She and Bob met thereafter at the rehearsals. There were few
opportunities for confidential chats like that on the Nickerson porch
during the storm, but occasionally he saw a chance to sit beside her on
a settee when the others were busy and whenever he did he seized it. On
one occasion he brought a few of his sketches to the vestry and showed
them to her. They were clever--even to a critical eye they would have
shown promise--and to her they seemed wonderful. He told her that he
had hired an empty shed belonging to Tobias Eldridge on the beach near
the latter’s property at South Harniss and was to use it as a studio
during the summer months.
“It’s a ripping place,” he declared, with enthusiasm. “Cheap, and off
by itself, you know, and looking right out to sea. I can draw and
paint there, and have a gorgeous time. It is far enough from home so
that I won’t be bothered with a lot of people I know dropping in and
interrupting and I can have a model once in a while, if I need one.
Two or three of the fishermen have posed for me already. They are good
fellows. I like to hear them talk. I want you to come down and let me
make that sketch of you in your costume some afternoon pretty soon.
Will you? The place smells a little of fish, but you won’t mind that.”
She would not have minded the fish, but she would not promise to visit
the beach studio. At the next rehearsal he confided another bit of news.
“I’ve begun that portrait of you,” he said. “Just roughed it in--from
memory, you know--but it is going to be good, I can see that already.
Oh, you needn’t laugh! I sound pretty cocky, perhaps, but--well, I _am_
cocky about that sketch. It _looks_ like you; honest it does!”
She laughed again. “You haven’t seen me more than a half dozen times
altogether,” she said. “If your portrait looks like me you must have a
pretty good memory, I should say.”
He nodded contentedly. “I have--for some people,” he declared. His tone
was so emphatic, that, although she still laughed, the color rose to
her cheeks. She changed the subject.
The evening of the Old Folks’ Concert was clear and balmy and the town
hall was packed to the doors. Esther, sitting on the platform, with
the other singers and looking out over the audience, after the curtain
rose, saw many strange faces--faces which did not belong to Harniss--as
well as the familiar ones. In a front seat she saw her uncle, big,
commanding, much stared at and quite careless of the stares, the flower
she had put in the button-hole of his blue serge coat still in place,
his gold-headed cane, presented to him by the committee of cranberry
growers after the passage of the much-discussed “cranberry bill,”
between his knees. Nearby were Reliance Clark and Millard, also Mr. and
Mrs. Varunas Gifford, Captain Ben Snow and wife, Abbie Makepeace, and
many others whom she knew almost as well.
Mr. Cornelius Gott, the undertaker’s assistant and local music teacher,
conducted. Nabby, whispering across her husband’s shoulder to Miss
Makepeace, commented upon his appearance. “Looks just as much like a
tombstone as he always does, don’t he?” she said. “Them old-fashioned
clothes ain’t took that out of him a mite, have they? You’d think he
was standin’ up there ready to show folks to their seats at George
Washin’ton’s funeral, or somethin’.”
The opening chorus was received with loud applause. So was Marjorie
Wheeler’s first solo. Marjorie’s voice lacked only depth, height,
purity and strength to be very fine indeed, but her play of eye and
brow was animated and her self-confidence supreme. She was handed
a large bouquet over the tin reflectors of the footlights when she
finished.
Esther Townsend’s confidence was by no means so assured. She was
suffering from stage fright when she stepped forward for her first
number. She had sung often before gatherings at the Conservatory and
in Mrs. Carter’s parlor, but this was different. It was the first
time she had appeared in public in her native town since she was a
little girl singing in Sunday School concerts. For just an instant her
voice trembled, then it rose clear and sweet and liquidly pure, in
an old-fashioned Scottish folk song. There was nothing merely polite
or perfunctory in the plaudits at its end. The audience clapped and
pounded and demanded an encore. Reliance’s round, wholesome face shone,
although her eyes were damp. Millard stood up when he applauded. It
was a great evening for Millard. The fierce light which beats upon
thrones was casting a ray or two in his direction and if strangers were
whispering: “Who, did you say? Oh, her uncle! I see.” If they were
saying that--and some were--Mr. Clark had no objections.
