Sally was in rather better spirits for some time after that walk to
Fisherman's Cove, although there is some doubt whether the improvement
was due to her brief sight of the Cove under a winter sun and moon or
to realization of the fact that a great number of people were worse
off than she or to her break with Everett or to seeing Fox again. But
her break with Everett was of only a temporary nature, a fact which he
made very evident to her, at least, and, incidentally, to Miss Miller
and to Miss Lambkin and to Mrs. Upjohn and to many others; and, as for
seeing Fox, she had been enjoying that privilege for twelve years,
from time to time. To be sure, it had occasionally been a long while
from time to time, but that had not seemed to trouble Sally. So,
altogether, we are forced to abandon the inquiry as fruitless. Sally,
if we had asked her, would have smiled and would have answered quite
truly that she didn't know and she didn't care. It was the fact which
was most important; the fact was, indeed, of the only importance,
except to persons like Miss Letty Lambkin, who are never satisfied
with the simple facts of life, but must dig down until they find
certain diseased roots, which they fondly believe, without further
tracing, to be the roots of those facts, but which, more often than
not, do not belong to them at all, but to some other tree.
Fox's hospital had had an opening, to which the inhabitants of Whitby
were invited. Whitby, in a way, was as exclusive as Philadelphia, and
Fox's cards of invitation were addressed only to those fortunate
persons living in a certain restricted area. That area was bounded, on
the east, by the Cow Path, although a few cards found their way down
the hill as far as Mrs. Stump's and Miss Miller's. Consequently,
Patty went and so did Mrs. Ladue and Sally. It might have been a
reception, for they found there nearly the whole of the elite of
Whitby and no one else, and the whole of the hospital staff were
engaged in showing small parties of the aforesaid elite over the
hospital and the farm connected with it. The hospital staff had no
other engagements, there being no patients yet. Patty was delighted
with it--and with the staff--and expressed her intention of coming out
to board as soon as the spring opened. And Fox, to whom this speech
was addressed--it was delivered in rather a coquettish manner, all
Miss Patty's own--smiled and bowed and made no reply. Perhaps no reply
was expected. Fox had heard many such remarks. He would have his
patients from among the makers of them.
As soon as he could, Fox took Mrs. Ladue and Sally out over the farm.
Patty was deep in conversation with Doctor Beatty. So he missed her,
to his great regret, he said. But, never mind. She'll have a chance to
see it. And thereupon he smiled enigmatically, and proceeded to show
them what had been done. He was proud of it. When he had shown them
all of it, he waved his hand toward the old cream-colored square
house.
"My residence," he said. "I am afraid that it will have to remain shut
up as it is, for the present. Henrietta's change of plan--or, I
shouldn't say that, perhaps--her engagement knocks my scheme of things
in the head. She is to be married in June, you know."
"But, Fox," Mrs. Ladue exclaimed, "surely, you don't mean that you
won't open the house at all!" She was sorry for him. Why did he have
to miss the satisfaction of living in his own house? Such a house,
too!
He nodded. "I don't see any prospect of it," he answered, rather
gloomily for him; "at least," he added, with a short laugh, "until I
am married. There is really no reason for it, you know. There is
likely to be room enough at this end of the establishment for some
time."
It was Margaret Savage he referred to, Sally supposed. At least,
Henrietta, she remembered, had said--had intimated it. Suddenly, she
hated the old house.
"It's a shame," Mrs. Ladue said softly. "It's a perfect shame, Fox.
If--if you want to live in it, there's no reason--"
Fox shook his head. "It wouldn't be best or wise, dear Mrs. Ladue," he
said gently. "I can wait."
"Aren't you going to show it to us?" asked Mrs. Ladue then, with
heightened color. "We should like to see the inside, shouldn't we,
Sally?"
But Sally did not have a chance to reply. "Not to-day," said Fox.
"Sometime, soon, I hope, but not to-day."
