THE LABORATORY IN THE HILLS I BY ELIZABETH FOOTE DR. CARTHEW had founded his laboratory, including, with an air of afterthought, his house, in a way that illustrates the force of reaction. Privacy was his first need; but he seemed to have desired that, when his close-worked eyes were raised from the microscope, they should have the contrast of as wide a vision as they could command. He was both in the hills and for the most part above them. His workshop clung to a high, sun-beaten crest. with an alarmed appearance of holding on by both hands, and supporting itself on an unusual number of legs. The drop of the hill from under necessitated this propping of quite half the building upon timbers whose length increased with the slope. This made, beneath, a shadowy, pillared cave. Its floor was rocky and of various degrees of steepness, its ceiling was the underside of the house; it was the private den of his daughter Babette, and strewed with her belongings, books showing marks of the same violence she bestowed upon her friends, mending of a large and hopeless description, and a few attempts at comfort in the form of battered rugs and cushions. Her brother had contributed certain woodsy collections barely distinguishable from rubbish-heaps; but she had the place mostly to herself. Young Carthew ranged the hills like a stray hound, and looked upon his home as a lodging for the night or occasional base of supplies. Babette came around the corner of the blazing piazza and descended its steps humming under her breath: Pars, mon ami, l'Alsace est prise! She was a fierce-eyed maiden of fifteen, thin as a little wolf, with a weight of black hair about her shoulders. There was an air of mastery about that head of hair which suggested that at some rather remote period Babette had been worsted in an attempt to comb it. She stopped her song suddenly, because, on looking over the railing into her cave, she saw that Patsy Chaloner was there. He was lying on every possible cushion, with an open book propped facedownward on his chest. He presented the very impersonation of laziness. He was also an intruder. Yet only that morning she had been defending his presence at the laboratory to his imperious cousin, Roma Chaloner, on the ground that he was studying chemistry with her father. "So he told me," Roma had said, but with amusement. "You don't seem to believe it." "That he's studying! Patsy!" Babette had championed her father's guest with her usual irrelevant detail. "Patsy is very nice. He helps me with my pony. John never has time to clean her, and I can't take her to town with burs in her mane, but Patsy helps me. When he brought his horse he wanted to bring his groom too; but of course there was no room for him. There really is n't any room for Patsy." Which brought one back to the original fact, that among the Carthews, with their faces of deadly earnest, and their abstracted housekeeping, Patsy was an anomaly. Babette descended upon him with a forbidding expression. She slipped among the rocks, declining his assistance, and fished up his book from a crevice where it had slid. "If you don't like this book there are others in the laboratory," she remarked. "It's cooler than the laboratory," Patsy pleaded. He had gentle, brownamber eyes like a setter dog. It was difficult (though often essential) to be harsh with him. "Besides, I'm kicked out. Mrs. Bunce is scrubbing." This explanation seemed to be satisfactory, and even diverting, to Babette. She seated herself with a satiric smile. "Did you stay long enough to hear any of it?" Patsy also smiled. "There seemed to be some disagreement between Mrs. Bunce and the doctor." "I should think there was! They have different ideas of cleanness." "Yes. Against the ordinary soap and bucket kind. The crash is something awful." At this point Newton Carthew appeared on the steps of the piazza, and peered down at them. "Hullo, Tony! Did no one call you?" asked Babette. It was near noon, but Newton was not a person of fixed habits. He blinked in the sun, his hair was all rubbed one way, and his just having got up was needlessly confirmed by the bathrobe that was his outer garment. Babette observed him. "You look as if Mrs. Bunce had been scrubbing you." "She scrubbed me out of bed all right. She must have broken something in the lab, by the noise. I say, Patsy, will you go fishing with me after lunch?” 66 "'Fraid I can't," said Patsy. "Oh, why not! I grant you it's a poor time to start; but we need n't come back till we're ready." "That's the hitch. I have an appointment with the doctor. Nobody ever kept an appointment that went fishing with you.' "Your appointments! I don't believe they're as important as you make them out. I can't see what you do puttering around in the lab." "What makes you think so?" inquired Patsy. "Stains on your fingers," said the daughter of the laboratory. Patsy laughed. Developing kodak films was responsible for the stains. "You're a great little detective, Babette, but you're off this time. The doctor would n't trust me with his slides for a round sum." Patsy got up and shook himself and went up the steps, making a grab at Tony's frowzy head in passing. He stood on the high piazza and looked far out on the wide circle of the hills, dreamy with heat, fading, height beyond height, into mysterious union with the sky. To see so far was yet to be shut in. It was like gazing into the future. And, for a moment at least, Patsy Chaloner's eyes looked as though they were following his thoughts into the invisible. But by and by my soul returned to me. Probably he was only taking in the remarks of Mrs. Bunce from within. Mrs. Bunce was a person of considerable presence apart from her command of rhetoric. The breadth of her hips, more especially when she planted both hands upon them, seemed to throw a certain personal weight into her most abstract