The colonel read about the virtually unanimous election of Tracy; the astonishment of the outsiders among the supposed anti-Tracy element; the composed and impenetrable front of the men closest to Keatcham; the reticence and amiability of Tracy himself, in whose mien there could be detected no hint either of hostility or of added cordiality toward the men who had been expected “to drag his bleeding pride in the dust;” finally of the response of the stock-market in a phenomenal rise of Midland.
Keatcham listened with his undecipherable mask of attention; there was not so much as the flicker of an eyelid or the twitch of a muscle. All he said was: “Now, read if there is anything about the endowment of the new fellowships in some medical schools for experimental research.”
“Who gives the endowment?”
“Anonymous. In memory of Maria Warren Keatcham and Helen Bradford Keatcham. Find anything?”
The colonel found a great deal about it. The paper was full of this munificent gift, amounting to many millions of dollars and filling (with most carefully and wisely planned details) an almost absolute vacuum in the American scheme of education. The dignity and fame of the chairs and fellowships endowed were ample to tempt the best ability of the profession. The reader grew enthusiastic as he read.
“Why, it’s immense! And we have always needed it!” he exclaimed.
“There are some letters about it, there,”—Keatcham feebly motioned to a number of neatly opened, neatly assorted letters on a desk. “The doctor said I might have the letters read to me. Miss Smith got him to. For fear of exciting you, the doctors usually let you worry your head off because you don’t know about things. I’ve got to carry a few things through if it kills me. Don’t you see?”
“I see,” said the colonel, “you shall.”
The next time he saw the financier, although only a few days had elapsed, he was much stronger; he was able to breathe comfortably, he spoke with ease, in his ordinary voice; in fine, he looked his old self again, merely thinner and paler. Hardly was the colonel seated before he said without preface—Keatcham never made approaches to his subject, regarding conversational road-making as waste of brains for a busy man:
“Colonel, Miss Smith hasn’t time to be my nurse and secretary both. I won’t have one sent from New York; will you help her out?”