The house-party had grown a little larger than was originally
intended. On Saturday night we sat down twelve to dinner.
Doctor Jones and I shared a room together, and I must say
whatever misgivings I might have had about him wore away very
quickly on closer acquaintance. In the first place he looked
well in evening dress, carrying himself with a sort of shy, kind
air that became him immensely. At table he developed the
greatest of conversational gifts--that of the appreciative and
intelligent listener. I heard one of the guests asking Eleanor
who was that charming young man. Freddy and I hugged each other
(I mean metaphorically, of course) and gloried in his success.
In the presence of an admirer (such is the mystery of women)
Eleanor instantly got fifteen points better looking, and you
wouldn't have known her for the same girl. Freddy thought it was
the two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar gown she wore, but I could see
it was deeper than that. She was thawing in the sunshine of
love, and I'll do Doctor Jones the justice to say that he didn't
hide his affection under a bushel. It was generous enough for
everybody to bask in, and in his pell-mell ardor he took us all
to his bosom. The women loved him for it, and entered into a
tacit conspiracy to gain him the right-of-way to wherever Eleanor
was to be found. In fact, he followed her about like a dog, and
she could scarcely move without stepping on him.
Sunday was even better. One of the housemaids drank some wood
alcohol by mistake for vichy water, and the resulting uproar
redounded to Jones' coolness, skill and despatch. He dominated
the situation and--well, I won't describe it, this not being a
medical work, and the reader probably being a good guesser. Mrs.
Matthewman remarked significantly that it must be nice to be the
wife of a medical man--one would always have the safe feeling of
a doctor at hand in case anything happened at night! Eleanor
said it was a beautiful profession that had for its object the
alleviation of human pain. Freddy. jealously tried to get in a
good word for boxers, but nobody would listen to her except me.
It was all Jones, Jones, Jones, and the triumphs of modern
medicine. Altogether he sailed through that whole day with
flying colors, first with the housemaid, and then afterward at
church, where he was the only one that knew what Sunday after
Epiphany it was. He made it plainer than ever that he was a
model young man and a pattern. Mrs. Matthewman compared him to
her departed husband, and talked about old-fashioned courtesy and
the splendid men of her youth. Everybody fell over everybody
else to praise him. It was a regular Jones boom. People began
to write down his address, and ask him if he'd be free Thursday,
or what about Friday, and started to book seats in advance.
That evening, as I was washing my hands before dinner and
cheerfully whistling Hiawatha, I became conscious that Jones was
lolling back on a sofa at the dark end of the room. What
particularly arrested my attention was a groan--a hollow,
reverberatory groan--preceded by a pack of heartrending sighs.
It worried me--when everything seemed to be going so well. He
had every right to be whistling Hiawatha, too.
"What's the matter, Jones?" said I.
He keeled over on the sofa, and groaned louder than ever.
"It isn't possible--that she's refused you?" I exclaimed. He
muttered something about his mother.
"Well, what about your mother?" I said.
"Westoby," he returned, "I guess I was the worst kind of fool ever
to put my foot into this house."
That was nice news, wasn't it? Just as I was settling in my head
to buy that Seventy-second Street place, and alter the basement
into a garage!
"You see, old man, my mother would never consent to my marrying
Eleanor. I'm in the position of having to choose between her and
the woman I love. And I owe so much to my mother, Westoby. She
stinted herself for years to get me through college; she hardly
had enough to eat; she . . . " Then he groaned a lot more.
"I can't think that your mother--a--mother like yours, Jones--would
consent to stand between you and your lifelong happiness. It's
morbid--that's what I call it--morbid, just to dream of such a thing."
"There's Bertha," he quavered.
"Great Scott, and who's Bertha?"
"The girl my mother chose for me two years ago--Bertha McNutt,
you know. She'd really prefer me not to marry at all, but if I
must--it's Bertha, Westoby--Bertha or nothing!"
"It's too late to say that now, old fellow"
"It's not too late for me to go home this very night."
"Well, Jones," I broke out, "I can't think you'd do such a
caddish thing as that. Think it over for a minute. You come
down here; you sweep that unfortunate girl off her feet; you make
love to her with the fury of a stage villain; you force her to
betray her very evident partiality for you--and then you have the
effrontery to say: 'Good-by. I'm off.'"
"My mother--" he began.
"You simply can not act so dishonorably, Jones."
He sat silent for a little while.
"My mother--" he started in again finally.
"Surely your mother loves you?" I demanded.
"That's the terrible part of it, Westoby, she--"
"Pooh!"
"She stinted herself to get me through col--"
"Then why did you ever come here?"
"That's just the question I'm asking myself now."
"I don't see that you have any right to assume all that about
your mother, anyway. Eleanor Van Coort is a woman of a
thousand--unimpeachable social position--a little fortune of her
own--accomplished, handsome, charming, sought after--why, if
you managed to win such a girl as that your mother would walk
on air."
"No, she wouldn't. Bertha--"
"You're a pretty cheap lover," I said. "I don't set up to be a
little tin hero, but I'd go through fire and water for my girl.
Good heavens, love is love, and all the mothers--"
He let out a few more groans.
"Then, see here, Jones," I went on, "you owe some courtesy to our
hostesses. If you went away to-night it would be an insult.
Whatever you decide to do later, you've simply got to stay here
till Tuesday morning!"
"Must I?" he said, in the tone of a person who is ordered not to
leave the sinking ship.
"A gentleman has to," I said.
He quavered out a sort of acquiescence, and then asked me for the
loan of a white tie. I should have loved to give him a bowstring
instead, with somebody who knew how to operate it. He was a
fluff, that fellow--a tarnation fluff!