An hour later the Doctor, looking out of his study window, saw a buggy
drive up and stop at his carriage-block. It contained a rustic-looking
young man, dressed in new and showy garments that had the cachet of the
department store, and a young woman brave in such finery as young women
wear when approaching the most important hour of their lives.
Instinctively the Doctor reached for his prayer-book, an inspired volume
that had a way of opening almost automatically at the marriage service.
But only the young man alighted. He came up the front walk with an
expression of fell determination about his firm-set mouth. The young
woman, holding the reins, frowned at Dr. Gowdy's house-front--in marked
repugnance and indignation.
Jared had come to tell Dr. Gowdy what he thought of him--their first and
only meeting. Dr. Gowdy at a distance had impressed him as an abstract
moral force, but Dr. Gowdy close at hand was a mere man like himself.
Jared pushed aside all deference and spoke his mind.
"You set me up an inch," said Jared hardily, "and then you went to work
to take me down an ell. You've tried to harm me all you could; you've
tried to ruin me. But it couldn't be done. Let me tell you this: I've
sold seventeen hundred dollars' worth of my work here, and the first of
the month I'm going East with a lot more of it. A man with money in his
pocket can get his rights," said Jared truculently.
Dr. Gowdy, to whom Jared too had been an abstraction--an abstraction
compact of bumptious heresy as regarded art and of crass ignorance as
regarded life in general--finally realized him now as a human being,
faulty and ill-regulated, indeed, but not altogether unlikeable, and by
no means lacking in a sort of rude capacity. He experienced, not for the
first time, the alleviating quality resident sometimes in personal
presence, even the presence of an antagonist.
But Jared had no sense of this. "You've made fun of me," he went on;
"you've made me ridiculous in my own home. They're all laughin' at me
down there. All but her"--with an awkward gesture toward Melissa, visible
through the front window. "She's stuck to me right along. She believed in
me from the beginning. It was her gave me that book of yours----"
"That book, that book!" groaned Dr. Gowdy. Alas for the refining and
ennobling influences of art! Threatened and hectored in his own house by
a loutish, daubing plough-boy!
"You've interfered with my success; you've taken money out of my pocket.
Do you want to know what I'm goin' to do? I'm goin' to sue you, that's
what! Her father is our county attorney, and he'll help me see that I get
my rights!"
"Sue me? Do, you poor ignorant young cub!" cried the Doctor. "I've just
had one lawsuit to-day, and what I want more than anything else is
another!"
Jared glowered at him heavily--a look that was not without its effect on
the Doctor. Jared knew nothing of the complexities and delays and
expenses and uncertainties of the law, but he had already taught Dr.
Gowdy that the overbearing power of sheer ignorance was not to be
despised.
"I may be a poor ignorant young cub," he returned, "but, for all that, I
know how to take care of myself. And of another too--that right will be
mine within half an hour." A second slight gesture toward the window. Dr.
Gowdy's accustomed ear recognised the confident tone of the bridegroom.
"Now, see here," said he, with a sudden lurch into what seemed an
unceremonious frankness. "Let me make amends." For there was a positive
note in Jared that responded to the positive strain within himself. Jared
was more likeable than Mr. Kahn, and better worthy of cautious heed as an
antagonist. Why, indeed, should he be further antagonized at all?
"Yes, let me make amends," said the Doctor. "Let me"--here the
prayer-book opened almost of its own accord--"let me--marry you."