CHAPTER XII
EN ROUTE
Miss Barry took the rest of the flowers and placed their stems in the washbowl, where the lovely blossoms lolled over awkwardly in an increasing haze of dust, after the manner of train flowers; then she stepped back to the divan and inspected the boxes of bon-bons, stuffed dates, mints, and so on. A flat tin box met her eye, and a note was tied against the cover.
"I didn't notice that preserved ginger," she reflected, and picked up the box with satisfaction, for the confection was her favorite. Her own name appeared on the note in a small, close chirography which was unfamiliar. She slipped off the metal cord and opened the letter. Its beginning brought a smile to her lips, and a recollection of jocose passages between herself and the writer, away back in the Christmas holidays.
Dear Lady of the Earrings
(she read): —
If you knew the circumstances under which I stopped to buy these coals to send to Newcastle, you would never doubt my devotion. However, I'll not pose, but hasten to tell you of the meeting to-night of stockholders and depositors from which I have just come. There was much antagonism to be overcome, and I'm beginning to feel a little dull in the upper story, so it wasn't an easy experience; but the outcome was so good that I slight my bed to tell you briefly that I now feel the first relief from the crushing pressure of the last few weeks. Those people could have put Barry & Co. in a hole out of which we couldn't climb, and some of them were bitter and inclined to do it; but the majority were willing to listen to my representations, and the minority were finally persuaded.
We shall issue notes to everybody concerned, and they have agreed to wait and give Barry & Co. a chance to turn around, and I have good ground for hoping that the memory of that grand man, Lambert Barry, will be cleared of every particle of the reproach which some angry and disappointed people have been flinging about. This night has been a great epoch in my career, and if I anticipated that there were any more such coming to me, that little crib out in the lake would suit me for a downy couch. As it is, I will now surprise my neglected bed by getting into it before three G.M.
Bon voyage, dear lady, and I hope you will sleep the better to-night for this message. I shall not communicate with Harriet until after you have gone.
Sincerely yours,
Bertram King.
Miss Barry had stood in the aisle during the reading of this epistle, too absorbed to notice the discomfort of lurching about. Now she held the letter for a space, in excited thought. Her thin face was flushed. She looked at Linda, whose gaze was fixed on the flat, flying landscape. The violets lay on the seat beside her, disregarded.
Miss Barry's lips tightened. "She doesn't deserve to know," she thought. "Oh, that wonderful young man! That poor boy!"
She seated herself opposite her traveling companion, and Linda languidly turning her head at the movement, her attention was caught by the fact that her aunt was wiping her glasses, and that her eyes were wet. An open letter lay in her lap.
Miss Barry was keenly aware of King's failure to mention Linda in this matter so nearly concerning her. It was only the relief of the news to her own heart which softened her sufficiently not to be glad of this punishment to the cruel young sufferer opposite. She hoped remorse would follow the reading in Linda's case.
She held out the letter in silence. The girl shrank and made a quick, protesting gesture.
"I can't – I can't bear any more!" she said.
"You can bear this," returned Miss Barry.
"But you're crying!"
"With joy, Belinda."
When her aunt gave the girl her full name it meant either a climax of indignation or a moment of sacred solemnity. That she knew well.
She regarded the letter with apprehension as she accepted it, and at once recognizing King's writing a sort of hard strength stole over her expression as she instinctively prepared to resist his statements. He was smooth and self-contained and clever. He could deceive Aunt Belinda and Harriet, but he could not deceive her.
After a moment of vigorous application of her handkerchief to her eyes, Miss Barry put on her spectacles again, and leaning back in the seat deliberately prepared to watch the effect upon her niece of Bertram King's letter.
Linda's lips, set firmly as she began, slowly relaxed as she read on, and her eyes grew darker. She began to breathe faster, and before she finished such an expression came over the young face that the older woman could no longer look, but closed her eyes and waited. It seemed to her a long time before she opened them again to find Linda regarding her. Life had revived in the large mourning eyes.
