so. In the first place, she could not be persuaded that a woman could
possibly know as much about diseases and their remedies as a man, and
she wondered if even the rural inhabitants of Oldfields would
cheerfully accept the change from their trusted physician to his young
ward, no matter what sails of diplomas she might spread to the breeze.
But Nan's perfect faith and confidence were not to be lightly
disputed; and if the practice of medicine by women could be made
honorable, it certainly was in able hands here, as far as an admiring
friend could decide. Nan was anything but self-asserting, and she had
no noisy fashion of thrusting herself before the public gaze, but
everybody trusted her who knew her; she had the rare and noble faculty
of inspiring confidence.
There was no excuse for a longer absence from the parlor, where Mrs.
Fraley was throned in state in her high-backed chair, and was already
calling the loiterers. She and Miss Prince were smiling indulgently
upon the impatient young man, who was describing to them a meeting of
the stockholders of the Turnpike Company, of which he had last year
been made secretary. A dividend had been declared, and it was larger
than had been expected, and the ladies were as grateful as if he had
furnished the means from his own pocket. He looked very tall and
handsome and business-like as he rose to salute Miss Fraley and Nan,
and presently told his real errand. He apologized for interfering with
the little festival, but two or three of the young people had suddenly
made a plan for going to see a play which was to be given that night
in the town hall by a traveling company. Would Miss Anna Prince care
to go, and Miss Fraley?
Nan hardly knew why she at once refused, and was filled with regret
when she saw a look of childish expectancy on Miss Eunice's face
quickly change to disappointment.
"It is too hot to shut one's self into that close place, I am afraid,"
she said. "And I am enjoying myself very much here, Mr. Gerry." Which
was generous on Nan's part, if one considered the premeditated war
which had been waged against her. Then the thought flashed through her
mind that it might be a bit of good fun for her companion; and without
waiting for either approval or opposition from the elder women, she
said, in a different tone, "However, if Miss Fraley will go too, I
will accept with pleasure; I suppose it is quite time?" and before
there could be a formal dissent she had hurried the pleased daughter
of the house, who was not quick in her movements, to her room, and in
a few minutes, after a good deal of laughter which the presence of the
escort kept anybody from even wishing to silence, the three were
fairly started down the street. It was of no avail that Mrs. Fraley
condemned her own judgment in not having advised Eunice to stay at
home and leave the young people free, and that Miss Prince made a
feeble protest for politeness' sake,--the pleasure-makers could not be
called back.
Nan had really grown into a great liking for George Gerry. She often
thought it would have been very good to have such a brother. But more
than one person in the audience thought they had never seen a braver
young couple; and the few elderly persons of discretion who had gone
to the play felt their hearts thrill with sudden sympathy as our
friends went far down the room to their seats. Miss Fraley was almost
girlish herself, and looked so pleased and bright that everybody who
cared anything about her smiled when they caught sight of her, she was
so prim and neat; it was impossible for her, under any circumstances,
to look anything but discreet and quaint; but as for Nan, she was
beautiful with youth and health; as simply dressed as Miss Eunice, but
with the gayety of a flower,--some slender, wild thing, that has
sprung up fearlessly under the great sky, with only the sunshine and
the wind and summer rain to teach it, and help it fulfill its
destiny,--a flower that has grown with no painful effort of its own,
but because God made it and kept it; that has bloomed because it has
come in the course of its growth to the right time. And Miss Eunice,
like a hindered little house-plant, took a long breath of delight as
she sat close by her kind young friend, and felt as if somebody had
set her roots free from their familiar prison.
To let God make us, instead of painfully trying to make ourselves; to
follow the path that his love shows us, instead of through conceit or
cowardice or mockery choosing another; to trust Him for our strength
and fitness as the flowers do, simply giving ourselves back to Him in
grateful service,--this is to keep the laws that give us the freedom
of the city in which there is no longer any night of bewilderment or
ignorance or uncertainty. So the woman who had lived a life of
bondage, whose hardest task-master was herself, and the woman who had
been both taught and inspired to hold fast her freedom, sat side by
side: the one life having been blighted because it lacked its mate,
and was but half a life in itself; while the other, fearing to give
half its royalty or to share its bounty, was being tempted to cripple
itself, and to lose its strait and narrow way where God had left no
room for another.
