The next fifteen years that carried Jarvis Thornton over from one
generation to another passed with placid monotony. He had been
decidedly successful. His little round of Boston streets where he
doled out mental and physical encouragement, resounded with his
praises. Moreover he was known as a "good fellow," an epithet that his
warmest friends in Camberton days would not have bestowed on him. He
was sleek and solid; well-groomed and rounded, in spite of constant
activity, and if his scientific reputation was not more than mediocre,
it was enough to give him a lectureship on neurosis in the Camberton
Medical School--that necessary mark of approval for a doctor
practising in his circle. He spent eight months of each year in
Boston; the other four he practised at Wolf Head, a fashionable
sea-side place that he had done much to promote. There he had built a
roomy cottage on a little point of land, and he had shrewdly invested
in the Improvement Company that held the best lots along the shore. He
was a comfortable family physician to have about, with a good
digestion and a desirable connection; in his few hours of recreation
he could be counted on for tennis or yachting or a dinner-party, even
with a dance attached.
One step that marked the prosperity of the Thorntons was their new
house on Beacon Street, selected with much care in the short block or
two of stable neighborhood. When they had moved into this new house,
Mrs. Thornton had referred to the past indirectly.
"Why don't you take the sewing-room?"
"What for? I can't entertain patients on the third floor."
"You could use it for a laboratory for your things," Mrs. Thornton
suggested vaguely. "I could get along without it."
The doctor smiled.
"Oh, I don't need so much room for that; I haven't over much time
these days."
It touched him that she remembered, even remotely, the bearing of that
tragic day when her sister had come to announce the Bradley rascality.
Soon she began again, this time nearer the heart of the matter.
"Jarvis, you don't mind it so very much, the change you had to make,
_now_."
"Now that I have more practice than I can attend to?"
The doctor's voice had an inexplicable tone in it at times which made
his wife shy of intimate conversation.
"You are such a success," she struggled on; "and everything has come
out so--peacefully."
"There are two verbs, my dear, which most people confuse: to succeed
and to win." Then, as he noted her troubled face, he kissed her. "That
bell has been ringing for half an hour. That is an outward and visible
sign of the first verb. I must heed it."
When he left her, she mused over his words. Except for occasional
disturbing moments like these, it never occurred to her that her
dreams made in that hot summer at the Four Corners had not come true
for them both. She had dreamed vaguely and she had realized vaguely.
When she contrasted her husband's career with her father's, or with
any other that made up the _repertoire_ among her acquaintances, it
seemed fair and unblemished. But men were exacting creatures, who
rarely knew what was best for them, and who kept about them a fund of
discontent to feed upon.
There was her poor father. He had given up now; Doctor Thornton saw
that his wife's parents did not starve. Ellwell was a melancholy
skeleton to meet on the streets, bent, walking stiffly at all his
joints, his fleshy cheeks fallen in as if after a severe fever. He was
shabby, too, though the allowance was a liberal one. Fine mornings he
would crawl down Tremont Street to one of the hotels, and lounge away
some hours in the bar-room, on the chance of meeting an old
acquaintance. Frequently the doctor would hear his husky cough in the
hall outside his office door, but the old man slunk away sullenly
whenever the door opened. Thornton suspected that on such occasions
drains were made upon his wife's allowance. Where else did it go to?
He was minded at times to mention this degrading beggary, but always
refrained. He would have to build his wife's character over from the
foundations in order to make her appreciate his disgust, and he was
not sure that he desired such an essential change in her, at least,
now. She would confuse the issue: he would seem to be rebuking her
pity and natural tenderness. So it mattered little if the old wreck
wasted a few hundreds more on the pleasures he was capable of getting.
The doctor's wife had wavered between invalidism and delicate health
for some years, and had settled into retirement until her daughter
brought her out once more, first at Wolf Head, then in Beacon Street.
The household, in spite of the fact that there were only three
members, was known as an expensive establishment. But the doctor was
supposed to be well off, and his practice was good for more than he
spent. If he worked hard all the winter, he was not idle in the
vacation months; his fawn-colored horse could be seen jogging about
for miles up and down the coast. It was generally well into the
evening before his dark face and burning cigar were seen on the path
of the cottage.
