CHAPTER IV
QUESTIONS OF DIPLOMACY
At the round table covered with sun-bleached napery and silver that caught the candle light until it seemed ablaze, Aunt Philomela, with a diplomacy equaled only by that of King Arthur, had so arranged the places that no one could tell who sat opposite who. She herself presided at the quaint old silver tea urn, so that naturally marked the head of the board. But Barnes and Miss Van Patten were placed equi-distant from her on either side so that they did not face one another.
On the table were damson preserves, a clear crimson as of molten rubies; milk-white bread; a bowl of crisp salad fresh from the garden; and a pitcher of milk so heavy with cream that it poured the lightest possible shade of coffee-color.
Aunt Philomela had freshened herself in a purple gown relieved by spider thread lace. Her niece was in a gossamer white China silk sprinkled with blue polka dots. In her black hair she wore a tortoise-shell comb surmounted with old gold scroll of the finest Venetian workmanship. It was just the touch needed to bring out the Italian richness of her features. She might now have been presiding at some old Patrician board with the chanties of the gondoliers floating in at the open windows, except for Aunt Philomela, stern as a Puritan conscience—and the damson preserves. On the whole Barnes liked her better in her present setting. To them all came the song of a whip-poor-will mourning to his mate beneath the purple sky in the orchard just outside.
“How will you have your tea?” asked Aunt Philomela.
“With cream, Aunt Philomela, no sugar if you please.”
Miss Van Patten held her breath. Aunt Philomela sat fixed with the tongs poised over the square sugar bowl.
“Such audacity!” she choked.
“I was only speaking my line,” he hastened to explain. “The servants, you know.”
“I think it quite necessary,” put in the girl, hastily bringing up reënforcements at the sight of her aunt’s snapping eyes.
“It will take me some time to get used to it,” added Barnes. “You see I haven’t the good fortune to have a real aunt.”
“It is an unpardonable liberty,” protested Aunt Philomela, unreasonably.
“And you must call me Joe,” he hurried on, “and I must address your niece as Eleanor.”
Barnes himself was a little breathless after that. He found himself studying the damson preserves. Had he looked up he would have found them a good match for Miss Van Patten’s cheeks.
“I see no help for it,” agreed the latter.
“Eleanor,” trembled the aunt.
“Well, is there?” she demanded. “How else can he address me before the servants?”
“He can at least refrain, when the servants are not in the room.”
She dropped two lumps of sugar into Barnes’ cup.
“If you please,” murmured Barnes, “no sugar, Aunt Philomela.”
Aunt Philomela corrected her mistake by adding another lump. Barnes accepted it with a murmur of thanks.
“You see,” he continued more at ease, “John already has his suspicions.”
“He has?” exclaimed the aunt uneasily. “But he has never seen Joe! He has been with us only since we came here.”
“All I know,” Barnes answered, “is that John looked under the bed and in the closets before he left me.”
The aunt did not disclose the fact that this was one of John’s nightly duties in the modest room she occupied next to her niece’s, but the latter’s eyes warmed into a smile.
“Perhaps that was mere force of habit,” hinted Miss Van Patten.
Aunt Philomela turned a warning glance upon her niece—her cheeks coloring daintily.
“It made me realize that I ought to know more about myself,” Barnes continued.
“You were precious little good,” vouchsafed the aunt.
“Must I act up to my reputation?” he asked solicitously.
Miss Van Patten put in kindly,
“I think you will have no difficulty in living up to the Joe my father found to-day.”
“I think it wise to idealize the boy as far as possible,” he said.
Miss Van Patten served him with salad and a portion of the damson preserves.
“But there are certain details,” he persisted.
“If you’re going to idealize Joe, you’d better leave out the details,” advised Aunt Philomela.
“I referred more particularly to the historical details,” he answered. “There is for instance the question of my age.”
“You will be twenty-three next October,” Aunt Philomela condescended to inform him.
“Thank you. Then I suppose I ought to know the ages of—my relatives.”
“Which matches well with your other presumptions,” answered the aunt with heat.
But here Miss Van Patten took the matter into her own hands and sketched for him as delicately as possible the brief career of this only son. She told first a little something of the mother who had been dead ten years now and of the blow this was to the father. Mr. Van Patten had practically retired, when this occurred, from the bank where he had for so long been president. For a few years they lived on in New York, with Aunt Philomela, her mother’s sister, filling the gap as best she could. Joe even as a child had been hard to handle and when he grew up became very willful. He did not like school and so Mr. Van Patten, when the boy was sixteen, found a position for him in the bank. But he was restless there and did not stay long. He tried one thing after another without success and finally when rebuked by his father, left home altogether. During these years she herself had been away at school and so had seen little of her brother. After the boy left, her father broke down and upon the advice of the doctors came back here in the hills. They had been here now five years living very much to themselves. From time to time they had heard from the boy in his wanderings, locating him a few months ago in Alaska.
It was an undramatic narrative and yet as it fell from her lips Barnes listened with keen absorption. Or was it merely to the melody of her voice? After she had ceased, he found himself still listening.
“May I serve you to more tea?” interrupted Aunt Philomela.
Barnes thoughtfully stirred the thick syrup in his cup.
“I think not, thank you,” he answered.
“So you see,” added Miss Van Patten, “there is not very much for you to learn.”
“No,” he smiled, “I’m not so black as I was painted. But there are still some other things I must post myself on. I would like—”
“I positively refuse to surrender my private papers,” objected Aunt Philomela.
“An atlas,” Barnes finished.
“An atlas!” gasped Aunt Philomela, taken by surprise.
