The Web of Life Part 42

"Is his picture still on exhibition?" Sommers inquired, with a faint smile.

"I don't know. I haven't seen much of them lately." She spoke as if Carson and his kind were completely indifferent to her. Her next remark surprised Sommers.

"I think I can see now why you felt as you did about--well, Mr. Carson. He is a sort of shameless ideal held up before such people as this young man who is speculating. Isn't that it?"

Sommers nodded.

"Uncle Brome, too? When he makes several hundred thousand dollars in Consolidated Iron, every clerk, every little man who knows anything about it has all his bad, greedy, envious pa.s.sions aroused."

The doctor smiled at the serious manner in which the young woman explored the old ground of their differences.

"But," she concluded, "they aren't _all_ like Mr. Carson and Uncle Brome. You mustn't make that mistake. And Uncle Brome is so generous, too.

It is hard to understand."

"No," Sommers said, preparing to leave. "Of course they are not all alike, and it is hard to judge. No man knows what he is doing--to any great extent."

"What will you do?" Miss. .h.i.tchc.o.c.k asked abruptly.

As Sommers's careworn face flushed, she added hurriedly,--"How cruel of me!

Of course you don't know. That will settle itself."

"I have had some notion of trying for a hospital again. It doesn't take much to live. And I don't believe in a doctor's making money. If it isn't the hospital--well, there's enough to do."

Miss. .h.i.tchc.o.c.k thought a moment, and then remarked unexpectedly, "I like that idea!"

"About all my kick over things has come to that point. There are some people who should be willing to--no, not willing, who should _want_ to do things without any pay. The world needs them. Most people are best off in the struggle for bread, but the few who see how--unsatisfying that end is, should be willing to work without profits. Good-by."

As they shook hands, Sommers added casually: "I shouldn't wonder if I went away from Chicago--for a time. I don't know now, but I'll let you know, if you care to have me."

"Of course I shall care to know!"

Miss. .h.i.tchc.o.c.k's voice trembled, and then steadied itself, as she added,--"And I am glad you are thinking of it."

With a sense of relief Sommers found himself alone, and free to return to the temple, to Alves, for the last time. The day had been crowded with insistent, petty details, and he marvelled that he had submitted to them patiently. In the chamber where the dead woman lay it was strangely still--deserted by all things human. He locked the doors and sat down for his second night of watch, reproaching himself for the hours he had lost this day. But when he looked at the cold, white face upon the pillow, that already seemed the face of one who had travelled far from this life, he felt that it had been best as it was. He kissed the silent lips and covered the face; he would not look at it again. Alves had gone. To-morrow he would lay this body in the little burial plot of the seminary above the Wisconsin lakes.

Already Alves had bequeathed him something of herself. She had returned him to his fellow-laborers with a new feeling toward them, a humbleness he had never known, a desire to adjust himself with them. He was sensitive to the kindness of the day,--White's friendly trust, Leonard's just words, Miss. .h.i.tchc.o.c.k's generosity. As the sense of this life faded from the woman he loved, the dawn of a fairer day came to him. And his heart ached because she for whom he had desired every happiness might never respond to human joy.

CHAPTER XI

During the next two years the country awoke from its torpor, feeling the blood tingle in its strong limbs once more, and rubbing its eyes in wonder at its own folly. Some said the spirit of hope was due to the gold basis; some said it was the good crops; some said it was the prospect of national expansion. In any event the country got tired of its long fit of sulks; trade revived, railroads set about mending their tracks, mills opened--a current of splendid vitality began to throb. Men took to their business with renewed avidity, content to go their old ways, to make new snares and to enter them, all unconscious of any mighty purpose. Those at the faro tables of the market increased the stakes and opened new tables. New industrial companies sprung up overnight like mushrooms, watered and sunned by the easy optimism of the hour. The rumors of war disturbed this hothouse growth. But the "big people" took advantage of these to squeeze the "little people," and all worked to the glory of the great G.o.d. In the breast of every man on the street was seated one conviction: 'This is a mighty country, and I am going to get something out of it.' The stock market might bob up and down; the gamblers might gain or lose their millions; the little politicians of the hour might talk blood and iron by the pound of _Congressional Record_; but the great fact stared you in the face--every one was hopeful; for every one there was much good money somewhere. It was a rich time in which to live.

Remote echoes of this optimism reached Sommers. He learned, chiefly through the newspapers, that Mr. R. G. Carson had emerged from the obscurity of Chicago and had become a celebrity upon the metropolitan stage after "the successful flotation of several specialties." Mr. Brome Porter, he gathered from the same source, had built himself a house in New York, and altogether shaken the dust of Chicago from his feet. Sommers pa.s.sed him occasionally in the unconsolidated air of Fifth Avenue, but the young doctor had long since sunk out of Brome Porter's sphere of consciousness. Sommers thought Porter betrayed his need of Carlsbad more than ever, and he wondered if the famous gambler had beguiled Colonel Hitchc.o.c.k into any of his ventures. But Sommers did not trouble himself seriously with the new manifestations of gigantic greed. Unconscious of the fact that from collar-b.u.t.ton to shoe-leather he was a.s.sisting Mr. Carson's industries to yield revenues on their water-logged stocks, he went his way in his profession and labored.

