Dear Mr. Phillips:Having heard of your interest in Colonial history, and particularly in Mme. Van Der Dokjen, I feel sure you will be pleased to learn that I have discovered a letter written by her to an ancestor of mine—a certain Ephraim Ordway, captain in General Washington’s army.Apparently Mme. V. took a pretty lively interest in Captain Ordway, and the letter may provide an amusing sidelight upon the lady’s history.If you would care to see it, I shall be glad to bring it to you some day.Very truly yours,Stephen Ordway.
Dear Mr. Phillips:
Having heard of your interest in Colonial history, and particularly in Mme. Van Der Dokjen, I feel sure you will be pleased to learn that I have discovered a letter written by her to an ancestor of mine—a certain Ephraim Ordway, captain in General Washington’s army.
Apparently Mme. V. took a pretty lively interest in Captain Ordway, and the letter may provide an amusing sidelight upon the lady’s history.
If you would care to see it, I shall be glad to bring it to you some day.
Very truly yours,Stephen Ordway.
“This,” said Cousin Ronald to himself, “is blackmail. ‘An amusing sidelight—!’ Merciful Powers!”
On a shelf before him stood a copy of “Mme. Van Der Dokjen and Her Milieu,” chastely bound in gray and gold. As frontispiece there was a portrait of her, smiling; but how dignified, how superb! “An amusing sidelight!”
“Of course I shall write to this fellow, and bid him bring his letter,” thought Cousin Ronald. “But I’ll have to pay. Heaven knows what I shall have to pay!”
It was a truly horrible situation, for it combined the two greatest fears of his soul; the fear of injury to Mme. Van Der Dokjen, and the fear of spending much money. Because, as was mentioned before, Cousin Ronald was no spendthrift.
It was with the object of obtaining temporary relief from these painful matters that he opened his other letters. But instead of relief, here were more blows. It was the beginning of the month, and all the other envelopes contained bills—for groceries, for meat, for vegetables, for laundry. He added them together, and was appalled. He knew what it had cost Mme. Van Der Dokjen to run this house; this was five times as much.
For a moment, a sort of desperation seized upon him. He saw his hard earned—by his father—money being squandered and dissipated upon all sides. He saw himself paying these bills, and buying the com[Pg 422]promising letter, and being left a ruined man.
“Merciful Powers!” he cried, with a groan.
Then he arose, and went to Cousin Winnie, and told her that he was a ruined man.
In that chapter on Mme. Van Der Dokjen “During the War,” he had written with a certain eloquence about her benevolence, and about womanly sympathy in general; he had praised it, but not before had he encountered it. And he found it even sweeter than he had believed.
He and Cousin Winnie had a long talk. He assured her that he was confiding in her. To tell the truth, he told her nothing, but he spoke of his “troubles” in a large, vague fashion, he begged her to help him to economize. And she pitied him.
Lucy pitied him, too. But she was of a somewhat more practical nature.
“If he’s ruined,” she said, “it seems to me that we’d better go back to the city, and I’ll get another job. And at least we’ll have hot baths, and electric lights, and enough to eat.”
“I could not leave your Cousin Ronald now,” her mother declared, solemnly. “He says that any day now he will know. And then we can decide.”
“Know what?” asked Lucy.
“Know the worst,” her mother replied.
“Nothing,” said Lucy, “could be worse than this.”
Indeed, matters were bad, very bad. A black shadow lay over the household. Every morning Cousin Ronald came to the breakfast table, with a stern, set face, opened his letters, looked at Cousin Winnie, and said “Nothing!” She knew not what fateful news he expected, but she dreaded it, and yet wished it would come, that the blow would fall, the suspense be ended.
In the meantime, she did her utmost to aid the stricken man. Her economies were heroic. No need to detail them here. She grew thinner and paler, but she did not falter. Cousin Ronald told her frequently that he did not know what he could do without her coöperation, and that was a spur to the willing horse.
She did not like her child to endure all this, though. Again and again she urged Lucy to go back to the city, but Lucy refused. She would not leave her mother, and she, too, was sorry for Cousin Ronald; quite as sorry as her mother, though in a different way. In her eyes he was not the distinguished and admirable figure Cousin Winnie thought him; he was simply a “poor, funny old darling.” So, she remained, also waiting for the blow.
But no one suffered as did Cousin Ronald. He had written at once to this Stephen Ordway, requesting him to bring the letter at his “earliest convenience.” No answer came; days went by, and Cousin Ronald wrote again. He waited and waited, in growing anguish. What, he asked himself, could be the reason for this silence? Awful fancies came to him.
His publishers wrote, asking if they might expect the manuscript of his new book in time for their spring list. He knew not how to reply. He dared not publish anything further about Mme. Van Der Dokjen while that letter was at large.
One night he had a dream. He dreamed that he went into Brentano’s, to look at his book—“A Historic Cottage”—which had just been published, in gray and gold, like the former volume. He was, in his dream, examining this volume with justifiable pleasure, when his eye fell upon another book beside it—a slim little book in a scarlet jacket—“The Lady and the Soldier—An Amusing Sidelight Upon Mme. Van Der Dokjen.”
It was a frightful dream, from which he awoke, cold and trembling.
“Whatever he asks, I’ll pay it!” he thought. “But—Merciful Powers! It may be a sum beyond the very bounds of reason.”
Still, he would pay. He would not see this noble woman held up to the world’s ridicule. Whatever the cost, he would pay.
And, until he knew the cost, every cent must be saved. Very well; every cent was saved. Cousin Winnie assisted him in this. He waited. They all waited.
The summer ran its course, and the great winds were beginning to blow. The leaves were falling fast. And, in the city, janitors were informing tenants that the furnace was being repaired; who so sorry as they for any delay in getting up a fine sizzling head of steam in the boiler these chilly mornings?
In the historic cottage there was, of course, not even a hope of a furnace. Cousin Winnie spent most of her time in the kitchen, where there was a coal stove,[Pg 423]and Cousin Ronald took long, healthful walks. So did Lucy; often they went together, but not on this especial afternoon. If they had, if Lucy had accompanied Cousin Ronald this afternoon, all might have been different.
