  Title: Agatha's Aunt Author: Harriet L. (Harriet Lummis) Smith Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 E-text prepared by MFR, Graeme Mackreth, |
| Note: | Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/agathasaunt00smitiala |
AGATHA'S AUNT
AGATHA'S AUNT
By
HARRIET LUMMIS SMITH
Author of
OTHER PEOPLE'S BUSINESS
INDIANAPOLIS
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
Copyright 1920
The Bobbs-Merrill Company
Printed in the United States of America
PRESS OF
BRAUNWORTH & CO.
BOOK MANUFACTURERS BROOKLYN, N. Y.
CONTENTS
| CHAPTER | PAGE | |
| I | Boarders Wanted | 1 |
| II | The Curtain Rises | 18 |
| III | A Social Secretary | 29 |
| IV | Complications | 42 |
| V | Company Manners | 57 |
| VI | Hephzibah Comes to Life | 78 |
| VII | Day Dreams | 94 |
| VIII | The Rescue | 109 |
| IX | An Embarrassment of Riches | 124 |
| X | A Confession | 140 |
| XI | A Wilful Man Must Have His Way | 155 |
| XII | Hephzibah Turns the Tables | 170 |
| XIII | Congratulations Are in Order | 184 |
| XIV | Confidences | 196 |
| XV | Underneath the Bough | 210 |
| XVI | Miss Finch Follows a Classic Example | 221 |
| XVII | The Day of Judgment | 235 |
| XVIII | Warren Gets a Tip | 249 |
| XIX | The Worm Turns | 264 |
| XX | The Day After | 276 |
| XXI | Enlightenment | 292 |
| XXII | Fellow Travelers | 305 |
| XXIII | An Introduction | 324 |
AGATHA'S AUNT
BOARDERS WANTED
It was too early in the season for lowered shades or closed shutters. The spring sunshine had taken possession of the big, many-windowed room, repaying the hospitality as other uninvited guests have been known to do, by its indiscreet revelations. In rooms much lived in, a rather endearing shabbiness is a familiar characteristic, suggestive, like a thumbed book, of homely comfort. The room in question had passed this stage and reached the shabbiness eloquent of poverty.
The paper on the walls was faded, and stained from a leak in the roof. The original carpet had been transformed into a rug that shrank annually and now showed threadbare areas, prophetic of gaping holes in the near future. The furniture, too, though of expensive make, had arrived at a point where a series of surgical operations seemed imperative. Yet with it all, a certain plucky defiance was evident in the shabby room. Pictures or calendars hung over the discolored spots on the wall, furniture arranged to conceal the weak spots of the carpet, a crocheted shawl thrown carelessly over the exposed entrails of a veteran armchair, a general air of putting the best foot foremost inevitably suggested that the dilapidated building sheltered youth, ardent and unconquered.
In the smallest chair the room contained, a rocking chair that creaked protestingly under its light burden, sat Miss Zaida Finch, darning a pink silk stocking. Miss Finch's print dress modestly concealed her diminutive lower limbs, her extremely small shoes scarcely peeping from beneath its hem. For all that the eye discerned, her anatomical structure might have been modeled after that of Mrs. Shem in a Noah's ark. Yet with no evidence to substantiate his certainty, any observer would have vowed that Miss Finch's painstaking toil was wholly disinterested. It was impossible to believe that the much-mended pink silk hosiery formed part of her wardrobe.
The industry of Miss Finch was spasmodic. One moment she plied her needle with an intentness indicating that her task absorbed her. And again she let the stocking drop into her lap, and lost herself listening to sounds overhead, footsteps, doors opening and closing, the murmur of voices. Once, rising, she tiptoed to the window and gazed for a long breathless moment at the touring car before the gate, the chauffeur puffing a cigarette with an arrogance characteristic of the driver of a seven-passenger Packard, who knows that at any moment a Ford roadster may round the curve ahead.
Despite occasional lapses Miss Finch was darning industriously when the voices overhead sharpened noticeably. A light staccato of high heels tapping the uncarpeted staircase was followed by the slamming of a door violently enough to shake the building. Miss Finch, groping vainly for the interpretation of these sounds, found her gaze drawn to the window as the Packard swept along the highway, its horn bleating an impassioned farewell.
The door at the rear of Miss Finch's chair opened emphatically, with such emphasis indeed, that the door-knobs parted company, one falling into the hall, the other projecting itself in the direction of Miss Finch as if with hostile intent. And close upon this demonstration a girl entered the room and flung herself into one of the ragged armchairs.
The owner of the pink silk stocking was revealed. It was all in keeping with her audacious color scheme. Her hair was obviously red, and instead of modestly disguising the fact, it used every known artifice to attract attention to itself, curling and crinkling and brazenly thrusting out tendril-like locks to catch the beholder's gaze. Her eyes should have been blue, according to all precedent, but instead they matched her hair, a daring reddish-brown, with yellow flecks like floating gold-leaf. Ordinarily her skin was creamy till the multiplying freckles of summer temporarily disguised its fairness, but at this moment some intense emotion dyed her crimson from her throat to the roots of her hair. Over a blue house dress she wore a sweater of vivid green, assumed, if the truth be told, not for the sake of warmth but to conceal her patched elbows. Her entrance into the room accentuated its faded dinginess and bleached Miss Finch to the color of ashes. Even the spring sunshine paled before her rainbow effect.
"Well, Fritz!" The girl used the incongruous nickname with the carelessness of long custom. "It's all over."
"All over!" Miss Finch echoed in alarm. The darning egg dropped from her lap and spun dizzily upon the floor, while its owner blinked rapidly as if the radiant presence in the armchair dazzled her eyes.
"Yes. That was Mrs. Leavett, the one who saw my advertisement in the Onlooker, and wrote and engaged board for herself and two children."
Miss Finch rolled her eyes heavenward. Under the matter-of-fact statement she scented calamity.
"It occurred to her that she'd like to see the place before she came. And now she's seen it, she's not coming. She says my ad was misleading."
"It was a very good advertisement, I'm sure," protested Miss Finch. "I didn't know myself how pleasant the place was till you read me what you'd written."
