HENDERSON 
 
 ROSE E. YOUNG
 
 0. ZSGMMWie' cJiW
 
 HENDERSON
 
 HEN D ERSO N 
 
 By Eose E. Young 
 
 Author of " Sally of Missouri" 
 
 BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
 HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 
 
 Cbe Fttecrsibc press, Cambribo* 
 1904
 
 COPYRIGHT 1904 BY ROSE E. YOUNG 
 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 
 
 Published February
 
 to 
 E. 8. YOUNG AND J. W. YOUNG
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. THE DIFFICULT MINUTE ... 1 
 II. THE LIFE ON THE TABLE . . 43 
 
 III. THE ROSE-RED GLOW . . .78 
 
 IV. THE TRAIL OF THE TANQLER . 118 
 V. THE WAY OF THE STRONG . . 152 
 
 VL THE BEGINNING 179
 
 HEKDEBSON 
 
 THE DIFFICULT MINUTE 
 
 FROM the depot at Penangton, Morning 
 County, Missouri, to the one line of street- 
 cars it is ten miles. Henderson figured that 
 out for himself, as he stumbled irritably over 
 the rough road, across the bridge, up the 
 plank walk, to the car. It was an October 
 evening, and the day was trailing off in a 
 gray, shining halation that was neither mist 
 nor fog, but dancing haze. Henderson saw 
 far-away houses brooded over by gray wings ; 
 he saw rickety wheels of gray spiked by the 
 small gleam of the street-lamps ; and he saw 
 occasional people work up out of, and twist 
 back into, the farther distance in gray spirals. 
 The whole town and the hills beyond it were 
 1
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 one wavering, lightening, darkening scheme 
 of gray, except where, far to the west, a 
 stretch of red lay along the sky. 
 
 As he came on toward the car, Henderson 
 had a half-dashed, half-defiant look in his 
 eyes. " You 're a pretty cuss ! " he mumbled 
 once or twice. " Better have stayed in Chi- 
 cago in the first place. Better have stayed in 
 Dixburn in the last place. Penangton ! " 
 He looked about him disgustedly. To the 
 west he could distinguish the outline of a 
 tall building, shadowy and uncertain in the 
 gloom ; he picked out the white letters across 
 its sides : " P-e-n-r-y-n M-i-1-l-s." He looked 
 to the east, and saw a straggling line of 
 sheds. He read the letters on their sides 
 easily enough, because his eyes had become 
 accustomed to the first part of the combina- 
 tion : " Penryn C-o-a-1 Penryn Coal P-o-c- 
 Penryn Coal Pockets." He stopped half- 
 way up the plank walk, dropped his heavy 
 traveling-case, and worked the fingers of 
 his aching hand. His eyes, sweeping south- 
 2
 
 THE DIFFICULT MINUTE 
 
 ward, were caught by a trim brick building 
 beyond the depot. It had white letters across 
 its front. " The first word is Penryn," said 
 Henderson, at a guess. " No, the first word 
 
 is T-h-o-r-l-e-y. Thorley-P-e-n-r Uh-unh ! 
 
 I knew Penryn would be along. Now what 's 
 the rest ? Thorley-Penryn S-e-r-o-t-h-e-r 
 Oh, go to the dickens ! " he finished impo- 
 tently. " I don't care what you are." Still 
 farther south he descried the headstones of 
 a cemetery. " Good ! One can at least die 
 in Penangton. I'll bet the tallest shaft is 
 named Penryn." The night's blacker shadow 
 leaped up out of the earth then, and the 
 haze became thick gloom. The last red flare 
 was gone from the west. Two men came up 
 the plank walk toward Henderson. 
 
 " Coolish night," he heard one saying, as 
 they clacked off northward. 
 
 " Brrrt ! It is a coolish night," said Hen- 
 derson to himself. He turned to pick up his 
 valise, but for some reason his hands went 
 together first, and he clinched them tightly. 
 3
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 " A coolish night," he heard himself re- 
 peating, with a wandering intonation. Then 
 he shook himself threateningly. " Oh, I '11 
 try again. Of course I '11 try," he said ; 
 but he said it like a man who is trying to 
 anaesthetize his soul ; and when he got into 
 the car, the look in his eyes was more dis- 
 tinctively dashed than defiant. 
 
 "Is there a driver? " he by and by asked 
 wistfully of the one other occupant of the 
 car. 
 
 " Yes, there 's a driver," the other occu- 
 pant looked out of the window at a frame 
 house which stood just where the plank walk 
 ended and the brick pavement and the car 
 track began, " but there 's also a saloon." 
 
 Henderson bit his lower lip in a confiden- 
 tial enjoyment of the quality of that voice. 
 There was a note in it of standing things 
 good-naturedly when they couldn't be 
 helped. 
 
 " I wonder if there 's no way of breaking 
 the connection ? " he said, getting back to 
 4
 
 THE DIFFICULT MINUTE 
 
 the driver and the saloon with a jerk. He 
 went to the car door and hallooed at the 
 frame house. A man came to the door. 
 
 " Dave ain't quite ready yet," called the 
 man, thickly but genially. "Jes wait a 
 minute till he wets his whis'le, will you ? " 
 
 It seemed the thing to do under the circum- 
 stances. The air had the crispness of early 
 autumn, and Henderson saw that the woman 
 in the car felt it ; so he shut the door and 
 came patiently back to his seat. 
 
 " It 's just one of Penangton's ways," she 
 explained, with a funny little lift of her 
 brows. 
 
 Henderson took his lower lip into confi- 
 dence again and poised himself in mid-air, 
 as it were on the sound of that voice. It 
 had so many kinds of suggestion in it. She 
 had said only two sentences to him, but the 
 first had made him aware that whatever was 
 worth laughing at in the world she was ready 
 to laugh at, and the next had made him 
 aware that she had run the gamut of Penang- 
 5
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 ton from end to end. After the atony of the 
 past few weeks he was glad of his rising 
 interest in that voice, in anything. His soul, 
 he knew, was somewhere near in the same 
 tense attitude his body had assumed out on 
 the plank walk, but he had a desire to tell 
 his soul to shut up, to come along, to make 
 the best of it. 
 
 " It 's quite a town, Penangton ? " 
 
 " The lamp is sputtering," said the woman, 
 in reply. " Could n't you turn the wick 
 higher? Oh, goodness, it's going out! 
 Why, there 's no oil in it." 
 
 They both got up hurriedly, but the lamp 
 was too far gone for rescue. It began to 
 smoke dismally. 
 
 " I '11 go get the driver," said Henderson. 
 " Just wait here a minute." He jumped off 
 the car and ran up the steps to the saloon. 
 Presently he came back, shaking his head. 
 "The driver's drunk for fair," he said. 
 " Everybody in there 's drunk. What '11 we 
 do?" 
 
 6
 
 THE DIFFICULT MINUTE 
 
 "Couldn't you drive?" she asked mer- 
 rily. 
 
 He looked down the silent street and his 
 eyes lit up a little. " I '11 drive you home, 
 if you '11 let me," he said, with decision. " I 
 can just do it." He ran through to the front 
 of the car, and unwound the reins from the 
 brake. The mules stirred slowly and sorrow- 
 fully. "Shall I?" asked Henderson. The 
 woman began to laugh. " Do you live on the 
 car-line?" went on Henderson gleefully. He 
 laughed, too. It seemed good to be pulling 
 his soul along out of its tragics into some- 
 thing humorous and commonplace. " Come 
 up ! " He shook the reins out over the mules. 
 " It 's my idea to drive until I stop to let you 
 out, then drive on a little farther, and leave 
 the car standing on the track, while I cut for 
 an hotel. Do you think it will work? The 
 mules seem to like to stand." His voice broke 
 up into little chuckles, like a schoolboy's. 
 
 The woman came out on the front platform 
 to him. She could hardly talk for laughing. 
 7
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 " It will work," she said, " unless somebody 
 else gets on the car." 
 
 Henderson's face wrinkled a little, but he 
 shot the leather quirt out over the mules 
 briskly. "Nobody will get on," he said. 
 " I '11 never be able to stop this team." He 
 felt so exhilarated that it was like pain. The 
 car began to make a great banging noise that 
 just suited him. The way the sparks flew 
 from the hoofs of the mules just suited him. 
 The way that woman leaned back against 
 the car door and laughed just suited him. 
 It was all so entirely on the outside. There 
 was nothing introspective about it. He 
 looked back at her gayly. "I hope you 
 live at the other end of the line?" he 
 queried. 
 
 "About half way." 
 
 " I hope it 's a long line." 
 
 " About two miles, not counting the rough- 
 ness." 
 
 " Don't count the roughness. Nothing 
 counts." 
 
 8
 
 THE DIFFICULT MINUTE 
 
 " That 's it, nothing counts. Is n't this 
 a lark?" 
 
 Henderson nodded brightly. " Will it be 
 dark like this all the way ? " he asked ; and 
 when she said yes, he began to sing the first 
 bars of a gay little air under his breath ; the 
 woman sang too, both of them holding their 
 voices down cautiously. 
 
 " Don't you ever finish things ? " she com- 
 plained finally, after trying in vain to adapt 
 her voice to Henderson's many-tuned mel- 
 ody. 
 
 " No," said Henderson. "No; I don't like 
 the finish of anything." He moved back 
 to where she was, and leaned against the 
 car frame, with the reins dangling carelessly. 
 "The beginning is always so much more 
 interesting." 
 
 She rocked her head on the door-jamb at 
 her back. " Mmh ! I don't know."- 
 
 " Oh, yes ! " cried Henderson. " In the 
 beginning you have the beginning and all 
 you can imagine about the end." 
 9
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 "But in the end you have the end and 
 all you can remember about the begin- 
 ning." 
 
 " Remember ! " It was a bad word for 
 Henderson. Something like a shiver passed 
 over him. " I '11 back imagination, anticipa- 
 tion, against memory, seven days in the week, 
 won't you ? " 
 
 " Hold in your mule steeds here," said the 
 woman. " Steady for the corner." 
 
 They swung around the corner, and started 
 on a gentle down grade between two rows 
 of splendid trees. " Say," said Henderson, 
 following her lead like a happy child, and 
 shunting the conversation off on a side track 
 again, " say, are n't you cold ? " 
 
 "No, indeed. Is n't this air fine ? That's 
 one good thing we have in Penangton." 
 
 " What other good things do you have in 
 Penangton ? " 
 
 " Oh, mills and coal-mines and an academy. 
 Then there 's the county," she gave a 
 wide sweep of her arm which seemed to skip 
 10
 
 THE DIFFICULT MINUTE 
 
 over the town and encircle something out- 
 side it, " wheat !" 
 
 " Many doctors here ? " 
 
 She looked back into the car at the small 
 case which sat beside his large one. " Oh ! 
 I see. Yes, there are a great many doc- 
 tors." 
 
 "What school?" 
 
 " Two who get their bills paid eventually, 
 two who forget to send out bills, and one 
 rascal." 
 
 Henderson propped one foot on the splash- 
 board of the car. " The last class seems to 
 invite as being least crowded," he commented 
 gravely. 
 
 " Well, I don't know ; if it comes to that, 
 they are all more or less rascals, at least 
 they don't believe in themselves. That 's a 
 pretty bad sort of rascality, you know. Are 
 you coming here to live ? " she asked sud- 
 denly, turning her face toward him. 
 
 " Like as not." 
 
 " Well, if you do, there 's one thing in 
 11
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 Penangton you want to look out for. 
 There 's one thing that is n't a good thing. 
 It 's Penrynism." 
 
 "What'sPenrynism?" 
 
 " It 's the money disease. Some doctors 
 get it. The rascal here has it." 
 
 Henderson dropped his head, and whacked 
 at his shoes with the butt of his quirt. " I 
 expect I'll get it, then. I feel particularly 
 susceptible to infection of that kind just at 
 this writing." Immediately he was as sombre 
 as he had been out there on the plank walk ; 
 his merriment had been a thin cloak, after 
 all, and it had worn through. 
 
 "Slow up now," said the woman next. 
 "I'm almost home. Just around this last 
 
 corner." 
 
 He drew his breath in sharply, and made 
 the mules take the corner very slowly. He 
 made them go slower yet when he found 
 that he was on a street where the trees were 
 so big and so close together, and the street- 
 lamps were so little and so far apart, that it 
 12
 
 THE DIFFICULT MINUTE 
 
 was as black as Egypt, and as mysteriously 
 pleasant. 
 
 "Stop. I'm home." 
 
 " Now you see," said Henderson ruefully, 
 " why I hate the end of things." He stepped 
 down to help her from the car. 
 
 " Remember the beginning. Oh, you 
 are going to have to learn to stand remem- 
 bering," she insisted, laughing lightly. 
 " Here, this is my gate." 
 
 He ran ahead and opened it for her, and 
 as she passed through he lifted his hat high 
 and made her a sweeping bow. " I 'd rather 
 hope it is n't the end," he said. 
 
 She only laughed again, and stood looking 
 at him for a short moment. " I think it is. 
 But it was a nice ride. I shan't forget it. 
 Good-night." She called back another cheer- 
 ful good-night, as she went up the walk, 
 while Henderson, at the gate, watched her, 
 with a lonely look on his face. Ahead of her 
 he traced out a big frowning house-front, 
 across the lower part of which ran a light 
 13
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 veranda, like a misplaced smile. When the 
 door had opened to her, she paused for a 
 moment in the light from the hall, with her 
 face turned his way ; then the door shut 
 quietly. Henderson rubbed his hand softly 
 over the brass head of the low gate-post, 
 until presently his eyes traveled to it. 
 " P-e-n-r-y-n," he spelled unseeingly. When 
 he did begin to see it, he said flat-footedly, 
 " Well, I 'm damned ! " and turned back to 
 his mules. 
 
 They were gone. As far down the street 
 as he could see, there was no sign of them. 
 " Now, how the mischief am I to find my 
 way ? " mused Henderson, without concern. 
 " Follow the track," suggested common sense. 
 " Follow, follow ! " supplemented romance 
 fancifully ; " a track must lead from the be- 
 ginning to the ending. So light her up, Fate, 
 kind lady ; we follow." With that Hender- 
 son looked at the Penryn house purposefully. 
 
 He was sure the car-track would pass an 
 hotel somewhere, and he had turned but 
 14
 
 THE DIFFICULT MINUTE 
 
 another corner when he came upon one, with 
 the car and the sad mules standing before it. 
 A crowd of mild-looking men were around the 
 car. 
 
 "But how you going to account for 
 the satchels ? " one man was asking, with 
 the hope of excitement vibrating blithely in 
 his voice. 
 
 Henderson got into the crowd at this junc- 
 ture. " I '11 account for the satchels," he vol- 
 unteered. " You '11 find my name on them, 
 Henderson. I left them in the car while I 
 went into the saloon for the driver. The 
 mules ambled off while I was out of the car." 
 It was a long hiatus, but Henderson saw that 
 there was no need of bridging it over; that 
 the men around him were used to the driver, 
 the saloon, and the mules. 
 
 Once in the hotel, he went directly to his 
 room, took off his top-coat, and sat down in 
 front of a comfortably glowing grate. " Very 
 beautiful," he said, straight at the red coals. 
 For a few minutes longer a half-blunted 
 15
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 interest remained in his face ; then his hands 
 spread out weakly on the arms of the chair 
 and he dropped his chin as though he were 
 going down in his clothes with the shame- 
 faced resolution never to come up again. 
 
 Slowly and reluctantly his mind went back 
 over his most recent past, the Illinois days. 
 First of all came the medical college in Chi- 
 cago ; and clearest of all was the vision of 
 Alden, the dean, on the rostrum before the 
 class, his burning eyes throwing off some kind 
 of illumination, conviction radiating from 
 every inch of his long, swaying body. And 
 loudest of all rang the recollection of Alden's 
 voice, high and quivering in its advocacy of 
 the Hahnemannian creed, the beauty of the 
 " law," the totality of the symptoms, the cen- 
 tral modality ; or fiercely earnest in its de- 
 nunciation of routinism, specifics, prescribing 
 in the lump. Ah, Alden had believed. That 
 had been the intrinsic beauty of sitting under 
 him. Henderson's perception had always 
 been of the keenest, and Henderson, of all 
 16
 
 THE DIFFICULT MINUTE 
 
 the men and women who had listened to 
 Alden, and learned of him, in the first four 
 years of the college's struggle for existence, 
 had been the one to carry away with him 
 the deepest impress of Alden's spirit. He, 
 of them all, had gone out from the college 
 doors with the feeling most strong upon him 
 that he had had a glorious bath in some deep, 
 clean current of ethics. He had never been 
 able to account to himself for Alden's influ- 
 ence upon him. Before he went up to college 
 he had been commonplace enough, a quick, 
 shrewd fellow, with a good business head, 
 acute sympathies, and one strong inclination 
 in the world, the inclination to study 
 medicine ; but when he left Alden he was 
 like a finely charged wire, across which 
 hummed and sang concepts of his profession 
 as the " noble profession," the scientific pos- 
 sibilities of the " noble profession," life as 
 an opportunity for the " noble profession," 
 all that went to make Alden's lif e like a 
 benediction. 
 
 17
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 And what happened? What always hap- 
 pens to the young physician who hasn't 
 money enough to wait three years for pa- 
 tients, and abide by the Code while waiting ? 
 He had first " located " in Chicago, in a 
 South Side boarding-house ; a little later he 
 had located in a town in central Illinois ; 
 and after that he had variously located all 
 over the state, until he found himself at 
 Dixburn, in southern Illinois. Henderson's 
 memory could linger in any one of the half 
 dozen towns that had preceded Dixburn, and 
 could find in each something halfway pleasant 
 or halfway worthwhile ; but Dixburn had been 
 hell from start to finish. He had to admit that 
 his acute sufferings in Dixburn had had no 
 better or bigger excuse than that his clothes 
 had begun there to show signs of irreparable 
 wear, and he had had no money for new 
 ones. Something psychical worked itself out 
 in him during the second month that he 
 loafed and suffered around that sun-baked 
 Illinois town. It might have been change, 
 18
 
 THE DIFFICULT MINUTE 
 
 or it might have been development, or 
 it might have been reversion. " I have 
 got down to my clothes," was the way 
 he passed judgment upon himself ; and, as 
 he had the time, he began to outline, with 
 some contemptuous amusement, the sort of 
 man he would have been if it had happened 
 that he had never been influenced by Alden. 
 When he had put himself to himself as 
 " ordinary," he went under a wet blanket 
 of conviction that he must get at life on a 
 different plane ; that he had been keyed up 
 too high in the beginning. A little later on 
 in that last month, there had come a day 
 when one of his shoes cracked straight across 
 the top ; and in the black, helpless cursing 
 that Henderson stuffed into the crack he 
 checked off self-potentialities never before 
 suspected. As he sat and glared at the shoe, 
 he told himself unqualifiedly that he was 
 done with trying to meet the conditions of 
 lif e in the Alden way ; that he was ready to 
 do anything now for money, money ! and 
 19
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 that Fate would better not tempt him. His 
 face assumed too sharp an expression ; it 
 became the face of a man in danger of over- 
 reaching himself, in his greediness for gain. 
 He felt sure that, if opportunity had come 
 his way, he would have done things that 
 much worse men than he never do. The 
 whiteness and the fineness of Alden's in- 
 fluence lifted from him entirely, and circled 
 off above him with a cool backward fan- 
 ning. 
 
 Then a medical magazine offered a prize 
 of one hundred and fifty dollars for the best 
 essay on The Physician as Friend, and Hen- 
 derson, with rebellion and blasphemy and 
 battered-down belief in his heart, wrote eth- 
 ically, and got the one hundred and fifty 
 dollars. Inevitably, the next thing he did 
 was to buy some shoes. That the ethical 
 should have stretched out a hand to him 
 with a purse in it just at this moment half 
 frightened him. He walked about Dixburn 
 
 in his new shoes for another month in crushed 
 20
 
 THE DIFFICULT MINUTE 
 
 incompetency, and when he crossed over to 
 Penangton he was still effectually flattened 
 out. The truth was, he told himself in final 
 review, as he sat there with his face tucked 
 away from the comfort in the grate, the 
 truth was that he had primed himself for 
 wickedness in Dixburn, had hung around and 
 waited for temptation, and temptation had 
 not come. Instead of temptation had come a 
 chance of the right sort. " But if the wrong 
 sort of chance had come," Henderson pointed 
 out to his soul, with that pitilessly keen in- 
 sight that was his, "if the wrong sort had 
 come, and I had profited by it more than by 
 the one hundred and fifty, I wonder, my 
 Soul, if you would be whining around now 
 like an abused house-cat ? " 
 
 He tumbled into bed a few minutes later, 
 glad to find that he was sleepy. Before he 
 was done felicitating himself upon that fact 
 he sat up, staringly awake. " If I don't win 
 out here," he said, as though he had dragged 
 up a large conclusion from the edge of the 
 21
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 land of dreams, " if I don't win out here, 
 I '11 never win out. It 's now or never, and 
 I don't think I '11 ever forget how she looked 
 there in that doorway." The dying gleam 
 in the grate shot up and broke into small 
 gaseous bubbles as he lay back on his 
 pillow. 
 
 When he had dressed and breakfasted, 
 the next morning, and had made his way to 
 the street, he felt immeasurably better. He 
 sat down in one of the loafing-chairs outside 
 the hotel door, and smoked, with two clearly 
 defined notions in his head : one was to finish 
 his cigar, and the other was to beat back 
 along that car-track to the house whose 
 door had opened and shut in front of him 
 the night before. Every time he thought of 
 the woman who had stood framed in that 
 door, he found his determination to stay in 
 Penangton strengthening. He was very near 
 the end of his cigar, and very near the be- 
 ginning of a dream, when a man stopped in 
 front of him. 
 
 22
 
 THE DIFFICULT MINUTE 
 
 " Scrape my shins if 't ain't ! " said the 
 man, holding out his hand. The big, assert- 
 ive voice pushed through Henderson's dream 
 like a steam-roller, and bowled him back, 
 willy-nilly, to the medical college, Alden, 
 and the Chicago days. 
 
 " Oh, you, Thorley ? How d' you do ? " 
 Henderson's greeting was slow, but it had 
 the amiability that curls off the end of a good 
 cigar, and he got up and shook hands with 
 the man, whom he could place as one of the 
 fellows of the '90 class. He had not seen 
 Thorley since the finish in April, two years 
 and more before, and he hardly recognized 
 him because of the bushy side-whiskers on 
 his face. Still, when he came to think of it, 
 it was inevitable that Thorley should have 
 sprung those whiskers. One never saw a 
 man with his kind of face who did n't sooner 
 or later come to side-whiskers, and stop 
 there permanently. All that Henderson 
 immediately recalled about him was that he 
 was the one chap at college who did n't have 
 23
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 to get "used" to the dissecting-room. 
 Thorley had n't sickened or blinked from the 
 first. And that odor of blood, still warm 
 enough to run, which sorely tried every 
 freshman's stomach in the operating-rooms, 
 had n't bothered Thorley in the least. He 
 had n't even noticed it, until a boy in front 
 of him reeled, and had to be swung out by 
 his shoulders and heels. 
 
