Part 11 (1/2)
A low, wild cry broke from the pale lips of the figure in the door-way, and the next instant Theodora North had flown to the bedside and dropped upon her knees by it, hiding her deathly-stricken young face upon her lover's lifeless hand, forgetting Splaighton, forgetting the doctor, forgetting even Priscilla Gower, forgetting all but that she, in this moment, knew that she could not give him up, even to the undivided quiet of death.
”He will die! He will die!” she cried out. ”And I never told him. Oh, my love! love! Oh, my dearest, dear!”
The little, old doctor drew back, half way, through a suddenly stranger impulse of sympathy. He was uneasily conscious of the fact, that the staid, elderly person at his side was startled and outraged simultaneously by this pa.s.sionate burst of grief on the part of her young mistress. He had seen so many of these unprepossessing English waiting-women that he understood the state of her feelings as by instinct. He turned to her with all the blandness possible under the circ.u.mstances, and gave her an order which would call for her presence down-stairs.
When she departed, as she did in a state bordering on petrification, he came forward to the bedside. He did not speak, however; merely looking down at his patient in a silence whose delicacy was worthy of honor, even in a shrivelled little snuff-taking, French, village doctor. The pretty young mademoiselle would be calmer before many minutes had elapsed--his experience had taught him. And so she was. At least, her first shock of terror wore away, and she was calm enough to speak to him. She lifted her face from the motionless hand, and looked up at him in a wild appeal for help, that was more than touching.
”Don't say he will die!” she prayed. ”Oh, monsieur, only save him, and he will bless you forever. I will nurse him so well. Only give me something to do, and see how faithful I shall prove. I shall never forget anything, and I shall never be tired--if--if he can only live, monsieur,” the terrified catching of her breath making every little pause almost a sob.
”My child,” he answered her, with a grave touch of something quite like affection in his air. ”My child, I shall save him, if he is to be saved, and you shall help me.”
How faithfully she held to the very letter of her promises, only this little, shrivelled village doctor could say. How tender, and watchful, and loving she was, in her care of her charge, only he could bear witness. She was never tired--never forgetful. She held to her place in the poor little bedroom, day and night, with an intensity of zeal that was actually astonis.h.i.+ng. Priscilla Gower and Pamela North might have been more calm--certainly would have been more self-possessed, but they could not have been more faithful. She obeyed every order given to her like a child. She sat by the bedside, hour after hour, day and night, watching every change of symptom, noting every slight alteration of color, or pulse.
The friends.h.i.+p between herself and monsieur, the doctor, so strengthened that the confidence between them was unlimited. She was only disobedient in one thing. She would not leave her place either for food or rest. She ate her poor little dinners near her patient, and, if the truth had been known, scarcely slept at all for the first two or three days.
”I could not sleep, you know,” she said to the doctor, her great pathetic eyes filling with tears. ”Please let me stay until Lady Throckmorton comes, at least.”
So she stayed, and watched, and waited, quite alone, for nearly a week.
But it seemed a much longer time to her. The poor, handsome face changed so often in even those few days, and her pa.s.sions of despair and hope were so often changed with it. She never thought of Priscilla Gower. Her love and fear were too strong to allow of her giving a thought to anything on earth but Denis Oglethorpe. Perhaps her only consolation had something of guilt in it; but it was so poor and desperate a comfort, this wretched one of hearing him speak to and of her in his fever and delirium.
”My poor, handsome Theo,” he would say. ”Why, my beauty, there are tears in your eyes. What a scoundrel I am, if I have brought them there. What!
the rose-colored satin again, my darling! Don't wear the rose-colored satin, Theo. It hurts my eyes. For G.o.d's sake, Priscilla, forgive me!”
And yet, even while they added to her terror, these poor ravings were some vague comfort, since they told her that he loved her. More than once her friend the doctor entered the room, and found her kneeling by the bedside, holding the unresponsive hand, with a white face and wide, tearless eyes; and seeing her thus, he read clearly that his pretty, inexperienced _protege_ had more at stake than he had even at first fancied.
It was about six days after Theodora North had arrived at St. Quentin, when, sitting at her post one morning, she heard the lumbering stage stop before the inn door. She rose and went to the window, half mechanically, half anxiously. She had been expecting Lady Throckmorton, for so long a time, that it seemed almost impossible that it could be she. But strangers had evidently alighted. There was a bustle of servants below, and one of them was carrying a leathern trunk into the house immediately under her window. It was a leathern trunk, rather shabby than otherwise, and on its side was an old label, which, being turned toward her, she could read plainly. She read it, and gave a faint start. It bore, in dingy black letters, the word ”Downport.”
She had hardly time to turn round, before there was a summons at the door, and without waiting to be answered, Splaighton entered, looking at once decorous and injured.
”There are two ladies in the parlor, mademoiselle,” she said (she always called Theo mademoiselle in these days), ”two English ladies, who did not give their names. They asked for Miss North.”
Theo looked at the woman, and turned pale. She did not know how or why her mother and Pamela should come down to this place, but she felt sure it was they who were awaiting her; and for the first time since she had received the telegram, a shock of something like misgiving rushed upon her. Suppose, after all, she had not done right. Suppose she had done wrong, and they had heard of it, and came to reproach her, or worse still (poor child, it seemed worse still to her), to take her away--to make her leave her love to strangers. She began to tremble, and as she went out of the room, she looked back on the face upon the pillow, with a despairing fear that the look might be her last.
She hardly knew how she got down the narrow stair-case. She only knew that she went slowly, in a curious sort of hysterical excitement.
Then she was standing upon the mat at the parlor-door; then she had opened the door itself, and stood upon the threshold, looking in upon two figures just revealed to her in the shadow. One figure--yes, it was Pamela's; the other not her mother's. No, the figure of Priscilla Gower.
”Pamela!” she cried out. ”Oh, Pam, don't blame me!”
She never knew how the sight of her standing before them, like a poor little ghost, with her white, appealing eyes, touched one of these two women to the heart.
There was something pathetic in her very figure--something indescribably so in her half-humble, half-fearing voice.
Pamela rose up from the horse-hair sofa, and went to her.
Each of the three faces was pale enough; but Pamela had the trouble of these two, as well as her own anxiousness in her eyes.
”Theo,” she said to her, ”what have you done? Don't you understand what a mad act you have been guilty of?”
But her voice was not as sharp as usual, and it even softened before she finished speaking. She made Theo sit down, and gave her a gla.s.s of water to steady her nervousness. She could not be angry even at such indiscretion as this--in the face of the tremulous hands and pleading eyes.