In worthy action and healthy enjoyment you will find a cure for all
your imaginary woes and all your maudlin fine feelings.
In two little lines lies the clue to an honorable and happy life:--
"Thou shalt find, by _hearty striving_ only
And _truly loving_, thou canst truly live."
DR. HUGER'S INTENTION.
DR. HUGER'S INTENTION.
[Illustration]
Dr. Huger was thirty years old when he deliberately resolved to be
in love,--I cannot say "fall in love" of anything so matter-of-fact
and well-considered. He made up his mind that marriage was a good
thing,--that he was old enough to marry,--finally, that he _would_
marry. Then he decided, with equal deliberation, on the qualifications
necessary in the lady, and began to look about him to find her. She
must be a blonde. Above all things else, he must have her gentle and
trustful; and he believed that gentleness and trustfulness inhered in
the blue-eyed, fair-haired type of womanhood. She must be appreciative,
but not strong-minded,--well-bred, with a certain lady-like
perfectness, which could not be criticised, and yet which would always
save her from being conspicuous. Not for the world would he have any
new-fangled woman's-rights notions about her.
You might fancy it would be a somewhat difficult matter for him to
find precisely the realization of this ideal; but here fate befriended
him,--fate, who seemed to have taken Dr. Huger under her especial
charge, and had been very kind to him all his life. He looked out of
his window, after he had come to the resolution heretofore recorded,
and saw Amy Minturn tripping across the village green.
Amy was eighteen,--blonde, blue-eyed, innocent, well-bred, unpresuming,
without ambition, and without originality. She was very lovely in her
own quiet, tea-rose style. Her position was satisfactory; for her
father, Judge Minturn, was a man of mark in Windham, and one of Dr.
Huger's warmest friends. So, having decided that here was an embodiment
of all his "must-haves," the doctor went over that evening to call
at the Minturn mansion. Not that the call in itself was an unusual
occurrence. He went there often; but hitherto his conversation had been
principally directed to the judge, and to-night there was a noticeable
change.
Amy was looking her loveliest, in her diaphanous muslin robes, with
blue ribbons at her throat, and in her soft light hair. Dr. Huger
wondered that he had never before noticed the pearly tints of her
complexion, the deep lustrous blue of her eyes, the dainty, flower-like
grace of her words and ways. He talked to her, and watched the changing
color in her cheeks, and her rippling smiles, until he began to
think the falling in love, to which he had so deliberately addressed
himself, the easiest and pleasantest thing in the world. She had the
prettiest little air of propriety,--half prudish, and half coquettish.
She received his attentions with a shy grace that was irresistibly
tempting.
He went often to Judge Minturn's after that--not _too_ often, for he
did not wish to startle his pretty Amy by attentions too sudden or too
overpowering; and, indeed, there was nothing in the gentle attraction
by which she drew him to hurry him into any insane forgetfulness of his
customary moderation. But he liked and approved her more and more. He
made up his mind to give her a little longer time in which to become
familiar with him, and then to ask her to be his wife.
When he had reached this determination, he was sent for, one August
day, to see a new patient,--a certain Miss Colchester. He was thinking
about Amy as he went along,--laughing at the foolish old notion
concerning the course of true love; for what could run any smoother, he
asked himself, than his had? It seemed to him as simple and pretty as
an idyl,--the "Miller's Daughter" New Englandized.
"Oh, that I were beside her now!
Oh, will she answer if I call?
Oh, would she give me vow for vow,--
Sweet Amy,--if I told her all?"
he hummed, half unconsciously, as he walked on.
Soon he came in sight of Bock Cottage, the place to which he was going,
and began thereupon to speculate about Miss Colchester. Of course
she was one of the summer boarders of whom Rock Cottage was full.
He wondered whether she were young or old,--whether he should like
her,--whether she would be good pay;--and by this time, he had rung
the bell, and was inquiring for her of the tidy girl who answered his
summons.
He was shown into a little parlor on the first floor, and, pausing a
moment at the door, he looked at his patient. A very beautiful woman,
he said to himself, but just such an one as he did not like. She sat
in a low chair, her back to the window and her face turned toward him.
