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Page 18
"Doctor! You have made the examination--you think--" he flung at the
newcomer, and the other answered with the cool incisive manner of one
whose words weigh.
"Mr. Newbold," he said, "when you came to my office this morning I told
you my conjectures and my fear. I need not, therefore, go into details
again. I am very sorry to have to say to you--" he stopped, and looked
at the younger man kindly. "I wish I might make it easier, but it is
better that I should tell you that your mother's condition is as I
expected."
Newbold gave way a step as if under a blow, and his color went gray. The
doctor had seen souls laid bare before, yet he turned his eyes to the
floor as the muscles pulled and strained in this young face. It seemed
minutes that the two faced each other in the loaded silence, the doctor
gazing gravely at the worn carpet, the other struggling for
self-control. At last Newbold spoke, in the harsh tone which often comes
first after great emotion.
"You mean that there is--no hope?"
And the doctor, relieved at the loosening of the tension, answered
readily, glad to merge his humanity in his professional capacity: "No,
Mr. Newbold; I do not mean just that. It is this bleak climate, the raw
winds from the lake, which make it impossible for your mother to take
the first step which might lead to recovery. There is, in fact--" he
hesitated. "I may say that there is no hope for her cure while here. But
if she is taken to a warm climate at once--at once--within two
weeks--and kept there until summer, then, although I have not the gift
of prophecy, yet I believe she would be in time a well woman. No
medicine, can do it, but out-of-doors and warmth would do it--probably."
He put out his hand with a smile. "I am indeed glad that I may temper
judgment with mercy," he said. "Try the south, Mr. Newbold,--try
Bermuda, for instance. The sea air and the warmth there might set your
mother up marvellously." And as the young man stared at him
unresponsively he gave a grasp to the hand he held, and turning, found
his way out alone. He stumbled down the dark steps of the third-rate
apartment-house and into his brougham, and as the rubber tires bowled
him over the asphalt he communed with himself:
"Queer about those Newbolds. Badly off, of course, to live in that
place, yet they know what it means to call me in. There must be some
money. I wonder if they have enough for a trip, poor souls. Bah! they
must have--everybody has when it comes to life and death. They'll get it
somehow--rich relations and all that. Burr Claflin is their cousin, I
know. David Newbold himself was rich enough five years ago, when he made
that unlucky gamble in stocks--which killed him, they say. Well--life is
certainly hard." And the doctor turned his mind to a new pair of horses
he had been looking at in the afternoon, with a comfortable sense of a
wind-guard or so, at the least, between himself and the gales of
adversity.
In the little drawing-room, with its cheap paper and its old portraits,
Randolph Newbold faced his sister with the news. He knew her courage,
yet, even in the stress of his feeling, he wondered at it now; he felt
almost a pang of jealousy when he saw her take the blow as he had not
been able to take it.
"It is a death-sentence," he said, brokenly. "We have not the money to
send her south, and we cannot get it."
Katherine Newbold's hands clenched. "We will get it," she said. "I don't
know how just now, but we'll get it, Randolph. Mother's life shall not
go for lack of a few hundred dollars. Oh, think--just think--six years
ago it would have meant nothing. We went south every winter, and we
were all well. It is too cruel! But we'll get the money--you'll see."
"How?" the young man asked, bitterly. "The last jewel went so that we
could have Dr. Renfrew. There's nothing here to sell--nobody would buy
our ancestors," and he looked up mournfully at the painted figures on
the wall. The very thought seemed an indignity to those stately
personalities--the English judge in his wig, the colonial general in his
buff-faced uniform, harbored for a century proudly among their own, now
speculated upon as possible revenue. The girl put up a hand toward them
as if deprecating her brother's words, and his voice went on: "You know
the doctor practically told me this morning. I have had no hope all day,
and all day I have lived in hell. I don't know how I did my work.
To-night, coming home, I walked past Litterny's. The windows were
lighted and filled with a gorgeous lot of stones--there were a dozen big
diamond brooches. I stopped and looked at them, and thought how she used
to wear such things, and how now her life was going for the value of
one of them, and--you may be horrified, Katherine, but this is true: If
I could have broken into that window and snatched some of that stuff,
I'd have done it. Honesty and all I've been brought up to would have
meant nothing--nothing. I'd do it now, in a second, if I could, to get
the money to save my mother. God! The town is swimming in money, and I
can't get a little to keep her alive!"
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