A LUNCHEON WITH UNBIDDEN GUESTS
“Now this is what I call delightful,” said Cyrus, as he set the
disreputable looking coffee-pot down upon the pile of boards, which was
serving us both as a table and seats. He wiped his heated brow wearily.
Impossible as it seemed, Cyrus had been roasting himself making Dave’s
coffee. The river flowed at our feet, blue, and softly singing, the
April sun was caressingly soft and warm and the greening earth a
fragrant joy.
“Can sorrow live with April days?” I murmured. But the lines of carking
care had come back to Cyrus’ face, as he seated himself on the pile
near the projecting board which was serving Alice Yorke as a tilt--we
all called them “tilters” in Palmyra.
“I think I won’t go up to the house to dinner,” he said. “I’m not
hungry, and since you are here, Bathsheba, there is no need. I was
going only to give you this.” And he calmly drew a telegram from his
pocket. “They seemed to think at the office that a telegram meant
business and must be sent to the counting-room.”
Now telegrams addressed to Miss Bathsheba Dill might have been as thick
as leaves in Vallambrosa for all the agitation Cyrus showed; but as for
me, the blood rushed to my head and for an instant Alice Yorke, on her
tilter seemed to be leading a race into the river.
I heard, as in a dream, Dave say, “Will you have some coffee, Miss
Yorke?” and noted vaguely that he was just as gallant and graceful as
if the cup were not old and cracked. And then, although my hands shook
like a leaf, I was face to face with the first telegram of my life.
“The best design. I think a great thing. Salter will write your
brother.
“E. CARRUTHERS.”
My heart leaped for joy. The best design! A great thing! I wanted to
shout it out to the four winds of heaven, but that provoking Dave had
sat down beside Alice Yorke and they were making merry over their
lunch. He had left the basket with another cracked cup and a tin can
at our end of the pile, and the coffee-pot was set down midway, but so
shakily that it seemed likely to tip off.
“Bathsheba, if you want some coffee you shall have my cup in a minute,”
he called to me. “I’ll wash it in the river.”
Cyrus made a feint of eating a little; it was easy to see that it was
hard work. I wished that Dave would not monopolize Alice Yorke, in that
boyish, ridiculous way, for I thought her brightness might make Cyrus
forget his care.
Dear old Cyrus! The softness he had shown in making Dave’s coffee had
drawn me to him with a new tenderness; after all Cyrus was my own
brother. He looked so forlorn, too, with his long, lank figure huddled
awkwardly upon the pile of boards and making a pitiful attempt to
assume the light-minded air appropriate to the occasion.
“Gay youth loves gay youth,” I said to myself, but nevertheless I was
irritated by Dave and Alice Yorke.
Cyrus had rather held aloof from Alice than otherwise since Dave had
come home, and yet I thought his interest in her was different from
that which he had ever shown in any other girl.
My feelings were rather queerly mingled. I had not been in the least
successful in conveying to Dave my discovery of his innocence--or
rather my belief, for it was not yet quite so much a discovery as I was
forced to acknowledge to myself, and it did not seem an opportune time
for imparting the good news of the telegram.
But I decided to share my delight with Cyrus; it might be cheering,
in the midst of the business troubles, to know that Dave had had some
success.
“A design?” repeated Cyrus dubiously, after I had explained all the
circumstances of my discovery. “O dear, has he gone to drawing again? I
hoped that was all over!” I don’t think that Cyrus really understood so
clearly as he might have done if Alice Yorke’s soft voice, mingled with
Dave’s manly tones, had not come floating constantly to our ears.
“But it is a real triumph to have his design chosen from among so
many!” I insisted. “And he will be paid for it--perhaps a great deal.”
“I hope he will,” said Cyrus, with a doubtful accent. “I hoped he might
develop some business talent, but I’m afraid there is no chance of
that. Probably he has been doing that sort of thing and giving his mind
to it all the time. But he has behaved well!”
There was no grudging in Cyrus’ tone; it was said heartily. He looked
at his watch.
“I have some letters to write. I really ought to go back to the
counting-room,” he said, and gathered his long length up decidedly
from the pile of boards. I was vexed with what I thought his stupidity
and yet I longed to offer him a little comfort.
