looked up for a moment, saw him, but instantly resumed her attentive
listening. This was enough; he perceived that for the present, at least,
he was not wanted. He strolled on towards the field, and just below the
edge of the bluff he saw Lanigan Beam sitting under a tree.
"Hello!" said the latter, looking up, "are they at that stupid business
yet?"
Lodloe smiled. "Are you waiting for Miss Mayberry to get through with
her lesson?" he asked.
"Yes, I am," said Lanigan. "I have been hanging around here for half an
hour. I never saw such a selfish old codger as that Tippengray. I
suppose he will stick there with them the whole afternoon."
"And you want him!" said Lodloe.
"Want him!" exclaimed Lanigan; "not much. But I want her. If there were
only two together I would do as I did yesterday. I would join them, take
a part, and before long carry her off; but I can't do that with Mrs.
Cristie there. I haven't the cheek to break up her studies."
Lodloe laughed. "Don't let us wait for the second table," he said; "come
and take a walk to Lethbury."
It was now Lanigan's turn to smile.
"You think you would better not wait for the second table," he said;
"very well, then; come on."
The lesson on the bench had been deliberately planned by Mrs. Cristie.
She had been considering the subject of her nurse-maid and Lanigan Beam,
and had decided that it was her duty to interfere with the growth of
that intimacy. She felt that it was her duty to exercise some personal
supervision over the interests of the young person in her service, and
had given her some guarded advice in regard to country-resort
intimacies.
Having given this advice to Ida Mayberry, it struck Mrs. Cristie that it
would apply very well to herself. She remembered that she was also a
young person, and she resolved to take to herself all the advice she had
given to her nurse-maid, and thus it was that she was sitting on the
bench by Mr. Tippengray, listening to his very interesting discourse
upon some of the domestic manners and customs of the ancients, and their
surprising resemblance in many points to those of the present day.
Therefore it was, also, that she allowed Walter Lodloe to pass on his
way without inviting him to join the party.
When Lodloe and Beam reached Lethbury, the latter proposed that they
should go and worry Calthea Rose; and to his companion's surprised
exclamation at being asked to join in this diversion Lanigan answered,
that having been used to that sort of thing all his life, it seemed the
most natural sport in which to indulge now that he found himself in
Lethbury again.
"Very good," said Lodloe, as they approached Miss Rose's place of
business; "I shall not interfere with your native sports, but I do not
care to join them. I shall continue my walk, and stop for you on my way
back."
When Lanigan Beam entered Miss Rose's shop she was sitting, as was her
custom, by the back window, sewing. A neighbor had dropped in to chat
with her a half-hour before, but had gone away very soon. The people of
Lethbury had learned to understand when Calthea Rose did not wish to
chat.
Miss Calthea was not happy; she was disappointed. Things had not gone as
she hoped they would go, and as she had believed they would go when she
accepted Mrs. Petter's invitation to tea. That meal had been a very
pleasant one; even the presence of Ida Mayberry, who came to table with
the family when the baby happened to be asleep, did not disturb her. On
the contrary, it gratified her, for Lanigan Beam sat by that young
person and was very attentive to her. She carefully watched Mr.
Tippengray, and perceived that this attention, and the interest of the
child's nurse in Lanigan's remarks, did not appear to give him the least
uneasiness. Thereupon she began gradually, and she hoped imperceptibly,
to resume her former method of intercourse with the Greek scholar, and
to do so without any show of restoring him to favor. She did this so
deftly that Mrs. Cristie was greatly interested in the performance, and
an outside observer could have had no reason to suppose that there had
been any break in the friendly intercourse between Miss Rose and Mr.
Tippengray.
But this unsatisfactory state of things soon came to an end. When the
daylight began to wane, and Miss Calthea's phaeton had been brought to
the door, she went to it with her plans fully formed. As Mr. Tippengray
assisted her into the vehicle, she intended to accept his proposition to
drive her to Lethbury. She had slightly deferred her departure in order
that the growing duskness might give greater reason for the proposition.
There would be a moon about nine o'clock, and his walk back would be
pleasant.
