heart, that, when she got back to Bobby at last, she felt as if she had really known this charming, friendly doctor the whole of her natural life.

“And so you have!” he said to her, next day, when, having sent for her to come to his office, she had made this same remark to him. “I really believe we have known each other always. It only remained for us to meet in bodily presence. But what I sent for you to-day was, to tell you that I had leisure now to listen to what you said you had to tell me about your future plans. I checked you then, but now I want to hear what it is. Tell me.”

“I only wanted to remind you that I must go away very soon,” she began.

“You can’t go; Bobby needs you,” said the doctor, decidedly.

“I know it. I don’t see what I am to do. I can go back and send a little money from my salary for his weekly board, but that seems almost preposterous.”

“The idea of your leaving seems preposterous,” he said. “I really can’t let you go. The school must go to the wall.”

“Oh! how can you talk so?” she said. “It’s the first time that you have seemed uncomprehending.”

“I am not uncomprehending,” he said; “I am only thinking hard how I can make you comprehend.”

“Comprehend what?” she said.

“Shall I tell you?” he asked. “Will you promise me not to be angry, and will you keep your promise?”

“Yes, tell me; I promise,” she said. “I don’t believe I could fail to comprehend whatever it is that you have to say to me.”

“Then what I have to say is this--what my heart burns to say, what I have had to fight myself, day and night, since the first day of your coming, to keep from saying, is this--that I love you, and that all my hope of joy is to have you for my wife.”

She sprang to her feet, and looked at him with wonder and mystification in her eyes.

“Ah!” he said; “you were mistaken. You cannot comprehend how I love you so, when, as you think, I know you so little. But there you are wrong. I know you, as no one else in all the world can possibly know you; and I think you, of all the world, are the one who best knows me. Here, look at this, and tell me if you have ever seen it before.”

He took a packet from the drawer at his side, and put it in her hands. The color flew to her face, and her lips parted in a radiant smile.

“Yes,” she said, “I have seen it before. Was this story written by you?”

“It was,” he answered; “and it is because I know that you have read it and have understood that it is no story, but the baring of a man’s inmost heart, that I say you know me as no one else does. In the same manner also, it has come to pass that I know you.”

“You got my manuscript?” she said. “It was you to whom Mr. Black sent it by mistake?”

“It was,” he answered; “and perhaps it will not seem strange to you now when I say, we are not strangers, but are intimately, closely, mysteriously known to one another. This knowledge of you, on my part, has led to love--the first real passion of my life. I loved you from the hour that I read that paper. I loved your nature, your mind, your soul. Now that I have seen you, in all your goodness and loveliness and beauty, I love you beyond all my dreams of love. And you?” he said; “how is it with you, Ethel?”

She looked at him with a slow, half-puzzled, wholly confiding, and happy smile.

“If you had asked me to marry you without telling me this,” she said, “I could not have said ‘yes.’ I might not have told you the reason, but it would have been that my heart was already given to a man whom I had never seen, and who was known to me only as ‘Hugh Robertson.’”

“But now,” he said, “now that you know that Hugh Robertson is really Arthur Hugh Hubert, what will you say? O Ethel, I love you with the hoarded love of many loveless and lonely years! Will you come to me, and be my wife?”

His eyes were glowing. His face was flushed; his breathing came from him in quick breaths. He did not move toward her, but stood where he was, and held out his arms.

And Ethel came to them, and as she rested there an instant, and then turned her face upward to receive his kiss, they both felt in that moment’s ecstasy the long thirsting of their souls satisfied at last, completely and eternally, by the divine draught of love.

