Part 11

Carey turned pale. "He's got that rooster in his throat," he said solemnly. The rooster was nearly life-size, but the incongruity of this suggestion did not strike him. Judith hastily rose from her chair and went to him.

"Had we better go up?" he whispered.

"Heavens—no!" Judith clutched his arm. "We couldn't do any good. The doctor's there. Such things make me ill. They ought not to have let him have the toy to take to bed with him. How could it get into his throat? Perhaps they are making it crow to divert him. Perhaps he's hurt himself somehow."

"He's got the crow part of that thing in his throat," Carey persisted in an anxious whisper. "The manufacturers ought to be prosecuted for making a toy that will come apart like that."

"Don't stand there," protested his wife. "Maybe it's nothing. Come here and sit down."

But Carey stood still. Presently Anthony came to the head of the stairs.

"Wayne," said he rapidly, "telephone Roger's office. Ask the trained nurse, Miss Hughes, to send a messenger with the doctor's emergency surgical case by the first train—he can catch the 9:40 if he's quick. Tell Miss Hughes to follow as soon as she can get ready, prepared to stay all night."

Then he disappeared. His voice had been steady and quiet, but his eyes had showed his friend that the order was given under tension. Carey sprang to the telephone, and his hand shook as he took down the receiver.

Upstairs Roger Barnes, in command, was giving cool, concise orders, his eyes on his little patient. When he had despatched Juliet for various things, including boiling water which she must get downstairs, he said to Anthony in a conversational tone:

"It will probably not be safe to wait till my instruments get here, and there's no surgeon near enough to call. I'm not going to take any chances on this boy. If I see the necessity I'm going to get into that throat and give him air. I shall want you and Carey to hold him. Juliet must be downstairs."

Anthony nodded. He did not quite understand; but a few minutes later, when Juliet had brought the boiling water, he suddenly perceived what his friend meant.

"Alcohol, now, please," said the doctor. When Juliet had disappeared again Barnes drew from his pocket a pearl-handled pocket-knife and tried its blades. "It's a fortunate thing somebody made me a present of such a good one to-day," he observed, "but it needs sharpening a bit. Have you an oil-stone handy?"

With tightly shut lips Anthony watched the doctor put a bright edge on his smallest blade, then, satisfied, drop the open knife into the water bubbling over a spirit-lamp. Anthony turned his head away for an instant from the struggling little figure on the bed. Barnes eyed him keenly.

"You're game, of course?" he said.

Anthony's eyes met his and flashed fire. "Don't you know me better than that?"

"All right," and the young surgeon smiled. "But I've seen a medical man himself go to pieces over his own child. This is a simple matter," he went on lightly. "Luckily, boiling water is a more potent antiseptic than all the drugs on the market—and alcohol's another. I shall want a new hairpin or two—if Juliet has a wire one.—That the alcohol? Thank you. Now if you've the hairpins, Juliet—ah—a silver one—all the better."

This also he dropped into the boiling water. Then he spoke very quietly to Tony's mother, as she bent over her child, fighting for his breath.

"It's a bit tough to watch," he said, "but we'll have him all right presently. Suppose you go and get his crib ready for him. You might fill some hot-water bags and bottles and have things warm and comfortable."

The telephone-bell rang below. After a minute Carey dashed upstairs. He looked into the room and spoke anxiously. "The messenger just missed the 9:40. He and the nurse will come on the 10:15."

"All right," said the doctor, as if the delay were of small consequence. "We're going to want your help presently, Carey, I think. Just ask Mrs. Carey to keep Mrs. Robeson with her for a few minutes, if she can."

Carey went down and gave his wife the message, then he hurried back and stood waiting just outside the door. And all at once the summons came. In a breath the doctor had changed his rôle. He spoke sharply:

"Now, Robeson—now, Carey—we've waited up to the limit. Keep cool—hold him like a rock—"

Wayne Carey came down to his wife, ten minutes later, smiled tremulously, sank into a chair, and fell to crying like a baby—softly, so that he could not be heard.

"But Juliet says he'll be all right," murmured Judith unsteadily.

