The Reclaimers Part 21

XI

AN INTERLUDE IN "EDEN"

An interlude should be brief. This one ran through a few midsummer days with amazing rapidity, considering that in its duration the current of a life was changed from one channel, whither it had been tending for almost a quarter of a century, to another and widely different course that ran away from the very goal-mark of all its years of inspiring ambition.

It was late afternoon of a July day. Jerusha Darby sat in the rose-arbor, fanning and rocking in rhythmic motion. The rose-vines had ceased to bloom. Their thinning foliage was augmented now by the heavier shade of thrifty moon-vines.

Midsummer found "Eden" no less restful and luxuriant in its July setting than it was in the freshness of June.

The afternoon train had crawled lazily up the Winnowoc Valley on schedule time, permitting Eugene Wellington, in white flannels, white oxfords, and pink-pin-striped white silk shirt, fresh from shave and shower-bath, to come on schedule time to the rose-arbor for a conference with Mrs. Darby.

The swift flow of events had not outwardly affected the handsome young man. The time of the early June roses had found him poor in worldly goods, but rich in a trained mind, a developed genius, a yearning after all things beautiful, a faith in divine Providence, abounding confidence in his own power to win to the mastery in his beloved art, and glorying in his freedom to do the thing he chose to do. It found him in love, and the almost accepted lover of a beautiful, wilful, magnetic girl--a girl with a st.u.r.dy courage in things wherein he was lacking; a frivolous, untrained girl, yet with surprising dependableness in any crisis. It found him the favorite nephew of a quiet, uninteresting, rich old money-grubbing uncle and his dominant, but highly approving wife, whose elegant home was always open to him the while he felt himself a pensioner on its hospitality.

Mid-July found him, in effect, the master where he had been the poor relation; the rich uncle gone forever from earthly affairs; a dominant aunt still ruling--so she fancied--as she had always ruled, but with the consciousness of her first defeated purpose rankling bitterly within her. It found Eugene still in love with the same beautiful, wilful girl, but far from any a.s.surance of being a really accepted lover. It found him insensibly forgetting the aspirations of a lifetime and beginning, little by little, to grasp after the Egyptian flesh-pots. Life was fast becoming a round of easy days, whose routine duties were more than compensated by its charming domestic settings. The one unsatisfied desire was for the presence of the bright, inspiring girl who had left a void when she went away, for whose return all "Eden" was waiting.

The swift course of events had created other changes. Some growths are slow, and some amazingly swift, depending upon the nature of the life-germ in the seed and the soil of the planting. In Eugene Wellington the love of beauty found its comfort in his present planting. It was easier to stay where beauty was ready-made than to go out and create it in some less lovely surroundings. Combine with this artistic temperament an inherent lack of initiative and courage, a less resistant force, and the product is sure. Moreover, this very falling away from the incentive to artistic endeavor exacted its penalty in a dulled spirituality.

Whoever denies the allegiance due, in however small a measure, to the call of art within him pays always the same price--a pound of tender bleeding flesh nearest his heart. For Eugene Wellington the Shylock knife was sharpening itself.

This July afternoon there were no misgivings in his soul, however--no black shadows of failure ahead. All the serpents of "Eden" were very good little snakes indeed. After a while he would paint again, leisurely, exquisitely; especially would he paint when Jerry came home.

As he lighted a cigarette, a recent custom of his, and strolled down the shady way to the rose-arbor to meet Mrs. Darby, he drew deep draughts of satisfaction. It had been an unusually good day for him. Unusually good. Business had made it necessary to open some closed records in the late Cornelius Darby's affairs, records that Mrs. Jerusha Darby herself had not yet examined. They put a new light on the whole Darby situation.

They went further and threw some side-lights on the late Jim Swaim's transactions. Altogether they were worth knowing. And Eugene, wielding a high hand with himself, had, once for all, stilled his finer sense of fitness in his right to know these things. He had also made rapid strides in this brief time toward comprehending business ethics as differing from church ethics and artistic ethics. Face to face in a conflict with Jerry Swaim, with Aunt Jerry Darby, with his conscience, his G.o.d, he was never sure of himself. But as to managing things, once he had shut his doors and barred them, he was confident. It was a truly confident Gene who stepped promptly into the rose-arbor on the moment expected. To the old woman waiting for him there he was good to look upon.

"I'm glad you are on time, Gene," Mrs. Darby began, rocking and fanning more deliberately. "I'm ready now to settle matters once for all."

"Yes, Aunt Jerry," Eugene responded, fitting himself gracefully into the settings of this summer retreat, with a look of steady penetration coming into his eyes as he took in the face before him.

"Any news from the Argonaut to-day?" he asked, at length, as Mrs. Darby sat silently rocking.

"Not a line. I guess Jerry is waiting for me to ask her to come back.

She must be through with her romantic fling by this time, and about out of money, too. So now's the time to act and settle matters, as I say, once for all. Jerry _must come home_."

"Amen, and amen," Eugene agreed, fervently.

"And if she won't come home herself, she must be brought--to see things as we do. _Must_, I say, Eugene."