“Cyrus, he didn’t do it! Dave didn’t do that dreadful thing!” I
whispered hoarsely. “I almost know the whole mystery.”
Cyrus looked at me in an absent, bewildered way. “If he did do it, he
is in a fair way to live it down,” he replied. “Everything must be done
to help him, everything!” There was an accent that seemed as if the
man’s whole soul were in it and his voice actually trembled. “But I
wish he would give up that drawing.”
Cyrus, despairing of his own business capacity, had been indulging in a
stronger hope than he would own, or perhaps had even been conscious of,
that Dave would develop something of the kind. Perhaps it was not to
be expected that he should be elated as I was over the success of the
design.
And, poor Cyrus! It was quite evident that he was struggling with
jealousy whether he were aware of it or not. For a moment I was so
angry with both these young chits that I could scarcely bring myself
to speak to them. And yet Cyrus ought to have known that one must woo
one’s sweetheart if he hopes to win her. But it seemed to me doubtful
whether Cyrus would know how, while it was as natural to Dave to be
gallant as to be stroke-oar in the college crew.
“That boy will always be pretty-spoken, whatever else he ain’t,” had
been Loveday’s dictum before he had reached a decade.
“Why, has Mr. Dill gone already!” exclaimed Alice Yorke with a pretty
little start and a widening of her bright eyes.
“He hasn’t time to spend in idleness and nonsense,” I said so harshly
that they both colored. I was ashamed of myself but I was not going to
have Alice Yorke fancy that he had been vexed by her foolish trifling.
I caught sight of a glimmer of Estelle’s light blue dress, among the
orchard trees and I went to meet her. There had been Dave’s favorite
pudding for dessert and she was bringing him some of it.
“Well, was Dave delighted to know that you had discovered that he
wasn’t a sneak after all?” she said sarcastically. These things had
worn on Estelle; that was undeniable.
“He--he wouldn’t listen to me,” I faltered, meekly. “And, Estelle, I
don’t dare to show him this! I’m afraid he will think I was meddling.”
And I poured into her ears all the little tale of the design.
“Ned Carruthers! It wouldn’t be strange if Dave thought you were
meddling,” she exclaimed, even while her eyes shone with pride and
delight. “I don’t know how you could talk to him about it, Bathsheba!
It’s the hardest of anything to forgive people for having been mean.”
“He thought Dave was a hypocrite; he had his provocations,” I retorted.
“And it was well that I could forgive him sufficiently to talk to him
about the design since he is really repentant and anxious to do all
that he can for Dave, and he is in a position to have influence with
Mr. Salter.”
“Dave doesn’t need influence; his drawings can stand on their own
merits,” she answered obstinately. But I felt sure that she was trying
to maintain a righteous indignation against young Carruthers and that
she really knew that sufficient outside influence to secure the prompt
examination of one’s work is not a bad thing. And then she suddenly
drew a long, deep breath.
“O, I’m so glad, so glad!” she cried. “You don’t know what it has been
to me to have Dave in the shipyard!”
“It has been a good thing,” I said stoutly. “It has been good
discipline for Dave, and it has opened Cyrus’ eyes to what was fine in
him. He said to me to-day that Dave had done well, that there was good
stuff in him.”
Estelle was pleased, although she was too proud to show it.
“Opened your eyes, too!” she said crisply. “You were almost as hard
upon him as Cyrus.” As I have remarked before, we are a plain-spoken
family.
Dave seized upon his pudding like a boy, insisting upon dividing it
with Alice Yorke and giving her the lion’s share of the frosting. No
one would have thought, seeing how light-hearted he was, that he was
living down a deep disgrace and that the shipyard was to be sold at
auction for the benefit of creditors the next month. Alice Yorke was so
gay that I thought my hasty whisper to her of “Dave didn’t do it” had
taken a load from her heart.
I will never think I know anything about a girl’s heart again!
Estelle was merry, as I had not seen her for a long time, and that
was not strange since her heart was so bound up in Dave. I knew she
was eager to ask me what I knew about Dave’s trouble and how I had
discovered it but her pride would not let her.