 " Live here ? " asked Henderson. 
 
 " Yes. How are you making it ? " Thorley 
 laughed a good-natured, rollicking laugh as 
 soon as Henderson opened his mouth to 
 reply. " Need n't to tell me. About eighteen 
 of the twenty in the '90 class have told me 
 already. I 'm making it," he rounded off, 
 with a dogged down jerk of his head. 
 
 " How ? " 
 
 " Whiskey cure." 
 
 "Oh, Lord!" 
 
 " And morphine," went on Thorley, un- 
 touched. 
 
 "What 's your your cure ? " Henderson 
 24
 
 THE DIFFICULT MINUTE 
 
 smiled down at Thorley from the heights of 
 the Code, as he nicked the ash from his cigar. 
 
 " Something new. It 's a serotherapy 
 wrinkle." 
 
 Henderson's smile became a deep-lunged 
 laugh, and Thorley's round eyes twinkled. 
 
 " Hair of the dog for the bite," Thorley 
 insisted. " Only mine 's cows. It 's simple." 
 His eyes fairly danced. " Inoculate a cow 
 with alcohol ; then draw off the serum from 
 the cow's blood, and use as an antidote for 
 inebriety. You 'd be surprised at the way it 
 works, Henderson." 
 
 For a moment Henderson made no reply ; 
 a direct- line of comparison had projected it- 
 self from the face of Thorley, standing there 
 with his fat neck spilling over his collar, to 
 the face of Alden, all aglow with splendid 
 dignity. "You've got a long way from 
 Alden," he demurred at last. 
 
 " Oh, Alden hell ! " said Thorley, with a 
 short laugh which stayed good-natured. 
 " Alden's wife has enough money for him to 
 25
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 live on. Mine has n't. That 's the difference 
 between me and Alden." He rocked back 
 on his heels easily. " Going to be here long ? " 
 he asked. 
 
 "Maybe." 
 
 " I tell you what you do," suggested Thor- 
 ley quickly, and with some emphasis. " Come 
 up and see my sanitarium. And say, one of 
 these days I '11 take you out to the depot and 
 show you the Thorley-Penryn Serotherapy 
 Stables, where we draw off anti-alcoholic 
 serum for alcoholism." 
 
 " Quack, quack, quack ! " laughed Hen- 
 derson ; and Thorley went off with his own 
 mouth puckered. 
 
 After Thorley had left him, Henderson 
 started up the street toward the Penryn 
 house. He had no trouble in finding it ; but 
 when he got within a block of it he had 
 trouble in accounting for its being there, 
 in Penangton. It was so much of a castle 
 that while it had ten times more ground than 
 
 the Chicago castles, it still did n't have half 
 26
 
 THE DIFFICULT MINUTE 
 
 ground enough. The effect was not good, 
 " though it would be if there were two miles 
 of park," thought Henderson. " Now, how 
 did she ever make a mistake of that kind ? 
 Must have been built before she grew up 
 and took hold of things." He walked on a 
 little farther, and examined the house more 
 carefully. " It was built before she grew up 
 and took hold of things," he said finally, his 
 eyes, agile as squirrels, running up and down 
 the weather marks of the house. He felt 
 immediately relieved. It somehow seemed 
 to him very important, just then, that that 
 woman should not fail him anywhere, should 
 come quite up to what he expected of her. 
 Suddenly he decided not to go any nearer 
 the house. It occurred to him that if she 
 should see him loitering about, their " begin- 
 ning " might be cheapened. He made a de- 
 tour around the house, and came back to the 
 main street a block above it, and continued 
 his walk. 
 
 He took that walk and made that detour 
 27
 
 HENDEESON 
 
 every day for a week; and although he 
 never got a glimpse of her, he refrained from 
 making any inquiries about her at the hotel, 
 from the same fear of cheapening their 
 beginning. During that week, however, he 
 learned incidentally that the various signs 
 which had glared him out of countenance, 
 the night of his arrival, did not begin to 
 cover all of the Penryn consequence to Pe- 
 nangton. Every enterprise in the town or 
 around it was a Penryn enterprise, and the 
 town itself was thickly coated with an adula- 
 tion of Penryn which was yet not thick 
 enough to hide its deep dislike for him. 
 
 It was on Tuesday of Henderson's second 
 week of the old business of waiting for busi- 
 ness that Thorley came into the hotel and 
 asked for him. Thorley had that concen- 
 trated look that most people wear when they 
 are acting under a rigid determination to 
 bring up something casually before they 
 have done with you. 
 
 " Suppose you come up and take a look at 
 28
 
 THE DIFFICULT MINUTE 
 
 my sanitarium to-day," said he, early in the 
 conversation. " Suppose you come along 
 now. Wouldn't you care to? I'd like to 
 show you over." 
 
 They went down the street together, and 
 Henderson knew that Thorley was telling 
 some hard-luck story of his own about early 
 struggles; but as that same kind of story 
 was already marked across Henderson's mem- 
 ory with a great puckered cicatrix that 
 pinched every nerve in him, he made a point 
 of not listening, until Thorley said, " There 
 she is," and turned his fat hand on his wrist 
 by way of indicating the sanitarium. It was 
 a two-story main building of brick, with 
 frame annexes that cluttered it up like an 
 oversupply of white wings. The main build- 
 ing was well out toward the street, and had 
 on its front windows, " Serotherapy Cure for 
 Alcoholism. If I Don't Cure You, You 
 Don't Pay Me." The subtle, half-sweet, 
 half-cutting odor of some never before 
 smelled drug combination assailed Hender- 
 29
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 son as soon as he was inside. He sniffed at 
 it curiously, as Thorley led the way into a 
 front room, which seemed to be an office be- 
 cause of the desk and safe in it, and a labor- 
 atory because of the long vial-cabinet against 
 one wall. The other walls were hung with 
 what looked like framed certificates, at first 
 glance, but, on closer inspection, proved to 
 be engrossed letters, all beginning, "My 
 dear Dr. Thorley," and all ending, " Very 
 gratefully yours." 
 
 "What's that I smell, Thorley?" asked 
 Henderson, still sniffing. 
 
 " That ? Oh, that 's my secret." 
 
 "You ought to keep your secret better 
 bottled, then," retorted Henderson. "It 
 smells to heaven." 
 
 " Well, now," said Thorley, sitting down 
 at the desk, " I was just thinking of unbot- 
 tling it, in a way. Look here, Henderson, 
 what's lacking about you that you useter 
 have? Tussle been too devilish hard for 
 you ? Sit down over there, sit down. You 
 30
 
 THE DIFFICULT MINUTE 
 
 want to try your hand at something 't ain't 
 so hard ? Something that '11 pay ? " 
 
 " Depends on the something," smiled Hen- 
 derson, as he took the chair pointed out to 
 him. 
 
 " Oh no, it don't," Thorley answered em- 
 phatically. " No, it don't. You can just bet 
 your life on that, as long as you have n't 
 a wife with the money. Let 's make a long 
 story short, Henderson. What I want to tell 
 you is this : I 'm making a go of this show. 
 I guess you ain't been here long enough to 
 know all it means to be hitched to the name 
 of Penryn with a hyphen. It 's meaning so 
 much that I can hardly keep track of it. I 
 gotta have a partner, a parlor partner, 
 Henderson. Trouble with me is, I 'm getting 
 a lot of people in here that I can't han'le. 
 I 'm plain to say they are up the scale from 
 me a ways. I haveter keep my mouth shut 
 just for fear of not saying the right thing. 
 They come from St. Louis and Kansas City 
 and round about, and I don't go with 'em. 
 31
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 'Specially I don't go with the women. When 
 you add morphine jim-jams to women's nat- 
 ural fits you 've got too much for me, Hen- 
 derson. They want you to be sympathetic, 
 and they're afraid you'll be fresh. They 
 keep me twirling. The fact is, I gotta have 
 some help." 
 
 " Count me out, Thorley." 
 
 " Well, now, I don't see why. You need 
 n't think I ain't straight. It's all legiti- 
 mate. There are hundreds of places, or simi- 
 lar, in this state and in every state in the 
 Union." 
 
 Thorley glanced up at Henderson, and 
 then continued, a little sheepishly : " They 
 do some good. My medicine is a sort of anti- 
 dote, don't care what you say." 
 
 " I guess your medicine is n't the serum, 
 then. I guess you fall back on the muriate 
 or the bichloride a little." 
 
 "Keep on guessing," laughed Thorley. 
 " Whatever it is, it helps my patients to stop, 
 if they wanta stop ; it helps 'em get 'em- 
 32
 
 THE DIFFICULT MINUTE 
 
 selves back. Say, Henderson, if you want 
 the truth, I got just one qualm of conscience 
 about this business. The patients are such 
 a damn bad lot in general, I feel some guilty 
 about helping 'em to get 'emselves back. 
 There 's nothing in 'em worth saving. When 
 you fish 'em up, and dry 'em out, and put 
 'em on their feet, you feel like you 'd played 
 a joke on 'em." 
 
 " Thorley, what the dickens did you ever 
 pick out a missionary business for ? " Hen- 
 derson got up, frowning. " You don't care 
 a continental about giving people a chance, 
 
 yet" 
 
 " Blue blazes, man," cried Thorley, " it 's 
 my own chance I 'm concerned about, not 
 theirs ! See here, Henderson. I suppose if 
 I were a damn fool, who went about this 
 thing with his face shining and his lips 
 twitching, like Alden, you 'd think the thing 
 was all right, and that I was all right. I 
 know the enthusiasm dodge ; but I got two 
 eyes, let me tell you, and I 'm none the 
 33
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 worse man for seeing on both sides and 
 straight to the bottom." 
 
 " You are the worse man, though, Thor- 
 ley, for never seeing straight to the top. 
 Wall your eyes up a little once in a way, 
 and you might get still another view." 
 
 When Henderson parted from Thorley, 
 that day, he went home directly past the 
 Penryn house. He felt justified in it ; and 
 though he did not see Miss Penryn about 
 the place, a fine and unsullied glow lasted 
 him all the way to the hotel. 
 
 After that, sustained by the sense of justi- 
 fication, he walked directly past the house 
 every day. It seemed to him that he would 
 have to find out more about her soon, whether 
 the " beginning " were to be cheapened by 
 his inquiries or not. The amount of pleasure 
 he got out of just remembering that woman 
 was a wonder to him, and the hope of know- 
 ing her better some day was a joy and a 
 support to him. From the sort of ivory 
 frame, rich and creamy, in which memory 
 34
 
 THE DIFFICULT MINUTE 
 
 had placed her, Miss Penryn dominated him, 
 waking or sleeping. 
 
 During the next week he was at Thorley's 
 a number of times. There was no other place 
 to go, and Mrs. Thorley's room, with its 
 glowing fire and cushioned chairs, was invit- 
 ing. It was up there, one blustering even- 
 ing, that Thorley said to him suddenly, 
 " Henderson, I wish to goodness you 'd quit 
 your hesitating, and come on in here with 
 us." 
 
 " Why, I did n't know that I was hesitat- 
 ing." 
 
 Thorley gave a peculiar grunt, and then 
 went on, as though some things were too 
 patent to be talked about : " You seem to 
 think it 's wrong for me to do a little good 
 to these howling hyenas I cage up here, just 
 because I do myself a lot more. That 's about 
 the size of your argument. Why, my prin- 
 ciple is the principle every syndicate and 
 every trust fattens on. Do somebody else a 
 little good, and do yourself a lot more. It 'a 
 35
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 the Penryn principle, and look at Pen- 
 ryn." 
 
 " And look at this bilious town," replied 
 Henderson. " It 's jaundiced with Penryn- 
 ism." 
 
 " Oh, come off ! If it was n't for Penryn, 
 this town would be a sand-bar in the Mis- 
 souri River. It's Penryn that worked the 
 railroad in, and Penryn that got the elevators 
 away from the river, where the grain-boats 
 could n't come no more, up to the depot, 
 where trains can come. It 's Penryn that got 
 the mines going, and Penryn that 's getting 
 us electricity for the cars. You need n't tell 
 me that kind of a man don't deserve credit. 
 It 's good religion to call him a cheat and 
 a rascal, and I guess he 's all of it ; but he 
 does things that other people get the benefit 
 of, no matter how you look at him." 
 
 " Has Mr. Penryn any children ? " Irre- 
 sistibly quick, the question clipped through 
 the barrier of the careful days with bullet- 
 like radicalism. 
 
 36
 
 THE DIFFICULT MINUTE 
 
 " Lord, yes. Them three boys at the 
 Bank 's his." 
 
 " Any daughters ? " Henderson sat up 
 straight, to let the questions volley as they 
 would. 
 
 " He 's got a daughter." 
 
 " Is she here ? " This close to that woman 
 again, this close to her name even, she seemed 
 to step down from her frame and to come 
 toward him, richly alive, with all the promis- 
 ing significance she had had for him that 
 first evening. There had been nothing in 
 his life more foolish than that woman's effect 
 upon him, and nothing more vital. He was 
 trembling as he waited for Thorley's an- 
 swer. 
 
 " Is she here now, Zu ? " called Thorley 
 to his wife, who was bending over some 
 knitting, close to the lamp. " She 's not here 
 much any more." Thorley raised his voice 
 and called again, " Zu, is Mrs. Shore here 
 now?" 
 
 " Purl one, two wait a minute purl 
 37
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 two that 's it. Why, yes, she was to come 
 in on the night train. She did n't make out 
 her visit to her father when she stopped on 
 her way up from St. Louis a week ago, be- 
 cause her husband came down from K. C. 
 for her next day. He 's that spoiled about 
 her. So now she 's down again for a few 
 days." 
 
 " Where 'd you ever meet her ? " asked 
 Thorley. It was strangely as it should be 
 that Thorley's emphasis unconsciously put 
 that woman on a pedestal, high and white. 
 
 " Why," said Henderson, like a man in a 
 fog, " somewhere a long way from here 
 if she is the woman I think she is. What 
 does she look like ? " 
 
 " Queen. And she rules, let me tell you. 
 She 's the one person living who 's been too 
 much for Lowry Penryn. They say this town 
 owes a good deal to her." Thorley chuckled 
 as he continued : " They say she 's headed 
 Lowry off a time or two." He put his clumsy 
 thumbs together and leaned toward Hender- 
 38
 
 THE DIFFICULT MINUTE 
 
 son a little. " Say, Henderson, I don't mind 
 telling you that Penryn 's agreed to back me 
 a long way further on the serum. We are 
 going to buy Al Hickam's farm, down 
 Weaver Road, for the cows, and we are going 
 to work the cure for all there is in it. And 
 there's plenty in it." 
 
 " So." The word clumped at Henderson's 
 ears heavily, without interrogation and full 
 of finish. "That's good." 
 
 He recognized that what Thorley had just 
 been telling him had set him fairly back in 
 the old-clothes Dixburn period, without any 
 of the bitter vigor and combativeness of 
 that period. In two seconds he had become 
 as pallid and anaemic, as unable to fight for 
 his ideal, and as little desirous of fighting, as 
 though Alden had never existed, as though 
 that woman in the frame had never existed. 
 She had n't ever existed. That was the worst 
 of it. He knew what Thorley was going to 
 say next, and as he picked up his hat and 
 coat his answer stood out in his mind with 
 39
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 great clearness. It was about the only clear 
 thing in his mind. He was going to accept 
 Thorley's offer. That was all there was to 
 it. Nothing could be simpler. His upper lip 
 strained back from the simplicity of it, and 
 his nostrils widened fastidiously to let the 
 simplicity of it down his dry throat. The 
 next thing was Thorley's voice : 
 
 " Tell you what I '11 do, Henderson : I '11 
 guarantee you three thousand for the first 
 year. After that there will be five, and after 
 that ten, if there 's a cent. And there 's 
 always a cent in a Penryn deal. Will you 
 take it?" 
 
 " No," said Henderson. That was simple, 
 too ; but his mind, crouched low to receive 
 the expected blow, lumbered through a good 
 half minute as though the blow had really 
 fallen. Then he put on his hat, said good- 
 by to the Thorleys and went down the 
 steps, all his nerves alive again, and flashing 
 jubilant notice to his brain that he had n't 
 been able to get down to that lower plane 
 40
 
 THE DIFFICULT MINUTE 
 
 even when he had wanted to ; that he had 
 underrated the protective value of his ideals, 
 had underrated himself there in Dixburn. 
 He might have trusted himself then, as he 
 could trust himself now, to hold out for the 
 right sort of finish, as right went with him. 
 He was bound to do it. He could n't do 
 anything else. " That 's the good thing 
 about it," he told himself. " Could n't strike 
 that gait even when I wanted to. Lord, 
 Alden, it was a precious leaven you gave 
 me." He deliberately stopped on the street 
 and hugged himself. " It 's bound to keep 
 you quick, you old lump," he said. Then, as 
 he was opposite the Penryn house, he looked 
 over that way. The shades were not drawn 
 hi a book-filled room on the lower floor and 
 through the street window he could see the 
 warm red glow in which the room lay. As 
 he stood looking, his arms folded, his head 
 high, his face still keen with the stress of 
 the minute he had just lived through, a 
 woman came into the room and stopped 
 41
 
 HENDEESON 
 
 before the fire, her hands clasped behind 
 her. Her tall form and the delicate contour 
 of her face were silhouetted distinctly for 
 Henderson. Presently, with a little startled 
 movement, as though she felt what she could 
 not see, she stepped to the window and drew 
 the shade close. 
 
 On the outside Henderson took up his 
 homeward journey with long swift steps. 
 
 " And I guess I 've got to learn to stand 
 remembering," he told himself quietly. 
 
 42
 
 n 
 
 THE LIFE ON THE TABLE 
 
 FIRST Shore heard the clock tick; then a 
 bird on a telephone-wire shrilled a glad note 
 at the spring sunshine; then the clock 
 ticked ; then his child in the nursery above 
 laughed happily; then the clock ticked; 
 then a man with small square boxes in his 
 hands called from the middle of Independ- 
 ence Avenue, " Berr-wizz ! berr-wizz ! " then 
 the clock ticked ; then the car at the corner 
 dragged its cable with an ugly, snarling 
 noise ; then the clock ticked 
 
 " Good God, Henderson ! " he cried from 
 his rocker to the man in the swivel-chair, 
 " will you stop that clock ! " He raised a 
 closely bandaged arm with an impatient jerk 
 that made him wince with pain. His free 
 hand was trembling, and there was a close, 
 fi^e perspiration on his face ; yet almost 
 43
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 instantly he took up the clock's rhythm 
 half laughingly. " Thump-her-in," he said, 
 " thump-her-in ; no-time-to-lose ; got-to-die- 
 young. Lynn, you 've heen a good wife to 
 me, but if you ever huy another clock that 
 ticks-ticks-ticks, I '11 divorce you sure." He 
 got up and crossed over to the open window, 
 where a woman was standing. He put his 
 arm over her shoulder and pushed aside the 
 lace curtain, shrank strangely from the sun- 
 shine and the woman, and came back to his 
 seat with a little hysterical gulp. 
 
 " It 's leaving you," he said to the woman. 
 He had slouched his huge body down into 
 the chair, and his head lay back heavily. 
 " That 's the thing that floors me, the only 
 thing. Oh, hell, I 'm lying ! It 's the big 
 thing, but 't is n't the only thing." Again 
 he got up, restless as a chained wolf, and 
 came over to her. " Look at that sunshine j 
 look at the size of this house; look how 
 thick our carpets are ; look what a beef I 
 am ! It 's got no business to turn out like 
 44
 
 THE LIFE ON THE TABLE 
 
 this. I 'm not half through. It ought n't to 
 be, it shan't be." He dropped into the 
 chair at the window, and began to choke in 
 his slow, sobbing breath, and the woman 
 turned her face to him. 
 
 " Risk it, Hard," she said. " Why don't 
 you ? You must. Is n't it a chance ? Risk 
 it." Her voice rocked like a bounding wire 
 under its weight of doubt and hope. It went 
 crazily from command to question, and she 
 seemed swung far out on it over some abys- 
 mal gulf of perplexity. Once she turned 
 toward the man in the swivel-chair, with a 
 wild strain on her face ; but he was not 
 looking at her, and she turned back to the 
 window quickly. 
 
 Again the other man regained his self- 
 control with one of his crinkled-up chuckles ; 
 he put up his hand and held to the woman's 
 arm. " Don't you get cross with your baby, 
 whatever you do," he said, looking up at 
 her with a deep and tender adoration. He 
 pressed his hand lovingly into the firm arm 
 45
 
 HENDEKSON 
 
 and pulled up by her. " Risk it ? Risk 
 this ? Oh, life, life ! " he cried, with his 
 head bent down to hers. Then he lifted her 
 strained face and made her look out of the 
 window. " That town yonder, see it ? It 
 needs me. I 'm predestined to make it a 
 bloomin' good mayor, one of these days. 
 It '11 miss me. It may do for me to run the 
 risk, but what about the town ? D' you 
 think Kansas City can afford to risk me ? " 
 The self-appreciation seemed appropriate 
 rather than uncouth, casual rather than con- 
 spicuous. He was so virile, so big and co- 
 ercive, that it would have been a pity for 
 him not to appreciate himself. 
 
 " If I risk you, if I 'm willing to," began 
 the woman, dropping the curtain between 
 them and the city, " if I risk you, the 
 town can, and you can risk the town." Her 
 eyes were keen and dry, and she held him a 
 little away from her, with her hands on his 
 shoulders. 
 
 A sort of shining joy came out on the 
 46
 
 THE LIFE ON THE TABLE 
 
 man's face at her words, and he clung to 
 the suggestion in them hungrily. " Do you 
 mean that, all of it ?" he asked. " You old 
 darling, why don't you speak the language 
 oftener ? " The wonder and the humility 
 which must have been his when he first won 
 her were manifest in his face and in his 
 voice. He had got used to everything else, 
 to a good degree of local fame and to for- 
 tune, but he had not got used to her. To an 
 onlooker he was half pathetic, toppling as 
 he did with his great weight toward her; 
 and she was half minatory, it looked so 
 easy for her, in her lithe and pliable youth, 
 to bend aside and fail him. 
 
