ACROSS THE YEARS
The Nicholets and the Endicotts had been sworn allies for generations.
Their genealogical roots were entwined in early Massachusetts Bay
history. Their forebears had perhaps helped each other burn witches and
slaughter Indians in the ancient days. Basicly the families were even
now as puritanical as the Sacred Codfish.
Yet under ordinary circumstances the Endicotts and the Nicholets,
although living side by side, would seldom think of interfering in--or
even discussing--each other's private affairs. New England people are
that way--the better class. Without being invited to do so Miss Ida
would not have concerned herself in the Endicotts' financial
difficulties except in this extraordinary situation.
The shocking story that Lorna had brought home--this utterly
preposterous accusation against Ralph--quite startled Miss Ida out of
the rut of usage. Although she had been consulted in their trouble by no
member of the Endicott family, she felt that she must offer sympathy
and--if possible--assistance. Although she seldom troubled her mind
about financial affairs--leaving those details to her brother--Miss Ida
was really the head of the Nicholet family. The bulk of the family
wealth was hers, as well as the homestead at Harbor Bar.
She was in a position therefore to aid Henry Endicott privately, were he
in need--as she believed he was. The professor's awkwardness when he
had called on her several evenings previous, when he had really come to
offer his assistance to Lorna's father, had served to convince Miss Ida
that the Endicotts were in need.
For years everybody who knew him had said that Professor Endicott was
wasting his substance in experiments that would never amount to anything
of a practical nature. Miss Ida herself believed that he had frittered
away much time and money since resigning as a young man from the chair
of experimental chemistry in a mid-New England college.
Just what had happened twenty and more years before this present date to
drive the wedge between Miss Ida and Henry Endicott no member of either
family knew. A match that at the time was considered eminently fitting
had suddenly become impossible. That was all anybody--save the two most
interested persons themselves--ever learned about it.
It was years later, when Ralph and Lorna were half grown, that Professor
Endicott and Miss Ida Nicholet began to agree on one important subject.
The two families should be united through Ralph and Lorna. The young
people, they both said, were made for each other.
That this statement had likewise been made _en famille_ about themselves
when they were young, Miss Ida and Henry Endicott perhaps had forgotten.
At least--as has been shown--neither would admit to nephew and niece any
good reason why the latter should not fulfill the arrangement.
On this particular morning Miss Ida was not thinking of her niece's
opposition to being joined with Ralph Endicott in wedlock. She flung a
shawl about her shoulders and wound a knitted scarf around her head to
venture out into the gale. A less important errand than the one she had
in view might have caused her to hesitate on the side porch. The gale
off the water was all but breath-taking.
On a day like this Mrs. Lucy Markham would not leave her own apartment.
The children would be in the playroom at the top of the house, as they
could not race the beaches below the clay cliff. Professor Endicott?
Miss Ida saw Jerome coming from the direction of the stable and garage,
the main part of which building was devoted to the experimental
laboratory. So she did not go to the house, but halted the old serving
man on the walk.
"Where is Professor Endicott, Jerome?"
"He's in his study--I mean the laboratory, Miss Nicholet. He's just had
me in to shave him, Miss. Isn't this a dreadful morning?"
"I wish to see the professor at once, Jerome," said Miss Ida, and
hurried on without rejoinder to his question, such was her agitation.
When she turned the knob of the door the wind drove both the door and
herself inward with a crash.
"Hoity-toity! What's this?" ejaculated the professor.
He stood at the sink with a towel in both hands, wiping his face dry
after applying the shaving embrocation. He stared at his visitor over
this towel as though she were an apparition.
"Miss Ida? My goodness! Let me shut the door." He sprang to it and
put a sturdy shoulder to the barrier, for he was no weakling. "Do sit
down, Ida. You are all out of breath. What has happened?"
He aided her to the swivel chair which stood before the desk he
sometimes used. At first glance Miss Ida's fingers itched to set it to
rights. It was heaped with papers and books and retorts and glasses, as
well as a multitude of riffraff.
Professor Endicott stood off from her and stared. He was without coat or
vest. There was a much warmer expression in his eyes now that they were
not veiled by the shell-rimmed spectacles he usually wore.
"What has happened, Ida?" he asked again.
"It is about Ralph," she told him, having recovered her breath if not
her tranquillity.
"Oh? Yes. Ralph," he murmured.
He looked puzzled, but he searched and found among the papers on the
desk an unfolded letter ("How could he place it in that mess?" was Miss
Ida's thought) and looked at it attentively.
"I found this tucked under the door after Ralph had gone away, it seems.
To tell the truth, Ida, I have been too deeply engaged recently to
attend to any exterior matters. Let us see, when was it I saw you last?
Has John returned from Boston?"
"No, John has not returned," she said coldly. "I know you have shut
yourself up here. I do not see how you dare make a recluse of yourself.
How do you know what is happening to your family?"
"Oh! I---- There is Cousin Luce, you know."
