Part 3

“Say!” called Mr. Hewett; “hold on a minute!” Then, as Barbara paused, “This ’ere account’s been standin’ since long before your pa died. I’ve been pretty easy on you to date, but I guess I’ll have to attach somethin’ before Jarvis gits his hold onto things. You’ve got some stock, I b’lieve, an’——”

But Barbara was already out of hearing, hurrying as if pursued. Two or three women, looking over dress goods at the counter, turned to look after the slim figure in its black dress.

“She don’t ’pear to see common folks any better’n her father did,” said one, with a spiteful laugh.

“Well, I don’t see’s she’s got much to be stuck up about,” put in another. “What with her father drinkin’ himself to death, an’——”

“Was that what ailed him?” inquired a newcomer in the neighborhood. “I remember he was buried a year ago last winter, just after we moved here. But I never heard he was a drinking man.”

“None of us suspicioned it for quite a spell,” explained the first speaker volubly. “Donald Preston was too awful stylish and uppity to go to the tavern an’ get drunk like common folks; he used to sen’ for his liquor f’om out of town. The best of brandy, so they say; then he’d drink, an’ drink till he was dead to the world, shut up in his room. He kind of lost his mind ’long toward the last, they say. He lived more’n two years that way ’fore he finally died.”

“She didn’t take care of him like that, did she?”

“Yes, she did. Her an’ the hired man; an’ I guess they had their hands full part the time. He used to cry an’ holler nights like a baby towards the last. Me an’ Mr. Robinson heard him once when we was comin’ home f’om a revival meetin’ over to the Corners. Seth, he was for stoppin’ an’ seein’ if there was anythin’ we could do, but I says, ‘No, I don’t want to mix up in it,’ I says. Afterwards I was kind of sorry; I’d like to have seen the upstairs rooms in that house.”

The subject of these manifold revelations and censures was walking rapidly down the village street, her mind a maze of unhappy reflections. She stopped short at the end of the sidewalk, as Jimmy had done the day before.

“I don’t suppose there’s any use,” she thought, her eyes fixed on the imposing front which the Jarvis residence presented to the public gaze. “But I’ll try, anyway. If he’d give me a year—or even six months longer, I’m sure I could get the interest paid up.”

Without waiting for her elusive courage to vanish into thin air the girl pushed open the front gate, which clanged decisively shut behind her. The harsh metallic sound appeared to pursue her relentlessly up the long gravelled walk, past the stiff figures of the cast-iron deer, past the blossoming shrubs and the glittering blue glass globes—quite up to the pillared entrance. A sour-faced woman opened the door.

Mr. Jarvis was at home, she informed Barbara. “But he’s busy,” she added importantly. “The’ can’t nobody see him this mornin’, an’ he’s goin’ away to-morrow.”

“Then I must see him,” Barbara said firmly. “Tell Mr. Jarvis that Miss Preston would like to see him—on—on business.”

Stephen Jarvis had spent several hours shut up in his library that morning, during which period he had opened and examined his mail, read the morning papers, published in a neighboring city, and the county papers, one of which he owned, and whose editorial utterances he controlled.

The morning sun, streaming cheerfully through the clear windows, lay across his paper-strewn desk, bringing into prominence its handsome fittings and the large sinewy hand which reached purposefully for a pen. As he sat there in the revealing light Stephen Jarvis appeared very nearly what he had made of himself in the course of some thirty laborious years. Nature had provided him with a big-boned, powerful body, topped by a head in no wise remarkable for its beauty, yet significant as the compact rounded end of a steel projectile; eyes of no particular color, deep-set beneath penthouse brows; a nose, high in its bony structure, curving at the tip, with a suggestion of scorn; a jaw, heavy but clear-cut, well furnished with strong, even teeth. Jarvis was born a farmer’s son, poor with the poverty of sparse acres, sparsely cultivated through successive generations of uncalculating, simple-hearted men, content to live and die as had their forbears. It was far otherwise with Stephen Jarvis. His initial conclusion, derived from keen-eyed observation and comparison, resulted in an active hatred of the grinding poverty his fathers had accepted with settled stoicism as the common lot. He would not, he resolved, remain poor. He would in some way—in any way—acquire houses, lands, money. This single idea, planted, rooted, and grown mighty, brought forth fruit after its kind. In ten years’ time he had climbed out of the walled pit where he had found himself; in the decade which followed, having learned, experimentally, of the compelling power of the fixed idea doggedly adhered to, he had gone on, adding more houses, more lands, more money to what he already possessed; and this process having by now become somewhat monotonously easy, he had reached for and seized political power of the sort most easily grasped by the large hand of wealth. He still continued almost mechanically to loan money at a high rate of interest, to execute and foreclose mortgages, but there was no longer zest or excitement in the game. And there intervened disquieting moments like the present when he perceived that, after all, he was not successful, as the world counted success; nor rich, as the world counted wealth; moments when he realized his loneliness and the coldness of his hearth-stone, where neither friends nor children gathered.

