“With your permission I will go at once. A train leaves now in an hour, and by morning I can be at home.”
“I scarcely think it prudent,” began the doctor.
“Oh, certainly not tonight,” said Mr. Ludolph, also.
“Pardon me, I must go at once,” interrupted Dennis, briefly and so decidedly that the gentlemen looked at each other and said no more.
“Mr. Bruder,” he continued, “I must be indebted to you for a real proof of your friendship. In that drawer you will find my money. The key is in my pocketbook. Will you get a carriage and take me to the depot at once? and can you be so kind as to go on home with me? I cannot trust myself alone. Mrs. Bruder, will you pack up what you think I need?” His faithful friends hastened to do his bidding.
“Mr. Ludolph, you have been very kind to me. I am sorry this has occurred, but cannot help it. I thank you gratefully, and will now trespass on your valuable time no longer.”
Mr. Ludolph, feeling that he could be of no further use, said: “You will be back in a week, Fleet. Courage. Goodbye.”
Dennis turned eagerly to the doctor and said: “Can you not give me something that will reduce the fever and keep me sane a little longer? I know that I am going to be delirious, but would reach the refuge of home first.”
A prescription was given and immediately procured, and the doctor went away shaking his head.
“This is the way people commit suicide. They know no more about, or pay no more heed to, the laws of health than the laws of China. Here is the result: This young fellow has worked in a way that would break down a cast-iron machine, and now may never see Chicago again.”
But Dennis might have worked even in his intense way for months and years without serious harm, had not a fair white hand kept him on the rack of uncertainty and fear.
Not work, but worry, makes havoc of health.
In the gray dawn Ethel Fleet, summoned from her rest, received her son, weak, unconscious, muttering in delirium, and not recognizing even her familiar face. He was indeed a sad, painful contrast to the ruddy, buoyant youth who had left her a few short months before, abounding in hope and life. But she comforted herself with the thought that neither sin nor shame had brought him home.
We need not dwell on the weary weeks that followed. Dennis had every advantage that could result from good medical skill and the most faithful nursing. But we believe that his life lay rather in his mother’s prayers of faith. In her strong realization of the spiritual world she would go continually into the very presence of Jesus, and say, “Lord, he whom Thou lovest is sick”; or, like parents of old, she would seem by her importunity to bring the Divine Physician to his very bedside.
Mr. Bruder, too, insisted on remaining, and watched with the unwearied faithfulness of one who felt that he owed to Dennis far more than life. It was indeed touching to see this man, once so desperate and depraved, now almost as patient and gentle as the mother herself, sitting by his unconscious friend, often turning his eyes heavenward and muttering in deep guttural German as sincere a prayer as ever passed human lips, that Dennis might be spared.
The hand of God seemed about to take him from them, but their strong, loving faith laid hold of that hand, and put upon it the restraint that only reverent, believing prayer can. Dennis lived. After many days delirium ceased, and the confused mind became clear. But during his delirium Ethel and Mr. Bruder learned from the oft-repeated words, “Cruel, cruel Christine!” the nature of the wound that had nearly destroyed his life.
Mr. Ludolph was late in reaching his home on the evening after Dennis was taken sick. Christine sat in the dusk on the ivy-shaded piazza, awaiting him. He said, abruptly, “What have you been doing to Fleet, over here?”
For a second her heart stood still, and she was glad the increasing gloom disguised her face. By a great effort she replied, in a cool, matter-of-fact tone: “I do not understand your question. Mr. Fleet was here this afternoon, and gave some finishing touches to my studio. I do not think I shall need him any more.”
Her quiet, indifferent voice would have disarmed suspicion itself.
“It is well you do not, for he seems to have received some ‘finishing touches’ himself. He fell across the threshold of the store in a dead faint, and has gone home, threatened with a serious illness.”
Even her resolute will could not prevent a sharp, startled exclamation.
“What is the matter?” said her father, hastily; “you are not going to faint also, are you?”
“No,” said Christine, quietly again; “but I am tired and nervous, and you told your news so abruptly! Why, it seemed but a moment ago he was here at work, and now he is dangerously ill. What an uncertain stumbling forward in the dark life is!”
This was a style of moralizing peculiarly distasteful to Mr. Ludolph—all the more repugnant because it seemed true, and brought home in Dennis’s experience. Anything that interfered with his plans and interests, even though it might be God’s providence, always angered him. And now he was irritated at the loss of one of his best clerks, just as he was becoming of great value; so he said, sharply: “I hope you are not leaning toward the silly cant of mysterious providence. Life is uncertain stumbling only to fools who can’t see the chances that fortune throws in their way, or recognize the plain laws of health and success. This young Fleet has been putting two days’ work in one for the past four months, and now perhaps his work is done
