Dr. Melton knew his sister. He made a rapid plunge through the obscurity of her brain into her heart’s warm clarity, and, “Oh, Julia, if you had seen her!” he cried.
She leaned toward him, responsive to the emotion in his voice. “Tell me about it, poor Marius,” she said, yearning maternally over his pain.
“I can’t—if you had seen her—”
“But how did you hear? Did she tell you? When did—”
“I was there at five, and her mother met me at the door. She took me upstairs, a finger on her lip, and there she and Marietta said they guessed this afternoon would settle things. A week ago, she said, she’d had an up-and-down talk with that dreadful carpenter and as good as forbade him the house—”
Mrs. Sandworth had a gesture of intuition. “Oh, if they’ve managed to shut Lydia off from seeing him—”
The doctor nodded. “That’s what her mother counted on. She said she thought it a sign that Lydia was just infatuated with Rankin—her being so different after she’d seen him—so defiant—so unlike Lydia! But now she hadn’t seen him for a week, and her mother and Marietta had been ‘talking to her’—Julia!—and then Paul had come to see her every evening, and had been just right—firm and yet not exacting, and ever so gentle and kind—and this afternoon when he came Lydia cried and didn’t want to go down, but her mother said she mustn’t be childish, and Marietta had just taken her right down to the library and left her there with Paul, and there she was now.” The doctor started up and beat his thin, corded hand on the mantel. He could not speak. His sister got up and laid a tender hand on his shoulder. “Poor Marius!” she said again.
He drew a long breath. “I did not fly at their throats—I turned and ran like mad down the stairs and into the library. It was Rankin I wanted to kill for letting his pride come in—for leaving her there alone with those—I was ready to snatch Lydia up bodily and carry her off to—” He stopped short and laughed harshly. “I reach to Lydia’s shoulder,” he commented on his own speech. “That’s me. To see what’s to be done and—”
“What was to be done?” asked Mrs. Sandworth patiently. She was quite used to understanding but half of what her brother said and had acquired a quiet art of untangling by tireless questionings the thread of narrative from the maze of his comments and ejaculations.
“There was nothing to be done. I was too late.”