Chapter XIV: The Nabob Makes an Impression

It was a divided stream in which the current of our story flowed during the days that followed, and a quiet stream it seemed at first after the dash and sparkle of the summer. A week more and Kate was busy with her books again, beginning her last year in the Rushmore High School. Tom Saxon was in school too, and Stella had flitted back to Boston, ready to settle down in that pretty studio of hers, with her art and her pupils. Esther alone was at leisure, but even for her the time passed swiftly. Aunt Elsie gave her a willing share in the light work of the household, and her grandfather claimed her more and more as a companion in all his goings, and a listener to his tales in the lengthening evenings.

Then there were the visits to Aunt Katharine, and few were the days in which they were omitted. The sight of the girl always brought a smile to the face of the lonely old woman. She was, if possible, more kind than ever, and yet, though Esther could not have explained it, she felt with a puzzled wonder that there was somehow a difference. Not for long had Aunt Katharine talked in the old passionate way of those peculiar views which she held so dear and vital. She seemed less eager than once to impress them, and Esther noted it, resenting more and more that fancy of her sister’s that the proud-spirited old woman would have taken undue advantage of her influence, or have wished to put compulsion on another’s life and thought.

It was a pity Kate did not know the true state of the case. As it was she sent an anxious thought every now and then in the direction of Aunt Katharine, and shook her fist, metaphorically speaking, in the face of those ideas which she imagined her to be always urging. In regard to anything else she refused to be solicitous over her sister, though Tom, who actually wrote a letter once a week for the first month, did his best to disturb her. The “nabob” was not only calling oftener than ever,—and this in the absence of Stella,—but the grandfather and Esther had been invited to visit at his summer home in Hartridge, a visit which they had made, and, according to reports on their return, enjoyed immensely.

“You can pay your money and take your choice, of course,” Tom wrote derisively at the end of this interesting news, which he sent in advance of Esther herself, “but it’s ancestors _or_ Esther, you can count on that. Maybe the young men out your way care more about their great-great-grandfathers than they do about girls, but in this part of the country it would be safer to bet on the girl.”

Kate sniffed at this, and responded promptly that the young men in her part of the country, so far as she was acquainted with them, didn’t trouble themselves about their great-great-grandfathers at all; and the mental workings of one who gave his time to the business—as Mr. Hadley certainly did in the earlier part of the summer—were beyond her. To which she added—what was clearly another matter—that even if Mr. Hadley had taken a fancy to Esther, it was by no means certain that she had a fancy for him.

She waited with some impatience for Esther’s account of the visit, and the letter which came shortly certainly bore out Tom’s impression that she had enjoyed it. It seemed that Mr. Hadley’s father was extremely anxious to meet Deacon Saxon, but being somewhat infirm of health and indisposed for so long a ride, had urgently begged the old gentleman to come to him,—with his granddaughter, of course,—and the two had taken the drive to Hartridge one day with all the pleasure in life. The Hadleys’ summer home, Esther wrote, was perfectly beautiful, much more so in outward aspect than the Boston house, with its straight brown front, and inside it was apparently a bower of loveliness. Such simple but elegant furnishings, such devices for making summer leisure redolent of rest and culture! Ah! It was a theme to inspire her pen, and she grew fairly eloquent over it.

It appeared, too, that Mr. Hadley had been more charming than ever, and his family were delightful. There had been a married sister from Boston there on a visit who had been more than gracious to Esther, and had assured her that she should count on seeing much of her during the winter. Altogether, it seemed to have been an idyllic day. Kate read the letter aloud to the family, then laid it down without joining in the general comment. She was half vexed that her sister should have had so good a time, and she really wished that Mr. Philip Hadley were not quite so agreeable.

But there were certain other people whose agreeable qualities she did not find so exasperating. The sight of one of them, coming to the house that afternoon in the edge of twilight, sent her flying out to meet him with a cry of delight.

“Mort Elwell!” she exclaimed, almost running into his arms; “oh, but I’m glad to see you!”

