Then there came to the Inn one day in the early part of the summer a new
guest--a man about fifty, with an aging, worldly face. Bill, the Albany
stage man, had brought him from Island Junction, and on the way had
answered all his questions, discreetly, reckoning in his wisdom that his
passenger was "one of those queer folks that went up to the old Doctor's
place." For there was something smart and fashionable about the
stranger's appearance that made Bill uncomfortable.
"There," he said, as he pulled up outside the red brick house and
pointed over the wall into the garden, "mos' likely you'll find the old
man fussin' 'round somewheres inside there, if he hain't down to the
School," and he drove off with the people's mail.
The stranger looked back through the village street, which was as silent
as a village street should be at four o'clock on a summer day. Then he
muttered to himself, whimsically, "Mos' likely you'll find the old man
fussin' 'round somewheres inside!" Well, _what next_? And he glanced at
the homely red brick building with the cold eye of one who has made many
goings out and comings in, and to whom novelty offers little
entertainment. As he stood there (thinking possibly of that early train
from the junction on the morrow) the hall door opened wide, and an
oldish man with white eye-brows and black eyes appeared. He was dressed
in a linen suit that deepened the dark tan of his face and hands. He
said:
"You are Dr. Augustus Norton?"
"And you," the Stranger replied with a graceful smile, "are the
Master--and this is the Inn!"
He had forgotten what Percival called the old boy--forgot everything
these days--had tried to remember the name all the way up--nevertheless,
he had turned it off well! So the two looked at each other--one a little
younger as years go, but with lined face and shaking fingers; the other
solid and self-contained, with less of that ready language which comes
from always jostling with nimble wits. But as they stood there, each saw
a Man and an Equal.
"The great surgeon of St. Jerome's," said our Master in further welcome.
"Honored by praise from your lips!" Thus the man of the city lightly
turned the compliment, and extended his hand, which the Master took
slowly, gazing meanwhile steadily at his guest.
"Pray come into my house," said the Master of the Inn, with more
stateliness of manner than he usually had with a new Brother. But, it
may be said, Dr. Augustus Norton had the most distinguished name of that
day in his profession. He followed the Master to his study, with
uncertain steps, and sinking into a deep chair before the smouldering
ashes looked at his host with a sad grin--"Perhaps you'll give me
something--the journey, you know?..."
Two years before the head surgeon of St. Jerome's had come to the
hospital of a morning to perform some operation--one of those affairs
for which he was known from coast to coast. As he entered the officers'
room that day, with the arrogant eye of the commander-in-chief, one of
his aides looked at him suspiciously, then glanced again--and the great
surgeon felt those eyes upon him when he turned his back. And he knew
why! Something was wrong with him. Nevertheless in glum silence he made
ready to operate. But when the moment came, and he was about to take the
part of God toward the piece of flesh lying in the ether sleep before
him, he hesitated. Then, in the terrible recoil of Fear, he turned
back.
"Macroe!" he cried to his assistant, "you will have to operate. I
cannot--I am not well!"
There was almost panic, but Macroe was a man, too, and proceeded to do
his work without a word. The great surgeon, his hands now trembling
beyond disguise, went back to the officers' room, took off his white
robes, and returned to his home. There he wrote his resignation to the
directors of St. Jerome's, and his resignation from other offices of
honor and responsibility. Then he sent for a medical man, an old friend,
and held out his shaking hand to him:
"The damn thing won't go," he said, pointing also to his head.
"Too much work," the doctor replied, of course.
But the great surgeon, who was a man of clear views, added impersonally,
"Too much everything, I guess!"
There followed the usual prescription, making the sick man a wanderer
and pariah--first to Europe, "to get rid of me," the surgeon growled;
then to Georgia for golf, to Montana for elk, to Canada for salmon, and
so forth. Each time the sick man returned with a thin coat of tan that
peeled off in a few days, and with those shaking hands that suggested
immediately another journey to another climate. Until it happened
finally that the men of St. Jerome's who had first talked of the date of
their chief's return merely raised their eyebrows at the mention of his
name.
"Done for, poor old boy!" and the great surgeon read it with his lynx
eyes, in the faces of the men he met at his clubs. His mouth drew
together sourly and his back sloped. "Fifty-two," he muttered. "God,
that is too early--something ought to pull me together." So he went on
trying this and that, while his friends said he was "resting," until he
had slipped from men's thoughts.
