Wild Wings Part 37

"I don't," said Phil. "I love her."

"I know you do. And she loves you. Go to her. Make her see. Make her marry you and be happy."

Phil was silent, not because he was not moved by the older man's plea but because he was almost too moved to speak. It rather took his breath away to have Harrison Cressy on his side like this. It was almost too incredible, and yet there was no mistaking the sincerity in the other's words or on his face. Carlotta's father did want Carlotta to come to him on his Hill.

But would Carlotta want it? That was the question. For himself he sought no higher road to follow than the one where his father and mother had blazed the trail through fair weather and stormy these many years. But would Carlotta be content to travel so with him? He did not know. At any rate he could ask her, try once more to make her see, as her father put it.

He turned to his companion with a sober smile at this point in his reflections.

"Thank you, Mr. Cressy. I will try again and I know it is going to make a great deal of difference to Carlotta--and to me--to have you on my side.

Perhaps she will see it differently this time. I--hope so."

"Lord, boy, so do I!" groaned Mr. Cressy. "You will come back to Crest House tomorrow with me?"

Phil hesitated, considered, shook his head.

"I'll come next Sat.u.r.day. I can't get away tomorrow," he said.

"Why not? For the Lord's sake, boy, get it over!"

Phil smiled but shook his head. He too wanted to get it over. He could hardly wait to get to Carlotta, would have started that moment if he could have done so. But there were clear-cut reasons why he could not go tomorrow, obligations that held him fast in Dunbury.

"I can't go tomorrow because I have promised my boys a hike," he explained.

Harrison Cressy nearly exploded.

"Heavens, man! What does a parcel of kids amount to when it comes to getting you a wife? You can call off your hike, can't you?"

"I could, but it would be hard on a good many of them. They count on it a good deal. Some of them have given up other pleasures they might have had on account of it. Tommy has, for instance. His uncle asked him to go to Worcester with him in his car, and he refused because of his date with me. They are all bribed to church and Sunday School by the means. One of the things Scouting stands for is sticking to your job and your word. I don't think it is exactly up to the Scoutmaster to dodge his responsibilities when he preaches the other kind of thing. Of course, if it were a life and death matter, it would be different. It isn't. I have waited a good many weeks to see Carlotta. I can wait one more."

Harrison Cressy grunted. He hardly knew whether to fly into a rage with this extraordinary young man or to clap him on the back and tell him he liked him better and better every minute. He contented himself by repeating a remark he had made earlier in the day.

"You are a darn fool, young man." Then he added, half against his will, "But I like your darnfoolness, hang me if I don't!"

Phil had a strenuous two hours in the store with never a minute to get at his father. It was not until the last customer had departed, the last clerk fled away and the clock striking eleven that the father and son were alone.

Philip came over to where the older man stood. His heart smote him when he saw how utterly worn and weary the other looked, as if he had suddenly added a full ten years to his age since morning. His characteristic buoyancy seemed to have deserted him for once.

"Dad, I've not had a minute alone with you all day. I am sorry Mr. Cressy bothered you about that blue sky proposition of his. I never would have let him if I had known. Of course there was nothing in it. I didn't consider it for a minute."

Stuart Lambert smiled wearily and sat down on the counter.

"I am afraid you have given up more than we realized, Philip, in coming into the store. Mr. Cressy gave me a glimpse into things that I knew nothing about. You should have told us."

"There was nothing to tell. I've given up nothing that was mine. I told Carlotta all along she would have to come to me. I couldn't come to her.

My whole life is here with you. It is what I have wanted ever since I had the sense to want anything but to enjoy my fool self. But even then I didn't appreciate what it would be like to be here with you. I couldn't, till I had tried it and found out first hand what kind of a man my dad was. I am absolutely satisfied. If Mr. Cressy had offered me a million a year I wouldn't have taken it. It wouldn't have been the slightest temptation even--" he smiled a little sadly--"even with Carlotta thrown in. I don't want to get Carlotta that way."

"You say you are satisfied, Philip. Maybe that is so. But you are not happy."

"I wasn't, just at first. I was a fool. I let the thing swamp me for awhile. Mums helped pull me out of the slough and since then I've been finding out that happiness is--well, a kind of by-product. Like the kingdom of heaven it doesn't come for observation. I have had about as much happiness here with you, and with Mums and the girls at home, and with my Scouts in the woods, as I deserve, maybe more. I'm going to try to get Carlotta. I haven't given up hope. I'm going down to Sea View next week to ask her again and maybe things will be different this time. Her father is on my side now, which is a great help. He has got the Holiday Hill viewpoint all at once. He wants Carlotta to come to me--us. So do I, with all my heart. But whether she does or doesn't, I am here with you as long as you want me, first last and all the time and glad to be. Please believe that, Dad, always."

Stuart Lambert rose.

"Philip, you don't know what it means to me to hear you say this." There was a little break in the older man's voice, the suggestion of pent emotion. "It nearly killed me to think I ought to give you up. You are sure you are not making too much of a sacrifice?"

"Dad! Please don't say that word to me. There isn't any sacrifice. It is what I want. I haven't been a very good son always. Even this summer I am afraid I haven't come up to all you expected of me, especially just at first when I was wrapped up in myself and my own concerns too much to see that doing a good job in the store was only a small part of what I was here in Dunbury to do. But anyway I am prouder than I can tell you to be your son and I am going to try my darndest to live up to the sign if you will let me stay on being the minor part of it."

He held out his hand and his father took it. There were tears in the older man's eyes. A moment later the store was dark as the two pa.s.sed out shoulder to shoulder beneath the sign of STUART LAMBERT AND SON.

