“JUST HELPING; JUST BEING KIND!”
Nan crossed a pasture, whistling. The Holsteins, nibbling the young
grass, lifted their heads and bent their slow, meditative gaze upon
her. She paused to pat one of them on the nose. Nan was growing wise
in dairy lore and knew at sight the heaviest producers of the herd.
She resumed her whistling and went on toward the house, with a pair of
robins hopping before her. June had come and summer sounds and scents
filled the air.
As she neared the bungalow a motor swept into the driveway and
discharged Eaton and Thurston.
“A child of the pastures! The daughter of Cincinnatus tripping in from
the fields!” observed Eaton, as he shook hands.
“Just been tinkering an incubator, if you want the facts--counting
chickens before they’re hatched,” laughed Nan, brushing a straw from
her skirt.
“We have a small business matter to discuss with you, Nan. We’ll fall
upon it at once if you’re agreeable.”
“Business!” Nan mocked. “I hoped you’d come to look at the dairy.”
This was a very different Nan, Eaton reflected, from the Nan of a year
ago. Exposure to wind and sun had already given her a becoming tan. Her
old listlessness, the defiant air she had sometimes worn, had vanished;
she had become alert, self-reliant, resolute. Within the bounds of her
self-respect she meant that the world should like her. A democratic
young person--this new Nan, on good terms with truck farmers, humble
drivers of grocers’ wagons, motormen, and market-house policemen. In
her short skirt and plain blue blouse, she looked less than her years
to-day.
“We can sit on the veranda if you gentlemen are not afraid of the
country air.”
“I wouldn’t dare go in after that,” remarked Thurston dryly; “Eaton
already refers to me as his learned senior.”
“Mr. Eaton is the youngest and the oldest man in the world!” Nan
declared.
“Well, Miss Farley,” Thurston began, as they gathered about a wicker
table and he drew a formidable bundle of papers from a leathern pouch,
“as we telephoned you yesterday, the opposition of Mr. Farley’s
relatives has been disposed of and your adoption was upheld by the
court. To prevent an appeal, and get rid of them for good, we’ve agreed
on your behalf to pay the two cousins ten thousand dollars apiece. Mr.
Eaton would have preferred to fight it clear through, but I prevailed
on him not to make Brother Harlowe work too hard. You may not know it,
but Eaton is a remarkably belligerent person. There’s no compromise in
him. He’d fight to the last ditch.”
He looked from Eaton to Nan over his glasses with a twinkle in his eyes.
“I never saw a fellow I wanted to smash as badly as I do Harlowe,”
Eaton remarked. “He’s the smoothest rascal I’ve ever known.”
“I don’t see that you’ve been very generous,” said Nan. “How much will
he get as a fee?”
“About nine tenths of the twenty thousand,” replied Thurston grimly.
“Rather less than that,” said Eaton, with one of his elusive smiles. “I
started the secretary of the White River Trust Company down to see the
esteemed cousins before we signed the agreement; told him to persuade
them to confide their ill-gotten gains to the company and advised them
to cut off Harlowe with a niggardly ten per cent for his services. I
was afraid to tell you that, Thurston. I knew you would scold me.”
“Eaton, for combined ingenuity and malevolence, you haven’t an equal!”
declared Thurston, chuckling.
“I don’t believe it,” cried Nan, glad that the interview was
progressing so cheerfully.
“Now, Miss Farley,” Thurston resumed, “if there’s anything a lawyer
doesn’t like, it’s an ungrateful client. Mr. Eaton and I have a
sneaking feeling that we’ve done pretty well with this case. The
credit is chiefly his--and I take off my hat to him. We’ve come here
in the hope that we shan’t have to argue with you, but just tell you.
Your scruples against accepting any share in Mr. Farley’s estate,
expressed after his death, did you credit--in a way. But now it’s all
yours; there’s no escape. A considerable amount of income has already
accumulated, and we can arrange payments necessary for your support
to begin at once, though the estate can’t be closed till the year of
administration is up. So far as your ability to earn your own living is
concerned, you have demonstrated that. You have shown a plucky spirit,
and I admire it. I will go further, and say that the community has
supported you strongly, and that your attitude has made many friends
for you. But now--now, we must have no more of this nonsense!”
He waved his hand to indicate the fields, and glanced meaningfully at
Nan’s heavy walking-shoes, which were disgracefully muddy.
“But that was settled--once and for all!” Nan replied firmly. “You
mustn’t think me ungrateful for what you’ve done; but I thought that
all out before I came here, and I haven’t had a single regret. If it
isn’t impolite, I’ll say that all I want is to be let alone!”
