"Oh, I'm an optimist," she replied, "especially when I'm eating your chowder. I don't see how you can look out of these windows and not love everybody."
She regarded her vis-à-vis as she said it. It was hard to visualize this spare and hard-featured woman as the young girl who used to sit on these rocks and build castles in the air.
"Mortals are ungrateful, I guess," was the reply. "I'm glad you like it here."
"It's a paradise to one who is tired of people and pianos," declared Mrs. Porter.
"Think you could look out of these windows and love 'em all, do you?" inquired Miss Barry dryly.
Mrs. Porter laughed. "At this distance, certainly," she answered. "Some of them I could love even if they were in the foreground," she continued. "I'm very fond of Linda, Miss Barry."
"A point in her favor," remarked the hostess, with a cool rising inflection.
"Thank you for saying so. One must make lots of allowance for a girl so pretty, so rich, and so overflowing with life."
"Let her overflow, only nowhere near me."
"Don't say that. She'll settle down under the responsibilities of life. Do you remember my cousin Bertram King?"
"Oh, yes. The long-legged, light-haired fellow that aids and abets my brother in overworking."
"That's the very one. I must tell you that he's heart and soul in love with Linda."
"H'm. I suppose so. I only wish she'd marry him and live out on Sheridan Road somewhere, then I could live with my brother and take care of him winters. He'd get some care then. Are they engaged?"
"Oh, no. She's just out of school. He hasn't asked her yet."
"What's the matter with him? Is he the kind with boiled macaroni for a backbone?"
"No, Bertram's backbone is all right. He wanted to let her get out of school. He has no relations but me. He had to confide in somebody."
"Well, he'll get all that's coming to him if he marries her." Miss Barry sniffed. "I guess if there was a prize offered for arrogance she'd get it. I speak plain because you're fond of her, and you're aware that you know her much better than I do, so I couldn't set you against her even if I wanted to; and I need somebody to confide in too."
Mrs. Porter smiled. "You'll change your tune some day. Linda has lots of goods that aren't in the show window."
Miss Barry nodded. "If she keeps her distance I may change in time. It all depends on that."
The visitor could picture how in little things the high-spirited, popular girl might have shown tactlessness during the holidays, and created an impression on the taciturn aunt which it would be hard to efface. Words could never do it, she realized, and wisely forbore to say more.
Dinner was over, and the visitor was just considering that during the process of social dishwashing she could broach the subject of a boarding-place, when Jerry Holt's steed again approached the shingled cottage. Both women discerned him at the same moment.
"Did you tell Jerry to come back for you? You can't go yet," said Miss Barry.
"I didn't, but it might be a good plan for him to take me the rounds."
"What rounds?"
"Of possible boarding-places."
Miss Barry did not reply, for she had to answer the knock at the door. There stood Captain Holt, holding a telegram gingerly between his thumb and finger, and his sea-blue eyes gazed straight into Belinda's.
"I want you should bear up, Belinda," he said kindly. "There ain't no other way." His voice shook a little, and Miss Barry turned pale as she took the sinister envelope.
Mrs. Porter heard his words, and hastening to her hostess stood beside her as she tore open the telegram. Captain Holt's heavy hand closed the door slowly, with exceeding care, as he shut himself out.
Mrs. Porter's arm stole around the other woman as she read the message: —
Mr. Barry died last night. Please come at once.
Henry Radcliffe.
Miss Barry's limbs shook under her, and she tottered to a chair.
Captain Holt sat on the edge of the piazza and bit a blade of grass while he waited.
In the silence a pall seemed to fall over the little house, broken only by the sharp rending apart of mounting waves against the rocks.
Mrs. Porter knelt by her friend and held her hands.
"What can I do for you?" she asked.
"Look in the desk over in that corner, and find the time-tables in the drawer."
"I know the Chicago trains, Miss Barry. Let me arrange it all for you. You wish to leave to-night?"
Miss Barry nodded without speech.
Mrs. Porter went out on the piazza and sent Jerry to telegraph, telling him to return.
"Did you know my brother was ill?" asked Belinda, when she returned, still without moving.
"No. I thought him just overtired."
The other nodded. "That's the way they do it. Rush madly after money and more money till they go to pieces all of a sudden."
The bereft sister's eyes were fixed on space, seeing who knows what pictures of the past, when a barefooted boy romped with her over these rocks that held the nest he had given her. Suddenly her far-away look came back, and focused on the pitiful eyes regarding her drawn, pale face.
"I'm glad you're here," she said simply.
"And I am so glad," responded the other, her thoughts busy with Linda and Bertram, and longing to fly to them.
"Will you stay here in my cottage till I come back? I have a little girl that comes every day to help. She cooks pretty well. She'll stay with you."
