At last Kike is getting better, and Morton can be spared. There is
no longer any reason why the rowdies on Jenkinsville Circuit should
pine for the muscular young preacher whom they have vowed to "lick as
soon as they lay eyes on to him." Dolly's legs are aching for a
gallop. Morton and Dr. Morgan have exhausted their several systems
of theology in discussion. So, at last, the impatient Morton mounts
the impatient Dolly, and gallops away to preach to the impatient
brethren and face the impatient ruffians of Jenkinsville Circuit.
Kike is left yet in his quiet harbor to recover. The doctor has
taken a strange fancy to the zealous young prophet, and looks forward
with sadness to the time when he will leave.
Ah, happiest experience of life, when the flood tide sets back
through the veins! You have no longer any pain; you are not well
enough to feel any responsibility; you cannot work; there is no
obligation resting on you but one--that is rest. Such perfect
passivity Kike had never known before. He could walk but little. He
sat the livelong day by the open window, as listless as the grass
that waved before the wind. All the sense of dire responsibility,
all those feelings of the awfulness of life, and the fearfulness of
his work, and the dreadfulness of his accountability, were in
abeyance. To eat, to drink, to sleep, to wake and breathe, to suffer
as a passive instrument the play of whatever feeling might chance to
come, was Kike's life.
In this state the severity of his character was laid aside. He
listened to the quick and eager conversation of Dr. Morgan with a
gentle pleasure; he answered the motherly questions of Mrs. Morgan
with quiet gratitude; he admired the goodness of Miss Jane Morgan,
their eldest and most exemplary daughter, as a far off spectator.
There were but two things that had a real interest for him. He felt
a keen delight in watching the wayward flight of the barn swallows as
they went chattering out from under the eaves--their airy vagabondage
was so restful. And he liked to watch the quick, careless tread of
Henrietta Morgan, the youngest of the doctor's daughters, who went on
forever talking and laughing with as little reck as the swallows
themselves. Though she was eighteen, there was in her full
child-like cheeks, in her contagious laugh--a laugh most unprovoked,
coming of itself--in her playful way of performing even her duties, a
something that so contrasted with and relieved the habitual austerity
of Kike's temper, and that so fell in with his present lassitude and
happy carelessness, that he allowed his head, resting weakly upon a
pillow, to turn from side to side, that his eyes might follow her.
So diverting were her merry replies, that he soon came to talk with
her for the sake of hearing them. He was not forgetful of the solemn
injunctions Mr. Wesley had left for the prudent behavior of young
ministers in the presence of women. With Miss Jane he was very
careful lest he should in any way compromise himself, or awaken her
affections. Jane was the kind of a girl he would want to marry, if
he were to marry. But Nettie was a child--a cheerful butterfly--as
refreshing to his weary mind as a drink of cold water to a
fever-patient. When she was out of the room, Kike was impatient;
when she returned, he was glad. When she sewed, he drew the large
chair in which he rested in front of her, and talked in his grave
fashion, while she, in turn, amused him with a hundred fancies. She
seemed to shine all about him like sunlight. Poor Kike could not
refuse to enjoy a fellowship so delightful, and Nettie Morgan's
reverence for young Lumsden's saintliness, and pity for his sickness,
grew apace into a love for him.
Long before Kike discovered or Nettie suspected this, the doctor had
penetrated it. Kike's whole-hearted devotion to his work had charmed
the ex-minister, who moved about in his alert fashion, talking with
eager rapidity, anticipating Kike's grave sentences before he was
half through--seeing and hearing everything while he seemed to note
nothing. He was not averse to this attachment between the two.
Provided always, that Kike should give up traveling. It was all but
impossible, indeed, for a man to be a Methodist preacher in that day
and "lead about a wife." A very few managed to combine the ministry
with marriage, but in most cases marriage rendered "location" or
secularization imperative.
[Illustration: CONVALESCENCE.]
Kike sat one day talking in the half-listless way that is
characteristic of convalescence, watching Nettie Morgan as she sewed
and laughed, when Dr. Morgan came in, put his pill-bags upon the high
bureau, glanced quickly at the two, and said:
"Nettie, I think you'd better help your mother. The
double-and-twisting is hard work."
Nettie laid her sewing down. Kike watched her until she had
disappeared through the door; then he listened until the more
vigorous spinning indicated to him that younger hands had taken the
wheel. His heart sank a little--it might be hours before Nettie
could return.
Dr. Morgan busied himself, or pretended to busy himself, with his
medicines, but he was observing how the young preacher's eyes
followed his daughter, how his countenance relapsed into its habitual
melancholy when she was gone. He thought he could not be mistaken in
his diagnosis.
"Mr. Lumsden," he said, kindly, "I don't know what we shall do when
you get well. I can't bear to have you go away."
