Miss Primrose: A Novel

Mrs. Neal, it seems, had broken her long silence and had been heard to allude to "my daughter Peggy in New York." Some years had passed since the farm-gate clicked behind that forlorn and outcast girl, and in all that time the mother had never spoken the daughter's name, nor had any one dared more than once to question her. Letitia had tried once, but once only, to intercede for the pupil she had loved, the manner of whose departure was well enough understood in the town and country-side, though where she had gone remained a mystery.

On leaving the farm that September evening, Peggy, with a desperate and tear-stained face, had been met by a neighbor girl, who as a confidant in happier hours, was intrusted with the story. It was not a long one. The mother had pointed to the gate.

"Look there!" she cried. "He went that way. I guess you'll find him, if you try, you – "

Then her mother struck her, Peggy said. She did not know it was the name which felled her.

Now after silence which had seemed like death to the lonely woman in the hills, Peggy had written home to her, to beg forgiveness, to say that in a life of ease and luxury in a great city, she could not help thinking of the farm, which seemed a dream to her; she could never return to it, she said, but she wondered if her father was living, and if her mother had still some heart for her wayward daughter, and would write sometimes. She said nothing of a child. That she was still unmarried seemed evident from the signature – "Your loving, loving Peggy Neal." That some good-fortune had befallen her in spite of that sad beginning in her native fields, was quite as clear, for the paper on which she had scrawled her message was of finest texture and delicately perfumed; and, what was more, between its pages the mother had found a sum of money, how much or little no one knew.

It was observed that the mother's face had relaxed a little. That she had answered her daughter's message was asserted positively by Mrs. Bell, though what that answer was, and whether forgiveness or not, she did not know. It was assumed, however, to have been a pardon, for the mother seemed pleased with the daughter's progress in the world, which must have seemed to her the realization, however ironical, of her discarded hopes; and it was she herself who had divulged the contents of the letter. To the cautious curiosity manifested by elderly ladies of Grassy Ford, who called upon her now more often than had been their wont, as she took some pleasure in reminding them, to their obvious discomfiture, and to all other hints and allusions she turned her deafer ear, while to direct questions she contented herself with the simple answer:

"Peggy's well."

"You hear from her often, I suppose?" some caller ventured. The reply was puzzling:

"Oh, a mother's apt to."

She said it so sadly, looking away across the farm, that Letitia's informant as she told the story burst into tears.

"She's a miserable woman, Miss Letitia, depend upon it. She's a miserable, broken-down, heart-sick creature for what she's done. 'You hear often, I suppose?' said I. 'A mother's apt to,' says she, and turned away from me with a face so lonesome as would break your heart."

For myself, as Letitia told me, I had my own notion of the mother's sad and evasive answer, but I held my peace.

It was the coldest winter we had known in years. For weeks at a time our valley was a bowl of snow, roads were impassable, and stock was frozen on the upland farms. Suddenly there came a thaw: the sun shone brightly, the great drifts sank and melted into muddy streams, and early one morning Farmer Bell, his shaggy mare and old top-buggy splashed with mire and his white face spattered, stopped at the post-office and called loudly to the passers-by.

"Old Neal's dead and I want the coroner."

To the crowd that gathered he told the story. Neal's wife, waiting up for him Christmas night, had made an effort to reach the Bells to ask for tidings, but the wind was frightful and the drifts already beyond her depth. She had gone back hoping that he was safe by his tavern fire, but she sat by her own all night, listening to the roaring of the wind and the rattling windows through which the snow came drifting in. At dawn, from an upper chamber, she peered out upon a sight that is seldom seen even in these northern hills. The storm was over, but the world was buried white; roads and fences and even the smaller trees were no longer visible, and the barn and a neighbor's cottage were unfamiliar in their uncouth hoods. For days she remained imprisoned on the lonely farm. She cut paths from the woodshed to the near-by barn and saved the cattle in their stalls. Then the thaw came, and she reached the Bells.

Hitching his mare to his lightest buggy, for the roads were rivers, the farmer drove through the slush and the remnant drifts to the corner tavern where Neal had been. The bartender stared blankly at his first question.

"Neal?" he stammered out at last.

"Yes, Neal! John Neal, confound you! Can't you speak?"

The man laid the glass he was wiping upon the bar.

