Henrietta had no great difficulty in doing it. She made a good
beginning before Charlie went back to college, although she had only a
little more than a fortnight, and she continued her attentions at
frequent intervals thereafter. There was nothing crude about either
Henrietta or her methods. She did not let him suspect her object or,
indeed, that she had an object, and Charlie did not look for one. His
own attractions were enough, goodness knows, to account for any
attentions that might be lavished upon him, and he accepted those
attentions almost as a matter of course. But as attentions and he had
become, to a certain extent, strangers,--always excepting Patty's
attentions, which did not count,--Charlie was very grateful in his
inmost soul and he made the most of them. He came down to Whitby more
often than he had been in the habit of doing and he invariably went to
the Torringtons' at the first possible moment and spent as much time
there as he could. He even developed a certain shyness which was very
becoming. But he avoided Dick. He had a grudge against Dick and he was
resolved not to forget it. Dick had done him an injury.
He did find himself forgetting that injury, in time. Who, in the face
of Dick's leisurely cordiality and general good nature, could remember
not to forget it? And in time--not so very long a time either--he
perceived that Henrietta had a secret sorrow which gnawed like a worm
at her heart. He set himself the task of pursuing this sorrow and
plucking it out; and--marvel of marvels!--he succeeded in dragging
from the unwilling Henrietta some information as to its nature. We
can, perhaps, imagine the reluctance with which this information was
given.
Charlie, although he may have been secretly disappointed that
Henrietta's sorrow was not more serious,--he may have thought that it
was of no less import than that she had found, too late, that she
loved another man better than she did her husband,--Charlie, I say,
although he may have been disappointed, managed to conceal whatever of
disappointment he felt.
"Oh," he said magnanimously and with sufficient indifference, "don't
you worry about that. I can fix that. I'll just speak to Patty about
it the very next time I go out there."
He did; and he reported to Henrietta that he had prevailed upon Patty
to consent to any arrangement she liked. He had also prevailed upon
Patty--not reported to Henrietta--to scrape together as many dollars
as she could conveniently manage to scrape--conveniently or
inconveniently, it was all one to Charlie--and to hand them over to
him for some purpose. It really does not matter what the purpose was.
Charlie was very fertile in invention, and if it was not one thing it
was another. Any excuse was good enough. But the strain was telling
upon Patty. Charlie should have been more careful.
Henrietta was so pleased with the report that she redoubled her
attentions. This may not have been wise, but there seems to be no
doubt that it was good for Charlie, on the whole. He went in to number
seven but once before Christmas, and there might have been some ground
for hope that, between Henrietta's attentions and his devotion to
automobiles, he might be induced to give it up altogether. Harry
Carling, who was keeping as close a watch upon Charlie as he could,
hoped so, at all events.
For Charlie, in his sophomore year, ran to motor cars. Indulgence of a
fine fancy for motors is apt to be expensive, as Patty was finding
out, but it is not as expensive as Charlie's one other diversion is
apt to be, on occasion. That his one experience of it, in his first
term, was not more expensive must be set down solely to luck.
Automobiles were bad enough, as a diversion, for a boy who could
afford them no better than Charlie Ladue. Patty learned of them with
horror. She had hoped, fondly, that Charlie had given them up after
his experience with them only last Easter; oh, she _hoped_ he had. She
said it with tears in her eyes and with an agonized expression that
would have melted a heart less hard than Charlie's. But Charlie merely
smiled. That phantom car had done him no harm, although he did not
call it a phantom car to Patty. Motor cars were not for the Hazens;
not for people of the older regime. And Charlie smiled again and
remarked that they might not have come to motors yet, but they would.
Patty said, with some spirit, that they were vulgar and that
they--they had a bad smell. For her part, she was satisfied to go no
faster than nature intended. The horse, as Charlie might be aware, was
the fastest animal that goes.
Having delivered this shot with evident pride, Patty sat back in her
chair and waited to see if Charlie would be able to make any reply.
She considered that last argument unanswerable. Charlie apparently did
not. He observed that Pat's horse, rising thirty and rather fat, could
hardly be called the fastest animal that goes. He never was very fast.
But he contented himself with that, for Patty had just turned over to
him all the ready money that she could raise and was feeling really
impoverished in consequence. So Charlie, having got what he came for,
took his leave, bidding Pat not to be anxious on his account, for he
wasn't going to get smashed up again--he almost forgot to put in the
"again"--and he wasn't going to spend much money on machines in the
future. They always cost more at first, before you got used to them.
With this comforting assurance, at which poor Patty sighed and said
that she hoped he was right, Charlie went out cheerfully to sit behind
one of the fastest animals that go, and to take the rig, for which
Sally would have to pay, back to the livery stable.
Nothing in particular happened that winter, except that Dick and
Henrietta moved into Miss Patty's house early in February. Patty was
getting to be considered--and to consider herself--one of Doctor
Sanderson's patients. And the Retreat was filling up and she did not
want to give up her comfortable room, with the probable chance that
she would be unable to get it again when she came back. In fact, it
looked as if anybody had better hold on to what she had at Doctor
Sanderson's.
So Sally saw but little of Fox that winter. They were both very busy,
and Sally had her hands and her head full, with the office and her
school, too. But she liked the office in spite of the work which,
between you and me, was not very hard. There was a good deal of it,
but it was interesting and Sally went home at night, tired and happy
and with her head full of schemes. Sometimes Everett was waiting for
her. She did not know whether she liked that or not, but there did not
seem to be reason enough for sending him away. She did not quite know
what her relations were with Everett; friendly, she hoped, no more.
For there was a difference between Sally's state of mind now and her
state of mind the year before. She was not indifferent now, she was
happy and things mattered in a wholesome way. But Sally knew that Fox
had not opened the cream-colored house again; not since Henrietta's
wedding. He had not even made any preparations to open it. Sally was
watching that house, out of the corner of her eye, and she knew. What
an old slow poke he was, wasn't he? The winter was gone before she
knew it and it was almost Easter. Then, one afternoon, Charlie made
his appearance, suddenly and unexpectedly, and went up to see
Henrietta almost immediately.
Sally was vaguely worried by this sudden appearance of Charlie, she
could not tell why. She had felt, all along, a great relief that he
had taken so readily to the Henrietta treatment and she had felt some
surprise at it. Having worried about it for an hour, she put it aside.
It would be time enough to worry when she knew there was something to
worry about. When that time did come, she would not have time to
worry, for she would probably be too busy doing something about it.
It was inaction that worried Sally, which is the case with most of us.
At any rate, Charlie was all right for the present. He had only gone
up to Henrietta's. Then Harry Carling came in: "J--j--just c--c--came
d--d--down t--to s--s--see H--H--Ho--orry, y--y--you kn--n--now,
S--S--Sally, f--f--for a m--m--min--n--nute." And Sally smiled and
shook hands with Harry and hastened to say--to save Horry the painful
experience of mentioning the matter--that he could go whenever he
wanted to, so far as she knew. And they went out together.