Part 5 (2/2)
”She's wise all right. After this you can leave that midget of yours in her care, Katherine. But now let's get busy. I'm upon the point of famis.h.i.+ng. Come, Peggy, honey; rally your forces and serve your old Daddy.”
Peggy turned toward her aunt. Not until that moment had her father been aware of the change made at his table. Then it came to him in a flash, and Mrs. Peyton was hardly prepared for the change which overspread his countenance as he asked:
”Peggy, why have you allowed your aunt to a.s.sume the obligations of hostess? Have you lost your ability to sit at the head of my table, daughter?”
Poor Peggy! It was well she understood or she would have been nearly heartbroken at the rebuke. Mrs. Peyton answered for her:
”Little Peggy had far too much upon her young shoulders, dear Neil. So I have volunteered to relieve her of some of her duties. I am happy to be able to do so.”
”Indeed, Katherine, we are all under deep obligation to you, I am sure, but Peggy hardly seems overborne by her burdens, and it is my wish that my daughter shall preside in her mother's place at my table. Jerome, Mrs. Stewart is to be relieved of this obligation after this meal. You are to be quite free of all responsibility during your visit with us, Katherine. And now, little girl, let me look at you. July, August, and, let me see, twenty-five days of September since I left you? Nearly three months. You manage to do remarkable things in a brief time, little daughter. But I fancy by the time I get back here again they will be more remarkable. Great plans are simmering for you; great plans,” and her father nodded significantly across at her.
Peggy was too happy to even ask what they were. She could only smile and nod back again.
Meanwhile Mrs. Stewart had used her napkin to scrub off her besmirched poodle's feet and had then surrept.i.tiously thumped her down upon her lap where the table-cloth would conceal her. At Captain Stewart's concluding words she felt her hopes revive a trifle. She was a fair actress when it served her turn. So now smiling across the table she said:
”So you have decided to consider my suggestion, Neil?”
”In one respect, yes, Katherine. I see plainly that things can no longer go on as they have been going. Llewellyn concurs in that.” He glanced toward the Doctor, who nodded gravely.
”I do most fully. Our halcyon days must end, I fear, as all such days do eventually, and we must meet the more prosaic side of life. Let us hope it will a.s.sume a pleasing form. I am loth to hand in my resignation as Dominie Exactus, however,” he ended with a smile for Peggy.
Peggy looked puzzled, and glanced inquiringly from one to the other. Her father stretched forth a hand and laid it over hers which rested upon the edge of the table:
”Smooth out the kinks in your forehead, honey. Nothing distressing is to happen.”
”Hardly,” agreed Mrs. Stewart. ”On the contrary, if your father acts upon my suggestion something very delightful will be the outcome, I am sure. I feel intuitively that you approve of my plan regarding the school, Neil.”
Peggy started slightly, and looked at her father. He nodded and smiled rea.s.suringly, then turning toward his sister-in-law, replied:
”Your letter, Katherine, only served to convince me that Peggy must now have a broader horizon than Severndale, or even Annapolis affords. Dr.
Llewellyn and I talked it over when I was home over a year ago, and again last June. When we first discussed it we were about as much at sea as the 'three wise men of Gotham' who launched forth in a tub. We needed a better craft and a pilot, and we needed them badly, I tell you, and at that time we hadn't sighted either. Then the 'Sky Pilot' took the job out of our hands and He's got it yet, I reckon. At any rate, indications seem to point that way, for on my way down here He ran me alongside my navigator and it didn't take her long to give me my bearings. She got on board the limited at Newark, N. J., and we rode as far as Philly together. She had three of her convoys along and they're all to the good, let me tell you.”
”Oh, Daddy, did you really meet Mrs. Harold and Polly, and who was with them?” broke in Peggy eagerly.
”I surely did, little girl; Mrs. Harold, Polly, Ralph and Durand. She was on her way for a week's visit with some relatives just out of Philly--in Devon, I believe, a sort of house-party, she's chaperoning--and a whole bunch of the old friends are to be there. Well, I got the 'Little Mother' all to myself from Newark to Philly and we went a twenty-knot clip, I tell you, for big as I am, I was just bursting to unload my worries upon someone, and that little woman seems born to carry the major portion of all creation's. She gets them, any way, and they don't seem to feaze her a particle. She bobs up serene and smiling after ever comber. But I've yet to see the proposition she wouldn't try to tackle. Oh, we talked for fair, let me tell you, and in those two hours she put more ideas into this wooden old block of mine than it's held in as many months. Did your ears burn this afternoon, Peggy? You are pretty solid in _that_ direction, little girl, and you'll never have a better friend in all your born days, and don't you ever forget _that_ fact. Well, the upshot is, that next Friday, one week from today, Middie's Haven will have its tenant back and, meantime, she is to write some letters and lay a train for _your_ welfare, honey. That school plan is an excellent plan, Katherine, but not a New York school: New York is too far away from home _and_ Mrs. Harold. Peggy will go to Was.h.i.+ngton this winter. Hampton Roads is not far from Was.h.i.+ngton and the ---- will put in there a number of times this winter. That gives _me_ a chance to visit my girl oftener and also gives Peggy a chance to visit Mrs. Harold, and run out here now and again if she wishes, though the place will be practically closed up for the winter. It was very good of you to offer to remain here but I couldn't possibly accept that sacrifice; for all your interests lie in New York, as you stated in your letter to me. You still have your apartments there, you tell me, and to let you bury yourself down here in this lonely place would be simply outrageous. Even Peggy has been here too long, without companions.”
