But she did not appear to care to be helped. Nor did Allan--he rarely came
to the house, and he went to Edith's not at all. He was even absent from
her Christmas tree for the children, a jolly little festivity which neither
he nor Deborah had missed in years.
"What has got into him?" Roger asked. And shortly after Christmas he called
the fellow up on the 'phone. "Drop in for dinner to-night," he urged. And
he added distinctly, "I'm alone."
"Are you? I'll be glad to."
"Thank you, Baird, I want your advice." And as he hung up the receiver he
said, "Now then!" to himself, in a tone of firm decision. But later, as the
day wore on, he cursed himself for what he had done. "Don't it beat the
devil," he thought, "how I'm always putting my foot in it?" And when Baird
came into the room that night he loomed, to Roger's anxious eye, if
anything taller than before. But his manner was so easy, his gruff voice so
natural, and he seemed to take this little party of two so quietly as a
matter of course, that Roger was soon reassured, and at table he and Allan
got on even better than before. Baird talked of his life as a student, in
Vienna, Bonn and Edinburgh, and of his first struggles in New York. His
talk was full of human bits, some tragic, more amusing. And Roger's liking
for the man increased with every story told.
"I asked you here," he bluntly began, when they had gone to the study to
smoke, "to talk to you about Deborah." Baird gave him a friendly look.
"All right. Let's talk about her."
"It strikes me you were right last year," said Roger, speaking slowly.
"She's already showing the strain of her work. She don't look to me as
strong as she was."
"She looks to me stronger," Allan replied. "You know, people fool doctors
now and then--and she seems to have taken a fresh start. I feel she may go
on for years." Roger was silent a moment, chagrined and disappointed.
"Have you had a good chance to watch her?" he asked.
"Yes, and I'm watching her still," said Baird. "I see her down there at the
school. She tells me you've been there yourself."
"Yes," said Roger, determinedly, "and I mean to keep on going. I'm trying
not to lose hold of her," he added with harsh emphasis. Baird turned and
frankly smiled at him.
"Then you have probably seen," he replied, "that to keep any hold at all on
her, you must make up your mind as I have done that, strength or no
strength, this job of hers is going to be a life career. When a woman who
has held a job without a break for eleven years can feel such a flame of
enthusiasm, you can be pretty sure, I think, it is the deepest part of her.
At least I feel that way," he said. "And I believe the only way to keep
near her--for the present, anyhow--is to help her in her work."
When Baird had gone, Roger found himself angry.
"I'm not in the habit, young man," he thought, "of throwing my daughter at
gentlemen's heads. If you feel as calm and contented as that you can go to
the devil! Far be it from me to lift a hand! In fact, as I come to think of
it, you would probably make her a mighty poor husband!" He worked himself
into quite a rage. But an hour later, when he had subsided, "Hold on," he
thought. "Am I right about this? Is the man as contented as he talks? No,
sir, not for a minute he isn't! But what can he do? If he tried making love
to Deborah he'd simply be killing his chances. Not the slightest doubt in
the world. She can't think of anything but her career. Yes, sir, when all's
said and done, to marry a modern woman is no child's play, it means thought
and care. And A. Baird has made up his mind to it. He has made up his mind
to marry her by playing a long waiting game. He's just slowly and quietly
nosing his way into her school, because it's her life. And a mighty shrewd
way of going about it. You don't need any help from me, my friend; all you
need is to be let alone."
In talks at home with Deborah, and in what he himself observed at school,
Roger began to get inklings of "A. Baird's long waiting game." He found
that several months before Allan had offered to start a free clinic for
mothers and children in connection with the school, and that he alone had
put it through, with only the most reluctant aid and gratitude from
Deborah--as though she dreaded something. Baird took countless hours from
his busy uptown practice; he hurt himself more than once, in fact, by
neglecting rich patients to do this work. Where a sick or pregnant mother
was too poor to carry out his advice, he followed her into her tenement
home, sent one of his nurses to visit her, and even gave money when it was
needed to ease the strain of her poverty until she should be well and
strong. Soon scores of the mothers of Deborah's children were singing the
praises of Doctor Baird.
Then he began coming to the house.
"I was right," thought Roger complacently.
He laid in a stock of fine cigars and some good port and claret, too; and
on evenings when Baird came to dine, Roger by a genial glow and occasional
jocular ironies would endeavor to drag the talk away from clinics,
adenoids, children's teeth, epidemics and the new education. But no joke
was so good that Deborah could not promptly match it with some amusing
little thing which one of her children had said or done. For she had a
mother's instinct for bragging fondly of her brood. It was deep, it was
uncanny, this queer community motherhood.
"This poor devil," Roger thought, with a pitying glance at Baird, "might
just as well be marrying a widow with three thousand brats."
But Baird did not seem in the least dismayed. On the contrary, his
assurance appeared to be deepening every week, and with it Deborah's air of
alarm. For his clinic, as it swiftly grew, he secured financial backing
from his rich women patients uptown, many of them childless and only too
ready to respond to the appeals he made to them. And one Saturday evening
at the house, while dining with Roger and Deborah, he told of an offer he
had had from a wealthy banker's widow to build a maternity hospital. He
talked hungrily of all it could do in co-operation with the school. He said
nothing of the obvious fact that it would require his whole time, but Roger
thought of that at once, and by the expression on Deborah's face he saw she
was thinking, too.
