Part 25

No, they would not alter. Her efforts only served to brand them more deeply on her mind. She looked up, at last, with a kind of wonder that the earth was still firm under her feet, and the sky's arch entire above her head. It would have seemed more in keeping to have beheld the universe crashing backward into chaos.

Not that she suffered very keenly yet. She was too much stunned to realize the extent of her wounds and bruises. She picked herself up, as it were, after the fall and the shock, and walked mechanically homeward. Her strength did not give way until she found herself in her room, shutting her door behind her, and felt what a different being had gone out of it only a little while before.

An hour after, Mrs. Bergan found her lying on her bed, white and still, more like a corpse than a living, suffering girl.

"Carice!" she cried, appalled, but not without an intuitive perception of the truth,--"Carice, my child! what is the matter?"

"I don't know--don't ask me," replied Carice, turning her face to the wall.

Mrs. Bergan burst into tears, and stole softly away. Here was a grief in which even she could only intermeddle as a stranger. She could simply commend her child to tenderer, wiser hands than hers.

A day or two went by, and Carice was down-stairs again, white; still, patient; filling her old place, and doing her old tasks, with a sad composure that was more affecting than any abandonment of sorrow. Her woe seemed to take the form of torpor, rather than of anguish. It was that chill and heavy misery, that dismal realization of the actual presence and power of evil in the world, which never comes to us except through the sin of some cherished, trusted friend; standing hitherto as the representative of all that is good and true, the earthly type of the Divine perfection. Falling, he falls not alone, but drags down with him the supports of every earthly confidence, and even makes the foundation of our heavenly faith to tremble. Such grief is dumb and tearless; it coils itself round the heart in cold, serpent-like folds, chilling the blood, and oppressing the breath; but it makes no single, special wound, to call forth cries and sobs of pain.

Meanwhile, the yellow fever, as foreseen long ago by Doctor Remy, made its silent entry into Berganton. One day a single case was reported in the outskirts of the town; another week, and there was scarcely a threshold which it had not crossed, either to strike or slay. The town put on sackcloth and ashes; business was suspended, except the business of nursing the sick and burying the dead; the streets were deserted, except by hearses and doctors. Or, it would be truer to say, a doctor; for Doctor Gerrish, being unacclimated, was one of the earliest patients; and Doctor Harris, being old and infirm, quickly sank exhausted; so Doctor Remy was soon left to face the pestilence alone, and multiply himself as best he could, to meet the demands of a whole people.

Let us do him ample justice. All that an iron frame, a steady courage, admirable executive ability, profound medical skill, and deep scientific interest, could prompt or do, he did. He organized and instructed a corps of nurses, and made them do effective work; he scattered printed suggestions and directions broadcast over the town, for the behoof of sick and well; he was himself constantly in the thickest of the fight, animating the workers, cheering the sick, wellnigh raising the dead,--doing everything but comfort the mourners, for that he had neither time nor talent. The town rang with praises of his energy and skill; his presence had brought back hope to many a house whence it seemed to have flown forever, joy into many a heart that had only made itself ready for sorrow. Even Carice, as her private grief half-sank, for the time, under the great wave of public calamity, was moved to a degree of respect and admiration for the doctor, of which, two or three weeks before, she could not have believed herself capable. There was still a hero, and room for heroism, in the world!

By and by, Mr. Bergan fell ill, not of the fever, but of one of the sympathetic diseases, which often go hand in hand with it. There were a few days of intense anxiety, during which the wife and daughter lived, as it were, on the words of Doctor Remy's mouth, and the look of his eyes. After these came slow weeks of convalescence, of exacting feebleness and irritable complaint.

It was during these that Doctor Remy spoke.

Is it necessary to describe the conflict, or designate the result? On the one side were parental wisdom, love, and authority, with the strong sanction of recent danger and present feebleness; on the other, filial respect, affection, and obedience, and a great self-distrust. For Carice remembered that she had taken her own way before, and whither it had led; now, ought she not to submit to the guidance ordained of God?

