of Maurice, and who was not wanted at that moment. So poor Paolo, in an
agony of fear for his master, was kept as quiet as possible, and had to
content himself with asking all sorts of questions and repeating all
the prayers he could think of to Our Lady and to his holy namesake the
Apostle.
The doctor wiped the mouth of the fisherman's bottle very carefully.
“Take a few drops of this cordial,” he said, as he held it to his
patient's lips. “Hold him just so, Euthymia, without stirring. I will
watch him, and say when he is ready to be moved. The litter is near by,
waiting.” Dr. Butts watched Maurice's pulse and color. The “Old Medford”
knew its business. It had knocked over its tens of thousands; it had its
redeeming virtue, and helped to set up a poor fellow now and then. It
did this for Maurice very effectively. When he seemed somewhat restored,
the doctor had the litter brought to his side, and Euthymia softly
resigned her helpless burden, which Paolo and the attendant Robert
lifted with the aid of the doctor, who walked by the patient as he was
borne to the home where Mrs. Butts had made all ready for his reception.
As for poor Lurida, who had thought herself equal to the sanguinary
duties of the surgeon, she was left lying on the grass with an old woman
over her, working hard with fan and smelling-salts to bring her back
from her long fainting fit.
XXIV. THE INEVITABLE.
Why should not human nature be the same in Arrowhead Village as
elsewhere? It could not seem strange to the good people of that place
and their visitors that these two young persons, brought together under
circumstances that stirred up the deepest emotions of which the human
soul is capable, should become attached to each other. But the bond
between them was stronger than any knew, except the good doctor, who had
learned the great secret of Maurice's life. For the first time since
his infancy he had fully felt the charm which the immediate presence
of youthful womanhood carries with it. He could hardly believe the fact
when he found himself no longer the subject of the terrifying seizures
of which he had had many and threatening experiences.
It was the doctor's business to save his patient's life, if he could
possibly do it. Maurice had been reduced to the most perilous state of
debility by the relapse which had interrupted his convalescence. Only by
what seemed almost a miracle had he survived the exposure to suffocation
and the mental anguish through which he had passed. It was perfectly
clear to Dr. Butts that if Maurice could see the young woman to whom he
owed his life, and, as the doctor felt assured, the revolution in his
nervous system which would be the beginning of a new existence, it would
be of far more value as a restorative agency than any or all of the
drugs in the pharmacopoeia. He told this to Euthymia, and explained the
matter to her parents and friends. She must go with him on some of his
visits. Her mother should go with her, or her sister; but this was a
case of life and death, and no maidenly scruples must keep her from
doing her duty.
The first of her visits to the sick, perhaps dying, man presented a
scene not unlike the picture before spoken of on the title-page of the
old edition of Galen. The doctor was perhaps the most agitated of the
little group. He went before the others, took his seat by the bedside,
and held the patient's wrist with his finger on the pulse. As Euthymia
entered it gave a single bound, fluttered for an instant as if with
a faint memory of its old habit, then throbbed full and strong,
comparatively, as if under the spur of some powerful stimulus.
Euthymia's task was a delicate one, but she knew how to disguise its
difficulty.
“Here is a flower I have brought you, Mr. Kirkwood,” she said, and
handed him a white chrysanthemum. He took it from her hand, and before
she knew it he took her hand into his own, and held it with a gentle
constraint. What could she do? Here was the young man whose life she
had saved, at least for the moment, and who was yet in danger from the
disease which had almost worn out his powers of resistance.
“Sit down by Mr. Kirkwood's side,” said the doctor. “He wants to thank
you, if he has strength to do it, for saving him from the death which
seemed inevitable.”
Not many words could Maurice command. He was weak enough for womanly
tears, but their fountains no longer flowed; it was with him as with the
dying, whose eyes may light up, but rarely shed a tear.
The river which has found a new channel widens and deepens it; it lets
the old water-course fill up, and never returns to its forsaken bed.
The tyrannous habit was broken. The prophecy of the gitana had verified
itself, and the ill a fair woman had wrought a fairer woman had
conquered and abolished.
