CHAPTER IV
AND A WAY
Mr. Sam wasn't taking any chances, for the next day he went to the city
himself to bring Mr. Dick up. Everything was quiet that day and the day
after, except that on the second day I had a difference of opinion with
the house doctor and he left.
The story of the will had got out, of course, and the guests were
waiting to see Mr. Dick come and take charge. I got a good bit of gossip
from Miss Cobb, who had had her hair cut short after a fever and used to
come out early in the morning and curl it all over her head, heating the
curler on the fire log. I never smell burnt hair that I don't think
of Miss Cobb trying to do the back of her neck. She was one of our
regulars, and every winter for ten years she'd read me the letters she
had got from an insurance agent who'd run away with a married woman the
day before the wedding. She kept them in a bundle, tied with lavender
ribbon.
It was on the third day, I think, that Miss Cobb told me that Miss Patty
and her father had had a quarrel the day before. She got it from one of
the chambermaids. Mr. Jennings was a liver case and not pleasant at any
time, but he had been worse than usual. Annie, the chambermaid, told
Miss Cobb that the trouble was about settlements, and that the more Miss
Patty tried to tell him it was the European custom the worse he got.
Miss Patty hadn't come down to breakfast that day, and Mr. Moody and
Senator Biggs made a wager in the Turkish bath—according to Miss
Cobb—Mr. Moody betting the wedding wouldn't come off at all.
"Of course," Miss Cobb said, wetting her finger and trying the iron to
see if it was hot, "of course, Minnie, they're not married yet, and if
Father Jennings gets ugly and makes any sort of scandal it's all off. A
scandal just now would be fatal. These royalties are very touchy about
other people's reputations."
Well, I heard that often enough in the next few days.
Mr. Sam hadn't come back by the morning of the sixth day, but he wired
his wife the day before that Mr. Dick was on the way. But we met every
train with a sleigh, and he didn't come. I was uneasy, knowing Mr. Dick,
and Mrs. Sam was worried, too.
By that time everybody was waiting and watching, and on the early train
on the sixth day came the lawyer, a Mr. Stitt. Mr. Thoburn was going
around with a sort of greasy smile, and if I could have poisoned him
safely I'd have done it.
It had been snowing hard for a day or so, and at eleven o'clock that day
I saw Miss Cobb and Mrs. Biggs coming down the path to the spring-house,
Mrs. Biggs with her crocheting-bag hanging to the handle of her
umbrella. I opened the door, but they wouldn't come in.
"We won't track up your clean floor, Minnie," Mrs. Biggs said—she was a
little woman, almost fifty, who'd gone through life convinced she'd only
lived so long by the care she took of herself—"but I thought I'd better
come and speak to you. Please don't irritate Mr. Biggs to-day. He's been
reading that article of Upton Sinclair's about fasting, and hasn't had a
bite to eat since noon yesterday."
I noticed then that she looked pale. She was a nervous creature,
although she could drink more spring water than any human being I ever
saw, except one man, and he was a German.
Well, I promised to be careful. I've seen them fast before, and when a
fat man starts to live on his own fat, like a bear, he gets about the
same disposition.
Mrs. Biggs started back, but Miss Cobb waited a moment at the foot of
the steps.
"Mr. Van Alstyne is back," she said, "but he came alone."
"Alone!" I repeated, staring at her in a sort of daze.
"Alone," she said solemnly, "and I heard him ask for Mr. Carter. It
seems he started for here yesterday."
But I'd had time to get myself in hand, and if I had a chill up my
spine she never knew it. As she started after Mrs. Biggs I saw Mr. Sam
hurrying down the path toward the spring-house, and I knew my joint
hadn't throbbed for nothing.
Mr. Sam came in and slammed the door behind him.
"What's this about Mr. Dick not being here?" he shouted.
"Well, he isn't. That's all there is to it, Mr. Van Alstyne," I said
calmly. I am always calm when other people get excited. For that reason
some people think my red hair is a false alarm, but they soon find out.
"But he MUST be here," said Mr. Van Alstyne. "I put him on the train
myself yesterday, and waited until it started to be sure he was off."
"The only way to get Mr. Richard anywhere you want him to go," I said
dryly, "is to have him nailed in a crate and labeled."
"Damned young scamp!" said Mr. Van Alstyne, although I have a sign in
the spring-house, "Profanity not allowed."
"EXACTLY what was he doing when you last laid eyes on him?" I asked.
"He was on the train—"
"Was he alone?"
"Yes."
"Sitting?"
"No, standing. What the deuce, Minnie—"
"Waving out the window to you?"
"Of course not!" exclaimed Mr. Van Alstyne testily. "He was raising the
window for a girl in the next seat."
"Precisely!" I said. "Would you know the girl well enough to trace her?"
"That's ridiculous, you know," he said trying to be polite. "Out of a
thousand and one things that may have detained him—"
"Only one thing ever detains Mr. Dick, and that always detains him," I
said solemnly. "That's a girl. You're a newcomer in the family, Mr. Van
Alstyne; you don't remember the time he went down here to the station to
see his Aunt Agnes off to the city, and we found him three weeks later
in Oklahoma trying to marry a widow with five children."
Mr. Van Alstyne dropped into a chair, and through force of habit I gave
him a glass of spring water.
"This was a pretty girl, too," he said dismally.
I sat down on the other side of the fireplace, and it seemed to me that
father's crayon enlargement over the mantel shook its head at me.
After a minute Mr. Van Alstyne drank the water and got up.
"I'll have to tell my wife," he said. "Who's running the place, anyhow?
You?"
"Not—exactly," I explained, "but, of course, when anything comes up
they consult me. The housekeeper is a fool, and now that the house
doctor's gone—"
"Gone! Who's looking after the patients?"