The summer when his daughter was seventeen, had been particularly
busy. They had had a stream of guests as usual, staying for a week or
a fortnight, and the busy doctor had not paid much attention whether
Ruby Bradley with her young son had come or gone, or whether the
second cousins had yet arrived. The house was generally full. He liked
that, although he chose to dine alone, quite frequently. His daughter,
whom he had watched shrewdly, demanded people, and the safer plan, he
thought, was in multitudes. She was a restless young person, tall like
him, with fair skin like her mother, dark hair, and nervous, active
arms.
"She will always have some man on hand to exercise her egotism on,"
the doctor reflected, impartially. So he fed her young men. The father
and daughter went about a good deal together, and people made pleasant
remarks over their intimacy. This summer the doctor thought about her
on his long drives, and scrutinized the young men who lounged about
his veranda. Most of them were boys in the calf stage, college youths,
who were spoiling with vacation. These the doctor called the puppies,
and treated indulgently. There were others who came to the hotel for
short fortnights, impecunious young business men or lawyers who were
looking about for suitable assistance in life. Such candidates were
submitted to a close scrutiny, but nothing to warrant active measures
had yet occurred.
He had made up his mind precisely about his future son-in-law. For two
years he had studied his daughter, and nothing could shake his
conviction that he had found the only safe conclusion to a difficult
problem--a certain kind of husband. He must be rich, for Maud had
inherited the Ellwell dependence upon luxury. And he must be able to
devote himself pretty steadily to her whims, subordinate himself
good-naturedly, and obtain for her whatever she might fancy for the
time.
"She will want to express herself badly," was the doctor's comment.
"If they should try to express themselves both at the same time, there
would be explosions--rows and divorce and scandal--unhappy children."
Once he said to his wife, forlornly, "She is too clever, poor child.
She has been talking to me like a marchioness of forty for the last
half hour. If this keeps on I shall have to domesticate her great
aunts in order to have some children about the house."
The desirable husband must be able to place her well socially, for
she had already shown herself keen in making distinctions. It gave her
father a wicked pleasure to see her snub young Roper Bradley when he
came with his mother to make their annual summer visit. She never
mentioned her uncle Roper, and she extended compassion to the doctor
on the subject of her grandfather Ellwell.
The doctor was fond of her in spite of his analysis. He thought with
pride that she was thoroughbred, capable of masterly strokes. Yet,
alas! the opportunities for masterly strokes would come so rarely;
meanwhile she was a dangerous, febrile, nervous, chemical
compound--something to be isolated. With her five-day enthusiasms, her
quick wit, her restlessness, her sense of dress, she would be
fascinating.
"If she will only fascinate the right sort!" the doctor prayed. He
smiled savagely at the picture he drew of the right sort, which, it
is needless to add, was not a congenial type.
"An acquiescent fool for a son-in-law, a kind of gentlemanly valet!"
And, "That, I trust, will be the end. Maud as a mother would be
atrocious."
His daughter gave the doctor a certain kind of scientific interest.
She harked back, so to speak, to former generations, perverting their
simple instincts. Her devotion to the Salvation Army for one winter,
he pointed out to his wife, was a recrudescence of the old Puritan
pastor in his revivalist days. This manifestation would not be
permanent, for there were so many other desires crowding each other in
her brain. Just now she had developed a longing for art. The doctor
had been obliged to exert himself to prevent her sudden departure for
Paris, where she pictured herself living on two francs a day at the
top of a very dirty flight of stairs.
"Perhaps she will elope," the doctor said to his wife, humorously.
"But she won't elope with a mere man: she will go off with an idea and
then come around to the front door to be taken back."
"I don't think she is very considerate," Mrs. Thornton hinted. Maud
treated her at times with toleration. The doctor understood what that
meant--her lack of sympathy with her mother's clinging to her family;
deluging the Thornton house with Ellwells and their affairs.
"If she would only cultivate some serious interests, yours, and take
the place of a son," thus Mrs. Thornton referred to her husband's
youth and its sacrifices.
"I haven't any use for women doctors," Thornton replied; "and Maud as
a nurse scrubbing floors would be more absurd than Maud in an Army
Rescue Post."
