thought he lived here, she says. He'd no business to go off and
leave her alone. Her family'd be worried to death. When I go out
with the baby I'll take her. I suppose you haven't changed your mind
about the baby, Mr. Williston?--now you're feeling more like
yourself," she added.
"I cannot discuss that subject, Mrs. Ufford," the young man
answered, in his rasping, unnatural voice. "When you have disposed
of the matter along the lines you yourself suggested, I am at your
service till you take the train. After that--after that"--his lips
tightened in a disagreeable smile--"I may be able to get to
work--and win another prize!"
"There, there!" she cautioned him, "don't talk about that, Mr.
Williston, don't, now! Why don't you go out with the little girl and
see if you can find her automobile? That'll be less for me to do.
Why don't you?"
He turned, muttering something about his hat, but Caroline tugged at
his coat.
"Wait, wait!" she urged him, "I want you to tell her to let me take
the baby! If you went to Harvard, that's all Cousin Richard said,
except about a gentleman"--she paused and scrutinized him a moment.
"You _are_ a gentleman, aren't you?" she asked.
He looked at her. "My father was," he answered briefly. "In my own
case, I have grave doubts. What do you think?" he asked the woman,
looking no lower than her eyes.
She fed the baby deftly. "Oh, Mr. Williston, don't talk so--of
course you're a gentleman!" she cried, "you couldn't help about the
money. You did your best."
His mouth twisted pitifully.
"That'll do," he said, "what does this child mean? Who is your
cousin? Where does he live?"
"He lives on Madison Avenue," Caroline began eagerly, "but I mustn't
tell you his last name, you know, because he doesn't want you to
know. That's just it. But he'd love the baby. I could take it right
back in the automobile."
The man felt in under his coat and detached from his waistcoat a
small gold pin. He tore a strip of wrapping paper from the open box
near him and wrote rapidly on it.
"There," he said, fastening the pin into the folded paper, "I'm glad
I never pawned it. If your cousin is a Harvard man, the pin will be
enough, but he can look me up from this paper--all he wants. They're
all dead but me, though. Here, wait a moment!"
He went back into the sitting room and fumbled in a heap of waste
paper on the floor, picked out of it a stiff sheet torn once
through, and attached it with the gold pin to the bit of writing.
"That's her marriage certificate," he said to the woman. She stared
at him.
"Mr. Williston, do you believe that child?" she burst out, loosening
her hold on the bottle in her hand. "Why, she may be making it all
up! I--I--you must be crazy! You don't even know her name! I won't
allow it--"
He broke into her excited remonstrance gravely.
"I don't believe a child could make up such details, in the first
place, Mrs. Ufford," he said, "she is repeating something she's
heard, I think. Did your cousin mention anything else?" he said
abruptly to Caroline.
She smiled gratefully at him. "The mother must be a good woman," she
quoted placidly.
Both of them started.
"Do you think a child would invent that?" he demanded. "Now, see
here. You take Mrs. Ufford home with you in the automobile and she
can see if there's anything in what you say, really. If there's not,
she can go right on with the--with it, and do as--as we arranged
before. It's all written on the paper, and my full consent to the
adoption, and if there's anything legal to do about it, Mrs. Ufford
can attend to it. But nobody'll trouble 'em--they can be sure of
that. My people all died long ago and--and hers--hers...."
He stopped short. With eyes filled and lips vaguely moving he fell
into a strange revery, a sort of tranced stupor. So intense were his
absent thoughts that they impressed the woman and the child; they
knew that he was back in the past and waited patiently while for a
few kind moments he forgot. At length his eyes shifted and he took
up his broken phrase, unconscious, evidently, of the pause. "--her's
are back in New England. They never knew.... I had _some_ pride.
They're the I-told-you-so sort, anyhow. And they told her, all
right. Oh yes, they told her! Narrow-minded, God-fearing prigs!" He
stared at Mrs. Ufford curiously. "But they paid their debts, all the
same," he added with a harsh laugh, "and that's more than I've been
able to do, I suppose you're thinking."
But almost before the dark red had flushed her tired, lined face,
he leaned forward and touched her shoulder kindly.
"I didn't mean that," he apologized. "I'm half crazy, I think.
You've been as good as gold, and even when I've paid you the money I
owe you, I'll owe you more than I can ever pay. I know that. And
you're New England, too."
His sudden softening encouraged the woman, and she looked
appealingly up at him, while she patted the bundle on her lap.
