Ainslee's magazine, Volume 16, No. 3, October, 1905

So much, at least, he vowed he would tell her; but he was determined that he would not be so weak as to ask her to wait for him.

The years of his uncle’s bounty fettered him hopelessly. When he knew where he stood, when he had something definite to offer her, then – but not till then. But it was bitter. He had supposed, of course, that he would go back in the autumn, open an office, be self-supporting, and then —

It was a few seconds before Elenore spoke. When she did her voice was cheerful and friendly.

“There is always something interesting in the most impossible places,” she said. “It may be rather fun. And we shall expect you to make it as picturesque as possible in your letters, if we tell you all the gossip here in exchange.”

He said to himself that she understood, at least. He thanked Heaven for that, as youth is prone to thank Heaven when Heaven lives up to its expectations. And if the place was not so very impossible —if– and perhaps—

So hope began to whisper. And then because If and Perhaps were all he could take with him, because she was so winsome and dear and so desirably human, because she was so daintily proud, and because the things he was not to tell her refused to be held back, he caught her hands in his, whispered: “God bless you! I shall write you everything – that I can,” and, wrapping his New England conscience round him, went without a backward glance.

Elenore stood quite still for a moment. The shadows were beginning to thicken in the long room, and she felt a certain restfulness in the half-light.

Then she turned resolutely toward her brother. Something in the dejection of his poise quickened her instantly.

“Ned! What is it?” she demanded.

“It’s the deluge – without an ark,” said Carrington, without stirring.

“Well?” said Elenore, tersely.

“I’m not going east with Velantour. I’m going home,” he said, mechanically.

“Not dad?” she said, breathlessly.

“No.” He answered the unfinished question. “But he’s broken his leg, poor old dad! And other things are wrong, and he wants me.”

“And me?” she questioned, quickly. “Doesn’t he want me?”

“No,” said Carrington, impatiently. “He wants his son, he says, and he shall have me. And he shan’t know I ever whimpered about coming. I’m not cad enough for that. But going east with Velantour is the chance of a lifetime, and it takes a minute or two to get heroic about giving it up, that’s all. All except that it’s bitter to think how little use I shall be to him when I get there, for it’s partly business, and I haven’t a particle of business ability. That will be his disappointment, which is bitterer still.”

“Do you mean to say that he doesn’t want me?” Elenore demanded. “Where is the letter?”

Carrington held it out to her without a word.

Dear Ned (it read), I’m sorry to call you home, but I must. I’m laid up with a broken leg – compound fracture. Don’t be alarmed. I’m in no danger of dying. But there are business complications I want to talk over with you – things it’s only fair to you to let you help decide. It may be only for a few weeks. Then you can go back. Let Elenore stay in Paris. It’s all man’s work to be done here. Just responsibilities to be met.

Your father,John Carrington.

Ned Carrington was turning over the pages of the morning Herald.

“I can catch the train for London in an hour, and sail from Liverpool tomorrow, or – no, here it is – I can leave here in the morning and get a boat at Boulogne. That will be better,” he planned.

“And Velantour?” Elenore questioned.

He threw out his hands despairingly.

“I’ll drive to the station and tell him,” he said. “Then I’ll come back and unpack – and pack.”

“Why can’t I go to dad instead of you?” Elenore demanded.

“Because it’s man’s work to be done,” said Carrington, impatiently. “Don’t argue it. I wish I had your brains for it, though. But it’s me that dad wants, and what he wants he shall have.”

“Two people are going to America who don’t want to go in the least. But they are men, and so, presumably, useful,” she said, spiritedly. “And the one person who would really like to go can’t; because she is a woman, and so, presumably, useless.” She flung her head backward a bit impatiently as she looked at her twin. He was fumbling among the papers on his desk; and the long mirror above it showed his face flushed and perturbed and boyish. Then she caught sight of her own in the glass, and started.

“There isn’t a pen here,” Ned said, irritably. “I must send dad a cable.”

“There’s one in my room,” she said, and her tone was full of energy and spirit. “Get it, while I tell Berthe to run for a cab, and you can take the message to the office on your way to tell Velantour.”

Her hand was on the bell as he disappeared. She had snatched up paper and pencil the next second, and was dashing off a note.

“Berthe,” she said, as the little maid hurried in, “you are to go for a cab, and see that it gets here in just fifteen minutes precisely; not before, mind. Tell the cocher that he shall have five francs pourboire if he is exact.”

