CHAPTER VIII
AN ESTIMABLE YOUNG MAN
Barnes found himself shaking hands with a pleasant looking young fellow of twenty-two or three who had a thin, earnest face and curly brown hair.
“This is a surprise,” exclaimed Langdon, “I didn’t know Miss Van Patten had a brother.”
“I did come as a bit of surprise,” admitted Barnes, “but so did you for that matter.”
“I?”
Miss Van Patten was taking as long a time as possible to remove her hat. Her cheeks were decidedly scarlet. But she did not run as Barnes half expected her to do. She returned and dropped into a chair before the two men.
“This is as good as a story-book, Miss Van Patten,” exclaimed Langdon.
“It’s better than a story-book,” she laughed.
“When I received your note last night I thought you must be ill or something. Miss Schuyler said this morning that you had gone to walk.”
“Yes,” she murmured uneasily.
“We went after my baggage,” explained Barnes.
“So Miss Schuyler said. She tells me you’ve had lots of interesting experience in Alaska. I tried to get her to repeat some of your adventures but she told me I’d have to wait until I saw you.”
“So?” grinned Barnes, “but she knows almost as much about them now, as I do myself.”
“Nothing like getting them first hand,” said Langdon.
He turned to Miss Van Patten.
“I was afraid we’d have to give up our duets if you had a guest. But we can go on with them now—mayn’t we? Unless Mr. Van Patten needs quiet.”
“Oh, he’s much improved,” the girl assured him.
Langdon entered into a rhapsody over some new music which had just been sent him from New York. Manifestly Barnes was not needed here. He made his apologies.
“But I say,” exclaimed Langdon as Barnes was leaving, “I want to hear something about that country.”
“Whenever you wish,” answered Barnes.
He retreated to the library and finding paper there sat down to write home. He headed his letter “Schuyler headquarters.”
“Dear Mother,” he began, “I saw your eyes yesterday in the straggling mist of some cotton-blossom clouds and they brought you very near to me. This is a wonderful country. I know that enough of you has survived the apartment houses and the Acme to allow you to enjoy it if you were here. The hawthorn in your blood would respond to the glad sunshine and the unsmirched sky. And the quiet too is such as you would like. You remember the walks we used to take in the Park on clear mornings when it seemed like a fairy island? It is like that here. I want to thank you right now for the times you took me to the Zoo. I didn’t think then that the information I picked up would prove so valuable. I don’t know what I should have done here without my knowledge of polar bears. One of the great delights of Art is that sooner or later every tittle of information one picks up is used. Art wastes nothing except time.
“My exercise has kept me in the best of condition. This morning I made only four miles but before that I have consistently covered fifteen. I think I shall linger a little here. I’ve found material for a big picture. The subject is different from anything you’ve ever seen of mine. I think even father might appreciate this. I’ve about decided to attempt it in oils; a sort of study in black and gold and damson preserves.” He scratched out damson preserves and substituted crimson. “I’m uncertain about the size of the canvas. Sometimes I think it ought to be heroic, like the Santa Barbara at Venice, and at other times I feel as though I can convey the impression of its fineness only in a miniature. Then again I feel as though it ought to be swept in with bold color strokes, and at other times as though it ought to be just suggested in grays. You see—”
Someone came to the door.
“Pardon me,” apologized Miss Van Patten, “I didn’t know you were here.”
He rose instantly.
“Won’t you come in for a moment?” he pleaded. “Has Mr. Langdon gone?”
“He has returned for his music.”
“Oh, I see.”
“He plays very well.”
“On the flute?”
“The violin. He has studied abroad. He’s here for the summer visiting Dr. Merriweather.”
“And you—you play?”
“On the ’cello—but only a very little. I’m afraid this—this new complication is going to be rather embarrassing. I don’t like to tell Carl untruths.”
“You needn’t. Leave that to me. Won’t you come in?”
She hesitated and then stepped in resolutely. She settled comfortably into a big chair on the opposite side of the library table.
“At first,” she said, “I thought only of Daddy and Aunt Philomela. But now that others are brought in, it doesn’t seem quite right to them, does it?”
“It seems inevitable and what is inevitable is right.”
She shook her head,
“I’m afraid you’re mistaken. But at any rate what is inevitable is inevitable. There seems nothing to do now but make the best of it.”
She appeared genuinely worried. He tried to change the subject.
“I was writing home,” he explained.
“Then,” she declared, “I shouldn’t disturb you. When one is writing home one needs absolute quiet.”
He was still standing. She thought he had a very soldier-like appearance. He really looked more like a soldier than an artist as she had conceived artists. Even his blond mustache had an aggressive military air. It was trimmed so short and cut so straight that it challenged the suggestion that it was there merely for ornament.
He returned quickly to the first subject.
“I myself did not by chance have anything of a musical education?” he asked.
“You?”