The history of Maurice Kirkwood loses its exceptional character from the
time of his restoration to his natural conditions. His convalescence
was very slow and gradual, but no further accident interrupted its even
progress. The season was over, the summer visitors had left Arrowhead
Village; the chrysanthemums were going out of flower, the frosts had
come, and Maurice was still beneath the roof of the kind physician. The
relation between him and his preserver was so entirely apart from all
common acquaintances and friendships that no ordinary rules could apply
to it. Euthymia visited him often during the period of his extreme
prostration.
“You must come every day,” the doctor said. “He gains with every visit
you make him; he pines if you miss him for a single day.” So she came
and sat by him, the doctor or good Mrs. Butts keeping her company in
his presence. He grew stronger,--began to sit up in bed; and at last
Euthymia found him dressed as in health, and beginning to walk about the
room. She was startled. She had thought of herself as a kind of nurse,
but the young gentleman could hardly be said to need a nurse any longer.
She had scruples about making any further visits. She asked Lurida what
she thought about it.
“Think about it?” said Lurida. “Why should n't you go to see a brother
as well as a sister, I should like to know? If you are afraid to go to
see Maurice Kirkwood, I am not afraid, at any rate. If you would rather
have me go than go yourself, I will do it, and let people talk just as
much as they want to. Shall I go instead of you?”
Euthymia was not quite sure that this would be the best thing for the
patient. The doctor had told her he thought there were special reasons
for her own course in coming daily to see him. “I am afraid,” she said,
“you are too bright to be safe for him in his weak state. Your mind is
such a stimulating one, you know. A dull sort of person like myself is
better for him just now. I will continue visiting him as long as the
doctor says it is important that I should; but you must defend me,
Lurida,--I know you can explain it all so that people will not blame
me.”
Euthymia knew full well what the effect of Lurida's penetrating
head-voice would be in a convalescent's chamber. She knew how that
active mind of hers would set the young man's thoughts at work, when
what he wanted was rest of every faculty. Were not these good and
sufficient reasons for her decision? What others could there be?
So Euthymia kept on with her visits, until she blushed to see that she
was continuing her charitable office for one who was beginning to
look too well to be called an invalid. It was a dangerous condition of
affairs, and the busy tongues of the village gossips were free in their
comments. Free, but kindly, for the story of the rescue had melted every
heart; and what could be more natural than that these two young people
whom God had brought together in the dread moment of peril should find
it hard to tear themselves asunder after the hour of danger was past?
When gratitude is a bankrupt, love only can pay his debts; and if
Maurice gave his heart to Euthymia, would not she receive it as payment
in full?
The change which had taken place in the vital currents of Maurice
Kirkwood's system was as simple and solid a fact as the change in
a magnetic needle when the boreal becomes the austral pole, and the
austral the boreal. It was well, perhaps, that this change took place
while he was enfeebled by the wasting effects of long illness. For
all the long-defeated, disturbed, perverted instincts had found their
natural channel from the centre of consciousness to the organ which
throbs in response to every profound emotion. As his health gradually
returned, Euthymia could not help perceiving a flush in his cheek,
a glitter in his eyes, a something in the tone of his voice, which
altogether were a warning to the young maiden that the highway of
friendly intercourse was fast narrowing to a lane, at the head of which
her woman's eye could read plainly enough, “Dangerous passing.”
“You look so much better to-day, Mr. Kirkwood,” she said, “that I think
I had better not play Sister of Charity any longer. The next time we
meet I hope you will be strong enough to call on me.”
She was frightened to see how pale he turned,--he was weaker than she
thought. There was a silence so profound and so long that Mrs. Butts
looked up from the stocking she was knitting. They had forgotten the
good woman's presence.
Presently Maurice spoke,--very faintly, but Mrs. Butts dropped a stitch
at the first word, and her knitting fell into her lap as she listened to
what followed.
“No! you must not leave me. You must never leave me. You saved my life.
But you have done more than that,--more than you know or can ever know.
To you I owe it that I am living; with you I live henceforth, if I am
to live at all. All I am, all I hope,--will you take this poor offering
from one who owes you everything, whose lips never touched those of
woman or breathed a word of love before you?”
