The Window-Gazer Part 35

Desire was inclined to take the common-sense view. Especially as just about this time she came upon the track of another Mary, also with yellow hair, who presented possibilities. The most suspicious thing about this second Mary was that neither the professor nor his friend Dr. Rogers had been able to tell Desire her first name. Now in Bainbridge everyone knows the first name of everyone else. One does not use it, necessarily, but one knows it. So that when Desire, having one day noticed a gleam of particularly golden hair, asked innocently to "whom it might belong" and was met by a plain surname prefixed merely by "Miss," she became instantly curious. From other sources she learned that the golden-haired Miss Watkins had been employed as a nurse in Dr.

Rogers' office for several months and that her Christian name was Mary Sophia.

This also, you will see, was not much to build upon. But Desire felt that she must neglect nothing. The menace of the unseen, unknown Mary was beginning seriously to disturb her peace of mind. She determined to see the doctor's pretty nurse at the earliest opportunity.

The comradeship between herself and Rogers had prospered amazingly. She had liked the young doctor at first sight; had discerned in him something charmingly boylike and appealing. And Desire had never had boy friends. The utter frankness of her friendship was undisturbed by overmuch knowledge of her own attractions, and the possibility of less contentment on his side did not occur to her. Feeling herself so much older, in reality, than he, she a.s.sumed with delicious naivete, the role of confidant and general adviser. What time she could spare from Benis and the great Book she bestowed most generously upon his friend.

During the four dragging days of waiting the appearance of Miss Davis, she had found the distraction of Dr. John's company particularly helpful. And then, after all, Miss Davis did not arrive. Instead, there came a note regretting a very bad cold and postponing the visit until its indefinite recovery. The news came at the breakfast table.

"How long," asked Desire thoughtfully, "does a bad cold usually last?"

"Not long--if it's just a cold," answered Benis with some gloom. "But,"

more hopefully, "if it is tonsillitis it lasts weeks and if pneumonia sets in you have to stay indoors for months."

Aunt Caroline looked over her spectacles.

"You sound," she said, "as if you wish it were pneumonia."

But in this she was, perhaps, severe. Her nephew was really not capable of wishing pneumonia for anyone, not even a possible Nemesis by the name of Mary. He merely felt that if such a complication should supervene he would bear the news with fort.i.tude. For, speaking colloquially, the professor was finding himself very much "in the air."

Desire's mind upon the subject of this guest in particular and of Marys in general, had become clouded to his psychological gaze. He had thought at first that his young secretary was jealous with that harmless s.e.x jealousy which may almost as well be described as "pique."

But, of late, he had not felt so sure about it. He did not, in fact, feel quite so sure about any-thing.

Desire was changing. He had expected her to change, but the rapidity of it was somewhat breath-taking. In appearance she had become noticeably younger. The firm line of her lips had taken on softer curves; the warm white of her skin was bloomy like a healthy child's; shadow after shadow had lifted from her deep grey eyes. But it was in her manner that the most significant difference lay. Spence sometimes wondered if he had dreamed the silent Desire of the mountain cottage. That Desire had stood coldly alone; had listened and weighed and gone her own way with the hard confidence of too early maturity. This Desire listened and weighed still, but her confidence was often now replaced by questioning. In this new and more normal world, her unserved, unsatisfied youth was breaking through.

But, if she were younger, she was certainly not more simple. If the grey eyes were less shadowed, they were no less inscrutable. If the lips were softer, their serenity was as baffling as their sternness had been. If she seemed more plastic she was not less illusive. Nimble as were his mental processes, the professor was discomfited to find that hers were still more nimble.

Meanwhile the Book was getting on. No excursions into the land of youth were allowed to interfere with Desire's idea of her secretarial duties.

If anyone shirked, it was the author; if anyone wanted holidays it was he. If he were lazy, Desire found ways of making progress without him; if he grumbled, she laughed.

The day set apart for the arrival of Miss Davis had been voted a holiday and the professor hoped that her non-appearance would not interfere with so pleasant an arrangement. But Desire's ideas were quite otherwise. Sharply on time she descended to the library with her note-book ready. The professor felt injured.

"Must we really?" he said. "Yes. I see we must. But mind! I know why you are doing it. I thought of your reason in the night when I was unable to sleep from overwork. You are hurrying to get through so that we may leave this sleepy town. Insatiable window-gazer! You wish to look in bigger windows."

"Do I?" Desire turned limpid eyes upon him and tapped her note-book.

"Then the sooner we get on with this chapter on 'The Significance of the Totem' the better. But, if you can excuse me this afternoon, Dr.

John has just 'phoned to ask me if I can call on the eldest Miss Martin. He says that her state of mind is her greatest trouble. And it does not react to medicine."

