The new year began inauspiciously at the Queerington's. In the first place Bertie woke up with the chickenpox and was banished to the nursery. Then the Doctor followed his annual custom of going over his business affairs, with the usual result that he found his accounts greatly overdrawn. This fact was solemnly communicated to each member of the family in turn together with admonitions in regard to the future. By lunch time Hattie had been sent to her room for impertinently suggesting that her father spent more on his books than she did on her clothes, and Connie was sulking over a reduced allowance.
“Of course,” the Doctor explained to Miss Lady as he sank exhausted into his invalid chair which had been pressed into service again during the past few weeks, “I have no doubt but that Basil Sequin can arrange things for me. He always has in the past, but he seems very pressed of late, very harassed. I hardly like to approach him so soon again for a loan.”
“Couldn't we rent a smaller house, and have less company?” suggested Miss Lady.
The Doctor shook his head. “It would be very difficult for me to adjust myself to new surroundings. The conditions here for my work are fairly satisfactory. The Ivy's piano, to be sure, is a constant annoyance, but by using cotton in my ears I obviate that nuisance. It is particularly unfortunate that this complication about money should come just at the most critical point of my work. Unless Basil Sequin can make some arrangement, I shall be seriously embarrassed.”
“I'll tell you what we can do,” cried Miss Lady brightly, just as if she had not been trying to get herself up to the point of making the offer for a week. “We can sell off another bit of Thornwood. Since the Sequins built out there ever so many people have asked about ground.”
“No,” said the Doctor, the lines of care deepening in his fine, grave face. “There is little left now but the house and farm. Your sentiment regarding the place is such that I cannot permit the sacrifice. The matter will doubtless adjust itself. I shall take some private pupils at the university and perhaps arrange an extra course of lectures. The exigencies of the past two years have been exceptional.”
“But you are already working yourself to death,” protested Miss Lady. “Doctor Wyeth said last week that you could not stand the strain. The rest of us ought to do something; we must do something!”
“You are doing something, my dear. You are relieving me of innumerable burdens in regard to the house and the children. You are proving of great assistance to me in my work, not only by your reading aloud, but by the unfailing sympathy and understanding you give me. Whatever success shall crown my life work will be in a measure due to you.”
She was sitting on a hassock at his feet, and she looked up at him with strange, dumb eyes. His frail body and towering ambition, his loveless life that knew not what it missed, roused in her a pity almost maternal. A fierce resentment rose within her against herself, for not loving him as she knew a husband should be loved. If he had only won her with his heart instead of his head!
The door bell rang and Miss Lady glanced up apprehensively.
“It was the pickle woman,” announced Myrtella, coming in a moment later from the hall. “I sent her about her business.”
“Not Miss Ferney!” cried Miss Lady, springing up and rushing out to call her.
Miss Ferney Foster with much difficulty was persuaded to return and sit on the edge of a hall chair. On New Year's in the past she had always made a formal call at Thornwood and presented the Colonel with a sample of her best wares. The Colonel in turn had invariably sent down cellar for one of the cobwebbiest bottles on the swinging shelf and bestowed it upon her with great gallantry. The indignity of having been refused admittance at the house of the Colonel's daughter was almost more than she could bear.
“Now, tell me about everybody out home,” demanded Miss Lady eagerly. “Begin at the bottom of the hill and go right straight up.”
“I don't know much news,” Miss Ferney said, plucking at the fingers of her cotton gloves. “I been sewing up to the Sequins' all week.”
“Mercy! How grand we are getting!”
“Just hemming table clothes and napkins. I can't say I think much of their new place. It's kind of skimpy.”
“Why, Miss Ferney! It is the biggest house I was even in!”
“I ain't talking 'bout the size. I'm talking 'bout the fixings. There ain't a single carpet that fits the floor by two feet, and the wallpaper's patched in every room but one. As for the dining-room! Well, I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it with my own eyes! They haven't got a picture, or a tidy, or a curtain, or a lamberkin, of any kind. 'Spose I oughtn't to tell it on 'em, but the day I was there they didn't even have a tablecloth!”
Miss Lady laughed in spite of herself, and Bertie heard her and got out of bed to call over the banisters that if they were telling jokes to please come up there.
“You know that young man that used to be out to the Wickers'?” asked Miss Ferney on the way up. “Well, he's Mrs. Sequin's brother. He's giving 'em considerable trouble.”
“How do you mean?”
“They want him to go 'way somewheres, and he won't do it. The servant girl told me that him and his sister had been having it up and down, and that Miss Margery took his side.”
