THE DOCTOR'S DISCOVERY
IN due time the letter written in the willow tree reached the city of
Hong-Kong, and was carried to the big English hotel, overlooking the
loveliest of Chinese harbors. But it was not delivered to Doctor
Huntingdon. It was piled on top of all the other mail which lay there,
awaiting his return. Under it was Georgina's first letter to him and the
one she had written to her mother about Dan Darcy and the rifle. And
under that was the one which Barbara called the "rainbow letter," and
then at least half a dozen from Barbara herself, with the beautiful
colored photograph of the Towncrier and his lass. Also there were
several bundles of official-looking documents and many American
newspapers.
Nothing had been forwarded to him for two months, because he had left
instructions to hold his mail until further notice. The first part of
that time he was moving constantly from one out-of-the-way place to
another where postal delivery was slow and uncertain. The last part of
that time he was lying ill in the grip of the very disease which he had
gone out to study and to conquer.
He was glad then to be traveling in the wake of the friendly old
Englishman and his party. Through their interpreter, arrangements were
made to have him carried to one of the tents of a primitive sort of a
hospital, kept by some native missionaries. The Englishman's young
assistant went with him. He was a quiet fellow whom Mr. Bowles had
jokingly dubbed David the silent, because it was so hard to make him
talk. But Doctor Huntingdon, a reserved, silent man himself, had been
attracted to him by that very trait.
During the months they had been thrown together so much, Dave had taken
great interest in the Doctor's reports of the experiments he was making
in treating the disease. When the Doctor was told that Mr. Bowles had
gone back to the coast, having found what he wanted and made his notes
for his next book, and consequently Dave was free to stay and nurse him,
he gave a sigh of relief.
Dave stopped his thanks almost gruffly.
"There's more than one reason for my staying," he said. "I've been sick
among strangers in a strange country, myself, and I know how it feels.
Besides, I'm interested in seeing if this new treatment of yours works
out on a white man as well as it did on these natives. I'll be doing as
much in the way of scientific research, keeping a chart on you, as if I
were taking notes for Mr. Bowles."
That was a long speech for Dave, the longest that he made during the
Doctor's illness. But in the days which followed, one might well have
wondered if there was not a greater reason than those he offered for
such devoted attendance. He was always within call, always so quick to
notice a want that usually a wish was gratified before it could be
expressed. His was a devotion too constant to be prompted merely by
sympathy for a fellow-country-man or interest in medical experiments.
Once, when the Doctor was convalescing, he opened his eyes to find his
silent attendant sitting beside him reading, and studied him for some
time, unobserved.
"Dave," he said, after watching him a while--"it's the queerest
thing--lately every time I look at you I'm reminded of home. You must
resemble someone I used to know back there, but for the life of me I
can't recall who."
Dave answered indifferently, without glancing up from the page.
"There's probably a thousand fellows that look like me. I'm medium
height and about every third person you see back in the States has gray
eyes like mine, and just the ordinary every-day sort of features that I
have."
The Doctor made no answer. It never would have occurred to him to tell
Dave in what way his face differed from the many others of his type.
There was a certain kindliness of twinkle in the gray eyes at times, and
always a straightforward honesty of gaze that made one instinctively
trust him. There was strength of purpose in the resolute set of his
mouth, and one could not imagine him being turned back on any road which
he had made up his mind to travel to the end.
Several days after that when the Doctor was sitting up outside the tent,
the resemblance to someone whom he could not recall, puzzled him again.
Dave was whittling, his lips pursed up as he whistled softly in an
absent-minded sort of way.
"Dave," exclaimed the Doctor, "there's something in the way you sit
there, whittling and whistling that brings little old Provincetown right
up before my eyes. I can see old Captain Ames sitting there on the wharf
on a coil of rope, whittling just as you are doing, and joking with Sam
and the crew as they pile into the boat to go out to the weirs. I can
see the nets spread out to dry alongshore, and smell tar and codfish as
plain as if it were here right under my nose. And down in Fishburn Court
there's the little house that was always a second home to me, with Uncle
Darcy pottering around in the yard, singing his old sailors' songs."
The Doctor closed his eyes and drew in a long, slow breath.
"Um! There's the most delicious smell coming out of that
kitchen--blueberry pies that Aunt Elspeth's baking. What wouldn't I give
this minute for one of those good, juicy blueberry pies of hers,
smoking hot. I can smell it clear over here in China. There never was
anything in the world that tasted half so good. I was always tagging
around after Uncle Darcy, as I called him. He was the Towncrier, and one
of those staunch, honest souls who make you believe in the goodness of
God and man no matter what happens to shake the foundations of your
faith."
The Doctor opened his eyes and looked up inquiringly, startled by the
knocking over of the stool on which Dave had been sitting. He had risen
abruptly and gone inside the tent.
"Go on," he called back. "I can hear you."
