Oldfield

VII

THE DOCTOR"S DILEMMA

Within the hour Lynn Gordon rode back down the hill, and pa.s.sed the window very slowly, watching the curtain as a star-gazer awaits the pa.s.sing of a cloud.

The baffling width of white cotton hung still unstirred; Doris was no longer sitting behind it, but the young man had no means of knowing that she had gone. As the hand on the reins unconsciously drew the horse almost to a standstill, the doctor and his wife left their seats on the porch of their house over the way, and came out to the gate to speak to him. They had met him at his grandmother"s on the previous evening, and they had been old friends of his father. Lynn sprang from the saddle and, leading his horse, crossed the big road to shake hands with them.

"Have you lost something?" asked Mrs. Alexander.

"Oh, no--yes--I have lost a jewel--a pearl," the young man replied rashly.

The doctor"s lady exclaimed in surprise. Jewels were rarely lost or found in that country. The gems oftenest lost were the sparkling seeds which flashed out of the jewel-weed; the finest pearls ever found were those which the mistletoe bore.

"Dear me, what a pity," lamented Mrs. Alexander. "And how was your pearl set?"

"It wasn"t mine. I didn"t notice how it was set. Oh, yes, I did. It was set amid roses and honeysuckle and humming-birds against a field of spotless snow," Lynn said, still more lightly.

The doctor"s wife was not a dull woman. She understood his tone, though she did not understand what he meant. She had been eagerly scanning the big road, as far as she could see; thinking that a jewel dropped near by on the highway--unrolling like a broad band of brown velvet from the far green hills on the north to the farther green hills on the south--must sparkle and flash, showing a long way off in such brilliant sunshine.

Now, however, she knew that Lynn was not in earnest, and she turned with a smile on her own face to meet the laughing frankness of his fine dark eyes. But a glance was just pa.s.sing between the young man and the older man, and she caught that also, with the vague, helpless uneasiness, tinged with resentment, which every woman feels at seeing a sign of the freemasonry of men.

But a doctor"s wife learns to overlook a good many things which she would like to have explained, if she be a sensible woman, as Mrs.

Alexander was. This one merely said:--

"You are a joker, I see, as your father was. n.o.body ever could tell when he was serious. Come in and sit with us. It"s nice and cool these early mornings on the porch. Tie your horse to the fence. I thought when I saw you getting down from the saddle, that you meant to hitch him to Sidney"s, and I was just going to call and ask you to tie him to ours instead. The doctor"s horses pull boards off our fences every day, but it doesn"t matter, because he keeps somebody to nail them on again; while Sidney has n.o.body but herself to depend upon."

"And even the resourceful Sidney--being a woman--can"t drive a nail,"

remarked the doctor, deliberately.

He knew how well worn the truism was, but he used it designedly, as a toreador uses his scarf. He liked to see his wife flare up. Her kind eyes grew so bright and her wholesome cheeks so red, and it was always so delightfully easy to get her in a good humor again. It is a tendency which is very common in large men with amiable little wives like Mrs.

Alexander, and one which is very uncommon in smaller men with wives of a different disposition.

Lynn Gordon, as an unmarried man, naturally knew nothing of these matters and blundered on, disappointing the doctor"s confident expectations by asking the lady a question, which turned her attention in another direction. He inquired who Sidney was, seeing an opportunity for learning something about the girl behind the silver poplars.

There was no subject upon which Mrs. Alexander was more willing to talk, nor one upon which she could talk more eloquently, and she accordingly began at once to give Lynn the history of Sidney Wendall, whom she held to be a most interesting as well as a most admirable and remarkable character. It was no easy or simple thing, so the doctor"s wife said, for a woman of the Pennyroyal Region to earn a family"s living. In that country no white woman could work outside her own home (were there anything for her to do) on account of coming into compet.i.tion with black laborers. And Sidney had received no training to lift her above the laboring cla.s.s, having had even less than the average country education.

