It was late in August before he was well enough to be about and to take
short walks out of doors. Reliance still remained at the big house. He
insisted that she do so.
“You stay here,” he ordered, “till I tell you to clear out. Nabby needs
somebody to help her, I guess. Anyhow she says she does. And I haven’t
by any means decided what I shall do with that house of yours. You
are as comfortable as you will be likely to be with that rattle-head
Makepeace woman. You stay right here.”
So she stayed on, although she had no intention of prolonging the stay
beyond the first of September. He was still far from strong, and was,
as Mrs. Gifford called it, “awful cranky,” so Reliance thought it best
not to upset his equilibrium by mentioning leaving until the time for
leaving came.
She and he had many long talks together. Esther’s letters to her came
regularly and she gave them to him to read, or such parts of them as
she thought it best for him to see. And every two weeks there was a
letter for him. He invariably put these letters in his pocket and she
never saw them again, nor did he refer to them. That he read them when
alone she felt certain. So far, Esther wrote, he had not replied. “Why
doesn’t he write me?” the girl demanded of her aunt. “You say you know
he is glad to get my letters. Why doesn’t he answer them? I am afraid
you are mistaken and that his feeling toward me has not really changed
at all. Oh, I wish it would! Just now _especially_ I should like to
know that it had.”
Reliance tried hard to be reassuring.
“It is all right, my dear,” she wrote again and again. “He is coming
around, but you must be patient and give him time. I have known him a
great many more years than you have and I tell you for Foster Townsend
to own up that he is wrong is no easy job. Most of his life he did
what he wanted to do and it turned out right, and, what is more, about
everybody he knew took pains to tell him it was right. He lost that
lawsuit, I know, but there are a good many people even yet who think
he was right in that and that the courts made a mistake. He holds his
head just as high as he ever did. It is as much as the average person’s
life is worth to hint they are sorry for him, or anything like that.
Let them say that to him just once and they don’t get the chance to say
much of anything to him again. It is stubborn and foolish, perhaps,
but I declare it makes me proud of him. I am a little that way myself,
I guess. He has never yet told me out and out that I did right in
insisting on you and Bob getting married before you left Harniss that
night. But I have said it two or three times and he hasn’t contradicted
me, and that is a lot--for him. Give him time, Esther, dear. He will
write you some day, I am sure. And that he loves you more than all
the rest of the world put together, I _know_. Be patient, and keep on
writing him. Only don’t mention the most important thing. Keep that for
a surprise.”
She did her best to seem cheerful while in his presence, but there
were matters which troubled her--one on the other side of the ocean,
although that, in the natural course of events, should end happily--and
one, at home in Harniss, which now seemed certain to end disastrously
for her. His keen eyes soon noticed, in spite of her pretense, that
there was something wrong, and he tried to learn what it was.
“What have you got on your mind, Reliance?” he demanded. “Oh, now,
now! don’t say you haven’t got anything because I know better. What is
worrying you?”
She laughingly insisted that she was not worried at all. When he
persisted she made an excuse to leave the room. He called after her.
“You are as stubborn as Balaam’s jackass,” he vowed. “All right. I have
got a little of that animal in me. If you won’t tell me I shall have to
find out for myself.”
It was Captain Benjamin Snow who disclosed the secret. Captain Ben,
still the loyal friend and as regular a caller at the big house as its
owner would permit, took the opportunity when Townsend and he were
alone in the library--Nabby having gone to prayer-meeting and Reliance
to the post office--to speak of what had troubled him for more than a
month.
“I should have told you sooner, Foster,” he said, “but the doctor
wouldn’t hear of it. Said you just simply mustn’t be bothered, that’s
all. I wonder somebody hasn’t told you when you were down street. The
whole town is talkin’ about it. It is too late to do anything, I guess;
yes, I know it is. But--”
Townsend interrupted. “For heaven’s sake!” he exclaimed, testily. “Stop
running around the mainmast and get some sail on her. Come to the
point, Ben. What are you trying to say?”
Captain Ben said it then. Reliance Clark was to lose her place as
postmistress. The time for her reappointment was at hand and that
reappointment would not be made. Congressman Mooney had taken the
matter into his own hands and he had picked Simeon Thacher for the
office. Thacher was the Honorable Mooney’s friend and henchman. He
had earned reward and now he was to have it. Rival petitions had been
circulated; Reliance’s friends had rallied and her petition was much
the longer of the two. But Thacher had the inside pull at Washington
and his was the winning side.
