GOOD SAMARITANS.
For many weary days and nights the patient fluctuates between
improvement and retrogression. The business is a long one, as Mr.
Skalpel prophesied. Alexis approaches that mysterious border-land
which lies between life and death. Mind and memory are dark. He sees
shadowy forms at his bedside,--sees the unreal more often than the
real, knows not where he is or what he is, and slowly awakening at
last, as from one long troubled dream--a dream of almost infinite
duration and of wondrous variety--he feels like a child new born to
life, seeking dimly to decipher the unknown characters of a strange
alphabet.
Who is this with the gentle face, the mild and thoughtful eyes,
shadowy hair, and soft white hands, who ministers to him so
patiently, whose voice has such a soothing influence?
Is it his wife? A flash of sudden hope quickens the throbbing of his
heart; he tries to raise himself up in his bed, when a strong hand
restrains him, and a familiar voice says,--
‘Alexis, dear old fellow, be careful. Mr. Skalpel says you mustn’t
exert yourself.’
It is no longer winter. The lattices are open, and through the
tender green of the willows smiles the blue April sky. Birds are
singing--there is a perfume of violets in the room--blessed heralds
of spring. Yes, there they are, violets and primroses on the
dressing-table--violets and primroses on the little table by his bed.
Oh, welcome spring--welcome sense of new-created life in his own
frame!
‘It was good of you to come to me,’ he murmurs, with half-closed
eyes, ‘good of you to nurse me. All forgotten, all forgiven. We shall
be very happy now, Sibyl.’
He thinks his wife is at his side,--a melancholy delusion, which
makes Richard Plowden very uncomfortable.
‘My dear Alexis,’ he says soothingly, ‘it is not Sibyl; we didn’t
know where to send for her. The lady who has nursed you was a
stranger to you until the day of your accident, but if she had been
your sister she could not have done more.’
Alexis closes his eyes with a heavy sigh.
‘She is very good,’ he murmurs resignedly, ‘and I have reason to be
grateful. I took her for my wife--a foolish mistake. I ought to have
known better. But I am afraid my mind has been wandering a little.’
He turns restlessly on his pillow, opens his eyes again, and looks
wonderingly round.
‘Violets!’ he exclaims. ‘How good of you to get me violets at this
time of year! What a blue sky for February!’
‘February!’ cries Richard. ‘My dear fellow, it is the nineteenth of
April.’
‘April? And I have been lying here----’
‘A little over two months.’
Alexis feels inexpressibly shocked at this revelation. What! the days
and nights have been passing, sunrise and sunset, moons waning, and
he has been lying there like a log, or like a madman, full of strange
fancies, and unconscious of the flight of time. This loss of two
months seems to him in some wise terrible. It is as if he had been
lying dead.
‘I suppose I have been very ill,’ he says at last.
‘Very ill, dear boy; so near death’s door that we have often feared
the door would open and you would pass the threshold. Thank Heaven,
we were able to keep you fast on this side. You have to thank Miss
Challice for your life,--there never was such a nurse.’
‘You forget that you have done more than half the nursing, Mr.
Plowden,’ remonstrates Linda, who sits with her face somewhat
shrouded by the dimity bed-curtain.
‘I----, nothing of the kind. I’ve tried to obey your instructions,
but at best I’m a clumsy assistant.’
‘You are the best of fellows,’ says Alexis, stretching out his feeble
hand to clasp his friend’s. ‘As for Miss Challice,’ he continues,
‘I haven’t the faintest idea who she is, or how she comes to be
interested in me; but I’m intensely grateful.’
He falls asleep after this, and slumbers peacefully for some hours.
When he awakes it is tea-time, the lattices are closed, and a young
moon shines in through the diamond panes. A fire burns cheerfully in
the old-fashioned fireplace opposite the foot of the bed. Firelight
and moonbeams shine into the room, flashes of silver and gleams of
ruddy gold light up the old furniture, the cups and saucers and the
old silver teapot on the round table by the fire. They shine, too, on
a quiet figure by the hearth, the graceful form of a girl dressed in
gray, who has fallen asleep in an old bamboo arm-chair by the hearth.
‘That’s Miss----Whatshername, I suppose,’ Alexis says to himself.
‘Curious business, very. Where am I, I wonder? This hardly looks like
the Grange.’
