Part 7

"No. We're both of us too much dressed up to wash dishes," she remarked. "I don't care if they ain't done for a week, Mr. Jack. I'm goin' to enjoy myself with you, this afternoon. You make yourself at home in any part o' the house but the kitchen for twenty minutes, and then I'll sit down with you. I guess you haven't forgotten your way 'round."

Jack regarded her with serious brown eyes. "Are there any moths in your sitting-room carpet, Aunt Love?" he asked.

Miss Berry looked amazement, and even a little anxiety lest her young friend's brain had received more of a shock than she realized. "What makes you ask that?" she demanded, being careful to speak gently.

"I know a sovereign remedy, that's all."

"I did, one time, have some trouble with that carpet," said Miss Berry doubtfully, "but pepper's good; I used that. Camphor, too."

"Tobacco is excellent," declared Van Tassel, looking pensively into the depths of his coffee cup.

A light of comprehension broke over Miss Berry's face.

"Mr. Jack, do you smoke!" she exclaimed reproachfully. "Do you shut those shiny white teeth o' yours on an old pipe-stem! Oh, there never ought a cigar to go into your mouth, never in the world. Do you _smoke_?"

"Well--on Fourth of July's, and New Years, and Christmas, and--birthdays, I do sometimes celebrate, and I thought if you wanted the moths kept out of your carpet-- One thing really, Aunt Love, if cigar smoke is disagreeable to you, you ought to have told me before betraying me into such a dinner."

"It isn't any more disagreeable to me than it is to any other woman of good principles," returned Miss Berry firmly. "'T isn't a question o' that. I can show you statistics, Mr. Jack."

"Yes, I have seen statistics," he answered, mildly. "You haven't time to look them up just now, and I think I'll walk out of doors a while and discuss the movement cure with Blitzen, and ask him what part of the chicken he'll take."

"No, no, Mr. Jack. There ain't enough paths shoveled to make it pleasant to go out around the house. I let Obed go just as soon as he'd done what was absolutely necessary this mornin'. 'T ain't that a cigar's unpleasant to my nose. It's my principles it hurts; but 't ain't so bad if you only smoke one for an occasional recreation. Remember you can't suit me except by makin' yourself entirely at home;" and the hospitable woman arose from the table. "If you don't smoke now in the sittin'-room, I shall feel bad."

So Van Tassel went back to his window and sent a few rings of fragrant smoke into the air before putting on his hat and sallying down the garden path. He had not finished his cigar before he heard himself called.

Miss Berry was standing in the open door, beckoning to him. "Time's up," she said, smiling.

Jack smiled back and held up the cigar explanatorily.

"I know all about that. Come in. It's a good smellin' one," she added, as her guest obediently returned to the piazza. "If folks would burn a few leaves o' tobacco like that occasionally, it would be agreeable enough, some like incense; but it's a pity to have it at the cost of a man's poisonin' his lungs."

Van Tassel followed her back to the sitting-room, where he took the armchair she had arranged for him, and smiled to see that one of the white and gold China saucers had even been sacrificed to receive the ashes of that disapproved cigar.

He thanked her and took from his pocket a little dark velvet box. "Here is something I brought you as a Christmas gift, Aunt Love. I had to get it in a hurry last night and I don't feel sure that it will please you."

Miss Berry opened the case and gazed at a hatpin of onyx set with a conventional design of pearls.

"It's good enough for an empress!" she exclaimed in ingenuous delight. "Why, you're too good, Mr. Jack. I'm just gettin' spoiled this Christmas. I got another present out o' the post-office last night," and Miss Lovina took from her pocket another and smaller box which she put into Jack's hand. "Velvet too, you see," she said, beaming, "and more precious yet inside, just like yours."

Jack opened the case and found a gold thimble.

"And it's big enough for me," announced the happy owner triumphantly; "I didn't know as gold ones grew big enough for workin' hands like mine: but you wouldn't catch Mrs. Van Tassel givin' anybody a thing they couldn't use."

Jack's head was bent above the bauble. "Oh, it is from her?"

