CONVALESCENCE.
Had it not been for the presence of Dr. Holbrook, who, accepting Guy’s
invitation to tea, rode back with him to Aikenside, Mrs. Agnes would
have gone off into a passion when told that Jessie had been “exposed to
fever and mercy knows what.”
“There’s no telling what one will catch among the very poor,” she said
to Dr. Holbrook, as she clasped and unclasped the heavy gold bracelets
flashing on her white, round arm.
“I’ll be answerable for any disease Jessie caught at Mr. Markham’s,”
the doctor replied.
“At Mr. Who’s? What did you call him?” Agnes asked, the bright color on
her cheek fading as the doctor replied:
“Markham—an old man who lives in Honedale. You never knew him, of
course.”
Involuntarily Agnes glanced at Guy, in whose eye there was, as she
fancied, a peculiar expression. Could it be he knew the secret she
guarded so carefully? Impossible, she said to herself; but still the
white fingers trembled as she handled the china and silver, and for
once she was glad when the doctor took his leave, and she was alone
with Jessie.
“What was that girl’s name?” she asked, “the one you went to see?”
“Maddy, mother—Madeline Clyde. She’s so pretty. I’m going to see her
again. May I?”
Agnes did not reply directly, but continued to question the child with
regard to the cottage which Jessie thought so funny, slanting away
back, she said, so that the roof on one side almost touched the ground.
The window panes, too, were so very tiny, and the room where Maddy lay
sick was small and low.
“Yes, yes, I know,” Agnes said at last, impatiently, weary of hearing
of the cottage whose humble exterior and interior she knew so much
better than Jessie herself.
But this was not to be divulged; for surely the haughty Agnes
Remington, who, in Boston, aspired to lead in society into which, as
the wife of Dr. Remington, she had been admitted, and who, in
Aikenside, was looked upon with envy, could have nothing in common with
the red cottage or its inmates. So when Jessie asked again if she could
not visit Maddy on the morrow, she answered decidedly: “No, daughter,
no. I do not wish you to associate with such people,” and when Jessie
insisted on knowing why she must not associate with such people as
Maddy Clyde, the answer was: “Because you are a Remington,” and as if
this of itself were of an unanswerable objection, Agnes sent her child
from her, refusing to talk longer on a subject so disagreeable to her
and so suggestive of the past. It was all in vain that Jessie, and even
Guy himself, tried to revoke the decision. Jessie should not be
permitted to come in contact with that kind of people, she said, or
incur the risk of catching that dreadful fever.
So day after day, while life and health were slowly throbbing through
her veins, Maddy waited and longed for the little girl whose one visit
to her sick room seemed so much like a dream. From her grandfather she
had heard the good news of Guy Remington’s generosity, and that, quite
as much as Dr. Holbrook’s medicines, helped to bring the color back to
the pallid cheek and the brightness to her eyes.
She was asleep the first time the doctor came after the occasion of
Jessie’s visit, and as sleep, he said, would do her more good than
anything he might prescribe, he did not awaken her; but for a long
time, as it seemed to Grandma Markham, who stood very little in awe of
the Boston doctor, he watched her as she slept, now clasping the
blue-veined wrist as he felt for the pulse, and now wiping from her
forehead the drops of sweat, or pushing back her soft, damp hair. It
would be three days before he could see her again, for a sick father in
Cambridge needed his attention, and after numerous directions as to the
administering of sundry powders and pills, he left her, feeling that
the next three days would be long ones to him. Dr. Holbrook did not
stop to analyze the nature of his interest in Maddy Clyde—an interest
so different from any he had ever felt before for his patients; and
even if he had sought to solve the riddle, he would have said that the
knowing how he had wronged her was the sole cause of his thinking far
more of her and of her case than of the thirty other patients on his
list. Dr. Holbrook was a handsome man, a thorough scholar, and a most
skillful physician; but ladies who expected from him those little
polite attentions which the sex value so highly generally expected in
vain, for he was no ladies’ man, and his language and manners were
oftentimes abrupt, even when both were prompted by the utmost kindness
of heart. In his organization, too, there was not a quick perception of
what would be exactly appropriate, and so, when, at last, he was about
starting to visit Maddy again, he puzzled his brains until they fairly
ached with wondering what he could do to give her a pleasant surprise
and show that he was not as formidable a personage as her past
experience might lead her to think.
