Nancy Of Paradise Cottage Part 9

This bomb seemed to have paralyzed the little family.

"I--I--tell him----" stammered Mrs. Prescott, looking piteously at Nancy for help.

"You'd better go right down, Mother. Why, you look frightened to death, dear."

"I am. He frightens me dreadfully. I can't bear sarcastic people. Do go down alone, Nancy,--tell him I have a headache."

"No, no! That wouldn't be wise. What can he say? He may want to be very nice," said Nancy, rea.s.suringly. "Come along--don't keep him waiting. Here, just tuck up your hair a bit. Come on, Alma."

Inwardly quaking, but outwardly preserving a dignified composure, the three descended the staircase, with the calmness of people going to some inevitable fate.

"He can't bite you, dear," whispered Nancy to her mother, with a nervous little giggle.

Mr. Prescott was standing perfectly still, with his back toward the door, staring with an evidently absorbed interest at the wall in front of him. He turned slowly, as Mrs. Prescott entered the room, and for a moment surveyed her and the two girls without speaking. Then he said, casually:

"Good-afternoon, Lallie."

Alma shot a glance at Nancy.

"Good-afternoon, Uncle Thomas," said Mrs. Prescott, in a rather faint voice, and flushing crimson with nervousness. "It--it is very kind of you----"

"Not at all," he interrupted, brusquely, "not at all. May we have a light--it is rather dark."

Nancy quickly lit the gas, and as the light from the jet shone down on her upturned face the old man scrutinized her keenly. A queer, half-tender, but repressed expression changed the lines in his stern old face for a moment, then he looked at Alma, who was regarding him with perfectly unconcealed terror and awe.

"How do you do?" he said to her, holding out his hand. "How do you do?

You're my niece Alma, eh? Anne is the one who looks like--like my nephew, and Alma is the one who resembles her mother." He said this as if he were repeating some directions to himself. "I haven't seen you since you were children." He shook Alma's hand formally, and sat down at Mrs. Prescott's timid invitation, The short silence which ensued, while it seemed like an age of discomfort to the Prescotts, apparently was un.o.bserved by him.

"It has been a very long time since--since I have seen you, Uncle Thomas," said Mrs. Prescott in desperation, quite aware that this remark, like any one she should make just then, was a very awkward one.

"Yes. I never go out, madam. So this is Anne--Nancy, eh?" He turned abruptly to the girl and met her clear, steady eyes sharply. "You were a child--a very little girl when I saw you last. You resemble my nephew very much,--my--my dear.

"No doubt, madam, you are wondering at the reason of this visit," he said, all at once plunging into the heart of matters with an air of impatience at any "beating about the bush." "I've no doubt it was the last thing in the world you expected, eh?"

"It was indeed a surprise," murmured Mrs. Prescott.

"I realized that my grandnieces are growing up, and I had a curiosity to see them. There is the kernel of the matter. They are handsome girls. I suppose everyone knows that they have a rich uncle--and prospects, eh?"

"Neither my daughters nor anyone else has been deluded in that respect," answered Mrs. Prescott, with a touch of spirit.

"Hum. Well, that's good, I should say. Nothing puts anyone in such a false position as to be generally regarded as having--prospects. It's ruinous, especially for girls."

"My daughters have been taught that they must rely entirely on themselves. You need not have come to repeat the lesson to them, Uncle Thomas," returned Mrs. Prescott, trying to conceal her temper. Mr.

Prescott affected not to notice her rising annoyance, which was a natural enough reaction from her earlier nervousness. Instead he next addressed himself directly to Alma.

"So you think I'm a regular old ogre, don't you, my dear?" His eyes suddenly twinkled at her palpable terror and distress, but only Nancy caught the twinkle. "You think I'm a queer, crotchety old fellow, eh?

Well, don't let's talk about me. I want to know what you are planning to do with yourselves--an old man's curiosity. Your face is your fortune, my dear--though a pretty face is not infrequently a misfortune, so the wiseacres say. I understand that you two young ladies are going now to a fashionable school,--to learn how to be fashionable, no doubt. That's a folly--it would be better if you stayed at home and learned how to cook and darn."

"We _can_ cook and darn," said Nancy, demurely.

"So? Good. Now tell me why are you going to this school? It's no place for poor girls. I suppose it's some woman's notion of yours, ma'am?" pursued the old gentleman, turning to Mrs. Prescott.

"My plans for my daughters can concern you so little, Uncle Thomas----"

began Mrs. Prescott, throwing her usual diplomacy to the winds.

"That it behooves me to mind my own business, eh?" Mr. Prescott finished for her with perfect good-humor. "You are quite right, madam." He seemed really pleased at Mrs. Prescott's spirit, and went on, "You do right to tell me so. I have acted in a most unkinsmanly way toward my nieces, and consequently it's none of my business what they do or what they don't do. Well, if you had allowed me to interfere in this matter, I should have imagined that you were doing so simply because you wanted to get into my good graces, and so forth, which would have been quite useless in as far as it would have changed my plans in regard to them. It's a very silly thing you are doing with them, in my opinion, but I'm glad you have spirit enough to stick to your own mind. Now, my dear, don't be angry with me. Understand that I have come to interfere in your plans in no way at all. It's not my purpose to use your poverty and your need for my money as a force by which to tyrannize over you. I had these thoughts in mind when I came here to-day--on an old man's whimsical impulse: I wished, first of all, to put a period to the unfriendliness that has existed between us all these years; I wished to see my nieces, and I wished, at the same time--and in order to avoid any false att.i.tude on your part or on my own--to have it clearly understood that you must not expect any financial a.s.sistance from me. Live out your own lives--think out your own problems--make your mistakes, fearlessly--do not, I beg you, humiliate yourselves by trying to conciliate an old man, who chooses to do what he will with the money he made with his own wits and labor.

