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Heriot's Choice

<h2>CHAPTER XXVII</h2> <h3>COOP KERNAN HOLE</h3> <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> 'The great and terrible Land Of wilderness and drought Lies in the shadows behind me— For the Lord hath brought me out. </div> <div class="stanza"> 'The great and terrible river I stood that night to view Lies in the shadows before me— But the Lord will bear me through.'—Poems by R. M. </div> </div> <hr style="width: 65%;" /> Mildred felt a little giddy and confused when she opened her eyes. 'Is anything the matter? I suppose I have been a little faint; but it is nothing,' she said, feebly. Her head was on a soft pillow; her face was wet with cold, fragrant waters; Polly was hanging over her with a distressed expression; Dr. Heriot's hand was on her wrist. 'Hush, you must not talk,' he said, with a grave, professional air, 'and you must drink this,' so authoritatively that Mildred could not choose but to obey. 'It is nothing of consequence,' he continued, noticing an anxious look on her face; 'the room was hot, and our talk wearied you. I noticed you were very pale when we came in.' And Mildred felt relieved, and asked no more questions. She was very thankful for the kindness that shielded her from all questioning and comment. When Dr. Heriot had watched the reviving effects of the cordial, and had satisfied himself that there would be no return of the faintness, he quietly but peremptorily desired that Polly should leave her. 'You would like to be perfectly alone for a little while, would you not?' he said, as he adjusted the rug over her feet and placed the screen between her and the firelight, and Mildred thanked him with a grateful glance. How could he guess that silence was what her exhausted nerves craved more than anything? But Dr. Heriot was not so impervious as he seemed. He was aware that some nervous malady, caused by secret anxiety or hidden care, was wasting Mildred's fine constitution. The dilated pupils of the eyes, the repressed irritability of manner, the quick change of colour, with other signs of mental disturbance, had long ago attracted his professional notice, and he had racked his brains to discover the cause. 'She has over-exerted herself, or else she has some trouble,' he said to himself that night, as he sat beside his solitary fire. She had crept away to her own room during the interval of peace that had been allowed her, and he had not suffered them to disturb her. 'I will come and see her to-morrow,' he had said to Olive; 'let her be kept perfectly quiet until then;' and Olive, who knew from experience the soothing effects of his prescription, mounted guard herself over Mildred's room, and forbade Polly or Chriss to enter. Dr. Heriot had plenty of food for meditation that night. In spite of his acquiescence in Polly's decision, he felt chilled and saddened by the girl's persistence. For the first time he gravely asked himself, Had he made a mistake? Was she too young to understand his need of sympathy? Would it come to this, that after all she would disappoint him? As he looked round the empty room a strange bitterness came over him. 'And it is to this loneliness that she will doom me for another year,' he said, and there was a heavy cloud on his brow as he said it. 'If she really loved me, would she abandon me to another twelvemonth of miserable retrospection, with only Margaret's dead face to haunt me with its strange beauty?' But even as the thought passed through him came the remembrance of those clinging arms and the dark eyes shining through their tears. 'I love you dearly—dearly—but I want to love you more.' 'Oh, Heartsease,' he groaned, 'I fear that the mistake is mine, and that I have not yet won the whole of your innocent heart. I have taken it too much as a matter of course. Perhaps I have not wooed you so earnestly as I should have wooed an older woman, and yet I hardly think I have failed in either devotion or reverence. Ah,' he continued, with an involuntary sigh, 'what right have I to complain if she withhold her fresh young love—am I giving her all that is in me to give?' But here he stopped, as though the reflection pained him. He remembered with what sympathy Mildred had advocated his cause. She had looked excited—almost indignant—as Polly had uttered her piteous protest for time. Had her clear eyes noticed any signs of vacillation or reluctance? Could he speak to her on the subject? Would she answer him frankly? And then, for the first time, he felt as though he could not so speak to her. 'Every one takes their troubles to her, but she shall not be harassed by me,' he thought. 