Part 50 (1/2)

”Perhaps she feels that it would be better for David to be-in different surroundings.”

”But w.i.l.l.y! Wednesday night she told me that I must be sure and bring him back to her on Sat.u.r.day. What has happened between Wednesday and Sat.u.r.day?”

”Very likely nothing has happened between Wednesday and Sat.u.r.day. But perhaps she has just made up her mind.”

”Ho!” said Dr. Lavendar; and after a while he added, ”'Um.”

Monday morning he went up to the Stuffed Animal House. But Mrs. Richie sent word down-stairs that she wasn't well; would he be so kind as to excuse her and to keep David a little longer. Sarah, when she gave the message, looked as mystified as Dr. Lavendar felt. ”I always thought she was just wrapped up in that there boy,” she told Maggie; ”and yet she lets him stay away two days after he gets home!” Dr. Lavendar, poking on with Goliath up the hill to Benjamin Wright's, had very much the same feeling: ”Queer! I wish w.i.l.l.y wasn't bottled up; of course he knows what it means. Well; if I wait, she'll explain it herself.”

But many days were to pa.s.s before Helena made any effort to explain.

And meantime Dr. Lavendar's mind was full of something else: old Benjamin Wright was running down-hill very rapidly.

In certain ways he seemed better; he could talk--and swear--quite fluently. ”He sayed to me, this mawnin',” Simmons told Dr. Lavendar, ”'Simmons, you freckled n.i.g.g.e.r,' he sayed, 'in the name of Lot's wife, who salted my porridge?' He spoke out just as plain!” Simmons detailed this achievement of the poor dulled tongue, with the pride of a mother repeating her baby's first word. Then he simpered with a little vanity of his own: ”He was always one to notice my freckles,” he said.

Benjamin Wright, lying in his bed with his hat on noticed other things than Simmons's freckles, and spoke of them, too, quite distinctly. ”My boy, S-Sam, is a good boy. He comes up every day. Well, Lav-Lavendar, sometimes I think I was--at fault?”

”I know you were, Benjamin. Have you told him so?”

”Gad-a-mercy! N-no!” snarled the other. ”He would be too puffed up.

Won't do to make young people v-vain.”

He ”took notice,” too, Simmons said, of the canaries; and he even rolled out, stammeringly, some of his favorite verses. But, in spite of all this, he was running down-hill; he knew it himself, and once he told Dr. Lavendar that this business of dying made a man narrow. ”I th-think about it all the time,” he complained. ”Can't put my mind on anything else. It's d.a.m.ned narrowing.”

Yet William King said to Dr. Lavendar that he thought that if the old man could be induced to talk of his grandson, he might rally. ”He never speaks of him,” the doctor said, ”but I am sure he is brooding over him all the time. Once or twice I have referred to the boy, but he pretends not to hear me. He's using up all his strength to bear the idea that he is to blame, I wish I could tell him that he isn't,” the doctor ended, sighing.

They had met in the hall as William was coming down-stairs and Dr.

Lavendar going up. Simmons, who had been shuffling about with a decanter and hospitable suggestions, had disappeared into the dining- room.

”Well,” said Dr. Lavendar, ”why don't you tell him? Though in fact, perhaps he is to blame in some way that we don't know? You remember, he said he had 'angered the boy'?”

”No; that wasn't it,” said William.

Dr. Lavendar looked at him with sudden attention. ”Then what--” he began, but a lean, freckled shadow in the dining-room doorway, spoke up:

”Maybe he might 'a' made Marster Sam's Sam mad, suh, that night; maybe he might 'a'. But that weren't no reason,” said Simmons, in a quivering voice, ”for a boy to hit out and give his own grandfather a lick. No, suh; it warn't. An' call him a liar!” Dr. Lavendar and William King stared at each other and at the old man, in shocked dismay. ”His grandfather used words, maybe, onc't in a while,” Simmons mumbled on, ”but they didn't mean no mo'n skim-milk. Don't I know?

He's d.a.m.ned me for forty years, but he'll go to heaven all the same.

The Lawd wouldn't hold it up agin' him. if a pore n.i.g.g.e.r wouldn't. If He would, I'd as lief go to h.e.l.l with Mr. Benjamin as any man I know.

Yes, suh, as I would with you yo'self, Dr. Lavendar. He was cream kind; yes, he was! One o' them pore white-trash boys at Morison's shanty Town, called me 'Ashcat' onc't; Mr. Wright he cotched him, and licked him with his own hands, suh! An' he was as kind to Marster Sam as if he was a baby. But Marster Sam hit him a lick. No, suh; it weren't right--” Simmons rubbed the cuff of his sleeve over his eyes, and the contents of the tilting decanter dribbled down the front of his spotted old coat.

”Simmons,” said Dr. Lavendar, ”what had they been quarrelling about?”

But Simmons said glibly, that 'fore the Lawd, he didn't know.

”He does know,” said Dr. Lavendar, as the man again retired to his pantry. ”But, after all, the subject of the quarrel doesn't make any difference. To think that the boy struck him! That must be a satisfaction to Benjamin.”

”A satisfaction?” William repeated, bewildered.

But Dr. Lavendar did not explain. He went on up-stairs, and sat beside the very old man, listening to his m.u.f.fled talk, and saying what he could of commonplace things. Once Benjamin Wright asked about Mrs.

Richie: