THAT telegram was handed to Captain Ben by the depot master who was also the telegraph operator. He watched the expression on the captain’s face during the reading of the dispatch.
“Say,” he demanded, excitedly, “you don’t suppose that is so, do you, Cap’n?”
Snow was staring at the yellow slip. He breathed hard. Then he shook his head.
“Can’t be!” he declared. “No, no! It can’t be. How can it?”
“But that man says he’s just got the word right from Washin’ton. Good Lord! Why—”
“Sshh! There must be a mistake somewhere. How can it be so? Here, don’t you tell anybody about this. Keep your mouth shut until we find out more, anyhow. If it is a mistake—and in spite of everything I believe it must be—you nor I don’t want to get ourselves into trouble by spreadin’ the news around. Wait! Don’t you tell a soul; do you hear?”
The depot master nodded. “I hear,” he observed. “You needn’t worry. I don’t shove my toe under Foster Townsend’s boot until I know what I’m doin’. I’ve seen too many toes jammed that way. I won’t say nothin’.... But, good heavens above, Cap’n Ben, suppose it is true! Foster Townsend licked by Elisha Cook!... Aw, it can’t be.”
All the way home the captain kept telling himself that very thing—it could not be. The Boston broker was a trustworthy man, one not likely to accept an unsubstantiated rumor, but nevertheless— No, there was a mistake somewhere, there must be. Captain Ben, as usual when in trouble or perplexed, took council with his wife. He handed her the telegram.
“It can’t be so, can it, Mary?” he demanded. “You don’t believe it, do you?”
Mrs. Snow dazedly shook her head. “I declare I don’t know what to believe, Ben,” she said. “It doesn’t seem as if it could be, but—but I suppose it might. Of course Elisha Cook and his lawyers must have thought they had a good chance or they wouldn’t have kept on fighting the way they have.”
Her husband nodded. “But for Foster—for Foster Townsend to be beat, to have anybody stop him from having his own way, why—why, it doesn’t seem possible,” he vowed.
“I know; I know it doesn’t.... But, Ben, things haven’t been going as smooth with him lately. Seems almost as if he started to slide down hill away back last summer and has kept sliding. First, there was that accident to Mr. Covell and all the talk it stirred up.”
“I know, but he didn’t have anything to do with that.”
“It was around him and those in his house that the talk settled. There was something about that accident that has never been cleared up. Bob Griffin was mixed up in it and the next thing we knew he had run away with Esther. We all know what a blow that was to Captain Foster. He won’t talk about it, of course, but it was a terrible setback for him. And now, if this should be true—well, I know what will be said. People will say pride always goes before a fall; that is what they will say.”
Her husband snorted. “Say!” he repeated. “They will say enough. Dear, dear! I hope this won’t mean that Foster is going to be too hard hit, in a money way. Once—a good while ago, it was, the time when the news came that Cook had been granted his appeal to the Supreme Court—he said to me then: ‘Well, Ben,’ he says, ‘I’ve bet all but my Sunday shirt on this particular horse. Looks now as if I might have a chance to bet that.’ It was more than he ever said before or since, but it set me wondering. Tut, tut, tut!” gloomily. “If he should be hard hit and have to really come down in the world there will be a lot of mean little mud frogs hopping out of their holes to croak at him, won’t there. He hits right and left when he’s mad and he has left a good many sore heads up and down Ostable County. This will be their chance—if it is true.”
The evening papers confirmed the tidings brought by the telegram. Elisha Cook had won his suit and the amount of damages granted him was large indeed. Foster Townsend was a wealthy man, how wealthy no one knew save himself, but even a millionaire would find it hard to pay such a sum. The “mud frogs” emerged from their holes and croaked and the summary of their croakings was to the effect that chickens had come home to roost. “He’s been stampin’ all hands under foot for twenty years, now he’s stamped on, himself. Let’s see how he likes it.” The croakers foresaw ruin, utter and complete. Even the great man’s staunchest followers, members of what the hitherto crushed minority had referred to as “the Townsend gang,” were stunned to silence by the newspaper details of the Cook triumph. In Denboro, a certain section of it, there was rejoicing. “This neighborhood is on the map again,” crowed the Denborites. “We shan’t have to crawl on our knees through Harniss when we want our rights, in politics or anything else. It’s our turn now.”