His wife, dead more than two years, had been a dull, emotionless woman, with a flat, pale, expressionless face and a high-shouldered, angular figure. Jarvis had married her without pretence of passion because she had money, and in his poverty-pinched youth he had thought of little else. He had never been unkind to the woman who bore his name. He had, in fact, paid very little attention to her, and she had trodden the dull round of her existence unprotestingly and died as unobtrusively as she had lived. A portrait of the late Mrs. Jarvis in the cold medium of black and white crayons, hung above the mantel. The man’s eyes rested upon it mechanically as he lifted them from the dull report of a dully rancorous speech delivered on a late public occasion by his political opponent in the county. The portrait failed to arouse memories either sweet or bitter; but Jarvis observed that his housekeeper in her annual spring cleaning had taken the pains to protect the picture in its showy, expensive frame. He frowned as he noticed the barred pink netting from behind which his wife’s plain features looked forth with a suggestion of pained protest. The effect was distinctly unpleasing. He caught himself wondering irritably why the picture should confront him thus; portraits were foolish, unmeaning things, anyway; shrouded with pink tarlatan they became impossible. His gaze still lingered frowningly upon the picture when there came a dubious tap upon the panels of the door.

“What d’you want?” demanded Jarvis sharply, as he recognized the intruder. “I thought I told you not to disturb me this morning.”

“Well, I told her so; but she wouldn’t go away,” the woman apologized. “I guess ’f I let her stan’ there till she’s good an’ tired o’ waitin’, she’ll——”

“Kindly acquaint me with the name of the person who wishes to see me, Mrs. Dumser,” he interrupted, with a quick, choleric lift of the hand.

“It’s that Preston girl,” the woman said sullenly. “I told her you was busy and——”

“Show her in at once,” her employer ordered briefly. On the whole he welcomed the interruption. There was a certain excitement akin to that experienced by the sportsman when he subdues some struggling wild creature to his will. It was a species of weak folly, he told himself, to entertain anything like compassion for borrowers of money who could not pay. And Stephen Jarvis was not a weak man. He was, moreover, thoroughly familiar with all the various excuses, subterfuges and pitiful expedients of such luckless individuals, as well as complete master of the final processes by which he was wont to detach them from their forfeited possessions. His mouth, long, straight, expressionless, and shaded by a closely clipped mustache, tightened as Barbara Preston entered.

He glanced at her sharply as the girl sank into a chair opposite the desk without waiting to be asked.

The light from the long French windows fell full upon the slender young figure in its plain black gown, and her face, seen against the sombre background afforded by rows of leather-bound law-books, appeared vividly alive, defiantly youthful, like a spray of peach blossoms against a leaden sky.

“You wished to see me, I believe,” said Jarvis, perceiving that the girl was struggling with involuntary fear of him, a fear heightened by her surroundings. “What can I do for you?”

She met his gaze unflinchingly.

“I have come,” she said, “to see if you will give me a little more time. It is going to be a good apple year, and—and I’ll work—hard to save the farm.”

Her eyes darkened and widened; a quick color sprang to lips and cheeks, as when a flag is suddenly unfurled to the wind.

“If you’ll only give me a chance!” she cried.

“What sort of a chance are you looking for?” he wanted to know.

Barbara’s eyes fell before his steady gaze.

“I—want——” she began, and stopped, obviously searching for forgotten words and phrases.

He waited imperturbably for her to go on.

“I want you to let me stay—in my home.”

He lifted his eyebrows.

“I thought we discussed that matter pretty thoroughly yesterday afternoon,” he said. “I can think of nothing more to say on the subject.”

“But,” she persisted, “I don’t intend to give it up. I—can’t.”

He was silent. But his look angered her unreasonably.

“You don’t want the farm!” she burst out, with sudden hot indignation. “You’ve got most of the farms about here now, and you’ll have the others in time, I suppose.”

“You appear to know a good deal about my business,” he said ironically. “But you’re right. I don’t want the Preston farm. I don’t want any of ’em. Why should I? Most of them are like yours, worn out, worthless. But the owners want my money—your father did. And I let him have what he asked for. I might have refused. But I let him have a thousand dollars, and he took it, did as he liked with it—drank it up, for all I know. And now you come here begging——”

The girl sprang to her feet; her gray eyes blazed angrily upon him.

