Instead of the Thorn

The two regarded each other for a silent space, and for the first time there crept into the younger man's mind the cold suspicion that the change in Linda's fortune had affected Bertram King. Even so, it could not have made such a brute of him as to let Linda creep off alone!

"Harriet was there, and Henry," he said, just for the sake of speaking, while he strove with this strange idea, one which had elements of relief for himself while it added fuel to his indignation with King.

"Of course," answered the other coolly. "So that was a pretty good bodyguard, for you're always a host, Freddy."

"There was very little I could do for her," declared Whitcomb, "and I'm sure you – you hurt her feelings."

"I'm glad you were there," said King.

"You've no right to be glad," retorted Freddy.

The older man smiled. "Isn't it magnanimous in me to be glad she's wearing your violets instead of mine, eating your chocolates instead of mine, reading your magazines instead – "

"Stop!" said Whitcomb, raising his hand imperatively. "It's sacrilege to joke about her."

"You're a nice chap, Freddy," declared King slowly.

The visitor rose. "Don't you dare to patronize me," he said. "Thanks to your cursed bank I'm a poor chap. I'd begun to hope – to hope – What do you care what I hoped? You're as cold-blooded as that irrigation swindle that's fooled us all."

A little slow color crept over Bertram King's lantern jaws.

"Sit down," he said briefly. "I brought you up here to talk about that. You didn't attend the meeting of the stockholders last night."

"No. I was doing errands for Miss Barry; and I didn't care to sit there and listen to empty platitudes."

King hesitated a moment, but he put constraint upon himself. Freddy was desperately in love, and had had a desperate disappointment.

"I don't blame you for feeling sore," he said at last, "but I believe I have good news for you. The irrigation proposition would have gone through all right if the panic in that region hadn't suddenly knocked the bottom out for the time being. It's a legitimate thing, and we were able to show the stockholders last night that if they would be patient and give us time, we would issue notes and the bank depositors would be paid."

"What?" asked Whitcomb incredulously, and again sat down.

King nodded. "The bank closed, but it didn't fail, and if Barry & Co.'s people will trust us, I firmly believe everybody is going to have his own – say in a year or two."

"Two!" echoed Whitcomb, the hopeful light fading somewhat.

"Of course. Money in the bank, boy." King rose and advanced to him and slapped him on the shoulder. "You don't need it to live on."

"No, I need it to get Linda," returned the other bluntly.

Bertram smiled wanly, and balanced back and forth on his heels and toes.

His visitor regarded him curiously. "I'll bet you've done some tall working on this," he said slowly.

"No fish ever worked harder," admitted Bertram.

"But when you knew it was your own fault – " suggested Whitcomb.

King's quizzical eyes regarded the speaker. "That conviction does always make a fellow rather hump himself, Freddy."

The caller rose. He didn't like the look in his host's face. All this heart-breaking business should be treated seriously. King looked worn, but he didn't look humble; and as Mr. Barry's factotum he had been frightfully neglectful of Linda this morning. No, Whitcomb didn't feel like shaking hands with him, even after King had lighted for him a beacon of hope. The caller suddenly assumed an abrupt, businesslike manner.

"This won't do for me," he said. "So long, King," and he started precipitately for the door. One backward glance at his host, who was still standing with feet wide apart and thumbs hooked in his vest, gave him pause. King's face showed so plainly the battle he had fought. Freddy returned and took Bertram's hand and wrung it.

"Do you know, I was sure you wanted Linda," he said, with sudden frankness.

King's slender fingers gave his a viselike grip, and his lips smiled calmly. "It isn't so much a question of what we want as what she wants, is it?" he said.

A cloud passed over Whitcomb's face, and again Bertram thought he could see exactly how Freddy had looked at the age of ten.

"Don't you believe she'll ever want me?" he asked naïvely. Now that he knew King was out of the running – whether from mercenary reasons or otherwise – he could put the question as to an intimate friend of the family.

King laughed softly for the first time since Lambert Barry's death.

"Don't know, Freddy. If I were a girl I'd want you, I know that. You're all right."

Whitcomb blushed and scowled; and as he took the elevator on its downward trip he reflected on Bertram King's power to irritate his fellowman.

