CHAPTER XV

THE DOUGLAS IN HIS HALL

As is frequently the case when I have gone to bed late and in a perturbed state of mind, I awake early, with a heavy feeling between my eyes and a marked distaste to getting up. It was so this morning, except I had an indistinct impression that, instead of waking normally, I had been awakened by some unusual noise.

I turned over in bed and looked around the room for a few minutes before I began to think of the effort of getting up. I had by no means forgotten that Richard was coming--might already be here, as the spasmodic bursts of sunshine indicated that it was at least seven o'clock--but he would not expect me to do anything so unusual as to dress this early and meet him down-stairs for a few minutes' stolen happiness before we should meet and shake hands formally at the breakfast table. The bliss of such a secret little reunion might, doubtless would, appeal to most lovers, but not to Coeur de Lion. He would see in it only the impropriety of a young woman meeting a man in a deserted library in the early hours of the morning. Richard has this way of throwing--well, not exactly cold water, but _iced lemonade_, over the exuberance of my youthful feelings! I wish this were not so, but--

I looked around the beautiful, befrilled bedroom, with its handsome furniture of Circassian walnut and its dainty blue silk hangings--and I thought, with a quick little pang of longing, of my severely plain sleeping apartment at home. This Spartan bareness is in imitation of Alfred's cell-like bedroom, which Ann Lisbeth had once shown me, and which had attracted me by the air of wholesomeness the immaculate cleanliness gave it. Alfred and I have often planned a house so plain and sanitary that we could turn the hose all through it. Housekeeping would be a delightfully simple affair with him, for he and I agree so perfectly in our dislike of complicated things. Dear me! I wonder what kind of house Richard and I will keep? It will be--expensive, but will it be harmonious?

The events of last night came crowding before me and I remembered with a most disagreeable little chill that Mrs. Chalmers' eye had held a look of terror as she thought of Richard's commands being disobeyed. Was Richard a monster then? Did he _eat_ people when they dared to go contrary to his wishes? I also recalled the day he and I had had our first actual quarrel--about the volume of Byron which Alfred had given me. His eyes grow very cold and glittering when he is angry, and--yes, I can understand that a certain class of women might be very much afraid of him. Especially if they had him to live with! And I wondered if, at last, after months of struggling, I, too, might not find it more restful and peaceable to become a groveling sort of hypocrite to my lord and master?

"Never, never!" I cried aloud, jumping out of bed as I heard again the same sounds which had awakened me--hurrying footsteps down-stairs through the halls, and the sound of many doors being hastily opened and closed. "I'll give him up if I find him as they say he is."

Just then I recognized the heavy, dignified slam of the massive front door, a kind of muffled protest against the impertinence of using haste with such an august portion of that house; then, a moment after, there was the sound of an automobile starting.

"Evelyn must be much worse," I thought uneasily, as I hurried through with my bath and slipped into my clothes. If this were so I knew that I should not have to meet Mrs. Chalmers at the breakfast table, and I should be relieved of the ordeal of coming in contact with her bland smile. I instinctively felt that she would meet us all exactly as if nothing had happened the night before. She is entirely too well-bred to bear malice.

Now, for my part, I have a nervous distaste to whited sepulchers, aside from any question of morality, and I always have a sense of being brought face to face with the rottenness and dead men's bones whenever I am forced to _smooth_ over a situation which has not been thoroughly explained and threshed out. When I have a grievance against any one, my first desire is to "have it out" with the offender, and I always want any one whom I have offended to offer me the same privilege of setting myself straight.

But Mrs. Chalmers would, I know, sit for ever at the mouth of such whited sepulcher with a bottle of vera-violet held to her nose before she would face anybody in helping to rid the place of its pestilence.

These thoughts were running through my mind as I was dressing, and I will say that I had the grace to feel ashamed of them as I ran down the steps and met her in the hall, her face looking old and drawn with anxiety, her hair in disarray, and her figure enveloped in a fantastic kimono.

