AUNT REBECCA
No sooner was Mrs. Melville ushered into her section than the colonel
went through the train. He was not so suspicious as he told himself
he might have been, with such a dovetailing of circumstances into his
accidentally captured information; he couldn’t yet read villainy on
that college lad’s frank face. But no reason, therefore, to neglect
precautions. “Hope the best of men and prepare for the worst,” was the
old campaigner’s motto.
A walk through the cars showed him no signs of the two men. It was a
tolerably complete inspection, too. There was only one drawing-room or
state-room of which he did not manage to get a glimpse--the closed room
being the property of a very great financial magnate, whose private car
was waiting for him in Denver. His door was fast, and the click of the
type-writer announced the tireless industry of our rulers.
But if he did not find the college boy or the man with the moles he
did get a surprise for his walk; namely, the sight of the family of
Haley, and Haley himself beside their trig, battered luggage, in a
section of the car next his own. Mrs. Haley turned a guilty red, while
Haley essayed a stolid demeanor.
“What does this mean?” demanded the colonel.
“Haley felt he would _have_ to go with you, Colonel,” replied Mrs.
Haley, who had timid, wide, blue eyes and the voice of a bird, but a
courage under her panic, as birds have, too, when their nests are in
peril. “We’ve rinted the house to a good man with grown-up children,
and Haley can get a job if you won’t want him.”
“Yis, sor,” mumbled Haley. He was standing at attention, as was his
wife, the toddling Nora being held in the posture of respect on the
plush seat.
“And I suppose you took the furniture money to buy tickets?”
“Yis, sor.”
“And you’re bound to go with me?”
“Yis, sor,” said Haley.
“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, Sergeant,” said the colonel; but
he was glad at the heart of him for this mutinous loyalty.
“Yis, sor,” said Haley.
“Well, since you are here, I engage you from to-day, you understand.”
“Yis, sor,” said Haley. Mrs. Haley whimpered a blessing; but the only
change in the soldier was that his military stolidity became natural
and real instead of forced.
“Sit down on this seat over here with me and I’ll tell you what I want.
You fraud, letting me say good-by to you--”
“I didn’t want to take the liberty, sor, but you _made_ me shake hands.
I was afraid you’d catch on, sor. ’Tis a weight off me moind, sor.”
“I dare say. You always have your way with me, you old mule. Now
listen; I want you to be on the watch for two men”--thereupon the
colonel described his men, laying special stress on the moles on the
face of one, and the other’s dimple.
Having set Haley his tasks, he went back to his car in better spirits.
By this time the train was moving. He had seen his kinswoman and her
party enter; and he found the object of Mrs. Melville’s darksome
warnings sitting with a slender lad in the main body of the car. Aunt
Rebecca was in the drawing-room, her maid with her. Mrs. Melville, who
had already revealed her presence, sat across the aisle. She presented
the colonel at once.
Miss Smith did not look formidable; she looked “nice,” thought
the colonel. She was of medium height; she was obviously plump,
although well proportioned; her presence had an effect of radiant
cleanliness, her eyes were so luminous and her teeth so fine and her
white shirt-waist so immaculate. There was about her a certain soft
illumination of cheerfulness, and at the same time a restful repose;
she moved in a leisurely fashion and she sat perfectly still. “I never
saw any one who looked less of an adventuress,” Winter was thinking, as
he bowed. Then swiftly his glance went to the lad, a pale young fellow
with hazel eyes and a long slim hand which felt cold.
The boy made a little inarticulate sound in his throat and blushed
when Colonel Winter addressed him. But he looked the brighter for the
blush. It was not a plain face; rather an interesting one in spite of
its listlessness and its sickly pallor; its oval was purely cut, the
delicate mouth was closed firmly enough, and the hazel eyes with their
long lashes would be beautiful were they not so veiled.
“He has the Winter mouth, at least,” noted the colonel. He felt a
novel throb at his heart. Had his own boy lived, the baby that died
when it was born, he would be only a year older than Archie. At least,
this boy was of his own blood. Without father or mother, but _not_
alone in the world; and, if any danger menaced, not without defenders.