Ensconced in their stateroom on the train for Boston, Miss Barry heaved a sigh of relief scarcely concealed by the mutter of the moving wheels. They had not taken a stateroom without protest from Linda on the ground of extravagance. Linda considering economy! It was a wonderful circumstance; but Miss Barry, anxious as she was to be gone, delayed their departure a few days to secure the room. Instinctively she felt that a door which she could close on her niece would give her a sense of security. She regarded her now, while the train gained swiftness, with something of the triumph the captor of an elusive, valuable wild animal might feel at seeing it safely in his possession.

Linda, passive and white, did not resemble a wild creature at the present moment. The first thing she did after the train started was to withdraw the pin from the huge bunch of violets she had put on to please Whitcomb, and toss them over on the divan. Miss Barry, taking off her hat, watched her furtively.

"Put my hat in the bag when you do yours, will you, Linda?"

The girl looked vaguely surprised. It was long since she had performed a service for any one, and she even held her own hat a moment uncertainly, after she had removed it, as if she expected her aunt to take charge of it; and she looked at Miss Belinda questioningly.

"Yes, put them both in, and hang them up over there."

Miss Barry handed her the bags, leaned back in her corner, and sniffed. A dog wags its tail to express emotion. Miss Belinda sniffed – a dry, sharp little sound, which just now expressed determination.

"It's time for her to give up sleep-walking," she thought, and she looked industriously out of the window.

Linda's eyes fell to the hats, and she slowly performed the office, and more slowly climbed on the seat and hung up the bags.

As Miss Barry noted the languid motions of the erstwhile captain of a basket-ball team, she realized that her niece was like a person convalescing from a siege of illness. Was she convalescing? Was she improving or retrograding? No matter which; they were going home, home to the Cape, where Miss Barry would not feel at a constant disadvantage; and her heart sang. Linda was too feeble to jump off the train, and they were as good as there. Miss Belinda sniffed again.

Her eye fell on the violets. Linda had sunk back into her corner, her lips apart, her eyes languid. The train was very warm. An electric fan whirred above their door.

Miss Barry leaned across and took up the violets. Whitcomb's face had been vibrant with emotion as he left them.

"The poor boy!" thought Miss Barry. She had learned a number of masculine names through reading the different cards coming repeatedly with boxes of flowers for Linda; but Fred Whitcomb had been more pushing and insistent than the others. He had, as it were, often put his heart in Miss Belinda's hands to be offered to Linda on a salver; and in the stress of emotion this morning Miss Barry had been afraid once or twice that her niece was going to be kissed by proxy. She certainly felt sorry for Freddy Whitcomb, almost as sorry as for Bertram King, whose absence had moved her keenly.

"Wouldn't you like to hold these? They're so refreshing," she said, holding out the violets toward their owner. The girl made a faint, protesting gesture with one hand, and shook her head. Miss Barry plunged her nose into the velvet depths, and looked over the bouquet at the white, immobile face in the opposite corner.

"Ch-ch-choo, ch-ch-choo," went the wheels, faster, faster. Welcome sound. Sweet violets. The scattered fragrance of woodland places, massed together for the joy of woman, offered by an eager heart to a cold one.

"Violet time is over at the Cape," she remarked.

"What?"

"I say, violet time's over at the Cape. Daisies and clover now, and the wild roses swelling up and getting ready."

Even the preoccupied Linda observed a new vitality in her companion's face, and life in her eyes in place of endurance.

"You're riding backward, Aunt Belinda. I didn't notice till this minute. Change with me." The girl leaned forward.

"Sit still, child. It makes no difference to me."

"Then come here beside me." Miss Barry hesitated. Once she would have declined on the ground of mutual comfort, but an overture from her captive was remarkable.

"Well, if it won't crowd you," she said, and after a moment of reluctance she obeyed.

"Don't you want to sit by the window?" asked the girl.

"Law, no. I wish the artists who do the Castoria signs would adopt futurist methods." As she spoke, Miss Barry made herself as small as she could against the arm of the seat, and again caressed her nose with Freddy Whitcomb's violets. The divan opposite was filled with American Beauties, magazines, and bon-bon boxes.

"I ought to put the flowers in water," she remarked.

Linda's large, somber gaze rolled toward the display.

"Yes, please do," she said.

"H'm," thought Miss Barry as she rose. "One word for the flowers and two for herself. She wants 'em out of sight."

"I think we ought to enjoy the violets," she said aloud. "Such a cabbage of 'em must have cost that boy a pretty penny, and they won't live only so long, anyway. Poor Mr. Whitcomb, didn't he look pretty near ready to have apoplexy when he got off!"

"He's got over it by now," said Linda, in her quiet expressionless voice.

"He's the kindest boy that ever lived. I didn't realize how many little things there were to attend to in leaving, or I'd have had Henry do them; but Mr. Whitcomb came and put himself at my disposal, and I certainly disposed of him, the good boy."

"He is a good boy. He ought to hate us," declared the girl languidly.

"Why's that?"

"He told me a long time ago that he had invested in – in – " the speaker caught her lip under her teeth.

"Now, now," returned Miss Barry soothingly, as the other paused. "He's young, and able to stand a few knockdowns. Every business man gets them sooner or later, and they're lucky when disaster comes early in their career instead of late. Now, now, Linda!" for the girl's handkerchief dried a drop stealing under her eyelid. "He adores you, the nice lad."

"Don't you see that makes it harder – as if I ought to marry him to make up?"

"Now, now!" Miss Barry tried to speak lightly. "He'd be worse than Shylock. I'll bet it's a hundred and thirty pounds when you're in good case. Aren't those candy boxes wonderful! I must take 'count of stock."

She started up and laid the violets on the vacated seat. Linda looked at them. She could hear Freddy Whitcomb's voice as it broke boyishly on that last evening of her life: —

"I don't care anything about your father's money, Linda. I had a raise last week."

Her hand fell gently on the velvet mass, and rested there. Miss Barry's Argus eyes observed the movement.

CHAPTER XII

EN ROUTE

Miss Barry took the rest of the flowers and placed their stems in the washbowl, where the lovely blossoms lolled over awkwardly in an increasing haze of dust, after the manner of train flowers; then she stepped back to the divan and inspected the boxes of bon-bons, stuffed dates, mints, and so on. A flat tin box met her eye, and a note was tied against the cover.

"I didn't notice that preserved ginger," she reflected, and picked up the box with satisfaction, for the confection was her favorite. Her own name appeared on the note in a small, close chirography which was unfamiliar. She slipped off the metal cord and opened the letter. Its beginning brought a smile to her lips, and a recollection of jocose passages between herself and the writer, away back in the Christmas holidays.

Dear Lady of the Earrings (she read): —

If you knew the circumstances under which I stopped to buy these coals to send to Newcastle, you would never doubt my devotion. However, I'll not pose, but hasten to tell you of the meeting to-night of stockholders and depositors from which I have just come. There was much antagonism to be overcome, and I'm beginning to feel a little dull in the upper story, so it wasn't an easy experience; but the outcome was so good that I slight my bed to tell you briefly that I now feel the first relief from the crushing pressure of the last few weeks. Those people could have put Barry & Co. in a hole out of which we couldn't climb, and some of them were bitter and inclined to do it; but the majority were willing to listen to my representations, and the minority were finally persuaded.

We shall issue notes to everybody concerned, and they have agreed to wait and give Barry & Co. a chance to turn around, and I have good ground for hoping that the memory of that grand man, Lambert Barry, will be cleared of every particle of the reproach which some angry and disappointed people have been flinging about. This night has been a great epoch in my career, and if I anticipated that there were any more such coming to me, that little crib out in the lake would suit me for a downy couch. As it is, I will now surprise my neglected bed by getting into it before three G.M.

Bon voyage, dear lady, and I hope you will sleep the better to-night for this message. I shall not communicate with Harriet until after you have gone.

Sincerely yours,Bertram King.

Miss Barry had stood in the aisle during the reading of this epistle, too absorbed to notice the discomfort of lurching about. Now she held the letter for a space, in excited thought. Her thin face was flushed. She looked at Linda, whose gaze was fixed on the flat, flying landscape. The violets lay on the seat beside her, disregarded.

Miss Barry's lips tightened. "She doesn't deserve to know," she thought. "Oh, that wonderful young man! That poor boy!"

She seated herself opposite her traveling companion, and Linda languidly turning her head at the movement, her attention was caught by the fact that her aunt was wiping her glasses, and that her eyes were wet. An open letter lay in her lap.

