Doctor Zay

VI.

EAST SHERMAN, as Mrs. Butterwell had not untruthfully observed, was a place lacking in “ society.” The people were miserably poor, and proportionally ignorant, — foreigners, largely : French and Irish lumbermen, and householders of the lesser sort, who raised cabbages, aspired to potatoes, and supported a theory, if not their families, — the theory being that they were farmers.

There are advantages in remoteness, solitude, and unlimited opportunity to appreciate nature, but advanced sanitary conditions are not, even in the State of Maine, necessarily among them. East Sherman raged with scarlet fever and diphtheria through that long July, and Doctor Zay had her expressive hands full. She was busy day and night. The exhausting rides of the country physician extended themselves through the neighboring towns, to disheartening lengths. Old Oak relieved the gray pony now regularly every day. The office bell rang to the verge of confusion. Handy, plunged in gloom, rolled out the phaeton at midnight, or waited vainly, deep through the late summer twilights, for the “ blessedest, best sound ” of low wheels returning down the lonely road. Handy had one spot in the back yard, by the wood-pile, where he stood to exercise what might he called his mind upon the medical and moral subjects connected with his calling. He dug his foot — the right one always, and he took off his shoe for the purpose — spirally into the sawdust, a process not widely understood for its tendency to develop thought, and retired deeper than usual into his hats. He had two. The felt one was the bigger ; he wore it altogether during the prevalence of the epidemic. Handy regarded the scarlet fever as a serious infliction, chiefly on horses, not to mention indirectly persons by occupation devoted to equine interests. He made unsuccessful attempts to explain this scientific theory to the doctor ; but found her the slave of established medical prejudices, not predisposing one to accept popular discoveries. When Handy was especially aggrieved, he alluded to his injury as “ an Ananias ’n’ Sapphiry shame.” No one had ever traced the etymological derivation of this figure.

One evening, as the clock was stinking eight, Handy, having reached that depth of spiral action on the sawdust heap which expressed resignation, not as yet hope, expectation, or disappointment, and still as far from the pessimistic as it was from the optimistic view of life, found himself, like many a better and wiser soul that in facing duty wrests content from the teeth of despair, suddenly plunged into undreamed-of but plainly deserved) delight.

The doctor was coming home.

“ Some of ’em’s better,” observed Handy, wriggling out of the sawdust, and into his shoe, an artistic attitude which joggled his hat an inch or so lower than usual over his nose. “Or some of ’em’s dead. Somebody ’s cured. Or somebody’s killed. I don’t care which. Well, Doctor ? ”

“ Don’t water her for thirty-five minutes,” said the doctor, throwing the reins over the dasher. “ She’s too warm.”

“ Gointerwanteragin ? ” asked Handy, in one agonized breath.

“ Not to-night. Put her up. Have you fed Old Oak ? Very well. That’s all.”

“ Bobailey was after you ’safternoon. The Baileybahyswuss. ’Relse it’s better. I forget. It’s one or t’other. It always is one or t’other,” added Handy in an aggrieved tone. “ Haintgoterseeitaginaveyer ?”

The doctor did not answer Handy. If she had been a man, one would have said she strode by him into the house. As it was, she had a long, nervous, absorbed step, that Handy knew very well. He and the gray pony looked at each other with a confidential air through the twilight of the deserted back yard.

“ It’s dead,” said Handy, “ ain’t it ? ” He stroked the pony’s chin. The horse returned the boy’s gaze with soft, tired eyes, and seemed to nod.

“I thought so,” said Handy. “ You needn’t tell me you ain’t glad of it. Got your supper an hour sooner. Accommodatinbaby warntit ? ”

He leaned his face against the pony’s, and whistled, as he led her to her stall, a polka made popular in Maine by the Sherman Brass Baud. The horse and the boy went gayly into the barn together, cheek to cheek, as if they both belonged there. Suddenly Handy appeared in the barn door, and made a dive (chiefly over the flower beds) after the doctor’s retreating figure.

“Oh, I say, Doctor! I forgot! Hewantsyer, mostpartiklertoo. I’ve got too much to do to keep rememberin’ him,” said Handy, with a look of disgust.

“ What is the matter, Handy ? ” The doctor stopped, not without a touch of annoyance.

“ Why, the fellar in the house. He’s wuss, too. They ’re all wuss to-day,” cried Handy, with professional glee.

“ It’s one of our days. It’s pretty much all wussuess. We’ve got our hands full, I tell yer, younmenthehosses.”

“But I went to see Mr. Yorke this morning,” said Doctor Zay, rather to herself than to Handy. She pushed off her hat, and passed her hand over her forehead wearily. There was an irritable, almost a womanish accent in her voice ; as if she would have said, “ What shall I do ? ” or, possibly, would have cried a little, if she had not been ashamed to. But only Handy heard her, and the gray pony, neighing through the barn door for her supper. Both of them discriminated finely, up to a certain point, in the doctor’s tones; but she had passed that point.

“ Can’t help that,” said Handy ; “ yervegotergo. He said so.”

She bathed, and changed her dress, and took her supper, before she obeyed Mr. Yorke’s order; but she obeyed it. He was on the lounge in his room, in the familiar position, and the lamp was in the entry; she came through the half-light, towards him, against the Rembrandt-like background. He watched her in silence.

“ Well ? ” she said, stopping before him. She made no movement to sit down.

“ Why, Doctor, you ’re cross ! ” said the young man, with an indefinably masculine touch in his tone; half frolic, half tenderness, as if he sported with her retreat, and put it aside as something not important to the case, or even as a thing which it might be in his power to overcome, if he chose.

“ Handy said you were worse, and needed me,” replied the doctor, gravely. Plainly, she was not a woman to be meshed by these little nets.

“I did not tell Handy I was worse. But I do need you.”

“So do many other people. If there are no new symptoms, Mr. Yorke ” —

“ Symptoms ! ” breathed the patient, all but inaudibly. “ There are new symptoms every day.”