“Thurston and I are not sentimentalists,” said Eaton. “We’ve given you
free rein to indulge your whims; but now we’ve come to a point where
we’ve got to take a hand.”
“But you can’t make me, if I won’t!” laughed Nan. “Just think how
humiliating it would be to back down now after I said I wouldn’t! Worse
than that, think of the effect on these girls we have at work here;
they’d lose their respect for me if they found I wasn’t really as poor
as they are! And there are other reasons, too,” she went on soberly. “I
don’t like to go over this again, but I never deserved anything of the
Farleys. I’ve got my conscience to live with, and I could never get on
with it if I allowed myself to take money which papa knew it was best
for me not to have. I’m serious about this. He knew me better than I
knew myself. You understand what I mean--”
“I don’t understand it in the way you mean, Nan,” Eaton answered; “but
let’s not argue it. Let’s be practical. Has it occurred to you that
something has to be done with this property? The lawful heir can’t just
walk off and leave an estate like this. It will be confiscated by the
State--thrown into the treasury and spent by a lot of politicians if
you refuse it. Take the money and buy a lot of farms with it or spend
it on working girls as much as you like--but please don’t talk any more
about refusing it.”
Eaton had spoken lightly, but she saw that he was very much in earnest.
The contingency he suggested had not, in fact, occurred to her. She had
assumed from the beginning that the adoption would be nullified and
that Farley’s money would be divided among the obscure and shadowy
cousins; and this abrupt termination of the case brought her face to
face with an unforeseen situation. Thurston was quick to take advantage
of her silence.
“You have to consider, Miss Farley, what your foster-father’s feelings
would be. He was a just man, and all the wills he considered from
time to time prove that he never had the slightest intention of
disinheriting you. Even in the last will creating the trusteeship,
he made you his sole heir; it was really the most generous of all!
Oh, yes,” he exclaimed hastily, as Nan colored deeply, “there was, I
suppose, a certain bitterness behind that. I want to say to you again
that I did my best to dissuade him from that step. I was confident
he would change his mind about it, as he had about so many other
things in his varying moods and tempers; and that he would realize
its unkindness. We have no right to assume that when he hid that will
behind his wife’s picture, he had any intention of executing it. It’s
an open question and it’s only fair to give him the benefit of the
doubt.”
“That’s true enough,” Nan assented; “but when I read that will and
found how bitter he had been, I knew I had done the right thing in
refusing to take anything!”
“I don’t agree with you,” Thurston continued patiently. “You must
be just; you must remember that that was the act of a man near his
death--nearer than any of us imagined. He didn’t have a chance to
change his mind again. It’s unjust to his memory to leave him in the
wrong utterly, as you will if you persist. There has already been a
great deal of talk about this attack on the adoption--people have been
blaming him for not guarding against the possibility of any such thing.
You see public sentiment is behind you! And in spite of anything you
may say, your act would have the appearance of pique; it would be like
slapping a dead man in the face!”
“Mr. Thurston is right, Nan,” said Eaton. “There is not only Mr.
Farley’s memory as a kind and just man to protect, but you must guard
yourself against even the appearance of resentment. The only thing you
have to consider is Mr. Farley’s conscientious desire to provide for
you, which was manifest at all times. As Mr. Thurston says, that last
will gave you absolutely everything, cutting out all the bequests he
had made at other times to benevolence and charity. My dear Nan, your
scruples are absurd! You haven’t any case at all! The idea of letting
the property Timothy Farley spent a laborious lifetime accumulating go
to the State is horrible. I can readily imagine what his feelings would
be! Why, my dear Nan, rather than let that happen, Thurston and I will
steal the whole thing ourselves!”
She received this with a grudging smile. What they said about the
injustice to Farley of a refusal impressed her, but her resolution was
still unshaken. And there was a stubborn strain in her of which she had
only lately been aware.
She reached for a pencil, and Eaton pushed a pad of paper toward
her. She began jotting down Farley’s various bequests to charity, as
provided in the series of wills, pausing now and then to refer to
Thurston for items she only imperfectly remembered.
The total was three hundred and fifty thousand dollars. She tapped the
paper reflectively.
“Of course,” remarked Thurston anxiously, as he saw what was in her
mind, “you are not bound by any of the legacies in those unsigned
wills. Not one of the wills contained all those bequests, so your total
doesn’t represent what he meant to dispose of in that way. And his last
will is evidence that he had wholly changed his mind about them.”
“We are bound to accept that last will as convincing proof of his very
great confidence in Miss Farley,” said Eaton quickly, “rather than as
an expression of distrust.”
“We all know perfectly well what he meant by that,” Nan replied. “But I
don’t want you to think I have any feeling about it.”
