Part 33

“Robert!” he called in faint accents. But the attendant was not there to answer.

“Paolo! Paolo!” But the faithful servant, who would have given his life for his master, had not yet reached the place where the crowd was gathered.

“Oh, for a breath of air! Oh, for an arm to lift me from this bed! Too late! Too late!” he gasped, with what might have seemed his dying expiration.

“Not too late!” The soft voice reached his obscured consciousness as if it had come down to him from heaven.

In a single instant he found himself rolled in a blanket and in the arms of--a woman!

Out of the stifling chamber,--over the burning stairs,--close by the tongues of fire that were lapping up all they could reach,--out into the open air, he was borne swiftly and safely,--carried as easily as if he had been a babe, in the strong arms of “The Wonder” of the gymnasium, the captain of the Atalanta, who had little dreamed of the use she was to make of her natural gifts and her school-girl accomplishments.

Such a cry as arose from the crowd of on-lookers! It was a sound that none of them had ever heard before or could expect ever to hear again, unless he should be one of the last boat-load rescued from a sinking vessel. Then, those who had resisted the overflow of their emotion, who had stood in white despair as they thought of these two young lives soon to be wrapped in their burning shroud,--those stern men--the old sea-captain, the hard-faced, moneymaking, cast-iron tradesmen of the city counting-room--sobbed like hysteric women; it was like a convulsion that overcame natures unused to those deeper emotions which many who are capable of experiencing die without ever knowing.

This was the scene upon which the doctor and Paolo suddenly appeared at the same moment.

As the fresh breeze passed over the face of the rescued patient, his eyes opened wide, and his consciousness returned in almost supernatural lucidity. Euthymia had sat down upon a bank, and was still supporting him. His head was resting on her bosom. Through his awakening senses stole the murmurs of the living cradle which rocked him with the wavelike movements of respiration, the soft susurrus of the air that entered with every breath, the double beat of the heart which throbbed close to his ear. And every sense, and every instinct, and every reviving pulse told him in language like a revelation from another world that a woman's arms were around him, and that it was life, and not death, which her embrace had brought him.

She would have disengaged him from her protecting hold, but the doctor made her a peremptory sign, which he followed by a sharp command:--

“Do not move him a hair's breadth,” he said. “Wait until the litter comes. Any sudden movement might be dangerous. Has anybody a brandy flask about him?”

One or two members of the local temperance society looked rather awkward, but did not come forward.

The fresh-water fisherman was the first who spoke.

“I han't got no brandy,” he said, “but there's a drop or two of old Medford rum in this here that you're welcome to, if it'll be of any help. I alliz kerry a little on 't in case o' gettin' wet 'n' chilled.”

So saying he held forth a flat bottle with the word Sarsaparilla stamped on the green glass, but which contained half a pint or more of the specific on which he relied in those very frequent exposures which happen to persons of his calling.

The doctor motioned back Paolo, who would have rushed at once to the aid of Maurice, and who was not wanted at that moment. So poor Paolo, in an agony of fear for his master, was kept as quiet as possible, and had to content himself with asking all sorts of questions and repeating all the prayers he could think of to Our Lady and to his holy namesake the Apostle.

The doctor wiped the mouth of the fisherman's bottle very carefully. “Take a few drops of this cordial,” he said, as he held it to his patient's lips. “Hold him just so, Euthymia, without stirring. I will watch him, and say when he is ready to be moved. The litter is near by, waiting.” Dr. Butts watched Maurice's pulse and color. The “Old Medford” knew its business. It had knocked over its tens of thousands; it had its redeeming virtue, and helped to set up a poor fellow now and then. It did this for Maurice very effectively. When he seemed somewhat restored, the doctor had the litter brought to his side, and Euthymia softly resigned her helpless burden, which Paolo and the attendant Robert lifted with the aid of the doctor, who walked by the patient as he was borne to the home where Mrs. Butts had made all ready for his reception.

As for poor Lurida, who had thought herself equal to the sanguinary duties of the surgeon, she was left lying on the grass with an old woman over her, working hard with fan and smelling-salts to bring her back from her long fainting fit.

XXIV. THE INEVITABLE.

Why should not human nature be the same in Arrowhead Village as elsewhere? It could not seem strange to the good people of that place and their visitors that these two young persons, brought together under circumstances that stirred up the deepest emotions of which the human soul is capable, should become attached to each other. But the bond between them was stronger than any knew, except the good doctor, who had learned the great secret of Maurice's life. For the first time since his infancy he had fully felt the charm which the immediate presence of youthful womanhood carries with it. He could hardly believe the fact when he found himself no longer the subject of the terrifying seizures of which he had had many and threatening experiences.

It was the doctor's business to save his patient's life, if he could possibly do it. Maurice had been reduced to the most perilous state of debility by the relapse which had interrupted his convalescence. Only by what seemed almost a miracle had he survived the exposure to suffocation and the mental anguish through which he had passed. It was perfectly clear to Dr. Butts that if Maurice could see the young woman to whom he owed his life, and, as the doctor felt assured, the revolution in his nervous system which would be the beginning of a new existence, it would be of far more value as a restorative agency than any or all of the drugs in the pharmacopoeia. He told this to Euthymia, and explained the matter to her parents and friends. She must go with him on some of his visits. Her mother should go with her, or her sister; but this was a case of life and death, and no maidenly scruples must keep her from doing her duty.

The first of her visits to the sick, perhaps dying, man presented a scene not unlike the picture before spoken of on the title-page of the old edition of Galen. The doctor was perhaps the most agitated of the little group. He went before the others, took his seat by the bedside, and held the patient's wrist with his finger on the pulse. As Euthymia entered it gave a single bound, fluttered for an instant as if with a faint memory of its old habit, then throbbed full and strong, comparatively, as if under the spur of some powerful stimulus. Euthymia's task was a delicate one, but she knew how to disguise its difficulty.

“Here is a flower I have brought you, Mr. Kirkwood,” she said, and handed him a white chrysanthemum. He took it from her hand, and before she knew it he took her hand into his own, and held it with a gentle constraint. What could she do? Here was the young man whose life she had saved, at least for the moment, and who was yet in danger from the disease which had almost worn out his powers of resistance.

“Sit down by Mr. Kirkwood's side,” said the doctor. “He wants to thank you, if he has strength to do it, for saving him from the death which seemed inevitable.”

Not many words could Maurice command. He was weak enough for womanly tears, but their fountains no longer flowed; it was with him as with the dying, whose eyes may light up, but rarely shed a tear.

The river which has found a new channel widens and deepens it; it lets the old water-course fill up, and never returns to its forsaken bed. The tyrannous habit was broken. The prophecy of the gitana had verified itself, and the ill a fair woman had wrought a fairer woman had conquered and abolished.

The history of Maurice Kirkwood loses its exceptional character from the time of his restoration to his natural conditions. His convalescence was very slow and gradual, but no further accident interrupted its even progress. The season was over, the summer visitors had left Arrowhead Village; the chrysanthemums were going out of flower, the frosts had come, and Maurice was still beneath the roof of the kind physician. The relation between him and his preserver was so entirely apart from all common acquaintances and friendships that no ordinary rules could apply to it. Euthymia visited him often during the period of his extreme prostration.

“You must come every day,” the doctor said. “He gains with every visit you make him; he pines if you miss him for a single day.” So she came and sat by him, the doctor or good Mrs. Butts keeping her company in his presence. He grew stronger,--began to sit up in bed; and at last Euthymia found him dressed as in health, and beginning to walk about the room. She was startled. She had thought of herself as a kind of nurse, but the young gentleman could hardly be said to need a nurse any longer. She had scruples about making any further visits. She asked Lurida what she thought about it.