The girl laughed out. The naive defense had the effect of partly dissipating her anger and bringing an evasive dimple into view.
"I leave it to you, Fritz, if I told a single whopper. I said the rooms were large and airy, and I didn't state that the paper was peeling off the walls. I mentioned the lawn and the shade trees, and failed to add that the house needed painting. It is not the business of the seller, Fritzie dear, to call attention to any little defects in the article he is trying to dispose of. Mrs. Leavett overlooked that point. Not a business woman, evidently."
"The vines cover a good bit of the house anyway," commented Miss Finch resentfully. "What does a little paint more or less matter to a summer boarder?"
"Mrs. Leavett seemed under the impression that it mattered to her. She was so very snippy that at last I asked her if she didn't think that to be unpainted in these days was rather a mark of distinction. Since you didn't see the lady, Fritz, you can hardly appreciate the insinuating cleverness of that inquiry. The red, red rose has nothing on her. Such a lovely, fast-color carmine, warranted to go through a fainting fit without fading."
"If you're going to have boarders, Agatha," Miss Finch remonstrated, "you've got to keep a tight rein on your temper."
"I did, Fritz; I was preternaturally amiable till I saw that the game was up. Then I thought I might as well relieve my feelings. The woman seemed to take it as an affront that I wasn't my own grandmother. She said for a girl of my age to advertise for boarders was a piece of presumption, and she wanted to know if I didn't have a guardian—as if I were weak-minded."
Miss Finch's contemptuous sniff breathed sympathetic scorn.
"I'm not ashamed of being only nineteen. Everybody has to be nineteen some time, except the people who die in infancy. As I said to Mrs. Leavett, if you're too young, time will mend it. But being too old isn't so easily remedied."
"Was she old?" inquired Miss Finch suspiciously.
"Older than she wants any one to think, Fritz. She's the sort of woman who talks about her little son when he's a sophomore in college, smoking an enormous meerschaum." Agatha's angry color had subsided to a becoming pink, and her eyes were luminous with mischief. "I'm going to try the frank, open style in ads, since the other doesn't seem to work. I shall want your opinion on it, Fritz, so prepare to give me your undivided attention." She flitted to the writing desk and began scribbling on the back of a convenient envelope and Miss Finch utilized the pause to recover her elusive darning egg, dropping her thimble in the process. Before she could capture the latter runaway, Agatha was ready for her services as critic.
"Boarders wanted. A spinster aged nineteen, of uncertain temper, will accommodate a limited number of boarders at her country place, Oak Knoll. Rooms large and airy, special ventilation secured through openings in the roof. In case of rain, guests will be furnished with tubs to catch the drippings, without extra charge. Fine lawn kept in excellent order by the untiring efforts of two horses and a cow. View unsurpassed. Meals excellent provided the cook is kept in good humor by considerate treatment."
She nipped the handle of her pen reflectively. "Do you think it necessary to mention that the cook and the proprietor are one and the same?"
"Agatha," cried Miss Finch with the agonized earnestness of a literal mind, "you mustn't think of sending that to the paper. Taking boarders is a good deal like getting married. There's a whole lot you've got to keep dark, or you might as well give up first as last."
Her outburst terminated in a sniff. Immediately the tip of her pale, seemingly bloodless little nose became as red as a cherry, the instantaneous sequel of tears, with Miss Finch.
"You're so smart, Agatha," she quavered. "If only you'd sell this house and wash your hands of Howard and me, who haven't the least claim on you, you could go to the city and look around and like enough find a husband. There's plenty of men who don't mind red hair."
Agatha ignored the encouragement. "Howard is my brother."
"Just like children pretend in play. He's your stepma's son. There's not a drop of Kent blood in him, and not a mite of Sheldon in you. But instead of giving your mind to getting married like a girl needs to do in these days, you're all the time worrying about educating that boy."
"I'm going to send Howard to college if I live, I'd rather do that than have twenty husbands."
"Then if that wasn't enough," lamented Miss Finch tearfully, "here I am, a good-for-nothing cumberer of the ground, for you to fuss and plan for. Don't tell me! All the reason you keep this place is to have a home for me and Howard. And it ain't right or fair."
Agatha crumpled the advertisement inspired by the visit of Mrs. Leavett into an inky wad, and took aim at the spider-like blotch on the ceiling. Then crossing the room swiftly, she hugged the limp little woman to her heart.
"You'll make me cry myself if you're not careful. You want to deprive me of my family and my chaperon at one swoop, and turn me out into the world a solitary orphan, you heartless creature." She silenced Miss Finch's gurgled protests with a kiss. "Hush!" she said authoritatively. "There comes Howard on the pony. He mustn't know anything about this."
The beat of hoofs ceased abruptly and a boy's swinging step sounded on the porch. To save the trouble of walking ten feet to the door, Howard raised the nearest window of the living-room, and made an unconventional entry. He was a handsome lad of sixteen, and Agatha's idol. She had been as ready as most young girls to resent her father's second marriage, but all her childish hostility vanished at the sequel, the chubby little boy who was her stepmother's contribution to the family circle. She had longed for a brother with the passionate yearning of a lonely child, and just when she had given up hope, a brother was hers. Agatha's sense of proprietorship had grown with the years. Nothing irritated her more than the suggestion that the tie between Howard and herself was less binding than that of blood.
The boy drew three letters from his pocket, slapping them down on the table.
"You're getting to be pretty popular, Aggie. Every time I go to the village there's mail for you. Two letters yesterday and three to-day."
"How warm you look, Howard." Agatha pushed the boy's heavy hair back from his moist forehead. "You mustn't get overheated and take cold." She was deliciously maternal in her solicitude for the sturdy youngster who already topped her by an inch or two.
"I'll look warmer before the day's over. I'm going to tackle the garden now. If you'd ever seen summer boarders eat new green peas you'd know 'twas time to get busy."
Howard departed as he had come, and his sister, her face overcast, gave her attention to her mail. The first letter opened was flung petulantly to the floor.
"Woman wants to know how many bathrooms we have, and will I please send her the names of several former patrons as references. Worse than Mrs. Leavett."
