CHAPTER XXV

ACROSS THE YEARS

The Nicholets and the Endicotts had been sworn allies for generations. Their genealogical roots were entwined in early Massachusetts Bay history. Their forebears had perhaps helped each other burn witches and slaughter Indians in the ancient days. Basicly the families were even now as puritanical as the Sacred Codfish.

Yet under ordinary circumstances the Endicotts and the Nicholets, although living side by side, would seldom think of interfering in--or even discussing--each other's private affairs. New England people are that way--the better class. Without being invited to do so Miss Ida would not have concerned herself in the Endicotts' financial difficulties except in this extraordinary situation.

The shocking story that Lorna had brought home--this utterly preposterous accusation against Ralph--quite startled Miss Ida out of the rut of usage. Although she had been consulted in their trouble by no member of the Endicott family, she felt that she must offer sympathy and--if possible--assistance. Although she seldom troubled her mind about financial affairs--leaving those details to her brother--Miss Ida was really the head of the Nicholet family. The bulk of the family wealth was hers, as well as the homestead at Harbor Bar.

She was in a position therefore to aid Henry Endicott privately, were he in need--as she believed he was. The professor's awkwardness when he had called on her several evenings previous, when he had really come to offer his assistance to Lorna's father, had served to convince Miss Ida that the Endicotts were in need.

For years everybody who knew him had said that Professor Endicott was wasting his substance in experiments that would never amount to anything of a practical nature. Miss Ida herself believed that he had frittered away much time and money since resigning as a young man from the chair of experimental chemistry in a mid-New England college.

Just what had happened twenty and more years before this present date to drive the wedge between Miss Ida and Henry Endicott no member of either family knew. A match that at the time was considered eminently fitting had suddenly become impossible. That was all anybody--save the two most interested persons themselves--ever learned about it.

It was years later, when Ralph and Lorna were half grown, that Professor Endicott and Miss Ida Nicholet began to agree on one important subject. The two families should be united through Ralph and Lorna. The young people, they both said, were made for each other.

That this statement had likewise been made _en famille_ about themselves when they were young, Miss Ida and Henry Endicott perhaps had forgotten. At least--as has been shown--neither would admit to nephew and niece any good reason why the latter should not fulfill the arrangement.

On this particular morning Miss Ida was not thinking of her niece's opposition to being joined with Ralph Endicott in wedlock. She flung a shawl about her shoulders and wound a knitted scarf around her head to venture out into the gale. A less important errand than the one she had in view might have caused her to hesitate on the side porch. The gale off the water was all but breath-taking.

On a day like this Mrs. Lucy Markham would not leave her own apartment. The children would be in the playroom at the top of the house, as they could not race the beaches below the clay cliff. Professor Endicott?

Miss Ida saw Jerome coming from the direction of the stable and garage, the main part of which building was devoted to the experimental laboratory. So she did not go to the house, but halted the old serving man on the walk.

"Where is Professor Endicott, Jerome?"

"He's in his study--I mean the laboratory, Miss Nicholet. He's just had me in to shave him, Miss. Isn't this a dreadful morning?"

"I wish to see the professor at once, Jerome," said Miss Ida, and hurried on without rejoinder to his question, such was her agitation.

When she turned the knob of the door the wind drove both the door and herself inward with a crash.

"Hoity-toity! What's this?" ejaculated the professor.

He stood at the sink with a towel in both hands, wiping his face dry after applying the shaving embrocation. He stared at his visitor over this towel as though she were an apparition.

"Miss Ida? My goodness! Let me shut the door." He sprang to it and put a sturdy shoulder to the barrier, for he was no weakling. "Do sit down, Ida. You are all out of breath. What has happened?"

He aided her to the swivel chair which stood before the desk he sometimes used. At first glance Miss Ida's fingers itched to set it to rights. It was heaped with papers and books and retorts and glasses, as well as a multitude of riffraff.

Professor Endicott stood off from her and stared. He was without coat or vest. There was a much warmer expression in his eyes now that they were not veiled by the shell-rimmed spectacles he usually wore.

"What has happened, Ida?" he asked again.

"It is about Ralph," she told him, having recovered her breath if not her tranquillity.

"Oh? Yes. Ralph," he murmured.

He looked puzzled, but he searched and found among the papers on the desk an unfolded letter ("How could he place it in that mess?" was Miss Ida's thought) and looked at it attentively.

"I found this tucked under the door after Ralph had gone away, it seems. To tell the truth, Ida, I have been too deeply engaged recently to attend to any exterior matters. Let us see, when was it I saw you last? Has John returned from Boston?"

"No, John has not returned," she said coldly. "I know you have shut yourself up here. I do not see how you dare make a recluse of yourself. How do you know what is happening to your family?"

"Oh! I---- There is Cousin Luce, you know."