'She is sinking now under the burdens which most likely other people have laid upon her. I will not add to their weight.' And a strange pity and longing seized him to know what ailed the generous creature, who never thought of herself, but of others. Mildred felt as though some ordeal awaited her when she woke the next morning. She looked so ill and weak that Olive was in despair when she insisted on rising and dressing herself. 'It will bring on the faintness again to a certainty,' she said, in a tone of unusual remonstrance; but Mildred was determined. But she was glad of Olive's assistance before she had finished, and the toilet was made very slowly and wearily. At the drawing-room door Dr. Heriot met her with a reproachful face; he looked a little displeased. 'So you have cast my prescription to the wind,' he said, drily, 'and are determined not to own yourself ill.' But Mildred coloured so painfully that he cut short his lecture and assisted her to the couch in silence. 'There you may stop for the next two or three days,' he continued, somewhat grimly. 'Mr. Lambert has desired me to look after you, and I shall take good care that you do not disobey my orders again. I have made Olive head nurse, and woe be to her if there be a single infringement of my rules.' Mildred looked up at him timidly. He had been so gentle with her the preceding evening that this change of manner disturbed her. This was not his usual professional gravity; on such occasions he had ever been kindness itself. He must be put out—annoyed—the idea was absurd, but could she have displeased him? She was too weak to bear the doubt. 'Have I vexed you, Dr. Heriot, by coming down?' she asked, gently. 'I should be worse if I fancied myself ill. I—I have had these attacks before; they are nothing.' 'That is your opinion, is it? I must say I thought better of your sense, Miss Lambert,' still gruffly. Mildred's eyes filled with tears. 'Yes, I am vexed,' he continued sitting down by her; but his tone was more gentle now. 'I am vexed that you are hiding from us that you are suffering. You keep us all in the dark; you deny you are ill. I think you are treating us all very badly.' 'No—no,' she returned, with difficulty. 'I am not ill—you must not tell me so.' And her cheek paled perceptibly. 'Have you turned coward suddenly?' he replied, with a keen look at her. 'I have heard you say more than once that the dread of illness was unknown to you; that you could have walked a fever hospital without a shudder. What has become of your courage, Miss Lambert?' 'I am not afraid, but I do not want to be ill,' she returned, faintly. 'That is more unlike you than ever. Impatience, want of submission, do not certainly belong to your category of faults. Well, if you promise to follow my prescription, I think I can undertake that you shall not be ill.' Mildred drew a long sigh of relief; the sigh of an oppressed heart was not lost on Dr. Heriot. 'But you must get rid of what is on your mind,' he went on, quickly. 'If other people's burdens lie heavily, you must shift them to their own shoulders and think only of yourself. Now I want to ask you a few questions.' Mildred looked frightened again, but something in Dr. Heriot's manner this morning constrained her to obey. His inquiries were put skilfully, and needed only a yea and nay, as though he feared she would elude him. Mildred found herself owning to loss of appetite and want of sleep; to languor and depression, and a tendency to excessive irritation; noises jarred on her; a latent excitement took the place of strength. She had lost all pleasure in her duties, though she still fulfilled them. 'And now what does this miserable state of the nerves mean?' was his next question. Mildred said nothing. 'You have suffered no shock—nothing has alarmed you?' She shook her head. 'You cannot eat or sleep; when you speak you change colour with every word; you are wasted, getting thinner every day, and yet there is no disease. This must mean something, Miss Lambert—excuse me; but I am your friend as well as your doctor. I cannot work in the dark.' Mildred's lips quivered. 'I want change—rest. I have had anxieties—no one can be free in this world. I am getting too weak for my work.' What a confession from Mildred! At another time she would have died rather than utter it; but his quiet strength of will was making evasion impossible. She felt as though this friend of hers was reading her through and through. She must escape in some measure by throwing herself upon his mercy. He looked uneasy at that; his eyes softened, then suffused. 