"Well, your mother would know best. Put that question to her next time she comes in--I'm not competent to answer it. And now let us go to bed--you are tired out, and so am I."

CHAPTER IX

Mysterious things are happening in Kennedy Square. Only the very wisest men know what it is all about--black Moses for one, who tramps the brick walks and makes short cuts through the dirt paths, carrying his tin buckets and shouting: "Po' ole Moses--po' ole fellah! O-Y-S-T-E-R-S!

O-Y-STERS!" And Bobbins, the gardener, who raked up last year's autumn leaves and either burned them in piles or spread them on the flower-beds as winter blankets. And, of course, Mockburn, the night watchman: nothing ever happens in and around Kennedy Square that Mockburn doesn't know of. Many a time has he helped various unsteady gentlemen up the steps of their houses and stowed them carefully and noiselessly away inside, only to begin his rounds again, stopping at every corner to drone out his "All's we-l-l!" a welcome cry, no doubt, to the stowaways, but a totally unnecessary piece of information to the inhabitants, nothing worse than a tippler's tumble having happened in the forty years of the old watchman's service.

I, of course, am in the secret of the mysterious happenings and have been for more years than I care to admit, but then I go ten better than Mockburn. And so would you be in the secret had you watched the process as closely as I have done.

It is always the same!

First the crocuses peep out--dozens of crocuses. Then a spread of tulips makes a crazy-quilt of a flowerbed; next the baby buds, their delicate green toes tickled by the south wind, break into laughter. Then the stately magnolias step free of their pods, their satin leaves falling from their alabaster shoulders--grandes dames these magnolias! And then there is no stopping it: everything is let loose; blossoms of peach, cherry, and pear; flowers of syringa--bloom of jasmine, honeysuckle, and Virginia creeper; bridal wreath in flowers of white and wistaria in festoons of purple.

Then come the roses--millions of roses; on single stalks; in cl.u.s.ters, in mobs; rushing over summer-houses, scaling fences, swarming up trellises--a riotous, unruly, irresistible, and altogether lovable lot these roses when they break loose!

And the birds! What a time they are having--thrush, bobolinks, blackbirds, nightingales, woodp.e.c.k.e.rs, little pee-wees, all fluttering, skimming, chirping; bursting their tiny throats for the very joy of living. And they are all welcome--and it wouldn't make any difference to them if they hadn't been; they would have risked it anyway, so tempting are the shady paths and tangled arbors and wide-spreading elms and b.u.t.ternuts of Kennedy Square.

Soon the skies get over weeping for the lost winter and dry their eyes, and the big, warm, happy sun sails over the tree-tops or drops to sleep, tired out, behind the old Seymour house, and the girls come out in their white dresses and silk sashes and the gallants in their nankeens and pumps and the old life of out-of-doors begins once more.

And these are not the only changes that the coming of spring has wrought. What has been going on deep down in the tender, expectant hearts of root and bulb, eager for expression, had been at work in Harry's own temperament. The sunshine of St. George's companionship has already had its effect; the boy is thawing out; his shrinking shyness, born of his recent trouble, is disappearing like a morning frost. He is again seen at the club, going first under St. George's lee and then on his own personal footing.

The Chesapeake, so St. George had urged upon him, was the centre of news--the headquarters, really, of the town, where not only the current happenings and gossip of Kennedy Square were discussed, but that of the country at large. While the bald-heads, of course, would be canva.s.sing the news from Mexico, which was just beginning to have an ugly look, or having it out, hammer and tongs, over the defeat of Henry Clay, to which some rabid politicians had never become reconciled, the younger gentry--men of Harry's own tastes--would be deploring the poor showing the ducks were making, owing to the up-river freshets which had spoiled the wild celery; or recounting the doings at Mrs. Cheston's last ball; or the terrapin supper at Mr. Kennedy's, the famous writer; or perhaps bemoaning the calamity which had befallen some fellow member who had just found seven bottles out of ten of his most precious port corked and worthless. But whatever the topics, or whoever took sides in their discussion, none of it, so St. George argued, could fail to interest a young fellow just entering upon the wider life of a man of the world, and one, of all others, who needed constant companionship. Then again, by showing himself frequently within its walls, Harry would become better known and better liked.

That he was ineligible for membership, being years too young, and that his continued presence, even as a guest, was against the rules, did not count in his case, or if it did count, no member, in view of what the lad had suffered, was willing to raise the question. Indeed, St. George, in first introducing him, had referred to "my friend, Mr. Rutter," as an "out of town guest," laughing as he did so, everybody laughing in return, and so it had gone at that.

At first Harry had dreaded meeting his father's and his uncle's friends, most of whom, he fancied, might be disposed to judge him too harshly.

