CHAPTER FOUR
In which the Candy Man again sees the Grey Suit, and Virginia continues the story of the Little Red Chimney.
It was Saturday afternoon, possibly the very next Saturday, or at most the Saturday after that, and the Candy Wagon was making money. The day of the week was unmistakable, for the working classes were getting home early; fathers of families with something extra for Sunday in paper bags under their arms. And the hat boxes! They passed the Candy Man's corner by the hundreds. Every feminine person in the big apartment houses must be intending to wear a new hat to-morrow.
There was something special going on at the Country Club—the Candy Man had taken to reading the social column—and the people of leisure and semi-leisure were to be well represented there, to judge by the machines speeding up the avenue; among them quite probably Miss Bentley and Mr. Augustus McAllister.
This not altogether pleasing reflection had scarcely taken shape in his mind, when, in the act of handing change to a customer, he beheld Miss Bentley coming toward him; without a doubt his Miss Bentley this time, for she wore the grey suit and the felt hat, jammed down any way on her bright hair and pinned with the pinkish quill. She was not alone. By her side walked a rather shabby, elderly man, with a rosy face, whose pockets bulged with newspapers, and who carried a large parcel. She was looking at him and he was looking at her, and they were both laughing. Comradeship of the most delightful kind was indicated.
Without a glance in the direction of the Candy Wagon they passed. Well, at any rate she wasn't at the Country Club. But how queer!
Earlier in the afternoon Virginia had gone by in dancing-school array, accompanied by an absurdly youthful mother. "I've got something to tell you," she called, and the Candy Man could see her being reproved for this unseemly familiarity.
His curiosity was but mildly stirred; indeed, having other things to think of, he had quite forgotten the incident, when on Monday she presented herself swinging her school bag.
"Say," she began, "I have found out about her Ladyship and the Little Red Chimney."
"Oh, have you?" he answered vaguely.
Virginia, resting her bag on the carriage block, looked disappointed. "I have been crazy to tell you, and now you don't care a bit."
"Indeed I do," the Candy Man protested. "I'm a trifle absent-minded, that's all."
Thus reassured she began: "Don't you know I told you I could see that chimney from our dining-room, and that I was going to watch it? Well, the other day at lunch I happened to look toward the window, and I jumped right out of my chair and clapped my hands and said, 'It's smoking, it's smoking!' There was company, and mother said, 'Good gracious, Virginia! what's smoking? You do make me so nervous!' Then I was sorry I'd said anything, because she wouldn't understand, you know. Well, after lunch I took one of Ted's balls, and went over to Uncle Bob's, and I got a little darkey boy to throw it in the yard, and then I went in to look for it. You see if Uncle Bob wasn't there and anybody asked me what I was doing, I could say I was looking for my brother's ball."
"I fear you are a deep one," remarked the Candy Man.
"No, I'm not, but I'm rather good at thinking of things," Virginia owned complacently. "And then," she continued, "I poked around the rose bush, and peeped in at the window, and sure enough she was there, brushing the hearth. She saw me and came to the window, and when I ran away, 'cause I thought maybe she was mad, she rapped, and then opened the window and called: 'Come in, little girl, and talk to me.' And now who do you think she turned out to be?"
A suspicion had been deepening in the Candy Man's breast for the last few moments. His heart actually thumped. "Not—you don't mean——?"
Virginia nodded violently. "Yes, the lady who fell and got muddy. And she's perfectly lovely, and I'm going there again. She asked me to."
Why, oh, why should such luck fall to the lot of a long-legged, freckle-nosed little girl, and not to him, the Candy Man wondered. He burned to ask innumerable questions, but compromised on one. Did Virginia know whether or not she had come to stay?
"Why, I guess so. She didn't have her hat on, and she was cleaning up—dusting, you know, and taking things out of a box."
"What sort of things?"
"Books and sofa pillows and pictures. I helped her, and by and by Uncle Bob came in."
"And what did he say?" asked the Candy Man, just to keep her going.
"Why, he said, didn't he tell me so? And wasn't it great to have her ladyship there?"
"And what did her ladyship say?"
"She said he was a dear, and I forget what else. Oh, but listen! I'll bet you can't guess what her name is."
He couldn't. He had racked his brain for a name at once sweet enough and possessing sufficient dignity. He had not found it for the good reason that no such name has been invented.
"It's a long name," said Virginia, "as long as mine. I am named for my grandmother, Mary Virginia, but they don't call me all of it." She paused to watch two white-plumed masons on their way to the commandery on the next block.
"Well?" said the Candy Man.
She laughed. "Oh, I forgot. Why, it is Margaret Elizabeth. The doctor came in; she's a lady doctor, you know, and said, 'Margaret Elizabeth, there'll be muffins for tea.' And she said, 'All right. Dr. Prue.' And Dr. Prue said, 'And cherry preserves, if you and Uncle Bob want them,' and Margaret Elizabeth said, 'Goody!' And I must go now," Virginia finished. "There's Betty looking for me."
