"It takes you, Doctor, to make Marcia mind."
"I 'm a man of years, Boy," the Doctor retorted, thereby reducing Jamie
to silence.
We sat expectant; but evidently the Doctor was in no hurry to open up
his subject. After a few minutes of deep thought, he spoke slowly,
almost as if to himself:
"I'm wondering where to begin, what to take hold of first. The
ordering of life is beyond all science--we 've found that out, we
so-called 'men of science'. The truth is, I believe I have a
'conscience fund' in the bank and on my mind. I know I am speaking
blindly, and perhaps reasoning blindly, and it's because I want you to
see things for me more clearly than I do, and through a different
medium, that I am going to tell you, as concisely as I can--and without
mentioning names--of an experience I had more than a quarter of a
century ago. I 've had several of the kind since, they are common in
our profession--but the result of this special experience is unique."
He paused, continuing to look steadfastly into the fire.
In the silence we heard the sweep of the wind through the woods, now
and then the scraping swish of a pine branch brushing the roof beneath
it.
"I recall that it was in December. I was twenty-nine, and had just got
a foothold on the first round of the professional ladder. Near
midnight I was called to go down into one of the slum districts--I
don't intend to mention names--of New York. There in a basement, I
found a woman who had just been rescued from suicide."
He paused, still keeping his gaze fixed intently on the fire. And I?
At the first words a faint sickness came upon me. Was I to hear this
again?--here, remote from the environment from which I had so recently
fled? Could it be possible that I was to hear again that account of my
mother's death? I struggled for control. They must not know, they
should not see that struggle. Intent on keeping every feature passive,
hoping that in the firelight whatever my face might have shown would
pass unnoticed, I waited for the Doctor's next word.
"It seems unprofessional, perhaps, to enter into any detail, but we are
far away from that environment now--and in time, too, for it was over a
quarter of a century ago. She was very young, nineteen perhaps, and
about to become a mother. I remained with her till morning. I knew
she would never come through her trial alive. I went again in the
evening and stayed with her till her child was born and--to the end
which came an hour afterwards. During all those twenty-four hours she
spoke but twice. She gave me no name, although I asked her; no name of
friends even--God knows if she had any, or why was she there?
"Now, here is my dilemma: in the morning, I signed the death
certificate and then went out of the city on a case that kept me
forty-eight hours. On my return, the woman, who had rescued this poor
girl,--a woman who took in washing and ironing in that basement--told
me a man had appeared at the house to claim the body he said was his
wife's. She gave me the man's name, but the name of this man was not
the name of the husband according to a marriage certificate which I
found in an envelope the young woman entrusted to me for her child. At
any rate, he had claimed the body and taken it away.
"Now, ordinarily the living waves of existence close very soon over
such an episode--all too common; and, so far as I am concerned, in such
and other similar cases I forget; it is well that I can. But I 've
never been permitted to forget this!"
He made this announcement emphatically, looking up suddenly from the
fire, and glancing at each of us in turn.
"And, moreover, I don't believe I am ever going to be permitted to
forget. Some one intends I shall remember!
"With me it was merely a charity case--one, it is true, that called
forth my deepest sympathy. The circumstances were peculiar. The woman
was young, rarely attractive in face, refined, well dressed. Her
absolute silence concerning herself during all that weary time; her
heroic endurance and, I may say, angelic acceptance of her
martyrdom--and all this in such an environment! How could it help
making a deep impression? Still, I am convinced I should have
forgotten it, had it not been for a constant reminder.
"In the first week of the next February, I received a notification from
a national bank in the city that five hundred dollars had been
deposited to my credit. The woman who lived in that basement received
during the first week of the New Year a draft on that bank--and mailed
by the bank--for the same amount. She consulted me about accepting it.
When I attempted to investigate at the bank, I found that no
information would be given and no questions answered--only the
statement made that the money was mine to do with what I might choose.