"Yes," answered Aunt Love, recalled by his tone from her heedless flight of enthusiasm. "This pin will always make me vain and happy," she added, "and I thank you from my heart, Mr. Jack, for thinkin' about me."

"You have been an important person in my thoughts this fall," said the young man, as he handed her the thimble, "for you can tell me of my father."

Jack looked thoughtfully at his cigar, and Aunt Love, from her neighboring chair, looked at him.

"I will tell you," she said, after waiting a moment to see if her guest wished to proceed. "I will tell you everything I can. Do you want to ask me questions, or shall I just talk to you a little?"

"I want to know just how ill he was through the summer. I was deliberately kept in the dark."

Miss Berry was alert to perceive the resentment in the quiet tone.

"He wasn't ill at all. Not so to say real sick," she replied. "His head didn't feel quite right after that light shock he got in the spring, and he thought he was takin' every precaution by comin' out of all the excitement of his busy life, right to this farm. The doctor said it was just the best thing he could do; and Mrs. Van Tassel"--

"Then he was not confined to his bed here?"

"No, indeed. Not a day. He had a steamer chair out under the big elm, and it never seemed to fret him a bit to be idle; and his wife"--

"He used to write me from under that tree," said Jack thickly.

"Yes, indeed he did; and he liked to be read to, and to play backgammon; and whenever Mrs. Van Tassel"--

"I ought to have been here to wait on him. What I was cheated out of!"

"But, Mr. Jack," Miss Berry spoke pleadingly, "you was trampin' through Switzerland, and just havin' the best time of all. Your father used to have guide-books and atlases, and follow up what you were doin' every day. Why, he entered into it, and enjoyed it just as if it was himself. He didn't know, and Mrs. Van Tassel didn't know, that there wasn't many another summer comin'."

"It makes it especially hard," said Jack, still staring at the forgotten cigar, dropped now into the saucer, "that I had been away from him four years already. The past summer is the one I should have spent with him. It seems as though the regret and the loss could never be forgotten. There never was such a father as mine." The speaker's features worked convulsively an instant. "The world is only a big, barren desert, without him, and I might have had all those months. I might"--

Aunt Love used to feel an especial tenderness for Jack when she tucked him into bed at night, because he had no mother to do it for him, and she had often kissed the child after he was asleep, for the same reason. Now his pale face in its pain and effort at self-mastery appealed to her irresistibly. In a moment she had slipped her arm around his shoulders, and with her other hand drawn his head gently against her breast.

"I know you've been hurt awful bad, dear heart," she said, tears running down her own cheeks, as she softly patted his hair.

For Jack, he did not stop to be astonished. It was too comforting to have the barriers of his self-restraint forcibly broken down. From the time when furtive bitter drops had added to the ocean's brine, as he meditated at evening on board the home-coming ship in cold November, no loving human soul had dared till now to take his grief into full companionship. Aunt Love's primitive, spontaneous method worked well. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to her that he should weep in her embrace, on the ample bosom of her black silk gown; and who shall say what a comfort it was to Jack, with no spectators but the haircloth chairs and sofa, to be held close in loving arms after weeks of lonely, speechless heartache under a conventional exterior.

"You are very good to me," he said at last, and though he leaned back in his chair, he continued to hold one of Aunt Love's plump hands as though she were a sort of anchor which he could not let go all at once.

"And now you've got to be patient with me just a minute, dear boy," said his companion, "and listen to something you won't like to hear, perhaps. My conscience wouldn't rest easy unless I told you a little about your father's wife."

"I know her," said Jack. "I don't want you to think I doubt her kindness to him. I am jealous of her. That is all."