Virginia might go and welcome. He had enough to occupy his thought for the present. Margaret Elizabeth! Such a name would never have suggested itself to him, yet it suited her. Beneath her young gaiety and charm there was something the name fitted. Margaret Elizabeth! He loved it already.
Why had he not guessed that the Little Red Chimney belonged to her? Had not the sight of it stirred his heart? And why should that have been so, except for some subtle fairy godmother suggestion? The picture of Margaret Elizabeth and Uncle Bob eating cherry preserves was a pleasant one. It brought her nearer. The Candy Man was inclined to like Uncle Bob, to think of him as a broad-minded person whose prejudices against Candy Men, granting he had them, might in time be overcome.
From being a bit low in his mind, the Candy Man's mood became positively jovial. When the sad grey man known to the children as the Miser, and invested with mysterious and awful powers, stopped to buy some hoarhound drops, he wished him a cheery good afternoon.
The Miser was evidently surprised, but responded courteously, and recalling the accident of two weeks ago, asked if the Candy Man had heard anything of the injured chauffeur.
It chanced that he had heard the Reporter say, only yesterday, that the man was doing well and likely to recover.
"And the young lady? I think I saw her the other day going into a house across the street from my own."
"The house with the Little Red Chimney?" asked the Candy Man indiscreetly, forgetting himself for the moment.
A smile slowly dawned on the face of the sad man, but quickly faded, as a flock of naughty pigeons tore by, screaming, "Lizer, Lizer, look out for the Miser!" If he had been about to make a comment, he thought better of it, and turned away.
Having identified the Little Red Chimney as the property of the Girl of All Others, the Candy Man now made a new discovery. He had a room in one of the old residences of the neighbourhood, so many of which in these days were being given over to boarding and lodging. Its windows overlooked a back yard, in which grew a great ash, and he had been interested to observe how long after other trees were bare this one kept its foliage. He found it one morning, however, giving up its leaves by the wholesale, under the touch of a sharp frost; and, wonder of wonders! through its bared branches that magical chimney came into view, with a corner of grey roof.
Not far away rose the big smoke stack belonging to the apartment houses, impressive in its loftiness, but to his fancy the Little Red Chimney held its own with dignity, standing for something unattainable by great smoke stacks, however important.
The Candy Man, it will be seen, did not attempt to reconcile conflicting evidence. He took what suited him and ignored the rest. Was Miss Bentley the niece of Mrs. Gerrard Pennington? She was also the niece of Uncle Bob. Did she ride in haughty limousines? She also rode in street cars. Was she wined and dined by the rich? She also ate muffins and cherry preserves, and brushed up the hearth of the Little Red Chimney.
CHAPTER FIVE
In which the double life led by the heroine is explained, and Augustus McAllister proves an alibi.
"Yes," said Miss Bentley, "I liked him. He turned out to be altogether different from my first impressions. That afternoon at the Country Club he seemed rather stiff—nice, assured manners, of course, but unresponsive. But then the way in which we bounced in upon each other was enough to break any amount of ice." She laughed at the recollection, clasping her hands behind her head.
Instead of the little grey hat jammed down anyhow, she wore this morning the most bewitching and frivolous of boudoir caps upon her bright head, and a shimmery, lacy empire something, that clung caressingly about her, and fell back becomingly from her round white arms. Miles and miles away from the Candy Wagon was Margaret Elizabeth, who had so recently hobnobbed down the avenue with Uncle Bob.
Mrs. Gerrard Pennington, in a similar garb, leaned an elbow on her desk, a dainty French trifle, and gazed, perhaps a bit wistfully, at Margaret Elizabeth's endearing young charms. "I am delighted that you like Augustus. He is a young man of sterling qualities. His mother and I were warm friends; I take a deep interest in him. Of course he is not showy; perhaps he might be called a little slow; but he is substantial, and while I should be the last to place an undue emphasis upon wealth, one need not overlook its advantages. Augustus has had unusual opportunities."
"Is Mr. McAllister rich?" Margaret Elizabeth dropped her arms in a surprise which in its turn stirred a like emotion in her aunt's breast, for Miss Bentley put rather a peculiar emphasis, it would seem, upon the word rich. "I should never have guessed it," she added.
If Mrs. Pennington had been perfectly honest with herself, she would have perceived that her own surprise indicated a suspicion that minus his wealth the aforesaid sterling qualities were something of a dead weight, but not for worlds would she have owned this. It would be a great thing for Margaret Elizabeth, if she liked him. If she could be the means of establishing dear old Richard's child in a position such as the future Mrs. Augustus would occupy, she would feel she had done her full duty. Mrs. Pennington was strong in the matter of duty.
"I should never have guessed it," Margaret Elizabeth repeated, after a minute spent in a quick review of that talk in the summer house.
"It is not always possible, surely, to gauge a person's bank account in the course of one conversation," her aunt suggested.
