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_ CHAPTER X
Mrs. Slocum looked at the doctor with a wide gape of surprise.
"Thought you knew," said she. "His name is Meserve, Mr. Edward Meserve,
and if he has come and went, and not told where, he was good pay, and if
he was took sick whilst he was to my house, I could have asked twice as
much as I did before. I'd like to know what right you had to take my
boarder to the hotel. He was my boarder. He wan't your boarder. I want
him fetched right back. That's what I have came for."
"Mrs. Slocum," said Gordon in a hard voice, "Mr. Meserve is too sick to
be moved, and his disease may be contagious. You might lose all your
other boarders, and whether he recovers or not, you would be obliged to
fumigate your house, and have his room repapered and plastered."
"He's got money enough to pay for it," Mrs. Slocum said doggedly.
"How do you know?"
"You think he ain't?"
Gordon looked imperturbable.
"He always paid me regular, and he ain't been to meals or to home nights
two-thirds of the time."
Gordon said nothing.
"You mean if my other boarders went, and the room had to be done over,
he ain't got money enough to make it good?"
Gordon said nothing. The woman fidgeted. "Well," said she, "if there's
any doubt of it, mebbe he _is_ better off here." Suddenly she gave a
suspicious glance at Gordon. "Say," said she, "the room here will have
to be done over. Who's goin' to pay for that?"
"The room is isolated," replied Gordon briefly.
The woman stared. She evidently did not know the meaning of the word.
"Well," said she at last, "if the room _is_ insulted, it will have to be
done over. Who's going to pay for that?"
"I am."
"Well, I don't see why you couldn't pay _me_ for that as well as Mr.
Evans."
"Don't you?"
"No."
"Well, I do. Now, Mrs. Slocum, I really have no more time to waste. Mr.
Meserve is a very sick man, and I have to go to him. I came down here
to consult with my assistant, and you have hindered us. Good-day!"
But the woman still stood her ground. "I'm goin' to see him," she said.
"He's my boarder."
"You will do so at your own risk, and also, if your call should prove
injurious to him, at a risk of being indicted for manslaughter, besides
possibly catching the disease."
"You say it's ketching?"
"I said it might be. We have not yet entirely formed our diagnosis."
The woman stared yet again. Then she turned about with a switch which
disclosed fringy black petticoats and white stockings. "Well, form your
noses all you want to," said she. "You have took away my boarder, an' if
he gits well, and it ain't ketchin', I'll have the law on ye."
Gordon drew a deep breath when the door closed behind her. "It seems
sometimes to me as if comedy were the haircloth shirt of tragedy," he
said grimly. "Well, Elliot, we will go upstairs and begin the fight. I
am going to fight to the death. I shall remain here to-night. You will
have to look after my other patients when you leave here. I am sorry to
put so much upon you."
"Oh, that's all right," said James, following Gordon upstairs. But as he
spoke he wondered more and more that this man, after what he had known
of him, should be of more importance to Gordon than all others.
Even during the short time they had been downstairs the angry red around
the abrasion on the cheek had widened, and widened toward the head.
Gordon opened his medicine-case and took out a bottle and hairbrush and
commenced work. Directly the entire cheek was blackened with the
application of iron. Georgie K. had brought glasses, and medicine had
been forced into the patient's mouth. "Now go and have some eggnog
mixed, Georgie K.," said Gordon, "and bring it here yourself, if you
will. I hate to trouble you."
"That's all right, Doc," said Georgie K., and went.
James remained only a short time, since he had the other calls to make.
He returned quite late to find that dinner had been kept waiting for
him, and Clemency in her pretty red gown was watching. Mrs. Ewing had
not come down all day. "Mother says she is easier," Clemency observed,
"only she thinks it better to keep perfectly still." Clemency said very
little about the man at the hotel. She seemed to dread the very mention
of him. She and James spent a long evening together, and she was
entirely charming. James began to put behind him all the mystery and
dark hints of evil. Clemency, although fond, was as elusive as a
butterfly. She had feminine wiles to her finger tips, but she was quite
innocent of the fact that they were wiles. It took the whole evening for
the young man to secure a kiss or two, and have her upon his knee for
the space of about five minutes. She nestled closely to him with a
little sigh of happiness for a very little while, then she slipped away,
and stood looking at him like an elf. "I am not going to do that much,"
said she.
