Candace c.o.c.ked a glance toward the elderly back at the door; and then returned her look to Mr. George:
"You"ll maybe be knowing Mr. Charles Stanhope?" she propounded, as if she were giving him a riddle, and her blue eyes looked him through and through:
"Oh, surely, surely! He was a very close friend! You--knew him?"
"I was Miss Betty"s nurse who cooked the griddle cakes for you the morning after the funeral----" she said, and waited with breathless dignity to see how he would take it.
"Oh! Is that so!" He beamed on her kindly. "Yes, yes, I remember those cakes. They were delicious! And what can I do for you? Just sit down.
Why, bless me, I don"t know but that your coming may be very opportune!
Can you tell me anything of Miss Betty?"
Candace pressed her lips together with a knowing smile as much as to say she might tell volumes if it were wise, and she cast a glance at the other brother who was shaking hands now with his visitor and promising to meet him a little later:
"Yon man"ll be knowing a bit, too, I"ll be thinking," she hazarded nodding toward Reyburn as he left. "He was at the wedding, I"m most sure----!"
The elder McIntyre gave her a quick glance and signalled to his brother to come near:
"This is Miss Stanhope"s nurse, the one who cooked breakfast for us at the time of the funeral," he said, and to Candace, "This is Mr. James McIntyre."
Candace fixed him with another of her inquisitive little glances:
"I"ve some bit papers put by that I thought ye might like to see," she said with a cautious air. "I"ve kept them fer long because I thought they might be wanted sometime, yet I"ve never dared bring them to your notice before lest I would be considered meddlin", and indeed I wasn"t sure but you had them already. Will you please to look over them papers and see if you"ve ever seen them before?" She drew forth an envelope from her bag and handed it to them. "It"s a bit letter that Mr. Stanhope wrote the day he was dyin" an" then copied and give to me to mail, and his lady took it away, sayin" she would attend to it. What I want to know is, did ye ever get the letter? If ye did it"s all right and none of my business further, an" I"ll go on my way back home again and think no more about it; but if ye didn"t then there it is, an" you ought to see it, that"s sure!"
The two men drew eagerly together and studied the trembling lines:
"It"s his writing all right," murmured one, under his breath, and the brother nodded gravely:
"You say that this was the original of a letter that was given to you to mail to us?"
Candace nodded.
"It"s what he wrote first, and got ink on it, an" then wrote it over. I can"t say what changes he made, as I didn"t read it, but this he gave to me to burn, and before I gets it burned my lady comes in and takes the letter from me while he was sleepin"; and so I hid the bit papers, thinkin" they might be a help to wee Betty sometime. And oh, can ye tell me anything of my little Lady Betty? Is she safe? Did she come to you for refuge? You needn"t be afraid to tell me. I"ll never breathe a word----!"
The two brothers exchanged quick glances of warning and the elder man spoke:
"My good woman, we appreciate your coming, and these papers may prove very useful to us. We hope to be able to clear up this matter of Miss Stanhope"s disappearance very soon. She did not come to us, however, and she is not here. But if you will step into the room just beyond and wait for a little while we may be able to talk this matter over with you."
Very courteously he ushered the plump, apprehensive little woman into the next room and established her in an easy leather chair with a quant.i.ty of magazines and newspapers about her, but she kept her little head c.o.c.ked anxiously on one side, and watched the door like a dog whose master has gone in and shut the way behind him; and she never sat back in her chair nor relaxed one iota during the whole of the two hours that she had to wait before she was called at last to the inner office where she found the handsome young man whom she remembered seeing at the wedding.
She presently found that Reyburn was as keen as he was handsome, but if she hadn"t remembered him at the wedding as a friend of that nice Mrs.
Cochrane, she never would have made it as easy as she did for him to find out things from her, for she could be canny herself on occasion if she tried, and she did not trust everybody.
CHAPTER XVI
THE mysterious disappearance of Candace from the Stanhope house caused nothing short of a panic. Herbert and his mother held hourly wrangles, and frantically tried one thing and then another. Day after day the responses came in from the advertis.e.m.e.nts they had caused to be put forth. Everyone was hot-foot for the reward, but so far little of encouragement had been brought out. More and more the young man was fixing his mind on the idea that Candace had something to do with Betty"s disappearance, so he was leaving no stone unturned to find the nurse as well as the girl. To this end he insisted on seeing personally and cross-examining every person who came claiming to have a clue to the lost girl.
That morning, at about the same hour when Candace walked into the office of the McIntyre Brothers in Boston, James, the butler, much against his dignity, was ushering a curious person into the presence of the son of the house. James showed by every line of his n.o.ble figure that he considered this duty beneath his dignity, and that it was only because the occasion was unusual that he tolerated it for a moment, but the man who ambled observantly behind him, stretching his neck to see everything that was to be seen in this part of the great house, that he might tell about it at the fire-house, failed to get the effect. He was wondering why in thunder such rich people as these seemed to be, couldn"t afford carpets big enough to cover their whole floors, instead of just having skimpy little bits of pieces dropped around here and there, that made you liable to skid all over the place if you stepped on one of them biasly.
Herbert Hutton lifted his head and watched Abijah Gage slouch into the room. He measured him keenly and remained silent while Abijah opened up.
There had been many other applicants for that reward that day, with stories cunningly woven, and facts, substantiated by witnesses, in one case a whole family brought along to swear to the fabrication; but as yet Herbert had not found a promising clue to his missing bride, and the time was going by. In a few days it would be too late, and his undisciplined spirit raged within him. It was not only his bride he wanted, it was her fortune, which was worth any trouble he might take; and every day, every hour, every minute now, it was slipping, slipping, slipping from his eager grasp.