He seemed to be looking for something, for he was striding up and down
in its narrow space. The Doctor raised his voice a trifle.
"That's all I had to say. I didn't intend to bore you talking about
people and places you never heard of. But it just came over me in a big
wave--that feeling of homesickness that makes you feel you've got to get
back or die. Did you ever have it?"
"Yes," came the answer in an indifferent tone. "Several times."
"Well, it's got me now, right by the throat."
Presently he called, "Dave, while you're in there I wish you'd look in
my luggage and see what newspapers are folded up with it. I have a dim
recollection that a _Provincetown Advocate_ came about the time I was
taken sick and I never opened it.
"Ah, that's it!" he exclaimed when Dave emerged presently, holding out
the newspaper. "Look at the cut across the top of the first page. Old
Provincetown itself. It's more for the name of the town printed across
that picture of the harbor than for the news that I keep on taking the
paper. Ordinarily, I never do more than glance at the news items, but
there's time to-day to read even the advertisements. You've no idea how
good those familiar old names look to me."
He read some of them aloud, smiling over the memories they awakened. But
he read without an auditor, for Dave found he had business with one of
the missionaries, and put off to attend to it. On his return he was
greeted with the announcement:
"Dave, I want to get out of here. I'm sure there must be a big pile of
mail waiting for me right now in Hong-Kong, and I'm willing to risk the
trip. Let's start back to-morrow."
Several days later they were in Hong-Kong, enjoying the luxuries of
civilization in the big hotel. Still weak from his recent illness and
fatigued by the hardships of his journey, Doctor Huntingdon did not go
down to lunch the day of their arrival. It was served in his room, and
as he ate he stopped at intervals to take another dip into the pile of
mail which had been brought up to him.
In his methodical way he opened the letters in the order of their
arrival, beginning with the one whose postmark showed the earliest
date. It took a long time to finish eating on account of these pauses.
Hop Ching was bringing in his coffee when Dave came back, having had not
only his lunch in the dining-room, but a stroll through the streets
afterward. He found Doctor Huntingdon with a photograph propped up in
front of him, studying it intently while Hop Ching served the coffee.
The Doctor passed the photograph to Dave.
[Illustration: _The Towncrier and his Lass_]
"Take it over to the window where you can get a good light on it," he
commanded. "Isn't that a peach of a picture? That's my little daughter
and the old friend I'm always quoting. The two seem to be as great chums
as he and I used to be. I don't want to bore you, Dave, but I would like
to read you this letter that she wrote to her mother, and her mother
sent on to me. In the first place I'm proud of her writing such a
letter. I had no idea she could express herself so well, and secondly
the subject matter makes it an interesting document.
"On my little girl's birthday Uncle Darcy took her out in his boat, _The
Betsey_. The name of that old boat certainly does sound good to me! He
told her--but wait! I'd rather read it to you in her own words. It'll
give you such a good idea of the old man. Perhaps I ought to explain
that he had a son who got into trouble some ten years ago, and left
home. He was just a little chap when I saw him last, hardly out of
dresses, the fall I left home for college.
"Uncle Darcy and Aunt Elspeth were fairly foolish about him. He had come
into their lives late, you see, after their older children died. I don't
believe it would make any difference to them what he'd do. They would
welcome him back from the very gallows if he'd only come. His mother
never has believed he did anything wrong, and the hope of the old man's
life is that his 'Danny,' as he calls him, will make good in some
way--do something to wipe out the stain on his name and come back to
him."
The Doctor paused as if waiting for some encouragement to read.
"Go on," said Dave. "I'd like to hear it, best in the world."
He turned his chair so that he could look out of the window at the
harbor. The Chinese sampans of every color were gliding across the water
like a flock of gaily-hued swans. He seemed to be dividing his attention
between those native boats and the letter when the Doctor first began to
read. It was Georgina's rainbow letter, and the colors of the rainbow
were repeated again and again by the reds and yellows and blues of that
fleet of sampans.
But as the Doctor read on Dave listened more intently, so intently, in
fact, that he withdrew his attention entirely from the window, and
leaning forward, buried his face in his hands, his elbows resting on
his knees. The Doctor found him in this attitude when he looked up at
the end, expecting some sort of comment. He was used to Dave's silences,
but he had thought this surely would call forth some remark. Then as he
studied the bowed figure, it flashed into his mind that the letter must
have touched some chord in the boy's own past. Maybe Dave had an old
father somewhere, longing for his return, and the memory was breaking
him all up.
Silently, the Doctor turned aside to the pile of letters still unread.
Georgina's stern little note beginning "Dear Sir" was the next in order
and was in such sharp contrast to the loving, intimate way she addressed
her mother, that he felt the intended reproach of it, even while it
amused and surprised him. But it hurt a little. It wasn't pleasant to
have his only child regard him as a stranger. It was fortunate that the
next letter was the one in which she hastened to call him "a
Saint-George-and-the-dragon sort of father."
