Chapter XIX: With Friends

Doctor Fielding turned his kind, grave eyes upon the frightened face of his pretty wife and shook his head.

“No, she is not dead, Minnie, but I shall have to reserve all explanations until we have resuscitated her,” he said. “She is in a deep swoon now, and before we try to revive her I want you to bring some of your warm, dry garments and put them upon her. You see she is quite damp now. She has been in the water.”

“In the water--oh, dear!” Minnie Fielding cried, with a shiver.

“I will go and light a fire in the kitchen while you change your patient,” said her husband. “I daresay Mrs. Strangemore will need a cup of warm coffee when she revives.”

“And I have been so lazy I have not made a drop this morning,” Mrs. Fielding cried, penitently.

“Of course not--it is much too early for breakfast yet, but I will see about the coffee, dear, while you attend to your friend.”

He slipped on a short gray dressing-gown and went out. Mrs. Fielding went about the task he had set her with tearful alacrity, pausing now and then to drop a kiss on the pale cheeks of the unconscious girl.

“Oh, my dear little pupil, my sweet Nina, what has happened to you?” she cried, sorrowfully, as she buttoned up her own pretty blue dressing-gown upon the slim, girlish figure.

Something in the sorrowful, tender words must have gone straight through the sealed consciousness of Nina for she stirred faintly and opened her eyes. Their dark wondering gaze fell on Mrs. Fielding’s tender tearful face.

“Nina, my darling little girl,” she repeated, fondly, and chafing the cold little hands in both her own, “Oh, my little pupil, how glad I am to see you again. I have wished so often that you would come and see me in my humble, happy little home, and now my hope is fulfilled!”

The dazed expression vanished out of the girl’s eyes, and full consciousness came into them--full consciousness of her sorrow. She could not answer the loving words of her old teacher. She looked back at her mutely with big, heavy dark eyes circled by wide, purple shadows, and full of hopeless misery.

Then for the first time it dawned on Mrs. Fielding that her old pupil had come to her in sorrow and misery, not in joyful greeting. Those dark eyes so full of despair told their own story. All the agony of a breaking heart was in them.

The kind hearted lady uttered a cry of blended sympathy and sorrow, and threw her arms around the passive figure, laying the golden head against her shoulder.

“Do not speak one word to me, darling, if you do not choose,” she said, “I see that you are in trouble and sorrow, and I am, oh, so sorry for you!”

Doctor Fielding coming in presently, found them thus, but he did not like the hard, cold misery of Nina’s face, lighted by the large suffering black eyes. Her speechless calm, her stony endurance seemed more terrible than tears.

He went to the crib to kiss his sleeping child, and the babe stirred and awoke. He took it carefully in his arms and carried it to Nina.

“This is our little daughter--just two months old--Mrs. Strangemore,” he said, “I hope you will kiss the little stranger, for Minnie has named her Nina for the sake of the love she had for you.”

Nina gazed with strange, wild eyes at the sweet, pink face a moment, then she stooped and pressed her lips to her little namesake’s cheeks. Two great burning tears splashed on the child’s face as she did so, and when she lifted her head it was to break into a tempest of bitter weeping which dismayed Minnie, but at which her husband gazed in silent satisfaction.

“Let her weep. It is better for her,” he said, under his breath, and he carried the baby out of the room, and left Minnie alone with the mourner.

She followed him presently with a sad, perplexed face, and took the fretful babe from his arms.

“She has sobbed herself to sleep without saying a word. Oh, Arthur, what has happened to the poor child?”

“Indeed, Minnie, I do not know,” he answered, “But I think she must have had some terrible trouble greater than she could bear, for last night I rescued her from a suicide’s grave in the deep sea.”

A cry of terror came from the lips of the happy young wife as she pressed her infant in her arms.