They nodded gravely as she glanced at them appealingly.
“I can see,” she went on hurriedly, “that my refusal to accept anything
at all might look like resentment; that it would be in a way unjust to
him.” She turned for a glance over the fields, as though seeking their
counsel. “Papa really wanted to help people who hadn’t a chance; he was
only hard on the idle and shiftless. If he hadn’t been big-hearted and
generous, he never would have taken me up as he did. And mamma was like
him. I feel strongly that even if he did change his mind sometimes, his
wish to help these things--the Boys’ Club, the Home for Aged Women, and
all the rest--should be respected.”
“That can’t be done unless you take the whole,” said Eaton quickly.
“But you needn’t decide about it now.”
“Yes; you should wait a few years at least!” added Thurston, crossing
his legs nervously.
“And since I’ve been out here and have learned about the girls Mrs.
Copeland is training to take care of themselves, I’ve thought of some
other things that might be done,” said Nan, ignoring their manifest
unwillingness to acquiesce in the recognition of Farley’s vacillating
benefactions. “There ought to be, in a town like this, a home and
training school for girls who start the wrong way, or make mistakes. We
haven’t anything that quite fills that need, and there are a good many
such girls. A hundred thousand dollars would provide such a place, and
it ought to have another hundred thousand for endowment. Mrs. Copeland
and I have talked of the need for such a school. It would be fine to
start something like that! And you know,” she added, “I might have
been just such a girl myself!”
Thurston turned to Eaton helplessly.
“It’s as plain as daylight,” Eaton remarked, amused by the despair in
his associate’s face, “that you will soon pauperize yourself at this
rate. It’s only fair to tell you that the estate shrank on a rigid
appraisement of Mr. Farley’s property. The million the newspapers
mentioned has dwindled to about eight hundred thousand. If you give
away all that’s mentioned in those wills and start this girls’ home,
you won’t be able to keep more than three automobiles for yourself.”
“Oh, the proof of the pudding is in the eating--and I know it’s good!”
Nan laughed. “I stuffed myself so long without thinking about my hungry
neighbors that it won’t hurt me to pass the plate down the table!”
“Well, the main thing,” said Thurston, “is to get your assurance that
you’ll accept the estate under your rights as Mr. Farley’s adopted
daughter. I suppose we can’t prevent your giving it away without having
you declared insane!”
“I dare you to try it!” Then, more serious than at any time during the
interview, she said: “You’ll have to let me reason it out my own way.
It was only a piece of luck that I wasn’t thrown into an orphan asylum
or left to die on the river bank when the Farleys gave me a home. I
shall never forget that--never _again_,” she added with deep feeling.
“The least I can do is to pass my good luck on. I’ve thought all that
out, so please don’t make me talk of it any more!”
Then, as the men rose to leave, Fanny appeared, and urged them to
remain to dinner. Thurston pleaded an engagement in town; Eaton said he
would stay.
“You’ve broken that man’s heart, Nan,” Eaton remarked, as Thurston
rolled away in his machine.
“What did you do to him, Nancy?” asked Fanny.
“She scared him to death! He’s convinced that she’s headed for an
insane asylum--that’s all,” chuckled Eaton. “Mere altruism doesn’t
interest Thurston; he thinks it just a sign of weak character--worse
than a weak chin.”
“I’ve always thought,” said Fanny, as her arm stole around Nan, “that
Nancy has a very nice chin.”
“I might go further,” Eaton remarked daringly, “and say that the face
in its entirety is pleasant and inspiring to look at!”
“Stop teasing me!” cried Nan, “or I’ll run out to the barn and cry.”
They were still talking in this strain when Copeland’s machine appeared
in the driveway.
“I didn’t tell you that we’re having a party to-night,” said Fanny.
“Unless I’m mistaken, Mr. Amidon is driving that machine.”
She walked to the veranda rail and looked expectantly toward the
approaching car. Though Billy had lately paid a visit to the farm, Nan
had not met him. Fanny, with her usual frankness, had warned Nan of the
expected visit, and Nan had carefully kept out of the way. She had not
seen Billy since the night he proposed the destruction of Farley’s will.
Copeland jumped from the machine and ran up the steps, while Jerry
disposed of the car. He shook hands with Fanny, and then turned toward
Nan inquiringly.
She was already walking toward him.
“I’m glad to see you, Billy.”
“I’m glad to see you, Nan,” he said, and added in a slightly lower
tone, “I’m glad to see you _here_.”
“And I’m glad to see you--here!”
