by Peggy Gaddis
He got to his feet suddenly, swiftly, his jaw set and hard. He must not let Liss’s words color his thoughts. It was idiotic to believe that Chloe had expected more of him than he had been able to provide. After all, Chloe knew his circumstances. If Chloe had wanted a man with money, there had been Bill Elliott, the town’s most eligible bachelor. Bill had been paying Chloe devoted attention when Scott had appeared on the scene. If Chloe had not been genuinely in love with Scott, if she had not been perfectly willing to marry him, knowing that they would probably never have anything but modest circumstances, if she had wanted money, she would never have consented to marry Scott. Therefore, Scott told himself grimly, he was an incredible fool to have given even passing thought to anything Liss had said. Chloe loved him; he loved Chloe; and that was that. Whereupon he went about his preparations to call for her for the night’s engagement.
- 12 -
“Come in,” said Stuart Parham cheerfully, opening the door to Scott and motioning toward the living room. “I don’t suppose I have to tell you that Chloe isn’t ready yet. You’ve long ago learned, of course, that if she’s supposed to be ready at seven-thirty, you’re lucky if she comes down by eight?”
“Something like that,” Scott agreed, and followed Stuart into the living room.
“Drink?” Parham suggested.
“Ginger ale, if you don’t mind. A pretty heavy day tomorrow,” said Scott.
Stuart raised his eyebrows humorously. But when they had settled in comfortable chairs, Stuart frowned and hesitated before he spoke.
“I’ve been wanting to have a little talk with you, Scott. I guess this is as good an opportunity as I’ll have. Once this engagement is formally announced, you and Chloe will be a couple of very busy people. I’ve had this on my mind for some little time and have felt that I owed it to you to offer the suggestion. Hope you’ll take it in the spirit it’s meant.”
“I’ll try to,” was as far as Scott would go on such a promise.
Stuart studied the amber contents of his glass for a moment and then he looked sharply at Scott and said quietly, “It’s about this Ku Klux Klan thing you seem to be riding so hard, Scott. You are tilting at windmills, and it is going to do you no good at all and could easily do you a good deal of harm. Step too hard on somebody’s toes, Scott, and some night when you get a call very late to some lonely spot, you may find a bunch of the ‘hooded defenders’ and get yourself a most unpleasant experience. I’m just warning you for your own good.”
Scott sat for a long moment, his glass in his hand, his eyes upon it. And then as he heard the click-click of heels on the stairs, he looked up at Stuart and said quietly, “Thanks a lot. But a man has to have certain convictions and if he doesn’t live up to them — well, he’s not much of a man.”
“He could easily be a fool, about a thing like this,” said Stuart explosively.
But Chloe was in the room now, looking as exquisite as an angel on a Christmas tree, her shining honey-colored curls swept high on her head and held in place by a spray of tiny sweetheart roses, her dress of pale blue gracefully sweeping the floor as she moved.
“Darling,” she greeted Scott, her eyes shining, her lovely face lifted for his kiss.
Scott kissed her, and as always at the touch of her, at the sound of her voice, his heart stirred and his pulse beat heavily.
“Don’t tell me you and Dad are quarreling,” she protested gaily, her hand through Scott’s arm, her eyes upon her father, not quite as warm and laughing as when she had greeted Scott.
“Nonsense, of course not. Why should I quarrel with Scott?” Her father’s voice had a slight rasp to it. “I’ve only been trying to warn him, for his own good, to stop going around town snooping into the Ku Klux Klan’s affairs. He’s going to get himself in a jam before he knows it.”
Chloe laughed and shrugged. “Oh, is that all? Come along, angel; we mustn’t be late.”
Outside in the soft moonlit night, Scott looked down at her for a moment, and Chloe drew the airy silver stole a little more closely about her lovely shoulders and smiled tenderly at him.
“Don’t let Dad upset you, angel. He’s an unreconstructed rebel, you know. Forget him and the silly old Klan, too.”
“I’d hardly given it a thought,” said Scott, as he started the car. “I’ve had other things on my mind. Far more important things, at the moment at least, because they concern you and me.”
