Chapter 20

Quin stood under the big car-shed at the Union Depot, and for the sixth time in ten minutes consulted the watch that was the pride of his life. He had been waiting for half an hour, not because the train was late, but because he proposed to be on the spot if by any happy chance it should arrive ahead of schedule time. The week before he had received a picture post-card on whose narrow margin were scrawled the meager lines:

So glad Cass is up again. Rose says you've been a brick. Home on Sept. 2. Hope to see you soon. E. M. B.

It was the only communication he had had from Eleanor since they sat on the stile in the starlight at Valley Mead three months before. To be sure, in her infrequent letters to Rose she had always added, "Give my love to Quinby Graham," and once she said: "Tell him I've been meaning to write to him all summer." Notwithstanding the fact that Quin had waited in vain for that letter for twelve consecutive weeks, that he had passed through every phase of indignation, jealousy, and consuming fear that can assail a young and undisciplined lover, he nevertheless watched for the incoming train with a rapture undimmed by disturbing reflections. The mere fact that every moment the distance was lessening between him and Eleanor, that within the hour he should see her, hear her, feel the clasp of her hand, was sufficient to send his spirits soaring into sunny spaces of confidence far above the clouds of doubt.

"Hello, Quinby; what are you doing here?" asked a voice behind him; and turning he saw the long, oval face and lady-like figure of Mr. Chester.

"Same thing you are," said Quin, grinning sympathetically. "Only if I was in your shoes I'd be walking the tracks to meet the train."

Mr. Chester shook his head and smiled primly.

"When you have waited twenty years for a young lady, twenty minutes more or less do not matter."

"They would to me!" Quin declared emphatically. "When is the wedding to be?"

"On the fourteenth. And that reminds me"--Mr. Chester ran his arm confidentially through Quin's and tried to catch step. "I want to ask a favor of you."

A favor to Quin meant anything from twenty-five cents to twenty-five dollars, and the fact that Mr. Chester should come to him flattered and embarrassed him at the same time.

"What's mine is yours," he said magnanimously.

"No, you don't understand," said Mr. Chester. "You see, not being a club man or a society man, I have in a way dropped out of things. I have comparatively few friends, and unfortunately they are not in a set personally known to Madam Bartlett. Miss Enid and I thought that it might solve the difficulty, and avoid complications, if you would agree to serve as my best man."

"Why, I'd be willing to serve as the preacher to see you and Miss Enid get married," said Quin heartily. Then his thoughts flew after his departed Tuxedo and the gorgeous wing-toed pumps. "What'll I have to wear?"

"It is to be a noon affair," reassured Mr. Chester. "Simple morning coat, you know, and light-gray tie."

Quin's ideas concerning a morning coat were extremely vague, and the possibility of his procuring one vaguer still; but the occasion was too portentous to admit of hesitation. He and Mr. Chester continued their walk to the far end of the shed, and then stood looking down at the coal cars being loaded from the yards.

"White gloves, I suppose?" observed Quin.

"Pearl gray, with very narrow stitching. I think that's better taste, don't you?"

"Sure," agreed Quin. "Flower in the buttonhole, or anything like that?"

While this all-important detail was being decided, a clanging bell and the hiss of an engine announced the incoming train. Before the two waiting cavaliers could reach the gate, Eleanor Bartlett came through, laden with wraps and umbrellas.

"I like the way you meet us," she called out. "For mercy sake, help me." And she deposited her burden in Quin's outstretched arms. Then, as Mr. Chester strode past them with flying coat-tails in quest of Miss Enid, she burst out laughing.

"Say, you are looking great," said Quin, with devouring eyes, as he surveyed her over the top of his impedimenta.

"It's more than you are." She scanned his face in dismay. "Have you been sick?"

"No, indeed. Never felt better."

"I know--it was nursing Cass that did it. Rose wrote me all about it. If you don't look better right away, I shall make you go straight to bed and I'll come feed you chicken soup."

"My fever's rising this minute!" cried Quin, "I believe I've got a chill. Send for the ambulance!"

"Not till after the wedding. I'll have you know I am to be Aunt Enid's bridesmaid."

"You've got nothing on me," said Quin, "I'm the best man!"

This struck them both as being so excruciatingly funny that they did not see the approaching cavalcade, with Madam walking slowly at its head, until Quin heard his name called.

"Oh, dear," said Eleanor, "there they come. And I've got a thousand questions to ask you and a million things to tell you."

"Come here, young man, and see me walk!" was Madam's greeting. "Do I look like a cripple? Leg off at the knee, crutches for life? Bah! We fooled them, didn't we?"

Quin made a tremendous fuss over the old lady. He also threw the aunties into pleased confusion by pretending that he was going to kiss them, and occasioned no end of laughter and good-natured banter by his incessant teasing of Mr. Chester. He was in that state of effervescence that demanded an immediate outlet.

Madam found him so amusing that she promptly detailed him as her special escort.

"Eleanor can look after the baggage," she said, "and Isobel can look after Eleanor. The turtle-doves can take a taxi." And she closed her strong old fingers around Quin's wrist and pulled him forward.

He shot an appealing glance over his shoulder at Eleanor, who shook her head in exasperation; then he obediently conducted Madam to her carriage and scrambled in beside her.

"Now," she said, when he had got a cushion at her back and a stool under her foot, "tell me: where's Ranny--drunk as usual?"

"No, siree!" said Quin proudly. "Sober as usual. He hasn't touched a drop since you went away."

She looked at him incredulously.

"Are you lying?"

"I am not."

Her hard, suspicious old face began to twitch and her eyelids reddened.

"This is your doing," she said gruffly. "You've put more backbone into him than all the doctors together."

"That's not all I've done," said Quin. "What are you going to say when I tell you I've sold him a farm?"

"A farm? You've got no farm; and he had no money to buy it, if you had."

"That's all right. He has had a farm for three months. You ought to see him--up at six o'clock every morning looking after things, and so keen about getting back to it in the evening that he never thinks about going to the club or staying in town."

"What's all this nonsense you are talking?"

"It's not nonsense. He's bought a little place out near Anchordale. They are living there."

"And they did this without consulting me!" Madam's eyes blazed. "Why, he is no more capable of running a farm than a ten-year-old child! I have fought it for years. He knew perfectly well if he told me I'd stop it instantly. He will appeal to me to help out within six months, you'll see! I sha'n't do it! I'll show my children if they can do without me that I can go without them."

She was working herself into a fine rage. The aigrette on her bonnet quivered, and the black velvet band about her neck was getting so tight that it looked as if it couldn't stand the strain much longer.

"Why didn't he write me?" she stormed. "Am I too old and decrepit to be consulted any more? Is he going to follow Enid's high-handed way of deciding things without the slightest reference to my wishes?"

"I expect he is," said Quin cheerfully. "You see, you can't stiffen a fellow's backbone, as you call it, for one thing and not another. When he found out he could stop drinking, he decided he could do other things as well. He's started a chicken farm."

Madam groaned: "Of course. I never knew a fool that sooner or later didn't gravitate to chickens. He will get an incubator next."

"He has two already. He and Mrs. Ranny are studying out the whole business scientifically."

"And I suppose they've got a rabbit hutch, and a monkey, and some white mice?"

"Not quite. But they've got a nice place. Want to go out with me next Saturday and see 'em?"

"I do not. I'm not interested in menageries. I never expect to cross the threshold."

Quin pulled up the cape that had slipped from her shoulder, and adjusted it carefully.

"When Mr. Ranny comes in to see you," he said, "I hope you won't ball him out right away. He's awful keen on this stunt, you know. It sort of takes the place of the things he has given up."

Madam glared straight ahead of her for a few moments, then she said curtly:

"I'll not mention it until he does."

"Oh, but I _want_ you to. He's as nervous as a witch about how you are going to take it. You see, he thinks more of your opinion than he does of anybody's, and he wants your approval. If you could jump right in and say you think it's a bully idea, and that you are coming out to see what he has done, and----"

"Do you want me to lie?" Madam demanded fiercely.

"No," said Quin, laughing; "I am trying to warm you up to the project now, so you won't have to lie." Then, seeing her face relax a little, he leaned toward her and said in his most persuasive tone:

"See here, now! I did my best to straighten Mr. Ranny out. He's making the fight of his life to keep straight. It's up to you to stand by us. You don't want to pitch the fat back in the fire, do you?"

They had reached the big house on Third Avenue, and the carriage was slowing up at the curbing. Quin, receiving no answer to his question, carefully helped Madam up the steps and into the house, where black Hannah was waiting to receive her.

"You can't come in," said Madam gruffly. "I am tired. I will see you some other time."

"All right," said Quin. "What time shall I come Saturday afternoon?"

"Saturday afternoon? Why then?"

"To go out to Mr. Ranny's farm."

For an instant they measured glances; then Quin began to laugh--a confident, boyish laugh full of teasing affection.

"Come on," he coaxed, "be a good scout. Let's give 'em the surprise of their lives."

"You rascal, you!" she said, hitting at him with her cane. "I believe you are at the bottom of all this. Mind, I promise you nothing."

"You don't have to," he called back. "I can trust you. I'll be here at three!"

He arrived on Saturday an hour early in the hope of seeing Eleanor, and was gloriously rewarded by thirty minutes alone with her in the big dark drawing-room. All the way up from the factory he had thought of the things he wanted to tell her--all the Martel news, the progress of affairs at Valley Mead, the fact that he had won his first-term certificate at the university, and above all about his promotion at Bartlett & Bangs. But Eleanor gave him no chance to tell her anything. She was like a dammed-up stream that suddenly finds an outlet. Into Quin's sympathetic ears she poured her own troubles, talking with her hands and her eyes as well as her lips, exaggerating, dramatizing, laughing one minute, half crying the next.

The summer, it seemed, had been one long series of clashes with her grandmother. She hadn't enjoyed one day of it, she assured him; that is, not a _whole_ day, for of course there were some gorgeous times in between. Her friends had not been welcome at the house, and one (whom Quin devoutly hoped was Mr. Phipps) had been openly insulted. She had not been allowed to take part in the play given at the club-house, when it had been planned with her especially in mind for the leading rôle. She had even been forbidden to go to the last boathouse dance, because it was a moonlight affair, and grandmother had never heard of such a thing as dancing without lights.

"She has spent the entire summer nagging at me," Eleanor concluded. "I couldn't do a thing to please her. If I stayed in she wanted me to go out; if I went out she thought I ought to stay in. If I put on one dress she invariably made me change it for another. And as for being late to meals, why, each time it happened you would have thought I'd broken the ten commandments."

"Couldn't you have pushed up the stroke and got there on time?" asked Quin, whose army training made him inclined to sympathize with Madam at this point.

"No, I could not. I am always late. It's a Martel trait--that's why it infuriates grandmother. But it wasn't any of these things I've been telling you that caused the real trouble. It was her constant interference in my private affairs. I am simply sick of being dictated to about my choice of friends."

"You mean Mr. Phipps?"

She looked at him quickly. "How did you know?"

"Mrs. Ranny told me he was up there, and I guessed there was a shindy."

"I should say there was--for the entire three days he was there! If he hadn't been big enough to rise above it and ignore grandmother, she would have succeeded in breaking up one of the most beautiful friendships of my life."

Quin absently twisted a corner of the corpulent sofa cushion which he held in his lap, before he asked cautiously:

"What is it you like so much in him. Miss Nell?"

Eleanor curled her feet under her on the sofa, and launched forth on a favorite theme:

"Well, to begin with, he's the most cosmopolitan man I ever met."

"Cosmopolitan? How do you mean?"

"Awfully sophisticated. A sort of citizen of the world, you know."

"You mean he's traveled a lot, knocked around in queer places, like me?"

"Oh, no; it isn't that. As a matter of fact, he has never been out of this country. But I mean that, wherever he'd go, he would be at home."

"Yes," Quin admitted, with a grim smile; "that's where he was most of the time when he was in the army. What else do you like about him?"

"I sha'n't tell you. You are prejudiced, like all the rest. He says that only an artist can understand an artist."

"Meaning, I suppose, that he understands you?"

"Yes; and I believe I understand him. Of course I don't agree with him in all his ideas. But then, I've been brought up in such a narrow way that I know I am frightfully conventional. He is awfully advanced, you know. Why don't you like him, Quin?"

Numerous concrete and very emphatic reasons sprang to Quin's lips. He would have liked nothing better than to answer her question fully and finally; but instead he only smiled at her and said:

"Why, I guess the main reason is because you do."

Eleanor looked at him dubiously: "No," she said; "it's something besides that. The family have probably filled your ears with silly gossip. Mr. Phipps _was_ wild at one time--he told me all about it. But that's ancient history; you can take my word for it."

Quin would have taken her word for almost anything when she looked at him with such star-eyed earnestness, but he was obliged to make an exception in the present instance.

"He's nothing in my young life," he said indifferently. "What I want to know is whether you are home to stay?"

Eleanor glanced at the door, listened, then she said:

"I don't know yet. You see, Papa Claude is to be in New York this winter, finishing his play. He says if I will come on he will put me in the Kendall School of Expression and see that I get the right start. It's the chance of a life-time, and I'm simply wild to go."

"And Queen Vic won't hear of it?"

"Not for a second. She knows perfectly well that I can go on the stage the day I am twenty-one, yet through sheer obstinacy she refuses to advance me a penny to do as I like with before the 20th of next July."

"She don't do it for meanness," Quin ventured. "She'd give you all she had if it came to a showdown. But none of 'em realize you are grown up; they are afraid to turn you loose."

"Well, I've stood it as long as I intend to. I made up my mind that I would stick it out until after Aunt Enid's wedding. It nearly breaks my heart to do anything to hurt her and Aunt Isobel; but even they are beginning to rebel against grandmother's tyranny."

"What do you mean to do?" asked Quin, with a sudden sinking of the heart.

"I am not sure yet; I haven't quite made up my mind. But I am not going to stay here. I am too unhappy, Quin, and with Aunt Enid gone----" Her voice broke, and as she caught her lip between her small white teeth she stared ahead of her with tragic eyes.

Quin laid his arm along the sofa, as close to her shoulders as he dared, and looked at her in dumb sympathy.

"Don't you think you might try a different tack with the old lady?" he ventured presently. "Even a porcupine likes to have its head scratched, and I think sometimes she's kind of hungry for somebody to cotton up to her a bit. Don't you think you might----"

"Who left that front door open?" broke in a harsh, peremptory voice from the landing. "I don't care _who_ opened it--I want it shut, and kept shut. Where's Quinby Graham? I thought you said he was waiting."

Quin rose precipitately and made a dash for the hall, while Eleanor discreetly disappeared through a rear door.

"Well," said Madam grimly, pulling on her gloves, "it is a novel experience to find a young person who has a respect for other people's time."