CHAPTER XVI
JOHN GIVES HIS NOTICE
Aunt Philomela was waiting breakfast in no very good humor. On the previous evening, she had sat up for an hour listening to the unintelligible hum of her niece’s voice without being able to catch a word of what she said. And when Miss Van Patten had finally stolen into the room, Aunt Philomela had found little relief in her questioning. The remainder of the night she had made a martyr of herself. She dreamed that Eleanor had run away with a ne’er do well artist, deserting her poor old aunt and her sick father. Then, in her dream, Mr. Van Patten had died, thereby leaving her a lonely, heart-broken old woman finding what solace she might in consecrating her life to the poor of the village. And that, after all, was a poor sort of consolation.
So when Aunt Philomela came down she was in no mood to be trifled with. Yet it was just this inopportune moment that John chose to explode a bomb-shell at her feet.
“I beg your pardon, ma’am,” he stammered, “but I wishes to give my notice.”
“You—what?” she cried.
“I wishes to give my notice,” he repeated with more self-assertiveness than she had ever suspected was in the man.
Aunt Philomela plumped herself down in a chair and folded her hands in her lap.
“Well,” she gasped, “I never heard of such a thing in all my life.”
John automatically adjusted his tie and ran his hand over his chin. He had been particularly careful in his toilet this morning.
“And what pray may be your reason?” she demanded.
“It’s nothin’ as you might say,” he answered uneasily, “that you can put your hands on, ma’am.”
“Don’t you get enough to eat?”
“Lord, yes, ma’am.”
“Aren’t you well enough paid?”
“I wouldn’t take no more, ma’am.”
“Have you secured another position?”
“No, ma’am,” he hastened to assure her as though freeing himself from the charge of treason.
“You have a nice, clean place to sleep?”
“A man could ask for nothing better, ma’am.”
If anything it was too clean and nice.
“Then what in the world is the matter with you?” she exclaimed, the mystery deepening.
John cleared his throat. This was a difficult matter to express. There have been plenty of better men in a like position—men with well-defined notions of what they wished to say but when the time came with no words to say them.
“Perhaps,” he suggested, “if I says I hasn’t slept for three nights that will be enough.”
“Then all you need is a tonic,” she affirmed, brightening. “I’ll get the bottle—”
She had half risen when he checked her. He remembered with decided unpleasantness the taste of that dark liquid which she kept for the occasional indispositions of her staff.
“No’m. It isn’t anything that medicine can fairly reach, ma’am. Thank you, ma’am.”
“Then if it isn’t your blood, it’s your nerves,” she declared.
“Nerves comes nearer it,” he admitted.
“Perhaps you need a vacation,” she hazarded, though the prospect of being left without John was unthinkable.
“I had thought of going off somewhere,” he confessed.
There was something in the way he said it—something in the way he glanced swiftly upward towards Mr. Barnes’ room that gave her a clew. She sat bolt upright.
“You don’t mean to tell me you’ve got your fool head turned about Alaska, do you?”
John nodded weakly.
“It was the Artcic that set me goin’.”
She sprang to her feet.
“Why, you—you’d freeze to death there,” she exclaimed.
“Lord, ma’am, I wasn’t thinking of going there,” he hastened to assure her.
“Then what—” she stammered, all at sea again.
“I wants to get away from the Artcic,” he explained. “I wants to get as far away as I can.”
“Well, you can’t get any farther away than this without running into the ocean.”
John tiptoed nearer. He spoke in a hoarse whisper.
“He brought it with him,” he explained.
He turned his eyes towards the stairs again.
“What did he bring?”
“It,” answered John. “The Thing under the bed.”
“He did? Why, he was never within a thousand miles of—”
She checked herself just in time. John’s eyes had begun to open wide. She was in a position more embarrassing than any which had yet grown out of this course of deceit. If there were any one thing more vital than cleanliness which she had impressed upon her servants, it was truthfulness. She had held it before their eyes as a clear translucent crystal. And now was she to be forced to violate it herself? Was she to be thrust into the position of being untruthful to her own butler? Her weak limbs shook beneath her at her helplessness. Her cheeks turned scarlet.
“You don’t know, ma’am,” commented John.