"Well, most of them have been here before," I explained, "and I know
their treatment—the kind of baths and all that."
"Oh, YOU know the treatment!" he said, eying me. "And why did the house
doctor go?"
"He ordered Mr. Moody to take his spring water hot. Mr. Moody's spring
water has been ordered cold for eleven years, and I refused to change.
It was between the doctor and me, Mr. Van Alstyne."
"Oh, of course," he said, "if it was a matter of principle—" He
stopped, and then something seemed to strike him. "I say," he said;
"about the doctor—that's all right, you know; lots of doctors and all
that. But for heaven's sake, Minnie, don't discharge the cook."
Now that was queer, for it had been running in my head all morning that
in the slack season it would be cheaper to get a good woman instead of
the chef and let Tillie, the diet cook, make the pastry.
Mr. Sam picked up his hat and looked at his watch.
"Eleven thirty," he said, "and no sign of that puppy yet. I guess it's
up to the police."
"If there was only something to do," I said, with a lump in my throat,
"but to have to sit and do nothing while the old place dies it's—it's
awful, Mr. Van Alstyne."
"We're not dead yet," he replied from the door, "and maybe we'll need
you before the day's over. If anybody can sail the old bark to shore,
you can do it, Minnie. You've been steering it for years. The old doctor
was no navigator, and you and I know it."
It was blowing a blizzard by that time, and Miss Patty was the only one
who came out to the spring-house until after three o'clock. She shook
the snow off her furs and stood by the fire, looking at me and not
saying anything for fully a minute.
"Well," she said finally, "aren't you ashamed of yourself?"
"Why?" I asked, and swallowed hard.
"To be in all this trouble and not let me know. I've just this minute
heard about it. Can't we get the police?"
"Mr. Van Alstyne is trying," I said, "but I don't hope much. Like as not
Mr. Dick will turn up tomorrow and say his calendar was a day slow."
I gave her a glass of water, and I noticed when she took it how pale she
was. But she held it up and smiled over it at me.
"Here's to everything turning out better than we expect!" she said, and
made a face as she drank the water. I thought that she was thinking of
her own troubles as well as mine, for she put down the glass and stood
looking at her engagement ring, a square red ruby in an old-fashioned
setting. It was a very large ruby, but I've seen showier rings.
"There isn't anything wrong, Miss Patty, is there?" I asked, and she
dropped her hand and looked at me.
"Oh, no," she said. "That is, nothing much, Minnie. Father is—I think
he's rather ridiculous about some things, but I dare say he'll come
around. I don't mind his fussing with me, but—if it should get in the
papers, Minnie! A breath of unpleasant notoriety now would be fatal!"
"I don't see why," I said sharply. "The royal families of Europe have a
good bit of unpleasant notoriety themselves occasionally. I should think
they'd fall over themselves to get some good red American blood. Blue
blood's bad blood; you can ask any doctor."
But she only smiled.
"You're like father, Minnie," she said. "You'll never understand."
"I'm not sure I want to," I snapped, and fell to polishing glasses.
The storm stopped a little at three and most of the guests waded down
through the snow for bridge and spring water. By that time the afternoon
train was in, and no Mr. Dick. Mr. Sam was keeping the lawyer, Mr.
Stitt, in the billiard room, and by four o'clock they'd had everything
that was in the bar and were inventing new combinations of their own.
And Mrs. Sam had gone to bed with a nervous headache.
Senator Biggs brought the mail down to the spring-house at four, but
there was nothing for me except a note from Mr. Sam, rather shaky, which
said he'd no word yet and that Mr. Stitt had mixed all the cordials in
the bar in a beer glass and had had to go to bed.
At half past four Mr. Thoburn came out for a minute. He said there was
only one other train from town that night and the chances were it would
be snowed up at the junction.
"Better get on the band wagon before the parade's gone past," he said in
an undertone. But I went into my pantry and shut the door with a slam,
and when I came out he was gone.
I nearly went crazy that afternoon. I put salt in Miss Cobb's glass when
she always drank the water plain. Once I put the broom in the fire and
started to sweep the porch with a fire log Luckily they were busy with
their letters and it went unnoticed, the smell of burning straw not
rising, so to speak, above the sulphur in the spring.
Senator Biggs went from one table to another telling how well he felt
since he stopped eating, and trying to coax the other men to starve with
him.
It's funny how a man with a theory about his stomach isn't happy until
he has made some other fellow swallow it.
"Well," he said, standing in front of the fire with a glass of water in
his hand, "it's worth while to feel like this. My head's as clear as
a bell. I don't care to eat; I don't want to eat. The 'fast' is the
solution."
"Two stages to that solution, Senator," said the bishop; "first,
resolution; last, dissolution."
Then they all began at once. If you have ever heard twenty people airing
their theories on diet you know all about it. One shouts for Horace
Fletcher, and another one swears by the scraped-beef treatment, and
somebody else never touches a thing but raw eggs and milk, and pretty
soon there is a riot of calories and carbohydrates. It always ends the
same way: the man with the loudest voice wins, and the defeated ones
limp over to the spring and tell their theories to me. They know I'm
being paid to listen.
On this particular afternoon the bishop stopped the riot by rising and
holding up his hand. "Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "let us not be
rancorous. If each of us has a theory, and that theory works out to his
satisfaction, then—why are we all here?"
"Merely to tell one another the good news!" Mr. Jennings said sourly
from his corner.
Honest, it was funny. If some folks were healthy they'd be lonesome.
But when things had got quiet—except Mr. Moody dropping nickels into
the slot-machine—I happened to look over at Miss Patty, and I saw there
was something wrong. She had a letter open in her lap not one of the
blue ones with the black and gold seal that every one in the house knew
came from the prince but a white one, and she was staring at it as if
she'd seen a ghost. |
