CHAPTER IV
AND A WAY
Mr. Sam wasn't taking any chances, for the next day he went to the cityhimself to bring Mr. Dick up. Everything was quiet that day and the dayafter, except that on the second day I had a difference of opinion withthe house doctor and he left.
The story of the will had got out, of course, and the guests werewaiting to see Mr. Dick come and take charge. I got a good bit of gossipfrom Miss Cobb, who had had her hair cut short after a fever and used tocome out early in the morning and curl it all over her head, heating thecurler on the fire log. I never smell burnt hair that I don't thinkof Miss Cobb trying to do the back of her neck. She was one of ourregulars, and every winter for ten years she'd read me the letters shehad got from an insurance agent who'd run away with a married woman theday before the wedding. She kept them in a bundle, tied with lavenderribbon.
It was on the third day, I think, that Miss Cobb told me that Miss Pattyand her father had had a quarrel the day before. She got it from one ofthe chambermaids. Mr. Jennings was a liver case and not pleasant at anytime, but he had been worse than usual. Annie, the chambermaid, toldMiss Cobb that the trouble was about settlements, and that the more MissPatty tried to tell him it was the European custom the worse he got.Miss Patty hadn't come down to breakfast that day, and Mr. Moody andSenator Biggs made a wager in the Turkish bath--according to MissCobb--Mr. Moody betting the wedding wouldn't come off at all.
"Of course," Miss Cobb said, wetting her finger and trying the iron tosee if it was hot, "of course, Minnie, they're not married yet, and ifFather Jennings gets ugly and makes any sort of scandal it's all off. Ascandal just now would be fatal. These royalties are very touchy aboutother people's reputations."
Well, I heard that often enough in the next few days.
Mr. Sam hadn't come back by the morning of the sixth day, but he wiredhis wife the day before that Mr. Dick was on the way. But we met everytrain with a sleigh, and he didn't come. I was uneasy, knowing Mr. Dick,and Mrs. Sam was worried, too.
By that time everybody was waiting and watching, and on the early trainon the sixth day came the lawyer, a Mr. Stitt. Mr. Thoburn was goingaround with a sort of greasy smile, and if I could have poisoned himsafely I'd have done it.
It had been snowing hard for a day or so, and at eleven o'clock that dayI saw Miss Cobb and Mrs. Biggs coming down the path to the spring-house,Mrs. Biggs with her crocheting-bag hanging to the handle of herumbrella. I opened the door, but they wouldn't come in.
"We won't track up your clean floor, Minnie," Mrs. Biggs said--she was alittle woman, almost fifty, who'd gone through life convinced she'd onlylived so long by the care she took of herself--"but I thought I'd bettercome and speak to you. Please don't irritate Mr. Biggs to-day. He's beenreading that article of Upton Sinclair's about fasting, and hasn't had abite to eat since noon yesterday."
I noticed then that she looked pale. She was a nervous creature,although she could drink more spring water than any human being I eversaw, except one man, and he was a German.
Well, I promised to be careful. I've seen them fast before, and when afat man starts to live on his own fat, like a bear, he gets about thesame disposition.
Mrs. Biggs started back, but Miss Cobb waited a moment at the foot ofthe steps.
"Mr. Van Alstyne is back," she said, "but he came alone."
"Alone!" I repeated, staring at her in a sort of daze.
"Alone," she said solemnly, "and I heard him ask for Mr. Carter. Itseems he started for here yesterday."
But I'd had time to get myself in hand, and if I had a chill up myspine she never knew it. As she started after Mrs. Biggs I saw Mr. Samhurrying down the path toward the spring-house, and I knew my jointhadn't throbbed for nothing.
Mr. Sam came in and slammed the door behind him.
"What's this about Mr. Dick not being here?" he shouted.
"Well, he isn't. That's all there is to it, Mr. Van Alstyne," I saidcalmly. I am always calm when other people get excited. For that reasonsome people think my red hair is a false alarm, but they soon find out.
"But he MUST be here," said Mr. Van Alstyne. "I put him on the trainmyself yesterday, and waited until it started to be sure he was off."
"The only way to get Mr. Richard anywhere you want him to go," I saiddryly, "is to have him nailed in a crate and labeled."
"Damned young scamp!" said Mr. Van Alstyne, although I have a sign inthe spring-house, "Profanity not allowed."
"EXACTLY what was he doing when you last laid eyes on him?" I asked.
"He was on the train--"
"Was he alone?"
"Yes."
"Sitting?"
"No, standing. What the deuce, Minnie--"
"Waving out the window to you?"
"Of course not!" exclaimed Mr. Van Alstyne testily. "He was raising thewindow for a girl in the next seat."
"Precisely!" I said. "Would you know the girl well enough to trace her?"
"That's ridiculous, you know," he said trying to be polite. "Out of athousand and one things that may have detained him--"
"Only one thing ever detains Mr. Dick, and that always detains him," Isaid solemnly. "That's a girl. You're a newcomer in the family, Mr. VanAlstyne; you don't remember the time he went down here to the station tosee his Aunt Agnes off to the city, and we found him three weeks laterin Oklahoma trying to marry a widow with five children."
Mr. Van Alstyne dropped into a chair, and through force of habit I gavehim a glass of spring water.
"This was a pretty girl, too," he said dismally.
I sat down on the other side of the fireplace, and it seemed to me thatfather's crayon enlargement over the mantel shook its head at me.
After a minute Mr. Van Alstyne drank the water and got up.
"I'll have to tell my wife," he said. "Who's running the place, anyhow?You?"
"Not--exactly," I explained, "but, of course, when anything comes upthey consult me. The housekeeper is a fool, and now that the housedoctor's gone--"
"Gone! Who's looking after the patients?"
"Well, most of them have been here before," I explained, "and I knowtheir treatment--the kind of baths and all that."
"Oh, YOU know the treatment!" he said, eying me. "And why did the housedoctor go?"
"He ordered Mr. Moody to take his spring water hot. Mr. Moody's springwater has been ordered cold for eleven years, and I refused to change.It was between the doctor and me, Mr. Van Alstyne."
"Oh, of course," he said, "if it was a matter of principle--" Hestopped, and then something seemed to strike him. "I say," he said;"about the doctor--that's all right, you know; lots of doctors and allthat. But for heaven's sake, Minnie, don't discharge the cook."
Now that was queer, for it had been running in my head all morning thatin the slack season it would be cheaper to get a good woman instead ofthe chef and let Tillie, the diet cook, make the pastry.
Mr. Sam picked up his hat and looked at his watch.
"Eleven thirty," he said, "and no sign of that puppy yet. I guess it'sup to the police."
"If there was only something to do," I said, with a lump in my throat,"but to have to sit and do nothing while the old place dies it's--it'sawful, Mr. Van Alstyne."
"We're not dead yet," he replied from the door, "and maybe we'll needyou before the day's over. If anybody can sail the old bark to shore,you can do it, Minnie. You've been steering it for years. The old doctorwas no navigator, and you and I know it."
It was blowing a blizzard by that time, and Miss Patty was the only onewho came out to the spring-house until after three o'clock. She shookthe snow off her furs and stood by the fire, looking at me and notsaying anything for fully a minute.
"Well," she said finally, "aren't you ashamed of yourself?"
"Why?" I asked, and swallowed hard.
"To be in all this trouble and not let me know. I've just this minuteheard about it. Can't we get the police?"
"Mr. Van Alstyne is trying," I said, "but I don't
hope much. Like as notMr. Dick will turn up tomorrow and say his calendar was a day slow."
I gave her a glass of water, and I noticed when she took it how pale shewas. But she held it up and smiled over it at me.