"Neal left here Christmas day – along about four in the afternoon, when the storm began."

As Bell drove homeward he saw two figures at the Neal farm-gate – that gate which Peggy had closed behind her – and, coming nearer, he made out his own man Tom and the widow, lifting the body from the melting snow.

Peggy Neal did not come to her father's funeral. Letitia herself would have written the news to her, for the woman, dry-eyed and dumb and sitting by the coffin-side, had aged in a day and was now as helpless as a child.

"Shall I write to Peggy?" Letitia asked her, but she did not hear. Twice the question was repeated, but they got no answer, so Letitia wrote, and laid the letter on the casket, open and unaddressed. It was never sent.

V

SURPRISES

Jogging homeward from a country call one afternoon in May, I was admiring the apple-orchards and the new-ploughed fields between them, when I chanced upon my son Robin with a handful of columbine, gathered among the Sun Dial rocks.

"Oh," said he, "is that you, father?" It is an innocent way of his when he has anything in particular to conceal.

"At any rate," I replied, "you are my son."

He smiled amiably and I cranked the wheel, making room for him beside me.

"Columbine," I remarked.

"Yes."

"Letitia will be pleased," I said.

Now I knew it was for the Parker girl – Rita Parker, who blushes so when I chance to meet her that I know now how it feels to be an ogre, a much-maligned being, too, for whom I never had any sympathy before.

"I just saw a redstart," remarked my son.

"So?" I replied. "Did you notice any bobolinks?"

"Did I?" he answered. "I saw a million of them."

"You did?"

"Down in the meadows there."

"A million of them?"

"Almost a million," he replied. "Every grass-stalk had one on it, teetering and singing away like anything."

"Why, I didn't know Rita was with you."

"Rita!" he exclaimed, reddening.

"Why, yes," I said. "You saw so many birds, you know."

It was a little hard upon the boy, but I broke the ensuing silence with some comments on the weather, and having him wholly at my mercy then, I chose a subject which so long had charmed me, I had been on the point of telling him time and again, yet had refrained.

"Robin," said I, "you will be a graduate in a day or two. What do you say to a summer in England, boy?"

He caught my hand – so violently that the rein was drawn and Pegasus turned obediently into the ditch and stopped.

"England, father!"

"If we are spared," I said, getting the buggy into the road again.

"All of us!" he cried.

"No."

"But you'll come, father?" He said it so anxiously that I was touched. It isn't always that a boy cares to lug his father.

"I should like to," I said, "but – no."

"Why not?"

"I cannot leave," I replied. "Jamieson's going. We can't both go."

"Oh, bother Jamieson!" Robin exclaimed. "What does he want to choose our year for? Why can't he wait till next?"

"It's his wife," I explained. "She's ill again. But you go, Robin, and take Letitia."

"When do we start?"

"In June."

"This June?"

"Next month. I've laid out the journey for you on a map, and I've got the names of the inns to stop at, and what it will cost you, and everything else."

"But when did you think of it?" asked my son.

"Last fall."

"Last fall! Does Aunt Letty know?"

"Partly," I said. "She knows you're going, but not herself. It's a little surprise for her. You may tell her yourself, now, while I stop at the office."

He scrambled out and hitched my horse for me, so I held the flowers. He flushed a little as he took them.

"Father, you're a trump," he said.

I bowed slightly: it is wise to be courteous even to a son. I had stopped at the office to get the map, and an hour later Letitia met me in our doorway.

"Bertram!" she said, taking my hand.

"Robin told you?"

"Yes. Oh, it's beautiful, Bertram, but I cannot go."

"Nonsense," I said.

"But you?"

"I shall do very nicely."

"But the cost?"

"Will be nothing," I said. "The boy must not go alone."

"That's not the reason you are sending me, Bertram."

"It's a good one," I replied.

"No," she insisted, shaking her head.

"You have been good to the boy, Letitia," I explained. "This is only a way of saying that I know."

"You do not need to say it," she replied. "I have done nothing."

"You have done everything, Letitia – for us both."

The tears ran down her cheeks. My own eyes —

"You have loved Dove's husband and son," I told her. "We shall not forget it."

Her face was radiant.

"It has been nothing for me to do," she said. "Loving no one in particular, I have had the time to love every one, don't you see? Why, all my life, Bertram, I've loved other people's dogs, and other people's children" – she paused a moment and added, smiling through her tears – "and other people's husbands, I suppose."

