University of Virginia Library

21. CHAPTER XXI.
EDITH'S TRUE KNIGHT.

THE next morning Edith was too ill to rise.
She had become chilled after her extraordinary
exertion of the previous evening, and a severe
cold was the consequence; and this, with the
nervous prostration of an overtaxed system, made
her appear more seriously indisposed than she really
was. For the sake of her mother and Laura, she
wished to be present at the meagre little breakfast
which her economy now permitted, but found it
impossible; and later in the day, her mind seemed
disposed to wander.

Mrs. Allen and Laura were terror-sticken at this
new trouble. As Hannibal said, they were all leaning
on Edith. They had lost confidence in themselves,
and hope now from the outside world. They
had scarcely the shadow of an expectation that Van
Dam would marry Zell, and therefore knew that
worse than work would separate them from all old
connections, and they had learned to hope nothing
from the people of Pushton. Poor, feverish, wandering
Edith seemed the only one who could keep
them from falling into the abyss of utter want. They
instinctively felt that total wreck was impossible as
long as she kept her hand upon the helm; but now

they had all the wild alarm of those who are drifting
helplessly on a reef, with a deep and stormy sea
on either side of it. Thus, to the natural anxiety of
affection was added sickening fear.

Poor old Hannibal had no fear for himself. His
devotion to Edith reminded one of a faithful dog;
it was so strong, instinctive, unreasoning. He realized
vaguely that his whole existence depended on
Edith's getting well, and yet we doubt whether he
thought of himself any more than the Newfoundland,
who watches beside the bed, and then beside
the grave of a loved master, till famine, that form
of pain which humanity cannot endure, robs him of
life.

“We must have a physician immediately,” said
Laura, with white lips.

“Oh, no,” murmured Edith; “we can't afford
it.”

“We must,” said Laura, with a sudden rush of
tears. “Everything depends on you.”

Hannibal, who heard this brief dialogue, went
silently down stairs, and at once started in quest of
Arden Lacey.

“If he is quar, he seemed kind o' human; and
I'se believe he'll help us now.”

Arden was on the way to the barn, having just
finished a farmer's twelve o'clock dinner, when Hannibal
entered the yard. An angel of light could
not have been more welcome than this dusky messenger,
for he came from the centre of all light and
hope now to poor Arden. Then a feeling of alarm

took possession of him. Had anything happened
to Edith? He had seen her shrinking shame. Had
it led her to—and he shuddered at the thought his
wild imagination suggested. It was almost a relief
when Hannibal said,

“Oh, Mr. Lacey, I'se sure from de way you acted
when we fust come, dat you can feel for people in
trouble. Miss Edie's berry sick, and I don't know
whar to go for a doctor, and she won't have any;
but she mus, and right away. Den again, I oughter
not leave, for dey's all nearly dead wid trouble and
cryin'.”

“You are a good, faithful fellow,” said Arden,
heartily; “go back and do all you can for Miss
Edith, and I'll bring a doctor myself, and much
quicker too than you could.”

Before Hannibal reached home, Arden galloped
past him, and the old man chuckled,

“De drunken Laceys' mighty good neighbors
when dey's sober.”

As well may be imagined, recent events, as far as
he understood them, had stirred Arden's sensitive
nature to the very depths. Hiding his feelings
from all save his mother, and often from her; appearing
to his neighbors stolid and sullen in the
extreme, he was, in fact, in his whole being, like
a morbidly-excited nerve. He did not shrink from
the world because indifferent to it, but because it
wounded him when coming in contact with it. He
seemed so out of tune with society, that it produced
only jarring discord. His father's course

brought him many real slights, and these he
resented as we have seen, and he resented fancied
slights quite as often, and thus he had cut himself
off from the sympathies, and even the recognition,
of nearly all.

