The Tryst (Annotated) (Grace Livingston Hill Book) (24 page)

“I shall keep it very sacredly,” said Patty gently; “and I feel honored that you want me to have it, though I should not have chosen it if I had known it was precious to you, I hate to take it from you. You should have it always.” 

“No! No! NO!” he fretted. “Take it! It’s not precious! Nothing is precious, I tell you, in this whole blamed world! It's all nonsense to live anyway, and worse to die! It's an outrage to have to!” 

“Oh, please don't talk like that. You mustn't! It’s wrong you know. There's a God somewhere and He likely loves you, I've always heard that God loves and understands everybody. It's often comforted me to believe that. Try it and see.”

“God! GOD! What do I want of a GOD! All He'd ever want with me would be to damn me--!

“There! THEEE! Mister Treeves, MASTER! Remember, it’s a young LADY you're talking to” -- broke in Hespur excitedly – “and she’ll miss her train, the young lady will.” 

“Well, there, go child!” 

The old man snatched her hand and pressed his withered old lips wildly, desperately, reverently on the soft fingers, then flung it from him. 

“GO!” I said, “and forget all that I have said! But don't forget to write to me! Don't—forget!” 

When Patty arrived in Miss Cole's room once more her face was so disturbed and troubled that the elder woman questioned her and Patty told all that had occurred: 

“It was dreadful, Miss Cole! I felt so sorry for him! He seems to be so lonely, and he carried on so--!” 

“Well, it’ll do him good!” snapped Miss Cole unexpectedly, although Patty could see she was wiping away a tear. “Yes, it’ll do him good!” she reiterated as if to reassure herself. “He's had his own way all his life. He's been selfish and grasping and cruel and overbearing and he didn’t care for anybody, so he got more and more money, for money was power, and that was what he wanted above everything!” 

“You knew him then when he was young?” 

Miss Cole was so excited that for once her alertness did not guard her secrets: 

“Yes, I knew him!” she answered, turning to look out of the window into the dark pines. “Oh, I knew him!” (A pause.) “He could have had what he wanted if he hadn’t cared more for his ambitions and his own way than for his friends. But he chose this way! He made his bed, let him lie on it! Plenty of people have spent their lives on the beds he made for them! Come, it’s time we got downstairs! Where is that porter?”

In thoughtful silence Patty followed her down to the office and into the cab. It was not until they were established in the sleeper and everything stowed away comfortably that she ventured another question: 

“Do you think I was wrong in promising to write to him?”

Miss Cole started as from a reverie and her eyes were sad and soft as she answered: 

“No, child, I don't! Poor old soul! Give him all the comfort you can now. He hasn't long for it in this world, and if all accounts are true, I don't believe he has much chance for it in the next --if there is a next!” 

Patty went to sleep that night with a great ache pounding in her heart and smarting in her eyes, and somehow she felt Miss Cole was tangled up in the tragedy. Then she dreamed that she and Miss Cole were trying to pull old Calvin Treeves out of a deep, dark pool, and he clutched at the slimy bank with his claw-like hand and screamed wildly for help, while his old servant stood weeping. 

She awoke to a gray December morning with lazy snow-flakes whirling through the air and carloads of Christmas trees everywhere along the side tracks.  

John Dunham did not accept the pressing invitation of Horliss-Cole to spend Christmas day in the Fifth Avenue mansion. Instead he ate a roasted chicken with onions and squash and a rice pudding, with Mrs. Burnside and her grandson in the little home bungalow at the end of the village street in Maple Brook. Not that he desired to do so. It was as far from his wish as the Fifth Avenue mansion. Christmas Day held sad memories for him, and it was only because he saw that Mrs. Burnside considered it her duty and was severely set upon it, that he humored her and stayed. She made a great deal of his being able to have the comforts of his old home on this holiday of holidays ; but every reference she made to the old days hurt him like a knife and he was glad that late in the afternoon he might reasonably plead the necessity for wending his way cityward. Even then he did not present himself at the Horliss-Cole house until very late, preferring to wander about the city rather than to come in on Christmas festivities that did not belong to him. 