“Bien, mademoiselle,” said the little maid.

“Post this note to Mrs. Walden, and come back with a second cab in twenty-five minutes, without fail. Either my brother or myself will give you your last instructions for the summer.”

“Bien, mademoiselle,” said the little maid – as she would have said it to any command short of murder.

She sped out, pleasingly stimulated by the silver coin in her palm.

“Has she gone?” demanded Ned, feverishly, as he reappeared with the pen.

“Yes,” said Elenore. “Write your message and read it off to me when you’ve done it, will you? I want to tuck some things into the bag that’s going to America.”

She nodded, smilingly, as she sped into his room.

Carrington sat down with a stifled groan. The sweetness had gone out of life. It was duty now. Say what you will, six years’ absence loosens ties of blood; and though he was ashamed to confess it himself, it was with a lagging loyalty that he thought of going home.

His whole life had been bent in one direction, and this abrupt break demanded a heroism which he resolved to simulate, at least. But he need not begin yet.

He could make his little moan to himself for this instant when he was alone.

He dipped the pen in the ink.

The first sheet of paper blotted hopelessly. And the second. The fingers that held a brush with unfaltering and delicate touch were clumsily nervous now.

John Carrington, Yellow Dog, Mich, (he got down). Am coming first boat.

“What was the boat?” he demanded of himself, and helplessly turned back to the Herald for information.

Kaiser Wilhelm sailing Cherbourg tomorrow.

Ned.

Then he dropped his face in his hands.

The written words seemed to make the thing so irrevocable.

He pulled himself together and walked nervously over to the window. Where on earth was the cab? It was a comfort to vent irritability on something.

Then he roved over to the trunk he had packed with such forethought.

He laughed a little bitterly.

“Poor old Velantour! He will be disappointed, too,” he whispered. “But of the two old men who love me, one has to go to the wall. And it shan’t be dad.”

He tramped up and down restlessly until he heard the sound of wheels.

Then he called to Elenore.

“I am going now.”

“Not in this cab, you are not,” her voice answered him. “This is mine. Yours will be here in ten minutes, and you will have lots of time then.”

“What?” he called, halfway to the door, and not believing his ears.

The door swung open, and in it he saw – himself.

Clad in loosely hanging dull gray velveteens, with a soft cravat the color of pigeon blood. Over his arm a long crimson-lined cape hung, half-concealing a suit case. The face, which was his, laughed at him triumphantly, and shook its dark hair, worn a trifle long, back from the forehead.

In the disencumbered hand a soft felt hat waved him back with a dash of bravado.

“Tell Berthe what you please when she comes with your cab,” his own voice cried gayly. “I’ve just time to catch the London train. You are for the east, I believe.” Then, as he stood thunderstruck, his double laughed exultantly.

“There’s a letter, with copious details, on your dresser,” the apparition stated, with a lilt of pure joy of escapade. “Considering the shortness of the time, I think I’ve been marvelous in thinking out all possible exigencies.”

And to his gesture of protest, of incredulity: “Don’t argue! You are to live the life you care for, for your three wonderful months, and so shall I. It’s not sacrifice. It’s selfishness. I want to go desperately. And I’ll write you here – volumes. You’ll find them when you get back.”

Then that voice which was his, and was not his, chanted saucily:

“Rue BoissonadeShall have its Claude,And l’AmeriqueThe new Van Dyck;But CarringtonShall have his son.”

The doorway was empty. He heard a cocher crack his whip, and a cab-horse evidently making record time. Five francs, mon Dieu, ça vaut la peine!

Ned Carrington stood bewildered. What should he do? He might follow her – might make a scene – but he was always worsted when Elenore became daintily willful. She was quite capable of carrying it off, too. And it was a lark!

A cab came clattering up the little street. The call of the East came to him with an overpowering lure. A wave of joy swept over him that he could go, after all. He felt a fury of impatience to be off. He grudged the time to give Berthe her instructions, to snatch Elenore’s letter from the dresser, to catch up his hat and coat. The mere thought to do these things should be enough. But Berthe’s willing feet were speeding up the stairway. He flung the rug from his more-than-ready trunk, and laughed as he touched the strap caressingly with his fingers.

“I’m going!” he whispered; and the words sung themselves to the rhythm of rapture unalloyed.

“Et puis, m’sieu?” said Berthe, breathlessly, from the doorway.

