The doctor looks at me like he don't skeercly know me. Which he don't. He has one of them quiet kind of drunks on. Which Looey explains is bound to come every so often. He don't do nothing mean, but jest gets low-sperrited and won't talk to no one. Then all of a sudden he will go down town and walk up and down the main streets, orderly, but looking hard into people's faces, mostly women's faces. Oncet, Looey says, they was big trouble over it. They was in a store in a good-sized town, and he took hold of a woman's chin, and tilted her face back, and looked at her hard, and most scared her to death, and they was nearly being a riot there. And he was jailed and had to pay a big fine. Since then Looey always follers him around when he is that-a-way.
Well, that night Doctor Kirby is too fur gone fur us to have our show. He jest sets and stares and stares at the fire, and his eyes looks like they is another fire inside of his head, and he is hurting outside and in. Looey and me watches him from the shadders fur a long time before we turns in, and the last thing I seen before I went to sleep was him setting there with his face in his hands, staring, and his lips moving now and then like he was talking to himself.
The next day he is asleep all morning. But that day he don't drink any more, and Looey says mebby it ain't going to be one of the reg'lar pifflicated kind. I seen Martha agin that day, too--twicet I has talks with her. I told her about the doctor.
"Is he into a quest, do you think?" I asts her.
She says she thinks it is remorse fur some crime he has done. But I couldn't figger Doctor Kirby would of done none. So that night after the show I says to him, innocent-like:
"Doctor Kirby, what is a quest?" He looks at me kind of queer.
"Wherefore," says he, "this sudden thirst for enlightenment?""I jest run acrost the word accidental-like," Itold him.
He looks at me awful hard, his eyes jest natcherally digging into me. I felt like he knowed I had set out to pump him. I wisht I hadn't tried it. Then he tells me a quest is a hunt. And I'm glad that's over with. But it ain't. Fur purty soon he says:
"Danny, did you ever hear of Lady Clara Vere de Vere?""No," I says, "who is she?"
"A lady friend of Lord Tennyson's," he says, "whose manners were above reproach.""Well," I says, "she sounds kind of like a medi-cine to me."
"Lady Clara," he says, "and all the other Vere de Veres, were people with manners we should try to imitate. If Lady Clara had been here last night when I was talking to myself, Danny, her manners wouldn't have let her listen to what Iwas talking about."
"I didn't listen!" I says. Fur I seen what he was driving at now with them Vere de Veres. He thought I had ast him what a quest was because he was on one. I was certain of that, now. He wasn't quite sure what he had been talking about, and he wanted to see how much I had hearn. Ithinks to myself it must be a awful funny kind of hunt he is on, if he only hunts when he is in that fix. But I acted real innocent and like my feelings was hurt, and he believed me. Purty soon he says, cheerful like:
"There was a girl talking to you to-day, Danny.""Mebby they was," I says, "and mebby they wasn't." But I felt my face getting red all the same, and was mad because it did. He grinned kind of aggervating at me and says some poetry at me about in the spring a young man's frenzy likely turns to thoughts of love.
"Well," I says, kind of sheepish-like, "this is summer-time, and purty nigh autumn." Then Iseen I'd jest as good as owned up I liked Martha, and was kind of mad at myself fur that. But Itold him some more about her, too. Somehow I jest couldn't help it. He laughs at me and goes on into the tent.
I laid there and looked at the fire fur quite a spell, outside the tent. I was thinking, if all them tales wasn't jest dern foolishness, how I wisht Iwould really find a dad that was a high-mucky-muck and could come back in an automobile and take her away. I laid there fur a long, long time;it must of been fur a couple of hours. I supposed the doctor had went to sleep.
But all of a sudden I looks up, and he is in the door of the tent staring at me. I seen he had been in there at it hard agin, and thinking, quiet-like, all this time. He stood there in the doorway of the tent, with the firelight onto his face and his red beard, and his arms stretched out, holding to the canvas and looking at me strange and wild.
Then he moved his hand up and down at me, and he says:
"If she's fool enough to love you, treat her well--treat her well. For if you don't, you can never run away from the hell you'll carry in your own heart."And he kind of doubled up and pitched forward when he said that, and if I hadn't ketched him he would of fell right acrost the fire. He was plumb pifflicated.
