When Esther entered the dining room next morning she found her uncle
already seated at the breakfast table reading a letter. The remainder
of the mail brought up from the post office by Varunas lay beside his
plate unopened. The letter seemed to be interesting, for although
he looked up to bid her good-morning, he returned to the reading
immediately. When he reached the foot of the last page he muttered an
exclamation; shook his head, and, turning back to the beginning, read
the letter through once more.
“What is it, Uncle Foster?” she asked, after a moment. “Anything
important?”
He nodded, absently. “Eh?” he queried. “Important?... Why, yes, I guess
so--maybe.”
“It isn’t bad news? Nothing has gone wrong with the lawsuit?”
“Eh? No, no. Nothing to do with that. It is.... Humph! I’ll tell you
about it while we eat. How are you feeling this morning? All shipshape
and ready for the day’s run, eh?”
“Yes. I am feeling very well, thank you.”
Something in her tone caused him to glance up quickly. He gave her an
appraising look.
“Humph!” he grunted. “Why, yes, you do seem to be pretty well up to
the top notch, that’s a fact. I haven’t seen as much color in your
cheeks or snap in your eye for more than a week. What has done it? Been
dreaming about singing to all those good-looking Frenchmen, have you?”
She laughed. She was in good spirits, wonderfully so. The color he had
mentioned deepened under his gaze.
“Oh, no!” she replied, lightly. “Not exactly that.”
“Must be something. Did you and that Griffin have an especially nice
evening?”
This was perilously near the truth. A part of the evening he mentioned
had been anything but pleasant, but for hours before falling asleep
she had been thinking of Bob’s great news and what it would mean to
both of them. Paris alone--or with only Mrs. Carter--had not been too
alluring, in spite of its glorious fulfillment of her hope. But Paris
with Bob--or at least with Bob not too far away--that was different.
She laughed again, to cover her confusion. She would tell him what Bob
intended doing, she had made up her mind to tell him, but before she
could speak the maid came in with the breakfast and while she was there
telling was, of course, impossible.
And as soon as the maid had gone Foster Townsend began speaking of
another subject, that of the letter he had been reading. He picked up
the closely written sheets and tapped their edges upon the table.
“Funny how things come around,” he observed, rubbing his beard with
his free hand. “Yes, it is _so_! I read once in a story-book--I don’t
read many, haven’t got time to waste on yarns that a man makes up out
of his head, but I do read once in a while one--I remember reading
how a fellow found a letter his mother, or his best girl or somebody,
had written years and years before, and when he read it this time
the book said it came to him like a voice out of the past.... Humph!
A voice out of the past. That’s a pretty good way to put it, seems
to me. And that’s about what this letter here is,” rapping the table
with the papers in his hand. “Here’s a man I used to know twenty--no,
nearer thirty years ago. He did me a big favor then. He lent me money
to go on with a deal that started me up the ladder. I didn’t have a
cent scarcely. He was only a few years older, but well-off already,
and not a relation or anything, not even a friend, at least I hadn’t
counted him that. He let me have the money because he said he believed
I had the right stuff in me, and he wouldn’t have charged me a penny
interest if I hadn’t made him. I swore then if ever I got the chance to
do him a good turn I’d do it no matter what it was. And now--when for
all I knew he might be dead with the grass growing over him--here he
is writing me to do that good turn. Humph! A voice from the past. Yes,
sir! that is what it is. Queer enough!”
Esther was interested. For the moment she forgot Paris--even Bob
Griffin and Paris.
“Who is he, Uncle Foster?” she asked.
“Eh? Oh, he’s a man named Covell--Seymour Covell. When I knew him he
was head of a meat and provision firm on Commercial Street in Boston.
Used to take contracts to fit out ships and all that. Later on he
went out to Chicago and got in on the ground floor with a crowd that
were killing hogs and beef cattle on a big scale. He is with ’em yet,
judging from this letter, commodore of the fleet or something like
that.”
“And he writes to you for _money_?”
Townsend laughed aloud. “Money!” he repeated. “He must be a millionaire
a dozen times over. No, no! he doesn’t want money. He wants me to help
him with his son, a young fellow in the twenties. Had a kind of hard
time with him, I guess. Here, you read yourself what he says. It will
save time. Read it out loud.”
