The Calling of Dan Matthews Part 5

"Oh, yes," exclaimed Harry, "we have the letter here. We were just speaking of you, Miss Farwell. This is Dr. Oldham; perhaps Dr. Miles told you of him."

She turned with a smile, "Yes indeed, Dr. Miles told me. I believe we have met before, Doctor."

The girl broke into a merry laugh, when the old man answered, gruffly: "I should think we had. I was just telling Harry there when you came in."

Then the younger physician asked, "How soon can you be ready to go on this case, Nurse?"

She looked at him with a faint expression of surprise. "Why I'm ready now, Doctor."

And the old Doctor broke in so savagely that they both looked at him in astonishment as he said: "But this is a hard case. You'll be up most of the night. You're tired out from your trip."

"Why, Doctor," said the young woman, "it is my business to be ready at any time. Being up nights is part of my profession. Surely you know that. Besides, that trip was really a good rest, the first good rest I've had for a long time."

"I know, of course," he answered. "I was thinking of something else. You must pardon me, Miss. Harry there will explain that I am subject to these little attacks."

"Oh, I know already," she returned smiling. "Dr. Miles told me all about you." And there was something in her laughing gray eyes that made the rough old man wonder just what it was that his friend Miles had told her.

"All right, get back to business you two," he growled. "I'll not interrupt again. Tell her about the case, Harry."

The young woman's face was serious in a moment, and she gave the physician the most careful attention as he explained the case for which he had written Dr. Miles to send a trained nurse of certain qualifications.

The Judge Strong of this story is an only son of the old Judge who moved Corinth. He is a large man--physically, as large as the Doctor, but where the Doctor is fat the Judge is lean. He inherited, not only his father's t.i.tle (a purely honorary one) but his father's property, his position as an Elder in the church, and his general disposition; together with his taste and skill in collecting mortgages and acquiring real estate. The old Judge had but the one child. The Judge of this story, though just pa.s.sing middle age, has no children at all. Seemingly there is no room in his heart for more than his church and his properties--his mind being thus wholly occupied with t.i.tles to heaven and to earth. With Sapphira, his wife, he lives in a big house on Strong Avenue, beyond the Strong Memorial Church, with never so much as a pet dog or cat to roughen the well-kept lawn or romp, perchance, in the garden. The patient whom Miss Farwell had come to nurse, was Sapphira's sister, a widow with neither child nor home. The Judge had been forced by his fear of public sentiment to give her shelter, and he had been compelled by Dr. Oldham and Dr.

Harry to employ a nurse. The case would not be a pleasant one; Miss Farwell would need all that abundant stock of tact and patience which Dr.

Miles had declared she possessed.

All this Dr. Harry explained to her, and when he had finished she asked in the most matter-of-fact tone: "And what are your instructions, Doctor?"

That caught Harry. It caught the old Doctor, too. Not even a comment on the disagreeable position she knew she would have in the Strong household, for Harry had not slighted the hard facts! She understood clearly what she was going into.

A light came into the young physician's eyes that his old friend liked to see. "I guess Miles knew what he was talking about in his letter,"

said the old Doctor. And the young woman's face flushed warmly at his words and look.

Then in his professional tones Dr. Harry instructed her more fully as to the patient's condition--a nervous trouble greatly aggravated by the Judge's disposition.

"Nice job, isn't it, Miss Farwell?" Harry finished.

She smiled. "When do I go on, Doctor?"

Harry stepped to the telephone and called up the Strong mansion. "This you, Judge?" he said into the instrument. "The nurse from Chicago is here; came today. We want her to go on the case at once. Can you send your man to the depot for her trunk?"

By the look on his face the old Doctor knew what Harry was getting. The younger physician's jaw was set and his eyes were blazing, but his voice was calm and easy. "But Judge, you remember the agreement. Dr. Oldham is here now if you wish to speak to him. We shall hold you to the exact letter of your bargain, Judge. I am very sorry but--. Very well sir. I will be at your home with the nurse in a few moments. Please have a room ready. And by the way, Judge, I must tell you again that my patient is in a serious condition. I warn you that we will hold you responsible if anything happens to interfere with our arrangements for her treatment.

Good-bye."

He turned to the nurse with a wry face. "It's pretty bad, Miss Farwell."

Then, ringing up the village drayman, he arranged to have the young woman's trunk taken to the house. When the man had called for the checks Harry said: "Now, Nurse, my buggy is here, and if you are ready I guess we had better follow your trunk pretty closely."

