A DISCLOSURE
"The old horse is neighing again," said Miss Ri, whimsically, one
morning a little later. "I must go to town, Verlinda."
The girl looked up from some papers over which she was working. The
two were sitting at the big table before an open fire, for it had
suddenly turned colder. The room was very cosey, with warm touches of
color found in the table-cover of red, in the yellow chrysanthemums
by the window, and in the deep tones of the furniture. Linda looked
frailer and thinner than when her life at the farm admitted of more
open-air employment and less indoor. She did her work conscientiously,
even thankfully, but hardly lovingly, and in consequence it was a
constant strain upon her vitality. "What were you saying, Aunt Ri?" she
asked, her thoughts vaguely lingering with her work, while yet she was
conscious of Miss Ri's remark.
"I said the old horse was neighing again. There is another sale this
week, a different express company this time, and I feel the call of the
unknown. I think I'll go up by train, and then you will be alone but
one night. Bertie enjoyed herself so much last time, that I am sure she
will like to come again, if you want her. Bertie is a nice child, not
an overstock of brains in some directions, but plenty of hard sense in
others."
"Do you suppose it will be cough medicine this time?" asked Linda,
making little spirals on the edge of her paper with her pencil.
"Heaven forfend! No, I'm going to bid on the biggest thing there, if
it be a hogshead. I saw one man get a stuffed double-headed calf, and
another the parts of some machine whose other belonging had evidently
gone elsewhere. I shall try to avoid such things. I wish you could go
with me, Verlinda; it is such fun." Miss Ri's eyes twinkled, as her
hands busied themselves with some knitting she had taken up.
"I'd like to go," admitted Linda wistfully, "but it isn't a holiday,
and I mustn't play truant. Good luck to you, Aunt Ri." She returned to
her work, while Miss Ri knitted on for a while.
"Shall you be working long?" asked the latter presently. "I must make
such an early start, that I think I'll go up, if you will put out the
lights and see to the fire."
"I have considerably more to do," Linda answered, turning over her
papers. "I'll put out the lights, Aunt Ri."
"Don't sit up too late," charged the other, stuffing her knitting into
a gay, flowery bag. "Good-night, child. I'll be off before you are up.
Just order anything you like, and don't bother about anything." She
dropped a kiss upon the shining dark hair, and went her way, stopping
to try the front door.
For half an hour Linda worked steadily, then she stacked her papers
with a sigh, arose and drew a chair before the fire, whose charred logs
were burning dully. She gave a poke to the smouldering ends, which
sent up a spurt of sparks and caused the flame to burn brightly. With
chin in hands, the girl sat for some time gazing into the fire which,
after this final effort, was fast reducing itself to gray ashes and red
embers. The old clock in the hall struck eleven slowly and solemnly.
Miss Ri's quick tread on the floor above had ceased long before. The
tick-tock of the clock and the crackle of the consuming wood were the
only sounds. Linda returned to the table, picked up a bit of paper
and began to write, at first rapidly, then with pauses for thought,
frequent re-readings and many erasures. She occupied herself thus till
the clock again struck deliberately but insistently. Linda lifted
her head and counted. "Midnight," she exclaimed, "and I am still up.
I wonder if it is worth it." She stopped to read once more the page
she had finally written, then, tucking the paper into her blouse, she
gathered up the rest, found a candle in one of the dignified old
candlesticks, put out the lamp and tip-toed to her room.
The sun was shining brightly on the river when she awakened next
morning. Miss Ri had gone long before. Linda had been dimly conscious
of her stirring about, but had slept on, realizing vaguely that it was
early. Her first movement was to sit up in bed, abstract a paper from
under her pillow, and read it over. "I wondered how it would sound by
daylight," she said to herself. "I think it isn't so bad, and it was
such a joy to do it after those stupid papers. I wonder, I wonder if it
is worth while." She tucked the paper away in her desk, feeling more
blithe and content than for many a day. How blue the river was, how
picturesque the tall-masted ships, how good the tang of the autumn air,
laden with the odor of leaf-wine. Even the turkey-buzzards, sailing
over the chimney-tops, gave individuality to the scene. It was a
beautiful world, even though she must be shut up in a school-room all
day with a parcel of restless urchins.
She went down-stairs humming a tune, to the delight of Phebe, who
waited below. "Dat soun' lak ole times, honey chile," she said. "I
ain't hyar dem little hummy tunes dis long while. I always use say to
mahse'f, 'Dar come mah honey chile. I knows her by dat little song
o' hers, same as I knows de bees by dere hummin' an' de robin by he
whistle.' Come along, chile, fo' yo' breakfus spile." She bustled back
to the kitchen, and Linda entered the dining-room, warm from the fire
in the wood stove and cheery by reason of the scarlet flowers with
which Phebe had adorned the table. There was an odor of freshly-baked
bread, of bacon, of coffee.
