King started to his feet, and viewed the girl in amazement. Her brow was furrowed, and the eyes in her white face blazed.
"Speak," she insisted.
A flood of color rushed to the man's very forehead as he realized her open enmity. In silence they stood thus for a moment.
"I refuse to answer you," he said at last.
Her gaze swept him scornfully. "It is what I expected." Then she turned to her sister, speaking gently. "Settle it between you now, Harriet. I suppose I may dispose of my own, and you know my wishes. They won't change."
After she had gone out, Harriet seized Bertram's hand as he stood dazed.
"Forgive her, Bertram," she said anxiously. "I do believe she's nearly crazy."
He sat down again, very pale, and with no comment proceeded to sort his papers.
Miss Barry's earrings were trembling, and she thought with longing of the peace of her "Gull's Nest."
CHAPTER IX
CORRESPONDENCE
Before Miss Barry's train had reached Chicago, Linda had received a telegram conveying sympathy from Mrs. Porter. A pile of notes and letters lay now unopened on her desk. Her sister had read the telegram at the time of its arrival, and left it on the table beside Linda's bed, where one day she read it; but the girl refused the least pressure on her wound from even the most friendly and delicate fingers. This very afternoon, when, tingling with excitement and antagonism, she swept from the room, she passed the maid who was at the door, just bringing in the mail. Somewhat hesitatingly the girl offered the letters to her young mistress. She and all the other servants stood in awe of the suffering that had so altered the jolly, careless, imperious young woman.
Linda, her heart beating tumultuously with its indignation, accepted the package automatically, and went on upstairs to her room.
She raised her hand to her throat in the effort to stop its choking, and threw down the letters. The handwriting on the top one was familiar and full of happy association. Here was one person who loved her, and understood her, and whose patience had never failed.
With the picture vividly before her of the faces of her scandalized sister and aunt, she caught up this letter and held it to her breast, her large gaze fixed straight ahead. The kindly expression, the humorous smile, the loving eyes of her teacher as they had rested on her hundreds of times, strove with the other picture. She felt she could bear to have Mrs. Porter talk to her. She moved to the door and locked it, conscious suddenly that she was trembling; then she sank into a chair and opened the letter.
My dear Linda (it began),—
I have waited a full week to write to you because I felt that at first you wouldn't care to read a letter even from me. Do you notice that "even"? Yes, I feel sure you love me as I do you, sincerely, and it gives me courage to talk to you just as if you were lying beside me on these sun-warmed rocks, with the cool wind trying in spurts to snatch off the duck hat that is shading my eyes. It can't succeed, for the hat is tied on with the white veil you gave me. There is a little scent of orris in it still, marking it as yours, and giving me the pleasant feeling of one of your "bear's hugs."
I am sorry to be a thousand miles off from my little girl's troubles, and so all this week I have been trying to know that the opposite of this sense of separation is the truth; that all that I love in you is mine still, and that the greater part of what I could do for you if I were there it is my privilege to do here. The personal touch, the interchange of loving looks, is dear to our human sense, but sometimes even these get in the way of the loftier, broader mission which God's children may perform for one another.
I have been thinking much about your father, a man whose keen sense of honor, and large charity, will be discerned more and more clearly when the present confusion is straightened out.
Linda's suddenly blinded eyes closed, and she again held the letter to her breast a minute before going on.
He is incapable of wrong intention. Do you notice that I say "is"? I wonder if you are feeling that sense of continuous immortal life which is your rightful and best comfort at this time. All that you loved best in your father were traits which your hands could not touch. Your heart and mind only discerned them. They are yours still, and they were that real part of him which God sustained and now sustains, and which were the reflections of His Light and Love.
I cannot touch your body now, any more than if it had ceased to dwell upon this earth,—any more than you can touch your father's,—but that makes you no less real to me. My tall little Linda speaks to me in her generosity, her lovingness, her gayety, as vividly as if you were beside me this minute, and it would be so if I knew I was never to look upon your face again. "The flesh profiteth nothing," the Bible says; and it is one of those lightning flashes of truth that glance away from us until the trained thought is sensitized to receive it; but after that, little by little it proves itself.