She wore a simple white-cambric wrapper. Her beauty had no external
adornment whatever. It shone upon him startlingly and unexpectedly, as
if you should open a closet, where you were prepared to find an old
family portrait of some stiff Puritan grandmother, and be confronted,
instead, by one of Murillo's Spanish women, passionate and splendid.
For Miss Colchester was not unlike those Murillo-painted beauties. She
had a clear, dark skin, through which the changeful color glowed as
if her cheeks were transparent; dark, heavily-falling hair; low brow;
great, passionate, slumbrous eyes; proud, straight features. There was
nothing like a New-England woman about her. That was Dr. Huger's first
thought; and she read it, either through some subtle clairvoyant power,
or, a simpler solution, because she knew that every one, who saw her
under these cool skies of the temperate zone, would naturally think
that thought first. Her full, ripe lips parted in a singular smile, as
she said,--
"You are thinking that I am not of the North. You are right. I was born
in New Orleans. I am a Creole of the Creoles. I don't like the people
here. I sent for you because you were German, at least by descent."
"How did you know it?"
It was an abrupt question for a man of the doctor's habitual grave
courtesy; but she seemed to him unique, and it was impossible to
maintain his old equipoise in her presence. She had read his thought
like a witch. Was there something uncanny about her?
"How did I know you were German?" She smiled. "Because your name
suggested the idea, and then I saw you in the street, and your features
indorsed the hint your name had given me."
"I am glad that anything should have made you think of me."
It was one of the conventional platitudes, of which self-complacent
men, like Dr. Huger, keep a stock on hand for their lady friends. Miss
Colchester saw its poverty, and smiled at it, as she answered him,--
"I think of every one with whom I come in contact; and I thought of
you, especially, because I intended from the first, if there were a
good physician here, to consult him."
The doctor looked into her radiant face.
"Is it possible that you are ill?"
He had sat down beside her by this time, and taken her hand. It gave
him a curious sensation as it lay quietly in his. He felt as if there
were more life, more magnetism, in it than in any hand he had ever
touched.
"That _you_ must tell me," she said, quietly. "My heart feels
strangely, sometimes; it beats too rapidly, I think, and sometimes very
irregularly. I have lived too fast,--suffered and enjoyed too keenly.
The poor machine is worn out, perhaps. I look to you to inform me
whether I am in danger."
"I must have my stethoscope. I will go for it. Are you sure you can
bear the truth?"
She smiled,--a cool smile touched with scorn.
"I have not found life so sweet," she said, "that its loss will trouble
me. I only want to know how long I am likely to have in which to do
certain things. If you can tell me, I shall be satisfied."
As Dr. Huger went home, he met Amy. Something in the sight of her
fresh, blonde beauty, with its fulness of life and health, jarred on
his mood. He bowed to her with a preoccupied air, and hurried on. When
he went back to Rock Cottage, Miss Colchester was sitting just as he
had left her. To sit long at a time in one motionless attitude was a
peculiarity of hers. Her manner had always a singular composure, though
her nature was impetuous.
He placed over her heart the instrument he had brought, then listened a
long time to its beating. He dreaded to tell her the story it revealed
to him, and at last made up his mind to evade the responsibility. When
he had come to this conclusion, he raised his head.
"I do not feel willing," he said, "to pronounce an opinion. Let me send
for a medical man who is older, who has had more experience."
She raised her dark eyes, and looked full in his face.
"You are afraid to tell me, after all I said? Will you not believe that
I do not care to live? I shall send for no other physician. I look for
the truth from your lips. You find my heart greatly enlarged?"
"I told you I did not like to trust my own judgment; but that _is_ my
opinion."
"And if you are right I shall be likely to live--how long?"
"Possibly for years. Probably for a few months. There is no help,--I
mean, no cure. If you suffer much pain, that can be eased, perhaps."
Miss Colchester was silent a few moments. Dr. Huger could see no change
in her face, though he watched her closely. The color neither left
her cheeks or deepened in them. He did not see so much as an eyelash
quiver. At last she spoke,--
"You have been truly kind, and I thank you. I believe I am glad of
your tidings. I think I shall stay here in Windham till the last. I
would like one autumn among these grand old woods and hills. I have
nothing to call me away. I can do all which I have to do by letter,
and my most faithful friend on earth is my quadroon maid who is here
with me. She will be my nurse, if I need nursing. And you will be my
physician,--will you not?"
