Pratt Portraits/Chapter 6
"AND how's Anson gittin' along?" asked Miss Grig, the proprietor of the thread and-needle store next door, as she payed for the new glass in her spectacles. "I've hear'n tell's how he was makin' quite a success of his doctorin'."
Mr. Bennett's face dropped its business expression and took on a genial look of complacence.
"Oh, Anson! He's doin' a great business. He's cuttin' out the allopaths right an' left. Reglars, they call themselves, and my wife says that's all right, for most on 'em's reglar old Betties! Why, Anson's got the best part of the practice in that country for miles round!"
"Well! It doos beat all, I must say, that a young man brought up to the spectacle trade should suddenly perk up and know so much 'bout folks' insides. I s'pose now, homepathic means home-made or somethin' of the kind."
"Like's not," replied the proud father. "I always said the doctors round here might learn a thing or two of Mis' Bennett. She comes of an oncommon smart family, the Pratts of Dunbridge, and she was about the smartest of the lot. It's been a real eddication to Anson to be the son of such a woman."
Then the worthy man grew more expansive, and leaning over the counter with a confidential air he added: "Do you know, Miss Grig—(I don't want to brag, but this is betwixt you and me)—that boy's used up one hoss a'ready!"
A look of horror came into the excitable countenance of Miss Grig. She gazed into Mr. Bennett's face through her neatly repaired glasses and gasped:
"What! For pills!"
While Mr. Bennett was explaining to his old friend, that the "hoss" had been used up by too much travel on the long country roads, young Bennett was driving the first victim's successor, at an easy pace along the East Burnham turnpike.
It was one of those soft days in early May, when the apple-blossoms are in their glory, and the balmy air quickens the heart with gladness. Anson Bennett's heart was beating to the tune of hope and joy. He felt to his finger-tips, the delicious spring awakening, and pleasant thoughts sprang up in his mind, as naturally as early buttercups from the sod.
Now this young man, with his well-favored, not unintelligent face, and an air of candor and goodwill which went far to win the se, people's confidence, was nothing more nor less than an impostor. Yet impostor that he was, he was first of all his own dupe. Homœopathy had but lately come into vogue, and the apparent simplicity of its principles had made it, or an unworthy travesty of it, instantly popular. Especially among New England housewives, who like to feel themselves equal to every emergency, the little wooden cases of bottles filled with palatable remedies for every ill, were welcome possessions.
"Why," Anson's mother had said, "it's just like the way Luther gave the Bible to the people! Think how long the priests had kept the religious doctorin' all to themselves."
The good woman had an ill-defined notion that doctrine and doctorin' had more similarity than that of mere sound. "I tell you, it's jest the same with the doctors. It's nothing but self-glorification that's always made'em so secret about their learnin'. The Lord sets 'em a better example than that. The Lord promises to help folks that help themselves. But you'd think, to hear the allopaths talk, that a woman was committing some awful crime, when she gave a little nux vomica to a child that's got the snuffles, instead of running up a doctor's bill and being made to torture the poor little thing with nasty-tasting drugs."
Jane Bennett was, as her simple-minded husband took pride in remembering, a Pratt of Dunbridge, and she had inherited something of the "faculty," which has always distinguished that highly respectable family.
Marrying at a very early age—in opposition, let it be whispered in confidence, to her mother's wishes—and removing to the small manufacturing town where her husband pursued his calling, Jane Pratt had taken a step downward in the social scale. The ignorante which is the prerogative of sweet seventeen, had not been modified by contact with her betters, or even with her equals, and her self-confidence—sometimes called pigheadedness—had received no check. Hence she never suspected the undeniable fact that she was as ignorant of the true science of homœopathy as she was of the higher mathematics. And in spite of ignorance and pigheadedness, Jane Bennett was very successful with her nux vomica and belladonna and what not, and she had little difficulty in persuading her son of the soundness of her views. Anson had received much practical benefit from his mother's treatment of the small ills which had assailed him from time to time; her methods seemed to him rational, her arguments just. When she finally gave him a little manual of "symptoms," and told him it would teach him homœopathy, there appeared, to his mind, to be a great light thrown upon a hitherto dark and tortuous province of human experience. He was very young, very ignorant and very ambitious, and he was but too ready to believe that those little sugar-coated pills were the last and most comprehensive outcome of medical science, and that he, with the aid of his manual, and a fair stock of natural "gumption," was as well fitted as another to administer them judiciously. Eight months' practice on whooping-cough and measles, in a healthy country neighborhood, had only confirmed him in his self-confidence, and he had almost come to feel as though it were his own diagnosis (a word, by the way, which he valued highly) which fixed the nature of the disease to be treated.
