Part 29

“He’ll be along in a minute, and then he can take us both to--”

“Pardon me!” said the portly lady, in a perfectly awful voice.

The young man seemed a little taken aback. She was now settled inside the cab, and he was standing outside in the rain. It was very dark, and they could not see each other; but so expressive was her voice that he fancied he knew how she looked.

“I shall instruct the driver to return here for you, if you wish,” said she.

“But, you see,” said the young man, quite good-humoredly, “I had engaged this cab. It’s late, and the weather’s bad, and I’m going in your direction. We can--”

“Pardon me! I cannot consent to that.”

“What?” persisted the young man. “Why not?”

“It is not my custom to encourage chance acquaintances,” replied she. “If you insist upon getting in, I shall get out.”

“But look here!” protested the young man. “I--”

She was already struggling with the handle of the door.

“Very well!” he said curtly. “I’ll go!”

As he turned, he saw the driver coming out of the shop, holding a handkerchief to his eye.

“This lady wants to go to No. 93 Sloan Street,” said he. “Oh, never mind me!”

And he set off on foot up the hilly street, in the pelting rain. The portly, white-haired lady watched him go.

“I cannot,” she said, half aloud, “encourage chance acquaintances--especially on Lynn’s account.”

II

For years the house at 93 Sloan Street had displayed a sign announcing that it was “to let or for sale,” and these words might as well have been followed by “take it or leave it,” for that was the owner’s attitude.

It was a hopeless house, dark, damp, and badly arranged, standing in a garden where enormous old trees cast so dense a shade over the front lawn that not even grass would thrive. As for the back garden, only the queerest, most obstinate, ancient shrubs were there, huddled against the side fence, because anything less tenacious was inevitably carried away by the river in its annual spring flood.

Just now the river was low, dolloping along dejectedly between its brown and uninteresting banks. Everything was brown--the water, the bare trees, the fields, the road in front, and No. 93 itself. Altogether the breath of life had gone out of Sloan Street, and to any one coming down from the sunny, breezy hilltop it seemed a sorry spectacle.

Some one had come down from the hilltop this morning--a brisk, neat little red-haired lady. She came smartly along the road to No. 93, pushed open the gate, and walked up the garden path. She saw the portly, white-haired lady standing on the veranda, looking down the road.

“Good morning!” said the visitor. “I’m your neighbor, Mrs. Aldrich.”

She waited at the foot of the steps, because she thought she would not go up on the veranda until she was invited. Well, she never was invited.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” she asked, with honest and neighborly good will.

The portly lady looked down at her as if doubtful whether such a creature could really exist.

“Thank you, there is not,” she said.

Mrs. Aldrich was greatly taken aback.

“I thought perhaps--” she began, in a tone not quite so neighborly, but the other interrupted.

“Very good of you, I’m sure; but I shall do very well, thank you.”

That last “thank you” seemed capable of lifting Mrs. Aldrich out of the garden all by itself.

“I wouldn’t set foot in that place again,” she declared, “if she begged me on her knees!”

This declaration was addressed to her nephew, Jerry Sargent. She had made it before, to her husband and to a neighbor or so, but she found special pleasure in telling things to Jerry, for the strange reason that he never agreed with her. She was a shrewd, sensible, rather peppery little woman. She had been his guardian when he was younger, and she still interfered pretty considerably in his affairs--which he good-humoredly permitted.

“If you could have seen the way she looked at me!” she went on. “As if I were a--a toad!”

“I know,” replied Jerry. “I didn’t see her, but I heard her, and I know the sort of look that would go with that tone. ‘Who is that impossible person?’ She told me she didn’t encourage chance acquaintances, and it looks as if she meant it!”

“I should have made her get out of that taxi and walk--in the rain!” cried Mrs. Aldrich, who had been informed of the episode of the previous night.