Cousin Ronald, however, had remained in his study, communing, so to speak, with Mme. Van Der Dokjen. It was growing late when from his window he saw Lucy coming back from her walk. Her hair was blown about, her cheeks were glowing, she looked the most alive, warm, radiant creature imaginable.
And he was chilly and dispirited, and, seeing her, he thought that perhaps a walk might do all that for him. So he put on his hat and overcoat and took up his stick, and set forth. Not ten yards from his own gate he passed the man he so anxiously awaited, but he knew him not. He went on, in one direction, and the man went on in the other.
The man knocked at the door of the cottage, and Lucy opened it. She was still flushed from her walk, and in that dim, low-ceilinged room she seemed to him, with her fair hair that shone, her clear blue eyes, her scarlet jersey, almost impossibly vivid.
“I beg your pardon,” he said. “Does Mr. Phillips live here?”
“Oh, yes!” Lucy answered. “But he’s just gone out. You might catch him if—”
“I’d be sure to miss him,” the stranger declared, firmly. “If it won’t bother you, may I wait? I’ll just sit down out here.” And he indicated a very historic settle which was built into the porch. All the winds that blew, blew here; an eddy of leaves whirled about his feet, now, and Lucy could scarcely hold the door open.
“You’d better come in,” she suggested.
“Well, thank you,” said he.
Fresh from the stir and color of the windy day, the sitting room seemed to him unpleasantly chill and dark as Lucy closed the door behind him. The fire was out, for economy’s sake, and the tiny panes in the historic window did not admit much light.
“This is a pretty old house, isn’t it?” he observed.
“Awfully!” said Lucy. “Sit down, won’t you? That chair’s a hundred and fifty years old. And it’s one of the junior set, too!”
“I’ve heard about this place. Belonged to Mme. Van Der Dokjen, didn’t it?”
“It still does!” said Lucy, grimly.
The stranger glanced at her.
“My name’s Ordway,” he explained. “I wrote to Mr. Phillips, and he asked me to come. I’ve been away—on my vacation—or I’d have come before.”
He wished that he had. He wished that he had come weeks ago. He felt that he had lost priceless time. And he looked as if he thought that.
Lucy had always liked red hair, and noses that turned up a little. This young man had red hair and that sort of nose; he was big, too, and broad-shouldered, and he looked cheerful. She asked him if he would care to look over the historic cottage and its antiques.
“Well—no, thanks,” he said. “Tell you the truth, I’ve had all I want of historic things. My aunts, you know—they’ve got ancestors, and documents. If you don’t mind, I’d rather just sit here and—”
He said “wait,” but what he meant was “talk to you.” The girl knew this. They did sit there, and they talked. The room grew dark; a very fine sunset was going forward in its proper place; indeed, at that moment Cousin Ronald was standing upon a hilltop, admiring it. But the laws of nature kept it away from the sitting room.
In the course of time Cousin Winnie was obliged to call for her daughter’s aid. She came into the doorway; Mr. Ordway was presented to her; she spoke to him graciously, and gave him a candle, then she took away the radiant Lucy.
Candle or no candle, the room seemed darker than ever to Ordway. He began to walk about, but he knocked his shins against too many historic objects, and at last he paused, in a spot where he could see into the kitchen. He saw Cousin Winnie and Lucy preparing dinner by candlelight.
And he did not find it picturesque. He saw Lucy vigorously plying the pump beside the sink. He was not reminded of the old days, when home life had been so much finer. He thought:
“Good Lord! A pump! Candles! It’s a shame! It’s a darned shame! A girl like that! It’s a darned shame!”
He blamed Mr. Ronald Phillips for all this.
When Cousin Ronald came home, he found a Stephen Ordway even more sinister than he had feared; a stern and very reticent young man, a very large one, too. By the light of the one candle in the sitting[Pg 424]room, he loomed, in the dictionary sense of the word—“loom: to appear larger than the real size, and indefinitely.” His red hair had an infernal gleam.
“Mr.—er—Ordway?” said Cousin Ronald. “Yes—yes—I had—er—a communication from you?”
“You did, Mr. Phillips.”
“Er—have you broughtitwith you?” asked Cousin Ronald, very low.
The young man said “Yes,” but made no move to produce any document. He was thinking of something else.
“This house is old,” he remarked; “but it seems pretty solid.”
“Yes, indeed!” Cousin Ronald assented anxiously. “Yes, indeed!” He saw that the young man was leading up to something. “Suppose we step into my study?”
The young man was looking about him, at the walls, up at the ceiling.
“Yes,” he asserted. “The place could be wired.”
“W-wired?” said Cousin Ronald. “I don’t—”
“I’m an electrical engineer,” said Ordway. “I’ve been looking around here.Thinkwhat electricity could do for you here! Light—plenty of light—electric water heater—pump—dish washer—vacuum cleaner—percolator—stoves. You could have decent comfort!”
Cousin Ronald could not fathom the motives of the stranger, but he felt sure that they were profoundly subtle, and inimical to Cousin Ronald’s welfare. Again he said:
“Will you—er—step into my study, sir?”
Ordway stepped, and when he got in there he loomed worse than ever.
“See here!” he said. “Let me do this job for you—wiring the house.”
Cousin Ronald felt a sort of illness, a sort of faintness. He believed that he could comprehend the plot now. Instead of bluntly demanding a certain sum for Mme. Van Der Dokjen’s letter, he was going to demand this job—this impious, this vandal job, of “wiring” the cottage. And the price—the price—
“I—er—fear it would be a somewhat costly undertaking,” said Cousin Ronald.
Ordway thought of the wonderful girl, groping about in this dismal house, cold, forlorn, captive to an ogre relative. He was perhaps a little obsessed by electricity—a good thing for one of his profession. He thought it the great hope of the modern world. And he could not endure the idea of a wonderful girl deprived of its benefits. He said:
“The question is—if anything can be too ‘costly,’ when it’s a matter of human dignity and welfare.”