From Provincetown to Wapatomac there was chatter of this kind. In political circles certain heads were raised and hopes, hitherto moribund, began to revive. The county boss had been beaten. His infallibility was a thing of the past. If beaten in one way, why not in others? The Honorable Mooney, now a Representative of his state in the halls of Congress at Washington, began to hear from other galled jades who, like himself, had winced beneath the Townsend whip.
And, at the end of the week, while the excitement was still boiling, the big mogul returned to his native town. Varunas and the span were at the station to meet him. Mr. Gifford’s was a broken spirit now. At first defiant and scornful, scoffing at the rumors of his employer’s defeat, as those rumors changed to certainties his attitude changed with them. Still outwardly lofty and calm, he met every taunt with sniffs of contemptuous pity. “It don’t mean nothin’,” he asserted. “You fellers are hollerin’ your heads off, but wait till the old man gets through with this business. Them Supreme Courters are goin’ to lose their jobs, some of ’em. Ye-ah, all right, you wait and see. There’s a law against bribery and corruption, ain’t there? The President of the United States ain’t had his say about this case yet. You hold on. You’ll be meek enough by and by. Huh!”
This to the world at large. But, at home, with his wife, it was different. Nabby was as downcast as he.
“I declare if I believed in spirits and warnin’s and them kind of things,” she sighed, “I’d have been more prepared for it. It started by his lettin’ that Bob Griffin into this house. I ought to have seen that there was a ‘sign’ in that. First a Cook begins to come here; then he gets poor Mr. Covell kicked out of the way by a horse; then he runs off with Esther. And now this! What does the Good Book say? ‘The way of the transgressor is hard,’ that’s what it says.”
Varunas pooh-poohed. “What’s that got to do with it?” he demanded. “Cap’n Foster never transgressed nothin’. ’Twas Griffin that was the transgressor and his way is pretty soft, if you ask me. The good book says lots of things. It says somethin’ about heavin’ bread on the waters, if I recollect right. If you’d done that with this saleratus biscuit I’m tryin’ to eat just now ’twould have sunk, I’ll bet.”
Mr. Gifford, awaiting his employer at the station, was outwardly serene but inwardly fearful. Would the great man whom he worshiped, of whose majesty he had so often boasted, step from that train a broken, humiliated wreck? Would he slink away from the curious crowd there gathered to watch his homecoming?
He did not. The Gifford apprehensions along that line were groundless. Foster Townsend, when he crossed the platform to the dog-cart, was, to all appearances, quite unchanged. He acknowledged the bows and good-days with his usual careless condescension. He greeted Varunas with the accustomed gruff “Hello!” He even insisted upon taking the reins himself and driving the span along the main road to the gate of the mansion. The “mud frogs” were disappointed.
And disappointed they continued to be, for a while at least. Little by little tales of changes in the Townsend régime began to circulate. It was said that all the trotting horses were to be sold, that already several large tracts of land belonging to Townsend in various parts of the town had been put up for sale. Captain Snow, on a visit to Boston, learned from his broker, a close friend of the senior partner in a firm handling the Townsend stock transactions, that bonds and shares amounting to many thousands of dollars had been turned into money for their former owner. The second maid at the big house had been given a month’s notice. These were the stories, and there were many more. No one could vouch for their truth in entirety. Townsend disclosed nothing. His stops at the post office were less frequent. He remained at home in the evenings. Sometimes callers came and with them, even the most loyal of friends and satellites, he was no more confidential than ever concerning his private affairs. How badly he was hit and how greatly his circumstances would be reduced by the loss of the famous suit no one learned from him. From Denboro, of course, came more news. Elisha Cook was a rich man now, although it was said that his lawyers would get much more than half of the sum awarded by the Court. He was triumphant, vaingloriously so, but his health was poor and people believed he would live but a few years to enjoy his sudden rise to affluence.
In all Harniss there was but one person whose calls at the big house, it was noticed, were frequent and appeared to be welcome. That person was Reliance Clark. Her first visit was made the afternoon of the day following Townsend’s return from Washington. She came by the path across the fields and knocked at the kitchen door. Nabby, who answered the knock, was surprised to see her—surprised and not too cordial. In Nabby’s mind Reliance was associated with Esther’s desertion of her uncle and the humiliating elopement with the grandson of the loathed Elisha Cook. Mrs. Clifford, like many another female, old or young, in Harniss, had never quite forgotten the charming personality of young Mr. Covell. She had hinted and prophesied much, at sewing-circle or after prayer-meeting, concerning the match to be made between him and the Townsend niece. Since the night of the runaway marriage her lot, that of false prophet, had been unpleasant. The innuendoes and sly taunts from friends and acquaintances were hard to bear. Her husband had been particularly irritating on the subject. It was in Reliance’s sitting-room that the marriage had taken place and Nabby was convinced that she was largely responsible for the family disgrace. And now, with every tongue in the county clacking over the new thunderbolt which had struck the house of Townsend, for this woman to appear at its door, demanding to see its owner, was nothing short of brazen.
