RICHARD.
So absorbed was Mrs. West in Robert that she seldom noticed Richard, and
so she paid no heed when he one day came into the sick-room, looking
whiter even than his brother, by whose side he sat down as usual, doing
for him the many offices he had been accustomed to perform, and except
for his suffering face, giving no token of the terrible pain which wrung
his heart when he that morning read in Jessie’s letter that the worst he
had feared was true, and that Dora was to be married in September.
“For a person just engaged she acts very strangely,” Jessie wrote, “and
Bell will insist that she does not love her future lord, but is marrying
him from some mistaken sense of duty. What do you think?”
Dr. West could not tell what he thought, he only knew that his brain
grew giddy, and his soul faint and sick as he realized that Dora was
lost to him forever. Never even when Anna died had he suffered so keen a
pang as now, when in the solitude of his chamber he tried to pray, while
the words he would utter died away in unmeaning sounds. But God, who
readeth the inmost secrets of the heart, knew what his poor sorrowing
child would ask, and the needed strength to bear was given all the same.
It was very tedious now, waiting in that sick-room, for there crept into
Richard’s mind the half conviction that if he would see Dora for only
one brief moment, he could save her from the sacrifice. But Robert’s
improvement was slow, and day after day went by, until at last there
came a morning when there was put into Richard’s hand a soiled,
worn-looking letter, whose superscription made his heart for an instant
stop its beatings, for he recognized Dora’s handwriting, and
involuntarily pressed the missive to his lips ere he broke the seal. It
had been weeks and weeks upon the road, lying for a long time in another
office, but it had come to him at last; he had torn the envelope open;
he was reading Dora’s cry for help, written so long ago, a cry to which
he gave a far different interpretation from what she had intended.
“Oh, why did I not speak to her again!” he exclaimed; “why was I
permitted to form so wrong an estimate of woman’s character? But it is
not yet too late. The wedding is to be the 15th of September, Jessie
wrote. A steamer sails from here in a few days, and Robert must be able
by that time to leave California, or if he is not I shall leave him
behind with mother and fly to Dora. Oh if I could go to-day!”
An hour later, and Robert knew all there was to know of Dora as
connected with his brother, and warmly approved the plan of sailing in
the Raritan. I shall grow stronger on the sea, he said, and the result
proved that he was right, for when at last the Raritan was loosened from
her moorings and gliding swiftly over the blue waters of the Pacific, he
lay on her deck, drinking in new strength and vigor with each freshening
breeze. But with Richard it was different. Now that they were really
off, and Robert needed comparatively little of his help, he sank beneath
the load of anxiety and excitement, and taking to his berth, scarcely
lifted his head from the pillow while the ship went gliding on towards
home and Dora Freeman.