"From the Depths of his Love"
At seven o'clock, precisely, Anthony Dexter's old housekeeper rang the
rising bell. Drowsy with the soporific he had taken, the doctor did
not at once respond to the summons. In fact, the breakfast bell had
rung before he was fully awake.
He dressed leisurely, and was haunted by a vague feeling that something
unpleasant had happened. At length he remembered that just before
dusk, in the garden of Evelina Grey's old house, he had seen a ghost--a
ghost who confronted him mutely with a thing he had long since
forgotten.
"It was subjective, purely," mused Anthony Dexter. "I have been
working too hard." His reason was fully satisfied with the plausible
explanation, but he was not a man who was likely to have an
hallucination of any sort.
He was strong and straight of body, finely muscular, and did not look
over forty, though it was more than eight years ago that he had reached
the fortieth milestone. His hair was thinning a little at the temples
and the rest of it was touched generously with grey. His features were
regular and his skin clear. A full beard, closely cropped, hid the
weakness of his chin, but did not entirely conceal those fine lines
about the mouth which mean cruelty.
Someway, in looking at him, one got the impression of a machine,
well-nigh perfect of its kind. His dark eyes were sharp and
penetrating. Once they had been sympathetic, but he had outgrown that.
His hands were large, white, and well-kept, his fingers knotted, and
blunt at the tips. He had, pre-eminently, the hand of the surgeon,
capable of swiftness and strength, and yet of delicacy. It was not a
hand that would tremble easily; it was powerful and, in a way, brutal.
He was thoroughly self-satisfied, as well he might be, for the entire
countryside admitted his skill, and even in the operating rooms of the
hospitals in the city not far distant. Doctor Dexter's name was well
known. He had thought seriously, at times, of seeking a wider field,
but he liked the country and the open air, and his practice would give
Ralph the opportunity he needed. At his father's death, the young
physician would fail heir to a practice which had taken many years of
hard work to build up.
At the thought of Ralph, the man's face softened a trifle and his keen
eyes became a little less keen. The boy's picture was before him upon
his chiffonier. Ralph was twenty-three now and would finish in a few
weeks at a famous medical school--Doctor Dexter's own alma mater. He
had not been at home since he entered the school, having undertaken to
do in three years the work which usually required four.
He wrote frequently, however, and Doctor Dexter invariably went to the
post-office himself on the days Ralph's letters were expected. He had
the entire correspondence on file and whiled away many a lonely evening
by reading and re-reading the breezy epistles. The last one was in his
pocket now.
"To think, Father," Ralph had written, "in three weeks more or less, I
shall be at home with my sheepskin and a fine new shingle with 'Dr.
Ralph Dexter' painted on it, all ready to hang up on the front of the
house beside yours. I'll be glad to get out of the grind for a while,
I can tell you that. I've worked as His Satanic Majesty undoubtedly
does when he receives word that a fresh batch of Mormons has hit the
trail for the good-intentions pavement. _Decensus facilis Averni_.
That's about all the Latin I've got left.
"At first, I suppose, there won't be much for me to do. I'll have to
win the confidence of the community by listening to the old ladies'
symptoms three or four hours a day, regularly. Finally, they'll let me
vaccinate the kids and the rest will be pitifully easy. Kids always
like me, for some occult reason, and if the children cry for me, it
won't be long till I've got your whole blooming job away from you.
Never mind, though, dad--I'll be generous and whack up, as you've
always done with me."
Remembering the boyishness of it, Anthony Dexter smiled a little and
took another satisfying look at the pictured face before him. Ralph's
eyes were as his father's had been--frank and friendly and clear, with
no hint of suspicion. His chin was firm and his mouth determined, but
the corners of it turned up decidedly, and the upper lip was short.
The unprejudiced observer would have seen merely an honest,
intelligent, manly young fellow, who looked as if he might be good
company. Anthony Dexter saw all this--and a great deal more.
It was his pride that he was unemotional. By rigid self-discipline, he
had wholly mastered himself. His detachment from his kind was at first
spasmodic, then exceptionally complete. Excepting Ralph, his relation
to the world was that of an unimpassioned critic. He was so sure of
his own ground that he thought he considered Ralph impersonally, also.
Over a nature which, at the beginning, was warmly human, Doctor Dexter
had laid this glacial mask. He did what he had to do with neatness and
dispatch. If an operation was necessary, he said so at once, not
troubling himself to approach the subject gradually. If there was
doubt as to the outcome, he would cheerfully advise the patient to make
a will first, but there was seldom doubt, for those white, blunt
fingers were very sure. He believed in the clean-cut, sudden stroke,
and conducted his life upon that basis.
