The Project Gutenberg EBook of 'Doc.' Gordon, by Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman

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Title: 'Doc.' Gordon

Author: Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman

Illustrator: Frank T. Merrill

Release Date: April 24, 2005 [EBook #15695]

Language: English

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[Illustration: Doctor Gordon * * * had not even taken off his overcoat,
which was white with snow. Page 104.]




"Doc." Gordon

By

MARY E. WILKINS-FREEMAN


Author of

"_The Debtor," "A Humble Romance," "The Heart's Highway," "Pembroke,"
Etc._


Illustrated in Water-Colors by FRANK T. MERRILL

Copyright, 1906, by Mary E. Wilkins-Freeman

H.L. MOORE
SPECIAL EDITION,
For Sale exclusively by us in Rahway, N.J.


NEW YORK AND LONDON
THE AUTHORS AND NEWSPAPERS ASSOCIATION
1906

COPYRIGHT, 1906, BY
MARY E. WILKINS-FREEMAN.

_Entered at Stationers' Hall.
All rights reserved_.

Composition and Electrotyping by
J.J. Little & Co.
Printed and bound by
Manhattan Press, New York.

[Illustration: (FACSIMILE PAGE OF MANUSCRIPT FROM DOC. GORDON)]




"DOC." GORDON




CHAPTER I


It was very early in the morning, it was scarcely dawn, when the young
man started upon a walk of twenty-five miles to reach Alton, where he
was to be assistant to the one physician in the place, Doctor Thomas
Gordon, or as he was familiarly called, "Doc." Gordon. The young man's
name was James Elliot. He had just graduated, and this was to be his
first experience in the practice of his profession of medicine. He was
in his twenties. He was small, but from the springiness of his gait and
the erectness of his head he gave an impression of height. He was very
good-looking, with clearly-cut features, and dark eyes, in which shone,
like black diamonds, sparks of mischief. They were honest eyes, too. The
young fellow was still sowing his wild oats, but more with his hands
than with his soul. He was walking because of a great amount of restless
energy; he fairly revelled in stretching his legs over the country road
in the keen morning air. The train service between Gresham, his home
place, and Alton was very bad, necessitating two changes and waits of
hours, and he had fretted at the prospect. When a young man is about to
begin his career, he does not wish to sit hours in dingy little railroad
stations on his way toward it. It was much easier, and pleasanter, to
walk, almost run to it, as he was doing now. His only baggage was his
little medicine-case; his trunk had gone by train the day before. He was
very well dressed, his clothes had the cut of a city tailor. He was
almost dandified. His father was well-to-do: a successful peach-grower
on a wholesale scale. His great farm was sprayed over every spring with
delicate rosy garlands of peach blossoms, and in the autumn the trees
were heavy with the almond-scented fruit. He had made a fortune, and
aside from that had achieved a certain local distinction. He was then
mayor of Gresham, which had a city government. James was very proud of
his father and fond of him. Indeed, he had reason to be. His father had
done everything in his power for him, given him a good education, and
supplied him liberally with money. James had always had a sense of
plenty of money, which had kept him from undue love of it. He was now
beginning the practice of his profession, in a small way, it is true,
but that he recognized as expedient. "You had better get acclimated,
become accustomed to your profession in a small place, before you launch
out in a city," his father had said, and the son had acquiesced. It was
the natural wing-trying process before large flights were attempted, and
the course commended itself to his reason. James, as well as his father,
had good reasoning power. He whistled to himself as he walked along. He
was very happy. He had a sensation as of one who has his goal in sight.
He thought of his father, his mother, and his two younger sisters, but
with no distress at absenting himself from them, although he lived in
accord with his family. Twenty-five miles to his joyous youth seemed but
as a step across the road. He had no sense of separation. "What is
twenty-five miles?" he had said laughingly to his mother, when she had
kissed him good-by. He had no conception of her state of mind with
regard to the break in the home circle. He who was the breaker did not
even see the break. Therefore he walked along, conscious of an immense
joy in his own soul, and wholly unconscious of anything except joy in
the souls of those whom he had left behind. It was a glorious morning, a
white morning. The ground was covered with white frost, the trees, the
house-roofs, the very air, were all white. In the west a transparent
moon was slowly sinking; the east deepened with red and violet tints.
Then came the sun, upheaving above the horizon like a ship of glory, and
all the whiteness burned, and glowed, and radiated jewel-lights. James
looked about with the delight of a discoverer. It might have been his
first morning. He begun to meet men going to their work, swinging tin
dinner-pails. Even these humble pails became glorified, they gave back
the sunlight like burnished silver. He smelled the odors of breakfast
upon the men's clothes. He held up his head high with a sort of
good-humored arrogance as he passed. He would have fought to the death
for any one of these men, but he knew himself, quite innocently, upon
superior heights of education, and trained thought, and ambition. He met
a man swinging a pail; he was coughing: a wretched, long rattle of a
cough. James stopped him, opened his little medicine-case, and produced
some pellets.

"Here, take one of these every hour until the cough is relieved, my
friend," said he.

The man stared, swallowed a pellet, stared again, in an odd, suspicious,
surly fashion, muttered something unintelligible and passed on.

There were three villages between Gresham and Alton: Red Hill,
Stanbridge, and Westover. James stopped in Red Hill at a quick-lunch
wagon, which was drawn up on the principal street under the lee of the
town hall, went in, ordered and ate with relish some hot frankfurters,
and drank some coffee. He had eaten a plentiful breakfast before
starting, but the keen air had created his appetite anew. Beside him at
the counter sat a young workingman, also eating frankfurters and
drinking coffee. Now and then he gave a sidelong and supercilious glance
at James's fine clothes. James caught one of the glances, and laughed
good-naturedly.

"These quick-lunch wagons are a mighty good idea," said he.

The man grunted and took a swallow of coffee.

"Where do you work?" asked James.

"None of your d---- business!" retorted the other man unexpectedly.
"Where do you work yourself?"

James stared at him, then he burst into a roar. For a second the man's
surly mouth did not budge, then the corners twitched a little.

"What in thunder are you mad about?" inquired James. "I am going to work
for Doctor Gordon in Alton, and I don't care a d---- where you work."
James spoke with the most perfect good nature, still laughing.

Then the man's face relaxed into a broad grin. "Didn't know but you were
puttin' on lugs," said he. "I am about tired of all those damned
benefactors comin' along and arskin' of a man whot's none of their
business, when a man knows all the time they don't care nothin' about
it, and then makin' a man take somethin' he don't want, so as to get
their names in the papers." The man sniffed a sniff of fury, then his
handsome blue eyes smiled pleasantly, even with mischievous confidence
into James's, and he swallowed more coffee.

"I am no benefactor, you can bet your life on that," said James. "I
don't mean to give you anything you want or don't want."

"Didn't know but you was one of that kind," returned the man.

"Why?"

The man eyed James's clothes expressively.

"Oh, you mean my clothes," said James. "Well, this suit and overcoat are
pretty fair, but if I were a benefactor I should be wearing seedy
clothes, and have my wallet stuffed with bills for other folks."

"You bet you wouldn't," said the other man. "That ain't the way
benefactors go to work. What be you goin' to do at Doc Gordon's?"

"Drive," replied James laconically.

"Guess you can't take care of hosses in no sech togs as them."

"I've got some others. I'm going to learn to doctor a little, too, if I
can."

The man surveyed him, then he burst into a great laugh. "Well," said he,
"when I git the measles I'll call you in."

"All right," said James, "I won't charge you a red cent. I'll doctor you
and all your children and your wife for nothing."

"Guess you won't need to charge nothin' for the wife and kids, seein' as
I ain't got none," said the man. "Ketch me saddled up with a woman an'
kids, if I know what I'm about. Them's for the benefactors. I live in a
little shanty I rigged up myself out of two packin' boxes. I've got 'em
on a man's medder here. He let me squat for nothin'. I git my meals
here, an' I work on the railroad, an' I've got a soft snap, with nobody
to butt in. Here, Mame, give us another cup of coffee. Mame's the girl I
want, if I could hev one. Ain't you, Mame?"

The girl, who was a blonde, with an exaggerated pompadour fastened with
aggressive celluloid pins, smiled pertly. "Reckon I h'ain't no more use
for men than you hev for women," said she, as she poured the coffee. All
that could be seen of her behind the counter was her head, and her waist
clad in a red blouse, pinned so high to her skirt in the rear that it
almost touched her shoulder blades. The blouse was finished at the neck
with a nice little turn-over collar fastened with a brooch set with
imitation diamonds and sapphires.

"Now, Mame, you know," said the man with assumed pathos, "that it is
only because I'm a poor devil that I don't go kerflop the minute I set
eyes on you. But you wouldn't like to live in boxes, would you? Would
you now?"

"Not till my time comes, and not in boxes, then, less I'm in a railroad
accident," replied the girl, with ghastly jocularity.

"She's got another feller, or _you_ might git her if you've got a stiddy
job," the man said, winking at James with familiarity.

"Just my luck," said James. He looked at the girl, and thought her
pretty and pathetic, with a vulgar, almost tragic, prettiness and
pathos. She was anæmic and painfully thin. Her blouse was puffed out
over her flat chest. She looked worn out with the miserable little
tediums of life, with constant stepping over ant-hills of stupidity and
petty hopelessness. Her work was not, comparatively speaking, arduous,
but the serving of hot coffee and frankfurters to workingmen was not
progressive, and she looked as if her principal diet was the left-overs
of the stock in trade. She seemed to exhale an odor of musty sandwiches
and sausages and muddy coffee.

The man swallowed his second cup in fierce gulps. He glanced at his
Ingersoll watch. "Gee whiz!" said he. "It's time I was off! Good-by,
Mame."

The girl turned her head with a toss, and did not reply. "Good-by,"
James said.

The man grinned. "Good-by, Doc," he said. "I'll call you when I git the
measles. You're a good feller. If you'd been a benefactor I'd run you
out."

The man clattered down the steps of the gaudily painted little
structure. The girl whom he had called Mame turned and looked at James
with a sort of innocent boldness. "He's a queer feller," she observed.

"He seems to be."

"He is, you bet. Livin' in a house he's built out of boxes when he makes
big money. He's on strike every little while. I wouldn't look at him.
Don't know what he's drivin' at half the time. Reckon he's--" She
touched her head significantly.

"Lots of folks are," said James affably.

"That's so." She stared reflectively at James. "I'm keepin' this quick
lunch 'cause my father's sick," said she. "I see a lot of human nature
in here."

"I suppose you do."

"You bet. Every kind gits in here first and last, tramps up to swells
who think they're doin' somethin' awful funny to git frankfurters and
coffee in here. They must be hard driv."

"I suppose they are sometimes."

Mame's eyes, surveying James, suddenly grew sharp. "You ain't one?" she
asked accusingly.

"You bet not."

Mame's grew soft. "I knew you were all right," said she. "Sometimes they
say things to me that their fine lady friends would bounce 'em for, but
I knew the minute I saw you that you wasn't that kind if you be dressed
up like a gent. Reckon you've been makin' big money in your last place."

"Considerable," admitted James. He felt like a villain, but he had not
the heart to accuse himself of being a gentleman before this pathetic
girl.

Mame leaned suddenly over the counter, and her blonde crest nearly
touched his forehead. "Say," said she, in a whisper.

"What?" whispered James back.

"What he said ain't true. There ain't a mite of truth in it."

"What he said," repeated James vaguely.

Mame pouted. "How awful thick-headed you be," said she. "What he said
about my havin' a feller." She blushed rosily, and her eyes fell.

James felt his own face suffused. He pulled out his pocket-book, and
rose abruptly. "I'm sorry," he said with stupidity.

The rosy flush died away from the girl's face. "Nobody asked you to be
sorry," said she. "I could have any one of a dozen I know if I jest held
out my little finger."

"Of course, you could," James said. He felt apologetic, although he did
not know exactly why. He fumbled over the change, and at last made it
right with a quarter extra for the girl.

"It's a quarter too much," said she.

"Keep it, please."

She hesitated. She was frowning under her great blonde roll, her mouth
looked hurt.

"What a fuss about a quarter," said James, with a laugh. "Keep it.
That's a good girl."

Mame took a dingy handkerchief out of the bosom of her blouse, untied a
corner, and James heard a jingle of coins meeting. Then she laughed.
"You're an awful fraud," said she.

"Why?"

"You can't cheat me, if you did Bill Slattery."

"I think I don't know what you mean."

"You're a gent."

The girl's thin, coarse laughter rang out after James as he descended
the steps of the quick-lunch wagon. She opened the door directly after
he had closed it, and stood on the top step with the cold wind agitating
her fair hair. "Say," she called after him.

James turned as he walked away. "What is it?"

"Nothin', only I was foolin' you, and so was Bill. I've got a feller,
and Bill's him."

"I'll make you a present when you're married," James called back with a
laugh.

"It's to come off next summer," cried the girl.

"I won't forget," answered James. He knew the girl lied; that she was
not about to marry the workingman. He said to himself, as he strode on
refreshed with his coarse fare, that girls were extraordinary: first
they were bold to positive indecency, then modest to the borders of
insanity.

James walked on. He reached Stanbridge about noon. Then he was hungry
again. There was a good hotel there, and he made a substantial meal. He
had a smoke and a rest of half an hour, then he resumed his walk. He
soon passed the outskirts of Stanbridge, which was a small, old city,
then he was in the country. The houses were sparsely set well back from
the road. He met nobody, except an occasional countryman driving a
wood-laden team. Presently the road lay between stately groves of oaks,
although now and then they stood on one side only of the highway. Nearly
all the oaks bore a shag of dried leaves about their trunks, like mossy
beards of old men, only the shag was a bright russet instead of white.
The ground under the oaks was like cloth-of-gold under the sun, the
fallen leaves yet retained so much color. James heard a sharp croak,
then a crow flew with wide flaps of dark wings across the road and
perched on an oak bough. It cocked its head, and watched him wisely.
James whistled at it, but it did not stir. It remained with its head
cocked in that attitude of uncanny wisdom.