He felt they wanted to be alone, so presently he left them. From his study
he could hear their voices growing steadily more intense. Was it all about
work? He could not tell. "They've got working and living so mixed up, a man
can't possibly tell 'em apart."
Then his daughter was called to the telephone, and Allan came in to bid
Roger good-night. And his eyes showed an impatience he did not seem to care
to hide.
"Well?" inquired Roger. "Did you get Deborah's consent?"
"To what?" asked Allan sharply.
"To your acceptance," Roger answered, "of the widow's mite." Baird grinned.
"She couldn't help herself," he said.
"But she didn't seem to like it, eh--"
"No," said Baird, "she didn't." Roger had a dark suspicion.
"By the way," he asked in a casual tone, "what's this philanthropic widow
like?"
"She's sixty-nine," Baird answered.
"Oh," said Roger. He smoked for a time, and sagely added, "My daughter's a
queer woman, Baird--she's modern, very modern. But she's still a woman, you
understand--and so she's jealous--of her job." But A. Baird was in no
joking mood.
"She's narrow," he said sternly. "That's what's the matter with Deborah.
She's so centered on her job she can't see anyone else's. She thinks I'm
doing all this work solely in order to help her school--when if she'd use
some imagination and try to put herself in my shoes, she'd see the chance
it's giving _me_!"
"How do you mean?" asked Roger, looking a bit bewildered.
"Why," said Baird with an impatient fling of his hand, "there are men in my
line all over the country who'd leave home, wives and children for the
chance I've blundered onto here! A hospital fully equipped for research, a
free hand, an opportunity which comes to one man in a million! But can she
see it? Not at all! It's only an annex to her school!"
"Yes," said Roger gravely, "she's in a pretty unnatural state. I think she
ought to get married, Baird--" To his friendly and disarming twinkle Baird
replied with a rueful smile.
"You do, eh," he growled. "Then tell her to plan her wedding to come before
her funeral." As he rose to go, Roger took his hand.
"I'll tell her," he said. "It's sound advice. Good-night, my boy, I wish
you luck."
A few moments later he heard in the hall their brief good-nights to each
other, and presently Deborah came in. She was not looking quite herself.
"Why are you eyeing me like that?" his daughter asked abruptly.
"Aren't you letting him do a good deal for you?"
Deborah flushed a little:
"Yes, I am. I can't make him stop."
Her father hesitated.
"You could," he said, "if you wanted to. If you were sure," he added
slowly, "that you didn't love him--and told him so." He felt a little
panic, for he thought he had gone too far. But his daughter only turned
away and restlessly moved about the room. At last she came to her father's
chair:
"Hadn't you better leave this to me?"
"I had, my dear, I most certainly had. I was all wrong to mention it," he
answered very humbly.
* * * * *
From this night on, Baird changed his tack. Although soon busy with the
plans for the hospital, to be built at once, he said little about it to
Deborah. Instead, he insisted on taking her off on little evening sprees
uptown.
"Do you know what's the matter with both of us?" he said to her one
evening. "We've been getting too durned devoted to our jobs and our ideals.
You're becoming a regular school marm and I'm getting to be a regular slave
to every wretched little babe who takes it into his head to be born. We
haven't one redeeming vice."
And again he took up dancing. The first effort which he made, down at
Deborah's school one evening, was a failure quite as dismal as his attempts
of the previous year. But he did not appear in the least discouraged. He
came to the house one Friday night.
"I knew I could learn to dance," he said, "in spite of all your taunts and
jibes. That little fiasco last Saturday night--"
"Was perfectly awful," Deborah said.
"Did not discourage me in the least," he continued severely. "I decided the
only trouble with me was that I'm tall and I've got to bend--to learn to
bend."
"Tremendously!"
"So I went to a lady professor, and she saw the point at once. Since then
I've had five lessons, and I can fox-trot in my sleep. To-morrow is
Saturday. Where shall we go?"
"To the theater."
"Good. We'll start with that. But the minute the play is over we'll gallop
off to the Plaza Grill--just as the music is in full swing--"
"And we'll dance," she groaned, "for hours. And when I get home, I'll creep
into bed so tired and sore in every limb--"
"That you'll sleep late Sunday morning. And a mighty good thing for you,
too--if you ask my advice--"
"I don't ask your advice!"
"You're getting it, though," he said doggedly. "If you're still to be a
friend of mine we'll dance at the Plaza to-morrow night--and well into the
Sabbath."
"The principal of a public school--dancing on the Sabbath. Suppose one of
my friends should see us there."
"Your friends," he replied with a fine contempt, "do not dance in the Plaza
Grill. I'm the only roisterer you know."
"All right," she conceded grudgingly, "I'll roister. Come and get me. But
I'd much prefer when the play is done to come home and have milk and
crackers here."
"Deborah," he said cheerfully, "for a radical school reformer you're the
most conservative woman I know."