AT LAST THE STORY BEGINS
Among the two million Americans shoved bodily into the maelstrom of the
World War were Thaxton Vail and the Creede twins.
This story opens in the spring of 1919, when all three had returned
from overseas service.
Aura and the summer-colony were heartily glad to have Thaxton Vail
back again. He was the sort of youth who is liked very much by nine
acquaintances in ten and disliked by fewer than one in ninety. But
there was no such majority opinion as to the return of the two young
Creedes.
The twins, from babyhood, had been so alike in looks and in outward
mannerisms that not five per cent of their neighbors could tell them
apart. But there all resemblance ceased.
Clive Creed was of the same general type as young Vail, who was his
lifelong chum. They were much alike in traits and in tastes. They even
shared--that last year before the war cut a hole in the routine of
their pleasant lives--a mutual ardor for Doris Lane, who, with her old
aunt, Miss Gregg, spent her summers at Stormcrest, across the valley
from Vailholme. It was the first shadow of rivalry in their chumship.
Clive and Thaxton had the same pleasantly easy-going ways, the
same unforced likableness. They were as popular as any men in the
hill-country’s big summer-colony. Their wartime absence had been a
theme for genuine regret to Aura Valley.
Except in looks, Osmun Creede was as unlike his twin brother as any
one could well have been. The man had every Scotch flaw and crotchet,
without a single Scotch virtue. Old Osmun Vail had sized up the lad’s
character years earlier, when he had said in confidence to Thaxton:
“There’s a white man and a cur in all of us, Thax. And some
psychologist sharps say twins are really one person with two bodies.
Clive got all the White Man part of that ‘one person,’ and my
lamentable namesake got all the Cur. At times I find myself wishing he
were ‘the lamented Osmun Creede,’ instead of only ‘the lamentable Osmun
Creede.’ Hester Gregg says he behaves as if Edgar Allan Poe had written
him and Berlioz had set him to music.”
From childhood, Thaxton and this Creede twin had clashed. In the honest
days of boyhood they had taken no pains to mask their dislike. In the
more civil years of adolescence they had been at much pains to be
courteous to each other when they met, but they tried not to meet. This
avoidance was not easy; in such a close corporation as the Aura set,
especially after both of them began calling over-often on Doris Lane.
Back to the Berkshires, from overseas, came the two Creedes. The
community prepared to welcome Clive with open arms; and to tolerate
Osmun, as of old, for the sake of his brother and for the loved
memory of his father. At once Aura was relieved of one of its former
perplexities. For no longer were the twins impossible to tell apart.
They still bore the most amazing likeness to each other, of course.
But a long siege of trench fever had left Osmun slightly bald on the
forehead and had put lines and hollows in his good-looking face and had
given his wide shoulders a marked stoop. Also, a fragment of shell in
the leg had left him with a slight limp. The fever, too, had weakened
his eyes; and had forced him to adopt spectacles with a faintly smoked
tinge to their lenses. Altogether, he was plainly discernible, now,
from his erect brother, and looked nine years older.
There was another change, too, in the brethren. Hitherto they had lived
together at Canobie. On their return from the war they astonished Aura
by separating. Osmun lived on at the big house. But Clive took his
belongings to Rackrent Farm; and set up housekeeping there; attended
by an old negro and his wife, who had worked for his father. He even
transported thither the amateur laboratory wherewith he and Osmun had
always delighted to putter; and he set it up in a vacant back room of
the farmhouse.
Aura was thrilled at these signs of discord in the hitherto inseparable
brethren. Clive had been the only mortal to find good in Osmun and to
care for his society. Now, apparently, there had been a break.
But almost at once Aura found there had been no break. The twins were
as devoted as ever, despite their decision to live two miles apart.
They were back and forth, daily, at each other’s homes; and they
wrought, side by side, with all their old zeal, in the laboratory.
Osmun’s cantankerous soul did not seem to have undergone any purifying
process from war experience and long illness. Within a month after he
came back to Aura he proceeded to celebrate his return by raising the
rents of the seven cottages he and Clive owned; and by a twenty per
cent cut in the pay of the Canobie laborers.
Aura is not feudal Europe. Nor had Osmun Creede any of the hereditary
popularity or masterliness of a feudal baron. Wherefore the seven
tenants prepared to walk out of their rent-raised homes. The Canobie
laborers, to a man, went on strike. Aura applauded. Osmun sulked.