But when she reached the phaeton Mr. Tippengray was not there. Ida
Mayberry, eager to submit to his critical eye two lines of Browning
which she had put into a sort of Greek resembling the partly cremated
corpse of a dead language, and who for the past ten minutes had been
nervously waiting for Master Douglas to close his eyes in sleep that she
might rush down to Mr. Tippengray while he was yet strolling on the
lawn by himself, had rushed down to him, and had made him forget
everything else in the world in his instinctive effort to conceal from
his pupil the shock given him by the sight of her lines. He had been
waiting for Miss Calthea to come out, had been intending to hand her to
her vehicle, and had thought of proposing to accompany her to the
village; but he had not heard the phaeton roll to the door, the
leave-taking on the porch did not reach his ear, and his mind took no
note whatever of the fact that Miss Rose was on the point of departure.
As that lady, stepping out upon the piazza, swept her eyes over the
scene and beheld the couple on the lawn, she gave a jerk to the glove
she was drawing on her hand that tore in it a slit three inches long.
She then turned her eyes upon her phaeton, declined the offer of Mr.
Petter to see her home, and, after a leave-taking which was a little
more effusive than was usual with her, drove herself to Lethbury. If the
sorrel horse had behaved badly in the early part of that afternoon, he
was punished for it in the early part of that evening, for he completely
broke all previous records of time made between the Squirrel Inn and
Lethbury.
Thus the hopes of Miss Calthea had been doubly darkened; the pariah with
the brimstone blossoms had not only treacherously deserted Lanigan, but
had made Mr. Tippengray treacherously desert her. She had been furiously
angry; now she was low-spirited and cross. But one thing in the world
could have then cheered her spirits, and that would have been the sight
of her bitterest enemy and Lanigan Beam driving or walking together past
her shop door; but when Lanigan alone entered that shop door she was not
cheered at all.
Mr. Beam's greeting was very free and unceremonious, and without being
asked to do so he took a seat near the proprietress of the
establishment.
"Well, well," he said, "this looks like old times. Why, Calthy, I don't
believe you have sold a thing since I was here last."
"If you had any eyes in your head," said Miss Calthea, severely, "you
would see that I have sold a great deal. Nearly everything, in fact."
"That proves my point," said Lanigan; "for nearly everything was gone
when I left."
"And some of the things that are gone," said she, "you still owe me
for."
"Well put, Calthy," said Lanigan, laughing; "and after that, let's drop
the business. What's new and what's stale in Lethbury?"
"You are about the newest as well as the stalest thing here," said she.
Lanigan whistled. "Calthy," said he, "would you mind my smoking a cigar
here! There will be no customers coming in."
"You know very well you cannot smoke here," she said; "what is the
matter with you? Has that pincushion-faced child's nurse driven you from
the inn?"
A pang went through Lanigan. Was Calthea jealous of Miss Mayberry on his
account? The thought frightened him. If he could have said anything
which would have convinced Calthea that he was on the point of marrying
Miss Mayberry, and that therefore she might as well consider everything
at an end between herself and him, he would have said it. But he merely
replied:
"She is a nice girl, and very much given to learning."
Now Miss Calthea could restrain herself no longer.
"Learning!" she exclaimed. "Stuff and deception! Impudent flirting is
what she is fond of, as long as she can get a good-for-naught like you,
or an old numskull like that Tippengray, to play her tricks on."
Now Lanigan Beam braced himself for action. This sort of thing would not
do; whatever she might say or think about the rest of the world, Calthea
must not look with disfavor on the Greek scholar.
"Numskull!" said he. "You're off the track there, Calthy, I never knew a
man with a better skull than Mr. Tippengray, and as to his being
old--there is a little gray in his hair to be sure, but it's my opinion
that that comes more from study than from years."
"Nonsense!" said Calthea; "I don't believe he cares a snap for study
unless he can do it with some girl. I expect he has been at that all his
life."
Now Lanigan's spirits rose; he saw that it was not on his account that
Calthea was jealous of Ida Mayberry. His face put on an expression of
serious interest, and he strove to speak impressively, but not so much
so as to excite suspicion.
"Calthea," said he, "I think you are not treating Mr. Tippengray with
your usual impartiality and fairness. From what I have seen of him, I am
sure that the great object of his life is to teach, and when he gets a
chance to do that he does it, and for the moment forgets everything
else. You may be right in thinking that he prefers to teach young
persons, and this is natural enough, for young people are much more
likely than older ones to want to learn. Now, to prove that he doesn't
care to teach young girls just because they are girls, I will tell you
that I saw him, this very afternoon, hard at work teaching Mrs. Cristie
and Ida Mayberry at the same time, and he looked twice as happy as when
he was instructing only one of them. If there were enough people here so
that he could make up a class, and could have a sort of summer school, I
expect he would be the happiest man on earth.
