[Pg 207]
"What took you into that Salvation Army?" she had asked, as she sat by Nora's bedside in the upper front chamber of the White-House.
"A divine call, I hope," Nora had answered.
"Couldn't you have done just as much good in some of the churches?"
"Very likely, but there's many will be doing that work, and there's no over-crowding among us highway-and-hedgers."
Nora remembered a curious little look on Miss Standish's face, as if she thought the answer savored of sarcasm. This expression had led her on to further explanation:—
"I know just how folk will be feeling about the Army. I know how I felt myself before I signed the Articles of War,—as if it was much like joining a circus-troop, going about so with a brass band."
"Well, isn't it?" asked Miss Standish, bluntly.
Nora colored, but answered amiably: "No, it does not look so to me now,—whiles there's things in the Army work for which I've no liking myself, the noise and a'; but such things are not for you and me. We can get our spiritual aid and comfort somewhere else; but these are like a snare spread for the souls we are hunting, and when you see the rough men come round us like those in the London streets, it's fair[Pg 208]wonderfu' how they be taken wi' the drums and torches."
"Humph!" sniffed Miss Standish, "it is as easy to gather converts with a drum as to collect flies round a lump of sugar,—men will always come buzzing about where there is any excitement. The question is, Have you got the fly-paper to make 'em stick?"
At Nepaug Nora had smiled at Miss Standish's blunt questions; but here, in the depression of spirits caused by overwork and the deadened atmosphere, the words came back to her with overwhelming force. When she rose on the morning after seeing Flint standing in the window at Delmonico's, she found more than one importunate question arising in her mind. Was it worth while after all—the sacrifice she was making, the work, the worry, and above all the contact with so much that offended her taste and judgment?
Were not those people behind the curtains, with their purple and fine linen, more nearly right than she? They at least found and gave pleasure for the moment—while she—? Then there swept over her the recollection of the drunkard who had shouted loudest in the hallelujah chorus and reeled home drunk after the meeting, of the penitent girl whom she had seen one night dissolved in tears, the next out[Pg 209]on the streets again at her old calling,—"Yes," she admitted sadly, "Miss Standish is right. It is one thing to catch them, but another to keep them." If it had been only the sinners, she would not have minded so much, but there were some things about her fellow-officers— Here she stopped, for her loyalty would not allow her to go on, even in thought. This mood of depression was not an uncommon thing in Nora Costello's life, but she sought the antidote in prayer and work.
After her morning devotions, she spent an hour in setting her room to rights; watering the plants on the window-sill, feeding the bird in the cage, and then, after a breakfast of the most frugal sort, she started on her way to her post. Although it was not yet eight o'clock when she emerged from the door of the tenement-house where she lodged, a haze of heat hung over the city like a pall, the sun was already beating with a sickening glare upon the sidewalk, which still showed signs of having been made a sleeping place by those who found their crowded quarters within too suffocating for endurance. On the doorstep, worn with the feet of the frequent passers, sat a weary woman, nursing her baby. Nora's heart sank as she noticed the deathly pallor of the little thing. She stopped, bent over, and listened to its breathing. Then she lifted[Pg 210]the eyelid streaked with blue, and looked into the fast dimming eye.
"That bairn needs a doctor," she said to the mother. "Come with me; there is a dispensary on the next block."
Rising stupidly, with her infant in her arms, the woman in dull obedience followed her down the sun-baked block to the door marked:
Nora looked at the sign in discouragement; instinct told her that two hours of delay would be fatal. The child was evidently nearing a state of collapse. Turning about entirely baffled, Nora's eyes fell upon an elderly man coming down the street at a brisk trot, a travelling bag in one hand and a large white umbrella in the other. He was evidently a gentleman,—which was strange, for gentlemen did not often appear in Bayard Street. What was stranger still, he looked up at the numbers of the houses as if he were seeking a friend, and, strangest of all, at the sight of herself he took off his hat, and her astonished gaze rested upon Dr. Cricket.
"Well, well, Captain," the little Doctor cried, peering at her with his near-sighted frown. "I[Pg 211]amin luck. I came down on the night boat, and hurried over here right away; but we were so late I was afraid you might have got off to headquarters to report for duty. I promised Miss Standish when I left Nepaug that I would surely see you on my way through New York. She felt so worried about your coming back so soon to this town, which is like a bake-oven,—or would be if it smelled better."
All this the good Doctor poured forth so rapidly that Nora could not get in a word edgewise. When at length she found space to utter a reply, she cried out, "Oh, Doctor, never mind me, but take pity on this bairn! It's in an awfu' way."