Next December, and a year to a day from the death of that young woman,
I received a similar notification, and the woman a draft for one
hundred. Since that time, now over twenty-five years ago, no December
has ever passed that the regular notification has not been mailed to me
and to the woman. I wrote to the man who had claimed the body, and
whose name and address the woman, who lived in the basement,
remembered. The letter was never answered. I waited a year, and wrote
the second time. The letter came back to me from the dead letter
office. I invested the increasing amount after two years and let it
accumulate at compound interest. As you will see, these donations have
amounted now to a tidy sum. I believe it to be 'conscience
money'--either from the man who claimed the body as that of his wife,
or from the woman's husband according to the marriage certificate. Or
are both men one and the same?
"I hired the farm of you, Gordon, merely telling you it was one of my
many philanthropic plans that, thus far, I have been unable to carry
out. As yet I have not used that money for any benefactions. Would
you hold it longer, or would you apply it to my farm project which is
to provide a home for the homeless, and for those whose home does not
provide sufficient change for them? I have thought sometimes I would
limit the philanthropy to those who need up-building in health.-- What
do you say, Gordon?"
He looked across the hearth to his friend who was leaning back in his
chair, his arm resting on the arm, his hand shading his eyes from the
firelight.
"I should like to think it over, John; it is a peculiar case. Have you
ever thought of the child? Do you know anything about it? Was it a
boy or a girl?"
"A girl. No, I never thought of the child--poor little bit of life's
flotsam. We don't get much time to think of all those we help to float
in on the tide. Now this is what I am getting, by looking at the
matter through others' eyes--you mean she should be looked up, and the
money go to her?"
"That was my first thought, but, as I said, I must think it over. The
two men, at least, the two names of possibly the same man, complicate
matters."
"That's what puzzles me," said Jamie. The Doctor turned to him.
"How do you look at it, Boy, you, with your twenty-three years? The
world where such things happen is n't much like that world of Andre's
Odyssey, is it?"
Jamie answered brightly, but his voice was slightly unsteady:
"Yes, it's the same old world; it's a wilderness, you know, for all of
us, only there are so many paths through it, across it, and up and down
it--paths and trails and roads that cross and recross; so many that end
in swamp and bog; so many that lead nowhither; so many that are lost on
the mountain. And so few guideposts--I wish there were more for us
all! You may bet your life that man--whether the girl's husband or
lover--has had to tread thorns until his feet bled before he could
clear his way through. Those five hundred dollars, in yearly deposits,
he intends shall be guideposts, and he trusts you to put them up in the
wilderness where they will do the most good.--I 'd hate to be that man!
Would you mind telling me, Doctor, how she attempted to make way with
herself?"
"Tried to drown herself from one of the North River piers."
"And her child too," said Jamie musingly; "there came near being two
graves in _his_ wilderness." He thought a moment in silence. "Make
the home on the farm with the money, Doctor Rugvie; use the interest in
helping others who have lost their way in the wilderness."
"Good advice, Boy, I 'll remember to act on it." The Doctor spoke
gratefully, heartily. His glance rested affectionately upon the long
figure on the sofa. Was he wondering, as I was, how Jamie at
twenty-three could reach certain depths which his particular plummet
could never have sounded? I intended to ask him what he thought of
Jamie's outlook on life, sometime when we should be alone together.
"Mrs. Macleod," he said, "do you think with your son?"
She hesitated. It is her peculiarity that a direct question, the
answer to which involves a decision, flusters her painfully.
"I shall have to think it over, like Mr. Ewart," she replied.
"And you, Marcia," he turned to me. Out of my knowledge I answered
unhesitatingly:
"It's not of the child I 'm thinking; she could n't accept the money
knowing for what it is paid. Nor am I thinking about those women who
need 'guide-posts', Jamie. I 'm thinking of that other woman who lived
in the basement and took in washing and ironing, the one who rescued
that other from her misery and cared for her with your help, Doctor
Rugvie--should n't she be remembered? She, who is living? If I had
that money at my disposal, I would found the farm home and put that
woman at the head of it. You may be sure she would know how to put up
the guideposts--and in the right places too."