A shudder ran along Cousin Ronald’s spine. The moment had come. Very well; he was ready. He admitted, in his own heart, that nothing could be too costly where Mme. Van Der Dokjen’s dignity was concerned. He was silent for a moment; then he raised his distinguished head.
“Mr. Ordway,” he said, “name your price, sir!”
Ordway stared at him with a faint frown.
“I didn’t mean that,” he explained. What he had meant was that he would be glad to do this job for nothing. But he feared to affront Mr. Phillips. “It’s—I’denjoydoing it,” he said earnestly.
Cousin Ronald could not endure the suspense any longer.
“Mr. Ordway,” he said, “let us be direct, sir. That is ever my way. I have long been prepared for this eventuality. I am ready, sir, to consider the purchase of this letter. Be good enough to name your price.”
Like many another man before him, Cousin Ronald was ill-served by his own impatience. Ordway had come, intending to hand the letter over as a gift of no importance, but being asked to name his price put ideas into his head. He reflected. He reflected so long that Cousin Ronald grew still more impatient.
“I have been practicing the strictest economy,” he announced. “I may say that I have endured something not short of actual discomfort, sir, in order that I might be in a position to meet any—er—reasonable terms—”
There was a knock at the door. It was Cousin Winnie.
“Yourdinner!” she whispered. “It’sready!”
Cousin Ronald did some quick reflecting himself. If the young man could observe their strict economy for himself—
“Mr. Ordway, sir,” he said, “will you favor us with your company at a very simple meal?”
“Thank you!” Ordway replied. “I’d be pleased to.[Pg 425]”
This dinner had, in Cousin Ronald’s eyes, a sweet, old-fashioned charm. A fire burned now upon the hearth; the board was set out with Wedgwood and with Sheffield plate. And Cousin Ronald positively recreated Mme. Van Der Dokjen, describing her just as she had been, here in this very room.
But Ordway was not moved. He did not give the Wedgwood or the plate anything like the attention he gave to the economical dinner, and the late Mme. Van Der Dokjen was, to him, of very inferior merit to the living Lucy. All the time Cousin Ronald discoursed, Ordway was thinking of Lucy, deprived of electricity and of all the other privileges she so richly deserved.
“It’s a darned shame!” he thought. “The old skinflint thinks more of that letter than he does of his own family. A darned shame!”
When the meal ended, Cousin Ronald suggested that Lucy sing, accompanying herself upon the spinet—an art she had recently acquired. He believed that this would soften the heart of the rapacious young man.
It did. It did, indeed. To the sweetly jangling spinet she sang some gentle old song. In firelight and candlelight—
The young man, watching her and hearing her, was quite as much moved as Cousin Ronald could have desired—but in the wrong direction.
Her song ended, Cousin Ronald and Ordway withdrew to the study, Cousin Winnie and her child to the kitchen. Twenty minutes passed; then Ordway reappeared. With a curtsy almost old-fashioned, Lucy went with him to the door, even across the threshold.
The wind slammed the door behind her, and for a few minutes she stood in the porch, talking to the young man. Cousin Winnie, in the kitchen, heard them; they were discussing a new play. Lucy said yes, she did like the theater, but she didn’t go very often now. And she had heard “The Maddened Brute” spoken of as a wonderful play—a really big thing. Cousin Winnie missed a little here, owing to her duties; the next thing she heard was Lucy saying good night to Mr. Ordway.
It had been a very brief conversation, but Ordway, as he walked to the station in the windy dark, imagined that she had said a great deal. He thought, somehow, that she had told him what a miserable existence she led in the historic cottage. What adarnedshame!
Lucy was sitting at a small table by the dining room window. She had bought a tube of cement, and with it she was mending a varied assortment of antique china she had discovered in a cupboard. It was raining outside, a chill, steady downpour. And the room was dim and cold, and it was a dismal world.
“I wish I was thirty!” she thought. Because at that advanced age she believed that one could be content to live in a historic cottage, and not mind dullness, or rain, or anything, very much. At thirty she would be content to devote her life to the ruined Cousin Ronald and her heroic mother. Yet, in a way, she disliked the thought of being thirty. She disliked all her thoughts this afternoon.
“As far as that goes,” she reflected, pursuing a certain familiar line, “I don’t have to wait for anybody to invite me. I can take mother to see ‘The Maddened Brute’ this very Saturday, if I like. I’ve got enough money for that. Only, mother wouldn’t like that sort of play. Anyhow, I don’t care!”
Carefully she cemented a handle on an ancient sugar basin; then, setting it down to dry, she looked out of the window. The postman, in a rubber coat, was coming along the muddy road.
“I don’t care!” she said again. She was not the sort of girl who waited with the slightest interest for letters that people had said they were going to write a week ago. Let them write, or not write; what cared she?
The postman came up on the porch and whistled, and the door opened—like a sort of cuckoo clock—and Cousin Winnie took in the letters. But what a long time she was in the hall!
“I suppose she’s got another letter from a cousin,” thought Lucy. “If there was anything for me—But I don’t care, anyhow.”
At last Cousin Winnie came into the dining room.
“A letter for you, Lucy,” she said, handed it to her child, and vanished. With the utmost indifference Lucy opened her letter. It contained two tickets for “The Maddened Brute” for Saturday afternoon, an[Pg 426]explanation of the difficulty of getting them, and a very civil request that she and her mother meet Stephen Ordway for lunch at the Ritz before the play.
Not yet being thirty, the girl was pleased.
“Mother!” she called. “Isn’t this nice? Listen—”
No answer. She got up and went into the kitchen, and found her mother standing by the window—just standing, doing nothing. This was alarming.
“Mother!” she said. “What’s wrong?”
“Lucy—” said her mother. “Oh, Lucy! Oh, think of it! You can travel! You can have really nice clothes!” She was actually in tears.
“What is the matter?” cried Lucy. And then: “What’s this?”