"Thank you, Aunt Belinda. May I keep it a little while?"
"You may keep it always," said Miss Barry solemnly. "It is more yours than mine. Isn't that a wonderful young man, Belinda Barry? Didn't I always say your father was too clever to trust the wrong people?"
"Bertram is clever," said Linda simply.
Miss Barry eyed her curiously, far from satisfied. "It's just," she thought, "as if some mental starch had gone all through the girl."
She wondered if her niece had no regret, no shame, that she had put herself so beyond the pale that Bertram ignored her.
"Really she is a handsome creature," thought Miss Barry, still regarding her vis-à-vis with some sternness.
"I hope as soon as we get home you will make haste to tell Mr. King that you appreciate all he has done."
"I do appreciate all he has done," said Linda, still with the exalted look in her eyes, "but he is doing his best to make up for it, Aunt Belinda." She leaned over far enough to put her hand on Miss Barry's knee, "If this comes out as Bertram hopes I will believe in God."
"Why, my dear child!" exclaimed the other.
"I tell you if a man like my father could be remembered in Chicago as touched by the faintest shade of dishonor, I should know that there couldn't be any God of justice."
"Very well, Belinda," replied Miss Barry warmly; "if you think so highly of justice you'd better try to practice it more yourself." Her nostrils dilated.
Linda relaxed and gave a little one-sided smile as she shook her head and leaned back again.
"Well, I never did!" thought Miss Barry; and she too leaned back in the corner, where her niece forgot all about her.
What a gift, what a wonder, to dare to think about her lost one! Hitherto to dwell upon the thought of him was to be cut with knives. The only peace possible had been negative; had been to harden herself to insensibility.
"It is the Spirit Flower," she thought, and her lips took a tender curve that matched the melting eyes above them. The association of ideas brought thoughts of Mrs. Porter, for it was the song Linda had last studied with her teacher whose words flowed now through her mind.
"My heart was frozen, even as the earth
That covered thee forever from my sight.
All thoughts of happiness expired at birth;
Within me naught but black and starless night.
"Down through the winter sunshine snowflakes came,
All shimmering, like to silver butterflies;
They seemed to whisper softly thy dear name;
They melted with the tear-drops from mine eyes.
"But suddenly there bloomed within that hour,
In my poor heart, so seeming dead, a flower
Whose fragrance in my life shall ever be:
The tender, sacred
memory
of thee."
Linda's eyes closed, and slow crystal drops stole under the lids, but for the first time they were not bitter tears. The journey would now not be wearisome. For a long time she sat motionless, her eyes on the flying clouds, nurturing that spirit flower.
She had put Mrs. Porter's letters in her traveling-bag, and after a time she took them out and read them over, this time with more open vision. She could not realize how recent was her bereavement. She seemed to have lived years in this new world into which she was born the day they brought her father home. It was to look back ages to think of their last breakfast together, his last embrace. She had asked that morning to come downtown to lunch with him, and he had told her that he couldn't spare the time. At least she had been assiduous that last week. With that world she had had nothing to do for so long. It was with this world, this world without her father in it, that she had now to deal, a world in which it seemed to her she had had time to grow old.
Her mind roved busily to and from the lines of Mrs. Porter's loving letters as she read. This new liberty to think, this hope contained in Bertram King's letter, endowed her with an unrestraint which seemed wonderful, and she sometimes read a line six times before the roving mind grasped its meaning.
Miss Barry had fallen asleep in her corner. How weary and haggard her face looked in its repose. Linda's wakened heart went out to the signs of her aunt's unregarded sorrow.
An express train going in the opposite direction crashed suddenly by the open windows with a deafening racket. Miss Barry started and waked.
Blinking, she realized her surroundings, and sat up. She met her niece's eyes. Linda had taken up the violets and her nose was buried in their soft fragrance.
