Glendenning and I went back to the rectory, and sat down in his study,
or rather he made me draw a chair to the open door, and sat down himself
on a step below the threshold. The day was one of autumnal warmth; the
haze of Indian summer blued the still air, and the wind that now and
then stirred the stiff panoply of the trees was lullingly soft. This
part of Gormanville quite overlooked the busier district about the
mills, where the water-power found its way, and it was something of a
climb even from the business street of the old hill village, which the
rival prosperity of the industrial settlement in the valley had thrown
into an aristocratic aloofness. From the upper windows of the rectory
one could have seen only the red and yellow of the maples, but from the
study door we caught glimpses past their boles of the outlying country,
as it showed between the white mansions across the way. One of these, as
I have already mentioned, was the Conwell place; and after we had talked
of the landscape awhile, Glendenning said: "By the way! Why don't you
buy the Conwell place? You liked it so much, and you were all so well in
Gormanville. The Conwells want to sell it, and it would be just the
thing for you, five or six months of the year."
I explained, almost compassionately, the impossibility of a poor
insurance man thinking of a summer residence like the Conwell place, and
I combated as well as I could the optimistic reasons of my friend in its
favor. I was not very severe with him, for I saw that his optimism was
not so much from his wish to have me live in Gormanville as from the new
hope that filled him. It was by a perfectly natural, if not very logical
transition that we were presently talking of this greater interest
again, and Glendenning was going over all the plans that it included. I
encouraged him to believe, as he desired, that a sea-voyage would be the
thing for Mrs. Bentley, and that it would be his duty to take her to
Europe as soon as he was in authority to do so. They should always, he
said, live in Gormanville, for they were greatly attached to the place,
and they should keep up the old Bentley homestead in the style that he
thought they owed to the region where the Bentleys had always lived. It
is a comfort to a man to tell his dreams, whether of the night or of the
day, and I enjoyed Glendenning's pleasure in rehearsing these fond
reveries of his.
He interrupted himself to listen to the sound of hurried steps, and
directly a man in his shirt-sleeves came running by on the sidewalk
beyond the maples. In a village like Gormanville any passer is of
interest to the spectator, and a man running is of thrilling moment.
Glendenning started to his feet, and moved forward for a better sight of
the flying passer. He called out to the man, who shouted back something
I could not understand, and ran on.
"What did he say?"
"I don't know." Glendenning's face as he turned to me again was quite
white. "It is Mrs. Bentley's farmer," he added, feebly, and I could see
that it was with an effort he kept himself from sinking. "Something has
happened."
"Oh, I guess not, or not anything serious," I answered, with an effort
to throw off the weight I suddenly felt at my own heart. "People have
been known to run for a plumber. But if you're anxious, let us go and
see what the matter is."
I turned and got my hat; Glendenning came in for his, but seemed unable
to find it, though he stood before the table where it lay. I had to
laugh, though I felt so little like it, as I put it in his hand.
"Don't leave me," he entreated, as we hurried out through the maples to
the sidewalk. "It has come at last, and I feel, as I always knew I
should, like a murderer."
"What rubbish!" I retorted. "You don't know that anything has happened.
You don't know what the man's gone for."
"Yes, I do," he said. "Mrs. Bentley is--He's gone for the doctor."
As he spoke a buggy came tearing down the street behind us; the doctor
was in it, and the man in shirt-sleeves beside him. We did not try to
hail them, but as they whirled by the farmer turned his face, and again
called something unintelligible to Glendenning.
We made what speed we could after them, but they were long out of sight
in the mile that it seemed to me we were an hour in covering before we
reached the Bentley place. The doctor's buggy stood at the gate, and I
perceived that I was without authority to enter the house, on which some
unknown calamity had fallen, no matter with what good-will I had come; I
could see that Glendenning had suffered a sudden estrangement, also,
which he had to make a struggle against. But he went in, leaving me
without, as if he had forgotten me.
I could not go away, and I walked down the path to the gate, and waited
there, in case I should be in any wise wanted. After a very long time
the doctor came bolting over the walk towards me, as if he did not see
me, but he brought himself up short with an "Oh!" before he actually
struck against me. I had known him during our summer at the Conwell
place, where we used to have him in for our little ailments, and I would
never have believed that his round, optimistic face could look so
worried. I read the worst in it; Glendenning was right; but I asked the
doctor, quite as if I did not know, whether there was anything serious
the matter.
"Serious--yes," he said. "Get in with me; I have to see another patient,
but I'll bring you back." We mounted into his buggy, and he went on.
"She's in no immediate danger, now. The faint lasted so long I didn't
know whether we should bring her out of it, at one time, but the most
alarming part is over for the present. There is some trouble with the
heart, but I don't think anything organic."
"Yes, I heard you telling her daughter so, just before lunch. Isn't it a
frequent complication with asthma?"
"Asthma? Her daughter? Whom are you talking about?"
"Mrs. Bentley. Isn't Mrs. Bentley--"
"No!" shouted the doctor, in disgust, "Mrs. Bentley is as well as ever.
It's Miss Bentley. I wish there was a thousandth part of the chance for
her that there is for her mother."