He felt a something high and implacable in the gentle girl; something he had never found in her before. He looked at her with despairing eyes. Her white grace, her stately little ways, her delicate beauty, had never seemed so desirable.

"Good G.o.d, Vivian. You can't mean it. Give me time. Wait for me. I'll be straight all the rest of my life--I mean it. I'll be true to you, absolutely. I'll do anything you say--only don't give me up!"

She felt old, hundreds of years old, and as remote as far mountains.

"It isn't anything you can do--in the rest of your life, my poor boy!

It is what you have done--in the first of it!... Oh, Morton! It isn't right to let us grow up without knowing! You never would have done it _if_ you'd known--would you? Can't you--can't we--do something to--stop this awfulness?"

Her tender heart suffered in the pain she was inflicting, suffered too in her own loss; for as she faced the thought of final separation she found that her grief ran back into the far-off years of childhood. But she had made up her mind with a finality only the more absolute because it hurt her. Even what he said of possible recovery did not move her--the very thought of marriage had become impossible.

"I shall never marry," she added, with a shiver; thinking that he might derive some comfort from the thought; but he replied with a bitter derisive little laugh. He did not rise to her appeal to "help the others." So far in life the happiness of Morton Elder had been his one engrossing care; and now the unhappiness of Morton Elder a.s.sumed even larger proportions.

That bright and hallowed future to which he had been looking forward so earnestly had been suddenly withdrawn from him; his good resolutions, his "living straight" for the present, were wasted.

"You women that are so superior," he said, "that'll turn a man down for things that are over and done with--that he's sorry for and ashamed of--do you know what you drive a man to! What do you think's going to become of me if you throw me over!"

He reached out his hands to her in real agony. "Vivian! I love you! I can't live without you! I can't be good without you! And you love me a little--don't you?"

She did. She could not deny it. She loved to shut her eyes to the future, to forgive the past, to come to those outstretched arms and bury everything beneath that one overwhelming phrase--"I love you!"

But she heard again Dr. Bellair's clear low accusing voice--"Will you tell that to your crippled children?"

She rose to her feet. "I cannot help it, Morton. I am sorry--you will not believe how sorry I am! But I will never marry you."

A look of swift despair swept over his face. It seemed to darken visibly as she watched. An expression of bitter hatred came upon him; of utter recklessness.

All that the last few months had seemed to bring of higher better feeling fell from him; and even as she pitied him she thought with a flicker of fear of how this might have happened--after marriage.

"Oh, well!" he said, rising to his feet. "I wish you could have made up your mind sooner, that's all. I'll take myself off now."

She reached out her hands to him.

"Morton! Please!--don't go away feeling so hardly! I am--fond of you--I always was.--Won't you let me help you--to bear it--! Can't we be--friends?"

Again he laughed that bitter little laugh. "No, Miss Lane," he said. "We distinctly cannot. This is good-bye--You won't change your mind--again?"

She shook her head in silence, and he left her.

CHAPTER XI.

THEREAFTER.

If I do right, though heavens fall, And end all light and laughter; Though black the night and ages long, Bitter the cold--the tempest strong-- If I do right, and brave it all-- The sun shall rise thereafter!

The inaccessibility of Dr. Hale gave him, in the eye of Mrs. St.

Cloud, all the attractiveness of an unscaled peak to the true mountain climber. Here was a man, an unattached man, living next door to her, whom she had not even seen. Her pursuance of what Mr. Skee announced to his friends to be "one of these Platonic Friendships," did not falter; neither did her interest in other relations less philosophic.

Mr. d.y.k.eman's precipitate descent from the cla.s.s of eligibles was more of a disappointment to her than she would admit even to herself; his firm, kind friendliness had given a sense of comfort, of achieved content that her restless spirit missed.

But Dr. Hale, if he had been before inaccessible, had now become so heavily fortified, so empanoplied in armor offensive and defensive, that even Mrs. Pettigrew found it difficult to obtain speech with him.

