CHAPTER VI.

THE BACHELOR UNCLE TO THE RESCUE

The years since Hemming's departure had brought little of joy to Molly Travers. At first anger at herself had occupied her mind. Then had come a short-lived anger toward Hemming for not writing or returning. Now she looked at life with a calm heartlessness. When she learned the true story of Penthouse a white fury entered into her, and she knew that there was not a person in the world whom she would now trust,--save Hemming, the man who despised her. Her mother tried to comfort her; tried to reason with her; tried to soothe her with platitudes and eligible suitors. For her pains, the poor woman was snubbed. So were the suitors--at first. But, as the seasons wore around, with no word of love or forgiveness from the man whose love she had tramped on, Miss Travers decided to take her revenge on the world. She took it daintily, and the world hardly knew what she was about. First, and always, there was Anderson. At first, love for the girl, and loyalty for his friend, struggled hard within him. Love won against loyalty. Then he found that she did not care. He was of a hopeful disposition, and continued to make a fool of himself even to the last, as you shall see. There were others,--a subaltern, a lawyer, the son of a colonial premier, and a baronet. It was always so cleverly done that not one of them could lay the blame on her. Tarmont, the young artist, was the first to understand. He saved himself just in time.

Mrs. Travers was in despair, especially when the baronet rode away. At last it occurred to her that still the memory of Hemming, the adventurer, stood between her daughter and a comfortable settlement in life. Why any one should prefer the memory of a poor man to the reality of a rich one, she really could not see. She was afraid to ask Molly for a solution of the problem (having learned something by experience), so she wrote a note to her brother. Mr. Pollin came promptly, and gave ear to the narration of her troubles with polite concern. When she had made a piteous end of it, he told her that she was fretting herself quite unnecessarily.

"I'll speak to Molly," he said, in a reassuring voice.

"But she does not like being spoken to," complained Mrs. Travers.

"Oh, she is really a sensible girl, and I am not afraid of her," said Mr. Pollin.

"Had I better call her now?" suggested the lady.

"Lord, no!" cried her brother. "I'll see her alone,--some other day."

One morning, Molly received a visit from her bachelor uncle, much to her surprise. What little she knew of her uncle rather attracted her. More than once she had detected signs of thought, even of intellect, in his conversation. Also, she had heard something of his early career and of the articles he had written. She greeted him brightly. He held her hand, and glanced around the depressing drawing-room.

"My dear, this is no place to talk," he said.

"No, not to really talk," she agreed, "but it is not often used for that." Then she looked at him suspiciously. "Are you going to scold me about something, uncle?" she asked.

He laughed, and shook his head.

"Oh, no. I am not as courageous as I look," he replied.

She wondered if this round, trim, elderly gentleman really imagined that he looked so.

"I don't know where else we can go," she said. "Mother is in the morning-room, and the library is being cleaned."

"If you will come for a walk," he said, with a winning hesitancy in his manner.

Molly smiled. "I'll come," she answered, "though I am quite sure you have something very disagreeable to say, otherwise why all this trouble?"

"My dear girl," began Mr. Pollin, "I do not wonder at your suspicion. Really, though, it is without grounds. I simply want to become better acquainted with an interesting and charming niece whom I have hitherto somewhat neglected."

"Then it is a matter of duty," laughed Molly.

"On your part, my dear," replied her uncle, with a gallant bow.

"Then wait a moment," she said, and left the room.

The moment lengthened into twenty minutes, at the end of which time Miss Travers reappeared, gowned for the street.

"By gad, I don't blame the young fools!" muttered Mr. Pollin to himself, as he followed her down the steps. At first their conversation was of trivialities. It soon worked around to books, and Molly found, to her delight and surprise, that her uncle had not altogether forsaken his first love, to wit,--literature.

"I have cloaked myself with the reputation of a gossip," he told her, "to hide my greater sins of serious reading and amateur scribbling. A literary man must be successful from the most worldly point of view, to be considered with any leniency by his friends. So I keep dark, and enjoy myself and the respect of--of the people we know. When I was younger, I was not so wise."

"I have heard about it," returned Molly, "and I always liked you for it. But I think you were a coward to give it up just as soon as you came in for money."

Mr. Pollin smiled somewhat sadly.

"I was never anything more than a dabbler. That is my only excuse for shunning the muse in public," he replied. "But here we are at the door of my humble habitation."

"I have seen the door before. It looks very nice," remarked Molly.

"On the other side of that door," said Mr. Pollin, standing still and surveying the oak, "are two hundred and odd rare volumes, and three times as many more or less common ones,--also some easy chairs, and a man-servant capable of producing a modest luncheon."

"And cigarettes?" asked Miss Travers.

The gentleman gave her a look of pained inquiry.

"For you, my dear girl?" he queried.

"I have not smoked a cigarette for years," she replied, "but I learned how--oh, long ago."

"I have some excellent cigarettes," rejoined Mr. Pollin, kindly, as he fitted his latch-key in the door.