What could Euthymia reply to this question, uttered with all the depth
of a passion which had never before found expression.
Not one syllable of answer did listening Mrs. Butts overhear. But she
told her husband afterwards that there was nothing in the tableaux they
had had in September to compare with what she then saw. It was indeed a
pleasing picture which those two young heads presented as Euthymia gave
her inarticulate but infinitely expressive answer to the question of
Maurice Kirkwood. The good-hearted woman thought it time to leave the
young people. Down went the stocking with the needles in it; out of her
lap tumbled the ball of worsted, rolling along the floor with its yarn
trailing after it, like some village matron who goes about circulating
from hearth to hearth, leaving all along her track the story of the new
engagement or of the arrival of the last “little stranger.”
Not many suns had set before it was told all through Arrowhead Village
that Maurice Kirkwood was the accepted lover of Euthymia Tower.
POSTSCRIPT: AFTER-GLIMPSES.
MISS LURIDA VINCENT TO MRS. EUTHYMIA KIRKWOOD. ARROWHEAD VILLAGE, May
18.
MY DEAREST EUTHYMIA,--Who would have thought, when you broke your oar as
the Atalanta flashed by the Algonquin, last June, that before the roses
came again you would find yourself the wife of a fine scholar and grand
gentleman, and the head of a household such as that of which you are the
mistress? You must not forget your old Arrowhead Village friends. What
am I saying?---you forget them! No, dearest, I know your heart too well
for that! You are not one of those who lay aside their old friendships
as they do last years bonnet when they get a new one. You have told me
all about yourself and your happiness, and now you want me to tell you
about myself and what is going on in our little place.
And first about myself. I have given up the idea of becoming a doctor. I
have studied mathematics so much that I have grown fond of certainties,
of demonstrations, and medicine deals chiefly in probabilities. The
practice of the art is so mixed up with the deepest human interests that
it is hard to pursue it with that even poise of the intellect which is
demanded by science. I want knowledge pure and simple,--I do not fancy
having it mixed. Neither do I like the thought of passing my life in
going from one scene of suffering to another; I am not saintly enough
for such a daily martyrdom, nor callous enough to make it an easy
occupation. I fainted at the first operation I saw, and I have never
wanted to see another. I don't say that I wouldn't marry a physician,
if the right one asked me, but the young doctor is not forthcoming at
present. Yes, I think I might make a pretty good doctor's wife. I could
teach him a good deal about headaches and backaches and all sorts of
nervous revolutions, as the doctor says the French women call their
tantrums. I don't know but I should be willing to let him try his new
medicines on me. If he were a homeopath, I know I should; for if a
billionth of a grain of sugar won't begin to sweeten my tea or coffee,
I don't feel afraid that a billionth of a grain of anything would poison
me,--no, not if it were snake-venom; and if it were not disgusting, I
would swallow a handful of his lachesis globules, to please my husband.
But if I ever become a doctor's wife, my husband will not be one of that
kind of practitioners, you may be sure of that, nor an “eclectic,” nor
a “faith-cure man.” On the whole, I don't think I want to be married at
all. I don't like the male animal very well (except such noble specimens
as your husband). They are all tyrants,--almost all,--so far as our sex
is concerned, and I often think we could get on better without them.
However, the creatures are useful in the Society. They send us papers,
some of them well worth reading. You have told me so often that you
would like to know how the Society is getting on, and to read some of
the papers sent to it if they happened to be interesting, that I have
laid aside one or two manuscripts expressly for your perusal. You will
get them by and by.