"They're an unreasonable lot, summer boarders," acquiesced Miss Finch.
The second letter was as unsatisfactory, judging from the impetuosity of its flight across the room.
"She's the widow of a missionary and wants board at half rates, and the younger children not to count."
"I don't believe you've got the temper for running a boarding-house," commented Miss Finch. "You're as fiery as red pepper and next to the married state, keeping boarders calls for a saintly disposition."
Agatha prying open the third communication with a hairpin, vouchsafed no reply. But her perturbed air changed magically to breathless attention. Her eyes moved slowly down the typewritten page, her air of stupefaction increasingly in evidence. Checking herself with an impatient gesture, she started again at the beginning and read the letter aloud:
"'My Dear Miss Kent:
"'My attention has just been called to your advertisement in the current Onlooker. I can hardly hope that you remember me, for it is over twenty years since our last meeting, and at that time I was an insignificant urchin of twelve—'"
"Over twenty years," Miss Finch interjected, "and you nineteen last week."
"'I remember you distinctly, however, and your beautiful old place with its fine grounds and noble trees. When I explain that I am the son of John Forbes you will understand that my visit with my father was a memorable occasion. He died soon after, as you remember, but he often spoke of our week at Oak Knoll and his affectionate admiration for yourself.'"
A flicker of understanding illumined Miss Finch's blank face.
"I'm beginning to see daylight," she interrupted. "The man's fooled by the likeness of names. He thinks he's writing to your great-aunt, Agatha Kent. She'd be between sixty and seventy if she were living."
Agatha had already solved the puzzle. She nodded and read on, too interested to pause for discussion:
"'I have played in rather hard luck recently. I contracted a severe form of malaria in my South American trip last year which has resulted, strangely enough, in a loss of eyesight, only temporary, the doctors hope. For six months I have gone about with my eyes bandaged. At present the building up of my general health seems the most important step in my recovery and I wish to secure board in some retired country place with a bracing climate, like that of Bridgewater.
"'In case you were willing to burden yourself with a blind boarder, I should, of course, insist on paying more than the moderate rates mentioned in your ad. I should also wish to engage the services of some youth in the neighborhood who could serve as valet and companion. I could bring an attendant from the city but would prefer a country boy, who would not be continually pining for roof gardens and like diversions. His work will be exacting, of course, for no child is as helpless as I, but I will pay well in addition to his board and will try to make his labors as agreeable as possible.
"'I have written at length because I wish you to understand just what you are letting yourself in for, if you admit me to Oak Knoll. The remembrance of your benevolent face which even to my unobservant boy self seemed to express your kindly nature, is my only reason for thinking that possibly your answer will be favorable.
"'Yours very truly,
"'Burton Forbes.'"
Mechanically Agatha folded the letter and returned it to its envelope. She spoke in a rapturous half whisper. "A blind man. If it had been planned on purpose, it couldn't have been more perfect. Please don't tell me I'm dreaming, Fritz."
Miss Finch rubbed her nose fretfully, a sign of perturbation. "Have you thought—"
"He can't see that the paper is peeling off the wall," Agatha continued ecstatically. "But he'll appreciate the rooms being large and airy. He won't worry because the house needs painting, but he can enjoy sitting under the shade of the trees. I can even feed him fried chicken while the rest of us are eating cod-fish gravy. It's an interposition of Providence."
Miss Finch was hectoring her nose again. "But how are you going to manage—"
"He wants a boy as an attendant," persisted Agatha jubilantly. "Howard is the boy. He'll pay him well, and pay me for his board. If only I'm not delirious. Oh, I want to jump and scream. Howard's next year in school is all provided for. And if Mr. What's-his-name would only stay blind till—"
"I guess you're forgetting one thing." Miss Finch raised her voice challengingly. "You ain't your great-aunt."
Agatha regarded the interruption with irritation. "Well!"
"It's her he wants to board with. He imagines she's a nice, motherly old soul, who'll pet him up and feed him up. It ain't likely he'd think of engaging board with a flighty young girl. I don't say you're not as competent as though you were sixty. But he wouldn't believe it."
The glow illuminating the girl's face flickered defiantly under this chilling blast of common sense, and went out, like a candle in the wind. She drew her arched brows into a meditative pucker and sat musing while Miss Finch, humanly complacent over having suggested a difficulty, gave her whole attention to her darning, leaving Agatha to wrestle with the solution.
"Fritz," the girl breathed at last, "do you believe in reincarnation?"
Miss Finch tried to look as if she understood the meaning of the word. With an adroitness for which few would have given her credit, she replied, "I won't say I do, and I won't say I don't."
"Well, it's true, Fritz. I am my own great-aunt."
"Land alive!" cried Miss Finch, startled into close attention.
"Mr. Burton Forbes wants to engage board for the summer with Miss Agatha Kent. Well, I'm Agatha Kent. He imagines that I'm a nice comfortable old lady with white hair and a double chin. Very well. It would be a hard heart that would disappoint a blind man in such a trifle."
"You mean," gasped Miss Finch, "that you're going to deceive him?"
"Heaven forbid. But I'm not going to undeceive him, Fritz. He assumed certain things about me. Let him keep his illusions, poor soul. He'll spend a happy summer with his father's old friend, and then go away and recover, I hope."
No trace of Agatha's shadowing perplexity remained. Her eyes had the mischievous brightness of a naughty child's. Miss Finch gazed aghast.
"He's bound to find out sooner or later. And no good comes of cheating anybody, least of all a blind man."
"You're not the stuff for a conspirator, I can see that," Agatha laughed. "You look positively frightened. But Howard will be delighted. He'll feel like the hero of a detective story."
The window by which her brother had made his exit was still open and Agatha took her departure in the same informal fashion. But little Miss Finch sat bowed in her chair, as if the responsibility for this newly hatched plot rested upon her narrow shoulders, and crushed her under its weight.
THE CURTAIN RISES
The composition of a suitable reply to Burton Forbes' request proved unexpectedly difficult. Agatha did not lack appreciation of the histrionic demands of her rÔle. She suspected the late John Forbes of something more than a platonic admiration for her imaginary self and it was out of the question to write his son the matter-of-fact letter which would have sufficed for another blind man, desiring board in the country. As she composed laborious missives only to destroy them on the second reading, Agatha thanked heaven that the hardships of her lot had not included the adoption of a literary career.
