ADJUSTMENTS
As soon as she had parted from John Ogden, Miss Frink went to her study.
Her secretary was in his place. Could this possibly be the world of the
barren yesterdays? The same world in which she and Leonard Grimshaw had
sat at their adjoining desks in this room and opened mail, dictated
letters, and considered investments, for so many years? Her welling sense
of gratitude gave her a novel attitude of sympathetic comprehension. If
her secretary, so long the sole partner and confidant of her days, were
suffering now from being to a degree usurped, it would not be surprising.
She felt a sort of yearning toward him.
He rose at her entrance, grave and businesslike as usual. She took her
customary place beside him, and he seated himself, drawing toward him the
morning’s mail.
“Never mind that now, Grim. We will attend to it this afternoon, if I can
keep awake.” She gave a little laugh.
He glanced around at her. Miss Frink, flushed and laughing, unmindful of
the mail! From bad to worse!
“The gayety of last evening too much for you?” he responded, with a
gravity so portentous as to be a rebuke.
“I suppose so. Say, Grim, how did Goldstein get in here?”
“I asked him. I knew your desire not to have anybody overlooked.”
“But we have never had any contact with him.”
Grimshaw cleared his throat, and drew forward a bunch of pencils and put
them back again.
“He is one of our stirring citizens,” he said.
“I know he stirs me,” remarked Miss Frink.
“He enjoyed the evening greatly,” declared Grimshaw.
“All right; but, if he ever comes to make his party call, remember he is
your guest.”
“Very well, Miss Frink.”
“Now, my dear boy,” she went on, and she laid a hand on her secretary’s
arm. He regarded it under dropped lids. “I feel I want to say a few
things to you in this great change that has come into my life.”
“I have anticipated it,” he returned. “You wish to dispense with my
services?”
Miss Frink withdrew her hand. “What could put such a wild idea into your
head, Grim? So far from dispensing with you, I feel it an occasion to
speak of my appreciation of your faithful service. In the great joy that
has come to me I long to give happiness. If it pleases you to know that
your efficient work is not taken for granted, but that it is given its
full value, I want you to realize that I thank you.” She paused and the
secretary bowed silently.
“In the changes that will result from the discovery of my nephew, I want
you to know also that none will affect you. You are mentioned in my will,
and nothing regarding you in that will be changed.”
Grimshaw did not alter his position, but some pulse leaped to his throat.
It was not a leap of gladness. If that were the case, then his employer’s
plans for him had fallen below expectations.
“In short,” said Miss Frink, “since this great blessing that has come to
me should make me a better woman, I hope to be a better friend to you and
to all.” As her companion did not break the pause that followed this, she
added: “I hope you don’t begrudge it to me, Grim?”
“By no means, Miss Frink,” he responded, without looking up. “Pardon me
for a moment, I am much moved.”
Miss Frink was touched. “The good boy!” she thought. “Probably constant
contact with me has made it impossible for him to express any feeling
that does not regard dollars and cents.”
“My narrow life could not fail to narrow you,” she said humbly. “I hope
we may both expand after this.”
Neither spoke for a minute. Grimshaw continued to look down, one hand
toying with a paper-cutter.
At last she spoke: “I told Adèle you would take her over to Mrs. Cooper’s
as soon as she was ready.”
“I shall be glad to,” he returned. “Adèle made a great impression last
night.”
“Indeed, she did. There is no doubt that she can teach here if she wishes
to. I have just been saying to her that I hope, when the subject comes
up, she will aid in letting it be known what a passive part Hugh played
in the camouflaged way he came to Farrandale. Mr. Ogden was the motive
power of it all, and you must help, too, Grim, in giving the right
impression.”
The secretary turned to her with a strange smile. “Do you think that your
nephew and heir will need any apologies?” he asked slowly. Miss Frink
felt uncomfortably the inimical attitude back of the words. “If he does,
he will never know it, and you will never know it. That is the advantage
of being the Queen of Farrandale.”
“The boy is jealous!” she thought.
“I hope,” he continued, “that your absorption is not so great that you
cannot use your influence to help Adèle, even though she is leaving your
house.”
Miss Frink felt the criticism in this. She was silent for a space.
“Adèle came here camouflaged also, Grim,” she said quietly. “She will
tell you about it.”
The secretary flashed a quick look around at her. “Perfectly innocent in
one case, I suppose,” he said, “and unpardonable in the other.”
Miss Frink was too deeply troubled about Adèle’s future in Farrandale to
be ruffled by this. “It was her own idea,” she said. “That makes some
difference. I am glad she has a friend in a truly upright man like you,
Grim. Help her to be a good woman.”
The secretary frowned in surprise at the earnestness of this appeal;
but, before he could speak, Adèle entered the room dressed for driving,
smiling, and with head held high.
Her departure with Grimshaw a few minutes later was decorous. Miss Frink
was at the door.
“Hugh will want to say good-bye to you,” she said. “Won’t you call him,
Grim?”
“Oh, no,” interrupted Adèle. “He is at his studies. Don’t disturb him. We
shall always be meeting.”
