Geoffrey Strong

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GEOFFREY STRONG

By

Laura E. Richards

Author of

"Captain January," "Melody," "Marie," etc.

TO
Richard Sullivan,
KINDEST OF UNCLES, FRIENDS, AND CRITICS,
THIS STORY IS AFFECTIONATELY
DEDICATED

CONTENTS

CHAPTER

I. THE TEMPLE OF VESTA

II. THE YOUNG DOCTOR

III. GARDEN FANCIES

IV. MOSTLY PROFESSIONAL

V. LETTER-WRITING AND HYSTERICS

VI. INFORMATION

VII. FESTIVITY

VIII. REVELATION

IX. SIDE LIGHTS

X. OVER THE WAY

XI. BROKEN BONES

XII. CONVALESCENCE

XIII. RECOVERY

ILLUSTRATIONS.

He paddled on in silence

The young doctor glancing around saw all these things.

He stood looking at her, his hand still on the hammock rope.

"There he comes, full chisel!" cried Ithuriel Butters.

CHAPTER I.

THE TEMPLE OF VESTA

"That's a pleasant looking house," said the young doctor. "What's
the matter with my getting taken in there?"

The old doctor checked his horse, and looked at the house with a
smile.

"Nothing in the world," he said, "except the small fact that they
wouldn't take you."

"Why not?" asked the young man, vivaciously. "Too rich? too proud?
too young? too old? what's the matter with them?"

The old doctor laughed outright this time. "You young firebrand!" he
said. "Do you think you are going to take this village by storm?
That house is the Temple of Vesta. It is inhabited by the Vestal
Virgins, who tend the sacred fire, and do other things beside. You
might as well ask to be taken into the meeting-house to board."

"This is more attractive than the meetinghouse," said the young
doctor. "This is one of the most attractive houses I ever saw."

He looked at it earnestly, and as they drove along the elm-shaded
street, he turned in his seat to look at it again.

It certainly was an attractive house. Its front of bright clean red
brick was perhaps too near the street; but the garden, whose tall
lilac and syringa bushes waved over the top of the high wall, must,
he thought, run back some way, and from the west windows there must
be a glorious sea-view.

The house looked both genteel and benevolent. The white stone steps
and window-sills and the white fan over the door gave a certain
effect of clean linen that was singularly pleasing. The young doctor,
unlike Doctor Johnson, had a passion for clean linen. The knocker,
too, was of the graceful long oval shape he liked, and burnished to
the last point of perfection, and the shining windows were so placed
as to give an air of cheerful interrogation to the whole.

"I like that house!" said the young doctor again. "Tell me about the
people!"

Again the old doctor laughed. "I tell you they are the Vestal Virgins!"
he repeated. "There are two of them, Miss Phoebe and Miss Vesta Blyth.
Miss Phoebe is as good as gold, but something of a man-hater. She
doesn't think much of the sex in general, but she is a good friend
of mine, and she'll be good to you for my sake. Miss Vesta"--the
young doctor, who was observant, noted a slight change in his hearty
voice--"Vesta Blyth is a saint."

"What kind of saint? invalid? bedridden? blind?"

"No, no, no! saints don't all have to be bedridden. Vesta is a--you
might call her Saint Placidia. Her life has been shadowed. She was
once engaged--to a very worthy young man--thirty years ago. The day
before the wedding he was drowned; sailboat capsized in a squall,
just in the bay here. Since then she keeps a light burning in the
back hall, looking over the water. That's why I call the house the
Temple of Vesta."

"Day and night?"

"No, no! lights it at sunset every evening regularly. Sun dips,
Vesta lights her lamp. Pretty? I think so."

"Affecting, certainly!" said the young doctor. "And she has mourned
her lover ever since?"

The old doctor gave him a quaint look. "People don't mourn thirty
years," he said, "unless their minds are diseased. Women mourn
longer than men, of course, but ten years would be a long limit,
even for a woman. Memory, of course, may last as long as life--sacred
and tender memory,"--his voice dropped a little, and he passed his
hand across his forehead,--"but not mourning. Vesta is a little
pensive, a little silent; more habit than anything else now. A sweet
woman; the sweetest--"

The old doctor seemed to forget his companion, and flicked the old
brown horse pensively, as they jogged along, saying no more.

The young doctor waited a little before he put his next question.

"The two ladies live alone always?"

"Yes--no!" said the old doctor, coming out of his reverie. "There's
Diploma Crotty, help, tyrant, governor-in-chief of the kitchen. Now
and then she thinks they'd better have a visitor, and tells them so;
but not very often, it upsets her kitchen. But here we are at the
parsonage, and I'll take you in."

