Part 6 (1/2)

At this same time,--how should she know it?--something very different was going on in one of the rooms of a great hotel in New York. Somebody else who had meant before now to have left for home, had been delayed till after sundown. Somebody else would go over the road by dark instead of by daylight. By dark,--though there should be broad, beating suns.h.i.+ne over the world again when the journey should be made.

While Mrs. Argenter's maid was bringing out the tray with delicate black-etched china cups, and costly fruit plates illuminated with color, and dainty biscuits, and large, rare, red berries, and cream that would hardly pour for richness in a gleaming crystal flagon,--and ranging them all on the rustic veranda table,--something very different,--very grim,--at which the occupants of rooms near by shuddered as it pa.s.sed their open doors,--was borne down the long, wide corridor to Number Five, in the Metropolitan; and at the same moment, again, a gentleman, very grave, was standing at the counter of the Merchants' Union Telegraph Company's Office, writing with rapid hand, a brief dispatch, addressed to ”Mrs. I.M. Argenter, Dorbury, Ma.s.s.,” and signed ”Philip Burkmayer, M.D.”

n.o.body knew of any one else to send to; at that hour, especially, when the office in State Street would be closed. Closed, with that name outside the door that stood for n.o.body now.

The news must go bare and unbroken to her.

Something occurred to Doctor Burkmayer, however, as he was just handing the slip to the attendant.

”Stop; give me that again, a minute,” he said; and tearing it in two, he wrote another, and then another.

”Send this on at once, and the second in an hour,” he said; as if they might have been prescriptions to be administered. ”They may both be delivered together after all,” he continued to himself, as he turned away. ”But it is all I can do. When a weight is let drop, it has got to fall. You can't ease it up much with a string measured out for all the way down!”

The young woman operator at the little telegraph station at Dorbury Upper Village heard the call-click as she unlocked the room and came in after her half-hour supper time. She set the wires and responded, and laid the paper slip under the wonderful pins.

”Tick-tick-tick; tick-tick; tick-tick-tick-tick,” and so on. The girl's face looked startled, as she spelled the signs along. She answered back when it was ended; then wrote out the message rapidly upon a blank, folded, directed it, and went to the open street door.

”Sim! Here--quick!” she called to a youth opposite, in a stable-yard.

”This has got to go down to the Argenter Place. And mind how you give it. It's bad news.”

”How can _I_ mind?” said Sim, gruffly. ”I spose I must give it to who comes.”

”You might see somebody on the way, and speak a word; a neighbor, or the minister, or somebody. 'Tain't fit for it to go right to her, _I_ know. Telegraphs might as well be something else when they can, besides lightning!”

”Donno's I can go travellin' round after 'em, if that's what you mean,” said Sim, putting the envelope in his rough breast pocket, and turning off.

Sylvie was standing on the stone steps, bidding the Sherretts good-by; Amy was just seated in the gig, and Rodney about to spring in beside her, when Sim Atwill drove up the avenue in the rusty covered wagon that did telegraph errands. Red Squirrel did not quite like the sudden coming face to face, as Sim reined up in a hurry just below the door, and Rodney had to pause and hold him in.

”A tellagrim for Mrs. Argenter,” said Sim, seizing his opportunity, and speaking to whom it might concern. ”Eighty cents to pay, and I 'blieve it's bad news.”

”O, Mr. Sherrett, stop, please!” cried Sylvie, turning white in the dim light. ”What shall I do? Won't you wait a minute, Miss Sherrett, until I see? Won't you come in again? Mother will be frightened to death, and I'm all alone.”

”Jump out, Amy; I'll take Squirrel round,” was Rodney's answer. ”Go right up; I'll come.”

And as Sylvie took the thin envelope that held so much, and the two girls silently pa.s.sed up into the piazza again, he paid Sim the eighty cents which n.o.body thought of at that moment or ever again, and sent him off.

Sylvie and Amy stopped under the softly bright hall lantern. Mrs.

Argenter was up-stairs in her dressing room, quite at the end of the long upper hall, changing her lace sack for a cashmere, before coming out into the evening air again.

”I think I shall open it myself,” whispered Sylvie, tremulously; ”it would seem worse to mother, whatever it is, coming this way. She has such a horror of a telegram.” She looked at it on both sides, drew a little s.h.i.+vering breath, and paused again.

”Is it wicked, do you think, to wish it may be--only grandma, perhaps? Do you suppose it could _possibly_ be--my _father_?”

And by this time there was a hysterical sound in poor little Sylvie's voice.

”Wait a minute,” said Amy, kindly. ”Here's Rod.”