The Reclaimers

I

THE HEIR APPARENT

Only the good little snakes were permitted to enter the "Eden" that belonged to Aunt Jerry and Uncle Cornie Darby. "Eden," it should be explained, was the country estate of Mrs. Jerusha Darby – a wealthy Philadelphian – and her husband, Cornelius Darby, a relative by marriage, so to speak, whose sole business on earth was to guard his wife's wealth for six hours of the day in the city, and to practise discus-throwing out at "Eden" for two hours every evening.

Of course these two were never familiarly "Aunt" and "Uncle" to this country neighborhood, nor to any other community. Far, oh, far from that! They were Aunt and Uncle only to Jerry Swaim, the orphaned and only child of Mrs. Darby's brother Jim, whose charming girlish presence made the whole community, wherever she might chance to be. They were cousin, however, to Eugene Wellington, a young artist of more than ordinary merit, also orphaned and alone, except for a sort of cousinship with Uncle Cornelius.

"Eden" was a beautifully located and handsomely appointed estate of two hundred acres, offering large facilities to any photographer seeking magazine illustrations of country life in America. Indeed, the place was, as Aunt Jerry Darby declared, "summer and winter, all shot up by camera-toters and dabbed over with canvas-stretchers' paints," much to the owner's disgust, to whom all camera-toters and artists, except Cousin Eugene Wellington, were useless idlers. The rustic little railway station, hidden by maple-trees, was only three or four good discus-throws from the house. But the railroad itself very properly dropped from view into a wooded valley on either side of the station. There was nothing of cindery ugliness to mar the spot where the dwellers in "Eden" could take the early morning train for the city, or drop off in the cool of the afternoon into a delightful pastoral retreat. Beyond the lawns and buildings, gardens and orchards, the land billowed away into meadow and pasture and grain-field, with an insert of leafy grove where song-birds builded an Eden all their own. The entire freehold of Aunt Jerry Darby and Uncle Cornie, set down in the middle of a Western ranch, would have been a day's journey from its borders. And yet in it country life was done into poetry, combining city luxuries and conveniences with the dehorned, dethorned comfort and freedom of idyllic nature. What more need be said for this "Eden" into which only the good little snakes were permitted to enter?

In the late afternoon Aunt Jerry sat in the rose-arbor with her Japanese work-basket beside her, and a pearl tatting-shuttle between her thumb and fingers. One could read in a thoughtful glance all there was to know of Mrs. Darby. Her alert air and busy hands bespoke the habit of everlasting industry fastened down upon her, no doubt, in a far-off childhood. She was luxurious in her tastes. The satin gown, the diamond fastening the little cap to her gray hair, the elegant lace at her throat and wrists, the flashing jewels on her thin fingers, all proclaimed a desire for display and the means wherewith to pamper it. The rest of her story was written on her wrinkled face, where the strong traits of a self-willed youth were deeply graven. Something in the narrow, restless eyes suggested the discontented lover of wealth. The lines of the mouth hinted at selfishness and prejudice. The square chin told of a stubborn will, and the stern cast of features indicated no sense of humor whereby the hardest face is softened. That Jerusha Darby was rich, intolerant, determined, unimaginative, self-centered, unforgiving, and unhappy the student of character might gather at a glance. Where these traits abide a second glance is unnecessary.

Outside, the arbor was aglow with early June roses; within, the cushioned willow seats invite to restful enjoyment. But Jerusha Darby was not there for pleasure. While her pearl shuttle darted in and out among her fingers like a tiny, iridescent bird, her mind and tongue were busy with important matters.

Opposite to her was her husband, Cornelius. It was only important matters that called him away from his business in the city at so early an hour in the afternoon. And it was only on business matters that he and his wife ever really conferred, either in the rose-arbor or elsewhere. The appealing beauty of the place indirectly meant nothing to these two owners of all this beauty.