"Evelyn is very much worse," she said in a trembling voice as I came up with her and inquired after the patient. "It is an acute attack of appendicitis and Doctor Cooley has just telephoned to the city for Doctor Gordon to come out on the first train. He says--she can't--_live_ without an operation; and, even so, he is very much afraid that it--the appendix--has ruptured."

She broke down here and sobbed miserably, burying her face in her hands and wiping away the tears upon one long silken sleeve of her flowered kimono.

"Evelyn is all I have in this world," she moaned, and I suddenly felt infinitely sorry for her--and forgiving. "She is all I have to comfort me in my miserable life, and now Richard has come home and blames this trouble on me."

"Blames you?" I questioned, looking down upon her disordered hair in amazement at the thought.

"He says that I ought to have known better than to let her dance so much the other night," she explained, lifting a tear-stained face to me for a moment, as if to acknowledge the sympathy in my voice. Clearly she was not accustomed to sympathy.

"Dance!" I said again in surprise. "Why, people have appendicitis who have never seen inside a ball-room! That is a most absurd idea."

"Not nearly so absurd as some things he hatches up against us two," she broke out, her anger toward Richard making her forget, for a moment, her anxiety for Evelyn. "Oh, Ann, he leads us _such_ a life! He is exactly like his father--and he was a _despot_!"

We were interrupted by the quick footsteps of Sophie, as she came hurrying through the hall. She had an ice-cap in her hand, and there was a thermometer-case thrust through her belt. There was no trained nurse in Charlotteville, so she had quietly explained to Doctor Cooley her qualifications to act in that capacity. Mrs. Chalmers whispered this to me, as Sophie passed by; also that Mr. Maxwell had left on the same train that brought Richard, but not before he and Sophie had spent a long hour together in the quiet library.

"She was up nearly all night," Mrs. Chalmers said, "so they came face to face here in the hall at daybreak. She is a good girl, and he will make her happy. I am glad they have come to an understanding."

"But I thought--" I began, then stopped, not knowing how to express my idea about her plans for Mr. Maxwell and Evelyn; but she read my mind.

"You thought I wanted to catch him for Evelyn?" she asked without embarrassment. "Well, I did, but I shouldn't have gone to such lengths, except for the sake of keeping Richard in a good humor."

"Then he'll be in a very bad humor with me when he hears that I was the one who told about Sophie," I suggested, but she cut me short.

"Oh, he's in such a fiendish humor about something that happened to him on this trip of his that he will forget all about these things here at home."

"Is there some sort of political trouble?" I asked anxiously, but she shook her head.

"Richard never mentions his business affairs to us," she said, as she smoothed down her kimono and followed Sophie up the stairs.

Half an hour later Richard met me at the door of the breakfast-room, looking very tired and morose. We sat down and ate breakfast in unchaperoned gloom. He asked me a few perfunctory questions about the happenings here since he left, but he volunteered no information as to what kind of business it was which had taken him away, nor where he had been.

After breakfast we established ourselves in the library, he with a batch of newspapers which he had brought with him from the city and I had a new magazine, but he seemed to care little for reading, and he sat and smoked in moody silence for a while. The day was warm, but the sunshine of the early morning grew fainter, and by noon there were signs of a thunder-shower, the clouds seeming to gather from all directions; and the air became oppressively heavy.

Richard finally threw away the end of his cigar, yawned a time or two in an abstracted sort of fashion, then got up and walked over to the window. He pulled aside the curtains and looked out at the threatening sky.

"Get your hat and let's go out for a little fresh air before it rains," he suggested as he came back and threw himself into his chair again, stretching out his long legs to the fire.

I got up obediently and started toward the door, but he reached out, caught my hand and stopped me.

"Isn't it a devilish old day?" he said lazily, as he drew me down toward him. "You haven't kissed me once since I came home. Don't you love me any more?"

"Love you? Of course I love you!" I answered, kissing him on the forehead and smoothing back his fair hair. I had entirely forgotten the traitorous thoughts of the early morning. "But you have been in _such_ a mood! Who wants to kiss something that looks about as lover-like as Rameses II?"