It was a check for five thousand dollars which Cousin Winnie extended in her trembling hand.
“Your—your Cousin Peter—left it to you!”
“Cousin Peter! Who’s he?”
“You wouldn’t remember,” said Cousin Winnie. “A—a second cousin of—your grandfather’s. Oh, Lucy! My dear, good child! Now you can go away!”
“But the check’s made out to you, and it’s signed L. B. Grey—”
“A legal form,” Cousin Winnie explained. “I myself shall be well and amply provided for. This check is entirely for you, Lucy.”
Somehow, “The Maddened Brute” was a disappointment. It was truly, as the advertisements declared it, a tense and gripping drama of life in the raw, but the characters were all so very violent that it was rather a relief than a tragedy when any one of them was silenced by stabbing, drowning, and so on.
Mr. Ordway was a little tense himself. When Cousin Winnie had seen him in the historic cottage, he had appeared such a cheerful young man, and now he was so odd, so silent. He ordered a superb luncheon at the Ritz; he provided them with an unparalleled box of chocolates; he was, in material ways, a most satisfactory host.
But spiritually he was depressing. In the theater he sat on the aisle, next to Cousin Winnie, and whenever the curtain went down he kept asking her about her plans, in a low and alarmingly serious voice.
“You won’t stay in that house all winter, will you?” And he spoke of pneumonia, of bronchitis, of rheumatism, with a horrid eloquence. He said that candles often set houses on fire. He pictured such a disaster on a bitter midwinter night.
He spoke of thieves. He went on to escaped lunatics; and when the curtain rose on the third act and showed theMaddened Brutegibbering in a cellar by the light of one candle, she gasped.
“I must speak to Lucy!” she thought. “She’s got to go away!” It was her policy not to interfere with her child, and she had waited very patiently for some word as to what Lucy meant to do with the check. But now she would wait no longer; she would speak to her about going away.
She had no opportunity, though. The young man insisted on taking them all the way back to the cottage.
It did, indeed, look sinister that evening, so small, so lonely under a stormy sky. Mad things could so easily be hiding behind those bushes. Of course they weren’t, but theycould.
“You must come in, Mr. Ordway,” said Cousin Winnie.
“Thanks,” he replied. “But—thanks, but I’ve got to go. Only, I wish you’d tell me first that you’ve decided not to stay here this winter.”
“Oh, dear!” said Cousin Winnie, mildly. “I’m sure I can’t.”
“Why don’t you go to Bermuda?” continued the young man. “Or Florida? You—both of you—look pale.”
Although a little tiresome, Cousin Winnie thought the young man’s solicitude rather touching. But Lucy answered him bluntly.
“We can’t afford things like that. We’re going to stay here—”
“But five thousand dollars ought—” he began, vehemently, and stopped short. There was a blank silence.
“Mother!” said Lucy, reproachfully.
“My dear!” said Cousin Winnie. “Naturally, I never mentioned—”
There was another silence.
“Mr. Ordway,” Lucy began. “What made you say ‘five thousand dollars’?”
“Oh! It—it just came into my head,” he replied.
“It couldn’t,” said Lucy, coldly. “I’d like to know. Will you tell me, please, why you thought I had five thousand dollars?”
Another silence.[Pg 427]
“Because,” said Ordway, “I sent it.”
“Oh!” cried mother and daughter.
“But—listen, please!” said the young man, in great distress. “It’s—if you’ll just listen. You see, I had a letter written by this Mme. Van Der What’s Her Name—and Mr. Phillips wanted it—badly. And when I saw how—what it was like in the cottage—and he seemed to have all he wanted to spare for that darn fool letter. I made him pay five thousand for it. Please! Just a minute! It reallybelongsto you. You’re his relatives.”
“But—Cousin Peter!” cried Lucy.
“I made him up,” said Cousin Winnie, faintly. “The letter said—from an anonymous friend—and I thought—perhaps your Cousin Ronald himself—But now, of course, Lucy will return it to you at once, Mr. Ordway.”
“I can’t,” said Lucy, with a sob. “You told me this Cousin Peter yarn—and you said you were amply provided for—and I’m young and healthy—and the poor thing did look so wretched—”
“Lucy! What ‘poor thing’? Oh, Lucy, what have you done?”
“You told me he was ruined,” said Lucy. “And he did look so cold, and wretched, and dismal—and I rather like him.”
“Lucy! You didn’t—”
“I did!” cried Lucy in despair. “I gave it to Cousin Ronald!”
“He accepted it?” asked Ordway, in a terrible voice.
“He had to,” Lucy replied. “I put it in an envelope and wrote—‘from an admirer of Mme. Van Der Dokjen’!”
No one spoke for a time.
“I know it was foolish,” said Lucy, finally. “But the day I got it, I felt so—I can’t describe it—so—well, so healthy, you know, and able to do anything I wanted. And he was sitting in there, writing his poor silly old book, with one candle. And his gray hair, and his funny little beard—and the way he clears his throat—sort of baaing—like a lamb. And I thought he was ruined.”
“Foolish!” repeated Cousin Winnie, and with that she walked briskly up the path.
“I really am a little bit sorry,” Lucy remarked.
“Sorry for what?” inquired Ordway.
“Well,” said she. “For you, I guess. You must feel pretty flat, just now.”
“Thank you,” said he. “I do.”
“It was a nasty, condescending thing.”
“It wasn’t meant like that,” he declared. “What I—”
The door of the cottage opened, and Cousin Winnie called:
“Don’t stand there in the cold!”
“Mother says—” Lucy began.
“I heard her,” said Ordway. “Thing is—what doyousay?”
“Well, I’d—I’d like you to come,” said Lucy.
Then they went in. They found Cousin Winnie standing by a console in the hall, with a strange look on her face.
“Really!” said she. “This is—Look at this!”
And she held out to them a check for five thousand dollars, drawn by Cousin Ronald to her order.
