“Mr. Etheridge, I have told you all my story. If it strikes you with dismay and you shrink in your noble manhood from a woman whom, rightfully or wrongfully, is burdened with the weight of a father’s death, do not try to overcome that shrinking or defy that dismay. We could never be happy if you did. Nothing but whole-souled love will satisfy me or help me to forget the shadows that bear so heavily upon my head. You say you love me, but your emotions upon reading this letter will prove to yourself what is the true strength and nature of your feelings. Let them, then, have their honest way. If they are in my favor I shall be the happiest girl alive, but if they lead you to go by on the other side of the street, then will I strive to bear this sorrow also, as one who has been much to blame for the evils which have befallen her.”
That was all. As Frank folded the last sheet and put it and the rest quietly away in his pocket, Edgar saw, or thought he saw, that happier hours were about to dawn for Hermione Cavanagh. It made him think of his own love and of the claims of the gentle Emma.
“Frank,” said he, with the effort of a reticent man compelled at last to make an admission, “if you are going to the Cavanaghs, I think—I—will—go—with you.”
Frank started and leaped forward warmly with outstretched hand. But before their two palms could meet, the door was violently opened and a messenger came panting in with the announcement:
“Dr. Sellick’s wanted. Hermione Cavanagh is at the point of death.”
XXVIII
IN EXTREMITY
Frank and Edgar were equally pale as they reached the Cavanagh house. No time had been lost on the way, and yet the moments had been long enough for them both to be the prey of the wildest conjectures. The messenger who had brought the startling news of Hermione’s illness knew nothing concerning the matter beyond the fact that Doris, their servant, had called to him, as he was passing their house, to run for Dr. Sellick, as Miss Hermione was dying. They were therefore entirely in the dark as to what had happened, and entered the house, upon their arrival, like men for whom some terrible doom might be preparing.
The first person they encountered was Huckins. He was standing in the parlor window, rubbing his hands slowly together and smiling very softly to himself. But when he saw the two young men, he came forward with a cringing bow and an expression of hypocritical grief, which revived all Frank’s distrust and antipathy.
“Oh, sir,” he exclaimed to Frank, “you here? You should not have come; indeed you should not. Sad case,” he added, turning to the Doctor; “very sad case, this which we have upstairs. I fear we are going to lose the dear young lady.” And he wiped his half-shut eyes with his fine white handkerchief.
“Let me see her; where is she?” cried the Doctor, not stopping to look around him, though the place must have been full of the most suggestive associations.
“Doris will show you. She was in the laboratory when I saw her last. A dangerous place for a young lady who has been jilted by her lover!” And he turned a very twinkling eye on Frank.
“What do you mean?” cried Frank. “The laboratory! The place where— O Edgar, go to her, go at once.”
But Edgar was already half-way upstairs, at the top of which he was met by Doris.
“What is this?” he cried. “What has happened to Miss Cavanagh?”
“Come and see,” she said. “O that she should go out of the house first in this way!”
Alarmed more by the woman’s manner than her words, Dr. Sellick hurried forward and entered the open laboratory door almost without realizing that in another instant he would be in the presence of Emma. And when he did see her, and met the eyes he had not looked into since that night a year before when she listened to his vows with such a sweet and bashful timidity, he hardly felt the shock of the change observable in her, for the greater shock her sister’s appearance inspired. For Hermione lay on that same old couch which had once held her father, ill to speechlessness, and though the Doctor did not know what had brought her to this condition, he began to suspect and doubt if he were in time to revive her.
“What has she taken?” he demanded. “Something, or she would not be as low as this without more warning.”
Emma, quaking, put a little piece of paper in his hand.
“I found this in her pocket,” she whispered. “It was only a little while ago. It is quite empty,” said she, “or you would have had two patients.”
He stared at her, hardly taking in her words. Then he leaped to the door.
“Frank,” he cried, tossing down a slip of paper on which he had hastily written a word, “go with this to the druggist at once! Run, for moments are precious!”