He smiled a little and took my face between his hands.

"I _am_ a savage," he admitted, though not at all bearing the appearance of one at that moment; "but I've had a lot to try me lately--and then I was so disgusted when I came home and found that mother had let Evelyn dance herself into another of these attacks."

"Oh, Richard! Surely you don't really think it was the dance that brought it on? It might have been the dinner--but I shouldn't even suggest that to your mother. She is miserable enough already. You ought to try to comfort her."

"That's very charitable of you," he said, a sarcastic little flicker around the corners of his mouth, "but, all the same, I find that I can manage my womenkind better to use a little frankness with them occasionally."

I drew back from him somewhat.

"Frankness?" I cried in genuine surprise at his cold sarcasm. "Even if frankness were the right name for--this, do you consider that now is the time for it? When she is so wretched?"

He turned from me and threw down the paper he had picked up a moment before as I stood talking to him.

"Let's don't quarrel," he said finally, in a low tone; and, impulsively reaching out both hands to me, he added: "And, Ann, for God's sake, don't ever act as if you were afraid of me!"

"Afraid of you!"

He smiled. I think he has the most adorable smile of any man on earth.

"Go and get your hat," he said.

As I came down-stairs again with my hat on I found Sophie standing at the front door talking with Richard. She was dressed entirely in the garb of a nurse by this time, and I looked admiringly at the becoming white uniform, but Richard made no reference to the change nor anything that it entailed.

"Sophie thinks that we would better not go very far," he said to me as he stepped outside into the vestibule and looked up again at the clouds. "She says Evelyn is not resting so well--and mother, of course, has entirely lost her grip."

"Do you think that there is any new danger in Evelyn's case?" I asked anxiously.

"Well, we are eager for the surgeon to get here as quickly as possible," she answered.

"He'll be here on the noon train, and, of course, he can operate immediately. And it hasn't been nearly twenty-four hours since the onset of the acute attack. The mortality is less than one per cent, if taken within--"

I had been looking into Sophie's eyes as I spoke and had not observed that Richard was listening intently to what I was saying, but as I made use of this last bit of medical jargon a contemptuous little half-laugh broke from him and I looked up quickly. He was smiling sardonically.

"Of course your friend, Doctor Morgan, is your authority," he said, his brows elevated and a disagreeable expression around his mouth.

"He is--and I couldn't ask a better," I flashed back at him.

We stood thus a moment, our eyes meeting in fiery challenge, and in that brief moment I realized that such a scene repeated a few times would cause us to hate each other. I felt suddenly as if the earth were receding from me and leaving me in a very uncertain stratum of air. I was violently angry with Richard--and he was infuriated.

"It's a pity the public continues to display such a lamentable ignorance in regard to this wonderful Hippocrates of yours," he sneered, though in an even voice.

"That ignorance is growing less every day," I responded easily, so easily, in fact, that I am sure Sophie never suspected that we were both at white heat.

But she was embarrassed at the bad taste we were both exhibiting, so she made some excuse and quickly left us. We walked slowly down toward the gate, not that there was any joy left in the prospect of a quiet walk together, but because there seemed nothing better to do right then. Out through the gate and quite a distance up the street we passed before either of us spoke, and I noticed once that his right hand, which clasped his slender silk umbrella, was trembling.

"Ann," he said finally, speaking in a remarkably low, gentle voice, "why does it seem to give you such pleasure to torture me that way?"

"Torture you?" I answered. "Oh, Richard! Why should you torture yourself into a passion if I but mention anything even remotely connected with the medical profession?"

"Medical profession!" His voice was still very quiet. "You would imply then that I am--that I am jealous of this yearling doctor?"

There was infinite contempt in the word "yearling."

"I don't _imply_!" I responded warmly. "I have good, clear English for what I wish to say."

"You certainly have for all that you wish to say about this paragon of yours."

"He _is_ a paragon; but he isn't mine."

