II

Slowly and carefully⁠—for he was still limp from his battle with pneumonia, resultant from the prolonged use of a lung-motor in the inexperienced hands of excited people⁠—two nurses had trundled young Merrick up to the well-appointed solarium.

“It won’t hurt him a bit,” Doctor Watson had said, “and there is at least the suspicion of a breeze upstairs.”

Parking his chair in an alcove somewhat sequestered from the general assembly of convalescents, most of them white-turbaned like himself, his uncommunicative attendants had pattered quickly away as if relieved to be off to more pleasant undertakings.

Their scamper added to his perplexity. Yesterday he had tried to explain the prevailing taciturnity of the people who waited on him: it was the weather. The muggy, mid-August humidity accounted for it. If doctors were brief and brusque, nurses crisp and remote, it was because the patients were fretful⁠ ⁠… everybody out of sorts⁠ ⁠… naturally.

But, even so, something more serious than a low barometer ailed this hospital. Its moodiness was too thick to be interpreted by a murky yellow sky, the abominable rasp of cicadas in the dusty maples, or the enervating heat. Brightwood was in trouble; nor could Bobby shake off the feeling that he, himself, was somehow at the bottom of it; else why this conspiracy of mute glumness in their attitude toward him? My God!⁠ ⁠… He might as well have been some penniless bum, fished out of the gutter, and patched up for sheer humanity’s sake⁠ ⁠… Didn’t they know who he was?⁠ ⁠… Why, his grandfather could buy up the whole works and never miss it!

It wasn’t that they’d neglected him, he was bound to admit. Somebody had been always hovering over him⁠ ⁠… God!⁠ ⁠… What a ghastly experience he had been through!⁠ ⁠… That fog⁠ ⁠… drifting in greyish-white, balloon-like billows across the road⁠—impenetrable, acrid, suffocating⁠—a damp, chilling, clinging cloud that pressed painfully against his chest, swathed his arms, clogged his feet⁠ ⁠… That trip back from Elsewhere!⁠ ⁠… Would he ever live long enough to forget? It made him shudder to remember it!⁠ ⁠… That unutterable fatigue!

Sometimes it had been more than he could bear. After he had plodded, staggering, groping his way for a few shaky steps, the Thing would rush him, with a roar like heavy surf, and hurl him incredible distances back toward oblivion. Then the violence of the storm would subside, followed by an ominous silence⁠ ⁠… Was he really dead, this time?⁠ ⁠… Suddenly, the Thing would swoop him up again and pitch him deeper into the stifling fog⁠ ⁠…

After years and years of that⁠—he had grown old and stiff and sore with his hopeless struggle⁠—the situation had begun to clear. Now and again there were ragged rents in the fabric of the fog through which certain landmarks might be fleetingly recognized, as steeples and spires come up, faintly, on an acid-touched plate. These hazy perceptions were, at first, exclusively olfactory. He had read, somewhere, that the nose was more integrally a part of the brain than the other sense organs. Perhaps the smelling faculty (he had taken more than a casual interest in physiology) was the oldest of all the perceptive organs; earliest to evolve. But no; that would be feeling⁠ ⁠… feeling first, then smelling⁠ ⁠… It had amazed and amused him that part of his mind seemed to be trudging alongside, analyzing the predicament of the rest of his mind, wading through the fog.

Now there had come a much wider gap in the drifting cloud, and through it breezed a combination of identifiable odours; strong scents crushed hard against his face; smell of good wool, and, buried in the wool, iodoform, cigarette smoke, chlorides of this-that-and-the-other, anaesthetics, antiseptics, laboratory smells, hospital smells.

A weight shifted about on his chest. It was warm. It throbbed. It pressed firmly, rested briefly, moved a little space, paused again, listened; went back to spots it had visited before; listened, more intently.

Then the weight had lifted and the medley of smells vanished. Through the next rift in the fog, voices were speaking from a vast distance; one of them calm, assured; the other bitter, unfriendly⁠ ⁠… That had been the beginning of his perplexity⁠ ⁠…

“I believe he’s going to pull through!”

“Doubtless⁠—and it’s a damned shame!”

After that, there had been a complicated jumble of voices⁠—one of them a woman’s⁠—before the fog closed in on him again. Occasionally, the cloud would tear apart, and he would take up his load⁠ ⁠… he seemed to be carrying some enormous weight⁠ ⁠… and plod on woodenly. He would have yawned, but deep breathing had gone out. They weren’t doing it any more⁠ ⁠… quite too painful. One breathed in short, dry, hot gasps⁠ ⁠… glad to have them at the price⁠ ⁠… Tom Masterson had confirmed that fact⁠ ⁠… Tom⁠—doubtless this was part of his delirium⁠—Tom had sat by the bed; and, queried about the new style of breathing, remarked, “That’s the way we’re all doing it⁠ ⁠… Not nearly so good as the old way, of course, but better than none.”

