The Seven Darlings

by Gouverneur Morris

  XXI

  Mr. Langham was at the float to welcome the two Carolinians.

  "You have," he complimented Colonel Meredith, "once more proved theability to land on your feet in a soft spot. You will be morecomfortable here, better fed, better laundered than anywhere else in theworld."

  As they strolled from the float to the office, Mr. Jonstone looked abouthim a little uneasily. Not one of the beautiful girls who had lookedinto his eyes from the page of _The Four Seasons_ was in sight, or,indeed, any girl, woman, or female of any sort whatever. He had ledhimself to expect a resort crowded with rustling and starchy boarders.He found himself, instead, in a primeval pine forest in which weresheltered many low, austere buildings of logs, above whose greatchimneys stood vertical columns of pale smoke. It was not yet dusk, butthe air among the long shadows had an icy quality and was heavilycharged with the odor of balsam. It was difficult to believe the seasonsummer, and Mr. Jonstone was reminded of December evenings in theCarolinas.

  "This is the office," said Mr. Langham, and he ushered them into thepresence of a bright birch fire and Maud Darling. Each of theCarolinians drew a quick breath and bowed as if before royalty. Mr.Langham presented them to Miss Darling. She begged them to write theirnames in the guest book and to warm themselves at the fire.

  "And then," said Sam Langham, "I'll shake them up a cocktail and showthem their house."

  "Are we to have a whole house to ourselves?" asked Colonel Meredith. Hehad not yet taken his eyes from Maud Darling's face.

  "It's only two rooms: bath, parlor, and piazza," she explained.

  "That last?" asked Mr. Jonstone.

  "It's the same thing as a 'poach,'" explained Mr. Langham with a slytwinkle in his eyes.

  "It's to sit on and enjoy the view from," added Maud.

  "But I don't want to admire the view," complained Colonel Meredith. "Iwant to lounge about the office. It's the prerogative of every Americancitizen to lounge about the office of his hotel."

  Colonel Meredith had yet to take his eyes from Maud Darling's face. Andit was with protest written all over it that he at length followed hiscousin and Mr. Langham into the open air.

  The three were presently sampling a cocktail of the latter's shaking inthe latter's snug little house, and speech was loosened in their mouths.

  "Darling, _pere_," explained Sam Langham, "went broke. He used to runthis place as it is run now, with this difference: that in the old dayshe put up the money, while now it is the guests who pay. Two years agothe Miss Darling you just met was one of the greatest heiresses inAmerica; now she keeps books and makes out bills."

  "And are there truly five others equally lovely?" asked ColonelMeredith.

  "Some people think that the oldest of the six is also the loveliest,"said Sam Langham, loyal to the choice of his own heart. "But they areall very lovely."

  To the Carolinians, warmed by Langham's cocktail, it seemed pitiful thatsix beautiful girls who had had so much should now have so little. Andwith a little encouragement they would have been moved to the expressionof exaggerated sentiments. It was Maud, however, and not the others,who had aroused these feelings in their breasts. The desire to benefither by some secret action--and then to be found out--was very strong inthem both.

  Langham left them after a time and they began to dress for dinner.Usually they had a great deal to say to each other; often they disputedand were gorgeously insolent to each other about the most triflingthings, but on the present occasion their one desire was to dress asrapidly as possible and to visit the office upon some pretext or other.

  When Colonel Meredith from the engulfment of a starched shirt announcedthat he had several letters to write and wondered where one could buypostage-stamps, it afforded Bob Jonstone malicious satisfaction toinform him that the "little drawer in their writing-table contained notonly plenty of twos but fives and a strip of special deliveries."

  "All I have to think about," said he, "is my laundry. I suppose they cantell me at the office."

  "_They?_" exclaimed Colonel Meredith.

  As he spoke the collar button sprang like a slippery cherry-stone frombetween his thumb and forefinger, fell in the exact middle of the roomin a perfectly bare place, and disappeared. Up to this moment thecousins had remained on even terms in the race to be dressed first. Butnow Mr. Jonstone gained and, before the collar button was found, hadgiven a parting "slick" to his hair and gone out.

  It was now dark, and the woodland streets of The Camp were lighted bylanterns. Windows were bright-yellow rectangles. A wind had risen andthe lake could be heard slapping against the rocky shore.