Miss Frink stood on the veranda and watched the motor drive away. She
drew a long breath of the sweet air. Whatever should come now, Adèle was
gone from the house. The relief of it!
In the motor, the two, sitting side by side, exchanged a mutual regard.
“It was very, very sweet of you to write me that note,” said Grimshaw.
“I thought it would help.”
“There has been some trouble between you and Miss Frink,” he pursued.
Adèle lifted her eyebrows and gave a little laugh. “Yes. Mr. Ogden kindly
tipped her off that I was merely the step-grandchild of her beloved chum.”
“Step-grandchild?” repeated Grimshaw.
“Yes. Complicated, isn’t it?—and not worth while trying to understand. It
served her as well as anything else as an excuse to get rid of me.”
Grimshaw frowned. He was angry with his employer for sending this lovely
creature away from the luxurious home, the Steinway grand, and himself;
but Miss Frink’s novel gentleness in their interview chained his always
cautious tongue; then, if Adèle had really deliberately misrepresented
facts, he knew how that must have offended Miss Frink’s rigorous
principles.
“You will find the change to the simplicity of the Cooper home rather
hard, Adèle.”
“No harder than your discovery that henceforward you are second-best in
your home,” she returned; but her voice was sympathetic, even tender.
“Perhaps you will have to go away.”
“No; she doesn’t want me to leave,” he answered dispiritedly. He turned
again suddenly to his companion: “You must tell me, Adèle, how I can help
you. How about this teaching business?”
She smiled at him, her sweetest. “Leonard, can you see me trudging around
in all weathers and teaching youngsters how to play scales?”
He shook his head.
“Hu—somebody said it was like harnessing a blooded horse to a coal wagon
to make me teach.”
Color rushed to Grimshaw’s face. “Adèle, it can’t be! You know I—”
She interrupted him with a laugh. “Look out! You nearly ran into that
Mr. and Mrs. Rube in their light wagon. Now, I’ll talk to the motor man
if he doesn’t look at me.” Grimshaw kept eyes ahead, and she continued.
“I never had the dimmest idea of teaching. I knew something would turn
up, and it has. Did you notice Mr. Goldstein draw me aside for a few
minutes last night?”
“Yes; confound his impudence, keeping everybody else waiting.”
“Not at all. Mr. Goldstein is a highly important friend. He wants me to
take charge of the music at the Koh-i-noor. He’s mad about the new organ,
and he says I’m just the person they have been looking for.”
“Can you play the organ?”
“Oh, yes, I’ve played one; and I have three weeks before they open. He
wants to add an orchestra later, and he wants me to take full charge of
the musical end of the theater.”
“Pretty fine—but Miss Frink—”
“Who is Miss Frink?” asked Adèle saucily. “Leonard”—she leaned toward
him, and her pressure thrilled him—“you and I have our own lives to live.”
“That arrangement would make you very independent, Adèle.”
“I can never be independent of the people I’m fond of,” she answered
softly, and withdrew from him.
“Strange that Goldstein should be the one to approach you just now. I
have had some business dealings with him, and he is all right; he has
big, generous ideas. There is nothing small about Goldstein. He is after
me now to put through a deal for him, but I don’t know. He makes it very
tempting for me, but I’m afraid Miss Frink—”
“Oh, don’t be tied to her apron-string. What is the deal?”
“Well, then, mum’s the word,” said Grimshaw, smiling.
“Oh, yes, mum as an oyster,” she returned.
“He wants to buy that place where the Duanes live.”
Adèle’s heart leaped. “What does he want of that little shanty?”
“He wants to tear it down and put up a flat building to cover the whole
lot.”
“Splendid idea,” responded Adèle. “It’s high time Farrandale had
something handsome in the way of an apartment building, and Mr. Goldstein
would do something with class.”
“But Colonel Duane’s garden. He is wrapped up in the place, and they
haven’t any money for another. It just happened that the cottage fitted
their needs and was cheap.”
Color brightened Adèle’s pale face. Lady Luck was coming her way. To get
rid of Millicent Duane was a rosier prospect than even the music at the
Koh-i-noor.
“They could find a place in the country,” she said. “It would be
something new if Miss Frink wanted to throw over such a chance to turn a
few honest thousands. You ought not to let her. You ought to look after
her better than that.”
“I told Goldstein that there was a probability that sentiment might enter
into this matter; and he has offered to make it very much worth my while
to put the sale through. It is the biggest temptation I ever received.”
The speaker’s eyes shone.
“I’ll give you another,” said Adèle, leaning toward him again. “If you
will put through the sale of the Duane place, I will—forget that there is
another man in the world but you.”
Grimshaw flushed, and the road being clear just then, he met her soft
gaze.
“Is that a promise, Adèle?” he asked.
“A solemn promise,” she answered.
* * * * *
John Ogden returned to his hostess in time for luncheon. Leonard
Grimshaw had remained for lunch at his cousin’s, for Adèle wanted him to
go with her afterward to see Mr. Goldstein and talk over her contract. So
it was that the three who felt very close to one another to-day sat at
the table alone. Stebbins was dismissed, to his regret, for he had found
breakfast very interesting and he wished to continue gathering data.