“If I could only take her something,” he said, glancing ruefully around
his office. “Now, if she were Jessie, nuts and raisins might answer—but
she must not eat such trash as that,” and he set himself to think
again, just as Guy Remington rode up, bearing in his hand a most
exquisite bouquet, whose fragrance filled the medicine-odored office at
once, and whose beauty elicited an exclamation of delight even from the
matter-of-fact Dr. Holbrook.
“I thought you might be going down to Honedale, as I knew you returned
last night, so I brought these flowers for your patient with my
compliments, or if you prefer I give them to you, and you can thus
present them as if coming from yourself.”
“As if I would do that,” the doctor answered, taking the bouquet in his
hand the better to examine and admire it. “Did you arrange it, or your
gardener?” he asked, and when Guy replied that the merit of
arrangement, if merit there were, belonged to himself, he began to
deprecate his own awkwardness and want of tact. “Here I have been
cudgeling my head this half hour trying to think what I could take her
as a peace offering, and could think of nothing, while you—Well, you
and I are different entirely. You know just what is proper—just what to
say, and when to say it—while I am a perfect bore, and without doubt
shall make some ludicrous blunder in delivering the flowers. To-day
will be the first time really that we meet, as she was sleeping when I
was there last, while on all other occasions she has paid no attention
whatever to me.”
For a moment Guy regarded his friend attentively, noticing now that
extra care had been bestowed upon his toilet, that the collar was fresh
from the laundry, and the new cravat tied in a most unexceptionable
manner, instead of being twisted into a hard knot, with the ends
looking as if they had been chewed.
“Doc,” he said, when his survey was completed, “how old are
you—twenty-five or twenty-six?”
“Twenty-five—just your age—why?” and the doctor looked with an
expression so wholly innocent of Guy’s real meaning that the latter,
instead of telling why, replied:
“Oh! nothing; only I was wondering if you would do to be my father.
Agnes, I verily believe, is more than half in love with you; but, on
the whole, I would not like to be your son; so I guess you’d better
take some one younger—say Jessie. You are only eighteen years her
senior.”
The doctor stared at him amazed, and when he had finished said with the
utmost candor: “What has that to do with Madeline? I thought we were
talking of her.” “Innocent as the newly-born babe,” was Guy’s mental
comment, as he congratulated himself on his larger and more varied
experience.
And truly Dr. Holbrook was as simple-hearted as a child, never dreaming
of Guy’s meaning, or that any emotion save a perfectly proper one had a
lodgment in his breast as he drove down to Honedale, guarding carefully
Guy’s bouquet, and wishing he knew just what he ought to say when he
presented it.
Maddy had gained rapidly the last three days. Good nursing and the
doctor’s medicines were working miracles, and on the morning when the
doctor, with Guy’s bouquet, was riding rapidly toward Honedale, she was
feeling so much better that in view of his coming she asked if she
could not be permitted to receive him sitting in the rocking-chair,
instead of lying there in bed, and when this plan was vetoed as utterly
impossible, she asked, anxiously:
“And must I see him in this nightgown? Can’t I have on my pink gingham
wrapper?”
Hitherto Maddy had been too sick to care at all about her personal
appearance, but it was different now. She did care, and thoughts of
meeting again the handsome, stylish-looking man who had asked her to
conjugate _amo_ and whom she fully believed to be Dr. Holbrook, made
her rather nervous. Dim remembrances she had of some one gliding in and
out, and when the pain and noise in her head was at its highest, a
hand, large, and, oh! so cool had been laid upon her temples, quieting
their throbbings and making the blood course less madly through the
swollen veins. They had told her how kind, how attentive he had been,
and to herself she had said: “He’s sorry about that certificate. He
wishes to show me that he did not mean to be unkind. Yes; I forgive
him: for I really was very stupid that afternoon.”
