Nurse Elisia Part 36

"Mr Elthorne!" she cried indignantly; "you take advantage of my helplessness here. I ought to look for your respect and protection as a gentleman, and you speak to me like this--here, with your poor father in this state."

"Don't reproach me," he pleaded. "Have I ever failed in respect and reverence for you from the day we met till now?--You are silent. You know I have not. You know how my love for you has grown day by day as we have worked together yonder--here. You know how I have fought against it till now, when I see you suffering, and I can bear no more."

"You insult me!" she said indignantly.

"It is no insult for a man to offer the woman he loves his name, and the devotion of his life," he said proudly. "Am I such a frivolous boy that you speak to me as you do, treating me as if it were some pitiful declaration from one who has uttered the same words to a dozen women? I am a student; my life has been devoted to my profession, and I swear to you that I never gave more than a pa.s.sing thought to love until you awoke the pa.s.sion in my breast--and for what? To tell me, when the truth will out, that I insult you! I--I who would die to save you pain--who would suffer anything for your sake--who would make it the one aim of my life to bring happiness to yours. And you tell me I insult you!"

"Yes; it is an insult to take advantage of my position here, sir, at such a time as this. You forget yourself. I am the hospital nurse attending your father. You are the surgeon whose duty is, not only to your patient, but also to me."

"It is no insult," he said warmly. "It is the honest outspoken word of the man who asks you to be his wife."

"Mr Elthorne," she said coldly, "it is impossible."

"Why? Can you not give me some hope? I will wait patiently, as Jacob waited for Rachel."

"I tell you, sir, it is impossible, and you force me to quit this house at once."

"No, no; for pity's sake don't say that," he cried, catching her hand, but she drew it away, and stood back with her eyes flashing.

"How dare you!" she cried angrily. "You force me to speak, sir. Once more I tell you it is an infamy--an insult."

"Infamy! Insult!" he said bitterly.

"Yes. Do you suppose I am ignorant of your position here? You ask me to be your wife when in a few more hours the lady to whom you are betrothed will be staying in the house."

He drew back, looking ghastly, just as there was a soft tap at the dressing room door, and Maria appeared, looking sharply from one to the other.

"I have brought up master's lunch," she said. "Shall I bring it in here?"

"No; I will come and see to it first," said the nurse quickly; and she went into the little room, while Neil walked across to his father's couch and stood looking down at the worn, thin face as the old man still slept on.

"An insult!" he thought--"the lady to whom I am betrothed!"

He looked round wildly, and a sense of despair that was almost insupportable attacked him as he fully realised his position and the justice of the words which had stung him to the heart.

"But there is something more," he said to himself, as, with nerves jarred and his feelings lacerated by disappointment, unworthy thoughts now crept in--"there is something more." And throwing himself into a chair, he sat gazing down at the carpet, recalling bit by bit every look and word of his brother, beginning with the scene upon the staircase on the night of Elisia's first arrival.

They were thoughts which grew more and more unworthy--thoughts which began to rankle in and venom his nature, as he formed mental pictures of his brother being received with smiles and kindly words.

"I would rather see her dead," he muttered fiercely; and at that moment the object of his thoughts entered from the dressing room, bearing the little tray with his father's lunch.

Their eyes met, and as he gazed in the pure, sweet face, the harsh unworthy thoughts pa.s.sed away, to give place to a sense of misery, hopelessness, and despondency, which humbled him before her to the dust.

"And I dared to think all that!" he said to himself, as he rose and drew back from the couch to give place for her to approach.

At that moment the pa.s.sion within him burned as strongly, but it was softened and subdued by the better feelings--the tender love which prevailed.

"Forgive me," he said deprecatingly. "I was nearly mad."

She made no reply, but stood by the couch half turned from him, and he could see that her lips were working.

"Can you not hear my words?" he continued humbly. "What more can I say?

It was the truth."

She turned to him proudly.

"Mr Elthorne," she said, "I ask you, as a gentleman, to end this scene.

If you have any respect for my position here, pray go."

He stood looking at her for a few moments, then turned and left the room without a word, giddy with emotion, crushed by a terrible feeling of despair which drove him to his own room.

Here the bitter thoughts came back.

Alison had been impressed from the first, and he was always seeking for opportunities to speak to her. That, then, was the reason, he told himself. She had twitted him with his engagement, but she would not have cast him off for that; and in this spirit a couple of hours went by, during which he paced the room.

Unable to bear the turmoil in his brain, toward the middle of the afternoon he went down and determined on trying to calm the irritation of his nerves by a long walk.

Crossing the garden, he reached the park, and was hesitating as to the direction he should take. Then, in a motiveless way, he went on to a plantation through which a path led toward a beautiful woodland hollow, which was his father's pride as being the loveliest bit of the park scenery.

Here, just as he reached the edge of the plantation, he caught sight of a figure walking rather quickly toward the woodland, and in a moment he was all excitement again.

"It was the time," he said to himself. "I was mad to speak to her at such an inopportune moment. She will listen to me now. For she is all that is gentle and sympathetic at heart."

His steps grew faster, and he was just about to turn to his right, so as to cut off a good corner, and meet the object of his thoughts about a quarter of a mile beyond where she was walking, when he caught sight of his brother going in the same direction as himself, but from another point, and he stopped short with the old sinking sense of misery coming back, and with it the host of bitter fancies.

For there could be no doubt about it, he thought, and not a single loyal honest idea came to his help. She was going toward the woodland, perhaps by appointment, and if not, Alison had seen her, and was hurrying his steps so as to overtake her as soon as she was out of sight.

A curious kind of mental blindness came over Neil Elthorne, and he stopped short in the shelter of the trees, gazing straight before him, till the figure of his brother disappeared just at the spot which Nurse Elisia had pa.s.sed a few minutes before.

He might have said to himself that there was nothing unusual in the nurse taking that part of the park for the daily walk upon which he had himself insisted, but upon which he had never intruded. And again it might have been accidental that his brother was going in that direction.

But, no; the woman he had idolised so long in silence had rejected him coldly, and twitted him with his position. Alison loved her he was sure, and he had gone to meet her. At that hour he was sure of this being the case, and he stood thinking.

Alison was as much engaged as he. Would she listen to him, and would she pa.s.s over it in the younger, more manly looking brother?

Human nature is strangely full of weakness as well as strength; and as these thoughts crowded through Neil Elthorne's brain, it was of the woman he was thinking, not of Nurse Elisia, toward whom for the past two years he had looked up, almost with veneration as well as love. It was the weak woman, not the self-denying, unwearied, patient being who glided from bedside to bedside, a.s.suaging pain and whispering hope and calming words.

Nurse Elisia with her saint-like face was no longer in his thoughts.

They were filled by the beautiful woman who preferred his brother to him, and, with a hoa.r.s.e cry of rage and despair, he strode away, his hands clenched, his brow rugged, and the veins in his temples swollen and throbbing.

For he was realising for the first time in his life the true meaning of the words "jealous hate"; but through it all there was a glimmering of satisfaction that he was not about to meet his brother on his way, and he shuddered as he thought that sooner or later they must encounter after all.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

A SORE LITTLE HEART.

Neil Elthorne was in his father's room when Nurse Elisia returned from her walk, looking agitated and strange. He had found the old man fretful and impatient, full of complaints about the way in which he was neglected by those who ought, he said, to respect and love him all the more for his illness.

"You all have an idea that I am weak and helpless," he cried; "but it is a mistake. I am a little weak, but quite able to manage the affairs of my house."