TIGER-LILY. (continued 2)

"Your grateful and loving

"Lilly."

The good little woman's tears fell faster as she looked about the empty room.

"I never was so beat in my life," she confided to a dozen of her intimate friends many times over during the next week. "You could have knocked me down with a feather."

Dr. Starkey's amazement surpassed Miss Bullins's, if possible. He first heard of the step Lilly had taken from Dr. Horton. He saw her himself a day or two later, on making his tri-weekly visit to the hospital, and commended her bravery and self-sacrificing spirit in phrases something less stilted than usual.

He could not entirely banish an uneasy feeling when he looked at the fresh young face, but he became tolerably reconciled to the situation when he saw what her energy and tenderness, in cooperation with Widow Gatchell's skill and experience, were accomplishing.

As for the girl herself, the days and nights passed so rapidly, making such demands upon body and mind, as to leave no time for regret. The scenes she witnessed effaced the past entirely for the time. In the midst of all the pain, and loathsomeness, and delirium, and death, she moved about, strong, gentle and self-contained, so self-contained that the vigilant eyes of the old nurse followed her in mute surprise.

"I never see nothin' like it," she said to Dr. Horton one day. "I've known her since she was little, an' I never would 'a' believed it, though I knew she'd changed. Why, she used to be so high-strung an' techy, like, an' now she's like a lamb."

On the tenth day after her coming, Dr. Horton in making his round entered an upper chamber, where Lilly was standing by one of the three beds it contained. She had just drawn the sheet over the faces of two who had died that morning—mother and child.

The dead woman was the deserted wife of a man who had left her a year before, young, weak and ignorant, to certain want and degradation.

"I cannot feel sorry," Lilly said. "It is so much better for them than what was left for them here."

Dr. Horton hardly seemed to hear her words. He was leaning wearily against a chair behind him; his eyes were dull, and his forehead contracted as if with physical suffering.

"You are ill!" she said, with a startled gesture.

"No, only getting a little tired out. I hope the worst is over now, and I think I shall hold out."

He went about from room to room, and from bed to bed, attentive and sympathetic as ever, and then left the house. A half hour later, one of the men came into the kitchen where Mrs. Gatchell was stirring something over the fire.

"Got a spare bed?" he asked, laconically.

The widow looked up.

"'Cause we've got another patient."

"Who is it?" she asked, quickly.

"Come and see."

She followed the man to the rear of the house, where, upon a stone which had fallen from the wall, Dr. Horton was sitting, his head bent in slumber. She listened a moment to his heavy breathing, laid her hand upon his forehead, and turned silently away.

A bed was made ready, and the young doctor, still wrapped in the heavy sleep of disease, was laid upon it, and one of the men was sent for Dr. Starkey.

In the delirium which marks the first stages of the disease, young Horton would allow no one but Lilly O'Connell to minister to him. Sometimes he imagined himself a boy, and called her "mother," clinging to her hand, and moaning if she made the least effort to withdraw. At other times, another face haunted him, and another name, coupled with endearing words or tender reproaches, fell from the half-unconscious lips.

Who but a woman can comprehend the history of those days and nights of watching and waiting? Each morning found her more marble-pale; purple rings formed themselves about the large eyes, but a deep, steady light, which was not born of pain and suffering, shone in their clear depths.

At last, one night, the crisis, whose result no human judgment could foretell, was at hand. No delirium, no restlessness now—only a deep sleep, in which the tense muscles relaxed and the breath came as softly as a child's.

Widow Gatchell shared the young girl's watch, but the strain of the last month had told upon her, and toward morning she fell asleep, and Lilly kept her vigil alone. Only the ticking of the old clock in the hall and the breathing of the sleepers broke the deep silence which filled the house. The lamp threw weird shadows across the ceiling and over the disfigured face upon the pillow. Of all manly beauty, only the close-clustering chestnut hair remained, and the symmetrical hands which lay nerveless and pale, but unmarred, upon the spread.

Statue-like, the young girl sat by the bed-side, her whole soul concentrated in the unwavering gaze which rested upon the sleeper's face. A faint—ever so faint—murmur came at last from the hot, swollen lips, and one languid hand groped weakly, as if seeking something. She took it gently and held it between her own soft palms. It seemed to her fine touch that a light moisture was discernible upon it. She rose and bent over the pillow with eager eyes. A storm of raptured feeling shook her. She sank upon her knees by the bed, and pressed the hand she held close against her breast, whispering over it wild words which no ear might hear.

All at once, the fingers which had lain so inert and passive in her grasp seemed to her to thrill with conscious life, to return faintly the pressure of her own. She started back.