Another smothering billow of fog had engulfed him; but the Thing wasn’t in it. He didn’t mind now, so long as the Thing was gone.

He opened his eyes and glimpsed a square of blue sky through a real window. The curtain fluttered. A motor churned in a court somewhere below; gears rasped, gravel scrunched. Ice tinkled in a glass, near at hand. A starched nurse, eyes intent on her watch, fumbled for his forearm. The sharp tip of a thermometer dug cruelly into the roots of his tongue. That was what ailed it, then⁠—all this awkward gouging while he had been unconscious.

He had become aware of the steady drone of an electric fan, the metallic whir of a lawn-mower in parched grass; had dully explored his cracked lips with a clumsy tongue; had regarded with apathy the nurse who bent over him; and, after a few hoarse croaks, had contrived to ask where he was. She told him. Sluggishly, he surmised that his presence at Brightwood indicated there was something wrong with his head. There was; it ached abominably, and was bandaged. He felt of it gingerly, and inquired.

“A hard bump. But you are doing very nicely. Drink this, please!”

And then he had slept some more. A dim light was burning when he awoke. Everything was very quiet; so he decided to go to sleep again. Another day came⁠ ⁠… two or three of them, maybe⁠ ⁠… he couldn’t remember.

A young, redheaded doctor, in a white coat, had appeared and asked some questions of the nurse. He seemed a friendly person⁠ ⁠… but young. Doctor Hudson was the big man at this place. If there was something the matter with his head, he wanted Hudson.

“I say,” he had called, stiffly turning his eyes toward the doctor, “why doesn’t Doctor Hudson look in? He knows me. I’ve been at his house. Does he know I’m here?”

“I’m Doctor Watson, Mr. Merrick. I’m looking after you. Doctor Hudson is not in the city⁠ ⁠…”

After Doctor Watson had left the room, he had beckoned the nurse to the bedside. Had Miss Hudson called?⁠ ⁠… No; but that was because he wasn’t seeing visitors yet⁠ ⁠… that is, not many⁠ ⁠… Yes, his grandfather had been in⁠ ⁠… and a Mr. Masterson⁠ ⁠… The accident?⁠ ⁠… Oh yes, they would tell him all about that, a little later⁠ ⁠… What he needed now was sleep; lots and lots of it; no worry or excitement⁠ ⁠… What we wanted now to make us well was sleep⁠ ⁠… Then we could have visitors, and the visitors would tell us everything we wanted to know⁠ ⁠… That kind of silly babytalk!⁠ ⁠… Hell’s bells!

This morning however he had grown impatient. These people were carrying their stupid silence strike too far! Obviously he had been in some sort of a scrape. Very well⁠ ⁠… It was not the first time. There would be some way to settle it. There always had been. Was he not accustomed to paying for smashed fenders, broken china, splintered furniture, outraged feelings, and interrupted business? If anybody had a grievance, let him make a bill of it, and he would draw a cheque! It wasn’t any of this hospital’s business, anyway! Or⁠ ⁠… was it?⁠ ⁠… What could he have done to their damned hospital?⁠ ⁠… Run into it?

“Tell me this much, won’t you, Miss⁠ ⁠… ?”

“Bates.”

“… Miss Bates; just how did I get this whack on my head?⁠ ⁠… And I won’t ask you any more questions.”

“There was a mast or something flew around and knocked you off a boat.”

“Thanks.”

A mast had knocked him off a boat! He grinned; tried to remember. Well⁠—that was that; but how did the hospital get in it?

At noon, his nurse had been relieved for an hour by a no less important factotum that Mrs. Ashford herself, superintendent of the hospital.

She sat by the window with a trifle of needlework in her hands, apparently intent upon it; but quite aware of her patient’s mood and expectant of an outburst.

Bobby studied her face and decided in its favour. It was a conclusion to which patients at Brightwood customarily arrived with even more promptness, but he was in no state of mind to lose his heart impetuously to anyone in this establishment where he was being treated with such contemptuous indifference.

He found himself guessing her age. Everybody indulged in such speculations on first sight of Nancy Ashford. Her maternal attitude toward the staff, the nurses, the patients, was premised solely upon her white hair. The fact that she had come by it in her early twenties, at the time of her husband’s fatal illness, in no way discounted the matronly authority it gave her as the general counsellor at Brightwood. Notwithstanding her quite youthful face and slim, athletic figure, many people who outranked her in years called her mother⁠—a perfect specimen of the type that instantly invites confidences. She had become a repository for a wider diversity of confessions than come to the ear of the average priest.

