THE COURTESY OF THE ROAD
The little old lady sitting by the window in the big living-room, as
serene as Whistler’s portrait of his mother, may have had a temper
but if so, thought Barnes as he entered at the girl’s heels, it was
concealed somewhere about her person other than in her face. She was
in black with a white cap sitting as daintily light on her gray hair
as the first flick of snow on a silver fir. She was a tiny body with
shrewd black eyes and a firm thin mouth. Her wrinkled cheeks still had
color. She was busy with a wisp of lace.
“Aunt Philomela, this is Mr. Barnes.”
The girl spoke the sentence as though it were one word. Aunt Philomela
snapped up her head and leveled her astonished black eyes upon a young
and decidedly good-looking stranger who was bowing low. Then she
shot them at the girl who had turned towards him she had so abruptly
introduced.
“I have been thrust so rather forcibly into the honor of your
acquaintance,” murmured Barnes, “in the hope that I may be of some
service.”
As he observed the lightning flashes beginning to cut the dark of her
eyes, Barnes suspected that she had already found in the hidden depths
of them, the missing temper. The formal courtliness of his introductory
speech baffled her for a moment, but now she observed in a sharp
staccato,
“Perhaps my niece will explain where she had the honor of meeting Mr.
Barnes.”
“By the hedge,” answered Barnes, assuming the burden of the reply,
“just by the letter-box.”
“And she is indebted--”
“To Chance and the courtesy of the road.”
“And the service you propose?” continued the little old lady, clearly
still bewildered. “A set of books, perhaps?”
It was evident that her wits were still keen.
“No,” answered Barnes, unruffled. He could blame his portfolio for that
accusation. “No, though it’s a matter requiring equal tact if that is
possible.”
The aunt, with a queenly nod of her white head towards a chair,
graciously gave him permission to be seated, though the red in her
cheeks was heightening ominously. Barnes surmising that she was
struggling hard not to sacrifice her present advantageous position to
a quick tongue, resolved to put the matter bluntly while yet there was
time.
“Your niece has just received a letter from your nephew. He writes that
he will not come home.”
“My niece confided this personal affair in you?”
He bowed.
“Eleanor,” she demanded, “is this true?”
“That Joe refuses to come home? It is brutally true, Aunt.”
The girl had turned her aunt’s hasty slur neatly. Barnes met her eyes
with understanding. As in Miss Van Patten’s case, the grim fact was
sufficient to divert the aunt’s attention from everything else.
“He refuses to come back at such a time?” she repeated. “This is
terrible!”
There was silence for a moment, and then she added,
“But this will break his heart!”
She glanced excitedly from one to the other of them. The girl crept to
her side.
“It will. It will if he learns of it. But he mustn’t.”
“Mustn’t, Eleanor? What other way is there?”
“Mr. Barnes--” began the girl.
The aunt glanced swiftly at the stranger again. He met her eyes
steadily--with perhaps the slightest, the very slightest, gallant
lowering of them in respectful deference to her age.
“I fail to see how a stranger may assist in so personal a matter,” she
observed icily.
“If you will let me explain,” said Barnes. “It seems to me that no one
but a stranger can help. I’ve ventured to suggest that I be allowed to
ward off the blow; that I be allowed to do this in the only possible
way now open--by impersonating the boy.”
The girl straightened herself and waited. Barnes put down his portfolio
and accepted the chair which had lately been offered him. Aunt
Philomela sat up as stiffly as though suddenly galvanized.
“You--you actually seriously propose such--such base trickery?” she
stammered.
“With the most honest intentions in the world,” nodded Barnes.
“You are bold and impertinent, sir!”
“Still with the best intentions in the world.”
“That does not excuse such knavery,” she protested.
The girl broke in,
“Aunt, if you’ll calm yourself and listen a moment. You are unkind to
one who has made so generous an offer--”
“Bah,” interrupted Aunt Philomela, “it is too generous.”
Barnes made no reply.
“I must ask Mr.--”
“Barnes,” he supplied as she hesitated.
“To withdraw at once.”
Barnes accepted the decision with equanimity. He reached for his
portfolio. But he was beginning to like this little old lady.
The girl checked him with a spirit that was authoritative.
“Would you be good enough to wait a moment,” she requested,
“until--until aunt goes upstairs and tells father?”
She turned to her aunt.
“Aunty,” she went on, “you must tell father that Joe refuses to come.