One day Percival of St. Jerome's, one of those boys he had growled at
and cursed in former times, met him crawling down the avenue to his
quietest club, and the old surgeon took him by the arm--he was gray in
face and his neck was wasting away--and told the story of his
troubles--as he would to anyone these days. The young man listened
respectfully. Then he spoke of the old Inn, of the Brotherhood, of the
Master and what he had done for miserable men, who had despaired. The
famous surgeon, shaking his head as one who has heard of these miracles
many times and found them naught, was drinking it all in, nevertheless.
"He takes a man," said the young surgeon, "who doesn't want to live and
makes him fall in love with life."
Dr. Augustus Norton sniffed.
"In love with life! That's good! If your Wonder of the Ages can make a
man of fifty fall in love with anything, I must try him." He laughed a
sneering laugh, the feeble merriment of doubt.
"Ah, Doctor!" cried the young man, "you must go and live with the
Master. And then come back to us at St. Jerome's: for we need you!"
And the great surgeon, touched to the heart by these last words, said:
"Well, what's the name of your miracle-worker, and where is he to be
found?... I might as well try all the cures--write a book on 'em one of
these days!"...
So he came by the stage to the gate of the old Inn, and the Master, who
had been warned by a telegram from the young doctor only that morning,
stood at his door to welcome his celebrated guest.
He put him in the room of state above the study, a great square room at
the southwest, overlooking the wings and the flower-scented garden, the
pool, and the waving grass fields beyond, dotted with tall elms--all
freshly green.
"Not a bad sort of place," murmured the weary man, "and there must be
trout in those brooks up yonder. Well, it will do for a week or two, if
there's fishing."... Then the bell sounded for dinner which was served
for the first time that season out of doors in the soft twilight. The
Brothers had gathered in the court beside the fountain, young men and
middle-aged--all having bent under some burden, which they were now
learning to carry easily. They stood about the hall door until the
distinguished Stranger appeared, and he walked between them to the place
of honor at the Master's side. Everyone at the long table was named to
the great surgeon, and then with the coming of the soup he was promptly
forgotten, while the talk of the day's work and the morrow's rose
vigorously from all sides. It was a question of the old mill, which had
given way. An engineer among the company described what would have to be
done to get at the foundations. And a young man who happened to sit next
to the surgeon explained that the Master had reopened an old mill above
the Inn in the Intervale, where he ground corn and wheat and rye with
the old water-wheel; for the country people, who had always got their
grain ground there, complained when the mill had been closed. It seemed
to the Stranger that the dark coarse bread which was served was
extraordinarily good, and he wondered if the ancient process had
anything to do with it and he resolved to see the old mill. Then the
young man said something about bass: there was a cool lake up the
valley, which had been stocked. The surgeon's eye gleamed. Did he know
how to fish for bass! Why, before this boy--yes, he would go at five in
the morning, sharp.... After the meal, while the blue wreaths of smoke
floated across the flowers and the talk rose and fell in the court, the
Master and his new guest were seated alone beneath the great elm. The
surgeon could trace the Master's face in the still waters of the pool at
their feet, and it seemed to him like a finely cut cameo, with gentle
lines about the mouth and eyes that relieved the thick nose.
Nevertheless he knew by certain instinct that they were not of the same
kind. The Master was very silent this night, and his guest felt that
some mystery, some vacuum existed between them, as he gazed on the face
in the water. It was as if the old man were holding him off at arm's
length while he looked into him. But the great surgeon, who was used to
the amenities of city life, resolved to make his host talk:
"Extraordinary sort of place you have here! I don't know that I have
ever seen anything just like it. And what is your System?"
"What is my System?" repeated the Master wonderingly.
"Yes! Your method of building these fellows up--electricity, diet,
massage, baths--what is your line?" An urbane smile removed the offence
of the banter.
"I have no System!" the Master replied thoughtfully. "I live my life
here with my work, and those you see come and live with me as my
friends."
"Ah, but you have ideas ... extraordinary success ... so many cases,"
the great man muttered, confused by the Master's steady gaze.
"You will learn more about us after you have been here a little time.
You will see, and the others will help you to understand. To-morrow we
work at the mill, and the next day we shall be in the gardens--but you
may be too tired to join us. And we bathe here, morning and noon. Harvey
will tell you all our customs."
The celebrated surgeon of St. Jerome's wrote that night to an old
friend: "And the learned doctor's prescription seems to be to dig in the
garden and bathe in a great pool! A daffy sort of place--but I am going
bass fishing to-morrow at five with a young man, who is just the right
age for a son! So to bed, but I suspect that I shall see you
soon--novelties wear out quickly at my years."