She made a nonchalant little gesture with one hand.

“ If that is all,” — there was a very fine emphasis, too light to bear italics, too clear to pass unnoticed, upon the “that,” “you will excuse me, to-night. I am — tired.”

“ Bring the light, please,” said Yorke, with a change of manner. “ No, sit down. I can do it myself. Take the easy-chair. No, take the lounge. I can sit up a few minutes perfectly well. I won’t keep you more than a few minutes. Please! Why not? Where’s the harm ? How tired — how tired you are ! ”

He had hobbled over, and brought the lamp : it was a little lantern, that he had made to swing upon bis arm,—one of the contrivances of convalescence, the offspring of necessity, like all the great inventions of history ; it had a Japanese paper shade. He stood leaning upon his crutches, looking down. She had silently taken the empty chair.

Doctor Zay had borne her epidemic superbly. Her bloom had subsided a little, it is true, but only enough to increase the delicacy rather than detract from the vigor of her strong face. He had all along perceived in her a person practically supported by what we are accustomed to call, with the most imperfect apprehension of the phrase, a scientific passion. Against the strain of exhausted sympathy she had set the muscle of intellectual conquest. It could not be denied that in a certain sense the doctor enjoyed her terrible work. She gave out of herself, as if she possessed the life everlasting before her time. She had bread to eat that he knew not of. He could not think of her as sinking, dejected, in need, ahungered. Her splendid health was like a God to her. She leaned against her own physical strength, as another woman might lean upon a man’s. She had the repose of her full mental activity. She had her dangerous and sacred feminine nerve under magnificent training. It was her servant, not her tyrant; her wealth, not her poverty; the source of her power, not the exponent of her weakness. She moved on her straight and narrow way between life and death, where one hysteric moment would bo fatal, with a glorious poise. The young man acknowledged from the bottom of his heart that she was a balanced and beautiful creature. He had read of such women. He had never seen one.

It was not without a thrill of reverence, amounting almost to awe, that he perceived, when he swung his fantastic little lantern full in her face, that she was undergoing some intense emotion, which, in almost any woman that he knew, would have weakened itself in vehement vocal expression.

“ I had a letter from my mother,” he began, “ and I thought - it was about you — I had told her at last — and it was such a pleasant letter. I meant to read it to you. She sends a long message to you. I really am not such a brute as I seem. I thought perhaps it would amuse you. Doctor Zay, I had no more idea you were so overworked than I had that you were ” — He broke off.

“ I never saw you look so ! ” he murmured, with rebellious, almost affectionate anxiety. “ It’s not easy, when you’ve done so much for him, for a man to look on, like a woman, this way. Is n’t there anything I can do ? If yon would stay a -while, I could read to you. We will send for Mrs. Butterwell, if you would rather. I could do something, I know I could ! Just let me try.”

“ You cannot help me,” she said, gently enough. “ Nobody can. I have lost a patient.”

Yorke was on the point of crying, “ Is that all ? ” but saved himself in time, and oidy said,—

“ Who is it ? ”

“ The little Bailey baby. It was doing so well, — out of danger. The mother took it over to a neighbor’s. You cannot conceive the ignorance and recklessness that we have to manage. She took the child out, like an express bundle, rolled in her shawl. Coming home, it got wet in that shower. I had ceased to visit there every day ; they did not send at once, — I suppose every doctor makes these excuses for himself; what would become of us, if we could n’t? — but when I got there, I could not do anything. The little thing died at half past seven.”

She sat looking straight before her at the Japanese lantern. Yrorke felt that the personality of the red and purple paper men on it came as near her at that moment as his. He could not think of anything to say which would not present the edge of an intrusion upon an experience so far without the pale of his own. The young man’s imagination was well stocked with comfortable material for the lesser sympathies. If she had lost a steamer to Liverpool, or a ticket for a Christmas oratorio, or a picture bidden for in the last great art craze, he could have comforted her. She had lost only a miserable child out of a beggarly home. What could he say ?

“ I don’t believe every baby in Sherman is worth your looking like that! ” he cried, with an impulse whose only virtue lay in its honesty. He really perceived that something more than scientific pride was hurt in Doctor Zay. He felt, with a kind of senseless triumph, which he put aside to analyze by and by, that he had found the woman in the doctor.

“ It was a dear little thing,” she said, softly, “ and fond of me. I had always taken care of it, ever since it was born. It was just beginning to talk. It was n’t a big, noisy baby, like the rest of the family. It is terrible that a child should die, — terrible ! It ought never to happen. There is no excuse for it. I can never be reconciled to it! ”

She rose impetuously, and left him without another word. The patient looked after her. She had forgotten him. He and the paper men turned and regarded each other. It was not for them to help her in her trouble. She went across the entry, and on into her own rooms, and he heard the door shut. Only one patient rang the office bell that night. He was glad she was left to herself. Mr. and Mrs. Butterwell came in. They, too, were much moved by the doctor’s grief. They all sat together in the sick-room, and mourned about that baby as if it had been one of the family.

“It ’s always just so,” said Mrs. Butterwell, wiping her eyes. " She has n’t lost but two patients since she came to Sherman, — except old Father Foxy, that nobody counts; for the Lord himself could n’t have saved him,— eightyseven, and drunk since he was seventeen. The Sherman Temperance Lodge used him for a warning in good and regular standing, till he got to be about fifty, he kept such excellent health ; and sixty, then they fought shy of him; and seventy, but did n’t die ; and when be came to be eighty they gave him up as a bad argument. But there ! It kills Doctor Zay to lose a patient. I never saw anybody mind anything so. She acts as if she’d murdered ’em. You ’ll see ! She ’ll be all but down sick over this. She’d better take it as a blessin’. I would. Those Baileys have got seven now, and poor as Job’s Monday dinners. I tell you, Providence knows what he’s about, if folks don’t. He will drown the extra kittens, when he can. I say he ought to be thanked to mercy for it. But we never do. We up and blame him, the more fools we ! ”

“ Why, Sar-ah!" said Mr. Butterwell, placidly.