He was now on his way to a patient—a mechanic living on the outskirts of the neighboring town of East Burnham—whose case he had pronounced to be a severe catarrhal cold, and had for some days past been treating accordingly. His heart swelled within him as he thought of his past success and future prospects, and all his meditations were tinged with the spring sunshine.
"What a heavenly-minded day this is," he said to himself; "and how pleasant it is to be driving along through this pretty country! To think that I might have spent all my days behind Father's counter, waiting on fussy old ladies, if I hadn't turned doctor!"
His thoughts made a pause, while a picture rose before his mental vision.
"I wonder if Alice wouldn't like to be sitting side o' me, and driving along among the apple-blossoms!"
The young man glanced wistfully at the empty seat beside him, and then at the blossoming trees on either hand.
"She'd go well with the apple blossoms. There's so much pink and white about her, and she's so sweet."
Then he fell into a wordless reverie, while his horse ambled lazily on. Thedreamy stretches of pasture land, the soft spring air, and the fragrant apple-blossoms were all blended in his happy mood; but the keynote of this delicate harmony was the pretty girlish face he looked upon with the "inward eye,"—pink and white and very sweet, but with a grace his fancy added, the grace of shy responsiveness. For the sweet face had not yet softened for him; the clear eyes had not yet met his with answering affection. It was only that on such a day as this everything seemed possible to his young ambition.
"She's proud, and she has a good right to be," he admitted to himself. "'T isn't only that her father's so well off and has been in the legislature. She'd be just the same if her folks were nobodies. A girl like her," he told himself to-day for the hundredth time, "couldn't be expected to marry a man of no account. It stands to reason she'd look high. But a doctor with such a practice as mine, is a different matter."
An attractive smile lit up his face. "I know I could make her happy. There isn't anything I wouldn't do for her. She should have as nice a house as any lady hereabouts, and lots of flowers in her garden. I s'pose she likes flowers. Seems as though a girl like her must feel sort of at home among them. I guess I'll send her a bunch next time I go home." He looked again at the apple-trees, whose blossoming branches hung over' the stone wall on either side of the road.
"I'd like to send her a lot of apple-blossoms now," he thought, "but I s'pose that wouldn't be much of a compliment; they're so plenty. They do look just like her though."
A stray petal floated through the still air and dropped upon his knee. He picked it up and regarded it thoughtfully.
"Pity so many of them come to nothing," he mused. "I wonder why things should be wasted so."
He often thought of the fragile waif, in after years, when he remembered that day of blossoming of all sweet things in his own thoughts.
Dr. Bennett stopped his horse before a barelooking house, dropped the weight on the ground with a professional air, and taking his medicine case from the buggy, walked up the path. It was with difficulty that he pulled himself together, and got himself back to real life. On the threshold he paused a moment and looked lingeringly upon the pleasant landscape, as though some subtle premonition had told him that he was turning his back for ever upon a sweet spring world. Then he lifted the latch and entered into the chill shadow of sordid cares.
A woman met him in the little dark entryway. She was a young, timid-looking creature, and little children were clinging to her skirts. Her cheeks were flushed and her eyes unnaturally bright. Anson thought he had never before noticed how pretty she was, and, stooping to pat the cheek of one of the children, he said, cheerily:
"Well, Mrs. Ellery, I hope your husband is doing well to-day."