arguments. On the occasion of this morning's cleaning she wore a jaunty sailor hat over a small amount of strained and knotted hair. Evidently she considered the laboratory an unsheltered spot. Those who encountered Dr. Carthew there occasionally found it so. Mrs. Bunce was cook and housekeeper, and ruled in her department with a tyranny not unlike the doctor's in his. She was nothing daunted when the departments and the tyrants - met. She was even now about to deprive the laboratory of her ministrations. "And the last time ever I was to town," she wound up her ultimatum, "I says to my daughter Mrs. Bucket: 'My Lord!' I says, 'I ain't done all my own work be "He does microscope work for father," sides working for the mayor's wife, in a said Babette. three-story house, and the best street in town, to come out to a rough place like here, and be told how to scrub floors.' When I've done with a room it don't need no going over again, not with no such rank-smelling dose as that;" she pointed to her pail, the contents of which had evidently been tampered with. "What's more, -I say it looks bad when a place needs disinfecting and there ain't nobody been sick. I say it's a queer place that's got to be cleaned that kind er way. An' I ain't so dull but what I know there's things kept in these rooms and things goin' on here that you won't find in no respectable house." "I dare say you would n't," said the doctor. "Take that pail away! Come in here, Chaloner." As Patsy entered he shut the door on Mrs. Bunce's indignant exit; but the mingled reek of brown soap and disinfectants being rather overpowering, he opened it again. It showed one corner of the queer little sittingroom, dark against the light of a window opposite, which framed in turn a burning glimpse of the hills. This little picture of immensity, set in the wall as in a telescope, held Patsy's eyes this afternoon as those far, familiar hills had never done before. Perhaps it was the hypnotism of a square of brightness; perhaps it was that, as the old woman had said, strange things happened in the doctor's house. The doctor himself, in a well-dressed, gentlemanly way, was an alarming-looking person. His eyes were as full of youthful madness as Babette's, yet they were intensely cold. He had the brows of a fanatic. The blackness of his closecropped head, the blueness of his shaven lips and chin, gave him the appearance of a man who, if once he gave in to his hair, would revert to the original jungle. He leaned across his desk and scrutinized Patsy, who remarked conversationally, "I suppose you're not afraid of the old woman's talk ?" "I am," said Dr. Carthew. "I'm afraid of all fools. They're extremely dangerous. The world being full of them, I don't consider it a safe place for a busy man. However, I've been very mild with the old thing." Patsy had only the doctor's word for this unlikely statement. "I don't want her to leave us in the lurch just now." "Then we're all ready?" "Ready!" muttered the doctor. "I've been ready these ten years!" He had a deep, sweet voice, and it touched with a tragic contrast the harshness of his words, seeming to hint that he might have been human if the world had not needed him for an implacable tool. "You are prepared-physically," he Isaid to Chaloner. "I don't know what you are thinking about. I don't want to know. But I should think you would be a good deal interested. I was mad once to do it myself, — and held back by having two children. I never thought then I'd find a man who would offer to do it for me. Certainly not one in your circumstances." In spite of his alleged indifference, Dr. Carthew looked curiously at Patsy. "I suppose I'm rather in luck," said the young man dully. "It's a neat way of closing things up if you don't care to go on. Only I hope there won't be a row till it's over. Of course there will be one then." "There certainly will," said the doctor. "If it fails there'll be one that may send me to join you." "I should think the law would give you a big chance even if you can't hush it up." "Oh, there'll be plenty of chance. And I suppose I shall have to truckle to it for the sake of the kids. It will be the most I've done for them yet. Imagine the sweetness of daily life, when you've aspired to change the fate of present millions and unborn generations! You've heard of a fellow who was sent to St. Helena after trying to conquer the world!" Patsy might have reflected that it was a fellow with somewhat of the doctor's fatal genius. But he was merely looking at the little far-away hills and thinking childishly: "However it comes out, she I will think of me a little different from the way she does now." He found it difficult to attend to the doctor's remarks, though he knew them to be freighted. Almost anything distracted him. He heard Babette going up to her little attic room, and mechanically counted her steps on the stairs, and then on the floor above his head. Babette was a person of associations. There were so many cherished knickknacks pinned to the walls of her bedroom that it looked something like a scrapbook. A libellous assortment of snapshots taken by Patsy gave glimpses of Roma's Chaloner striking face, seeming to submit with a humorous stoicism to all the forms of caricature; and beside Roma's, another face, so fair that the sun could not distort it,—that of Ellen Fearing, her dearest friend. Babette was turning things over in a drawer. She drew out a photograph of a different finish and date. It was of a round, thoughtless, girlish face, with a hurt look in the eyes which some one perhaps had put there, for it did not seem to belong to that face. Beneath it was delicately scrawled: "Mes mains dans les vôtres HÉLÈNE." her mother's memory. He never spoke of his dead young wife nor permitted the mention of her name. He had loved her; she was not clever; he was a man