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Page 77
As Burns drove away he was feeling a sense of loneliness as unpleasant as
it was unexpected, and found himself longing to get back to a certain
pair of arms whose hold was a panacea for every ache.
"He thinks he owes it all to me," he was saying by and by, when this
desirable condition had been fulfilled. "But maybe I don't owe something
to him. If the sight of a plucky fight for self-control is a bracing
tonic to any man I've had one in watching him. I never saw a finer
display of will against heavy odds. Another man in the shape he was in
last spring would have gone under."
"It would be pretty difficult, I think, dear," said his wife, softly
touching his thick locks, as his head lay on her lap, "for any man to go
under with you pulling him out."
"I didn't pull him out. No man in creation can pull another out, no
matter how strong his effort. The chap that's in the current has got to
do every last ounce of the pulling himself. I don't say God can't help,
for I'm positive He can, but I don't think a man can do much. And it's my
belief that even God helps chiefly through making the man realize that he
can help himself."
"For which office he sometimes appoints a man as his human instrument,
doesn't he?"
Burns turned his head and touched his lips to the hand which had laid
itself against his cheek.
"Perhaps, when he can't find a woman. As a power conductor she is the
only, original, copper wire!"
* * * * *
The curiosity which James Macauley had freely expressed as to the
probable degree of friendship between Leaver and Amy Mathewson, developed
by months of close association, was, with him and with others, not
unnatural. But, in Ellen's case, the desire to know just how much the
situation had meant to Amy herself, was a result of her increasingly
warm affection for a young woman of character and personal
attractiveness, mingled with a sense of her own and her husband's
responsibility in bringing together two people who might be expected
to emerge from the encounter not a little affected by it.
On the morning after John Leaver's departure, Ellen, standing at a
window, found herself watching with more than ordinary intentness the
face of Amy as she came up the walk to the house. Lest Leaver should
realize to what an extent his presence had disturbed the regular routine
of Burns's office, Amy had not been allowed to resume her position
according to the old r�gime, but had spent only a portion of her time
there, more as a guest of the house might assume certain duties than as a
regularly hired assistant would attend to them. This was, therefore, the
first time, since Leaver had left the confinement in his room, that Amy
Mathewson had appeared in the office in her old r�le, announced by the
donning of her uniform.
"I certainly don't see any unhappiness there," said Ellen to herself,
watching Amy as she stooped to pick up an early fallen scarlet leaf upon
the lawn. She fastened it upon the severe whiteness of her attire, then
came on to the house with an alert step, as if she approached work she
looked forward to with zest. Her colour was more vivid than it had been
last June, when first she began to live the outdoor life with her
patient, her eyes were brighter, her whole personality seemed somehow
more significant. Ellen had noted in her these signs of enriched life
many times before during these weeks; but the fact that Amy's aspect, on
the day after the departure of her comrade of the summer, seemed to have
suffered no change, but that her whole air, as she came to her old task,
was that of one who hastens to a congenial appointment, gave to Ellen a
distinct sense of relief from an anxiety she had suffered from time to
time throughout the whole experience.
Burns had gone away early, summoned by an insistent call, and the office
was empty. Knowing this, Ellen went in to greet her friend. There could
be no other term, now, for the whole-hearted bond between the two.
"Isn't it glorious, this touch of frost in the air?" Amy came in smiling,
her cheeks bright with the sting of the early October morning. "And
to-day--to-day, at last, I am free to go to work as I like. I don't
believe Dr. Burns has sent out a bill for three months. He would go
bankrupt before he would tell a man what he owed him."
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