Both knew what was in the other’s thoughts. Copeland bowed slightly,
and crossed to Eaton, who was gazing fixedly at the gathering glories
of the sunset.
Jerry, in a gray suit, and the very tallest collar he could buy, now
added himself to the group. He bent over Mrs. Copeland’s hand with his
best imitation of Eaton’s manner, and then, as he raised his head,
looked around furtively to see whether his mentor was watching him.
The laughter that greeted this had the effect of putting them all at
ease.
“I knew Jerry could do it,” said Nan, “but I didn’t suppose he would
dare try it in his Cecil’s presence.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” remarked Eaton, feigning
indignation at their treatment of his protégé. “If you’re not satisfied
with Jeremiah’s manners, we’ll both go home.”
Nan ran away to change her clothes and reappeared just as dinner was
announced.
“Please sit wherever you happen to be,” said Fanny, as they reached the
dining-room; and then, as they sat down, she bit her lip and colored,
finding that it fell to Copeland’s lot to sit opposite her. Eaton,
noticing her embarrassment, immediately charged Copeland Farms with
responsibility for the high cost of living.
“You must watch Nan carefully, Mrs. Copeland. She’s grinding the face
of the poor. I heard Mrs. Harrington complaining bitterly last night
about the price she has to pay for such trifling necessities as eggs
and butter. You’re going to bring a French Revolution on this country
if you’re not careful. And there will be eggs thrown that don’t bear
the Copeland Farm’s stamp.”
“I refuse to have this suit spoiled with any other kind,” Jerry
protested. “Speaking of eggs--”
“No, you don’t!” Nan interrupted. “You can’t tell any of your
country-hotel egg stories here. I refuse to hear them.”
“All right, then; we’ll drop the eggs. I was shaking hands with old
friends on the lower Wabash last week and struck three slabs of
cocoanut pie in three days. I’m going to make a map of the pie habits
of the Hoosiers and send it out as a Copeland-Farley advertisement.
I’ve been all over the State lately, and I’ve never found cocoanut pie
north of Logansport, and you never find it east of Seymour going south.
Down along the Ohio you can stand on hotel porches in the peach season
and see thousands of acres of peaches spoiling on the trees, and you go
inside and find dried-peach pie on the programme. And you have to eat
it or take sliced bananas or hard chunks of canned pineapple. No wonder
traveling men go wrong! I wonder at times at my own pure life!”
It was evident that they liked Jerry. They encouraged him to talk, and
he passed lightly from Praxiteles, whom he had just discovered in a
magazine article, to the sinfulness of the cut-price drug store, which
he pronounced the greatest of commercial iniquities.
After coffee on the veranda, Eaton quietly disappeared. Then Jerry and
Nan went off for a stroll, leaving Copeland and Fanny together.
“I guess that’s coming out all right,” remarked Jerry, indicating the
veranda with a wave of his straw hat. “But it’s tough on Cecil. I’ve
been wondering whether _she_ knows how it’s going to hit him.”
“Oh, I hope not! But that’s something we’ll never know.”
“Of course, Cecil needn’t have done all the things he did to bring them
together again. He might have let the boss go by the board. It wasn’t
just money that saved the boss! it was John Cecil’s strong right arm!”
“And yours, too, Jerry! Oh, yes; I know more about it than you think I
do. You helped--you did a lot to save him.”
“Well, if I did,” he admitted grudgingly, “that was Cecil, too. I’d
been busy rustling for myself--never caring a hang for the other
fellow--till Cecil got hold of me. I’ve wondered a good deal how he did
it--a scrub like me!”
“Don’t be foolish, Jerry; it had to be in you first. But he does make
people want to be different. He’s certainly affected me that way.”
“Oh, you!” he exclaimed disdainfully.
“Well, don’t you ever think I’m proud of myself, Jeremiah Amidon!” She
paused abruptly at the edge of a brook that tinkled musically on its
way to the river. “I’m only just beginning to try to be self-respecting
and decent and useful; I think it’s going to be a lot of fun if I ever
get started.”
“Well, I hope to see you on the cars sometimes. I’ve got the same
ticket, but I’m not sure it’s good on the limited. I’m likely to be
chucked at the first tank.”
They jumped the brook and followed a cow path across a broad pasture,
talking of old times on the Ohio, and of Farley, of whom Jerry always
spoke in highest reverence, and then of his own prospects.
Both were subdued by the influences of the night. The stars hung near;
it seemed to Jerry that they had stolen closer to earth to enfold Nan
in their soft radiance. A new idea had possessed him of late. His heart
throbbed with it to-night.
“In a place like this,” he began slowly, “you think a lot of things
that wouldn’t strike you anywhere else.”