He handed her the letter. It was a long one and she read it through,
aloud, as requested. It began by calling the writer to Foster
Townsend’s memory, speaking of old acquaintanceship and the like.
Seymour Covell, it appeared, was a widower with one child, a son, now
twenty-seven years of age. The requested favor had to do with the
latter.
“I have had a devil of a time with him,” Covell had written. “He and I
don’t seem to pull well together, for some reason or other. Maybe it
is partly my fault, I don’t know. While his mother lived she spoiled
him, I guess, and I probably did my share. I don’t think he is bad;
naturally I wouldn’t. He has had the best of everything I could buy
for him, expensive preparatory school--he was fired from one but he
graduated from another--college, although he did not finish that. He
thought he wanted to be an artist, paint pictures, you know.”
“Like old ’Lisha’s grandson,” broke in Townsend, with a sardonic
chuckle. “Regular disease, that seems to be. Go ahead, Esther.”
His niece continued her reading. “‘So,’ she read, ‘I sent him to Paris,
where they teach that sort of thing. He learned a lot over there, but
not altogether about pictures. Then he studied in New York. He paints
some, when he feels like it, but he hasn’t sold anything yet. For the
past six months he has been here at home in Chicago, and that isn’t
doing him any good. He isn’t too well, but he isn’t sick either. I am
about at my wit’s end and I have thought of you, Townsend. When I knew
you you were a real man and, from what I have taken pains to find out
about you lately, I judge you have reached the position I expected you
to reach. I wonder if you can’t find something for Seymour to do. Yes,
he is named after me; his mother started in to handicap him at the
very beginning, you see. I wonder if you couldn’t get him some sort of
a job--never mind what or what it pays--in your part of the country.
Something that would keep him out of doors a part of the time and build
him up, and, more than all, get him away from the hothouse crowd he is
traveling with. If you could it would be worth more money than I have
got--to him and to me. I don’t care much what it is, not at first. Get
him out of the city and away from city tricks and manners. If you cared
to let him come and visit you a week or two in the beginning, so that
you might look him over and size him up, that, I should think, would be
a good idea. Under a man like you, a driver, and as good a judge of men
and the best handler of men I ever knew, we might make something of him
yet. God knows I want him to be worth while. What do you think? Give me
your advice, at least.’”
There was more, but not much. The letter was written upon paper bearing
the name of one of the largest packing-houses in the country and was
signed, “Your old-time friend, Seymour T. Covell.”
Esther, having finished her reading, looked at her uncle. He was,
apparently, thinking deeply, pulling at his beard, his brows drawn
together.
“How strange that he should write like this--to you,” she said. “About
his personal affairs, and his own son. Did you use to know this Mr.
Covell very well, Uncle Foster?”
“No-o--and yes. I didn’t know him so very long, but for a time we were
pretty close together, considering that he had made his start and I was
just trying to make mine. It is queer that he should think enough of my
opinion to ask me to help him in such a private job as managing his own
boy. Losing his mind, is he, do you think?”
“I guess not. This letter doesn’t read as if he were. I think he means
just what he says when he calls you the best handler of men he ever
knew. He must have known a great many men--and big men, too. It is a
wonderful tribute to you, his remembering you and asking your help and
advice, after all these years. What will you do, Uncle Foster?”
Townsend was plainly puzzled and concerned.
“I give it up,” he said. “What can I do? I might get the young fellow
a job in Boston, with some of my friends up there, maybe; but I should
hardly like to recommend a chap I didn’t know to any of them. His own
father’s recommendations aren’t too strong, if you read between the
lines.”
“That is true. And, besides, Mr. Covell doesn’t ask you to find him
work in a city. He asks if there isn’t something which will take him
away from cities.”
“So he does. And what is there down here for Seymour Covell’s son? I
doubt if digging clams or hauling lobster pots would suit him, or his
father. And,” with a chuckle, “I doubt just as much if he could fill
either bill if he tried. I can’t do anything, as I see it now. And
yet--yet, by the Lord Harry, I hate to say no to the man who never said
it to me.... _I_ don’t know what to do--or say. Wish I did. See any
light through the fog, Esther?”
She was rereading portions of the long letter.
“He suggests that his son might come here for a short visit,” she
reminded him. “He seems to think that, after you had seen him, and
‘sized him up’ as he says, you might be better able to judge what could
be done--if anything. Why don’t you invite him here for a few weeks? It
looks to me as if you would _have_ to do that, at least.”
