SHE and Bob met thereafter at the rehearsals. There were few opportunities for confidential chats like that on the Nickerson porch during the storm, but occasionally he saw a chance to sit beside her on a settee when the others were busy and whenever he did he seized it. On one occasion he brought a few of his sketches to the vestry and showed them to her. They were clever—even to a critical eye they would have shown promise—and to her they seemed wonderful. He told her that he had hired an empty shed belonging to Tobias Eldridge on the beach near the latter’s property at South Harniss and was to use it as a studio during the summer months.
“It’s a ripping place,” he declared, with enthusiasm. “Cheap, and off by itself, you know, and looking right out to sea. I can draw and paint there, and have a gorgeous time. It is far enough from home so that I won’t be bothered with a lot of people I know dropping in and interrupting and I can have a model once in a while, if I need one. Two or three of the fishermen have posed for me already. They are good fellows. I like to hear them talk. I want you to come down and let me make that sketch of you in your costume some afternoon pretty soon. Will you? The place smells a little of fish, but you won’t mind that.”
She would not have minded the fish, but she would not promise to visit the beach studio. At the next rehearsal he confided another bit of news.
“I’ve begun that portrait of you,” he said. “Just roughed it in—from memory, you know—but it is going to be good, I can see that already. Oh, you needn’t laugh! I sound pretty cocky, perhaps, but—well, I am cocky about that sketch. It looks like you; honest it does!”
She laughed again. “You haven’t seen me more than a half dozen times altogether,” she said. “If your portrait looks like me you must have a pretty good memory, I should say.”
He nodded contentedly. “I have—for some people,” he declared. His tone was so emphatic, that, although she still laughed, the color rose to her cheeks. She changed the subject.
The evening of the Old Folks’ Concert was clear and balmy and the town hall was packed to the doors. Esther, sitting on the platform, with the other singers and looking out over the audience, after the curtain rose, saw many strange faces—faces which did not belong to Harniss—as well as the familiar ones. In a front seat she saw her uncle, big, commanding, much stared at and quite careless of the stares, the flower she had put in the button-hole of his blue serge coat still in place, his gold-headed cane, presented to him by the committee of cranberry growers after the passage of the much-discussed “cranberry bill,” between his knees. Nearby were Reliance Clark and Millard, also Mr. and Mrs. Varunas Gifford, Captain Ben Snow and wife, Abbie Makepeace, and many others whom she knew almost as well.
Mr. Cornelius Gott, the undertaker’s assistant and local music teacher, conducted. Nabby, whispering across her husband’s shoulder to Miss Makepeace, commented upon his appearance. “Looks just as much like a tombstone as he always does, don’t he?” she said. “Them old-fashioned clothes ain’t took that out of him a mite, have they? You’d think he was standin’ up there ready to show folks to their seats at George Washin’ton’s funeral, or somethin’.”
The opening chorus was received with loud applause. So was Marjorie Wheeler’s first solo. Marjorie’s voice lacked only depth, height, purity and strength to be very fine indeed, but her play of eye and brow was animated and her self-confidence supreme. She was handed a large bouquet over the tin reflectors of the footlights when she finished.
Esther Townsend’s confidence was by no means so assured. She was suffering from stage fright when she stepped forward for her first number. She had sung often before gatherings at the Conservatory and in Mrs. Carter’s parlor, but this was different. It was the first time she had appeared in public in her native town since she was a little girl singing in Sunday School concerts. For just an instant her voice trembled, then it rose clear and sweet and liquidly pure, in an old-fashioned Scottish folk song. There was nothing merely polite or perfunctory in the plaudits at its end. The audience clapped and pounded and demanded an encore. Reliance’s round, wholesome face shone, although her eyes were damp. Millard stood up when he applauded. It was a great evening for Millard. The fierce light which beats upon thrones was casting a ray or two in his direction and if strangers were whispering: “Who, did you say? Oh, her uncle! I see.” If they were saying that—and some were—Mr. Clark had no objections.
