Chapter 11

Madam Bartlett's accident had far-reaching results. For fifty years her firm hand had brooked no slightest interference with the family steering-wheel, and now that it was removed the household machinery came to a standstill. She who had "ridden the whirlwind and directed the storm" now found herself ignominiously laid low. Instead of rising with the dawn, primed for battle in club committee, business conclave, or family council, she lay on her back in a darkened room, a prisoner to pain. The only vent she had for her pent-up energy was in hourly tirades against her daughters for their inefficiency, the nurses for their incompetency, the doctors for their lack of skill, and the servants for their disobedience.

The one person who, in any particular, found favor with her these days was her son's new secretary. Every Saturday, when Quinby Graham stopped on his way to the bank with various papers for her to sign, he was plied with questions and intrusted with various commissions. A top sergeant was evidently just what Madam had been looking for all her life--one trained to receive orders and execute them. All went well until one day when Quin refused to smuggle in some forbidden article of diet; then the steam-roller of her wrath promptly passed over him also.

He waited respectfully until her breath and vocabulary were alike exhausted, then said good-humoredly:

"I used to board with a woman up in Maine that had hysterics like that. They always made her feel a lot better. Don't you want me to shift that pulley a bit? You don't look comfortable."

Madam promptly ordered him out of the room. But next day she made an excuse to send for him, and actually laughed when he stepped briskly up to the bed, saluted smartly, and impudently asked her how her grouch was.

There was something in his very lack of reverence, in his impertinent assumption of equality, in his refusal to pay her the condescending homage due feebleness and old age, that seemed to flatter her.

"He's a mule," she told Randolph--"a mule with horse sense."

Quin's change from khaki to civilian clothes affected him in more ways than one. Constitutionally he was opposed to saying "sir" to his fellow men; to standing at attention until he was recognized; to acknowledging, by word or gesture, that he was any one's inferior on this wide and democratic planet. He much preferred organizing to being organized, leading to being led. Early in his military training he had evinced an inclination to take things into his own hands and act without authority. It was somewhat ironic that the very trait that had deprived him of a couple of bars on his shoulder should have put the medal on his breast.

But freedom from the restrictions of army life brought its penalties. He found that blunders condoned in a soldier were seriously criticized in a civilian; that the things he had been at such pains to learn in the past two years were of no apparent value to him now. It was a constant surprise to him that a plaid suit and three-dollar necktie should meet with less favor in the feminine eye than a dreary drab uniform.

About the first of March he was getting somewhat discouraged at his slow progress, when an incident happened that planted his feet firmly on the first rung of his social ladder.

Ever since their mother's accident, Miss Isobel and Miss Enid had stood appalled before their new responsibilities. They were like two trembling dead leaves that still cling to a shattered but sturdy old oak. What made matters worse was the absence of the faithful black Tom, who for years had served them by day and guarded them by night. They lived in constant fear of burglars, which grew into a veritable terror when some one broke into the pantry and rifled the shelves.

Quin heard about it when he arrived on Saturday morning, and as usual offered advice:

"What you need is a man in the house. Then you wouldn't be scared all the time."

"Well," said Madam, "what about you?"

Quin's face fell. He had no desire to exchange the noisy, wholesome family life of the Martels for the silent, somber grandeur of the Bartletts. His affections had taken root in the shabby little brown house that always seemed to be humming gaily to itself. When the piano was not being played, the violin or guitar was. There were bursts of laughter, snatches of song, and young people going and coming through doors that never stayed closed.

"You don't seem keen about the proposition," Madam commented dryly, smoothing the bed-clothes with her wrinkled fingers.

"Well, I can't say I am," Quin admitted. "You see, I'm living with some friends out on Sixth Street. They are sort of kin-folks of yours, I believe--the Martels."

A carefully aimed hand grenade could have produced no more violent or immediate result. Madam damned the Martels, individually and collectively, and furiously disclaimed any relationship.

"They are a trifling, worthless lot!" she stormed. "I wish I'd never heard of them. They fastened their talons on my son Bob, and ruined his life, and now they are doing all they can to ruin my granddaughter. Haven't you ever heard them speak of me?"

"Oh, yes," said Quin with laughing significance.

"What do they say?" Madam demanded instantly.

"You want it straight?"

"Yes."

"Well, Mr. Martel told me only last night that he thought you were an object of pity."

Madam's jaw relaxed in amazement.

"What on earth did he mean?" she asked.

"He said you'd got 'most everything in life that he'd missed, but he'd hate to change places with you."

She lay perfectly still, staring at him with her small restless eyes, and when she spoke again it was to revert to the subject of burglars.

Quin was relieved. He had been skating on thin ice in discussing the Martels, for any moment might have brought up a question concerning Eleanor.

"I used to have a corporal that was an ex-burglar," he said, plunging into the new subject with alacrity. "First-rate fellow, too. Last I heard of him, he had a position as chauffeur with a rich old lady who lived alone up in Detroit. She had two burglar-alarm systems, but the joke of it was she made him sleep in the house for extra protection!"

"I suppose you are trying to frighten me off from engaging you?" Madam asked.

"Not exactly," Quin smiled. "Of course I'll come if you can't get anybody else. But there's no question of engaging me. If I come, I pay board."

Madam laughed aloud for the first time since her accident.

"Do you take me for a landlady?" she asked.

"Only when you take me for a night-watchman," said Quin.

They eyed each other steadily for a moment, then she held out her hand.

"We'll compromise," she said. "No salary and no board. We'll try it out for a week."

The next day Quin's suit-case, containing all his worldly possessions, was transferred from the small stuffy room over the Martels' kitchen to the large luxurious one over the Bartletts' dining-room. It was quite the grandest room he had ever occupied, with its massive walnut furniture and its heavily draped windows; but, had it been stripped bare but for a single picture, it would still have been a _chambre de luxe_ to him. The moment he entered he discovered a photograph of Eleanor on the mantel, and ten minutes later, when Hannah tapped at the door to say that dinner was served, he was still standing with arms folded on the shelf in absorbed adoration.

That first meal with the Misses Bartlett was an ordeal he never forgot. Their formal aloofness and evident dismay at his presence were enough in themselves to embarrass him; but combined with the necessity of choosing the right knife and fork, of breaking his bread properly, and of removing his spoon from his coffee-cup, they were quite overpowering. During his two years in the army he had drifted into the easy habits and easier vernacular of the enlisted man. Whatever knowledge he had of the amenities of life had almost been forgotten. But, though his social virtues were few, he passionately identified himself with them rather than with his faults, which were many. To prove his politeness, for instance, he insisted upon his hostesses having second helps to every dish, offered to answer the telephone whenever it rang, and even obligingly started to answer the door-bell during the salad course.

That dinner was but the initiation into a week of difficult adjustments. When he was not in the arctic region surrounding Miss Isobel and Miss Enid, he was in the torrid zone of Madam's presence. New and embarrassing situations confronted him on every hand, and when he was not breaking conventions he was breaking china. But Quin was not sensitive, and, in spite of the fact that he was being silently or vocally condemned most of the time, he cheerfully persevered in his determination to win the respect of the family.

The saving of his ignorance was that he never tried to conceal it. He looked at it with surprise and discussed it with disconcerting frankness. He was no more abashed in learning new and better ways of conducting himself than he would have been in learning a new language. He laughed good-humoredly at his mistakes and seldom committed the same one a second time. His limitations were to him like the frontier to a pioneer--a thing to be reached and crossed.

If only he could have contented himself with performing the one duty required of him and then gracefully effacing himself, his success would have been assured. But that was not Quin's nature. Having identified himself with the family, he promptly assumed full responsibility for its welfare. By the end of the second week he was the self-constituted head of the establishment. No mission was too high or too low for him to volunteer to perform. One moment he was tactfully severing diplomatic relations with a consulting physician in the front hall, the next he was firing the furnace in the basement. Whenever he was in the house he was meeting emergencies and adjusting difficulties, upsetting established customs and often achieving unexpected results with new ones.

Miss Isobel and Miss Enid stood aghast at his temerity, and waited hourly for the lightning of Madam's wrath to annihilate him. But, though the bolts rained about him, they failed to destroy him.

On one occasion Miss Isobel was so outraged by his familiar attitude toward her mother that she plucked up courage to remonstrate with him; but Madam, instead of appreciating the interference on her behalf, promptly turned upon her defender.

"Now, Isobel," she said caustically, "_you_ may be old enough to want men to respect you, but I am young enough to want them to like me. You leave young Graham alone."

Quin meanwhile, in spite of his arduous duties at the office and at home, was living in a world of dreams. The privilege of hearing Eleanor's name frequently mentioned, of getting bits of news of her from time to time, the exciting possibility of being under the same roof with her when she returned, supplied the days with thrilling zest. Since her teasing note in answer to his double-barreled communication, he had written but once and received no answer; but he knew that she was expected home for the Easter vacation, and he lived on that prospect.

One evening, when he was summoned to Madam's room to shorten her new crutches, he realized that the all-important subject was under discussion.

"Isn't that exactly like her?" Madam was saying. "Refusing to go in the first place, and now objecting to coming home."

"Well, it isn't especially gay for her here, is it?" Miss Enid ventured in feeble defense. "I am afraid we are rather dull company for a young girl."

"Well, make it gay," commanded Madam. "You and Isobel aren't so old and feeble that you can't think of some way to entertain young people."

"A tea?" suggested Miss Enid.

"A tea would never tempt Eleanor. She's too much her mother's child to enjoy anything so staid and respectable."

"Why don't you give her a dance?" suggested Quin enthusiastically, looking up from his work.

"Give who a dance?" demanded Madam in surprise.

"Miss Eleanor," said Quin, bending over his work and blushing to the roots of his stubby hair.

The three ladies exchanged startled glances; then Miss Enid said:

"Of course. I had forgotten that you met her the night of the accident. I wonder if we _could_ give the dear child a party?"

"It is not to be thought of," said Miss Isobel, "with no regular butler, and mother ill----"

"I tell you, I'm _not_ ill!" snapped Madam. "I intend to be up and about by Easter. I'll give as many parties as I like. Hurry up with those crutches, Graham; do you think I am going to wait all night?"

One of Quin's first acts upon coming into the house had been to aid and abet Madam in her determination to use her injured leg. Dr. Rawlins had infuriated her by his pessimistic warnings and his dark suggestions of a wheeled chair.

"We'll show 'em what you can do when you get that cast off," Quin had reassured her with the utmost confidence. "I've limbered up heaps of stiff legs for the fellows. It takes patience and grit. I got the patience and you got the grit, so there we are!"

Now that the cast was off, a few steps were attempted each night, during which painful operation Miss Enid fled to another room to shed tears of apprehension, while Miss Isobel hovered about the hall, ready to call the doctor if anything happened.

"Is that better?" he asked now, as he got Madam to her feet and carefully adjusted the crutches. "If you say they are too short, I'll tell you what the little man said when he was teased about his legs. 'They reach the ground,' he said; 'what more can you ask?'"

"Shut up your nonsense, and mind what you are doing!" cried Madam. "My leg is worse than it was yesterday. I can't put my foot to the ground."

"Oh, yes, you can," Quin insisted, coaxing her from the bed-post to the dresser. "You are coming on fine. I never saw but one person do better. That was a guy I knew in France who never danced a step until he lost a leg, and then his cork leg taught his other leg to do the fox-trot."

"Didn't I tell you to hush!" commanded Madam, laughing in spite of herself. "You will have me falling over here in a minute."

When she was back in her chair and Quin was leaving, she beckoned to him.

"What about Mr. Ranny?" she asked in an anxious whisper. "Was he at the office to-day?"

Quin had been dreading the question, but when it came he did not evade it. Randolph Bartlett's lapses from grace were coming with such alarming frequency that the sisters' frantic efforts to keep the truth from their mother only resulted in arousing her suspicion and making her more unhappy.

"No," said Quin; "he hasn't been there for a week. He's never going to be any better as long as he stays in the business. You don't know what he has to stand from Mr. Bangs."

"I know what Mr. Bangs has had to stand from him."

"Yes; but Mr. Ranny's never mean. He is one of the kindest, nicest gentlemen I ever met up with. But he can't stand being nagged at all the time, and he feels that he don't count for anything. He says Mr. Bangs considers him a figurehead, and that he'd rather be selling shoestrings for himself than be in partnership with him."

"Yes, and if I let him go that's what he _would_ be doing," said Madam bitterly.

"Mr. Chester don't think so," persisted Quin; "he says Mr. Ranny's got a lot of ability."

"Don't quote that sissified Francis Chester to me. He may be a good man--I suppose he is; but I can't abide the sight of him. He goes around holding one hand in the other as if he were afraid he'd spill it! What did you say he said about Ranny?"

"He said he had ability; that if he was on his own in the country some place----"

"'On his own'!" Madam's contempt was great. "He hasn't _got_ any own. He's just like the girls--no force or decision about any of them. Their father wasn't like that; I am sure _I'm_ not. What's the matter with them, anyhow?"

Quin looked her straight in the eyes. "Do you want to know, honest?"

Disconcerting as it was to have an oratorical question taken literally, Madam's curiosity prompted her to nod her head.

"The same thing's the matter with them," said Quin, with brutal frankness, "that's the matter with your leg. They've been broken and kept in the cast too long."

Then, before he could get the berating he surely deserved, he was off down the stairs, disturbing the silence of the house with his cheerful whistle.

At breakfast the next morning he scented trouble. Until now he had made little headway with the two sisters, having been too much occupied in storming the fortress of Madam's regard to concern himself with the outlying districts. But this morning he met with an even colder reception than usual. In vain he fired off his best jokes: Miss Enid remained pale and languid, and Miss Isobel presided over the coffee-pot as if it had been a funeral urn. A crisis was evidently pending, and he determined to meet it half way.

"Is Queen Vic mad at me?" he asked suddenly, leaning forward on his folded arms and smiling with engaging candor.

Miss Isobel started to pour the cream into the sugar-bowl, but caught herself in the act.

"If you mean my mother," she said with reproving dignity, "she has asked me to tell you--that is, we all think it best----"

"For me to go?" Quin finished it for her. "Now, look here, Miss Isobel; you can fire me, but you know you can't fire the furnace! Who is going to stay here at night? Who is going to carry Madam up and down stairs? Of course I don't want to butt in, but if ever a house needed a man it's this one. Why don't you have me stay on until things get to running easy again?"

There was an embarrassing pause during which Miss Isobel fidgeted with the cups and saucers and Miss Enid bit her lips nervously.

"Don't you-all like me?" persisted Quin with his terrible directness.

Now, Miss Isobel had spent her life in evasions and reservations and compromises. To have even a personal liking stripped thus in public offended her maiden modesty, and she scurried to the cover of silence.

"Of course we like you," murmured Miss Enid, coming to her rescue. "We like you very much, Mr. Graham, and we appreciate your kindness in coming to help us out. But mother feels that we shouldn't impose on your good nature any longer."

Quin shook his impatient head.

"That's not it," he said. "She's mad at something I said last night, and she's got a right to be. It was true all right, but it was none of my business. I made up my mind before I went to bed that I was going to apologize. I can fix things up with her. It's you and Miss Isobel I can't understand. You say you like me, but you don't act like it. I know I make mistakes about lots of things, and that I do things wrong and say things I oughtn't to. But all you got to do is to call me down. I want to help you; but that's not all--I want to learn the game. When a fellow has knocked around with men since he was a kid----"

He broke off suddenly and stared into his coffee-cup.

"I think he might go up and speak to mother, don't you, Isobel?" asked Miss Enid tentatively.

Quin pushed back his chair and rose precipitately from the table, dragging the cloth away as he did so.

"That's not the point!" he said heatedly. "It's for you two to decide, as well as her. Do you want me to go or to stay?"

Miss Isobel and Miss Enid, who had been assuring each other almost hourly that they could not stand that awful boy in the house another day, looked at each other intercedingly.

"It would be a great help if you could stay at least until mother learns to use her crutches," urged Miss Enid.

"Yes, and until we get some one we can trust to stay with us at night," added Miss Isobel.

"I'll stay as long as you like!" said Quin heartily; and he departed to make his peace with Madam.