And so, in a most forgiving frame of mind, Maddy submitted to the snowy
robe which grandma brought in place of the coveted gingham wrapper, and
which became her well, with its daintily-crimped ruffles about the neck
and wrists. Those wrists and hands! How white and small they had grown!
and Maddy sighed, as her grandmother buttoned together the wristbands,
to see how loose it was.
“I have been very sick,” she said. “Are my cheeks as thin as my arms?”
They were not, though they had lost some of their symmetrical
roundness. Still there was much of childish beauty in the young, eager
face, and the hair had lost comparatively none of its glossy
brightness.
“That’s him,” grandma said, as the sound of a horse’s gallop was heard,
and in a moment the doctor reined up before the gate.
From Mrs. Markham, who met him in the door, he learned how much better
she was; also how “she has been reckoning on this visit, making herself
all a-sweat about it.”
Suddenly the doctor felt returning all his old dread of Maddy Clyde.
Why should she wrong herself into a sweat? What was there in that visit
different from any other? Nothing, he said to himself, nothing; and yet
he, too, had been more anxious about it than any he had ever paid.
Depositing his hat and gloves upon the table, he followed Mrs. Markham
up the stairs, vaguely conscious of wishing she would stay down, and
very conscious of feeling glad; when just at Maddy’s door and opposite
a little window, she espied the hens busily engaged in devouring the
yeast cakes, with which she had taken so much pains, and which she had
placed in the hot sun to dry. Finding that they paid no heed to her
loud “Shoo, shoos,” she started herself to drive them away, telling the
doctor to go right on and to help himself.
The perspiration was standing under Maddy’s hair by this time, and when
the doctor stepped across the threshold, and she knew he really was
coming near her, it oozed out upon her forehead in big, round drops,
while her cheeks glowed with a feverish heat. Thinking he should get
along with it better if he treated her just as he would Jessie, the
doctor confronted her at once, and asked:
“How is my little patient to-day?”
A faint scream broke from Maddy’s lips, and she involuntarily raised
her hands to thrust the stranger away. This black-eyed, black-haired,
thick-set man was not Dr. Holbrook, for he was taller, and more slight,
while she had not been deceived in the dark brown eyes which, even
while they seemed to be mocking her, had worn a strange fascination for
the maiden of fourteen and a half. The doctor fancied her delirious
again, and this reassured him at once. Dropping the bouquet upon the
bed, he clasped one of her hands in his, and without the slightest idea
that she comprehended him, said, soothingly:
“Poor child, are you afraid of me—the doctor, Dr. Holbrook?” Maddy did
not try to withdraw her hand, but raising her eyes, swimming in tears,
to his face, she stammered out:
“What does it mean, and where is he—the one who—asked me—those dreadful
questions? I thought that was Dr. Holbrook.”
Here was a dilemma—something for which the doctor was not prepared, and
with a feeling that he would not betray Guy, he said:
“No; that was some one else—a friend of mine—but I was there in the
back office. Don’t you remember me? Please don’t grow excited. Compose
yourself, and I will explain all by and by. This is wrong. ’Twill never
do,” and talking thus rapidly he wiped away the sweat, about which
grandma had told him.
Maddy was disappointed, and it took her some time to rally sufficiently
to convince the doctor that she was not flighty, as he termed it; but
composing herself at last, she answered all his questions, and then, as
he saw her eyes wandering toward the bouquet, he suddenly remembered
that it was not yet presented, and placing it in her hands, he said:
“You like flowers, I know, and these are for you. I——”
“Oh! thank you, thank you, doctor; I am so glad. I love them so much,
and you are so kind. What made you think to bring them? I’ve wanted
flowers so badly; but I could not have them, because I was sick and did
not work in the garden. It was so good in you,” and in her delight
Maddy’s tears dropped upon the fair blossoms.
