University of Virginia Library

25. CHAPTER XXV.
BREAKING THE ENGAGEMENT.

POOR Squire Russell,” Jessie kept repeating to
herself, as she saw him next morning going up
to Dora, who would far rather not have seen
him until some one had told him what she knew now
must be.

But there was no longer a reason why he should not be
admitted to her presence, and so he came, his kind face
bathed in tears, and glowing all over with delight as he
stooped to kiss “his lily,” as he called her, asking how
she felt, and whispering to her of his joy that she was
better.

“I knew the doctor would help you,” he said, rubbing
his hands complacently. “You would have died but for
him. We will always like Dr. West, Dora, for he saved
your life.”

“I guess I would not talk any more now,—it tires her,”
Jessie said, in a perfect tremor of distress; and taking his
arm, she lead him away; then, closing the door upon him,
she went back to Dora, who was weeping silently.

“It seems dreadful to deceive him any longer,” Jessie

said, and as Dr. West just then came in she appealed to
him to know if it were not a shame for that nice man to be
kept so in the dark. “If you and Dora love each other,
as I suppose you do, why, you'll have each other of course,
and Squire Russell must console himself as best he can.
For my part, I pity him,” and Jessie flounced out of the
room, leaving Dr. West alone with Dora.

For a long time they talked, Dora weeping softly
while the doctor soothed and comforted, and told her of
the love cherished so many years for the little brown-eyed
girl, who now confessed how dear he was to her,
but cried mournfully when she spoke of Squire Russell.
It was cruel when he trusted and loved her so much.
Perhaps, too, it was wrong, she said. It might be her
imperative duty to take charge of those children, and
then she startled the doctor by saying:

“You know how much I love you. I am not ashamed
to confess it, but I am most afraid that when the time
comes to talk with John, I shall tell him that I will
marry him.”

“Not by a jug full! I'll tend to that myself. I
know now what has been the matter!” was almost
screamed in the ears of Dr. West and Dora, as Johnnie
rushed into the room.

He had started to come before, he said, but had been
arrested at the door by something Dora was saying to
the doctor.

“I know it's paltry mean to listen,” he continued,
“but I could not help it, and so I stood stiller than a
mouse, and heard all you had to say. That's why Aunt
Dora has looked so white and cried so much, and didn't
want father to kiss her. I understand. She didn't like
him, but she's pesky willing to have you slobber over
her as much as you want to,” and the boy turned fiercely
toward the doctor. “I counted, and while I stood there
you kissed her fourteen times! It was smack, smack,
till I was fairly sick, and sort of mad with all the rest.
I know auntie always has done right, and so I s'pose she
is right now, but somehow I can't help feeling as if the
governor was abused, and me too! How, I'd like to
know, am I ever going to Europe if you don't have
father? O Auntie, think again before you quit entirely!”
and overmastered with tears, Johnnie buried
his face in the bed-clothes, begging of Dora “to think
again, and not give poor father the mitten!”

“You are making her worse! You had better go
out!” the doctor said kindly, laying a hand on Johnnie's
shoulder; but the boy shook it off, savagely exclaiming:

“You let me be, old Dr. West. I shall stay if I have
a mind to!” But when Dora said:

“Johnnie, Johnnie, please don't,” he melted at once,
and sobbed aloud.

“I was mad, Auntie; and I guess I'm mad yet, but I
do love you. O Auntie, poor father! I'm going right

off to tell him. He shan't be fooled any longer!” and
the excited child darted from the room ere Dora had
time to stop him.

Rushing down the stairs and entering the library, he
called loudly for his father, but he was not there. He
had gone into the village, Jessie said, asking if it was
anything in particular which he wanted. “Yes, of
course. I want to tell him how it's all day with him
and Auntie. She don't like him, and she does like
Dr. West. Poor father! was there ever anything so
mean?”