"Pooh, Pooh, nothing of the sort!" answered the Doctor, with professional cheerfulness, before he had fairly glanced at the child. Then aside to Nora: "We must get into the dispensary somehow. Water, hot and cold, are what the child needs. It is near a convulsion."
At this juncture, as eight o'clock was striking, the dispensary clerk arrived, key in hand, and, seeing the emergency, put all the resources of the building at the disposal of Dr. Cricket, who soon brought a better color to the little face, and handing the child, rolled in a blanket, to the mother, bade her keep it cool. The woman looked blankly at the rising wave of heat outside;[Pg 212]Dr. Cricket too looked out, and felt the shadow of her hopelessness fall on himself. "Here," he said suddenly, pressing a bill into her hand, "take that; get your baby dressed and onto the Coney Island boat as quick as you can."
The woman took the bill and crumpled it in her fingers; but she turned away without uttering either thanks or protest.
"You must na mind the ongraciousness o' the puir mither," Nora said, as they turned away. "She is too fashed and clear worn out to have any sense o' gratitude left." In her excitement the girl dropped into a nearer approach to dialect than marked her ordinary speech.
"My dear young lady," said the Doctor, "do you suppose I hold you responsible for the manners of Bayard Street? You won't be here to be held responsible for anything long if this heat lasts. I wish to the devil (excuse me!) I could get you out of the hole. We need just such a person as you at our Sanatorium in Germantown. What do you say to coming to try it for two months at least?"
The offer chimed in so with her morning thoughts that it seemed to Nora a direct temptation of the devil, and she thrust it away almost angrily.
"Never be speaking o' such a thing! Do[Pg 213]you think I would desert now when the war is raging?"
"I don't know anything about your Salvation Army jargon," answered the Doctor, with equal brusqueness; "if it's the war with sin you're talking about, you needn't be afraid of lack of fighting wherever you go—I'll wager Philadelphia can furnish as lively service as New York."
Nora laughed, showing her white teeth in genuine amusement.
"Well, I'm fearing you're richt, Doctor, and you must na fancy I dinna recognise your kindness in wanting to get me out of 'this hole;' but I'm called to work right here, and I must 'stay by the stuff,' like the men in the Bible."
"Then my taking the trouble to come here without any breakfast goes for nothing," said the Doctor, a little crossly. He liked his own way, and he liked to help people, and this girl was balking him in both desires.
"Good for nothing!" cried Nora. "You must na say so. You dare na say so, when God put it into your hands to save a life! Dinna ye remember the story of Abdallah, and how the golden leaf of his clover, the most precious leaf he found on earth, was the life which it was given to him to save?"
Nora stopped in her words, as in her walk, for they had reached the corner where her division[Pg 214]headquarters stood. Dr. Cricket made no answer to her little sermon—only put out his hands in response to hers, and gave her a grip like a freemason's. "Maybe you're right after all," he said, "and I like your pluck, right or wrong. Only remember, if you want help, or think better of my offer, just drop a line to Dr. Alonzo Cricket at the Sanatorium."
When the good-byes were said, Nora stood a moment watching the Doctor's little figure moving jerkily down the street under its white umbrella. "I believe he was sent," she said to herself. "I must try to be to some other puir soul what he has been to me this day."
At her desk at headquarters Nora found a memorandum of four letters to be written,—three to men in the prison at Sing-Sing. These she despatched speedily, with the aid of a typewriter; but the fourth she wrote with her own hand, for it was in answer to one from an orphan girl who was coming to New York in search of work, and who desired to be put in the way of finding a safe boarding-place. Nora's heart was touched by a peculiar sympathy at the thought of the girl's loneliness, so closely allied to her own, and she wanted her to feel that it was a friend, and not merely an officer of the Army, who responded to her appeal, and held out the right hand of fellowship.
[Pg 215]
It was eleven o'clock when the letters were written, and Nora ran downstairs to vary her industry by cutting out baby-clothes in the workroom. Just as she was taking the shears in hand, however, news was brought in of an accident to a factory-girl who had crushed her foot in the machinery, and had been brought home to her lodgings in the house on the next corner.
To this house Nora went, and found the girl alone, and weeping more from loneliness than suffering. The doctor had left, promising to come again, and to send an ambulance later in the day, to take the sufferer to the hospital. Nora knocked gently at the chamber door.
"Come in!" a voice from within answered wearily.
The visitor, standing in the doorway, was impressed by the dreariness of disorder which reigned inside. Such a room would have been impossible to Nora herself while hands and knees and a scrubbing-brush were left to her. In one sweeping glance she took in the hastily dumped clothing on the floor, the bureau heaped with mussy finery, the fly-specked window-pane, and soiled bed-spread.
