LAWRENCE DECEIVED AND UNDECEIVED.
For a time after Mildred left him, Lawrence slept on quietly, and Lilian
gradually felt her fears subsiding, particularly as Rachel brought in a
lamp and placed it on the mantel. Still she was very nervous and she sat
sobbing behind her handkerchief, until Lawrence showed signs of waking;
then remembering what Mildred had said of something in a cup, she held
it to his lips, bidding him drink, but he would not, and setting it down
she went back to her crying, thinking it mean in Mildred to leave her
there so long when she wasn’t a bit accustomed to sick folks.
Suddenly she felt a hand laid upon her own, and starting up she saw
Lawrence Thornton looking at her. Instantly all her fortitude gave way,
and laying her face on the pillow beside him she sobbed:
“Oh, Lawrence, Lawrence, I’m so glad you ain’t dead, and have waked up
at last, for it’s dreadful sitting here alone.”
Drawing her nearer to him the young man said:
“Poor child, have you been here long?”
“Yes, ever since the doctor left,” she answered. “Mildred is with Clubs.
I don’t believe she’d care a bit if you should die.”
“Mildred—Mildred,” Lawrence repeated, as if trying to recall something
in the past. “Then it was _you_ who were with me in all that dreadful
agony, when my life came back again? I fancied it was Mildred.”
Lilian had not the courage to undeceive him, for there was no mistaking
the feeling which prompted him to smooth her golden curls and call her
“Fairy.” Still she must say something, and so she said:
“I held the cup to your lips a little while ago.”
“I know you did,” he answered. “You are a dear girl, Lilian. Now tell me
all about it and who saved my life.”
“Waked up in the very nick of time,” muttered the Judge, who all the
while had been in the next room, and who had been awake just long enough
to hear all that had passed between Lawrence and Lilian. “Yes, _sir_,
just in the nick of time, and now we’ll hear what soft-pate has to say;”
and moving nearer to the door he listened while Lilian told Lawrence how
Oliver had taken him from the river and laid him under a tree, where he
was found by two of the villagers, who brought him home.
“Then,” said she, “they sent for the doctor, who did all manner of cruel
things, until you came to life and went to sleep.”
“And Mildred wasn’t here at all,” said Lawrence sadly. “Why did she stay
with Oliver? What ails him?”
“He had the nose-bleed, I believe,” answered Lilian. “You know he’s
weak, and getting you out of the water made him sick, I suppose. Mildred
thinks more of Oliver than of you, I guess.”
“The deuce she does,” muttered the Judge, and he was about going in to
charge Lilian with her duplicity when Mildred herself appeared, and he
resumed his seat to hear what next would occur.
“I am sorry I had to leave you,” she said, going up to Lawrence, “but
poor Oliver needed the care of some one besides old Hepsy, and I dare
say you have found a competent nurse in Lilian.”
“Yes, Fairy has been very kind,” said Lawrence, taking the young girl’s
hand, “I should have been sadly off without her. But what of Oliver?”
Mildred did not then know how severe a shock Oliver had received, and
she replied that, “he was very weak, but would, she hoped, be better
soon.”
“I shall go down to-morrow and thank him for saving my life,” was
Lawrence’s next remark, while Mildred asked some trivial question
concerning himself.
“Why in thunder don’t she tell him all about it?” growled the Judge,
beginning to grow impatient. “Why don’t she tell him how she worked like
an ox, while t’other one sat on the floor and snivelled?” Then as he
heard Mildred say that she must go and see which of the negroes would
stay with him that night, he continued his mutterings: “Mildred’s a
fool,—Thornton’s a fool,—and that Lilian is a consummate fool; but I’ll
fix ’em;” and striding into the room, just as Mildred was leaving it, he
said, “Gipsy, come back. You needn’t go after a nigger. I’ll stay with
Lawrence myself.”
It was in vain that both Lawrence and Mildred remonstrated against it.
The Judge was in earnest. “Unless, indeed, _you_ want to watch,” and he
turned to Lilian: “You are such a capital nurse,—not a bit afraid of the
dark, nor sick folks, you know,” and he chucked her under the chin,
while she began to stammer out:
“Oh, I carn’t! I carn’t! it’s too hard,—too hard.”
“Of course, it’s too hard,” said Lawrence, amazed at the Judge’s
proposition. “Lilian is too delicate for that; she ought to be in bed
this moment, poor child. She’s been sadly tried to-day,” and he looked
pityingly at Lilian, who, feeling that in some way wholly unknown to
herself, she had been terribly aggrieved, began to cry, and left the
room.