Here at last was one who in part expressed her own
sentiments, and the impulsive Jessie replied:

“It is mean, I think, and I am so sorry for your
father. Of course Dora intends to do right, and likes
the doctor best, because he is not so old as your father;
but young as I am, I should not think it so awful to
marry a man of forty. Why, I think it would be rather
jolly, for I could do just as I pleased with him. Yes, I
blame Dora some—”

“I won't have Aunt Dora blamed,” Johnnie roared, a
reaction taking place the moment any one presumed to
censure her. “No, I won't have her blamed, so you
just hush up. If she don't want father she shan't have
him, and I'll lick the first one who says she shall.”

Here Johnnie broke down entirely, and with a howling
cry fled away into the garden, leaving Jessie perfectly

amazed as she thought “how very unsatisfactory
it was to meddle with a love-affair.”

Meanwhile Johnnie had seated himself beneath a tree
in a sunny, quiet spot, where he was crying bitterly, and
feeling almost as much grieved as when his mother died.
Indeed, he fancied that he felt worse, for then there was
hope in the future, and now there was none. Hearing
the sound of the gate, and thinking his father had returned,
he rose at last, and drying his eyes, repaired to
the house, finding his conjecture true, for Squire Russell
had come, and was reading his paper in the library.
With his face all flushed with excitement, and his eyes
red with weeping, Johnnie went to him at once, and
bolting the door, began impetuously, “I would not mind
it a bit, father. I'd keep a stiff upper lip, just as if I
did not care.”

“What do you mean?” the Squire asked, in surprise,
and Johnnie continued: “I mean that you and Aunt
Dora have played out, and you may as well hang up
your fiddle, for she don't want you, and she does want
Dr. West, and that's why she has grown poor as a shark
and white as chalk. I just found it out, standing by the
door and hearing the greatest lot of stuff,—how he asked
her to marry him once, and she got into a tantrum and
wouldn't say yes, though she wanted to all the time.
What makes girls act so, I wonder?”

Squire Russell was too deeply interested to offer any

explanation with regard to girls' actions, and Johnnie
went on:

“Then he went off to California, and didn't write, as
she hoped he would, and you and I asked her to have
you, and she did not want to, but thought it was her
duty, and wrote to ask the doctor, and he didn't get the
letter for weeks and weeks, and when he did he was
most distracted, and cut stick for home; and Aunt Dora
didn't know it, and went off to the Lake, and sat with
both feet in the water, and Mr. Robert West found her
there and told her, and got her home, and she most had
a fit, and, O thunder! what a muss they have kicked up!”

Here Johnnie stopped for breath, while his father
grasped the table with both hands, as if he thus would
steady himself, while he said slowly, with long breaths
between the words, “How—was it—my son? Tell me
—again. I—I do not—think—I understand.”

Briefly then Johnnie recapitulated, telling how he happened
to find it out, and adding, “Such kissing I never
heard! Fourteen smashers, for I counted; and don't
you know, father, how, if you even touched her hand or
her hair, she would wiggle and squirm as if it hurt her?
Well, I peeked through the crack of the door, and instead
of wigglin' she snugged up to him as if she liked it, and
I know she did, for her eyes fairly shone, they were so
bright, when she looked at him. But, father, she talked
real good about you, and said that if you insisted she

should marry you just the same; but you won't father,
will you?”

“No, my son, no. O Dora!”

The words were a groan, while the Squire laid his face
upon the table. Instantly Johnnie was at his side comforting
him as well as he was able, and trying manfully
to keep down his own choking sorrow.

“Never mind, father, never mind; we will get along,
you and I. And I'll tell you now what folks say, and
that is, that no chap has a right to marry his wife's sister,
which I guess is so. Don't cry, father, don't. Somebody
will have you, if Aunt Dora won't. There,—there,” and
Johnnie tried in vain to hush the grief becoming rather
demonstrative as the Squire began to realize what he had
lost.

Noisy grief is never so deep as the calm, quiet sorrow
which can find no outlet for its tears, and so Squire Russell
was the more sure to outlive this bitter trial; but
that did not help him now, or make the future seem one
whit less desolate. It was an hour before Johnnie left
him, and went into the hall, where he encountered Jessie,
to whom he said, “I've told him and he'll do the handsome
thing, but it almost kills him. Maybe you, being
a girl, can talk to him better than I,” and Johnnie went
on up to Dora's chamber, while Jessie, after hesitating a
moment, glided quietly into the library, where Squire
Russell still sat with his head upon the table.

