_In Which We Hear Once More of a Sandalwood Fan._
IN the winter which followed Richard often wondered if he were the same
man who had ridden his old Ben up over the hills, and had said his solemn
grace at his own candle-lighted table.
It had been decided that he and Eve should wait until another year for
their wedding. Richard wanted to get a good start. Eve was impatient, but
acquiesced.
It was not Richard's engagement, however, which gave to his life the
effect of strangeness. It was, rather, his work, which swept him into a
maelstrom of new activities. Austin needed rest and he knew it. Richard
was young and strong. The older man, using his assistant as a buffer
between himself and a demanding public, felt no compunction. His own
apprenticeship had been hard.
So Richard in Austin's imposing limousine was whirled through fashionable
neighborhoods and up to exclusive doorways. He presided at operations
where the fees were a year's income for a poor man. A certain percentage
of these fees came to him. He found that he need have no fears for his
financial future.
His letters from his mother were his only link with the old life. She
wrote that she was well. That Anne Warfield was with her, and Cousin
Sulie, and that the three of them and Cousin David played whist. That
Anne was such a dear--that she didn't know what she would do without her.
Richard went as often as he could on Sundays to Crossroads. But at such
times he saw little of Anne. She felt that no one should intrude on the
reunions of mother and son. So she visited at Beulah's or Bower's and
came back on Mondays.
Nancy persisted in her refusal to go back to New York. "I know I am
silly," she told her son, "but I have a feeling that I shouldn't be able
to breathe, and should die of suffocation."
Richard spoke to Dr. Austin of his mother's state of mind. "Queer thing,
isn't it?"
"A natural thing, I should say. Your father's death was an awful blow. I
often wonder how she lived out the years while she waited for you to
finish school."
"But she did live them, so that I might be prepared to practice at
Crossroads. As I think of it, it seems monstrous that I should disappoint
her."
"Fledglings always leave the nest. Mothers have that to expect. The
selfishness of the young makes for progress. It would have been equally
monstrous if you had stayed in that dull place wasting your talents."
"Would it have been wasted, sir? There's no one taking my place in the
old country. And there are many who could fill it here. There's a chance
at Crossroads for big work for the right man. Community water
supply--better housing, the health conditions of the ignorant foreign
folk who work the small farms. A country doctor ought to have the
missionary spirit."
"There are plenty of little men for such places."
"It takes big men. I could make our old countryside bloom like a rose if
I could put into it half the effort that I am putting into my work with
you. But it would be lean living--and I have chosen the flesh-pots."
"Don't despise yourself because you couldn't go on being poor in a big
way. You are going to be rich in a big way, and that is better."
As the days went on, however, Richard wondered if it were really better
to be rich in a big way. Sometimes the very bigness and richness
oppressed him. He found himself burdened by the splendor of the mansions
at which he made his morning calls. He hated the sleekness of the men in
livery who preceded him up the stairs, the trimness of the maids waiting
on the threshold of hushed boudoirs. Disease and death in these sumptuous
palaces seemed divorced from reality as if the palaces were stage
structures, and the people in them were actors who would presently walk
out into the wings.
It was therefore with some of the feelings which had often assailed him
when he had stepped from a dim theater out into the open air that Richard
made his way one morning to a small apartment on a down-town side street
to call on a little girl who had recently left the charity ward at
Austin's hospital. Richard had operated for appendicitis, and had found
himself much interested in the child. He had dismissed the limousine
farther up. It had seemed out of place in the shabby street.
He stopped at the florist's for a pot of pink posies and at another shop
for fruit. Laden with parcels he climbed the high stairs to the top floor
of the tenement.
The little girl and her grandmother lived together. The grandmother had a
small pension, and sewed by the day for several old customers. They thus
managed to pay expenses, but poverty pinched. Richard had from the first,
however, been impressed by their hopefulness. Neither the grandmother nor
the child seemed to look upon their lot as hard. The grandmother made
savory stews on a snug little stove and baked her own sweet loaves. Now
and then she baked a cake. Things were spotlessly clean, and there were
sunshine and fresh air. To have pitied those two would have been
superfluous.
After he had walked briskly out into Fifth Avenue, he was thinking of
another grandmother on whom he had called a few days before. She was a
haughty old dame, but she was browbeaten by her maid. Her grandchildren
were brought in now and then to kiss her hand. They were glad to get
away. They had no real need of her. They had no hopes or fears to
confide. So in spite of her magnificence and her millions, she was a
lonely soul.
Snow had fallen the night before, and was now melting in the streets, but
the sky was very blue above the tall buildings. Christmas was not far
away, and as Richard went up-town the crowd surged with him, meeting the
crowd that was coming down.
He had a fancy to lunch at a little place on Thirty-third Street, where
they served a soup with noodles that was in itself a hearty meal. In the
days when money had been scarce the little German cafe had furnished many
a feast. Now and then he and his mother had come together, and had talked
of how, when their ship came in, they would dine at the big hotel around
the corner.
And now that his ship was in, and he could afford the big hotel, it had
no charms. He hated the women dawdling in its alleys, the men smoking in
its corridors, the whole idle crowd, lunching in acres of table-crowded
space.
So he set as his goal the clean little restaurant, and swung along toward
it with something of his old boyish sense of elation.
