Chapter XXV: Breaking the Engagement

“Poor Squire Russell,” Jessie kept repeating to herself, as she saw him next morning going up to Dora, who would far rather not have seen him until some one had told him what she knew now must be.

But there was no longer a reason why he should not be admitted to her presence, and so he came, his kind face bathed in tears, and glowing all over with delight as he stooped to kiss “his lily,” as he called her, asking how she felt, and whispering to her of his joy that she was better.

“I knew the doctor would help you,” he said, rubbing his hands complacently. “You would have died but for him. We will always like Dr. West, Dora, for he saved your life.”

“I guess I would not talk any more now,—it tires her,” Jessie said, in a perfect tremor of distress; and taking his arm, she led him away; then, closing the door upon him, she went back to Dora, who was weeping silently.

“It seems dreadful to deceive him any longer,” Jessie said, and as Dr. West just then came in she appealed to him to know if it were not a shame for that nice man to be kept so in the dark. “If you and Dora love each other, as I suppose you do, why, you’ll have each other of course, and Squire Russell must console himself as best he can. For my part, I pity him,” and Jessie flounced out of the room, leaving Dr. West alone with Dora.

For a long time they talked, Dora weeping softly while the doctor soothed and comforted, and told her of the love cherished so many years for the little brown-eyed girl, who now confessed how dear he was to her, but cried mournfully when she spoke of Squire Russell. It was cruel when he trusted and loved her so much. Perhaps, too, it was wrong, she said. It might be her imperative duty to take charge of those children, and then she startled the doctor by saying:

“You know how much I love you. I am not ashamed to confess it, but I am most afraid that when the time comes to talk with John, I shall tell him that I will marry him.”

“_Not by a jug full!_ I’ll tend to that myself. I know now what has been the matter!” was almost screamed in the ears of Dr. West and Dora, as Johnnie rushed into the room.

He had started to come before, he said, but had been arrested at the door by something Dora was saying to the doctor.

“I know it’s paltry mean to listen,” he continued, “but I could not help it, and so I stood stiller than a mouse, and heard all you had to say. That’s why Aunt Dora has looked so white and cried so much, and didn’t want father to kiss her. I understand. She didn’t like him, but she’s pesky willing to have _you_ slobber over her as much as you want to,” and the boy turned fiercely toward the doctor. “I counted, and while I stood there you kissed her _fourteen_ times! It was smack, smack, till I was fairly sick, and sort of mad with all the rest. I know auntie always _has_ done right, and so I s’pose she is right now, but somehow I can’t help feeling as if the governor was abused, and _me_ too! How, I’d like to know, am I ever going to Europe if you don’t have father? O Auntie, think again before you quit entirely!” and overmastered with tears, Johnnie buried his face in the bed-clothes, begging of Dora “to think again, and not give poor father the mitten!”

“You are making her worse! You had better go out!” the doctor said kindly, laying a hand on Johnnie’s shoulder; but the boy shook it off, savagely exclaiming:

“You let me _be_, old Dr. West. I shall stay if I have a mind to!” But when Dora said:

“Johnnie, Johnnie, please don’t,” he melted at once, and sobbed aloud.

“I was mad, Auntie; and I guess I’m mad yet, but I do love you. O Auntie, poor father! I’m going right off to tell him. He shan’t be fooled any longer!” and the excited child darted from the room ere Dora had time to stop him.

Rushing down the stairs and entering the library, he called loudly for his father, but he was not there. He had gone into the village, Jessie said, asking if it was anything in particular which he wanted. “Yes, of course. I want to tell him how it’s all day with him and Auntie. She don’t like him, and she does like Dr. West. Poor father! was there ever anything so mean?”