"I don't mean that; but don't you think, Aunt Eleanor, you can usually tell very rich people? They are apt to be limited, in a way. Not always, of course, but often. I can't explain it exactly. Perhaps it is over-refined."
"If to be refined is to be limited, I prefer to be limited," Mrs. Pennington remarked.
It was plain that unless Margaret Elizabeth went to the length of retailing the whole of that Sunday morning conversation, which was out of the question, she could not hope to make her meaning clear.
"What surprises me," her aunt went on, "is that you should have met Augustus in a public park. It is very unlike him. I wonder what he thought of you?"
This brought out Miss Bentley's dimples, as she owned he had seemed not displeased to meet her. "I explained that I was waiting for Dr. Prue, who had gone in to see one of the superintendent's children." She further assured her aunt that River Bend Park was a delightful place in which to enjoy nature, on Sunday morning or any other time.
"I confess I do not choose a public park when I wish to enjoy nature—except for driving, of course. Perhaps," added Mrs. Pennington, "that is what you call over-refined."
Margaret Elizabeth considered this thoughtfully. "Perhaps it is," she said. "Not being able to enjoy things that are free to everybody."
But Margaret Elizabeth in that frivolously-becoming cap was an antidote to her own remarks. Mrs. Pennington smiled indulgently. Richard's daughter came honestly by some eccentricities, not to mention those Vandegrifts, whose influence she greatly deplored.
"You will outgrow these socialistic ideas, my dear," she said. "But I am still puzzled, the more I think of it, at your meeting Augustus on Sunday morning. Was it two weeks ago? I am under the impression he left for New York that very day."
"He didn't mention it, but there are afternoon trains," answered Margaret Elizabeth. "He merely said something about a sick boy he was going to see at St. Mary's."
This again was very unlike Augustus, but Mrs. Pennington said no more. Meanwhile the faintest shadow of a doubt was dawning in her niece's mind; so shadowy she was scarcely aware of it, until, glowing from her walk across the park, she entered the drawing-room that afternoon.
There is, by the way, a difference between walking in Sunset Park, the abode of the elect, with a huge St. Bernard in leash, and taking the same exercise at River Bend, unchaperoned save by a chance guard. Any right-minded person must see this.
A young man, who sat talking to Mrs. Gerrard Pennington before the fire, rose at her entrance.
"I am glad you have come, Margaret Elizabeth," her aunt exclaimed. "I think you know Mr. McAllister? But we have rather a good joke on you, for August says he was never in his life in River Bend Park."
"How do you do, Miss Bentley. Awfully glad to see you. That is, except to motor through, don't you know, Mrs. Pennington."
Miss Bentley's brown eyes met Mr. McAllister's blue ones, and in the period of one brief glance she experienced almost as many sensations, and reviewed as much past history, as the proverbial drowning man. The casual resemblance was striking. But the eyes—these were not the friendly, merry eyes to which she had confided the fairy godmother nonsense. Fancy so much as mentioning fairy godmothers in the presence of these steely orbs.
Margaret Elizabeth was game, however.
"I was mistaken, of course," she owned lightly, as she shook hands. "I have met so many people, and am stupid at connecting names and faces. I recall Mr. McAllister perfectly." And straightway she plunged into New York and what was going on there. Had he seen "Grumpy" and wasn't it dear? And so on, and so on. Margaret Elizabeth could talk, and more than this she could look bewitching, and did, when she slipped out of her long coat, and with many graceful upward motions, removed her hat and fluffed her hair.
She would make tea, she loved to, in fact she seemed bent upon luring Augustus away from the fire and Mrs. Pennington. This young gentleman, whose mental processes were not rapid, and who habitually overworked any idea that found lodgment in his mind, was disposed to dwell upon River Bend Park and Miss Bentley's strange mistake in thinking she had seen him there, when actually, don't you know, he was on his way to New York. It was just as well not to have the situation complicated by the presence of her more alert relative, whose amused glances kept the glow on Margaret Elizabeth's cheek at a most becoming pitch. Perhaps, too, the subconscious thinking concerning that same queer mistake, which went on while she chatted so gaily, so skilfully leading the way to safer ground, had something to do with it.
Augustus, unaware that he was led, was as clay in her hands. He warmed to her expressions of pleasure in the proposed dinner dance, which were indeed entirely genuine. A dance was a dance, and Miss Bentley was young. As she poured tea her curling lashes rested now on her cheek, were now lifted in smiling glances at the complacent Augustus, much as when on a certain Sunday morning, while softly laying bloom against bloom, her eyes had now and again met the eyes of the Candy Man. There were other callers, other tea drinkers, but to none did Mr. McAllister surrender his place of vantage.
"If she keeps on like this, Augustus is hers—if she wants him," Mr. Gerrard Pennington remarked to his wife later in the evening.
"If I could have her all to myself," Mrs. Pennington sighed; "but any impression I may make is neutralised by her association with those Vandegrifts. It is an absurd arrangement, spending half her time down there."