I am delighted to know that you keep Paolo with you. Arrowhead Village
misses him dreadfully, I can tell you. That is the reason people become
so attached to these servants with Southern sunlight in their natures? I
suppose life is not long enough to cool their blood down to our Northern
standard. Then they are so child-like, whereas the native of these
latitudes is never young after he is ten or twelve years old. Mother
says,--you know mother's old-fashioned notions, and how shrewd and
sensible she is in spite of them,--mother says that when she was a
girl families used to import young men and young women from the country
towns, who called themselves “helps,” not servants,--no, that was
Scriptural; “but they did n't know everything down in Judee,” and it is
not good American language. She says that these people would live in the
same household until they were married, and the women often remain in
the same service until they died or were old and worn out, and then,
what with the money they had saved and the care and assistance they got
from their former employers, would pass a decent and comfortable old
age, and be buried in the family lot. Mother has made up her mind to the
change, but grandmother is bitter about it. She says there never was
a country yet where the population was made up of “ladies” and
“gentlemen,” and she does n't believe there can be; nor that putting a
spread eagle on a copper makes a gold dollar of it. She is a pessimist
after her own fashion. She thinks all sentiment is dying out of our
people. No loyalty for the sovereign, the king-post of the political
edifice, she says; no deep attachment between employer and employed; no
reverence of the humbler members of a household for its heads; and to
make sure of continued corruption and misery, what she calls “universal
suffrage” emptying all the sewers into the great aqueduct we all must
drink from. “Universal suffrage!” I suppose we women don't belong to the
universe! Wait until we get a chance at the ballot-box, I tell grandma,
and see if we don't wash out the sewers before they reach the aqueduct!
But my pen has run away with me. I was thinking of Paolo, and what a
pleasant thing it is to have one of those child-like, warm-hearted,
attachable, cheerful, contented, humble, faithful, companionable, but
never presuming grownup children of the South waiting on one, as if
everything he could do for one was a pleasure, and carrying a look of
content in his face which makes every one who meets him happier for a
glimpse of his features.
It does seem a shame that the charming relation of master and servant,
intelligent authority and cheerful obedience, mutual interest in each
other's welfare, thankful recognition of all the advantages which belong
to domestic service in the better class of families, should be almost
wholly confined to aliens and their immediate descendants. Why should
Hannah think herself so much better than Bridget? When they meet at the
polls together, as they will before long, they will begin to feel more
of an equality than is recognized at present. The native female turns
her nose up at the idea of “living out;” does she think herself so much
superior to the women of other nationalities? Our women will have to
come to it,--so grandmother says,--in another generation or two, and in
a hundred years, according to her prophecy, there will be a new set of
old “Miss Pollys” and “Miss Betseys” who have lived half a century in
the same families, respectful and respected, cherished, cared for in
time of need (citizens as well as servants, holding a ballot as well
as a broom, I tell her), and bringing back to us the lowly, underfoot
virtues of contentment and humility, which we do so need to carpet the
barren and hungry thoroughfare of our unstratified existence.
There, I have got a-going, and am forgetting all the news I have to tell
you. There is an engagement you will want to know all about. It came to
pass through our famous boat-race, which you and I remember, and shall
never forget as long as we live. It seems that the young fellow who
pulled the bow oar of that men's college boat which we had the pleasure
of beating got some glimpses of Georgina, our handsome stroke oar. I
believe he took it into his head that it was she who threw the bouquet
that won the race for us. He was, as you know, greatly mistaken, and
ought to have made love to me, only he did n't. Well, it seems he came
posting down to the Institute just before the vacation was over, and
there got a sight of Georgina. I wonder whether she told him she didn't
fling the bouquet! Anyhow, the acquaintance began in that way, and now
it seems that this young fellow, good-looking and a bright scholar, but
with a good many months more to pass in college, is her captive. It was
too bad. Just think of my bouquet's going to another girl's credit! No
matter, the old Atalanta story was paid off, at any rate.
You want to know all about dear Dr. Butts. They say he has just been
offered a Professorship in one of the great medical colleges. I asked
him about it, and he did not say that he had or had not. “But,” said he,
“suppose that I had been offered such a place; do you think I ought to
accept it and leave Arrowhead Village? Let us talk it over,” said he,
“just as if I had had such an offer.” I told him he ought to stay. There
are plenty of men that can get into a Professor's chair, I said, and
talk like Solomons to a class of wondering pupils: but once get a really
good doctor in a place, a man who knows all about everybody, whether
they have this or that tendency, whether when they are sick they have
a way of dying or a way of getting well, what medicines agree with them
and what drugs they cannot take, whether they are of the sort that think
nothing is the matter with them until they are dead as smoked herring,
or of the sort that send for the minister if they get a stomach-ache
from eating too many cucumbers,--who knows all about all the people
within half a dozen miles (all the sensible ones, that is, who employ a
regular practitioner),--such a man as that, I say, is not to be replaced
like a missing piece out of a Springfield musket or a Waltham watch.
