Harry Coverdale's Courtship, and All That Came of It

by Frank E. Smedley

Harry Coverdale was blessed with an iron constitution, or as he would himself have expressed it, the good keep and training he had come in for ever since he was a colt, had put real hard flesh and muscle on him, so that take him when you would, he was always in working order. Thus, although the hurried journey he had performed with a broken arm and a series of bruises from head to foot, would have stretched most men on a bed of sickness, and although Scalpel Gouger, M.D., elongated his already sufficiently lengthened visage on beholding his condition, and prophesied results of which lock-jaw was by no means one of the most terrible, Harry yet experienced no ill effects from his imprudence. His stiffness wore off after a day or two, the bruises disappeared one by one, and the broken bone began to re-unite as quickly as in the nature of things was possible. But although his bodily ailments gave him little cause for uneasiness, his mind remained a prey to anxiety, grief, and remorse; for Alice, his young wife—the depth and strength of his love for whom he became painfully aware of, now that, as it appeared, he was about to lose her—lay at the point of death. The demon of fever had fixed his burning fingers upon her, and held her in an iron grasp which no mortal power seemed able to unclasp. When Harry arrived, Alice did not recognize him, her state alternating between attacks of delirium, in which she talked with the wildest incoherence, and intervals of stupor, during each of which she lay perfectly unconscious and prostrated by the violence of the paroxysm which had preceded it. Poor Harry lost not an instant in making his way to her room, disregarding the housekeeper’s entreaties to wait for Dr. Gouger’s return. When he entered, Alice was sitting up in bed, with flushed cheeks and eyes brilliant with the unnatural lustre of feverish excitement, and talking with the utmost volubility; at first he fancied she recognized him, for regarding him earnestly, she exclaimed—

“So you have come at last, have you?—and now tell me quickly, what news do you bring me?” Without waiting a reply, she continued: “Why don’t you speak? No news, do you say?—it is false, you are trying to deceive me. I can read it in your face.—What! have they met already? then Harry is killed. Ah! I knew it, I knew it! D’Almayne is a dead shot—Alfred Courtland told me so in that letter.—What did you mutter?—an accident,—it was no accident.—D’Almayne has shot him, killed him in a duel; but it was my fault, I made him angry,—I drove him to go up to London,—it is I who have murdered him. Oh, Harry, my own loved husband, if I could but have died for you!—shall I never see him again?” She continued wildly: “Ah, yes, I must, I will! Let me go to him, I say;” and as she spoke she attempted to get out of bed. Throwing his uninjured arm round her, Harry prevented her from accomplishing her purpose, though she struggled so violently that he was obliged to obtain the assistance of the hired nurse who had been recommended by the medical man.

“Alice, love, look at me,” he said, tenderly. “I am safe—I am here by your side—I will not leave you. Do you not know me?” Gazing at him wildly, she tore herself from his embrace, exclaiming in a tone of horror—

“Know you? yes, I know you, fiend! demon! you are Horace D’Almayne! Do you come here with my husband’s blood fresh upon your hands, and dare to insult me by your detestable caresses?—are not you afraid that the ground will open and swallow you? Leave me, leave me instantly, or, weak woman as I am, I will take my vengeance into my own hands, and stab you to the heart!”

This idea that Harry was D’Almayne recurred to Alice’s mind whenever she beheld her husband, and was the source of so much pain and distress to him, that for both their sakes Mr. Gouger forbade him to enter her room for two or three days, by which time he trusted the delusion might have worn itself out. The prohibition was a judicious one, as it enabled Harry to obtain the rest he so much required; and when, after an interval of nearly a week, he again returned to his wife’s apartment, although she was still unable to recognize him, she no longer evinced any repugnance on his approach. Her fits of delirium became less violent and frequent, but she appeared to be gradually sinking into a state of prostration, mental and bodily, which to the eye of the medical man was even more alarming. Her next fancy was, that Harry was her brother Arthur; she talked to him of old scenes and recollections, of their childhood, and half broke poor Harry’s heart by deploring in the most pathetic terms the loss of her husband’s affection, which she declared Arabella Crofton had stolen from her.

“Ah, Arthur,” she would exclaim, “it is cruel of her, because, you know, I loved him so very, very much! Until I saw him I meant never to marry; I fancied I could not bear to leave dearest mamma, and Emily, and Tom, and all of you. But it was of no use: he was so good and kind, and brave, and handsome; and though he was a little rough at first, I soon saw what a noble, gentle heart his rough manner concealed, and when I found he loved me (for he did love me once, Arthur), how could I, how could any girl, help loving him with her whole soul.”

Poor Harry, as she thus wildly talked, would lean over and kiss her pale, worn cheeks, and tell her he was her own loving husband, and doted on her, and her only,—that he never cared, and never would care, for any other woman, and she would smile faintly, and reply—

“No, Arthur, Harry would not say that; he loved her before he knew me, over in Italy; Alfred Courtland told me all about it,—how they ran away together, and all.”

As she uttered these words Coverdale started, and a shade passed across his brow; not heeding it, Alice continued—

“Oh! she is a dreadful woman, and so clever! all the foolish things I did to pique Harry, in order to regain his affection, she showed them up to him in a false light, and made him believe me as wicked as herself, and so she stole his love away from poor, poor Alice;” then she would turn her face from him, and wail feebly like an unhappy child. At other times she would burst into the most violent self-reproaches.