When he was working in his little back-room study, he wondered what the two sisters could find to talk about for hours. He fancied that they were going over the old items of the family budget, the thousand trivialities of family gossip that never seemed to be ended and never lost their interest. One day he could hear Ruby earnestly talking--she had just come from New York--and then he thought he caught the sound of suppressed tears. After a time he rose nervously and walked out to his wife"s room where the sisters were.
Ruby"s face was excited though sullen. She had not taken off her hat, and in her haste her gloves had fallen on the floor by the door. Her sister was crying, quietly. "What"s up?" Thornton turned sharply to Ruby, his voice betraying his desire to sweep her out of his life forever.
A slight sneer crossed her face. She said nothing, and punched the footstool with the toe of her boot sullenly, as if resenting his appearance. As Thornton waited for an explanation, she rose and picked up her gloves.
"You"ll have to tell him," she spoke roughly to her sister. "I"m going over to mother"s."
Thornton accompanied her to the door. Her air was defiant and sullen; Thornton contemptuously refrained from questioning her.
"Well," he said, quietly, when he had returned. Something very bad was to come; it had been hanging about in the air for months.
"Jarvis, I can"t tell you; it"s so awful. What shall we do? Poor Aunt Mary and Aunt Sophie!"
"They have lost their money."
She nodded.
"Through Bradley?"
"Oh, Jarvis, I have brought you so much trouble; I am afraid I ought not to have kept you here in Boston."
"I don"t see how that could affect this," he replied kindly to her irrelevant contrition. "Has it all gone?"
"I suppose so."
"How did he get hold of it?"
"I don"t remember anything. Papa had it--all their money--to invest, and he let Ruby"s husband have it to put in wheat. It"s all gone."
Thornton had heard that John Ellwell"s sisters had been left a small fortune by their father with strict directions to keep it out of their brother"s hands. They were two delicate maiden ladies, who had floated about Europe aimlessly for a number of years, living in one watering-place after another. Their refusal to have anything to do with their brother had been one fruitful topic of family discussion. A few years before, however, when American stocks were booming, the two maiden ladies had withdrawn their hundred thousand from the woollen mill where old Mr. Ellwell had placed it, and had given it to the stock-broker for reinvestment. Their brother had always fascinated them. He was clever, wicked perhaps, but so clever that he always got into good things. The conclusion came shortly. For the last six months Ellwell had managed to keep up the interest; now he had come to the end of his rope, and he was about to commit suicide by selling his seat in order to provide a pittance, at least, for his sisters.
Husband and wife sat silent for a long time.
"Why did Ruby come to break the news?" Thornton asked at last. His wife looked at him timidly, then flushed.
"I suppose she thought we could do something; but what shall we do? We never have anything left over."
The bolt had fallen; Thornton traced its course in a few little moments.
"There is but one thing," he said, gently; "we must see that your aunts do not starve, at least for the present."
"You"ll have to give up your investigations and laboratory work, and all that?"
She was striving to comprehend his situation, an effort that he had planned for her that July day when they had become engaged.
"For the present."
"How can you love me? Your life would have been so different. You have always said that you were equipped with ideal conditions, just enough money to work as you liked. And now you can"t escape unless I die."
He disliked to utter commonplace lies; although she spoke the truth in her sudden realization of the facts to have him deny it, he could not protest; so he kissed her instead and said, later:
"We can"t reckon things that way." Her old look of misery came back.
"You can"t win with me."
"But I have won love."
And she was appeased.
From that date he had become a man in the sordid sense of the word. He had taken his father-in-law sternly in hand, presented the case firmly, and showed him the extent of the sacrifice his worthless life had made necessary. He paid from that day the normal income to the Misses Ellwell"s bankers, but he gave the stock-broker to understand that was the end. Any further protection for him was not to be found in this life.
A few months later he hung out his shingle as practising physician and surgeon. There would be need enough of money in his life; the way to get it was by using his acquaintances in Boston and practising only about a few streets of the Back Bay. So at thirty he had begun the ordinary routine of a well-connected physician--the profession he had sneered at in his youth, the profession of polite humbug.
IX
The next fifteen years that carried Jarvis Thornton over from one generation to another pa.s.sed with placid monotony. He had been decidedly successful. His little round of Boston streets where he doled out mental and physical encouragement, resounded with his praises. Moreover he was known as a "good fellow," an epithet that his warmest friends in Camberton days would not have bestowed on him. He was sleek and solid; well-groomed and rounded, in spite of constant activity, and if his scientific reputation was not more than mediocre, it was enough to give him a lectureship on neurosis in the Camberton Medical School--that necessary mark of approval for a doctor practising in his circle. He spent eight months of each year in Boston; the other four he practised at Wolf Head, a fashionable sea-side place that he had done much to promote. There he had built a roomy cottage on a little point of land, and he had shrewdly invested in the Improvement Company that held the best lots along the sh.o.r.e. He was a comfortable family physician to have about, with a good digestion and a desirable connection; in his few hours of recreation he could be counted on for tennis or yachting or a dinner-party, even with a dance attached.
One step that marked the prosperity of the Thorntons was their new house on Beacon Street, selected with much care in the short block or two of stable neighborhood. When they had moved into this new house, Mrs. Thornton had referred to the past indirectly.
"Why don"t you take the sewing-room?"
"What for? I can"t entertain patients on the third floor."
"You could use it for a laboratory for your things," Mrs. Thornton suggested vaguely. "I could get along without it."
The doctor smiled.
"Oh, I don"t need so much room for that; I haven"t over much time these days."
It touched him that she remembered, even remotely, the bearing of that tragic day when her sister had come to announce the Bradley rascality.
Soon she began again, this time nearer the heart of the matter.
"Jarvis, you don"t mind it so very much, the change you had to make, _now_."
"Now that I have more practice than I can attend to?"
The doctor"s voice had an inexplicable tone in it at times which made his wife shy of intimate conversation.
"You are such a success," she struggled on; "and everything has come out so--peacefully."
"There are two verbs, my dear, which most people confuse: to succeed and to win." Then, as he noted her troubled face, he kissed her. "That bell has been ringing for half an hour. That is an outward and visible sign of the first verb. I must heed it."
When he left her, she mused over his words. Except for occasional disturbing moments like these, it never occurred to her that her dreams made in that hot summer at the Four Corners had not come true for them both. She had dreamed vaguely and she had realized vaguely.
When she contrasted her husband"s career with her father"s, or with any other that made up the _repertoire_ among her acquaintances, it seemed fair and unblemished. But men were exacting creatures, who rarely knew what was best for them, and who kept about them a fund of discontent to feed upon.