PART I CHAPTER I

YOUNG Doctor Dearing sat in the little church at an open window through which he had a partial view of that portion of old Stafford which stretched out desultorily toward the east. Immediately in front was a common fairly well covered with grass and weeds, except at the pawed and beaten spot where the public hitched its riding-horses, and beyond stood rows of old-fashioned residences of brick and stone, interspersed with a few modern frame cottages which, in gaudy paint, thrust themselves nearer the street than their more stately neighbors.

It was a Sunday morning, and the smile of a balmy spring day lay over every visible object, filling the ambient air with a translucent message that no human mind could interpret. It was as though an infinite God were speaking to eyes and ears too coarsely fashioned to fully see and hear.

The whole was conducive to the doctor’s feeling of restfulness and content and good-will to every human being. He liked the young minister who was seated in the high-backed rosewood chair behind the white pulpit, holding a massive Bible on his slender knees, a look of consecration to a sacred cause in his brown eyes. There was an assuring augury that spoke well for the youth of the town in the spectacle of the choir—the young men in their best clothes, and the young women in their flower-like dresses and plumed and ribboned hats.

His gaze was drawn perforce to the face of the young organist, who sat staring listlessly over the top of her hymn-book. She had a face and form of rare beauty and grace. Her features were most regular; her skin clear; her eyes were large, long-lashed, dreamy, and of the color of violets. Her hair was a living mass of silken bronze.

“She looks tired and worried,” was Dearing’s half-professional comment. “Perhaps her mother is worse, and she sat up last night. Poor Dora! she has certainly had a lot to contend with since her father died. I’ll wait for her after church and ask about her mother.”

The service over, he made his way through the throng down the aisle toward the door. He was quite popular, and there was many a hand to shake and many a warm greeting to respond to, but he finally succeeded in reaching a point in the shaded church-yard which Dora Barry would pass on her way home, and there he waited.

For some unaccountable reason she was almost the last to leave the church, and the congregation had well-nigh dispersed when he saw her coming. He noticed that she kept her glance on the ground, and that her step was slow and languid; he was all but sure, too, that he heard her sigh, and he saw her firm round breast heave tremulously as she neared him.

“Good-morning, Dora,” he said, cheerily; and she started as, for the first time, she noticed his presence.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, a flush forcing itself into the pallor of her really exquisite face. “I thought—that is, I didn’t expect to—to see you here, and, and—”

“I have been watching you this morning instead of the preacher,” he said, with a boyish laugh, “and I made up my mind that I’ll have to take you in hand. You are burning the candle at both ends, and there is a fire-cracker in the middle. What is the use of being your family doctor if I let you get down sick, when I can prevent it by raking you over the coals? How is your mother? You had to be up last night—I can see it by the streaks under your eyes.”

“No, I wasn’t up,” the girl answered. The color had receded from her cheeks, and the abstracted expression which he had noticed in the church began to repossess her wondrous eyes. “She is not quite well yet, but she did not call me at all through the night. Your last prescription did her good; it soothed her pain, and she rested better.”

“Well, I’m going to walk home with you and stop in and see her, to make sure,” he answered, still lightly. “If you don’t look out you will be down yourself. Two sick persons in a family of two wouldn’t be any fun.” She made no response; her eyes had a far-off look in their shadowy depths, and as he walked along beside her he eyed her profile curiously.

“Well, I declare, Dora,” he said, half jestingly, “you don’t seem overjoyed to have a fellow’s company. Of course, I’m not a ladies’ man, and—”

“Forgive me, Wynn.” She looked up anxiously, and her lip trembled as she suppressed another sigh. “It wasn’t that I didn’t want you to come. You know better than to accuse me of such a thing. I have always considered you the best, kindest, and truest friend I have.”

“I was only joking,” he responded, touched by the undoubted sincerity of her tone and manner; “but, really, I don’t like to see my little neighbor looking so glum, and I am going to stop in and see how your mother is. If she needs a trained nurse I’ll get one, or come over and look after her myself.”

