Chapter III: Part 3

“He promised me that if he could not call any week he would write me a line instead. He came to town last week, and he neither called nor wrote. That wasn’t like the man I saw in him. That was a direct breaking of his word. I can’t understand, and I’m disappointed.”

Holloway took out his cigarette case and turned it over and over thoughtfully in his hands.

“He’s nothing but a boy,” he said at last, with an effort.

“He’s no boy,” she said. “He’s almost twenty-two years old. He’s a man.”

“Some are men at twenty-two, and some are boys,” Holloway remarked. “I was a man before I was eighteen—a man out in the world of men. But Denham’s a boy.”

He rose as he spoke, and she held out her hand for him to raise her, too.

“It’s early to go,” she remarked parenthetically.

“I know,” he replied; “but I hear someone being shown into the drawing-room. I don’t feel formal to-day, and if I can’t lounge in here alone with you I’d rather go.”

“How egotistical!” she commented.

“I am egotistical,” he admitted.

And went.

The footman passed him in the hall; he had a card upon his silver salver, and was seeking his mistress in the library. But when he entered there the room was empty. Mrs. Rosscott had slipped through the blue velvet portières, expecting to see a friend, and had stopped short on the other side, amazed at finding herself face to face with an utter stranger.

“I gave the man my card,” said the stranger, in a tone as faded as his mustache. He was a long, thin man, but what the Germans style “_sehr korrect_.”

“I didn’t wait to get it,” the hostess said. “I supposed that, of course, it was somebody that I knew.”

“That was natural,” he admitted.

There was a slight pause of awkwardness.

“Won’t you sit down?” she asked.

“Certainly,” said the caller, and sat down.

Then she sat down, too, and another awkward pause ensued.

“You didn’t expect to see me, did you?” said the stranger, smiling.

“No, I didn’t,” said Mrs. Rosscott frankly. “I expected to see someone else—someone that I knew. Nearly all my visitors are people whom I know.”

Her eyes rather demanded an observance of the conventionalities while her words were putting the best face possible on the queer five minutes. The stranger smiled.

“My name is Clover,” he said then. “Of course, as you never saw me before, you want to know that first of all.”

“I’d choose to know,” she said. And then the uncompromising neutrality of her expression deepened so plainly that he hastened to add:

“I’m H. Wyncoop Clover.”

“Oh!” she said. And then smiled, too; having heard the name before.

“Why don’t you ask me my business?” went on H. Wyncoop Clover. “I must have come for some reason, you know.”

“I didn’t know it,” said Mrs. Rosscott—“I don’t know anything about you yet.”

They both smiled—and then H. Wyncoop resumed his colorless sobriety at once.

“It’s about Jack,” he said—“these terrible new developments—” he stopped short, seeing his _vis-à-vis_ turn deathly white, “it’s nothing to be frightened over,” he said reassuringly.

Mrs. Rosscott was furious with herself for having paled. She became instantly haughty.

“I was alarmed for my brother,” she said. “I always think of them both as together.”

“Oh, in that case, I can reassure you instantly,” said the caller. “Burnett is doing finely.”

Mrs. Rosscott was conscious of being suddenly and skillfully countercharged. She blushed with vexation, bit her lip in perturbation, and cast upon the trying individual opposite a look of most appealing interrogation.

“You see,” said Clover pleasantly, “I was coming to town, so I came in handy for the purpose of telling you.”

She gave him a glance that prayed him to be decent and go on with his errand.

“Burnett is about recovered,” he said.

She clasped her hands hard.

“I wouldn’t be a man for anything!” she exclaimed with sudden fervor, “they are so awfully mean. Why _don’t_ you go on and tell me _what_ you’ve come about?”

He raised his eyebrows.

“May I?” he asked.

She choked down some of her exasperation.

“Yes, you may.”

“Oh, thank you so much. I’ll begin at once then. Only premising that as I go to school with your little brother, and as he is rather under a cloud just at present, we clubbed together to bring you a letter about him and Jack. He was going to dictate it, but in the end Mitchell wrote it all. Here it is.”

With that he put his hand into his pocket, drew out an envelope and handed it to her.

“How awfully good of you,” she said gratefully. “Do excuse my reading it at once, won’t you? You see, I’ve been so anxious about—about my brother.”

He nodded understandingly, and she hastily tore open the envelope and ran her eyes over the written sheets.