Doctor Hudson’s tragic death had been a deeper sorrow to her than anybody connected with Brightwood was ever going to know certainly⁠—whatever might be guessed; and the business of bearing it with precisely the right outward expression of regret was the most serious problem she had ever faced.

For fifteen years Mrs. Ashford had grown more and more indispensable to Doctor Hudson. Entering his experimental hospital as an operating nurse, shortly after the death of her husband⁠—a promising young surgeon and a protégé of the brain specialist⁠—she had quickly and quietly transferred many an administrative responsibility from her chief’s shoulders to her own, almost without his realizing how deftly she had eased him of an increasing volume of wearisome details. The time came when her decisions represented the opinions of Doctor Hudson, and went unquestioned. Nobody was jealous of her influence over him, or of her calm authority over the institution. Improvident young interns sought her counsel in their troublesome business affairs. Nurses told her their love stories. Patients laid their hearts bare to her; confided everything from minor domestic perplexities to major crimes; wrote to her after they had gone home; not infrequently proposed marriage to her; deluged her with Christmas gifts.

“Isn’t she sweet?” the women patients would say. She was not. The word was silly, applied to her. She was understanding, tactful, and, above all, strong; with the face of a young woman, the mind of a man, and the white hair of a matron.

There were some other things about Mrs. Ashford which, had young Merrick known, might have changed his attitude toward her that morning, as she sat jabbing her needle into the bit of tapestry and waiting for him to blow up.

Doctor Hudson had taken her for granted. He had grown accustomed to confiding every difficulty to her, and only rarely was he disposed to debate any of her opinions. There was no phase of his professional life to which she was a stranger. Even some of the strictly private enterprises to which he gave himself with stealthy concern⁠—thinking them effectively concealed⁠—she had discovered, either by chance or shrewd guess; and from that knowledge she had long since deduced at least a vague and troublesome idea of the motive back of them. He would have been amazed⁠—perhaps somewhat annoyed⁠—had he known that Nancy Ashford almost knew the one important secret of his life.

How deeply she cared for him, and the nature of that affection, the surgeon suspected, but resolutely refused to recognize. Anything like a mutual admission of their actual dependence upon and attraction for each other would, he felt, lead to unhappy complications. He could not marry her. Joyce would have disapproved.

“A nurse?⁠ ⁠… Why, Daddy!⁠ ⁠… You wouldn’t!⁠ ⁠… You mustn’t!”

On the morning that he told Nancy he was to be married the next Tuesday to Joyce’s college friend, she had said quickly, “A very sensible thing to do. She will make you happy. I am so glad for you.”

“I had hoped you might think that,” he replied, obviously relieved.

Luckily for both, they were not facing each other. He was tugging on his rubber gloves, in the little laboratory adjacent to his operating-room, and she was buttoning his long white coat down the back. He pretended not to notice how long it was taking her.

“All right, back there?” he sang out, with attempted casualness, glancing over his shoulder.

“Quite all right now,” she had answered, in a tone that matched his for lightness; but⁠—it was not quite all right⁠ ⁠… Nothing would ever be quite all right again.

Bobby had felt his heart warming toward the lady of indeterminate age who busied herself with the needle, evidently unaware of the tumult of his mind. He decided to disturb her peace. He would ask a few questions which he had been at some pains to compose. They sounded a bit bookish, as if memorized⁠ ⁠… It was clear enough, he said, that he had been in some kind of a mess. He was forever getting into messes. That appeared to be his occupation. It was customary with him, he recited, with what sounded more like silly bravado than he had intended, to be in a bad scrape and not know the full particulars until the next morning. What was this one about? Had anybody else been hurt? He could not recall. If there were damages, he would gladly pay.

It had turned out to be a surly speech, as it progressed; mostly because Mrs. Ashford did not look up from her work, or seem properly attentive to the petulant complaint. Mistaking her effort at self-control for but another exhibition of the indifference under which he had fretted, Bobby grew irascible. In the very middle of a spluttery sentence however he broke off suddenly and regarded her with perplexity. As she raised her eyes to meet his, he saw that they were brimming with tears. Her lips trembled.

“What have I done?” he demanded huskily. “It’s something very terrible. I can see that in your face. You’ve simply got to tell me. I can’t stand this anxiety any longer!”

Mrs. Ashford put down her work on the table, came to the bedside, and taking one of Bobby’s hands in both of her own said, “My friend, something has occurred here that makes us all very, very unhappy. It happened about the time that you came here. We are not recovered from it. But it was not your fault, and the damages cannot be settled. You need give yourself no further concern about it.”

