XVII

But she did not appear to care to be helped. Nor did Allan⁠—he rarely came to the house, and he went to Edith’s not at all. He was even absent from her Christmas tree for the children, a jolly little festivity which neither he nor Deborah had missed in years.

“What has got into him?” Roger asked. And shortly after Christmas he called the fellow up on the phone. “Drop in for dinner tonight,” he urged. And he added distinctly, “I’m alone.”

“Are you? I’ll be glad to.”

“Thank you, Baird, I want your advice.” And as he hung up the receiver he said, “Now then!” to himself, in a tone of firm decision. But later, as the day wore on, he cursed himself for what he had done. “Don’t it beat the devil,” he thought, “how I’m always putting my foot in it?” And when Baird came into the room that night he loomed, to Roger’s anxious eye, if anything taller than before. But his manner was so easy, his gruff voice so natural, and he seemed to take this little party of two so quietly as a matter of course, that Roger was soon reassured, and at table he and Allan got on even better than before. Baird talked of his life as a student, in Vienna, Bonn and Edinburgh, and of his first struggles in New York. His talk was full of human bits, some tragic, more amusing. And Roger’s liking for the man increased with every story told.

“I asked you here,” he bluntly began, when they had gone to the study to smoke, “to talk to you about Deborah.” Baird gave him a friendly look.

“All right. Let’s talk about her.”

“It strikes me you were right last year,” said Roger, speaking slowly. “She’s already showing the strain of her work. She don’t look to me as strong as she was.”

“She looks to me stronger,” Allan replied. “You know, people fool doctors now and then⁠—and she seems to have taken a fresh start. I feel she may go on for years.” Roger was silent a moment, chagrined and disappointed.

“Have you had a good chance to watch her?” he asked.

“Yes, and I’m watching her still,” said Baird. “I see her down there at the school. She tells me you’ve been there yourself.”

“Yes,” said Roger, determinedly, “and I mean to keep on going. I’m trying not to lose hold of her,” he added with harsh emphasis. Baird turned and frankly smiled at him.

“Then you have probably seen,” he replied, “that to keep any hold at all on her, you must make up your mind as I have done that, strength or no strength, this job of hers is going to be a life career. When a woman who has held a job without a break for eleven years can feel such a flame of enthusiasm, you can be pretty sure, I think, it is the deepest part of her. At least I feel that way,” he said. “And I believe the only way to keep near her⁠—for the present, anyhow⁠—is to help her in her work.”

When Baird had gone, Roger found himself angry.

“I’m not in the habit, young man,” he thought, “of throwing my daughter at gentlemen’s heads. If you feel as calm and contented as that you can go to the devil! Far be it from me to lift a hand! In fact, as I come to think of it, you would probably make her a mighty poor husband!” He worked himself into quite a rage. But an hour later, when he had subsided, “Hold on,” he thought. “Am I right about this? Is the man as contented as he talks? No, sir, not for a minute he isn’t! But what can he do? If he tried making love to Deborah he’d simply be killing his chances. Not the slightest doubt in the world. She can’t think of anything but her career. Yes, sir, when all’s said and done, to marry a modern woman is no child’s play, it means thought and care. And A. Baird has made up his mind to it. He has made up his mind to marry her by playing a long waiting game. He’s just slowly and quietly nosing his way into her school, because it’s her life. And a mighty shrewd way of going about it. You don’t need any help from me, my friend; all you need is to be let alone.”

In talks at home with Deborah, and in what he himself observed at school, Roger began to get inklings of “A. Baird’s long waiting game.” He found that several months before Allan had offered to start a free clinic for mothers and children in connection with the school, and that he alone had put it through, with only the most reluctant aid and gratitude from Deborah⁠—as though she dreaded something. Baird took countless hours from his busy uptown practice; he hurt himself more than once, in fact, by neglecting rich patients to do this work. Where a sick or pregnant mother was too poor to carry out his advice, he followed her into her tenement home, sent one of his nurses to visit her, and even gave money when it was needed to ease the strain of her poverty until she should be well and strong. Soon scores of the mothers of Deborah’s children were singing the praises of Doctor Baird.

Then he began coming to the house.

“I was right,” thought Roger complacently.

He laid in a stock of fine cigars and some good port and claret, too; and on evenings when Baird came to dine, Roger by a genial glow and occasional jocular ironies would endeavor to drag the talk away from clinics, adenoids, children’s teeth, epidemics and the new education. But no joke was so good that Deborah could not promptly match it with some amusing little thing which one of her children had said or done. For she had a mother’s instinct for bragging fondly of her brood. It was deep, it was uncanny, this queer community motherhood.

“This poor devil,” Roger thought, with a pitying glance at Baird, “might just as well be marrying a widow with three thousand brats.”

But Baird did not seem in the least dismayed. On the contrary, his assurance appeared to be deepening every week, and with it Deborah’s air of alarm. For his clinic, as it swiftly grew, he secured financial backing from his rich women patients uptown, many of them childless and only too ready to respond to the appeals he made to them. And one Saturday evening at the house, while dining with Roger and Deborah, he told of an offer he had had from a wealthy banker’s widow to build a maternity hospital. He talked hungrily of all it could do in cooperation with the school. He said nothing of the obvious fact that it would require his whole time, but Roger thought of that at once, and by the expression on Deborah’s face he saw she was thinking, too.