They heard a shout in answer; then the noise of the front door opening and shutting, and the sound of rapidly departing steps.
“Thank God!” the young physician murmured, as he came back into the laboratory, “that I studied chemistry with Mr. Cavanagh, or I might not know just what antidote was required here.”
“Look!” Emma whispered; “she moved, when you said the word Frank.”
The Doctor leaned forward and took Emma’s hand.
“If we can rouse her enough to make her speak, she will be saved. When did she take that powder?”
“I fear she took it this morning, shortly after—after nine o’clock; but she did not begin to grow seriously ill till an hour ago, when she suddenly threw up her arms and shrieked.”
“And didn’t you know; didn’t you suspect—”
“No, for she said nothing. She only looked haggard and clung to me; clung as if she could not bear to have me move an inch away from her side.”
“And how long has she been unconscious and in that clammy, cold sweat?”
“A little while; just before we sent for you. I—I hated to disturb you at first, but life is everything, and—”
He gave her one deep, reassuring look.
“Emma,” he softly murmured, “if we save your sister, four hearts shall be happy. See if you can make her stir. Tell her that Frank is here, and wants to see her.”
Emma, with a brightening countenance, leaned over and kissed Hermione’s marble-like brow.
“Hermione,” she cried, “Hermione! Frank wants you; he is tired of waiting. Come, dear; shall I not tell him you will come?”
A quiver at the word Frank, but that was all.
“It is Frank, dear; Frank!” Emma persisted. “Rouse up long enough just to see him. He loves you, Hermione.”
Not even a quiver now. Dr. Sellick began to turn pale.
“Hermione, will you leave us now, just as you are going to be happy? Listen, listen to Emma. You know I have always told you the truth. Frank is here, ready to love you. Wake, darling; wake, dearest—”
There was no use. No marble could be more unresponsive. Dr. Sellick rushed in anguish to the door. But the step he heard there was that of Huckins, and it was Huckins’ face he encountered at the head of the stairs.
“Is she dead?” cried that worthy, bending forward to look into the room. “I was afraid, very much afraid, you could not do any good, when I saw how cold she was, poor dear.”
The Doctor, not hearing him, shouted out: “The antidote! the antidote! Why does not Frank come!”
At that instant Frank was heard below: “Am I in time?” he gasped. “Here it is; I ran all the way”; and he came rushing up the stairs just as Huckins slipped from the step where he was and fell against him.
“Oh,” whimpered that old hypocrite, “I beg your pardon; I am so agitated!” But his agitation seemed to spring mainly from the fact that the antidote Frank brought was in powder and not in a bottle, which might have been broken in their encounter.
Dr. Sellick, who saw nothing but the packet Frank held, grasped the remedy and dashed back into the room. Frank followed and stood in anguished suspense within the open doorway. Huckins crouched and murmured to himself on the stair.
“Can we get her to take it? Is there hope?” murmured Emma.
No word came in reply; the D
octor was looking fixedly at his patient.
“Frank,” he said solemnly, “come and take her hand in yours. Nothing else will ever make her unlock her lips.”
Frank, reeling in his misery, entered and fell at her feet.
“Hermione,” he endeavored to say, but the word would not come. Breaking into sobs he took her hand and laid his forehead upon it. Would that anguish of the beloved one arouse her? Dr. Sellick and Emma drew near together in their anxiety and watched. Suddenly a murmur escaped from the former, and he bent rapidly forward. The close-locked lips were parting, parting so slowly, so imperceptibly, that only a physician’s eye could see it. Waiting till they were opened enough to show the pearly teeth, he stooped and whispered in Frank’s ear. Instantly the almost overwhelmed lover, roused, saw this evidence of existing life, and in his frenzied relief imprinted one wild kiss upon the hand he held. It seemed to move her, to reach her heart, to stay the soul just hovering on the confines of life, for the lips parted further, the lids of the eyes trembled, and before the reaction came, Dr. Sellick had succeeded in giving her a few grains of the impalpable powder he was holding.