"I believe I'm hungry," said Linda.
Phebe's face beamed. "Dat soun' lak sumpin," she declared. "Jes' wait
till I fetches in dem hot rolls. Dey pipin' hot right out o' de oben.
I say hongry," she murmured to herself, as she went clumsily on her
errand.
The day went well enough. On her way home from school, Linda stopped
to ask Bertie to spend the night with her. But Bertie was off to a
birthday dance in the country, which meant she would not be back till
the next morning. She was "so sorry." If she had "only known," and all
that. "But, of course, you can get someone else," she concluded by
saying.
"Oh, I don't mind staying alone, if it comes to that," Linda told her.
"You stay too much alone, Linda."
"And I, who am surrounded all day by such a regiment of boys."
"Oh, they don't count; I mean girls of your own age. How are you
getting along, Linda, by the way?"
"Oh, well enough," responded Linda doubtfully. "The more successful
I am, the more it takes it out of me, however, and I am afraid I
shall really never love teaching. Even though you may succeed in an
undertaking, if you don't really love it, you tire more easily than if
you did something much harder, but which you really loved."
"I suppose that may be true. Well, Linda, I hope you will not always be
a teacher."
"I hope not," responded Linda frankly.
"I wish you would come over oftener, and would go around more with the
girls. They would all love to have you."
Linda shook her head gravely. "That is very nice for you to say, but I
couldn't do it--yet."
"Well, be sure you don't stay by yourself to-night," Bertie charged her.
Linda promised, and started off to fulfil the intention. Miss Parthy,
from her porch, called to her as she went by. "When's Ri coming back?"
she asked, over the heads of her three dogs, who occupied the porch
with her.
"Not till to-morrow morning."
"You'd better come over here and sleep," Miss Parthy advised her. "I
have an extra room, you know."
"And leave dear old Mammy to her lonesome? No, I think I'd better not,
Miss Parthy; thank you. I'll get someone to stay."
"You can have one of the dogs," offered Miss Parthy quite seriously.
"They are better than any watchman."
Linda thanked her, but the thought of Brownie's tail thumping on
the floor outside her door, or of Pickett's sharp bark, or Flora's
plaintive whine, decided her. "I think I'd rather have a human girl,
thank you, Miss Parthy, and even if I find no one, it will be all
right; I have stayed with only Mammy in the house dozens of times."
She continued her way, stopping at the house of this or that friend,
but all were bound for the birthday party, and after two or three
attempts she gave it up. Rather than put any more of the good-hearted
girls to the pain of refusing, she would stay alone. More than one had
offered to give up the dance, and this she could not allow another to
propose. After all, it would not be bad, though Mammy should drop to
sleep early, for there would be the cheerful fire and another bit of
paper to cover with the lines which had been haunting her all day.
She turned toward home again, with thoughtful tread, traversing the
long street between rows of flaming maples or golden gum trees, whose
offerings of scarlet and yellow fluttered to her feet at every step.
There was the first hint of winter in the air, but the grass was green
in the gardens and in the still unfrosted vines birds chattered and
scolded, disputing right of way.
At the corner she met Mr. Jeffreys, who joined her. "Bound for a walk?"
he asked. "May I go with you?"
As a girl will, who does not despise the society of a companionable
man, she tacitly accepted his escort, and they went on down the street
toward the river, where the red and yellow of trees appeared to have
drifted to the sky, to be reflected in the waters below.
"Miss Talbot," said the young man, when they had wandered to where
houses were few and scattered, "I have a confession to make."
Linda looked at him in surprise. He was rather a reticent person,
though courteous and not altogether diffident. "To me?" she exclaimed.
"To you first, because--well, I will tell you that I, too, can claim
kinship with the Talbot family. My great-grandfather and yours were
brothers. Did you ever hear of Lovina Talbot?"
"Why, yes. Let me see; what have I heard? It will come back to me after
a while. That branch of the Talbots left here years ago."
"Yes, just after the War of 1812. My great-grandfather, Cyrus, went to
Western Pennsylvania. His only daughter, Lovina, was my grandmother.
She married against his wishes, and then he married a second time--a
Scotch-Irish girl of his neighborhood--and the families seem to have
known little of one another after that. My father, Charles Jeffreys,
was Lovina's son. He settled in Hartford, Connecticut. And now you have
my pedigree."
"Why, then we are really blood relations. No wonder you were interested
in the old Talbot place. Why--" she paused, hesitated, flushed
up--"then it must be some of the Talbot property you are looking up."
"That is it; but I don't exactly know which it is, and without proof I
can make no claim, as I have often said."