“Look out that there don’t something catch you in the hall,” the Judge
called after her, shrugging his shoulders, and thinking that not many
hours would elapse ere he pretty thoroughly undeceived Lawrence
Thornton.
But in this he began to fancy he might be disappointed, for soon after
Mildred left them, Lawrence fell away to sleep, resting so quietly that
the Judge would not awake him, but sat listening to his loud breathings
until he himself grew drowsy. But Lawrence disturbed him, and after a
few short nods, he straightened up, exclaiming, “the confoundedest
snorer I ever heard. I can hear him with my deaf ear. Just listen, will
you!” and he frowned wrathfully at the curtained bed, where lay the
unconscious object of his cogitations. “It’s of no use,” he said at
last, as he heard the clock strike one. “No use to be sitting here.
Nothing short of an earthquake could wake him, and sleep will do him
more good than that slush in the cups. I ain’t going to sit up all night
either. ‘I carn’t! I carn’t! it’s too hard,—too hard!’ Little fool!” and
laughing to himself as he mimicked Lilian, he stalked into the adjoining
chamber, and when at sunrise Mildred came in she found the medicines all
untouched, and the Judge fairly outdoing Lawrence in the quantity and
quality of his snores!
But the Judge was right in one conclusion,—sleep did Lawrence more good
than medicine could possibly have done, and he awoke at last greatly
refreshed. Smiling pleasantly upon Mildred, whom he found sitting by
him, he asked her to open the shutters, so he could inhale the morning
air, and see the sun shine on the eastern hills.
“My visit has had a sad commencement,” he said, as she complied with his
request, and went back to his side; “and lest it should grow worse, I
shall return home in a day or so. Do you think Lilian will be ready to
accompany me?”
Instantly the tears came to Mildred’s eyes, but Lawrence thought they
were induced by a dread of losing Lilian, and he hastened to say, “She
need not go, of course, unless she chooses.”
“But you,—why need you go?” asked Mildred. “I was anticipating so much
pleasure from your visit, and that first night you came I was so rude
and foolish. You must think me a strange girl, Mr. Thornton.”
Whether he thought her strange or not, he thought her very beautiful,
sitting there before him in her white morning wrapper, with her cheeks
fresh as roses and her brown hair parted smoothly back from her open
brow.
“It was wrong in Lilian to betray your confidence,” he replied; “but she
did it thoughtlessly, and has apologized for it, I presume; she promised
me she would.”
Mildred did not tell him that she hadn’t, and he continued, “It is very
natural that a girl like you should have hosts of admirers, and quite as
natural that you should give to some one of them the preference. I only
hope he is worthy of you, Milly.”
Mildred felt that she could not restrain her tears much longer, and she
was glad when Lilian at last came in, thus affording her a good excuse
for stealing away. She did not hear what passed between the two, but
when Lilian came down to breakfast she said, “Lawrence had suggested
their going home,” and as nothing could please her more, they would
start the next day if he were able.
“I’ll bet he won’t go before he gets a piece of my mind,” thought the
Judge, as he watched for a favorable opportunity, but Lilian was always
in the way, and when long after dinner he went to Lawrence’s room, he
found that he had gone down to visit Oliver, who was still confined to
his bed and seemed to be utterly exhausted.
Lawrence had not expected to see him so pale and sick, and at first he
could only press his hands in silence.
“It was very kind in you, Clubs,” he said at last, “to save my life at
the risk of your own.”
“You are mistaken,” returned Oliver; “it was for Mildred I risked my
life, far more than for you.”
“For Mildred, Clubs,—for Mildred!” and all over Lawrence Thornton’s
handsome face there broke a look of perplexity and delight, for Oliver’s
words implied a something to believe which would be happiness indeed.
“I can’t tell you now,” said Oliver, “I am too faint and weak. Come to
me before you go and I will explain; but first, Lawrence Thornton,
answer me truly, as you hope for heaven, do you love Mildred Howell?”
“Love Mildred Howell,—love Mildred Howell!” Lawrence repeated, in
amazement. “Yes, Clubs, as I hope for heaven, I love her better than my
life, but she isn’t for me, she loves somebody else,” and he hurried
down the stairs, never dreaming that the other was himself, for had it
been, she would not have deserted him the previous day, when he was so
near to death. “No, Oliver is deceived,” he said, and he walked slowly
back to Beechwood, thinking how bright the future would look to him
could he but possess sweet Mildred Howell’s love. “I never receive any
help, from Lilian,” he unconsciously said aloud. “She lies like a weight
upon my faculties, while Mildred has the most charming way of rubbing up
one’s ideas. Mildred is splendid,” and his foot touched the lower step
of the back piazza just as the Judge’s voice chimed in:
“I’m glad you think so. That’s what I’ve been trying to get at this
whole day, so sit down here, Thornton, and we’ll have a confidential
chat. The girls are off riding, and there’s no one to disturb us.”