The depression which had enveloped him lifted as mist before the sun,
burned away by the mere thought of possible difficulties. “We will
see if any one swindles you out of your share,” said Rupert Winter,
compressing the Winter mouth more firmly, “or if those gentlemanly
kidnappers mean you.”
His ebbing suspicion of the boy’s companion revived; he would be on his
guard, all right.
“Aunt Rebecca wants to see you,” Mrs. Melville suggested. “She is in
the drawing-room with her solitaire.”
“Still playing Penelope’s Web?”
“Oh, she always comes back to it. But she plays bridge, too; Rupert, I
hear your game is a wonder. Archie’s been learning, so he could play
with you.”
“Good for Archie!”--he shot a glance and a smile at the lad’s reddening
face--“we’ll have a game.”
“Lord, I wish he didn’t look quite so ladylike,” he was grumbling
within, as he dutifully made his way to his aunt’s presence.
The electric lights flooded the flimsy railway table on which were
spread rows of small-sized cards. An elderly lady of quality was musing
over the pasteboard rows. A lady of quality--that was distinctly the
phrase to catch one’s fancy at the first glimpse of Mrs. Winter. Not
an aged lady, either, for even at eighty that elegantly moulded,
slim figure, that abundance of silvery hair--parted in the middle
and growing thickly on each side in nature’s own fashion, which art
can not counterfeit, as well as softly puffed and massed above--that
exquisitely colored and textured skin, strangely smooth for her years,
with tiny wrinkles of humor, to be sure, about the eyes, but with
cheeks and skin unmarred; that fine, firmly carved profile, those black
eyebrows and lashes and still brilliant dark eyes; most of all that
erect, alert, dainty carriage, gave no impression of age; but they all,
and their accessories of toilet and manner, and a little prim touch of
an older, more reticent day in both dress and bearing, recalled the
last century phrase.
A soft gray bunch of chinchilla fur lay where she had slipped it on
her soft gray skirts; one hand rested in the fur--her left hand--and on
the third finger were the only rings which she wore, a band of gold,
worn by sixty years, and a wonderful ruby, wherein (at least such was
Rupert’s phantasy) a writhing flame was held captive by its guard of
diamond icicles. The same rings admired by her nephew ever since he was
a cadet--just the same smiling, inscrutable, high-bred, unchanging old
dame!
“Good evening, Aunt Rebecca; not a day older!” said the colonel.
“Good evening, Bertie,” returned the lady, extending a hand over the
cards; “excuse my not rising to greet you; I might joggle the cards. Of
course I’m not a day older; I don’t dare to grow older at my age! Sit
down. I’m extremely glad to see you; I’ve a heap to talk to you about.
Do you mind if I run this game through first?”
The colonel didn’t mind. He raised the proffered hand to his lips; such
homage seemed quite the most natural act in the world with Mrs. Winter.
And he unobtrusively edged his own lean and wiry person into the vacant
seat opposite her.
“How far are you going?” said she, after a few moves of the cards.
“My ticket says Los Angeles; but it had to say something, so I chose
Los Angeles for luck; I’m an irresponsible tramp now, you know; and I
may drop off almost anywhere. You are for southern California, aren’t
you?”
“Eventually; but we shall stop at San Francisco for two or three weeks.”
“Do you mind if I stop off with you? I want to get acquainted with my
ward,” said the colonel.
“That’s a good idea, Bertie.”
“He seems rather out of sorts; you aren’t worried about--well,
tuberculosis or that sort of thing?”
“I am worried about just that sort of thing; although the doctor says
nothing organic at all is the matter with him; but he is too melancholy
for a boy; he needs rousing; losing his father and mother in one year,
you know, and he was devoted to them. I can’t quite make him out,
Bertie; he hasn’t the Winter temperament. I suppose he has a legal
right to his mother’s nature; but it is very annoying. It makes him so
much harder to understand--not that she wasn’t a good woman who made
Tom happy; but she wasn’t a Winter. However, Janet has brightened him
up considerably--you’ve seen Janet--Miss Smith? What do you think of
her?”
Winter said honestly that she was very nice-looking and that she looked
right capable; he fell into the idiom of his youth sometimes when with
a Southerner.
“She is,” said Aunt Rebecca.
