A POWERFUL NEIGHBOR
It was near the end of the week. Already Woodsedge seemed to have
wakened, drawn a long breath, and assumed that pleasant expression so
earnestly sought for by generations of photographers. In fact, the old
house had taken on a homelike look, and both the girls had been sewing
at break-needle speed trying to finish some muslin curtains that they
wished to have put up in their own room before Sunday, as those windows
were in full view of Broadway drivers, and they felt that propriety
demanded muslin curtains as well as shades. And this, according to Lena,
was "Friday alretty," so together they were driving Dick, the canary,
nearly wild by singing against him over their work, when John Lawton,
wearing an ancient alpaca coat and a mournful and repentant straw hat,
appeared upon the porch clasping a left finger in a very bloody right
hand; remarking, with his usual moderation of speech: "I think I have
got a cut."
"Do you, indeed?" Sybil snapped, as she rushed for an old handkerchief.
"I suppose a severed artery would about convince you of the fact! Bring
me a bit of thread, Dorrie! Oh, you white-faced goose, that screech of
yours has brought mamma!" And mamma was followed by the ever-faithful
Lena. And so it happened that Mr. Lawton's injured finger drew to his
service four devoted women. Sybil, first pouring some fair water over
the cut, proceeded to bandage it with a bit of old linen. Dorothy,
keeping her face averted, held out a spool of white silk. Lena, with a
trail of rejected cobweb in one hand and an enormous pair of shears in
the other, waited to cut the thread off; while Mrs. Lawton, with
eye-glasses on nose, superintended Sybil's efforts and sagely advised
her that if she wound the bandage too tight it would stop circulation,
and if it were too loose it would come off, and----
"And if I should get it just right, what would happen, mamma?" meekly
questioned the girl.
"Why--why--er," confusedly stammered Mrs. Lawton, "why--really I----"
"Your mother can't conceive the idea of anything being just right, this
side of our heavenly home, my dear," gravely remarked her husband, which
was unexpected, not to say ungrateful.
"John!" sternly spoke the lady, "instead of jeering at the wife of your
bosom in the presence of your children----"
"There, mamma washes her hands of us, you see, Dorrie," interposed
Sybil; but Mrs. Lawton went straight on:
"--you would do well, first, to remember that though I have lost my
illusions, I have not neglected my religious duties, and next to explain
what you were about to get a cut shaped like that?"
"O observant mamma!" laughed Sybil, while Lena remarked, with
unconscious impertinence: "I tink dot cut make himself mit a sickle
alretty. Ain't dot so, my Herr Mister?"
"Oh, papa," cried both girls, "you were never trying to cut the grass
yourself, were you?"
"Why not?" asked the old gentleman. "It needs it badly, and it will be a
bit of change saved if I can do it myself."
"Nein! nein!" cried Lena, indignantly. "I make mit de sickles myself by
and bye, ven I got of de times. I vork youst so well as any mans on de
grass! Dot is not for you, my Herr Mister; dot is for me. Und you don't
see alretty yet vat I got in dose gartens. You come with me, Miss
Ladies--I show!" and all one broad, flat laugh, she led Sybil and
Dorothy to the rear of the house, and proudly pointed to a freshly dug
garden bed.
"Why!" cried they, "who did it?" and "Oh, Lena, did you make a bargain
beforehand?" asked the sadly experienced young Dorothy.
But Lena laughed and laughed and pounded her knee so vigorously that the
girls fairly winced at sight of the blows. Then joyously, if slangily,
she explained: "Dot mash-man, he do dot diggins--youst for me. Und he
say he do more to-morrow. Und Sunday I rake 'em fine, dot bed, und put
in der seeds, und behold, der vill be a garten one of dose days. Vat you
tink, eh?"
Both the girls had very bright eyes. They looked at each other. Sybil
started to unfasten the pretty belt she wore, but Dorothy shook her head
warningly, then put her hand up and drew from her hair a little
side-comb.
"Wait!" cried Sybil, and she took out one of hers, and with much
laughter saw Lena proudly place the combs in her own flaxen locks; and
as the maid returned to her endless work, Sybil exclaimed: "What a
nature! what a good-hearted creature!"
"And yet," laughed Dorothy, "how mercenary in her treatment of her
'mash-man'! Oh, Sybil, where do you suppose she got that word? Poor
thing, I did not dare let you give her the belt, dear, because we have
but the one between us, just now. But here is the other comb--yes, take
it! Your hair is heavier than mine. Oh, Sybil, darling girl, don't, oh,
don't cry! Things will come right, somehow--only wait!"
