Part 45 (1/2)
”You couldn't hold it up for half an hour, could you?” asked Quin. Then, as he glanced down and met Eleanor's eyes br.i.m.m.i.n.g with all those recent tendernesses, his carefully practised stoicism received a frightful jolt.
As the ”All aboard!” sounded, she clutched his sleeve in sudden panic.
”Oh, Quin, I know I'm going to be horribly lonesome and homesick. I--I wish you were going too!”
”All right! I'll go! Why not?”
”But you can't! I was fooling. You must get off this instant!”
”May I come on later? Say in the spring?”
”Yes, yes! But get off now! Quick, we are moving!”
She had almost to push him down the aisle and off the steps. Then, as the train gained speed, instead of looking forward to the wide fields of freedom stretching before her, she looked wistfully back to the disconsolate figure on the platform, and, with a sigh that was half for him and half for herself, she lifted her fingers to her lips and rashly blew him a good-by kiss.
CHAPTER 28
That aerial kiss proved more intoxicating to Quin than all the more tangible ones he had ever received. It sent him swaggering through the next few months with his head in the air and his heart on fire. Nothing could stop him now, he told himself boastfully. Old Bangs was showing him signal favor, Madam Bartlett was his staunch friend, Mr. Ranny and the aunties were his allies, and even if Miss Nell didn't care for him yet, she didn't care for anybody else, and when a girl like Miss Nell looks at a fellow the way she had looked at him----
At this rapturous point he invariably abandoned cold prose for poetry and burst into song.
Almost every week brought him a letter from Eleanor--not the romantic, carefully penned epistles she had indited to Harold Phipps, but hasty scrawls often dashed off with a pencil. In them she described her absurd attempts at housekeeping in the little two-room apartment; her absorbing experiences in the dramatic school; all the ups and downs of her wonderful new life. She was evidently enjoying her freedom, but Quin flattered himself that between the lines he could find evidences of discouragement, of homesickness, and of the coming disillusionment on which he was counting to bring her home when her six months of study were over.
It was only when Rose read him Papa Claude's lengthy effusions that his heart misgave him. Papa Claude announced that Eleanor was sweeping everything before her at the dramatic school, where her beauty and talent were causing much comment, and that he had not been mistaken when he had foreseen her destiny, and, ”single-handed against the world,” forced its fulfilment.
Usually, upon reading one of Papa Claude's pyrotechnical efforts, Quin went to see Madam Bartlett. After all, he and the old lady were paddling in the same canoe, and their only chance of success was in pulling together.
As the end of the six months of probation approached, Madam became more and more anxious. Ever since Eleanor's high-handed departure she had been undergoing a metamorphosis. Like most autocrats, the only things of which she took notice were the ones that impeded her progress. When they proved sufficiently formidable to withstand annihilation, she awarded them the respect that was their due. Eleanor's childish whim, heretofore crushed under her disapprobation, now loomed as a terrifying possibility. The girl had proved her mettle by living through the winter on a smaller allowance than Madam paid her cook. She had shown perseverance and pluck, and an amazing ability to get along without the aid of the family. In a few months she would be of age, and with the small legacy left her by her spendthrift father, would be in a position to snap her fingers in the face of authority.
”If it weren't for that fool Phipps I'd have her home in twenty-four hours,” Madam declared to Quin. ”She'll be wanting to take a professional engagement next.”
Quin tried to rea.s.sure her, but his words rang hollow. He too was growing anxious as the months pa.s.sed and Eleanor showed no sign of returning. He longed to throw his influence with Madam's in trying to induce her to come back before it was too late. The only thing that deterred him was his sense of fair play to Eleanor.
”You let Miss Nell work it out for herself,” he advised; ”don't threaten, her or persuade her or bribe her. Leave her alone. She's got more common sense than you think. I bet she'll get enough of it by May.”
”Well, if she doesn't, I'm through with her, and you can tell her so. I meant to make Eleanor a rich woman, but, mark my word, if she goes on the stage I'll rewrite my will and cut her off without a penny. I'll even entail what I leave Isobel and Enid. I'll make her sorry for what she's done!”
But with the approach of spring it was Madam who was sorry and not Eleanor. Quin's sympathies were roused every time he saw the old lady.
Her affection and anxiety fought constantly against her pride and bitterness. For hours at a time she would talk to him about Eleanor, hungrily s.n.a.t.c.hing at every crumb of news, and yet refusing to pen a line of conciliation.
”If she can do without me, I can do without her,” she would say stubbornly.
Quin's business brought him to the Bartlett home oftener than usual these days. For twenty years Madam and Mr. Bangs, as partners in the firm of Bartlett & Bangs, had tried to run in opposite directions on the same track, with the result that head-on collisions were of frequent occurrence. Since Randolph Bartlett's retirement from the firm, Quin had succeeded him as official switchman, and had proven himself an adept. His skill in handling the old lady was soon apparent to Mr. Bangs, who lost no time in utilizing it.
One afternoon in April, when Quin was busily employed at his desk, his eyes happened to fall upon a calendar, the current date of which was circled in red ink. The effect of the discovery was immediate. His energetic mood promptly gave way to one of extreme languor, and his gaze wandered from the papers in his hand across the grimy roof tops.
This time last year he and Miss Nell had made their first pilgrimage to Valley Mead. It was just such a day as this, warm and lazy, with big white clouds loafing off there in the west. He wondered if the peach trees were in bloom now, and whether the white violets were coming up along the creek-bank. How happy and contented Miss Nell always seemed in the country! She had never known before what the outdoor life was like.
How he would like to take her hunting for big game up in the Maine woods, or camping out in the Canadian Rockies with old Cherokee Jo for a guide!