Perhaps I am talking too long, but please know that I am thinking of you daily, with thoughts full of love.
The Comforter that Jesus promised us is a real Existence, and "underneath are the everlasting arms."
"As one whom his mother comforteth so will I comfort you, saith the Lord." How I love to think of that when I think of my dear girl.
I found those words a few weeks ago on the calendar you gave me, and now I give the wonderful promise back to you. Say it over to yourself, dear child, even if you don't now see how or when it will come true, for His promises are sure. It only rests with us to open our hearts to receive them.
Your loving friend,
Maud Porter.
Linda's lip was caught between her teeth, and her brow frowning, as she finished reading. She turned the letter back to read again the sentences about her father. Here was no uncertain note.
She crumpled the sheets between her hands and closed her eyes.
"Oh, God, You have taken away my father. Help us now to clear his name!"
It was a cry from her heart, the first time in all this eternity of days that her thought had turned to the Higher Power with any feeling save resentment. She saw her friend lying on the sun-warmed rocks in the sunlit atmosphere of a joyous June day, longing to help her, longing to impart to her the sustaining calm of her own faith, and gratitude woke feebly in her.
She rose, and carried the letter to her bedroom, folding it again in its envelope. It did not belong in her desk. Such a message from the woman who had long been her ideal was a thing apart. She placed it in the back of a drawer in her dresser, and there her hand encountered a scrap of paper which she drew forth. Its clear lettering stood out against the ivory-white background.
"Instead of the thorn shall come up the fir tree—"
She read no further. The calendar again! She recalled also that leaf which in the studio she had marked for Mrs. Porter's reproach:—
"When thy father and thy mother forsake thee, then the Lord will take thee up."
She dropped the papers and covered her eyes again with her hands.
"Oh, Mother, Mother!" she moaned above her breath. "How could God, if there is a God, comfort me as you would!"
Supposing immortality, in which every Sunday in church she declared her belief, were really true. Supposing her father and mother were together. Supposing her mother were now consoling him for his mistakes,—for Bertram King's mistakes,—would that thought not bring consolation? Her worried father! Her lonely father! She sank into a chair, weeping helplessly. She had worn his pearls and danced, while he was lonely! If she could only die and go to her father and mother. Life here was ruined, and no one needed her. Harriet was engrossed with her family. Aunt Belinda's heart was in her home, stern duty alone holding her in this place.
After a few minutes the mourner lifted her bowed head, pulled a sheet of paper toward her, and wrote:—
I am bleeding. Please write to me again.
Linda.
When she had addressed the note to Mrs. Porter, she washed her face and made herself ready for the tête-à-tête dinner with her aunt, which would shortly be served in her sitting-room. She had never entered the dining-room since the last meal she ate there with her father.
She set her door open in order that Aunt Belinda should not be afraid to come in, and shortly the much-tried lady did appear, her lips set in a line of endurance. Miss Barry had never approved less of her niece than at the moment of the girl's exit from that business interview. She gave a sharp glance now at her, sitting as usual with eyes gazing from the window at nothing, and hands loosely folded in her lap.
"Harriet left her good-bye for you," she said. "She had to hurry home for Harry's supper."
"Yes," responded Linda.
Miss Belinda sat down, and the gaze she fixed on her niece waited for an explanation or an apology. None came.
Miss Barry cleared her throat. "Harriet wishes to put herself on record," she said distinctly, "as entirely disowning any such feeling toward Mr. King as you expressed."
"You know he is her husband's cousin," returned Linda passively. "One must keep harmony in a family."
"More than that, Linda Barry," continued her aunt crisply, "that young man would have had to be guilty of designing your father's downfall to deserve such words and such a manner as yours."
The girl eyed the speaker steadily, and again the fire of excitement glowed in her look.
"You saw that he could not answer my question."
"I saw that he would not."
"It would be a good plan for you to talk with some of the prominent business men of the town," remarked Linda, the light going out of her eyes.
"I don't need any business man to tell me that that poor boy is about used up—and in whose service, pray? Answer me that, Linda Barry."