“Is he going to stay?” Miss Lady paused and her fingers gripped the banister.
“I dunno. I guess if he gits mad enough he'll run off to China like he did before. Ain't that somebody calling you?”
It was Connie who had run up to say that a young man was at the front door who looked like a tombstone with a blond pompadour.
“Noah Wicker!” exclaimed Miss Lady. “I forgot that I told him I would try to get him into Mr. Gooch's law office the first of the year. Wasn't it like him to arrive the first day? You go down, Connie, that's a darling, and entertain him 'til I come. I'll be there directly.”
But “directly” proved an elastic term, for after Miss Ferney had left, and four different persons had been assured over the telephone that all invitations were being declined on account of the Doctor's indisposition, Miss Lady found Hattie still sulking in her room, and spent a half hour in restoring peace to that troubled bosom.
Meanwhile Myrtella came up to announce with elation that a waterpipe had burst in the cellar. Few things roused such joy in Myrtella as the bursting of a waterpipe. It was an act of insubordination on the part of the pipe, with which she deeply sympathized.
“And it's Mr. Gooch's night for supper, and if that man in the parlor stays, too, the ice cream won't go 'round,” she declared, with evident satisfaction in the cumulative tragedy.
By the time the knots were untied, Miss Lady had forgotten all about Noah Wicker, and it was only when Connie came in declaring indignantly that she wouldn't talk to the stupid fellow another minute, that she remembered.
“You poor dear child!” she cried, giving her a repentant squeeze. “I am sorry. Hattie, would you mind going down and entertaining him a second, 'til I change my dress?”
“I would,” said Hattie firmly.
Of course Noah stayed to dinner, and Miss Lady regarded it as an act of Providence that he and Mr. Gooch should have thus immediately been thrown together.
But when Mr. Gooch arrived he was concerned with much more important affairs. He brought the astounding news that Donald Morley had returned home and, against the advice of his family and his lawyers, decided to stand his trial for the shooting of Dick Sheeley!
“It is perfectly preposterous!” Mr. Gooch exploded, “to voluntarily put himself in the clutches of the law in a complicated case like this! He could have lived elsewhere for a few years. Even if he is innocent, the evidence is all against him. I have argued with him for two days. His sister tells me that she has worked on him for a week. He will listen to nobody.”
“Quite right,” said the Doctor emphatically. “The establishment of his good name should be his primary consideration. 'The purest treasure mortal times afford is spotless reputation.' I am more gratified than I can say that Donald is taking this course. He is justifying my persistent belief in his integrity. Once cleared by a jury the ghost of that unfortunate affair will, I trust, be laid forever.”
“It is not so certain that he will be cleared,” Mr. Gooch said, taking his accustomed seat at the table, with a solicitous eye on the door where Myrtella would appear with the soup. “I shall do my best for him, but I have my doubts.”
“You say he has been here a week?” the Doctor asked. “Strange he has not been in to see us. He was always fond of the children, and professed a certain regard, I believe, for me. I want him to meet Mrs. Queerington.”
There was a pause, during which Noah Wicker turned a surprised glance upon the hostess.
“I know Mr. Morley,” she said steadily, while the color mounted to her cheeks. “I knew him when he was with Noah at the farm.”
“Indeed,” said the Doctor. “I must have forgotten your mentioning it. I am afraid, Mr. Wicker, we've been neglecting you to-night in our concern over Donald's problems. But it is a subject in which you are doubtless equally interested?”
Noah started to reply, but realizing that the company was looking at him, forgot what he was going to say and bowed instead.
At this juncture the thing of all others that Miss Lady dreaded, occurred. Donald Morley was announced by Myrtella in tones whose accents implied that nothing could now prevent the ice cream from giving out.
“Well, well!” cried the Doctor, rising and greeting him with outstretched hand, “a hearty welcome home. You know everybody here, I believe? Even Mrs. Queerington tells me she has met you. And this is Hattie. I am quite sure you were not prepared to see her so tall.”
Donald, retaining Hattie's hand, made the round of greetings.
“Where are Connie and Bert?”
“Connie is dressing for a party, and poor old Bert is struggling with the chickenpox,” Miss Lady managed to say as she busied herself with the coffee cups.
“And now tell us about yourself,” said the Doctor, drawing a chair for Donald beside his own. “You will pardon my cushions, but I am still something of an invalid, and the little lady at the end of the table insists upon spoiling me. You knew, of course, of my accident, some two years ago?”
“Not until I got home,” Donald said without looking up. “I hope you've gotten well again?”
