Andrew Kelton put out his hand to say good-night a moment after Sylvia had vanished.
"Sit down, Andrew," said Mrs. Owen. "It's too early to go to bed. That draft's not good for the back of your head. Sit over here."
He had relaxed after the departure of the dinner guests and looked tired and discouraged. Mrs. Owen brought a bottle of whiskey and a pitcher of water and placed them near his elbow.
"Try it, Andrew. I usually take a thimbleful myself before going to bed."
The novelty of this sort of ministration was in itself sufficient to lift a weary and discouraged spirit. Mrs. Owen measured his whiskey, and poured it into a tall glass, explaining as she did so that a friend of hers in Louisville kept her supplied out of the stores of the Pendennis Club.
"It's off the wood. This bottled drug-store whiskey is poison. I'd just as lief take paregoric. I drew this from my own 'bar'l' this morning. Don't imagine I'm a heavy consumer. A 'bar'l' lasts me a long time. I divide it around among my friends. Remind me to give you some to take home. Try one of those cigars; John Ware keeps a box here. If they're cabbage leaf it isn't my fault."
"No, thanks, Sally. You're altogether too kind to me. It's mighty good to be here, I can tell you."
"Now that you are here, Andrew, I want you to remember that I'm getting on and you're just a trifle ahead of me on the dusty pike that has no turning."
"I wish I had your eternal youth, Sally. I feel about ninety-nine to-night."
"That's the reason I'm keeping you up. You came here to talk about something that's on your mind, and the sooner it's over the better. No use in your lying awake all night."
Professor Kelton played with his glass and moved uneasily in his chair.
"Come right out with it, Andrew. If it's money that worries you, don't waste any time explaining how it happened; just tell me how much. I had my bank book balanced yesterday and I've got exactly twelve thousand four hundred and eighteen dollars and eleven cents down at Tom Adams's bank. If you can use it you're welcome; if it ain't enough I'm about to sell a bunch o' colts I've got on my Lexington place and they're good for six thousand more. I can close the trade by a night telegram right now."
Kelton laughed. The sums she named so lightly represented wealth beyond the dreams of avarice. It afforded him infinite relief to be able to talk to her, and though he had come to the city for the purpose, his adventures of the day with banks and trust companies had given a new direction to his needs. But the habit of secrecy, of fighting out his battles alone, was so thoroughly established that he found it difficult to enter into confidences even when this kind-hearted friend made the way easy for him.
"Come, out with it, Andrew. You're the only person I know who's never come to me with troubles. I'd begun to think you were among the lucky ones who never have any or else you were afraid of me."
"It's not fair to trouble you about this, but I'm in a corner where I need help. When I asked you to let me bring Sylvia here I merely wanted you to look her over. She's got to an age where I can't trust my judgment about her. I had a plan for her that I thought I could put through without much trouble, but I found out to-day that it isn't so easy. I wanted to send her to college."
"You want to send her to college and you thought you would come over and let me give her a little motherly counsel while you borrowed the money of Tom Adams to pay her college bills. Is that what's happened?"
"Just about that, Sally. Adams is all right; he has to protect the bank."
"Adams is a doddering imbecile. How much did you ask him for?"
"Five thousand dollars. I offered to put up my life insurance policy for that amount and some stock I own. He said money was tight just now and they'd want a good name on the paper besides the collateral, and that I'd better try my home bank. I didn't do that, of course, because Montgomery is a small town and—well, I'd rather not advertise my affairs to a whole community. I'm not a business man and these things all seem terribly complicated and embarrassing to me."
"But you tried other places besides Adams? I saw it in your eye when you came home this evening that you had struck a snag. Well, well! So money is tight, is it? I must speak to Tom Adams about that. He told me yesterday they had more money than they could lend and that the banks were cutting down their dividends. He's no banker; he ought to be in the old-clothes business."
"I can't blame him. I suppose my not being in business, and not living here, makes a difference."
"Rubbish! But you ought to have come to me. You spoke of stock; what's that in?"