'I thought as much,' he muttered; 'I could not be deceived by that face.' And a great pity swelled up in his heart. He would like to befriend this noble woman, who was always so ready to sacrifice herself to the needs of others. He would ask her to impart her trouble, whatever it was; he might be able to help her. But Mildred, who read his purpose in his eyes, went on breathlessly— 'It is the rest I want, and the change; I am not ill. I knew you would say so; but the nerves get strained sometimes, and then worries will come.' 'Tell me your trouble,' he returned abruptly, but it was the abruptness of deep feeling. 'I have not forgotten your kindness to me on more than one occasion. I have debts of gratitude to pay, and they are heavy. Make me your friend—your brother, if you will; you will find I am to be trusted.' But the poor soul only shrank from him. 'It cannot be told—there are reasons against it. I have more than one trouble—anxiety,' she faltered. 'Dr. Heriot, indeed—indeed, you are very good, but there are some things that cannot be told.' 'As you will,' he returned, very gently; but Mildred saw he was disappointed. In what a strange complication she was involved! She could not even speak to him of her fear on Roy's behalf. He took his leave soon after that, and Mildred fancied a slight reserve mingled with the kindness with which he bade her good-bye. He seemed conscious of it, for he came back again after putting on his coat, thereby preventing a miserable afternoon of fanciful remorse on Mildred's part. 'I will think what is to be done about the change,' he said, drawing on his driving-gloves. 'I am likely to be busy all day, and shall not see you again this evening. Keep your mind at rest as well as you can. You don't need to be told in what spirit all trials must be borne—the darker the cloud the more need of faith.' He held out his hand to her again with one of his bright, genial smiles, and Mildred felt braced and comforted. Mildred was obliged to allow herself to be treated as an invalid for the next few days; but when Dr. Heriot saw how the inaction and confinement fretted her, he withdrew a few of his restrictions, even at times going against his better judgment, when he saw how cruelly she chafed under her own restlessness. This was the case one chill, sunless afternoon, when he found her standing by the window looking out over the fells, with a sad wistfulness that went to his heart. As he went up to her he was shocked to see the marks of recent tears upon her face. 'What is this—you are not worse to-day?' he asked, in a tone of vexed remonstrance. 'No—oh no,' she returned, holding out her hand to him with a misty smile, the thin blue-veined hand, with its hot dry palm; 'you will think me a poor creature, Dr. Heriot, but I could not help fretting over my want of strength just now.' 'Rome was not built in a day,' he responded, cheerily; 'and people who indulge in fainting fits cannot expect to feel like Hercules. Who would have thought that such an inexorable nurse as Miss Lambert should prove such a fractious invalid?' and there was a tone of reproof under the light raillery. 'I do not mean to be impatient,' she answered, sighing; 'but I am so weary of this room and my own thoughts, and then there are my poor people.' 'Don't trouble your head about them; they will do very well without you,' with pretended roughness. She shook her head. 'You are wrong; they miss me dreadfully; Olive has brought me several messages from them already.' 'Then Olive ought to be ashamed of herself, and shall be deposed from her office of nurse, and Polly shall reign in her stead.' But Mildred was too much depressed and in earnest to heed his banter. 'There is poor Rachel Sowerby up at Stenkrith; her mother has been down this morning to say that she cannot last very much longer.' 'I am just going up to see her now. I fear it is only a question of days,' he replied, gravely. Mildred clasped her hands with an involuntary movement of pain. 'Rachel is very dear to me; she is the model girl and the favourite of the whole school, and her mother says she is pining to see me. Oh, Dr. Heriot—' but here she stopped. 'Well,' he returned, encouragingly; and for the second time he noticed the exceeding beauty of Mildred's eyes, as she fixed them softly and beseechingly on his face. 'Do you think it would hurt me to go that little distance, just to see Rachel?' 'What, in this bitter wind!' he remonstrated. 'Wait until to-morrow, and I will drive you over.' 'There may be no to-morrows for Rachel,' she returned, with gentle persistence. 'I am afraid I shall fret sadly if I do not see her again; she was my best Sunday scholar. The wind will not hurt me; if you knew how I long to be out in it; just before you came in I was wishing I were on the top of one of those fells, feeling it sweep over me.' 