AN ABRUPT ENDING
Nan sang as she dressed the next morning. The gods had ordained
that she shouldn’t marry Billy, and after her uncertainties on that
point she was relieved to find that the higher powers had taken the
troublesome business out of her hands. She was surprised at her
light-hearted acceptance of the situation. She hadn’t married Billy and
she sang in the joy of her freedom.
Just as she was ready to leave her room the maid brought up a special
delivery letter from Copeland. It had been posted at six o’clock. She
tore open the envelope and read frowningly:--
_Dear Nan_:--
Sorry about the row at the church last night. Never occurred to me
that there’d be such a jam. I hung around the neighborhood as long as
I could, hoping to find you. But it will be nicer, after all, to make
the run by daylight. Telephone me where we can meet this morning, say
at ten. I shall be at the office early and shall expect to hear from
you by nine-thirty. For God’s sake, don’t fail me, Nan!
This was scrawled in pencil on Hamilton Club paper. She propped it
against her dressing-table mirror and stared at it wonderingly. It
did not seem possible that she had ever contemplated running away with
Billy. The remembrance of him as he sat in his car, quarreling with the
police, with the eyes of a hundred people upon him, sickened her.
Either you love me, Nan, or you don’t; you either have been fooling
me all along or you mean to stand by me now and make me the happiest
man alive....
She smiled at Billy’s efforts to be pathetic--a quizzical little smile.
The paper smelt odiously of tobacco smoke. She tore the note to pieces
and let them slip slowly from her hand into her waste-basket. No; she
did not love Billy. Only a few hours earlier she had been ready to run
away with him; but that was all over now. She was sorry for Billy,
but she did not love him. How could she have ever been foolish enough
to think she did! But why, she wondered, was she forever yielding to
impulses from which a kind fate might not always protect her? “You
little fool!” she ejaculated. A moment later she stood smiling in
Farley’s door.
“Nan, look here what they say about you in the paper!” he said,
glancing at her over his spectacles. “I told Eaton not to blab about
that swimmin’-tank business and here they’ve got us all in the paper!”
“Oh, if only you could have been there, papa!”
She saw that he was pleased. He bade her ring for the maid to bring
up their breakfast; he wanted to know all about the exercises at the
Settlement House.
“I guess you made a hit all right,” he said proudly, after making her
read the account aloud. “I never liked your sayin’ pieces in public;
but I guess if you can tickle a crowd like that I ain’t got any right
to kick.”
The reporter had built his story around her; and had done full justice
to her part in the surprise of the evening. Her recitations were
praised extravagantly as worthy of a professional; “it is unfortunate,”
ran the article, “that Miss Farley’s elocutionary talents are so rarely
displayed in public.”
It was compensation for much greater catastrophes than the loss of
Billy Copeland to find Farley so pleased.
“It’s kind o’ nice to do things like that--to do things for people,”
Farley remarked wistfully, after subjecting Nan to a prolonged
cross-examination. “I’m sorry now I didn’t tell you about that swimmin’
pool. You’ve got a mighty kind heart, Nan. I used to think I wouldn’t
make any will, but let what I’ve got go to you, and leave it to you to
help some of these schemes for the poor. You know you’ve worried me
sometimes--we won’t talk about that any more; I guess it’s all over
now.”
The questioning look he bent upon her gave her conscience a twinge.
If Billy hadn’t become embroiled with the police she would not be
listening to Farley’s praise!
“Yes, papa; it’s all over,” she replied softly, and bent down and
kissed him.
When later she called Copeland on the telephone it was to laugh at
their misadventure--it seemed safer to make light of it.
“Please forget all about it, Billy. It wasn’t my fault or yours either;
it was all wrong any way. No--”
He was talking from his desk at the store and as he began to argue she
dismissed him firmly.
“Please don’t be cross, Billy. You ought to be as glad as I am that we
didn’t do it. No; never again! Cheer up; that’s a nice boy!”
She hung up on his angry reply.
