"I read your page clearly enough, my boy," he said, earnestly. "You are taking a hand in a big game, and the other fellow keeps his cards under the table. Blowouts are not as uncertain as women, Joe. Let me tell you something. You will find it out, anyhow. I can ease the thing up now.
Back in Philadelphia a rich old widow has given two young lovers the opportunity to earn their living or depend on her bounty--a generous one, too. Being childless and selfish, she secretly wanted to hold them dependent on her, that she may demand their love and esteem. It is an old mistake that childless wealth and selfishness often make. The girl, being temperamentally romantic and inherently stubborn, voted to go alone. These things, rather than any particularly n.o.ble motive--I hate to disillusion you, Joe, but I must hold to facts--have landed her practically penniless in our midst; and she is not acquainted yet with either lack of means or the labor of earning. The young man, gifted in himself, which his sweet-heart is not, son of a visionary spendthrift, has chosen the easier way, a small clerkship and a luxurious home seeming softer to his artistic nature than the struggling up-climb with his real gift. This old lady won"t last forever. Her disinherited niece won"t want to work at teaching forever. The waiting clerk will come after the heir apparent just when she is most tired of the Sage Brush and the things thereof, and--they will live tamely ever after on the aunt"s money. Do you see what you are up against, Joe? Don"t waste energy on a dream--with nothing to show for your labor at last but debt and possible failure, and the beautiful Sage Brush Valley turned to a Sodom before your eyes."
"Whenever you are ready I"ll sign up the lease," was Joe"s only reply.
So the transaction was completed in silence.
III
JERRY AND EUGENE--AND JOE
XIII
HOW A GOOD MOTHER LIVES ON
New Eden never saw a more beautiful autumn, even in this land of exquisite autumn days, than the first one that Jerry Swaim pa.s.sed in the Middle West. And Jerry reveled in it. For, while she missed the splendid colorings of the Eastern woodlands, she never ceased to marvel at the clear, bright days, the sweet, bracing air, the wondrous sweeps of landscapes overhung by crystal skies, the mist-wreathed horizons holding all the softer hues, from jasper red to purest amethyst, that range the foundation stones of heaven"s walls as Saint John saw them in his dream exquisite.
It had never occurred to Jerry that a beauty impossible to a wooded broken country might be found on the October prairies. Her dream of a Kansas "Eden" exactly like the Pennsylvania "Eden," six times enlarged, had been shattered with one glimpse of her possession--a possession henceforth to be a thing forgotten. But life had opened new pages for her and she was learning to read them rapidly and well.
One thought of the past remained, however. The memory of a romance begun in her Eastern home would not die with the telling. And while Jerry Swaim persuaded herself that what Eugene Wellington called success to her was failure, and while every day widened the breach between the two, time and distance softened her harsher judgment, and she remembered her would-be lover with a tender sadness that made her heart cold to the thought of any other love.
This did not make her the less charming, however--this pretty girl without any trace of coquetry, who knew how to win hearts to her. Sure of the wideness that separated her life from the life of the Sage Brush Valley, she took full measure of interest in living, unconsciously postponing for herself the future"s need for the solace of love. The small income from her lease to the Macpherson Mortgage Company filled her purse temporarily, and she began at once upon a course of economic estimates worthy of Jim Swaim"s child, however seemingly impossible in Lesa Swaim"s pretty, dueless daughter. Another trait, undeveloped heretofore, began to be emphasized--namely, that while she could chatter glibly on embroideries and styles, and prettily on art, and seriously and intelligently on affairs of national interest, as any all-round American girl should do--she was discreet and uncommunicative regarding her business affairs. Not that she meant to be secretive; she was simply following the inherited business ability of an upright, well-balanced man, her father. Coupled with this was a pride in her determination to win--to prove to Aunt Jerry Darby and Eugene Wellington that she had made no mistake; and until victory was hers she would be silent about her endeavors.
The Macphersons had insisted that Jerry should remain their guest at least until the opening of the school in September. And if the girl imagined that she found a faint hint of fervor gone from Laura Macpherson"s urging, her hostess made up for it in the abundant kindness of little acts of hospitality. Jerry was frankly troubled, and yet she could not say why, for it was all the impressions of a mind sensitized to comprehend unspoken things. Jerry"s memory would call up that incident of the lost purse found in her hand-bag, and of Laura"s excuse for it, which she, Jerry, knew was impossible. And yet the girl felt that it was a contemptible thing to impute a distrust to Laura that, placed in the same position, she herself would scorn to harbor.
"I see no way but the everlasting run of events. I wish they would run fast and clear it up," Jerry said to herself, dismissing the matter entirely, only to have it bobbing up for consideration again on the first occasion.
At the close of a hot summer day Jerry was in her room, finishing a letter to Jerusha Darby, to whom she wrote faithfully, but from whom she had rarely received a line. York and Laura were on the porch, as usual.
The hammock that day had been swung to a shadier position, on account of the slipping southward of the late summer sun; and Laura forgot that Jerry"s window opened almost against it now, so that she could hear all that was said at that corner of the porch. As Jerry finished her letter she caught a sentence outside that interested her. She was innocent of any intention of eavesdropping afterward, but what she heard held her motionless.
"The leak has opened again, York," Laura was saying. "Things are beginning to disappear, especially money."
York"s face took on a sort of bulldog grimness, but he made no reply.
Inside, Jerry glanced at her beaded hand-bag lying on the top of the little desk, saying to herself:
"I"ll open a bank-account to-morrow. I"ve been foolish to leave that roll of bills lying around; all I have, too, between me and the last resort in Kansas--"to go mad or go back East." I"m certainly a brilliant business woman--I am."
