Theo — Chapter 8 Part 1: Theo's first trouble
THEO'S FIRST TROUBLE.
He had been gone three days, and, in their lapse, Theo felt as if three lustrums had passed.
Their parting had been so unexpected a one, that she could not get used to it, or believe it was anything else but a painful dream.
After all, it seemed that Fortune was crueller than she had imagined possible.
He was gone, and to Priscilla Gower; and she had never been able to believe that some alteration, of which she had no very definite conception, would occur, and end her innocent little ghost of a love-story, as all love-stories should be ended.
It had never been more than the ghost of a story.
Until that last night he had never uttered a word of love to her; he had never even made the fine speeches to her which she might have expected, and, doubtless, would have expected, if she had been anybody else but Theodora North.
She had not expected them, though, and, consequently, was not disappointed when she did not receive them.
But she found herself feeling terribly lonely after Denis Oglethorpe left Paris.
The first day she felt more stunned than anything else.
The second her sensibilities began to revive keenly, and she was full of sad, desperate wonder concerning him--concerning how he would feel when he stood face to face with Priscilla Gower; how he would look, what he would say to her.
The third day was only the second intensified, and filled with a something that was almost like a terror now and then.
It was upon this third day that Lady Throckmorton was unexpectedly called away.
A long-lost friend of her young days had suddenly made her appearance at Rouen, and having, by chance, heard of her ladyship's presence in Paris, had written to her a letter of invitation, which the ties of their girlhood rendered almost a command.
So to Rouen her ladyship went, for once leaving Theo behind.
Madam St. Etunne was an invalid, and the visit could not be a very interesting one to a young girl.
This was one reason why she was left--the other was the more important one, that she did not wish to go, and made her wishes known.
She was not sorry for the chance of being left to herself for a few days--it would be only a few days at most.
"Besides," said Lady Throckmorton, looking at her a trifle curiously, "you do not look well yourself.
Theo, you look feverish, or nervous, or something of the kind.
How was it I did not notice it before?
You must have caught cold.
Yes, I believe I must leave you here."
Consequently, Theo was left.
She was quiet enough, too, when her ladyship had taken her departure.
It was generally supposed that Miss North had accompanied her chaperon, and so she had very few callers.
She spent the greater part of her time in the apartment in which Denis Oglethorpe had bidden her farewell, and, as may be easily imagined, it did not add to her lightness of spirit to sit in her old seat and ponder over the past in the silence of the deserted room.
She arose from her ottoman one night, and walked to one of the great mirrors that extended from floor to ceiling.
She saw herself in it as she advanced--a regal-like young figure, with a head set like a queen's, speechful dark eyes, and glowing lips; a face that was half child's, half woman's, and yet wholly perfect in its fresh young life and beauty.
Seeing this reflection, she stopped and looked at it, in a swift recognition of a new thought.
"Oh, Pam!"
she cried out, piteously.
"Oh, my poor, darling, faded Pam.
You were pretty once, too, very dear, pretty and young.
And you were happier than I can be, for Arthur only died.
Nobody came between your love and you--nobody ever could.
He died, but he was yours, Pam, and you were his."
She cried piteously and passionately when she went back to her seat, rested her arm upon a lounging-chair near her, and hid her face upon it, crying as only a girl can, with an innocent grief that had a pathos of its own.
She was so lovely and remorseful.
It seemed to her that some fault must have been hers, and she blamed herself that even now she could not wish that she had never met the man whose love for her was a dishonor to himself.
Where was he now?
He had told Lady Throckmorton that business would call him to several smaller towns on his way, so he might not be very far from Paris yet.
She was thinking of this when at last she fell asleep, sitting by the fire, still resting her hand upon the chair by her side.
It was by no means unnatural, though by no means poetic, that her girl's pain should end so.
But when the time-piece on the mantle chimed twelve with its silver tongue, she found herself suddenly and unaccountably wide awake.
She sat up and looked about her.
It was not the clock's chime that had awakened her she thought.
It must have been, something more, she was so very wide awake indeed, and her senses were so clear.