The most to be said of Cornelius Darby was that he was born the son of a rich man and he died the husband of a rich woman. His life, like his face, was colorless. He fitted into the landscape and his presence was never detected. He had no opinions of his own. His father had given him all that he needed to think about until he was married. "Was married" is well said. He never courted nor married anybody. He was never courted, but he was married by Jerusha Swaim. But that is all dried stuff now. Let it be said, however, that not all the mummies are in Egyptian tombs and Smithsonian Institutions. Some of them sit in banking-houses all day long, and go discus-throwing in lovely "Edens" on soft June evenings. And one of them once, just once, broke the ancient linen wrappings from his glazed jaws and spoke. For half an hour his voice was heard; and then the bandages slipped back, and the mummy was all mummy again. It was Jerry Swaim who wrought that miracle. But then there is little in the earth, or the waters under the earth, that a pretty girl cannot work upon.

"You say you have the report on the Swaim estate that the Macpherson Mortgage Company of New Eden, Kansas, is taking care of for us?" Mrs. Darby asked.

"The complete report. York Macpherson hasn't left out a detail. Shall I read you his description?" her husband replied.

"No, no; don't tell me a thing about it, not a thing. I don't want to know any more about Kansas than I know already. I hate the very name of Kansas. You can understand why, when you remember my brother. I've known York Macpherson all his life, him and his sister Laura, too. And I never could understand why he went so far West, nor why he dragged that lame sister of his out with him to that Sage Brush country."

"That's because you won't let me tell you anything about the West. But as a matter of business you ought to understand the conditions connected with this estate."

"I tell you again I won't listen to it, not one word. He is employed to look after the property, not to write about it. None of my family ever expects to see it. When we get ready to study its value we will give due notice. Now let the matter of description, location, big puffing up of its value – I know all that Kansas talk – let all that drop here." Jerusha Darby unconsciously stamped her foot on the cement floor of the arbor and struck her thin palm flat upon the broad arm of her chair.

"Very well, Jerusha. If Jerry ever wants to know anything about its extent, agricultural value, water-supply, crop returns, etc., she will find them on file in my office. The document says that the land in the Sage Brush Valley in Kansas is now, with title clear, the property of the estate of the late Jeremiah Swaim and his heirs and assigns forever; that York Macpherson will, for a very small consideration, be the Kansas representative of the Swaim heirs. That is all I have to say about it."

"Then listen to me," Mrs. Darby commanded. And her listener – listened. "Jerry Swaim is Brother Jim and Sister Lesa's only child. She's been brought up in luxury; never wanted a thing she didn't get, and never earned a penny in her life. She couldn't do it to save her life. If I outlive you she will be my heir if I choose to make my will in her favor. She can be taken care of without that Kansas property of hers. That's enough about the matter. We will drop it right here for other things. There's your cousin Eugene Wellington coming home again. He's a real artist and hasn't any property at all."

A ghost of a smile flitted across Mr. Darby's blank face, but Mrs. Darby never saw ghosts.

"Of course Jerry and Gene, who have been playmates in the same game all their lives, will – will – " Mrs. Darby hesitated.

"Will keep on playing the same game," Cornelius suggested. "If that's all about this business, I'll go and look after the lily-ponds over yonder, and then take a little exercise before dinner. I'm sorry I missed Jerry in the city. She doesn't know I am out here."

"What difference if you did? She and Eugene will be coming out on the train pretty soon," Mrs. Darby declared.

"She doesn't know he's there, maybe. They may miss each other," her husband replied.

Then he left the arbor and effaced himself, as was his custom, from his wife's presence, and busied himself with matters concerning the lily-ponds on the far side of the grounds where pink lotuses were blooming.

Meantime Jerusha Darby's fingers fairly writhed about her tatting-work, as she waited impatiently for the sound of the afternoon train from the city.

"It's time the four-forty was whistling round the curve," she murmured. "My girl will soon be here, unless the train is delayed by that bridge down yonder. Plague on these June rains!"

Mrs. Darby said "my girl" exactly as she would have said "my bank stock," or "my farm." Hers was the tone of complete possession.

"She could have come out in the auto in half the time, the four-forty creeps so, but the roads are dreadfully skiddy after these abominable rains," Mrs. Darby continued.

The habit of speaking her thoughts aloud had grown on her, as it often does on those advanced in years who live much alone. The little vista of rain-washed meadows and growing grain that lay between tall lilac-trees was lost to her eyes in the impatience of the moment's delay. What Jerusha Darby wanted for Jerusha Darby was vastly more important to her at any moment than the abstract value of a general good or a common charm.