"Yes. I know and you know just how much of a housekeeper and manager she is!" ejaculated Miss Ida. "It cannot truthfully be said that Lucy Markham neglects your brother's family--and you. For she never in this world paid any attention to such a duty. How you expect the younger children will grow up----"

"Oh, now, Ida. They seem to get along very well," he demurred. "Healthy and happy and all that. And Ralph---- By the way, this letter now---- I have neglected something which he reminds me of in this. But, believe me, these final experiments have been most enthralling.

"You must know, my dear Ida, that I have been associating myself with certain government chemists. They come to me when they can get no further in their experiments. We have finally completed a chemical formula that will revolutionize the expansion of balloons--if you know what I mean? It is a lighter and positively un-inflammable gas.

"My royalties will be rather large. Not that I have aided our government solely for a monetary consideration," he added parenthetically. "But our income will be quite doubled by these royalties I have agreed to accept."

"What?" gasped Miss Ida, so astounded that she was more than abrupt. "You say--you make _money_--from these--these----?"

She stared around at the littered place. Mentally, on entering, she had called it a pig-sty!

"Oh, yes. I have made quite a lot of money in the past. Much more than I ever could have obtained from a salaried position. But nothing like these royalties from this last invention. Of course, it is commercial, in a way, and the Endicotts have never been commercially inclined. But, then----"

"Henry Endicott!" she breathed, "then you are not in--in financial difficulties?"

"Financial difficulties? Not at all! Not at all! Far from it, I may confidently say. Indeed, my dear Ida," and he flushed painfully, "I am so situated that if you--if John---- That is, if you would allow me, as an old and tried friend----"

"Well?" demanded Miss Ida, sitting very straight in the chair and looking at him most uncompromisingly it seemed.

"Why, I---- You see, my nephew says here," the professor hastily went on, referring to the paper in his hand. "Ahem! Let me see. Yes. 'I am going on a voyage with Captain Bob Pritchett on the _Nelly G_. No! That is not the place. Oh, here: 'Look out for Lorna, Uncle Henry. See her father just as soon as he gets home. If they need help you know whatever I have they are welcome to.'"

Miss Ida rose to her feet in a flame of indignation.

"What under the sun does the boy mean?" she asked haughtily. "Such impudence! Does that mean, Henry, that Ralph has defaulted in the understood arrangement that he and Lorna were to marry? I thought that it was entirely my niece's fault that her engagement to Ralph was not yet announced."

"Does that sound cold, Ida?" rejoined the professor earnestly. "The boy offers all he possesses to help Lorna--and you--in your trouble."

"Our trouble! What trouble? I do not know what you mean."

The professor broke through his restraint at last. Ralph's letter fluttered to the floor. He seized Miss Ida's hands.

"There, there!" he said. "We know all about it, Ida. Nobody can feel more sympathy for you than Ralph and I. I hoped to see John Nicholet and talk it over with him. It would have been easier--for both you and me.

"This is something that you cannot bear alone, Ida. Let me help. God knows I, like my nephew, and for a greater reason, would gladly give you every cent of my personal fortune----"

"Henry Endicott!" she finally gasped vehemently. "Do you think we need financial assistance?"

But she did not withdraw her hands from his grasp. She looked into his face (she was almost as tall as he was) with a strangely tender expression flooding her own countenance.

"So the story goes, Ida," he said gently. "Hasn't John met with some heavy losses? Or don't you know about it?"

"Nothing of the kind!" she cried. "It is ridiculous. And you---- Why! we were told---- Where could Lorna have heard it? We believed you had lost the greater part of your property. I came over here this morning to offer assistance. I was afraid you had shut yourself up here in this awful place, worrying over your losses. Oh, Henry!"

Suddenly he smiled. Like Ralph's, the professor's smile was a most winning one. But it was not wholly the warmth of that smile that drew the woman closer to him.

"Ida," he said, in some wonderment, "would you have done that for me?"

"We--we have been friends so many years, Henry."

The flush in her cheek was like a girl's, but she did not drop her gaze. She met his look squarely.

"So many wasted years, Ida," the man repeated softly.

"You don't seem to have wasted them after all, Henry," she breathed. "I only _thought_ you were a waster. You know I always did despise any person who, in this busy and needy world, was non-productive."

Professor Endicott glanced about the laboratory. He shrugged his shoulders.

"All this is vanity, Ida," he said. "Financial gain is a very small part of life. We have existed, you and I, that is all--merely vegetated. What we should have had--what was meant for us--has been lost. We are bankrupt, Ida."

"No, no!"

His grasp of her hands relaxed. Her left hand stole up, up--across his shoulder and around his neck. She pressed against him and at last her gaze fell.

"No, no!" she whispered. "Not bankrupt, Henry. It is not too late----"

A little later Miss Ida raised her head from the professor's shoulder. Her eyes were tear-drenched, but her smile was warm.

"Henry," she said, "I had forgotten. Do you know that they accuse Ralph of helping to rob the Clinkerport Bank?"