The other laughed again; then dismissed the question with a wave of his
hand, and pulled out a great gold watch with cornelian seals. "Carter
swears that Dr. Contesse hath a specific that is as sovereign for the gout
as is St. Andrew's cross for a rattlesnake bite. I've had twinges lately,
and the doctor lives hard by. Evelyn, will you rest here while I go
petition Æsculapius? Haward, when I have the recipe I will return, and
impart it to you against the time when you need it. No, no, child, stay
where you are! I will be back anon."
Having waved aside his daughter's faint protest, the Colonel departed,--a
gallant figure of a man, with a pretty wit and a heart that was
benevolently gay. As he went down the path he paused to gather a sprig of
lilac. "Westover--Fair View," he said to himself, and smiled, and smelled
the lilac; then--though his ills were somewhat apocryphal--walked off at a
gouty pace across the buttercup-sprinkled green toward the house of Dr.
Contesse.
Haward and Evelyn, left alone, kept silence for a time in the quiet room
that was filled with late sunshine and the fragrance of flowers. He stood
by the window, and she sat in a great chair, with her hands folded in her
lap, and her eyes upon them. When silence had become more loud than
speech, she turned in her seat and addressed herself to him.
"I have known you do many good deeds," she said slowly. "That gentleman
that was here is your servant, is he not, and an exile, and unhappy? And
you sent him away comforted. It was a generous thing."
Haward moved restlessly. "A generous thing," he answered. "Ay, it was
generous. I can do such things at times, and why I do them who can tell?
Not I! Do you think that I care for that grim Highlander, who drinks my
death in place of my health, who is of a nation that I dislike, and a
party that is not mine?"
She shook her head. "I do not know. And yet you helped him."
Haward left the window, and came and sat beside her. "Yes, I helped him. I
am not sure, but I think I did it because, when first we met, he told me
that he hated me, and meant the thing he said. It is my humor to fix my
own position in men's minds; to lose the thing I have that I may gain the
thing I have not; to overcome, and never prize the victory; to hunt down a
quarry, and feel no ardor in the chase; to strain after a goal, and yet
care not if I never reach it."
He took her fan in his hand, and fell to counting the slender ivory
sticks. "I tread the stage as a fine gentleman," he said. "It is the part
for which I was cast, and I play it well with proper mien and gait. I was
not asked if I would like the part, but I think that I do like it, as much
as I like anything. Seeing that I must play it, and that there is that
within me which cries out against slovenliness, I play it as an artist
should. Magnanimity goes with it, does it not, and generosity, courtesy,
care for the thing which is, and not for that which seems? Why, then, with
these and other qualities I strive to endow the character."