Clive came to the rescue, as ever he had done when his brother’s
actions had aroused ill-feeling. He rode over to Canobie and was
closeted for three hours with Osmun. Servants, passing the library,
heard and reported the hum of arguing voices. Then Clive came out and
rode home. Next morning Osmun lowered the rents and restored wages to
their old scale. As usual, the resultant popularity descended on Clive
and not upon himself.
It was a week afterward that Thaxton Vail chanced to meet Osmun at the
Aura Country Club. Osmun stumped up to him, as Vail sat on the veranda
rail waiting for Doris Lane to come to the tennis courts.
“I was blackballed, yesterday, by the Stockbridge Hunt Club,” announced
Creede, with no other salutation.
“I’m sorry,” said Thaxton, politely.
“I hear, on good authority, that it was you who blackballed me,”
continued Osmun, his spectacled eyes glaring wrathfully on his
neighbor. “And I’ve come to ask why you did it. In fact, I demand to
know why.”
“I’m disobedient, by nature,” said Thaxton, idly. “So if I had
blackballed you, I’d probably refuse to obey your ‘demand.’ But as
it happened, I didn’t blackball you. I wasn’t even at the Membership
Committee’s meeting.”
“I hear, on good authority, that _you_ blackballed me,” insisted Osmun,
his glare abating not at all.
“And I tell you, on better authority, that I didn’t,” returned Thaxton
with a lazy calm that irked the angry man all the more.
“Then who did?” mouthed Osmun. “I’ve a right to know. I mean to get to
the bottom of this. If a club, like the Stockbridge Hunt, blackballs a
man of my standing, I’ll know why. I--”
“I believe the proceedings of Membership Committee meetings are
supposed to be confidential,” Thaxton suggested. “Why not take your
medicine?”
“I still believe it was you who blackballed me!” flamed Osmun. “I had
it from--”
“You have just had it from me that I didn’t,” interposed Thaxton, a
thread of ice running through his pleasant voice. “Please let it go at
that.”
“You’re the only man around here who would have done such a thing,”
urged Creede, his face reddening and his voice rising. “And I am going
to find out why. We’ll settle this, here and now. I--”
Thaxton rose lazily from his perch on the rail.
“If you’ve got to have it, then take it,” he said, facing Osmun. “I
wasn’t at the meeting. But Willis Chase was. And I’ll tell you what
he told me about it, if it will ease your mind. He said, when your
name was voted on, the ballot-box looked as if it were full of Concord
grapes. There wasn’t a single white ball dropped into the box. I’m
sorry to--”
“That’s a lie!” flamed Osmun.
Thaxton Vail’s face lost all its habitual easy-going aspect. He took a
forward step, his muscles tensing. But before he could set in whizzing
action the fist he had clenched, a slender little figure stepped, as
though by chance, between the two men.
The interloper was a girl; wondrous graceful and dainty in her white
sport suit. Her face was bronzed, beneath its crown of gold-red hair.
Her brown eyes were as level and honest as a boy’s.
“Aren’t you almost ready, Thax?” she asked. “I’ve been waiting, down
at the courts, ever so long while you sat up here and gossiped. Good
morning, Oz. Won’t you scurry around and find some one to make it
‘doubles’? Thax and I always quarrel when we play ‘singles.’ Avert
strife, won’t you, by finding Greta Swalm, or some one, and joining us?
Please do, Oz. We--”
Osmun Creede made a sound such as might well be expected to emanate
from a turkey whose tail feathers are pulled just as it starts to
gobble. Glowering afresh at Vail, but without further effort at
articulate speech, he turned and stumped away.
Doris Lane watched him until his lean form was lost to view around the
corner of the veranda. Then, wheeling on Thaxton, with a striking
change from her light manner, she asked:
“What was the matter? Just as I came out of the door I heard him tell
you something or other was a lie. And I saw you start for him. I
thought it was time to interrupt. It would be a matter for the Board of
Governors, you know, here on the veranda, with every one looking on.
What was the matter?”
“Oh, he thought I blackballed him, for the Hunt Club,” explained
Thaxton. “When, as a matter of fact, I seem to be about the only member
who didn’t. I told him so, and he said I lied. I’m--I’m mighty glad you
horned in when you did. It’s always a dread of mine that some day I’ll
have to thrash that chap. And you’ve saved me from doing it--this time.
It’d be a hideous bore. And then there’d be good old Clive to be made
blue by it, you know. And besides, Uncle Oz and his dad were--”
“I know,” she soothed. “I know. You won’t carry it any further, will
you? Please don’t.”