The young doctor made his visit at the parsonage dutifully and
carefully. He meant to make a good impression wherever he went. It
was no such easy matter to take the place of the old doctor, who,
after a lifetime of faithful and loving work, had been ordered off
for a year's rest and travel; but the young doctor had plenty of
courage, and meant to do his best. He answered evasively the inquiry
of the minister's wife as to where he meant to board; and though he
noted down carefully the addresses she gave him of nice motherly
women who would keep his things in order, and have an eye to him in
case he should be ailing, he did not intend to trouble these good
ladies if he could help himself.

"I want to live in that brick house!" he said to himself. "I'll have
a try for it, anyhow. The old ladies can't be insulted by my telling
them they have the best house in the village."

After dinner he went for a walk, and strolled along the pleasant
shady street. There were many good houses, for Elmerton was an old
village. Vessels had come into her harbour in bygone days, and
substantial merchant captains had built the comfortable, roomy
mansions which stretched their ample fronts under the drooping elms,
while their back windows looked out over the sea, breaking at the
very foot of their garden walls. But there was no house that compared,
in the young doctor's mind, with the Temple of Vesta. He was walking
slowly past it, admiring the delicate tracery on the white
window-sills, when the door opened, and a lady came out. The young
doctor observed her as she came down the steps; it was his habit to
observe everything. The lady was past sixty, tall and erect, and
walked stiffly.

"Rheumatic!" said the young doctor, and ran over in his mind certain
remedies which he had found effective in rheumatism.

She was dressed in sober gray silk, made in the fashion of thirty
years before, and carried an ancient parasol with a deep silk fringe.
As she reached the sidewalk she dropped her handkerchief. Standing
still a moment, she regarded it with grave displeasure, then tried
to take it up on the point of her parasol. In an instant the young
doctor had crossed the street, picked up the handkerchief, and
offered it to her with a bow and a pleasant smile.

"I thank you, sir!" said Miss Phoebe Blyth. "You are extremely
obliging."

"Don't mention it, please!" said the young doctor. "It was a pleasure.
Have I the honour of speaking to Miss Blyth? I am Doctor Strong.
Doctor Stedman may have spoken to you of me."

"He has indeed done so!" said Miss Phoebe; and she held out her
silk-gloved hand with dignified cordiality. "I am glad to make your
acquaintance, sir. I shall hope to have the pleasure of welcoming
you at my house at an early date."

"Thank you! I shall be most happy. May I walk along with you, as we
seem to be going the same way? I have been admiring your house so
very much, Miss Blyth. It is the finest specimen of its kind I have
ever seen. How fine that tracery is over the windows; and how seldom
you see a fan so graceful as that! Should you object to my making a
sketch of it some day? I'm very much interested in Colonial houses."

A faint red crept into Miss Phoebe's cheek; it was one of her dreams
to have an oil-painting of her house. The young doctor had found a
joint in her harness.

"I should be indeed pleased--" she began; and, being slightly
fluttered, she dropped her handkerchief again, and again the young
doctor picked it up and handed it to her.

"I am distressed!" said Miss Phoebe. "I am--somewhat hampered by
rheumatism, Doctor Strong. It is not uncommon in persons of middle
age."

"No, indeed! My mother--I mean my aunt--younger sister of my mother's--
used to suffer terribly with rheumatism. I was fortunate enough to
be able to relieve her a good deal. If you would like to try the
prescription, Miss Blyth, it is entirely at your service. Not
professionally, please understand, not professionally; a mere
neighbourly attention. I hope we shall be neighbours. Don't mention
it, please don't, because I shall be so glad, you know. Besides--you
have a little look of my--aunt; she has very regular features."

Miss Phoebe thanked him with a rather tremulous dignity; he was a
most courteous and attractive young man, but so impetuous, that she
felt a disturbance of her cool blood. It was singular, though, how
little dear Doctor Stedman had been able to do for her rheumatism,
for as many years as he had been attending her. Perhaps newer methods--
it must be confessed that Doctor Stedman was growing old.

"Where do you intend to lodge, Doctor Strong?" she asked, by way of
changing the subject gracefully.

The young doctor did not know, was quite at a loss.

"There is only one house that I want to lodge in!" he said, and his
bold face had grown suddenly timid, like a schoolboy's. "That is, of
course there are plenty of good houses in the village, Miss Blyth,
excellent houses, and excellent people in them, I have no doubt; but--
well, there is only one house for me. You know what house I mean,
Miss Blyth, because you know how one can feel about a really fine
house. The moment I saw it I said, 'That is the house for me!' But
Doctor Stedman said there was no possible chance of my getting taken
in there."