Abijah was a little overawed in the presence of this insolent man of the world, but he felt he had, for almost the first time in his life, Truth on his side, and he was strong in the power of it. With a cunning equal to the one that matched him he dealt out his information bit by bit, giving only enough at a time to make his victim sure it was the real thing this time; and then he halted stubbornly and would say no more until that five thousand dollars was signed and sealed over to him. They had a long argument, but in the end Bi won, and was given certain doc.u.ments which he was satisfied would stand in court. A little later the telephone in Reyburn"s office rang sharply, and when Jimmie Ryan responded a voice that he had never heard before asked for Mr. Warren Reyburn.
"He"s out of town," Jimmie replied.
"How soon will he be back?" The voice was like a snarl.
"I"m not quite sure. He"s called to Boston on business," swelled Jimmie loyally.
An oath ripped over the wire, and Jimmie raged within and quailed. Was his idol then losing a great case?
"He might be back in a few hours," insinuated Jimmie. "Who shall I say called up if he should have me over long distance?"
"You needn"t say anybody! I"ll call up again," growled the voice, and the man hung up.
Jimmie sat for a long time in blissful reverie. "He"s getting there!" he whispered to himself. "He"ll get the big cases yet, and I can keep my first place. I must see Jane to-night and tell her."
Meanwhile, back at Tinsdale improvements had been going on at the Carsons". Bob, always handy with tools, had been putting in a tank over the bathtub. They had one at the house on the hill, only it was run by a windmill. Bob had a friend who was a plumber"s son, and from him had obtained some lengths of second-hand water-pipe and an old faucet. He had conceived the idea of a tank on the roof, and his first plan had been only a rainwater tank, but gradually as his vision widened he included a force pump in the outfit of desires. He hung around the plumber"s until they unearthed an old force pump somewhat out of repair, and for a few days" a.s.sisting the plumber Bob acquired it, together with after-hour help to put it into operation. The next object was a tank, which seemed at first to represent the impossible; but the grocer at last offered a suggestion in the shape of several large empty hogsheads which he readily accepted at the price of four Sat.u.r.days" work in the store.
All Bob"s extra time was put into these improvements, and he was as excited every night when it grew dark and he was forced to come to supper because he couldn"t see any longer to work, as if he had been building an airship.
The day the hogsheads were marshaled and connected and the force pump sent its first stream into them was a great occasion. The family a.s.sembled in the yard, with Elise Hathaway, who had been allowed to come over for a few minutes with Betty. Bob and his plumber friend pumped, and Emily climbed to the attic window, which overlooked the row of hogsheads, ranged so that the water would flow from one to the other, and acted as pilot to the new enterprise. As the first stream from the force pump, which Bob had lavishly painted red, crept its way up the pipes and began to wet the bottom of the first and highest hogshead Emily gave a little squeal of delight and shouted "It"s come! It"s come!
The water"s come!" and the family below fairly held their breath with the wonder of it. Not that such a thing could be, but that their own freckled, grinning Bob should have been able to achieve it.
There was an elaborate system of tin conductors which conveyed the waste water from the bathtub out through a hole in the wall of the little laundry bathroom, and distributed it along the garden beds wherever its controller desired to irrigate. Thus the system became practical as well as a luxury. There was also an arrangement of gutter pipes for carrying off any surplus water from the hogsheads, so saving the Carson house from possible inundation at any time of heavy storms.
After the plumbing was finished Bob painted the laundry neatly inside with beautiful white paint and robin"s-egg blue for the ceiling, and Betty told him it almost made one think of going swimming in the ocean.
Next he began to talk about a shower bath. Betty told him what one was like and he began to spend more days down at the plumber"s asking questions and picking up odd bits of pipe, making measurements, and doing queer things to an old colander for experiment"s sake. The day that Warren Reyburn came for the first time Bob had the shower part finished and ready to erect, and the next day saw it complete with a rod for the rubber curtain that Betty had promised to make for him. He and she were planning how they would make further improvements on the house before Jane and Nellie should come home for their summer vacation week.
Betty had thoroughly entered into the life of the little household now, and was a part of it. She saved her own small wages, and grudged all she had to spend for necessary clothes, that she might contribute further to the comfort and beauty of the general home.
After Warren Reyburn"s visit the last barrier between Betty and Ma seemed to be broken down. As soon as she had closed the door she flew into the other room and flung her arms around Ma"s neck, bursting into soft weeping on her motherly shoulder. Ma had done a rapid turning act when she heard her coming, for in truth she had been peeping behind the green window-shade to watch the handsome stranger go down the street, but she would have dropped the iron on her foot and pretended to be picking it up rather than let Betty suspect her interest in the visitor.
"Oh, mother," she murmured in Mrs. Carson"s willing ear, "I have been so frightened----"
"I know, dearie!" soothed the mother, quite as if she had been her own.
"I know!"
"But he was very kind," she said lifting her head with an April effect of tears. "He"s going to try to fix things for me so that I don"t need ever to be afraid of any one making trouble for me any more. You see, I sort of ran away. There was somebody I was afraid of who troubled me a great deal."
"Yes, dearie, I thought as much," said Ma. "Jane kind of gave me to understand there was something like that. I"m real glad there"s somebody goin" to look into your affairs an" fix things right for you. I knew you was restless an" worried. Now it"ll get all straightened out.
He"s got a nice face. I trusted him first off. He"s a church member, an"
that"s somethin". They ain"t all spiritual, but they"re mostly clean an"
just an" kindly, when they"re anythin" at all but just plain hypocrites, which, thank the Lord, there ain"t so many as some would have us believe. Now wash your face, dearie, an" run back to your place so you can come home early, for we"re goin" to have the old hen with dumplin"s for supper to celebrate."
That was one charming thing about that household: they celebrated every blessed little trifle that came into their lives, so that living with them was like a procession of beautiful thanksgivings.