EN ROUTE

Miss Barry took the rest of the flowers and placed their stems in the washbowl, where the lovely blossoms lolled over awkwardly in an increasing haze of dust, after the manner of train flowers; then she stepped back to the divan and inspected the boxes of bon-bons, stuffed dates, mints, and so on. A flat tin box met her eye, and a note was tied against the cover.

"I didn't notice that preserved ginger," she reflected, and picked up the box with satisfaction, for the confection was her favorite. Her own name appeared on the note in a small, close chirography which was unfamiliar. She slipped off the metal cord and opened the letter. Its beginning brought a smile to her lips, and a recollection of jocose passages between herself and the writer, away back in the Christmas holidays.

Miss Barry had stood in the aisle during the reading of this epistle, too absorbed to notice the discomfort of lurching about. Now she held the letter for a space, in excited thought. Her thin face was flushed. She looked at Linda, whose gaze was fixed on the flat, flying landscape. The violets lay on the seat beside her, disregarded.

Miss Barry's lips tightened. "She doesn't deserve to know," she thought. "Oh, that wonderful young man! That poor boy!"

She seated herself opposite her traveling companion, and Linda languidly turning her head at the movement, her attention was caught by the fact that her aunt was wiping her glasses, and that her eyes were wet. An open letter lay in her lap.

Miss Barry was keenly aware of King's failure to mention Linda in this matter so nearly concerning her. It was only the relief of the news to her own heart which softened her sufficiently not to be glad of this punishment to the cruel young sufferer opposite. She hoped remorse would follow the reading in Linda's case.

She held out the letter in silence. The girl shrank and made a quick, protesting gesture.

"I can't—I can't bear any more!" she said.

"You can bear this," returned Miss Barry.

"But you're crying!"

"With joy, Belinda."

When her aunt gave the girl her full name it meant either a climax of indignation or a moment of sacred solemnity. That she knew well.

She regarded the letter with apprehension as she accepted it, and at once recognizing King's writing a sort of hard strength stole over her expression as she instinctively prepared to resist his statements. He was smooth and self-contained and clever. He could deceive Aunt Belinda and Harriet, but he could not deceive her.

After a moment of vigorous application of her handkerchief to her eyes, Miss Barry put on her spectacles again, and leaning back in the seat deliberately prepared to watch the effect upon her niece of Bertram King's letter.

Linda's lips, set firmly as she began, slowly relaxed as she read on, and her eyes grew darker. She began to breathe faster, and before she finished such an expression came over the young face that the older woman could no longer look, but closed her eyes and waited. It seemed to her a long time before she opened them again to find Linda regarding her. Life had revived in the large mourning eyes.

"Thank you, Aunt Belinda. May I keep it a little while?"

"You may keep it always," said Miss Barry solemnly. "It is more yours than mine. Isn't that a wonderful young man, Belinda Barry? Didn't I always say your father was too clever to trust the wrong people?"

"Bertram is clever," said Linda simply.

Miss Barry eyed her curiously, far from satisfied. "It's just," she thought, "as if some mental starch had gone all through the girl."

She wondered if her niece had no regret, no shame, that she had put herself so beyond the pale that Bertram ignored her.

"Really she is a handsome creature," thought Miss Barry, still regarding her vis-À-vis with some sternness.

"I hope as soon as we get home you will make haste to tell Mr. King that you appreciate all he has done."

"I do appreciate all he has done," said Linda, still with the exalted look in her eyes, "but he is doing his best to make up for it, Aunt Belinda." She leaned over far enough to put her hand on Miss Barry's knee, "If this comes out as Bertram hopes I will believe in God."

"Why, my dear child!" exclaimed the other.

"I tell you if a man like my father could be remembered in Chicago as touched by the faintest shade of dishonor, I should know that there couldn't be any God of justice."

"Very well, Belinda," replied Miss Barry warmly; "if you think so highly of justice you'd better try to practice it more yourself." Her nostrils dilated.

Linda relaxed and gave a little one-sided smile as she shook her head and leaned back again.

"Well, I never did!" thought Miss Barry; and she too leaned back in the corner, where her niece forgot all about her.

What a gift, what a wonder, to dare to think about her lost one! Hitherto to dwell upon the thought of him was to be cut with knives. The only peace possible had been negative; had been to harden herself to insensibility.

"It is the Spirit Flower," she thought, and her lips took a tender curve that matched the melting eyes above them. The association of ideas brought thoughts of Mrs. Porter, for it was the song Linda had last studied with her teacher whose words flowed now through her mind.

"My heart was frozen, even as the earth
That covered thee forever from my sight.
All thoughts of happiness expired at birth;
Within me naught but black and starless night.
"Down through the winter sunshine snowflakes came,
All shimmering, like to silver butterflies;
They seemed to whisper softly thy dear name;
They melted with the tear-drops from mine eyes.
"But suddenly there bloomed within that hour,
In my poor heart, so seeming dead, a flower
Whose fragrance in my life shall ever be:
The tender, sacred memory of thee."

Linda's eyes closed, and slow crystal drops stole under the lids, but for the first time they were not bitter tears. The journey would now not be wearisome. For a long time she sat motionless, her eyes on the flying clouds, nurturing that spirit flower.