"I can't! I--I won't!" cried Sybil. "The shame, the mortification of
accepting help from that poor, overworked little German girl, who
coquets with a laborer for our benefit--oh, it sickens one! Dorrie, I'm
going to tell papa, right out, straight and plain, that I'm going on the
stage! There--I can at least earn my own living, if I can't win fame. I
know he will be terribly upset, but I'll say--that----"
"Suppose," gently suggested the practical Dorothy, "that we finish the
curtains, Sybil dear, and you can tell me all about what you intend
saying to papa while we sew!"
When, twenty-five years ago, "all in the merry month of May," John
Lawton had married Letitia Bassett, there had not been wanting at the
wedding-feast one or two of those distant relatives who generally make
such unwelcome guests; since not near enough to be known and loved, yet
not distant enough to be ignored, they are very apt to amuse themselves
by keeping tab on the bride's birthdays and the groom's debts, while
with suspicious glances they closely search the wedding gifts for
something plated. Grandaunt Lucilla and old James Baker, with blood
chilled against the kindly influence of sparkling champagne or rare good
sherry, had that day peered into the future with wise old eyes, and,
foreseeing, had mumblingly foretold the financial ruin that was now full
upon John Lawton. Of those who heard the croaking of the ancient pair
the most indignant had been Nellie Douglass--bridesmaid and intimate of
Letitia Lawton. She cried: "Shame," to Grandaunt Lucilla, "for
prophesying evil upon one of her own blood, and the very handsomest
bride the Bassetts had ever led to altar-rail and expectant groom. But
then, it was just crass envy and malice that moved her, unmarried at
seventy-five, to such wicked speech--ruin indeed!" And she tossed her
flower-wreathed head, as she glanced about at the lavish decorations, at
the newly added shelf, circling the library walls, to accommodate the
many late-coming wedding gifts: "Only--only, she wished now, more than
ever, that Letitia had not been a May bride, and had not wound all those
lovely pearls around her slender throat! What on earth had made her so
reckless? it was risky enough to say 'Yes,' without winding yourself up
in pearls and saying it in May!"
But certain men who heard the prophesy looked over at the wealthy
bridegroom, and, noting the dimpled, pointed chin, the wide-apart blue
eyes, with their absent expression, they thought of the far-away coffee
plantations that had come with the fortune they had already made into
his helpless looking hands, and shook their heads, fearing old man
Baker's saying might yet come true. Lawton had come to New York on a
matter of business connected with those plantations, and, instead of
devoting himself to that and returning at once, he fell head over heels
in love and straightway married, and as his bride was of a very fair
complexion and dreaded the sun, and was very fond of society and dreaded
loneliness, she simply could not go to South America with him; and when
once he bravely tried to go alone back to his duty, she indulged in such
an hysterical outburst of temper and grief combined as did herself
serious injury at the time, and ended at once and forever his personal
management of the plantations.
They were both outrageously extravagant--not in a gross, flaunting way,
desiring the pained humiliation of those less fortunate than themselves,
but in a way that showed an almost childish ignorance of the value of
money. John Lawton, Sr., had been a shrewd, far-sighted, honorable man,
a hard worker, who held fast to what he earned until it could earn too.
Strong and self-denying, he yet fathered a son who seemed to have been
born for the express purpose of being fleeced. Honest, honorable,
temperate, moral, without a single vice, possessing most of the virtues,
he was nevertheless that piteous creature--the well-intentioned but
unsuccessful man.
After the plantations had gently slipped away from him he did not
attempt to retrench. He loved his wife; he had not the heart to deny her
anything; also he remembered the hysterical outburst and a tiny, tiny
little grave, and he--well, he dared not suggest even a slight change in
their style of living, but he did decide that something must be found to
take the place of the money-yielding coffee plantations. Hence it
followed that for some years there were few salted mines, whether of
gold or silver; few gushing oil-wells, located miles outside of the oil
belt; few Eden-like land-booms in Southern swamps, that had not found in
John Lawton an eager purchaser of shares. Some fine corner lots in the
business centre of a Western city--built entirely on paper--were his
last, large, losing investment. After that he dribbled away the few
dollars left to him in helping to secure patents for such useless
inventions as an ink-well with automatic cover that was meant to keep
the ink from evaporating, but failed to do it. A dish-washing machine
looked like a winner, until he found it was apt suddenly to go wrong and
crush more dishes in a moment than the most impetuous Bridget would
destroy in a week. And a cow-milker had lately absorbed the money that
should have gone for walking boots. Each time he was deceived he was as
greatly surprised as he had been on the first occasion; then, sadly
gathering up his worthless shares, he tied them neatly together with
pink tape, labelled them, laid them aside--and was ready to be taken in
again. In all these foolish investments he was actuated solely by love
for his family. There was no taint of selfishness underlying his desire
to regain a lost fortune. He suffered twice to their once, since he felt
every one of their privations in addition to his own. In his slow way he
had come to understand that his weakness had brought about the family's
downfall. He had not been strong enough to hold what he had once
possessed, and even when he knew they were rushing to destruction, he
had not been strong enough to put the brakes down hard. He said
little--almost nothing; but there were times when his wife thought him
sleeping when he sat with closed eyes thanking God for that tiny grave
which held his only son, for had he lived a weakling like himself he
might have carried the good old name down to no one knows what depths;
while the girls, such good girls, such pretty girls they were, would
doubtless marry some time, and so the name would pass, would be
forgotten; and the absent look would be very marked, when his pale blue
eyes opened again. The poor, tender-hearted, gullible old gentleman!
That Grandaunt Lucilla, who at their wedding feast had prophesied ruin
within twenty years for the Lawtons, had lived long enough to see the
seeds of extravagance sown by them take root, develop stalk and stem,
and blossom forth into many mortgages--for stranger hands to gather; so,
leaving her savings to that "tinkling cymbal of humanity," as she called
her grandniece, Letitia Lawton, she first secured the legacy with so
many legal knots and seals and witnesses and things, that it simply
could not be squandered by one Lawton, nor invested by the other; and
now it was to that small inheritance that they clung for their lives.
The family's position was most painful, but the girls suffered most. In
the past John and Letitia had danced long and merrily, so it was but
fair that they should now "pay the piper," but Sybil and Dorothy, for
all their warm young blood and springy feet, danced not, for their hands
were empty, and there was no one to "pay the piper" for them. Poor
things, they could remember when their fine feathers had made them very
fine little birds, indeed; when they had taken their walks abroad under
the care of a voluble French nurse. They could remember, too, the day
their pretty, ever-talkative mamma had refused to go to church with but
one man on the carriage box. Then there had come a time when there was
no man and no carriage and no French maid. Then flittings followed, and
after each one fewer friends had followed them, and the last flitting
had brought them here, to the old White house, or to Woodsedge, as Mrs.
Lawton sternly commanded all to call it; and no old friends seemed
likely to follow them out of the land of plenty, while it was too soon
yet to know whether they would find new friends in the desert. So they
could only make the best appearance possible and rush up their bedroom
curtains. And as they worked, Sybil, the impetuous, with flushing
cheeks, told Dorothy, who steadily turned-down and hemmed, how
impossible it was for her to do anything but act; how sure she was she
could act; how clearly she was going to put the case before papa. And
then Dorothy wished to know how Sybil was going to get into a theatre--a
really nice theatre was not so easily entered. For herself, she would
rather try to write--then you could send your manuscript to the
publishers and not go outside of your own home-- "That is," she added,
reluctantly, "if--you have plenty of stamps."
And just then John Lawton lowered the paper he had been reading, as he
sat at the far end of the porch, and asked: "Girls, have you noticed a
young woman who rides past here on horseback evenings, generally without
a groom?"
"Yes!" cried the girls. "Sometimes she comes scrambling down that rocky
lane below us," said Sybil, "but she never does that on the big
chestnut--he'd break his legs."
"Nice horse, that," commented Mr. Lawton. "But do you know who she is?"
"No, papa, do you?" asked Dorothy, turning the last hem.
"Y--e--s," was the slow answer. "I was looking at the swelling on the
leg of that black police-horse last night, and I told him--the
policeman, I mean--that a bandage was needed, and just then along came
the young woman, riding a small bay at almost a dead run. I thought at
first there was work for the policeman to do, but the rider touched her
cap as she rushed past, and the officer guessed my thought, for he said:
'No; that ain't no runaway! I suspect the bay's been a bit unruly;
anyway, she never rides at such a spanking gait as that except in the
cool of the evening and when the roads are quiet.' He seemed to know the
lady so well that I asked if she lived in the neighborhood, and he said:
'Why, good Lord! Don't you know who she is? Why, that's Claire Morrell,
the actress.'"
With a cry Sybil sprang to her feet, wide-eyed and palpitating with
excitement, while Dorothy exclaimed, reproachfully: "Oh, papa, why did
you not tell us before? Where does she live? Now don't say you don't
know and so reduce us to the necessity of interviewing the policeman for
ourselves!"
Mr. Lawton gently pinched his bandaged finger, to see how much it was
hurt, before answering: "Miss Morrell, who is Mrs. Barton in private
life, you know, lives as the crow flies exactly opposite us on Riverdale
Avenue, at a place called The Beeches."
"Oh! oh!" cried Dorothy. "Let's go and tell mamma whom she has for a
neighbor--she will be so interested! She used to be quite proud of
living near a former residence of Miss Kemble, the English actress.
Come, Sybil dear--why, are you asleep?" For her sister had been
standing, staring dumbly into space. Now she leaned forward and
whispered, rapidly:
"Dorrie! Dorrie! Here is the answer to your question, and here is my one
chance! This woman has power to help me, and she shall use it--yes, if I
have to go upon my knees to her! Her hand shall open to me the
stage-door of the theatre!"