Romance Classics (84 page)

It was only at such times as these, when he was tired and depressed, that he thought of Chloe with something so nearly like distaste that it shook him badly. He
was
in love with Chloe, he reassured himself vehemently. Yet he realized, though he tried to deny it, that the very vehemence with which he repeated it was in itself a dangerous symptom of something he didn't want to believe. Chloe was dear and lovely and alluring. And the fact that her parents had given their gracious consent to the marriage and had even gone so far as to offer the upper floor of their home as an apartment for the newlyweds was something for which he should be very grateful.

His reluctance to face the fact that he was engaged to be married and that the engagement was to be formally announced in a week was only because he was tired.

He parked in front of the Hanover house, took out his instrument case and went quickly up the walk, as though to convince himself that he wasn't tired at all.

The door swung open before he could ring and Liss stood there, tall and slender and smiling in a turquoise-colored housecoat, zipped from throat to heel and sashed in silver.

“Do come in, Doctor,” she greeted him. “Your patient has rallied.”

“That I can see with half an eye, and very pleasant seeing, too,” said Scott. He put down his hat and instrument case and followed her into the living room.

Liss curled herself in a deep wing chair and smiled at him.

“Tea, Doctor?” she suggested, her hand hovering above the bell-button.

“Oh, so this is a social call? Would you be shocked if I asked for tall iced tea, if possible with a sprig of mint on top?”

“It's a wicked waste of mint, since mint was supposed to be used on stuff stronger than iced tea, but we strive to please,” said Liss gaily, and when the maid came, ordered, “tea, please, Julia. With mint.”

The maid went out and Liss studied Scott, as he sat relaxed in a wickedly comfortable armchair. The laughter went out of her eyes and she said quietly, “Tired, Scott?”

“A little,” he admitted. “Mostly, it's that Mrs. Brownlee died this morning. I tried so hard, and it makes me feel so useless.”

Liss let him talk it all out, and when he had finished, he looked up at her, put down the empty, chilled glass and said quietly, “Thanks, Liss. You're a friend.”

Liss looked down into her own glass, and was silent for a moment. And when she looked up there was a mist of tears in her eyes and her soft mouth was tremulous.

“I owe you so much, Scott, so terribly much. It just occurs to me — the idea is not particularly new; I've had glimmerings of it for some time — that you're a pretty wonderful guy, Scott.”

“Oh, come now.”

“No, let me finish, Scott. And don't bother blushing. You're going to hate me before I've finished,” Liss was terribly earnest. “You see, Scott, I'm going to New York next week. I talked to Clay on the telephone yesterday. It was my birthday, Scott, and he remembered and called me. He thinks we can make a go of it, and he wants to try, and so — well, we're going to.” She brushed the tears from her eyes with the back of her hand and smiled at him warmly.

“I'm terribly glad, Liss.”

“You should be. You're the one that brought it about.”

He looked startled. “I did?”

She nodded. “By diagnosing the thing that has kept me from sleeping, that has made me neurotic. Oh, Scott, please believe that if I hurt you now it's only because I love you. I
do
love you, Scott, as my dearest friend, as a wise and kindly and interested slightly older brother.”

“Here, here, what's all this?” Scott was puzzled.

“Scott, you mustn't marry Chloe,” said Liss, as though the words were so difficult to speak that she could only throw them at him like small stones and then sit back and wait, frightened but determined.

Scott stood up, his jaw hard, his eyes cold.

“I'm sorry; Liss, but you must be out of your mind. I can't sit here and listen to an attack on my fiancée.”

Liss pleaded swiftly, “Wait, Scott, please. No one else will tell you these things.”

“I'm quite sure of that.”

“But I am so deeply in your debt, Scott, because you've helped me clear up the mess I was making of my life, and I can't just sit idly by and watch her mess up yours,” Liss pleaded, and now she was on her feet, her hand on his arm, holding him when he would have turned to the door. “Oh, please, Scott, listen to me. You like Hamilton, don't you? Your life here, your friends?”

“Very much.”

“And you have no intention of applying for a position in one of the big, fancy hospitals in Atlanta and setting up offices there and specializing in some fashionable disease or other?” Liss demanded.

In spite of himself, Scott grinned a little, though it was a grin that was still taut with anger. “Have you gone completely out of your head, Liss? What would an ordinary, run-of-the-mill general practitioner like me be doing in a fancy Atlanta hospital? And what in heaven's name would I specialize in? And what would I use for money to finance such specialized training?” he demanded. And now the whole thing seemed in the nature of a joke, even if it was in rather bad taste.

“That's what Chloe is planning for you, Scott,” Liss told him swiftly. “She is hinting around that maybe Tim Ryan likes you well enough to finance you for a couple of years while you do your special training. Oh, don't look at me like that, Scott. It's the truth. I don't know whether she has talked to Tim yet or not, but I wouldn't put it past her.”

“Liss, I'm beginning to wonder if you'd better go to New York after all,” said Scott sharply, “unless you agree to detour for a few months treatment by a top-flight psychiatrist. Even if Chloe had any such absolutely cockeyed ideas in her head — ”

“Take it from me, pal, she has!”

“In that case, very little could be done without my consent. And do you think for one small, infinitesimal moment I'd let her get away with any such thing?”

Liss said quietly, “I'm not ordinarily a betting woman. But want to make a little bet that six months from the day you marry Chloe, you'll be winding up the details of your practice in Hamilton and moving on to larger and more ambitious fields?”

“I never bet on a sure thing, and I'd hate to see you lose,” Scott told her grimly.

Liss lifted her lovely shoulders in a shrug and smiled at him.

“Oh, well, don't ever say I didn't warn you,” she said lightly, and slid her hand through his arm and walked with him to the door, where she stood watching him as he went down the walk and got into his car.

Scott drove to the cottage that was more home to him than any place he could remember in his orphaned life, and left the car in the drive, should there be a call. He let himself into his shabbily comfortable apartment, dropped his instrument case and his hat, and stood for a long time staring straight before him, his eyebrows drawn together.

For the moment he forgot the cold shower and the change of clothes that he had been anticipating so much. What Liss had told him had shaken him badly, for all that he denied it to her and now tried to deny it to himself. Chloe couldn't possibly have any such ideas as Liss had mentioned…. Or could she?

He had no thought of attempting to specialize; he had always wanted to be simply a general practitioner, a family doctor. He liked it; he liked Hamilton; he liked the people. Move to Atlanta? Try for a job in an Atlanta hospital? Specialize? The thought was actually funny. And where would be the advantage to Chloe of his working in a hospital? Regular hours, perhaps, though there were not many “five o'clock surgeons” in hospitals these days; very few whose hours were hard and fast and who could count definitely on being off duty at five o'clock in the afternoon. There would be a regular salary, of course. That might be an advantage, perhaps, to a woman brought up as Chloe had been, though surely when she had promised to marry him, she had known that their income would be uncertain.

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.

“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.”