Not a bit satisfied, but assured by Mrs. Ashford’s tone that their discussion was at least temporarily a closed incident, Bobby made no further effort to press his inquiries. He murmured his regrets that there had been any trouble and sank into his pillows, disquieted, but⁠—whatever was the matter it was no concern of his. That was good. That was ever so much better than he had feared.

It had been a very welcome diversion, an hour later, when Doctor Watson had suggested the solarium. In the rumbling elevator, Bobby had made a feeble effort to be jocular. It was impossible that the grief which had seemed to distress the matronly Mrs. Ashford would be equally experienced by so young and pretty a girl as the slender blonde who stood at his elbow, silently awaiting their arrival at the top floor.

“I’ll bet you a box of candy against a pleasant smile,” he said, grimly, “that we do less talking in our hospital than any place else on earth.”

Instantly he realized it was the wrong thing to have said to her. She did not challenge his statement. It was not that she was offended. It was rather as if she had not heard him. She was in trouble. She was in the same kind of trouble that affected everybody else in this hospital. It plunged him again into the gloom from which he had partly extricated himself through the not very reassuring statements of Mrs. Ashford.

Squelched to a shamed silence by the girl’s rebuff, he gazed steadily ahead, conscious of flushed cheeks, as they wheeled him into the alcove, adjusted his pillows, half-lowered the blind, moved the screen closer to isolate him from the others and, without a word or a smile, hurried away.

He must have been there an hour or more before he learned what he thought he had wanted to know.

In the course of that hour, failing of scraping together enough remembered facts to be of any service in the solution of his problem, he had gone woolgathering in all directions.

Perhaps it was his sense of utter desolation and loneliness that had set him going over the path of his singularly bitter childhood.

Bobby Merrick had grown up about as independent of the normal restraints imposed upon children as could have been possible in civilized society.

When he was a little lad, his father, Clif Merrick, had been too much occupied with business⁠—what time he was not yacht racing, deer hunting, or on other journeys not quite so clearly explained⁠—to pay any attention to the sensitive child beyond an occasional pat on the head as he passed him on the stairs in tow of a governess; or a brief and clumsy tussle in imitation of paternal playfulness. The big man was always half drunk when he made these rough overtures of comradeship. The boy dreaded seeing his father approach, of a late afternoon, with a flushed face, suggesting a good romp together.

On such occasions, if she was present, Bobby’s neurotic mother usually intervened.

“You’re much too rough with him, Clif,” she would expostulate. “He’s only a little boy. You hurt him! Stop it, I tell you!”

“Nonsense!” his father would reply, glancing toward the governess for approval, “you don’t know anything about boys. Does she, Bobby?”

In all truth, she didn’t; but the lad would be distressed over the episode, hardly knowing what answer was expected of him.

Once⁠—how vividly he remembered this!⁠—his mother, upon being sarcastically scorned in his presence for the way she was “bringing up a soft little mollycoddle, with his hands full of dolls and dishes” (true enough), had shocked him by screaming, in a shrill falsetto, “Leave him alone; damn you! I won’t have you bullying him any more when you’re drunk! You touch him again and I’ll call the police!”

The police! For his father! Bobby remembered that it had made him ill⁠—nauseated. The governess had had to carry him upstairs, where he was awfully sick. He even remembered what it was he had eaten⁠—currant pudding. He had never cared much for currants thereafter.

Clif Merrick so steadily ragged the child, after that, about his girlish toys and trinkets, that Bobby himself revolted against the soft programme the women had made for him and gratefully approved when his father suggested boxing lessons. Strangely enough, he found himself happy with the new sport. Eager to test the value of the instruction he was receiving, he occasionally slipped away from the big house about time for school to be out in the afternoon, attired in an immaculate black velvet suit with white lace cuffs, and waited at the corner for somebody to yell “Sissy!” When he returned home he would be very dirty and greatly in need of repair, but grinning from ear to ear.

When he was twelve, Bobby’s father had died suddenly of pneumonia brought on by exposure while duck hunting in nasty weather. Young as he was, the boy realized that his mother’s bereavement was accepted by her with a calm fortitude out of all proportion to her weakness for indulging in self-pity.

One of her remarks, upon their return from the cemetery that bleak afternoon, was chiselled indelibly upon her son’s mind. None of the epitaphs he had regarded with childish curiosity, as they drove slowly along the narrow, winding roads, was carved deeper. Sometimes, when he thought of it, he winced; sometimes he grinned.

“Well,” she said, handing Colleen her furs, “that’s that!”

“Yes, ma’am,” dutifully replied Colleen, accustomed to occasional outbursts of caste-forgetful confidences vouchsafed by her mistress, “it certainly is!”

