NAN sang as she dressed the next morning. The gods had ordained that she shouldn’t marry Billy, and after her uncertainties on that point she was relieved to find that the higher powers had taken the troublesome business out of her hands. She was surprised at her light-hearted acceptance of the situation. She hadn’t married Billy and she sang in the joy of her freedom.
Just as she was ready to leave her room the maid brought up a special delivery letter from Copeland. It had been posted at six o’clock. She tore open the envelope and read frowningly:—
Dear Nan:—
Sorry about the row at the church last night. Never occurred to me that there’d be such a jam. I hung around the neighborhood as long as I could, hoping to find you. But it will be nicer, after all, to make the run by daylight. Telephone me where we can meet this morning, say at ten. I shall be at the office early and shall expect to hear from you by nine-thirty. For God’s sake, don’t fail me, Nan!
This was scrawled in pencil on Hamilton Club paper. She propped it against her dressing-table mirror and stared at it wonderingly. It did not seem possible that she had ever contemplated running away with Billy. The remembrance of him as he sat in his car, quarreling with the police, with the eyes of a hundred people upon him, sickened her.
Either you love me, Nan, or you don’t; you either have been fooling me all along or you mean to stand by me now and make me the happiest man alive....
She smiled at Billy’s efforts to be pathetic—a quizzical little smile. The paper smelt odiously of tobacco smoke. She tore the note to pieces and let them slip slowly from her hand into her waste-basket. No; she did not love Billy. Only a few hours earlier she had been ready to run away with him; but that was all over now. She was sorry for Billy, but she did not love him. How could she have ever been foolish enough to think she did! But why, she wondered, was she forever yielding to impulses from which a kind fate might not always protect her? “You little fool!” she ejaculated. A moment later she stood smiling in Farley’s door.
“Nan, look here what they say about you in the paper!” he said, glancing at her over his spectacles. “I told Eaton not to blab about that swimmin’-tank business and here they’ve got us all in the paper!”
“Oh, if only you could have been there, papa!”
She saw that he was pleased. He bade her ring for the maid to bring up their breakfast; he wanted to know all about the exercises at the Settlement House.
“I guess you made a hit all right,” he said proudly, after making her read the account aloud. “I never liked your sayin’ pieces in public; but I guess if you can tickle a crowd like that I ain’t got any right to kick.”
The reporter had built his story around her; and had done full justice to her part in the surprise of the evening. Her recitations were praised extravagantly as worthy of a professional; “it is unfortunate,” ran the article, “that Miss Farley’s elocutionary talents are so rarely displayed in public.”
It was compensation for much greater catastrophes than the loss of Billy Copeland to find Farley so pleased.
“It’s kind o’ nice to do things like that—to do things for people,” Farley remarked wistfully, after subjecting Nan to a prolonged cross-examination. “I’m sorry now I didn’t tell you about that swimmin’ pool. You’ve got a mighty kind heart, Nan. I used to think I wouldn’t make any will, but let what I’ve got go to you, and leave it to you to help some of these schemes for the poor. You know you’ve worried me sometimes—we won’t talk about that any more; I guess it’s all over now.”
The questioning look he bent upon her gave her conscience a twinge. If Billy hadn’t become embroiled with the police she would not be listening to Farley’s praise!
“Yes, papa; it’s all over,” she replied softly, and bent down and kissed him.
When later she called Copeland on the telephone it was to laugh at their misadventure—it seemed safer to make light of it.
“Please forget all about it, Billy. It wasn’t my fault or yours either; it was all wrong any way. No—”
He was talking from his desk at the store and as he began to argue she dismissed him firmly.
“Please don’t be cross, Billy. You ought to be as glad as I am that we didn’t do it. No; never again! Cheer up; that’s a nice boy!”
She hung up on his angry reply.
Nan spent all day at home virtuously addressing herself to household affairs, much to the surprise of the cook and maid.
Mamie Pembroke stopped to leave a huge bunch of chrysanthemums for Mr. Farley. He sent for her to come to his room and asked her all about the evening at the Settlement House. Mamie’s appearance added to his happiness. He had been deeply grieved when Mamie and the Harrington girls dropped Nan; it was a good sign that they were beginning to evince a renewed interest in her. He attributed the change in their attitude to Nan’s abandonment of Copeland and the Kinneys, never dreaming in his innocence of the quiet missionary work that Eaton had been doing with the cautious mothers of these young women.
“You’d better give Nan some work to do on some of your charity schemes, Mamie. She’s been shut up here with me so much she hasn’t got around with the rest of you girls as I want her to.”
“Oh, don’t think I do so much! Mamma does it for the whole family. I’m sure Nan does as much as any of the girls.”