"Why not, darling?"
"Because I am not. It is silly. I love you, but I will not be silly. I
want only what will last. The love will last, but the silliness won't.
We are going to be married, but I shall not want to sit on your knee all
the time, and what is more, you will not want me to. Suppose we should
live to be very old. Who ever saw a very old woman sitting on her very
old husband's knee? The love will last, but that will not. We will not
have so very much of that which will not last."
For all that, James caught Clemency and kissed her until her soft face
was crimson, but he said to himself, when he was in his own room, that
never was a girl so wise, and how much more he wanted to hold her upon
his knee--as if he had not already held her there--and yet she was not
coquettish. She was simply earnest, with an odd, wise, childlike
earnestness.
Early the next morning James went to the hotel, and found Gordon haggard
and intense, sitting beside his patient, who was evidently worse. The
terrible red fire of Saint Anthony had mounted higher, and settled
lower. "It has attacked his throat now," Gordon said in a whisper. "I
expect every minute it will reach his brain. When it does, nobody but
you and I must be with him, not even Georgie K. He is getting some rest.
He was up half the night, bless him! But when it reaches the brain two
will be needed here, and the two must be you and I. Take this list, and
make the calls as quickly as you can, and come back here." James, with a
last glance at the black and swollen face of the man, who now seemed to
be in a state of coma, obeyed. He hurried through his list, and
returned. He found no apparent change in the patient, and tried to
persuade Gordon to take a little rest, but the elder man was obdurate.
"No" he said, "here I stay. I have had a bit to eat and drink. You go
down yourself and get something, then come back. The crisis may arrive
any second. Then I shall need you."
The fire had outstripped the blackness on the man's cheek toward the
temple. One eye was closed.
When James returned after a hurried lunch, he heard a loud, terrible
voice in the room. Outside the door a maid stood with a horrified face
listening. James grasped her roughly by the shoulder. "Get out of this,"
he ordered. "If I find you or any one else here listening, you'll be
sorry for it."
The maid gasped out an excuse and fled. James tried the door, but it was
locked. "Is that you, Elliot?" called Gordon above the other awful
voice.
"Yes."
The door was unlocked, and James sprang into the room, but he was hardly
quick enough, for the man was almost out of bed, when the two doctors
forced him back with all their strength. Then he sat up and raved, and
such raving! James felt his very blood cold within him. Revelations as
of a devil were in those ravings. Once in a while James opened the door
cautiously to be sure that no one was listening. The raving man
reiterated names as of a multitude. Gordon's was among them, and many
names of women, one especially--Catherine. He repeated that name more
frequently than the others, but the others were legion. There was
something indescribably horrible in hearing this repetition of names of
unknown people, accompanied with statements beyond belief regarding them
and the raving man. Gordon's face was ghastly, and so was the younger
doctor's. "Look and see if any one is listening, for God's sake," Gordon
gasped, after one terrific outburst, and James looked, but Georgie K.
was keeping watch that nobody approached the door.
James never knew how long he was in that room with Gordon listening to
those frenzied ravings, and striving with him to keep the man from
injuring himself. The daylight waned, James lighted a lamp. Then a
mighty creaking was heard outside, and Georgie K., himself bearing a
great supper tray, knocked at the door. "It's me, and I brought you
something," he shouted, and then they heard his retreating footsteps.
Much delicacy was there in Georgie K., and much affection for Doctor
Gordon.
James brought in the tray, and now and then he and Gordon took advantage
of a slight lull to take a bite, but neither had any desire for food. It
was only the instinctive sense that they must keep up their strength in
order that nobody else should hear what they were hearing, that forced
them to eat and drink. Well into the evening the ravings stopped
suddenly, the man fell back upon his pillow, and lay still. James
thought at first that all was over, but presently stertorous breathing
began.
"Now get Georgie K. up," Gordon said hoarsely. "There is no further need
for us to be alone, and there will be directions to be given."
James went out and found Georgie K. sitting up in his bar-room.
"Doctor Gordon wants you," he said.
"How is he?" asked Georgie K., following James.
"Dying."
Georgie K. made an indescribable sound in his throat as the two men
ascended the stair.
