"I would spurn him from my thoughts as a being unworthy of respect or
admiration. I would not marry such a man were he to lay at my feet the
diadem of the East. Forgive me for having made myself merry at your
expense, but I could not help laughing at your overwrought
sensibility. Answer me seriously, Mary, and tell me if you think that
if Fitzroy really loved you, and was worthy of your love, he would
become alienated by a trifle like this?"
Mary began to be ashamed of her emotions in the presence of her
reasonable cousin;--she was ashamed, and endeavoured to conceal them,
but they were not subdued. She was conscious she must appear in a
ridiculous light in the eyes of the scrupulously elegant Fitzroy,
whose morbid tastes she had so unfortunately studied. When they met
again, it was with feelings of mutual estrangement. She was cold and
constrained--he polite, but reserved. Mary felt with anguish that the
soft, purple hue which had thrown such an enchantment over every
scene, was vanished away. The realities of existence began to appear.
Fitzroy soon after took his leave, with very different feelings from
what he had once anticipated. He blamed himself, but he could not help
the chilled state of his heart. Mary was a mortal, after all; she ate
cake, drank lemonade, and used her handkerchiefs like other ladies,
only she kept them out of sight. Her loveliness, grace, and feminine
gentleness of manner no longer entranced him. He departed, and Mary
sighed over the dissolving of her first love's dream; but
notwithstanding her weakness on this subject, she had a just
estimation of herself, and a spirit which, when once roused, guided
her to exertions which astonished herself. Her gay cousin, too,
departed, and she was thrown upon her own resources. She read much,
and reflected more. She blushed for her past weakness, and learned to
think with contempt upon the man who had so false an estimate of the
true excellence and glory of a woman's character. "Oh," repeated she
to herself a hundred times, as, interested in domestic duties, she
devoted herself to the comfort of her widowed father, "how miserable I
should have been as the wife of a coxcomb, who would desire me to sit
all day with folded hands, holding an embroidered handkerchief, with
fingers encased in white kid gloves! How could I ever have been so
weak and foolish?" Mary generally concluded these reflections with a
sigh, for Fitzroy was handsome, graceful, and intellectual, and he
was, moreover, the first person who had ever interested her young
heart.
The following summer she accompanied her father to a fashionable
watering-place. She was admired and caressed, but she turned coldly
from the gaze of admiration, and cared not for the gayety that
surrounded her. While others hurried to the ball-room, she lingered
over her book, or indulged in meditations unfamiliar to the lovely and
the young. One evening, when she had been unusually dilatory, she
heard her father call, and taking a lamp, began to thread the passage,
which led through a long suite of apartments occupied by the visiters
of the spring. As she passed by one of the rooms, the door of which
was partially opened, she heard a faint, moaning sound, and paused to
listen. It returned again and again, and she was sure some stranger
was suffering there, probably forgotten in the gay crowd that filled
the mansion. Her first impulse was to enter, but she shrunk from the
thought of intruding herself, a young maiden, into the apartment of a
stranger. "My father will go in and see who the sufferer is," cried
she, hastening to meet him on the stairs.
Mr. Lee required no entreaties from his daughter, for his kind and
humane feelings were immediately excited by the idea of a lonely and
perhaps dying stranger, in the midst of a heartless crowd. Mary gave
the lamp into her father's hand, and stood in the passage while he
entered. A sudden exclamation, echoed by a faint low voice, made her
heart palpitate with vague apprehensions. Who could this lonely
stranger be whom her father evidently recognised? She stood holding
her breath painfully, fearing to lose the sound of that faint voice
which awakened strange emotions within her, when her father suddenly
came to the door and beckoned her to him. "I do believe he is dying,"
said he, in an agitated tone. "It is Fitzroy himself! You must come to
him, while I call a physician."
Mary almost mechanically obeyed the summons, and stood the next
moment, pale and trembling, by the bedside of the man she had once
loved. Could that, indeed, be the elegant Fitzroy?--with disordered
hair, half-closed eyes, parched and trembling lips, which now vainly
endeavoured to articulate a sound?--the pillows tossed here and there,
as if in wrestling with pain; the white counterpane twisted and
tumbled--were these the accompaniments of this fastidious exquisite?