“I suppose not,” he answered. “But, really, after a man calls another a
liar and--”
“Oh, I suppose that means there’ll be one more neighborhood squabble,”
she sighed, puckering her low forehead in annoyance. “And two more
people who won’t see each other when they meet. Isn’t it queer? We
come out to the country for a good time. And we spend half that time
starting feuds or stopping them. People can live next door to each
other in a big city for a lifetime, and never squabble. Then the moment
they get to the country--”
“‘All Nature is strife,’” quoted Thaxton. “So I suppose when we get
back to Nature we get back to strife. And speaking of strife, there
was a girl who was going to let me beat her at tennis, this morning;
instead of spending the day scolding me for being called a liar. Come
along; before all the courts are taken. I want to forget that Oz Creede
and I have got to cut each other, henceforth. Come along.”
On the following morning, appeared a little “human interest” story,
in the Pittsfield _Advocate_. One of those anecdotal newspaper yarns
that are foredoomed to be “picked up” and copied, from one end of the
continent to the other. Osmun Creede had written the story with some
skill. And the editor had sent a reporter to the courthouse to verify
it, before daring to print it.
The article told, in jocose fashion, of the clause in old Osmun Vail’s
will, requiring his great-nephew and heir to maintain Vailholme, at
request, as a hotel. An editorial note added the information that a
copy of the will had been read, at the courthouse, by an _Advocate_
reporter, as well as Thaxton Vail’s signed acceptance of its conditions.
It was Clive Creede who first called Thaxton’s notice to the newspaper
yarn. While young Vail was still loitering over his morning mail, Clive
rode across from Rackrent Farm, bringing a copy of the _Advocate_.
“I’m awfully sorry, old man,” he lamented, as Thaxton frowningly read
and reread the brief article. “Awfully sorry and ashamed. I guessed
who had done this, the minute I saw it. I phoned to Oz, and charged
him with doing it. He didn’t deny it. Thought it was a grand joke. I
explained to him that the story was dead and forgotten; and that now he
had let you in for no end of ridicule and perhaps for a lot of bother,
too. But he just chuckled. While I was still explaining, he hung up the
receiver.”
“He would,” said Thaxton, curtly. “He would.”
“Say, Thax,” pleaded Clive, “don’t be too sore on him. He means all
right. He just has an unlucky genius for doing or saying the wrong
thing. It isn’t his fault. He’s built that way. And, honest, he’s a
tremendously decent chap, at heart. Please don’t be riled by this
newspaper squib. It can’t really hurt you.”
The man was very evidently stirred by the affair; and was wistfully
eager, as ever, to smooth over his brother’s delinquencies. Yet,
annoyed by what he had just read, Thaxton did not hasten, as usual, to
reassure his chum.
“You’re right when you say he has ‘an unlucky genius for saying the
wrong thing,’” he admitted. “The last ‘wrong thing’ was what he said to
me yesterday. He called me a liar.”
“_No!_ Oh, Lord, man, no!”
“Before I could slug him or remember he was your brother, Doris Lane
strolled in between us, and the war was off. You might warn him not to
say that particular ‘wrong thing’ to me again, if you like. Because,
next time, Doris might not be nearby enough to stave off the results.
And I’d hate, like blazes, to punch a brother of yours. Especially when
he’s just getting on his feet after a sickness. But--”
“I wish you’d punch _me_, instead!” declared Clive. “Gods, but I’m
ashamed! I’ll give him the deuce for this. Won’t you--is there any use
asking you to overlook it--to accept my own apology for it--and not to
let it break off your acquaintance with Oz? It’d make a mighty hit with
me, Thax,” he ended, unhappily. “I think a lot of him. He--”
Thaxton laughed, ruefully.
“That’s the way it’s always been,” he grumbled. “Whenever Oz does or
says some unspeakably rotten thing, and just as he’s about to get in
trouble for it, you always hop in and deflect the lightning. You’ve
been doing it ever since you were a kid. There, stop looking as if some
one was going to cut off your breathing supply! It’s all right. I’ll
forget the whole thing--so far as my actions towards Oz are concerned.
Only, warn him not to do anything to make me remember it again. As for
this mess he’s stirred up, in the _Advocate_, I can’t see what special
effect it’ll have. Uncle Oz was too well loved, hereabouts, for it to
make his memory ridiculous.”
* * * * *
But, within the day, Thaxton learned of at least one “special effect”
the news item was to have. At four o’clock that afternoon, he received
a state visit from a little old lady whom he loved much for herself and
more for her niece. The visitor was Miss Hester Gregg, Doris’s aunt
and adoptive mother.