The man was a long time dying. It seemed to James as if that awful
struggle of the soul for release from the body would never cease. He
knew, or thought he knew, that there was no suffering to the dying man,
but, after all, the sounds as of suffering seemed almost to prove it.
Gordon whispered for a while to Georgie K., as if the dying man might be
disturbed by audible speech. Then Georgie K. tiptoed out in his creaking
boots, and James knew that some arrangements were to be perfected for
the last services to the dead. Gordon stood over the bed, with his own
face as ghastly as that of its occupant. James dared not speak to him.
It was midnight when the dreadful breathing ceased, and there was
silence. Georgie K. had returned. The three living men looked at one
another with ghastly understanding of what had happened, then they
hastily arranged some matters. The dead man was decently composed and
dressed, his throat swathed anew in linen handkerchiefs, and another
handkerchief laid over the discolored face, which had in death a strange
peace, as if relieved of an uneasy and wearing tenant. Before Georgie K.
went out, the village undertaker had been summoned, and had been waiting
for some time in the parlor with a young assistant. They mounted the
stairs bearing some appurtenances of their trade. Gordon addressed the
undertaker briefly, giving some directions, then he motioned to James,
and they passed out. Georgie K. remained in the room. He prevented the
undertaker from removing the linen swathe on the dead man's throat. "Doc
says it's catching," he said, and the undertaker drew back quickly.
When Gordon and James were in the buggy on the way home, Gordon all at
once gave a great sigh, like that of a swimmer who yields to the force
of the current, or the fighter who sinks before his opponent. "I'm about
done, too," he said. "Here, take the lines, Elliot."
James took the reins and looked anxiously at his companion's face, a
pale blue in the moonlight. "You are not ill?" he said.
"No, only done up. For God's sake let me rest, and don't talk till we
get home!" James drove on. Gordon's head sank upon his breast, and he
began to breathe regularly. He did not wake until James roused him when
they reached home.
* * * * *
The next morning before breakfast James was awakened by a loud voice in
the office, the high-pitched one of a woman. He recalled how exhausted
Doctor Gordon had been the night before, and rose and dressed quickly.
When he entered the office Gordon was sitting huddled up in his old
armchair before the fire, while bolt upright beside him sat Mrs. Slocum,
discoursing in loud and angry tones, which Gordon seemed scarcely to
heed. When James entered she turned upon him. "Now I'll see if I can git
anythin' out of you," she said. "He" (pointing to Gordon) "don't act as
if he was half-alive. I'm goin' to have my rights if I have to go to law
to git 'em. Doctor Gordon took away my boarder. And if I'd had him sick
and die to my house, I could have got extra. Now what I want is jest
this, an' I'm goin' to hev it, too! Doctor Gordon said Mr. Meserve
didn't have money. I don't know nothin' about that. I ain't went through
his pockets, but his trunk is to my house, and there's awful nice men's
clothes into it, and I mean to hev 'em. That ain't nothin' more'n fair.
That's what I hev came here for, jest as soon as I heard the poor man
had passed away. I left my daughter to git the breakfast for the
boarders, and I hev came here to see about that trunk, and hisn's
clothes."
James laughed. "But, Mrs. Slocum," he said, "what on earth do you want
with men's clothes? You can't wear them."
To his intense surprise the great face of the woman suddenly reddened
like that of a young girl, but the next moment she gave her head a
defiant toss, and stared boldly at him. "What if I can't?" said she.
"There's other men as can wear 'em, and they'll jest fit Bill Todd. He's
been boardin' with me five year, and if he wants to git married and save
his board bill, it's his business and mine and nobody else's."
James turned to Gordon, who seemed prostrated before this feminine
onslaught. "Do you object to this woman's having the trunk?" he asked.
Gordon made an effort and roused himself. "She can have it after I have
examined it for papers," he said.
"There ain't a scrap of writin' in the trunk," Mrs. Slocum vociferated.
"Me an' my boarder hev looked. There ain't no writin' an' no jewelry,
an' no money. He used to carry his money with him, and he had a bank
book in his pocket, and a long, red book he used to git money out of the
bank. I've seen 'em. Doctor Gordon said he didn't have no money. He did
hev money. Once he left the long, red book on his bureau, and I looked
in it, and the leaves that are as good as money wan't a quarter torn
out. I know he had money, an' I've been cheated out of it. But all I ask
is that trunk."
