Instead of the Thorn
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"Bertram!" The ejaculation was accusing. "Where have you seen him?"
"At the office."
"The office! Of all places this glorious night! Father, dear," reproachfully, "I thought you went off with Mr. Radcliffe to paint the town. That's what he told me. How could Bertram get hold of you? I'd have made Freddy tie him to our machine if I had suspected such a thing."
"Mr. Radcliffe had some business to talk over, and the data were at the office."
The utter weariness of the reply made the fresh face cling again against the speaker's gray head.
"But Bertram came here to find you."
"Yes, I got him at the club."
Linda gave an inarticulate exclamation. "Oh, doesn't it just do me good to think how soon you'll be where offices and Bertrams are unknown!" she said slowly.
The man in her embrace lifted her hand to his lips in silence.
"You're the stunningest thing on horseback that was ever seen," she went on, "and the only time you'll be out of the saddle is when you're in bed."
Silence.
"Why don't you say something?" she mumbled against his hair. "Did you know I was good-looking?" she added after a pause, lifting her head and squeezing him.
"Yes, child."
"Oh, Father, don't be so meek! Say something nice and impudent, or I'll think you're too tired, and take you away to-morrow. I was leading up tactfully to thanking you for being the best-looking man in Chicago so your daughter could have a nice nose." She burrowed the feature into his thick hair, and kissed it again.
"You're my darling girl," he said soberly. "You've been a joy to me ever since you were born."
"Hurrah for us!" ejaculated Linda. "I've been no kind of a joy compared to what I'm going to be. Now I have all this school business off my hands, I'm going to trail you – just dog your footsteps. Now, don't say that I won't be near so much of a joy that way, because I can think of more ways to make you have a good time than you dream of now!"
"You aren't the sort of girl who stays with Father long."
"Do you mean marriage? My dear sir, don't you know that handsome girls are far less apt to marry than the nice, commonplace, cozy ones with turn-up noses? I admit coyly that I'm something of a peach, but I'm going to stay with you."
"Have you ever thought," – the question came gravely, – "have you ever thought of – Bertram?"
Color mounted richly over the face against the gray hair.
"Thought of him! I should say so! The most critical, disagreeable, nosey man; always interfering and – and trying to make people over into his mold. It never occurs to him that his ideas could be anything less than perfection."
"I'm surprised to hear you speak so," came the monotonous voice, "and disappointed too."
"Father, dear, don't! You make me sad! When I know you've come into this tired condition, just working for me, – that's one of the pleasant things Bertram said to me to-night."
"He was wrong. It wasn't working for you, Linda. Remember that. Money-making gets to be a disease. A millionaire should be satisfied; but the multi-millionaires are ahead of him, and the game is exciting." There was no excitement in the colorless voice. "Mere prosperity palls. He takes chances, hoping and expecting to do great things for himself and every one involved with him. There's the pinch. He should never allow others to take chances with him. That's criminal."
"Oh, well." Linda opposed a light tone to what she considered the morbidity of over-fatigue. Her heart reproached her for not having seen the symptoms long ago. She should have thrown up college and taken her dear one away long ago. Resentment against King again flared up in her. His had been daily companionship with her father. How could he have let it come to this!
"If Barry & Co.," she went on, "should ever have a setback, they would simply deal out," – she gestured as if dealing cards, – "deal out to the little people and make up their losses. That would be Barry & Co.'s way," she added proudly.
Her father's next words were irrelevant, and came after a short silence.
"I'm surprised that you give Bertram such a bad character. He is unconscious of offending you, I'm sure."
"Oh, Daddy, dear, don't bother about that. I don't hate him, you understand. It's only that he is flint and perhaps I'm steel. At any rate, there are fireworks when we mingle in society."
"Not flint at all, Linda. He loves you."