"I think you are rather in the lead, aren't you, my dear?"
Mrs. Pennington shrugged her shoulders, but there was some triumph in her smile. "She is a dear child, in spite of some absurd notions, and I long to see her well and safely settled. I don't quite know in what her charm most lies, but she has it."
"Oh, it's her youth, and the conviction that it is all so jolly well worth while. She is so keen about everything." There was an odd twinkle in Mr. Pennington's eyes, usually so piercing beneath their bushy grey brows. Margaret Elizabeth called him Uncle Gerry. It was amusing. He liked it, and enjoyed playing the part of Uncle Gerry. "Of course she's bound to get over that. Still, I shouldn't be in any haste to settle her."
His wife thought of her brother, the Professor of Archæology, now in the Far East. "It is queer, but Dick never has," she said, answering the first part of his sentence. But when she spoke again, it was to say energetically: "The Towers needs a mistress, and August is irreproachable. Really, I am devoted to the boy."
Mr. Pennington found this amusing.
"If only it were a colonial house. It is handsome, but I prefer simpler lines," Mrs. Pennington continued meditatively.
The Towers was a combination of feudal castle and Swiss châlet erected thirty years before by the parents of Augustus, and occupying a commanding position on Sunset Ridge. The irreverent sometimes referred to it as the Salt Shakers.
Margaret Elizabeth meanwhile, in the solitude of her own room, was asking herself questions, for which she found no answers.
"Who—oh, who was this person with the nice friendly eyes that led one on to talk about fairy godmothers?"
She considered it in profound seriousness for a time, then suddenly broke into unrestrained laughter.
CHAPTER SIX
In which Margaret Elizabeth is discussed at the Breakfast Table; in which also, later on, she and Virginia and Uncle Bob talk before the fire, and in which finally Margaret Elizabeth seeks consolation by relating to Uncle Bob her adventure in the park.
"No, she is not regularly beautiful," remarked Dr. Prue in her diagnostician manner as she poured her father's second cup of coffee, "but there is much that is captivating about her. Her hair grows prettily on her forehead, the firmness of her chin, the line of her lips in repose——"
"Mercy on us! You talk like a novel," interrupted Uncle Bob, who was longing to get in an oar. "Now I like her best when she laughs."
"But I was speaking of her face in repose."
"And any way," persisted Uncle Bob, "if she isn't a beauty, I don't know what you call it. She has the witchingest ways!"
"We were speaking of features, not ways. If you dissect her——"
"Good Heavens, Prue! Find another word."
"If you dissect her," the doctor repeated firmly, "you will find nothing remarkable in her separate features."
"But I insist," Uncle Bob spoke in a loud tone, and brought his fist down so emphatically his coffee spilled over into the saucer, "that beauty is a complex thing consisting of ways as well as features." The sentence was concluded in a milder tone, owing to the coffee.
"Nancy, give Mr. Vandegrift another saucer," said Dr. Prue.
"My dear, there is no need. I can pour this back," he protested. Then, a fresh saucer having been substituted, he went on: "Take a landscape——"
"I haven't time for landscapes this morning, father. I am due at the hospital at nine. You'll have to excuse me."
"Well, what I was going to say is, that it is the combination of all her separate qualities and characteristics, manifested in ways and otherwise, that is beautiful—that constitutes beauty. The something that makes her Margaret Elizabeth, that subtle—" Uncle Bob was talking against time.
"Now, father," Dr. Prue pushed back her chair and rose, "there is nothing subtle about Margaret Elizabeth, and you know it. She is a thoroughly nice, quite pretty girl, and that is all there is to it. If those Penningtons don't spoil her." With this the doctor disappeared.
"Miss Prue and her pa do argufy to beat the band," Nancy remarked to Jenny the cook as she waited for hot cakes.
"That's all, Nancy. I shan't want any more," her master told her when she carried them into the dining-room. "You needn't wait." As the door closed behind her he smiled to himself. He always enjoyed the leisurely comfort of those last cakes.
The morning sun shone in brightly, emphasising the pleasant, substantial appointments of the room and the breakfast table. Its glint in the old silver coffee pot was a joy to him; the unopened paper at his elbow spoke to him of the interests of a day, like it, not yet unfolded. Uncle Bob after his own fashion savoured life....
Dr. Prue
The sun had travelled around the house and was looking in at the west window of the Little Red Chimney Room, when Virginia discovered her ladyship sitting on a low stool by her hearthstone deep in meditation. "I saw the smoke," she announced, "so I thought I'd come over."
"I am glad to see you," Margaret Elizabeth said, waking up. "But what smoke do you mean?" And now it developed that although Miss Bentley was of course aware of the Little Red Chimney, and indeed preferred it red, she had not understood its significance.
In amused interest she listened while Virginia explained. "That dear, ridiculous Uncle Bob!" she cried, hugging her knees. "And what fun, Virginia!"