“Thanks for your kind words, Mamie; you know perfectly well they dropped me from the Kindergarten Board for cutting all the meetings. But I think we all ought to help in these things. It certainly opened my eyes to see that crowd down there last night; I had no idea the Settlement had grown so big.”
“I wish you and Mamie would go down and look at the Boys’ Club sometime. They’ve only got a tumble-down house, but they’re talkin’ of doin’ something better. A poor boy has a mighty hard time. When I was a boy down on the Ohio—”
The story was a familiar one to Nan, and as he talked her thoughts reverted to the will in which his provisions for the Boys’ Club had so angered her.
All day she marveled at her happiness, her newly-awakened unselfishness. In her gratitude for what she sincerely believed to have been a providential deliverance from Copeland she voluntarily gave the nurse the night off.
Her good cheer had communicated itself to Farley. The nurse was a nuisance, he said, and he would soon be well enough to dispense with her altogether. Over the supper they ate together in his room she exerted herself to amuse him and he proved unusually amiable. The afternoon paper’s account of his gift of the swimming-pool revived this as a topic of conversation.
“I haven’t done as much as I ought to for the poor and unlucky. I expect they’ve called me a pretty hard specimen; and I’ve turned down lots of these people that’s always chasin’ round with subscription papers. But I always had an idea I’d like to do something that would count. I’m sorry now I didn’t give those Boys’ Club folks a boost while I could see the money spent myself. I’ve tried makin’ wills and ain’t sure about any of ’em. I got a good mind to burn ’em all, Nan, and leave it up to you to give away what you think’s right. Only I wouldn’t want you to feel bound to do it. These things don’t count for much unless you feel in your heart you want to do ’em.”
She tried to divert his thoughts to other channels, but he persisted in discussing ways and means of helping the poor and unfortunate. She was surprised at his intimate knowledge of local philanthropic organizations; for a number of them he expressed the greatest contempt, as impractical and likely to do harm. Others he commended warmly and urged her to acquaint herself with their methods and needs.
“We ought to do those things ourselves, while we’re alive. You can’t tell what they’ll do with your money after you’re dead,” he kept repeating.
She wondered whether he regretted now having made the will that had caused her so much anguish. Perhaps.... But her resentment had vanished. His solicitude for friendless boys, based upon his own forlorn youth, impressed her deeply. It was out of the same spirit that he had lifted her from poverty—she had even greater cause for gratitude and generosity than he, and she said so in terms that touched him.
“You mustn’t think of those things any more, papa,” she said finally. “If you have a bad night, Miss Rankin will give me a scolding. I’m going to read you something.”
“All right,” he acquiesced. “To-morrow I’ll talk to you some more about my will. It’s worried me a whole lot; I want to do the right thing, Nan; I want you to know that.”
“Of course I know that, papa; I’d be a mighty stupid girl if I didn’t; so don’t waste your strength arguing with me. You’ve been talking too much; what shall I read?”
“Don’t read me any of this new-fangled stuff. Take down ‘Huck Finn’ and read that chapter about the two crooks Huck meets on the river. You ain’t read me that lately.”
He lay very quiet until she had finished the chapter.
“Much obliged,” he said absently. “You run along now. I’ll be all right.”
In the hall she met the maid coming to announce a caller.
Jerry, chastely attired in a new fall suit, greeted her with the ambassadorial dignity that he assumed for social occasions, with apologies to J. C. E. He could bow and shake hands like his idol and mentor, and though his manner of speech was still his own, he had greatly subdued its original violences. The area of collar and cuff that could be sustained on a salary lately increased to eighty dollars a month might provoke smiles; but Jerry was not troubled. By discreetly soliciting custom for a tailor who made a twenty-five dollar suit which only the most sophisticated sartorial critic could distinguish from a sixty-dollar creation, he got his clothes at a discount. While he had not yet acquired a dress-suit or a silk hat, he boasted a dinner-coat and a cutaway. He had dedicated the latter by wearing it boldly to Christ Church, where he was ushered to the third pew from the chancel and placed beside a lady whose kneelings and risings he imitated sedulously. This was Eaton’s church, and while that gentleman was not present on that particular morning, a tablet commemorating his father’s virtues (twenty years warden and vestry-man) gave Jerry a thrill of pride and a sense of perspective. His mother had been a Campbellite, and a vested clergy and choir, sprung upon him suddenly, had awed him to a mood of humility.
“I’d been wondering as I came up what I’d do if you were out: I couldn’t decide whether to jump in the river or lie down in the middle of the street and be killed by a large, fat auto. Nan,”—he held her hand and gazed into her face with tragic intensity,—“Nan, you have saved my life!”
She met him promptly on his own ground.
“I should have worn mourning for you, Jerry; you may be sure of that.”
“The thought seems to give you pleasure. But I like you best in blue—that suit you had on the day we paddled up the river still haunts me.”