Here at last was one who in part expressed her own sentiments, and the impulsive Jessie replied:

“It is mean, I think, and I am so sorry for your father. Of course Dora intends to do right, and likes the doctor best, because he is not so old as your father; but young as I am, I should not think it so awful to marry a man of forty. Why, I think it would be rather jolly, for I could do just as I pleased with him. Yes, I blame Dora some—”

“I won’t have Aunt Dora blamed,” Johnnie roared, a reaction taking place the moment any one presumed to censure her. “No, I won’t have her blamed, so you just hush up. If she don’t want father she shan’t have him, and I’ll lick the first one who says she shall.”

Here Johnnie broke down entirely, and with a howling cry fled away into the garden, leaving Jessie perfectly amazed as she thought “how very unsatisfactory it was to meddle with a love-affair.”

Meanwhile Johnnie had seated himself beneath a tree in a sunny, quiet spot, where he was crying bitterly, and feeling almost as much grieved as when his mother died. Indeed, he fancied that he felt worse, for then there was hope in the future, and now there was none. Hearing the sound of the gate, and thinking his father had returned, he rose at last, and drying his eyes, repaired to the house, finding his conjecture true, for Squire Russell had come, and was reading his paper in the library. With his face all flushed with excitement, and his eyes red with weeping, Johnnie went to him at once, and bolting the door, began impetuously, “I would not mind it a bit, father. I’d keep a stiff upper lip, just as if I did not care.”

“What do you mean?” the Squire asked, in surprise, and Johnnie continued: “I mean that you and Aunt Dora have _played out_, and you may as well hang up your fiddle, for she don’t want you, and she does want Dr. West, and that’s why she has grown poor as a shark and white as chalk. I just found it out, standing by the door and hearing the greatest lot of stuff,—how he asked her to marry him once, and she got into a tantrum and wouldn’t say yes, though she wanted to all the time. What makes girls act so, I wonder?”

Squire Russell was too deeply interested to offer any explanation with regard to girls’ actions, and Johnnie went on:

“Then he went off to California, and didn’t write, as she hoped he would, and you and I asked her to have you, and she did not want to, but thought it was her duty, and wrote to ask the doctor, and he didn’t get the letter for weeks and weeks, and when he did he was most distracted, and cut stick for home; and Aunt Dora didn’t know it, and went off to the Lake, and sat with both feet in the water, and Mr. Robert West found her there and told her, and got her home, and she most had a fit, and, O thunder! what a muss they have kicked up!”

Here Johnnie stopped for breath, while his father grasped the table with both hands, as if he thus would steady himself, while he said slowly, with long breaths between the words, “How—was it—my son? Tell me—again. I—I do not—think—I understand.”

Briefly then Johnnie recapitulated, telling how he happened to find it out, and adding, “Such kissing I never heard! _Fourteen_ smashers, for I counted; and don’t you know, father, how, if you even touched her hand or her hair, she would wiggle and squirm as if it hurt her? Well, I peeked through the crack of the door, and instead of wigglin’ she snugged up to him as if she liked it, and I know she did, for her eyes fairly shone, they were so bright, when she looked at him. But, father, she talked real good about you, and said that if you insisted she should marry you just the same; but you won’t father, will you?”

“No, my son, no. O Dora!”

The words were a groan, while the Squire laid his face upon the table. Instantly Johnnie was at his side comforting him as well as he was able, and trying manfully to keep down his own choking sorrow.

“Never mind, father, never mind; we will get along, you and I. And I’ll tell you now what folks say, and that is, that no chap has a right to marry his wife’s sister, which I guess is so. Don’t cry, father, don’t. Somebody will have you, if Aunt Dora won’t. There,—there,” and Johnnie tried in vain to hush the grief becoming rather demonstrative as the Squire began to realize what he had lost.

Noisy grief is never so deep as the calm, quiet sorrow which can find no outlet for its tears, and so Squire Russell was the more sure to outlive this bitter trial; but that did not help him now, or make the future seem one whit less desolate. It was an hour before Johnnie left him, and went into the hall, where he encountered Jessie, to whom he said, “I’ve told him and he’ll do the handsome thing, but it almost kills him. Maybe you, being a girl, can talk to him better than I,” and Johnnie went on up to Dora’s chamber, while Jessie, after hesitating a moment, glided quietly into the library, where Squire Russell still sat with his head upon the table.