She didn’t know! She would have given a year of her life if she didn’t know. If only she herself were so deluded that she might innocently repeat those outrageous yarns, she could at least preserve her self respect. But no, she must sit dumb, expressing a silent lie.
“There’s Things,” whispered John, “that you doesn’t even suspect.”
At this she roused herself. She scented a new danger. Perhaps John was eavesdropping last night.
“What do you mean?” she demanded, with some show of her old spirit.
“In the closet. Under the bed,” he answered.
“Are you crazy?”
The surprise occasioned by this unexpected statement bewildered her still more. Surprise had followed surprise, until now she could make neither head nor tail out of John’s fears.
“He says as how it has to do with gold,” continued John.
“So it was he who told you about this?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“Have you ever seen it?”
“No, ma’am. That’s the trouble. I don’t mind anything I can lay my hands on.”
He drew himself to his full height.
“Then,” choked Aunt Philomela, in helpless wrath, “why don’t you face it like a man?”
“If it didn’t come from the Artcic, ma’am.”
“Well, it didn’t,” she declared.
“Then you knows about it?”
“Yes,” she answered coldly, “I know all about it.”
“Perhaps you’ve seen it?”
“I don’t need to see it, to know all about it.”
John looked skeptical.
“People always thinks things isn’t so until he sees them himself,” he observed sadly.
“That is a frightfully ungrammatical sentence,” she commented.
“It doesn’t take grammar to see them,” he ventured with some truth.
Then of a sudden she came to herself.
“I can tell you what you’re going to do,” she stormed, stepping towards him. “You’re going back to your work and think no more about these fool things. You leave them to me. I’ll attend to them. You understand? Go back to your work and do no more talking about leaving or I’ll discharge you quicker than you can say Jack Robinson. You needn’t worry about any more Things or Its. I’ll attend to those, too.”
John had been slowly pressed back. His spirit had quite gone at the first sentence. He was not a timid man, but it took more than human courage to stand before Aunt Philomela in such a mood. He would thank his stars if he could only get safely into the buttery again. She paused a moment, and John threw himself against the swinging door and disappeared. Aunt Philomela turned around.
It was this auspicious moment that Barnes chose for entering. Aunt Philomela swung upon him before he had time even to say good-morning.
“Do you think it’s honorable to scare a poor old butler half to death?” she demanded.
He glanced around as though he expected to see the corpse of the poor butler lying upon the floor.
“Then why did you do it?”
“I?” he stammered. “Why, it’s the poor old butler who has been trying to frighten me.”
“I’d be thankful if he had succeeded,” she snapped.
“He is a mystic—that man,” declared Barnes. “He is a seer of things in the dark.”
“And who put the foolish notions into his head?” she insisted unflinchingly.
“Who? I should like to know as well as you. Who taught him to walk on tiptoe? Who taught him to appear as though through a trap-door? Who taught him to look suddenly about as though in league with the unknown? Who—” he demanded darkly, “taught him to look under beds?”
Aunt Philomela caught her breath at this last query.
“At least,” she returned weakly, “I never made him believe he saw anything under there.”
“Nor I,” he hastened to explain. “That is what bothered us both; we couldn’t find anything.”
“Perhaps,” she observed sarcastically. “Perhaps you wish to enter a complaint against John.”
At this moment John himself entered with the coffee.
“John,” announced Barnes, “I beg to report that the Thing is gone. Pouf!” he snapped his fingers. “All gone.”
“You really thinks so?” stammered John.
“I’ll give you a dollar for every time you find him after this,” agreed Barnes.
“Lord, sir, I wouldn’t find him for a hundred.”
“Then we’ll let him go. As a matter of fact it got too hot for him around here. He’s used to a colder climate.”
“That’s good, sir. I hope you sleeps better at night for it.”
“Hoping you will the same, I beg to remain,” he concluded, quoting from the personal circular letter of the Acme.
John went out with a brisker step than he had shown for a number of days, and in at the other door, with an even brisker step, came Eleanor.
It would be difficult to imagine a fairer harbinger of peace than she, and yet it required all her best efforts to dissipate the cloud which hung over the breakfast table that morning. Barnes, who was always ready to assist at such an undertaking, was strangely silent, while Aunt Philomela refused to enthuse even over the marked change for the better in her brother’s condition. Everyone was glad when the meal was finished. When they rose, Carl had not yet appeared. Barnes braced himself to the task ahead. As Miss Van Patten stood uncertain just what to do next, he suggested that she come with him into the flower-garden for a breath of the morning air. She appeared a bit startled but acquiesced, and so they made their way out doors.
Just how far it was his right to go, just how far it was his duty as a brother to go, Barnes did not know, but that he must say something in view of what was coming he had no doubt. She was bending over her flowers plucking off dead leaves when he began.
“Eleanor,” he said, “your father seemed to be very much interested in Carl this morning.”
“Indeed?”
“Very much interested,” he repeated.
She gave him no encouragement. He looked about anxiously.
“He and I both agreed that Carl is a fine fellow,” he observed. She raised her head at this. She looked at him without embarrassment.
“Carl is an artist,” she said. “You and Carl ought to have much in common.”
“Much in common?” he exclaimed. “We have. We have too much in common.”
“What do you mean by that?”
Her question was as direct and unsuspicious as a child’s.
“We agree on so very many things that—well, you know it’s sometimes more comfortable to disagree.”
“Is it?”
“With Aunt Philomela, for instance. We get on much better by disagreeing than we should if we looked at things in just the same way.”
“But at bottom, you know, you and Aunt Philomela really agree. She wouldn’t quarrel with you if she didn’t agree with you.”
“No?” he asked with interest. “What would she do?”
“She would be very polite with you,” she answered.
“That would be terrible.”
“At least, it would be uninteresting. She is polite to the Reverend John Powers.”
“I haven’t met him yet.”
“Not yet. But you can never tell when you may meet him.”
She bent over her flowers again. Barnes tried to collect his thoughts. He hadn’t got very far with that beginning.
“The thing that impressed both your father and me about Carl—” he began.
She lifted her head once more.
“Yes?” she inquired sweetly.
If he could only paint her as she stood now—as though she were growing in the garden! So few women really get up until after lunch, but she—she, like the poppies, awoke with the kiss of the sun into her full beauty. There was no trace of the night about her. All her dreams were tucked away in the long gallery with her pictures. Yesterday was one with ten thousand yesterdays and she was as though new born for this day alone. This was especially true of her eyes. As the planets bear no trace of the eternal cycles through which they have ranged, but come each night new created, so her eyes were almost abstract in their freshness.
“I suppose,” she said, to break the silence, “I suppose I ought to take Aladdin out to-day. He’s been shut up in his stall for a week now.”
Yesterday he would have protested. Now he basely betrayed his trust.
“If you are going to ride, you ought to ride this morning, oughtn’t you?”
“Yes,” she answered. “I think I ought to go at once.”
He felt a bit uncomfortable, but if Carl didn’t know enough to take quick advantage of his opportunity that was his own fault. Surely his duty as a brother did not go so far as to manage Carl’s wooing. She started towards the stable.
“I will go just as I am,” she determined.
“And I will help you saddle the horse,” he said.
Aladdin heard her coming before her feet had touched the barn floor and greeted her with a glad whinny. He cropped at her fingers as she untied the halter rope. Sam, the man of all work, came up, but she would have none of his help. She led out the strong-limbed animal and in a jiffy adjusted his bridle. The most that Barnes found to do was to throw the saddle over his back, and even then she insisted upon fastening the girths herself. Barnes kept his eye down the road and became as impatient as Aladdin himself for the start.
Sam held out his hand and her foot scarcely touched it as she vaulted lightly into the saddle. And then how like a queen she looked! Her long skirt made her seem even more like one of those for whom King Arthur’s knights fought.
She spoke a word to Aladdin, waved her hand, and in all too brief a space was out of sight.
Barnes went back to the house. Near the Dutch door he met Carl.
“Eleanor,” explained Barnes, “has just galloped off.”
He took an immense amount of satisfaction in conveying this slight bit of news. But the next second his enthusiasm vanished.
“Is that so?” answered Langdon. “Why, then, I guess I’ll go down the road and meet her as she comes back.”