“Yes, he is in,” she admitted, reluctantly, “but I don’t believe he’ll want to see you. He don’t want to see anybody. I guess likely you’d better come some other time.”
She would have closed the door, but Reliance calmly pushed it open and entered the kitchen.
“Where is he?” she asked.
“He’s in the library, I suppose; at least he was there last time I looked. But he won’t want to see you, I tell you. Why, look at the folks—the kind of folks—that’s been here to-day. Cap’n Snow—and he wouldn’t see him. And Mr. Colton, the minister of his own church, and he wouldn’t even see him. Do you suppose likely if he turned that kind of folks away he’ll want to see—well—anybody?... Why, where are you goin’? Didn’t you hear what I said?”
Reliance had heard but she paid no attention. She walked calmly from the kitchen to the dining room. Nabby, after a moment of petrified resentment, ran after her and reached the library first.
“Cap’n Foster,” she cried, breathlessly, “there’s somebody here to see you. It ain’t my fault. I told ’em you didn’t want to see anybody. I said those very words. They’d ought to have been enough, I should think.”
But Reliance had entered and now spoke for herself.
“Good afternoon, Foster,” she said. “You’ll see me for a minute or two, won’t you? I hope you will.”
Foster Townsend was sitting in the leather chair. When the housekeeper burst into the room he looked up with a frown. As he recognized his caller he slowly leaned back. It was the first time she had entered that house since Esther left it.
“Humph!” he observed. “It’s you, eh?” He was silent for an instant, then he turned to the perturbed Mrs. Gifford.
“All right, Nabby,” he said. “You can go.”
Nabby was expectantly awaiting orders to show the intruder to the door. Her cheeks, puffed with righteous indignation, collapsed like punctured balloons. “Wh—what?” she gasped.
“You can go. Shut the kitchen door after you. Go along.”
Nabby went, under protest, muttering all the way to the kitchen. Townsend thrust his hands into his trousers’ pockets. His face, as he raised it to meet Reliance’s look, was expressionless.
“Well?” he asked. Then, with a grim smile he added: “Come for a look at the remains, have you? Are you satisfied? Do I look natural?”
She took a step toward him and put out her hand impulsively. “Don’t, Foster,” she protested. “Don’t talk that way.”
“Why not?” still smiling. “All hands know I am dead. You must have heard them preaching my funeral sermon for a week.... Well, well,” with sudden impatience, “let’s make the ceremony as simple as possible. What is it you have come for? What do you want?”
“I don’t want anything. And I came—because—oh, I’ve been thinkin’ of you night and day ever since we all heard about it. And since yesterday, when Millard told he saw you at the depot, I—well, I have been thinkin’ of you more than ever, if that is possible. Of you, sittin’ here all alone in this great house.”
He shrugged. “Kindly omit flowers,” he said.
She sighed. “You make it hard for me, don’t you,” she said. “Well, I expected you would. May I sit down a minute?”
He hesitated. Then he took a hand from his pocket and motioned to the rocker at the other side of the table. “Sit down, if you want to,” he said.
She sat in the rocker. “I shan’t stay very long,” she began. “Foster, tell me: Is this very bad? They are sayin’—oh, they are sayin’ all sorts of things. I read the papers, of course. It seems like a terrible lot of money. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but I have heard so much. Is it—will this—”
He finished the sentence for her and in his own way.
“Will it put me in the poorhouse, you mean?” he suggested. “I presume likely some of my charitable friends are picking out my room there already. Well, no, it won’t do that—quite. They are going to be disappointed. I shall have something left.”
“Of course you will. Any sane person would know that, of course.”
“Humph! Would they? I don’t know why. But I shall—a little. At least so my lawyers seem to think.”
“Must you—must you really pay Elisha Cook all those thousands and thousands of dollars? Have you got to do it?”
He straightened.
“I’ll pay the last dollar,” he declared, sharply. “And it won’t be paid in notes dated fifty years after death or anything like that. It will be paid cash down, and just as soon as that cash can be raised. You can tell that to any prying busybody that asks you.”