And then, apparently dissatisfied with her rejoinder, which had taken an almost too casual view of the matter for one who entertained so wholesome a respect for death, Colleen added, sepulchrally, “It must have been very hard, ma’am, to leave him out there.”

Upon which followed the memorable elegy spoken by his mother.

“Well; I’ll know now where he is!”

Sometimes, when, as a collegian, Bobby was at that exact state of intoxication where the tragic in a man’s experience becomes distorted into broad, screaming farce, and even sacred memories make wry faces and put out their tongues in scorn of everything decent, he would recall his mother’s elegiac comment, laugh uproariously, and pound his knee. “What a corking epitaph!” he had shouted once, and had instantly cursed himself for a drunken fool.

Bobby could not remember precisely when he had become conscious that his father and mother despised each other. It must have been while he was still a mere baby. By the time he was eight, they had stopped quarrelling, their mutual contempt too ponderous for so frail a vehicle as speech. Unquestionably she had suffered much; but it was no use trying to champion her cause. She was entitled to her son’s pity, and had it. He would have been glad enough to have respected her, too, had that been possible.

Petulant, selfish, suspicious⁠—Maxine Merrick was no end difficult. Her only proficiency was her skill as a pianist; and aware that it was the sole endowment she was in a position to transmit, she had begun to teach the child piano technique almost before he knew the letters on his building-blocks.

A restless soul, she was; temperamentally cursed with “floating anxiety”; pretty, after a fashion⁠ ⁠… a transparent blonde⁠ ⁠… always attracting attention at the opera where she quite took one’s breath away with her beauty at thirty yards; given to fits of melancholy, for which there was plenty of excuse, God knew; dissatisfied with her own personality which she constantly endeavoured to improve, either by tinkering with her face and figure, or by taking her dishevelled mind to quack psychiatrists and will doctors for adjustments. She was on the sucker list of all the advertising mountebanks in town; talked seriously about palmistry; had paid a considerable sum for a horoscope which related her affairs somehow with the movements of Arcturus; frequently had her fortune told.

She vibrated between institutions for the care of the body and the cure of the soul. Having spent a busy season of assiduous devotion to the business of being plucked, picked, dyed, frescoed, and massaged; sitting long and painful hours in the studios of beauty experts, Maxine would suddenly experience an unaccountable surge of disgust, and make off hurriedly to some sanitarium de luxe where, in seclusion almost conventional, she lived on unsalted insipidities, and listened of evenings in the lounge to mellifluous harangues on personality expression⁠ ⁠… nerves in order⁠ ⁠… the will to live⁠ ⁠… life at its utmost; followed by less sidereal comments by the chief of staff concerning the importance of internal purity⁠—not of the conscience, which was out of his field, as the piracy of his bills attested⁠—but of the colon, to which he referred with a bland candour somewhat disconcerting to the newer arrivals, still serving their novitiate in the by no means unexacting vocation of hypochondria.

During these spells of improving her health and personality, Maxine would lose many pounds and add as many new words to her pathological vocabulary. It suited her mood, during such retreats, to become as disdainful of her appearance as a Tibetan lama.

One day, for no apparent reason other than caprice, there would be a flurry of trunks and boxes, tickets and taxis, and a swift return home, to the utter consternation of yogis who had been fattening on her patronage, and the indignant amazement of pallid charlatans whose income would be alarmingly depleted by the sudden demobilization of her crusade for the Perpetual Light. It would be generally rumoured among the patients that Mrs. Merrick was a brilliant social leader⁠ ⁠… “simply required, my dear, to stop and rest for a few weeks, now and then, if you know what I mean”⁠ ⁠… which was nonsense; for Clif Merrick never took her anywhere, and she could have numbered her friends on her fingers.

On these excursions in quest of youth, beauty, sweetness and light, his mother never took Bobby along. He remained at home in the custody of grafting servants and an endless procession of young governesses, none of whom ever stayed longer than a few weeks. The prettier ones were the quickest to go⁠ ⁠… sometimes on an hour’s notice. He had put on quite a scene when Miss Newman had left without so much as saying goodbye to him, and had been slapped by his father for the racket he was making.

Shortly after Maxine had been assured that henceforth she would know exactly where Clif was, the big house on Piedmont Square was sold, and Bobby was taken to Europe where his mother rapidly improved in health and spirits. He was placed in a school for rich waifs at Versailles, where he fraternized with youngsters who had become an embarrassing liability to divorced parents. On brief vacations he joined “Maxine”⁠—as he obediently called her⁠—in Paris, scowling his distaste when, in the presence of her new friends, she chattered baby talk to him, to which he made sour replies in a voice that frequently skidded off the treble clef. She had filled her spacious apartment with wigged and bangled old harridans, who swapped dull prattle about their aristocratic relatives for caviar and champagne and was inordinately vain of her ménage, which Bobby impudently insisted would better be called her menagerie.