'Ministers of grace defend me from the soft pleading of a woman's tongue!' exclaimed Dr. Heriot, impatiently, but he laughed too; 'you are a most troublesome patient, Miss Lambert; but I suppose you must have your way; but you must take the consequences of your own wilfulness.' Mildred quietly seated herself. 'No, I am not wilful; I have no wish to disobey you,' she returned, in a low voice. He drew near and questioned her face; evidently it dissatisfied him. 'If I do not let you go, you will only worry yourself the whole day, and your lungs are sound enough,' he continued, brusquely; but Mildred's strange unreasonableness tried him. 'Wrap yourself up well. Polly is going with me, but there is plenty of room for both. I will pay my visit, and leave you with Rachel for an hour, while I get rid of some of my other patients.' Mildred lost no time in equipping herself, and though Dr. Heriot pretended to growl the greater part of the way, he could not help noticing how the wind—bleak and boisterous as it was—seemed to freshen his patient, and bring back the delicate colour to her cheeks. 'What a hardy north-country woman you have become,' he said, as he lifted her down from the phaeton, and they went up the path to the house. 'I feel changed already; thank you for giving me my way in this,' was the grateful answer. When Dr. Heriot had taken his departure, she went up to the sickroom, and sat for a long time beside her old favourite, reading and praying with her, until Rachel had fallen into a doze. 'She will sleep maybe for an hour or two; she had a terrible night of pain,' whispered Mrs. Sowerby, 'and she will sleep all the sweeter for your reading to her. Poor thing! she was set on seeing her dear Miss Lambert, as she always calls you.' 'I will come again and see her to-morrow, if Dr. Heriot permits it,' she replied. When Mrs. Sowerby had gone back to her daughter's room, she went and sat by herself at a window looking over Stenkrith; the rocks and white foaming pools were distinctly visible through the leafless trees; a steep flight of steps led down to the stream and waterfall; the steps were only a few yards from the Sowerbys' house. As Mildred looked, a strange longing to see the place again took possession of her. For a moment she hesitated, as Dr. Heriot's strictures on her imprudence recurred to her memory, but she soon repelled them. 'He does not understand—how can he—that this confinement tries me,' she thought, as she crept softly down the stairs, so as not to disturb Rachel. 'The wind was delicious. I feel ten times better than I did in that hot room; he will not mind when I tell him so.' Mildred's feverish restlessness, fed by bitter thought, was getting the better of her judgment; like the skeleton placed at Egyptian feasts to remind the revellers that they were mortal, so Mildred fancied her courage would be strengthened, her resolution confirmed, by a visit to the very spot where her bitterest wound had been received; she remembered how the dark churning waters had mingled audibly with her pain, and for the moment she had wished the rushing force had hurried her with it, with her sweet terrible secret undisturbed, to the bottom of that deep sunless pool. And now the yearning to see it again was too strong to be resisted. Polly had accompanied Dr. Heriot. Mrs. Sowerby was in her daughter's room; there was no one to raise a warning voice against her imprudence. The whole place looked deserted and desolate; the sun had hidden its face for days; a dark moisture clung to the stones, making them slippery in places; the wind was more boisterous than ever, wrapping Mildred's blue serge more closely round her feet, and entangling her in its folds, blowing her hair wildly about her face, and rendering it difficult with her feeble force to keep her footing on the slimy rocks. 'I shall feel it less when I get lower down,' she panted, as she scrambled painfully from one rock to another, often stopping to take breath. A curious mood—gentle, yet reckless—was on her. 'He would be angry with her,' she thought Ah, well! his anger would only be sweet to her; she would own her fault humbly, and then he would be constrained to forgive her; but this longing for freedom, for the strong winds of heaven, for the melody of rushing waters, was too intense to be resisted; the restlessness that devoured her still led her on. 'I see something moving down there,' observed Polly, as Dr. Heriot's phaeton rolled rapidly over the bridge—'down by the steps, I mean; it looked almost like Aunt Mildred's blue serge dress.' 'Your eyes must have deceived you, then,' he returned coolly, as he pulled up again at the little gate. Polly made no answer, but as she quickened her steps towards the place, he followed her, half vexed at her persistence. 