Suddenly James saw before him the figure of a girl, moving swiftly. She
must have come out of the wood. She went as freely as a woodland thing,
although she was conventionally dressed in a tailor suit of brown. Her
hat, too, was brown, and a brown feather curled over the brim. She
walked fast, with evidently as much enjoyment of the motion as James
himself. They both walked like winged things.

Suddenly James had a queer experience. One sense became transposed into
another, as one changes the key in music. He heard absolutely nothing,
but it was as if he saw a noise. He saw a man standing on the right
between him and the girl. The man had not made the slightest sound, he
was sure. James had good ears, but sound and not sight was what betrayed
him, or rather sound transposed into sight. He stood as motionless as a
tree himself. James knew that he had been looking at the girl. Now she
was looking at him. James felt a long shudder creep over him. He had
never been afraid of anything except fear. Now he was afraid of fear,
and there was something about the man which awakened this terror, yet it
was inexplicable. He was a middle-aged man, and distinctly handsome. He
was something above the medium height, and very well dressed. He wore a
fur-lined coat which looked opulent. He had gray hair and a black
mustache. There was nothing menacing in his face. He was, indeed,
smiling a curious retrospective smile, as if at his own thoughts.
Although his eyes regarded James attentively, this smiling mouth seemed
entirely oblivious of him. The man gave an odd impression, as of two
personalities: the one observant, with an animal-like observance for his
own weal or woe, the other observant with intelligence. It was possibly
this impression of a dual personality which gave James his quick sense
of horror. He walked on, feeling his very muscles shrink. Just before
James reached the man he emerged easily, with not the slightest
appearance of stealth, from the wood, and walked on before him with a
rapid, swinging stride. There were then three persons upon the road: the
girl in brown, the strange man in the fur-lined coat, and James Elliot.
James quickened his pace, but the other man kept ahead of him, and
reached the girl. He stopped and James broke into a run. He saw the man
place a hand upon the girl's shoulder, and make a motion as if to turn
her face toward his. James came up with a shout, and the man disappeared
abruptly, with a quick backward glance at James, into the wood.

The girl looked at James, and her little face under her brown plumed hat
was very white. "Oh," she gasped, as if she had always known him, "I am
so glad you are here! He frightened me terribly."

She tried to smile at James, although her poor little mouth was
quivering. "Who was he?" she asked.

[Illustration: "You don't think he will come back?" Page 21.]

"I don't know."

A sudden suspicion flashed into her eyes. "He wasn't with you?"

"No. I saw him on the edge of the woods back there, and I didn't like
his looks. When he started to follow you I hurried to catch up."

"Oh, thank you," said the girl fervently. "Do forgive me for asking if
you were with him. I knew you were not the minute I saw you. I did not
turn my face, although he tried to make me. I don't know why, but I do
know he was something terrible and wicked." The girl said this last with
a shudder. She caught hold of James's arm innocently, as a frightened
child might have done. "You don't think he will come back?"

"No, and if he does I will take care of you."

"He may be--armed."

Suddenly the girl reeled. "Don't let me faint away. I won't faint away,"
she said in an angry voice. James saw that she was actually biting her
lips to overcome the faintness.

"If you will sit down on that rock for a moment," said James, "I have
something in my medicine-case which will revive you. I am a doctor."

"I shall faint away if I sit down and give up to it, if I swallow your
whole case," said the girl weakly. "I know myself. Let me hold your arm
and walk, and don't make me talk, then I can get over it." She was
biting her lips almost to bleeding.

James walked on as he was bidden, with the slender little brown-clad
figure clinging to him. He realized that he had fallen in with a girl
who had a will which was possibly superior to anything in his
medicine-case when it came to overcoming fright.

They walked on until they came in sight of a farm-house, when the girl
spoke again, and James saw that the color was returning to her face. "I
am all right now," said she, and withdrew her hand from his arm. She
gave her head an angry, whimsical shake. "I am ashamed of myself," said
she, "but I was horribly frightened, and sometimes I do faint. I can
generally get the better of myself, but sometimes I can't. It always
makes me so angry. I do hope you don't think I am such an awful coward,
because I am not."

"I think most girls whom I have known would have made much more fuss
than you did," said James. "You never screamed."

"I never did scream in my life," said the girl. "I don't think I could.
I don't know how. I think if I did scream, I should certainly faint."

James stopped and opened his medicine-case. "I think you had better take
just a swallow of brandy," said he.

The girl thrust back the bottle which he offered her with high disdain.
"Brandy," said she, "just because I have been frightened a little! I
should be ashamed of myself if I did such a thing. I am ashamed now for
almost fainting away, but I should never forgive myself if I took brandy
because of it. If I haven't nerve enough to keep straight without
brandy, I should be a pretty poor specimen of a girl." She looked at him
indignantly, and James saw what he had not seen before (he had been so
engrossed with the strangeness of the situation), that she was a
beautiful girl with a singular type of beauty. She was very small, but
she gave the impression of intense springiness and wiriness. Although
she was thin, no one could have called her delicate. She looked as much
alive as a flame, with nerves on the surface from head to heel. Her eyes
were blue, not large, but full of light, her hair, which tossed around
her face in a soft fluff, was ash-blonde. Brown was the last color,
theoretically, which she should have worn, but it suited her. The ash
and brown, the two neutral tints, served to bring out the blue fire of
her eyes and the intense red of her lips. However, her beauty lay not so
much in her regular features as in the wonderful flame-like quality
which animated them, and which they assumed when she spoke or listened.
In repose, her face was as neutral as a rock or dead leaf. It was
neither beautiful nor otherwise. When it was animated, it was as if the
rock gave out silver lights of mica and rosy crystal under strong light,
and as if the dead leaf leapt into flame. James thought her much
prettier than any of his sisters or their friends, but he was led quite
unknowingly into this opinion, because of his own position as her
protector. That made him realize his own male gorgeousness and strength,
and he really saw the girl with such complacency instead of himself.

They walked along, and all at once he stopped short. Something occurred
to him, which, strange to say, had not occurred before. He was not in
the least cowardly. He was brave almost to foolhardiness. All at once
it occurred to him that he ought to follow the man.

"Good Lord!" said he and stopped.

"What is the matter?" asked the girl.

"Why, I must follow that man. He is a suspicious character. He ought not
to be left at large."

"I suppose you don't care if you leave me alone," said the girl
accusingly.

James stared at her doubtfully. There was that view of the situation.

"I am going to see my friend Annie Lipton, who lives in Westover. There
is half a mile of lonely road before I get there. That man, for all I
know, may be keeping sight of us in the woods over there. While you are
going back to chase him, he may come up with me. Well, run along if you
want to. I am not afraid." But the girl's lips quivered, and she paled
again.

James glanced at the stretch of road ahead. There was not a house in
sight. Woods were on one side, on the other was a rolling expanse of
meadowland covered with dried last year's grass, like coarse
oakum-colored hair.

"I think I had better keep on with you," James said.

"You can do exactly as you choose," the girl replied defiantly, but
tremulously. "I am not in the least dependent upon men to escort me. I
wander miles around by myself. This is the first time I have seemed to
be in the slightest danger. I dare say there was no danger this time,
only he came up behind like a cat, and--"

"He didn't say anything?"

"No, he didn't speak. He only tried to make me turn my head, so he could
see my face, and directly it seemed to me that I must die rather than
let him. He was trying to make me turn my head. I think maybe he was an
insane man."

"I will go on with you," said James.

They walked on for the half mile of which the girl had spoken. A sudden
shyness seemed to have come over both of them. Then they began to come
in sight of houses. "I am not afraid now," said the girl, "but I do
think you are very foolish if you go back alone and try to hunt that
man. Ten chances to one he is armed, and you haven't a thing to defend
yourself with, except that medicine-case."

"I have my fists," replied James indignantly.

"Fists don't count much against a revolver."

"Well, I am going to try," said James with emphasis.

"Good-by, then. You are treating me shamefully, though."

James stared at her in amazement. She was actually weeping, tears were
rolling over her cheeks.

"What do you mean?" said he. "Don't feel so badly."

"You can't be very quick-witted not to see. If you should meet that man,
and get killed, I should really be the one who killed you and not the
man."

"Why, no, you would not."

The girl stamped her foot. "Yes, I should, too," said she, half-sobbing.
"You would not have been killed except for me. You know you would not."

She spoke as if she actually saw the young man dead before her, and was
indignant because of it, and he burst into a peal of laughter.

"Laugh if you want to," said she. "It does not seem to me any laughing
matter to go and get yourself killed by me, and my having that on my
mind my whole life. I think I should go mad." Her voice shook, an
expression of horror came into her blue eyes.

James laughed again. "Very well, then," he said, "to oblige you I won't
get killed."

He, in fact, began to consider that the day was waning, and what a
wild-goose chase it would probably be for him to attempt to follow the
man. So again they walked on until they reached the main street of
Westover.

Westover was a small village, rather smaller than Gresham. They passed
three gin-mills, a church, and a grocery store. Then the girl stopped at
the corner of a side street. "My friend lives on this street," said she.
"Thank you very much. I don't know what I should have done if you had
not come. Good-by!" She went so quickly that James was not at all sure
that she heard his answering good-by. He thought again how very handsome
she was. Then he began to wonder where she lived, and how she would get
home from her friend's house, if the friend had a brother who would
escort her. He wondered who her friends were to let a girl like that
wander around alone in a State which had not the best reputation for
safety. He entertained the idea of waiting about until she left her
friend's house, then he considered the possible brother, and that the
girl herself might resent it, and he kept on. The western sky was
putting on wonderful tints of cowslip and rose deepening into violet. He
began considering his own future again, relegating the girl to the
background. He must be nearing Alton, he thought. After a three-mile
stretch of farming country, he saw houses again. Lights were gleaming
out in the windows. He heard wheels, and the regular trot of a horse
behind him, then a mud-bespattered buggy passed him, a shabby buggy, but
a strongly built one. The team of horses was going at a good clip. James
stood on one side, but the team and buggy had no sooner passed than he
heard a whoa! and a man's face peered around the buggy wing, not at
James, but at his medicine-case. James could just discern the face,
bearded and shadowy in the gathering gloom. Then a voice came. It
shouted, one word, the expressive patois of the countryside, that word
which may be at once a question and a salute, may express almost any
emotion. "Halloo!" said the voice.

This halloo involved a question, or so James understood it. He quickened
his pace, and came alongside the buggy. The face, more distinct now,
surveyed him, its owner leaning out over the side of the buggy. "Who are
you? Where are you bound?"

James answered the latter question. "I am going to Alton."

"To Doctor Gordon's?"

"Yes."

"Then you are Doctor Elliot?"

"Yes."

"Get in."

James climbed into the buggy. The other man took up the reins, and the
horse resumed his quick trot.

"You didn't come by train?" remarked the man.

"No. You are Doctor Gordon, I suppose?"

"Yes, I am. Why the devil did you walk?"

"To save my money," replied James, laughing. He realized nothing to be
ashamed of in his reply.

"But I thought your father was well-to-do."

"Yes, he is, but we don't ride when it costs money and we can walk. I
knew if I got to Alton by night, it would be soon enough. I like to
walk." James said that last rather defiantly. He began to realize a
certain amazement on the other man's part which might amount to an
imputation upon his father. "I have plenty of money in my pocket," he
added, "but I wanted the walk."

Doctor Gordon laughed. "Oh, well, a walk of twenty-five miles is nothing
to a young fellow like you, of course," he said. "I can understand that
you may like to stretch your legs. But you'll have to drive if you are
ever going to get anywhere when you begin practice with me."

"I suppose you have calls for miles around?"

"Rather." Doctor Gordon sighed. "It's a dog's life. I suppose you
haven't got that through your head yet?"

"I think it is a glorious profession," returned James, with his haughty
young enthusiasm.

"I wasn't talking about the profession," said the doctor; "I was talking
of the man who has to grind his way through it. It's a dog's life.
Neither your body nor your soul are your own. Oh, well, maybe you'll
like it."

"You seem to," remarked James rather pugnaciously.

"I? What can I do, young man, but stick to it whether I like it or not?
What would they do? Yes, I suppose I am fool enough to like a dog's
life, or rather to be unwilling to leave it. No money could induce me
anyhow. I suppose you know there is not much money in it?"

James said that he had not supposed a fortune was to be made in a
country practice.

"The last bill any of them will pay is the doctor's," said Doctor
Gordon. Then he added with a laugh, "especially when the doctor is
myself. They have to pay a specialist from New York, but I wait until
they are underground, and the relatives, I find, stick faster to the
monetary remains than the bark to a tree. If I hadn't a little private
fortune, and my--sister a little of her own, I expect we should starve."

James noticed with a little surprise the doctor's hesitation before he
spoke of his sister. It seemed then that he was not married. Somehow,
James had thought of him as married as a matter of course.

Doctor Gordon hastened to explain, as if divining the other's attitude.
"I dare say you don't know anything about my family relations," said he.
"My widowed sister, Mrs. Ewing, keeps house for me. I live with her and
her daughter. I think you will like them both, and I think they will
like you, though I'll be hanged if I have grasped anything of you so far
but your medicine-case and your voice. Your voice is all right. You give
yourself away by it, and I always like that."