“I like that,” said Chloe happily, and snuggled closer to him.
“I still find it hard to believe that anybody as lovely as you, darling, would be willing to tie yourself down to the dullness of being the wife of a small-town general practitioner, who hasn’t the faintest hope of ever being anything else.”
“Hope, angel? Or desire?” asked Chloe gently.
He looked at her swiftly.
“Well, desire, I suppose. I like Hamilton. I like the people; I like the sort of practice I have. I suppose I’m painfully lacking in ambition, if one comes right down to it,” he admitted quite honestly.
She nodded thoughtfully, but her eyes were downcast and he could only guess, in the alternate light and shadow as they drove along the tree-shaded street, what her expression might be.
“I do think, darling, that it’s lack of ambition,” she told him at last. “Now wait a minute; let me finish. And then we won’t ever discuss it again. You are thoroughly capable, Scott dearest. You’re competent and you could do research, specialize, go wherever you liked.”
Scott’s heart sank a little, but he waited. And suddenly she raised her eyes, and the moonlight showed him the glimmer of tears, and her voice shook as she said very low, “But it’s you I love, Scott dearest. I don’t care whether you’re a famous surgeon, a general practitioner, or a ditch-digger. I love you, not your job or your financial position or anything else.”
Scott swung the car to the curb beneath the shadow of a friendly live-oak tree and took her into his arms and held her very close, his cheek against her hair, and in his heart he swore at Liss for her malicious warning.
At last Chloe said reluctantly, her eyes shining, “Darling, I’d so much rather just sit right here for hours and hours. But the Gordons are giving a dinner in our honor and it’s just simply outrageous for the guests of honor to be late.”
Scott kissed her tenderly, and with his heart light as a bubble in the air, started the car once more….
The dinner party was more formal than Scott was accustomed to in Hamilton. But he realized that this was because the Gordons were people of the Parhams’ age and set, instead of Chloe’s. There were three couples Chloe’s and Scott’s age, but the other two, along with the Gordons, were older.
After dinner, they were all in the living room, about to settle down to a rubber or so of bridge, when the telephone rang. A moment later the houseman came to the door.
“Telephone for you, Doctor,” he announced.
Scott excused himself, and when he came back five minutes later, he had his hat in his hand.
“Oh, Scott, no — not a call,” protested Chloe sharply.
“I’m sorry as the dickens, honey, but it’s just that — a delivery. I hate to take you home this early, but I’ll have to hurry.”
“Oh, you mustn’t, Scott,” said Mrs. Gordon hospitably. “Run along to your call, and come back here. I daresay we’ll be here for hours.”
“And if the party breaks up before you get back, Scott, I’ll see Chloe gets safely home,” said Bill Elliott with a friendly grin.
“Thanks,” said Scott. And to Chloe he added coaxingly, “I’m sorry, honey.”
Chloe raised her eyes to his for a long, still moment, and Scott was startled at the murky, ugly malevolence, in their depths. She meant him to see that look. She held his eyes until she was quite sure that he had seen it. And then she lowered her eyes and her voice was quite colorless as she said evenly, “It’s quite all right, Scott.”
He made his apologies to Mrs. Gordon and the others; then Mrs. Gord
on walked with him to the door and waited hospitably until his car had started. And when the door closed behind her, Scott’s mouth was a tight hard line.
There were hours of anxiety and stress and work. Gray dawn was touching the sky when the baby gave its first angry wail and Scott could relax a little and turn the red-faced, squalling tiny mite over to the anxious-eyed grandmother and concentrate on the exhausted mother. And when at last he knew that it was safe to leave her and came out into the small cabin’s combination kitchen and dining room where a dazed, rough-handed, haggard boy of nineteen stood looking down into the basket where his first-born lay, Scott felt as though he himself had been put through the wringer.
The boy looked up at him with a bewildered, shaken look. “Doc,” stammered the boy, badly shaken. “He’s so derned little. And he’s so mad. What’s he got to be mad about?”
