Part 72

“I’m an electrical engineer,” said Ordway. “I’ve been looking around here. _Think_ what electricity could do for you here! Light--plenty of light--electric water heater--pump--dish washer--vacuum cleaner--percolator--stoves. You could have decent comfort!”

Cousin Ronald could not fathom the motives of the stranger, but he felt sure that they were profoundly subtle, and inimical to Cousin Ronald’s welfare. Again he said:

“Will you--er--step into my study, sir?”

Ordway stepped, and when he got in there he loomed worse than ever.

“See here!” he said. “Let me do this job for you--wiring the house.”

Cousin Ronald felt a sort of illness, a sort of faintness. He believed that he could comprehend the plot now. Instead of bluntly demanding a certain sum for Mme. Van Der Dokjen’s letter, he was going to demand this job--this impious, this vandal job, of “wiring” the cottage. And the price--the price--

“I--er--fear it would be a somewhat costly undertaking,” said Cousin Ronald.

Ordway thought of the wonderful girl, groping about in this dismal house, cold, forlorn, captive to an ogre relative. He was perhaps a little obsessed by electricity--a good thing for one of his profession. He thought it the great hope of the modern world. And he could not endure the idea of a wonderful girl deprived of its benefits. He said:

“The question is--if anything can be too ‘costly,’ when it’s a matter of human dignity and welfare.”

A shudder ran along Cousin Ronald’s spine. The moment had come. Very well; he was ready. He admitted, in his own heart, that nothing could be too costly where Mme. Van Der Dokjen’s dignity was concerned. He was silent for a moment; then he raised his distinguished head.

“Mr. Ordway,” he said, “name your price, sir!”

Ordway stared at him with a faint frown.

“I didn’t mean that,” he explained. What he had meant was that he would be glad to do this job for nothing. But he feared to affront Mr. Phillips. “It’s--I’d _enjoy_ doing it,” he said earnestly.

Cousin Ronald could not endure the suspense any longer.

“Mr. Ordway,” he said, “let us be direct, sir. That is ever my way. I have long been prepared for this eventuality. I am ready, sir, to consider the purchase of this letter. Be good enough to name your price.”

IV

Like many another man before him, Cousin Ronald was ill-served by his own impatience. Ordway had come, intending to hand the letter over as a gift of no importance, but being asked to name his price put ideas into his head. He reflected. He reflected so long that Cousin Ronald grew still more impatient.

“I have been practicing the strictest economy,” he announced. “I may say that I have endured something not short of actual discomfort, sir, in order that I might be in a position to meet any--er--reasonable terms--”

There was a knock at the door. It was Cousin Winnie.

“Your _dinner_!” she whispered. “It’s _ready_!”

Cousin Ronald did some quick reflecting himself. If the young man could observe their strict economy for himself--

“Mr. Ordway, sir,” he said, “will you favor us with your company at a very simple meal?”

“Thank you!” Ordway replied. “I’d be pleased to.”

This dinner had, in Cousin Ronald’s eyes, a sweet, old-fashioned charm. A fire burned now upon the hearth; the board was set out with Wedgwood and with Sheffield plate. And Cousin Ronald positively recreated Mme. Van Der Dokjen, describing her just as she had been, here in this very room.

But Ordway was not moved. He did not give the Wedgwood or the plate anything like the attention he gave to the economical dinner, and the late Mme. Van Der Dokjen was, to him, of very inferior merit to the living Lucy. All the time Cousin Ronald discoursed, Ordway was thinking of Lucy, deprived of electricity and of all the other privileges she so richly deserved.

“It’s a darned shame!” he thought. “The old skinflint thinks more of that letter than he does of his own family. A darned shame!”

When the meal ended, Cousin Ronald suggested that Lucy sing, accompanying herself upon the spinet--an art she had recently acquired. He believed that this would soften the heart of the rapacious young man.

It did. It did, indeed. To the sweetly jangling spinet she sang some gentle old song. In firelight and candlelight--

The young man, watching her and hearing her, was quite as much moved as Cousin Ronald could have desired--but in the wrong direction.

Her song ended, Cousin Ronald and Ordway withdrew to the study, Cousin Winnie and her child to the kitchen. Twenty minutes passed; then Ordway reappeared. With a curtsy almost old-fashioned, Lucy went with him to the door, even across the threshold.

