She was feeling, as she went back to her difficult task, more hopeful about Cary than she had ever felt hitherto. Well she might. She had now enlisted in his behalf the whole power of a reconstructing force of which until now she had hardly recognized the existence.
CHAPTER VIII
SPENDTHRIFTS
ROBERT BLACK was dressing for the day. This procedure, simple and commonplace enough in the schedule of the ordinary man, was for him usually a somewhat complicated process. The reason for this was that he was apt to be, as to-day, attempting at the same time to finish the reading from some left-over chapter of the book he had been devouring the last thing before he went to bed. Of course he could neither take his cold tub nor shave his always darkening chin while perusing the latest addition to his rapidly growing library. But the moment these activities were over, he could and did don his attire for the day while engaged in scanning the printed page propped upon the chest of drawers before him. The result of this economy of time was that he seldom actually heard the bell ring to summon him to his breakfast, and was accustomed to appear in the dining-room doorway, book in one hand, morning paper just gathered in from the doorstep in the other, and to find there Mrs. Hodder awaiting him in a grieved silence. He would then offer her a smiling apology, upon which she would shake her head over the incomprehensible ways of men who thought more of the feeding of brains than body, and proceed devotedly to serve him with food kept hot for his coming.
On this particular morning Black, strolling in as usual, book under his arm, newspaper stretched before him, eagerly snatching at the headlines always big with war news these days, paused to finish a long paragraph, at the same time saying cheerfully, “Good morning, Mrs. Hodder. Late again, am I? Sorry! Afraid I’m hopeless. But—listen to this:” The paragraph finished, he looked up, emphatic comment on his lips. It died there even as it was born, for the room was empty, the table unset, the curtains at the windows undrawn. In brief, no breakfast was awaiting the minister this morning, and there was no possible explanation visible.
Black may have been an incorrigible student; he was also unquestionably a man of action. He threw book and paper upon the table and ascended the back stairs in long leaps. Had Mrs. Hodder overslept? It was inconceivable. The only other logical supposition then was that she was ill. If she were ill—and alone—of course he couldn’t get to her too soon—hence the leaps. She must be very ill indeed to keep her from preparing the breakfast which, he had discovered, was to her, in the manse, nothing less than a rite.
He knocked upon her door. An unhappy voice instantly replied: “Open the door—just a crack—Mr. Black, and I’ll tell you——”
He opened the door the required crack, and the explanation issued, in unmistakable accents of suffering:
“I tried my best to get down, I did indeed, Mr. Black. But the truth is I can’t move. No—no—” at an exclamation from outside the door denoting sympathy and alarm—“I haven’t got a stroke nor anything like that. It’s nothing more nor less than the lumbago, and I’m humiliated to death to think I got such a thing. I’m subject to it, and that’s the truth, and I never know when it’ll ketch me, but I haven’t had a touch of it since I’ve been with you. I begun to think there was something about the manse—and doing for a minister, maybe—that kept it away. But—it’s caught me good this time, and I don’t know what you’ll do for your breakfast. I think maybe you’d better go over to the——”
But here Black interrupted her. “I’ll get my own breakfast,” he announced firmly, “and yours, too. Stay perfectly quiet till I bring you up a tray. After that we’ll have the doctor in to see you——”
He was interrupted in his turn. “I don’t want any doctor. Doctors can’t do a thing for lumbago—except tell you you got chilled or something, and to keep still and rest up. When the pain goes it goes, and you can’t tell when. Maybe ’long about noon I can get downstairs. I don’t want any breakfast, and if you’ll go over to the——”