A year passed away, and things began to look a good deal clearer to
Aleck; and the farther he went, the more ready he was to confess his
uncle was keeping his promise to show him he could study a profession
behind his counter, as well as he could in a doctor’s office or a
law-school.
“It isn’t so bad, after all, Nelly,” he said now and then as he came
home with a glowing account of some new experiment, “and you may be
proud of me yet as a distinguished chemist, assayer, and what not. If
you’re not, it will only be because you can’t appreciate me.”
The year as it closed brought another graduating-class to their
leave-takings at the professor’s, and this time Hal Fenimore gathered
his laurels, and said farewell with the rest, but with no tears of
regret for the past or the future.
“What a ridiculous little goose Will Carter was,” he said the next day
as he came into Halliday’s for a few minutes’ chat with Aleck; “what a
queer notion that he didn’t like business, and would rather go off and
play middy on that old prison of a ship than enter the counting-house.
I’m going straight in with my uncle, and thankful enough to do it,
and expect to be taken in as partner, and make my fortune before he’s
anything more than second-mate, and it isn’t half the chance there
was at Carter & Co.’s, either. I don’t wonder he didn’t want to go to
college and stuff with Latin and Greek four years more; but to throw
away such a chance as he had at home, to go and put himself under the
thumb of a second-mate, and tar ropes and eat hard-tack for nobody
knows how long before he gets a peg higher!”
Aleck didn’t tell Hal that he himself was stealing every hour he could
get by day and by night to follow up the college course; he only
laughed, and said,
“Well, it might go rather hard with your store if nobody took a fancy
to go to sea; I don’t know where some of your best goods would come
from.”
“That’s a fact,” said Hal; “every one to his taste, and I’m glad
Carter’s got a berth to his fancy, and I hope he’ll make the most of
it.”
Just as Hal left the store, old Joan opened the door of the doctor’s
office and stepped softly in. There was no fire to be brushed up this
time, but she made one pretext after another until she got round in
front of the doctor’s chair, as she always did when she meant to open
a discussion. But this time it seemed as if she could not manage to
begin, and the doctor, guessing at her subject, concluded he must help
her.
“Where’s Thorndyke, Joan?”
That was enough; Joan was fairly launched.
“Hoot, laddie, and where suld the bairnie be, but moping over a book in
some corner or anither o’ the house? It’s little change frae that he
has; and what wi’ his books and the pain, and nae companions to run in
the free sunshine wi’, e’en if he had the strength to do it, we shall
no find we ha’ him wi’ us much longer; either the gude Lord will take
him a’thegither frae our hands, or we shall hae no bairn at a’, but
only a little auld mon, withered and shrunken before his time.”
“And what do you propose to do about it, Joan?”
“What wad I propose to do? Ye ken weel eneugh it’s na proposing or
disposing o’ mine, to say what suld be done wi’ the bairn. It were no
notion o’ mine sending him to the school i’ the first place; but I’m
no sae sure I wadna be more favorable to trying something o’ the kind
once mair, provided sic a place could be found and sic companions as
wouldn’t trample the soul out o’ his body before they had time to see
what it waur made of. But I’m e’en thinking he might hae mair strength
to bear a little rough wind now, and it’s a cruel and unnatural thing
to let a bairn o’ his age ken nae mair o’ life than lies within these
four walls and the covers o’ his book, except indeed when the one
friend he has outside comes to talk a bit wi’ him, or tak him to pass
an hour at his ain house now and then.”
“And you don’t think that’s as much as any reasonable man could ask?”
said the doctor, as a vision of Nelly Halliday, as she stopped one day
with her pony-chaise to leave Thorndyke, as every one called him now,
at the door, rose up before him.
“As muckle as what?” asked Joan, quite in a puzzle. “I dinna
a’thegither understand how muckle it may be, but mercifu’ as it is,
and sent frae the Lord’s pity, it’s no eneugh. It’s no eneugh for ony
bairn to gang frae his book to the front-door all day lang, and never
a step farther into the world, and never feel his blood stirred wi’
ony little brush in life, and always wearing a patient, sorrowfu’ look
that’s eneugh to grieve the hardest heart that could look upon it. Not
that I wad hae the boldness to bring aught before your notice as if ye
couldna see the whole wi’ far better een than mysel’.”