“Please say you’re glad to see me, Thax,” she greeted Vail. “And please
say it, _now_. Because when you hear what I’ve come for, you’ll hate
me. Not that I mind being hated, you know,” she added. “But you lack
the brain to hate, intelligently. You’d make a botch of it. And I like
you too well to see you bungle. Now shall I tell you what I’ve come
for?”
“If you don’t,” he replied, solemnly, “I shall begin hating you for
getting my curiosity all worked up, like this. Blaze away.”
“In the first place,” she began, “you know all about our agonies, with
the decorators, at Stormcrest. You’ve barked your shins over their
miserable pails and paper-rolls, every time you’ve tried to lure Doris
into a dark corner of our veranda. Well, I figured we could stay on,
while they were plying their accursèd trade. I thought we could retreat
before them, from room to room; and at last slip around them and take
up our abode in the rooms they had finished, while they were working on
the final ones. It was a pretty thought. But we can’t. We found that
out, to-day. We’re like old Baldy Tod, up at Montgomery. He set out to
paint his kitchen floor, and he painted himself into a corner. We’re
decorated into a corner. We’ve got to get out, Doris and I, for at
least a week; while they finish the house. We’ve nowhere to live. Be it
never so jumbled there’s no place at home--”
“But--”
“We drove over to Stockbridge, to-day, to see if we could get rooms in
either of the hotels. (We’ll have to be near here; so I can oversee
the miserable activities of the decorators, every day.) No use. Both
hotels disgustingly full of tourists. The return of all you A. E. F.
men and the post-war rush of cash-to-the-pocket-book have jammed every
summer resort on earth. We tried at Lenox and Lee and we even went over
to Pittsfield. The same everywhere. Not an inn or a hotel with a room
vacant. Then--”
“Hooray!” exulted Vail. “Stop right there! I have the solution. You and
Doris come over here! I’ve loads of room. And it’ll be ever so jolly to
have you--both. _Please_ come!”
“My dear boy,” said the old lady, “that’s just what I’ve been leading
up to for five minutes.”
“Gorgeous! But when are you going to get to the part of your visit
that’s due to make me hate you? Thus far, you’ve been as welcome as
double dividends on a non-taxable stock. When does the ‘hate’ part
begin?”
“It’s begun,” she said. “Now let me finish it. I saw the _Advocate_
story, this morning. I’d almost forgotten that funny part of the will.
But it gave me my idea. I spoke of it to Doris. She was horrified. And
that confirmed my resolve. Whenever modern young people are horrified
at a thing, one may know that is the only wise and right thing to do.”
“I don’t understand,” he said, crestfallen. “Doesn’t she want to come
here? I hoped--”
“Not the way _I’m_ coming,” supplemented Miss Gregg. “I’m not coming to
visit Vailholme as a guest. I’m coming here to board!”
She paused to let him get the full effect of her words. He got them.
And he registered his understanding by a snort of disdain.
“Your great-uncle,” she resumed, defiantly, “put that clause in his
will for the benefit of wayfarers up here who could pay and who
couldn’t get any other accommodations. That fits my case precisely.
So it’ll be great fun. Besides, I loathe visiting. And I really enjoy
boarding. So I am coming here, for a week, with Doris. To board. Not as
a guest. _To board._ So _that’s_ settled. We will be here about eleven
o’clock, to-morrow morning.”
She gazed in placid triumph at the bewildered young man.
“You’ll do nothing of the sort!” he sputtered. “You’re the oldest
friends I’ve got--both of you are. And it’ll be _great_ to have you
stay here from now till the Tuesday after Eternity. But you’re not
going to board. That’s plain idiocy.”
“Thax,” she rebuked. “You are talking loudly and foolishly. We are
coming to board with you. It’s all settled. I settled it, myself. So
I know. We’re coming for a week. And our time will be our own, and we
won’t feel under any civil obligations or have to be a bit nicer than
we want to. It’s an ideal arrangement. And if the coffee is no better
than it was, the last night we dined here, I warn you I shall speak
very vehemently to you about it. Coffee making is as much an art as
violin playing or administering a snub. It is not just a kitchen chore.
We shall stay here,” she forestalled his gurgling protest, “under
an act of Legislature of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The law
demands that a landlord give us hotel accommodations, until such time
as we prove to be pests or forget to pay our bills. We--”
“Bills!” stammered Thaxton. “Oh, murder!”
