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and

to - to - ” She hesitated and Maitland did not permit her to

finish her sentence.

 

“You must pardon me, Miss Darrow,” he replied, “but I can accept no

further payment for the little I have done. It has been a pleasure

to do it and the knowledge that you are now released from the

disagreeable possibilities of your father’s will is more than

sufficient remuneration. If you still feel that you owe me anything,

perhaps you will be willing to grant me a favour.”

 

“There is nothing,” she said earnestly, “within my power to grant

for which you shall ask in vain.”

 

“Let me beg of you then,” he replied, “never again to seek to repay

me for any services you may fancy I have rendered. There is nothing

you could bestow upon me which I would accept.” She gave him a

quick, searching glance and I noticed a look of pain upon her face,

but Maitland gave it no heed, for, indeed, he seemed to have much

ado either to know what he wanted to say, or knowing it, to say it.

 

“And now,” he continued, “I must no longer presume to order your

actions. You have considered my wishes so conscientiously, have

kept your covenant so absolutely, that what promised to be a

disagreeable responsibility has become a pleasure which I find

myself loth to discontinue. All power leads to tyranny. Man cannot

be trusted with it. Its exercise becomes a consuming passion, and

he abuses it. The story is the same, whether nations or individuals

be considered. I myself, you see, am a case in point. I thank you

for the patience you have shown and the pains you have taken to make

everything easy and pleasant for me; and now I must be going, as I

have yet much to do in this matter. “It may be a long time,” he

said, extending his hand to her, “before we meet again. We have

travelled the same path - ” but he paused as if unable to proceed,

and a deadly pallor overspread his face as he let fall both her hand

and his own. He made a heroic effort to proceed.

 

“I - I shall miss - very - very much miss - pray pardon me - I - I

believe I’m ill - a little faint I’d - I’d better get out into the

air - I shall - shall miss - pardon - I - I’m not quite myself -

goodbye, goodbye!” and he staggered unsteadily, half blindly to the

door and out into the street without another word. He certainly

did look ill.

 

Gwen’s face was a study. In it surprise, fear, pain, and dismay,

each struggled for predominance. She tried to retain her

self-control while I was present, but it was all in vain. A moment

later she threw herself upon the sofa, and, burying her face in the

cushions, wept long and bitterly. I stole quietly away and sent

Alice to her, and after a time she regained her self-control, if

not her usual interest in affairs.

 

As day after day passed, however, and Maitland neglected to call,

transacting such business as he had through me, the shadow on

Gwen’s face deepened, and the elasticity of manner, whereof she

had given such promise at Maitland’s last visit, totally deserted

her, giving place to a dreamy, far-away stolidity of disposition

which I knew full well boded no good. I stood this sort of thing

as long as I could, and then I determined to call on Maitland and

give him a “piece of my mind.”

 

I did call, but when I saw him all my belligerent resolutions

vanished. He was sitting at his table trying to work out some

complicated problem, and he was utterly unfitted for a single

minute’s consecutive thought. I had not seen him for more than two

weeks, and during that time he had grown to look ten years older.

His face was drawn, haggard, and deathly pale.

 

“For Heaven’s sake, George,” I exclaimed, “what is the matter with

you?”

 

“I’ve an idea I’m spleeny,” he replied with a ghastly attempt at a

smile. This was too much for me. He should have the lecture after

all. The man who thinks he is dying may be spleeny, but the man

who says he is spleeny is, of the two, the one more likely to be

dying.

 

“See here, old man,” I began, “don’t you get to thinking that when

you hide your own head in the sand no one can see the colour of

your feathers. You might as well try to cover up Bunker Hill

Monument with a wisp of straw. Don’t you suppose I know you love

Gwen Darrow? That’s what’s the matter with you.”

 

“Well,” he replied, “and if it is, what then?”

 

“What then?” I ejaculated. “What then? Why go to her like a man;

tell her you love her and ask her to be your wife. That’s what I’d

do if I loved - ” But he interrupted me before I had finished the

lie, and I was not sorry, for, if I had thought before I became

involved in that last sentence, how I feared to speak to Jeannette

- well, I should have left it unsaid. I have made my living

giving advice till it has become a fixed habit.

 

“See here, Doc,” he broke in upon me, “I do love Gwen Darrow as few

men ever love a woman, and the knowledge that she can never be my

wife is killing me. Don’t interrupt me! I know what I am saying.

She can never be my wife! Do you think I would sue for her hand?

Do you think I would be guilty of making traffic of her gratitude?