They had reached the cottage where Dora lived. It was small, and stood in a diminutive but rather pretty flower-garden on a short, little used street immediately behind Dearing’s home. And when he had opened the sagging gate in the white paling fence, she preceded him into the low, vine-grown porch, and narrow, box-like hallway, from which she led him into the parlor, the room opposite to the chamber of the sick woman.

“Sit down, won’t you?” Dora said, in a weary tone, as she began to unfasten her hat. “I’ll tell her you are here.”

He took a seat in the bowed window of the plainly furnished room, and she brought a palm-leaf fan to him. “I’m sure my mother won’t keep you waiting long.” And with the look of abstraction deepening on her mobile face, she turned away.

A neat matting made of green and brown straw covered the floor, on which were placed rugs made of scraps of silk of various colors artistically blended. A carved rosewood table with a white marble top stood in the centre of the room, and on it rested a plush-covered photograph-album, a glass lamp with a fluted and knotched paper shade on a frame of wire, and a vase of freshly cut flowers. Between the two front windows, which, like their fellows, were draped in white lace curtains of the cheapest quality, stood Dora’s piano—a small, square instrument with sloping octagonal legs and lyre-shaped pedal-support. Against the wall near by leaned a time-worn easel, on which lay some torn and ragged sketches, a besmeared palette, and a handful of stubby, paint-filled brushes. The ceiling overhead was made of planks and painted light blue; the walls were plastered and whitewashed and ornamented by some really good family portraits in oil which had been done by Dora’s deceased father, who had been the town’s only artist. A Seth Thomas clock presided over a crude mantelpiece which was bare of any other ornament. The deep chimney was filled with pine-tops and cones, the uneven bricks of the hearth were whitewashed.

Dearing heard the girl’s returning step in the hallway, and then she looked in on him.

“She is sitting up,” Dora announced. “She wants you to come to her.”

As he entered the room across the hall Dora turned toward the kitchen in the rear, and he found himself facing her mother, a thin, gaunt woman about fifty years of age, who sat in a low rocking-chair near her bed, the latter orderly arranged under a spotlessly white coverlet and great snowy pillows.

“This is not a professional visit, Mrs. Barry.” He smiled as he bent to take her thin, nervous hand, the fingers of which were aimlessly picking at the fringe on the arm of the chair. “Dora was headed for home, and so was I. The truth is, I am not half so much worried about you as I am about her. Your color is coming back fast enough, and you have no fever. You are all right, but she looks upset and nervous. It may be due to her highly artistic temperament, which is a thing medicine can’t easily reach. Do you know if her appetite is good?”

“Really I haven’t noticed about that particularly,” the woman answered, in a plaintive tone. “You see, since I got down I haven’t been about the dining-room at all. She has waited on me instead of me on her.”

“Well, you’ll be all right in a day or so,” Dearing said, his brows drawn thoughtfully, “and then you can take charge of her. She declares, though, that her health is tip-top.”

The old patient folded her thin, blue-veined hands tightly for a moment, and twisted them spasmodically together; then suddenly she fixed her sharp, gray eyes anxiously on the young man’s face, and he saw that she was deeply moved, for her lower lip was twitching.

“I have always felt that you are the one young man whom I could trust—absolutely trust,” she said, falteringly. “Physicians are supposed to keep certain matters to themselves, anyway, but even aside from that, Wynn, it is hard to keep from speaking to you in a familiar way, having seen you grow up from babyhood right under my eyes, so I hope you will forgive me if—”

“Oh, I wouldn’t have you quit calling me that for the world!” Dearing flushed deeply and laughed. “I haven’t grown a full beard yet to make me look older and wiser than I am, as many young sawbones do. I hope I’ll always be simply Wynn Dearing to you, Mrs. Barry.”

She looked as admiringly and as proudly as a mother might at the strong, smooth-shaved face, with its merry eyes of brown, firm chin and mouth, and shock of thick, dark hair, and at the tall, muscular frame and limbs in the neatly cut suit of brown.

“Yes, I can trust you,” she muttered, her voice growing husky, “and it seems to me if I don’t confide in some one, I may as well give up.”

“Why, what is the matter, Mrs. Barry?” Dearing inquired, now quite grave.