“We are all of us, all the best folks in town, as sorry as we can be,
Foster,” declared Captain Ben. “We all like Reliance and she has made a
first-rate postmistress, but what can you do against politics? They’ve
trumped up charges, of course, said Millard was no good as assistant,
and that is true enough, but those charges don’t cut any figure. It’s
Mooney’s drag with the Washin’ton folks that has done the trick. He is
smart and a coming man in the party, everybody says so. He is getting
to be the county boss, that is what he is getting to be.”
Foster Townsend had listened with, for him, surprising patience. Now he
broke in.
“What!” he cried. “He is, eh? County boss already! I want to know!...
Ben Snow, how long has this been going on? What do you mean by keeping
it from me?”
Snow shook his head. “First I heard of it was just before you were
taken sick, Foster,” he said. “That’s when it came out, but I guess it
was going on, underneath, a long, long while before that. And then,
after you was sick, I couldn’t see you, of course. And, even now, if
the doctor knew--”
“Blast the doctor!... Sshh! Let me think. Does Reliance know about it?”
“Sartin. Of course she does. She--”
“Yes, yes. Of course she does. That is what she’s had on her mind.
Humph! I knew there was something. Thacher hasn’t got his papers yet,
has he?”
“No. But I guess he has just as good as got ’em. He is expecting them
any time.”
“Humph! Expecting is one thing and getting is another. There, there!
Don’t talk any longer. Clear out. I’ve got to think--yes, and do.”
“But, Foster, what can you do? What can anybody do? And you aren’t fit
to--”
“Sshh! You haven’t been to my funeral yet, have you? No. Well, neither
has Mooney. Run along, Ben, run along! And say, don’t you tell a soul
that I know anything about this. Reliance especially; don’t you tell
her.”
Captain Snow left his friend’s house in a peculiar state of mind.
His conscience troubled him a little. Foster Townsend was still far
from strong. If, under the spur of this disclosure, he should attempt
exertions which brought about a relapse, he--Snow--would be to blame.
And, after all, what had been gained by telling? Nothing could be done.
As he had just said, what could any one do? Nevertheless, amid Captain
Ben’s perturbations there was a faint trace of unreasonable hope. For
many years he, like so many other Harniss citizens, had depended upon
Foster Townsend to steer their ship through the shoals of politics. And
the trust had never been misplaced. Of course, now, everything was
different. Yet the captain could not help hoping--a little.
That evening, just before he went up to his room, Townsend astonished
his housekeeper by announcing that he desired an early breakfast. “Have
it ready at six,” he ordered. “And tell Varunas to have the horse and
buggy at the door as soon as I’ve finished. I want to make the quarter
to seven train.”
Nabby stared at him, horror-stricken.
“My soul and body!” she exclaimed. “Cap’n Foster, be you crazy? You
ain’t much more than just up off a sick bed. Where are you goin’--in a
train? What’ll I tell Doctor Bailey? Yes, and Reliance?”
Her employer grinned. “Tell Bailey I have gone to China for my health,”
he announced. “According to you I should have to go as far as that to
find it. And don’t you tell Reliance that I have gone at all, until
after you have heard the engine whistle. Then you can tell ’em all you
know--which won’t be much.”
He caught the train, and Varunas, having seen him and his valise safely
aboard, returned home baffled and pessimistic.
“No, no,” he told his wife, “he wouldn’t tell me nothin’. _Asked_ him!
Course I asked him; but all he would say was ‘Shut up.’ When he said it
the third time I could see he meant it.... Ah hum! I don’t never expect
to see him again, alive. If he ain’t crazy then everybody will say we
are for lettin’ him go.”
Three days--four--and five passed without a message of any sort from
the traveler. Acting under Miss Clark’s orders, and her instructions
were insistent, the occupants of the big house told no one, save the
doctor, of Townsend’s mysterious and alarming absence. But few had
seen him take the train at the station, and, as he bought no ticket,
they took it for granted that he had gone but a little way, probably
to Ostable, and that Varunas was to drive to that town later in the
day and bring him home. Foster Townsend’s daily doings were no longer
a matter of overwhelming importance to Harniss in general. His losing
the lawsuit was an old story. The big mogul was shorn of most of his
bigness. It did not now matter greatly what he did.
