“I — I heard your voice; … I wanted to speak to you — to hear you speak to me,” she said. A new timidity came into her tone; she raised her head. “I — somehow when you spoke — I felt that you — you were honest.” She stammered again, but Lansing’s cool voice brought her out of her difficulty and painful shyness.
“What is your name?” she asked.
“I’m Dr. Lansing,” he said.
“Will you open my steel box and read my papers for me?” she inquired, innocently.
“I will — if you wish,” he said, impulsively; “if you think it wise. But I think you had better read the papers for yourself.”
“Why, I can’t read,” she said, apparently surprised that he should not know it.
“You mean that you were not taught to read in your convent school?” he asked, incredulously.
A curious little sound escaped her lips; she raised both slender hands and unpinned her hat. Then she turned her head to his.
The deep-blue beauty of her eyes thrilled him; then he started and leaned forward, closer, closer to her exquisite face.
“My child,” he cried, softly, “my poor child!” And she smiled and fingered the straw hat in her lap.
“Will you read my father’s papers for me?” she said.
“Yes — yes — if you wish. Yes, indeed!” After a moment he said: “How long have you been blind?”
IV
That evening, at dusk, Lansing came into the club, and went directly to his room. He carried a small, shabby satchel; and when he had locked his door he opened the satchel and drew from it a flat steel box.
For half an hour he sat by his open window in the quiet starlight, considering the box, turning it over and over in his hands. At length he opened his trunk, placed the box inside, locked the trunk, and noiselessly left the room.
He encountered Coursay in the hall, and started to pass him with an abstracted nod, then changed his mind and slipped his arm through the arm of his young kinsman.
“Thought you meant to cut me,” said Coursay, half laughing, half in earnest.
“Why?” Lansing stopped short; then, “Oh, because you played the fool with Agatha in the canoe? You two will find yourselves in a crankier craft than that if you don’t look sharp.”
“You have an ugly way of putting it,” began Coursay. But Lansing scowled and said:
“Jack, I want advice; I’m troubled, old chap. Come into my room while I dress for dinner. Don’t shy and stand on your hind-legs; it’s not about Agatha Sprowl; it’s about me, and I’m in trouble.”
The appeal flattered and touched Coursay, who had never expected that he, a weak and spineless back-slider, could possibly be of aid or comfort to his self-sufficient and celebrated cousin, Dr. Lansing.
They entered Lansing’s rooms; Coursay helped himself to some cognac, and smoked, waiting for Lansing to emerge from his dressing-room.
Presently, bathed, shaved, and in his shirt-sleeves, Lansing came in, tying his tie, a cigarette unlighted between his teeth.
“Jack,” he said, “give me advice, not as a self-centred, cautious, and orderly citizen of Manhattan, but as a young man whose heart leads his head every time! I want that sort of advice; and I can’t give it to myself.”
“Do you mean it?” demanded Coursay, incredulously.
“By Heaven, I do!” returned Lansing, biting his words short, as the snap of a whip.
He turned his back to the mirror, lighted his cigarette, took one puff, threw it into the grate. Then he told Coursay what had occurred between him and the young girl under the elm, reciting the facts minutely and exactly as they occurred.
“I have the box in my trunk yonder,” he went on; “the poor little thing managed to slip out while Munn was in the barn; I was waiting for her in the road.”
After a moment Coursay asked if the girl was stone blind.
“No,” said Lansing; “she can distinguish light from darkness; she can even make out form — in the dark; but a strong light completely blinds her.”
“Can you help her?” asked Coursay, with quick pity.
Lansing did not answer the question, but went on: “It’s been coming on — this blindness — since her fifth year; she could always see to read better in dark corners than in a full light. For the last two years she has not been able to see; and she’s only twenty, Jack — only twenty.”
“Can’t you help her?” repeated Coursay, a painful catch in his throat.
“I haven’t examined her,” said Lansing, curtly.
“But — but you are an expert in that sort of thing,” protested his cousin; “isn’t this in your line?”