“I’m not begging!” she cried. “All I want is the chance to pay you—every cent, and I could do it—I will do it.”

“Perhaps you will tell me how you are going about it,” he said coldly.

She sank back into her chair.

“Yes!” she said slowly. “I am—begging. I am begging for time. Give me another year—give me this summer, and let me—try!”

He was studying the girl’s passionate face with a curious interest. A singular idea had presented itself to him, and he was considering it half mockingly. Nevertheless it lent a human sound to his voice as he answered her.

“See here, Miss Preston,” he said. “I admire your pluck and energy. But let me tell you that you don’t want to hold on to that farm. The orchards are too old to be productive; the land needs fertilizers, rotation, all sorts of things that require brains and money. That old fool, Morrison, hasn’t managed the place properly, and can’t. It’s a losing fight, and you’d better give it up—peaceably.”

“But I want it,” she urged, “for Jimmy. I want to hold the place for him. He’ll soon grow up now, and—he’s the last of the Prestons.”

She stopped short and sprang to her feet, with a little gasp of angry protest.

“You are laughing at me!” she cried indignantly. “You have no right——”

She was mistaken; Stephen Jarvis seldom indulged in laughter; but his hard-set mouth had relaxed somewhat under his clipped mustache. His greenish brown eyes shone with an unaccustomed light. He was thinking his own thoughts, and for once, at least, he found a singular pleasure in them.

“Don’t get excited,” he advised her coolly. “Sit down and we’ll talk this over. You want to keep the farm for that half-brother of yours, you say. Well, I’m disposed to give it to you to do as you like with, if you——”

She gazed at him almost incredulously.

“You’ll give me time to try?” she asked breathlessly. “Oh, thank you!”

He answered her impetuous question with another. “Did you notice the person who showed you in? Yes; I see you did, particularly. Well, she’s my housekeeper. She’s been here since my—since I buried the late Mrs. Jarvis. But I—well; I’m tired of seeing the woman about. I shall need somebody to take her place, and—Stop! I want you to hear me out.”

The girl had not resumed her seat at Jarvis’s bidding. She retreated swiftly toward the door. The man’s imperious voice followed her.

“Come back! I’m not done with what I had to say!”

But Barbara had already closed the door definitely behind her. The woman in black silk stood just outside. She had, in fact, been listening.

“Well!” she breathed explosively, staring at Barbara. Then she rustled toward the front door, her ample draperies filling the narrow twilight passage with a harsh, swishing sound.

“You better not show your face here again!” she said in a low, fierce voice, as she held the door wide for Barbara to pass out.

IV

JIMMY PRESTON sat curled up on one foot by the table in Peg Morrison’s loft. His yellow hair was damp and towsled, for he had run bare-headed through the rain, bearing his precious book of “Vallable Information” tucked under his blouse.

“I didn’t bring my red ink,” he explained breathlessly to Peg, “‘cause I was ’fraid I’d spill it. I fought I could borrow some of yours.”

“You can, an’ welcome, son,” agreed Peg, “but remember that’ll give me an option on yours. Them that borrows ought to be willin’ to lend. They ain’t though, as a gen’ral thing. Borrowers is spenders, and lenders is savers, as a rule.”

“I’ll lend you my whole bottle of red ink an’ I’ll lend you my pen, too,” said Jimmy magnificently.

The little boy spread his book open on the table for Mr. Morrison’s inspection. “You see I’ve begun it already,” he said with pride.

“Le’ me see; what you got here?” and Peg traced the first wavering line with a horny forefinger.

“That’s how not to lose a letter,” said Jimmy proudly. “Barb’ra says sometimes letters are ’portant, an’ you don’t want to lose ’em.”

“‘Lev letters in the posoffis. They wil be saf ther,’” read Peg slowly. He paused and screwed his mouth in a noiseless whistle.

“Don’t you think that’s a vallable inf’mation?” demanded Jimmy anxiously. “If I hadn’t taken that letter and put it in my pocket, I shouldn’t have lost it. Barb’ra could have got it herself, and maybe it was ’portant. You can’t tell ’thout you read a letter whether it’s ’portant or not; an’ you can’t read a letter when it’s lost.”

“So you lost a letter ’dressed to Barb’ry, did you? H’m! Where’d you lose it?”

“If I knew, I’d go an’ find it,” said Jimmy soberly. “I put it in my pocket, an’ it was blue, an’ it was f’om out west. Barb’ra doesn’t know who it was f’om. But she’d like to know.”