“Oh, no, I shall never be well. The physicians assured me of that from the first, but they also said that with care and proper conservation of my energies I would probably live to a ripe old age. I do not suppose you have ever had to resist the temptation to overwork, Donald?”
Donald smiled and puckered his brow.
“He has plenty of work cut out for him now!” growled Mr. Gooch, whose mind having been temporarily diverted by the salad now rushed back to the trial.
“Work for an admirable cause,” said the Doctor. “Mr. Gooch has just been telling us of your decision, Donald, and I cannot express my gratification at your course of action.”
“Thank you, Doctor! That's the first encouragement I've had. My family seem to think I am a lunatic, and even my lawyer, here, is taking the case under protest.”
“The value of a good name,” began the Doctor, then remembering that he had delivered himself at length on that subject earlier in the evening, he broke off by inquiring if Donald had been doing any writing during his absence.
“Oh! yes, I am always scribbling. It doesn't amount to anything though.”
“Yes, it does, too!” declared Hattie, to whom Cousin Don had always been a hero. “Mr. Decker told Gerald Ivy that you did all the best things in the articles he sent home for the syndicate.”
“I suspected it!” said the Doctor. “I thought I recognized your humorous view-point in that first article on China. I remarked to my wife at the time that you had visualized the scene, for the reader, exactly as you had seen it.”
“But I didn't!” said Donald. “I wrote that story a month before we reached China. Decker hit on the idea of getting all the articles written while we were crossing the Pacific, so we wouldn't have to bother about them after we landed. We used to get up on the boat-deck and turn them off like hot cakes. That's all foolishness about my doing the best parts. Why, Decker is a wonder! He 's reducing the thing to a science; he doesn't even need a pen or a pencil; just plenty of guide books, a paper of pins, and a pair of scissors. Lapboard literature, he calls it. He spent most of his time trimming my effusions down to measurements.”
“That is because you indulged your imagination. It is a drug in the journalistic market, but it is invaluable elsewhere. Why not try something for the magazines? Choose a congenial theme and give your fancy full rein. It will be interesting to see what comes of it.”
Connie's entrance here interrupted further conversation. She had neglected no detail of her toilet, and the result was a pink and white confection ready for conquest.
“We thought you were never coming to see us, Cousin Don,” she said, half pouting, and giving a side glance at Noah Wicker. “You 've been home a whole week!”
“Heavens, Connie! I didn't expect to find you so grown up. How long have you been out?”
“I 've never been in,” she said, releasing her hand and smiling consciously. “Aren't you coming to the Bartrums' party to-night?”
“No, I'm not in a mood for parties these days.”
“But I 've never had a chance to dance with you since you taught me to waltz.”
“Horrible deprivation! Can you still do the cake walk I taught you?”
“Yes, and so can Miss Lady! Isn't it funny? She says it 's the one the darkeys dance at the picnics up at Thornwood! Come on, Miss Lady; let 's show them!”
“Constance, Constance!” remonstrated the Doctor gently, as the girl seized Miss Lady's hands and tried to draw her to her feet. “You see, Donald, the children forget that Mrs. Queerington is anything but a play-fellow, and sometimes—” he rose and laid a hand on her shoulder, “sometimes she forgets, too.”
Donald pushed back his chair abruptly.
“I think I'll come to the party, Connie, after all. I'll run up to Decker's room at the hotel and change my togs. You will save me a waltz or two?”
“All of them, if you like! It's going to be the jolliest dance of the season, everybody says so. Change your mind, Miss Lady, and come! I don't see how you can hesitate when you remember the time you had at the Sequins'! Gerald is coming for me; we can all go down together.”
Miss Lady needed only the spark of Connie's enthusiasm to start all the forbidden fires in her. Her eyes flew to the Doctor's face.
He smiled as he caught her eager look. “Go with them, my dear, if you like. It is quite a natural instinct, I believe, to celebrate the first night of the New Year.”
“But you, will you take me? Just this once, Doctor?”
“No, no. My party days are over. Donald here will take my place, will you not, Donald?”
But Miss Lady gave him no chance to answer. That mad insistent clamor within her for joy, for life, for love, could not be trusted for a moment. She was afraid of herself!
“I'll stay home,” she said, with a brave attempt at gaiety, conscious of Donald's critical eyes upon her. “We will have a pinochle tournament, and Noah and I will beat the home team on its own ground. Won't we, Noah?”
But Noah did not hear her; he was absorbed in watching Connie who stood on tiptoe, pinning a flower in Don Morley's buttonhole.