"Who are you?" asked the girl, raising her head from the pillow. "Oh, one of those Salvation Army women," she added, as she caught sight of the dark bonnet.
[Pg 216]
"Yes," answered Nora, "I heard of your accident and that you were all alone. I have come to try to help you."
"You can't. Nobody can help me. I wish I was dead." With this the girl buried her face in the pillow and resumed her half-hysterical weeping.
Nora wisely wasted no words in trying to prove her ability to help, but began quietly to hang up the clothes, to slip the soiled lace and brass chains from the top of the bureau into the drawer, to close the blinds, and fold a towel over a basin on the chair within reach of the sufferer.
"There," she said, "maybe if you could wash you'd feel a bit more comfortable, and I'll run round to my lodgings—they're not far off—and back in no time."
When she reappeared, it was with a snowy white dimity spread taken from her own bed, a pitcher of ice-water, and a large palm-leaf fan. When the bed was re-made, the self-appointed nurse seated herself by the bedside of the sick girl, promising to stay until the coming of the ambulance, and settling down to listen to all the details of the accident, which seemed to give the victim a grewsome satisfaction in rehearsing.
When the ambulance arrived, and the patient departed, the nurse began to realize that it was[Pg 217]three o'clock, and that she had had no food since seven. As the Bible-reading was at four, she had time only for a hastily swallowed cup of tea, and a slice of bread and butter, with a bit of cold meat, before the reading, after which she went home, bathed, rested, and supped, before presenting herself again at headquarters for the night duty, which called her to patrol the streets with a companion officer (a dull, rather coarse woman, who "exhorted" and sang through her nose) until after midnight.
Then she went home and to bed, inwardly thanking Heaven for her happy day. She felt, as she would have said, that she had been "awfu' favored."
[Pg 218]
A man's character is like the body of a child,—it grows unequally and in sections. Certain qualities in Flint had lain throughout these thirty-three years wholly undeveloped and unaffected by the culture of other characteristics. In his case the dormancy of the sympathetic side of his nature was no doubt largely due to the absence of those close family ties which call out in most of us our first sense of the kinship of the race.
Flint had no recollection of either father or mother, and he was an only child. On his mother's death, he was sent to the home of an uncle and aunt in Syracuse. They received him without enthusiasm, and only because it was inevitable that the child should be cared for, and there was no one else to undertake the task. Flint sometimes recalled, with a feeling[Pg 219]of bitterness against Fate, those early years of repression, when silence and self-obliteration were the only merits or attractions asked for in the orphan boy.
Those formative years might have proved a much drearier period but for the circumstance that his uncle's house was provided with a library, made up of books of all grades and qualities. To these volumes young Jonathan was at liberty to help himself without let or hindrance, provided he handled them with care.
Mr. Mullett Flint was a collector of books, but not a reader. Elzevirs and Aldines and first editions bound by Rivière pleased him as so much pottery might have pleased him, and he took great pride in relating how the value of his purchases had increased on his hands. His guidance in the paths of literature would not have been of great benefit to his nephew had he been disposed to offer it; but, in fact, he wasted little thought either on the contents of books or on his nephew's mental progress. His tastes, interests, and ambitions lay wholly in the business world, in the making of money, and the handling of mercantile affairs of magnitude. Had Jonathan, as he grew older, shown more sharpness and sagacity, some bond of sympathy, if not attachment, might have formed itself between[Pg 220]the two. As it was, they drifted farther and farther apart. The uncle looked with a shrug of his shoulders at the boy curled up in one of the library arm-chairs on a Saturday morning, poring over a volume of the Waverley Novels, when he himself was briskly making ready to betake himself to business.
"I wish that boy had any enterprise. I'd rather see him breaking windows or shooting cats out the back door than dawdling like that," he said once to his wife.
"Yes," answered that worthy lady,—"and he wears out the furniture so!"
Mrs. Mullett Flint was one of those heavy, apathetic women who seem to have a special attraction for brisk, energetic men of Mr. Flint's type. If he ever made the discovery that apathy and amiability are not identical, he never revealed his disappointment to the world,—perhaps for the same reason that he kept silence over the failure of other investments, lest the rumor should injure his reputation for shrewdness as a business-man.