Foster Townsend did not applaud—with hands, feet or the gold-headed cane. His expression was calm. Nevertheless, he was the proudest person in that hall.
Yes, it was Esther Townsend’s evening, every unprejudiced witness of her triumph said so. Mrs. Wheeler was a trifle condescending in her congratulations and Marjorie did not offer any, but Esther did not mind. Quite conscious that she made a charming picture in Grandmother Townsend’s gown and aware that she had sung her best, she was happy. People wished to shake hands with her—the “best people” and many of them—and her lifelong acquaintances and friends crowded about to say pleasant things. Reliance did not say much. “I can’t, dearie,” she whispered. “My, but I’m proud of you, though!” Millard would have said much, and said it stentoriously, if his half-sister had not dragged him away. Nabby Gifford cackled like a hen. Varunas’s praise was characteristic.
“You done well, Esther,” he declared. “I knew you would. They can’t lick us Townsends, trottin’, nor pacin’, nor singin’, nor nothin’ else, by Judas! You had ’em all beat afore the end of the first lap, and you didn’t have to bust any britchin’ to do it neither.”
Not until after the final curtain fell did she see Bob Griffin and then but for a moment. He pushed through the group of perspiring performers—wigs and padded coats and flounces and furbelows are warm wearing in summer at the rear of a row of blazing kerosene lamps—and caught her hand. His eyes were shining.
“You were great!” he whispered. “By George, you were great! Wait till you see what I can do with that portrait after this! You are coming down to see it. Oh, yes! you are. I’ll just make you.”
The carriage was fragrant with flowers when she and Foster Townsend entered it. He put his arm about her shoulder.
“Good girl!” he said with, for him, unusual emphasis. “Good girl, Esther! This settles it so far as that Paris cruise of ours is concerned. It would be a crime to keep you from getting the best teaching there is after you’ve shown us what you can do with what you’ve had. Hang on to your patience till that blasted lawsuit is out of the way, and then we’ll heave anchor.”
The flowers were brought into the library and examined there. Each cluster had a card attached except one. The biggest and finest was from Foster Townsend himself. Esther gave him a hug and kiss.
“They’re dear, Uncle Foster,” she declared. “Thank you ever so much.”
As usual he turned the thanks into a joke.
“‘Dear’ is the right word,” he observed, with a twinkle. “I had ’em sent down from Boston. Must fertilize those greenhouses with dollar bills, I guess. Never mind. Considering what you gave us for ’em they were cheap at the price.”
The floral tribute which bore no card was a bunch of pink rosebuds. Townsend turned them over, searching for the name of the donor.
“Humph!” he grunted. “Wonder who these came from. They don’t seem to be labeled. Do you know who gave you these, Esther?”
Esther said she did not know. The statement was true as far as it went. If he had asked her to guess it might have been harder to answer. She did not know who had sent the rosebuds, but she remembered a conversation with Bob Griffin, during which she had expressed a love for the old-fashioned “tea” rose. And these were tea roses. She was glad that her uncle’s question was framed as it was and that his curiosity was not persistent.
She and Bob did not meet again during the following week. Then, one morning, she found amid the Townsend mail which Varunas had brought up from the post office and left, as was his custom, upon the library table, an envelope bearing her name in an unfamiliar hand. Letters and notes were by no means novelties for her now. She had become a very popular young lady and invitations to all sorts of social affairs, not only in Harniss but in Bayport and Orham and Denboro, were frequent. Wondering what this particular note might be she tore open the envelope. The enclosure was brief.
“Dear Esther,” she read. “The portrait sketch is done, all but the finishing touches. I am waiting for you before I tackle those. Can’t you come down to the shanty some afternoon soon? I shall be there all this week. I won’t keep you long, but you just must see the thing. It is pretty darned good, if I do say so. Now do come. I shall expect you.
“R. G.”
She tucked the note into the bosom of her dress, thankful that neither her uncle nor Nabby was there to ask troublesome questions. Of course she should not go to the “shanty,” as Griffin irreverently named his ’longshore studio. Uncle Foster would not like it if she did—that is, she was almost sure he would not. Other than that there was, of course, no reason why she should not go. She did wish she might see the drawing, or sketch, or painting, or whatever it was. It was a portrait of her and, naturally, she would like just a glimpse of it. Any girl would. And Bob was so certain that it was good. If her uncle were any one else—if it was not for that lawsuit and his quarrel with old Mr. Cook— But, after all, and as Bob had said that afternoon of the storm, the lawsuit hadn’t anything to do with them; they were not responsible for it. Bob Griffin was a nice boy, every one said so. She had half a mind—
By the next day the half a mind had become a whole one. After dinner—Foster Townsend was again away, at Ostable on business connected with the suit—she told Nabby she was going for a walk and left the house. Half an hour later she knocked at the door of the rickety building on the beach near—but fortunately out of sight from—the Tobias Eldridge house. Bob himself opened the door. He greeted her with a whoop of delight.
“So you did come, didn’t you!” he crowed. “I thought you would. I knew you had sense and a mind of your own. Come in! Come in! It is all ready for you to look at.”
The portrait was on an easel in the middle of the dusty, littered floor. It was an oil sketch in full color and she could not repress an exclamation of delighted surprise when she saw it. There she was, in Grandmother Townsend’s gown, smiling from the canvas, and very, very good to look upon, a fact of which she was quite as conscious as the artist.
“Oh!” she cried. And then again. “Oh!”
He laughed, triumphantly. “Told you it wasn’t so bad, didn’t I?” he demanded. “It isn’t finished. There are some points about the face which don’t exactly suit me yet, but we can fix that in a hurry, now that you are here. Come now, what do you think of it?”
She thought it marvelous and said so.
“I don’t see how you ever remembered about the dress and the funny little bonnet,” she said. “Even the lace and the trimming are just right. How could you remember?”
He laughed again. “It wasn’t memory altogether,” he told her. “I got a copy of the photograph of the crowd which was taken the afternoon of the dress rehearsal and I worked from that. Then, besides, I made no less than three quick sketches of you in that costume. Once when you put it on for the committee to see; once when you were singing at the dress rehearsal; and the last and best the night of the concert. I was behind the scenes, no one was watching me and I had a great chance.”
The mention of the event reminded her. She turned to look at him.
“You sent me those tea roses, didn’t you?” she asked.
He nodded. “They should have been orchids,” he declared. “Would have been if I could have afforded the price. But you told me once that you liked those old-fashioned roses. Hope you did like ’em.”
“They were darlings. But you shouldn’t have given them to me.”
“Why not? I didn’t put my name on them, but I hoped you would guess. Nobody else guessed, did they?” he added, a trifle anxiously.
“No-o. No.... Well,” with a sudden turn of the subject. “I must go now. I think the portrait is splendid and I am glad I have seen it. Good afternoon.”
His change of expression was funny.
“Go!” he repeated, in alarm. “Of course you’re not going yet! Why, what I really wanted you to come here for was to pose for me just a little. The mouth—and the eyes—why, you can see for yourself they’re not right. Now, can’t you?”
She hesitated. “Well,” she admitted, “of course they are not just like mine, but—”
He interrupted. “But we’ll make ’em like yours,” he vowed. “Now you sit down over there—on that chair, where I can get the light as it is in the photograph. The chair is a good deal of a wreck, like about everything else in this ruin, but I guess it will hold you. You see, I want to get—”
And now she interrupted. “Oh, no, I mustn’t!” she protested, hurriedly. “I mustn’t stay, really. Please don’t ask me to.”
“But I do ask you. I’ve got to ask you. This is by miles the best thing I’ve ever done and I want to make it as near perfect as I can. Oh, say, Esther; you’ll give me my chance, won’t you? I don’t believe it will take very long.”
She hesitated. It seemed cruel to refuse.
“We-ll,” she yielded, “if you are sure it won’t? Just a few minutes—”
So the posing began. She sat in the wobbly chair, the afternoon sunshine streaming in through the cobwebbed window, while he painted at top speed, chatting all the time. He told of his struggles with his beloved studies, of his hopes and ambitions, and gradually drew her into talking of her own. At last she sprang to her feet.