The completed letter, however, so far met her exacting requirements that in satisfied contemplation of her intellectual offspring, she forgot the pangs attending its birth. With a naive complacency not unfamiliar among the craft, she read the masterpiece to Miss Finch:
"My Dear Mr. Forbes:
"Your letter, just received, both surprised and touched me. Your memory must, indeed, be tenacious if you recall me, for in the twenty years which have passed since your visit to Oak Knoll you have, I am sure, seen much better worth remembering than a quiet, old country woman the best of whose life is now its golden memories.
"I hardly need tell you that my door would be open to your father's son under any circumstances, and the fact of your blindness—which I sincerely trust will prove temporary—only makes you doubly welcome. Fortunately I know exactly the person for your attendant, a young friend of mine named Howard Sheldon. He is thoroughly reliable and the salary will be a great help to him, as he is ambitious for an education.
"Please let me know when to expect you. I am looking forward to renewing the friendship begun so long ago that it almost seems as if it must have been in another state of existence.
"Very truly yours,
"Agatha Kent."
Miss Finch did not share Agatha's enthusiasm. Her pinched little face was wan and worried as she conscientiously did her best to dampen the satisfaction of the proud author.
"That letter gives me a dreadful upset feeling, Agatha. I don't know as I could put my finger on a downright lie, but it certainly ain't true."
"It is the truth and nothing but the truth, Fritzie. It is ridiculous for a little four-page letter to claim to be the whole truth. Take, for instance, the fact about his being doubly welcome because he is blind. That's truer than he has any idea of."
"'Golden memories,'" quoted Miss Finch with severity. "A young girl like you!"
"That's the best thing in the letter," cried Agatha, enraptured. "I don't know how I ever came to think of anything so clever. 'Golden memories,'" she repeated with the sentimental inflection she deemed appropriate. "Do you know, Fritz, I don't believe it's as hard to write books as the authors make out."
Disappointing as Miss Finch proved in the rÔle of conspirator, Howard's enthusiasm largely compensated for her deficiencies. Howard was in his element. To share in a plot of this character was rapture beyond words. The only drawback to his happiness was the fact that Agatha had described him to his prospective employer as a reliable boy, ambitious for an education. Howard felt that to live up to such a character promised an insipid summer. It would have added a tang to existence had he been cast for a refugee or a cowboy. It was with difficulty that Agatha brought him to relinquish his determination to play some sort of part.
"I could pretend to be an awfully ignorant cuss, don't you know, Aggie. I could say 'betcher life' instead of 'yes,' and, 'not on your tintype' for 'no.'"
Yielding to his sister's eloquent representations, Howard reluctantly consented to confine himself to his normal mode of expression during Mr. Forbes' stay and bend all his energy toward furthering his sister's success in the impersonation fate demanded of her. His suggestions proved an almost startling range of ingenuity. Agatha was to complain frequently of rheumatic pains in her knees, and keep a cane handy for strolling about the grounds. Another point on which Howard placed great emphasis was the necessity of frequently mislaying her supposedly indispensable spectacles.
"He'll be sure to suspect something," insisted Howard, "if you don't keep losing your spectacles. Old folks always do. And when I find them and bring them to you, you must always say that they are the ones you use for looking far off and you want your reading glasses."
The exchange of several letters between Burton Forbes and his prospective hostess resulted in an arrangement entirely satisfactory from Agatha's standpoint. Her boarder was to make the trip from the city without an attendant. Howard would meet him at the station with the carryall and convey him to Oak Knoll, where Agatha would make him welcome as the son of a friend long dead. The possibility of Mr. Forbes' enlightenment through the interference of neighbors she had met with characteristic decision by disseminating the information that her home was to serve as temporary asylum for a blind gentleman, broken in health and with an unconquerable aversion to society. Without definitely reflecting on Mr. Forbes' mental condition, Agatha succeeded in conveying the impression that any one attempting to interview her blind boarder would do so at his own risk.
Youthful audacity, together with a daring peculiar to herself, carried Agatha triumphantly through the successive stages of preparation. It was not until Howard had actually driven to the station to meet the expected arrival that she began to appreciate her own temerity in committing herself to so reckless a scheme. To be an old lady for an entire summer, to be discreet and dignified—sufficiently so at least to deceive a blind man—began to seem to her a contract impossible to carry out. Her knees weakened under her. An abnormal acceleration of her pulses convinced her that she was more frightened than she was willing to admit. As the time approached for Howard's return, she was almost on the point of offering a prayer that Mr. Forbes had suddenly decided on a summer in Canada.
The carryall drawn by the leisurely bays came in sight just when apprehension was reaching the point of panic. Agatha strained her eyes. Howard occupied the driver's place and in the comparative obscurity of the back seat the outlines of a masculine figure were visible. Her throat dry and her forehead unpleasantly moist, Agatha went out upon the piazza to receive her guest.
Under ordinary circumstances Howard's passenger would not have seemed a formidable personage. In spite of the disfiguring blue goggles, his clear-cut features were distinctly prepossessing. Moreover, his air of helplessness would have appealed to the maternal instinct of any female five years old, and led her to constitute herself his protector. Only a guilty conscience accounted for the shrinking with which Agatha advanced to welcome him.
"How do you do, Mr. Forbes." She spoke in the repressed tones she imagined befitting age, and her fluttering heart imparted a suitable tremolo to the greeting.
Forbes snatched off his hat and put out a groping hand. His abundant brown hair, cut severely close, showed a well-shaped head. His voice, too, was in his favor.
"Have I the pleasure—"
"I am Miss Kent." Agatha took his hand and quickly released it. "Bring Mr. Forbes' suit-case, Howard. I suppose you'd like to go to your room, Mr. Forbes. Shall I help you?"