“Yes; I sat and talked to her half an hour and did not know she was blind. She has a pair of magnificent deep-blue eyes; nobody, talking to her, could suspect such a thing. Still — her eyes were shaded by her hat.”
“What kind of blindness is it?” asked Coursay, in a shocked voice.
“I think I know,” said Lansing. “I think there can be little doubt that she has a rather unusual form of lamellar cataract.”
“Curable?” motioned Coursay.
“I haven’t examined her; how could I — But — I’m going to do it.”
“And if you operate?” asked Coursay, hopefully.
“Operate? Yes — yes, of course. It is needling, you know, with probability of repetition. We expect absorption to do the work for us — bar accidents and other things.”
“When will you operate?” inquired Coursay.
Lansing broke out, harshly: “God knows! That swindler, Munn, keeps her a prisoner. Doctors long ago urged her to submit to an operation; Munn refused, and he and his deluded women have been treating her by prayer for years — the miserable mountebank!”
“You mean that he won’t let you try to help her?”
“I mean just exactly that, Jack.”
Coursay got up with his clinched hands swinging and his eager face red as a pippin. “Why, then,” he said, “we’ll go and get her! Come on; I can’t sit here and let such things happen!”
Lansing laughed the laugh of a school-boy bent on deviltry.
“Good old Jack! That’s the sort of advice I wanted,” he said, affectionately. “We may see our names in the morning papers for this; but who cares? We may be arrested for a few unimportant and absurd things — but who cares? Munn will probably sue us; who cares? At any rate, we’re reasonably certain of a double-leaded column in the yellow press; but do you give a tinker’s damn?”
“Not one!” said Coursay, calmly.
Then they went down to dinner.
Sprowl, being unwell, dined in his own rooms; Agatha Sprowl was more witty and brilliant and charming than ever; but Coursay did not join her on the veranda that evening, and she sat for two hours enduring the platitudes of Colonel Hyssop and Major Brent, and planning serious troubles for Lansing, to whose interference she attributed Coursay’s non-appearance.
But Coursay and Lansing had other business in hand that night. Fortune, too, favored them when they arrived at the O’Hara house; for there, leaning on the decaying gate, stood Eileen O’Hara, her face raised to the sky as though seeking in the soft star radiance which fell upon her lids a celestial balm for her sightless eyes.
She was alone; she heard Lansing’s step, and knew it, too. From within the house came the deadened sound of women’s voices singing:
“Light of the earth and sky, Unbind mine eyes, Lest I in darkness lie While my soul dies. Blind, at Thy feet I fall, All blindly kneel, Fainting, Thy name I call; Touch me and heal!”
In the throbbing hush of the starlight a whippoorwill called three times; the breeze rose in the forest; a little wind came fragrantly, puff on puff, along the road, stirring the silvery dust.
She laid one slim hand in Lansing’s; steadily and noiselessly they traversed the dew-wet meadow, crossed the river by the second bridge, and so came to the dark club-house under the trees.
There was nobody visible except the steward when th
ey entered the hall.
“Two rooms and a bath, John,” said Lansing, quietly; and followed the steward up the stairs, guiding his blind charge.
The rooms were on the north angle; Lansing and Coursay inspected them carefully, gave the steward proper direction, and dismissed him.
“Get me a telegram blank,” said Lansing. Coursay brought one. His cousin pencilled a despatch, and the young man took it and left the room.
The girl was sitting on the bed, silent, intent, following Lansing with her sightless eyes.
“Do you trust me?” he asked, pleasantly.
“Yes, … oh, yes, with all my heart!”
He steadied his voice. “I think I can help you — I am sure I can. I have sent to New York for Dr. Courtney Thayer.”
He drew a long breath; her beauty almost unnerved him. “Thayer will operate; he’s the best of all. Are you afraid?”
She lifted one hand and held it out, hesitating. He took it.
“No, not afraid,” she said.
“You are wise; there is no need for fear. All will come right, my child.”