For the next month little else was talked about but Donald Morley's trial. The truth of the matter sustained a compound fracture every time the subject was discussed. In some quarters it was confidently asserted that the fugitive from justice had been captured the moment he landed in America, and was allowed his liberty only under a heavy bond. Others contended that a guilty conscience had driven him to confession.
Meanwhile his friends were either exasperated at his folly in reviving the old scandal, or quixotically enthusiastic over his demand for justice. Mrs. Sequin bitterly opposed his action until she found that the Bartrums, Dr. Queerington, and other influential friends upheld him, then she decided to suspend her judgment until the trial was over. Of course if he was going to be a hero, she wanted to be his loving sister, but if he was going to be convicted, she would have nothing more to do with him. He had gone directly against her advice in coming home, and she observed with ominous certainty that “he would see.”
Donald threw himself into the work before him with grim determination. He spent hours daily in Mr. Gooch's stuffy office going over transcript of testimony in the Dillingham trial; he made a number of visits to Billy-goat Hill, recalling every detail of the shooting. On the first visit he had sought out Sheeley, confident of being able to jog his memory, concerning his part in the affray, but to his dismay he found that Sheeley had already been summoned to the office of the prosecuting attorney. In every direction he turned he encountered the octopus of the law.
Mr. Gooch gave him little encouragement. He wheezed, and whined, and contested every suggestion. His client appeared to him a foolhardy boy who had gotten well out of an ugly scrape, and did not have sense enough to stay out. So strongly did he feel this that he felt called upon to express it at great length, on every possible occasion.
Donald would sit before him with arms folded, and jaws set, waiting impatiently for these harangues to cease. He had employed him because he was the family lawyer, and because he was a friend of Doctor Queerington's. At the end of the first week he realized that he had made a mistake, and confided the fact to Noah Wicker.
Noah, having successfully worked through the law course at the university, was now, by the persistent efforts of Miss Lady, occupying a dark corner of Mr. Gooch's outer office. Here, with feet hooked under a rung of a stool, and fingers grasping his pompadour, he doggedly wrestled with the cases he heard in court, laboriously puzzling out obscure points by the aid of the Statute and the Code.
Donald soon fell into the habit of discussing his approaching trial with him, at such times as Mr. Gooch was absent. He found Noah's calm, impersonal point of view a relief after the skeptical, disapproving attitude of the older attorney.
During these days Donald spent as little time as possible at Angora Heights. The family skeletons that had always lurked in the Sequin closets, seemed to revel in their commodious new quarters. It is a melancholy fact that the more closets one acquires, the more skeletons there are to occupy them!
Mrs. Sequin's existence, if restless in town, was trebly so in the country. Between catching trains and receiving and speeding guests, engaging and dismissing servants, and agonizing over the non-essentials, she dwelt in the vortex of a whirlwind that disturbed everything in its wake.
Between her and Margery the gulf was widening. Having declared her independence, the girl went further, and entered a training class in the kindergarten, an act which caused a rupture that threatened to be serious, until the head of the family for once asserted his authority, and unexpectedly sided with his daughter.
Basil Sequin during these days had little time to bestow upon family matters. He rose at six o'clock, drank three cups of black coffee, devoured the newspapers, and was on the way to the office before his gardener was out of bed. Before and after banking hours he had committee meetings, and special appointments, snatching a few minutes for luncheon at the nearest restaurant.
Donald had had but one chance to talk with him since his return, and that was one evening when he was summoned to his den. He found him pacing restlessly up and down the room, his hands thrust deep in his pockets.
“You've decided to stand the trial, I hear?” Mr. Sequin asked abruptly.
“Yes, I had to get the matter cleared up. It is all so idiotic, my being indicted! I don't anticipate any trouble.”
“You can't tell,” said Mr. Sequin, “but I didn't send for you to discuss the trial. It's business I want to talk about. Do you know how much stock you own in the People's Bank?”
“No, I can't say that I do exactly.”
“Well, it's time you were finding out. How would you like to take charge of your own affairs from now on?”
Donald looked at him in undisguised surprise. Heretofore the only time that money matters had been discussed between them was when he had been guilty of some extra extravagance. This sudden change of tactics on the part of his brother-in-law was disconcerting.
“Why, I shouldn't like it at all, unless it would relieve you,” he said.
“It isn't that. One bother more or less doesn't matter. The point is, I want you to act for yourself. The result of this trial is by no means certain; you may need considerable ready money before you get through with it. Why don't you sell your bank stock, and make some better paying investments on your own hook?”
“Why, I thought the bank stock—” began Donald, but Mr. Sequin wheeled upon him impatiently.
