Under the Country Sky Part 24

Certainly far, far less than had had Mr. E. C. Jefferson and that same Georgiana Warne.

He did not see her at once, for the father and mother of his patient met him in the middle of the floor, and his first glance fell upon them and remained there while he spoke to them of their daughter. Even in his manner of speaking Georgiana felt a decided difference. There was a curious crispness and succinctness of speech that marked the professional man, which was decidedly different from the more expanded conversational manner of Mr. Jefferson.

"Yes, she is sleeping quietly under the last effects of the anaesthetic,"

he was saying when Georgiana took note of his words once more. "We will let her sleep. It will spare her some hours of consciousness."

"Will she suffer very much when she wakes, Doctor?" was the mother's anxious question.

Doctor Craig's smile was the very one Georgiana had first liked about him, for it transformed his face and gave it back the youth which his early responsibility in a serious profession had done its best to age.

"We shall not let her suffer very much," he promised. "That's not necessary nor desirable."

"When may we see her?" Mrs. Crofton pursued.

"You may all see her for a moment before she wakens, if you wish.

Afterward her mother and father for just a word, and--I am told she expressed a very strong wish to see a young man who was on his way. Has he come? For the sake of her contentment I have agreed to allow him a word with her by and by--just a word, if he will be very quiet."

It was Uncle Thomas who turned to beckon James Stuart forward, and then to nod at Georgiana. Immediately Stuart was presented to Doctor Craig, who, looking intently into the young man's questioning face, said straightforwardly: "Mr. Stuart and I have met before under quite different circ.u.mstances. He knew me as a writer of books and may be surprised to find me here--as I am surprised to find him."

"Let me present you to my niece, Miss Warne, Doctor Craig," said Aunt Olivia, and Georgiana was glad of the preparation the minutes had given her, for here indeed was need for all her powers of self-control. Her eyes had no sooner looked into those which met them with such a keen and searching glance than she was stirred to the depths. She had thought she had known what it would be to feel those eyes upon her again, but she had not reckoned with the effect of absence.

He made no effort to conceal the situation. "When your daughter sees me next, Mrs. Crofton," he said, without turning from Georgiana, "she will know me, as Miss Warne and Mr. Stuart do. I spent last winter in Miss Warne's home, under the name of Jefferson alone, to find time to work at a book I am writing. I gave it up sooner than I had expected, because my work here would not be denied."

"Didn't Jean know you when she saw you before the--the operation?" cried Rosalie, full of curiosity at this unexpected turn of affairs.

"She did not see me before she was anaesthetized," explained Doctor Craig; and Doctor Westfall added, patting Rosalie's hand: "It's rather like a story, isn't it, Rosy? Doctor Seaver, of the staff here, was telling me this morning how Doctor Craig tried to take a year off to rest and write, but how they got him back--and glad enough to have him, too. And yet we want that book. It's rather hard to have a reputation so big it won't give you time to rest. He needed the rest, Seaver told me."

"I had it. Six months in the country did more for me than a year in town," said Doctor Craig. He turned at the sound of a light knock upon the door. He gave the impression of a man whose senses were every one alert.

An apologetic interne came in with a message for Doctor Craig and he left them, with a final word of confidence and the request that they all retire to rooms at the nearby hotel where they were staying.

Georgiana found Rosalie at her side. "O George! is he really the man you had in your house all this year? You lucky thing! Didn't you fall in love with him instantly? Why, he's perfectly wonderful!"

"You think so now, child, because you know he's distinguished. If you had seen him quietly working at his book you probably wouldn't have looked at him a second time."

Rosalie studied her cousin's face so intently that Georgiana had some difficulty in maintaining this att.i.tude of cool detachment. The young girl shook her head. "He couldn't have changed his face," she insisted.

"He's not a bit handsome, but he's stunning just the same. Oh, how astonished Jean will be when she finds out who's saved her life! When do you suppose he'll let Jimmy Stuart see her? He'll die if he doesn't make sure she's alive pretty soon."

CHAPTER XX

FIVE MINUTES

It was not many hours before Doctor Craig himself led Georgiana and James Stuart together into the room where Jeannette lay. She had asked to see them together, he said, and they might remain for precisely five minutes. He immediately left the room again and took the nurse with him.