You must tell him that Joe is brutal about it. You may tell him that
there is no longer any need of his waiting.”
Aunt Philomela quailed.
“Where is the letter?” she demanded feebly.
“I tore it up. It wasn’t suitable for you to read.”
Barnes leaned forward towards the little form which had settled back
wearily into the chair. His eyes were tender and sympathetic but there
was nothing obtrusive in his attitude.
“Believe me,” he said gently, “I am sorry for you and would do what I
can. If what I proposed sounds absurd at first, you see that the only
other alternative is cruel. If we can make the end come peacefully and
quietly, won’t it justify us somewhat?”
“But why should you, a stranger--” Aunt Philomela began suspiciously.
“I don’t blame you for your doubts,” he answered. “But at such moments
as these, who are the strangers? I would help an old man who was
bruised by the roadside; why not an old man who lies bruised in his
bed?”
“Who are you?” she demanded.
Barnes smiled.
“Ask your cook. I’m the son of the Acme Manufacturing Co.”
The aunt for a moment doubted his sanity.
“Also,” he added, “I paint water-colors--some of them good, some of
them indifferent, all of them as well done as I know how to make them.”
“And you came here?” stammered Aunt Philomela, still confused.
“To escape New York. Also for a bit of walking trip to make sketches.
For what else--God knows. Perhaps for this.”
Aunt Philomela studied him shrewdly and in spite of herself his mouth
started a twinkle in her eyes.
“The whole idea,” she declared, “is absurd.”
“The whole situation,” he returned, “is pitiful.”
“Oh,” moaned Miss Van Patten, “it is. We have no right to stop at
anything which shall bring him relief.”
“We have no right to shirk our duty,” returned the aunt with conviction.
“Duty?” queried the girl. “Is it our duty to let father suffer?”
“It is our duty to bear our own burdens and not shift them upon
strangers.”
“I see no burden whatever in the undertaking,” corrected Barnes.
“Why don’t you?” challenged the aunt.
That _was_ a question. Why was he willing to leave the pleasant
freedom of the open road for a task which could not be called in
itself pleasurable? The question was even more involved than the
shrewd aunt suspected, when the fact was taken into account that he
was even willing to act the prodigal--a character for which he had a
particular aversion. To his mind the only decent way for the prodigal
to return was with the fatted calf over his own shoulders. He must
return triumphant, even if repentant. Otherwise it behooved him to stay
away in the far country he had chosen and take his medicine like a man.
To be sure the present case justified itself, but even so he did not
altogether like the flavor of it. Then why was this no burden? It was
clearly simply a case of atmosphere. The house itself had something
to do with it, the gold in the girl’s hair had something, so did the
little old aunt herself with the pink in her crinkly cheeks. He turned
from the aunt to the niece. Decidedly, he thought, she should be
painted on ivory.
“Why don’t you?” repeated the aunt, pressing home her point.
He glanced out of the window. The West was donning her jewels; pearl,
opal, and amethyst.
“Because,” he answered, “the day is very fair.”
“We are indebted then to the sun?”
He avoided the obvious pun and nodded.
“To the sun, the month, the time of day, and--a slight matter of
temperament.”
The girl lifted her eyes to his with a smile. The aunt did not repeat
again her salient question; instead she frowned.
“I have my two eyes,” she answered enigmatically.
“The world is your debtor,” murmured Barnes, chivalrously.
“Aunty, you ought to think of nothing but father,” broke in the girl.
“He will soon wake up in the dark with the old question on his lips.”
There came to them even then the silvery tinkle of a bell from
upstairs.
“Oh, dear,” gasped Aunt Philomela.
Her niece stood squarely before her.
“There’s no more time for argument,” she said. “We must decide now at
once. Either we must accept Mr. Barnes’ offer or--you must go up to
father.”
“Oh, dear,” gasped Aunt Philomela.
“Are you going to him, Aunt?” demanded the girl.
“Oh, dear no,” she trembled. “It quite puts me out of breath to think
of it.”
“Then--?”
“Do you think it possible that he can be deceived like this?” she asked.
Barnes arose.
“We can only try. It looks in our favor.”
There was a pause.
“Then?” inquired Barnes, directly.
“Go,” she replied. “Go quickly.”
Which, though ambiguous, decided the matter. Barnes left the room,
following the girl who, quite as out of breath as her aunt, led the
way.