Part 3

Two or three evenings later, Doctor Horton received an urgent summons from one of his patients, who lived at the end of a new and almost uninhabited street. A lamp at the corner of the main street lighted it for a short distance, beyond which the darkness was intense. When just opposite the lamp, and about to cross over, he observed a woman pass swiftly across the lighted space in the direction toward which he was himself going. There was no mistaking the erect figure and graceful gait--it was Lilly O'Connell. After an instant of wondering what could have brought her there at such an hour, for it was late, according to village customs, he changed his intention as to crossing, and kept down the other side.

The sight of this girl brought back afresh that brief, unpleasant scene with Florence, which he had tried to forget, but which had recurred to him very often, and always with a keen sting of pain and shame. His faith in the woman he loved was so perfect! Should hers be less in him? For him there was no happiness without repose. To doubt, to be doubted, would end all. He walked on in the darkness, lost in such thoughts, and quite forgetting where he was, but all at once he became aware of other footsteps behind him, and involuntarily looking back, he saw, just on the edge of the lamp-lit space, the figure of a man--a tall figure, with a certain panther-like grace of movement. There was but one such in the town, that of Commeraw, the mulatto.

The sight gave him a disagreeable shock. That he was following Lilly O'Connell he had no doubt. Could it be true, then, the rumor to which he had given so little credence? He remembered, now, that he had seen this fellow hanging about at various times and places when she was present. Might it not have been pretence--her proud indifference and scornful evasion of his advances? He asked himself, with a hot flush of mortification, the same question which Florence had put to him. It was true that he had many times openly defended her. He had been forced to do so by that quality of his nature which moved him always to espouse the cause of the weak. Perhaps he had elevated this girl to a higher plane than she deserved to occupy. After all, it would not be strange if her heart, in its longing for sympathy, had turned toward this man of her dead mother's race. Then her face, so sensitive, so overshadowed with sadness, came before him, and he could not think of it in juxtaposition with the brutal face of Commeraw. He banished the thought with disgust.

In the meantime, the man could be seen creeping along, a black shadow thrown into faint relief against the white sand of the overhanging bank. There was something furtive and stealthy in his actions which excited Horton's fears. He saw that he had at last overtaken the girl, and he quickened his own pace until he was so near that the sound of their voices came over to him.

"There is no other answer possible," she was saying. "You must never speak to me in this way again."

She would have gone on, but the man placed himself before her. There was a deliberation in the way he did so which showed his consciousness of power.

"This is a lonesome place," he said, with a short, cruel laugh.

She made no answer.

The man muttered an imprecation.

"You are not going to leave me so," he said. "Curse it! why do you treat me so, as if I were a dog? What are you more than I am? Are you so proud because you have a few more drops of their cursed white blood in your veins than I have? What will that help you? Do you imagine it will get you a white husband?"

"Let me pass!" interrupted the girl, coldly. "You can kill me if you like. I would rather die than give you any other answer. Will you let me pass?" and she made another swift motion to go by him.

A savage cry came from his lips. He sprang toward her. She made no outcry. The two shadows struggled for a moment in deadly silence, but it was only for a moment. Quick as thought, Horton flung himself upon the man, who, taken thus by surprise, loosened his hold upon the girl, shook himself free, and, with a fierce oath, fled.

Lilly staggered back against the bank.

"Do not be afraid," said Horton, panting. "The fellow will not come back."

"Doctor Horton!" she said, faintly.

"Yes, it is Doctor Horton. Where were you going? I will see you in safety."

"I was on my way to watch with Mrs. Lapham," she answered, in firmer tones.

"I am going there too," said Horton. "If you feel able, go on, I will follow after awhile. Or will you go home?"

She came forward, walking a little slowly.

"I will go on; she expects me."

And in a few moments she had disappeared from sight.

Horton remained where she had left him for perhaps a quarter of an hour. Then he proceeded on his way. An old woman admitted him to the house, and he went into the sick-room. Lilly O'Connell was sitting by the cradle of the youngest child, which lay across her lap. She greeted him with a bow, and averted her head, but the glimpse he had of her face showed him that it was not only pale, but drawn as if with physical pain.