In his own home, however, there was increasing worry and a growing
fear. Nabby declared that she was so nervous she couldn’t keep her
mind on her work. “I’ll p’ison us all some of these meals,” she said.
“I give the cat mashed turnip yesterday and ’twan’t till the critter
turned up his nose at it that I found I was puttin’ raw liver on the
dinner table.” Varunas was quite as distraught. Reliance Clark was more
composed, but she was very anxious.
On the morning of the sixth day came a telegram. It was addressed
to Mr. Gifford. “Meet me with the team at the South Denboro station
seven ten to-night,” it read. Why he should have chosen to alight at
South Denboro instead of keeping on to Harniss no one of the three
could understand, but the fact that he was still alive was reassuring.
Varunas and the horse and buggy were on hand a half hour ahead of the
time set. At a little before nine Foster Townsend reëntered his own
dining room.
Nabby had expected to meet a physical wreck, a pale and haggard shadow
whose one desire would be to be helped to bed as soon as possible. Her
eyes and mouth opened in astonishment.
“Well, I declare, Cap’n Foster!” she gasped. “I do declare! I snum if
you ain’t--I do believe you look _better_ than you done when you went
out of this house.”
Townsend smiled. “I am better,” he said. “Nothing like travel, Nabby.”
In spite of her questions and Reliance’s when, later on, the latter
came back from the post office, he would not disclose one atom of
information as to where he had been so long or why.
“Never you mind,” he insisted, and with surprising good nature.
“That’s my business. I am not married to either one of you. I am free
and independent. I guess likely I can go off on a spree if I want to
without doing my catechism afterwards. I have had a good time and
maybe I’ll have a better one by and by. You be satisfied with that.”
They had to be. Neither then, nor the following day, nor the day after
that, would he say more. It was tantalizing to the Giffords, but
Reliance did not mind so much. She was grave and preoccupied nowadays
and Nabby and her husband thought they understood the reason. Captain
Townsend, apparently, did not notice her gravity or long intervals of
silence.
His trips to the post office were very regular. One noon he came
home to dinner with, so Nabby thought, a more than usually satisfied
expression. In fact he seemed, for him, almost excited.
“I don’t know what has changed him so lately, Varunas,” she confided.
“Must have been that ‘spree’ he went on, whatever it was. He is more
like himself--his old smart, lively self, I mean--than I’ve seen him
since Esther ran off and married that Griffin thing.”
Varunas had something to say. “You know what that letter was he give me
to mail just now?” he asked. “The one he wrote right after dinner? No?
Well, I don’t neither, but I know who ’twas to. ’Twas to the Honorable
Alpheus Mooney, Trumet, Mass. That’s who ’twas to; and he was mighty
anxious I should stop in and mail it on my way to the livery stable.
What in time is he writtin’ to Congressman Mooney for? Don’t cal’late
he’s goin’ to get some political job, or somethin’, do you--now that
he’s lost his money?”
One evening soon afterward, when Reliance Clark came home after locking
the post office door, she found Foster Townsend in the library. He was
seated in the easy-chair and the _Item_ was in his hand. He looked up
and spoke.
“Tired to-night, are you, Reliance?” he asked. “In a special hurry to
go aloft and turn in?”
“No, Foster. Why?”
“Because, if you had just as soon, I’d like to have you wait up a
while. I am sort of expecting somebody here to see me to-night and I’d
rather like to have you around where I can call you if I want you.”
She did not understand, of course, nor, just then, was she particularly
curious. There were other matters on her mind, one matter so
transcendently important that she could think of nothing else.
“I can wait as well as not,” she told him. “In fact, I was goin’ to sit
up anyway. I’ve got somethin’ to tell you, Foster. Somethin’ wonderful.
I had a letter come in to-night’s mail. You had one, too. I’ve got them
both here.”
She had the letters in her hand. He looked at them, then at her face.
“From--from the other side?” he asked, quickly.
“Yes.”
“From--her?”
“Yes. One of them.”
“Humph! What makes you look so queer? Say, there’s nothing--nothing
wrong, is there?”
She shook her head.