From the beginning Mrs. Mullett Flint had taken one of her apathetic dislikes to the little Jonathan. He was no kindred of hers, and she thought it rather hard at her time of life to have her housekeeping put about by a boy whose feet were always muddy and who had a[Pg 221]reprehensible habit of tucking them under him when he sat down, as he did with utter lack of discrimination in the matter of relative values in furniture. Her manner toward the child was not intentionally unkind, but it was wholly devoid of the tenderness which is as necessary to the growth of a child as air and sunshine to a plant. She always called him by his full name, which sounded strangely prim and formal applied to the little kilted figure with its thatch of black hair. He recalled distinctly once going up to the long pier-glass between the two windows and stroking his own hair as he had seen a mother across the street do for her boy at the window opposite, and then saying softly, in imitation of supposed maternal tones, "Johnny! Dear little Johnny!"
Such moods of sentiment were exceedingly rare in Flint's earliest infancy, and grew rarer as he advanced in life. At twelve he was sent to boarding-school, and thence to college, with scarcely an interval of home life. In college he formed several friendships; but in each he was and felt himself the superior, whereby he lost the inestimable privilege of looking up.
There had been a decided difference of opinion between Mr. Mullett Flint and his nephew in regard to the choice of a college. Mr. Flint strongly urged that the family traditions should[Pg 222]be preserved, and that Jonathan should pursue his education under the shadow of old Nassau, "where giant Edwards stamped his iron heel." The nephew was as strongly prejudiced against Princeton as the uncle in its favor. He declared that the educative effect of living for four years within sight of his venerated ancestor's grave in President's Row was more than offset by other considerations, and that if the influence of the departed still lingered about the college halls he was as likely to fall under the spell of Aaron Burr as under that of Jonathan Edwards. With all the headstrong will of youth he determined to go to Harvard, and carried his point, though not without a degree of friction, which alienated him still farther from his uncle.
It was, therefore, with immense surprise that, on Mr. Flint's death, which occurred in Jonathan's junior year at college, the young man learned that his uncle had left him his library and a substantial share of his fortune. The terms of the will were not flattering. "To my nephew, Jonathan Edwards Flint," so it ran, "I leave this amount, realizing that the money left him by his father is inadequate for his support, and that he will never have the energy to make a living for himself."
The widow wrote a conventional note of combined self-condolence and congratulation for[Pg 223]Jonathan over his inheritance. Between the lines Flint quite easily read that her latent aversion to him was augmented by her husband's bequest.
"I have decided," she wrote, "to go at once to London, where I shall probably reside for some years. I shall therefore strip my house of furniture preparatory to renting. I will pack up the books which now belong to you, and await your instructions as to the address to which you would like them forwarded. Should we not meet again—and I presume you will agree with me that it is hardly worth while to interrupt your studies at Cambridge for a trip to New York before the steamer sails—pray accept my best wishes for your future happiness and prosperous career."
With this cool leave-taking Flint's association with his aunt had come to an end. The books, which were his earliest friends, followed him about from place to place, until at length they had found a home on the walls of his study in "The Chancellor."
The work of his first solitary evening after his return from Nepaug was to pull off the sheets and newspapers with which the caretaker of his room had vainly striven to protect them against the all-pervading dust of summer. He sat in his easy-chair, running over the titles with the endeared eye of long familiarity.
[Pg 224]
There stood a set of Edwards's treatises, in eight ponderous volumes; their leaves yellow with age, and cut only here and there at irregular intervals. "Freedom of the Will" and "The Nature of Virtue" jostled "Original Sin;" and "The History of Redemption" leaned up against "God's Last End in the Creation of the World."
On the same shelf, as if with sarcastic attempt to mark the logical sequence, Flint had placed a black-clad row of John Stuart Mill's essays, while Hume and Hobbes looked out above and below. It amused Flint, as he sat there alone, to fancy these polemical gentlemen issuing from their bindings and sitting down together around his evening lamp, to talk things over. "Probably," he mused, with that idle pensiveness which is the lazy man's apology to himself for not thinking, "the thing which would surprise them most would be to see how much they held in common. If they could get rid of the cant of theology and the jargon of metaphysics, they would find that they were not so far apart after all. But I don't know that that would gratify them so much,—certainly not the old parson, for he belonged to the Church Militant if ever any one did, and dearly loved to belabor his enemies with the spiritual weapons too heavy for any but him to handle. Well, itwasa temptation to let something fly, be it Bible or brickbat, at the[Pg 225]head of the average dullard. How was it that some people did not find the average man dull? There was Winifred Anstice, for instance,—she seemed to find something interesting in every one she met. Perhaps because she did not try to approach them on the intellectual side at all, but took them into her sympathies and soothed their troubles, as he remembered that mother across the way from his uncle's house soothing the little son and wiping away his tears."
