Part 12

"That's beyond me," he explained. "But I tell you what, I'm going for Dr. Driggs, anyhow. You get in the car and come along with me. Only, I better take that black dingus off your face, hadn't I?"

Buller made a clumsy effort to detach it himself, but his left hand alone could not manage it. Sam did it for him.

"Now, as soon as I get the car," he explained, "we can start."

While he was gone Buller paced the floor like a caged animal, writhing with pain, crying, cursing. Sam was gone but a few minutes. It seemed an eternity to the poor, waiting wretch. Then away they sped through the cool, calming darkness of the night.

In the extremity of his anguish, nothing really signified to Buller, yet again and again he found himself wondering if Slawson would "split" on him. As a matter of fact, Sam never opened his lips, beyond delivering his message to the doctor from Mr. Ronald, then turning Buller over to him for immediate attention.

The old physician scowled through his spectacles when he saw the wound.

"How did you manage _this_ job?" he asked in his blunt, uncompromising way.

Buller winced. "Trap. Foxes after my hens. I set a trap to catch them."

"And got caught in it yourself! Huh! That's sometimes the way. Here, swallow this down. It'll dull the pain some. Now is the time you may wish you weren't a drinking man, Buller. I'll do the best I can for you, but you've given yourself a nasty hurt, and your blood's not in a state to help the healing along much. However, we'll see what we'll see. I'll give you these extra drops to take home with you. Use them if the pain comes back. Don't meddle with my bandage, d'you hear. Leave it alone. And, let me see you in the morning. Now, Mr. Slawson---- Ready!"

Again that swift, almost silent speeding through the night.

Since Buller's torture had ceased, the motion seemed for him part of a blissful dream, by which he was being gradually lulled to deeper and deeper peace. At first he started in to babble fatuously, but Dr. Driggs brusquely bade him, "Shut up! This is no time for merrymaking!" and he dropped back into himself, subdued but not suppressed.

At the big house Sam stopped his car.

"I'll take Buller home, and come back for you," he explained to Dr. Driggs.

"Better dump him out on the road," was the harsh, whispered rejoinder. "I know him from the ground up. He lied to me about his hand. He was up to deviltry of some kind, other than trapping foxes, depend upon it! Between you and me, that's a fierce hand he's got. I don't envy him his dance with it."

In the meantime, Martha had found Claire Ronald feverish and excited. It did not take her long to decide she would not leave the big house that night. When Sam returned to take him home, Dr. Driggs was not ready to go. Neither was Martha.

"But _you'd_ better turn in, Slawson," advised Mr. Ronald. "No use in everybody's getting worn out. If I should need you, I'll call you up."

Early next morning the young kitchen-maid from the big house appeared at the Lodge door for certain necessaries Martha wanted and could not be spared long enough to come, herself, and fetch.

"Eh, now! You don't say so! Things must be pretty bad over there!" observed Ma.

The girl nodded dumbly. She adored Mrs. Ronald.

"If I was you, beggin' pardon for the liberty," Martha addressed Mr. Frank, "I'd get a-holt of those doctors an' nurses from the city you have engaged. They was comin' up in two weeks, anyhow. You never can tell. This might be a false alarm, but then again it mightn't. Either way, we don't want to take no risks."

"I'll telegraph," said Francis Ronald dully.

"What's the matter with the telefoam? Ain't you got a long-distance connection here?"

While Central was clearing the wire, Katherine Crewe was ushered in. She hesitated on the library threshold, then came forward rapidly, her face more lovely than Martha had ever seen it, in its softened expression of human sympathy.

"I'm so sorry--I've just heard--I came to see if I could do something--be of any help," she stammered shyly.

Frank Ronald had risen and was about to reply, when Dr. Driggs pushed through the doorway, interrupting gruffly.

"I'm not quite satisfied with the way things are going. Nothing to be uneasy about, you know, but, under the circumstances, I'd like another man to talk the case over with."

"I've just called up the New York specialist. He and the nurses----"

"Lord! I don't mean _that_! It'll take _them_ a full day to get here. We can't wait that long. I want some one _now_."

"Now?" Frank Ronald echoed, without any appearance of understanding what the word meant.