Scott grinned and clapped the boy on the shoulder, a heartening, man-to-man slap.
“Little? You’re crazy. Hell tip the scales at eight pounds, maybe a few ounces over,” he protested. “He’s a fine, normal boy. You can be very proud of him, you and Jennie.”
“Now, Horace, you stop pestering Doctor,” said the baby’s grandmother importantly. “Jennie, she ain’t had no bad time. Like most young-uns, she thinks didn’t nobody in the world ever have no such pains birthin’ a baby as she did. But minute she sees him and holds him in her arms she’ll be that crazy about him she’ll go around telling folks that it wasn’t nothin’ at all — like having your hair cut or your fingernails trimmed. Doctor, reckon you’d be right glad of a cup of coffee. And I got breakfast ready.”
“You shouldn’t have bothered, Mrs. Weems, with all you have to do.” Scott sniffed the boiling coffee appreciatively.
Mrs. Weems laughed richly. “All I had to do? Ain’t never a doctor left my house yet, after taking care o’ my sick, that ain’t had at least a cup of coffee to warm him up. Here, set, Doctor. You, too, Horace. Reckon a cup o’ coffee wouldn’t hurt you none, neither.”
Scott knew that to refuse would be to mortally offend his hostess. And he had no desire to refuse as he eyed hungrily the platter of country ham, fried golden brown, and rimmed about on the platter with the white and yellow of day-old eggs, the bowl of smoking-hot grits, the plump brown-topped biscuits and the fragrant strong dark coffee. When he had finished, had taken a last look at the young mother, sleeping the healing sleep of exhaustion, and had left what he felt were entirely unnecessary instructions with the humorous-eyed Mrs. Weems, Horace walked with him out to the car.
“Well, sir, we sure do thank you, Doc,” said Horace warmly.
“Tell Jennie to bring the baby in to me once a month, until we get him started out right,” said Scott, and added, “I’ll be out again tomorrow, of course. That’s a fine boy you’ve got there, Horace. We’ve got to take care of him.”
“Yes, sir, we sure will,” agreed Horace.
Scott drove off down the narrow winding road that led to the highway and back to town. He was tired and sleepy, but he had the warm satisfaction of one who loved his job and knew he has handled it well. But despite his weariness — perhaps because of it — there was a little nagging memory of last night, when for a long moment Chloe had looked at him and let him see her anger and her bitterness that his duty should call him away from her at such a time. But she’d have to learn, he told himself wearily. If she didn’t already know that a doctor’s time was not his own, then she’d have a mighty unpleasant lesson ahead of her.
- 13 -
There was no particular reason he should always look forward to his clinic days at River’s Edge, unless it was that the small clinic building was so neat and tidy, so perfectly equipped with everything the most ambitious doctor could wish. Miss Mabel was always precise and crisply efficient, ready to greet him; the patients looked at him with a simple faith and an implicit confidence that he found very touching. Barring accidents such as are part and parcel of any large industry, whether it is mechanized farming such as was practiced at River’s Edge or some big textile plant, there was not a great deal for him to do. There were babies to deliver, of course; now and then a child with a foot infected from stepping on a nail or broken glass; a cold that threatened to develop into flu. He and Miss Mabel were working hard on prevention rather than cure, trying to give education in balanced diets and simple rules of hygiene that would create better health and minimize still further the work of a clinic.
Two days after the Gordon dinner party he finished up his morning in the clinic and went into the small three-bed “women’s ward” to check on a new mother and her three-day-old infant. He paused a moment, startled, because Kate sat beside the new mother’s bed, holding the new infant in her arms, bending above it, absorbed, as the mother looked on proudly.
The mother saw Scott first. “Marnin’, Doctor.”
Kate flung up her head, startled, and a warm tide of color swept up and over her face.
“Don’t scold, please. I know new babies aren’t to be fondled and held,” she laughed. “But when they are such delectable small creatures — ! His hair is like black silk, and look at that absurd button of a nose. Do you suppose it will ever get big enough to be of any real service to him?”
The new mother laughed richly.