CHAPTER II

The case of the old-fashioned watch snapped together for the fortieth time in John Carrington’s restless hands, and he sighed impatiently.

Not since those days of dread loneliness after his wife’s death, when he had first sent the children abroad, had time dragged so rackingly.

His leonine, iron-gray head moved irritably among the pillows of the bed where he had been “caged,” as he called it, for three interminable weeks.

Mrs. Kipley, tidying up the room with an accentuation of her usual briskness, gave him as indulgent a look as the formation of her rigid cast of countenance would permit.

“Wearin’ out your watch case won’t hurry up that train none,” she observed, as she straightened a china cat on the mantel into an expectant attitude.

It had been her gift the previous Christmas to John Carrington, and her admiration of it extended to the hope that it would pleasingly impress the returning traveler.

“Miss Elenore was fondest of animals, though,” she murmured, absently.

John Carrington’s eyes twinkled appreciatively. He did not share Mrs. Kipley’s admiration for her feline gift.

“Ned will appreciate that cat, though, Mrs. Kipley,” he said, genially. “You know he’s been studying art;” but with the word a shadow came over his face.

“It’s hard on the lad, bringing him back,” he said. “Yellow Dog will look pretty crude to him, I expect.”

He moved his head restlessly, and the leg in its swinging splint became more exasperatingly painful.

Of course it would be only natural for Ned to have grown away from home ties. It was an unspoken thought against which he had braced himself for all these ten days. If the boy came back half-heartedly, contemptuous of the place, indifferent to the mine, alienated from his father – that was the touch of the thumbscrew.

And yet, he told himself wearily, six years was a long time. The boy was talented, cultured, used to all the refinements of an older civilization. What wonder if – And if he, through love for his son, and carrying out his mother’s wishes for his future, had been responsible for the separation which might mean all this?

Ah, well, he was not the first father, nor the last, to think out these same things, and try to see them dispassionately.

“He was real spry about starting,” said Mrs. Kipley.

John Carrington’s face relaxed.

“Caught the first boat,” he said. Then “Is his room ready and comfortable?” he demanded, as he had demanded many times.

“I wouldn’t worry about that room none, if I was you,” said Mrs. Kipley, serenely.

“Did you remember about the cigars and a decanter of whisky?” he asked.

Mrs. Kipley looked at him in a patient exasperation.

“They’s two kinds of cigars, every brand of cigarettes Kipley could lay hands on in Yellow Dog, the biggest decanter full of whisky, the motto ‘Love One Another,’ that my Sunday-school class worked for me last winter; red-white-and-blue soap in the soap dish, and two pincushions with a French motto worked on each of ’em. Hemmy did ’em in black and white pins. She thought’t would make it seem more like Paris to him. One says ‘Vive Napoleon,’ and the other says ‘Veuve Cliquot.’ Kind of twins, you see.”

John Carrington’s mouth twitched. Then he frowned slightly. For would the boy understand? If he were not amused – if he were merely contemptuous!

“Hemmy’s picking some flowers for the house now,” Mrs. Kipley went on, serenely. “And Kipley’s took a saddle horse besides the road wagon, so’s if Mr. Ned wanted to ride over, he could.”

The case of John Carrington’s watch came open once more. If the train was on time, and Ned did choose the saddle horse, another ten minutes – But would he? The lad was a bit of a dandy. Carrington had smiled indulgently over some of his tailor’s bills. Probably you couldn’t coax him on a horse, even in Yellow Dog, unless he was arrayed in all the proper paraphernalia.

But what was that clatter of horse’s hoofs – fast and furious – faster and more furious than any Yellow Dog had heard since the day three weeks ago when the Carrington team, terrorized by a small boy’s premature bunch of firecrackers, had run away, and John Carrington, thrown from the wreckage of his light buggy, had been brought home with a badly fractured leg?

Mrs. Kipley looked out of the window.

“Merciful sakes!” she ejaculated, startled.

Not an accident to Ned, John Carrington prayed, with stiff, dry lips and apprehensive eyes.

“Of all things!” Mrs. Kipley murmured; and her tone indicated that she was now past surprise, and merely numbered with the numb.

Some one was running up the veranda steps; the door was flung open, and a tall, dark, slender boy in a marvelous suit of dull gray velveteens stood on the threshold.

