"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.