“Well, you’d better believe I’m glad to see you,” he replied. And then they clasped hands and beamed at each other for a minute like brother and sister.

“My! how tall you’re getting! Has Esther been growing like that this summer?” he demanded, as they walked together to the house.

“The first question, of course,” she replied, trying to pout. “I’m sure I can’t tell. I don’t believe there’s any difference in me, only you’ve forgotten how I looked when I went away.”

Forgotten! Not he. He protested that he remembered just how high she had come above his shoulders when she stood on the threshing machine that day last summer. And then they both laughed. How long ago it seemed, that harvesting at the farm!

“But it seems longer to us than to you, Mort, I know it does,” said the girl. “So much has happened to us, and we’ve seen so many different places.”

“I’ve seen a few places myself, if you please,” he retorted, “and there’s more difference in them than you’d think, especially when it comes to the eating. But there are other things, besides going around, to make time seem long to a body.”

They welcomed him in the house with such affectionate cordiality as might have been extended to one very dear and near of kin. Mrs. Northmore’s eyes grew bright and moist at the sight of him; and the doctor, who had stretched himself on the lounge five minutes before in a state of exhaustion, declaring that nothing short of a case of apoplexy could make him budge off it that evening, fairly bounded across the room at the sight of Morton, and shook his hand with a heartiness suggestive of exuberant vitality.

“When did you get home?” was the first question when the greetings were over, and “When are you going away?” followed, without waiting for answer.

“I just got in on the train this noon,” said Morton, “and I’m going to-morrow morning. Can’t spend any time loafing, you know, for the term began a month ago, and I must get there now as soon as I can.”

“And you’ll have back work to make up the very first thing,” said Mrs. Northmore. “It’s too bad to work so hard all summer and then start into your studies at such a disadvantage.”

“I think I can manage that all right,” said the young man, confidently. “I’ve got money enough to make the ends meet for a while, without doing any outside work, and it won’t take me long to catch up.”

“Well, don’t make too brilliant a run, Mort,” said the doctor, dryly. “I hate to see a good proverb spoiled; and all work and no play ought to make Jack a dull boy, if it doesn’t.”

“I rather think Jack’s a dull boy to start with, if it knocks him out in one season,” said the young man, laughing.

He was so modest, so manly, and his buoyant energy was so refreshing, that it was no wonder they all sat looking at him as if they had a personal pride in his doings.

“But at least you won’t have to teach school this winter,” said Mrs. Northmore.

“Not unless somebody relieves me of what I’ve earned this summer,” said Morton, lightly. “In that case I’ll speak for my old place again.”

“I’ll warrant they’d let you have it,” said the doctor.

“Oh, they’ve made me the offer, already,” said Morton; “besides, I hold a first-grade certificate to teach in that county, and I might miss it on examination somewhere else.”

“Not much danger of that, I fancy,” said Mrs. Northmore, and the doctor added, growling, “Those examinations are a good deal of a humbug. For my part, I think a few oral questions put to a fellow straight out would be worth as much as all that written stuff.” He had been a county examiner once himself, and had a painful remembrance of the “stuff,” which, to tell the truth, his wife had mostly examined for him.

“I rather think an oral question that was put to me helped me in my examination,” said Morton, a gleam of amused remembrance coming into his eyes. “Did I ever tell you about that? I had just finished one set of papers and gone up to the desk for another, when one of the examiners, a dry, shrewd-looking old fellow, leaned over and put this question to me: ‘When turkeys are six and three-fourths dollars per dozen, how many may be had for two dollars eighty-one cents and one-fourth?’”

“The mean thing!” ejaculated Kate. “He didn’t expect you to figure that out in your head, right then and there, did he?”

“He expected an answer,” said Morton, “and do you know, as good luck would have it, I hit it at the first shot, and gave it to him in a quarter of a minute. I told him _five_, and that was right.”

“Well,” gasped the doctor, “talk about lightning calculators!”

