Читать книгу Lola - Owen Davis - Страница 3

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The old man lay back in his chair asleep. The morning sun beat against the drawn window shades, filling the room with a dim, almost cathedral light. An oil lamp, which had performed its duty faithfully through the night, now seemed to resent its neglect, and spluttered angrily. There was the usual sound of the busy city’s street outside the window, for the morning was advancing, but here in the room it was very quiet. A quaint little Dutch clock ticked away regularly, and the tired man’s soft breathing came and went, peacefully, for his sleep was untroubled, his heart was full of happiness.

Presently the door opened, and a young girl came into the room, and seeing him, there in the chair, she stopped, afraid for a moment, then stepped forward and bent over him. She smiled as she straightened up, and turning called out softly:

“Miss Lola! Miss Lola!”

“Coming, Maria,” the answer came in a clear, fresh young voice; for a moment the sleeper hesitated, about to awake, then thought better of it, and dreamed a dream of the triumph that was to be his.

“Hush!” Maria spoke softly as Lola came into the room, and Lola, following the girl’s pointed finger, smiled lovingly as she crossed and stood beside her father’s chair.

There was a strong contrast between these two girls as they stood there for a moment, side by side, young and good-looking as both undoubtedly were.

Lola was the sleeper’s daughter. Maria, their servant. Maria was strong and rugged; Lola delicate and blond. Maria’s splendid young body had been developed by hard work, while her mind had been stunted by a miserable childhood of neglect and abuse. Lola, since her mother’s death, had been her father’s constant companion, and had seemed to catch from him something of his grave and scholarly outlook upon life, lightened, however, by the impulses of a naturally sweet and sunny disposition, and the brave happiness of youth.

“He hasn’t been to bed at all!” exclaimed Maria, as Lola stooped and put her hand lightly on the sleeper’s arm.

“Father!” she called softly. “Father! It is morning!”

He awoke, startled, for a moment rather bewildered, then added his smile to theirs, and said brightly, “I am very happy, Lola.”

“I’m sure you haven’t any right to be, and, of course, you know that you ought to be scolded?”

“Perhaps so,” he returned, looking with pride at a complicated electric apparatus on the table beside him, “but I have worked it all out! I am sure of it this time!”

“Put that dreadful lamp out, and open the window!” called out Lola to Maria, as she started to pick up from the floor bits of broken glass and pieces of wire.

“I do wish you would use the electric lights, father. That lamp isn’t enough, even if you could be trusted to refill it, which you can’t!”

“You can’t teach an old dog new tricks, my dear,” smiled the Doctor, as he rose, rather stiffly. “The big thoughts won’t come by electric light, at least not to an old fellow who learned to do his thinking under an old-fashioned student’s lamp.”

“Oh, I don’t mind, not really,” answered Lola. “And, besides, the lamp saves money.”

She was turning away when the Doctor’s low chuckle of amusement stopped her. “Are you laughing at me, father?” she questioned, with pretended sternness.

“Just a little perhaps, my dear, because after this you need not think of little savings. You shall give up your school-teaching; you shall have new dresses every day of your life, and hats—— La! Never mind, you shall see.”

“You really think so, father?”

“I know it! After last night I shall never doubt it again. I did not dare to stop until my work was done, and then I sat there, dreaming, until I fell asleep.”

He looked again at his apparatus with such pride and confidence that even Lola, who knew nothing of the details of his experimental work, was thrilled with the hope of his success, and rested her hand tenderly upon his arm as she stood beside him.

They were much alike, these two, as they stood there together, the tall, rather delicate old man, and the fragile, sensitive girl. Dreamers both, one had but to look at them to see that, and they started apart, almost guiltily, as the little clock on the mantel struck eight.

“Eight o’clock! Oh, Maria! Eight o’clock! We must hurry!” Lola called out to Maria, who was busily arranging the breakfast table in the adjoining room.

“Come, father!” she continued. “Run and get yourself ready for breakfast, and the very minute we get through I am going to put you to bed.”

“Not to-day, my dear,” he answered gaily; “this is to be my busy day!”

As he left the room, smiling and happy, Maria looked after him anxiously.

“He’ll be sick if you don’t look out, Miss Lola. He don’t know no more about takin’ care of himself than one of my sister’s babies.”

Lola laughed cheerfully as she looked with approval over the neatly arranged breakfast table.

“I think he is perfectly well, Maria, and quite delighted with himself this morning. He feels sure that he has made a wonderful discovery, something he has been working on for years. I know that he thinks it is going to be a fine thing for all the world and for us, Maria; he says it is going to make us rich.”

“I hope so, I’m sure. There’s lots of little things we’re needing in the kitchen,” said Maria practically. “Anyway, he’s the best doctor in the world, and he ought to have the most money!”

“Don’t get his egg too hard.”

“No, Miss, it will be just like he wants it.”