She sighed again. “I can hardly believe you have lost that suit,” she said. “I—why, everybody took it for granted you would win. I don’t see how those Supreme Court folks could do such a thing.”
His lip curled. “I was a little surprised myself,” he admitted. “So were Cook and his gang, I rather guess.... And yet, maybe I ought to have expected it. Things have been going that way with me lately.... Well, is there anything else you want to say—or find out?”
She hesitated. “Why, yes, there is,” she said. “I hardly know how to say it, either. Foster, you’ll have to get rid of—to sell some of your property to pay this awful lot of money, won’t you? That is what they are sayin’ around town. Please don’t mind my askin’. It’s more my business than it sounds. I’ll tell you why in a minute.”
He crossed his knees. “I shall sell about everything before I get through, I suppose,” he replied.
“Not this house? You won’t have to give up this lovely house?”
“No. At least I don’t think so. I shall hang on to it till the last gun fires, anyhow.”
“Foster, you own the house I live in. If—this was what I really came to tell you—if you feel you ought to sell that house along with other things I don’t want you to let any thought of me stand in the way. Perhaps you wouldn’t anyway. I know you will never forgive me for—well, for that business of Esther’s marriage. I have thought about it seems to me every minute since it happened, and tried to look at it every way, and I can’t feel that I did wrong. In fact I am surer than ever that I did right. But you don’t feel so, I know. Well, that’s past and gone. Now about this house Millard and I live in, that I rent from you. If you have a good chance to sell for a good price, and you feel you ought to sell, then you must do it. I can find somewhere else to go just as well as not. Don’t you fret about that at all. Promise me you won’t.”
For the first time since she entered the room his manner changed. Hitherto he had been gruff, defiant, cynically aloof. Now, as she made this appeal, the frown faded from his brow. As she finished he turned his head away. She waited for him to speak, but he did not do so.
“You will sell if you think you ought to, won’t you, Foster?” she urged.
He cleared his throat. “There, there,” he muttered, hastily. “That’s all right, Reliance. I shan’t have to turn you out, I guess. Not yet a while, anyhow. Don’t be frightened about that.”
“I wasn’t frightened—not about myself at all. I just wanted to be sure.”
“Sshh! Sshh! Forget it.... What? Are you going? You don’t make long calls, do you? It has been a good while since you made any—up here.”
“It isn’t any farther from your house to mine than it is from mine to yours. You haven’t been droppin’ in on me very often. Oh, I don’t blame you. I suppose likely I should feel as you do if I were in your place. We are both of us pretty set in our ways.... Well, good-by.”
He rose. He crossed the room, turned back and spoke. What he said came as a tremendous surprise.
“What is the news from—over yonder?” he asked, gruffly.
“Over where? Why!... Do you mean from—from Esther?”
“Yes. I presume likely you get letters, don’t you?”
Reliance drew a long breath. “Why—why, yes, I do,” she stammered. “She writes me every week.”
“Humph! Well, if she can write she hasn’t starved to death yet, I take it. How is she getting along?”
“Why, very well, I should say. She lives in Paris and—and she seems to be very happy.”
“Um-hum. All right. Good-by.”
She turned to go. Then she hesitated.
“Foster,” she faltered, “I—”
“Well? What?”
She shook her head. “I was wonderin’ if I ought to say it,” she confessed. “I guess I will. Foster, in every letter she writes me she asks about you. She wants to know how you are and what you are doin’ and—and everything. And in every one of those letters she asks if I think you would care to have her write you. She wants to do it, Foster. Indeed and indeed she does! Shall I tell her you said she might?”
His answer was prompt.
“I never begged anybody to write me yet,” he growled, defiantly. “And I am not beginning now. You and she can understand that.”
“Yes—yes, of course I understand. I am awfully glad I came here this afternoon. I was almost afraid to, but I am glad I did. May I come again pretty soon?”
He looked at her intently. “Why do you want to come?” he asked. “I haven’t said that I have changed my mind about anything, have I?” Then, before she could reply, he added, brusquely, “Oh, well, come if you want to. I don’t know who would be liable to stop you. Far as I can see you generally do what you set out to.”
She was content with that, and more than content with his reference to Esther. That evening, after she had locked the post office, she wrote her niece a long letter. She told of the loss of the lawsuit. “Very likely you may have heard of it before you receive this, but I have just come from your uncle’s house and the sight of him, alone there, sitting in that library, with nobody to speak to, knowing as he does that everybody is talking about him, some of them crowing over him, facing the fact that he must give up about everything he’s got in the world—well, I never wanted to cry over a human creature more. I didn’t do it, of course. He would have pushed me outdoors if I had. I couldn’t scarcely tell him how sorry I felt. He is as proud as he ever was and he doesn’t ask sympathy of anybody. He needs it though. You know how sure he was of winning that suit. For Elisha Cook to beat him is the hardest blow that could have been struck. And not a word of complaint. The one thing he seemed to want me and everybody else to understand was that every dollar damages would be paid cash down.”
Then she wrote of his questions concerning Esther’s well being. “Write him, dearie,” she urged. “Write him and keep on writing, no matter whether he answers your letters or not. And, oh, if you can, try to comfort him. Make him see that you love him just as much as you ever did. That will help him now more than anything else in the world, I do believe. He is so all alone.”
The next time she visited the big house she took with her all of Esther’s letters, those written from Boston as well as the later arrivals from Paris. She said little about them.
“I brought ’em along,” she said, “thinkin’ you might like to look ’em over sometime. They are real interestin’. She writes a good letter and what she says about tryin’ to make herself understand amongst all those French people is very funny.”
He did not answer, nor did he refer to the letters in their conversation. He did not refuse them, however, so she left them on the table when she went away.
By the end of June rumors had changed to certainties. Harniss now knew something of the extent of the disaster which had befallen its great man. Knew it, rather than guessed or imagined it. The acres of pasture land and the square mile of wood lots belonging to Foster Townsend were his no longer. Some of the real estate had gone at private sale; a public auction disposed of much more. The trotters and all the racing paraphernalia were sent to Boston, to be sold by dealers there. The mare, Claribel, Varunas Gifford’s especial pride, was bought by Sam Baker; this was the bitterest blow for Varunas. The famous span was sold. Of all the Townsend stable there remained but one horse, and that a sober, middle-aged animal fit only for pulling a carriage. And of all the carriages were left but two, a buggy and a carryall. The Townsend mansion, shorn of its surrounding meadows and pine-sprinkled fields, was still owned and occupied by the man who built it, and the Clark cottage and the acre and a half upon which it stood were still his. For some reason he had refused to sell the cottage property. It seemed odd, for every one knew that he had been offered, and more than once, a good price for it. Its situation upon the main road and adjoining the post office made it desirable.
The big mogul was no longer big, so far as his possessions were concerned. His progress through his native town was not triumphal now. His closest friends still stood by him, but his influence among the majority was waning. For years unconquerable he had been beaten at last and badly beaten. Elisha Cook had beaten him, even young Griffin had got the better of him. No longer a millionaire, the richest man in the county, he was now estimated to be worth perhaps forty or fifty thousand dollars exclusive of the house he lived in and the Clark cottage. There were a half dozen wealthier men than that in Harniss alone. The old guard among the politicians still came to consult him, but there was a new and younger element gaining strength and influence and they did not consult him at all. The Honorable Alpheus Mooney was their leader now.
Foster Townsend was quite aware of his shrunken importance. Yet there was no change in his manner and attitude. His excursions to and from the stores and the post office were now, for the most part, made on foot, but his step was firm, his dress as carefully chosen, his silk hat as neatly brushed as in the days when that hat was revered by the masses as the crown upon the head of the potentate whom they feared and honored. And his speech was as brusque, his nod as off-hand, his manner of greeting his fellow-citizens, high and low, just as uncompromising and stand-offish as ever.
Tobias Eldridge happened to be present at a meeting between Townsend and Congressman Mooney and had much to say about it.
“Mr. Mooney had drove over to see Simeon Thacher about somethin’ or other,” explained Tobias, “and they was standin’ right in the middle of the walk in front of the post office, talkin’. Don’t ask me what they was talkin’ about, some kind of politics of course— Sim is takin’ a whole lot of interest in politics these days. Well, anyhow, there they was when along the sidewalk comes Cap’n Foster, walkin’ just as pompous and important as if old Cook hadn’t kicked him all the way home from Washin’ton. Mooney see him comin’ and he whispers somethin’ to Sim and both of ’em laughed. When the cap’n got abreast of ’em Mooney turned around. ‘Oh, how are you, Townsend?’ he says, kind of as if he wasn’t much interested.”
Mrs. Eldridge, to whom her husband was telling the story, interrupted.