As she leaned forward, listening intently for the rumble of the train down in the valley, a great automobile swung through the open gateway of "Eden" and rounded the curves of the maple-guarded avenue, bearing down with a birdlike sweep upon the rose-arbor.

"Here I am, Aunt Jerry," the driver's girlish voice called. "Uncle Cornie is coming out on the train. I beat him to it. I saw the old engine huffing and puffing at the hill beyond the third crossing of the Winnowoc. It is bank-full now from the rains. I stopped on that high fill and watched the train down below me creeping out on the trestle above the creek. When it got across and went crawling into the cut on this side I came on, too. I had my hands full then making this big gun of a car climb that muddy, slippery hill that the railroad cuts through. But I'd rather climb than creep any old day."

"Jerry Swaim," Mrs. Darby cried, staring up at her niece in amazement, "do you mean to say you drove out alone over that sideling, slippery bluff road? But you wouldn't be Lesa Swaim's daughter if you weren't taking chances. You are your mother's own child, if there ever was one."

"Well, I should hope I am, since I've got to be classified somewhere. I came because I wanted to," Jerry declared, with the finality of complete excuse in her tone. All her life what Jerry Swaim had wanted was abundant reason for her having. "It was dreadfully hot and sticky in the city, and I knew it would be the bottom deep of mugginess on that crowded Winnowoc train. The last time I came out here on it I had to sit beside a dreadful big Dutchman who had an old hen and chickens in a basket under his feet. He had had Limburger cheese for his dinner and had used his whiskers for a napkin to catch the crumbs. Ugh!" Jerry gave a shiver of disgust at the recollection. "An old lady behind us had 'sky-atick rheumatiz' and wouldn't let the windows be opened. I'd rather have any kind of 'rheumatiz' than Limburger for the same length of time. The Winnowoc special ought to carry a parlor coach from the city and set it off at 'Eden' like it used to do. The agent let me play in it whenever I wanted to when I was a youngster. I'm never going to ride on any train again unless I go in a Pullman."

The girl struck her small gloved fist, like a spoiled child, against the steering-wheel of her luxuriously appointed car, but her winsome smile was all-redeeming as she looked down at her aunt standing in the doorway of the rose-arbor.

"Come in here, Geraldine Swaim. I want to talk to you." Mrs. Darby's affectionate tones carried also a note of command.

"Means business when she 'Geraldine Swaims' me," Jerry commented, mentally, as she gave the car to the "Eden" man-of-all-work and followed her aunt to a seat inside the blossom-covered retreat, where the pearl shuttle began to grow tatting again beneath the thin, busy fingers.

It always pleased Jerusha Darby to be told that there was a resemblance between these two. But, although the older woman's countenance was an open book holding the story of inherited ideas, limited and intensified, and the young face unmistakably perpetuated the family likeness, yet Jerry Swaim was a type of her own, not easy to forejudge. In the shadows of the rose-arbor her hair rippled back from her forehead in dull-gold waves. One could picture what the sunshine would do for it. Her big, dark-blue eyes were sometimes dreamy under their long lashes, and sometimes full of sparkling light. Her whole atmosphere was that of easeful, dependent, city life; yet there was something contrastingly definite in her low voice, her firm mouth and square-cut chin. And beyond appearances and manner, there was something which nobody ever quite defined, that made it her way to walk straight into the hearts of those who knew her.

"Where were you in the city to-day?" Mrs. Darby asked, abruptly, looking keenly at the fair-faced girl much as she would have looked at any other of her goodly possessions.

"Let me see," Jerry Swaim began, meditatively. "I was shopping quite a while. The stores are gorgeous this June."

"Yes, and what else?" queried the older woman.

"Oh, some more shopping. Then I lunched at La Señorita, that beautiful new tea-house. Every room represents some nationality in its decoration. I was in the Delft room – Holland Dutch – whiskers and Limburger" – there was a gleam of fun in the dark-blue eyes – "but it is restful and charming. And the service is perfect. Then I strolled off to the Art Gallery and lost myself in the latest exhibit. Cousin Gene would like that, I'm sure. It was so cool and quiet there that I stayed a long time. The exhibit is mostly of landscapes, all of them as beautiful as 'Eden' except one."

There was just a shade of something different in the girl's tone when she spoke her cousin's name.

"And that one?" Mrs. Darby inquired. She did not object to shopping and more shopping, but art was getting outside of her dominion.

