Time, in quiet neighborhoods, like water in a pool, slips in and out
leaving the pool but little changed. Only when one is waiting for
something dreaded or desired do the days drag or hasten. Miss Davis was
to arrive upon the Friday following her telephone invitation. That left
Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Desire found them very long.
Nothing more had been said of the personality of the expected visitor.
Desire did not ask, because she felt sure that, when she had seen, she
would know without asking. At present there was little enough to go
upon. The guest's name was Mary. Her hair was yellow. She had visited
in Bainbridge before. She and Benis had been friends. Beyond this there
was nothing save the professor's carelessness with the family Spode--an
annoying device for diverting attention in moments of embarrassment.
Against this circumstantial evidence there was the common-sense
argument that the real Mary of the professor's romance would hardly be
likely, under the circumstances, to propose herself as his aunt's guest.
Desire was inclined to take the common-sense view. Especially as just
about this time she came upon the track of another Mary, also with
yellow hair, who presented possibilities. The most suspicious thing
about this second Mary was that neither the professor nor his friend
Dr. Rogers had been able to tell Desire her first name. Now in
Bainbridge everyone knows the first name of everyone else. One does not
use it, necessarily, but one knows it. So that when Desire, having one
day noticed a gleam of particularly golden hair, asked innocently to
"whom it might belong" and was met by a plain surname prefixed merely
by "Miss," she became instantly curious. From other sources she learned
that the golden-haired Miss Watkins had been employed as a nurse in Dr.
Rogers' office for several months and that her Christian name was Mary
Sophia.
This also, you will see, was not much to build upon. But Desire felt
that she must neglect nothing. The menace of the unseen, unknown Mary
was beginning seriously to disturb her peace of mind. She determined to
see the doctor's pretty nurse at the earliest opportunity.
The comradeship between herself and Rogers had prospered amazingly. She
had liked the young doctor at first sight; had discerned in him
something charmingly boylike and appealing. And Desire had never had
boy friends. The utter frankness of her friendship was undisturbed by
overmuch knowledge of her own attractions, and the possibility of less
contentment on his side did not occur to her. Feeling herself so much
older, in reality, than he, she assumed with delicious naivete, the
role of confidant and general adviser. What time she could spare from
Benis and the great Book she bestowed most generously upon his friend.
During the four dragging days of waiting the appearance of Miss Davis,
she had found the distraction of Dr. John's company particularly
helpful. And then, after all, Miss Davis did not arrive. Instead, there
came a note regretting a very bad cold and postponing the visit until
its indefinite recovery. The news came at the breakfast table.
"How long," asked Desire thoughtfully, "does a bad cold usually last?"
"Not long--if it's just a cold," answered Benis with some gloom. "But,"
more hopefully, "if it is tonsillitis it lasts weeks and if pneumonia
sets in you have to stay indoors for months."
Aunt Caroline looked over her spectacles.
"You sound," she said, "as if you wish it were pneumonia."
But in this she was, perhaps, severe. Her nephew was really not capable
of wishing pneumonia for anyone, not even a possible Nemesis by the
name of Mary. He merely felt that if such a complication should
supervene he would bear the news with fortitude. For, speaking
colloquially, the professor was finding himself very much "in the air."
Desire's mind upon the subject of this guest in particular and of Marys
in general, had become clouded to his psychological gaze. He had
thought at first that his young secretary was jealous with that
harmless sex jealousy which may almost as well be described as "pique."
But, of late, he had not felt so sure about it. He did not, in fact,
feel quite so sure about any-thing.
Desire was changing. He had expected her to change, but the rapidity of
it was somewhat breath-taking. In appearance she had become noticeably
younger. The firm line of her lips had taken on softer curves; the warm
white of her skin was bloomy like a healthy child's; shadow after
shadow had lifted from her deep grey eyes. But it was in her manner
that the most significant difference lay. Spence sometimes wondered if
he had dreamed the silent Desire of the mountain cottage. That Desire
had stood coldly alone; had listened and weighed and gone her own way
with the hard confidence of too early maturity. This Desire listened
and weighed still, but her confidence was often now replaced by
questioning. In this new and more normal world, her unserved,
unsatisfied youth was breaking through.