"I am afraid that is Mr. Tippengray's fault," continued Lanigan, folding
his hands in his lap and gazing reflectively at his outstretched legs.
"I am afraid that he gives too much of his mind to teaching, and
neglects other things. He is carried away by his love of teaching, and
when he finds one person, or a dozen persons who want to learn, he
neglects his best friends for that one person, or those dozen persons.
He oughtn't to do it; it isn't right--but then, after all, no man is
perfect, and I suppose the easiest way for us to get along is to stop
looking for perfection."
Miss Calthea made no answer. She gazed out of the window as if she was
mildly impressed with a solicitude for the welfare of her garden. There
flitted into her mind a wavering, indeterminate sort of notion that
perhaps Lanigan was a better fellow than he used to be, and that if she
should succeed in her great purpose it might not be necessary that he
should go away. But still,--and here prudence stepped in front of
kindliness,--if that child's nurse remained in the neighborhood, it
would be safer if Lanigan kept up his interest in her; and if she
ultimately carried him off, that was his affair.
Leaning forward, Miss Calthea took a match from a box on a shelf, and
handed it to Lanigan.
"You may as well smoke if you want to," she said; "it's not likely any
one will be coming in, and I don't object when the window is open."
Gratefully Lanigan lighted his cigar.
"Calthy, this is truly like old times," he said. "And to finish up with
Tippengray, I'll say that if Lodloe and I had not our mind so filled
with our own businesses and projects, I'd get him to go in with me, and
help make up a class; but if I were to do that, perhaps people might say
that all I wanted was to get in with the girls."
Here was a chance for Calthea to give her schemes a little push.
"There is only one girl," she said, "who would be likely to take part in
that sort of thing, and that is the child's nurse at the Squirrel Inn;
but if she really is given to study, I suppose she might help you to
improve your mind, and if you are what you used to be, it will stand a
good deal of improving."
"That's so, Calthy," said Lanigan; "that's so." He was in high good
humor at the turn the conversation had taken, but did his best to
repress his inclination to show it. "It might be well to go in for
improvement. I'll do that, anyway." Lanigan blew out a long whiff of
purple smoke. "Calthy is a deep one," he said to himself; "she wants me
to draw off that girl from the old man. But all right, my lady; you
tackle him and I will tackle her. That suits me beautifully."
At this moment Lodloe entered the shop, and Miss Calthea Rose greeted
him with much graciousness.
[Illustration: "CALTHY, THIS IS TRULY LIKE OLD TIMES."]
"You must have taken a short walk," said Lanigan. "Don't you want to
wait until I finish my cigar? It's so much pleasanter to smoke here than
in the open air. Perhaps Miss Calthea will let you join me."
Lodloe was perfectly willing to wait, but did not wish to smoke. He was
interested in what he had heard of the stock of goods which was being
sold off about as fast as a glacier moves, and was glad to have the
opportunity to look about him.
"Do you know, Calthy," said Lanigan, "that you ought to sell Mr. Lodloe
a bill of goods?" He said this partly because of his own love of
teasing, but partly in earnest. To help Calthea sell off her stock was
an important feature of his project.
"Mr. Lodloe shall not buy a thing," said Calthea Rose. "If he is ever in
want of anything, and stops in here to see if I have it in stock, I
shall be glad to sell it to him if it is here, for I am still in
business; but I know very well that Mr. Lodloe came in now as an
acquaintance and not as a customer."
"Beg your pardons, both of you," cried Lanigan, springing to his feet,
and throwing the end of his cigar out of the window; "but I say, Calthy,
have you any of that fire-blaze calico with the rocket sparks that's
been on hand ever since I can remember?"
"Your memory is pretty short sometimes," said Calthea, "but I think I
know the goods you mean, and I have seven yards of it left. Why do you
ask about it?"
"I want to see it," said Lanigan. "There it is on that shelf; it's the
same-sized parcel that it used to be. Would you mind handing it down to
me?"
Lanigan unrolled the calico upon the counter, and gazed upon it with
delight. "Isn't that glorious!" he cried to Lodloe; "isn't that like a
town on fire! By George! Calthea, I will take the whole seven yards."