MY DEAR MRS. ROSSCOTT:—
Being the prize writer of the class, I am chosen to take down the
ante mortem confessions of our shattered friends. It is in a sad
hour for them that I do so, because I am naturally so truthful that
I shall not force you to look for my meaning between the lines. On
the contrary, I shall set the cold facts out as neatly as the
pickets on the fence. And in evidence thereof, I open the ball by
telling you frankly that they both look fierce. If they had looked
less awful, and Burnett had had more lime in his bones, we might
have escaped the Powers That Be by simply admitting a sprained
ankle and carefully concealing everything else. But if one man
cracks where you can’t finish the deal, even by the most unlimited
outlay of mucilage and persistence, and another blazes his whole
surface-area in a manner that seems to make the underbrush dubious
to count on forever henceforth; why, you then have a logarithm the
square of which is probably as far beyond your depth as I am beyond
my own just at this point of this sentence.
The long and short of my fresh start is, that your brother wants to
write you, but he is so handicapped (forgive me, but you’re the
only one who hasn’t had that joke sprung on them!) with bandages,
that it’s cruel to expect much of him. It is true that he has his
bosom friend to fall back upon, but if you could see that friend as
we see him these days you wouldn’t be sure whether it was true or
not. The old woman, who had the peddler-and-petticoat episode, was
not in it the same day with your brother’s friend! I do assure you.
And anyhow—even if he still has brains—his writing apparatus is all
done up in arnica, so there you are!
But do not allow me to alarm you unduly! When all’s said and done,
they’re not so badly off physically. Hair and ribs are mere
vanities, anyhow, and we’re here to-day and gone to-morrow!
Something much worse than disfigurements and broken bones has
sprung forth from chaos, and has almost stared them out of
countenance since. It is the wolf that is at the door, and the
howling and prowling of their particular wolf is not to be sneezed
at, let me tell you. To put a modern political face upon an ancient
Greek fable, the wolf in their case symbolizes the bitter question
of whose roof is going to roof them when they get out of the
plaster casts that are bed and board to them just at present. Where
are they to go? All those which used to be open to them are
suddenly shut tight. They’ve both been expelled, and both been
disinherited. If I was inclined to look on the blue side of the
blanket, I should certainly feel that they were playing in very
tough luck. Burnett, of course, can come to you, and his soul is
full of the wish to bring his fellow-fright along with him. Which
wish of his is the gist of my epistle. Can he bring him? He wants
to know before he broaches the proposition. I’m to be skinned alive
if Jack ever learns that such a plea was made, so I beg you
whatever other rash acts you see fit to commit during your meteoric
flight across my plane of existence, don’t ever give me away.
Firstly, because if I ever get a chance to do so, I’m positive that
I should want to cling to you as the mistletoe does to the oak, and
could not bear to be given away; and secondly, because I’m so
attached to my own skin that I should really suffer pain if it was
taken from me by force. Bob wants you to think it over, and let him
know as to the whats and whens by return mail.
You are so inspiring that I could write you all day, but those
relics of what once was, but alas! will never be again, need to be
rolled up afresh in absorbent cotton, and so I must nail my Red
Cross on to my left arm, and get down to business. If you saw how
useful I am to your brother, you’d thank his lucky stars that I
came through myself with nothing worse than getting my ear stepped
on. I was hugging the ladder (being canny and careful), and the man
above me toed in. Isn’t it curious to think that if he’d worn
braces in early youth my ear would be all right now.
Behold me at your feet.

Respectfully yours, HERBERT KENDRICK MITCHELL.

When Mrs. Rosscott had finished the letter she looked across at her caller, and said:

“You’ve read this, haven’t you?”

“No,” said he. “I tried to unstick it two or three times coming on the train, but it was too much for me.”

“Don’t you really know what it says?” she asked more earnestly.

“Yes, I do,” Clover answered, “but Denham must never know that I do.”

“I won’t tell him,” she said smiling faintly. “But surely he can’t be as badly off as this says. Has he really lost all his hair?”

“Not all—only in spots,” Clover reassured her; but then his recollections overcame him, and he added, with a grin: “But he’s a fearful looking specimen, all right, though.”

“About my brother,” she went on, turning the letter thoughtfully in her fingers; “when can he get out, do they think?”

“Any time next week.”

“I’ll write him,” she said. “I’ll write him and tell him that everything will be arranged for—for—for them both.”

Clover sprang to his feet.

“Oh, thank you,” he exclaimed. “That’s most awfully good in you!”

“Not at all,” she answered. “I’m very glad to be able to welcome them. You must impress that upon them—particularly—particularly on my brother.”

Clover smiled.

“I will,” he said, rising to go.

“I’d ask you to stay longer,” she said, holding out her hand, “but I’m due at a charity entertainment to-night, and I have to go very early.”

“I know,” he said; “I’ve come up on purpose to go to it.”

“Then I shall see you there?” she asked him.

“It will be what I shall be looking forward to most of all,” he said.

“It’s been a great pleasure to meet you,” she said, holding out her hand, “you’re—well, you’re ‘unlike,’ as they say in literary criticisms.”

“Thank you,” he replied; “but may I ask if you intend that as a compliment?”

“Dear me,” she laughed, “let me think how I did intend it.—Yes, it was meant for a compliment.”

“Thank you,” he said, shaking her hand warmly, “it’s so nice to know, you know. Good-by.”

“Good-by.”

Then he went away.

Chapter Eleven The Dove of Peace

The first result of Mrs. Rosscott’s invitation was that Jack refused. He said that he had a sister of his own—two, if it came to that—and so he could easily manage for himself. He was very decided about it, and somewhat lofty and bitter—a stand which no one understood his taking.