James straightened himself a little. There was something bantering in
the other's tone. It made him feel young, and he resented being made to
feel young. He himself at that time felt older than he ever would feel
again. He realized that he was not being properly estimated. "If," said
he, with some heat, "a patient can make out anything by my voice as to
what I think, I miss my guess."

"I dare say not," said Doctor Gordon, and his own voice was as if he put
the matter aside.

He spoke to the horse, whose trot quickened, and they went on in
silence.

At last James began to feel rather ashamed of himself. He unstiffened.
"I had quite an exciting and curious experience after I left
Stanbridge," said he.

"Did you?" said the other in an absent voice.

James went on to relate the matter in detail. His companion turned an
intent face upon him as he proceeded. "How far back was it?" he asked,
and his tone was noticeably agitated.

"Just after I left the last house in Stanbridge. We went on together to
Westover. She mentioned something about going to see a friend there. I
think Lipton was the name, and she left me suddenly."

"What was the girl like?"

"Small and slight, and very pretty."

"Dressed in brown?"

"Yes."

"How did the man look?" Doctor Gordon's voice fairly alarmed the young
man.

"I hardly can say. I saw him distinctly, but only for a second. The
impression he gave me was of a middle-aged man, although he looked
young."

"Good-looking?"

"My God, no!" said James, as the man's face seemed to loom up before him
again. "He looked like the devil."

"A man may look like the devil, and yet be distinctly handsome."

"Well, I suppose he was; but give me the homeliest face on earth rather
than a face like that man's, if I must needs have anything to do with
him." The young fellow's voice broke. He was very young. He caught the
other man by his rough coat sleeve. "See here, Doctor Gordon," said he,
"my profession is to save life. That is the main end of it but, but--I
don't honestly know what I should think right, if I were asked to save
_that_ man's life."

"Was he well dressed?"

"More than well dressed, richly, a fur-lined coat--"

"Tall?"

"Yes, above the medium, but he stooped a little, like a cat, sort of
stretched to the ground like an animal, when he hurried along after the
girl in front of me."

Doctor Gordon struck the horse with his whip, and he broke into a
gallop. "We are almost home," said he. "I shall have to leave you with
slight ceremony. I have to go out again immediately."

Doctor Gordon had hardly finished speaking before they drew up in front
of a white house on the left of the road. "Get out," he said
peremptorily to James. The front door opened, and a parallelogram of
lighted interior became visible. In this expanse of light stood a tall
woman's figure. "Clara, this is the new doctor," called out Doctor
Gordon. "Take him in and take care of him."

"Have you got to go away again?" said the woman's voice. It was sweet
and rich, but had a curious sad quality in it.

"Yes, I must. I shall not be gone long. Don't wait supper."

"Aren't you going to change the horse?"

"Can't stop. Go right in, Elliot. Clara, look after him."

James Elliot found himself in the house, confronting the most beautiful
woman he had ever seen, as the rapid trot of the doctor's horse receded
in vistas of sound.

James almost gasped. He had never seen such a woman. He had seen pretty
girls. Now he suddenly realized that a girl was not a woman, and no more
to be compared with her than an uncut gem with one whose facets take the
utmost light.

The boy stood staring at this wonderful woman. She extended her hand to
him, but he did not see it. She said some gracious words of greeting to
him, but he did not hear them. She might have been the Venus de Milo for
all he heard or realized of sentient life in her. He was rapt in
contemplation of herself, so rapt that he was oblivious of her. She
smiled. She was accustomed to having men, especially very young men,
take such an attitude on first seeing her. She did not wait any longer,
but herself took the young man's hand, and drew him gently into the
room, and spoke so insistently that she compelled him to leave her and
attend. "I suppose you are Doctor Gordon's assistant?" she said.

James relapsed into the tricks of his childhood. "Yes, ma'am," he
replied. Then he blushed furiously, but the woman seemed to notice
neither the provincial term nor his confusion. He found himself somehow,
he did not know how, divested of his overcoat, and the vision had
disappeared, having left some words about dinner ringing in his ears,
and he was sitting before a hearth-fire in a large leather easy-chair.
Then he looked about the room in much the same dazed fashion in which he
had contemplated the woman. He had never seen a room like it. He was
used to conventionality, albeit richness, and a degree even of luxury.
Here were absolute unconventionality, richness, and luxury of a kind
utterly strange to him. The room was very large and long, extending
nearly the whole length of the house. There were many windows with
Eastern rugs instead of curtains. There were Eastern things hung on the
walls which gave out dull gleams of gold and silver and topaz and
turquoise. There were a great many books on low shelves. There were
bronzes, jars, and squat idols. There were a few pieces of Chinese ivory
work. There were many skins of lions, bears, and tigers on the floor,
besides a great Persian rug which gleamed like a blurred jewel. Besides
the firelight there was only one great bronze lamp to illuminate the
room. This lamp had a red shade, which cast a soft, fiery glow over
everything. There were not many pictures. The rich Eastern stuffs, and
even a skin or two of tawny hue, covered most of the wall-spaces above
the book-cases, giving backgrounds of color to bronzes and ivory
carvings, but there was one picture at the farther end of the room which
attracted James's notice. All that he could distinguish from where he
sat was a splash of splendid red.

He gazed, and his curiosity grew. Finally he rose, traversed the room,
and came close to the picture. It was a portrait of the woman who had
met him at the door. The red was the red of a splendid robe of velvet.
The portrait was evidently the work of no mean artist. The texture of
the velvet was something wonderful, so were the flesh tones; but James
missed something in the face. The portrait had been painted, he knew
instinctively, before some great change had come into the woman's heart,
which had given her another aspect of beauty.

James turned away. Then he noticed something else which seemed rather
odd about the room. All the windows were furnished with heavy wooden
shutters, and, early as it was, hardly dark, all were closed, and
fastened securely. James somehow got an impression of secrecy, that it
was considered necessary that no glimpse of the interior should be
obtained from without after the lamp was lit. They sat often carelessly
at his own home of an evening with the shades up, and all the interior
of the room plainly visible from the road. An utter lack of secrecy was
in James's own character. He scowled a little, as he returned to his
seat by the fire. He was too confused to think clearly, but he was
conscious of a certain homesickness for the wonted things of his life,
when the door opened and the woman reëntered.

James rose, and she spoke in her sweet voice. It was rather lower
pitched than the voices of most women, and had a resonant quality. "Your
room is quite ready, Doctor Elliot," said she. "Your trunk is there. If
you would like to go there before dinner, I will pilot you. We have but
one maid, and she is preparing the dinner, which will be ready as soon
as you are. I hope Doctor Gordon and Clemency will have returned by that
time, too."

By Clemency James understood that she meant her daughter, of whom Doctor
Gordon had spoken. He wondered at the unusual name, as he followed his
hostess. His room was on the same floor as the living-room. She threw
open a door at the other side of the hall, and James saw an exceedingly
comfortable apartment with a hearth-fire, with book-shelves, and a
couch-bed covered with a rug, and a desk. "I thought you would prefer
this room," said the woman. "There are others on the second floor, but
this has the advantage of your being able to use it as a sitting-room,
and you may like to have your friends, whom I trust you will find in
Alton, come in from time to time. You will please make yourself quite
at home."

James had not yet fairly comprehended the beauty of the woman. He was
still too dazzled. Had he gone away at that time, he could not for the
life of him have described her, but he did glance, as a woman might have
done, at her gown. It was of a soft heavy red silk, trimmed with lace,
and was cut out in a small square at the throat. This glimpse of firm
white throat made James wonder as to evening costume for himself. At
home he never dreamed of such a thing, but here it might be different.
His hostess divined his thoughts. She smiled at him as if he were a
child. "No," said she, "you do not need to dress for dinner. Doctor
Gordon never does when we are by ourselves."

Then she went away, closing the door softly after her.

James noticed that over the windows of this room were only ordinary
shades, and curtains of some soft red stuff. There were no shutters. He
looked about him. He was charmed with his room, and it did away to a
great extent with his feeling of homesickness. It was not unlike what
his room at college had been. It was more like all rooms. He had no
feeling of the secrecy which the great living-room gave him, and which
irritated him. He brushed his clothes and his hair, and washed his hands
and face. While he was doing so he heard wheels and a horse's fast trot.
He guessed immediately that the doctor had returned. He therefore, as
soon as he had completed the slight changes in his toilet, started to
return to the living-room. Crossing the hall he met Doctor Gordon, who
seized him by the shoulder, and whispered in his ear, "Not a word before
Mrs. Ewing about what happened this afternoon."

James nodded. "More mystery," thought he with asperity.

"You have not spoken of it to her already, I hope," said Doctor Gordon
with quick anxiety.

"No, I have not. I have scarcely seen her."

"Well, not a word, I beg of you. She is very nervous."

The doctor had been removing his overcoat and hat. When he had hung them
on some stag's horn in the hall, he went with James into the
living-room.

There, beside the fire, sat the girl in brown whom James had met that
afternoon on the road.




CHAPTER II


She looked up when he entered, and there was in her young girl face the
very slightest shade of recognition. She could not help it, for Clemency
was candor itself. Then she bowed very formally, and shook hands
sedately when Doctor Gordon introduced James as Doctor Elliot, his new
assistant, and carried off her part very well. James was not so
successful. He colored and was somewhat confused, but nobody appeared to
notice it. Clemency went on relating how glad she was that Uncle Tom met
her as she was coming home from Annie Lipton's. "I am never afraid,"
said she, and her little face betrayed the lie, "but I was tired, and
besides I was beginning to be cold, for I went out without my fur."

"You should not have gone without it. It grows so cold when the sun goes
down," said Mrs. Ewing. Then a chime of Japanese bells was heard which
announced dinner.

"Doctor Elliot will be glad of dinner," said Doctor Gordon. "He has
walked all the way from Gresham."

Clemency looked at him with approval, and tried to look as if she had
never seen him walking in her life. "That is a good walk," said she.
"Twenty-five miles it must be. If more men walked instead of working
poor horses all the time, it would be better for them."

"That is a hint for your Uncle Tom," said Gordon laughingly.


"I never hint," said Clemency. "It is just a plain statement. Men are
walking animals. They could travel as well as horses in the course of
time if they only put their minds to it."

"Well, your old uncle's bones must be saved, even at the expense of the
horse's," said Doctor Gordon.

"Bones are improved by use," said Clemency severely, as she took her
seat at the dinner-table. They all laughed. The girl herself relaxed her
pretty face with a whimsical smile. It was quite evident that Clemency
was the spoiled and petted darling of the house, and that she traded
innocently upon the fact. The young doctor, although his first
impression of the elder woman was still upon him, yet realized the
charm of the young girl. The older woman was, as it were, crowned with
an aureole of perfection, but the young girl was crowned with
possibilities which dazzled with mystery. She looked prettier, now that
her outer garments were removed, and her thick crown of ash-blonde hair
was revealed. The lamp lit her eyes into bluer flame. She was a darling
of a young girl, and more a darling because she had the sweetest
confidence in everybody thinking her one.

However, James Elliot, sitting in the well-appointed dining-room, which
was more like a city house than a little New Jersey dwelling, did not
for a second retreat from his first impression of Mrs. Ewing. Behind the
coffee-urn sat the woman with whom he had not fallen in love, that was
too poor a term to use. He had become a worshipper. He felt himself,
body and soul, prostrate before the Divinity of Womanhood itself. He
realized the grandeur of the abstract in the individual. What was any
spoiled, sweet young girl to that? And Mrs. Ewing was, in truth, a
wonderful creature. She was a large woman with a great quantity of
blue-black hair, which had the ripples one sees in antique statues. Her
eyes, black at first glance, were in reality dark blue. Her face gave
one a never-ending surprise. James had not known that a woman could be
so beautiful. Vague comparisons with the Greek Helen, or Cleopatra, came
into his head. Now and then he stole a glance at her. He dared not
often. She did not talk much, but he was rather pleased with that fact,
although her voice was so sweet and gracious. Speech in a creature like
that was not an essential. It might even be an excrescence upon a
perfection. It did not occur to the dazed mind of her worshipper that
Mrs. Ewing might have very simple and ordinary reasons for not
talking--that she might be tired or ill, or preoccupied. But after a
number of those stolen glances, James discovered with a great pang, as
if one should see for the first time that the arms of the Venus were
really gone, when his fancy had supplied them, that the woman did not
look well. In spite of her beauty, there was ill-health evident in her
face. James was a mere tyro in his profession as yet, but certain
infallible signs were there which he could not mistake. They were the
signs of suffering, possibly of very great suffering. She ate very
little, James noticed, although she made a pretense of eating as much
as any one. James saw that Doctor Gordon also noticed it. When the maid
was taking away Mrs. Ewing's plate, he spoke with a gruffness which
astonished the young man. "For Heaven's sake, why don't you eat your
dinner, Clara?" said he. "Emma, replace Mrs. Ewing's plate. Now, Clara,
eat your dinner." To James's utter astonishment, Mrs. Ewing obeyed like
a child. She ate every morsel, although she could not restrain her
expression of loathing. When the salad and dessert were brought on she
ate them also.

Doctor Gordon watched her with what seemed, to the young man, positive
brutality. His mouth under his heavy beard quivered perceptibly whenever
he looked at his sister eating, his forehead became corrugated, and his
deep-set eyes sparkled. James was heartily glad when dinner was over,
and, at Doctor Gordon's request, he followed him into his office.

Doctor Gordon's office was a small room at the back of the house. It had
an outer door communicating with a path which led to the stable. Two
sides of the room were lined with medical books, and two with bottles
containing diverse colored mixtures. A hanging lamp was over the center
of a long table in the middle of the room. Around it dangled prisms,
which cast rainbow colors over everything. The first thing which struck
one on entering the room was the extraordinary color scheme: the dull
gleams of the books, the medicine bottles which had lights like jewels,
and over all the flickers of prismatic hues. The long table was covered
with corks, empty bottles, books, a medicine-case, and newspapers,
besides a mighty inkstand and writing materials. There were also a box
of cigars, a great leather tobacco pouch, and, interspersed among all, a
multitude of pipes. The doctor drew a chair beside this chaotic table
lit with rainbow lights, and invited James to sit down. "Sit down a
moment," he said. "Will you have a pipe or a cigar?"

"Cigar, please," replied James. The doctor pushed the box toward him.
James realized immediately a ten-cent cigar at the least when he began
to smoke. Doctor Gordon filled a pipe mechanically. His face still wore
the gloomy, almost fierce, expression which it had assumed at table. He
was a handsome man in a rough, sketchy fashion. His face was blurred
with a gray grizzle of beard. He wore his hair rather long, and he had
a fashion of running his fingers through it, which made it look like a
thick brush. He dressed rather carelessly, still like a gentleman. His
clothes were slouchy, and needed brushing, but his linen was immaculate.

Doctor Gordon smoked in silence, which his young assistant was too shy
to break. The elder man finished his pipe, then he rose with an
impatient gesture and shook himself like a great shaggy dog. "Come,
young man," said he, "we don't want to spend the evening like this. Get
your hat and coat."

James obeyed, and the two men left the office by the outer door which
opened on the stable. As they came around by the front of the house
Clemency stood in the doorway.

"Are you going out, you and Doctor Elliot, Uncle Tom?" she called.

"Yes, dear; why?"

"Patients?"

"No; we are going down to Georgie K.'s. Tell your mother to go to bed at
once."

When the two men were out in the street, walking briskly in the keen
frosty air, James ventured a question. "Mrs. Ewing is not well, is she?"
he said. He fairly started at the way in which his question was
received. Doctor Gordon turned upon him even fiercely.

"She is perfectly well, perfectly well," he replied.

"She does not look--" began James.

"When you are as old as I am you can venture to diagnose on a woman's
looks," said Gordon. "Clara is perfectly well."

James said no more. They walked on in silence under a pale sky. Above a
low mountain range on their right was a faint light which indicated the
coming of the moon. The ground was frozen in hard ridges. James walked
behind the doctor on the narrow blue stone walk which served as
sidewalk.

"This town has made no provision whatever for courting couples," said
Doctor Gordon suddenly, and to James's astonishment his whole manner and
voice had changed. It was far from gloomy. It was jocular even.

James laughed. "Yes, it would be difficult for two to walk arm in arm,
however loving," he returned.

"Just so," said the doctor, "and the funny part of it is that this
narrow sidewalk was intentional."

"Not for such a purpose?"

"Exactly so. It was given to the town by a rich spinster who died about
twenty years ago. It was given in her will on condition that it should
not be more than two feet wide."

"For that reason?"

"Just that reason. She had been jilted in her youth, and her heart had
been wrung by the sight of her rival passing her very window where she
sat watching for her lover, arm in arm with him. It was in summer, and
the dirt sidewalk was dry. She made up her mind, then and there, that
that sort of thing should be prevented."

They had just reached a handsome old house standing close to the narrow
sidewalk. In fact, its windows opened directly upon it.

"This is the house," the doctor said in corroboration. James laughed,
but he wondered within himself if he were being told fish tales. Doctor
Gordon made him feel so very young that he resented it. He resented it
the more when he realized the new glow of adoration in his heart for
that older woman whom they had left behind. He began wondering about
her: how much older she was. He said to himself that he did not care if
she were old enough to be his mother, his grandmother even, there was no
one in the whole world like her.

Then they came to the hotel, the Evarts House. It was rather
pretentious, well built, with great columns in front supporting double
verandas. It was also well lighted. It was evidently far above the usual
order of a road house. Doctor Gordon entered, with James at his heels.
They went into the great low room at the right of the door, which was
the bar-room. Behind the bar stood an enormous man, yellow haired and
yellow bearded, dispensing drinks. The whole low interior was dim with
tobacco smoke, and scented with various liquors and spices. There was on
one side a great fireplace, in which stood earthen pitchers, in which
cider was being mulled with red-hot pokers, eager vinous faces watching.
Nobody was intoxicated, but there was a general hum of hilarity and
gusto of life about the place, an animal enjoyment of good cheer and
jollity. It was in truth not respectable to get entirely drunk in Alton.
It was genteel to become "set up," exhilarated, but the real gutter form
of inebriety was frowned upon to a much greater extent than in many
places where there was less license.

"Hullo!" sang out Doctor Gordon as he entered. Immediately a grin of
comradeship overspread the pink face of the yellow-haired giant behind
the bar. "Hullo!" he responded. "Just step into the other room, and I'll
be there right away."

James followed Doctor Gordon into what was evidently the state parlor of
the hotel. There was haircloth furniture, and a mahogany table, with
various stains of conviviality upon its polished surface. There was a
fire on the hearth, and on the mantel stood some gilded vases and a
glass case of wax-flowers, also a stuffed canary under a glass shade,
pathetic on his little twig. Doctor Gordon pointed to the flowers and
the canary. "Poor old man lost his wife, when he had been married two
years," he said. "She and the baby both died. That was before I came
here. Damned if I wouldn't have pulled them through. That was her bird,
and she made those fool flowers, poor little thing. I suppose if the
hotel were to take fire Georgie K. would go for them before all the cash
in the till."

"He hasn't married again?"

"Married again! It's my belief he'd shoot the man that mentioned it."

Then Georgie K. entered, his rosy face distended with a smile of the
most intense hospitality, and before Doctor Gordon had a chance to
introduce James, he said, "What'll you take, gentlemen?"

"This is my new assistant, from Gresham, Doctor Elliot," said Gordon.
Georgie K. made a bow, and scraped his foot at the same time with a
curiously boyish gesture. "What'll you take?" he asked again. That was
evidently his formula of hospitality, which must never be delayed.

"Apple-jack," responded Doctor Gordon promptly. "You had better take
apple-jack too, young man. Georgie K. has gin that beats the record, and
peach brandy, but when it comes to his apple-jack--it's worth the whole
State of New Jersey."

"All right," answered James.

Soon he found himself seated at the stained old mahogany table with the
two men, and between two glasses, a bottle, and a pitcher of hot water.
Doctor Gordon dealt a pack of dirty cards while the hotel keeper poured
the apple-jack. James could not help staring at the elder doctor with
more and more amazement. He seemed to assimilate perfectly with his
surroundings. The tormented expression had gone from his face. He was
simply convivial, and of the same sort as Georgie K. He no longer
looked even a gentleman. He had become of the soil, the New Jersey soil.
As they drank and played, he told stories, and roared with laughter at
them. The stories also belonged to the soil, they were folk lore, wild,
coarse, but full of humanity. Although Doctor Gordon drank freely of the
rich mellow liquor, it did not apparently affect him. His cheeks above
his gray furze of beard became slightly flushed, that was all.

James drank rather sparingly. The stuff seemed to him rather fiery, and
he remembered the goddess in the doctor's house. He could imagine her
look of high disdain at him should he return under the influence of
liquor. Besides, he did not particularly care for the apple-jack.

It was midnight before they left. Georgie K. went to the door with them,
and he and the doctor shook hands heartily. "Come again," said Georgie
K., "and the sooner the better, and bring the young Doc. We'll make him
have a good time."

Until they were near home, Doctor Gordon continued his strangely
incongruous conversation, telling story after story, and shouting with
laughter. When they came in sight of the house Gordon stopped suddenly
and leaned against a great maple beside the road. He stared at the
house, two of the upper windows of which were lighted, and gave a great
sigh, almost a groan. James stopped also and stared at him. He wondered
if the apple-jack had gone to the doctor's head after all. "What is the
matter?" he ventured.

"Nothing, except the race is at a finish, and I am caught as I always
am," replied Doctor Gordon.

"The race--" repeated James vaguely.

"Yes, the race with myself. Myself has caught up with me, God help me,
and I am in its clutches. The time may come when you will try to race
with self, my boy. Let me tell you, you will never win. You will tire
yourself out, and make a damned idiot of yourself for nothing. I shall
race again to-morrow. I never learn the lesson, but perhaps you can, you
are young. Well, come along. Please be as quiet as you can when you go
into the house. My sister may be asleep. She is perfectly well, but she
is a little nervous. I need not repeat my request that you do not
mention your adventure with Clemency this afternoon to her."

"Certainly not," said James. He walked on beside the doctor, and entered
the house, more and more mystified. James was not sure, but he thought
he heard the faintest little moan from upstairs. He glanced at Doctor
Gordon's face, and it was again the face of the man whom he had seen
before going to Georgie K.'s.




CHAPTER III


The next morning after breakfast, at which Mrs. Ewing did not appear,
Doctor Gordon observed that she always took her rolls and coffee in bed.
James followed Doctor Gordon into his office. Clemency, who had presided
at the coffee urn, had done so silently, and looked, so James thought,
rather sulky, as if something had gone wrong. Directly James was in the
office, the doctor's man, Aaron, appeared. He was a tall, lank
Jerseyman, incessantly chewing. His lean, yellow jaws appeared to have
acquired a permanent rotary motion, but he had keen eyes of intelligence
upon the doctor as he gave his orders.

"Put in the team," said Gordon. "We are going to Haver's Corner. Old Sam
Edwards is pretty low, and I ought to have gone there yesterday, but I
didn't know whether that child with diphtheria at Tucker's Mill would
live the day out. Now he has seen the worst of it, thank the Lord! But
to-day I must go to Haver's. I want to make good time, for there's
something going on this afternoon, and I want an hour off if I can get
it." Again the expression of simple jocularity was over the man's face,
and James remembered what he had said the night before about again
running a race with himself the next day.

After Aaron had gone out Gordon turned to James. He pointed to his great
medicine-case on the table. "You might see to it that the bottles are
all filled," he said. "You will find the medicines yonder." He pointed
to the shelf. "I have to speak to Clemency before I go."

James obeyed. As he worked filling the bottles he heard dimly Gordon's
voice talking to Clemency on the other side of the wall. The girl seemed
to be expostulating.

When Doctor Gordon returned Aaron was at his heels with an immense
bottle containing a small quantity of red fluid. "S'pose you'll want
this filled?" he said to Gordon with a grin which only disturbed for a
second his rotary jaws.

"Oh, yes, of course," replied Gordon, "we want the aqua."

James stared at him as he poured a little red-colored liquid from one of
the bottles on the shelves into the big one. "Now fill it up from the
pump, and put it in the buggy; be sure the cork is in tight," he said to
Aaron.

Gordon looked laughingly at James when the man had gone. "I infer that
you are wondering what 'aqua' may be," he said.

"I was brought up to think it was water," said James.

"So it is, water pure and simple, with a little coloring matter thrown
in. Bless you, boy, the people around here want their medicines by the
quart, and if they had them by the quart, good-by to the doctor's job,
and ho for the undertaker! So the doctor is obliged to impose upon the
credulity of the avariciously innocent, and dilute the medicine. Bless
you, I have patients who would accuse me of cheating if I prescribed
less than a cupful of medicine at a time. They have to be humored. After
all, they are a harmless, good lot, but stiffened with hereditary ideas,
worse than by rheumatism. If I should give a few drops in half a glass
of water, and order a teaspoonful at a time, I should fly in the face of
something which no mortal man can conquer, sheer heredity. The
grandfathers and great-grandfathers of these people took their physic on
draft, the children must do likewise. Sometimes I even think the
medicine would lose its effect if taken in any other way. Nobody can
estimate the power of a fixed idea upon the body. All the same, it is a
confounded nuisance carrying around the aqua. I will confess, although I
see the necessity of yielding, that I have less patience with men's
stiff-necked stupidity than I have with their sins."

James drove all the morning with Doctor Gordon about the New Jersey
country. It was a moist, damp day, such as sometimes comes even in
winter. It was a dog day with an atmosphere slightly cooler than that of
midsummer. Overcoats were oppressive, the horses steamed. The roads were
deep with red mud, which clogged the wheels and made the hoofs of the
horses heavy. "It's a damned soil," said Doctor Gordon. This morning
after appearing somewhat saturnine at breakfast, he was again in his
unnatural, rollicking mood. He hailed everybody whom he met. He joked
with the patients and their relatives in the farmhouses, approached
through cart-tracks of mire, and fluttered about by chickens, quacking
geese, and dead leaves. Now and then, stately ranks of turkeys charged
in line of battle upon the muddy buggy, and the team, being used to it,
stood their ground, and snorted contemptuously. The country people were
either saturnine with an odd shyness, which had something almost hostile
in it, or they were effusively hospitable, forcing apple-jack upon the
two doctors. James was much struck by the curious unconcern shown by the
relatives of the patients, and even by the patients themselves. In only
one case, and that of a child suffering from a bad case of measles, was
much interest evinced. The majority of the patients were the very old
and middle-aged, and they discussed, and heard discussed, their symptoms
with much the same attitude as they might have discussed the mechanism
of a wooden doll. If any emotion was shown it was that of a singular
inverted pride. "I had a terrible night, doctor," said one old woman,
and a smirk of self-conceit was over her ancient face. "Yes, mother
_did_ have an awful night," said her married daughter with a triumphant
expression. Even the children clustering about the doctor looked
unconsciously proud because their old grandmother had had an awful
night. The call of the two doctors at the house was positively
hilarious. Quantities of old apple-jack were forced upon them. The old
woman in the adjoining bedroom, although she was evidently suffering,
kept calling out a feeble joke in her cackling old voice.

