Chapter III

Money isn't everything, but it has so much to do with most things that even a dim, story-book vision of it stirred Alice's imagination. Luther, having no imagination, dismissed the vision from his mind after writing a letter to "Amos Hughes, Attorney at Law." Indeed, Luther had more practical things to think of than possible legacies, poor fellow. His balance-sheet for that month of June was very dark. More than once, after the office was closed for the day, he sat at his desk in his shirt-sleeves, hot and tired and grimy, poring over his ledger by the light of a swinging lamp. Alice grew worried about his pallor and the hollows in his cheeks; but there was nothing she could do, though she chafed against her helplessness to help, and revolved all sorts of schemes in her impractical girl-mind. Indeed, she went so far as to pour out her heart to Dr. Lavendar, in the hope that he could make some suggestion. She found the old man sitting in the wistaria arbor near his beehives, smoking peacefully, and throwing sticks to Danny, who needed exercise and scrambled after them into the tall grass, bringing them back with fatiguing alacrity.

"Look here, sir," said Dr. Lavendar, "don't find 'em so quick. I'm worn out pitching them."

Then Alice Gray came down between the box borders and said she wanted his advice; and Dr. Lavendar, glancing up at her, saw an uncertain lip and heard a catch in her voice; whereupon he told her to give Danny a run. "The scoundrel has kept me working for the last half-hour," he complained.

When she came back, flushed and laughing, and sat down on the arbor step, her voice was quite steady; so he listened placidly to her story.

"You want to get some work to help Lute, do you, good-for-nothing?"

"Yes," Alice said, eagerly. "Oh, Dr. Lavendar, _can_ you think of anything? I wanted to go into the office and learn to set type, but Mrs. Gray--"

"Well?"

"Mrs. Gray said I had better learn to keep house economically. She said father wouldn't like it."

"Mrs. Gray would always think first of what your father would like."

Alice scratched lines in the gravel with one of Danny's sticks. "I suppose she would," she admitted.

"And what did Lute say?"

"Oh, he wouldn't listen to it. But I thought maybe you could make him, Dr. Lavendar?"

"I?" said Dr. Lavendar. "No, thank you. Do you think I'd rob the boy?"

"Rob him?"

"Of his self-respect; a boy wants to stand on his own legs; he doesn't want a girl propping him up. You let Lute alone. He'll manage. And you're young yet, anyhow. It won't hurt ye to wait. Mrs. Gray is right. You learn to be as good a housekeeper as she is; and though you mayn't put money into Lute's pocket before you're married, you'll not be taking it out after you're married."

Alice sighed. "Oh, I wish I could help Lute; I wish I had a lot of money."

"A lot of sense is better," Dr. Lavendar said, chuckling. "Oh, you women! You steal a man's unselfishness and self-respect, and you put it down to love. Love? You're a pack of thieves, the lot of you. You ought to be prosecuted. I'd do it, if I had time. Hey, Danny! bite her; she's like all the rest of 'em."

Alice hugged him, and defended herself. "You're just an old bachelor; you don't appreciate us."

"Appreciate ye? I appreciate you. Maybe that's why I'm an old bachelor."

But though he discouraged Alice's projects for assisting Luther, Dr. Lavendar went plodding up the printing-office stairs the next morning. Luther, emerging from behind a press, brightened at the sight of his caller, and ushered him into a small closet which he called his private office; and when Dr. Lavendar asked him to print some more missionary-meeting notices, he said he would put them in at cost price.

"Don't you do it!" said Dr. Lavendar, thumping the floor with his umbrella. "Look here; I'll have to teach you the first principles of business: make your profit--and don't go to 'pauperizing the Church,' sir. There's too much of that sort of thing," he added, with reminiscent crossness. "Some scalawag of a bookseller wrote and offered to sell me books at thirty-three per cent. discount because I was a parson. There's no more reason why a parson should get a discount than a policeman. I told him so. I tell you so. Print those slips, and _print 'em better than you did the last lot_! Do you hear that? You forgot a comma on the second line. How's business, Lute?"

Lute's face fell. Then they talked things over, to the boy's great comfort; and at the end of the talk Lute straightened his shoulders and drew a good breath.

"By George! sir, if hanging on does it, I'll hang on--" he stopped, and looked round, in answer to a knock. "Well?" he said, impatiently. But the gentleman who stood in the doorway was not rebuffed.

"Are you Mr. Metcalf, the editor of the _Globe_?"

"Yes, sir," said Luther.

"I called in relation to an advertisement"--Luther was instantly alert, and Dr. Lavendar, scenting a customer, was about to withdraw--"an advertisement in a New York paper, requesting information of a certain person--"

"What!" cried Luther. "I had forgotten all about it."

"My name is Carter. I am from the office of Mr. Amos Hughes. Messrs. Pritchett, Carver, and Pritchett, Solicitors at Law, of London, are our principals. The advertisement was in relation to a person called Alys Winton."

Luther, stumbling in his astonishment over his words, began to explain. "Mrs. Gray is dead," he ended. "And Alice is her daughter; isn't she, Dr. Lavendar? She asked me to write to you."

"Well, well; this is very interesting," said Dr. Lavendar. "I hope your object in seeking to obtain information is to benefit this young lady? She's one of my children."

Mr. Carter, still standing in the doorway, smiled, and said, "Do I understand that this Miss Alice is the daughter of the person named Alys Winton?"

"Yes," said Dr. Lavendar. "You can easily satisfy yourself on that point by consulting my parish records."

"And her mother is the lady you advertised for!" cried Luther. The boy was red with excitement. It was just as Alice said--a story-book. And they could get married right away! For it would be a lot of money--perhaps $5000; people in England didn't advertise for information of a person dead for twenty-two years for any small amount; well, even if it were $4000, they could get married; even if it were $3000. "How m--" he began, and stopped; of course that was not a proper question. "Alice's mother is the lady you advertised about," he said, lamely.

