Dr. Lavendar's People Part 25

This question of the purchase of a new press, before the old press had been paid for, was a very serious and anxious one. "I wish father could help," Alice said--they were walking home from Wednesday-evening lecture, loitering in the moonlight, and wishing the way were twice as long.

"Oh, I wouldn't think of such a thing," the young man declared; "we'll pull out somehow. He's gone off to the woods, hasn't he?"

"Yes, he went this morning; he's so pleased to get away! He won't be back till the Academy opens."

"I suppose he hates to leave you, though," Lute said.

"Yes, but I can see that the getting away is a great relief. I keep his pictures dusted, and take the flowers up to the cemetery for him; so he knows things are not neglected."

"But," Luther said, thoughtfully, "I think she's sorry to have him go?"

"Oh yes; sorry, I suppose," Alice admitted. "She's fond of him--in her way."

"Then why--" Luther began.

"My dear, she's _jealous_ of my mother."

"Oh, Alice!"

"Well, you know," Alice explained, "my mother was so beautiful--and poor Mrs. Gray! But I must say, Lute, she's the justest person I know.

She's always told me that my mother was perfect. And of course she was; but when you're jealous, it isn't so easy to acknowledge things like that."

"But I don't see how you can be jealous of the dead," Luther ruminated.

"Oh, _I_ do! I could be jealous of some girl who was dead, if you'd loved her, Lute." And then the boy put his arm round her, and they kissed each other there in the shadows of the locust-trees overhanging a garden wall. "I'm so glad there isn't anybody, dead or alive," Alice said, happily; "though I'd rather have her alive than dead. If she were alive, you'd have quarrelled with her, and stopped loving her.

But if she were dead, she would keep on being perfect. Yes; I'd rather marry a man who had been--been _divorced_," said Alice, lowering her voice, because the word was hardly considered proper in Old Chester, "than a man whose wife was dead, because he would always be thinking what an angel she was and what a sinner I was."

"He would think you were an angel," the boy told her, blushing at his own fervency.

But the fervency died on his ardent young lips when they got into the house and sat decorously in the parlor with Mrs. Gray. Rebecca was sewing, her hard, square face a little harder than usual. Mr. Gray had gone away on that annual fishing-trip--gone, with a look of relief growing in his eyes even as he stepped into the stage and pulled the door to behind him; pulled it hurriedly, as though he feared she would follow. Then, baring his head politely, he had looked out of the window and said:

"Good-bye. You will send for me should you, by any chance, need me. I trust you will be very well."

"I don't know that I have ever had to interrupt your fishing-trip with any of my needs," Rebecca had answered, briefly. She spoke only the truth; she never had interfered with any pleasure of his; and yet Robert Gray had winced, as if he had not liked her words. Now, alone, in the parlor, darning his stockings, she wondered why. She never said anything but the simple truth; but he looked at her sometimes as a dog looks who expects a blow. He was truthful himself, but he never seemed to care much to hear the truth, she thought, heavily. Once he told her that truth was something more than a statement of fact. The statement of a fact may be a lie, he had said, smiling whimsically; and Rebecca used to wonder how a fact could be a lie? She recalled the time when, with brief accuracy, she had mentioned to him in what condition of ragged neglect she had found his wardrobe after the "creature of light"

had left him; and how he had seemed to shrink not from the shiftless dead, but from her. And she remembered painfully that one unkindness: She had told him that, to her mind, not even the weakness of death was quite an excuse for saying you didn't like your own baby; and he had said, with a terrible look, "We will not discuss it, if you please, Mrs. Gray." She had never spoken of it again; but his look had burned into her poor, narrow, sore mind; she thought of it now, moodily, as she sat alone, her heart following him on his journey. If his first wife had only not been so perfect, she said to herself, she could have borne it better; if she had had a bad temper, even, it would have been something. But she had often heard Robert tell Alice that her mother had an "angelic temper." Rebecca wished humbly she herself could be pleasanter. "I don't feel unpleasant inside; but I seem to talk so,"

she thought, helplessly. She was thinking of this when the two young people came in; and looking up over her spectacles, she said, coldly:

"Did you remember to wipe your feet, Luther? You are careless about that. Alice, I found a flower on my daphne; you can carry the pot up to the cemetery when you go."