He had said he would be late and he had hoped to be let quietly in by the footman and escorted to his room without the knowledge of the family. But he had failed to reckon by New York standards and he found everything in full blast about a mammoth Christmas tree whose lights made the great entrance hall one blaze of color, and put to shame the big yule log blazing rarely in the immense, carved-stone fireplace that flanked one entire end of the room. A concealed orchestra behind a wall of palms and ferns on the gallery above the wide staircase were sending forth most delicious strains, haunted with tender old Christmas carols and gay with the lilt of Christmas merriment culled from the music of the ages. Young men and maidens, a select company in gala attire, were dancing and frolicking around the Christmas tree, and the place seemed one mad whirl of joy as he entered. For a moment he stood on the edge of the room and looked about him, feeling most tremendously out of place in his present mood, and wishing with all his heart he had remained in the streets for another two hours rather than encounter this just now. Then Marjorie Horliss-Cole, whose gleaming shoulders and back rose startlingly beautiful in contrast to the amazing frock all gauze and sparkle that was neither midnight blue nor yet deep smoky forrest green, rushed forward and took possession of him. Her dark eyes were more wonderful than ever set off by the soft dusky hair in which nestled a string of some strange jewels that held all the lights of blue and green in her robe. If he had put his thoughts into words she seemed like the very spirit and essence of the Christmas tree stepped down off its branches to converse with men. 

But John Treeves did not feel that he had time to play with the spirit of Christmas trees that night. His heart was full of the message he meant to bring to the church on the morrow. It was also full of sad memories, and the day with Mrs. Burnside had not been particularly helpful, for that good woman seemed to feel it incumbent upon her to refer to his mother's illness and the details of her death with every other breath, until his heart was wrung with pain and every nerve cried out for rest. Therefore while he smiled pleasantly at the bright apparition of the girl his spirit shrank from mirth and longed for quiet. 

“You are just in time to dance this with me!” she cried brightly, balancing on a silver slipper and holding out a shapely hand. 

“Thank you,” he said. “I'm not a dancer.” 

“Oh, never mind that, I'll soon teach you, though I'm sure I don't see how you possibly went through the war without learning. I understand there was a great deal of it over there. Come on, well slip in the little reception room till you get the step, and then I’ll astonish them all with my new partner. I’ve taught hundreds. You’ll soon get it.”

“You misunderstand me,” he said gently. “I do not ever dance.” 

She paused and looked up astonished: 

“You don’t mean that the church won’t let you? I didn't think there were any narrow people like that left anywhere in the world. You know that won’t matter in New York. You will be expected to dance. The people will like you all the better for it. Nobody will object in the least.” 

“But I should object myself,” he smiled with that winning graciousness that always took the edge from any refusal. I’m not under any churchly rules as yet so far as that goes, and I do not know what the attitude of the church to-day, as a whole, would be on the subject, but I know that it is one of the things that I decided long ago I wouldn’t do, and I haven’t seen any reason to change my mind. I’m sorry to seem a sort of grouch, but I really don’t belong at a party to-night. I’ve had a long, hard day, and I want to make a little further preparation for to-morrow. Would you mind if I went to my room?” 

“Oh, not at all, if you feel that you must, but you must come over to the dining-room and have something first!” 

He followed her through the wide corridor into the dining-room, with its loaded table, almost deserted now, save for a stray couple or two who had drifted in to quench a thirst. 

A waiter brought him a plate of tempting Christmasy things, and asked his preference in wines, and when he quietly declined any of the latter the girl beside him looked up sharply and challenged him again. 

“You don’t mean that you never take anything? Never!” 

He bowed assent a trifle coldly. It did not please him to be put through a catechism about his personal opinions. 

“But why? You are surely not afraid?” There was a touch of contempt in her voice. 

He looked at her steadily, quietly: 

“Yes, I am afraid, if you please to put it so. But not because I have any more reason to be afraid than any other man or woman living. I don’t touch it because I believe it is a bad thing for anybody, and for my sake as well as for others I believe in letting it alone.” 