"A queer sort of love, then. It isn't so much what he says, dear," – Linda's cheeks were burning, – "it's that compelling – oh, sort of – well, compelling's the best word, – that always wants to – to guide me; and I won't be guided by anybody but you. I'll tell you what, Daddy, you haven't any son, and I'm going to be your son after this. If you're very good for two whole weeks after we get out to Colorado, and don't say one word about business, after that I'll get you to tell me all about your affairs, and I'll put my whole mind on understanding them. You know, Daddy, I have a good head for mathematics and for business generally, – truly I have. This isn't bluffing. If you'll take a little pains with me, you'll find Bertram isn't the only one you'll confide in. I think I'd like business. My heart isn't much to boast of, but my head, now, when it comes to my head – Thank Heaven, Bertram will be where he can't write to you about anything but fish. Mrs. Porter has persuaded him to go to Maine. Just think what she did, Daddy. She went off without saying a word to me. I went down to the studio and there was no one there but a caretaker, packing up. The calendar hadn't been torn off, so I tore off a leaf and wrote her a message on the date I was there. It's a calendar of Bible promises, and this one was, 'When thy father and thy mother forsake thee, then the Lord will take thee up.' I added something about her inhumanity in forsaking me."
"Why – why," – Mr. Barry's brow wrinkled, – "I'm afraid I've been remiss. I paid the bill for your lessons, and when she sent back the receipt she wrote something about having tried to get you on the 'phone, but that you were too popular, and that she was going East to tell your aunt that you were a good girl."
"Then she has gone to the Cape!" exclaimed Linda, with interest. "I remember when Aunt Belinda was here at Christmas Mrs. Porter talked about it with her."
"Yes," responded Mr. Barry, "and I think the plan is for Bertram to join her there if – when he can go."
"Right away, won't he?" demanded Linda eagerly. "His doctor says – "
"Yes, poor Bertram," said Mr. Barry slowly, "he does need it; but, little one," – he patted Linda's hand slowly, – "we can't either of us go quite so soon as we expected."
"Now, Father!" exclaimed the girl acutely.
"Something very important, Linda," – his voice increased as he repeated it, – "very important. I think we must – " he rose; "but it's late. We must go upstairs now, little one."
His repetition of the term of affection impressed Linda. It was associated with sadness. She remembered how often he had used it during the week that her mother died.
"I shall read you to sleep, dear. Please let me," she said as they rose.
"No, no need of that. Go to bed, little girl. I'll lock up. Good-night, daughter."
He put his arms around her, and she clung to him, kissing him again and again.
CHAPTER V
THE CAPE
Maine. Mrs. Porter loved the very word. Always when the train left the North Station in Boston she sank into her chair with a sense of shaking off the cares of life; and to-day the smile she gave the porter as he placed her suit-case beside that chair was valued, even by him, more than the coin she placed in his hand.
The cares of life in her case were represented by a busy music studio, where, luckily for her, every half-hour was a busy one; but there were the pupils who didn't supply their own steam, but had to be urged laboriously up the steeps of Parnassus; there were those in whom a voice must be manufactured if it ever appeared; and those whose talent was great and whose application was fitful; those whose vanity was fatuous, and those whose self-depreciation was a ball and chain; those who had been badly taught and who must be guided through that valley of humiliation where bad habits are overthrown. Taking into account all the trials of the profession, any voice teacher in Mrs. Porter's place to-day might give a Boston and Maine porter a seraphic smile as if he were opening to her the gate leading to Elysian Fields where pianos and vocalises have no place.
"That woman sure do look happy," was the soliloquy of this particular red-cap as he pocketed the silver and left the car.
The traveler leaned back in her chair with a glorious sense of unlimited leisure, and prepared to recognize the landmarks grown as familiar to her as the scenes on the Illinois Central suburban railroad.
Probably none of her pupils save Linda Barry, although there were other hero-worshipers among them, would deny that Mrs. Porter's nose was too short, her mouth too wide, and her eyes too small; but the kindly lips revealed such even teeth, and the eyes such light, that no one commented on Maud Porter's looks, nor cared what shape her nose was. One saw, as she leaned back now in her chair, that her brown hair was becoming softly powdered with gray. Her eyes half closed as the express train gained speed, flying away from care, and her humorous lips curved as she considered the mild adventure on which she was embarking.
When Miss Belinda Barry had visited her brother during the holidays, she had dropped some remarks concerning her home which had roused Mrs. Porter's curiosity and interest. The idea had been growing on her all the spring that, instead of going out as usual to one of the islands in Casco Bay, she would explore this corner of the mainland from whence had sprung the Chicago financier. She had not, however, communicated since with Miss Barry. She did not wish that lady to feel any responsibility for her.
