Life at High Tide Part 9

The Doctor shook his head.

She hesitated a moment, smiling a little. "'Lord, _if Thou hadst been here_, our brother had not died!'" she quoted.

The Doctor got up quickly from his chair. He knocked the ash from his cigar and laid it down on the tray. "Well," he said, lightly, "I must be off." He squared his shoulders and held out his hand; its grip upon her own trembled very slightly, but he smiled sunnily. "I'll come back for some more music some day."

"Do," the girl said. She had risen and was smiling too.

The Doctor looked about the room wistfully. "Jolly place,--I don't get up very often, do I?"

"Not very."

They smiled at each other again, then the girl, turning abruptly away, walked to the window and came back with a double handful of yellow flowers.

"Will you carry these to your wife? They are the first of the year."

She held the door open for him, and from the little landing watched him down the stairs. At their turn he glanced up for a moment, holding his hat raised silently. She waved him a mute acknowledgment, then going into the room again, closed the door.

The firelight still leaped languidly on the hearth, and on the half-smoked cigar and pile of ashes in the tray. The girl stood a moment looking at these things and the chair, then walked quietly to the piano and sat down before it. But she did not play again.

Meantime the Doctor, an erect and urgent presence in the dusk, had driven through dim streets and climbed again the four flights of the morning, to find the hush of heaven fallen on the house.

"I knew _you_ could save him!" said the pale mother only, lifting blind eyes of wors.h.i.+p from the couch.

The Doctor laughed, poured her out with his own hands a sleeping-draught, and sat patiently beside her till she slept, then stole away, leaving injunctions with the nurse, established in his absence, to telephone if there came a crisis--"even," after a moment's hesitation, "in the night."

"Home!"--he gave the order briefly. There were black circles beneath his eyes, making him look thinner than when he left the house that morning; he had no distinct reminiscence of lunch, and he was very tired; but his shoulders no longer ached, his headache was gone, and his hands were perfectly steady.

Odd bits of music hummed perversely through his head, mixing themselves up with all things and rippling the air about him into their own large waves, bearing now and then upon them, like the insistent iteration of an oratorio chorus, fantastic fragments--"If Thou hadst been here!--If Thou hadst been here!" His fingers ached towards the responsive strings, and pulling out his watch, he made a hasty calculation. There should be good fifteen minutes, he decided--toilet allowed for--and he hurried the coachman again and leaned forward, looking with bright, eager eyes into the night, and humming to himself.

One liveried servant opened the house door, another the carriage door, and a third relieved him of his hat and coat. Out of the warmth and brightness his wife advanced to meet him, a child in either hand, their long curls brushed and tied with bright ribbons. Her face was filled with tender solicitude.

"You must be worn out;--what a long day you have made! Would you like the dinner sent in at once, or would you rather wait? Children, don't hang so on papa; he must be dreadfully tired. Oh, and there's a man been waiting over an hour; he simply _wouldn't go_; but you'll let him come back to-morrow?--you won't try to see any one else tonight?"

The Doctor hesitated a moment, letting all the warmth and brightness sink into him, while his hands played with the soft hair of his little son and daughter. He smiled at his wife, a bright, tired smile.

"Robin," he said, "run down to the carriage; there are some posies there for mamma--from Miss Graham, Louise,--you see I did get a moment's rest."

"Yes," said his wife. She continued to gaze compa.s.sionately at the tired man. After a moment she repeated gently, "And the dinner, dear--?"

"No,--don't wait for me; I'll not be long. Have it brought in at once, and--send the man into the office, please."

He stooped and kissed the children, and turning away, went into his office and closed the door behind him.

A WORKING BASIS

BY ABBY MEGUIRE ROACH

Why she married him her friends wondered at the time. Those she made later wondered more. Before long she caught herself wondering. Yes, she had seen it beforehand, more or less. But she had seen other things as well: he had developed unevenly, unexpectedly, if logically.

There had been common tastes--which grew obsolete or secondary. As the momentum of what she believed and hoped of him ran down with them both, he crystallized into the man he was, and no doubt virtually had always been.

It was bad enough to have to ask for money, but to have it counted out to you, to be questioned about it like a child, was worse.

"I don't understand," she said in the first months of their marriage.

"Are you afraid I won't be judicious, responsible? Mightn't you try before judging?"

"Judicious? Responsible?" He pinched her cheek. (Judith was five feet nine and sweetly sober of mien.) "There are no feminines or diminutives of those words, my dear."

She stepped back. "But with more freedom I could manage better, Sam."

"Manage?"--jocularly. "That _is_ your long suit, isn't it? You feel equal to managing all of us? Could even give me pointers on the business, eh?"

"Why not?" she asked, quietly.

Sam, feet apart, hands in pockets, looked her over with the smile one has for a dignified kitten. "I won't trouble you, my dear. I manage this family." With his pleasantries a lower note struck--and jangled.

"But that isn't the point. I want--"

"Really? You always do. Don't bother to tell me what. If you got this you'd be wanting something else, so what's the use of the expense merely to change the object?" He chuckled at her baffled silence.

"I can't answer when you're like that. But--but, Sam! It isn't fair!"

Still she supposed that relevant.

However, money was not the chief thing. He could manage. Let it go.

Having properly impressed her, nothing made Sam feel larger than to bring her a set of pearl-handled knives,--when she had wanted a dollar for kitchen tins. His extravagances were not always generosities.

Once, after she had turned her winter-before-last suit and patched new seats into the boy's flannel drawers, because "times were hard," he bought a brace of blooded hunting-dogs.

Next day she opened an account at a department store.

With the promptness of the first of the month and the sureness of death, the bill came. Sam had expressed himself unchecked before she turned in the doorway. "If you will go over it," she said, with all her rehearsal unable, after all, to imitate his nonchalance, "you will find nothing unnecessary. I think there is nothing there for the dogs."

But her cannon-ball affected him no more than a leaf an elephant; he did not know he was. .h.i.t. It was always so.

In his cool way, however, Sam had all the c.u.mulative jealousy of the primitive male for his long primacy. Some weeks later, when Judith ordered an overcoat for Sam junior sent home on approval, she found the store had been instructed to give her no credit.

She got out, with burning face and heart, without the article. Her first impulse was to shrink from a blow.

But at table that night she recounted her experience: "The very courteous gentleman who informed me of your predicament happened to be a cousin of Mr. Banks, of Head and Banks. (They supply your grain, I believe?) Mrs. Howe (isn't it R. E. Howe who is president of the Newcomb Club?) was at my elbow. The salesgirl has Sam junior's Sunday-school cla.s.s. Doubtless it will interest them all to know you are in such straits you can't clothe your children."

Ah? She had touched his vulnerable point? Instantly she was swept by compunction, by impulses to make amends, to him, to their love. Their love! That delicate wild thing she kept in a warm, moist, sheltered place, and forbore to look at for yellowing leaves.

Like the battle of Blenheim, it was a famous victory, but what good came of it at last? The overcoat came home, to be sure, with cap and shoes besides. But she was too gallant to press her advantage.