IN THE HOUR OF NEED
In the meantime Alva, left alone in her room, felt troubled, vastly
troubled, by the sorrow and shame gathering so close to her. The
emotions of those near by affect one keenly attuned, in a degree that
the less sensitive would hardly believe possible.
She went and locked the door after Lassie left, and going to a chair
that happened to stand close to the bureau, sat down there, leaned her
face on her hand and thought earnestly of the whole matter.
"Why must I trouble so?" she said to herself, presently; "no one else
does," and then she smiled sadly. "It is because I have set my face in
that direction," she said; "I have vowed myself to service, just as he
has vowed himself, for the love of God and God in humanity."
A light tap on her own door sounded, and she started, crying "Come in,"
quite forgetting that the door was locked.
Some one tried the door and then Alva sprang up and unfastened it. It
opened, and Miss Lathbun stood there in the crack.
"May I come in for a few minutes?" she asked, pale and with frightened
eyes.
"Yes, come in," Alva said quickly; "come in and sit down." She drew a
chair near to the one that she had been occupying.
"I have come to you on a--" began the girl, "on a--on a--" she stammered
and stopped.
"You are in trouble," Alva said gently; "tell me all about it."
"I am going to tell you; I have come on purpose to tell you. You were so
kind and friendly the other day, and I--I--wasn't truthful; I didn't
tell you everything."
Alva rested her face on her hand again and looked straight at her. "Then
tell me everything now," she said.
Miss Lathbun returned her look. "Mr. O'Neil has just been up to tell
Mother that we must pay our bill here, or leave," she said. "Mother is
desperate. She doesn't know what to do, and I don't know what to do. I
told you so little of the whole story. The truth is that he is actually
driving Mother and me into poverty. The truth is that I don't know
whether he ever really has thought of marrying me. Mother never has
believed that he has. She doesn't think that he would put us to such
straits if he was honest. Of course she doesn't know about his watching
nights. I can't tell her. She'd go mad."
Alva contemplated her quietly. "But you love him?" she said.
Miss Lathbun's eyes filled with tears. "I do love him, and I believe
that he loves me."
"You feel sure of it, don't you?"
The girl looked at her earnestly. "Doesn't one always know?" she asked.
Alva smiled a little. "One ought to," she assented; "well, then, how
can he bear to make your life so miserable?"
The white girl clasped her delicate hands tightly in her thin black
merino lap. "I don't know," she said, in a voice almost like a wail;
"but oh, we have been very miserable! We have such little income and it
comes through the lawyer. He sent the lawyer to Seattle on business in
July, and Mamma and I haven't had any money since. We have gone from
place to place--we have almost fled from place to place; our trunks are
held for bills; we are penniless, winter is coming, and--oh, I don't
know what to do; I don't know what to do!" She bit her lip so as not to
cry, but her pale face worked pitifully.
Alva looked at her in a curiously speculative but not at all heartless
way. "Isn't it strange," she murmured, "that the resolution that drives
one man to any heights will drive another of the same calibre to any
depths?" She rose and went to her table. "Tell me," she said, taking a
framed picture from before the mirror, "is he really like this? You said
so before. Say it again."
Miss Lathbun took the picture in her two hands. "Oh, yes, yes!" she
said, eagerly; "it is the same. They are just the same."
"What did you say his name was?" Alva asked, taking the picture from her
and restoring it to its place.
Miss Lathbun told her: "Lisle C. Bayard."
Alva sat down again, and rested her chin on her hand as before. "I
wonder how I can really help you. I am trying to be big enough to see."
Miss Lathbun's lips parted slightly; she looked at her breathlessly, and
held her peace.
"Even if you were lying to me still," Alva said presently, "I should
want just as much to help you. If you cheated me and laughed at me
afterwards, I should still want to help you. If you are an adventuress
and I succored you, what would count to me would be that I tried to do
right."
She spoke in a strange, meditative manner; Miss Lathbun continued to
watch her, always white, and whiter.
"I cannot see why you and your mother came into my life," Alva went on;
"but you have come, and I have been interested in you. Our paths seemed
ready to diverge and yet just now they join again. Do you know, that a
week or so ago I knelt in a church and took two vows; one was to accept
without murmur whatever life might bring because for the moment I was so
superlatively blessed; the other was to never again pass any trouble by
carelessly. No matter what is brought to me, I must deal with it as
earnestly and justly as I know how,--as I shall try to deal with you."
She got up, took a key from the pocket of a coat hanging on a hook near
by, unlocked her trunk, opened a purse therein, and extracted some
bills.
The girl watched her like one fascinated.