“No. No, Foster,” she said, “there is nothin’ wrong. Everything is all
right. Thank God for it.”
He leaned forward. “What are you thanking God for?” he demanded.
“And--here-- Are you crying? I believe you are. What--”
Just then Nabby Gifford bustled into the library. She had not announced
her coming; she was too excited for that.
“Who do you suppose is out here, waitin’ to see you, Cap’n Foster?” she
whispered. “The Honorable Mooney, that’s who.”
Townsend’s reception of this announcement was disappointing, to say the
least.
“Humph!” he grunted. “I thought it must be Saint Peter, judging by your
face. Tell him to come in. Yes, yes. Go and tell him.”
He turned to Reliance. “Reliance,” he said, “I want you to hear this.
You go in the parlor and leave the door open a crack. Don’t mind
sitting in the dark a few minutes, do you?”
She started toward the parlor. Then she turned and looked at him
fixedly and with growing suspicion.
“Foster,” she said, sharply, “what is all this? Have you-- What have
you been doin’?”
He waved her away. “Keep your ears open and maybe you’ll find out,” he
suggested. “Hurry up! I don’t want him to see you--yet.”
Congressman Alpheus Mooney had not honored that room with his presence
for almost a year. That he now considered himself as honoring it was
quite apparent. Bowed in by the reverential Mrs. Gifford he entered
briskly and with importance. When he last crossed the threshold of the
Townsend house he had been an anxious candidate for office, humbly
seeking aid and advice from the most influential man in his district.
Then he came hat in hand. His hat was in his hand now, but he tossed it
lightly upon the table without waiting for an invitation.
“Good evening, Cap’n Townsend,” he said. “Well, here I am, you see.”
“Glad to see you, Mooney,” declared the captain. “It was good of you to
come. You are pretty busy these days, I expect. Have a chair.”
Mooney took the chair which was offered him. He crossed his knees.
“Why, yes,” he admitted. “Yes, I am pretty busy just now, that’s a
fact. Never too busy to oblige an old friend though. I happened to be
in Trumet when your letter came and I was very glad to drive up and see
you. I was sorry to hear of your sickness. You look quite like yourself
again. As well as you ever did, I should say.”
If there was a very slight hint of patronage in the Congressman’s
manner it was no more than should be expected of a Congressman. And in
this case it was unintentional. The Honorable Mooney was not wholly
at ease concerning the purpose of this interview to which he had been
summoned. The letter he had received was brief and polite. If Mr.
Mooney could make it convenient to drop in at the Harniss house some
evening soon, Foster Townsend would consider his doing so a favor.
There was a little matter, of interest to both, to be talked over.
He--Townsend--had not been well or he should come to Trumet. Mooney
had replied by telegraph naming this Wednesday evening at nine. And in
the interval between the receipt of the letter and that moment he had
been wondering what the little matter of interest might be. There was
but one which offered itself as a probability, and that little matter
was all right, settled beyond change. Nevertheless--well, the Honorable
Alpheus was not entirely free from curiosity, perhaps even from anxiety.
Foster Townsend received the gratifying assurance concerning his robust
appearance with a rather dubious shake of the head.
“I don’t know, Mooney,” he observed. “When a man of my age has been as
sick as I was he doesn’t get up again in a minute. However, I’m not
dead, and that is something. No, I’m not even as dead as--well, as some
folks think I am. Have a cigar?”
Mooney accepted the cigar. Townsend also took one and they lit and
smoked. The captain mentioned the fine weather they had for the past
few days, also the promise of a good cranberry crop that fall.
“You will be glad of that, Mooney,” he observed. “Everybody knows you
are the father of that cranberry bill that has done so much for us in
this section.”
The Congressman glanced at him. The Townsend face was grave, there was
not even the faintest twinkle in the Townsend eye. Nevertheless Mr.
Mooney’s slight uneasiness became a shade less slight. Was this man
making fun of him? It was time he found out.
“Yes--yes, of course,” he said. “Well, Cap’n Townsend,” leaning easily
back in his chair and knocking the ashes from his cigar, “what was it
you wanted to talk over with me? A little politics, eh?”
Townsend nodded. “You’ve guessed it,” he said. “It was a little matter
of politics. I never should have dared bother as busy a man as you are
with anything but business.”