As he was about to leave his patient's side he looked toward her again, and his eyes fell upon the arm which supported the child's head. About the sleeve, a handkerchief, stained with blood, was tightly bound.

He went over to the corner where she was sitting.

"Will you come into the next room?" he said. "I would like to give you some directions about the medicine."

She gave him a quick, upward glance, arose, laid the baby in the arms of the old woman, and followed him mutely into the adjoining room, where a light was burning on the table, and stood before him, waiting for him to speak.

"You are hurt," he said, taking the bandaged arm in his hand. "That fellow has wounded you."

"I suppose he meant to kill me," she answered, leaning with the disengaged arm against the table.

Horton unbound the handkerchief. The blood was oozing from a deep flesh cut below the elbow. With skilful fingers, he ripped open the sleeve and turned it back from the fair round arm. Then, with the appliances the country doctor has always at hand, he dressed the wound. When he had finished, Lilly drew the sleeve down and fastened it over the bandage.

Horton looked into her face. She was deadly pale, and her hands, which had touched his once or twice during the operation, were like ice.

"You are weak and unstrung. You have lost a great deal of blood. Sit down, Miss O'Connell."

She did so, and there was a little silence. The young man's nerves were still thrilling with the excitement of the last hour. For the moment, this girl--sitting there before him, this fair girl with her hard, cruel destiny--filled him completely.

"What are you going to do?" he asked, at length.

"Do?" she repeated. "Nothing."

"You will let this villain escape justice?" he said. "You will take no measures to protect yourself?"

Lilly raised her head. A look of intense bitterness swept across her face.

"I shall not do anything," she said. "Doctor Horton, you have always been good to me. As far back as I can remember, you have been my friend. I want you to promise me not to speak of what has happened to-night."

Horton bit his lips in perplexity.

"I do not think I have any right to make such a promise," he said, after a little pause. "This was an attempt at murder."

She rose and came close up to him.

"You _must_ promise me. Do you not see?" she went on, passionately. "If I were any one else, it would be different--do you not understand? To have my name dragged before the public--I could not bear it! I would rather he killed me outright!"

Doctor Horton walked the floor excitedly.

"It is a terrible thing," he said. "I cannot blame you, but it does not seem right. Think the matter over. Perhaps you will feel differently. In the meantime, I will do nothing without your consent."

"Thank you, Doctor Horton," she said.

A feeble call came from the sick-room, and she turned away. Soon after, Doctor Horton left the house.

The next day Commeraw's shop remained closed, and it was discovered that he had fled the town. Numerous debts and embarrassments which came to light sufficiently accounted for his departure, and were also ample guarantee against his return. In this way, the question which had vexed Doctor Horton's mind was unexpectedly settled.

He did not see Lilly O'Connell for several days, but met her at last on the street in such a way that she could not well avoid him.

"It goes against my sense of justice that that scoundrel should escape so easily," he said, after having made professional inquiries after the wounded arm, "but at least you will now be safe," and, touching his hat respectfully, he turned to leave her. At that instant, Miss Fairfield's phaeton dashed around the corner. The occupant drew the reins slightly and regarded the two with a flash of the turquoise eyes; then, bowing coldly, she gave her horse a touch of the whip and dashed on again.

When Horton appeared at Mrs. Fairfield's that evening, however, Florence received him with unusual sweetness, and when chided playfully for the coldness of her greeting on the street, replied only with a light laugh.

The next morning rain was falling steadily, but it did not prevent Miss Fairfield from appearing in Miss Bullins's shop, taut and trim in her blue flannel suit, the yellow hair and delicate rose-tinted face finely relieved against the black velvet lining of her hat. She found Lilly O'Connell in attendance and the shop otherwise unoccupied, as she had expected. She was very gracious. She brought with her a parcel containing costly linen and laces, which she wished made into mysterious garments after the imported models inclosed.