October found her bound fast by a promise, held irrevocably to a day. The outward conflict was over; but the inward struggle, she found, was scarce begun! Under that, she paled and wasted; sleep and appetite forsook her; her eyes grew to have the pathetic, pleading look of a dumb animal taken in a net. Finally, worn-out nature took refuge in apathy that nothing seemed to disturb.

XI

A CLUE.

A chill November day was drawing near its close. With the evening dusk snowflakes filled the air, and began to whiten the swells and slopes of the Arling farm, and lay the foundation of future drifts beside the doorstep and under the eaves of the Arling homestead. This structure had begun life as a log cabin, but had grown, by the simple and natural process of adding on a room or a wing, as fast as it was required and could be afforded, into a large, and somewhat picturesque, cluster of roofs and gables; beneath which there might easily be not only room for the fullest, heartiest flow of domestic and social life, but also means and influences to a considerable degree of refinement and culture.

Toward it, a stout, broad-shouldered personage was making his way, through the dusk and the snow, with a cheery face and an energetic tread, that plainly minded neither. Tramp, tramp, went the brisk footfalls up the gravel walk, the bright brass knocker was made to send a note of warning through the house, and the wayfarer admitted himself into a lighted hall, through which he strode to the open door of the sitting-room at the farther end.

A pleasant family picture was before him. Bergan Arling, on one side of the crimson-covered centre-table, looked up, smiling, from the book out of which he had been reading aloud. Two of his sisters sat near him, busy with crotchet needles and bright worsteds. Still another was drawing at a side-table; and over her, giving her the benefit of his criticism, leaned her brother Hubert, scarce two years younger than Bergan, and so strikingly like him, that one was often taken for the other, outside the family circle. At one side of the fire-place sat the master of the house, a tall, noble-looking man, with eye undimmed and hair unfrosted by the snows of over sixty years. Opposite him was the home's true light and centre, the house-mother. She reclined in a large, low easy chair, the paleness on her face half concealed by the glow of the blazing fire, and her eyes shining with that tender joy and peace which convalescents sometimes bring back from the edge of the grave,--a reflection, perhaps, from the paradise that was already opening before the gaze of the half-freed spirit.

Doctor Trubie paused for a moment in the doorway, to master the details of the scene. He has changed but little since he was introduced to the reader, fourteen years ago, in his medical Alma Mater. His figure has gained in breadth and strength, and his features in character, but it is the same frank, genial face, and the same good-humored smile. No one that knew him then, could fail to recognize him now.

In a moment, he caught sight of Mrs. Arling, and hastened toward her with outstretched hand. "I don't know whether to congratulate or to scold you," he began, smiling, yet shaking his head with mild disapproval.

Hubert Arling came forward to Bergan's side. "I can settle the question for you," said he. "Congratulate her, and scold us. We brought her down, chair and all; she did not touch foot to the floor in the transit."

"Then I will save my scolding until it is needed. It seems little less than miraculous to see you here," he went on, turning to Mrs. Arling, "when I think how things seemed to be going, a few weeks ago. It has been a hard pull, and a long one."

"And a strong one, and a pull altogether," added Hubert Arling, merrily, by way of arresting the tears that he saw starting into his sisters' eyes.

"The strong pull," remarked Doctor Trubie, "came from my medical brother, down South."

"You underrate yourself," replied Mr. Arling. "Of what avail would Doctor Remy's suggestions have been, without your indefatigable vigilance, and your professional skill and knowledge to carry them out?"

"That is to say," returned Doctor Trubie, "that a good commander-in-chief can do nothing without good generals. At all events, Doctor Remy is a wonderfully talented fellow. He seems to keep not only abreast of medical science, but in advance of it. That very suggestion of his, which proved most valuable to us, was mentioned in my last medical review, as the latest discovery at Paris. There is something about his bold, yet scientific mode of reasoning which reminds me strangely of an old fellow-student. But Doctor Remy, I hope, is a better fellow than _he_ was. By the way," he added, turning to Bergan, "I came near forgetting that I have brought you a letter from him, as I judge from the handwriting."

Bergan tore open the letter, and with an apologetic bow to the company, began eagerly to read it. Doctor Trubie seated himself by the table, picked up the rejected envelope, and gave it a critical examination.

"That's what I call a good hand," said he, "a round, clear, energetic hand, that neither tries your eyesight, nor rouses your distrust. There is no crookedness nor meanness in it; yet there is plenty of character; one can see, at a glance, that the writer is bold and sagacious as well as profound, a man of action as well as a man of science."

Bergan had finished the letter, which was short; and he now looked up with a much amused face. "I ought to tell you," said he, "that Doctor Remy possesses the rare accomplishment of being able to write with either hand; he uses the right or the left, at pleasure. But the two handwritings are entirely distinct. That address was written with his left hand, and so, I remember, were the suggestions and prescriptions that I handed over to you. But this letter was written with his right hand; see what you can make of it," and Bergan pushed the open sheet across the table.

The change in Doctor Trubie's face was startling. "This!" he exclaimed, his voice trembling with excitement, "who did you say wrote this?"

"Doctor Remy, the same man who wrote that address."

Doctor Trubie glanced back at the letter, and his eyes lit with a strange, stern joy. "At last!" he muttered through his set teeth.

Mrs. Arling leaned forward, and her face grew pale. "What is it, doctor?" she asked, trembling. "What is the matter?"

Doctor Trubie glanced at her excited face, and saw what mischief he was doing. "Nothing," he hastened to answer, "nothing, only an old sore pressed on suddenly. This handwriting reminds me of one that--I never expected to see again."

He gave the letter a long, moody look, then refolded it, and handed it back to Bergan.

Mrs. Arling looked anxiously at her son. "Does Doctor Remy give you any special news?" she asked.

"Not much. Uncle Godfrey is better, and the fever is over. Business is still dull."

"Then you will not need to hurry back?"

Bergan knelt by his mother's side. "My dear mother," he whispered, "you know it is not for the sake of my business that I am anxious to return, as soon as I may. I must see Carice, and satisfy myself that nothing is amiss."

Mrs. Arling smiled, yet she sighed, too. "Ah, yes, I remember," said she, "and you are quite right."

Doctor Trubie rose, and came to the other side of Mrs. Arling's chair. "I am glad to see that I am not wanted here any longer," he began, pleasantly;--

"But you are wanted," interrupted Mrs. Arling; "you are always wanted, as a friend."

"Thank you; but I am wanted elsewhere as a physician; so I must take my leave, for the present."

He shook hands with Mrs. Arling, and gave Bergan a meaning glance, as he did so. The young man rose. "I will walk a little way with you, if you like," said he. "I have a boyish delight in the first snow, and I did not see any last winter, you remember."

The two gentlemen were hardly outside the gate, before Doctor Trubie asked;--"What do you know of this Doctor Remy's antecedents?"

Bergan narrated the facts which he had gathered, from time to time, from Doctor Remy's conversation.

"So, he would have us believe," said Doctor Trubie, contemptuously, "that he transformed himself from a poor lawyer into a scientific physician, in a year and a half, by the help of a friendly doctor, and a course of lectures! There is falsehood on the face of it."

"He had a genius for the study," replied Bergan.

"Aye, I'll warrant! that is the saving grain of truth in the whole story. Do you remember the circumstances of your elder brother's death?"

"Not very distinctly. I was so young, at the time; and then, you know, mother could never bear to hear any allusion to them."

"You know that he was murdered?"

Bergan looked surprised. "I know there was talk of suicide," said he, "but I thought it was decided that he was poisoned by mistake."

"He was murdered," asserted Doctor Trubie, getting his teeth, "foully murdered by the man who professed to be his friend,--a man who wrote a hand as much like this Doctor Remy's as one side of your face is like the other. I charged him with it, at the time, and I have always believed that I should live to see the charge proven." And he finished by giving a succinct account of the circumstances attending Alec Arling's death.