For the larger part of the time he was an a.s.sistant in a large New York hospital, where he found enough hard work to keep his thoughts from wandering to Carson, Brome Porter, and Company. In the feverish days that preceded the outbreak of the Cuban war, he heard rumors that Porter had been caught in the last big "flotation," and was heavily involved. But the excitement of those days destroyed the importance of the news to the public and to him.

Sommers resolved to find service in one of the military hospitals that before long became notorious as pestholes. From the day he arrived at Tampa, he found enough to tax all his energies in trying to save the lives of raw troops dumped in the most unsanitary spots a paternal government could select. In the melee created by incompetent officers and ignorant physicians, one single-minded man could find all the duties he craved.

Toward the close of the war, on the formation of a new typhoid hospital, Sommers was put in charge. There one day in the heat of the fight with disease and corruption he discovered Parker Hitchc.o.c.k, who had enlisted, partly as a frolic, an excuse for throwing off the ennui of business, and partly because his set were all going to Cuba. Young Hitchc.o.c.k had come down with typhoid while waiting in Tampa for a transport, and had been left in Sommers's camp. He greeted the familiar face of the doctor with a welcome he had never given it in Chicago.

"Am I going to die in this sink, doctor?" he asked, when Sommers came back to him in the evening.

"I can't say," the doctor replied, with a smile. "You are a good deal better off on this board floor than most of the typhoids in the camps, and we will do the best we can. Shall I let your people know?"

"No," the young fellow said slowly, his weak, white face endeavoring to restrain the tears. "The old man is in a bad place--Uncle Brome, you know--and I guess if it hadn't been for my d.a.m.n foolishness in New York--"

He went off into delirious inconsequence, and on the way back Sommers stopped to telegraph Miss. .h.i.tchc.o.c.k. A few days later he met her at the railroad station, and drove her over to the camp. She was worn from her hurried journey, and looked older than Sommers expected; but the buoyancy and capability of her nature seemed indomitable. Sommers repeated to her what Parker had said about not letting his people know.

"It's the first time he ever thought of poor papa," she said bluntly.

"I thought it might do him good to fight it out by himself. But loneliness kills some of these fellows."

"Poor Parker!" she exclaimed, with a touch of irony in her tone. "He thought he should come home a hero, with flags flying, all the honors of the season, and forgiveness for his little faults. The girls would pet him, and papa would overlook his past. The war was a kind of easy penance for all his sins. And he never reached Cuba even, but came down with typhoid--due to pure carelessness, I am afraid."

"That is a familiar story," the doctor observed, with a grim smile, "especially in his set. They took the war as a kind of football match--and it is just as well they did."

"You are the ones that really know what it means--the doctors and the nurses," Miss. .h.i.tchc.o.c.k said warmly.

"Here is our San Juan," Sommers replied dryly, pointing to the huddle of tents and pine sheds that formed the hospital camp.

After they had visited Parker Hitchc.o.c.k, Sommers conducted her over the camp. Some of the cots were occupied by gaunt figures of men whom she had known, and at the end of their inspection, she remarked thoughtfully:

"I see that there is something to do here. It makes me feel alive once more."

The next month, while Parker dragged slowly through the stages of the disease, Miss. .h.i.tchc.o.c.k worked energetically with the nurses. Sommers met her here and there about the camp and at their hurried meals. The heat and the excitement told upon her, but her spirited, good-humored mood, which was always at play, carried her on. Finally, the convalescents were sent north to cooler spots, and the camp was closed. Parker Hitchc.o.c.k was well enough to be moved to Chicago, and Sommers, who had been relieved, took charge of him and a number of other convalescents, who were to return to the West.

The last hours of the journey Sommers and Miss. .h.i.tchc.o.c.k spent together.

The train was slowly traversing the dreary stretches of swamp and sand-hills of northern Indiana.

"I remember how forlorn this seemed the other time--four years ago!"

Sommers exclaimed. "And how excited I was as the city came into view around the curve of the lake. That was to be my world."

"And you didn't find it to your liking," Miss. .h.i.tchc.o.c.k replied, with a little smile.

"I couldn't understand it; the thing was like raw spirits. It choked you."

"I think I understand now what the matter has always been," she resumed after a little interval. "You thought we were all exceptionally selfish, but we were all just like every one else,--running after the obvious, common pleasures. What could you expect! Every boy and girl in this country is told from the first lesson of the cradle, over and over, that success is the one great and good thing in life. The people here are young and strong, and you can't blame them if they interpret that text a little crudely. But I am beginning to understand what you feel."

"We can't escape the fact, though," Sommers responded. "Life must be based, to a large extent, on gain, on mere living. Nature has ordered it."

"Only in cases like yours," she murmured. "_I_ can never free myself from the order of nature. I shall always be the holder of power acc.u.mulated by some one else."

As Sommers refrained from making the plat.i.tudinous reply that such a remark seemed to demand, they were silent for several minutes. Then she asked, with an air of constraint:

"What will you do? I mean after your visit to us, for, of course, you must rest."