"I'm glad she didn't say 'brought home' if she's going to send me after her," the young man thought. The memory of having been sent after Jerry in years gone by, and of coming back empty-handed, but full-hearted and sore-headed, were still strong within him. "How shall we make her see?"

he inquired.

Mrs. Darby rocked vigorously for a few minutes. Then she brought her chair to a dead stop and laid down the law without further shifting of anchors.

"All my property, my real estate, country and city, my bank stocks, my government bonds, my business investments--everything--is mine to keep for my lifetime, and to pa.s.s by will to whomsoever I choose. Of course it's only natural I should choose the only member of my family now living to succeed to my possessions."

How the "my" sounded out as the woman talked of her G.o.d, to whose service she was bound, but of whose blessings she understood so little!

Eugene sat waiting and thinking.

"Of course, whoever marries Jerry with my approval will come into a fortune worth having."

"He certainly will," Eugene declared, fervently.

A clear vision of Jerry and June roses swept his soul with refreshing sweetness, followed by the no less clear imagery of Uncle Cornie stepping slowly but persistently at the wrong moment after his wabbling discus. He looked away down the lilac-walk, unconsciously expecting the familiar, silent, uninteresting face and figure to come again to view.

To the artist spirit in him the old man was there as real to vision as he had been on that last--lost--June day.

"You are thinking of Jerry herself. I am thinking of her inheritance, which is a deal more sensible, although Jerry is an unusually interesting and surprising girl," the old woman was saying.

"Unusually," Eugene echoed. "And in case you do not make a will?"

The young man was still looking down the lilac-walk as he asked the question, seemingly oblivious to the narrow eyes of Mrs. Darby scrutinizing his face.

"I have already made it. If things do not please me I shall change it. I may do that half a dozen times if I choose before I'm through with it.

Now listen to me." The woman spoke sharply.

Eugene listened, wondering the while what sort of lightning-rod she carried, to speak with such a.s.surance of all she meant to do before she was through with the transactions of this life. Uncle Cornie had not been so well defended.

"I want you to write to Jerry to come home. You can pay her expenses.

She will take the money quicker from you than from me. She's as proud as Lucifer in some things, once she's set. But she's in love with you, and where a girl's in love she listens."

Eugene looked up quickly. "Are you sure?" he asked, eagerly.

"Of course I am! Why shouldn't I know love when I see it?" Mrs. Darby inquired.

Yes, why?

"But you mustn't give in, nor plead with her. Just tell her how well fixed you are, and how much she is missing here, and that you will wait her time, only she must come back, and promise to stay here, or I'll cut my will to bits, I certainly shall. I'll write myself to York Macpherson. He's level-headed and honorable as truth. If he was dead in love with Jerry himself--as he no doubt is by this time--he'd just put it all away if he found out he was denying me my rights. I'll put it up to his honor. And so with him at that end of the line, and you here, and me really moving the chessmen, it can't be a losing game, Eugene. It simply can't. Jerry may not get tired of her new playthings right away, but she will after a while. It isn't natural for her to take to a life so awfully different from her bringing up. When the new wears off she'll come home, even if necessity didn't drive her, as it's bound to sooner or later. She's nearly out of money right now, and she can't sponge off the Macphersons forever and be Jim Swaim's child. Is everything clear to you now?"

Eugene threw away his cigarette and lighted a fresh one, his face the while as expressionless as ever the dry, dull face of Cornelius Darby had been. At last he answered:

"Mrs. Darby has made a will, presumably in favor of her niece, Geraldine Swaim--a will subject to replacement by any number of wills creating other beneficiaries. In any event, Mrs. Darby proposes to have a voice in the final disposition of her property."

Mrs. Darby nodded emphatically. "I certainly do."

Eugene smiled approval of such good judgment. "You are right, Mrs.

Darby. What is your own you should control, always. But, frankly, Aunt Jerry, it is Geraldine Swaim herself who is my fortune--if I can ever acquire it."

"You don't object to her prospects, I hope," Mrs. Darby interrupted, with a twinkle in her eye.

"I couldn't, for her sake. And I am artistic enough to love the charm of an estate like this; and sensible enough, maybe, to appreciate the influence and opportunity that are afforded by the other financial a.s.sets of the Darby possessions. I'll do all in my power to bring Jerry back to a life of ease and absence of all anxiety and responsibility.

Shall I go out to Kansas after her?"

An uncomfortable feeling about that York Macpherson had begun now to pull hard upon Eugene's complacent a.s.surance, although he had rebelled a few minutes ago at the thought of going anywhere after Jerry.

"Never," Mrs. Darby responded. "It would just give her another chance for adventure and seem to acknowledge that we couldn't do without her."

In truth, Mrs. Darby was shrewd enough to know that with Eugene on the ground she could not count on York Macpherson as her ally. York would naturally champion Jerry's cause, and she knew that Eugene Wellington would be no match for the diplomatic man of affairs whom she had known intimately from his childhood.

"Aunt Jerry, how much do you know of the value of this Swaim estate?"