As for himself, he remained where he was for a long time. He never knew how long. He felt numb. He realized himself to be in a gulf of misunderstanding, from which he could not be extricated, even for the sake of Clemency. It seemed to him again that he must go away, but he remembered Gordon's pitiful plea to him to remain. Finally he went into his room, to find that Emma, in her absurd malice, had left only the coverlid on the bed. She had stripped it of the sheets and blankets. He lay down with his clothes on and passed a sleepless night.
The next morning at the breakfast-table he looked haggard and pale. He could eat nothing. Doctor Gordon looked at him keenly.
"What is the matter, Elliot?" he asked.
Clemency gave a quick glance at him, and her face worked.
"Nothing," replied James.
"You look downright ill."
"I am not ill."
Clemency rose abruptly and left the table.
"What is the matter, Clemency? Where are you going?" Gordon called out.
"I have finished my breakfast," the girl replied in a stifled voice.
Gordon insisted on making some calls that morning, and relieving James.
"You are worn out, my son," he said in a voice of real affection, and clapped him on the shoulder. He sent James on a short round in spite of his objections, and the consequence was that James reached home half an hour before luncheon.
It was a beautiful morning. Spring seemed to have come with a winged leap. A faint down of green shaded the elms, and there was a pink cloud of peach bloom in the distance. The cherry trees were swollen almost to blossom, and the apple trees had pale radiances in the glance of the sun. The grass was quite green, and here and there were dandelions.
Clemency was out in the yard, working in a little flower-garden, as James drove in. She had on a black dress, and her fair head was uncovered. She pretended not to see James, but he had hardly entered the office before she came in. Her face was all suffused with pink. She looked at him tenderly and angrily.
"Are you ill?" she said, in an indignant voice which had, in spite of herself, soft cadences.
"No, Clemency."
"Then why do you look so?" she demanded.
James turned at that. "Clemency, you accuse me of cruelty," he said, "but you yourself are cruel. You do not realize that you cannot tell a man he is a murderer, and throw him over when he loves you, and yet have him utterly unmoved by it."
Suddenly Clemency was in his arms. "I love you, I love you," she sobbed.
"Don't be unhappy, don't look so. It breaks my heart. I love you, I do love you, dear. I can't marry you, but I love you!"
"If you love me, you can marry me."
Clemency shrank away, then she clung to him again. "No," she said, "I can't get over the thought of it. I can't help it, but I do love you. We will go on just the same as ever, only we will not get married. You know we were not going to get married just yet anyway. I love you. We will go on just the same. Only don't look the way you did this morning at breakfast."
"How did I look?"
"As if your heart were broken."
"So it is, dear."
"No, it is not. I love you, I tell you. What is the need of bothering about marriage anyway? I am perfectly happy being engaged. Annie says she is never going to get married. Let the marriage alone. Only you won't look so any more, will you, dear?"
CHAPTER XVI
After this James encountered a strange state of things: the semblance of happiness, which almost deceived him as to its reality.
Clemency was as loving as she had ever been. Gordon congratulated James upon the reconciliation. "I knew the child could never hold out, and it was Annie Lipton," he said. James admitted that Annie Lipton might have been the straw which turned the balance. He knew that Clemency had not told Gordon of her conviction that he had given the final dose of morphine to her aunt. Everything now went on as before. Clemency suddenly became awake to Emma's petty persecutions of James, and they ceased. James one day could not help overhearing a conversation between the two. He was in the stable, and the kitchen windows were open. He heard only a few words. "You don't mean to say you are goin' to hev him?" said Emma in her strident voice.
"No, I am not," returned Clemency's sweet, decided one.
"What be you goin' with him again for then?"
James knew how the girl blushed at that, but she answered with spirit.
"That is entirely my own affair, Emma," she said, "and as long as Doctor Elliot remains under this roof, and pays for it, too, he must be treated decently. You don't pass him things, you don't fill his lamp. Now you must treat him exactly as you did before, or I shall tell Uncle Tom."
"You won't tell him why?" said Emma, and there was alarm in her voice, for she adored Gordon.
"Did you ever know me to go from one to another in such a way?" asked Clemency. "You know if I told Uncle Tom, he would not put up with it a minute. He thinks the world of Doctor Elliot."
"It's awful queer how men folks can be imposed on," said Emma.
"That has nothing to do with it," Clemency said. "You must treat Doctor Elliot respectfully, Emma."
"I'm jest as good as he be," said Emma resentfully.
"Well, what if you are? He's as good as you, isn't he? And he treats you civilly. He always has."
"I'm a good deal better than he be," Emma went on irascibly. "I wouldn't have gone and went, and--"
"Hush!" ordered Clemency in a frightened voice. "Emma, you must do as I say."
James drove out of the yard and heard no more, but after that he had no fault to find with Emma, so far as her service was concerned. It is true that she gave him malignant glances, but she made him comfortable, albeit unwillingly. It was fortunate for him that she did so, or he would have found his position almost unbearable. Doctor Gordon relaxed again into his state of apathetic gloom. His strength also seemed to wane. Almost the whole practice devolved upon James. Gordon seemed less and less interested even in extreme cases. Georgie K. also lost his power over him. Now and then of an evening he came, but Gordon, save to offer him a cigar, took scarcely any notice of him. One evening Georgie K. made a motion to James behind Gordon's back when he took leave, and James made an excuse to follow him out. In the drive Georgie K. took James by the arm, and the young man felt him tremble. "What ails him?"
asked Georgie K.
"I hardly know," James replied in a whisper.
"I know," said Georgie K. By the light from the office window James could see that the man was actually weeping. His great ruddy face was streaming with tears. "Don't I know?" he sobbed.
James remembered the stuffed canary and the wax flowers, and the story Gordon had told him of Georgie K.'s grief over his wife's death.
"I dare say you are right," he returned.
"He's breakin' his heart, that's what he's doin'," said Georgie K.
"Can't you get him to go away for a change or somethin'?"
"I have tried."
"He'll die of it," Georgie K. said with a great gulp as he went out of the yard.