For as the play went on and the easily pleased audience laughed and
clapped its hands, and the tired players bowed and smiled from behind
the flaring foot-lights, there was one spectator who was conscious of
a great crisis in her own life, which the mimicry of that evening
seemed to ridicule and counterfeit. And though Nan smiled with the
rest, and even talked with her neighbors while the tawdry curtain had
fallen, it seemed to her that the coming of Death at her life's end
could not be more strange and sudden than this great barrier which had
fallen between her and her girlhood, the dear old life which had kept
her so unpuzzled and safe. So this was love at last, this fear, this
change, this strange relation to another soul. Who could stand now at
her right hand and give her grace to hold fast the truth that her soul
must ever be her own?
The only desire that possessed her was to be alone again, to make Love
show his face as well as make his mysterious presence felt. She was
thankful for the shelter of the crowd, and went on, wishing that the
short distance to her aunt's home could be made even shorter. She had
felt this man's love for her only in a vague way before, and now, as
he turned to speak to her from time to time, she could not meet his
eyes. The groups of people bade each other good-night merrily, though
the entertainment had been a little tiresome to every one at the last,
and it seemed the briefest space of time before Miss Fraley and Nan
and their cavalier were left by themselves, and at last Nan and George
Gerry were alone together.
For his part he had never been so happy as that night. It seemed to
him that his wish was coming true, and he spoke gently enough and of
the same things they might have talked about the night before, but a
splendid chorus of victory was sounding in his ears; and once, as they
stopped for a moment to look between two of the old warehouses at the
shining river and the masts and rigging of the ship against the
moonlighted sky, he was just ready to speak to the girl at his side.
But he looked at her first and then was silent. There was something in
her face that forbade it,--a whiteness and a strange look in her eyes,
that made him lose all feeling of comradeship or even acquaintance. "I
wonder if the old Highflyer will ever go out again?" she said slowly.
"Captain Parish told me some time ago that he had found her more badly
damaged than he supposed. A vessel like that belongs to the high seas,
and is like a prisoner when it touches shore. I believe that the stray
souls that have no bodies must sometimes make a dwelling in inanimate
things and make us think they are alive. I am always sorry for that
ship"--
"Its guardian angel must have been asleep the night of the collision,"
laughed young Gerry, uneasily; he was displeased with himself the
moment afterward, but Nan laughed too, and felt a sense of reprieve;
and they went on again and said good night quietly on the steps of the
old Prince house. It was very late for Dunport, and the door was shut,
but through the bull's-eyed panes of glass overhead a faint light was
shining, though it could hardly assert itself against the moonlight.
Miss Prince was still down-stairs, and her niece upbraided her, and
then began to give an account of the play, which was cut short by the
mistress of the house; for after one eager, long look at Nan, she
became sleepy and disappointed, and they said good-night; but the girl
felt certain that her aunt was leagued against her, and grew sick at
heart and tired as she climbed the stairs. There was a letter on the
long mahogany table in the hall, and Nan stopped and looked over the
railing at it wearily. Miss Prince stopped too, and said she was sorry
she had forgotten,--it was from Oldfields, and in Dr. Leslie's
writing. But though Nan went back for it, and kissed it more than once
before she went to bed, and even put it under her pillow as a comfort
and defense against she knew not what, for the first time in her life
she was afraid to open it and read the kind words. That night she
watched the moonlight creep along the floor, and heard the cocks crow
at midnight and in the morning; the birds woke with the new day while
she tried to understand the day that had gone, wondering what she must
do and say when she faced the world again only a few hours later.