"Shares in the White River Canneries. I put all I had in that company. Everybody seemed to make money in the canning business and I thought it would be a good investment. It promised well in the prospectus."
"It always does, Andrew," replied the old lady dryly. "Let me see, Morton Bassett was in that."
"I believe so. He was one of the organizers."
"Um."
"Adams told me to-day there had been a reorganization and that my shares were valueless."
"Well, well. So you were one of the suckers that put money into that canning scheme. You can charge it off, Andrew. Let's drop the money question for a minute, I want to talk about the little girl."
"Yes I'm anxious to know what you think of her"
"Well, she's a Kelton; it's in the eyes; but there's a good deal of her Grandmother Evans in her, too. Let me see,—your wife was one of those Posey County Evanses? I remember perfectly. The old original Evans came to this country with Robert Owen and started in with the New Harmony community down there. There was a streak o' genius in that whole set. But about Sylvia. I don't think I ever saw Sylvia's mother after she was Sylvia's age."
"I don't think you did. She was away at school a good many years. Sylvia is the picture of her mother. It's a striking likeness; but their natures are wholly different."
He was very grave, and the despondency that he had begun to throw off settled upon him again.
"Andrew, who was Sylvia's father? I never asked you that question before, and maybe I oughtn't to ask it now; but I've often wondered. Let me see, what was your daughter's name?"
"Edna."
"Just what happened to Edna, Andrew?" she persisted.
Kelton rose and paced the floor. Thrice he crossed the room; then he flung himself down on the davenport beside Mrs. Owen.
"I don't know, Sally; I don't know! She was high-spirited as a girl, a little willful and impulsive, but with the best heart in the world. She lost her mother too soon; and in her girlhood we had no home—not even the half-homes possible to naval officers. She had a good natural voice and wanted to study music, so after we had been settled at Madison College a year I left her in New York with a woman I knew pretty well—the widow of a brother officer. It was a horrible, terrible, hideous mistake. The life of the city went to her head. She wanted to fit herself for the stage and they told me she could do it—had the gift and all that. I ought never to have left her down there, but what could I do? There was nothing in a town like Montgomery for her; she wouldn't listen to it."
"You did your best, Andrew; you don't have to prove that to me. Well—"
"Edna ran off—without giving me any hint of what was coming. It was a queer business. The woman I had counted on to look out for her and protect her seemed utterly astonished at her disappearance and was helpless about the whole matter when I went down there. It was my fault—all my fault!"
He rose and flung up his arms with a gesture of passionate despair.
"Sit down, Andrew, and let's go through with it," she said calmly. "I reckon these things are hard, but it's better for you to tell me. You can't tell everybody and somebody ought to know. For the sake of the little girl upstairs you'd better tell me."
"What I've said to you I've never said to a soul," he went on. "I've carried this thing all these years and have never mentioned it. My friends at the college are the noblest people on earth; they have never asked questions, but they must have wondered."
"Yes; and I've wondered, too, since the first time you came here and told me you had brought your daughter's child home. It's perfectly natural, Andrew, for folks to wonder. Go on and tell me the rest."
"The rest!" he cried. "Oh, that's the hardest part of it! I have told you all I know! She wrote me after a time that she was married and was happy, but she didn't explain her conduct in any way. She signed herself Garrison, but begged me not to try to find her. She said her husband wasn't quite prepared to disclose his marriage to his family, but that it would all be right soon. The woman with whom I had left her couldn't help me to identify him in any way; at least she didn't help me. There had been a number of young men boarding in the neighborhood—medical and law students; but there was no Garrison among them. It was in June that this happened, and when I went down to try to trace her they had all gone. I was never quite sure whether the woman dealt squarely with me or not. But it was my fault, Sally; I want you to know that I have no excuse to offer. I don't want you to try to say anything that would make my lot easier."
It was not Sally Owen's way to extenuate errors of commission or omission. Her mental processes were always singularly direct.
"Are you sure she was married; did you find any proof of it?" she asked bluntly.