“Listen!” she said, and began to read:
“My dear Winnie:“An unexpected stroke of good fortune enables me to tender to you this small token of my profound appreciation of your kindness toward me in a dark hour. I beg that you will honor me by accepting it.“Furthermore, it occurs to me that this cottage, hallowed as it is to me by its associations, is scarcely suitable in its present condition for a winter residence for ladies accustomed to modern conveniences. I shall endeavor to arrange for the installation of electricity, and I am this afternoon going into the city to consult with an expert upon the advisability of a small furnace.“I shall be somewhat late in returning. Indeed, my dear Winnie, I should prefer that you read this in my absence, and to consider—”
“My dear Winnie:
“An unexpected stroke of good fortune enables me to tender to you this small token of my profound appreciation of your kindness toward me in a dark hour. I beg that you will honor me by accepting it.
“Furthermore, it occurs to me that this cottage, hallowed as it is to me by its associations, is scarcely suitable in its present condition for a winter residence for ladies accustomed to modern conveniences. I shall endeavor to arrange for the installation of electricity, and I am this afternoon going into the city to consult with an expert upon the advisability of a small furnace.
“I shall be somewhat late in returning. Indeed, my dear Winnie, I should prefer that you read this in my absence, and to consider—”
“That’s all that matters,” said Cousin Winnie, hastily, folding up the letter.
“No! Read the rest!” her child firmly insisted.
“No,” Cousin Winnie asserted. “I—I prefer not.”
“But why?” Lucy began, and then stopped, staring at her mother.
“Mother!” the girl exclaimed.
“Don’t be silly!” said Cousin Winnie, severely.
“Merciful Powers!” Lucy remarked, with a shocking mimicry of Cousin Ronald’s manner. “I fear this is another compromising letter!”
“It is not, at all!” Cousin Winnie declared indignantly. “Nothing could be more honorable and—”
Then suddenly they all began to laugh. Cousin Ronald, coming up the path, heard them. He thought it was an agreeable thing to hear, suggestive of that fine, old-fashioned home life.[Pg 428]
MUNSEY’SMAGAZINE
AUGUST, 1926Vol. LXXXVIIINUMBER 3
[Pg 429]
By Elisabeth Sanxay Holding
MRS. RUSSELL sat on the veranda, waiting for her son. A handsome and dignified woman she was, and a very calm one, but her calmness did not suggest patience.
On the contrary, she looked like one of those persons who wait until exactly the right moment, and then proceed to do whatever is exactly the right thing to be done, leaving late or careless persons to their well-deserved fate. Half past six was the dinner hour; at half past six she would go into the dining room, and if her son were not home—
He always was home, though. For twenty-three years he had been trained in punctuality, neatness, and economy, and his mother was satisfied with the result. She turned her eyes toward the west, where the sun was preparing to leave, gathering together his gorgeous, filmy raiment.
She was not looking at, or thinking of, any sunset, however, but looked in that direction because the railway station lay there, and she had heard a train whistle. It was not Geordie’s regular train, but once in awhile he came a little earlier; and, though Mrs. Russell was too reasonable to expect such a thing, she hoped he was coming now.
It was nice to have an extra half hour with her boy; nice to walk about the lawn with him, to talk to him, to listen to him, even just to look at him, as long as he didn’t catch her at it.
No; he wasn’t coming early to-night. The long tree lined street was empty, except for a woman who had just crossed the road. She was an odd figure; even the judicial Mrs. Russell had to smile a little at her frantic progress. A flower crowned hat had slipped far to the back of her head, a gray dust coat, unbuttoned, flew out behind her.
She walked bent by the weight of two heavy bags, pressing forward in haste, as if struggling against a mighty wind. She came nearer, and through the branches of a tree a shaft from the setting sun fell upon her wild fair hair.
“But—goodness gracious!” said Mrs. Russell, half aloud. “But—no! Nonsense! It can’t be!”
For there had been somebody else, with wild fair hair like that, shining not gold, but silver when the sun lay on it; somebody else slight and tall, and always in a desperate hurry. That was years and years ago.
She got up and came to the edge of the veranda, a queer flutter in her heart. Could there be any one else with quite that[Pg 430]air—distinguished, and yet a little ridiculous, and somehow so touching?
“Louie!” she said, incredulously.
Down went the bags on the pavement. The newcomer stood where she was for an instant, then, headlong, rushed through the gate, up the steps, and clasped Mrs. Russell in her arms so violently that the flower crowned hat fell off and rolled down the steps. It lay on the gravel walk like a poor dry little flowerpot.
“Oh, Bella!” she cried. “Oh, Bella! Oh, Bella!”
“There—” said Mrs. Russell. “Sit down, my dear! Try to control yourself!”
As a matter of fact, she was crying herself, in a quiet, dignified sort of way. But, by the time she had gone down the steps and fetched her sister’s lively hat, she had put an end to all such nonsense, and was quite calm again.
“I’mveryhappy to see you, Louie—” she began, but the other interrupted her.
“After all these years!” she cried, with a sob. “It doesn’t seem possible, does it, Bella? We were young then, Bella. Oh, think of that! Young, Bella—”
“I shan’t think of any such thing,” said Mrs. Russell, tartly. “Do stop crying, Louie, please, and tell me something about yourself.”
“It isn’t me yet, Bella; not the poor, silly forty-five-year-old me. It’s the other Louie, with her hair down her back, sitting here with the old Bella in that plaid dress. Do you remember that plaid gingham, Bella, that mother made for you? With the bias—”
“No!” Mrs. Russell replied. “I do not. I don’t want to, either. What I want to hear is something about yourself, Louie—something sensible and intelligible.”
“I remember you, Bella, so well—sitting at the piano, with a great black braid over your shoulder, playing that ‘Marche Aux Flambeaux,’ and poor father keeping time with his pipe. And that duet, Bella! You and I—the Grande Fantasia for Les Huguenots—” She giggled through her tears, and that giggle was more than Mrs. Russell could bear. It made the plaid dress and the duet and a hundred heartbreaking, dusty, forgotten things rise up before her.
