CHAPTER VIII
James and Clemency had hardly started upon their drive before there was a ring at the office door, and Doctor Gordon, who was alone there, answered it. He was confronted by a man who lived half-way between Alton and the next village on the north. He had walked some three miles to get some medicine for his wife, who was suffering from rheumatism. He was pathetically insistent upon the fact that his wife did not require a call from the doctor, only some medicine. "Now, see here, Joe," said Gordon, "if I really thought your wife needed a call, I would go, and it should not cost you a cent more than the medicine, but I am dog tired, and not feeling any too well myself, and if her symptoms are just as you say, I think I can send her something which will fix her up all right."
"She is just the way she was last year," said the man. He did not look unlike Gordon, although he was poorly clad, and was a genuine son of the New Jersey soil. His poor clothes, even his skin, had a clayey hue, [pg 155] as if he had been really cast from the mother earth. It was frozen outside, but a reddish crust from the last thaw was on his hulking boots. He spoke with a drawl, which was nasal, and yet had something sweet in it. "I would have came this afternoon, but I was afraid you might have went out," he remarked.
"Yes, I was out," replied Gordon, who was filling out a prescription. The man stooped and patted the bull terrier, which had not evinced the slightest emotion at his entrance.
"Mighty fine dog," said the man.
"Yes, he is a pretty good sort," replied Gordon.
"Shouldn't like to meet him if I had came up to your house an' no one round, and he had took a dislike to me."
"I should not myself," said Gordon. "But he does not dislike you."
"Dogs know me pooty well," said the man. "They ain't no particler likin' for me. Don't want to run and jump an' wag, but they know I mean well, and they mostly let me alone."
"Yes, I guess that's so," said Gordon. "Jack would have barked if he had not known you were all right, Joe."
"Queer how much they know," said the man reflectively, and a dazed look overspread his dingy face with its cloud of beard. If once he became launched upon a current of reflection, he lost his mental bearings instantly and drifted.
"Well, they do know," said Gordon. "Now listen, Joe! You see this bottle. You give your wife a spoonful of the medicine in a glass of water every three hours. Mind, you make it a whole tumbler full of water."
"Yes, sir," replied the man.
"Of course, you need not wake her up if she gets to sleep," said the doctor, "but every three hours when she is awake."
"Yes, sir." The man began fumbling in his pocket, but Gordon stopped him. "No," he said, "put up your pocketbook, Joe. I don't want any money. I get this medicine at wholesale, and it don't cost much."
"I come prepared to pay," said the man. He straightened his shoulders and flushed.
"Oh, well," said Doctor Gordon, "wait. If you need more medicine, or it seems necessary that I should drive over to see your wife, you can do a little work on my garden in the spring, or you can let me have a bushel of your new potatoes when they are grown next [pg 157] summer, or some apples, and we'll call it square. Wait; I don't want any money for that bottle of medicine to-night anyhow. Did you walk over, Joe?"
Joe said that he had walked over. "Aaron might just as well drive you home as not," said Gordon. "The sooner your wife has that medicine the better. How is the baby getting along?"
"First-rate. I'd just as soon walk, doctor."
For answer Gordon opened the door and called Aaron, and told him to hitch up and take the man home.
"Doctor Elliot has gone with the bay," said Aaron. "The teams are about played out, and there's nothin' except the gray."
"Take her then."
"She looked when I fed her jest now as if she was half a mind to balk at takin' her feed," Aaron remarked doubtfully.
"Nonsense! Give her a loose rein, and she'll be all right."
Aaron went out grumbling.
Gordon offered the man a cigar, which he accepted as if it had been a diamond. "I'll save it up for next Sunday, when I've got a little time to sense it," he said. "I know what your cigars be."
Gordon forced another upon him, and the man looked as pleased as a child.
Presently a shout was heard, and Gordon opened the office door.
"Here's Aaron with the buggy," he said.
He stood in the doorway watching, but the gray, instead of balking, went out of the yard with an angry plunge. Gordon shook his head.
"Confound him, he's pulling too hard on the lines," he muttered. Then he closed and locked the office door, and went into the living-room to find it deserted. Gordon called up the stairs. "Have you gone to bed, Clara?" His voice was at once tenderly solicitous and angry.
Mrs. Ewing answered him from above, and in her tone was something propitiating. "Yes, Tom, dear," she called.
Gordon hesitated a moment. His face took on its expression of utmost misery. "Is—the pain very bad?" he called then, and called as if he were in actual fear.
"No, dear," the woman's patient, beseeching voice answered, "not very bad."
"Not very?"
"No, only I felt a little twinge, and thought I had better go to bed. I am quite comfortable [pg 159] now. I think I shall go to sleep. I am sorry to leave you alone all the evening, Tom."
"That's right," called Gordon. His voice rang harsh, in spite of his effort to control it. He threw his arm over his eyes, and fairly groped his way back to his office, stifling his sobs. When he was in his office he flung himself into a chair, and bent his head over his hands on the table, and his whole frame shook. "Oh, my God!" he muttered. "Oh, my God!" He did not weep, but he gasped like a child whom his mother has commanded not to weep. Terrible emotion fairly convulsed him. He struggled with it as with a visible foe. At last he sat up and filled his pipe. The dog had crept close to him, and was nestling against him and whimpering. Gordon patted his head. The dog licked his hand.
The simple, ignorant sympathy of this poor speechless thing nearly unnerved the man again, but he continued to smoke. He looked at the dog, whose honest brown eyes were fixed upon him with an almost uncanny understanding, and reflected how the woman upstairs, who was passing out of his life, had become in a few days so associated with the animal, that after she was gone he could [pg 160] never see him without a pang. He looked about the office, with whose belongings she was less associated than with anything in the house, and it seemed to him that everything even there would have for him, after she had passed, a terrible sting of reminiscence. It seemed to him, as he looked about, as if she were already gone. He was, in fact, suffering as keenly in anticipation as he would in reality. The horror, the worst horror of life, of being left alive with the dead and the associations of the dead was already upon him. Some people are comforted by such associations, others they rend. Gordon was one whom they would rend, whom they did rend. He made up his mind, as he sat there, that he would have to go away from Alton, and enter new scenes for the healing of his spirit, and yet he knew that he should not go: that at the last his courage would assert itself.
He sat smoking, the dog's head on his knee. There was not a sound to be heard in the house. Emma, the maid, had gone away to visit a sick sister. She might not be back that night. So there was absolute silence, even in the kitchen. Suddenly the dog lifted his head and listened to something which Gordon could not himself hear. He watched [pg 161] the dog curiously. The dog gave a low growl of fear and rage, and made for the office door. He began scratching at the threshold, and emitted a perfect volley of barks. It did not sound like one dog, but a whole pack. Gordon, with an impulse which he could not understand, quickly put out the prism-fringed lamp which hung over his table. Then he sprang to the dog, and had the dog by the collar. "Be still, Jack," he said in a low voice, and the dog obeyed instantly, although he was quivering under his hand. Gordon could feel the muscles run like angry serpents under the smooth white hair, he felt the crest of rage along his back. But the animal was so well trained that he barked no more. He only growled very softly, as if to himself, and quivered.
Gordon ordered him to charge in a whisper, and the dog stretched himself at his feet, although it was like the crouch of a live wire. Then Gordon rose and went softly to a window beside the door. The office had very heavy red curtains. It was impossible, since they were closely drawn, that a ray of light from within should have been visible outside. Gordon had reasoned it out quickly when he extinguished the lamp. Whoever [pg 162] was without would have had no possible means of knowing that anything except the dog was in the office, but the light once out, Gordon could peep around the curtain and ascertain, without being himself seen, what or who was about. He had a premonition of what he should see, and he saw it. The stable door was almost directly opposite that of the office. Between the two doors there was a driveway. On this driveway the only pale thing to be seen in the darkness was the tall, black figure of a man standing perfectly still, as if watching. His attitude was unmistakable. The long lines of him, upreared from the pale streak of the driveway, were as plainly to be read as a sign-post. They signified watchfulness. His back was toward the office. He stood face toward the curve of the drive toward the road, where any one entering would first be seen. Gordon, peeping around his curtain, knew the dark figure as he would have known his own shadow. In one sense it had been for years his shadow, and that added to the horror of it. The man behind the curtain watched, the man in the drive watched; and the dog, crouched at the threshold of the door, watched with what sublimated sense God alone knew, which enabled [pg 163] him to know as much as his master, and now and then came the low growl. Gordon began to formulate a theory in his mind. He remembered suddenly the man whom Aaron had driven home. He realized that the watching man might easily have mistaken him for Gordon himself, going away with his man to make a call upon some patient. He suspected, with an intensity which became a certainty, that the man knew that Clemency and Elliot were out and would presently return, and that it was for them he was watching. All the time he thought of the sick woman upstairs, and was glad that her room faced on the other side of the house. He was in agony lest she should be disturbed.