One minute later she found out what it was.
There was some slight confusion down-stairs; a door was opened and closed, and she heard the sound of voices in the entrance-hall.
She turned her head, and listening attentively, discovered that some one was coming up to the room in which she sat.
The door opened, and upon the threshold stood a servant bearing in his hand a salver, and upon the salver a queer, official-looking document, such as she did not remember ever having seen before.
"A telegram," he said, rapidly in French, "for milady.
They had thought it better to acquaint Mad'moiselle."
She took it from him, and opened it slowly and mechanically.
She read it mechanically also--read it twice before she comprehended its full meaning, so great was the shock it gave her.
Then she started from her seat with a cry that made the servant start also.
"Send Splaighton to me," she said, "this minute, without a moment's delay."
For the telegram she had just read told her that in a wayside inn, at St. Quentin, Denis Oglethorpe lay dying, or so near it that the medical man had thought it his duty to send for the only friend who was on the right side of Calais, and that friend, whose name he had discovered by chance, was Lady Throckmorton.
It was, of course, a terribly unwise thing that Theodora North decided upon doing an hour later.
Only such a girl as she was, or as her life had necessarily made her, would have hit upon a plan so loving, so wild and indiscreet.
But it did not occur to her, even for a second, that there was any other thing to do.
She must go to him herself in Lady Throckmorton's stead; she must take Splaighton with her, and go try to take care of him until Lady Throckmorton came, or could send for Priscilla Gower and Miss Elizabeth.
"Ma'mselle," began the stricken Splaighton, when, as she stood before the erect young figure and desperate young face, this desperate plan was hurriedly revealed to her.
"Ma'mselle, you forget the imprudence--" But Theo stopped her, quite ignorant of the fact, that by doing so, she forfeited her reputation in Splaighton's eyes forever.
"He is going to die!"
she said, with a wild little sob in her voice.
"And he is all alone-and--and he was to have been married, Splaighton, in July--only a few months from now.
Oh, poor Priscilla Gower!
Oh, poor girl!
We must save him.
I must go now and try to save him for her.
Oh, if I could just have Pamela with me."
The woman saw at once that remonstrance would be worse than useless.
Theo was slowly revealing to her that this despairing, terrified young creature would not understand her resistance in the slightest degree.
She would not comprehend what it meant; so, while Splaighton packed up a few necessary articles, Theo superintended her, following her from place to place, with a longing impatience that showed itself in every word and gesture.
She did not dare to do more, poor child.
She had never overcome her secret awe of her waiting-woman.
In her inexperienced respect for her, she even apologized pathetically and appealingly for the liberty she was taking in calling upon her.
"I am sorry to trouble you," she said, humbly, and feeling terribly homesick as she said it; "but I could not go alone, you know--and I must go.
There is a lace collar in that little box that you may have, Splaighton.
It is a pretty collar, and I will give you the satin bow that is fastened to it."
Scarcely two hours later they were on their way to St. Quentin.
It never occurred to Theo, in the midst of her fright and unhappiness, that she was now doing a very unwise and dangerous thing.
She only thought of one thing, that Denis was going to die.
She loved him too much to think of herself at all, and, besides, she did not, poor innocent, know anything about such things.
It was a wonderful trial of the little old French doctor's calmness of mind, when, on his next visit to his patient, he found himself confronted by a tall, young creature, with a pale, desperate face, and lovely tear-fraught eyes, instead of by the majestic, elderly person, the perusal of Lady Throckmorton's last letter to Denis had led him to expect.
It was in the little inn parlor that he first encountered Theodora North, when she arrived, and on seeing her he gazed over his spectacles, first at herself, and then at the respectable Splaighton, in a maze of bewilderment, at seemingly having made so strange a blunder.
"Lady Throckmorton?"
he said, at last, in English, or in a broken attempt at it.
"Oh!
_Oui_--I understand.
The sister of monsieur?
Ah, milady?"
Theo broke in upon him in a passionate impulse of fear and grief.
"No," she said.
"I am not Lady Throckmorton.