"Yes. I know and you know just how much of a housekeeper and manager
she is!" ejaculated Miss Ida. "It cannot truthfully be said that Lucy
Markham neglects your brother's family--and you. For she never in this
world paid any attention to such a duty. How you expect the younger
children will grow up----"
"Oh, now, Ida. They seem to get along very well," he demurred.
"Healthy and happy and all that. And Ralph---- By the way, this letter
now---- I have neglected something which he reminds me of in this.
But, believe me, these final experiments have been most enthralling.
"You must know, my dear Ida, that I have been associating myself with
certain government chemists. They come to me when they can get no
further in their experiments. We have finally completed a chemical
formula that will revolutionize the expansion of balloons--if you know
what I mean? It is a lighter and positively un-inflammable gas.
"My royalties will be rather large. Not that I have aided our
government solely for a monetary consideration," he added
parenthetically. "But our income will be quite doubled by these
royalties I have agreed to accept."
"What?" gasped Miss Ida, so astounded that she was more than abrupt.
"You say--you make _money_--from these--these----?"
She stared around at the littered place. Mentally, on entering, she had
called it a pig-sty!
"Oh, yes. I have made quite a lot of money in the past. Much more than
I ever could have obtained from a salaried position. But nothing like
these royalties from this last invention. Of course, it is commercial,
in a way, and the Endicotts have never been commercially inclined. But,
then----"
"Henry Endicott!" she breathed, "then you are not in--in financial
difficulties?"
"Financial difficulties? Not at all! Not at all! Far from it, I may
confidently say. Indeed, my dear Ida," and he flushed painfully, "I am
so situated that if you--if John---- That is, if you would allow me, as
an old and tried friend----"
"Well?" demanded Miss Ida, sitting very straight in the chair and
looking at him most uncompromisingly it seemed.
"Why, I---- You see, my nephew says here," the professor hastily went
on, referring to the paper in his hand. "Ahem! Let me see. Yes. 'I
am going on a voyage with Captain Bob Pritchett on the _Nelly G_. No!
That is not the place. Oh, here: 'Look out for Lorna, Uncle Henry. See
her father just as soon as he gets home. If they need help you know
whatever I have they are welcome to.'"
Miss Ida rose to her feet in a flame of indignation.
"What under the sun does the boy mean?" she asked haughtily. "Such
impudence! Does that mean, Henry, that Ralph has defaulted in the
understood arrangement that he and Lorna were to marry? I thought that
it was entirely my niece's fault that her engagement to Ralph was not
yet announced."
"Does that sound cold, Ida?" rejoined the professor earnestly. "The boy
offers all he possesses to help Lorna--and you--in your trouble."
"Our trouble! What trouble? I do not know what you mean."
The professor broke through his restraint at last. Ralph's letter
fluttered to the floor. He seized Miss Ida's hands.
"There, there!" he said. "We know all about it, Ida. Nobody can feel
more sympathy for you than Ralph and I. I hoped to see John Nicholet
and talk it over with him. It would have been easier--for both you and
me.
"This is something that you cannot bear alone, Ida. Let me help. God
knows I, like my nephew, and for a greater reason, would gladly give you
every cent of my personal fortune----"
"Henry Endicott!" she finally gasped vehemently. "Do you think we need
financial assistance?"
But she did not withdraw her hands from his grasp. She looked into his
face (she was almost as tall as he was) with a strangely tender
expression flooding her own countenance.
"So the story goes, Ida," he said gently. "Hasn't John met with some
heavy losses? Or don't you know about it?"
"Nothing of the kind!" she cried. "It is ridiculous. And you---- Why!
we were told---- Where could Lorna have heard it? We believed you had
lost the greater part of your property. I came over here this morning
to offer assistance. I was afraid you had shut yourself up here in this
awful place, worrying over your losses. Oh, Henry!"
Suddenly he smiled. Like Ralph's, the professor's smile was a most
winning one. But it was not wholly the warmth of that smile that drew
the woman closer to him.
"Ida," he said, in some wonderment, "would you have done that for me?"
"We--we have been friends so many years, Henry."
The flush in her cheek was like a girl's, but she did not drop her gaze.
She met his look squarely.
"So many wasted years, Ida," the man repeated softly.
"You don't seem to have wasted them after all, Henry," she breathed. "I
only _thought_ you were a waster. You know I always did despise any
person who, in this busy and needy world, was non-productive."
Professor Endicott glanced about the laboratory. He shrugged his
shoulders.
"All this is vanity, Ida," he said. "Financial gain is a very small
part of life. We have existed, you and I, that is all--merely
vegetated. What we should have had--what was meant for us--has been
lost. We are bankrupt, Ida."
"No, no!"
His grasp of her hands relaxed. Her left hand stole up, up--across his
shoulder and around his neck. She pressed against him and at last her
gaze fell.
"No, no!" she whispered. "Not bankrupt, Henry. It is not too late----"
A little later Miss Ida raised her head from the professor's shoulder.
Her eyes were tear-drenched, but her smile was warm.
"Henry," she said, "I had forgotten. Do you know that they accuse Ralph
of helping to rob the Clinkerport Bank?"