“Do you mean to say,” he asked, aghast, “that I—! Great Scott!”
Settled in the living-room, they got back rather quickly to their status of the night before, and he was moved to confession.
“I didn't really intend to wait until to-morrow,” he said. “I got up with the full intention of coming here to-day, if I did it over the wreck of my practice. At eleven o'clock this morning I held up a consultation ten minutes to go to Yardsleys and buy a tie, for this express purpose. Perhaps you have noticed it already.”
“I have indeed. It's a wonderful tie.”
“Neat but not gaudy, eh?” He grinned at her, happily. “You know, you might steer me a bit about my ties. I have the taste of an African savage. I nearly bought a purple one, with red stripes. And Aunt Lucy thinks I should wear white lawn, like David!”
They talked, those small, highly significant nothings which are only the barrier behind which go on the eager questionings and unspoken answers of youth and love. They had known each other for years, had exchanged the same give and take of neighborhood talk when they met as now. To-day nothing was changed, and everything.
Then, out of a clear sky, he said:
“I may be going away before long, Elizabeth.”
He was watching her intently. She had a singular feeling that behind this, as behind everything that afternoon, was something not spoken. Something that related to her. Perhaps it was because of his tone.
“You don't mean-not to stay?”
“No. I want to go back to Wyoming. Where I was born. Only for a few weeks.”
And in that “only for a few weeks” there lay some of the unspoken things. That he would miss her and come back quickly to her. That she would miss him, and that subconsciously he knew it. And behind that, too, a promise. He would come back to her.
“Only for a few weeks,” he repeated. “I thought perhaps, if you wouldn't mind my writing to you, now and then—I write a rotten hand, you know. Most medical men do.”
“I should like it very much,” she said, primly.
She felt suddenly very lonely, as though he had already gone, and slightly resentful, not at him but at the way things happened. And then, too, everyone knew that once a Westerner always a Westerner. The West always called its children. Not that she put it that way. But she had a sort of vision, gained from the moving pictures, of a country of wide spaces and tall mountains, where men wore quaint clothing and the women rode wild horses and had the dash she knew she lacked. She was stirred by vague jealousy.
“You may never come back,” she said, casually. “After all, you were born there, and we must seem very quiet to you.”
“Quiet!” he exclaimed. “You are heavenly restful and comforting. You—” he checked himself and got up. “Then I'm to write, and you are to make out as much of my scrawl as you can and answer. Is that right?”
“I'll write you all the town gossip.”
“If you do—!” he threatened her. “You're to write me what you're doing, and all about yourself. Remember, I'll be counting on you.”
And, if their voices were light, there was in both of them the sense of a pact made, of a bond that was to hold them, like clasped hands, against their coming separation. It was rather anti-climacteric after that to have him acknowledge that he didn't know exactly when he could get away!
She went with him to the door and stood there, her soft hair blowing, as he got into the car. When he looked back, as he turned the corner, she was still there. He felt very happy affable, and he picked up an elderly village woman with her and went considerably out of his way to take her home.
He got back to the office at half past six to find a red-eyed Minnie in the hall.
X
AT half past five that afternoon David had let himself into the house with his latch key, hung up his overcoat on the old walnut hat rack, and went into his office. The strain of the days before had told on him, and he felt weary and not entirely well. He had fallen asleep in his buggy, and had wakened to find old Nettie drawing him slowly down the main street of the town, pursuing an erratic but homeward course, while the people on the pavements watched and smiled.
He went into his office, closed the door, and then, on the old leather couch with its sagging springs he stretched himself out to finish his nap.
Almost immediately, however, the doorbell rang, and a moment later Minnie opened his door.
“Gentleman to see you, Doctor David.”
He got up clumsily and settled his collar. Then he opened the door into his waiting-room.
“Come in,” he said resignedly.
A small, dapper man, in precisely the type of clothes David most abominated, and wearing light-colored spats, rose from his chair and looked at him with evident surprise.
“I'm afraid I've made a mistake. A Doctor Livingstone left his seat number for calls at the box office of the Annex Theater last night—the Happy Valley company—but he was a younger man. I—”
David stiffened, but he surveyed his visitor impassively from under his shaggy white eyebrows.
“I haven't been in a theater for a dozen years, sir.”
Gregory was convinced that he had made a mistake. Like Louis Bassett, the very unlikeliness of Jud Clark being connected with the domestic atmosphere and quiet respectability of the old house made him feel intrusive and absurd. He was about to apologize and turn away, when he thought of something.
“There are two names on your sign. The other one, was he by any chance at the theater last night?”
“I think I shall have to have a reason for these inquiries,” David said slowly.
He was trying to place Gregory, to fit him into the situation; straining back over ten years of security, racking his memory, without result.
“Just what have you come to find out?” he asked, as Gregory turned and looked around the room.
“The other Doctor Livingstone is your brother?”
“My nephew.”
Gregory shot a sharp glance at him, but all he saw was an elderly man, with heavy white hair and fierce shaggy eyebrows, a portly and dignified elderly gentleman, rather resentfully courteous.
“Sorry to trouble you,” he said. “I suppose I've made a mistake. I—is your nephew at home?”
“No.”
“May I see a picture of him, if you have one?”
David's wild impulse was to smash Gregory to the earth, to annihilate him. His collar felt tight, and he pulled it away from his throat.
“Not unless I know why you want to see it.”
“He is tall, rather spare? And he took a young lady to the theater last night?” Gregory persisted.
“He answers that description. What of it?”
“And he is your nephew?”
“My brother's son,” David said steadily.
Somehow it began to dawn on him that there was nothing inimical in this strange visitor, that he was anxious and ill at ease. There was, indeed, something almost beseeching in Gregory's eyes, as though he stood ready to give confidence for confidence. And, more than that, a sort of not unfriendly stubbornness, as though he had come to do something he meant to do.
“Sit