“Of course you would,” her nephew agreed, with a grin. “I know you! And you’d have called her names out of the window as you passed her, wouldn’t you? But I’m much milder. I was ashamed of being a chance acquaintance, anyhow. It didn’t seem respectable.”

“I wish you wouldn’t take everything so lightly!” complained Mrs. Aldrich, but she didn’t mean it. The thing she loved best in her nephew was his careless and generous good humor, his utter lack of malice or resentment. “You ought to have more pride, Gerald, than to allow yourself to be trampled on.”

He rose to his feet, and stood looking down at her with an expression of great severity; and though his aunt knew it to be assumed, she thought it very becoming to his face. A big, handsome fellow he was, with the gray eyes and black hair and all the wit and charm and grace of his blessed mother, and all the energy and practical good sense of his father. A good man of business he was, but into the dullest matter of routine, into the most trifling details of everyday life, he brought his own sort of laughing romance.

“Very well, madam!” said he. “You’re disappointed in me because I’ve let myself be trampled on. Now you’ll see what I can do when my pride is roused!”

“Jerry, you ridiculous boy! Where are you going?”

“Down to No. 93,” said he. “The turning worm! Good-by!”

And off he went, down the hill, whistling as he walked.

III

Without the slightest hesitation Jerry opened the garden gate, went up the path and up the steps, and rang the bell. At least, he imagined that he rang the bell, but as a matter of fact he did nothing except turn a handle which was connected with nothing. After two or three attempts he began to suspect this, and knocked instead, which soon brought some one running along the hall to open the door.

He was astounded--not because it was a girl, and not because she was pretty. He had seen pretty girls before, and knew that they were likely to crop up anywhere; but this girl had exactly the sort of prettiness he had been looking for and waiting for so long that he had almost given up hope of finding it.

She was tall, slender, dark-browed, so gracious and serene, with lovely, fragile hands; and her eyes! They were black eyes, so clear, so quiet, so luminous and untroubled! It didn’t make the least difference that she was wearing a gingham apron and carried a rolling pin under her arm. She was matchless, she was incomparable, in her was personified all the romance left in the world.

“Did you--” she began, and hesitated. “Are you--”

“I thought--” he answered, still a little dazzled. “That is, I thought maybe--”

It was this tremendously important and significant conversation that the portly, white-haired lady interrupted. She appeared suddenly in the background, and regarded them with severe astonishment.

“Are you the plumber?” she inquired of Jerry, raising her eyebrows. “Run away, Lynn!”

“I don’t think so,” he answered absently, because he was watching Lynn “run away” as slowly as any healthy human being could well move.

“Indeed!” said she. “The plumber should be here.”

The inference evidently was that Jerry Sargent should have been the plumber.

“No,” he added, with a smothered sigh. “I just stopped in to see if there was anything you wanted done.”

“There are several things that I want done,” she replied; “but I trust I shall be able to find the proper workmen to do them. I need a plumber and a carpenter. Are you a carpenter?”

Now Jerry knew very well that she knew he wasn’t a carpenter, and that she simply wished to be obnoxious. On the spur of the moment, looking steadily at her, he answered:

“Yes, I am. Any little odd jobs you’d like done?”

She returned his glance with one quite as steady.

“There are,” she said.

With that, he promptly took off his coat, and she, equally determined to see the thing through, led him into the dismal front room.

“I want shelves put up,” said she. “Three rows--on this wall. There are boards in the cellar for that purpose.”

Fortunately Jerry was by nature “handy,” and in his younger days had had much experience in building chicken houses and rabbit hutches and such things. With the calmest air in the world he set to work, wondering for what possible reason she could want a triple row of enormous shelves. For some time the portly lady watched him, but that didn’t worry him, for he felt sure that she knew even less than he did about putting up shelves; and at last she went away.

When he was alone, he couldn’t help laughing. It might have ended that way, with Jerry thinking the whole thing a rather idiotic joke, in which he was getting somewhat the worst of it, if something had not happened to change the aspect of the situation.

