West Lawn, and The rector of St. Mark's

by Mary Jane Holmes

She did not know what he meant, and she only answered him with kisses, while her hands moved caressingly across his forehead, just as they had moved years ago in Rome when she soothed the pain away. There certainly was a mesmeric influence emanating from those hands, and Arthur felt its power, growing very quiet and at last falling away to sleep while the passes went on, and Lucy held her breath lest she should waken him. She was a famous nurse, the physician said, when he came, and he constituted her his coadjutor and gave his patient’s medicine into her care.

It was hardly proper for her niece to stay at the rectory, Mrs. Hetherton thought, but Lucy was one who could trample down proprieties, and it was finally arranged that, in order to avoid all comment, Fanny should stay with her.

So, while Fanny went to bed and slept Lucy sat all night in the sick-room with Mrs. Brown, and when the next morning came she was looking very pale, and languid, but very beautiful withal. At least such was the mental compliment paid her by Thornton Hastings, who was passing through Hanover and stopped over a train to see his old college friend and perhaps tell him what he began to feel it was his duty to tell him in spite of his promise to Anna. She was nearly well now and had driven with him twice to the park, but he could not be insensible to what she suffered, or how she shrank from hearing the proposed wedding discussed, and in his intense pity for her he had half resolved to break his word and tell Arthur what he knew. But he changed his mind when he had been in Hanover a few hours and watched the little fairy, who, like some ministering angel, glided about the sick-room, showing herself every whit a woman, and making him repent that he had ever called her frivolous or silly. She was not either, he said, and with a magnanimity for which he thought himself entitled to a good deal of praise, he felt that it was very possible for Arthur to love the gentle little girl who smoothed his pillows so tenderly, and whose fingers threaded so lovingly the dark brown locks when she thought he—Thornton—was not looking on. She was very coy of him, and very distant towards him, for she had not forgotten his sin, and she treated him at first with a reserve for which he could not account. But as the days went on and Arthur grew so sick that his parishioners began to tremble for their young minister’s life, and to think it perfectly right for Lucy to stay with him even if she was assisted in her labor of love by the stranger from New York, the reserve all disappeared, and on the most perfect terms of amity she and Thornton Hastings watched together by Arthur’s side.

Thornton Hastings learned more lessons than one in that sick-room where Arthur’s faith in God triumphed over the terrors of the grave which at one time seemed so near, while the timid Lucy, whom he had only known as a gay butterfly of fashion, dared before him to pray that God would spare her promised husband, or give her grace to say “Thy will be done.” Thornton could hardly say that he was skeptical before, but any doubts he might have had touching the great fundamental truths on which a true religion rests were gone forever, and he left Hanover a changed man in more respects than one.

Arthur did not die, and on the Sunday preceding the week when the Christmas decorations were to commence he came again before his people, his face very pale and worn, and wearing upon it a look which told of a new baptism,—an added amount of faith which had helped to lift him above the fleeting cares of this present life. And yet there was much of earth clinging to him still, and it made itself felt in the rapid beatings of his heart when he glanced towards the pew where Lucy knelt and knew that she was giving thanks for him restored again.

Once in the earlier stages of his convalescence he had almost betrayed his secret by asking her which she would rather do, bury him from her sight, feeling that he loved her to the last, or give him to another now that she knew he would recover.

There was a frightened look in Lucy’s eyes as she replied:

“I would ten thousand times rather see you dead, and know that even in death you were my own, than to lose you that other way. O Arthur, you have no thought of leaving me now?”

“No, darling, I have not. I am yours always,” he said, feeling that the compact was sealed forever, and that God blessed the sealing.

He had written to Mrs. Meredith, granting her his forgiveness, and asking that if Anna did not already know of the deception she might never be enlightened. And Mrs. Meredith had answered that Anna had only heard a rumor that an offer had been made her, but that she regarded it as a mistake, and was fast recovering both her health and spirits. Mrs. Meredith did not add her surprise at Arthur’s conscientiousness in adhering to his engagement, nor hint that her attack of conscience was so safely over; she was glad of it, for she still had hope of that house on Madison Square; but Arthur guessed at it and dismissed her from his mind, and waited with a trusting heart for whatever the future might bring.