"Mammon," was the sententious reply.
"Pshaw!" ejaculated her aunt. "A clever man like your father didn't trust that man for no reason. Harriet's and my heart just ached for the poor fellow this afternoon. I thought for a minute after you went out that he was going to faint."
"Yes," returned Linda listlessly; "I suppose he had been sure no one would hold him in any way responsible."
The servant here came in to spread the little table for dinner, while Miss Barry, her hands tightly locked together, gave her indignant thoughts free rein, and followed Bertram King to his room at the club.
Had she really been able to see him, she would have witnessed his finding upon his arrival a letter in Mrs. Porter's handwriting.
His white, stoical face did not change while he read it:—
Dear Bertram,—
I want to send you a few lines to the club, because I feel sure there will be a quieter atmosphere there than at the office these troublous days. There is never an hour in which my thoughts do not go to you and Linda, fellow sufferers and both so dear to me. I can scarcely wait for the day when your duties will let you leave Chicago and come here. Doubtless Linda will arrive soon, and here you will both find healing for your sorrow, and if it is right, find each other. She will have a double reason for nearness to you as the chief earthly link with her dear father, and here in this simplicity and quiet the real things of life are more easily discernible. Complications seem to have no place in these broad, harmonious spaces, and both you dear ones can forget the fevers of sorrowful excitement.
Let me hear from you.
Yours as ever,
Maud.
It was by return mail that Mrs. Porter received the answer to this letter. She opened it with eagerness:—
Dear Maud,—
Thank you for your letter and far more for your affection. It is some comfort, while I am locking horns with enemies, or endeavoring to untangle labyrinths, to know that there's a good little woman ready to coddle me when I have time to be coddled.
I see you remember the heart-to-heart talk you drew me into one day—and I admit I was easy to draw. Now I ask you to forget all that I said if you can. My wishes and plans have undergone a complete change, and I am glad you are the only person living who knows what my designs and hopes were, for they have vanished.
Pardon brevity. I'm "that druv," as your Maine friends would have it, that I don't know whether I'm afoot or horseback. I'll look forward, however, to an hour when you and I can elope to some Arcadia for a few weeks, and I'll let you know when such a day looms on the horizon.
Your devoted cousin,
Bertram.
Mrs. Porter's face had slowly undergone a change from eagerness to dazed and sad surprise.
"I wouldn't have believed it!" she soliloquized, as she let the sheet fall. "People have so often said that Bertram cared for the dollar mark above all else, but I laughed at them. How I hope she doesn't care! How I hope it!"
CHAPTER X
THE SPELL BREAKS
That spot in Miss Belinda's heart which had softened toward her niece in the latter's misery of bereavement bid fair to harden over again every time she thought of Linda's attitude toward Bertram King. It was bad enough to harbor the absurd theory that so young a man had been able to mould the opinions and actions of his employer; but it was unthinkable that in this time of grief and stress the girl had been able to sneer at him, and so evidently cut him to the heart with her accusation. Every time that scene rose before Miss Barry's mental vision her earrings quivered again. What did these weary days that she was undergoing amount to? Linda was civil to her, but indifferent to everything and everybody. The girl made no effort to conceal that the visits of her own sister were a weariness, and, unthinkable to Harriet, she made excuses not to see little Harry.
Day after day of the big empty house and the silent girl, the constant whirr of motors through the wide-open windows, caused Miss Barry to find that she was guilty of nerves. Again and again she hinted to Linda that the sea air was what she needed. The girl was usually deaf to the suggestion, or else returned, gently and civilly, it is true, to pleading with her aunt not to remain longer, protesting that she was entirely recovered and able to be left alone.
One day her answer became more frank.
"Mrs. Porter has written me that she is trying to get Bertram to come there to rest," she said.
Miss Barry gazed at the speaker. "Sits the wind in that quarter?" thought she. Her earrings quivered again, and she counted ten. Of what use was it to contend with a statue? At last she spoke.
"I only wish we could do something for him," she said, "but it won't be that. I met him on the street yesterday, and he said it wouldn't be possible for him to get away before autumn."
Linda making no reply to this, Miss Barry stared at her for a minute more, then sought her own pleasant, spacious room. Hers was not the pen of a ready writer, but she sat down now at her well-appointed desk, and wrote a letter.
Dear Mrs. Porter,—
I begin to see a loophole of light on our situation. I wrote you a week ago how crazy I am to come home. I'd like to burn every devilish automobile in Chicago, I'm so sick of their noise; but Linda's kept on just as obstinate as a mule, saying she must stay, but wanting me to go. I can't go unless she does. She's taken against everybody. Harriet thinks she's out of her mind because she refuses to see the wonderful baby; and I assure you I'd be squeamish about leaving her, for I couldn't be sure she wouldn't do away with herself, she's so morbid. I haven't told you the greatest proof of her morbidness (perhaps it ought to be morbidity, but no matter)—she acts like the devil incarnate to your cousin Bertram King. You know you told me he wanted to marry her. Well, I guess he's graduated from that notion. At any rate, it seems she thinks he led her father into the business deal that brought on most of this trouble—that big irrigation project out West. My brother wasn't anybody that could be led by the nose, but Linda won't hear to reason, and my patience with her is exhausted. Well, this morning when I returned to the charge about going home, it came out that she was afraid Mr. King was going to you. Now he isn't, because he can't get away for months to come. So won't you write her that you've given up trying to get him, and that you want to see her—if you can make up your mind to a whopper—and that you hope for my sake she'll exert herself and bring me home! That's a good one! Bring me home! If any one can persuade her, you can, for so far as I can find out you're the only person on earth she hasn't taken against. Sometimes I speak of you, sort of carelessly, and say I hope you ain't feeling it too much responsibility to take care of the cottage when you'd hoped to have an entire rest! And if she hears what I say she looks at me real human for an instant.
Once I asked her if she wouldn't sit down to that little piano in her sitting-room and let me hear her voice. Law! You ought to have seen the way her eyes turned on me. Truly I never saw anybody who could look so near as if they had a knife in their heart as she can.
I'm getting as nervous as a cat. After we've dragged through a day, then comes on the night, when everything on wheels goes past our house. If Gatling guns came small enough I'd rig one in my window and do some of the shooting myself.
Now, you do your best to fix it up, Mrs. Porter, and if you can just get us to the Cape, then you can go off somewhere else where there won't be any wet blanket to spoil your fun. Linda ought to be outdoors; but I've never got her out once since we came back from the cemetery. She asks every day if the cars are sold. She has it on the brain to pay back everybody who lost anything in the catastrophe.
I'm hanging all my hopes on you, and am
Yours truly,
Belinda Barry.
While reading this letter Mrs. Porter's cheeks grew pink, and upon finishing she fell into a prolonged brown study. So it was not mercenary considerations which had altered Bertram's aspirations. Her heart went out to him. She had never known till now how much she cared for Bertram. The impulse attacked her to leave this peaceful scene and take the first train for the spot where her loved ones were in such distress; but Miss Barry's adjuration must be heeded. To get Linda away from those scenes and associations was surely the first necessity. Mrs. Porter found she had to meet and banish some resentment toward the unhappy girl who could so ruthlessly add to another's woe. But she had Linda's appeal. When one is bleeding one may be ruthless without realizing; so again Mrs. Porter sat down and addressed herself to the task of helping the sufferer:
My dear Linda (she wrote),—
I'm not on the warm, breezy rocks to-day. A nor'easter is gathering, and I am sitting in Miss Barry's living-room, where her good little Blanche has let me build a roaring, glorious fire of birch logs. It seems almost wicked to burn anything so beautiful as the white birch, and yet anything so airy and poetical should not, perhaps, be allowed to wither and fall into decay. Better, perhaps, that it should be caught up in a chariot of flame.
If you knew how lovely it is here, how sweet the smells, how pure and clear the silence of all save Nature's sounds, you would, I am sure, take the first train out of Chicago. I have given up the hope of persuading Bertram to leave. He would far rather die right there than leave one duty to your father unperformed. I shall hope to go back in August and get him to go West with me for a time before my teaching begins.