He was hammering away at a bracket which would--he hoped--support one end of one of those monster shelves, when he heard a light footstep behind him. He turned and saw the incomparable girl.

She smiled in her serious way, and Jerry tried to look equally serious, but did not succeed very well. In the first place, it wasn’t natural to him to be serious, and, in the second place, he was extraordinarily pleased to see the incomparable girl again. He couldn’t help fancying that she shared at least a little in his delight.

Anyhow, she was very friendly toward this strange carpenter. She asked him if he needed anything else for his work. He thanked her earnestly and said that he did not. Then she advanced a little farther into the room, and laid one of her slender little hands on the boards standing against the wall.

“Is the work very hard?” she asked.

“No,” said Sargent. “I like it--very much!”

There was a long silence. She was still standing beside the boards, running her delicate fingers along the edges, with her eyes thoughtfully downcast. The shifting sunshine, filtering through the leafy branches outside, threw a wondrous light upon her gleaming dark hair and her pale, clear features. Somehow it hurt Jerry to look at her. There was something about her, some intangible shadow over her young face, which made him feel sure that she had endured much, and had endured it with fortitude and courage.

“The poor little thing!” he thought. “Shut up here in this dismal hole, with that dragon! Oh, the poor, poor little thing!”

He suddenly realized that he was in his shirt sleeves. With a hasty apology, he put on his coat.

“You know,” he said, “I’m not really a carpenter.”

“I knew you weren’t,” said she. “I knew you were--well, I mean, I knew you weren’t.”

Another silence.

“Would you like a cup of tea?” she asked. “I’d be--oh!”

“What’s the matter?” cried Jerry.

“Nothing,” she answered, but he saw her pull a handkerchief out of her pocket and wrap her hand in it.

“Let me see!” he commanded.

“Really it’s nothing,” she protested; “only a splinter from those boards. I should have known better.”

Well, splinters ought to be taken out, lest they fester; and it was the most natural thing in the world for Jerry to insist upon performing the operation. She fetched a needle, and he burned the point in the flame of a match, and grasped her injured hand firmly.

He hadn’t realized what it would mean. The splinter was long and deeply embedded, and he could not help hurting her. She winced and bit her lip. When at last the heartbreaking job was done, his face was quite pale. He still held her hand, and was looking at her with the most miserable contrition; but she smiled.

“You mustn’t be so silly!” she said. “It’s really--”

“Lynn!” said an awful voice.

Lynn, suddenly growing very red, escaped at once, and Jerry saw her no more that day.

He would perfectly well endure being called a plumber, a carpenter, and a chance acquaintance, but he could not endure this. He no longer wished to laugh, he no longer saw this thing as a joke. On the contrary, he was immeasurably offended by the suspicious and scornful glare he got from the portly, white-haired lady.

IV

Next morning the postman delivered a letter at No. 93, addressed to Mrs. Nathaniel Journay, who was none other than the portly lady.

DEAR MADAM:

In order to avoid a misunderstanding which has often been a cause for dissatisfaction in our tenants, we beg to call your attention to that clause in your lease which restrains the tenant from driving any nails into the walls, or in any way defacing or marring the walls or woodwork of the premises.

Trusting that you find the house entirely as represented,

Very truly yours, COOPER & COOPER, Agents.

“Humph!” said she, very much taken aback.

Lynn looked up from her breakfast.

“What is it, auntie?” she asked.

“Nothing,” said the other calmly. “Simply one of the necessary annoyances of a business career.”

She was prepared to say a good deal more than that to a certain person. She was by no means stupid. She put two and two together, and chalked up a mighty black four against that fraudulent carpenter. He was the talebearer. Very well--only wait until he presented himself again!

In the meantime the indomitable woman finished the carpentering herself. The noise of the hammering made her very nervous, but she made up her mind to defy Cooper & Cooper if they should appear. She had to have those shelves, and she would have them.