But, if she were younger, she was certainly not more simple. If the
grey eyes were less shadowed, they were no less inscrutable. If the
lips were softer, their serenity was as baffling as their sternness had
been. If she seemed more plastic she was not less illusive. Nimble as
were his mental processes, the professor was discomfited to find that
hers were still more nimble.
Meanwhile the Book was getting on. No excursions into the land of youth
were allowed to interfere with Desire's idea of her secretarial duties.
If anyone shirked, it was the author; if anyone wanted holidays it was
he. If he were lazy, Desire found ways of making progress without him;
if he grumbled, she laughed.
The day set apart for the arrival of Miss Davis had been voted a
holiday and the professor hoped that her non-appearance would not
interfere with so pleasant an arrangement. But Desire's ideas were
quite otherwise. Sharply on time she descended to the library with her
note-book ready. The professor felt injured.
"Must we really?" he said. "Yes. I see we must. But mind! I know why
you are doing it. I thought of your reason in the night when I was
unable to sleep from overwork. You are hurrying to get through so that
we may leave this sleepy town. Insatiable window-gazer! You wish to
look in bigger windows."
"Do I?" Desire turned limpid eyes upon him and tapped her note-book.
"Then the sooner we get on with this chapter on 'The Significance of
the Totem' the better. But, if you can excuse me this afternoon, Dr.
John has just 'phoned to ask me if I can call on the eldest Miss
Martin. He says that her state of mind is her greatest trouble. And it
does not react to medicine."
The professor looked still more injured.
"We can't begin the totem chapter unless we are going to go on with
it," he objected. "I don't see why John doesn't get a secretary of his
own."
"He has a nurse," said Desire smoothly.
"Er--oh yes, of course. Well, perhaps we had better begin--but why does
he want you to call on Miss Martin?"
Desire looked self-conscious, a rare thing for her. "Well, you see, I
have an idea about Miss Martin. It may be entirely wrong but John
thinks it worth trying. You knew that her fiance was killed just before
the armistice, didn't you? John says she seemed stunned at the time but
kept on, the way most women did. She helped him fight the 'flu' all
that winter without taking it her-self. But she was one of the first to
come down with it when it returned this Spring. She got through the
worst--and there she stays. John says that if she doesn't begin to pick
up soon there won't be enough of her left to bother about."
"And your idea?"
"You might laugh," said Desire with sudden shyness.
The professor promised not to laugh.
"My idea is this. To find out the real reason for her not getting
better and treat that."
"Very simple."
"Yes, because John already knows the real cause. He says she doesn't
get well because she doesn't want to. In the old days people would say
her heart was broken. And it seems such a pity, because, if what
everyone says is true, she would have been frightfully unhappy if she
had married him. (Desire became slightly incoherent here.) They weren't
suited at all. He was a musician, a derelict who hadn't a thought in
the world for anything but his violin. Aunt Caroline says the
engagement was a mystery to everyone. She says that probably Miss
Martin just offered to take him in hand and look after him (she used to
be very capable) and he hadn't backbone enough to say she couldn't.
They say that the only time anyone ever saw a gleam in his face was the
day he went away to the war. Then he was killed. And now she won't get
well because she can't forget him."
"And that is what you call a 'pity'?"
"Well, not exactly that." She hesitated. "If he had cared for her as
she thought he did, it wouldn't seem such a waste. But he didn't.
Everybody knew it--except herself."
"Everybody may have been wrong."
"Yes. But that is just the point. They weren't. He died as he had lived
without a thought for anything but music. I happened to hear a rather
wonderful story about his dying. Sergeant Timms, who drives the baker's
cart, was in the next cot to his, in the hospital. And my idea is that
if he could just tell her the story--just let her see that he went away
without a thought--she might get things in proportion again and let
herself get well."
"I see. Well, my dear, it is your idea. Is John going to drive you out?"
"No. He wanted to. But I'll have to find the Sergeant and take him with
me."
"In the baker's cart?"
"What a good idea! I would never have thought of that. And I've always
wanted to ride in a baker's cart. They smell so crusty."
So it was really the professor's fault that Bainbridge was scandalized
by the sight of young Mrs. Spence jogging comfortably along through the
outskirts in a bread cart driven by the one-time Sergeant Edward Timms.