"You will go?" I asked.

"I should love to go."

"You will go, Letitia?"

"I will go," she said.

That evening I took from my pocket a brand-new map of the British Isles – I mean brand-new last fall. Many a pleasant hour I had spent that winter at the office with a red guide-book and the map before me on my desk. With no little pride I spread it now on the sitting-room table which Letitia had cleared for me.

"What are the red lines, father?" asked my son. He had returned breathless from telling the Parker girl.

"Those in red ink," I replied, "I drew myself. It is your route. There's Southampton – where you land – and there's London – and there's Windsor and Oxford and Stratford and Warwick and Kenilworth – and here," I cried, sweeping my hand suddenly downward to the left – "here's Devonshire!"

"Where father was a boy," Letitia murmured, touching the pinkish county tenderly with her hand.

Ah, I was primed for them! There was not a question they could ask that I could not answer. There was not a village they could name, I could not instantly put my finger on. Those winter hours had not been spent in vain. I knew the inns – the King's Arms, the Golden Lion, the White Hart, the Star and Anchor, the George and Dragon, the Ring o' Bells! I knew where the castles were – I had marked them blue. I knew the battle-fields – I had made them crimson. For each cathedral – a purple cross. Each famous school – a golden star. Never, I believe, was there such a map before – for convenience, for ready reference: one look at the margin where I made the notes – a glance at the map – and there you were!

"Oh, it is beautiful!" exclaimed Letitia.

"Isn't it?" I cried.

"You should have it patented," said my son.

"Suppose," I suggested, "you ask me something – something hard now. Ask me something hard."

I took a turn with my cigar. Robin knitted his brows, but could think of nothing. Letitia pondered.

"Where's – "

She hesitated.

"Out with it!" I urged.

"Where's Tavistock?" she asked.

I thought a moment.

"Is it a castle?"

She shook her head.

"Is it a battle-field?"

"No."

"Is it just a town, then?"

"Yes, just a town."

"Did anything famous happen there?"

She hesitated.

"Well," she said, "perhaps nothing very famous – but it's an old little town – one that I've heard of, that is all."

Well, she did have me. It was not very famous, and only a – an idea came to me.

"Oh," I said, shutting my eyes a moment, "that town's in Devon."

Letitia nodded.

"See," I said. Adjusting my glasses, and peering a moment at the pinkish patch, I tapped it, Tavistock, with my finger-nail. "Right here," I said.

We made a night of it – that is, it was midnight when I folded my map and locked it away with the guide-book and the table of English money I had made myself. There was one in the book, it is true, but for ready reference, for convenience in emergencies, it did not compare with mine – mine worked three ways.

A fortnight later I had the tickets in my hand – ss. Atlantis, date of sailing, the tenth of June. I myself was to steal a day or two and wave farewell to them from the pier. Robin already had packed his grip; indeed, he repacked it daily, to get the hang of it, he said. It was a new one which I had kept all winter at the office in the bottom of a cupboard, and it bore the initials, R. W., stamped on the end. And he had a housewife – a kind of cousin to a needle-book – stuffed full of handy mending-things, presented by the Parker girl. The boy was radiant, but as June drew nigh I saw he had something heavy on his mind. A dozen times he had begun to speak to me, privately, but had changed the subject or had walked away. I could not imagine what ailed the fellow. He seemed restless; even, as I fancied, a little sad at times, which troubled me. I made opportunities for him to speak, but he failed to do so, either through neglect or fear. I saw him often at the office, where he was always bursting in upon me with some new plan or handy matter for his precious bag. He had bought a razor and a brush and strop.

"But what are they for?" I asked, amazed. A blush mantled his beardless cheeks.

"Those? Oh – just to be sure," he said.

Now what could be troubling the lad, I wondered? It was something not always on his mind, for he seemed to forget it in preparations, but it lurked near by to spring out upon his blithest moments. His face would be shining; an instant later it would fall, and he would walk to the window and gaze out thoughtfully into the street, in a way that touched me to the heart, for, remember, this was to be my first parting with the boy. The more I thought of it, the more perplexed I was; and the more I wondered, the more I felt it might be my duty to speak myself.