And yet, as the doctor"s wife pointed out, she had managed to maintain her family and herself in reasonable comfort and universal respect. It was all very well for the men to laugh at Sidney and make fun of her news and her gossip. It was all very well for them to say--as the doctor said, according to his wife, who flashed her eyes at him--that Sidney made her news out of the whole cloth when she did not get it over the grapevine telegraph. Everybody knew how hard men always were on any woman who was not pretty. As though poor Sidney could help the length of her own nose! Let the mean men make fun as much as they pleased! The indignant lady would like, so she said, to see one of them who had done his duty in the world more n.o.bly than Sidney had done hers. She would also like, so she declared, to see one of them who kept as strict guard over what he said about his neighbors, and who was as free from evil-speaking and mischief-making, as Sidney was--for all her talking that they were always so ready to ridicule.

The doctor leaned back in his chair, beaming at his wife. He was very proud of her when she talked and looked as she was doing now, and he was truly sorry when she was compelled to pause for sheer lack of breath.

"I am afraid I don"t know the lady of whom you are speaking," Lynn said, as soon as he had a chance to speak. "I haven"t been here, you know, since I could remember. Do you mean some one who lives over there in the house behind those silver poplars?" And then, he added artfully, "It seems to be deserted."

"There is where Sidney Wendall lives, but she is never at home in the daytime. Her business takes her out. But Doris, the eldest daughter, is at home. She has always taken care of the house and the other children, and even of Uncle Watty. She used to do it when she wasn"t so high," the doctor"s wife said, holding her hand about three feet from the porch floor. "Such a lovely, golden-haired, dark-eyed, delicate little changeling, in that homely, rude, rough-and-tumble brood."

"Is this beautiful Doris a child still?" inquired the young man, deceitfully leading on nearer to what he wished to learn.

"Oh, no. I was speaking of years ago. Doris is about grown now, and prettier than ever. You"ll be sure to see her. There are very few young ladies in Oldfield. She seldom goes out, though. She stays close at home and takes care of things just as she always has done. It must be a lonely, dreary life for a girl,--and such a beauty too,--but she never seems to mind it. I heard her singing this morning about the time that you rode up."

"I met Sidney coming out of the Watsons" gate when I went in to see Tom in pa.s.sing," the doctor said suddenly, and with a different manner. "I wish, Jane, that you would ask Sidney, the first time you see her, to go there as often as she can. Send her something, and tell her that I think her going would cheer up Tom."

"Indeed!" exclaimed Mrs. Alexander, scathingly. "Then Sidney"s "gab," as you ungrateful men call it, has its uses after all!"

"I am not jesting now, my dear. I am seriously disturbed about Tom Watson. So far as I am able to judge, there is nothing more that surgery or medicine can do for him. The time has come, now when we have done our utmost for his body, that we must find some relief for his mind. He must not be allowed to sit there propped up by the window, staring out at the big road, and never trying to speak even the few indistinct words that he might utter, and always brooding, brooding--over his own awful condition, I"m afraid."

"Well, I"ve done what I could," said the doctor"s wife, quickly, as though her husband"s words bore some unspoken reproach. "I know my double duty to a neighbor and a patient of yours, John. But I can"t go to see Tom Watson again. You never saw such a sad sight, Mr. Gordon. I actually dream about it after I have seen him. That is where the Watsons live," she said, pointing to the house. "I go every morning to the cross fence between our house and theirs, taking some little thing for Tom just to show that I have been thinking about him, and I call Anne to the other side of the fence and ask her how he is. But doing even that hurts her and hurts me, for she knows that I know that he never can be any better."

"And I think he knows it too. That is the most terrible thing of all,"

the doctor said, musingly, as if turning over ways and means in his mind.

Mrs. Alexander looked at Lynn with a sudden dimness shadowing the brightness of her kind eyes. "You don"t know the Oldfield people, Mr.

Gordon, though you are really one of us. Unless you had known Tom Watson as we knew him, you can hardly understand how terrible and how strange his present condition seems to us. He used to be a great, strong, noisy, reckless, hot-tempered dare-devil, but as tender-hearted as a child and liked by everybody, black and white, big and little, in the whole country."

A sudden recollection caused her to smile at her husband, forgetting that she had just been scolding him and that he richly deserved it:--

"You remember, John, that time when Tom kept those bear cubs tied up in his back lot. One day the biggest of them got loose and caught Sidney as she was going home with a pitcher of milk which Anne had given her.

Sidney was almost scared out of her wits, and screamed as loud as she could, till the bear squeezed her so tight that she couldn"t make another sound. But she never let go the pitcher--never even loosed her grip--and kept on holding it out of the cub"s reach, long after she couldn"t scream any more. Tom went running. Can"t you see him now, John?

and hear him shouting at every jump: "Let go, Sid. Good Gad--woman! are you going to let the bear hug the life out of you before you"ll give him that spoonful of milk?""

