The Big Mogul by Joseph Crosby Lincoln - HTML preview

 

CHAPTER XXV

IT was late in August before he was well enough to be about and to take short walks out of doors. Reliance still remained at the big house. He insisted that she do so.

“You stay here,” he ordered, “till I tell you to clear out. Nabby needs somebody to help her, I guess. Anyhow she says she does. And I haven’t by any means decided what I shall do with that house of yours. You are as comfortable as you will be likely to be with that rattle-head Makepeace woman. You stay right here.”

So she stayed on, although she had no intention of prolonging the stay beyond the first of September. He was still far from strong, and was, as Mrs. Gifford called it, “awful cranky,” so Reliance thought it best not to upset his equilibrium by mentioning leaving until the time for leaving came.

She and he had many long talks together. Esther’s letters to her came regularly and she gave them to him to read, or such parts of them as she thought it best for him to see. And every two weeks there was a letter for him. He invariably put these letters in his pocket and she never saw them again, nor did he refer to them. That he read them when alone she felt certain. So far, Esther wrote, he had not replied. “Why doesn’t he write me?” the girl demanded of her aunt. “You say you know he is glad to get my letters. Why doesn’t he answer them? I am afraid you are mistaken and that his feeling toward me has not really changed at all. Oh, I wish it would! Just now especially I should like to know that it had.”

Reliance tried hard to be reassuring.

“It is all right, my dear,” she wrote again and again. “He is coming around, but you must be patient and give him time. I have known him a great many more years than you have and I tell you for Foster Townsend to own up that he is wrong is no easy job. Most of his life he did what he wanted to do and it turned out right, and, what is more, about everybody he knew took pains to tell him it was right. He lost that lawsuit, I know, but there are a good many people even yet who think he was right in that and that the courts made a mistake. He holds his head just as high as he ever did. It is as much as the average person’s life is worth to hint they are sorry for him, or anything like that. Let them say that to him just once and they don’t get the chance to say much of anything to him again. It is stubborn and foolish, perhaps, but I declare it makes me proud of him. I am a little that way myself, I guess. He has never yet told me out and out that I did right in insisting on you and Bob getting married before you left Harniss that night. But I have said it two or three times and he hasn’t contradicted me, and that is a lot—for him. Give him time, Esther, dear. He will write you some day, I am sure. And that he loves you more than all the rest of the world put together, I know. Be patient, and keep on writing him. Only don’t mention the most important thing. Keep that for a surprise.”

She did her best to seem cheerful while in his presence, but there were matters which troubled her—one on the other side of the ocean, although that, in the natural course of events, should end happily—and one, at home in Harniss, which now seemed certain to end disastrously for her. His keen eyes soon noticed, in spite of her pretense, that there was something wrong, and he tried to learn what it was.

“What have you got on your mind, Reliance?” he demanded. “Oh, now, now! don’t say you haven’t got anything because I know better. What is worrying you?”

She laughingly insisted that she was not worried at all. When he persisted she made an excuse to leave the room. He called after her.

“You are as stubborn as Balaam’s jackass,” he vowed. “All right. I have got a little of that animal in me. If you won’t tell me I shall have to find out for myself.”

It was Captain Benjamin Snow who disclosed the secret. Captain Ben, still the loyal friend and as regular a caller at the big house as its owner would permit, took the opportunity when Townsend and he were alone in the library—Nabby having gone to prayer-meeting and Reliance to the post office—to speak of what had troubled him for more than a month.

“I should have told you sooner, Foster,” he said, “but the doctor wouldn’t hear of it. Said you just simply mustn’t be bothered, that’s all. I wonder somebody hasn’t told you when you were down street. The whole town is talkin’ about it. It is too late to do anything, I guess; yes, I know it is. But—”

Townsend interrupted. “For heaven’s sake!” he exclaimed, testily. “Stop running around the mainmast and get some sail on her. Come to the point, Ben. What are you trying to say?”