A long, crimson-lined cape was flung over his arm. He tossed it from him. And “Dad!” he cried, exultantly, and was across the room, with his arms around his father’s neck, and had kissed him on both cheeks.

“French fashion, dad!” he laughed, flushing suddenly.

“Now we’ll do it the Anglo-Saxon way;” and he caught both his father’s hands in his own and wrung them heartily. “It’s great to be home again,” he said, buoyantly.

And the joyful light in his eyes was unmistakably genuine.

John Carrington’s face softened amazingly. Happiness such as he had not known for six years gripped him. The warm ardor of his son’s embrace, the touch of the soft, boyish lips, unnerved him, but he liked it astonishingly. It was so naïf, so unspoiled, so reassuring against that dread of alienation he had endured, that he felt submerged in the warm, comfortable certitude of his son’s affection. He gripped the lad’s hands strongly, and surveyed him with a proud, fatherly interest.

The blue eyes that looked frankly into his own were like the lad’s mother’s, like Althea’s; the face that smiled gayly at him was alight with youthful energy, and the mouth, though the lips were a trifle full, had firm and resolute lines.

It was no dawdling dreamer that he saw, but an action-lover.

He nodded satisfiedly.

“You’ll do, lad,” he said, briefly.

Then he smiled as he caught sight of Mrs. Kipley, standing with the rigidity of an automaton, dust cloth in hand.

“You remember Mrs. Kipley,” he said, significantly. The boy wheeled instantly.

“Don’t I!” he said, laughingly, and something in his advance galvanized Mrs. Kipley into life again.

“None of your French fashions with me,” she said, severely, extending her right hand to him, less in greeting than as a rampart.

He swept a wonderful bow over it. Bent to it as a courtier might have done, and kissed its wrinkled, work-hardened back lightly. Then he straightened up to look her full in the eyes, and laughed his bubbling laugh once more.

“Do you still make those wonderful twisted doughnuts, Mrs. Kipley?” he asked, gayly. “I’ve bragged about them in Paris till they’re famous.”

Mrs. Kipley was scrutinizing the back of her hand minutely, to see if it was still intact. Finding it apparently uninjured, she drew breath and looked the surprising apparition in the face. Her own relaxed to his handsome, dashing youth and to his praise.

“I guess they’re about the same,” she said, dryly. But John Carrington chuckled to himself. He recognized the subjugation of Mrs. Kipley.

“What will he be with the young women!” he commented, to himself, amusedly.

Then he asked the question that was consuming Mrs. Kipley:

“Ned, are those clothes the style in Paris?”

The boy swung himself lightly into the big armchair beside the bed.

“They’re the badge of my craft, sir,” he said, good-humoredly, settling the soft cravat with deft fingers. “Don’t you like them?”

“Oh, I like them,” said John Carrington. (“Handsome lad!” he was whispering to himself, proudly.) “But I was wondering how they would strike Yellow Dog, that’s all.”

“There did seem to be some little interest in my arrival,” the lad admitted, gleefully.

“Sakes alive! They beat anything I ever see in all my life!” Mrs. Kipley communed with herself.

“And Elenore?” said John Carrington. “How did you leave Elenore?”

The boy stirred slightly in his chair.

“Elenore is well, dad. She wanted to come. I think she was a little disappointed that you didn’t want your daughter instead of your son.”

John Carrington shook his head.

“Yellow Dog is no place for a young lady, Ned,” he said. “It was better for her to stay with her friends. I should have liked to see her, though. She’s quite a woman, from her picture. Time for sweethearts, eh? Your Aunt Sarah wrote a good deal about a young Hastings. She seemed to think it might be serious.”

The boy flushed annoyedly.

“Aunt Sarah loves to fuss and exaggerate,” he said, and there was a slight coolness in his voice. “Maiden aunts are apt to, you know,” he went on, more naturally. He smiled his attractive smile once more. Whatever had perturbed him for the instant was past.

Miss Hematite Kipley, ætat seventeen, coming into the room with a fragrant bowl of syringa blossoms, compared it favorably with any picture her beloved romancers had been able to conjure up.

From the moment when she had seen the picturesque figure dismount and make a rapid way into the house, she had been perishing to make this entrance, but she had restrained herself in accordance with her ideas of propriety and gentility. Miss Kipley strove to be “elegant,” aided by certain open columns in respected periodicals, after which she patterned her conduct and her clothes.