Upon the sill of the open window, during the unwonted domestic excitement of that summer evening, a felt hat with a boy under it had sympathetically and prudently reposed. Nobody minded Handy. He looked in and out unnoticed, with wide-apart, dumb eyes, like the pony. Sometimes Yorke wondered dimly if anybody had fed and watered him; but even that was an intellectual effort disproportionate to the proposition. It was a long time since the doctor had lost a patient. Handy regarded it as an epoch in human history. He felt that the event reflected importance upon himself, who might be said to have had a share in the glory of the circumstance. He felt above the company of the pony and Old Oak that night; and though the bosom of the family, as expressed by the window-sill, was a little hard, there is a compensatory pleasure in finding one’s social level. Handy remained there, after Mr. and Mrs. Butterwell had gone. It seemed to him that this lame gentleman encroached somewhat upon his (Handy’s) rights in exhibiting so much interest in that dead baby. That was a professional matter mainly between himself and the doctor.

Mr. Yorke, left alone, after a few moments’ thought, bent his head upon the top of his crutch, sitting quite still. The red and purple light of the Japanese gentlemen on the little lantern, flashed and defined his profile. Handy vaguely resented its expression. The old felt hat slipped softly from the window-sill, and betook itself confidently to the doctor’s side of the house. The office door was open to the warm night. Handy peeped. He peeped without a qualm. He regarded it as one of his privileges to follow the doctor’s private career. Who had as good a right ?

Doctor Zay was sitting by her office table. A half-open drawer showed surgical instruments. Rows of vials exhibited mysteries of white pellets and powders. Medical books lay open underneath her hat and gloves, which she had tossed down on coming in. But Handy regarded these points with the apathy of familiarity. The environment did not interest this scientific child. Doctor Zay, who drove the fastest horse in Sherman, who always knew by an awful omniscience whether you missed a pailful or shook the oat-measure ; Doctor Zay, who had got old Doctor Adoniram’s practice half away from him; Handy’s Doctor Zay, was bent and bowed over her office table, her face crushed into her resolute hands, as if she had been stricken down by a power that no man could see.

If Handy’s education had progressed a little farther he would have called this a phenomenon. As it was, he could only say, —

“ It’s a thunderin’ Ananias ’n’ Sapphiry shame. Nothin’ but a Bailey baby ! ”

It occurred to Handy, as he walked sadly away, over the heavy wet heads of the clover-tops, back to the sawdust heap by the wood-pile, that perhaps he had peeped as far for that one night as the perquisites of his calling allowed.

“ Two of ’em,” reflected Handy.

“ Heads down, like unlucky coppers. One on his crutch. T’other on her learnin’. Bobailey ’n’ all his tribe ain’t wuth it.”

Handy was confusedly jealous of something. He imagined it was Bob Bailey.

I he doctor was called out that night to see a poor girl, three miles away.

Handy accompanied her. As they drove through the chilly dawn alone together, Handy’s emotions waxed mighty within him.

“ Doctor ? ” he said, in a pleasant, confidential way.

“Well, Handy ? ”

“ Is Mr. Yorke wuss ? ”

“ Why, no, Handy.”

“ Ain’t wrong in his head or nothin’, is he ? ”

“ Oh, no, Handy.”

“ Well. I did n’t know. While you was takin’ on so about the Bailey baby, he flopped over on them Bangor crutches, and says he, ‘ Poor girl ! ’ He says it out loud. I heern him. Now, you know, you ain't a girl; you ’re a doctor. I thought may be he was a mite loony, and we’d ought to look after him. Do you keep any medicine for loons, Doctor ? ”

She made her call, as usual, the next morning ; a very short one. Yorke had hoped he knew not what, he knew not why, from it; she left him only his powders and his disappointment. It was impossible to draw her within telescopic sweep of a personality. She had seemed near to him in that outburst of grief, last night, as if some kindly or friendly impulse in her reached out its hands to him; precisely by the width of that impulse was she now removed. He had his day’s orders from his doctor ; nothing more. She looked, as Mrs. Butter well had prophesied, really ill. He thought of her; he thought of her till he was ashamed to think how long it was since he had thought of anything else. The terrible leisure of invalidism gaped, a gulf, and filled itself with her. If he could have arisen like a man, and bridged it, or like a hero, and leaped into it, she would never, he said to himself doggedly, have this exquisite advantage over him. He lay there like a woman, reduced from activity to endurance, from resolve to patience, while she amassed her importance to him, — how idly ! — like gold that she gave herself no trouble to count.

He was surprised that night at receiving a second visit; but his momentary gratification quickly spent itself. Her errand was to inform him that she should not come again.

“ I do not understand you, Doctor Lloyd,”said the young man, with an effort at composure ; his breath shortened, and he felt dizzy and faint.

“ Oh, I mean, if you are able, won’t you come to the office ? ” she answered wearily. “ I am preoccupied, and begin wrong end foremost. I do not mean to neglect you. But I really think you able to get around to my door. The air and exercise will be beneficial to you. There is no reason for my coming to you so often. You can take the morning hour, from eight to nine, or the one at noon, as you prefer.”

She gave that slight and fine emphasis of hers to the word “ reason.”

“ This means that I am not to see you — here — any longer ? ”

“ Not unless it is necessary.”

“ Suppose I find it necessary, Doctor Lloyd ? ”

“I must be the judge of that, Mr. Yorke.”

“ Very well,” said Yorke, after a moment’s thought, “ I will come to your office to-morrow.”

