On entering the doctor's office, Laure found him examining Bela's eye,
or rather the part of the face that once contained that valuable organ.
"How do, Doctor," said Laure; "how are you, Bela? Now that you are
well, why do you not return to your mistress?"
"Missy don't want see Bela now he got only one eye."
"We'll see about that," said Dr Fox. "Glad you came in, Laure. I was
about experimenting on the boy's eye. We'll see if we can't send you
back to your mistress with a new optic!"
As he said this he lifted Bela's eyelid, and in another second the boy
stood before the men with two eyes in his head, though one was but a
glass eye.
"Hello!" said Laure, "what hinders you now from going home to your
mistress? You are nearly as good-looking as you ever were! By the way,
Doctor I wish you would drop in and see Mrs Laure. She does not look
well."
"Sorry to hear that," said the doctor. "I will call there this morning
and take Bela with me." The two men exchanged a few more words and then
parted. Some hours later Bela, accompanied by the doctor, entered his
old home dressed in a most fantastic costume, and expressed, in his
peculiar way, the greatest joy at seeing his mistress, who was well
pleased to receive him again. She greeted the doctor cordially, and was
curious about this new eye of Bela's.
"How did you ever do it?" she asked.
Pleased to see her interested, the doctor slipped the shell that so
skilfully simulated the destroyed organ of sight, and showed her how it
was inserted.
"It is easy enough. You could do it yourself," said he.
Dainty felt a childish desire to try. She had none of that horror of
mutilation that most delicate women have, for her life had made her
familiar with the sight of physical afflictions. The doctor, though he
secretly wondered at her curiosity, was willing to indulge it, and
Dainty soon found that she could actually adjust a glass eye herself.
Bela was dismissed, and her look of interest gave place to one of
weariness. "Well, Mrs Laure, what is the reason I have not seen you
riding of late?"
The blood flew to her cheeks, for she felt that the doctor was reading
her heart. With the desire that every woman has to guard her dearest
secret, she said:
"Donald imagines I am threatened with fever. It is nothing but a
feeling of homesickness. To be sure my heart beats so at times that it
nearly chokes me, but I think it will soon pass away. I have been
coaxing Mr Laure to take me away from the Fields. I think if I were
near the old ocean once more my health would return."
The doctor listened to her voice, but he only heard her mental words.
The words she framed with her lips did not conceal the cause of her
distress. We think to deceive the world when we talk to cover our
feelings, but how rarely do we succeed with the good and true. The soul
sits in the silence. Its influences are silent influences, and its
voice soft and gentle. So, as it is attuned to stillness, it hears
other soul voices when in harmony with it, and it discerns the truth
with unerring judgment.
Dr Fox had diagnosed mental struggles until it had become second nature
to him to read the thoughts of his patients. He had also been keenly
alive to the infatuation of Herr Schwatka for Mrs Laure, and when she
alluded to a weakness of the heart, he asked:
"Have you anything on your mind that worries you?" She caught her
breath for a second, and the doctor read in her hesitancy the true
answer, though she replied:
"Oh, no."
"I will leave you a few powders, though a change of scene would do you
more good than any medicine I might prescribe. You need to get out and
away from accustomed places. You are stagnating. Your mind is
travelling in a circle, and your thoughts dwell too much on yourself,
which always produces an unsatisfactory mental, as well as physical
condition. I sometimes advise my lady patients, when they are the
subject of their own thoughts, to think of me. A crusty old bachelor is
so radical a change, and so hard a subject that it has succeeded
admirably in curing some of them, who only needed variety." This last
remark brought a smile to Dainty's face.
"Yet I advise them not to overdo the remedy lest they think too much of
me. I am extremely cautious, Mrs Laure."
Dainty smiled again. Sentiment and the doctor seemed so absurd a
combination to her. He was kind-hearted, but to think of him as an
awakener of love--Ah! love brought to her mind another. She blushed,
stopped, and _thought of the doctor_. It was a good remedy. He was
looking at her. She felt a mixture of discomfort and a desire to tell
him how great was her heartache. Had he asked her her secret, she would
have told him. He divined her confidential mood, but asked nothing. It
is sometimes wise to be ignorant. If the family physician should
divulge the secrets of the inner life of the social sphere in which he
moves, what a shattered world would we live in! The life of a hermit
would at once hold irresistible charms for many.
What an innocent and ignorant violator of social and marital laws was
Dainty! But ignorance and innocence are not as beautiful qualities as
knowledge and purity. With the former, life is but drifting; with the
latter, it is anchored to a rock.
The doctor realised that Dainty was drifting. He had seen many another
woman drift, only to be broken against the rocks on bleak unknown
shores; later he had seen the wreck washed up lying on the sands of
life, exposed to the gaze of the gaping curiosity-seeker, and to his
careless comments. Would this beautiful creature, wounded almost to
death, be another wreck noted by pitying angels, and filling a sorrowful
page in the book of Time? Not if he could help guide her. Ah! if our
impulses are in the direction of the good, we know not how soon we may
be given the opportunity to guide a frail bark clear of some threatening
rock, into smiling waters, and under summer skies! The doctor's
opportunity came sooner than he anticipated.
"I will call in again, Mrs Laure," said he, rising. "I have to see a
patient a few hours' ride from here, and on my return, will tell Mr
Laure that he must take you to England. I am expecting to go home for a
short trip this summer, I need a change, too. One gets rusty living in
Africa without a sight of other lands."
He took her little hand in his, gave it a quick, firm, friendly grasp,
that seemed to say: "I know all about your trouble. Everything will
come out all right." Aloud he said: "You must stop thinking about
yourself," and left the house.