Doctor Gordon was usually a man of resources, but now he did not know what to do. The dark figure on the park-drive made now and then a precautionary motion of his right arm as he watched, which was significant. Gordon knew that he was holding a revolver in readiness. In the event of Aaron returning alone he would probably be puzzled, and Gordon thought that he might slip away. In the event of James and Clemency returning first, Gordon thought that he knew conclusively what he purposed—a bullet for James, [pg 164] and then away with the girl, unless he was hindered.
Gordon let the curtain slip back into place, and with a warning gesture to the dog, who was ready for action, he tiptoed across the room to the table, in a drawer of which he kept his own revolver. He opened the drawer softly, and rummaged with careful hands. No revolver was there. He made sure. He even opened other drawers and rummaged, but the weapon was certainly missing. He stood undecided for a moment. Then he went softly out of the room, bidding in a whisper the dog to follow. He crept upstairs and paused at a closed chamber door. Then he opened it very carefully. Mrs. Ewing at once spoke. "Is that you, dear?" she said.
"Yes, I wanted to tell you not to be frightened, dear, if you should hear a shot or the dog bark."
There was a rustling in the dark room. Mrs. Ewing was evidently sitting up in bed. "Oh, Tom, what is it?" she whispered.
Gordon forced a laugh. "Nothing at all," he replied, "except there's a fox or something out in the yard, and Jack is wild. I may get a shot at him. Do you know where my revolver is?"
"Why, where you always keep it, dear, in the table drawer in the office."
"I don't seem to see it. I guess I will take your little pistol."
"Oh, Tom, I am sorry, but I know that won't go off. Clemency tried it the other day. You remember that time Emma dropped it. I think something or other got bent. You know it was a delicate little thing."
"Oh, well," said Gordon carelessly, "I dare say I can find my revolver."
"I don't see who could have taken it away." said Mrs. Ewing. "I am sorry about my pistol, because you gave it to me too, dear."
"I'll get another for you," said Gordon, "Those little dainty, lady-like, pearl-mounted weapons don't stand much."
"I am feeling very comfortable, dear," Mrs. Ewing said in her anxious, sweet voice. "You will be careful, won't you, with your revolver, with that dog jumping about?"
"Yes, dear. I dare say I shall not use the revolver anyway, but don't be frightened if you should hear a little commotion."
"No, Tom."
"Go to sleep."
"Yes, I think I can. I do feel rather sleepy."
Gordon closed the door carefully and retraced his steps to the office, the dog at his heels. He slipped the curtain again and looked out. The man still stood watching in the driveway. Gordon had never been at such a loss as to his best course of action. He was absolutely courageous, but here he was unarmed, and he could have no reasonable doubt that if he should go out, he would be immediately shot. In such a case, what of the woman upstairs? And, moreover, what of James and Clemency? He thought of any available weapon, but there was nothing except his own stick. That was stout, it was true, but could he be quick enough with it? His mad impulse to rush out unarmed except with that paltry thing could hardly be restrained, but he had to think of other lives beside his own.
He began to think that the only solution of the matter was the return of Aaron alone. The watching man would immediately realize that he had made some mistake, that he, Gordon, was in the house, or had been left at the home of a patient. He could have no possible reason for molesting the man. He would probably slip aside into a shadow, then make his way back to the road. In [pg 167] such a case Gordon determined that he and Aaron would follow him to make sure that no harm came to James and Clemency. So Gordon stood motionless waiting, in absolute silence, except for the frequently recurring mutter of fear and rage of the dog. As time went on he became more and more uneasy. It seemed to him finally that Aaron should have been back long before. He moved stealthily across the room, and consulted his watch by the low light of the hearth fire. Aaron had been gone an hour. He should have returned, for the mare was a good roadster when she did not balk. Gordon shook his head. He began to be almost sure that the mare had balked. He returned to the window. His every nerve was on the alert. The moment that James and Clemency should drive into the yard, he made ready to spring, but the horrible fear lest it should be entirely unavailing haunted him. If only Aaron would come. Then the man would slip into cover of the shadows, and steal out into the road, and Gordon would jump into the buggy, and he and Aaron would follow him. He knew the man well enough to be sure that he would never venture an attack upon James and Clemency with witnesses. [pg 168] If only Aaron would come! Gordon became surer that the mare had balked. He vowed within himself that she should be shot the next day if she had. Every moment he thought he heard the sound of wheels and horse's hoofs. His nervous tension became something terrible. Once he thought of stealing through the house, and out by the front door, and walking to meet James and Clemency so as to warn them. But that would leave the helpless woman upstairs alone. He dared not do that.