"I really do not know how Doctor Stedman should speak with authority
on the subject!" said Miss Phoebe Blyth.

Young doctor! young doctor! is this the way you are going to comport
yourself in the village of Elmerton? If so, there will be
flutterings indeed in the dove-cotes. Before night the whole village
knew that the young doctor was going to board with the Blyth girls!

CHAPTER II.

THE YOUNG DOCTOR

"And he certainly is a remarkable young man!" said Miss Phoebe Blyth.
"Is he not, Sister Vesta?"

Miss Vesta came out of her reverie; not with a start,--she never
started,--but with the quiet awakening, like that of a baby in the
morning, that was peculiar to her.

"Yes! oh, yes!" she said. "I consider him so. I think his coming
providential."

"How so?" asked the visitor. There was a slight acidity in her tone,
for Mrs. Weight was one of the motherly persons mentioned by the
minister's wife, and had looked forward to caring for the young
doctor herself. With her four children, all croupy, it would have
been convenient to have a physician in the house, and as the wife of
the senior deacon, what could be more proper?

"I must say he doesn't look remarkable," she added; "but the
light-complected seldom do, to my mind."

"It is years," said Miss Vesta, "since Sister Phoebe has suffered so
little with her rheumatism. Doctor Strong understands her
constitution as no one else ever has done, not even dear Doctor
Stedman. Sister Phoebe can stoop down now like a girl; can't you,
Sister Phoebe? It is a long time since she has been able to stoop
down."

Miss Vesta's soft white face glowed with pleasure; it was a gentle
glow, like that at the heart of certain white roses.

Mrs. Weight showed little enthusiasm.

"I never have rheumatism!" she said, briefly. "I've always wore gold
beads. If you'd have tried gold beads, Phoebe, or a few raisins in
your pocket, it's my belief you'd never have had all this trouble."

It was now Miss Phoebe's turn to colour, but hers was the hard red
of a winter pear.

"I am not superstitious, Anna Maria," she said. "Doctor Strong
considers gold beads for rheumatism absurd, and I fully agree with
him. As for raisins in the pocket, that is nonsense, of course."

"It's best to be sure of your facts before reflecting upon other
folks' statements!" said Mrs. Weight, with dignity. "I know whereof
I speak, Phoebe. Father Weight is ninety years old this very month,
and he has carried raisins for forty years, and never had a twinge
of rheumatism in all that time. The same raisins, too; they have
hardened into stone, as you may say, with what they have absorbed. I
don't need to see things clearer than that."

"H'm!" said Miss Phoebe, with the suspicion of a sniff. "Did he ever
have it before?"

"I wasn't acquainted with him before," said Mrs. Weight, stiffly.

There was a pause; then the visitor went on, dropping her voice with
a certain mystery. "You may talk of superstition, Phoebe, but I must
say I'd sooner be what some folks call superstitious than have no
belief at all. I don't wish to reflect upon any person, but I must
say that, in my opinion, Doctor Strong is little better than an
infidel. To see a perishing human creature set himself up against
the Ordering of Providence is a thing I am sorry to meet with in
_this_ parish."

"Has Doctor Strong set himself against Providence?" asked Miss Phoebe,
her back very rigid, her knitting-needles pointed in stern
interrogation.

"You shall judge for yourselves, girls!" Mrs. Weight spoke with
unction. "At the same time, I wish it to be understood that what I
say is for this room only; I am not one to spread abroad. Well! it
has never been doubted, to _my_ knowledge, that the lower animals
are permitted to absorb diseases from children, who have immortal
souls to save. Even Doctor Stedman, who is advanced enough in all
conscience, never denied that in _my_ hearing. Well! Mrs. Ezra Sloper--
I don't know whether you are acquainted with her, girls; I have my
butter of her. She lives out on the Saugo Road; a most respectable
woman. She has a child with a hump back; fell when it was a baby,
and never got over it. I found she wasn't doing anything for the
child,--nice little boy, four years old; hump growing right out of
his shoulders. I said to her, 'Susan,' I said, 'you want to get a
little dog, and let it sleep with that child, and let the child play
with it all he can, and get real attached to it. If anything will
cure the child, that will.'

"She said, 'Mis' Weight,' she said, 'I'll do it!' and she did. She
thanked me, too, as grateful as ever I was thanked. Well, girls,"--
Mrs. Weight leaned forward, her hands on her knees, and spoke
slowly and impressively,--"as true as I sit here, in three months'
time that dog was humpbacked, and growing more so every day."