Jessie was a nice little comforter, and so the Squire found her as she stood over him, just as she did when Margaret died, smoothing his hair, her favorite method of expressing sympathy, and saying to him so softly, “I pity you, and I think you so good to give her up.”

He could talk to Jessie; and bidding her to sit down, he asked what she knew of Dora’s love-affair with the doctor, thereby learning some things which Johnnie had not told him.

“It is well,” he said at last; “I see that Dora is not for me; I give her to Dr. West; and, Miss Verner,—Jessie,—I thank, you for your sympathy with both of us. I am glad you are here.”

Jessie was glad, too, for if there was anything she especially enjoyed, it was the whirl and the excitement going on around her. Bowing, she too quitted the library, and went up to corroborate what Johnnie had already told to Dora.

After that Squire Russell sat no more in the upper hall watching Dora’s door, but stayed downstairs with his little children, to whom he attached himself continually, as if he felt that he must be to them father and mother both. Now that the crisis was past, the doctor thought it advisable to go back to Mrs. Markham’s, his boarding-place, but he met Squire Russell first, and heard from his own lips a confirmation of what Johnnie had said. There was no malice in John Russell’s nature, and he treated the doctor as cordially and kindly as if he had not been his rival.

“God bless you both,” he said; “I blame no one,—harbor no ill-feeling towards any one. If Dora had told me frankly at first it might have saved some pain, some mortification, but I do not lay it up against her. She meant for the best. It is natural she should love you more than me. God bless her; and doctor, if you like, marry her at once, but don’t take her away from here yet; wait a little till I am more settled,—for the children’s sake, you know.”

Dr. West could not understand the feeling which prompted Squire Russell to want Dora to stay there, but he recognized the great unselfishness of the man whose sunshine he had darkened, and with a trembling lip he, too, said, “God bless you,” as he grasped the hand most cordially offered, and then hurried away. It was a week before the Squire could command sufficient courage to have an interview with Dora, as she had repeatedly asked that he might do. With a faltering step he approached her door, hesitating upon the threshold, until Jessie, coming suddenly upon him, said to him, cheerily, “It will soon be over, never mind it; go in.”

So he went in, and stayed a long, long time, but as they were alone, no one ever knew all that had passed between them. The Squire was very white when he came out, but his face shone with a look of one who felt that he had done right, and after that the expression did not change except that it gradually deepened into one of content and even cheerfulness, as the days went by, and people not only came to know that the wedding between himself and Dora would never be, but also to approve the arrangement, and to treat him as a hero who had achieved a famous victory. As for Dora, Jessie and Bell found her after the interview weeping bitterly over what she called her own wicked selfishness and John’s great generous goodness in giving her up so kindly, and making her feel while he was talking to her that it really was no matter about him. He was not injured so very much, although he had loved her dearly. He still had his children, and with them he should be happy.

“Oh, he is the best man!” Dora said; “the very best man that ever lived, and I wish he might find some suitable wife, whom he could love better than he did me, and who would make him happy.”

“So do I! I guess I do!” retorted Jessie, industriously cutting a sheet of note-paper in little slips and scattering them on the floor. “I’ve thought of everybody that would be at all suitable, for I suppose he must be married on account of the children; but there is nobody good enough except—” and Jessie held the scissors and paper still a moment, while she added, “except Bell. I think she would answer nicely. She is twenty-nine,—almost that awful thirty,—which no unmarried woman ever reaches, they say; and I’d like to be aunt to six children right well, only I believe I should thrash Jim and Letitia—who, by the way, is not very bright. Did you ever discover it, Dora?”