“Do you want my advice or not?”
“Of course I want it.”
“Very well. Listen to me. Almost every dollar you have is tied up in the People's Bank. Go down to-morrow morning to a broker, Gilson's the best man, tell him that you must have a big sum of money at once. In order to get it you are willing to sacrifice every share of your People's stock. Tell him not to put it on the market, but to sell it in small blocks to different people, and not to stick at the price. Make him understand that it has to do with your trial, and caution him particularly not to let me know of the transaction.”
“But I don't understand,” said Donald, watching with troubled eyes the stooped figure that continued to pace up and down the room like an animal in a cage.
“I didn't offer to explain. I offered to advise,” Mr. Sequin snarled. “There are complications that couldn't be made clear to you in a month! I'll ask you not to refer to this matter again to me or to any one else. I have a lot of papers to look over now, so I'll say good night.”
Donald rose from where he had been sitting at the table.
“Of course you know what is best,” he said irresolutely. “And I know I've got no business shifting my responsibilities on you. By the way, can't I help you with some of this stuff? You look about done for to-night.”
“Done for?” Mr. Sequin smiled ironically, and ran his fingers through his scant gray hair. “Why, Don, I'd change places with any old corpse to-night, just for a chance to lie down in a quiet corner and stop thinking! No, there's nothing you can do. There's nothing anybody can do. Good night; close the door as you go out, and leave word downstairs if I am called over the 'phone to say I am not here.”
All things considered it is small wonder that Donald passed as little time as possible at Angora Heights. The time he was not occupied with his trial hung heavy on his hands. Distrustful of his friends, sensitive to criticism, and dreading the humiliating ordeal to come, he spent one of the most wretched months of his life. He tried to write, but fancy fled before the glare of the actual. The only place where he found temporary peace was under the roof of the grim-looking house in College Street.
From the first Doctor Queerington had championed his cause, and urged upon him his hospitality. To be sure the Doctor's hospitality usually began and ended with his welcome, after which he would take himself off to the study, and leave his guest to the care of the family.
At such times Miss Lady invariably went with him. In fact, Donald had never seen her alone since the night of his arrival, and the very fact that she seldom remained down-stairs in the evenings, made his conscience lighter about lingering in her vicinity.
Mrs. Ivy was the first to comment on his frequent visits. She confided to Mrs. Sequin that she was afraid he was getting interested in Connie Queerington, and that somebody ought to tell him that Connie had been in love with dear Gerald for years and years. An impartial observer might have expressed a less confident opinion concerning the object of Miss Connie's affections.
Noah Wicker, for instance, while not exactly an impartial observer, had arrived at quite a different conclusion.
“You watch the way she looks at Don,” he said darkly to Miss Lady on one occasion.
Miss Lady laughed, “Oh! Connie's like the Last Duchess, she likes whate'er she looks on, and her looks go everywhere.”
“Yes, but this is different. Has she ever said anything to you about him?”
“Mercy, yes, Connie talks to be about all the boys.”
“Does she talk about me?” Noah's eyes were as wistful as a dog's.
For a second Miss Lady hesitated, then she compromised with truth and said, “yes.” She did not add that Connie was particularly voluble on the subject of his hair, and the creak of his boots and his apparent genius for ubiquity.
“Do you know what I'd do if I were you, Noah?” she said. “I'd have me a new suit of clothes made.”
“Why, these are new!”
“Yes, I know, but they don't fit. And get some shoes that don't creak, and—and you won't mind my telling you, Noah? Pompadours went out of style six years ago.”
Noah gloomily shook his head. “It's not my clothes. It's not clothes that make Don Morley. By the way, aren't you two friends, any more?”
Miss Lady faced the question unflinchingly. “Yes, we are friends. Is he going to win out?”
“With Miss Connie?”
“No, you foolish boy. In his trial.”
“I don't know.”
“What will happen if he loses?”
“The case will be appealed.”
“And if he loses in the Court of Appeals?”
“It's up to Gooch to see that he doesn't lose. I only wish I was as certain of a few other things as I am of Donald Morley's innocence!”
One afternoon, a few days before the trial, Donald after oscillating between the hotel and his club and finding each equally intolerable, jumped on the car and went out to the Queeringtons. It was a cold, raw day, with a fine mist filling the air, and even the dull formality of the drab parlor seemed a relief from the gloom without.
Miss Lady started up from the piano as he entered, but Connie pulled her back:
“You shan't run off and leave us, shall she, Cousin Don? She was just going to play for Mr. Wicker to sing. Did you know he could sing?”
