Part 2 (2/2)

Dodan had frequently invited him, and Miss Dodan's brightness and her cheerful art at the piano would, I know, cheer him, inured too long to his lonely life, subject to the periodic returns of that bitter sadness, which was now only accentuated by his self-imposed exile from the home and scenes of his former happiness.

He at last consented, and in October, 1891, accompanied by the Dodans, whom he had summoned from Christ Church, he went down the steep hillside that slanted from our plateau to the lowlands, and was soon lost from view in a turn of the road, which also robbed me of the sight of a waving, small white handkerchief, floating in front of a half-loosened pile of chestnut hair.

A few days later I received a visit from Miss Dodan. I was then working at some photographs in the dark room. My a.s.sistant told me of her arrival. I hurried to our little reception room and library, where a few of my father's ”Worthies of Science” decorated the walls, which for the most part were covered with irregular book cases, while a long square covered table occupied the center of the room, littered with charts, maps, journals and daily papers.

Miss Dodan sat near the wide window looking toward Christ Church and the quickly descending road over which only a few days ago my father had journeyed. I caught in her face, as I entered, an anxious and disturbed glance, and I felt almost instantly an intimation of disaster. She turned to me as I came into the room and with a quick movement advanced.

”Mr. Dodd, your father is ill. I hardly know what is the matter with him. He is quite strange; does not know us when we talk to him, and wanders in a talk about 'magnetic waves' and 'his wife' and 'different code.' Won't you come to see him? You may help him greatly.”

The kind, clear eyes looked up into mine and the impulse of real sympathy as she pressed my hand seemed unmistakable. I asked a few questions and was convinced that my father was the victim of some sort of shock, perhaps precipitated by the continuous excitement caused by our unaccountable experience in the observatory.

I was but a few moments getting ready for the drive to Christ Church. I remember the cold, crisp air, the rapid motion, and can I ever forget it--the nearness and touch of Miss Dodan's person, perhaps only a hurried brus.h.i.+ng past me of her arm, the stray touch of her floating hair, or the accidental stubbing of her foot against my own. It seemed a short, delicious drive. I fear my heart was almost equally divided between apprehension for my father's health and the joy of simple nearness to the woman I loved. At last we reached Christ Church. The Dodans lived in the suburbs in a pretty villa on a high hill, from whose top the city lay spread before them in its modest extent with its neighboring places and Port Lyttelon eight miles away.

I found my father better, but it required my own zeal and affection to thoroughly restore him, and bring him back to his characteristic interest and alertness, which made him so original and delightful a companion. At length, by a week's nursing, during which Miss Dodan and myself were frequently together, becoming more and more attached to each other, my father renewed his wonted studies, and strongly desired to return to the ”plateau.”

I almost regretted, harsh as the thought may seem, our return. Such incidents are now a kind of sweet sadness to recall, for as I write these words, I hear nearer and nearer the summons that must put me also in the spirit world, while she, in whose heart my own trustingly lived, has been taken away, I think wisely and prudently, to live with her father's people in a charming, rustic village of Devons.h.i.+re. But oh! so far away! and this picture which daily I draw from beneath the pillow of my sick couch must alone serve to replace the companions.h.i.+p of her face and voice.

I can permit myself in this last record of an unrecoverable past to describe a treasured incident just before I left the Dodan home with my father. I was coming out of my room when I found Miss Dodan also emerging from her own bedroom at the opposite end of an upper hall. We met and I said: ”Miss Dodan, it is a treacherous confession, but I wish you were going back with us, or that my father would stay a little longer here. I shall miss you.”

”Yes,” she answered. ”Aren't you a good nurse?”

”Oh, I think you need not misunderstand me,” I insisted.

”Misunderstanding is rather an English trait, you Americans say,” she retorted.

”But in this case,” I continued, ”I hoped any disadvantages of that sort would be overcome by your own feelings.”

She blushed and looked quite dauntlessly into my eyes: ”You mean,” she inquired, ”that you are sorry to leave me?”

My face was very red, I knew, and I felt a puzzling sensation in my throat, but I did not hesitate: ”Of course, I am sorry to leave you, more sorry than I can say, but I fear more, that leaving you may mean losing you.”

This time confusion seemed struggling with a pleased mirth in her face, and with a laugh and a quick movement toward the stairway she exclaimed: ”Well, Americans, they say, never lose what they really care to win.”

I darted forward, but she was too quick for me and the chase ended in the lower hall in a group of people--her parents, my father, visitors and servants--and I saw her disappear with a backward glance, in which, I could swear, I saw two pouting lips.

My father was overjoyed to return to our really very comfortable quarters on ”Martian Hill,” as Mr. Dodan, in reference to my father's infatuation over his imaginary (?) population of Mars, was accustomed to call our professional home.

It was, I think, only a few weeks after this that my father called me to his room. He was standing in his morning apparel, a strange garb which he sometimes affected, made up of a black velvet gown brought together at the waist by a stout yellow cord, a bright red skull cap, a sort of sandal shoe, picked out with silver ornaments, his arms covered with loose, puckered sleeves of lace, dotted with black extending up to the close fitting sleeves of the velvet gown which only descended to his elbow. Beneath the gown, when he was thus theatrically attired, he wore a s.h.i.+rt of pale blue silk with a flat collar, over which came a black vest meeting his black trunks and blue hose.

My father was a really striking and beautiful picture in his incongruous habiliment. His strong and thoughtful face, over which yet cl.u.s.tered the curly hair of boyhood, just touched with gray, lit up by his earnest, sad eyes, seemed--how distinctly I recall it--almost ideally lovely that morning, and I compared him in my thoughts with the father of Romola, only as wearing a more youthful expression. He was seated when I came in, and as his eyes encountered mine, I detected the traces of tears upon his cheeks. My heart was full of love for my father, or childlike adoration it might have been called. I hurried to him and embraced him.

The tenderness overcame his habitual self-restraint and he seemed to fall sobbing in my arms.

”My son,” he finally whispered, ”my days are drawing very fast to a close. The shock I experienced at Christ Church prepared me to believe I would die in some attack of paralysis. A slight aphasia occurred this morning. It, too, as suddenly disappeared. But these warnings cannot be neglected. I and you must at once make preparations for that future colloquy which we must endeavor to establish between ourselves, when I have left this earth and you yet remain upon it.

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