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Page 13
"Cigar, please," replied James. The doctor pushed the box toward him.
James realized immediately a ten-cent cigar at the least when he began
to smoke. Doctor Gordon filled a pipe mechanically. His face still wore
the gloomy, almost fierce, expression which it had assumed at table. He
was a handsome man in a rough, sketchy fashion. His face was blurred
with a gray grizzle of beard. He wore his hair rather long, and he had
a fashion of running his fingers through it, which made it look like a
thick brush. He dressed rather carelessly, still like a gentleman. His
clothes were slouchy, and needed brushing, but his linen was immaculate.
Doctor Gordon smoked in silence, which his young assistant was too shy
to break. The elder man finished his pipe, then he rose with an
impatient gesture and shook himself like a great shaggy dog. "Come,
young man," said he, "we don't want to spend the evening like this. Get
your hat and coat."
James obeyed, and the two men left the office by the outer door which
opened on the stable. As they came around by the front of the house
Clemency stood in the doorway.
"Are you going out, you and Doctor Elliot, Uncle Tom?" she called.
"Yes, dear; why?"
"Patients?"
"No; we are going down to Georgie K.'s. Tell your mother to go to bed at
once."
When the two men were out in the street, walking briskly in the keen
frosty air, James ventured a question. "Mrs. Ewing is not well, is she?"
he said. He fairly started at the way in which his question was
received. Doctor Gordon turned upon him even fiercely.
"She is perfectly well, perfectly well," he replied.
"She does not look--" began James.
"When you are as old as I am you can venture to diagnose on a woman's
looks," said Gordon. "Clara is perfectly well."
James said no more. They walked on in silence under a pale sky. Above a
low mountain range on their right was a faint light which indicated the
coming of the moon. The ground was frozen in hard ridges. James walked
behind the doctor on the narrow blue stone walk which served as
sidewalk.
"This town has made no provision whatever for courting couples," said
Doctor Gordon suddenly, and to James's astonishment his whole manner and
voice had changed. It was far from gloomy. It was jocular even.
James laughed. "Yes, it would be difficult for two to walk arm in arm,
however loving," he returned.
"Just so," said the doctor, "and the funny part of it is that this
narrow sidewalk was intentional."
"Not for such a purpose?"
"Exactly so. It was given to the town by a rich spinster who died about
twenty years ago. It was given in her will on condition that it should
not be more than two feet wide."
"For that reason?"
"Just that reason. She had been jilted in her youth, and her heart had
been wrung by the sight of her rival passing her very window where she
sat watching for her lover, arm in arm with him. It was in summer, and
the dirt sidewalk was dry. She made up her mind, then and there, that
that sort of thing should be prevented."
They had just reached a handsome old house standing close to the narrow
sidewalk. In fact, its windows opened directly upon it.
"This is the house," the doctor said in corroboration. James laughed,
but he wondered within himself if he were being told fish tales. Doctor
Gordon made him feel so very young that he resented it. He resented it
the more when he realized the new glow of adoration in his heart for
that older woman whom they had left behind. He began wondering about
her: how much older she was. He said to himself that he did not care if
she were old enough to be his mother, his grandmother even, there was no
one in the whole world like her.
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