CHAPTER XXII

THE DUNBURY CURE

Harrison Cressy awoke next morning to the cheerful chirrup of robins and the pleasant far-off sound of church bells. He liked the bells. They sounded different in the country he thought. You couldn't hear them in the city anyway. There were too many noises to distract you. There was no Sabbath stillness in the city. For that matter there wasn't much Sabbath.

He got up out of bed and went and looked out of the window. There was a heavenly hush everywhere. It was still very early. It had been the Catholic bells ringing for ma.s.s that he had heard. The dew was a-dazzle on every gra.s.s blade. The robins hopped briskly about at their business of worm-gathering. The morning glories all in fresh bloom climbed cheerfully over the picket fence. He hadn't seen a morning glory in years. It set him dreaming again, took him back to his boyhood days.

If only Carlotta would be sensible and yield to the boy's wooing. Dunbury had cast a kind of spell upon him. He wanted his daughter to live here.

He wanted to come here to visit her. In his imagination he saw himself coming to Carlotta's home--not too big a home--just big enough to live and grow in and raise babies in. He saw himself playing with Carlotta's little golden-haired violet-eyed daughters, and walking hand in hand with her small son Harrison, just such a st.u.r.dy, good-looking, wide-awake youngster as Philip Lambert had no doubt been. Harrison Cressy's mind dwelt fondly upon this grandson of his. That was a boy indeed!

Carlotta's son should not be permitted to grow up a money grubber. There would be money of course. One couldn't very well avoid that under the circ.u.mstances. The boy would be trained to the responsibilities of being Harrison Cressy's heir. But he should be taught to see things in their true values and proportions. He must not grow up money-blinded like Carlotta. He should know that money was good--very good. But he should know it was not the chief good, was never for an instant to be cla.s.sed with the abiding things--the real things, not to be purchased at a price.

Mr. Cressy sighed a little at that point and crept back to bed. It occurred to him he would have to leave this latter part of his grandson's education to the Lambert side of the family. That was their business, just as the money part was his.

He fell asleep again and presently re-awoke in a kind of shivering panic.

What if Carlotta would not marry Philip after all? What if it was too late already? What if his grandson turned out to be a second Herbert Lathrop, an un.o.bjectionable, possibly even an objectionable a.s.s.

Perspiration beaded on the millionaire's brow. Why was that young idiot on the Hill waiting? What were young men made of nowadays? Didn't Philip Lambert know that you could lose a woman forever if you didn't jump lively? Hanged if he wouldn't call the boy this minute and tell him he just had to change his mind and go to Crest House that very morning without a moment's delay. Delay might be fatal. Harrison Cressy sat up in bed, fumbled for his slippers, shook his head gloomily and returned to his place under the covers.

It wasn't any use. He might as well give up. He couldn't make Philip Lambert do anything he did not want to do. He had tried it twice and failed ignominiously both times. He wouldn't tackle it again. The boy was stronger than he was. He had to lie back and let things take their course as best they might.

"Cheer up! Cheer up!" counseled the robins outside, but millionaire Cressy heeded not their injunctions. The balloon of his hopes lay p.r.i.c.ked and flat in the dust.

He rose, dressed, breakfasted and discovered there was an eleven o'clock train for Boston. He discovered also that he hadn't the slightest wish to take it. He did not want to go to Boston. He did not want to go to Crest House. And very particularly and definitely he did not want to see his daughter Carlotta. Carlotta might ferret out his errand to Dunbury and be bitterly angry at his interference with her affairs. Even if she were not angry how could he meet her without telling her everything, including things that were the boy's right to tell? It was safer to stay away from Crest House entirely. That was it. He would telegraph Carlotta his gout was worse, that he had gone to the country to take a cure. He would be home Sat.u.r.day.

Immensely heartened he dispatched the wire. By this time it was ten-thirty and the dew on the gra.s.s was all dry, the morning glories shut tight and the robins vanished. The church bells were ringing again however and Harrison Cressy decided to go to church, the white Methodist church on the common. He wouldn't meet any of the Hill people there. The Holidays were Episcopal, the Lamberts Unitarian--a loose, heterodox kind of creed that. He wished Phil were Methodist. It would have given him something to go by. Then he grinned a bit sheepishly at his own expense and shook his head. He had had the Methodist creed to go by himself and much good had it done him. Maybe it did not make so much difference what you believed. It was how you acted that mattered. Why that was Unitarianism itself, wasn't it? Queer. Maybe there was something in it after all.

Seated in the little church Harrison Cressy hardly listened to the preacher's droning voice. He followed his own trend of thought instead, recalling long-forgotten scriptural pa.s.sages. "What shall it profit a man though he gain the whole world and lose his own soul?" was one of the recurring phrases. He applied it to Philip Lambert, applied it sadly to himself and with a shake of his head to his daughter, Carlotta. He remembered too the story of the rich young man. Had he made Carlotta as the rich young man, c.u.mbered her with so many worldly possessions and standards that by his own hand he was keeping her out of the heaven of happiness she might have otherwise inherited? He feared so.

He bowed his head with the others but he did not pray. He could not. He was too unhappy. And yet who knows? Perhaps his unwonted clarity of vision and humility of soul were acceptable that morning in lieu of prayer to Sandalphou.

As he ate his solitary dinner his despondency grew upon him. He felt almost positive Philip would fail in his mission, that Carlotta would go her willful way to regret and disillusionment, and all these things gone irretrievably wrong would be at bottom his own fault.

Later he endeavored to distract himself from his dreary thoughts by discoursing with his neighbor on the veranda, a tall, grizzled, soldierly looking gentleman with shrewd but kind eyes and the brow of a scholar.