"Now," repeated Dr. Driggs. "I'd like to call in----"

Tinkled the telephone-bell with irritating insistence.

Frank Ronald's cold hand gripped the thing as if he would choke it.

"Hello! Is this New York? Is this Dr. Webster? 'Morning, Dr. Webster! This is F. B. Ronald speaking. Yes--I've called you up, because my wife---- Can you hear me _now_? Is this better?--My wife--I'm worried about my wife. I've called in Dr. Driggs of this village. He wants more advice.... Yes, by all means come on at once, and bring the nurses. But Driggs says he can't wait. Must have some one immediately.... Eh? ... _Who_, do you say? ... Boston? Yes, I get that ... Ballard of Boston? ... There's a young fellow here from Boston named Ballard, but he ... I don't believe he's the man. Wait a minute.... Please repeat that! ... You say he's the best skill in New England? National repute? ... I'm afraid.... Hello! Dr. Webster ... Driggs, here, says _'tis_ the man you mean. He says he was just trying to tell me, when ... yes ... I'm sure we can get him. Yes, we _are_ in luck! ... Very well ... Burbank Junction ... midnight.... Good-by!"

Francis Ronald's words and manner were painfully precise.

Thought Martha, "I've seen parties none too steady on their pins, just that kind o' mincin' about their steps. As if they'd dare you say they couldn't walk a chalk-line. Poor fella. He's so crazed with worry he can't see straight, but he's goin' to prove anybody thinks so, is another!"

When Katherine reached home she found Madam Crewe awaiting her.

"Well, and how are things going? You had your tramp for nothing, eh? Young Sammy's account of Mrs. Ronald's danger was hocus-pocus, of course!"

"No. Dr. Driggs is very anxious. He wants a consultation. While I was there Mr. Ronald called up Dr. Webster--_Elihu_ Webster, from home. He's coming up with two nurses----"

"And Mrs. Ronald is going to _wait_ for him? That's obliging of her, I'm sure!"

"Dr. Driggs had asked Mr. Ronald to let him have Dr. Ballard. He had asked, before they got Dr. Webster on the wire. Then, the first name Dr. Webster suggested was Dr. Ballard's. He called him 'the best skill in New England.' Said he was of 'national repute.'"

"You mean Driggs did. Well, what then? Driggs is getting old. He sometimes muddles. He's probably got this young sprig here confused with the great one."

"No, grandmother. Dr. Webster said it. Dr. Driggs only repeated what Dr. Webster said."

During the pause following Katherine's statement, Madam Crewe sat quite still, apparently absorbed in contemplation of her two, tiny hands, lying folded and motionless in her lap. When, at length, she looked up, a curious ghost of a smile curled the corners of her mouth.

"Really I am uncommonly gratified. You see, I can't help thinking, how barely I missed the honor of being this young man's grandmother. I'd have _liked_ to have a grandchild of whom I could be proud."

Katherine winced. "I'm sorry I've disappointed you," she said bitterly.

"Don't mention it. It's not the first disappointment I've had in my life. It probably won't be the last. Moreover, now that you _know_, undoubtedly you'll think better of your decision to give him up. You'll marry him, after all, in spite of the loss of me and my money. So I'll have my _eminent_ grandson, whether I want him or not."

"_Grandmother!_"

"Well, won't I? It seems to me, you have quite a keen eye for the main chance. At least, that's how I've made it out, judging from your behavior. At first, you were all for marrying him, when you thought you could do it on the sly, without sacrificing your interests with me. Then, on the impulse of the moment, for Norris's benefit, maybe, you played tragedy-queen and forswore your fortune for the sake of the man you love. All of which would have been very pretty and romantic--if you had stuck to it. But, when you had had time to calculate--presto! it's your lover you repudiate, to hang on to the money. Now you're fairly certain he's got all you'll need--doctors fleece one abominably, nowadays! Come and feel your pulse, and give you a soothing-syrup, and send in a bill for ten dollars, and _that's_ no placebo, I tell you! Oh, there's no doubt you'll be rich, if you marry a _doctor_---- Where was I?"

"You were running down doctors, grandmother, and I don't see how you can, when you know what those you've had have done for you. I----"

"There, there! I don't need _you_ to inform me, young miss. What I was saying is, nobody would doubt, for a minute, you'll take him now. _I_ don't."

