The Web of Life Part 20

Sommers spoke nonchalantly, as if his views could not interest Dr. Lindsay, but were interesting to himself, nevertheless.

"That's pretty fierce!" Lindsay remarked, with a laugh. "I guess you haven't seen much of business. If you had been here during the anarchist riots--"

Sommers involuntarily shrugged his shoulders. The anarchist was the most terrifying bugaboo in Chicago, referred to as a kind of Asiatic plague that might break out at any time. Before Lindsay could get his argument launched, however, some of the guests drifted out to the terrace, and the two men separated.

Later in the evening Sommers found Miss. .h.i.tchc.o.c.k alone, and explained to her that he should have to leave in the morning, as that would probably be the last chance to reach Chicago for some days. She did not urge him to stay, and expressed her regret at his departure in conventional phrases.

They were standing by the edge of the terrace, which ran along the bluff above the lake. A faint murmur of little waves rose to them from the beach beneath.

"It is so heavenly quiet!" the girl murmured, as if to reproach his dissatisfied, restless spirit. "So this is good-bye?" she added, at length.

Sommers knew that she meant this would be the end of their intimacy, of anything but the commonplace service of the world.

"I hope not," he answered regretfully.

"Why is it we differ?" she asked swiftly. "I am sorry we should disagree on such really unimportant matters."

"Don't say that," Sommers protested. "You know that it is just because you are intelligent and big enough to realize that they _are_ important that--"

"We strike them every time?" she inquired.

"Laura Lindsay and Caspar would think we were drivelling idiots."

"I am not so sure they wouldn't be right!" She laughed nervously, and locked her hands tightly together. He turned away in discomfort, and neither spoke for a long time. Finally he broke the silence,--

"At any rate, you can see that I am scarcely a fit guest!"

"So you are determined to go in this way--back to your--case?"

At the scorn of her last words Sommers threw up his head haughtily.

"Yes, back to my case."

CHAPTER XVII

Mrs. Ducharme opened the door of the cottage in response to Sommers's knock. Attired in a black house dress, with her dark hair smoothly brushed back from round, fat features, she was a peaceful figure. Sommers thought there was some truth in her contention that "Ducharme ought to get a decent-looking woman, anyway."

"How is Mr. Preston?" he asked.

Mrs. Ducharme shook her head mournfully.

"Bad, allus awful bad--and _pitiful_. Calling for stuff in a voice fit to break your heart."

"Mind you don't let him get any," the doctor counselled, preparing to go upstairs.

"Better not go up there jest yet," the woman whispered. "He _did_ get away from us yesterdy and had a terrible time over there." She hitched her shoulders in the direction of Stoney Island Avenue. "We ain't found out till he'd been gone 'most two hours, and, my! such goings on; we had to git two perlicemen."

"I suppose you were out looking for Ducharme?" the doctor asked, in a severe tone.

"It was the last time," the woman pleaded, her eyes downcast. "Come in here. Miss Preston ain't got back from school,--she's late to-day."

Sommers walked into the bare sitting room and sat down, while Mrs. Ducharme leaned against the door-post, fingering her ap.r.o.n in an embarra.s.sed manner.

"I've got cured," she blurted out at last. "My eye was awful bad, and it's been most a week since you sent me here."

"Did you follow my treatment?"

"No! I was out one afternoon--after Mrs. Preston came back from school--and I had walked miles and miles. Comin' home I pa.s.sed a buildin' down here a ways on the avenue where there were picter papers pasted all over the windows; the picters were all about healin' folks, heaps and heaps in great theaters, a nice white-haired old preacher doin' the healin'. While I was lookin' at the picters, a door opened and a young feller came along and helped 'em carry in a cripple in his chair. He turns to me arter finis.h.i.+n'

with the cripple and says, 'Come in, lady, and be healed in the blood of the lamb.' In I went, sure enough, and there was a kind of rough church fitted up with texts printed in great show-bills, and they was healin'

folks. The little feller was helpin' em up the steps to the platform, and the old feller was prayin', and at last the young feller comes to me and says, 'Want ter be healed?' and I just got up, couldn't help it, and walked to the platform, and they prayed over me--you aren't mad, are you?" she asked suspiciously.

Sommers laughed.

"Mrs. Preston said you'd be very angry with such nonsense. But at any rate the old fellow--Dr.--Dr.--Po--"

"Dr. Potz," Sommers suggested.

"That's him. He cured me, and I went back again and told him about Ducharme. And _he_ says that he's got a devil, and he will cast it out by prayin'. But he wants money."

"How much will it cost to cast out the devil?" the doctor inquired.

"The doctor says he must have ten dollars to loosen the bonds."

"Well," Sommers drew a bill from his pocket, "there's ten dollars on account of your wages. Now, don't you interfere with the doctor's work. You let him manage the devil his own way, and if you see Ducharme or the other woman, you run away as hard as you can. If you don't, you may bring the devil back again."

The woman took the money eagerly.

"You can go right off to find the doctor," Sommers continued. "I'll stay here until Mrs. Preston returns. But let me look at your eye, and see whether the doctor has cast that devil out for good and all."

He examined the eye as well as he could without appliances. Sure enough, so far as he could detect, the eye was normal, the peculiar paralysis had disappeared.

"You are quite right," he p.r.o.nounced at last. "The doctor has handled this devil very ably. You can tell Mrs. Preston that I approve of your going to that doctor."

"I wonder where Mrs. Preston can be: she's most always here by half-past four, and it's after five. He," the woman pointed upstairs to Preston's rooms, "is sleeping off the effects of the dose Mrs. Preston gave him."

"The powders?" the doctor asked.

"Yes, sir. She had to give him two before he would sleep. Well, I'll be back by supper time. If he calls you, be careful about the bar on the door."

After Mrs. Ducharme had gone, the doctor examined every object in the little room. It was all so bare! Needlessly so, Sommers thought at first, contrasting the bleak room with the comfortable simplicity of his own rooms. The strip of coa.r.s.e thin rug, the open Franklin stove, the pine kitchen table, the three straight chairs--it was as if the woman, crushed down from all aspirations, had defiantly willed to exist with as little of this world's furniture as might be. On the table were a few school books, a teacher's manual of drawing, a school mythology, and at one side two or three other volumes, which Sommers took up with more interest. One was a book on psychology--a large modern work on the subject. A second was an antiquated popular treatise on "Diseases of the Mind." Another volume was an even greater surprise--Balzac's _Une Pa.s.sion dans la Desert_, a well-dirtied copy from the public library. They were fierce condiments for a lonely mind!

His examination over, he noiselessly stepped into the hall and went upstairs. After some fumbling he unbolted the door and tiptoed into the room, where Preston lay like a log. The fortnight had changed him markedly.

There was no longer any prospect that he would sink under his disease, as Sommers had half expected. He had grown stouter, and his flesh had a healthy tint. "It will take it out of his mind," he muttered to himself, watching the hanging jaw that fell nervelessly away from the mouth, disclosing the teeth.

As he watched the man's form, so drearily promising of physical power, he heard a light footstep at the outer door, which he had left unbarred. On turning he caught the look of relief that pa.s.sed over Mrs. Preston's face at the sight of the man lying quietly in his bed. What a state of fear she must live in!