Don't go! said I. Stay here and save our precious lives, if you can, or
at least put us through in the proper way, so that we needn't be ashamed
of ourselves for dying, if we must die. Well, Dr. Butts is not going
to leave us. I hope you will have no unwelcome occasion for his
services,--you are never ill, you know,--but, anyhow, he is going to be
here, and no matter what happens he will be on hand.
The village news is not of a very exciting character. Item 1. A new
house is put up over the ashes of the one in which your husband
lived while he was here. It was planned by one of the autochthonous
inhabitants with the most ingenious combination of inconveniences that
the natural man could educe from his original perversity of intellect.
To get at any one room you must pass through every other. It is blind,
or nearly so, on the only side which has a good prospect, and commands
a fine view of the barn and pigsty through numerous windows. Item 2. We
have a small fire-engine near the new house which can be worked by a man
or two, and would be equal to the emergency of putting out a bunch of
fire-crackers. Item 3. We have a new ladder, in a bog, close to the new
fire-engine, so if the new house catches fire, like its predecessor, and
there should happen to, be a sick man on an upper floor, he can be got
out without running the risk of going up and down a burning staircase.
What a blessed thing it was that there was no fire-engine near by and no
ladder at hand on the day of the great rescue! If there had been, what a
change in your programme of life! You remember that “cup of tea spilt
on Mrs. Masham's apron,” which we used to read of in one of Everett's
Orations, and all its wide-reaching consequences in the affairs of
Europe. I hunted up that cup of tea as diligently as ever a Boston
matron sought for the last leaves in her old caddy after the tea-chests
had been flung overboard at Griffin's wharf,--but no matter about that,
now. That is the way things come about in this world. I must write a
lecture on lucky mishaps, or, more elegantly, fortunate calamities. It
will be just the converse of that odd essay of Swift's we read together,
the awkward and stupid things done with the best intentions. Perhaps I
shall deliver the lecture in your city: you will come and hear it, and
bring him, won't you, dearest? Always, your loving
LURIDA.
MISS LURIDA VINCENT TO MRS. EUTHYMIA KIRKWOOD.
It seems forever since you left us, dearest Euthymia! And are you, and
is your husband, and Paolo,--good Paolo,--are you all as well and happy
as you have been and as you ought to be? I suppose our small village
seems a very quiet sort of place to pass the winter in, now that you
have become accustomed to the noise and gayety of a great city. For all
that, it is a pretty busy place this winter, I can tell you. We have
sleighing parties,--I never go to them, myself, because I can't keep
warm, and my mind freezes up when my blood cools down below 95 or 96
deg. Fahrenheit. I had a great deal rather sit by a good fire and
read about Arctic discoveries. But I like very well to hear the bells'
jingling and to see the young people trying to have a good time as hard
as they do at a picnic. It may be that they do, but to me a picnic is
purgatory and a sleigh-ride that other place, where, as my favorite
Milton says, “frost performs the effect of fire.” I believe I have
quoted him correctly; I ought to, for I could repeat half his poems from
memory once, if I cannot now.
You must have plenty of excitement in your city life. I suppose you
recognized yourself in one of the society columns of the “Household
Inquisitor:” “Mrs. E. K., very beautiful, in an elegant,” etc., etc.,
“with pearls,” etc., etc.,--as if you were not the ornament of all that
you wear, no matter what it is!
I am so glad that you have married a scholar! Why should not
Maurice--you both tell me to call him so--take the diplomatic office
which has been offered him? It seems to me that he would find himself in
exactly the right place. He can talk in two or three languages, has good
manners, and a wife who--well, what shall I say of Mrs. Kirkwood but
that “she would be good company for a queen,” as our old friend the
quondam landlady of the Anchor Tavern used to say? I should so like to
see you presented at Court! It seems to me that I should be willing to
hold your train for the sake of seeing you in your court feathers and
things.