"Robin," I said one day, and as casually as I could make my tone, "did you want to tell me anything? What is it? Speak, my boy."

We were alone together in my inner office and the door was shut. He walked resolutely to the desk where I was sitting.

"Father," he said, "I have."

My heart was beating, he looked so grave.

"Well," I remarked, "you have nothing to fear, you know."

"Father," he said, doggedly, "it's about – it's about – "

"Yes?" I encouraged him.

"It's about this trip."

"This trip?"

"Yes. It's about – father, you'll tell her – "

"Tell her?" I repeated.

"Yes. You tell her."

"Tell whom? Tell what?"

"Why, Aunt Letty."

"Aunt Letty! Tell Aunt Letty what?"

He blurted it fiercely:

"About her hat."

"Her hat! Her hat! Good Lord, what hat?"

"Why, her Sunday hat!"

"You mean her – "

"Why, yes, father! You know that hat."

I knew that hat.

"Do you object," I asked, "to your aunt's best Sunday hat?"

His scowl vanished and his face broke into smiles.

"That's it," he said.

"Don't be alarmed," I assured him, keeping my own face steady – no easy matter, for, as I say, I knew the hat. "Don't be alarmed, my son. She shall have a new one, if that will please you."

His smiles vanished. He seemed suspicious. His tone was cautiousness itself.

"But who will buy it?" he asked.

"Why, you!" I said.

He leaped to my side.

"I?"

"You," I repeated.

He laughed hysterically – whooped is the better word.

"You wait!" he cried, and, fairly dancing, he seized his cap and rushed madly for the door. It shut behind him, but as swiftly opened again.

"Oh, dad," he said, beaming upon me from the crack, "it'll be a stunner! You'll see."

It was.

VI

AN OLD FRIEND OF OURS

Oh, I know the town," I had told them confidently – had I not been there in 18 – ? But no, it was not my town. It was not my New York at all that we found at our journey's end, but belonged apparently to the mob we fell among bags and bundles, by the station steps, till from our cabman's manner, when I mildly marvelled at the fare he charged us, the place, I suspected, belonged to him. Four days and nights we heard it rumbling about us. Robin got a mote in his eye, Letitia lost her brand-new parasol, and I broke my glasses – but we saw the parks and the squares and the tall buildings and the statue which Johnny Keats never climbed. Reluctantly, for the day was waning as we stood on the Battery looking out at it across the bay, we followed his example. On the third afternoon Letitia proposed a change of plans. Her eyes, she confessed, were a little tired with our much looking. Why not hunt old friends?

"Old friends?" I asked. "Whom do we know in New York, Letitia?"

"Why, don't you remember Hiram Ptolemy and Peggy Neal?"

"To be sure," I said – "the Egyptologist! But the addresses?"

"I have them both," she replied. "Mrs. Neal came to the house crying, and gave me Peggy's, and begged me to find her if I could. And Mr. Ptolemy – why can I never remember the name of his hotel?"

"You have heard from him then?"

She blushed.

"Yes," she replied. "It's a famous hotel, I'm sure. The name was familiar."

"Hotel," I remarked. "Hiram must be getting on then?"

"Oh yes," she said, fumbling with her address-book. "It's the Mills Hotel."

"And a famous place," I observed, smiling. "So he lives at a Mills Hotel?"

"I forgot to tell you," she continued, "I have been so busy. He wrote me only the other day, that, after all these years – mercy! how long it has been since he fed us lemon-drops! – after all these years of tramping from publisher to publisher, footsore and weary, as he said, he had found at last a grand, good man."

"One," I inferred, "who will give his discovery to the world."

"Oh, more than that," explained Letitia, "this dear, old, white-haired – "

"Egyptologist," I broke in.

"Publisher," she said, with spirit, "has promised him to start a magazine and make him editor – a scientific magazine devoted solely to Egyptology, and called The Obelisk."

"Well, well, well, well," I said. "We must congratulate the little man. Perhaps you may even be impelled to recon – "

"Now, Bertram," began Letitia, in that tone and manner I knew of old – so I put on my hat, and, freeing Robin to likelier pleasures, we drove at once to "the" Mills Hotel. Letitia's address-book had named the street, which she thought unkempt and cluttered and noisy for an editor to live in, though doubtless he had wished to be near his desk.

"Is Mr. Hiram Ptolemy in?" inquired Letitia.

"I'll see," said the clerk, consulting his ledgers.

He returned at once.

"There is no one here of that name, madam."

"Strange!" she replied. "He was here – let me see – but two weeks ago."

"No madam," he said. "You must mean the other Mills Hotel."

"Is there another Mills Hotel?" she asked.

"Yes," he replied. "Hotel number – "

"I thought," said Letitia, "this place seemed – "

She glanced about her.

"But," said I, "the address is of this one."

"True," she replied. "Did you look in the P's?" she inquired, sweetly.

"Why, no; in the T's. You said – "

"But it's spelled with a P," she explained. "P-t-o-l – "

Then her face reddened.

"Never mind," she said. "You are right – quite right. It is the other hotel. But can you tell me, please, if Mr. Hiram De Lancey Percival lives here?"

The clerk smiled broadly.

"Oh yes," he said. "Mr. Percival does, but he's out at present. You will find him, however, at this address."

He wrote it down for her and she took it nervously.

"Thank you," she said, glancing at it. "Don't be silly, Bertram. Yes, it's the publisher's. Let us go. Good-day, sir."

It was not a large publisher's, we discovered, for the place was a single and dingy store-room in a small side street. Its walls were shelved, filled from the floor to the very ceiling – volume after volume, sets upon sets, most of them shopworn and bearing the imprints of by-gone years. Between the shelves other books, equally old and faded, and offered for sale at trifling prices, lay on tables in that tempting disarray and dust which hints of treasures overlooked and waiting only for recognition – always on the higher shelf, or at the bottom of the other pile. The window was filled with encyclopædias long outgrown by a wiser world, and standing beside them, and looking back towards the store-room's farther end, was a melancholy vista of discarded and forgotten literature.

"Who buys them?" asked Letitia.

"Who wrote them?" I replied.

A bell had tinkled at our entrance, but no one came to us, so we wandered down one narrow aisle till we reached the end. And there, at the right, in an alcove hitherto undiscernable, and at an old, worm-eaten desk dimly lighted by an alley window, sat our old friend Ptolemy, writing, and unaware of our approach. It was the same Hiram, we observed, though a little shabbier, perhaps, and scraggier-bearded than of old, but the same little, blinking scientist we had known, in steel-bowed spectacles, scratching away in a rickety office-chair. He was quite oblivious of the eyes upon him, lost, doubtless, in some shadowy passage of Egyptian lore.

I coughed slightly, and he turned about, peering in amazement.

"Miss Primrose! Dr. Weatherby! I do believe!" he exclaimed, and, dropping his pen, staggered up to us and shook our hands, his celluloid cuffs rattling about his meagre wrists and his eyes watering with agitation behind his spectacles.

"You– in New York!" he piped. "I – why, I'm astounded – I'm astounded – but delighted, too – delighted to see you both! But you mustn't stand."

I looked curiously at Letitia as he brought us chairs, setting them beside his desk. She was a little flushed, but very gracious to the little man.

"Miss Primrose," he said, fidgeting about her, "allow me – allow me," offering what seemed to be the stabler of the wooden seats. She had accepted it and was about to sit, when he stopped her anxiously with a cry, "Wait! – wait, I beg of you!" and replaced it with his own. His was an elbow chair whose sagging leathern seat had been reinforced with an old green atlas, its pasteboard cover still faintly decorated with a pictured globe.

Seating himself again beside his desk, he turned to us beaming with an air of host, and listened with many nervous twitchings and furtive glances at Letitia, while I explained our presence there.

"It's a grand journey – a grand journey, Miss Primrose," he declared. "I only wish I were going, too."

"Tell us," said Letitia, kindly, "about The Obelisk. Is the first number ready yet?"

He sat up blithely, wetting his lips, and with that odd mannerism which recalled his visit to Grassy Ford, he touched with one finger the tip of his celluloid collar, and thrust out his chin.

"Almost," he said. "It's almost ready. It'll be out soon – very soon now – it'll be out soon. I've got it here – right here – right here on the desk."

He touched fondly the very manuscript we had surprised him writing.

"That's it," he said. "The Obelisk, volume one, number one."

"And the great stone of Iris-Iris?" queried Letitia.

He half rose from his chair, and exclaimed, excitedly, pointing to a drawer in the paper-buried desk: