Читать книгу The Tryst (Musaicum Romance Classics) - Grace Livingston Hill - Страница 8

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An old man with eyes like a hawk and an arrogant beak sat shriveled into an invalid's chair in the sunniest window of the best suite in the hotel, querulously watching the driveway that wound up among the trees, glimpsable here and there at open points, until it curved in with a wide sweep at the elaborate gateway and rolled up under the porte cochere.

“You're sure the telegram said he would come on that train, Hespur? You haven't made a mistake about it? Where's that telegram? You've thrown it away, I suppose. You ought never to throw away a thing like that until the time for it is over. I've told you that a thousand times ——”

"Telegram right here, sir." He laid the yellow paper in the trembling hand of the invalid. “It says he'll be on the afternoon train."

"Well, isn't there more than one train in the afternoon?” queried the old man excitedly, his voice rising portentously. “What right did you have to jump to that conclusion? I've told you more than once ——"

“It’s the only train from the North, Mr. Treeves."

"Well, what right had you to think he was coming from the North, you rascal? You're always so cocksure of yourself!"

"You said he came over on a transport, sir!” The telegram was sent from New York——!"

“Well, there, there, there! Don't say any more about it. He hasn't come, has he? You were wrong, weren't you? The hack has come up from the station, hasn't it, and he hasn't come? And you knew the doctor said I mustn't be excited!”

“He might've walked, sir; they sometimes do, you know."

“What nonsense! Walked! The nephew of Calvin Treeves walk up from the station when he could just as well ride? He knew he could ride! I tell you, you are a fool!” The old man’s face was purple with rage.

“There's some one turned in at the drive just now, sir. He's carrying a suitcase, sir.”

“What bosh! As if my nephew would carry a suitcase! Walk and carry a suitcase up to this hotel with all those hens and cats down there on the veranda knitting and clacking their tongues. He would have more respect for me than to do a thing like that. If he didn't, I'm sorry I sent for him! I’ll teach him to disgrace —— !”

The trembling old claw-like hands gripped the arms of the chair, and the selfish old voice trembled dangerously. There were sparks of fire from the dim, disappointed old eyes, and the, puffy veins on the withered face swelled purple and congested.

“Just keep calm a minute, sir, there's some one at the door. You know the doctor said you mustn't get excited, Mr. Treeves –!"

“Keep calm! Keep calm!" muttered the angry old man, trying to lift himself to his feet, and then dropping back helplessly with a groan.

The man returned with a card.

“He has come, Mr. Treeves.”

“How could he? That fellow walking wasn't my nephew. He would have been in uniform. That man wore civilian clothes. He ought to have been in officer's uniform. It was outrageous ——! An insult to the name! My nephew a private! But he won enough honors to make a good showing even in private's uniform, and give those cats something to talk about at last!"

His eyes glittered with a gleam of triumph.

“Well, tell him to come up. Better late than never, I suppose——"

The old man settled back against his pillows and closed his eyes, drawing in a deep breath, as if gathering strength for the interview. Then he sat up with a tense alertness and a feverish quiver of his lips that betokened his deep feeling, and looked toward the door as a tall, well-built young man, dressed in a business suit of brown, entered and looked about him.

The young man had crisp brown curly hair cut close, and pleasant brown eyes, but there was a look of aloofness about him as if he were holding any friendliness he might have in abeyance for the present. Even the attendant felt it, and if the truth were known perhaps honored him the more for it. It was a trait of the Treeveses, this independence, this being able to stand alone and demand respect. A look of admiration dawned in old Hespur’s face as he stood watching the young man advance into the room.

John Treeves walked over toward the withered little figure of a man in the chair and stood, as a soldier might stand, at attention, although there was that in his attitude that said he reserved the right to his own thoughts and would give inward respect only to whom respect was due.

“You have sent for me, Mr. Treeves?”

“Why don't you call me Uncle?” whimpered the old man irascibly.

“I understood that you did not wish to own me as a nephew. You disowned my father as a brother, for marrying my mother, and you refused to acknowledge me as your nephew some years ago. Why should I presume to call you Uncle?”

“I sent for you, isn't that enough? No need to have a nasty temper about it,” replied the old man testily.

“You have sent for me. Uncle Calvin."

The old man's face softened just a shade.

“There that sounds better," he gloated like one who has conquered as usual. “Now sit down and let me see what you're made of."

A swift flicker of anger went over the young man's face and left it hard and cold:

“Thank you. I prefer to stand until I know why you sent for me.”