Captain Ben said it then. Reliance Clark was to lose her place as postmistress. The time for her reappointment was at hand and that reappointment would not be made. Congressman Mooney had taken the matter into his own hands and he had picked Simeon Thacher for the office. Thacher was the Honorable Mooney’s friend and henchman. He had earned reward and now he was to have it. Rival petitions had been circulated; Reliance’s friends had rallied and her petition was much the longer of the two. But Thacher had the inside pull at Washington and his was the winning side.

“We are all of us, all the best folks in town, as sorry as we can be, Foster,” declared Captain Ben. “We all like Reliance and she has made a first-rate postmistress, but what can you do against politics? They’ve trumped up charges, of course, said Millard was no good as assistant, and that is true enough, but those charges don’t cut any figure. It’s Mooney’s drag with the Washin’ton folks that has done the trick. He is smart and a coming man in the party, everybody says so. He is getting to be the county boss, that is what he is getting to be.”

Foster Townsend had listened with, for him, surprising patience. Now he broke in.

“What!” he cried. “He is, eh? County boss already! I want to know!... Ben Snow, how long has this been going on? What do you mean by keeping it from me?”

Snow shook his head. “First I heard of it was just before you were taken sick, Foster,” he said. “That’s when it came out, but I guess it was going on, underneath, a long, long while before that. And then, after you was sick, I couldn’t see you, of course. And, even now, if the doctor knew—”

“Blast the doctor!... Sshh! Let me think. Does Reliance know about it?”

“Sartin. Of course she does. She—”

“Yes, yes. Of course she does. That is what she’s had on her mind. Humph! I knew there was something. Thacher hasn’t got his papers yet, has he?”

“No. But I guess he has just as good as got ’em. He is expecting them any time.”

“Humph! Expecting is one thing and getting is another. There, there! Don’t talk any longer. Clear out. I’ve got to think—yes, and do.”

“But, Foster, what can you do? What can anybody do? And you aren’t fit to—”

“Sshh! You haven’t been to my funeral yet, have you? No. Well, neither has Mooney. Run along, Ben, run along! And say, don’t you tell a soul that I know anything about this. Reliance especially; don’t you tell her.”

Captain Snow left his friend’s house in a peculiar state of mind. His conscience troubled him a little. Foster Townsend was still far from strong. If, under the spur of this disclosure, he should attempt exertions which brought about a relapse, he—Snow—would be to blame. And, after all, what had been gained by telling? Nothing could be done. As he had just said, what could any one do? Nevertheless, amid Captain Ben’s perturbations there was a faint trace of unreasonable hope. For many years he, like so many other Harniss citizens, had depended upon Foster Townsend to steer their ship through the shoals of politics. And the trust had never been misplaced. Of course, now, everything was different. Yet the captain could not help hoping—a little.

That evening, just before he went up to his room, Townsend astonished his housekeeper by announcing that he desired an early breakfast. “Have it ready at six,” he ordered. “And tell Varunas to have the horse and buggy at the door as soon as I’ve finished. I want to make the quarter to seven train.”

Nabby stared at him, horror-stricken.

“My soul and body!” she exclaimed. “Cap’n Foster, be you crazy? You ain’t much more than just up off a sick bed. Where are you goin’—in a train? What’ll I tell Doctor Bailey? Yes, and Reliance?”

Her employer grinned. “Tell Bailey I have gone to China for my health,” he announced. “According to you I should have to go as far as that to find it. And don’t you tell Reliance that I have gone at all, until after you have heard the engine whistle. Then you can tell ’em all you know—which won’t be much.”

He caught the train, and Varunas, having seen him and his valise safely aboard, returned home baffled and pessimistic.

“No, no,” he told his wife, “he wouldn’t tell me nothin’. Asked him! Course I asked him; but all he would say was ‘Shut up.’ When he said it the third time I could see he meant it.... Ah hum! I don’t never expect to see him again, alive. If he ain’t crazy then everybody will say we are for lettin’ him go.”

