The winter’s work had been unusually heavy, and the burden of it had not lightened with the spring. Murchison enjoyed the grappling of difficulties, that keen tautness of the intellect that vibrates to necessity. Strong as he was, the strain of the winter’s work had told on him, and his wife, ever watchful, had seen that he was spending himself too fast. Interminable night work, the rush of the crowded hours, and hurried meals, grind down the toughest constitution. Murchison was not a man to confess easily to exhaustion, possessing the true tenacity of the Saxon, the spirit that will not realize the nearness of defeat. It was only by constant pleading that Catherine persuaded him to consider the wisdom of hiring help. Sleeplessness, the worker’s warning, had troubled her husband as the spring drew on.
One Wednesday evening in May, Murchison came home dead tired and faint for want of food. The day had been rough and stormy, a keen wind whirling the rain in gray sheets across the country, beating the bloom from the apple-trees, and laying Miss Gwen’s proud tulips in red ruin along the borders. Murchison’s visiting-list would have appalled a man of frailer energy and resolution. The climbing of interminable stairs, the feeling of pulses, and all the accurate minutes of the craft, the interviewing of anxious relatives, slave work in the slums! A premature maternity case had complicated the routine. Murchison looked white and almost hunted when he sat down at last to dinner.
Catherine dismissed the maid and waited on him in person.
“Thanks, dear, this is very sweet of you.”
She bent over him and kissed him on the forehead.
“You look tired to death.”
“Not quite that, dear; I have been rushed off my legs and the flesh is human.”
“Crocker will send a suitable man down in a day or two. He can take the club work off your hands. You have finished for to-night?”
He lay back in his chair, the lines of strain smoothed from his face a little, the driven look less evident in his eyes.
“Only a consultation or two, I hope. I shall get to bed early. Ah, coffee, that is good!”