Dr. Filhiol, sitting at the window of his room, up-stairs, watched the captain and Hal with narrowed eyes that harbored suspicion. His lips drew tight, but he uttered no word. Hal, glancing up, met his look with instinctive defiance. Boldness and challenge leaped into his eyes. Filhiol understood his threat:
“Keep yourself out of this or take all consequences!”
And again the thought came to the doctor:
“What wouldn’t I give to have you for a patient of mine? Just for one hour!”
The captain and Hal disappeared ’round the ell, in which Filhiol had his room; but even after he had lost them to sight, he sensed the fatuous self-deception of the old man and the cruel baseness of the young one. Hal’s overstrained effort at good fellowship grated on the doctor’s nerves with a note as false as his forced smile. He longed to warn the captain—and yet! How could he make Briggs credit his suspicions? Impossible, he realized.
“Poor captain!” he murmured. “Poor old captain!” And so he sat there, troubled and very sad.
He heard their feet on the porch, then heard Hal coming up-stairs, alone. Along the passageway went Hal, muttering something unintelligible. Presently he returned down-stairs again and went into the yard. Filhiol swung his blinds shut. Much as he hated to play the spy, instinct told he must.
Hal now had his pipe, and carried books and paper. With these he sat down on the rustic seat that encircled one of the captain’s big elms—a seat before which a table had been built, for al fresco meals, or study. He opened one of the books and began writing busily, while smoke curled on the breeze now growing damp and raw. Even the doctor could not but admit Hal made an attractive figure in his white flannels.
“Pure camouflage, that study is,” pondered the doctor. “That smile augurs no good.” Down-stairs he heard Briggs moving about, and pity welled again. “This is bad, bad. There’s something in the wind, I know. Tss-tss-tss! What a wicked, cruel shame!”
Down in the cabin, Captain Briggs’s appearance quite belied the doctor’s pity. Every line of his venerable face showed deep content. In his eyes lay beatitude.