"YOU INSULT ME!"
And now Nurse Elisia sat in Ralph Elthorne's chamber, her face buried in
her hands, the memories of her past life rushing back and a sense of
misery and despair increasing, so that she felt that the time had come
when she must rise and flee from a place which had suddenly become
insupportable to her.
Then a change came over her. There was a feeling of passionate
resentment, and a desire to do battle against the one who had wrecked
her life.
"Shall I stand by and see another's life destroyed as mine has been?"
But her own misery and despair drove these thoughts away, and her spirit
was sinking lower and lower as the complications of her position seemed
to increase.
"I cannot stay here," she said to herself. "It is impossible. I have
no part or parcel with these people. I have done my duty, and I must
go."
Suddenly she started as if she had been stung, for her hand had been
taken, and Neil Elthorne was bending over her.
"For Heaven's sake," he whispered, "don't! I cannot bear to see you
suffer. Tell me, why are you in such grief?"
"Mr Elthorne!" she cried in a low voice, as she glanced toward where
the patient lay asleep.
"Yes; Neil Elthorne," he said huskily. "I cannot bear to see you in
such distress. I have fought with it; I have struggled and suffered for
months and months now. I felt that it was a kind of madness and that it
was folly and presumption to think as I did of one who seemed never even
to give me a thought. I came down here. It was to flee from you, and
try to forget you, but fate brought you here, and I have had to go on
from day to day fighting this bitter fight."
"Mr Elthorne--your father--are you mad?"
"Yes," he said excitedly. "Mad; and you have made me so. I know that I
am not worthy of you, but listen; give me some hope. Elisia, have pity
on me--I love you."
"No, no; hush, hush!" she whispered excitedly. "It is impossible; it is
not true."
"It is not impossible, and it is true," he said. "You must have known
this for long enough. You must have seen the cruel struggle I have had.
Are you so cold and heartless that you turn from me like this?"
"Mr Elthorne!" she cried indignantly; "you take advantage of my
helplessness here. I ought to look for your respect and protection as a
gentleman, and you speak to me like this--here, with your poor father in
this state."
"Don't reproach me," he pleaded. "Have I ever failed in respect and
reverence for you from the day we met till now?--You are silent. You
know I have not. You know how my love for you has grown day by day as
we have worked together yonder--here. You know how I have fought
against it till now, when I see you suffering, and I can bear no more."
"You insult me!" she said indignantly.
"It is no insult for a man to offer the woman he loves his name, and the
devotion of his life," he said proudly. "Am I such a frivolous boy that
you speak to me as you do, treating me as if it were some pitiful
declaration from one who has uttered the same words to a dozen women? I
am a student; my life has been devoted to my profession, and I swear to
you that I never gave more than a passing thought to love until you
awoke the passion in my breast--and for what? To tell me, when the
truth will out, that I insult you! I--I who would die to save you
pain--who would suffer anything for your sake--who would make it the one
aim of my life to bring happiness to yours. And you tell me I insult
you!"
"Yes; it is an insult to take advantage of my position here, sir, at
such a time as this. You forget yourself. I am the hospital nurse
attending your father. You are the surgeon whose duty is, not only to
your patient, but also to me."
"It is no insult," he said warmly. "It is the honest outspoken word of
the man who asks you to be his wife."
"Mr Elthorne," she said coldly, "it is impossible."
"Why? Can you not give me some hope? I will wait patiently, as Jacob
waited for Rachel."
"I tell you, sir, it is impossible, and you force me to quit this house
at once."
"No, no; for pity's sake don't say that," he cried, catching her hand,
but she drew it away, and stood back with her eyes flashing.
"How dare you!" she cried angrily. "You force me to speak, sir. Once
more I tell you it is an infamy--an insult."
"Infamy! Insult!" he said bitterly.
"Yes. Do you suppose I am ignorant of your position here? You ask me
to be your wife when in a few more hours the lady to whom you are
betrothed will be staying in the house."
He drew back, looking ghastly, just as there was a soft tap at the
dressing room door, and Maria appeared, looking sharply from one to the
other.
"I have brought up master's lunch," she said. "Shall I bring it in
here?"
"No; I will come and see to it first," said the nurse quickly; and she
went into the little room, while Neil walked across to his father's
couch and stood looking down at the worn, thin face as the old man still
slept on.
"An insult!" he thought--"the lady to whom I am betrothed!"
He looked round wildly, and a sense of despair that was almost
insupportable attacked him as he fully realised his position and the
justice of the words which had stung him to the heart.