Three days—four—and five passed without a message of any sort from the traveler. Acting under Miss Clark’s orders, and her instructions were insistent, the occupants of the big house told no one, save the doctor, of Townsend’s mysterious and alarming absence. But few had seen him take the train at the station, and, as he bought no ticket, they took it for granted that he had gone but a little way, probably to Ostable, and that Varunas was to drive to that town later in the day and bring him home. Foster Townsend’s daily doings were no longer a matter of overwhelming importance to Harniss in general. His losing the lawsuit was an old story. The big mogul was shorn of most of his bigness. It did not now matter greatly what he did.

In his own home, however, there was increasing worry and a growing fear. Nabby declared that she was so nervous she couldn’t keep her mind on her work. “I’ll p’ison us all some of these meals,” she said. “I give the cat mashed turnip yesterday and ’twan’t till the critter turned up his nose at it that I found I was puttin’ raw liver on the dinner table.” Varunas was quite as distraught. Reliance Clark was more composed, but she was very anxious.

On the morning of the sixth day came a telegram. It was addressed to Mr. Gifford. “Meet me with the team at the South Denboro station seven ten to-night,” it read. Why he should have chosen to alight at South Denboro instead of keeping on to Harniss no one of the three could understand, but the fact that he was still alive was reassuring. Varunas and the horse and buggy were on hand a half hour ahead of the time set. At a little before nine Foster Townsend reëntered his own dining room.

Nabby had expected to meet a physical wreck, a pale and haggard shadow whose one desire would be to be helped to bed as soon as possible. Her eyes and mouth opened in astonishment.

“Well, I declare, Cap’n Foster!” she gasped. “I do declare! I snum if you ain’t—I do believe you look better than you done when you went out of this house.”

Townsend smiled. “I am better,” he said. “Nothing like travel, Nabby.”

In spite of her questions and Reliance’s when, later on, the latter came back from the post office, he would not disclose one atom of information as to where he had been so long or why.

“Never you mind,” he insisted, and with surprising good nature. “That’s my business. I am not married to either one of you. I am free and independent. I guess likely I can go off on a spree if I want to without doing my catechism afterwards. I have had a good time and maybe I’ll have a better one by and by. You be satisfied with that.”

They had to be. Neither then, nor the following day, nor the day after that, would he say more. It was tantalizing to the Giffords, but Reliance did not mind so much. She was grave and preoccupied nowadays and Nabby and her husband thought they understood the reason. Captain Townsend, apparently, did not notice her gravity or long intervals of silence.

His trips to the post office were very regular. One noon he came home to dinner with, so Nabby thought, a more than usually satisfied expression. In fact he seemed, for him, almost excited.

“I don’t know what has changed him so lately, Varunas,” she confided. “Must have been that ‘spree’ he went on, whatever it was. He is more like himself—his old smart, lively self, I mean—than I’ve seen him since Esther ran off and married that Griffin thing.”

Varunas had something to say. “You know what that letter was he give me to mail just now?” he asked. “The one he wrote right after dinner? No? Well, I don’t neither, but I know who ’twas to. ’Twas to the Honorable Alpheus Mooney, Trumet, Mass. That’s who ’twas to; and he was mighty anxious I should stop in and mail it on my way to the livery stable. What in time is he writtin’ to Congressman Mooney for? Don’t cal’late he’s goin’ to get some political job, or somethin’, do you—now that he’s lost his money?”

One evening soon afterward, when Reliance Clark came home after locking the post office door, she found Foster Townsend in the library. He was seated in the easy-chair and the Item was in his hand. He looked up and spoke.

“Tired to-night, are you, Reliance?” he asked. “In a special hurry to go aloft and turn in?”

“No, Foster. Why?”

“Because, if you had just as soon, I’d like to have you wait up a while. I am sort of expecting somebody here to see me to-night and I’d rather like to have you around where I can call you if I want you.”