"And him so silly with havin' her," said Mrs. Beatty (who first noticed
them), "that he didn't know a French roll from a currant bun."
Indeed we may as well admit that the gallant Sergeant confused more
things that day than rolls and buns. The latter part of his orderly
bread route was strewn thickly with indignant customers. For the
Sergeant was a thoroughgoing fellow quite incapable of a divided
interest.
"You can tell me the details of the story as we go along," Desire said,
"so that I shan't be interrupting your work at all."
The dazzled Sergeant agreed and immediately delivered two whites
instead of one brown and forgot the tickets.
"Well, you see," he said, "it was this way. We went over there
together, him and me. And we hadn't known each other, so to speak, not
intimate. You didn't know him yourself at all, did you?"
Desire shook her head.
"He was a queer one. Willin' as could be to do what he was told, but
forgettin' what it was, regular. Just naturally no good, like, except
with the fiddle. I will say, that with that there instrument he was a
Paderwooski--yes, mam! By the time our outfit got into them trenches
the boys was just clean dippy about him. They kind of took turns
dry-nursin' him and remindin' him of the things he'd got to do, and
doin' them for him when they could put it over. I'll tell you
this--it's my private suspicion that more than one chap went west
tryin' to keep the bullets offen him! Not that they were crazy about
him exactly, but that fiddle of his had got them goin'. 'Twasn't only
the fiddle he played on, either. Anything would do. That there chap
could play you into any kind of dashed mood he liked and out of it
again. Put more pep into you with a penny whistle than Sousy's band or
a bottle of rum. Ring you out like a dishrag, he could, and hang you
out to dry. Gee! He could do anything--just anything!"
(It was here that the bun episode occurred.)
"Well,--he got buried. Parapet blown in. And when they got him out he
was--hurt some." (The Sergeant remembered that one must not shock the
ladies.)
"That was all I would have known about it," he went on, "only we happen
to turn up in hospital together. I wakes up one mornin' and finds him
in the next cot. He was supposed to be recoverin' but was somehow
botchin' the job.
"'Where's the fiddle?' I says to him one day when I was feelin' social.
And then, all of a minute, I guessed why he wasn't patchin' up like
what was his duty. You see, that b-blessed parapet hadn't had any more
sense than to go and spoil his right arm for him--the one he fiddled
with, see?"
(Here the Sergeant delivered one brick loaf instead of two sandwich
ditto.)
"Well, they kept sayin' there weren't any reason he shouldn't mend up.
But he didn't. And one night--" the Sergeant pulled up the cart so
quickly that Desire almost fell out of it. "You won't believe this
part," he said in a kind of shamefaced way.
"Try me."
"Well then, one night he called to me in a kind of clear whisper.
'Bob!' he says, 'I've got my fiddle!'
"'Sure you have, old cock,' says I.
"'And my arm's as good as ever,' says he.
"'Sure it is! Better,' says I.
"'Listen!' says he.
"And I listened and--but you won't believe this part--"
"I will."
"Well, I heared him playin'! Not loud--not very near but so clear not
one of the littlest, tinkly notes was lost. I never heard playin' like
that--no, mam! And the ward was still. I never heard the ward still,
like that. I think I went to sleep listenin'. I don't know."
The Sergeant broke off here long enough to deliver several orders--all
wrong. Desire waited quietly and presently he finished with a jerk.
"When I woke up in the mornin', I was feelin' fine--fine. The first
thing I did was to look over to the next cot. But there was a screen
around it.... I ain't told the story to his folks because he hasn't
got any," he added after a pause. "And I kind of thought it mightn't
comfort his fiancy any--it not bein' personal, so to speak."
Desire frankly wiped her eyes. (It was fortunate that no one saw her do
this.)
"It's a beautiful story," she said.
"Well, if you think I ought to tell, I will. But if his fiancy says,
'Was there any message?' hadn't I best put in a little one--somethin'
comforting?"
"Oh--no."
"All right. Couldn't I just say that at the end he called out
'Amelia!'?"
"Oh, Mr. Timms!"
"Not quite playin' the game, eh? Well, then I won't. But it does seem
kind of skimp like.... There's the doctor waitin' at the gate."