"For God's sake take the trunk and clear out," shouted Gordon with
unexpected violence, "but if there is a scrap of written paper in that
trunk, and you keep it, you'll be sorry."
"There ain't," said the woman with evident truthfulness. She rose and
clutched at the back of her skirt, and tugged at her boa and coat.
"Thank you, Doctor Gordon," said she. "When is the funeral goin' to be?"
"Tell her to-morrow at two o'clock at the hotel, and tell her to leave,"
said Gordon, and his voice was suddenly apathetic again.
When the woman had gone Gordon turned to James. "How comedy will prick
through tragedy," he said.
"Yes," James answered vaguely. He looked anxiously at Gordon, whose eyes
had at once a desperate and an utterly wearied appearance. "I will make
all the arrangements for the funeral, if you wish, Doctor Gordon," he
said. "I know the undertaker, and I can manage it as well as you. You
look used up."
"I am pretty nearly," muttered Gordon. Then he gave an almost
affectionate glance at James. "Do you think you can manage it?" he said.
James smiled. "It is a new thing to me, but I have no doubt I can," he
replied.
"You cannot imagine what a weight you would take off my shoulders. Don't
spare money. See to it that everything is good and as it should be. The
bills are to be sent to me."
Gordon answered an unspoken question of James. "Yes," he said, "he had
money, a considerable fortune, and he has no heirs--at least, I am as
sure as I need be that he has none. In his pockets were two bank books,
small check books, and a security register book. I have done them up in
a parcel. See to it that they are buried with him."
"But," said James.
"Oh, yes, I know. Sooner or later there will be advertisements in the
papers, and that sort of thing, but that will pass. God knows I would
not touch his money with the devil's pitchfork, nor allow anybody whom I
loved to touch it. Let him be buried under the name by which he was
known here. It is not the name, needless to say, on the bank books.
While living under other than his rightful name, he must have gone to
New York in person to supply himself with cash. There was some two
hundred dollars in bank notes in his wallet. That is with the other
things. Let the whole be buried with him, and see to it that Drake does
not discover it. You had better take the parcel now. Open the right
drawer of the table, and you will find it in the corner. Then, after
breakfast, you had better see Drake at once. I will attend to the
patients to-day."
"You are not able."
"Able is a word which I have eliminated from my vocabulary as applied to
myself."
The funeral, which was held the next afternoon in the parlor of the
hotel, was at once a ghastly and a grotesque function. The two doctors,
the undertaker and his assistant, Georgie K. and the bar-tender, and
Mrs. Slocum with a female friend, and a man, evidently the boarder to
whom she had referred, were the only persons present. The boarder wore a
hat which had belonged to the dead man. It was many sizes too large for
his grayish blond, foolish little head, and, when he put it on, it
nearly obscured his eyes. Mrs. Slocum sniffed audibly through the
service, which was short, being conducted by the old Presbyterian
clergyman of Alton. He hardly spoke above a whisper of "the stranger who
had passed from our midst into the beyond." His concluding prayer was
quite inaudible. Mrs. Slocum had brought a bouquet of cheerful pink
geraniums from her window plants, which on the top of the closed black
casket made an odd spot of color and life in the dim room. Among the
blossoms were some rose-geranium leaves, whose fragrance seemed to
mantle everything like smoke. While the clergyman conducted the
inaudible services loud voices were heard in the bar-room, and the yelp
of a dog. On one side of the house was the hush of death, on the other
the din of life. James wondered what the clergyman found to say: all
that he had distinguished was the expression, "The stranger within our
midst."
It all seemed horribly farcical to him. The dead man in his casket had
no personality for him; the sniffs of Mrs. Slocum, her boarder with the
hat, assumed, in his eyes, the character of a "Punch and Judy" show. But
along with that feeling came the realization of a most terrible pathos.
