The Doctor [45]
I was!" cried Foxmore, backing further away behind the others.
"Yes," cried Barney, his voice rising hoarse, "you would all of you laugh at that brute ruin the name and honour of a lonely girl!" He walked up and down before the group which stood huddled in the corner in abject terror, more like a wild beast than a man. "You're not fit to live! You're beasts of prey! No decent girl is safe from you!" His voice rose loud and thin and harsh. He was fast losing hold of himself. His ghastly face, bloody and horribly disfigured, made an appalling setting for his blazing eyes. Nearer and nearer the crowd he walked, gnashing and grinding his teeth till the foam fell from his lips. The wild fury of his Highland ancestors was turning him into a wild beast with a wild beast's lust of blood. Further and further back cowered the group without a word, so utterly panic-stricken were they.
"Barney," said Dick quietly, "come home." He stopped short, with a mighty effort recalling his reason. For a few moments he stood silent looking at the floor, then, raising his eyes, he let them rest upon the doctor, who was leaning against the wall, and, without a word, turned and slowly passed out of the room.
"Gad!" said Foxmore, with a horrible gasp of relief, "if the devil looks like that I never want to see him."
XI
IOLA'S CHOICE
Iola was undoubtedly pleased; her lips parting in a half smile, her eyes shining through half-closed lids, her whole face glowing with a warm light proclaimed the joy in her heart. The morning letters lay on her table. She sat some moments holding one which she had opened, while she gazed dreamily out through the branches of the big elms that overshadowed her window. She would not move lest the dream should break and vanish. As she lay back in her chair looking out upon the moving leaves and waving boughs, she allowed the past to come back to her. How far away seemed the golden days of her Southern childhood. Almost her first recollection of sorrow, certainly the first that made any deep impression upon her heart, was when the men carried out her father in a black box and when, leaving the big house with the wide pillared veranda, she was taken to the chilly North. How terribly vivid was the memory of her miserable girlhood, poverty pressed and loveless, her soul beating like a caged bird against the bars of the cold and rigid discipline of her aunt's well-ordered home. Then came the first glad freedom from dependence when first she undertook to earn her own bread as a teacher. Freedom and love came to her together, freedom and love and friendship in the Manse and the Old Stone Mill. With the memory of the Mill, there rose before her, clear- limned and vividly real, one face, rugged, strong, and passionate, and the thought of him brought a warmer light to her eyes and a stronger beat to her heart. Every feature of the moonlight scene on the night of the barn-raising when first she saw him stood out with startling distinctness, the new skeleton of the barn gleaming bony and bare against the sky, the dusky forms crowding about, and, sitting upon a barrel across the open moonlit space of the barn floor, the dark-faced lad playing his violin and listening while she sang. At that point it was that life for her began.
A new scene passed before her eyes. It was the Manse parlour, the music professor with dirty, claw-like fingers but face alight with rapturous delight playing for her while she sang her first great oratorio aria. She could feel to-day that mysterious thrill in the dawning sense of new powers as the old man, with his hands upon her shoulders, cried in his trembling, broken voice, "My dear young lady, the world will listen to you some day!" That was the beginning of her great ambition. That day she began to look for the time when the world would come to listen. Then followed weary days and weeks and months and years, weary with self-denials new to her and with painful struggling with unmusical pupils, for she needed bread; weary with heart-breaking strivings and
"Yes," cried Barney, his voice rising hoarse, "you would all of you laugh at that brute ruin the name and honour of a lonely girl!" He walked up and down before the group which stood huddled in the corner in abject terror, more like a wild beast than a man. "You're not fit to live! You're beasts of prey! No decent girl is safe from you!" His voice rose loud and thin and harsh. He was fast losing hold of himself. His ghastly face, bloody and horribly disfigured, made an appalling setting for his blazing eyes. Nearer and nearer the crowd he walked, gnashing and grinding his teeth till the foam fell from his lips. The wild fury of his Highland ancestors was turning him into a wild beast with a wild beast's lust of blood. Further and further back cowered the group without a word, so utterly panic-stricken were they.
"Barney," said Dick quietly, "come home." He stopped short, with a mighty effort recalling his reason. For a few moments he stood silent looking at the floor, then, raising his eyes, he let them rest upon the doctor, who was leaning against the wall, and, without a word, turned and slowly passed out of the room.
"Gad!" said Foxmore, with a horrible gasp of relief, "if the devil looks like that I never want to see him."
XI
IOLA'S CHOICE
Iola was undoubtedly pleased; her lips parting in a half smile, her eyes shining through half-closed lids, her whole face glowing with a warm light proclaimed the joy in her heart. The morning letters lay on her table. She sat some moments holding one which she had opened, while she gazed dreamily out through the branches of the big elms that overshadowed her window. She would not move lest the dream should break and vanish. As she lay back in her chair looking out upon the moving leaves and waving boughs, she allowed the past to come back to her. How far away seemed the golden days of her Southern childhood. Almost her first recollection of sorrow, certainly the first that made any deep impression upon her heart, was when the men carried out her father in a black box and when, leaving the big house with the wide pillared veranda, she was taken to the chilly North. How terribly vivid was the memory of her miserable girlhood, poverty pressed and loveless, her soul beating like a caged bird against the bars of the cold and rigid discipline of her aunt's well-ordered home. Then came the first glad freedom from dependence when first she undertook to earn her own bread as a teacher. Freedom and love came to her together, freedom and love and friendship in the Manse and the Old Stone Mill. With the memory of the Mill, there rose before her, clear- limned and vividly real, one face, rugged, strong, and passionate, and the thought of him brought a warmer light to her eyes and a stronger beat to her heart. Every feature of the moonlight scene on the night of the barn-raising when first she saw him stood out with startling distinctness, the new skeleton of the barn gleaming bony and bare against the sky, the dusky forms crowding about, and, sitting upon a barrel across the open moonlit space of the barn floor, the dark-faced lad playing his violin and listening while she sang. At that point it was that life for her began.
A new scene passed before her eyes. It was the Manse parlour, the music professor with dirty, claw-like fingers but face alight with rapturous delight playing for her while she sang her first great oratorio aria. She could feel to-day that mysterious thrill in the dawning sense of new powers as the old man, with his hands upon her shoulders, cried in his trembling, broken voice, "My dear young lady, the world will listen to you some day!" That was the beginning of her great ambition. That day she began to look for the time when the world would come to listen. Then followed weary days and weeks and months and years, weary with self-denials new to her and with painful struggling with unmusical pupils, for she needed bread; weary with heart-breaking strivings and