"My dresses will be made in Boston," she explained, with a conscious blush, "but I want these things made under my own supervision--and I want _you_ to make them."

What was it in her crisp, clear tones which gave the common words so subtle an effect? The two girls looked each other full in the face for a moment. Miss Fairfield was the first to look away.

"You do your work so beautifully, you know," she added, with a very sweet smile.

There was nothing more to say, yet she sauntered about the shop awhile, looking at the goods displayed, or out into the rainy street.

"I'm sorry to see you looking so badly," she said, at last, turning her eyes suddenly upon the pale face behind the counter. "But I don't wonder, either. It is natural you should take it hard."

Again the gray eyes met the blue in that mute encounter.

"I don't think I know what you mean," said Lilly, her fingers tightening upon the laces she was folding.

Miss Fairfield raised her eyebrows.

"Oh, of course," she went on, sympathetically, "of course, you don't like to talk about it, but I'm sure _you_ are not in the least to blame. It was shameful of Commeraw to go off the way he did. I am really sorry for you. _Good_-morning!"

A moment later, when she was well outside, a little laugh broke from her lips. It had been very well done--even better than she had meant to do it.

The new minister, a susceptible young man, meeting her at this moment, thought he had never seen his fair parishioner looking so charming.

Just after, he was equally struck by another face, framed in reddish-golden hair, which was gazing out from the milliner's window at the murky sky. Its set, hopeless expression startled him.

"What a remarkable face!" he reflected. "It is that girl whose voice I noticed the other evening." And, being a well-meaning young man, he mentally added, "I really must speak with her, next conference-meeting."

Summer passed tranquilly away, autumn ran its brief course; and in November, when the days were getting toward their shortest and dreariest, something happened which startled quiet Ridgemont out of the even tenor of its way. The small-pox broke out among the operatives in the paper-mill, and spread so rapidly during the first days as to produce a universal panic. The streets were almost deserted; houses were darkened, as if by closed shutters one might shut out the fatal guest. Those who were compelled to go about, or whose social instinct overcame their fear, walked the streets with a subdued and stealthy air, as if on the lookout for an ambushed foe.

The village loafers were fewer in number, and their hilarity was forced and spasmodic. Jokes of a personal nature still circulated feebly, but seemed to have lost their point and savor, and the laughter which followed had a hollow ring. Mr. Hanniford was visibly depressed, and the sallies which his position as local humorist compelled him to utter were of a ghastly description. He still endeavored to enliven his labors with his favorite ditty, but it had lost perceptibly in force and spirit.

Mr. Doolittle, the post-master, bore himself with a dignified composure truly admirable, going fishing more persistently and smoking more incessantly than ever.

"What you want, boys," he remarked, with great earnestness, to the few faithful retainers whom the potent spell of gingerpop rendered insensible to other considerations,--"what you want is to take plenty of exercise in the open air, and smoke freely. Tobacco is a great--a--prophylactic."

Meetings of citizens were held, and all the usual sanitary means adopted and put in execution. An uninhabited farm-house, whose rightful owner was in some unknown part of the world, was chosen for hospital uses, and thither all victims of the disease were carried at once. From the beginning, Dr. Horton had been most prompt and active in suggesting prudential measures, and in seeing them carried out. By universal consent, he was invested with full powers. Dr. Starkey, the only other physician, on the ground of failing health, willingly submitted to the situation. The young physician's entire energies were aroused. He worked indefatigably, sparing neither strength nor pocket; for among the victims were several heads of families, whose sickness--and, in a few cases, whose death--left want and misery behind them.

One of the greatest obstacles encountered was the scarcity of nurses, most of those responding to the call becoming themselves victims in a few days. Two men only--veteran soldiers--were equal to the occasion, and acted in multifarious capacities--as drivers of the ambulance, housekeepers, cooks, nurses, undertakers, and grave-diggers.

On the evening when the certainty of the outbreak was established, Dr. Horton, after a day of excessive labor, went around to Mrs. Fairfield's. It was a dark, rainy evening, and the house seemed strangely cheerless and silent. A faint light shone from one upper window, and he fancied, as he reached the steps, that he saw a girlish figure leaning against the window-sash. The housemaid who admitted him, after a second ring, did so with a hesitating and constrained air, eyed him askance as she set her lamp upon the parlor table, and retreated hastily.

He was kept waiting, too, as it seemed to him, an unnecessarily long time. He was tired and a little unstrung. He was in that mood when the touch of a warm, tender hand is balm and cordial at once, and the delay fretted him. He could hear muffled footfalls over his head, and the murmur of voices, as he wandered about the room, taking up various small articles in a listless way, to throw them down impatiently again; pulling about the loose sheets of music on the piano, and wondering why so lovely a creature as Florence need to be so scrupulously exact about her toilet, with an impatient lover chafing and fretting not twenty paces away. But at last there was a sound of descending footsteps, a rustling of skirts, and the door opened to admit--Mrs. Fairfield. She, at all events, had not been spending the precious moments at her toilet-table. Something must have thrown her off her guard. She was negligent in her attire, and certain nameless signs of the blighting touch of Time were allowed to appear, it may be safely asserted for the first time, to the eyes of mortal man. She was also flustered in manner, and, after giving Dr. Horton the tips of her cold fingers, retreated to the remotest corner of the room, and sank into an easy-chair. He noticed as she swept by him that her person exhaled camphor like a furrier's shop.

"It's dreadful, isn't it?" she murmured, plaintively, holding a handkerchief saturated with that drug before her face. "Perfectly dreadful!"

Dr. Horton was at first puzzled, and then, as the meaning of her remark came to him, a good deal amused. He had not felt like laughing, all day; but now he was obliged to smile, in the palm of his hand, at the small, agitated countenance of his future mother-in-law, seen for the first time without "war-paint or feathers."

"It is certainly a misfortune," he said, reassuringly; "but it is not wise to become excited. The disease is confined at present to the lower part of the town, and, with the precautions which are to be taken, it will hardly spread beyond it."

Mrs. Fairfield shook her head incredulously.

"There's no telling," she murmured, sniffing at her handkerchief with a mournful air.

"I have only a few moments to stay," the young man said, after a slight pause. "I have to attend a citizens' meeting. Is not Florence well?"

"Y-yes, she is well," came in hesitating and muffled accents from behind the handkerchief. "She is not _ill_, but she is terribly upset by the state of things, poor child! She has _such_ a horror of disease! Why, she can't bear to come near me when I have one of my sick headaches. So sensitive, you know. So----"

A light had gradually been breaking upon Horton's mind. He colored, and stepped forward a little. He had not been asked to sit down, and was still in overcoat and gloves.

"I think," he said, slowly, looking Mrs. Fairfield full in the face,--"I _suppose_ I know what you mean. Florence will not come down. She is afraid to--to see me."

Mrs. Fairfield fidgeted in her chair, and a red spot burned in her sallow cheek.

"You must not think strange of it, Roger," she began, volubly. "You know how delicately organized Florence is. So nervous and excitable. And it would be _such_ a misfortune--with her complexion!"

Dr. Horton took one or two turns across the room. He was not apt to speak on impulse, and he waited now. He stopped before a portrait of Florence, which hung over the piano. The tender face looked out upon him with the soft, beguiling smile about the small, curved lips, which had become so dear to him. Above it was a bunch of gorgeous sumac, which he had gathered for her one heavenly day, not long ago; and on the piano-rack stood the song she had taught him to believe the sweetest song in all the world:

"Du bist wie eine Blume, So schön, so hold, so rein."

He looked at the face again. She _was_ "like a flower." How could he have found it in his heart to blame her, even by the remotest thought?

"I'm sure," came the plaintive voice again, "you ought not to blame her. I think it's perfectly natural."

Dr. Horton turned toward her, with a cheerful smile.