“Louie!” she said. “I’m ashamed of you! When two sisters haven’t met for—”
“For two lifetimes!” said the incorrigible Louie. “I don’t care, Bella! The old things are the best.”
“What,” interrupted Mrs. Russell, sternly, “have you been doing all these years, Louie? Why didn’t you ever write to me?”
“I never had time, Bella. I’ve been too busy, failing. I’ve failed at everything, Bella, everything! I gave my recital—and you must have read how quickly and thoroughly I failed there. Then I tried giving music lessons, but I was always late, or I forgot to come at all, or I’d feel not in the mood for teaching. Then I studied filing and indexing, and oh, Bella, you should have seen the awful things I did! You know I never was exactly methodical! Then I learned typing. I was a little frightened then, Bella. I really tried, at that. But, you see, I wasn’t young any more then, and not good at the work. That failed, too. Then I tried to peddle things—scented soap, from door to door.”
“Louie! I—I’m very sorry, my dear!”
“Well, you needn’t be!” said her sister, drying her eyes. “It’s been very wonderful—sometimes, Bella. I’ve been happy most of the time—because, you see, I never minded failing.”
“Are you—” Mrs. Russell began, with no little embarrassment. “Are you—in difficulties now, Louie?”
“I haven’t a penny in the world, Bella. You remember that fable of La Fontaine’s we used to recite in school?‘La Cigale et La Fourmis’?(The Grasshopper and the Ant.) I’m Miss Cigale, Bella, and you’re Mrs. Fourmis. I’m the poor, silly grasshopper who danced the summer away—and here I am, Bella. It’s winter—for me—and I want to rest, here with you, until the summer comes back.”
“Oh, don’t be so—‘highfalutin’’!” cried Mrs. Russell, stung by emotion into using a long-forgotten word. “Try to talk sensibly, Louie.”
This was all so typical of her sister; all her memories of Louisa were made up of these queer little storms, these showers of tears, these rainbow smiles.
“Always so upsetting!” she thought, half angry. Yet there never had been any one dear to her in the way Louisa was.
“Come upstairs,” she said, firmly, “and get ready for dinner, and then—Oh! There’s Geordie!”
“Oh, Bella! Your son!”
“Louie, listen to me! You must not be—silly about Geordie. He won’t understand it, and he won’t like it. Do, for goodness’ sake, pull yourself together![Pg 431]”
But Louie couldn’t. She tried; she sat up very straight in her chair, and smiled, but Mrs. Russell was not satisfied. She wished that she had had time to put Louie in order before the boy saw her. He was so fastidious; what would he think of this unexpected aunt, with her wild, fair hair, her blue eyes swimming in tears, her trembling smile?
“She looks worn,” thought Mrs. Russell, “but not—well, somehow, not grown up!”
Geordie had come up the steps now; a good-looking young fellow, and somehow touching, with his sulky mouth and his sulky blue eyes.
“Louisa!” said Mrs. Russell, in a threatening voice. “This is my son, George. Geordie, your Aunt Louisa!”
Poor Louisa said nothing at all, for fear of bursting into tears, but Geordie could be trusted to behave with decorum. He said something about this being an unexpected pleasure; said it punctiliously. But Mrs. Russell knew at once, by the tone of his voice, that he didn’t like this aunt. She saw him cast a quick glance at her lamentable untidiness.
“Are those your bags, out in the street?” he inquired. “Shan’t I get them?”
“Oh, no!” cried Louie. “Please don’t bother! I’ll get them!” And she made a sort of rush forward, which Mrs. Russell checked.
“Louie!” she said, sternly, and after Geordie had gone down the steps: “Louie! You must have more dignity!”
There was no dinner at half past six that evening, or at seven, either. When the clock struck the hour, there was Mrs. Russell sitting on the veranda, while her son paced up and down, hands in his pockets, and his face sulkier than ever. The sun was gone, now, and the clear sky was fading from lemon-yellow into gray; the honeysuckle was coming to life in the quiet dusk.
“How long is she going to stay?” he demanded.
Mrs. Russell didn’t like that tone.
“Naturally I didn’t ask her,” she answered, stiffly. “She’s had a great many—difficulties, and she’s come here, to me, for a rest.”
“D’you mean she’s going to live here?”
She was hurt and amazed at his manner, but it was not her way to show it.
“Your aunt hasn’t mentioned her plans for the future,” she replied.
He walked up and down in silence for a time, and to his mother there was something ominous in his steady footfall; it was, she thought, as if he were going away from her, miles and miles away. Suddenly he spoke again, from the other end of the veranda:
“Isn’t it hard enough for us to get on as it is?” he asked. “Without an extra—”
“George!” she cried, too hurt to stifle the cry. “Your own aunt!”
“Oh, let’s look at the thing from a practical point of view!” he suggested, impatiently. “You know what my salary is, mother, and you know how far it goes, or doesn’t go.”
“Please!” said Mrs. Russell, curtly. “Surely we needn’t discuss this now—before your aunt has been in the house an hour.”
“Just as you please!” said he. “But—” Again he walked down to the other end of the veranda. “All I mean is”—he went on, in a strained unsteady voice—“that I can’t do any more. I’ve—I’ve done my best, and I can’t do any more.”
Mrs. Russell sat like a statue in the gathering darkness. She had come face to face with sorrow and anxiety more than once in her life; she had had her full share of all that; but never, never before had anything wounded her like this. So she was a burden to her son.
All the little money left her by her husband she had used for the boy’s education and welfare, with all her love, her time, all her life thrown, unconsidered, into the bargain. And now she was a burden to him.
“I’ve lived too long,” she said as if to herself.
Geordie had stopped in his restless pacing to and fro.
“Mother!” he said. “You know I didn’t mean it. Mother! I’m sorry.”
“Very well, my boy!” she answered, in her composed way. “We’ll say no more about it.”
He came a few steps nearer, but halted; he hadn’t been bred to the habit of affection. A hundred thousand old impulses that had been stifled by cool common sense made a great barrier now, just there, a few steps away from his mother. He turned away again, and Mrs. Russell did not stir.