Foster Townsend did not applaud--with hands, feet or the gold-headed
cane. His expression was calm. Nevertheless, he was the proudest person
in that hall.
Yes, it was Esther Townsend’s evening, every unprejudiced witness of
her triumph said so. Mrs. Wheeler was a trifle condescending in her
congratulations and Marjorie did not offer any, but Esther did not
mind. Quite conscious that she made a charming picture in Grandmother
Townsend’s gown and aware that she had sung her best, she was happy.
People wished to shake hands with her--the “best people” and many of
them--and her lifelong acquaintances and friends crowded about to say
pleasant things. Reliance did not say much. “I can’t, dearie,” she
whispered. “My, but I’m proud of you, though!” Millard would have said
much, and said it stentoriously, if his half-sister had not dragged
him away. Nabby Gifford cackled like a hen. Varunas’s praise was
characteristic.
“You done well, Esther,” he declared. “I knew you would. They can’t
lick us Townsends, trottin’, nor pacin’, nor singin’, nor nothin’ else,
by Judas! You had ’em all beat afore the end of the first lap, and you
didn’t have to bust any britchin’ to do it neither.”
Not until after the final curtain fell did she see Bob Griffin and
then but for a moment. He pushed through the group of perspiring
performers--wigs and padded coats and flounces and furbelows are warm
wearing in summer at the rear of a row of blazing kerosene lamps--and
caught her hand. His eyes were shining.
“You were great!” he whispered. “By George, you _were_ great! Wait till
you see what I can do with that portrait after _this_! You are coming
down to see it. Oh, yes! you are. I’ll just make you.”
The carriage was fragrant with flowers when she and Foster Townsend
entered it. He put his arm about her shoulder.
“Good girl!” he said with, for him, unusual emphasis. “Good girl,
Esther! This settles it so far as that Paris cruise of ours is
concerned. It would be a crime to keep you from getting the best
teaching there is after you’ve shown us what you can do with what
you’ve had. Hang on to your patience till that blasted lawsuit is out
of the way, and then we’ll heave anchor.”
The flowers were brought into the library and examined there. Each
cluster had a card attached except one. The biggest and finest was from
Foster Townsend himself. Esther gave him a hug and kiss.
“They’re dear, Uncle Foster,” she declared. “Thank you ever so much.”
As usual he turned the thanks into a joke.
“‘Dear’ is the right word,” he observed, with a twinkle. “I had ’em
sent down from Boston. Must fertilize those greenhouses with dollar
bills, I guess. Never mind. Considering what you gave us for ’em they
were cheap at the price.”
The floral tribute which bore no card was a bunch of pink rosebuds.
Townsend turned them over, searching for the name of the donor.
“Humph!” he grunted. “Wonder who these came from. They don’t seem to be
labeled. Do you know who gave you these, Esther?”
Esther said she did not know. The statement was true as far as it
went. If he had asked her to guess it might have been harder to
answer. She did not know who had sent the rosebuds, but she remembered
a conversation with Bob Griffin, during which she had expressed a
love for the old-fashioned “tea” rose. And these were tea roses. She
was glad that her uncle’s question was framed as it was and that his
curiosity was not persistent.
She and Bob did not meet again during the following week. Then, one
morning, she found amid the Townsend mail which Varunas had brought
up from the post office and left, as was his custom, upon the library
table, an envelope bearing her name in an unfamiliar hand. Letters and
notes were by no means novelties for her now. She had become a very
popular young lady and invitations to all sorts of social affairs, not
only in Harniss but in Bayport and Orham and Denboro, were frequent.
Wondering what this particular note might be she tore open the
envelope. The enclosure was brief.
“Dear Esther,” she read. “The portrait sketch is done, all but the
finishing touches. I am waiting for you before I tackle those. Can’t
you come down to the shanty some afternoon soon? I shall be there all
this week. I won’t keep you long, but you just _must_ see the thing.
It is pretty darned good, if I do say so. Now do come. I shall expect
you.
“R. G.”
