Читать книгу Because of Stephen (Romance Classic) - Grace Livingston Hill - Страница 3

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The room was full of blue smoke from bacon sizzling on the stove when Philip Earle came in.

Philip was hungry, but there was a weirdly monotonous reminder of preceding meals in the odor of the bacon that took the edge from his appetite.

The lamp was doing its best to help both the smoke and the odor that filled the room; any other function it might have had being held in abeyance by the smoke.

The lamp was on a little shelf on the wall, and under it, half hidden by the smoke, stood another young man bending over the stove.

There was nothing attractive about the room. It was made of rough boards: walls, floor, and ceiling. The furniture was an old extension table, several chairs, a cheap cot covered with a gray army blanket, and a desk which showed hard usage, piled high with papers and a few books. A wooden bench over by the stove held a tin washbasin and cooking-utensils in harmonious proximity.

Several coats and hats and a horse-blanket hung on nails driven into the walls. A line of boots and shoes stood against the baseboard. There was nothing else but a barrel and several boxes.

The table was set for supper: that is, it held a loaf of bread, two cups and knives and spoons, a bag of crackers, a paper of cheese, a pitcher of water, and a can of baked beans newly opened.

Philip added to the confusion already on the table by throwing his bundles down at one end. Then he stood his whip in one corner, and tossed his felt hat across the room to the cot, where it lay as if accustomed to staying where it landed.

"A letter for you, Steve!" he said as he sat down at the table and ran his hands wearily through his thick black hair.

Stephen Halstead emerged from the cloud of smoke by the stove, and examined the postmark on the letter.

"Well, I guess it can wait till we've had supper," he said carelessly. "It's not likely to be important. I'm hungry!" and he landed a large plate of smoking bacon and shriveled, blackened, fried eggs on the table beside the coffeepot, and sat down.

They began to eat, silent for the most part, with keen appetites, for both had been in the open air all day. Stephen knew that his partner would presently report about the sale of cattle he had made, and tell of his weary search for several stray animals that had wandered off. But that could wait.

Philip, however, was thinking of something else. Perhaps it was the texture of the envelope he had just laid down, or the whiff of violet scent that had breathed from it as he took it from his pocket, that reminded him of old days; or perhaps it was just that he was hungry and dissatisfied.

"Say, Steve," said he, setting down his empty cup, "do you remember the banquet in '95?"

A cloud came over Stephen's face. He had reasons to remember it of which his friend knew not.

"What of it?" he growled.

"Nothing; only I was thinking I would like to have the squabs and a few other little things I didn't eat that night. They wouldn't taste bad after a day such as we've had."

He helped himself to another piece of cheese, and took another supply of baked beans.

Stephen laughed harshly. He did not like to be reminded of that banquet night. To create a diversion, he reached out for the letter.

"This is from that precious sister of mine, I suppose," he said, "who isn't my sister at all, and yet persists every once in a while in keeping up the appearance. I don't know what she ever expects to make out of it. I haven't anything to leave her in my will. Besides, I don't answer her letters once in an age."

"You're a most ungrateful dog," said Philip. "You ought to be glad to have someone in the world to write to you. I've often thought of advertising for somebody who'd be a sister to me, at least enough of one to write to me. It would give a little zest to life. I don't see why you have such a prejudice against her. She never did anything. She couldn't help it that her mother was your father's second wife. It wasn't her affair, at all, nor yours either, as I see. When did you see her last?"

"Never saw her but once in my life, and then she was a little, bawling, red thing with long clothes, and everybody waiting on her."

"How old were you?"

"About ten," said Stephen doggedly, not joining in the hilarious laughter that Philip raised at his expense. "I was old enough to resent her being there at all, in my home, where I ought to have been, and her mother managing things and having me sent off to boarding-school to get rid of me. I could remember my own mother, Phil. She hadn't been dead a year when father married again."

"Well, it wasn't her fault anyway, that I can see," said Philip amusedly; "and, after all, she's your sister. She's as much your father's child as you are."

