Chapter Twenty Two.
A Last Effort.
“Corny, I’ve no patience with you,” cried Dr Thorpe, as they sat at dinner in their hotel with a guest that evening—Joe Pacey.
“Not to-night, dear,” she said, with a quiet, grave smile.—“He has very little patience with me when he comes home tired from the hospitals,” she continued, turning to Pacey. “He works too hard.”
“Yes: he does seem a glutton over work; but we must work hard nowadays to succeed.”
“Hah, you are right,” said the young doctor. “It was all very well a hundred years ago. Plenty of medical men went through life then without half the knowledge I possess, while I’m a perfect baby to your big doctors.”
“No, you are not, dear,” said Cornel quietly. “You know that you stand first among our young medical men.”
“Humph! not saying much that; but this is begging the question. I shall want to stay in England another three months, and, as I was saying, the Hudsons go back by the next boat. I’ve been to the office: you can have a cabin, so you had better accompany them.”
“No, dear, I shall stay and go back with you.”
Thorpe pushed his chair away from the table impatiently.
“My dear sister, where is your pride?”
“My dear brother, where is your sympathy?”
“How can I have sympathy for a girl who is so blind to her own dignity! Now, my dear Pacey, do you not agree with me that my sister is behaving very foolishly?”
“No,” said Pacey, holding his glass of wine to the light, shutting one eye and scowling at it with the other—“no, sir, I don’t.”
“Thank you, Mr Pacey,” said Cornel, laying her hand upon the table, so that he could take it in his and press it warmly.
“Can’t kiss it before company,” he said, in his abrupt way. “Please take it as being done—or owing.”
“You are as bad over the scamp as she is,” cried Thorpe sharply.
“Come, come, doctor,” cried Pacey; “you are too hard. If Armstrong were suffering from a bodily disease, you would stand by him.”
“Of course. But this—”
“Is a mental disease,” cried Pacey, “so why blame your sister for standing by the patient?”
“Bah! Don’t talk like that. I haven’t patience with her. I thought her firm, self-reliant, and proud of her position as a woman.”
“Quite right,” said Pacey, turning and smiling at Cornel. “She’s all that.”
“I join issue,” cried Thorpe. “No: she is neither one nor the other.”
“And I say that she is all three,” cried Pacey, bringing his fist down on the table with a thump, which drew the waiters’ attention. “I beg pardon,” he said hastily. “No, I don’t. I’m not ashamed of my earnestness.”
“Just eight,” said Thorpe, looking at his watch. “I’ve a meeting to attend. You will stop and talk to my sister?”
“Of course.”
Ten minutes later they were alone, and Cornel’s manner changed.
“You will not mind my brother’s manner to you?” she said earnestly.
“Not I,” replied Pacey bluffly. “He’s mad against Dale, naturally. Wouldn’t be a good brother if he were not. I’m mad against him, and get worse; every day.”
“But tell me now—what news have you for me?” Pacey looked at her with pitying thoughtfulness, and then said gravely—
“You have trusted me thoroughly since the first day we met, and made me your friend.”
“Completely,” she said earnestly.
“And a friend would be nothing unless sincere.”
“No.”
“I have no news, then, that is good.”
Cornel sighed, and rested her head upon her hand.
“Can nothing be done?” she said at last. “Oh! it is too dreadful to let his whole career be blasted like this! Mr Pacey, you are his friend; pray, pray, help me! Tell me what to do.”
Pacey’s brow wrinkled so that he looked ten years older, and he sat for some time with his eyes averted.
At last he spoke.
“I know what I ought to say to you as your friend.”
“Yes; what?” she cried eagerly; but Pacey shook his head.
“Nothing but—be strong and bear your cruel disappointment like a true woman, proud of her dignity.”
“I could bear all that,” she said piteously, “even if it broke my heart, but I cannot bear the knowledge that the boy with whom I walked hand in hand as a child, grew up with as if he were my own brother, and whose child-love ripened into a sincere affection, should drift away like this. Mr Pacey—this woman! I know how beautiful she is, and how she has ensnared him. I ceased to wonder when we stood face to face. I know too what influence she has, but nothing but horror and misery can result from it all, and it cuts me to the heart to think of what he will suffer—of the bitter repentance to come.”
Pacey sighed.
“To me, night and day, it is as if he were drowning—being swept away; and if—utterly worn out—I sleep for a few minutes, I wake up with a start, for his hands seem to be stretched out to me to save him before it is too late.”
Pacey was silent still as he sat with his arms resting upon his knees, and his head bent, gazing at the carpet.
At last he looked up, to meet her appealing eyes fixed on his.
“Yes,” he said, and he took a long deep breath: “there is no other way.”
“You—you have thought of something?” she cried eagerly.
“It is a forlorn hope,” he replied. “I ought not to advise it, and your brother will blame me, and tell me I am not acting as an honest friend.”
“The danger sweeps away all ideas of worldly custom, Mr Pacey,” she cried with animation, her eyes sparkling, her cheeks flushed; and as he gazed at her, the artist mentally said that if his friend could see the woman he had so cruelly jilted, now, he would humbly ask her to pardon him, and take him back to her heart.
“Yes,” he said firmly, “this is not time to study etiquette. Go to him, then. Don’t look upon it as sinking your womanly dignity, but as a last effort to save the man you once loved from a deadly peril.”
“Yes; and when I go,” said Cornel faintly, “what can I say more than I have said?”
“Say nothing, child. If your face, and your reproachful forgiving eyes do not bring him to your feet, come away, and go down upon your knees to thank God for saving you from a man not worthy of a second thought.”