Other People's Business Part 20

"Persis, I've got no love for the city as you well know. As the poet says, 'G.o.d the first garden made and the first city, Cain.' But I'm ready to sacrifice myself for what's best for you. I'll go along."

Persis regarded him without any indication of fervent grat.i.tude for the sacrifice so n.o.bly announced.

"It's good of you, Joel, but it won't be necessary."

He waved her protest away with a dominating gesture.

"It _is_ necessary. It won't do to turn a woman like you loose in a city like Boston. As long as you didn't have any money, it wasn't so much matter. But now there'll be folks to sell you gold bricks, and when you unwrap 'em, they won't be nothing but plain ordinary bricks after all."

"They can't sell me bricks if I won't buy 'em, Joel."

"You don't know what they can do. You never went up against a professional sharper. Women ain't any match for that kind. They'll probably give me a bed at the hotel that hasn't been used since sometime last winter, but never mind. I'm going along to protect you."

"Joel!" Persis' tone for all its gentleness showed plenty of decision.

"Thank you, but this time I don't want you."

"What's that?"

"Some other time when you feel like running up to the city for a few days, we'll go together. But just now I've got some business to attend to."

"You mean I'd be in the way?"

"Yes."

"Persis." Joel spoke in heart-broken accents. "I guess the Good Book ain't far wrong in calling money the root of all evil. Up till you come into this prop'ty, you was all a man could ask for in a sister."

Like many another, Joel found his blessings brightest in retrospect.

"But now you're as set as a post and as stubborn as a mule. It's pretty dangerous, Persis, when a woman gets the idea she knows all that's worth knowing. As the poet says, 'A little learning is a dangerous thing.' I feel in my bones that there's trouble coming out of this wild-goose chase of yours."

It was not characteristic of Joel to keep his grievances secret.

Wherever he went for the next few days, he fairly oozed reproach and resentment. And on the Monday when Persis took the ten o'clock train for Boston it was generally understood that she had declined the pleasure of her brother's company and was bent on an errand whose nature she alone knew.

"She'll put up at a hotel, I suppose," said Mrs. Hornblower. "She'll have to, for there's n.o.body in Boston she knows well enough to visit.

A single woman staying alone at a hotel sounds dreadful improper to me.

Robert would never allow me to do such a thing, never for a minute.

And n.o.body even knows what she's gone for."

But Annabel Sinclair thought she knew. "I shouldn't wonder," she told Diantha, "if when Persis Dale gets back we'd see startling changes."

Her confidential tone was balm to Diantha's spirit. For since the daughter's sudden leap into maturity, the relations between the two had been strained, the instinct of s.e.x rivalry overmastering such shadowy maternal impulses as had outlived Diantha's babyhood. The girl responded eagerly to the advance.

"Yes, I shouldn't wonder if she'd have lots of new clothes."

"She'll need more than clothes to make her presentable, and she knows it, too." Annabel's voice was rasping. "They have beauty-shops in the cities, you know, where they fix over old women who want to look young, skin off the wrinkles and all sorts of things." She flashed a glance at the mirror--there was always a mirror convenient in the Sinclair establishment--and smiled with malicious enjoyment. Annabel did not need skinning.

Diantha edged away with sudden distaste. "I don't think Miss Persis would do anything like that, mama."

"Why not?" Her mother spoke fiercely. "It's the sensible thing to do when you need it. After her good looks are gone, there's nothing left for a woman." The bitterness of a partic.i.p.ant in a losing fight flung a black shadow across her fairness. For defy Time as she would, the day must come when he would triumph. She looked again at herself in the mirror as if already he had stolen the bloom from her cheek and the gold from her hair and shuddered at the thought of what must be.

Persis had said to her brother that she might be away a week. On the sixth day came a brief note to the effect that her business was not quite finished and that she would let him know when to expect her.

Another week went by, and one afternoon Joel received his first telegram.

He stood staring at the sinister brown envelope with its black lettering, and a chilly fear clutched his heart. One catastrophe after another suggested itself, each to be discarded in favor of another more appalling. Persis had lost her money. She had met with an accident.

She was dead. His bony hand shook till the envelope rattled, and the small boy who had brought the message eyed him with curiosity.

"Any answer?"

The question was rea.s.suring. It suggested that Persis was still to be reached by mundane means of communication. Joel regarded the lad appealingly.

"Say, son, do you know what's in this?"

"Naw!" The boy's tone showed impatience tinged with contempt. "Why don't you look and see for yourself?"

