He entered the room and found her coloring a figure she had drawn: it was a beautiful woman, with an anchor at her feet. The door was open, and the doctor, entering softly, saw a tear fall on the work from a face so pale and worn with pining, that he could hardly repress a start; he did repress it though, for starts are unprofessional; he shook hands with her in his usual way. "Sorry to hear you are indisposed, my dear Miss Grace." He then examined her tongue, and felt her pulse; and then he sat down, right before her, and fixed his eyes on her. "How long have you been unwell?"
"I am not unwell that I know of," said Grace, a little sullenly.
"One reason I ask, I have another patient, who has been attacked somewhat in the same way."
Grace colored, and fixed a searching eye on the doctor. "Do I know the lady?"
"No. For it happens to be a male patient."
"Perhaps it is going about."
"Possibly; this is the age of competition. Still it is hard you can't have a little malady of this kind all to yourself; don't you think so?"
At this Grace laughed hysterically.
"Come, none of that before me," said the doctor sternly.
She stopped directly, frightened. The doctor smiled.
Mr. Carden peeped in from his study. "When you have done with her, come and prescribe for me. I am a little out of sorts too." With this, he retired. "That means you are to go and tell him what is the matter with me," said Grace bitterly.
"Is his curiosity unjustifiable?"
"Oh no. Poor papa!" Then she asked him dryly if he knew what was the matter with her.
"I think I do."
"Then cure me." This with haughty incredulity.
"I'll try; and a man can but do his best. I'll tell you one thing: if I can't cure you, no doctor in the world can: see how modest I am. Now for papa."
She let him go to the very door: and then a meek little timid voice said, in a scarce audible murmur, "Doctor!"
Now when this meek murmur issued from a young lady who had, up to this period of the interview, been rather cold and cutting, the sagacious doctor smiled. "My dear?" said he, in a very gentle voice.
"Doctor! about your other patient!"
"Well?"
"Is he as bad as I am? For indeed, my dear friend, I feel--my food has no taste--life itself no savor. I used to go singing, now I sit sighing. Is he as bad as I am?"
"I'll tell you the truth; his malady is as strong as yours; but he has the great advantage of being a man; and, again, of being a man of brains. He is a worker, and an inventor; and now, instead of succumbing tamely to his disorder, he is working double tides, and inventing with all his might, in order to remove an obstacle between him and one he loves with all his manly soul. A contest so noble and so perpetual sustains and fortifies the mind. He is indomitable; only, at times, his heart of steel will soften, and then he has fits of deep dejection and depression, which I mourn to see; for his manly virtues, and his likeness to one I loved deeply in my youth, have made him dear to me."
During this Grace turned her head away, and, ere the doctor ended, her tears were flowing freely; for to her, being a woman, this portrait of a male struggle with sorrow was far more touching than any description of feminine and unresisted grief could be: and, when the doctor said he loved his patient, she stole her little hand into his in a way to melt Old Nick, if he is a male. Ladies, forgive the unchivalrous doubt.
"Doctor," said she, affecting all of a sudden a little air of small sprightliness, very small, "now, do--you--think--it would do your patient--the least good in the world--if you were to take him this?"
She handed him her work, and then she blushed divinely.
"Why, it is a figure of Hope."
"Yes."
"I think it might do him a great deal of good."
"You could say I painted it for him."
"So I will. That will do him no harm neither. Shall I say I found you crying over it?"
"Oh, no! no! That would make him cry too, perhaps."
"Ah, I forgot that. Grace, you are an angel."
"Ah, no. But you can tell him I am--if you think so. That will do him no great harm--will it?"
"Not an atom to him; but it will subject me to a pinch for stale news. There, give me my patient's picture, and let me go."
She kissed the little picture half-furtively, and gave it him, and let him go; only, as he went out at the door, she murmured, "Come often."
Now, when this artful doctor got outside the door, his face became grave all of a sudden, for he had seen enough to give him a degree of anxiety he had not betrayed to his interesting patient herself.
"Well, doctor?" said Mr. Carden, affecting more cheerfulness than he felt. "Nothing there beyond your skill, I suppose?"
"Her health is declining rapidly. Pale, hollow-eyed, listless, languid--not the same girl."
"Is it bodily do you think, or only mental?"
"Mental as to its cause; but bodily in the result. The two things are connected in all of us, and very closely in Miss Carden. Her organization is fine, and, therefore, subtle. She is tuned in a high key. Her sensibility is great; and tough folk, like you and me, must begin by putting ourselves in her place before we prescribe for her, otherwise our harsh hands may crush a beautiful, but too tender, flower."
"Good heavens!" said Carden, beginning to be seriously alarmed, "do you mean to say you think, if this goes on, she will be in any danger?"
"Why, if it were to go on at the same rate, it would be very serious. She must have lost a stone in weight already."
"What, my child! my sweet Grace! Is it possible her life--"
"And do you think your daughter is not mortal like other people?
The young girls that are carried past your door to the churchyard one after another, had they no fathers?"
At this blunt speech the father trembled from head to foot.