He went. He stumped around on the Bangor crutches over the piazza to the office door, which set forth the legend “ Z. A. Lloyd, M. D.,” in modest little letters of gray and gold. The reception-room was partly full. Five or six women sat there, and a child or two; one man, a lumberman, who said Puella said she wanted more powders for that crookedness in her mind. Another man came, while Yorke waited, with what he called an “order” for an immediate call on his wife. Doctor Zay nodded to Yorke pleasantly when she came out, but did not speak. He perceived that he was to bide his turn, like any other patient. The doctor said. “ Next ? ” as if they had been children at school. She was abstracted and pale. She had that look of application which failed of being beautiful. The reception-room was rather pleasant. It was clear that the young lady furnished her own part of the house. Yorke took in an idle, luxurious sense of familiar photographs and even a high-art carpet. There were flowers all over the room, and a table covered with books and periodicals for the patients. Some of the women were reading. He took up yesterday’s Boston Advertiser, and hid his amusement, if not his embarrassment, behind it.

Presently he realized that they had all gone. Doctor Zay stood waiting for him, gravely. He followed her into the office ; a tiny room, hardly more than a generous closet. She shut the door, and motioned him to a chair. She took her own at the desk where the vials were. Her ledgers and note-book, and one or two volumes of Materia Medica, were lying about. The office, he saw at once, was lined from floor to ceiling with bookcases, all full. The doctor waited a moment, as if for him to begin his daily report. He did not. She raised her eyes quickly to his face, and that sensitive change he liked so much crossed her own. Then, for the first time, he saw signs of embarrassment in her. She colored a little, and he smiled.

“ Really, Doctor,” he said, “ do you think this is an improvement ? ”

She hesitated before she answered: “ Really, I — don’t know.”

“ Keeping me here among all those ladies, — the only fellow, except Puella’s. He did n’t stay by me long. I think, for my own part, it was much better in my room.”

“ Perhaps it was,” she admitted, “but” —

“ But you don’t want to come any longer ? ”

“ Frankly, Mr. Yorke, no.”

“ Then you sha’n’t. I won’t be more disagreeable than I must. I will come to the office, as you wish. But why cannot I have a separate hour, after the women are gone ? It seems to me it would be quite as pleasant, and much less” — he, too, hesitated before adding, “ noticeable.”

“ I hardly know,” said Doctor Zay, knitting her brows. “ There are no precedents, exactly.” He had never seen her irresolute before. She looked fatigued and annoyed. “ There are new questions constantly arising,” she went on, “ for a woman in my position. One ceases to be an individual. One acts for the whole, — for the sex, for a cause, for a future. We are not quite free, like other people, in little perplexities. It is what Paul said about no man’s living to himself. We pay a price for our privilege. I suppose everything in this world renders its cost, but nothing so heavily, nothing so relentlessly, as an unswerving purpose in a woman. Nothing is more expensive than sustained usefulness, — or what one tries to make such. I hate to think of petty things ! ” she added, with some fire.

“ Then don’t ! ” urged the young man. “ I cannot see the need of it, in a case like yours. You are an antidote to pettiness. You eat it out, like a swift and beautiful vitriol. You would make us all ashamed of it. It cannot exist where you are. I felt that in you the first time I saw7 you. And pretense, — I had got so tired of pretense. You went on your way so simply. You were so thorough. I said, There is a trained woman. She is honest all through. She has the modesty of knowledge. I thought all this while you were tying that artery, before I fainted. What a faint that was ! ”

“You overestimate me, Mr. Yorke,” said the doctor, rather distantly. And yet be was sure that he had not displeased her.

“ I have sometimes wondered,” he went on, with an awkward courage, “what you thought of me, the first time you saw me. I dare say you could n’t remember. I don’t presume, believe me, that it was of so much importance.”

“ Oh, yes, I remember perfectly,” said Doctor Zay, laughing. “ I thought, Concussion and dislocation ! Possibly a fine compound fracture. I have never had a compound fracture. I’ve always wanted one.”

“ And I have always thought, always maintained, that the scientific temperament is the hardest among civilized types. ‘ He broke himself against that flint,’I heard said once of a sensitive man, in a miserable instance, — it happened to be a marriage, but that does n’t affect the point. One comes upon such a nature as against the glacial period: it solidifies against you ; it never bends nor shatters ” —

“ Nor melts ? ” she asked, smiling (he could see) out of pure mischief.

“ In the course of ages, I suppose. Too late to be of practical service. One freezes in the process.”

“ The best thing that could happen! ” she said quickly.

A white light darted over the young man’s face, and passed. He was a remarkably fine-looking fellow in these swift pallors. He shook himself, as if to shake his weakness off.

“ Come, Doctor,” he said, lightly enough. “ Tell me ! Was that all you thought when I fell into your remorseless hands ? ”

“ No,” she said gravely and gently. “ I thought — His mother would not know him.”

“ Was I so hideous ?”

“Yes, you were badly mangled.”

“ Well, I am even with you. That first time you touched me, I thought I was in hell.”

“ Yes, sir ; you made the fact quite evident, particularly when I set the ankle.”

“ And now,” he said, leaning his head back in the office chair, and dreamily regarding her across the little distance that separated them, — “ now I am in ” —

The doctor looked at her watch, and moved back her chair.

“ I have spent fifteen minutes on you ! ” she said, in a tone of vexation too genuine to be mistaken by the blindest feeling for a freak of feminine coyness. “ So long out of this short morning ! And I have thirty-five calls to make before supper. Continue the remedy that you have, till to-morrow. Then call on me again, — here. Come at noon ; the office will not be so full, then. You may be a little late, if you like. You may come to me twice a week, now, for an office call. If you need extra attention, — but I do not think you will, — I will call on you, as formerly. You must excuse me now.”

“Twice a week!” cried the patient. She made him no answer, rang her bell for Handy, and, putting on her feathered hat, walked rapidly away.

Yorke sat in the office a few minutes where she had left him ; he looked confusedly about. It seemed to him that he was taking her up in new and unknown conditions, like the second volume of a novel. He turned the leaves with a dull uneasiness. Something in him urged, “Throw the book down !” He searched his soul for power to arise and do so. He found there only a great compulsion, as silent and as terrible as the thread in the hand of Lachesis, which he knew would bind him down to read on to the end.

