George Fenn - The Tiger Lily

“What are you going to do? – give me chloroform?”

“No; I am going to inject a fluid that will dull the sensitive nerves of the part, and place you in such a condition that you will lose all sense of suffering.”

“And if I don’t come to?”

“You will not for some time. Now, old friend, show me your confidence. Are you ready?”

There was a long, deep-drawn breath, a look at the young girl’s patient, trust-giving face and then Ezekiel Masters, one of the wealthiest men in Boston, said calmly —

“Yes.”

A few minutes later he was lying perfectly insensible, and breathing as gently as an infant. “Can you repeat that from time to time, as I tell you?” said the surgeon.

“Yes, dear.”

“Without flinching?”

“Yes. It is to save him. I shall not shrink.”

“Then I depend upon you.”

Busy minutes followed, with the patient lying perfectly unconscious.

“How long could he be kept like this, Michael?” whispered Cornel, whose face looked very white.

“As long as you wished – comparatively. Don’t talk; you hinder me.”

“As long as I liked,” thought Cornel, with her eyes dilating as she gazed at the patient, with the little syringe in her hand, and the stoppered bottle, from which the fluid was taken, close by – “as long as I liked, and he as if quite dead. What an awful power to hold within one’s grasp!”

“Hah!”

A long-drawn sigh of content, which made Cornelia Thorpe emerge from her chair behind the bed-curtains, and bend over to lay her soft white hand upon the patient’s forehead, but only for it to be taken and held to his lips.

“Well, angel?” he said quietly.

“Your head is quite cool; there is no fever. Have you had a good night’s rest?”

“Good, my child? It has been heavenly. I seemed to sink at once into a delicious dreamless sleep, such as I have not known for a year, and I feel as if I had not stirred all night.”

“You have not.”

“Then you have watched by me?”

“Oh, yes.”

“Hah!” There was a pause. Then: “You must have given me a strong dose?”

“No,” said Cornel, smiling. “Your sleep was quite natural. Why should it not be? Michael says the cause of all your suffering is completely removed, and that he has been successful beyond his hopes.”

The old man lay holding his nurse’s hand, and gazing at her fair, innocent face intently for some minutes before breaking the silence again.

“When was it?” he said at last.

“A week to-day, and in another month you may be up again.”

“Hah! And they say there are no miracles now, and no angels upon earth,” said the patient, half to himself. Then more loudly, “Cornel, my child, I think I must turn over a new leaf.”

“Don’t,” she said, smiling. “I like the old page. You have always been my fathers dear friend – always good and kind.”

“I? Bah! A regular money-scraping, harsh tyrant. A regular miser.”

“Nonsense, Mr Masters.”

“Then I’ll prove it. I won’t pay Michael his fees, nor you your wages for nursing me – not till I’m dead. Well, have I said something funny? Why do you laugh?”

“I smiled because I felt pleased.”

“Because I’m better?”

“Yes; and because you are not going to insult Michael, nor your nurse, by offering us – ”

“Dollars? Humph! There, let’s talk about something else. Does Michael still hold to that insane notion of going to Europe?”

“Oh yes; we should have been there now, if it had not been for your illness.”

“Then he gave it up for a time, because I wanted him to attend me?”

Cornel bowed her head.

“Humph! Sort of madness to want to go at all. Isn’t America big enough for him?”

“Of course,” said Cornel, laughing gently; and now the air of the nurse appeared to have dropped away, to give place to the bright happy look of a girl of twenty. “Surely it is not madness to want to increase his knowledge by a little study at the English and French hospitals. Besides, it was our father’s wish.”

“Yes; Jack was very mad about the English doctors, when there was not one who could touch him. I say, though: Michael is going to be as clever.”

“I hope so,” said Cornel, with animation. “He studies very hard.”

“Yes, he’s a clever one, girl; and Jack Thorpe would have been very proud of him if he had lived. But, I say – ”

Cornel looked inquiringly in the keen eyes which searched her face.

“You really want to go with your brother?”

“Yes,” she said with animation – “I should very much like to go.”

“To study with him in the English and French hospitals?”

“I should like him to take me round with him,” she said, with her cheeks growing slightly tinged. “I am always interested in his cases, and surely a woman is none the worse for a little surgical and medical knowledge.”

“A precious deal better, my dear. But, I say – ”

“Yes, dear guardian,” she said, with a sweet, thrilling modulation now in her tones, as her eyes grew dim, and she laid both her little hands in the patient’s.

“I promised your father I’d always have an eye on you two, and I don’t think I ought to let you think of going, Cornel dear.”

She was silent.

“Isn’t it a sort of madness for you – to – eh? You know.”

“To love and keep my faith to Armstrong Dale?” she said gently; and the love-light shone brightly in the eyes which met the old man’s now without shrinking.

“Yes; that’s what I meant, little one. I don’t know how you could get yourself engaged to him.”

Cornel laughed gently – a pleasant, silvery little laugh, which seemed to do the patient good, for he smiled and listened to the last note of the musical sounds. But he grew serious, and there was a cynicism in his tones as he went on.

“I don’t believe in him, my girl. He’s good-looking and a bit clever; but when you have said that, you have said all.”

A little white finger was laid upon the speaker’s lips, but he went on.

“I know: he gammoned you with his love nonsense, but if he had been the fellow I took him for, he’d have stayed here in Boston and painted and glazed. Painted you. Painted me – glazed me too, if he had liked. What did he want to go and study at Rome and Paris and London for? We’ve cleverer people in the States than out there.”

“To get breadth, and learn his own failings,” said Cornel gently.

“Hadn’t any – I mean he was full of ’em, of course. Couldn’t have loved you, or he’d have stopped at home.”

“It was to show his love for me, and to try and make himself a master of his art, that he went away,” said Cornel, with a look of faith and pride in her eyes.

“Bah! He has forgotten you by this time. Give him up, puss. He’ll never come back. He’ll marry some fine madam in the old country.”

Cornel winced, and her eyes dilated as these words stung her; but the pang was momentary, and she laughed in the full tide of her happy trust in the man she loved.

“You mark my words, Cornel,” said the old man; “that fellow will throw you over, and then that will set your monkey up, and you’ll come and ask me to marry you, and I will. The folks ’ll all laugh, but let ’em. We shall be all right, little one. I shall have a sweet little nurse and housekeeper to take care of me to the end, and you’ll have an ugly, cantankerous old husband, who won’t live very long, and will die and leave you a million dollars, so that you can laugh at the whole world, and be the prettiest little widow in Boston – bah! in the whole States – and with too much good sense to throw yourself away. – Who’s that?”