"Now, Lanigan," said Miss Calthea, "you know you haven't the least use
in the world for this calico."
"I know nothing of the sort," said Lanigan; "I have a use for it. I want
to make Mrs. Petter a present, and I have been thinking of a
fire-screen, and this is just the thing for it. I'll build the frame
myself, and I'll nail on this calico, front and back the same. It'll
want a piece of binding, or gimp, tacked around the edges. Have you any
binding, or gimp, Calthy, that would suit?"
Miss Calthea laughed. "You'd better wait until you are ready for it,"
she said, "and then come and see."
"Anyway, I want the calico," said he. "Please put it aside for me, and
I'll come in to-morrow and settle for it. And now it seems to me that if
we want any supper we had better be getting back to the inn."
"It's not a bad idea," said Miss Calthea Rose, when she was left to
herself; "but it shall not be in a class. No, indeed! I will take good
care that it shall not be in a class."
XVII
BANANAS AND OATS
When Walter Lodloe walked to Lethbury because he could not talk to Mrs.
Cristie, it could not have been reasonably supposed that his walk would
have had more practical influence on his feelings towards that lady than
a conversation with her would have had; but such was the case.
It would have been very pleasant to talk, or walk, or chat, or stroll,
or play tennis, with her, but when he reached the quiet little village,
and wandered by himself along the shaded streets, and looked into the
pretty yards and gardens, on the profusion of old-fashioned flowers and
the cool green grass under the trees, and here and there a stone
well-curb with a great sweep and an oaken bucket, and the air of quaint
comfort which seemed to invade the interiors of those houses that were
partly opened to his view, it struck him, as no idea of the sort had
ever struck him before, what a charming and all-satisfying thing it
would be to marry Mrs. Cristie and live in Lethbury in one of these
cool, quaint houses with the quiet and shade and the flowers--at least
for a few years until his fortunes should improve.
He had a notion that Mrs. Cristie would like that sort of thing. She
seemed so fond of country life. He would write and she would help him.
He would work in the vegetable garden, and she among the flowers. It
would be Arcadia, and it would be cheap. Even with his present income
every rural want could be satisfied.
An infusion of feasibility--or what he looked upon as such--into the
sentimentality of such a man as Walter Lodloe generally acts as a
stiffener to his purposes. He was no more in love with Mrs. Cristie than
he had been when he left the Squirrel Inn, but he now determined, if he
saw any reason to suppose that she would accept them, to offer himself
and a Lethbury cottage to Mrs. Cristie.
He had a good opportunity to think over this matter and come to
decisions, for his companion walked half the way home without saying a
word.
Suddenly Lanigan spoke.
"Do you know," said he, "that I have about made up my mind to marry the
governess?"
"She isn't a governess," said Lodloe; "she is a nurse-maid."
"I prefer to invest her with a higher grade," said Lanigan; "and it is
pretty much the same thing, after all. Anyway, I want to marry her, and
I believe I can do it if nobody steps in to interfere."
"Who do you suppose would do that?" asked Lodloe.
"Well," said Lanigan, "if the Lethbury people knew about it, and had a
chance, every man jack of them, and every woman jack, too, would
interfere, and under ordinary circumstances Calthea Rose would take the
lead; but just now I think she intends to lend me a hand--not for my
good, but for her own. If she does that, I am not afraid of all Lethbury
and the Petters besides. The only person I am afraid of is Mrs.
Cristie."
"Why do you fear her?" asked Lodloe.
"Well," said Lanigan, "when she was at the inn some years ago I was at
my wildest, and her husband did not like me. He was in bad health, very
touchy, and I suppose I gave him reason enough to consider me an
extremely black sheep. Of course Mrs. Cristie naturally thought pretty
much as he did, and from what you told me of the conference over my
advent, I suppose her opinions haven't changed much. She has treated me
very well since I have been here, but I have no doubt that she would
consider it her duty to let Miss Mayberry know just the sort of fellow
she thinks I am."
"Of course she would do that," said Lodloe; "and she ought to do it."