The old man straightened up and looked at his nephew, half in admiration, half in fury:

“You prefer to stand, you young rascal!” he fairly snorted. “You do, do you? Well, I prefer that you sit! Do you hear! Hespur! Here! Make that young man sit down! make him sit down, I say!” he screamed, thrashing the air vigorously with a frail claw of a hand. “Is this the way that paragon of a mother taught you to behave to your elders, you young rascal? Hespur! Here!”

Hespur, the obedient, advanced coolly like a well-trained animal that was set to do the impossible, but was swept aside like a toy by the strong arm of the young giant, who wheeled and strode toward the door:

“That will be about all!” he said as he paused with the knob of the door in his hand. I never allow my mother to be spoken of in that tone. I will bid you good afternoon and good-bye, mister Treeves.”

The old man sat agap in wonder. Not in years had anyone dared to oppose him like this! Nay, even to reprove him. He was too angry and astonished for articulation. Old Hespur stood in line with him watching with admiration the retreat of the young visitor, looking down at his arm that had been gripped in the giant vise, as if an honor had been conferred upon him. This surely was a young gentleman to be proud of, a true chip of the old block!

Then while Calvin Treeves still stared and spluttered for words, the door opened, and the young man went out and down the hall.

The old man was stunned for a second, then turned to his faithful servitor:

“Hespur! Go! Bring him back!” he pleaded like a child, who has been punished and is suddenly repentant.

The young man pausing before the elevator door was suddenly confronted by the old servant, bowing before him with distress in his face.

“Oh, sir! He is sorry! He didn't mean it! Come back, sir, quick! The doctor said he must not be excited, sir. He might have a stroke. He's a mighty sick old man, is Mr. Treeves, and he don't rightly know hoar disagreeable he gets.”

“Did he say he was sorry?" asked the young man, looking at the servant keenly.

“No, sir, he didn't say he was sorry. But he meant it, sir. He wouldn't rightly know how to say he was sorry. He never made a practice of saying he was sorry, sir!"

“I should say not!" said the nephew with flashing eyes and quivering upper lip, the kind of quiver that denotes a hurt soul; but he followed the serving man back albeit with his head held high and a haughty, stem chin. He came into the room once more and stood at attention.

Again that gleam of triumph in the old eye:

“You young rapscallion!" breathed the old man with a chuckle. "You certainly are hot headed enough!"

"Sir, no one may speak so of my mother without having to account for it. If you called me here to insult her holy memory, it is time that I went. You gave her a lifetime of insult and if it had not been for her forgiving spirit I would not have been here to-day."

“Oh!" chortled the old man,” She had an eye to my sending for you some day, did she? Rather long-headed, wasn't she?”

The old servitor started anxiously and looked toward the young man whose set jaw grew more stem and manly with every word, and who was looking straight into the wicked old eyes with an unflinching gaze:

"Sir," said the clear young voice, “it was when I was a child, and I had told her I hated you and would never forgive you for the way you had treated her, and she said that no soul ought to go into eternity unforgiven and I must not refuse you that if you ever asked.”

The old man blanched as if he had been struck by the words, and then a wave of purple rage rolled up over his withered face:

“Well, wait till I ask then!” he roared out. “I want no old woman's talk about eternity! I sent for you to-day because I wanted you, not because I wanted forgiveness. Sit down, young man, and let's get to business! I tell you I won't be annoyed this way. You've got to do as I want you to do. I'm an old man, and I can't stand this excitement!"

He fumbled around for his handkerchief and mopped his congested forehead, panting for breath, as the wave of rage passed away and left him weak and feeble.

“Sir, you've got to apologize for the way you spoke of my mother or I’ll never sit down. I know of no business I want to talk over with you, and if your business is not worth an apology I would better be going."

The old man stopped mopping his face and stared at his nephew.

“Apologize!" he muttered. “Ha! Hal Apologize! Why, son, I never apologized to anyone in my life. You don't expect me to begin now——!"

“Very well! I will bid you good afternoon ——”

“Stop!" spluttered Calvin Treeves. “Stop! I apologize! Now, sit down!" He fairly shouted it.

The young man sat down sternly erect on the edge of the chair, but the effect was the same as when standing. Calvin Treeves realized this, and fairly whimpered his disappointment:

“Take this other chair and be comfortable!" There was almost a pleading note in the dictatorial old voice.

“What is your business, Mr. Treeves?"

“Call me Uncle ——” crooned the old man.

“What is your business, Uncle Calvin?"

The old gleam of triumph came back:

“That's better, nephew, that's better. Now we can talk. Well, my business is this. You see I'm all alone in the world. I'm getting to be an old man, and I'm sick. I want some one to belong to me, in whom I can live my life over again. In short, I want to get acquainted with you and feel that there is some one in the world to whom I can turn.”