"Folks have hearts in New England, Mr. Williston," she began, "and
if you was to go to her folks or write to 'em, I guess you'd
find--oh, couldn't you?"
His impatient hand checked her.
"He might grow up to be a real comfort to you," she murmured
persistently, "and you could look out for him well enough, once you
get started. Just see how smart you are, Mr. Williston--look at that
prize you got; she was awful proud of it."
His face twisted painfully.
"I looked out for _her_ well, didn't I?" he said coldly, "I was a
'good provider,' as they say up there, wasn't I? Do you think--"
his voice rang harshly and he struck the table by his side till it
rattled on its unsteady legs--"do you think if I couldn't look out
for her, I would look out for _that_? Get it ready."
The woman rose, her lips pressed together, and rolled the blankets
tightly about the quiet child. With one gesture she put on a shabby
hat and pinned it to her hair.
"I'll leave the bottle with you," she said to Caroline; "it'll help
keep him quiet, when I'm gone. Come on."
The man turned away his head as they passed him. At the outer door
she paused a moment, and her face softened.
"I know how you feel, Mr. Williston, and I don't judge you," she
said gently, "for the Lord knows you've had more than your share of
trouble. But won't you kiss it once before--before it's too late?
It's your child, you know. Don't you feel--"
"I feel one thing," he cried out, and the bitterness of his voice
frightened Caroline; "I feel that it murdered her! Take it away!"
They shrank through the door.
The woman sobbed once or twice on the stairs, but Caroline patted
the flannel bundle excitedly.
They had rounded the corner in a moment, and the woman pointed ahead
with her free hand.
"Is that the automobile?" she asked.
Caroline nodded. The brougham stood empty and alone where she had
left it.
"They're not back yet!" she cried in disgust, "the idea!"
"Maybe they're looking for you," Mrs. Ufford said shortly.
"Aren't you glad we've got it?" Caroline inquired timidly. "I am,
awfully. I didn't expect to get such a good one, so soon," she went
on more easily, "but I don't like that man much. He's so cross."
"Child, child, you don't know what you're talkin' about!" the woman
cried impatiently. "He's not cross--but his heart's just about
broke. He thinks more money would've saved her. And I guess he's
right about that. She was a soft little thing. But she stuck to
him."
They walked a few steps in silence.
"I don't know as I was actin' right, either, to talk as I did," she
continued abruptly. "I s'pose it is better as 'tis, 'specially if
your folks will take the baby. They'll do a lot more for it than
ever he could, prob'ly. I s'pose they're real rich--regular swells?
I can see they've got a fine automobile."
"Oh, yes. Cousin Richard's very rich," Caroline answered,
indifferently, "that's only the brougham--there are two more. I have
more fun at Aunt Edith's, though."
"_'Twas_ queer about all those things your cousin wanted, wasn't
it?" the woman said, musingly. "'Seemed like kind of a sign to him,
I could see--going to Harvard College and all. I s'pose it was a
sign--maybe."
She walked slowly, perhaps because of her burden.
"That's a fine college, I s'pose?" she said, inquiringly.
"It's good enough," Caroline allowed, "of course Yale's the best. We
all go to Yale. Uncle Joe says there had to be something for Yale to
beat, so they founded Harvard!"
"You don't say," Mrs. Ufford returned, "that's funny."
They were very near the brougham now. It stood as deserted as when
Caroline had left it. The baby in the bundled blanket neither cried
nor stirred.
"He's the best child," said the woman, with her tired, kindly smile.
"He's next to nothing to tend to. If he'd felt to go back to her
folks with it, I'd 'a' gone with him to look after it. I've got
enough for that--the things sold real well, and he'd never let me
lose, anyhow. He isn't that kind. I took a real likin' to both of
'em. I've kept boarders, all over, for fifteen years and I never
lost a cent from anybody like him, not one. You get to know all
sorts, keepin' boarders, and Mr. Williston's all right--though you
mightn't think so," she ended loyally.
Caroline hardly listened. She saw herself in the bearskin reception
room, up the stairs, in the library, her baby in her arms; she heard
the incredulous joy of the Duchess, she explained importantly with
convincing detail, to Cousin Richard the critical. To her eager soul
this thin, friendly woman was merely an incident; that irritable,
incoherent man less than a dream.
They paused on the curb, and she opened the brougham door
hospitably.
"You get in first," she said, "and then I can hold him a little
while, can't I?"
"I never was in one o' these," Mrs. Ufford answered doubtfully,
"s'pose you go in first. It can't go--or back, or anything, can it?"
