Treasure Valley Part 11

"Yes," answered Gilbert, surprised; "that is, I helped to, somewhat.

Do you know----"

The man interrupted with a harsh laugh, such as had startled the minister. It was as unmirthful as a cry of pain. "Yes, I know more than you think. I know _you_, Gilbert Allen!" His voice was harsh with scorn. "Many, many a time I've heard your name--spoken with the highest praise--oh, the very highest. But you are like all the rest of the world. You would let your best friend starve. Selfishness and dishonesty!" he cried, clenching his hands, "selfishness and dishonesty! Those are the commonest things in this world--the only things!"

He picked up his lantern, and turning his back on his astonished visitor, disappeared into the dark recess of the engine-room.

The young doctor stood staring after him, undecided whether to follow or not. Was the man mad? There was a wild gleam in his eye, but Gilbert's professional knowledge told him it was rather a gleam of anguish than insanity. He took a step forward, then turned and walked away, wondering, and hotly indignant. He was filled with rage that any man should dare to speak to him so, and wished with all his heart that John McIntyre's hair had not been so white, nor his shoulders so stooped and thin.

But with his amazement and indignation there was struggling a new feeling. The May night was cool, but he felt suffocatingly hot. He shrugged his shoulders. Nonsense! The man certainly was mad. How could any sane person accuse him of leaving his best friend to starve?

And yet--

A figure in white was coming down the village street. It was the princess of the ravine. She was dressed as suited her now, in a long, white, filmy gown, which she held up daintily. She wore no hat, and the bronze hair crowning her shapely head caught the sunset light and shone like gold.

She spoke to him, with a stately sweetness that recognized their previous acquaintance, but invited no further advance. The deep, searching look in her eyes, the same as in her old uncle's, made Gilbert feel uncomfortable. It seemed as if she knew, and every one knew, that he had been guilty of "selfishness and dishonesty."

He did not worry long over the strange man and his stranger accusation, for his fortune took a sudden happy turn.

Down on the Lake Simcoe road, about a couple of miles below the village, lived old Mrs. McKitterick, the mother of Conductor Lauchie.

For years she had been an invalid, and a great sufferer, and poor Lauchie had spent half his earnings on doctors' bills; but still she lay in her bed weary month after weary month. They called in the new doctor, and he tried a new form of treatment, a simple operation, and before a month was gone the old lady walked to the barnyard gate and waved her shawl at Lauchie's train as it came puffing out of the swamp.

And the conductor blew her such a joyous salute that folks thought there must be an accident, and Jake Sawyer stopped his mill and ran up the track to see if any of the orphans had been run over.

The real cause of the uproar was soon proclaimed from Long's upstairs, and with it went ringing over the countryside the fame of the new doctor.

Gilbert awoke one morning to find himself the most important man in the township of Oro, and the busiest. Patients came from all directions, and Speed, his trim little mare, went flying over the hills and dales as though she, too, were heartily glad that work had begun. Lauchie McKitterick advertised him at every station along the line, and when the doctor wanted to go anywhere on the train Davy Munn needed only to brandish his mother's sunbonnet from the window of the stable loft, and the Lakeview and Simcoe express stopped just below his back gate. He was soon so busy that Granny Long had to give up her afternoon nap to keep track of his swift movements. There was always something doing in the village, too. There was often an accident in the mill, and there was always an accident at Jake Sawyer's. The eldest orphan fell into the mill-pond, and was nearly drowned; the twins took a dose of Paris green just to see if it really would turn their hair into gra.s.s; and Joey ate all the early green apples off a d.u.c.h.ess tree. Then there was Granny Long's neuralgia and Uncle Hughie Cameron's rheumatism; and Mrs.

Winters declared she believed folks got sick on purpose, for the sake of calling the doctor in.

There was some shadow of truth in this, for as the young man came and went among the people's homes their admiration for his skill was soon mingled with a warmer feeling. He had such a "takin' way" with him, old Granny Long declared, that a body just couldn't help being glad to see him; and old Mrs. McKitterick said the sight of his face was like a dose of medicine, a compliment the young doctor accepted gratefully in its true meaning. Even Mrs. Winters, and all the other famous nurses of the district, who, over an afternoon cup of tea, would give him full instructions upon how to treat this case and that, agreed that the doctor was generally right. And then, though he always had his own way in the end, he took their advice with such good humor, and never scoffed, the way old Dr. Williams did. He would walk into the house and order things in a way that commanded the admiration of even the Duke of Wellington. He scolded the mothers roundly whenever he was called to see a sick baby. He denounced pork and pickles as a child's diet, and made such a fuss about air-tight bedrooms that Jake Sawyer, who, in company with his wife, lived in terror lest a draught of night air should blow on the orphans' precious heads, was forced into the patient complaint that though the doctor was a fine young man, and their eldest was just crazy over him, still he believed, if he had his way, he'd turn folks out of house and home, to live in the road, like tinkers.

The busier Gilbert became the happier he grew. Elmbrook stood, in the center of a rich agricultural district, his patients were mostly wealthy farmers, and he began to feel that he was not so far from his ambition, after all. He would be well enough off at the end of two years to set up a city practice and make a home for Rosalie.

Among the doctor's first social appearances was tea at the manse, where he met again the beautiful Miss Cameron. She came with her brother Malcolm, who was Gilbert's a.s.sistant since he had returned from college. When he was not too busy in the fields, or in dancing attendance on Marjorie Scott, the young man rendered the doctor considerable help.

It was a warm evening, and when tea was finished the company sat out on the veranda. The manse and the church were in full view of the village, half a mile distant, and a fine target for the telescope, as the minister's wife well knew. But here they were screened from observation by the vines.

