Up The Hill And Over Part 10

"Consider it finished, old man."

"Then what does this, all this"--with a sweeping hand wave--"mean? You cannot seriously intend to stay here?"

"Why not?"

"Your question is absurd."

"No, it isn't. Let it sink in. Why should I not stay here? Examine the facts. I am ordered change, rest, interest, good air--a year at least must elapse before I take up my life again. I must spend that year somewhere. Why not here? It is healthy, high, piney, quiet. I had become utterly tired of my tramping tour. All the good I can get from it I have got. Chance, or whatever you like to call it, leads me to this place. A place which needs a doctor and which this particular doctor needs. There is nothing absurd about it."

The tall man observed his friend in interested silence. Apparently he required time to adjust his mind to the fact that Callandar was in earnest. The badinage he brushed aside.

"Then you really intend--but how about this office? If it is not a torn-fool office, where does the necessary rest come in?"

"Rest doesn't mean idleness. I should die of loafing. As a matter of fact since coming here I have rested as I have not rested for a year.

Look at me! Can't you see it? Or is the renovation not yet visible to the naked eye? Great Scott! I don't need to vegetate in order to rest, do I?"

"No." Another pause ensued during which the gimlet eyes of the professor were busy. Then he seemed suddenly to leap to the heart of the matter.

"And--Lorna?" He asked crisply.

It was the other's turn to be silent. He flushed, looked embarra.s.sed, and drummed with his fingers upon the table.

"Of course I have no right to ask," added Willits primly.

"Yes, you have, old man. Every right. But I knew you had come to ask that question and I didn't like it. The answer is not a flattering one--to me. Nor is it what you expected. To be brief, Lorna won't have me. Refused me--flat!"

Blank surprise portrayed itself upon the professor's face.

"The devil she did!"

"Confess now!" said Callandar, smiling. "You thought I was the one to blame? There was retributive justice in your eye, don't deny it!"

"But, I don't understand! I thought--I was sure--"

"I know. But she doesn't! Not in that way. As a sister--"

"That's enough! I--Accept my apology. I feel very sorry, Henry."

Again that look of embarra.s.sment and guilt upon the doctor's face.

"No. Don't feel sorry! See here, let's be frank about the whole thing.

It was a mistake, from the very beginning, a mistake. Miss Sinnet, Lorna, is a girl in a thousand. But--I did not care for her as a man should care for the woman he makes his wife. Nor did she care for me--wait, I'm not denying that there was a chance. We were very congenial. She might have cared if--if I had cared more greatly."

"Henry Callandar! Are you a cad?"

"No. Merely a man speaking the exact truth. I thought I might risk it, with you. Lorna Sinnet is not a woman to give her love and take a half-love in return. She was more clear-sighted than you or I. We should both have been very miserable."

Elliott Willits sighed. He was a very sensible man. He prided himself upon being devoid of sentiment, but even the most sensible of men, entirely devoid of sentiment, do not like to see their well laid plans go wrong.

"Well," he said, "I was mistaken. Let us say no more about it."

Callandar's eyes softened, melted into misty grey. He laid his arm affectionately over the other's thin shoulders. "Only this," he said.

"That no man ever had a better friend! I know you, old b.u.t.ton-Moulder. I know your ambition to make of me a 's.h.i.+ning b.u.t.ton on the vest of the world!' You thought that Lorna might help. But I failed you there. I'm sorry. That was really the bitterness of the whole thing---to fail you!"

"You owe me nothing," gruffly.

"Only my life--my sanity."

"I shall doubt the latter if you stay here."

"No, you will see it triumphantly vindicated. I tell you I am better already. Look at my hand! Do you remember how it shook the last time I held it out for you. A few more months of this and it will be steady as a rock. Ah! it's good to be feeling fit again! And it isn't only a physical improvement." His smile faded and rising he began to pace the room. "I doubt if even you fully understand the mental depression that was dragging me down. No wonder Lorna would have none of me! Strange, that I cannot understand my own case as I understand the cases of others. Do what I would, I could not heal myself, the soul of the matter persistently escaped me. I was beginning to be as much the victim of an obsession as any of the poor creatures whom I tried to cure."

"You never told me of that."

"No, I was afraid to speak of it. It would have made it seem more real.

But I can tell you now, if you are sure you will not be bored."

"I shall not be bored," said Willits quietly.

