“I am no hero,” said Dan, bitterly. “A little while ago it would not have been so hard. You have wronged me in some things, though I know I have not done right. Yes, I am ready to marry Susie Dykes to-morrow, though I confess I would rather die.”
Here the door opened, and Susie, who had heard all, ashy pale and trembling in every limb, confronted her lover, more dead than alive, and scarcely able to articulate the words: “God forgive you, Dan, and make you happy. You will never marry Susie Dykes;” and sinking down exhausted from her emotion, the doctor caught her and kissed her forehead. “Brave girl!” he said. “Are you really in earnest? Would you really refuse, under such circumstances?” “I would die ten thousand deaths,” she cried, “rather than permit him to make a sacrifice in keeping his word to me,” and she motioned violently for Dan to leave her presence.
As he rushed from the room and from the house, covered with shame and self-contempt, Dan was as wretched as his most murderous enemy could have desired. When the door closed behind him, Susie sobbed bitterly, and the doctor lifted her bodily and laid her on the lounge.
“I did not think you had so much character,” he said, laying his hands on her temples. “You are a good girl, though you have thrown away your heart and gone the way of many. You shall never want a friend, my dear child. I shall stand by you. Now cheer up, and we will see what can be done by-and-by.” As he said this, he mixed her a powder, not too innocuous this time, and as he held it to her lips she moaned, “Oh, good, kind, noble one, you would be kinder to me if you would help me end my wretched life. Oh, do, doctor! Do give me something; I will never tell that it was you.”
“Very likely not. You couldn’t very well, if it was an effective dose,” said the doctor, trying to be gay for her sake.
“Oh! I mean when I am suffering—dying. Do you think I would tell? Oh, you do not know me!”
“Nonsense, little one. Now, shut your eyes and let me hold my hand over them. This powder will soon take effect. You are young, and the world has need of brave hearts and willing hands like yours. Don’t feel disgraced, and you will not be so in fact. Cultivate the thought that it is not you, but conventional society that makes it wrong to have a child by one you love, and right by one you loathe, if you happen to be married to him. Remember this: grief does not last forever; and if you are wise, this experience may prove a blessing to you—nothing like it to show a woman the gold from the dross.” As he said this, music rang out from happy voices in the parlor, for none but the actors themselves knew of the drama enacted in the doctor’s study. Susie thought Dan was there in the parlor, careless of her suffering, and she sobbed aloud in her agony: “What shall I do? what shall I do?”
“Put your whole trouble on me. Go straight to bed, now, and take this powder along, but don’t take it if you can get to sleep without it. I will go and talk with Mrs. Forest, and see if she will help us.”
“Us,” repeated Susie, covering the doctor’s hand with tears and kisses. “You are as good as Christ was, and if I live, I will show you how I thank you for your goodness—how I love you for being so good to me in this awful time.”
“Trust me, child. I shall be the same to you to-morrow and every day. Bear up bravely, and all will come out right.”