Chapter 5

"Never laid his eyes on him," the woman went on sadly, "as if it was any good, to blame the poor baby! He's taken a terrible grudge on the little thing. He was awfully fond of his wife, though. He told me he was going to leave him right here, and then, of course, somebody in the house would notify the police, if I didn't take him to the Foundling. And of course he'd get better care, for that matter--there's no doubt about that. It's too bad. There's people that would give their eyes for a fine baby like that, you know."

"I know it," said Caroline simply, "my cousin Richard would be glad to have him--he wants one very much. But he's very particular."

The woman looked at her sharply. "What do you mean?" she asked. "How particular?"

Suddenly she laughed nervously. "I ought to be ashamed of myself," she said, "you ought to be at the police station now. But I'm all worn out, and it does me good to talk to anybody. I don't let the neighbors in much--it's a cheap set of people around here, and Mr. Williston's different from them and I hate to hear him talking to them the way he will. He don't know what he's doing. He tells 'em all about that prize--and it's true, you know, he did get it; that's what they married on, and he thought he could get plenty more that way, and then he never sold another story. It was too bad. He's a real gentleman, though you might not think it to look at him now, not shaved, and all. He thought he could earn a thousand every week, I s'pose, poor fellow. He got work in a department store, fin'ly, and it took all he made to bury her. She was a sweet little thing, but soft. I was real sorry for 'em."

She wiped her eyes hastily.

"Do you know whether he went to Harvard?" Caroline inquired, in a business-like tone.

The woman was heating some milk in a bottle, over a lamp, and did not answer her, but a voice from the door brought her sharply around. The young man stood there. Though still unshaven, he was otherwise quite changed. His hair was parted neatly, his coat brushed, his face no longer flushed, but pale and composed.

"If your extraordinary question refers to me, yes, I went to Harvard," he said in a grating, disagreeable voice. "I have in fact been called a 'typical Harvard man.' But that was some time ago. May I ask who you are?"

The woman lifted the bottle from the tin cup that held it and picked up the baby; the young man shifted his eyes from her immediately and looked persistently over Caroline's head.

"Her family's coachman's name is Hunt," said the woman, "and she thought he lived here, she says. He'd no business to go off and leave her alone. Her family'd be worried to death. When I go out with the baby I'll take her. I suppose you haven't changed your mind about the baby, Mr. Williston?--now you're feeling more like yourself," she added.

"I cannot discuss that subject, Mrs. Ufford," the young man answered, in his rasping, unnatural voice. "When you have disposed of the matter along the lines you yourself suggested, I am at your service till you take the train. After that--after that"--his lips tightened in a disagreeable smile--"I may be able to get to work--and win another prize!"

"There, there!" she cautioned him, "don't talk about that, Mr. Williston, don't, now! Why don't you go out with the little girl and see if you can find her automobile? That'll be less for me to do. Why don't you?"

He turned, muttering something about his hat, but Caroline tugged at his coat.

"Wait, wait!" she urged him, "I want you to tell her to let me take the baby! If you went to Harvard, that's all Cousin Richard said, except about a gentleman"--she paused and scrutinized him a moment. "You _are_ a gentleman, aren't you?" she asked.

He looked at her. "My father was," he answered briefly. "In my own case, I have grave doubts. What do you think?" he asked the woman, looking no lower than her eyes.

She fed the baby deftly. "Oh, Mr. Williston, don't talk so--of course you're a gentleman!" she cried, "you couldn't help about the money. You did your best."

His mouth twisted pitifully.

"That'll do," he said, "what does this child mean? Who is your cousin? Where does he live?"

"He lives on Madison Avenue," Caroline began eagerly, "but I mustn't tell you his last name, you know, because he doesn't want you to know. That's just it. But he'd love the baby. I could take it right back in the automobile."

The man felt in under his coat and detached from his waistcoat a small gold pin. He tore a strip of wrapping paper from the open box near him and wrote rapidly on it.

"There," he said, fastening the pin into the folded paper, "I'm glad I never pawned it. If your cousin is a Harvard man, the pin will be enough, but he can look me up from this paper--all he wants. They're all dead but me, though. Here, wait a moment!"