"That was too bad, Aunt Belinda," she said, leaning forward. "It's growing very warm. Can't I get you a drink?" she said.
"Glory be!" thought Miss Barry. "Yes, I wish you would," she said aloud. Her eyes followed the girl, as she slowly rose and moved away to get the water. "At last," continued Miss Barry mentally, "she isn't walking in her sleep."
She accepted the glass when it came, and drank thirstily, although she had not been thirsty.
When Linda returned, moving slowly and holding by the seat, she did not take the place she had vacated, but sat down beside her aunt.
"Tell me something about Father," she said.
"What sort of thing? What do you mean?"
"Not the things the newspapers have printed, about his beating his way to Chicago on the trains, and being an errand boy, and having no education, and all that – his phenomenal rise to fortune. Not that."
Miss Barry snorted. "No education! Absurd! The newspapers make me sick. He had education enough to make him one of the smartest men in the country. I should think folks would know better than to believe such stuff."
"And you took care of him, didn't you, Aunt Belinda? I never used to want to know anything about his childhood. I grew tired of hearing people say he was a self-made man, and I was ashamed to know that he was barefooted and poor. That was another thorn," finished Linda, under her breath.
"Another what?"
"A thorn."
Miss Barry looked around at the speaker. "Oh, a thorn in your side, you mean. I guess you have always been some high-headed, Linda." She used the past tense instinctively as she viewed the pale, languid face leaning back beside her.
"You took care of him like a little mother," persisted the girl. "He has told me so."
"Yes, I was only ten when Ma died, and I guess the papers would 'a' been right about your father's education if I hadn't saved her slippers."
"You mean figuratively? You stepped into them."
"No, I don't. I mean it just as literal as anything could be meant. Pa was easy-going and had enough to attend to, black-smithing and selling flour and feed, so if anybody was going to spank Lambert it had to be me."
Linda's lips, pressed tightly against the violets, quivered against them.
"I'm sure you loved him tremendously," she said unsteadily.
Miss Barry sniffed, with a one-sided smile. "I didn't have much time to think about that. I had to get breakfast and get to school myself, and spank him when he ran away, and when he hitched on trains, and robbed apple orchards, and so on, but mostly when he wouldn't go to school. Ma's slippers were 'most done for, when one day I caught him, and took one of the old tattered things and was going to give him what he deserved, when he just caught my arms in his two hands, and began to laugh. I noticed then for the first time that he was as tall as I was, and his eyes looked straight into mine the fullest of mischief you ever saw. I could feel myself getting as red as a beet. 'Let me go this minute,' I yelled at him. 'Let me go, Lammie.' That's what the schoolboys called him when they wanted to be mean. He fought a lot o' boys for that before they learned better, and I remember exactly how he managed to get both o' my calico sleeves into one hand, and boxed my ears with the other; not real hard, he was laughing all the time.
"'Come on, Belinda,' he said, 'let's bury the slipper.' I knew what he meant, because the boys were always playing Indian, and burying hatchets; but, do you know, he made me bury that shoe then and there? He took me outdoors and made me take the hoe and bury that slipper in the garden. He stood over me, and before I finished I was crying, I was so mad. I was fifteen then, and he was eleven, but I was small for my age; and that was the end of the spankings. But you see by that time," continued Miss Barry complacently, "I'd made him a real good boy."
"Yes, yes, you did," agreed Linda warmly. "What then?"
"Oh, then it was lobster traps, and I helped him with them, and I got Father to buy lobsters off him, and buy his clams, too, and I think Lambert was always sort of sorry for me even when I was scolding him. He knew I had a lot to do for a young one."
"Yes," said Linda, with eagerness, "and he resolved to make it up to you, I know."
"He did make it up to me. He was the best brother in the world," answered Miss Barry simply.
The girl's lips trembled again against the violets, and the two watched the flying landscape in silence.