“There!” she cried. “I must not stay another second. It is—oh, good gracious! It is after four now. Where has the time gone?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know,” he replied. “Well, there! it isn’t right yet—we must have some more sittings—but it is better. Don’t you think so?”
It was better, but even she could see that it was by no means perfect.
“Can’t you come to-morrow?” he begged.
“No. I don’t see how I can. You see—”
“Then the next day. We’ve got to get it right, haven’t we.... If I am going to give you this thing I want it to be as good as I can make it.”
She clasped her hands. “You are going to give it to me?” she repeated.
“Of course I am. I’ll probably want to show it a little first. One of my teachers—oh, he is a corker!—I wish you could see his stuff—has a summer studio in Wapatomac and he must have a look at it, sure. But, after that, it is going to be yours—if you want it.”
“Want it! I should love it! But—but I don’t see how it can ever be mine. I live with Uncle Foster and—well, you know.”
He frowned. “That’s so,” he admitted. “I suppose there would be the deuce to pay if he knew I painted it for you. Don’t suppose he would want it himself, do you? I needn’t give it to him, but you could.”
Her eyes flashed. “Why—why, that would be—it might be just the thing!” she exclaimed. “His birthday is the third of next month and—and I could give it to him as a birthday present, couldn’t I? He says he wants a new photograph of me, and this is ever so much better than a photograph. Of course, as you painted it, and you are a Cook, he might not—”
Bob broke in. “It might help to show him that the Cooks are good for something, after all,” he suggested, laughing but eager. “It might—why, by George!—Esther, if we can get it just right, it might help to soften down this family row of ours a little bit. If it did—well, it looks to me as if it were worth trying.”
She was by no means confident, but inclination conquered judgment.
“Perhaps it might help a little,” she agreed. “But can you finish it in time for Uncle Foster’s birthday?”
“Of course I can, and time enough to show to my Wapatomac man, too. But I must have those sittings. You’ll come day after to-morrow, won’t you?”
Again she hesitated, but in the end she promised. She came that day and on other days. And with each session in the shanty she grew to know Bob Griffin better and to like him better. And, now fortified by the reasonable excuse that the presentation of the portrait was to be his birthday surprise, she said no word to her uncle nor to any one of her growing intimacy with Elisha Cook’s grandson. And the secret might have been kept until the birthday had not Fate, disguised as Millard Fillmore Clark, interfered.
Mr. Clark, as a usual thing, kept away from the Townsend mansion and its environs. He had never been known to refuse an invitation to dine there and might have made his niece’s presence an excuse for spending much time on the premises had not several pointed hints from Captain Foster, backed by peremptory orders from Reliance, made him aware of the possibility that frequent visits might not be welcome.
“I’d like to know why I can’t stop in once in a while, just to pass the time of day if nothin’ more,” he protested, indignantly, on one occasion. “Esther’s my relation, just as much as she is Foster Townsend’s, as far as that goes. I feel about as much responsibility for her as I ever did. No sense in it, I know, but I can’t get over it. Maybe I don’t forget as easy as some folks seem to.”
Reliance, who was preparing the outgoing mail, kept on with her work.
“I’m glad of that,” she observed, calmly. “Then of course you haven’t forgotten what Varunas Gifford called you the last time you were hangin’ around the stable in his way. I should think that ought to stick in your memory. It would in mine.”
Millard drew himself up. “Varunas Gifford is nothin’ but a—a no-account horse jockey,” he declared. “And maybe you didn’t hear what I called him back.”
“Maybe he didn’t, either. Or perhaps he did; I recollect you looked as if you’d come home in a hurry that day. There, there! Don’t you let me hear again of your trottin’ at Foster Townsend’s heels, tryin’ to curry favor. When he wants us at his house he invites us to come there. Yes, and sometimes when he doesn’t want us, I shouldn’t wonder. Behave yourself, Millard. If you don’t know what self-respect is, look it up in the dictionary.”
So Millard, although he boasted much, at the store and about town, of his intimacy with the great man, dared not presume upon it. Therefore Foster Townsend was surprised to be accosted by him outside the post office one afternoon and to learn that Mr. Clark had something important to tell him.
“Well, what is it?” he asked, impatiently. “Heave ahead with it. I’m in a hurry.”
Millard looked cautiously over his shoulder.
“Don’t speak so loud, Cap’n Foster,” he whispered. “Reliance is inside there and she’s got the door open. I haven’t told her what ’tis. I haven’t told anybody.”
“All right. Then I wouldn’t bother to tell me. Keep it to yourself.”
“No, I ain’t goin’ to keep it to myself. It’s somethin’ you ought to know and—and bein’ as I’m one of the family, as you might say, I think it’s my—er—well, duty, to tell you. It’s about Esther.”
Townsend jerked his sleeve from the Clark grasp. He frowned.
“Esther?” he repeated, sharply. “What business have you got with Esther’s affairs?”
“Why—why, I don’t know’s I’ve got any, maybe—except that she’s one of my relations and I think a sight of her.... Now, hold on! Listen, Cap’n Foster! She’s seein’ that Griffin feller, old Cook’s grandson, from Denboro, about every day or so. He’s got that fish shanty of Tobe Eldridge’s—hires it to paint his fool pictures in, so Tobe says—and he’s been paintin’ a picture of Esther and she goes there about every afternoon. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t—”
Foster Townsend interrupted. “Here!” he ordered. “Wait! Come over here!”
He seized Millard by the arm and led him down the sidewalk to the shelter of a clump of lilacs at the end of the Clark picket fence.
“Now tell me what you are talking about,” he commanded.
Millard told him. Mrs. Tobias Eldridge had seen Esther pass the house one afternoon and had wondered where the girl was going. Two days later she saw her pass again and this time her curiosity had prompted her to go out by the back door and to the knoll behind the henhouse from which she could look up the beach. She had seen Esther knock at the door of the shanty and had heard Bob Griffin’s greeting. She told her husband and he, a few days later, mentioned it to Clark.
“Naturally I was consider’bly interested,” went on Millard. “Tobias he couldn’t make out what she was doin’ there and neither could I. ‘Looks to me,’ says I, ‘as if—me bein’ her uncle—I ought to know the ins and outs of this. You’ve got a spare key to that shanty, ain’t you, Tobias? Can’t we make out to get in there to-morrow mornin’ before Bob shows up?’ Well, we did and I saw that picture of Esther. Pretty good, ’tis, too, considerin’ who made it. I own up I was surprised. ’Bout as big as life, you know, and all colored up, and—”
“Ssh!... Humph!... How many people have you told about this?”
“Not a soul! Honest, Cap’n Foster, I swear I haven’t told a livin’ soul. And Tobias hasn’t told neither. ‘The way I look at it,’ he says to me, ‘it ain’t any of my business, nor my wife’s. I’m not runnin’ across Foster Townsend’s bows,’ he says, ‘not much. I’ve told you, Mil, because you’re one of the family. You can do what you want to about it. If I was you, though, I guess I’d keep still.’ ‘You bet I will!’ I told him. But, of course, I knew you ought to know about it, Cap’n Foster. I judged likely you didn’t know, and for Esther Townsend to be in that fish shanty along with one of that Cook tribe seemed to me—”
“Shut up!” The order was savagely given. “Humph! Here! you don’t think others know this, do you?”
“Not a livin’ soul except Tobias and his wife—and me, of course. I haven’t even told Reliance.”
“You keep this to yourself; do you hear? Don’t you mention it again.”
“Oh, I shan’t—I shan’t. But—”
“You had better not.... There, that’ll do. Clear out! I’ve wasted time enough.”
Mr. Clark was disappointed. He had expected thanks, at least, possibly more substantial reward. Nevertheless, it was some comfort to know that he and the Harniss magnate shared a secret in common. His self-respect, to which Reliance had so slightingly referred, was bolstered by that knowledge.