VII.

He did not go at noon. It occurred to him in the morning that he was well enough to wait till the evening office. He dreamed away his day on the piazza, watching her as she went and came ; lost in admiration of his own self-restraint, and in a nebulous impression that it was time to take matters into a more strictly masculine control.

She did not come home till eight o’clock. The July twilight was already deepening down. Handy came up from the depths of the sawdust-heap, and retired from public life with Old Oak; the doctor went to her supper; and Yorke got around into the receptionroom, and waited for her in the dusk. No other patients were there. Roses were in the room somewhere, — he could not see them. The folds of the long muslin curtains drifted in the warm wind. The rows of books in the office, seen through the open door, looked fuller for the darkness. Beyond them, another door led into the doctor’s private parlor. lie had heard Mrs. Butterwell say that her lodger had three rooms below (“ two and a half,” Mrs. Butterwell called them), and one up-stairs. This other door was half open, swinging idly on its hinges in the perfumed air. He sat and watched it till she came in. It did not open ; it would not shut.

She did not see him at first, and he admired the fine unconsciousness of her movements as she crossed the rooms. She lighted her German student lamp on the office table, and, pulling a formidable professional book towards her, without a moment’s irresolution, plunged into its contents with the headlong dash which only an absorbing intellectual passion gives. She leaned her head upon her hand, with her controlled profile towards him, while she read. He contrasted this little act cruelly with his invalid reveries.

A woman who says, “ My life is too full to have need of you,” will be met by the historic masculine privilege of reply, “ You take the trouble to mention it. I reserve the benefit of the doubt.” Doctor Zay took the trouble to mention nothing.

The young man had seen for himself what all the little feminine protest in the world could never have made patent to his imagination: a woman absorbed in her business, to whom a man must be the accident, not the substance, of thought.

He rose at once, and made her aware of his presence. She expressed the slight, superficial surprise of a preoccupied person, whose life brings her in constant contact with the unexpected. She met him very cordially. He vaguely felt that she approved of him for staying away half a day longer than was necessary. He limped over to the office chair. She shut the door, and he surrendered himself to the brief medical consultation. She found it necessary to examine the injured foot, upon which she laid for a moment her vital, healing touch.

“ You would get on much faster if this foot could be properly treated every day, Mr. Yorke. There is not a massage rubber short of Bangor. You need one now. You have reached the stage where I should recommend it decidedly. I am sorry.”

Yorke made no reply ; he dared not, he was so sure that he should say something unexpected to himself and annoying to her ; and she brought the consultation to an end. As he went away she told him that she desired him to ride the next day. His ankle she thought, would bear the motion, — one of the last experiments before walking, — and he would have a driver, of course. She gave the order lightly, the means by which it was to be obeyed not being the physician’s concern.

“ I should like it, of all things,” said Yorke, impulsively, “ if I may. But it is so dull with a driver, and Mr. Butterwell is going to Bangor, you know, for several days. I don’t doubt he would offer to take me, if he were here. I wish ” —

“ Why, I suppose I might take you,” said Doctor Zay, after a scarcely" perceptible pause. “ I never thought of it! ”

“ I did n’t suppose you did,” said Yorke, laughing ; “ but I don’t see why I should n’t go, —if you won’t let me bore you, that is, — do you ? ”

“ Certainly not. I will take you with pleasure. I often take patients in the summer. It is stupid waiting. Yon won’t find it an exciting process, I warn you. But it will be better for you than moping on the piazza. You have done enough of that.”

“ Quite enough, I think,” said Yorke, looking fully into her upraised eyes.

“ Persistent pallor ! ” said the doctor, in a meditative tone. “ Tendency to fixed ideas. This accords with other symptoms I have noted. I must look it up carefully ; but I feel pretty sure I shall give you ” — her face lighted with the fervor of the symptomatologist — “ I shall give you carbo vegetabUis ! ” They rode. They rode three hours through the warmth and scent of roadside things, while the summer morning waxed indolently towards the splendid noon. Yorke bore the experiment with remarkable success. The doctor attributed this to the carbo vegetabilis.

She chatted cordially with him, as they drove over the long, solitary intervals that separated one call from another ; or she came from a grave case to sit in the phaeton silent and distrait, and mind him no more than if he had been Handy ; or a patient was responding to a difficult diagnosis or a pet theory, and she radiated her happiness upon him. He did not try to talk much. He absorbed her idly, as he did returning life and the throbbing day. He had never been beside her for so long before. He thought of that first ride through the Maine forest, and said dreamily, —

“ It seems like a modern magazine serial that I should be driving with the caryatid. But I have not overtaken Atalanta. There is the Greek tragedy. No, don’t turn to your note-book. I am not delirious — yet. You need not” — " Need not what, sir ? ”

“ Need not change the remedy. It works well.”

“ Yon speak in figures,” said the woman of science, curtly. “ I am a person of facts. I fail to follow you.”

They called at those Baileys’ who had become historic during the scarlet fever, and Yorke looked about him with vague reminiscences. The woman came to the door to welcome the doctor, extending her lean arm.

“ There ! It’s the sign-post woman ! ” cried Yorke. “ We owe it all to her.”

“ You are strangling in allegory, again. It is a case of asphyxia,” said the doctor, handing him the blue reins.

“ I mean, we owe it to her that I ever got to Sherman, — a precious sort of debt you think it! Your eyes laugh loud enough to be heard in Bangor. You might spare a shattered man so innocent a delusion. Science would be none the less exact for it. Hang — no, bless Mrs. Bailey ! It was she who put me up to— By the way, Doctor, did you drop it by accident, or did you mean ” —

“ How’s that leg of Bob’s ? ” asked the doctor, in her happy soprano. She was half-way up the dreary front yard. The children ran to meet her, — a forlorn little batch, —and the woman clung to her with an uncouth, pathetic gesture, half reverence, half fearless love. Mrs. Bailey never thought of paying a doctor’s bill, but she wore new mourning for her baby. Her affection was none the less genuine for that. Doctor Zay did not grudge her the sleazy alpaca.