He felt a sort of pity for the dead man, whose very personality had
become nothing to him, and the pity was the greater because of that. It
became a pity for the very scheme of things, for man in the abstract,
born perhaps, through no fault of his own, to sin and misery, both
miserable and causing misery throughout his life, and then to end in the
grave, and vanish from the sight and minds of other men. He felt that it
would not be so sad if it were sadder, if Mrs. Slocum's sniffs had come
from her heart, and not from her sentimentality. He felt that a funeral
where love is not is the most mournful function on earth. Then, too, he
felt a great anxiety for Doctor Gordon, who sat shrugged up in his gray
overcoat, with his gray grizzle of beard meeting the collar, and his
forehead heavily corrugated over pent and gloomy eyes.
He was heartily glad when the service was over, when the casket had been
lowered into the grave, when the village hearse had turned off into a
street, the horse going at a sharp trot, and he and Doctor Gordon were
left alone. He drove. Gordon sat hunched into a corner of the buggy, as
he had sat in the corner of the hotel parlor. James hesitated about
saying anything, but finally he spoke, he felt foolishly enough,
although he meant the words to be comforting. "You did all you could to
save his life," he said.
Gordon made no reply.
When they reached the house, Clemency's head disappeared from the
window, where she had evidently been watching. She met them at the
office door, with an odd, shocked, inquiring expression on her little
face. James kissed her furtively, while Gordon's back was turned, as he
divested himself of his gray coat.
"Dinner is nearly ready," Clemency said in an agitated voice.
"How is she?" asked Gordon, then before she had time to reply, he added
almost roughly, "What on earth are you fretting about?"
"I am not fretting," Clemency answered in a weak little voice.
"There is nothing in all this for you to concern yourself with. Put it
out of your head!"
"Yes, Uncle Tom."
"How is she?"
"She has been asleep all the afternoon."
"She has not had another attack?"
"No, Uncle Tom."
Then the dinner-bell rang.
To James's surprise, but everything surprised him now, Gordon seemed to
recover his spirits. He ate heartily. He laughed and joked. After dinner
he went upstairs to see Mrs. Ewing, and when he came down insisted that
James should accompany him to the hotel for a game of euchre. James
would have preferred remaining with Clemency, whose eyes were wistful,
but Gordon hurried him away. They remained until nearly midnight in the
parlor, where the funeral had taken place a short time before, playing
euchre, telling stories, and drinking apple-jack. James noticed that the
hotel man often cast an anxious and puzzled glance at Gordon. He began
to fancy that what seemed mirth and jollity was the mere bravado of
misery and a ghastly mask of real enjoyment. He was glad when Gordon
made the move to leave. Georgie K. stood in the door watching the two
men untie the horse and get into the buggy. "Take care of yourself,
Doc," he hallooed, and there was real affection and concern in his
voice.
Gordon drove now, and the mare, being on her homeward road, made good
time. James helped Gordon unharness, as Aaron had gone to bed. His deep
snores sounded through the stable from his room above. "It's a pity to
wake up anything," Gordon said. "Guess well put the mare up ourselves."
Now his voice was bitter again. Gordon had the key of the office door,
and after locking the stable the two men entered. Gordon threw some wood
on the fire. The lamp with its dangling prisms was burning. "Sit down a
minute," Gordon said, "'I have something to tell you. I may as well get
it off my mind now. It has got to come sometime."
James sat down and lit a cigar. He felt himself in a nervous tension.
Gordon filled his pipe and lit it, then he began to speak in an odd,
monotonous voice, as though he were reciting.
"That man's name was James Mendon. He was an Englishman. When I first
began practice it was in the West. That man had a ranch near the little
town where I lived with my sister Alice. Alice was a beautiful girl. We
had lost our parents, and she kept house for me. The man was as handsome
as a devil, and he had the devil's own way with women. God only knows
what a good girl like my sister saw in him. He had a bad name, even out
in that rough country. Horrible tales were circulated about his cruelty
to animals for one thing. His cowboys deserted him and told stories.
His very dog turned on him, and bit him. God knows how he was torturing
the animal. I saw the scar on his hand when he lay on his death-bed.
Well, however it was, my sister loved him and married him, and he
treated her like a fiend. She died, and it was a merciful release. He
deserted her three months before her death. Sold out all he had, and
left her without a cent. She came back to me, and three months later
Clemency was born."
Gordon paused and looked at James. "Yes," he said, "that man was
Clemency's father."
He waited, but only for a second. The young man spoke, and his clear
young voice rang out like a trumpet. "I never loved Clemency as I love
her now," he said. _
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