“I'm not talking nonsense,” said the doctor. “I should be if I pretended there was anything mysterious about that boy's case upstairs. He has had a tremendous experience, say what you will; and it's pulled him down nervously, and every other way. He isn't ready or able to talk of it yet. And he knows as soon as he comes down there'll be forty people waiting to congratulate him and ask him how it was. I don't wonder he fights shy. If he could take his bride by the hand and walk out of the house with her I believe he could start to-morrow; but if there must be a wedding and a lot of fuss”—
Mrs. Creve nodded her head approvingly. The three had risen and stood around the hearth, while the colonel put the brands delicately together with the skill of an old campaigner. The flames breathed again.
“I don't offer this as a professional opinion,” said the doctor. “But a case like his is not a disease, it's a condition”—
“Of the mind, perhaps?” the colonel added significantly. He glanced at Mrs. Creve. “You've thought about that, Doctor? The letter his mother consulted you about?”
“Have you been worrying about that, Colonel? Why didn't you say so? There is nothing in it whatever. Why, it's so plain a case the other way—any one can see where the animus comes from!”
“Now you are getting mysterious, and I'm going to bed!” said Mrs. Creve.
“No; we're coming to the point now,” said the colonel.
“What is it you want Bogardus to do?” asked Doctor Fleming. “Want him to get up and walk out of the house as my patient did at the hospital? Dare say he could do it, but what then? Will you let me speak out, Colonel? No regard to anybody's feelings? Now, this may be gossip, but I think it has a bearing on the case upstairs. I'm going to have it off my mind anyhow! When Mrs. Bogardus came to see the guide,—Packer John,—day before yesterday, was it?—he asked to see her alone. Said he had something particular to say to her about her son. We thought it a queer start, but she was willing to humor him. Well, she wasn't in there above ten minutes, but in that time something passed between them that hit her very hard, no doubt of that! Now, Bogardus holds his tongue like a gentleman as to what happened in the woods. He doesn't mention his comrades' names. And the packer has disappeared; so he can't be questioned. Seems to me a little bird told me there was an attachment between one of those Bowen boys and Miss Christine?
“Now we, who know what brutes brute fear will make of men, are not going to deny that those boys behaved badly. There are some things that can't be acknowledged among men, you know, if there is a hole to crawl out of. Cowardice is one of them. Well then, they lied, that's the whole of it. The little boys lied. They wrote Mrs. Bogardus a long letter from Lemhi,”—the doctor was reviewing now for Mrs. Creve's benefit,—“when they first got out. They probably judged, by the time they had had, that Paul and the packer would never tell their own story. Very well: it couldn't hurt Paul, it might be the saving of them, if they could show that something had queered him in the woods. They asked his mother if she had heard of the effects of altitude upon highly sensitive organizations. They recounted some instances—I will mention them later. One of the boys is a lawyer, isn't he? They are a pair of ingenious youths. Bogardus, they claim, avoided them almost from the time they entered the woods,—almost lived with the packer, behaved like a crank about the shooting. Whereas they had gone there to kill things, he made it a personal matter whenever they pursued this intention in a natural and undisguised manner. He had pangs, like a girl, when the creatures expired. He hated the carcases, the blood—forgive me, Mrs. Creve. In short, he called the whole business butchery.”
“Do you make that a sign of lunacy?” Mrs. Creve flung in.