 The man in the swivel-chair had thus far 
 kept up a ceaseless tattoo with his thumb- 
 nail against his teeth. When finally he 
 stopped the tattoo, it was to throw his 
 arms back and pound on his chest once or 
 twice. 
 
 " I guess you are wondering about now 
 why I dragged you up from Penan gton to 
 47
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 pass on me, Henderson," called the man at 
 the window, with some appreciation of the 
 other's impatience, " long as I ain't taking 
 your word for the final word very fast ; but 
 I tell you what, old man, you Ve disap- 
 pointed me for fair. I thought you 'd have 
 good taste enough to agree with me, and let 
 diagnosis go hang. I knew you weren't 
 sensational, and I expected you to say that 
 the other chaps were on the wrong tack; 
 but I '11 be doggoned if you are n't proving 
 up the bloodthirstiest of the lot. What the 
 dickens you got against me, my friend 
 what you got against me ? " He could talk 
 foolishness with a whimsical assumption of 
 gravity, and his wide, handsome face now 
 mocked Henderson with unsmiling interro- 
 gation. 
 
 Henderson wondered afterward just what 
 pathological change his own brain presented 
 after that witless question had cut its way in 
 and out. He began to beat his hands to- 
 gether softly and to talk rapidly, in the way 
 48
 
 he had when he wished he did n't have to 
 talk at all : 
 
 " What I got against you, Shore, is your 
 symptoms. I wish I could unsay what I 've 
 said, or put a little sweetening in it, but I 
 can't do it. The last time I talked with you 
 in my own office in Penangton I got afraid 
 that Lahn and Carey had your case down 
 about right, and now I know it. At least I 
 know that lump on your wrist is too near to 
 being a spindle-celled sarcoma for you to 
 fool away any more time on neat little com- 
 presses and quiet little rest-cures ; the thing 
 for you now is a sharp little knife. If you 
 don't take that thing in time, and the 
 time 's now, you might as well shut up 
 that real-estate office of yours at once and 
 be done with it. All the real estate you '11 
 need will be a bunch six feet long by two 
 wide" Henderson stopped abruptly, un- 
 able to get the right hold on this line of 
 talk; the things he usually said to people 
 whose lives were in danger and whom his 
 49
 
 knife might save were not coming to his 
 mind readily, and were not fitting the situa- 
 tion when they did come. The jokes on 
 which he was accustomed to ride his patients 
 into an easy familiarity with danger seemed 
 unable to bear the weight of the big man in 
 front of him. 
 
 Henderson did not look at the woman, 
 but he got a sensation that she understood, 
 and that she was doing what she could to 
 make it easier on him when she said : " Har- 
 din, the time 's gone by for talking ; the 
 time 's going by for acting. You must stop 
 this foolishness. The operation itself might 
 be much more serious : you have as good 
 a chance as anybody to rally from it." She 
 pushed him back into a chair, and stood 
 over him with a strong, maternal protection, 
 for all he was so big and stalwart, and she 
 was so straight and slender. "He has as 
 good a chance as anybody, hasn't he?" 
 She looked at Henderson with the earnest 
 concentration in her eyes that was always in 
 50
 
 THE LIFE ON THE TABLE 
 
 them, like unused, expectant lightning, when 
 she looked squarely at him. 
 
 " With the right operator he has," an- 
 swered Henderson, and wondered what she 
 thought he meant by that. 
 
 She was urging on the man in the chair 
 again, as though she had not heard Hender- 
 son : " Say you will risk the operation, 
 say you will." 
 
 Her husband buried his face against her, 
 and gave up the fight with an awkward, 
 gigantic helplessness. " Why need I, when 
 you're saying it, boss? You hear, don't 
 you, Henderson ? I 'm to risk it." The wo- 
 man pulled quickly away from him, with an 
 expression of relief that remained perplexed, 
 and the big man rose to his feet. " But 
 there's one thing I want your lily-white 
 hand on, Henderson," he continued banter- 
 ingly. " You got to promise that you '11 do 
 every bit of the work yourself." Through 
 his banter ran the important, well-fed man's 
 jealousy about himself. Now that it was 
 51
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 coming to the pinch, he plainly did n't like 
 the idea of being subjected to handling 
 and analysis that would be purely scientific, 
 purely impersonal ; he even had a supersti- 
 tious feeling that such a dry valuation of 
 life was likely to invoke death. His person- 
 ality had always meant a great deal to him, 
 and he shrank outspokenly from being viewed 
 as material instead of as Hardin Shore, rich, 
 fate-conquering. " Life means a heap to 
 me," he went on insistently, "and I ain't 
 putting it into the hands of anybody but 
 the chap I can trust, the chap that knows 
 what and how much I have to h've for," 
 he held out his hand toward the woman, but 
 she stood quietly back beyond his reach, 
 smiling at him ; " and I 'm going to put 
 the whole business into your hands, Hender- 
 son. I 'm going to be yours to bind or to 
 loose, as you will and can. Understand? 
 Will you do the work yourself ? " 
 
 Henderson turned nervously from the un- 
 reasoning sentiment of patient toward physi- 
 52
 
 THE LIFE ON THE TABLE 
 
 clan which, in its helpless emotionalism, so 
 saddles a man with responsibility. He shook 
 his head vehemently. " No, no ! " he said. 
 " Let Lahn operate. He 's the one. He 's 
 the very best here. Why, Shore, I 'm only 
 a country surgeon, at most. Let Lahn. I 
 can't do it I can't operate on you I can't 
 take your life into my hands I don't want 
 to " 
 
 " All right, sir," the other man held up 
 his afflicted hand by way of unpromising 
 emphasis, " all right. You see, don't you, 
 Lynn ? Shows how much he believes in it. 
 You won't operate, eh? All right. One 
 thing for sure, nobody else shall." 
 
 The woman put her hand on Henderson's 
 arm. "What do you mean by hesitating 
 now ? " she asked imperiously. " What do 
 you mean? Why, we trust you. You can 
 trust yourself. It 's the only way. You must 
 trust yourself. I 'm not afraid ; Hardin is n't. 
 Should you be ? Why, I Ve had so much 
 trouble to get him even to consider it. He 
 53
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 never would have, if it had n't been for you. 
 He believes in you. Every fibre of chance 
 he has hangs from you." 
 
 Henderson looked down at her grimly. 
 " You know I like responsibility," he said. 
 " Pile it on." Then, with a violent splinter- 
 ing of his thought, he cried wildly : " I tell 
 you I 'm afraid of myself ! His life means 
 too much, to you, to himself, to hundreds of 
 people to me " 
 
 " I can't help that," she persisted, as ar- 
 dent as he. " You 've got to go all the way. 
 You can't refuse, you can't turn back now ; 
 you dare not." 
 
 The same tragic mixture of pleading and 
 command was in her voice again, making 
 her half-admonitory angel, half-tearful wo- 
 man, and her face was becoming so tense 
 that her husband came quickly to the rescue 
 with his ready capacity for forging a finish 
 to anything which he had thought worth 
 beginning. 
 
 " Henderson, I may have a spindle-shanked 
 54
 
 THE LIFE ON THE TABLE 
 
 sarcoma in my hand, but you've got one in 
 your head. 'T is n't normal for a surgeon to 
 have to be coaxed to operate. Responsibility 
 nothing ! I '11 take the responsibility. Will 
 you operate ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes, yes," said Henderson wearily. 
 
 " That 's better. Why, man alive, you 've 
 made me feel that my old arm can't put up 
 a real interesting case for you on the table. 
 Go 'way ; I '11 get you in a box yet before 
 you 're through with me." 
 
 He was deliberately talking and laughing 
 himself out of his first hysterical antipathy 
 to the operation into his usual orderly good 
 nature. His big, powerful shoulders had 
 squared back, and the danger he was about 
 to brave was passing from a great potential 
 tragedy the tragedy of risking life when 
 life means wealth, power, happiness into 
 the flat, every-day fact that he was going to 
 be operated on, going to take some chloro- 
 form, and going to get off the operating-table 
 and go about his business again. 
 55
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 " Now the question is, when ? " he asked 
 next, with the peremptory manner of a man 
 who is accustomed to run his affairs on 
 schedule time. 
 
 The woman looked at Henderson smil- 
 ingly. " It 's fine to have him good at last, 
 isn't it?" she said. "Better not give him 
 time to undergo any sea-change. I suppose 
 you want to get hack to Penangton, too, 
 just as soon as you can ? " 
 
 Henderson furrowed a long straight line 
 in the carpet, between himself and the two 
 opposite him, before he answered. " If you 
 insist upon leaving it to me, I '11 arrange to 
 get you into Miss Maguire's Surgical Sana- 
 torium to-morrow, and I '11 operate the day 
 after, or the day after that. No use to sleep 
 long on the matter. If we are going to enter 
 the lists, the sooner we do it the better." 
 His pleasure, as he again got hold of that 
 old ability of his to handle himself, to catch 
 step with fate and go marching on, lit up 
 his face like a streak of pallid dawn. During 
 56
 
 THE LIFE ON THE TABLE 
 
 the last year of his life, ever since he had 
 met the woman before him, he had required 
 and obtained a great deal of himself, had 
 put himself in the way of a good many crises, 
 and had never yet failed himself ; but the 
 last time he had lived through a sight of her 
 husband's affection for her, the last time he 
 had blistered in the warmth of the husband's 
 friendship for him, he had promised himself 
 that he would keep away from crises in 
 future. Still, here he was, in their house 
 again, at their invitation, their entreaty, and 
 forced to stand there before them with the 
 delicate scales of life and death in his un- 
 willing hand. Henderson's life as physician 
 and surgeon had not been a quiet or an easy 
 one, and before this he had had occasion 
 to wish that a few respectable trials, "like 
 death," he would say, might enter into his 
 experience. His trials had been such tiger 
 trials ; their claws had dug so deep into his 
 sensitiveness. It was not a small thing for 
 a man with Henderson's capacity for suffer- 
 57
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 ing to be able to " handle himself," and it 
 was no great wonder that he took an un- 
 thawed, frosty pleasure in it. 
 
 " So, then, Shore," he concluded capably, 
 " the thing for me to do is to corral Lahn 
 and Carey and MacWhirr, and have them 
 with me to see that you get a fighting 
 chance, and the rest we '11 have to leave to 
 your lucky star." He laughed wholesomely 
 now, a surgeon's confidence - inspiring 
 laugh. 
 
 " Now you are talking sense," said the big 
 man cordially. He moved over to the open 
 fire beside the woman and put his well arm 
 about her, crumpling her to him with his big 
 masculine strength, while Henderson stood 
 there facing the two. Then suddenly Shore, 
 glad in the relaxation of having his physical 
 problem settled, glad in his wife, glad in his 
 friend, held out his hand in his good way. 
 And Henderson was able to take the hand, 
 his eyes staying on Shore's eyes, not seeking 
 hers for a flying second. Yet some electric 
 58
 
 THE LIFE ON THE TABLE 
 
 circuit was completed as the three stood in 
 that close companionship, and somehow he 
 knew that she understood how it was with 
 him ; and somehow he was glad to have her 
 know. 
 
 Then instantly she showed that she had 
 everything in hand and would be able, with a 
 peerless justice, to help him get the most out 
 of himself, so that he might stand unshaken 
 on the heights of a rare friendship. 
 
 " Yes, now we must all talk sense," she 
 said, taking up her husband's word lightly ; 
 " now we must all set our faces steadily 
 toward the task in hand." 
 
 " Steadily toward the task in hand," re- 
 peated Henderson, his eyes on hers at last. 
 
 As he said it, he knew that the stinging 
 agony of saying it, the still strange triumph 
 of saying it, would forever abide with him. 
 
 "All right, sir," interposed Shore, still 
 
 gripping Henderson's hand ; " and operation 
 
 being the task in hand, this is your affair 
 
 from now on ; I 'm not concerned in it any 
 
 59
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 farther. But see here, I tell you what I am 
 concerned in : I Ve a deal on with a railroad 
 for to-day. I need just one last hour at the 
 office. I can go, can't I ? 'T won't hurt if I 
 take the carriage, will it ? " He seemed will- 
 ing to turn authority over to his physician, 
 but unable, from long authoritative habit, to 
 do so. He began every sentence as an asser- 
 tion, and the question only curled in lamely 
 as an afterthought. When Henderson had 
 given him a niggardly consent to do what he 
 was going to do anyhow, Shore turned from 
 his wife to the door. He came back, with 
 his hat in his hand, a moment later, and 
 shook his finger at her. "You are a nice 
 lot, you two," he said. " I hope you are 
 satisfied, but I doubt it. I doubt you '11 be 
 satisfied till you get that chloroform-cap over 
 my nose " He left off suddenly because 
 of the look on his wife's face. She put her 
 hand to her mouth in an unavailing effort to 
 push back a short, sharp scream. 
 
 " You, Hardin ! " she cried ; and when 
 60
 
 THE LIFE ON THE TABLE 
 
 he had come to her and had taken her into 
 his arms, she laughed and trembled, and 
 rubbed her face against his with a clinging, 
 forgiving reproach. " What do you say 
 things like that for ? You must n't. It is n't 
 so easy for anybody concerned that you need 
 make it harder." 
 
 Her bosom kept heaving in a broken, help- 
 less way even after he had gone out of the 
 house to his carriage, and Henderson held 
 his eyes away from her while she stood at the 
 window trying to regain her composure, and 
 talked to her lightly of Penangton, the little 
 Missouri town that was now his home, and 
 that had once been hers. 
 
 " Oh, yes," he said. " You have n't been 
 coming down to Penangton often enough 
 lately, and the calacanthus bush in Mrs. 
 Thorley's yard is 'way ahead of yours. Its 
 buds have popped." 
 
 She swayed abstractedly with the cur- 
 tain, to which she was holding, and against 
 which her head was pressed. "I know I 
 61
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 haven't. I suppose Pete forgets to dig 
 around my bushes? I haven't been down 
 all spring." 
 
 " Mmmh ! I guess I know that." Hender- 
 son whistled softly, and went and stood by 
 the other window. " Why have n't you come 
 down?" 
 
 " Oh I don't believe I know. Hardin, 
 I expect. I get uneasy if he is out of my 
 sight." She held her curtain back suddenly, 
 and looked sharply at Henderson. " What 's 
 the real danger ? " she asked. " Other peo- 
 ple come through all right. What 's the real 
 danger with Hard ? There 's something spe- 
 cial, is n't there ? What is it ? " 
 
 If there was one thing that Henderson 
 was coming to hate more than another, in 
 his business of being the doctor, it was the 
 constant metamorphosis of him from man 
 into physician that went on under his very 
 nose, and that he was powerless to prevent. 
 People were eternally demanding it of him, 
 and he was eternally meeting the demand, 
 62
 
 THE LIFE ON THE TABLE 
 
 involuntarily, like clockwork. A man had 
 spoken to her, from behind a curtain, a 
 moment before ; a physician pushed the 
 curtain back, as she had pushed hers back, 
 and his answer was as straight and sharp as 
 her question : " The real trouble with Hard 
 is the big physical hold he has on life. It 's 
 one of those foolish paradoxes that are true. 
 It 's like this : Hard is so everlastingly alive, 
 and there 's so much of him to be alive, that 
 he is bound to feel a physical shock more, 
 and to smash down harder, than a wiry, ner- 
 vous man would. I Ve got to knock his feet 
 right from under him ; and it 's his feet that 
 Hard stands on rather more than the next 
 man. I guess I ought to tell you frankly 
 that there '11 be trouble if I can't put the 
 operation through in a rush. But I will put 
 it through that way. And he '11 rally." Hen- 
 derson stepped back behind his curtain and 
 drummed on the window. " He 's got to 
 rally." 
 
 The woman moved back behind her cur- 
 63
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 tain, too. The lines of perplexity, confidence, 
 anxiety, and admiration that had been on her 
 face all the morning became more strongly 
 marked. " It has awful responsibilities, sur- 
 gery, hasn't it?" she said slowly. 
 
 " Yes, awful," answered the man behind 
 the curtain. 
 
 Three men, in white duck aprons, short 
 duck jackets, and close white caps, stood in 
 one corner of a large light room and talked 
 comfortably, calling each other by their un- 
 titled surnames with the relief of men who 
 know what it is to have a title eat up indi- 
 viduality. They were men of widely different 
 personalities and unlike appearances : Mac- 
 Whirr, the Scot ; Lahn, German to the last 
 drop of blood; and Carey from Kentucky. 
 But for all their dissimilarity, on the face 
 of each was an expression so dominant that 
 the three looked like brothers. It was the 
 eager stress of men who have the same life- 
 work, appealing to them in the same degree 
 64
 
 THE LIFE ON THE TABLE 
 
 as important and interesting, who find them- 
 selves face to face with an opportunity for 
 the work, and who are glad of the oppor- 
 tunity. The pulses of the three were going 
 steady as time, yet the room was charged 
 with nervous energy. The faces of the three 
 were as shut against emotion as three graves, 
 yet the minds of the three quivered with emo- 
 tion ; and recollections, influences, brought 
 back from sharp battles with death, were 
 continued from mind to mind with telepathic 
 vividness. 
 
 " Who 's anaesthetizing, Miss Morse ? " 
 The Scot turned from his colleagues to a 
 young woman who was dipping a handful 
 of gleaming steel into the enameled tray that 
 formed the top to a spare iron table. 
 
 "Dr. Henderson has young Wear and 
 Mason down there with him, but he 's doing 
 the anaesthetizing himself." She smiled 
 knowingly at the men ; she appreciated as 
 keenly as they did that an operator has no 
 business to tire himself out with the anaes- 
 65
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 thetic. " The patient would n't have it any 
 other way," she explained. 
 
 Lahn, who was chief consulting surgeon 
 to most of the Kansas City hospitals, and 
 known far and wide through the Valley 
 states as a very safe man behind the knife, 
 spoke next : " Ever see Henderson operate, 
 Mac ? No ? Well, he 's 'way ahead of me. 
 Yes, he is. You 've got a treat before you. 
 What a man with his nerve fools away time 
 over materia medica for beats me. Clean- 
 est, quickest, stubbornest operator you ever 
 saw." 
 
 " What 's he abidin' down in that little 
 town for ? " asked the Scot skeptically. 
 
 " Why is it, Carey, anyhow ? " Lahn took 
 up the question as though it had long inter- 
 ested him. " You 're his friend. Why don't 
 you get him up here ? I want him for the 
 Hospital. Besides his ability, he has these 
 Shores back of him, and if through him we 
 could get Hardin Shore on the Directory, 
 and Mrs. Shore at the head of the Ladies' 
 66
 
 THE LIFE ON THE TABLE 
 
 Auxiliary, the Hospital would be in luck 
 already. Why won't he come ? " 
 
 The man from Kentucky looked immut- 
 able. "Search me!" he said. "I've done 
 my best to get him here, but every time he 
 backs down. I take it he has some private 
 reason for not leaving Penangton. Got a 
 girl down there, like as not." 
 
 Another young woman came to the door. 
 She had run through the hall from the ele- 
 vator, and she was panting a little. "Dr. 
 Carey, they are having trouble getting him 
 under. Dr. Henderson would like you to 
 step down a minute." 
 
 Carey and the girl went off down the hall 
 with the long, light step of their kind, and 
 presently got off the elevator on a lower 
 floor. As Carey caught the swift, treacher- 
 ous wave of the anesthetic he hastened his 
 pace unconsciously, and passed on into a 
 luxurious room, where on a narrow white 
 bed lay what ten minutes before had been 
 a well-coordinated man, but what now might 
 67
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 as well have been ox or bull or beef, for all 
 the promise of resurrection in the face. 
 Henderson, at the head of the bed, was 
 bending over the face and pursuing it re- 
 lentlessly with an inhaler cap. Back and 
 forth thrashed the face, and dogging it, 
 riding it, came the cap in Henderson's hand. 
 
 " Carey," said Henderson, without look- 
 ing up, " I 've got to push him to a finish 
 somehow. He 's been bruising his lungs on 
 inspissated air long enough. I can't get him 
 under, though, as long as he has hold of 
 that hand." Henderson nodded at the pa- 
 tient's big hand, which was shut like faith 
 around a woman's hand. 
 
 The woman looked up at Henderson with 
 wan, self -accusing apology. " It was a mis- 
 take, was n't it ? " she whispered. " I still 
 can't get away." 
 
 " Oh, he would go to sleep with Mrs. 
 
 Shore's hand in his," answered Henderson 
 
 laconically to the inquiry in the face of his 
 
 colleague ; " and without meaning to, she 's 
 
 68
 
 THE LIFE ON THE TABLE 
 
 holding him this side of Lethe. See if you 
 can get her hand away, will you ? " 
 
 Presently the Kentuckian raised up, red- 
 faced and puffing. " Why, Henderson, I 'm 
 dashed if I can untangle him." Carey 
 stooped again. " Just alive enough to swing 
 to her. Uh-uh ! I 'm afraid, if they 're to 
 be parted, you '11 have to do the parting, 
 Henderson. I have n't the muscle. Peculiar 
 case, eh ! " 
 
 Henderson's lashes dropped down over a 
 long, yellow gleam in his eyes, then straight- 
 ening up to let Carey take his place, he gave 
 a short, harsh laugh. " Peculiarest case you 
 ever saw, Carey, for half a hundred rea- 
 sons. He 's been using that hand as a rud- 
 der through the waves of a can of chloro- 
 form, more or less. Whew ! He 's fought 
 me every inch of the way. I'm tired be- 
 fore I begin." But he mopped his forehead, 
 and without an instant's delay bent over, and 
 with his supple young fingers uncrinkled 
 the heavy hand from the white, bruised one 
 69
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 within it. Twice he straightened out the 
 powerful fingers ; twice they clamped back 
 like jack-knives ; and the last time Hen- 
 derson's hand and the woman's hand lay shut 
 together within the strong grasp. 
 
 " Oh ! " she gasped, under her breath. 
 " Oh, don't ! It 's pushing a drowning man 
 under water it 's cruel he 's so helpless. 
 Oh, don't do it he needs me don't " 
 She had gone to pieces, in the way people 
 have when doctors most need their help ; and 
 Henderson kept straight on, in the way doc- 
 tors have of getting along without help. 
 
 " Keep quiet, keep quiet," he growled. 
 " I 've got him. Now, Carey ! " He split 
 loose the clump of hands on the bed with 
 one quick upheaval, swept the woman's hand 
 aside, and pulled her from her chair just as 
 the man on the bed lashed out wildly, floun- 
 dered back, and, under the compelling, 
 unescapable cap, passed on into a deep, 
 stupendous coma. 
 