For a moment the doctor was sorely tempted to keep the credit thus
enthusiastically given; but he was too truthful for that, and so
watching her as her eyes glistened with pleased excitement, he said:
“I am glad you like them, Miss Clyde, and so will Mr. Remington be. He
sent them to you from his conservatory.”
“Not Mr. Remington from Aikenside—not Jessie’s brother?” and Maddy’s
eyes now fairly danced as they sought the doctor’s face.
“Yes Jessie’s brother. He came here with her. He is interested in you,
and brought these down this morning.”
“It was Jessie, I guess, who sent them,” Maddy suggested, but the
doctor persisted that it was Guy.
“He wished me to present them with his compliments. He thought they
might please you.”
“Oh! they do, they do!” Maddy replied. “They almost make me well. Tell
him how much I thank him, and like him too, though I never saw him.”
The doctor opened his lips to tell her she had seen him, but changed
his mind ere the words were uttered. She might not think as well of
Guy, he thought, and there was no harm in keeping it back.
So Maddy had no suspicion that the face she thought of so much belonged
to Guy Remington. She had never seen him, of course; but she hoped she
would some time, so as to thank him for his generosity to her
grandfather and his kindness to herself. Then, as she remembered the
message she had sent him, she began to think that it sounded too
familiar, and said to the doctor:
“If you please, don’t tell Mr. Remington that I said I liked him—only
that I thank him. He would think it queer for a poor girl like me to
send such word to him. He is very rich, and handsome, and splendid,
isn’t he?”
“Yes, Guy’s rich and handsome, and everybody likes him. We were in
college together.”
“You were?” Maddy exclaimed. “Then you know him well, and Jessie, and
you’ve been to Aikenside often? There’s nothing in the world I want so
much as to go to Aikenside. They say it is so beautiful.”
“Maybe I’ll carry you up there some day when you are strong enough to
ride,” the doctor answered, thinking of his light buggy at home, and
wondering he had not used it more, instead of always riding on
horseback.
Dr. Holbrook looked much older than he was, and to Maddy he seemed
quite fatherly, so that the idea of riding with him, aside from the
honor it might be to her, struck her much as riding with Farmer Green
would have done. The doctor, too, imagined that his proposition was
prompted solely from disinterested motives, but he found himself
wondering how long it would be before Maddy would be able to ride a
little distance, just over the hill and back. He was tiring her all out
talking to her; but somehow it was very delightful there in that sick
room, with the summer sunshine stealing through the window and falling
upon the soft reddish-brown head resting on the pillows. Once he fixed
those pillows, arranging them so nicely that grandma, who had come in
from her hens and yeast cakes, declared “he was as handy as a woman,”
and after receiving a few general directions with regard to the future,
“guessed, if he wasn’t in a hurry, she’d leave him with Maddy a spell,
as there were a few chores she must do.”
The doctor knew that at least a dozen individuals were waiting for him
that moment; but still he was in no hurry, he said, and so for half an
hour longer he sat there talking of Guy, and Jessie, and Aikenside, and
wondering he had never before observed how very becoming a white
wrapper was to sick girls like Maddy Clyde. Had he been asked the
question, he could not have told whether his other patients were
habited in buff, or brown, or tan color; but he knew all about Maddy’s
garb, and thought the dainty frill around her slender throat the
prettiest “puckered piece” that he had ever seen. How, then, was Dr.
Holbrook losing his heart to that little girl of fourteen and a half?
He did not think so. Indeed, he did not think anything about his heart,
though thoughts of Maddy Clyde were pretty constantly with him, as
after leaving her he paid his round of visits.
The Aikenside carriage was standing at Mrs. Conner’s gate when he
returned, and Jessie came running out to meet him, followed by Guy,
while Agnes, in the most becoming riding habit, sat by the window
looking as unconcerned at his arrival as if it were not the very event
for which she had been impatiently waiting, Jessie was a great pet with
the doctor, and, lifting her lightly in his arms, he kissed her
forehead where the golden curls were clustering and said to her:
“I have seen Maddy Clyde. She asked for you, and why you do not come to
see her, as you promised.”