"Kindness ain't just the word," persisted Aunt Love. "I can imagine your father livin' through such a summer as last was, and havin' a pretty weary time of it, cut off from so much that had made his life before. Now I just want you to picture this young woman, a pretty, girlish critter that had seen trouble enough to make her low-spirited if she'd had a mind to be, just studyin' to make the days pleasant for him. She was cheerful in just such a stiddy way as a brook is; not much noise about it, but always right there, singin' if so be you want it. She played games with your dear father, or she read to him, or she waited on him, or she just set and sewed and let him look at her, whichever happened to suit his mood; and he bein' always thoughtful and tender of her, 'twas just a pleasure to see 'em together. She hunted up maps and articles about places you was travelin', and from sunrise till sunset she just had one idea, and that was whether anything could make Mr. Van Tassel any more comfortable than he was. He was a happy man in spite of the new weakness which might have made him miserable. Ain't that somethin' for you to remember when you think of the woman that bears his name? You know some kinds o' clover brings the person that finds it good luck. I often used to think o' that as I watched 'em together, and I thought your father had found one of the best sort. It's a good name for her. Clover's just like her, unpretendin' and sweet, whether it's red or white; always cheerful and innocent, distillin' honey for mankind." Miss Berry paused a minute before she went on: "The word _father_ means a great deal to you, Mr. Jack. It was the heavenly Father that gave that lovely companion to soothe Mr. Van Tassel's last days; and the same all-lovin' Father has permitted a great blow to fall upon you; but the Holy One whose birthday we are keepin' to-day said that in this world we must have tribulation, and He told us, too, be of good cheer. The Saviour did overcome the world; there is a heaven, your father has gone to it, and you and I are both bound for it. It's the main concern we've got in life to get ready for it. Let your sorrow help you along, Mr. Jack, and don't shut anybody out o' your generous heart, least of all the woman I've been talkin' about."

Van Tassel took an eight o'clock train back to Boston that night. He walked to the station with a lighter step than the one that had carried him from it. Some subtle influence had softened him; some poisoned rankling dart had been drawn away. A crescent moon hung in the sky. The quiet snowclad village suggested more than ever the idea of a Christmas picture, and the song that the angels once sang, as they floated through the starry heavens, seemed now to fall like a benediction from above: "Peace on earth, good will to men."

*CHAPTER XI.*

*THE DEDICATION.*

Gorham Page thought he perceived a change for the better in the spirits of his cousin, after that visit to Pearfield, but Jack said little about the event. It was well into the New Year, when the two happened to be alone in the office one afternoon, that Jack mentioned his father's widow voluntarily for the first time since his return.

"Did I understand you to say, Gorham, that Clover sent word to me that she should not return to the Hyde Park house?"

"Yes."

"Do you think it was because she felt enmity, or because she feared it?"

"Why, it is your house," said Page. "It was left to you, as it turns out."

"Yes, but what difference does that make?" returned the other, with a tinge of impatience, the unreasonableness of which made his cousin smile.

"She wished you to feel full liberty in coming back," said the latter. "She broke down when she spoke of it, I remember."

"I don't like that," asserted Jack, turning over the pages of Blackstone. "I don't like to have Clover exiled from a comfortable place, where she would like to be. It is a dog-in-the-manger business that doesn't suit me in the least."

"I guess you needn't worry about the matter," remarked Page. "Mrs. Van Tassel is in no condition to bear a Chicago winter."

"Do you mean she is ill?" asked the other, shutting the heavy book suddenly.

"I don't know. She looks like alabaster, or something that would be easily broken. Miss Bryant was evidently much distressed about her."

Jack fell into a brown study. It sounded strange to hear his cousin speak of these old schoolmates by such names. The idea of Clover, jolly, laughing Clover, with her sunburned cheeks and dancing blue eyes,--the idea that any one should speak of her as looking like alabaster. And Miss Bryant! It was a jest in itself to hear his serious cousin refer in that tone, and by such a dignified title, to Mildred. It was more than two years since Jack had seen the romping girl, whose heavy hair would never remain in its braid, and who, it seemed, would never cease outgrowing her clothes.

He thought of the sisters for some time, while Page went on with his work. He recalled the little boy and girl who had loved him, and gentle Mrs. Bryant, whose mother-heart had always made him welcome equally with her own children. They had all gone now to that world which had lately gained definite interest for him. Had Clover and Mildred suffered yearning and loss comparable to his? The mere thought, tolerantly admitted, gave him a new feeling toward his old comrades.