The wind slammed the door behind her, and for a few minutes she stood in the porch, talking to the young man. Cousin Winnie, in the kitchen, heard them; they were discussing a new play. Lucy said yes, she did like the theater, but she didn’t go very often now. And she had heard “The Maddened Brute” spoken of as a wonderful play--a really big thing. Cousin Winnie missed a little here, owing to her duties; the next thing she heard was Lucy saying good night to Mr. Ordway.

It had been a very brief conversation, but Ordway, as he walked to the station in the windy dark, imagined that she had said a great deal. He thought, somehow, that she had told him what a miserable existence she led in the historic cottage. What a _darned_ shame!

V

Lucy was sitting at a small table by the dining room window. She had bought a tube of cement, and with it she was mending a varied assortment of antique china she had discovered in a cupboard. It was raining outside, a chill, steady downpour. And the room was dim and cold, and it was a dismal world.

“I wish I was thirty!” she thought. Because at that advanced age she believed that one could be content to live in a historic cottage, and not mind dullness, or rain, or anything, very much. At thirty she would be content to devote her life to the ruined Cousin Ronald and her heroic mother. Yet, in a way, she disliked the thought of being thirty. She disliked all her thoughts this afternoon.

“As far as that goes,” she reflected, pursuing a certain familiar line, “I don’t have to wait for anybody to invite me. I can take mother to see ‘The Maddened Brute’ this very Saturday, if I like. I’ve got enough money for that. Only, mother wouldn’t like that sort of play. Anyhow, I don’t care!”

Carefully she cemented a handle on an ancient sugar basin; then, setting it down to dry, she looked out of the window. The postman, in a rubber coat, was coming along the muddy road.

“I don’t care!” she said again. She was not the sort of girl who waited with the slightest interest for letters that people had said they were going to write a week ago. Let them write, or not write; what cared she?

The postman came up on the porch and whistled, and the door opened--like a sort of cuckoo clock--and Cousin Winnie took in the letters. But what a long time she was in the hall!

“I suppose she’s got another letter from a cousin,” thought Lucy. “If there was anything for me--But I don’t care, anyhow.”

At last Cousin Winnie came into the dining room.

“A letter for you, Lucy,” she said, handed it to her child, and vanished. With the utmost indifference Lucy opened her letter. It contained two tickets for “The Maddened Brute” for Saturday afternoon, an explanation of the difficulty of getting them, and a very civil request that she and her mother meet Stephen Ordway for lunch at the Ritz before the play.

Not yet being thirty, the girl was pleased.

“Mother!” she called. “Isn’t this nice? Listen--”

No answer. She got up and went into the kitchen, and found her mother standing by the window--just standing, doing nothing. This was alarming.

“Mother!” she said. “What’s wrong?”

“Lucy--” said her mother. “Oh, Lucy! Oh, think of it! You can travel! You can have really nice clothes!” She was actually in tears.

“What is the matter?” cried Lucy. And then: “_What’s this?_”

It was a check for five thousand dollars which Cousin Winnie extended in her trembling hand.

“Your--your Cousin Peter--left it to you!”

“Cousin Peter! Who’s he?”

“You wouldn’t remember,” said Cousin Winnie. “A--a second cousin of--your grandfather’s. Oh, Lucy! My dear, good child! Now you can go away!”

“But the check’s made out to you, and it’s signed L. B. Grey--”

“A legal form,” Cousin Winnie explained. “I myself shall be well and amply provided for. This check is entirely for you, Lucy.”

VI

Somehow, “The Maddened Brute” was a disappointment. It was truly, as the advertisements declared it, a tense and gripping drama of life in the raw, but the characters were all so very violent that it was rather a relief than a tragedy when any one of them was silenced by stabbing, drowning, and so on.

Mr. Ordway was a little tense himself. When Cousin Winnie had seen him in the historic cottage, he had appeared such a cheerful young man, and now he was so odd, so silent. He ordered a superb luncheon at the Ritz; he provided them with an unparalleled box of chocolates; he was, in material ways, a most satisfactory host.

But spiritually he was depressing. In the theater he sat on the aisle, next to Cousin Winnie, and whenever the curtain went down he kept asking her about her plans, in a low and alarmingly serious voice.

“You won’t stay in that house all winter, will you?” And he spoke of pneumonia, of bronchitis, of rheumatism, with a horrid eloquence. He said that candles often set houses on fire. He pictured such a disaster on a bitter midwinter night.