He was silent for a moment before he met her eyes.
"I have no proof of it. All I have is Edna's assurance in a letter."
Their gaze held while they read each other's thoughts. She made no comment; there was nothing to say to this, nor did she show surprise or repugnance at the dark shadow his answer had flung across the meagre picture.
"And Garrison—who was he?"
"I don't know even that! From all I could learn I think it likely he was a student in one of the professional schools; but whether law or medicine, art or music—I couldn't determine. The whole colony of students had scattered to the four winds. Probably Garrison was not his real name; but that is wholly an assumption."
"It's clear enough that whoever the man was, and whether it was straight or not, Edna felt bound to shield him. That's just like us fool women. How did Sylvia come to your hands?"
"There was nothing in that to help. About four years had passed since I lost track of her and I had traveled all over the East and followed every clue in vain. I spent two summers in New York walking the streets in the blind hope that I might meet her. Then, one day,—this was twelve years ago,—I had a telegram from the superintendent of a public hospital at Utica that Edna was there very ill. She died before I got there. Just how she came to be in that particular place I have no idea. The hospital authorities knew nothing except that she had gone to them, apparently from the train, seriously ill. The little girl was with her. She asked them to send for me, but told them nothing of herself. She had only hand baggage and it told us nothing as to her home if she had one, or where she was going. Her clothing, the nurse pointed out, was of a style several years old, but it was clean and neat. Most surprising of all, she had with her several hundred dollars; but there was nothing whatever by which to reconstruct her life in those blank years."
"But she wrote to you—the letters would have given a clue of some kind?"
"The few letters she wrote me were the most fragmentary and all in the first year; they were like her, poor child; her letters were always the merest scraps. In all of them she said she would come home in due course; that some of her husband's affairs had to be straightened out first, and that she was perfectly happy. They were traveling about, she said, and she asked me not to try to write to her. The first letters came from Canada—Montreal and Quebec; then one from Albany; then even these messages ceased and I heard no more until the telegram called me to Utica. She had never mentioned the birth of the child. I don't know—I don't even know where Sylvia was born, or her exact age. The nurse at the hospital said Edna called the child Sylvia."
"I overheard Sylvia telling Ware to-night that she was born in New York. Could it be possible—"
"No; she knows nothing. You must remember that she was only three. When she began to ask me when her birthday came—well, Sally, I felt that I'd better give her one; and I told her, too, that she was born in New York City. You understand—?"
"Of course, Andrew. You did perfectly right. She's likely to ask a good many questions now that she's growing up."
"Oh," he cried despairingly, "she's already asked them! It's a heartbreaking business, I tell you. Many a time when she's piped up in our walks or at the table with some question about her father and mother I've ignored it or feigned not to hear; but within the past year or two I've had to fashion a background for her. I've surrounded her origin and antecedents with a whole tissue of lies. But, Sally, it must have been all right—I had Edna's own word for it!" he pleaded brokenly. "It must have been all right!"
"Well, what if it wasn't! Does it make any difference about the girl? All this mystery is a good thing; the denser the better maybe, as long as there's any doubt at all. Your good name protects her; it's a good name, Andrew. But go on; you may as well tell me the whole business."
"I've told you all I know; and as I've told it I've realized more than before how pitifully little it is."
"Well, there's nothing to do about that. I've never seen any sense in worrying over what's done. It's the future you've got to figure on for Sylvia. So you think college is a good thing for girls—for a girl like Sylvia?"
"Yes; but I want your opinion. You're the only person in the world I can talk to; it's helped me more than I can tell you to shift some of this burden to you. Maybe it isn't fair; you're a busy woman—"
"I guess I'm not so busy. I've been getting lazy, and needed a hard jolt. I've been wondering a good deal about these girls' colleges. Some of this new woman business looks awful queer to me, but so did the electric light and the telephone a few years ago and I can even remember when people were likely to drop dead when they got their first telegram. Sylvia isn't"—she hesitated for an instant—"from what you say, Sylvia isn't much like her mother?"