There were lonely summers at Brighton and Deauville, lonely Christmases at Cannes; private schools and sycophantic tutors; trains and hotels; brief, dry, hard friendships with over-sophisticated, unwanted boys like himself, envious of their mothers’ Pekingeses, and not infrequently dizzy with pilferings from the decanter on the sideboard.

At seventeen, he had been sent back, alone, to enter a high-toned prep school in Connecticut where, for previous lack of a balanced intellectual ration and experience of steady discipline, he survived only until Thanksgiving. Headmaster Bowers saw him off on the train and returned to lead the chapel exercises. Ineffable calm sat on his brow, and his voice was vibrant with unfeigned gratitude as he announced, “We will stand and sing the Doxology.”

Through the influence of old Nicholas, Bobby was then accepted, provisionally, in another preparatory school, a Military Academy not quite so close to salt water⁠ ⁠… “It’s just a ritzy reform school,” he wrote on his first day, to his perplexed grandparent, who replied, in substance, that, if that were so, it was quite the place for him. To his instructors there, he gave more bother than any other six, but contrived to stay on. Through these days, he renewed his abandoned taste for boxing, under a preceptor who cuffed him about, shamefully, until he discovered that the boy was game and thereafter took an interest in him. It was Mr. Bowman’s boast, when Bobby finished with them, that albeit he was a bit frail in algebra, he could lick his weight in wildcats.

It was at the State University, however, that Bobby had struck his stride. Neither a loafer nor a dunce, he easily ran circles around the average student in such classes as stirred his curiosity. Zoology?⁠ ⁠… He ate it up! Physiology⁠ ⁠… psychology⁠ ⁠… chemistry⁠ ⁠… he was constantly amazing his friends by his ardent boning, especially in chemistry, in the face of his utter indifference to scholastic credit in the courses he disliked.

His David-and-Jonathan friendship with Tom Masterson had been good for him; better for him than for Tom, a likeable youngster with an insatiable ambition to be a short-story writer.

They had found each other as rushees at a luncheon for freshmen in the Delta Omega house, and decided on the spot to room together. Young Masterson, however eager to emancipate himself from the restraints of a rather severely disciplined household, was something of an idealist, and opened up a new world to Bobby who, listening at first because he liked Tom, and later because he liked what Tom said, learned from his youthful tutor a love for the classics which, in the original, he had despised.

But Masterson, not having been brought up on cocktails, was not much advantaged by the tardy instruction he received in exchange for his Greek and Roman mythology. Once he started⁠—no matter what the hour, place, or circumstance⁠—Tom could be depended upon to continue drinking until he was unconscious. Bobby, approximately sober, would get him home, somehow, and put him to bed with all the solicitude of a mother. Apparently it never occurred to him that he was jeopardizing his chum’s future.

“Poor old Tommy!” he would say, unlacing his shoes. “I’m afraid you’ll just never learn to drink like a gentleman!”

Nor was the Merrick influence much of a blessing upon the Delta Omega house into which he and Tom moved as sophomores. Had he been less lovable, he might have been less dangerous. His charming irresistibility was fatal to the good resolutions of many a chap who honestly wanted to stay sober and do his work. Even the seniors⁠—by custom disdainful of juvenile society⁠—once they were in debt to him for lavish hospitality which was at first reluctantly accepted, found themselves careening over the road in Bobby’s big touring-car, late Friday afternoons, en route to his grandfather’s home on Lake Saginack.

And the indulgent old man, believing they would all have a better time if they had the house to themselves⁠—and eager to be out of the racket⁠—would be driven in to the city to find sanctuary at the Columbia Club. The neighbourhood used to protest, but old Nicholas always reminded them⁠—when they complained of drunken demons, for whose conduct he was presumably responsible, driving recklessly with open mufflers and raucous sirens, at all hours of the night⁠—that boys would be boys. When they smashed something, he paid for it.

Not infrequently Bobby’s weekend guests went back to Ann Arbor on Monday morning without a nickel; wearing their very socks by permission of their host, who owned them after an all-day poker game on Sunday. How often they promised themselves, “Never again!” but it was hard to stand out against Bobby’s insidious smile. Moreover, the food and service at old Nicholas’ country palace was a tempting diversion from the near-starvation of fraternity fare and the discomforts of a crowded house where nothing ever received anxious thought and respect but the impending payments on the mortgage.

For some time, Bobby had been conscious of a dull rumble of conversation, just beyond the screen. It began to annoy him. Some stupid ass was airing his home-brewed philosophy.