And then, unconscious at first that she was listening, her ear caught what followed outside:
"York, the queer thing is that it"s just at "Castle Cluny" that things are disappearing right now. Mrs. Bahrr was over to-day and told me the Lenwells had even gone to Kansas City and forgot to lock their back door, and not a thing was missing, although Clare Lenwell left five silver dollars stacked up on the dresser in plain view."
"If anybody would know the particulars it would be the Big Dipper," York declared.
"Oh, now don"t begin on that tune, York, for I"m really uneasy," Laura began.
"For why?" York inquired.
And then Laura told him the story of her lost purse, omitting Stellar Bahrr"s part in the day"s events, and adding:
"Of course, I hate myself for even daring to carry a hint of suspicion for a minute, but Jerry knew as well as I did that I hadn"t put my purse in her hand-bag by mistake, for she carried it with her up-town that day. But I could forget the whole thing if it had ended there. I know that the dear girl was dreadfully short of money until just recently.
Now her purse is full of bills. I couldn"t help seeing that when she displays it so indifferently. She says she will have no funds from Philadelphia. Where does she get money when I can"t keep a bill around the house?"
"Then I would quit the stocking-toe banking system that mother and all the other women and most of the men back in Winnowoc used to employ. You might try the First National Bank of New Eden. I"m one of the directors, and a comparatively safe man for all that," York advised, gravely.
"The loss of the money is nothing to the possible loss of confidence,"
Laura went on, ignoring her brother"s thrust. "Could such a thing be possible that this dear girl is discouraged and tempted to hide her necessities?" The woman"s voice was full of kindly sorrow. "York, couldn"t you tell her?"
"I see myself doing that," York fairly exploded. "Laura, there may be a big leak in this house where valuables seep through. I"m not saying otherwise. But as for Jerry Swaim, it"s simply preposterous--impossible.
Never let such a thing cross your mind, let alone your lips again, you dear best of sisters. You know you don"t believe a word of it."
"I know I don"t, too, York; of course I don"t; but I must have needed you to a.s.sure me of it. It all began in circ.u.mstance and an ugly suspicion that a story of Stellar Bahrr"s suggested. And when I missed my own money and saw that great roll of bills--Oh, I must be crazy or just a plain human creature full of evil--"
"Or both," York added. "We are all more or less human and more than less crazy, especially if we will listen to old wives" tales against the expressed command of our wise brothers. As for Jerry having money"--York suddenly recalled his promise to Jerry not to discuss her affairs--"it"s hardly likely she would display carelessly what was acquired by extreme care. Let"s call her out here and think of better things."
As Laura looked up she realized for the first time the nearness of the hammock to Jerry"s open window. The grief of being overheard by one whom she would not wound for worlds, with the self-rebuke for giving ear to Stellar Bahrr"s gossip, almost overcame her.
"You go after Jerry, please," she said, faintly.
York went into the hall, calling at Jerry"s open door, but she was not there. He looked in the living-room, but it was empty. Through the dining-room he pa.s.sed to the side porch, where a dejected, lonely little figure was half hidden by the vines that covered it. At sight of her York stopped to get a grip on himself.
At her host"s explosive declaration, "I see myself doing it," Jerry had come to herself. Surprised and wounded, but realizing the justice of the ground for suspicion against her--her--Jerry Swaim, who had always had first concern in those about her--she left her room hastily and pa.s.sed out of the house by the side door. In the little vine-covered entry she sat down and stared out at the lawn, where the fireflies were beginning to twinkle against the shrubbery bordering the driveway. She had thought the disposition of her estate, and the choice of occupation, and the putting away of Eugene Wellington, had settled things for her future.
Here was the fulfilling of a sense of something wrong that had recently possessed her, hardly letting itself be more than a sense till now. What did life mean, anyhow? "To go mad or go back East?" Why should she do either one, who had not offended anybody?
As Jerry gazed out at the shadowy side lawn the sound of a step caught her ear--a shuffling of feet across the gra.s.s, and the noise of a hard sole on the cement driveway. Jerry"s eyes mechanically followed a short, shambling figure, suggesting a bear almost as much as a human being, as it pa.s.sed forward a step or two; then, dividing the spirea-bushes on the farther edge, it disappeared into the deeper shadow of the slope toward the town below "Kingussie."
It was Fishing Teddy--old Hans Theodore; Jerry recognized him at a glance, and in the midst of her confused struggle to find herself she paused to wonder about him. Intense mental states often experience such pauses, when the mind grappling in an internal combat rests for a moment on an impression coming through the senses.
"What"s the old Teddy Bear doing here?" Jerry asked herself, and then she remembered his coming once before almost to this very spot. That was the night Joe Thomson had called--the big farmer whose property her own was helping to destroy. There was something strong and unbreakable about this Joe. A million leagues from her his lot was cast, of course, and yet she hoped somehow that Joe might be near and that the Teddy Bear was waiting for him.
"Jerry! Jerry!" York called through the hall, and then he came out to where she sat on the side porch.
"I was hunting for you. You have a caller, my lady, a gentleman who wants to take you for a ride up the river. It will be gloriously cool on the ridges up-stream. He will give you a splendid hour before the curfew rings--the lucky dog!"
Jerry looked up expectantly. "It must be Joe Thomson," she thought, and she was glad to have him come again.
On the front porch little Junius Brutus Ponk was strutting back and forth, chatting with Laura.
"Good evening, Miss Swaim. I just soared down to invite you to take a little drive in my gadabout. I hope it will suit you to go."
"Nothing would please me more," Jerry said, lightly. "Let me get my wrap." As she returned to her room her eye fell on her hand-bag, lying on her desk. A sense of grief swept over her, for one moment, followed by a strange lightness of heart as if her latest problem had solved itself suddenly.