"Grandmother," the girl began, with the same kind of exaggerated punctilio Martha had observed in Mr. Ronald. "Grandmother, I want to be very respectful to you. I don't want to say one word that will excite you, or make you ill. But I think you take unfair advantage of me. You taunt me, and jeer at me because you know I can't hit back, without being an unutterable coward."

Madam Crewe made a clicking sound with her tongue.

"On the whole, I think I'd like it better if you _did_ hit back, providing you hit back in the right way. No temper, you understand. No rage, no rumpus and that sort of vulgarity. But real dexterous thrusting and parrying. Now, for example, you missed an opportunity a few moments ago. When I said I'd have liked to have a grandchild I could be proud of, you might have retorted, 'I'm sorry I disappoint you, grandmother, but, perhaps, if _you_ had been Dr. Ballard's grandmother, his distinction might not have been so great.' That would have been a silencer, because,--it would have been true. I'm afraid you're not very clever, my dear."

"If that sort of thing--slashing people with one's tongue, is clever, I'm glad I'm stupid."

"There! That's not so bad! Try again!" applauded the old woman.

Katherine turned away, with a gesture of discouragement.

"It never occurred to me before," Madam Crewe meditated, "but what you really need is a sense of humor. You're quite without humor. You've brains enough, but you have about as much dash and sparkle as one of your husband-that-is-to-be's mustard-plasters. Only the mustard-plaster has the advantage of you in sharpness."

The girl wheeled about abruptly. "He is not my husband that-is-to-be. I have told you that before."

"But the circumstances have changed. Now you know he is distinguished--probably well-to-do----"

"It only makes another barrier. Can't you see? Can't you understand?"

"Perhaps I might, if you'd have the goodness to explain. But you must remember, I'm an old woman. It's a great many years since I had heroics."

"Perhaps you never had them," Katherine retorted. "Perhaps you never were _young_--never cared for any one with all your heart. Perhaps you never had a heart."

"Perhaps," agreed Madam Crewe. "In which case, don't appeal to it. Appeal to my imagination. That, at least, I can vouch for."

"I took your word for it, that Dr. Ballard was a young struggling doctor, poor--with, at best, no more than a problematic future--that's what you said--a problematic future."

"Well?"

"When I began to suspect he cared for me, I was glad he hadn't a lot of advantages, to emphasize my want of them. It didn't seem to me, then, so impossible, that as poor as I should be, and as dull as you've always said I am, I might marry him some day, if he loved me. I never cared a rush about that nonsense connected with his grandfather. I wouldn't have cared, if it had been true. So when you threw mud at _my_ grandfather and father, I didn't suppose _he'd_ care--or believe it--either. And, he didn't and--doesn't. So far, we stood about equal. I could give him as true a love as he could give me. But----"

"Oho! So that's your idea. I see your point now. You've got the kind of love that weighs and balances, have you? You won't take more than you can give! Why, young miss, let me tell you, you may think that's high-flown and noble--it's no such thing! If you want to know what it is, it's your great-grandfather's arrogance turned inside out, that's all! If you refuse to marry the man you love, because you have nothing to offer him, you're as bad as I was when I refused because my lover had nothing to offer me. There's a pride of poverty that's as detestable as the pride of riches. You talk about love! You don't know what the word means. If you did, you'd see that the real thing is beyond such mean dickering. In love _fair exchange is low snobbery_."

The girl stared silently into her grandmother's face. Two bright spots were glowing in the withered cheeks, the old woman's eyes shot forth the fire of youth.

For the second time Katherine felt that the drawbridge was down. Impulsively, she took a step forward, grasping one of the little old hands, folding it tight in both her own.

"Grandmother, I want to tell you something--I see what you mean and--I know it's true. But--but--there's something else----"

Madam Crewe did not withdraw her hand. It almost seemed to Katherine as if its clasp tightened on hers.

"What else?"

"When he--when Dr. Ballard first spoke to me about his grandfather, he said, 'But after all, the only thing that really counts is character.' He said: 'One can afford to whistle at family-trees if one's own record is clean!' He said: 'After all, what's most important, is to be straight goods one's self. If I'd lied, or was a coward or had taken what belonged to some one else, or had any other dirty rag of memory trailing after me, I'd hesitate to ask any one to share my life with me, but----'"

"Well?"