She tucked the note into the bosom of her dress, thankful that neither
her uncle nor Nabby was there to ask troublesome questions. Of course
she should not go to the “shanty,” as Griffin irreverently named his
’longshore studio. Uncle Foster would not like it if she did--that
is, she was almost sure he would not. Other than that there was, of
course, no reason why she should not go. She did wish she might see the
drawing, or sketch, or painting, or whatever it was. It was a portrait
of her and, naturally, she would like just a glimpse of it. Any girl
would. And Bob was so certain that it was good. If her uncle were any
one else--if it was not for that lawsuit and his quarrel with old Mr.
Cook-- But, after all, and as Bob had said that afternoon of the storm,
the lawsuit hadn’t anything to do with them; they were not responsible
for it. Bob Griffin was a nice boy, every one said so. She had half a
mind--
By the next day the half a mind had become a whole one. After
dinner--Foster Townsend was again away, at Ostable on business
connected with the suit--she told Nabby she was going for a walk and
left the house. Half an hour later she knocked at the door of the
rickety building on the beach near--but fortunately out of sight
from--the Tobias Eldridge house. Bob himself opened the door. He
greeted her with a whoop of delight.
“So you did come, didn’t you!” he crowed. “I thought you would. I knew
you had sense and a mind of your own. Come in! Come in! It is all ready
for you to look at.”
The portrait was on an easel in the middle of the dusty, littered
floor. It was an oil sketch in full color and she could not repress an
exclamation of delighted surprise when she saw it. There she was, in
Grandmother Townsend’s gown, smiling from the canvas, and very, very
good to look upon, a fact of which she was quite as conscious as the
artist.
“Oh!” she cried. And then again. “Oh!”
He laughed, triumphantly. “Told you it wasn’t so bad, didn’t I?” he
demanded. “It isn’t finished. There are some points about the face
which don’t exactly suit me yet, but we can fix that in a hurry, now
that you are here. Come now, what do you think of it?”
She thought it marvelous and said so.
“I don’t see how you ever remembered about the dress and the funny
little bonnet,” she said. “Even the lace and the trimming are just
right. How could you remember?”
He laughed again. “It wasn’t memory altogether,” he told her. “I got a
copy of the photograph of the crowd which was taken the afternoon of
the dress rehearsal and I worked from that. Then, besides, I made no
less than three quick sketches of you in that costume. Once when you
put it on for the committee to see; once when you were singing at the
dress rehearsal; and the last and best the night of the concert. I was
behind the scenes, no one was watching me and I had a great chance.”
The mention of the event reminded her. She turned to look at him.
“You sent me those tea roses, didn’t you?” she asked.
He nodded. “They should have been orchids,” he declared. “Would have
been if I could have afforded the price. But you told me once that you
liked those old-fashioned roses. Hope you _did_ like ’em.”
“They were darlings. But you shouldn’t have given them to me.”
“Why not? I didn’t put my name on them, but I hoped you would guess.
Nobody else guessed, did they?” he added, a trifle anxiously.
“No-o. No.... Well,” with a sudden turn of the subject. “I must go now.
I think the portrait is splendid and I am glad I have seen it. Good
afternoon.”
His change of expression was funny.
“Go!” he repeated, in alarm. “Of course you’re not going _yet_! Why,
what I really wanted you to come here for was to pose for me just a
little. The mouth--and the eyes--why, you can see for yourself they’re
not right. Now, can’t you?”
She hesitated. “Well,” she admitted, “of course they are not _just_
like mine, but--”
He interrupted. “But we’ll make ’em like yours,” he vowed. “Now you
sit down over there--on that chair, where I can get the light as it
is in the photograph. The chair is a good deal of a wreck, like about
everything else in this ruin, but I guess it will hold you. You see, I
want to get--”
And now she interrupted. “Oh, no, I mustn’t!” she protested,
hurriedly. “I mustn’t stay, really. Please don’t ask me to.”
“But I do ask you. I’ve got to ask you. This is by miles the best thing
I’ve ever done and I want to make it as near perfect as I can. Oh, say,
Esther; you’ll give me my chance, won’t you? I don’t believe it will
take very long.”
She hesitated. It seemed cruel to refuse.
“We-ll,” she yielded, “if you are sure it won’t? Just a few minutes--”
So the posing began. She sat in the wobbly chair, the afternoon
sunshine streaming in through the cobwebbed window, while he painted
at top speed, chatting all the time. He told of his struggles with his
beloved studies, of his hopes and ambitions, and gradually drew her
into talking of her own. At last she sprang to her feet.