of imperious intellect; and he had been cruel to her. But Babette did not know that. She only took his hardness for granted. and kept the dream of her lost childhood far from him and from all uncomprehending eyes. The door opened suddenly and Newton extended a torn jacket into the room by the scruff of its neck. "I say, Babette, I wish you'd —” "I wish you'd knock at my door!" snapped Babette. "Leave it here. I'll mend it right away." Newton retreated and Babette took the coat downstairs with her. She went out upon the piazza first, but the afternoon shadow had not yet prolonged itself there, and she slipped back into the gloom of the little sittingroom. She could see Patsy through the laboratory door, evidently talking to her father, whose desk was out of range. He looked at her in a reflective way and his next remark was in French. Babette turned her head with a little thrill at the sound. The doctor answered, — in noticeably better French than Patsy's. — and the conversation continued in that tongue. The doctor attributed it vaguely to some glimpse of Mrs. Bunce seen by Patsy through the door, or a general feeling of a wish to veil their discourse. Babette, listening mechanically as she wrestled with a patch, was gradually impressed with a meaning to their words. Babette took out a French book that was underneath the photograph, and then put it back again, reflecting that Patsy was not going fishing and would be at large in the house all day. She did not wish him to see her reading that book, So that was why Patsy Chaloner was and to question her about it. This was staying at the laboratory! Well, he might part of a curious fancy of Babette's that not be useful himself, but he was certainno outsider should know how she clung ly allowing others to make use of hiin! to the speech of her French mother. She The extent to which he was being used. would not have adınitted that she could did not dawn upon her. It would hardly speak French. Yet she had kept her hold have occurred to any one who should upon it. She read it, thought in it: some- have beheld Patsy through the half-open times she spoke it with her father in cer- door, his hands in the pockets of his sporttain moments of odd intellectual com- ing breeches. tilting back his chair and radeship that arose between them. Yet bumping his brown head softly against it was he who was responsible for the a tall box behind him where the doctor pression of this as of all other tokens of kept a skeleton. Lengthening shadows sup lured Babette to a seat on the piazza, and Patsy subsided with relief into English. "D' you mean to say you can tell it within a day? Sort of like tracking up a comet, is n't it?” Dr. Carthew kicked his desk with one of the sudden, irritable movements peculiar to him. "You'll be of a good deal more importance to this world than a comet if you live to be tracked up!" II In the afternoon Patsy descended from the double-edged atmosphere of the laboratory in the hills to the little, provincial town at their feet. He tied his skittish saddle-horse, put into harness for the nonce and extremely unresigned to it, and ran up the steps of the Fearings' house. He searched unsuccessfully for the bell. Through the screen door he could dimly see within that a lesson in gymnastics was going forward. Ellen Fearing's two little sisters, holding themselves breathlessly erect, stood opposite Ellen and followed her movements stiffly with serious eyes. Ellen was counting in tones of encouragement: "One, two, one, two straight up, Polly! Come, you'll do better with the music!" She sat down to the battered little piano and began an enticing march. The little girls interrupted her: "Mr. Chaloner 's at the door!" They assisted Ellen (all with rosy faces) in receiving her guest. "We're doing physical culture!" they hastened to inform him. "Bully!" said Patsy, while Ellen laughed deliciously. "Going to be mughunters, are you?" "We're going to be as straight as Miss Roma Chaloner," Polly, the eldest, explained. "You don't say! Are you going to be as tall as Miss Roma Chaloner ?" The little Fearings were not sure as to that. Patsy reported himself as on the way to the Chaloners'. Roma had said she expected Ellen there that afternoon. Would she not go with him? "I'm afraid I can't go now," Ellen considered. "I know. Roma said you could n't. But she said I was to tag around till you could." Ellen rolled down her sleeves, and replaced the stock which hid the perfection of her throat. "A sweet disorder in the dress," did not alter her reserved and delicate beauty. "I have to take flowers to the church, and arrange them—" "All right," agreed Patsy. "I'll carry the flowers." The little girls brought baskets with green boughs and summer roses, and Patsy picked up a basket and a little girl with an air of imperfectly distinguishing them and led the way. The small wooden church was dim and close, its atmosphere reminiscent of past congregations. Under Ellen's directions he opened the long windows; leaves from the poplars outside drifted in. He fastened boughs in an arch over the chancel, the little girls taking care to "hold the ladder" lest he should fall. He narrowly escaped treading on their fingers, and they were sent to gather hymn-books in the pews. "Do you want some of the roses stuck up there?" inquired the philistine Patsy. "Oh no, I want them all for the altar." He watched her as she spread white linen cloths over the green baize ones, and placed a slender vase of roses on either side of the bright brass cross. He found it a pleasant sight. But Ellen was thinking of another church; of a high altar in whose shadow she had stood, as in the shadow of a great rock, with the heavy-headed roses of the city in her hands. She thought of the light from dark and glowing windows, of the long vista of the aisles, the climb of great organ pipes, |