I
Monday morning found Eileen too ill to be out of bed. Dr. Schubert
came in response to an urgent request from her father, looked at her
tongue, felt her pulse, smiled tolerantly ... and prescribed a nerve
sedative. Later in the day the girl who had twined her baby fingers
about the emotional center which in a man of science does duty as a
heart asserted her right to consideration. He went home and talked it
over with Sydney.
“Use your intuition, boy. I can’t have her going to pieces like this.
She has always been free from hysteria--so different from her mother.”
“She has had her first love affair--and Hal Marksley is off to college.”
“Sydney! That thick-lipped youth! Besides, Eileen is only a child.”
“You remember the day she was born, and you forget the days between. I
have been wretched over it all summer. One night I met them, half way
over to Greenville--the night I was called to see the Hemple baby. I
spoke to Sylvia about it. And she reminded me of the night--on that
same road--when old Selim cast a shoe, and we didn’t get home until
almost morning. Once I was on the point of taking it up with Lary; but
he’s too deeply in love to see.”
“Lary in love! Who’s the charmer?”
“You dear old scientific abstraction. Have you had Mrs. Ascott at
your elbow four days a week--and do you think a fellow with Lary’s
temperament could spend all his evenings with her, and escape?”
“That’s--beautiful! But what about her ... a woman who has exhausted
New York and Paris? Would she be satisfied with a simple nature like
Lary’s?”
“Lary’s nature is about as simple in its refractions as a rose diamond!
Mrs. Ascott mothers him. I have tried to make up that deficit in
his life--but of course a boy he grew up with couldn’t do it, as a
sensitive woman could. He knows I understand about Mrs. Ascott. Oh, not
that we have ever talked about it. That would be too crude for Lary.”
“You are like your mother, boy. She spoke three languages--and could
dispense with all of them. But we have gone miles from Eileen. I need
your help, desperately.”