The professor looked still more injured.

"We can't begin the totem chapter unless we are going to go on with it," he objected. "I don't see why John doesn't get a secretary of his own."

"He has a nurse," said Desire smoothly.

"Er--oh yes, of course. Well, perhaps we had better begin--but why does he want you to call on Miss Martin?"

Desire looked self-conscious, a rare thing for her. "Well, you see, I have an idea about Miss Martin. It may be entirely wrong but John thinks it worth trying. You knew that her fiance was killed just before the armistice, didn't you? John says she seemed stunned at the time but kept on, the way most women did. She helped him fight the 'flu' all that winter without taking it her-self. But she was one of the first to come down with it when it returned this Spring. She got through the worst--and there she stays. John says that if she doesn't begin to pick up soon there won't be enough of her left to bother about."

"And your idea?"

"You might laugh," said Desire with sudden shyness.

The professor promised not to laugh.

"My idea is this. To find out the real reason for her not getting better and treat that."

"Very simple."

"Yes, because John already knows the real cause. He says she doesn't get well because she doesn't want to. In the old days people would say her heart was broken. And it seems such a pity, because, if what everyone says is true, she would have been frightfully unhappy if she had married him. (Desire became slightly incoherent here.) They weren't suited at all. He was a musician, a derelict who hadn't a thought in the world for anything but his violin. Aunt Caroline says the engagement was a mystery to everyone. She says that probably Miss Martin just offered to take him in hand and look after him (she used to be very capable) and he hadn't backbone enough to say she couldn't.

They say that the only time anyone ever saw a gleam in his face was the day he went away to the war. Then he was killed. And now she won't get well because she can't forget him."

"And that is what you call a 'pity'?"

"Well, not exactly that." She hesitated. "If he had cared for her as she thought he did, it wouldn't seem such a waste. But he didn't.

Everybody knew it--except herself."

"Everybody may have been wrong."

"Yes. But that is just the point. They weren't. He died as he had lived without a thought for anything but music. I happened to hear a rather wonderful story about his dying. Sergeant Timms, who drives the baker's cart, was in the next cot to his, in the hospital. And my idea is that if he could just tell her the story--just let her see that he went away without a thought--she might get things in proportion again and let herself get well."

"I see. Well, my dear, it is your idea. Is John going to drive you out?"

"No. He wanted to. But I'll have to find the Sergeant and take him with me."

"In the baker's cart?"

"What a good idea! I would never have thought of that. And I've always wanted to ride in a baker's cart. They smell so crusty."

So it was really the professor's fault that Bainbridge was scandalized by the sight of young Mrs. Spence jogging comfortably along through the outskirts in a bread cart driven by the one-time Sergeant Edward Timms.

"And him so silly with havin' her," said Mrs. Beatty (who first noticed them), "that he didn't know a French roll from a currant bun."

Indeed we may as well admit that the gallant Sergeant confused more things that day than rolls and buns. The latter part of his orderly bread route was strewn thickly with indignant customers. For the Sergeant was a thoroughgoing fellow quite incapable of a divided interest.

"You can tell me the details of the story as we go along," Desire said, "so that I shan't be interrupting your work at all."

The dazzled Sergeant agreed and immediately delivered two whites instead of one brown and forgot the tickets.

"Well, you see," he said, "it was this way. We went over there together, him and me. And we hadn't known each other, so to speak, not intimate. You didn't know him yourself at all, did you?"

Desire shook her head.

"He was a queer one. Willin' as could be to do what he was told, but forgettin' what it was, regular. Just naturally no good, like, except with the fiddle. I will say, that with that there instrument he was a Paderwooski--yes, mam! By the time our outfit got into them trenches the boys was just clean dippy about him. They kind of took turns dry-nursin' him and remindin' him of the things he'd got to do, and doin' them for him when they could put it over. I'll tell you this--it's my private suspicion that more than one chap went west tryin' to keep the bullets offen him! Not that they were crazy about him exactly, but that fiddle of his had got them goin'. 'Twasn't only the fiddle he played on, either. Anything would do. That there chap could play you into any kind of dashed mood he liked and out of it again. Put more pep into you with a penny whistle than Sousy's band or a bottle of rum. Ring you out like a dishrag, he could, and hang you out to dry. Gee! He could do anything--just anything!"

(It was here that the bun episode occurred.)

"Well,--he got buried. Parapet blown in. And when they got him out he was--hurt some." (The Sergeant remembered that one must not shock the ladies.)

"That was all I would have known about it," he went on, "only we happen to turn up in hospital together. I wakes up one mornin' and finds him in the next cot. He was supposed to be recoverin' but was somehow botchin' the job.