CHAPTER XVII
A BUNCH OF LETTERS
When people went down to breakfast the next morning they found a card
hanging on the office door with a half dozen new rules on it, and when
I went out to the spring-house the guests were having an indignation
meeting in the sun parlor, with the bishop in the chair, and Senator
Biggs, so wobbly he could hardly stand, making a speech.
I tried to see Mr. Pierce, but early as it was he had gone for a
walk, taking Arabella with him. So I called a conference at the
shelter-house—Miss Patty, Mr. and Mrs. Van Alstyne, Mr. and Mrs. Dick,
and myself. Mrs. Dick wasn't dressed, but she sat up on the edge of her
cot in her dressing-gown, with her feet on the soap box, and yawned. As
we didn't have enough chairs, Miss Patty jerked the soap box away and
made me sit down. Mr. Dick was getting breakfast.
We were in a tight place and we knew it.
"He is making it as hard for us as he can," Mrs. Sam declared. "The idea
of having the card-room lights put out at midnight, and the breakfast
room closed at ten! Nobody gets up at that hour."
"He was to come here every evening for orders," said Mr. Dick, measuring
ground coffee with a tablespoon, as I had showed him. "He came just
once, and as for orders—well, he gave 'em to me!"
But Miss Patty was always fair.
"I loathe him," she asserted. "I want to quarrel with him the minute I
see him. He—he is presumptuous to the point of impertinence—but he's
honest: he thinks we're all hypocrites—those that are well and those
that are sick or think they are—and he hates hypocrisy."
Everybody talked at once, then, and she listened.
"Very well," she said. "I'll amend it. We're not all hypocrites. My
motives in all this are perfectly clear—and selfish."
"You and old Pierce would make a fine team, Pat," Mrs. Dick remarked
with a yawn. "I like hypocrites myself. They're so comfy. But if you're
not above advice, Pat, you'll have Aunt Honoria break her neck or
something—anything to get father back to town. Something is going to
explode, and Oskar doesn't like to be agitated."
She curled up on the cot with that and went sound asleep. The rest of us
had coffee and talked, but there wasn't anything to do. As Mr. Sam said,
Mr. Pierce didn't want to stay, anyhow, and as likely as not if we went
to him in a body and told him he must come to the shelter-house for
instructions, and be suave and gentle when he was called down by the
guests about the steam-pipes making a racket, he'd probably prefer to go
down to the village and take Doctor Barnes' place washing dishes at the
station. That wouldn't call for any particular mildness.
But he settled it by appearing himself. He came across the snow from the
direction of Mount Hope, and he had a pair of skees over his shoulder.
(At that time I didn't even know the name of the things, but I learned
enough about them later.) I must say he looked very well beside Mr.
Dick, who wasn't very large, anyhow, and who hadn't had time to put on
his collar, and Mr. Sam, who's always thin and sallow and never takes a
step he doesn't have to.
I let him in, and when he saw us all there he started and hesitated.
"Come in, Pierce," Mr. Sam said. "We've just been talking about you."
He came in, but he didn't look very comfortable.
"What have you decided to do with me?" he asked. "Put me under
restraint?"
He was unbuttoning his sweater, and now he took out two of the smallest
rabbits I ever saw and held them up by the ears. Miss Patty gave a
little cry and took them, cuddling them in her lap.
"They're starving and almost frozen, poor little devils," he said. "I
found them near where I shot the mother last night, Minnie, and by way
of atonement I'm going to adopt them."
Well, although the minute before they'd all been wishing they'd never
seen him, they pretty nearly ate him up. Miss Patty held the rabbits, so
we all had turns at feeding them warm milk with a teaspoon and patting
their pink noses. When it came Mr. Pierce's turn they were about full
up, so he curled his big body on the floor at Miss Patty's feet and
talked to the rabbits and looked at her. He had one of those faces
that's got every emotion marked on it as clear as a barometer—when he
was mad his face was mad all over, and when he was pleased he glowed to
the tips of his ears. And he was pleased that morning.
But, of course, he had to be set right about the sanatorium, and Mr. Sam
began it. Mr. Pierce listened, sitting on the floor and looking puzzled
and more and more unhappy. Finally he got up and drew a long breath.
"Exactly," he agreed. "I know you are all right and I'm wrong—according
to your way of thinking. But if these people want to be well, why should
I encourage them to do the wrong thing? They eat too much, they don't
exercise"—he turned to Mr. Van Alstyne.
"Why, do you know, I asked a half dozen of the men—one after the
other—to go skeeing with me this morning and not one of them accepted!"
"Really!" Mr. Sam exclaimed mockingly.
"What can you do with people like that?" Mr. Pierce went on. "They don't
want to be well; they're all hypocrites. Look at that man Biggs! I'll
lay you ten to one that after fasting five days and then stealing a
whole chicken, a dozen oysters and Lord knows what else, now that he's
sick, he'll hold it against me."
"He's not holding anything," I objected.
"Because HE is a hypocrite—" Mr. Sam began.
"That's not the point, Pierce," Mr. Dick broke in importantly. "You were
to come here for orders and you haven't done it. You're running this
place for me, not for yourself."