 " See to Mrs. Shore, Miss Green," ordered 
 70
 
 THE LIFE ON THE TABLE 
 
 Henderson briskly ; " and, Wear, you and 
 Mason get him to the surgery as fast as you 
 like. We '11 be there before you will." 
 
 Five minutes later, the operators, those 
 who were to assist and those who were to 
 stand ready to assist, were flipping asepticized 
 water from their hands into loose-meshed 
 towels, and the girl at the tray had settled 
 back, erect and vigilant as a sentry. Lahn 
 and Henderscfn were tucking their duck 
 sleeves to the elbow, as they filed around to 
 the table, and talking of little things, which 
 is good for the nerves. 
 
 " Awfully nice of you to play second fiddle 
 for me, old man," Henderson was saying 
 appreciatively. 
 
 " You ought to pay me back for it by com- 
 ing up here to live, as I want you to. There 's 
 a big business up here for you. Your friends 
 the Shores are here, too. That ought to count 
 for something." 
 
 " It does," said Henderson, " counts 
 for a heap." He called abruptly to Carey 
 71
 
 HENDEKSON 
 
 then : " I 'd rather you 'd be at the cap, 
 Carey, if you don't mind. Just let Dr. Carey 
 in there, Mr. Wear, and you have the salt 
 solution ready, will you ? " The clear, ring- 
 ing voice was quickly buoyant with mastery. 
 The ground that he was on he knew so com- 
 pletely ; he was so strong on it ; it was so 
 easy for him to cover the whole surgical out- 
 look with half an eye. Before he had put 
 out his hand to the girl at the tray his mind 
 had got away ahead, and was pushing every 
 adverse possibility down within reach of the 
 hand. The girl gave him a knife, and put 
 her hand back over the other instruments. 
 Then, Henderson, surgeon, with his own life 
 a-tingle to the finger-tips, took up the life 
 on the table, and cut and lifted and twisted 
 with it through delicate ganglia and fascia, 
 in and out around ligament and artery, 
 now slicing with knife, now snipping with 
 scissors, now squeezing with catch-forceps ; 
 met at each need, before he could voice it, 
 by the girl at the tray or the chief across 
 72
 
 THE LIFE ON THE TABLE 
 
 from him. He began to enjoy the work. He 
 was far up on the cool, invulnerable heights 
 of Science ; the man before him was no 
 longer a man, but his case. He was achiev- 
 ing what the chief would call a classical op- 
 eration, dexterous, clean-handed, watchful, 
 working like a beaver and ordering like a 
 general : " Look to the ligature there, Mason. 
 Steady that arm all you can, Mac. Pull that 
 muscle back just a trifle, Lahn." 
 
 " Henderson," interrupted Carey, with an 
 admirable cool-headedness which he had not 
 acquired in Kentucky, " I can't give you 
 much more time." 
 
 Henderson raised up from over the case 
 for just one second. " Don't you try to hurry 
 me, Carey," the words would have been a 
 threat if they had not been a prayer. " You 
 hold on to him. There 's a lot of involve- 
 ment here." His fingers were back at work 
 again, cutting and peeling ever more rapidly. 
 "See that, Lahn. I '11 have to get that out, 
 sure as fate." 
 
 73
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 " You '11 have to be a little quicker than 
 fate, then," said Carey dryly. No man likes 
 to stand at the cap as the gray shadow steals 
 over the face on the table. Without any 
 change of posture on the part of the men, 
 without word or sign, a fight was now on 
 above the unheeding form before them. 
 From being a case the form had become a 
 man again, rehabilitated, reprivileged, by his 
 dire danger, as he hung there on the shaking 
 thread of his pulse. In the twinkling of an 
 eye, his inviolable property right in lif e had 
 become paramount. It was a moment as 
 acutely personal as though Technique, Skill, 
 Experience, and all the other white hand- 
 maidens of Science had become clumsy, wordy 
 unrealities. Each man was formulating his 
 intense private idea ; each man was getting 
 ready to offer it to Henderson, arbiter of 
 fate there j and each man would, and must, 
 then, according to the Code, stand back and 
 lift not so much as a deterrent finger in the 
 
 course Henderson should select for himself, 
 
 74
 
 THE LIFE ON THE TABLE 
 
 though the danger of that course stiffened 
 a man's backbone with suspense. 
 
 " Ain't I right, Lahn ? " asked Henderson, 
 a little drawn about the mouth, but hard- 
 voiced and steady-handed. 
 
 The chief glanced from the case's arm to 
 the case's face. " Theoretically you are, Hen- 
 derson, but every second's going against 
 him. Look yonder. Better have a live man 
 with a little mischief sewed up in him than 
 a dead one sweet and clean." 
 
 " What 's your mind, Mac ? " White to 
 the lips now, Henderson again held out his 
 hand to the girl at the tray. 
 
 The Scot edged over. " It means you '11 
 have all the work to do again if you leave 
 those nuclei in there, which will kill him 
 then instead of now ; but " he waited a 
 second to catch his cautious national poise 
 " I believe I 'd stop on what 's done, Hender- 
 son. He 's uncommon slippish." 
 
 "I don't like to go against you, gen- 
 tlemen," Henderson closed his fingers 
 75
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 around a pair of scissors the girl had put 
 into them, " but he 's got to have his full 
 fighting chance." His teeth clamped off the 
 ends of his words as he bent again to the 
 work, by that one half second of answer 
 over against the others, by that taking arbi- 
 trary possession of the life on the table, by 
 that making himself lord dispenser of life 
 and death ! 
 
 " Whatever comes of it, I did all I could 
 for you, you great, barring hulk." Hender- 
 son never knew whether he said those words 
 out loud or only thought them, but presently 
 he heard his voice reassuringly distinct, and 
 neatly punctuated by the pauses needed to 
 obey his instructions : " Get the salt solution 
 going now, Wear, he '11 tone up. . . . 
 See his lips now, Lahn. . . . I 'm ready to 
 put those coaptation sutures in, Mac. . . . 
 See his lips now, boys. . . . Get me threaded 
 there, Miss Morse. . . . See his lips now, 
 Lahn see his lips, Lahn ah, God ! 
 
 see" 
 
 76
 
 THE LIFE ON THE TABLE 
 
 Then came the final word of the chief : 
 " Guess you did the right thing, after all, 
 Henderson. He '11 come round. Tired, are n't 
 you ? Tedious job, all right. Let 'em trot 
 him off to bed now. He's safe for fifty 
 years to come." 
 
 77
 
 Ill 
 
 THE ROSE-RED GLOW 
 
 GRAY weather! 
 
 Henderson, getting back toward Penang- 
 ton from a visit to a sick man down Weaver 
 Road in the late afternoon of a cloudy day, 
 talked to his mare for company, and glanced 
 out from his buggy-hood across the still 
 fields with a peculiar, aching apprehension. 
 He could feel the distance from house to 
 house along the desolate country road as 
 though distance were a snake-like thing to 
 twist out and sting a man, and he could feel 
 the loneliness of his thought like the chilly, 
 vaporish touch of spectral wings. All the 
 land beyond the rail fences lay solemnly 
 quiet. The chickens, ruffed up under the 
 bushes, the mules at the five-barred gates, 
 looked solemn ; the cows, huddled neck to 
 haunch under the sugar-maples, the dogs on 
 78
 
 THE ROSE-RED GLOW 
 
 the porch mats, the droopy children at the 
 doors, looked solemn. If a woman came to 
 a door and peered out over the children, she 
 did it solemnly. If a man came up across 
 lots from the ploughing, he came in a sad 
 saunter. 
 
 Gray ! Gray ! 
 
 Henderson put his head against the side 
 of the buggy-hood to observe the length and 
 the breadth of it, but it was quickly too much 
 for him. Slanting his lids far enough down 
 to shut out a great deal of it, he tried to 
 evade the rest of it and his loneliness by see- 
 ing how it would have been with him at this 
 hour, on this kind of a homeward journey, 
 if it had ever happened that his dream had 
 come true. It could be gray like this, evening 
 coming on, and he would be a little tired, 
 as he undoubtedly was now, and he would 
 be urging the mare forward, as he did not 
 do now, until he could stop at a house 
 that he had built once in the dream, and 
 jump from the buggy, and look up, he 
 79
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 would not let the dream come fast now, he 
 held it back a little, fastidiously careful with 
 it, and there, in the door, a rose-red glow 
 over her from a shaded lamp or something, 
 She would be standing. " Waiting for me," 
 Henderson suggested to himself, his lips 
 trembling over the beauty of the words. 
 " Waiting for me," he repeated. And she 
 would hold out her hand to him, hold out 
 both her hands, and he would get to her in 
 a hurry, in the dream he could always get 
 to her, and he would take her hand, take 
 both her hands, and they would go inside, 
 and she would be his, while they talked and 
 laughed a little and read a little and sang 
 a little, the gray weather hanging futilely 
 without, and, more likely than not, he would 
 keep her hand in his all the time, yes, 
 surely, keep her hand, ah-h-h ! the dream- 
 touch of that hand, lingering, confidential, 
 woman-sweet ! 
 
 He was back within Penangton's gates, 
 
 so he sat up and shook himself out of the 
 80
 
 THE ROSE-RED GLOW 
 
 dream : " Oh, you fool ! " he told himself 
 sharply ; " always dreaming up some smoke- 
 woman, some bachelor's comfort, always 
 teasing yourself away from the possible to- 
 ward the " He stopped with that, and 
 driving on down the street to Toplitz's drug 
 store, he turned his entire attention to the 
 comfort of his mare, stabling her himself in 
 the barn behind the store, petting her, half 
 clinging to her, loath to go away from tho 
 little comfort of her soft kind eyes and her 
 occasional affectionate snozzling at his neck. 
 
 When he left her and emerged from the 
 stable, a slow fine rain was sifting down. 
 He made his way through it, around to the 
 front of the store, above which he had his 
 office and living-rooms. 
 
 " Hi, Henderson ! Ain't seen you since 
 you got back from your trip East; stop a 
 minute." There were three or four men 
 around the counter, each in approved corner- 
 store attitude, one foot hitched back a little, 
 the whole weight of the body slouched upon 
 81
 
 the other foot and upon the elbows that were 
 flexed back upon the counter. They greeted 
 Henderson cordially as he came through, 
 asking questions, trying to get at his affairs, 
 earnestly interested, after the fashion of 
 corner-store men. 
 
 "Didn't get married while you were 
 away?" 
 
 " No, oh no ; I was doing post-graduate 
 surgical work," Henderson told them. 
 
 " Well, glad you did n't bring a Yankee 
 girl home with you, Henderson ; you are one 
 of us now, take a wife from our home 
 girls." 
 
 " Sure, Henderson ; lots of nice girls in 
 Penangton who can cook and housekeep." 
 
 Followed by a fire of suggestions of this 
 kind, Henderson went on upstairs to his 
 room. Arrived there, it first occurred to 
 him that nothing under heaven can dis- 
 hearten a sentimental man like the shifty 
 talk of commonplace men who advise a 
 sentimental thing, marrying, for an un- 
 82
 
 THE ROSE-RED GLOW 
 
 sentimental reason, getting somebody to 
 cook for you. And it next occurred to him 
 that nothing under heaven can make a lonely 
 man feel his loneliness as does the room that 
 he insists upon arranging for himself, with 
 a blank disregard of the consolation in color, 
 in the softness of a hanging, in the readi- 
 ness of a cushion. All Henderson's stuff was 
 stiff. His chairs were the kind of chairs 
 whose arms seem to double away from you 
 instead of toward you. Over in one corner 
 stood his instrument cabinet, a glass-sided 
 thing that twirled on a pivot and revealed 
 knives, forceps, tenacula, scissors, probes on 
 every side. The cold metallic gleam of the 
 instruments was no colder than anything 
 else in the room. His neat desk, Hender- 
 son was orderly, an operating-chair, and a 
 hard, worn leather couch completed the fur- 
 nishing of the outer room ; and in the other 
 room there was a carpet, a bed, a chair, 
 a wardrobe, and a washstand. It could not 
 have been worse. Henderson put his medi- 
 83
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 cine-case on the desk and walked to the 
 window. The room had got on his nerves. 
 
 Outside the window the rain was coming 
 down with increased volume and directness. 
 Almost all the people who passed on the 
 court-house side held their umbrellas gripped 
 down closely ; but one girl who passed let 
 hers fall back on her shoulder, when she was 
 opposite Henderson's office, and looked up. 
 There was a smile on her face and a light 
 in her eyes as she bowed to him. She was 
 Miss Penang, the daughter of the lady with 
 whom he took his meals, and, despite some 
 disastrous turns of circumstances, entitled 
 to especial consideration, according to her 
 mother's way of looking at it, because her 
 father's father's father had founded and 
 named Penangton. Henderson watched her 
 as far as he could see her, her smile teasing 
 him and cheering him for an interval. Then 
 he went back and sat down on the leather 
 couch. 
 
 So much alone ! So much alone ! The 
 84
 
 THE ROSE-RED GLOW 
 
 rain beat the consciousness of his aloneness 
 at him in dull cold spats, the walls dripped 
 it, the couch was slippery with it. Why did 
 he insist upon it? Why did not he marry 
 some girl, with a nice smile and a light in 
 her eyes, who could at least cheer him a 
 little? If he were married, he would have 
 somebody to work for ; there would be some 
 use in digging out his career, in developing 
 his remarkable surgical abilities, if he had 
 anybody to care about his success, to be 
 benefited by it, to be glad about it. Why 
 not marry ? Why hold himself to the mea- 
 sure of a dream? That was what he was 
 doing. Because he had an ideal of a woman's 
 face, a woman's form, a woman's touch, her 
 voice, her sympathetic intelligence, her vital 
 effect upon him, he would look at and think 
 of nothing else, nothing less. It was im- 
 mensely stupid. He really needed a wife. 
 It was high time that he looked at the ques- 
 tion practically, as did other men, who, hav- 
 ing missed real romance through deficiency 
 85
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 in sentiment or hostility of circumstances, 
 hobble on to the recognition of the winter- 
 bitten fact that they " ought to marry." He, 
 Henderson, " ought " to have a home, wife, 
 children. Say that he could not get the 
 ideal in touch, voice, intelligence, vital effect 
 upon him, he could probably get eyes with 
 some light in them, a nice smile, fair intelli- 
 gence ; other men rested with no more, and 
 there was no gainsaying that it looked as 
 though a man should be able to secure some 
 large satisfactions out of the mere fact that 
 he was settled and had somebody to care 
 a little. Why, if he, to-night, here, now, had 
 anybody, anybody on earth, to talk to, to 
 let him lean his head against a minute, he 
 would be happy, or if not happy, certainly 
 cheered and soothed. 
 
 He lay back by the couch's one fat silk 
 pillow. * Miss Penang had made that pillow 
 for him, and there had been times in his life 
 when, all stuck over with pin-feathers, he 
 had hated it and hated Miss Penang for 
 86
 
 THE ROSE-RED GLOW 
 
 having made it. This evening, however, 
 flattened beyond himself by his unlovely 
 surroundings, he took the pillow into his 
 arms and clung to it. It was better than 
 nothing. It was a little podgy symbol that 
 somebody had thought about him and his 
 comfort for a minute. Its bright color was 
 pleasing, and a fragrance stole out of it, the 
 mystic fragrance on whose languorous wings 
 women's smiles, softness, whiteness, pretti- 
 ness go floating by. He laid it down rather 
 affectionately after a while, rose from the 
 couch, and made himself ready to go to 
 Mrs. Penang's for supper. 
 
 As he put by his umbrella in the hall in 
 Mrs. Penang's house, he saw through the 
 open door into the parlor. Lula Penang 
 was in there, sitting under the rose-red light 
 of a shaded piano-lamp, idly turning some 
 new music in her lap, and whistling and 
 humming occasional snatches that appealed 
 to her. 
 
 "Oh, you?" she said as Henderson 
 87
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 stopped in the doorway. She put her music 
 on the piano and got up. " If you are going 
 to supper, I'll come along, too; most every- 
 body 's through, but I have n't had mine 
 yet." Henderson had sometimes been made 
 restless by the other boarders' insistence that 
 Miss Penang rather systematically " came 
 along, too," but to-night he felt glad that 
 she had waited for him. It seemed kind. 
 He stood looking at her for a moment in a 
 questioning surprise, barring the door with 
 his long slender body. 
 
 "Do you know, I like you in that rose 
 light," he said, his eyes about half shut as 
 he said it. The thought that perhaps rose 
 lights in general had more to do with it than 
 the woman who stood under them in particu- 
 lar had come into his mind with a little 
 aesthetic shock. 
 
 " No, I did n't know it," the girl before 
 him answered with a restrained fervor in her 
 voice ; " maybe I 'd better stay here in it 
 then, and let you go on to supper alone ? " 
 88
 
 THE EOSE-RED GLOW 
 
 " Oh no, you don't," said Henderson 
 quickly, that word " alone " smiting him ; 
 " no, you come along, and we '11 have supper 
 together and come hack to the rose light." 
 
 That was not much to say, yet Henderson 
 had always kept the thought of the rose 
 light so especially for Her that that much 
 sounded like something to which he would 
 have to accustom his ears forcefully and de- 
 terminedly if they were ever to be accus- 
 tomed to it. He was glad that there was no 
 rose-red glow in the dining-room, and that 
 Miss Penang sat opposite him in the direct 
 light of the small gas chandelier overhead. 
 It had occurred to him on the way to the 
 dining-room that this was a practical ques- 
 tion with him now, and that it would be bet- 
 ter to consider it in direct lights only. In 
 the direct light he could see that, though 
 the girl was young and pretty, her lips were 
 thin and purposeful, and as her mother, a 
 hard-faced woman, came and went about the 
 table, there was a constant disconcerting 
 89
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 illustration of what that kind of lips made 
 of a woman when she was no longer young. 
 In the direct light, Henderson told himself, 
 with a fine prevision of the amount of nui- 
 sance the wrong woman might be in a man's 
 life, Miss Penang had not one characteristic 
 that, coming out subtly on her face or in 
 her voice, appealed to him especially for her, 
 as opposed to any other young and pretty 
 girl, unless, indeed, it were that light in 
 her eyes. Shining from far back, liquidly, 
 as though it came through the softness and 
 sweetness of occasional tears, it was the best 
 thing about her. Henderson had sometimes 
 wondered if it were really in her eyes when 
 he had first met her upon his installation in 
 Penangton two or three years before; he 
 had not noticed it until just before he went 
 East ; but then he had not noticed her at all, 
 except for that unpleasant sensation that she 
 was a little insistent in her attentions to him. 
 Out in town she and her mother labored 
 under an unfortunate reputation of being 
 90
 
 THE ROSE-RED GLOW 
 
 too anxious for her to marry well, and the 
 other boarders, having made much of it for 
 Henderson's especial benefit, had influenced 
 him into a man's silent resentment about 
 it. That was as far as he had ever got in 
 any conscious consideration of Miss Penang, 
 until there in the rose light and here in the 
 direct light. His conclusion now was that it 
 was a pity that she did not look the same 
 under both illuminations ; but just then Miss 
 Penang got up and went into the kitchen 
 for a moment, and when she returned with 
 a plate of hot cakes that she had browned 
 for him herself, the conclusion seemed less 
 final. The cakes were exactly as he liked 
 them. 
 
 " It 's such an awfully bad night, Doctor," 
 suggested Mrs. Penang, looking through the 
 kitchen door; "why don't you stay down 
 here till bedtime ? I should think you 'd be 
 lonely over those shut-up stores, a rainy, blue 
 evening like this. Stay down here with Lu 
 and me." They had invited him like that 
 91
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 many times before, but beyond idling at the 
 parlor fire for a minute on a few winter 
 nights and sitting, unrelaxed and impatient, 
 on the bench in the front yard for a minute 
 on a few summer evenings, he had never 
 profited by the invitation until to-night. To- 
 night, quitting the supper-table, he went into 
 the parlor in the wake of Miss Penang, still 
 a little uncertain ; but when Mrs. Penang 
 came to the door and said that, as the cur- 
 tains would have to come down to be laun- 
 dered next day anyway, he could smoke if 
 he wanted to, his misgiving began to leave 
 him, and he felt more cheerful than he had 
 felt in a long time. 
 
 "Yes, indeed, smoke away," said Miss 
 Penang. She selected a pillow from the 
 array on the sofa where he had seated him- 
 self with his head against the wall, and 
 insisted upon his putting it behind his shoul- 
 ders. Then she stepped over to the piano- 
 stool and sat down in the rose-red glow 
 of the piano-lamp. She looked wonderfully 
 92
 
 THE ROSE-RED GLOW 
 
 better at once. " Do you want me to sing to 
 you ? " she asked, her hands trailing on the 
 keys, her young body half turned from him, 
 her face twisted over her shoulder at him. 
 Already great feathery wreaths of smoke lay 
 between Henderson and her. Half shutting 
 his eyes, he saw her through the fluff of 
 smoke as through a veil, the rose-red glow 
 toning her, the high light in her eyes, the 
 smile on her lips. Seen in that way, he got 
 from her a soothing, complementary sense 
 of femininity without any worry about what 
 she was and what she might become. She 
 was just Woman. " Do you want me to sing 
 to you ? " she repeated. 
 
 "Mh-hm, please. But low, sing low," he 
 ordered. " I don't know but what I 'd rather 
 you 'd hum and whistle in that funny way of 
 yours." 
 
 She laughed docilely, not musician enough 
 
 to resent the restrictions imposed and well 
 
 enough satisfied with Henderson to meet the 
 
 humor of his painstaking self-indulgence. 
 
 93
 
 HENDEKSON 
 
 Starting in obediently, she whistled a bar or 
 two, then trilled off softly in a hushed lah- 
 de-dah-de-doo. Then presently the words of 
 the song stole out as well, a whole stanza 
 about love generically, about the fact that 
 birds and flowers and earth and sky thrilled 
 with love harmonies, a long if simple diapa- 
 son that sounded the making of worlds, until 
 the song-writer, oppressed possibly by the 
 eternity in the theme, ran away from it on 
 the fleet-footed refrain, 
 
 " I love ! love you, dear, none but you! " 
 
 Through the red glow Henderson noticed 
 by and by that the girl's back was straight. 
 He noticed that her own and her mother's 
 valuation of her showed rather adroitly in 
 the tilt of her head. He noticed that her 
 hair had a soft, babyish kink where it lifted, 
 thick and brown, from the back of her neck. 
 As he sat, he could not see her lips, with 
 their little hovering expression of purpose- 
 fulness. He could not see any of the indi- 
 cations of the sharp woman of small schemes 
 94
 
 THE ROSE-RED GLOW 
 
 she would necessarily become as soon as her 
 youth was gone. He could see only her 
 prettiness and the dimpling swell of her na- 
 ture under the melody of her song. As she 
 floated toward him, draped, as it were, by 
 the dreamy rose-light vibrations, Henderson 
 floated to meet her, not because she was Miss 
 Penang, but because she was Woman. He 
 guessed he would propose to her when she 
 finished the song. 
 