"Yes, Miss Barry." It was on the tip of the visitor's tongue to say, "You'll bring Linda back with you," but she restrained the words. This common sorrow would do its work between aunt and niece, she felt sure.
There was no further inaction. A trunk was packed, and Mrs. Porter accompanied the traveler as far as Portland, spending the night again at the hotel where she had left her belongings; and Miss Barry pursued her sad journey.
Henry Radcliffe met her at the station in Chicago; and when they were in the motor Miss Barry turned to him with dim eyes.
"What was the matter with Lambert?"
His pale face looked excited and sleepless.
"You haven't seen the papers?"
"No. My head ached and I didn't read them. What do you mean?" Her voice grew tense.
"Barry & Co. have gone to pieces."
"What do I care for that? Lambert! My brother! Tell me of him!"
"But it carried a lot of innocent ones down in the crash."
"Oh, my poor brother! What of him, Henry? Tell me. Tell me."
The young man turned his head away, and his voice grew thick. "He died down in the office."
"Heart trouble?"
"Yes. He never told us if he knew he had a weak heart. The shock was terrible."
The young man took his companion's groping hand.
"Linda is prostrated. We have had to save her in every way. Poor Harriet! She has had to be a heroine."
The speaker's voice thickened and choked again, and hand in hand the two kept an unbroken silence until the motor drew up before the house on Michigan Avenue, where lilies and ferns hung against the heavy door.
CHAPTER VII
THE DAYS THAT FOLLOWED
During the monotonous days following the funeral, Miss Barry and her niece dwelt alone in the big, echoing house. Harriet had gone home to her husband and child. The papers still resounded with the Barry tragedy, but it was not difficult to keep them from Linda, whose stormy grief had changed to utter listlessness.
One morning Miss Barry sat by the window in her niece's room with some mending, while Linda, in her white négligée, dragged herself about the apartment as if all the spring in her supple young body had grown flaccid. Occasionally the older woman glanced over the rim of her glasses at the girl's expressionless face. Miss Belinda herself felt numbed by shock, but there was present with her the instinctive necessity which all had felt, of standing between Linda and a complete understanding of the situation.
Ever since the girl's breakfast tray had been removed that morning they had remained here in silence.
"There's one way I can't make any mistake," thought the aunt, "and that's by holding my tongue. She knows I'm here, and that if I can do anything for her I want to do it."
The housekeeper had answered her appeal for something to keep her hands busy, and so she worked while Linda moved languidly about, apparently forgetful of her presence.
While they still remained thus, a card was brought up.
Miss Barry took it from the maid.
"Bertram King, Linda," she said. "Will you see him?"
She was surprised by the life which sprang for a moment into the girl's eyes.
"No," answered Linda clearly.
Her aunt stood undecidedly, the linen in one hand and the card in the other.
"Shall I see him, then?" she asked.
"I don't care, Aunt Belinda."
The maid waited, casting curious glances from one to the other.
"Henry says Mr. King's been wonderful," said Miss Barry, after a moment of waiting. "The greatest help in the world: always kept his head, and thought of the right thing to do, though he was suffering so."
"I'm not – " Linda tried to reply, but her lips quivered, and she bit them. "I can't see him," she ended abruptly.
Miss Barry nodded comprehension. The associations would naturally be overwhelming.
"I'll go down, then," she said, sighing, and laying down her work. "I suppose I shall tell him you thank him for all he has done, and for the flowers every day."
"No." Linda faced her aunt, and again life leaped in her eyes. "I'm not sending any message. Remember that."
Miss Barry frowned in perplexity, thinking of Mrs. Porter's confidences concerning King.
"Oh, law," she thought wearily, "I suppose she's refused him."
So downstairs the good lady went, her black dress trailing after her, to the reception room, where stood a hollow-eyed young man. His face had become familiar to her in the past days.
"Good-morning, Mr. King."
"Good-morning, Miss Barry." His eyes interrogated her hungrily. "I suppose I should apologize for coming at this hour, but I'm so anxious to know how Linda is."
"She's up and about. Sit down."
"Would it be impossible for me to see her?" The speaker did not sit, though Miss Barry did so. His wistful eyes were still fixed questioningly.
"Yes, Mr. King. Just impossible. She hasn't seen anybody. She doesn't even see me." Miss Belinda smiled ruefully. "I just sit there with her. I don't know whether she knows I'm there or not."
Now King did sit down, and his companion proceeded: —
"To tell the truth, I need to see you alone, Mr. King. I need to know what Henry means when he says Barry & Co. have gone to pieces. That isn't so, is it?"
"Yes, practically." King looked at the floor, and locked his hands together. "A very big undertaking has failed, and it was the knowledge that it was impossible to satisfy all the investors that killed your brother. A run on the bank put the finishing touch to our misfortunes; but I am taking every step which I know Mr. Barry would wish to have taken, and the excitement will abate when the public sees that we are fellow sufferers."
"Then Linda is – Linda will be poor?" Miss Barry asked it in hushed tones.
"Comparatively, yes; she will call it poor, but I know Linda. She would wish justice done. I want to see her. I must see her, in fact, as soon as she is able to meet me with Harriet. I know what Mr. Barry would wish, but it must be a mutual agreement. I'm not forgetting, Miss Barry," added the young man, kindly, "that this hits you financially too."
"You mean my allowance? I'm very thankful, Mr. King, that I've spent but little of it, and I have the home my dear brother gave me. I never felt perfectly certain that there wouldn't be any reverses. Business men when they get as rich as Lambert are like aëronauts. Who can tell when some current of wind they didn't count on will strike their ship?"
"I'm glad you've been so wise. I assure you that since the catastrophe I have often thought of you."
Miss Barry regarded the speaker kindly. The difficulties of his position surged upon her.
"Have I told you I left Mrs. Porter in my house?"
"I knew she expected to see you."
"Yes; she was there when the message came, and she helped me in every way. Best of all, she was willing to see that nobody ran off with my cottage while I was gone."
"I wish she were here with Linda, though," said King. "I believe she could get nearer to her than anybody."
"I suppose there isn't any doubt," returned Miss Barry without enthusiasm, "that my niece will go to her. There don't seem any doubt that I ought to take her home with me and let the sea tone her up. She may prefer to stay with Harriet. I shall give her her choice. I suppose this house will be sold."
"I suppose so. That is one of the things Linda will have to help decide."
They sat for a moment in silence, Miss Barry liking her companion better and better, finding it easy to believe on general principles that Linda had been cruel to him.
King rose suddenly from his brown study. "Will you give her these flowers, please?" he said, indicating a box that lay on a chair. "I shall get Harriet to arrange a meeting for us to discuss the matters that are pressing."
Miss Barry rose, and they looked into one another's eyes.
"I had hoped that it might be some comfort to Linda to see me, as one who stood so close to her father," said King wistfully.
Miss Barry found him pathetic.
"Seems to work the other way," she answered curtly. "Some folks would think of your side of it. I can tell you, though, Mr. King, the rest of the family appreciates all you have done and are doing."
Miss Barry's hand gave the young man's a decided squeeze as they parted. Her handshakes ordinarily were of the loose and hard variety.
She turned and took up the box of flowers. King's offering had come daily among others since the funeral, but Linda would not allow any flowers to be left in her room.
"I'd like to know just what she means by flashing up at the mention of that poor fellow's name," soliloquized Miss Belinda, as she mounted the stairs. "Lambert's gone and left him to take the brunt of the situation. Shouldn't wonder if going down to that office every day is some like going to a torture chamber."
She entered her niece's room. Linda was sitting before the dresser, pulling over with languid fingers the contents of a drawer. Each article in it was associated with happy, remote days separated from the present by a cold, dark, impassable gulf – the gulf of grief, remorse, and despair. Nothing could bring her father back. Every interest that had kept her from him loomed hateful in her eyes. Just as Miss Barry entered the room her hand had fallen on a morocco box. It contained the necklace which had been her graduation gift from him. She had worn it at the dinner dance at the South Shore Club.
What had her father been doing that night? Why had she not insisted on his presence at the dinner? How she loathed each of those triumphant hours when the gems had risen and fallen on her happy breast. Her head suddenly fell forward on the dresser, and her shoulders heaved in deep-drawn sobs.
Miss Barry dropped the flower box on a chair, and her cheeks flushed as she advanced uncertainly. Her niece's previous reserve made the older woman feel that Linda might resent her presence now. She retreated a step toward the door; but no. The girl was her own flesh and blood. She didn't know what to say to her, and her own eyes dimmed under the repressed agony of those despairing sobs; but she approached and put a timid hand on the convulsed shoulder.
"Linda, Linda," she said. "I wish, poor child, I could do something." And the tremor in her voice carried to the young aching heart.
The girl did not raise her bowed head, but she reached up one strong, smooth hand, and quickly it was locked in Miss Belinda's.
The latter's eyes regarded the open morocco box on the dresser, and noted the lustrous pearls lying on their white velvet. "That necklace means something special, I suppose," she thought, and winked away big drops from her own sight.
"Maybe it'll do you good to cry, Linda," she said. "Did your father give you the beads, dear?" she added tenderly, and the smooth hand clutched hers tighter.
After a minute more of the sobbing silence, Miss Belinda reached out her free hand and closed the morocco box.