There, that is particularly what I wanted to say to you. Don't try to 'work' me. Don't expect anything from me. Thus, if we are friends, it will be a disinterested friendship. Otherwise, if I felt that we were on good terms, I should be thinking to myself--'It is only because I am the rich uncle.' If you were amiable with me, I'd think, 'That's because they are afraid of angering me.' Now--let us be friends. I think I can be very fond of my nieces--but don't expect anything from me. Is that clear? Will you make friends with an old man on those terms?" He looked first into Mrs. Prescott's eyes, and saw that she was still hostile; at Alma, and read her bewilderment in her face, and then at Nancy. Again his eyes softened, almost touchingly, and with quick instinct she understood the appeal that lay beneath his brusque language. She remembered her father's stories of his tenderness, and somehow she understood that what the old man longed for was the simple affection of which for so long his life had been empty. And she understood, too, his dread of gaining that affection by holding out hopes of payment for it. His reiterated "Don't expect anything of me,"

was more of a plea than a curt warning. He wanted their good-will for himself, and not for his money--that was what he was trying to say in his brusque, almost crude, way. Her eyes were bright with this understanding of his heart, and she held out her hand with a smile; for he seemed to have turned directly to her for his answer. He grasped her hand eagerly.

"There!" he exclaimed, with an almost child-like pleasure. "There is George's daughter, every inch. We understand each other, eh? Good girl. We shall be friends, eh? I'm a friend--not a rich old uncle, who'll give you what you want, if you manage him right. That's it, you understand? Now, this is pleasant--this is honest. Be independent, my dear. Don't expect anything of me. I tell you--if I thought that it was only thoughts of my money that bought your good-will, I'd give the last cent of it away to-morrow."

He got up, evidently well satisfied, and still retaining Nancy's hand in his. The other he held out to Mrs. Prescott, who took it, with a constrained smile; and then, in high good-humor he pinched Alma's dimpled chin playfully.

"Good-day! Good-day! I'm glad I came. We'll know each other better after a while. We understand each other, eh? The hatchet is buried, eh? Good. It's a piece of business I've been putting off for a long while. Tut-tut! Where's my umbrella?"

The three Prescotts stood at the window, staring with varying feelings at the stooped, but surprisingly agile old figure that walked off through the rain and fog, head down, the worn velvet collar of his old coat hunched around his neck--and with never a look behind. Then, all at once, both Alma and Nancy broke out laughing.

"You seemed to get along with him beautifully," chuckled Alma.

"Goodness, he scared me out of my five wits--so that I couldn't understand a word he was saying. I couldn't tell you for the life of me what he was talking about. I think he must be crazy. But he doesn't seem so bad at all. At times he even looked rather nice."

"Why, I believe he _is_ nice," said Nancy. "He's a funny, eccentric old man, but I'm sure that he'd be rather a dear, if he doesn't think that we are trying to 'manage' him as he says."

Mrs. Prescott was silent, her pretty face frowning a little. Nancy looked at her a moment, and then putting her arms around her, rubbed her own ruddy cheek against her mother's pink one.

"Put yourself in his place, Mother," she said gently. "He's very lonely--he wants to be friendly--he was thinking of Father all the time, you know. But he has a horror of our being affectionate with him just for the sake of his money. Imagine what it would be to be a lonely old man, always troubled by the thought that the only reason people would be nice to him was because they were hoping to profit by it."

"He made it very clear that he has no intention of--of helping us in that way," said Mrs. Prescott.

"And I'm glad of it. I'm glad of it!" cried Nancy. "I don't want to act and think and live to conciliate a rich relative. I think that must be the most hateful position in the world. I want to forget that Uncle Thomas is very rich and very old--just as he wants us to forget it. I want to make my own life, and have no one to thank or to blame for whatever I accomplish but myself."

"What an independent la.s.sie! You are right, dear," said Mrs. Prescott, touching the little curls around Nancy's flushed face affectionately.

"You are right. You are like a boy, aren't you? I was never that way myself--and that was the trouble. You have such good sense, my dear.

Whatever am I going to do without you?"

CHAPTER VIII

THE FIRST NIGHT AT SCHOOL

Miss Leland's school wore that sober t.i.tle with a somewhat frivolous air. It seemed to be saying, "Oh, call me a school if you want to--but don't take me seriously." It was like a pretty girl, who puts on a pair of bone-rimmed spectacles in fun and a.s.sumes a studious expression, while the dimples lurk in her cheeks.

It was a low, rambling, white building, with a stately colonial portico, and broad porches at each wing. In front, an immaculate lawn swept to the trim hedges that bordered the road; in the back, this lawn sloped downward to a grove of trees, which were now almost bare. Under them stood several picturesque stone benches, while just beyond lay a wide, terrace-garden with a sun-dial in the centre. Altogether, it resembled a pleasant country place, dedicated to merriment and good cheer.

Through the dusk of a rather bleak autumn night, its friendly lights shone out comfortably as the two Prescotts jogged up to the door in the station wagon.

The trip up from the Broadmore Station had not, however, been a lively one, despite the fact that two other girls besides the Prescotts had taken the hack with them; the first spasm of homesickness having evidently seized them all simultaneously. One of the girls, a little, sallow-faced creature, sat like a mouse in her corner, and by occasional dismal sniffles, gave notice that she was weeping and did not want to be disturbed. The other, a plump miss with scarlet cheeks and perfectly round eyes, had bravely essayed a conversation.