"Why? Because he is a prying suspicious jacka.s.s of a country doctor!

He came at exactly six o'clock. it was perfectly evident that he meant to give me the pleasure of his company at dinner."

At that she sprang to her feet, her impetuous hands upon his arm.

"Then he was not--suspicious! Don't you see? He was only friendly!"

She trembled with the reaction of that instant of dismay. "He was not suspicious, or he wouldn't have been--been willing--" Her voice trailed into shamed silence.

Lloyd Pryor pushed her hand away, impatiently. "I'm not anxious for his friendship or even his acquaintance. You will please consider what would have happened if I had not come home just as he arrived!" He paused, his voice hardening: "My daughter saw him."

Helena stepped back, wincing and silent.

"You will be so good as to consider the result of such tomfoolery--to me."

"And what about me?" she said. "Your 'daughter'--I suppose you mean Alice--is not the only person in the world!"

But Lloyd Pryor, having dealt his blow, was gracious again. "My dear, you needn't begin recriminations. Of course, I speak on your account as much as on my own. It would have been--well, awkward, all round.

You must see that it does not occur again. You will not get on terms with these people that will encourage them to look me up. You understand?"

She looked at him, terror-stricken. In all their squabbles and differences--and there had been many in the last few years--he had never spoken in this extraordinary tone. It was not anger, it was not the courteous brutality with which she was more or less familiar; it was superiority. The color swept into her face; even her throat reddened. She said stammering, "I don't know why you speak--in--in this tone--"

"I am not going to speak any more in any tone," he said lightly; "there's the stage! Good-by, my dear. I trust your boy may recover rapidly. Tell him I was prepared for his sling and the 'smooth stone out of the brook'! Sorry I couldn't have seen more of you." As he spoke he went into the hall; she followed him without a word. He picked up his hat, and then, turning, tipped her chin back and kissed her. She made no response.

When he had gone, she went into the parlor and Shut the door.

CHAPTER XIX

David was quite a personage in Old Chester for a few days. Mrs.

Richie was his slave, and hardly left him day or night; Dr. King came to see him five times in one week; Mrs. Barkley sent him some wine jelly in a sheaf-of-wheat mould; Dr. Lavendar climbed the hill on two afternoons, to play dominoes with him, though, as it happened, Mrs.

Richie was not present either day to watch the game. The first time she had just gone to lie down, Sarah said; the second time she had that moment started out to walk--"Why, my goodness!" said Sarah, "she must 'a' _just_ gone! She was here not a minute ago. I should 'a'

thought she'd 'a' seen you tyin' up at the gate?"

"Well, evidently she didn't," Dr. Lavendar said, "or she would have waited. Tell her I'm sorry to miss her, Sarah." Then, eagerly, he went on up-stairs to David.

William King, too, was scarcely more fortunate; he only found her at home once, so at the end of the week he was unable to tell her that David was improving. It was, of course, necessary that she should be told this; so that was why he and Jinny continued to come up the hill for another week. At any rate that was the explanation he gave his Martha. "I must let her know just when David can go back to school,"

he said. And Martha, with a tightening lip remarked that she should have supposed a woman of Mrs. Richie's years could use her own judgment in such a matter.

William's explanation to Dr. Lavendar was somewhat fuller: "I make a point of calling, on the plea of seeing David, but it's really to see her. She's so high strung, that this little accident of his has completely upset her. I notice that she sort of keeps out of the way of people. I'm pretty sure that yesterday she saw me coming and slipped out into the garden to avoid me--think of that! Nervousness; pure nervousness. But I have a plan to brighten her up a little--a surprise-party. What do you say?"

Dr. Lavendar looked doubtful. "William," he said, "isn't life surprising enough? Now, here's Sam Wright's Sam's performance."

Dr. Lavendar looked care-worn, and with reason. Sam Wright's Sam had indeed provided a surprise for Old Chester. He had quietly announced that he was going to leave town.

"Going away!" repeated the senior warden. "What are you talking about?"

Sam said briefly that he wanted to try to get a drama he had written, published.

"You are out of your senses!" his father said; "I forbid it, sir. Do you hear me?"

Sam looked out of the window. "I shall go, I think, to-morrow," he said thoughtfully.

Samuel Wright stared at his wife in dumfounded silence. When he got his breath, he said in awful tones, "Eliza, he defies me! A child of mine, and lost to all sense of duty! I cannot understand it;--unless such things have happened in _your_ family?" he ended with sudden suspicion,

"Never!" protested the poor mother; "but Samuel, my dear--Sammy, my darling--"

The senior warden raised a majestic hand. "Silence, if you please, Eliza." Then he thrust his right hand into his bosom, rested his left fist on the marble-topped centre-table, and advanced one foot.

Standing thus, he began to tell his son what he thought of him, and as he proceeded his anger mounted, he forgot his periods and his att.i.tudes, and his voice grew shrill and mean. But, alas, he could not tell the boy all that he thought; he could not tell him of his high ambitions for him, of his pitiful desire for his love, of his anguished fear lest he might be unhappy, or foolish, or bad. These thoughts the senior warden had never known how to speak. Instead, he detailed his grievances and his disappointments; he told Sam with ruthless candor what the world called his conduct: dishonest, idiotic, ungrateful. He had a terrifying string of adjectives, and through them all the boy looked out of the window. Once, at a particularly impa.s.sioned period, he glanced at his father with interest; that phrase would be fine in a play, he reflected. Then he looked out of the window again.