The doctor got up and paced the room a few times after Joan went out,
and when he sat down again, he had come to another decision. Not that
Joan had put any new thoughts into his mind; she had only dropped a
spark upon tinder that he had been gathering together for some months
past, as he watched Thorndyke from week to week. He was no slower to
act upon a decision than a year ago, and in fifteen minutes more the
black horse stood before Halliday’s, and the doctor was having a little
private talk behind the desk.
“I’d like to put him in here,” he was saying, “for I can’t think of any
place where he would do so well. The boy has got brains enough to make
almost anything, and I meant to have made a doctor of him, and one that
would have found high-water mark in his profession before many years;
but that’s all over now. If all I can do for him can give him strength
to get over here two or three times a day and meet his work after he
gets here, it’s the most I can hope for; but we’ll make a man of him
yet, and one we can both be proud of, if you’ll take him after he gets
here and do what you can for him. And I assure you, you shall not be
the loser, if you can manage the matter for me as I wish.”
Mr. Halliday looked thoughtful, but not because he was hesitating as to
his answer. He was thinking of the time when some one, once long ago,
had it in his power to decide for him whether he should be anything or
nothing in the world.
He turned suddenly with a smile,
“You don’t care about sending him before to-morrow,” he said.
“Why, no,” said the doctor, smiling in return. “I don’t know that
to-morrow would not do on the whole.”
“Well, send him to-morrow, then, or any day after, when you and he are
ready, and Aleck here shall teach him what he knows for a while, and
then I’ll take him in hand and see if we can’t make something pretty
nearly as good as a doctor out of him.”
“All right, and thank you,” said the doctor laughing; “I don’t doubt
you’ll get him in advance of some of us, and before so very many years
either.”
So far so good; now for settling the matter with Thorndyke, and he lost
no more time about that than in what had come before.
“See here, little man,” he said, darting one of the old glances in
Thorndyke’s face, as he came in and found him waiting as usual in the
office, and as usual buried in a book, “do you remember my telling you
once on a time, and possibly more than once, that there was a place in
the world for you as well as for the rest of us?”
Thorndyke had started, as he always did, at the first sound of the
doctor’s voice, and met it with the same smile that had troubled him
a year ago, but which he had seen so many times since as to expect
nothing else. But as the sentence was finished he shrank back again.
What could the doctor be going to say? If it were only about a share in
the fight, why that was all right, but anything more! The doctor could
not be mistaken in anything else, but it was of no use talking about
that. He could be a soldier, and he was trying hard for it; but one of
the princes!
“Do you remember, little man?” said the doctor again.
“Yes, I remember.”
“Well, that’s just as true as it ever was; but there’s another thing,
that I did not say at that time. The only way to make sure of places,
sometimes, is to step into them, and the only way to get our share, is
to reach out and take it. Do you see?”
Thorndyke nodded.
“Well, now, there comes a time to most of us, when we have to do that,
though the change from pleasant old ways makes a rough sort of break
sometimes. For instance, it would go pretty hard with me to miss you
out of the office, but it would not do to keep you here too long, and
I never meant to do it. I meant to make a doctor of you after awhile,
but I’m afraid that isn’t going to do, as things are. Doctors have a
pretty hard time now and then, and as long as that pain holds on, I’m
afraid it wouldn’t do. But what would you say to just going round the
corner to Halliday’s once or twice a day, and trying whether you or
your friend Aleck there can do most toward keeping up the credit of the
firm? How do you think that would do?”
A soldier! Thorndyke had meant to be one, and thought he had won some
battles, and vanquished some foes for ever, but here the whole thing
seemed to be rising up again, stronger than ever, and the soldier
thrown to the ground in a moment.
He dropped his book on the table, and hid his face in it for a moment;
then he looked suddenly up.
“Oh, I cannot,” he cried; “I never, never can! Why do you ask me such a
thing? To stand there all day long and have people come in every minute
to say, ‘Look at Humpy!’ Oh, it would be too much! I don’t believe even
the King would ever think I could do it.”
A whole year, and that wound no nearer healing than it was at first!