“All this here talk about Providence⁠ ⁠… Providence; bah⁠—I say!⁠ ⁠… Take this very case, for instance!⁠ ⁠… Here is a noted man who has made himself so useful that people came to him for thousands of miles for help that nobody could give them but him!⁠ ⁠… Look at me, for instance!⁠ ⁠…”

Bobby scowled, and muttered, “Yeah!⁠ ⁠… Look at you!⁠ ⁠… It’s bad enough to have to listen to you!”

“Look at me! I came here clear from Ioway; and lucky enough I got here when I did⁠ ⁠… Last operation he ever performed, they tell me!⁠ ⁠… And they might have saved his life too if that pulmotor thing, or whatever it was, hadn’t been in use on that drunken young What’s-his-name with the rich granddaddy! What right had he to be alive, anyhow⁠ ⁠… now I ask you?”

It may have been Bobby’s sudden pallor that attracted the attention of the nurse who sat at the little desk by the door. She quickly crossed the room and asked if there was anything he wanted. Bobby swallowed with a dry throat, attempted a grateful smile, and replied weakly, “Perhaps I should go back⁠ ⁠… feel better in bed⁠ ⁠… not very strong yet. Tell them, will you?”

His exit from the solarium was effected with such promptness that the patients observed it. Who was this youngster? Questions were asked and answered. The man who had discoursed of the unseemly ways of Providence was deeply contrite⁠ ⁠… Wished he’d known, he said.

Bobby’s nurse stepped out into the corridor, after putting him to bed, and an intern passing by remarked, “So he knows all about it.”

“Well, he had to find out sometime, didn’t he?”

“Yes⁠—but he’s a pretty good scout⁠ ⁠… And it was a rotten way to dish it up to him!”

“You should worry,” snapped Miss Bates.

For hours, Bobby Merrick lay with his eyes closed, motionless, but not asleep. At first, he was hotly indignant. What right had these saps from Ioway, or wherever, to pass judgment on what kind of people had a right to live? How could anybody be so small-minded as to hold it against him that his life had been saved, even if it could be shown that Doctor Hudson might have been rescued if the oxygen machine had been available? It wasn’t his fault. He hadn’t borrowed the damned thing! He hadn’t asked to have his life saved at that price, or at all!

And then his resentment over this monstrous injustice gave way to steady thinking. Perhaps, after all, he was under a certain obligation to this dead man. Very good; he would show his appreciation of what it had cost to save his life. He fell to wondering whether Doctor Hudson had left his young wife and Joyce properly provided for. Joyce was extravagant. He knew what it must require to keep her going. He had had her in tow, occasionally, himself.

“See if Mrs. Ashford is free to come here for a moment,” commanded Bobby. The nurse nodded stiffly, left the room, and, in a few minutes, Mrs. Ashford stood by the bedside.

Assuming what he believed to be a mature, conventional, business tone⁠—the tone of large capital about to indulge itself in a brief seizure of magnanimity⁠—he inquired, without preamble, “What sort of an estate did Doctor Hudson leave?”

“I do not know,” she replied; and after a pause added crisply, “Why?”

The dry crackle of that “why?” irritated him. She had given him reason to believe that she was sympathetic. Surely she might know he was not asking this question out of sheer curiosity.

“You seem to infer that it is none of my business,” he retorted.

Nancy Ashford coloured slightly.

“Well,” she snapped, “is it?”

Bobby’s face felt hot. He was at a serious disadvantage, and she was not helping him; not making the slightest attempt to understand him.

“You might at least credit me with an honest wish to do something about all this, if I can,” he expostulated angrily.

“I am sorry if I offended you,”⁠—with forced composure⁠—“You were thinking of giving some money to the family?”

“If they need it⁠—yes.”

“Whose money?”

Bobby raised up on one elbow and scowled.

“Whose money? Why, my own, of course!”

“Some you earned, maybe?”

For a moment, he was speechless with exasperation over the studied insolence of her query. Sinking back upon the pillow, he motioned to her to leave him. Instead, she took her stand at the foot of his bed, and, hands on hips, militantly began an address distinguished for its lack of polite ambiguity.

“You invited this,” she said thickly. “You called me in here to get some information about the Hudsons, and I’m going to tell you! And then you can pay them off⁠ ⁠… with your grandfather’s money! Do you know what killed Doctor Hudson?⁠ ⁠… Worry! They said it was overwork that weakened his heart. I know better! The only thing that counted in his life, besides his profession, was Joyce. He saw her going to the dogs. Part of that was your fault! You’ve had a reputation for ruining all your friends!”

Bobby Merrick lay stunned under the attack, his eyes wide with amazement at the woman’s audacity.

