The Tryst (Annotated) (Grace Livingston Hill Book) (23 page)

That evening a beautiful box of roses was brought to Miss Cole's apartment “For the young lady with the smile, with Calvin Treeves's compliments.” 

“What shall I do?” asked Patty turning to Miss Cole with the open box of loveliness and a troubled look on her face, “He oughtn’t to be sending me flowers. I didn't do anything but the simplest act of courtesy.” 

“There are none too many of those left in the world, child,” said Miss Cole, “and few falling his way that are not baited with silver. Better run around to his apartment and thank him. He may swear at you, but it will do him good, poor old soul. He's been too crusty and too selfish to get many of the good things of life except such as money will buy, and that isn't much, I've found out.”

She ended with a half sigh, and Patty with a thoughtful look at her and wearing one of the roses in her hair and another nestled in her gown, slipped down the hall and tapped at Calvin Treeves's door. 

She stayed a half hour that first evening, talking and laughing, relating a bit of happening from her school life, singing a scrap of a tender song, and impersonating a funny old woman she had known in her childhood. When she was gone the old man said to his servant in a tone he kept for the seldom and real things of life: 

“That’s a fine child, Whisper, a fine child! That’s the kind I'd have liked my daughter to be if I'd ever had one.” 

Old Hespur, deeply moved, and pottering round tidying the already tidied room, agreed: 

“She's all that, sir, she's all that.” 

Thereafter just at dusk every evening Hespur tapped at Miss Cole's door and preferred the request: 

“Would Miss Fisher be pleased to read awhile to my master to-night?” Or, “He's been having a bad day again. Would the young lady be kind enough to come and give him a bit of cheer?” 

So Patty would spend a half hour or more with the old rascal, who under her happy ministrations had become as tame as a canary in her presence. Whenever she entered the room it seemed to the two old men that the sun had suddenly arisen. Hespur would set her a chair, and give a poke to the fire to send the flames leaping up joyously, and would tiptoe away to a point of vantage with a sigh of relief, to enjoy the half hour as much as his master. When she had been coming for three days it seemed as though she had belonged to them for years, and they began to count on the hour of dusk as the centre of the whole day. 

So when Patty walked into the room in her traveling dress and hat and announced that she had come to say good-bye, it had all the effect of a bomb on the quiet room. 

“What! What-what! WHAT!” sputtered old Calvin Treeves in a blaze of anger. 

“I’m sorry,” said Patty gently. “I wanted to finish reading that story to you, but perhaps if I get at it I can get the most of it done--!”

“Story! Story be hanged! It’s you I want! YOU, I say! YOU! And she shan’t take you away from me. I say she shan't! You tell her so from me! You tell her so-o-o-o!” 

The tears were rolling down the old man's face and he was trembling. 

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” said Patty. “But you mustn't feel that way. Nobody is taking me away from you. I’ll always be friends, and maybe some day I'll be where I can read to you again.” 

“No, no, NO!” said the old man shaking his head from side to side like a spoiled child. “If you go now I'll never get you again! It's always so. Everything I get that I like leaves me. If s a curse. IT'S A CURSE! She told me long ago I'd be cursed for my money--!” 

“There, now. Master. There, there!” soothed Hespur patting his shoulder lovingly. “It's no curse, sir, it’s just life, sir! We's all like that! You have to be brave, sir! Don’t you see you're distressing the young lady! We don't want for to make the young lady feel bad. There's tears in her bright eyes. The young lady’s been very good, she has, and you shouldn’t reward her by getting upset, sir, when she didn't go for to make you feel badly.” 

“Oh, no,” said Patty brushing away the teardrops that had sprung into her eyes at the pitiful sight of the poor old child. “No, I wouldn’t hurt you for the world, and you mustn't take such a mournful view of things. Sometime very likely I'll be back. If I get a chance I surely will, but it happens just now that things are so I ought to go. Listen! Suppose I write you a letter! Would you like that? It will be almost like talking to you, and then you can write me one back some day. How will that be?” 

“You would forget!” mourned the old man. “Young people have their own lives. You are like my nephew. He came, and I wanted him, and he went. He wouldn't stay for all the money in the world. And now you are that way, too? You will go away and forget.” 

“No, I will not forget,” said Patty soberly. “I will write you a letter once a week and tell you something interesting that I have seen. But I don't think your nephew has forgotten.” 

