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Page 87
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 I saw that Maitland was waking, when I laid my hand
upon her head and asked her to dry her eyes lest he should notice her
tears.
"May I speak to him?" she said, with a look of resolution upon her
face. I could not divine her thoughts, as she smiled at me through
her tears, but I had no hesitancy in relying upon her judgment, so
I gave her permission and started to leave the room.
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