Neil Stewart paused to take some nuts from the dish which Jerome, now recovered and beaming, held for him. Mrs. Stewart could have screamed with baffled rage, for, now that it was too late, she saw that she had quite overshot the mark, and given her brother-in-law a complete advantage over her designs. ”And that hateful, designing cat!” as she stigmatized Mrs. Harold ”had completed her defeat.” She had gauged her brother-in-law as ”a perfect simpleton where a woman was concerned,” and never had she so miscalculated. He _was_ easygoing when at home on leave, or off on one of his outings, as he had been when she met him in New London. Why not? When he worked he worked with every particle of energy he possessed, but when he ”loafed,” as he expressed it, he cast all care to the winds and was like an emanc.i.p.ated school-boy. It was the school-boy side of his nature she had gauged. She knew nothing of Neil Stewart the Naval Officer and man; hadn't the very faintest conception of his latent force once it was stirred. And she little guessed how she _had_ stirred it by her letter written the morning she had made Peggy so unhappy. It was the one touch needed to bring the climax and it had brought it with a rush which Mrs. Peyton had little antic.i.p.ated. What the outcome might have been had Neil Stewart not met Mrs. Harold on that train is impossible to surmise further than that he had fully decided to free himself of all connection with Peyton's widow. He had always disliked and distrusted her, but now he detested her. Peggy's letters had revealed far more than she guessed, though they had not held one intended criticism. She had written just as she had written ever since she promised him when he visited her the previous year, to send ”a report of each day, accurate as a s.h.i.+p's log.” But she could not write of the daily happenings without giving him a pretty graphic picture of Mrs. Stewart's gradual usurpation, and Harrison had felt no compunction in expressing _her_ views.
And so the ”best laid plans o' mice and (wo)men” had ”gone agley” in a demoralizing manner, and Neil Stewart had come down to Severndale ”under full headway,” and wasted no time in ”laying hold of the helm.” That talk upon the train had been what he termed ”one real old heart-to-hearty,” for Mrs. Harold had foreseen just such a crisis and felt under no obligation to refrain from speaking her mind where Mrs.
Stewart was concerned. She had seen just such women before. Captain Stewart had asked her to read the letters sent to him. She nearly had hysterics over Harrison's, but Peggy's brought tears to her eyes, for she loved the girl very dearly and understood her well. Mrs. Stewart's letter made her eyes snap and her mouth set firmly, as she said:
”Captain Stewart, you have asked my advice and I shall give it exactly as though Peggy were my daughter, for I could hardly love her and Polly more dearly if they were my own children. I am under every obligation of affection to Peggy but not the slightest to Mrs. Stewart, and from all I observed in New London she is by no means the woman to have control over a girl like Peggy. She is one of the most lovable girls I have ever known, but at the same time has one of the most distinct personalities and the strongest wills. She can be easily guided by combined wisdom and affection, but she would be ruined by a.s.sociation with a calculating, unrefined, or capricious nature, and, pardon my frankness, I consider Mrs. Peyton Stewart all of these. Peggy needs a.s.sociation with other girls--that is only natural--and we must secure it at once for her.”
Neil Stewart laid her words to heart, and the ensuing week brought to pa.s.s some radical changes.
On the thirtieth of September the whole brigade of mids.h.i.+pmen came pouring back to Annapolis, the academic year beginning on October first.
On the thirtieth also came Mrs. Glenn Harold and her niece Polly Howland, brown, happy and refreshed by their summer's outing, and Polly eager to meet her old friends at the Academy and her chum Peggy.
October first falling upon Sunday that year the work at the Academy would not begin until Monday, and, although the mids.h.i.+pmen had to report on September thirtieth, Sunday was to a certain extent a holiday for them and on that afternoon a rare treat was planned for some of them by Captain Stewart.
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