These thoughts darted through Mary's mind, as the vision of her soiled
handkerchief came ghost-like before her. But she was no longer the
weak girl who wept tears of bitter agony at the discovery that she was
made of mortal mould; she was a woman awakened to the best energies
and virtues of her sex. She found herself alone with the sick man, for
her father had flown for the assistance he required, and left her to
watch till his return. She saturated her handkerchief with cologne,
and bathed his burning temples and feverish hands. Her heart softened
over the invalid in his prostrate and dependent state. "Ah, proud
Fitzroy," thought she, "this handkerchief is now more soiled and
defaced than the one which alienated your fancy from me, and yet you
shrink not from its contact. No pride or scorn now flashes from those
dim eyes, or curls those pallid lips. Alas! he is very, very ill--I
fear even unto death." The tears gathered into her eyes at this
appalling idea, and even mingled with the odorous waters with which
she embalmed his forehead.
Her father soon came in with the physician, and Mary resigned her
watch by his bedside. She withdrew to her own apartment, and waited
with intense anxiety the tidings which he promised to bring her. She
was surprised at her own emotions. She thought Fitzroy perfectly
indifferent to her--nay, more, that she disliked him; but now, when
she saw him in suffering and danger, she remembered the charm with
which her imagination had once invested him, and accused herself of
harsh and vindictive feelings.
"Yes," said Mr. Lee, in answer to her earnest inquiries, "he is very
ill--dangerously ill. Imprudent exposure to the burning mid-day sun
has brought on a sudden and violent fever, the consequences of which
are more to be dreaded, as he has never been sick before. Could he
have commanded immediate attention, perhaps the disease might have
been arrested. But in this scene of gayety and confusion--though got
up for the express accommodation of invalids--Heaven save the sick and
the dying."
"Who will take care of him, father? He has no mother or sister near.
Oh, surely we must not let him die for want of these!"
"I know what you are thinking of, Mary," said Mr. Lee, shaking his
head; "but I cannot consent to it. The fever may be contagious, and
you are too young and too delicate for such a task. Besides, there
might be remarks made upon it. No; I will remain with him to-night,
and to-morrow we will see what can be done for him."
"But to-night may be the crisis of his fate," pleaded Mary; "to-morrow
it may be too late. You are very kind, father, but you are not a
woman, and you know there are a thousand gentle cares which only a
woman's hand can tender. I am a stranger here; I don't care if they do
censure me. Let me act a true woman's, a kind sister's part. You know,
by your own experience, what a skilful nurse I am."
Mary pleaded earnestly, and wound her arms caressingly around her
father's neck, and looked up into his face with such irresistible
eyes, that he could not refuse her. The pallid face of Fitzroy seemed
to be leaning beside her own, clothed with that authority which
sickness and approaching death impart. So Mary twisted up her shining
ringlets, and took the rings from her jeweled fingers, and donned a
loose, flowing robe. Behold her, one of the loveliest nurses that
ever brought the blessings of Hygea to the chamber of disease. There
is a great deal said in romances of the interesting appearance of
invalids, of a languor more lovely than the bloom of health, of a
debility more graceful than the fullness of strength; but this is all
romance. It has been said by one of the greatest moralists of the age,
that the slow consuming of beauty is one of the greatest judgments of
the Almighty against man for sin. Certainly a sick chamber is not the
place for romantic beings to _fall in love_, but it is the place where
love, once awakened, can exert its holiest influences, and manifest
its death-controlling power; it is the place where religion erects its
purest altar, and faith brings its divinest offerings. Yea, verily, it
is hallowed ground. Thus Mary thought through the vigils of that long
night. She had never been dangerously sick herself, but she felt the
entire dependence of one human being upon another, and of all upon
God. She felt, too, a kind of generous triumph, if such an expression
may be used, in the conviction that this proud and over-sensitive
being was so completely abandoned to her cares. Fitzroy lay in the
deep lethargy of a burning fever, unconscious whose soft footsteps
fell "like snow on snow" around his bed. "He never shall know it,"
said Mary, to herself. "He would probably feel disgust, instead of
gratitude. If he saw this handkerchief, all impregnated with camphor,
and stained with medicine, he might well think it unfit for a lady's
hand. Shame on me, for cherishing so much malice against him--he so
sick and pale!"