Perhaps, after all, she was right and he was wrong.It was almost the first time in Flint's life that he had ever definitely formulated a confession that his attitude towards life in general was not what it might be. Once formulated, it began to grow upon him curiously. He found himself reviewing whole courses of conduct, and testing them by new rules and standards.
At first these rules and standards were cold and rigid abstractions; but gradually they took on a faint echo of personality, and he found himself speculating on what Winifred Anstice would have done or said, on occasions when he felt himself to have been harsh and hard. This haunting influence was intensified by the presence of the portrait which he had brought away from Nepaug; the picture of the gray-robed Quakeress, with the soft dark eyes, and the white lace, and the point of flame at her breast.
[Pg 226]
He had lost all appreciation of its artistic qualities. The mottled softness of the curtained background against the folds of the woollen stuff gave him no pleasure now,—at least, he never thought of it. His whole attention was absorbed in that faint hint of resemblance to Winifred Anstice which lay chiefly in the full eyelids and the subtle, shadowy, evanescent smile which said at once so much and so little.
He could not tell how it fell out, but at last the time came when he admitted the source of its charm. He recalled the time sharply long after, and how he had risen hastily, and paced the floor with his hands thrust deep into his pockets. That it should come to this—he, Jonathan Flint, a man whose gray hairs—here he stepped before the mirror and studied the tuft of prematurely white locks upon his forehead—whose gray hairs ought to have brought with them wisdom, or at least common sense,—that he should fall to sitting for hours in front of a picture like any schoolboy of eighteen! Really, it was too absurd!
He would send off the portrait to the cleaner to-morrow, and then when it was properly framed, it should be sent to Miss Anstice with his compliments, and so an end of the whole matter. He would never see it again.
Nor the original?
[Pg 227]
This query was so insistent that it seemed to come from outside his consciousness, and to demand an answer. He stopped short in his walk as it struck him. Then, alone as he was, he colored to the temples, and gave a little gasp. Like an overwhelming tidal wave there swept over him the realization that his will was mastered by a power above it, mightier than itself; that his seeing Winifred Anstice again was hardly a question of volition any longer, any more than breathing was a matter of will—that hemustsee her—that the chief question of his future was whether she cared to see him.
This train of thought did not tend to anything very cheerful. One after another he recalled their interviews, on the road, in the boat, on the beach, and again at Flying Point. Her manner on each of these occasions had been sufficiently pronounced to leave him in no doubt of her opinion; and at the last two meetings her words had been even more explicit. She had called him a man of ice. She had taxed him with the narrow limits of his sympathies. "Well," said Reason, "did you not give her cause for all she said and more? Weren't you an odious, crabbed, supercilious cad?"
Flint took a savage satisfaction in admitting every accusation which he could bring against himself, in recalling the light irony with which[Pg 228]Winifred Anstice had witnessed his blunders, and the direct, downright anger with which she had dealt out her judgments there at the Point. Only one drop of comfort could Flint extract from the memory of that interview, and he smiled cynically as he remembered the warmth which marked her description of her friend, the editor of the "Trans-Continental." When the surprises of the sudden enlightenment and the emotion of the moment had passed away, which feeling, he asked himself, would remain in her mind,—the liking for the ideal or the disliking of the experienced? For both there was not room, yet each was intense. It was a curious psychological problem. At a further remove it would have afforded him a keen intellectual pleasure to speculate upon the probable working of a woman's heart under such conditions. As it was, he found himself incapable either of solving the problem or of letting it alone. His mind dwelt upon it continuously. He was almost inclined, like Eugene Aram, to tell his story disguised to strangers, and listen to their idle speculations. Brady was a comfort at this time. He was so responsive in his sympathies and so obtuse in his perceptions. It was possible to talk all round a subject to him with no fear that his imagination would travel a step farther than it was led. It needed no urging, either, for he[Pg 229]appeared to have a sentiment of his own for Nepaug and all its associations, and drew towards it as naturally as a moth to a flame or a woman to a mirror.
Indeed, Brady often dwelt spontaneously upon the various episodes of the days at the beach,—the fireworks, the shipwreck, the evening at Flying Point. He was a capital mimic, and loved to imitate Dr. Cricket striding up and down the room, with his hands clasping his elbows behind his back and his chin-whiskers thrust out before as a herald of his approach. Then casting aside all the scruples which should have been raised within him by ties of blood, he would give a burlesque of Miss Standish peering out from beneath her little gray curls at the world, and rapping out her opinion of those around her in good set terms.