It was over; that was their sensible way of dealing with all such matters; not to[Pg 432]take them out into the daylight and destroy them, but to shut them up, to weigh down the heart for many and many a day. They had ten minutes more alone there in the dusk together, ten long minutes, and neither of them spoke.
They were, of course, waiting for their luckless guest, and both silently condemning her unpardonable delay. But, if they could have seen her just then, down on the floor on her knees beside the neat little bed in the neat, strange little room, not weeping, but very still, as if a ruthless hand had struck into quietude all her flutterings.
She had come downstairs, quite airy, quite gay, in a fresh blouse and a not too dingy skirt, and, standing unnoticed in the doorway, she had heard her nephew’s words. She had rushed up the stairs again, silent as a moth, except for the tinkle of countless small hairpins dropping from her riotous hair, and had sunk down on the floor like this, to taste failure again.
The clear chiming of the clock roused her. She got up, a little bewildered for a moment.
“I’ll go away!” she thought, at first. But, after all, her failure had taught her something. She put more pins into her hair, a little more powder on her nose; she tried a smile or two before the mirror, and down the stairs she went, airy as before.
“The only really terrible thing,” she said to herself, “is to fail because you haven’t tried.”
And so she did try. She sat at the table with her unsmiling and calm sister, her unsmiling and sulky nephew, and she smiled for three; she talked, and in the end she made them smile, not because she was especially witty, but because her sweet, light spirit gave a glimmer to all her words. She was ridiculous, but she was charming; she made of that sober family dinner a high festival. And when they had finished:
“Oh, let’s have coffee in the garden, Bella!” she said.
“No!” said Mrs. Russell, startled. “We don’t have coffee, Louie. I think it keeps one awake.”
“But who doesn’t want to be awake on a night like this? Let’s be awake! Let’s have a little table on the lawn, and candles—candlelight under the trees is so wonderful, Bella!”
“Mary won’t like it!” whispered Mrs. Russell. “It means extra work for her.”
“I’ll do it! All alone!”
Mrs. Russell might have protested more, if she had not observed her son pushing the books and papers off the top of a small table in the next room. If he wanted it so, or if he were trying to atone, very well; she would agree to this absurd proposal.
So the table was placed in the back garden, and there Mrs. Russell and her son sat, to wait for Louie and the coffee. They sat there under the great dark beeches that rustled solemnly in the night wind and set the candles to flickering.
Candlelight wonderful under the trees? It was horrible; it was the most sorrowful, gloomy, bitter thing. Was that the leaves stirring, or a sigh from the boy? Mrs. Russell wanted to look at him, but dared not, for fear that their eyes should meet, and with what lay between them, they must not look into each other’s eyes. A burden to him—a burden too heavy for his young shoulders—
Louie came across the grass with the tray, and this time Geordie’s sigh was quite audible as he arose to take it from her.
“There!” she cried. “Isn’t this nice?”
Her gay voice sounded very pitiful in the dark. Mrs. Russell resolved to make an effort to help the poor creature.
“Yes,” she said. “It is—very nice.” But no other words came.
There could be no silence where Louie was, though; even if no one spoke, there was a swarm of dainty little sounds, the clink of a porcelain cup on its saucer, the musical ring of a silver spoon on the brass tray; the sugar tongs against the crystal bowl.
“There!” Louie cried again. “Don’t you smoke, Geordie?”
“Thanks!” said he, gloomily, and taking a cigarette from his case, he leaned forward to light it at the candle.
“Mercy!” exclaimed Mrs. Russell. The two others looked inquiringly at her, but she said hastily that it was nothing. For she certainly did not intend to explain what had startled her.
It was the sight of Geordie’s face as he had leaned over the candle. His blue eyes had seemed to dance and gleam, the flickering light had given him a look as if smiling in impish glee—altogether, he had looked so much, so very much, as Louie had looked years ago.
He had drawn back into the shadows, tilting his chair against the trunk of a tree, and, feeling herself deserted, Mrs. Russell[Pg 433]tried to talk to her sister. Useless! Geordie was there, and could hear if he wished.
She understood what Louie was thinking about—what things she had in her queer, pitiful life to think about, what compensations she had found for missing wifehood and motherhood?
“Because she’s not unhappy,” thought Mrs. Russell. “She hasn’t anything at all, as far as I can see, and yet she’s not unhappy. Perhaps I’m as much a failure as she is. I meant to help him—to make him happy. But he’s miserable. I’ve done the best I can; I can’t do any more. It’s as if his heart was breaking. Why? He has a good salary. I’ve only taken just enough to keep his home as he likes it. He has plenty for his clothes and whatever else he wants. I thought—I made him—happy.”
Not one minute more could she endure this soft, dark silence; she wanted to get into the house, in the lamplight, safely shut into her home, away from the vast summer night.
“What time is it, Geordie?” she asked, so suddenly that he started.
“Nine,” he replied.
“But what watch is that?”
“A new one.”
“Then where’s the one they gave you at the office, Geordie? Such a handsome one, Louie! A present to him on his twenty-fourth birthday. Engraved. Geordie, I hope you haven’t left it about, anywhere. It’s not a thing to be careless with.”
“No; it’s safe,” he said, briefly.
“Where? In your room?”
“It’s perfectly safe!” he answered, with such a note of exasperation in his voice that Louie pitied him.
“I’m sure—” she began happily, but her sister interrupted.
“Well, I’m not. You don’t know what a boy that age is capable of. And it’s a handsome watch. Geordie, I wish—There! Now you’ve broken this new one! Oh, my dear—”
For, as he arose, his foot had caught in the chair; he stumbled, and dropped the watch with a thud. It was Louie who recovered it; Louie who hastily gathered together the small oblong papers that fluttered out of his breast pocket. One had fallen at Mrs. Russell’s feet; she stooped.
“What—” she began; but Louie fairly snatched it out of her fingers.
“Here, Geordie!” she said, gayly.
Mrs. Russell did not know what these tickets were, but Louie did. Louie knew well.