This was overdoing it a trifle. Mooney was not an absolute fool and his
suspicion that he was being made fun of became more of a certainty. He
cleared his throat, and frowned slightly.
“I see,” he said, more brusquely. “Yes, I see.... Well, Cap’n Townsend,
for old times’ sake I should like to oblige you if I can. What do you
want? What can I do for you?”
Townsend blew a cloud of smoke and fanned it from before his face with
his hand.
“You can’t do anything for me, Mooney,” he answered. “You’ve done all
you can do for me by coming here to-night. As far as that is concerned
I could have managed to get along if you hadn’t come.... So,” with an
ominous change in his tone, “I wouldn’t put it just that way if I were
you. Mooney, when you started to pitch Reliance Clark out of our post
office and squeeze Sim Thacher into it why did you do it behind my
back? Why did you hide it from me?”
So it was the post office matter, after all. In a way Mooney was
relieved. That battle was won. His countenance assumed an expression of
pained resentment.
“Nonsense, Cap’n Townsend,” he said, with lofty indignation. “Nonsense!
Whoever told you I have been hiding anything--lied, that’s all. You
were sick--”
“Here, here! I may have been sick along the last of it, but not at
first when you and Thacher were laying your plans. I know as much about
those plans as you do, I guess. I have made it my business to find out.
You started planning away last December, a month after you were elected
to Washington. Before that election you were crawling around here on
your hands and knees, begging me to please do this and that to help you
get votes. Why, confound you, you couldn’t have been nominated if it
hadn’t been for me. And away back in the beginning, when that cranberry
bill had you licked so that you couldn’t have been elected poundkeeper,
I gave you the chance to square yourself. I was the fool there, of
course; but I thought you were so scared you would behave yourself for
the rest of your life. Bah! Don’t you say ‘nonsense’ to me again....
Here! You aren’t going yet. This little talk of ours has only begun.”
The Honorable Alpheus was on his feet, his round face crimson. He
snatched his hat from the table.
“I don’t want to hear any more from you, Townsend,” he declared. “You
are a sick man--and an old man. If you weren’t--”
“Here! here! I’m not sick. And I’m not so darned old that I can’t see
through a jellyfish. I saw through you the first time you came into
this room. And I saw through what you were up to with this post-office
business the minute I heard of it. You probably as good as promised Sim
Thacher the post office away back when you were hunting the nomination.
You would have come to me about it months ago if you hadn’t figured I
was down and out and not worth considering any more. Elisha Cook and
the Supreme Court had licked me, and so you thought you could do it.
Pshaw!” in huge disgust; “Elisha Cook is a _man_, whatever else he is.”
The Honorable Mooney drew himself erect. His chest expanded.
“Townsend,” he declaimed, with all the dignity of his platform manner,
“I make allowances for you. I realize you are not well. And I suppose
it is natural you should be disappointed because your friend--your
housekeeper I am told she is now--has lost the post office here. I am
sorry for her myself, in a way. But I have the interests of the folks I
represent in Congress to consider. It is my duty to think of them and
act for their good. Miss Clark has not--no, sir, she has _not_ run that
office as it ought to be run. She has neglected it. More than that, she
has been spending the public money to hire that worthless brother of--”
“Sshh!” Foster Townsend brought his palm down upon his knee with a
crack which startled the representative of an outraged people to
silence. “Be still!” ordered the captain. He slowly shook his head.
“Well, there!” he went on, in a calmer tone. “That was a real pretty
speech of yours, but you needn’t finish it; I can guess the end. I have
said more than I meant to say, myself. No use wasting time. Although,”
with another momentary outburst, “when I think of how you and your gang
worked and schemed to put a lone woman out of her job, I-- Humph!...
Mooney, she isn’t going to be put out of it. She is going to stay right
where she is.”
The Honorable Alpheus stared. Then he smiled, a smile of dignified pity.
“Townsend,” he proclaimed, loftily, “I don’t see what you hope to gain
by this sort of thing. Simeon Thacher will be the Harniss postmaster.
The appointment is made--or as good as made. That is my final word to
you.”
Townsend lifted his hand. “Better wait until you hear mine, Mooney,” he
said, warningly. “I was fussing with politics when you were running to
school and I have learned enough to know that nothing political is done
until it has _been_ done.... I went up to see Senator Gore last week.
He and I are old friends.”
