Part 5 (1/2)

”Good morning, Miss Blyth! glorious day, isn't it? going to sling a hammock? let me do it, won't you?”

Vesta Blyth looked at him with sombre eyes. ”I couldn't hold it!” she said, unwillingly. ”There is no strength left in my hands.”

”You are still tired, you see,” said Geoffrey, cheerfully, as he picked up the hammock. ”That's perfectly natural.”

”It isn't natural!” said the girl, fiercely. ”It's devilis.h.!.+”

”This is a good place,” said Geoffrey, paying no attention to her.

”Combination of shade and sun, you see. Pillow at this end? There! how is that?”

”Thank you! it will do very well.”

She stretched herself at full length in the hammock. Her movements were perfectly graceful, he noted; and he made a swift comparison with the way his cousins flounced or twittered or slumped into a hammock.

[Ill.u.s.tration: He stood looking at her, his hand still on the hammock rope.]

He stood looking at her, his hand still on the hammock-rope. He was conscious only of a friendly feeling of compa.s.sion for this fair young creature, built for vigour and an active life, now condemned for months, it might be years, of weariness and pain. Whether any unconscious keenness of scrutiny crept into his eyes or not, is not known; but as Vesta Blyth looked up and met their gaze, a wave of angry crimson rushed over her face and neck.

”Doctor Strong,” she said, violently, her voice low and vibrating, as some women's are in pa.s.sion, ”I must request you _not_ to look at me!”

Geoffrey started, and coloured in his turn. ”I beg your pardon!” he said. ”I was not aware--I a.s.sure you I had no intention of being rude, Miss Blyth.”

”You were not rude!” Vesta swept on. ”I am rude; I am unreasonable, I am absurd. I can't help it. I will not be looked at professionally.

Half the people in this village would welcome your professional glance as a beam from heaven, and bask in it, and drop every symptom as if it were a pearl, but I am not a 'case.' I am simply a human being, who asks nothing but to be let alone.”

She stopped abruptly, her bosom heaving, her eyes like black agates with fire behind them, looking straight past him at the trees beyond.

”If you wish to put me to the last humiliation,” she added, hurriedly, ”you may wait and have the satisfaction of seeing me cry; if not--”

But Geoffrey was gone, fleeing into the house with the sound of stormy sobs chasing him like Furies. He never stopped till he reached his own room, where he flung himself into his chair in most unprofessional agitation. The window was open--what a fool he was to leave windows open!--and the sound followed him; he could not shut it out. Dreadful sobs, choking, agonising; he felt, as if he saw it, the whole slender figure convulsed with them. Good heavens! the girl would be in convulsions if she went on at this rate.

Now the sobs died away into long moans, into quivering breaths; now they broke out again, insistent, terrible. Broken words among them, too.

”What shall I do? Oh, dear! oh, dear! what shall I do?”

Geoffrey, who had been trying to look over some papers, started up and paced the room hurriedly. ”This--this is very curious!” he was trying to say to himself. ”Hysteria pure and simple--very interesting--I must note the duration of the paroxysms. Good G.o.d! can't somebody stop her?

perfectly inhuman, to let a creature go on like that!”

He was at the door, with some vague idea of alarming the house, when a soft knock was heard on the other side. He flung the door open, and startled Miss Vesta so that she gave a little cry of dismay, and retreated to the head of the stairs. ”Pray excuse me, Doctor Strong,”

she said. ”I see that you are occupied; I pray you to excuse me!”

”No, no!” said Geoffrey, hurriedly. ”I am not--it's nothing at all.

What can I do for you, Miss Vesta? Do come in, please!”

”My niece,” said the little lady, with a troubled look, ”is in a highly nervous condition to-day, Doctor Strong. She is--weeping. My sister thought you might have--” she paused, as Miss Phoebe's crisp and decided tones came up over the stairs.

”Little Vesta has got into a crying-spell, Doctor Strong. I want a little valerian for her, please. I will go down and give it to her myself, if you will hand it to my sister.”