“Sure it will, Miss Kate, honey. He got a nose just like his pappy’s — always stuck in other folks business,” she announced.
“Now, Molly, that’s not fair,” protested Kate, laughing. “Jim’s just curious, that’s all. And being curious is the way people learn about things.”
“Then that man of mine ought to be the smartest man ever lived, only he ain’t,” said Molly firmly.
Kate put the baby into the tiny bassinet, and straightened the covers gently about his small plump legs.
“Stop in for lunch before you leave, Scott,” suggested Kate lightly. “Cook’s making corn fritters, just the way you like them. She’ll be hurt if you don’t stay.”
“How will you feel if I don’t stay?” asked Scott impulsively, and the next moment could have bitten his tongue out.
Kate straightened and tilted her head a little. Her eyes were cool, almost frosty.
“I? Why, I shall be in the bottomless pit of despair, of course. Where else would I be?” she answered, brightly derisive, and walked out.
Molly said anxiously, “Doctor, I been wantin’ to say somethin’ to you, only I ain’ want nobody else to hear.”
Scott took the chair Kate had just vacated and put his fingers on the woman’s pulse.
“What’s worrying you, Molly? You mustn’t let yourself get all wrought up, now that you have the baby,” he said soothingly.
“It ain’t the baby I’m worrying about, Doctor, it’s the baby’s daddy!” said Molly anxiously. “That fool man of mine, Doctor, going to get himself killed if he ain’t careful, and careful’s something he ain’t gonna be!”
“Why, what’s Jim been doing?”
“Doctor Etheridge, he trying to find out what white folks is top dog in the Kluxers, and you know that ain’t no healthy thing for a black man to be doing.”
There was such a depth of conviction, such perturbation in the woman’s voice and her anxious face, that Scott stared at her, his brows raised.
“Has he any idea, or is he just fooling around?” he demanded.
“Well, I don’t rightly know do he know something or do he just be trying to find out something. But he says if he can find out who the top dogs is, then they can make them stop. Do you think they can, Doctor?”
“I don’t know, Molly,” Scott admitted heavily. “But I do think that public opinion, if focused on the top dogs, might have some effect. But Jim’s fooling with something that could be pretty dangerous.”
“He thinks the world of you, Doctor. Do you have the chance maybe you’d sort of explain to him that he’s going to get himself in a jam — ”
“I’ll talk to him, Molly,” said Scott quickly, “and I’ll tell him that he has re
sponsibilities now, and he’s got to remember that he has a son that’s going to need him to look after him. Junior’s going to have to have a dad who is not in jail or in trouble.”
Molly grinned bashfully.
“The baby ain’t going to be called Jim Junior, Doctor. We’d like to call him Scott if y’all wouldn’t mind?” said Molly anxiously.
“I’d be flattered, Molly,” said Scott so simply and so sincerely that Molly’s face flamed with pleasure.
Outside in the dispensary, Miss Mabel looked up from her records and grinned at him.
“How many does that make, Doctor?” she said teasingly. “Seven or eight little Scotts at River’s Edge?”
“Well, a couple are Etheridges,” Scott answered lightly.
When they had finished with the morning’s work, Scott went out and along the lane that led to the big house. Halfway to the house he saw Tim waiting for him, and the two men greeted each other with genuine liking and respect. As they strolled on together, Tim obviously had something on his mind. And since Tim was not one to beat around the bush or hide behind a pretense, he stopped just as they reached the drive, and faced Scott.
“Something I’d like to get settled, Scott,” he said, a little embarrassed but doggedly determined to go through with it. “There’s — well, I suppose it’s a rumor, gossip. I usually don’t pay any attention to such things. But this is — well, I keep hearing it.”
“Spill it,” said Scott, a little afraid that he knew what was coming.
“I keep hearing that you are dissatisfied with Hamilton and are planning on moving on to where the fields are greener,” said Tim flatly.
Scott’s jaw hardened and his hands, sunk into the pockets of his jacket, clenched into hard fists. But when he spoke his voice was quite steady.