"Those people seem positively elated because that old soul is sick,"
said James when he and the doctor were again in the buggy.

"They are," said Doctor Gordon, "even the old woman herself, who knows
well enough that she has not long to live. Did you ever think that the
desire of distinction was one of the most, perhaps the most, intense
purely spiritual emotion of the human soul? Look at the way these people
live here, grubbing away at the soil like ants. The most of them have in
their lives just three ways of attracting notice, the momentary
consideration of their kind: birth, marriage, sickness and death. With
the first they are hardly actively concerned, even with the second many
have nothing to do. There are more women than men as usual, and although
the women want to marry, all the men do not. There remains only sickness
and death for a stand-by, so to speak. If one of them is really sick and
dies, the people are aroused to take notice. The sick person and the
corpse have a certain state and dignity which they have never attained
before. Why, bless you, man, I have one patient, a middle-aged woman,
who has been laid up for years with rheumatism, and she is fairly
vainglorious, and so is her mother. She brags of her invalid daughter.
If she had been merely an old maid on her hands, she would have been
ashamed of her, and the woman herself would have been sour and
discontented. But she has fairly married rheumatism. It has been to her
as a husband and children. I tell you, young man, one has to have his
little footstool of elevation among his fellows, even if it is a mighty
queer one, or he loses his self-respect, and self-respect is the best
jewel we have."

They were now out in the road again, the team plodding heavily through
the red shale. "It's a damned soil," said the doctor for the second
time. He looked down at the young man beside him, and James again felt
that resentful sense of youth and inexperience. "I don't know how you've
been brought up," said the elder man. "I don't want to infuse heretic
notions into your innocent mind."

James straightened himself. He tried to give the other man a knowing
look. "I have been about a good deal," he said. "You need not be afraid
of corrupting _me_."

Doctor Gordon laughed. "Well, I shall not try," he said. "At least, I
shall not mean to corrupt you. I am a pessimist, but you are so young
that you ought not to be influenced by that. Lord, only think what may
be before you. You don't know. I am so far along that I know as far as I
am concerned. I did not know but you had been brought up to think that
whatever the Lord made was good, and that in saying that this red, gluey
New Jersey soil was darned bad, I was swearing the worst way. I don't
want to have millstones and that sort of thing about my neck. I was
quite up in the Scriptures at one time."

"You need not be afraid," said James with dignity; "I think the soil
darned bad myself." He hesitated a little over the darned, but once it
was out, he felt proud of it.

"Yes, it is," said Doctor Gordon, "and if the Lord made it, he did not
altogether succeed, and I see no earthly way of tracing the New Jersey
soil back to original sin and the Garden of Eden."

"That's so," said James.

Doctor Gordon's face grew sober, his jocular mood for the time had
vanished. He was his true self. "Did it ever occur to you that disease
was the devil?" he asked abruptly. "That is, that all these infernal
microbes that burrow in the human system to its disease and death, were
his veritable imps at work?"

James shook his head, and looked curiously at his companion's face with
its gloomy corrugations.

"Well, it has to me," said the doctor, "and let me ask you one thing.
You have been brought up to believe that the devil's particular
residence was hell, haven't you?"

James replied in a bewildered fashion that he had.

"Well," said Doctor Gordon, "if the devil lives here, as he must live,
when there's such failures in the way of soil, and such climates, and
such fiendish diseases, and crimes, why, this is hell."

James stared at him.

Doctor Gordon nodded half-gloomily, half-whimsically. "It's so," he
said. "We call it earth; but it's hell."

James said nothing. The doctor's gloomy theology was too much for him.
Besides, he was not quite sure that the elder man was not chaffing him.

"Well," said Doctor Gordon presently, "hell it is, but there are
compensations, such as apple-jack, and now and then there's something
doing that amuses one even here. I am going to take you to something
that enlivens hell this afternoon, if somebody doesn't send a call. I am
trying to get my work done this morning, the worst of it, so as to have
an hour this afternoon."

The two returned a little after twelve, and found luncheon waiting for
them. Mrs. Ewing took her place at the table, and James thought that she
did not look quite so ill as she had done the evening before. She talked
more, and ate with some appetite. Doctor Gordon's face lightened, not
with the false gayety which James had seen, but he really looked quite
happy, and spoke affectionately to his sister.

"What do you think, Tom," said she, "has come over Clemency? I don't
know when there has been a morning that she has not gone for a tramp,
rain or shine, but she has not stirred out to-day. She says she feels
quite well, but I don't know."

"Oh, Clemency is all right," said Doctor Gordon, but his face darkened
again. As for Clemency, she bent over her plate and looked sulkier than
ever. She fairly pouted.

"She can go out this afternoon," said Mrs. Ewing. "It looks as if it
were going to clear off."

"No, I don't want to go," said Clemency. "I am all out of the humor of
it." She spoke with an air of animosity, as if somebody were to blame,
but when she saw Mrs. Ewing's anxious eyes she smiled. "I would much
prefer staying with you, dear," she said, "and finish Annie's Christmas
present." She spoke with such an affectionate air, that James looked
admiringly at her. She seemed a fellow-worshipper. He thought that he,
too, would much prefer staying with Mrs. Ewing than going with Doctor
Gordon on the mysterious outing which he had planned.

However, directly after luncheon Gordon led James out into the stable
and called Aaron. "Are they ready, Aaron?" inquired the doctor.

Aaron grinned, opened a rude closet, and produced a number of objects,
which James recognized at once as dummy pigeons. So Doctor Gordon was to
take him to a pigeon-shooting match. James felt a little disgusted. He
had, in fact, taken part in that sport with considerable gusto himself,
but, just now, he being fairly launched, as it were, upon the serious
things of life, took it somewhat in dudgeon that Doctor Gordon should
think to amuse him with such frivolities. But to his amazement the
elder man's face was all a-quiver with mirth and fairly eager. "Show the
pigeons to Doctor Elliot, Aaron," said Doctor Gordon. James took one of
the rude disks called pigeons from the hand of Aaron with indifference,
then he started and stared at Doctor Gordon, who laughed like a boy,
fairly doubling himself with merriment. Aaron did not laugh, he chewed
on, but his eyes danced.

"Why, they are--" stammered James.

"Just so, young man," replied Doctor Gordon. "They are wood. Aaron made
them on a lathe, and not a soul can tell them from the clay pigeons
unless they handle them. Now you are going to see some fun. Jim Goodman,
who is the meanest skunk in town, has cheated every mother's son of us
first and last, and this afternoon he is going to shoot against Albert
Dodd, and he's going to get his finish! Dodd knows about it. He'll have
clay pigeons all right. Goodman has put up quite a sum of money, and he
stands fair to lose for once in his life."

"Come on, Aaron, put the bay mare in the buggy. We'll drive down to the
field. We haven't got much time to spare."

Aaron backed the mare out of her stall and hitched her to the
mud-bespattered buggy, and the two men drove off with the wooden pigeons
under the seat. They had not far to go, to a large field intersected
with various footpaths and with, a large bare space, which evidently
served as a football gridiron. "This field is used like town property,"
explained the doctor, "but the funny part of it is, it belongs to an old
woman who is, perhaps, the richest person in Alton, and asks such a
price for the land that nobody can buy it, and it has never occurred to
her to keep off trespassers. So everybody trespasses, and she pays the
taxes, and we are all satisfied, especially as there are plenty of
better building sites in Alton to be bought for less money. That old
woman bites her nose off every day, and never knows it."

On this barren expanse, intersected with the narrow footpaths, covered
between with the no color of last year's dry weeds and grass, were
assembled some half dozen men and boys. They rushed up as the doctor's
buggy came alongside. "Got 'em?" they cried eagerly. Doctor Gordon
fumbled under the seat and drew out the batch of wooden pigeons, which
one young fellow, who seemed to be master of ceremonies, grasped and
rushed off with to the queer-looking machine erected in the centre of
the football clearing, for the purpose of making them take wing. The
others went with him. Doctor Gordon got out of his buggy, accompanied by
James, and they, too, joined the little group. "Got the others?" asked
Gordon in a half whisper.

"Yes, you bet. We've got the others all right," said the young fellow,
and everybody laughed.

Men and boys began to gather until the field was half filled with them.
They all wore grinning countenances. "For Heaven's sake, boys, don't act
as if it were so awful funny, or you'll spoil the whole thing," said the
young fellow who had come for the pigeons.

Only one face was entirely sober, even severe, as with resolve, and that
was the face of a small, mean-looking man between forty and fifty. He
carried a gun, and looked at once important and greedy. "That's Jim
Goodman," whispered Doctor Gordon to James, "and he's a crack shot, too.
Albert isn't as sure, though he's pretty good, too."

James began to catch the spirit of it himself. He felt at once disgusted
and uneasy about the doctor, but as for himself he was only a young
man, after all, and sport was still sweet to his soul. He shouted with
the rest when the first pigeon was launched into the air, and Albert
Dodd, a tall, serious young man, fired. He hit the bird, which at once
flew into fragments, as a clay pigeon properly should.

Georgie K. came up and joined them. He was evidently not in the secret,
for he looked intensely puzzled when Jim Goodman, who had next shot, hit
his bird fairly, but it only hopped about and descended unbroken. "What
the deuce!" he said.

"Hush up, Georgie K.," said Doctor Gordon. The other man turned and
looked at him keenly, but the doctor's imperturbable, smiling face was
on the sport. Georgie K.'s great pink face grew grave. Every time Albert
Dodd fired the pigeons dropped in pieces, every time Jim Goodman fired
they hopped as if they were alive. Jim Goodman swore audibly. He looked
to his cartridges. The whole field was in an uproar of mirth. The
gunshots were hardly audible for the yells and wild halloos of
merriment. The match at last was finished. Jim Goodman's last pigeon
hopped, and he was upon it in a rage. He took it up and examined it. It
was riddled with shot. He felt it, weighed it. Then his face grew
fairly black. From being only mean, he looked murderous. He was losing
money, and money was the closest thing to his soul. He looked around at
the yelling throng, one man at bay, and he achieved a certain dignity,
even in the midst of absurdity.

"This darned pigeon is wood," said he. "They are all wood, all I have
shot. This is a put-up job! It ain't fair." He turned to the young
fellow who had taken the pigeons, and who acted as referee.

"See here, John," he said, "you ain't going to see me done this way, be
you? You know it ain't a fair deal. Albert Dodd's shot clay pigeons, and
I've shot wood. It ain't fair."

"No, it ain't fair," admitted the young fellow reluctantly, with a side
glance at Doctor Gordon. Gordon made a movement, but Georgie K. was
ahead of him. James saw a roll of bills pass from his hands to Jim
Goodman's. Gordon came up to Georgie K.

"See here!" he said.

"Well," replied Georgie K., without turning his head.

"Georgie K."

"I can't stop. Excuse me, Doc." Georgie K. jumped into a light wagon on
that side of the field, and was gone with a swift bounce over the hollow
which separated it from the road. Doctor Gordon hurried back to his own
buggy, with James following, got in and took the road after Georgie K.
"He mustn't pay that money," said Gordon. James said nothing.

"I never thought of such a thing as that," said Doctor Gordon, driving
furiously, but they did not catch up with Georgie K. until they reached
the Evarts House, and he was out of his wagon.

Doctor Gordon approached him, pocketbook in hand. "See here, Georgie
K.," he said, "I owe you a hundred."

"Owe me nothing," said Georgie K. It had seemed impossible for his great
pink face to look angry and contemptuous, but it did. "I don't set up
for much," said he, "but I must say I like a square deal."

"Good Lord! so do I," said Gordon. "Here, take this money. I had Aaron
make those darned wooden pigeons. Jim Goodman has skinned enough young
chaps here to deserve the taste of a skin himself."

"He ain't skinned you."

"Hasn't he? He owes me for two wives' last sicknesses, to say nothing
of himself and children, and he's living with his third, and I shall
have to doctor her for nothing or let her die. But that wasn't what I
did it for."

Georgie K. turned upon him. "What on earth did you do it for, Doc?" said
he.

"Because I felt the way you have felt yourself."

"When?"

"When the woman that made those wax-flowers, and loved that little
stuffed bird in there, died."

Georgie K.'s face paled. "What's the matter, Doc?"

"Nothing, I tell you."

"What?"

"Nothing. Who said there was anything? I had to have my little joke. I
tell you, Georgie K., I've _got_ to have my little joke, just as I've
got to have my game of euchre with you and my glass of apple-jack; a man
can't be driven too far. I meant to make it right with him. He's a mean
little cuss, but I am not mean. I intended to spend a hundred on my
joke, and you got ahead of me. For God's sake, take the money, Georgie
K."

Georgie K., still with a white, shocked, inquiring face, extended his
hand and took the roll of bills which the doctor gave him.

"Come in and take something," said he, and Doctor Gordon and James
accepted. They went again into the state parlor on whose shelf were the
wax-flowers and the stuffed canary, and they partook of apple-jack.

Then Doctor Gordon and James took leave. Georgie K. gave Gordon a hearty
shake of the hand when he got into the buggy. Gordon looked at James
again with his gloomy face, as he took up the lines. "Failed in the race
again," he said. "Now we've got to hustle, for I have eight calls to
make before dinner, and it's late. I ought to change horses, but there
isn't time."




