CHAPTER XIII

Sally was in rather better spirits for some time after that walk to Fisherman's Cove, although there is some doubt whether the improvement was due to her brief sight of the Cove under a winter sun and moon or to realization of the fact that a great number of people were worse off than she or to her break with Everett or to seeing Fox again. But her break with Everett was of only a temporary nature, a fact which he made very evident to her, at least, and, incidentally, to Miss Miller and to Miss Lambkin and to Mrs. Upjohn and to many others; and, as for seeing Fox, she had been enjoying that privilege for twelve years, from time to time. To be sure, it had occasionally been a long while from time to time, but that had not seemed to trouble Sally. So, altogether, we are forced to abandon the inquiry as fruitless. Sally, if we had asked her, would have smiled and would have answered quite truly that she didn't know and she didn't care. It was the fact which was most important; the fact was, indeed, of the only importance, except to persons like Miss Letty Lambkin, who are never satisfied with the simple facts of life, but must dig down until they find certain diseased roots, which they fondly believe, without further tracing, to be the roots of those facts, but which, more often than not, do not belong to them at all, but to some other tree.

Fox's hospital had had an opening, to which the inhabitants of Whitby were invited. Whitby, in a way, was as exclusive as Philadelphia, and Fox's cards of invitation were addressed only to those fortunate persons living in a certain restricted area. That area was bounded, on the east, by the Cow Path, although a few cards found their way down the hill as far as Mrs. Stump's and Miss Miller's. Consequently, Patty went and so did Mrs. Ladue and Sally. It might have been a reception, for they found there nearly the whole of the elite of Whitby and no one else, and the whole of the hospital staff were engaged in showing small parties of the aforesaid elite over the hospital and the farm connected with it. The hospital staff had no other engagements, there being no patients yet. Patty was delighted with it--and with the staff--and expressed her intention of coming out to board as soon as the spring opened. And Fox, to whom this speech was addressed--it was delivered in rather a coquettish manner, all Miss Patty's own--smiled and bowed and made no reply. Perhaps no reply was expected. Fox had heard many such remarks. He would have his patients from among the makers of them.

As soon as he could, Fox took Mrs. Ladue and Sally out over the farm.

Patty was deep in conversation with Doctor Beatty. So he missed her, to his great regret, he said. But, never mind. She'll have a chance to see it. And thereupon he smiled enigmatically, and proceeded to show them what had been done. He was proud of it. When he had shown them all of it, he waved his hand toward the old cream-colored square house.

"My residence," he said. "I am afraid that it will have to remain shut up as it is, for the present. Henrietta's change of plan--or, I shouldn't say that, perhaps--her engagement knocks my scheme of things in the head. She is to be married in June, you know."

"But, Fox," Mrs. Ladue exclaimed, "surely, you don't mean that you won't open the house at all!" She was sorry for him. Why did he have to miss the satisfaction of living in his own house? Such a house, too!

He nodded. "I don't see any prospect of it," he answered, rather gloomily for him; "at least," he added, with a short laugh, "until I am married. There is really no reason for it, you know. There is likely to be room enough at this end of the establishment for some time."

It was Margaret Savage he referred to, Sally supposed. At least, Henrietta, she remembered, had said--had intimated it. Suddenly, she hated the old house.

"It's a shame," Mrs. Ladue said softly. "It's a perfect shame, Fox.

If--if you want to live in it, there's no reason--"

Fox shook his head. "It wouldn't be best or wise, dear Mrs. Ladue," he said gently. "I can wait."

"Aren't you going to show it to us?" asked Mrs. Ladue then, with heightened color. "We should like to see the inside, shouldn't we, Sally?"

But Sally did not have a chance to reply. "Not to-day," said Fox.

"Sometime, soon, I hope, but not to-day."

He said no more and Mrs. Ladue said nothing and Sally said nothing; and they went in again, by unanimous consent, and presently Mrs. Ladue and Sally and Patty drove away, although so early a departure was much against Patty's inclination. They would not have succeeded in getting her to go at all but that Fox took Doctor Beatty off to show him something, and Doctor Beatty thanked him, although he did not make it clear whether it was for wanting to show him the something or for taking him away. But Meriwether Beatty had shown a capacity for leaving Patty when he felt like it, so that I am forced to conclude that that had nothing to do with his thanks. When they got back to Mrs. Stump's they found a letter from Charlie waiting for them on the hall table. I may add that Patty found a letter from Charlie, also, but it was not like the one to his mother and Sally. It differed from theirs in several important particulars.

Charlie wrote a letter home every week, with unfailing regularity. It was a perfunctory letter, filled with the unimportant happenings at college. It never gave any information about himself except on those rare occasions when he had something favorable to report, and it did not need to be anything exceptionally favorable either.