There was a sacredness to the physician beyond the pale of enlightened social science, in the clasp of those scraggy black arms. Mrs. Bailey might outrage political economy, and retard the millennium by becoming a pauper ; but she trusted her doctor, and had lost her baby.

Yorke knew little about people of this sort; he had left the lower orders of society to his mother, with a dim sense of their usefulness in providing an outlet for her superfluous sympathies. Boston women must always have an outlet. His mother kept herself supplied with several. He thought, as he sat in the phaeton waiting for this unusual young lady to exchange the society of the Baileys for his own, that she possessed a power which was far more masculine than feminine, of absorption in the immediate task. He thought it would go hard with a man to haunt her. She would shake him off for what she called objects in life, as a fine spaniel shakes off the drops after a plunge into the sea ; earth is his element, after all.

Bob Bailey had cut one of the femoral muscles on a mowing-machine. The doctor etherized him, and sewed the leg up, enthusiastically. The odor of the ether permeated the fresh morning, and Yorke sickened over it in the phaeton. She came out presently, with that cool, scientific eye which stimulated more than it defied him.

“ I had forgotten you were here! ” she said, as she took the reins. “ Are you tired waiting ? ”

“ I am not patient by nature, but may become so by grace. I am cherishing a host of feminine virtues,” replied Yorke, stretching his big dimensions in the little carriage. “ I shall make rather a superior woman by the time I get well. Like the man who had a damp cellar : it was good for nothing else, so he grew mushrooms in it. These beautiful characteristics which suffering or you, — it’s all the same thing ” —

“ Why, thank you ! ”

— “ Are cultivating in me, are ” — “Mushrooms ? ”

“ I ’m afraid so. They won’t live long. I am not a woman, unfortunately. I am only an arrested development. It is something, though, in this world, to be even a lost opportunity.”

“ Call it a rudiment,” was the scientific suggestion. “ And I am glad you reach the subject of mushrooms, Mr. Yorke, of your own accord. It is precisely the point to which I wish to conduct your botanical education. When one knows enough not to expect a mushroom to be, say, an aloe, one is prepared for life. You will recover. I like the symptom.”

“ Symptom ! ” cried the young man irritably. “ Everything, with you, is a symptom. I am growing nervous over the sound of the word.”

“ Morbid sensitiveness to trifles. I must consider that in your next remedy. Well, and why not, Mr. Yorke? Most things are symptoms. Life is only a pathological experiment.”

“ That is a narrow professional view.”

“ All views are narrow. Let me advise you to have as few as possible.”

“ I am tired of being advised,” said Yorke wearily.

Her eyes brimmed with frolic. “ Do you want to go home ? Or change your doctor ? ”

“ Sometimes I think I will do both, to-morrow.”

“You could not do a better thing,” said Doctor Zay, carelessly.

“ Do you think me able to travel so far? ”

“ I did not say that. Much depends on the patient. There are collateral dangers in all cases. Many cures consist in a fine choice of risks. Therapeutics, as Hamilton said of conversation, is always a selection.”

Yorke regarded her steadily. “ I shall not go,” he said with decision, after a moment’s pause.

They rode. He drank in the divine healing of the day. They talked of safe subjects, — anæstheties and Materia Medica. Yorke had always before regarded homœopathy as a private hobby of his mother’s. He was interested in this young woman’s clear-headed exposition of a theory to which he was compelled to acknowledge himself a grateful, if not a convincing testimony. With the irresponsibility of the laity, he amused himself with her fervor, while revering her skill. When she alluded to the Divine Truth in connection with her sugar-plums, he laughed. But when they drove over that bridge whence the Bangor pony had plunged to his last account, the young man grew respectfully grave. He experienced at moments a species of awe of this studious and instructed lady; not so much because of her learning, which was unquestionable, nor of her beautiful inborn fitness for the art of healing, which was as clear as the flash of her eye, as for the fact that, in spite of these circumstances, she could be a charming creature.

The swift morning grew into the high, hot noon. The dew dried on the white clover by the roadside. The dust flew a little. Yorke was tired, despite himself, and glad when the doctor took a crosscut through a wood-path to make her last call. It was a poor girl, she said, who had few friends. They passed a sawmill, as they drove to this place. The wheel was silent. The water dripped from it with a cool sound. The men were separating to their dinner; one remained at work above the dam. Yorke observed with admiration his practiced step upon the slippery logs which floated, chained, over the deep, black pool.

Doctor Zay drove to the foot of the hill, and stopped. She would leave him in the shade, she said, and walk up to her patient’s ; it was but a step. Yorke made no protest. He had long since learned that it was hopeless to argue with his physician. He sat and rested in the green coolness, till she returned.

She was gone about twenty minutes, and came out abstracted and stern. She did not speak at first, or take the reins, but sat still, with a twitching of all the delicate facial muscles which in other women would have meant a shower of tears or a tornado of anger.

“ Well ? ” asked Yorke, conscious how imbecile the monosyllable sounded, but not daring to add another.

“ She has just told me who it is that is to blame,” said the physician in a low, surcharged voice

Yorke uttered a sympathetic ejaculation, as her meaning flashed upon him. He felt touched both at the simplicity and the solemnity of her words. Nothing of the sort had occurred to him, when she spoke about her “ poor girl.” Nothing could have revealed to him as did this little shock, the gravity and sacredness of her work. Alas! what could have so betrayed to him the gulf between her dedicated life and his own ?

“ I have tried for some time to learn,” said the doctor, with unwonted agitation.

“ The poor thing opened her heart to me just now. You cannot think how such things affect me. He was perfectly free to marry her. There is nothing too bad for him ! I have no mercy for such men, — none ! I wish — Excuse me, Mr. Yorke,” she interrupted herself. “ There is a professional thoughtlessness ; I hope I do not often fall into it. I was overborne by the poor thing’s trouble. She is such a pretty creature.