His flat refusal was communicated to his would be hostess and it goes without saying that she was as unable to understand as all the rest. It keyed well enough with his lately shown indifference, but the indifference keyed not at all with all that had gone before and still less with her very correct comprehension of Jack himself. She was quite positive as to the sincerity of those protestations which he had made so haltingly—so boyishly—and in such absolutely truthful accents. Why he had turned over a new—and bad—leaf so suddenly she did not at all know, but her woman’s wit—backed up by the many good instincts which good women always get from Heaven knows just where—made her feel firmer than ever as to her hospitable intentions. Jack had told her many times that she was his good angel, and it did not seem to her that now, when he was so deeply involved in so much trouble, was the hour for a man’s good angel to quietly turn away. Suppose he was haughty!—she knew men well enough to know that in his case haughtiness and shame would be two Dromios that even he himself would be unable to tell apart. Suppose he did rebel against her kindness!—she knew women well enough to know that under some circumstances they can put down rebellion single-handed—if they can only be left in the room alone with it for a few minutes. As regarded Jack, she knew that there was something to explain; and as to herself she was delightfully positive as to her own irresistibleness. Given two such statements and the conclusion is easy. Mrs. Rosscott wrote to Mitchell and here is what she wrote:

MY DEAR MR. MITCHELL:
I should have answered your letter before only that in the
excitement of corresponding with my brother I forgot all else. But
my manners have returned by slow degrees and in hunting through my
desk for a bill I found you and so take up my pen.
I am quite sure that—in spite of that beautiful opening play of
mine—you are wondering why I am really writing and so I will tell
you at once. When Bob comes here to stay with me I want Mr. Denham
to come too. I have various reasons for wanting him to come. One is
that he has nowhere else to go where he will have half as good a
time as he will here and another is that if he goes anywhere else I
won’t have half as good a time as if he comes here. Pray excuse my
brutal candor, but I am only a woman; brutal candor and womanly
weakness always have gone about encouraging one another, you know.
I cannot see any good reason for Mr. Denham’s not coming except
that he declines my invitation. It is very silly in him, and I
regard it as no reason at all. I am quite unused to being declined
and do not intend to acquire the habit until I am a good deal older
than I was my last birthday. Still, I can understand that he is too
big to force against his will, so I think the kindest way to break
the back of the opposition will be for me to do it personally. As
an over-ruler I nearly always succeed. All I require is an
opportunity.
Please lay the two halves of your brain evenly together and devise
a train and an interview for me. Of course you will meet me at the
train and leave me at the interview. These are the fundamental
rules of my game. I know that you are clever and before we have
left the station you will know that I am. As arch-conspirators we
shall surely win out together, won’t we?

Yours very truly,
BERTHA ROSSCOTT.

This missive posted, Jack’s good angel made herself patient until the afternoon of the next day when she might and did expect an answer.

She was not disappointed. The letter came and it was pleasantly bulky and appeared ample enough to have contained an indexed gun powder plot. She was so sure that Mitchell had been fully equal to the occasion that she tore the envelope open with a smile—and read:

MY DEAR MRS. ROSSCOTT:

To think of my having some of your handwriting for my own!—I was
nearly petrified with joy.
You see I know your writing from having read Burnett all those
“Burn this at once” epistles. And I know it still better from
having to catalogue them for his ready reference. You know how
impatient he is. (But I have run into an open switch and must
digress backwards.)
I shall preserve your letter till I die. In war I shall wear it
carefully spread all over wherever I may be killed, and in peace I
intend to keep my place in my Bible with it. Could words say more!
(Being backed up again, I will now begin.)
I was not at all surprised at your writing me. If you had known me
it would have been different. But where ignorance is bliss any
woman but yourself is always liable to pitch in with a pen, and you
see you are not yourself but only “any woman” to me as yet.
Besides, women have written to me before you. My mother does so
regularly. She encloses a postal card and all I have to do is to
mail it and there she is answered. It’s a great scheme which I
proudly invented when I first went away to school and I recommend
it to you if you—if you ever have a mother.
How my ink does run away with me! Let me refer to your esteemed
favor again! Ah! we have worked down to the bed-rock, or—in Hugh
Miller’s colloquial phrasing—to the “old red sandstone,” of the
fact that you want Jack. You state the fact with what you designate
as brutal candor—and I reply with candied brutality, that I have
thought that all along. If you are averse to my view of the matter,
you must look out of the window the whole time that I continue, for
once entered I always fight to a finish and I cannot retire to my
corner on this auspicious occasion without announcing through a
trumpet that even if Jack is a most idiotic fellow I never have
caught the microbe from him, and, as a sequence, have always seen
clear through and out of the other side of the whole situation. Of
course I should not say this to any woman but you because it would
not have any meaning to her, but, between you and me all things are
printed in plain black and white and, therefore, I respectfully
submit a program consisting of the two o’clock train Tuesday and
myself, to be recognized by a beaming look of burning joy, upon the
platform. Beyond that you may confide yourself to waxing waxy in my
hands. They are not bad hands to be in as your brother and
whatever-you-call-Jack can testify. I will lay my lines in the dark
to the end that you may bloom in the sun.
Trust me. You need do no more—except buy your ticket.
The two o’clock on Tuesday. You can easily remember it by the
T’s—if you don’t get mixed with three o’clock on Thursday. Try
remembering it by the 2’s. A safe way would be to put it down.

Yours to obey,
HERBERT KENDRICK MITCHELL.

P.S. Please recollect that I am only handsome according to the good old proverb, and do not mistake me for an enterprising hackman.

Mrs. Rosscott clapped her hands with delight when she finished the letter. She was overjoyed at the success of her “opening play,” and she wrote her new correspondent two lines accepting his invitation, and went down on the appointed train on the appointed day. He met her at the depot and they divined one another at the first glance. It was impossible not to know so pretty a woman—or so homely a man. For the ancestors of Mitchell had worn kilts and red hair in centuries gone by, and although he proved the truth of the red-hair proposition, no one would ever believe that anything of his build could ever have been induced to have put itself into kilts—knowingly. Furthermore, his voice had a crick in it, and went by jerks, and his eyebrows sympathized with his voice, and the eyes below them were little and gray and twinkling, and altogether he was the sort of man who is termed—according to a certain style of phrasing—“above suspicion.” But she liked him, oh! immensely, and he liked her. And when they were riding up in the carriage together she felt how thoroughly trustworthy his gray eyes and good smile declared him to be, and had no hesitation in telling him what she wanted to do, and in asking him what she wanted to know.

