Bingham appeared on the door-step, just as the tail of locomotive smoke
swept over the front yard. "Will you smoke with us?" asked Marshall.
Brower smiled, though neither of the others seemed conscious of any
secondary meaning in this simple question. "Thank you, no," replied
Bingham. "I am moving on to an appointment, and am a little late as it
is." He looked down on Marshall with an expression of friendly
solicitude, and shook hands with him in a long, slow clasp. "Good-night;
you are entitled to better care than you are giving yourself." And he
moved down the footpath towards the front gate.
Marshall looked after him wistfully. "If I were only in that man's shoes!
If I but had half his health and strength!" Brower heard nothing of this;
he was straining his ears for a further sound from within.
"I must get rest," cried the old man, pitifully. "I'm wearing out. I stay
up till midnight and after, every night, and even then it's sometimes
daylight before I have a minute's sleep, I can't stand it; nobody can."
There was a sound inside, as of scuffling among the furniture. It was
Jane, feeling her way through the dark, listening for the sound of
Theodore Brower's voice, and murmuring tremulously with her own,
"_Toujours fidele; toujours fidele!_"
"What can I do?" asked the old man, with an appealing grip on Brower's
arm. "What doctor can I see? Where can I go for a change and for rest? Or
how," he groaned, "can I go away at all? They are crowding me down; they
are wrenching my business from my hands! I can't give way at such a time
as this!"
Brower hardly heard him; he was listening for Jane, who was now doubling
the newel-post just within, and whose quavering undertone broke at the
turn as she chanted once more her phrase of hope and reassurance.
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