He tries to raise himself into a sitting position, in order the
better to inspect the premises. The process is painful enough to
wring a groan from him, and the groan awakens his nurse.
‘You mustn’t do that,’ says the gentle voice which has argued and
pleaded with him so often in his delirium, but which seems quite
unknown to him to-night. ‘You mustn’t try to sit up yet awhile.’
‘Not yet awhile,’ repeats Alexis. ‘I’ve been ill over two months, and
I’m getting better--I believe you will. I am getting better.’
‘You are much better--you are getting well very fast.’
‘Oh, this is getting well very fast, is it? And after two months I
am not to try to raise myself in my bed. Do you know, it strikes me
that’s getting well rather slowly.’
‘You mustn’t be impatient. The injury to your ribs brought on
inflammation of the lungs. You have been in great danger.’
‘And you--a stranger--have nursed me?’
‘Not a stranger. Providence brought you to our door; you are our
neighbour.’
‘“Which of these, think you?”’ murmurs Alexis. ‘Yes, you have been
verily my neighbour, in the Gospel sense of the word. How shall I
ever thank you enough, Miss----.’
‘Challice,’ says Linda, as he pauses at a loss for the name. ‘Believe
me, Mr. Secretan, I need no thanks. My grandfather and I are very
happy to have been of use to you.’
‘Dick Plowden says you have saved my life. Where is Dick, by the way?’
‘He has gone to lie down for a short time. He has had very little
rest of late, poor fellow. And now shall I give you some tea?’
‘Yes, if you will be so good. I should like some tea.’
She pours out a cup and brings it to him, and raises his head upon
the heaped-up pillows which sustain his weary frame, and puts the
cup to his lips. It is a curious sensation for him, this awakening
to life; curious to look into this strange face in the uncertain
firelight, to hear this gentle voice, to feel the soft touch of these
white womanly hands.
‘If this were but my wife, it would indeed be awakening to new life
and new happiness,’ he thinks, and the thought that another can so
minister to him while his wife treads her selfish way, ignorant of
his pain, is very bitter.
‘I think I could hold the teacup myself,’ he says, and he makes the
attempt feebly, with a tremulous hand.
‘Capital!’ exclaims Linda. ‘How strong you are getting!’
‘Oh, this is getting strong, is it?’ enquires Alexis. ‘I should like
to have seen myself when I was weak. I must have been a pleasing
spectacle.’
He falls asleep by-and-bye in the firelight, and sleeps long, for he
has at this stage of his illness a wonderful capacity for sleep. When
he awakes the fire is burning low, and the dim glimmer of a night
lamp suggests some sepulchral hour betwixt night and morning. Richard
Plowden occupies the easy chair by the fire.
‘Where is Miss--Miss--Challice?’ asks the invalid.
‘In bed, and sound asleep, I hope. She has sat up night after night
to watch you, Alex.’
‘She is very good.’
‘She is an angel, or as near an approach to the angelic as one can
hope to meet with upon earth,’ replies Richard, with enthusiasm.
‘Who is she, Dick? and by what concatenation of events do I find
myself in a strange house, watched over by a strange young lady?’
Richard explains.
‘Indeed. This is Dorley Mill, and my fair nurse is the miller’s
granddaughter. If I were a bachelor now, this might be the opening
scene of a charming romance. But I should have taken that young lady
for something superior to a miller’s granddaughter; she has an air of
refinement.’
‘She belongs by inheritance to the world of art. Her father was a
painter.’
‘Challice--yes, I remember, I have seen pictures of his. He died
young, I think.’
‘He did, and left this young lady an orphan.’
Mr. Secretan, finding himself able to sit up in bed, and hold a glass
or a cup, during the next two or three days shows great anxiety to
be taken back to the Grange. He is anxious to resume the business
of life--to see his horses, his gardens, to be within reach of his
library. He is quite horrified when Mr. Skalpel informs him that he
is likely to be obliged to remain at Dorley Mill for three weeks or a
month before he will be strong enough to bear the shaking involved in
the easiest journey.
‘You need not be in a hurry to leave,’ says the surgeon, ‘you have
been well taken care of, I am sure.’
‘I should be an ungrateful hound if I were to forget that for a
moment,’ replies Alexis, ‘but I should really like to relieve this
house of my presence; I have given so much trouble.’
