III
Halfan hour later, Judge Herford stood on his front steps, bidding his last two guests good-night.
“Come again!” he called after them in his deep bass. “You’ll always find us prepared enough for the pair of you. By the way, Faunce, I suppose it’s too much to expect that any one so famous as you will hang around Mapleton long?”
“I don’t know any better place to hang around, judge,” Faunce replied. “When a man’s been in exile two years, the old places look good to him.”
“That’s right! Then be sure you don’t forget the way here.”
“He won’t!” Dr. Gerry flung back, as he plodded toward the gate. “You’re not the only attraction at this house, Hadley. For my part, I only come here to see Diane!”
They heard the judge’s laugh following them, and saw his large figure still outlined against the light, the big gray head and massive shoulders and long body looking a little too heavy for the short legs.
“If Hadley had been sawed off at the waist, they’d have said he was a perfect model for aRoman emperor,” observed the doctor, as they passed out into the road and heard the judge shut his door for the night.
Faunce agreed with some amusement.
“It’s strange, isn’t it, how some men seem to lose their proportion when they stand up? They’re not put together in equal parts.”
“A good many who are put together right outside are out of joint inside.”
“How about the mental proportion—or shall we call it the spiritual?”
“That depends upon how much you follow the dean. A mental twist is pretty nearly certain to go hand in hand with moral lopsidedness, though.”
Faunce reflected on this for a moment, while they made their way under the interlacing branches of the big trees that arched over the country road. It was late in October, and the fall of the leaves had already stripped the big elms and left them in spectral outline against the moonlit sky.
“I take it, then, that you hold a moral shortcoming as a sign of an unbalanced mind?”
“I didn’t say that. That’s the other way around; but it’s true, too, though I shouldn’t cite it as a reason for getting off a criminal. We’ve had a little more of that lately than is good for us.”
“Then you don’t think that the mental condition palliates crime?”
“I think a good many people commit murder or highway robbery, and then, about the time when they get caught, they decide that they must have been crazy.”
“You argue, then, that the insanity is synchronous with the discovery?”
The doctor nodded, trudging sturdily forward toward the turn in the road which led to his own house. The autumn air was chill with frost, and Faunce seemed to shiver as he buttoned up his coat. Dr. Gerry, observing the young man from the tail of his eye, remarked it.
“Feel a chill, eh? I shouldn’t think you’d mind it, after the south pole!”
“Any touch of cold that reminds me of that is enough to make me shiver. I can’t close my eyes now without seeing those livid wastes and hearing the wind. It’s a frozen hell!”
“It’s on your nerves. How many hours do you sleep at night?”
Faunce gave him an uneasy look, in which surprise and something like apprehension were strangely mingled; but the street lights were poor, and he could only half discern the old man’s face as it emerged above the heavy collar of his greatcoat.
“I don’t sleep at all. How did you find that out?”
“I’ve seen a good many in the same plight before,for one thing, and you’re a pretty easy case to read.”
“Am I?” Faunce laughed harshly. “I didn’t know it. Perhaps you can tell me what to do, then?”
“Stop taking narcotics, to begin with, and then get control of your nerves.”
“So you’ve discovered that, too?”
“What?”
“The narcotics. I had to try something. I haven’t had three continuous hours of sleep since—not for five months, anyway.”
“Humph!” The doctor stumbled on a stone and stopped to kick it out of the way. “That’ll lead you on the same road with old Henry Jersey, down in Featherbed Lane.”
“What’s the matter with him?”
“Well, there’s some divergence of opinion, but his neighbors call him bughouse, if you know what that is.”
“Crazy?”
“Pretty near it. He took drugs, too, for a while.”
“I’ve only taken small doses, enough to get a little sleep. I had to have it. Perhaps”—he laughed unsteadily—“perhaps you can tell me what I’ve taken?”
“Oh, it might be anything,” the doctor replied carelessly; “but I should call it chloral.”
“You’ve hit it! I shall begin to think you’re a mind-reader.”
“I am, in a sense. The fact is, I can tell you what’s the matter with you now. It’s your nerves. You’ve got something on your mind, and you won’t be any better, you won’t sleep any sounder, until you get it off.”
Faunce was startled. He glanced around again, but could only make out a dim outline of Gerry’s blunt profile between the old man’s collar and the big soft hat he had pulled comfortably down to his ears. For a moment he reflected on the doctor’s words in silence.
It was evidently true that Gerry had an unaccountable way of hitting the nail on the head. Faunce wondered how much the old man had already divined of the trouble that was harassing his soul. If he was indeed so palpably easy to read, how could he screen it from the curious gaze of every inquiring eye that he met? They were almost in sight of the doctor’s white gate before he roused himself to reply.
“That sounds like saying that honest confession is good for the soul,” he said with his nervous laugh. “I should never have suspected you of commending that course.”
“I’ve been father confessor for a good many,” retorted the doctor crustily. “What I meant to say, though, was much simpler. You’ve got to free your mind. When a man lets anything bite inas your trouble seems to be doing, he soon comes to the end of his tether. His nerves break down, he can’t sleep, and then he can’t eat. It’s an old story. I can give you something to ease up the body, but I can’t do anything for the mind. You’ll have to look after that for yourself.”
Faunce stopped at the gate.
“How about the soul?” he asked dryly.
“I’ll leave that to the dean—or to Mrs. Price. She’d have a quotation that would fit it to the letter. Will you come in?” he added, opening his gate.
“Not to-night. I’m going to tramp for a while. When I’m tired out, I sometimes sleep a little—without the chloral.”
The doctor grunted, went into his front yard, and let the old white gate swing to behind him.
“I suppose you know the risk you’re taking?”
Faunce nodded.
“Oh, I sha’n’t kill myself.” He laughed again, rather loudly this time. “I haven’t the courage!”
“It doesn’t take courage when you’ve got enough of the stuff. It’s as easy to slip off as it is for a frozen man to sink into the final stupor.”
For a moment they stood peering at each other through the night. A fitful moon vanished behind a cloud, and left each one in doubt of the other’s attitude; but the doctor was aware that Faunce pulled himself together and moved away from the fence.
“So you think that’s easy?” he said in a hoarse voice.
“I know it is—at the end. There’s a limit, you see, to human endurance. When it’s reached and passed, coma ensues. That’s easy!”
Faunce took a step toward the gate, as if an impulse moved him to follow the doctor in. Then he turned with an inarticulate exclamation, waved an abrupt good-night, and walked rapidly away into the darkness.
Dr. Gerry watched him disappear before he turned and deliberately climbed the steps to his own front door, to find the cat rubbing herself against his ankles. He stooped down and caressed her, running his hand down the length of her sleek, gray back, and finally giving her tail a gentle tweak. Then he unlocked his door and entered, carrying her under his arm.