"Yes, yes—" Carey wiped his eyes and blew his nose. "I'm just a little unnerved, that's all. Lord—and he's dropped off to sleep as quiet as a lamb—with Barnes holding the gash in his throat open with a hairpin to let the air in. When it comes to emergency surgery I tell you it's a lucky thing to have an expert in the house. Completely worn out—the little chap. When the nurse comes they'll get out the whistle and sew the place up. She ought to be here—I'll go meet that train."

He sprang to his feet and hurried out of the house. Presently he was back, followed by an erect young woman who wore a long coat over the uniform she had not taken time to change. Carey carried the long black bag she had brought with her.

By and by Anthony and Roger Barnes came down. The former was pale, but as quietly composed as ever; the latter nonchalant, yet wearing that gleam of satisfaction in his eye which is ever the badge of the successful surgeon.

"Well, Mrs. Carey," said the doctor, smiling, "why not relax that tension a bit? The youngster is right as a trivet."

"I suppose that's your idea of being right as a trivet," Judith retorted. "In bed, with a trained nurse watching you, and a doctor staying all night to make sure."

"Bless you—what better would you have? If it were any other boy the doctor would have been home and in bed an hour ago, I assure you. Carey—if you don't stop acting like a great fool I'll put you to bed too."

For Carey was wringing Barnes' hand, and the tears were running unashamed down his cheeks. "I gave him that rooster myself," he said, and choked.

Upstairs all was quiet. The little life was safe, rescued at the crucial moment when interference became necessary, by the skill and daring which do not hesitate to use the means at hand when the authorized tools can not be had. Every precaution had been taken against harm from these same unconventional means, and the doctor, when he left his patient in the hands of his nurse, felt small anxiety for the ultimate outcome.

He said this very positively to the boy's father and mother, holding a hand of each and bidding them go peacefully to sleep. He would have slipped away then, but they would not let him go. There were no tears, no fuss; but Juliet said, her eyes with their heavy shadows of past suspense meeting his steadily, "Roger, nothing can ever tell you what I feel about this," and Anthony, gripping his friend's hand with a grip of steel, added: "We shall never thank the Lord enough for having you on hand, Roger Barnes."

But when the young surgeon had gone, warm with pleasure over the service he had done those he loved this night, the ones he had left behind found their self-control had reached the ragged edge. Turning to her husband Juliet flung herself into his arms, and met there the tenderest reception she had ever known. So does a common anxiety knit hearts which had thought they could be no tighter bound.

Judith and Wayne Carey, walking along silent streets in the early dawn of the day after Christmas on their way to take their train home, had little to say. Only once Judith ventured an observation to her heavy-eyed companion:

"Surely, such a scene as you went through last night must diminish a trifle that envy you are always possessed with, when you're at that house."

But Wayne, staring up at the wintry sky, answered, more roughly than his wife had ever heard him speak: "No—God knows I envy them even at a time like this!"

XXIII.—TWO NOT OF A KIND

"Yes, they are very pleasant rooms," Juliet admitted, with the air of one endeavouring to be polite. She sat upon a many-hued divan, and glanced from the blue-and-yellow wall-paper to the green velvet chairs, the dull-red carpet and the stiff "lace" curtains. "You get the afternoon sun, and the view opposite isn't bad. The vestibule seemed to be well kept, and I rang only three times before I made you hear."

"The janitor promised to fix that bell," said Judith hastily. "Oh, I know the colour combinations are dreadful, but one can't help that in rented rooms. Of course our things look badly with the ones that belong here. But as soon as we can we are going to move into a still better place."

"Going to keep house?"

"No-o, not just yet." Judith hesitated. "You seem to think there's nothing in the world to do but to keep house."

"I'm sure of it."

"I can't see why. A girl doesn't need to assume all the cares of life the minute she marries. Why can't she keep young and fresh for a while?"

Juliet glanced toward a mirror opposite. "How old and haggard I must be looking," she observed, with—it must be confessed—a touch of complacency. The woman who could have seen that image reflected as her own without complacency must have been indifferent, indeed.

"Of course, you manage it somehow—I suppose because Anthony takes such care of you. But you wait till five years more have gone over your head, and see if you're not tired of it."

"If I'm as tired of it as you are—" began Juliet, and stopped. "But seriously, Judith, is it nothing to you to please Wayne?"

"Why, of course." Judith flushed. "But Wayne is satisfied."

"Are you sure of it?"

