From that silent contest of wills Octave came out conqueror. There
was no resisting her merry audacity, with its underlying principle to
strengthen it, and Melville was the first to speak. He did so in his
own peculiar fashion, and his cousin answered after hers.
To her surprise, he did not make himself half so disagreeable as she
had expected. It may be that he, too, felt drawn to the high-spirited
girl whose whole life was such a contrast to his own; or it may be
that his heart was softened by the reports from the apartment of his
grandmother, whom he had really loved in his own selfish fashion, even
though he had tormented her in so unmanly a manner. Then, too, there
was sound common-sense at the bottom of his nature, and he could but
see that it was an impossibility for even energetic Aunt Ruth to look
after three invalids in as many separate places.
“With Grandmother Amy thrown in for good measure,” concluded Octave,
quietly.
Twenty-four hours proved the experiment a success, and another
twenty-four made Melville wonder how he had ever managed without this
new companion, though she did scarcely one thing he desired her to do.
“You’ve been coddled and babied till you aren’t half a boy, Melville
Capers; and a good thing it is for you that your grandmother is sick
and I have come to take her place. Not a bit of coddling you’ll get
from me, so you needn’t look for it!”
If he fretted, she laughed. If he read sentimental or melancholy poems,
as he was given to doing, she repeated Mother Goose. If he praised
Dickens, she lauded Scott. If he complained of his cruel portion in
life, she ridiculed him and told him it was his own fault.
“What do you mean?” he demanded, after this last seemingly heartless
assertion.
“Why, I heard Aunt Ruth say that, if you had not been so afraid of
trying heroic treatment when you were little, you might have been
cured. Even when you first came here, and that is only three years ago.
But you cried, and ‘couldn’t,’ and your poor grandmother loved you so
she ‘wouldn’t,’ and so you have no one to blame for a wasted life but
your own cowardly self.”
“Octave Pickel! You are rightly named.”
“I think so. My family is an honorable one.”
“But you are Pickel by name and the sourest kind of a pickle by nature.”
“Sharp, not sour. That is, none too sour. It doesn’t do to have
everything sweet--like you.”
“I hate you! I want you to go out of this room.”
“I can’t. The doctor forbids me to walk, or even try.”
Melville fixed his eyes upon her face in a long, questioning gaze. Then
he gave a great sigh--which was almost a sob. Octave’s own look did not
falter, and out of the depths of her warm, wholesome heart she echoed
the sigh.
“Well, and how--how do you like it?” Melville’s question came bitterly,
fiercely.
Octave’s merry eyes filled with a sympathy that the boy could not fail
to see was wholly genuine. “Cousin Melville, I do not like it at all. I
can hardly bear it, even for these few days or weeks I shall have to
endure it; and I cannot bear that you should submit to it so tamely.
You must not--you shall not!” cried the girl, excitedly.
She understood perfectly, with the electric perception of youth, that
the cripple had compared her temporary helplessness with his own, which
he supposed incurable. She had been longing to have just this subject
come up between them, for down in her heart she had hidden a daring
thought.
The thought had been caused by a talk with her Uncle Fritz; which,
however, that soft-hearted man had little intention should bear just
such fruit.
He had said that he believed the boy could be helped, or that he could
have been, by a difficult and painful operation which a celebrated
surgeon of his own country, now inspecting the American hospitals, had
once successfully performed.
The thought had come like a flash to Octave then and there; and, with
a minuteness which her fond uncle thought an admirable thirst for
knowledge pure and simple, she had questioned him of the operation in
all its details. Now, Mr. Fritz Pickel always protested that a famous
surgeon had been lost to the world when his father had apprenticed him
to business; and it was his recreation, still, to “walk the hospitals”
with his many friends among the doctors, and he would grow most
enthusiastic over any difficult or particularly “beautiful” case which
they reported to him or allowed him to see.
So he fell innocently into Octave’s little trap, and the girl was now
fortified with all the information she required. The opportunity she
craved had come, and, though she trembled a little, she improved it.