A Bartered Birthright

A Bartered Birthright

After debating the matter for ten years or so, John Hertford had made up his mind to adopt St. Petersburg as a place of residence, and was now on his way back to New York, to order his affairs to that end. He was not rich, but then he was not extravagant, and his moderate income was more than sufficient for the wants of a man who had no one dependent on him, and who had entirely made up his mind not to marry. He had been in love more than once in his life, and yet, ardent as his feelings had been for the objects who aroused that emotion in him, he had never had quite the feeling to make him long to call any woman his wife. The truth was owned to himself in his secret heart--that word “wife” possessed for him a significance which involved so much that he had often wondered, in early youth, if he could ever actually find, in one personality, all the qualities of mind and heart and person which he looked for. In maturer years, he had quite satisfied himself that the idea was absurd. So he abandoned his youthful dreams, without any great ado, especially as he had found that life had certain positive compensations for their loss. He made up his mind, however, that he could not accept less than his ideal in marriage, and so, with more or less contentment, he had shaped his life to the demands and dimensions of a bachelor existence, and was looking forward with pleasure to the more deliberate and satisfactory settlement of himself and his belongings at the brilliant capital on his return. He was not indolent, and his taste for art, music and literature gave him plenty of occupation to diversify the life of social pleasure in the midst of which he had cast his lines. He was a very popular man, and yet one could hardly tell exactly why it was that men and women, and even children, liked him so. His face was strong and interesting rather than handsome, and his figure active and powerful rather than elegant. He had no especial charms of manner, except a supremely winning trait of gentleness, which would have made the eternal happiness of his wife--had there been such a being!

He was not looking forward with much pleasure to his visit to his native country, and had bound himself by the severest obligations to be back in a very short time; and now, on the first day out on his ocean voyage, he found himself wishing that the trip to New York was over, and that he was going back. There would be so many changes among his old friends--so many reminders of the painful fact that youth was passing--a thing he could ignore much better in Russia than in his own land!

He was, like many people whose attachments are warm when made, rather averse to making new acquaintances, from the fact that the ones already possessed kept his faculty of affection sufficiently employed. So, when he glanced over the passenger-list, it was rather satisfactory than otherwise to see there was no name he knew. He had plenty of books with him, and expected to find his time sufficiently occupied in reading, and in escaping from the bores by whom men crossing the ocean are apt to be beset.

It was early in December, and the weather was raw and cold. Hertford was well protected against it, however, and spent much of his time on deck. On the afternoon of the second day out, he had been comfortably settled for some time, absorbed in his book, when, amid the confused sounds of water and machinery and human speech, he heard some words spoken so near him that they compelled the recognition of his consciousness.

“It seems that’s her aunt, and not her mother,” the voice said: and glancing up, Hertford saw two women, who had placed themselves very near him and were evidently discussing some third party of travellers. “I heard the beautiful girl call her ‘Auntie,’ as I passed. I call the old one the ‘Rich Lady,’ until I can find out her name, because she’s so high and mighty and magnificent. They’ve got a foreign maid and man-servant with them, and more furs and rugs and foot-warmers and luxuries than any one on the ship. I want you to watch the Rich Lady when she speaks to those servants. I’ve heard her call them both by name, and they had foreign names unfamiliar to me; but I told someone yesterday evening that, as well as I could make out, she called the maid ‘Minion,’ and the man ‘Varlet’--perhaps her manner helped me a little to this understanding of her words.”

