Part 5 (1/2)
”Randolph, it's I--Katherine. Don't be startled.”
”What's the matter? Is she worse?” He lifted himself anxiously, blinking sleep from his eyes.
”No--oh no! She's sleeping well. It's just that I have to talk to you, Randolph. Now. I can't wait till morning--you'll understand when I tell you. I haven't been asleep at all; I've been thinking. I know now how we can get the money.”
”Katherine, are you raving?” the brother demanded; but the girl was not to be turned aside.
”Listen to me,” she said, and in her tone was the authority of the stronger personality, and the young man listened. She sat on the edge of his bed and held his hand as she talked, and through their lives neither might ever forget that midnight council.
The room had an air of having come in perfect and luxurious condition, fur-lined and jewel-clasped, as it were, from the hands of a good decorator, and of having stopped at that. The great triple lamp glowed green as if set with gigantic emeralds; and its soft light shone on a scheme of color full of charm for the eye. The stuffs, the woodwork, were of a delightful harmony, but it seemed that the books and the pictures were chosen to match them. The man talking, in the great carved armchair by the fire, fitted the place. His vigorous, pleasant face looked prosperous, and so kindly was his air that one might not cavil at a lack of subtler qualities. He drew a long breath as he brought out the last words of the story he was telling.
”And that, Mr. North,” he concluded, ”is the way the firm of Litterny Brothers, the leading jewellers of this city, were done yesterday by a person or persons unknown, to the tune of five thousand dollars.” His eyes turned from the blazing logs to his guest.
The young man in his clerical dress stood as he listened, with eyes wide like a child's, fixed on the speaker. He stooped and picked up a poker and pushed the logs together as he answered. The deliberateness of the action would not have prepared one for the intensity of his words. ”I never wanted to be a detective before,” he said, ”but I'd give a good deal to catch the man who did that. It was such planned rascality, such keen-witted scoundrelism, that it gives me a fierce desire to show him up. I'd like to teach the beggar that honesty can be as intelligent as knavery; that in spite of his strength of cunning, law and right are stronger. I wish I could catch him,” and the bra.s.s poker gleamed in a savage flourish. ”I'd have no mercy. The hungry wretch who steals meat, the ignorant sinner taught to sin from babyhood--I have infinite patience for such. But this thief spoke like a gentleman, and the maid said he was 'a pretty young man'--there's no excuse for him. He simply wanted money that wasn't his,--there's no excuse. It makes my blood boil to think of a clever rascal like that succeeding in his rascality.” With that the intense manner had dropped from him as a garment, and he was smiling the gentlest, most whimsical smile at the older man. ”You'll think, Mr. Litterny, that it's the loss of my new parish-house that's making me so ferocious, but, honestly, I'd forgotten all about it.” And no one who heard him could doubt his sincerity. ”I was thinking of the case from your point of view. As to the parish-house, it's a disappointment, but of course I know that a large loss like this must make a difference in a man's expenditures. You have been very good to St. John's already,--a great many times you have been good to us.”
”It's a disappointment to me as well,” Litterny said. ”Old St. John's of Newburyport has been dear to me many years. I was confirmed and married there--but _you_ know. Everything I could do for it has been a satisfaction. And I looked forward to giving this parish-house. In ordinary years a theft of five thousand dollars would not have prevented me, but there have been complications and large expenses of late, to which this loss is the last straw. I shall have to postpone the parish-house,--but it shall be only postponed, Mr. North, only postponed.”
The young rector answered quietly: ”As I said before, Mr. Litterny, you have been most generous. We are grateful more than I know how to say.”
His manner was very winning, and the older man's kind face brightened.
”The greatest luxury which money brings is to give it away. St. John's owes its thanks not to me, but to you, Mr. North. I have meant for some time to put into words my appreciation of your work there. In two years you have infused more life and earnestness into that sleepy parish than I thought possible. You've waked them up, put energy into them, and got it out of them. You've done wonders. It's right you should know that people think this of you, and that your work is valued.”
”I am glad,” Norman North said, and the restraint of the words carried more than a speech.
Mr. Litterny went on: ”But there's such a thing as overdoing, young man, and you're shaving the edge of it. You're looking ill--poor color--thin as a rail. You need a rest.”