A change came over Mr. Mooney’s face. It lost something of its
confidence, its high disdain.
“Well--well, I am very glad you did,” he asserted, after an instant’s
pause. “Yes, indeed. The Senator is a friend of mine, too, I am proud
to say. He knows all about this post office matter. I advised with him
before I made up my own mind.”
And now it was Townsend who smiled. He seemed amused.
“Oh, so you ‘advised’ with him, did you?” he chuckled. “Well, your
advice must have been worth listening to.... There, there! Wait a
minute more. _I_ ‘advised’ with the Senator myself. And he seemed to be
interested. He ought to be. I knew him before he was Senator. I’ve done
him a good many favors down here in this district. He hadn’t forgotten
them. A good memory is a mighty valuable item of cargo to have aboard,
if you are cruising in politics. That’s a piece of advice I’ll hand
over to you, Mooney, and I won’t charge for it. Senator Gore remembers
favors. _He_ is a big man.”
The Congressman would have spoken, but the captain did not give him the
opportunity.
“Just a minute now,” he said. “I’m almost through. I told the Senator
the straight truth about our post office here. He was surprised. I
judged it was different from what he had heard from you. He said he
could not understand, considering the story you told him. I said that,
according to my experience, you were subject to changes of mind at
times. By the way of proof I showed him some letters you wrote me
two or three years ago. His name was in those letters. Perhaps you
remember--you were a little peeved because he hadn’t used his influence
in a matter you were interested in and you spoke out pretty plain. I
wouldn’t say the names you called him were compliments, exactly. So--”
But Mooney could hold in no longer. His dignity was gone and with it
his confident assurance.
“You showed him those letters!” he shouted. “Why--why, those were
personal letters. What do you mean by--”
“Sshh! No they weren’t. You asked me to show them to other people and
to do what I could to help you upset the Senator’s plans. Anyhow, I
needed ’em to prove my case, just as, I suppose, to prove yours you
felt it necessary to say what you did about Reliance Clark’s misusing
the Government money and things like that. Never mind what you said
about me. I could answer that without the help of anybody’s letters.
So--well, to make a long yarn shorter, Senator Gore said he could see
I was right and that he would help me. I said the help must be prompt
or it would be too late. He made it prompt. The President himself
happened to be in New York last week, maybe you saw it in the papers.
He was there and the Senator took me to see him. It seemed a kind of a
shame to bother the President of this whole United States with a little
two-for-a-cent mess like the Harniss post office, but--well, he was
patient and so--Reliance!” he called, raising his voice. “Reliance, you
can come in now. I have got something for you.”
The parlor door swung open and Miss Clark appeared. Her expression was
peculiar, but not nearly as peculiar as that of the Honorable Alpheus
Mooney when he recognized her.
Foster Townsend took from the inside pocket of his coat a folded,
official-looking document. He handed it to her. She took it
mechanically.
“There is your notice of reappointment, Reliance,” he said. “It wasn’t
really necessary, maybe. They might have let you stay on without it,
perhaps; I don’t just know how such things are worked although I have
had a hand in a good many appointments of different kinds. But I asked
the Senator to have something sent and sent to me. I thought I’d like
the fun of giving it to you, and I thought, too, if it was done here,
privately, between us three, it might save our friend Mr. Mooney from
having to make a lot of public explanations. I don’t know exactly why
I should do you a favor, Mooney,” he added, cheerfully, “but I am glad
to do this one. Want to see the paper, do you? I guess Miss Clark will
show it to you, though you can take my word for it that it is perfectly
straight.”
The Congressman did not ask to see the paper. He asked for nothing and
said nothing. He seemed to be in a daze and when Townsend picked up the
hat which he had dropped he took it without a word.
He departed, a moment or two later, and the captain accompanied him to
the outer door. Townsend was smiling when he reëntered the library.
“I should be a little sorry for that fellow,” he observed, “if he
hadn’t behaved so like a swelled-up bullfrog. He is in for a joyful
time with Thacher and the rest of them. Maybe it will be good for him,
though. I guess likely he will be a little more careful about the kind
of letters he writes.”
He looked at Reliance. She had unfolded the document from Washington
and was reading it, or trying to do so. Her hands were trembling.
Townsend looked away.