For the art fever, however, the doctor felt to some extent
responsible. He had allowed young Addington Long a certain right of
way in the house. Long was the son of an old friend, a Camberton man,
who had wrecked himself early in his career. Doctor Thornton had taken
the boy out of his squalid home, sent him to a boarding-school, and
then, as he promised well, paid his way at Camberton. The young fellow
had not done anything remarkable, merely grown into a nice gentlemanly
manhood, with a taste for illustrating, by which he picked up a few
dollars for spending-money, and placed himself pleasantly in Camberton
circles. When he graduated, Dr. Thornton fell in with his suggestions
that he should like to try his fortunes as an artist. So Long had
spent several years in a studio at Paris, and had done solid work. The
doctor had felt encouraged with his experiment and treated him
liberally.
This was only one of a number of similar experiments in young life
that the doctor carried on silently. Earlier in life than most men, he
had had the yearning to see others go where fate had forbidden him. A
number of young doctors, studying in Berlin or Vienna, and some young
scientists scattered over the country owed their freedom to his
liberality. He selected his material here and there, without much
apparent discrimination, but one test existed, known only to the
doctor, a test that was strangely sentimental, and yet shrewd.
Long's interests had been outside his field, but the tenderness he had
felt for the father caused him to make this exception. He had not made
a mistake, however. Long had exhibited at Berlin and Munich, and had
begun to sell his work a little. He was already spoken of by the
international press as a promising young American artist. This summer
he was at home, sketching in a village not far away, and the end of
the day found him quite frequently at the doctor's dinner-table.
The doctor liked him. He had bought Long's first picture in the Salon
and had procured him patrons. He took him off on his yacht whenever he
had a chance, and the more he saw of the young man the more he was
ready to bet on his future. "There is so much that is clean and
wholesome in him," he observed to his wife. "He has managed to live
over there without catching their cheap bohemianism." Mrs. Thornton
felt at liberty to encourage Addington Long's intimacy at the house.
But he would not do for a son-in-law; there would be two tragedies
instead of one. So when Mrs. Thornton suggested that he should be
asked for a visit during September, the doctor put the question off
with irrelevant excuses; they had had too many people; September was
his time for a rest; young Long should be getting down to hard work,
not loafing in a comfortable cottage.
One evening toward the middle of the summer the doctor came home later
than usual, and, wearied with his day's driving, he got out of his
carriage and let himself into his grounds by the shore path. The
evening wind was puffing casually across the bay; in the cottage above
the lamps were being lit. The doctor walked slowly, thoughtfully,
picking his way in and out of the shrubbery, thinking vaguely of the
day's work, the cases visited, the cases to be visited on the morrow,
the routine he had established. As his eyes rested on the cottage
nestled in its little domain that commanded several miles of the
shore-line, he reflected complacently on his business sense which had
led him to develop Wolf Head. He had managed, so far, skilfully, and
this matter of a daughter that would come to a crisis during the next
five years should be handled successfully. No one could be said to
have the confidence of the doctor; one would not look to him for
confidences of any sort. Did he ever betray any doubts as to the
desirability of his career? Indeed, he never put the question to
himself. Fate had caught him in a vice; he had spent eighteen active
years in padding that vice. Yet he mused as a man will at the close of
a busy day, wondering what compelling power drives him over the wonted
round.
Suddenly he heard voices on his lawn, and instinctively stepped from
the gravel path to the grass. There was a long murmur of a low voice;
he wondered at his own intensity in listening. Something in the timbre
of the voice, some suppressed emotional quality, struck his
experienced ear. When the sound ceased he advanced carefully along the
hedge until he came to an opening that gave a view to the lawn. The
voice was his daughter's, as he had guessed; beside her was stretched
a man's figure in flannels, probably Long's. It was simple enough:
tired after their tennis they had flung themselves down where the
hedge sheltered them from the evening breeze and were talking. But
their attitude arrested him; he felt an undue strain in the air.
Presently Long spoke with a low, slow utterance, as if ordering his
words. His face was turned away from the doctor, looking up steadily
at the girl.
"Yes," he said, and the doctor felt he ought to walk on, "it's hard on
a man. You see so many fellows who have failed who are just as good as
you are----"
"No, no; not just as good," the girl interrupted, "there is
_something_ different."