When he read Barbara's explanation of his long silence and Georgina's
quick acceptance of it, he wanted to take them both in his arms and tell
them how deeply he was touched by their love and loyalty; that he hadn't
intended to be neglectful of them or so absorbed in his work that he put
it first in his life. But it was hard for him to put such things into
words, either written or spoken. He had left too much to be taken for
granted he admitted remorsefully to himself.
For a long time he sat staring sternly into space. So people had been
gossiping about him, had they? And Barbara and the baby had heard the
whispers and been hurt by them----He'd go home and put a stop to it. He
straightened himself up and turned to report his sudden decision to
Dave. But the chair by the window was empty. The Doctor glanced over his
shoulder. Dave had changed his seat and was sitting behind him. They
were back to back, but a mirror hung in such a way the Doctor could see
Dave's face.
With arms crossed on a little table in front of him, he was leaning
forward for another look at the photograph which he had propped up
against a vase. A hungry yearning was in his face as he bent towards it,
gazing into it as if he could not look his fill. Suddenly his head went
down on his crossed arms in such a hopeless fashion that in a flash
Doctor Huntingdon divined the reason, and recognized the resemblance
that had haunted him. Now he understood why the boy had stayed behind to
nurse him. Now a dozen trifling incidents that had seemed of no
importance to him at the time, confirmed his suspicion.
His first impulse was to cry out "_Dan!_" but his life-long habit of
repression checked him. He felt he had no right to intrude on the
privacy which the boy guarded so jealously. But Uncle Darcy's son! Off
here in a foreign land, bowed down with remorse and homesickness! How he
must have been tortured with all that talk of the old town and its
people!
A great wave of pity and yearning tenderness swept through the Doctor's
heart as he sat twisted around in his chair, staring at that reflection
in the mirror. He was uncertain what he ought to do. He longed to go to
him with some word of comfort, but he shrank from the thought of saying
anything which would seem an intrusion.
Finally he rose, and walking across the room, laid his hand on the bowed
shoulder with a sympathetic pressure.
"Look here, my boy," he said, in his deep, quiet voice. "I'm not asking
you what the trouble is, but whatever it is you'll let me help you,
won't you? You've given me the right to ask that by all you've done for
me. Anything I could do would be only too little for one who has stood
by me the way you have. I want you to feel that I'm your friend in the
deepest meaning of that word. You can count on me for anything." Then in
a lighter tone as he gave the shoulder a half-playful slap he added,
"I'm _for_ you, son."
The younger man raised his head and straightened himself up in his
chair.
"You wouldn't be!" he exclaimed, "if you knew who I am." Then he
blurted out the confession: "I'm Dan Darcy. I can't let you go on
believing in me when you talk like that."
"But I knew it when I said what I did," interrupted Doctor Huntingdon.
"It flashed over me first when I saw you looking at your father's
picture. No man could look at a stranger's face that way. Then I knew
what the resemblance was that has puzzled me ever since I met you. The
only wonder to me is that I did not see it long ago."
"You knew it," repeated Dan slowly, "and yet you told me to count you as
a friend in the deepest meaning of that word. How could you mean it?"
The Doctor's answer came with deep impressiveness.
"Because, despite whatever slip you may have made as a boy of eighteen,
you have grown into a man worthy of such a friendship. A surgeon in my
position learns to read character, learns to know an honest man when he
sees one. No matter what lies behind you that you regret, I have every
confidence in you now, Dan. I am convinced you are worthy to be the son
of even such a man as Daniel Darcy."
He held out his hand to have it taken in a long, silent grip that made
it ache.
"Come on and go back home with me," urged the Doctor. "You've made good
out here. Do the brave thing now and go back and live down the past.
It'll make the old folks so happy it'll wipe out the heart-break of all
those years that you've been away."
Dan's only response was another grasp of the Doctor's hand as strong and
as painful as the first. Pulling himself up by it he stood an instant
trying to say something, then, too overcome to utter a word, made a dash
for the door.
Doctor Huntingdon was so stirred by the scene that he found it difficult
to go back to his letters, but the very next one in order happened to be
the one Georgina wrote to her mother just after Belle had given her
consent to Barby's being told of Emmett's confession. He read the latter
part of it, standing, for he had sprung to his feet with the surprise of
its opening sentence. He did not even know that Emmett had been dead all
these years, and Dan, who had had no word from home during all his
absence, could not know it either. He was in a tremor of eagerness to
hurry to him with the news, but he waited to scan the rest of the
letter.
Then with it fluttering open in his hand he strode across the hall and
burst into Dan's room without knocking.
"Pack up your junk, this minute, boy," he shouted. "We take the first
boat out of here for home. Look at this!"
He thrust Georgina's letter before Dan's bewildered eyes.