At last he spoke again. "Where did Mrs. Van Tassel say they were going?"

It was the first time he had given his friend her title. Page observed it.

"California," he answered sententiously.

"That doesn't tell anything."

Page smiled slightly. "Perhaps that is just what she considered," he returned, and Jack thought that Gorham was a provoking, dry sort of fellow.

"I'll tell you what I'm going to do," he said, rising. "I'm going to Chicago."

"Are you? Well, you are that favored species of individual who can control his own movements."

"Yes. They've ceased pulling hair out there, and have decided to locate the Fair in Jackson Park, quite near our house, you remember."

"So I observed. They have lost a good deal of time in controversy, it strikes me. They will have to scratch gravel now."

And this, if Mr. Page had only known it, was literally what had begun to be done out there in Chicago, in the unreclaimed district which bordered Jackson Park on the south.

Sand-dunes, and marshes, woodland and slough, had all to be effaced, for a new earth must be offered in time to be the foundation for those castles in the air, which were already creating in men's brains.

As the scope of the proposed work unfolded and became clear, the time began to seem nigh to hopelessly short for its accomplishment. Of public opinion in the East, the kindest expression continued patronizing, amused, and skeptical; the average, contemptuous and hostile.

But Chicago, which had formed a habit of making stepping-stones of obstacles, now said "I will" with greater doggedness of purpose than ever before, and sending steam dredges to invade the wilderness, began the patient, laborious grubbing, which was necessary to excavate in one place, and fill in in another. Meanwhile the oldest inhabitant wandered about, looking on, wondering and fascinated. The maiden, going in advance of the feller of trees, caught with her kodak a farewell glimpse of the wood-road, that had furnished a foothold amid the sand for the spring violets of her childhood. The small boy looked longingly at the sloughs, which had been first to freeze in autumn, and thought it a thousand pities that Chicago had been so brave as to deserve the Fair. The Eastern papers thought so too, and still exercised the virtue of frankness to the fullest extent; but Chicago, with all her reputation for talking, now had no time for such indulgence; but emulated Uncle Remus's famous tar-baby, who, it will be remembered, when Brer Rabbit jeered at her once and again, still "ain't sayin' nothin'." She only grubbed away, and her citizens prepared themselves for the long pull, the strong pull, and the pull all together, which should win ultimate triumph.

When Jack arrived there, he found his city in all the excitement of work and plans and anticipation. His father's Scotch housekeeper, Jeanie, was in possession as of old when he reached home, and gave him a reception in which tears mingled with cordiality. "It's all different without your father, Mr. Jack," she mourned, "but we must bear it,--we must bear it."

Jack went through the house, finding changes in every room but his own. In that one, every object was familiar.

Jeanie had nothing but good words for her young mistress. She was ready to praise her as long as Jack would have patience to listen. Miss Bryant, too, came in for a share of her voluble encomiums; but she did not know where they were, for though Mrs. Van Tassel wrote her an occasional note, she said they were moving about from place to place.

The upshot of Jack's trip was, that he went back to Boston and his cousin's office, and waited for destiny to show him some natural way of communicating his generous impulses to Clover.

So he lived through the winter, keeping up some interests in common with certain of his classmates, and gaining a reputation for touchiness regarding his native city, with whose exertions he felt a loyal and filial sympathy. It made him hot to read and hear frequent allusions to prove that the public was still holding its sides with merriment over the exquisite humor of the idea that upstart, pork-packing Chicago should undertake to conceive and carry out a true World's Fair, one fit to follow the great similar achievements of the Old World nations, and to be an adequate embodiment of the high ideas which gave birth to the enterprise.

It was little mollifying to him to perceive that much of the sneering had at least the merit of genuineness; that there was much sincere incredulity of Chicago's ability to rise to an occasion so remote from her habits and experience. With his Cambridge training, his youth, and his years of absence from home, he might have sympathized in all this, more with than against the Eastern element, but for his father's active labors, and his own knowledge of the men who had the matter in hand.