Lawrence took the offered seat, and the Judge continued:
“I don’t know how to commence it, seeing there’s no head nor tail, and I
shall make an awful bungle, I presume, but what I want to say is this:
You’ve got the wool pulled over your eyes good. I ain’t blind, nor deaf
either, if one of my ears is shut up tight as a drum. I heard her
soft-soaping you last night, making you think nobody did anything but
her. It’s Lilian, I mean,” he continued, as he saw the mystified
expression on Lawrence’s face. “Now, honest, didn’t she make you believe
that she did about the whole; that is, did what women would naturally do
in such a case?”
Lawrence had received some such impression and as he had no reason for
thinking Lilian would purposely deceive him, he roused up at once in her
defense.
“Everybody was kind, I presume,” he said, “but I must say that for a
little, nervous creature as she is, Lilian acted nobly, standing
fearlessly by until the worst was over, and then, when all the rest was
gone, who was it sat watching me, but Lilian?”
“Lilian! the devil! There, I have sworn, and I feel the better for it,”
said the Judge, growing red in the face, and kicking over one of
Mildred’s house plants with his heavy boot. “Thornton, you are a fool.”
“Very likely,” answered Lawrence; “but I am certainly willing to be
enlightened, and as you seem capable of doing it, pray continue.”
“Never granted a request more willingly in my life,” returned the Judge.
“Thornton, you certainly have some sense, or your father never would
have married my daughter.”
Lawrence could not tell well what that had to do with his having sense,
but he was too anxious to interrupt the Judge, who continued: “You see,
when Clubs crawled back to his door and told how you were dead, and when
Hepsy screamed for help like a panther as she is, Mildred was the first
to hear it, and she went tearing down the hill, while I went wheezing
after, with Lilian following like a snail. I was standing by when Clubs
told Milly you were dead, and then, Thornton, then there was a look on
her face which made my very toes tingle, old as I am. Somehow the girl
has got an idea that you think Lilian a little angel, and turning to
her, she said, ‘Lilian, Lawrence is dead. Let us go to him together. He
is mine now as much as yours,’ but do you think, boy, that she went?”
“Yes, yes, I don’t know. Go on,” gasped Lawrence, whose face was white
as ashes.
“Well, sir, she didn’t, but shrank back in the corner, and snivelled
out, ‘I carn’t, I carn’t. I’m afraid of dead folks. I’d rather stay
here.’ I suppose I said some savage things before I started after Milly,
who was flying over the fields just as you have seen your hat fly in a
strong March wind. When I got to the tree I found her with her arms
around your neck, and as hard a wretch as I am, I shed tears to see
again on her face that look, as if her heart were broken. When we
reached home with you, we found Lilian crying in her room, and she never
so much as lifted her finger, while Mildred stood bravely by, and once,
Thornton, she put her lips to yours and blew her breath into your lungs,
until her cheeks stuck out like two globe lamps. I think that did the
business, for you soon showed signs of life, and then Mildred cried out
for joy while Lilian, who heard her, fancied you were dead, and wanted
somebody to stay with her, because she was afraid of ghosts. Just as
though you wouldn’t have enough to do seeing what kind of a place you’d
got into, without appearing to her? When the danger was all over, and
you were asleep, Mildred, of course, wanted to go to Clubs, so she asked
Lilian to stay with you, but she had to bring her in by force, for
Lilian said she was afraid of the dark. I was in the next room and heard
the whole performance. I heard you, too, make a fool of yourself, when
you woke up and Lilian gave you her version of the story. Of course, I
was considerably riled up, for Mildred is the very apple of my eye.
Lawrence, do you love Lilian Veille?”
Scarcely an hour before, Oliver had said to Lawrence, “Do you love
Mildred Howell?” and now the Judge asked, “Do you love Lilian Veille?”
To the first Lawrence had answered “Yes.” He could answer the same to
the last, for he did love Lilian, though not as he loved Mildred, and so
he said yes, asking in a faltering voice:
“What he was expected to infer from all he had heard?”
“Infer?” repeated the Judge. “Good thunder, you ain’t to infer anything!