“It will either kill or restore her,” said he. “In five minutes we shall know the result.”
And when at the end of those five minutes they heard a soft sigh, they never thought, in their sudden joy and relief, to look for the sneaking figure trembling on the staircase, who, at this first sign of reviving life in one he thought dead, slid from his station and went creeping down the stairs, with baffled looks that would have frightened even Doris had she seen them.
XXIX
IN THE POPLAR WALK.
Two days had passed. Hermione was sitting in the cheerful sitting-room with the choicest of flowers about her and the breeze from the open window fluttering gayly in her locks. She was weak yet, but there was promise of life in her slowly brightening eye, and from the language of the smile which now and then disturbed the lines of her proud lips, there was hope of happiness in the heart which but two short days before had turned from life in despair.
Yet it was not a perfect hope, or the smiles would have been deeper and more frequent. She had held a long talk with Frank, but he had not touched upon a certain vital question, perhaps because he felt she had not yet the strength to argue it. He was her lover and anticipated marrying her, but he had not said whether he expected her to disobey her father and leave her home. She felt that he must expect this; she also felt that he had the right to do so; but when she thought of yielding to his wishes, the old horror returned to her, and a suffocating feeling of fear, as if it would never be allowed. The dead have such a hold upon us. As the pleasure of living and the ecstasy of love began to make themselves felt again in her weakened frame, she could not refrain from asking herself by what right she contemplated taking up the joys of life, who had not only forfeited them by her attempt at suicide, but who had been cursed by a father and doomed by his will to perpetual imprisonment. Had he not said, “Let not hatred, let not love, lead you to leave these doors”? How then presume to think of it or dream that she could be happy with such remembrances as hers ever springing up to blight her life? She wished, oh! how she wished, that Frank would not ask her to leave her home. Yet she knew this was weakness, and that soon, at the next interview, perhaps, she would have to dash his hopes by speaking of her fears. And so Hermione was not perfectly happy.
Emma, on the contrary, was like a bird loosed from a cage. She sang, yes, sang as she flitted up and down the stairs, and once Hermione started and blushed with surprise as her voice in a merry peal of laughter came from the garden. Such a sound had not been heard in that house for a year; such a sound seemed an anomaly there. Yet how sweet it was, and how it seemed to lift the shadows.
There was another person who started as this unusual note of merriment disturbed the silence of the garden. It was Huckins, who was slowly walking up and down beneath the poplars. He was waiting for Doris, and this sound went through him like an arrow.
“Laughter,” he muttered, shaking his trembling hands in menace towards her. “That is a sound I must crush. It speaks too much of hope, and hope means the loss to me of all for which I have schemed for years. Why didn’t that poison work? Why did I let that doctor come? I might have locked the door against him and left them to hunt for the key. But I was afraid; that Etheridge is so ready to suspect me.”
He turned and walked away from the house. He dreaded to hear that silvery sound again.
“If she had died, as I had every reason to suspect after such a dose, Emma would have followed her in a day. And then who could have kept me out of my property? Not Etheridge, for all his hatred and suspicion of me.” He shook his hand again in menace and moved farther down the path.
As his small black figure disappeared up the walk Doris appeared at the kitchen door. She also looked cheerful, yet there was a shade of anxiety in her expression as she glanced up the walk.
“He says he is going away,” she murmured. “The shock of Miss Hermione’s illness was too much for him, poor man! and he does not seem to consider how lonesome I will be. If only he had asked me to go with him! But then I could not have left the young ladies; not while they stick to this old horror of a house. What is it, Miss Emma?”
“A four-leaved clover! one, two, three of them,” cried her young mistress from the lawn at the side of the house. “We are in luck! Times are going to change for us all, I think.”
“The best luck we can have is to quit this house forever,” answered Doris, with a boldness unusual on her lips.