The speaker and her companion both laughed, and Hertford, amused, too, followed the direction of their eyes, and soon identified the two persons under discussion. It was certainly true that they were surrounded by a greater evidence of magnificence in their travelling paraphernalia than any one else he had seen. Their deck-chairs, cushions, rugs, and superb furs made them seem almost unnecessarily luxurious. The older of the two had her large and bony frame stretched out at length on her deck-chair, and her harsh profile, with its thin, aquiline nose and thick, whitish eyebrows was thrown out in high relief against the dark-red cloak worn by her companion, whose head was enveloped in its pointed hood. The girl’s face was turned seaward, so that Hertford could not get a glimpse of it. But just as he had seen, in spite of heavy coverings, that the older woman’s figure was angular and thin, so he could see, in the younger one’s, suggestions of youthful vigor and loveliness. He was conscious of being interested by the mere pose of her head and turn of her throat. Her red cloak was gathered in at the neck by an infinite number of fine, flat little plaits that broke into free and graceful folds about her shoulders, and covered her arms and hands. Hertford had given no more than a passing glance to the faces of the two women whose conversation he had overheard, and a glance was enough to satisfy him also as to the appearance of the girl’s companion; but for several moments he kept his eyes furtively upon the muffled figure and head of the girl herself. As he was looking, a more violent lurch than any that had preceded it tipped the vessel so far on its side that a great wave, which was advancing, broke over the deck and deluged everyone with the heavy salt water. In an instant it had receded, leaving the floor of the deck a running stream, and the water standing in little puddles on rugs and cloaks, and wherever it had found a hollow to fill. Most of the passengers laughed good-humoredly, and took it as a joke, while the deck-stewards were brushing them off and mopping up the water. Hertford sat up and shook himself with a smile, and as he did so, he heard his nearest neighbor say:

“Oh, _do_ look at the Rich Lady!”

She had drawn herself upward in her chair, the picture of angry protest, and as the assiduous steward hurried to her assistance, she said, indignantly:

“Well! Are we likely to have much more of this?” Quite as if she had put up with as much from the ocean as she proposed to stand!

As the humor of the thing flashed upon Hertford, he glanced at the figure beyond, which had also taken an upright position, and he saw the very loveliest girl-face that he had ever set his eyes on. He not only saw it, but he exchanged with it a glance of sympathetic amusement, which, somehow, seemed to do the work of an acquaintanceship of weeks. If, as George Eliot so profoundly says, “A difference of taste in jokes is a great strain on the affections,” the reverse is equally true; and a sense of liking sprang into being in both of the individuals whose eyes met in that momentary smiling glance. In an instant they looked away from each other. And now the two foreign servants came hurrying up with towels and brushes. Hertford could not distinctly make out the hurried French sentences which the old lady addressed to them, but he soon comprehended the attitude which had suggested the names of “Minion” and “Varlet” to his bright little neighbor.

It soon appeared that it was the Rich Lady’s will to go below, and she got to her feet, shaking herself free from her furs, and motioning her niece to follow her. The girl rose obediently, and as the maid came to her assistance, Hertford noticed the gentle and amiable way in which she spoke to the servant, in strong contrast to the manner of the older woman. She, however, responded very submissively to her aunt’s wish, although he thought it possible that she would have preferred to stay. As she passed very near to Hertford she did not look toward him, and so he could venture to look at her. Her profile was exquisite, and her very manner of walking and holding her wraps was full of charm for him. When she was almost out of sight, he obeyed the strong impulse which prompted him to follow, and, leaving all his belongings, he did so, keeping them in sight until they had disappeared into one of the _cabines-de-luxe_, the number of which he easily ascertained. Then he went to the saloon, where he looked at the passenger-list. The names opposite the number of that state-room were: _Mrs. Etheridge and Miss Sheldon; valet et femme-de-chambre_.

He returned to his seat on deck, but his book had lost its interest. There was something in the glance of that girl’s eyes which was enthralling. It crowded everything else out of his mind. He sat there thinking for a long time; and he felt it a real satisfaction when, at last, from some deep recess of his memory he recalled a rhyme which represented to him exactly his present state of mind. He said it to himself, under his breath:

“But if Maud were all that she seemed, And her smile had all that I dreamed, Then the world were not so bitter But a smile could make it sweet.”

In the days that followed, Hertford became more completely absorbed in watching this young girl, and wondering and imagining about her, than he had ever been in anything in his life. He never saw her except at a distance, and even then he guarded his looks carefully. The two ladies seemed to have no acquaintances on board, and if they had had, it would have done him no good, for he knew no one to introduce him. Besides, he was not sure he wanted to be introduced. There was more room for the indulgence of dreams as things were now.