"No, no, of course not," said Caroline impatiently. "There's Hunt
'way up the street--he doesn't see us--how he's hurrying!"
The woman paused, her foot on the broad step.
"'Taint Hunt--it's Mr. Williston," she announced. "What's he want, I
wonder? Look--he's wavin' at us! I guess he forgot some paper he
wants you to take--he's bound to have it legal," she added with a
sigh. "No, dear, let me be. I'll see what he wants before I get in."
The young man was running fast; his face was red, his eyes anxious.
"Have you got it? Is it here?" he cried, panting, and as she lifted
the bundle high, his face cleared and Caroline saw that he was very
handsome.
"Oh, Mrs. Ufford," he gasped, "read this! Just read it! I found it
in my pocket-book--I thought you might be gone--she put it there for
me--my poor little Lou! My God, what a brute--what a brute!"
The woman, one foot still on the step of the brougham, supported the
child on her raised knee and held the paper in her free hand.
"_My dearest husband_," she read aloud, "_if I get well you will
never see this, for I will take it out, but I don't believe I will
take it out, for I don't believe I will get well. They say everybody
thinks they will die, and of course a great many don't, but some do,
and I think I will, I don't know why, but I am sure. But you will
have the little girl. I am sure she will be a girl, and I hope she
will look like me and be a comfort to you. You will take good care
of her, I know. Think how nicely you took care of me and how hard
you worked. You take her to my sister, and when she gets big enough,
then you take her. She will not be a burden for you will earn lots
of money when you can stop working in that horrid store on my
account, and have time to do your writing. You must not get
discouraged, for your writing is fine. Remember that prize you took.
They will all be proud of you some day. You have been so good to me.
Your loving wife, Lou._"
Her voice broke, and with no further word she held the child out to
the young man. Without a word he took it and stared eagerly into its
face, pushing the wrappings aside.
"He has her eyes," he murmured, "Lou's eyes!"
The baby felt the grip of a stronger arm, wrinkled its features and
appeared to scan the dark, trembling face above it.
"He knows me! Mrs. Ufford, he knows me!" cried the man.
"Maybe so, maybe so," she said, soothingly. "You'll keep him, won't
you, now?"
"Keep him? Keep him?" he repeated, "why he's all I've got of
hers--all! He's Lou's and mine, together! He's--"
"Hush, hush!" she warned him, "here's a crowd already! We're right
out in the street, Mr. Williston! Come back with me. Yes, keep him
if you want to."
She turned to Caroline, neglected and wide-eyed, in the brougham.
"You see how it is, dear," she said hastily, "he wants it, after
all. I can't help bein' glad. It ain't always that money does the
most, you know. And he's the baby's father. Don't you mind, will
you?"
Caroline gulped.
"I--I guess not," she answered bravely. "But I did want him!"
"I know. You meant all right," the woman assured her. "You're
real--there's your coachman runnin'. He saw the crowd gatherin',
prob'ly. Good-by, dear."
She slipped through the curious street children after the tall
figure that hurried on with his bundle, a block ahead. Gleggson
dashed up to the brougham.
"W'ere was you, Miss, for goodness' sake?" he gasped out, "h'I've
been h'all over after yer! Don't, don't tell Hunt on me, will you,
Miss? He'd fair kill the life out o' me! He's comin' now. 'e 'ad to
go, Miss, fer his little boy was took sick last night and callin'
for 'im. So 'e made up the errant. But it'll cost us both our place,
y' know, Miss!"
The man's voice shook. Hunt was very near them now, walking hard.
"I'd no business to leave, I know--_will_ you h'overlook it for
once, Miss, and keep mum?" the man pleaded.
"All right, Gleggson--all right," she said wearily, "I won't tell."
Confused, disappointed, and yet with a curious sense of joy in the
joy of the two even now rounding the corner, she leaned back in the
brougham.
"I'm afraid he'll go to Harvard, anyway," she sighed.
IV
WHERE THIEVES BREAK IN.
One glance at Caroline's shoulders, hunched with caution, the merest
profile, indeed, of her tense and noiseless advance up the narrow
gravel path, would have convinced the most casual observer that she
was bent upon arson, at the least. At the occasional crunch of the
gravel she scowled; the well meant effort of a speckled gray hen,
escaped from some distant part of the grounds, to bear her company,
produced a succession of pantomimic dismissals that alarmed the hen
to the point of frenzy, so that her clacks and cackles resounded far
beyond the trim hedge that separated the drying-ground from the
little kitchen garden.