In her glittering butterfly garb she had seemed as far as possible from the girl with whom he had talked in the church the week before, but now her eyes suddenly took on a hungry anxious look: 

“Do you mean that you have to sacrifice all the things you want to do in order to live the kind of life you were talking about the other day?” 

“I mean that sacrifices are not even considered, if you really want to live that life,” he said with his brilliant winning smile, “but in my case it happens not to be a sacrifice. My ancestors did that for me, and I have neither the taste nor desire for such things. But couldn't we find some more pleasant subject for conversation than my personal opinions? They surely can't be interesting to you. Have you had a pleasant Christmas?” 

“Oh, so-so!” said the girl indifferently. “Of course I got all the things I told them I wanted, but then I'd have gotten them anyway. Dad always gives me all the money I want, and they seldom interfere with what I buy. And, of course, we've had a very gay time, loads of parties --but it's all a beastly bore when it's done. If you can't have the one thing that you want at the time it doesn't matter how much else you have.” 

His face kindled: 

“Do you feel that way, too? Well, well just have to see what we can find to do for someone else then. That helps a lot I tried it in France the winter my mother died. Christmas didn't seem to be Christmas, no matter how many turkeys they gave us, and so I just cut it all and went out to find some little French child that was worse off than I was. I found her. Little Marie Louise rolled up in a tattered quilt sick and cold and hungry. Her father had been killed in the war and her mother had been carried off by the Germans. Her oldest brother had been made stone blind by a shell, and her youngest brother, only eight years old, was the only one left to care for her. He had been away all the morning and most of the afternoon trying to get her a drop of milk for her Christmas dinner. He had come back without it and the two were sobbing in each other's arms when I found them, so I gathered them up and took them back to the boys. We gave them such a dinner as they hadn't had for months, and then took up a collection and went out and bought them clothes and things they needed and some toys. There was a doll with a pink dress for the little girl, and everything we could get to make a tree pretty. Then when it was ready we took the children in to look at it, and you should have seen their eyes bulge with wonder and joy. Their little, pinched, white faces got pink with happiness and they just sat down at the foot of the tree and gazed and gazed. We adopted those children then and put them with a good woman to be cared for, and fixed it so that they would be looked after when we were gone. But it made a bright spot in that dreary Christmas for me, I can tell you, that wouldn't have been if I had been trying to enjoy myself.” 

She had listened intently. 

“That's awfully interesting," she said. “I’ve often thought I'd like to go into settlement work, but mother would never stand for it. I'm coming out this winter, of course, but it’s not awfully exciting, because --well--I'm not greatly interested in it. I've thought a lot about what you said the other day --but I don't see how I could! I've been wondering --why couldn't I get some one else to do that 'asking' for me? Some one that already lives that way? Why couldn't you do it and get the thing I want for me? Ministers do pray for their congregations. Isn't that what they are there for?” 

“Well, not exactly,” said Treeves laughing, “but I get your point. You mean why couldn't I do the living for the whole congregation and they get what they want through me? Well, it isn't done, that's all.” 

“What do you mean?” she asked puzzled. 

“Why, I mean that there is no promise of that sort. The promise is only to those who comply with the condition. And it isn't God's fault that that is so; it wouldn't be possible any other way.” 

“I don't see why not.” 

“Why, because it is only when you are in accord with God's will that you ask things that are right and fit in with His plans.” 

“Then perhaps what I want does not fit in with His plans?” She cast a troubled belligerent look up at him. 

“Well, possibly. You could not tell that until you had given up yourself and your will to His plans, then you would know, and you would not ask a thing that you knew was not in His plans.” 

“Yes, I would! I want it anyway t I don't care what His plans are. That is making Him just like Dad and Mother. What I want doesn't fit with their plans either, and I mustn't even ask any more or I get sent off to a hateful old boarding school for another whole year.”

“Well, but don't you see that God couldn't trust people like that with a promise of that sort? It would be like giving a stranger a blank check and letting him fill it in with whatever amount he wanted, before you knew whether he was trustworthy or not. God only gives His blank checks to His own children who love Him so much and are so much in His confidence that He can trust them not to put themselves ahead of the universe.”