"Miss Lou"

by Edward Payson Roe

"Having escaped that," she reflected, "there's nothing else I greatly fear," and she went down to breakfast resolving that she would be so faithful in her duties as a nurse that no one in authority would listen to her cousin or Perkins if they sought to make known their surmises.

Ignorant of her son's action and its results, Mrs. Whately met her niece kindly and insisted that she should not leave the dining-room until she had partaken of the breakfast now almost ready. Captain Maynard joined her with many expressions of a solicitude which the girl felt to be very uncalled for, yet in her instinct to propitiate every one in case her action should be questioned, she was more friendly to him than at any time before. Meanwhile, she was asking herself, "What would they do to me if all was found out?" and sustaining herself by the thought, "Whatever they do to me, they can't reach Lieutenant Scoville."

It was gall and bitterness to Whately to find her talking affably to Maynard, but before the meal was over she had the address to disarm him in some degree. For his own sake as well as hers and the family's she thought, "I must not irritate him into hasty action. If he should find out, and reveal everything, no matter what happened to me, he would bring everlasting disgrace on himself and relatives. I could at least show that my motives were good, no matter how soldiers, with their harsh laws, might act toward me; but what motive could excuse him for placing me, a young girl and his cousin, in such a position?"

Whately had already satisfied himself that no pretence of zeal for the service could conceal his real motive or save him from general scorn should he speak of the mere conjectures of a man like Perkins. He had never meant to speak of them publicly, simply to use his knowledge as a means of influencing his cousin. He now doubted the wisdom of this. Reacting from one mood to another, as usual, his chief hope now was that some unexpected turn of fortune's wheel would bring his opportunity. The one thing which all the past unfitted him to accept was personal and final denial. His egotism and impatience at being crossed began to manifest itself in another direction, one suggested by Maynard's evident susceptibility to his cousin's attractions. "Here is a chance," he thought, "of righting myself in Lou's eyes. If this fellow, thrown into her society by the fortune of war, not by courtesy, presumptuously goes beyond a certain point in his attentions, Cousin Lou will find that no knight of olden time would have fought for her quicker than I will. Mother says she is one who must have her romance. She may have it with a vengeance. It may open her eyes to the truth that a spirit like mine brooks no opposition, and when she sees that I am ready to face death for her she will admire, respect, and yield to a nature that is haughty and like that of the old nobility."

Thus he blinded himself in these vain, silly vaporings, the result of a false training and the reading of stilted romances. The thought of studying the girl's character, of doing and being in some degree what would be agreeable to her, never occurred to him. That kind of good sense rarely does occur to the egotistical, who often fairly exasperate those whom they would please by utter blindness to the simple things which ARE pleasing. Miss Lou had read more old romances than he, but she speedily outgrew the period in which she was carried away by the fantastic heroes described. They became in her fancy the other extreme of the matter-of-fact conditions in which her uncle and aunt had lived, and as we have seen, she longed to know the actual world, to meet with people who did not seem alien to her young and natural sympathies. Each new character she met became a kind of revelation to her. She was the opposite pole of the society belle, whose eyes have wearied of humanity, who knows little and cares less for anything except her mirrored image. With something of the round-eyed curiosity and interest of a child, she looked at every new face, asking herself, "What is he like?" not whether he will like and admire me, although she had not a little feminine pleasure in discovering that strangers were inclined to do this. Her disapproval of Maynard arose chiefly from the feeling that his gallantry at such a time, with the dead and dying all about them, was "more shocking than a game of cards on Sunday." She regarded his attentions, glances, tones, as mere well-bred persiflage, indulged in for his own amusement, and she put him down as a trifler for his pains. That he, as she would phrase it, "was just smitten without any rhyme or reason" seemed preposterous. She had done nothing for him as she had for Scoville. The friendly or the frankly admiring looks of strangers, the hearty gratitude and goodwill of the wounded, she could accept with as much pleasure as any of her sex; but she had not yet recognized that type of man who looks at a pretty woman and is disposed to make love to her at once. "Why does Captain Maynard stare at me so?" she asked herself, "when I don't care a thistle for him and never will. Why should I care? Why should he care? Does he think I'm silly and shallow enough to be amused by this kind of thing when that brave old colonel is dying across the hall?"

It was a relief to her to escape from him and Whately and to visit even poor Waldo, dying also, as she believed. "Dr. Ackley," she said, "you may trust me to give him his food now every two hours. I won't break down again."

"You did not break down, Miss Baron. All my nurses have their hours off. Why shouldn't you? I reckon," he added, smiling, "you'll have to obey my orders like the rest. I will go with you again on this visit."

To her the youth seemed ghastlier than ever, but the expression of gladness in his eyes was unchanged.

"Miss Baron feels very remorseful that she has not been to see you before," said Dr. Ackley, "but her labors yesterday were so many and varied that she had to rest. She will do better by you to-day."

Waldo could only reach his hand feebly toward her in welcome. She took the brown, shapely hand in both of hers and it made her sad to feel how cold and limp it was. "But a few hours ago," she thought, "it was striking blows with a heavy sabre."—"I have brought you some strong, hot soup," she said gently, "and shall bring it every two hours. You'll be very good and take it from me, won't you?"