It would break your heart to see her. And the women all depend on me so ; they think there is nothing beyond my power. Why, she clings to me as if she thought I could undo it all, — could make her what she used to be again ! I believe she does. It is more than I can bear.”

His own eyes filled, as he saw the slow, strong tears, beaten back and dreaded, gather on her lids. All the littleness and pretense and shallow barrier of the world slipped away from them, as they sat there together in the forest. They did not seem any more to be young and unfamiliar, or even man and woman, but only two human beings, who could arise and go hand in hand to meet the solemn need of all the world. To Yorke it was a moment that he wished might never end.

She was the first to speak, and she said gently, —

“ I have tired, or perhaps shocked you. We will go home now. It is not my habit to speak of my cares to my patients. You must ” —

“Help! Help! Oh, for God’s sake, HELP!”

A terrible cry interrupted the doctor. It came from the mill-pond, whose dam frowned over their heads. The thin cascade of the falls drooped like lace against the wall of stone. The trees gathered close about the water, and Yorke looked up to the sky, as out of a well. He could see nothing else. The cry died in a gurgling sound. Yorke sprang, putting the woman by; he forgot her.

“ Mr. Yorke, stay just where you are! ”

An imperious voice, a firm hand, barred his way.

“ Let me go ! ” demanded the man.

“ Not an inch ! To lame yourself for life, and help nobody! You never can get up there. Sit back! Take the reins! Drive on for help ! There must be men at dinner behind that barn. Do as I bid you! Do as I ask you,—please.”

He obeyed her; he cursed his helplessness, but he obeyed. She was already out of his sight, behind the sawmill. The next instant, as he drove, lashing the pony, he saw her run swiftly out upon the chained logs above the dam. He closed his eyes. She poised herself like a chamois. He saw her sink upon her knees, — had she slipped? His breath came fast and feeble. The road darkened before him, and the forest whirled.

“ Am I going to do such a lady-like thing as to faint ? ” thought the sick man. He fixed his eyes fiercely upon the blue reins, —they seemed to remain knotted in his fingers ; he had a vision of the flying road, of the sudden sun, of dashing down upon a group of men, of seeing figures dart, of cry answering to cry ; and his next precise impression was that he had been sitting in the bottom of that phaeton, with his head on the cushions, longer than he supposed. He was alone, by the barn she spoke of. All the men were gone. He gathered his soul together, and drove back as he had come.

A cluster of men hung on the bank above the dam. A motionless figure lay on the ground in the centre of the group. For an instant Yorke could see nothing distinctly.

“ Turn him over ! ” rang out a clear, sweet, imperious voice. “ No, not so. So. This way. There! Now, here, Jenley ! You help me.”

“ All right, Doctor ! ” said an unseen man. Silence followed. Yorke bowed his face upon his crutch, with a confused idea of saying his prayers. All he could think of was the Apostles’ Creed and Fairy Lilian. The trickle of the fall fell cheerfully over the dam.

“ Tompkins, you here ! ” came the word of command, in that calm, refined voice. “ Work at his feet, as I bade you. Keep the arms, Jenley. Tear the shirt, — don’t wait. Harder, Smith! Get more blankets from the house, — bed-quilts, anything. And flannel cloths, — all you can muster. Be quiet. Work more steadily. Don’t get excited. I want even motions, — so.”

Fifteen minutes passed. One of the men spoke in a low tone : —

“ He don’t budge, Doctor.”

She made no answer. They worked on silently. Yorke looked at his watch. Twenty-two minutes.

“ Make that chest movement just as I told you, Jenley ! — patiently. Have courage. Give me the flannel, Smith. No. Rub upwards, not down ; I told you twice. Harder. Here, I ’ll show you.”

Twenty-six minutes. Half an hour. The lumbermen began to mutter. Yorke could hear their faint guttural protest.

“ You can’t resusentite a dead man, Doctor.”

“ He’s dead, that’s gospel sure, — deader ’n Judas.”

“ A critter’s legs don’t hang that way if he’s livin’.”

“ Yo hain’t seen so many drownded lumbermen as we have, young lady.”

“ My arms ache,” said one big fellow earnestly. “ I’ve rubbed a loug spell. Give him up, Doctor ? ”

“Give him up? No!” came down the ringing cry.

Yorke quivered with the pride he felt in her. He leaned over his watch, as if it held the arrested heart-beats of the human life for which the brave girl fought.

Thirty-five minutes. Forty. Fortyone— two — three. Forty-four minutes.

A low, awed whisper began to rustle through the group. Some of the men dropped on their knees. One ran towards the house. She seemed to call him back, to utter some rapid order ; he started off again. As he ran past the phaeton be called to Yorke, —

“GOT a' mighty, she’s fetched him ! ”

This man did not return.

Yorke was sitting in a picturesque heap, with his crutches, wondering where was the precise point at which a newlyacquired tendency to faint ceased to be physics and became psychology, and how long he should maintain himself at that creditable juncture in philosophical experience, when he felt her hand upon his own.

“ Drink this,” she said laconically. He looked up, and saw that she had coffee in her hand; he swallowed it obediently.

“ We have got him into the house,” she said, speaking rapidly. “ Everything goes well. I know this has hurt you. But I don’t want to take you home yet. I have a reason. Can you eat, — if I desire it very much ? ”

“ I can try,” said Yorke, smiling at her tone ; she really pleaded.

“ Then I will sit here with you, and we will have luncheon together. You need your dinner. You will be good for nothing with an empty stomach. There! It will gratify me if you will eat half this bread.”

She got into the phaeton and sat beside him, leaning back, and watching him with a gentle eagerness which he would have dared to call tender if he had not remembered that it was professional. “ I will eat it all,” said Yorke.

She made a pretense of sharing the slice with him, but he could see that she was keenly excited.