'My dear child, as though your Aunt Milly would do anything so absurd,' he remonstrated. 'Why, the rocks are quite unsafe after the rain, and the wind is enough to cut one in halves.' 'It is Aunt Milly. I told you so,' returned Polly, triumphantly, as she descended the step; 'there is her blue serge and her beaver hat. Look! she sees us; she is waving her hand.' Dr. Heriot suppressed the exclamation that rose to his lips. 'Take care, Polly, the steps are slippery; you had better not venture on the stones,' he said, peremptorily. 'Keep where you are, and I will bring Miss Lambert back.' Mildred saw him coming; her heart palpitated a little. 'He will think me foolish, little better than a child,' she said to herself; he will not know why I came here;' and her courage evaporated. All at once she felt weak; the rocks were certainly terribly slippery. 'Wait for me; I will help you!' he shouted, seeing her indecision; but either Mildred did not hear, or she misunderstood him; the stone was too high for her unassisted efforts; she tried one lower; it was wet; her foot slipped, she tried to recover herself, fell, and then, to the unspeakable horror of the two watching her above, rolled from rock to rock and disappeared. Polly's wild shriek of dismay rang through the place, but Dr. Heriot never lost his presence of mind for a moment. 'Stay where you are; on your peril disobey me!' he cried, in a voice of thunder, to the affrighted girl; and then, though with difficulty, he steered his way between the slippery stones, and over the dangerous fissures. He could see her now; some merciful jag in the rocks had caught part of her dress, and arrested her headlong progress. The momentary obstacle had enabled her, as she slipped into one of the awful fissures that open into Coop Kernan Hole, to snatch with frantic hands at the slimy rock, her feet clinging desperately to the narrow slippery ledge. 'John, save me!' she screamed, as she felt herself slipping into the black abyss beneath. 'John!' John Heriot heard her. 'Yes, I am coming, Mildred; hold on—hold on, another minute.' The drops of mortal agony stood on his brow as he saw her awful peril, but he dared not, for both their sakes, venture on reckless haste; already he had slipped more than once, but had recovered himself. It seemed minutes to both of them before Polly saw him kneeling on one knee beside the hole, his feet hanging over the water. 'Hush! do not struggle so, Mildred,' he pleaded, as he got his arm with difficulty round her, and she clung to him almost frantically; the poor soul had become delirious from the shock, and thought she was being dashed to pieces; her face elongated and sharpened with terror, as she sank half fainting against his shoulder. The weight on his arm was terrible. 'Good Heavens! what can I do?' he ejaculated, as he felt his strength insufficient to lift her. His position was painful in the extreme; his knee was slipping under him; and the dripping serge dress, heavy with water, increased the strain on the left arm; a false movement, the slightest change of posture, and they must both have gone. He remembered how he had heard it said that Coop Kernan Hole was of unknown depth under the bridge; the dark sluggish pool lay black and terrible between the rocks; if she slipped from his hold into that cruel water, he knew he could not save her, for he had ever been accounted a poor swimmer, and yet her dead-weight was already numbing his arm. 'Mildred, if you faint we must both die!' he cried in despair. His voice seemed to rouse her; some instinct of preservation prompted her to renewed effort; and as he held her more firmly, she managed to get one hand round his neck—the other still clutched at the rock; and as Polly's cries for help reached a navvy working at some distance, she saw Dr. Heriot slowly and painfully lift Mildred over the edge of the rock. 'Thank God!' he panted, and then he could say no more; but as he felt the agonised shuddering run through Mildred's frame, as, unconscious of her safety, she still clung to him, he half-pityingly and half-caressingly put back the unbound hair from the pale face, as he would have done to a child. But he looked almost as ghastly as Mildred did, when, aided by the navvy's strong arms, they lifted her over the huge masses of rocks and up the steep steps. Polly ran to meet them; her lover's pale and disordered appearance alarmed her almost as much as Mildred's did. 'Oh, Heriot!' cried the young girl, 'you are hurt; I am sure you are hurt.' 'A strain, nothing else,' he returned, quickly; 'run on, dear Polly, and open the door for us. Mrs. Sowerby must take us in for a little while.' When Mildred perfectly recovered consciousness, she was lying on the old-fashioned couch in Mrs. Sowerby's best room; but she was utterly spent and broken, and could do nothing for a little while but weep hysterically. Polly lent over her, raining tears on her hands. 