After her came Mr. Anstice, looking busily in every corner for the book he had in his hand. This the mimic followed by a representation of Ben Bradford, with hand propped on knee and chin on hand, glooming from his corner upon Winifred Anstice, when she ventured to address some one else.
"I cannot do Miss Anstice," Brady confessed one evening. It was October then, and the two friends were sitting together in Flint's room. "She has too much humor. The more humor[Pg 230]there is in an original poem, for instance, the harder it is to parody, and so with people. The grand, gloomy, and peculiar are easy enough, let them be ever so august; but the light, delicately ironical manner is a difficult thing to exaggerate."
"Yes," assented Flint, "the heaviness of touch necessary to caricature spoils the effect."
"Precisely," said Brady, "and it is as difficult to take off her looks as her manner. Her expression is too changeable to leave any characteristic fixed in the mind. The fact is, Miss Anstice is almost a beauty at times."
"You think so?" responded Flint, with half-closed eyes.
"Yes, I do really—in a way—not like that Madonna-type of Nora Costello."
"No, certainly not like her."
"But still she has a style of her own."
"Oh, yes, quite so—as you say, she has a style of her own."
"You are very cool on the subject; but you should have heard a man at the club go on about her, when he heard that we had spent our vacation at Nepaug."
"I should scarcely think," said Flint, opening and closing his match-box with a quick, nervous movement, "that you would have allowed her name to come up at the club."
"Oh, hang it, Flint, that is going pretty far![Pg 231]I don't know that Miss Anstice's name is too sacred to be mentioned in general society; and as for the club,—why, if it is not made up of gentlemen, what did you put me up for?"
It was seldom that Brady got off so much of a speech, and he felt a little elated by seeing his friend without an answer for the moment.
"Besides," he continued, "nothing was said, except about what a stunning girl she was. 'Handsomer than ever,' Livingston said, 'since she came home.'"
"So the Anstices are at home?"
"Yes, and Cousin Susan is coming down next week to visit them. She wrote me to be sure to call."
"I shall try to go before Miss Standish arrives."
Brady laughed.
"You and Cousin Susan never did hit it off very well."
"Excuse me, I think she hit me off very well; the fact is, thefemme soleafter fifty becomes either pious or pugnacious. Miss Standish is both."
"You are prejudiced, as usual, and malicious, too, under the guise of impartiality. Miss Standish is a benevolent woman, with an irresistible bent towards doing people good even against their will."
[Pg 232]
Flint groaned assent. "Alas, yes," he muttered.
"She is a fine woman," continued Brady, "and a fine-looking one too, as Dr. Cricket will testify, for on my soul I think the old duffer wants to marry her."
"I wish he would, and rid the world of an officious old maid."
"'Old maid' is an opprobrious term. Miss Standist is a well-preserved single woman."
"Hold there, Brady! She is really not sugary enough for a preserve; I should say rather well canned. But never mind, I can forgive her some acidity toward myself, in consideration of her sweetness to Nora Costello. She has really been good to that girl."
"Who could help it!" exclaimed Brady, unguardedly. Then he cleared his throat with a nervous little cough, and began again with would-be unconcern: "By the way, I don't know whether I told you, that the day after you left Nepaug, Jimmy Anstice picked up a gold brooch on the beach, just where you came ashore after the wreck. It was a homely, old-fashioned thing, with a gold-stone centre big enough for a tombstone; but Jim brought it to me with all the pride of a discoverer. I turned it over, and on the back I saw engraved in the gold, 'To Nora from her Mother, on her birthday, November[Pg 233]tenth,' Of course I knew in an instant that it belonged to Nora Costello. Then it came to me how the girl spent most of the day while she was at Nepaug wandering up and down on the beach. Of course she was looking for her brooch; but she was afraid, if she said anything, it would look like accusing somebody; and besides, very likely with her queer ideas she felt that she ought not to have kept any piece of jewelry, even if it was her mother's."
"You seem to have studied her feelings rather closely."
"Why, of course, when one meets a pretty girl like that—and really you know she is the prettiest I ever saw—"
"How long is it since you said the same of Miss Anstice?"
"Ah! that was before I met Nora Costello. 'Time's noblest offspring is his last.' But if you will keep still and listen, instead of interrupting all the time, you will hear something about the little plot which Miss Anstice and Cousin Susan and I have laid among us."
"Well—"
"I should say it was well. Just you wait and see. Cousin Susan is to write to Nora."
"Nora?" commented Flint, with raised eyebrows.
"Yes, Nora," repeated Brady, somewhat defiantly.[Pg 234]"If I said Captain Costello you would not know whether I was talking of her or her brother."
