Роберт Чамберс - A Young Man in a Hurry

He steadied his voice. "I think I can help you—I am sure I can. I have sent to New York for Dr. Courtney Thayer."

He drew a long breath; her beauty almost unnerved him. "Thayer will operate; he's the best of all. Are you afraid?"

She lifted one hand and held it out, hesitating. He took it.

"No, not afraid," she said.

"You are wise; there is no need for fear. All will come right, my child."

She listened intently.

"It is necessary in such operations that the patient should, above all, be cheerful and—and happy—"

"Oh, yes, … and I am happy! Truly! truly!" she breathed.

"—and brave, and patient, and obedient—and—" His voice trembled a trifle. "You must lie very still," he ended, hastily.

"Will you be here?"

"Yes—yes, of course!"

"Then I will lie very still."

He left her curled up in an easy–chair, smiling at him with blind eyes; he scarcely found his way down–stairs for all his eyesight. He stumbled to the grill–room door, felt for the knob, and flung it open.

A flood of yellow light struck him like a blow; through the smoke he saw the wine–flushed faces of Colonel Hyssop and Major Brent staring at him.

"Gad, Lansing!" said the Major, "you're white and shaky as a ninety–nine–cent toy lamb. Come in and have a drink, m'boy!"

"I wanted to say," said Lansing, "that I have a patient in 5 and 6. It's an emergency case; I've wired for Courtney Thayer. I wish to ask the privilege and courtesy of the club for my patient. It's unusual; it's intrusive. Absolute and urgent necessity is my plea."

The two old gentlemen appeared startled, but they hastily assured Lansing that his request would be honored; and Lansing went away to pace the veranda until Coursay returned from the telegraph station.

In the grill–room Major Brent's pop eyes were fixed on the Colonel in inflamed inquiry.

"Damme!" snapped the Colonel, "does that young man take this club for a hospital?"

"He'll be washing bandages in the river next; he'll poison the trout with his antiseptic stuffs!" suggested the Major, shuddering.

"The club's going to the dogs!" said the Colonel, with a hearty oath.

But he did not know how near to the dogs the club already was.

It is perfectly true that the club and the dogs were uncomfortably close together. A week later the crisis came when Munn, in a violent rage, accused Sprowl of spiriting away his ward, Eileen O'Hara. But when Sprowl at last comprehended that the girl and the papers had really disappeared, he turned like a maddened pig on Munn, tore the signed checks to shreds before his eyes, and cursed him steadily as long as he remained within hearing.

As for Munn, his game appeared to be up. He hurried to New York, and spent a month or two attempting to find some trace of his ward, then his money gave out. He returned to his community and wrote a cringing letter to Sprowl, begging him to buy the O'Hara land for next to nothing, and risk the legality of the transfer. To which Sprowl paid no attention. A week later Munn and the Shining Band left for Munnville, Maine.

It was vaguely understood at the club that Lansing had a patient in 5 and 6.

"Probably a rich woman whom he can't afford to lose," suggested Sprowl, with a sneer; "but I'm cursed if I can see why he should turn this club into a drug–shop to make money in!" And the Colonel and the Major agreed that it was indecent in the extreme.

To his face, of course, Sprowl, the Colonel, and the Major treated Lansing with perfect respect; but the faint odor of antiseptics from rooms 5 and 6 made them madder and madder every time they noticed it.

Meanwhile young Coursay had a free bridle; Lansing was never around to interfere, and he drove and rode and fished and strolled with Agatha Sprowl until neither he nor the shameless beauty knew whether they were standing on their heads or their heels. To be in love was a new sensation to Agatha Sprowl; to believe himself in love was nothing new to Coursay, but the flavor never palled.

What they might have done—what, perhaps, they had already decided to do—nobody but they knew. The chances are that they would have bolted if they had not run smack into that rigid sentinel who guards the pathway of life. The sentinel is called Fate. And it came about in the following manner:

Dr. Courtney Thayer arrived one cool day early in October; Lansing met him with a quiet smile, and, together, these eminent gentlemen entered rooms 5 and 6.

A few moments later Courtney Thayer came out, laughing, followed by Lansing, who also appeared to be a prey to mirth.

"She's charming—she's perfectly charming!" said Courtney Thayer. "Where the deuce do these Yankee convent people get that elusive Continental flavor? Her father must have been a gentleman."

"He was an Irish lumberman," said Lansing. After a moment he added: "So you won't come back, doctor?"

"No, it's not necessary; you know that. I've an operation to–morrow in Manhattan; I must get back to town. Wish I could stay and shoot grouse with you, but I can't."

"Come up for the fall flight of woodcock; I'll wire you when it's on," urged Lansing.

"Perhaps; good–bye."

Lansing took his outstretched hand in both of his. "There is no use in my trying to tell you what you have done for me, doctor," he said.

Thayer regarded him keenly. "Thought I did it for her ," he remarked.

Instantly Lansing's face turned red–hot. Thayer clasped the young man's hands and shook them till they ached.

"You're all right, my boy—you're all right!" he said, heartily; and was gone down the stairs, two at a jump—a rather lively proceeding for the famous and dignified Courtney Thayer.

Lansing turned and entered rooms 5 and 6. His patient was standing by the curtained window. "Do you want to know your fate?" he asked, lightly.

She turned and looked at him out of her lovely eyes; the quaint, listening expression in her face still remained, but she saw him, this time.

"Am I well?" she asked, calmly.

"Yes; … perfectly."

She sat down by the window, her slender hands folded, her eyes on him.

"And now," she asked, "what am I to do?"

He understood, and bent his head. He had an answer ready, trembling on his lips; but a horror of presuming on her gratitude kept him silent.

"Am I to go back … to him ?" she said, faintly.

"God forbid!" he blurted out. With all his keen eyesight, how could he fail to see the adoration in her eyes, on her mute lips' quivering curve, in every line of her body? But the brutality of asking for that which her gratitude might not withhold froze him. It was no use; he could not speak.

"Then—what? Tell me; I will do it," she said, in a desolate voice. "Of course I cannot stay here now."

Something in his haggard face set her heart beating heavily; then for a moment her heart seemed to stop. She covered her eyes with a swift gesture.

"Is it pain?" he asked, quickly. "Let me see your eyes!" Her hands covered them. He came to her; she stood up, and he drew her fingers from her eyes and looked into them steadily. But what he saw there he alone knows; for he bent closer, shaking in every limb; and both her arms crept to his shoulders and her clasped hands tightened around his neck.

Which was doubtless an involuntary muscular affection incident on successful operations for lamellar or zonular cataract.

That day they opened the steel box. She understood little of what he read to her; presently he stopped abruptly in the middle of a sentence and remained staring, reading on and on in absorbed silence.

Content, serene, numbed with her happiness, she watched him sleepily.

He muttered under his breath: "Sprowl! What a fool! What a cheap fool! And yet not one among us even suspected him of that !"