The suggestion seemed reasonable, and Joel followed it. The typewritten enclosure blurred before his eyes, and so strong is the force of apprehension that he seemed to see words of ominous import staring up at him through the confusion. Then the mist cleared and his forebodings with it.

"Home on four-twenty train not necessary to meet me tell Mary to have plenty for supper.

"Persis Dale."

Joel felt the sense of grievance which is the almost inevitable sequel to groundless fears. "There's no answer," he told the boy gruffly.

The urchin sidled away and Joel stood rigid, regarding the slip in his hand. His first move was to count the words. Seventeen! Joel groaned. What extravagance. If she had said "unnecessary" instead of "not necessary" there would have been a saving of one to begin with.

And the closing injunction might have been omitted altogether. "Tell Mary to have plenty for supper." What an extraordinary request to telegraph from the city of Boston. Could it be that in the metropolis of New England she had lacked for food to satisfy the pangs of appet.i.te?

So absorbed did he become in attempting to solve the riddle that he almost forgot to impart the contents of the telegram to Mary. The fresh-colored farmer's daughter who had found life extremely monotonous without the vivacious presence of her mistress, heard the news with elation and showed no surprise over the concluding request.

"I've heard how they feed folks in them city places. Ma's cousin was a waiter in a Boston boarding-house onct, and she says she was fairly ashamed to set before folks the little dabs that was served out, for all the world like samples. I guess after two whole weeks of that kind of food, Miss Dale's good and hungry."

Joel noticed with irritation that Persis had carried her independence to the point of suggesting that it was not necessary for him to meet her, though she was well aware that his presence at the station when the four-twenty train came in, had taken on almost the sacredness of a religious rite. "Looks as if she wasn't in any dreadful hurry to see me," Joel mused. It occurred to him that it would be a fitting return for Persis' perverseness for him to retire to his room and refuse to leave except at her humble and reiterated entreaty. It is unfortunate that so often the course of conduct consistent with one's dignity involves a painful sacrifice. As train-time drew near, Joel realized that he would not be equal to the ordeal of absenting himself, even for so worthy a cause as to teach Persis a much-needed lesson.

There was the usual number of loungers on the station platform, and Joel was soon surrounded by an interested circle. As the brother of a woman of property, he had acquired a certain vicarious importance in the last few weeks. Information as to what Persis was doing, or about to do, was sought eagerly in all directions, and Joel's vanity was flattered at finding himself the center of attention, even though in his heart he was well aware of the reason.

"Sister having a good time up to Boston?" inquired a florid man, who despite the chilliness of the late fall day was in his s.h.i.+rt-sleeves.

The uncertainty in Joel's mind as to whether Persis had spent her time attending the theater or in the surgical ward of a hospital, caused him to evade a direct answer.

"Oh, so-so. I'm expecting her home on this train."

The countenances of the group brightened. Some of them had come a long distance to await the four-twenty train. Pressing work was on the consciences of several. It was agreeable to know that their sacrifices were not thrown away. They would see Persis Dale step off the train and would be able to tell their wives at supper whether, as far as their obtuse masculine powers of observation had been able to determine, she was arrayed in the spoils of city shops.

The train screamed at the crossing half a mile below and made its appearance with the usual accompaniments of smoke and rattle.

Pa.s.sengers looked with weary interest at the crowd on the platform, and the crowd on the platform watched eagerly for alighting pa.s.sengers. A farmer living in the vicinity left the smoking-car to be given scant welcome, for the lookers-on were antic.i.p.ating something more impressive. A fat old woman with a basket and a couple of shawl-straps was also coldly received. Then some one caught Joel's arm with an exclamation, m.u.f.fled but profane.

There was a parlor-car at the rear of the train, a concession to the pa.s.sengers for Montreal. From this a rather striking procession was descending. It was led by a dark handsome boy about twelve years of age, while a fair girl, a little younger, followed behind. Another boy and then another girl, smaller and chubbier than their predecessors, were next to receive the a.s.sistance of the obsequious porter. And lastly he gave his attention to a woman who carried a baby in her arms.

The woman wore a hat and coat new to Clematis, but there was something not unfamiliar in her erect carriage, and the capable fas.h.i.+on in which, she directed the movements of her little flock.

"Straight ahead, children. Algie, you walk right toward that hack with the two gray horses, and the rest of you follow Algie. Well, here's Uncle Joel come to meet us."

Some one pushed Joel forward. With his jaw dropping and his eyes protruding, he looked like a criminal urged on toward the scaffold rather than a man of affectionate disposition welcoming home a family circle unexpectedly enlarged. The hoa.r.s.e gurgle which escaped his lips might have ga.s.sed for a greeting, or it might have presaged an epileptic seizure.