"Well, that does not follow, young gentleman; but the coincidence of the name was of sufficient interest for our firm to feel that I might, perhaps, just look into it. There may be dozens of Alys Wintons, you know."

"Oh," said Luther, so blankly that Dr. Lavendar laughed.

"Perhaps before beginning at the beginning you might save time by looking at the end," he said to the lawyer. "If you will step over to my church, you will see that our little Alice here is the daughter of Mr. Robert Gray and a lady named Alys Winton."

"A very good idea, sir. You, I infer, are a clergyman in this place? Ah, yes; just so. Lavendar? Ah, yes. I shall be pleased to look at the records, as you suggest, sir."

Luther, rather abashed, longing to accompany them, stood waiting for an invitation. But none came. Dr. Lavendar went pounding down the stairs, followed by Mr. Carter, and Lute heard them talking about the roughness of the road from Mercer over which Mr. Carter had come on the morning stage.

"Confound the road!" said Lute to himself. "Hi! Davidson! I'm going out. The first page is all made up; you can close up the fourth." Then he dashed down the creaking stairs and out into the hot sunshine. He had a glimpse up the street of the church, and Dr. Lavendar bending down fumbling with the key of the vestry door; it was evident that Luther's presence was not considered necessary. "I don't care," the boy said to himself, joyously, and started at a swinging pace out over the hill. "I'll be the one to tell her, anyhow!" His face was all aglow. As he hurried along he made calculations as to the rent of the little house. To be sure, he was reckoning on Alice's money; but the boy was so honest, and so in love, that he had no mean self-consciousness of that kind. "_We can get married!_" He had no room for any other thought.

Mrs. Gray was sitting on the back porch shelling pease; there was a grape trellis running out from the porch roof, and under it the shadows lay cool and pleasant on the damp flagstones. Rebecca, absorbed in the lulling snap of pods, looked up, frowning, at the noisy interruption, for the young man burst in, breathless, swinging his cap, his eyes shining.

"Oh, Mrs. Gray, where's Alice? Oh, my, such news! I never was so excited in my life!"

"That is not saying much," Rebecca told him; "you've not had a very exciting life. Alice is in the dining-room. Alice! come out here. Here's Luther. He says he never was so excited in his life; and I hope he won't be again, for he has upset my bucket of pods."

Luther, full of apologies, began to pick them up. "I'm so sorry, but I was so dreadfully excited--"

"Dreadful is a large word," Rebecca said. "I doubt whether either you or I have ever seen anything 'dreadful' in our lives. Don't exaggerate, Luther."

"Yes, ma'am," Lute said. "Oh, there's Alice! _Alice!_" He stood up, his hands full of pods, his face red. "Oh, Alice, what do you suppose has happened? You'll never guess!"

"The advertisement man!" cried Alice. Luther's face fell a little, and he laughed.

"Well, you're pretty smart. Yes, it is--"

"_What?_" said Rebecca Gray. As for Alice, she whirled out on the cool flags and jumped up and down.

"Oh, Lute, tell us--tell us! What does he say? Has he sent some money? Oh, how much is it? Oh, Lute, we'll pay for the press. Lute, is it--is it $1000? Tell us; hurry, hurry!"

Upon which Lute began to subside. "Well, it isn't quite--I mean, he didn't--he hasn't said just exactly how much. I mean, of course, I suppose, it isn't certain; but I'm sure there isn't a particle of doubt; only--"

"Now, Lute, begin at the beginning and tell us." Alice sat down breathlessly beside her step-mother, and began mechanically to shell the pease.

"Don't," Rebecca said; "I will do my own work. You'd better get your table-cloth and finish that darning." Her face had grown quite pale; she saw the fabric of her life crumbling at the base; if, through that first wife, money should come into the family, what use for her patient economies? What use for her existence? That first wife, yet more perfect, would crowd her further from her husband's life. In her heart, used to the long, dull ache of unloved years, rose up a murderous hatred of the dead woman. At first she hardly heard Luther's story, but as it went on she began to listen and the pain in her tightened throat of unshed tears lessened. It might not be. As this Mr. Carter said, there might be dozens of Alys Wintons. Her hands, motionless after the first shock, went at their work again.

"You're the daughter of a lady of that name," she said, coldly; "but she may not be the lady they want. Better not count on it." Alice looked rather blank for a moment; and then she burst into even more than Luther's confidence.

"Do you suppose it will be $2000? Oh, Lute, just think, we'll pay for the new press right down!"

"No, we won't, either," Lute said, stoutly. "I'm not going to let you spend your money on printing-presses."

"Nonsense!" Alice cried, laughing and stamping her foot.

Rebecca frowned and looked at her over her glasses. "Don't be unlady-like, Alice."

"No, 'm," Alice said; and then she laughed at her own excitement; "it may be only $100."

"It may be nothing at all," Rebecca Gray said, and got up and took her pan and bucket and went into the house. It seemed to her that if she had to hear any more of Alys Winton she would speak out and say some dreadful thing about her. But what could she say with any kind of truth? What could she say ill of that poor creature, so beloved and so harmless? For, after all, though a woman ought to see that a man's buttons are sewed on, you can't say that mere shiftlessness is a sin. Besides, she was sick for those few months. "Perhaps if my health hadn't been good, I would have been careless myself," Rebecca thought, with painful justice. But she went up-stairs to her own room and locked the door. She felt sure that it was as Alice and Luther said: there would be money, and she would be of still less consequence to her husband; for what did Robert Gray, nervously polite, really care for her economies and her good housekeeping?

"Not _that_!" she said to herself, bitterly.