"It was a desert-like scene; just yellow-gray plains, with no trees at all. And in the farther distance the richest purples and reds of a sunset sky into which the land sort of diffused. No landscape on this earth was ever so yellow-gray, or any sunset ever so like the Book of Revelation, nor any horizon-line so wide and far away. It was the hyperbole of a freakish imagination. And yet, Aunt Jerry, there was a romantic lure in the thing, somehow."

Jerry Swaim's face was grave as she gazed with wide, unseeing eyes at the vista of fresh June meadows from which the odor of red clover, pulsing in on the cool west breeze of the late afternoon, mingled with the odor of white honeysuckle that twined among the climbing rose-vines above her.

"Humph! What else?" Aunt Jerry sniffed a disapproval of unpleasant landscapes in general and alluring romances in particular. Love of romance was not in her mental make-up, any more than love of art.

"I went over to Uncle Cornie's bank to tell him to take care of my shopping-bills. He wasn't in just then and I didn't wait for him. By the way" – Jerry Swaim was not dreamy now – "since all the legal litigations and things are over, oughtn't I begin to manage my own affairs and live on my own income?"

Sitting there in the shelter of blossoming vines, the girl seemed far too dainty a creature, too lacking in experience, initiative, or ability, to manage anything more trying than a big allowance of pin-money. And yet, something in her small, firm hands, something in the lines of her well-formed chin, put the doubt into any forecast of what Geraldine Swaim might do when she chose to act.

Aunt Jerry wrapped the lacy tatting stuff she had been making around the pearl shuttle and, putting both away in the Japanese work-basket, carefully snapped down the lid.

"When Jerusha Darby quits work to talk it's time for me to put on my skid-chains," Jerry said to herself as she watched the procedure.

"Jerry, do you know why I called you your mother's own child just now?" Mrs. Darby asked, gravely.

"From habit, maybe, you have said it so often." Jerry's smile took away any suggestion of pertness. "I know I am like her in some ways."

"Yes, but not altogether," the older woman continued. "Lesa Swaim was a strange combination. She was made to spend money, with no idea of how to get money. And she brought you up the same way. And now you are grown, boarding-school finished, and of age, you can't alter your bringing up any more than you can change your big eyes that are just like Lesa's, nor your chin that you inherited from Brother Jim. I might as well try to give you little black eyes and a receding chin as to try to reshape your ways now. You are as the Lord made you, and Providence molded you, and your mother spoiled you."

"Well, I don't want to be anything different. I'm happy as I am."

"You won't need to be, unless you choose. But being twenty-one doesn't make you too old to listen to me – and your uncle Cornie."

In all her life Jerry had never before heard her uncle's name brought in as co-partner of Jerusha Darby's in any opinion, authority, or advice. It was an unfortunate slip of the tongue for Uncle Cornie's wife, one of those simple phrases that, dropped at the right spot, take root and grow and bear big fruit, whether of sweet or bitter taste.

"Your mother was a dreamer, a lover of romance, and all sorts of adventures, although she never had a chance to get into any of them. That's why you went skidding on that sideling bluff road to-day; that and the fact that she brought you up to have your own way about everything. But, as I say, we can't change that now, and there's no need to if we could. Lesa was a pretty woman, but you look like the Swaims, except right across here."

Aunt Jerry drew her bony finger across the girl's brows, unwilling to concede any of the family likeness that could possibly be retained. She could not see the gleam of mischief lurking under the downcast eyelashes of Lesa Swaim's own child.

"Your father was a good business man, level-headed, shrewd, and honest" – Mrs. Darby spoke rapidly now – "but things happened in the last years of his life. Your mother took pneumonia and died, and you went away to boarding-school. Jim's business was considerably involved. I needn't bother to tell you about that. It doesn't matter now, anyhow. And then one night he didn't come home, and the next morning your uncle found him sitting in his office, just as he had left him the evening before. He had been dead several hours. Heart failure was what the doctor said, but I reckon everybody goes of heart failure sooner or later."

A bright, hard glow came into Jerry Swaim's eyes and the red lips were grimly pressed together. In the two years since the loss of her parents the girl had never tried to pray. As time went on the light spirit of youth had come back, but something went out of her life on the day of her father's death, leaving a loss against which she stubbornly rebelled.