She put her hand through his arm to guide him, her face aflame. Yet her youthful zest for adventure was asserting itself and there was something contagious in Howard's delight over actually embarking on the anticipated conspiracy. Agatha's breathing steadied. She caught Howard's eye and flashed a smile at him. The experience was like a plunge into a mountain stream, exhilarating after the first shock was over.
"This is very good of you, Miss Kent," Forbes was saying as they ascended the wide staircase, side by side. "I shan't be quite so helpless as this when I've once got my bearings." His voice took on an interrogative note. "I hardly suppose you would have known me?"
Agatha threw him an appreciative glance. "I think it would be out of the question for any one who had known you to forget you."
"Really?" He seemed pleased. "But surely I have changed."
"In twenty years? Certainly. Even I"—she smiled in enjoyment of her own daring—"even I have changed since your last visit."
Howard, on the stairs behind them, coughed loudly by way of applause, but Agatha's complacency was destined to be jarred. "Don't make rash claims," the new arrival said severely, "I feel you're nothing but a girl."
"I—I—"
"At least that is how you impressed me the first time I saw you—the only time I've seen you," Forbes corrected, "as if you would never grow old."
Agatha made a quick recovery. "I try to keep a young heart," she replied demurely. "Now, Mr. Forbes, remember that when you get to the top of the stairs you turn toward the front of the house, and the door of your room is the first on your right."
The big front room for all its appalling shabbiness, was deliciously airy. Forbes stood between the open windows and drew deep breaths. "This is what I've been pining for without knowing it," he burst out. "I have a presentiment that this air is going to be just the tonic I need, and that I'll be seeing again in a week or two."
"I hope—so," lied Agatha with the jerkiness of one unused to falsehood. "Howard, get Mr. Forbes everything he needs and bring him down to the porch when he is ready, unless he would like to lie down." She withdrew sedately and then atoned for her unnatural repression by galloping down the stairs and falling upon Miss Finch, who, having viewed the arrival from a convenient window, had withdrawn to her own little rocking chair, a prey to lugubrious forebodings.
The panting Agatha revealed no traces of her late misgivings. "It's ridiculously easy, Fritz, and the greatest fun. I believe I'd have made a star actress. I honestly felt as old as the hills, exactly as if he were a young fellow I'd known years ago, when he was a little boy. I was almost tempted to smooth back his hair from his forehead—he has such a nice thoughtful forehead, Fritz—and imprint a benevolent kiss above his nose."
"Yes, I saw he was nice-looking," sighed Miss Finch. "Such a pity he can't see. I've often thought I wouldn't mind marrying a blind man or a cripple and sacrificing my entire life to making him happy. But I'm afraid you'd tire of it, Agatha."
"I'm sure I should. It makes me tired even to think of such a thing," admitted Agatha shamelessly. "But you don't get my point of view, Fritz. The kiss was to have been maternal or even grandmotherly. He thinks I am an old lady and in spite of everything, I regard myself from his standpoint. I never looked forward to a summer so much in all my life. It'll be like going to a play morning, noon and night."
Voices sounded on the stairs, a man's deep notes blending pleasantly with the fresh tones of a growing lad. Agatha seized Miss Finch's arm.
"Come out and meet him, Fritz. And I believe I'll begin calling you Zaida. You're considerably younger than I, you know. Why, what's the matter?"
Terror in her eyes, Miss Finch was resisting the friendly propulsion. "I'm afraid to go near him. I'll be letting the cat out of the bag, and I'm not going to have lies on my conscience even for you, Agatha."
With a laugh the girl released her. "Poor old Fritz, you never were intended for a diplomatic career. But you'll get used to it. Train yourself to think of me as some one venerable and stately, long, long past the follies of youth." She advanced to the door with a dancing step borrowed from Mrs. Vernon Castle as depicted on the screen, turned to kiss her hand to the crushed Miss Finch, and disappeared in the direction of the kitchen. And presently, mingling with the composite fragrance of the garden and distant hay-fields, the appreciative nostrils of Mr. Burton Forbes differentiated the less esthetic but equally delectable odor of frying chicken.
A SOCIAL SECRETARY
In nineteen observant years Agatha had noted a business man's invariable interest in the local telegraph service, and the tendency of lovers to be dissatisfied with the mail facilities of the neighborhood. The concern manifested by Burton Forbes on learning that the Rural Free Delivery called at Oak Knoll but once a day, classified him definitely, in Agatha's estimation.
"You can always send Howard to the village for the afternoon mail," she suggested, the new warmth in her voice an unconscious demonstration of the truth that all the world loves a lover.
"Thanks, that's fine!" The brightening of Forbes' face quite offset his immediate conscientious warning that she was not to spoil him just because she was sorry for him.
As the Rural Free Delivery brought nothing of consequence on the morning following Forbes' arrival, Howard was despatched to the village after the mid-day meal, leaving Forbes in Agatha's care. Agatha conducted her charge to a creaking rocking chair, in the shadiest angle of the porch, and shoved a foot-stool near. "Now I'll get my knitting," she said blithely, "and we'll talk."
Forbes seemed delighted. "It's too good to be true," he murmured. "I thought they were extinct, the old ladies who sat knitting. It's like stepping into the heart of an old-fashioned story."
Agatha smiled tolerantly. "It's clear you're just back from South America. Up here everybody's knitting, young and old."
"But not like you," he insisted. "I am sure you have an air about it that differentiates your knitting from all this kittenish frolicking with balls of yarn." He turned his wistful face toward her as if it helped to visualize the picture, and then added, "Just the hour for confidences, isn't it?"
Agatha smiled at the dun colored wool in her lap. "A warm day, a cool porch, an old lady knitting, and a young man in love. Of course it's ideal for confidences."
He did not seem in any hurry to take advantage of the opening he had asked for. "I'm afraid I'm going to impose on you," he said, after so long a pause that she wondered whether he were planning to deny her charge. "Howard is a bright kid, and I'm sure he'll prove a satisfactory secretary, but there are a few letters I'd hate to dictate to a boy." He laughed with rather an engaging air of shyness as he added, "I imagine it won't be particularly easy to dictate them even to you."