Jessie was a nice little comforter, and so the Squire
found her as she stood over him, just as she did when
Margaret died, smoothing his hair, her favorite method
of expressing sympathy, and saying to him so softly, “I
pity you, and I think you so good to give her up.”

He could talk to Jessie; and bidding her to sit down, he
asked what she knew of Dora's love-affair with the doctor,
thereby learning some things which Johnnie had not told
him.

“It is well,” he said at last; “I see that Dora is not
for me; I give her to Dr. West; and, Miss Verner,—
Jessie,—I thank, you for your sympathy with both of us.
I am glad you are here.”

Jessie was glad, too, for if there was anything she especially
enjoyed, it was the whirl and the excitement
going on around her. Bowing, she too quitted the library,
and went up to corroborate what Johnnie had already
told to Dora.

After that Squire Russell sat no more in the upper
hall watching Dora's door, but stayed downstairs with his
little children, to whom he attached himself continually,
as if he felt that he must be to them father and mother
both. Now that the crisis was past, the doctor thought
it advisable to go back to Mrs. Markham's, his boarding-place,
but he met Squire Russell first, and heard from his
own lips a confirmation of what Johnnie had said. There
was no malice in John Russell's nature, and he treated

the doctor as cordially and kindly as if he had not been
his rival.

“God bless you both,” he said; “I blame no one,—
harbor no ill-feeling towards any one. If Dora had told
me frankly at first it might have saved some pain, some
mortification, but I do not lay it up against her. She
meant for the best. It is natural she should love you
more than me. God bless her; and doctor, if you like,
marry her at once, but don't take her away from here
yet; wait a little till I am more settled,—for the children's
sake, you know.”

Dr. West could not understand the feeling which
prompted Squire Russell to want Dora to stay there, but
he recognized the great unselfishness of the man whose
sunshine he had darkened, and with a trembling lip he,
too, said, “God bless you,” as he grasped the hand most
cordially offered, and then hurried away. It was a week
before the Squire could command sufficient courage to
have an interview with Dora, as she had repeatedly asked
that he might do. With a faltering step he approached
her door, hesitating upon the threshold, until Jessie, coming
suddenly upon him, said to him, cheerily, “It will
soon be over, never mind it; go in.”

So he went in, and stayed a long, long time, but as
they were alone, no one ever knew all that had I assed between
them. The Squire was very white when he came
out, but his face shone with a look of one who felt that

he had done right, and after that the expression did not
change except that it gradually deepend into one of content
and even cheerfulness, as the days went by, and
people not only came to know that the wedding between
himself and Dora would never be, but also to approve the
arrangement, and to treat him as a hero who had achieved
a famous victory. As for Dora, Jessie and Bell found
her after the interview weeping bitterly over what she
called her own wicked selfishness and John's great generous
goodness in giving her up so kindly, and making her
feel while he was talking to her that it really was no matter
about him. He was not injured so very much, although
he had loved her dearly. He still had his children,
and with them he should be happy.

“Oh, he is the best man!” Dora said; “the very best
man that ever lived, and I wish he might find some suitable
wife, whom he could love better than he did me, and
who would make him happy.”

“So do I! I guess I do!” retorted Jessie, industriously
cutting a sheet of note-paper in little slips and scattering
them on the floor. “I've thought of everybody
that would be at all suitable, for I suppose he must be
married on account of the children; but there is nobody
good enough except—” and Jessie held the scissors and
paper still a moment, while she added, “except Bell. I
think she would answer nicely. She is twenty-nine,—almost
that awful thirty,—which no unmarried woman ever

reaches, they say; and I'd like to be aunt to six children
right well, only I believe I should thrash Jim and Letitia,
—who, by the way, is not very bright. Did you ever
discover it, Dora?”