Just here there entered that lovely night wind, rising far away beyond
the low lakes to the south--it soughed through the room, swaying the
draperies, sighing, sighing, and it blew out the candle. The sick man
looked down on the court below, white in the moonlight, and his eyes
roved farther to the dark orchard, and the great barns and the huddled
cattle.
"Quite a bit of country here!" the surgeon murmured. As he stood there
looking into the misty light which covered the Intervale, up to the
great hills above which floated luminous cloud banks, the chorus of an
old song rose from below where the pipes gleamed in the dark about the
pool. He leaned out into the air, filled with all the wild scent of
green fields, and added under a sort of compulsion--"And a good place,
enough!"
He went to bed to a deep sleep, and over his tired, worldly face the
night wind passed gently, stripping leaf by leaf from his weary mind
that heavy coating of care which he had wrapped about him in the course
of many years.
* * * * *
Dr. Augustus Norton did not return at the end of one week, nor of two.
The city saw him, indeed, no more that year. It was said that a frisky,
rosy ghost of the great surgeon had slipped into St. Jerome's near
Christmas--had skipped through a club or two and shaken hands about
pretty generally--and disappeared. Sometimes letters came from him with
an out-of-the-way postmark on them, saying in a jesting tone that he was
studying the methods of an extraordinary country doctor, who seemed to
cure men by touch. "He lives up here among the hills in forty degrees of
frost, and if I am not mistaken he is nearer the Secret than all of you
pill slingers"--(for he was writing a mere doctor of medicine!). "Anyhow
I shall stay on until I learn the Secret--or my host turns me out; for
life up here seems as good to me as ice-cream and kisses to a girl of
sixteen.... Why should I go back mucking about with you fellows--just
yet? I caught a five-pounder yesterday, and _ate_ him!"
There are many stories of the great surgeon that have come to me from
those days. He was much liked, especially by the younger men, after the
first gloom had worn off, and he began to feel the blood run once more.
He had a joking way with him that made him a good table companion, and
the Brothers pretending that he would become the historian of the order
taught him all the traditions of the place. "But the Secret, the Secret!
Where is it?" he would demand jestingly. One night--it was at table and
all were there--Harvey asked him:
"Has the Master confessed you?"
"'Confessed me'?" repeated the surgeon. "What's that?"
A sudden silence fell on all, because this was the one thing never
spoken of, at least in public. Then the Master, who had been silent all
that evening, turned the talk to other matters.
The Master, to be sure, gave this distinguished guest all liberties, and
they often talked together as men of the same profession. And the
surgeon witnessed all--the mending of the mill, the planting and the
hoeing and the harvesting, the preparations for the long winter, the
chopping and the road-making--all, and he tested it with his hands. "Not
bad sport," he would say, "with so many sick-well young men about to
help!"
But meanwhile the "secret" escaped the keen mind, though he sought for
it daily.
"You give no drugs, Doctor," he complained. "You're a scab on the
profession!"
"The drugs gave out," the Master explained, "and I neglected to order
more.... There's always Bert Williams at Stowe, who can give you
anything you might want--shall I send for him, Doctor?"
There was laughter all about, and when it died down the great surgeon
returned to the attack.
"Well, come, tell us now what you do believe in? Magic, the laying on of
hands? Come, there are four doctors here, and we have the right to
know--or we'll report you!"
"I believe," said the Master solemnly, in reply to the banter, "I
believe in Man and in God." And there followed such talk as had never
been in the old hall; for the surgeon was, after his kind, a
materialist and pushed the Master for definition. The Master believed,
as I recall it, that Disease could not be cured, for the most part. No
chemistry would ever solve the mystery of pain! But Disease could be
ignored, and the best way to forget pain was through labor. Not labor
merely for oneself; but also something for others. Wherefore the School,
around which the Inn and the farm and all had grown. For he told us then
that he had bought the Inn as a home for his boys, the waste product of
the city. Finding the old tavern too small for his purpose and seeing
how he should need helpers, he had encouraged ailing men to come to live
with him and to cure themselves by curing others. Without that School
below in the valley, with its workshops and cottages, there would have
been no Inn!
As for God--that night he would go no further, and the surgeon said
rather flippantly, we all thought, that the Master had left little room
in his world for God, anyhow--he had made man so large. It was a stormy
August evening, I remember, when we had been forced to dine within on
account of the gusty rain that had come after a still, hot day. The
valley seemed filled with murk, which was momentarily torn by fire,
revealing the trembling leaves upon the trees. When we passed through
the arcade to reach our rooms, the surgeon pointed out into this sea of
fire and darkness, and muttered with a touch of irony--
"HE seems to be talking for himself this evening!"