Dora had sometimes thought Letitia a little dull, she said, and then she turned to Bell to see how she fancied the idea of being step-mother to all those dreadful children; but Bell did not fancy it at all, as was plainly indicated by the haughty toss of her head as she replied that:

“Thirty had no terrors for her, but was infinitely preferable to a widower with six children.”

Jessie whistled, while Dora smiled softly as she caught the sound of a well-known step upon the stairs, and knew her physician was coming.

Bell and Jessie always left her alone with him, and when they were gone he kissed her pale cheek, which flushed with happiness, while her sunny eyes looked volumes of love into the eyes meeting them so fondly.

“My darling has been crying,” the doctor said. “Will she tell me why?”

And then came the story of her interview with John, who had proved himself so noble and good.

“Yes, I know; he came from you to me!” the doctor replied, and into Dora’s eyes there crept a bashful, frightened look, as she wondered if John had said to Richard what he did to her.

He had in part, viz., that he wished matters to proceed just as if he had never thought of marrying Dora; that as soon as she was able he would like to see her the doctor’s wife, and then if there were no objections on the part of either, he would like to have her remain at Beechwood awhile, at least until he could make some other arrangement for his children.

“I told him you might,” Richard said, as he imprisoned the hand which was raised to remonstrate. “I said I knew you would be willing to stay, and that I should like my new boarding-place very much; and now nothing remains but for you to get well as fast as possible, for the moment the doctor pronounces you convalescent you are to be his wife. Do you understand?”

He did not tell her then of the plan which was maturing, and for the furtherance of which Robert was sent away, viz., the purchase of the homestead whose loss Dora had so much deplored.

There was an opening in the town for a new physician, the doctor had ascertained; and though he would dislike to leave his many friends in Beechwood, still, for Dora’s sake, he could do so, and he had sent Robert to open negotiations with the present proprietor of the place once owned by Colonel Freeman, and for which there was ample means to pay in the sum brought by the prodigal from the mines of California.

But this was a secret until something definite was known, and Richard willingly acceded to the Squire’s proposition that he and Dora should remain there until something was devised for the children.

Of this Dora was not much inclined to talk, and as she was tired and excited, the doctor left her at last, stopping on his way from the house to look at little Daisy, whom Jessie held in her lap, and who seemed feverish and sick. The doctor did not then say what he feared, but when later in the day he came again, the child’s symptoms had developed so rapidly, that he had no hesitancy in pronouncing it the scarlet fever, then prevailing to an alarming extent in an adjoining town.

Squire Russell had thought his cup full to overflowing, but in his anxiety for Daisy, he forgot his recent disappointment, and, as a father and mother both, nursed his suffering child, assisted by Jessie, whose services there, as elsewhere, were invaluable. It was indeed a house of mourning, and for weeks a dark cloud brooded over it as one after another, Ben and Burt, Letitia and Jim, were prostrate with the disease which Daisy had been the first to take, and from which she slowly recovered. When Letitia was smitten down Jessie was filled with remorse, for she remembered what she had said of the quiet child, and with a sister’s tenderness she nursed the little girl, who would take her medicine from no one else. From the first Ben and Burt were not very ill, but for a time it seemed doubtful which would gain the mastery, life or death, in the cases of Letitia and Jim. With regard to Letitia that question was soon settled, and one October morning Jessie put gently back upon the pillow the child who had died in her lap, kissing her the last of all ere she went the dark road already trodden by the mother, who in life would have chosen anybody else than Jessie Verner to have soothed the last moments of her little girl.

But Jessie’s work was not yet done, and while the sad procession went on its way to the village graveyard, where Margaret was lying, she sat by Jimmie’s side fanning his feverish cheeks, and carefully administering the medicines which were no longer of avail.

Two days after Jimmie, too, died in Jessie’s lap, and as she gave him into his father’s arms the weeping man blessed her silently for all she had been to him and his, and felt how doubly desolate he should be without her.