Nan spent all day at home virtuously addressing herself to household
affairs, much to the surprise of the cook and maid.
Mamie Pembroke stopped to leave a huge bunch of chrysanthemums for Mr.
Farley. He sent for her to come to his room and asked her all about
the evening at the Settlement House. Mamie’s appearance added to his
happiness. He had been deeply grieved when Mamie and the Harrington
girls dropped Nan; it was a good sign that they were beginning to
evince a renewed interest in her. He attributed the change in their
attitude to Nan’s abandonment of Copeland and the Kinneys, never
dreaming in his innocence of the quiet missionary work that Eaton had
been doing with the cautious mothers of these young women.
“You’d better give Nan some work to do on some of your charity schemes,
Mamie. She’s been shut up here with me so much she hasn’t got around
with the rest of you girls as I want her to.”
“Oh, don’t think I do so much! Mamma does it for the whole family. I’m
sure Nan does as much as any of the girls.”
“Thanks for your kind words, Mamie; you know perfectly well they
dropped me from the Kindergarten Board for cutting all the meetings.
But I think we all ought to help in these things. It certainly opened
my eyes to see that crowd down there last night; I had no idea the
Settlement had grown so big.”
“I wish you and Mamie would go down and look at the Boys’ Club
sometime. They’ve only got a tumble-down house, but they’re talkin’ of
doin’ something better. A poor boy has a mighty hard time. When I was a
boy down on the Ohio--”
The story was a familiar one to Nan, and as he talked her thoughts
reverted to the will in which his provisions for the Boys’ Club had so
angered her.
All day she marveled at her happiness, her newly-awakened
unselfishness. In her gratitude for what she sincerely believed to have
been a providential deliverance from Copeland she voluntarily gave the
nurse the night off.
Her good cheer had communicated itself to Farley. The nurse was a
nuisance, he said, and he would soon be well enough to dispense with
her altogether. Over the supper they ate together in his room she
exerted herself to amuse him and he proved unusually amiable. The
afternoon paper’s account of his gift of the swimming-pool revived this
as a topic of conversation.
“I haven’t done as much as I ought to for the poor and unlucky. I
expect they’ve called me a pretty hard specimen; and I’ve turned down
lots of these people that’s always chasin’ round with subscription
papers. But I always had an idea I’d like to do something that would
count. I’m sorry now I didn’t give those Boys’ Club folks a boost while
I could see the money spent myself. I’ve tried makin’ wills and ain’t
sure about any of ’em. I got a good mind to burn ’em all, Nan, and
leave it up to you to give away what you think’s right. Only I wouldn’t
want you to feel bound to do it. These things don’t count for much
unless you feel in your heart you want to do ’em.”
She tried to divert his thoughts to other channels, but he persisted
in discussing ways and means of helping the poor and unfortunate.
She was surprised at his intimate knowledge of local philanthropic
organizations; for a number of them he expressed the greatest contempt,
as impractical and likely to do harm. Others he commended warmly and
urged her to acquaint herself with their methods and needs.
“We ought to do those things ourselves, while we’re alive. You can’t
tell what they’ll do with your money after you’re dead,” he kept
repeating.
She wondered whether he regretted now having made the will that
had caused her so much anguish. Perhaps.... But her resentment had
vanished. His solicitude for friendless boys, based upon his own
forlorn youth, impressed her deeply. It was out of the same spirit
that he had lifted her from poverty--she had even greater cause for
gratitude and generosity than he, and she said so in terms that touched
him.
“You mustn’t think of those things any more, papa,” she said finally.
“If you have a bad night, Miss Rankin will give me a scolding. I’m
going to read you something.”
“All right,” he acquiesced. “To-morrow I’ll talk to you some more about
my will. It’s worried me a whole lot; I want to do the right thing,
Nan; I want you to know that.”
“Of course I know that, papa; I’d be a mighty stupid girl if I didn’t;
so don’t waste your strength arguing with me. You’ve been talking too
much; what shall I read?”