“Where did you find her?” asked the colonel carelessly, inspecting the
cards.
Aunt Rebecca smiled. “I thought Millicent would have given you all
the particulars. She was nurse, secretary, companion and diet cook to
Cousin Angela Nelson; when _she_ died I got her. Lucky for me.”
“So I should judge,” commented the colonel politely.
“I presume Millicent has told you that she is an adventuress and after
my money and a heap more stuff. If she hasn’t she will. Get a notion
once in Millicent’s head and a surgical operation is necessary to
dislodge it! Janet is the only mortal person who could live with poor
Cousin Angela, who had enough real diseases to kill her and enough
imaginary ones to kill anybody who lived with her! Janet made her
comfortable, would not stand everything on earth from her--though she
did stand a heap--and really cared for her. When she died Cousin Angela
left her some money; not very much, but a few thousands. She would
have left her more, but Janet wouldn’t let her. She left some to some
old servants, who surely deserved it for living with _her_, some to
charities and the rest to her sisters, who hadn’t put a foot inside the
house for fifteen years, but naturally resented her not giving them
everything. I reckon they filled Millicent up with their notions.” She
pushed the outspread cards together.
“You had several moves left,” said the colonel.
“Four. But then, I was finished. Bertie, you play bridge, of course;
and I used to hear of your whist triumphs; how did you happen to take
to whist?”
“To fill up the time, I reckon. I began it years ago. Now a soldier’s
life is a great deal more varied, because a man will be shifted around
and get a show of the different kinds of service. And there are the
exams, and the Philippines--oh, plenty of diversions. But in the old
days a man in the line was billed for an awfully stupid time. I didn’t
care to take to drink; and I couldn’t read as you do if I’d had books,
which I hadn’t, so I took to playing cards. I played skat and poker
and whist, and of late years I’ve played bridge. Millicent plays?”
“Millicent is a celebrated player. She was a great duplicate-whist
player, you know. To see Millicent in her glory, one should play
duplicate with her. I’m only a chump player; my sole object is to win
tricks.”
“What else should it be?”
Aunt Rebecca smiled upon him. “To give information to your partner.
The main object of the celebrated American-leads system is signaling
information to your partner. Incidentally, one tells the adversaries,
as well as one’s partner, which, however, doesn’t count really as much
as you might think; for most people don’t notice what their partners
play _very_ much, and don’t notice what their adversaries play at
all. Millicent is always so busy indicating things to her partner and
watching for his signals and his indications that you can run a cross
ruff in on her without her suspecting. She asked me once if she didn’t
play an intelligible game, and I told her she did; a babe in arms could
understand it. She didn’t seem quite pleased.”
“How about Archie? Can he play a good game?”
“Very fair for a boy of fourteen; he was fond of whist until his
troubles came,” said Mrs. Winter, with a faint clouding of her keen
gaze. “Since then he hasn’t taken much interest in anything. Janet has
brightened him up more than any one; and when he heard you were coming
that did rouse him. You are one of his heroes. He’s that sort of a
boy,” she added, with a tinge of impatience in her soft Southern voice.
As if to divert her thoughts, she began deftly moving the cards before
her. Her hands showed the blue veins more prominently than they show in
young hands. This was their only surrender to time; they were shapely
and white, and the slim fingers were as straight as when the beaux of
Fairfax County would have ridden all day for a chance to kiss them.
The colonel watched the great ruby wink and glow. The ruby was a part
of his memories of his aunt; she had always worn it. He remembered
it, when she used to come and visit him at the hotel at West Point,
dazzling impartially officers, professors, cadets and hotel waiters.
Was that almost forty years ago? Well, thirty-four, anyhow! She had
been very good, very generous to all the young Winters, then. Indeed,
although she never quite forgave him for not marrying the wife of
her selecting, she had always been kind and generous to Rupert; yet,
somehow, while he had admired and found a humorous joy in his Aunt
Rebecca, he wondered if he had ever loved her. She was both beautiful
and brilliant when she was young, a Southern belle, a Northern society
leader; her life was full of conquests; her footsteps, which had
wandered over the world, had left a phosphorescent wake of admiration.
