Читать книгу The Tides of Barnegat - Francis Hopkinson Smith - Страница 8

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With the warmth of Jane's parting grasp lingering in his own Doctor John untied the mare, sprang into his gig, and was soon clear of the village and speeding along the causeway that stretched across the salt marshes leading past his own home to the inner beach beyond. As he drove slowly through his own gate, so as to make as little noise as possible, the cottage, blanketed under its clinging vines, seemed in the soft light of the low-lying moon to be fast asleep. Only one eye was open; this was the window of his office, through which streamed the glow of a lamp, its light falling on the gravel path and lilac bushes beyond.

Rex gave a bark of welcome and raced beside the wheels.

"Keep still, old dog! Down, Rex! Been lonely, old fellow?"

The dog in answer leaped in the air as his master drew rein, and with eager springs tried to reach his hands, barking all the while in short and joyful yelps.

Doctor John threw the lines across the dash-board, jumped from the gig, and pushing open the hall door—it was never locked—stepped quickly into his office, and turning up the lamp, threw himself into a chair at his desk. The sorrel made no attempt to go to the stable—both horse and man were accustomed to delays—sometimes of long hours and sometimes of whole nights.

The appointments and fittings of the office—old-fashioned and practical as they were—reflected in a marked degree the aims and tastes of the occupant. While low bookcases stood against the walls surmounted by rows of test-tubes, mortars and pestles, cases of instruments, and a line of bottles labelled with names of various mixtures (in those days doctors were chemists as well as physicians), there could also be found a bust of the young Augustus; one or two lithographs of Heidelberg, where he had studied; and some line engravings in black frames—one a view of Oxford with the Thames wandering by, another a portrait of the Duke of Wellington, and still another of Nell Gwynn. Scattered about the room were easy-chairs and small tables piled high with books, a copy of Tacitus and an early edition of Milton being among them, while under the wide, low window stood a narrow bench crowded with flowering plants in earthen pots, the remnants of the winter's bloom. There were also souvenirs of his earlier student life—a life which few of his friends in Warehold, except Jane Cobden, knew or cared anything about—including a pair of crossed foils and two boxing-gloves; these last hung over a portrait of Macaulay.

What the place lacked was the touch of a woman's hand in vase, flower, or ornament—a touch that his mother, for reasons of her own, never gave and which no other woman had yet dared suggest.

For an instant the doctor sat with his elbows on the desk in deep thought, the light illuminating his calm, finely chiselled features and hands—those thin, sure hands which could guide a knife within a hair's breadth of instant death—and leaning forward, with an indrawn sigh examined some letters lying under his eye. Then, as if suddenly remembering, he glanced at the office slate, his face lighting up as he found it bare of any entry except the date.

Rex had been watching his master with ears cocked, and was now on his haunches, cuddling close, his nose resting on the doctor's knee. Doctor John laid his hand on the dog's head and smoothing the long, silky ears, said with a sigh of relief, as he settled himself in his chair:

"Little Tod must be better, Rex, and we are going to have a quiet night."

The anxiety over his patients relieved, his thoughts reverted to Jane and their talk. He remembered the tone of her voice and the quick way in which she had warded off his tribute to her goodness; he recalled her anxiety over Lucy; he looked again into the deep, trusting eyes that gazed into his as she appealed to him for assistance; he caught once more the poise of the head as she listened to his account of little Tod Fogarty's illness and heard her quick offer to help, and felt for the second time her instant tenderness and sympathy, never withheld from the sick and suffering, and always so generous and spontaneous.

A certain feeling of thankfulness welled up in his heart. Perhaps she had at last begun to depend upon him—a dependence which, with a woman such as Jane, must, he felt sure, eventually end in love.

With these thoughts filling his mind, he settled deeper in his chair. These were the times in which he loved to think of her—when, with pipe in mouth, he could sit alone by his fire and build castles in the coals, every rosy mountain-top aglow with the love he bore her; with no watchful mother's face trying to fathom his thoughts; only his faithful dog stretched at his feet.

Picking up his brierwood, lying on a pile of books on his desk, and within reach of his hand, he started to fill the bowl, when a scrap of paper covered with a scrawl written in pencil came into view. He turned it to the light and sprang to his feet.

"Tod worse," he said to himself. "I wonder how long this has been here."

The dog was now beside him looking up into the doctor's eyes. It was not the first time that he had seen his master's face grow suddenly serious as he had read the tell-tale slate or had opened some note awaiting his arrival.

Doctor John lowered the lamp, stepped noiselessly to the foot of the winding stairs that led to the sleeping rooms above—the dog close at his heels, watching his every movement—and called gently:

"Mother! mother, dear!" He never left his office when she was at home and awake without telling her where he was going.

No one answered.

"She is asleep. I will slip out without waking her. Stay where you are, Rex—I will be back some time before daylight," and throwing his night-cloak about his shoulders, he started for his gig.

The dog stopped with his paws resting on the outer edge of the top step of the porch, the line he was not to pass, and looked wistfully after the doctor. His loneliness was to continue, and his poor master to go out into the night alone. His tail ceased to wag, only his eyes moved.

Once outside Doctor John patted the mare's neck as if in apology and loosened the reins. "Come, old girl," he said; "I'm sorry, but it can't be helped," and springing into the gig, he walked the mare clear of the gravel beyond the gate, so as not to rouse his mother, touched her lightly with the whip, and sent her spinning along the road on the way to Fogarty's.

The route led toward the sea, branching off within the sight of the cottage porch, past the low, conical ice-houses used by the fishermen in which to cool their fish during the hot weather, along the sand-dunes, and down a steep grade to the shore. The tide was making flood, and the crawling surf spent itself in long shelving reaches of foam. These so packed the sand that the wheels of the gig hardly made an impression upon it. Along this smooth surface the mare trotted briskly, her nimble feet wet with the farthest reaches of the incoming wash.

As he approached the old House of Refuge, black in the moonlight and looking twice its size in the stretch of the endless beach, he noticed for the hundredth time how like a crouching woman it appeared, with its hipped roof hunched up like a shoulder close propped against the dune and its overhanging eaves but a draped hood shading its thoughtful brow; an illusion which vanished when its square form, with its wide door and long platform pointing to the sea, came into view.

More than once in its brief history the doctor had seen the volunteer crew, aroused from their cabins along the shore by the boom of a gun from some stranded vessel, throw wide its door and with a wild cheer whirl the life-boat housed beneath its roof into the boiling surf, and many a time had he helped to bring back to life the benumbed bodies drawn from the merciless sea by their strong arms.