DR. SCOTT PAYS A CALL
Dr. Scott manufactured beautiful phrases as he walked to Thomasina's. He
thought of his last visit to her house, when he had been accompanied,
when his most polished sentences had hung, unfinished, on the air while
Mrs. Scott spoke of matters totally unrelated to the subject in hand.
This call would be very different. He hoped that Thomasina would let him
sit in the semi-darkness of her parlor, and look out into her garden. He
was punctilious about appearances; he had not the least instinct of a
Don Juan, and he would have been horrified to have any one suppose that
his affections wandered for an instant. But to-night he did not care for
appearances. If a suspicious spouse had been upon his track, if the
whole village had been at gaze, he would still have gone to call upon
Thomasina. She was of Basil Everman's generation, she would be able to
talk well about him. She was a keen observer who would have remembered
and noted incidents and traits that even his sister might have
forgotten. He had many questions to ask; he would be scholarly and
elaborate and impressive--Dr. Scott at his best. It would disappoint him
keenly to find that Thomasina was not at home, or that there were other
callers to claim her attention.
But Thomasina was at home and she was alone. She was pale, but paleness
was not unbecoming. He looked at her with admiration. She was
distinguished, she was a personage, she was the most notable citizen of
Waltonville, and he was proud of her friendship.
She inquired for Mrs. Scott and for Cora. She was not unaware of Cora's
trouble. She spoke of Richard and of the opportunities before him.
"He has talent and time and youth and ambition and ample means," said
she.
"It sounds too promising."
"Oh, he'll be chastened, poor lad. We all are, sooner or later!"
"Miss Thomasina--" Dr. Scott paused; a sentence hovered upon the edge of
recollection; he tried to identify and complete it. Was it something
about "a girl to go gypsying with through all the world"? Such a girl he
seemed to see before him.
"Yes?" said Thomasina encouragingly.
"I am to have an extraordinary opportunity thanks to Mrs. Lister."
"Yes?" said Thomasina with a little more curiosity. Her heart was still
sore at thought of Mary Alcestis.
"I am to edit her brother's works!"
"What works?" asked Thomasina.
"Works which they have found; other stories, poems, translations, an
incredibly rich and valuable collection."
Thomasina leaned forward, an intensely eager look in her brown eyes.
"Works they have found! Where?"
"I think they were put away. I think from what Dr. Lister said her grief
for her brother was so great that she could not bear to have them
touched."
"And who has touched them now?" asked Thomasina in a hard voice.
"I think--it is my impression--that Dr. Lister found them and persuaded
her."
Thomasina sank back in her chair.
"Did you know Basil Everman well?" asked Dr. Scott.
"Yes." Thomasina's voice was now a whisper.
"I wonder whether you would talk to me about him. I must prepare a
biographical chapter and the material is so very scant."
Thomasina rose unsteadily, and asked to be excused for a moment. She
went out into the hall and climbed the stairs slowly. When she came back
she carried her little inlaid box as though it contained precious and
fragile jewels. She stood before Dr. Scott and held it out.
"Here are Basil Everman's letters," said she. "They show all his plans
and hopes. They were written to _me_." The first utterance of a bride
could have been no more filled with sweet triumph. "I did not know that
any of his plans had been carried out. I did not know anything survived.
You may use the letters if you wish."
Dr. Scott felt like Richard that there were moments in life to which one
could say, "Linger, thou art so fair!"
Thomasina still held out the little box.
"Do you wish me to look at them now?"
"If you will."
He put out a shaking hand. He would have thought long before exchanging
this experience for a year of the opportunities of a Boswell.
Thomasina took up a book; then she walked into her garden; then she
crossed the hall, closing both doors behind her, and practiced finger
exercises in her music room. The light, delicate arpeggios and runs and
trills came faintly to Dr. Scott's enchanted ears. Thus had Thomasina
quieted her soul a thousand times.
When she returned there remained but one letter in the little box. Dr.