"No? I wonder why? You certainly might have won him!"

Was this a lovers' quarrel? I had always heard them spoken of as being frivolous, make-believe disagreements, whose sting was light as thistle-down and whose shadows were quick to disappear at the dawn of a beloved smile. But if this were true, then my altercation with Richard was a much more serious affair, for I found my patience strained to the breaking point when I finally burst out: "Richard, hush! This is disgraceful! I will not quarrel with you any longer. You make me wish that I had never seen your face!"

My vehemence seemed to startle him out of his own wrath, or, at all events, it acted as a signal to him that he was to go no further, for he began to retract; not humbly, not penitently, as if he had found himself in the wrong, but with a sudden sparkling brilliance, his eyes and his smile dazzling my senses as they did the sunny afternoon we spent together, sitting on the orchard fence.

"Well, I'm glad I have seen your face," he said fondly, as he looked down upon me with that same air of possession, "for you are the prettiest little spitfire I ever saw."

He suggested that we walk up to the river side, not a great distance away, but it is as secluded a spot as if it were miles away from human habitation. There are thickets of undergrowth just beyond a skirt of woods, and a stone wall where we might sit down for a quiet little talk.

We made for this spot in silence, and, as he placed a strong, lithe hand on either side of my waist to lift me bodily up on the wall he said, with that same directness of manner which I found characterized his speech: "Ann, I beg your pardon--ten thousand times, sweetheart! Will you forgive me--and--and kiss me?"

His lips were already upon mine, and I knew then that there was nothing in this life so beautiful and sweet and intoxicating as their touch. I gave myself up to the exquisite madness with an abandon which shuts out all knowledge that Richard and I are not comrades, not even friends--that we have no ideals in common, no similar tastes! What does all this matter when he has his arms about me and I am so close to him that I can hear the quick thump, thump of his heart-beats, and I know how they quicken for me! Nothing matters! I love him!

"That's my own little girl," he said radiantly, as he lifted his face from mine and saw my entire surrender. "This is the first moment to-day that I have felt as if you really love me."

He dusted off a space on the wall then sprang lightly up to a seat by my side.

"I've been waiting for you to brighten up a bit and look like yourself," he continued after a few minutes of happy silence. "I have something to show you."

"Something to show me?" I looked at him wonderingly.

"Something I brought you from--from the city."

"But I told you not to bring me anything."

"I know. But I had already bought it then, and I couldn't take it back to the jeweler and tell him that my lady had turned it down, could I?"

He drew a little case from his pocket, a long, slender one this time, and as I found my eyes fixed with an eager fascination upon his hands as they worked for a moment with the catch, I seemed to see stretching before me a long vista of years, each one punctuated with quarrels like the one we had just endured, and the rough places left by these ruptures filled in and smoothed over by myriads of these small, dainty jewel-boxes. But Richard's deft fingers had opened the case, and he passed it over to me. I gave a little gasp of astonished delight as I saw lying upon its bed of velvet a string of pearls--white, softly-glistening, beautiful things.

"Let's see how they look on you," he suggested, unfastening the dull gold clasp and slipping the lovely chain around my neck. He fastened them securely, then smiled approval as he leaned back and viewed the effect.

"I've wanted you to have something like this ever since I've known you," he said with the air of a connoisseur as he still held back and looked at the pearls lying close around the neck of my collarless blouse. "So when I happened to see these the other day in--the city, I decided that they were exactly what I wanted for my little girl."

I was opening and shutting the box as he talked, and when he mentioned seeing them in the city I idly glanced at the name on the lining, and saw that the case bore the name of a well-known firm in St. Louis.

"Why, Richard," I cried, "did you go all the way to St. Louis to find them?"

I laughed, but there were two tiny lines between his eyes.

"Don't say anything about it to mother, but the truth is I did have to go to St. Louis while I was away from home this time."

"Your mother thinks you were down in some little country town--away from a telephone!"

"Well, it was a--business trip. She wouldn't be interested, and I never have believed in a man boring his family with his business affairs."