“Oh, yes. Wick's the Original Warbler. Do you remember our serenades on the Cane Run Road, Wick?”
“Yes,” said Noah glumly.
“I forgot that you and Mr. Wicker used to know each other,” Connie said curiously. “Why the Cane Run Road runs by Thornwood, doesn't it?”
“Yes,” said Don calmly, seizing the conversation and shoving it out of shoal water. “Go ahead, Wick, and sing something; we'll join in the chorus.”
But when the time for the chorus came Donald had forgotten his promise. He was leaning back in a corner of the sofa, his hand shading his eyes, watching Miss Lady, and wondering what trick of fate had driven her to marry John Jay Queerington. There was no man in the world whose moral worth he admired more, but Miss Lady seemed as out of place in his life as a darting, quivering humming-bird in a museum of natural history. He noticed the faint shadows about her eyes, and the wistful droop of her lips. If he could only set her free! A mad desire seized him to see her once more joyously on the wing with all her old buoyancy and daring. And yet she had walked open eyed into her cage, and he had yet to see the tiniest flutter of her wings against the bars.
On that first night of his home-coming surely he had read a welcome in her eyes! But never since by word or gesture had he reason to think that she remembered. She was gracious and elusive, and she talked to him as she talked to Decker and Gerald Ivy, only she looked at them when she talked, and she never even looked at him.
Yet shehadcared! He had only to recall the flashing revelation of her eyes that night in the garden to know for one transcendent moment, at least, she was his. It was the look that had sustained his faith in her through all those weary months of silence, making him cling to the belief, until he heard the truth from her own lips, that she had failed to get his letter. It was the remembrance of that look and what it had promised that rushed upon him now as he watched her.
All the reckless impulse of his boyhood, the long years of unrestraint, surged over him, urging him on to wake in her some answer to his fierce, insistent demand. She should remember the way he had loved her, she should know the way he loved her now. If there was any heart left in her she must respond in some way to his imperative need.
But her eyes kept steadily on the key-board, and her fingers unfalteringly followed the notes. Could he have known how the tears burned under her lashes, and how cold her fingers were on the keys; could he have guessed how she sat there under his steady gaze, with tense muscles and quivering nerves, calculating the minutes that must elapse before Noah's interminable verses would end, and she could escape, he might have had compassion on her.
“Sing, Cousin Don!” demanded Connie; “you are leaving it all to Mr. Wicker and me, while you sit there looking exactly as if you had lost your last friend.”
“No, only my illusions, Connie.”
“Where did you lose them?”
“In Singapore. All but one. I hung on to it clear around the world, only to lose it on Christmas night when I got home. Don't you feel sorry for me?”
“Not a bit,” said Connie saucily. “I couldn't feel sorry for anybody as good looking as you are,—could you, Mr. Wicker? Where did Miss Lady go?”
“She said she was going to lie down, that her head ached,” said Noah.
“I know what's the matter,” said Connie; “she tries to keep us from seeing it, but she's all broken up over selling Thornwood.”
“Thornwood!” cried Donald; “she hasn't sold it?”
“No, but it's been put up for sale. She'd die at the stake for Father. He doesn't even know about it.”
“But surely there is some other way.” Connie shrugged her shoulders. “I am sure I don't know. Hattie's given up music and French, and we've put Bertie in the public school, and I haven't had but one party dress this winter. But a girl doesn't have to depend on clothes to have a good time, does she, Mr. Wicker?”
That night Donald sat up late, turning things over in his mind. Once the trial was over he must go away, where he could not see Miss Lady or hear of her. He must plunge into some business that would absorb his time and attention. But before he went he must make an investment and make it at once. In order to do so, he would follow Basil Sequin's advice, and offer his bank stock for sale in the morning.
There was anxiety in the drab house in College Street. The second day of Donald Morley's trial had come and no decision had been reached. Every ring of the telephone, every opening of the front door brought a hurrying of feet through the hall, and an eager demand to know if there was any news.
“I'll never get my lessons!” exclaimed Hattie petulantly, collecting her scattered belongings after one of these rushes to the door. “I wish to Heaven one of my fingers was a lead pencil!”
“Why don't you wish your tongue was one, Hat, then you wouldn't have to sharpen it,” suggested Connie.
“I bet Miss Lady had my pencil,” went on Hattie, ignoring Connie's comment. “She's never owned a pair of scissors, or a pencil, or a shoe-buttoner since she's been here. And look at those letters on the mantel! She'll never think about mailing them.”