"And now," Mr. Wright ended sonorously, "what reply have you to make, sir?"

Sam looked confused. "I beg your pardon, father? I did not hear what you were saying."

Samuel Wright stared at him, speechless.

As for the boy, he said calmly, "Good night, father," and went up- stairs to his own room where he began his packing. The next morning he had gone.

"Where?" asked Dr. Lavendar, when the angry father brought him the news. "I do not know," said the senior warden, "and I do not--"

"Yes, you do," said Dr. Lavendar; "but that's not the point. The point is that it doesn't really matter, except for our comfort, whether we know or not. Sam is a man, and our protection is an impertinence. He's taking a dive on his own account. And as I look at it, he has a right to. But he'll come up for breath, and then we'll get some information.

And he'll get some sense."

But of course the Wright family was in a most distressed state. The mother was overwhelmed with anxious grief; the father was consumed with mortification and blazing with anger.

"He didn't take his second-weight flannels," moaned Mrs. Wright; "he will catch cold. Oh, where is he? And n.o.body knows how to cook his hominy for him but our Betsy. Oh, my boy!"

"Good riddance," said Sam senior between his teeth; "ungrateful puppy!"

Dr. Lavendar had his hands full. To rea.s.sure the mother, and tell her that the weather was so warm that Sam couldn't use the second-weight flannels if he had them, and that when he came back Betsy's hominy would seem better than ever--"Old Chester food will taste mighty good, after a few husks," said Dr. Lavendar, cheerfully--to tell Sam senior that a grateful puppy would be an abnormal monster, and to refrain from telling him that whatever a father sows he is pretty sure to reap--took time and strength. So Dr. Lavendar did not enter very heartily into William King's plans for a surprise-party. However, he did promise to come, if the doctor succeeded in getting Old Chester together.

Meantime he and Danny and Goliath went up to The Top to tell Benjamin Wright about Sam's Sam. The grandfather displayed no surprise.

"I knew he was going to clear out," he said; he was poking about among his canaries when Dr. Lavendar came in, and he stopped and sat down, panting. "These fowls wear me out," he complained. "Whiskey? No? Dear me! Your senior warden's got you to sign the pledge, I suppose? Well, I will; to drink the cub's health. He'll amount to something yet, if he doesn't eat his fatted calf too soon. Fatted calf is very bad for the digestion."

"Wright, I don't suppose you need to be told that you behaved abominably Sunday night? Do you know where Sam is?"

"I don't; and I don't want to. Behaved abominably? He wouldn't shake hands with me! Sam told me he was going, and I gave him some money-- well! why do you look at me like that? Gad-a-mercy, ain't he my grandson? Besides, since our love-feast, ain't it my duty to help his father along? I've had a change of heart," he said, grinning; "where's your joy over the one sinner that repenteth? I'm helping young Sam, so that old Sam may get some sense. Lavendar, the man who has not learned what a d.a.m.ned fool he is, hasn't learned anything. And if I mistake not, the boy will teach my very respectable son, who won't smoke and won't drink, that interesting fact. As for the boy, he will come back a man, sir. A man! Anyway, I've done my part. I offered him money and advice--like the two women grinding at the mill, one was taken and the other was left. Yes; I've done my part. I've evened things up. I gave him his first tobie, and his first drink, and now I've given him a chance to see the world--which your senior warden once said was a necessary experience for a young man. I've evened things up!" He thrust a trembling hand down into the blue ginger-jar for some orange- skin. "He said he'd pay the money back; I said, 'Go to thunder!' As if I cared about the money. I've got him out of Old Chester; that's all I care about."

"Well," said Dr. Lavendar, "I hope you haven't got him merely out of the frying-pan."

"So you think there is no fire in Old Chester? She's a pretty creetur, Lavendar, ain't she? Poor thing!"

Dr. Lavendar did not follow the connection of ideas in the older man's mind, but he did say to himself, as he and Goliath went away, that it was queer how possessed Benjamin Wright was that Sam's love-making was dangerous. Then he sighed, and his face fell into troubled lines. For all his brave words, he wished he knew where the boy was; and though he was already late for dinner, he drew up at William King's door to ask the doctor if he had any new ideas on the subject.

But w.i.l.l.y was not at home. Martha was sitting under the grape-vine trellis at the back door, topping and tailing gooseberries. From the kitchen behind her came the pleasant smell of preserving. She had a big yellow earthenware bowl in her lap, and excused herself for not rising when Dr. Lavendar came round the corner of the house to find her.

"_I_ am a housekeeper, Dr. Lavendar. William thinks it's pretty not to understand housekeeping; but I expect if he didn't have preserves for his supper, he wouldn't think it was so pretty. No; he isn't at home, sir. He's gone out--with the thermometer at ninety--to see about that party he is getting up for Mrs., Richie. So long as he has time to spare from his patients, I should think he would like to take up my spare-room carpet for me. But, oh dear, no. He has to see about parties!"