“That brings me to the question of terms,” she resumed. “There will
be Doris and myself and Clarice, my personal maid. (Clarice has the
manners of a bolshevist and the morals of a medical student. But she
has become a habit with me.) We shall want a suite of two bedrooms and
a sitting room and bath for Doris and myself. And we shall need some
sort of room for Clarice. A cage will do, for her, at a pinch. I’ve
been figuring what you ought to charge me; and I’ve decided that a fair
price would be--”
“So have I,” interrupted Thaxton, a glint of hope brightening his
embarrassment. “I’ve been figuring on it, too. On the price, I mean.
Man and boy, I’ve been thinking it over, for the best part of ten
seconds. I am the landlord. And as such I have all sorts of rights, by
law; including the right to fix prices. Likewise, I’m going to fix it.
If you don’t like my rates, you can’t come here. That’s legal. Well,
my dear Miss Gregg, on mature thought, I have decided to make special
rates for you and your niece and Clarice. I shall let you have the
suite you speak of, per week, with meals (and coffee, such as it is)
for the sum of fifteen cents per day--five cents for each of you--or
at the cut rate of one dollar weekly. Payable in advance. Those are my
terms. Take them or leave them.”
He beamed maliciously upon the old lady. To his surprise, she made
instant and meek answer:
“The terms are satisfactory. We’ll take the rooms for one week, with
privilege of renewal. I don’t happen to have a dollar, in change, with
me, at the moment. Will you accept a written order for one dollar; in
payment of a week’s board in advance?”
“As I know you so well,” he responded, deliberating, “I think I may
go so far as to do that. Of course, you realize, though, that if the
order is not honored at the bank, I must request either cash payment or
the return of your keys. That is our invariable rule. And now, may I
trouble you for that order?”
From her case Miss Gregg drew a visiting card and a chewed gold pencil.
She scribbled, for a minute, on the card-back; then signed what she had
written; and handed the card to Thaxton. He glanced amusedly at it;
then his face went idiotically blank. Once more, his lips working, he
read the lines scribbled on the back of the card:
“_Curator of Numismatic Dept., Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
City:--Please deliver to bearer (Mr. Thaxton Vail) upon proper
identification, the silver dollar, dated 1804, which I placed on
exhibition at the Museum.--Hester Gregg._”
“The 1804 dollar!” he gasped. “That’s a low-down trick to play on me!”
“Why?” she asked, innocently. “It is worth at least its face value. In
fact--as you may recall--my father paid $2,700 for it. When I placed it
on view at the Museum, the curator told me its present value is nearer
$3,600. You see, there are only three of them, extant. So, since you
really insist on $1 a week for our board, it may as well be paid with a
dollar that is worth the--”
“I surrender!” groaned Thaxton.
“You’d have saved so much trouble--people _always_ would save
themselves so much trouble,” she sighed, plaintively, “by just letting
me have my own way in the first place. Thaxton, I am going to pay you
$200 a week, board. As summer hotel rates go, now, it is a moderate
price for what we’re going to get. And I’ll see we get it. We’ll
be here, luggage and all, at about eleven in the morning. And now
suppose you ring for Horoson. I want to talk to her about all sorts of
arrangements. You’d never understand. And you’d only be in the way,
while we’re talking. So, run out to the car. I left Doris there. Run
along.”
Summoning his housekeeper,--who had also kept house for Osmun
Vail,--Thaxton departed bewilderedly to the car where Doris was
awaiting her aunt’s return.
“Are you going to let us come here, Thax?” hailed the girl, eagerly. “I
do hope so! I wanted, ever so much, to go in while Auntie was making
her beautifully preposterous request. But she said I mustn’t. She said
there might be a terrible scene; and that you might use language. She
said she is too innocent to understand the lurid things you might say,
if you lost your temper; but that I’m more sophisticated; and that it’d
be bad for me. _Was_ there a ‘terrible scene,’ Thax?”
“Don’t call me ‘Thax!’” he admonished, icily. “It isn’t good form to
shower familiar nick-names on your hotelkeeper. It gives him a notion
he can be familiar or else that _you’re_ trying to be familiar. It’s
bad, either way. Call me ‘Mine Host.’ And in moments of reproof, call
me ‘Fellow.’ If only I can acquire a bald head and a red nose and a bay
window (and a white apron to drape over it) I’ll be able to play the
sorry rôle with no more discomfort than if I were having my backteeth
pulled. In the meantime, I’m as sore as a mashed thumb. What on earth
possessed her to do such a thing?”
“Why, she looks on it as a stroke of genius!” said Doris. “Any one can
go visiting. But no one ever went boarding in this way, before. It’s
just like Auntie. She’s ever so wonderful. She isn’t a bit like any one
else. Aren’t you going to be at all glad to have us here?”