But what human soul can dwell alone? The
true hermit finds in communion with the Divine
mind the perfection of companionship. But Arden
knew not God. He had heard of Him all his
life; but Jove and Thor were images more familiar
to his mind than that of his Creator. He loved
his mother and sister, but their life seemed a poor,
shaded, little nook, where they toiled and moped.
And so, to satisfy the cravings of his lonely heart,
he had created and peopled an unreal world of his
own, in which he dwelt most of the time. As his
interest in the real world ceased, his imagination
more vividly portrayed the shadowy one, till at last,
in the scenes of poetry and fiction, and the splendid
panorama of history, he thought he might rest
satisfied, and find all the society he needed in converse
with those, whom, by a refinement of spiritualism,
he could summon to his side from any age
or land. He secretly exulted in the still greater
magic by which the unreal creatures of poetic
thought would come at his volition, and he often
smiled to think how royally attended was “old,
drunken Lacey's” son, whom many of the neighbors
thought scarcely better than the horses he drove.

Thus he lived under a spell of the past, in a
world moon-lighted by sentiment and fancy, surrounded

by his ideal of those whom he read, and
Shakespeare's vivid, life-like women were better
known to him than any of the ladies of Pushton.
But dreams cannot last in our material world, and
ghosts vanish in the sunlight of fact. Woman's
nature is as beautiful and fascinating now as when
the master-hand of the world's greatest poet delineated
it, and when living, breathing Edith Allen
stepped suddenly among his shadows, seemingly so
luminous, they vanished before her, as the stars
pale into nothingness, when the eastern sky is
aglow with morning. Now, in all his horizon, she
only shone, but the past seemed like night, and the
present, day.

The circumstances under which he had met
Edith, had, in brief time, done more to acquaint
him with her than years might have accomplished,
and for the first time in his life he saw a superior
girl with the distorting medium of his prejudice
pushed aside. Therefore she was a sudden beautiful
revelation to him, as vivid as unexpected. He
did not believe any such being existed, and indeed
there did not, if we consider what he came to idealize
Edith into. But a better Edith really lived than
the unnatural paragon that he pictured to himself,
and the reality was capable of a vast improvement,
though not in the direction that his morbid mind
would have indicated.

The treatment of his sister, the sudden ceasing
of all intercourse, and the appearance of Gus
Elliott upon the scene, had cruelly wounded his fair

ideal, but with a lover's faith and poet's fancy he
soon repaired the ravages of facts. He assured himself
that Edith did not know the character of the
men who visited her house.

Then came Crowl's gossip, the knowledge of her
poverty, and her wretched errands to New York to
dispose of the relics of the happy past. He gathered
from such observation as he could maintain
without being suspected, by every crumb of gossip
that he could pick up (for once he listened to gossip
as if it were gospel), that they were in trouble,
that Edith was looking for work, and that she was
so superior to the rest of the family, that they now
all deferred to her and leaned upon her. Then, to
his deep satisfaction he had seen Elliott, the morning
after his scathing repulse, going to the train,
and looking forlorn and sadly out of humor, and he
was quite sure he had not been near the little cottage
since. Arden needed but little fact on which
to rear a wondrous superstructure, and here seemed
much, and all in Edith's favor, and he longed with
an intensity beyond language to do something to
help her.

Then came the tragedy of Zell's flight, Edith's
heroic and almost superhuman effort to save her,
now followed by her pathetic weakness and suffering,
and no knight in the romantic age of chivalry
ever more wholly and loyally devoted himself to
the high-born lady of his choice, than did Arden
to the poor sick girl at whom the finger of scorn
would now be generally pointed in Pushton.

To come back to our hero, galloping away on his
old farm horse to find a country doctor, may seem
a short step down from the sublime. And so, perhaps,
it may be to those whose ideal of the sublime
is only in outward and material things. But to
those who look past these things to the passionate
human heart, the same in every age, Arden was animated
by the same spirit with which he would have
sought and fought the traditional dragon.