Only once Jack heard of Clover and Mildred during the summer that followed. He visited Miss Berry again, and heard from her that Mrs. Van Tassel's health was reestablished, and that the sisters had taken a trip to Alaska. He asked her to convey to them, for him, an earnest invitation to return to the homestead, whenever they pleased.

Once again, in the winter, he learned from the same source of information that they had gone to Europe. In June, Van Tassel and Page took a trip through the English and Scottish lakes together. Clover and Mildred evidently wished to live a life apart. Very well, it should be as they pleased; but Jack could not help looking for them at each little inn where his and Page's horses stopped. His father's memory was still a living, ever-present one, and persons so strongly associated with him could not be forgotten.

In the autumn the young men came home to find the country absorbed in Columbian celebrations. Red and yellow was as popular a combination as red, white, and blue. Columbus was pictured on every hand. There was no sameness, no fear of monotony about these representations. He was shown thin and stout, old and young, fair and dark, narrow-visaged and rotund of countenance. Meanwhile, the dedication in his honor drew on apace.

The twentieth of October, Chicago was to be clothed in bunting, and the great men of the country were to be drawn by prancing steeds through her streets. On the twenty-first, the Exposition buildings were to be dedicated to their splendid use, and Jack Van Tassel told his cousin that they must both be present at the ceremonies. Page demurred, but Van Tassel had his way, and ten o'clock of that sunshiny, clear, Friday morning found the two men entering the grounds, where a sense of roominess was the first sensation, after struggling in the city's crowd.

Jack felt his breast swell with pride in the fair scene, incomplete, yet already inspiring; but he forbore from being the first to comment. Let the Boston man speak; and he finally did. Page's eyes slowly took in an overwhelming impression of the general scheme,--of what had already been, and what would be accomplished. Then he spoke:--

"This is great--so far."

The words were balm to his companion.

Page went on.

"But Eastern men designed these palaces. Eastern art"--

"Now look here," burst forth Jack. "Don't try to apologize for Chicago's achievement. She hasn't got there yet, quite, of course, but she is arriving. She had sense enough to make this Fair a national and not a local business. You're surely not surprised at that? She understood it that way from the first. They are not all Chicago men who have done this work, but be kind enough to remember that they are Chicago men who have laid the brains of this country under contribution, and whose indomitable energy has been the steam which has actuated the vast machinery of construction from the beginning, and will do so to the end. Don't explain it, my friend; just say it is stupendous, and pass on."

Page, as he silently obeyed, remembered Mildred Bryant's prophetic words in the Portland train:--

"It is very fortunate for the country that we have taken the Fair."

It began to look that way; still herculean tasks remained.

Jack had received an invitation to witness the parade from the loggia of the Mining building, and the cousins bent their steps thither, between the lines of waiting spectators. At present, the building was used as barracks for troops. The two glanced down the neat perspective of soldier beds, as they ran up the broad flight of steps leading to the gallery, then they came out upon the balcony that faces north, and looked with interest upon the scene. Flags in great numbers were flying from every roof. The waterways and Wooded Island lay before them in the October sunlight.

They were talking of the names of buildings, and discussing the fabulous measurements of the mountain called Manufactures and Liberal Arts, when a new party appeared from the gallery doorway. The new-comers advanced to an arch a couple of rods from where the young men were standing, and Jack, who was profoundly interested in his subject, merely received an impression of beauty and fashion as he glanced at them, and then, looking back, returned to his statistics.

"If they can only have good weather the coming winter," he went on, "the thing will be ready May 1st, in spite of the croakers."

Soft laughter and happy voices came from beyond the massive masonry, which half concealed their neighbors.

"Jack," said Page, in a low tone, "Mrs. Van Tassel and Miss Bryant are with that party."

"No! Why, I didn't see them."

"Yes. Mrs. Van Tassel has some kind of a gray and white dress on, and Miss Bryant"--

"I want to get out of here, then."

Page answered him sharply.

"Is it your intention to play the role of Indian toward those ladies the rest of your life?"