Chapter VI The Unexpected Guest
Miss Berry’s legal question was at last disposed of. Page carefully mapped out a plan of action for her, and explained each detail with painstaking kindness.
“You are clever to me, Mr. Gorham,” she repeated gratefully, when all was made clear. “Now I want to pay you exactly as any of your clients would,” she added, in a business-like tone.
“You can’t,” he answered, throwing himself back in his chair, “for they don’t any of them make such cookies as you do.”
“Now please don’t joke,” she begged, half-laughing. “You’ve had the cookies already.”
“Of course, just a retaining fee as it were. Blitzen and I want some more before I go to bed.”
“But such an obligation,” pleaded Miss Berry.
“Such a pleasure, Aunt Love,” rejoined her lawyer. “Now, to change the subject, what is Pearfield’s opinion about the World’s Fair? Where do you think it ought to be held?”
“I don’t know enough about the different cities to say,” returned Miss Berry. “I see by the papers some o’ the Western cities think they have as good a right as anybody. Chicago is after it. Such an idea! As though folks want to have to traipse way across the country to see the Fair. I don’t know much about public questions,” continued Miss Lovina, complacently smoothing her apron, “but I know enough to see that there ain’t any sense in that notion, and reasonable folks won’t listen to it; not but what Chicago’s a good deal of a city, I s’pose.”
“Chicagoans have that idea,” answered Page, smiling. “I have a friend who recently returned from Europe; and he says that one day in the boat’s music-room he found on the table a book purporting to portray only Chicago and its suburbs. There were pictures in it of Niagara Falls and the Yellowstone Park.”
“Do tell!” exclaimed Miss Berry, laughing. “Well, where do you want the Fair to be, Mr. Gorham?”
“Oh, I feel as though New York were the proper place. I think it is the general feeling that it would be a risk to trust a matter like that to Chicago. There has been a very clever cartoon published recently in New York, showing our principal cities represented as pretty women standing in a semicircle around Uncle Sam waiting to see which shall receive a bouquet which he holds in his hands labeled ‘World’s Fair,’—that is, they are all pretty women except Chicago, who is a half-grown, scrawny girl, arrayed in an evening gown covered with a pattern of little pigs. She has huge diamonds blazing in her breast and ears, her thin arms are bare, and the hands she wildly stretches out to Uncle Sam wear white kid gloves with one button at the wrist. Her mouth is wide open, and she is evidently vociferously demanding the prize, while New York, a beautiful society girl, gazes at her with well-bred scorn. For my own part, I think New York may overdo the nonchalant business, and if she does, the energetic maiden stands a good chance to gain her end.”
“How do you suppose your cousin Jack likes to have his city made such game of?” asked Miss Lovina.
“Oh, I fancy Jack has learned by this time to view the Garden City from a Bostonian standpoint. I don’t know what his views are on the subject of the Fair. I have seen very little of him the last years.”
“You are liable to make up for it in the year to come,” said a new voice suddenly.
Blitzen had already run growling toward a window, and now barked furiously as Jack Van Tassel walked into the room and Miss Lovina and her guest sprang to their feet.
“Forgive the intrusion,” added the new-comer, in the handshaking that ensued. “I looked through the window and saw you sitting here so comfortably, I thought it a pity to make you the trouble of coming to the door. Aunt Love, how are you? You didn’t expect to see me here, Gorham?”
“Where have you dropped from? You were in Chicago day before yesterday,” rejoined his cousin.
“I don’t deny it. Thank you, Aunt Love. I used to like this rocking chair when my feet wouldn’t touch the floor as I sat in it. What do I see? If there isn’t the cookie box!”
“Yes, and you’re in great luck to come as soon as you have, for I was just meditating another onslaught upon it.”
“Well, if you two great boys ain’t as bad as you ever were!” exclaimed Miss Berry in high delight, as she hastened to bring forth the currant wine again for the delectation of her new guest.
“Perhaps you will explain yourself,” remarked Page curiously, hospitably reaching out the tin box and meanwhile making attempts to hold Blitzen off with his foot; an effort which met the success attendant on similar treatment of quicksilver.
“Why, I’ve come to see Aunt Love,” responded Jack. “Why shouldn’t I?”
Miss Berry looked at his brilliant, graceful face and figure admiringly. “Why not, indeed?” she said, laughing. “I was always good to you, wasn’t I, Mr. Jack?”
“Too good. Far too good. I remember everything.”
“That is all very well; but why did you bid me a long farewell a week ago, and then turn around and come back again?” persisted Page.
Jack tossed off a glass of wine. “Better than ever!” he exclaimed, sending Miss Berry one of the caressing, admiring looks which warmed any feminine heart toward which they were directed. Then he turned to his cousin. “Because, my dear Gorham, I have repented of my rejection of your offer, and after I’ve talked over old times sufficiently with Aunt Love, it is my intention to accompany you to Germany. Do you accept my apology?”
“Good enough,” commented Page briefly, but with evident satisfaction. “Your decision must have been sudden, though. What was the matter? Did Chicago grate upon your æsthetic sense in her scramble for the Fair?”
“She isn’t scrambling, that I know of. She doesn’t need to. She’ll get the Fair all right. Any one can see with half an eye that Chicago is the only place for it,—the foreordained place.”
Page laughed quietly and skeptically, and there followed one of the arguments of which every American citizen knows the pros and cons.
That night Miss Berry put her unexpected guests into two bedrooms which communicated. When her last good wishes for their comfort had been expressed and good-nights said, the two men looked at each other as they listened to her retreating footsteps.
“Of course,” said Page, “if the explanation you gave me downstairs is all you care to say, I’m satisfied.”
The brightness had faded from Van Tassel’s face. He looked moody and worn.
“No, I meant to tell you, of course,” he answered, seating himself on the side of the bed. “I found when I reached home that father had assumed charge of an orphan asylum, and I thought I should be better off out of the way.”
“What do you mean?”
“Exactly what I say. He is going to marry the eldest member, in order to facilitate matters.”
“Uncle Richard is going to marry again, and you have quarreled with him?”
Jack shook his head quickly. “I don’t quarrel with father,” he replied briefly.
Page sat down in a blue chintz armchair by the window and pushed open the blind; then recollecting that one of Aunt Love’s last warnings had been not to do so on account of mosquitoes, he closed it again.
“Uncle Richard has been a widower for fifteen years,” he said. “He is scarcely over fifty years old. Aren’t you unreasonable to resent his marrying?”
Van Tassel, his sombre eyes fixed on the palm-leaves in the ingrain carpet, emitted an inarticulate sound.
“What more appropriate,” continued his cousin, “than that he should select a widow, even supposing she has children. He has plenty of money. I can see how it would make you feel sore and change your home feeling at first; but Uncle Richard has such a level head, you may be certain that the lady is such a one as you will like after a time.”
Jack gave a short, unmirthful laugh. “The lady hasn’t any children. What a pity you can’t see her! She is a little girl who went to school with me at home; and she has an invalid mother, some younger sisters, and a brother on her hands.”
Page raised his heavy eyebrows and gave a soft whistle.
“As they have nothing in the world, they have roped father in.”
“That’s bad!” admitted the older man with some sympathetic disgust. “Then you have quarreled with Uncle Richard, for of course you attempted to dissuade him.”
“Not at all. I arrived home to find the engagement a fixed fact and all the parties satisfied. What was there to be done?”
“You didn’t come away without saying anything?”
“No, no. I wouldn’t do that, and I believe that in place of anything else to be proud of, I shall always be proud of having had some self-control in that last interview with father. I knew all the time, hot and angry as I was, that if I said to him what I felt, I should repent of hurting him all my life. He is the noblest man, the best father, that ever lived.” The speaker’s eyes grew bright, and Page believed it was with moisture.
“I’m glad to hear you say that,” he rejoined heartily. “You are right, I know. Uncle Richard is one man in a thousand, and it would be easy enough to believe that even a young girl might feel a deep and romantic attachment for him.”
Van Tassel shook his head. “You are all off again. Say all you like in praise of father, but”—
“But why be prejudiced?” suggested Page hopefully. “This Miss—Miss”—
“Bryant.”
“Why should you, on the circumstantial evidence of her family’s need, decide that she is only mercenary? Perhaps she loves”—
“And perhaps she doesn’t,” interrupted Jack impatiently. “She says she doesn’t.”
“What?”
“Yes, Clover is a very honest girl, and she was good enough to inform me of the neutral state of her affections.”
“Well, well! I must say Uncle Richard is beginning to puzzle me. He has seen this girl grow up. Is she so irresistibly beautiful?”
“What an idea! No. My father puzzles me too, I assure you, but I must believe he loves her, and in the face of that, Gorham,” Van Tassel looked up with strong feeling in face and voice, “that dear old fellow made sure that he wouldn’t be interfering with me before he spoke to her. He came to me just before leaving Cambridge, and asked me if I cared for her. Of course I didn’t suspect anything. It seemed only a consistent carrying out of the desire he has always had to anticipate my every wish. He urged nothing, but persisted gently till he discovered what he was after; and I tell you it touches me—in the light of present circumstances it touches me to think about it. He would have given up his wishes; no one would ever have been allowed to suspect them, had they conflicted with mine.” The speaker rose, crossed the room, and stood with his back to his cousin, while he regarded the antlered cows in a framed sampler executed by Miss Lovina’s mother.
“No wonder you are glad that you said nothing offensive at parting,” remarked Page.
“Yes,” replied Jack, turning back. “I have been in twenty different minds since taking the train for Boston, as to whether I do right or wrong to go to Europe now. Very few words passed between father and me about it. I had some hours to think before meeting him, after learning what he had done, and I merely told him that Clover had told me of their engagement. He looked right at me and he understands me pretty well. ‘Does it displease you, Jack?’ he asked. ‘It surprises me, sir,’ I answered, ‘and it makes me feel that while matters are in the transition state which is coming, I might perhaps as well put in that year abroad you spoke of.’ He was silent for a minute, and I knew that, try as I might, I couldn’t mislead him much as to my feelings, so I braced up and spoke as naturally as I could, about how deeply I desired his happiness, and said that if my staying at home would conduce to it, I would stay. He thought a minute more, and then he said as quietly as he always says everything, ‘You had better go, Jack.’”
The speaker paid one more visit to the sampler with its angular green trees.
After a minute Page broke the silence: “I believe you have decided wisely. I believe you had better come with me.”