“H’m!” repeated Peg. “You’d ought to carried it all the way right in your han’, where you c’d see it. Pockets are kind o’ dangerous when it comes to letters. I know a whole row o’ little boys ’at ain’t alive at all, ’count o’ a letter bein’ lost. They never was born,” he added by way of explanation.

Jimmy drew a deep sigh of sustained interest.

“You see it was this way,” continued Peg circumstantially. “The’ was a young feller ’at I used to know, an’ he was workin’ in a lumber-camp one winter where the’ wasn’t any pos’offis; one o’ the men used to carry the letters in an’ out, a matter o’ fifteen miles. One time he lost a letter this young feller wrote to his girl, an’ didn’t think to say nothin’ ’bout it; an’ she got all worked up ’cause she didn’t hear f’om him, an’ after a spell she up an’ married another man; an’ so the young man I was speakin’ of never got married, an’ never had any little boys o’ his own. He felt awful bad ’bout it fer a long time, but he ain’t never los’ a letter ’at b’longed to anybody else.”

The pattering sound of the rain on the barn roof increased to a steady roar as Peg related this short but instructive tale.

“I sh’d think those little boys would feel bad,” said Jimmy sympathetically. “I’d hate not to be alive.”

“Mebbe they do; an’ ag’in, mebbe they don’t,” observed Peg cautiously. “Anyhow, some of ’em would be growed up by this time; farmin’ it, mebbe, or keepin’ store.” His eyes wore a far-away look.

Jimmy dipped Peg’s pen in the red ink bottle.

“How do you spell not, Peg?” he inquired.

“K-n-o-t,” replied the old man, with a sigh.

Jimmy was silent for a long minute, his pen travelling slowly along the blue line and leaving a trail of wabbly red letters behind.

“‘Hough knot to los a letter,’” he read aloud, with honest pride in his achievement. “What’ll I say next, Peg?”

“Keep yer mind an’ yer eyes onto it till you get it t’ the person it’s meant for,” the old man said, with some sternness. “You’ve got to do that with ev’rythin’ you do,” he went on. “You can’t go moseyin’ ’long thinkin’ ’bout ev’rythin’ under the sun ’cept what you’re doin’. If you’re ploughin’, plough, an’ put all the grit an’ gumption you’ve got onto ploughin’. Most folks ain’t so smart ’at they c’n afford to run a d’partment store in their minds. Hold on! Don’t try to write all that. Jus’ say, pay attention to that letter. You know, Cap’n,” he went on impressively, “you come of awful fine stock. The Prestons was always smart; your great-gran’father, he was smarter ’an all possess, an’ your gran’father, he was jes’ the same.”

“An’ my father was, too,” interrupted Jimmy, eying the old man with a pucker between his brown eyes. “Wasn’t he smarter’n all possess, Peg?”

“‘Course he was, Cap’n,” agreed the old man hastily. “Up to the time he was took sick, he was A number one. An’ Barb’ry—I mean Miss Barb’ry, she’s awful smart an’ ambitious, too, fer a female. Oh, you’ll get along in the world, Cap’n, ’course you’ll get along! But losin’ letters is like losin’ other things, such as money an’—an’ health, an’ reputation an’—farms. It all comes o’ lettin’ yer mind kind o’ wander. You won’t do that, will you, Cap’n?”

The man’s voice trembled; he seemed anxiously intent on the little boy’s answer.

“I won’t, if I can help it, Peg,” Jimmy answered honestly. “But,” he added candidly, “I like to think ’bout things in school—all kind o’ things. When I look out the windows an’ see the trees wavin’ an’ hear the birds I like t’ p’tend I’m outdoors playin’.”

“Don’t you do it, Cap’n,” Peg spoke almost solemnly. “You keep a stiddy holt on them thoughts o’ yourn’ an’ nail ’em down to readin’, writin’, an’ ’rithmetic. If you ketch ’em a-wanderin’ out the window, you fetch ’em back an’ make ’em work. You c’n do it, every trip.”