"O Doctor!" she answered, in a voice that sounded strained and weak, "I was just going to send after you. He's been that bad all day, that I was afraid to wait till you'd come."
A queer shock went through Anson, as he drew himself up and looked again into her face; but he recovered himself instantly, and saying, "I'm sorry you've been anxious, but I guess we shall have him all right again pretty soon," he passed into the sick-room with her. The children remained huddled together in the dark entry.
The sick-room was on the north side of the house, and seemed chilly and comfortless. The patient lay with closed eyes on the bed. A strange, bluish pallor overspread his face, and he was breathing hard and painfully. Dr. Bennett took in his the hand that lay upon the calico counterpane. It was cold and clammy, and again that strange shock went through him.
At his touch the patient opened his eyes feebly, and looked up at him. But he closed them again, muttering something which the doctor failed to catch.
"I guess he's asking for Dr. Morse," said the wife, whose cheeks were pale again. "He's been asking for him all day, and I didn't know what I'd ought to do about it."
Dr. Morse, as Anson knew, was the family physician whom he had superseded. For a moment the young doctor's face looked hard and almost cruel. He had seated himself in the chair placed for him at the bedside, and was apparently absorbed in counting his patient's pulse. It was but a faint fluttering of life beneath his finger, and he felt a sinking at the heart as he tried to put his mind upon the count. He had never lost but one patient, as he often reflected with pride, and that was an aged man. Suppose James Ellery should die. Was it his fault? People must die, in spite of the doctors. It was only that this was almost his first fatal case, that it should take such hold of him. Yet, all the same, it was a sickening feeling to have a life which you were trying to hold slip from your grasp in this way.
His touch upon the wrist must have tightened, for the patient moved uneasily, and tried to draw his handaway. Dr. Bennett looked at his watch. Nearly five minutes had passed, and yet he had not counted the feeble pulse. He released the hand suddenly and turned to the woman standing beside him.
"Do you want Dr. Morse?" he asked.
"If you wouldn't mind," she said, hesitatingly. "I think it would comfort James. He's been fretting about it all day."
"I will go for him."
"Oh, no? Don't leave him," she begged, with a frightened look towards the sick man. "I'll send Willie Anderson next door," and she hurried from the room.
"I suppose that's always the way," thought Anson, ratherly bitterly, yet trying to reassure himself by the reflection. "They lay every thing to the doctor, and I suppose now they're sorry they ever left that old fogy, with his nasty drugs and his bloodlettings, and all his antiquated notions. But he looked from time to time uneasily at his patient.
It was a miserable situation, and every moment increased Anson's perplexity and distress. He got up and paced the room—for Mrs. Ellery did not return—and tried to cast off the terrible weight of anxiety. Then he paused and looked again at the sufferer. It was no wonder that his heart was lead within him. He was standing face to face with death—not death as he had seen it, coming to release a pilgrim bowed down with years and infirmity, but death, summoning the soul of a man in the prime and vigor of life. He seemed to see the grim spectre defying him, and he, who should have been armed to the teeth, stood weaponless, helpless as a child. A shuffling sound at the door startled him, and then he heard a childish voice whimpering—"Muvver! Muvver! Let me in!"
He went and opened the door and said sternly: "Your mother isn't here. Go away," and the little figure turned and fled from the strange man, in whose set face the child had not recognized the doctor.
And still the mother did not return. She must have gone herself for Dr. Morse. Anson paced the room in growing anguish of spirit. It seemed like a horrible nightmare, and he flung his head back violently to wake himself. Yet he knew, with an insistent, grinding knowledge, that it was a nightmare from which there would be no awakening.
In after years when he looked back upon that day, one consolation remained to him in his shame and self-abasement. He had not carried on the pitiful farce a moment after it was revealed to him in its true light. Though his mind was not prompt to accept the bitter truth of his incompetency, a deeper consciousness of it was so borne in upon him, that he offered no remedy—gave no advice. From the moment when his finger touched the vanishing pulse, he ceased to act his miserable part. His feeble pleas for himself, his fretful accusations of others, were but surface disturbances.