“Is that what he called him—Townsend?” she exclaimed. “Humph! The last time I heard ’em speakin’ together was up at the town hall ’most a year ago. ’Twas, ‘How do you do, Cap’n Townsend, sir?’ then. And if his tongue wasn’t buttered from bow to stern then I never heard one that was.”
“Wan’t no butter on it this time,” declared Tobias. “He just says ‘How are you?’ same as I’d say it to—to Millard Clark. Cap’n Foster never turned a hair. Just looked him over as if, for a minute, he wasn’t sure who ’twas. Then he nodded his head. ‘Oh, hello, Mooney,’ says he. ‘Sorry, but I can’t talk with you now. I’m in a hurry to get my mail.’ Well, Mooney stepped out of the way, but I declare if he didn’t look foolish. Yes, and mad. He ain’t used to havin’ folks shove him to one side much nowadays, I guess.”
The important Mr. Mooney was not the only person “shoved to one side” by Foster Townsend. Mrs. Wheeler, whose summer home was opened late in May, called at the mansion soon after her arrival.
“The man was almost rude to me,” she confided to Mrs. Colton. “I did practically all the talking while he sat there scarcely saying yes or no. And when I just mentioned to him—I hadn’t seen him since it happened, you know—what a shock it was to all of us, the news of his niece’s elopement with that man of all people, he actually snubbed me. Changed the subject entirely. I shall never go near him again.”
When Esther replied to her aunt’s letter she said that she had written to her uncle and should keep on doing so. “No matter whether he answers my letters or not,” she wrote, “I shall write him just the same. Bob had a note from Mr. Cook’s lawyer. It’s the first word he has had from his grandfather and even now Mr. Cook did not write the letter himself. But he must have told the lawyer to do it. I suppose he is so brimful of triumph that he couldn’t help gloating. Of course he knew Bob would tell me and it was his way of gloating over me, second-hand. Bob is far from gloating. He feels as sorry for poor Uncle Foster as I do. Oh, dear! that awful lawsuit was at the bottom of all our troubles, wasn’t it? The lawyer writes that Mr. Cook is far from well.”
Reliance continued to call at the Townsend house. Sometimes her calls appeared to be welcome and her chats with Foster Townsend almost bright and cheerful. At others he said practically nothing, and occasionally he sent word by Nabby that he was busy and could not see her. Twice he had dropped in at the cottage—although never when Millard was present, or at the millinery shop where Miss Makepeace might listen to or take part in the conversation. During the first of these calls Reliance mentioned something that Esther had written her. He nodded. “Um-hum,” he agreed. “I heard about that.”
So she knew he had received and read Esther’s letter. It was his sole reference to that letter, however, and she asked no questions. Esther wrote her aunt that he had not replied, but that she should keep on writing just the same.
During his second visit she brought up a subject which had been troubling her.
“Foster,” she said, “why don’t you sell this house and land? I know you could get a good price for it. Eben Hopkins told me himself that he wants to buy it. Since his house burned down he hasn’t got any regular place to live. Why don’t you let him buy?”
He shook his head. “That’s my business,” he said.
“But it is mine, too, in a way. I keep feelin’ that you are holdin’ on to it just because you don’t want to put me and Millard out. That is silly. I could find another place to go as well as not. Abbie would take me to board. Sometimes I think runnin’ a house, as well as ’tendin’ post office and a hat shop, is more than I ought to do, anyhow. I am gettin’ old and lazy, I guess.”
“Um—yes,” dryly. “You are about as lazy as a mosquito at camp meeting. What would you do with that half-brother of yours, if you boarded out?”
“I should board him out, too. I guess I could find a place where he could work for his board and keep.”
“Humph! When he works I’ll buy a ticket to watch him.... There, there! You stay where you belong.”
“But, Foster, you don’t make a cent rentin’ this house to me. You could get a dozen tenants who would be glad to pay you twice as much. I expect everybody is sayin’ that very thing.”
He pulled his beard. “I expect they are,” he agreed. “Well, my say counts in a few things, even yet. That property is one of ’em. Talk about the weather, Reliance.”
One afternoon in early July when Reliance called at the big house she was refused admittance. Nabby said that the captain was not feeling very well and did not want to see any one. It had happened before and Reliance was neither offended nor worried. The next day, however, when she again called and received the same answer she began to think it strange. The following forenoon Millard, returning from an errand to the store, told her a piece of news.
