Heriot's Choice Part 68

'I love you dearly--dearly--but I want to love you more.'

'Oh, Heartsease,' he groaned, 'I fear that the mistake is mine, and that I have not yet won the whole of your innocent heart. I have taken it too much as a matter of course. Perhaps I have not wooed you so earnestly as I should have wooed an older woman, and yet I hardly think I have failed in either devotion or reverence. Ah,' he continued, with an involuntary sigh, 'what right have I to complain if she withhold her fresh young love--am I giving her all that is in me to give?' But here he stopped, as though the reflection pained him.

He remembered with what sympathy Mildred had advocated his cause. She had looked excited--almost indignant--as Polly had uttered her piteous protest for time. Had her clear eyes noticed any signs of vacillation or reluctance? Could he speak to her on the subject? Would she answer him frankly? And then, for the first time, he felt as though he could not so speak to her.

'Every one takes their troubles to her, but she shall not be hara.s.sed by me,' he thought. 'She is sinking now under the burdens which most likely other people have laid upon her. I will not add to their weight.' And a strange pity and longing seized him to know what ailed the generous creature, who never thought of herself, but of others.

Mildred felt as though some ordeal awaited her when she woke the next morning. She looked so ill and weak that Olive was in despair when she insisted on rising and dressing herself. 'It will bring on the faintness again to a certainty,' she said, in a tone of unusual remonstrance; but Mildred was determined.

But she was glad of Olive's a.s.sistance before she had finished, and the toilet was made very slowly and wearily. At the drawing-room door Dr.

Heriot met her with a reproachful face; he looked a little displeased.

'So you have cast my prescription to the wind,' he said, drily, 'and are determined not to own yourself ill.' But Mildred coloured so painfully that he cut short his lecture and a.s.sisted her to the couch in silence.

'There you may stop for the next two or three days,' he continued, somewhat grimly. 'Mr. Lambert has desired me to look after you, and I shall take good care that you do not disobey my orders again. I have made Olive head nurse, and woe be to her if there be a single infringement of my rules.'

Mildred looked up at him timidly. He had been so gentle with her the preceding evening that this change of manner disturbed her. This was not his usual professional gravity; on such occasions he had ever been kindness itself. He must be put out--annoyed--the idea was absurd, but could she have displeased him? She was too weak to bear the doubt.

'Have I vexed you, Dr. Heriot, by coming down?' she asked, gently. 'I should be worse if I fancied myself ill. I--I have had these attacks before; they are nothing.'

'That is your opinion, is it? I must say I thought better of your sense, Miss Lambert,' still gruffly.

Mildred's eyes filled with tears.

'Yes, I am vexed,' he continued sitting down by her; but his tone was more gentle now. 'I am vexed that you are hiding from us that you are suffering. You keep us all in the dark; you deny you are ill. I think you are treating us all very badly.'

'No--no,' she returned, with difficulty. 'I am not ill--you must not tell me so.' And her cheek paled perceptibly.

'Have you turned coward suddenly?' he replied, with a keen look at her.

'I have heard you say more than once that the dread of illness was unknown to you; that you could have walked a fever hospital without a shudder. What has become of your courage, Miss Lambert?'

'I am not afraid, but I do not want to be ill,' she returned, faintly.

'That is more unlike you than ever. Impatience, want of submission, do not certainly belong to your category of faults. Well, if you promise to follow my prescription, I think I can undertake that you shall not be ill.'

Mildred drew a long sigh of relief; the sigh of an oppressed heart was not lost on Dr. Heriot.

'But you must get rid of what is on your mind,' he went on, quickly. 'If other people's burdens lie heavily, you must shift them to their own shoulders and think only of yourself. Now I want to ask you a few questions.'

Mildred looked frightened again, but something in Dr. Heriot's manner this morning constrained her to obey. His inquiries were put skilfully, and needed only a yea and nay, as though he feared she would elude him.

Mildred found herself owning to loss of appet.i.te and want of sleep; to languor and depression, and a tendency to excessive irritation; noises jarred on her; a latent excitement took the place of strength. She had lost all pleasure in her duties, though she still fulfilled them.

'And now what does this miserable state of the nerves mean?' was his next question. Mildred said nothing.

'You have suffered no shock--nothing has alarmed you?' She shook her head.