"I shouldn't be bored, Richard," I began, hoping so fervently that he was going to confide in me that half the joy I should have been feeling over my beautiful new possession was turned into pain when I saw that he was not.

He changed the subject quietly and we discussed various minor matters, until I remembered, with a start, that it was time for us to be going home. It must be long past noon. I mentioned this to Richard and he jumped down immediately.

"I haven't heard the train whistle, have you?"

"No, but we haven't been listening for it. Look at your watch."

He did so, and we were both surprised and not a little ashamed when we saw that it was half-past one.

"We'll have to hurry," he said briefly, and we walked home faster, I dare say, than ever lovers walked away from that delightful spot before.

When we reached the house we found that the doctor from the city had indeed arrived; the preparations for the operation being well under way. There was not to be an hour's delay, Sophie told us, as she paused on her way up the steps. Her hands were full of glistening instruments, and a negro servant followed with kettles of boiled water.

"What does Gordon think of her condition?" Richard asked, as he eyed Sophie's burden with a little shrinking.

"Doctor Gordon couldn't come," she answered abstractedly as she looked around and gave the servant some directions about keeping a bountiful supply of water that had been boiled, "there was a wreck on the road that he is surgeon for--it didn't amount to much, but still he had to be there, so he telephoned Doctor Cooley that this young colleague of his whom he sent to do the operation is thoroughly competent--it seems that they operate together a great deal. I didn't catch the young doctor's name when he was introduced--and I've been too busy since to ask."

"Doctor Morgan," I said, feeling sure that Doctor Gordon would send no one but Alfred on a case like this.

"Doctor Morgan--the _devil_ it is!" Richard's voice burst out so suddenly and so fiercely that I turned and looked at him in amazement. Then, for the first time, I realized how easy it might be to be afraid of him. Fierce and sudden as the words were, they were spoken in his deep, even voice, and not a muscle of his face showed the intense fury which I felt that he was laboring under. It was a cold, cruel anger, and it showed only in his eyes. They were glittering like two sharp-pointed steel blades. "Doctor Morgan here--and you knew all the time that he was coming!"

He looked at me so accusingly that Sophie sensed the point of the situation at once, although she had never heard Alfred's name mentioned before; and she broke in with a light laugh.

"Why, he didn't know himself that he was coming until ten minutes before train time. It was too late even to find a nurse to bring with him, so I am going to help in the operation."

Her words had the effect of quieting, in a measure, this insane suspicion of Richard's; and he and I followed her up the broad staircase. She led the way into the room which had been hastily divested of its rich furnishings and transformed into a semblance of an operating-room; and we two followed automatically. Sophie passed in and began busying herself about the preparations, but just inside the doorway we stopped.

Standing in the middle of the floor, near the end of a long table upon which had been placed several bowls of water, some clear, others light blue, his top shirt off and his arms up to his elbows thickly coated over with a soft lather, was Alfred. Another young fellow, whom I afterward learned was a local physician, stood near the table; and he too was busily "scrubbing up." As we came into the room Alfred bade Sophie hurry up with her own preparations.

"Would you object to hearing a word from me before your manipulations go further?" Richard's voice broke in, after the briefest and most perfunctory of greetings, which fortunately were divested of any hypocritical handshaking on account of Alfred's green soapiness. "I understand that our family physician, Doctor Cooley, telephoned to the city for Doctor _Gordon_ to come down here and operate upon my sister."

"Doctor Gordon received the message, but was detained by a small wreck on the Eastern," Alfred said quietly, rinsing the soap-suds from his hands and motioning Sophie to drop another bichloride tablet into the next bowl of water. "He sent me to do the work."

"So I have been informed," Richard said, his eyes looking far colder and more cutting than the steel instruments which Sophie was now rattling about in a big pan, "but--as it happens--I don't want you to do the work."