“It’s just the dear country lonesomeness. I come out here often in the
evenings; used to in the winter, when the snow was deepest. I love all
this--” She stretched out her arms with a quick gesture comprehensive
of the star-hung fields.
Jerry’s dejection increased. The more he saw of Nan the less he seemed
to count in her affairs. A Nan who tramped snowy fields and took
counsel of the heavens was beyond his reach--immeasurably beyond.
“I don’t take hold of things the way you do, Nan. Being out here just
makes me lonesome, that’s all. I’ve got to be where I can see electric
signs spelling words on tall buildings. Just hearing that trolley
tooting away over there helps some; must be because it’s going toward
the lights.”
“If you feel so terribly, maybe we’d better go back!” she said
tauntingly and took a step downward.
“Don’t do that again! If you leave me here in the dark I’ll be scared
to death.”
“That _would_ be a blow to the human race,” she mocked.
“Well, I’ve had blows enough!”
“You hide the scars well--I can say that!” she flung back.
“Listen, Nan--”
“I thought John Cecil had broken you of the ‘listen’ habit.”
“Forget it! You know perfectly well what I want to tell you!”
“Then, why do we linger? We really must go!”
“My business is selling goods and it’s a rule of the game never to let
a customer turn his back on you.”
“All right; you go first!”
“Nan”--he drew nearer and planted himself in her path--“you can’t
go--not till I’ve promised to marry you!”
This reversal of the established formula evoked a gay laugh; but she
did not attempt to pass him.
“I never meant to ask you; I was afraid you’d marry me for my money and
I want to be loved for myself alone! And don’t think I’d be mentioning
it now if I wasn’t so lonesome I could cry! If you’re going to take
that money, it’s all off, anyhow. I can’t afford to have anybody
questioning my motives. As far as loving you’s concerned, I started
full time that first day we met on the river bank, when you pulled my
fly out of the tree. I might just as well have told you then--and I
wish I had!”
“Well, you needn’t scold me about it now!”
“I’m not scolding. I’m just telling you what you missed!”
“Why don’t you give me another chance? I know I’m only a poor working
girl--”
“Nan, I wish you were that!” he cried earnestly. “But all that money’s
coming to you now. I wouldn’t have the nerve--”
“It would be the first time your nerve ever failed!” Then, fearing she
had wounded him, she added quickly, “Of course, I didn’t mean that.”
“Nan!”
“Well, don’t cry, little boy!”
“Nan!”
“Yes, Jerry.”
“I love you, Nan!” he said gently. “I wish you cared even a little bit.”
“It’s a good deal more than that, Jerry.”
He took her hands and kissed them. There was a great awe in his heart.
“Nan, this doesn’t seem right, you being you; and you know what I am!”
“I think I know what you are, Jerry,--you’re fine and loyal and good!”
“I’m going to try to be,” he said humbly.
“And you’ve helped me more than I could make you understand, from that
very first day we met, when I hated myself so! You brought back the
old days; everything that has happened since has made me think of you.
You were the only person around here who really knew all about me--just
what I came from, and all that. And it helped me to see how bravely you
were fighting your own way up. I had the chance forced on me that you
made for yourself. And I made a mess of everything! Oh, Jerry!”
She clung to him, crying. As he kissed away her tears, the touch of her
wet cheek thrilled him....
“We mustn’t be so happy we can’t remember other people,” she said as
they loitered hand in hand toward the house.
“I guess that’s the only way, Nan. That’s what Cecil’s always saying.
And I guess he’s about right about everything.”
Eaton passed them, unconscious of their nearness. He walked with head
erect, as one who has fought and won a good fight. A sense of all his
victory had cost him was in both their hearts. There was an infinite
pathos in his figure as he strode through the dusk, returning to the
woman he loved and to the man he had saved and given back to her.
“It’s tough on Cecil,” said Jerry chokingly. “It doesn’t seem quite
square, some way--I mean the Copelands hitting it off again.”
“Well, we may be sure he doesn’t feel that way,” Nan answered. “It’s
all come out the way he wanted it to. He brought them together.”
[Illustration: THE TOUCH OF HER WET CHEEK THRILLED HIM]
“It’s funny, Nan; but I’m never dead sure I catch Cecil’s drift--the
scheme or whatever it is he works by. I can’t find it in the books he
gives me to read.”
“It isn’t in books, Jerry; it’s in his heart--just helping; just being
kind!”
THE END
The Riverside Press
CAMBRIDGE . MASSACHUSETTS
U . S . A
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES:
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Emboldened text is surrounded by equals signs: =bold=.
Obvious typographical errors have been corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation have been standardized.