Part 13 (2/2)

Then Susan went, because going in silence was the only way that she could save the shreds of dignity which remained to her, and bending forward, with a contented chuckle, Cyrus spat benevolently down upon the miniature sunflowers.

In the half hour that followed he did not think of his daughter. From long discipline his mind had fallen out of the habit of thinking of people except in their relation to the single vital interest of his life, and this interest was not fatherhood. Susan was an incident--a less annoying incident, it is true, than Belinda--but still an incident.

An inherent contempt for women, due partly to qualities of temperament and partly to the accident of a disillusioning marriage, made him address them always as if he were speaking from a platform. And, as is often the case with men of cold-blooded sensuality, women, from Belinda downward, had taken their revenge upon him.

The front door-bell jangled suddenly, and a little later he heard a springy step pa.s.sing along the hall. Then the green lattice door of the porch opened, and the face of Mrs. Peachey, wearing the look of unnatural pleasantness which becomes fixed on the features of persons who spend their lives making the best of things, appeared in the spot where Susan had been half an hour before. She had trained her lips to smile so persistently and so unreasonably, that when, as now, she would have preferred to present a serious countenance to an observer, she found it impossible to relax the muscles of her mouth from their expression of perpetual cheerfulness. Cyrus, who had once remarked of her that he didn't believe she could keep a straight face at her own funeral, wondered, while he rose and offered her a chair, whether the periodical sprees of honest Tom were the cause or the result of the look of set felicity she wore. For an instant he was tempted to show his annoyance at the intrusion. Then, because she was a pretty woman and did not belong to him, he grew almost playful, with the playfulness of an uncertain tempered ram that is offered salt.

”It is not often that I am honoured by a visit from you,” he said.

”The honour is mine. Mr. Treadwell,” she replied, and she really felt it. ”I was on my way upstairs to see Belinda, and it just crossed my mind as I saw you sitting out here, that I'd better stop and speak to you about your nephew. I wonder Belinda doesn't plant a few rose-bushes along that back wall,” she added.

”I'd pay you fifty dollars, ma'am, if you'd get Belinda to plant anything”--which was not delicately put, perhaps, but was, after all, spoken in the only language that Cyrus knew.

”I thought she was so fond of flowers. She used to be as a girl.”

”Humph!” was Cyrus's rejoinder, and then: ”Well, what about my nephew, madam?” Clasping his bony hands over his knee, he leaned forward and waited, not without curiosity, for her answer. He did not admire Oliver--he even despised him--but when all was said, the boy had succeeded in riveting his attention. However poorly he might think of him, the fact remained that think of him he did. The young man was in the air as inescapably as if he were the measles.

”I'm worrying about him, Mr. Treadwell; I can't help myself. You know he boards with me.”

”Yes'm, I know,” replied Cyrus--for he had heard the fact from Miss Priscilla on his way home from church one Sunday.

”And he's not well. There's something the matter with him. He's so nervous and irritable that he's almost crazy. He doesn't eat a morsel, and I can hear him pacing up and down his room until daybreak. Once I got up and went upstairs to ask him if he was sick, but he said that he was perfectly well and was walking about for exercise. I am sure I don't know what it can be, but if it keeps up, he'll land in an asylum before the summer is over.”

The look of satisfaction which her first words had brought to Cyrus's face deepened gradually as her story unfolded. ”He's wanting money, I reckon,” he commented, his imagination seizing upon the only medium in which it could work. As a philosopher may discern in all life different manifestations of the Deity, so he saw in all affliction only the wanting of money under varied aspects. Sorrows in which the lack of money did not bear a part always seemed to him to be unnecessary and generally self-inflicted by the sufferers. Of such people he would say impatiently that they took a morbid view of their troubles and were ”nursing grief.”

”I don't think it's that,” said Mrs. Peachey. ”He always pays his bills promptly on the first day of the month, and I know that he gets checks from New York for the writing he does. I'm sometimes tempted to believe that he has fallen in love.”

”Love? Pshaw!” said Cyrus, and dismissed the pa.s.sion.

”But it goes hard with some people, and he's one of that kind,” rejoined the little lady, with spirit, for in spite of her wholesome awe of Cyrus, she could not bear to hear the sentiment derided. ”We aren't all as sensible as you are, Mr. Treadwell.”

”Well, if he is in love, as you say, whom is he in love with?” demanded Cyrus.

”It's all guesswork,” answered Mrs. Peachey. ”He isn't paying attention to any girl that I know of--but, I suppose, if it's anybody, it must be Virginia Pendleton. All the young men are crazy about her.”

She had been prepared for opposition--she had been prepared, being a lady, for anything, as she told Tom afterwards, short of an oath--but to her amazement the unexpected, which so rarely happened in the case of Cyrus, happened at that minute. Human nature, which she had treated almost as a science, proved suddenly that it was not even an art. One of those glaring inconsistencies which confute every theory and overturn all psychology was manifested before her.

”That's the daughter of old Gabriel, aint it?” asked Cyrus, and unconsciously to himself, his voice softened.

”Yes, she's Gabriel's daughter, and one of the sweetest girls that ever lived.”

”Gabriel's a good man,” said Cyrus. ”I always liked Gabriel. We fought through the war together.”

”A better man never lived, nor a better woman than Lucy. If she's got a fault on earth, it's that she's too unselfish.”

”Well, if this girl takes after them, the young fool has shown more sense than I gave him credit for.”

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