‘That is all past,’ says Linda. ‘Our only trouble was the fear that
you would not recover.’
‘Mr. Benfield must consider me an intolerable nuisance.’
‘He does nothing of the kind,’ says Dick; ‘he is looking forward to
your going downstairs as if it were some grand holiday.’
Alexis sighs. The comforts and indulgences of a sick room pall upon
his active temperament. But he resigns himself to the inevitable, and
Linda and Richard do their utmost to make his life happy.
Now that bodily strength begins slowly to return he suffers from
extreme mental depression. He feels as if this coming back to life
were something of a mistake, that it might have been better to have
slipped quietly through the dark portal. He feels that he has
nothing to live for, neither wife nor child. No kith nor kin, only
the beaten round of a prosperous man’s existence.
‘I who have tasted the bitter cup of poverty ought to find
contentment in prosperity,’ he tells himself; but as the days
lengthen slowly to their lingering close he is not content.
‘He’s dreadfully low-spirited,’ says Dick to his assistant nurse.
‘What are we to do to cheer him up a little?’
Linda sighs and looks doubtful; but in the course of the afternoon
she brings up some of her favourite books, Shakespeare, Tennyson,
Dickens, and offers to read to the invalid.
He is delighted. Any relief is welcome that will take him away from
his own thoughts. He chooses the ‘Midsummer Night’s Dream,’ and Linda
reads at his bidding.
‘We’ll have one of the tragedies when I’m stronger,’ he says. ‘I
couldn’t stand “Hamlet” or “Lear” yet awhile.’
From this time forward the reading becomes an institution. Linda
is a good reader, her voice round and full, her emphasis always
intelligent. Alexis makes a closer acquaintance with Tennyson than he
has ever made before now, and renews his boyish delight in Dickens.
In about a week after that first reading he is well enough to go
downstairs to the cheerful parlour, but not without support from
Richard’s sustaining arms. There is no longer any talk of his going
back to the Grange yet awhile. He knows his own weakness now, and is
resigned to the tedium of a slow recovery.
‘You are all so good to me,’ he says, with tears in his eyes, ‘I
should be a fool to wish myself away from you.’
It is a sunny afternoon in early May when he goes downstairs for
the first time. Linda has done her uttermost to make the room
bright and cheerful. There are flowers, sweet spring flowers on the
chimney-piece, table, and chiffonier; violets, primroses, hyacinths,
narcissus, pale monthly roses from the southern wall. A fire burns
gaily in the old-fashioned grate; for the invalid is chilly, and
May sunshine uncertain. The invalid’s couch has been arranged in
the cosiest corner by the fire; snow-white pillows, Berlin wool
coverlet, knitted by Linda’s own hands as a Christmas present for
her grandfather. The brown wainscot walls are brightened with
water-colour landscapes in a higher style of art than Alexis would
have expected to find at Dorley Mill; but he learns by-and-bye that
they are all the work of Linda’s pencil.
‘What a pretty room!’ cries Alexis, when he is established on his
sofa, ‘and what a pretty picture that water-mill makes against the
blue sky! I feel ever so much better for the change.’
He enjoys the novelty of the apartment as much as if he had come into
a new country, and his spirits begin to rise immediately.
‘Now I feel that I am really getting well,’ he says.
It is three o’clock in the afternoon. Mr. Benfield is to come in at
five to tea, and there is to be quite a grand tea-drinking in honour
of Mr. Secretan’s convalescence. The simple-hearted old man is almost
as delighted at his guest’s recovery as if the Squire of Cheswold
were his son.
Linda seats herself in her favourite chair by the open window. Dick
places himself by the foot of the couch. The invalid lies in a lazy
silence, looking out at the willows and the mill-stream, and the
green hills beyond. How lovely nature seems to him after his nights
of pain and darkness!
Presently he hears a small voice calling ‘mammie,’ and a small hand
making ineffectual attempts to turn the handle of the door. Linda
runs to open the door, and the prettiest child Alexis ever remembers
to have seen runs into the room.
He has soft golden curls all over his small head, rosy cheeks, bold
brown eyes, and the open, confiding look of a child that has been
reared in love’s tender keeping. He clings to Linda’s dress.