You are to take it for gospel truth. Mildred _does_ love somebody, as
that blabbing Lilian said she did, and the two first letters of his name
are LAWRENCE THORNTON! But what the mischief, boy; are you sorry to know
that the queen of all the girls that ever was born, or ever will be, is
in love with you?” he asked, as Lawrence sprang to his feet, and walked
rapidly up and down the long piazza.
“Sorry,—no; but glad; so glad; and may I talk with her to-night?”
answered Lawrence, forgetting his father’s wrath, which was sure to fall
upon him,—forgetting Lilian,—forgetting everything, save the fact that
Mildred Howell loved him.
“Sit down here, boy,” returned the Judge. “I have more to say before I
answer that question. You have seen a gnarled, crabbed old oak, haven’t
you, with a green, beautiful vine creeping over and around it, putting
out a broad leaf here, sending forth a tendril there, and covering up
the deformity beneath, until people say of that tree, ‘It’s not so ugly
after all?’ But tear the vine away, and the oak is uglier than ever.
Well, that sour, crabbed tree is _me_; and that beautiful vine, bearing
the broad leaves and the luxurious fruit, is Mildred, who has crept
around and over, and into my very being, until there is not a throb of
my heart which does not bear with it a thought of her. She’s all the old
man has to love. The other Mildred is dead long years ago, while
Richard, Heaven only knows where my boy Richard is,” and leaning on his
gold-headed cane, the Judge seemed to be wandering away back in the
past, while Lawrence, who thought the comparison between the oak and the
vine very fine, very appropriate, and all that, but couldn’t, for the
life of him, see what it had to do with his speaking to Mildred that
night, ventured again to say:
“And I may tell Mildred of my love,—may I not?”
Then the Judge roused up and answered, “Only on condition that you both
stay here with me. The oak withers when the vine is torn away, and I,
too, should die if I knew Milly had left me forever. Man alive, you
can’t begin to guess how I love the vixen, nor how the sound of her
voice makes the little laughing ripples break all over my old heart.
There comes the gipsy now,” and the little, laughing ripples, as he
called them, broke all over his face, as he saw Mildred galloping to the
door, her starry eyes looking archly out from beneath her riding hat,
and her lips wreathed with smiles as she kissed her hand to the Judge.
“Yes, boy, botheration, yes,” whispered the latter, as Lawrence pulled
his sleeve for an answer to his question, ere hastening to help the
ladies alight. “Talk to her all night if you want to, I’ll do my best to
keep back ‘softening of the brain,’” and he nodded toward Lilian, who
was indulging herself in little bits of feminine screams as her horse
showed signs of being frightened at a dog lying behind some bushes.
But the judge had promised more than he was capable of performing. All
that evening he manœuvred most skilfully to separate Lilian from
Mildred, but the thing could not be done, for just so sure as he asked
the former to go with him upon the piazza and tell him the names of the
stars, just so sure she answered that “she didn’t know as stars had
names,” suggesting the while that he take Mildred, who knew everything,
and when at last he told her, jokingly as it were, that “it was time
children and fools were in bed,” she answered with more than her usual
quickness:
“I would advise you to go then.”
“Sharper than I s’posed,” he thought, and turning to Lawrence, he
whispered: “No use—no use. She sticks like shoemaker’s wax, but I’ll
tell you what, when she is getting ready to go to-morrow I’ll call Milly
down, on the pretence of seeing her for something, and then you’ll have
a chance,” and with this Lawrence was fain to be satisfied.
He did not need to go to Oliver for an explanation of his words,—he knew
now what they meant,—knew that the beautiful Mildred did care for him,
and when he at last laid his head upon his pillow, he could see in the
future no cloud to darken his pathway, unless it were his father’s
anger, and even that did not seem very formidable.
“He will change his mind when he sees how determined I am,” he thought.
“Mildred won the crusty Judge’s heart,—she will win his as well. Lilian
will shed some tears, I suppose, and Geraldine will scold, but after
knowing how Lilian deceived me, I could not marry her, even were there
no Mildred ‘with the starry eyes and nut-brown hair.’”
He knew that people had applied these terms to his young step-mother,
and it was thus that he loved to think of Mildred, whose eyes were as
bright as stars and whose hair was a rich nut-brown. He did not care who
her parents were, he said, though his mind upon that point was pretty
well established, but should he be mistaken, it was all the same.
Mildred, as his wife and the adopted daughter of Judge Howell, would be
above all reproach, and thus, building pleasant castles of the future,
he fell asleep.
[Illustration: Flowers]