Alva came to her side and put the roll in her hands and closed her
fingers over it. "It will settle everything," she said; "there, take it,
go. Be honest again. Surprise every one. God be with you."
Hannah Adele looked down at her hand as if in a dream. "I was going to
ask you for a little money," she faltered; "but this--this--"
"I know," said Alva, "I knew when you came in. Now, please don't say any
more. Go back to your mother and tell her. I shall not say one word
about it, you can depend upon me."
The girl rose in a blind, stupid kind of way and left the room. When she
was gone, Alva went to the window for a minute and looked out. The
glisten of coming cold was in the air. The thistles were loosing their
down and it floated on the wind like ethereal snow. She stood there for
a long time. "Something is to be," she murmured, "I feel it coming. What
is it?"
Then she went to her table, picked up a pen and wrote:
LISLE C. BAYARD,
_Dear Sir_:--I am acting under an impulse which I cannot
overcome. It may be only a folly, but it is too strong within
me to be resisted.
You may or may not know two ladies of the name of Lathbun; you
may or may not be interested in them; but if by any chance you
are interested in them, you ought to know that both have been
threatened with terrible trouble. If the story which I have
been told be really true it ought to make you not sorry, but
very glad, to learn that in their hour of stress they found a
friend.
Yours very truly ...
and she signed her full name.
After that she wrote another letter, with full particulars of the story.
And when that letter, too, was finished, she slipped on her wraps and
walked up the cinder-path to the post-office.
She found Mrs. Ray just in the fevered finale of her chase after ants.
"Put the letters on the counter," said the postmistress; "I'm standing
on the post-box, and the Republican party is getting one good, useful
deed to its credit this term, anyhow. I tried a soap box and bu'st
through, and I haven't had a worse shock since I stepped down the wrong
side of the step-ladder last spring, when I was kalsomining for Mrs.
Clinch. But the post-box is as steady as the Bank of England and I feel
as if for this one occasion, at least, my grocery business was coming
out on top. Well, has anything new come up down your way since noon?
Haven't paid their bill yet, have they?"
"I think they'll pay it," said Alva, smiling.
"Pay it! Those two? Well, not much! You're from the city and don't get a
chance to judge character like I do, but I tell you every one that is
honest has got to have a change of undershirts, at least. I've heard of
people as turned them hind side before one week, and inside out the
next, but they washed 'em the week after that, if they had any
reputations at all to keep up."
"Do you want to bet with me as to Mrs. Lathbun's paying her bill, Mrs.
Ray?" Alva asked.
Mrs. Ray turned and looked sharply down from her government perch. "My
goodness me," she said, "you surely ain't been fool enough to lend her
money, have you?"
Alva was too startled to collect herself.
"Well, you deserve to lose it then," said Mrs. Ray, climbing down
abruptly; "see here, it isn't any of my business, but I'm going to make
it my business and tell you the plain truth, and if you take offence
I'll have done my duty, anyhow. Now you listen to me and bear in mind
that I'm twice your age and have got all the experience of a
postmistress and a farmer, and a sexton and a grocery business and a
married woman and a widow and a stepmother; if you've lent money to the
Lathbuns you're going to lose it, for they're just what the paper
said--they're a foxy pair and no mistake, and furthermore, with all the
money you're spending on that house, you'd better be keeping your eyes
open, mark my words."
[Illustration: "IF YOU'VE LENT MONEY TO THE LATHBUNS YOU'RE GOING TO
LOSE IT."]
"Why, Mrs. Ray, what makes you say that?"
"Because I've got eyes of my own," said Mrs. Ray; "and I've been married
too. I've been married and I walked to the Lower Falls beforehand, too.
I saw 'em come up the road the first day, and I saw 'em going down it
to-day. I'd send her packing, if I was you."
Alva laughed ringingly. "Oh, Mrs. Ray," she exclaimed; "I'm not going to
marry that man, and besides, let me tell you something else; I haven't
_lent_ any money to the Lathbuns."
Mrs. Ray stared fixedly into her face for a long minute, then she said
abruptly: "You tell Nellie not to send up for mail to-night. I'll bring
the letters down. I'll be out filin' my bond, and I can just as well
bring 'em down. It won't do any good your coming for 'em, because the
post-office will be closed and me gone, so you couldn't get 'em if you
did come."
Alva smiled. "We'll wait at the house," she said, laying her hand on the
door-knob.
Mrs. Ray watched her take her departure.
"I'm glad she's give up the man so pleasant," she said; "and she's give
up the money just as pleasant. Poor thing! She thought she was smart
enough to keep me from seeing how she meant it. As if any one from a
city could fool me!"