Melville had naturally asked, “What do you mean?”
“I mean that, according to my Uncle Fritz, you are not what you
think,--incurable.”
“The best physicians in the country have said I am!” cried the lad,
mournfully.
“There is a better than the best, and he is ‘in the land’ now, if you
will see him.”
“Who sent you in here to distress me like this?”
“My love for you.”
“Your love! A pretty way you take of showing it!”
“I think it is the best way, Cousin Melville.”
“It is cruel to raise false hopes like that.”
“Pooh! Are you any worse off for hearing about this great surgeon? If
you are so indifferent to yourself that you will not endure a little
suffering to be made well, you are certainly too small-minded to be
very greatly hurt; and if you are willing, isn’t it love for you that
has prompted me to find out all about it, and tell you? I thought I’d
sound you first, yourself, because it all rests with you. Then, if you
had any sense, I would get Uncle Fritz, who is as wise as the wisest
where surgery is concerned, to tell you everything he knows. He doesn’t
know that I am going to talk with you, nor anybody; and no one need
know if you do not choose differently.”
“Octave, if I were never so willing, Grandmother Capers would never
allow it.”
“No, Melville; I know that. But--why hide it? You know, you must know,
what the others all think, that dear old Mrs. Capers is just slowly and
gently dying. She cannot live very long to wait upon you, even if she
gets up from this strange sickness which nobody understands exactly,
and I should think you would like to change places and do a few things
for her, who has done so many for you.”
Poor Octave had been sorely troubled by Mrs. Capers’s illness. All the
household had reassured her again and again that she was mistaken, but
she could not help fancying that her little brother’s encounter with
“the Witch of Endor” had something to do with his victim’s fading away.
And, since she could do nothing for her personally, she longed beyond
telling to help the grandson who was more to the doting old heart than
its own life. After she ceased speaking the cousins lay each very
quiet for a long time. Octave was frightened by her own temerity, now
that the deed had really been done; and in Melville’s breast hope and
despair surged up and down tumultuously.
So occupied, indeed, were they with their own thoughts that they did
not perceive the entrance of a frail little figure of a woman, which
glided softly in its old familiar way to the foot of Melville’s lounge.
“What is that, my darling, about your being cured?” said a pathetically
feeble voice, so suddenly that both the hearers started violently.
Mrs. Capers had seated herself on the lounge, but so weakly and
tremblingly that the others expected to see her fall. Octave half
slipped from her low bed, forgetting her own injury in her eagerness
to support the tottering old lady; but she was arrested as much by the
words which followed as by the exquisite torture of her injured ankle.
“Melville, I have heard the whole talk. I--I am going to die--as this
young girl says. I am not sorry, except for you; and now I am not sorry
at all. I could not bear to see you suffer any more, or to endure--an
operation,--even though it might cure you. I love--I love you too well.
But, when I am gone, I want you to try it, if--if you have the courage.
There will be money enough, plenty of money to pay anything this great
doctor asks. Promise me, darling; that is, if--you don’t mind, if you
wish to, that you--will see this surgeon. I shall die happy then.”
The sick woman’s long speech, and her eagerness to utter it, exhausted
her. Appalled by the unexpected effect of their own words, the children
gazed at her in helpless silence. But suddenly, upon the wan features
turned so anxiously toward Melville, there came a change which even his
inexperienced eye was swift to interpret.
With a strength born of excitement,--or given by God,--he forced his
useless body downward upon the lounge until he could clasp and hold his
grandmother’s head against his breast.
Then a rapture, born of her great love for him and of her gratitude
for his unwonted tenderness, illumined the aged face: “My darling--my
darling!” she cried faintly. And, as if over-weighted by happiness, the
white lids closed above the faded eyes which had looked for so little
in this world.
For a long time the stillness remained unbroken. Then a groan burst
from the lips of the lad who had held a great love lightly--till it was
lost.