V

So Nellie’s summer outing was arranged: she was to have four months in a quiet place in the country; plenty of fresh air, and good milk, and wholesome food.

No wonder the little pale cheeks grew round and faintly pink; that her eyes seemed darker and brighter; her pinched, white lips fuller and redder. In a month it was evident that the quiet life which Sara had taken such pains to find was good for her; her whole miserable, sickly body began to thrive. It was a “quiet” life. From the girl’s point of view it was perfectly intolerable. She endured, in her way, the misery of the intellectual man or woman cut off absolutely from books or study of any kind, or of a clean person obliged to live in filth. The contrast was as great. The fact that it was in favor of righteousness did not make it any the less painful. Nellie’s sudden removal from the cheap and base excitements of her life caused absolute suffering. Such suffering, untempted reformers argue, is good for the soul.

But to Nellie the sweet drift of silent summer days was maddeningly dull; she brooded over what she felt was the hardship of her lot, and looked back upon her Mercer life as a time of freedom, and of a strange sort of importance,—which was as near self-respect as she could come. At least, in Mercer she was not “trod on,” as she now felt herself to be; she could go and walk the street on fine afternoons with the Caligan girls, three abreast, arm in arm, strutting and jostling each other, and looking into the shop windows; laughing loudly, or glancing haughtily at the passers-by, or giggling at “gentlemen friends.” It was all so harmless and so pleasant! Of course, Mrs. Smith’s on Baker Street, that was different; but just to meet lady and gentlemen friends, and talk and “carry on”—what was wrong in that? She did, to be sure, feel nervous about her health; but if it were necessary to go into the country, why couldn’t she have gone to a hotel, where she could have had some fun? It seemed a cruel life to Nellie! She came to feel toward Sara Wharton, instead of the uncomfortable resentment which in such natures takes the place of gratitude, a venomous hatred. Sara seemed to this poor, mean soul, a powerful enemy, one who interfered with every joy, and, not content with that, who “talked;” and Nellie hated talk. Like most of her class, except when in a rage, she had little to say beyond exclamations, and Miss Wharton’s impetuous flow of words, her entreaties, and rebukes, and suggestions, had only bewildered and irritated the girl; for Sara, like most of her class, had never taken Nellie’s mental deficiencies into account; she treated her always like a rational being. Like a “Soul,” Sara herself would have said.

So, up on the farm, as her fright about her health subsided, poor Nellie raged against her benefactor and her cruel fate. She fell into fits of weeping, or, what was worse to the quiet husband and wife in whose charge she was, into long silences, broken only by fitful flashes of black temper. Yet in spite of this, her bodily health increased. Very likely there would have been open rebellion, and a break for liberty by midsummer, if an unexpected interest had not come into her life. Two students, with their tutor, came to camp out near the farm; and after passing them once or twice in the road, and giggling with them over the posting of a letter in the office, poor Nellie grew better tempered. She frizzed her hair with keener enjoyment, and practiced airs and graces before her glass all the long hot forenoons; and in the afternoons walked in to the village on the remote chance of meeting the two boys. She did not see them often, but to know they were near gave her something to think about in the deadly monotony of farm life, and she was much happier. On the rare occasions of their meeting she would roll her eyes, and talk in her simpering, nasal voice of the weather, or the novel she had been reading, or how her “guardian” had sent her into the country for her health. The boys said to each other that she was pretty, and ripping good fun; and used to laugh over her silliness with their tutor. They were too busy and too wholesomely happy to give very much thought to her.

Thus the summer passed. The health which Sara Wharton so earnestly desired had returned, temporarily at least. When at last the first of September came, and Miss Wharton’s letter arrived to say she might come home,—such a gentle, friendly, sympathetic letter,—Nellie was wild with delight. She could hardly remember to say good-by to the kind people who had looked after her for the last few months; she almost forgot the boys; she was tremulous with joy.

“Oh, I’m so glad to go back—oh, I hate, hate, hate the country!” she kept saying; while the husband and wife looked at each other wonderingly.

So, strengthened and invigorated, panting for excitement, unchecked by any moral perceptions, by gratitude, by love, even by fear (now that she was well again),—she came back to Mercer.

VI

One night in December, Sara Wharton, coming home from a dinner, was told that Dr. Morse was waiting for her in the library. She went in at once, pulling off her long gloves, and with her white cloak falling back from her pretty shoulders. She had not seen the doctor since that talk about Nellie, and she had forgotten her indignation with him. She had heard too much of his goodness among the poor people to harbor resentment.