Molly found that, for a poor bachelor, her uncle lived very comfortably. She really did not see how one man and his valet could use so many rooms. The library was a charming place, walled with shelves of books, and warmed and brightened by a glowing fire. The floor had no carpet, but was thickly strewn with rugs. The chairs were of modern pattern and wicker ware, built for comfort rather than for looks. The big writing-table had books, magazines, and manuscripts scattered over it.

Mr. Pollin rang for his man, who appeared on the instant.

"My niece, Miss Travers, will lunch with me," he said.

"Very good, sir," replied the man, and hesitated at the door.

"Well, Scanlan?" inquired his master.

"General Davidson, sir,--and the lady, sir,--will that be hall?"

"Good Lord!" exclaimed Mr. Pollin, "I'd forgotten the general. You don't mind old Davidson, do you, Molly?"

"I'm sure I do not know. I have never met him," replied Molly.

"That will be all," said Mr. Pollin to the man, and, as soon as the door closed, he turned to Molly and said: "Now, my dear, we have just an hour before that old bore Davidson, with his everlasting plans of battles, gets here, so we had better make the most of our time." He stirred the fire, and then seated himself close to his niece. He looked at her nervously, and several times opened his mouth as if to speak, but always seemed to think better of it before he had made a sound.

"Why, what on earth is the matter?" cried Miss Travers, staring with wide eyes.

Mr. Pollin braced himself, and swallowed hard. "My dear," he said, "I want to confess that I promised your mother that I would speak to you about--about--"

"About what, uncle?" She breathed fast, and her face was anxious.

"Dash it all, about some silly rot!" cried the old gentleman, "and, by gad, I don't intend to mention it. You are quite old enough to look after your own affairs,--of that nature,--and you are much wiser than the people who wish to look after them for you."

"I know what it is," said Molly, slowly.

"Then don't give it another thought," said Mr. Pollin. He patted her hand gently, and sighed with relief. "Now we can have a cigarette," he said. But his real task was yet to come. He wanted to know, by her own showing, if she still cared for Hemming. How the devil was it to be done, he wondered. He looked at the clock, and saw that the general was not due inside another forty minutes. He looked at Molly. She leaned back in his deepest chair, looking blissfully at home and uncommonly pretty. Her slight, rounded figure was turned sidewise between the padded arms of the chair, while her grave gaze explored the book-shelves. Between two fingers of her right hand she held a fat cigarette, unlighted.

"What a lucky man an uncle is," he murmured.

She wrinkled her eyes at him for a moment, and then laughed softly. "That was very prettily said; but I would much rather you read to me--something that you are very fond of. I'll see if I like it. Perhaps our tastes are a good deal the same, and, if so, you will be able to save me a lot of time and temper by telling me what to read."

"A literary adviser," suggested Mr. Pollin, as he fumbled through a stack of magazines and papers beside his chair.

"Surely you will not find anything in the magazines," she exclaimed.

In answer, he selected one from the heap, and opened it at a marked page.

"What is it?" she asked.

"'Pedro, the Fisherman,' is the name of it," he replied, and straightway began to read.

It was a simple story of a small, brown boy somewhere at the other side of the world, and yet the beauty, the humble joy, and the humble pathos, made of it a masterpiece,--for the seeing ones. Pollin read it well, with sympathy in his voice and manner, but with no extravagance of expression. When he came to the end (it was a very short story), he got up hurriedly and placed the magazine in his niece's lap.

"I must see how Scanlan is getting along," he said, and left the room.

Molly sat very still, with the magazine face down upon her knee. Her eyes, abrim with tears, saw nothing of the glowing fire toward which they were turned. There was no need for her to look, to see by whom the story was written. Who but her old lover could touch her so with the silent magic of printed words? She forgot, for awhile, the unanswered letter and the weary seasons through which she had vainly waited for his forgiveness. Now she saw only the exile,--the wanderer,--and her heart bled for him. He would be wiser than of old, she thought, but still gentle and still fearless. A cynic?--no, he could never be that. Such a heart, though embittered against one woman, would not turn against the whole of God's world. She had thrown aside the love that now read and translated the sufferings and joys of outland camps and cities. The very tenderness that enabled him to understand the men and women of which he wrote had once been all for her.

The magazine slid to the floor, and a loose page, evidently cut from some other periodical, fluttered to one side. Molly sat up and recovered it. Listlessly she turned it over. Here were verses by Hemming. Her tears blotted the lines as she read:

"When the palms are black, and the stars are low, and even the trade-winds sleep, God, give my longing wings, to span the valleys and hills of the deep!"

And again,--

"The sailor's voyage is a thousand miles, 'bout ship, and a thousand more! By landfall, pilot, and weed-hung wharf,--to the lass at the cabin door.

"But mine!--fool heart, what a voyage is this, storm-beaten on every sea, With never the glow of an open door and a lamp on the sill for me?"

