All human things cease--some end. Happy are they who can spring
the hard and brittle bar of experience into a bow of promise. For
such, there shall ever more be an orderly gravitation.
My next call on Maitland was professional. I found him abed and in a
critical condition. I blamed myself severely that I had allowed other
duties to keep me so long away, and had him at once removed to the
house, where I might, by constant attendance in the future, atone for
my negligence in the past. Despite all our efforts, however, Maitland
steadily grew worse. Gwen watched by him night and day until I was
finally obliged to insist, on account of her own health, that she should
leave the sick room long enough to take the rest she so needed. Indeed,
I feared lest I should soon have two invalids upon my hands, but Gwen
yielded her place to Jeannette and Alice during the nights and soon
began to show the good effects of sleep.
I should have told you that, during all this time, Jeannette was staying
with us as a guest. I had convinced her father that it was best she
should remain with us until the unpleasant notoriety caused by his
arrest had, in a measure, subsided. Then, too, I told him with a
frankness warranted, I thought, by circumstances that he could not hope
to live many weeks longer, and that every effort should be made to make
the blow his death would deal Jeannette as light as possible. At this
he almost lost his self-control. “What will become of my child when I am
gone?” he moaned. “I shall leave her penniless and without any means of
support.”
“My dear Mr. Latour,” I replied, “you need give yourself no uneasiness
on that score. I will give you my word, as a man of honour, that so long
as Miss Darrow and I live we will see that your daughter wants for none
of the necessities of life,--unless she shall find someone who shall
have a better right than either of us to care for her.” This promise
acted like magic upon him. He showered his blessings upon me,
exclaiming, “You have lifted a great load from my heart, and I can now
die in peace!” And so, indeed, he did. In less than a week he was dead.
I had prepared Jeannette for the shock and so had her father, but,
for all this, her grief was intense, for she loved her father with a
strength of love few children give their parents. In time, however, her
grief grew less insistent and she began to gain something of her old
buoyancy.
In the meantime, Maitland’s life seemed to hang by a single thread. It
was the very worst case of nervous prostration I have ever been called
to combat, and for weeks we had to be contented if we enabled him to
hold his own. During all this time Gwen watched both Maitland and myself
with a closeness that suffered nothing to escape her. I think she knew
the changes in his condition better even than I did.
And now I am to relate a most singular action on Gwen’s part. I doubt
not most of her own sex would have considered it very unfeminine, but
anyone who saw it all as I did could not, I think, fail to appreciate
the nobility of womanhood which made it possible. Gwen was not dominated
by those characteristics usually epitomised in the epithet ‘lady.’ She
was a woman, and she possessed, in a remarkable degree, that fineness of
fibre, that solidity of character, and that largeness of soul which rise
above the petty conventionalities of life into the broad realm of the
real verities of existence.
It occurred on the afternoon of the first day that Maitland showed the
slightest improvement. I remember distinctly how he had fallen into
a troubled sleep from which he would occasionally cry out in a
half-articulate manner, and how Gwen and I sat beside him waiting for
him to awaken. Suddenly he said something in his sleep that riveted our
attention. “I tell you, Doc,” he muttered, “though love of her burn my
heart to a cinder, I will never trade upon her gratitude, nor seek to
profit by the promise she made her father. Never, so help me God!”
Gwen gave me one hurried, sweeping glance and then, throwing herself
upon the sofa, buried her face in the cushions. I forbore to disturb her
till I saw that Maitland was waking, when I laid my hand upon her head
and asked her to dry her eyes lest he should notice her tears.
“May I speak to him?” she said, with a look of resolution upon her face.
I could not divine her thoughts, as she smiled at me through her tears,
but I had no hesitancy in relying upon her judgment, so I gave her
permission and started to leave the room.
“Please don’t go,” she said to me. “I would prefer you should hear
what I have to say.” I reseated myself and Gwen drew near the bedside.
Maitland was now awake and following her every motion.
“I have something I want to say to you,” she said, bending over him. “Do
you feel strong enough to listen?” He nodded his head and she continued.
“You have already done a great deal for me, yet I come to you now to
ask a further favour,--I will not say a sacrifice--greater than all the
rest. Will you try to grant it?”
The rich, deep tones of her voice, vibrant with tender earnestness,
seemed to me irresistible.
“I will do anything in my power,” the invalid replied, never once moving
his eyes from hers.
“Then Heaven grant it be within your power!” she murmured, scarcely
above a whisper. “Try not to despise me for what I am about to say. Be
lenient in your judgment. My happiness, perhaps my very life, depends
upon this issue. I love you more than life; try to love me, if only a
little!”
I watched the effect of this declaration with a good deal of anxiety.
For fully half a minute Maitland seemed to doubt the evidence of his
senses. I saw him pinch himself to see if he were awake, and being thus
reassured, he said slowly: “Try--to--love--you! In vain have I tried
not to love you from the moment I first saw you. Oh, my God! how I adore
you!” He reached his arms out toward her, and, in a moment, they were
locked in each other’s embrace.
I saw the first kiss given and then stole stealthily from the room.
There was now no need of a doctor. The weird, irresistible alchemy of
love was at work and the reign of medicine was over. I did not wish to
dim the newly found light by my shadow, and,--well,--I wanted to see
Jeannette, so I left.
I need not tell you, even though you are a bachelor, how fast Maitland
improved. Gwen would permit no one else to nurse him, and this had much
to do with the rapidity of his recovery. In a month he was able to go
out, and in another month Gwen became Mrs. Maitland. A happier pair, or
one better suited to each other, it has never been my privilege to know.
As I visited them in their new home I became more and more dissatisfied
with bachelor existence, and there were times when I had half a mind
to go straight to Jeannette and ask her advice in the matter. Ah, those
days! They will never come to me again. Never again will a pink and
white angel knock so loudly at my heart, or be so warmly welcomed. I
wonder where she is and if she is thinking of me.
And now I may as well stop, for my narrative is over, and I hear someone
coming along the hail, doubtless after me. It is only Harold, so I
may add a word or two more. I am writing now with difficulty, for some
frolicsome individual has placed a hand over my eyes and says, “Guess.”
I can just see to write between the fingers. Again I am commanded,
“Guess!” so I say carelessly, “Alice.” Then, would you believe it,
someone kisses me and says: “Will you ever have done with that writing?
The children wish me to inform you that they have some small claim upon
your time.” You see how it is. I’ve got to stop, so I say, as becomes an
obedient gentleman: “Very well, I will quit upon one condition. I have
been wondering where on earth you were. Tell me what you have been doing
with yourself. I have been repeating in retrospect all the horrors of
bachelordom.”
“Why, Ned dear,” my wife replies, “I’ve only been down-town shopping for
Harold and little Jeannette. Bless me, I should think I’d been gone a
year!”
“Bless you, my dear Jeannette,” I reply; “I should think you had,” and
I draw her down gently into my lap and kiss her again and again for
the sake of the conviction it will carry. She says I am smothering her,
which means she is convinced.
You see I have learned some things since I was a bachelor.