Bobbie, General Manager/Chapter 8
CHAPTER VIII
TWO days later I received a frenzied reply to my note to Oliver. The words were underscored, smeared, repeated, blotted and scratched out. I never read such a letter. I think Oliver swore in it. At any rate my heart almost stood still when the words "for God's sake" struck at me like swords from the white paper. I knew at least that Oliver was terribly in earnest. I read and re-read the letter, then locked it away in the cupola in the lowest drawer of my table-desk. No one shall ever see it; no one shall ever know what it contains—no one but Oliver and me. I shall never tell Alec, nor his own twin Malcolm, nor even his wife, if he should ever marry. This is between Oliver and me. He had chosen to tell his older sister about his trouble to the exclusion of every one else, and she would prove to him that he had rightly placed his faith.
I don't want to imply that Oliver had been really dishonest. I am sure he had not been that, but it seems that he was treasurer of something or other down there at college, and had boggled the accounts. He never could keep money straight. Perhaps he had borrowed a little of it—like the bank clerk Alec told me about—and now suddenly he discovered there was more of a shortage than he could make good. He wrote that on December third he must make a report, and if he couldn't account for seventy-five dollars short in the treasury—well—There followed six dashes with three exclamation points at the end.
I wrote back I'd get that seventy-five dollars for him or die.
I scraped money out of every hole and corner I could find. I sold my lavender liberty automobile veil to Juliet Adams for a dollar and a half, and Ruth bought my rhinestone horse-shoe pin, which I paid three-fifty for, for seventy-five cents. I didn't spend a single penny of my own allowance for November and begged Alec for five dollars which I told him, without a quiver, that I'd got to have for the purpose of buying some new stuff for the kitchen. But most of the money had to come from Dr. Maynard. I sewed like mad. Locked in my bedroom with the alarm-clock keeping track of my time I simply devoured holes. I was like a hungry animal. I couldn't get enough of them—and the bigger they were the better they satisfied me. Socks by the dozens; table-clothes gnawed by rats; napkins worn to shreds; blankets to be rebound; sheets to be hemmed; anything that required a needle, I welcomed with rejoicing.
But of course a man doesn't need more than three dozen socks on hand, five dozen perfectly whole towels and ten table-clothes. There is an end to a bachelor's equipment, and even after I had finished mending with gummed paper a whole music-rack full of old sheet-music Dr. Maynard used to sing, I had earned only twenty dollars.
I was very unhappy when Dr. Maynard passed me my last receipted bill. He was looking at me out of the corner of his eye.
"Well," he said, "does this close our business transactions? Are you all fixed up now?"
I shook my head and blushed, ashamed somehow to be in need of so much money.
"Oh, I know," I hastened to say, "that there's no more work you can give me, and I do thank you—I do really."
"Let's see," Dr. Maynard said. "Let's see. What kind of a hand do you write? If it's plain and legible, I don't know but what I'll engage you to copy some old letters of my mother's—written to me when I was a small boy at school. The ink is fading and I want them preserved."
"Dr. Maynard," I exclaimed, "I don't know what I'd do if it wasn't for you!" There were almost tears in my eyes I was so grateful.
"Nonsense," he laughed. "But what do you want so much money for?"
"A bill—for some dresses I had made, and I don't want to bother Alec."
Dr. Maynard gave a long low whistle.
"Oh, I see." Then quite seriously he added, "Better tell him, Bobbie."
"Dr. Maynard," I said, "if you mention one single word of this to Alec, you don't know the harm you'll do. You don't know!" Why, if Alec had gotten wind of what Oliver had done, there wouldn't be a scrap of lenience shown that poor twin. It would mean clattering looms for Oliver, as surely as the electric chair for a murderer; and I was absolutely fierce in my determination that that brother of mine should graduate from college, as well as all the others. Before Dr. Maynard went home that afternoon he had promised he would not tell Alec a word about our business transactions.