“Do you know my nephew?” The old man sat up and shot a quick glance at her. 

The color flew into Patty's cheeks, but she answered coolly enough:

“I've seen him, of course, but what I mean is this: You probably haven't made him understand that you really care. If you had you wouldn't have lost him. Because I'm sure he hasn't forgotten. He's probably not understood, that's all. I have an idea you are one of those people that shut all the lovely part of them up tight in a shell and show only the hard, prickly side, and expect your friends to guess that it isn't all hard and prickly.” 

Patty's smile was adorable, the kind that would make the most unkind truth seem flattery. The old man looked at her sharply. 

“You know,” said Patty dimpling. “You weren't just really your best when you first met me. If I remember rightly, you gave me a very cool welcome, and if I had followed my first impulse I should just have scuttled off out of your sight in a hurry and never have crossed your vision again--” 

“You're a very plain-spoken young woman!” he snarled with a half a smile on his old purple lips. 

“Well, isn't it true, Mr. Treeves; weren't you very cross indeed to me that first day?” 

“Well, I suppose I was,” he admitted shamedly, “but I'm an old man and I'm used to having my own way, and people have to make allowances for me.” 

“But people won't, you know,” said Patty sadly, with a cute little tilt of her head. “They'll just think you are a horrid cross old bear and keep away from you, when they ought to know that you are very nice behind the prickers, and a splendid friend to have!”  

“There There! THERE! There! THERE!” spluttered the old man beginning to weep again. “I'm not! You know I'm not, and what's the use saying it? Hespur, you old fool, don't stand there gaping! Go get that leather box of mine! QUICK!” 

Hespur was at his side almost immediately with a dark leather-covered box in his hand. 

“Get the KEY, you old fool! What good is the box without the key, I'd like to know?” 

“Why, that's just what I said,” laughed Patty. “What good is it to have a nice heart unless you give the key of it to your friends?” 

“But I haven't a nice heart! I have a bad one!” confessed the old sinner looking into her eyes as if she were an angel come to bring him to judgment. 

“Oh, no,” said Patty quite emphatically. “You’ve shown me that you have a good heart. We’ve had some very pleasant talks together here.” 

“You only came because you were sorry for me,” grumbled the old man bitterly. “I saw it in your eye every time.” 

“No,” said Patty firmly, “I had another reason, too. I was sorry for you because I saw you put the prickly on the outside, but I really had another reason for coming.” 

“Well, what was it?” 

“Why,” said Patty hesitating, “I didn't expect to tell you that, but I will. There's no reason why I shouldn't. It was just that I once loved your sister-in-law very much. She was the sweetest woman I ever knew -- and, when you asked me, I came to see you for her sake!” 

“WHAT!” exploded the old man. “My, MY S-S-Sis-ter-in-law! Why, I never had a sister-in-law, child! Oh! You -- you --why you must mean --why! did you mean my nephew's mother?” 

“Yes,” said Patty simply, not understanding why there should be anything extraordinary in that. “I spent a few weeks once in the village where she lived. She was very good to me and I loved her. I think she was the most wonderful woman I ever knew.” 

“Why—I-I think so, TOO!” the old man burst out and the tears flowed gallantly down his cheeks in the first really repentant confession he ever made in his wicked old life. “I THINK SO, TOO, DON'T I, HESPUR?” The question came out with a bounce at the old servant so that he fairly jumped up in the air as he answered: 

“Yessir! Yessir! You do, sir. That you do, sir!” I've always said to myself you did, sir! Always, sir!” 

“I'm so glad you loved her, too!” said Patty softly. “And now, I've got to go, for I've several things yet to do before we leave and it’s getting late. But I’ll not forget to write.” 

Then she stooped and did the most extraordinary thing. She kissed the leathery, massaged, powdered, perfumed old forehead with a gentle daughterly salute like a rose breath and was gone. 

It was safe to say that a kiss like that had never dropped upon his soul from any lips since his mother had kissed him as a child. He sat quiet, petrified, until the door had closed behind her, somewhat prolonged by a bit of farewelling by Hespur on his own account, and then he dropped his old head on his clawlike old hands and burst into wholesome tears. 

“Therey! Therey!” patted old Hespur. “She’s gone, but wasn’t she a thoroughbred? Never did I see two that would have mated so evenlike. Bless’em, I hope they sometime meets together!” 