“What are they doing with black borders?”
“She bought a job lot of paper the other day, all colors and sizes, trying to be economical. She uses the mourning ones to pay the bills.”
“Yes, and I'll have to be putting little pink love letters in big blue envelopes all winter. Say, Hat, do you suppose it would be all right if I called up Mr. Wicker to ask him how the trial is going?”
“Of course not. We'll hear as soon as there is anything to hear. I wish you'd hush talking and let me study.”
Connie heroically refrained from speech for five minutes, then she announced:
“Do you know, I don't believe Miss Lady likes him!”
“Who? Mr. Wicker?”
“No, you silly,—Don.”
“When did you stop saying Cousin Don, pray?”
“Oh, ages ago. She's always so quiet when he comes, and she goes up-stairs the first chance she gets. I think she's changed a lot since she first came, don't you?”
“Well, I guess you'd change, too, if you had married a sick man with three children, as poor as poverty, and a cook as cross as Myrtella.”
“But she has Myrtella eating out of her hand. Imagine my marrying a man as old as Father!”
“If I had to marry, I'd rather marry Father than anybody else. But I've never seen the man yet that I'd be willing to marry.”
“Oh, I have! I know ten right now that I'd marry in a minute.”
“Connie Queerington! Who are the others beside Gerald and Cousin Don?”
“Guess.”
“Noah Wicker?”
Connie laughed. “Mr. Wicker is not as bad as he was. He must have taken chloroform and had his pompadour cut. Don says he is awfully clever.”
“Anybody could be clever who took a whole day to compose each speech. I'll tell you what's the matter with Miss Lady; she is worrying herself sick over Father. Did she tell you what Doctor Wyeth told her?”
“That Father would have to give up his classes, and get away some where? But of course he can't do it.”
“But he can! Miss Lady has rented Thornwood from the man who bought it, and we are all to go out there this spring.”
“Heavens! That means frogs and crickets and whippoorwills, and a lonesome time for me.”
“But think of Father!” said Hattie with her most virtuous air. “If it's perfectly quiet, perhaps he can finish his book.”
“No, he won't,” said Connie petulantly. “He may finish himself, but he'll never finish that book; he keeps on thinking of more to say, just like Mr. Melcher does when he prays. If it weren't for that stupid old book he might get well. Was that the telephone?”
It proved to be the side-door bell, which was rung by an old woman who had lost her husband and her front teeth, and was engaged in the precarious occupation of selling shoe-strings. She was one of the numerous proteges, who began to call on Miss Lady soon after breakfast, and kept up their visits through the day, to the exasperation of Myrtella Flathers, who spent her time devising means to rid the back hall of these incumbrances.
In this instance strategy was not required, for she was bidden to send the woman away. Such an unusual proceeding aroused her curiosity and she returned to the dining-room to peep through the door at her young mistress, who had been sitting motionless since breakfast with her elbows on the table, and her hands locked under her chin. It was evident that something was wrong, and Myrtella became so concerned that she at last decided to take action. The panacea she applied to all ailments, moral or physical, was a counter-irritant.
“Mis' Squeerington!” she ventured finally. “I hope you ain't fergot that it's Saturday mornin' an' you'd orter row the grocery man. He's a cortion, that's what he is, a-sendin' us Mis' Ivy's ribs, an' Mis' Logan's liver. It ain't a decent way to treat a old customer, an' he orter be told so. There never was a grocery man that was born into the world that didn't have to be rowed! They expect it, they look fer it, an' when they don't get it they feel it.”
“I can't 'row' people, Myrtella; I don't know how,” said Miss Lady listlessly.
“I'll learn you. You've picked up a lot more already than anybody would 'a' supposed you would when you first come. But one thing you ain't learned. When a lady goes to smilin' over the telephone, an' tellin' the butcher that she don't know one cut from another but she'll trust him to send her a nice piece, you kin count on it she's goin' to git a gristle. Compliments an' smiles may git some things, but it takes rowin' an' back-talk to git a good beefsteak!”
“I think I'll send you to the grocery to-day, Myrtella,—it—it may rain.”
“It ain't goin' to rain before noon,” Myrtella said authoritatively, in a tone that indicated her intention of stopping it immediately if it showed any intention of doing so. “It'll do you good to git out and walk a spell.”
Miss Lady shook her head.
“Well, then you better let me send Bertie down here, he's makin' a awful racket in the nursery an' his pa'll be after him soon.”
Bertie was induced to abandon a life of adventure on the footboard of his bed, by the suggestion that Miss Lady had something to tell him in the dining-room. He came tearing through the hall shouting, “Extras,” at the top of his voice.