“Mother won’t let me,” Jessie answered. “She says they are not fit
associates for a Remington.”
There was a sudden flash of contempt on the doctor’s face, and a gleam
of wrath in Agnes’ eyes as she motioned Jessie to be silent, and then
gracefully received the doctor, who by this time was in the room. As if
determined to monopolize the conversation, and keep it from turning on
the Markhams, Agnes rattled on for nearly fifteen minutes, scarcely
allowing Guy a chance for uttering a word. But Guy bided his time, and
seized the first favorable opportunity to inquire after Madeline.
She was improving rapidly, the doctor said, adding: “You ought to have
seen her delight when I gave her your bouquet.”
“Indeed,” and Agnes bridled haughtily; “I did not know that Guy was in
the habit of sending bouquets to such as this Clyde girl. I really must
report him to Miss Atherstone.”
Guy’s seat was very near to Agnes, and while a cloud overspread his
fine features, he said to her in an aside:
“Please say in your report that the worst thing about this Clyde girl
is that she aspires to be a teacher, and possibly a governess.”
There was an emphasis on the last word which silenced Agnes and set her
to beating her French gaiter on the carpet; while Guy, turning back to
the doctor, replied to his remark:
“She was pleased, then?”
“Yes; she must be vastly fond of flowers, though I sometimes fancied
the fact of being noticed by you afforded almost as much satisfaction
as the bouquet itself. She evidently regards you as a superior being,
and Aikenside as a second Paradise, and asking innumerable questions
about you and Jessie, too.”
“Did she honor me with an inquiry?” Agnes asked, her tone indicative of
sarcasm, though she was greatly interested as well as relieved by the
reply:
“Yes; she said she heard that Jessie’s mother was a beautiful woman,
and asked if you were not born in England.”
“She’s mixed me up with Lucy. Guy, you must go down and enlighten her,”
Agnes said, laughing merrily and appearing more at ease than she had
before since Maddy Clyde had been the subject of conversation.
Guy did not go down to Honedale—but fruit and flowers, and once a
bottle of rare old wine, found their way to the old red cottage, always
brought by Guy’s man, Duncan, and always accompanied with Mr.
Remington’s compliments. Once, hidden among the rosebuds, was a
childish note from Jessie, some of it printed and some in the uneven
hand of a child just commencing to write.
It was as follows:
“DEAR MADDY: I think that is such a pretty name, and so does Guy, and
so does the doctor, too. I want to come see you, but mamma won’t let
me. I think of you ever so much, and so does Guy, I guess, for he sends
you lots of things. Guy is a nice brother, and is most as old as mamma.
Ain’t that funny? You know my first ma is dead. The doctor tells us
about you when he comes to Aikenside. I wish he’d come oftener, for I
love him a bushel—don’t you? Yours respectfully,
“JESSIE AGNES REMINGTON.
“P. S.—I am going to tuck this in just for fun, right among the buds,
where you must look for it.”
This note Maddy read and reread until she knew it by heart,
particularly the part relating to Guy. Hitherto she had not
particularly liked her name, greatly preferring that it should have
been Eliza Ann, or Sarah Jane; but the knowing that Guy Remington
fancied it made a vast difference, and did much toward reconciling her.
She did not even see the clause, “and the doctor, too.” His attentions
and concern she took as a matter of course, so quietly and so
constantly had they been given. The day was very long now which did not
bring him to the cottage; but she missed him much as she would have
missed her brother, if she had had one, though her pulse always
quickened and her cheeks glowed when she heard him at the gate. The
inner power did not lie deeper than a great friendliness for one who
had been instrumental in saving her life. They had talked over the
matter of her examination, the doctor blaming himself more than was
necessary for his ignorance as to what was required of a teacher; but
when she asked who was his proxy, he had again answered, evasively: “A
friend from Boston.”
And this he did to shield Guy, whom he knew was enshrined in the little
maiden’s heart as a paragon of all excellence.