From the window the old Doctor watched them get into the buggy, and drive off down the street. Mechanically he opened the letter from Dr. Miles, which he still held in his hand. "An ideal nurse, who has taken up the work for love of it,--have known the family for years--thoroughbreds--just the kind to send a Kentuckian like you--I warn you look out,--I want her back again."

The Doctor chuckled when he remembered Harry's look as he talked to the young woman. "If ever a man needed a wife Harry does," he thought. "Who knows what might happen?"

Who knows, indeed?

Then the Doctor went home to Dan. He found him in Denny's garden, with Denny enthroned on the big rock--listening to his fun, while Deborah, from the house, looked on, unable to believe that it was "the parson sure enough out there wid Denny,"--Denny who was to have been a priest himself one day, but who would never now be good for much of anything.

CHAPTER VI.

THE CALLING OF DAN MATTHEWS

"'In the battle of life we cannot hire a subst.i.tute; whatever work one volunteers to make his own he must look upon as his ministry to the race.'"

Dan, with the Doctor and Mrs. Oldham were to take supper and spend the evening at Elder Jordan's. Martha went over early in the afternoon, leaving the two men to follow.

As they were pa.s.sing the monument, Dan stopped. "Did you know him?" he asked curiously, when he had read the inscription. It was not like Dan to be curious.

The Doctor answered briefly: "I was there when he was born and was his family physician all his life, and I was with him when he died."

Something in the doctor's voice made Dan look at him intently for a moment, then in a low tone: "He was a good man?"

"One of the best I ever knew, too good for this town. Look at that thing.

They say that expressed their appreciation of him--and it does," he finished grimly.

"But," said Dan, in a puzzled way, turning once more to the monument, "this inscription--" he read again the sentence from the statesman's speech on the forgotten issue of his pa.s.sing day.

The Doctor said nothing.

Then gazing up at the cast-iron figure posed stiffly with outstretched arm in the att.i.tude of a public speaker, Dan asked: "Is that like him?"

"Like him! It's like nothing but the people who conceived it," growled the Doctor indignantly. "If that man were living he would not be always talking about issues that have no meaning at this day. He would be giving himself to the problems that trouble us now. This thing," he rapped the monument with his stick until it gave forth a dull, hollow sound, "this thing is not a memorial to the life and character of my friend. It memorializes the dead issue to which he gave himself at one pa.s.sing moment of his life, and which, had he lived, he would have forgotten, as the changing times brought new issues to be met as he met this old one.

He was too great, too brave, to ever stand still and let the world go by.

He was always on the firing line. This thing--" he rapped the hollow iron shaft again contemptuously, and the hollow sound seemed to add emphasis to his words--"this is a dead monument to a dead issue. Instead of speaking of his life, it cries aloud in hideous emphasis that he is dead."

They stood silently for a moment then Dan said, quietly: "After all, Doctor, they meant well."

"And that," retorted the old man grimly, "is what we doctors say when we see our mistakes go by in the hea.r.s.e."

They went on up the street until they reached the church. Here Dan stopped again. He read the inscription cut large in the stone over the door, "The Strong Memorial Church." Again Dan turned to his friend inquiringly.

"Judge Strong, the old Judge," explained the Doctor. "That's his picture in the big stained-gla.s.s window there."

In all his intentions Nathaniel Jordan was one of the best of men.

Surely, if in the hereafter, any man receives credit for always doing what his conscience dictates, Nathan will. He was one of those characters who give up living ten years before they die. Nathan stayed on for the church's good.

Miss Charity, the Elder's only child is--well, she was born, raised and educated for a parson's wife. The Doctor says that she didn't even cry like other babies. At three she had taken a prize in Sunday school for committing Golden texts, at seven she was baptized, and knew the reason why, at twelve she played the organ in Christian Endeavor. At fourteen she was teaching a cla.s.s, leading prayer meeting, attending conventions, was president of the Local Union, and pointed with pride to the fact that she was on more committees than any other single individual in the Memorial Church. The walls of her room were literally covered with badges, medals, tokens, prizes and emblems, with the picture of every conspicuous church worker and leader of her denomination. Between times the girl studied the early history of her church, read the religious papers and in other ways fitted herself for her life work. Poor Charity!

She was so cursed with a holy ambition, that to her men were not men, they simply _were_ or were _not_ preachers.