VII
Itwas toward the end of the following month, when the winter had set in, that Judge Herford was seized with one of his bad attacks of lumbago.
Dr. Gerry, summoned by Diane, found his patient in the library. The judge’s figure, which had the habit of appearing so massive when seated, still retained its large dignity of pose, for the deep cushions of his chair concealed the humiliating twist which the disease had not failed to inflict on its victim’s aristocratic muscles; but his temper, never of an amiable turn, had gained nothing under the visitation. He did not hesitate to scowl openly as his old friend appeared carrying, as usual, the small black bag with which the rural practitioner arms himself for the worst emergencies.
“No pills for me!” he growled. “I’ve got a hot-water bag and a plaster—enough for any poor devil. I suppose Diane sent for you!”
“Diane has more sense than you have,” replied the doctor, taking off his greatcoat with the utmost composure.
“What are you staying for?” demanded thejudge savagely. “I tell you I won’t be pilled for a muscular twist!”
“Put out your tongue, Hadley,” responded his visitor, mounting his spectacles. “The color of it is more important just now than the way it wags.”
In spite of himself the judge laughed in a sour way. Then a twinge overtook him, and he swore under his breath.
“If you could cure this infernal disease, I’d give you ten thousand dollars!”
“Keep it for Diane. She’ll need the money about the time you kill yourself with hard work.”
The judge eyed him.
“Trying to intimidate me into taking your drugs, eh?”
“That’s my business,” replied the doctor, drawing his chair to the fire and looking over his open case for an appropriate dose.
The other man lay back in his cushioned chair, free for a moment of the teasing ache, and regarded Gerry in silence. His appearance of great strength, the florid flush on his skin, and his iron-gray hair, defied both age and weakness; but the doctor’s words had set him thinking, and he strummed on his chair-arms with angry fingers. A bright fire was burning on the hearth, and the flames made fitful shadows in the small, comfortable, book-lined room—a room that had an intimate air of having associated long with a manof affairs, and of having acquired, even in its old, dilapidated bindings and its well-worn rug, the full measure of dignity and reserve which befitted a judge.
“I’ve got a great deal to do before I’m ready to go,” he remarked at length, in his deep voice. “They’ve mussed up the political situation in this State. If I died or resigned, they’d put in that fool, Henry Runes, as judge!”
Gerry selected a glass bottle, and, opening it deliberately, shook some pink pills into an envelope.
“Henry Runes? Isn’t he a cousin of Overton’s?” the doctor asked.
“Is there any one who isn’t a cousin of Overton’s, since he got famous?” snapped the judge.
“Has he got famous? I thought he had only died. It’s Faunce who’s famous.”
“That’s the way of the world. A man’s got to be very much alive nowadays to be famous overnight.”
“I hear that you have undertaken to be his political sponsor. They say he’s nursing a boom for Congress.”
“He’d better do that than go to his death like Overton, hadn’t he?”
“I don’t think I’ve ever confused him with Overton. He isn’t of the same mental caliber. What’s the idea, Hadley?”
The judge twisted in his chair with a wry face.
“If he doesn’t take up a career here, they’ll put him in command of the new expedition. He’s booked for it, I believe. I’d rather have him settle down and go into politics here. There’s good stuff in him, and he’s got what the newspapers call personal magnetism.”
“He’s got a good many things besides that!” retorted the doctor dryly, adjusting his glasses as he started to write directions on three sets of envelopes. “You seem to take his affairs to heart. Got any special interest in the boy, Hadley?”
Herford was silent for a moment. In his large and more judicial aspect he seemed to be weighing an important question, and his eyes dwelt moodily on the fire. The doctor, without apparently observing him, finished his hieroglyphics, put back his little glass bottles, and closed his case with a snap. As he did it, he heard the judge’s voice in an unwonted key.
“The truth is he’s taken me into his confidence—not a word of this to Diane, Sam—and I know he wants to marry my daughter. I’ll admit that at first it was rather a shock. I’m selfish enough to want to keep her; but gradually I’ve reconciled my mind. I suppose it’s inevitable. Besides, if anything happened to me, she’d be alone, and—well, I haven’t any objection. I’ve been considering,instead, some way to keep him out of that infernal south pole business.”
“Does Diane know?”
“That he’s in love with her? I suppose she does; girls do, as a rule, I think. But he hasn’t spoken to her yet—I know that—and I’ve held my tongue about it. He made me promise.”
The doctor whistled softly. His patient turned a suspicious eye on him.
“What’s your objection?” the judge asked.
“Why don’t you ask Diane if she has any? She’s the important person.”
“I think she likes him.”
The doctor laughed dryly.
“Take it from me that she has a mind of her own!”
The judge threw back his head haughtily.
“I’m not trying to push her.”