“Don’t read me any of this new-fangled stuff. Take down ‘Huck Finn’ and
read that chapter about the two crooks Huck meets on the river. You
ain’t read me that lately.”
He lay very quiet until she had finished the chapter.
“Much obliged,” he said absently. “You run along now. I’ll be all
right.”
In the hall she met the maid coming to announce a caller.
Jerry, chastely attired in a new fall suit, greeted her with the
ambassadorial dignity that he assumed for social occasions, with
apologies to J. C. E. He could bow and shake hands like his idol and
mentor, and though his manner of speech was still his own, he had
greatly subdued its original violences. The area of collar and cuff
that could be sustained on a salary lately increased to eighty dollars
a month might provoke smiles; but Jerry was not troubled. By discreetly
soliciting custom for a tailor who made a twenty-five dollar suit
which only the most sophisticated sartorial critic could distinguish
from a sixty-dollar creation, he got his clothes at a discount. While
he had not yet acquired a dress-suit or a silk hat, he boasted a
dinner-coat and a cutaway. He had dedicated the latter by wearing it
boldly to Christ Church, where he was ushered to the third pew from
the chancel and placed beside a lady whose kneelings and risings he
imitated sedulously. This was Eaton’s church, and while that gentleman
was not present on that particular morning, a tablet commemorating
his father’s virtues (twenty years warden and vestry-man) gave Jerry
a thrill of pride and a sense of perspective. His mother had been a
Campbellite, and a vested clergy and choir, sprung upon him suddenly,
had awed him to a mood of humility.
“I’d been wondering as I came up what I’d do if you were out: I
couldn’t decide whether to jump in the river or lie down in the middle
of the street and be killed by a large, fat auto. Nan,”--he held her
hand and gazed into her face with tragic intensity,--“Nan, you have
saved my life!”
She met him promptly on his own ground.
“I should have worn mourning for you, Jerry; you may be sure of that.”
“The thought seems to give you pleasure. But I like you best in
blue--that suit you had on the day we paddled up the river still haunts
me.”
“Oh, that was a last year’s bird-nest. I have a lot better clothes than
that, but I don’t wear them to picnics.”
“You’d be dazzling in anything; I’m dead sure of that!”
He ran on in his usual key for some time, and then rose abruptly and
walked toward her.
“Are we quite alone?” he whispered tragically.
“We are,” she replied, imitating his tone. “I hope you don’t mean to
rob the house.”
“No,” he replied; “I didn’t come to steal; I’ve brought you a large
beautiful present.”
This she assumed to be the preliminary to a joke of some kind.
“I left it behind that big rosebush in the yard and I’ll bring it
in--nobody likely to come--no?”
“No; the nurse is out and I just now heard the maid climbing the back
stairs to her room.”
A smothered “Oh!” greeted him as he reappeared bearing the suit-case
she had entrusted to Copeland’s messenger the day before. He placed it
quietly by the door, a little shame-facedly, in spite of his efforts to
pass the matter off lightly. Nan flushed, staring at him defiantly.
“I saw this down at the works and I just thought I’d bring it up.
Maybe,” he said reflectively, “it ain’t yours; but I thought I’d take a
chance.”
“N. F.” neatly printed on the end of the bag advertised its ownership
to any observant eye.
“You and I are good friends, I hope,” she said uneasily.
“Don’t be silly, Nan; if we’re not, what are we?”
This was not a question she cared to debate; the immediate matter was
the narrowness of her escape from a marriage with Copeland and just
what she should tell Jerry about it.
“If you know about--_that_--”
“I make it my business never to know anything! I don’t want to know
anything about that bag. So we’ll just forget it.”
Seeing that her eyes rested nervously on the suit-case, he carried it
into the hall out of range of any chance caller’s eyes.
“Thank you,” she said absently as he came back. He began speaking
volubly of the delights of “Ivanhoe” which Eaton had lately given him
to read.