Bergan listened attentively and critically, as became his legal training. "I do not understand why the finding of the diamond was such conclusive evidence of guilt," said he, when the doctor paused.

"Because Roath swore, at the inquest, that he did not touch either bottle or glass, and did not even go to that end of the table. That was where he overreached himself; without that, the stone in the glass would not have been such a damning circumstance. He recognized it as such himself;--else why did he fly?"

"Well, you may be right about the murder," said Bergan, after a little consideration, "but I think you have mistaken the man."

"Let us see," said Doctor Trubie. "He is about my height?"

"Yes,--perhaps a little taller."

"He stoops a little?"

"Not at all, he is uncommonly erect."

"He has dark hair?"

"It may have been so, it is prematurely gray."

Doctor Trubie looked a little discomfited. "Give me a sketch of his character," said he.

Bergan hesitated. It was a difficult thing to do, on the instant. His impressions of Doctor Remy's character had varied, as he remembered.

"On second thought," said Doctor Trubie, "I will give you one. All of him, that is not intellect, is ice. In religious matters, he is an utter sceptic. Socially, he is brilliant; but he has no intimate friends, and he makes no confidants. Men and women, to him, are subjects of study, not objects of affection. He cares for nothing but himself and his profession. And no one cares for him--much. They may admire, but they cannot love."

Bergan looked considerably startled. "Your sketch tallies well with some impressions of mine, which I did my best to rid myself of," said he. "But Doctor Remy has befriended me, from the first, and you yourself say that he has been largely the means of saving my mother's life."

"He has had his own reasons for both; Edmund Roath never did anything without a reason, and a selfish one. Has he anything to gain by keeping you out of the way?"

"Nothing, that I can imagine."

"When do you return to Berganton?"

"Mother has consented that I shall start on Monday, if she is no worse."

"She will be much better. Do not delay longer than that. I will accompany you; I want to see this Doctor Remy. Seeing is believing. But, mind, not a word of my coming, to him or any one else. Now, go back to your mother, or she will be alarmed. Good night."

Bergan walked back slowly and thoughtfully. Without being fully convinced of the truth of Doctor Trubie's suspicions, he was strangely disturbed and startled. Reaching the gate, he turned his face south-eastward, and gazed across the white meadows, toward the dim outline of the distant hills. His thoughts overleaped even that far barrier, and took an air line to Oakstead and to Carice. Her face rose vividly before him, not, strange to say, as he had seen it last, rosy and bright, but pale and piteous, and gazing toward him with a look that besought sympathy and succor, plainer than any speech. His eyes grew moist, his breath tremulous; his heart swelled with passionate love and longing.

"I will beg my mother to consent to my going at once," said he to himself. "I cannot wait another day."

The next afternoon, he was on his way to Berganton, whither Doctor Trubie was shortly to follow him.

XII.

TOO LATE.

In those days, there was a pleasant spice of uncertainty about Southern journeyings. Cars, steamboats, and stages ran in happy independence of each other and the time-table. The traveller never knew at what point of juniper swamp, or pine barren, or cotton plantation, he would be set down to while away some hours in botanical or ethnological investigations, if his mind were sufficiently at ease, or in chewing the bitter cud of impatience, if it were not. Defective machinery and lazy officials labored mightily together to miss connections, and wherever human inefficiency came short, down swept a hurricane from the skies, and strewed the roads with prostrate trunks of trees, through which the cumbrous stage coach had literally to hew its path.

More than one such delay attended Bergan's progress southward. Under their teasing friction, the shadowy anxiety with which he had set out, increased to a positive weight of alarm. Reaching Savalla on the twelfth evening, he stopped neither for rest nor refreshment, but looked up a horse, flung himself into the saddle, and set off toward Berganton at a rapid rate. Outside the city limits, however, he was forced to slacken his pace. The night was dark, no faintest gleam of moon or star tempered the black obscurity of the tree-arched and swamp-bordered road. Compelled thus to feel his way, as it were, it was near midnight when he came upon the outlying fields of Oakstead. Reluctantly he told himself that an interview with Carice, to-night, was out of the question; she and all the household were certain to be fast asleep, it was doubtful if even the faintest outline of the darkened dwelling would be discernible through the murky night. He had no choice but to ride on to Berganton.