But St. George had shut his ears to every objection, insisting that the club was a place where a man could be as independent as he pleased, and that as his guest he would be ent.i.tled to every consideration.

The boy need not have been worried. Almost every member, young and old, showed by his manner or some little act of attention that their sympathies were with the exile. While a few strait-laced old Quakers maintained that it was criminal to blaze away at your fellow-man with the firm intention of blowing the top of his head off, and that Harry should have been hung had Willits died, there were others more discerning--and they were largely in the majority--who stood up for the lad however much they deplored the cause of his banishment. Harry, they argued, had in his brief career been an unbroken colt, and more or less dissipated, but he at least had not shown the white feather. Boy as he was, he had faced his antagonist with the coolness of a duellist of a score of encounters, letting Willits fire straight at him without so much as the wink of an eyelid; and, when it was all over, had been man enough to nurse his victim back to consciousness. Moreover--and this counted much in his favor--he had refused to quarrel with his irate father, or even answer him. "Behaved himself like a thoroughbred, as he is," Dorsey Sullivan, a famous duellist, had remarked in recounting the occurrence to a non-witness. "And I must say, sir, that Talbot served him a scurvy trick, and I don't care who hears me say it."

Furthermore--and this made a great impression--that rather than humiliate himself, the boy had abandoned the comforts of his palatial home at Moorlands and was at the moment occupying a small, second-story back room (all, it is true, Gentleman George could give him), where he was to be found any hour of the day or night that his uncle needed him in attendance upon that prince of good fellows.

One other thing that counted in his favor, and this was conclusive with the Quakers--and the club held not a few--was that no drop of liquor of any kind had pa.s.sed the boy's lips since the eventful night when St.

George prepared the way for their first reconciliation.

Summed up, then, whatever Harry had been in the past, the verdict at the present speaking was that he was a brave, tender-hearted, truthful fellow who, in the face of every temptation, had kept his word.

Moreover, it was never forgotten that he was Colonel Talbot Rutter's only son and heir, so that no matter what the boy did, or how angry the old autocrat might be, it could only be a question of time before his father must send for him and everything at Moorlands go on as before.

It was on one of these glorious never-to-be-forgotten spring days, then, a week or more after St. George had given up the fight with Kate--a day which Harry remembered all the rest of his life--that he and his uncle left the house to spend the afternoon, as was now their custom, at the Chesapeake. The two had pa.s.sed the early hours of the day at the Relay House fishing for gudgeons, the dogs scampering the hills, and having changed their clothes for something cooler, had entered the park by the gate opposite the Temple Mansion, as being nearest to the club; a path Harry loved, for he and Kate had often stepped it together--and then again, it was the shortest cut to her house.

As the beauty and quiet of the place with its mottling of light and shade took possession of him he slackened his pace, lagging a little behind his uncle, and began to look about him, drinking in the loveliness of the season. The very air breathed tenderness, peace, and comfort. Certainly his father's heart must be softening toward him; surely his bitterness could not last. No word, it is true, had yet come to him from Moorlands, though only the week before his mother had been in to see him, bringing him news of his father and what her son's absence had meant to every one, old Alec especially. She had not, she said, revived the subject of the boy's apology; she had thought it better to wait for the proper opportunity, which might come any day, but certain it was that his father was most unhappy, for he would shut himself up hours at a time in his library, locking the door and refusing to open it, no matter who knocked, except to old John Gorsuch, his man of business. She had also heard him tossing on his bed at night, or walking about his room muttering to himself.

Did these things, he wondered on this bright spring morning, mean a final reconciliation, or was he, after all, to be doomed to further disappointment? Days had pa.s.sed since his mother had a.s.sured him of this change in his father, and still no word had come from him. Had he at last altered his mind, or, worse still, had his old obstinacy again taken possession of him, hardening his heart so that he would never relent? And so, with his mind as checkered as the shadow-flecked path on which they stepped, he pursued his way beneath the wide-spreading trees.

When the two had crossed the street St. George's eye rested upon a group on the sidewalk of the club. The summer weather generally emptied the coffee-room of most of its habitues, sending many of them to the easy-chairs on the sprinkled pavement, one or two tipped back against the trees, or to the balconies and front steps. With his arm in Harry's he pa.s.sed from one coterie to another in the hope that he might catch some word which would be interesting enough to induce him to fill one of the chairs, even for a brief half-hour, but nothing reached his ears except politics and crops, and he cared for neither. Harding--the pessimist of the club--a man who always had a grievance (and this time with reason, for the money stringency was becoming more acute every day), tried to beguile him into a seat beside him, but he shook his head. He knew all about Harding, and wanted none of his kind of talk--certainly not to-day.