 "Love you, dear, none but you lah, 
 lah-de-doo-lah-de-doo." 
 
 " That 's it," murmured Henderson ; 
 ft leave out the words ; give me just the lah- 
 de-doo." 
 
 "Don't you care for the words?" asked 
 the girl. " I think they 're sweet. I sing 
 them as Lynn Penryn Mrs. Shore, you 
 know used to sing them, twisted right 
 much. Lynn has a way of twisting things 
 to suit herself, don't you think so, or do 
 you know her well enough to know that ? " 
 
 Henderson had about finished his cigar, 
 95
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 and he now took the smouldering stub of it 
 from between his teeth and sat up straight. 
 The feathery fluff between him and the girl 
 cleared away. As he made no reply, Miss 
 Penang continued casually, " Lynn was to 
 come down from Kansas City on the evening 
 train, so Mr. Penryn told me up at the bank 
 a little bit ago. I wonder if she came ? Did 
 you hear any one say at the drug store ? 
 She and her husband were both coming ; did 
 you hear whether they came ? " And when 
 Henderson said no, he had not heard, Miss 
 Penang added, " Well, I reckon she came," 
 nodding her head over it, and beginning to 
 sing the refrain again, 
 
 "Love you, dear, none but you!" 
 
 Henderson got to his feet. "I must be 
 going," he said in a slow, absent way. And 
 when the girl, with a disappointed, troubled 
 look on her face, glanced up at him and 
 asked, " Oh, going now ? " he answered, yes, 
 he must. She went to the outer door with 
 him, and recovering himself on the step suf- 
 96
 
 THE ROSE-RED GLOW 
 
 ficiently to be conscious of some obligation 
 to her, he tried feebly to express to her his 
 appreciation of her goodness in helping him 
 get through a bad evening. 
 
 " Oh, pshaw ! stay any time that you think 
 the hum and whistle will amuse you," she 
 told him, with a pleasant intonation, which, 
 conquering her purpose and her disappoint- 
 ment, had an unconscious heroism in it. But 
 Henderson, absorbed now in his own heart's 
 concern, missed this illustration of the trag- 
 edy of waste in Love's economy. 
 
 He said that he was very much obliged, 
 and put up his umbrella and went down the 
 steps. At the gate he saw that she was still 
 standing in the doorway. Through the par- 
 lor window the red light shone on under the 
 half-drawn blind rosily, but the girl, out be- 
 yond it in the shadow, looked unrelievedly 
 drab. He started off up the street in the di- 
 rection of his office, but as soon as he heard 
 the Penangs' front door shut he turned in his 
 tracks and came past the house again, on his 
 97
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 way to another house, which he did not reach 
 until he had rounded two corners and tra- 
 versed a long distance on a densely shaded 
 street. He had been growing happier and 
 happier all the way to the house, until, as he 
 rang the bell on its front door, the very 
 hand that he put forth seemed sentient in 
 eagerness. 
 
 A servant opened the door, and in the hall 
 beyond the servant a woman stopped as she 
 was passing to the library. The globes of the 
 hall chandelier were red, and as Henderson 
 entered through the door their glow bathed 
 her from head to foot, and made her fully 
 and perfectly the picture, the whole right 
 thing. No need to half shut one's eyes so 
 that the glow might tone her. Falling on 
 her face, her throat, her firm, close-draped 
 figure, the glow became at once a part of 
 her, and at once seemed to burn delicately 
 from within outward. She came toward him, 
 with both her hands held out gladly, and he 
 took her hands, and for one lying second 
 98
 
 THE ROSE-RED GLOW 
 
 everything was perfect, because of her touch, 
 her voice, her sympathetic intelligence, her 
 vital effect upon him. 
 
 " Oh, good ! Hardin and I were wishing 
 that you would find out to-night that we had 
 come," she was saying, not letting his hands 
 go at once, and looking up at him, that un- 
 namable effect of hers getting into the air 
 around her in broad, wave-like vibrations that 
 were like low music. " Father says we come 
 down to Penangton to see you quite as much 
 as to see him. Hardin admits it. And I can't 
 deny it. What made you stay East so long ? 
 We have missed you." Her voice trembled 
 a little, and Henderson got from it an instant 
 impression that she had needed him, too. 
 
 " Was it long ? It was to me ; but still, I 
 thought very seriously of making it longer. 
 I thought of not coming back to Missouri 
 at) ail. 
 
 " I knew it, I knew it ! " she cried, with 
 that little grieving shake in her voice, which 
 Henderson could not stand. 
 99
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 "But I came back all right. How's 
 Hard?" 
 
 " Well, so he says. Come in here to him 
 and father." 
 
 That was all there was of it, only one 
 minute in the glow, with her hands in his. 
 Then Henderson followed her into the library, 
 where two very different men greeted him. 
 One, Lowry Penryn, Penangton's richest citi- 
 zen, was a thin, hatchet-faced man, whose 
 small black eyes were noted as being the 
 sharpest eyes in the state of Missouri, but 
 who had a fashion of looking at his daugh- 
 ter when she was not looking at him, and of 
 not looking at her when she was looking at 
 him. The other was Hardin Shore, rich, self- 
 made, vigorous and expansive, whose ambi- 
 tions, after leading him into the politics of 
 his home city, Kansas City, were now, so it 
 developed in his conversation, blazing a trail 
 for him straight into the larger politics of the 
 state. He had come down to Penangton on 
 this occasion to consult with his father-in-law 
 100
 
 THE ROSE-EED GLOW 
 
 about his campaign fund for the governor- 
 ship of Missouri, and also, ostensibly, to con- 
 sult with Henderson, as his physician-friend, 
 concerning the possible menace to his health 
 should he enter into the excitement of poli- 
 tics. He was big and powerful to look at, 
 but no healthier than most heavy-bodied, 
 tightly strung men, and the malignant 
 growth that Henderson had removed from 
 his arm the year before had already told its 
 story of constitutional dyscrasia. Shore, who 
 was a precipitate man, set about talking over 
 his purposes there in the library at once 
 with Lowry and Henderson, and Henderson 
 quickly noticed that as Shore talked his eyes 
 avoided his wife's eyes, as though he recog- 
 nized that he could hold more adequately to 
 his own notions if he did not look at her, 
 and that he seemed possessed by a rough- 
 shod determination to have his own way 
 which was unnatural in him and disturbing 
 to him. 
 
 " And I 'm against it. That 's what he is 
 101
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 really trying to tell you/' Mrs. Shore said to 
 Henderson, as soon as Shore had finished his 
 story of what the state leaders up at Jefferson 
 and down at St. Louis expected of him and 
 for him. Shore had talked in a dry-tongued 
 voice that tinkled, half with elation over the 
 flattering outlook, and half with sheer phy- 
 sical tension ; and his wife, leaning back in 
 her chair, looking from Shore to Henderson, 
 from Henderson to her father, and back again 
 to Shore, a little crinkling play about the 
 corners of her eyes, seemed to have got sup- 
 plementary evidence from Shore's recital to 
 strengthen her opposition without ever once 
 manifesting any nervous alertness. "I'm 
 against it," she repeated. 
 
 Shore regarded her with his lips jerking 
 humorously. " She thinks politics will cor- 
 rupt me, Henderson." 
 
 " Tsst ! " Henderson made one of his little 
 demurring clicks behind his teeth ; " if poli- 
 tics is corrupt, that 's a reason for going into 
 it, not staying out of it. Mrs. Shore would 
 102
 
 THE ROSE-RED GLOW 
 
 have a more logical reason than that," he 
 said waitingly, a little heliographic flash of 
 understanding, swift and illuminative, play- 
 ing from her to him. 
 
 "Yes. More logical than that." She 
 nodded, her eyes on Hardin Shore's face. 
 
 " Well, now, what ? " asked Shore, with 
 that affectionate, badgering tone that men 
 are apt to use when trying to draw their 
 wives into admissions particularly pleasing 
 to a husband. 
 
 " Well, it 's logical, but selfishly logical," 
 she said evasively, yet Shore was insistent. 
 
 " Well, say what," he urged. 
 
 She let her long lashes trail on her cheeks 
 a moment with a hesitancy that looked es- 
 sentially virginal, yet essentially wifely, and 
 Henderson noticed how perfectly she stayed 
 his dream-woman even here in the strong 
 white light of the library, how entirely the 
 woman he would have liked to have raise 
 those lashes upon him in that virginal, wifely 
 shyness. Only, when she raised the lashes, 
 103
 
 HENDEKSON 
 
 her eyes swept past him, with some sort 
 of hidden appeal, he thought, and sought 
 out the other man. She seemed to see no- 
 thing hut the other man, with an insist- 
 ent loyalty and a foreboding comprehension 
 that took in all his deceptive bigness, his 
 unsafe tension, the bluish whiteness of his 
 temples, the little flabbiness under his eyes, 
 the strain that for months had held his 
 mouth back from the expression of some- 
 thing pain, or nervousness, or ambition 
 that distressed him. " Well," she began 
 again, haltingly still, " it 's that I don't want 
 to divide with the public. I don't want a 
 public man for a husband ; I want my hus- 
 band for myself, oh, Hard, you know it, 
 you've known it all along." Henderson 
 knew that in saying this she had somehow 
 doubled and turned on an original purpose 
 to speak her entire mind ; but her tone, the 
 look on her face seemed to satisfy Shore 
 utterly. The strain left his mouth for a mo- 
 ment, and he laughed a big, glad, complacent 
 104
 
 THE ROSE-RED GLOW 
 
 laugh. Though he said nothing, it was ex- 
 actly as though he said, " Just see how she 
 loves me/' to Henderson and to her father. 
 His satisfaction in what she had said seemed 
 to treble by the presence of the other two 
 men ; he seemed to hear for himself, ardently, 
 as her husband ; for Penryn, indulgently, as 
 her father ; and for Henderson, well, plea- 
 santly, as her friend. The fine, lasting ro- 
 mance of their relationship was heightened 
 almost unendurably for Shore by this three- 
 fold apprehension of it. He got up yearn- 
 ingly, went over to her, touched her shoulders 
 once with his hands lightly, then put the 
 hands in his pockets and began to pace up 
 and down in front of her, after a habit of 
 his. His lips shook a little, and his brow 
 tightened and relaxed, tightened, relaxed. 
 Once, a keen pain twitched across his face, 
 and Henderson, flat back in a chair, with his 
 hands gripped to the chair-arms to keep them 
 from shaking, was not too self -concerned to 
 notice it. 
 
 105
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 "Hard," began Henderson finally in a 
 well-ordered voice, " I think that as a friend 
 I ought to say to you that you would better 
 keep out of politics, and as a doctor I say 
 that you have got to." Henderson had long 
 since come to the point where he could say 
 things and do things because they were the 
 things to say and do, but it sometimes seemed 
 to him as though his lax voice and limp body 
 must one day surely betray him ; surely 
 he must one day show the cheap automatism 
 with which he went through the saying and 
 the doing of the " right thing." 
 
 " Well, but now, Henderson," commenced 
 Shore, his unpersuaded thought finding 
 expression in blunt, downward inflections as 
 he phrased, " you 're giving just an off-hand, 
 snap-shot opinion, aren't you? You don't 
 know any specific reason why my health 
 won't permit of my going into politics if I 
 want to go into politics, do you, now? Of 
 course you don't. You 've hardly looked at 
 me. You 've no real reason for warning me 
 106
 
 THE ROSE-RED GLOW 
 
 off, don't you see ? And, on the other hand, 
 there are big reasons for my not being warned 
 off this time." Shore paused a moment, 
 gathered up his forces and went on stub- 
 bornly, "It's a chance for a oh, for a 
 sort of good wind-up, I mean a sort of 
 crowning to a man's career, and my heart 'a 
 so set upon it that I can't let you and Lynn 
 twist me about the way you usually do, 
 especially when you have no reason, you 
 know you have no reason." He was so 
 vehemently reiterative that he seemed to be 
 trying to push Henderson into a position by 
 the force of his insistence that Henderson 
 was in the position ; and he seemed, too, 
 to be keeping a peculiar, watch-dog sort of 
 guard on Henderson, on his wife, on himself, 
 particularly on himself, as he walked and 
 walked and walked. " Shucks ! Just jumped 
 into an assertion without any reason, 
 didn't you, Henderson, didn't you?" 
 
 That talkative stubbornness of the man 
 brought to Henderson at last the complete 
 107
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 significance of his stiff-necked turning from 
 his wife's counsel, his desperate clinging to 
 his plan for a political career. With Shore 
 politics was standing out as something that 
 could be used to crowd and push him busily 
 to the end, the end to which disease was re- 
 morselessly bearing him. That was Shore's 
 whole meaning, pitifully plain to the phy- 
 sician who faced him in the peculiar, con- 
 scious stillness that had settled upon the 
 room. 
 
 "Hard," said the physician slowly, "if 
 you'll raise your left arm, straight up, like 
 this, I'll tell you my specific reason." It 
 was a brutally kind fashion of heading Shore 
 off, of letting him see that his deception 
 about his condition did not deceive; but 
 Henderson, bent only upon saving Shore for 
 the woman beside him, risked it. He let his 
 hand fall back, after stretching his arm up 
 by way of illustration, and then sat quite 
 still, waiting on Shore, his hands just touched 
 together at the finger-tips, his eyes narrowed 
 108
 
 THE ROSE-RED GLOW 
 
 upon Shore, his mind quickly aware that the 
 woman was meeting the blow exactly as he 
 had relied upon her to meet it, as strongly 
 and as quietly. Shore, attempting confusedly 
 to turn the probe of Henderson's insinuation, 
 shot his arm up overhead foolhardily, only 
 to sicken and blanch with pain. Half reeling, 
 he turned upon Henderson, " You you 
 you " he began, speechlessly beyond con- 
 trol in his leaping, unreasoning resentment 
 at the exposure and miscarriage of his plan 
 to keep the recurrence of his disease to him- 
 self ; but the woman sat on unflinchingly, 
 until Shore dared look at her and move over 
 to her. 
 
 " Did you think I did n't know, Hard? " 
 she whispered, her hand finding his. "Do 
 you suppose I haven't known all these 
 weeks?" 
 
 For answer he went down on his knees 
 
 beside her and clung to her and cried like a 
 
 child. Lowry Penryn stole hastily from the 
 
 room. Henderson got up and went over to 
 
 109
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 the window. Outside the rain was still fall- 
 ing. Its cold spats alternated with the sobs 
 of the kneeling man and the caressing, an- 
 swering murmur of the woman : " To keep 
 your sweet life so close to the shadow because 
 mine 's got to keep there, oh, I wanted to 
 save you, I wanted to keep it from you, 
 I thought if I got busy enough I could keep 
 it back, I wanted to fool you ! " His 
 broken, tortured words were just audible to 
 Henderson. 
 
 " But, Hard, that may have been strong, 
 but was it fair, not to count on me, 
 shadow or no shadow ? " 
 
 Henderson could hear her words, too, 
 their fierce loyalty, their strong, young ma- 
 ternalism, the choking hush of her own wild 
 rebellion. He turned upon them purposefully, 
 as they sat together under the bare white 
 light that shone on into their very hearts. 
 
 "Hard," he said, in a plain voice that 
 eased by its steady pulling back to the every- 
 day level on which people drank coffee, kept 
 110
 
 THE ROSE-RED GLOW 
 
 house, bought and sold and chaffed, " Hard, 
 I don't understand what this is all for. I 
 can see that there are some dangers ahead, 
 and that to avoid them you 've got to follow 
 the right course, but I can't see what you 
 mean with this morbid conviction that you 
 are done for. Where did you get it ? I'm 
 willing to bet that it 's auto-infection with 
 you, I '11 bet that you have caught it from 
 yourself, that you haven't talked to a soul 
 since I went away ! But even if you have, 
 and have been discouraged, I want to tell 
 you that there isn't the practitioner alive 
 who can name the right time to quit hoping. 
 What have you quit hoping for ? What are 
 you taking yourself as a dead man for, when 
 life reaches out fair and straight on half a 
 dozen sides ? " Henderson's first perception 
 that in his absence things had not gone well 
 with Shore, that Shore had managed to get 
 into the full swing of taking himself in the 
 wrong way, was by now engulfed in the force 
 of his intention to oppose this new current 
 111
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 of discouragement, to stop the annihilating 
 sweep of it, to get both Shore and his wife 
 safely out of it. 
 
 " Oh, Henderson," faltered Shore in his 
 dull, beaten tone, " I got so tired of fight- 
 ing. You were n't here. I saw I was done 
 for. I just decided to order my life to a busy 
 finish and be done with it." 
 
 " Be done with it ! " retorted Henderson 
 angrily. " You are n't done with it. You 
 don't know the first toot of Gabriel's horn, 
 and you could n't tell your summons from 
 a dinner-gong. Just because I left you to 
 yourself a little while, just because I could 
 n't reassure you every time you got a pin 
 scratch, you scare yourself into a lot of fool 
 ideas ; you 're nothing but a kid, anyway ; 
 get up here now and let me look at that arm 
 again, likely as not it 's nothing, some 
 little sympathetic reflex. Even if it 's recur- 
 rence, it 's not final. Did n't I warn you that 
 we might run against snags of that kind for 
 
 some time ? Get up here." He hardly knew 
 112
 
 THE EOSE-KED GLOW 
 
 himself how much of what he said was true 
 and how much was made to seem true by 
 the force of his intention to create for them 
 a mental atmosphere that would have a 
 beneficent physiological effect. He always 
 recognized himself in an effort of this kind 
 with any patient, but especially with this 
 patient, as an hypnotic force, a power of 
 healing, not as a man. " Now, Hard," he 
 went on, when he was through with the 
 examination of Shore's arm, " I can fix that 
 in just one little half hour. I admit I 'd 
 rather it had not lumped up there, but there 's 
 no death-knell in the fact that it has lumped. 
 Why in the dickens have you acted like 
 this ? Why did n't you wait for me ? " 
 
 " Henderson," Shore turned from his 
 wife to Henderson, "I was afraid you 
 were n't coming back, in the first place, 
 that got me uneasy, you know I don't 
 believe that any other doctor has a tea- 
 spoonful of sense, and in the next place, 
 it began just like this before and and 
 113
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 she 's been through the anxiety of one opera- 
 tion with me. I can't, I won't, let her life 
 be spent in the strain of a long fight. When 
 I found this thing coming back I well, it 
 just came to me that I 'd get so busy with 
 politics or something else that I would n't 
 notice the pain, or talk about it, so she 
 would n't have the trouble of it." His heroic 
 thought of her now mingled queerly with an 
 increasing relief. The morbidity that had 
 hung over him for weeks had been broken 
 up, and his response to the renewal of hope 
 was ingenuous and childlike. " It was mostly 
 because you went away, Henderson," he 
 said, with a tremulous, shamefaced tearful- 
 ness. " Should n't have got into this fool 
 mess of conviction if you had been about. 
 I '11 be all right if you '11 stay where I can 
 feel you. What made you go away and leave 
 us ? Can't you stand us ? " 
 
 "Yes, I've made up my mind to it," 
 smiled Henderson, the smile and the words 
 being a sort of bond with himself as well as 
 114
 
 THE ROSE-RED GLOW 
 
 with Shore. " I '11 not go away again. And 
 I '11 get you, and keep you, in shape. Only 
 you 've got to do what I tell you to do. You 
 have got, for one thing, to keep out of 
 excitement. You can't go into politics, for 
 instance." 
 
 " O Lord ! I don't care a hang about poli- 
 tics except as a thought-killer," declared 
 Shore, almost blithe in the reaction from his 
 despair. 
 
 "Well, then, if that's understood, if 
 you 're going to become good, I '11 be off 
 now, and come up and arrange about that 
 arm in the morning." 
 
 They followed him out into the hall, both 
 showing their utter dependence upon him 
 as physician and friend. " By George, Hen- 
 derson ! " cried Shore at the hall door, " I 
 don't see how we could live without you," 
 one of Shore 's hands rested on his wife's 
 shoulder and the other pressed Henderson's 
 hand ; " honest to the Lord, I don't see 
 how we could live without you." 
 115
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 " No, I don't see," she said, in a mystical 
 voice, as she took Henderson's hand, in her 
 turn. The rose-red glow from the hall globes 
 fell full upon her. 
 
 " Oh, there are plenty of doctors," laughed 
 Henderson. 
 
 "But only one Henderson," said Shore 
 earnestly. 
 
 " Only one ' Henderson,' " she repeated, 
 her lips trembling a little, but with that gaze 
 of hers which expected so much of him fixed 
 steadfastly upon him. 
 
 " Well, if there were a dozen of me, I 'd 
 be yours, all yours ; always rely on that." 
 He had both their hands, and he was look- 
 ing from one to the other as he spoke, and, 
 as he spoke, he got a certain happiness. 
 
 " I 'd rather have my sense of her, her 
 completeness, than another man's ability to 
 stand another woman's incompleteness," he 
 told himself. On the veranda he looked 
 back to smile at them before he stepped out 
 into the rain, and saw her there, still in the 
 116
 
 THE ROSE-RED GLOW 
 
 glow, the other man's arm still around her. 
 " It is not the glow," said Henderson softly, 
 as though he had saved something ; " it 's 
 the one woman. And I 'm glad of it." 
 Then he went on in the rain. 
 
 117
 
 IV 
 
 THE TRAIL OF THE TANGLER 
 
 THE "Electric" left the Fifteenth Street 
 Terminal in Kansas City in the yellow dawn 
 of an October morning; the car, with its 
 snub nose and projecting forward cage, 
 nosing on like a great catfish across bridges, 
 railroad switches, and cross-streets up to 
 Ninth Street, where it headed toward the 
 town of Independence, Mo., at a smooth, 
 swimming gait. Just beyond the Belt Cross- 
 ing the motorman glanced back at the con- 
 ductor for an inquiring half second, the 
 inquiry being, " Do I dare ? " and the con- 
 ductor flashed back at the motorman, " Sure, 
 dare ! " The motorman's eyes were shining 
 and the conductor's eyes were shining. The 
 car began to go faster. Beyond Sheffield, 
 in the open stretch with its sprinkling of 
 country houses, the speed was a thing to 
 118
 
 THE TKAIL OF THE TANGLER 
 
 question, and, quitting the rear cage, where 
 he had been talking to two men, the con- 
 ductor passed through the car to the motor- 
 man out front. Two or three of the few 
 passengers aboard, who were noticing, were 
 glad to see that the conductor was disposed 
 to put a stop to the motorman's foolishness. 
 