Mr. Pierce looked at Mr. Dick and from there to Mr. Sam and smiled.
"I did come," he explained. "I came twice, and each time we played
roulette. I lost all the money I'd had in advance. Honestly," he
confessed, "I felt I couldn't afford to come every day."
Miss Patty got up and put the baby rabbits into her sister's big fur
muff.
"We are all talking around the question," she said. "Mr. Pierce
undertook to manage the sanatorium, and to try to manage it
successfully. He can not do that without making some attempt at
conciliating the people. It's—it's absurd to antagonize them."
"Exactly," he said coldly. "I was to manage it, and to try to do it
successfully. I'm sorry my methods don't meet with the approval of
this—er—executive committee. But it might as well be clear that I
intend to use my own methods—or none."
Well, what could we do? Miss Patty went out with her head up, and the
rest of us stayed and ate humble pie, and after a while he agreed to
stay if he wasn't interfered with. He said he and Doctor Barnes had a
plan that he thought was a winner—that it would either make or break
the place, and he thought it would make it. And by that time we were so
meek that we didn't even ask what it was.
Doctor Barnes and Miss Summers were the first to come to the mineral
spring that morning. She stopped just inside the door and sniffed.
"Something's dead under the floor," she said.
"If there's anything dead," Doctor Barnes replied, "it's in the center
of the earth. That's the sulphur water."
She came in at that, but unwillingly, and sat down with her handkerchief
to her nose. Then she saw me.
"Good gracious!" she exclaimed. "What have you done that they put you
here?"
"If you mean the bouquet from the spring, you get to like it after a
while," I said grimly. "Ordinary air hasn't got any snap for me now."
"Humph!" She looked at me suspiciously, but I was busy wiping off the
tables. "Well," she said, holding up the glass Doctor Barnes had brought
her, "it doesn't cost me anything, so here goes. But think of paying
money for it!"
She drank it down in a gulp and settled herself in her chair.
"What'll it do to me?" she asked. "Mixed drinks always play the deuce
with me, Barnes, and you know it."
"If you'll cut down your diet and take some exercise it will make you
thin," I began. "'The process is painless and certain: kindly nature in
her benevolent plan—'"
"Give me another!" she interrupted, and Doctor Barnes filled her glass
again. "Some women spell fate f-a-t-e," she said, looking at the water,
"but I spell it without the e."
She took half of it and then put down the glass. "Honestly," she
declared, "I'd rather be fat."
Mr. Pierce met them there a few minutes later and they had a
three-cornered chat. But Miss Summers evidently didn't know just how
much I knew and was careful of what she said. Once, however, when I was
in the pantry she thought I was beyond ear-shot.
"Good heavens, Pierce," she said, "if they could put THAT in a play!"
"Cut it out, Julia," Doctor Barnes snapped, and it wasn't until they had
gone that I knew she'd meant me. I looked through the crack of the door
and she was leaning over taking a puff at Doctor Barnes' cigarette.
"Curious old world, isn't it?" she said between puffs. "Here we are the
three of us—snug and nice, having seven kinds of hell-fire water and
not having to pay for it; three meals a day and afternoon tea ditto,
good beds and steam-heat ditto—and four days ago where were we? Pierce,
you were hocking your clothes! Doc, you—"
"Washing dishes!" he said. "I never knew before how extravagant it is to
have a saucer under a cup!"
"And I!" she went on, "I, Julia Summers, was staring at a ceiling in the
Finleyville hotel, with a face that looked like a toy balloon."
"And now," said Doctor Barnes, "you are more beautiful than ever. I am a
successful physician—oh, lord, Julia, if you'd hear me faking lines in
my part! And my young friend here—Pierce—Julia, Pierce has now become
a young reprobate named Dicky Carter, and may the Lord have mercy on his
soul!"
I tried to get out in time, but I was too late. I saw her rise, saw the
glass of water at her elbow roll over and smash on the floor, and saw
her clutch wildly at Mr. Pierce's shoulder.
"Not—not DICKY Carter!" she cried.
"Richard—they call him Dick," Mr. Pierce said uneasily, and loosened
her fingers from his coat.
Oh, well, everybody knows it now—how she called Mr. Dick everything in
the calendar, and then began to cry and said nobody would ever know what
she'd been through with, and the very dress she had on was a part of
the trousseau she'd had made, and what with the dressmaker's bills—
Suddenly she stopped crying.
"Where is he, anyhow?" she demanded.
"All we are sure of," Mr. Pierce replied quietly, "is that he is not in
the sanatorium."
She looked at us all closely, but she got nothing from my face.
"Oh, very well," she said, shrugging her shoulders, "I'll wait until he
shows up. It doesn't cost anything."
Then, with one of her easy changes, she laughed and picked up her muff
to go.
"Minnie and I," she said, "will tend bar here, and in our leisure
moments we will pour sulphur water on a bunch of Dicky's letters that I
have, to cool 'em." She walked to the door and turned around, smiling.
"Carry fire insurance on 'em all the time," she finished and went out,
leaving us staring at one another! |