CHAPTER VII

"In order to make you understand, I'll have to go back," said the doctor musingly, "a long way back. Some of the story you already know, but now I want you to know it all. But first--when you found me in that hospital, a useless bit of human wreckage, and forced me back into life with your scorn of a coward and your cutting words, what did you think?

What did I tell you? It is all hazy to me."

"You told me very little. It was plain enough. You had come a bad cropper. Some girl, I gathered. You had lost her, you blamed yourself.

You talked a great deal of nonsense. I inferred--the usual thing!"

"You were mistaken. It was at once better and worse than that. But let's begin at the beginning. My father was a fairly wealthy man--but a dreamer. He made his money by a clever invention and lost it by an investment little short of idiotic. Like many unpractical men he had rather fancied himself as a man of business and the disillusion killed him. He--shot himself. My mother, my sister and myself were left, with nothing save a small sum in the bank and the deed of the modest house we lived in. Adela was twenty-one and I was nineteen. We sold the house, moved into rooms; Adela learned shorthand and went into an office. I wanted to do the same. But mother was adamant. I must finish my college course and take my degree; she and Adela could manage until I could make it up to them later. It was hard, but it seemed the only sensible thing to do--

"I faced the task of working my way through college with a thankful heart, for though I pretended that I did not care, it would have been a terrible thing to have given up my life's ambition. The thought of Adela trudging to the office hurt--it was the touch of the spur. I needn't tell you, you can guess how I worked! People were kind. One summer, old Doctor Inglis, whose amiable hobby it was to help young medical students, engaged me for the holidays as his chauffeur and general helper at a wage which would see me through my next term. It seemed an unusual piece of luck, for he lived only twenty miles from my mother's home and an electric tram connected the towns. One night I went with Adela to a Church Social--of all places--and that is where the story really begins, for it was at the Social that I met Molly Weston. It seemed the most casual of all accidents, for you can imagine that I did not frequent churches in those days, and Molly, too, had come there by chance. She was dressed in pink, her cheeks were pink, she wore a pink rose in her hair. She was the prettiest little fairy that ever smiled and pouted her way into a boy's heart. Before I left her I was madly in love--a boy's first headlong pa.s.sion. Adela was amazed, teased me in her elderly sister way but never for a moment took it seriously. Molly was a mere bird of pa.s.sage, an American girl staying with friends for a brief time, therefore my infatuation was a humorous thing. But it was not so simple as that. Molly stayed on, Dr. Inglis was indulgent, we met continually. If her friends knew of it they did not care. It was just a flirtation of their pretty guest's. As a serious factor I was quite beneath the horizon, a young fellow working his way through college, and with, later on, a mother and sister to support.

"Molly understood the situation. At least she knew all the facts. I doubt if she ever understood them. She was one of those helpless, clinging girls who never seem to understand anything clearly. I remember well how I used to agonise in explanation, trying to make her see our difficulties and to face them with me. But when I had talked myself into helpless silence she would ruffle my hair and say, 'But you really do love me, don't you, Harry?' or 'I don't care what we have to do, so long as mother doesn't know.'

"I soon found out that her one strong emotion was fear of her mother.

She was fond of her but she feared her as weak natures fear the strong, especially when bound to them by ties of blood. I was allowed to see her photograph--the picture of a grim hard face instinct with an almost terrible strength. No wonder my pretty Molly was her slave. One would have deemed it impossible that they were mother and daughter. Molly, it appears, was like her father, and he, poor man, had been long dead.

Molly would do anything, promise anything, if only her mother might not know. She had not the faintest scruple in deceiving her, but this I laid, and still lay, to the strength of her love for me.

"She did love me. She must have loved me--else how could her timid nature have taken the risk it did?

"Summer fled by like a flash. Molly stayed with her friends as long as she could find an excuse and then went on for a brief week in Toronto.

It was the week, of course, that I returned to college. We hoped that she could extend her stay, but her mother wrote 'Come home,' and there was no appeal from that. Then I did a desperate thing. Without Molly's knowledge I wrote to her mother telling her that I loved her daughter and begging, as a man begs for his life, to be allowed to ask her to wait for me. The letter was a lie in that it concealed the fact that my love was already confessed but I felt it necessary to s.h.i.+eld Molly. I received no answer to the letter, but Molly received a telegram, 'Come home at once.'

"I can leave you to imagine the scene--my despair, Molly's tears! Never for an instant did she dream of disobeying and I--I felt that if she went I should lose her forever.