The old man stopped and eyed the younger keenly, anxiously.

The young man looked up with the stern look still about his mouth and eyes:

“I'm afraid that is impossible!”

“Why?" cringed the old man as if he had been struck.

“Because of the way in which you treated my mother. You let her struggle on all those years when I was a child, and never offered to even help her to find something to do to earn her living and mine till I was old enough to help. You even refused to help pay the funeral expenses of your own brother, and when mother asked you to lend her enough to pay the interest on the mortgage of our house for one year until she could earn enough to pay you back, you told her she was an interloper and had cheated my father out of a fair start in life. Afterward, when my mother lay sick in the hospital for weeks and I was cared for by strangers, you never lifted your finger. Do you think that I could care to live on intimate terms with one who did all that?”

The old man seemed to wither and shrink before the scathing tone of the young man. His thin hands like yellow parchment clung claw-like to each other, and he cringed before the young eyes that condemned him.

“You are very harsh in your judgment of me!" he put in plaintively. "Your father was engaged to a woman both beautiful and rich who would have made his life a different thing ———!”

“Knowing my mother, I can only rejoice for my father's sake that he married my mother instead of this woman!”

Young voices are so cold and clear in condemnation. The old man shivered.

“I never saw your mother!” he whimpered placatingly.

“That was your fault,” scathed the son.

“I’ll say this much for her, she did well in bringing you up.”

The young man lifted scornful eyes.

“You know nothing about me; how can you say that?”

The cunning gleamed in the old eyes again:

"I know all about you. I’ve followed your career ever since you entered the army. I know you and am proud of you, and I want you for my own.”

There was a curious pathetic hunger in the old voice that the younger man could not ignore. Because he was the son of such a mother, he knew he must not pass it by.

“Why did you do that?” he asked at last after a long pause of troubled thought.

“Because when I happened to see your name in the paper I was proud that there was one of my name to go over. I had no son myself, and was too old to have any part myself, but – you were there – and I followed the war through you. I had a man over there finding out everything you did. I knew every turn you took. I know all the honors you won. I’m proud of you and the way you have honored the name of Treeves.”

There was still that plaintive appeal for love in the old voice, the wistful look mingling with the cunning in the spoiled old eyes. John Treeves looked up and pondered and then spoke:

“I could not give you my” – he carefully considered the words – “affection, nor my” – he considered again – “confidence, sir, so long as you feel as you do about my mother. I think, sir, there would be always a wall between us.”

A look of cunning twinkled into the little, old eyes:

"Perhaps by knowing you I should learn to know her better and think better of her. I have thought better of her since following your career. Anyhow” – in a fretful tone – “that was a long time ago. Let us put it all by and begin again. If I made a mistake then I can’t right it now, can I? Suppose you begin and tell me all about yourself. I shall doubtless get glimpses of your mother through that. Go ahead! I want to know all!”

The young man's lips looked stubborn at first. Even the old servant could see that the order was distasteful, that to talk of himself was never a favorite employment, and to talk about his sacred life with his beloved mother seemed a sacrilege in this presence. The fine brows drew down lower, and the whole face looked ominous. The little old man sat huddled in his pillows and watched fearfully. He wanted to conquer, more than he had ever wanted anything in his life before. This strong vital young man with his beauty and his independence, his audacity and his impudence had in these few minutes become of immense value to his lonely frightened old life. For he was frightened. He had even begun to admit it to himself in the still watches of the night when reality clutched him and made him face the future. He knew he had been a bad old man and a bad young man. He had had his own way all his life, had got himself riches and made others poor, had torn a tempestuous supremacy through his family and his neighborhood and his whole world and made everybody who did not fear him hate him – everybody save old Hespur, whom he had abused more than all. He knew, and wanted to buy back a little of his spent happiness by grafting to himself a young, strong, beautiful life; wanted to buy a whole Heaven for himself by making a late reparation to the child of the woman he had ignored in her trouble and given nothing but contempt. He wanted to do it in his own lordly way and not to enter Heaven by the lowly door of repentance as he knew the rest of the world must do. And so he sat and quavered and hung upon the words of the young man, his nephew, frightened lest here too he should fail, yet determined that he should not.

At last the nephew looked up:

“What do you want to know?” he asked reluctantly.

“Anything, everything that you can remember,” cackled the uncle joyously.

The young brows drew down and the young voice was cold:

"That would be impossible!” he said in that tone of haughty withdrawal. "There is very little that you have a right to know. You forfeited all that long ago.”