And then a strange thing happened. For the first time in months he found
his heart marking time to the tune of the song which old Ben's hoofs had
beaten out of the roads as they made their way up into the hills--
"I think she was the most beautiful lady,
That ever was in the West Country----"
He was even humming it under his breath, unheard amid the hum and stir of
the crowded city street.
The shops on either side of him displayed in their low windows a wealth
of tempting things. Rugs with a sheen like the bloom of a
peach--alabaster in curved and carved bowls and vases, old prints in dull
gilt frames--furniture following the lines of Florentine
elaborateness--his eyes took in all the color and glow, though he rarely
stopped for a closer view.
In front of one broad window, however, he hesitated. The opening of the
door had spilled into the frosty air of this alien city the scent of the
Orient--the fragrance of incense--of spicy perfumed woods.
In the window a jade god sat high on a teakwood pedestal. A string of
scarlet beads lighted a shadowy corner. On an ancient and priceless
lacquered cabinet were enthroned two other gods of gold and ivory. A
crystal ball reflected a length of blue brocade. A clump of Chinese bulbs
bloomed in an old Ming bowl.
Richard went into the shop. Subconsciously, he went with a purpose. But
the purpose was not revealed to him until he came to a case in which was
set forth a certain marvelous collection. He knew then that the old song
and the scents had formed an association of ideas which had lured him
away from the streets and into the shop, that he might buy for Anne
Warfield a sandalwood fan.
He found what he wanted. A sweet and wonderful bit of wood, carved like
lace, with green and purple tassels.
It was when he had it safe in his pocket, in a box that was gay with
yellow and green and gold, that he was aware of voices in the back of the
shop.
There were tables where tea was served to special customers--at the
expense of the management. Thus a vulgar bargain became as it were a
hospitality--you bought teakwood and had tea; carved ivories, and were
rewarded with little cakes.
In that dim space under a low hung lamp, Marie-Louise talked with the fat
Armenian.
He was the same Armenian who had told her fortune at Coney. He stood by
Marie-Louise's side while she drank her tea, and spoke to her of the
poet-king with whom she had walked on the banks of the Nile.
Richard approaching asked, "How did you happen to come here,
Marie-Louise?"
"I often come. I like it. It is next to traveling in far countries." She
indicated the fat Armenian. "He tells me about things that happened to
me--in the ages--when I lived before."
A slender youth in white silk with a crimson sash brought tea for
Richard. But he refused it. "I am on my way to lunch, Marie-Louise. Will
you go with me?"
She hesitated and glanced at the fat Armenian. "I've some things to buy."
"I'll wait."
She flitted about the shop with the fat Armenian in her train. He showed
her treasures shut away from the public eye, and she bought long lengths
of heavy silks, embroideries thick with gold, a moonstone bracelet linked
with silver.
The fat Armenian, bending over her, seemed to direct and suggest.
Richard, watching, hated the man's manner.
Outside in the sunshine, he spoke of it. "I wouldn't go there alone."
"Why not?"
"I don't like to see you among those people--on such terms. They don't
understand, and they're--different."
"I like them because they are different," obstinately.
He shifted his ground. "Marie-Louise, will you lunch with me at a cheap
little place around the corner?"
"Why a cheap little place?"
"Because I like the good soup, and the clean little German woman, and the
quiet and--the memories."
"What memories?"
"I used to go there when I was poor."
She entered eagerly into the adventure, and ordered her car to wait. Then
away they fared around the corner!
Within the homely little restaurant, Marie-Louise's elegance was more
than ever apparent. Her long coat of gray velvet with its silver fox
winked opulently from the back of her chair at the coarse table-cloth and
the paper napkins.
But the soup was good, and the German woman smiled at them, and brought
them a special dish of hard almond cakes with their coffee.
"I love it," Marie-Louise said. "It is like Hans Andersen and my fairy
books. Will you bring me here again, Dr. Richard?"
"I am glad you like it," he told her. "I wanted you to like it."
"I like it because I like you," she said with frankness, "and you seem to
belong in the fairy tale. You are so big and strong and young. I don't
feel a thousand years old when I am with you. You are such a change from
everybody else, Dr. Dicky."
Richard spoke the next day to Austin of Marie-Louise and the fat
Armenian. "She shouldn't be going to such shops alone. She has a romantic
streak in her, and they take advantage of it."
"She ought never to go alone," Austin agreed, "and I have told her. But
what am I going to do? I can rule a world of patients, Brooks, but I
can't rule my woman child," he laughed ruefully. "I've tried having a
maid accompany her, but she sends her home."
"I wish she might have gone to the Crossroads school, and have known the
Crossroads teacher--Anne Warfield. You remember Cynthia Warfield, sir;
this is her granddaughter."
Austin remembered Cynthia, and he wanted to know more of Anne. Richard
told him of Anne's saneness and common sense. "I am so glad that she can
be with my mother, and that the children have her in the school. She is
so wise and good."
He thought more than once in the days that followed of Anne's wisdom and
goodness. He decided to send the fan. He expected to go to Crossroads for
Christmas, but he was not at all sure that he should see Anne. Something
had been said about her going for the holidays to her Uncle Rod.
Was it only a year since he had seen her on the rocks above the river
with a wreath in her hand, and in the stable at Bower's, with the lantern
shining above her head?