 In the forward cage the conductor, his 
 breath issuing explosively in steamy whiffs, 
 was shrieking to the motorman, " Jimmy ! 
 Mr. Shore says a hundred more if we reach 
 Shore Station in fifteen minutes ! Let her 
 go ! Let her go ! " 
 
 Then he passed back through the car, 
 humming, to hide his excitement from the 
 passengers. 
 
 " See here," said an uneasy man, pluck- 
 ing at the conductor's sleeve as he passed, 
 " what 's this for ? Ain't we a-going too 
 fast?" 
 
 "Fast?" repeated the conductor, with a 
 look of competency betrayed, " fast ? " He 
 passed on haughtily, but turned, on some 
 119
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 charitable impulse, to say behind his hand, 
 " We are runnin' on skedaddle time, but 
 that 's an expert at the motor ; need n't 
 worry, no matter how fast we go." With 
 that, he went on back to the rear, where 
 the two men were waiting for him, the eyes 
 of both burning with impatience and dis- 
 tress. One of them, a big fellow, who seemed 
 to carry one arm with a little nursing care, 
 and who looked ill despite his great size, 
 thundered impotently at the conductor : 
 
 " See here, Henry, what are we crawling 
 along like this for ? If this is the best you 
 can get out of this damned snail " 
 
 "Well, I tell you, Mr. Shore," interposed 
 the conductor soothingly, " I '11 let you come 
 through and stand by Jimmy. Then you 
 can see how fast we are goin', and mabby 
 that '11 quiet you." 
 
 " Let 's do that. Let 's move up there in 
 front, Hardin." As he spoke the slighter 
 and taller of the two men stooped for a medi- 
 cine-case that sat at his feet, and with the 
 120
 
 THE TRAIL OF THE TANGLER 
 
 case in one hand steadied the big man with 
 the other until they reached the front cage, 
 where they took up positions behind the mo- 
 torman, their urging for speed becoming like 
 the crack of a whip about the motorman's 
 ears. 
 
 Ahead of them Jackson County stretched 
 into the pale, gleaming east with the limit- 
 less, dipping roll of the Missouri country. 
 Fields where the corn had been shocked 
 stretched off on the right, up the curve of a 
 hill, into the sky, the line of small dun stacks 
 like so many space-markers to the watchers 
 behind the motorinan. The tiny red station 
 sheds, the gleam of the silver-white mail- 
 boxes on the fences, the three or four big 
 houses of gray stone, the numerous natty 
 houses of brick and shingle, all marked space 
 in running laps for the watchers behind the 
 motorman. Woods tipped with the blood- 
 red sumach, flaunting hillside sweeps of 
 golden-rod, long, lean pastures, switches of 
 rank horse-weed, all were etched out, clean 
 121
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 and sharp, against the eastern light, only to 
 be succeeded by other woods, other sweeps, 
 other pastures, other switches, in a ceaseless, 
 merciless duplication for the two behind the 
 motorman. 
 
 " Great God ! " cried the big man at 
 last, " there is no agony on earth like wait- 
 ing." He forgot the trouble that his lame 
 arm caused him, and flung both hands out 
 in front of him helplessly. 
 
 " Careful, be careful," said the other 
 man warninglyj "be careful with your arm, 
 Hard." 
 
 " Careful, nothing ! " groaned the big 
 man, his heavy hands working ; " what 's 
 the use of being careful about me, what 's 
 the use of anything when she Now here, 
 Jimmy, you've got to do better than this; 
 we 're walking, walking ! " He turned upon 
 the motorman vehemently. 
 
 " Well, you see, the road being so full of 
 curves, Mr. Shore," began the motorman 
 in a faint demur, but letting his car out a 
 122
 
 THE TRAIL OF THE TANGLER 
 
 little more, his eyes straining toward the 
 east, his muscles tense with his endeavor to 
 reach Shore Station in the appointed fifteen 
 minutes, " road being so full of curves, I 
 don't dare go too fast." 
 
 " Go just as fast as you do dare, Jimmy." 
 Shore's lips shook so that he could hardly 
 talk, and he turned his wide, well-featured 
 face to the man beside him, in a dumb reli- 
 ance that seemed to be habit with him. Un- 
 fortunately for him, just at that moment the 
 look in the other man's eyes was appalling. 
 " G-r-r-r-h ! It 's no great comfort to look 
 at you ! What 's the matter, what do you 
 mean " The words, begun as a cry of 
 protest, were beaten into a hopeless mumble 
 by Shore's tempestuous despair. " If you 
 give up, if you lose hope, you ! " he cried, 
 and the other drew up quickly. His face 
 stayed as gray as wood ashes, but his tone 
 was quiet and his eyes were steady. 
 
 " No, oh no," he said earnestly, his low 
 voice rich and warm and confident ; " it 's 
 123
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 not that I have given up, not that I have 
 lost hope. Only, you know, I have not seen 
 her myself, I have had to take your impres- 
 sion for my impression, and it 's hard to wait 
 till I see her and can get my own impres- 
 sion ; that 's all." 
 
 "Oh, it's awful, to keep riding on 
 and on, and we don't get there at all." 
 Shore's thought was submerged by his tears, 
 and came out in fragments like drowned 
 flotsam. That he was dramatically uncon- 
 scious of the moment's drama, that he was 
 as simple and direct as he was big, was evi- 
 dent from the loose way in which he went to 
 pieces, careless of appearances, shaken inside 
 and out by the emotion that possessed him. 
 The motorman scratched his ear, and the 
 other man looked off into the silver-yellow 
 light in the east. " I ought n't to have left 
 her," sobbed Shore, "but I couldn't seem 
 to stay in that house any longer until I had 
 you there with me. You know how it goes 
 with me in my own sickness when I have n't 
 124
 
 THE TRAIL OF THE TANGLER 
 
 you about, it 's worse now with her sick," 
 he took his hand from his eyes and sought 
 the eyes of the other imploringly. 
 
 The other, as though beating about for 
 relief, began to ask questions that had been 
 asked and answered many times before on 
 that same morning. " When did Carey see 
 her first ? " he undamped his teeth to say, 
 and while his arm steadied Shore, he was 
 conscious of a tremor all over his own body. 
 
 " Why, seven or eight days ago," answered 
 Shore, moistening his lips and leaning nearer 
 his comrade with that same appeal for help, 
 that same close reliance, that same gigantic 
 helplessness. " This was the order of things : 
 We had had a good summer at Mackinac, 
 after that last seance with my arm in the 
 spring, and we left there three weeks ago, 
 she and the boy and I, all well. I was get- 
 ting along shipshape, so I came straight 
 through from Chicago, and she went down 
 to that forsaken Illinois town of Dixburn. 
 She has a married friend there, and of course 
 125
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 she was interested in the place because you 
 had once lived there. Well, she stayed there 
 a week, and came on home with her head 
 aching. It did n't quit, so I brought Carey 
 out, and he said malaria. And though that 
 fool's been out every day since, he never 
 once said danger till last night. Last night 
 he said typhoid, and I wired to Penangton 
 for you. This morning she Why, why, 
 she does n't know even me ! " All his pro- 
 found assumption of her love for him was 
 patent in his inflection. " I could n't stand 
 it. You don't know what it is to a man mar- 
 ried like I am to be without her, without 
 her spirit " He stopped trying to talk. 
 
 " And Dr. Carey thinks that this turn for 
 the worse thinks that she is in danger?" 
 Shore's emotionalism seemed hard on the 
 other man, whose questions clicked out 
 sharply. 
 
 " Why, that 's just it, that 's why I 'm 
 done with Carey, told me to be prepared, 
 aw, I can't talk, Carey 's a fool ! " 
 126
 
 THE TRAIL OF THE TANGLER 
 
 " How many nurses have you out there, 
 Hard?" 
 
 " Oh, two or three shifts of them ; seems 
 to me I 've seen four or five girls around." 
 
 " We '11 let all but one go. I '11 nurse and 
 you can nurse, and we don't want to he clut- 
 tered up with too much checked gingham 
 and white apron. How nearly there are we 
 now, Hardin ? " 
 
 " Just around that curve yonder. Go on, 
 Jimmy, go on ! Go on ! " 
 
 The motorman yielded helplessly, and the 
 car, obedient to his daring, all but leaped 
 from the track around the curve, slid, lock- 
 wheeled, on a down grade for a rod, and 
 stopped. 
 
 Afterwards, the rush of that ride across 
 country always stood out in the mind of 
 one of the men as a part the beginning 
 of the longer, doubling, twisting trail over 
 which he was to go. 
 
 " Thank God and you, Jimmy ! " cried 
 Hardin Shore, and he and his comrade 
 127
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 leaped through the gates that were thrown 
 open. 
 
 " Get the doctor's case there, Tom," com- 
 manded Shore to the servant, who stood 
 waiting beside a light trap at the station shed. 
 " Don't let that nigger tell me she 's worse," 
 he snarled on in a stiff-lipped agony, as he 
 read through the gloom on the negro's 
 face. Hurrying into the trap beside the 
 doctor, he gathered up the reins in his well 
 hand and guided his horses across the car- 
 track, speeding the strong, clean-limbed ani- 
 mals down the country road for half a mile, 
 without word or pause, then up a long drive- 
 way to a stone house. 
 
 As they came on under the overhanging 
 grove of young walnut-trees, the yellow light 
 of the morning sifted through the leaves and 
 fell upon the house beyond with a wan illu- 
 mination hateful to see, and the prescience 
 of the house's disaster lifted like a visible 
 thing and drifted toward the men in the trap, 
 lodging in the trees overhead with a low and 
 128
 
 THE TRAIL OF THE TANGLER 
 
 mournful rustle. There was a chilling sense 
 of a lost presence in the air, a sense of some- 
 thing lacking, something that had vitalized 
 and irradiated, whose absence left an oppress- 
 ive emptiness. At the corner of the house 
 a group of negro women stood in frightened 
 expectancy, their hands working in their 
 aprons. Behind the women some small black 
 children gaped wonderingly. The fright, the 
 expectancy were hard to bear, and Shore got 
 down from the trap trembling ; but fright 
 and expectancy were acting like a challenge 
 upon the other man, whose eyes had narrowed 
 and grown steely, and whose bearing showed 
 fight. 
 
 Inside the wide hall, one of the nurses 
 came noiselessly to meet them. "Yes, 
 seventh-day crisis, I reckon, or fourteenth- 
 day," she whispered to the physician, and 
 then drew Shore into a chair. " Sit there for 
 a moment, won't you, until you feel better," 
 she said, taking charge of Shore with an 
 expert recognition of the latent invalidism 
 129
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 showing plainly now in the drawn lines of 
 his face. 
 
 " That 's right ; don't come for a second, 
 Hardin. But don't be afraid. You have not 
 lost her; you are not going to. Wait here till 
 I send down for you." The physician went 
 up the stairs on his quick feet, and passed 
 into the typhoid patient's room. Carey, the 
 doctor in attendance, stood at the foot of 
 the bed, looking at his case in gloomy help- 
 lessness, while over at the window one of the 
 nurses was putting crushed ice into an ice- 
 cap. The little tinkle of the ice mingled with 
 the murmuring voice of the woman on the 
 pillow, and the two sounds were like the 
 tumbling unrest of a hill stream. 
 
 " Can't stop that," whispered Carey, hold- 
 ing with relief to the hand of the newcomer, 
 who nodded understandingly, slipped past 
 him, and put his hand on the woman's hand, 
 outwardly the physician only, perceiving at 
 once the crucial signs, the thready pulse, 
 the short breathing, the hurrying delirium. 
 130
 
 THE TRAIL OF THE TANGLER 
 
 With his ear close to her lips he caught the 
 words : 
 
 " A long trail, twisting and turning." 
 Then a rhythmic pause, and the beat of the 
 words again : " Don't forget Hardin, he will 
 suffer I am far along on the tangling trail 
 ah me ! we go fast, too fast ! " A flicker- 
 ing, frightened cry ! The physician's hand 
 tightened on her hand, and for a troubled 
 second she was quiet ; then her eyes opened 
 staringly, flashed, and steadied. " Garth ! 
 Garth ! " she cried, and tried to leap up, her 
 eyes wide open upon his eyes, her arms Hf ted 
 to his shoulders ; but he laid her back, and 
 held her with firm, detaining hands, a sud- 
 den illumination upon his face, as wild, as 
 deh'rious as that upon her own. Little by little 
 her head ceased to roll upon the pillow ; her 
 lips stopped twitching, and her thick lashes 
 drooped till the eyes beneath them were quite 
 shut. Carey came around softly from the 
 foot of the bed. 
 
 " Wonderful past any 'pathy, that touch 
 131
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 of yours ! " he murmured, looking down upon 
 the woman's hypnotic calm. Over at the 
 window the nurse was watching, a trained 
 blankness on her face. 
 
 " She will have a conscious moment when 
 she rouses. Will you have Mr. Shore here ? 
 She will ask for him," said the doctor in low 
 tones that glided across the air with a mu- 
 sical suggestion more effective than a com- 
 mand. His eyes stayed brilliant. 
 
 An hour later the woman, after a briefly 
 conscious interval, was sleeping; Hardin 
 Shore sat in the next room with a look of 
 hope on his face ; in the lower hall the two 
 doctors were talking the case over softly, 
 Carey telling what he had done and had been 
 just about to do, the other not listening, but 
 acquiescing and approving, all after the dicta 
 of the Code ; in the room assigned to the 
 nurses the two who were to go were packing 
 their traveling-cases in open rebellion. 
 
 "Who-all is he, anyway, this new man, 
 I wish you 'd say ? " grumbled one. She was 
 132
 
 THE TKAIL OF THE TANGLER 
 
 the girl who had been last on duty in the 
 sickroom, and there was a significant resent- 
 ment in her tone. 
 
 " A country doctor, from that little town 
 of Penangton down the river where Mrs. 
 Shore used to live, that 's all the who," an- 
 swered the other, equally petulant ; " a friend 
 who runs the Shores, if I can read anything, 
 sending people away ! " 
 
 " And what 's his name ? " pursued the 
 first speaker, that trained hlankness again on 
 her face. 
 
 " Henderson." 
 
 "But his first name?" 
 
 " I d'n' know, Garth, I believe." 
 
 " Oh, I see ! " 
 
 "See what?" 
 
 A look of ostentatious discretion passed 
 over the face of the first nurse ; she would 
 not say what, and presently the two went 
 out of the house and back to the city with 
 Carey. 
 
 The people who were left ranged up, 
 133
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 watchful and alert, under Henderson's lead- 
 ership, for their fight with the fever. 
 
 "It's treacherous, typhoid," Henderson 
 told Hardin Shore in the very beginning; 
 " it will double on us, it will let us hope, it 
 will cheat us, it will lead us on a long trail, 
 the old tangler." He had got immediately 
 at the woman's notion that the dizziness of 
 her head was the ceaseless twisting and turn- 
 ing of an aeriform Something that flew with 
 her, and he expressed himself with an uncon- 
 scious assumption of her fancy. " All we can 
 do," he told Shore, " is to keep up with it, 
 keep a hand on it, till we tire it out, then 
 pull her back to us." 
 
 The Shore child was sent away, and from 
 morning until night there was no sound in 
 the great house, save the coming and going 
 of careful servants and the low whispered 
 word ; but through it all, up to the day of 
 the last crisis, the household having re- 
 sponded confidently to Henderson's pre- 
 sence, the house seemed to have lost its 
 134
 
 THE TRAIL OF THE TANGLER 
 
 prescience of disaster; the servants smiled 
 sometimes, and in far corners of the grounds 
 the small black children laughed gayly. 
 
 " I feel that I 'm unfair to you, a regular 
 burden, Henderson," said Shore, who stayed 
 near the sickroom helplessly but enviously ; 
 " still, I don't know where to begin to stop 
 it. I 'm foolish about you. I want you to be 
 in there with her all the time, and when you 
 are not with her, I have to have you with 
 me." 
 
 For a number of years Shore, through his 
 own hard fight with disease, had been ex- 
 pressing this sort of dependence upon Hen- 
 derson ; for years, through long tests of 
 friendship, he had been utterly trustful ; for 
 years, through blinding mists of passion, 
 Henderson had been entirely reliable, en- 
 tirely true ; for years the woman had stood 
 between them; until now, her eyes always 
 insistently upon Hardin Shore's eyes, her 
 hand sometimes in Henderson's hand in 
 secure friendliness, a delicate protective aura 
 135
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 playing from her consciousness like a lumi- 
 nous ether, through which Henderson could 
 not look, and would not have dared look if 
 he could. 
 
 That had been the way for years. But 
 now, out on the red range of the fever, had 
 not the luminous veil fluttered raggedly back, 
 and for once, whether he would or not, had 
 he not seen beneath it ? " Garth ! Garth ! " 
 she had cried, and had clung to him. Was 
 it all the craziness of the fever, had she 
 not known him f The mad question became 
 a companion thing of that hurrying delirium 
 of hers, leading him on and on after her, 
 twisting, turning, coiling. And over and 
 over he put his hands upon his shoulders as 
 though he must push in deeper the burn of 
 those hands of hers ; over and over, as her 
 eyes opened staringly upon him, he told him- 
 self that the question reached her and was 
 answered, that off on the devious trail of her 
 delirium she came face to face with him and 
 knew him for himself. When he was not 
 136
 
 THE TRAIL OF THE TANGLER 
 
 beside her, his forehead would grow cool, and 
 he would explain the whole thing to himself ; 
 remind himself that the revelations of delir- 
 ium were reliable for the purposes of the 
 pathological novel only, not for any honest 
 weighing of things; that instead of being 
 taken as signal flashes from the sub-con- 
 sciousness of the patient, they should be 
 taken for what they were, distorted gleams, 
 refracted through the media of the fever-hot 
 brain-cells. And finally, whatever this par- 
 ticular woman said in her delirium, the fact 
 remained that in the full possession of her 
 faculties, she handed herself and her great 
 power of loving to her husband more un- 
 equivocally, more fully, and more beautifully 
 than any woman in the world. Then he 
 would go back to her again. 
 
 The cycles went by, from seventh day to 
 fourteenth day, to twenty-first day, in the 
 rhythm of the fever, and as he sat beside her, 
 ceaseless in vigilance, meeting the disease 
 symptom by symptom, fighting, nursing, 
 137
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 quieting, a strange thing came to pass, he 
 began to see that there were two of him : one, 
 the physician at the bedside, watching the zig- 
 zag climb of the fever, his hand on the jerk- 
 ing thread of the patient's pulse ; the other, 
 a dreamer who, following a trail daringly, 
 found what he sought in a sublimated free- 
 dom overhead. To the physician below, the 
 woman's broken words were formless and void, 
 but the dreamer up above shut his soul about 
 them and made life of them. 
 ' " I must be going ! " she would cry. 
 " Are you here ? Are you ready ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes, I am ready," he would say, that 
 mystical quieting force of his in the smile 
 that he turned upon her. As she grew still, 
 he would talk on, without the spoken word 
 or the need of it : " Now we are flying free ! 
 Now the trail leads us higher, higher ! Now 
 we are in our place of dreams ! " He would 
 He back in his chair then and close his eyes, 
 as softly as hers were closed. 
 
 " That Thing went fast over the tangling 
 138
 
 THE TKAIL OF THE TANGLER 
 
 trail ! " The fever would be heightening 
 again. 
 
 " Did you get tired ? " he would say. " I 
 never tire coming up here." 
 
 Sometimes the physician was sorry for the 
 dreamer, thinking of the awakening that was 
 to come, but the dreamer was heedless. It 
 was so real to him, he followed the trail so 
 often, that it came about that he recognized 
 his sensations like landmarks along the way, 
 the first uplif t of his spirit, the strength 
 of his soaring, the tremulous joy of finding 
 her. 
 
 " The end of the tangling trail," she would 
 mutter. 
 
 " I am here at the end. I shall be here 
 always, always waiting," he would insist, a 
 great satisfaction on his face, and would open 
 his eyes to find Hardin Shore standing beside 
 them. 
 
 " Asleep, Henderson ? " 
 
 " No, more awake than ever in my life." 
 
 " Is she better, old man ? Every time I 
 139
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 hear you speak like that I think she must 
 be better, must be coming back to me, there 's 
 such a joy in your voice, Henderson. Is it 
 true ? Is she coming back ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes, she is coming back, not quite 
 yet perhaps, but she is coming back." 
 
 " What is it that she repeats like that ah* 
 the time, Henderson ? Can you understand 
 it?" 
 
 " It 's dream-talk, I would n't bend too 
 close, Hard ; it disquiets her. You will hear 
 only fragments about the tangling trail of 
 the Thing that flies with her." 
 
 " Keeps muttering," repeated Shore wist- 
 fully. He put his great hand over his wife's 
 hand, and she opened her eyes and gazed 
 at him for a moment, then some bewildered 
 effort at control shivered through her and 
 she lay still. 
 
 " Oh, get away, Hard ! That 's bad, that 's 
 
 bad ! " Henderson pulled Shore up with an 
 
 irresistible hand and drew him into the next 
 
 room. " You see, Hardin," he explained, 
 
 140
 
 THE TRAIL OF THE TANGLER 
 
 driving himself on to comfort Shore with a 
 singular consciousness that the woman was 
 directing him to the explanation, "her 
 thought has come to be so constantly of 
 saving you anxiety, because of your own ill- 
 ness, that now she is ill her chief worry is 
 that you are in the way of distress about 
 her. It is n't that she does n't know 
 you ; it 's that she" does, comprehends just 
 enough to be trying to protect you." 
 
 The grieved look on Shore's face lifted. 
 " That 's right, you old conjurer," he said. 
 "Put me back upon the thought of her 
 love of me. I know, trying to think of 
 me, even when she can't think." 
 
 From twenty-first day to twenty-eighth 
 day ! In the blackness of that last night, Hen- 
 derson, the dreamer, passed out of the Shore 
 house into the grounds. He walked, blindly 
 anxious for motion, over the soft, thick turf, 
 with its shaggy mat of leaves, to the wall 
 around the young orchard behind the house. 
 The night was in the deep after-midnight 
 141
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 lull, infinitely quiet ; but Henderson pressed 
 his hand to his head as though to shut out 
 great noises, and peered out into the dense, 
 clinging darkness as though to catch the 
 flight of something that swept past over- 
 head. 
 