“How many people know about--_that_?” she demanded, breaking in sharply
upon his praise of Scott.
“Oh, the bag? Not a soul; I told you not to worry about that. I found
it behind the door in his private office. Purely accidental--honest,
it was! He wasn’t feeling well to-day,” he added. “He hung around the
store all morning looking pretty glum and didn’t show up at all this
afternoon. I went to the club and fished him out about six o’clock and
took him home in a taxi. That’s all.”
Reduced to terms, Billy had characteristically celebrated the failure
of the elopement by continuing the drunk he had begun the night before.
Her good luck had not deserted her if no one but Jerry knew that her
suit-case, packed for flight, had stood all day in Copeland’s office.
Jerry’s intuitions were too keen for her to attempt dissimulation. It
would be better to confess and assure herself of his secrecy.
“You don’t need to worry about that little matter, Nan,” Jerry
continued reassuringly. “Nobody’s going to know anything about it.
Nobody _does_ know anything about it--”
“Mr. Eaton?” she suggested faintly.
“I haven’t seen Cecil for two days. I’ve told you all there is to
tell. I don’t know any more and I don’t want to know. Now, forget it!
Only”--he deliberated a moment and then added brokenly--“only, for
God’s sake, don’t ever try it again!”
It flashed upon her suddenly that the presence of her suit-case in
Copeland’s office was susceptible of grave misconstruction.
“I’m going to tell you the whole story, Jerry; I think I’ll feel
happier if I do.”
“Well, you don’t have to tell me anything; remember that!”
“Maybe not, Jerry. But I feel that having known me away back in the old
times, you’ll understand better than anybody else.”
There was an appeal in this that filled his heart with pride. He was
struck with humility that a girl like Nan should confide in him. He had
not yet recovered from his surprise that she tolerated him at all.
“Please don’t think I was going to do anything wrong, Jerry,” she said
pleadingly; “we were to have been married last night; it wasn’t--it
wasn’t anything worse!” she faltered.
“Nan!” he gasped; “don’t say things like _that_! I wouldn’t think it--I
hadn’t thought it of him! And you--!”
“Well, you might have thought it,” she said, with a despairing note;
“but you didn’t because you’re my good friend and a gentleman.”
He was so astounded by her unsparing self-condemnation that he almost
missed this heart-warming praise. She hurried on with the story, tears
filling her eyes. It was an undreamed-of thing that he should see his
divinity weep. For the first time in his life he felt that he, too, was
capable of tears. But he must restore her equanimity, and before she
concluded he had decided to pass the whole thing off as a joke.
“Forget it, Nan! You never really meant to do it, anyhow. If Cecil
hadn’t turned up, it’s a safe bet you’d have weakened before you got
into the boss’s machine. It was a good joke--on the boss; that’s all
I see in it. Come on, now, and give a merry ha-ha. The only sad thing
about it is that it put the boss on the blink all day. If he’d been a
real sport he wouldn’t have let you escape so easy; looks as though he
wasn’t exactly crazy about it himself!”
“Oh, you think he wasn’t!” she flared.
“I thought I’d get a rise out of you with that! Take it from me, if I’d
framed up a thing like that I’d ’ve pulled up large shade trees and
upset tall buildings putting it over. But all you’ve got to do is to
charge it up to profit and loss. Hereafter you’d better not make any
engagements without seeing me,” he concluded daringly.
“There may be something in that,” she laughed. “I’m glad I told you,
Jerry. It helps a lot to tell your troubles to some one--and you don’t
think much worse of me?”
“Oh, too much sympathy wouldn’t be good for you!” he said, looking at
her fixedly. “Your trouble is, Nan, if you will take it from an old
friend, that you’ve had too soft a time. You need a jar or two to make
you watch the corners. So do I; so does everybody! When things come
easy for me I get nervous. I’ve got to have something to fight; but I
don’t mean punching heads; not any more. Cecil says his great aim in
life is to teach me to fight with my brains instead of my fists and
feet. But it’s hard work, considering the number of heads there are
that need punching.”