He went back into the sitting room and fumbled in a heap of waste paper on the floor, picked out of it a stiff sheet torn once through, and attached it with the gold pin to the bit of writing.

"That's her marriage certificate," he said to the woman. She stared at him.

"Mr. Williston, do you believe that child?" she burst out, loosening her hold on the bottle in her hand. "Why, she may be making it all up! I--I--you must be crazy! You don't even know her name! I won't allow it--"

He broke into her excited remonstrance gravely.

"I don't believe a child could make up such details, in the first place, Mrs. Ufford," he said, "she is repeating something she's heard, I think. Did your cousin mention anything else?" he said abruptly to Caroline.

She smiled gratefully at him. "The mother must be a good woman," she quoted placidly.

Both of them started.

"Do you think a child would invent that?" he demanded. "Now, see here. You take Mrs. Ufford home with you in the automobile and she can see if there's anything in what you say, really. If there's not, she can go right on with the--with it, and do as--as we arranged before. It's all written on the paper, and my full consent to the adoption, and if there's anything legal to do about it, Mrs. Ufford can attend to it. But nobody'll trouble 'em--they can be sure of that. My people all died long ago and--and hers--hers...."

He stopped short. With eyes filled and lips vaguely moving he fell into a strange revery, a sort of tranced stupor. So intense were his absent thoughts that they impressed the woman and the child; they knew that he was back in the past and waited patiently while for a few kind moments he forgot. At length his eyes shifted and he took up his broken phrase, unconscious, evidently, of the pause. "--her's are back in New England. They never knew.... I had _some_ pride. They're the I-told-you-so sort, anyhow. And they told her, all right. Oh yes, they told her! Narrow-minded, God-fearing prigs!" He stared at Mrs. Ufford curiously. "But they paid their debts, all the same," he added with a harsh laugh, "and that's more than I've been able to do, I suppose you're thinking."

But almost before the dark red had flushed her tired, lined face, he leaned forward and touched her shoulder kindly.

"I didn't mean that," he apologized. "I'm half crazy, I think. You've been as good as gold, and even when I've paid you the money I owe you, I'll owe you more than I can ever pay. I know that. And you're New England, too."

His sudden softening encouraged the woman, and she looked appealingly up at him, while she patted the bundle on her lap.

"Folks have hearts in New England, Mr. Williston," she began, "and if you was to go to her folks or write to 'em, I guess you'd find--oh, couldn't you?"

His impatient hand checked her.

"He might grow up to be a real comfort to you," she murmured persistently, "and you could look out for him well enough, once you get started. Just see how smart you are, Mr. Williston--look at that prize you got; she was awful proud of it."

His face twisted painfully.

"I looked out for _her_ well, didn't I?" he said coldly, "I was a 'good provider,' as they say up there, wasn't I? Do you think--" his voice rang harshly and he struck the table by his side till it rattled on its unsteady legs--"do you think if I couldn't look out for her, I would look out for _that_? Get it ready."

The woman rose, her lips pressed together, and rolled the blankets tightly about the quiet child. With one gesture she put on a shabby hat and pinned it to her hair.

"I'll leave the bottle with you," she said to Caroline; "it'll help keep him quiet, when I'm gone. Come on."

The man turned away his head as they passed him. At the outer door she paused a moment, and her face softened.

"I know how you feel, Mr. Williston, and I don't judge you," she said gently, "for the Lord knows you've had more than your share of trouble. But won't you kiss it once before--before it's too late? It's your child, you know. Don't you feel--"

"I feel one thing," he cried out, and the bitterness of his voice frightened Caroline; "I feel that it murdered her! Take it away!"

They shrank through the door.

The woman sobbed once or twice on the stairs, but Caroline patted the flannel bundle excitedly.

They had rounded the corner in a moment, and the woman pointed ahead with her free hand.

"Is that the automobile?" she asked.

Caroline nodded. The brougham stood empty and alone where she had left it.

"They're not back yet!" she cried in disgust, "the idea!"

"Maybe they're looking for you," Mrs. Ufford said shortly.

"Aren't you glad we've got it?" Caroline inquired timidly. "I am, awfully. I didn't expect to get such a good one, so soon," she went on more easily, "but I don't like that man much. He's so cross."

"Child, child, you don't know what you're talkin' about!" the woman cried impatiently. "He's not cross--but his heart's just about broke. He thinks more money would've saved her. And I guess he's right about that. She was a soft little thing. But she stuck to him."

They walked a few steps in silence.

"I don't know as I was actin' right, either, to talk as I did," she continued abruptly. "I s'pose it is better as 'tis, 'specially if your folks will take the baby. They'll do a lot more for it than ever he could, prob'ly. I s'pose they're real rich--regular swells? I can see they've got a fine automobile."

"Oh, yes. Cousin Richard's very rich," Caroline answered, indifferently, "that's only the brougham--there are two more. I have more fun at Aunt Edith's, though."

"_'Twas_ queer about all those things your cousin wanted, wasn't it?" the woman said, musingly. "'Seemed like kind of a sign to him, I could see--going to Harvard College and all. I s'pose it was a sign--maybe."

She walked slowly, perhaps because of her burden.

"That's a fine college, I s'pose?" she said, inquiringly.

"It's good enough," Caroline allowed, "of course Yale's the best. We all go to Yale. Uncle Joe says there had to be something for Yale to beat, so they founded Harvard!"

"You don't say," Mrs. Ufford returned, "that's funny."

They were very near the brougham now. It stood as deserted as when Caroline had left it. The baby in the bundled blanket neither cried nor stirred.

"He's the best child," said the woman, with her tired, kindly smile. "He's next to nothing to tend to. If he'd felt to go back to her folks with it, I'd 'a' gone with him to look after it. I've got enough for that--the things sold real well, and he'd never let me lose, anyhow. He isn't that kind. I took a real likin' to both of 'em. I've kept boarders, all over, for fifteen years and I never lost a cent from anybody like him, not one. You get to know all sorts, keepin' boarders, and Mr. Williston's all right--though you mightn't think so," she ended loyally.

Caroline hardly listened. She saw herself in the bearskin reception room, up the stairs, in the library, her baby in her arms; she heard the incredulous joy of the Duchess, she explained importantly with convincing detail, to Cousin Richard the critical. To her eager soul this thin, friendly woman was merely an incident; that irritable, incoherent man less than a dream.

They paused on the curb, and she opened the brougham door hospitably.

"You get in first," she said, "and then I can hold him a little while, can't I?"

"I never was in one o' these," Mrs. Ufford answered doubtfully, "s'pose you go in first. It can't go--or back, or anything, can it?"

"No, no, of course not," said Caroline impatiently. "There's Hunt 'way up the street--he doesn't see us--how he's hurrying!"

The woman paused, her foot on the broad step.

"'Taint Hunt--it's Mr. Williston," she announced. "What's he want, I wonder? Look--he's wavin' at us! I guess he forgot some paper he wants you to take--he's bound to have it legal," she added with a sigh. "No, dear, let me be. I'll see what he wants before I get in."

The young man was running fast; his face was red, his eyes anxious.

"Have you got it? Is it here?" he cried, panting, and as she lifted the bundle high, his face cleared and Caroline saw that he was very handsome.

"Oh, Mrs. Ufford," he gasped, "read this! Just read it! I found it in my pocket-book--I thought you might be gone--she put it there for me--my poor little Lou! My God, what a brute--what a brute!"

The woman, one foot still on the step of the brougham, supported the child on her raised knee and held the paper in her free hand.

"_My dearest husband_," she read aloud, "_if I get well you will never see this, for I will take it out, but I don't believe I will take it out, for I don't believe I will get well. They say everybody thinks they will die, and of course a great many don't, but some do, and I think I will, I don't know why, but I am sure. But you will have the little girl. I am sure she will be a girl, and I hope she will look like me and be a comfort to you. You will take good care of her, I know. Think how nicely you took care of me and how hard you worked. You take her to my sister, and when she gets big enough, then you take her. She will not be a burden for you will earn lots of money when you can stop working in that horrid store on my account, and have time to do your writing. You must not get discouraged, for your writing is fine. Remember that prize you took. They will all be proud of you some day. You have been so good to me. Your loving wife, Lou._"

Her voice broke, and with no further word she held the child out to the young man. Without a word he took it and stared eagerly into its face, pushing the wrappings aside.