In the midst of the hilarity Estelle uttered a cry of dismay and I,
following her gaze, saw a startling white face appearing above the edge
of the wood-pile behind us. It vanished so suddenly that if it had not
been for Estelle’s cry I should almost have thought myself the victim
of a disordered imagination.
“Rob?” I cried. “It can’t be Rob!”
“It was Rob’s face,” said Estelle, with white lips--for not since his
return from school had Rob been able to leave his room.
Dave strode around the wood-pile and drew forth a shrinking figure, so
white-faced and at the same time so grotesque that we scarcely knew
whether to laugh or to cry at sight of it.
Rob had thrown over his flannel dressing-gown the silk crazy-quilt,
Marcella’s pride, from his bed. It was drawn partly over his head and
the gay colors made his pallor ghastly.
Dave tore off the quilt and tossed it up on the wood-pile, and in a
moment had thrust his own rough jacket upon Rob. It was scarcely less
grotesque a garment for him than the quilt, it was so much too large,
but was certainly warmer--and the wind from the river was cool although
the sun was warm. Dave took off his own cap, also, and put it upon
Rob’s head and we all laughed a little in spite of our fright, when it
came down nearly to his ears.
“I came to find Bathsheba,” he said as Dave scolded him, as gently
as his mother might have done. “She--she knows, Dave!” His voice was
a husky whisper and he trembled in every limb. “I didn’t think how
dangerous it was, at first. She’ll think it her duty to tell, girls
always think it’s their duty to do disagreeable things! And if father
should find out----! You make her promise not to tell a soul, Dave!”
Dave had drawn him down into a sheltered nook in the great pile
of boards and spread the quilt over him. He supplemented it by a
sheltering arm, regardless of his coatless and hatless condition.
“You must rest a little while and then we’ll get you home,” he said
anxiously. “Never mind Bathsheba! I’ll fix Bathsheba!” he added lightly.
But the boy was too thoroughly alarmed to be put off in that way.
“Make her promise solemnly!--you know I couldn’t stand father. It would
kill me! And they’ll be after me in just a minute. I got away while the
nurse was at dinner. I climbed down the woodbine trellis. It didn’t
make me breathe half so badly as she did”--indicating me by a resentful
little jerk of the head. “She came and talked and talked. I thought at
first that she was only bothering, like a girl; then I thought she was
trying to find out things; at last she let out that she knew!”
Dave looked at me steadily. I had not known until that moment how hurt
he had been.
“At first I thought only of the horse,” Rob continued in his weak,
querulous voice. “You haven’t done as you ought about old Lucifer,
Dave!”
Old Lucifer! That was the horse that Uncle Horace had sold, four or
five years before because, as he said, Rob was making a sentimental
fuss over him. Rob had grieved so that he had brought on a fit of
illness.
“That fellow will get him on to the race-course again! There are such
brutes in the world! You wouldn’t believe ’twas old Lucifer when I
showed you the picture on the fence. You wouldn’t have gone to the race
if I hadn’t run away when I was so ill that you had to follow me. You
see if Bathsheba should tell father of all that I did then--writing his
name on the check and all----”
“That’s all right you know, Rob, she won’t tell!” interrupted Dave
hastily. “No one shall know.”
I looked at Alice Yorke; she stood a little aside, near the river bank.
Rob did not seem to observe that she was within hearing; there seemed
to me a danger that what with his terror of his father and his anxiety
about his old horse his mind would become permanently weakened.
As for me I felt as if the very boards had ears, instead of feeling
exultant at the revelation that was proving Dave’s innocence of all the
evil of which he had been accused. I had that strange sense that comes
to us all sometimes that there is some one near, although invisible.
I looked about me. There were many piles of boards behind which a
listener might lurk; there was a clump of alders near us tall enough
and thick enough to conceal an eavesdropper.
But of course it was only a nervous fancy that any one was near, so I
said to myself impatiently, the next moment. I feared that my mind was
growing weak like Rob’s--which would never do for a practical business
woman.
“We paid Alf Reeder too much for the horse, anyway; he showed he was a
cheat and then it was dangerous to let him board him, if he did say
he knew just how to take care of him. Do you remember how he stumbled
and fell? And how they spurred him till there was blood on his flanks?
If they had made him try it once more it would have killed him! They
thought so, too, or they wouldn’t have sold him. But how they made
you pay! Now that you don’t hear from him I expect they’re racing him
again. When my breathing gets easier so that I drop asleep I start up
again thinking I see Lucifer straining his muscles and bleeding from
the spur, as he was that day, and with that human agonized look that
there was in his eyes when he turned them toward us!”
“You mustn’t think of it,” said Dave earnestly. “You’ll never get
well while you keep brooding over it. And the horse isn’t racing now;
he is taken good care of. The money has been paid regularly for his
board--you couldn’t think that I would neglect that?”
I pricked up my ears. How had he paid it? I could not think how he
could have come by even so small an amount of money as a horse’s board
would cost.
Suddenly I met Estelle’s eyes and I knew. The old berry savings
in the tin bank that were to have sent Cyrus to college had grown
undisturbed; they had been added to by grandma, from time to time, as
an encouragement to the childish thrift and industry. I remembered when
they had been transferred from the red tin apple to the Palmyra bank,
and remembered Estelle’s proud boast that there were more than forty
dollars. The interest would have added a little to it in the years that
had passed since then.
I was unconscious that there was a sudden questioning in my eyes until
Estelle answered it.
“No, I never was told how things were until to-day,” she said. “I would
have scorned to be. I know Dave!”
Now of course reason was not altogether upon her side, and yet as she
looked straight at me with those clear uncompromising blue eyes of
hers, I hung my head.
“Now, you bear up, Rob, old fellow!” Dave counseled with an affectation
of lightness--I knew that it was an affectation by the anxious little
frown between his eyes. “We must get you home or we shall have your
father down upon us.”
Rob looked about him uneasily. “No, he has gone out to the back
pastures and from there he was going to ride up to Penfield. He won’t
be home until night. And that fat nurse eats a lot and gossips with
Marcella. It makes me feel better to be here. I wish I could get well
enough to go with you, Dave, when you go after Lucifer. If it would
only be safe to bring him home. But it won’t, you know; ten years
wouldn’t change Lucifer so father wouldn’t know him. But you will get
him boarded in a good place, won’t you, Dave? and so near that we can
go to see him!”
Dave’s teeth were set tightly together, his face was turned away from
Rob.
“I’ll do just the best I can, Rob, and soon now, I hope!” he said in a
cheerful tone. “But if you are going to pick up so you can go with me,
it won’t do for you to take such excursions as this!”
“You put me off about the horse; there’s something you don’t tell me!”
cried Rob querulously. “People think it’s all right to cheat me; and
then they spy upon me and try to make me tell them things, as Bathsheba
did. Why did she want to make me tell her, when she knew already? I
suppose she wanted to tell father that I had owned up. If he should
know, Dave, that you had borne all the blame for me--why I think it
would kill him! He is so proud; he is ashamed of my being a weakling,
as he calls it! And just the way he would look at me would kill me!
That girl that’s listening won’t tell, will she?”
He seemed suddenly aware of Alice Yorke’s presence and to realize that
he was revealing more than was prudent.
“No, she won’t tell; I am sure I can answer for that,” said Dave
gravely. “No one will tell.” And looking over Rob’s head Dave made a
solemn, mournful sign to Estelle and me. It meant that Rob would not
live long; we must humor him at whatever cost. Now inwardly I rebelled.
I thought there had been too much yielding to Rob’s whims already; that
Dave’s had been a foolish martyrdom. It was natural that a strong and
healthy young man like Dave should think Rob was upon the verge of the
grave; I knew that puny people sometimes live long. And I thought it
quite time that Dave’s costly sacrifice should come to an end.
Was the only difference to be that Estelle should have added sight to
her faith, and that I, whereas I had been blind, should see? I wished
to tell as well as know.
My heart burned within me. In spite of Rob’s weakness I should have
blazed forth my opinion of his selfishness, if Dave had not laid a
restraining hand upon me. He drew me a little aside.
“It’s no use now, Bathsheba, don’t you see?” he said. “I shouldn’t have
promised to keep silent about it, if Uncle Horace had not been just
what he is and Rob in such terror of him. It’s constitutional with Rob,
you know. Uncle Horace’s wife was afraid of him in the year before she
died. No one can help pitying the poor boy.”
There was a noise behind the boards that startled me.
“You are afraid of your shadow! Those loose boards are light and the
wind rattles them,” said Dave carelessly. “As I was saying I had to do
just what I did--pay the money and get the check back on which Rob had
forged his father’s name, and let the college authorities think that
I had lost the money in betting. I couldn’t say, could I, that I had
only followed Rob to Newmarket when he got off a sick-bed and made his
way there somehow, because a picture of one of the race-horses which
he saw by accident had made him sure that it was his old Lucifer;--the
boy’s love for animals is almost morbid. Yes, perhaps I ought to have
said so, Bathsheba; there were others to be thought of besides Rob
or myself. But I gave him my promise hastily. I didn’t foresee the
expulsion from college and all the consequences. When Rob found what
a serious matter it was, he became wild with terror lest his father
should find out.”
“We that are strong should bear the burdens of the weak, but we
shouldn’t help them to be selfish,” I said sententiously.
“But Rob is so very weak! He’s different from other people. If his
father had only realized that and made allowances for it.”
“But, now,” I said, “surely there’s no need of keeping on with the
stupid deceit.” For I was too angry to give any fine names to the
foolish business.
“But, now, do you know, I’ve come to rather like the martyrdom?” said
Dave, with actually a twinkle in his eye. “I’ve learned in it more
than I could have learned in college! ‘There’s a divinity that shapes
our ends,’ you know!”
“God’s providence is mine inheritance,” flashed into my mind, but I
would not say it lest I should encourage the boy in folly.
“I have been practising at something besides ship-carpentering,
although that isn’t such a bad thing for a fellow with muscle to earn
his living by! And I have some chance, perhaps only a slight one, of
making a success of it.”
How that telegram burned in my pocket when I saw the wistful eagerness,
mingled with doubt, in his eyes!
But I kept it in my pocket and held my peace. Being a sister to a boy
is a matter that requires diplomacy!
“And I’m living it down,” continued Dave, not without a touch of pride
in his voice. “Cyrus has confidence in me already. Even Uncle Horace
has asked my opinion of several matters connected with these business
troubles. Promise me, Bathsheba, that you’ll keep quiet and let me live
it down.”
“I can’t bear that they shouldn’t know it. Uncle Horace and Cyrus,
especially Uncle Horace; he was so perfectly sardonic that Thanksgiving
day!”
The wind seemed to be rising; those boards rattled so.
“Wait, for my sake, if not for poor Rob’s,” he insisted. “‘The mills of
the gods grind slowly,’” he added lightly.
“‘The mills of God,’” I amended.
“‘Though the mills of God grind slowly
Yet they grind exceeding small,
Though with patience He stands waiting
With exactness grinds He all.’”
I murmured the words, as Dave hurried back to Rob, fearing that he
would take cold in the fresh wind. They were beautifully true words,
I know, and yet I felt wicked enough at that moment to long to help a
little in the grinding of Uncle Horace!
I loitered, reflecting, on the way back to the others. With a vague
recollection of the feeling I had had that some one was near I turned
around. The great unfinished vessel, some of its ribs still bare, so
slowly had the work progressed of late, loomed large between the blue
of the river and the blue of the sky.
Stepping from the shadow of a great heap of sawdust a tall, gaunt
figure was visible for a moment, then was lost to sight behind the
vessel’s stern. To the back pastures his father had gone, Rob said, and
he was going thence to Penfield; but was there another figure in the
world that could be mistaken for Uncle Horace’s?
I stepped back to the rattling boards. There were huge tracks behind
them, that went zigzagging away as if their maker had moved stealthily
behind one pile of boards and then another. From the ground I picked
up a dog-skin driving-glove--a very large one. Had I, all unwittingly,
assisted vigorously at the grinding of Uncle Horace?