As he sat beside his patient in the gathering twilight, listening to his labored breathing and feeble moanings, he looked upon the dying man with a passion of envy stronger, even, than his remorse. To die! To die! To escape from a life, maimed, ruined, as his own must be, if this were indeed no nightmare, but an inexorable fate.
There was a sudden sound of steps in the passage-way, and the door opened softly. A light streamed in from the lamp which Mrs. Ellery held in her hand, and at first Anson saw only her frightened face. But there, in the shadow, was the short, sturdy figure of Dr. Morse, the despised rival of the successful young practitioner. While Mrs. Ellery explained, in a hurried whisper, that she had not found Willie Anderson, and had herself been searching through the town for Dr. Morse, the latter stepped to the bedside, and made a hasty examination of the patient. He shook his head and Anson fancied that he heard the words—"Too late."
A baby's wail from the kitchen broke rudely upon the solemn hush, a door was opened, and the sound of fretful voices approached. Dr. Bennett stood an instant irresolute. Then he said, in a dry, hard voice: "I will go and quiet the children."
"Oh, if you would!" said Mrs. Ellery, gratefully; and Anson left the room, accepting it as his dismissal.
He went into the kitchen and humbly did his best to pacify the peevish, hungry little people who were quarrelling in the dark. He lit a lamp and got them some gingerbread from a high shelf in the cupboard, and presently they were standing around his chair, five little eager listeners, while he told them the story of Jack the Giant Killer. Curiously enough, he became so absorbed in the old tale, that he succeeded in detaching his mind, for the moment, from all that was real and painful, and, finding an unspeakable relief in this momentary oblivion, he continued his storytelling, relating, with a feverish earnestness and rapidity, the adventures of one after another of the nursery heroes.
An hour or more had passed thus, when suddenly a heavy step just outside the door smote upon his consciousness like a blow, and he stood up to meet his accuser.
Dr. Morse opened the door, and said, in a voice that sounded very much like a command: "I should be glad to have a talk with you, Dr. Bennett. Suppose we step out-of-doors.'
Bennett pushed the children rather roughly aside, and followed his summons. The stars were out, and the evening air was sweet with the fragrance of apple-blossoms. As he stepped off the low, flat door stone, Anson felt a sudden giddiness, and faltered in his gait. But the voice of Dr. Morse steadied him.
"Your patient is dead," he said, harshly. "There's a neighbor woman in there with Mrs. Ellery."
They walked down the little path and back again.
"I thought I should like to know what your treatment of pneumonia is."
"Pneumonia!" exclaimed Anson, involuntarily.
"Yes, pneumonia. I assume that you concealed the nature of the disease out of consideration for Mrs. Ellery. You did not, of course, blunder in the diagnosis of so plain a case."
Anson made no reply.
"How long has your patient been ill?"
There was a sarcastic emphasis on the words "your patient" as often as the doctor spoke them.
"I was first called last Monday."
"H'm! Did he seem pretty sick then?"
"No. He only seemed to have a violent cold. He was feverish and coughed a good deal, and he complained of a pain in his side. But that went off after three days."
"How was his pulse?"
"Rapid, but pretty strong."
"And his respiration?"
"He seemed to breathe easily."
The elder man's lip curled scornfully. They were still pacing up and down the path to the front door.
"Let us step outside the gate," said Anson, "where we sha'n't have to turn so often."
As they opened the gate, Anson's horse turned his head toward his master and whinnied softly. It was singularly comforting. The horse, at least, believed in him, and looked to him for release.
"I suppose you know that the respiration must be closely watched. It's a pity you can't speak more positively about it."
A feeling of irritation came over Anson. He resented being catechised, and resentment was a relief.
"I don't know what you could do about it now," he said, "if I chose to tell you."
"Oh! then you kept yourself informed. That is well. What stimulant did you give him?"
