James and Clemency had hardly started upon their drive before there was
a ring at the office door, and Doctor Gordon, who was alone there,
answered it.
He was confronted by a man who lived half-way between Alton
and the next village on the north. He had walked some three miles to get
some medicine for his wife, who was suffering from rheumatism. He was
pathetically insistent upon the fact that his wife did not require a
call from the doctor, only some medicine. "Now, see here, Joe," said
Gordon, "if I really thought your wife needed a call, I would go, and it
should not cost you a cent more than the medicine, but I am dog tired,
and not feeling any too well myself, and if her symptoms are just as you
say, I think I can send her something which will fix her up all right."
"She is just the way she was last year," said the man. He did not look
unlike Gordon, although he was poorly clad, and was a genuine son of the
New Jersey soil. His poor clothes, even his skin, had a clayey hue, as
if he had been really cast from the mother earth. It was frozen outside,
but a reddish crust from the last thaw was on his hulking boots. He
spoke with a drawl, which was nasal, and yet had something sweet in it.
"I would have came this afternoon, but I was afraid you might have went
out," he remarked.
"Yes, I was out," replied Gordon, who was filling out a prescription.
The man stooped and patted the bull terrier, which had not evinced the
slightest emotion at his entrance.
"Mighty fine dog," said the man.
"Yes, he is a pretty good sort," replied Gordon.
"Shouldn't like to meet him if I had came up to your house an' no one
round, and he had took a dislike to me."
"I should not myself," said Gordon. "But he does not dislike you."
"Dogs know me pooty well," said the man. "They ain't no particler likin'
for me. Don't want to run and jump an' wag, but they know I mean well,
and they mostly let me alone."
"Yes, I guess that's so," said Gordon. "Jack would have barked if he had
not known you were all right, Joe."
"Queer how much they know," said the man reflectively, and a dazed look
overspread his dingy face with its cloud of beard. If once he became
launched upon a current of reflection, he lost his mental bearings
instantly and drifted.
"Well, they do know," said Gordon. "Now listen, Joe! You see this
bottle. You give your wife a spoonful of the medicine in a glass of
water every three hours. Mind, you make it a whole tumbler full of
water."
"Yes, sir," replied the man.
"Of course, you need not wake her up if she gets to sleep," said the
doctor, "but every three hours when she is awake."
"Yes, sir." The man began fumbling in his pocket, but Gordon stopped
him. "No," he said, "put up your pocketbook, Joe. I don't want any
money. I get this medicine at wholesale, and it don't cost much."
"I come prepared to pay," said the man. He straightened his shoulders
and flushed.
"Oh, well," said Doctor Gordon, "wait. If you need more medicine, or it
seems necessary that I should drive over to see your wife, you can do a
little work on my garden in the spring, or you can let me have a bushel
of your new potatoes when they are grown next summer, or some apples,
and we'll call it square. Wait; I don't want any money for that bottle
of medicine to-night anyhow. Did you walk over, Joe?"
Joe said that he had walked over. "Aaron might just as well drive you
home as not," said Gordon. "The sooner your wife has that medicine the
better. How is the baby getting along?"
"First-rate. I'd just as soon walk, doctor."
For answer Gordon opened the door and called Aaron, and told him to
hitch up and take the man home.
"Doctor Elliot has gone with the bay," said Aaron. "The teams are about
played out, and there's nothin' except the gray."
"Take her then."
"She looked when I fed her jest now as if she was half a mind to balk at
takin' her feed," Aaron remarked doubtfully.
"Nonsense! Give her a loose rein, and she'll be all right."
Aaron went out grumbling.
Gordon offered the man a cigar, which he accepted as if it had been a
diamond. "I'll save it up for next Sunday, when I've got a little time
to sense it," he said. "I know what your cigars be."
Gordon forced another upon him, and the man looked as pleased as a
child.
Presently a shout was heard, and Gordon opened the office door.
"Here's Aaron with the buggy," he said.
He stood in the doorway watching, but the gray, instead of balking, went
out of the yard with an angry plunge. Gordon shook his head.
"Confound him, he's pulling too hard on the lines," he muttered. Then he
closed and locked the office door, and went into the living-room to find
it deserted. Gordon called up the stairs. "Have you gone to bed, Clara?"
His voice was at once tenderly solicitous and angry.
Mrs. Ewing answered him from above, and in her tone was something
propitiating. "Yes, Tom, dear," she called.
Gordon hesitated a moment. His face took on its expression of utmost
misery. "Is--the pain very bad?" he called then, and called as if he
were in actual fear.
"No, dear," the woman's patient, beseeching voice answered, "not very
bad."
"Not very?"
"No, only I felt a little twinge, and thought I had better go to bed. I
am quite comfortable now. I think I shall go to sleep. I am sorry to
leave you alone all the evening, Tom."
"That's right," called Gordon. His voice rang harsh, in spite of his
effort to control it. He threw his arm over his eyes, and fairly groped
his way back to his office, stifling his sobs. When he was in his office
he flung himself into a chair, and bent his head over his hands on the
table, and his whole frame shook. "Oh, my God!" he muttered. "Oh, my
God!" He did not weep, but he gasped like a child whom his mother has
commanded not to weep. Terrible emotion fairly convulsed him. He
struggled with it as with a visible foe. At last he sat up and filled
his pipe. The dog had crept close to him, and was nestling against him
and whimpering. Gordon patted his head. The dog licked his hand.
The simple, ignorant sympathy of this poor speechless thing nearly
unnerved the man again, but he continued to smoke. He looked at the dog,
whose honest brown eyes were fixed upon him with an almost uncanny
understanding, and reflected how the woman upstairs, who was passing out
of his life, had become in a few days so associated with the animal,
that after she was gone he could never see him without a pang. He
looked about the office, with whose belongings she was less associated
than with anything in the house, and it seemed to him that everything
even there would have for him, after she had passed, a terrible sting of
reminiscence. It seemed to him, as he looked about, as if she were
already gone.