"Here's to everything turning out better than we expect!" she said, andmade a face as she drank the water. I thought that she was thinking ofher own troubles as well as mine, for she put down the glass and stoodlooking at her engagement ring, a square red ruby in an old-fashionedsetting. It was a very large ruby, but I've seen showier rings.
"There isn't anything wrong, Miss Patty, is there?" I asked, and shedropped her hand and looked at me.
"Oh, no," she said. "That is, nothing much, Minnie. Father is--I thinkhe's rather ridiculous about some things, but I dare say he'll comearound. I don't mind his fussing with me, but--if it should get in thepapers, Minnie! A breath of unpleasant notoriety now would be fatal!"
"I don't see why," I said sharply. "The royal families of Europe have agood bit of unpleasant notoriety themselves occasionally. I should thinkthey'd fall over themselves to get some good red American blood. Blueblood's bad blood; you can ask any doctor."
But she only smiled.
"You're like father, Minnie," she said. "You'll never understand."
"I'm not sure I want to," I snapped, and fell to polishing glasses.
The storm stopped a little at three and most of the guests waded downthrough the snow for bridge and spring water. By that time the afternoontrain was in, and no Mr. Dick. Mr. Sam was keeping the lawyer, Mr.Stitt, in the billiard room, and by four o'clock they'd had everythingthat was in the bar and were inventing new combinations of their own.And Mrs. Sam had gone to bed with a nervous headache.
Senator Biggs brought the mail down to the spring-house at four, butthere was nothing for me except a note from Mr. Sam, rather shaky, whichsaid he'd no word yet and that Mr. Stitt had mixed all the cordials inthe bar in a beer glass and had had to go to bed.
At half past four Mr. Thoburn came out for a minute. He said there wasonly one other train from town that night and the chances were it wouldbe snowed up at the junction.
"Better get on the band wagon before the parade's gone past," he said inan undertone. But I went into my pantry and shut the door with a slam,and when I came out he was gone.
I nearly went crazy that afternoon. I put salt in Miss Cobb's glass whenshe always drank the water plain. Once I put the broom in the fire andstarted to sweep the porch with a fire log Luckily they were busy withtheir letters and it went unnoticed, the smell of burning straw notrising, so to speak, above the sulphur in the spring.
Senator Biggs went from one table to another telling how well he feltsince he stopped eating, and trying to coax the other men to starve withhim.
It's funny how a man with a theory about his stomach isn't happy untilhe has made some other fellow swallow it.
"Well," he said, standing in front of the fire with a glass of water inhis hand, "it's worth while to feel like this. My head's as clear asa bell. I don't care to eat; I don't want to eat. The 'fast' is thesolution."
"Two stages to that solution, Senator," said the bishop; "first,resolution; last, dissolution."
Then they all began at once. If you have ever heard twenty people airingtheir theories on diet you know all about it. One shouts for HoraceFletcher, and another one swears by the scraped-beef treatment, andsomebody else never touches a thing but raw eggs and milk, and prettysoon there is a riot of calories and carbohydrates. It always ends thesame way: the man with the loudest voice wins, and the defeated oneslimp over to the spring and tell their theories to me. They know I'mbeing paid to listen.
On this particular afternoon the bishop stopped the riot by rising andholding up his hand. "Ladies and gentlemen," he said, "let us not berancorous. If each of us has a theory, and that theory works out to hissatisfaction, then--why are we all here?"
"Merely to tell one another the good news!" Mr. Jennings said sourlyfrom his corner.
Honest, it was funny. If some folks were healthy they'd be lonesome.
But when things had got quiet--except Mr. Moody dropping nickels intothe slot-machine--I happened to look over at Miss Patty, and I saw therewas something wrong. She had a letter open in her lap not one of theblue ones with the black and gold seal that every one in the house knewcame from the prince but a white one, and she was staring at it as ifshe'd seen a ghost.
Where There's a Will Page 4