He said no more and Mrs. Ladue said nothing and Sally said nothing;
and they went in again, by unanimous consent, and presently Mrs. Ladue
and Sally and Patty drove away, although so early a departure was much
against Patty's inclination. They would not have succeeded in getting
her to go at all but that Fox took Doctor Beatty off to show him
something, and Doctor Beatty thanked him, although he did not make it
clear whether it was for wanting to show him the something or for
taking him away. But Meriwether Beatty had shown a capacity for
leaving Patty when he felt like it, so that I am forced to conclude
that that had nothing to do with his thanks. When they got back to
Mrs. Stump's they found a letter from Charlie waiting for them on the
hall table. I may add that Patty found a letter from Charlie, also,
but it was not like the one to his mother and Sally. It differed from
theirs in several important particulars.
Charlie wrote a letter home every week, with unfailing regularity. It
was a perfunctory letter, filled with the unimportant happenings at
college. It never gave any information about himself except on those
rare occasions when he had something favorable to report, and it did
not need to be anything exceptionally favorable either.
He wrote to Patty irregularly, sometimes more often sometimes less,
depending upon his needs. Once, when he had been having an unusually
good run of luck, he let nearly three weeks elapse between letters,
and then his next letter was almost seven pages long and contained no
reference to money. Patty had been awaiting a letter nervously and
opened this one with fear and trembling. The combination, after such
an interval, transported Patty with delight, and she ran over at once
to show the letter to Mrs. Ladue. It was the only one that she did
show to Mrs. Ladue, for all the others either were evidently dictated
by a necessity more or less dire, or they referred to previous "loans"
of which Mrs. Ladue and Sally knew nothing. Patty always managed to
supply his needs, although sometimes with extreme difficulty and with
a great casting up of accounts, in which process many perfectly good
pencils were consumed in a manner for which they were not intended. If
the makers of pencils had designed them for such use, they would have
made them with lolly-pops or chewing-gum on one end.
Charlie's letters to Patty were triumphs of art, and would have made
his scholastic fortune if they could have been presented as daily
themes. If they were not always free from error, they were always
readable and the matter was treated in a way which unfailingly would
have been of interest to any one but Patty, and they showed evidence
of a lively and well-nourished imagination which was not allowed to
become atrophied. "William Henry's Letters to his Grandmother,"
although of a somewhat different nature, were not a patch upon them.
But Patty was too much concerned about the matter treated in these
letters to be interested in their literary value; and, besides, she
was not in a position to know the extent of the exercise to which
Charlie's imagination was subjected in the course of composition. Her
own imagination was not without exercise, for she had to finance his
requests.
Patty's financing, that winter, would have done credit to a promoter.
She had already succeeded in getting herself involved deeply with the
builder who was repairing her house and with Dick, although Dick was
as yet in blissful ignorance of the fact. The builder had been paid
but very little since Christmas; but he, being an elderly man who had
known her father well, and who, accordingly, trusted any member of the
family implicitly, had said nothing yet. Patty wondered, with some
fear and trembling, how much longer he would go on without saying
anything. And then she put the whole matter aside. She could not see
her way out yet.
It was not that she considered the repairs upon her house, which
amounted almost to rebuilding, as properly any business of Dick's.
But, unaccountably and inscrutably to Patty, if not to her friends and
acquaintances, her father had given Richard Torrington great
discretion, under his will. The Richard aforesaid was even empowered
to keep the management of all Patty's property and to give her no more
than a stated allowance, if he saw good reason to do so. Mr. Hazen had
made him virtually a trustee, perhaps actually; but, so far, he seemed
to regard himself as no more than the channel through which Patty's
money must necessarily flow and he honored all her requests, asking
only that she tell him the general purpose to which the money was to
be applied.
In consequence of this situation, there had been certain checks signed
by Richard Torrington, Executor, designed to be applied to payments
upon the house. Several of these checks had been hypothecated by Patty
and diverted to other uses. Possibly Charlie Ladue could have given
some information as to those uses. Certainly Patty could not. She knew
nothing at all of the ultimate purposes to which her money was put.
