Mr. Macglowrie's Widow

He could find out little more when he arrived and examined her as she lay pale and unconscious on the sofa of her sitting room. It had not been thought necessary to loosen her already loose dress, and indeed he could find no organic disturbance. The case was one of sudden nervous shock—but this, with his knowledge of her indolent temperament, seemed almost absurd. They could tell him nothing but that she was evidently on the point of entering the dining room when she fell unconscious. Had she been frightened by anything? A snake or a rat? Miss Morvin was indignant! The widow of MacGlowrie—the repeller of grizzlies—frightened at "sich"! Had she been upset by any previous excitement, passion, or the receipt of bad news? No!—she "wasn't that kind," as the doctor knew. And even as they were speaking he felt the widow's healthy life returning to the pulse he was holding, and giving a faint tinge to her lips. Her blue-veined eyelids quivered slightly and then opened with languid wonder on the doctor and her surroundings. Suddenly a quick, startled look contracted the yellow brown pupils of her eyes, she lifted herself to a sitting posture with a hurried glance around the room and at the door beyond. Catching the quick, observant eyes of Dr. Blair, she collected herself with an effort, which Dr. Blair felt in her pulse, and drew away her wrist.

"What is it? What happened?" she said weakly.

"You had a slight attack of faintness," said the doctor cheerily, "and they called me in as I was passing, but you're all right now."

"How pow'ful foolish," she said, with returning color, but her eyes still glancing at the door, "slumping off like a green gyrl at nothin'."

"Perhaps you were startled?" said the doctor.

Mrs. MacGlowrie glanced up quickly and looked away. "No!—Let me see! I was just passing through the hall, going into the dining room, when—everything seemed to waltz round me—and I was off! Where did they find me?" she said, turning to Miss Morvin.

"I picked you up just outside the door," replied the housekeeper.

"Then they did not see me?" said Mrs. MacGlowrie.

"Who's they?" responded the housekeeper with more directness than grammatical accuracy.

"The people in the dining room. I was just opening the door—and I felt this coming on—and—I reckon I had just sense enough to shut the door again before I went off."

"Then that accounts for what Jim Slocum said," uttered Miss Morvin triumphantly. "He was in the dining room talkin' with the new preacher, when he allowed he heard the door open and shut behind him. Then he heard a kind of slump outside and opened the door again just to find you lyin' there, and to rush off and get me. And that's why he was so mad at the preacher!—for he says he just skurried away without offerin' to help. He allows the preacher may be a pow'ful exhorter—but he ain't worth much at 'works.'"

"Some men can't bear to be around when a woman's up to that sort of foolishness," said the widow, with a faint attempt at a smile, but a return of her paleness.

"Hadn't you better lie down again?" said the doctor solicitously.

"I'm all right now," returned Mrs. MacGlowrie, struggling to her feet; "Morvin will look after me till the shakiness goes. But it was mighty touching and neighborly to come in, Doctor," she continued, succeeding at last in bringing up a faint but adorable smile, which stirred Blair's pulses. "If I were my own dog—you couldn't have treated me better!"

With no further excuse for staying longer, Blair was obliged to depart—yet reluctantly, both as lover and physician. He was by no means satisfied with her condition. He called to inquire the next day—but she was engaged and sent word to say she was "better."

In the excitement attending the advent of the new preacher the slight illness of the charming widow was forgotten. He had taken the settlement by storm. His first sermon at Laurel Spring exceeded even the extravagant reputation that had preceded him. Known as the "Inspired Cowboy," a common unlettered frontiersman, he was said to have developed wonderful powers of exhortatory eloquence among the Indians, and scarcely less savage border communities where he had lived, half outcast, half missionary. He had just come up from the Southern agricultural districts, where he had been, despite his rude antecedents, singularly effective with women and young people. The moody dyspeptics and lazy rustics of Laurel Spring were stirred as with a new patent medicine. Dr. Blair went to the first "revival" meeting. Without undervaluing the man's influence, he was instinctively repelled by his appearance and methods. The young physician's trained powers of observation not only saw an overwrought emotionalism in the speaker's eloquence, but detected the ring of insincerity in his more lucid speech and acts. Nevertheless, the hysteria of the preacher was communicated to the congregation, who wept and shouted with him. Tired and discontented housewives found their vague sorrows and vaguer longings were only the result of their "unregenerate" state; the lazy country youths felt that the frustration of their small ambitions lay in their not being "convicted of sin." The mourners' bench was crowded with wildly emulating sinners. Dr. Blair turned away with mingled feelings of amusement and contempt. At the door Jim Slocum tapped him on the shoulder: "Fetches the wimmin folk every time, don't he, Doctor?" said Jim.

"So it seems," said Blair dryly.

"You're one o' them scientific fellers that look inter things—what do YOU allow it is?"

The young doctor restrained the crushing answer that rose to his lips. He had learned caution in that neighborhood. "I couldn't say," he said indifferently.

"'Tain't no religion," said Slocum emphatically; "it's jest pure fas'nation. Did ye look at his eye? It's like a rattlesnake's, and them wimmin are like birds. They're frightened of him—but they hev to do jest what he 'wills' 'em. That's how he skeert the widder the other day."

The doctor was alert and on fire at once. "Scared the widow?" he repeated indignantly.

"Yes. You know how she swooned away. Well, sir, me and that preacher, Brown, was the only one in that dinin' room at the time. The widder opened the door behind me and sorter peeked in, and that thar preacher give a start and looked up; and then, that sort of queer light come in his eyes, and she shut the door, and kinder fluttered and flopped down in the passage outside, like a bird! And he crawled away like a snake, and never said a word! My belief is that either he hadn't time to turn on the hull influence, or else she, bein' smart, got the door shut betwixt her and it in time! Otherwise, sure as you're born, she'd hev been floppin' and crawlin' and sobbin' arter him—jist like them critters we've left."

"Better not let the brethren hear you talk like that, or they'll lynch you," said the doctor, with a laugh. "Mrs. MacGlowrie simply had an attack of faintness from some overexertion, that's all."

Nevertheless, he was uneasy as he walked away. Mrs. MacGlowrie had evidently received a shock which was still unexplained, and, in spite of Slocum's exaggerated fancy, there might be some foundation in his story. He did not share the man's superstition, although he was not a skeptic regarding magnetism. Yet even then, the widow's action was one of repulsion, and as long as she was strong enough not to come to these meetings, she was not in danger. A day or two later, as he was passing the garden of the hotel on horseback, he saw her lithe, graceful, languid figure bending over one of her favorite flower beds. The high fence partially concealed him from view, and she evidently believed herself alone. Perhaps that was why she suddenly raised herself from her task, put back her straying hair with a weary, abstracted look, remained for a moment quite still staring at the vacant sky, and then, with a little catching of her breath, resumed her occupation in a dull, mechanical way. In that brief glimpse of her charming face, Blair was shocked at the change; she was pale, the corners of her pretty mouth were drawn, there were deeper shades in the orbits of her eyes, and in spite of her broad garden hat with its blue ribbon, her light flowered frock and frilled apron, she looked as he fancied she might have looked in the first crushing grief of her widowhood. Yet he would have passed on, respecting her privacy of sorrow, had not her little spaniel detected him with her keener senses. And Fluffy being truthful—as dogs are—and recognizing a dear friend in the intruder, barked joyously.

The widow looked up, her eyes met Blair's, and she reddened. But he was too acute a lover to misinterpret what he knew, alas! was only confusion at her abstraction being discovered. Nevertheless, there was something else in her brown eyes he had never seen before. A momentary lighting up of RELIEF—of even hopefulness—in his presence. It was enough for Blair; he shook off his old shyness like the dust of his ride, and galloped around to the front door.

But she met him in the hall with only her usual languid good humor. Nevertheless, Blair was not abashed.

"I can't put you in splints and plaster like Fluffy, Mrs. MacGlowrie," he said, "but I can forbid you to go into the garden unless you're looking better. It's a positive reflection on my professional skill, and Laurel Spring will be shocked, and hold me responsible."

Mrs. MacGlowrie had recovered enough of her old spirit to reply that she thought Laurel Spring could be in better business than looking at her over her garden fence.

"But your dog, who knows you're not well, and doesn't think me quite a fool, had the good sense to call me. You heard him."

But the widow protested that she was as strong as a horse, and that Fluffy was like all puppies, conceited to the last degree.

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