Virginia nodded. "Like a fairy-tale," she said.
"So it is," Miss Bentley agreed, and became again lost in thought.
From the other side of the hearth Virginia watched her. Her ladyship to-day wore a grey-blue gown with a broad white collar, and she contrasted harmoniously with the soft browns and greens of her surroundings. Uncle Bob should have been there to enjoy the glint of the sunshine in her hair.
It was an unobtrusive room, abounding in pleasant suggestions if you sat still and let them sink in: books around the walls, a few water colours and bits of porcelain, an open piano, a work table, a broad divan with many cushions, ferns in the windows, and the fire.
Virginia, however, saw nothing of this; she was looking at Margaret Elizabeth. "The Candy Man wanted to know where you stayed when you weren't here," she remarked at length.
Miss Bentley came out of her brown study in great surprise. Who in the world was the Candy Man?
"Why, you know the Candy Wagon on the Y.M.C.A. corner! And don't you remember how you fell in the mud, and the Candy Man helped you up, and I gave you your bag, and the Miser was there too?" Virginia spoke in patient toleration of Miss Bentley's strange lapse of memory.
"Naturally I was rather shaken and didn't notice. Was it a Candy Man who picked me up? And a miser, you say?" Chin in hand Margaret Elizabeth regarded her visitor. "It is all very interesting, but why should the Candy Man wish to know about me?"
Virginia owned that she had mentioned the Little Red Chimney to him, and that when the identity of her ladyship had come to light, he had exclaimed, "I might have guessed!"
"Well, really," said Miss Bentley, sitting up very straight, "what business is it of his to be guessing about me?"
"He isn't Irish like Tim," Virginia hastened to assure her. "He's very nice. He's a friend of mine."
Margaret Elizabeth laughed. "That makes it all right, I suppose; and if he picked me up—But who is the Miser?"
"He lives over there," Virginia pointed toward the front window, "in that stone house with the vine on it. Aleck says he has rooms and rooms full of money."
The house she indicated was almost black with time and soot, but its fine proportions suggested spacious, high-ceiled rooms, and whatever its present condition, a past of dignity and importance.
"How extremely interesting! What a remarkable neighbourhood this seems to be!"
"Is it like a fairy-tale where you stay when you aren't here?" Virginia asked.
Sudden illumination came to Margaret Elizabeth. "That is just what it isn't," she cried. "It's splendid and beautiful, and all sorts of things, except a fairy-tale. I wonder why? I love fairy-tales and Little Red Chimneys."
"So does the Candy Man," exclaimed Virginia, charmed at the coincidence. "It must be fun to be a Candy Man," she continued. "It isn't much like a fairy-tale where I live. I should like to live in a sure-enough house with stairs."
"You talk like a squirrel who lives in a tree. And speaking of squirrels, you and I must buy some nuts for our bunny sometime, from this Candy Man. If he picked me up I suppose I ought to patronise him. All the same, Virginia," and now Miss Bentley spoke with great seriousness, "I wish you not to say anything about me to him. It is rather silly, you know."
Virginia did not know, but she longed to do in every particular what Miss Bentley desired, so she promised.
The opal lights in the western sky were the only reminders left of the sunny day, when Uncle Bob, seated comfortably in the big armchair, listened to Margaret Elizabeth's confession, the flames dancing and curling around a fresh log meanwhile. In size it was but a modest log, for the fireplace was neither wide nor deep like those at Pennington Park, but the Little Red Chimney did its part so merrily and well that upon no other hearth could the flames dance and curl so gaily. At least so it had seemed to Margaret Elizabeth, sitting there chin in hand, after Virginia's departure.
"And you are certain you never met him before?" Uncle Bob ran his fingers through his hair and frowned thoughtfully.
"Perfectly certain. You see the resemblance was remarkable, all but the eyes, and I thought Mr. McAllister had simply waked up. People are sometimes stiff when you first meet them. He knew who I was, for he called me Miss Bentley. Naturally I thought it was some one I had met—particularly when he mentioned the accident. You see, in getting out of the machine at the Country Club a day or two before I caught my skirt in the door and fell, striking my elbow. It didn't amount to anything, though it hurt for a minute, but Aunt Eleanor made a great fuss. He may have been somewhere about at the time, but I didn't meet him. And it makes me furious," Margaret Elizabeth continued, "when I think of his not telling me."
"Telling you that you didn't know him?" asked Uncle Bob.
"Certainly, he should have said at the very beginning, 'Miss Bentley, you are mistaken in thinking you know me.'"
"Ha! ha!" laughed Uncle Bob.
"Now what are you laughing at?" his niece demanded. "Honestly, don't you think he should have?" But she laughed herself.
"Well, perhaps," he owned, reflecting, however, that if Margaret Elizabeth looked half so alluring that morning as she did now in her grey-blue frock, with her bright hair a bit tumbled, it was asking a good deal of human nature.