Has she not her father’s command to wed me if I but ask her, even

as she would have wed that scoundrel, Godin, had things gone as he

planned them? Did she not tell us both that she should keep her

covenant with her father though it meant for her a fate worse than

death? And you would have me profit by her sacrifice? For shame!

Love may wither my heart till it rustles in my breast like a dried

leaf, but I will never, never let her know how I love her. And see

here, Doc, promise me that you will not tell her I love her - nay,

I insist on it.”

 

Thus importuned I said, though it went much against the grain, for

that was the very thing I had intended, “She shall not learn it

first through me.” This seemed to satisfy him, for he said no more

upon the subject. When I went back to Gwen I was in no better frame

of mind than when I left her. Here were two people so determined

to be miserable in spite of everything and everybody that I sought

Jeannette by way of counter-irritant for my wounded sympathy.

 

Ah, Jeannette! Jeannette! to this day the sound of your sweet name

is like a flash of colour to the eye. You were a bachelor’s first

and last love, and he will never forget you.

CHAPTER V

All human things cease - some end. Happy are they who can spring

the hard and brittle bar of experience into a bow of promise. For

such, there shall ever more be an orderly gravitation.

 

My next call on Maitland was professional. I found him abed and in

a critical condition. I blamed myself severely that I had allowed

other duties to keep me so long away, and had him at once removed to

the house, where I might, by constant attendance in the future,

atone for my negligence in the past. Despite all our efforts,

however, Maitland steadily grew worse. Gwen watched by him night

and day until I was finally obliged to insist, on account of her

own health, that she should leave the sick room long enough to take

the rest she so needed. Indeed, I feared lest I should soon have

two invalids upon my hands, but Gwen yielded her place to Jeannette

and Alice during the nights and soon began to show the good effects

of sleep.

 

I should have told you that, during all this time, Jeannette was

staying with us as a guest. I had convinced her father that it was

best she should remain with us until the unpleasant notoriety caused

by his arrest had, in a measure, subsided. Then, too, I told him

with a frankness warranted, I thought, by circumstances that he

could not hope to live many weeks longer, and that every effort

should be made to make the blow his death would deal Jeannette as

light as possible. At this he almost lost his self-control. “What

will become of my child when I am gone?” he moaned. “I shall leave

her penniless and without any means of support.”

 

“My dear Mr. Latour,” I replied, “you need give yourself no

uneasiness on that score. I will give you my word, as a man of

honour, that so long as Miss Darrow and I live we will see that your

daughter wants for none of the necessities of life, - unless she

shall find someone who shall have a better right than either of us

to care for her.” This promise acted like magic upon him. He

showered his blessings upon me, exclaiming, “You have lifted a great

load from my heart, and I can now die in peace!” And so, indeed,

he did. In less than a week he was dead. I had prepared Jeannette

for the shock and so had her father, but, for all this, her grief

was intense, for she loved her father with a strength of love few

children give their parents. In time, however, her grief grew less

insistent and she began to gain something of her old buoyancy.

 

In the meantime, Maitland’s life seemed to hang by a single thread.

It was the very worst case of nervous prostration I have ever been

called to combat, and for weeks we had to be contented if we enabled

him to hold his own. During all this time Gwen watched both

Maitland and myself with a closeness that suffered nothing to escape

her. I think she knew the changes in his condition better even than

I did.

 

And now I am to relate a most singular action on Gwen’s part. I

doubt not most of her own sex would have considered it very

unfeminine, but anyone who saw it all as I did could not, I think,

fail to appreciate the nobility of womanhood which made it possible.

Gwen was not dominated by those characteristics usually epitomised

in the epithet ‘lady.’ She was a woman, and she possessed, in a

remarkable degree, that fineness of fibre, that solidity of

character, and that largeness of soul which rise above the petty

conventionalities of life into the broad realm of the real verities

of existence.

 

It occurred on the afternoon of the first day that Maitland showed

the slightest improvement. I remember distinctly how he had fallen

into a troubled sleep from which he would occasionally cry out in a

half-articulate manner, and how Gwen and I sat beside him waiting for

him to awaken. Suddenly he said something in his sleep that riveted

our attention. “I tell you, Doc,” he muttered, “though love of her

burn my heart to a cinder, I will never trade upon her gratitude,

nor seek to profit by the promise she made her father. Never, so

help me God!”

 

Gwen gave me one hurried, sweeping glance and then, throwing herself

upon the sofa, buried her face in the cushions. I forbore to

disturb her till

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