He spoke of thieves. He went on to escaped lunatics; and when the curtain rose on the third act and showed the _Maddened Brute_ gibbering in a cellar by the light of one candle, she gasped.

“I must speak to Lucy!” she thought. “She’s got to go away!” It was her policy not to interfere with her child, and she had waited very patiently for some word as to what Lucy meant to do with the check. But now she would wait no longer; she would speak to her about going away.

She had no opportunity, though. The young man insisted on taking them all the way back to the cottage.

It did, indeed, look sinister that evening, so small, so lonely under a stormy sky. Mad things could so easily be hiding behind those bushes. Of course they weren’t, but they _could_.

“You must come in, Mr. Ordway,” said Cousin Winnie.

“Thanks,” he replied. “But--thanks, but I’ve got to go. Only, I wish you’d tell me first that you’ve decided not to stay here this winter.”

“Oh, dear!” said Cousin Winnie, mildly. “I’m sure I can’t.”

“Why don’t you go to Bermuda?” continued the young man. “Or Florida? You--both of you--look pale.”

Although a little tiresome, Cousin Winnie thought the young man’s solicitude rather touching. But Lucy answered him bluntly.

“We can’t afford things like that. We’re going to stay here--”

“But five thousand dollars ought--” he began, vehemently, and stopped short. There was a blank silence.

“Mother!” said Lucy, reproachfully.

“My dear!” said Cousin Winnie. “_Naturally_, I never mentioned--”

There was another silence.

“Mr. Ordway,” Lucy began. “What made you say ‘five thousand dollars’?”

“Oh! It--it just came into my head,” he replied.

“It couldn’t,” said Lucy, coldly. “I’d like to know. Will you tell me, please, why you thought I had five thousand dollars?”

Another silence.

“Because,” said Ordway, “I sent it.”

“_Oh!_” cried mother and daughter.

“But--listen, please!” said the young man, in great distress. “It’s--if you’ll just listen. You see, I had a letter written by this Mme. Van Der What’s Her Name--and Mr. Phillips wanted it--badly. And when I saw how--what it was like in the cottage--and he seemed to have all he wanted to spare for that darn fool letter. I made him pay five thousand for it. Please! Just a minute! It really _belongs_ to you. You’re his relatives.”

“But--Cousin Peter!” cried Lucy.

“I made him up,” said Cousin Winnie, faintly. “The letter said--from an anonymous friend--and I thought--perhaps your Cousin Ronald himself--But now, of course, Lucy will return it to you at once, Mr. Ordway.”

“I can’t,” said Lucy, with a sob. “You told me this Cousin Peter yarn--and you said you were amply provided for--and I’m young and healthy--and the poor thing did look so wretched--”

“Lucy! What ‘poor thing’? Oh, Lucy, what have you done?”

“You told me he was ruined,” said Lucy. “And he did look so cold, and wretched, and dismal--and I rather like him.”

“Lucy! You didn’t--”

“I did!” cried Lucy in despair. “I gave it to Cousin Ronald!”

“He accepted it?” asked Ordway, in a terrible voice.

“He had to,” Lucy replied. “I put it in an envelope and wrote--‘from an admirer of Mme. Van Der Dokjen’!”

No one spoke for a time.

“I know it was foolish,” said Lucy, finally. “But the day I got it, I felt so--I can’t describe it--so--well, so healthy, you know, and able to do anything I wanted. And he was sitting in there, writing his poor silly old book, with one candle. And his gray hair, and his funny little beard--and the way he clears his throat--sort of baaing--like a lamb. And I thought he was ruined.”

“Foolish!” repeated Cousin Winnie, and with that she walked briskly up the path.

“I really am a little bit sorry,” Lucy remarked.

“Sorry for what?” inquired Ordway.

“Well,” said she. “For you, I guess. You must feel pretty flat, just now.”

“Thank you,” said he. “I do.”

“It was a nasty, condescending thing.”

“It wasn’t meant like that,” he declared. “What I--”

The door of the cottage opened, and Cousin Winnie called:

“Don’t stand there in the cold!”

“Mother says--” Lucy began.

“I heard her,” said Ordway. “Thing is--what do _you_ say?”

“Well, I’d--I’d like you to come,” said Lucy.

