Chapter 123
"He said it all came out before my military brother. Did that change Lucas's destination?" said Janet, looking up.
"Ask him?"
"No, indeed," said Jock, when he understood. "I turned doctor as the readiest way of looking after mother."
"Did you understand nothing?"
"Only that she had some memoranda of my father's, that the sc---- that Hermann wanted. I never thought of them again till she told me."
Mrs. Brownlow started at the next few words.
"My child was born only two days after we landed at New York."
But a quick interrogative glance kept her silent. "She was very small and delicate, and her father was impatient both of her weakness and mine. I think that was when I began to long for my mother. He made me call her Glykera, after his mother. I had taught him to be bitter against mine."
"O mother, if you could have seen her," suddenly exclaimed Janet, "she was the dearest little thing," and she drew from her bosom a locket with a baby face on one side, and some soft hair on the other, put it into her mother's hand and hid her face on her shoulder.
"Oh! my poor Janet, you have suffered indeed! How long did you keep the little darling?"
"Two years. You will hear! I was not quite wretched while I had her. Go on, mother. There's no talking of it."
"We tried both practising and lecturing, feeling our way meantime towards the Magnum Bonum. We found, however, in the larger cities that people were quite as careful about qualifications as at home, and that we wanted recommendations. I could have got some practice among women if Demetrius would have rested long enough anywhere, but he liked lecturing best. I had been obliged to perceive that he had very little real science, and indeed I had to give him the facts and he put them in his flowery language. While as to Magnum Bonum, he had gained enough to use it in a kind of haphazard way, for everything. I trembled at what he began doing with it, when in the course of our wanderings we got out of the more established regions into the south-west. In Texas we found a new towns.h.i.+p, called Burkeville, without a resident medical man, and the fame of his lectures had gone far enough for him to be accepted. There we set up our staff, and Demetrius--it makes me sick to say so--tried to establish himself as the possessor of a new and certain cure. I was persuaded that he did not know how to manage it, I tried to make him understand that under certain conditions it might be fatal, but he thought I was jealous. He had had one or two remarkable successes, his fame was spreading, he was getting reckless, and I could not watch as carefully as I sometimes did, for my child was ill, and needed all my care. The favourite of all the parish was the minister's daughter, a beautiful, lively, delicate girl, loved and followed like a sort of queen by the young men, of whom there were many, while there were hardly any other young women, none to compare with her. Demetrius had lost some patients, it was a sickly season, and I fancy there was some mistrust and exasperation against him already, for he was incompetent, and grew more averse to consulting me when his knowledge was at fault. I need not blame him. Everyone at home knows that I do not always make myself agreeable, and I had enough to exacerbate me, with my child pining in the unhealthy climate, and my father's precious secret used with the rough ignorance of an empiric. I knew enough of the case of this Annie Field to be sure that there were features in it which would make that form of treatment dangerous. I tried to make him understand. He thought me jealous of his being called in rather than myself. Well--she died, and such a storm of vengeance arose as is possible in those lawless parts. I knew and heeded nothing of it, for my little Glykera was worse every day, and I thought of nothing else, but it seems that reports unfavourable to us had come from some one of the cities where we had tried to settle, and thus grief and rage had almost maddened one of Annie's lovers, a young man of Irish blood, a leader among the rest. On the day of her funeral all the ruffianism in the place was up in arms against us. My husband had warning, I suppose, for I never saw or heard of him since he went out that morning, leaving me with my little one moaning on my lap. She was growing worse every hour, and I knew nothing else, till my door was burst open by a little boy of eight or ten years old, crying out, 'Mrs. Hermann, Mrs. Hermann, quick, they are coming to lynch you! come away, bring the baby. If father can't stop them, there's no place safe but our house.'
"And indeed upon the air came the sound of a great, horrible, yelling roar unspeakably dreadful. It seems never to have been out of my ears since. I do not know whether an American mob would have proceeded to extremities with a lonely woman and dying child, but there was an Irish and Spanish element of ferocity at Burkeville, and the cold, hard Englishwoman was unpopular, besides that, I was supposed to share in the irregular practice that had had such fatal effects. But with that horrible sound, one did not stop to weigh probabilities. I gathered up my child in her bed-clothes, and followed the boy out at the back door, blindly. And where do you think I found myself? where but in the minister's house? His wife, whose daughter had just been carried out to her grave, rose up from weeping and praying, to take me into the innermost chamber, where none could see me, and when she saw my darling's state, to give me all the help and sympathy a good woman could. Oh! that was my first true knowledge of Christian charity.
"Mr. Field himself was striving at the
"You have gone on now," said her mother, looking up at her.
Janet's reply was to produce the little book from her handbag, showing marks of service, and then to open it at the fly leaf. There Caroline herself had written "Janet Hermann," with the reference to St. Luke xv. 20. She had not dared to write more fully, but the good minister of Burkeville had, at Janet's desire, put his own initials, and likewise written in full:
"Refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes from tears, for thy work shall be rewarded, saith the Lord, and they shall come again from the land of the enemy. And there is hope in thine end, saith the Lord, that thy children shall come again to their own border."
"He might have written it for me," said Caroline. "My child--one at least is come to me."
"Or you have gone into her far country to seek her," said Janet.
"Can I write to this good man?" asked Caroline. "I do long to thank him."
"O yes. I wrote to him only the day before yesterday."