She paused, drawing a long breath of triumph, and looked from one to
the other of her hearers.

"Well!" said Miss Phoebe, dryly. "Did the child get well? And where
does Doctor Strong's infidelity come in?"

"The child _would_ have got well," said Mrs. Weight, with tragic
emphasis. "The child might be well, or near it, this living day of
time, if the Ordering of Providence had not been interfered with.
The child had a spell of stomach trouble, and Doctor Strong was sent
for. He ordered the dog out of the house; said it had fleas, and
sore eyes, and I don't know what. Susan Sloper is a weak woman, and
she gave in, and that child goes humpbacked to its grave. I hope
Doctor Strong is prepared to answer for it at the Last Day."

Miss Phoebe laid down her knitting-needles; but before she could
reply, Doctor Strong himself came in, bringing the breeze with him.

"How do you do, Mrs. Weight?" he said, heartily. "How is Billy?
croupy again? Does he go out every day? Do you keep his window open
at night, and give him a cold bath every morning? Fresh air and
bathing are absolutely necessary, you know, with that tendency. Have
you taken off all that load of flannel?"

Mrs. Weight muttered something about supper-time, and fled before
the questioner. The young doctor turned to his hostess, with the
quick, merry smile he had. "I had to send her away!" he said.
"You are flushed, Miss Blyth, and Miss Vesta is tired. Yes, you are,
Miss Vesta; what is the use of denying it?"

He placed a cushion behind Miss Vesta, and she nestled against it
with a little comfortable sigh. She looked at the young doctor kindly,
and he returned the look with one of frank affection.

"Your mother must have had a sight of comfort with you," said
Miss Vesta. "You are a home boy, any one can see that."

"I know when I am well off!" said the young doctor.

Geoffrey Strong certainly was well off. In some singular way, which
no one professed wholly to understand, he had won the confidence of
both the "Blyth girls," who were usually considered the most
exclusive and "stand-offish" people in Elmerton. He made no secret
of being in love with Miss Vesta. He declared that no one could see
her without being in love with her. "Because you are so lovely, you
know!" he said to her half a dozen times a day. The remark never
failed to call up a soft blush, and a gentle "Don't, I pray you, my
dear young friend; you shock me!"

"But I like to shock you," the young doctor would reply. "You look
prettiest when you are shocked." And then Miss Vesta would shake her
pretty white curls (she was not more than sixty, but her hair had
been gray since her youth), and say that if he went on so she must
really call Sister Phoebe; and Master Geoffrey would go off laughing.

He did not make love to Miss Phoebe, but was none the less intimate
with her in frank comradeship. Rheumatism was their first bond.
Doctor Strong meant to make rather a specialty of rheumatism and
kindred complaints, and studied Miss Phoebe's case with ardour.
Every new symptom was received with kindling eye and eager
questionings. It was worst in her back this morning? So! now how
would she describe the pain? Was it acute, darting, piercing? No?
Dull, then! Would she call it grinding, boring, pressing? Ah! that
was most interesting. And for other symptoms--yes! yes! that
naturally followed; he should have expected that.

"In fact, Miss Blyth, you really are a magnificent case!" and the
young doctor glowed with enthusiasm. (This was when he first came to
live in the Temple of Vesta.) "I mean to relieve your suffering;
I'll put every inch there is of me into it. But, meantime, there
ought to be some consolation in the knowledge that you are a most
beautiful and interesting case."

What woman,--I will go farther,--what human being could withstand
this? Miss Phoebe was a firm woman, but she was clay in the hands
of the young doctor,--the more so that he certainly did help her
rheumatism wonderfully.

More than this, their views ran together in other directions. Both
disapproved of matrimony, not in the abstract, but in the concrete
and personal view. They had long talks together on the subject,
after Miss Vesta had gone to bed, sitting in the quaint parlour,
which both considered the pleasantest room in the world. The young
doctor, tongs in hand (he was allowed to pick up the brands and to
poke the fire, a fire only less sacred than that of Miss Vesta's lamp),
would hold forth at length, to the great edification of Miss Phoebe,
as she sat by her little work-table knitting complacently.

"It's all right for most men," he would say. "It steadies them, and
does them good in a hundred ways. Oh, yes, I approve highly of
marriage, as I am sure you do, Miss Blyth; but not for a physician,
at least a young physician. A young physician must be able to give
his whole thought, his whole being, so to speak, to his profession.
There's too much of it for him to divide himself up. Why, take a
single specialty; take rheumatism. If I gave my lifetime, or twenty
lifetimes, to the study of that one malady, I should not begin to
learn the A B C of it."