"Grandmother--_I've_ the kind of dirty rag of memory, he spoke about. I'm a coward--I've lied--I've taken what belonged to some one else."

*CHAPTER XIII*

Madam Crewe said nothing.

She gazed into Katherine's face blankly for a moment, then gradually withdrew her eyes to fix them on a bit of sky visible through the bowed shutters of the open window.

When the silence became unendurable, "Won't you speak to me, grandmother?" the girl pleaded. "Won't you let me feel you understand?"

There was a long pause before any answer came.

"Understand? No, I don't understand. How could one understand one's own flesh and blood being, doing--what you describe? That story would be perpetually new--perpetually incomprehensible. But perhaps you're vaporing. Using big words for insignificant things. A child's trick. Tell me the truth, and be quick about it."

There was something so formidable in the tiny old woman sitting there, coldly withdrawn into herself again, controlling any show of natural emotion with a fairly uncanny skill, that Katherine quailed before her.

In as few words as possible, she sketched the story of the recovered pocket.

Madam Crewe heard her through, in silence. In silence, received the object that had, at one time, been such a determining factor in her life. Katherine could not see that she betrayed, by so much as the quiver of an eyelash, the natural interest one might be conceived as feeling in so significant a link with the past.

"Be good enough to leave me," the old woman said at last. "And don't open this subject again, unless I bid you. If I need any one I'll ring for Eunice. Don't _you_ come--for the present. Oh, before you go, see that you keep a close mouth about this thing, not alone to me, but to _every one_. Understand?"

Katherine nodded dumbly. She felt like a child dismissed in disgrace, or a prisoner returned to his cell. She did not know how long she remained in her room, but when Eunice came to announce luncheon, she sent her away, merely explaining that she was not hungry. And would Eunice kindly answer if Madam Crewe should ring?

Within her, a hundred impulses of revolt urged to some act of self-deliverance. She fought them down with appeals to her own better nature, her grandmother's need of her. It was to escape from herself, as much as from her environment, that, at last, in desperation, she caught up her hat and left the house.

She had been gone several hours, and it was twilight, when a low tap sounded on Madam Crewe's door.

Without waiting for permission to come in, Dr. Ballard did so. The old woman started up, as if his presence roused her from sleep, but he could see she had been fully awake.

"You look as if you had been through the wars," she observed dryly, examining his face with her searching eyes.

He dropped heavily into the chair she indicated.

"I have," he answered.

"You've saved two souls alive? Mother and child?"

He nodded. "But the war's not over. The fight's still on. I've done all _I_ can. The rest lies with----"

The old woman took him up sharply. "Don't try to talk. Touch that bell."

Then, when Eunice, responding, stood on the threshold: "Bring me the leathern case you'll find standing beside the clothes-press in my dressing-room. Yes ... that's the one. Bring it here to me! Now, go downstairs and fetch a plateful of hard biscuits. Hurry! ... Stop! ... Before you go, hand me that glass from my table."

When the girl was gone, Madam Crewe unlocked the case before her, took from it a flask, and with surprisingly steady hands, poured a share of its contents into the glass Eunice had placed on the wide arm of her chair.

"Wine?" asked Dr. Ballard doubtfully, hesitating to drink.

"No, not wine. Drink it down. Now, the biscuits. Don't talk."

She pretended to busy herself with the leathern case upon her knees--replacing the flask, turning the key in the lock, rather elaborately fingering the smooth surface, as if all her attention was concentrated on some imaginary fleck or flaw she had just discovered.

When, watching covertly, she saw the haggard lines slowly fade from her companion's face, the blood gradually mount to his cheeks, she drew an audible breath.

"That's great stuff!" Daniel Ballard observed appreciatively. "What do you call it?"

Madam Crewe raised her eyebrows. "I don't call it. It has no name, so far as I know. It's an old stimulant my father picked up somewhere in the far East. He treasured it like gold."