I think of you every day, my little Linda. I received your note. We do bleed when we are wounded; but blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. The blessing of mourning is the finding of real comfort—spiritual comfort; the oil of joy for mourning; the realization that we need never mourn; that this world is not all; that no good thing will He withhold from them that walk uprightly; that no blessing is ever taken away from God's child.
We hear people say, "Shan't I believe the evidence of my own senses?" I once heard a lecturer enlarge upon that theme, showing that our whole education is largely for the purpose of instructing us away from the evidence of our senses, from learning that the sun does not rise or set,—through the whole list of deceitful appearances. If I believed what I see now, I should say that the sun had left the world to storm and darkness, but we know that the glorious sun and cloudless firmament are there to-day as truly as on the brilliant yesterday, and we have no fear that we shall not see it again.
The deceitful appearance which you have now to recognize is that your father has died and left you. Life never dies, and Love is immortal. Life is progress, too, and he knows more and greater and happier things than he knew here. Every right motive and act of his life is receiving its logical reward, and opening out new channels for progress. Let us not think of him in the flesh, but in the spirit. Let us not dwell sadly on his mortal harassment or disappointments. How do we know but such thoughts are a drag upon his spirit? Let us speed him on with our own love and courage, and let us try every day to harbor no thought that will hamper our souls and make us less fit to join him.
It is easier to sink down under a blow than to rise and go on; and yet rising and going on is what will make you keep step with your loved one and not be left behind. Your sister has an advantage over you, because she must rise and go on. If you are finding that the strong leading-spirit, Linda Barry, is faltering and weak now, you are making a blessed discovery; finding that the strength of the human will is not the true strength, and that like a little child you can turn to your Heavenly Father, and receive from Him strength which no mortal blow can destroy. Keep the fire of Love glowing in your heart, and you will find that it is the fuel that will make strong and bright every faculty. Unselfishness follows where that fire burns; but withdraw the fuel and the heart is cold, and those about you feel the chill.
I am hoping daily to hear that you are ready to bring your aunt home. Has she ever told you the pretty story of her girlish day-dreams on these rocks, and how her barefooted brother resolved mentally that he would be a prosperous man some day, and give her a home right here? He was able to fulfill that boyish resolve, and somehow this cottage is to me very full of him. Many men would have forgotten in the rush of business to carry out such a plan, but not your father. I can imagine with just what refreshment his thoughts flew here from the clatter of the city. I am sure Miss Barry's come here every day, and I am sure she will be very happy when you decide to leave. I know you are not detaining her willingly, but in her place I should feel as she does about coming without you. Do you know that I want very much to see you? Here in the nest of your dear father's generous, loving thought, I am resting, and waiting for you to rest too. You'll feel nearer to him than in the crashing city. Come and try.
Yours lovingly,
Maud Porter.
Miss Barry had brought this thick letter to her niece, and though her hands were busied with some work as she sat at a distance from her, she glanced furtively at the girl from time to time, striving to glean from her face some hope as to its effect.
When Linda finished reading, she dropped the sheets and looked up so quickly that she caught her aunt's inquiring glance. Miss Barry flushed guiltily, and looked back at her work.
"How soon do you think we could go to the Cape, Aunt Belinda?"
In her excitement and eagerness Miss Barry's words stuck in her throat.
"Why—ahem!—how about—how about to-morrow?"
"Let us go to-morrow," said Linda.
CHAPTER XI
EASTWARD HO!
Fred Whitcomb felt his eyes sting, but he scorned to wipe them as he strode manfully up Michigan Avenue. Instead, he scowled and set his teeth and threw his shoulders back, as one who yearns to meet the foe hand to hand. His opportunity was near, for Bertram King, having forgotten some papers, was walking hastily toward the club, and Fred, blinded and distrait, turned a corner and ran directly into him.
The lighter and taller man seized his assailant.
"Don't do that again, Freddy. It's a wonder I didn't go over like a tenpin."
"I didn't see you," growled Freddy, winking hard.
"I gathered that," remarked King, and was hurrying on, but Whitcomb held him.