"Certainly. Oh, sometimes, when we go to see you, and you make things so pleasant with your big fire and your good things to eat, he gets a spasm of wishing we were by ourselves, but—"

Juliet shook her head. "Wayne doesn't say a word," she said, "and he's as devoted to you as a man can be. But, Judith, if I know the symptoms, that husband of yours is starving for a home, and—do I dare say it?"

Judith was staring out of the window at the ugly walls opposite. It was her bedroom window, and the opposite walls were not six feet away.

"I suppose you dare say anything," she answered, looking as if she were about to cry. "I'm sure I envy you, you're so supremely contented. I don't think I was made to care for children."

"That might come," said Juliet softly. "I'm sure it would, Judith. As for Wayne, if you could see the look on his face I've surprised there more than once, when he had little Anthony, and he thought nobody noticed, it would make your heart ache, dear. Don't deny him—or yourself—the best thing that can happen to either of you. At least, don't deny it for lack of a home. I'm sure I can't imagine Tony, Junior, in these rooms of yours. They don't look," she explained, smiling, "exactly babyish."

She rose to go. She looked so young and fair and sweet as she spoke her gentle homily that Judith, half doubting, half believing, admitted to herself that of one thing there could be no question: Mrs. Anthony Robeson envied nobody upon the face of the earth.

The visits of the Robesons to the various apartments which were in rotation occupied by the Careys were few. Somehow it seemed much easier and simpler for the pair who had no children, and no housekeeping to hamper them, to run out into the suburbs than for their friends to get into town. So the Careys came with ever increasing frequency, always warmly welcomed, and enjoyed the hours within the little house so thoroughly that in time the influence of the content they saw so often began to have its inevitable effect.

"I've great news for you," said Anthony, coming home one March day, when little Tony was nearing his second birthday. "It's about the Careys. Guess."

"They are going to housekeeping."

"How did you know?"

"I didn't know, but Judith told me weeks ago she supposed she should have to come to it. Have they found a house?"

"Carey thinks he has. Judith doesn't like the place, for about fifty good and sufficient reasons—to her. He's trying to persuade her. He has an option on it for ten days. He wants us to come out and look at it with them."

"Where is it?"

"About as far east of the city as we are north. If to-morrow is a good day I promised we would run out with them on the ten-fifteen. I suspect they need us badly. Wayne looks like a man distracted. The great trouble, I fancy, is going to be that Judith Dearborn Carey is still too much of a Dearborn to be able to make a home out of anything. And Carey can't do it alone."

"Indeed he can't, poor fellow. I never saw a man in my life who wanted a home as badly as Wayne does. Let's do our best to help them."

"We will. But the only way to do it thoroughly is to make Judith over. Even you can't accomplish that."

"There's hope, if she has agreed at all to trying the experiment," Juliet declared, and thought about her friends all the rest of the day.

It was but five minutes' walk, from the suburban station where the party got off next morning, to the house which Carey eagerly pointed out as the four approached.

"There it is," he said. "Don't tell me what you think of it till you've seen the whole thing. I know it doesn't look promising as yet, but I keep remembering the photographs of your home, Robeson, before you went at it. I'm inclined to think this can be made right, too."

Anthony and Juliet studied Carey's choice with interest. Judith looked on dubiously. It was plain that if she should consent it would be against her will.

"It looks so commonplace and ugly," she said aside to Juliet, as the four completed the tour around the house and prepared to enter. "Your home is old-fashioned enough to be interesting, but this is just modern enough to be ugly. Look at that big window in front with the cheap coloured glass across the top. What could you do with that?"

"Several things," said her friend promptly. "You might put in a row of narrow casement windows across the front, with diamond panes. No—the porch isn't attractive with all that gingerbread work, but you could take it away and have something plain and simple. The general lines of the house are not bad. It has been an old-fashioned house, Judith, but somebody who didn't know how has altered it and spoiled it. People are always doing that. There must have been a fanlight over this door. You could restore it. And do you see that quaint round window in the gable? Probably they looked at that and longed to do away with it, but happily for you didn't know how."