“But if I don’t want to——”

“There you got it! Struck the nail square on the head, Cap’n. You’ve got to make yourself want to. You ain’t too young to learn, neither. Gracious! I wisht somebody’d told me what I’m tellin’ you, when I was ’bout your age. I’ve kind o’ reasoned it out, watchin’ folks an’ their doin’s, an’ noticin’ how I try an’ squirm out o’ doin’ things. The’s two folks in ev’rybody, Cap’n; a lazy, good-fer-nothin’ sort o’ a chap, that won’t do nothin’ in school, nor anywheres else if he c’n help it, an’ there’s a smart, good, up-an’-a-goin’ feller ’at’s anxious to git along in the world. I know ’em both inside o’ me. An’ ol’ lazybones come nigh onto ruinin’ me when I was a boy. Lord! I jes’ wouldn’ work! Ust t’ lie half th’ day in the sun an’ think o’ nothin’, when I’d ought t’ been hoein’ corn. Then I’d come in an’—say I had the backache, or th’ headache or—mos’ anythin’ I could think of. Ol’ lazybones is an awful liar, Cap’n. You don’t want t’ listen to anythin’ he says. You want to shet him up an’ keep him shet. He’ll lead a man t’ drink an’ to steal other folks’ time an’ money; he’s meaner’n pusley an’ slyer’n—well, he’s s’ durned sly, Cap’n, that you gotta be on his track all the endurin’ while.”

“Do you think I’ve got two folks in me, Peg?” asked Jimmy, laying his hand over the pit of his stomach with a worried look.

“I’m reelly ’fraid ye have, Cap’n,” said Peg firmly. “I never see anybody ’at hadn’t. But ef you git th’ upper han’ o’ ol’ lazybones now’t you’re small, you won’t have much trouble with him.”

“I’m not small, Peg,” Jimmy corrected him. “You said I was large an’—an’ hefty fer my age.”

“Sure you be, Cap’n, but you ain’t reelly a man growed. That’s what I mean, an’ I want you should grow up into an A number one man, full o’ grit an’ gumption. An’ you can’t do it unless you start right. You see, Cap’n, I’m gittin’ ’long in life an’ I’ve figgered it out ’at ’bout six folks out o’ every ten kind o’ see-saws back an’ forth betwixt bein’ lazy an’ lyin’ an’ no ’count, an’ bein’ industrious an’ truthful. Folks like that gits ’long so-so; they don’t hev no partickler good luck—ol’ lazybones keeps ’em f’om that; but they don’t git nowheres neither, ’cause they don’t stick to biz. Then the’s ’bout three out o’ ev’y ten thet gives right up to ol’ lazybones f’om the start; an’ he runs ’em right into th’ ground ’s fas’ ’s possible. The tenth man, he stomps on ol’ lazybones ev’ry time he opens his head t’ speak, an’ bimeby he gits on the right track s’ stiddy an’ constant ’at nobody c’n stop ’im. An’ he’s the one thet gits thar! I want you should be that kind o’ a man, Cap’n. An’ that’s one reason I give you that book o’ Vallable Info’mation. It’ll help you to kind o’ think over differ’nt things that happens. Now I’ll bet you won’t lose another letter in a hurry.”

“No, I won’t,” Jimmy said earnestly. “An’ I’m goin’ to try an’ stomp on ol’ lazybones.”

“That’s right, Cap’n,” cried Peg. “You jes’ stomp on him hard an’ proper. You git th’ upper han’ o’ him b’fore he grows too big and hefty, an’ bimeby he won’t bother you.”

“Peg,” said Jimmy, after a period devoted to reflection, “the Hon’rable Stephen Jarvis is in our house.”

“Dear me! You don’t say so!” ejaculated Peg, with a frightened start.

“He makes Barb’ra cry,” said Jimmy, scowling fiercely. “I wanted to stay an’ keep him f’om doin’ it; but Barb’ra said for me to come out here and see you. I’d like to stomp on him—hard!”

The subject of these dubious comments and conjectures, more ill at ease than his worst enemy had ever hoped to see him, sat in the dull light of the rainy afternoon, looking at Barbara Preston with new eyes: to wit, the eyes of a man.

“I suppose,” the girl said steadily, “you have come to tell me that you will foreclose the mortgage.” She gripped her hands close in her lap.

“No,” said Stephen Jarvis, “that was not my intention. As I have already informed you, the mortgage will foreclose itself, when the time comes.”

He stopped short and narrowed his lids frowningly.

“I have been thinking about you,” he said harshly, “since you left me so abruptly yesterday. Why did you do it? And yet, I am glad, on the whole, that you did. I want to tell you that I stood in my library door and witnessed my housekeeper’s dismissal of you from my house. Her own followed without delay.”

“I am sorry,” Barbara told him mechanically. She was noticing dazedly that Jarvis was dressed as she had occasionally seen him in church, and that his gloves and linen were quite fresh and immaculate.

“Why should you be sorry?” he demanded with a straight look at her.

“I—why, I think I should be sorry for any woman who had lost what she wanted to keep,” Barbara answered. “If you discharged her because I——”