The insult was so barefaced and so ugly that Sophie suddenly turned scarlet and the young doctor bending over the bowl of water busied himself unnecessarily with a bottle of green soap. Richard himself began nervously tampering with his watch-fob, while I afterward recalled that my fingers were playing convulsively with the pearls which were still around my neck. It was an _electrical_ moment and we all showed signs of weakening before the current--all except Alfred.

He stood in the same spot at the end of the table, directing straight at Richard his level, steady glance, and looking the personification of simple dignity--in an undershirt.

"That might put a different aspect upon the matter," he said slowly after a moment's deliberation. Not a muscle of his face changed, and no one less well acquainted with him than I am could have detected the hardness in his voice.

"_Might_ put a different aspect?" Richard looked incredulous.

"Yes, it might--if the patient were a minor, and you her sole guardian."

"Ah! Then you mean to ignore my rights?"

"I do--if you wish to put it that way. Your sister's condition is critical; and there is no one else to operate."

"Then there is no appeal to be made to your pride?" I do not know what Richard meant, nor do I believe that he knew himself, for he surely would not have run the risk of trying to get another surgeon when it had been made so clear to him that the delay would be fatal. Alfred seemed to realize that there was no more occasion for argument than if he had been talking to an unreasonable child--or a dangerous lunatic.

"No; my pride lies dormant in a case like this," he answered simply. "I acknowledge only Duty."

Then, at Alfred's words, it seemed that the magic change which I have before noticed comes over Richard when he sees that he has gone far enough, began to make itself felt. It appeared that he was not going to have the courage to turn about and apologize, as he had done with me earlier in the day; but he began to do what he considered all that was ever necessary from _him_ to ordinary mortals. He began to back, sullenly.

"Of course, if it is only an ordinary case of appendicitis _you_ might do," he admitted grudgingly, "but--suppose there are complications?"

I give Richard credit for not intending this worst insult of all. He was so entirely absorbed in gaining his own end, and that end was proving to Alfred that he was incompetent to operate, that he failed to consider the words he used. To him this was only a simple argument in favor of his theory. Alfred met the thrust as he had met the minor ones.

"If there are complications, I shall grapple with them," he answered quietly. "That's what I studied surgery for."

Sophie came across the room then and told us in a low voice that they were about ready. Would we please wait outside? Without another word Richard took me by the arm and we walked out together. He held my arm tightly as we made our way cautiously down the steps; cautiously because it had suddenly grown very dark and there were threatening rumbles in the distance, following vivid flashes of lightning. The fumes of the anesthetic were filling the house, while outside the big drops of rain were beginning to pelt down, making little comet-shaped streaks of wetness against the window-panes.

We heard the shuffling steps as they moved Evelyn into the room and placed her upon the table; then we heard Alfred call from the head of the steps, his voice calm and unruffled as it would be in the case of any gentleman making a request of another.

"Mr. Chalmers, will you call the power-house and have them turn on the lights?"

Hours after, when it was all safely over and Sophie earnestly supplemented the local doctor's praise of Alfred's skill and technique, Richard sought me out as I stood alone in the dining-room locking up the silver. I had seen Mrs. Chalmers do this and knew that it was a habit of hers; and to-night there was no one else to do it.

"Ann," he said, coming close and looking around to make sure that there was no one else near, "Ann, I'm really sorry about what I said to that fellow, Morgan, this afternoon. Of course I didn't intend any aspersions upon his ability, but I suppose, according to their infernal ethics, it was--discourteous."

I picked up a soft flannel case and wrapped a handful of heavy forks in it. "Yes, I dare say he considered it so," I agreed.

"I've wondered what I can do to make amends," he continued. "Do you think I might double the amount of his fee?"

"No, no," I begged earnestly, a sudden sense of disgust at the thought of such a thing. "No, don't try to offer Alfred _money_."

Poor Richard! Was there nothing in the world he could do except trample upon people's feelings then offer to pay them to get in a good humor again? He had insulted Alfred, who was a hero, then suggested offering him money to wipe out the stain. He had neglected and offended me this miserable day--but he had given me a string of pearls!