She had always been a personage. She was a power in Washington after
the war; they had found her uniquely delightful in royal courts long
before Americans were the fashion; she had been of importance in New
York, and they had loved her epigrams in Boston; now, in her old age,
she held a veritable little court of her own in the provincial Western
city which had been her husband’s home. He went to Congress from
Fairport; he had made a fortune there, and when he died, many years
ago, in Egypt, back to his Western home, with dogged determination and
lavish expenditures of both money and wit, his widow had brought him to
rest. The most intense and solemn experience of a woman she had missed,
for no children had come to them, but her husband had been her lover
so long as he lived, and she had loved him. She had known great men;
she had lived through wonderful events; and often her hand had been on
those secret levers which move vast forces. She had been in tragedies,
if an inviolable coolness of head, perhaps of heart, had shielded
her from being of them. The husband of her youth, the nearest of her
blood, the friends of her middle life--all had gone into the dark; yet
here she sat, with her smooth skin and her still lustrous eyes and her
fragrant hands, keenly smiling over her solitaire. The colonel wondered
if he could ever reconcile himself with such philosophy to his own
narrowed and emptied life; she was older than he, yet she could still
find a zest in existence. All the great passions gone; all the big
interests; and still her clever mind was working, happy, possibly, in
its mere exercise, disdaining the stake, she who had had every success.
What a vitality! He looked at her, puzzling. Her complexity bewildered
him, he not being of a complex nature himself. As he looked, suddenly
he found himself questioning why her face, in its revival of youthful
smoothness and tint, recalled some other face, recently studied by
him--a face that had worn an absolutely different expression; having
the same delicate aquiline nose, the same oval contour, the same wide
brows--who? who? queried the colonel. Then he nodded. Of course; it was
the man with the moles, the brother. He looked enough like Mrs. Winter
to be her kinsman. At once he put his guess to the test. “Aunt Becky,”
said he, “have you any kin I don’t know about?”
“I reckon not. I’m an awfully kinless old party,” said she serenely. “I
was a Winter, born as well as married, and so you and Mel and Archie
are double kin to me. I was an only child, so I haven’t anything closer
than third or fourth cousins, down in Virginia and Boston.”
“Have you, by chance, any cousin, near or far, named Mercer?”
Resting her finger-tips on the cards, Aunt Rebecca seemed to let her
mind search amid Virginian and Massachusetts genealogical tables. “Why,
certainly,” she answered after a pause, “there was General Philemon
Mercer--Confederate army, you know--and his son, Sam Nelson; Phil was
my own cousin and Sam Nelson my second, and Sam Nelson’s sons would be
my third, wouldn’t they? Phil and Sam are both dead, and Winnie Lee,
the daughter, is dead, and poor Phil--the grandson, you know--poor
boy, _he_ shot himself while at Harvard; but his brother Cary is alive.”
“Do you know him?”
“Never saw him but once or twice. He has very good manners.”
“Is he rich?”
“He was, but after he had spent his youth working with incredible
industry and a great deal of ability to build up a steel business and
had put it into a little combination--not a big trust, just a genuine
corporation--some of the financial princes wanted it for a club--to
knock down bigger game, I reckon--and proceeded to cheapen the stock
in order to control it. Cary held on desperately, bought more than he
could hold, mortgaged everything else; but they were too big for him
to fight. It was in 1903, you know, when they had an alleged financial
panic, and scared the banks. Cary went to the wall, and Phil with him,
and poor Phil killed himself. Afterward Cary’s wife died; he surely did
have a mean time. And, to tell you the truth, Bertie, I think there has
been a little kink in Cary’s mind ever since.”
“Did you hold any of Cary’s stock?” He was piecing his puzzle together.
“Yes, but my stock was all paid for, and I held on to it; now it is
over par and paying dividends. Oh, the property was all right, had it
been kept in honest hands and run for itself. The trouble with Cary
was that in order to keep control of the property he bought a lot of
shares on margins, and when they began to run downhill, he was obliged
to borrow money on his actual holdings to protect his fictitious ones.
The stock went so low that he was wiped out. He wouldn’t take my advice
earlier in the game; and I knew that it would only be losing money to
lend it to him, later--still, sometimes I have been rather sorry I
didn’t. Would I better try the spade, Bertie, or the diamond?”
The colonel advised the spade. He wondered whether he should repeat
to his aunt the few sentences which he had overheard from Mercer and
his companion; but a belief that old age worries easily, added to his
natural man’s disinclination to attack the feminine nerves, tipped the
scales against frankness. So, instead, he began to talk about Archie;
what was he like? was he fond of athletics? or was he a bookish lad?
Aunt Rebecca reported that he had liked riding and golf; but he was not
very rugged, and since his father’s death he had seemed listless to
a degree. “But he is better now,” she added with a trace of eagerness
quite foreign to her usual manner. “Janet Smith has roused him up; and
what do you suppose she has done? But really, you are the cause.”
“I?” queried the colonel.
“Just you. Archie, Janet argued, is the kind of nature that must have
some one to be devoted to.”
“And has he taken a fancy to her? Or to you?”
Aunt Rebecca’s eyes dulled a little and her delicate lips were twisted
by a smile which had more wistfulness than humor in it. “I’m not a
lovable person; anyhow, he does not love easily. We are on terms of
the highest respect, even admiration, but we haven’t got so far as
friendship, far less comradeship. Janet is different. But I don’t mean
Janet; she has grown absurdly fond of him; and I think he’s fond of
her; but what she did was to make him fond of you. You, General Rupert
Winter; why, that boy could pass an examination on your exploits and
not miss a question. Janet and he have a scrap-book with every printed
word about you, I do believe. And she has been amazingly shrewd. We
didn’t know how to get the youngster back to his sports while he was
out of school; and, in fact, an old woman like me is rather bewildered
by such a young creature, anyhow; but Janet rode with him; _you_ are a
remarkable rider; I helped there, because I remembered some anecdotes
about you at West Point--”
“But, my dear Aunt--”
“Don’t interrupt, Bertie, it’s a distinctly American habit. And
we read in the papers that you had learned that Japanese trick
fighting--jiu-jitsu--and were a wonder--”
“I’m not, I assure you; that beast of a newspaper man--”
“Never mind, if you are not a wonder, you’ll have to be; you can take
lessons in Los Angeles; there are quantities of Japs there. Why, even
in Chicago, Janet picked up one, and we imported him, and Archie took
lessons, and practises every day. There’s a book in my bag, in the
rack there, a very interesting book; Janet and I have both read it so
we could talk to Archie. You would better skim it over a little if you
really aren’t an expert, enough so you can _talk_ jiu-jitsu, anyhow; we
can’t be destroying Archie’s ideals until he gets a better appetite.”
“Well, upon my word!” breathed the colonel. “Do you expect me to be
a fake hero? I never took more than two lessons in my life. That
reporter interviewed my teacher, who was killed in the Japanese War,
by the way; he went to the army after my second lesson. He didn’t know
any English beyond ‘yes’ and ‘if you please’; and he used them both on
the reporter, who let his own fancy go up like a balloon. Well, where
is the book?”
He found it easily; and with a couple of volumes of another kidney,
over which he grinned.
“_The Hound of the Baskervilles_ and _The Leavenworth Case_! I’ve read
them, too,” he said; “they’re great! And do you still like detective
stories? You would have made a grand sleuth yourself, Aunt Becky.”
Again he had half a mind to speak of the occurrence at the station;
again he checked the impulse. “I remember,” he added, “that you used to
hold strenuous opinions.”
“You mean my thinking that the reason crimes escape discovery is not
that criminals are so bright, but that detectives in general are so
particularly stupid? Oh, yes, I think that still. So does Sir Conan
Doyle. And I have often wished I could measure my own wits, once, with
a really _fine_ criminal intellect. It would be worth the risk.”
“God forbid!” said the colonel hastily.
There came a tap on the door.
“Millicent!” groaned Aunt Rebecca. “I know the creaking of her stays.
No, don’t stay, Bertie; go and get Janet and a rescue bridge party as
quick as you can!”
“The original and only Aunt Rebecca,” thought the colonel at the door,
smiling. But, somehow, the handsome old dame never had seemed so nearly
human to him before.