Sometimes she felt herself carried along upon a rushing tide, and was
amazed that a hundred gifts and conditions to which she had scarcely
given a thought seemed dear and necessary. Once she fancied herself in
a quiet home; living there, perhaps, in that very house, and being
pleased with her ordering and care-taking. And her great profession
was all like a fading dream; it seemed now no matter whether she had
ever loved the studies of it, or been glad to think that she had it in
her power to make suffering less, or prevent it altogether. Her old
ambitions were torn away from her one by one, and in their place came
the hardly-desired satisfactions of love and marriage, and home-making
and housekeeping, the dear, womanly, sheltered fashions of life,
toward which she had been thankful to see her friends go hand in hand,
making themselves a complete happiness which nothing else could match.
But as the night waned, the certainty of her duty grew clearer and
clearer. She had long ago made up her mind that she must not marry.
She might be happy, it was true, and make other people so, but her
duty was not this, and a certainty that satisfaction and the blessing
of God would not follow her into these reverenced and honored limits
came to her distinctly. One by one the reasons for keeping on her
chosen course grew more unanswerable than ever. She had not thought
she should be called to resist this temptation, but since it had come
she was glad she was strong enough to meet it. It would be no real
love for another person, and no justice to herself, to give up her
work, even though holding it fast would bring weariness and pain and
reproach, and the loss of many things that other women held dearest
and best.
In the morning Nan smiled when her aunt noticed her tired look, and
said that the play had been a pursuit of pleasure under difficulties.
And though Miss Prince looked up in dismay, and was full of objections
and almost querulous reproaches because Nan said she must end her
visit within a day or two, she hoped that George Gerry would be, after
all, a reason for the girl's staying. Until Nan, who had been standing
by the window, looking wistfully at the garden, suddenly turned and
said, gently and solemnly, "Listen, Aunt Nancy! I must be about my
business; you do not know what it means to me, or what I hope to make
it mean to other people." And then Miss Prince knew once for all, that
it was useless to hope or to plan any longer. But she would not let
herself be vanquished so easily, and summoned to her mind many
assurances that girls would not be too easily won, and after a short
season of disapproving silence, returned to her usual manner as if
there had been neither difference nor dispute.
XX
ASHORE AND AFLOAT
"Your cousin Walter Parish is coming to dine with us to-day," said
Miss Prince, later that morning. "He came to the Fraleys just after
you went out last evening, to speak with me about a business matter,
and waited to walk home with me afterward. I have been meaning to
invite him here with his wife, but there doesn't seem to be much
prospect of her leaving her room for some time yet, and this morning I
happened to find an uncommonly good pair of young ducks. Old Mr. Brown
has kept my liking for them in mind for a great many years. Your
grandfather used to say that there was nothing like a duckling to his
taste; he used to eat them in England, but people in this country let
them get too old. He was willing to pay a great price for ducklings
always; but even Mr. Brown seems to think it is a great wrong not to
let them grow until Thanksgiving time, and makes a great many
apologies every year. It is from his farm that we always get the best
lamb too; they are very nice people, the Browns, but the poor old man
seems very feeble this summer. Some day I should really like to take a
drive out into the country to see them, you know so well how to manage
a horse. You can spare a day or two to give time for that, can't you?"
Nan was sorry to hear the pleading tone, it was so unlike her aunt's
usually severe manner, and answered quickly that she should be very
glad to make the little excursion. Mr. Brown had asked her to come to
the farm one day near the beginning of her visit.
"You must say this is home, if you can," said Miss Prince, who was a
good deal excited and shaken that morning, "and not think of yourself
as a visitor any more. There are a great many things I hope you can
understand, even if I have left them unsaid. It has really seemed more
like home since you have been here, and less like a lodging. I wonder
how I--When did you see Mr. Brown? I did not know you had ever spoken
to him."
"It was some time ago," the girl answered. "I was in the kitchen, and
he came to the door. He seemed very glad to see me," and Nan hesitated
a moment. "He said I was like my father."