She did not understand, of course, nor, just then, was she particularly curious. There were other matters on her mind, one matter so transcendently important that she could think of nothing else.

“I can wait as well as not,” she told him. “In fact, I was goin’ to sit up anyway. I’ve got somethin’ to tell you, Foster. Somethin’ wonderful. I had a letter come in to-night’s mail. You had one, too. I’ve got them both here.”

She had the letters in her hand. He looked at them, then at her face.

“From—from the other side?” he asked, quickly.

“Yes.”

“From—her?”

“Yes. One of them.”

“Humph! What makes you look so queer? Say, there’s nothing—nothing wrong, is there?”

She shook her head.

“No. No, Foster,” she said, “there is nothin’ wrong. Everything is all right. Thank God for it.”

He leaned forward. “What are you thanking God for?” he demanded. “And—here— Are you crying? I believe you are. What—”

Just then Nabby Gifford bustled into the library. She had not announced her coming; she was too excited for that.

“Who do you suppose is out here, waitin’ to see you, Cap’n Foster?” she whispered. “The Honorable Mooney, that’s who.”

Townsend’s reception of this announcement was disappointing, to say the least.

“Humph!” he grunted. “I thought it must be Saint Peter, judging by your face. Tell him to come in. Yes, yes. Go and tell him.”

He turned to Reliance. “Reliance,” he said, “I want you to hear this. You go in the parlor and leave the door open a crack. Don’t mind sitting in the dark a few minutes, do you?”

She started toward the parlor. Then she turned and looked at him fixedly and with growing suspicion.

“Foster,” she said, sharply, “what is all this? Have you— What have you been doin’?”

He waved her away. “Keep your ears open and maybe you’ll find out,” he suggested. “Hurry up! I don’t want him to see you—yet.”

Congressman Alpheus Mooney had not honored that room with his presence for almost a year. That he now considered himself as honoring it was quite apparent. Bowed in by the reverential Mrs. Gifford he entered briskly and with importance. When he last crossed the threshold of the Townsend house he had been an anxious candidate for office, humbly seeking aid and advice from the most influential man in his district. Then he came hat in hand. His hat was in his hand now, but he tossed it lightly upon the table without waiting for an invitation.

“Good evening, Cap’n Townsend,” he said. “Well, here I am, you see.”

“Glad to see you, Mooney,” declared the captain. “It was good of you to come. You are pretty busy these days, I expect. Have a chair.”

Mooney took the chair which was offered him. He crossed his knees.

“Why, yes,” he admitted. “Yes, I am pretty busy just now, that’s a fact. Never too busy to oblige an old friend though. I happened to be in Trumet when your letter came and I was very glad to drive up and see you. I was sorry to hear of your sickness. You look quite like yourself again. As well as you ever did, I should say.”

If there was a very slight hint of patronage in the Congressman’s manner it was no more than should be expected of a Congressman. And in this case it was unintentional. The Honorable Mooney was not wholly at ease concerning the purpose of this interview to which he had been summoned. The letter he had received was brief and polite. If Mr. Mooney could make it convenient to drop in at the Harniss house some evening soon, Foster Townsend would consider his doing so a favor. There was a little matter, of interest to both, to be talked over. He—Townsend—had not been well or he should come to Trumet. Mooney had replied by telegraph naming this Wednesday evening at nine. And in the interval between the receipt of the letter and that moment he had been wondering what the little matter of interest might be. There was but one which offered itself as a probability, and that little matter was all right, settled beyond change. Nevertheless—well, the Honorable Alpheus was not entirely free from curiosity, perhaps even from anxiety.

Foster Townsend received the gratifying assurance concerning his robust appearance with a rather dubious shake of the head.

“I don’t know, Mooney,” he observed. “When a man of my age has been as sick as I was he doesn’t get up again in a minute. However, I’m not dead, and that is something. No, I’m not even as dead as—well, as some folks think I am. Have a cigar?”