The meeting between father and son she characterized as “a sacred moment,” and she regretted her mother’s continued intrusion upon it with the resigned exasperation of one who had often and fruitlessly pointed out to a primitive parent the proper forms of procedure.

Miss Kipley was rather pretty in a wholesome, buxom, blond way, and the “open columns” had stimulated her to a crisp freshness of attire, and partially reconciled her to the maternal regulations of its enforced simplicity.

She came into the room with her eyelids so demurely lowered that she might have been taken for a sleepwalker.

“Good-morning, Hemmy,” said John Carrington, with an outward courtesy which marked an inward amusement. In spite of her physical bulk, Miss Hematite was mentally transparent.

“Why, Hemmy!” said young Carrington, gayly, “how awfully pretty you have grown!”

Miss Kipley felt an inward commotion which threatened suffocation. Her fingers tightened on the blue bowl in a way which tested its enduring qualities. Mrs. Kipley’s maternal eye became vigilant.

There was a suggestion of a wrinkle on John Carrington’s brow. He hoped the boy would remember that this was not Paris; that the Kipleys represented the survival of a good many New England traits.

But neither parent could find anything to criticise in the way the lad relieved the blushing Hemmy of the bowl, shook her hand in a cordial, unaffected way, and turned to set the white blossoms on the square ledge of the open window, where the breeze converted them into a spicy censer.

As for Hematite, though visibly she stood in a deep pink embarrassment, in fancy she trod the sunny slopes of romance. This was the way things happened in the books over which she pored, palpitant. She sought vainly for some appropriate expression of welcome.

“I guess Hemmy and me will let you have a chance to get acquainted. I can finish dusting by and by,” said Mrs. Kipley, tersely. “Your old room’s all ready for you, Mr. Ned. Come, Hemmy.”

That young person followed her mother mechanically from the room.

“Cat got your tongue?” inquired Mrs. Kipley, severely, in the hall. “For all you are forever reading about the proper way to do things, you can’t even say ‘Glad to see you back.’”

Miss Kipley looked down from the happy heights to which she had mentally withdrawn herself, to the prosaic parent treading the valley of plain realities.

“There are moments beyond words,” she vouchsafed. Then she sped down the garden path to the now sacred syringa.

Mrs. Kipley watched her from the doorway with an anxious air.

“I hope she ain’t caught anything,” she murmured. “That was a terrible fool remark. I don’t know what there is around just now for her to catch.”

But it is characteristic of the disorder which Miss Hematite had so recently acquired that no one save the person afflicted knows it’s around till the case has taken.

* * * * *

The lad had slipped his fingers in his father’s, and they sat a little while in silence. So Althea and John Carrington had often sat, in that silent communion which is the bond of the finest fellowship.

Mr. Abner Kipley, entering suddenly, with Ned’s suit case in hand and a desire to expatiate on recent events oozing from every pore, viewed this singular proceeding as one further extraordinary manifestation emanating from the same remarkable cause.

“Seems you can teach an old dog new tricks,” he communed with himself. “Probably by to-morrow I’ll be holding hands myself.” He chuckled grimly to himself over the impossible thought. But the glance he gave the lad from under his shaggy eyebrows was unwillingly admiring.

Yet Mr. Kipley prided himself on his unerring attitude of judicial criticism.

The boy swung round in his chair to greet him smilingly.

“You walked over, Mr. Kipley, I assume,” he said, mischievously.

“I didn’t try to kill a horse ’n’ get my neck broke,” responded Mr. Kipley, defensively.

“You picked up thet baby nice, though,” he added, with the air of a man willing to be just.

John Carrington looked at him with an air of sudden inquiry.

“It was lucky,” said the lad, languidly; and he lounged over to the open window, as though the subject was finished.

“I’m goin’ to,” said Mr. Kipley, impatiently, to the growing insistence of John Carrington’s look.

He objected to being hurried in the narration of a story which he rejoiced was his to tell.

“When he,” he began, jerking his head in the lad’s direction, “’lected to ride the Colonel home, he threw that red-backed garmint” – no mere black-and-white could reproduce the patronage of Mr. Kipley’s tone – “’cross the saddle in front of him. ’N’ the Colonel, not being used to the fashions in Paris, bolted. They went up the road’s though they was goin’ to glory, ’n’ didn’t have but one chance to ketch the limited. ’N’ I threw his grip in the wagon ’n’ started after ’em.