“The poor chap tried to pull himself together.” Her voice wavered a little, but she went on with resolution. “Built that little house at the lake, went swimming when he wasn’t able; knew he wasn’t able; had provided a lung-motor for emergencies; and then, at the moment when he has to have it⁠—you’re using it! You⁠—of all people! And now you casually suggest settling the bill with money!”

Something in his look⁠—it was the look of a hurt animal⁠—checked Nancy’s passionate diatribe.

“Please forgive me,” she muttered agitatedly. “But, as I say, you invited it. You wanted to know, I have told you.”

Bobby swallowed awkwardly, and rubbed his brow with the rough sleeve of his cotton smock.

“Well,” he muttered hoarsely, “you’ve told me. If you’ve said everything you have to say, I won’t keep you.”

She started toward the door, paused, turned about, walked slowly to the window and stood looking out, her left elbow cupped in her right hand, the slim fingers of the other tapping her shoulder, agitatedly, at first; then meditatively. Bobby watched the slowing tempo of her fingers, cleared his throat nervously, and decided to meet her halfway.

“That was really all I had to offer; wasn’t it?⁠ ⁠… just money?”

She returned slowly to the bedside, drew up a chair, sat down, and rested her plump arms upon the white counterpane close to his pillow.

“You have something very valuable besides money; but you’ll never use it.” Her tone was judicial, prophetic. “It’s in you, all right, but it will never come out. Nobody will ever know that you had it. The money will always be blocking the way⁠ ⁠… You were much disturbed today, because you overheard an impolite insinuation that your life wasn’t worth saving at the price of Doctor Hudson’s. Naturally, you resented that. Your indignation does you credit⁠ ⁠… However⁠—crude as that man was, what he said was true, wasn’t it?⁠ ⁠… You admitted it was true when you decided to put up a cash difference. But you can’t justify yourself that way. It might make things more comfortable for the Hudson family; but it wouldn’t help you to live with yourself again.”

She had taken his hand in hers, maternally. Disengaging his eyes, she stared upward absorbedly, and murmured, as if quite alone, “He’d never do it, of course⁠ ⁠… Couldn’t!⁠ ⁠… Wouldn’t!⁠ ⁠… Too much money⁠ ⁠… It would be too hard⁠ ⁠… take too long⁠ ⁠… but God!⁠ ⁠… What a chance!”

Bobby stirred uneasily.

“I’m afraid I don’t get you⁠ ⁠… if⁠—if you’re talking about me.”

“Oh, yes, you do!” She nodded her head, slowly, emphatically. “You know what I mean⁠ ⁠… and you wish you were up to it⁠ ⁠… but⁠—” pulling herself together resolutely, “you’re not; so we won’t talk about it any more⁠ ⁠… Is there something I can get for you before I go?”

Bobby raised a detaining hand, and their fingers interlaced.

“I think I know now what you’re hinting. But it’s quite impossible, as you say. It’s worse than impossible. It’s ridiculous! Doctor Hudson was famous! Nobody can ever replace him!⁠ ⁠… Oh, I say, Mrs. Ashford; that’s quite too bad! I didn’t mean to say the wrong thing, you know!”

For Nancy’s eyes had suddenly tightened as if wincing under sharp pain, and her white head bent lower and lower in a dejection strangely out of keeping with her aggressive personality. He ventured to touch her hair in a clumsy, boyish caress, murmuring again that he was sorry.

“That’s all right, boy,” she said thickly, regarding him with weary eyes, suddenly grown old. “You needn’t worry about me!⁠ ⁠… I’ll carry on!⁠ ⁠… My little problem is quite simple compared to yours.”

She straightened up, patted his hand, and smiled.

Bobby raised on one elbow.

“You’re a good sport, Mrs. Ashford!”

“Thanks!⁠ ⁠… You like people to be good sports; don’t you?⁠ ⁠… So do I. I’d rather be a good sport than worth millions!⁠ ⁠… I expect you’re a pretty good sport too; aren’t you, Bobby?”

He relaxed on his pillow and studied the ceiling.

“Your⁠—what you were talking about⁠—would be a sort of sporting proposition; wouldn’t it?”

“Quite!”

“Years and years!”

“For life!⁠ ⁠… There would be no discharge in that war!” She extended her hand, as one man to another.

“I’m going now⁠ ⁠… Sure you’re not angry with me any more?”

He shook his head, with tightly closed eyes, and gripped her hand. The emotional tension of the past half hour was taking advantage of his physical weakness. Hot tears seeped through his lashes, and trickled down his temples.

Nancy withdrew her hand, stood for a moment silently regarding him, her knuckles pressed hard against her lips; then turned away and quietly closed the door behind her.