"You have never heard Miss Cameron sing, have you, Dr. Allen?" asked the minister's wife. "Then there's a treat in store for you. Run in and give us a song, Elsie, dear."

Gilbert murmured something polite. He was quite sure Miss Cameron's singing would be very sweet and pretty, like herself; but he still had tingling recollections of the whip-poor-will song, and his anxiety to hear more Elmbrook talent was only mild.

The girl arose from the steps and returned to the twilight of the parlor. "Give us 'Abide with me,' Elsie," called the minister, leaning back in his worn armchair with a contented sigh.

"That's the one father always asks for," said his wife, with a smile.

"He says he'd rather hear your Elsie sing that, Malcolm, than listen to the best minister in Canada preach."

Young Malcolm turned reluctantly. He was seated on the bottom step, engaged in an absorbing conversation with the minister's eldest daughter, and did not like to be interrupted; but he knew better than to neglect Marjorie's mother.

"Yes, Elsie whoops it up not so badly, sometimes," he remarked with brotherly candor not unmixed with pride. "I like to hear her, all right, when she's singing an out-and-out song that's got a head and tail to it. But when she gets on to those hee-ha, hee-ha Italian fireworks things, away up in G, I generally cut for the barn."

"Hush!" said the minister gently. The first notes of the prelude came floating out of the dusk, and then, soft and sweet, and uttered with a perfect enunciation, the words:

"_Abide with me! fast falls the eventide; The darkness deepens: Lord, with me abide!

When other helpers fail, and comforts flee, Help of the helpless, O abide with me!_"

The voice was pure and full, and as clear as a bird's; but there was something deeper in it than mere beauty, some subtle, compelling quality that made the tears rise unbidden, and that forced the heart to join in the prayer it uttered.

No one moved until the last line rang out triumphantly.

"In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me!"

When she had finished, Gilbert spoke no word of admiration. It had been so much better than he had dreamed that words seemed inadequate.

She sang again and again; now the song was gay, now grave, and she ended with an ecstatic spring song that had in it the sparkle of the stream, the song of the robin, and all the glorious delight of earth's resurrection.

When she came out to them again and her audience expressed their pleasure, Gilbert looked at her with a sharp feeling of pity. They had enjoyed her singing, no doubt, but they had no idea how wonderful it was. And to be able to sing like that, and not be appreciated, was tragic.

"I suppose you are going back to Toronto to study, next autumn?" he said, when she was seated again on the veranda steps.

"No, I think not," she said, with what seemed to him shocking indifference. "Not for some years at least, if ever."

"Why--you--you are surely not going to give up studying music!" he cried bluntly. "You, with a voice like that!"

His tone was unconsciously flattering. The girl smiled gratefully.

She looked at him very gravely, as though about to speak, when she caught her brother's eye upon her, and paused with an embarra.s.sed air.

"That's just what we're all saying to her, doctor," he said. "She ought to go, but she won't."

"Oh, I may, some time," she said lightly, "but I have had enough lessons for a while. Now, Marjorie, aren't you going to play for us?"

Gilbert went home, wondering over this strange young woman, and feeling toward her a strong impatience. Either she did not know the magnitude of the talent she possessed, or she was wofully lacking in ambition.

With that voice, and a little spirit, there was nothing she might not accomplish; while here she was, content to feed chickens, and carry eggs to the corner store, with the placid a.s.surance that she "had had enough lessons for a while." If she had not been so stately, he felt he would like to shake her.

He did not meet her again for some time; for even when he found leisure to attend a social gathering, she was seldom present. But he was on the lookout for her. He determined that the next time he met her he would give her some much-needed advice. She ought to be stirred up.

These country folk had no ambition.

Her brother seemed to have no lack of it, he discovered. He took young Malcolm with him to see a patient occasionally, and on one long drive the boy confided in him something of the struggle it had been to give them all an education. It was a lucky thing that Elsie didn't want to go on with her music, he said, for the expense of her training would be so great that both he and Jean would have to stay home for some years, and Jean was dying to go to the high school in the fall. Both Uncle Hughie and mother had declared that Elsie must have first chance, but Elsie didn't want to go, and it certainly was lucky, though they were all sorry, of course, that she wasn't going on.

Gilbert wondered a little over the lad's remarks, but forgot them until the next occasion when he met Miss Cameron.

He had been up to see a patient among the Glenoro hills, and was driving homeward. The road was a narrow, lonely one, winding here and there through the dense wood. On either side the trees and underbrush made a towering green wall. Through it the eye could catch occasional glimpses of the flower-spangled earth, or a vista of splendid trunks with the sunlight making golden splashes on their spreading boughs.

Gilbert pulled up Speed and drove slowly. Her hoofs made but a smothered pad, pad in the soft leaf-mold. The air was cool, and laden with the delicious scents of moss and bracken and leaf-strewn earth.

Far away in the green depths a whitethroat was sending forth his long, clear, silvery call, in endless praise of "Canada! Canada! Canada!"

As Gilbert turned a curve in the road a figure appeared ahead, a figure that seemed to add the finishing touch to the almost perfect scene--a girl, her arms full of marigolds, walking along the flower-bordered pathway.

She wore a pale-green gown, her bronze hair was shaded by a big straw hat, and she seemed a harmonious part of the gold-and-green picture of the summer woods.

The young doctor drew up at her side. She was a little pale and weary-looking from her long, hot walk, and she gladly accepted his invitation to ride. Jim had needed another man for the haying, she said, and she was the only one who could be spared to go and seek one; she was very fortunate to get a ride home.