Mooney accepted the cigar. Townsend also took one and they lit and smoked. The captain mentioned the fine weather they had for the past few days, also the promise of a good cranberry crop that fall.

“You will be glad of that, Mooney,” he observed. “Everybody knows you are the father of that cranberry bill that has done so much for us in this section.”

The Congressman glanced at him. The Townsend face was grave, there was not even the faintest twinkle in the Townsend eye. Nevertheless Mr. Mooney’s slight uneasiness became a shade less slight. Was this man making fun of him? It was time he found out.

“Yes—yes, of course,” he said. “Well, Cap’n Townsend,” leaning easily back in his chair and knocking the ashes from his cigar, “what was it you wanted to talk over with me? A little politics, eh?”

Townsend nodded. “You’ve guessed it,” he said. “It was a little matter of politics. I never should have dared bother as busy a man as you are with anything but business.”

This was overdoing it a trifle. Mooney was not an absolute fool and his suspicion that he was being made fun of became more of a certainty. He cleared his throat, and frowned slightly.

“I see,” he said, more brusquely. “Yes, I see.... Well, Cap’n Townsend, for old times’ sake I should like to oblige you if I can. What do you want? What can I do for you?”

Townsend blew a cloud of smoke and fanned it from before his face with his hand.

“You can’t do anything for me, Mooney,” he answered. “You’ve done all you can do for me by coming here to-night. As far as that is concerned I could have managed to get along if you hadn’t come.... So,” with an ominous change in his tone, “I wouldn’t put it just that way if I were you. Mooney, when you started to pitch Reliance Clark out of our post office and squeeze Sim Thacher into it why did you do it behind my back? Why did you hide it from me?”

So it was the post office matter, after all. In a way Mooney was relieved. That battle was won. His countenance assumed an expression of pained resentment.

“Nonsense, Cap’n Townsend,” he said, with lofty indignation. “Nonsense! Whoever told you I have been hiding anything—lied, that’s all. You were sick—”

“Here, here! I may have been sick along the last of it, but not at first when you and Thacher were laying your plans. I know as much about those plans as you do, I guess. I have made it my business to find out. You started planning away last December, a month after you were elected to Washington. Before that election you were crawling around here on your hands and knees, begging me to please do this and that to help you get votes. Why, confound you, you couldn’t have been nominated if it hadn’t been for me. And away back in the beginning, when that cranberry bill had you licked so that you couldn’t have been elected poundkeeper, I gave you the chance to square yourself. I was the fool there, of course; but I thought you were so scared you would behave yourself for the rest of your life. Bah! Don’t you say ‘nonsense’ to me again.... Here! You aren’t going yet. This little talk of ours has only begun.”

The Honorable Alpheus was on his feet, his round face crimson. He snatched his hat from the table.

“I don’t want to hear any more from you, Townsend,” he declared. “You are a sick man—and an old man. If you weren’t—”

“Here! here! I’m not sick. And I’m not so darned old that I can’t see through a jellyfish. I saw through you the first time you came into this room. And I saw through what you were up to with this post-office business the minute I heard of it. You probably as good as promised Sim Thacher the post office away back when you were hunting the nomination. You would have come to me about it months ago if you hadn’t figured I was down and out and not worth considering any more. Elisha Cook and the Supreme Court had licked me, and so you thought you could do it. Pshaw!” in huge disgust; “Elisha Cook is a man, whatever else he is.”

The Honorable Mooney drew himself erect. His chest expanded.