“But I didn’t calculate it,” laughed the young man. “I told you ’twas luck. You see I knew the answer, being turkeys, must be a whole number, and the sum named was less than half the price of a dozen, so it couldn’t be six, and I took the chances on five. The man that asked the question saw through it, of course, and I believe he sort of liked me after that. But look here, who cares about county examinations or what I did last winter? I want to hear about this summer, and how you liked New England. Start in, Kate, and tell me everything.”

“‘Only that and nothing more?’” she said, lifting her hands. “Why, I intend to give out my experiences sparingly, and embellish my conversation with them for the rest of my life. But we did have a glorious time—I’ll tell you so much. And New England’s great. If you’ve any doubts on that point you may as well give them up right here and now. It’s funny, some of it, of course; the little fields, and the stone walls, and the ox-teams—but you get used to those things, you know; and the people are nice. It’s the next best thing to living out here—it really is—to live in the Old Bay State, as grandfather calls it.”

And then, with an abandon which hardly tallied with her avowed intention to keep some capital for future use, she threw herself into the doings on the old farm, the attractions of New England villages, and the delights—oh! the delights of Boston and the sea, with his eager questions drawing her on and fresh items suggesting themselves at every turn.

It lengthened itself into a long delicious evening, and after a little the young people had it all to themselves, for the doctor was called off, and not to a case of apoplexy either, only to a child who had put a button into his ear; and a neighbor dropped in, to whose troubles Mrs. Northmore must give her sympathizing attention.

There was one subject on which the young man’s interest showed itself keen at a score of points in the course of Kate’s vivacious talk. Did Esther look at this and that as her sister did? Did she note the contrasts with a touch of pride and pleasure in the ways at home? Was she wholly glad to stay behind? And might it not be longer than the winter, much longer perhaps, before she would be at home again.

As to the last point Kate eagerly denied the danger. The other questions she answered more slowly, but with her usual frankness. Esther had been more in love with New England than herself; she had not criticised things—oh, dear, she had never quarrelled with anybody in behalf of her native state; and she had been perfectly delighted with the invitation to stay, there could be no doubt of that. And then she was silent, her face lengthening a little, as she thought of the one who gave the invitation.

The young man had listened with the closest attention while she talked, and he gave a little sigh when she finished. “I’m afraid I shan’t know as much about things that are happening there now as I did before you came away,” he said wistfully. “You were ever so good about writing to me, Kate. I haven’t had but one letter since you came away.”

His eyes wandered as he spoke to that letter with its well-known writing lying on the table, and it was not the first time since he came in that they had moved in that direction. Kate noted the hungry look, and felt mean.

“We had one to-day, and she is perfectly well,” she said uneasily. And then she would have changed the subject but that Virgie, who was so little given to conversation that her occasional contributions were the more dangerous, spoke up just then and said it was such an interesting letter, all about a visit Esther had made with grandfather; Kate had read it to them all, and it was beautiful.

“Can’t I hear it too?” said Morton, boldly.

There was no help for it now, and Kate walked soberly to the table. There were one or two passages she would certainly have left out, but Virgie, who had read it three times, would be likely enough to call attention to the omissions, and that would make the business worse. So she went straight through it, with a certain hardness of tone when allusions were made to the charming qualities of Mr. Philip Hadley which made them all the more emphatic.

Morton Elwell’s eyes did not move from her face as she read. Indeed, there was a tenseness about his expression at moments which suggested that he was holding his breath.

“So you see grandfather’s taking her into all the gayeties,” Kate said rather nervously, as she laid down the letter. “She’s a wonderful favorite with grandfather.”

Morton drew his hand across his forehead. “This Mr. Hadley is the one who went to the graveyard with her, isn’t he? Esther wrote me about that.”

“Yes, only ’twas Stella he was with,” said Kate. “Esther was with grandfather.”

The exact arrangement of the party was apparently not the main interest just then for Morton. “And he showed you around Boston and Cambridge and those other places afterward, didn’t he?” he queried.