Miss Barry was keenly aware of King's failure to mention Linda in this matter so nearly concerning her. It was only the relief of the news to her own heart which softened her sufficiently not to be glad of this punishment to the cruel young sufferer opposite. She hoped remorse would follow the reading in Linda's case.

She held out the letter in silence. The girl shrank and made a quick, protesting gesture.

"I can't – I can't bear any more!" she said.

"You can bear this," returned Miss Barry.

"But you're crying!"

"With joy, Belinda."

When her aunt gave the girl her full name it meant either a climax of indignation or a moment of sacred solemnity. That she knew well.

She regarded the letter with apprehension as she accepted it, and at once recognizing King's writing a sort of hard strength stole over her expression as she instinctively prepared to resist his statements. He was smooth and self-contained and clever. He could deceive Aunt Belinda and Harriet, but he could not deceive her.

After a moment of vigorous application of her handkerchief to her eyes, Miss Barry put on her spectacles again, and leaning back in the seat deliberately prepared to watch the effect upon her niece of Bertram King's letter.

Linda's lips, set firmly as she began, slowly relaxed as she read on, and her eyes grew darker. She began to breathe faster, and before she finished such an expression came over the young face that the older woman could no longer look, but closed her eyes and waited. It seemed to her a long time before she opened them again to find Linda regarding her. Life had revived in the large mourning eyes.

"Thank you, Aunt Belinda. May I keep it a little while?"

"You may keep it always," said Miss Barry solemnly. "It is more yours than mine. Isn't that a wonderful young man, Belinda Barry? Didn't I always say your father was too clever to trust the wrong people?"

"Bertram is clever," said Linda simply.

Miss Barry eyed her curiously, far from satisfied. "It's just," she thought, "as if some mental starch had gone all through the girl."

She wondered if her niece had no regret, no shame, that she had put herself so beyond the pale that Bertram ignored her.

"Really she is a handsome creature," thought Miss Barry, still regarding her vis-à-vis with some sternness.

"I hope as soon as we get home you will make haste to tell Mr. King that you appreciate all he has done."

"I do appreciate all he has done," said Linda, still with the exalted look in her eyes, "but he is doing his best to make up for it, Aunt Belinda." She leaned over far enough to put her hand on Miss Barry's knee, "If this comes out as Bertram hopes I will believe in God."

"Why, my dear child!" exclaimed the other.

"I tell you if a man like my father could be remembered in Chicago as touched by the faintest shade of dishonor, I should know that there couldn't be any God of justice."

"Very well, Belinda," replied Miss Barry warmly; "if you think so highly of justice you'd better try to practice it more yourself." Her nostrils dilated.

Linda relaxed and gave a little one-sided smile as she shook her head and leaned back again.

"Well, I never did!" thought Miss Barry; and she too leaned back in the corner, where her niece forgot all about her.

What a gift, what a wonder, to dare to think about her lost one! Hitherto to dwell upon the thought of him was to be cut with knives. The only peace possible had been negative; had been to harden herself to insensibility.

"It is the Spirit Flower," she thought, and her lips took a tender curve that matched the melting eyes above them. The association of ideas brought thoughts of Mrs. Porter, for it was the song Linda had last studied with her teacher whose words flowed now through her mind.

"My heart was frozen, even as the earthThat covered thee forever from my sight.All thoughts of happiness expired at birth;Within me naught but black and starless night."Down through the winter sunshine snowflakes came,All shimmering, like to silver butterflies;They seemed to whisper softly thy dear name;They melted with the tear-drops from mine eyes."But suddenly there bloomed within that hour,In my poor heart, so seeming dead, a flowerWhose fragrance in my life shall ever be:The tender, sacred memory of thee."

Linda's eyes closed, and slow crystal drops stole under the lids, but for the first time they were not bitter tears. The journey would now not be wearisome. For a long time she sat motionless, her eyes on the flying clouds, nurturing that spirit flower.

She had put Mrs. Porter's letters in her traveling-bag, and after a time she took them out and read them over, this time with more open vision. She could not realize how recent was her bereavement. She seemed to have lived years in this new world into which she was born the day they brought her father home. It was to look back ages to think of their last breakfast together, his last embrace. She had asked that morning to come downtown to lunch with him, and he had told her that he couldn't spare the time. At least she had been assiduous that last week. With that world she had had nothing to do for so long. It was with this world, this world without her father in it, that she had now to deal, a world in which it seemed to her she had had time to grow old.