 If she died ! Foolish, futile thought ! He 
 would not give it place ; he hurled it from 
 his mind. She need not dfe. He would not 
 let her die. Had it not been his again and 
 again to rescue the sick, to hold back the 
 dying ? She need not die. He knew himself. 
 He was not afraid. 
 
 And if she lived ! His the power, to 
 bring her back to the other man, to bring 
 her back now, bring her home from the wild 
 trail of their going, from the high realm of 
 his fancy, reestablish her in her old relations, 
 not as the free, flying spirit that he had 
 known in that upper living, ah, God, to 
 do that ! 
 
 Across the black quiet of the night 
 another figure was vaguely outlined at the 
 142
 
 THE TRAIL OF THE TANGLER 
 
 orchard wall. Shore was standing there for- 
 lorn, one foot on the low wall, his lame arm 
 across his knee, his eyes burning into the 
 darkness, seeking, seeking. 
 
 "I am so lost, Henderson," he groaned, 
 as Henderson came up silently. " I followed 
 you out here. I can't stay in that house. 
 You see, with her unconscious, it 's as though 
 she isn't here. I'm so used to having her 
 here, Henderson. She has had always such 
 power for being here, all around and in and 
 through me, everything that a man needs to 
 round himself out and everything else 
 Henderson, if you only understood what I 
 feel, you would n't let her go, you could n't." 
 
 " Oh, stop, Hardin ! " 
 
 " Time and again, Henderson, you 've 
 interposed that will of yours, that power of 
 yours, between death and me ; time and 
 again I 've felt it like a thing to touch and 
 see ; time and again you 've kept me here 
 when I should have gone but for you." 
 
 " Hardin, do you think I need this urg- 
 143
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 ing ? " cried Henderson, his voice ringing 
 clarion clear in the night's quiet. 
 
 " It 's because I know your ability, Hen- 
 derson," went on Shore, bungling miser- 
 ably, " that I want to know you 're using 
 every ounce of it. You will save her for me, 
 won't you, old man you will save her 
 forme?" 
 
 " Yes, I '11 save her for you," answered 
 Henderson, with that final assured confidence 
 which he always used to compel confidence. 
 " Come on back to the house, Hard. It 's 
 hour by hour till dawn now." He put his 
 arm through Hardin Shore's arm, and they 
 went into the house together. 
 
 Back in the sickroom Henderson, the 
 physician, took up his vigil again alone. He 
 made Hardin Shore wait in an adjoining 
 room with the nurse, and, alone, he sat 
 down beside his patient, the weight of des- 
 tiny in his eyes. The seconds went by with 
 a little clicking catch in their going, marked 
 by the flicker of her breathing, and she gave 
 144
 
 THE TEAIL OF THE TANGLER 
 
 no heed to the compulsion in the physician's 
 touch upon her hand. The seconds went by 
 with a little clicking catch in their going, 
 and the physician became the dreamer and 
 began to talk to her, urging himself far out 
 after her, covering the range of the fever 
 with his own tenacious swiftness : " Come 
 back, come back ! We may not stop at the 
 place of dreams ! It is all over and ended ! 
 Come back ! " 
 
 Tossing, rocking, her head, with its great, 
 tumbled mass of soft hair, came nearer, and 
 her cheek cradled into the hand that he 
 stretched out supportingly. 
 
 " Oh," she cried, " the end of the trail at 
 last? The real?" 
 
 He put his hand on her shoulder gently. 
 " The real," he said. The last of all reality, 
 it seemed to him, the finish of the wild 
 dream-fancies that had been for him so long 
 the fullest and richest reality. 
 
 Her eyes opened, shut, opened and fixed 
 upon him, her tension relaxing, her mind 
 145
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 clearing, her breathing quieting, the mystic 
 fever-cycle ended. 
 
 " Why, it 's you, dear old doctor-boy ! " 
 She had come back, the sane, strong, delicate- 
 fibred woman, who for years had been the 
 flower of his fancy, the root of his morality, 
 his courage ! The craziness, his and the 
 fever's, was a thing of the past, the mad 
 aerial journeying was over, she had come 
 back ! The physician was sorry for the 
 dreamer as Henderson laid his hand upon 
 her lips and looked once into her earnest, 
 questioning eyes : 
 
 " Don't talk ; you 're back, that 's enough ; 
 you 're saved, that 's enough." 
 
 " It was good of you to save me for 
 Hard," she said softly, brokenly, fast grow- 
 ing drowsy again, but comprehending still. 
 
 Hardin Shore tipped to the door, his wide 
 face lit with joy, and even as he bent and 
 kissed her forehead worshipfully, his wife 
 was safely sleeping. 
 
 Long, quiet days followed, and at the end 
 146
 
 THE TRAIL OF THE TANGLER 
 
 of one of them, Henderson, still neglectful of 
 his Penangton practice, sat at the window 
 across the room from her bedside. Hardin 
 Shore was in his own room, sleeping off the 
 exhaustion of those weeks of anxiety for 
 which he had been so ill conditioned, and 
 the nurse was out in the young orchard, 
 methodically measuring off her evening exer- 
 cise. Beyond the window the sun had set, and 
 a soft, thickening gloom lay over the room. 
 Through it the two figures, the woman on 
 the pillow and the man in the chair by the 
 window, were barely visible to each other. 
 She lay with her hands above her head, 
 the new thinness of her face softened by the 
 fall of lace from her wrists. He sat in his 
 chair with his head thrown back wearily, his 
 fatigue lifting and floating away like a gos- 
 samer whenever his eyes rested upon her. 
 The physician had remained sorry for the 
 dreamer ; the memory of an illusion is hard 
 to bear. 
 
 " You are all tired out," she said. 
 147
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 " You are all wrong," he said. * 
 
 " Do you hear the sleepy things outside? " 
 she asked. The katydids were crying and 
 the crickets were chirping in a drowsy re- 
 moteness. " It 's strange to hear things and 
 see things and know them for what they 
 really are." 
 
 He glanced at her comprehendingly, think- 
 ing to let her know that he understood the 
 little shock of amusement with which she 
 was finding herself again, but seeing how 
 beautifully her hair lay about her face, and 
 how subtly her grace showed in the languid, 
 swinging movements of her long arms, he 
 was not sure what he had let her know. 
 
 " That trail, that tangling trail ! " she 
 began next, as though feeling her way, and 
 Henderson sat up and bent forward, his eyes 
 fixed upon her. 
 
 " Well, what of it ? " he asked, his breath 
 hard and short. 
 
 "Well, I don't know, do you?" She 
 smiled at him, but the little shaking span of 
 148
 
 THE TRAIL OF THE TANGLER 
 
 her voice showed that she was using it to 
 bridge some chasm that yawned before her. 
 She raised her arms and let the laces tumble 
 more thickly about her face ; then, looking 
 at him through the veil, asked in an uncer- 
 tain flare of bravery, " Did it tangle you, 
 too?" 
 
 He leaned forward on the arm of his chair 
 and his glance went through the laces to her 
 eyes. " Did what tangle me ? " 
 
 " Why, the trail that we followed, did 
 it tangle you, too ? " 
 
 He had a sudden impulse to candor, abso- 
 lute and entire, "Then there was a trail 
 for you, as for me ! " he cried, " and you 
 realized " He stopped in that impulse to 
 candor, for she had drawn the laces closely 
 about her eyes. Seeing her do that, he 
 dropped back in his chair. " I understand," 
 he said, " you need not be afraid." 
 
 " No, not of not of a sick woman's fan- 
 cies, need I ? Need you ? " The voice quiv- 
 ered, and the hand above her head closed 
 149
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 tightly. " There was one fancy," she went 
 on, as though to an appointed task, " there 
 was one about the place of dreams at 
 the end of the trail where somebody 
 Hardin, I expect always found me. Did 
 I ever did I ever speak of that?" Her 
 intention to define for him their old rightful 
 relations touched him like an accolade, rais- 
 ing him, a bewildered knight-errant, to go 
 whither she pointed. 
 
 " My, yes ! " he answered her evenly, "and 
 next you would cry, l Hardin ! Hardin ! ' 
 and we should have to scamper after Hard." 
 The laces pressed close to the eyes and the 
 tight hand relaxed. " Oh, you were a nui- 
 sance about Hard," went on Henderson in 
 a resonant tone now, his eyes lighting up ; 
 " { Hardin ! Hardin ! ' you were always 
 crying." 
 
 She began to laugh, tremulous with success 
 
 under her laces. "I suppose it must have 
 
 been like that. I could n't always tell what 
 
 I was doing and saying, whose name I was 
 
 150
 
 calling, I was whirled about so, it was 
 such a long trail, that old tangler's. But if 
 it did n't tangle you, if you understand " 
 Her slender clasped hands were raised to 
 him, her voice swayed to him with a fine, 
 remote music like a wind-blown bell. 
 
 " Yes, I understand. And it did n't tangle 
 me," answered Henderson, folding his arms 
 and striding to the window, where he stood 
 for a moment, a lean young figure, tall and 
 straight, cleanly cut against the light in the 
 west. 
 
 151
 
 THE WAY OF THE STRONG 
 
 FOR the five days of big wind at the end of 
 the March blowing of 1901 the boom across 
 the ploughed land on the bluff farms of 
 Morning County beat time to the shrill 
 whistling in the timber like the drone bass 
 in pifferari music. It was a grand world out 
 of doors, the sort of world that is always 
 unrolling with the whirl of the wind in 
 Missouri, wild and gray and free. In the 
 swales the tough grass dipped and rose in 
 shaking circles ; on lihe hills the gaunt trees 
 went like flails ; overhead resounded that 
 whistling, roaring diapason. The sting of 
 the air was like a whip. On the bluffs few 
 people braved it. In the hillside pastures 
 the horses battled against it with wide-nos- 
 triled whinny ; and the cattle ran from it to 
 the shelter of the hay-ricks, heads down, 
 lowing uneasily. 
 
 152
 
 THE WAY OF THE STRONG 
 
 At Hogback Hill, the foreland tract in 
 the chain of great tracts in the holding of 
 Lowry Penryn, of Penangton, Penryn's 
 tenant, a tireless farmer, looked out on the 
 resistless weather in the mid-afternoon of 
 the final day, took the horn from the kitchen 
 porch and sent a reluctant winding call to 
 his hands in the furrows. The hands turned 
 back to shelter gladly, and for the rest of 
 that day the fields were left in the clutch 
 of the storm, while the men sat in the barn, 
 tinkering, mending harness, recalling other 
 storms. 
 
 " They '11 be lightning to come," said one, 
 who stood in the barn door watching. "Hue- 
 come me to know is f 'm that yellowness yon- 
 der. Scampish-lookin' clouds over tha'." 
 
 " 'T is n't to say cyclone-time, though, is 
 it ? " inquired another, who had come from 
 the Northeast, and feared the ways of Mis- 
 souri. 
 
 " Naw, but they '11 be devil's own light- 
 ning," replied the old-timer comfortingly, 
 153
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 and added that it was well to be indoors on 
 such a day. " Takes town-fool boarders to 
 resk it outside ! " He breathed the last words 
 in a whistling cadence, his lips tightening 
 condemningly, his eyes fixed upon the two 
 who were running down the steps of the 
 weather-beaten front porch of the tenant's 
 house. 
 
 The high-trunked walnut-trees, the black- 
 jack oaks, and the silver sycamores tossed 
 and strained sonorously as the two who had 
 come down from the porch went across the 
 damp mast-weighted grass of the yard at 
 Hogback Hill, scurrying like children, 
 the skirts of the woman blown out in front 
 of her, her slender body careening with the 
 grace of a ship at sea, her eyes bright, her 
 cheeks red, the man's hand on the wo- 
 man's arm, the wind raising his thick black 
 hair, his chest expanding. A strain, as of 
 watching and waiting, that sharpened the 
 faces of both, slackened. Whatever cares 
 oppressed them blew away for the moment 
 154
 
 THE WAY OF THE STRONG 
 
 on the \vings of the wind. The youth and 
 vigor in both were keenly triumphant. As 
 they pitted themselves against the stress of 
 the elements, they were aware only of a glee 
 in their own valiance, their own well-matched 
 vigor. A recognition that they were splen- 
 didly complementary flashed from one to the 
 other as he seized her hand and they were 
 swept on to the yard fence, where they 
 leaned, laughing a little and panting hard. 
 
 " Oh, yes," he said in a tone which seemed 
 to have a direct reference to some antecedent 
 advice. " You do look better already. You 
 needed fresh air. You can't stay in the 
 house all day much better than I can." He 
 had not released her hand, and she drew it 
 from him. 
 
 " I can stand alone," she said. " Yes, 
 it 's true that I need lots of outdoors. Is n't 
 it satisfying ! " She threw her head back 
 and watched the storm, the high up-rolling 
 of the clouds, the blown grass, the hills 
 where the great trees lashed. " That 's what 
 155
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 it does for me, satisfies by expressing." 
 There was a leaping joy in her voice, as 
 though some deep note responded, true and 
 strong, to the storm. 
 
 When she had taken her hand from his 
 he had folded his arms, and he stood now, 
 unshaken in the teeth of the wind, looking 
 down at her, his great love of her hardly 
 restrained. " Does it do that for you, too ? " 
 he asked, understanding in his voice. His 
 eyes sought hers and held them. Then, as 
 though to make sure that he understood, he 
 added, " By expressing what ? Satisfies by 
 expressing what ? " 
 
 " One hardly knows what," she mur- 
 mured, " the things that fight toward 
 expression in one's soul, the blown weak- 
 ness of tears, the keen strength of joy." 
 Though some shadow of waiting self-reproach 
 lay like a veil across the light in her eyes, 
 the light was there and the words swelled 
 and quivered up the gamut from grief to 
 gladness. 
 
 156
 
 THE WAY OF THE STRONG 
 
 Watching her, he drew his breath in with 
 a trembling inspiration, made a little start 
 toward her, and turned away. The moments 
 of intimacy that came into their days were 
 too life-laden. " Don't ! " he said pitifully. 
 "Don't!" 
 
 "Don't? Don't what?" 
 
 " Don't let me know your soul ! " he cried 
 in a strange earnestness of entreaty. " Keep 
 me out ! Keep me out ! " 
 
 The cry was the cry of one on the thresh- 
 old of his own, fighting himself back. 
 
 Her eyes, frightened and storm-driven, 
 sought the flying clouds again, and a little 
 silence fell between them, impenetrable for 
 a time. 
 
 " Talk to me of Hardin," she said at last, 
 in a low, reticent voice. " How are we to 
 reconcile him to the loss of that arm ? " 
 
 Her eyes met his steadily now, all that 
 young leaping strength of hers, body and 
 soul, securely controlled. 
 
 " Yes, talk to me of Hardin," he caught 
 157
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 at the name as at a thing to pull up by and 
 stand by. " Though I 've met with a lot of 
 discouragement with him, I 'm bound to 
 admit that the worst thing in the whole his- 
 tory of his case is this final apathy of resent- 
 ment at having to meet the future disabled. 
 All his hold on life seems to have lain in the 
 grip of the hand that had to go." 
 
 " Ah, Hard was so big and whole ! He 
 has reveled so in his strength, been so vain 
 in the thought of it, his poor old pride is 
 so hurt, don't you see ? " she explained. 
 
 " Yes, I see. He is getting restless again, 
 have you noticed ? We have had him down 
 here nearly a week. That's doing pretty 
 well. What next ? Shall you take him back 
 to Kansas City?" 
 
 " No, to Penangton, I expect. He likes to 
 be near you. You can stand it, can't you? 
 Now, as always, his chance seems to lie with 
 you." 
 
 " His chance is good. Don't forget that. 
 He is still strong. We shall save him yet." 
 158
 
 THE WAY OF THE STRONG 
 
 She looked off toward the house, where 
 she could see a man who waited for them at 
 a window. He had one arm through the 
 sleeve of a velvet jacket, and the other sleeve 
 of the jacket hung empty from the shoulder, 
 but he sat up stockily and looked out upon 
 the storm. .When he saw that the woman's 
 eyes sought his, he raised his arm in saluta- 
 tion and smiled a halting, absent smile. She 
 lifted her hand and waved to him, then 
 clasped both arms about her own body. 
 " Oh, if I were not so much alive ! It 's a 
 crime with Hardin like that, let 's go back 
 to him, let 's go back ! " she cried, with a 
 tumultuous rush of sorrow, and the two 
 started again across the yard together. 
 
 The man at the window lay back on his 
 chair and watched them come up the trough 
 of the wind, his thoughts surging toward the 
 woman. " Ah, yes, you ! You 're something 
 to keep a man, but you are whole, and 
 I lying here in these bandages dying 
 limb by limb, like a tree, God ! It 's hardly 
 159
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 the way of the strong." He looked down 
 upon the bandaged rigidity of his trunk and 
 groaned. The strong ! That was what he 
 had been all his vigorous, successful life, 
 powerful, intact. He had come up out of the 
 strength of a sturdy, barefooted childhood, 
 on into the strength of a muscle-hardened, 
 poverty-urged boyhood, on into the strength 
 of a seasoned manhood, that had overcome 
 the circumstances of birth, wrested wealth, 
 wife, and happiness from fate, conquered, 
 after the fashion of the strong. And here, 
 at the end of it all, he was back in the home 
 of his childhood, whither he had crept to 
 hide from his conquered world, while he 
 sought the strength to accustom himself to 
 himself as maimed, as incomplete. He was 
 seeking that new strength still, braced against 
 his wife and his physician ; seeking, but not 
 finding it. The marks of his inability to find 
 it had seared his face deep these past few 
 weeks. As he waited for the woman to come 
 to him, his defeat, his admission that his was 
 160
 
 THE WAY OF THE STRONG 
 
 battle strength, the strength to act, not to 
 stand and endure, lay plainly upon him. 
 
 On the weather-beaten porch again, the 
 woman and the man stopped for a moment. 
 The glow was dying from her face. She 
 looked anxious, burdened, as she turned to- 
 ward him. "It's very good " she hesi- 
 tated as though the wind swept the words 
 from her lips, and she swayed a little toward 
 him. If he had willed it, he could have 
 touched her hair with his lips. 
 
 "Yes? "he asked. 
 
 " good to have you stand by us, it 's 
 a hard place to stand in, I know that." Her 
 tone was full of a divine sympathy. 
 
 "A hard place, but a high place, am 
 I failing you ? " 
 
 A flash of glad light came over her face. 
 " Oh, no, you are not failing me, being 
 you, you could not fail me ! " she cried softly, 
 her very confidence in him beating like 
 waves about him. 
 
 He opened the outer door for her quickly, 
 161
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 and she went quickly by him to the door of 
 her own room. 
 
 " Stay with Hardin a minute, will you ? " 
 she asked, as she disappeared through her 
 door, and he, passing on into the sick man's 
 room, was greeted listlessly : 
 
 "Well, Henderson, couldn't stand the 
 storm?" 
 
 " Yes, oh, yes, we stood it." 
 
 " We can blow in Missouri, when the no- 
 tion takes us, huh ? " went on the sick man, 
 his voice blank, his little effort at friendly 
 conversation a futile chipping at the shell of 
 despondency about him. 
 
 " It 's a monster wind." Henderson mani- 
 fested a fresh interest in the barren topic, 
 so different from the other's lifelessness as 
 to suggest that the one was determinedly 
 opposed to the other. " The farm here gets 
 the full force of it, Hard. Wonder how 
 your pioneer ancestors ever happened to 
 select this bleak foreland to pitch crops 
 on?" 
 
 162
 
 THE WAY OF THE STRONG 
 
 " Lord ! " intermingled with an invalid's 
 querulousness was a little of that interest for 
 which the physician was playing, " pitched 
 here because they could reap here, black 
 land this." 
 
 " You spent nearly all your boyhood here, 
 did n't you, Hard?" 
 
 " Mighty near it, good times those, 
 Henderson," he sat up and looked out 
 over the distant hills where the wind swept 
 and harried. " Very good times. And it 's 
 queer, is n't it, how old times, old places call 
 and call to a fellow. From the very minute 
 that I heard that Lynn's father had added 
 this farm to his holdings, though I 'd forgot- 
 ten the place for years, why, nothing for it, 
 but what I must get back here and remem- 
 ber my beginning. I was born in that room 
 there," he twisted his head over his shoul- 
 der, with a jerk toward the tenant's dining- 
 room. " And look here," he waved his 
 hand toward the window, " see the road 
 over the hill from the river ? Many 's the 
 163
 
 time I Ve tramped it to school with my din- 
 ner-pail on my arm and mighty precious little 
 in the pail." He kept his eyes on the yellow 
 road winding uphill in the distance tiU the 
 fugitive interest passed from his face and was 
 replaced by the melancholy. " But somehow, 
 Henderson, when I indulge in sympathy for 
 myself, 't is n't that hungry youngster I 'm 
 sorry for, it's this one-armed lumpkin," 
 his voice choked with the thought of the 
 significance of his disaster, and he stopped. 
 Henderson moved up a little nearer silently, 
 and the bitter words began again. " That 
 hungry boy had everything ahead of him, 
 Henderson, and the gnawing in his stomach 
 was to him, with his kind of strength, nothing 
 worse than another prod onward. He had 
 everything to do and every reason to do, 
 and he was fully equipped to do it. I sup- 
 pose, Henderson, I 'd get along better now 
 if there was n't so much behind me, if there 
 was anything left ahead of me that needed 
 doing." That battle strength within him, 
 164
 
 THE WAY OF THE STRONG 
 
 that impulse toward activity, roused and 
 beat against the bars of his invalidism, but 
 Henderson, welcoming any change from 
 apathy, let him continue. " I could fight 
 with one hand, Henderson, if there was any- 
 thing to fight for anything left " 
 " Hard ! There 's a big thing left ! " 
 " Oh, I know what you mean, Henderson, 
 but I don't have to fight for that, do I ? 
 She 's mine already, is n't she ? I want some- 
 thing to fight for. I don't have to fight for 
 her, I have her, if ever a man had anything 
 on this earth. What do you expect, then? 
 Can a fellow like me rock back on his wife's 
 love and his love of her, and end his days 
 watching himself go to pieces ? You expect 
 that of me ? You need n't. I have to do 
 things. I don't know how to stand things 
 any better than a baby. You don't know 
 what you are talking about when you ask it, 
 Henderson. When did you ever endure? 
 You could n't any better than I can, and 
 I can't at all ! " He got up from his chair. 
 165
 
 HENDEESON 
 
 " God ! I 'm a crying failure at it. If I 
 had n't been a strong man, Henderson, 
 but I 've lived the life of the strong, 
 why, with that old arm that 's gone I 've 
 lifted and carried what two men couldn't 
 budge," his face lit with a momentary 
 gleam of satisfaction ; " why, Henderson, 
 in the old days, in log-rolling time, I used to 
 make big Jim Bard's eyes stick out an inch 
 by what I could do, and before me Jim was 
 the strong man in these parts. Why, I could 
 roll aU day. And I was the stoutest man at 
 a hand-spike you ever saw. Why, just feel 
 that muscle even yet, huh ? ain't that 
 a lump ! " There was something infinitely 
 pathetic in this braggadocio about his past 
 that was stopping for a moment the thought 
 of his future. " Muscle-wrapped giant that 
 I was, and now maimed, not ah 1 here. No, 
 I shan't stop, Henderson. Question with me 
 has come to be whether you had the right 
 ever to stop me, a doctor may take too 
 much on himself, patching a patient to- 
 166
 
 THE WAY OF THE STRONG 
 
 gether when he'd better go to pieces, a 
 strong man does n't want to live beyond the 
 day of his strength, what 's life to mean 
 
 
 
 to me now, going leg by leg, arm by arm, 
 aw, don't talk, you 've missed your 
 prognosis before, I know that 's the way 
 I '11 go ; what have you done this thing for, 
 anyway ? I 'm not so essential to you, am I, 
 that you should have held on to me and 
 fought death away from me all these years ? 
 I 'd have been finished and good riddance, 
 long ago, if it had n't been for you ! " 
 
 Face to face with the physician's tragedy 
 of a patient's reproach, Henderson was con- 
 scious only of vindication. " It was for her, 
 Hardin, for her. She wanted you saved; 
 maimed or halt or blind, she wanted you 
 saved." 
 