"But there is something more," he said to himself, as, with nerves
jarred and his feelings lacerated by disappointment, unworthy thoughts
now crept in--"there is something more." And throwing himself into a
chair, he sat gazing down at the carpet, recalling bit by bit every look
and word of his brother, beginning with the scene upon the staircase on
the night of Elisia's first arrival.
They were thoughts which grew more and more unworthy--thoughts which
began to rankle in and venom his nature, as he formed mental pictures of
his brother being received with smiles and kindly words.
"I would rather see her dead," he muttered fiercely; and at that moment
the object of his thoughts entered from the dressing room, bearing the
little tray with his father's lunch.
Their eyes met, and as he gazed in the pure, sweet face, the harsh
unworthy thoughts passed away, to give place to a sense of misery,
hopelessness, and despondency, which humbled him before her to the dust.
"And I dared to think all that!" he said to himself, as he rose and drew
back from the couch to give place for her to approach.
At that moment the passion within him burned as strongly, but it was
softened and subdued by the better feelings--the tender love which
prevailed.
"Forgive me," he said deprecatingly. "I was nearly mad."
She made no reply, but stood by the couch half turned from him, and he
could see that her lips were working.
"Can you not hear my words?" he continued humbly. "What more can I say?
It was the truth."
She turned to him proudly.
"Mr Elthorne," she said, "I ask you, as a gentleman, to end this scene.
If you have any respect for my position here, pray go."
He stood looking at her for a few moments, then turned and left the room
without a word, giddy with emotion, crushed by a terrible feeling of
despair which drove him to his own room.
Here the bitter thoughts came back.
Alison had been impressed from the first, and he was always seeking for
opportunities to speak to her. That, then, was the reason, he told
himself. She had twitted him with his engagement, but she would not
have cast him off for that; and in this spirit a couple of hours went
by, during which he paced the room.
Unable to bear the turmoil in his brain, toward the middle of the
afternoon he went down and determined on trying to calm the irritation
of his nerves by a long walk.
Crossing the garden, he reached the park, and was hesitating as to the
direction he should take. Then, in a motiveless way, he went on to a
plantation through which a path led toward a beautiful woodland hollow,
which was his father's pride as being the loveliest bit of the park
scenery.
Here, just as he reached the edge of the plantation, he caught sight of
a figure walking rather quickly toward the woodland, and in a moment he
was all excitement again.
"It was the time," he said to himself. "I was mad to speak to her at
such an inopportune moment. She will listen to me now. For she is all
that is gentle and sympathetic at heart."
His steps grew faster, and he was just about to turn to his right, so as
to cut off a good corner, and meet the object of his thoughts about a
quarter of a mile beyond where she was walking, when he caught sight of
his brother going in the same direction as himself, but from another
point, and he stopped short with the old sinking sense of misery coming
back, and with it the host of bitter fancies.
For there could be no doubt about it, he thought, and not a single loyal
honest idea came to his help. She was going toward the woodland,
perhaps by appointment, and if not, Alison had seen her, and was
hurrying his steps so as to overtake her as soon as she was out of
sight.
A curious kind of mental blindness came over Neil Elthorne, and he
stopped short in the shelter of the trees, gazing straight before him,
till the figure of his brother disappeared just at the spot which Nurse
Elisia had passed a few minutes before.
He might have said to himself that there was nothing unusual in the
nurse taking that part of the park for the daily walk upon which he had
himself insisted, but upon which he had never intruded. And again it
might have been accidental that his brother was going in that direction.
But, no; the woman he had idolised so long in silence had rejected him
coldly, and twitted him with his position. Alison loved her he was
sure, and he had gone to meet her. At that hour he was sure of this
being the case, and he stood thinking.
Alison was as much engaged as he. Would she listen to him, and would
she pass over it in the younger, more manly looking brother?
Human nature is strangely full of weakness as well as strength; and as
these thoughts crowded through Neil Elthorne's brain, it was of the
woman he was thinking, not of Nurse Elisia, toward whom for the past two
years he had looked up, almost with veneration as well as love. It was
the weak woman, not the self-denying, unwearied, patient being who
glided from bedside to bedside, assuaging pain and whispering hope and
calming words.
Nurse Elisia with her saint-like face was no longer in his thoughts.
They were filled by the beautiful woman who preferred his brother to
him, and, with a hoarse cry of rage and despair, he strode away, his
hands clenched, his brow rugged, and the veins in his temples swollen
and throbbing.
For he was realising for the first time in his life the true meaning of
the words "jealous hate"; but through it all there was a glimmering of
satisfaction that he was not about to meet his brother on his way, and
he shuddered as he thought that sooner or later they must encounter
after all.