CHAPTER XIII
HOME-COMING
Often during the remainder of the journey Linda questioned her aunt about her own and her father's childhood. Hitherto she had avoided as far as possible all mention or knowledge of his antecedents and the struggles which preceded his success. Again she felt the relief consequent upon opening a mental door until now painstakingly kept closed. Instead of the thorn again came up the fir-tree, as her thoughts, led by Miss Barry, roved about the hard but wholesome past, and she acquainted herself with the good stock which had produced her lost treasure.
"Don't grieve. Speed him on," had been Mrs. Porter's tender and strong admonition. Linda tried to remember it every time that submerging wave of realized loss went sweeping suffocatingly over her head.
Miss Barry, rousing from practical thoughts of her home and housekeeping, or waking from a nap, usually saw her niece poring over letters, and occasionally it was Bertram King's that she held in her hands.
Once when this was the case Miss Belinda held out a metal box. "Try some of this ginger," she said. "Coals to Newcastle! Did you ever? Isn't Mr. King the impudent one?"
Linda leaned politely toward the confection, then drew back again.
"Don't waste it on me, Aunt Belinda. I don't seem to care for sweets."
"Well, I hope Mrs. Porter will. I can't eat all these things alone," replied Miss Barry, casting a glance toward the varied boxes.
At the same time she let that eagle glance come back to her niece.
"I hope you're going to remember," she said impressively, "that that fine man to whom we owe so much is related to Mrs. Porter."
"What?" asked the girl absent-mindedly. "Oh," suddenly gathering her aunt's meaning. "Yes, certainly."
Miss Barry sniffed. "Linda," she said, "I don't know but I'd ought to go and dig up your grandmother's slipper!"
The girl smiled, and the older woman shook her head. "She is a handsome thing," she thought.
Mrs. Porter thought so too when she met them in Portland. In spite of the change wrought in her pupil's appearance during the last month she reflected how beauty at twenty-one will be beauty still.
"There's no place like home!" exclaimed Miss Barry, as she accepted Mrs. Porter's embrace. "I'm aching for one look at the ocean."
"Isn't she saucy to our grand lake?" asked Mrs. Porter, putting her hand through Linda's arm, and leading the way to the motor waiting outside.
"What does this mean?" asked Miss Barry. "The train's good enough for us."
"No, it's such a beautiful afternoon. It will rest you both to motor home," said Mrs. Porter. She supported Linda's arm, noting the feebleness of the girl's movements.
The two black-clothed women entered the car, the porter put in their suit-cases, Mrs. Porter jumped in, and they started. As yet Linda had scarcely spoken. It was curious to her to see her teacher thus, off duty, wearing an outing hat and corduroy. She, who had always been surrounded with a wall of delicate formality which no pupil save herself had ever had the audacity to break down, now smiling, tanned and rosy, girlish in her soft white hat, seemed another identity. Linda regarded her teacher gravely, while the latter responded cheerfully to Miss Barry's questions. The sun shone, the breeze was crisp.
As they emerged into the suburbs and countryside, all the joyousness of June smote upon the travelers' tired senses.
Linda turned her wistful eyes away when Mrs. Porter met them, a reassuring strength in her regard.
"Jerry was so disappointed when I told him he needn't come to the station for us," she said. "All your neighbors are excited over your home-coming."
"H'm," sniffed Miss Barry in a one-sided smile. "Luella accommodatin' any boarders?"
"Yes, a mother and daughter from New York."
"H'm. Their bones beginning to show yet?"
Mrs. Porter laughed. "If it is as you say, why shouldn't Miss Luella advertise a reducing establishment? I'm sure it would pay."
The speaker's cheer covered a pang. Linda's slenderness and pallor spoke eloquently, and made her forget the girl's probable injustice to Bertram King.
Linda had made but one visit before to the Cape. That was ten years ago, when her aunt's cottage was first built. It had been a flying trip with her father and mother, and she had slight recollection of the place. Her mother had cared more for mountains than sea, and Linda had visited them on both sides of the ocean. It was now to a practically new place that the motor was carrying her.
