"Oh, are you, sir? I didn"t know you was that way inclined."
"I"m not," Thor explained, when they had moved from the greenhouse into the yard. "I only feel that we people of the old stock hang out of politics too much and that I ought to pitch in and make one more. So you get my idea, Fay. It"ll give me standing to hold a bit of property like this, even if it"s only on lease."
There was no need for further explanations. Fay consented, not cheerfully, but with a certain saddened and yet grateful resignation, of which the expression was cut short by a cheery, ringing voice from the gateway:
"h.e.l.lo, Mr. Fay! h.e.l.lo, Dr. Thor! Whoa, Maud, whoa! Stand, will you?
What you thinking of?"
The response to this greeting came from both men simultaneously, each making it according to his capacity for heartiness. "h.e.l.lo, Jim!" They emphasized the welcome by unconsciously advancing to meet the tall, stalwart young Irishman of the third generation on American soil who came toward them with the long, loose limbs and swinging stride inherited from an ancestry bred to tramping the hills of Connemara. A pair of twinkling eyes and a mouth that was always on the point of breaking into a smile when it was not actually smiling tempered the peasant shrewdness of a face that got further softening, and a touch of superiority, from a carefully tended young mustache.
Thor and Jim Breen had been on friendly terms ever since they were boys; but the case was not exceptional, since the latter was on similar terms with every one in the village. From childhood upward he had been a local character, chiefly because of a breezy self-respect that was as free from self-consciousness as from self-importance. There was no one to whom he wasn"t polite, but there had never been any one of whom he was afraid. "h.e.l.lo, Mr. Masterman!" "h.e.l.lo, Dr. Hilary!" "h.e.l.lo, Father Ryan!" "h.e.l.lo Dr. Sim!" had been his form of greeting ever since he had begun swaggering around the village, with head up and face alert, at the age of five. No one had ever been found to resent this cheerful familiarity, not even Archie Masterman.
As a man in whom friendliness was a primary instinct, Jim Breen never entered a trolley-car nor turned a street corner without speaking or nodding to every one he knew. Never did he visit a neighboring town without calling on, or calling up, every one he could claim as an acquaintance. He was always on hand for fires, for fights, for fallen horses, for first-aid in accidents, for ball-games, for the outings of Boy Scouts, and for village theatricals and dances. There were rumors that he was sometimes "wild," but the wildness being confined to his incursions into the city--which generally took place after dark--it was not sufficiently in evidence to shock the home community. It was a matter of common knowledge that he used, in village phrase, "to go with"
Rosie Fay--the breaking of the friendship being attributed by some of the well-informed to his reported wildness, and by others to differences in religion. As Thor had been absent in Europe during this episode, and was without the native suspicion that would have connected the two names, he took Jim"s arrival pleasantly.
Having finished his bit of business, which concerned an order for azaleas too large for his father to meet, and in which Mr. Fay might find it to his advantage to combine, Jim turned blithely toward Thor.
"Hear about the town meeting, Dr. Thor?--what old Billy Taylor said about the new bridge? What do you think of that for nerve? Tell you what, there"s some things in this town needs clearing up."
The statement bringing out Thor"s own intention to run as a candidate for office at the next election, Jim expressed his interest in the vernacular of the hour, "What do you know about that?" Further discussion of politics ending in Jim"s pledging his support to his boyhood"s friend, Thor shook hands with an encouraging sense of being embarked on a public career, and went forward to visit his patient in the house.
His steps were arrested, however, by hearing Jim say with casual light-heartedness, "Rosie anywheres about, Mr. Fay?"
The old man having nodded in the direction of the hothouse, Jim advanced almost to the door, where Thor, on looking over his shoulder, saw him pause.
It was a curious pause for one so self-confident as the young Irishman--a pause like that of a man grown suddenly doubtful, timid, distrustful. His hand was actually on the latch when, to Thor"s surprise, he wheeled away, returning to his "team" with head bent and stride slackened thoughtfully. By the time he had mounted the wagon, however, and begun to tug at Maud he was whistling the popular air of the moment with no more than a subdued note in his gaiety.
CHAPTER X
But Thor was pleased with the idea that his father could scarcely refuse him the lease. He would in fact make it worth his while not to do so.
Rosie Fay and those who belonged to her might, therefore, feel solid ground beneath their feet, and go on working and, if need were, suffering, without the intolerable dread of eviction. It would be a satisfaction to him to accomplish this much, whatever the dictates of honor might oblige him to forego.
He felt, too, that he was getting his reward when, after Jim"s departure, Rosie nodded through the gla.s.s of the hothouse, giving him what might almost be taken for a smile. He forbore to go to her at once, keeping that pleasure for the end of his visit. After seeing his patient, there were generally small directions to give the daughter which afforded pretexts for lingering in her company. His patient was getting better, not through ministrations of his own, but through some mysterious influence exerted by Reuben Hilary. As a man of science and a skeptic, Thor was slightly impatient of this aid, even though he himself had invoked it.
He was half-way up the stairs on his way to the bedroom in the mansard roof when, on hearing a man"s voice, he paused. The voice was saying, with that inflection in which there was no more than a hint of the brogue:
"Now there"s what we were talking of the last time I was here: "Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid. Ye believe in G.o.d; believe also in me." There"s the two great plagues of human existence--fear and trouble--staggered for you at a blow. And you do believe in G.o.d, now, don"t you?"
Thor had turned to tiptoe down again when he heard the words, spoken in the rebellious tones with which he was familiar, modulated now to an odd submissiveness: "I don"t know whether I do or not. Isn"t there something in the Bible about, "Lord, I believe, help thou mine unbelief"?"
"There is, and it"s a good way to begin."