He wrote to Patty irregularly, sometimes more often sometimes less, depending upon his needs. Once, when he had been having an unusually good run of luck, he let nearly three weeks elapse between letters, and then his next letter was almost seven pages long and contained no reference to money. Patty had been awaiting a letter nervously and opened this one with fear and trembling. The combination, after such an interval, transported Patty with delight, and she ran over at once to show the letter to Mrs. Ladue. It was the only one that she did show to Mrs. Ladue, for all the others either were evidently dictated by a necessity more or less dire, or they referred to previous "loans"

of which Mrs. Ladue and Sally knew nothing. Patty always managed to supply his needs, although sometimes with extreme difficulty and with a great casting up of accounts, in which process many perfectly good pencils were consumed in a manner for which they were not intended. If the makers of pencils had designed them for such use, they would have made them with lolly-pops or chewing-gum on one end.

Charlie's letters to Patty were triumphs of art, and would have made his scholastic fortune if they could have been presented as daily themes. If they were not always free from error, they were always readable and the matter was treated in a way which unfailingly would have been of interest to any one but Patty, and they showed evidence of a lively and well-nourished imagination which was not allowed to become atrophied. "William Henry's Letters to his Grandmother,"

although of a somewhat different nature, were not a patch upon them.

But Patty was too much concerned about the matter treated in these letters to be interested in their literary value; and, besides, she was not in a position to know the extent of the exercise to which Charlie's imagination was subjected in the course of composition. Her own imagination was not without exercise, for she had to finance his requests.

Patty's financing, that winter, would have done credit to a promoter.

She had already succeeded in getting herself involved deeply with the builder who was repairing her house and with d.i.c.k, although d.i.c.k was as yet in blissful ignorance of the fact. The builder had been paid but very little since Christmas; but he, being an elderly man who had known her father well, and who, accordingly, trusted any member of the family implicitly, had said nothing yet. Patty wondered, with some fear and trembling, how much longer he would go on without saying anything. And then she put the whole matter aside. She could not see her way out yet.

It was not that she considered the repairs upon her house, which amounted almost to rebuilding, as properly any business of d.i.c.k's.

But, unaccountably and inscrutably to Patty, if not to her friends and acquaintances, her father had given Richard Torrington great discretion, under his will. The Richard aforesaid was even empowered to keep the management of all Patty's property and to give her no more than a stated allowance, if he saw good reason to do so. Mr. Hazen had made him virtually a trustee, perhaps actually; but, so far, he seemed to regard himself as no more than the channel through which Patty's money must necessarily flow and he honored all her requests, asking only that she tell him the general purpose to which the money was to be applied.

In consequence of this situation, there had been certain checks signed by Richard Torrington, Executor, designed to be applied to payments upon the house. Several of these checks had been hypothecated by Patty and diverted to other uses. Possibly Charlie Ladue could have given some information as to those uses. Certainly Patty could not. She knew nothing at all of the ultimate purposes to which her money was put.

For that matter, Charlie's knowledge went only one step farther. He was nothing but a channel through which Patty's money necessarily flowed. A good, generous sewer-pipe would have served as well, for all the good that the money did him; and the process was rapidly undermining Patty's morals.

It was a great pity that Patty had chosen this method of supply. As long as she was bound to keep Charlie supplied with whatever he asked for, or as nearly as she could come to that, it would have been much better to ask d.i.c.k to double her allowance for her personal use. He might have wondered at such a request, but he would have done it without question, and thereby Patty's self-respect would have been saved without producing any effect upon Charlie's in either way. One wonders whether Charlie had any shreds of self-respect left, anyway.

So it is difficult to say whether Patty looked forward with greater joy than dread to Charlie's coming home for the Easter recess. For some weeks he had kept her stirred up by his requests, but these requests were for relatively small sums, ten dollars or twenty-five, and once he asked for fifty. But for ten days before his vacation, he had asked her for nothing, and her fears were forgotten.

When, at last, the Easter recess began, Charlie appeared promptly on the afternoon when he should have appeared and he looked neither forlorn nor seedy. To a careful eye, a loving eye, watching him for some days, he might have seemed to be possessed of an anxiety which he took pains to conceal; but it was an elusive thing and, if he chose to deny its existence, how was one to prove it?

Sally thought that she detected something, she could not tell just what, and she asked her mother, casually, whether she had noticed anything.

Mrs. Ladue looked up quickly. "I can't tell, Sally," she replied. "I thought I did, and I spoke to Charlie about it, but he a.s.sured me that there was nothing wrong and that it must be all my imagination. I couldn't press the question. To tell the truth, I was afraid to. He seems to have no disposition to confide in me and to have a low opinion of my judgment, but I shouldn't like to have him say so.