“Yes, we did a good deal of sight-seeing together,” said Kate, and then she added hurriedly, “he and Stella are tremendously up in art, and that’s why he went to some places with us. He wanted to show her a picture in his own house for one thing. Maybe Esther wrote you about that too.”

“But he knows Stella’s gone from your grandfather’s now, doesn’t he?” said the young man. There were apparently other things besides the price of turkeys in regard to which he could draw quick deductions, and his eyes searched Kate’s at that moment with a look that was straight and keen.

“I don’t know but he does,” she said almost pettishly.

There was a minute’s silence, and somehow it occurred to Morton Elwell just then that the hour was growing late.

“I must be going home,” he said. “Aunt Jenny’ll wonder what has become of me.”

He said good night to Virgie, and stopped in the hall a minute for a word with Mrs. Northmore. Kate was beside him. “I’ll go down to the gate with you,” she said, as she had said many a time before, and he seemed to expect it.

But when they were fairly beyond the porch, in the shadows of the shrubbery, he slipped his arm through hers, and said very quietly: “Kate, I wish you’d tell me the truth about this Mr. Hadley. He’s coming to see Esther, of course. Is he in love with her?”

“I don’t know that he is. I never saw a thing to make me think so,” said Kate, with low vehemence. And then (for there was a frankness in her which would not let her stop there) she added: “Tom says he is; but Tom made up his mind to that right at the start, and he’s the most obstinate boy I ever saw about his own opinions. He never changes his mind, no matter what good reasons you may show him on the other side.”

The idiosyncrasies of Tom Saxon were not interesting just then to Morton Elwell. Kate heard him draw his breath hard before he said: “Of course he’s in love with her. He’s been seeing her all summer, and he couldn’t help being. And she”—he paused for an instant before he added bitterly: “I understand it now. It’s knowing _him_ that made her so willing to stay.”

“Oh, no it isn’t, Mort; indeed it isn’t,” said Kate, bringing him to a standstill with a compelling pressure on his arm. “If you knew everything, you wouldn’t say that. It was Aunt Katharine that made her stay. Oh, if you knew Aunt Katharine! She’s a dreadfully strong-minded woman, and she’s taken a terrible fancy to Esther. She’d like to make her feel just as she does about woman’s rights, and never marrying, and all that sort of thing. _She’s_ the one, not Mr. Hadley at all, that has such an influence over Esther.”

“Nonsense!” said Morton Elwell; and he said it with a sharpness that for an instant made Kate almost afraid of him.

There was silence for a minute as they moved down the path. Then, with the sharpness gone out of his voice and the bitterness overflowing it again, he said: “I don’t wonder at it. He’s rich and agreeable,—you wrote that yourself, Kate. He’s all that’s delightful and cultivated,—she says so in the letter. He has everything and—and time to be with her,” he added, with a groan. “She can’t help caring for him. I know it as if I were there to see.”

They had reached the great horse-chestnut tree by the gate, and the moonlight came down through the half-leafless branches on the girl’s face lifted to his. “Oh, it won’t be the way you think, Mort,” she whispered passionately. “Esther _can’t_ care for Mr. Hadley. I’m sure, I’m sure she can’t!”

“Why can’t she?” he asked, and his face looked pale and stern.

She caught her breath with a sob. “Because—oh, Mort—because _you’re_ so much nicer!” she said, with an utter abandon. And then her head dropped, and a splash of tears fell on his coat-sleeve.

He stooped suddenly and kissed her; then, without even a good night, strode off down the road.

It lay before him straight and empty in the moonlight; and he followed it past the turn that led to his uncle’s house, on and on, taking no note of distance. This fear which had come to him so suddenly—it seemed already not a possibility but a certainty, and it stalked at his side, keeping even step with his. He had no vanity to whisper that there were other attractions besides those which fortune had bestowed so lavishly on Mr. Philip Hadley. He had been too busy all his life, and such gifts as he had were too inherently part of his nature for him to turn an observant eye upon them and mark their value. He seemed to himself a homely, humdrum fellow beside this other who had stepped so lightly into Esther Northmore’s life. There was envy enough in his heart, Heaven knew; but it somehow withheld the thought that wealth was accidental, culture acquired,—poor things at best beside that inner something which makes the man. They were good gifts. He hoped to prove it for himself by and by, and that other something—How if Mr. Philip Hadley were rich in that, too?