She straightened herself with interest when the settlement came in sight, and her large gaze sought for the little house that had been her father's gift of love to his sister.
Mrs. Porter saw her eagerness. "Just about three minutes away now," she said.
"Is that it? The brown one?" asked the girl as they neared the rocky point.
"Yes, the Gull's Nest," replied Mrs. Porter. "I don't know what Miss Barry calls it, but how could it have any other name?"
"Lambert was always telling me to name it and he'd give me some writing paper, stamped."
"And why didn't you?"
"I did." Miss Barry tossed her head a little toward the welcoming waves.
"What is it?" asked Mrs. Porter eagerly.
"Oh, no matter," returned Miss Belinda.
"You haven't told? Do you mean you haven't
told
?" Mrs. Porter's eyes twinkled at the proof of New England reticence.
"What's in a name, anyway?" returned Miss Belinda evasively.
Her niece regarded the flush on her aunt's thin cheek wistfully, and wondered what bit of sentiment she was concealing.
The wonder heightened the interest with which she entered the cottage. The little house was unexpectedly roomy within. Lambert Barry had given his sister
carte blanche
as to coziness, provided she would have room enough for him and his when they could arrange to come; but the nearness to the great diapason of the waves had repelled his wife, and after he lost her the engrossed business man could make only flying visits to the scenes of his childhood. There were the rooms, however, and Linda was soon led to hers.
"It's the one I always called your father's room, Linda," said Miss Barry, as she ushered her in.
Mrs. Porter, after brief explanation of her preparations, had remained below stairs to leave them alone.
Linda looked from the windows on the limitless ocean, dotted with distant sails; on the fleecy islands of cloud in a sky as blue, as limitless.
She turned back to her companion. A look of satisfaction had overspread her aunt's wan face.
"You've been very good to me, Aunt Belinda," she said deliberately. "I've known it all the time, but I shall appreciate it more and more."
"Well, well, that's all right, child," returned the other hastily. "I think there's everything here to make you comfortable. The bathroom's here, between your room and mine; and if there's anything you want that you don't see, just let me know."
She went out and left Linda standing there, her wide gaze fixed on the open sea and ships. Islands were but distant scenes from the Cape. Here the granite cliffs rose high and higher. She could get glimpses along the shore of their hollows, which soon would shelter luxuriant deep-pink wild roses, but now waved with snowy daisies, flirting with the foam which ever sought to reach them.
An hour afterward she went downstairs, and found Mrs. Porter sitting with a book in the glassed-in end of the veranda.
"See? I've been saving this hammock for you," said Mrs. Porter, looking up.
Linda stood still and smiled, looking with fascinated eyes at the sea.
Mrs. Porter remained quiet, watching the girl's face grow grave.
"It's very wonderful after the city, isn't it?" she asked at last.
"Yes. The noise on the avenue was constant, then the banging and confusion of trains. This is like being born into a new world. I was wondering just now if Father felt that same great contrast and peace when he waked up."
"I'm sure he did," replied Mrs. Porter. She said no more to urge her friend to lie down, but dropped her book and took up some sewing that lay on the table beside her.
Pretty soon Linda came over to the hammock and seated herself on its edge, and at that moment Miss Barry appeared with an armful of neglected bon-bon boxes.
"This is day before yesterday's candy," she announced, "but most of them haven't been opened at all, and any that you don't want will find a market in the neighborhood." The speaker raised her eyebrows significantly.
Mrs. Porter smiled. "Poor little Blanche Aurora, for instance. She's been a good little helper."
"You don't mean to say she hasn't broken dishes."
"Well, not so very many, really. She's been very much excited over your home-coming."
When Jerry came with the trunks, his sea-blue eyes regarded Linda with respectful interest, while he shook hands with her aunt.
"Ye look some faded, Belinda," he remarked.
