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_ 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." _
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