The Three Brides, Love in a Cottage, and Other Tales Part 34

"No, dochthor, dear--it's no mistake--it's the water cure I'm after.

Sure it's the blissid wather that saves us. There was Pat Murphy that brak his leg when he fell with a hod of bricks aff the ladder in Say Strate, and they put a bit of wet rag round it, and the next wake he was dancing a jig to the chune of Paddy Rafferty, at the ball given by the Social Burial Society. And there was my sister Molly's old man, Phelim, that was took bad wid the fever--and he drank walth of whiskey, but it never did him a bit of good--but when he lift off the whiskey, and drank nothin' but wather, he came round in a wake. O, dochthor, let me have the blissid water."

"You must see your landlord about that."

"You wouldn't sind me to him, dochthor."

"I'm no doctor, good woman," said the clerk, now thoroughly annoyed, "and you've come to the wrong shop, as I told you."

"How do you use the water?" inquired the woman.

"Why, you turn the c.o.c.k and let it on--in this way," said the clerk, letting a little Cochituate into a basin. "There, go along now, and go to the doctor's, as I have directed you."

"Sorrow a dochthor I go to but the water dochthor, this blissid day,"

said the woman, and she left the office.

She repaired to her cellar in no enviable frame of mind. She was sick and discouraged, and labored under the impression that she had been to the right place, but they had imposed upon her, from an unwillingness to aid her. In the mean while, however, during her absence, a service pipe had been admitted into her premises by the landlord, though she was not aware of the fact. She became acquainted with it soon enough, however. The next morning, about four o'clock, as she lay on the floor, bemoaning her hard fate and the neglect of the "dochthor," she heard a rus.h.i.+ng noise. The water pipe had burst, and a stream, like a fountain, was now steadily falling into the cellar.

"Bless their hearts!" exclaimed the old woman, "they haven't forgotten the poor. The dochthor's sent the water at last--and I must lie still and take it."

The first shock of the invading flood was a severe one.

"Millia murther!" she exclaimed, "how could it is! Dochthor, dear, couldn't ye have let me had it a thrifle warmer?"

The water continued to pour in, and she was thoroughly soaked. Under the belief that the doctor must be somewhere about, superintending the operation, but keeping himself out of sight from motives of delicacy, she continued to address him.

"There! dochthor, dear. Blessings on ye! That'll do for this time.

It's could I am! Stop it, dochthor! I've had enough! It's too good for the likes of me. I fale betther, dochthor; I won't throuble ye more, dochthor; many thanks to ye, dochthor! do ye hear? It's drowning I am!"

By this time she had risen, and was standing ankle deep in water. As the element was still rising, and the "dochthor" failed to make his appearance, the poor woman climbed upon a stool, which was soon insulated by the tide. From this she managed to escape in a large bread trough, and ferried herself over to a shelf, where she lay in comparative safety, watching the rising of the waters.

What would have been her fate, if she had remained alone, it is impossible to say. After some time the noise of waters alarmed the neighbors; they came to see what was the matter, and finally succeeded in rescuing the tenant of the cellar from the threatened deluge. She was comfortably cared for by a fellow-countrywoman, and a regular dispensary physician sent for. Wonderful to relate, the shock of the cold bath had accomplished one of those accidental cures, of which many are recorded in the history of rheumatic disorders; and in a few days, the sufferer was on her legs again. Furthermore, her sickness had proved the means of interesting several benevolent individuals in her fate, and by their a.s.sistance she was established in a little shop, where she is making an honest penny, and laying by something against a rainy day. This she all attributes to the "blissid wather,"

and, in her veneration for the element, has totally abjured whiskey, and signed the pledge, an act which gives a.s.surance of her future fortune.

THE COSSACK.

CHAPTER I.

I'd give The Ukraine back again to live It o'er once more, and be a page, The happy page, who was the lord Of one soft heart and his own sword.

MAZEPPA.

Count Willnitz was striding to and fro in the old hall of his ancestral castle, in the heart of Lithuania. Through the high and narrow Gothic windows the light fell dimly into the cold apartment, just glancing on the ma.s.sive pillars, and bringing into faint relief the dusty banners and old trophies of arms that hung along the walls, for the wintry day was near its close. The count was a dark-browed, stern-featured man. His cold, gray eyes were sunken in their orbits; and deep lines were drawn about his mouth, as if some secret grief were gnawing at his vitals. And, indeed, good cause existed for his sorrow; for, but a few days previously, he had lost his wife. They had buried the countess at midnight, as was the custom of the family, in the old, ancestral vault of the castle. Va.s.sal and serf had waved their torches over the black throat of the grave, and the wail of women had gone up through the rocky arches. Still the count had been seen to shed no tear. An old warrior, schooled in the stern academy of military life, he had early learned to conquer his emotions; indeed, there were those who said that nature, in moulding his aristocratic form, had forgotten to provide it with a heart; and this legend found facile credence with the cowering serfs who owned his sway, and the ill-paid soldiers who followed his banner. The last male descendant of a long and n.o.ble line, he was ill able to maintain the splendor of his family name; for his dominions had been "curtailed of their fair proportion," and his finances were in a disordered state.

As, like Hardicanute in the old ballad,

"Stately strode he east the wa', And stately strode he west,"

there entered a figure almost as grim and stern as himself. This was an old woman who now filled the office of housekeeper, having succeeded to full sway on the death of the countess, the young daughter of the count being unable or unwilling to a.s.sume any care in the household.

"Well, dame," said the count, pausing in his walk, and confronting the old woman, "how goes it with you, and how with Alvina? Still sorrowing over her mother's death?"

"The tears of a maiden are like the dews in the morning, count,"

replied the old woman. "The first sunbeam dries them up."

"And what ray of joy can penetrate the dismal hole?" asked the count.

"Do you remember the golden bracelet you gave your lady daughter on her wedding day?" inquired the old woman, fixing her keen, gray eye on her master's face as she spoke.

"Ay, well," replied the count; "golden gifts are not so easily obtained, of late, that I should forget their bestowal But what of the bawble?"

"I saw it in the hands of the page Alexis, when he thought himself un.o.bserved."

"How!" cried the count, his cheek first reddening, and then becoming deadly pale with anger; "is the blood of the gitano a.s.serting its claim? Has he begun to pilfer? The dog shall hang from the highest battlement of the castle!"

"May it not have been a free gift, sir count?" suggested the hideous hag.

"A free gift! What mean you? A love token? Ha! dare you insinuate? And yet her blood is----"

"Hus.h.!.+ walls have sometimes ears," said the old woman, looking cautiously around. "The gypsy child you picked up in the forest is now almost a man; your daughter is a woman. The page is beautiful; they have been thrown much together. Alvina is lonely, romantic----"

"Enough, enough!" said the count, stamping his foot. "I will watch him. If your suspicions be correct----" He paused, and added between his clinched teeth, "I shall know how to punish the daring of the dog.

Away!"

The old woman hobbled away, rubbing her skinny hands together, and chuckling at the prospect of having her hatred of the young countess and the page, both of whom had excited her malevolence, speedily gratified.

Count Willnitz was on the eve of a journey to Paris with his daughter.

They were to start in a day or two. This circ.u.mstance brought on the adventure we shall speedily relate.

Between Alexis, the beautiful page whom the late countess had found and fancied among a wandering Bohemian horde, and the high-born daughter of the feudal house, an attachment had sprung up, nurtured by the isolation in which they lived, and the romantic character and youth of the parties. About to be separated from his mistress for a long time, the page had implored her to grant him an interview, and the lovers met in an apartment joining the suite of rooms appropriated to the countess, and where they were little likely to be intruded upon. In the innocence of their hearts, they had not dreamed that their looks and movements had been watched, and they gave themselves up to the happiness of unrestrained converse. But at the moment when the joy of Alexis seemed purest and brightest, the gathering thunder cloud was overhanging him. At the moment when, sealing his pledge of eternal fidelity and memory in absence, he tremblingly printed a first and holy kiss upon the blus.h.i.+ng cheek of Alvina, an iron hand was laid upon his shoulder, and, torn ruthlessly from the spot, he was dashed against the wall, while a terrible voice exclaimed,--

"Dog, you shall reckon with me for this!"

Alvina threw herself at her father's feet.

"Pardon--pardon for Alexis, father! I alone am to blame."

"Rise! rise!" thundered the count. "Art thou not sufficiently humiliated? Dare to breathe a word in his favor, and it shall go hard with thy minion. Punishment thou canst not avert; say but a word, and that punishment becomes death; for he is mine, soul and body, to have and to hold, to head or to hang--my va.s.sal, my slave! What ho, there!"

As he stamped his foot, a throng of attendants poured into the room.

"Search me that fellow!" cried the count, pointing with his finger to Alexis.

A dozen officers' hands examined the person of Alexis, one of them, more eager than the rest, discovered a golden bracelet, and brought it to the count.

"Ha!" cried the count, as he gazed upon the trinket; "truly do I recognize this bawble. Speak, dog! when got'st thou this?"