"I'll pick up," was the reply. "This is my niece, Cap'n Holt."
Linda brought her absent-minded gaze back with a start, realizing that the "expressman" was being introduced to her.
He put out his rough hand kindly, and she saw by his expression that he was acknowledging her bereavement. She put her hand in his in silence.
"Cap'n Holt knew your father, Linda," said Mrs. Porter.
The girl's eyes met his. "Did you work for my father?" she asked.
"Dunno 'bout that," was the good-humored response. "I was the oldest, and I guess mebbe he worked fer me some."
Cap'n Holt's lips twitched as if a humorous continuation of his declaration was imminent, but Linda's grave looks and her black gown restrained him. A faint color mounted to the girl's cheeks. She must remember hereafter!
"He was well liked around here, your father was," finished Jerry Holt warmly.
"Thank you," said Linda, and Jerry dropped her smooth young hand awkwardly.
"Sometime you must tell me about when he was a little boy," she continued, still gazing at him.
Jerry Holt winked hard as he drove his team away from those appealing eyes. "She takes it hard," he said to himself, "she takes it hard."
Luella Benslow had seen him drive by with the trunks, and she was working in her garden as he returned. Luella had not succeeded in entirely breaking down the reserve of that pleasant-faced Mrs. Porter, who had been keeping house for Belinda. The socially experienced musician had known how to awe her. Luella was by no means certain that Belinda Barry's loss had dulled her speech, so she restrained the curiosity which urged her to create an immediate errand at the Barry cottage.
Jerry must pass her house on his return, so she set herself to work at piling some wood, her father not being amenable to the performing of such an arduous task.
Her regimentals for such labor consisted of a deep shaker bonnet provided with a flowing collar, in which her complexion was shielded. She also wore a complication of capes, and a terraced arrangement of aprons, one above the other, the whole giving the strong, sportive sea wind an assorted lot of banners, which it tossed in all directions.
As Jerry's wagon approached, Luella was too deafened by the wind and her shaker to hear the wheels on the soft earth. She was at the roadside, gathering the smaller wood which had fallen by the way, and the back view of her stooping figure presented an appearance which Jerry's steed, mentally consulting a long experience, could not remember to have seen paralleled. Deciding that it would be on the safe side to approach no nearer, Molly planted her forefeet, and all Jerry's adjurations failed to persuade her to move. Her eloquent ears went forward and back.
At last there came borne to Luella a stentorian yell.
"Git up! Git up, I tell ye, Luella."
She slowly lifted her head, turned, and brushing her hair out of her eyes beheld Molly with feet planted and ears laid back. Jerry was standing up in his wagon, gesticulating with his whip.
"Git up, I tell ye! The hoss won't go
by
ye!" he yelled.
Luella arose with alacrity, but slowly, her arms full of kindling. This she dropped incontinently, and Molly shied as the fluttering figure ran forward.
"I want to speak to you, Jerry. Don't go till you tell me about 'em!" she said breathlessly. "Do excuse my looks," she added with a simper.
"I can overlook 'em if Molly can," replied Jerry.
Both Molly and Luella seemed to be indulging in a return to the skittishness of youth.
Jerry had twice taken Luella home from singing school in days gone by, and he had been ticketed as one of her beaux ever since! A might-have-been with whom she consistently played the game.
She pushed her shaker back. "Have you seen the orphan?" she added, again brushing stray locks of hair out of her curious eyes.
"Yes."
"What's she like? Awful proud, I s'pose."
"Mebbe. She favors Lambert. He went some on looks, you remember."
"How should I remember?" returned Luella with a coy smile, which showed dentally the evenness of piano keys. "I was so
much
younger than you and Mr. Barry."
"I wish Luella's teeth wouldn't kind o' drop," reflected Jerry Holt. "It makes me dizzy."
He snapped his whip gently, while Molly, reassured, rested in the first position.
"I think I'd ought to call real soon," said Luella. "Don't you?"
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