“Old man Townsend is sick, so they say,” he announced. “Don’t know what’s the matter with him. So fur’s I’m concerned I don’t much care. Cranky old blow-hard! I hope he’s got the rheumatics and his shoulder gets to be sore as mine was after he chucked me over that hassock. I’d ought to have sued him for assault and battery that time. I would if it hadn’t been for you, Reliance Clark. I might have got some of that money old Cook squeezed out of him.”
His half-sister looked at him. “I was talkin’ with Seth Francis yesterday,” she said. “He says he might ship you for that Banks’ fishin’ trip if the rest of his crew would stand for it. He is afraid they wouldn’t. He says they’re pretty fussy about what they have aboard the schooner. If he could use you for bait, he says—but he can’t, the codfish are particular, too.”
Millard Fillmore’s mouth was closed. His sister’s attitude toward him was still anything but reassuring. A dozen times during the past month she had hinted that he might have to go to work and earn his own living. It was high time that sort of thing was forgotten.
Reliance made her third call at the mansion that afternoon and the sight of Doctor Bailey’s horse and buggy standing by the gate alarmed her. Nabby, however, would give no particulars.
“He’s got a cold or somethin’,” she said. “And he just won’t have me let anybody in to see him. I sent for the doctor on my own hook and I know he’ll give me the very Old Harry for doin’ it. Cranky! My good Lord! Oh, dear! And I’m so all alone here, too. Varunas—I presume likely you know it—is workin’ down to the livery stable four days a week now. Cap’n Foster made him take the job. Said there wasn’t enough to keep him busy around here, and there ain’t, of course. He’s here nights and that helps a little, but I feel so dreadful lonesome and—and responsible. If the cap’n should be sick—real sick—I don’t know what I would do. No, no, Reliance, there ain’t any use for you to keep runnin’ here. He won’t see you. I’ll let you know if he gets real bad.”
So for three days and nights Reliance waited anxiously. Then, on the morning of the fourth day, she found a note tucked under the door leading to the millinery shop. Varunas had left it on his way to the livery stable. It was from Nabby.
“Do come up here soon as ever you can,” Mrs. Gifford had written. “I am about crazy. Please come.”
Reliance went, of course. Nabby—a white-faced, nervous Nabby—admitted her to the kitchen and poured into her ears a tale which drove the color from her own cheeks. Foster Townsend was ill, seriously ill, threatened with pneumonia. The doctor was alarmed. He had insisted upon a nurse, but his patient flatly refused to have one in the house.
“I can’t do a thing with him,” declared the housekeeper, “and Doctor Bailey he can’t neither. He’s beginnin’ to be out of his head part of the time, and when he ain’t he vows that if I fetch a hired nurse into this house he’ll heave her out of the window. I don’t know but he would, too. You know how he is when his mind’s sot. And who could I get? The doctor says one of them hospital nurses from Boston, same as took care of poor Mr. Covell; but how can I get one of them? They are so dreadful expensive and I’d have to do it on my own responsibility—and what would he say? And—and that ain’t it either, Reliance. He doesn’t want anybody. Between you and me,” she lowered her voice, “I do believe he don’t care two cents what happens to him. Just as soon die as not, I guess. Oh, Reliance, he ain’t the way he used to be. He makes out to folks that he is, but he ain’t. This—this business about Esther and losin’ that law case have—well, they’ve broke him all to pieces. What shall I do? I never was so tired and—and discouraged in my life.”
It was some few minutes before Reliance answered. She bade Nabby keep still while she did a little thinking. When, at last, she did speak, her remarks were very much to the point.
For a fortnight Foster Townsend’s mind was little concerned with his own affairs or those of any one else. The disease ran its course, of pain and delirium, fever and weakness. When, at last, he turned the corner and began faintly to realize where he was and what was going on about him he noticed that Reliance Clark was sitting in the chair by his bedroom window, sewing. He watched her for a time without speaking. Then he whispered her name.
“Reliance,” he murmured, “that’s you, isn’t it?”
She put down the hat she was trimming and crossed to his bedside.
“Yes, Foster,” she said cheerfully, “it is me. My! I am glad to have you enough better to know who it is. You are goin’ to be all right now; the doctor says so.”
His condition did not interest him, apparently.
“What in the devil are you doing here?” he whispered.
“Oh, I just came up to see how you were gettin’ along. Don’t worry about me. And don’t try to talk.”
He moved his head impatiently on the pillow.
“You were here yesterday, weren’t you?” he asked. “Seems as if I remember seeing you.”
“Oh, I don’t know. I might have been. Now you lie still. Go to sleep, if you can.”