"One learns a good deal when one has it!" said poor Miss Phoebe.

"Yes, of course, and I am speaking the simple truth when I say that
I wish I could have it for you, Miss Blyth. I should have--it would
be most instructive, most illuminating. Some day we shall have all
that regulated, and medical students will go through courses of
disease as well as of study. I look forward to that, though it will
hardly come in my time. Rheumatism and kindred diseases, say two
terms; fever, two terms--no, three, for you would want to take in
yellow and typhus, as well as ordinary typhoid. Cholera--well, of
course there would be difficulties, but you see the principle. Well,
but we were talking about marriage. Now, you see, with all these new
worlds opening before him, the physician cannot possibly be thinking
of falling in love--"

Miss Phoebe blinked, and coloured slightly. She sometimes wished
Doctor Strong would not use such forcible language.

"Of falling in love and marrying. In common justice to his wife, he
has no business to marry her; I mean, of course, the person who
might be his wife. Up all night, driving about the country all day,--
no woman ought to be asked to share such a life. In fact, the one
reason that might justify a physician in marrying--and I admit it
might be a powerful one--would be where it afforded special
facilities for the study of disease. An obscure and complicated case
of neurasthenia, now,--but these things are hardly practicable;
besides, a man would have to be a Mormon. No, no, let lawyers marry
young; business men, parsons,--especially parsons, because they need
filling out as a rule,--but not doctors."

The young doctor paused, and gave his whole vigorous mind to the
fire for a moment. It was in a precarious condition, and the brands
had to be built up in careful and precise fashion, with red coals
tucked in neatly here and there. Then he took the bellows in hand,
and blew steadily and critically, with keen eyes bent on the
smouldering brands. A few seconds of breathless waiting, and a jet
of yellow flame sprang up, faltered, died out, sprang up again, and
crept flickering in and out among the brands powdered white with
ashes. Now it was a strong, leaping flame, and all the room shone
out in its light; the ancient Turkey carpet, with its soft blending
of every colour into a harmonious no-colour; the quaint portraits,
like court-cards in tarnished gilt frames; the teak-wood chairs and
sofas, with their delicate spindle-legs, and backs inlaid with
sandalwood; Miss Phoebe's work-table, with its bag of faded crimson
damask, and Miss Phoebe herself, pleasant to look upon in her
dove-coloured cashmere gown, with her kerchief of soft net.

[Illustration: The young doctor glancing around saw all these things.]

The young doctor, glancing around, saw all these things in the light
of his newly-resuscitated fire; and seeing, gave a little sigh of
comfort, and laying down the bellows, leaned back in his chair again.

"You were going to say something, Miss Blyth?" he said, in his
eager way. "Please go on! I had to save the fire, don't you know? it
was on its last legs--coals, I should say. Please go on, won't you?"

Miss Phoebe coughed. She had been brought up not to use the word
"leg" freely; "limb" had been considered more elegant, as well as--
but medical men, no doubt, took a broader view of these matters.

"I was merely about to remark," she said, with dignity, "that in
many ways my views on this subject coincide with yours, Doctor Strong.
I have the highest respect for--a--matrimony; it is a holy estate,
and the daughter of my honoured parents could ill afford to think
lightly of it; yet in a great many cases I own it appears to me a
sad waste of time and energy. I have noted in my reading, both
secular and religious, that though the married state is called holy,
the term 'blessed' is reserved for a single life. Women of clinging
nature, or those with few interests, doubtless do well to marry, a
suitable partner being provided; but for a person with the full use
of her faculties, and with rational occupation more than sufficient
to fill her time, I admit I am unable to conceive the attraction of
it. I speak for myself; my sister Vesta has other views. My sister
Vesta had a disappointment in early life. From my point of view, she
would have been far better off without the unfortunate attachment
which--though to a very worthy person--terminated so sadly. But my
sister is not of my opinion. She has a clinging, affectionate nature,
my sister Vesta."

"She's an angel!" said Doctor Strong.

"You are right, my friend, you are very right!" said Miss Phoebe;
and her cap strings trembled with affection. "There is an angelic
quality, surely, in my sister Vesta. She might have been happy--I
trust she would have been--if Providence had been pleased to call
her to the married estate. But for me, Doctor Strong, no! I have
always said, and I shall always say, while I have the use of my
faculties--no! I thank you for the honour you do me; I appreciate
the sentiments to which you have given utterance; but I can never be
yours."

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