Dr. Scott sighed and took down another book, then for hours he was dull to the passing of time. Sometimes he was able to lose himself in dreams. But when he woke his house was all the more intolerable and even his study offered no balm. Late July brought Walter for a visit and Walter seemed more than ever worldly, smart, progressive, and intolerable. Cora sat in her room silent and white-faced. Sometimes she read for a long time from one of her padded poets. Mrs. Scott longed for Atlantic City and complained about the Listers.
To Dr. Scott the story of Basil Everman exhibited all the cruel sadness of human fate. His imagination was fertile and he reconstructed Basil, an alien spirit in the Everman house. His speech was not the speech of Puritanic theology, his ways could not have been the ways of Mary Alcestis. He was so soon a ghost, wandering forlorn, his work only begun when life was ended! Dr. Scott meant to talk to Thomasina Davis about him—she surely would remember him.
He saw no reason why "Bitter Bread" should not make a little book. Would the Listers think of him as the editor for such a volume? So happy an event was hardly, in this disappointing world, probable; nevertheless, though he knew himself to be reckoning without any host whatever, he began to put together editorial words and phrases. Then, remembering Utterly, who had a certain right as a discoverer, he ceased dreaming.
Mrs. Scott thought Eleanor's story poor and called attention to the fact that she had taken Dr. Green's office as a model for untidiness, at which he laughed immoderately. He said that Eleanor might use himself or his office as a model at any time or to any extent she wished.
"Undoubtedly she has some kind of a pull," was Mrs. Scott's next comment.
"Pull?" repeated Dr. Scott nervously.
"Yes, influence over the editor," explained Mrs. Scott, "pull" in this sense being a new usage adopted from Walter. "Perhaps a financial influence. They seem to have money."
Thomasina Davis, when she opened her copy of "Willard's Magazine," grew pale; then she put it aside and went to walk up and down her garden. It was a long time before serenity returned to her countenance.
Later in the day she went to the Bents' to congratulate Eleanor. It was probable, she thought, that no one else in Waltonville but Dr. Scott would say anything to her. Eleanor looked ill and troubled, not as one would expect a rising author to look, and her mother looked even more distressed. They sat on the porch with Mrs. Bent watching her daughter anxiously, from the background, the dark circles under her eyes telling of sleepless nights.
"You ought to take Eleanor away for a vacation," advised Thomasina. "There is no place superior to Waltonville, but you have to go away sometimes to realize it. Perhaps she would like to go somewhere with me."