Caroline scowled, turned to shake her fist at the hen, now lumbering
awkwardly through the hedge, and sat down heavily on a little bed of
parsley.
"Nasty old thing!" she gulped, "_anybody_ could've heard me! And I
was creeping up so still...."
She peered out from behind a dwarf evergreen and made a careful
survey of the situation. The big square house stood placid and empty
in the afternoon sun; not a cat on the kitchen porch, not a curtain
fluttering from an open window. All was neat, quiet and deserted.
Caroline set her lips with decision.
"We'll pretend there wasn't any hen," she said, in a low voice, "and
go on from here, just the same."
Rising with great caution she picked her way, crouching and dodging,
from bush to bush; occasionally she took a lightning peep at the
silent house, then dipped again and continued her stalking.
Following the evergreen hedge around a final corner, she emerged
stealthily in the lee of the latticed kitchen porch and drew a
breath of relief.
"All right so far," she muttered; "I wonder if that old gray cat
with the new kittens is fussing around here?"
But no breath of life stirred under the porch as she stooped to peer
through a break in the lattice, and with a final survey of the
premises, inserted her plump person into the gap and wriggled,
panting, into the darkness below.
It was stuffy and dusty there; the light filtered dimly through the
diamond spaces, and the adventurer, crawling on hands and knees,
bumped into a shadowy pile of flower-pots, sneezed violently and
grovelled wrathfully among the ruins for at least five minutes,
helplessly confused. Quite by accident she knocked her cobwebbed
head against a narrow, outward swinging window, seized it
thankfully, and plunged through it. Hanging a moment by her grimy
hands she swayed, a little fearfully, then dropped with a quick
breath to the concrete floor beneath, and smiled with relief as the
comparative brightness of a well kept cellar revealed her safety.
Vegetable bins, a neat pile of kindling wood, a large portable
closet of wire netting, with occasional plates and covered dishes
suggestively laid away in it, met her eye; on the floor in front of
this last rested a little heap of something wet and glistening.
Untidy as it looked, it had an eatable appearance to Caroline,
whose instinct in these matters was unimpeachable, and bending over
it she inserted one finger.
"Current jelly!" she whispered, thoughtfully licking the inquiring
member. "The idea!"
She approached the wire closet and peered along the shelves; there
was no jelly there.
"'Dropped it getting it out," she pursued, "I wonder why Selma
didn't wipe it up."
Suddenly her face brightened.
"We'll keep right on and pretend _'twas_ burglars," she announced to
the quiet cellar, "and they stole the jelly in a hurry and dropped
this and never noticed, and went upstairs to eat it and get the
silver! And so I found 'em, after all!"
Still on tiptoe, she left the cellar, stole through the laundry, and
crept mysteriously up the back stairs. So absorbed she was that a
cracking board stopped her heart for a breath, and a slip on the
landing sent her to her knees in terror. The empty quiet seemed to
hum around her; strange snappings of the old woodwork dried her
throat. With her hand on the swing door that led into the
dining-room, she paused in a delicious ecstasy of terror, as the
imagined clink of glass and silver, the normal clatter of a cheerful
meal, seemed to echo in the air.
It was always difficult for Caroline in such moments of excitement
to distinguish between what she saw and heard and what she wished to
see and hear, and at this ghost of table music she smiled with
pleasure.
"The house is empty," said her common-sense, but she pursed her lips
and whispered, "they're up here eating--they've come for the
silver!"
By fractions of inches she pushed the door on its well-oiled hinge
and slipped noiselessly into the dining-room.
A broad beam of light fell across the dark, wainscoted room, and in
the track of it sat a handsome well-dressed man, busily eating. In
front of him was a roast chicken, a cut-glass dish of celery and a
ruby mound of jelly; a crusty loaf of new bread lay broken at his
right; at his left, winking in the sunbeam, stood a decanter half
filled with a topaz liquor. He was daintily poising a bit of jelly
on some bread, the mouthful was in the air, when his eyes fell on
Caroline, an amazed and cobwebbed statue in front of him.
The hand that held the bread grew rigid. As spilled milk spreads
over a table, the man's face was flooded with sudden grayish white;
against it his thin lips were marked in lavender. While the
grandfather clock ticked ten times they stared at each other, and
then a wave of deep red poured over his face and his mouth twitched.
"What are you doing here, little girl?" he demanded sternly,
pointedly regarding her dusty rumpled figure.
Caroline gulped and dropped her eyes.
"I--I--nothing particular," she murmured guiltily.