“Bertie, darling! Please don't,” cried Miss Lady roused from her apathy. “Remember it's Saturday and Father's home.”
“I wish he wasn't,” said Bertie. “I hate a tiptoe house! When can I call extras?”
“When we get up to Thornwood. You and I will play all over the hills, and I'll teach you to be a real country boy.”
“And can Chick be there, too?”
“Yes, and perhaps by that time Chick will have been to the hospital and can talk like other boys.”
Bertie was standing on the back of her chair by this time, apparently trying to strangle her.
“And can we slide down the ice-house like you used to do? And will Uncle Jimpson call up the doodle-bugs out of the ground like he did when you was a little girl?”
“Listen!” cried Miss Lady suddenly starting up. “What is that?”
From the far end of the street came the sound, “Wuxtry! Here's your Wuxtry! All about—”
“It's just the newsboy I was being like,” said Bertie. “What's the matter? What makes you shake so, Miss Lady?”
Myrtella thrust her head in the door. “Here comes that there Mrs. Ivy running 'cross the yard. She's good fer a hour.”
But Mrs. Ivy did not seem to be good for anything by the time Miss Lady reached her. She was half reclining on a haircloth sofa in the front hall with a bottle of smelling salts to her nose and a newspaper in her hand.
“Oh, mydear!” she managed to gasp. “Such a frightful shock! So utterly unexpected!”
“Do you mean Don?” Miss Lady's lips scarcely moved as she asked the question.
“No, the bank! I was all alone in the house when I heard the boys calling the extras—Ah! my poor weak heart!”
“Brandy?” suggested Miss Lady anxiously.
Mrs. Ivy raised feeble but protesting eyes: “Never! The Angel of Death shall never find me with the odor of liquor on my lips. Could you send for some nitroglycerin?”
By the time Mrs. Ivy was revived, Connie and Hattie had joined the group in the hall, and the latter was reading aloud in awe-struck tones the account of the People's Bank failure. The age and reputation of the institution and the prominence of Basil Sequin as a local financier gave the subject grave significance.
“And to think that I should be involved!” wailed Mrs. Ivy. “I've only been treasurer of the W. A. Board for six weeks and this was my first investment! They told me to use my judgment, and I did the best I could! Only last Thursday I went to see Mr. Gilson the broker, you know, about investing the money we're collecting for building the Parish House. He said I had come at the right moment as he had just gotten hold of some of the People's Bank stock, 'gilt edged,' he called it, and I remember just what I said to him, I said, 'Mr. Gilson, I simply let Providence lead me, and it led me to your door!' and I bought it!” sobbed Mrs. Ivy; “forty shares!”
“I suppose Father's lost awfully,” said Hattie, sitting round eyed and anxious on the steps.
“And all the Sequins, and Don,” added Connie.
“It says that all the stockholders and most of the depositors stand to lose heavily,” said Miss Lady, scanning the paper; “I must tell the Doctor at once.”
She sped up the steps and knocked breathlessly at his study door. It was only at the second knock that she was bidden to enter.
The Doctor sat at his desk in a long, gray dressing-gown, with a rug across his knees: around him were ranged several straight-backed chairs on which were spread hundreds of pages of closely written manuscript. At his elbow on a stand was an immense dictionary, from which he lifted a pair of absorbed and preoccupied eyes.
“Doctor!” Miss Lady burst out impetuously, “the Bank has failed—the paper says—”
“If you please!” the Doctor raised an imploring hand; “don't tell me now. The news will keep and I am in a most critical stage of my summary. Today's work is important, very important. Kindly close the door.”
Miss Lady stood in the hall without and stared at the drab-colored wallpaper. A fierce anger rose in her, not against the Doctor, but against that vampire work which was sucking all the vitality and sympathy and understanding out of him. She was eager to bear his burdens; she was willing to fight his battles; but it was hard to take his side single-handed against herself. She wanted love, and affection and sympathy, and she wanted a manly shoulder to weep on when the way became too hard. But the Doctor's slanting, scholarly shoulder afforded no resting-place for a world-weary head.
“Mis' Squeerington!” called Myrtella from the lower floor. “The grocery man didn't have no beets, and his new potatoes is hard as rocks, an' if I was you I'd go over to Smithers jes' to spite him out fer a spell. And I fergot to tell you that that there Mr. Wicker called you up a hour ago, an' sez the case was lost. I don't know what he meant. I hope he ain't lost it 'round here. Next thing I hear they'll be sayin' I took it!”