She listened intently.
“It is necessary in such operations that the patient should, above all, be cheerful and — and happy—”
“Oh, yes, … and I am happy! Truly! truly!” she breathed.
“ — and brave, and patient, and obedient — and—” His voice trembled a trifle. “You must lie very still,” he ended, hastily.
“Will you be here?”
“Yes — yes, of course!”
“Then I will lie very still.”
He left her curled up in an easy-chair, smiling at him with blind eyes; he scarcely found his way down-stairs for all his eyesight. He stumbled to the grill-room door, felt for the knob, and flung it open.
A flood of yellow light struck him like a blow; through the smoke he saw the wine-flushed faces of Colonel Hyssop and Major Brent staring at him.
“Gad, Lansing!” said the Major, “you’re white and shaky as a ninety-nine-cent toy lamb. Come in and have a drink, m’boy!”
“I wanted to say,” said Lansing, “that I have a patient in 5 and 6. It’s an emergency case; I’ve wired for Courtney Thayer. I wish to ask the privilege and courtesy of the club for my patient. It’s unusual; it’s intrusive. Absolute and urgent necessity is my plea.”
The two old gentlemen appeared startled, but they hastily assured Lansing that his request would be honored; and Lansing went away to pace the veranda until Coursay returned from the telegraph station.
In the grill-room Major Brent’s pop eyes were fixed on the Colonel in inflamed inquiry.
“Damme!” snapped the Colonel, “does that young man take this club for a hospital?”
“He’ll be washing bandages in the river next; he’ll poison the trout with his antiseptic stuffs!” suggested the Major, shuddering.
“The club’s going to the dogs!” said the Colonel, with a hearty oath.
But he did not know how near to the dogs the club already was.
V
It is perfectly true that the club and the dogs were uncomfortably close together. A week later the crisis came when Munn, in a violent rage, accused Sprowl of spiriting away his ward, Eileen O’Hara. But when Sprowl at last comprehended that the girl and the papers had really disappeared, he turned like a maddened pig on Munn, tore the signed checks to shreds before his eyes, and cursed him steadily as long as he remained within hearing.
As for Munn, his game appeared to be up. He hurried to New York, and spent a month or two attempting to find some trace of his ward, then his money gave out. He returned to his community and wrote a cringing letter to Sprowl, begging him to buy the O’Hara land for next to nothing, and risk the legality of the transfer. To which Sprowl paid no attention. A week later Munn and the Shining Band left for Munnville, Maine.
It was vaguely understood at the club that Lansing had a patient in 5 and 6.
“Probably a rich woman whom he can’t afford to lose,” suggested Sprowl, with a sneer; “but I’m cursed if I can see why he should turn this club into a drug-shop to make money in!” And the Colonel and the Major agreed that it was indecent in the extreme.
To his face, of course, Sprowl, the Colonel, and the Major treated Lansing with perfect respect; but the faint odor of antiseptics from rooms 5 and 6 made them madder and madder every time they noticed it.
Meanwhile young Coursay had a free bridle; Lansing was never around to interfere, and he drove and rode and fished and strolled with Agatha Sprowl until neither he nor the shameless beauty knew whether they were standing on their heads or their heels. To be in love was a new sensation to Agatha Sprowl; to believe himself in love was nothing new to Coursay, but the flavor never palled.
What they might have done — what, perhaps, they had already decided to do — nobody but they knew. The chances are that they would have bolted if they had not run smack into that rigid sentinel who guards the pathway of life. The sentinel is called Fate. And it came about in the following manner:
Dr. Courtney Thayer arrived one cool day early in October; Lansing met him with a quiet smile, and, together, these eminent gentlemen entered rooms 5 and 6.
A few moments later Courtney Thayer came out, laughing, followed by Lansing, who also appeared to be a prey to mirth.
“She’s charming — she’s perfectly charming!” said Courtney Thayer. “Where the deuce do these Yankee convent people get that elusive Continental flavor? Her father must have been a gentleman.”
