CHAPTER VI.
The next few days were quiet dreamy ones to the invalid. Not much conversation was allowed in his room, and he did not seem inclined to talk. To watch Victoria as she glided silently about performing the usual duties, was happiness enough for him. There was a world of enduring patient love in his eyes, as they followed her every motion. His thoughts were always of her. “Was there ever woman so noble, so forgiving? If he had loved her in the days gone by, what was this feeling which now thrilled him whenever she laved his face or touched his hand? It was as if the hand of an angel had been laid upon him.” He felt purified, exhilarated, free from all sin. Her calm spirituelle face soothed and quieted him. He longed to utter what was in his mind; to tell her how sanctified she had become to him; to pray to her as a Catholic prays to his patron saint. Knowing his sin, knowing how he had deceived her, she did not turn from him in scorn and loathing, as any other woman would have done, but true to herself, compassionate, forgiving, she had stayed by him tenderly nursing him back to health and strength. He knew that to her never-ceasing care he owed his life, but not for a moment was he vain enough to attribute it to love for him. The love which was just springing up in her heart like a tender flower, must have been ruthlessly crushed when she knew of his base deception which had continued for so many years, and now that she knew Roger was living, her love would again return to him and rightfully, Andrew did not rebel at the thought. There could never be any more hatred for Roger in his heart. The noble conduct of this more than noble woman had forever dispelled it. Without a murmur he would resign her, content in knowing that she had forgiven him; content to worship her from afar, living over again the fragrant past, taking no hopes for the future for he could see none. The doctor had said that Roger’s days were numbered, but what of that, Victoria would never return to him who had ruined her life. Ah, no, her forebearance could not be expected to extend that far, and somehow the thought did not affect him, as it would have done before this sickness. His love for Victoria was purer, of a higher order than before. She seemed no longer a mortal but a being most celestial, and he would not have been at all surprised had he seen wings suddenly appear upon her form and Victoria soaring away into space far, far beyond his gaze.
Victoria was conscious of Andrew’s eyes following her every motion, and she strove to curb the strong passion which at times threatened to master her. She longed to cast herself beside him; to confess the overpowering influence which drew her to him despite her will; to tell him that now, God pity her, she loved him with a strength, a passion, which was as deep as his own, and that the man upstairs, who should be all in all to her, was nothing, nothing, nor ever would be. She cared for him less than she cared for Mary, and in the same maternal way; but for the man who had sinned so grievously against her and her child; who had not hesitated to commit a crime which if known meant years of imprisonment; for this man, guilty though he might be, she was willing to suffer anything, rather than be separated from him. And why was it so? That she was unable to explain even to herself. She only knew that so it was, incredible as it might seem to anybody who had never been tempted in like manner. To save the man she loved she resolved to keep Roger in imprisonment, whatever might be the cost, and to let things go on as before. She felt a satisfaction in the thought that in so doing her guilt would be equal to Andrew’s. Therefore one could not reproach the other.
Few words had passed between them. Once when she had been feeding to him some gruel, he had kissed her hand and murmured: “My angel,” in tones which stirred every fiber in her heart, and set them quivering. She had not answered him. She could not. If she had, such a torrent of burning words would have escaped her, that in his weak state might have proved disastrous. To kill him now would be to kill herself, so she veiled her eyes when obliged to approach him, and her calm, low voice, and rather cold features, told not of the storm-tossed soul within the fragile frame.
Mary had been allowed in for a few moments each day, but her incessant chattering wearied Andrew. He loved his child. The sight of her glad face brought him new life. Her kisses were like strong wine, yet in a short time he tired of her, and was glad when the door closed upon her, and he was once more left alone with his waking dreams, wherein Victoria, “his angel,” was always the central figure.
Despite Victoria’s entreaties the doctor had gone back to his cheerless bachelor quarters which he shared with a younger colleague who had taken the doctor’s patients during Andrew’s illness. Back to a landlady who resembled a feather pillow tied tightly around the middle; a landlady who wore a false front many shades darker than the back hair; who sniffed when she poured his tea, sniffed when she passed him an article of food, and who had a very annoying habit of inquiring after each and every patient by name, and of enumerating their several ailments for the benefit of the other boarders who did not know, and who did not care to know, but who bore the infliction with martyr-like stoicism. From what source she gathered her information was a mystery to the doctor who was most reticent in all things pertaining to his profession. He would have left her establishment long ago only it was “Hobson’s choice” with him. There was none other. She was sole monarch over the stomachs of all the homeless men in Fort Henry, and if any dared to grumble at the food placed before him she could afford to toss her head and tell him, “if he didn’t like it he knew what he could do,” which was just what the hapless individual did not know. The doctor never grumbled over the culinary arrangements. He was never known to perpetrate but one joke on the good woman, which, although hugely enjoyed by those who heard it, fell far short of the mark shot at.