Her mind roved busily to and from the lines of Mrs. Porter's loving letters as she read. This new liberty to think, this hope contained in Bertram King's letter, endowed her with an unrestraint which seemed wonderful, and she sometimes read a line six times before the roving mind grasped its meaning.

Miss Barry had fallen asleep in her corner. How weary and haggard her face looked in its repose. Linda's wakened heart went out to the signs of her aunt's unregarded sorrow.

An express train going in the opposite direction crashed suddenly by the open windows with a deafening racket. Miss Barry started and waked.

Blinking, she realized her surroundings, and sat up. She met her niece's eyes. Linda had taken up the violets and her nose was buried in their soft fragrance.

"That was too bad, Aunt Belinda," she said, leaning forward. "It's growing very warm. Can't I get you a drink?" she said.

"Glory be!" thought Miss Barry. "Yes, I wish you would," she said aloud. Her eyes followed the girl, as she slowly rose and moved away to get the water. "At last," continued Miss Barry mentally, "she isn't walking in her sleep."

She accepted the glass when it came, and drank thirstily, although she had not been thirsty.

When Linda returned, moving slowly and holding by the seat, she did not take the place she had vacated, but sat down beside her aunt.

"Tell me something about Father," she said.

"What sort of thing? What do you mean?"

"Not the things the newspapers have printed, about his beating his way to Chicago on the trains, and being an errand boy, and having no education, and all that – his phenomenal rise to fortune. Not that."

Miss Barry snorted. "No education! Absurd! The newspapers make me sick. He had education enough to make him one of the smartest men in the country. I should think folks would know better than to believe such stuff."

"And you took care of him, didn't you, Aunt Belinda? I never used to want to know anything about his childhood. I grew tired of hearing people say he was a self-made man, and I was ashamed to know that he was barefooted and poor. That was another thorn," finished Linda, under her breath.

"Another what?"

"A thorn."

Miss Barry looked around at the speaker. "Oh, a thorn in your side, you mean. I guess you have always been some high-headed, Linda." She used the past tense instinctively as she viewed the pale, languid face leaning back beside her.

"You took care of him like a little mother," persisted the girl. "He has told me so."

"Yes, I was only ten when Ma died, and I guess the papers would 'a' been right about your father's education if I hadn't saved her slippers."

"You mean figuratively? You stepped into them."

"No, I don't. I mean it just as literal as anything could be meant. Pa was easy-going and had enough to attend to, black-smithing and selling flour and feed, so if anybody was going to spank Lambert it had to be me."

Linda's lips, pressed tightly against the violets, quivered against them.

"I'm sure you loved him tremendously," she said unsteadily.

Miss Barry sniffed, with a one-sided smile. "I didn't have much time to think about that. I had to get breakfast and get to school myself, and spank him when he ran away, and when he hitched on trains, and robbed apple orchards, and so on, but mostly when he wouldn't go to school. Ma's slippers were 'most done for, when one day I caught him, and took one of the old tattered things and was going to give him what he deserved, when he just caught my arms in his two hands, and began to laugh. I noticed then for the first time that he was as tall as I was, and his eyes looked straight into mine the fullest of mischief you ever saw. I could feel myself getting as red as a beet. 'Let me go this minute,' I yelled at him. 'Let me go, Lammie.' That's what the schoolboys called him when they wanted to be mean. He fought a lot o' boys for that before they learned better, and I remember exactly how he managed to get both o' my calico sleeves into one hand, and boxed my ears with the other; not real hard, he was laughing all the time.

"'Come on, Belinda,' he said, 'let's bury the slipper.' I knew what he meant, because the boys were always playing Indian, and burying hatchets; but, do you know, he made me bury that shoe then and there? He took me outdoors and made me take the hoe and bury that slipper in the garden. He stood over me, and before I finished I was crying, I was so mad. I was fifteen then, and he was eleven, but I was small for my age; and that was the end of the spankings. But you see by that time," continued Miss Barry complacently, "I'd made him a real good boy."