“Joe.”
She laughed.
“No,” she answered. “You refused to practice.”
“It is just as well. Yet I remember the story of a French prisoner who to save his life, learned to play upon a trumpet in a single night.”
“Luckily you won’t need to do that but I think you could.”
“Luckily for Mr. Langdon. Otherwise we should have a trio.”
She had risen and was now nearing the door.
“Will you come in and listen to us?” she asked.
He reflected a moment to keep her longer by the door.
“No,” he decided, “I think I’ll not, thank you.”
“Carl seemed quite anxious to see more of you.”
“I’m afraid he will—the best I can do.”
“I must run up and see if father is awake,” she said and vanished.
With a sigh Barnes returned to his letter.
“I might paint her in an open doorway,” he wrote, “upon the point of leaving. She would be half turned, posed in so light a fashion that the onlooker would be half afraid she was about to vanish from the canvas. She should appear startled as though hearing the approach of—”
He glanced up. Aunt Philomela stood in the doorway. He rose again. She paused uncertainly.
“Won’t you come in?” he welcomed her bravely though she looked suspiciously as though loaded for bear.
“I thought Eleanor might be here,” she observed, as though she expected him to feel guilty.
“She left only a moment ago,” he answered frankly.
She appeared to be taking aim.
“I was writing home,” he took her into his confidence to ward off as long as possible whatever might be coming.
“I thought artists had no homes.”
“On the contrary they have more homes than anyone else.”
“I suppose that depends upon your definition of a home,” she suggested.
“Doubtless,” he agreed.
“To my mind it is where one is brought up.”
“Lord forbid,” he gasped, thinking of the apartment houses.
“And where one’s own kith and kin are.”
“Then if one got married—”
“That is quite another matter,” she snapped so decisively as to forbid further argument along this line.
But one must have a subject, thought Barnes, or one could not tell what subject Chance might introduce. Aunt Philomela had the self-conscious air of one who has approached with a mission.
“I was writing home about a piece of work I have in mind.”
“Work?” she asked with some scorn.
“A picture,” he explained amiably, “there’s a lot of work in one.”
“I’m afraid you’ll have little time for it here.”
“On the contrary, the inspiration for it came from here.”
“I’ve seen inspiration for nothing but deceit. I refused to tell him anything whatever about Alaska.”
“Mr. Langdon, you mean?”
“Who else? I was left here alone an hour with him.”
“It did make a bit of a complication, but it’s all adjusted now. I suppose I’ll have to tell all over again about three-fingered Bill.”
“This is disgraceful,” she exploded, “I’ve a good mind to confess the whole matter and have it done with.”
“But it wouldn’t be done with even if you did that. It would be almost sure to reach Mr. Van Patten’s ears.”
“It would be better if it did. It’s the first time a Schuyler has not faced things squarely.”
“Pardon me, but can’t we just as well face the present situation squarely? We are working to save a father’s mind—isn’t that a situation to face squarely?”
“We’re forced into the position of deceiving him and not only him but a most estimable young man.”
“Ah, a most estimable young man!”
“I should die of shame if ever Carl discovered our trickery.”
“And your brother would die of grief if ever he discovered it. But he won’t.”
He turned upon her a bit nettled.
“Aunt Philomela,” he said, “now that we have begun, we must play the game for all it’s worth. That is another thing the Schuylers have always done, haven’t they? You and I and the estimable young man count for nothing in this. Do you think I would play it for myself alone?”
Aunt Philomela looked a bit chagrined.
“No,” she said, “I suppose—I suppose we do owe you a great debt.”
The soft grass had muffled his approach so that for a moment
she was unaware that she was not alone.
“You owe me nothing. I’m well repaid by my inspirations and by a certain easing of my conscience in a little family affair of my own. But even without those things I should still be repaid. And even if I were not repaid at all, I’d again gladly undertake it. Only we must pull together, Aunt Philomela, and we must stick it out to the end.”
“But,” she trembled, “what is the end?”
“God knows,” he answered.
She was edging towards the door.
“I—I spoke rather hastily,” she half apologized.
“So did I.” He smiled. “Often times we most easily tell the truth that way.”
She vanished. Barnes returned to his letter.
“So you see,” he wrote, “I have my hands full. I will write from time to time, but I’m so uncertain in my movements that I can give no address. You may always know that I am busy and in good spirits.
Your son, Dick.”
The second letter was more easily accomplished.
“DEAR FATHER,—I’m head over heels in work and know that you are the same. I trust your work is counting for as much as mine. Hoping this will find you in your usual good health, I beg to remain,
Your prodigal son,
RICHARD.”
As he scrawled the addresses, he heard the tuning of instruments in the sitting-room. He hastily sealed the envelopes and hurried out. The sun was just setting. The old brick house looked very mellow.
He walked to the tin mail-box and dropped in his letters.