“Oh, that was a last year’s bird-nest. I have a lot better clothes than that, but I don’t wear them to picnics.”
“You’d be dazzling in anything; I’m dead sure of that!”
He ran on in his usual key for some time, and then rose abruptly and walked toward her.
“Are we quite alone?” he whispered tragically.
“We are,” she replied, imitating his tone. “I hope you don’t mean to rob the house.”
“No,” he replied; “I didn’t come to steal; I’ve brought you a large beautiful present.”
This she assumed to be the preliminary to a joke of some kind.
“I left it behind that big rosebush in the yard and I’ll bring it in—nobody likely to come—no?”
“No; the nurse is out and I just now heard the maid climbing the back stairs to her room.”
A smothered “Oh!” greeted him as he reappeared bearing the suit-case she had entrusted to Copeland’s messenger the day before. He placed it quietly by the door, a little shame-facedly, in spite of his efforts to pass the matter off lightly. Nan flushed, staring at him defiantly.
“I saw this down at the works and I just thought I’d bring it up. Maybe,” he said reflectively, “it ain’t yours; but I thought I’d take a chance.”
“N. F.” neatly printed on the end of the bag advertised its ownership to any observant eye.
“You and I are good friends, I hope,” she said uneasily.
“Don’t be silly, Nan; if we’re not, what are we?”
This was not a question she cared to debate; the immediate matter was the narrowness of her escape from a marriage with Copeland and just what she should tell Jerry about it.
“If you know about—that—”
“I make it my business never to know anything! I don’t want to know anything about that bag. So we’ll just forget it.”
Seeing that her eyes rested nervously on the suit-case, he carried it into the hall out of range of any chance caller’s eyes.
“Thank you,” she said absently as he came back. He began speaking volubly of the delights of “Ivanhoe” which Eaton had lately given him to read.
“How many people know about—that?” she demanded, breaking in sharply upon his praise of Scott.
“Oh, the bag? Not a soul; I told you not to worry about that. I found it behind the door in his private office. Purely accidental—honest, it was! He wasn’t feeling well to-day,” he added. “He hung around the store all morning looking pretty glum and didn’t show up at all this afternoon. I went to the club and fished him out about six o’clock and took him home in a taxi. That’s all.”
Reduced to terms, Billy had characteristically celebrated the failure of the elopement by continuing the drunk he had begun the night before. Her good luck had not deserted her if no one but Jerry knew that her suit-case, packed for flight, had stood all day in Copeland’s office. Jerry’s intuitions were too keen for her to attempt dissimulation. It would be better to confess and assure herself of his secrecy.
“You don’t need to worry about that little matter, Nan,” Jerry continued reassuringly. “Nobody’s going to know anything about it. Nobody does know anything about it—”
“Mr. Eaton?” she suggested faintly.
“I haven’t seen Cecil for two days. I’ve told you all there is to tell. I don’t know any more and I don’t want to know. Now, forget it! Only”—he deliberated a moment and then added brokenly—“only, for God’s sake, don’t ever try it again!”
It flashed upon her suddenly that the presence of her suit-case in Copeland’s office was susceptible of grave misconstruction.
“I’m going to tell you the whole story, Jerry; I think I’ll feel happier if I do.”
“Well, you don’t have to tell me anything; remember that!”
“Maybe not, Jerry. But I feel that having known me away back in the old times, you’ll understand better than anybody else.”
There was an appeal in this that filled his heart with pride. He was struck with humility that a girl like Nan should confide in him. He had not yet recovered from his surprise that she tolerated him at all.
“Please don’t think I was going to do anything wrong, Jerry,” she said pleadingly; “we were to have been married last night; it wasn’t—it wasn’t anything worse!” she faltered.
“Nan!” he gasped; “don’t say things like that! I wouldn’t think it—I hadn’t thought it of him! And you—!”
“Well, you might have thought it,” she said, with a despairing note; “but you didn’t because you’re my good friend and a gentleman.”
He was so astounded by her unsparing self-condemnation that he almost missed this heart-warming praise. She hurried on with the story, tears filling her eyes. It was an undreamed-of thing that he should see his divinity weep. For the first time in his life he felt that he, too, was capable of tears. But he must restore her equanimity, and before she concluded he had decided to pass the whole thing off as a joke.
“Forget it, Nan! You never really meant to do it, anyhow. If Cecil hadn’t turned up, it’s a safe bet you’d have weakened before you got into the boss’s machine. It was a good joke—on the boss; that’s all I see in it. Come on, now, and give a merry ha-ha. The only sad thing about it is that it put the boss on the blink all day. If he’d been a real sport he wouldn’t have let you escape so easy; looks as though he wasn’t exactly crazy about it himself!”