He felt they wanted to be alone, so presently he left them. From his study he could hear their voices growing steadily more intense. Was it all about work? He could not tell. “They’ve got working and living so mixed up, a man can’t possibly tell ’em apart.”

Then his daughter was called to the telephone, and Allan came in to bid Roger good night. And his eyes showed an impatience he did not seem to care to hide.

“Well?” inquired Roger. “Did you get Deborah’s consent?”

“To what?” asked Allan sharply.

“To your acceptance,” Roger answered, “of the widow’s mite.” Baird grinned.

“She couldn’t help herself,” he said.

“But she didn’t seem to like it, eh⁠—”

“No,” said Baird, “she didn’t.” Roger had a dark suspicion.

“By the way,” he asked in a casual tone, “what’s this philanthropic widow like?”

“She’s sixty-nine,” Baird answered.

“Oh,” said Roger. He smoked for a time, and sagely added, “My daughter’s a queer woman, Baird⁠—she’s modern, very modern. But she’s still a woman, you understand⁠—and so she’s jealous⁠—of her job.” But A. Baird was in no joking mood.

“She’s narrow,” he said sternly. “That’s what’s the matter with Deborah. She’s so centered on her job she can’t see anyone else’s. She thinks I’m doing all this work solely in order to help her school⁠—when if she’d use some imagination and try to put herself in my shoes, she’d see the chance it’s giving me!”

“How do you mean?” asked Roger, looking a bit bewildered.

“Why,” said Baird with an impatient fling of his hand, “there are men in my line all over the country who’d leave home, wives and children for the chance I’ve blundered onto here! A hospital fully equipped for research, a free hand, an opportunity which comes to one man in a million! But can she see it? Not at all! It’s only an annex to her school!”

“Yes,” said Roger gravely, “she’s in a pretty unnatural state. I think she ought to get married, Baird⁠—” To his friendly and disarming twinkle Baird replied with a rueful smile.

“You do, eh,” he growled. “Then tell her to plan her wedding to come before her funeral.” As he rose to go, Roger took his hand.

“I’ll tell her,” he said. “It’s sound advice. Good night, my boy, I wish you luck.”

A few moments later he heard in the hall their brief good nights to each other, and presently Deborah came in. She was not looking quite herself.

“Why are you eyeing me like that?” his daughter asked abruptly.

“Aren’t you letting him do a good deal for you?”

Deborah flushed a little:

“Yes, I am. I can’t make him stop.”

Her father hesitated.

“You could,” he said, “if you wanted to. If you were sure,” he added slowly, “that you didn’t love him⁠—and told him so.” He felt a little panic, for he thought he had gone too far. But his daughter only turned away and restlessly moved about the room. At last she came to her father’s chair:

“Hadn’t you better leave this to me?”

“I had, my dear, I most certainly had. I was all wrong to mention it,” he answered very humbly.

From this night on, Baird changed his tack. Although soon busy with the plans for the hospital, to be built at once, he said little about it to Deborah. Instead, he insisted on taking her off on little evening sprees uptown.

“Do you know what’s the matter with both of us?” he said to her one evening. “We’ve been getting too durned devoted to our jobs and our ideals. You’re becoming a regular school marm and I’m getting to be a regular slave to every wretched little babe who takes it into his head to be born. We haven’t one redeeming vice.”

And again he took up dancing. The first effort which he made, down at Deborah’s school one evening, was a failure quite as dismal as his attempts of the previous year. But he did not appear in the least discouraged. He came to the house one Friday night.

“I knew I could learn to dance,” he said, “in spite of all your taunts and jibes. That little fiasco last Saturday night⁠—”

“Was perfectly awful,” Deborah said.

“Did not discourage me in the least,” he continued severely. “I decided the only trouble with me was that I’m tall and I’ve got to bend⁠—to learn to bend.”

“Tremendously!”

“So I went to a lady professor, and she saw the point at once. Since then I’ve had five lessons, and I can foxtrot in my sleep. Tomorrow is Saturday. Where shall we go?”

“To the theater.”

“Good. We’ll start with that. But the minute the play is over we’ll gallop off to the Plaza Grill⁠—just as the music is in full swing⁠—”

“And we’ll dance,” she groaned, “for hours. And when I get home, I’ll creep into bed so tired and sore in every limb⁠—”

“That you’ll sleep late Sunday morning. And a mighty good thing for you, too⁠—if you ask my advice⁠—”

“I don’t ask your advice!”

“You’re getting it, though,” he said doggedly. “If you’re still to be a friend of mine we’ll dance at the Plaza tomorrow night⁠—and well into the Sabbath.”

“The principal of a public school⁠—dancing on the Sabbath. Suppose one of my friends should see us there.”

“Your friends,” he replied with a fine contempt, “do not dance in the Plaza Grill. I’m the only roisterer you know.”

“All right,” she conceded grudgingly, “I’ll roister. Come and get me. But I’d much prefer when the play is done to come home and have milk and crackers here.”

“Deborah,” he said cheerfully, “for a radical school reformer you’re the most conservative woman I know.”