Scott was not reading; he sat staring at the floor. It seemed to him
that he had helped to open the tomb of a Queen Ta, that he had touched
the jewels with which the hands of love had decked her. Then he looked
up. Thomasina regarded him; alive, breathing, lovely, she was not in the
least like Queen Ta. He felt that he must speak, but his eloquence,
slow, but equal to every occasion, failed him now.
"If you will tell me what passages you wish to use, I shall copy them
for you."
"May I say that they were written to you?"
An inward light illumined Thomasina's face. It was not pride, it was an
emotion more intense, more exalted.
"You have been honored above most women," said Dr. Scott.
Thomasina took one of the letters in her hand.
"Say they were written to a friend. His biography does not need me, and
I had rather be invisible beside him." Thus Thomasina, who longed, in
Mrs. Lister's opinion, for fame! "Now I must go over to the Listers to
say good-bye to Richard."
Together Dr. Scott and Thomasina crossed the campus and at the Listers'
door Dr. Scott said good-night. He could scarcely wait to get back to
his study and to his pen. He did not mean to stop at his house; indeed,
he thought it unlikely that his house would see him until dawn, but
remembering a need for matches, he ran up the steps. There sitting on
the doorstep, a valise beside her, was a small figure.
"Cora!" said Dr. Scott. "What in the world are you doing here?"
Cora rose stiffly. It seemed that she had been waiting a long time.
"I came back on the nine o'clock train."
"Where is your mother?"
"She is at Atlantic City. I told her that I wouldn't stay."
The last sentence startled Dr. Scott even more than Cora's unexpected
appearance. He unlocked the door and picked up the valise. There was a
new tone in her sweet voice, a tone which disturbed him, but when he got
the lamp lighted and had a good look at her round little face, it would
doubtless seem imaginary. Surely it could not be that she had come home
so as to be near Richard Lister!
When the lamp was lit, it seemed to reveal the same Cora, a little white
and tired and travel-stained, but surely not wild or violent!
"Sit down, my dear!"
Cora sat down heavily on a little gilt chair.
"Are you hungry?"
"No, I thank you," she answered, true to her polite type.
Dr. Scott sat himself down on the second step.
"What does this return mean, my dear? You went away to have a change."
Cora looked at him, looked long at him. In that look certain messages
passed from her to her father. For a long time she did not answer, then
she burst into tears.
"I am not crying because I want to cry," said she angrily. "Or because I
feel like crying. I am tired, that is why I cry. I came home because I
couldn't stand the dullness."
"The dullness!" Dr. Scott was bewildered. "Of Atlantic City!"
"I want something to do," demanded Cora, "something for my mind. You
have always treated me like a baby. You've sent me to school and put me
out of your thoughts. You don't even talk to me intelligently; I mean
that you don't talk to me as if I were intelligent. You talk to Miss
Thomasina and Dr. Lister in an entirely different way. I can study as
well as Richard and--and as--" but the name of her rival Cora could not
pronounce. "I have a better mind than Walter. Walter can't do anything
but make money. You should hear him with his friends at Atlantic City,
you should hear him only ten minutes! And he wants me to like those
people!"
"My dear--"
But Cora had not said all she had to say.
"Mother thinks I have failed because I am not engaged to Richard. He
never thought of me. I am convinced that he never thought of me. It has
made me appear like a crazy person. I don't know what the Listers think
of me."
Then Cora gave her father a shock of many volts. She had not read her
padded poets or her Bible in vain. Nor was her paternity entirely
without evidence.
"I don't wish to go in solemn procession all my days because of the
bitterness of my soul."
For the first time in his life, Dr. Scott's reaction from a thrilling
experience was expressed in terms of money. He determined at that
instant that his work on Basil Everman's writings must be paid for; he
determined, moreover, that henceforth the whole of his salary should not
be handed over as heretofore. He put his arm round his weeping daughter.
"Don't cry, Cora! You will have plenty left in life. Sometime you will
smile over this trouble. You and I will work together, and by and by we
will go abroad."