Sylvia's sprain, as Austin had suspected, proved much more serious than
she had admitted, but when the village doctor came about noon to dress
her ankle, she insisted that she was none the worse for her long
exposure, and that if she must lie still on a lounge for two weeks, the
least the family could do would be to humor her in everything, and spend
as much time as possible with her, or she would certainly die of
boredom. She passed the entire day in making and unfolding plans,
looking up the sailing dates of steamships, and writing letters of
introduction for Austin. By night she had the satisfaction of knowing
that Weston's offer for the south meadow had been accepted, that the
Wallacetown Bank and the insurance money would furnish part of the
needed funds, and that she was to be allowed to loan the rest, and that
the little brick cottage belonged to her. The fact that Austin had had a
long talk with his father and brother, and that his passage for Holland
had been engaged by telegraph, seemed scarcely less of an achievement to
her; but Mrs. Gray noticed, as she kissed her little benefactress after
seeing her comfortably settled for the night, that her usually pale
cheeks were very red and her eyes unnaturally bright, and worried over
her all night long.
The next morning there could be no doubt of the fact that Sylvia was
really ill, and two days later Dr. Wells shook his head with
dissatisfaction after using his thermometer and stethoscope. He was a
conscientious man who lacked self-confidence, and the look of things was
disquieting to him.
"I think you ought to get a nurse," he said in the hall to Mrs. Gray as
he went out, "and probably she would like to have her own doctor from the
city in consultation, and some member of her family come to her. It looks
to me very much as if we were in for bronchial pneumonia, and she's a
delicate little thing at best."
Sylvia was laughing when Mrs. Gray, bent on being both firm and tactful,
reentered her room. "Tell Dr. Wells he must make his stage-whispers
softer if he doesn't want me to overhear him," she said, "and don't think
of ordering the funeral flowers just yet. I'm not delicate--I'm strong as
an ox--if I weren't I shouldn't be alive at all. Get a nurse by all means
if it will make things easier for you--that's the only reason I need one.
They're usually more bother than they're worth, but I know of two or
three who might do fairly well, if any one of them is free. My doctor is
an old fogey, and I won't have him around. As for family, I'm not as
greatly blessed--numerically or otherwise--in that respect as the Grays,
but my Uncle Mat would love to come, I feel sure, as he's rather hurt at
my runaway conduct." She gave the necessary addresses, and still
persisting that they were making a great fuss about nothing, turned over
on her pillow in a violent fit of coughing.
Sylvia was right in one thing: she was much stronger than Dr. Wells
guessed, and though the next week proved an anxious one for every member
of the household except herself, it was not a dismal one. Even if she
were flat on her back, her spirit and her vitality remained contagious.
Thomas, whose state of mind was by this time quite apparent to the
family, though he imagined it to be a well-concealed secret, hung about
outside her door, positive that she was going to die, and brought
offerings in the shape of flowers, early apples, and pet animals which he
thought might distract her. Austin, who shared his room, insisted that he
could not sleep because Thomas groaned and sighed so all night; Molly
pertly asked him why he did not try rabbits, as kittens did not seem to
appeal to Sylvia, and his mother bantered him half-seriously for thinking
of "any one so far above him" whose heart, moreover, was buried "in the
grave." Austin's somewhat expurgated version of Sylvia's story put an end
to the latter part of the protest, but sent his hearers into a new
ferment of excitement and sympathy. Sally, who was all ready to start
for a "ball" in Wallacetown with Fred when she heard it, declared she
couldn't go one step, it made her feel "that low in her spirits," and
Fred replied, by gosh, he didn't blame her one mite; whereat they
wandered off and spent the evening at a very comfortable distance from
the house, but fairly close together, revelling in a wealth of gruesome
facts and suppositions. Katherine said she certainly never would marry at
all, men were such dreadful creatures, and Molly said, yes, indeed, but
what else _could_ a girl marry?--while Edith determined to devote the
rest of _her_ life to attending and adoring the lovely, sad, drooping
widow, whose existence was to be one long poem of beautiful seclusion;
and she was so pleased with her own ideas, and her manner of expressing
them, that she wept scalding tears into the broth she was making for
Sylvia as she stirred it over the stove.
The presence of "Uncle Mat," greatly dreaded beforehand, proved an
unexpected source of solace and delight. He was a quiet, shrewd little
man, not unlike Sylvia in many ways, but with a merry twinkle in his eye,
and a brisk manner of speech which she did not possess. He sized up the
Gray family quickly, and apparently with satisfaction, for he talked
quite freely of his niece to them, and they saw that they were not alone
in their estimate of her.
