Читать книгу To the Highest Bidder - Florence Morse Kingsley - Страница 5

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After Jimmy had said his prayers and was tucked up in bed, tired but happy, the book of “Vallable Information” under his pillow, Barbara sat for awhile by the open window in the dusk of the April night. The wind had gone down since sunset, and in the stillness she could hear the “peepers,” singing in the distant marshes, and the soft roar of the river, filled to its brim with the melted snows from the hills. Something in the sound of the swollen river and the gleam of a single star, seen dimly between drifting clouds, brought the remembrance of other April nights to Barbara’s mind.

Her thoughts went back to the day when her father, then a proud, handsome man in his prime, had brought his new wife to the farm. Her own passionately mourned mother seemed strangely forgotten in the joy of the home-coming and the girl had resented it in the dumb, pathetic fashion of childhood. After a little, though, she had come to love the gentle creature who had won her father’s heart. There followed a few happy years, regretfully remembered through a blur of tears, when the little mother, as Barbara learned to call her, filled the old house to overflowing with sunshine. Then on an April night when the river lifted up its plaintive voice in the stillness that fell after a wild, windy day, Jimmy came, and the little mother went—hastily, as if summoned out of the dark by some voice unheard by the others. Barbara remembered well the night of her going, and of how, with a last effort, she had lifted the tiny baby and placed him in her own strong young arms.

“Love—him—dear,” whispered the failing voice. Then she had smiled once, as if with a great content, and was gone.

Jimmy’s voice broke sleepily through these bitter-sweet memories.

“Barb’ra!” he called, “are you there? I forgot somethin’.”

“What did you forget, dear?” asked the girl, going to his bed.

“I love you, Barb’ra!” murmured the little boy, snuggling his hand in hers.

She stooped to kiss him all warm and sweet with sleep. Then drew the blankets closer about his shoulders.

“It was—a—a—letter,” the drowsily-sweet little voice went on. “I—forgot——”

“Jimmy,” said Barbara the next morning, as she brushed the child’s yellow hair, “what was it you said last night about a letter?”

“Oh, I bringed—no, I brought a letter home to you in my coat pocket, and I forgot to give it to you.”

“It isn’t in either of your pockets, dear. I looked there last night. Try and think what you did with it.”

The little boy looked troubled.

“The man gave it to me, an’ it was blue. An’ he said it was f’om way out west, an’ he asked me who did you know out west; an’ I said I didn’t know; but I’d ask you. I put it in my pocket.”

“Perhaps it wasn’t anything important,” Barbara said slowly, “but——”

“No, I guess it wasn’t,” agreed Jimmy placidly. “Say, Barb’ra, can I have two popcorn balls to take to school?”

“But what do you suppose became of the letter?” persisted Barbara. “Which pocket did you put it in?”

Jimmy eyed the small garment uncertainly.

“It was in this one,” he decided; “I ’member I put the letter in my pocket an’ it stuck out, ’cause it was too long.”

“Did you come straight home from the post-office?” demanded Barbara. “Did you, Jimmy?”

Jimmy reflected.

“I walked along,” he said, “an’ ’nen I looked in through the fence to see the deer an’ the shiny blue round things—you know, Barb’ra, when the sun shines you c’n see——”

“I know,” said the girl, with a touch of impatience.

“An’ ’nen I saw the horse wiv a short tail come out, an’ I p’tended I was drivin’ an’ goin’ awful fast! But I couldn’t trot real fas’ because the m’lasses spilled. I had to stop an’ lick it off lots of times.”

“Why, Jimmy!” said the girl rebukingly.

“Wiv my fingers,” explained Jimmy mildly. “You know you have to do something when it comes out all bubbles ’round the edge; an’—an’ ’nen I——”

“You must have dropped the letter somewhere along the road,” interrupted his sister.

“Uh-huh! I guess I did,” assented the culprit. “But I didn’t mean to, Barb’ra. Truly I didn’t.”

His lip quivered as he looked up at her stormy face.

The girl controlled herself with an effort.

“Of course you didn’t mean to, darling,” she said, kissing the rosy mouth, which had begun to droop dolefully at the corners. “Perhaps it was just an advertisement, anyway, and not worth bothering over. I’ll walk along with you and see if we can find it.”

But the letter, snugly hidden under a clump of unfolding fern, gave no token of its presence as the two walked slowly past it, their eyes searching the road and the tangled growths on either side.

Barbara walked swiftly to the post-office, after she had left Jimmy at the schoolhouse. It had occurred to her that someone might have returned the missing letter to the office.

Al Hewett, when questioned, shook his head.

“Nope,” he said, “the’ ain’t nobody brought it here. ’Course I’d ’a’ saved it fer you if they had. I remember the letter all right, I happened to notice the postmark. It was fo’m Tombstone, Arizony. Know anybody out there?”

The girl shook her head. “Was there any printing—or—writing on the envelope?” she asked.

“Not that I recall,” said Mr. Hewlett, mindful of his official state. “Of course you understan’ with the amount of mail we handle in this office that we couldn’t be expected to notice any one letter in pertickler. I’m real sorry, Barb’ra,” he added, with genuine good feeling. “Jimmy’s pretty small t’ deliver mail. He’s a nice little shaver, though. Anythin’ in the line o’ groceries to-day?”

“Not to-day,” said Barbara, her cheeks flushing.

Then she looked up with sudden determination. “Is your father here?” she asked, in a low voice. “If he is—I’d like to see him.”

“Pa’s in the back room makin’ up accounts,” the younger Hewett informed her. “I’ll call him, if you say so.—Pa!”

“No; don’t, please,” objected Barbara hastily. “I’ll go and speak to him there.”

But Mr. Abram Hewett had already appeared in answer to the summons and was advancing briskly behind a counter gay with new prints and ginghams. His face stiffened at sight of Barbara, and he darted an impatient look at his son.

“Could I speak with you—just a moment, Mr. Hewett?” asked Barbara, in a low, determined voice, “on business?”

The man coldly scrutinized the flushed face the girl lifted to his.

“If it was ’bout the balance o’ that account o’ yours——” he began, “I was just lookin’ it over, ’long with some others like it. You c’n come in here.”

Barbara followed his short, bent figure, her heart beating heavily. But she had found a remnant of her vanished self-possession by the time Mr. Hewett had climbed to the high stool behind the long-legged desk, which represented the financial centre of the establishment. “Well?” he said interrogatively, fixing his lowering regard upon her.

Barbara glanced at the two fly-specked legends which flanked the desk on either side, reading respectively, “My time is money; don’t steal it,” and “This is my busy day.”

“I didn’t come to finish paying that bill to-day,” she said, a flush of shame mounting to her forehead. “But the hens are beginning to lay now, and——”

“Eggs is cheap an’ plentiful,” demurred Mr. Hewett, with unconcealed impatience. “I couldn’t agree t’ allow ye much on eggs.”

“It wasn’t the bill I came to see you about,” said Barbara, with a proud look at him. “I shall pay it in money as soon as I possibly can.”

“Oh!” interjected Mr. Hewett. Then he added sharply “Humph!” drumming meanwhile on the lid of his desk to denote the lapse of unfruitful minutes.

Barbara still hesitated, while she strove to find words to introduce the difficult business she had in mind.

Mr. Hewett cleared his throat suggestively.

“There’s a mortgage on the farm,” she said slowly, “and we’re going to lose it, unless——”

“Unless you pay up,” suggested Mr. Hewett briskly. “Yes; jes’ so. I’ve been wonderin’ how you managed to hang on to it s’ long’s you have.”

“I’ve worked,” said Barbara, in a low, tense voice. “I’ve worked early and late, ever since father died, and before that. But—there was unpaid interest, and interest on that; and last year the apples failed, and so——”

“He’s goin’ to foreclose on ye. Yes, yes; exac’ly. I s’pose likely Jarvis holds the mortgage?”

“Yes,” said Barbara breathlessly. “But if I only had a little more time I could manage it—somehow. I must keep the farm for Jimmy. I promised father he should have it.”

Mr. Hewett was silent, his plump face drawn into the semblance of a dubious smile.

“I’ve come to ask you to take up the mortgage for me, and give me more time to pay it. Will you do it?” asked Barbara, avoiding the man’s look.

Mr. Hewett shifted his gaze to the ink-well, around the edge of which a lean black fly was crawling dispiritedly.

“W’y, no,” he said decidedly. “I shouldn’t like to interfere; I couldn’t do it.”

“Why couldn’t you?” demanded Barbara. “If we have a good apple year, I could pay the mortgage in two years. It doesn’t cost us much to live.”

“If it’s a good apple year, apples’ll be a drug on the market,” Mr. Hewett prophesied gloomily. “Nope! I’m sorry; but I guess you’ll have to let Jarvis foreclose on ye. I shouldn’t like to run up against Jarvis, y’ know.”

“But—there’s Jimmy!” The girl’s voice rang out in a sharp cry.

“Put the boy in an institootion, or bind him out,” advised Mr. Hewett, drumming impatiently on the lid of his desk. “The’s folk a-plenty that wouldn’t mind raisin’ a healthy boy to work.”

Barbara turned swiftly.

“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.