"May I advise you unselfishly to get into a better humor with the world in general, and Dr. Van Anden in particular, before you undertake to talk with a lady again?" Sadie answered in her usual tones of raillery; all her dignity had departed. "Meantime, if you would like to have unmolested possession of this piazza to assist you in tramping off your evil spirit, you shall be indulged. I'm going to the west side. The evening air and I are excellent friends." And with a mocking laugh and bow Sadie departed.
"I wonder," she soliloquized, returning to gravity the moment she was alone, "I wonder what that man has been saying to him now? How unhappy these two gentlemen make themselves. It would be a consolation to know right from wrong. I just wish I believed in everybody as I used to. The idea of this gray-headed minister being a hypocrite! that's absurd. But then the idea of Dr. Van Anden being what he is! Well, it's a queer world. I believe I'll go to bed."
CHAPTER XXIV.
GOD'S WAY.
Be it understood that Dr. Douglass was very much astonished, and not a little disgusted with himself. As he marched defiantly up and down the long piazza he tried to analyze his state of mind. He had always supposed himself to be a man possessed of keen powers of discernment, and yet withal exercising considerable charity toward his erring fellow-men, willing to overlook faults and mistakes, priding himself not a little on the kind and gentlemanly way in which he could meet ruffled human nature of any sort. In fact, he dwelt on a sort of pedestal, from the hight of which he looked calmly and excusingly down on weaker mortals. This, until to-night: now he realized, in a confused, blundering sort of way, that his pedestal had crumbled, or that he had tumbled from its hight, or at least that something new and strange had happened. For instance, what had become of his powers of discernment? Here was this miserable doctor, who had been one of the thorns of his life, whom he had looked down upon as a canting hypocrite. Was he, after all, mistaken? The explanation of to-night looked like it; he had been deceived in that matter which had years ago come between them; he could see it very plainly now. In spite of himself, the doctor's earnest, manly apology would come back and repeat itself to his brain, and demand admiration.
Now Dr. Douglass was honestly amazed at himself, because he was not pleased with this state of things. Why was he not glad to discover that Dr. Van Anden was more of a man than he had ever supposed? This would certainly be in keeping with the character of the courteous, unprejudiced gentleman that he had hitherto considered himself to be; but there was no avoiding the fact that the very thought of Dr. Van Anden was exasperating, more so this evening than ever before. And the more his judgment became convinced that he had blundered, the more vexed did he become.
"Confound everybody!" he exclaimed at length, in utter disgust. "What on earth do I care for the contemptible puppy, that I should waste thought on him. What possessed the fellow to come whining around me to-night, and set me in a whirl of disagreeable thought? I ought to have knocked him down for his insufferable impudence in dragging me out publicly in that meeting." This he said aloud; but something made answer down in his heart: "Oh, it's very silly of you to talk in this way. You know perfectly well that Dr. Van Anden is not a contemptible puppy at all. He is a thoroughly educated, talented physician, a formidable rival, and you know it; and he didn't whine in the least this evening; he made a very manly apology for what was not so very bad after all, and you more than half suspect yourself of admiring him."
"Fiddlesticks!" said Dr. Douglass aloud to all this information, and went off to his room in high dudgeon.
The next two days seemed to be very busy ones to one member of the Ried family. Dr. Douglass sometimes appeared at meal time and sometimes not, but the parlor and the piazza were quite deserted, and even his own room saw little of him. Sadie, when she chanced by accident to meet him on the stairs, stopped to inquire if the village was given over to small-pox, or any other dire disease which required his constant attention; and he answered her in tones short and sharp enough to have been Dr. Van Anden himself:
"It is given over to madness," and moved rapidly on.