VII

Then they went in. They found Cousin Winnie standing by a console in the hall, with a strange look on her face.

“Really!” said she. “This is--Look at this!”

And she held out to them a check for five thousand dollars, drawn by Cousin Ronald to her order.

“Listen!” she said, and began to read:

“MY DEAR WINNIE:

“An unexpected stroke of good fortune enables me to tender to you this small token of my profound appreciation of your kindness toward me in a dark hour. I beg that you will honor me by accepting it.

“Furthermore, it occurs to me that this cottage, hallowed as it is to me by its associations, is scarcely suitable in its present condition for a winter residence for ladies accustomed to modern conveniences. I shall endeavor to arrange for the installation of electricity, and I am this afternoon going into the city to consult with an expert upon the advisability of a small furnace.

“I shall be somewhat late in returning. Indeed, my dear Winnie, I should prefer that you read this in my absence, and to consider--”

“That’s all that matters,” said Cousin Winnie, hastily, folding up the letter.

“No! Read the rest!” her child firmly insisted.

“No,” Cousin Winnie asserted. “I--I prefer not.”

“But why?” Lucy began, and then stopped, staring at her mother.

“Mother!” the girl exclaimed.

“Don’t be silly!” said Cousin Winnie, severely.

“Merciful Powers!” Lucy remarked, with a shocking mimicry of Cousin Ronald’s manner. “I fear this is another compromising letter!”

“It is not, at all!” Cousin Winnie declared indignantly. “Nothing could be more honorable and--”

Then suddenly they all began to laugh. Cousin Ronald, coming up the path, heard them. He thought it was an agreeable thing to hear, suggestive of that fine, old-fashioned home life.

MUNSEY’S MAGAZINE

AUGUST, 1926 Vol. LXXXVIII NUMBER 3

Miss Cigale

IT SHOULD BE QUITE NATURAL FOR A GRASSHOPPER TO KNOW MORE ABOUT PAWN TICKETS THAN DOES AN ANT

By Elisabeth Sanxay Holding

Mrs. Russell sat on the veranda, waiting for her son. A handsome and dignified woman she was, and a very calm one, but her calmness did not suggest patience.

On the contrary, she looked like one of those persons who wait until exactly the right moment, and then proceed to do whatever is exactly the right thing to be done, leaving late or careless persons to their well-deserved fate. Half past six was the dinner hour; at half past six she would go into the dining room, and if her son were not home--

He always was home, though. For twenty-three years he had been trained in punctuality, neatness, and economy, and his mother was satisfied with the result. She turned her eyes toward the west, where the sun was preparing to leave, gathering together his gorgeous, filmy raiment.

She was not looking at, or thinking of, any sunset, however, but looked in that direction because the railway station lay there, and she had heard a train whistle. It was not Geordie’s regular train, but once in awhile he came a little earlier; and, though Mrs. Russell was too reasonable to expect such a thing, she hoped he was coming now.

It was nice to have an extra half hour with her boy; nice to walk about the lawn with him, to talk to him, to listen to him, even just to look at him, as long as he didn’t catch her at it.

No; he wasn’t coming early to-night. The long tree lined street was empty, except for a woman who had just crossed the road. She was an odd figure; even the judicial Mrs. Russell had to smile a little at her frantic progress. A flower crowned hat had slipped far to the back of her head, a gray dust coat, unbuttoned, flew out behind her.

She walked bent by the weight of two heavy bags, pressing forward in haste, as if struggling against a mighty wind. She came nearer, and through the branches of a tree a shaft from the setting sun fell upon her wild fair hair.

“But--goodness gracious!” said Mrs. Russell, half aloud. “But--no! Nonsense! It can’t be!”

For there had been somebody else, with wild fair hair like that, shining not gold, but silver when the sun lay on it; somebody else slight and tall, and always in a desperate hurry. That was years and years ago.

She got up and came to the edge of the veranda, a queer flutter in her heart. Could there be any one else with quite that air--distinguished, and yet a little ridiculous, and somehow so touching?

“_Louie!_” she said, incredulously.

Down went the bags on the pavement. The newcomer stood where she was for an instant, then, headlong, rushed through the gate, up the steps, and clasped Mrs. Russell in her arms so violently that the flower crowned hat fell off and rolled down the steps. It lay on the gravel walk like a poor dry little flowerpot.

