Chapter XVI

Aline Rodney possessed a very quick and passionate temper. She had been very injudiciously spoiled by her father, and very injudiciously punished by her mother. The result showed itself in a willful capricious temper that could not bear contradiction and restraint.

When Mr. Delaney firmly reiterated his assertion, that she should never be permitted to leave Delaney House unless she solemnly pledged herself to silence regarding her sojourn there, Aline’s young heart was filled with the bitterest anger and rebellion. She was unaccustomed to absolute control. Her mother’s efforts in that direction were weak and fitful, her father’s love made him blind to the inherent obstinacy of her nature. When Oran Delaney, strong and masterful as he was by nature, undertook to dictate to this spoiled, petted child, he found that he incurred a serious risk.

I am ashamed to record this of my heroine--such characters are expected to realize our ideal of perfection--but she flew into a passion. She scolded Mr. Delaney in the bitterest terms her sharp little tongue could devise. She reproached him angrily, laying all the blame of her presence in the house upon his broad shoulders, and utterly ignoring her share in it. She was half-maddened by her sense of wrong and injury, and when she found that all her remonstrances broke against his strong, firm will, like water against a rock, she relapsed into violent hysterics.

She was not your ideal of a heroine, reader, nor mine, nor Oran Delaney’s! His proud lip curled, half in pity, half in scorn, at her passionate ravings. He was not at all frightened by her anger. He said to himself that it was the impotent, unreasonable anger of a child, and that she had a decidedly shrewish temper; but at the same time he could not help seeing how beautiful she was in her anger and spite. Her blue eyes sparkled through the tears that filled them, a crimson color glowed upon her cheeks. Her voice, even at its sharpest, trembled with her sense of injury, and had a certain pathos that made it sound musical. Her whole proud spirit was aroused. She defied him to carry out his assertion, and then, in unreasoning contradiction of herself, she declared that she would remain at Delaney House until her bright eyes were dim, and her dark hair gray, before she would take the oath of silence he demanded of her. She would never submit to such tyranny and injustice.

If Aline had been well and strong, Mr. Delaney would have laughed at her anger; but he grew apprehensive now. It was not well for her to excite herself. He regretted his precipitancy in acquainting her with his intentions. He wished that he had temporized with her.

“But how was I to know that she would take it so hardly?” he muttered to himself.

He was greatly relieved when Mrs. Griffin suddenly put in an appearance. She was honestly aghast at the state of the patient, and, while hurriedly mixing a composing draught, she gave loud utterance to her anxiety.

“This will be the death of her! A fever will be sure to set in. I cannot imagine what you have said to excite her so much, Mr. Delaney. It was very imprudent.”

“I did not know she would take it so hard,” he muttered, glancing uneasily at Aline, whose angry reproaches had subsided into low, smothered sobs and heart-broken wails.

“You had better leave her to me, now,” she said. “I can coax her to take this medicine, perhaps, when you are gone.”

He went up to Aline, and held out his hand.

“I am sorry you think so hardly of me,” he said. “Try to forgive me, won’t you, Aline?”

“I will never forgive you,” Aline, cried out, resentfully, as she pushed the offered hand away. And Mr. Delaney went away, then, without another word or look.

But Mrs. Griffin gave her a glance of lively reproach.

“For shame, Miss Rodney!” she cried. “You might treat Mr. Delaney civilly, at least, considering that he saved your life.”

“When?” demanded Aline, desisting from her sobs in sheer surprise.

“There, now! I always said I had a long tongue. Mr. Delaney told me not to tell,” muttered the nurse.

“When did he save my life?” demanded the girl, in her pretty, peremptory way.

“Don’t worry, Miss Rodney, that was a mere slip of the tongue, just now,” said Mrs. Griffin, as she approached with the wine-glass of medicine.

“I shall not take the medicine unless you tell me what you meant by saying that Mr. Delaney saved my life,” declared Aline, coolly.

“Won’t you? Then I shall have to call him back to pour it down your throat, as he did last night,” threatened the nurse, vexed at the willfulness of her patient.

“You will do no such thing, for I shall immediately tell him what you said, and ask him if it is true,” declared the perverse girl; “but, if you tell me the truth, I shall not tell him that you betrayed his confidence.”

Mrs. Griffin looked thoroughly vexed, but seeing what a headstrong nature she had to deal with, she meekly capitulated.

“If excitement weren’t so hurtful to you, I’d let you do your worst, my spoiled young lady,” she said; “but, for your own sake, and to save you from another fit of temper, I’ll tell you the truth. Mr. Delaney saved you from that _creature_ that assaulted you yesterday. She had already wounded him upstairs, but he pursued her, and reached the parlor just in time to prevent her from giving you a second stab with her dagger; and if she had succeeded in that second attempt, you would have bidden good-by to this world, my pretty one!”

Aline shuddered at the emphatic tone. Mrs. Griffin held out the medicine to her, and she swallowed it meekly, without a word of remonstrance. Her pretty face, still flushed from her anger and tears, looked very grave.