“Townsend,” he declaimed, with all the dignity of his platform manner, “I make allowances for you. I realize you are not well. And I suppose it is natural you should be disappointed because your friend—your housekeeper I am told she is now—has lost the post office here. I am sorry for her myself, in a way. But I have the interests of the folks I represent in Congress to consider. It is my duty to think of them and act for their good. Miss Clark has not—no, sir, she has not run that office as it ought to be run. She has neglected it. More than that, she has been spending the public money to hire that worthless brother of—”

“Sshh!” Foster Townsend brought his palm down upon his knee with a crack which startled the representative of an outraged people to silence. “Be still!” ordered the captain. He slowly shook his head. “Well, there!” he went on, in a calmer tone. “That was a real pretty speech of yours, but you needn’t finish it; I can guess the end. I have said more than I meant to say, myself. No use wasting time. Although,” with another momentary outburst, “when I think of how you and your gang worked and schemed to put a lone woman out of her job, I— Humph!... Mooney, she isn’t going to be put out of it. She is going to stay right where she is.”

The Honorable Alpheus stared. Then he smiled, a smile of dignified pity.

“Townsend,” he proclaimed, loftily, “I don’t see what you hope to gain by this sort of thing. Simeon Thacher will be the Harniss postmaster. The appointment is made—or as good as made. That is my final word to you.”

Townsend lifted his hand. “Better wait until you hear mine, Mooney,” he said, warningly. “I was fussing with politics when you were running to school and I have learned enough to know that nothing political is done until it has been done.... I went up to see Senator Gore last week. He and I are old friends.”

A change came over Mr. Mooney’s face. It lost something of its confidence, its high disdain.

“Well—well, I am very glad you did,” he asserted, after an instant’s pause. “Yes, indeed. The Senator is a friend of mine, too, I am proud to say. He knows all about this post office matter. I advised with him before I made up my own mind.”

And now it was Townsend who smiled. He seemed amused.

“Oh, so you ‘advised’ with him, did you?” he chuckled. “Well, your advice must have been worth listening to.... There, there! Wait a minute more. I ‘advised’ with the Senator myself. And he seemed to be interested. He ought to be. I knew him before he was Senator. I’ve done him a good many favors down here in this district. He hadn’t forgotten them. A good memory is a mighty valuable item of cargo to have aboard, if you are cruising in politics. That’s a piece of advice I’ll hand over to you, Mooney, and I won’t charge for it. Senator Gore remembers favors. He is a big man.”

The Congressman would have spoken, but the captain did not give him the opportunity.

“Just a minute now,” he said. “I’m almost through. I told the Senator the straight truth about our post office here. He was surprised. I judged it was different from what he had heard from you. He said he could not understand, considering the story you told him. I said that, according to my experience, you were subject to changes of mind at times. By the way of proof I showed him some letters you wrote me two or three years ago. His name was in those letters. Perhaps you remember—you were a little peeved because he hadn’t used his influence in a matter you were interested in and you spoke out pretty plain. I wouldn’t say the names you called him were compliments, exactly. So—”

But Mooney could hold in no longer. His dignity was gone and with it his confident assurance.

“You showed him those letters!” he shouted. “Why—why, those were personal letters. What do you mean by—”

“Sshh! No they weren’t. You asked me to show them to other people and to do what I could to help you upset the Senator’s plans. Anyhow, I needed ’em to prove my case, just as, I suppose, to prove yours you felt it necessary to say what you did about Reliance Clark’s misusing the Government money and things like that. Never mind what you said about me. I could answer that without the help of anybody’s letters. So—well, to make a long yarn shorter, Senator Gore said he could see I was right and that he would help me. I said the help must be prompt or it would be too late. He made it prompt. The President himself happened to be in New York last week, maybe you saw it in the papers. He was there and the Senator took me to see him. It seemed a kind of a shame to bother the President of this whole United States with a little two-for-a-cent mess like the Harniss post office, but—well, he was patient and so—Reliance!” he called, raising his voice. “Reliance, you can come in now. I have got something for you.”

The parlor door swung open and Miss Clark appeared. Her expression was peculiar, but not nearly as peculiar as that of the Honorable Alpheus Mooney when he recognized her.

Foster Townsend took from the inside pocket of his coat a folded, official-looking document. He handed it to her. She took it mechanically.