One day the doctor came to his dinner with a ravenous appetite. He had been in the saddle since daybreak without a mouthful. A brown substance was set before him which he eyed rather suspiciously. At last hunger conquered suspicion, and he took a mouthful. He chewed and chewed, and finally with a gulp which brought the tears to his eyes, he swallowed it. The few who had suffered before him were watching silently.
“What do you call this dish?” he gravely asked his landlady.
“Fried sole,” she replied, busy with the cups and saucers.
“Ah?” he exclaimed, quickly. “What shoemaker do you deal with? I must know him.”
A general laugh followed his query. Only the landlady maintained her gravity. She had heard nothing to laugh at. “I most generally trade at the sign of the boot,” she said, casting a withering look around the table, but which changed to a smile as she looked at the doctor. “I never had cause to complain, although I will say that my last congress gaiters ain’t goin’ to wear near so good as t’others, but on the whole I’d advise you to go there, doctor. They’ll treat you well, especially if you have corns.”
The doctor looked helplessly at his companions and then collapsed. His first and only joke had been a failure. “Requiescat in pace,” he murmured, which quotation caused another outbreak among the diners, but they were quickly frowned down by the austere mistress. She had no affinity between fried soles and her shoemaker, but she did look with approving eyes at the doctor, who had noticed her feet enough to ask what shoemaker she employed. “He was a dear man, and near her own age; could it be possible he was thinking of matrimony, and with her? Well, if so, he should be rewarded. She had saved a tidy little sum since Samuel died,” (Samuel being the dear departed, of course), “and it should be all his, every cent. He should see how generous she could be. The dear, good man.”
After this she watched over his going out and coming in with almost wisely solicitude. She managed by hook or by crook to know who were his patients, and what their ailments. It necessitated a reckless expenditure of coppers among the street gamin, but it might pay her in the end, so she thought. He could not very well ignore her, when he found how anxiously she studied his every interest. She even went so far as to purloin several medical works from his study in his absence, so as to read up against the time when she might have to entertain him whole evenings in her parlor, which until now had been sacred to Sundays and “other high days,” as she called them. No boarder’s profane foot had ever desecrated the jaundiced carpet, whose flaring green and yellow figures, if made in our day and time, would have driven Oscar Wilde much wilder. The stiff, horsehair chairs were miracles in their way. It required courage and a certain amount of finesse on the part of a would-be occupant, ere he dared entrust himself to their embrace—a cold, slippery embrace, not at all reassuring. Even a huge oil painting of the dear, departed Samuel, taken in Highland costume, could not lend a festive aspect to the room. In all things but the carpet it was decidedly funereal. Into this “cheerful” retreat she ushered the doctor the night of his return from “The Five Gables.” She had literally killed the fatted calf in honor of his return. The supper-table groaned beneath the unwonted weight of so many delicacies heaped upon it. The widow was resplendent in a new false front which curled. She had given several shin-plasters for those curls, “something quite new,” the shopkeeper told her, “and recently adopted by the Queen of England.” It was not without some misgivings that she indulged in this reckless piece of extravagance, but there was much at stake. Those curls might be the means of a proposal. “Mrs. Dr. Arthur Harrison.” The name was magical. Without so much as a sigh she counted out the necessary amount, and the curls were hers.
She made the chore boy saw a new board for her stays, which she laced until every breath she drew was a sigh. She could not even sniff without a pang in her bosom, and after she was dressed she ordered the maid of all work to go around her with a tape line. She smiled, although it was a mighty effort, when she heard the girl exclaim: “Thirty-four inches, Mistress Jackson; that’s two inches less than last week, and three inches less than the week before.” What a sacrifice was she offering upon the altar of her love. She met the doctor with a fat smile, which she meant should be captivating, but which only served to make her ridiculous. The doctor thought as he went slowly to his study: “I wonder what has come over the old lass. She seems a good deal spruced up. It must be that she is on the war path for a successor to the dear departed. Well I wish her all the good fortune that may attend her. Fortune is a fickle jade.”
He did not dream that all these demonstrations were in honor of his modest self.
The boarders looked at one another as their landlady with a sweet smile, asked the doctor to accompany her to the parlor as they left the table. What was about to happen? Were the skies going to fall? Were their eyes to behold that sacred veil, i. e.—the door—lifted so that at last they might gaze on what lay beyond? Oh, no, the landlady had other plans. As the doctor could hardly refuse her invitation this first evening of his return, he acquiesced with as good grace as possible.