A ray of dawning light crept under the window-shade and lay across the sick man's face. His eyes were open, and regarding her with a look of perfect intelligence.

The girl rose with a smothered cry, and laid the drooping hand upon the bed. The dark, gentle eyes followed her beseechingly. It seemed as if he would have spoken, but the parched lips had lost their power.

She went to the sleeping woman and touched her shoulder.

"Sarah, I think he is better," she said, her voice trembling.

Instantly, the old nurse was on the alert. She went to the bed, and laid her hand upon the sick man's forehead and wrist, then turned toward Lilly, with a smile.

"Go and take some rest," she said in a whisper. "The crisis has passed. He will live."

Dr. Horton's recovery was not rapid, but it was sure.

From the hour of his return to consciousness, Lilly O'Connell had not entered his room.

When a week had passed, he ventured to question his faithful attendant, Widow Gatchell, in regard to her. For twenty-four hours he had missed the step and voice he had believed to be hers, passing and repassing the hall outside his door. The old woman turned her back abruptly and began stirring the already cheerful fire.

"She ain't quite so well to-day," she answered, in a constrained voice.

The young man raised his head.

"Do you mean that she is sick?" he asked hastily.

"She was took down last night," the widow answered, hesitating, and would have left the room; but the young man beckoned her, and she went to his side.

"Let everything possible be done for her," he said. "You understand—everything that can be done. Let Mason attend to me."

"I'll do my part," the old nurse answered, in the peculiarly dry tone with which she was accustomed to veil her emotions.

Dr. Starkey, who, since the young doctor's illness, had been, perforce, in daily attendance, was closely questioned. His answers, however, being of that reserved and non-committal nature characteristic of the profession, gave little satisfaction, and Horton fell into a way of noticing and interpreting, with the acute sense of the convalescent, each look of his attendant, each sound which came to him, keeping himself in a state of nervous tension which did much toward retarding his recovery.

Three or four days had passed in this way, when one morning, just at daybreak, Dr. Horton was roused from his light sleep by sounds in the hall outside his door—hushed voices, shuffling footsteps, and the sound of some object striking with a heavy thud against the balusters and wall. He raised himself, his heart beating fast, and listened intently. The shuffling steps moved on, down the creaking stairs and across the bare floor below. A door opened and shut, and deep silence filled the house again. He sank back upon his pillow, faint and bewildered, but still listening, and after some moments, another sound reached his ears faintly from a distance—the click of metal against stones and frozen mold.

He had already been able, with some assistance, to reach his chair once or twice a day; now he rose unaided, and without consciousness of pain or weakness, found his way to the window, and pushed aside the paper shade with a shaking hand.

It was a dull, gray morning, and a light snow was falling, but through the thin veil he could see the vague outlines of two men in the pasture opposite, and could follow their stiff, slow motions. They were filling in a grave.

He went to his bed and lay back upon it with closed eyes. When he opened them, Widow Gatchell was standing by him with his breakfast on a tray.

Her swarthy face was haggard, but her eyes were tearless, and her lips set tightly together. He put his hand out and touched hers.

"I know," he said, softly.

The woman put the tray on the table, and sank upon a chair. She cleared her throat several times before speaking.

"Yes," she said, at last, in her dry, monotonous voice. "She is gone. We did all we could for her, but 'twarn't no use. She was all wore out when she was took. Just afore she died she started up and seized hold o' my hand, her eyes all soft an' shinin', an' her mouth a-smilin'. 'Sarah,' says she, 'I shall know the meaning of it now!' The good Lord only knows what she meant—her mind was wanderin', most likely—but them was her last words, 'I shall know the meanin' of it now, Sarah!'"

The old woman sat a while in silence, with the strange repressed look which watching by so many death-beds had fixed upon her face; then, arranging the breakfast upon the stand, went out again.

It snowed persistently all day. From the chair by the window, Doctor Horton watched it falling silently, making everything beautiful as it fell,—rude wall, and gnarled tree, and scraggy, leafless bush,—and covering those low, unsightly mounds with a rich and snowy pall. He watched it until night fell and shut it from his sight.

Lilly O'Connell's was the last case. The disease seemed meantime to have spent its force, and in a few weeks the unbroken silence of midwinter rested over the drear and forlorn spot.

Doctor Horton was again at home. He was thin, and his face showed some traces of the disease from which he had just recovered, but they were slight, and such as would pass away in time. The pleasant chamber where he was sitting was filled with evidences of care and attention, for every woman in Ridgemont, old or young, desired to show in some way her admiration and esteem for the young physician. Fruit and jellies and flowers and books filled every available place.