“Oh, you think he wasn’t!” she flared.
“I thought I’d get a rise out of you with that! Take it from me, if I’d framed up a thing like that I’d ’ve pulled up large shade trees and upset tall buildings putting it over. But all you’ve got to do is to charge it up to profit and loss. Hereafter you’d better not make any engagements without seeing me,” he concluded daringly.
“There may be something in that,” she laughed. “I’m glad I told you, Jerry. It helps a lot to tell your troubles to some one—and you don’t think much worse of me?”
“Oh, too much sympathy wouldn’t be good for you!” he said, looking at her fixedly. “Your trouble is, Nan, if you will take it from an old friend, that you’ve had too soft a time. You need a jar or two to make you watch the corners. So do I; so does everybody! When things come easy for me I get nervous. I’ve got to have something to fight; but I don’t mean punching heads; not any more. Cecil says his great aim in life is to teach me to fight with my brains instead of my fists and feet. But it’s hard work, considering the number of heads there are that need punching.”
She was touched by his anxiety to serve her, to see her always in the best possible light. He was a comforting person, this Jerry. His philosophy was much sounder than her own; he was infinitely wiser. He had done much better with his life than she had with hers, and the advantages had been so immensely in her favor! There was no one else in the world, she reflected, to whom she could confide as in him. She marveled that she trusted him so implicitly—and he knew how little she merited trust! A sudden impulse carried her across the room to where he stood fingering a book.
“You are very good to me, Jerry!” she said with deep feeling.
Her hand touched his—a light, caressing stroke; then she sprang away from him, abashed. The color mounted to his face, and he thrust the hand awkwardly into his pocket. The touch of her hand had thrilled him; a wave of tenderness swept him.
“I want to be good to you; I want to help you if I can,” he said simply.
But he was afraid of Nan in tears, and there were tears in the eyes with which she now regarded him. She turned away, slipping her handkerchief from her sleeve. This would never do. He waited a moment, then began talking, as though nothing had happened, of old times on the river, of steamboat men and their ways, in the hope of restoring her tranquillity.
“I guess I had my share of fun down there; if I could be a kid again I’d want to be born right down there on the old Ohio. I remember once—”
A muffled crash in the room above sent her flying into the hall and upstairs.
“Papa!” she called, standing in the doorway of Farley’s room and fumbling for the electric button.
As the ceiling lights flooded the room she called loudly to Jerry.
Farley lay on the floor in a crumpled heap. The crash that had accompanied his collapse had been due to the overturning of the electric table lamp, at which he had caught as he felt himself falling.
Jerry was already on his knees beside the prone figure.
Nan snatched the receiver of the telephone from its bracket and called the regular physician; and then, remembering another doctor who lived just around the corner, she summoned him also. Amidon lifted Farley and placed him on the bed. While waiting for her numbers she told him where to find a restorative the doctor had provided for emergencies, and before she finished telephoning he had tried vainly to force a spoonful of the liquid between Farley’s lips.
“It’s no use,” said Jerry, placing his hand over the stricken man’s heart.
“No! No! It can’t be possible!” Nan moaned. “He’d been so well to-day!”
In a few minutes both physicians were in the room. They made a hurried examination, asked a few questions, and said there was nothing to be done.
The indomitable spirit of Timothy Farley had escaped from its prison-house; what was mortal of him remained strangely white and still. Nan, kneeling beside the bed, wept softly. Her foster-mother had died after a brief illness and she had experienced no such shock as now numbed her. She had, after all, been closer to Farley than to his wife. Mrs. Farley, with all her gentleness and sweetness, had lacked the positive traits that made Timothy Farley an interesting, masterful character.
“There will be things to do,” Amidon was saying gently. “Do you mind if I tell Mr. Eaton? He’d want to know.”
“No; I should like him to come,” she replied.
Jerry went below with the physicians and called Eaton on the telephone in the lower hall.
Nan rose and began straightening the room. Farley had evidently drawn on his dressing-gown with a view to remaining up some time, and had walked to the quaint little table that had so long stood near the window. Nan saw now what had escaped her when she rushed into the room. The oblong top of the table had been so turned that it disclosed a compartment back of the trio of drawers in which Mrs. Farley had kept her sewing articles. Four long envelopes lay on the lid; two others had fallen to the floor and lay among the debris of the lamp. At a glance she saw that these were similar to the ones she had seen Farley hiding on several occasions, and the counterpart of the envelope containing the will she had read with so much concern. One of the envelopes was torn twice across, as though he had intended disposing of it finally. The others were intact.
She gathered them all together and thrust them back into the table; then ran her fingers along the underside of the lid until she found a tiny catch. Noting the position of this, she drew the top into place, satisfied herself that the spring had caught, and rose just as Jerry came back.