Doc. Gordon | Page 9

out Doctor
Gordon. "Take him in and take care of him."
"Have you got to go away again?" said the woman's voice. It was sweet
and rich, but had a curious sad quality in it.
"Yes, I must. I shall not be gone long. Don't wait supper."
"Aren't you going to change the horse?"
"Can't stop. Go right in, Elliot. Clara, look after him."

James Elliot found himself in the house, confronting the most beautiful
woman he had ever seen, as the rapid trot of the doctor's horse receded
in vistas of sound.
James almost gasped. He had never seen such a woman. He had seen
pretty girls. Now he suddenly realized that a girl was not a woman, and
no more to be compared with her than an uncut gem with one whose
facets take the utmost light.
The boy stood staring at this wonderful woman. She extended her hand
to him, but he did not see it. She said some gracious words of greeting
to him, but he did not hear them. She might have been the Venus de
Milo for all he heard or realized of sentient life in her. He was rapt in
contemplation of herself, so rapt that he was oblivious of her. She
smiled. She was accustomed to having men, especially very young men,
take such an attitude on first seeing her. She did not wait any longer,
but herself took the young man's hand, and drew him gently into the
room, and spoke so insistently that she compelled him to leave her and
attend. "I suppose you are Doctor Gordon's assistant?" she said.
James relapsed into the tricks of his childhood. "Yes, ma'am," he
replied. Then he blushed furiously, but the woman seemed to notice
neither the provincial term nor his confusion. He found himself
somehow, he did not know how, divested of his overcoat, and the
vision had disappeared, having left some words about dinner ringing in
his ears, and he was sitting before a hearth-fire in a large leather
easy-chair. Then he looked about the room in much the same dazed
fashion in which he had contemplated the woman. He had never seen a
room like it. He was used to conventionality, albeit richness, and a
degree even of luxury. Here were absolute unconventionality, richness,
and luxury of a kind utterly strange to him. The room was very large
and long, extending nearly the whole length of the house. There were
many windows with Eastern rugs instead of curtains. There were
Eastern things hung on the walls which gave out dull gleams of gold
and silver and topaz and turquoise. There were a great many books on
low shelves. There were bronzes, jars, and squat idols. There were a
few pieces of Chinese ivory work. There were many skins of lions,

bears, and tigers on the floor, besides a great Persian rug which
gleamed like a blurred jewel. Besides the firelight there was only one
great bronze lamp to illuminate the room. This lamp had a red shade,
which cast a soft, fiery glow over everything. There were not many
pictures. The rich Eastern stuffs, and even a skin or two of tawny hue,
covered most of the wall-spaces above the book-cases, giving
backgrounds of color to bronzes and ivory carvings, but there was one
picture at the farther end of the room which attracted James's notice.
All that he could distinguish from where he sat was a splash of splendid
red.
He gazed, and his curiosity grew. Finally he rose, traversed the room,
and came close to the picture. It was a portrait of the woman who had
met him at the door. The red was the red of a splendid robe of velvet.
The portrait was evidently the work of no mean artist. The texture of
the velvet was something wonderful, so were the flesh tones; but James
missed something in the face. The portrait had been painted, he knew
instinctively, before some great change had come into the woman's
heart, which had given her another aspect of beauty.
James turned away. Then he noticed something else which seemed
rather odd about the room. All the windows were furnished with heavy
wooden shutters, and, early as it was, hardly dark, all were closed, and
fastened securely. James somehow got an impression of secrecy, that it
was considered necessary that no glimpse of the interior should be
obtained from without after the lamp was lit. They sat often carelessly
at his own home of an evening with the shades up, and all the interior
of the room plainly visible from the road. An utter lack of secrecy was
in James's own character. He scowled a little, as he returned to his seat
by the fire. He was too confused to think clearly,