But was it fair, was it fair that he, to whom only a summer pleasuring had brought acquaintance with Esther Northmore, should steal her away from one who had loved her so long? His heart ran swiftly over the past, and a lump rose in his throat as memory brought back those early days. She was five years old, he seven, when he came to his uncle’s house, a lonesome, homesick boy. He remembered how she came across the fields with her mother, on that first afternoon, in her little red shoes and white apron, a dainty figure, with gentle ways and soft, loving eyes. He remembered how she had slid her hand into his and whispered she was sorry his mother was dead. And then they had played together, he drawing her about in his little cart; and before he knew it the long day was ending and a sense of being at home had stolen into his heart. That was the beginning, and what friends they had been through the childish years that followed! He remembered how he bought her a carnelian ring once at the county fair. The ring had broken next day, and she had wept scalding tears. Alas, there was no dime left to buy another, but he had promised that she should have a gold one sometime, with a shining stone at the top, and she had been comforted with this, and promised to wait.

Ah, one could not bear such memories as this. He thrust it down and swallowed fiercely at the lump in his throat, which seemed his heart itself swollen to bursting. But other pictures came: the growing girl, so willing to take his help, so quick to give her own, so proud of all his successes. They had gone through the district school side by side, he only a class ahead, though older, for his chance to begin had come later than hers. How many times he had worked her problems for her, how often he had gone over his boyish debates and speeches with her for listener, on the way to school, or in her father’s orchard when his chores were done, sure that he had made his pleading well when the tears sprang into her eyes, and the quick responsive color flushed and paled in her cheeks! What would any work he could do, or any triumph he could ever win, be worth to him if she had ceased to care?

There had been a difference in her,—he had marked it uneasily, slow as he was in the steadfast loyalty of his own thoughts to guess at change in hers,—but he had said to himself it was because they had been apart too much, she at boarding school, he at college. It would all be as it had been when they could see each other again in the old way. That they belonged to each other was a thing he had held so simply and of course that the fear of losing her had never till now really entered his heart.

And then, with a passionate protest, he felt himself writing to her, telling her of his love and calling her back; but swift chilling doubts overtook the impulse. If she had forgotten, slipped away from all this of the past, could any word of his, across the cruel distance, call her back? He had no art with his pen, and what would the poor meagre page be worth beside the living presence of this new, delightful friend?

The bitterness gathered like a flood in his heart, and all its waves and billows went over him. He knew nothing of the beauty of the night nor the way he was taking. He had no sense of outward things, when his name was called suddenly behind him.

“Mort Elwell! Well, upon my word! I thought ’twas you, and then I thought it couldn’t be. When did I ever catch up with you before, on a straight road, with you well in the start?”

The young man turned at the voice, and for a moment stared blankly at the speaker. It was the New Light preacher, his friend of many years, his comrade in the labors of the early summer. The long loose figure bent eagerly toward him, and the sallow face shone in the flooding moonlight. It was impossible, at any pass of melancholy, not to find a moment’s pleasure in so warm a greeting.

“I declare I didn’t hear you coming up,” said the young man. “I was taking my time to it, and wasn’t looking for company.”

“No, I reckon not,” said the preacher, smiling. “It’s toler’ble late, if you happen to know it, and you’re a little out of your own bailiwick, aren’t you?”

“Over in yours?” said Morton, noting for the first time how far he had gone. “Well, it’s rather late for you too, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” said the preacher; “but I’ve been over at old man Towner’s. He’s having one of his bad spells, and this time he won’t pull through. I reckon he’ll be done with living here in a few days more.”

