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 [pg 059] 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 [pg 060] 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 [pg 061] 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 [pg 062] 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 [pg 063] 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, [pg 064] 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 [pg 065] 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 [pg 066] 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 [pg 067] 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."
[pg 068]"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 [pg 069] 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."
[pg 070]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 [pg 071] 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 [pg 072] 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 [pg 073] 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."
[pg 074]"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."
[pg 075]"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 [pg 076] 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 [pg 078] 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 [pg 079] 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 [pg 080] 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 [pg 081] 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 [pg 082] 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, [pg 083] 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."
[pg 084]"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 [pg 085] 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.
[pg 086]"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.
[pg 087]"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 [pg 088] 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.
[pg 089]"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 [pg 090] 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 [pg 091] 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 [pg 092] 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."
[pg 093]"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 [pg 095] 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 [pg 096] 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, [pg 097] 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."
[pg 098]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.
[pg 099]"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 [pg 100] 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."
[pg 101]"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.
[pg 102]"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 [pg 103] 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 [pg 104] 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."
[pg 105]"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 manœuvre. 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."
[pg 106]"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 [pg 107] 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."
[pg 108]"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 [pg 109] 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 [pg 110] 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, [pg 111] 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, [pg 112] 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?"
[pg 113]"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 [pg 114] 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, [pg 115] 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 [pg 116] 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 [pg 117] 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!"