"Why, then, it isn"t perfect."
"Yes, it is."
"Well, then, Miss Garnet, with the perfect understanding that the understanding is perfect, I propose to bid this hand good-by in a fitting and adequate manner, and trust I shall not be inter--!--rupted!
Good-by."
"Oh, Mr. March, I don"t think that was either fair or right!" Her eyes glistened.
"Miss Barb, it wasn"t! Oh, I see it now! It was a wretched mistake!
Forgive me!"
Her eyes, staring up into his, filled to the brim. She waved him away and turned half aside. He backed to the door and paused.
"Miss Barb, one look! Oh, one look, just to show I"m not utterly unforgiven and cast out! I promise you it"s all I"ll ever ask--one look!"
"Good-by," she murmured, but could not trust herself to move.
He stifled a moan. She gave a start of pain. He thought it meant impatience. She took an instant more for self-command and then lifted a smile. Too late, he was gone!
LXI.
A SICK MAN AND A SICK HORSE
"Thank you, no," said Miss Garnet at the door of Mrs. Fair"s room, refusing to enter. "I rapped only to say good-night."
To the question whether she had heard all the poems read she replied, "Not all," with so sweet an irony in her grave smile that Mrs. Fair wanted to tell her she looked like the starlight. But words are clumsy, and the admirer satisfied herself with a kiss on the girl"s temple.
"Good-night," she said; "dream of me."
Several times next day, as the three travelers wound their swift course through the mountains of Pennsylvania, Mrs. Fair observed Barbara sink her book to her lap and with an abstracted gaze on the landscape softly touch the back of her right hand with the fingers of her left. It puzzled her at first, but by and by--
"Poor boy!" she said to herself, in that inmost heart where no true woman ever takes anyone into council, "and both of you Southerners! If that"s all you got, and you had to steal that, you"re both of you better than I"d have been."
When about noon she saw her husband"s eyes fixed on Barbara, sitting four seats away, she asked, with a sparkle: "Thinking of Mr. March?"
"Yes, I"ve guessed why he"s stayed behind."
"Have you? That"s quick work--for a man."
"It looks to-day as if he were out of the game, doesn"t it?"
The lady mused. This time the husband twinkled:
"If he is, my dear, whom should we congratulate: all three or which two?"
"I don"t know yet, my love. Wait. Wait till we"ve tried her in Boston."
At this hour John March was imperatively engrossed by an unforseen discovery. Tossing on his bed the night before, he had decided not to telegraph to Suez for money until he had searched all the hotels for some one from Dixie who would exclaim, "Why, with the greatest pleasure," or words to that effect. In the morning he was up betimes and off on this errand, asking himself why he had not done it the evening before, but concluding he must have foreborne out of respect for the Sabbath.
At the first hotel his search had no reward. But in the second he found a Pulaski City man, whose acquaintance he had never previously prized, yet from whom he now hid four-fifths of his surprised delight and still betrayed enough to flatter the fellow dizzy. John took him back to his own hotel for breakfast, made sure he had only to ask a loan to get it, and let him go at last, unable to get the request through his own teeth.
He went to a third hotel, but found only strangers. Then he went to a fourth, explored its rotunda in vain, turned three or four leaves of its register, and was giving a farewell glance to the back page, when he started with surprise.
"I see," he said to the clerk, "I see you have--will you kindly look this way a moment? Are these persons still with you?"
"They are, sir," said the clerk, gazing absently beyond him, and took March"s card. "Front! I"ll have to send it to the lady, sir; Colonel Ravenel"s sick. What? Oh, well, sir, if _you_ think pneumonia"s slight--Yes, sir, that"s what he"s got." He was turning away contemptuously, but John said:
"Oh!--eh--one moment more, if you please."
"Well, sir, what is it?" The man gave his ear instead of his eye; but he gave both eyes, as John giving both his, asked deferentially:
"Do you own all the hotels in this town, sir, or are you merely a clerk of this one?"
The card went, and a bell-boy presently led the way to Fannie"s door. It stood unlatched. The boy pushed it ajar, and John met only his frowning image reflected full length in the mirror-front of a folding-bed, until a door opened softly from the adjoining room and closed again, and Fannie, pale and vigil worn, but with ecstasy in her black eyes, murmured:
"Oh, John March, I never knew I could be quite so glad to see you!"
She pressed his hand rapturously between her two, dropped it playfully, and saw that there had come between them a nearness and a farness different from any that had ever been. John felt the same thing, but did not guess that this was why her smile was grateful and yet had a pang in it. There was a self-oblivious kindness in his murmur as he refused a seat.
"No, I mustn"t keep you a moment. Only tell me what I can do for you."
She explained that she would have to go back into the sick-room and return again, as the physician was in there, and Jeff-Jack was unaware, and ought probably to be kept unaware, of any other visitor"s presence.
John said he would wait and hear the doctor"s p.r.o.nouncements and her commands. When she came the second time this person appeared with her.
Beyond a soft introduction there were only a few words, and the two men went away together. As Fannie returned and bent cheerily over the bridegroom"s bed, she was totally surprised by his feeble, bright-eyed request.
"When John March comes back with the medicine I want to see him."
The man to whom Fannie had introduced John was of a sort much newer to him than to travelers generally--a typical physician-in-ordinary to a hotel. He wore a dark-blue overcoat abundantly braided and frogged; his sheared mustaches were dyed black, and his diamond scarf-pin, a pendant, was chained to his shirt. As they drove to a favorite apothecary"s some distance away, John told why he had come North, and the doctor said he had a cousin living at the hotel who had capital, and happened just then to be looking for investments. It would be no trouble at all to drive Mr. March back from the apothecary"s and make him acquainted with Mr.
Bulger. Was Mr. March fond of horses? Good! Bulger owned the fastest span in the city, and drove them every morning at ten.
In fact, before they quite reached the hotel again they came upon the capitalist, ribbons in hand, just leaving a public stable behind such a pair of trotters that John exclaimed at sight of them and accepted with alacrity a seat by his side. As for the medicine, the physician himself took it to Mrs. Ravenel, explained that John would be along in an hour or two, and said, "Yes, the patient could see Mr. March briefly, but must talk as little as possible."
Four or five times during the next seven or eight hours the sick man"s eyes compelled Fannie to say: "I don"t know why he doesn"t come." And at evening with an open note in her hand, a smile on her lips, and a new loneliness in her heart, she announced: "He says he will be here early in the morning."
Mr. Bulger was large, heavy, and clean-shaven, as became a capitalist; but his overcoat was buff, with a wide tr.i.m.m.i.n.g of fur, and his yellow hair was parted in the back and perfumed. March did not mind this, but he was truly sorry to notice, very quickly, that his companion"s knowledge of horses was mostly a newspaper knowledge. While Mr. Bulger quoted turf records, John said to himself:
"Wonder how far he"ll drive before he sees his nigh horse is sick."
But very soon the owner of the team remarked: "The mare seems droopy."
"Yes, Mr. Bulger," replied John, almost explosively, "she"s going to be a very sick animal before you can get her back to the stable, if you ever get her back at all. If we don"t do the right thing right off, you"ll lose her. I wouldn"t stop them, sir. My conscience! don"t let her stand here, or she"ll be so stiff, directly, you can"t make her go!"
"Yes, I guess you"re right," said Bulger, moving on. "If I can just get her home and out of harness and let her lie down----"