For that matter, Charlie's knowledge went only one step farther. He
was nothing but a channel through which Patty's money necessarily
flowed. A good, generous sewer-pipe would have served as well, for all
the good that the money did him; and the process was rapidly
undermining Patty's morals.
It was a great pity that Patty had chosen this method of supply. As
long as she was bound to keep Charlie supplied with whatever he asked
for, or as nearly as she could come to that, it would have been much
better to ask Dick to double her allowance for her personal use. He
might have wondered at such a request, but he would have done it
without question, and thereby Patty's self-respect would have been
saved without producing any effect upon Charlie's in either way. One
wonders whether Charlie had any shreds of self-respect left, anyway.
So it is difficult to say whether Patty looked forward with greater
joy than dread to Charlie's coming home for the Easter recess. For
some weeks he had kept her stirred up by his requests, but these
requests were for relatively small sums, ten dollars or twenty-five,
and once he asked for fifty. But for ten days before his vacation, he
had asked her for nothing, and her fears were forgotten.
When, at last, the Easter recess began, Charlie appeared promptly on
the afternoon when he should have appeared and he looked neither
forlorn nor seedy. To a careful eye, a loving eye, watching him for
some days, he might have seemed to be possessed of an anxiety which he
took pains to conceal; but it was an elusive thing and, if he chose to
deny its existence, how was one to prove it?
Sally thought that she detected something, she could not tell just
what, and she asked her mother, casually, whether she had noticed
anything.
Mrs. Ladue looked up quickly. "I can't tell, Sally," she replied. "I
thought I did, and I spoke to Charlie about it, but he assured me that
there was nothing wrong and that it must be all my imagination. I
couldn't press the question. To tell the truth, I was afraid to. He
seems to have no disposition to confide in me and to have a low
opinion of my judgment, but I shouldn't like to have him say so.
If--if you could speak to him--"
"Very well," said Sally, sighing wearily, "I will, although I have no
hope of accomplishing anything by it--except arousing his suspicion,"
she added with a short laugh, "if there is anything which worries him
and which he is unwilling to tell. We are not in Charlie's
confidence."
"We have not been--_I_ have not been in his confidence for eleven
years--since I was taken sick." Mrs. Ladue sighed in her turn. "He
seems like a stranger. I haven't been able to get near him. But he
seems to be rather afraid of your judgment, Sally."
"That's not a great help," Sally remarked with another short laugh,
"in getting near him, is it? But I'll try."
Accordingly Sally asked him whether--she was careful to put the
question in as natural a form as possible and she tried to make it
seem casual, too--she asked him whether there was anything he would
like to have them do for him. It is not likely that she succeeded
thoroughly in either of these attempts, for Charlie only looked
startled and answered that he didn't think there was anything. And he
added that he was a little anxious about his reports. If they were not
as good as they might be, he hoped that mother would not be too much
disappointed. And Sally had shrugged a little and smiled a little and
shown a little of the contempt which she always felt for lying. She
did not know that Charlie was lying, but she felt that he was, and she
could not have helped that little smile of contempt to save her life.
But Charlie did not recognize her smile as one of contempt. He went
off to see Patty, smiling and patting himself on the back for having
thrown Sally off the scent so cleverly.
It is not to be supposed that either Mrs. Ladue or Sally was so
lacking in natural affection that she let Charlie go on the way he was
going without a struggle--without several struggles. Not that they
knew just the way he was going, but they knew very well that they had
lost all their control over him; the control which is due to a mutual
love. It was Charlie who had shown a lack of natural affection. His
mother had struggled in vain against that lack and against the effect
of Patty's indulgence. As for Sally, if the love and regard of ten or
twelve years before, a love very like a mother's, had been changed
insensibly into the tolerant contempt of the strong for the weak--not
always perfectly tolerant, I am afraid--Charlie had only himself to
blame. But, as for blaming himself--pfooh! Much he cared!