That afternoon a man came by, asking for work. He said he was a gardener; and after Mrs. Journay had cross-examined him until he was reduced to an abject condition, and she felt sure he was no spy, she set him to work.

The next morning she had another letter from Cooper & Cooper, pointing out to her that it was strictly prohibited to tenants to remove shrubs in the garden, to lop off branches from trees, or in any way to mar or deface the garden.

This time she wrote a tart answer, remarking that the garden was in a lamentable condition which no one could deface or mar, that the branches lopped away had been those which shut off light from the house, and that she would really be justified in sending the landlord a bill for this work. Nevertheless, she did not employ the gardener again.

For a few days she and her niece were invisibly busy within the house, but at last, one bright morning, they came out with a ladder, which Mrs. Journay held while Lynn climbed up it and hung out a glittering gilt signboard, lettered in black:

YE OLDE NEW ENGLAND BOX SHOPPE

The sign shone in the sun like a warrior’s shield. The two women regarded it with pride and pleasure.

“I believe the customers will begin coming to-morrow,” said the elder.

But the first thing to come the next day was a letter from Cooper & Cooper.

DEAR MADAM:

It has no doubt escaped your notice that the premises at 93 Sloan Street are upon highly restricted property, which restrictions forbid the use of the house or grounds for any business purpose. You will find this covered in the fifth section of your lease, any violation of which, if willfully persisted in, renders the contract null and void.

Very truly yours, COOPER & COOPER, Agents.

“Let ’em!” she cried aloud, dismayed, but valiant as ever.

“What is it, auntie?” inquired Lynn.

“Never mind, my dear!” said the other. “You go on painting your boxes, and I’ll attend to the business arrangements.”

Mrs. Journay spoke in her usual confident manner, but at heart she was alarmed and not at all certain as to what she ought to do. She was certain, however, that her niece must not be worried by these unexpected developments. To protect Lynn was her chief duty on earth, and her chief pleasure, too. Terrible as she might be to others, to Lynn she was never anything but kind and generous and affectionate, in her august fashion.

“I’d rather know, auntie,” insisted Lynn. “I think I really ought to know. We’re partners, aren’t we?”

“Yes,” said Mrs. Journay. “Yes, I know that, but--”

“We can’t carry on our business,” Lynn continued, “unless we both know everything about it--can we, darling?”

She was now standing behind her aunt’s chair, resting her soft cheek against that imposing coiffure. Mrs. Journay frowned.

“It doesn’t seem necessary,” she said.

She was already conquered, however. To tell the truth, her serious and quiet niece had always been able to wind Mrs. Journay around her little finger.

“Let me see the letter, auntie dear!” said Lynn.

She did see it, and the two former ones.

“It’s that man!” declared Mrs. Journay. “There’s no possible doubt of it. He came here to spy. Some one sent him. My theory is that some one knew we were going to start this shop, and, fearing the competition, determined to drive us out!”

Lynn stood looking down at the letter with a curious expression.

“I see!” she said.

From her face one might imagine that whatever it was she saw gave her very little pleasure.

They were both silent for a time, with their meager little breakfast forgotten between them. They had always been more or less poor, but never in this way. Until recently they had lacked neither dignity nor comfort. They had had their friends and their little diversions, and a cozy sort of existence, until something happened. It doesn’t much matter what the catastrophe was. The important fact is that their small income vanished, and here they were, gallantly prepared to make a new one for themselves.

And was this enterprise, into which the very last of their savings had gone, to be wrecked by Cooper & Cooper? Mrs. Journay would not permit it. Often in the past, when she had coldly ignored people, such people had disappeared from her sight--beneath the surface of the earth, for all she knew; and she decided to try this on Cooper & Cooper. She would scornfully ignore them. The shop should go on--it must!

She was about to say this aloud, when Lynn began to speak.

“Auntie dear,” she said, “let’s give it up!”