"Of course not," agreed Agatha, with ready sympathy. "Love-letters seem one's own business more than almost anything in the world." His artless confidences had brought a lovely color to her cheeks. Practical as Agatha believed herself, she was romance-hungry, and it did not matter in the least that in this particular love-affair she was cast for a minor rÔle. "And I'll read you her letters, too," she offered joyously. "It will save Howard some trying experiences. Howard's just at the age when he's horribly embarrassed by anything in the shape of sentiment."
"Thank you. I'd any amount rather you read them," returned Forbes gratefully. "But they won't be sentimental letters, at all. Howard could read them without finding a word that would bring a blush to his maiden cheek."
"Oh!" observed Agatha blankly, and knitted to the end of her needle without speaking. Apparently the path that had seemed so plain led nowhere, after all.
Forbes, too, seemed in no haste to speak. "Of course," he explained at last, "I'm very hopeful. If I make a complete recovery as the doctors tell me I'm likely to do, there's no reason why things shouldn't be as they were before."
Agatha laid down her knitting and regarded him fixedly, an upright crease between her brows. The tranquillity of his unconscious face gave the impression that she must have misunderstood him. "How were they before?" she asked bluntly.
Apparently he did not question her right to a categorical answer. "We had planned to be married in January till this came up. But of course I couldn't hold a girl like Julia when there's a possibility of my having to grope my way through life."
"No, of course not," agreed Agatha, with misleading calm. "But if she were enough in love with you to plan to marry you in January, I should suppose something would hold her, something you had nothing to do with."
There was a moment of rather tense silence. Then Forbes laughed out boyishly:
"You dear old soul," he cried, "you don't know how mid-Victorian that sounds. When you were a girl, women took all that sentimental stuff seriously; about sacrificing themselves for love, I mean. But you don't understand the modern girl. She's beyond that."
"I don't pretend to understand your Julia," agreed Agatha, her eyes aflame, "I don't want to."
Forbes laughed again, this time with a reservation in his mirth. "Look here," he said, "you mustn't criticize Julia, for then I can't talk to you about her, and that would be a deuced bore. And she's a queen. A girl of that sort is bound to know her value. Julia was really fond of me, not desperately in love as I was—as I am—that wasn't to be expected, but really fond of me and inclined to exaggerate ridiculously my small achievements. But of course it's out of the question for her to marry me if the rest of my life is to be a game of Blind Man's Buff."
"Per—perhaps so," Agatha stammered. One of her ready rages was coming on. She felt it distinctly. One familiar symptom was that her blood seemed boiling in her veins, and her ears felt hot and swollen. She had seen them before when she was angry, flaming like two danger signals, and tempering the redness of her hair. Her shaking hands made knitting quite impossible. "Of course people can't marry if they haven't the money to marry on," she succeeded in saying finally, in an unsteady voice, "but there's nothing to keep them from loving each other till they die, and having that comfort, anyway."
She had succeeded in making him very uncomfortable. She would have known that by the way the rocking chair was creaking as he squirmed, even if his astonished face had not borne witness to the facts in the case.
"It—it is not a question of money," he explained stiffly. "I have plenty, and so has she. We're not extravagant in our tastes, either of us. The thing that's out of the question—" He seemed to find a little difficulty in making it clear, after all, and floundered at this point. "You can't think of it," he protested angrily, "tying a girl like Julia, a beautiful, queenly creature, to a man who has to be led around like a poodle dog. God! I couldn't be coward enough to accept such a sacrifice."
"Oh, I understand, now." Agatha's anger was past the inarticulate stage. She pulled a needle from her knitting, and brandished it dangerously as she talked. "You mean that you wouldn't let her be engaged to you." The affected innocence of her voice was flatly contradicted by the bitterness of her eyes. "You just insisted that there shouldn't be anything more between you two till you were sure that your eyes were going to be all right again. Well, I tell you frankly that I think you've treated Julia brutally, and that she has a right to detest you."
Apparently Mr. Forbes was losing confidence in his ability to make the matter clear. He sighed patiently as he tried again.
"No, that isn't it. We were agreed perfectly on the subject. Love isn't quite so reckless a passion as it was when you were young, Miss Kent. Julia and I belong to a reasonable generation, tremendously matter-of-fact. She was really cut up over the whole affair, but she felt she owed it to herself to break the engagement since my future was so uncertain, and I felt I owed it to her to release her. So we were perfectly agreed, you see."
"Yes, I see." Agatha was glaring at him with the expression of a vixen. "Just as businesslike as if you had been planning to go into partnership to raise chickens, weren't you? And so that's what the modern girl is like. Dear me!"
The edge to her voice made her irritation sufficiently plain, and Forbes, with a gentle deference that touched her, changed the topic to one unlikely to combat her old-fashioned prejudices. They were discussing Thackeray and George Eliot when Howard returned. Swinging himself from his pony, the boy came clattering along the porch, and deposited a package of mail on his employer's knees.
"It's lucky I went over," Howard declared. "You've got a regular windfall, five or six letters beside the things with one-cent stamps."
In spite of Mr. Forbes' assumption of ultra-modern reasonableness, his countenance betrayed a boyish ardor that added to Agatha's resentment against the recreant Julia. She took possession of the letters, saying to her brother, "You'd better put the pony up, hadn't you, Howard? I'll attend to Mr. Forbes' mail."
Her boarder only waited for the beat of the pony's hoofs to tell that Howard was out of hearing, before he leaned toward her, his face pathetically eager. "Is there one from her?"
"What's the post-mark?"
"She's probably at the Briercliff Manor, this week. She writes a striking hand, not the old-time idea of feminine, but full of character and strength. You'll always recognize it after you've seen it once."
Unfortunately it appeared that Agatha's education in this important branch of knowledge was not to begin immediately. There was no letter from Julia. This fact established, the light went out of Forbes' face, and it remained blank during the reading of several communications of varying degrees of interest. For the first time he seemed an embodiment of all the pitiful helplessness of the blind.
"I suppose," he ventured hesitatingly, when she had finished, "that you're too busy to take a letter for me to-day. Got to go on with that knitting, haven't you?"