"No, sir," said Lanigan; "you are wrong, and I am going to prove it to
you, and you shall see that I trust you as if I had known you years
instead of days. I want you to understand that I am not the same sort of
fellow that I used to be, not by any means. I told old Petter that, so
that he might have a little practice in treating me with respect, but I
didn't give him any reasons for it, because Calthea Rose would be sure
to suspect that he knew something, and she'd worm it out of him; but I
don't believe she could worm anything out of you. When I left this
place some eighteen months ago I went down to Central America and bought
a banana farm, paying very little money down. In less than three months
I sold my land to a company, and made a very good thing out of it. Then,
thinking the company after a while might want more land, I bought
another large tract, and before the end of the year I sold that to them,
doubling my money. Then I left the tropics, fearing I might go too deep
into that sort of speculation and lose every cent I had. I traveled
around, and at last landed in Chicago, and here the money-making fever
seized me again. It is a new thing to me, and a lot more intoxicating, I
can tell you. I invested in oats, and before I knew it that blessed
grain went up until, if its stalks had been as high as its price, it
would have been over my head. I sold out, and then I said to myself:
'Now, Lanigan, my boy, if you don't want to be a beastly pauper for the
rest of your life, you had better go home.' Honestly, I was frightened,
and it seemed to me I should never be safe until I was back in Lethbury.
Look here," he said, taking from a pocket a wallet filled with a mass of
papers and a bank-book; "look at those certificates, and here is my New
York bank-book, so you can see that I am not telling you lies.
"Now you may say that the fact of my having money doesn't prove that I
am any better than I used to be, but if you think that, you are wrong.
There is no better way to reform a fellow than to give him something to
take care of and take an interest in. That's my case now, and all I've
got I've given myself, which makes it better, of course. I'm not rich,
but I've got enough to buy out any business in Lethbury. And to go into
business and to live here are what will suit me better than anything
else, and that's not counting in Ida Mayberry at all. To live here with
her would be better luck than the biggest rise in oats the world ever
saw. Now you see where I stand. If Mrs. Cristie goes against me, she
does a cruel thing to me, and to Ida Mayberry besides."
"Why don't you tell her the facts?" said Lodloe. "That would be the
straightforward and sensible thing to do."
"My dear boy," said Lanigan, "I cannot put the facts into the hands of a
woman. No matter how noble or honorable she may be, without the least
intention on her part they would leak out, and if Calthea Rose should
get hold of them I should be lost. She'd drop old Tippengray like a hot
potato and stick to me like one of those adhesive plasters that have
holes in them. No, sir; I don't want Calthea Rose to think well of me. I
want her to keep on considering me as a good-for-nothing scapegrace,
and, by George! it's easy enough to make her do that. It's all in her
line of business. But I want other people to think well of me in a
general way, and when Calthea and Tippengray have settled things between
them, and are traveling on the Continent, which they certainly ought to
do, I'll start in business, and take my place as one of the leading
citizens of Lethbury; and, as things look now, all will be plain sailing
if Mrs. Cristie thinks well enough of me not to interfere between me
and Ida Mayberry. Now all I ask of you is to say a good word for me if
you can get a chance."
"After what you have told me," said Lodloe, "I think I shall say it."
"Good for you!" cried Lanigan. "And if I go to Calthy and ask her to
lend me the money to get a frame made for Mrs. Petter's fire-screen,
don't you be surprised. What I'm doing is just as much for her good as
for mine. In this whole world there couldn't be a better match for her
than old Tippengray, and she knows it, and wants him."
"If there was a society for the prevention of cruelty to Greek scholars,
I don't know but that it might interfere in this case," said Lodloe.
XVIII.
SWEET PEAS.
Walter Lodloe was now as much flushed with the fever of love-making as
Lanigan Beam had been flushed with the fever of money-making, but he did
not have the other man's luck. Mrs. Cristie gave him few opportunities
of making her know him as he wished her to know him. He had sense enough
to see that this was intentional, and that if he made any efforts to
improve his opportunities he might drive her away.
As he sat at his tower window, his fingers in his hair and his mind
trying to formulate the prudent but bold thing he ought to do, a voice
came up from below. It was that of Ida Mayberry.
"Mr. Lodloe! Mr. Lodloe!" she cried; and when he had put his head out of
the window she called to him:
"Don't you want to come down and help us teach Mr. Tippengray to play
tennis? He has taught us so much that we are going to teach him
something."
"Who are going to teach?" asked Lodloe.
"Mrs. Cristie and I," said Ida. "Will you come?"
Instantly consenting, Lodloe drew in his head, his love fever rising.