“There is your notice of reappointment, Reliance,” he said. “It wasn’t really necessary, maybe. They might have let you stay on without it, perhaps; I don’t just know how such things are worked although I have had a hand in a good many appointments of different kinds. But I asked the Senator to have something sent and sent to me. I thought I’d like the fun of giving it to you, and I thought, too, if it was done here, privately, between us three, it might save our friend Mr. Mooney from having to make a lot of public explanations. I don’t know exactly why I should do you a favor, Mooney,” he added, cheerfully, “but I am glad to do this one. Want to see the paper, do you? I guess Miss Clark will show it to you, though you can take my word for it that it is perfectly straight.”

The Congressman did not ask to see the paper. He asked for nothing and said nothing. He seemed to be in a daze and when Townsend picked up the hat which he had dropped he took it without a word.

He departed, a moment or two later, and the captain accompanied him to the outer door. Townsend was smiling when he reëntered the library.

“I should be a little sorry for that fellow,” he observed, “if he hadn’t behaved so like a swelled-up bullfrog. He is in for a joyful time with Thacher and the rest of them. Maybe it will be good for him, though. I guess likely he will be a little more careful about the kind of letters he writes.”

He looked at Reliance. She had unfolded the document from Washington and was reading it, or trying to do so. Her hands were trembling. Townsend looked away.

“I gave the Honorable one little piece of parting advice,” he added, with another chuckle. “I told him what I told Ben Snow, that it was generally good policy to wait until after a man was buried before you took it for granted he was dead.”

He stretched out his arms and laughed aloud.

“That did me good!” he declared. “That did me a world of good. I guess maybe I never was dead, after all. Or else I am just coming to life again.”

He turned once more to Miss Clark. She was still gazing at the paper in her hands.

“Well, Reliance,” he said, “that is off your mind. You can sort letters for a while longer anyhow. Are you glad?”

She sighed. “I—I don’t know what I am, hardly, yet,” she confessed. “Oh, Foster, how am I ever—ever goin’ to pay you for this?”

“I don’t want any pay. The debt was all on my side. I owe you a whole lot more yet. You foolish woman! Why didn’t you tell me what was going on? What would you have done for a living if they had put you out of that post office?”

She tried to smile. “I should have got along some way,” she said. “I had planned it pretty well out. I should have boarded with Abbie—I am going to do that anyhow—and worked harder at the millinery, that is all. I would have got along.”

“Yes,” with a disgusted grunt, “you would have got along; all creation couldn’t stop your doing that, I guess. But what kind of a get-along would it have been? This is why you sublet your house, of course. I knew there was something behind that.... Now you aren’t going boarding down at Abbie Makepeace’s. You are going to stay right here. There is plenty of room. Nabby needs you to help. Yes, you are going to stay. You will stay—at least until the time comes when I put those Hopkinses out of your own place and you go back there to live, where you ought to be.”

“No, Foster—”

“I say yes! Confound it! Let me have my own way once in a while, won’t you?”

This was like the old Foster Townsend, the big mogul. Her smile broadened. He noticed it and smiled also.

“Sit down over there a minute, Reliance,” he ordered. “I want to talk to you.”

She took the rocker so recently vacated by the Honorable Mooney. He sank into the leather chair and stretched his legs. She waited for him to speak, but he did not.

“Well, Foster,” she asked, after a moment, “what is it?”

He jingled the change in his pocket, the old habit of his. He appeared a little uneasy.

“Well?” she repeated.

He lifted his head. “What I have got to say is—well, confound it, it is hard to say,” he began. “For me, anyhow. Reliance, I suppose you think I’ve got a grudge against you for—that business of Esther’s. I haven’t.”

“I am glad of that, Foster.”

She was glad, especially glad to hear him say it. In spite of her assurances to Esther, she had begun to think he never would.

