“‘My dear doctor,’” he read, “‘if you love the doctor like I think you love him, come; he needs you. He is sick, and he looks like he wanted to die. There ain’t nobody else. Please come. Excuse spelling and things and come; we need you. Maria.’”
He caught the next steamer from Liverpool.
CHAPTER XIX
WILL POWER
The old man sat in the same shabby chair, in the same little Eighth Avenue apartment where he had lived ten months before. He was dreaming again, although his eyes were open, and his dreams were not the old dreams of happy confidence.
He looked to be a broken man as he sat there, his mind and body both inert, in a half trance, half doze. On the table beside him still stood his electric apparatus, and on the mantel the little Dutch clock still ticked away soberly.
Men are born and die. Hearts are made glad and hearts are broken, fame comes and disgrace, but time goes on, unfaltering. Ten thousand years ago men fought for their brief moment of life, just as they fight to-day, just as they must ten thousand years from now; the joys that mean so much to us, the griefs that seem to fill the universe with sorrow blend in that endless procession of to-morrows into one little grain of the world’s experience.
Through the open window the harsh music of a street piano penetrated discordantly, and Maria, who was quietly working about the dining-room, looked up.
“Bother the old thing! They always make him nervous!” She crossed the room and closed the window, moving so as not to disturb the old man. The music came fainter now, and the time changed abruptly to a waltz; the swing of it got into her head, and because she was young, and full of life and joy, she forgot for a moment the silent, grief-stricken figure so near to her, and she waltzed back to the dining-room, humming to herself. It was a fine thing to be alive, she thought, and to be of real use to this lonely man; he had done much for her, but now she felt that she was paying some of her debt to him of gratitude. Without her what would become of him? He was as helpless as a child and without a child’s real desire to live. She busily arranged some slices of bread and butter on a plate, and placing it on a tray with a pot of freshly made tea, she put it down on the dining-room table, and stepping into the front room, stood by the Doctor’s chair.
“Your tea is ready, Doctor.”