The Return of Peter Grimm by David Belasco (good romance books to read TXT) 📖

perfectly friendly way.' I hope you are quite satisfied?"

"I am," answered Frederik. "Quite. In fact I'm every bit as satisfied as you are, uncle."

Grimm sat very still for a moment or so, staring blindly into space, his head on his breast. Then, with a sigh, he roused himself. Reaching for the telephone he called up his office.

"Send Mr. Hartmann over here," he commanded.

He set down the instrument and resumed his blank stare into nothingness. Frederik was once more wholly engrossed in the book he was not reading. Hartmann broke in upon the strained silence.

"You sent for me, sir?" he asked, his breezy bigness waking the still room to life.

"Yes," replied Peter Grimm. "James, it has occurred to me--to ask--it has occurred to me that--James, please tell me your reason for asking a few minutes ago to be transferred to Florida?"

James made no immediate reply. He seemed ransacking his mind for the right words. Grimm eyed him closely, asking with sudden directness:

"Was it on account of my little girl?"

"Yes, sir," replied Hartmann.

The secretary's confusion had fled. Calm, self-contained, flinching not at all from the shrewd, searching eyes that were fixed on his own, he stood awaiting the breaking of the storm.


CHAPTER IV


A WARNING AND A THEORY

But, to Hartmann's surprise, the storm did not break. Instead, Peter Grimm sat gazing at him with impassive face,--gazing long and without a word. And when at last Grimm spoke, the old man's voice was as emotionless as his face.

"You love her?" he asked.

"Yes, sir," answered Hartmann, as calmly as though stating some fact in botany.

"H'--m!" rumbled Grimm, half to himself. "_Ja vis! Ja vis!_"

Hartmann still waited for the storm. And still it did not come.

"You love her?" repeated Grimm. "Does she know?"

"No. She doesn't know. She need never know. I had not meant to say a word to any one."

Grimm rose and came toward him. The hard face was gentle again. The inquisitorial voice was once more kindly.

"James," said the old man, "go to the office and get your money. Then start for Florida headquarters. Good-bye."

"Good-bye, sir," replied James, grasping the outstretched hand. "I'm very sorry."

"I'm sorry, too, James. Good-bye!"

As Hartmann left the room, Grimm turned to Frederik, and his eyes were full of pain.

"_That_ is settled, thank Heaven!" he announced; but there was no jubilance in his voice. "I wish--Hello, there's old McPherson!"

Glad to divert his mind he hurried to the front door to welcome the visitor and drew him into the room with friendly roughness.

Dr. McPherson would have borne the stamp, "Family physician of the Old School," even had he been found in the ranks of the Matabele army. Big, shaggy, bearded, he was of the ancient and puissant type that, under the tidal wave of "specialism" is fast being swept towards the shores where live the last survivors of the Great Auk, the Dinosaur, and the Spread Eagle Orator tribes.

"Good-morning, Peter," hailed the doctor, a Scotch burr faintly rasping his bluff voice. "Morning, Fred. I passed young Hartmann at the gate. He looks as if he was taking a pleasure trip to his own funeral. What ails him?"

No one answered.

"He's about the finest lad that ever I brought into the world. What's happened to make him so----? Good-morning, Kathrien," he broke off, as the girl, followed by Marta, came in with Grimm's long delayed breakfast.

"Good-morning, Doctor," she answered. "Oom Peter, you forgot to send for this. So I----"

"What's that?" roared McPherson, sniffing the air like a bull that scents an enemy. "Coffee? Why, damn it, Peter, I forbade you to touch coffee. It's rank poison to you. And you know it is. I told you----"

"Wouldn't you like a cup, Doctor?" asked Kathrien innocently.

"I----"

"Of course he'll take a cup," interrupted Grimm. "He'll damn it. But he'll drink it."

"And look here!" proceeded McPherson, pointing an accusing finger at the breakfast tray. "Waffles! Actually _waffles_! And after I told you----"

"Yes, Katje," explained Grimm, "he'll damn the waffles, too. But, if you watch closely, you'll notice he'll eat some. Sit down, Andrew."

"I tell you," fumed the doctor, "I didn't come here to encourage you, by my example, in wrecking your system. I came for a serious talk with you, Peter."

Kathrien, at the hint, discreetly effaced herself. Frederik followed her example.

"Well? well?" queried Peter in mock despair, seating himself opposite his old crony and tyrant. "What new horrors of diet have you thought up for my misery? Out with it. Let me know the worst."

"It isn't your body this time, Peter," was the troubled answer. "It's something that means more. The matter's been keeping me awake all night. Tell me:--how is every one provided for in this house?"

"Provided for?" echoed Peter in bewilderment. "How do you mean? Everybody gets enough to eat and we are----"

"Why, you don't understand me. You're a wonderful man for making plans, Peter. But what have you done?"

"Done?"

"If you--if you were to die--say to-morrow, or--or any other time," went on the doctor with an effort at carelessness that sat on his rough honesty as ill as his Sunday broadcloth adorned his rugged shoulders, "if you--die--unexpectedly,--how would it be with the rest of them here?"