“Better not! She won’t stand for it. How did Faunce come to tell you?” The doctor’s large mouth crinkled at the corners. “Did he ask your consent?”
“Not quite. That’s not the fashion these days, is it? It was an accident. I found out a good deal, and he admitted it handsomely. Upon my word, I never liked a young man better than I did Faunce just then. I’ve never thought any man quite good enough for Di, but he’s won me over. I sha’n’t oppose it—if she wants him.”
“Hope she doesn’t!”
“Why?”
The doctor rose and pulled himself into his greatcoat.
“He isn’t fit to tie her shoe!”
“You’re prejudiced. You didn’t like his father.”
Gerry grinned.
“I remember you did like his mother!”
“Lily Blake?” The judge smiled reminiscently. “We were young sweethearts, but she threw me over to marry Henry Faunce.”
“Just so! Now you follow my advice and throw her son over. Diane can do better than that.”
The judge, taken with another twinge of lumbago, growled.
“It’s up to her; but I like Faunce.”
The doctor’s response was an inarticulate grunt. Then he pushed his medicine envelopes into a little row on the library table.
“I’ll send Diane in to dose you,” he remarked, moving toward the door.
“You can’t. She’s gone out with Faunce.”
The two old men looked at each other. Then they both laughed, the doctor without merriment.
“Hadley, if you weren’t a judge, I’d say you were——”
“An old fool!” concluded the judge grimly.
The doctor nodded and went out, shutting the door rather sharply behind him. On the frontsteps he encountered Diane and Faunce, just returned from a long walk. It was a cold day, and the wind had brought a brightness into Diane’s face. Her eyes sparkled with something of the latent fire of her father’s, and her cheeks were aglow. Faunce, on the other hand, looked like a ghost of himself.
“How’s father?” Diane questioned as she came up.
“Cross as two sticks,” replied the doctor, and gave her some directions about his patient.
Her face sobered.
“You don’t think he’s really ill?”
The doctor shook his head grimly.
“I’d like to make him sick enough to keep still for six weeks. He’s overworked, Di, and the machinery needs oiling up.”
“I can’t make him mind,” she objected. “I wanted to take him to Florida for three months.”
“We may get him there yet. Don’t worry! Hello, Faunce; coming my way?”
Faunce shook his head smilingly.
“I’m going to see the judge,” he said.
For a moment Dr. Gerry stood staring at him. The young man winced.
“You won’t find the judge in a good humor,” the doctor warned him. “You’d better come along with me and test my cigars. Di’s got her hands full taking care of her father.”
Faunce turned involuntarily and looked atDiane, who stood in the vestibule, listening, and smiling in an absent way, her eyes on the gloves that she was slowly unfastening. As Faunce turned, however, she looked up, and her face softened and glowed with a new and delicate embarrassment. She had never looked more charming, more desirable in his eyes, than at that moment. Dr. Gerry, following his glance, caught the look on her face, too, and his hand tightened its grip on his little black bag.
“I think I’ll stay for a while and risk the judge’s lumbago,” Faunce said without turning his head.
Gerry went slowly down the steps. At the foot he turned and looked at Faunce again.
“You’re risking a good deal more than that,” he observed dryly; and with this enigmatical remark he plodded steadily down to the gate without once glancing over his shoulder.
Diane laughed.
“The doctor’s so full of crotchets! I suppose he and papa have been quarreling again. They always do.”
Faunce, to whom Dr. Gerry’s look had conveyed a very different meaning, made no immediate reply. Instead, he followed Diane into the drawing-room, and waited there while she went to carry out the doctor’s instructions and administer a dose of medicine to the querulous patient.
Faunce moved over to the long French windowand stood looking out, aware of the judge’s voice in the distance, before Diane shut the door between. In a long vista between the hedgerows he saw the doctor’s sturdy figure trudging toward the automobile that he had left at the end of the lane.
He recalled the night, now nearly two months ago, when they had walked home together, and he had admitted his insomnia. Since then he had more or less avoided the older man. Gerry had been so quick to divine his use of drugs that he dreaded a more searching scrutiny, which might fathom yet another recess of his inner mind, or surprise some secret that he was still determined to hide.
Yet, as he stood there alone in the warm and fragrant room—a room that seemed to express so much of Diane’s rich personality, her refinement and taste and spirit—he recalled Dr. Gerry’s words:
“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.”
A sudden impulse gripped him, a potent longing to rush out of the house, bareheaded as he was, and, pursuing the older man down the lane, to pour out the misery that was destroying his soul. It seemed to him that the relief would be more than commensurate with the humiliation; that the very sound of his own voice unfolding his terriblestory would break the dread spell, release his spirit from thraldom, and expel the specter that haunted his brain.
The impulse had come to him before, but never with such compelling force as now—perhaps because there had never been so much reason for him to pause, to halt on the road he was following, before it was too late.