"He has her eyes," he murmured, "Lou's eyes!"

The baby felt the grip of a stronger arm, wrinkled its features and appeared to scan the dark, trembling face above it.

"He knows me! Mrs. Ufford, he knows me!" cried the man.

"Maybe so, maybe so," she said, soothingly. "You'll keep him, won't you, now?"

"Keep him? Keep him?" he repeated, "why he's all I've got of hers--all! He's Lou's and mine, together! He's--"

"Hush, hush!" she warned him, "here's a crowd already! We're right out in the street, Mr. Williston! Come back with me. Yes, keep him if you want to."

She turned to Caroline, neglected and wide-eyed, in the brougham.

"You see how it is, dear," she said hastily, "he wants it, after all. I can't help bein' glad. It ain't always that money does the most, you know. And he's the baby's father. Don't you mind, will you?"

Caroline gulped.

"I--I guess not," she answered bravely. "But I did want him!"

"I know. You meant all right," the woman assured her. "You're real--there's your coachman runnin'. He saw the crowd gatherin', prob'ly. Good-by, dear."

She slipped through the curious street children after the tall figure that hurried on with his bundle, a block ahead. Gleggson dashed up to the brougham.

"W'ere was you, Miss, for goodness' sake?" he gasped out, "h'I've been h'all over after yer! Don't, don't tell Hunt on me, will you, Miss? He'd fair kill the life out o' me! He's comin' now. 'e 'ad to go, Miss, fer his little boy was took sick last night and callin' for 'im. So 'e made up the errant. But it'll cost us both our place, y' know, Miss!"

The man's voice shook. Hunt was very near them now, walking hard.

"I'd no business to leave, I know--_will_ you h'overlook it for once, Miss, and keep mum?" the man pleaded.

"All right, Gleggson--all right," she said wearily, "I won't tell."

Confused, disappointed, and yet with a curious sense of joy in the joy of the two even now rounding the corner, she leaned back in the brougham.

"I'm afraid he'll go to Harvard, anyway," she sighed.

IV

WHERE THIEVES BREAK IN.

One glance at Caroline's shoulders, hunched with caution, the merest profile, indeed, of her tense and noiseless advance up the narrow gravel path, would have convinced the most casual observer that she was bent upon arson, at the least. At the occasional crunch of the gravel she scowled; the well meant effort of a speckled gray hen, escaped from some distant part of the grounds, to bear her company, produced a succession of pantomimic dismissals that alarmed the hen to the point of frenzy, so that her clacks and cackles resounded far beyond the trim hedge that separated the drying-ground from the little kitchen garden.

Caroline scowled, turned to shake her fist at the hen, now lumbering awkwardly through the hedge, and sat down heavily on a little bed of parsley.

"Nasty old thing!" she gulped, "_anybody_ could've heard me! And I was creeping up so still...."

She peered out from behind a dwarf evergreen and made a careful survey of the situation. The big square house stood placid and empty in the afternoon sun; not a cat on the kitchen porch, not a curtain fluttering from an open window. All was neat, quiet and deserted. Caroline set her lips with decision.

"We'll pretend there wasn't any hen," she said, in a low voice, "and go on from here, just the same."

Rising with great caution she picked her way, crouching and dodging, from bush to bush; occasionally she took a lightning peep at the silent house, then dipped again and continued her stalking. Following the evergreen hedge around a final corner, she emerged stealthily in the lee of the latticed kitchen porch and drew a breath of relief.

"All right so far," she muttered; "I wonder if that old gray cat with the new kittens is fussing around here?"

But no breath of life stirred under the porch as she stooped to peer through a break in the lattice, and with a final survey of the premises, inserted her plump person into the gap and wriggled, panting, into the darkness below.