"Well, as far as you can see they are just as good; they have worked
terribly hard. Then you shut your teeth and go in again, working
desperately from the first light to the last peep until you are
plugged out."
"Then?" his companion said, eagerly.
"Perhaps you crawl out to Lavenue's and sit there in the evening
watching the people sip and talk, the girls sauntering home, or the
students who are gassing forever. It doesn't seem to make any
difference what you do then, whether you go on a loaf for a month and
fool with those who play, or go home to bed and back to work in the
morning. You think the idea will come some day whenever it gets ready,
and that there is precious little use in slaving away on a one franc
fifty dejeuner."
"Don't you think of home, America, and us who are anxious for you?"
"It seems so far away; and do you care unless I make a strike?"
The girl was silent; her face was turned away while she played with
his answer.
"You know we do," shielding herself with a neutral plural.
"There's the other side," the young man's voice sounded out more
buoyantly.
"You go around to some friends' studio and see what they are up to,
and get ideas and go home with more spirit; or something good comes
along, a picture is accepted, an order comes in. You think you have
got there all right and it's only the question of a little patience.
There's a good dinner or a little trip in the country--it's fine
around Paris you know. Then I think of coming home with some kind of a
rep., and how all of you will be glad--_you_ at any rate, Miss
Thornton?"
The doctor sighed and crept away.
"The condition for the fever," he muttered.
X
When he had entered his study he sat down to think. His man announced
a patient, but the doctor made no reply. Suddenly he glanced up at the
waiting servant.
"Will you tell Mr. Long as he leaves that I wish to speak to him."
Then he went on thinking. Soon there was a knock, and Long came into
his study. The doctor motioned to the chair he had just left, and,
reaching for a box of cigars, took one and lit it. Long watched him
expectantly.
"Shall you stay on here much longer?" the doctor asked at last, in his
usual composed manner.
"Oh, I don't much know. I want to get back to Paris in the winter
if----"
"Don't bother about that," the doctor interrupted him, hastily. "You
can trust me to find the amount, you know, until you are squarely on
your feet; only," his voice grew sharper, "you won't do much here. You
should go at once."
The young man stared.
"Sail next week," the doctor continued, blandly, but fixing his eyes
steadily on Long's face.
"I don't know that I can accept----"
The older man waved his hand hastily.
"You can from me. I have been your father for a good many years."
There was a pause. Then Long blushed slowly. "I don't know that I
can," he said at length. "Why are you so anxious to get rid of me?" It
was the doctor's turn for silence.
"If you don't go now, you will not be likely to go for a long time."
His eyes kept firmly on the young man's face.
"And if I have a reason to stay here?"
"There can be no reason stronger than your success."
"But there is--at least," he paused, awkwardly--"I feel there is, I
hope there is."
"Do you know why I have backed you so persistently?"
"You have been awfully kind!"
"It was not altogether on your father's account," the doctor
interrupted him. "I might have put you in some business and left you
to fight your own way. That kind of experience we all know makes men,
the successful men, who are tried and found capable of bearing
strains. I have saved you so far from that struggle. Why?
"Because," continued the doctor authoritatively, "there are some men
who care more to do some one thing, who love one object, more than
they care for success, for fame, for pleasure. If they are defeated,
if they never have the chance to do that one thing--perhaps the world
is no poorer--there are plenty to take their places, but they are
capable of misery, real misery, such as no common failure ever brings
to the common man. They may be foolish; they may be idle and be drawn
aside and think they are happier in doing what comes along, but that
is never true. They are wretched. Such men can never love, except as
an interlude. Do you understand me?"
The doctor paused at this sharp interrogation; Long's eyes had
followed him wonderingly during his long monologue.
"So you thought----" he stammered.
"That you were made in that way," nodded the doctor; "an
undomesticated animal."
Long sat brooding over this idea. The doctor went on in his low, swift
tones.
"You have the hunger and the thirst for that work over there. You
would play with a woman and then put her out of your heart into the
street, or try to tame yourself. Which would be worse."
"And if I am not so sure that I am built like that? Suppose I am
willing to make the sacrifice, if you call it that?"
The doctor's tone became neutral again.
"You refer to a possible interest in my daughter."