"You have been too good, doctor. I am afraid you have spoiled me."
The thought of going to Pottawottomie Creek was growing more and more
painful to Kike. He had put all thoughts of the sort out of his
mind, because the doctor wished him to keep his mind quiet. Now, for
some reason, Doctor Morgan seemed to force the disagreeable future
upon him. Why was it unpleasant? Why had he lost his relish for his
work? Had he indeed backslidden?
While the doctor fumbled over his bottles, and for the fourth time
held a large phial, marked _Sulph. de Quin._, up to the light, as
though he were counting the grains, the young preacher was
instituting an inquiry into his own religious state. Why did he
shrink from Pottawottomie Creek circuit? He had braved much harder
toil and greater danger. On Pottawottomie Creek he would have a
senior colleague upon whom all administrative responsibilities would
devolve, and the year promised to be an easy one in comparison with
the preceding. On inquiring of himself he found that there was no
circuit that would be attractive to him in his present state of mind,
except the one that lay all around Dr. Morgan's house. At first Kike
Lumsden, playing hide-and-seek with his own motives, as other men do
under like circumstances, gave himself much credit for his grateful
attachment to the family. Surely gratitude is a generous quality,
and had not Dr. Morgan, though of another denomination, taken him
under his roof and given him professional attention free of charge?
And Mrs. Morgan and Jane and Nettie, had they not cared for him as
though he were a brother? What could be more commendable than that
he should find himself loth to leave people who were so good?
But Kike had not been in the habit of cheating himself. He had
always dealt hardly with Kike Lumsden. He could not rest now in this
subterfuge; he would not give himself credit that he did not deserve.
So while the doctor walked to the window and senselessly examined the
contents of one of his bottles marked "_Hydrarg._," Kike took another
and closer look at his own mind and saw that the one person whose
loss would be painful to him was not Dr. Morgan, nor his excellent
wife, nor the admirable Jane, but the volatile Nettie, the cadence of
whose spinning wheel he was even then hearkening to. The
consciousness that he was in love came to him suddenly--a
consciousness not without pleasure, but with a plentiful admixture of
pain.
Doctor Morgan's eyes, glancing with characteristic alertness, caught
the expression of a new self-knowledge and of an anxious pain upon
the forehead of Lumsden. Then the physician seemed all at once
satisfied with his medicines. The bottle labelled "_Hydrarg._" and
the "_Sulph. de Quin._" were now replaced in the saddle bags.
At this moment Nettie herself came into the room on some errand.
Kike had heard her wheel stop--had looked toward the door--had caught
her glance as she came in, and had, in that moment, become aware that
he was not the only person in love. Was it, then, that the doctor
wished to prevent the attachment going further that he had delicately
reminded his guest of the approach of the time when he must leave?
These thoughts aroused Kike from the lassitude of his slow
convalescence. Nettie went back to her wheel, and set it humming
louder than ever, but Kike heard now in its tones some note of
anxiety that disturbed him. The doctor came and sat down by him and
felt his pulse, ostensibly to see if he had fever, really to add yet
another link to the chain of evidence that his surmise was correct.
"Mr. Lumsden," said he, "a constitution so much impaired as yours
cannot recuperate in a few days."
"I know that, sir," said Kike, "and I am anxious to get to my
mother's for a rest there, that I may not burden you any longer,
and----"
"You misunderstand me, my dear fellow, if you think I want to be rid
of you. I wish you would stay with me always; I do indeed."
For a moment Kike looked out of the window. To stay with the doctor
always would, it seemed to him, be a heaven upon earth. But had he
not renounced all thought of a heaven on earth? Had he not said
plainly that here he had no abiding place? Having put his hand to
the plow, should he look back?
"But I ought not to give up my work."
It was not in this tone that Kike would have spurned such a
temptation awhile before.
"Mr. Lumsden," said the doctor, "you see that I am useful here. I
cannot preach a great deal, but I think that I have never done so
much good as since I began to practice medicine. I need somebody to
help me. I cannot take care of the farm and my practice too. You
could look after the farm, and preach every Sunday in the country
twenty miles round. You might even study medicine after awhile, and
take the practice as I grow older. You will die, if you go on with
your circuit-riding. Come and live with me, and be my----assistant."
The doctor had almost said "my son." It was in his mind, and Kike
divined it.
"Think about it," said Dr. Morgan, as he rose to go, "and remember
that nobody is obliged to kill himself."
And all day long Kike thought and prayed, and tried to see the right;
and all day long Nettie found occasion to come in on little errands,
and as often as she came in did it seem clear to Kike that he would
be justified in accepting Dr. Morgan's offer; and as often as she
went out did he tremble lest he were about to betray the trust
committed to him.
_CHAPTER XXII._