The man laid the piece of bread down carefully and wiped his fingers
on the napkin spread across his knees.
"Some time," he said, in a leisurely drawl, "you'll burst into a
room like that, where a person with a weak heart may be sitting, and
that'll be the last of 'em."
[Illustration: "What are you doing here, little girl?" he demanded
sternly.]
"The last of 'em?" Caroline repeated vaguely.
"Just so. They'll die on you," he explained briefly.
Caroline stepped nearer.
"Is--is your heart weak?" she inquired fearfully. "I'm so sorry. So
is my Uncle Lindsay's."
"What were you sneaking about so soft for?" he demanded.
She flushed.
"I--I was playing burglars," she confessed, "and I got to where they
were in here with the silver, and--and I was coming in to--to get
them, and I didn't expect anybody would be here, really, you know,
and I was surprised when I saw you. I didn't know about your heart."
"Burglars?" said the man, laughing loudly. "Well, that's one on me!
I must say you're a nervy young party. So you thought I was a
burglar, did you?"
"Oh, no!" Caroline cried, "of course not--I meant I was playing it
was burglars; I didn't mean you. I--I didn't know anybody was here."
"Humph!" said he. "What made you play burglars? Anything in that
line yourself, ever?"
Caroline stared uncomprehendingly.
"My mother doesn't think it's right for Aunt Edith to go off and
leave the house all alone the way she does," she explained; "she's
always telling her some one will break in if she doesn't leave Selma
or a dog. And she never locks a thing, you know--she says if they
intend to get in, they will, and that's all there is about it. So
this time she went for three days, and Miss Honey and the General
and Delia; and Selma and Anna went to a wedding and Ed went
somewhere about a lawn-mower, and little Ed was going to get the
pony shod. I told Aunt Edith I'd--" she coughed importantly--"keep
an eye on the house."
"I see," said the man.
He poured himself two inches of the topaz liquor; it rocked in the
glass.
Caroline sniffed inquiringly.
"That's the Scotch," she said; "I know by the smell, partly like
cologne and partly smoky. Do you like it?"
The man raised the glass to the level of his eyes and watched the
light play through it, then made a slight movement of his arm and
the whisky disappeared smoothly.
"Your Aunt Edith's taste is as good as her voice," he said, eyeing
Caroline carefully.
"Oh, that's not Aunt Edith's--that's Uncle Joe's," she explained.
Then, as it flashed across her suddenly.
"Did you want to see him? He's in New York, too. They're going to
have pictures taken of Miss Honey and General. But after that, Uncle
Joe's going to Chicago. Did you want him?"
"N-no, not exactly," said the man, studying his well-kept
finger-nails. "I can't say I do. No, my business is with--is more--"
He stopped suddenly and followed the direction of Caroline's eyes.
There on the sideboard behind him stood a leather suit-case, long
and solid looking. It was open and tight rows of forks and spoons
filled it.
The room was quite still for a moment. Caroline wanted to show by
some intelligent remark that she understood the situation, and
could easily imagine what the man was doing with the silver, but
she found this difficult.
Strange people came to Aunt Edith's house. Dark, foreign-looking men
ate meals there at unusual hours; once Caroline had seen with her
own eyes a plump, yellow German fall suddenly on his knees at Aunt
Edith's feet, as a hand-organ struck up its brassy music under the
window, and burst into passionate singing, waving a whisk-broom in
the air and offering it to Aunt Edith with the most extraordinary
force of manner. And her aunt, who wore at the time a raincoat and
tam o'shanter cap, had leaned forward graciously, gurgled out a most
delicious little tune, accepted the whisk-broom, affected to inhale
its fragrance rapturously, and whirled into a big and beautiful song
in which the plump, yellow gentleman joined, and rising seized her
in his arms, at which point they drowned the hand-organ completely,
and the hand-organ man and Uncle Joe applauded loudly, and they gave
the hand-organ man all he could eat and a dollar.
You may see from this that one did not look for the commonplace in
Aunt Edith's house. Moreover, the stranger was not unlike some of
her aunt's friends; though he was handsome and assured and
noticeably at his ease, Caroline felt that his manner was subtly
different from that of the friends of her own family. But even the
most unconventional guest had never collected the sideboard silver,
and a little feeling was growing in the air ... doubt and a bit of
what might have begun to be fear ... when suddenly the man began to
laugh. It was abrupt and it rang harshly at first, but grew with
every moment warmer and more infectious, so that Caroline, though
she felt that she was in some way the cause of it, joined in it
finally, in spite of herself.