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Page 17
"You need not be afraid," said James with dignity; "I think the soil
darned bad myself." He hesitated a little over the darned, but once it
was out, he felt proud of it.
"Yes, it is," said Doctor Gordon, "and if the Lord made it, he did not
altogether succeed, and I see no earthly way of tracing the New Jersey
soil back to original sin and the Garden of Eden."
"That's so," said James.
Doctor Gordon's face grew sober, his jocular mood for the time had
vanished. He was his true self. "Did it ever occur to you that disease
was the devil?" he asked abruptly. "That is, that all these infernal
microbes that burrow in the human system to its disease and death, were
his veritable imps at work?"
James shook his head, and looked curiously at his companion's face with
its gloomy corrugations.
"Well, it has to me," said the doctor, "and let me ask you one thing.
You have been brought up to believe that the devil's particular
residence was hell, haven't you?"
James replied in a bewildered fashion that he had.
"Well," said Doctor Gordon, "if the devil lives here, as he must live,
when there's such failures in the way of soil, and such climates, and
such fiendish diseases, and crimes, why, this is hell."
James stared at him.
Doctor Gordon nodded half-gloomily, half-whimsically. "It's so," he
said. "We call it earth; but it's hell."
James said nothing. The doctor's gloomy theology was too much for him.
Besides, he was not quite sure that the elder man was not chaffing him.
"Well," said Doctor Gordon presently, "hell it is, but there are
compensations, such as apple-jack, and now and then there's something
doing that amuses one even here. I am going to take you to something
that enlivens hell this afternoon, if somebody doesn't send a call. I am
trying to get my work done this morning, the worst of it, so as to have
an hour this afternoon."
The two returned a little after twelve, and found luncheon waiting for
them. Mrs. Ewing took her place at the table, and James thought that she
did not look quite so ill as she had done the evening before. She talked
more, and ate with some appetite. Doctor Gordon's face lightened, not
with the false gayety which James had seen, but he really looked quite
happy, and spoke affectionately to his sister.
"What do you think, Tom," said she, "has come over Clemency? I don't
know when there has been a morning that she has not gone for a tramp,
rain or shine, but she has not stirred out to-day. She says she feels
quite well, but I don't know."
"Oh, Clemency is all right," said Doctor Gordon, but his face darkened
again. As for Clemency, she bent over her plate and looked sulkier than
ever. She fairly pouted.
"She can go out this afternoon," said Mrs. Ewing. "It looks as if it
were going to clear off."
"No, I don't want to go," said Clemency. "I am all out of the humor of
it." She spoke with an air of animosity, as if somebody were to blame,
but when she saw Mrs. Ewing's anxious eyes she smiled. "I would much
prefer staying with you, dear," she said, "and finish Annie's Christmas
present." She spoke with such an affectionate air, that James looked
admiringly at her. She seemed a fellow-worshipper. He thought that he,
too, would much prefer staying with Mrs. Ewing than going with Doctor
Gordon on the mysterious outing which he had planned.
However, directly after luncheon Gordon led James out into the stable
and called Aaron. "Are they ready, Aaron?" inquired the doctor.
Aaron grinned, opened a rude closet, and produced a number of objects,
which James recognized at once as dummy pigeons. So Doctor Gordon was to
take him to a pigeon-shooting match. James felt a little disgusted. He
had, in fact, taken part in that sport with considerable gusto himself,
but, just now, he being fairly launched, as it were, upon the serious
things of life, took it somewhat in dudgeon that Doctor Gordon should
think to amuse him with such frivolities. But to his amazement the
elder man's face was all a-quiver with mirth and fairly eager. "Show the
pigeons to Doctor Elliot, Aaron," said Doctor Gordon. James took one of
the rude disks called pigeons from the hand of Aaron with indifference,
then he started and stared at Doctor Gordon, who laughed like a boy,
fairly doubling himself with merriment. Aaron did not laugh, he chewed
on, but his eyes danced.
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