It was stuffy and dusty there; the light filtered dimly through the diamond spaces, and the adventurer, crawling on hands and knees, bumped into a shadowy pile of flower-pots, sneezed violently and grovelled wrathfully among the ruins for at least five minutes, helplessly confused. Quite by accident she knocked her cobwebbed head against a narrow, outward swinging window, seized it thankfully, and plunged through it. Hanging a moment by her grimy hands she swayed, a little fearfully, then dropped with a quick breath to the concrete floor beneath, and smiled with relief as the comparative brightness of a well kept cellar revealed her safety. Vegetable bins, a neat pile of kindling wood, a large portable closet of wire netting, with occasional plates and covered dishes suggestively laid away in it, met her eye; on the floor in front of this last rested a little heap of something wet and glistening. Untidy as it looked, it had an eatable appearance to Caroline, whose instinct in these matters was unimpeachable, and bending over it she inserted one finger.

"Current jelly!" she whispered, thoughtfully licking the inquiring member. "The idea!"

She approached the wire closet and peered along the shelves; there was no jelly there.

"'Dropped it getting it out," she pursued, "I wonder why Selma didn't wipe it up."

Suddenly her face brightened.

"We'll keep right on and pretend _'twas_ burglars," she announced to the quiet cellar, "and they stole the jelly in a hurry and dropped this and never noticed, and went upstairs to eat it and get the silver! And so I found 'em, after all!"

Still on tiptoe, she left the cellar, stole through the laundry, and crept mysteriously up the back stairs. So absorbed she was that a cracking board stopped her heart for a breath, and a slip on the landing sent her to her knees in terror. The empty quiet seemed to hum around her; strange snappings of the old woodwork dried her throat. With her hand on the swing door that led into the dining-room, she paused in a delicious ecstasy of terror, as the imagined clink of glass and silver, the normal clatter of a cheerful meal, seemed to echo in the air.

It was always difficult for Caroline in such moments of excitement to distinguish between what she saw and heard and what she wished to see and hear, and at this ghost of table music she smiled with pleasure.

"The house is empty," said her common-sense, but she pursed her lips and whispered, "they're up here eating--they've come for the silver!"

By fractions of inches she pushed the door on its well-oiled hinge and slipped noiselessly into the dining-room.

A broad beam of light fell across the dark, wainscoted room, and in the track of it sat a handsome well-dressed man, busily eating. In front of him was a roast chicken, a cut-glass dish of celery and a ruby mound of jelly; a crusty loaf of new bread lay broken at his right; at his left, winking in the sunbeam, stood a decanter half filled with a topaz liquor. He was daintily poising a bit of jelly on some bread, the mouthful was in the air, when his eyes fell on Caroline, an amazed and cobwebbed statue in front of him.

The hand that held the bread grew rigid. As spilled milk spreads over a table, the man's face was flooded with sudden grayish white; against it his thin lips were marked in lavender. While the grandfather clock ticked ten times they stared at each other, and then a wave of deep red poured over his face and his mouth twitched.

"What are you doing here, little girl?" he demanded sternly, pointedly regarding her dusty rumpled figure.

Caroline gulped and dropped her eyes.

"I--I--nothing particular," she murmured guiltily.

The man laid the piece of bread down carefully and wiped his fingers on the napkin spread across his knees.

"Some time," he said, in a leisurely drawl, "you'll burst into a room like that, where a person with a weak heart may be sitting, and that'll be the last of 'em."

"The last of 'em?" Caroline repeated vaguely.

"Just so. They'll die on you," he explained briefly.

Caroline stepped nearer.

"Is--is your heart weak?" she inquired fearfully. "I'm so sorry. So is my Uncle Lindsay's."

"What were you sneaking about so soft for?" he demanded.

She flushed.

"I--I was playing burglars," she confessed, "and I got to where they were in here with the silver, and--and I was coming in to--to get them, and I didn't expect anybody would be here, really, you know, and I was surprised when I saw you. I didn't know about your heart."

"Burglars?" said the man, laughing loudly. "Well, that's one on me! I must say you're a nervy young party. So you thought I was a burglar, did you?"

"Oh, no!" Caroline cried, "of course not--I meant I was playing it was burglars; I didn't mean you. I--I didn't know anybody was here."

"Humph!" said he. "What made you play burglars? Anything in that line yourself, ever?"

Caroline stared uncomprehendingly.