"She's nothing but a half-sister," said Stephen decidedly, "and of no interest in the world to me. What on earth she's taken to writing me long letters for, I can't make out. It's only since father died she's done it. I suppose her mother thought it would be well to appease me, lest I make trouble about the will; but I knew well enough there wouldn't be much of anything father had for me. His precious second wife did me out completely from the first minute she set eyes on me. And she's dead now, too. If it hadn't been for what my mother left, I wouldn't have had a cent."

"Who's the girl living with?" asked Philip.

"O, with an aunt,—her mother's sister,—an old maid up in New England."

Then Stephen tore open the letter, and shoved his chair back nearer to the lamp. There was silence in the room while Stephen read his letter; and Philip, emptying the coffee-pot, mused over the life of an orphan girl in the home of a New England maiden aunt.

Suddenly Stephen's chair jerked about with a sharp thud on the bare floor, and Stephen stood up and uttered some strong language.

He had a lot of light hair, originally a golden brown, but burnt by exposure to sun and rain to a tawny shade. He was a slender fellow, well knit, with a complexion tanned to nature's own pleasant brown, out of which looked deep, unhappy eyes of blue. He would have been handsome but for a restless weakness about the almost girlish mouth.

He was angry now, and perplexed. His yellow brows were knit together in a frown, his head up, and his eyes darker than usual. Philip watched him in languid amusement, and waited for an explanation.

"Well, is she too sisterly this time?" he asked.

"Altogether!" said Stephen. "She's coming to see us."

The amusement passed rapidly from Philip's face. He sprang to his feet, while the color rolled up under his dark skin.

"Coming to see us?" he ejaculated, looking round and suddenly seeing all the short-comings of the room.

"Coming to see us?" he repeated as if not quite sure of the sound of his own words. "Here?"

"Here!" asseverated Stephen tragically with outspread hands, and the two looked about in sudden knowledge of the desolation of the place they had called "home" for three years.

"When?" Philip managed to murmur weakly, looking about in his mind for a way of escape for himself without deserting his partner.

Stephen stooped to pick up the letter he had thrown on the floor in his excitement.

"I don't know," he said dejectedly. "Here, read the thing, and see if you can find out." He handed the letter to Philip, who received it with alacrity, and settled into the chair under the light, suddenly realizing that he was tired.

"She'll have to be stopped," said Stephen meditatively, sitting down on the cot to study it out, "or sent back if it's too late for stopping. She can't come here, of course."

"Of course!" agreed Philip decidedly. Then he read:

"My dear Brother Stephen:—"

Philip suddenly felt strong jealousy of his friend. It would be nice to get a letter like that.

"It is a long time since I have been able to write to you, but you have never been out of my thoughts for long at a time. Aunt Priscilla was taken ill the day after I wrote you the last time. She was confined to her room all winter, and some of the time a little flighty. She took queer notions. One of them was that I was going to run away and marry a Spaniard. She could not bear me out of her sight. This tied me down very much, even though we had a nurse who relieved me of the entire care of her. I could not even write when I was in her sight, because she imagined I was getting up some secret plot to send her away to an old ladies' home of which she had a great horror.

"I don't like to think of those long, dreary months; but they are all over now, and I will not weary you with talking of them. Aunt Priscilla died a month ago, and now I am all alone in the world save for you. Stephen, I wonder if you have any idea how dear you have grown to me. Sometimes it has seemed as if I just could not wait any longer to see you. It has kept me up wonderfully to know that I have a lovely, big, grown-up brother to turn to."

Philip's eyes grew moist, and he stopped to clear his throat as he turned the page and glanced surreptitiously toward the unloving brother, who sat in a brown and angry study, his elbows on his knees, his chin in his hands.

"So now, Stephen, I am going to do just what I have wanted to do ever since mother died and I left college and came home to Aunt Priscilla. I am coming to you! There is nothing to hinder. I have sold the old house. There was a good opportunity, and I cannot bear the place. It has been desolate, desolate here." Philip wondered what she would think of her brother's home. "I cannot bear the thought of staying here alone, and I know I could not coax you away from your beloved West. So I am all packed up now, except the things that have been sold, and I am starting at once. Perhaps you may not like it, may not want me; and in that case of course I can come back. But anyway I shall see you first. I could not stand it without seeing you. I keep thinking of what father said to me just before he died. I never told you. I have always thought I would rather wait till I could say it to you, but now I will send it on to you as my plea for a welcome. It was the last afternoon we had together. Mother was lying down, and I was alone with him. He had been asleep, and he suddenly opened his eyes and called me to him. 'Don't forget you have a brother, when I am gone,' he said, and then after a minute he looked up and said: 'Tell him I'm afraid I wasn't wise in my treatment of him always. Tell him I loved him, and I love you, and I want you two to love each other.'

"I began to love you then, Stephen, and the longing to know you and see you has grown with the years, five years since father died. I never told mother about it. She was not well enough to talk much, you know; and she did not live long after that. Of course, I never told Aunt Priscilla. She was not the kind of woman to whom one told things. But I have never had opportunity to claim that love, or to seek it except in just writing you letters occasionally; and sometimes I've been afraid you didn't care to get them. But now I'm coming to see for myself; and, if I'm not welcome, why, I can go back again. I shall not be a burden to you, brother; for I have enough, you know, to take care of myself. And, if you don't want me, all you have to do is to tell me so, and I can go away again. But I hope you'll be able to love me a little for father's sake."

"Have you read the whole of this, Steve?" asked Philip, suddenly looking up as he reached the end of one sheet of paper and was starting on another.

"No," said Stephen gruffly; "I read enough." "Read the rest," commanded Philip, handing over the first sheet while he went on with the second.

"Now I have burned my bridges behind me, Stephen; and I have not let you know until just the last thing. This letter will reach you only a few days before I do; so it will not be of any use to telegraph me not to come if you don't want me, for I shall be well on my way, and it will be too late. Please forgive me; I did this purposely because I felt I must at least see you before I gave up my plan, or I should never be able to give it up. And I am hoping that you will be glad to see me, and that perhaps I can be of some use to you, and put a little comfort into your life. You have never told me whether you are boarding or housekeeping or what. It is strange not to know more about one's brother than I do about mine, but I shall soon know now. I am bringing all the little things I care about with me; so, if you let me stay, I shall have nothing to send for; and, if I have to go back, they can go back, too, of course.

"I shall reach your queer-sounding station at eight o'clock Friday evening, and I hope you will be able to meet me at the train, for of course I shall be very lonely in a strange place. Forgive me for surprising you this way. I know Aunt Priscilla would think I was doing a dreadful thing; but I can't feel that way about it myself, and anyway I have myself to look out for now. So goodbye until Friday evening of next week, and please make up your mind to be a little glad to see your sister,"

"MARGARET HALSTEAD."

Philip handed over the last sheet to Stephen, and sat up, looking blankly at the wall for a minute. He could not deny to himself that he was wholly won over to the enemy's cause. There was something so fresh and appealing about that letter written from a lonely girlish heart, and something so altogether brave and daring in her actually starting out to hunt up a renegade brother who had shown no wish to be brotherly, that he could but admire her. But what could they do with her there? Of course she must go back. A pity, too, when she seemed to have her heart so set. But, if she stayed, she would be disappointed. Philip looked at Stephen sadly. It was a good thing she must go back, and would not need to know how little worthy of her love and admiration this unknown brother of hers was. He was a good-hearted fellow, too. A pity for the girl she had not someone to care for her.

Suddenly a new thought came to him as he looked idly down at the envelope of the letter Stephen had carelessly flung aside. The date on it was a week old.

He picked it up excitedly.

"Steve, what day was that letter written?"

"The twenty-eighth," said Stephen, looking up to see what caused the unusual note in Philip's tone.

"Man alive!" exclaimed Philip, "that letter's lain in the office for more than a week now, or else it's been off up to Humstead's ranch, lying around till someone had time to bring it back to the office. Such a postmaster as they have out here anyway! Get up, Steve, and do something! This is Friday night! Don't you realize that your sister's almost here? If it wasn't that the Northern Central is always an hour or more behind time, she would be standing alone down there on the platform, in the dark, this minute, with all that howling mob of loungers that congregate nearby. What are you going to do?"

"I don't know," said Stephen in a dazed way.

Philip towered over him fiercely.

"Well, you better know. Get up. It's five miles away, and the express is due now if it's on time."