Just then a bolt shot downward, revealing with large exaggeration the
hills, the folded valleys--the descents.
"It's like standing on a thin plank in a turbulent sea!" the surgeon
remarked wryly. "Ah, my boy, Life's like that!" and he disappeared into
his room.
Nevertheless, it was that night he wrote to his friend: "I am getting
nearer this Mystery, which I take to be, the inner heart of it, a
mixture of the Holy Ghost and Sweat--with a good bath afterward! But the
old boy is the mixer of the Pills, mind you, and he _is_ a Master! Most
likely I shall never get hold of the heart of it; for somehow, yet with
all courtesy, he keeps me at a distance. I have never been 'confessed,'
whatever that may be--an experience that comes to the youngest boy among
them! Perhaps the Doctor thinks that old fellows like you and me have
only dead sins to confess, which would crumble to dust if exposed. But
there is a sting in very old sins, I think--for instance--oh! if you
were here tonight, I should be as foolish as a woman...."
The storm that night struck one of the school buildings and killed a
lad. In the morning the Master and the surgeon set out for the School
Village, which was lower in the valley beyond Albany. It was warm and
clear at the Inn; but thick mist wreaths still lay heavily over the
Intervale. The hills all about glittered as in October, and there was
in the air that laughing peace, that breath of sweet plenty which comes
the morning after a storm. The two men followed the foot-path, which
wound downward from the Inn across the Intervale. The sun filled the
windless air, sucking up the spicy odors of the tangled path--fern and
balsam and the mother scent of earth and rain and sun. The new green
rioted over the dead leaves.... The Master closely observing his guest,
remarked:
"You seem quite well, Doctor. I suppose you will be leaving us soon?"
"Leaving?" the surgeon questioned slowly, as if a secret dread had risen
at the Master's hint of departure. "Yes," he admitted, after a time, "I
suppose I am what you would call well--well enough. But something still
clogs within me. It may be the memory of Fear. I am afraid of myself!"
"Afraid? You need some test, perhaps. That will come sooner or later; we
need not hurry it!"
"No, we need not hurry!"
Yet he knew well enough that the Inn never sheltered drones, and that
many special indulgences had been granted him: he had borrowed freely
from the younger Brothers--of their time and strength. He thought
complacently of the large cheque which he should drop into the house-box
on his departure. With it the Master would be able to build a new
cottage or a small hospital for the School.
"Some of them," mused the Master, "never go back to the machine that
once broke them. They stay about here and help me--buy a farm and
revert! But for the most part they are keen to get back to the fight, as
is right and best. Sometimes when they loiter too long, I shove them out
of the nest!"
"And I am near the shoving point?" his companion retorted quickly. "So I
must leave all your dear boys and Peace and Fishing and _you_! Suppose
so, suppose so!... Doctor, you've saved my life--oh, hang it, that
doesn't tell the story. But even _I_ can feel what it is to live at the
Inn!"
Instinctively he grasped his host by the arm--he was an impulsive man.
But the Master's arm did not respond to the clasp; indeed, a slight
shiver seemed to shake it, so that the surgeon's hand fell away while
the Master said:
"I am glad to have been of service--to you--yes, especially to
_you_...."
They came into the school village, a tiny place of old white houses,
very clean and trim, with a number of sweeping elms along the narrow
road. A mountain brook turned an old water-wheel, supplying power for
the workshops where the boys were trained. The great surgeon had visited
the place many times in company with the Master, and though he admired
the order and economy of the institution, and respected its
purpose--that is, to create men out of the refuse of society--to tell
the truth, the place bored him a trifle. This morning they went directly
to the little cottage that served as infirmary, where the dead boy had
been brought. He was a black-haired Italian, and his lips curved upward
pleasantly. The Master putting his hand on the dead boy's brow as he
might have done in life stood looking at the face.
"I've got a case in the next room, I'd like to have your opinion on,
Doctor," the young physician said in a low tone to the surgeon, and the
two crossed the passage into the neighboring room. The surgeon fastened
his eyes on the sick lad's body: here was a case he understood, a
problem with a solution. The old Master coming in from the dead stood
behind the two.
"Williams," the surgeon said, "it's so, sure enough--you must
operate--at once!"
"I was afraid it was that," the younger man replied. "But how can I
operate here?"