“I am very glad he saved my life,” she said, after a minute, thoughtfully. “I should not like to die yet. I am too young, and the world is too lovely.”

“As well die young as old,” growled the grim nurse. “One is saved a deal of pain by it.”

“You are an old croaker, like Mr. Delaney,” Aline exclaimed, impatiently. “I dare say I shall be as hopeful and happy and as much in love with life when I am old as I am now!”

“Let us hope so,” said the old woman, dryly; then she added, with some spirit, “As for Mr. Delaney being an old croaker, Miss Rodney, he is not old, let me tell you. He is only a little past thirty. I nursed him when he was a baby.”

“Did you, really, Mrs. Griffin? How strange!” cried Aline, trying to realize the fact that Mr. Delaney had ever been a baby. She looked at Mrs. Griffin meditatively a moment, and, as a vision of the tall, handsome man in bibs and long skirts came before her mind’s eye, she burst out laughing.

“Well, I never saw such a child--crying one moment, laughing the next!” cried Mrs. Griffin, offended at her levity.

“Don’t be angry, nurse. I was only laughing at the idea of that stern, dark man ever being a baby. Tell me, did you really nurse him? And was he a pretty baby? And was his mamma very fond of him?” cried volatile Aline.

“His mamma died when he was born, Miss Rodney. She was as young as you are, I believe, but she had a vast deal more dignity than you have,” Mrs. Griffin said, reprovingly.

“I have no dignity at all. I have heard that every day of my life, and I am eighteen years old,” said Aline, rather soberly; “and this poor young mother who died so sadly, Mrs. Griffin, was she a pretty girl?”

“How you do fly from one subject to another, miss!” cried Mrs. Griffin. “Yes, she was very beautiful. But, my dear, I don’t think that Mr. Delaney would like for me to discuss his family affairs with a stranger. Suppose you shut your eyes and go to sleep. You have had too much excitement already.”

Aline could be a very sweet, obedient child when it pleased her to be so. She relapsed into one of those gracious moods now. She nestled her dark head down upon the pillow and obediently closed her eyes.

But she was not asleep, although the grim nurse “laid that flattering unction to her soul.” She was busily thinking. “So Mr. Delaney saved my life,” she was saying to herself. “Why did he not tell me? I might not have been quite so abominable to him then. What a little wretch he must think me! I am sorry his mother died when he was a baby! I don’t think I should have had a very pleasant life if my mamma had died like that, even though she scolds me and punishes me sometimes.”

She was unconsciously penitent for all her rudeness and anger toward Mr. Delaney. He had saved her life. That was a great boon in Aline’s eyes. She was young and fair, and life was very sweet.

“I should not have been quite so bad if only I had known,” she repeated to herself. “I will be kinder to him after this. I do not want him to think me a little heathen. But he should not keep me here against my will. He must know that I want to go home!”

While she lay thus apparently sleeping, but in reality busily thinking, the nurse watched her anxiously. She believed that the girl was asleep, but she did not like to see the bright, warm color that began to burn fitfully on the fair cheek beneath the long, dark fringe of the lashes.

“I do not like the look of it,” she muttered, shaking her gray head, ominously. “’Twill be a mercy if fever doesn’t set in after all that passion she was in. And if it does, he daren’t bring the physician again. The risk will be too great.”

She started when the blue eyes unclosed presently and looked up into her face. They were unnaturally dark and bright.

“Send Mr. Delaney to me,” she said, “I am not going to tell him what you said, nurse, oh, no! Only send him here.” He came, and when he saw the hot flush on her cheeks, and the brilliant light in her eyes he was frightened. They were unnatural.

Aline put out her dainty, dimpled hand to him.

“I was very rude to you,” she said, simply. “Will you pardon me, Mr. Delaney?”

He clasped the small hand gently and assured her that he was not offended in the least. He knew that he had given her great cause to be angry with him.

“Still I need not have been such a little wretch,” she said, “and--and--I punished myself when I would not take the flowers. I wanted them very much! Will you give them to me now?”

He brought the little basket to her, and she buried her hot face among the cool, dewy leaves of the roses. She began to talk to them in a childish whisper, that suddenly grew into a loud, meaningless, vacant babble. Oran Delaney looked anxiously at Mrs. Griffin.

“Great Heaven!” he said, “what ails her? What does it mean?”

She shook her gray head gloomily.

“It is fever! I feared as much,” she said. “The excitement was too great in her weak, wounded condition. Heaven only knows how it will end.”

It was fever indeed. Aline’s reckless indulgence of her wrath had wrought the worst possible results. Fever and delirium had set in. The wound which they had thought so lightly of at first now threatened to terminate fatally.

“If she dies, it will be I who have killed her. I was a fool; I was mad surely when I told her all I did,” said Oran Delaney to himself.

The fever set in high, and strong, and violent. It was pitiful to hear the sweet, high-pitched voice raving of the dear ones from whom she was cruelly separated. As she fought the hard battle between the opposing forces of life and death she called upon them all to help her--mamma, papa, Max and Effie, all those dearly beloved ones who were so near and yet so cruelly far.