Treasure Valley Part 3

Master Davy Munn, still enthroned calmly upon the front seat of the useless vehicle, contemplated the tumultuous line with supreme contempt. Mr. Munn never hurried. Should all Elmbrook have risen up one morning and gone hurtling down to Lake Simcoe, it would have left him seated alone, undisturbed, on its vacated ridge.

He turned leisurely and chirped to the horses. "Jim Cameron lent yous to haul that outfit to the station," he complained, as they lumbered out through the gateway, "but I'll be darned if I promised to run 'em there, so yous kin git home."

Meantime, the vanguard of the Orphan Rescue Expedition had reached the railroad track. Just on the outskirts of the village lay a deep ravine, spanned by a bridge. Over this the train moved slowly, and here, with his eye on the lookout for white signals, the conductor spied the Duke of Wellington in the middle of the track, waving a white banner. Being an Elmbrook man, Lauchie took in the situation at once.

Jake and Hannah were late, of course; too late even to run across the fields while he waited at the station. He gave the signal, and the train slowed down, the snorting engine coming to a standstill within a foot of the flaunting garment.

Engine Driver Nick Boyle, who would have willingly stopped at Elmbrook every day in the week, to talk over the back fences with the pretty girls, but who objected on principle to all that his chief did, poked his head out of his black box, grimy and disapproving. "What in thunder's Bra.s.s b.u.t.tons up to now?" he demanded. Miss Weir, who had thrashed Nick times without number in his youth, fixed him with her steady gray eye.

"He stopped because I signaled him to, Nicholas Boyle," she said tartly.

The Duke was still standing in the middle of the track, waving the overalls, as though the train were a wild animal to be kept quiet by having its attention diverted. The sight tickled the engineer.

"Golly, it must be a weddin'," he remarked, facetiously. "Who's gettin' hitched? You, Miss Weir?"

"Hold your tongue!" she commanded, and the abashed young man collapsed into his box.

By this time Hannah had arrived, and was being helped aboard. The wraps, the pies, the bottle of milk, the crock of b.u.t.ter, the basket of provisions, and her husband, were bundled after her. The group of friends stood waving good-by with sunbonnets and ap.r.o.ns, the schoolmistress, still holding Jake's forgotten pipe, and still faithfully brandishing the overalls, stepped off the track to let the train start, and the expedition was just drawing a breath of relief, when they were suddenly thrown back into their former state of consternation. Conductor Lauchie leaned down from the platform, and, with his thumb pointing over his shoulder, announced in a loud whisper, "Losh keep us, I would be forgetting! He'll be aboard, Harriet Munn!

Your new pill-mixer'll be aboard!"

Mrs. Munn stared at him in dismay. "Not him! Not the new doctor!"

The conductor looked abashed, as though he had brought the wrong parcel from town. "Och, he would be as fine a lookin' young man as you'll see in Oro!" he whispered, apologetically. "Will I jist be puttin' him off here?"

"Don't you dast to do such a trick, Lauchie McKitterick!" cried Mrs.

Winters, shaking her fist in his face. "Harriet's been up helpin'

Hannah all mornin', an' she ain't ready for him. Take him on to the station, an' we'll run up an' help her red up before he comes. An'

mind you go slow!"

The conductor hastily acquiesced. He was a native of Elmbrook, and knew his place when Susan Winters was giving orders. "Awl aboard!" he shouted.

The group gave one final, farewell flourish toward the train, and then turned and sped up the lane to meet the new emergency. Jake and Hannah, their faces settled once more into their accustomed expressions of good-humored placidity, leaned from their windows and waved their hands. Hannah smiled a toothless but happy smile, and Jake's eyes beamed a great content as he sat back in his seat, and, holding the rattle between his teeth, fumbled happily for a match. He looked across at his wife, and their eyes met in a rapturous smile; for at last, after years of striving and longing, they were on their way to the fulfilment of their great ambition; they were to have a child of their very own!

And so, as the train sped in one direction, and the group of women in another, no one noticed the stooped, gaunt man who dropped from the rear end of the baggage car, and, creeping down the bank of the ravine, disappeared into the green tangle of underbrush.

CHAPTER III

HIS FIRST PATIENT

Oh, the dainty, dainty maid to the borders of the brook Lingered down as lightly as the breeze; And the shy water-spiders quit their scurrying to look; And the happy water whispered to the trees.

--C. G. D. ROBERTS.

Dr. Gilbert Allen, gold-medalist of the Toronto School of Medicine, and just home from a post-graduate course in London and Edinburgh, had his coat off, his sleeves rolled up, and was busy arranging bottles on the shelf of his tiny dispensary. He was whistling cheerily. It was young Dr. Allen's nature to be cheerful even under adverse circ.u.mstances, and this morning all his prospects were bright. For after years of spending money--and largely another man's money, too--he was at last on his feet. His college life had been a very happy one, it is true; so, also, had been the years since his graduation, the first two spent as house surgeon in a Toronto hospital, the last, and best of all, in the Old Land. They had given him breadth and experience; but though Gilbert was willing to concede that experience teaches, he was equally a.s.sured that she does not pay bills. Now he was a free man, and master of his profession. He used the last phrase modestly; he was ready and anxious to make the mastery more complete, and at the same time to win a name for himself and a home and a fortune for Rosalie.

As he stacked the bottles noisily in their places he glanced around the little room, and wished he might turn a handspring, just to let off steam and be able to write to Harwood and the other fellows to say his office was big enough to admit of the feat. He wisely crushed the desire, for he recognized the fact that he was under surveillance.

