A SURPRISE
Promptly at seven the candles were lighted upon the dinner-table where
they burned in sacrificial splendor in the midst of an offering fit
for Ceres. At seven one, Aunt Philomela swept in gowned in purple
silk, resplendent in the family jewels; at seven five Miss Van Patten
appeared and put the family jewels to shame. She was in something as
light as mist. It fell from her neck and hung like spray about her
ankles. At seven ten the doctor’s gig drove up and a hearty “Whoa”
announced the doctor himself like a bugle blast. At seven fifteen, the
preliminary embarrassment of the introduction was over and Barnes’ back
smarting under the gruff greeting. At seven twenty the doctor returned
from a brief visit upstairs and John produced himself in the majesty of
full regalia.
It was not until the soup was served that Barnes found himself in a
position to size up the genial enemy. Among other reasons he was too
elated over the necessity that had forced Aunt Philomela to seat him
opposite her niece. Barnes saw a heavy man of sixty with a round
tanned face, and hands of remarkable beauty. They were tender hands
backed by arms that might have been those of a Flemish warrior. In
a dozen ways the bluff doctor made him think of those who fought in
Flanders and secured immortality, not so much by their deeds, strangely
enough, as by the canvases of those who depicted them. The burly
physician might have been the result of some subtle blending of the
poet artist and his warrior model; of the brush and the sword. Give
him a rolling hat with a feather in it, and he could take his place
beside Porthos; put a brush in his hand and he would have passed
for Rembrandt. At the sick bed of children the women gave over,
unquestioning, the joy of their travail to those hands--recognizing
them as even more tender than their own.
It took but a glance to see what he must mean to the country-side. No
ice-laden wind which ever blew would be strong enough to stand between
him and a cry of pain or the moan of a fevered soul. It was enough if
he himself came; it did not so much matter whether he brought his vials
or no.
Barnes found the situation more disconcerting than he had anticipated.
His self-confidence deserted him. He had no heart to play upon this
big man’s credulity. Rather would he take him into his confidence;
rather would he speak fairly to those blue eyes resting in their nest
of wrinkles. Here was a man used to seeing the unshrouded souls of his
fellows. He was doctor, priest, and lawyer, and when these three get
together in one man there is a great dropping off of cloaking rags.
Such a man must see terrible things; at times beautiful things.
“Boy,” exclaimed the doctor, “you’ve done more for your father in three
days than I’ve been able to do in three months. You ought to have come
a year ago.”
“If I’d known what I now know I _would_ have come,” answered Barnes.
Aunt Philomela glanced up sharply. But she was not in her usual spirit.
Her heart was in her mouth.
“When a man gets old he clings to his own,” declared the doctor. “It is
as natural as for youth to reach for the new.”
“At any age,” opined Aunt Philomela, “there is nothing like one’s own
flesh and blood.”
“Not so,” objected the doctor, “if my son didn’t stand by his
sweetheart against me I’d disown him.”
Barnes felt his heart warming towards this man at once.
“There’s Carl,” pursued the doctor with a wink at Eleanor, “he’s
reaching out--reaching out.”
Barnes turned to his soup.
“That is different,” answered Aunt Philomela.
The doctor swallowed his soup red hot.
“Boy,” he broke out, “you have been where I would go if I were thirty
years younger. I’ve too many children here to look after or I might go
now. Tell me about the place.”
Barnes glanced up. John had stepped into the kitchen.
“You refer to Alaska?” he asked quietly.
“Alaska,” answered the doctor.
“I have never been there in my life,” was Barnes’ astounding reply.
For a moment there was that stillness which presages the hurricane; a
hush of such intensity that it seemed as though the inanimate objects
participated--a silence so close as to be stifling. Then Aunt Philomela
dropped her spoon. The girl started. The doctor’s brows contracted.
Barnes sipped his soup.
“Perhaps I did not understand you,” hazarded Dr. Merriweather.
“I said I have never been in Alaska in my life,” Barnes repeated in as
matter of fact a tone as he might have commented on the weather.
The doctor turned to Miss Schuyler. The latter could not have
pronounced her own name.
“Then,” inquired the doctor, “am I to understand that you’re an
impostor?”
“Nothing else,” admitted Barnes, “but,” he added, anxiously glancing
towards the buttery, “you mustn’t let the servants know.”
“Perhaps you’re not even Mr. Van Patten’s son?”
“I am no relation whatever,” confessed Barnes.
“Eleanor,” gasped Aunt Philomela weakly.
The girl turned and smiled upon her. After the first shock, she
strangely enough was the only composed one of the group. She was not
only composed but elated.
“Let me explain,” begged Barnes, facing the doctor squarely. “After
all, it’s a simple ruse; the boy Joe would not come, and so to save Mr.
Van Patten from the shock of this news, I volunteered. The deceit has
worked perfectly; he suspects nothing, and is, as you saw, a happy man.”
“Well,” muttered the doctor, “so that explains it.”
His face began to brighten and continued until it had expanded into a
broad grin. With this expression he again confronted Aunt Philomela,
whose cheeks had turned a fiery red.
“Aunty Schuyler,” he declared, “I didn’t think it was in you.”
“I know that it--it was contemptible, but I--I couldn’t help it,” she
faltered.
“Contemptible!” he exploded. “It’s great!”
He turned to Barnes and stretched out his big arm across the table.
“Boy, your hand upon it!”
Barnes seized the hand, and that firm grip, if nothing else, made it
seem all worth while.
“Aunt Philomela--” began Barnes, still anxious to absolve Miss Schuyler.
But the doctor interrupted him with a loud laugh. He threw back his
head and laughed as he had not laughed in twenty years.
“She told me a yarn that was pretty hard to swallow,” he roared, “but,
Lord, it was a good one.”