 The words came on to the sick man like 
 an arrow to the mark. He bowed his head 
 against the window, and his rage lulled. 
 
 " Whatever I 've done for you, I 've done 
 for her," insisted Henderson ; and then, 
 167
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 seeing that Shore's wife stood questioningly 
 at the door, her face, with its sharp lines of 
 suffering and strain, turned toward him, he 
 beckoned her to his place, and stole from the 
 room. 
 
 She came up to Shore and laid her hand 
 upon his arm. " Ah, yes, you ! " he mur- 
 mured, putting his arm about her. " You 
 promised to stay away and exercise and rest 
 for a full half hour." He tried hard to main- 
 tain his control of the discord within him, 
 holding her a little way from him and look- 
 ing down upon her lovingly, for all the strife 
 on his face. 
 
 " Yes, but you see, I get restless away 
 from you." 
 
 " Awful baby about me, are n't you, 
 are n't you now, for a woman who has been 
 married to me for years ? " The old egoistic 
 raillery slipped from his lips, as she drew 
 him to a chair, where she knelt beside him, 
 her young arms about him. He laughed, a 
 little pleased growl, as she held him to her. 
 168
 
 THE WAY OF THE STRONG 
 
 " Well, I like it better with you than out 
 in the storm," she said. " It was wild out 
 there. This is safer." 
 
 " You had Henderson with you, did n't 
 Henderson take good care of you ? " 
 
 "Yes, I had him. Yes, he took good 
 care." He could feel the soft acquiescent 
 motion of her cheek against his face. 
 
 " Guess you are safe enough with Hen- 
 derson." 
 
 " Yes." She rocked back on the firm 
 support his big, muscle-corded arm gave her. 
 " I 'm glad we have this arm," she said, 
 nesting her head against it comfortably. 
 " Yes, I 'm safe enough with Henderson." 
 She smiled into his eyes as she added, " Hen- 
 derson can hold the storm in hand, of 
 course ; " and he missed her deeper meaning, 
 but met her banter with a chuckle that had 
 in it something of his natural spontaneity. 
 
 " We think Henderson can do a plenty, 
 don't we ? " he assented. 
 
 " He has done so much ! " She pressed 
 169
 
 more closely to him, and the answering clasp 
 -of the arm about her made the bandages 
 across his chest strain for a moment. " He 
 has saved you for me over and over. He 
 has done so much, say it." 
 
 " Yes, yes, if just being alive is much." 
 His tone was flat and dull again, and his 
 eyes slanted from the head on his breast to 
 his armless shoulder. " But, Lynn, what I 
 am having to meet and down now is whether 
 or no being alive is anything at all. You 
 know I Ve been a man for effort on the 
 outside. What am I to do for the rest of 
 my days besides fight disease ? Develop my 
 character ? I 'm a sweet creature to start 
 in to calcimine my inside life with ethical 
 enameline, ain't I? I can't live inside. 
 You know that. What am I to do, honey ? " 
 
 All his sense of defeat, his pride in his 
 old life, his blank inability to get hold of 
 another life, beat into the question and 
 tolled up to her like a knell. 
 
 " But I have to have you, Hardin ! That 's 
 170
 
 THE WAY OF THE STRONG 
 
 something. It might easily be a pur- 
 pose " 
 
 " Ah, but do you ? " he cried, on a sud- 
 den impulse to get at the bare truth of every- 
 thing. " You are young, sound, whole. Do 
 you really want me, ah, there ! there ! I 
 know, I know ! " he veered swiftly be- 
 cause of the fright, the appeal on her face. 
 " You could n't go on without me. I guess 
 there would n't be anything ahead for you. 
 There would n't be anything ahead for me 
 without you, no matter how many arms were 
 left me. I could n't live without you. And 
 you can't live without me. That 's it, is it ?" 
 
 " Yes, that 's it," she cried chokingly. 
 " I could n't face the future. I should feel 
 that somehow it was all my fault, that if I 
 had been everything I might have been, you 
 would not have gone. Anybody who is left 
 must feel like that, I think. Ah, Hardin, 
 stay with me, want to stay ! " She threw 
 her arms about him and clung to him. Her 
 abandon, her forgetfulness of his crippled 
 171
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 shoulder made him wince with a pain that 
 was, all the while, a joy. She had triumphed 
 again; she had brought life back to him 
 again ; her presence had softened and en- 
 livened his thought again, and, conquered, 
 he let his head rest upon hers, while he 
 peered out timidly upon the new life. 
 
 Henderson came back presently and found 
 them like that, and Shore greeted him with 
 a note of the old boyish pleasantness of tem- 
 per; a forced note, but welcome, for all that, 
 to the two who had been for so long trying 
 to make him put out that kind of effort. 
 
 " Well, Henderson, here goes for a fresh 
 start." Shore let his arm slip from his wife, 
 and got to his feet as though he would take 
 hold of life anew single-handed. " You two 
 keep at a fellow so eternally, there 's nothing 
 to do but do as you say. Live, you say. All 
 right, I '11 live. I '11 fight to live. I don't 
 want to, but I '11 do it, I '11 work for it, just 
 for you two." He began a nervous pacing 
 to and fro, the strength that was in him 
 172
 
 THE WAY OF THE STRONG 
 
 urging him into some kind of activity, how- 
 ever unsatisfying. 
 
 " Sit down, old man, sit down ! " 
 "Oh, my God, Henderson, I can't sit 
 down. I 'm reconstructing myself. I need 
 some room. Look at the power of that wind 
 in the trees, it 's the kind of thing that 's 
 shaking me. Here, I'm going out on the 
 porch a minute to watch that wind, to feel 
 it. It helps. Yes, I am. You 've both been. 
 Did n't hurt you. Now I 'm going." 
 
 In rousing him at all they had taken the 
 risk of over-keying him, and, at high tension, 
 a paroxysm of nervousness upon him, he 
 passed out on the porch, the other two be- 
 hind him, powerless to oppose the strength of 
 his mood. " Ah, this is better, better ! " he 
 cried, sending his voice out into the sweep and 
 roar of the storm. The wind had increased 
 in violence and tore over the hills now 
 with the howl of wolves. The air was shot 
 through with electricity, and streaks of gold 
 and blue played out of the slate-black sky. 
 173
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 At the barn door the farm-hands clustered 
 anxiously. " Look at that ! Look at that ! " 
 cried one suddenly, and stretched out a long 
 hairy arm, whose crooked forefinger pointed 
 down the yard. 
 
 " The sick man ! Gord, he 's crazy ! " 
 Hardin Shore, that unbearable nervous- 
 ness still upon him, had gone down into the 
 yard, rejecting warning and remonstrance, 
 after the manner of convalescence. Coatless, 
 bareheaded, he forged into the storm, his 
 eyes eager with the stimulus of the air, a 
 fine free mood triumphing over his despond- 
 ency. " Oh, I 'm all right now," he cried to 
 the two who followed him, and he threw off 
 Henderson's hold impatiently. " I 'm no sick 
 man, Henderson. Don't hold me back. I 'm 
 well again. No, I won't go in. No, I won't 
 take care ! No, I won't do one damn weak 
 thing for at least five minutes. Whew, that 
 wind ! No Missourian ever forgets the thrash 
 of it ! " The up-welling strength within him 
 communicated its inspiration to the two be- 
 174
 
 THE WAY OF THE STKONG 
 
 side him, and they stopped trying to restrain 
 him, smiling at him, letting him have his 
 way. " This is the right sort of thing," he 
 cried ; " this is living. You want to put life 
 into me ? This does it. Give me something 
 on the outside to stand up against." 
 
 He pushed up a high knoll, crowned by 
 one giant-trunked, lean walnut, storm-tossed 
 but invincible, and they came on after him. 
 At the feet of the beetling bluff the Mis- 
 souri, swollen and black, tore tumultuously 
 through her bar-locked channels. The dis- 
 tant upturned fields, the timber patches, the 
 feeble young corn were being raked and 
 flattened by the teeth of the wind, that now 
 swooped low and bit and crunched at the 
 ground, now rose, screaming, and sent the 
 very clouds driving before it. On the top 
 of the knoll, Shore stopped triumphantly, 
 and the other two stopped with him. 
 
 As they stood watching the gray, wild 
 weather, Shore jubilant, his temporary 
 exhilaration overriding the memory of his 
 175
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 affliction, whole again by virtue of his re- 
 newed physical joy in living, a blue-gold 
 gleam shot out of the sky, spiking the air 
 with blinding needles. In the flash that fol- 
 lowed, Henderson, benumbed, helpless, ting- 
 ling, heard somewhere above them the 
 popping and straining of tough fibres, and 
 knew that the big walnut was falling toward 
 them, but could move neither hand nor foot 
 in the voltaic shock upon him. With his 
 wide-open, staring eyes he could see, how- 
 ever, see the woman standing as he stood, 
 dazed, helpless, see Hardin Shore's one 
 mighty arm upheld, the corded muscles 
 standing out like cables under the velvet 
 sleeve, his face lit with a proud confidence ; 
 see the tree deflected and go crashing to the 
 ground beyond them ; see Shore's foot slip, 
 and Shore go down under the trunk, while 
 they two stood by, helpless, and the farm- 
 hands came running from the barn. 
 
 The wind went higher yet by night, but 
 176
 
 THE WAY OF THE STRONG 
 
 the sun set red and glorious. In a bedroom 
 in the foreland farmhouse a strong man lay 
 dying, and his passing was no small thing, 
 but glorious, like the setting of the sun. 
 
 " How much better, how much better," he 
 murmured to two who knelt beside him, " to 
 lay down this maimed body for you both, 
 to pay you back for your fight for my life." 
 An illumination lay on his face ; he looked 
 as though he were breathing light. " It was 
 a great chance," he turned to the woman 
 beside him pleadingly, as though he must 
 reconcile her to his choice, "I would have 
 tried to live just because you wanted it so ; 
 I had made up my mind to it ; but it would 
 have been hard to live as I must have lived, 
 and I can't help being glad that the matter 
 got beyond us, and you must try to see 
 that this sort of dying is better than any 
 sort of living." He held to her hand, the 
 strength of his love surging toward her as 
 the strength of his body ebbed; then his 
 eyes closed softly for a moment. When 
 177
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 they opened again they fell upon the man 
 beside him. 
 
 "Henderson?" 
 
 " I am here, Hard. But, oh, God ! if I 
 were not here ! If I could have died 
 instead ! " 
 
 " Ah, that shows this is a great fate, 
 when you envy me, old man, but don't 
 begrudge me my destiny," his voice weak- 
 ened and stopped, his eyes roaming out of 
 window, where the yellow road rose out 
 of his childhood to the top of the hill and 
 lost itself on the other side. 
 
 In the swales the tough grass dipped and 
 rose ; on the hills the trees went like flails ; 
 overhead was the roar of an unseen surf. 
 The sun went down trailing glory as Hardin 
 Shore turned his illumined face toward it. 
 
 " How much better " they heard him 
 say again, a final Praise-God in his tone 
 "that a man lay down his life for his 
 friends, it 's the way of the strong." 
 
 178
 
 VI 
 
 THE BEGINNING 
 
 THE eventful hour of the day had come for 
 the Penangton depot. The train from St. 
 Louis for Kansas City was due. Groups of 
 Penangtonians stood about. For every per- 
 son who had come down to take the train, 
 six had come down to see how he looked 
 when he did it. The ticket-agent's assistant, 
 who handled the baggage, was frightfully 
 busy with two trunks and a valise. The bus 
 had backed up to the platform. Four bug- 
 gies and a buckboard were at the hitching- 
 rail over by the Thorley-Penryn Serotherapy 
 Stables. The teamsters who had got in line 
 in front of the Penryn Coal Pockets stood 
 up in their wagons to watch. Some coal- 
 diggers, pot-black from the little lamps on 
 their caps to the broken shoes on their feet, 
 stopped on their way home from the Penryn 
 179
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 mines and arranged themselves like a row 
 of crows on the platform. Some gay young 
 girls waited on the bridge between the street- 
 car track and the depot. Little quivers of 
 excitement shook through everybody. A 
 negro, in a road-wagon, held the reins across 
 a pair of pawing, impatient horses behind 
 the depot. 
 
 Just beyond the track the ground sloped 
 upward for a few feet and was topped by 
 a rail fence. On the fence, side by side, sat 
 five men, their knees up under their chins, 
 their eyes down the track to the east. Occa- 
 sionally one of the five snatched at a blade 
 of the high grass pushing up about his feet, 
 occasionally all five laughed at nothing. 
 The little thin, hard-faced man was Lowry 
 Penryn. The three well set-up, important 
 young fellows were his sons. The high- 
 headed man with the light in his eyes was 
 Henderson. 
 
 "Say, I wish she would come on. Say, 
 think of her being away for two years." 
 180
 
 THE BEGINNING 
 
 Edgar, the youngest Penryn, took a deep 
 breath. "Bet you won't find that sticky, 
 empty feeling around the house to-night," 
 he went on. " Bet you everything '11 seem all 
 right from the ground up, minute I get 
 sight of Lynn. D'you ever notice how 
 my sister is the whole thing, Garth ? " The 
 youngest Penryn was at the age when the 
 masculine judgment is sanest and coolest in 
 its analysis of the eternal feminine, viewing 
 it telescopically, as one views the stars, get- 
 ting large abstractions from it. He was for 
 the moment too interested in the way he 
 was handling his subject to care for an 
 answer. "Lynn has her looks and her 
 brains and her well, that way she makes 
 you glad she 's there. There ain't many 
 women up to my sister, Garth?" He ap- 
 pealed to Henderson, as to a confidential 
 friend, with direct inquiry, at last. 
 
 " It seems to me you take the right view, 
 Edgar," assented Henderson gravely. 
 
 " Well, but two years ! That 's a good 
 181
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 while to have managed without her. She 
 won't go to Europe again, sure." It was 
 hard-faced Lowry himself who spoke, his 
 queer crippled feelings hobbling out jerkily 
 on his sharp voice. Each of the five nodded 
 with a little flare of conviction on that 
 count. 
 
 " Hi ! Hi ! " cried Maxwell Penryn then ; 
 " hear that ? She 's a-coming." 
 
 The five jumped from the fence on the 
 instant and hurried across the track to the 
 platform. Henderson drew a great sighing 
 breath and allowed the father and brothers 
 to pass ahead of him along the cinder-path 
 toward the Pullman car. The train slowed 
 down, the Penryns reached the sleeper, a 
 little boy rushed through the sleeper door 
 and tumbled hilariously into the arms of the 
 Penryn men. Behind the little boy came 
 a woman. For a second Henderson could 
 see her on the car-steps, smiling down at 
 her father and brothers, see the strength and 
 symmetry of her figure, see all the little 
 182
 
 THE BEGINNING 
 
 things that made her so inexpressibly, so 
 comprehensively the right woman, the 
 youthful joy of life that radiated from her, 
 the world-old deep sweetness of her eyes, the 
 humorous crinkle at their corners, the lithe 
 grace of her movements, the quick search- 
 ing glance across the heads of the people 
 below her. 
 
 Then came the meeting between her eyes 
 and his, and her wonderful, vital effect upon 
 him. 
 
 " Oh, I am glad that you are here ! " she 
 cried, her hand in his, trembling a little 
 in his, a delicate emphasis in her inflec- 
 tion. Her gaze flew past him like a long 
 arrow of light as she tried to talk to him, 
 and she turned from him quickly to speak 
 to the Penangtonians who were pushing 
 toward her. It was the old, gay diffidence, 
 part of the enticing remoteness that was 
 such an exquisite part of her. 
 
 When he got a chance to speak to her 
 again he told her that he wanted her to 
 183
 
 HENDERSON 
 
 walk back over the hills with him, and she 
 said that she would. 
 
 Then the Penryn men took the little boy 
 and got in the surrey and started home- 
 ward, and Henderson and she left the depot 
 together. They crossed the bridge slowly. 
 They went up the plank walk slowly. The 
 air was musky with fragrance. On the hills 
 the fruit trees were blooming. The great 
 domes of pink and white blossoms looked 
 like wind temples. Overhead the birds 
 started lullabys that drowsed away sleepily, 
 leaving the trees shaking in the general 
 high tremble of music. 
 
 " The old leafmess of the town is here 
 again," he said softly. 
 
 "And the old smell of lilacs still drifts 
 over the fences," she answered as softly. 
 
 To Henderson it was a tremendous thing 
 to be walking beside her, filled as he was 
 with the sense that he was seeing her for the 
 very last time as something separate and 
 apart from himself. He took delight in this 
 184
 
 THE BEGINNING 
 
 suspended interval, keeping a little distance 
 between them for the sake of a mental per- 
 spective, looking down upon Her, watching 
 the ways of the shyness that now and then 
 made her catch at her breath, remembering 
 the past, seeing the future. 
 
 They talked of Penangton's growth next. 
 Three houses had tumbled down, but four 
 new ones had been built. He stopped her to 
 point them out with his bamboo stick. Stop- 
 ping where they did reminded him of some- 
 thing. 
 
 " It was just here," he said reminiscently, 
 " that I put down my grips one October 
 night and tried to look Penangton in the 
 eye for the first time." 
 
 " And it was just there," she answered, as 
 they continued their slow progress, " that we 
 met in the mule-car. And there 's the saloon 
 where the driver was drunk. And yonder go 
 the very mules you drove." 
 
 " Ah, then, you remember ? " 
 
 " You were a young doctor straying into 
 185
 
 HENDEKSON 
 
 Penangton in search of a location, and I was 
 an old Penangtonian coming home for a visit. 
 And we banged down to my father's house 
 all alone in the dingy little car." 
 
 "We sang and laughed. I remember 
 that." 
 
 " Yes. But when we came out now and 
 then into the flicker of the street-lamps, I 
 could see your face plainly, see the defeat on 
 it, see the reckless slouch of your shoulders. 
 You were almost ready to stop that night, 
 were n't you ? " 
 
 " I 've been ready to stop plenty of nights 
 since, too." 
 
 " But now success is upon you, and you 
 are glad that you went on ? " 
 
 She was looking out over the most 
 distant hills that broke and tumbled into 
 the Missouri. From where they stood they 
 could see the flying light on the yellow river. 
 The dusk had rilled mysteriously with 
 shadows. 
 
 " Ah, success is a little thing," he told her 
 186
 
 THE BEGINNING 
 
 at last, half lifting his hand toward her. She 
 would not look at him, and his hand dropped 
 back quietly. 
 
 " I 'm glad you did n't come East to meet 
 me," she said, after a long silence. 
 
 " Well, it was n't easy not to. But you 
 said not, and I had stuck it out so long that 
 I thought I ought to stick it out to the finish. 
 You see, I have always wanted everything to 
 get right here, here where I first saw you." 
 His words were brave and candid, but some- 
 thing of her timidity suddenly communicated 
 itself to him and made him realize that that 
 fine reticence of hers was going to be a hard 
 thing to get through. Then, with the very 
 keenness of the realization, he became im- 
 petuous and assertive. 
 
 " I told Judge Harmon to happen in at 
 your father's this evening after supper," he 
 said, " and I have a marriage license in my 
 pocket." 
 
 The words burdened the air with a yet 
 more mystic fragrance, bewildering and 
 187
 
 HENDEKSON 
 
 breath-taking. She stopped in the street for 
 a half second, her breath shaking, her long 
 lashes veiling her eyes. " To-morrow would 
 n't do as well?" she began furtively. 
 
 " To-morrow would n't do at all. You must 
 remember that you have already made me 
 wait a long time. This is the best way." 
 
 She bit her lip, and one of her little gay 
 laughs escaped her. They had turned into a 
 dark, leafy street, and were now at the gate 
 in front of the Penryn house. 
 
 " Once," he said, stopping at the gate, in 
 the resistless grasp of the future, " once, as 
 we stood here together, I dared to say that 
 I hoped it was not the end, and you had to 
 tell me that you thought it was look at 
 me ! well, and now ? " 
 
 "Well, and now I dare tell you " she 
 began bravely, her soul flashing through the 
 little break in her plastic strength, but before 
 the leaping light in his eyes her soul took 
 fright, and fled back to cloister. 
 
 " And now you dare tell me ? " he urged, 
 188
 
 THE BEGINNING 
 
 pushing after with all his right and might; 
 " now you dare tell me what ? " 
 
 " dare tell you that I think it 's the 
 beginning," she answered breathlessly ; and, 
 slipping by him, went through the door of 
 the great house into the hall, where she stood 
 waiting for him, safer from the view of 
 passers-by, the red glow from the chandelier 
 f ailing upon her, her slender, firm body sway- 
 ing a little toward him, her hands held out 
 to him. For another short instant he could 
 not go to her, could only stand voiceless, 
 looking at her, enmeshed in the chance of 
 going to her ; she was so perfectly what he 
 had waited for, with the glow upon her, the 
 love-light in her eyes. 
 
 Then he ran up the steps and closed the 
 door softly behind him. 
 
 189
 
 dfte fiitoeriibe 
 
 BUetrotyped and printed by H. O. Hougkion A* Co, 
 Cambridge, Mass., U.S. A.
 
 A 000 1 29 040 2