There was but little more of the narrative. "At night he borrowed a waggon, and drove me to a station in time to take the early train for the north-east, supplying me with means for the journey, and giving me a letter to a family relation of his, in New York State. I was most kindly sheltered there for a few days while I looked out for advertis.e.m.e.nts.
I found, however, that I must change my name, for the history of the Burkeville affair was copied into all the papers, and there were warnings against the two impostors, giving my maiden name likewise, as that in which my Zurich diploma had been made out. This cut me off from all medical employment, and I had to think what else I could do, not that I cared much what became of me. Seeing a notice that an a.s.sistant was wanted to colour and finish photographs, I thought my drawing, though only schoolroom work, might serve. I applied, showed specimens, and was thought satisfactory. I sent my address to Mr. Field, who had promised to let me know in case my husband made any attempt to trace me, or if I could find my way back to him, but up to this time I have heard absolutely nothing. The few white days in my life are, however, when I get a cheering, comforting letter from him. How I should once have laughed their phraseology to scorn, but then I did not know what reality meant, and they are the only balm of my life now, except mother's little book, and what they have led me to.
"But you see why I cannot come with Elvira. Not only do I not dare to meet my mother, but it might bring down upon her one whom she could not welcome. Besides, it is clearly fit that I should strive to meet him again; I would try to be less provoking to him now."
"I see, my dear," said Caroline. "But why did you never draw on Mr.
Wakefield all this time?"
"I never thought we ought to take that money," said Janet. "I could maintain myself, and that was all I wanted. Besides I was ashamed to bid him use a false name, and I durst not receive a letter under my own, nor did I know whether Demetrius might go on applying."
"He did once, saying that you were unwell, but Mr. Wakefield declined to let him be supplied with out your signature."
Janet eagerly asked the when and the where.
"I am glad," said her mother, "to find that you change of name was not in order to elude him, as feared at first."
"No," said Janet, "he never knew he was cruel, but he had made a mistake altogether in me. I was a disappointment to begin with, owing to my own bad management, you see, for if I had brought off the book, and destroyed the will, his speculation would have succeeded. And then, for his comfort, he should have married a pa.s.sive, ignorant, senseless, obedient oriental, and he did not know what to do with a cold, proud thing, who looked most hard when most wretched, who had understanding enough to see his blunders, and remains of conscience enough to make her sour. Poor Demetrius! He had the worst of the bargain! And now--" She turned the leaf of the ma.n.u.script, and showed, with a date three days back:
"Mr. Field has written to me, sending a cutting of an advertis.e.m.e.nt of a month back of a spiritualist from Abville, which he thinks may be my husband's. I am sure it is, I know the Greek idiom put into English. It decides me on what I had thought of before. I shall offer my services as nurse or physician, or whatever they will let me be in that stress of need. I may find him, or if he have fled, I may, if I live, trace him.
At any rate, by G.o.d's grace, I may thus endeavour to make a better use of what has never yet been used for His service.
"And in case I should add no further words to this, let me conclude by telling my dear, dear mother that my whole soul and spirit are asking her forgiveness, and by sending my love to my brothers, and sister, whom I love far better now than ever I did when I was with them. And to Elvira too--perhaps she is my sister by this time.
"Let them try henceforth to think not unkindly of
"JANET HERMANN."
This had been enclosed in an envelope addressed to Mrs. Joseph Brownlow, to the care of Wakefield and Co., solicitors.
"You see I cannot go back with you, mother dear," she said, "though you have come to seek me."
"Not yet," said Caroline, handing the last page to Jock, who had come back again from one of his excursions.
"Look here, Janet," said Jock, "mother will not forbid it, I know. If you will wait another day for me to arrange for her, I will go with you. This is a place specially mentioned as in frightful need of medical attendance, and I already doubted whether I ought not to volunteer, but if you have an absolute call of duty there, that settles it. Mother, do you remember that American clergyman who dined with us? I met him just now. He begged me with all his heart to persuade you to come and stay with his family. I believe he is going to bring his wife to call. I am sure they would take care of you."
"I don't want care. Jock, Jock, why should I not go and help? Do you think I can send my children into the furnace without me?"
Jock came and sat down by her with his specially consoling caress.
"Mother dear, I don't think you ought. We are trained to it, you see, and it is part of our vocation, besides, Janet has a call. But your nursing would not make much difference, and besides, you don't belong only to us--Armine and Babie need their home. And suppose poor Bobus came back. No, I am accountable to them all. They didn't send me out in charge of my Mother Carey that I should run her into the jaws of Yellow Jack. I can't do it, mother. I should mind my own business far less if I were thinking about you. It would be just like your coming after me into a general engagement."
"Lucas is quite right," said Janet. "You know, mother, this is a special kind of nursing, that one does not understand by the light of nature, and you are not strong enough or tough enough for it."
"I flattered myself I was pretty tough," said her mother, with trembling lip. "What sort of a place is it? Could not I--even if you won't let me nurse--be near enough to rest you, and feed you, and disinfect you? That is my trade, Jock will allow, as a doctor's wife and mother. And I could collect things and send them to the sick. Would not that be possible, my dears?"
Jock said he would find out. And then he told them he had found a Church with a daily service, to which they went.
And then those three had a wonderfully happy evening together.
CHAPTER XLI. -- GOOD OUT OF EVIL.
How the field of combat lay By the tomb's self; how he sprang from ambuscade-- Captured Death, caught him in that pair of hands.
Browning.