Araminta was very still and her hand was cold. She moved it uneasily.

"Don't, dear," said Ralph, his voice breaking. "Don't you like to have me hold your hand? I won't, if you don't want me to."

Araminta drew her hand away. She was frightened.

"I don't wonder you're afraid," continued Ralph, huskily. "You little wild bird, you've been in a cage all your life. I'm going to open the door and set you free."

Miss Evelina tapped gently on the door, then entered, with a bowl of broth for the invalid. She set it down on the table at the head of the bed, and went out, as quietly as she had come.

"I'm going to feed you now," laughed Ralph, with a swift change of mood, "and when I come to see you to-morrow, I'm going to bring you a book."

"What kind of a hook?" asked Araminta, between spoonfuls.

"A novel--a really, truly novel."

"You mustn't!" she cried, frightened again. "You get burned if you read novels."

"Some of them are pretty hot stuff, I'll admit," returned Ralph, missing her meaning, "but, of course, I wouldn't give you that kind.

What sort of stories do you like best?"

"Daniel in the lions' den and about the ark. I've read all the Bible twice to Aunt Hitty while she sewed, and most of the _Pilgrim's Progress_, too. Don't ask me to read a novel, for I can't. It would be wicked."

"All right--we won't call it a novel. It'll be just a story book. It isn't wrong to read stories, is it?"

"No-o," said Araminta, doubtfully. "Aunt Hitty never said it was."

"I wouldn't have you do anything wrong, Araminta--you know that.

Good-bye, now, until to-morrow."

Beset by strange emotions, Doctor Ralph Dexter went home. Finding that the carriage was not in use, he set forth alone upon his feline quest, reflecting that Araminta herself was not much more than a little grey kitten. Everywhere he went, he was regarded with suspicion. People denied the possession of cats, even while cats were mewing in defiance of the a.s.sertion. Bribes were offered, and sternly refused.

At last, ten miles from home, he found a maltese kitten its owner was willing to part with, in consideration of three dollars and a solemn promise that the cat was not to be hurt.

"It's for a little girl who is ill," he said. "I've promised her a kitten."

"So your father's often said," responded the woman, "but someway, I believe you."

On the way home, he pondered long before the hideous import of it came to him. All at once, he knew.

XIII

The River Comes into its Own

"Father," asked Ralph, "who is Evelina Grey?"

Anthony Dexter started from his chair as though he had heard a pistol shot, then settled back, forcing his features into mask-like calmness.

He waited a moment before speaking.

"I don't know," he answered, trying to make his voice even, "Why?"

"She lives in the house with my one patient," explained Ralph; "up on the hill, you know. She's a frail, ghostly little woman in black, and she always wears a thick white veil."

"That's her privilege, isn't it?" queried Anthony Dexter. He had gained control of himself, now, and spoke almost as usual.

"Of course I didn't ask any questions," continued Ralph, thoughtfully, "but, obviously, the only reason for her wearing it is some terrible disfigurement. So much is surgically possible in these days that I thought something might be done for her. Has she never consulted you about it, Father?"

The man laughed--a hollow, mirthless laugh. "No," he said; "she hasn't." Then he laughed once more--in a way that jarred upon his son.

Ralph paced back and forth across the room, his hands in his pockets.

"Father," he began, at length, "it may be because I'm young, but I hold before me, very strongly, the ideals of our profession. It seems a very beautiful and wonderful life that is opening before me--always to help, to give, to heal. I--I feel as though I had been dedicated to some sacred calling--some lifelong service. And service means brotherhood."

"You'll get over that," returned Anthony Dexter, shortly, yet not without a certain secret admiration. "When you've had to engage a lawyer to collect your modest wages for your uplifting work, the healed not being sufficiently grateful to pay the healer, and when you've gone ten miles in the dead of Winter, at midnight, to take a pin out of a squalling infant's back, why, you may change your mind."

"If the healed aren't grateful," observed Ralph, thoughtfully, "it must be in some way my fault, or else they haven't fully understood. And I'd go ten miles to take a pin out of a baby's back--yes, I'm sure I would."

Anthony Dexter's face softened, almost imperceptibly. "It's youth," he said, "and youth is a fault we all get over soon enough, Heaven knows.

When you're forty, you'll see that the whole thing is a matter of business and that, in the last a.n.a.lysis, we're working against Nature's laws. We endeavour to prolong the lives of the unfit, when only the fittest should survive."

"That makes me think of something else," continued Ralph, in a low tone. "Yesterday, I canva.s.sed the township to get a cat for Araminta--the poor child never had a kitten. n.o.body would let me have one till I got far away from home, and, even then, it was difficult.

They thought I wanted it for--for the laboratory," he concluded, almost in a whisper.

"Yes?" returned Doctor Dexter, with a rising inflection. "I could have told you that the cat and dog supply was somewhat depleted hereabouts--through my own experiments."

"Father!" cried Ralph, his face eloquent with reproach.

Laughing, yet secretly ashamed, Anthony Dexter began to speak.

"Surely, Ralph," he said, "you're not so womanish as that. If I'd known they taught such stuff as that at my old Alma Mater, I'd have sent you somewhere else. Who's doing it? What old maid have they added to their faculty?"

"Oh, I know, Father," interrupted Ralph, waiving discussion. "I've heard all the arguments, but, unfortunately, I have a heart. I don't know by what right we a.s.sume that human life is more precious than animal life; by what right we torture and murder the fit in order to prolong the lives of the unfit, even if direct evidence were obtainable in every case, which it isn't. Anyhow, I can't do it, I never have done it, and I never will. I recognise your individual right to shape your life in accordance with the dictates of your own conscience, but, because I'm your son, I can't help being ashamed. A man capable of torturing an animal, no matter for what purpose, is also capable of torturing a fellow human being, for purposes of his own."

Anthony Dexter's face suddenly blanched with anger, then grew livid.

"You--" he began, hotly.

"Don't, Father," interrupted Ralph. "We'll not have any words. We'll not let a difference of opinion on any subject keep us from being friends. Perhaps it's because I'm young, as you say, but, all the time I was at college, I felt that I had something to lean on, some standard to shape myself to. Mother died so soon after I was born that it is almost as if I had not had a mother. I haven't even a childish memory of her, and, perhaps for that reason, you meant more to me than the other fellows' fathers did to them.

"When I was tempted to any wrongdoing, the thought of you always held me back. 'Father wouldn't do it,' I said to myself. 'Father always does the square thing, and I'm his son.' I remembered that our name means 'right.' So I never did it."

"And I suppose, now," commented Anthony Dexter, with a.s.sumed sarcasm, "your idol has fallen?"

"Not fallen, Father. Don't say that. You have the same right to your opinions that I have, but it isn't square to cut up an animal alive, just because you're the stronger and there's no law to prevent you.

You know it isn't square!"

In the accusing silence, Ralph left the room, and was shortly on his way uphill, with Araminta's promised cat mewing in his coat pocket.

The grim, sardonic humour of the situation appealed strongly to Doctor Dexter. "To think," he said to himself, "that only last night, that identical cat was observed as a fresh and promising specimen, providentially sent to me in the hour of need. And if I hadn't wanted Ralph to help me, Araminta's pet would at this moment have been on the laboratory table, having its heart studied--in action."