"Now, of course, Uncle Bob, this is strictly confidential. I wouldn't have Dr. Prue know for the world. It is bad enough to have Aunt Eleanor smiling sarcastically, though she doesn't know half. I think I have at length quieted her, and the great Augustus is entirely mollified." She paused to laugh again, then continued tragically, "Sympathy is what I need now. To begin with, it was the most perfect day—the sort to make you forget tiresome conventions."
Uncle Bob nodded. "Perhaps he forgot, too," he suggested.
Margaret Elizabeth bit her lip. "That's true. I must try to be fair. He had nice eyes, Uncle Bob—with a twinkle in them." A smile played over her lips, her dimple came and went. She gazed absently at the curling flame. Suddenly she rose from her ottoman, and seated herself bolt upright on the sofa with one of the plumpest cushions behind her. "All the same it was inexcusable in me," she declared sternly.
"What was?" asked her uncle.
"The nonsense I talked. About a Fairy Godmother Society! No doubt he was laughing in his sleeve all the time."
"Oh, I guess not. It sounds quite original and interesting. Have you copyrighted the idea?"
"Uncle Bob, you are a dear. Some time I'll tell you all about it—when I get over feeling so terribly, if I ever do."
"Now, really," insisted Uncle Bob, "I don't see why you should worry. You are almost certain to meet him again, and——"
"I shall die if I do," Margaret Elizabeth declared; but somehow the assertion failed to ring true.
"From what you have said he is plainly a gentleman, and altogether matters might be worse," Uncle Bob concluded.
Miss Bentley shook her head. "I don't see how they could be," she insisted.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Shows how the Candy Wagon is visited in behalf of the Squirrel, and how pride suffers a fall; how Miss Bentley turns to Vedantic Philosophy to drown her annoyance, and discovers how hard it is to forget when you wish to.
"When I reflect upon the small weight attaching to true worth unsupported by personal charm, I am tempted to turn cynic."
Dr. Prue closed her bag with a snap and lifted her arms to adjust a hatpin.
"Youth and beauty take the trick, that's a fact." Uncle Bob laughed as if he found it a delicious comedy.
They stood before the office window. At the gate the Apartment Pigeons were fluttering around Margaret Elizabeth, while her ladyship gravely admonished them for some piece of mischief.
"I believe she is taming the terrors," remarked the doctor.
"She had them all in the other afternoon," said Uncle Bob, "sitting cross-legged on the floor like little Orientals, while she told them stories. Margaret Elizabeth can manage them!" His tone thrilled with pride.
"Yes, and Miss Kitty Molloy will drop anything she has on hand to work for Miss Bentley; the market-man picks out his choicest fruit for her; and so it goes, if you call it managing. Well, I must be off. Good-by."
As Dr. Prue went out, Margaret Elizabeth, having dismissed the pigeons for the time being, came in, and sat down at her desk to finish a letter.
She wrote: "Yes, Uncle Bob and Cousin Prue argue as much as ever, and I suspect that more often than not I am the subject upon which they disagree. I am in a state of disagreement about myself, father dear. Society is absorbing beyond anything I dreamed of, and if I had not promised you to stop and think for at least ten minutes out of the fourteen hundred and forty, I fear I should have already become a real Society Person."
At this point Uncle Bob looked in. "Well, how many parties on hand now?" he asked.
Margaret Elizabeth laid down her pen and counted them off on her fingers, beginning with a tea at five, theatre and supper afterward, and so on, till the supply of fingers threatened to become exhausted.
"Go on, I'll lend you mine," said Uncle Bob. "Prue says," he added, "that it is enough to kill you, but you look pretty strong."
"She wouldn't mind if I worked my fingers to the bone for her hospital or the Suffrage Association, but I want a little fun first, Uncle Bob." Margaret Elizabeth supported an adorable chin in a pink palm and regarded her relative appealingly.
"That's what I tell Prue. It is natural you should like best to stay at Pennington Park, and go about in a splendid machine. I don't blame you in the least, and I don't wish you to feel bound to come down here when you don't really care to. Much as I love to have you, I shall not be hurt." Uncle Bob nodded at Margaret Elizabeth with a reassuring smile that in spite of intentions was a bit wistful too.
"I don't believe you understand, and for that matter, neither do I. I love you best, and the Little Red Chimney, and this darling room. There aren't any fairies at Pennington Park, but—I do like the whirl, the fun, the pretty things, and——"
"The admiration, Margaret Elizabeth; out with it. You'll feel better," said Uncle Bob.
"Well, yes, people do like me, and oh, I must show you something!" She sprang up, and from a box lying on the sofa she took a filmy, rose-coloured fabric. "What do you think of this?" she demanded, shaking out the shimmering folds before his surprised eyes.
He rose nobly to the occasion. "Why, it looks like a sunset cloud. Is it to wear?"