Grimm set down his coffee cup with slow precision. And slowly he raised his eyes to McPherson's worried gaze.

"What do you mean?" he asked with something very like awe in his tone. "If I were to die to-morrow----"

"You won't!" declared McPherson emphatically. "You won't. So don't worry. You're good for a long time yet. A score of years, perhaps. You're all right, if you take decent care of yourself. Which you never do. But we've all got to come to it, sooner or later. And it's well to make provision. For instance, what would Kathrien's position be in this house, in case you were taken out of it? Kathrien is a little 'prescription' of mine, you'll remember. And--I suppose your heart is still set on her marrying Frederik, so that what is one's will be the other's. Personally I've always thought it was rather a pity that Frederik wasn't James and James wasn't Frederik."

"Eh?" cried Peter. "What's that?"

"It's none of my business," answered McPherson. "And it's all very well as it stands--if she wants Frederik. But if you want to do anything for _her_ future welfare, take my advice, and do it _now_."

"You mean," Peter said evenly, between stiffening lips, "you mean that I could--die?"

"Every one can," replied McPherson with elephantine lightness. "And at one time or another, every one does. It's a thing to be prepared for."

"One moment," urged Grimm, the keen little eyes piercing the other's badly woven cloak of indifference. "You think that I----!"

"I mean nothing more nor less, Peter, than that the machinery is wearing out. There's absolutely no cause for apprehension. Still, I thought I had better tell you."

"But," asked Grimm with a pathetic insistence, "if there's no cause for apprehension----?"

"Listen, Peter: when I cured you of that cold the other day--the cold you got by tramping around like an idiot among the wet flower-beds without rubbers--I made a discovery of--of something I can't cure."

Grimm studied his friend's unreadable face for an instant with an almost painful intensity. Then a smile swept away the worry from his own visage.

"Oh, Andrew, you old croaking Scotch raven," he cried. "Your professional ways will be the death of some one yet. But the 'some one' won't be Peter Grimm. That sick bed manner is splendid for bullying old maids into taking their tonic. But it's wasted on a grown man. No, no, Andrew. You can't make _me_ out an invalid. You doctors are a sorry lot. You pour medicines of which you know little into systems of which you know nothing. You condemn people to death as the old Inquisition would have blushed to. Why, every day we read in the papers about some frisky boy a hundred years old whom the doctors gave up for lost when he was twenty-five. And," the forced gaiety in his voice merging into aggressive resolve, "I'm going to live to see children in this old house of mine. Katje's babies creeping about this very floor; sliding down those bannisters over there, pulling the ears of Lad, my collie."

"Good Lord, Peter! That dog is fifteen years old _now_! Argue yourself into miraculous longevity if you want to. But don't argue old Lad into it. Do you expect _nothing_ will ever change in your home?"

"Perhaps," agreed Peter, with unshaken defiance. "But not before I live to see a new line of rosy-faced, fluffy-haired little Grimms."

McPherson leaned back with a sigh of discouragement. Then, with professional insight, he noted for the first time the gallant fight the old man opposite him was making to keep up that obstinate gay courage whose outward expression had so irritated the doctor. And, all at once, McPherson ceased to become the gruff friend and assumed the role that Ananias's physician probably acquired from his famous patient and which, most assuredly, he has handed down to all his medical successors.

"I see no reason, Peter," said he with judicial ponderousness, "why you shouldn't reach a ripe old age. You're quite likely to outlive me and a host of younger men. Only, take better care of yourself. And,--no matter how many probable years of life a man has before him, it does him no harm to set his house in order. Think over that part of my advice and forget the rest of it."

"Forget the rest of it," echoed Grimm absently. "The rest----"

McPherson hesitated; then as though overcome by a temptation too strong for him to battle against, he blurted out half-shamefacedly:

"Peter--don't laugh at me. I want to make a strange compact with you. As I've told you, you're quite likely to outlive me. But--will you agree that whichever of us happens to--to go first,--shall come back and--and let the other fellow know? Let the other fellow know; so as to settle the Great Question once and for all?"

Grimm stared at him for a moment. Then he set the room ringing with a laugh of whose mocking heartiness there could be no doubt.

"Oh, Andrew! Andrew!" he cried, when he could get his breath. "Still riding your one crazy hobby! And you so sane in other ways!"

"But you'll make the compact?" begged McPherson. "You're a man of your word,----"

"Make a compact to----? Oh, no, no, man. _No!_ I'd be ashamed to have people know I was such a fool."

"But," urged the doctor, "no one else need know anything about it. It'll be just between ourselves."

"No, no, dear old Andrew," laughed Grimm indulgently. "Positively _no_! I refuse, point-blank. I'll do you any favour in reason. But I draw the line at being dragged into any of your absurd spook tests."

"You sneer at 'spooks,' as you call them," retorted the doctor. "Most people do. Just as people scoffed when Columbus told them there was an America. But how many times do you think _you_ have seen a spook, yourself?"

"A spook? I can't remember that I ever----"

"Yes, a ghost."

"A ghost," repeated Grimm with the utmost solemnity and wrinkling his forehead as in an effort of memory. "I can't just now recall----"