'Oh, Aunt Milly,' sobbed the faithful little creature, 'what should we have done if we had lost you? Darling—darling, how dreadful it would have been.' 'I wished to die,' murmured Mildred, half to herself; 'but I never knew how terrible death could be. Oh, how sinful—how ungrateful I have been.' And she covered her face with her hands. 'Oh, Heriot; ask her not to cry so,' pleaded poor Polly. 'I have never seen her cry before, never—and it hurts me so.' 'It will do her good,' he returned, hastily; but he went and stood by the window, until Polly joined him. 'She is better now,' she said, timidly glancing up into his absorbed face. Upon that he turned round. 'Then we must get her home, that she may change her wet things as soon as possible. Do you feel as though you can move?' he continued, in his ordinary manner, though perhaps it was a trifle grave. 'You are terribly bruised, I fear, but I trust not otherwise injured.' She looked up a little surprised at the calmness of his tone, and then involuntarily she stretched out her hands to him— 'Let me thank you first—you have saved my life,' she whispered. 'No,' he returned, quietly. 'It is true your disobedience placed us both in jeopardy; but it was your obedience at the last that really saved your life. If you had fainted, you must inevitably have been lost. I could not have supported you much longer in my cramped position.' 'Your arm—did I hurt it?' she asked, anxiously, noticing an expression of pain pass over his face. 'I daresay I have strained it slightly,' he answered, indifferently; 'but it does not matter. The question is, do you think you can bear to be moved?' 'Oh, I can walk. I am better now,' she replied, colouring slightly. His coolness disappointed her; she was longing to thank him with the full fervour of a grateful heart. It was sweet, it was good in spite of everything to receive her life back through his hands. Never—never would she dare to repine again, or murmur at the lot Providence had appointed her; so much had the dark lesson of Coop Kernan Hole taught her. 'Well, what is it?' he asked, reading but too truly the varying expressions of her eloquent face. 'If you will only let me thank you,' she faltered, 'I shall never forget this hour to my dying day.' 'Neither shall I,' he returned, abruptly, as he wrapped her up in his dry plaid and assisted her to rise. His manner was as kind and considerate as ever during their short drive, but Mildred felt as though his reserve were imposing some barrier on her. Consternation prevailed in the vicarage at the news of Mildred's danger. Olive, who seldom shed tears, became pale and voiceless with emotion, while Mr. Lambert pressed his sister to his heart with a whispered thanksgiving that was audible to her alone. It was good for Mildred's sore heart to feel how ardently she was beloved. A great flood of gratitude and contrition swept over her as she lay, bruised and shaken, with her hand in Arnold's, looking at the dear faces round her. 'It has come to me not in the still, small voice, but in the storm,' she thought. 'He has brought me out of the deep waters to serve Him more faithfully—to give a truer account of the life restored to me.' The clear brightness of her eyes surprised Dr. Heriot as he came up to her to take leave; they reminded him of the Mildred of old. 'You must promise to sleep to-night. Some one must be with you—Olive or Polly—you might get nervous alone,' he said, with his usual thoughtfulness; but she shook her head. 'I think I am cured of my nervousness for ever,' she returned, in a voice that was very sweet. The soft smiling eyes haunted him. Had an angel gone down and troubled the pool? What healing virtues had steeped the dark waters that her shuddering feet had pressed? Could faith, full-formed, spring from such parentage of deadly anguish and fear? Mildred could have answered in the verse she loved so well— <div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> 'He never smiled so sweet before Save on the Sea of Sorrow, when the night Was saddest on our heart. We followed him At other times in sunshine. Summer days And moonlight nights He led us over paths Bordered with pleasant flowers; but when His steps Were on the mighty waters, when we went With trembling hearts through nights of pain and loss, His smile was sweeter, and His love more dear; And only Heaven is better than to walk With Christ at midnight over moonless seas.' </div> </div> <hr style="width: 65%;" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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