'You cannot eat or sleep; when you speak you change colour with every word; you are wasted, getting thinner every day, and yet there is no disease. This must mean something, Miss Lambert--excuse me; but I am your friend as well as your doctor. I cannot work in the dark.'

Mildred's lips quivered. 'I want change--rest. I have had anxieties--no one can be free in this world. I am getting too weak for my work.' What a confession from Mildred! At another time she would have died rather than utter it; but his quiet strength of will was making evasion impossible. She felt as though this friend of hers was reading her through and through. She must escape in some measure by throwing herself upon his mercy.

He looked uneasy at that; his eyes softened, then suffused.

'I thought as much,' he muttered; 'I could not be deceived by that face.' And a great pity swelled up in his heart.

He would like to befriend this n.o.ble woman, who was always so ready to sacrifice herself to the needs of others. He would ask her to impart her trouble, whatever it was; he might be able to help her. But Mildred, who read his purpose in his eyes, went on breathlessly--

'It is the rest I want, and the change; I am not ill. I knew you would say so; but the nerves get strained sometimes, and then worries will come.'

'Tell me your trouble,' he returned abruptly, but it was the abruptness of deep feeling. 'I have not forgotten your kindness to me on more than one occasion. I have debts of grat.i.tude to pay, and they are heavy. Make me your friend--your brother, if you will; you will find I am to be trusted.' But the poor soul only shrank from him.

'It cannot be told--there are reasons against it. I have more than one trouble--anxiety,' she faltered. 'Dr. Heriot, indeed--indeed, you are very good, but there are some things that cannot be told.'

'As you will,' he returned, very gently; but Mildred saw he was disappointed. In what a strange complication she was involved! She could not even speak to him of her fear on Roy's behalf. He took his leave soon after that, and Mildred fancied a slight reserve mingled with the kindness with which he bade her good-bye.

He seemed conscious of it, for he came back again after putting on his coat, thereby preventing a miserable afternoon of fanciful remorse on Mildred's part.

'I will think what is to be done about the change,' he said, drawing on his driving-gloves. 'I am likely to be busy all day, and shall not see you again this evening. Keep your mind at rest as well as you can. You don't need to be told in what spirit all trials must be borne--the darker the cloud the more need of faith.' He held out his hand to her again with one of his bright, genial smiles, and Mildred felt braced and comforted.

Mildred was obliged to allow herself to be treated as an invalid for the next few days; but when Dr. Heriot saw how the inaction and confinement fretted her, he withdrew a few of his restrictions, even at times going against his better judgment, when he saw how cruelly she chafed under her own restlessness.

This was the case one chill, sunless afternoon, when he found her standing by the window looking out over the fells, with a sad wistfulness that went to his heart.

As he went up to her he was shocked to see the marks of recent tears upon her face.

'What is this--you are not worse to-day?' he asked, in a tone of vexed remonstrance.

'No--oh no,' she returned, holding out her hand to him with a misty smile, the thin blue-veined hand, with its hot dry palm; 'you will think me a poor creature, Dr. Heriot, but I could not help fretting over my want of strength just now.'

'Rome was not built in a day,' he responded, cheerily; 'and people who indulge in fainting fits cannot expect to feel like Hercules. Who would have thought that such an inexorable nurse as Miss Lambert should prove such a fractious invalid?' and there was a tone of reproof under the light raillery.

'I do not mean to be impatient,' she answered, sighing; 'but I am so weary of this room and my own thoughts, and then there are my poor people.'

'Don't trouble your head about them; they will do very well without you,' with pretended roughness.

She shook her head.

'You are wrong; they miss me dreadfully; Olive has brought me several messages from them already.'

'Then Olive ought to be ashamed of herself, and shall be deposed from her office of nurse, and Polly shall reign in her stead.'

But Mildred was too much depressed and in earnest to heed his banter.

'There is poor Rachel Sowerby up at Stenkrith; her mother has been down this morning to say that she cannot last very much longer.'

'I am just going up to see her now. I fear it is only a question of days,' he replied, gravely.

Mildred clasped her hands with an involuntary movement of pain.

'Rachel is very dear to me; she is the model girl and the favourite of the whole school, and her mother says she is pining to see me. Oh, Dr.