Complete Project Gutenberg Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Works eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 4,188 pages of information about Complete Project Gutenberg Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Works.

Complete Project Gutenberg Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Works eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 4,188 pages of information about Complete Project Gutenberg Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. Works.

As for poor Lurida, who had thought herself equal to the sanguinary duties of the surgeon, she was left lying on the grass with an old woman over her, working hard with fan and smelling-salts to bring her back from her long fainting fit.

XXIV

The inevitable.

Why should not human nature be the same in Arrowhead Village as elsewhere?  It could not seem strange to the good people of that place and their visitors that these two young persons, brought together under circumstances that stirred up the deepest emotions of which the human soul is capable, should become attached to each other.  But the bond between them was stronger than any knew, except the good doctor, who had learned the great secret of Maurice’s life.  For the first time since his infancy he had fully felt the charm which the immediate presence of youthful womanhood carries with it.  He could hardly believe the fact when he found himself no longer the subject of the terrifying seizures of which he had had many and threatening experiences.

It was the doctor’s business to save his patient’s life, if he could possibly do it.  Maurice had been reduced to the most perilous state of debility by the relapse which had interrupted his convalescence.  Only by what seemed almost a miracle had he survived the exposure to suffocation and the mental anguish through which he had passed.  It was perfectly clear to Dr. Butts that if Maurice could see the young woman to whom he owed his life, and, as the doctor felt assured, the revolution in his nervous system which would be the beginning of a new existence, it would be of far more value as a restorative agency than any or all of the drugs in the pharmacopoeia.  He told this to Euthymia, and explained the matter to her parents and friends.  She must go with him on some of his visits.  Her mother should go with her, or her sister; but this was a case of life and death, and no maidenly scruples must keep her from doing her duty.

The first of her visits to the sick, perhaps dying, man presented a scene not unlike the picture before spoken of on the title-page of the old edition of Galen.  The doctor was perhaps the most agitated of the little group.  He went before the others, took his seat by the bedside, and held the patient’s wrist with his finger on the pulse.  As Euthymia entered it gave a single bound, fluttered for an instant as if with a faint memory of its old habit, then throbbed full and strong, comparatively, as if under the spur of some powerful stimulus.  Euthymia’s task was a delicate one, but she knew how to disguise its difficulty.

“Here is a flower I have brought you, Mr. Kirkwood,” she said, and handed him a white chrysanthemum.  He took it from her hand, and before she knew it he took her hand into his own, and held it with a gentle constraint.  What could she do?  Here was the young man whose life she had saved, at least for the moment, and who was yet in danger from the disease which had almost worn out his powers of resistance.

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