He nodded.
“Afraid you’re right,” he agreed. “I shall have to, of course.
Humph! It’s a blasted nuisance, isn’t it. I don’t want
company--strangers--around the house--just now. I want to have you all
to myself the short time you are going to be here. I can’t spare a
minute of you; haven’t got many left. You’ll be sailing in a fortni’t.”
She had an inspiration. She leaned toward him, eagerly.
“Why, Uncle Foster!” she cried. “I tell you what to do! Write and ask
him to visit you, but plan to have him arrive just after I have gone.
You will want some one here then, some one to talk to and keep you
interested. You won’t be half as lonely and I shall feel ever so much
more contented, knowing that you aren’t sole alone--or with no one but
Nabby and Varunas. Come; that is a good idea, isn’t it?”
He hesitated; then he nodded once more. “Good as any, I guess,” he
admitted. “I don’t know but I’d just as soon be alone as with a young
cub I’m supposed to keep a weather eye on and that, nine chances out of
ten, I’ll hate the sight of from the minute I lay eyes on him.... But
I’ll write and ask him. I’ll write now, to-day.”
She was turning over the sheets of Covell’s letter. Now she uttered an
exclamation.
“Here is something else,” she exclaimed. “Something we haven’t read. A
postscript, written on the back of this last page. It says: ‘I think
you will like the boy, when you meet him. He has a knack of making
people like him at first sight. When they are the right people it is a
valuable knack.’ There, Uncle Foster, you see! You won’t hate him, you
will like him. I am ever so glad he is coming.”
Just then there was a knock at the door leading from the kitchen.
Varunas appeared with a yellow envelope in his hand.
“Telegram for you, Cap’n Foster,” he announced. “Seth Canby’s boy just
fetched it up. Hope ’tain’t no bad news. Nobody dead or nothin’ like
that.”
Townsend took the envelope. “What do you mean by ‘nothing like that’?”
he observed. “I never saw anything like being dead except _being_ dead,
did you, Varunas?”
Nabby, who had followed her husband into the room, sniffed.
“You never saw _him_ about gettin’ up time of a winter mornin’, then,
Cap’n Foster,” she declared. “If he ain’t dead then he’s a turrible
good imitation.”
Foster Townsend had torn open a yellow envelope. Now he threw the
telegram upon the table and rose from his chair.
“Bah!” he snorted, disgustedly. “Can’t they let me alone for two
days running? I’ve got to go to Ostable this minute. Lawyer business
again.... Well, what must be must. The train has gone long ago so I
shall have to drive. Want to go with me, Esther?”
His niece shook her head. “I can’t, Uncle Foster,” she answered. “I
promised Mr. Colton I would attend a meeting of the Welfare Society.
Mrs. Wheeler and Mrs. Snow and ever so many more are to be there. They
are thinking of getting up another entertainment of some kind to raise
money. Of course I can’t take part because I am going abroad, but I
must help as long as I can.”
Foster Townsend sniffed. “All right,” he said. “If you promised you’ll
have to be there, I suppose. Well, I can’t stand here. Hitch up the
team, Varunas.” Then thrusting the packet of unopened mail matter into
his pocket, he added, “I’ll read this after I get there. There’ll be
plenty of time. I never broke my back chasing over to that law office
yet that I didn’t have to wait for somebody else who hadn’t taken the
trouble to break his.... Good-by, Esther.”
He kissed her and hurried through the library to the hatrack in the
hall. She called after him.
“You are going to write Mr. Covell and invite his son for that visit,
aren’t you, Uncle Foster?” she asked.
“Yes,” he shouted in reply. “Got to, so far as I can see. I’ll write
him to-day, from over there. I’ll have time enough for that, too,
unless there has been a miracle and the whole crowd is on time for
once.”
After he had gone Esther remembered that she had not told him of Bob’s
proposed European trip. She would do it that evening. She wondered what
he would say. A suggestion of Nabby Gifford’s, made on the morning
following Bob’s last call but one, had lingered in her mind, although
she had done her best to forget it. It was silly, it was outrageous,
it was everything but sane and sensible, but she had not been able
to dismiss it entirely from her thoughts. What _would_ her uncle say
when he learned that Bob Griffin was to be in Paris during her stay
there? Well, she would soon know, for she would tell him as soon as he
returned.