"It certainly was a great stroke of luck all round--for her as well as
for you--when she blew in here," he said, "but if you knew what an
awful hole we think she's left behind her in New York you'd think
yourselves doubly lucky to have her all to yourselves. There's more
than one young man, I can tell you"--with a sly look at
Thomas--"watching out for her return. You should have seen her at a
party I gave for her three years ago or more, dressed in a pink frock
looped up with roses, and with cheeks to match! She wasn't always this
pale little shadow, I can tell you. Well, the boys were around her that
night like bees round a honeysuckle bush--no denying there's something
almighty irresistible about these little, soft-looking girls, now, is
there? Ah! her roses didn't last long, poor child. Now you've given her
a good, healthful place to live in, and something to think about and
do--she'd have lost her reason without them, after all she's been
through. But when you're tired of her, I want her. I'm a poor, forlorn
lonely old bachelor, and I need her a great deal more than any of you.
What do you say to a little walk, Mr. Gray, before we turn in? I want
to have a look at your fine farm. I have a farm myself--no such grand
old place as this, of course, but a neat little toy not far from the
city, where I can run down Sundays. Sylvia used to be very fond of
going down with me. It's from my foreman, a queer, scientific
chap--Jenkins his name is--that she's picked up all these notions
she's been unloading on you. Pretty good, most of them, aren't they,
though? You must run down there some time, boys, and look things
over--it's well to go about a bit when one's thinking of building and
branching out--Sylvia's idea, exactly, isn't it?"
Mr. Gray and Thomas did "run down," seizing the opportunity while Austin
was still at home, and while there was practically no farm-work to be
done. Jenkins did the honors of Mr. Stevens's little place handsomely,
and they returned with magnificent plans, from the erection of silos and
the laying of concrete floors to the proper feeding of poultry. When
"Uncle Mat" was obliged to return to his business, after staying over two
weeks with the Grays, Austin went with him, for he suggested that he
would be glad to have the boy as his guest in New York for a few days
before he sailed.
"You better have a glimpse of the 'neat little toy,' too," he said,
"and perhaps see something of a rather neat little city, too! You'll
want to do a little shopping and so on, and I might be of assistance in
that way."
"I don't see how you can go," said Thomas to Austin the night before he
left, as they were undressing, "while Sylvia is still in bed, and won't
be around for another week at least. She's responsible for all your
tremendous good fortune, and you'll leave without even saying thank you
and good-bye. You're a darned queer ungrateful cuss, and always were."
"I know it," said Austin, "and such being the 'nature of the beast,'
don't bother trying to make me over. You can be grateful and devoted
enough for both of us. Now, do shut up and let me go to sleep--I sure
will be thankful to get a room to myself, if I'm not for anything else."
"I don't see how any one can help being crazy over her," continued
Thomas, thumping his pillow as if he would like to pummel any one who
disagreed with him.
"Don't you?" asked Austin.
The next night he was in New York with Mr. Stevens, trying hard to feel
natural in a tiny flat which was only one of fifty in the same great
house. A colored butler served an elaborate dinner at eight o'clock in
the evening, and brought black coffee, liqueurs, and cigars into the
living-room afterwards, and, worst of all, unpacked all his scanty
belongings and laid them about his room. Austin really suffered, and the
cold perspiration ran down his back, but he watched his host carefully
and waited from one moment to another to see what would be expected of
him next; he managed, too, before he went to bed, to ask a question which
had been on his mind for some time.
"Would you mind telling me, sir, where Sylvia's mother is?"
Uncle Mat shot one of his keen little glances in Austin's direction.
"Why, no, not at all, as nearly as I can," he said. "My brother,
Austin, made a most unfortunate match; his wife was a mean, mercenary,
greedy woman, as hard as nails, and as tough as leather--but handsome,
oh, very handsome, as a girl, and clever, I assure you. I have often
been almost glad that my brother did not live long enough to see her in
her real colors. She married, very soon after Sylvia herself, a
worthless Englishman--discharged from the army, I believe, who had
probably been her lover for some time. Cary gave her a check for a
hundred thousand to get rid of her the day after his wedding to Sylvia,
and the pair are probably living in great comfort on that at some
second-rate French resort."
"Thank you for telling me; but it's rather awful, isn't it, that any one
should have to think of her mother as Sylvia must? Why, my mother--" He
stopped, flushing as he thought of how commonplace, how homely and
ordinary, his mother had often seemed to him, how he had brooded over his
father's "unfortunate match." "My mother has worked her fingers to the
bone for all of us, and I believe she'd let herself be chopped in pieces
to help us gladly any day."
"Yes," assented Mr. Stevens, "I know she would. There are--several
different kinds of mothers in the world. It's a thousand pities Sylvia
did not have a fair show at a job of that sort. She would have been one
of the successful kind, I fancy."
"It would seem so," said Austin.