"I will when I can help you. At other times, may I not be your friend,
and as such come to see you as often as I can?"
"Just as often,--the oftener the better," she answered, with that
smile which thrilled him so strangely every time he met it. "I shall
always be glad to see you. Your visits will be a real charity; for,
except Lisette, I am quite solitary."
He understood by her manner that it was time to go, and took his leave.
That night he walked over to Judge Minturn's. Amy was just as pretty as
ever,--just as graceful and gentle and faultless in dress and manner.
Why was it that he could not interest himself in her as heretofore?
Had the salt lost its savor? His judgment endorsed her as it always
had. She was precisely the kind of woman to make a man happy. That
pure blonde beauty, with its tints of pearl and pink, was just what he
wanted, always had wanted. Why was it that he was haunted all the time
by eyes so different from those calm blue orbs of Amy's? He thought
it was because his new patient's case had interested him so much in
a medical point of view. He was tired, and he made it an excuse for
shortening his call.
He went home to sit and smoke and speculate again about Miss
Colchester. He seemed to see her wonderful exotic face through the blue
smoke-wreaths. Her words and ways came back to him. He had discovered
so soon that _she_ was no gentle, yielding creature. She had power
enough to make her conspicuous anywhere--piquant moods and manners
of her own, which a man could find it hard to tame. He was glad,--or
thought he was,--that such office had not fallen to his share,--that
the woman he had resolved to marry was so unlike her; yet he could not
banish the imperious face which haunted his fancy.
The next day found him again at Rock Cottage; but he waited until
afternoon, when all his other visits had been made. It was a warm day;
and Miss Colchester was again in white, but in full fleecy robes, whose
effect was very different from the simple cambric wrapper she had worn
the day before. Ornaments of barbaric gold were in her ears, at her
throat, and manacled her wrists. A single scarlet lily drooped low in
her hair. She looked full of life,--strong, passionate, magnetic life.
Was it possible that he had judged her case aright? Could death come to
spoil this wonderful beauty in its prime?
Their talk was not like that of physician and patient. It touched on
many themes, and she illuminated each one with the quick brilliancy
of her thought. He grew acquainted with her mind in the two hours he
spent with her; but her history,--who she was,--whence she came,--why
she was at Windham,--remained as mysterious as before. Her maid came in
once or twice, and called her "Miss Pauline," and this one item of her
first name was all that he knew about her more than he had discovered
yesterday. He saw her,--a woman utterly different from the gentle,
communicative, impressible, blue-eyed ideal he had always cherished,--a
woman with whom, had she been in her full health, his reason would
have pronounced it madness to fall in love. How much more would
it be madness now, when he knew that she was going straight to her
doom,--that when the summer came again, it would shine upon her grave!
And yet it seemed as if the very hopelessness of any passion for her
made her power over him more fatal.
He went to see her day after day. He did not consciously neglect Amy
Minturn, because he did not think about her at all. She was no more to
him in those days than last year's roses, which had smelled so sweet
to him in their prime. He was absorbed in Pauline Colchester--lived
in her life. She accepted his devotion, simply because she did not
understand it. If she had been in health, she would have known that
this man loved her; but the knowledge of her coming fate must make all
that impossible, she thought. So she accepted his friendship with a
feeling of entire security; and, though she revealed to him no facts of
her material life, admitted him to such close intimacy with her heart
and soul as, under other circumstances, he might never have reached in
a lifetime of acquaintance.
And the nearer he drew to her the more insanely he loved her,--loved
her, though he knew the fate which waited for her, the heart-break he
was preparing for himself.
At last he told her. He had meant to keep his secret until she died,
but in spite of himself it came to his lips.
In September it was,--one of those glorious autumn days when the year
seems at flood-tide, full of a ripe glory, which thrills an imaginative
temperament as does no tender verdure of spring, no bravery of summer.
Pauline Colchester, sensitive to all such influences as few are, was
electrified by it. Dr. Huger had never seen her so radiant, so full
of vitality. It seemed to him impossible that she should die. If he
had her for his own,--if he could make her happy,--could he not guard
her from every shock or excitement, and keep her in such a charmed
atmosphere of peace that the worn-out heart might last for many a year?