Taking his arm and giggling like a girl of sixteen, she swept him out of the door on to the veranda, and unlocking the big green door, ushered him with an awed manner into the sacred room. The semi-twilight which struggled through the drawn shades, was embarrassing in the extreme to the doctor, who was all at sea as to his surroundings. He dared not advance a step in any direction, for huge shapes loomed up before him, the likeness of which he could only imagine. Vague feelings of mistrust as to his landlady’s designs began to steal upon him. He wished he had not come. She still held his arm, and she now gave it a little squeeze which made him feel chilly. “Horrors! what was this dreadful woman about to say or do?” He resolved to forestall her by saying: “Madam, take pity on my youth and innocence. I am an orphan, with neither father or mother, and two hundred miles from home,” but ere he could muster his courage she had left him, and in a moment he heard a flint struck, and she came toward him bearing a candelabra which she set upon a table. He could now see where he was, and as she said: “Be seated, doctor,” he gingerly consigned himself to one of the horsehair chairs, which looked to him like an evil spirit in disguise.
She seated herself in a similar chair, which she drew perilously near the doctor. He would have liked to move away, but he felt a slipperiness which warned him that any unguarded move might send him upon the floor. He raised his eyes to where hung the portrait of the dear departed. Here, at least, was a safe subject for conversation.
“A fine-looking man,” he said, nodding at the sepulchral face of Samuel.
“Ah, now, you be talking,” replied the widow, with a loud sniff, which caused her untold agony in the region of her waist. “Oh, he was a man what was a man, was that one. Never a word of fault about anything, just that even tempered was he. Give him his ale and a pipe, and you’d never know he was in the house. He was Scotch, you know.”
“I perceive that,” said the doctor, who felt in duty bound to say something.
“Yes,” continued the widow, “that picture I had copied. A man came along and stopped with me two weeks. He never paid me any board money. He hadn’t any money, so he said as how he would paint my Samuel’s picter. It’s as nateral as life, only one thing, Samuel had a cast in one eye. I often longed to know how he would look with two straight eyes, so I had him painted with both eyes alike. Oh, how I have admired that picter. It was the only thing I didn’t quite love him for, that squint. Sometimes it were worse nor others, and I know when he was courting me, I used to imagine he had one eye on me and tother on the timepiece, as if he was thinking about going every minute. He’s been dead seven year. I wore my bombazine as long as any widow ever does. I mourned him faithful. Folks ought not to gossip if I see fit to choose another.” She heaved a sigh and looked coyly at the doctor. “I have saved a good bit of money, and it’s all in stocks and bonds. This house and the next one is mine, clear from debt. I don’t owe anybody. I’m as good a match for a man of my age as you’ll find in a long run.”
The doctor fidgeted. “Was he listening to a proposal from this old busybody, who was old enough to be his mother, or she ought to be, if she wasn’t? Would nothing help him out of this dilemma?” In his uneasiness he had been perilously nearing the edge of the chair, but he was unaware of his peril. He was trying to conjure some excuse for leaving the room without telling a down-right lie. “My dear,”—he was about to add “madam,” but his evil star was just then in the ascendant, for, without warning, before he could regain his balance, the treacherous horsehair deposited him at the widow’s feet. She did not wait for him to finish his sentence. The sight of him upon his knees before her, where she had so often seen him in her dreams, was too much, and clasping him around the neck, she held his head tightly against her expansive breast, while she sobbed: “Yes, I know I am your dear. Oh, Arthur! how happy we shall be! I’ll turn all the boarders away, and we’ll live here all alone, just you and me, ducky.”
The doctor struggled to free himself. He felt as if he was slowly suffocating, but she held him fast.
“Oh, how good it seems to again hold a dear head like this,” she continued, patting him heavily. The doctor groaned.
“And don’t my petsie, wetsie, feel good?” she asked, kissing the bald spot on his head. “Is he sick? Oh, I am such a wonderful nurse. Where is the pain, ducky?”
She let up on her hold of him for a moment, and he partly struggled to his feet, but she caught him again.
“Let me go, woman!” he roared, “you must be mad, stark, staring mad! Marry you? Why, I’d poison you within a week.”
“Woman!” she gasped, “oh, that I should live to hear my Arthur call me woman!” She made one grand effort to hold him, but there came a sound like the distant report of a pistol; with a shriek she loosened her arms, and the doctor ignominiously fled. Fled out through the green door, leaving it open behind him; around the porch, into his study, where he bolted and barred the doors and windows. Then he sat down and laughed. Laughed until the tears came at the spectacle he must have presented upon his knees, with the widow hugging him for dear life.
To what good angel he owed his happy release he knew not, but the widow knew only too well. The long suffering stays at last rebelled, and at the most critical moment revenged themselves by bursting.
So ended the widow’s courtship. She sat long that night gazing at Samuel’s portrait. “To think he should have witnessed my humiliation,” she murmured, and then to her excited fancy, one eye began to take on that leer which had been so distasteful to her, and sighing heavily, she arose and turned the picture toward the wall.