“Oh, Bella!” she cried. “Oh, Bella! Oh, Bella!”

“There--” said Mrs. Russell. “Sit down, my dear! Try to control yourself!”

As a matter of fact, she was crying herself, in a quiet, dignified sort of way. But, by the time she had gone down the steps and fetched her sister’s lively hat, she had put an end to all such nonsense, and was quite calm again.

“I’m _very_ happy to see you, Louie--” she began, but the other interrupted her.

“After all these years!” she cried, with a sob. “It doesn’t seem possible, does it, Bella? We were young then, Bella. Oh, think of that! Young, Bella--”

“I shan’t think of any such thing,” said Mrs. Russell, tartly. “Do stop crying, Louie, please, and tell me something about yourself.”

“It isn’t me yet, Bella; not the poor, silly forty-five-year-old me. It’s the other Louie, with her hair down her back, sitting here with the old Bella in that plaid dress. Do you remember that plaid gingham, Bella, that mother made for you? With the bias--”

“No!” Mrs. Russell replied. “I do not. I don’t want to, either. What I want to hear is something about yourself, Louie--something sensible and intelligible.”

“I remember you, Bella, so well--sitting at the piano, with a great black braid over your shoulder, playing that ‘Marche Aux Flambeaux,’ and poor father keeping time with his pipe. And that duet, Bella! You and I--the Grande Fantasia for Les Huguenots--” She giggled through her tears, and that giggle was more than Mrs. Russell could bear. It made the plaid dress and the duet and a hundred heartbreaking, dusty, forgotten things rise up before her.

“Louie!” she said. “I’m ashamed of you! When two sisters haven’t met for--”

“For two lifetimes!” said the incorrigible Louie. “I don’t care, Bella! The old things are the best.”

“What,” interrupted Mrs. Russell, sternly, “have you been doing all these years, Louie? Why didn’t you ever write to me?”

“I never had time, Bella. I’ve been too busy, failing. I’ve failed at everything, Bella, everything! I gave my recital--and you must have read how quickly and thoroughly I failed there. Then I tried giving music lessons, but I was always late, or I forgot to come at all, or I’d feel not in the mood for teaching. Then I studied filing and indexing, and oh, Bella, you should have seen the awful things I did! You know I never was exactly methodical! Then I learned typing. I was a little frightened then, Bella. I really tried, at that. But, you see, I wasn’t young any more then, and not good at the work. That failed, too. Then I tried to peddle things--scented soap, from door to door.”

“Louie! I--I’m very sorry, my dear!”

“Well, you needn’t be!” said her sister, drying her eyes. “It’s been very wonderful--sometimes, Bella. I’ve been happy most of the time--because, you see, I never minded failing.”

“Are you--” Mrs. Russell began, with no little embarrassment. “Are you--in difficulties now, Louie?”

“I haven’t a penny in the world, Bella. You remember that fable of La Fontaine’s we used to recite in school? _‘La Cigale et La Fourmis’?_ (The Grasshopper and the Ant.) I’m Miss Cigale, Bella, and you’re Mrs. Fourmis. I’m the poor, silly grasshopper who danced the summer away--and here I am, Bella. It’s winter--for me--and I want to rest, here with you, until the summer comes back.”

“Oh, don’t be so--‘highfalutin’’!” cried Mrs. Russell, stung by emotion into using a long-forgotten word. “Try to talk sensibly, Louie.”

This was all so typical of her sister; all her memories of Louisa were made up of these queer little storms, these showers of tears, these rainbow smiles.

“Always so upsetting!” she thought, half angry. Yet there never had been any one dear to her in the way Louisa was.

“Come upstairs,” she said, firmly, “and get ready for dinner, and then--Oh! There’s Geordie!”

“Oh, Bella! Your son!”

“Louie, listen to me! You must not be--silly about Geordie. He won’t understand it, and he won’t like it. Do, for goodness’ sake, pull yourself together!”

But Louie couldn’t. She tried; she sat up very straight in her chair, and smiled, but Mrs. Russell was not satisfied. She wished that she had had time to put Louie in order before the boy saw her. He was so fastidious; what would he think of this unexpected aunt, with her wild, fair hair, her blue eyes swimming in tears, her trembling smile?

“She looks worn,” thought Mrs. Russell, “but not--well, somehow, not grown up!”