Linda ran over in her mind the various pieces of property which she
was aware of having belonged to the original grants. "There was a good
deal of it," she said. "Some of it was sold before my father's time,
and he parted with more, so now all we have is the old homestead farm.
I should like to know," she continued musingly, "which place you think
it really is. I suppose it must be Timber Neck, for that was the first
which passed out of our hands."
"I cannot tell, for I don't know exactly."
"Why didn't you make yourself known before? Didn't you know it would
have made a difference to me--to us all, if you belonged, even
remotely, to one of the old families?"
"Yes, I did, I suppose; but for that very reason I was slow to confess
it. I came here under rather awkward circumstances. For a time I was in
a position to be looked upon with suspicion, to be considered a mere
adventurer. I may be yet," he continued, with a smile and a side glance
at the girl, "even if I do pay my board bills and my laundress."
"Oh, we don't think that of you; we are quite sure you are genuine,"
Linda hastened to assure him.
"You have only my word. You don't know who my father was."
"You just told me he was Charles Jeffreys."
"Yes, but--" He did not finish the sentence. "I thought it was due you
to know something of myself and my errand."
"I am glad to know it."
"Thank you. That is very good of you. Do you mind if I ask that you do
not repeat what I have been telling you?"
"Not even to Miss Ri?"
Mr. Jeffreys considered the question. "I think Miss Hill should
certainly know, for she was my first friend; and Mr. Matthews, too,
perhaps. I will tell them and ask them to respect my secret for the
present. When I can come among you as one who has a right to claim
ancestry with one of your Eastern Shore families, that will be a
different thing."
[Illustration: "BUT YOU MUST NOT CALL ME COUSIN," SAID LINDA.]
Linda would like to have asked for more of his personal history
and, as if reading her thought, he went on: "I have not had a
wildly-adventurous life; it has been respectably commonplace. I
had a fair education, partly in Europe; but I am not college-bred. My
father was a gentleman, but not over-successful in business. He left
only a life insurance for my mother, enough for her needs, if used with
care. My mother died two years ago, and I have neither brother nor
sister."
Linda's sympathy went out. "Neither have I brother nor sister," she
returned softly. "I can understand just how lonely you must be. But
you know you have discovered a cousin, and you may consider it a real
relationship."
The young man cast her a grateful look. "That makes me feel much
less of an alien. I am afraid an outsider would not meet with such
graciousness up our way."
"But you must not call me cousin," said Linda, "or we shall have your
secret public property, and that will never do." Her sweet eyes were
very tenderly bright, and the gentle curve of her lips suggested a
smile.
"She is much prettier than I thought," the young man told himself.
"She has always looked so pale and unresponsive, I thought she lacked
animation; but when one sees--I beg your pardon," he was roused by
Linda's speaking. "Oh, yes; it is getting on to supper time, I am
afraid. Perhaps we'd better turn back."
They returned by the river walk, parting at Miss Ri's gate.
"Good-night, cousin," said Linda, "and good luck to you."
The walk had stirred her blood, the talk had roused a new and romantic
interest in her companion, and the same song which Phebe had heard in
the morning was on her lips as she entered the house.
Phebe was on the watch for her. "Ain't nobody comin' to eat suppah with
yuh?" she inquired.
"No; the girls are all off to a dance in the country. I don't need
anyone, Mammy. You and I have been alone many a time before this, and
it will seem like old times."
Mammy looked at her critically. "Yuh sholy is beginnin' to git some
roses in yo' cheeks," she said. "Whar yuh been?"
"Just around town a little, and then I took a walk by the river."
"By yose'f? Who dat come to de gate wi' yuh?"
"You prying old Mammy. I believe you could see even around the corner.
That was Mr. Jeffreys."
"Dat bo'ds wi' Miss Parthy an' feeds de chickens?"
"That is the one."
"Humph!" Mammy's tones expressed contempt. Who was he to be gallanting
her young lady around town? But she knew better than to follow up her
expressive ejaculation with any spoken comment, and went in without
another word.
It was a quiet, cosey evening that Linda spent. It being Friday, there
were no lessons to be considered for the morrow, and so she smiled
over her own scribbling or smiled into the fire when pleasant thoughts
possessed her. At the end of the evening, there was a carefully-copied
contribution, which was ready to go to a weekly paper; but so precious
was it, that it must not be trusted to remain on the sitting-room
table, but must be carried upstairs until, with her own hand, she could
take it to the postoffice.
As she went to her window to draw down the shades, a handful of pebbles
clicked against the pane. She raised the sash and looked out. "I'm
making the rounds," said a voice from below. "Good-night." And through
the dimness she saw Wyatt Jeffreys' tall figure tramping around the
corner of the house.
"That is nice of him," she said to herself. "Poor fellow, I hope he
does recognize that I don't mean to be offish. I am sure he is proving
his own cousinly consideration."