Geoffrey Strong | Page 9

be very gentle. "Miss Blyth told me.
Does it still hurt, dear lady?"
Miss Vesta's breath fluttered for a moment, but it was only a moment.
Her soft white fingers, cool as rose-leaves, returned the pressure of his
affectionately. "No, my--my dear," she said. "It does not hurt-- now.
There is no pain now, only memory; blessed, blessed memory. He--
there is something--you remind me of him a little, Doctor Geoffrey."
They stood silent, the young man and the old woman, hand in hand in
the soft evening. The splendour in the west died out, and soft clouds of
gray and purple brooded like wings over the sea. The water deepened
from gold to glimmering gray, from gray to deep brown and blue. In
one spot a faint glimmer trembled on the waves; the light from Miss
Vesta's lamp. The little lady gazed at it long, then looked up into the
strong young face above her.
"He was--your age!" she said, hurrying the words out in a low murmur,
hardly louder than the night breeze in the tall lilac-trees. "He was bright
and strong and gay like you; his sun went down while it was yet day.
The Lord took him into his holy keeping. I wish--I wish you all the joy
I should have tried to give him, Doctor Geoffrey. I wish your life
fortunate and brave, and your love happy; more than all, your love
happy."
She pressed his hand, and went quietly away; came back for a moment
to pat his arm and say she trusted she had not distressed him, and beg
him not to stay out too long in the night air; then went into the house,
closing the door softly after her.
Left alone, Geoffrey Strong fell to his pacing again, up and down the
neat gravel paths with their tall box hedges. His face was very tender;
looking at it, one might know he had been a loving son to his mother.
But presently he frowned over his cigar, and then laughed, and went

and shook the unoffending moth (it was a rare one, if he had been
thinking of that kind of thing) off the phlox.
"All the more reason, Stupid!" he said to the moth, as it flew away. "A
man goes and gets a girl to care for him, and then he goes and plays
some fool trick--like as not this chap had his sheet tied--and leaves her
alone the rest of her life. Just look at this sweet old angel, will you? it's
a shame. No, sir, no woman in mine, thank you!"
He paced again. The moth fluttered off in the gloom; fluttered back,
hovered, then settled once more on the milk-white phlox, which
glimmered like a fragrant ghost in the half-light. The perfume rose
from the flowers and mingled with the delicate scent of the roses and
the heavier breath of lilac and syringa.
"'Where I find her not, beauties vanish; Whither I follow her, beauties
flee. Is there no method to tell her in Spanish"--
"Oh, I must be drunk!" said Doctor Geoffrey. He tried another path. A
new fragrance met him, the keen, clean, cruelly sweet smell of
honeysuckle. Browning was gone with the phlox and the roses; and
what was this coming unbidden into his head, crisp and clean and
possessing, like the honeysuckle?
"'Where e're she be, That not impossible She Who shall command my
life and me"--
"I am drunk!" said Geoffrey Strong. And he threw away his cigar and
went to bed.

CHAPTER IV
.
MOSTLY PROFESSIONAL.
"I fear Doctor Strong will be very much put out!" said Miss Phoebe
Blyth.
Miss Vesta sighed, and stirred her coffee delicately. "It is unfortunate!"
she said.
"Unfortunate! my dearest Vesta, it is calamitous. Just when he is
comfortably settled in surroundings which he feels to be congenial"--
Miss Phoebe bridled, and glanced round the pleasant dining-room-- "to
have these surroundings invaded by what he dislikes most in the world,
a girl, and a sick girl at that; I tell you it would not surprise me if he

should give notice at once."
This was not quite true, for Miss Phoebe would have been greatly
surprised at Doctor Strong's doing anything of the kind; but she
enjoyed saying it, and felt rather better after it.
"We could not possibly refuse, though, Sister Phoebe," said Miss Vesta,
mildly. "Little Vesta being my name-child, and Brother Nathaniel
without faculty, as one may say,--and it is certainly no place for her at
home."
"My dearest Vesta, I have not been entirely deprived of my senses!"
Miss Phoebe spoke with some asperity. "Of course we cannot refuse,
and of course we must do our utmost for our brother's motherless child;
but none the less, it is calamitous, I repeat;