Dora had sometimes thought Letitia a little dull, she
said, and then she turned to Bell to see how she fancied
the idea of being step-mother to all those dreadful children;
but Bell did not fancy it at all, as was plainly indicated
by the haughty toss of her head as she replied
that:

“Thirty had no terrors for her, but was infinitely preferable
to a widower with six children.”

Jessie whistled, while Dora smiled softly as she caught
the sound of a well-known step upon the stairs, and knew
her physician was coming.

Bell and Jessie always left her alone with him, and
when they were gone he kissed her pale cheek, which
flushed with happiness, while her sunny eyes looked
volumes of love into the eyes meeting them so fondly.

“My daring has been crying,” the doctor said.
“Will she tell me why?”

And then came the story of her interview with John,
who had proved himself so noble and good.

“Yes, I know; he came from you to me!” the doctor
replied, and into Dora's eyes there crept a bashful,
frightened look, as she wondered if John had said to
Richard what he did to her.

He had in part, viz., that he wished matters to proceed
just as if he had never thought of marrying Dora; that as
soon as she was able he would like to see her the doctor's
wife, and then if there were no objections on the part of
either, he would like to have her remain at Beechwood
awhile, at least until he could make some other arrangement
for his children.

“I told him you might,” Richard said, as he imprisoned
the hand which was raised to remonstrate. “I
said I knew you would be willing to stay, and that I
should like my new boarding-place very much; and now
nothing remains but for you to get well as fast as possible,
for the moment the doctor pronounces you convalescent
you are to be his wife. Do you understand?”

He did not tell her then of the plan which was maturing,
and for the furtherance of which Robert was sent
away, viz., the purchase of the homestead whose loss
Dora had so much deplored.

There was an opening in the town for a new physician,
the doctor had ascertained; and though he would dislike
to leave his many friends in Beechwood, still, for Dora's
sake, he could do so, and he had sent Robert to open
negotiations with the present proprietor of the place once
owned by Colonel Freeman, and for which there was
ample means to pay in the sum brought by the prodigal
from the mines of California.

But this was a secret until something definite was

known, and Richard willingly acceded to the Squire's
proposition that he and Dora should remain there until
something was devised for the children.

Of this Dora was not much inclined to talk, and as
she was tired and excited, the doctor left her at last,
stopping on his way from the house to look at little
Daisy, whom Jessie held in her lap, and who seemed
feverish and sick. The doctor did not then say what he
feared, but when later in the day he came again, the
child's symptoms had developed so rapidly, that he had
no hesitancy in pronouncing it the scarlet fever, then
prevailing to an alarming extent in an adjoining town.

Squire Russell had thought his cup full to overflowing,
but in his anxiety for Daisy, he forgot his recent disappointment,
and, as a father and mother both, nursed his
suffering child, assisted by Jessie, whose services there,
as elsewhere, were invaluable. It was indeed a house of
mourning, and for weeks a dark cloud brooded over it as
one after another, Ben and Burt, Letitia and Jim, were
prostrate with the disease which Daisy had been the
first to take, and from which she slowly recovered.
When Letitia was smitten down Jessie was filled with
remorse, for she remembered what she had said of the
quiet child, and with a sister's tenderness she nursed the
little girl, who would take her medicine from no one else.
From the first Ben and Burt were not very ill, but for a
time it seemed doubtful which would gain the mastery,

life or death, in the cases of Letitia and Jim. With regard
to Letitia that question was soon settled, and one
October morning Jessie put gently back upon the pillow
the child who had died in her lap, kissing her the last
of all ere she went the dark road already trodden by the
mother, who in life would have chosen anybody else than
Jessie Verner to have soothed the last moments of her
little girl.

But Jessie's work was not yet done, and while the sad
procession went on its way to the village graveyard,
where Margaret was lying, she sat by Jimmie's side fanning
his feverish cheeks, and carefully administering the
medicines which were no longer of avail.

Two days after Jimmie, too, died in Jessie's lap, and
as she gave him into his father's arms the weeping man
blessed her silently for all she had been to him and his,
and felt how doubly desolate he should be without her.