When Mr. Pollin returned to the library, he found his niece with her face hidden in the cushions of the chair, weeping quietly. He had half-expected something unusual, but the sight of her grief made him feel like a fool. He picked up the magazine, and replaced it neatly on the top of the pile. Then he noticed the clipping containing Hemming's verses, damp and crumpled, at her feet. That's what did it, he thought, and was about to recover it, too, when his attention was diverted by the sound of wheels at his curb.

"The general," he exclaimed.

Molly sat up quickly, and mopped her eyes. "I think I must have fallen asleep," she said, with her face turned away from her uncle. But he was the more confused of the two.

"Yes, my dear," he said, "but now you must dry your--I mean, wake up, for the general is at the door." He went to the window. With the tail of his eye, he saw Molly stoop, quick as a flash, pluck something from the rug at her feet, and thrust it into the front of her dress. Next moment the general was announced.

The lunch was sent in from the kitchen of a famous restaurant, and was artfully served by Scanlan. During the first part of the meal, the general did little but eat. He had a surprisingly healthy appetite for a retired British soldier of his age and rank. Later he talked, beginning with his little say concerning the War Office. That institution suffered severely.

"Bless my soul! what did they need of a commission to look into the state of affairs?" he fumed. "I could have told them about the rifles years ago. Why, man, I lugged one of the useless things to Newfoundland with me, and first day on the barrens crawled to within sixty yards of a stag, and sniped at him steady as a church,--with my elbow on a rock, mind you. Off walked the stag, so I popped again. At that, he walked a bit farther, and shook his head. My half-breed sniggered. 'Damn you,' I said (there were no ladies there, Miss Travers; I never swear before women and parson's), 'make me a target, and I'll see what's the matter with this blessed shootin'-iron.' Sacobie fixed up a target, and we both blazed at it--turn about--all afternoon. Every bullet went eighteen feet to the left. Gad, if they had only heard me that day, they would have guessed that something was wrong with the sightin' of their precious rifles."

Next, he held forth on military matters in general, even down to rations and uniforms for men in the field. "The matter with our Tommies," he declared, "is that the poor beggars haven't wind enough to march with, tied about as they are with a lot of idiotic straps."

Presently, much to Molly's surprise, he pushed his wine-glasses to one side, and asked for a copy of "Where Might Is Right."

"This chap, Hemming, considering his lack of age, knows a wonderful lot about it," he said, when he got the book in his hand. He fluttered the pages, and soon found a passage that seemed to please him. He straightway read it aloud, in ringing tones and with a grand air.

"I call that inevitable--inevitable," he cried, glaring the while at his host and the lady, as if looking for contradictions.

"It strikes me as remarkably true," agreed Mr. Pollin. Molly said nothing, but something of the inner glow of pride must have shone in her face, for her uncle glanced at her, and smiled knowingly.

The general left shortly after lunch, for he was a man of affairs,--mostly other people's.

"I must go now," said Molly. "Mother will be wondering what you have done with me."

Mr. Pollin took both her hands between his, and pressed them warmly.

"Do you love Bert Hemming?" he asked.

She turned her face away, and did not answer. But he felt her hands tremble in his, and saw the red glow on neck and cheek.

"Bring him back," he said. "If you love him, why ruin your own life as well as his?"

"I wrote to him--long ago--and he--he took no notice," whispered Molly.

"And you never wrote again?" inquired her uncle.

"Why should I? He despises me,--or he would have answered that letter. I--I dragged my heart before him," she sobbed.

Mr. Pollin let go her hands, and slipped one arm around her shoulders.

"My dear little girl," he replied, "letters have been known to go astray,--just as conclusions have." He patted her bowed head with his free hand. "Why, once I lost a letter with a money order in it," he added, seriously.

Molly brushed away her tears. "I must go now," she said, moving away from him. She put up her hands to straighten her hair. Then a sudden thought occurred to her, and she plucked Mr. Pollin's sleeve.

"Uncle, we must both forget about to-day," she said.

"Not I," he replied. "I am going to write--"

He stopped short, spellbound by her sudden change of countenance and manner. Her eyes fairly flamed. Her whole body trembled.

"You would not dare!" she cried. "Oh, you would not dare! Are you, too, nothing but a busybody?"

Poor old Pollin gasped.

"Good Lord! I meant it for the best," he exclaimed, weakly, "but just as you say, my dear."

He took her home, and, by the time her door was reached, her manner toward him had again warmed.

"It was a charming lunch," she said, as they shook hands.

Mr. Pollin sat at his writing-table, and dipped his pen in the ink, only to dot lines on his blotter.

"The girl was right," he said, "I don't dare."

He lit a cigarette, and for several minutes contemplated wreaths of smoke, without moving. Suddenly he leaned forward, took a fresh dip of ink, and scribbled:

"DEAR BERT:--You are a fool to stay away,--unless, perhaps, you no longer care for the girl."

Without adding his signature to this offhand communication, he enclosed it in an envelope, and addressed the same to Hemming, care of his New York publishers.