The five minutes were spent by Stuart with Jeannette's hand in both his own, as he knelt beside the the bed where she lay, no pillow under her head, her face very white but her eyes glowing.

Jeannette's look met Georgiana's. "Is it all right?" she said very low.

"Of course it's all right, dear; and I'm perfectly happy over it,"

whispered Georgiana.

Jeannette smiled. "I couldn't be happy till I was sure," she breathed.

"I thought--I might die, even yet--and I wanted it like this--first."

An inarticulate murmur from Stuart answered this, but Georgiana a.s.sured her very gently: "You're going to be happy with Jimps for years and years, Jean darling."

They were silent then, as they had been bidden, but the silence was eloquent. Doctor Craig, coming in to put an end to the little interview, saw the unmistakable tableau. As Stuart, catching sight of him, rose slowly to his feet, the surgeon's fingers closed upon his patient's pulse. He nodded.

"As a heart stimulant you have done very well, Mr. Stuart," he said.

"But small doses, frequently repeated, are better than large ones."

Jeannette's hand weakly caught his. "Isn't it queer, Georgiana," she murmured, "that it should be your Mr. Jefferson who has saved my life?"

In spite of herself, Georgiana could not prevent the rich wave of colour which swept over her face. She knew, without venturing to look at him, that Doctor Craig's eyes flashed toward her with a smile in them. She stooped over Jeannette with a gay reply:

"And he began his acquaintance with you by s...o...b..lling you till you almost had need of his surgery on the spot!"

Then she and Stuart were out in the wide, bare hospital corridor, and Stuart was saying with a shiver: "Does she look all right to you, George--sure?"

"Of course she does, Jimps. You never saw her before with her hair down in braids; and any face looks pale against a white bed."

He shook his head. "I shall not stir out of this town till she looks like herself to me."

"Of course you won't. I wish I needn't, but I must go back to father to-night."

They all tried to dissuade her from this course, but she was firm. She knew well enough that all Jeannette had wanted of her was to a.s.sure herself that she possessed a clear right and t.i.tle to Stuart's love.

Evidently Jeannette had guessed more at Stuart's past relations with Georgiana than either of them had imagined, and she would not allow herself to be happy without the knowledge that she was not making her cousin miserable.

One brief conversation with Doctor Craig was all that was vouchsafed Georgiana before she left the city, and that took place in the presence of others, in Aunt Olivia's apartment. It was clear enough how busy a man he was in this his own world, for when he came into the room he explained to Mrs. Crofton that it had been his only chance since they arrived to make a brief social call upon the family of his patient. It was but an hour before Georgiana's departure, and when he learned this, Jefferson Craig came over to her, where she sat upon a divan at one end of the long private drawing-room of the suite. Seeing this, the others of the party began conversations of their own, after the manner of the highly intelligent, and for those five minutes Georgiana lived in a place apart from the rest of the world.

"Please tell me all about your father," he began, and the tones of his voice, low as are habitually those of his profession, could hardly have been heard by one across the room.

Georgiana told him, unconsciously letting him see that the fear of her probable loss was ever before her, though she could not put it into words. She knew as she spoke that his eyes did not leave her face. She had no possible idea how alluring was that face as the light from the sconces nearby fell upon it. She was conscious, womanlike, that the small hat she wore was made over from one of Jeannette's, and she did not think it becoming. Though it was November, she still wore her summer suit, for the reason that since her return from abroad Jeannette had not found time to pack and send off the usual "Semi-Annual," and previous boxes had not included winter suits at at all. Altogether, with many-times-mended gloves upon her hands, and shoes which to her seemed disgraceful, though preserved with all the care of which she was mistress, Georgiana felt somehow more than ordinarily shabby.

Doctor Craig asked her several questions. He spoke of the rug-making, watching her closely as she answered. He asked how often she went to walk and how far. He asked what she and her father were reading. He would have asked other questions, but she interrupted him.

"It's not fair," she said. "Please tell me about the book. Does it get on?"

"Do you care to know?"

"Very much. I'm wondering if your copyist makes those German references any clearer for the printer than I did."

"n.o.body has copied a word. I have not written a word. The book is at a complete standstill. I see no hope for it until I can take another vacation--under the name of E. C. Jefferson."

"And that you will never take," she said positively.