Agatha longed to say yes. In her present mood, to transcribe an impassioned letter to the object of Forbes' regard, seemed well-nigh intolerable. Inexorably she forced herself to reply that she was not in the least busy. "I'll get Howard out of the way by sending him to the garden," she added. "He'll be perfectly willing to change jobs with me."
Howard, who had the average boy's aversion to the use of a pen, bore out her statement and joyfully agreed to picking peas in place of acting as an amanuensis. He went his way, favoring her with an almost ribald wink, a natural reaction from the profound respect he was now required to show her. With an expression that would have befitted Queen Elizabeth, when signing the death-warrant of Lady Jane Grey, Agatha began her task.
Forbes' mood, though disappointed, was not reproachful. His pale face flushing slightly at the novel experience of giving voice to such tender sentiments in the presence of a third person, he dictated the letter with only those pauses necessary to enable Agatha to keep pace with him.
"My Dearest Girl.
"The afternoon mail has just been brought from the village, and I was disappointed at not receiving a letter from you. Disappointed I am, but not surprised, for I am sure that wherever you are, you will have little time to yourself unless you take it by main force, so to speak. That is the penalty I pay for being in love with one so charming.
"I wish you could look in on me here, at the home of my father's old friend, Miss Agatha Kent. Oak Knoll is a fine old place. The house is spacious, comfortable and homelike, the last characteristic doubtless due to the personality of the owner. As Miss Kent is good enough to write this for me, I must wait some other opportunity to tell you how delightful I find her. Her type is disappearing, unluckily, which makes me all the more ready to congratulate myself on this chance of renewing a friendship which might almost be regarded as an inheritance.
"The troublesome eyes pained me a little last night, but lying awake was not altogether fruitless, as in the stillness I could bring your dear face before me almost as vividly as if I saw it in the flesh. To-day I feel much better. I am convinced that this wonderful air is going to make me over, and then in a few weeks I shall again have a right to indulge myself in the dreaming of those dreams which need no Daniel to interpret them."
Forbes' deep voice came to a halt at this point. He turned his face toward Agatha, the involuntary movement showing that his blindness was not of long duration, and smiled with that winsome boyishness which made it impossible to believe him past thirty.
"I believe I'll take my pen in hand for the wind-up, if you please, Miss Kent. I think I can manage a line or two, without making it illegible."
She brought the sheet to him, put the pen in his hand, and indicated where he was to begin to write. And then suddenly as she watched him, the outline of his fine profile was blurred by angry tears. Something in his expression gave her an inkling of the tenderness compressed in those few straggling lines, and all for the girl who had "owed it to herself" to break her engagement because of his misfortune.
"She owes it to herself to break with him," reflected Agatha, "but she doesn't owe it to him to make it final, and give him a chance to get over it Oh, no! He can go on to the end of his life dreaming about her, and making love to her, and feeding her vanity by his devotion. And then he calls that deliberate heartlessness reasonable, and makes himself believe that she's the type of the modern girl. The cat!"
Agatha's righteous indignation was getting the best of her. She said the last two words aloud.
"Beg pardon!" Forbes turned, showing a puzzled face.
"The cat is rather near the chickens," Agatha explained. "If you'll excuse me, I'll run down and drive her away." She started at a pace which would have been reckless for rheumatic knees, recalled herself, and slowed down till beyond his hearing. Then she stood quite still and stamped her foot upon the gravel like a restive horse, till she felt better.
When she returned, flushed but calm, the letter was completed and folded. "Haven't any asbestos envelopes, have you?" questioned Forbes, trying to make a joke out of his bit of sentiment. "I've made it hot stuff, I assure you." And then he acknowledged that an ordinary envelope would probably retain his ardent effusion without bursting into flame, and Agatha wrote the name she already hated, eying each letter malevolently, as she set it down:
Miss Julia Studley
Briercliff Manor
Briercliff, New York
Howard took her aside that night to thank her for relieving him of an obnoxious task. "It's the only part of the work I mind, writing those darned letters. Does he make 'em long?"
"A great deal too long," said Agatha, "and I don't blame you for hating that job. It's rotten."
COMPLICATIONS
For a week Forbes' spirits were fitful. Morning after morning, the Rural Free Delivery brought a variety of offerings, and disappointment along with the rest. Each afternoon Howard rode to the village, and though he never returned empty-handed, he might as well have done so, since he failed to bring the right letter. Had it not been for Agatha, Forbes' depression might easily have become serious. She spent with him all the time she could spare, even shelling peas and whipping cream upon the porch within arm's length of his chair. Whatever opinion he expressed, she promptly disagreed. She railed at modern institutions. She professed unbounded contempt for the modern girl. She was as prickly as a chestnut burr, as puckery as an unripe persimmon, as ruffling as a January gale. But she gained her point. Forbes did not mope.
In that week of waiting, she wrote at his dictation three letters to Julia, all of them ardently tender, and quite uncomplaining. Though he confessed to disappointment over not hearing from her, he did not seem to question that it was her privilege to keep him waiting her pleasure. His humility aroused Agatha to a fury of protest. She dotted her "i's" as if she were stabbing the paper, and crossed her "t's" with a sweep, like the slash of a knife. Her valorous instinct to champion the cause of the under dog had never been so constantly in evidence.
The table at Oak Knoll was extremely good that week. In addition to distracting Forbes' thoughts by continually opposing him, Agatha concentrated her attention on making him eat. The fundamental common sense, underlying like granite her girlish caprices and audacity, assured her that an aching heart was in some mysterious fashion relieved by a full stomach. The price Forbes had insisted on paying for his board had seemed to her excessive, and now it justified her in trying her choicest recipes. And while Forbes' mood would have made it easy for him to be quite indifferent to what was set before him, thanks to these tactics he ate with a rather shamefaced relish, and assured Agatha that cooks of her sort had all been born before the Civil War.
At the end of a trying week, the looked-for letter arrived. Agatha herself took it from the mail box at the end of the long drive, and she eyed it as if it had been a new species of noxious insect. Though she had never seen Julia's chirography, she instantly recognized it, even without the aid of the post-mark. The letter was a long one, evidently, for it had called for double postage.