Here Anson seemed to feel the ground under his feet once more, and he said with decision: "Our school does not believe in stimulants."
"And nourishment?" asked the doctor.
"He was too feverish to be given much nourishment."
"Too feverish for nourishment, and his pulse sinking to nothing! Good heavens, man, you don't know what you are talking about!"
Again there was a feeble flutter of self-assertion in Anson's harassed mind, and he answered, with a last attempt at dignity:
"You must remember, Dr. Morse, that you and I belong to different schools of medicine."
Here the doctor's patience gave out, and his wrath broke loose—
"Different schools," he cried. "Different schools! You're talking arrant bosh! Your sort don't belong to any school under heaven. The Lord knows there's no love lost betwixt me and the homœopaths. They're a wrong-headed lot, and I should like to see the whole wretched fallacy uprooted and cast to the winds. But there are scientific men among them, who are neither knaves nor fools, and I won't have any body of scientific men insulted. Such men as you are the curse of any school—it is such men as you who have brought it into disrepute—it is such men as you"
"For God's sake, stop!"
The doctor turned, suddenly ashamed of his torrent of words, and looked at Anson, who had stopped in his walk, and stood clutching a thin rail fence, which creaked and wavered in his grasp. In the dim starlight his face looked drawn and deathly white.
"Do you feel ill?" asked the doctor.
"Yes, mortally ill," said Anson, with a harsh laugh. "If you had a pistol about you, I think I could cure my own case quicker than you could."
"Here, take my arm—I'm afraid I was a brute."
"We're all brutes together," said Anson. "I don't want your arm. It isn't my body that you've butchered," and he walked toward his buggy and began fumbling with the hitching rein. The doctor watched him uneasily, but did not venture to help him: When he had unfastened the rein, Anson lifted the weight a few inches, but dropped it again, and left it lying on the ground. As he got into the buggy he reeled slightly, and the doctor took a step forward. But he recovered himself without help, and when he was seated, he gathered up the reins and drove rapidly away. Dr. Morse stood looking after the black buggy top, as it disappeared in the darkness, and listening to the sound of the receding wheels.
"Who could have supposed that a quack had a conscience," he muttered, as he turned on his heel and walked back to the desolate little house.
Anson Bennett had gone down into a blackness of darkness infinitely more terrible than anything the good doctor conceived of.
One pleasant evening four days later, Dr. Morse sat in his office enjoying an hour of hard-earned leisure. The office was a plain, uninviting room, with oil-cloth on the floor, shabby old furniture, and an unsightly hole under the mantlepiece, where a stove-pipe did duty in winter time. But the doctor loved the place, and was never so comfortable as when sitting, as now, in his revolving-chair, surrounded by his well-worn books and dusty bottles, smoking the second half of a cigar. He smoked very slowly, waiting, after each whiff, to watch the blue incense curl and wind in a vanishing spiral.
To-night he was taking his pleasure more slowly and thoughtfully, if possible, than was his wont. In fact, he once let his cigar go out entirely, a thing which he prided himself upon just avoiding, in his skilful prolongation of the indulgence. He was ruminating upon Mrs. Ellery and her perplexities, which occupied his mind as often as it was free from immediate demands. Between whiles he permitted himself an occasional fling of scorn at that "miserable young quack." When the cigar had been long enough extinguished for the smoke to have yielded to the perfume of the blossoms which floated in at the open window, the delicate odor recalled so vividly the circumstances of his talk with Bennett, that he felt a return of that compunction and soft-heartedness which he had come to regret, and he hastily struck a match and relighted his cigar.
Presently there was a step on the gravel walk, and, looking up, the doctor saw the object of his indignation approach his door. As the young man entered, Dr. Morse rose with conflicting feelings. He did not immediately offer his hand, and when he did so Bennett had seen his hesitation and withheld his own.
"You needn't mind about shaking hands," he said, with a touch of dignity which seemed scarcely compatible with the situation as the doctor looked at it. "I haven't come to you on my own account, and I won't trouble you for long."