He thought then of going to the front of the house, and watching there, and endeavoring to intercept James and Clemency before they turned into the driveway. But he felt that he could not for one second relax his watch upon the watching man, and he had no guarantee whatever that, at the first sound of wheels, the man himself would not make for the front of the house. Then he thought, as always, of not disturbing the sick woman whose room faced the road. It seemed to him that his only course was to remain where he was and wait for the return of Aaron before James and Clemency. He knew now that the horse must have balked. His only hope was that James and Clemency, [pg 169] since it was such a fine night, and time is so short for lovers, might take such a long drive that even the balky mare might relent. Always he heard at intervals the trot of a horse, which only existed in his imagination. He began to wonder if he should know when Aaron, or Clemency and James, actually did drive into the yard, if he should be quick enough. Suddenly he thought of the dog: that he would follow him, and of what might happen. The dog's chain-leash was on the table. He stole across, got it, fastened it to the animal's collar, and made the end secure to a staple which he had had fixed in the wall for that purpose. As yet no intention of injury to the man except in self-defense was in his mind. If actually attacked, he must defend himself, of course, but he wished more than anything to drive the intruder away with no collision. That was what he hoped for. The time went on, and the strain upon the doctor's nerves was nearly driving him mad. Sometimes the mare balked for hours. He began to hope that Aaron would leave her, and return home on foot. That would settle the matter. But he remembered a strange trait of obstinacy in Aaron. He remembered how he [pg 170] had once actually sat all night in the buggy while the mare balked. The man balked as well as the horse. "The damned fool," he muttered to himself in an agony. The dog growled in response. Then it was that first the thought came to Gordon of what might be done to save them all. He stood aghast with the horror of it. He was essentially a man of peace himself, unless driven to the wall. He was a good fighter at bay, but there was in his heart, along with strength, utter good-will and gentleness toward all his kind. He only wished to go his way in peace, and for those whom he loved to go in peace, but that had been denied him. He began considering the nature of the man whose dark figure remained motionless on the driveway. He knew him from the first. It sounded sensational, his recapitulation of his knowledge, but it was entirely true. It was that awful truth, which is past human belief, which no man dares put into fiction. That man out there had been from his birth a distinct power for evil upon the face of the earth. He had menaced all creation, so far as one personality may menace it. He was a force of ill, a moral and spiritual monster, and the more dangerous, because of a subtlety and resource [pg 171] which had kept him immune from the law. He outstripped the law, whose blood-hounds had no scent keen enough for him. He had broken the law, but always in such a way that there was not, and never could be, any proof. There had not been even suspicion. There had been knowledge on Gordon's part, and Mrs. Swing's, but knowledge without proof is more helpless than suspicion with it. The man was unassailable, free to go his way, working evil.
Again Gordon thought he heard the nearing trot of a horse, and again the dog growled. Gordon was not quite sure that time that a horse had not passed the house. He told himself in despair that he could not be sure of knowing when James and Clemency came, and again the awful thought seized him, and again he reflected upon the man outside. Suppose, instead of wearing the semblance of humanity, he had worn the semblance of a beast, then his course would have been clear enough. Suppose it were a hungry wolf watching out there, instead of a man, and this man was worse than any wolf. He was like the weir-wolf of the old Scandinavian legend. He had all the cowardly cruelty of a wolf, he was a means of evil, but he had the trained brain of a man.
Gordon thought he heard footsteps, and the man made a very slight motion. Gordon thought joyfully that Aaron had left the balky mare, and had returned, but it was not so. He had heard nothing except the pulsations of the blood in his own overwrought brain.