Mitchell certainly had a talent for plotting, for when they reached the house where the culprits were temporarily domiciled, Burnett had gone out to give his mended ribs some exercise, and Jack was reading alone in the room where they shared one another’s liniments with friendly generosity.

The arch-conspirator went upstairs, came down, and then, seeking the lady whom he had left in the parlor, said to her:

“Denham’s up there and you can go up and say whatever you have to say. You know ‘In union there is strength.’ Well you’ve got him alone now, and he’ll prove weakly as a consequence or I miss my guess.”

Then he walked straight over by the window and picked up a magazine as if it was all settled, and she only hesitated for half a second before she turned and went upstairs.

There was a door half open in the hall above, and she knew that that must be the door. She tapped at it lightly, and a man’s voice (a voice that she knew well), called out gruffly:

“Come in!”

She pushed the door open at that and entered, and saw Jack, and he saw her. He turned very pale at the sight, and then the color flooded his face, and he rose from his chair abruptly, and put his hand up to the strips that held the bandage on his head.

“Burnett isn’t here,” he said quickly. “He went out just a few minutes ago.”

His tone was hard, and yet at the same time it shook slightly.

She approached him, holding out her hand.

“I’m glad of that,” she said, “because it was to see you that I came.”

To her great surprise something mutinous and scornful flashed in his eyes as he rolled a chair forward for her.

“You honor me,” he said, and his tone and manner both hardened yet more. His general appearance was that of a man ten years older; he had changed terribly in the weeks since she had last seen him. She took the chair and sat down, still looking at him. He sat down too, and his eyes went restlessly around the room as if they sought a hold that should withhold them from her searching gaze. There was a short pause.

“Don’t speak like that,” she said at last. “It isn’t your way, and I know you too well—we know one another too well—to be anything but sincere. You owe me something, too, and if I forbear you should understand why.”

“I owe you something, do I?” he asked. “What do I owe you?”

Mrs. Rosscott caught her under lip in her teeth.

“You gave me a promise, Mr. Denham,” she said, quite low, but most distinctly—“a promise which you broke.”

Jack flushed; his eyelids drooped for a minute.

“I didn’t break it,” he said. “I gave it up.”

“Is there any difference?”

“A great difference.”

He shrugged his shoulders.

“Do you want to have the truth?” he said. “If you really do, I’ll tell you. But I don’t ask to tell you, recollect, and if I were you I’d drop the whole—I certainly would.—If I were you.”

She looked at him in astonishment.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “Tell me what you mean.”

He raised his hand to his bandaged head again.

“I think,” he said, fighting hard to speak with utter indifference, “I think that it would have been better if you had told me about Holloway.”

At that her big eyes opened widely.

“What should I tell you about Mr. Holloway?” she asked. “What could I tell you about him?”

“It isn’t any use speaking like that,” he said; and with the words he suddenly leaped from his chair and began to plunge back and forth across the small room. “You see I’m not a boy any more. I’ve come to my senses. I know now! I understand now! It’s all plain to me now. Now and always. I’ve been fooled once but only once and by All that Is, I never will be fooled again. Your’re pretty and awfully fascinating, and it’s always fun for the woman—especially if she knows all her bets are safely hedged. And I was so completely done up that I was even more sport than the common run, I suppose; but—” she was staring at him in unfeigned amazement, and he was lashing himself to fury with the feelings that underlaid his words—“but even if you made it all right with yourself by calling your share by the name of ‘having a good influence’ over me (I know that’s how married women always pat themselves on the back while they’re sending us to the devil), even then, I think that it would have been better to have been fair and square with me. It would have been better all round. I’d have been left with some belief in—in people. As it is, when I saw that you’d only been laughing at me, I—well, I went pretty far.”

He stopped short, and transfixed her paleness with his big, dark eyes.

“Why weren’t you honest?” he asked angrily. And then he said again, more bitterly, more scornfully, than before: “Why wasn’t I told about Holloway?”

She clasped her hands tightly together.

“What has been told you about Mr. Holloway and myself?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“Then why do you speak as you do?”

At that he thrust his hands into his pockets and again began to fling himself back and forth across the room.

“Perhaps you’ll think I’m a sneak,” he said, “but I wasn’t a sneak. I went in to see you that Saturday as usual, and when I went upstairs—you were with him in the library. I heard three words. God! they were enough! I didn’t know that anything could knock the bottom out of life so quickly. My sun and stars all fell at once—I reckon my Heaven went too. At all events I went out of your house and down town and I drank and drank—and all to the truth and honor of women.”

He halted with his back to her, and there was silence in the room for many minutes.

When he faced around after a little, she was weeping bitterly, having turned in her seat so that her face might be buried in the chair back. Her whole body was shaking with suppressed sobs. He stood still and stared down upon her and finally she lifted up her face and said with trembling lips:

“And all the trouble came from that. Oh, what shall I do? What shall I say?”

