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 flown into a passion when told that Jessie had been exposed to
fever, of which she had a great dread.
“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
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 quickly, 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.”
“Certainly not—how could I?” Agnes replied, as she took her seat at the
tea-table. But her 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 the 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 way 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, for she was tired
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 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, 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 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 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
her cheek, and the brightness to her eyes.
She had been 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 waken her; but for a long time,
as it seemed to Grandma Markham, who stood a 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 all the other patients on his list. Dr.
Holbrook was a handsome man, a thorough scholar, and a most skillful
physician; but 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 when, on his return from
Cambridge, he was about starting to visit Maddy again, he puzzled his
brains until they ached with wondering what he could do to give her a
pleasant surprise and show that he was not so 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 drove up, bearing in his hand a most exquisite
bouquet, whose fragrance filled the 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 will give them to you, and you can
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 that extra
care had been taken with his toilet, that the collar was fresh from the
laundry, and the new cravat tied in a most unexceptionable manner,
instead of being twisted in 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-six or twenty-seven?”
“Just your age;—why?” and the doctor looked up 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 should 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 new-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, and never
dreamed 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 during 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 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 night-gown! 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; and thoughts of meeting again the
handsome, stylish-looking man, whom she fully believed to be Dr.
Holbrook, made her rather nervous. Dim remembrances she had of some one
gliding in and about the room, and when the pain and noise in her head
was in its highest, a hand large and cool had been laid upon her
temples, quieting the throbbing, 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 wish 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 night
dress which grandma brought in place of the gingham wrapper, and which
became her well, with its daintily-crimped ruffles about the neck and
wrists, which had grown so small that Maddy sighed to see how loose they
were as her grandmother buttoned together the wristbands.
“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
Maddy was; and also how, as grandma expressed it, “She had been
reckoning on this visit, making herself all a sweat about it.”
Suddenly the doctor felt all his old dread of Maddy Clyde returning. Why
should she worry 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 out of the
room, 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 in by 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 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; 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 delirious, 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 Mr. Remington will be glad
too. _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 once. He is interested in
you, and brought these down this morning to my office.”
“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 before the words were uttered. She might not think so well of Guy,
he thought, and there was no harm in withholding the truth.
So Maddy had no suspicion that the face she had thought of so much
belonged to Guy Remington. She had never seen him, of course; but she
hoped she should 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.”
“Perhaps I’ll take 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, he knew, by talking to her so
much; but somehow it was very delightful there in that sick-room, with
the summer sunshine stealing through the window and falling upon the
brown head resting on the pillows. Once he fixed the 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 wan’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 people were waiting for him; 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 wore buff, or brown, or tan color;
but he knew all about Maddy’s dress, and thought the dainty frill around
her slender throat the prettiest thing that he had ever seen. At last he
really must go, and, bidding Maddy good-bye, he started on his daily
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 most becoming attire, 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 the bouquet. She wished me to thank you
for her.”
“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 boot 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
that 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 a second Paradise, and asked 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 had 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 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 you have 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. She was Guy’s mother, and my papa
was ever so old. 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 put this in just for fun, right among the buds,
where you must look for it.”
This note Maddy read and re-read until she knew it by heart, especially
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 notice
the clause, “and the doctor too.” His attentions and likings 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 motive-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 more than once, 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 always
answered evasively:
“A friend from Boston.”
And this he did to shield Guy, who he knew was enshrined in the little
maiden’s heart as a paragon of all excellence.