I enjoyed the copying. Dr. Maynard's mother must have been a perfectly lovely woman. She used to write to her son every Sunday, and oh, such sweet companionable little notes—all about what was going on in the town, and always at the end just a sentence or two about honour and ideals, and how she believed in her son and missed him. If Oliver had had a mother to write to him like that—to tell him how she wanted him to grow up in the image of his honoured father who had died, who rejoiced at every success he had, who sympathised at every failure—if Oliver had had a mother to write him letters every Sunday evening by the firelight, I don't believe he would have ever gotten into such a difficulty. I wondered if mothers wrote letters like these to their daughters. Of course they must.
Every once in a while, I would run across a reference to my own mother (for Mrs. Maynard was her neighbour) and, really, it was a little like seeing her for just a minute.
I know I'm neglecting my story, but I must tell about one special letter of Mrs. Maynard's, because it referred to me. It didn't happen to be written to her son but to a woman friend whom I didn't know. It was a chatty letter, that related all the important events and happenings in the town, very long and full of the littlest details you can imagine. It was on the fourth thin sheet that I ran across this: "And our dear neighbour Mrs. Vars has a little daughter three weeks old," I deciphered. "She has named her Lucy for herself. I went in to see her last week and took her a jar of my quince jelly. She is a very happy woman. She has always wanted a little girl. When she took the little baby in her arms she said with tears in her eyes, 'My little daughter and I are going to be "best friends" all our lives.'"
I read that precious sentence over and over again. My mother and I 'best friends all our lives'—and oh, I couldn't remember her smile. 'Best friends all our lives'—and she had gone before we could share a single secret. I leaned right forward over my copying and cried, "If you'd lived I wouldn't care if we were poor. If you and I were 'best friends,' I wouldn't care if I never had a good time. Oh, if you were here! If you were here!"
And yet, although I cried so hard, I was strangely happy that evening. Of course I don't believe in miracles. They don't happen nowadays, and yet it seems almost as if my mother might have sent that message to me, to console me in my struggle, to tell me that I wasn't all alone. I gazed at her picture—the only one she had ever had taken—under its cold glass over my bed, before I went to sleep that night. It is a profile, clear-cut and a little sad. They tell me she was only nineteen in the picture—my age, just my age now.
"My best friend," I whispered, "my best friend all my life!"
As the dreary days wore on, all the sympathy that I possessed yearned over my patient brother Alec. But I couldn't help him any. Time and time again I tried to cheer him up, but my attempts fell flat. There was a time when Alec used to go out among the young people in Hilton quite a good deal, but I observed that lately he had nothing but business engagements to take him away.
Alec had never talked to me about a certain young lady named Edith Campbell—I don't know that he had ever mentioned her name to me—but I knew that he had always entertained a sneaking admiration for her. Since father died he hadn't seen her so much and I had been glad of it. I don't like Edith Campbell. There is so much show about her, and she always contrives to make Alec look so forlorn and pathetic. I remember one morning not long after Alec's serious talk with me, that he went out of the door gloomier than ever with his green felt bag filled with the ledgers that he'd been working over till midnight. Just as he was going down the front steps who should appear but Edith Campbell in a sporty little rig, driving a new cob of hers—round and plump and shiny. She had some little out-of-town whippersnapper of a man beside her, and as she drew her horse to a standstill right by Alec, she looked trig and sporty enough for the front cover of a magazine. She gave Alec a play salute from the brim of her perky little hat, and my poor tired brother took off his limp grey felt. He went over and leaned one hand on the horse's brilliant flank, and gazed up at Edith. His overcoat that used to be black looked greenish in the bright sunlight and the velvet collar was worn about the edges.
"Hello, Al Vars!" exclaimed Miss Campbell. I could hear her through the open door, hidden behind the lace. "I haven't seen you for one age. You ought to come out of that shell of yours. Al used to be a pal of mine," she laughed to the man beside her and introduced them. The stiffly-starched little out-of-town man gave Alec a hand gloved in yellow dog-skin and Alec turned and said something I couldn't hear to Miss Campbell. She called her reply back over her shoulder as she drove off. "Sorry, Al. Can't. Too bad. I'm going to Florida with Mother and Dad for the winter next week!"
Alec stood forlorn in the middle of the street, watching her descend the hill. The back of the highly-shellaced little waggonette flashed in the sunlight. Miss Campbell sat erect, sleek as her horse. My feelings grew savage against her, and when Alec finally shifted the heavy green bag to the other hand and moved slowly off down the street toward the factory I wanted to run after him and tell him she wasn't worth a single thought of his. I wished that my life-long devotion might make up for this single morning's sting of Edith Campbell's heartless exhibition of prosperity. But it couldn't. It couldn't break through my brother's brooding silence for even an interval.
Ruth took our change of circumstances very philosophically at first. Ruth is sixteen now, and awfully pretty. She has boy-callers about three times a week. She's very popular. She can sing like a little prima-donna, and can dance a cake-walk like a young vaudeville performer. The twins think Ruth is the cleverest little creature alive. She's a very independent sort of girl. No one can give any advice to Ruth on what is the proper thing for her to wear; no one can tell her what is the correct way for girls of sixteen to act; at least, I can't. Ruth loves fashion and style. She was glad to have Alec dispose of Dixie.
"Why," she said to me in her little sophisticated way, "Dixie is eating his head off, and he limps! I'd be ashamed to be seen at a funeral driving Dixie! You may have noticed I never use him." She was delighted to learn that Alec was going to sell the house. "For he says," she announced to me gleefully, "that perhaps now we can live in one of those darling little shingled houses on the south side. Those houses have the loveliest little dens in them with a stained-glass window, where I could have my callers. I just hate the parlour here. There's a big new crack over the marble mantel, and I have a dreadful time making people sit with their backs to it."
"And Nellie?" I questioned.
"Good riddance, I think. She's the bane of my life, and she hasn't a scrap of style. She's been here so long she thinks she can boss me as if she were my mother."
Ruth's chief source of sorrow was the announcement that she couldn't attend dancing-school. That brought the tears and for three days she'd hardly speak a word. When I told her that she ought to be cheerful for Alec's sake, she slammed the door in my face and told me not to preach.
I am afraid Ruth and I aren't very congenial sisters. I try very hard to be helpful and sympathetic, for Ruth, of course, is as motherless as I am. But she's a difficult younger sister. She never wanted me to take her to places when she was a little girl. She hates to be petted. It troubles me a little to think we aren't closer friends, because we each are the only sister in the world that the other has.
It was Ruth who stepped in and upset my whole scheme with Dr. Maynard. She can be dreadfully annoying, and cause as much trouble as any grown-up person I ever knew. It was when I was within ten dollars of the end of my struggle. I had finished the copying, and now I was working Dr. Maynard's initials on about everything that that man owned.
It was on a Saturday afternoon, and Juliet Adams, who had come down from college to spend Sunday with her family (Juliet goes to a girl's big college now), had dropped over to see me. I was sitting by the west window sewing on some things of my own, for of course all Dr. Maynard's work I was careful to do in private. Ruth was upstairs getting dressed to go out to a party with one of her numerous boy-friends. Suddenly, with her hair down her back, and dressed only in her white petticoat and dressing-sack, she appeared in the doorway.
"Got a thimble?" she asked. "I want to baste in a ruching," and without asking leave she grabbed my work-bag that was on the couch. It was open and she caught hold of it in such a way that the contents all went tumbling out on the floor. A dozen new socks done up in balls, on which I had been working initials, rolled out in all directions. The red monogram stared me in the face.
"I'll pick them up," I said hurriedly, but Ruth was too quick for me and she pounced upon them before I could stop her. Very little of importance escapes Ruth.
"W. F. M.!" she exclaimed. "Who's that? W. F. M.! As I live, on every one of them! Who's W. F. M.?" She unrolled one pair. "Men's socks too," she said, holding them up to plain view. "W. F. M.!" Then suddenly she broke into hilarious laughter. "I have it!" she burst out, waving the socks over her head and triumphantly dancing around the room. "William Ford Maynard! W. F. M. William Ford Maynard!"
"Stop, Ruth!" I cried, my old anger beginning to surge up in me. "Stop, I tell you!"