“I gave the Honorable one little piece of parting advice,” he added,
with another chuckle. “I told him what I told Ben Snow, that it was
generally good policy to wait until after a man was buried before you
took it for granted he was dead.”
He stretched out his arms and laughed aloud.
“That did me good!” he declared. “That did me a world of good. I guess
maybe I never was dead, after all. Or else I am just coming to life
again.”
He turned once more to Miss Clark. She was still gazing at the paper in
her hands.
“Well, Reliance,” he said, “that is off your mind. You can sort letters
for a while longer anyhow. Are you glad?”
She sighed. “I--I don’t know what I am, hardly, yet,” she confessed.
“Oh, Foster, how am I ever--_ever_ goin’ to pay you for this?”
“I don’t want any pay. The debt was all on my side. I owe you a whole
lot more yet. You foolish woman! Why didn’t you tell me what was going
on? What would you have done for a living if they had put you out of
that post office?”
She tried to smile. “I should have got along some way,” she said. “I
had planned it pretty well out. I should have boarded with Abbie--I am
going to do that anyhow--and worked harder at the millinery, that is
all. I would have got along.”
“Yes,” with a disgusted grunt, “you would have got along; all creation
couldn’t stop your doing that, I guess. But what kind of a get-along
would it have been? This is why you sublet your house, of course. I
knew there was something behind that.... Now you aren’t going boarding
down at Abbie Makepeace’s. You are going to stay right here. There is
plenty of room. Nabby needs you to help. Yes, you are going to stay.
You will stay--at least until the time comes when I put those Hopkinses
out of your own place and you go back there to live, where you ought to
be.”
“No, Foster--”
“I say _yes_! Confound it! Let me have my own way once in a while,
won’t you?”
This was like the old Foster Townsend, the big mogul. Her smile
broadened. He noticed it and smiled also.
“Sit down over there a minute, Reliance,” he ordered. “I want to talk
to you.”
She took the rocker so recently vacated by the Honorable Mooney. He
sank into the leather chair and stretched his legs. She waited for him
to speak, but he did not.
“Well, Foster,” she asked, after a moment, “what is it?”
He jingled the change in his pocket, the old habit of his. He appeared
a little uneasy.
“Well?” she repeated.
He lifted his head. “What I have got to say is--well, confound it, it
is hard to say,” he began. “For me, anyhow. Reliance, I suppose you
think I’ve got a grudge against you for--that business of Esther’s. I
haven’t.”
“I am glad of that, Foster.”
She _was_ glad, especially glad to hear him say it. In spite of her
assurances to Esther, she had begun to think he never would.
“Don’t you misunderstand me,” he went on, sharply. “I am no more in
favor of her marrying that Griffin cub than I ever was. She made a
big mistake there. If she had left it to me I could have found her a
husband that was something more than a picture dauber. You bet I could!
And he wouldn’t have been a Cook either.”
There was much she might have said, much she wanted to say, but she
thought it inadvisable just then.
“We all of us make mistakes, Foster,” was her only comment.
“Humph! Yes, we do. I have made a lot in my life. Well, if I had it to
live over again, I would make the same ones, I shouldn’t wonder. I am
built that way. I can no more help bossing other people’s affair than
I can help breathing. I like to do it, always did. I don’t know as it
pays, though.”
“I don’t believe it does, Foster.”
“It paid with Mooney just now, didn’t it?... Oh, well, you may be
right. I certainly haven’t made what you might call a first-class job
of it for the last three or four years.... Well, that wasn’t what I
started to say. Reliance, you did one first-class job that night when
you made Esther and--and that fellow of hers get married before they
left Harniss. Get married right in your own house, with you to stand by
and see them sign articles. That saved talk--and dirty, mean talk that
might have hung around the girl all her life.”
“That is the way I felt about it.”
“Um-hum. Well, it is the way I feel--have felt since it happened. I
haven’t told you so because--well, because.”
“I understand.”
“Yes, I guess you do; you ought to know me by this time.... What’s the
matter now?”
She had risen from the rocker. “Those letters!” she exclaimed.
“Mine--and that one for you! I must have left them in the parlor. That
talk between you and Mr. Mooney made me forget them altogether. I
wouldn’t have believed anything could make me forget _those_.”
She ran to the parlor and returned, the letters in her hand.
“Here is yours,” she said.