"It's certainly done the trick. I was all in, and now I feel quite fit. Mrs. Slawson and I have been _on the job_ since morning. She's a wonder, that woman! No end of nerve and pluck. I could make a corking good nurse of her! She's back there now, watching. Firm as Gibraltar. I couldn't stand it any longer. I had to get away for a moment, to catch a breath of fresh air, and a glimpse of----"

"Me?" Madam Crewe caught him up.

He corrected her gravely. "No, the evening star."

"Katherine came home from the Ronalds' this morning much disturbed."

"Over the case?"

"Yes--that, and--the fact of your being what she hadn't supposed."

Dr. Ballard looked his question.

"She feels overawed, now she's aware _what a great man are you_. A bit sheepish, too, I fancy, because, if I remember right, she has twitted you, more than once, on being worn out waiting for patients."

"Well, what of it? Suppose she has? I can stand chaffing, I hope. And besides, she was right. I _am_ worn out waiting for patients--waiting for patients to 'do the rest' after I've, so to speak, 'pressed the button.'"

"It's hard to believe you're the Daniel Ballard of Boston there's so much fuss about. Are you sure you're the man Elihu Webster meant? The man he called a celebrated specialist--the best skill in New England--and so forth and so forth?"

"I'm the only M.D. of my name in Boston," the young man said simply. "But I don't call myself a specialist, much less and-so-forth and-so-forth!"

"What do you call yourself, then?"

"A physician."

"I wish I had married your grandfather," Madam Crewe announced.

Daniel Ballard bent his head, acknowledging what was more than mere compliment, by a silence sincerer than words.

"I must go. Where's Katherine?" he asked, after a moment.

"I don't know. Not at home, I fancy. Will you do me a favor?"

"If I can."

"Don't try to see her for a while. Leave her alone."

He had risen to go, but her words checked him.

"I can't give you any such promise," he said. "It seems a strange request for you to make."

"You don't trust me?"

"No. Not in this."

"You may."

He hesitated. "Perhaps. Still--I give no promise. I'll think it over. When I have more time, you'll explain?"

"Perhaps," she echoed.

The next minute she was alone.

However she accomplished it, Madam Crewe had her way. Katherine did not see Dr. Ballard again before he left for Boston. He left a brief note explaining that Mr. Ronald refused to release him, even after Dr. Webster arrived with his brace of nurses.

Katherine read the letter with a bitter smile. Technically, she had nothing to complain of. She had definitely said she would never marry him. He had taken her at her word--and yet, his easy acquiescence hurt her cruelly. It did not _explain_ anything, that Mr. Ronald himself confessed his dependence on Dr. Ballard.

The saving of his wife and baby (a miracle, Dr. Webster called it) made Frank Ronald feel that, whoever came or went, "Ballard" and Martha Slawson could not be spared from Claire's bedside, until the danger was over, recovery absolutely certain.

It was all perfectly plausible, and yet--

Then came an urgent recall to Boston, which "the best skill in New England" felt obliged to respond to in person.

"If you didn't have a family, Mrs. Slawson," he said to Martha, the last evening, as they sat in Claire's sitting-room, gratifying Frank Ronald's whim that they remain within call,--"If you didn't have a family I'd urge you to take up nursing. You have an excellent knack for it. I could make a capital nurse of you."

Martha nodded appreciatively. "Thank you, sir. But there's so many things I'm, as you might say, billed to be made over into first, I guess I'll have to cut out the trained nurse. Besides, I might fall down on a case I was a stranger to. It's dead easy do for anybody you love, but to go an' pick'm up off'n the roadside----! Well, that's a differnt proposition. The dirt an' the smell o' some o' them! You wouldn't believe it!"

"Do you love that scamp Buller?"

"Not on your life! That is,--not so you'd notice it."

"Yet you stood by him like a soldier, when Driggs and I took his hand off, last night. How's that?"

Martha pondered a moment. "Well, you see, sir, to tell the truth, I feel kind o' responsible for Buller. 'Twas me made'm mad in the first place, an' then, when he wanted to get back at me, 'twas our trap give'm the nip. Poor fella! You couldn't help be sorry for'm, he'll miss that strong right hand o' his so, which it used to be a reg'lar pretidigiagitator with the licka---- 'Now you see it an' now you don't effec'.'"