"No. Her qualities are wholly different. Edna had a different mind altogether. There was nothing of the student about her. The only thing that interested her was music, and that came natural to her. I've studied Sylvia carefully,—I'm ashamed to confess how carefully,—fearing that she would grow to be like her mother; but she's another sort, and I doubt if she will change. You can already see the woman in her. That child, Sally, has in her the making of a great woman. I've been careful not to crowd her, but she has a wonderful mind,—not the brilliant sort that half sees things in lightning flashes, but a vigorous mind, that can grapple with a problem and fight it out. I'm afraid to tell you how remarkable I think she is. No; poor Edna was not like that. She hated study."
"Sylvia's very quiet, but I reckon she takes everything in. It's in her eyes that she's different. And I guess that quietness means she's got power locked up in her. Children do show it. Now Marian, my grandniece, is a different sort. She's a forthputting youngster that's going to be hard to break to harness. She looks pretty, grazing in the pasture and kicking up her heels, but I don't see what class she's going to fit into. Now, Hallie,—my niece, Mrs. Bassett,—she's one of these club fussers,—always studying poetry and reading papers and coming up to town to state conventions or federations and speaking pieces in a new hat. Hallie's smart at it. She was president of the Daughters once, by way of showing that our folks in North Carolina fought in the Revolution, which I reckon they did; though I never saw where Hallie proved it; but the speech I heard her make at the Propylæum wouldn't have jarred things much if it hadn't been for Hallie's feathers. She likes her clothes—she always had 'em, you know. My brother Blackford left her a very nice fortune; and Morton Bassett makes money. Well, as I started to say, there's all kinds of women,—the old ones like me that never went to school much, and Hallie's kind, that sort o' walked through the orchard and picked the nearest peaches, and then starts in at thirty to take courses in Italian Art, and Marian, who gives her teachers nervous prostration, and Sylvia, who takes to books naturally."
"There are all kinds of girls, just as there are all kinds of boys. Good students, real scholars have always been rare in the world—men and women. I should like to see Sylvia go high and far; I should like her to have every chance."
"All right, Andrew; let's do it. How much does a college course cost for a girl?"
"I didn't come here to interest you in the money side of it, Sally; I expected—"
"Answer my question, Andrew."
"I had expected to give her a four-year course for five thousand dollars. The actual tuition isn't so much; it's railroad fare, clothing, and other expenses."
Mrs. Owen turned towards Kelton with a smile on her kind, shrewd face.
"Andrew, just to please me, I want you to let me be partners with you in this. What you've told me and what I've seen of that little girl have clinched me pretty strong. I wish she was mine! My little Elizabeth would be a grown woman if she'd lived; and because of her I like to help other people's little girls; you know I helped start Elizabeth House, a home for working girls—and I'm getting my money back on that a thousand times over. It's a pretty state of things if an old woman like me, without a chick of my own, and with no sense but horse sense, can't back a likely filly like your Sylvia. I want you to let me call her our Sylvia. We'll train her in all the paces, Andrew, and I hope one of us will live to see her strike the home stretch. Come into my office a minute," she said, rising and leading the way.
The appointments of her "office" were plain and substantial. A flat-topped desk stood in the middle of the room—a relic of the lamented Jackson Owen; in one corner was an old-fashioned iron safe in which she kept her account books. A print of Maud S. adorned one wall, and facing it across the room hung a lithograph of Thomas A. Hendricks. Twice a week a young woman came to assist Mrs. Owen with her correspondence and accounts,—a concession to age, for until she was well along in the fifties Sally Owen had managed these things alone.
"You've seen my picture-gallery before, Andrew? Small but select. I knew both the lady and the gentleman," she continued, with one of her humorous flashes. "I went to Cleveland in '85 to see Maud S. She ate up a mile in 2:08-3/4—the prettiest thing I ever saw. You know Bonner bought her as a four-year-old—the same Bonner that owned the 'New York Ledger.' I used to read the 'Ledger' clear through, when Henry Ward Beecher and Fanny Fern wrote for it. None of these new magazines touch it. And you knew Tom Hendricks? That's a good picture. Tom looked like a statesman anyhow, and that's more than most of 'em do."