Ogden noted that the flush on Miss Frink’s cheeks, and Hugh’s subdued
manner, persisted.
“I had a delightful call this morning,” he said in his usual cheerful
tone. “I dropped my little bomb on the Duanes’ piazza with great effect.”
Hugh glanced up at him sharply.
“I do like those people. They have a distinctly pleasant atmosphere.
Colonel Duane, always looking like somebody in particular, and so
hospitable, and Miss Millicent more like a rosebud than ever this morning
in a pink apron, delving in a big tin pan.”
“He went to tell them what a happy woman I am,” explained Miss Frink,
looking across at Hugh. He met her eyes, and smiled acknowledgment, the
more gently for the mutiny within. At last he was honest, but he was more
than ever conspicuous and discussed. He hated it. His ears burned now.
“I suppose they nearly fainted,” he remarked. “I’m sure you told them
that I was a puppet and you pulled the wires.”
“Don’t put it that way, Hugh,” pleaded Miss Frink.
“I can’t help it, Aunt Susanna! It’s a mess!”
“Don’t say so, dear boy.” Hugh met her bright, speaking eyes. “I have
always been a successful woman, that’s what the world calls it; but I
never was a happy one until last night.”
“I’m not much to make you happy,” said the boy restively. “Just a pawn in
a game, not a penny in the world of my own, in debt to Ogden, and a sneak
in the eyes of your town—”
“Oh, my boy! Oh, Hugh!” There was such pain and longing in Miss Frink’s
tone that it checked him. Beside all that he expressed was the constant
irritation and humiliation that remained from the scene with Adèle.
“Hugh, you told me last night that you—” Miss Frink stopped because
something rose in her throat. No one broke the silence. “I know how your
young pride is hurt,” she went on at last, “but it will be restored.”
“Colonel Duane said,” put in Ogden, “that there would be very little
talk: that wherever you went, Miss Frink’s nephew would be always
welcome.”
“That is true,” she agreed; “and, Hugh, if you can be so unselfish, don’t
spoil this great joy of mine—a child belonging to me; but take it as if
we had known all along that you were mine. In perfect frankness let me do
for you what it is my right to do. In the presence of Mr. Ogden, who has
accomplished such wonders for us, let me say that he and I shall together
settle such of our obligation to him as can be paid, and then you, Hugh,
until you are admitted to the bar, will accept from me your education,
and your allowance, without a thought of dependence—”
Hugh regarded the earnest speaker with a mixture of resistance and
appreciation.
“Ross Graham Company—” he began—
“Can take care of itself,” said Miss Frink with a return of her brisk,
curt manner. “You can always get competent managers.” John Ogden’s mind
took a leap back to the day when he told Hugh that the department store
might belong to him. “Now I know,” went on Miss Frink, “that you’re a
bit afraid of your old aunt, a little afraid that in my pride I may want
to put you into a velvet suit and lace collar à la Fauntleroy, or its
equivalent; but you needn’t be afraid. I haven’t lived seventy-two years
for nothing, and I didn’t make a mess of my treatment of your father for
nothing. Neither am I in my second childhood. I have all my faculties,
and, with so much now to live for, I expect to keep them until I’m one
hundred. I don’t want to make an idol of you. I want you to be a man
among men, and stand on your own feet; but it’s my right to give you a
start, and I like to believe that you have enough common sense to accept
it in the spirit in which it is offered, without any fuss or foolish
hair-splitting.”
Hugh looked around at Ogden, who nodded at him.
“Put that in your pipe and smoke it,” remarked Ogden.
Hugh, pushing back his chair, rose and came around to Miss Frink.
“There’s only one answer a fellow can make to all that, Aunt Susanna,” he
said, and, stooping, he kissed her.
“Now, then,” she, too, rose, “please go on the veranda and watch for
Millicent. I want to see Mr. Ogden a few minutes in the study, and I’ll
let her know when I’m ready for her.”
Hugh wandered through the hall, pausing between the portières of the
drawing-room and looking at the piano. Was it only last evening that Ally
had done her brilliant work? He shook his head, went out to the piazza,
and started to take the swinging seat, but changed his mind, and,
throwing himself on a wicker divan, lighted a cigarette. He was conscious
of a deep soreness in the thought of Adèle. What a series of foolish
moves her life had been! He shrank in distaste from it all.
What a different specimen of girlhood was Millicent Duane! Of course,
she was nothing but a child, with her ready tears and blushes; still,
it was better to be crude, and sweet, and pure, than sophisticated and
audacious. He wished he could have seen her face when Ogden told them his
news. A certain looking up to himself which the girl had evinced in their
daily meetings, he suddenly found was valuable to him. Colonel Duane
had said Miss Frink’s nephew was always sure of a welcome. He knew what
that meant, and the implication again stirred his rebellion. He would
know when he saw Millicent to-day if he had much to live down in her
transparent soul.