Carey glanced curiously at his friend's wife, then anxiously at his own. Juliet's face was alight with interest; Judith's heavy with dissatisfaction. He wondered for the thousandth time what made the difference. He would have given a year's salary to see Judith look interested in this desire of his heart. It was hard to push a thing like this against the will of the only person whose help he could not do without. Carey was determined to have the home. Even Judith acknowledged that she had not been happy in any of the seven apartments they had tried during the less than four years of their married life. Carey believed with all his heart that their only chance for happiness lay in getting away from a manner of living which was using up every penny he could earn without giving them either satisfaction or comfort. His salary would not permit him to rent the sort of thing in the sort of neighbourhood which Judith longed for. And if it should, he did not believe his wife would find such environments any more congenial than the present one. Carey had a theory that a woman, like a man, must be busy to be contented. He meant to try it with his handsome, discontented wife.

"Oh, what a pretty hall!" cried Mrs. Robeson, with enthusiasm. "How lucky that the vandals who made the house over didn't lay their desecrating hands on that staircase."

"The hall looks gloomy to me," said Mrs. Carey, with a disapproving glance at the walls.

"Of course—with that dingy brown paper and the woodwork stained that hideous imitation of oak. You can scrape all that off, paint it white, put on a warm, rich paper, restore your fanlight, and you'll have a particularly attractive hall."

"I wish I could see things that are not visible, as you seem to be able to," sighed Judith, looking unconvinced. "I never did like a long, straight staircase like that. And there's not room to make a turn."

"You don't want to, do you? It's so wide and low it doesn't need to turn, and the posts and rails are extremely good. How about this front room?"

She stood in the center of the front room, and the two men, watching her vivid face as it glowed above her furs, noting the capable, womanly way she had of looking at the best side of everything and discerning in a flash of imagination and intuition what could be done with unpromising material, appreciated her with that full masculine appreciation which it is so well worth the trouble of any woman to win.

Judith was not blind; she saw little by little as Juliet went from room to room—seizing in each upon its possibilities, ignoring its poorer features except to suggest their betterment, giving her whole-hearted, friendly counsel in a way which continually took the prospective homemakers into consideration—that she herself was losing something immeasurably valuable in not attempting to cultivate these same winning characteristics. And in the same breath Judith was forced to admit to herself that she did not know how to begin.

"There is really a very pretty view from the dining-room," she said, as a first effort at seeing something to admire. Both Juliet and Anthony agreed to this statement with a cordiality which came very near suggesting that it was a relief to find Mrs. Carey on the optimistic side of the discussion even in this small detail. As for Carey, he looked so surprised and grateful that Judith's heart smote her with a vigour to which she was unaccustomed.

"I suppose you could use this room as a sort of den?" she was prompted to suggest to her husband; and such a delighted smile illumined Carey's face that the sight of it was almost pathetic to his friends, who understood his situation rather better than he did himself. In his pleasure Carey put his arm about his wife's shoulders.

"Couldn't I, though?" he agreed enthusiastically. "And you could use it for a retreat while I was away for the day."

"A retreat from what? Too much excitement?" began Judith, the old habit of scorn of everything which was not of the city returning upon her irresistibly. But it chanced that she caught Juliet's eyes, unconsciously wearing such an expression of solicitude to see her friend complaisant in this matter which meant so much, that Judith hurriedly followed her ironic question with the more kindly supplement: "But doubtless I should have plenty, and be glad to get away."

"You certainly would," asserted Anthony. "We never guessed how much there would be to occupy us in the country, but there seems hardly time to write letters. Nobody can believe, till he tries, how much pleasure there is in wheedling a garden into growing, nor how well the labour makes him sleep o' nights."

"Yes—I think I could sleep here," said Carey, and passed a hand over a brow which was aching at that very moment. "I haven't done that satisfactorily for six months."

"You'll do it here," Anthony prophesied confidently. "It's a fine air with a good breath of the salt sea in it, which we don't get. Your sleeping rooms are all well aired and lighted—a thing you don't always find in more pretentious houses. And when the paint and paper go on you'll own yourselves surprised at the transformation. I was never so astonished in my life as I was at the change in the little bedroom in our house which has that pale yellow-and-white stripe on the wall. It was a north room, and the old wall was a forlorn slate, like a thundercloud. My little artist here, with her eye for colours, instantly announced that she would get the sunshine into that room. And so she did—with no more potent a charm than that fifteen-cent paper and a fresh coat of white paint."