"Yes, it is quite natural. Of course I have taken every precaution; but it was wrong of me to come without finding out how she felt. Tell her I will not come again until"--he paused, with an unpleasant feeling in his throat--"until she wishes me to come."

"Well, I am sure," said Mrs. Fairfield, rising with an alacrity which betrayed how great was her relief, "you must know what a trial it is to her, Roger. The poor girl feels _so_ badly. You are not angry?" giving her hand, but holding the camphorated handkerchief between them.

"No," Dr. Horton said, taking the reluctant fingers a moment, "not at all angry."

He went away into the outer darkness, walking a little heavily. The house-door shut behind him with a harsh, inhospitable clang, and as he went down the steps the wind blew a naked, dripping woodbine-spray sharply against his cheek, giving him a curiously unpleasant thrill.

When he was part way down the walk, he looked back. At the upper window the girlish figure was still visible, the face still pressed against the pane. His heart bounded at the sight, and then sank with a sense of remoteness and loss for which, a moment later, he chided himself bitterly.

Mrs. Fairfield waited only until she believed Roger was off the grounds, when she threw open all the windows in the room, sprinkled everything liberally with carbolic acid, and went up-stairs to her daughter.

She found Florence standing at the window where she had left her.

"What did he say?" she asked, without looking around.

"Oh, he was very reasonable," Mrs. Fairfield answered, seizing the camphor-bottle from the bureau, "very, indeed. He said it was wrong in him to have come under such circumstances, and he would not come again until the danger was over. Roger always was so sensible."

Tears rolled from the girl's eyes down over her blue cashmere wrapper, and she bit her lips to keep back the sobs which threatened to break out.

"Hannah says three more cases were reported to-night," said her mother, re-entering, after a short absence.

An exclamation escaped the girl's lips, and she wrung her fingers nervously.

"We'd better go, hadn't we?" said Mrs. Fairfield.

"No!" cried the girl. "Yes! Oh, I don't know! I don't know!" and she threw herself upon the bed, crying hysterically.

The evil news being corroborated by the milkman next morning, led to another conference between mother and daughter, the result of which was that the following notes awaited Dr. Horton on his return from an exhausting day's work:

"MY DEAREST ROGER: Do not be _too_ much hurt or shocked to hear that mother and I have left town on the 3.30 train. We think it best. It is hard, of course; but the separation will be easier than if we were in the same place. I assure you, dear Roger, it pains me to go, _dreadfully_; but I cannot bear such a strain upon my nerves. Do, dearest, take care of yourself--though, of course, you won't take the disease. Doctors never do, I believe. I don't see why, I'm sure.

"Oh, how I wish you had settled in Boston, or some large place, where your practice would have been among first-class people only. Those low mill people are always breaking out with some horrid thing or other. It is too bad. We are going to stay with Aunt Kitty, in Boston. She has been wanting me to spend the winter with her. She is very gay, but of course, dearest, I shall have no interest in _anything_. Of course you will write.

"Your own, as ever,

"F. F."

Doctor Horton read this letter twice before opening the other, which was from Mrs. Fairfield herself, and ran as follows:

"MY DEAR ROGER: I am sure you will not blame me for taking our darling Flossie out of harm's way, nor her for going. As I told her last night, you always were so sensible. The poor child has been in such a state, you've no idea! We feel real anxious about you. Do take every precaution, for Flossie's sake, though they say doctors never take diseases. Do wear a camphor-bag somewhere about you. I always did wish you had chosen the law--it is so much nicer. Of course Flossie will expect letters, but don't you think you had better soak the paper and envelopes in carbolic acid beforehand? They say it's very efficacious.

"Yours, affectionately,

"A. FAIRFIELD.

"P. S.--You have no idea how the darling child's spirits have risen since we began packing. She is quite another creature.

"A. F."

Doctor Horton smiled as he read, but as he put both notes away in his desk, his face became grave and sad again.

"It is perfectly natural," he said to himself, as he went down to his lonely tea. "Perfectly so, and I am glad she has gone. But----"

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