When Elbridge came back, Northwick called out, "Come in!" and then went
and unlocked the door for him. "I forgot it was locked," he said,
carelessly. "Do you think the colt's going to be lame?"
"Well, I don't like the way she behaves, very well. Them shoes have got
to come off." Elbridge stood at the corner of the desk, and diffused a
strong smell of stable through the hot room.
"You'll see to it, of course," said Northwick. "I'm going away in the
morning, and I don't know just how long I shall be gone." Northwick
satisfied his mechanical scruple against telling a lie by this formula;
and in its shelter he went on to give Elbridge instructions about the
management of the place in his absence. He took some money from his
pocket-book and handed it to him for certain expenses, and then he said,
"I want to take the five o'clock train, that reaches Ponkwasset at nine.
You can drive me up with the black mare."
"All right," said Elbridge; but his tone expressed a shadow of
reluctance that did not escape Northwick.
"Anything the matter?" he asked.
"I dunno. Our little boy don't seem to be very well."
"What ails him?" asked Northwick, with the sympathy it was a relief for
him to feel.
"Well, Dr. Morrell's just been there, and he's afraid it's the
membranous crou--" The last letter stuck in Elbridge's throat; he gulped
it down.
"Oh, I _hope_ not," said Northwick.
"He's comin' back again--he had to go off to another place--but I could
see 'twa'n't no use," said Elbridge with patient despair; he had got
himself in hand again, and spoke clearly.
Northwick shrank back from the shadow sweeping so near him; a shadow
thrown from the skies, no doubt, but terrible in its blackness on the
earth. "Why, of course, you mustn't think of leaving your wife. You must
telephone Simpson to come for me."
"All right." Elbridge took himself away.
Northwick watched him across the icy stable-yard, going to the
coachman's quarters in that cosy corner of the spreading barn; the
windows were still as cheerily bright with lamplight as when they struck
a pang of dumb envy to Northwick's heart. The child's sickness must have
been very sudden for his daughters not to have known of it. He thought
he ought to call Adeline, and send her in there to those poor people;
but he reflected that she could do no good, and he spared her the
useless pain; she would soon need all her strength for herself. His
thought returned to his own cares, from which the trouble of another had
lured it for a moment. But when he heard the doctor's sleigh-bells clash
into the stable-yard, he decided to go himself and show the interest his
family ought to feel in the matter.
No one answered his knock at Elbridge's door, and he opened it and found
his way into the room, where Elbridge and his wife were with the doctor.
The little boy had started up in his crib, and was struggling, with his
arms thrown wildly about.
"There! There, he's got another of them chokin' spells!" screamed the
mother. "Elbridge Newton, ain't you goin' to do anything? Oh help him,
save him, Dr. Morrell! Oh, I should think you'd be ashamed to let him
suffer so!" She sprang upon the child, and caught him from the doctor's
hands, and turned him this way and that trying to ease him; he was
suddenly quiet, and she said, "There, I just knew I could do it! What
are you big, strong men good for, any--" She looked down at the child's
face in her arms, and then up at the doctor's, and she gave a wild
screech, like the cry of one in piercing torment.
It turned Northwick heart-sick. He felt himself worse than helpless
there; but he went to the farmer's house, and told the farmer's wife to
go over to the Newtons'; their little boy had just died. He heard her
coming before he reached his own door, and when he reached his room, he
heard the bells of the doctor's sleigh clashing out of the avenue.
The voice and the look of that childless mother haunted him. She had
been one of the hat-shop hands, a flighty, nervous thing, madly in love
with Elbridge, whom she ruled with a sort of frantic devotion since
their marriage, compensating his cool quiet with a perpetual flutter of
exaggerated sensibilities in every direction. But somehow she had put
Northwick in mind of his own mother, and he thought of the chance or the
will that had bereaved one and spared the other, and he envied the
little boy who had just died.
He considered the case of the parents who would want to make full
outward show of their grief, and he wrote Elbridge a note, to be given
him in the morning, and enclosed one of the bills he was taking from the
company; he hoped Elbridge would accept it from him towards the expenses
he must meet at such a time.
Then he wheeled his chair about to the fire and stretched his legs out
to get what rest he could before the hour of starting. He would have
liked to go to bed, but he was afraid of oversleeping himself in case
Elbridge had neglected to telephone Simpson. But he did not believe this
possible, and he had smoothly confided himself to his experience of
Elbridge's infallibility, when he started awake at the sound of bells
before the front door, and then the titter of the electric bell over his
bed in the next room. He thought it was an officer come to arrest him,
but he remembered that only his household was acquainted with the use of
that bell, and then he wondered that Simpson should have found it out.
He put on his overcoat and arctics and caught up his bag, and hurried
down stairs and out of doors. It was Elbridge who was waiting for him on
the threshold, and took his bag from him.
"Why! Where's Simpson?" he asked. "Couldn't you get him?"
"It's all right," said Elbridge, opening the door of the booby, and
gently bundling Northwick into it. "I could come just's easy as not. I
thought you'd ride better in the booby; it's a little mite chilly for
the cutter." The stars seemed points of ice in the freezing sky; the
broken snow clinked like charcoal around Elbridge's feet. He shut the
booby door and then came back and opened it slightly. "I wa'n't agoin'
to let no Simpson carry you to no train, noway."
The tears came into Northwick's eyes, and he tried to say, "Why, thank
you, Elbridge," but the door shut upon his failure, and Elbridge mounted
to his place and drove away. Northwick had been able to get out of his
house only upon condition that he should behave as if he were going to
be gone on an ordinary journey. He had to keep the same terms with
himself on the way to the station. When he got out there he said to
Elbridge, "I've left a note for you on my desk. I'm sorry to be leaving
home--at such a time--when you've--"
"You'll telegraph when to meet you?" Elbridge suggested.
"Yes," said Northwick. He went inside the station, which was deliciously
warm from the large register in the centre of the room, and brilliantly
lighted in readiness for the train now almost due. The closing of the
door behind Northwick roused a little black figure drooping forward on
the benching in one corner. It was the drunken lawyer. There had been
some displeasures, general and personal, between the two men, and they
did not speak; but now, at sight of Northwick, Putney came forward, and
fixed him severely with his eye.
"Northwick! Do you know who you tried to drive over, last evening?"
Northwick returned his regard with the half-ironical, half-patronizing
look a dull man puts on with a person of less fortune but more brain. "I
didn't see you, Mr. Putney, until I was quite upon you. The horses--"
"It was the LAW you tried to drive over!" thundered the little man with
a voice out of keeping with his slender body. "Don't try it too often!
You can't drive over the Law, _yet_--you haven't quite millions enough
for that. Heigh? That so?" he queried, sensible of the anti-climax of
asking such a question in that way, but tipsily helpless in it.
Northwick did not answer; he walked to the other end of the station set
off for ladies, and Putney did not follow him. The train came in, and
Northwick went out and got aboard.