The two men sat down and were silent for a moment. The cigar had again gone out, and the scent of the blossoms filled the room. The voices of the doctor's wife and daughters came in at the open window, and made upon Bennett an indescribable impression of home and comfort. This was what he had looked forward to. Honor and love and a happy home. And the short-lived blossoms whose sweetness had mingled with his dream, had not yet passed away! But the doctor was waiting for him to speak.
"Dr. Morse," he began, "you will not be surprised to hear that I have given up doctoring, and you will, of course, understand that the only wish which I can have, or at least which I have any right to have, is to make what reparation I can to the family of my unhappy patient."
The doctor was not only surprised, but fairly taken aback by this speech. He repeated the young man's word mechanically.
"Reparation. Yes, of course, of course. Quite natural."
But his mind was undergoing another awkward change of attitude toward quacks.
"You would have heard from me before this," Bennett continued, "but I thought it best not to trouble you until the matter was settled. I have been home and talked things over with my poor father. It comes hard on him, but he looks at it as I do, and he will take me back into business."
"What's your business?" asked the doctor.
"We are opticians."
"H'm! Do you like the trade?"
"I don't know what that has to do with the question. We're in it, and it gives us a fair living. What I have come to ask about is Mrs. Ellery. I shall, of course, consider myself responsible for the support of the family, and I want you to act for me in the matter. I have inquired about her husband's earnings, and I think I can spare very nearly that income from the beginning. Your part would be to invent some reason for her receiving it without betraying me. I'm afraid she wouldn't take the money if she knew all. Do you think you could arrange this?"
"Easily enough," said the doctor. He examined his small fraction of a cigar with much apparent interest, and then he added: "I suppose Mrs. Ellery has a mind, but I have never known her to use it. She would believe that the ravens were feeding her if I told her so."
Anson was about to make some reply when the doctor asked, abruptly: "How long do you propose to keep it up?"
"How long? Always, I suppose."
"And when you are married and have a family of your own to provide for?"
"I, married? I shall never marry."
"Oh! You can't be so sure of that at your age."
"I tell you I shall never marry."
"Have you never wished to?"
Anson sprang impatiently from his seat and strode to the window.
"I wish you'd quit your probing, Dr. Morse. I didn't come to talk about myself."
Dr. Morse rose, more deliberately, and followed him to the window, where the light was still clear. Bennett's face was under better control than his voice, but there was a change in it which the doctor recognized as permanent. A great wave of respect and compassion went through him.
"Young man," he said, in an altered voice, "I should feel it an honor if you would shake hands with me."
Flushing like a boy, Anson turned and looked into the homely face. The two men clasped one another's hands.
The next day Anson sat once more in his father's shop, plying with skilled fingers the handiwork to which he had been trained. Preoccupied as he was with bitter reflections, he was yet not wholly without consolation. His father's welcome was something. Mr. Bennett, garrulous in time of triumph, had few words on this occasion. When they entered the shop together on that first morning, he only said: "It seems real good to have you back, Anson. I've missed you considerable," but Anson felt the grip of the kind hand all day long, and often, in the days to come, he seemed to feel again that friendly pressure. In the practice, too, of his trade was unlooked-for solace. The sense of mastery was peculiarly soothing to his wounded self-esteem, and it was then that he realized for the first time the satisfaction of being an expert. Had it not been for the frequent calls to the counter he might almost have lost himself in his occupation.
For the first few days after his return it was surprising how fast the Bennett custom increased. One after another of the neighbors came in with spectacles in need of repair, until Anson suspected them of ransacking their garrets in search of discarded glasses, merely for the sake of having a talk over the counter.
Among the first to appear was Miss Grig, with a pair of "specs" belonging to her mother, which seemed "kind o' loose in the jints." Would Anson "jest see 'f he couldn't tighten 'em up a bit?"
Anson had begun to feel the grim humor of the thing, and he made a pretence of tinkering the glasses a little before returning them.
"Thank 'ee," said Miss Grig, as she took them. "How much will that be?"
"Nothing at all, Miss Grig. It isn't worth mentioning."
"Very much obligated, I am sure," said the old lady, evidently relieved. She had rather begrudged the price of her curiosity.
"We're all so glad to see you back, Anson," she went on, with a comical accession of interest. "It seems so nat'ral to see you standin' there behind the counter. Only it 'pears to me you ain't lookin' quite so hearty as you was. Maybe you found doctorin' didn't agree with you. 'T was too confinin', 'praps."
Miss Grig looked at him with her head a little on one side, like a bright-eyed, inquisitive cock-sparrow.
"No, it wasn't exactly that," Anson replied, with an assumption of indifference. "The fact is, Miss Grig, I had come to the conclusion that I didn't know enough for doctoring."
"Now do tell. And we all heard you was so successful and hed sech a great practice. Why, your Pa told me"
"Yes, yes! I know! Father was all right about that. I had plenty of patients. But I found it was a bigger subject than I thought for, and I was afraid I might be making mistakes and doing mischief if anything unusual turned up."
"An' I s'pose that idee was wearin' on you. Well, I don't know's I wonder. The allopaths, now, do have a sight o' larnin'. My second cousin on my mother's side is bringin' up her son for a doctor, and there don't seem to be no end to the trouble and expense. But I s'posed 't was different with the homepaths. Them little pills seem so easy given and so easy took. An' if they don't do no good, I don't see's they can do much harm any way. You didn't happen to ketch yourself givin' the wrong kind now, did you?"
At this juncture another customer came in and the small inquisition ceased, only to recommence in another form. Happily not many of his examiners were as searching in their methods as Miss Grig, and Anson rarely found himself cornered. By and by, too, the little flurry of curiosity subsided, and it was not long before the neighbors had almost forgotten how "Dr. Bennett" came by his title. To this, however, they clung with a tenacity which it was useless to combat. How he hated it! He used at first to feel as though his friends were jeering at him when they called him "doctor," and even in after years the long-accustomed title would sometimes bring a hot flush to his face.
Several years went by before arate Alice Ives was married, and then it was that Anson allowed himself the one extravagance of his life. He went to the city and bought a water-color, for which he paid more than he would have been willing to admit. The picture was not much appreciated in the community, but Alice liked it. A branch of apple-blossoms against a pale blue sky. So exquisitely were they painted that even the cavillers owned that you could almost smell them, but "after all," they added, "it was nothing but a picture of apple-blossoms, just like what anybody could see every spring, and you would think it would be no great matter to paint a thing like that."
Alice was so touched and pleased with the charming gift that she came over herself that same day after tea to thank Anson. It was June, and she found him working in his garden. She stepped lightly down the garden walk, clad in a flowered muslin, with a broad leghorn hat pushed back from her face. Anson did not see her coming. He was on his knees, weeding the border. Alice stood for a moment, watching him, and a wistful look came into her dark-blue eyes. Somehow he looked so poor in his old clothes and so lonesome, so different from the Anson of a few years ago. There he knelt, pulling up the ugly weeds, and tossing them into a basket that stood beside him. She wished, vaguely, that he had been planting something. The sight of him gave her a heartache that she longed to ease. If she could only give him some little thing, just something bright and sweet from her own abundance. She reached out her hand and plucked a spray of laburnum that grew beside the path. Yet no. It would be foolish to give him a flower out of his own garden, and she hastily tucked it into her bodice. Anson heard the sudden movement, and, turning, saw her standing there in the slanting sunlight. He got up and brushed the earth from his hands with his pocket-handkerchief, which he threw far away from him as Alice came toward him with outstretched hands.
"O Anson," she cried, and in her voice there was a something that neither of them understood, a stray note of feeling which it was perhaps as well they should not understand. "O Anson! it is the loveliest of all my presents. How came you to think of giving me such a beautiful thing?"
"It came very natural," he answered, with an odd smile, as he took her hand in both his and looked down into the fair young face. "You always make me think of apple-blossoms, Alice."