“Ah,” returned Emma, with her spirits a little dashed, “I cannot say about that, but we will try and be happy in it.”
“Happy in it!” repeated Doris, but this time to herself. “I can never be happy in it, now I have had my dreams of pleasure abroad.” And she left the kitchen door and began her slow walk towards the end of the garden.
Arrived at the place where Huckins waited for her, she stopped.
“Good afternoon,” said she. “Pleasant strolling under these poplars.”
He grunted and shook his head slowly to and fro.
“Nothing is very pleasant here,” said he. “I have stood it as long as I can. My nieces are good girls, but I have failed to make them see reason, and I must leave it now to these two lovers of theirs to do what they can.”
“And do you think they will succeed? That the young ladies will be influenced by them to break up their old habits?”
This was what Huckins did think, and what was driving him to extremity, but he veiled his real feelings very successfully under a doleful shake of the head.
“I do not know,” said he. “I fear not. The Cavanagh blood is very obstinate, very obstinate indeed.”
“Do you mean,” cried Doris, “that they won’t leave the house to be married? That they will go on living here in spite of these two young gentlemen who seem to be so fond of them?”
“I do,” said he, with every appearance of truth. “I don’t think anything but fire will ever drive them out of this house.”
It was quietly said, almost mournfully, but it caused Doris to give a sudden start. Looking at him intently, she repeated “Fire?” and seemed to quake at the word, even while she rolled it like a sweet morsel under her tongue.
He nodded, but did not further press the subject. He had caught her look from the corner of his eye, and did not think it worth while to change his attitude of innocence.
“I wish,” he insinuated, “there was another marriage which could take place.”
“Another marriage?” she simpered.
“I have too much money for one to spend,” said he. “I wish I knew of a good woman to share it.”
Doris, before whose eyes the most dazzling dreams of wealth and consequence at once flashed, drooped her stout figure and endeavored to look languishing.
“If it were not for my duty to the young ladies,” sighed she.
“Yes, yes,” said he, “you must never leave them.�
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She turned, she twisted, she tortured her hands in her endeavor to keep down the evidences of her desire and her anxiety.
“If—if this house should be blown down in a storm or—or a fire should consume it as you say, they would have to go elsewhere, have to marry these young men, have to be happy in spite of themselves.”
“But what cyclones ever come here?” he asked, with his mockery of a smile. “Or where could a fire spring from in a house guarded by a Doris?”
She was trembling so she could not answer. “Come out here again at six o’clock,” said she; “they will miss me if I stay too long now. Oh, sir, how I wish I could see those two poor loves happy again!”
“How I wish you could!” said he, and there was nothing in his tone for her ears but benevolence.
As Huckins crept from the garden-gate he ran against Frank, who was on his way to the station.
“Oh, sir,” he exclaimed, cringing, “I am sure I beg your pardon. Going up to town, eh?”
“Yes, and I advise you to do the same,” quoth the other, turning upon him sharply. “The Misses Cavanagh are not well enough at present to entertain visitors.”
“You are no doubt right,” returned Huckins with his meekest and most treacherous aspect. “It is odd now, isn’t it, but I was just going to say that it was time I left them, much as I love the poor dears. They seem so happy now, and their prospects are so bright, eh?”
“I hope so; they have had trouble enough.”
“Um, um, they will go to Flatbush, I suppose, and I—poor old outcast that I am—may rub my hands in poverty.”
He looked so cringing, and yet so saturnine, that Frank was tempted to turn on his heel and leave him with his innuendoes unanswered. But his better spirit prevailing, he said, after a moment’s pregnant silence:
“Yes; the young ladies will go to Flatbush, and the extent of the poverty you endure will depend upon your good behavior. I do not think either of your nieces would wish to see you starve.”
“No, no, poor dears, they are very kind, and the least I can do is to leave them. Old age and misery are not fit companions for youth and hope, are they, Mr. Etheridge?”
The Anna Katharine Green Mystery Megapack Page 182