“Don’t you misunderstand me,” he went on, sharply. “I am no more in favor of her marrying that Griffin cub than I ever was. She made a big mistake there. If she had left it to me I could have found her a husband that was something more than a picture dauber. You bet I could! And he wouldn’t have been a Cook either.”

There was much she might have said, much she wanted to say, but she thought it inadvisable just then.

“We all of us make mistakes, Foster,” was her only comment.

“Humph! Yes, we do. I have made a lot in my life. Well, if I had it to live over again, I would make the same ones, I shouldn’t wonder. I am built that way. I can no more help bossing other people’s affair than I can help breathing. I like to do it, always did. I don’t know as it pays, though.”

“I don’t believe it does, Foster.”

“It paid with Mooney just now, didn’t it?... Oh, well, you may be right. I certainly haven’t made what you might call a first-class job of it for the last three or four years.... Well, that wasn’t what I started to say. Reliance, you did one first-class job that night when you made Esther and—and that fellow of hers get married before they left Harniss. Get married right in your own house, with you to stand by and see them sign articles. That saved talk—and dirty, mean talk that might have hung around the girl all her life.”

“That is the way I felt about it.”

“Um-hum. Well, it is the way I feel—have felt since it happened. I haven’t told you so because—well, because.”

“I understand.”

“Yes, I guess you do; you ought to know me by this time.... What’s the matter now?”

She had risen from the rocker. “Those letters!” she exclaimed. “Mine—and that one for you! I must have left them in the parlor. That talk between you and Mr. Mooney made me forget them altogether. I wouldn’t have believed anything could make me forget those.”

She ran to the parlor and returned, the letters in her hand.

“Here is yours,” she said.

He took it from her. “What is all this?” he demanded. “You were crying when you started to give it to me before. I believe you are crying now. What in the name of—”

“Read it,” she urged. “Please read it. We can talk about it afterwards.”

He tore open the envelope. She hurried to the dining room and remained there for perhaps five minutes. When she came back he was sitting there, his hand resting on his knee and the letter—Esther’s letter—between his fingers. His attitude reminded her of that dreadful evening in her own sitting-room when she had returned to find him after he had read that other letter from his niece.

He heard her enter and looked up.

“Well!” he observed, with a slow shake of the head. “Well! here is another surprise package for me. Here is another thing you have been keeping from me, eh?”

“I couldn’t help it, Foster. Esther and I both thought it was best not to tell you. We were afraid you might be worried.”

“Humph! So you thought you would do all the worrying for the pair of us. That is like you, I must say. Did Esther write you? You said you had a letter—from her.”

“Mine wasn’t from her. Bob wrote me. But he said Esther insisted on writing you herself. She couldn’t write much of course—not yet. I suppose it wasn’t a long letter.”

“Not very.”

“But, Foster, isn’t it wonderful? It doesn’t seem as if it could be so, does it?”

He sniffed. “Why, I don’t know as it is so tremendously wonderful,” he replied. “About what was to be expected sometime or other, I should say.”

“But—but, Foster, did you read it all? Didn’t she write you about her—about their—about Mr. Cook?”

He turned the letter over. “Um-hum,” he grunted. “She wrote that Cook was in a pretty bad way and that he has asked to have his grandson come and see him.”

“Yes, but she and—and the baby will come, too, of course.”

“Humph!... The old scamp must have had a change of heart. Ready to forget and forgive, maybe, like the rich old granddads, or whatever they were, in the Sunday School books. Well, he can afford to forgive. He is rich, blast him! That is, provided the lawyers haven’t got the whole of the plunder.”

She waited a moment longer. Then she leaned toward him.

“Is that all you’ve got to say?” she asked, anxiously. “I shall have to write Esther, you know, and she will want to be told everything.”

He did not appear to have heard. He was absently folding the letter. Suddenly he spoke, but to himself more than to her. “I wonder who the young shaver looks like,” he muttered.

It was very little, but it was enough. Reliance was satisfied. She could await Esther’s homecoming with a light heart.

 

THE END