“What!”
“But you shan’t lose by it, Rodman. No, no, you shan’t lose by it, my manny. I am going to waive my commission. The puir bonny wee lass!”
The car rolled off down the road. Mr. McKinnon, seated in the back, was blowing his nose violently.
“This is the end!” said James.
It is necessary at this point to pause and examine James Rodman’s position with an unbiased eye. The average man, unless he puts himself in James’s place, will be unable to appreciate it. James, he will feel, was making a lot of fuss about nothing. Here he was, drawing daily closer and closer to a charming girl with big blue eyes, and surely rather to be envied than pitied.
But we must remember that James was one of Nature’s bachelors. And no ordinary man, looking forward dreamily to a little home of his own with a loving wife putting out his slippers and changing the gramophone records, can realize the intensity of the instinct for self-preservation which animates Nature’s bachelors in times of peril.
James Rodman had a congenital horror of matrimony. Though a young man, he had allowed himself to develop a great many habits which were as the breath of life to him; and these habits, he knew instinctively, a wife would shoot to pieces within a week of the end of the honeymoon.
James liked to breakfast in bed; and, having breakfasted, to smoke in bed and knock the ashes out on the carpet. What wife would tolerate this practice?
James liked to pass his days in a tennis shirt, grey flannel trousers, and slippers. What wife ever rests until she has enclosed her husband in a stiff collar, tight boots, and a morning suit and taken him with her to thés musicaux?
These and a thousand other thoughts of the same kind flashed through the unfortunate young man’s mind as the days went by, and every day that passed seemed to draw him nearer to the brink of the chasm. Fate appeared to be taking a malicious pleasure in making things as difficult for him as possible. Now that the girl was well enough to leave her bed, she spent her time sitting in a chair on the sun-sprinkled porch, and James had to read to her—and poetry, at that; and not the jolly, wholesome sort of poetry the boys are turning out nowadays, either—good, honest stuff about sin and gasworks and decaying corpses—but the old-fashioned kind with rhymes in it, dealing almost exclusively with love. The weather, moreover, continued superb. The honeysuckle cast its sweet scent on the gentle breeze; the roses over the porch stirred and nodded; the flowers in the garden were lovelier than ever; the birds sang their little throats sore. And every evening there was a magnificent sunset. It was almost as if Nature were doing it on purpose.
At last James intercepted Dr. Brady as he was leaving after one of his visits and put the thing to him squarely:
“When is that girl going?”
The doctor patted him on the arm.
“Not yet, Rodman,” he said in a low, understanding voice. “No need to worry yourself about that. Mustn’t be moved for days and days and days—I might almost say weeks and weeks and weeks.”
“Weeks and weeks!” cried James.
“And weeks,” said Dr. Brady. He prodded James roguishly in the abdomen. “Good luck to you, my boy, good luck to you,” he said.
It was some small consolation to James that the mushy physician immediately afterward tripped over William on his way down the path and broke his stethoscope. When a man is up against it like James every little helps.
He was walking dismally back to the house after this conversation when he was met by the apple-cheeked housekeeper.
“The little lady would like to speak to you, sir,” said the apple-cheeked exhibit, rubbing her hands.
“Would she?” said James hollowly.
“So sweet and pretty she looks, sir—oh, sir, you wouldn’t believe! Like a blessed angel sitting there with her dear eyes all a-shining.”
“Don’t do it!” cried James with extraordinary vehemence. “Don’t do it!”
He found the girl propped up on the cushions and thought once again how singularly he disliked her. And yet, even as he thought this, some force against which he had to fight madly was whispering to him, “Go to her and take that little hand! Breathe into that little ear the burning words that will make that little face turn away crimsoned with blushes!” He wiped a bead of perspiration from his forehead and sat down.
“Mrs. Stick-in-the-Mud—what’s her name?—says you want to see me.”
The girl nodded.
“I’ve had a letter from Uncle Henry. I wrote to him as soon as I was better and told him what had happened, and he is coming here tomorrow morning.”
“Uncle Henry?”
“That’s what I call him, but he’s really no relation. He is my guardian. He and daddy were officers in the same regiment, and when daddy was killed, fighting on the Afghan frontier, he died in Uncle Henry’s arms and with his last breath begged him to take care of me.”
James started. A sudden wild hope had waked in his heart. Years ago, he remembered, he had read a book of his aunt’s entitled Rupert’s Legacy, and in that book—
“I’m engaged to marry him,” said the