If--if you could speak to him--"

"Very well," said Sally, sighing wearily, "I will, although I have no hope of accomplishing anything by it--except arousing his suspicion,"

she added with a short laugh, "if there is anything which worries him and which he is unwilling to tell. We are not in Charlie's confidence."

"We have not been--_I_ have not been in his confidence for eleven years--since I was taken sick." Mrs. Ladue sighed in her turn. "He seems like a stranger. I haven't been able to get near him. But he seems to be rather afraid of your judgment, Sally."

"That's not a great help," Sally remarked with another short laugh, "in getting near him, is it? But I'll try."

Accordingly Sally asked him whether--she was careful to put the question in as natural a form as possible and she tried to make it seem casual, too--she asked him whether there was anything he would like to have them do for him. It is not likely that she succeeded thoroughly in either of these attempts, for Charlie only looked startled and answered that he didn't think there was anything. And he added that he was a little anxious about his reports. If they were not as good as they might be, he hoped that mother would not be too much disappointed. And Sally had shrugged a little and smiled a little and shown a little of the contempt which she always felt for lying. She did not know that Charlie was lying, but she felt that he was, and she could not have helped that little smile of contempt to save her life.

But Charlie did not recognize her smile as one of contempt. He went off to see Patty, smiling and patting himself on the back for having thrown Sally off the scent so cleverly.

It is not to be supposed that either Mrs. Ladue or Sally was so lacking in natural affection that she let Charlie go on the way he was going without a struggle--without several struggles. Not that they knew just the way he was going, but they knew very well that they had lost all their control over him; the control which is due to a mutual love. It was Charlie who had shown a lack of natural affection. His mother had struggled in vain against that lack and against the effect of Patty's indulgence. As for Sally, if the love and regard of ten or twelve years before, a love very like a mother's, had been changed insensibly into the tolerant contempt of the strong for the weak--not always perfectly tolerant, I am afraid--Charlie had only himself to blame. But, as for blaming himself--pfooh! Much he cared!

CHAPTER XIV

Charlie stood by the mantel in Patty's room, in such an att.i.tude as he imagined that Everett might take, under similar circ.u.mstances, and he was trying to look troubled. It was an imitation mantel by which he stood, being no more than a marble slab set upon iron brackets; for the real mantel, of wood, which had surrounded a real fireplace of generous proportions, had been removed when the fireplace had been bricked up and a register inserted. That register, of the regulation black, now stared at Miss Patty as she sat facing Charlie, and it emitted a thin column of faintly warm air. Altogether, it was a poor subst.i.tute for a fire and a gloomy thing to contemplate. Charlie's att.i.tude, too, as has been intimated, was but an imitation. His trouble was no imitation, though, and his attempt to look troubled succeeded beyond his fondest hopes.

Patty had been looking at him for some time, growing more anxious every minute. Charlie had said nothing at all, but had kept his eyes fixed upon the distance; upon such distance as he could get through Patty's window. That was not so very much, the distance being limited by the house across the street, perhaps sixty feet away. At intervals he sighed heavily, the time between sighs apparently--to Patty, at least, his only hearer--apparently occupied by equally heavy thinking.

At last Patty could stand it no longer. "What is it, Charlie, dear?"

she asked in a voice which trembled a little. "What is the matter, dear boy?"

Charlie forced a smile, his frown disappeared for an instant, and he brought his gaze back, with a great effort, a superhuman effort, to things near at hand: eventually to Patty herself.

"Oh, nothing," he said gently. "Nothing at all." And he resumed his gazing at the front of that house, sixty feet away, and his frowning and his sighing and his heavy thinking.

Patty was silent for some minutes. "Won't you tell me?" she asked then. "I am sure there must be something which troubles you. You know you can count on my sympathy."

Charlie went through the same process as before. It took time. "What did you say?" he said absently, when his look had, at last, come down to Patty. "Sympathy? I'm afraid that won't do me much good." He smiled; a smile that was meant to be pitiful. "But, no. There's nothing the matter. Nothing at all, I a.s.sure you. It's all my own fault anyway; my misfortune, rather," he added, so low that Patty barely heard, and she thought that the words were not meant for her ears. That was exactly in accordance with Charlie's intention.

"Charlie!" she cried. "Charlie! You've got to tell me. I heard those last words which you didn't mean me to hear. Now, you've got to tell me." Her voice trembled more than ever.

Charlie could not seem to resist this plea. He looked at her pityingly, and he drew a long breath.

"Well, Pat," he said--Pat was his pet name for her, used only under stress--"well, Pat, if you must have it, then here goes. I'm only out, for this vacation, on bail. I've got to--"