"To be plain, Jerry," Mrs. Darby hurried on, "you have your inheritance all cleared up at last, after two whole years of legal trouble."

"Oh, it hasn't really bothered me," Jerry declared, with seeming flippancy. "Just signing my name where somebody pointed to a blank line, and holding up my right hand to be sworn – that's all. I've written my full name and promised that the writing was mine, 's'welp me Gawd,' as the court-house man used to say, till I could do either one under the influence of ether. Nothing really bothersome about it, but I'm glad it's over. Business is so tiresome."

"It's not so large a fortune, by a good deal, as it would have been if your father had listened to me." Mrs. Darby spoke vaguely. "But you will be amply provided for, anyhow, unless you yourself choose to trifle with your best interest. You and I are the only Swaims living now. Some day, if I choose, I can will all my property to you."

The square-cut chin and the deep lines around the stern mouth told plainly that obedience to this woman's wishes alone could make a beneficiary to that will.

"You may be a dreamer, and love to go romancing around into new scrapes like your mother would have done if she could. But she was as soft-hearted as could be, with all that. That's why she never denied you anything you wanted. She couldn't do a thing with money, though, as I said, except spend it. You are a good deal like your father, too, Jerry, and you'll value property some day as the only thing on earth that can make life anything but a hard grind. If you don't want to be like that bunch of everlasting grubs that ride on the Winnowoc train every afternoon, or the poor country folks around here that never ride in anything but a rickety old farm-wagon, you'll appreciate what I – and Uncle Cornie – can do for you."

Uncle Cornie again, and he never had shared in any equal consideration before. It was a mistake.

"There's the four-forty whistling for the curve at last. It's time it was coming. I must go in and see that dinner is just right. You run down and meet it. Cousin Eugene is coming out on it. Your uncle Cornie is here on the place somewhere. He came out after lunch on some business we had to fix up. No wonder you missed him. But, Jerry" – the stern-faced woman put a hand on the girl's shoulder with more of command than caress in the gesture – "Eugene is a real artist with genius, you know."

"Yes, I know," Jerry replied, a sudden change coming into her tone. "What of that?"

"You've always known him. You like him very much?" Jerusha Darby was as awkward in sentiment as she was shrewd in a bargain.

The bloom on the girl's cheek deepened as she looked away toward the brilliantly green meadows across which the low sun was sending rays of golden light.

"Oh, I like him as much as he likes me, no doubt. I'll go down to the station and look him over, if you say so."

Beneath the words lay something deeper than speech – something new even to the girl herself.

As Jerry left the arbor Mrs. Darby said, with something half playful, half final, in her tone: "You won't forget what I've said about property, you little spendthrift. You will be sensible, like my sensible brother's child, even if you are as idealizing as your sentimental mother."

"I'll not forget. I couldn't and be Jerry Darby's niece," the last added after the girl was safely out of her aunt's hearing. "My father and mother both had lots of good traits, it seems, and a few poor ones. I seem to be really heir to all the faulty bents of theirs, and to have lost out on all the good ones. But I can't help that now. Not till after the train gets in, anyhow."

Her aunt watched her till the shrubbery hid her at a turn in the walk. Young, full of life, dainty as the June blossoms that showered her pathway with petals, a spoiled, luxury-loving child, with an adventurous spirit and a blunted and undeveloped notion of human service and divine heritage, but with a latent capacity and an untrained power for doing things, that was Jerry Swaim – whom the winds of heaven must not visit too roughly without being accountable to Mrs. Jerusha Darby, owner and manager of the universe for her niece.

II

UNCLE CORNIE'S THROW

Jerry was waiting at the cool end of the rustic station when the train came in. How hot and stuffy it seemed to her as it puffed out of the valley, and how tired and cross all the bunch of grubs who stared out of the window at her. It made them ten times more tired and cross and hot to see that girl looking so cool and rested and exquisitely gowned and crowned and shod. The blue linen with white embroidered cuffs, the rippling, glinting masses of hair, the small shoes, immaculately white against the green sod – little wonder that, while the heir apparent to the Darby wealth felt comfortably indifferent toward this uninteresting line of nobodies in particular, the bunch of grubs should feel only envy and resentment of their own sweaty, muscle-worn lot in life.