‘Mammie, mammie dear,’ he cries, ‘Trot wants oo, Trot nenner sees oo
now. Oo viz de genlamum?’
‘The gentleman has been very ill, darling, and he wanted me more than
Trot does.’
‘Oo tell tory. Trot want oo allvis.’
‘You had Elizabeth to take care of you, pet. Elizabeth is very kind.’
‘See isn’t. Me hate Lithabess.’
‘Oh, you naughty boy. Look, Trot, this is the sick gentleman. Go and
shake hands.’
‘Me won’t. Me hate the genlamum.’
‘Oh, Trot!’
‘Cause he keeps oo away from Trot.’
‘But he won’t do that any more, Trot,’ says Alexis, delighted with
this infantile grumbler. ‘Come to me, my little man, and let’s make
friends. See what I’ve got here!’
And Alexis produces his watch, that unfailing resource of a man who
wants to amuse a child.
At sight of the watch and jingling bunch of lockets and seals the
little one’s eyes open their widest, and he creeps a little nearer
the enemy.
‘I don’t like oo,’ he says, ‘but I’ll look at oor watch.’
With this protest he goes close up to Alexis, and allows himself to
be entertained.
‘What a darling little fellow!’ says Alexis. ‘A nephew of yours, I
suppose, Miss Challice?’
‘No, he is no relation. He is a little boy my grandfather adopted.’
‘How good of him! The son of an old friend, I conclude.’
‘No. We adopted him to save him from the workhouse.’
‘Ah, that is like you--just as you took me in to save me from death.’
Alexis does not like to ask any further questions, yet he would be
glad to know more about this fascinating little fellow, who soon
grows friendly and familiar, and nestles his golden head in the
invalid’s waistcoat, and plays with the seals and lockets.
Presently the miller comes in to tea, and the table is spread with
a simple feast, new-laid eggs, cream, cakes of Linda’s manufacture,
and strawberry jam, which Elizabeth, the maid of all work, secretly
believes to be the best strawberry jam in Hampshire.
Trot sits up in his high chair at the table, and behaves very
prettily, though he disposes of more bread and jam, and follows it
up with more cake than Alexis can suppose beneficial to his internal
economy; but then Mr. Secretan has seen very little of children and
their ways.
Henceforward Trot is a wonderful favourite with him. He allows
the little fellow to come into his room at all times and seasons,
he sends Dick to Winchester for a cargo of picture-books, and Trot
sits upon the invalid’s bed for hours together looking at the
pictures, and demanding explanations thereof. When the pictures have
been explained to Trot by Alexis, Trot insists on explaining them
over again to the explainer, and lays down the law about them and
philosophises upon them in a delightful way.
Never before has Alexis had any dealings with a child. It is a new
experience to him. The little fellow amuses him for hours together.
The thought that his own son might have grown into just such a boy
as this seems a bond of union between him and Trot. The boy grows
wondrous fond of him, and places him second only to mammie in his
measure of love.
‘Have you had Trot long?’ Alexis asks one day of Linda.
‘Ever since he was a fortnight old.’
‘What a charge for you! His parents are dead, of course?’
‘I know nothing about his parents.’
‘Indeed! Poor little waif and stray. If you were not so very fond of
him I should beg him of you, and make him my son and heir.’
‘I couldn’t bear to part with him. You are not in earnest, of course,
but even if you were, and offered him the greatest advantages, I
don’t think I could bring myself to part with him. I have suffered so
much for his sake. Perhaps that is why I love him so dearly.’
‘Suffered? But how?’
‘Pray do not ask me. I cannot possibly tell you. It is all past and
gone now, and I try to forget it. But it was very bitter.’
This sets Alexis thinking, and the thoughts that come of it trouble
him. He sees but one solution of the enigma, and that is one which
casts the shadow of disgrace on Linda Challice. Can she, this gentle,
lovable girl, with her fair innocent face, be something less pure
and perfect than he has believed her? The suspicion pains him as
keenly as if she were his sister or his plighted wife. He lies awake
for many a weary hour pondering over this painful question. For a
little while even his heart turns from poor Trot, who is distressed
at finding his new friend less kind, but Trot soon makes himself
beloved again. Whatever misery this little brown-eyed boy may have
unconsciously occasioned, Alexis cannot help loving him.