”I think I'll go to Bermuda. My senior warden was there last year, and he says it's a wonderful little place--full of flowers and tennis and sailing, and blue sea and nice people.” He stood up suddenly and broadened his broad shoulders. ”I love the south,” he said. ”And I love out-of-doors and using my muscles. It's good to think of whole days with no responsibility, and with exercise till my arms and legs ache. I get little exercise, and I miss it. I was on the track team at Yale, you see, and rather strong at tennis.”
Mr. Litterny smiled, and his smile was full of sympathy. ”We try to make a stained-gla.s.s saint out of you,” he said, ”and all the time you're a human youngster with a human desire for a good time. A mere lad,” he added, reflectively, and went on: ”Go down to Bermuda with a light heart, my boy, and enjoy yourself,--it will do your church as much good as you. Play tennis and sail--fall in love if you find the right girl,--nothing makes a man over like that.” North was putting out his hand. ”And remember,” Litterny added, ”to keep an eye out for my thief.
You're retained as a.s.sistant detective in the case.”
On a bright, windy morning a steams.h.i.+p wound its careful way through the twisted water-road of Hamilton Harbor, Bermuda. Up from cabins mid corners poured figures unknown to the decks during the pa.s.sage, and haggard faces brightened under the balmy breeze, and tired eyes smiled at the dark hills and snowy sands of the sliding sh.o.r.e. In a sheltered corner of the deck a woman lay back in a chair and drew in breaths of soft air, and a tall girl watched her.
”You feel better already, don't you?” she demanded, and Mrs. Newbold put her hand into her daughter's.
”It is Paradise,” she said. ”I am going to get well.”
In an hour the landing had been made, the custom-house pa.s.sed; the gay, exhilarating little drive had been taken to the hotel, through white streets, past white-roofed houses buried in trees and flowers and vines; the sick woman lay quiet and happy on her bed, drawn to the open window, where the healing of the breeze touched her gently, and where her eyes dreamed over a fairy stretch of sea and islands. Katherine, moving about the room, unpacking, came to sit in a chair by her mother and talk to her for a moment.
”To-morrow, if you're a good child, you shall go for a drive. Think--a drive in an enchanted island. It's Shakespeare's _Tempest_ island,--did I tell you I heard that on the boat? We might run across Caliban any minute, and I think at least we'll find 'M' and 'F', for Miranda and Ferdinand, cut into the bark of a tree somewhere. We'll go for a drive every day, every single day, till we find it. You'll see.”
Mrs. Newbold's eyes moved from the sea and rested, perplexed, on her daughter. ”Katherine, how can we afford to drive every day? How can we be here at all? I don't understand it. I'm sure there was nothing left to sell except the land out west, and Mr. Seaton told us last spring that it was worthless. How did you and Randolph conjure up the money for this beautiful journey that is going to save my life?”
The girl bent impulsively and kissed her with tender roughness. ”It is going to do that--it is!” she cried, and her voice broke. Then: ”Never mind how the money came, dear,--invalids mustn't be curious. It strains their nerves. Wait till you're well and perhaps you'll hear a tale about that land out west.”
Day after day slipped past in the lotus-eating land whose unreality makes it almost a change of planets from every-day America. Each day brought health with great rapidity, and soon each day brought new friends. Mrs. Newbold was full of charm, and the devotion between the ill mother and the blooming daughter was an attractive sight. Yet the girl was not light-hearted. Often the mother, waking in the night, heard a s.h.i.+vering sigh through the open door between their rooms; often she surprised a hara.s.sed look in the young eyes which, with all that the family had gone through, was new to them. But Katherine laughed at questions, and threw herself so gayly into the pleasures which came to her that Mrs. Newbold, too happy to be a.n.a.lytical, let the straws pa.s.s and the wind blow where it would.
There came a balmy morning when the two were to take, with half a dozen others, the long drive to St. George's. The three carriage-loads set off in a pleasant hubbub from the white-paved courtyard of the hotel, and as Katherine settled her mother with much care and many rugs, her camera dropped under the wheels. Everybody was busy, n.o.body was looking, and she stooped and reached for it in vain. Then out of a blue sky a voice said: