If she were even a type, she might be worth considering;but she is simply an abnormal sport, with a little brain addled by notions that she is like Hypatia, and a large impudence rendered intolerable by the fact that she has money.Her father is a decent man.He ought to have her whipped."Mr.Ware drew himself erect, as he listened to these outrageous words.It would be unmanly, he felt, to allow such comments upon an absent friend to pass unrebuked.
Yet there was the courtesy due to a host to be considered.
His mind, fluttering between these two extremes, alighted abruptly upon a compromise.He would speak so as to show his disapproval, yet not so as to prevent his finding out what he wanted to know.The desire to hear Ledsmar talk about Celia and the priest seemed now to have possessed him for a long time, to have dictated his unpremeditated visit out here, to have been growing in intensity all the while he pretended to be interested in orchids and bees and the drugged Chinaman.
It tugged passionately at his self-control as he spoke.
"I cannot in the least assent to your characterization of the lady," he began with rhetorical dignity.
"Bless me!" interposed the doctor, with deceptive cheerfulness, "that is not required of you at all.
It is a strictly personal opinion, offered merely as a contribution to the general sum of hypotheses.""But," Theron went on, feeling his way, "of course, I gathered that evening that you had prejudices in the matter;but these are rather apart from the point I had in view.
We were speaking, you will remember, of the traditional attitude of women toward priests--wanting to curl their hair and put flowers in it, you know, and that suggested to me some individual illustrations, and it occurred to me to wonder just what were the relations between Miss Madden and--and Father Forbes.She said this morning, for instance--I happened to meet her, quite by accident--that she was going to the church to practise a new piece, and that she could have Father Forbes to herself all day.
Now that would be quite an impossible remark in our--that is, in any Protestant circles--and purely as a matter of comparison, I was curious to ask you just how much there was in it.
I ask you, because going there so much you have had exceptional opportunities for--"A sharp exclamation from his companion interrupted the clergyman's hesitating monologue.It began like a high-pitched, violent word, but dwindled suddenly into a groan of pain.The doctor's face, too, which had on the flash of Theron's turning seemed given over to unmixed anger, took on an expression of bodily suffering instead.
"My shoulder has grown all at once excessively painful,"he said hastily."I'm afraid I must ask you to excuse me, Mr.Ware."Carrying the afflicted side with ostentatious caution, he led the way without ado round the house to the front gate on the road.He had put his left hand under his coat to press it against his aching shoulder, and his right hung palpably helpless.This rendered it impossible for him to shake hands with his guest in parting.
"You're sure there's nothing I can do," said Theron, lingering on the outer side of the gate."I used to rub my father's shoulders and back; I'd gladly--""Oh, not for worlds!" groaned the doctor.His anguish was so impressive that Theron, as he walked down the road, quite missed the fact that there had been no invitation to come again.
Dr.Ledsmar stood for a minute or two, his gaze meditatively following the retreating figure.Then he went in, opening the front door with his right hand, and carrying himself once more as if there were no such thing as rheumatism in the world.
He wandered on through the hall into the laboratory, and stopped in front of the row of little tanks full of water.
Some deliberation was involved in whatever his purpose might be, for he looked from one tank to another with a pondering, dilatory gaze.At last he plunged his hand into the opaque fluid and drew forth a long, slim, yellowish-green lizard, with a coiling, sinuous tail and a pointed, evil head.
The reptile squirmed and doubled itself backward around his wrist, darting out and in with dizzy swiftness its tiny forked tongue.
The doctor held the thing up to the light, and, scrutinizing it through his spectacles, nodded his head in sedate approval.
A grim smile curled in his beard.
"Yes, you are the type," he murmured to it, with evident enjoyment in the conceit."Your name isn't Johnny any more.
It's the Rev.Theron Ware."