A picture of Linda's aunt rose before her mind as she reflected. Tall, thin, with a scanty coiffure and long onyx earrings. These ornaments Miss Barry had donned in her youth, and declined to renounce with the fashion; so that when they began to be worn again by the daring, they gave her the effect, as Linda had confided to her teacher, of being "the sportiest old thing in town."
The naturally severe cast of Miss Barry's features, Mrs. Porter had always observed, rather increased in severity when the good lady looked at her niece, and that holiday visit had been a strain on both sides.
It was happy history repeating itself when the traveler alighted to-day at the Union Station in Portland. The same involuntary wonder rose within her that any face could look harassed, ill, or care-worn here. It was Maine. It was the enchanted land! the land of pines, of unmeasured ocean, of supernatural beauty in sunset skies; of dreamful days and dreamless nights.
She smiled at her own childish ignoring of the seamy side of existence as evidenced in the look of many of the crowd hurrying through the busy clearing-house of the station. She beamed upon a porter who took her to a waiting carriage – a sea-going hack, Linda would have called it – and drove to a hotel. She would not risk arriving in the evening in a locality where the only inn might be that of the Silver Moon.
Till supper time – it would be supper, she considered exultantly – she wandered up Congress Street to some of her favorite shops. Undeniably there are other streets in Portland, but to the summer visitor the dignified city is much like a magnified village with one main street where its life centers.
Maud Porter entered one shop after another, repressing with difficulty her longing to tell every clerk how happy she was to be back, and enjoying all over again the good manners and obligingness of everybody.
Next morning, as soon as breakfast was over, she made her inquiries and took her train. It was one that stopped at every station, and when, after three quarters of an hour of this sauntering, she alighted on a desolate and unpromising platform, her first thought was to inquire in the small depot for the first train back. The little house seemed to be deserted for the moment, however, and she observed an elderly man with a short white beard, who, with trousers tucked into his boots and thumbs hooked in his armholes, stood at a little distance, regarding speculatively the lady in the gray suit and floating gray veil. Near where he was standing a carryall was waiting by the platform.
In Mrs. Porter's indecision she looked again within the weather-beaten station, then across at the motionless, weather-beaten face.
"There doesn't seem to be any one in here," she said.
"I cal'late Joe's out in the shed luggin' wood," responded the man. His pleasant tone, his drawl, the sea-blue of his eyes, caused her to move toward him as the needle to the magnet. She knew the type. All the suspended Maine exhilaration rushed back upon her. How clean he was! How rough! How adorable!
"I've come," she said, gazing up into the eyes regarding her steadily, and said no more.
"Want me to haul ye?" he asked kindly, not changing his position.
"Yes."
"Where to?"
"I don't know." The sunlight of her smile evoked a grin from him.
"Come on a chance, have ye?"
"Yes, So did you, I should think. Nobody but little me getting off here."
"No, 't ain't time for 'em really to come yet."
"Who? Summer people, do you mean?"
"Yes. Folks is beginnin' to think they like it down here; but we don't take summer boarders to the Cape, ye'll have to know that."
A prodigious wink enveloped one sea-blue eye.
"Oh, I'm so sorry." Mrs. Porter's smile vanished in her earnestness. "Wouldn't – wouldn't your wife, perhaps – "
"Haven't got none."
"Oh, I'm sorry."
"I ain't. Ben glad on't always. Hain't ever repented."
"Then you mean you never were married."
"That's what I mean." The speaker nodded as if to emphasize a triumph.
"But isn't there some one in your – your village – I suppose it's a village, isn't it?"
"Shouldn't wonder if 'twas."
The visitor tasted that "'t wa-a-as" with appetite, and echoed it mentally.
"Some one who would take a boarder if – if I want to stay?" The monotonous landscape was not inviting.
"Wall, for accawmodation's sake I cal'late they would; but it's only for accawmodation's sake, ye understand." The speaker winked again. "The Cape don't take boarders."
"Oh, I see," laughed the visitor. "But you must have expected somebody. You're here."
"Usually git somebody. I haul 'em for hard cash, not for accawmodation's sake, so ye see I'm on hand."
"I should hope so. What should I have done if you hadn't been here?"
"Oh, they'se a car you could git over there a little piece." The speaker unhooked one thumb and gestured.
"I'd far rather go with you, Mr. – Mr. – "
"Holt. Jerry Holt. Most folks forgit the Mister. Shall I take yer bag?"
It was standing where Mrs. Porter had descended from the train, and Jerry unhooked his thumbs and clumped across the platform in the heavy boots in which he had gone clamming that morning.
Maud Porter, her spirits high, entered the old carryall. She suddenly decided not to mention her acquaintance with Miss Barry, but to pursue her way independently.
Deliberately her companion placed her bag in the carriage, then lifted the weight which anchored his steed to duty, and took his place on the front seat, half turning with a sociable air to include his passenger. "Git ap, Molly," he remarked, and Molly somewhat stiffly consented to move.
"You have a nice horse," remarked his passenger fatuously. She knew her own folly, but reveled in it. Pegasus himself could not have pleased her at this moment so well as Jerry Holt's bay. It proved that her remark was the open sesame to her driver's heart.
"There's wuss," he admitted. "Ye see me lift that weight jest now? It's nonsense to use it, but Molly's a female, after all, and in-gines comin' and goin' might git on her nerves; but take her in the ro'd, now, that hoss, she ain't afraid o' no nameable thing!" The sea-blue eyes met his listener with a challenge.
"Not autos even?" with open admiration.
Jerry Holt snorted. "Shoot! She looks down on 'em. Miss – Miss – "
"Oh, excuse me. I forgot you didn't know me. I'm Mrs. Porter, from Chicago."
"Chicago, eh? We've got a neighbor out there. Barry his name is. A banker. Ever hear of him?"
"Oh, yes, certainly."
"Sister lives here still. We all went to school together."
They were driving on a good road between green fields, and Mrs. Porter scented the crisp sea air.
"There's a handsome new house started over there," she said, indicating a hill which was to their left. "Who's building that?"
"Wall, now," the driver responded in his slow, mellifluous tones, "I couldn't tell ye – sudden."
Mrs. Porter leaned back in the carriage with a sigh of ineffable contentment, and thought of the corner of State and Madison streets.
In a minute more the glorious blue of the ocean came in sight, and scattered cottages, which with delightful irregularity were set down at random, some of them surrounded with trees and shrubs.
Mrs. Porter leaned forward with sparkling eyes.
"Don't take me anywhere just yet," she said. "Drive about a little. Have you time?"
"Plenty," declared her companion. "Hain't got to go to the station only once more to-day. Git ap, Molly."
"Oh, let her walk if she wants to. This is beautiful!"
The Cape ran out into the sea, bearing lighthouses, and was bordered with high, jagged rocks among which the clear waves rushed and broke in gay, powerful confusion. As they neared the water the visitor observed on the side toward the ship channel a cottage whose piazza touched the rocks. The hill upon which it stood ended abruptly at the water, and daisies waved in the interstices of the natural sea-wall.
"Who is the lucky woman who lives clinging to the rocks like that?" asked Mrs. Porter, indicating the shingled house with her slender umbrella.
"That? Oh, that's Belinda Barry's cottage. Might's well live in the lighthouse and done with it, I say; but she's got a spyglass and likes to watch the shippin'. See the New York bo't out there comin' in now? There! Hear her blow? Bet Belinda's got her eye on her this minute. Seems if Belinda set on them rocks a lot when she was a girl, and had a cottage in the air, ye might say, 'bout livin' there some day; so when her brother began to have more money'n he knew what to do with, he give Belinda that place. Nobody else wanted it, I can tell ye that. When I'm ashore I'd ruther be ashore, myself."
A man with a bucket of clams passed their slow-moving carriage, and looked curiously at Mrs. Porter.
"Hello, Cy," said Jerry Holt, jerking his head toward the other's nod.
The visitor looked after the figure in the dilapidated coat. "That man had a fine head," she said.
"H'm," ejaculated the other. "A pity there ain't more in it."
"Oh, is the poor creature – do you mean – "
"Oh, no, not so bad as that; but ye know how there are some folks no matter what they try at, they 're allers poundin' and goin' astern. Cy's that kind."
"It's a mercy there are always clams," said Mrs. Porter, and Jerry Holt's sea-blue eyes twinkled at her.
The visitor's plans for independence suddenly weakened. That cottage clinging to the rocks was undermining it more swiftly the further the carriage advanced.
"I believe, Mr. Holt, you'd better leave me at Miss Barry's," she said suddenly.
He shook his head. "Not a bit o' use," he replied. "She won't even accawmodate ye, let alone takin' a boarder. Belinda ain't stuck up. Her worst enemy can't say it changed her a mite to have a brother that eats off gold plates. She was always jest that way."