“There!” she cried. “I must _not_ stay another second. It is--oh, good
gracious! It is after four now. Where has the time gone?”
He shook his head. “_I_ don’t know,” he replied. “Well, there! it isn’t
right yet--we must have some more sittings--but it is better. Don’t you
think so?”
It was better, but even she could see that it was by no means perfect.
“Can’t you come to-morrow?” he begged.
“No. I don’t see how I can. You see--”
“Then the next day. We’ve _got_ to get it right, haven’t we.... If I am
going to give you this thing I want it to be as good as I can make it.”
She clasped her hands. “You are going to give it to _me_?” she repeated.
“Of course I am. I’ll probably want to show it a little first. One of
my teachers--oh, he is a corker!--I wish you could see _his_ stuff--has
a summer studio in Wapatomac and he must have a look at it, sure. But,
after that, it is going to be yours--if you want it.”
“Want it! I should love it! But--but I don’t see how it can ever be
mine. I live with Uncle Foster and--well, you know.”
He frowned. “That’s so,” he admitted. “I suppose there would be the
deuce to pay if he knew I painted it for you. Don’t suppose he would
want it himself, do you? _I_ needn’t give it to him, but you could.”
Her eyes flashed. “Why--why, that would be--it might be just the
thing!” she exclaimed. “His birthday is the third of next month
and--and I could give it to him as a birthday present, couldn’t I? He
says he wants a new photograph of me, and this is ever so much better
than a photograph. Of course, as you painted it, and you are a Cook, he
might not--”
Bob broke in. “It might help to show him that the Cooks are good
for something, after all,” he suggested, laughing but eager. “It
might--why, by George!--Esther, if we can get it just right, it might
help to soften down this family row of ours a little bit. If it
did--well, it looks to me as if it were worth trying.”
She was by no means confident, but inclination conquered judgment.
“Perhaps it might help a little,” she agreed. “But can you finish it in
time for Uncle Foster’s birthday?”
“Of course I can, and time enough to show to my Wapatomac man, too. But
I must have those sittings. You’ll come day after to-morrow, won’t you?”
Again she hesitated, but in the end she promised. She came that day
and on other days. And with each session in the shanty she grew to
know Bob Griffin better and to like him better. And, now fortified by
the reasonable excuse that the presentation of the portrait was to be
his birthday surprise, she said no word to her uncle nor to any one of
her growing intimacy with Elisha Cook’s grandson. And the secret might
have been kept until the birthday had not Fate, disguised as Millard
Fillmore Clark, interfered.
Mr. Clark, as a usual thing, kept away from the Townsend mansion and
its environs. He had never been known to refuse an invitation to dine
there and might have made his niece’s presence an excuse for spending
much time on the premises had not several pointed hints from Captain
Foster, backed by peremptory orders from Reliance, made him aware of
the possibility that frequent visits might not be welcome.
“I’d like to know why I can’t stop in once in a while, just to pass
the time of day if nothin’ more,” he protested, indignantly, on
one occasion. “Esther’s my relation, just as much as she is Foster
Townsend’s, as far as that goes. I feel about as much responsibility
for her as I ever did. No sense in it, I know, but I can’t get over it.
Maybe I don’t forget as easy as some folks seem to.”
Reliance, who was preparing the outgoing mail, kept on with her work.
“I’m glad of that,” she observed, calmly. “Then of course you haven’t
forgotten what Varunas Gifford called you the last time you were
hangin’ around the stable in his way. I should think that ought to
stick in your memory. It would in mine.”
Millard drew himself up. “Varunas Gifford is nothin’ but a--a
no-account horse jockey,” he declared. “And maybe you didn’t hear what
I called him back.”
“Maybe he didn’t, either. Or perhaps he did; I recollect you looked as
if you’d come home in a hurry that day. There, there! Don’t you let
me hear again of your trottin’ at Foster Townsend’s heels, tryin’ to
curry favor. When he wants us at his house he invites us to come there.
Yes, and sometimes when he doesn’t want us, I shouldn’t wonder. Behave
yourself, Millard. If you don’t know what self-respect is, look it up
in the dictionary.”