She was touched by his anxiety to serve her, to see her always in
the best possible light. He was a comforting person, this Jerry. His
philosophy was much sounder than her own; he was infinitely wiser. He
had done much better with his life than she had with hers, and the
advantages had been so immensely in her favor! There was no one else
in the world, she reflected, to whom she could confide as in him. She
marveled that she trusted him so implicitly--and he knew how little she
merited trust! A sudden impulse carried her across the room to where he
stood fingering a book.
“You are very good to me, Jerry!” she said with deep feeling.
Her hand touched his--a light, caressing stroke; then she sprang away
from him, abashed. The color mounted to his face, and he thrust the
hand awkwardly into his pocket. The touch of her hand had thrilled him;
a wave of tenderness swept him.
“I want to be good to you; I want to help you if I can,” he said simply.
But he was afraid of Nan in tears, and there were tears in the eyes
with which she now regarded him. She turned away, slipping her
handkerchief from her sleeve. This would never do. He waited a moment,
then began talking, as though nothing had happened, of old times on the
river, of steamboat men and their ways, in the hope of restoring her
tranquillity.
“I guess I had my share of fun down there; if I could be a kid again
I’d want to be born right down there on the old Ohio. I remember once--”
A muffled crash in the room above sent her flying into the hall and
upstairs.
“Papa!” she called, standing in the doorway of Farley’s room and
fumbling for the electric button.
As the ceiling lights flooded the room she called loudly to Jerry.
Farley lay on the floor in a crumpled heap. The crash that had
accompanied his collapse had been due to the overturning of the
electric table lamp, at which he had caught as he felt himself falling.
Jerry was already on his knees beside the prone figure.
Nan snatched the receiver of the telephone from its bracket and called
the regular physician; and then, remembering another doctor who lived
just around the corner, she summoned him also. Amidon lifted Farley and
placed him on the bed. While waiting for her numbers she told him where
to find a restorative the doctor had provided for emergencies, and
before she finished telephoning he had tried vainly to force a spoonful
of the liquid between Farley’s lips.
“It’s no use,” said Jerry, placing his hand over the stricken man’s
heart.
“No! No! It can’t be possible!” Nan moaned. “He’d been so well to-day!”
In a few minutes both physicians were in the room. They made a hurried
examination, asked a few questions, and said there was nothing to be
done.
The indomitable spirit of Timothy Farley had escaped from its
prison-house; what was mortal of him remained strangely white and
still. Nan, kneeling beside the bed, wept softly. Her foster-mother had
died after a brief illness and she had experienced no such shock as
now numbed her. She had, after all, been closer to Farley than to his
wife. Mrs. Farley, with all her gentleness and sweetness, had lacked
the positive traits that made Timothy Farley an interesting, masterful
character.
“There will be things to do,” Amidon was saying gently. “Do you mind
if I tell Mr. Eaton? He’d want to know.”
“No; I should like him to come,” she replied.
Jerry went below with the physicians and called Eaton on the telephone
in the lower hall.
Nan rose and began straightening the room. Farley had evidently drawn
on his dressing-gown with a view to remaining up some time, and had
walked to the quaint little table that had so long stood near the
window. Nan saw now what had escaped her when she rushed into the room.
The oblong top of the table had been so turned that it disclosed a
compartment back of the trio of drawers in which Mrs. Farley had kept
her sewing articles. Four long envelopes lay on the lid; two others had
fallen to the floor and lay among the debris of the lamp. At a glance
she saw that these were similar to the ones she had seen Farley hiding
on several occasions, and the counterpart of the envelope containing
the will she had read with so much concern. One of the envelopes was
torn twice across, as though he had intended disposing of it finally.
The others were intact.
She gathered them all together and thrust them back into the table;
then ran her fingers along the underside of the lid until she found a
tiny catch. Noting the position of this, she drew the top into place,
satisfied herself that the spring had caught, and rose just as Jerry
came back.