He was seated before a cheerful fire. Upon the table by his side lay many papers and letters, the accumulation of several weeks. One letter, of a recent date, was open in his hand. A portion of it ran thus:

"* * * It has been very gay here this season, and mother and Aunt Kitty have insisted upon my going out a great deal. But I have had no heart in it, dearest, especially since I knew that you were ill. I assure you, I was almost ill myself when I heard of it. How thankful I am that you are convalescent. I long to see you so much, but Aunt Kitty does not think I ought to return before spring. Oh Roger, do you think you are much changed? * * *"

Shading his eyes with his thin hand, he sat a long time in deep thought. At last, rousing himself, he went to his desk and wrote as follows:

"My Dear Florence: I am changed; so much that you would not know me; so much that I hardly know myself; so much, indeed, that it is better we do not meet at present.

R. H."

With a smile so bitter that it quite transformed his genial, handsome face, he read and re-read these lines.

"Yes," he said aloud, "it is the right way, the only way," and he sealed and directed the letter, and went back to his reverie by the fire.

Lilly O'Connell's death made a deep impression in the village. That which her life, with all its pain and humiliation and loneliness, its heroic struggles, its quiet, hard-won victories, had failed to do, the simple story of her death accomplished. It was made the subject of at least two eloquent discourses, and for a time her name was on every tongue. But it was only for a time, for when, in the course of years, the graves in the pasture were opened, and the poor remains of mortality removed by surviving friends to sacred ground, her grave remained undisturbed.

It was not forgotten, however. One day in June, when the happy, teeming earth was at her fairest, Dr. Horton drove out of the village, and turning into the grass-grown, untraversed road, went on to the scene of the past winter's tragedy of suffering and death. The old house was no longer in existence. By consent of the owner (whose whereabouts had been discovered), and by order of the selectmen of the town, it had been burned to the ground. Where it had stood, two crumbling chimneys rose from the mass of blackened bricks and charred timbers which filled the cellar, the whole draped and matted with luxuriant woodbine and clinging shrubs. Birds brooded over their nests in every nook and cranny of the ruin, and red roses flaunted in the sunshine and sprinkled the gray door-stone with splashes of color. The air was as sweet about it, the sky as blue above it, as if crime and plague were things which had no existence.

Dr. Horton left his horse to browse on the tender leaves of the young birches which grew along the wall, and went down into the pasture. The sod above the graves was green, and starred with small white flowers. There were fifteen graves in all, distinguished only by a number rudely cut upon rough stakes driven into the ground at their heads.

He went slowly among them until he came to one a little apart from the others, in the shadow of the woods which bordered the field. A slender young aspen grew beside it, its quivering leaves shining in the sun. Soft winds blew out from the fragrant woods, and far off in their green depths echoed the exquisite, melancholy note of the wood-thrush. At the foot of the grave, where the grass, nourished by some hidden spring, grew long and lush, a single tiger-lily spread its glowing chalice.

The young man stood there with uncovered head a long, long time. Then, laying his hand reverently upon the sod for one instant, he went away.

Several years have passed since these events. Dr. Horton is still unmarried. This is a source of great regret in the community with which he has become so closely allied, and by which he is held in universal regard and honor. There are some prematurely whitened locks upon his temples, and two or three fine straight lines just above his warm, steadfast eyes, but he is neither a morose nor a melancholy man, and there are those who confidently hope that the many untenanted rooms in the old homestead may yet open to the sunshine of a wife's smile, and echo to the music of childish voices.

It was two years before he met Miss Fairfield, she having spent that time in Europe with her mother and "Aunt Kitty." It was a chance meeting, upon Tremont Street, in Boston. He was in the act of leaving a store as she entered, accompanied by her mother. He recognized them with a friendly and courteous bow, and passed on.

Miss Fairfield leaned against the counter with a face white as snow.

"He is not—changed—so very much," she whispered to her mother.

Mrs. Fairfield, who had had her own ideas all along, kept a discreet silence.

The Fairfields spend a part of their time in Ridgemont, and the elegant little phaeton and the doctor's buggy often pass each other on the street; the occupants exchange greetings, and that is all.

Miss Fairfield is Miss Fairfield still. Always elegant and artistic in her dress, she is not quite the same, however. The porcelain tints have faded, and there is a sharpness about the delicate features, and a peevishness about the small pink lips. She is devoted to art. She paints industriously, and with fair result. Her tea-sets are much sought after, and she "spends her winters in Boston."