“Lynn! I am surprised!”

“Yes!” Lynn went on, with a sort of vehemence. “Let’s give this up and go away from here.”

“Lynn! Your boxes! The beautiful boxes you’ve painted!”

“I’d like,” said Lynn, “to see them all sailing down the river! Oh, auntie, do let’s go away! I hate this house and this place and--we’ll go back to Philadelphia, and I’ll take a position in an office, and--”

The girl stopped short at the sight of her aunt’s face.

“Oh, my dear!” she cried. “I didn’t really mean that! No--we’ll stay here, of course, and we’ll make a wonderful success of the shop.”

She sat on the arm of her aunt’s chair, and they talked with enthusiasm of their dazzling future; but they didn’t look at each other--not once. They talked, they even laughed, and after breakfast they went about busily preparing for customers; but all the time there lay over them the black shadow of this persecution. Why should any one wish them ill?

“I’d really be glad to go,” thought Mrs. Journay, “if it weren’t for Lynn; but I can’t and won’t have Lynn working in an office. I’ll make this--this disgusting shop a success!”

Lynn went on painting boxes all the morning.

“He was the only one who knew about the shelves,” she said to herself. “Out of petty, despicable spite against poor auntie, he went off and told the agents; and after he’d been so--not that I care, though. I knew all the time that he was one of those men who always--who always pretend to--to like people!”

Still, in spite of not caring in the least, it seemed to her that this incident was harder to bear than all her other misfortunes--harder to bear than exile from her old home and her old friends, than her desperate anxiety about money, or than the frightful tedium of painting boxes.

“Because it’s such a humiliation,” she explained to herself.

The admiration of young men was certainly no new thing to Lynn, but that a man should look at her like that, should speak as he had spoken, and then so basely betray her aunt and herself--

Her cheeks burned with just anger, or perhaps with shame, that even for a moment she should have thought so well of him.

V

No one came to molest them that day, or the next, or all that week, or that month, but this good fortune was counterbalanced by the fact that no customers came, either.

Mrs. Journay and her niece took turns in attending to the shop with the regularity of deck officers standing watch; and, having once arranged a schedule, they were afraid to depart from it, for fear of admitting in any way that trade was not brisk. Lynn went on and on painting boxes, because, in the first place, they had a large stock to be painted, and, in the second place, she had nothing else to do; but the dismalness of sitting in that big, dim room, to see the boxes piling up on the shelves, and to make calculations which showed that the money decreased even faster than the boxes increased, was not a life to give animation to a girl, or comfort to an elderly lady.

Indeed, the only thing that supported them was their splendid, ridiculous Journay fortitude and obstinacy. They had gone into this thing without help or advice. They wouldn’t ask help or advice now, and they wouldn’t complain.

It was Lynn’s turn in the shop that afternoon. She sat there behind a long table on which were a tin cash box, wrapping paper, twine, and a pile of pretty little blue cards on which was printed:

YE OLDE NEW ENGLAND BOX SHOPPE--Hand-decorated gift boxes for all purposes--Chests made to order.

She was sewing, but when she heard a step on the veranda she hid the sewing in a drawer and began to write busily on a pad. The front door was open, and the customer entered the room. Lynn looked up with an alert, businesslike expression--and it was that man!

“I’ve been away,” he began eagerly. “Otherwise--” He stopped short, looking at Lynn. “Is anything wrong?” he asked.

“No,” she said evenly.

For an instant her clear eyes rested on his face, and then they glanced away, as if he wasn’t worth regarding. She was not rude, or scornful, or awe-inspiring like her aunt, but her attitude was unmistakable.

“I’ll have to ask you to excuse me,” she said politely. “I’m busy this morning.”

Rising, she moved toward the door.

“No!” he cried. “Please wait! Please tell me what’s the matter! Every minute I’ve been away, I’ve been thinking of getting back and seeing you again. I--please don’t go! Just tell me!”