"Certainly. It is a pattern robe. Miss Kitty across the street is going to put it together for me. She is a genius. Sunset cloud is very poetic. Thank you, Uncle Bob. And now I must finish my letter before I go over to Miss Kitty's, and then I promised the children I'd go with them to buy some nuts for the squirrel. A bunny who has the courage to live so far downtown should be rewarded. I wish you had been here, Uncle Bob, to join our society." Margaret Elizabeth sat down with the rosy cloud all about her, and laughed at the recollection. "Never again will they throw a stone at his bunnyship. We laid our hands together so, and swore by the paw of the cinnamon bear and the ear of the tailless cat, to take the part of our brother beasts and birds. It was all on the spur of the moment, or I might have done better, but they were impressed."
Uncle Bob
"I should think so, indeed," remarked her uncle. "You are a sort of philanthropist after all."
"Yes, I have a very marked bump. That reminds me, if I don't see Dr. Prue, you tell her, please, that I am going to take Augustus McAllister to the Suffrage meeting."
Having returned her robe to its box, Miss Bentley sat down at her desk and wrote furiously for five minutes, then folded her letter, put it in the envelope, and addressed, stamped, and sealed it, concluding the business with a resolute fist. Shortly after, in the familiar grey suit, with the little grey hat jammed down anyhow on her bright hair, she went forth, the box containing the sunset cloud under her arm.
Homage and admiration attended upon her within Miss Kitty's humble establishment, and waited outside in the persons of the adoring pigeons. Virginia, having been unable to keep the story of the Little Red Chimney to herself, must now in consequence share her ladyship with the flock. But certain privileges were hers—to walk next to Miss Bentley and clasp her disengaged hand; to carry her bag or book; to act as her prime minister in keeping order.
Thus Miss Bentley went her triumphant way that afternoon, all unconscious that there was any triumph about it. Not that she was wholly unaware of her own charm. As she confessed to Uncle Bob, she knew people liked her, and the knowledge was pleasing. She was now on her way to be gracious to the Candy Man, and in this connection she had rehearsed a neat little scene in which she stood by and allowed the children to make their purchases, and then at the right moment asked easily if there had been any more accidents on the corner of late, adding something about his kindness in helping her up, and so on. The Candy Man would of course touch his cap, for from Virginia's account he was rather a nice Candy Man, and reply, "Not at all, Miss," or "That's all right"; then she would smile upon him and the incident would be closed.
The first half of the scene went off perfectly. The Candy Man was selling taffy to a nurse-maid when they approached, and if he saw who was coming, and if his heart was in his mouth, and if he felt a wild longing to escape from the Candy Wagon, he gave no sign. To Margaret Elizabeth, as they waited, he was a Candy Man in white jacket and cap, and nothing more.
The pigeons fluttered joyously. Miss Bentley uttered an impersonal good afternoon, Virginia advanced, a silver quarter in her palm, and demanded chestnuts for the squirrel. The bag was filled and held out to her, and as she handed over the quarter in exchange she explained, gratuitously, "We'll perhaps eat some of them ourselves."
At this the Candy Man looked up with a smile in his eyes, and met the glance of Miss Bentley, who immediately forgot all she had intended to say, for these were the eyes that were not the eyes of Augustus. There was no excuse for arguing the question. She knew it.
The point was, after all, Margaret Elizabeth concluded in the solitude of her own hearth-stone, not whether she had been equal to the occasion to-day—and she hadn't—but that he on a former occasion had been guilty of base behaviour. If this were a real Candy Man, one might excuse him, but he plainly was not. There was a mystery, and she loathed mysteries. She was annoyed to the point of exasperation. She would dismiss him from her mind now and forever.
Uncle Bob, reading the evening paper in the dining-room while Nancy set the table, admitting as she passed back and forth an occasional savoury odor from the kitchen region, became aware of sounds in the hall which betokened some one descending the stairs in haste. The next moment Margaret Elizabeth stood in the doorway.
"Uncle Bob," she said, as she drew a long white glove over her elbow, her face shadowed by her plumy hat, "you remember you said it might be worse, and I insisted it couldn't be? You were right, it is infinitely worse."
With this she was gone, and a premonitory buzz of great dignity and reserve from the street presently indicated that she was being borne away in the Pennington car.
And now it was that Miss Bentley discovered how impossible it is to forget when you wish to. You may assist a treacherous memory with a memorandum, but no corresponding resource offers when you wish to forget. You may succeed in diverting your thoughts for a time, but sooner or later, ten to one, in the most illogical manner, the very thing you seek to avoid forces itself upon your attention. What could have seemed further away from the Candy Man than ancient Hindoo Philosophy? And into this she plunged to drown her annoyance, and incidentally help a fellow member of the Tuesday Club. Margaret Elizabeth was ever ready to fill in a breach, and when Miss Allen came to her in despair, having been positively forbidden to use her eyes, she obligingly agreed to help her.
