IX
The next fifteen years that carried Jarvis Thornton over from one generation to another passed with placid monotony. He had been decidedly successful. His little round of Boston streets where he doled out mental and physical encouragement, resounded with his praises. Moreover he was known as a "good fellow," an epithet that his warmest friends in Camberton days would not have bestowed on him. He was sleek and solid; well-groomed and rounded, in spite of constant activity, and if his scientific reputation was not more than mediocre, it was enough to give him a lectureship on neurosis in the Camberton Medical School—that necessary mark of approval for a doctor practising in his circle. He spent eight months of each year in Boston; the other four he practised at Wolf Head, a fashionable sea-side place that he had done much to promote. There he had built a roomy cottage on a little point of land, and he had shrewdly invested in the Improvement Company that held the best lots along the shore. He was a comfortable family physician to have about, with a good digestion and a desirable connection; in his few hours of recreation he could be counted on for tennis or yachting or a dinner-party, even with a dance attached.
One step that marked the prosperity of the Thorntons was their new house on Beacon Street, selected with much care in the short block or two of stable neighborhood. When they had moved into this new house, Mrs. Thornton had referred to the past indirectly.
"Why don't you take the sewing-room?"
"What for? I can't entertain patients on the third floor."
"You could use it for a laboratory for your things," Mrs. Thornton suggested vaguely. "I could get along without it."
The doctor smiled.
"Oh, I don't need so much room for that; I haven't over much time these days."
It touched him that she remembered, even remotely, the bearing of that tragic day when her sister had come to announce the Bradley rascality. Soon she began again, this time nearer the heart of the matter.
"Jarvis, you don't mind it so very much, the change you had to make, now."