She continued her efforts to divert his thoughts from the real matter at hand, summoning from the shadows all the Hoosier statesmen of the post-bellum period to aid her, and she purposely declared her admiration of several of these to provoke Kelton's ire.
"That's right, Andrew; jump on 'em," she laughed, as she drew from the desk a check book and began to write. When she had blotted and torn out the check she examined it carefully and placed it near him on the edge of her desk. "Now, Andrew Kelton, there's a check for six thousand dollars; we'll call that our educational fund. You furnish the girl; I put in the money. I only wish I had the girl to put into the business instead of the cash."
"But I don't need the money yet; I shan't need it till fall," he protested.
"That's all right. Fall's pretty close and you'll feel better if you have it. Now, you may count on more when that's gone if you want it. In case anything goes wrong with you or me it'll be fixed. I'll attend to it. I look on it as a good investment. Your note? Look here, Andrew Kelton, if you mention that life insurance to me again, I'll cut your acquaintance. You go to bed; and don't you ever let on to that baby upstairs that I have any hand in her schooling." She dropped her check book into a drawer and swung round in her swivel chair until she faced him. "I don't want to open up that affair of Sylvia's mother again, but there's always the possibility that something may happen. You know Edna's dead, but there's always a chance that Sylvia's father may turn up. It's not likely; but there's no telling about such things; and it wouldn't be quite fair for you to leave her unprepared if it should happen."
"There's one more circumstance I haven't told you about. It happened only a few days ago. It was that, in fact, which crystallized my own ideas about Sylvia's education. A letter was sent to me by a stranger, offering money for Sylvia's schooling. The whole thing was surrounded with the utmost secrecy."
"So? Then some one is watching Sylvia; keeping track of her, and must be kindly disposed from that. You never heard anything before?"
"Never. I was asked to send a verbal answer by the messenger who brought me the letter, accepting or declining the offer. I declined it."
"That was right. But there's no hiding anything in this world; you must have some idea where the offer came from."
"I haven't the slightest, not the remotest idea. The messenger was a stranger to me; from what Sylvia said he was a stranger at Montgomery and had never seen the college before. Time had begun to soften the whole thing, and the knowledge that some one has been watching the child all these years troubles me. It roused all my old resentment; I have hardly slept since it occurred."
"It's queer; but you'd better try to forget it. Somebody's conscience is hurting, I reckon. I wouldn't know how to account for it in any other way. If it's a case of conscience, it may have satisfied itself by offering money; if it didn't, you or Sylvia may hear from it again."
"It's just that that hurts and worries me,—the possibility that this person may trouble Sylvia sometime when I am not here to help her. It's an awful thing for a woman to go out into the world followed by a shadow. It's so much worse for a woman; women are so helpless."
"Some of us, like me, are pretty tough, too. Sylvia will be able to take care of herself; you don't need to worry about her. If that's gnawing some man's conscience—and I reckon it is—you can forget all about it. A man's conscience—the kind of man that would abandon a woman he had married, or maybe hadn't married—ain't going to be a ghost that walks often. You'd better go to bed, Andrew."
Kelton lingered to smoke a cigar in the open. He had enjoyed to-night an experience that he had not known in years—that of unburdening himself to a kindly, sympathetic, and resourceful woman.
While they talked of her, Sylvia sat in her window-seat in the dark above looking at the stars. She lingered there until late, enjoying the cool air, and unwilling to terminate in sleep so eventful a day. She heard presently her grandfather's step below as he "stood watch," marking his brief course across the dim garden by the light of his cigar. Sylvia was very happy. She had for a few hours breathed the ampler ether of a new world; but she was unconscious in her dreaming that her girlhood, that had been as tranquil water safe from current and commotion, now felt the outward drawing of the tide.