Just outside the windows stretched a little lawn, with a star-shaped flower-bed in the middle. Up and down this green s.p.a.ce, following a leisurely and devious course, journeyed a lawnmower, propelled by a long-limbed youth. His straw hat hung limply from his head, his coat flapped limply from his shoulders, and his trousers bulged limply from his big top-boots. Nevertheless, he had a certain lumbering airiness of movement, and such a mien of lofty indifference to his surroundings that the beholder was impressed with the idea that he was a very sprightly gentleman indeed, and need never work unless he was so minded. Just why he should spend a whole morning cutting a few square yards of short May gra.s.s was a problem the doctor had not yet solved.

But even in his brief acquaintance, Gilbert had learned that the actions of this young man, who had entered into an important relation to himself as groom and general factotum, were not to be measured by any rational standard.

The slow clatter of the lawnmower grew louder, and finally ceased beneath the window. The doctor turned, a bottle in each hand. The open sash was filled by a straw hat which formed the frame for a broad, smiling countenance.

"Want any help?" the visitor inquired, genially.

"No, thank you," answered the doctor, adding, pointedly: "You have other work to do, you know."

"Oh, I ain't worryin' about that," responded his man-servant, rea.s.suringly. "Old Doc. Williams uster say he'd make kindlin' wood o'

me, when I didn't hustle round, but it never fizzed on me." He hung himself over the window-sill with a sigh of satisfaction, and gazed admiringly at his employer.

A wire door, leading from the veranda to the main portion of the house, swung slowly open, and a woman, wearing a big, blue-checked ap.r.o.n, and carrying a long pewter spoon, looked out anxiously. "Davy!" she called in a loud whisper, "why don't you get on with your work?"

"I'm helpin' the doctor with his mixtures," he answered, in a tone of remonstrance.

The woman's tight mouth closed emphatically. "Well, hish!" she said, raising her spoon warningly. "Susan Winters is sittin' on her porch, an' she'll hear if you don't look out. It's no use talkin' about things, anyhow."

The wire door creaked again, Mrs. Munn sailed away, and her son hung himself farther over the window-sill. Evidently he had inherited none of his mother's reticence.

"Say," he ventured, confidentially, "Elsie Cameron's home; came yesterday, the very day you came. Ain't that funny?"

The young doctor did not seem to see anything humorous in the coincidence. He glanced meaningly toward the lawnmower.

"I bet she thinks it's a kind of a come-down to come back an' work on the farm after doin' nothin' but sing for so long. She's a bully singer, I tell you, only she's got red hair."

He waited for some comment, but as there was none forthcoming, except a louder clatter of bottles, he continued: "Everybody thinks she's so awful good-lookin', but I don't think she's half as pretty as Jean--that's her sister. Say"--his voice sank to a whisper--"did anybody tell you about her sister yet?"

There was a note of strained anxiety, almost amounting to terror, in the boy's tone, that commanded Gilbert's attention. He looked around.

Perhaps it was some serious illness, and the new doctor was badly in need of a patient.

"No. What's the matter with her?" he asked, interestedly.

Davy glanced about him fearfully, as though he were about to disclose the young woman as the author of a deadly crime. He leaned still farther into the room. "She's--_she's my girl_!" he exploded, in a loud whisper.

The new doctor turned his back suddenly. There was a long pause. "I must congratulate you," he said at last, in a smothered voice.

Davy gazed at his broad back uncertainly. He had heard that formula before, but it had always been delivered to the newly wed. He was afraid the doctor was under a pleasant misapprehension.

"We're jist kind o' keepin' company--yet," he explained carefully.

"An' Jean, she's an awful girl to laugh. An' then there's old lady Cameron--that's her mother. She's a blasted bother. There's never a fella' goes to see them girls but she has to sit 'round an' do all the talkin'. It ain't fair." His tone was deeply aggrieved. "You won't like it any better'n' me if you keep company with Elsie," he added, after a pause.

The doctor turned, and his expression was so alarming that the youth slipped back several feet into the garden. "That's what everybody's been sayin'," he stammered, in self-defense. "All the folks was sayin'

you'd be sure to keep company with Elsie when she came home. I thought it would be kind o' handy 'count o' me goin' to see Jean. We'd be company home, nights."

The indignation that had been rising in the young doctor's gray eyes vanished. He turned quickly to his bottles and indulged in a spasm of silent laughter. But his face was very grave when he looked around again. "Look here, David," he said firmly, "I'd advise you not to discuss my affairs. Neither you nor the rest of the village had better even speculate upon them. You're almost dead sure to be wrong. Now go on with your work."

The boy slowly and reluctantly detached himself from the window-sill, and set the lawnmower on another zigzag journey. His hat, his coat, and his trousers hung limper than ever. He moved wearily, and at the end of the garden he sat down under a cherry-tree to muse on the strange, sad fact that his new employer promised to be not one whit more companionable than old Doc. Williams.

The young doctor finished his work, and went up the stairs three steps at a time, making a commotion that brought Mrs. Munn from her pie-baking in hurried alarm. He washed his hands, resumed his coat, and, leaning out of the window, wished with all his might that he had something to do. He was seized with an honest, pagan desire that some one would get sick, or that there might be an accident in the mill---just a mild accident, of course; or, better still, that that queer specimen of humanity sitting under his cherry-tree, down there, should be smitten with paralysis. He confessed that this last seemed the most hopeful outlook, then laughed at himself for his monstrous wishes. He seized his hat and ran downstairs. He would go out and explore the village. He must do something, he warned himself, or he would be in danger of rushing into the street and lacerating the first man he met, just for the sake of sewing him up again.