IV
The young girl herself opened the door, and faced him first with the tragic family mask. Then she put out her hand to him with the personal gayety he had recalled. Her laugh, so far as it bore upon the situation, recognized rather the good joke of their finding themselves all in an American hotel together than expressed anxiety for her aunt's condition. It was so glad and free, in fact, that Olney was surprised to find Mrs. Meredith looking quite haggard on the sofa, from which she reached him her hand without attempting to rise.
"Isn't it the most fortunate thing in the world," said Miss Aldgate, "that it should really be Dr. Olney? We couldn't believe it when we saw it in the paper!" she added; and now Olney perceived that the laugh which he might have thought indifferent, was a laugh of happy relief, of trust that since it was he, all must go well.
"Yes, it is indeed," said Mrs. Meredith ; but she had none of the gayety in putting the burden upon Olney, under Providence, which flashed out in her niece's smile ; she appeared to doubt whether Providence and he could manage it, and to relinquish it with misgiving. "There were so many chances against it that it scarcely seemed possible." She examined Olney's face, which had at once begun to hide the professional opinion he was forming, and seemed to find comfort in its unsmiling strength. "And I hated dreadfully to trouble you at such an hour."
"I believe there's no etiquette as to the time of a doctor's visits," said Olney, pulling a chair up to the, sofa, and looking down at her. "I hope, if things go well after I'm settled here, to be called up sometimes in the, middle of the night, though ten o'clock isn't bad for my second day in Boston." Miss Aldgate laughed with instant appreciation of his pleasantry, and Mrs. Meredith wanly smiled. "You must be even more recent than I am, Mrs. Meredith. I'm afraid that if I had found your names in the register when I signed mine, I should have ventured to call unprofessionally. But then it would very likely have been some other Mrs. Meredith."
Miss Aldgate laughed again, and Olney gave her a look of the kindness a man feels for any one who sees his joke. She dropped upon the chair at the head of the sofa, and invited him with dancing eyes to say some more of these things. But Mrs. Meredith took the word.
"We only got in this morning. That is, the steamer arrived too late last night for us to come ashore, and we drove to the hotel before breakfast. You must be rather surprised to find us in such a place."
"Not at all; I'm here myself," said Olney.
"Oh! " Miss Aldgate laughed.
"I don't assume," he added, "that you came here for cheapness, as I did. At the hotels on the European plan, as they call it, they charge you as much for a room as they do for room and board together here."
"Everything is very expensive," sighed Mrs. Meredith. "We paid three dollars for our carriage from the ship; and I believe it's nothing to what it is in New York. But it's a great while since I've been in Boston, and I told them to bring me here because I'd heard it was an old-fashioned, quiet place. I felt them need of rest, but it seems very noisy. It was very smooth all the way over; but I was excited, and I slept badly. The last two or three nights I've scarcely slept at all."
"Hmm!" said the doctor, feeling himself launched upon the case.
Miss Aldgate rose.
"My dear," said her aunt, "I wish you would look up the prescription the ship's doctor gave me. I was thinking of sending out to have it made up, but I shouldn't wish to try it now unless Dr. Olney approves."
Olney profited by Miss Aldgate's absence to feel Mrs. Meredith's pulse and look at her tongue. He asked her a few formal questions. He was a little surprised to find her so much better than she looked.
"You seem a little upset, Mrs. Meredith," he said. "You may be suffering from suppressed seasickness, but I don't think it's anything worse." He tried to treat the affair lightly, and he added: "I don't see why you shouldn't be on good terms with sleep. You know Tito slept very well, even with a bad conscience."
Mrs. Meredith would not smile with him at the recurrence to their last conversation. She sighed, and gave him a look of tragical appeal. " I sometimes think he had an enviable character."
"Or temperament ," Olney suggested. "There doesn't seem to have been much question of character. But he was certainly well constituted for getting on in a world where there was no moral law--if he could have found such a world."
"Then you do believe there is such a law in this world? " Mrs. Meredith demanded, with an intensity that did not flatter Olney he had been light to good purpose.
He could not help smiling at his failure. "I would rather not say till you had got a night's rest."
"No, no," she persisted. "Do you believe that any one can rightfully live a lie? Do you believe that Tito was ever really at rest when he thought of what he was concealing?"
"He seems to have been pretty comfortable, except when Romola got at him with her moral nature."
"Ah, don't laugh! " said Mrs. Meredith. "It isn't a thing to laugh at."
MissAldgate came in, with a scrap of paper fluttering from her slim hand, and showing her pretty teeth in a smile so free of all ethical question that Olney swiftly conjectured an anxiety of Mrs. Meredith concerning a nature so apparently free of all personal responsibility as the young girl looked at that moment. He was aware of innocently rejoicing in this sense of her, which came from the goodness and sweet- ness which she looked as much as the irresponsibility. It might be that Mrs. Meredith bad lost sleep in revolving the problems of Miss Aldgate's character, and the chances of her being equal to the duties that had left so little of Mrs. Meredith. If such an aunt and such a niece were formed to wear upon each other, as the ladies say, it was clear that the niece had worn the most. With this thought evanescently in mind, Olney took the prescription from her.
He read it over, but he did not perceive that the sense of it had failed to reach his mind till Mrs. Meredith said, "If it is one of those old-fashioned narcotics--he called it a sleeping draught--I would rather not take it."
Though Olney had not been thinking of the prescription, he now pretended that he had. "It would be rather a heroic dose for a first-cabin passenger," he said, "though it might do for the steerage." He took out his pocket-book and wrote a prescription himself. "There! I think that ought to get you a night's rest, Mrs. Meredith."
"I suppose we can get it made up?"' she said, irresolutely, lifting herself a little on one elbow.
"I'll take it out and have it done myself," said Olney. "There's an apothecary's just under the hotel."
He rose, but she said: "I can't let you be at that trouble. We can send. Will you-"
"I'll ring, Aunt Caroline," said Miss Aldgate; and she ran forward to press the electric button by the door.
The bell was answered by the same man who came to call the doctor to Mrs. Meredith. Miss Aldgate took the prescription, and rapidly explained to. him what she wanted. When she had finished, he looked up from the prescription at Olney with a puzzled face.
Olney smiled and Miss Aldgate laughed. The man had not understood at all.
"You know the apothecary's shop under the hotel?" Olney began.
"Yes, I know that forst-rate, sor."