I am only her niece, Theodora North.
My aunt was away when your telegram arrived, and--and I knew some one must come--so I came myself.
Splaighton and I can take care of Mr. Oglethorpe.
Oh, monsieur, is it true that he is dying?
--will he never get well?
How could it happen?
He was so strong only a few days since.
He must not die.
It cannot be true that he will die--he has so many friends who love him."
Monsieur, the doctor, softened perceptibly under this; she was so young and innocent-looking, this girlish little English mademoiselle.
Monsieur up-stairs must be a lucky man to have won her tender young heart so utterly.
Strange and equivocal a thing as the pretty child (she seemed a child to him) was doing, he never for an instant doubted the ignorant faith and love that shone in the depths of her beautiful agonized eyes.
He bowed to her as deferentially as to a sultana, when he made his answer.
"It had been an accident," he commenced.
"The stage had overturned on its way, and monsieur being in it, had been thrown out by its falling into a gully.
His collar-bone had been broken, and several of his ribs fractured; but the worst of his injuries had been a gash on his head--a sharp stone had done it.
Mademoiselle would understand wherein the danger lay.
He was unconscious at present."
This he told her on their way to the chamber up-stairs; but even the gravity of his manner did not prepare her for the sight the opening of the door revealed to her.
Handsome Denis Oglethorpe lay upon the narrow little bed with the face of a dying man, which is far worse than that of a dead man.
There were spots of blood on his pillow and upon his garments; he was bandaged from head to foot, it seemed, with ghastly red, wet bandages; his eyes were glazed, and his jaw half dropped.
A low, wild cry broke from the pale lips of the figure in the door-way, and the next instant Theodora North had flown to the bedside and dropped upon her knees by it, hiding her deathly-stricken young face upon her lover's lifeless hand, forgetting Splaighton, forgetting the doctor, forgetting even Priscilla Gower, forgetting all but that she, in this moment, knew that she could not give him up, even to the undivided quiet of death.
"He will die!
He will die!"
she cried out.
"And I never told him.
Oh, my love!
love!
Oh, my dearest, dear!"
The little, old doctor drew back, half way, through a suddenly stranger impulse of sympathy.
He was uneasily conscious of the fact, that the staid, elderly person at his side was startled and outraged simultaneously by this passionate burst of grief on the part of her young mistress.
He had seen so many of these unprepossessing English waiting-women that he understood the state of her feelings as by instinct.
He turned to her with all the blandness possible under the circumstances, and gave her an order which would call for her presence down-stairs.
When she departed, as she did in a state bordering on petrification, he came forward to the bedside.
He did not speak, however; merely looking down at his patient in a silence whose delicacy was worthy of honor, even in a shrivelled little snuff-taking, French, village doctor.
The pretty young mademoiselle would be calmer before many minutes had elapsed--his experience had taught him.
And so she was.
At least, her first shock of terror wore away, and she was calm enough to speak to him.
She lifted her face from the motionless hand, and looked up at him in a wild appeal for help, that was more than touching.
"Don't say he will die!"
she prayed.
"Oh, monsieur, only save him, and he will bless you forever.
I will nurse him so well.
Only give me something to do, and see how faithful I shall prove.
I shall never forget anything, and I shall never be tired--if--if he can only live, monsieur," the terrified catching of her breath making every little pause almost a sob.
"My child," he answered her, with a grave touch of something quite like affection in his air.
"My child, I shall save him, if he is to be saved, and you shall help me."
How faithfully she held to the very letter of her promises, only this little, shrivelled village doctor could say.
How tender, and watchful, and loving she was, in her care of her charge, only he could bear witness.
She was never tired--never forgetful.
She held to her place in the poor little bedroom, day and night, with an intensity of zeal that was actually astonishing.
Priscilla Gower and Pamela North might have been more calm--certainly would have been more self-possessed, but they could not have been more faithful.
She obeyed every order given to her like a child.
She sat by the bedside, hour after hour, day and night, watching every change of symptom, noting every slight alteration of color, or pulse.