Thor was out in the yard before he could hear more. Standing for a minute in the windy sunshine, he wondered at the curious phenomenon presented by men in evident possession of their faculties who relied for the dispersion of human care on means invisible and mystic. The fact that in this case he himself had appealed to the illusion rendered the working of it none the less astonishing. His own method for the dispersion of human care--and the project was dear to him--was by dollars and cents. It was, moreover, a method as to which there was no trouble in proving the efficiency.
He took up the subject of her mother with Rosie, who, with the help of Antonio, was rearranging the ma.s.ses of azaleas, carnations, and poinsettias after the depletion of the Christmas sales. "She"s really better, isn"t she?"
Rosie pushed a white azalea to the place on the stand that would best display its domelike regularity. "She seems to be."
"What do you think has helped her?"
She gave him a queer little sidelong smile. "You"re the doctor. I should think you"d know."
He adored those smiles--constrained, unwilling, distrustful smiles that varied the occasional earnest looks that he got from her green eyes.
"But I don"t know. It isn"t anything I do for her."
She banked two or three azaleas together, so that their shades of pink and pomegranate-red might blend. "I suppose it"s Dr. Hilary."
"I know it"s Dr. Hilary. But he isn"t working by magic. If she"s getting back her nerve it isn"t because he wishes it on her, as the boys say."
Suspecting all his approaches, she confined herself to saying, "I"m sure I don"t know," speaking like a guilty witness under cross-examination.
The a.s.siduity of his visits, the persistency with which he tried to make her talk, kept her the more carefully on her guard against betraying anything unwarily.
But to him the reserve was an added charm. He called it shyness or coyness or maidenly timidity, according to the circ.u.mstance that called it forth; but whatever it was, this apathy to his pa.s.sionate dumb-show piqued him to a frenzy infused with an element of homage. Any other girl in her situation would have come half-way at least toward a man in his.
His training having rendered him a.n.a.lytical of the physical side of things, he endeavored, more or less unsuccessfully, to account for the extraordinary transformation in himself, whereby every nerve in his body yearned and strained toward this hard, proud little creature who, too evidently--as yet, at any rate--refused to take him into account. She made him feel like a man signaling in the dark or speaking across a vacuum through which his voice couldn"t carry, while he was conscious at the same time of searchings of heart at making the attempts to do either.
He was beset by these scruples when, after taking his runabout from the garage, in order to go to town, he met Lois Willoughby in the Square. On the instant he remembered Dearlove"s counsel of a few days earlier--"He"d "ave to ease the first one off a bit." Whatever was to be his ultimate decision, the wisdom of this course was incontestable. As she paused, smiling, expecting him to stop, he lifted his hat and drove onward. Perhaps it was only his imagination that caught in her great, velvety brown eyes an expression of surprise and pain; but whether his sight was accurate or not, the memory of the moment smote him. The process of "easing the first one off" would probably prove difficult. "I shall have to explain to her that I was in a hurry," he said, to comfort himself, as he flew onward to the town.
The explanation would have been not untrue, since he was already overdue at his appointment with Mr. William Darling, his grandfather"s executor.
It was the second of the meetings arranged for giving him a general idea of the estate he was coming into. At the first he had gone over the lists of stocks, mortgages, and bonds. To-day, with a map of the city and the surrounding country spread out, partially on the desk and partially over Mr. Darling"s knees as he tilted back in a revolving-chair, Thor learned the location of certain bits of landed property which his grandfather, twenty or thirty years before, had considered good investments. The astuteness of this ancestral foresight was ill.u.s.trated by the fact that Thor was a richer man than he had supposed. While he would possess no enormous wealth, according to the newer standards of the day, he would have something between thirty and forty thousand dollars of yearly income.
"And that," Mr. Darling explained with pride, "at a very conservative rate of investment. You could easily have more; but if you take my advice you"ll not be in a hurry to look for more till you need it. I don"t want to hurt any one"s feelings. You surely understand that."
Thor was not sure that he did understand it. He was not sure; and yet he hesitated to ask for the elucidation of what was intended perhaps to remain cryptic. In a small chair drawn up beside Mr. Darling"s revolving seat of authority, his elbow on his knee, his chin supported by his fist, he studied the map.
"I don"t want to hurt any one"s feelings," the lawyer declared again, "either before or after the fact."
This time an intention of some sort was so evident that Thor felt obliged to say, "Do you mean any one in particular, sir?"
The trustee threw the map from off his knees, and, rising, walked to the window. He was a small, neat, sharp-eyed man of fresh, frosty complexion, his exquisite clothes making him something of a dandy, while his manner of turning his head, with quick little jerks and perks, reminded one of a bird. At the window he stood with his hands behind his back, looking over the jumble of nineteenth-century roofs--out of which an occasional "skysc.r.a.per" shot like a tower--to where a fringe of masts and funnels edged the bay. He spoke without turning round.
"I don"t mean any one in particular unless there should be any one in particular to mean."
With this oracular explanation Thor was forced to be content, and, as the purpose of the meeting seemed to have been accomplished, he rose to take his leave.
Mr. Darling was quick in showing himself not only faithful as a trustee, but cordial as a man of the world. "My wife would like you to come and see her," he said, in shaking hands. "She asked me to say, too, that she hopes you and your brother will come to the dance she"s going to give for Elsie in the course of a month or two. You"ll get your cards in time."
Warmly expressing the pleasure this entertainment would give him, while knowing in his heart that he wouldn"t attend it, the young man took his departure.
But no later than that evening he began to perceive why the oracle had spoken. Claude having excused himself from dressing for dinner on the ground of another mysterious engagement with Billy Cheever, and Mrs.
Masterman having retired up-stairs, Thor was alone in the library with his father.