So Millard, although he boasted much, at the store and about town, of
his intimacy with the great man, dared not presume upon it. Therefore
Foster Townsend was surprised to be accosted by him outside the
post office one afternoon and to learn that Mr. Clark had something
important to tell him.
“Well, what is it?” he asked, impatiently. “Heave ahead with it. I’m in
a hurry.”
Millard looked cautiously over his shoulder.
“Don’t speak so loud, Cap’n Foster,” he whispered. “Reliance is inside
there and she’s got the door open. I haven’t told her what ’tis. I
haven’t told anybody.”
“All right. Then I wouldn’t bother to tell me. Keep it to yourself.”
“No, I ain’t goin’ to keep it to myself. It’s somethin’ you ought to
know and--and bein’ as I’m one of the family, as you might say, I think
it’s my--er--well, duty, to tell you. It’s about Esther.”
Townsend jerked his sleeve from the Clark grasp. He frowned.
“Esther?” he repeated, sharply. “What business have you got with
Esther’s affairs?”
“Why--why, I don’t know’s I’ve got any, maybe--except that she’s one
of my relations and I think a sight of her.... Now, hold on! Listen,
Cap’n Foster! She’s seein’ that Griffin feller, old Cook’s grandson,
from Denboro, about every day or so. He’s got that fish shanty of Tobe
Eldridge’s--hires it to paint his fool pictures in, so Tobe says--and
he’s been paintin’ a picture of Esther and she goes there about every
afternoon. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t--”
Foster Townsend interrupted. “Here!” he ordered. “Wait! Come over here!”
He seized Millard by the arm and led him down the sidewalk to the
shelter of a clump of lilacs at the end of the Clark picket fence.
“Now tell me what you are talking about,” he commanded.
Millard told him. Mrs. Tobias Eldridge had seen Esther pass the house
one afternoon and had wondered where the girl was going. Two days later
she saw her pass again and this time her curiosity had prompted her to
go out by the back door and to the knoll behind the henhouse from which
she could look up the beach. She had seen Esther knock at the door of
the shanty and had heard Bob Griffin’s greeting. She told her husband
and he, a few days later, mentioned it to Clark.
“Naturally I was consider’bly interested,” went on Millard. “Tobias he
couldn’t make out what she was doin’ there and neither could I. ‘Looks
to me,’ says I, ‘as if--me bein’ her uncle--I ought to know the ins and
outs of this. You’ve got a spare key to that shanty, ain’t you, Tobias?
Can’t we make out to get in there to-morrow mornin’ before Bob shows
up?’ Well, we did and I saw that picture of Esther. Pretty good, ’tis,
too, considerin’ who made it. I own up I was surprised. ’Bout as big as
life, you know, and all colored up, and--”
“Ssh!... Humph!... How many people have you told about this?”
“Not a soul! Honest, Cap’n Foster, I swear I haven’t told a livin’
soul. And Tobias hasn’t told neither. ‘The way I look at it,’ he says
to me, ‘it ain’t any of my business, nor my wife’s. I’m not runnin’
across Foster Townsend’s bows,’ he says, ‘not much. I’ve told you, Mil,
because you’re one of the family. You can do what you want to about it.
If I was you, though, I guess I’d keep still.’ ‘You bet I will!’ I told
him. But, of course, I knew you ought to know about it, Cap’n Foster.
I judged likely you didn’t know, and for Esther Townsend to be in that
fish shanty along with one of that Cook tribe seemed to me--”
“Shut up!” The order was savagely given. “Humph! Here! you don’t think
others know this, do you?”
“Not a livin’ soul except Tobias and his wife--and me, of course. I
haven’t even told Reliance.”
“You keep this to yourself; do you hear? Don’t you mention it again.”
“Oh, I shan’t--I shan’t. But--”
“You had better not.... There, that’ll do. Clear out! I’ve wasted time
enough.”
Mr. Clark was disappointed. He had expected thanks, at least, possibly
more substantial reward. Nevertheless, it was some comfort to know that
he and the Harniss magnate shared a secret in common. His self-respect,
to which Reliance had so slightingly referred, was bolstered by that
knowledge.