Without so much as the quiver of an eyelash, Anthony Dexter could tell
a man that within an hour his wife would be dead. He could predict the
death of a child, almost to the minute, without a change in his
mask-like expression, and feel a faint throb of professional pride when
his prediction was precisely fulfilled. The people feared him,
respected him, and admired his skill, but no one loved him except his
son.
Among all his acquaintances, there was none who called him friend
except Austin Thorpe, the old minister who had but lately come to town.
This, in itself, was no distinction, for Thorpe was the friend of every
man, woman, child, and animal in the village. No two men could have
been more unlike, but friendship, like love, is often a matter of
chemical affinity, wherein opposites rush together in obedience to a
hidden law.
The broadly human creed of the minister included every living thing,
and the man himself interested Doctor Dexter in much the same way that
a new slide for his microscope might interest him. They exchanged
visits frequently when the duties of both permitted, and the Doctor
reflected that, when Ralph came, Thorpe would be lonely.
The Dexter house was an old one but it had been kept in good repair.
From time to time, wings had been added to the original structure,
until now it sprawled lazily in every direction. One wing, at the
right of the house, contained the Doctor's medical library, office,
reception room, and laboratory. Doors were arranged in metropolitan
fashion, so that patients might go out of the office without meeting
any one. The laboratory, at the back of the wing, was well fitted with
modern appliances for original research, and had, too, its own outside
door.
When Ralph came home, the other wing, at the left of the house, was to
be arranged in like manner for him if he so desired. Doctor Dexter had
some rough drawings under consideration, but wanted Ralph to order the
plans in accordance with his own ideas.
The breakfast bell rang again, and Doctor Dexter went downstairs. The
servant met him in the hall. "Breakfast is waiting, sir," she said.
"All right," returned the Doctor, absently. "I'll be there in a
moment."
He opened the door for a breath of fresh air, and immediately perceived
the small, purple velvet box at his feet. He picked it up,
wonderingly, and opened it.
Inside were the discoloured pearls on their bed of yellowed satin, and
the ivory-tinted slip of paper on which he had written, so long ago, in
his clear, boyish hand: "First, from the depths of the sea, and then
from the depths of my love."
Being unemotional, he experienced nothing at first, save natural
surprise. He stood there, staring into vacancy, idly fingering the
pearls. By some evil magic of the moment, the hour seemed set back a
full quarter of a century. As though it were yesterday, he saw Evelina
before him.
She had been a girl of extraordinary beauty and charm. He had
travelled far and seen many, but there had been none like Evelina. How
he had loved her, in those dead yesterdays, and how she had loved him!
The poignant sweetness of it came back, changed by some fatal alchemy
into bitterness.
Anthony Dexter had seen enough of the world to recognise cowardice when
he saw it, even in himself. His books had taught him that the mind
could hold but one thought at a time, and, persistently, he had
displaced the unpleasant ones which constantly strove for the right of
possession.
Hard work and new love and daily wearying of the body to the point of
exhaustion had banished those phantoms of earlier years, save in his
dreams. At night, the soul claims its own--its right to suffer for its
secret sins, its shirking, its betrayals.
It is not pleasant for a man to be branded, in his own consciousness, a
coward. Refusal to admit it by day does not change the hour of the
night when life is at its lowest ebb, and, sleepless, man faces himself
as he is.
The necklace slipped snakily over his hand--one of those white, firm
hands which could guide the knife so well--and Anthony Dexter
shuddered. He flung the box far from him into the shrubbery, went back
into the house, and slammed the door.
He sat down at the table, but could not eat. The Past had come from
its grave, veiled, like the ghost in the garden that he had seen
yesterday.
It was not an hallucination, then. Only one person in the world could
have laid those discoloured pearls at his door in the dead of night.
The black figure in the garden, with the chiffon fluttering about its
head, was Evelina Grey--or what was left of her.
"Why?" he questioned uneasily of himself. "Why?" He had repeatedly
told himself that any other man, in his position, would do as he had
done, yet it was as though some one had slipped a stiletto under his
armour and found a vulnerable spot.
Before his mental vision hovered two women. One was a girl of twenty,
laughing, exquisitely lovely. The other was a bent and broken woman in
black, whose veil concealed the dreadful hideousness of her face.
"Pshaw!" grumbled Doctor Dexter, aloud. "I've overworked, that's all."
He determined to vanquish the spectre that had reared itself before
him, not perceiving that Remorse incarnate, in the shape of Evelina,
had come back to haunt him until his dying day.
V