"Why weren't you at the station to see them off?" he demanded. "I thought of course you'd be there."
"More room for you, Freddy," returned the other, looking steadily into his friend's belligerent eyes.
"I don't see how you could neglect Linda at such a time."
"Do you think she missed me?" asked King quietly.
"Of course she did," hotly. "I found out only by accident by what train they were going. They didn't let anybody know, Miss Barry said; but of course you knew. I'd—I'd hardly know Linda."
A terrific lump rose in the speaker's throat, and blinded again by grief he turned hastily away to continue his march.
This time Bertram detained him. Freddy tried to escape, but it was a grip of steel on his arm. "Come into the club a minute," said King, and his companion obeyed the leading. At least it would be a place where he could use his handkerchief secure from observation.
"Now, you're not taking me to your room," objected the younger man, as his captor, not relaxing the hold on his arm, led him toward the elevator.
"Guess again, Freddy," said Bertram; and the visitor, after a moment of holding back, found himself in the elevator.
When they were in King's room, and the door closed, the host indicated a chair, but the guest remained standing.
Bertram smiled a little wistfully as he regarded the other's youthful strength, thinking his face, in its present condition of repressed emotion, looked as it must have done when he was ten.
"What do you want with me?" asked Freddy, his head held high.
"I wish I knew what you use for a hair tonic," said Bertram, passing his hand over his own fair locks, beginning to feel thin at the crown.
"Don't be a—What have you brought me up here for?"
"To let you pull yourself together for one thing. You were in a fair way to assault and batter all down the avenue."
"You—you fish!" ejaculated the visitor, changing his mind suddenly, and dropping into the offered chair. Quite frankly he covered his flushed face with his handkerchief and choked into it.
King sat down near an open window, and waited for the paroxysm to pass.
"It breaks me up completely to see Linda like that," said Whitcomb at last, wiping his eyes and shaking his shoulders impatiently. He faced his host, and realized the latter's appearance. No one could look seedier than King, he thought. "Of course I know you're rushed," he added, "but in your place I'd rather have sat up all night than not to see her off; and the humorous part of it is that I've been believing you were crazy about her."
The two regarded each other for a silent space, and for the first time there crept into the younger man's mind the cold suspicion that the change in Linda's fortune had affected Bertram King. Even so, it could not have made such a brute of him as to let Linda creep off alone!
"Harriet was there, and Henry," he said, just for the sake of speaking, while he strove with this strange idea, one which had elements of relief for himself while it added fuel to his indignation with King.
"Of course," answered the other coolly. "So that was a pretty good bodyguard, for you're always a host, Freddy."
"There was very little I could do for her," declared Whitcomb, "and I'm sure you—you hurt her feelings."
"I'm glad you were there," said King.
"You've no right to be glad," retorted Freddy.
The older man smiled. "Isn't it magnanimous in me to be glad she's wearing your violets instead of mine, eating your chocolates instead of mine, reading your magazines instead—"
"Stop!" said Whitcomb, raising his hand imperatively. "It's sacrilege to joke about her."
"You're a nice chap, Freddy," declared King slowly.
The visitor rose. "Don't you dare to patronize me," he said. "Thanks to your cursed bank I'm a poor chap. I'd begun to hope—to hope—What do you care what I hoped? You're as cold-blooded as that irrigation swindle that's fooled us all."
A little slow color crept over Bertram King's lantern jaws.
"Sit down," he said briefly. "I brought you up here to talk about that. You didn't attend the meeting of the stockholders last night."
"No. I was doing errands for Miss Barry; and I didn't care to sit there and listen to empty platitudes."
King hesitated a moment, but he put constraint upon himself. Freddy was desperately in love, and had had a desperate disappointment.
"I don't blame you for feeling sore," he said at last, "but I believe I have good news for you. The irrigation proposition would have gone through all right if the panic in that region hadn't suddenly knocked the bottom out for the time being. It's a legitimate thing, and we were able to show the stockholders last night that if they would be patient and give us time, we would issue notes and the bank depositors would be paid."
"What?" asked Whitcomb incredulously, and again sat down.
King nodded. "The bank closed, but it didn't fail, and if Barry & Co.'s people will trust us, I firmly believe everybody is going to have his own—say in a year or two."
"Two!" echoed Whitcomb, the hopeful light fading somewhat.
"Of course. Money in the bank, boy." King rose and advanced to him and slapped him on the shoulder. "You don't need it to live on."
"No, I need it to get Linda," returned the other bluntly.
Bertram smiled wanly, and balanced back and forth on his heels and toes.
His visitor regarded him curiously. "I'll bet you've done some tall working on this," he said slowly.
"No fish ever worked harder," admitted Bertram.
"But when you knew it was your own fault—" suggested Whitcomb.
King's quizzical eyes regarded the speaker. "That conviction does always make a fellow rather hump himself, Freddy."
The caller rose. He didn't like the look in his host's face. All this heart-breaking business should be treated seriously. King looked worn, but he didn't look humble; and as Mr. Barry's factotum he had been frightfully neglectful of Linda this morning. No, Whitcomb didn't feel like shaking hands with him, even after King had lighted for him a beacon of hope. The caller suddenly assumed an abrupt, businesslike manner.
"This won't do for me," he said. "So long, King," and he started precipitately for the door. One backward glance at his host, who was still standing with feet wide apart and thumbs hooked in his vest, gave him pause. King's face showed so plainly the battle he had fought. Freddy returned and took Bertram's hand and wrung it.
"Do you know, I was sure you wanted Linda," he said, with sudden frankness.
King's slender fingers gave his a viselike grip, and his lips smiled calmly. "It isn't so much a question of what we want as what she wants, is it?" he said.
A cloud passed over Whitcomb's face, and again Bertram thought he could see exactly how Freddy had looked at the age of ten.
"Don't you believe she'll ever want me?" he asked naïvely. Now that he knew King was out of the running—whether from mercenary reasons or otherwise—he could put the question as to an intimate friend of the family.
King laughed softly for the first time since Lambert Barry's death.
"Don't know, Freddy. If I were a girl I'd want you, I know that. You're all right."
Whitcomb blushed and scowled; and as he took the elevator on its downward trip he reflected on Bertram King's power to irritate his fellowman.
Ensconced in their stateroom on the train for Boston, Miss Barry heaved a sigh of relief scarcely concealed by the mutter of the moving wheels. They had not taken a stateroom without protest from Linda on the ground of extravagance. Linda considering economy! It was a wonderful circumstance; but Miss Barry, anxious as she was to be gone, delayed their departure a few days to secure the room. Instinctively she felt that a door which she could close on her niece would give her a sense of security. She regarded her now, while the train gained swiftness, with something of the triumph the captor of an elusive, valuable wild animal might feel at seeing it safely in his possession.
Linda, passive and white, did not resemble a wild creature at the present moment. The first thing she did after the train started was to withdraw the pin from the huge bunch of violets she had put on to please Whitcomb, and toss them over on the divan. Miss Barry, taking off her hat, watched her furtively.
"Put my hat in the bag when you do yours, will you, Linda?"
The girl looked vaguely surprised. It was long since she had performed a service for any one, and she even held her own hat a moment uncertainly, after she had removed it, as if she expected her aunt to take charge of it; and she looked at Miss Belinda questioningly.
"Yes, put them both in, and hang them up over there."
Miss Barry handed her the bags, leaned back in her corner, and sniffed. A dog wags its tail to express emotion. Miss Belinda sniffed—a dry, sharp little sound, which just now expressed determination.
"It's time for her to give up sleep-walking," she thought, and she looked industriously out of the window.
Linda's eyes fell to the hats, and she slowly performed the office, and more slowly climbed on the seat and hung up the bags.
As Miss Barry noted the languid motions of the erstwhile captain of a basket-ball team, she realized that her niece was like a person convalescing from a siege of illness. Was she convalescing? Was she improving or retrograding? No matter which; they were going home, home to the Cape, where Miss Barry would not feel at a constant disadvantage; and her heart sang. Linda was too feeble to jump off the train, and they were as good as there. Miss Belinda sniffed again.