Not even the words forgotten! Then might not the doctor as well give up
all hope that they ever would be! and all hope of everything else but
making life a little easier from day to day! The pain would be there,
in the heart as well as in the back, for life, he feared.
It was lucky for Carter and Hal Fenimore that he had nothing to say
to them at that instant, but he stopped before Thorndyke’s chair, and
lifting the white face that had dropped upon the book again, held it
gently in his hands.
“You cannot let people see the form the King has seen fit to give you,
when you can show them at the same time that he has given you a soul
and a brain worthy of any of his princes? Is it hard to choose between
hiding away here like some poor frightened thing, and stepping out
where you can find every hour filled with work any man might be proud
of, and make yourself known and valued all over the city by-and-by?
What should you say if the day were to come when I thought I could not
be satisfied with any prescription that you should not put up? Wouldn’t
that be almost as good as having you for a partner, as I might if you
were stronger?
“And even if you can’t get over feeling that this costs you a good
deal, can’t you remember that when the Prince Royal was here, his
visage was more marred than any man’s, and yet he let every one look at
it? And if he has a work for you now, and a place where you can gather
up a great share of what is worth having in life, can’t you take it up
for his sake, and for my sake, if not for you own?”
The blue veins were swelling again, and the old throbbing at the heart
coming back in full force; but he would not forget that he was a
soldier! And yet even a soldier might beg for a truce!
“Oh, wait, please,” he cried, “only wait till to-morrow!”
“Of course we will wait,” said the doctor, “and as long as you like;
and in the meantime we will eat our dinner, and after that, suppose we
have a drive together? Not so far as to meddle with the pain, but I
think we might get a breath of what lies outside the city for once in a
way.”
The battle lasted well into the night, in spite of the drive behind
Jet, and everything the doctor could think of to make it seem as if
there were no such thing as fighting in the world. But though Thorndyke
had begged for a truce, he was determined not to go to sleep till the
enemy was put to rout again, and it seemed at one time as if it were
going to take the whole night to do it. He lay with his eyes wide open,
the moon shining into the little room that had seemed so wonderful when
it was first given him, but only a mockery so many times since; and
the forms of all the terrible things he should have to meet if he did
as the doctor wished stalked about it like evil spirits of the night.
The fight had been sharp enough when he determined to open the door for
patients again, and the first time he went home with Aleck it seemed
as if he should die; but opening the door was for the doctor, and he
had got accustomed to it now; and Nellie Halliday never seemed to see
anything but his face, and had taken it in her slender white hands one
day and asked him if he knew it was a wonderful gift of Heaven; he
could not tell what she meant, but he had never been afraid to let her
see him since then.
But Halliday’s! There would be hundreds of people coming in all day
long, and he himself would be standing behind the counter scarcely
able to look over it, and every one looking down upon him to see how
strangely he was made! And then going through the street so many times
every day! Going on errands here and there, very likely, and letting
every one wonder where Halliday had found such a strange little
creature to do his work! He could bear the pain, he could bear knowing
that he was never to learn the games of the boys, and to go about with
them as the doctor had thought he should, he could bear never feeling
that he was one of the princes again, but he could not bear this!
He shut his eyes, but there it all was, just the same; what could he
do? The ugly forms would not be beaten down, and yet he must not give
it up!
But at last, a different thought rose up, that seemed to make them
shrink away, and he felt himself gaining a little once more! There were
the Prince Royal and the doctor! If they wished it, and it would please
_them_, why should he care for anything else! If he could only once
determine that he did not care! No, he never could do that, but if he
could only be so happy in pleasing them as to trample all the pain that
might come from anywhere else under his feet! And after all, would it
not be a great thing to have a business, a profession of his own, and
know so much that he could be really of some use as well as if he were
like other people, instead of “hiding away all his life,” as the doctor
called it? And perhaps other people _might_ come to respect him for
what he knew and could do, some day! Oh, he could see it all now! Why
had he not seen it before, and how could he ever thank the doctor for
seeing it for him? He would do it; he would be ready any day!
The battle was won, and the tired soldier turned on his pillow to go to
sleep, with something nearer the old joyous thrill in his veins than he
had thought he could ever feel again.