when reality clutched him and made him face the future. He knew he had been a bad old man and a bad young man. He had had his own way all his life, had got himself riches and made others poor, had torn a tempestuous supremacy through his family and his neighborhood and his whole world and made everybody who did not fear him hate him – everybody save old Hespur, whom he had abused more than all. He knew, and wanted to buy back a little of his spent happiness by grafting to himself a young, strong, beautiful life; wanted to buy a whole Heaven for himself by making a late reparation to the child of the woman he had ignored in her trouble and given nothing but contempt. He wanted to do it in his own lordly way and not to enter Heaven by the lowly door of repentance as he knew the rest of the world must do. And so he sat and quavered and hung upon the words of the young man, his nephew, frightened lest here too he should fail, yet determined that he should not.
At last the nephew looked up:
“What do you want to know?” he asked reluctantly.
“Anything, everything that you can remember,” cackled the uncle joyously.
The young brows drew down and the young voice was cold:
"That would be impossible!” he said in that tone of haughty withdrawal. "There is very little that you have a right to know. You forfeited all that long ago.”
The old man crouched as if he were hit and shivered in his padded silken robe.
“I will tell you a few things,” went on the nephew.
“My mother and I lived in two rooms over a bakery for a long time and mother had to sell bread to get bread for herself and me! But she kept me in school as soon as I was old enough and every evening she went over my studies with me. Sundays we went to church, and in between services we took long walks in the woods when the weather was good and she talked to me of life. I shall never expect to hear greater wisdom from any lips than the things she said to me. And she was but a girl when she began to teach me! It was so that when I went to college my teachers wondered where I had got my advanced ideas, and how I came to be so well trained in concentration, and it was all my mother's doings!”
He looked up, and the old man was still huddled silently in his pillows, with his bright wild eyes peering out piercingly, watching, listening, being condemned!
“She slaved at fine sewing and embroidery half the night to keep me in school and prepare me for college, and she went without everything she could without my finding out, to spend the money on me. I even caught her going without the necessary plain food herself in order to have me well fed. She did all that, and denied herself everything possible, and do you think I could easily sit down and make friends with a relative who let her do all that for his own brother's son, and was amply able to have helped her? Not that she would have accepted charity. What she needed was a friend and a little kindly advice just to feel there was somebody back of her ready to lift the burden if she should fall under it. She would have paid with interest anything that had been loaned to her. But instead she was compelled to borrow from her own vitality, and you, you were to blame! You are a bad old man!”
The cool young voice pounded out each word like blows of a hammer driving in a spike. The old man seemed to shrink and shrivel before each one.
“You shan't say that!” he snarled. “I never did anything wrong.”
“It’s not what you did, it's what you refused to do!”
The old eyes quailed:
“Well, perhaps, I can make it up now!” he whimpered.
“No. It's too late. You can never make up what you missed doing.”
The old man sighed and lifted a trembling claw aimlessly to his lips as if to steady them:
"Well, well, go on with your story ——!" he evaded.
“There isn't much more. I went to work vacations and nights and mornings as soon as I was old enough and lifted as much burden as I could, and then she would have me go to college. I worked my way through that – and Seminary ——”
“What were you preparing for? Anything special?” There was deep interest in the old eyes. He wanted to avoid getting back to the discussion of his own faults.
The young man hesitated and spoke the words as if they were something sacred:
“I was preparing for the ministry."
“What?" said the old man suddenly erect. “You mean a diplomatic service?”
“Oh, no,” said the nephew, “theology!”
“You don't mean you were going to be a preacher! Oh, the devil!” and he finished with a cackle from the tombs.
The young man fixed him with a stern eye.
“Oh, well, go on with your story! The war came along and spoiled you for any such milk-and-water woman's job as that! I know the rest. Enough for the present. We'll talk about the war after dinner. Hespur, take the young gentleman to his room. He'll want to prepare for dinner, and I'm going down to the dining-room myself to-night to do him honor. Hear that, Hespur? You can hunt out my evening clothes when you came back. That's all, nephew! Go and get ready for dinner!”
Then quite naturally John Treeves found himself following the old servant to a suite of rooms directly across the hall from his uncle's.
“I hope you'll be entirely comfortable," said old Hespur adoringly. “You'll find plenty of hot water for your bath, and you've only to ring and I'll come. Would you like me to unpack your suitcase, sir, and lay out your things?”
“No,” said John Treeves with a weary smile, “I haven't much and I'm used to doing for myself, A bath will feel good, however.”
Nevertheless, when he was left to himself he did not immediately proceed to the white-tiled bathroom whose door stood so invitingly open, but strode to the window, thrust his fingers through his hair, with his elbow on the upper window sash and stood staring out into the beauty of the hotel grounds, and off at the purple misty mountains in the distance. But he was not seeing the beauty. He was thinking of what he had just said to his uncle, and his blood was still boiling over the remembrance of his mother and the indignities she had suffered from the old despot. And yet, in spite of it all, there had been an appeal in the old reprobate's eyes that somehow would not be denied. He had not meant to stay all night – not definitely – yet here he was staying, and he wondered if he had done right to yield even so much?
A car was driving up to the veranda below, and its Klaxon attracted his gaze idly. Two travelers were getting out, one an old lady, quite crippled with rheumatism apparently, and one a lithe young girl who sprang from the car nimbly and turned a charming face up to the front of the building with an appraising glance, then dropped her eyes with a quick motion and put out her hands to assist her companion. John Treeves started and said aloud to himself:
“That looks like Patty Merrill! I believe it is! I’m going down to see!”
CHAPTER VI
Miss Sylvia Cole was generally regarded by her friends and family as an old crab who was too important to be put in her place