“Don’t,” she pleaded.
“She told me about Billy who had lost four fingers, and--”
“Le voilà,” interrupted Barnes, swinging upon Aunt Philomela, “I warned
you to be accurate.”
Miss Van Patten reached under the table and found Aunt Philomela’s
trembling hand.
“And you made it all up as you went along?” demanded the doctor, the
tears starting in his eyes. “You did it off hand?”
“No,” broke in Barnes. “Truly she must be exonerated. She only repeated
what I told her. She was quite forced into it.”
“Don’t spoil it,” pleaded the doctor, waving him back. “Don’t take her
laurels! I’ve told her often enough that the only thing she lacked was
imagination.”
But at this moment John entered, and Barnes raised a warning finger to
his lips.
“Don’t let John know. It might get upstairs.”
“Mum’s the word,” agreed the doctor, trying hard to stifle his chuckles.
He whispered across the table,
“Aunty Schuyler--after dinner--more! More!”
But Barnes saw that it was high time to check the merriment. The little
old lady looked to be upon the point of leaving. She took the situation
far too seriously. So he deftly turned the doctor away from the subject
to a theme he had long since discovered to be a vital one in the
country,--the rights of automobiles on country roads.
“If I had my way,” the doctor exploded, rising to the bait at once,
“I’d fine ’em a hundred dollars for going over four miles an hour.”
“But in your profession you find them useful?” inquired Barnes, though
he knew from the way the doctor had shouted “Whoa” as he entered the
yard that he was too loyal to his horse to admit such slander.
“Bah! D’ye think I’d risk my patient’s life to say nothing of my own
in one of the things? When I start I want to be sure of getting there.
What d’ye think I’d have done last night at Mrs. Van Dusen’s with only
a minute to spare?”
Aunt Philomela glanced up with interest.
“A boy,” he informed her.
Her eyes warmed.
Barnes drew him on further to tell of some of the cases in the
neighborhood in which Aunt Philomela was interested. This turned out
to be an inexhaustible theme and revealed the fact that in the work of
relief organization Aunt Philomela was the doctor’s good right arm.
The two of them were evidently a self-appointed board of charities
for the village. Aunt Philomela lost herself in the discussion, so
that her spirits soon revived again. In fact, with the weight of the
secret off her mind, she appeared even more vivacious than usual, which
left Barnes, although still obliged to listen attentively with his
eyes, free to follow his own thoughts. And Miss Van Patten, though she
apparently hung upon every word that was spoken, was no less free to
pursue the trend of her own thoughts. And both were conscious that
each was doing this.
There are blessed limits as to how far this matter of chaperonage may
be carried. Given two people well in tune with one another and it is
doubtful if it amounts to very much. There are instances of two who, at
opposite ends of a crowded church, have successfully found one another,
and in consequence heard but little of the sermon. There are those who,
in the midst of a vast crowd with the band playing and people huzzaing,
have felt themselves as secluded as in a country lane.
It is certain that Barnes found himself conversing quite freely with
her who, leaning forward, was giving such attention to her aunt. No
words were spoken, to be sure, for there was no need of words.
“You appear more beautiful to-night than I’ve ever seen you,” he began
boldly, if silently.
“What has that to do with the matter?” she answered without moving her
lips.
Barnes for the moment felt venturesome.
“As an artist,” was his reply, “it’s my duty to take such details into
account. Your eyes match marvelously well with the candle light.”
“Your calling doesn’t give you the privilege of being bold.”
“So long as the boldness is born of truth. Your hair, too, is as a
thousand candles burning in the night.”
“You are thinking of my mother’s hair.”
“Because I see your hair as your father saw your mother’s hair when the
two were young.”
“Father was pleased by the tender way you spoke to him of mother.”
“My heart was dangerously tender as through you I saw your mother.”
“You think of danger--ever?”
“I fear at times, but I cannot tell whether it is for myself or for
you.”
“What is there to fear for me?”
“I wish you would answer that yourself.”
“I cannot. You must answer all questions you ask of me.”
“Aye, and they must be answered before they are asked. But I will ask
one;--what makes your cheeks so red just now?”
“Because the blood mounts high in them.”
“Whence comes the blood?”
“From the heart, to be sure.”
“The heart must be over eager. Why is that?”
“That is a question for Dr. Merriweather.”
“He might know more about it than most doctors. But when all is said
and done what a pitiful little your surgeon knows about the heart.”
“What a pitiful little anyone knows,” she answered.
The hum of the doctor’s talk went on. Barnes, as he watched the girl,
caught her gaze.
“I wonder what sort of a picture you are painting of me?” he asked. “I
see you dipping the brush of your long lashes into the pigment of your
eyes.”
“You may be sure that whatever it is, it is not for exhibition.”
“I should be half afraid to view it, if it were.”
“Doubtless you would criticise it. But it is not half done.”
“Sometimes one best catches the truth in a half-finished work.”
“Not as a maid paints.”
“How does a maid paint?”
“Backwards. She paints her picture and then rubs out and out until
sometimes she has nothing left.”
“And if the likeness is good at the start?”
“Then it stands. But there are many mutilated pictures in a maid’s
gallery.”
“And how does mine progress?”
“So far as you may pierce the gallery windows you may see.”
“But your eyes are such loop-holes. One has to be within to see well
from them.”
“You must win your own position.”
“A soldier’s privilege is mine?”
“The soldier’s privilege is every man’s.”
“Then, by my soul, I’ll--”
Aunt Philomela was rising from the table. How was that? He had no
memory of the intermediate courses.
“You agree, boy?” demanded Dr. Merriweather.
“Oh, certainly,” faltered Barnes, “I agree heartily.”