"Yes, indeed," responded Miss Prince, drearily; and the thought seized
her that it was very strange that the same mistaken persistency should
show itself in father and child in exactly opposite ways. If Nan would
only care as much for marrying George Gerry, as her father had for
marrying his wretched wife! It seemed more and more impossible that
this little lady should be the daughter of such a woman; how dismayed
the girl would be if she could be shown her mother's nature as Miss
Prince remembered it. Alas! this was already a sorrow which no vision
of the reality could deepen, and the frank words of the Oldfields
country people about the bad Thachers had not been spoken fruitlessly
in the ears of their last descendant.
"I am so glad the captain is coming," Nan said presently, to break the
painful silence. "I do hope that he and Dr. Leslie will know each
other some time, they would be such capital friends. The doctor sent
his kind regards to you in last night's letter, and asked me again to
say that he hoped that you would come to us before the summer is over.
I should like so much to have you know what Oldfields is like." It was
hard to save herself from saying "home" again, instead of Oldfields,
but the change of words was made quickly.
"He is very courteous and hospitable, but I never pay visits
nowadays," said Miss Prince, and thought almost angrily that there was
no necessity for her making a target of herself for all those curious
country-people's eyes. And then they rose and separated for a time,
each being burdened less by care than thought.
The captain came early to dine, and brought with him his own and Miss
Prince's letters from the post-office, together with the morning
paper, which he proceeded to read. He also seemed to have a weight
upon his mind, but by the time they were at table a mild cheerfulness
made itself felt, and Nan summoned all her resources and was gayer and
brighter than usual. Miss Prince had gone down town early in the day,
and her niece was perfectly sure that there had been a consultation
with Mr. Gerry. He had passed the house while Nan sat at her upper
window writing, and had looked somewhat wistfully at the door as if he
had half a mind to enter it. He was like a great magnet: it seemed
impossible to resist looking after him, and indeed his ghost-like
presence would not forsake her mind, but seemed urging her toward his
visible self. The thought of him was so powerful that the sight of the
young man was less strange and compelling, and it was almost a relief
to have seen his familiar appearance,--the strong figure in its
every-day clothes, his unstudent-like vigor, and easy step as he went
by. She liked him still, but she hated love, it was making her so
miserable,--even when later she told Captain Parish some delightful
Oldfields stories, of so humorous a kind that he laughed long and
struck the table more than once, which set the glasses jingling, and
gave a splendid approval to the time-honored fun. The ducklings were
amazingly good; and when Captain Walter had tasted his wine and read
the silver label on the decanter, which as usual gave no evidence of
the rank and dignity of the contents, his eyes sparkled with
satisfaction, and he turned to his cousin's daughter with impressive
gravity.
"You may never have tasted such wine as that," he said. "Your
grandfather, the luckiest captain who ever sailed out of Dunport,
brought it home fifty years ago, and it was well ripened then. I
didn't know there was a bottle of it left, Nancy," he laughed. "My
dear, your aunt has undertaken to pay one of us a handsome
compliment."
"Your health, cousin Walter!" said the girl quickly, lifting her own
glass, and making him a little bow over the old Madeira.
"Bless your dear heart!" responded the captain; "the same good wishes
to you in return, and now you must join me in my respects to your
aunt. Nancy! I beg you not to waste this in pudding-sauces; that's the
way with you ladies."
The toast-drinking had a good effect upon the little company, and it
seemed as if the cloud which had hung over it at first had been blown
away. When there was no longer any excuse for lingering at the table,
the guest seemed again a little ill at ease, and after a glance at his
hostess, proposed to Nan that they should take a look at the garden.
The old sailor had become in his later years a devoted tiller of the
soil, and pleaded a desire to see some late roses which were just now
in bloom. So he and Nan went down the walk together, and he fidgeted
and hurried about for a few minutes before he could make up his mind
to begin a speech which was weighing heavily on his conscience.
Nan was sure that something unusual was perplexing him, and answered
his unnecessary questions patiently, wondering what he was trying to
say.