"Yes, ma'am," Alice said. She took up her sewing (for Rebecca would not have idle hands about); sometimes she glanced at Luther, sitting primly in the corner of the sofa, and once caught his eye and smiled; but there were no sheep's-eyes or sweet speeches. They were Old Chester young people, and such things would have been considered improper; just as sitting by themselves would have been thought not only indecorous, but selfish.

"Oh, Alice," Luther said, suddenly, "I meant to ask you; wasn't your mother's name spelled 'Alys'?"

"Yes. Why?"

"Well, it's such an unusual name that it struck my attention when I saw it in the paper."

"What about it?" Alice asked. "Oh, dear, why didn't father spell me 'Alys' instead of 'Alice'? It's so much prettier!"

"Prettiness isn't everything; and 'Alice' is a sensible name," Rebecca said. "Don't criticise your father."

"It was an advertis.e.m.e.nt in one of the _Globe's_ exchanges," Luther explained. "I was scissoring things, and the name caught my eye. It was information wanted. Of course it's just a coincidence, but it's queer, because--here it is," said the editor of the _Globe_, fumbling in his pocket. "I cut it out and meant to show it to you, but I forgot." Then he read, slowly, "_Information wanted of one Alys Winton--_"

"Why, but Winton was my mother's name!" cried Alice.

"_--one Alys Winton, who married sometime in 1845; husband thought to be an American, name unknown. She (or a child of hers, born in 1846) is requested to communicate with Amos Hughes, Attorney at Law,_" etc.

Alice stared, open-mouthed. "Why, Lute!" she said--"why, but that must be my mother!"

Lute shook his head. "I don't think there's anything in it. Do you, Mrs. Gray?"

"Might be," she said, briefly.

Alice took the crumpled cutting, and holding it under the lamp, read it through to herself. "But, Lute, really and truly," she said, "it is queer. Perhaps some of my mother's rich relations have left her a fortune! Then we could pay off the mortgage. Only I'm afraid my mother hadn't any rich relations--or poor ones, either. I never heard of any. Did you, Mrs. Gray?"

"No," Rebecca said.

"She was a governess, you know, Lute, in some horrid English family; the wife didn't like her, and she discharged my poor little mother; then the family went off and left her all alone in Germany. Perfectly abominable!"

"Don't be unjust, Alice; you don't know anything about it," Mrs. Gray said. "She was very young. Perhaps she couldn't teach the children to suit their parents. Though it was unkind to leave her unprovided for,"

she added, with painful fairness.

"I guess it was!" cried Alice. "Oh, how angry father gets when he talks about it! He says she was in such terror, poor little thing, when he met her. And yet she was very forgiving, father says. He says she wrote and told the gentleman that she was married. _I_ wouldn't have. I'd have let him think I'd starved, so he would have suffered remorse--the wretch!"

"I hope you would not have been so foolish or so selfish," her step-mother said.

"You see, she had no relations to turn to," Alice explained to Luther; "if father hadn't come, dear knows what would have become of her."

"I suppose she could have earned an honest living, like anybody else,"

Mrs. Gray said.

"Well, anyway," Alice said, thoughtfully, "this advertis.e.m.e.nt is queer.

She had no relations that father ever heard of; but there might be some one. What do you think, Mrs. Gray?"

"There might be," Rebecca said. She thought to herself that it was very probable; that first wife had brought Robert Gray beauty and love; it only needed that she should bring him money to make it all perfect.

In her bleak mind a window of imagination suddenly opened, and she had a vision of what wealth would mean to her husband, coming as a gift from those dead hands. She set her lips, and said: "Better find out about it, Luther. Write to the man and say that a person of that name before her marriage, died here in Old Chester, leaving a child--and don't keep your hands in your pockets; it's bad manners."

"Do you really think it is worth while, ma'am?" Luther said, incredulously.

"Of course it is," said Alice. "Suppose it should be some inheritance?

Such things do happen."

"In story-books," Lute said.

"Well, then I'd like to be in a story-book," Alice said, sighing.

"Just think, Lute, we might pay for the press and pay off the mortgage!"

"Golly!" said Lute.