She had put Mrs. Porter's letters in her traveling-bag, and after a time she took them out and read them over, this time with more open vision. She could not realize how recent was her bereavement. She seemed to have lived years in this new world into which she was born the day they brought her father home. It was to look back ages to think of their last breakfast together, his last embrace. She had asked that morning to come downtown to lunch with him, and he had told her that he couldn't spare the time. At least she had been assiduous that last week. With that world she had had nothing to do for so long. It was with this world, this world without her father in it, that she had now to deal, a world in which it seemed to her she had had time to grow old.

Her mind roved busily to and from the lines of Mrs. Porter's loving letters as she read. This new liberty to think, this hope contained in Bertram King's letter, endowed her with an unrestraint which seemed wonderful, and she sometimes read a line six times before the roving mind grasped its meaning.

Miss Barry had fallen asleep in her corner. How weary and haggard her face looked in its repose. Linda's wakened heart went out to the signs of her aunt's unregarded sorrow.

An express train going in the opposite direction crashed suddenly by the open windows with a deafening racket. Miss Barry started and waked.

Blinking, she realized her surroundings, and sat up. She met her niece's eyes. Linda had taken up the violets and her nose was buried in their soft fragrance.

"That was too bad, Aunt Belinda," she said, leaning forward. "It's growing very warm. Can't I get you a drink?" she said.

"Glory be!" thought Miss Barry. "Yes, I wish you would," she said aloud. Her eyes followed the girl, as she slowly rose and moved away to get the water. "At last," continued Miss Barry mentally, "she isn't walking in her sleep."

She accepted the glass when it came, and drank thirstily, although she had not been thirsty.

When Linda returned, moving slowly and holding by the seat, she did not take the place she had vacated, but sat down beside her aunt.

"Tell me something about Father," she said.

"What sort of thing? What do you mean?"

"Not the things the newspapers have printed, about his beating his way to Chicago on the trains, and being an errand boy, and having no education, and all that—his phenomenal rise to fortune. Not that."

Miss Barry snorted. "No education! Absurd! The newspapers make me sick. He had education enough to make him one of the smartest men in the country. I should think folks would know better than to believe such stuff."

"And you took care of him, didn't you, Aunt Belinda? I never used to want to know anything about his childhood. I grew tired of hearing people say he was a self-made man, and I was ashamed to know that he was barefooted and poor. That was another thorn," finished Linda, under her breath.

"Another what?"

"A thorn."

Miss Barry looked around at the speaker. "Oh, a thorn in your side, you mean. I guess you have always been some high-headed, Linda." She used the past tense instinctively as she viewed the pale, languid face leaning back beside her.

"You took care of him like a little mother," persisted the girl. "He has told me so."

"Yes, I was only ten when Ma died, and I guess the papers would 'a' been right about your father's education if I hadn't saved her slippers."

"You mean figuratively? You stepped into them."

"No, I don't. I mean it just as literal as anything could be meant. Pa was easy-going and had enough to attend to, black-smithing and selling flour and feed, so if anybody was going to spank Lambert it had to be me."

Linda's lips, pressed tightly against the violets, quivered against them.

"I'm sure you loved him tremendously," she said unsteadily.

Miss Barry sniffed, with a one-sided smile. "I didn't have much time to think about that. I had to get breakfast and get to school myself, and spank him when he ran away, and when he hitched on trains, and robbed apple orchards, and so on, but mostly when he wouldn't go to school. Ma's slippers were 'most done for, when one day I caught him, and took one of the old tattered things and was going to give him what he deserved, when he just caught my arms in his two hands, and began to laugh. I noticed then for the first time that he was as tall as I was, and his eyes looked straight into mine the fullest of mischief you ever saw. I could feel myself getting as red as a beet. 'Let me go this minute,' I yelled at him. 'Let me go, Lammie.' That's what the schoolboys called him when they wanted to be mean. He fought a lot o' boys for that before they learned better, and I remember exactly how he managed to get both o' my calico sleeves into one hand, and boxed my ears with the other; not real hard, he was laughing all the time.

"'Come on, Belinda,' he said, 'let's bury the slipper.' I knew what he meant, because the boys were always playing Indian, and burying hatchets; but, do you know, he made me bury that shoe then and there? He took me outdoors and made me take the hoe and bury that slipper in the garden. He stood over me, and before I finished I was crying, I was so mad. I was fifteen then, and he was eleven, but I was small for my age; and that was the end of the spankings. But you see by that time," continued Miss Barry complacently, "I'd made him a real good boy."

"Yes, yes, you did," agreed Linda warmly. "What then?"

"Oh, then it was lobster traps, and I helped him with them, and I got Father to buy lobsters off him, and buy his clams, too, and I think Lambert was always sort of sorry for me even when I was scolding him. He knew I had a lot to do for a young one."

"Yes," said Linda, with eagerness, "and he resolved to make it up to you, I know."

"He did make it up to me. He was the best brother in the world," answered Miss Barry simply.

The girl's lips trembled again against the violets, and the two watched the flying landscape in silence.