  Maud Darling had left the office long enough to change from tailor-madetweeds to the simplest white muslin. She was adding up a column in a fatbook. She looked golden in the firelight and the lamplight, andresembled some heavenly being but for the fact that, for the moment, shewas puzzled to discover the sum of seven and five and was biting the endof her pencil. The divine muse of Inspiration lives in the "other" endsof pens and pencils. The world owes many of its masterpieces ofliterature and invention to reflective nibbling at these instruments,and if I were a teacher I should think twice before I told my pupils totake their pencils out of their mouths.

  Mr. Jonstone knocked on the open door of the office.

  "This is the office," said Miss Maud Darling; "you don't have to knock.Is anything not right?"

  "Everything is absolutely perfect," bowed Mr. Jonstone. "But you arebusy. I could come again. I only wanted to ask about sending some thingsto a laundry."

  "You're not supposed to think about that," said Maud. "There is aclothes-bag in the big closet in your bedroom and my sister Eve does therest."

  "Oh, but I couldn't allow----"

  "Not with her own hands, of course; she merely oversees the laundry andkeeps it up to the mark. But if you like your things to be done in anyspecial way you must see her and explain."

  "In my home," said Jonstone, "my old mammy does all the washing and mosteverything else, and I wouldn't dare to find fault. She would follow meup-stairs and down scolding all the time if I did. You see, though sheisn't a slave any more, she's never had any wages, and so she takes itout in privileges and prerogatives."

  "No wages ever since the Civil War!" exclaimed Maud.

  "We had to have servants," he explained, "and until the other day therewas never any money to pay them with. We had nothing but the plantationand the family silver."

  "And of course you couldn't part with that. In the North when we gethard up we sell anything we've got. But in the South you don't, and I'vealways admired that trait in you beyond measure."

  "In that case," said Mr. Jonstone, turning a little pale, "it is my dutyto tell you that the other day I parted with my silver in exchange for alarge sum of money. I made up my mind that I had only one life to liveand that I was sick of being poor."

  Maud smiled.

  "If you want to keep your ill-gotten gains," she said, "you ought neverto have come to this place. Wasn't there some kind friend to tell youthat our prices are absolutely prohibitive? We haven't gone intobusiness for fun but with the intention of making money hand over fist.It's only fair to warn you."

  She imagined that, at the outside, he might have received a couple ofthousand dollars for his family silver, and it seemed wicked that heshould be allowed to part with this little capital for food, lodging,and a little trout-fishing.

  "My silver," he said, "turned out to be worth a lot of money, and I haveput it all in trust for myself, so that my wife and children shall neverwant."

  A flicker of disappointment appeared in Maud Darling's eyes.

  "But I didn't know you were married," she said lamely.

  "Oh, I'm not--yet!" he exclaimed joyfully. "But I mean to be."

  "Engaged?" she asked.

  "Hope to be--mean to be," he confessed.

  And at this moment Colonel Melville Meredith came in out of the night.Having bowed very low to Miss Darling, he turned to his cousin.

 
; "Did Langham find you?" he asked.

  "No."

  "Well, he's a-waiting at our house. I said I thought you'd be rightback."

  "Then we--" began Jonstone.

  "Not we--_you_," said his cousin, malice in his eyes. "I want to askMiss Darling some questions about telegrams and special messages bytelephone."

  Bob Jonstone withdrew himself with the utmost reluctance.

  "We have a telephone that connects us with the telegraph office atCarrytown," Maud began, but Colonel Meredith interrupted almost rudely.

  "We engaged our rooms for ten days only," he said, "but I want to keepthem for the rest of the summer. Please don't tell me that they arepromised to some one else."

  "But they are," said she; "I'm very sorry."

  "Can't you possibly keep us?"

  She shook her fine head less in negation than reflection.

  "I don't see how," she said finally, "unless some one gives out at thelast minute. There are just so many rooms and just so many applicants."

  "How long," he asked, "would it take to build a little house for mycousin and me?"

  "If we got all the carpenters from Carrytown," said Maud, "it could bedone very quickly. But----"

  "Now you are going to make some other objection!"

  "I was only going to say that if you wanted to go camping for a fewweeks, we could supply you with everything needful. We have first-ratetents for just that sort of thing."

  "But we don't want to go camping. We want to stay here."

  "Exactly. There is no reason why you shouldn't pitch your tent in themain street of this camp and live in it."

  "That's just what we'll do," said Colonel Meredith, "and to-morrow we'llpick out the site for the tent--if you'll help us."