“Well, it’s something to be through with,” said the young man. He had spoken more to fill the pause than for anything else, but there was a dreary note in his voice which fell strangely on the ear of the other.

“You, Mort!” he exclaimed, and his eyes searched the face of his companion for a moment curiously. It looked tired and worn. “Just through your work?” he asked. “When did you get in?”

“Finished my job yesterday,” said Morton, “and am here just long enough to pick up my things. Shall go to-morrow morning.”

“And start in for another stiff year’s work,” said the preacher. “Well, Mort, you’ve made a summer of it. I hope things’ll ease up for you sometime, and they will, they will.”

The young man lifted his head with an impatient movement. “I wish people wouldn’t pity me for having to work,” he said. “I don’t care how hard I work. It’s the easiest thing there is.”

Some fine wrinkles had gathered in the preacher’s forehead. “Yes,” he said, with his eyes still on Morton’s face. “It’s a good deal easier than wanting work and not getting it, for instance. Plenty of folks could tell you that.”

There was a touch of contempt mingled now with the impatience in Morton’s voice. “I never was a bit afraid but I could get all the work I wanted,” he said. “Give me my head and hands, and I’ll take care of that.”

“And not be so proud of yourself for doing it maybe, when you get to my age,” said the preacher. Then dropping into his bit of a drawl, he added: “But there _are_ things that ain’t so easy to come by, eh, Mort? It’s a fact, man. But ‘Faint-heart never won fair lady,’ nor anything else worth having.”

A flush rose in Morton’s face and he sent a quick look at the preacher. The shrewd gray eyes were looking at him kindly.

“And Stout-heart doesn’t win them either, sometimes,” he said bitterly.

“Oh, it’s chance, it’s chance, the way things happen!”

The preacher laid his hand on the young fellow’s shoulder. “No, Mort,” he said with a peculiar gentleness in his voice, “Stout-heart _doesn’t_ win them always. We fail of them sometimes with all our trying. God knows how I’ve wanted some things I’ve missed. But there’s one thing we needn’t miss,—the Lord himself stands to that,—courage to meet what comes, strength to go without, if we must, and not be broken by it.”

The young man stopped in his walk and faced the other. “Strength!” he cried, almost fiercely. “To do without the things that make everything else worth having! Where is one to get it? You could hunt for work—I’d take my chances on finding that—but _this_!”

He set his teeth hard, and the preacher felt the strong young figure grow tense under his hand. He drew himself up, and his eyes held the boy’s with a compelling earnestness.

“Where are you to get it, Mort?” he said solemnly. “From the One that gave you what strength you’ve got. Do you think He bankrupted Himself giving you and me the little sense, the little power that’s in us? I tell you there’s more; there’s _enough_ for every soul of us. Cry to Him for it. Open your eyes and open your heart. It’s here, it’s there, it’s all around us. And it’s ours for the having.”

He stretched out his arms as he spoke with a wide reverent gesture, and his plain awkward face looked noble as he lifted it toward the sky.

They stood together for a long still minute without speaking. He had broken in upon an hour of solitary wrestling; the older man knew it, and he shrank back now from his intrusion. Suddenly he turned away. “It’s a little shorter for me across the fields, Mort, and I’ll leave you here,” he said. “Good night, and God bless you.”

It was past midnight when Morton Elwell opened the door of his uncle’s house. A light was burning in the sitting room; and his aunt rose as he entered, dropping from her lap the work with which she had been filling the time while she waited.

“What, were you sitting up for me, Aunt Jenny?” he said, as she met him.

“It’s a long time since I had a chance to sit up for you, Mort,” she said tenderly. And then she added, with a gentle reproach in her voice, “Don’t you think you ought to be taking a little more rest to-night, when you start so early to-morrow?”

“I’m going to bed right now,” he said. Then he put his arm around her neck in the old affectionate way, as he added, “A fellow has a deal to be thankful for that’s had such an auntie as you are to take care of him all these years.”

And with that manly word, and a little quiver at his lips, he mounted the stairs to his own room.