It was the idlest of lover's dreams, the emptiest and most baseless of
hopes, which he would have called any other man insane for cherishing.
But he grasped at it eagerly, and, before he knew what he was doing, he
had breathed out his longing at the feet of Miss Colchester.
"Is it possible," she said, after a silent space, "that you could
have loved me so well? That you would have absorbed into your own the
poor remnant of my life, and cherished it to the end? I ought to be
sorry for your sake; but how can I, when just such a love is what I
have starved for all my life? I have no right to it now. I am Mrs.,
not Miss, Colchester. I was Pauline Angereau before Ralph Colchester
found me and married me. I had money and, I suppose, beauty; perhaps
he coveted them both. He made me believe that he loved me with all his
heart; and then, when I was once his wife, he began torturing me to
death with his neglect and his cruelty. He was a bad man; and I don't
believe there is a woman on earth strong enough to have saved him from
himself. I bore everything, for two years, in silence. Then I found
that it was killing me, and, in one of his frequent absences, I came
away to die in peace. When it is all over, Lisette will write to him.
He will have the fortune he longed for, without the encumbrance of
which he tired so soon. You must not see me any more. Bound as I am,
feeling what you feel, there would be sin in our meeting. And yet I
shall die easier for knowing that, once in my life, I have been loved
for myself alone."
Then Dr. Huger rose to go. To-morrow, perhaps he could combat those
scruples of hers; but to-day, there was no more to be said to this
woman whom another man owned. To-morrow, he could tell better how
nearly he could return to the quiet ways of friendship,--whether it
would be possible for him to tend her, brother-like, to the last, as
he had meant to do before he loved her. He took her hand a moment, and
said, in a tone which he tried so hard to make quiet that it almost
sounded cold,--
"I must go now. I dare not stay and talk to you. I will come again
to-morrow."
"Yes, to-morrow."
Her face kindled, as she spoke, with a strange light as of prophecy.
What "to-morrow" meant to her he did not know. He turned away suddenly,
for his heart was sore; and, as he went, he heard her say, speaking
very low and tenderly,--
"God bless you, Francis Huger."
The next day he went again to Rock Cottage. He had fought his battle
and conquered. He thought now that he could stay by her to the end,
and speak no word, look no look, which should wrong her honor or his
own. He asked for her at the door as usual; and they told him she had
paid her bill that morning, and left. She had come, they said, no one
knew from whence; and no one knew where she had gone. She had left no
messages and given no address.
Dr. Huger understood that this was something she had meant to keep
secret from him of all others. Was he never to see her again? When she
had said, "Yes, to-morrow," could she have meant the long to-morrow,
when the night of death should be over? He turned away, making no sign
of disappointment,--his sorrow dumb in his heart; and, as he went, her
voice seemed again to follow him,--
"God bless you, Francis Huger."
For two months afterward, he went the round of his daily duties in
a strange, absent, divided fashion. He neither forgot nor omitted
anything; yet he saw as one who saw not, and heard with a hearing
which conveyed to his inward sense no impression. _She_ was with him
everywhere. All the time, he was living over the brief four weeks of
their acquaintance, in which, it seemed to him, he had suffered and
enjoyed more than in all the rest of his lifetime. Every day, every
hour, he expected some message from her. He felt a sort of conviction
that she would not die until he had seen her again. He thought, at
last, that his summons to her side had come. He opened, one day, a
letter directed in a hand with which he was not familiar. He read in
it, with hurrying pulses, only these words:--
"Madame Pauline Angereau Colchester is dead. I obey her wish in
sending you these tidings."
"LISETTE."
From the letter had dropped, as he unfolded it, a long silky tress
of dark hair. He picked it up, and it seemed to cling caressingly to
his fingers. It was all he could ever have in this world of Pauline
Colchester. Her "to-morrow" had come. His would come, too, by-and-by.
What then? God alone knew whether his soul would ever find hers, when
both should be immortal.
Will he go back again some day to Amy Minturn? Who can tell? Men have
done such things. It will depend on how weary the solitary way shall
seem,--how much he may long for his own fireside. At any rate, he will
never tell her the story of Pauline.
THE MAN WHOSE LIFE WAS SAVED.
THE MAN WHOSE LIFE WAS SAVED.