The old man looked up a cunning twinkle in his streaming eyes: 

“You think so, too, Hespur, don’t you? I knew you would. I thought of it the first time I laid eyes on her. Do you think, Hespur, it would do to put it in the will?” 

“No, sir, I don't, sir! You know he's a chip off the old block, and there's none like them to get a bit bull-headed if you try to drive them. It's like a calling, this marrying is, Sir; it's got to come from above or it won't work the right combination, sir. Better trust to Heaven, sir, if it's meant, sir, it's meant, and nothing’ll stop it. It's too delicate a matter, sir, for man's hand to meddle with.” 

“That's right, Hespur. I'm an old fool. I've bungled my own life and now I'm trying to bungle my nephew's. But say, Hespur, you rascal, what's that on the floor? Is that my jewel box? You old reprobate! You never picked it up! And she never saw the jewels! And I wanted to give her one--!” 

He began to sob in dry, hopeless gasps: 

“It's not too late yet, sir. I could go take it to her, sir. Pick out what you like, sir, and I’ll take it to her quick, sir.” 

The old hands grasped at the box, a great glitter of magnificent stones, picked up in all quarters of the earth, the pride and the boast of his heart, wrangled and grasped after, and collected, and kept in a wonderful safe in his room; no fit companion for a rich and wicked old man, but yet one of his whims that he had insisted upon. 

They hung above the precious stones. 

“Shall I give her the ring with the blue diamond?” he asked as his fingers hovered above the azure blaze. 

“Why not the white, sir? It’s very wonderful with a heart like fire, sir!” 

“No!” said the old man sharply, then sadly. “No, Hespur, I never give that away. That’s the ring I bought for the girl I loved. You didn’t know I loved a girl once, did you, Hespur?” His voice was almost a whisper, “But I did. Now, Hespur! Don’t you ever let me know I told you that, or I’ll send you to THUNDER!!! Do you HEAR???”

Hespur caught his breath: 

“Yessir! That’s all right, sir!” I’ll remember, sir!” 

“I don’t want you to REMEMBER! I want you to FORGET!” 

“That’s all right, sir. I mean forget, sir! I was forgetting, sir, then, sir! That was what I was doing, sir! Did you say you was going to send the blue diamond, sir? I’ll get the little velvet box, sir, shall I?” 

The ring was hastily encased and Hespur hurried away with the gift, but he was scarcely back again in the room and mending the master’s fire when light, hurrying feet were heard at the door, and Patty rushed in: 

“Oh, Mr. Treeves, dear! I couldn’t take this. It is very wonderful and beautiful, but I couldn’t take a gift like this.” 

“Why not, if I want to give it?” The little old man was trembling and crouching, his last pleasure was being taken away from him. 

Why, because it isn’t right. I 8houldn’t feel right, and if anyone ever found it out they would think I had come to see you for what I could GET! How I should hate that! And by and by you might get to thinking that, too, you know.” 

“But that is just so you won't forget me!” he pleaded. He was beginning to see how his illgotten gains would not buy him a thing that he really wanted. 

“Oh, there's no danger of that,” she smiled. “And here, if you want to give me a keepsake, let me have the little book I read to you from the first evening.” 

“It was only a library book. It's gone back!” sighed the old man wearily. “It wasn't mine to give. Nothing is, it seems, that’s worth while.” 

“I'm sorry to make you feel this way,” said Patty, troubled, “but indeed I couldn't take a valuable thing like that. Haven't you some little trifle?” 

“That's only a trifle,” he said fretfully. “If you only knew me better you'd think it was a good thing that I wanted to give it away. I'm not much of a giver. But show her the box, Hespur, maybe she'll find something she'd like better.” 

“Oh!” breathed Patty as the box was opened and the light flashed out from a thousand facets. For a moment she gazed in wonder, and then her glance traveled rapidly through the collection of rings, pendants, pins, bracelets, chains and unset jewels. 

“What is this?” she said, pointing to a little slender gold ring, worn almost to a thread, and set with a single tiny pearl so small as to seem almost mean and cheap in the wonder of display.”  Is it something you care for very much, or could I take that?” 

“It was my mother's ring,” he murmured. “Take it. I should like to have you have it, if you will. She never had money to buy anything better. I kept it because it was hers, but I am going soon where I can't keep it any longer. If you will take it I shall be glad. You are the kind of girl she was.”