He did, after a while. When he awoke it was Nabby who sat by the window. He asked her questions, but the replies were unsatisfying. The following day Reliance was again with him, but he did not question her. She was glad of the omission, but she could not understand it. He was gaining strength hourly and he was now perfectly rational. Why he did not subject her to the cross-examination she expected seemed queer. A week passed and still he did not do so. Nabby reported that he had not tried to learn anything from her.
“He’s thinkin’ it out himself,” she declared. “That would be his way. Some of these days he’ll dump down on both of us like a tipcart load of clamshells, see if he don’t.”
Which was precisely what he did. Reliance came into the room one morning and found him propped in the rocker and awaiting her.
“What have you done to Nabby Gifford?” she asked. “She looks scared to death. What have you been sayin’ to her?”
He did not reply. Instead he gave an order, in quite his old way.
“You sit down alongside here,” he commanded. “That’s right. Now then, let’s hear what you have got to say? Nabby has told me her end of the yarn and I dragged what I could out of the doctor. No, no! I’ll do the bulk of the talking. You can say yes or no. Do you understand?”
She smiled. “I shouldn’t wonder if I did, Foster,” she replied. “I’ll try to, anyway.”
“Humph! All right. Now then; is it true that you have been living in this house for three weeks or more? Taking care of me?”
“Helpin’ take care of you—yes. Nabby has done as much—or more.”
“What did you do that for?”
“Somebody had to. You told Nabby that you would throw a regular nurse out of the window. I knew you couldn’t do that to me.”
“Humph! If I had had my senses I should have tried. Who is running the post office?”
“I am. I go down there before the mails come in and when the outgoin’ mail has to be got ready. Millard and Abbie are there other times.”
“How about your bonnet making?”
“I do my share of that. I have finished two hats right here in this room. They were pretty good-lookin’ hats, too, if I do say it.”
“Humph!... Pshaw!... Well, here’s the real thing I want to know: Is it true that somebody else—Eben Hopkins’s family—are living in that house I rent to you?”
“Why, yes, it is. I couldn’t live in it. I had enough to keep me busy up here. Eben is dreadfully anxious to buy that house; you know that. I couldn’t sell it to him, for it isn’t mine to sell.”
“No,” emphatically, “you are right, it isn’t.”
“But I could rent it to him for six months; sublet it at a bigger rent than I pay you, and make a little extra money. So that is what I did. He’s taken it furnished, with my things in it. By the time his six months are up he’ll want to buy it more than ever, or I miss my guess. If you take my advice you’ll sell it to him.”
He tried to lean forward in the chair, gave it up and sank back again.
“Do you mean to tell me,” he demanded, angrily, “that you have let another tenant into my house without asking me whether you could or not?”
“I couldn’t ask you. You were too sick to be asked anything.”
“Is there a clause in your lease that gives you the right to sublet?”
She laughed. “You’re jokin’, Foster,” she said. “You know as well as I do that I never had any lease in all the years I have rented from you. The Hopkinses are in and I am out. It’s all settled. You are gettin’ as much money as you got from me and I am gettin’ a little on my own account. Everybody is satisfied, or ought to be. Stop fussin’ and behave yourself.”
He groaned. “If only I had my strength!” he muttered. “You’ve got me down and you know it. Tut, tut, tut! What have you done with Millard?”
“He has got a room with Hulda Makepeace, Abbie’s sister-in-law. He is supposed to do work enough around the place to pay for his room and meals. I only hope he does it. And between times he is with me at the post office same as always.”
“Humph! And you are living up here.”
“I am for the present. By and by, when you are well enough so that Nabby can get along alone, I am goin’ to have a room with Abbie. She and I will do light housekeepin’ together. It’s a real sensible arrangement. Don’t you think so?”
He did not answer. It was some time before he spoke again. When he did, he said:
“Humph! You’re a smart woman, Reliance, but don’t you get the idea that I’m such a fool as not to understand what brought you up here. I don’t quite understand why you sublet your house. I rather guess there’s something behind that you haven’t told me. But, according to the doctor, the care you have been taking of me, night and day, is the principal reason why I’m not in the cemetery this minute. What did you do it for? Blamed if I think it was worth while.”
“I do. And Doctor Bailey ought to know better than to tell you any such silly stuff.... Well, there! I guess you are well enough to be left a few minutes and I must run and help Nabby.... Oh, there is a letter on the table for you. It’s got a French stamp on it. Here it is. Now you behave yourself till I come back.”