When the Doctor returned he found everything ready for his breakfast, and he stopped to greet Maria kindly, as he always did, for aside from his habit of rather old-fashioned courtesy she was a great favorite of his.

“Would you like a pan-cake, Doctor?” she inquired anxiously, as she stood beside the table. “There’s a Dutch lady boarding with my brother’s wife. She showed me how to make real German ones.”

“I can’t have you spoiling father,” reproved Lola gently. “Besides German pan-cakes are not supposed to be eaten for breakfast.”

“She knows no more about German food,” said the Doctor, “than an Irishman’s pig! You shall make me one of your pan-cakes to-night.”

Maria smiled gratefully at him, and leaving the apartment ran down stairs to the letter-box in the hall, returning a moment later with the morning mail, which she put beside Lola’s plate.

“Four letters,” said Lola, glancing over them. “One for me, a bill! Two for you, father.” She pushed them across the cloth. “And, Maria! Oh, Maria! This is for you. Oh, Maria! You’re blushing. Who do you suppose it’s from,” she teased, as Maria stepped forward eagerly and took the letter.

“I guess, Miss,” said Maria in confusion, “I guess it’s from a friend of mine.”

Lola looked after her, as she hurried out of the room, the precious letter clutched tightly in her hand.

“Poor girl! That is from her sweetheart, the one she calls Mr. Barnes, and she can’t read it.”

“I thought you were to teach her,” remarked her father, as he helped himself to a second piece of toast.

“I am trying my best,” answered Lola, “but she never had a chance before, that’s what makes it so hard for her now.”

“She has done wonders since you found her, my dear girl. She has caught the spirit of this great New York, and she is growing very fast.”

“Hello!” he exclaimed, as he opened the first of his letters. “From Paul Crossett.”

Lola looked up, surprised and pleased, as her father hastily read the brief note, and continued.

“He is here, at last! Here in New York! And he is coming up this morning.”

“That’s fine!” exclaimed Lola, her face reflecting her father’s pleasure. “I have heard so much about him all my life, and now I am really going to see him.”

“I, myself,” said the Doctor, “have only seen him once in ten years, only twice in twenty. He is a great man now, rich and famous, but he was a scamp when I first knew him.” He laughed softly as his mind travelled back to the time when he and this successful French physician were boys together at the University.

“How was it?” inquired Lola, “that a Frenchman was your chum at Heidelberg?”

“He was,” her father replied, “even as a boy, a cynic, a philosopher, and he amused me. He had a big mind, and a big heart, and I loved him.”

As he spoke he opened the second letter, and after a moment’s reading looked up at Lola, his face reflecting an almost comic dismay. “Listen, Lola! ‘My dear Doctor,’” he read slowly, his voice betraying his surprise and growing distress, “‘I am going to call upon you to-morrow, and ask you to do me a great honor. I love your daughter——’” he stopped helplessly, almost like a child, afraid to continue.

Lola rose from the table, blushing furiously, but with a happy light underlying the guilty look in her eyes.

“Father!”

He looked at her for a moment, and gradually his look softened and the surprise gave way to a humorous tenderness.

“Let’s tear it up,” he suggested, holding the unwelcome paper out before him. “I think that would be the best way out of this.”

“Oh, no, father!” exclaimed Lola, catching his hand anxiously; “do go on, it’s very interesting.”

“Oh,” said the Doctor drily, “then we will proceed. ‘I love your daughter, and I want to ask you to let her become my wife.’”

“And to think,” said Lola, as he paused, “and to think that I didn’t know his handwriting.”

“So! So you know who had the impudence to write this,” assumed her father.

“Well,” replied Lola rather timidly, “I have my suspicions.”

“Oh, this love business,” groaned the Doctor in great disgust; “just as I have everything fixed, this must come! It is Mr. Fenway, I suppose?”

“Father!” cried Lola, indignantly. “Mr. Fenway! The idea!”

The Doctor turned the page quickly and read the signature, then exclaimed to her in wonder, “John Dorris! And I thought he only came here to talk to me! Did you know anything of this?”

“Anything?” replied Lola. “Well, I—I told him to write to you.”

For just a moment he hesitated; they were alone together in the world, these two, and the bond between them had been very close, and now all was to be changed; this stranger, a man, whom a few months before they had never seen, had stepped into their lives, and never again would this man’s child be to him quite what she had been for so many peaceful, happy years.

JAMES YOUNG AS DICK FENWAY.

Something of the bitterness of this thought must have become visible in his face, for Lola stepped to him anxiously, and he, generous and afraid of hurting any living creature as he always was, smiled at her tenderly and put his arm about her as he spoke gravely: “God bless you Lola, and if he is the right man, God bless you both.”

She nestled against him, reassured by his tone, and he continued, “John Dorris, a fine fellow, but I thought for a moment that it must be Dick Fenway.”

“Father,” she protested, “it isn’t at all like you to be so silly! Dick Fenway is nothing but—but a millionaire!”

“Am I supposed to sympathize with him for that?” inquired the Doctor gravely. “But, my dear,” he added, as he saw that she was mutely appealing for his sympathy, “I like your young man best, although he is like the rest of us; he isn’t half good enough for the woman he loves.”

He led her tenderly into the front room, and seating himself in his favorite old chair, drew her down upon one of its sturdy arms, and began to question her about John Dorris. At first she was conscious and embarrassed, but little by little, reassured by his sympathy, she opened her heart to him, and let him see that this new love that had come into her life was not a passing fancy, but a feeling so pure and tender that he sat awed before it, as all good men are awed when for a moment it is permitted them to read the secrets of a woman’s heart. He helped her greatly in that half hour, and as she clung to him, timid, half afraid even of her own happiness, he spoke to her of her mother and of what her love had been to him.

In all the world I think there is no stronger tie, no closer sympathy, than there is between a father and a daughter, and these two felt that then, and gloried in it, never dreaming of that awful thing that was so soon to come between them.

At last he left her, and went to change his clothes, and when Maria entered the room ten minutes later, she still sat there, her lover’s letter in her hand, her mind filled with strange, new thoughts, half happiness, half fear.

Maria went to her, and seeing the look on her face, and the open letter in her hand, said timidly, “That’s a letter from him?”

“Yes,” smiled Lola happily, “from him!”

“So is mine, Miss,” volunteered poor Maria, “but I can’t read it.” Lola turned quickly to her.

“Shall I read it for you?”

“Thank you, Miss, I knew you would, but I’d be ashamed to have him know it. He ain’t like most of the young fellars hanging around. He’s smart! He’s a sailor, on the Vermont, and he’s just fine!”

“This is from Boston,” said Lola, as she glanced at the open letter Maria handed to her. “I am glad to read it for you, of course, but before long I am going to have you so that you will be able to read his letters for yourself.”

“I hope so, Miss Lola, but I’m awful slow. I don’t know what I’d do if it wasn’t for you,” she continued gratefully; “there ain’t anybody else in the world I could bear to see reading his letters. I’d rather just keep them, without ever knowing what he said. It’s a lot just to know that a person wants to write to you.”

“‘Boston, June Third,’ began Lola. ‘Respected Friend: I write you these lines to say that I am well, and I hope you are the same. Boston is a fine City, with lots of people and many buildings. There is water here with ships and things in it, just like New York. I often think of you, and no girl seems like you to me, so no more from,

“‘Yours respectfully,

“‘Wm. Barnes.’”

“Ain’t that a fine letter?” said Maria, with great admiration. “Getting letters like that makes me more ashamed than ever. I’m afraid I’m too ignorant to appreciate all he tells about the countries he visits.”

“It is a very fine letter, I am sure, Maria, and he must be a fine fellow, and very fond of you?”

“Oh, yes, I’m sure he is,” replied Maria happily. “At first I wouldn’t have nothing to do with him, but he kept on coming around,—and now I’m glad he did. After what I saw at home I about made up my mind not to let any man come near me, but—but somehow he’s different. He wouldn’t act like father, or like my sister’s husband, I know; he’s the kind that seems to think a girl ought to be taken care of; that’s nice, when you never had anybody that thought that in all your life, isn’t it?”

“It’s very nice, Maria,” replied Lola, quite touched by the tone of real affection in Maria’s voice. “I am sure that it is the nicest thing in the world.” As she spoke a ring of the bell interrupted them, and Maria, hastily putting the precious letter in her apron pocket, went to the door and admitted a shabby little woman and a delicate child.

“Good morning, Mrs. Mooney,” said Lola, as she caught sight of them. “Good morning, Nellie! Come right in. Tell father, Maria!” she continued, and as Maria left the room she bent over little Nellie and kissed her tenderly, then turned to the anxious mother and did her best to put her at her ease.

“I’m afraid we’re too early, Miss,” began Mrs. Mooney, in that tired, colorless voice that tells its own story of hardship and hopelessness, “but Nellie couldn’t rest at all last night. We don’t want to be bothering your father, though; he’s been kind enough already.”

“He is quite ready for you, I’m sure,” replied Lola, “but I will go to him; he might need me to help him with his things.” As she left the room Nellie looked after her wistfully.

“There’s nobody I ever see like her,” she said, in that tone one often hears in children’s voices when they speak of those whom they have selected for that strange form of hero worship so common to the young. “When he hurts me, and I have to cry, I’ll see her with the tears in her eyes.”

“I know,” replied her mother gratefully; “it was she that first brought the Doctor to see you, and he’ll cure you yet, and if they do that——” She stopped for a moment and clutched at her breast, as though to tear away the dread and anguish that was there. “It’s all right, Nellie—it’s all right, I’m telling you! You’re going to be as good as any of ’em yet!”

LOLA VISITS THE MOONEY FAMILY.