Her eye fell on the violets. Linda had sunk back into her corner, her lips apart, her eyes languid. The train was very warm. An electric fan whirred above their door.
Miss Barry leaned across and took up the violets. Whitcomb's face had been vibrant with emotion as he left them.
"The poor boy!" thought Miss Barry. She had learned a number of masculine names through reading the different cards coming repeatedly with boxes of flowers for Linda; but Fred Whitcomb had been more pushing and insistent than the others. He had, as it were, often put his heart in Miss Belinda's hands to be offered to Linda on a salver; and in the stress of emotion this morning Miss Barry had been afraid once or twice that her niece was going to be kissed by proxy. She certainly felt sorry for Freddy Whitcomb, almost as sorry as for Bertram King, whose absence had moved her keenly.
"Wouldn't you like to hold these? They're so refreshing," she said, holding out the violets toward their owner. The girl made a faint, protesting gesture with one hand, and shook her head. Miss Barry plunged her nose into the velvet depths, and looked over the bouquet at the white, immobile face in the opposite corner.
"Ch-ch-choo, ch-ch-choo," went the wheels, faster, faster. Welcome sound. Sweet violets. The scattered fragrance of woodland places, massed together for the joy of woman, offered by an eager heart to a cold one.
"Violet time is over at the Cape," she remarked.
"What?"
"I say, violet time's over at the Cape. Daisies and clover now, and the wild roses swelling up and getting ready."
Even the preoccupied Linda observed a new vitality in her companion's face, and life in her eyes in place of endurance.
"You're riding backward, Aunt Belinda. I didn't notice till this minute. Change with me." The girl leaned forward.
"Sit still, child. It makes no difference to me."
"Then come here beside me." Miss Barry hesitated. Once she would have declined on the ground of mutual comfort, but an overture from her captive was remarkable.
"Well, if it won't crowd you," she said, and after a moment of reluctance she obeyed.
"Don't you want to sit by the window?" asked the girl.
"Law, no. I wish the artists who do the Castoria signs would adopt futurist methods." As she spoke, Miss Barry made herself as small as she could against the arm of the seat, and again caressed her nose with Freddy Whitcomb's violets. The divan opposite was filled with American Beauties, magazines, and bon-bon boxes.
"I ought to put the flowers in water," she remarked.
Linda's large, somber gaze rolled toward the display.
"Yes, please do," she said.
"H'm," thought Miss Barry as she rose. "One word for the flowers and two for herself. She wants 'em out of sight."
"I think we ought to enjoy the violets," she said aloud. "Such a cabbage of 'em must have cost that boy a pretty penny, and they won't live only so long, anyway. Poor Mr. Whitcomb, didn't he look pretty near ready to have apoplexy when he got off!"
"He's got over it by now," said Linda, in her quiet expressionless voice.
"He's the kindest boy that ever lived. I didn't realize how many little things there were to attend to in leaving, or I'd have had Henry do them; but Mr. Whitcomb came and put himself at my disposal, and I certainly disposed of him, the good boy."
"He is a good boy. He ought to hate us," declared the girl languidly.
"Why's that?"
"He told me a long time ago that he had invested in—in—" the speaker caught her lip under her teeth.
"Now, now," returned Miss Barry soothingly, as the other paused. "He's young, and able to stand a few knockdowns. Every business man gets them sooner or later, and they're lucky when disaster comes early in their career instead of late. Now, now, Linda!" for the girl's handkerchief dried a drop stealing under her eyelid. "He adores you, the nice lad."
"Don't you see that makes it harder—as if I ought to marry him to make up?"
"Now, now!" Miss Barry tried to speak lightly. "He'd be worse than Shylock. I'll bet it's a hundred and thirty pounds when you're in good case. Aren't those candy boxes wonderful! I must take 'count of stock."
She started up and laid the violets on the vacated seat. Linda looked at them. She could hear Freddy Whitcomb's voice as it broke boyishly on that last evening of her life:—
"I don't care anything about your father's money, Linda. I had a raise last week."
Her hand fell gently on the velvet mass, and rested there. Miss Barry's Argus eyes observed the movement.
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."