The subject grew, as all subjects have a way of doing. It was a providential ordering, Uncle Bob remarked, enabling the writers of papers to take refuge from criticism in the impressive statement that it is impossible to treat of the matter adequately in so short a space. Margaret Elizabeth laughed, and crossed out a paragraph at the bottom of her first page, and then set out for the Public Library.
Seated in the Reference Room, with more books than she could read in a year on the table before her, behold Miss Bentley presently inconsolable for lack of a certain authority she chanced to remember in the college library at home. The whole force of the Reference Room mourned with her, for Margaret Elizabeth in the part of earnest student was no less captivating than in her other roles.
"I know where there is a copy," said the youngest and wisest of the force, "but it won't do you any good. Mr. Knight, the man the children call the Miser, has one."
"I'll go and ask him to let me see it. I'd like to know a real live miser." Margaret Elizabeth closed the book she had in hand and rose.
The force gasped at her temerity. They had heard he was a horrid old man; but the youngest observed wisely that probably he wouldn't bite.
Miss Bentley, however, having recently developed a bump of discretion, did first consult Dr. Prue in the matter, who responded, "Why certainly, I see no objection to your asking to see the book. Mr. Knight is a harmless, studious man. I have met him on two occasions when I was called in to attend his housekeeper, Mrs. Sampson, and he was courtesy itself. I will go with you and introduce you, if you like."
Virginia, hanging around and overhearing, begged to be allowed to go too. "I'd love to see the inside of his house," she urged.
She was assured she would find it stupid, but this was as nothing compared with the glory of entering the abode of the Miser in company with her ladyship, and the other pigeons looking enviously on outside.
Dr. Prue, of course, had no time to waste, so Margaret Elizabeth hastened to find her pad and pencil, and across the street they went forthwith. The Miser was discovered in his library, a spacious, shabby room, yet not too shabby for dignity, full of valuable and even rare things, such as old prints and engravings, and most of all of books, which overflowed their shelves in a scholarly disorder not unfamiliar to Margaret Elizabeth.
With businesslike brevity Dr. Vandegrift presented her cousin and her credentials to Mr. Knight, who, with a quaint and formal courtesy, was happy to oblige the daughter of an author so distinguished in his chosen field.
Miss Bentley in her turn presented, with suitable gravity, Miss Virginia Brooks, who promised to be quiet as a mouse, and whose eyes betrayed her disappointment on discovering the inside of the Miser's house to be so much like any other.
After the necessary stir attending upon the finding of the desired volume, and getting settled to work, profound quiet again rested upon the library. Margaret Elizabeth wrote busily, her book propped upon a small stand before her, while across the room Virginia softly turned the leaves of a huge volume of engravings, pausing now and then to rest her cheek in her palm and regard the Miser steadily for a moment.
The master of the library had the air of having forgotten their presence altogether. Aided by a microscope, with a grave absorbed face, he studied and compared a series of prints spread before him. So quiet was it all, that the crackle and purr of the coal fire in the old-fashioned grate made itself quite audible, and the leisurely tick of the clock in the hall marked time solemnly.
Margaret Elizabeth's interest in Vedantic Philosophy began after a time to wane, and she allowed her attention to wander about the room, from object to object, until it concentrated upon the student himself. Was he really a miser? she wondered. He did not look it. His was rather the face of an ascetic. Suddenly it flashed into her mind that here was the sad, grey man of that unforgettable conversation in the park.
Virginia slipped down and came to her side. "Is there really a room full of gold?" she whispered.
Margaret Elizabeth shook her head sternly. It was time they were going. Her hand was tired. She would ask permission to come again. As she returned her book to the shelf, she displaced a smaller one, a shabby leather-bound book, at which she scarcely glanced, but upon which Virginia seized.
"The Candy Man has one like this," she said. "Such a funny name! See? Only his is Vol. one and this is Vol. two."
Miss Bentley cared not at all what strange books the Candy Man owned, and said so, frowning so severely you could scarcely have believed her to be the same person who only a few minutes later was thanking the Miser with such alluring grace of manner.
She was welcome to come when she chose, she was assured, with grave politeness. His library was at her disposal.
"You have many beautiful things," said Margaret Elizabeth. "This portrait above the mantel, for instance, seems to me very interesting."
The portrait in question was rather a splendid one of a military-looking man probably in his thirties. One of the best examples of Jouett's work it was generally considered, Mr. Knight explained, and said to have been an admirable likeness of his uncle, General Waite, at the time it was painted.
It was inexplicable that as Margaret Elizabeth gazed up at the general the eyes beneath the stern brows should become the eyes of the Candy Man. But her exasperation at this absurd illusion passed quickly into horrified embarrassment, when Virginia, edging toward the master of the house, asked explosively, "Say, have you really got a room full of gold?"
"There is one thing certain, you can never go there with me again," said Miss Bentley, on their way across the street.
"But Aleck said——" began the culprit.
"Never mind what he said. Aleck is a very ignorant little boy. People don't keep gold in rooms. If they have it they put it in the bank or send it to the mint."