"And to think of poor Tom as he is now;" she went on presently, the smile fading. "I will speak to Sidney as you suggest, John. I will send her a basket of sweet potatoes and urge her to go as often as she can.

Anne would never think of asking any one to come, but I know she would be pleased to have Sidney drop in. She"s always like a fresh breeze on a hot day even to well folks. She told me, however, the other morning that Tom Watson never seemed to notice anything that she had to say. She said that, no matter how hard she tried to entertain him, he kept on staring out at the empty big road, just sitting there, not trying to speak, and looking like a dead man only for his restless, burning eyes."

"And yet he may live for years just as he is now," the doctor said. "But we must not give up trying to help him because he can never be any better. I must devise some sort of relief. It will not do to let him sit there, like that, all day, day after day--maybe for years. I tried this morning to find out what he was thinking about. I also tried to learn from Anne what his tastes were, what sort of things he had liked or was interested in before he met with the accident. His sight is much impaired, and he seems never to have been anything of a reader. I doubt whether he ever had any indoor interests, except playing cards. All that I can remember is that he used to gamble like the very devil."

"Shame on you, John, to be raking up that against the poor fellow, as he is now," protested the doctor"s wife, indignantly.

"Nonsense! Who"s raking anything up?" the doctor responded. "I was merely trying to think of some way of diverting his mind. I thought perhaps a game of cards--"

The doctor"s wife uttered a smothered little shriek: "John _Alexander_!

What are you thinking of to speak of card-playing in Anne Watson"s house?"

The doctor grew calmly judicial, as all good husbands grow when their wives become unduly excited. "I am well aware of Anne"s prejudice. I know precisely how strong--"

"Strong!" repeated his wife, interrupting him. "It"s the strongest thing--the only really strong thing--_in_ Anne--that, and her religion.

Her horror of card-playing is a part of her religion. It"s bred in her bone. She got it from her father, the elder. Some people thought he was actually out of his head about cards. And Anne believes as firmly as he believed it, that cards are Satan"s chief weapon, and that even to touch them is to imperil the soul. She believes it as firmly as she believes in baptism for the remission of sins; as firmly as she believes that there is a heaven and a h.e.l.l."

All this breathless outpouring the doctor waved aside: "As I have already said, my dear, I know perfectly well what Anne"s feeling used to be. Now, however, in Tom"s hopeless condition she will, of course, look at the matter with more reason."

"Now _isn"t_ that like a man?" appealed Mrs. Alexander, to no one in particular, since she could hardly appeal to her visitor against his own s.e.x. "Wouldn"t anybody but a man know that Anne would only stand the firmer for that very reason? Any woman would see in a moment that the very fact of Anne"s knowing that her husband"s mortal life was hopelessly wrecked, could not fail to increase her resistance against a thing which she believes must lose him the life everlasting."

The doctor took his feet down from the porch railing, and tapped his pipe against the post with an unnecessary amount of noise. Lynn Gordon looked hard at the silver poplars on the other side of the big road.

Different men have different ways of giving outward expression to the embarra.s.sment which every man feels at a woman"s innocent frankness regarding spiritual things. Neither of these men spoke for a s.p.a.ce. The doctor was casting about for the surest and swiftest way of fetching his wife back to some ground on which he felt rather more at home, and decidedly more secure of his own footing.

"Anne knew that Tom was a born gambler; she knew it before she married him. n.o.body but a woman--a fanatical visionary like Anne--would have been foolish enough to expect to change a leopard"s spots."

"It doesn"t strike me as particularly foolish for Anne--or for any other woman--to expect her husband to keep his promise not to get any _new_ spots," the lady retorted, with all the promptness and spirit that her husband antic.i.p.ated.

The doctor glanced at the young man as triumphantly as he dared, and the young man returned the doctor"s glance as non-committally as he could.

They had both often observed before this, as most observant people observe at some period of their lives, that while a man will defend another man whenever he can, regardless of his own feelings toward the individual, he has never a word to say in defence of men; and that, while a woman will seldom defend another woman without strong personal reasons, she is always ready, _cap-a-pie_, to defend women, through thick and thin.