He took it from her. “What is all this?” he demanded. “You were crying
when you started to give it to me before. I believe you are crying now.
What in the name of--”
“Read it,” she urged. “Please read it. We can talk about it afterwards.”
He tore open the envelope. She hurried to the dining room and
remained there for perhaps five minutes. When she came back he was
sitting there, his hand resting on his knee and the letter--Esther’s
letter--between his fingers. His attitude reminded her of that dreadful
evening in her own sitting-room when she had returned to find him after
he had read that other letter from his niece.
He heard her enter and looked up.
“Well!” he observed, with a slow shake of the head. “Well! here is
another surprise package for me. Here is another thing you have been
keeping from me, eh?”
“I couldn’t help it, Foster. Esther and I both thought it was best not
to tell you. We were afraid you might be worried.”
“Humph! So you thought you would do all the worrying for the pair of
us. That is like you, I must say. Did Esther write you? You said you
had a letter--from her.”
“Mine wasn’t from her. Bob wrote me. But he said Esther insisted on
writing you herself. She couldn’t write much of course--not yet. I
suppose it wasn’t a long letter.”
“Not very.”
“But, Foster, isn’t it wonderful? It doesn’t seem as if it could be so,
does it?”
He sniffed. “Why, I don’t know as it is so tremendously wonderful,” he
replied. “About what was to be expected sometime or other, I should
say.”
“But--but, Foster, did you read it _all_? Didn’t she write you about
her--about their--about Mr. Cook?”
He turned the letter over. “Um-hum,” he grunted. “She wrote that Cook
was in a pretty bad way and that he has asked to have his grandson come
and see him.”
“Yes, but she and--and the baby will come, too, of course.”
“Humph!... The old scamp must have had a change of heart. Ready to
forget and forgive, maybe, like the rich old granddads, or whatever
they were, in the Sunday School books. Well, he can afford to forgive.
He _is_ rich, blast him! That is, provided the lawyers haven’t got the
whole of the plunder.”
She waited a moment longer. Then she leaned toward him.
“Is that all you’ve got to say?” she asked, anxiously. “I shall have to
write Esther, you know, and she will want to be told everything.”
He did not appear to have heard. He was absently folding the letter.
Suddenly he spoke, but to himself more than to her. “I wonder who the
young shaver looks like,” he muttered.
It was very little, but it was enough. Reliance was satisfied. She
could await Esther’s homecoming with a light heart.
THE END
_STORIES BY JOSEPH C. LINCOLN_
=QUEER JUDSON=--Carey Judson, a square peg in a round hole, returns
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=THE PORTYGEE=--The temperament and “calf love” of the son of a
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=SHAVINGS=--The loyalty and shrewdness of a quaint windmill-maker
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=EXTRICATING OBADIAH=--Cap’n Noah Newcomb extricates his former cabin
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=THANKFUL’S INHERITANCE=--Thankful Barnes and her helper lose their
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=KENT KNOWLES: QUAHAUG=--A search for a distant cousin, “Frank,” who
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=CAP’N DAN’S DAUGHTER=--She rescues him from her mother’s social
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=MR. PRATT’S PATIENTS=--Mr. Pratt and his friend Miss Sparrow
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=THE RISE OF ROSCOE PAINE=--A New Yorker and his daughter seek simple
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=THE POSTMASTER=--A retired sea captain finds plenty of activity in
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=CAP’N WARREN’S WARDS=--Cap’n Warren finds himself in strange waters
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=THE WOMAN-HATERS=--Two avowed woman-haters clear up
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=KEZIAH COFFIN=--An old maid proves a good angel to a minister in his
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=CY WHITTAKER’S PLACE=--An old bachelor adopts a little girl and with
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=PARTNERS OF THE TIDE=--The surprising adventures and difficulties of
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=CAP’N ERI=--Adventures begin for Cap’n Eri and his two friends when
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=OUR VILLAGE=--A series of unforgettable little sketches, describing
Cape Cod life thirty years ago.
=CAPE COD BALLADS=--Old Cape Cod scenes and folk appear in over
eighty verses.
_Each, $2.00_
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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
Italicized or underlined text is surrounded by underscores: _italics_.
Emboldened text is surrounded by equals signs: =bold=.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.
Archaic or variant spelling has been retained from the original.