[Illustration]
I.
On a pleasant, sunshiny afternoon of early summer, Mlle. Lisa sat
knitting in the door-way of a white, shining house, fronting on a
silent, remote street of a garrisoned town of France, not far distant
from Paris. The street was narrow and badly paved with sharp, irregular
stones, sloping gradually down to a point in the centre, which formed
the gutter, and at night was feebly lighted by an oil-lamp suspended
to a rope and stretched across the street at the corners. The general
aspect of the place was not amusing, for the habitations were few
and the passers-by fewer. Long rows of high, white-washed walls, the
boundaries of gentlemen's gardens, garnished with broken glass and
pots of cactus, gave a certain monotony to the Rue Arc en Ciel. The
very blossoms of the fruit-trees and flowering-shrubs behind the
white-washed walls, looked sleepily over their barriers, as they
diffused the contagious languor of their odors along the silent
white street. These drowsy influences, however, seemed in no ways to
diminish the carolling propensities of Mlle. Lisa, or to abate in any
particular the ardor of her knitting.
Lisa Ledru was the daughter of the _proprietaire_ of No. 29,--a worthy
woman who had toiled to sustain herself and an agreeable, sprightly
husband, addicted to no vice save that of contented idleness, through
many long, weary years, and had brought up her only child, Lisa, to
a point of prettiness and usefulness, which compensated for past
sacrifices, and promised well for the future.
Madame Ledru's house had been for years the abode of _militaires_. She
would occasionally condescend to the admission of a bourgeois, but this
infringement of habit and inclination was but a condescension after
all, and left her with a certain sense of degradation, when she exposed
her stair-case, which had creaked so long under the thundering tread
of martial heel and spur, to the mild, apologetic footstep of a man of
peace. Mme. Ledru's principles were well-known and properly appreciated
by the regiments in garrison, and her house never lacked inmates. Her
reputation for discretion and adroitness, in bringing order out of the
chaotic love affairs which perpetually entangled the impetuous sons
of Mars, was established on the firmest basis. No lodger was ever "at
home" to an importunate creditor, so long as madame's ample person
could bar the passage to their entrance, and no _tête-à-tête_ of a
tender nature was ever interrupted by the untimely appearance of a
cherished mother or aunt, or, still worse, the jealous intrusion of a
rival queen.
The court-yard of Mme. Ledru's house presented a far more lively
appearance than the street in which it stood. In the centre of
the court stood a large, umbrageous tree, drooping over a stone
watering-trough, which gave drink to the numerous horses in the
stable-yard as well as to the chickens and barn-yard fowls, who
cackled and prowled about in its vicinity, as they picked up their
precarious living. At times their foraging-ground would be enriched
by a shower of crumbs from a friendly window above, and rumor
asserted that the gallant Colonel Victor de Villeport, hero of many
campaigns, with the prestige of a wound or two, and a compensating
glitter of decorations, had so far abandoned himself to the pastime
of chicken-feeding as to invent new methods of beguiling the monotony
of the entertainment,--such as tying morsels of bread to a string
and dancing it distractedly before the eyes of stupid clucking hens,
until experience had taught them in a measure how to cope with this
unexpected phase of their trying existence. The stable-yard, extending
to the left of the court, was gay with the bright military caps of
orderlies, who sang snatches of vaudeville airs, as they rubbed down
their masters' steeds, and polished up their sabres and buckles.
But to return to Mlle. Lisa, who sat knitting and singing in the Porte
Cochère of No. 29, on a warm summer afternoon. Her joyous refrain
ceased, for a moment, as she heard the little gate opposite to the
house, belonging to the Countess d'Hivry's garden, creak on its
hinges, and the next instant saw protruding the round, red head of
François, the gardener. This apparition, though not itself enchanting,
gave Mlle. Lisa, on this occasion, the liveliest satisfaction.
"Good-morning, Monsieur François," she said, with a beaming smile, as
she glanced furtively at the bouquet of flowers which was in his hand.
However dull might be the instincts of François in many things, they
were keen enough where Lisa was concerned; and, recognizing at once the
advantages of the situation, he advanced with a profusion of bows, and
a grin of ecstasy, to deposit his tribute of flowers at the feet of his
_adorata_.