“ Now,” she said, when the bread and coffee were gone, “ are you better ? Are you strong enough to hear what I want of you ? ”

“ Try me, and see.”

“ They are together there,” — she pointed to the poor girl’s house, — “those two, who ought to be together for all their lives. He is the man.”

“ The drowned man ? ” cried Yorke. She nodded fiercely.

“ I want you to come up there with me. I want you for a witness. I may fail in the thing, but it’s got to be tried. I can’t have any of those fellows there, and there’s nobody at home but a young step-mother, who won’t come near us. Are you able to do this?”

Yorke replied by silently taking the reins. He, too, felt excited and strong. They drove up the steep, short hill, and close to the poor place. At the gate stood a wagon, containing an elderly and gentlemanly but very impatient person. A few men were hanging about the door-steps, The doctor helped her patient out, and he followed her into the house, asking no questions.

They went into a low, clean room on the ground floor. A man was there upon a lounge, swathed in blankets; he was ghastly white. A girl hung over him : she uttered low, inarticulate cries ; she rained her tears upon his face, his hands, — nay, her kisses on his great coarse feet, as if he were her saviour. The doctor shut the door softly, and Yorke stood uncovered beside her. The girl noticed them no more than if they bad been spirits.

“ Why, Molly ! ” said the fellow weakly. “ Why, Molly ! I hain't done so well by you that you should — kiss me — now. I don’t deserve it,” lie added, after a moment’s thought.

“ Molly,” said the doctor, coming forward with her nervous step, “ leave Jim to me a minute. I want to talk to him.”

Molly gathered herself together, a miserable little effort, — shame and love and tears, — and obeyed. She was a pretty girl, with blonde hair.

“ Deserve it ? ” said Doctor Zay, in a changed manner, as soon as the girl was gone. “ Deserve it? You have behaved to her like a coward and a sneak. She is behaving like — a woman. She loves him, I suppose,” added the doctor, in an undertone. “ That is the way with these women. Now, then, Jim Paisley! I have just this to say to you. You are able to sit up. Let me see you do it.”

The resuscitated man struggled to an obtuse angle against the pillows.

“ Very good. I wish you could stand up, but that will do. I want you to marry Molly. I will call her back.”

“ But, Doctor ” — began Jim.

“ No shilly - shallying,” returned the doctor sharply. “ Not a word. Let me see it done before I leave the house. I sent Henry for the minister the first breath you drew, — out there on the shore, — before I sent for the brandy, before you gasped twice. He is sitting at the gate this minute, with a borrowed horse, too, that he’s in a burry to get back to a man who is mowing. Don’t waste any more of our time. It’s too precious for you. Come ! ”

“ But, Doctor, how can I be married, done up in blankets like a mummy. It’s — so — ridiculous ! ” pleaded Jim. “ I ’d have liked my best close on.”

“ Paisley ! ” said the doctor, towering and superb, “ didI I work over you fourteen minutes after every man in Sherman would have given you up for dead? Fourteen minutes longer than is laid down by Hering, too,” she added, turning to Yorke.

“ Well, Doctor, I s’pose you did.”

“Did I bring back the soul to your senseless, sinful body, after it had gone God knows where, but where you ’ll never go again till you go to stay ? ”

“ That’s a fact, Doctor. Yes, marm.”

“ I’ve got some rights in your life, have I, Jim ? ”

“ Yes, marm. I don’t deny you brought me to.”

“ Do you suppose you were worth touching, except that you had it in your miserable power to right a poor wronged girl ? Come ! Do you ? ”

“ No, marm.”

“ If you don’t marry Molly before I leave this house, every lumberman in Sherman may throw you into the millpond, — and some of them will, I ’ll stand by and see them do it. I won’t lift a huger for you.”

“ You ’re hard on a fellow,” complained Jim. “ I hain’t said I would n’t.

I only said I’d rather wait and get my best close. I vum, when I come to, and — Good Lord! did you see her, Doctor ? I hain’t done right by her, that’s a fact. I told her so.”

“Well, well 1 ” said Doctor Zay, softening. She went at once to call the girl, who lay crouched like a spaniel outside the door, upon the bare entry floor.

“ Come here, Molly,” she said, with ineffable gentleness. “Jim wants to be married.”

Molly stood still. The color slowly crept over her delicate neck.

“ He hain’t asked me himself,” she said. Jim held out his hand to her.

“The doctor thought I wasn’t fit to ask you, Molly. She ain’t far out, either.”

The girl advanced slowly, looking at him searchingly. Then, with a certain dignity, she gave the man one hand, and said, —

“ Very well, Doctor.”

The minister came, talking about his borrowed horse. He was worried and hurried.

“ Where is your certificate of intention to marry ? ” he asked shortly, “ we require five days’ notice of intention in our State.”

“ The marriage will be legal,” replied Dr. Zay, promptly. “ I’ve had occasion to look into that. Whatever formalities are necessary, I will attend to myself. I will pay your fine, if you are called to account for this.”

“ It is a large fine,” said the minister, slowly.

“ I will be responsible for it,” persisted the Doctor. “ I must see the thing done now. Something might go wrong with the ease yet. The man is very weak.”

The old minister yielded his point after a little feeble protest; he wanted to get back to his mowing.

Yorke and the physician witnessed the marriage. And the young stepmother, out in the front yard, gossiped with the lumbermen through it all.

Doctor Zay took her patient home immediately when the painful scene was over. He was greatly exhausted. She sent him at once to bed, left minute orders for his care, and went off on her afternoon rounds.

In the evening she came to him again. She sat some time. She was anxious, gentle, half deprecating. She gave her professional tenderness a beautiful freedom. He felt her sympathy like a sparkling tonic. She atoned for what she had cost him by a divine hour.

She did not mention the poor girl. But Yorke thought of the caryatid lifting marble arms to hold the Temple “ high above our heads.”

Elizabeth Stuart Phelps.