"What way?"
"Oh, high-headed ye might call it. I dunno exactly what; but Belinda allers claimed to steer; and now she lives to Portland winters in any hotel she's a mind to, she don't act a mite different from what she allers did, though lots o' folks claim she does. 'T ain't no use, though, Mis' Porter, your goin' there. I'd – I'd kind o' hate to have Belinda refuse ye."
The speaker cast a kindly glance at his passenger, who smiled back at him appreciatively.
"Thank you, but I do know Miss Barry. I met her in Chicago, and I'll just stop for a call, and she'll advise me where to go; for I tell you I'm going to stay, Mr. Holt, even if you have to let me sleep in your carryall. Why haven't you a nice wife, now, who would take me in?"
"That's jest why. 'Cause that's the specialty o' wives, and I didn't want to be took in."
Mrs. Porter laughed, and the carryall drew up beside Miss Barry's sunlit piazza. She opened her purse. "How much, Mr. Holt?"
"Well, I'll have to charge ye twenty-five cents for this outin'," he returned with deliberate cheerfulness. "One minute, till we see if Miss Barry's to home."
He got out upon the piazza and knocked on the cottage door, opening it at the same time.
"Belinda!" he called.
"Leave it on the step," came a loud voice from the back of the house.
"Hear that?" he grinned, turning. "She's home, and I'm to leave ye on the step."
"That's all right," said Mrs. Porter, alighting. Jerry Holt's clean, rough hand assisted her, and lifted out her suit-case "I'm perfectly charmed to be left on the step," she added, handing her guide a quarter, which he pocketed with a nod. "I'll try not to envy the girl who sat on these rocks and built a cottage in the air that came to earth."
"She's welcome to it, welcome to it," observed Jerry, as he climbed back into the carriage. "When I'm to sea I want to be to sea. When I'm ashore I druther be to shore."
"Did you ever go to sea?"
"Cap'n of a schooner fifteen year or more."
"Why didn't you tell me? You're Captain Holt, of course."
"Oh," he shook his head, "hain't got nothin' to steer but Molly now." He smiled, nodded a farewell, and turned his horse around with many a cluck of encouragement.
The sound of departing wheels was lost in the swish of surf on the rocks. Maud Porter stood looking seaward. Again the New York boat in the distance, lost to sight now, boomed its signal to smaller fry as it advanced to the harbor. The rioting wind carried her thin gray veil out straight. She heard the house door open, and turned to meet the surprised gaze of Miss Barry, in a checked gingham gown, but with her scanty coiffure and long onyx earrings precisely as she had seen them last.
Mrs. Porter smiled radiantly, and captured her streaming veil.
"I'm what he left on the step," she said.
Miss Barry's surprised gaze grew uncertain. There was a familiar look about this radiant face, but where —
"Was you one of the Portland Aid – " she began.
"No, no!" Mrs. Porter stepped forward and held out both her hands. "Don't let my suit-case frighten you, dear Miss Barry. I've only come to call. Remember last Christmas in Chicago, and Linda's teacher, Mrs. Porter?"
"Mrs. Porter!" exclaimed Miss Barry, letting her hand be captured in the two outstretched ones. "Do excuse me!" Her face beamed welcome. She had liked Linda's voice teacher, and when Belinda Barry liked a person it was once and forever. "Come right into the house this minute," she said cordially. "I'm ashamed o' myself!"
CHAPTER VI
THE SHINGLED COTTAGE
Miss Barry's hard, kindly hands helped remove the visitor's hat and veil, although Mrs. Porter repeated her declaration that she had come only for a call.
"You're going to stay to dinner with me," returned the hostess. "I always do have enough for two."
Her lips, which had returned to their rather grim line, twitched a little as she spoke, and Maud Porter glanced about the living-room with its old-fashioned furniture and rag rugs. Beyond was the dining-room, divided from this only by an imaginary line, and the table stood ready set for one.
"You live here all alone?" asked the visitor.
"Not half as alone as I'd like to be. I don't mind the fish and the barnacles, but it's the folks coming to the back door. Sit right down, Mrs. Porter."
"Don't let me detain you if you were getting dinner." The caller laughed. "How about these folks that come to the front door; the things Captain Holt leaves on the step?"