“I don’t know what you can do, or what you can say,” he said, remaining still and watching her sincere distress. “I’d feel pretty blamed mean if I were you, though. Understand, I don’t question your good taste in choosing Holloway, nor your right to love him, nor his right to be there; but I fail to understand why you were to me just as you were, and I think it was unfair—out-and-out mean!”

“Mr. Denham,” she said almost painfully, “you’ve made a dreadful mistake.” Then she stopped and moistened her lips. “I don’t know just what words you overheard, but the dramatic instructor was there that afternoon drilling Mr. Holloway and myself for the parts which we took in the charity play that week; after he went out we went over one of the scenes alone. Perhaps you heard part of that.” She stopped and almost choked. “Mr. Holloway has never really made any love to me—perhaps he never wanted to—perhaps I’ve never wanted him to.”

Jack stared. His misconception was so strongly intrenched in the forefront of his brain that he could not possibly dislodge it at once.

Mrs. Rosscott continued to dry the tears that continued to rise; she seemed terribly affected at finding herself to have been the cause (no matter how innocently) of this latest tale of wrack and ruin.

“Do you mean to say,” the young man said, at last, “that there was no truth in what I heard? Don’t you expect to marry Holloway?”

“I never expect to marry anyone, but certainly not him,” she replied, trying to regain her composure.

“Honest?”

“Assuredly.”

It was as if an unseen orchestra had suddenly burst forth just near enough and just far enough away. He came to the side of her chair and laid his hand upon its back.

“Then what have you been thinking of me lately?” he asked.

“Very sad thoughts,” she confessed—hiding her face again.

“Did you care?”

“Yes, I cared.”

He stood beside her for a long time without speaking or moving. Then he suddenly pulled a chair forward, and sat down close in front of her.

“Don’t cry,” he said, almost daring to be tender. “There’s nothing to cry about now, you know.”

“I think there’s plenty for me to cry about,” she said, looking up through her long wet lashes. “It is so terrible for me to be the one that is to blame. Papa swears he’ll never forgive Bob, and your aunt—”

“Lord love you!” he exclaimed; “don’t worry over me or my aunt. I don’t. I don’t mind anything, with Holloway staked in the ditch. I can get along well enough now.”

He smiled—actually smiled—as he spoke.

“Oh, you mustn’t speak so,” she said, blushing; “indeed, you must not.” And smiled, too, in spite of herself.

“Who’s going to stop me?” he said. “You know that you can’t; I’m miles the biggest.”

She looked at him and tried to frown, but only blushed again instead. He put out his hand and took hers into its clasp.

“I’m everlasting glad to shake college,” he declared gayly; “it never was my favorite alley. I’ve made up my mind to go to work just as soon as I get these pastry strips off my head.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. Anywhere. I don’t care.”

“But you’ll come to my house when Bob comes next week, won’t you?” she asked suddenly. “I can see now why you wouldn’t before, but—but it’s different now. Isn’t it?”

“Is it?” he said, asking the question chiefly of her pretty eyes. “Is it honestly different now?”

“I think it is,” she answered.

A door banged below.

“That’s Burr!” he exclaimed, remembering suddenly the proximity of their chairs, and making haste to place himself farther away.

Burnett’s step was heard on the stair.

“You never said anything to him, did you?” she questioned quickly.

“Certainly not.”

The next instant Burnett was in the room, and his sister was in his arms. (Astonishing how coolly he accepted the fact, too.)

“Mr. Denham is coming to me with you, Bob,” she said when he released her. “I’ve persuaded him.”

“How did you do it?” she was asked.

“By undertaking to reconcile him with his aunt, dear,” she replied, blandly. “It’s a contract that we’ve drawn up between us. You know that I was always rather good in the part of the peacemaker.”

As she spoke, her eyes fell warningly on the manifest astonishment of Aunt Mary’s nephew.

“You don’t know what you’re undertaking, Betty,” said her brother. “You never had a chance to take Aunt Mary for better, for worse—I have.”

“I’m not alarmed,” said she, “I’m very courageous. I’m sure I’ll succeed.”

“Can the mender of ways—other people’s ways—come in?” asked a voice at the door.

It was Mitchell’s voice, and he came in without waiting for an invitation.

“Is it time that I went?” Mrs. Rosscott asked him, anxiously.

“Half an hour yet.”

“Oh, I say Jack,” cried Burnett, “let’s boil some water in the witch-hazel pan, and make a rarebit in the poultice pan, and have some tea here.”

“Sure,” said Jack, suddenly become his blithe and buoyant self again. “You just take off your hat and look the other way, Mrs. Rosscott, and we’ll have you a lunch in a jiffy.”

Chapter Twelve A Trap For Aunt Mary

In Aunt Mary’s part of the country the skies had been crying themselves sick for the last six weeks. The cranberry bog was a goner forever, it was feared, and a little house, very handy for sorting berries in, had had its foundations undermined, and disappeared beneath the face of the waters also.

Under such propitious circumstances, Aunt Mary sat by her own particular window and looked sternly and severely out across the garden and down the road. Lucinda sat by the other window sewing. Lucinda hadn’t changed materially, but her general appearance struck her mistress as more irritating than ever. Everything and everybody seemed to have become more and more irritating ever since Jack had been disinherited. Of course, it was right that he should have been disinherited, but Aunt Mary hadn’t thought much beforehand as to what would happen afterward, and it was too aggravating to have him turn out so well just when she had lost all patience with him and so cast him off forever, and for him to develop such a beautiful character, all of a sudden too—just as if education and good advice had been his undoing and seclusion and illness were the guardian angels arrived just in time to save him from the evil effects thereof.

It hadn’t occurred to Aunt Mary that people keep on living just the same even after they have been cut out of a will. And she never had counted on Jack’s taking his bitter medicine in the spirit he was manifesting. She had not calculated any of the possible effects of her hasty action very maturely, but she certainly had not anticipated a lamblike submission to even the harshest of her edicts, nor had she expected Jack to be one who would strictly observe the Bible regulations and so return good for evil—in other words, write her now when he had never written her in the bygone years (unless under sharpest financial stress of circumstances).

Yet such was the case. Jack had become a “ready letter-writer” ever since his removal to the city, whither some kind friends had invited him directly he could leave his sick-room. Aunt Mary did not know who the friends were and had hesitated somewhat as to opening the first letter. But it had borne no sting—being instead most sweetly pathetic, and since then, others had followed with touching frequency. Their polished periods fell upon the old lady’s stony hardness of heart with the persistent frequency of the proverbial drop of water. After the second she had ceased to regard the instructions given Lucinda as to mentioning her nephew’s name, and after the third he became again her favorite topic of conversation.

It seemed that the poor boy had had the misfortune to contract measles, and in his weakened state the disease had nearly proved fatal. You can perhaps divine the effect of this statement on the grand-aunt, and the further effect of the words: “But never mind, Aunt Mary,” with which he concluded the brief narration.

Aunt Mary had tried to snort and had sniffed instead; she had turned back to the first page, read, “All my head has been shaved, but I don’t care about having any more fun, anyhow,” and had let the letter fall in her lap. Every time that she had thought since of “our boy,” her anger had fallen hotter upon whoever was handiest. Lucinda (who was used to it) lived under a figurative rain of cinders, and thrived salamander-like in their midst; but Arethusa—who had come up for a week—found herself totally unable to stand the endless lava and boiling ashes, and fled back to the bosom of Mr. Arethusa the third morning after her arrival.

“I’ve got to go, I find,” she had yelled the night before her departure.

“I certainly wish you would,” replied her aunt. “I’m a great believer in married women paying attention at home before they begin to pry into their neighbors’ affairs. It’s a good idea. Most generally—most always.”

This was bitterly unkind, since Arethusa was in the habit of taking the long journey purely out of a sense of duty and to keep Lucinda up to the mark; but grateful appreciation is rarely ever a salient point in the character of an autocrat.

“I’m glad she’s gone,” Aunt Mary told Lucinda, when they were left together once more. “She puts me beyond all patience. She chatters gibberish that I can’t make out a word of for an hour at a time, and then, all of a sudden, she screams, ‘Dinner’s ready,’ or something equally silly, in a voice like a carvin’ knife. It’s enough to drive a sane person stark, raving mad. It is.”

Lucinda acquiesced with a nod. Lucinda herself was glad that Arethusa had gone. She resented the manner in which the latter always looked over the preserve closet and counted the silver. Nothing was ever missing, because Lucinda was as honest as a day twenty-five hours long, but the more honest those of Lucinda’s caliber are, the more mad they get if they feel that they are being watched. So Lucinda acquiesced with a nod.

The mistress and maid were sitting alone together, with the June rain falling without, and it was that pleasantly exciting hour which comes only in the country and is known as “about mail-time.”

“There’s Joshua now,” Aunt Mary exclaimed, presently, “I see him turnin’ in the gate. He’ll be at the door before you get there, Lucinda,—he will. There, he’s twistin’ his wheel off. He’s tryin’ to hold Billy an’ hold the letters an’ whistle, all at once. Why don’t you go to him, Lucinda? Can’t you hear a whistle that I can see? Or, if you can’t hear the whistle, can’t you hear me? Do you think whoever wrote those letters would be much pleased if they could see you so slow about gettin’ them? Do—”

Just here the old lady, turning toward Lucinda, perceived that she had been gone—Heaven knew how long. She felt decidedly vexed at finding herself to be in the wrong, rubbed her nose impatiently, and waited in a temper to match the rubbing.

“My Lord! how slow she is!” she thought. “Well, if I don’t die of old age first, I presume I’ll get my letters some time. Maybe.”

As a matter of fact, the door had blown shut behind Lucinda, and the latter personage was making her way, with well-hoisted skirts, around the house to the back door. She didn’t pass the window where the Argus-eyed was looking forth; because that lady had strong opinions of those who let doors bang behind them without their own volition.

Five minutes later the maid did finally appear with one letter.

“I thought you was waitin’ to bring to-morrow’s mail at the same time,” said Aunt Mary, icily.

Then she found that the letter was from Jack, and Lucinda was completely forgotten in the pleasure of opening and reading it.

DEAR AUNT MARY:

It seems so strange how I’m just learning the pleasure of writing letters. I enjoy it more every day. When I see a pen I can hardly keep from feeling that I ought to write you directly. I think of you, then, because I’m thinking of you most always. It seems as if I never appreciated you before, Aunt Mary.

I want to tell you something that I know will make you happy. I’ve never made you very happy Aunt Mary, but I’m going to begin now. I’ve got a place where I can earn my own living, and I’m going to work just as soon as I am strong enough. I’m as tickled as a baby over it. I’ll lay you any odds I get to be a richer man than the other John Watkins. I reckon money was bad for me, Aunt Mary, and I can see that you’ve done just the right thing to make a man of me. That isn’t surprising, because you always did do just the right thing, Aunt Mary; it was I that always did just the wrong thing, but I’m straightened out now and this time it’s forever—you just wait and see.

There’s one thing bothers me some, and that is I don’t get strong very fast. They want me to take a tonic, but I don’t think a tonic would help me much. I feel so sort of blue and depressed, and perhaps that’s natural, for Bob’s away most of the time and I’m here all alone. It’s a big house and sort of lonely and sometimes I find myself imagining how it would seem to have someone from home in it with me, and I find myself almost crying—I do, for a fact, Aunt Mary.

Next week, Bob is going to be away more than usual, and I’m dreading it awfully; but never mind, Aunt Mary, I don’t want to make you blue, because honestly I don’t think I’m going into a decline, even if the doctor does. And, after all, if I did sort of dwindle away it wouldn’t matter much, for I’m not worth anything, and no one knows that as well as myself—except you, Aunt Mary. I must stop because it’s nine o’clock and time I was in bed. I’ve got some socks to wash out first, too; you see, I’m learning how to economize just as fast as I can. It’s only two miles to my work, and I’m going to walk back and forth always—that’ll be between fifty cents and a dollar saved each week. I’m figuring on how to live on my salary and never have a debt, and you’ll be proud of me yet, Aunt Mary—if I don’t die first.

Think of me all alone here next week. If I wasn’t steadfast as a rock I believe I’d do something foolish just to get out of myself. But never mind, Aunt Mary, it’s all right.

Your afft. nephew, JOHN WATKINS, JR., DENHAM.

When Lucinda returned from drying her feet, Aunt Mary had her handkerchief in one hand and spectacles in the other.

“Saints and sinners!” cried the maid, in a voice that grated with sympathy. “He ain’t writ to say he’s dead, is he?”

“No,” said Aunt Mary; “but he isn’t as well as he makes out. There’s no deceivin’ me, Lucinda!”

“Dear! dear!” cried the Trusty and True; “is that so? What’s to be done? Do you want Joshua to run anywhere?”

Aunt Mary suddenly regained her composure.

“Run anywhere?” she asked, with her usual bitter intonation. “If you ain’t the greatest fool I ever was called upon to bed and board, Lucinda! Will you kindly explain to me how settin’ Joshua trottin’ is goin’ to do any mortal good to my poor boy away off there in that dreadful city?”

“He could telegraph to Miss Arethusa,” Lucinda suggested. The suggestion bespoke the superior moral quality of Lucinda’s make-up—her own feeling toward Arethusa being considered.

“I don’t want her,” said Aunt Mary with a positiveness that was final. “I don’t want her. My heavens, Lucinda, ain’t we just had enough of her? Anyhow, if you ain’t, I have. I don’t want her, nor no livin’ soul except my trunk; an’ I want that just as quick as Joshua can haul it down out of the attic.”

“You ain’t thinkin’ of goin’ travelin’!” the maid cried in consternation; “you can’t never be thinkin’ of _that?_”

“No,” said her mistress with fine irony; “I want the trunk to make a pie out of, probably.”

Lucinda was speechless.

“Lucinda,” her mistress said, after a few seconds had faded away unimproved, “seems to me I mentioned wantin’ Joshua to get down a trunk—seems to me I did.”

The maid turned and left the room. She felt more or less dazed. Nothing so startling as Aunt Mary’s wanting a trunk had happened in years. Disinheriting Jack was not in it by comparison. She went slowly away to find Joshua and found him in the farther end of the rear woodhouse—John Watkins, like several of his ilk, having marked each forward step in the world by a back extension of his house.

Joshua was chopping wood; his ax was high in the air. He also was calm and unsuspecting.

“She’s goin’ to the city all alone!” Lucinda’s voice suddenly proclaimed behind him.

The ax fell.

“Who says so?” its handler demanded, facing about in surprise.

“She says so.”

Joshua picked up the ax and poised it afresh. He was himself again.

“She’ll go then,” he said calmly.

Lucinda marched around in front of him, and planted herself firmly among the chips.

“Joshua Whittlesey!”

“We can’t help it,” said Joshua stolidly. “We’re here to mind her. If she wants to go to New York, or to change her will, all we’ve got to do is to be simple witnesses.”

“She don’t want Miss Arethusa telegraphed,” said Lucinda.

“I don’t blame her,” said Joshua; “if I was her and if I was goin’ to New York I wouldn’t want no one telegraphed.”

“She wants her trunk out of the attic.”

“Then she’ll get her trunk out of the attic. When does she want it?”

“She wants it now.”

“Then she’ll get it now,” said Joshua. From the general trend of this and other remarks of Joshua the reader will readily divine why he had been in Aunt Mary’s employ for thirty years, and had always been characterized by her as “a most sensible man,” and anyone who had seen the alacrity with which the trunk was brought and the respectful attention with which Aunt Mary’s further commands were received would have been forced to coincide in her opinion.

The packing of the trunk was a task which fell to Lucinda’s lot and was performed under the eagle eye of her mistress. Aunt Mary’s ideas of what she would require were delightfully unsophisticated and brought up short on the farther-side of her tooth brush and her rubbers. Nevertheless she agreed in Lucinda’s suggestions as to more extensive supplies.

Late that afternoon Joshua drove into town (amidst a wealth of mud spatters) and dispatched the answer to Jack’s letter. Aunt Mary was urged to haste by several considerations, some well defined, and others not so much so. To Lucinda she imparted her terrible anxiety over the dear boy’s health, but not even to herself did she admit her much more terrible anxiety lest Arethusa or Mary should suddenly appear and insist on accompanying her. She wanted to go, but she wanted to go alone.

Jack telegraphed a response that night, and his aunt left by the Monday morning train. She had a six o’clock breakfast, and drove into town at a quarter of nine so as to be absolutely certain not to miss the train. Joshua drove, with the trunk perched beside him. It was a small and unassuming trunk, but Aunt Mary was not one who believed in putting on airs just because she was rich. Lucinda sat on the back seat with her mistress.

“I’m sure I hope you’ll enjoy yourself,” she said.

“Of course he’s nothing but a boy,” Aunt Mary replied,—“an’ I’ve told you a hundred times that boys will be boys and we mustn’t expect otherwise.”

They arrived on time, and only had an hour and three-quarters to wait in the station. Toward the last Aunt Mary grew very nervous for fear something had happened to the train; but it came to time according to the waiting-room clock. Joshua put her aboard, and she soon had nothing left to worry over except the wonder as to whether Jack would be on hand to meet her or not.

Joshua drove back home, let Lucinda out at the door, and put the horse up before going in to where she sat in solitary glory.

“I wonder what _he’s_ up to?” she said with a pleasant sense of unlimited freedom as to the subject and duration of the conversation.

“Suthin’, of course,” was the answer.

“Do you s’pose he’s really sick?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Do you s’pose she thinks he’s really sick?”

“Mebbe.”

“Ain’t you goin’ to sit down, Joshua?”

“I don’t see nothin’ to make me sit down here for.”

“What do you think of her going?” she said, as he walked toward the door.

“I think she’ll have a good time.”

“At her age?”

“Havin’ a good time ain’t a matter o’ age,” said Joshua. “It’s a matter o’ bein’ willin’ to have a good time.”

Lucinda screwed her face up mightily.

“If I was sure she’d be gone for a week,” she said, “I’d go a-visitin’ myself.”

“She’ll be gone a week,” said Joshua; and the manner and matter of his speech were both those of a prophet.

Then he went out and the door slammed to behind him.

Chapter Thirteen Aunt Mary Entrapped

Aunt Mary’s arrival in the city just coincided with the arrival of that day’s five o’clock. Five o’clock in early June is very bright daylight, therefore she was rather bewildered when the train pulled up in the darkness and electricity of the station’s confusion. The change from sunlight to smoke blinded her somewhat and the view from the car window did not restore her equanimity. When the porter, to whom she had been discreetly recommended by Joshua, came for her bags, she felt woefully distressed and not at all like her usual self.

“Oh, do I have to get out?” she said. “I ain’t been in this place for twenty-five years, and I was to be met.”

The porter’s grin hovered comfortingly over her head.

“You can stay here jus’ ’s long as you like, ma’am,” he yelled, in the voice of a train dispatcher. “I’ll send your friends in when they inquiahs.”

Aunt Mary eyed him gratefully, and gave him the nickel which she had been carefully holding in her hand for the last hour.

Then she looked up, and saw Jack!

A perfectly splendid Jack, in resplendent attire, handsome, beaming, with a big bouquet of violets in his hand!

“For you, Aunt Mary,” he said, and dropped them into her lap, and hugged her fervently. She clung to him with a cling that forgot the immediate past, disinheriting and all. Oh! she was so glad to see him!

The porter approached with a beneficent look.

“Has he taken good care of you, Aunt Mary?” Jack asked, as the man gathered up the things and they started to leave the car.

“Yes, indeed,” Aunt Mary declared.

So Jack gave the porter a dollar.

Then they left the train.

“I was so worried,” Aunt Mary said, as she went along the platform hanging on her nephew’s arm. “I thought you’d met with an accident.”

“I couldn’t get on until the rest got off,” he said, gazing down on her with a smile; “but I was on hand, all right. My, but it’s good to think that you’re here, Aunt Mary! Maybe you think that I don’t appreciate your taking all this trouble for me, but I do, just the same.”

Aunt Mary smiled all over. Everyone who passed them was smiling, too, and that added to the general joy of the atmosphere. Aunt Mary felt proud of Jack, and rejoiced as to herself. Her content with life in general was, for the moment, limitless. She did not stop to dissect the sources of her delight. She was not in a critical mood just then.

“Why don’t you stick those flowers in your belt, Aunt Mary?” her nephew asked, as they penetrated the worst of the human jungle, and the preservation of the violets appeared to be the main question of the day. “That’s what the girls do.”

His aunt looked vaguely down at herself. She had no belt to stick her violets in. She wore no belt. She wore a basque. A basque is a beltless something that you can’t remember, but that females did, once upon a time, cover the upper half of their forms with. Basques buttoned down the front with ten to thirty buttons, and may be studied at leisure in any good collection of daguerreotypes. Ladies like Aunt Mary are apt to scorn such futilities as waning styles after they pass beyond a certain age, and for that reason there was no place for Jack’s violets.

“Never mind,” he said cheerfully, having followed her dubiousness with his understanding. “Just hang on to them a minute longer, and we’ll be out of all this.”