CHAPTER IV


The weeks went on, and James led the same life with practically no
variation. The sense of a mystery or mysteries about the house never
left him, and it irritated him. He was not curious; he did not in the
least care to know in what the mystery consisted, but the fact of
concealment itself was obnoxious to him. As for himself, he never
concealed anything, and when it came to mystery, he had a vague idea of
something shameful, if not criminal. Doctor Gordon's incomprehensible
changes of mood, of almost more than mood, of character even, disturbed
him. Why a man should be one hour a country buffoon, the next an
absorbed gentleman, he could not understand. And he could not understand
also why Clemency had never left the house since he had met her on the
day of his arrival. She evidently was herself angry and sulky at being
housed, but she did not attempt to resist, and whenever Mrs. Ewing
expressed anxiety about her health, she laughed it off, and made some
excuse, such as the badness of the roads, or some Christmas work which
she was anxious to finish. However, at last Mrs. Ewing's concern grew so
evident that Doctor Gordon at dinner one day gave what seemed a
plausible reason for Clemency remaining indoors. "If you will have it,
Clara," he said, "Clemency has a slight pain in her side, and pleurisy
and pneumonia are all about, and I told her that she had better take no
chances, and the weather has been raw."

Mrs. Ewing turned quite white. "Oh, Tom," she murmured, "why didn't you
tell me?"

"I did not tell you, Clara dear, because you would immediately have had
the child in a galloping consumption, and it is really nothing at all. I
only want to be on the safe side."

"It is a very little pain, mother dear," said Clemency. When Clemency
spoke to Mrs. Ewing, her voice had a singing quality. At such times,
although the young man's very soul was possessed of the mother, he could
not help viewing the daughter with favor. But he was puzzled about the
pleurisy. The girl seemed to him entirely well, although she was losing
a little of her warm color from staying indoors. Still, after all, a
pain is as invisible as a spirit. Her friend, Annie Lipton, spent a few
days with her, and then James saw very little of Clemency. The two girls
sat together in Clemency's room, and only the Lord of innocence and
ignorance knew what they talked about. They talked a great deal. James,
whenever he was in the house, was conscious of the distant murmur of
their sweet young voices, although he could not distinguish a word.
Annie Lipton was a prettier girl than Clemency, though without her
personal charm. Her beauty seemed to abash her, and make her indignant.
She was a girl who should have been a nun, and viewed love and lovers
from behind iron bars. She treated James with exceeding coolness.

"Annie Lipton is an anomaly," Doctor Gordon remarked once over his
after-dinner pipe, when they sat in the study listening to the feminine
murmur on the other side of the wall. It sounded like the gentle ripple
of a summer sea.

"Why?" returned James.

"She defies her sex," replied Doctor Gordon, "and still there is nothing
mannish about her. She is a woman angry and ashamed at her womanhood.
If she ever marries, it will be at the cost of a terrible mental
struggle. There are women-haters among men, and there are a very few--so
few as to rank with albinos and white blackbirds in scarcity--man-haters
among women. Annie is a man-hater."

"She is very pretty, too," said James.

"If you attempt the conquest, I'll warn you there will be scaling
ladders and all the ancient paraphernalia of siege needed," said Doctor
Gordon laughingly. James colored.

"It may be that I am a woman-hater," he replied, and looked very young.
Doctor Gordon again laughed.

A little later they went to Georgie K.'s. They went nearly every evening
while Annie Lipton was with Clemency. After she had left they did not go
so often. "It is pretty dull for Clemency," Doctor Gordon would say, and
they would remain at home and play whist with the two ladies. James
began to be quite sure that Doctor Gordon's visits to Georgie K.'s were
mostly made when Mrs. Ewing looked worse than usual and did not eat her
dinner. James became convinced in his own mind that Mrs. Ewing was not
well, although he never dared broach the subject again to the doctor,
and although it made no difference whatever in his own attitude toward
her. As well might he have turned his back upon the Venus, because of
some slight abrasion which her beautiful body had received from the
ages.

But one day, having come in unexpectedly alone, he found her on the
divan in the living-room, evidently weeping, and his heart went out to
her. He flung himself down on his knees beside her.

"Oh, what is it? What is the matter?" he whispered.

Her whole body was writhing. She uncovered her eyes and looked at him
pitifully, and yet with a certain dignity. Those beautiful eyes,
brimming with tears, were not reddened, and their gaze was steady. "If I
tell you, will you keep my secret?" she whispered back, "or, rather, it
is not a secret since Doctor Gordon knows it. I wish he did not, but
will you keep your knowledge from him?"

"I promise you I will," said James fervently.

"I am terribly ill," said Mrs. Ewing simply. "I suffer at times
tortures. Don't ask me what the matter is. It is too dreadful, and
although I have no reason to feel so, it seems to me ignominious. I am
ashamed of being so ill. I feel disgraced by it, wicked." She covered
her face again and sobbed.

"Don't, don't," said James, out of his senses completely. "Don't, I
can't bear it. I love you so. Don't! I will cure you."

"You cannot. Doctor Gordon does not admit that my case is hopeless, but
he gives no hope, and you must have noticed how he suffers when he sees
me suffer. He runs away from me because he can do nothing to help me.
That is the worst of it all. I could bear the pain for myself, but for
the others, too! Oh, I wish there was some little back door of life out
of which one could slip, and no blame to anybody, in a case like this.
But there is nothing but the horrible front door, which means such agony
to everybody who is left, as well as the one that goes." Mrs. Ewing had
completely lost control of herself. She sobbed again and moaned.

James covered one of her cold hands with kisses. "Don't, don't," he
begged. "Don't, I love you."

Suddenly Mrs. Ewing came to the comprehension of what he said. She
looked at his bent head--James had a curly head like a boy's--and a
strange look came into her eyes, as if she were regarding him across an
immeasurable gulf. Nobody had ever seemed quite so far away in the world
as this boy with his cry of love to the woman old enough to be his
mother. It was not the fact of her superior age alone, it was her
disease, it was her sense of being done forever with anything like this
that gave her, as it were, a view of earth from outside, and yet she had
a sense of comfort. James was even weeping. She felt his tears on her
hand. It did her good that anybody could love her so little as to be
able to stay by and see her suffer, and weep for her, and not rush forth
in a rage of misery like Thomas Gordon. In a second, however, she had
command of herself. She drew her hand away. "Doctor Elliot," she said,
"you forget yourself."

"No, no, I don't," protested James. "It is not as if I--I were thinking
of you in that way. I am not. I know you could not possibly think of me
as a girl might. It is only because I love you. I have never seen
anybody like you."

"You must put me out of your head," said Mrs. Ewing. "I am old enough to
be your mother; I am ill unto death. You must not love me in any way."

"I cannot help it"

Mrs. Ewing hesitated. "I have a mind to tell you something," she said in
a low voice. "Can I rely upon you?"

"I would die before I told, if you said I was not to," cried James.

"It might almost come to that," said the woman gravely. "A very serious
matter is involved, otherwise there would not be this secrecy. I cannot
tell you what the matter is, but I can tell you something which will
cure you of loving me."

"I don't want to be cured," protested James, "and I have told you it is
a love like worship, it is not--"

Mrs. Ewing interrupted him. "The worship of a young man is not to be
trusted," she said. "I cannot have you made to suffer. I will tell you,
but, remember, if you betray me you will do awful harm. Neither the
doctor nor Clemency even must know that I tell you. The doctor knows, of
course, the secret; Clemency does not know, and must never know. It
would be the undoing of all of us, the terrible undoing, if this were to
get out, but I will tell you. You are a good boy, and you shall be
spared needless pain. Listen." She leaned forward and whispered close to
his ear. James started back, and stared at her as white as death. Mrs.
Ewing smiled. "It hurts a little, I know," she said, "but better this
now than worse later. You are foolish to feel so about me; you were at a
disadvantage in coming here. It is only right that you should know. Now
never speak to me again about this. Think of me as your friend, and your
friend who is in very great suffering and pain, and have sympathy for
me, if you can, but not so much sympathy that you too will suffer. I
want sympathy, but not agony like poor Tom's. That makes it harder for
me."

"Does she know?" asked James, half-gasping.

"You mean does Clemency know I am ill?"

"Yes."

"She knows I am ill. She does not know how terrible it is. You must help
me to keep it from her. I almost never give way when she is present. I
knew she was taking a nap this afternoon, and the pain was so awful. It
is better now. I think I will go to my room and lie down for a while."
Mrs. Ewing rose, and extended her hand to James. "I have forgotten
already what you told me," she said.

"I can never forget!"

"You must, or you must go away from here."

"I can never forget, but it shall be a thing of the past," said James.

"That is right," Mrs. Ewing said with a maternal air. "It will only take
a little effort. You will see."

She went out of the room with a flounce of red draperies, and left
James. He sat down beside a window and stared out blankly. The thought
came to him, how many avowals of love and deathless devotion such a
woman must have listened to. Her manner of receiving his made him think
that there had been many. "It is quite proper," he thought to himself.
"A woman like that is born to be worshiped." Then he thought of what she
had told him, and a sort of rage filled his heart. He recognized the
fact that she had been right in her estimation of the worship of a young
man. He is always trying to turn his idol into clay.

The door opened and Clemency entered, but he did not notice it. She came
and sat down in front of him, and looked angrily at him, then for the
first time he saw her. He rose. "I beg your pardon, I did not hear you
come in," he said.

"Sit down again," said Clemency pettishly. "Don't be silly. I am used
to having young men not see anybody but my mother when she comes into a
room, and it is quite right, too. I don't think there ever was a woman
so beautiful as she, do you?"

"No, I don't," replied James.

Clemency eyed him keenly. Then she blushed at the surmise which came to
her, and James also blushed at the knowledge of the surmise. "You can't
be much older than I am. I am twenty-three," said Clemency after a
while. Then the red suffused her very throat.

"I am twenty-three, too," said James. Then he added bluntly, for he
began to be angry, "A man can think a woman the most beautiful he ever
saw without--"

"Oh, I didn't think you were such a fool," said Clemency; then she
added, in a meek and shamed voice, "I should have been awfully disgusted
with you if you had not thought my mother the most beautiful woman you
ever saw, and I am used to men not seeing me. I don't want them to. I
think I feel something as Annie Lipton does about men. She says she
feels as if she wanted to kill every man who looks at her as if he
loved her. I think I should, too."

"Miss Lipton has a great many admirers," remarked James by way of
changing the subject.

"Oh, yes, every young man for miles around, ever since she was grown up.
She doesn't like any of them." Clemency looked at James with sudden
concern. "I am going to tell you something," she said, "even if it is
rather betraying confidence. I think I ought to. Annie told me she had
taken a great dislike to you, from the very first moment she saw you, so
it would be no use--"

"I am sorry," replied James stiffly, "but as I had no particular feeling
for her, except admiration of her beauty, it makes no especial
difference."

"I thought, of course, you would fall in love with her," said Clemency.
Then she added, with most inexplicable inverted jealousy, "You must have
very poor taste, or you would. You are the first one."

"Some one has to be first," James said, laughing.

"I don't know but I was horrid to tell you what I did," said Clemency,
looking at him doubtfully.

"I don't thing it as horrid for a girl to assume that every man is in
love with her friend as it would be if she assumed something else," said
James. He knew that his speech was ungallant; but it seemed to him that
this girl fairly challenged him to rudeness. But she looked at him
innocently.

"Oh, no, I never should think that," said she. "Being with two women so
very beautiful as my mother and Annie so much makes me quite sure that
nobody is thinking of me. It is only sometimes that I feel a little like
a piece of furniture, only chairs can't walk into rooms." She ended with
a girlish laugh. Then her face suddenly sobered. "Doctor Elliot, I want
you to tell me something," said she. "Uncle Tom wouldn't if I asked him,
and I don't dare ask him anyway. Do you think mother is very well?"

James hesitated. "You ought to tell me," Clemency said imperatively.

"I have thought sometimes that she did not look quite well," said James.

"What do you think the matter is?"

"It may be indigestion."

"Do you think it is?"

"I don't know. Doctor Gordon has told me nothing, and Mrs. Ewing has
told me nothing."

"I thought doctors could tell from a person's looks."

"Not always."

"Doctors aren't much good anyhow," said Clemency. "I don't care if you
are one, and Uncle Tom is one. I notice people die just the same. So you
think it is indigestion? Well, it may be. Mother doesn't have much
appetite."

"Yes, I have noticed that," said James.

"Then there is something else I want to ask you," said Clemency. "I have
a right to know if you know. What does Uncle Tom make me stay in the
house so for?"

"I don't know," replied James, looking honestly at her.

"Don't you, honest? Hasn't he told you?"

"No."

"Of course, I know the first of it came from my meeting that man the day
you came here, but it does seem such utter nonsense that I have to stay
housed this way. I never met a man that frightened me before, and it is
not likely that I shall again. It does not stand to reason that that man
is hanging around here waiting to intercept me again. It is nonsense,
but Uncle Tom won't let me stir out. He has even ordered me to keep away
from the windows, and be sure that the curtains are drawn at night. I
don't know what the matter is. I can't say a word about it to mother,
she is so nervous. I have to pretend that I like to stay in the house,
and some days I really think I am going mad for fresh air. Uncle Tom
won't even let me go driving with him. So you don't know anything about
it?"

"Nothing whatever."

"Well, I can't stand it much longer," said Clemency with an obstinate
look. "As for the pain in my side, that's an awful lie; I haven't the
ghost of a pain. I can't stand it much longer. Here's Uncle Tom. You are
not going to tell him I said anything about it?"

"Of course, I am not," answered James. He began to feel that he was
entangled in a web of secrecy, and his feeling of irritation increased.
He would have gotten out of it and spent Christmas at his own home, but
Doctor Gordon had an unusual number of patients suffering from grippe,
and pneumonia was almost epidemic, and he felt that he should not
leave. It was the second week of the new year when James, returning from
a call at a near-by patient, whither he had walked, found Mrs. Ewing in
the greatest distress. It was ten o'clock at night, and she was pacing
the living-room. Immediately when he entered she ran to him. "Oh," she
gasped, "Clemency, Clemency!"

"Why, what is it?" asked James. Clemency had not been at the
dinner-table, but he had supposed her sulking, as she had been doing of
late, and that she had taken advantage of Doctor Gordon's absence at a
distant patient's to remain away from the table.

"She begged so hard to go out, and said the pain was quite well," gasped
Mrs. Ewing, "that I said she might go and see Annie, and here it is ten
o'clock at night, and Tom has gone to Grover's Corner, and may not be
home until morning, and Aaron is with him, and I had no one to send. I
thought I would not say anything to you. I thought every minute she
would come in, and Emma has walked half a mile looking for her, and I am
horribly worried."

"I will go directly and look for her," said James. "I will put the bay
in the light buggy, and drive to Westover. Don't worry. I'll bring her
back in half an hour."

"The bay is so lame she can't travel, I heard Tom say this morning,"
said Mrs. Ewing.

"Then I'll take the gray."

"She balks, you know."

James laughed. "Oh, I'll risk the balking," he said.

He hurried out to the stable and put the gray in the buggy. It was a
very short time before James was on the road, and the gray went as well
as could be desired, but just before she reached Westover she stopped
short, and James might as well have tried to move a mountain as that
animal with her legs planted at four angles of relentless obstinacy.




CHAPTER V


James had considerable experience with, horses. He knew at once that it
was probably a hopeless undertaking to change the mare's mind, or rather
her obstinacy. However, he tried the usual methods, touching with the
whip, getting out and attempting to lead, but they were all, as he had
supposed from the first, in vain. A terrible sense of being up against
fate itself seized him: an animal's will unreasoning, unrelenting,
bears, in fact, the aspect of fate itself. It is at once sensate and
insensate. James thought of Clemency, and decided to waste no more time.

The gray mare was near enough to a tree to tie her, and he tied her and
set out on foot. It was a very dark night, cloudy and chilly and
threatening snow. He walked on, as it were, through softly enveloping
shadows, which seemed to his excited fancy to be coming forward to meet
him. He began to be very much alarmed. He had wasted most of his young
sentiment upon Clemency's mother, but, after all, he suddenly
discovered that he had a feeling for the girl herself. He thought that
it was only the natural anxiety of any man of honor for the safety of a
helpless young girl out alone at night, and beset by possible dangers,
but he realized himself in a panic. His plan was of course to go
directly to Annie Lipton's home, some two miles farther on, then it
occurred to him that Clemency must inevitably have left there. If she
were lying dead or injured on the road, how in the world was he to see?
He felt in his pocket for matches, and found just one. He lit that and
peered around. While it burned he saw nothing except the frozen road
with its desolate borders of woods and brush, a fit scene for countless
tragedies. When the match burned out he thought of something else.
Supposing that Clemency were lying half-dead anywhere near the road, how
was she to know that a friend was near? Immediately he began to whistle.
Whistling was a trick of his, and he had a remarkably sweet, clear pipe.
He knew that Clemency, if she were to hear his whistle, would know who
was near. He whistled "Way down upon the Suwanee River" through, then he
began on the "Flower Song" from Faust, walking all the time quite
rapidly but with alert ears. He was half through the "Flower Song" when
he stopped short. He thought he heard something. He listened, and did
hear quite distinctly an exceedingly soft little voice, which might have
been the voice of shadows--"Is that you?"

"Clemency," he cried out, and rushed toward the wood, and directly the
girl was clinging to him. She was panting with sobs, but she kept her
voice down to a whisper. "Speak low, speak low," she said in his ear. "I
don't know where he is. Oh, speak low." She clung to him with almost a
spasmodic grip of her slender arms. "If you had been ten minutes longer
I think I should have died," she whispered. "Don't make a sound. I don't
know where he is."

"Was it--" began James. He felt himself trembling at the thought of what
the girl might be going to reveal to him.

"Yes, that same dreadful man. Uncle Tom was right. I stayed too long at
Annie's. It was almost dark when I left there. She persuaded me to stay
to dinner. They had turkey. I was about half a mile below here when he,
the man, came out of the woods, just as he did before. I heard him, and
I knew. I did not look around. I ran, and I heard his footsteps behind
me. The darkness seemed to shut down all at once. I knew he could catch
me, and remembered what I had heard about wild animals when they were
hunted. I had gone a little past here, running just as softly as I
could, when I turned right into the woods, and ran back. Then I lay
right down in the underbrush and kept still. I heard him run past. Then
I heard him come back. He came into the woods. I expected every minute
he would step on me, but I kept still. Finally I heard him go away, but
I have not dared to stir since! I made up my mind I would keep still
until I heard a team pass. It did seem to me one must pass, and one
would have at any other time, but it has been hours I have been lying
there. Then I heard your whistle. I was almost afraid to speak then.
Don't speak above a whisper now. Did you come on foot?"

"I had the gray mare, and she balked about half a mile from here. You
are sure you are not hurt?"

"No, only I am trying hard not to faint. Let us walk on very fast, but
step softly, and don't talk."

James put his arm around the girl and half carried her. She continued
to draw short, panting breaths, which she tried to subdue. They reached
the place where the gray mare loomed faintly out of the gloom with the
dark mass of the buggy behind her.

"Let us get in," whispered Clemency. "Quick!"

"I am afraid she won't budge."

"Yes, she will for me. She has a tender mouth, that is why she balks.
You must have pulled too hard on the lines. Sometimes I have made her go
when even Uncle Tom couldn't."

Clemency ran around to the gray's head and patted her, and James untied
her. Then the girl got into the buggy and took the reins, and James
followed. He was almost jostled out, the mare started with such impetus.
They made the distance home almost on a run.

"Oh, I am so glad," panted Clemency. "You see I can seem to feel her
mouth when I hold the lines, and she knows. Was poor mother worried?"

"A little."

"I know she was almost crazy."

"She will be all right when she sees you safe," said James.

"Is Uncle Tom home yet? No, of course I know he isn't, or he would have
come instead of you. Oh, dear, I know he will scold me. I shall have to
tell him, but I mustn't tell mother about the man. What shall I tell
her? It is dreadful to have to lie, but sometimes one would rather run
the risk of fire and brimstone for one's self than have anybody else
hurt. If I tell mother she will have one of her dreadful nervous
attacks. I can't tell her. What shall I tell her, Doctor Elliot?"

"I think the simplest thing will be to say that Miss Lipton persuaded
you to stay to supper, and so you were late, and I overtook you," said
James.

"Mother will never believe that I stayed so long as that," said
Clemency. "I shall have to lie more than that. I don't know exactly what
to say. I could have Charlie Horton come in to play whist, and be taking
me home in his buggy. He always drives, and you could meet me on the
road."

"Yes, you could do that."

"It is a very complicated lie," said Clemency, "but I don't know that a
complicated lie is any worse than a simple one. I think I shall have to
lie the complicated one. You need not say anything, you know. You can
take the mare to the stable, and I will run in and get the lie all told
before you come. You won't lie, will you?"

James could not help laughing. "No, I don't see any need of it," he
replied.

"It is rather awful for you to have to live with people who have to lie
so," remarked Clemency, "but I don't see how it can be helped. If you
had seen my mother in one of her nervous attacks once, you would never
want to see her again. There is only one thing, I do feel very weak
still, and I am afraid I shall look pale. Hold the lines a minute. Don't
pull on them at all. Let them lie on your knees."

"What are you doing?" asked James when he had complied.

"Doing? I am pinching my cheeks almost black and blue, so mother won't
notice. I don't talk scared now, do I?"

"Not very."

"Well, I think I can manage that. I think I can manage my voice. I am
all over being faint. Oh, I will tell you what I will do. You haven't
got your medicine-case with you, have you?"

"No, I started so hurriedly."

"Well, I will go in the office way. I know where Uncle Tom keeps
brandy, and I will be so chilled that I'll have to take a little before
mother sees me. That will make me all right. I wouldn't take it for
myself, but I will for her."

"And you are chilled, all right," said James.

"Yes, I think I am," said Clemency. "I did not think of it, but I guess
it was cold there in the woods keeping still so long." Indeed, the girl
was shaking from head to foot, both with cold and nervous terror. "It
was awful," she said in a little whisper.

James felt the girl shaking from head to foot. Suddenly a great
tenderness for the poor, little hunted thing came over him. He put his
arm around her. "Poor little soul," he said. "It must have been terrible
for you lying out there in the cold and dark and not knowing--"

Clemency shrank into his embrace as a hurt child might have done. "It
was perfectly terrible," she said, with a little sob. "I didn't know but
he might come back any minute and find me."

"It is all over now," James said soothingly.

"Yes, for the time," Clemency replied with a little note of despair in
her voice, "but there is something about it all that I don't understand.
Only think how long I have had to stay in the house, and he must have
been on the watch. I don't know when it is ever going to end."

"I think that I will end it to-morrow," said James with fierce
resolution.

"You? How?"

"I am going to put a stop to this. If an innocent girl can't step out of
the house for weeks at a time without being hounded this way, it is high
time something was done. I am going to get a posse of men and scour the
country for the scoundrel."

"Oh, will you do that?"

"Yes, I will. It is high time somebody did something."

"You saw him. You know just how he looks?"

"I could tell him from a thousand."

Clemency drew a long breath. "Well," she said doubtfully, "if you can,
but--"

"But what?"

"Nothing, only somehow I doubt if Uncle Tom will think it advisable.
There must be some mystery about all this or Uncle Tom himself would
have done that very thing at first. I don't understand it. But I don't
believe Uncle Tom will consent to your hunting for the man. I think for
some reason he wants it kept secret." Suddenly, Clemency gave a
passionate little outcry. "Oh, how I do hate secrets!" she said. "How I
have always hated them! I want everything right out, and here I seem to
be in a perfect snarl of secrets! I wonder how long I shall have to stay
in the house."

"Perhaps you are wrong, and your uncle will take measures now this has
happened for the second time," said James.

"No, he won't," replied the girl hopelessly. "I am almost sure that he
will not."

Clemency was right. After she had made her entry and told her little lie
successfully, and explained that she had taken some brandy because she
was chilled, and Mrs. Ewing had gently scolded her for staying so late,
and kissed and embraced her, and gotten back her own composure, Doctor
Gordon arrived, and James, who had waited for him in the study, told him
the story in whispers. "Now I think you had better let me get a posse of
men and scour the country to-morrow," he concluded. "It seems to me
that this thing has gone far enough."

Doctor Gordon sat huddled up before him in an arm-chair. He had not even
taken off his overcoat, which was white with snow. The storm had begun.
"It will be easy to track him on account of the snow," added James.

"Tracking is not necessary," replied Gordon, with his haggard face fixed
upon James. "I know exactly where the man is, and have known from the
first."

"Then--" began James.

"You don't know what you are talking about," Gordon said gloomily. "I
would have that fiend arrested to-morrow. I would have him hung from the
nearest tree if I had my way, but I can do absolutely nothing."

"Nothing?"

"No, I can do nothing, except what I have been doing, so far in vain, it
seems, to try to tire him out. I traded too much on his impatience, it
seemed. I did not think he would have held out so long."

"You mean you will have to keep that poor little thing shut up the way
you have been doing?"

"I see no other way. God knows I have tried to think of another, day and
night."

"I don't see why you or I could not take her out sometimes when we
visit patients anyway," said James in a bewildered fashion.

"You don't understand," replied Doctor Gordon irritably. "The main point
is: the girl must not be even seen by that man. That is the trouble.
Driving, she might be perfectly safe; in fact, in one way she is safe
anyhow. She is not in any danger of bodily harm, as you may think, but I
don't want her seen."

"Why not let me take her out sometimes of an evening then?" said James,
more and more mystified. "If she wore a veil, and went out driving in
the evening, I can't see how anybody could get a glimpse of her."

"You don't understand that we have to deal with a very devil incarnate,"
said Doctor Gordon wearily. "He will be on the watch for just that very
manoeuvre. However, perhaps we may be able to manage that; I will see."

"She will be ill if she remains in the house so closely," said James,
"especially a girl like her, who has been accustomed to lead such an
outdoor life. In fact, I don't think she does look very well now. It is
telling on her."

"Yes, I think it is," agreed Doctor Gordon gloomily, "but again, I say,
I see no other way out of it. However, perhaps you or I can take her out
sometimes of an evening. I suppose it had better be you, on some
accounts. I will see. Well, I will take off my coat and get something to
eat. I suppose Clara and Clemency have gone to bed."

"They went hours ago," replied James. It was, in fact, two in the
morning. James followed the doctor, haggard and weary, into the kitchen,
where, according to custom at such times, some dinner had been left to
keep warm on the range. "I'll sit down here," said Doctor Gordon. "It is
warmer than in the dining-room, and I am chilled through. If you don't
mind, Elliot, I wish you would get me a bottle of apple-jack from the
dining-room. I must have something to hearten me up, or I shall go by
the board, and I don't know what will become of her--of them."

James sat and waited while the doctor ate and drank. When he had
finished he looked a little less haggard. He stretched himself before
the warm glow from the range and laughed. "Now I feel my fighting blood
is up again," he said. "After all, if there is anything in the Good
Book, the wicked shall not always triumph, and I may win out. I shall
do my best anyhow. But I confess you took the wind out of me with what
you told me when I came in. I am glad Clara does not know. Poor little
Clemency having to pave her way with lies, but it would kill Clara. Oh,
God, it does seem as if I had enough before. Take my advice, young man,
and try to think more of yourself than anybody else in the world. Don't
let your heart go out to anybody. Just as sure as you do, the door of
the worst torture-chamber in creation swings open. The minute you become
vulnerable through love, you haven't a strong place in your whole
armor."

"What a doctrine!" observed James.

"I know it, but I have taken a fancy to you, boy; and hang it if I want
you to suffer as I have to."

"But a man would not be a man at all if he did not think enough of
somebody to suffer," said James, and now he was thinking of poor little
Clemency, and how she had nestled up to him for protection.

"Maybe," said Doctor Gordon gloomily, "but sometimes I wonder whether it
pays in the long run to be what you call a man. Sometimes I wish that I
were a rock or a tree. I do to-night."

"You will feel better after you have had a little sleep," James said,
as the two men rose.

Suddenly one of Doctor Gordon's inexplicable changes of mood came over
him. He laughed. "If it were not so late we would go down to Georgie
K.'s," said he. "I never felt more awake. Well, I guess it's too late.
You must be dead tired yourself. I have not thanked you at all for your
rescue of the girl. She would have been down with a serious illness if
you had not gone, for she would have lain in that place being snowed
over until somebody came."

"She was mighty clever to do what she did," said James.

"Yes, she is clever," returned Doctor Gordon. "She is a good girl, and
it stings me to the very heart that she has to suffer such persecution.
Well, 'all's well that ends well.' Did it ever occur to you that God
made up to mankind for the horrors of creation, by stating that there
would be an end to it some day? Good God, if this terrible world had to
roll on to all eternity!" Doctor Gordon laughed again his unnatural
laugh. "Fancy if you were awakened to-night by the last trump," he said.
"How small everything would seem. Hang it, though, if I wouldn't try to
have a hand at that man's finish before the angel of the Lord got his
flaming sword at work."

James looked at him with terror.

"Don't mind me, boy," said Gordon. "I don't mean to blaspheme; but Job
is not in it with me just now. You cannot imagine what I had to contend
with before this melodramatic villain appeared on the stage. Sometimes I
think this is the finish," Gordon's mouth contracted. He looked savage.
James continued to stare at him. Gordon laid his hand on James's
shoulder. "Thank the Lord for one thing," he said almost tenderly, "that
he sent you here. Between us we will take care of poor little Clemency
anyhow. Now go to bed, and go to sleep."

James obeyed as to the one, but he could not as to the other. He became,
as the hours wore on, so nervous that he was half-inclined to take a
sleeping powder. The room seemed full of flashes of lightning. He heard
sounds which made him cold with horror. He was highly strung nervously,
and was really in a state bordering upon hysteria. The mystery which
surrounded him was the main cause. He was never himself before an
unknown quantity. He had too much imagination. He made all sorts of
surmises as to the stranger who was haunting Clemency. Starting with two
known quantities, he might have accomplished something, but here he had
only one: Clemency herself. He had a good head for algebra, but a man
cannot work out a problem easily with only one known quantity. He began
to wonder if the poor girl herself were sleeping. He realized a sort of
protective tenderness for her, and indignation on her behalf. It did not
occur to him as being love. Still the image of her wonderful mother
dominated him. But his mind dwelt upon the girl. He thought of a piazza
whose roof opened as he knew upon Clemency's room. He wondered if a man
like that would stick at anything. Then he recalled what Doctor Gordon
had said about Clemency's not being in any bodily danger, and again he
speculated. The room began to grow pale with the late winter dawn.
Familiar objects began to gain clearness of outline. There were two
windows in James's room. They gave upon the piazza. Suddenly James made
a leap from his bed. He sprang to one of the windows. Flattened against
it was the face of the man. But the face was so destitute of
consciousness of him, that James doubted if he saw rightly. The wide
eyes seemed to gaze upon him without seeing him, the mouth smiled as if
at something within. The next moment James was sure that the face was
not there. He drew on his trousers, thrust his feet into his shoes, and
was out of his room and the house, and on the piazza. It was still
snowing, but the dawn was overcoming the storm. The whole world was lit
with dead white pallor like the face of a corpse. James rushed the
length of the piazza. He looked at the walk leading to it. He thought he
could distinguish footprints. He looked on the piazza, but the wind,
being on the other side of the house, there was not enough snow there to
make footprints visible. The snow on the walk was drifted. He looked at
it closely, and made sure of deep marks. He stood for a moment undecided
what to do. He disliked to arouse Doctor Gordon. He was afraid of
awakening Mrs. Ewing, if he ventured into the upper part of the house.
Then he thought of the man Aaron who slept in a room over the stable. He
reëntered the house, locked the front door, went softly into the
doctor's study, and out of the door which was near the stable. Then he
made a hard snowball, and threw it at Aaron's window. The window opened
directly, and Aaron's head appeared. James could see, even in the dim
light, and presumably just awakened from sleep, the rotary motion of his
jaws. He was probably not chewing anything, simply moving his mouth from
force of habit. "Hullo!" said Aaron, "that you Doctor Gordon?"

"No, it is I," replied James. "Put on something as quick as you can, and
come down here. Something is wrong."

Aaron's head disappeared. In an incredibly short space of time the
stable door was unlocked and slid cautiously back, and Aaron stood
there, huddled into his clothes. "What's up?" he asked.

"I don't know. Have you got a lantern in the stable?"

"Yep."

"Light it quick, then, and come along with me."

Aaron obeyed. "Anybody sick," he asked, coming alongside with the
flashing lantern. He threw a cloth over it so as to prevent the rays
shining into the house windows. "I don't want to frighten her," he said,
and James knew that he meant Mrs. Ewing. "She's awful nervous," said
Aaron. Then he said again, "What's up?"

"I saw a man's face looking into one of my windows," replied James.

Aaron gave a low whistle. "Somebody wanted the doc?" he inquired.

"No," replied James shortly, "it was not."

"Must have been."

"No, it was not."

"Must have been," repeated Aaron, chewing.

"I tell you it was not. I knew--" James stopped. He suddenly wondered
how much he ought to tell the man, how much Doctor Gordon had told him.

Aaron chewed imperturbably, but a sly look came into his face. "I have
eyes, and they see, and ears, and they hear," he said, after an odd
Scriptural fashion, "but don't you tell me nothin', Doctor Elliot.
Either I take what I get from the fountain-head, or I makes my own
conclusions that I can't help. Don't you tell me nothin'. S'pose we look
an' see ef there's footprints that show anythin'."

Aaron flashed the lantern, all the time carefully shading it from the
house windows, over the walk which led to the front door and the piazza.
James followed him. "Well," said Aaron, "there's been somebody here,
but, with snow like this, it might have been a monkey or a rhinoceros
or an alligator. You can't make nothin' of them tracks. But they do go
out to the road, and turn toward Stanbridge."

"Suppose we--" began James. He was about to suggest following the
prints, when he remembered Doctor Gordon's injunction to the contrary.

However, Aaron anticipated him. "Might as well leave the devil alone,"
said he. "It might have been the old one himself, for all we can tell by
them tracks. You had better go back to bed, Doctor Elliot. You ain't got
much on. It ain't near breakfast time yet. Better go back to bed."

And James thought such a course the wiser one himself. He went back to
bed, but not to sleep. He kept his eyes fixed upon the windows. He was
prepared at any instant, should the man reappear, to spring out. He felt
almost murderous. "It has come to a pretty pass," he thought, "if that
scoundrel, whoever he may be, is lurking around the house at night."

The daylight came slowly on account of the storm. When it did come, it
was an opaque white daylight. James began to smell coffee and frying
ham. He rose and dressed himself, and looked out of the window. It was
like looking into a blurred mirror. He began to wonder if he could have
been mistaken, if possibly that face had been simply a vision which had
come from his overwrought brain. He wondered if he should tell Doctor
Gordon, if it might not disturb him unnecessarily. He wondered if he
should have enforced secrecy upon Aaron. He was still undecided when the
Japanese gong sounded, and he went out to breakfast. Clemency was
looking worn and ill. Somehow the sight of her piteous little face
decided James. He thought how easily an athletic man could climb up one
of those piazza posts, which was, moreover, encircled by a strong old
vine which might almost serve as ladder. He made up his mind to tell
Doctor Gordon, and he did tell him when they were out upon their rounds,
tilting and sliding along the drifted country roads in an old sleigh. "I
don't think I can be mistaken," he said when he had finished.

Doctor Gordon looked at him intently. "You are sure," he said. "You are
a nervous subject for a man, and you had not slept, and you had this man
very much on your mind, and there must have been some snow on the
window which could produce an illusion. Be very sure, because this is
serious."

James thought again of Clemency's little white face. "Yes," he said, "I
am sure."

"You have no doubt at all?"

"None. The man had his face staring into the room. He did not seem to
see me, but looked past me at the bed."

"He might easily have thought that room, being on the ground floor and
accessible to night-calls, was mine," said Doctor Gordon, as if to
himself.

"I thought how easily he could have climbed up one of the piazza posts
to her room," said James.

The Doctor started. "Yes, that is so," he said. "He might have had two
motives. That is so."

The next call was at a patient's who had a slight attack of grippe.
Doctor Gordon left James there, saying that he would make another call
and be back for him directly. James noticed how he urged the horses out
of the drive at almost a run. He was back soon, and James having made up
his prescription, went out and got into the sleigh. Doctor Gordon looked
at him gloomily. "He is no longer where he has been staying," he said,
and his face settled into a stern melancholy. That evening, although the
storm continued, he suggested a visit to Georgie K.'s; and at supper
time he insisted upon Clemency's occupying another room that night. "The
wind is on your side of the house," he said, "and I am afraid you will
take more cold." Clemency stared and pouted, then said, "All right,
Uncle Tom!"




CHAPTER VI


Even the apple-jack and euchre at Georgie K.'s were not sufficient to
entirely establish Doctor Gordon in his devil-may-care mood. Georgie K.
kept looking at him with solicitation, which had something tender about
it. "Don't you feel well, Doc?" he asked.

"Never felt better in my life," returned Gordon quickly. "To-night I am
feeling particularly good, because I really think I have evolved an
utterly new theory of death and disease which ought to make me famous,
if I ever get a chance to write a book about it."

Georgie K. stared at him inquiringly.

"I don't know that you will understand, old man," said Gordon, "but here
it is. It is simple in one way. Nobody will deny that we come of the
earth; well, we are sick and die of the earth. We grow old and weary and
drop into our graves, because of the tremendous, though unconscious and
involuntary, wear upon nerves and muscles and emotion which is required
to keep us here at all. Gravitation kills us all in the end, just as
surely as if we fell off a precipice. Gravitation is the destroyer, and
gravitation is earth-force. The same monster which produces us devours
us. That's so. I hope I shall get a chance to write that book. Clubs are
trumps; pass."

"Sure you are well, Doc?" inquired Georgie K., again scowling anxiously.

"Never felt better, didn't I just say so? You are a regular old hen,
Georgie K. You cluck at a fellow like a setting hen at one chicken."

Still Doctor Gordon's gloomy face, although he tried to be jocular, did
not relax. Going home late that night, or rather early next morning, he
laid his hand heavily on James's shoulder.

"Boy, I am about at the finish!" he groaned out.

"Now, see here, Doctor Gordon, can't I be of some assistance if you were
to tell me?" asked James. He passed his hand under the older man's arm,
and helped him through a snowdrift as if he had been his father. A great
compassion filled his heart.

But Gordon only groaned out a great sigh. "No," he said. "Secrecy is the
one shield I have. I don't say weapon, but shield. In these latter days
we try to content ourselves with shields; and secrecy is the strongest
shield on earth. If I were going to commit a crime, I should never even
intimate the slightest motive for it to any man living. I should trust
no man living to help me through with it."

James felt a vague horror steal over him. He tried to speak lightly to
cover it. "I trust there is no question of crime?" he said, laughing.

"Not the slightest," replied Gordon. "I have no intention to use a
weapon, but my shield I must stick to. Thank the Lord, you were awake
last night, and to-night Clemency is in another room. By the way, I have
bought a dog."

"A dog?"

"Yes, a bull terrier, well trained, but he has a voice like a whole pack
of hounds. Clemency likes dogs. I will venture that no one comes near
the house after this without waking him up."

"You will keep him tied though."

"Yes, unless I get driven too far," replied Gordon grimly.

"Does Mrs. Ewing like dogs?"

"She is as fond of them as Clemency."

When, the next day, the dog arrived James was assured of the fact that
both Clemency and Mrs. Ewing did like dogs. They seemed more pleased
than he had ever seen them, and the dog responded readily to their
advances. He was a splendid specimen of his breed, very large, without a
spot on his white coat, and with beautiful eyes. Doctor Gordon had a
staple fixed in the vestibule, and the dog was leashed to it at night.
"I can't have my patients driven away," he said with a laugh.

That evening Doctor Gordon had a call, and he took Aaron with him. That
left James alone with Clemency, as Mrs. Ewing retired almost immediately
after Doctor Gordon left.

After the jingle of the sleigh-bells had died away Clemency laid down
her work and looked at James. The new dog was lying at her feet. "Uncle
Tom bought this dog on account of him," she said. As she spoke, she gave
an odd significant gesture over her shoulder as if the man were there,
and a look of horror came over her face. Immediately the dog growled,
and sprang up, raced to the door, and let forth a volley of howls and
barks. "He knows," said Clemency. "Isn't it queer? That dog knows there
is something wrong just by the way I spoke and looked."

James himself was not quite so sure. He glanced at the closed shutters.
Then he went himself to the door to be sure that it was bolted as usual,
and through into the study. Everything was fast, but the dog continued
to race wildly back and forth