Part 34 (1/2)

”Oh, I know you say you've done nothing, except what you've been glad to do! You love me like that! But it's just that love! Giving up all your practice little by little, and your reputation uptown--all for the sake of me, Allan, me!”

”You're wrong,” he replied. ”Compared to what I'm getting, I've given up nothing! Can't you see? You're just as narrow in your school as Edith is right here in her home! You look upon my hospital as a mere annex to your schools, when the truth of it is that the work down there is a chance I've wanted all my life! Can't you understand,” he cried, ”that instead of your being in debt to me it's I who am in debt to you? You're a suffragist, eh, a feminist--whatever you want to call it! All right! So you want to be equal with man! Then, for G.o.d's sake, why not begin? _Feel_ equal! I'm no annex to you, nor you to me! It has happened, thank G.o.d, that our work fits in--each with the other!”

He stopped and stared, seemed to shake himself; he walked the floor. And when he turned back his expression had changed.

”Look here, Deborah,” he asked, with an appealing humorous smile, ”will you tell me what I'm driving at?”

Deborah threw back her head and laughed, and her laughter thrilled with relief. ”How sure I feel now that I love him,” she thought.

”You've proved I owe you nothing!” she cried. ”And that men and women of our kind can work on splendidly side by side, and never bother our poor little heads about anything else--even marriage!”

”We will, though!” he retorted. The next moment she was in his arms. ”Now, Deborah, listen to reason, child. Why can't you marry me right away?”

”Because,” she said, ”when I marry you I'm going to have you all to myself--for weeks and weeks as we planned before! And afterwards, with a wonderful start--and with the war over, work less hard and the world less dark and gloomy--we're going to find that at last we can live! But this winter it couldn't be like that. This winter we've got to go on with our work--and without any more silly worries or talk about whether or not we're in love. _For we are_!” Her upturned face was close to his, and for some moments nothing was said, ”Well?” she asked. ”Are you satisfied?”

”No--I want to get married. But it is now a quarter past one. And I'm your physician. Go straight to bed.”

She stopped him a minute at the front door:

”Are you sure, absolutely, you understand?”

He told her he did. But as he walked home he reflected. How tense she had been in the way she had talked. Yes, the long strain was telling. ”Why was she so anxious to get me out of the house,” he asked, ”when we were alone for the first time in days? And why, if she's really sure of her love, does she hate the idea that she's in my debt?”

He walked faster, for the night was cold. And there was a chill, too, in this long waiting game.

Roger heard Deborah come up to bed, and he wondered what they had been talking about. Of the topic he himself had broached--each other, love and marriage?

”Possibly--for a minute or two--but no more,” he grumbled. ”For don't forget there's work to discuss, there's that ma.s.s meeting still on her mind. And G.o.d knows a woman's mind is never any child's play. But when you load a ma.s.s meeting on top--”

Here he yawned long and noisily. His head ached, he felt sore and weak--”from the evening's entertainment my other daughter gave me.” No, he was through, he had had enough. They could settle things to suit themselves. Let Edith squander her money on frills, the more expensive the better. Let her turn poor Johnny out of the house, let her give full play to her motherhood. And if that scared Deborah out of marrying, let her stay single and die an old maid. He had worried enough for his family. He wanted a little peace in his house.

Drowsily he closed his eyes, and a picture came into his mind of the city as he had seen it only a few nights before. It had been so cool, so calm and still. At dusk he had been in the building of the great tower on Madison Square; and when he had finished his business there, on an impulse he had gone up to the top, and through a wide low window had stood a few moments looking down. A soft light snow was falling; and from high up in the storm, through the silent whirling flakes, he had looked far down upon lights below, in groups and cl.u.s.ters, dancing lines, between tall phantom buildings, blurred and ghostly, faint, unreal. From all that bustle and fever of life there had risen to him barely a sound. And the town had seemed small and lonely, a little glow in the infinite dark, fulfilling its allotted place for its moment in eternity. Suddenly from close over his head like a brazen voice out of the sky, hard and deafening and clear, the great bell had boomed the hour. Then again had come the silence, and the cool, soft, whirling snow.

Like a dream it faded all away, and with a curious smile on his face presently Roger fell asleep.

CHAPTER x.x.x

And now he felt the approach at last of another season of quiet, one of those uneventful times which come in family histories. As he washed and dressed for dinner, one night a little later, he thought with satisfaction, ”How nicely things are smoothing out.” His dressing for dinner, as a rule, consisted in changing his low wing collar and his large round detachable cuffs; but to-night he changed his cravat as well, from a black to a pearl gray one. He hoped the whole winter would be pearl gray.

The little storm which Edith had raised over John's presence in the house had been allayed. Deborah had talked to John, and had moved him with his belongings to a comfortable sunny room in the small but neat apartment of a Scotch family nearby. And John had been so sensible. ”Oh, I'm fine, thank you,” he had answered simply, when in the office Roger had asked him about his new home. So that incident was closed. Already Edith was disinfecting John's old room to her heart's content, for George was to occupy it now.

She was having the woodwork repainted and a new paper put on the walls. She had already purchased a small new rug, and a bed and a bureau and one easy chair, and was making a pair of fresh pretty curtains. All right, let her do it--if only there could be peace in the house.

With his cravat adjusted and his thick-curling silver hair trim from having just been cut by ”Louis” over at the Brevoort, Roger went comfortably down to his dinner. Edith greeted him with a smile.

”Deborah's dining out,” she said.