Scarcely had he reached this conclusion, when a radiant window shone vision-like through the trees; a little farther on, and the cottage, though yet distant, came full into view through an opening in the forest, brilliantly illuminated from roof to foundation as for a festivity of no ordinary magnitude. Even the surrounding lawn was lighted up into the semblance of day; and in its remotest corner, a group of negroes, dancing to some strain of music inaudible to the wondering spectator, looked fantastic enough for the unsubstantial images of a dream.

For a moment or two, Bergan suspected his jaded senses of playing him false, as a step preparatory to taking leave of him altogether. There was something too incongruous to be real, between this gay scene of festivity and the picture presented by Doctor Remy's last letter,--a dull, silent house, its master a feeble, exacting convalescent, its mistress and daughter worn out with anxiety and watching. An intuition of some unlooked-for calamity seized him. Putting spurs to his horse, he dashed over the mile that intervened between him and the cottage, at a scarcely less furious rate than that with which Vic had borne him over the same road--how well he remembered it!--just one year ago. He did not suspect that he was now to taste the bitterest consequences of that ride.

In a very few moments, he rode through the open gates of Oakstead. Here, he found the avenue to the house encumbered with teams and saddle-horses, tied to every tree and post. The every-day aspect of these sleepy animals was like a bucket of cold water to his excited imagination. Strains of dancing music, too, came to his ear,--flutes and violins, none too well played, sent forth the notes of a popular air. Plainly, he had been a fool to connect the thought of calamity with anything so exceedingly common-place as an evening party. If Godfrey Bergan chose to call in his friends and neighbors to dance over his restoration to health, who should gainsay him? Convalescents had their fancies, and must be humored.

In this cooler frame of mind, it naturally occurred to Bergan that he was in no fit condition to face a festal throng. His appearance, thus way-worn and travel-stained, would be scarcely more timely than that of the Ancient Mariner to the wedding guest. It would look as if he, too, had a tale of horror to impart, and Carice might be unpleasantly startled,--Carice, who little imagined him so near to her! At the thought, a strange, indefinable thrill and shiver passed over him, hard to define as either pleasure or pain.

After a moment's consideration, he dismounted, and walked quietly round to the spot where the negroes still kept up their lively dance. One of them, Bruno by name, stood a little apart, a smiling spectator of the merriment that he was too old to join. It was easy to touch him on the shoulder, without attracting the notice of the rest. The negro turned, and instantly recognized Bergan; but his exclamation of surprise was cut short by the young man's significant gesture, and he silently followed him to a spot equi-distant between the cottage and the dancers.

"All well, Bruno?" was Bergan's first inquiry.

"All bery well, Massa Arling. You's welcome back, sah. But I'se sorry you's too late for de weddin'."

_The wedding_,--the word fell almost meaninglessly on Bergan's ear, so intent was he upon satisfying himself that his late anxieties had been groundless. "And Miss Carice," he went on, "is she quite well, too?"

Bruno smiled. "Yes, massa, I 'spec so, tho' she do look mighty pale and peaked, dese yere last weeks. But dey mostly look so, at sich times, I s'pose. She'll be better when de weddin's ober, an' all de fuss and flurry."

This second mention of "the wedding" penetrated to Bergan's understanding, and awakened a faint emotion of surprise.

"The wedding!--whose wedding?" he asked.

Bruno opened his eyes wide in astonishment. "Why, don' you know, sah? I thought you'd come on purpose. Miss Carice's weddin', to be sure."

It was Bergan's turn to look more than astonished, confounded. "Miss Carice's wedding!" he repeated, as doubting the trustworthiness of his own ears.

"Yes, sah, to Doctor Remy, sah. Dey had--"