For more than a week Fitzroy languished in that almost unconscious
condition, and during that interval Mary continued to lavish upon him
every attention a kind and gentle sister could bestow. At length he
was declared out of danger, and she gradually withdrew from her
station in the sick chamber. Her mission was fulfilled, and an angelic
one it had been. The physician, her father, and a youthful, unimpaired
constitution accomplished the rest.
"What do I not owe you?" said Fitzroy, when, liberated from
confinement, he was slowly walking with her through one of the green,
shady paths of the enclosure. Now he, indeed, looked interesting. The
contrast between his dark brown hair and pale cheek was truly
romantic. That dark hair once more exhaled the odours of sweet-scented
waters, and his black dress and spotless linen were as distinguished
for their elegance as in former days. "What do I not owe you?"
repeated he, with more fervour.
Mary smiled. "You were sick, and I ministered unto you. I only obeyed
a divine command. A simple act of obedience deserves no reward."
"Then it was only from a sense of duty that you watched over me so
kindly?" repeated he, in a mortified tone. "You would have done the
same for any stranger?"
"Most certainly I would," replied Mary; "for any stranger as helpless
and neglected as you appeared to be."
"Pardon me," said he, evidently disconcerted, "but I thought--I dared
to think--that----"
Mary laughed, and _her_ rosy lip began to curl with a slight
expression of scorn. She was a woman, and her feelings had once been
chafed, humiliated through him, if not by him. Her eyes sparkled, not
vindictively, but triumphantly. "You dared to think that I was in love
with you! Oh, no; that is all passed--long, long ago."
"Passed? Then you acknowledge that you _have_ loved?"
"Yes," replied she, in the same laughing tone, though she blushed
deeply all the while; "I did love you, Fitzroy, and I could have loved
you with a life-long passion. To win your affection I tried to pass
myself off as an angel, to whose garments the dust of mortality never
adhered. You discovered my folly, and turned from me in contempt. It
was a bitter lesson at first, but I thank you for it now. I am not the
foolish girl that I was when I first knew you, Fitzroy. You must not
think that I am----"
"And _I_ am not the fool I was then," interrupted he. "I know now what
constitutes the perfection of a woman's character. You only captivated
my fancy then, now you have won my whole heart."
"Better lost than won," cried Mary, in the same careless accents. "I
could not keep the treasure, and I cannot take it. You think you love
me now, but I might fall sick, you know, and people do not look so
pretty when they are sick, and you might not like the scent of camphor
and medicine, and then one's handkerchiefs get so terribly soiled!"
She stopped, and looked archly at Fitzroy's clouded countenance.
"I understand it all," cried he, bitterly; "you pitied me in sickness,
and watched over me. But I must have looked shockingly ugly and
slovenly, and you became disgusted. I cannot blame you, for I deserve
such a punishment."
"No, no--not ugly, Fitzroy, but helpless, weak, and dependent, proud
man that you are. But, oh! you ought to know that this very
helplessness and dependence endear the sufferer ten thousand times
more to a fond woman's heart than all the pride of beauty and the
bloom of health. I have had my revenge; but believe me, Fitzroy, the
hours passed in your chamber of sickness will be remembered as the
happiest of my life."
The tone of playful mockery which she had assumed, subsided into one
of deep feeling, and tears gathered in her downcast eyes. Fitzroy--but
it is no matter what Fitzroy said--certainly something that pleased
Mary, for when they returned, more than an hour afterwards, her cheeks
were glowing with the roses of Eden.
It was about six months after this that Cousin Kate visited Mary--but
not _Mary Lee_--once more. Fitzroy, who now often complained of a
headache, was leaning back in an easy chair, and Mary was bathing his
temples, which she occasionally pressed with her linen handkerchief.
"Oh, shocking!" exclaimed Kate; "how can you bear to see Mary touch
anything so rumpled and used, about your elegant person?"
"The hand of affection," replied Fitzroy, pressing Mary's gently on
his brow, "can shed a beautifying influence over every object. Mary is
a true alchemist, and has separated the gold of my heart from the
worthless dross that obscured its lustre. She put me in the crucible,
and I have been purified by the fires through which I passed."
THE END