"I wouldn't look over these things yet," she said; and Linda freed her hand, and crossing her arms on the dresser rested her head upon them.
"I never did anything for Father," she declared in a choked voice.
Miss Barry thought this was probably true, and she winked hard in a big struggle with her New England conscience.
"He didn't think that way," she replied at last.
"Yes. Yes, he thought that way."
"What do you mean, child?"
"He left me." The words seemed wrenched from the depths of grief.
Again Miss Barry's conscience objected to making the sweeping contradiction for which the occasion called.
"How could he help that?" she asked at last, gently.
"He couldn't help it, but perhaps I could have helped it," came the weary answer. "If I had been more to him – filled a larger place in his life – been a companion instead of just his pet – "
Miss Barry felt coerced to extend meager comfort. "But your school, Linda. I know your time was all taken up."
"Yes, because I let it be. I've wasted four years when I was old enough to have been a companion to Father."
"Why, you had visits with him once a week. Supposing you had gone East to college."
"That is something, no doubt," returned Linda, slowly lifting swollen eyes and looking listlessly out of the window; "but I didn't make myself count with him."
"Nonsense, child," said Miss Barry, trying to speak stoutly. "That's morbid, isn't it?"
Linda shook her head slowly, still with the dreary eyes looking into space.
Miss Barry sank into the nearest chair, and regarded the stricken girl helplessly.
"I know you suffer, too, Aunt Belinda," said the girl, at last. "I know I'm selfish, but life – everything – seems blotted out for me. It is only once in a while that I can feel anything."
Linda recalled her far-away gaze and looked at her aunt. She saw her now, not as a negligible figure with too-long earrings and too-thin hair, brushed with a New England thoroughness which concealed rather than exhibited what there was of it. Aunt Belinda was a fellow sufferer, and Linda recognized it, but without sympathy. She turned back to the sorting of the articles in the open drawer. Her handbag lay there, and a piece of paper projected from it. She took out the crumpled leaf, and remembered how on one of those remote happy days she had gone to Mrs. Porter's studio and discovered her departure. She had torn off a leaf of the calendar, and seeing no place to bestow it had crumpled it and placed it in her bag. She straightened it now, reflecting on the date, and how little she had known then that it was one of the days she would now give half her life to recall. The clearly printed words looked up at her, and her eyes rested on them heavily.
"Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree; and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree."
In the present passionate longing to escape from her nightmare, the words seemed significant. Oh, if they could be anything but words! If there were any hope! Her lips moved as she read the verse again. Her aunt was watching her, motionless, helpless, dim-eyed.
"Did you ever hear this, Aunt Belinda?" she asked, and read the sentences aloud in her colorless voice.
"I think I have," responded Miss Barry. "It's in the Bible, I think."
"Yes, it's in Isaiah," returned the girl, her eyes on the paper. "I tore it off Mrs. Porter's calendar. It's a calendar of promises. What's the use of promises made thousands of years ago?"
Her breath caught in her throat.
"Mrs. Porter is very fond of you, Linda," ventured Miss Barry.
The girl nodded. She seemed to see the soft light in her teacher's eyes. The calendar message would probably find response in her optimism.
"We took a course in the Bible at school," she went on. "We had to; but Mrs. Porter says she reads it because she likes to. I gave her this calendar as a kind of a joke."
Miss Barry made no comment on the dreary irreverence.
"I haven't told you," she replied, "that Mrs. Porter is keeping house in my cottage."
The girl turned her slow regard upon the speaker.
"When the right time comes," went on Miss Barry, "I want you should go back with me, Linda."
"I wish to stay here," returned the girl quickly, "and, Aunt Belinda, I don't want you to wait. I know you must long to get home, and there's nothing, really nothing, for you to wait for here. All I wish is to be quiet and just stay where – " her throat closed. She glanced once more at the calendar leaf, and started to drop it in the basket, but changed her mind and put it back in the open drawer.
"All in good time, Linda," was the reply. "Here are some flowers Mr. King brought you."
The girl turned with a frowning glance toward the long box. "He seems to have plenty of money to waste," she said, "in spite of Barry & Co.'s troubles. Probably his own nest is well feathered."
"Why, my child!" exclaimed Miss Barry, bewildered at sight of that strange fire which again illumined the heavy eyes. "What can you have against that poor young man?" Linda's lassitude seemed to drop from her like a garment. She rose suddenly, took the flower box, and moving to the door pushed it into the hall with her foot, and closed the door upon it. Then she stood, her back against the wall, tall in her white garments, and pressed a hand to her throat, choking with her sudden passion.
"Not much against him," she said in a stifled voice, her eyes shining upon her bewildered companion. "Bertram King murdered my father. That's all!"