“He was an Irish lumberman,” said Lansing. After a moment he added: “So you won’t come back, doctor?”
“No, it’s not necessary; you know that. I’ve an operation to-morrow in Manhattan; I must get back to town. Wish I could stay and shoot grouse with you, but I can’t.”
“Come up for the fall flight of woodcock; I’ll wire you when it’s on,” urged Lansing.
“Perhaps; good-bye.”
Lansing took his outstretched hand in both of his. “There is no use in my trying to tell you what you have done for me, doctor,” he said.
Thayer regarded him keenly. “Thought I did it for her,” he remarked.
Instantly Lansing’s face turned red-hot. Thayer clasped the young man’s hands and shook them till they ached.
“You’re all right, my boy — you’re all right!” he said, heartily; and was gone down the stairs, two at a jump — a rather lively proceeding for the famous and dignified Courtney Thayer.
Lansing turned and entered rooms 5 and 6. His patient was standing by the curtained window. “Do you want to know your fate?” he asked, lightly.
She turned and looked at him out of her lovely eyes; the quaint, listening expression in her face still remained, but she saw him, this time.
“Am I well?” she asked, calmly.
“Yes; … perfectly.”
She sat down by the window, her slender hands folded, her eyes on him.
“And now,” she asked, “what am I to do?”
He understood, and bent his head. He had an answer ready, trembling on his lips; but a horror of presuming on her gratitude kept him silent.
“Am I to go back … to him?” she said, faintly.
“God forbid!” he blurted out. With all his keen eyesight, how could he fail to see the adoration in her eyes, on her mute lips’ quivering curve, in every line of her body? But the brutality of asking for that which her gratitude might not withhold froze him. It was no use; he could not speak.
“Then — what? Tell me; I will do it,” she said, in a desolate voice. “Of course I cannot stay here now.”
Something in his haggard face set her heart beating heavily; then for a moment her heart seemed to stop. She covered her eyes with a swift gesture.
“Is it pain?” he asked, quickly. “Let me see your eyes!” Her hands covered them. He came to her; she stood up, and he drew her fingers from her eyes and looked into them steadily. But what he saw there he alone knows; for he bent closer, shaking in ev
ery limb; and both her arms crept to his shoulders and her clasped hands tightened around his neck.
Which was doubtless an involuntary muscular affection incident on successful operations for lamellar or zonular cataract.
That day they opened the steel box. She understood little of what he read to her; presently he stopped abruptly in the middle of a sentence and remained staring, reading on and on in absorbed silence.
Content, serene, numbed with her happiness, she watched him sleepily.
He muttered under his breath: “Sprowl! What a fool! What a cheap fool! And yet not one among us even suspected him of that!”
After a long time he looked up at the girl, blankly at first, and with a grimace of disgust. “You see,” he said, and gave a curious laugh— “you see that — that you own all this land of ours — as far as I can make out.”
After a long explanation she partly understood, and laughed outright, a clear child’s laugh without a trace of that sad undertone he knew so well.
“But we are not going to take it away from your club — are we?” she asked.
“No,” he said; “let the club have the land — your land! What do we care? We will never come here again!” He sat a moment, thinking, then sprang up. “We will go to New York to-morrow,” he said; “and I’ll just step out and say good-bye to Sprowl — I think he and his wife are also going to-morrow; I think they’re going to Europe, to live! I’m sure they are; and that they will never come back.”
And, curiously enough, that is exactly what they did; and they are there yet. And their establishment in the American colony is the headquarters for all nobility in exile, including the chivalrous Orleans.
Which is one sort of justice — the Lansing sort; and, anyway, Coursay survived and married an actress a year later. And the club still remains in undisturbed possession of Eileen Lansing’s land; and Major Brent is now its president.
As for Munn, he has permanently retired to Munnville, Maine, where, it is reported, he has cured several worthy and wealthy people by the simple process of prayer.
Works of Robert W Chambers Page 1123