He wondered if he were really going mad, although all the time his mind was steadily at work upon the awful problem which had been forced upon it. Should any power for evil be allowed to exist upon the earth if mortal man had strength to stamp it out? Suppose that was a poisonous snake out there, and not a man. What was out there was worse than any snake. Gordon reasoned as the first man in Eden may have reasoned; and he did not know whether his reasoning were right or wrong. Meantime, the danger increased every moment. Of one thing he was perfectly sure: he had no personal motive for what he might or might not do. He had reached that pass when he was himself, as far as he himself was concerned, beyond hate of that man outside. It was a principle for which he argued. Should a monster, something abnormal in strength and subtlety and wickedness, something which menaced [pg 173] all the good in the world, be allowed to exist? Gordon argued that it should not. He was driven to it by years of fruitless struggling against this monstrous creation in the shape of man. He had seen such suffering because of him; his whole life had been so turned and twisted this way and that way because of him, that he himself had in the end become abnormal, and mentally askew, with the system of things. He was conscious of it himself. He had been naturally a good, simple, broad-visioned man, full of charity, with almost no subtlety. He had been forced to lead a life which strained and diverted all these good traits. Where he would have been open, he had been secret. Where he would have had no suspicion of any one, his first sight now seemed to be for ulterior motives. He weighed and measured where he naturally would have scattered broadcast. He had been obliged to compress his broad vision into a narrow window of detection. He was not the man he had been. Where he had gazed out of wide doors and windows at life, he now gazed through keyholes, and despised himself for so doing. In order to evade the trouble which had fallen to his lot, he took refuge in another personality. Thomas Gordon [pg 174] was a man whom a happy and untroubled life would have kept from all worldly blemish. Now the gold was tarnished, and he himself always saw the tarnish, as one sees a blur before the eye. Twenty years before, if any one had told him that he would at any period of his life become capable of standing and arguing with himself as to the right or wrong of what was now in his mind, he would have been incredulous. He had in reality become another man. Circumstances had evolved him, during the course of twenty years, into something different, as persistent winds evolve a pliant tree into another than its typical shape. Gordon had lost his type.
As he stood at the window the room grew cold. The hearth fire had died down. He knew that the furnace needed attention, but he dared not quit his post and his argument. He became sure that the maid would not return that night. He knew that Aaron was sitting with his human obstinacy behind the obstinate brute, somewhere on the road. He knew that James and Clemency might at any moment drive in, and he might rush out too late to prevent murder and the kidnapping of the girl. He knew what the man was [pg 175] there for. And he knew the one way to thwart him, but it was so horrible a way that it needed all this argument, all this delay and nearing of danger, before he adopted it.
The increasing cold of the room seemed to act as a sort of physical goad toward action. "By God, it is right!" he muttered. Then he looked at the dog crouching still with that wiry intentness before the door. The dog came of a good breed of fighters. He was in himself both weapon and wielder of weapon. He was a concentrated force. His white body was knotted with nerves and muscles. The chances were good if—Gordon pictured it to himself—and again the horror and doubt were over him. He himself had acquired a certain stiffness and lassitude from years, and long drives in one position. He would stand no chance unarmed against a bullet. But the dog—that was another matter. The dog would make a spring like the spring of death itself, and that white leap of attack might easily cause the aim to go wrong. It would be like aiming at lightning. He knew how the dog would gather himself together, all ready for that terrible leap, the second he opened the door. He knew that he might be able to open the door for the leap without [pg 176] attracting the man's attention, faced as he was the other way, if he could keep the dog quiet. He knew how it would be. He could see that tall dark figure rolled on the drive, struggling as one struggles with death, for breath, under the vise-like grip on his throat. Gordon knew that the dog's unerring spring would be for the throat; that was the instinct of his race, a noble race in its way, to seize vice and danger by the throat, and attack the very threshold of life.
Gordon returned to the window. It seemed to him again that he heard a horse's trot. He felt sure that it was not the trot of the gray, who had a slight lameness. He knew the trot of the gray. He became sure that James and Clemency would the next moment enter the drive. He set his mouth hard, crept toward the dog, and patted him. As he patted him he felt the rage-crest rise higher on his back. Gordon bade him be quiet, and slipped his leash from the staple. Then he took it from the collar. He listened again. It seemed to him that his ears could not deceive him. It seemed to him that James and Clemency were coming. He was almost delirious. He fancied he heard their voices and the girl's laugh ring out. Holding the [pg 177] dog firmly by the collar, he rose and very carefully and noiselessly slipped the bolt of the door back. Then he waited a second. Then as slowly and carefully, still holding the dog by the collar, and whispering commands to hush his growls, he turned the door knob.
"There was a white flash of avenging brute force upon the man."
Then the thing was done. He flung the door open. He saw the man in the drive, standing with his face toward the road. He had heard nothing. Then he loosened his grasp of the straining dog's collar, and there was a white flash of avenging brute force upon the man. Gordon saw only one leap of the dog before the man was down. A futile pistol shot rang out. Then came the snarl and growl of a fighting dog fastened upon his prey.