A Man and His Money Part 8

"If I may venture an opinion, Madam," observed Mr. Heatherbloom in a far-away voice, "I should say Naughty will surely return, or be returned."

"You venture an opinion!" said Miss Van Rolsen. "You!"

Miss Dalrymple breathed the fragrance of the flowers; she apparently liked it.

"You are discharged!" said Miss Van Rolsen violently to Mr.

Heatherbloom. "I give you the two-weeks' notice agreed upon."

"I'll waive the notice," suggested the young man at the window quickly.

"You'll do nothing of the sort." Sharply. "It'll take me that time to find another incompetent keeper for them. And, meanwhile, you may be sure," grimly, "you will be very well watched."

"Under the circ.u.mstances, I should prefer--since you _have_ discharged me--to leave at once."

"Your preferences are a matter of utter indifference. You were employed with a definite understanding in this regard."

Mr. Heatherbloom gazed rather wildly out of the window; two weeks.--that much longer! He was about to say he would not be well watched; he would take himself off--that she couldn't keep him; but paused. A contract was a contract, though orally made; she could hold him yet a little. But why did she wish to? He had not calculated upon this; he tried to think but could not. He looked from the elder to the younger woman. The latter did not look at him.

Miss Dalrymple had seated herself at the piano; her fingers--light as spirit touches--now swept the keys; a Debussey fantasy, almost as pianissimo as one could play it, vibrated around them. Outside the whir!

whir! of the skates went on. A little girl tumbled. Mr. Heatherbloom regarded her; ribbons awry; fat legs in the air. The music continued.

"You may go," said a severe voice.

He aroused himself to belated action, but at the door he looked back.

"I'm sure it will be all right," he repeated to Miss Van Rolsen. "On my word"--more impetuously.

At the piano some one laughed, and Mr. Heatherbloom went.

"Why on earth, Aunt, did you want to keep him two weeks longer?" he heard the girl's now pa.s.sionate tones ask as he walked away.

"For a number of reasons, my dear," came the response. "One, because he wanted to leave me in the lurch. Another--it will be easier to keep an eye on him until Naughty is returned, or"--her voice had the vindictive ring of a Roman matron's--"this person's culpability is proven. Naughty is a valuable dog and--"

Mr. Heatherbloom's footsteps hastened; he had caught quite enough, but as he disappeared to the rear, the dream chords on the piano, now louder, continued to follow him.

CHAPTER VII

DEVELOPMENTS

That night, as if his rest were not already sufficiently disturbed, a disconcerting possibility occurred abruptly to Mr. Heatherbloom. It was born in the darkness of the hour; he could not dispel it. What if the person in whom he had confided in the park were not all she seemed? He hated the insinuating suggestion but it insisted on creeping into his brain. He had once, not so long ago, in his search for cheap lodgings, stumbled upon a roomful of alleged cripples and maimed disreputables who made mendicancy a profession; their jibes and jests on the credulity of the public yet rang in his ears. What if she--his casual acquaintance of the day before--belonged to that yet greater cla.s.s of dissemblers who ply their arts and simulations with more individualism and intelligence?

Mr. Heatherbloom sat up in bed. Naughty might be worth five or even ten thousand dollars. He remembered having read at some previous time about a certain canine whose proud mistress and owner was alleged to have refused twenty thousand for him. The perspiration broke out on Mr.

Heatherbloom's face. Was Naughty of this category? He looked very "cla.s.sy," as if there couldn't be another beast quite like him in the world. What had been the twenty-thousand-dollar mistress' name; not Van--impossible!

But the more he told himself "impossible", the more positive grew a certain perverse inner a.s.severation that it was quite possible. And what if the person in the park had known it? He reviewed the circ.u.mstances of their different meetings; details that had not impressed themselves upon him at the time--that had almost escaped his notice, now stood out clearer--too clear, in his mind. He remembered how she had brightened astonis.h.i.+ngly after the brief fainting spell when he had made his ill-advised proposal. It had been as elixir to her. He recalled how she had met him every day. Had it been mere chance? Or--disconcerting suspicion!--had she deliberately planned--

For Mr. Heatherbloom there was no sleep that night. At the first signs of dawn he was up and out, directing his steps toward the park, as a criminal returns to the haunts of his crime. No faces of any kind now greeted him there; only trees confronted him, gaunt, ghostlike in the early morning mists. Even the squirrels were yet abed in their miniature Swiss chalets in the air. The sun rose at last, red and threatening. He now met a policeman who looked at him questioningly. Mr. Heatherbloom greeted him with a blitheness at variance with his mood. Officialdom only growled and gazed after the young man as if to say: "We'll gather you in, yet."

It was past nine o'clock before Mr. Heatherbloom ventured to approach the house; as he did so, the front door closed; some one had been admitted. He himself went in through the area way; from above came joyous barks, a woman's voice; pandemonium. Mr. Heatherbloom listened.

Later he learned what had happened; a young woman had brought back Naughty; a very honest young woman who refused all reward.

"Sure," said the cook, who had the story from the butler, "and she spoke loike a quane. 'I can take nothing for returning what doesn't belong to me, ma'am. I am but doing my jooty. But if ye plaze, would ye be lookin'

over these recommends av mine--they're from furriners--and if yez be havin' ony friends who be wanting a maid and yez might be so good as to recommind me, I'd be thankin' of yez, for it's wurrk I wants.' Think av that now. Only wurrk! Who says there arn't honest servin' gurrls, nowadays? The mistress was that pleased with her morals an' her manners--so loidy-loike!--she gave her the job that shlip av a Jane had; wid an advance av salary on the sphot."

"You mean Miss Van Rolsen has actually engaged her?" Mr. Heatherbloom, face abeam, repeated.

"Phawt have I been saying just now?" Scornfully. "Sure, an' is it ears you have on your head?"

Mr. Heatherbloom, a weight lifted from his shoulders, departed from the kitchen. He had wronged her--this poor girl, or young woman, who, in her dire distress, had appealed to him. How he despised now the uncharitable dark thoughts of the night! How he could congratulate himself he had obeyed impulse, and not stopped to reason too closely, or to question too suspiciously, when he had decided to act the day before!

All is well that ends well. All he had to do now was to complete as unostentatiously as possible his term of service--But perhaps he would be released at once?

No; not at once! Those anxious to supersede him began to dribble in, it is true; but they faded away, one by one, after interviews with Miss Van Rolsen, and returned no more. They were a mournful lot, these would-be, ten-dollar-a-week custodians; Mr. Heatherbloom wondered if his own physiognomy in a general way would merge nicely in a composite photograph of them?

His duties he performed now as quietly as he could. Two weeks more, ten days, nine, eight! Then? Ah, then!

He did not see Miss Van Rolsen again nor Miss Dalrymple. He encountered the fair unknown, though, his acquaintance of the park, occasionally, as she in demure cap and white ruffled ap.r.o.n glided softly her allotted way. Sometimes he nodded to her in distant fas.h.i.+on, sometimes she got by before he actually realized he had pa.s.sed her. She seemed to move so quickly and with such little ado; or, it may be, he was not very observant. He didn't feel very keen on mere minor details these days; he experienced princ.i.p.ally the sensation of one who was now merely "marking time", as it were--figuratively performing a variety of goose-step, the way the German soldiers do.

But one day she--Marie, they called her--stopped him.

"I understand from one of the servants that it cost you your position to--do what you did. You know what I mean--"

He looked alarmed. "Don't worry about that."

"But shouldn't I?" Steady dark eyes upon him.

"On the contrary!" Vigorously.

"I don't understand--unless.--"

"The salary--it is nothing here"--Mr. Heatherbloom gestured airily. "I should do much better--one of my ability, you understand!--elsewhere."

"Could you?" She regarded him doubtfully. "But, perhaps, they--It was not very pleasant for you here, anyway. Miss Van Rolsen--her niece, Miss Dalrymple--does not like you." He started. "It was easy to see that; when I mentioned regretfully that the good fortune that brought me where there is plenty; to eat should have been the cause of your being in disfavor, she stopped me short." Mr. Heatherbloom studied the distance.

"'The person you speak of intended leaving anyhow,' she said, and her voice was--_mon Dieu_!--ice."

The listener swallowed. "Quite so," he said jauntily. "Miss Dalrymple is absolutely correct."

She regarded him an instant with sudden, very mature gaze. "I can't quite make you out."

"No one ever can. Don't try. It isn't worth while. Which reminds me"--he rattled on--"I did you an injury; an injustice--"

"Ah?" she said quickly.

"In my mind! You will excuse me, but do you know that night after I had consigned him to your care in the park, I afterward felt quite anxious--"