"Think of it!" he had heard the growler say to Judge Pancoast as he was about to pa.s.s his chair--"the Patapsco won't give me a cent to move my crops, and I hear all the others are in the same fix. You can't get a dollar on a house and lot except at a frightful rate of interest. I tell you everything is going to ruin. How the devil do you get on without money, Temple?" He was spread out in his seat, his legs apart, his fat face turned up, his small fox eyes fixed on St. George.

"I don't get on," remarked St. George with a dry smile. He was still standing. "Why do you ask?" Money rarely troubled St. George; such small sums as he possessed were hived in this same Pataps...o...b..nk, but the cashier had never refused to honor one of his checks as long as he had any money in their vaults, and he didn't think they would begin now.

"Queer question for you to ask, Harding" (and a trifle underbred, he thought, one's private affairs not being generally discussed at a club).

"Why does it interest you?"

"Well, you always say you despise money and yet you seem happy and contented, well dressed, well groomed"--here he wheeled St.

George around to look at his back--"yes, got on one of your London coats--h.e.l.lo, Harry!--glad to see you," and he held out his hand to the boy. "But really, St. George, aren't you a little worried over the financial outlook? John Gorsuch says we are going to have trouble, and John knows."

"No"--drawled St. George--"I'm not worried."

"And you don't think we're going to have another smash-up?" puffed Harding.

"No," said St. George, edging his way toward the steps of the club as he spoke. He was now entirely through with Harding; his financial forebodings were as distasteful to him as his comments on his clothes and bank account.

"But you'll have a julep, won't you? I've just sent John for them. Don't go--sit down. Here, John, take Mr. Temple's order for--"

"No, Harding, thank you." The crushed ice in the gla.s.s was no cooler nor crisper than St. George's tone. "Harry and I have been broiling in the sun all the morning and we are going to go where it is cool."

"But it's cool here," Harding called after him, struggling to his feet in the effort to detain him. There was really no one in the club he liked better than St. George.

"No--we'll try it inside," and with a courteous wave of his hand and a feeling of relief in his heart, he and Harry kept on their way.

He turned to mount the steps when the sudden pushing back of all the chairs on the sidewalk attracted his attention. Two ladies were picking their way across the street in the direction of the club. These, on closer inspection, proved to be Miss Lavinia Clendenning and her niece, Sue Dorsey, who had been descried in the offing a few minutes before by the gallants on the curbstone, and who at first had been supposed to be heading for Mrs. Pancoast's front steps some distance away, until the pair, turning sharply, had borne down upon the outside chairs with all sails set--(Miss Clendenning's skirts were of the widest)--a shift of canvas which sent every man to his feet with a spring.

Before St. George could reach the group, which he did in advance of Harry, who held back--both ladies being intimate friends of Kate's--old Captain Warfield, the first man to gain his feet--very round and fat was the captain and very red in the face (1812 Port)--was saying with his most courteous bow:

"But, my dear Miss Lavinia, you have not as yet told us to what we are indebted for this mark of your graciousness; and Sue, my dear, you grow more like your dear mother every day. Why are you two angels abroad at this hour, and what can we do for you?"

"To the simple fact, my dear captain," retorted the irresistible spinster, spreading her skirts the wider, both arms akimbo--her thin fingers acting as clothespins, "that Sue is to take her dancing lesson next door, and as I can't fly in the second-story window, having mislaid my wings, I must use my feet and disturb everybody. No, gentlemen--don't move--I can pa.s.s."

The captain made so profound a salaam in reply that his hat grazed the bricks of the sidewalk.

"Let me hunt for them, Miss Lavinia. I know where they are!" he exclaimed, with his hand on his heart.

"Where?" she asked roguishly, twisting her head on one side with the movement of a listening bird.

"In heaven, my lady, where they are waiting your arrival," he answered, with another profound sweep of his hand and dip of his back, his bald head glistening in the sunlight as he stooped before her.

"Then you will never get near them," she returned with an equally low curtsy and a laugh that nearly shook her side curls loose.

St. George was about to step the closer to take a hand in the badinage--he and the little old maid were forever crossing swords--when her eyes fell upon him. Instantly her expression changed. She was one of the women who had blamed him for not stopping the duel, and had been on the lookout for him for days to air her views in person.

"So you are still in town, are you?" she remarked frigidly in lowered tones. "I thought you had taken that young firebrand down to the Eastern Sh.o.r.e to cool off."

St. George frowned meaningly in the effort to apprise her ladyship that Harry was within hearing distance, but Miss Lavinia either did not, or would not, understand.