The old man crouched as if he were hit and shivered in his padded silken robe.

“I will tell you a few things,” went on the nephew.

“My mother and I lived in two rooms over a bakery for a long time and mother had to sell bread to get bread for herself and me! But she kept me in school as soon as I was old enough and every evening she went over my studies with me. Sundays we went to church, and in between services we took long walks in the woods when the weather was good and she talked to me of life. I shall never expect to hear greater wisdom from any lips than the things she said to me. And she was but a girl when she began to teach me! It was so that when I went to college my teachers wondered where I had got my advanced ideas, and how I came to be so well trained in concentration, and it was all my mother's doings!”

He looked up, and the old man was still huddled silently in his pillows, with his bright wild eyes peering out piercingly, watching, listening, being condemned!

“She slaved at fine sewing and embroidery half the night to keep me in school and prepare me for college, and she went without everything she could without my finding out, to spend the money on me. I even caught her going without the necessary plain food herself in order to have me well fed. She did all that, and denied herself everything possible, and do you think I could easily sit down and make friends with a relative who let her do all that for his own brother's son, and was amply able to have helped her? Not that she would have accepted charity. What she needed was a friend and a little kindly advice just to feel there was somebody back of her ready to lift the burden if she should fall under it. She would have paid with interest anything that had been loaned to her. But instead she was compelled to borrow from her own vitality, and you, you were to blame! You are a bad old man!”

The cool young voice pounded out each word like blows of a hammer driving in a spike. The old man seemed to shrink and shrivel before each one.

“You shan't say that!” he snarled. “I never did anything wrong.”

“It’s not what you did, it's what you refused to do!”

The old eyes quailed:

“Well, perhaps, I can make it up now!” he whimpered.

“No. It's too late. You can never make up what you missed doing.”

The old man sighed and lifted a trembling claw aimlessly to his lips as if to steady them:

"Well, well, go on with your story ——!" he evaded.

“There isn't much more. I went to work vacations and nights and mornings as soon as I was old enough and lifted as much burden as I could, and then she would have me go to college. I worked my way through that – and Seminary ——”

“What were you preparing for? Anything special?” There was deep interest in the old eyes. He wanted to avoid getting back to the discussion of his own faults.

The young man hesitated and spoke the words as if they were something sacred:

“I was preparing for the ministry."

“What?" said the old man suddenly erect. “You mean a diplomatic service?”

“Oh, no,” said the nephew, “theology!”

“You don't mean you were going to be a preacher! Oh, the devil!” and he finished with a cackle from the tombs.

The young man fixed him with a stern eye.

“Oh, well, go on with your story! The war came along and spoiled you for any such milk-and-water woman's job as that! I know the rest. Enough for the present. We'll talk about the war after dinner. Hespur, take the young gentleman to his room. He'll want to prepare for dinner, and I'm going down to the dining-room myself to-night to do him honor. Hear that, Hespur? You can hunt out my evening clothes when you came back. That's all, nephew! Go and get ready for dinner!”

Then quite naturally John Treeves found himself following the old servant to a suite of rooms directly across the hall from his uncle's.

“I hope you'll be entirely comfortable," said old Hespur adoringly. “You'll find plenty of hot water for your bath, and you've only to ring and I'll come. Would you like me to unpack your suitcase, sir, and lay out your things?”

“No,” said John Treeves with a weary smile, “I haven't much and I'm used to doing for myself, A bath will feel good, however.”

Nevertheless, when he was left to himself he did not immediately proceed to the white-tiled bathroom whose door stood so invitingly open, but strode to the window, thrust his fingers through his hair, with his elbow on the upper window sash and stood staring out into the beauty of the hotel grounds, and off at the purple misty mountains in the distance. But he was not seeing the beauty. He was thinking of what he had just said to his uncle, and his blood was still boiling over the remembrance of his mother and the indignities she had suffered from the old despot. And yet, in spite of it all, there had been an appeal in the old reprobate's eyes that somehow would not be denied. He had not meant to stay all night – not definitely – yet here he was staying, and he wondered if he had done right to yield even so much?

A car was driving up to the veranda below, and its Klaxon attracted his gaze idly. Two travelers were getting out, one an old lady, quite crippled with rheumatism apparently, and one a lithe young girl who sprang from the car nimbly and turned a charming face up to the front of the building with an appraising glance, then dropped her eyes with a quick motion and put out her hands to assist her companion. John Treeves started and said aloud to himself:

“That looks like Patty Merrill! I believe it is! I’m going down to see!”