“An atlas. I must study my geography. The most I know of Alaska at present is that it’s the home of polar bears. Are you familiar with the habits of polar bears, Aunt Philomela?”
The girl smiled. That was what Barnes had wished.
“No. I fear I can’t assist you in that fabrication,” Aunt Philomela answered curtly.
“There is a bear in the park,” he informed her. “I’ve often watched him. Upon that subject at least I may speak with some authority. But there are many other things in Alaska. Eskimos, for instance. I’m a little weak on Eskimos. In the pictures they look much like the bears except that they carry harpoons. There are also the details of mining—have you ever been interested in mines?”
“Yes,” scowled Aunt Philomela. “In a weak moment Joe persuaded me by letter.”
Clearly that was a delicate subject. He swerved away from it.
“I must post myself on names. I recall only Nome, White Horse, and Dawson.”
The girl smiled again.
“That is a complication,” she exclaimed. “Father is sure to question you. He is interested in travel.”
“I’ll do my best to instruct him.”
“I don’t think you’re justified in imposing upon a helpless old man,” declared Aunt Philomela, severely.
“My dear aunt,” returned Barnes, amiably, “all of us stay-at-homes are imposed upon by our traveling brothers. I have a friend who has been to India whom I have often confuted with the aid of an encyclopedia. Unless I’m mistaken, my stories will compare favorably with any Joe himself might tell.”
“They couldn’t be much more untruthful,” the aunt admitted, thinking of her mine.
“That gives me a pleasant margin.”
“Of one fact I can assure you,” she further volunteered, “gold does not lie around the hills in chunks—at least not in the vicinity of ‘The Lucky Find.’”
“I’ll make a note of that.”
“Which I hope will prove more valuable than my nephew’s notes.”
John stole in at the door.
“He is calling for Mr. Van Patten, Miss Schuyler.”
Schuyler? Barnes received a pleasant surprise at the name. His ancestors had fought under Schuyler and now fortune had decreed that he himself should enter an engagement with one of that hero’s descendants.
Aunt Philomela glanced towards Barnes with something like reliance.
“Very well, John,” he answered, “I’ll be right up.”
“May I hope that the ladies will not have retired before I return?”
“You may be assured of that fact,” answered Aunt Philomela with decision.
He had no sooner left the room than she confronted her niece.
“Well?” she demanded, indicating clearly that she still held the girl accountable for the whole situation.
Miss Van Patten lowered her eyes.
“You make it very hard,” she murmured.
“I?” snorted the aunt. “What have I to do with it? I wash my hands of the whole affair.”
“You can’t do that,” she exclaimed, “after you asked him to remain!”
“I asked him to remain? I? When that great tall man stood over me—”
In her indignation she could go no further.
“Why he wouldn’t hurt you. He wouldn’t hurt—anything.”
“What do you know about him?”
“Can’t you see?”
“Yes,” answered the aunt, “I can see.”
“One need only look at his eyes.”
She stopped. Her aunt had a most embarrassing way at times.
“I suppose he means well enough,” admitted the aunt more kindly.
“How can he mean anything else? What has he to gain by giving his time to us?”
“It is not easy to understand men—especially young men,” affirmed Aunt Philomela.
“There isn’t anything to understand, when one is just kind.”
“A great deal more sometimes than when one is merely unkind.”
Miss Van Patten met her aunt’s eyes.
“Aunt,” she declared, “if you could have seen the joy in Daddy’s face you wouldn’t bother yourself with suspicions. We haven’t any right to consider ourselves at all in this matter. We’ve saved father a great grief. Isn’t that enough?”
The aunt shook her head slowly.
“My dear,” she answered, “you’ve been swept on by your emotions. You don’t realize the seriousness of what we’ve done. We’ve taken into the intimacy of our family a stranger—a young stranger, about whom we know nothing. Supposing any of our relatives should swoop down on us from New York? What would they say? What will our friends about here say? What will Dr. Merriweather say?”
The girl answered quietly,
“What does all that matter when you think of what we’ve saved Daddy?”
“Matter? It would mean nothing short of a scandal.”
Miss Van Patten flushed. But she answered still quietly,
“I think you’re mistaken, Aunty. But even that—what would that matter?”
“Bah. You aren’t out of your swaddling-clothes as far as the world goes.”
The girl crept closer to her aunt. She placed her hand upon the thin shoulder.
“Aunty dear, if you found an old man bruised by the road, would you hesitate? Do we need a stranger to show us how just to be kind? That isn’t the way you’ve helped the poor with Dr. Merriweather.”
Aunt Philomela looked steadily into the young girl’s face.
“My dear,” she answered, “I’m seventy-two and you’re twenty-two.”
“Must I wait until I am your age before I’m human?”
“Perhaps—before you learn that you are human.”
Then the aunt asked an apparently irrelevant question,
“Is Carl coming over to practice with you to-night?”
Miss Van Patten turned away.
“I haven’t been thinking of Carl.”
“How are you going to introduce him to this stranger?”
Miss Van Patten did not answer.
“You see,” observed Aunt Philomela as she rose from the table, “there are more complications here than you think of.”
The two made their way into the sitting-room. The aunt took a chair near the window. Miss Van Patten remained standing, looking out into the dark.
“I shall send a note to Carl telling him I’m engaged for this evening,” she concluded. She gave the letter to John and then returned. Aunt Philomela remained staring at the door. It was a full half hour before Barnes came down.
“Alaska,” he announced, sinking into a chair in the ark, “Alaska is said to be a cold country, but at times it gets most uncomfortably hot there.”