But Ruth was deaf to me. She simply kept on tearing around the room like a wild Indian. "How do you do, Mrs. Maynard," she shouted at me in silly school-girl fashion, and amidst her mad laughter sang out, full of derision, "Juliet, let me introduce Mrs. William Ford Maynard!"
I was standing up in a minute and was at Ruth with all my might and main. I was firing mad.
"Ruth Chenery Vars," I cried, "stop, stop, stop!" and then suddenly there was Alec standing quietly in the doorway in his overcoat and hat.
Ruth and I went out like flames.
There was a dead silence for an instant, then Alec asked quietly:
"What does this mean?"
Ruth answered him.
"I tipped over Lucy's work-bag and all these men's socks fell out. Every one of them is marked with Dr. Maynard's initials, and Lucy got mad because I made fun of her."
"Will's initials, Lucy?" asked Alec perplexed.
"Yes, W. F. M.," went on Ruth delightedly. "See?" She gave the socks to Alec. "Nobody is W. F. M. in this town, but William Ford Maynard," she finished and sat down on the piano-stool in a satisfied way, as if she had cleared herself of any blame, and now was ready for some fun.
I think it was here that Juliet got up and slipped out of the room. Anyhow I know she wasn't there during the whole interview.
"Well, Lucy?" said Alec, looking at me.
"I was paid for it," I exclaimed. "I was paid for every single initial and every single stitch I ever took for him! Oh, there was nothing sentimental about it. Ruth makes me sick! I did it simply to earn money."
Alec looked down at the initials.
"How much were you paid?" he asked.
"I was paid," I went on, still on the defensive, "I was paid fifty cents an hour. It was all business from beginning to end. Oh, there was nothing silly in it!"
"Fifty cents an hour?" Alec repeated.
"Oh, yes," I said. "Ruth is absurd. I made out bills and receipts and everything. It was absolutely businesslike."
"And how much has Will already given you?"
The colour for some reason rose to my cheeks. Alec looked as if he wasn't pleased and I was suddenly ashamed.
"About—sixty dollars," I murmured.
"Sixty dollars!" Alec flashed. "Why did you need so much money?" he asked me sternly.
I saw my danger then. It was as if I had had my hands on the steering-wheel of Dr. Maynard's automobile, and suddenly saw an enormous limousine headed for me around a curve.
"Why," I stammered, trying to keep calm, "I thought the business was doing so—poorly, that I—I—"
"Why did you think it necessary not to tell me about this—enterprise of yours?" asked Alec.
The limousine kept coming straight for me, you see.
I hesitated just a moment. I had no idea of telling about Oliver. After you've worked for a cause, you'll protect it if it kills you. But I was at a loss to know which way to turn, and I had to act quickly. An inspiration came to me. It wasn't a good one, but I was excited.
"I borrowed seventy-five dollars from the Household Account. I had a dressmaker's bill of my own to pay that had stood a long while, and so—now I'm trying to make it up."
Alec dropped the socks as if they had been hot. He didn't say a single word. He just stood there and stared and stared. I glanced up for a fleeting second and Alec's eyes were terrible. The vision of them remained with me for days, just as the image of the sun will dance before your eyes after you have gazed at its piercing light for an instant. I turned and looked quickly out of the window. The clock in the hall struck five. I counted it to myself. The last stroke died away, and still Alec stood and stared. He seemed to be willing me to bow down in remorse and shame. I couldn't help it. I tried and I couldn't. I wasn't guilty—oh, no, Alec, I wasn't guilty—but suddenly a hot wave spread over me up to my temples and I hung my head before my brother's condemning gaze.
He turned away then, and without a word went out into the hall.
I didn't know a silence could be so eloquent; I didn't know a silence could hurt. It sobered even Ruth. She slunk quietly upstairs. And when I discovered I was quite alone, I drew a long breath. Then I got up, gathered the poor socks that had caused so much trouble together in a pile and put them back into my work-bag.
I didn't go down to supper that night. Alec knocked on my bedroom door about nine o'clock, and came in.
"Please put the household check-book on my desk," he said shortly; "I will take charge of it hereafter."
"Very well," I replied, perfectly calm; and a thick heavy curtain fell quietly down between Alec and me like the curtain after the last act at the theatre.