"Dear me!" he grumbled at last, "I shall have to steer a straight
course. The truth is, Nancy has been telling me that I ought to advise
with you, and see that you understand what you are about with young
Gerry. She has set her heart on your fancying him. I dare say you know
she has treated him like a son all through his growing up; but now
that you have come to your rightful place, she can't bear to have
anybody hint at your going back to the other people. 'Tis plain enough
what he thinks about it, and I must say I believe it would be for your
good. Here you are with your father's family, what is left of it; and
I take no liberty when I tell you that your aunt desires this to be
your home, and means to give you your father's share of the property
now and the rest when she is done with it. It is no more than your
rights, and I know as much as anybody about it, and can tell you that
there's a handsomer fortune than you may have suspected. Money grows
fast if it is let alone; and though your aunt has done a good deal for
others, her expenses have been well held in hand. I must say I should
like to keep you here, child," the captain faltered, "but I shall want
to do what's for your happiness. I couldn't feel more earnest about
that if I were your own father. You must think it over. I'm not going
to beseech you: I learned long ago that 'tis no use to drive a
Prince."
Nan had tried at first to look unconcerned and treat the matter
lightly, but this straightforward talk appealed to her much more than
the suggestion and general advice which Miss Prince had implored the
captain to give the night before. And now her niece could only thank
him for his kindness, and tell him that by and by she would make him
understand why she put aside these reasons, and went back to the life
she had known before.
But a sudden inspiration made her resolution grow stronger, and she
looked at Captain Parish with a convincing bravery.
"When you followed the sea," she said quickly, "if you had a good ship
with a freight that you had gathered with great care and hopefulness,
and had brought it almost to the market that it was suited for, would
you have been persuaded to turn about and take it to some place where
it would be next to useless?"
"No," said Captain Parish, "no, I shouldn't," and he half smiled at
this illustration.
"I can't tell you all my reasons for not wishing to marry," Nan went
on, growing very white and determined, "or all my reasons for wishing
to go on with my plan of being a doctor; but I know I have no right to
the one way of life, and a perfect one, so far as I can see, to the
other. And it seems to me that it would be as sensible to ask Mr.
Gerry to be a minister since he has just finished his law studies, as
to ask me to be a wife instead of a physician. But what I used to
dread without reason a few years ago, I must forbid myself now,
because I know the wretched inheritance I might have had from my poor
mother's people. I can't speak of that to Aunt Nancy, but you must
tell her not to try to make me change my mind."
"Good God!" said the captain. "I dare say you have the right points of
it; but if I were a young man 't would go hard with me to let you take
your life into your own hands. It's against nature."
"No," said Nan. "The law of right and wrong must rule even love, and
whatever comes to me, I must not forget that. Three years ago I had
not thought about it so much, and I might not have been so sure; but
now I have been taught there is only one road to take. And you must
tell Aunt Nancy this."
But when they went back to the house, Miss Prince was not to be seen,
and the captain hurried away lest she should make her appearance, for
he did not wish just then to talk about the matter any more. He told
himself that young people were very different in these days; but when
he thought of the words he had heard in the garden, and remembered the
pale face and the steadfast, clear-toned voice, he brushed away
something like a tear. "If more people used judgment in this same
decision the world would be better off," he said, and could not help
reminding himself that his own niece, little Mary Parish, who was
wearing a wistful countenance in these days, might by and by be happy
after all. For Nan's part it was a great relief to have spoken to the
kind old man; she felt more secure than before; but sometimes the fear
assailed her that some unforeseen event or unreckoned influence might
give her back to her indecisions, and that the battle of the night
before might after all prove not to be final.
The afternoon wore away, and late in the day our heroine heard George
Gerry's step coming up the street. She listened as she sat by the
upper window, and found that he was giving a message for her. It was
perfect weather to go up the river, he was saying; the tide served
just right and would bring them home early; and Miss Prince, who was
alone in the parlor, answered with pleased assurance that she was sure
her niece would like to go. "Yes," said Nan, calling from the window,
urged by a sudden impulse. "Yes indeed, I should like it above all
things; I will get ready at once; will you carry two pairs of oars?"