"Oh, yes, I should," said Flint, "for you never talk of him at all; but never mind that—go on with your revelations of this deep conspiracy."
"You don't deserve to hear; but as it gives me pleasure to tell you, I will. Cousin Susan writes to the Costellos to come to the Anstices' house on the evening of November tenth. They arrive. We are there already. Tableau—old Nepaug minus Dr. Cricket and Ben Bradford—and a bouquet for Mistress Nora, with her brooch hanging from it in a little bag which Miss Standish was manufacturing when I came away. Now isn't that a scheme?"
"The tenth of November," responded Flint, as though the latter part of the sentence had escaped him—"and am I to be invited?"
"Why, of course!" exclaimed Brady, impatiently. "Weren't you the one to save her life? Worse luck to you for having the honor fall to your share!"
"Then," said Flint, with that curious obliviousness of the important parts of his companion's remarks,—"then in common civility I ought to call there beforehand."
"Ah! Flint, I'm glad to see you waking up to some decent sense of social observances."
[Pg 235]
"What time is it?" asked his friend, absently, oblivious of the watch in his pocket.
"Quarter before eight," Brady answered.
"Then out of my room with you, for I have just time to dress and get down there. If one must do these things, the sooner they are out of the way the better."
[Pg 236]
It is nearly two weeks since I left Oldburyport, and in spite of the Anstices' hospitality I have been homesick ever since. When we reach middle age nothing suits us so well as village life. The small events occupy and divert our minds without wearying them with the bewildering whirl of the city. The interest of our neighbors in us and our affairs, which is annoying in youth, becomes more grateful as life goes on, and we discover how little real thoughtfulness and interest in others the world contains. As for the narrowing influences of village life, I don't see that people in Oldburyport are any more provincial or prejudiced than they are in New York,—not so much so, I really think, for they are forced by the very smallness of their circle to find their interests in the affairs of the great world, and the lack of social excitements gives them so much more time for reading.[Pg 237]To be sure, when people are unhappy there is less to divert their minds, and when they are irritable they feel more at liberty to vent their tempers, because they know folks cannot get away from them so easily. I confess I was not sorry to take leave of Cousin John, though I did feel sorry for him, as he sat there all alone with his gouty foot up on the chair in front of the Franklin stove in the sitting-room. He is not satisfied with Philip, and seems to hold me responsible. He would like to have Phil come home to live and be cashier of the bank.
Cousin John thinks the world revolves round the Oldbury bank; and I suppose it is natural he should, seeing how long he has been president, and what a fine reputation it has the country round.
Of course Philip does not see it in the same light, and it seems he made some ill-advised speech,—said he would rather turn sexton and bury other people than be buried alive himself in a hole like that, which was not a nice thing for him to say to his father,—but that was no reason why Cousin John should swear at him, and tell him he was sick of his capitalist airs, and he for one should not be surprised if he came some day to beg for aid from the bank he thought too insignificant to be worthy of his attention.
Philip was furious. "Bankrupt I may be[Pg 238]some day," he answered, "but I promise you I will go to the poorhouse before ever I ask help of you and your infernal bank."
This was the state of mind in which they parted, when Philip had come home for his first visit in years. I could have shaken them both for their obstinacy and lack of common sense; but it is always so when men live alone. They need a woman about the house to accustom them to being contradicted. Now if Philip married a girl like Winifred, she would soon straighten things out. I can see now how Cousin John would dote on her and pretend not to care very much, and scold sometimes when he had the gout; but all the while be her slave and spend his life trying to give her pleasure. That is what ought to happen, so of course it won't. Instead, Philip will go and marry some uncomfortable sort of person with a mission. Oh, dear! what if it should be—? There, I will not allow my mind to turn inthatdirection. I have a sort of superstition that thinking too much about any unfortunate thing helps to bring it about. I think it must be this city life which makes me feel so blue and discouraged. The fact is, I do not like New York. In the first place, because it is not Boston; and in the second place, because itisNew York. There is too much of everything here—too much[Pg 239]money, too much show, too many lamps, and sofa-pillows, and courses at dinner. Then everybody seems to be everlastingly at work getting ready to live. Here is Winifred, for instance, tearing up and down for hours after upholsterers and paper-hangers, toiling about from shop to shop, and from Broadway to Sixth Avenue, matching samples and trying æsthetic effects which no one but herself cares anything for when they are accomplished. And by the end of the day she is so tired that she falls asleep when I read aloud to her in the evening.
"Why do you fuss so about everything?" I asked her the other day. "We don't fuss in Boston."