“Oh, it is about Dora!” The old woman sighed. “Wynn, I may as well confess it. My sickness is partly due to worry over her. It is not because she is unwell either. It is something else. I am afraid she has some—some secret trouble. You must not show that you suspect anything—that would never do; but all is not as it should be with her. Naturally she has as happy a disposition as any girl I ever knew. Her art pupils adore her, and up to quite recently she used to laugh and joke with them constantly; but she has altered—strangely altered. I catch her sitting by herself at times with the saddest, most woebegone expression on her face. When I try to worm it out of her, she attempts to laugh it off; but she can’t keep up the pretense, and it is not long before she begins to droop again. Her room is there, you see; and as the partition is thin, I often wake up in the dead of night and hear her cautiously tiptoeing over the floor—first to the window and then back to her bed, as though she were unable to sleep.”

“That is bad,” Dearing said, sympathetically, as Mrs. Barry paused and, covering her wrinkled face with her hands, remained silent for a moment.

“I would like to ask you something,” the old woman continued, hesitatingly—“something of a personal nature. I have no earthly right to do such a thing, but I thought, you see, that it might help me decide whether I am right in something I fear. Is it true that—that your uncle has forbidden Fred Walton to visit your sister Margaret?”

Dearing shrugged his broad shoulders and contracted his heavy brows. “I may as well tell you that he has, Mrs. Barry. I don’t like to speak against another young man, and one who has never harmed me in any way; but I agree with my uncle that Fred is not exactly the kind of man I’d like to have Madge make an intimate friend of. His general character is not what it ought to be, and he seems to be going from bad to worse. He still has plenty of friends and even sympathizers, who think Fred would reform and settle down to business if his father were not quite so hard on him. Madge is one of them. She has a sort of girlish faith in the fellow, and the slightest word against him makes her mad.”

“Well, it is about Fred Walton that I want to speak to you,” Mrs. Barry resumed, tremulously. “He has been coming to see Dora a good deal for the last year. He passes by the gate often in the afternoon, and they take long walks over the hills to the river. Sometimes he accompanies her when she goes to sketch in the woods. And now and then she slips out after dark, and won’t say where she has been. You see, I am speaking very frankly. I have to, Wynn, for I am in great trouble—greater than I ever thought could come to me at my time of life. My child is an orphan, and there is no one, you see, to—to protect her. It is hard to think that any man here at home could be so—so dishonorable, but they all say he is reckless, and—well, if I must say it—I am afraid she cares a great deal about him. I may be very wrong, and I hope I am, but I am deeply troubled, and need not try to hide it.”

“I see how you feel,” Dearing said, his face hardening as he bit his lip, and a fixed stare came into his eyes, “but I am sure you have nothing very—very serious to fear. Dora may think she cares for him. He seems to have a wonderful way with women, young and old. They all stand by him and make excuses for his daredevil ways.”

“Well, I do hope I am wrong,” Mrs. Barry said, brightening a little. “It has made me feel better to talk to you. We’ll wait and see. As you say, it may be only a fancy on Dora’s part, and it may all come out right. I have said more to you, Wynn, than I could have said to any one else in the world. That shows how much confidence I place in you.”

“You can trust me, Mrs. Barry,” Dearing said, as he looked at his watch and rose to go. “I know how to keep my mouth shut.”

As he was leaving, Dora stood motionless at the window of her room, hidden from his view by the curtains. She watched him as he passed out of the yard and crossed the narrow street to reach the rear gate to his own grounds.

“If he knew the truth he’d despise me!” she moaned, as she sank into a chair and tensely clasped her little hands in her lap. “How can I bear it? I’m so miserable—so very, very miserable!”

She rose, and went to her bureau, and took up a photograph of Fred Walton; as she gazed at it her eyes filled and her lip quivered.

“Dear, dear Fred!” she said, fervently, “in spite of all the faults they say you have, you are the best and truest friend a poor girl ever had. If I’d only listened to your advice I’d never have been like this. Oh, what will you think when you hear the truth—the awful, awful truth!”

She threw herself on her bed, and with her face covered she lay trying to sob, trying to shed tears, but the founts of her agony were dry.