Agatha walked rapidly back to the house, congratulating herself that her duties would be less onerous, at least till the stimulating effect of this letter had worn away. She beckoned to Howard, who was escorting Forbes about the grounds on his morning constitutional, and despatched him on some unnecessary errand, while she took his place at Forbes' side. "It's come," she said briefly.
Though terse, the statement was quite intelligible. Forbes put out his hand eagerly, and she saw it was trembling. She gave him the letter, conscious of a pity that had a mixture of contempt. "Shall I read it to you?" she asked.
"Why, of course. What am I thinking of! Shall we go to the porch? It seems like a fat fellow, and I don't want to keep you standing."
Agatha put her hand through his arm and steered him in the direction of the house. She noticed the shadow on his face had lifted. A little color had come to his cheeks, and his sensitive mouth seemed on the point of smiling. She felt that she despised his weakness in letting himself be played upon by the caprices of a heartless girl, but at the same time, she wanted to cry. And Forbes, as if suspecting her mood, entertained her as they walked, by making fun of himself and of the rapture he could not hide.
"What do you think, Miss Kent? Will you be equal to reading this to me every day till the next one comes?"
"I suppose," said Agatha with resignation, "that I can stand it if you can."
"Oh, there won't be any difficulty as far as I'm concerned. In fact, if my eyes were normal, I should probably read it several times a day, whenever I had a minute to spare. But I haven't the nerve to impose on you to that extent."
"Heaven forbid!" cried Agatha devoutly, and he broke into hilarious laughter. Agatha reflected that if this was the result of falling in love, the longer that catastrophe was postponed, the better.
Forbes had been quite correct in saying that Julia's letter would not be sentimental. Howard could have read it without the slightest embarrassment. She apologized casually for not having written earlier, and by way of explanation gave a list of her engagements for the past two weeks, a device which lent her letter the effect of the society column in a Sunday newspaper, and accounted for the double postage. The names of several men appeared frequently in her record, and it was evident that Forbes was not the only one of his sex to recognize her charm. She even quoted one or two compliments she had received, as if certain of his sympathetic pleasure in her popularity, and his expression as he listened seemed to justify her confidence.
On the last page of the fifteen, Julia detached herself from this fascinating theme, and touched on his affairs. She was glad he was better and she was sure he must enjoy Oak Knoll. She thought those old colonial houses simply lovely and from his description, Miss Kent was a perfect dear. It was good of him to write so often for she was always glad to hear, and she was very cordially his friend, Julia.
Agatha laid down the letter, hardly able to keep back the scornful comment that rushed to her lips like a hemorrhage. She was rather in hopes Forbes would say it himself. The shallowness of the missive, its unabashed vanity, its colossal selfishness were so apparent to her intelligence that she half expected to have Forbes break the silence by congratulating himself on his escape from marrying Julia in January. With this thought in her mind, the fatuous complacency indicated by Forbes' tone came in the nature of a shock.
"She's a bit irregular as a correspondent, but when she does write, you see it's some letter."
Agatha digested this in silence.
"You can gather from this," continued the unconscious Mr. Forbes, "how popular she is. Wherever she goes, she's the center of attention."
Since it gave him pleasure to continue in this strain, and Agatha was not really hard-hearted, she composed herself to listen till Howard's return. But the sight of her brother's slender figure in the distance was peculiarly welcome. By dint of vehement gestures, she induced him to exchange his sauntering gait for a run, and so shortened her ordeal perceptibly.
Howard looked from the frowning girl to the smiling young man with perplexity. For several days Forbes' depression had weighed on the boy's spirits. And now Mr. Forbes was grinning like a chessy cat, and Aggie looked mad enough to bite a nail in two. Howard continued to stare till by a sweeping gesture Agatha indicated her wish to be left to herself. For some time Forbes had gone through the program of exercise his physician had outlined with a listlessness which proved his lack of interest. Now as Howard suggested continuing their interrupted walk, he clapped the boy on the shoulder, seized his arm and the two went off laughing. And Agatha, recalling his boast that he was a representative of a generation remarkable for its reasonableness, smiled sourly and significantly after his departing figure, and asked herself whether all men were fools, or only the nice ones.
In her valiant effort to sustain Forbes' spirits, Agatha had for some days neglected her household duties, and she profited by his temporary accession of cheerfulness to despatch a number of pressing duties, aided by Phemie Tidd, the daughter of a neighboring farmer. The most notable characteristic of Phemie was her stupidity, and though Agatha had sometimes found this trying, in the present emergency she derived satisfaction from the certainty that nature had rendered it impossible for Phemie to find out anything on her own initiative. Whether she was positively weak-minded or not was a question on which the community did not agree, but under careful supervision she accomplished rather more work than would have seemed possible, considering her mental equipment.
As there was no immediate prospect of another letter from Julia, Howard was excused from his afternoon trips to the village, and left to discharge his secretarial duties unassisted. For this reason Agatha was several hours late in learning an important bit of news. It was approaching noon on Friday when she came out upon the porch flushed and weary, after a strenuous morning, and dropped into a chair near that which Forbes was occupying. Though the young man was alone, his mood was evidently cheerful. As she approached him, his smile challenged her attention, and she pondered with frank amazement on the extraordinary effect of Julia's inane letter.
"It's Miss Kent, isn't it?" Forbes looked boyishly pleased over having guessed correctly. "I am beginning to enjoy some of the perquisites of blindness. I can recognize the footsteps of all of you. Do you know you walk with wonderful lightness for a woman of your age?"
Agatha immediately resolved to begin wearing a pair of Howard's slippers, which could be kept on only by dragging her feet.
"I've been wanting to see you all the morning," continued Forbes light-heartedly. "I've great news for you. We're going to have company."
"Company!" Had Forbes' sense of hearing reached the stage of acuteness he fondly imagined, he would have recognized instantly a note of wildness in Agatha's exclamation.
"Had a letter this morning from a pal of mine, fellow I knew in college. He's coming to-morrow to spend Sunday with me."
"To spend Sunday!" Even though Forbes was unable to perceive the frozen horror of Agatha's countenance, her appalled tone convinced him that something was wrong. His smile gave way to an expression of anxiety.