"That accounts," she answered,—which was not very civil, I thought. She has certainly grown very queer this fall. She told me this morning that she thought the Unitarians were as bigoted as anybody. Now she never would have said a thing like that this summer when she was living in the open air. It's my opinion that two things are telling upon her,—furnace heat and the influence of that Mr. Flint—especially the last. Why, it just seems to me as if she were trying to make herself over into the kind of woman he would be likely to like. She has dropped her old hoidenish ways and goes about as prim as a Puritan. She says she[Pg 240]is always like that in the city, and that her Nepaug ways are only a reaction; but I don't believe it. He comes here a great deal, that is certain; and I don't think it is very gentlemanly, after her begging him, as I heard her with my own ears, to go away. But he is too selfish to care what any one wants but himself. For some reason or other it suits his plans just now to try to please Winifred.
The first night I was here Winifred was telling him about Maria Polonati, the little Italian girl who sells flowers at the corner of the Square, and how she had made friends with her, and learned all about her "padre" and her "madre" and the playmates she had left behind her in the "bella Napoli." Winifred knows how to tell a thing so it seems to stand right out like the old Dutch women in the pictures, and I could see that Mr. Flint was taking it all in, for all he said so little; and so he was, for the next time he came he walked right up to Winifred's chair and dropped a great bunch of violets into her lap.
"The little girl at the corner sent you these," he said; and Winifred smiled as if it were the most natural thing in the world for that cross-grained egotist to do a thing like that. He did it rather gracefully, I admit; but a Boston man would have done it just as well, if he had only thought of it.
[Pg 241]
Of late Mr. Flint has taken to dropping in once or twice a week of an evening to play whist,—he and Winifred against her father and me. Now I like to beat as well as any one; but I do like some show of organized resistance, and this young man's playing is what I call impertinently poor, as if he did not think it worth while to try. Winifred seems just as well satisfied to be beaten as to beat, and the Professor takes a guileless and childlike satisfaction in his triumph which is quite pitiable. I take pains to let Mr. Flint see that I at least am not taken in; but he only smiles in that exasperatingly non-committal way of his, as if it mattered little enough to him what I thought one way or the other. After the game is over he gets a chance for a few minutes' talk with Winifred while I am hunting up my knitting and her father his pipe, and it is my belief that it's just those few minutes that he looks forward to all the evening, while he is ignoring his partner's trump-signal and leading from his weak suit.
Winifred has caught a very annoying trick of turning to him on all occasions, as if waiting to know what he thought before making up her mind. Altogether I don't like the look of things at all.
Of course there was no getting out of inviting Mr. Flint to the little birthday party which we[Pg 242]were planning for Nora Costello. To tell the truth, nobody but me seemed to want to get out of it. Professor Anstice says he is the most agreeable man that comes to the house, and when I confided to him that I was afraid Winifred would fall in love with him, he answered: "She might do worse. She might do much worse." That was all the consolation I got in that quarter, and with Winifred herself it was as bad. I thought it might do good to recall some of her early impressions, which seem to have changed so mightily of late.
"Don't you remember," I said, "how you called him a refrigerator?"
"Did I?" she said with a little laugh. "Well, he was rather frigid in those days."
"Yes, and you said how disagreeable his manners were, and how thoughtless he was of every one but himself."
At this Winifred colored up as if they hadn't been her own very words. "If I said it," she answered with a little toss of her head, "or if anybody else said it, it was a stupid slander, which grows stupider every time it is repeated."
I was a little nettled myself at her answering me like that. "You didn't think so," I said, "when you begged him to go away from Nepaug."
At this Winifred jumped straight up from her[Pg 243]chair, running her hand through her hair in a way she has when she is excited—"Did you hear that? Then you must have been listening," she cried out, as if she were accusing me of chicken-stealing.
"If you think that of me, Winifred, the sooner my trunk is packed the better," I answered, as stiff as the Captain's monument on Duxbury Hill.
In an instant Winifred was on her knees by my side, and had thrown her arms around my neck.
"No, no, dear Miss Standish, I do not think it, and I ought not to have said it. It only made me feel so badly to think of any one's having overheard my secret, which after all was not my own."
Now here was my chance to find out the very thing which had been bothering my old head all these weeks. I had only to pretend to know and I should hear it all, for Winifred was in one of her rare confidential moods. But that inconvenient New England conscience of mine not only would not let me pretend, but it pricked me a little with Winifred's accusation of having listened. Perhaps if my ears had not been strained just a trifle, I should not have caught as much as I did of the conversation at Flying Point. Anyway, I felt bound to confess now.