Indeed, all the three inmates of the house were heavy at heart that night, each with some especial knowledge not shared by the others. The night grew sultry, too, and when the morning came, it was the first day of real summer, hot and still. It was a day to make any one jaded who had not slept well.
Geordie was down first, and walking up and down the veranda; smoking, too, his aunt noticed.
“You shouldn’t, before breakfast!” she admonished him, cheerfully. “And you can’t smell the flowers, either, if you do.”
He smiled, a forced, strained sort of smile, but civil enough, considering how unwelcome the sight of her was. He stopped walking up and down, too, and, after a moment, said, in a perfunctory voice:
“It’s going to be a hot day.”
“Geordie!” said she. “Let me talk to you!”
As much as his mother, did he hate and dread that note of fervor, of intimacy. He moved his shoulders restlessly, and smiled again.
“About time for breakfast,” he murmured evasively.
“No, it’s not. Geordie, you won’t mind if I stay here with you and your mother for a little while, will you?”
He turned scarlet.
“No. Of course not,” he replied. “Very glad.”
“I want to stay—ever so much. But only if it can be my way. Because I’m a frightfully obstinate creature, Geordie; absolutely unmanageable. And I can’t bear not to be independent. I’m going to find myself a job—”
“No!” he interrupted, with a frown. “Please don’t.”
She seated herself on the rail of the veranda, a most undignified attitude for one of her years, and yet, as always, there was a debonair grace about her; something unconquerably girlish.
“I will get a job, Geordie!” she announced. “That’s settled. No matter where I live, I’ll do that. But I want so much to stay here, if you’ll let me stay on my own terms. Let me pay my board[Pg 434]and feel like a nice, independent business woman!”
“No!” he said, again. “I—it can’t be that way.”
“But why, Geordie?” she asked, smiling a little.
And he couldn’t endure her smile; he couldn’t endure her proposal; it was the final straw for his already mutinous and unhappy spirit. If she had any faint idea of what he already suffered from this talk about being “an independent business woman”; if she had imagined what a sore subject that was.
“No!” he said. “If you want to stay here and make mother a visit, you’re more than welcome. But—I don’t approve of women going out to work.”
“What!” she cried. “Oh, but my dear boy!”
There was something in her good-humored protest that made him hot with resentment. She wasn’t laughing at him—and yet, she might as well have been; she couldn’t have pointed out more plainly the absurdity of his words and his attitude. Just by some little inflection of the voice, she made him the youngest twenty-five that ever lived—a boy, a child, a silly, pompous, impertinent young ass.
“I won’t have it!” he said.
She saw her mistake then—she was always quick to recognize her failures—but it was too late to remedy it.
“I’m sorry you feel like that, George,” she said, gravely. “Because, you see, I couldn’t stay here unless it could be that way.”
“Suit yourself!” he answered, briefly.
But he regretted the words as soon as they were spoken.
“I only meant—” he began, but when he turned he found her gone, vanished in her own quick, quiet way. He hurried into the house to find her, and looked for her everywhere, but in vain.
And it seemed to him that he could not go off to the city with this new burden upon his conscience. It was bad enough that he should have hurt his mother the evening before; bad enough to endure the other harassments that had tried him so sorely, for so long, without this new misery. He thought of his aunt’s sprightliness; her gay and touching friendliness toward him; he remembered how grave her face had become.
“She might have known I didn’t mean that,” he thought, dismayed. “I don’t like her, and she’ll be a bore and a nuisance; but I didn’t mean to offend her.”
And all the time he was perfectly aware that she wasn’t “offended,” any more than a clover blossom is offended if you tread it underfoot. It was he who had been offended at the idea of his mother’s sister going out to work every day from under his roof—of any woman doing so, in whom he was interested. Come to think of it, he was glad he had said he “wouldn’t have it”; he meant that. He had told Nell also that he wouldn’t have it.
“Still,” he admitted, “I might have been a little more—well, more cordial to her. Because I can see that she’s another one of those people.”
For lately the poor fellow had been learning something about that other sort of people—people not sensible and restrained, but full of fancies and notions and feelings; people who needed careful handling, unless you were willing to see that look of pain and disappointment in their eyes.
Mrs. Russell thought that her son looked pale and jaded that morning, and noticed, with a heavy heart, how little he ate.
“I suppose he’s working too hard,” she said to herself. “Wearing himself out, and wasting all his youth—to take care of me. I suppose what he wants is—”
But she couldn’t quite imagine what he might want.
“Perhaps he’d rather go off and live in the city with one of his friends, like Dick Judson,” she thought. “I wonder if I couldn’t—” So there she sat, calm and composed as ever, making the most absurd plans for living on her own private income of thirty dollars a month.
“Perhaps Louie and I together might manage something,” she thought. “Louie knows more than I do about things of that sort. I’ll speak to her.”
Geordie went off, and still Mrs. Russell sat at the breakfast table, waiting for her sister, and silently condemning this sloth that kept her so late abed.
As a matter of fact, Louie was half a mile away from the house, picking daisies in a wide, sunny field. Seen from the road, you might have thought that tall and slender creature with fair hair shining in the sun was a care-free young girl; she moved so lightly, and now and then she sang a snatch of song.[Pg 435]
But all this was mere bravado, her own especial method of preparing herself for a painful ordeal. She had something to do that morning which she dreaded, and instead of taking an extra cup of coffee, or anything of that sort, the silly creature forgot all about breakfast and wandered off into a daisy field. No wonder she was such a failure!
She had peculiar compensations, though. The fierce hot sun, and the rank, sweet smell of the humble little field flowers and weeds, even the troublesome insects that crawled out from the daisies onto her hands, and the little winged nuisances that flew in her face, amused and solaced her, and did her, or so she fancied, more good than ten breakfasts.
And after a time she felt strong and tranquil enough to face her day. From a pocket in her skirt she drew out a bit of paper—one of those dropped by her nephew the evening before, and she looked at it carefully.
It was a pawn ticket, marked: