The Roswell Legacy by Frances Statham (parable of the sower read online .TXT) 📗

charging for the train ride that had once been free were now feeding the smouldering resentment of men whose lives were totally controlled by one man. One day soon, the fire would ignite.

By the time Andrew opened the gate to the mansion by the lake, Morrow was seated near the parlor window. She put down her embroidery and watched him approach the house. Her pleasure in seeing him had not lessened, even after seven years of marriage. Tall and vigorous, he walked with an easy grace. He was handsome by any woman’s standards, with his strong, craggy face and merry blue eyes. But it was his sense of fairness and justice and his vision for the future that had caused Morrow’s love for him to grow through the years.

She stood and went to greet her husband in the hall. “Welcome home, Andrew,” she said, as he gave his hat and coat to Allie.

His smile was heartwarming. “Hello, my lovely,” he said in his lilting Scottish brogue.

Allie giggled in spite of herself, for Andrew’s words were identical to the ones spoken by the man outside the chuck-a-luck gambling hall that afternoon.

“Have I said something extremely amusing?” Andrew inquired.

“No, darling,” Morrow quickly answered. “Allie is being impudent, as usual. I just may send her back to Mother if she can’t behave herself.”

“Perhaps it’s time for your mother to visit us.”

“Yes, that would serve the purpose just as well.” Morrow smiled and left the hallway, with Andrew by her side.

With words used through the ages by wives greeting their husbands home from work, Morrow said, “Did you have a nice day?”

Andrew hesitated. “It was an unsettling day,” he confessed. “But on the way home from Pullman, I finally came to a decision.”

Morrow stopped. With her head inclined in a questioning pose, a mannerism inherited from her father, Coin Forsyth, she looked up at Andrew and waited for him to tell her.

“I’m turning down the Pullman project addition and selling my rail stock. There’s trouble brewing. I don’t know when it will actually come, but when it does there’ll be a regular bloodbath. I’m afraid I won’t have much sympathy for the owners—only for the poor working men.”

CHAPTER

11

Charles stood at one of the windows in the Trask Medical Center complex in Washington and stared out at the quadrangle. Already the morning sun had begun its daily sweep along the paved paths between the buildings and in convoluted patterns had begun to attach itself to the Gothic-gray stone buildings as tightly as the aged ivy that clung to its walls.

A slight breeze through the filtered leaves of a nearby tree played about the open arched window and reached inside to riffle the papers on Charles’s desk. But the paperweight was sufficient to keep them in order. The proposed medical budget for another six months was much too important to be scattered by the wind.

The medical center, although affiliated with the university system, was a separate entity, with its own operating budget and a near autonomy for its governing medical staff. Only twice a year was the director called upon to attend the trustees meeting, and that was mainly to get the budget approved, a mere formality if one were careful not to be too specific about the research department. Charles had been warned about that. The idea of exploring tissue for cause of death and disease was a touchy issue, for it had not been too many years since it was against the law.

Charles took out his watch to check the time. Nine o’clock. Any moment now, Allison’s husband should be appearing. He left the window and sat down at his desk to review the medical journal that had just arrived from England.

He found solace in the familiar, for how did a man prepare himself to see another man who had taken his wife from him? In his medical practice, Charles had seen the best and the worst of humanity—all the follies, all the jealousies that had eaten away at a man’s soul and caused him as much distress as any fatal disease of the body.

Since meeting Allison in the park the previous afternoon, Charles had fought hard not to allow his own emotions to rule him. But he was a man first. And he was aware that a medical degree meant little in matters of the heart. Emotions were primitive and could not be excised with the scalpel.

A knock at the door brought Charles to his feet so abruptly that he jarred the skeleton hanging in the corner. A macabre dancing of bones accompanied Charles’s trek across the room to open the door.

“Dr. Forsyte?”

Charles stared at the dark-haired man who was several inches taller than he. It had been over twenty years since he’d seen him, and then only from a distance. Now he was actually facing the man who had appeared in his nightmares during those early years.

“Major Meadors?”

“Yes.”

“Come in, please. I was expecting you.”

Charles made no move to shake hands. He had gotten out of the habit long ago, after being admonished by his mentor for doing so.

“Charles, your surgeon’s hands are priceless. And you’d be a fool to risk harm to them by some sadistic bonecrusher trying to impress upon you how much character he has.”

He motioned Allison’s husband to a chair instead. “Have a seat, Major.”

The two men sat across from each other. Like two stags, they sized each other up. Neither was in a hurry to begin the conversation. But Charles, as host, finally broke the awkward silence.

“I suppose Allison has already told you of our … of the past.”

“Yes. And I understand the necessity of keeping it quiet for the moment.”

“Especially because of Ginna and your son,” Charles added. “I’ve thought about them for the past week, wondering what path we should take. I’d like to hear your thoughts on the matter.”

Rad cleared his throat. The man before him was one he might eventually have sought out for friendship,