Dr. Neak, a new-comer who was gaining some
little name for skill and success, and was making
the most of it, was at home; but on Arden's hurried
application, ahemmed, hesitated, colored a
little, and at last said:

“Look here, Mr. —(I beg your pardon, I've
not the pleasure of knowing your name), I'm a comparative
stranger in Pushton, and am just gaining
some little reputation among the better classes. I
would rather not compromise myself by attendance
upon that family. If you can't get any one else, and
the girl is suffering, of course I'll try and go, but—”

“Enough,” interrupted Arden, starting up blazing
with wrath. “You should spell your name
with an S. I want a man as well as a physician,”
and, with a look of utter contempt, he hastened
away, leaving the medical man somewhat anxious,
not about Edith, but whether he had taken the best
course in view of his growing reputation.

Arden next traced out Dr. Blunt, who readily
promised to come. He attended all alike, and
charged roundly also.

“Business is business,” was his motto. “People
who employ me must expect to pay. After all, I'm
the cheapest man in the place, for I tell my patients
the truth, and cure them as quickly as possible.”

Arden's urgency soon brought him to Edith's
side, and his practised eye saw no serious cause for
alarm, and having heard more fully the circumstances,
said,

“She will be well in a few days if she is kept
very quiet, and nothing new sets in. Of course
she would be sick after last night. One might as
well put his hand in the fire and not expect it to
burn him, as to get very warm and then cool off
suddenly without being ill. Her pulse indicates
general depression of her system, and need of rest.
That's all.”

After prescribing remedies and a tonic, he said,
“Let me know if I am needed again,” and departed
in rather ill humor.

Meeting Arden's anxious, questioning face at the
gate, he said gruffly,

“I thought from what you said the girl was dying.
Used up and a bad cold, that's all. Somewhat
feverish yourself, ain't you?” he added meaningly.

Though Arden colored under the doctor's satire,
he was chiefly conscious of a great relief that his
idol was not in danger. His only reply was the
sullen, impassive expression he usually turned toward
the world.

As the doctor rode away, Hannibal joined him,
saying,

“Mr. Lacey, you'se a friend in need, and if you
only knowed what an angel you'se serving, you
wouldn't look so cross.”

“Do I look cross?” asked Arden, his face becoming
friendly in a moment. “Well, it wasn't
with you, still less with Miss Edith; for even you
cannot serve her more gladly than I will. That old
doctor riled me a little, though I can forgive him,
since he says she is not seriously ill.”

“I'se glad you feels your privileges,” said Hannibal,
with some dignity. “I'se knowed Miss Edie
eber since she was a baby, and when we lived on de
Avenue, de biggest and beautifullest in de city
come to our house, but none of 'em could compare
with my young lady. I don't care what folks say,
she's jes as good now, if she be poor, and her sister
hab run away, poor chile. De world don't know
all;” and old Hannibal shook his white head sadly
and reproachfully.

His panegyric found strong echo in Arden's heart,
but his habit of reticence and sensitive shrinking
from showing his feelings to others, permitted him
only to say, “I am sure every word you say is more
than true, and you will do me a great favor when
you let me know how I can serve Miss Edith.”

Hannibal saw that he need waste no more ammunition
on Arden, so he pulled out the prescriptions,
and said:

“The Doctor guv me dese, but, Lor bress you,
my ole jints is stiff, and I'd be a week in gittin'
down and back from de willage.”

“That's enough,” interrupted Arden, “you shall
have the medicines in half an hour;” and he kept
his word.

“He is quar,” muttered Hannibal, looking after
him. “Neber saw a man so 'bligin'. Folks say
winegar ain't nothin' to him, but he seems sweet on
Miss Edie, sure 'nuff. What 'ud he say, `You'se
do me great favor to tell me how I can serve Miss
Edie?' I'se hope it 'll last,” chuckled Hannibal,
retiring to his domain in the kitchen, “'cause I'se
gwine to do him a heap ob favors.”