He was afraid of her then. He imagined fleeing to Leora, and the two of them, frightened little people, comforting each other and hiding from her in snug corners.
But often enough Joyce was his companion, seeking new amusements as surprises for him, and in their son they had a binding pride. He sat watching little John, rejoicing in his strength.
It was in early winter, after she had royally taken the baby South for a fortnight, that Martin escaped for a week with Terry at Birdies’ Rest.
He found Terry tired and a little surly, after months of working absolutely alone. He had constructed beside the home cabin a shanty for laboratory, and a rough stable for the horses which he used in the preparation of his sera. Terry did not, as once he would have, flare into the details of his research, and not till evening, when they smoked before the rough fireplace of the cabin, loafing in chairs made of barrels cushioned with elk skin, could Martin coax him into confidences.
He had been compelled to give up much of his time to mere housework and the production of the sera which paid his expenses. “If you’d only been with me, I could have accomplished something.” But his quinine derivative research had gone on solidly, and he did not regret leaving McGurk. He had found it impossible to work with monkeys; they were too expensive, and too fragile to stand the Vermont winter; but he had contrived a method of using mice infected with pneumococcus and—
“Oh, what’s the use of my telling you this, Slim? You’re not interested, or you’d have been up here at work with me, months ago. You’ve chosen between Joyce and me. All right, but you can’t have both.”
Martin snarled, “I’m very sorry I intruded on you, Wickett,” and slammed out of the cabin. Stumbling through the snow, blundering in darkness against stumps, he knew the agony of his last hour, the hour of failure.
“I’ve lost Terry, now (though I won’t stand his impertinence!). I’ve lost everybody, and I’ve never really had Joyce. I’m completely alone. And I can only half work! I’m through! They’ll never let me get to work again!”
Suddenly, without arguing it out, he knew that he was not going to give up.
He floundered back to the cabin and burst in, crying, “You old grouch, we got to stick together!”