That his best friend, so long supporting him in cheerful bachelorhood, should have thus late laid down his arms, was bitterly resented. That Mr. Skee, free lance of years standing, and risen victor from several "stricken fields," should show signs of capitulation, annoyed him further. Whether these feelings derived their intensity from another, which he entirely refused to acknowledge, is matter for the psychologist, and Dr. Hale avoided all psychologic self-examination.

With the boys he was always a hero. They admired his quiet strength and the unbroken good nature that was always presented to those about him, whatever his inner feelings.

Mr. Peters burst forth to the others one day, in tones of impa.s.sioned admiration.

"By George, fellows," he said, "you know how nice Doc was last night?"

"Never saw him when he wasn't," said Archie.

"Don't interrupt Mr. Peters," drawled Percy. "He's on the brink of a scientific discovery. Strange how these secrets of nature can lie unrevealed about us so long--and then suddenly burst upon our ken!"

Mr. Peters grinned affably. "That's all right, but I maintain my a.s.sertion; whatever the general attraction of our n.o.ble host, you'll admit that on the special occasion of yesterday evening, which we celebrated to a late hour by innocent games of cards--he was--as usual--the soul of--of----"

"Affability?" suggested Percy.

"Precisely!" Peters admitted. "If there is a well-chosen word which perfectly describes the manner of Dr. Richard Hale--it is affable!

Thank you, sir, thank you. Well, what I wish to announce, so that you can all of you get down on your knees at once and worship, is that all last evening he--had a toothache--a bad toothache!"

"My word!" said Archie, and remained silent.

"Oh, come now," Percy protested, "that's against nature. Have a toothache and not _mention_ it? Not even mention it--without exaggeration! Why Archimedes couldn't do that! Or--Sandalphon--or any of them!"

"How'd you learn the facts, my son? Tell us that."

"Heard him on the 'phone making an appointment. 'Yes;' 'since noon yesterday,' 'yes, pretty severe.' '11:30? You can't make it earlier?

All right.' I'm just mentioning it to convince you fellows that you don't appreciate your opportunities. There was some exceptional Female once--they said 'to know her was a liberal education.' What would you call it to live with Dr. Hale?"

And they called it every fine thing they could think of; for these boys knew better than anyone else, the effect of that a.s.sociation.

His patients knew him as wise, gentle, efficient, bringing a sense of hope and a.s.surance by the mere touch of that strong hand; his professional a.s.sociates in the town knew him as a good pract.i.tioner and friend, and wider medical circles, readers of his articles in the professional press had an even higher opinion of his powers.

Yet none of these knew Richard Hale. None saw him sitting late in his office, the pages of his book unturned, his eyes on the red s.p.a.ces of the fire. No one was with him on those night tramps that left but an hour or two of sleep to the long night, and made that sleep irresistible from self-enforced fatigue. He had left the a.s.sociations of his youth and deliberately selected this far-off mountain town to build the life he chose; and if he found it unsatisfying no one was the wiser.

His successive relays of boys, young fellows fresh from the East, coming from year to year and going from year to year as business called them, could and did give good testimony as to the home side of his character, however. It was not in nature that they should speculate about him. As they fell in love and out again with the facility of so many Romeos, they discoursed among themselves as to his misogyny.

"He certainly has a grouch on women," they would admit. "That's the one thing you can't talk to him about--shuts up like a clam. Of course, he'll let you talk about your own feelings and experiences, but you might as well talk to the side of a hill. I wonder what did happen to him?"

They made no inquiry, however. It was reported that a minister's wife, a person of determined character, had had the courage of her inquisitiveness, and asked him once, "Why is it that you have never married, Dr. Hale?" And that he had replied, "It is owing to my dislike of the meddlesomeness of women." He lived his own life, unquestioned, now more markedly withdrawn than ever, coming no more to The Cottonwoods.

Even when Morton Elder left, suddenly and without warning, to the great grief of his aunt and astonishment of his sister, their medical neighbor still "sulked in his tent"--or at least in his office.

Morton's departure had but one explanation; it must be that Vivian had refused him, and she did not deny it.

"But why, Vivian, why? He has improved so--it was just getting lovely to see how nice he was getting. And we all thought you were so happy."