The Tryst (Annotated) (Grace Livingston Hill Book) (33 page)

It never occurred to her that she was making great embarrassment for her mother and sister, to explain her absence. She thought that she had been away so much it would be easy to say she was away again. Hal Barron's coming after her could have but one meaning. He had really liked her, and Evelyn's jealousy must have some foundation. Hal Barron had become so detestable in her eyes that she never wanted to see him again. She must stay away until she was sure he was over any such crazy notion, and had gone back to Evelyn. She thought sadly of the future. If Evelyn should marry Hal she would never want to go to see her, or be near her, for she would always remember the awful words she had heard, and always be self-conscious in Hal Barron's presence. If only her father would come back and tell her what to do! She would not mind earning her living, nor being in a house where they did not consider her an equal; if she were sure that she had a right to stay away from home as she was doing without telling anyone where she was. Suddenly her situation seemed to overwhelm her, and she put her head down in her hands and wailed aloud a little cry of heart-brokenness: 

“Oh, Daddy, Daddy, Daddy! Where are you? Why don't you write to me? Oh-GOD! Where is Daddy – and WHERE are YOU?” 

It was the nearest to a prayer she had ever come since the days of “Now I lay me” long ago. All during school God had meant little more to her than Santa Claus or fairies. Church was a ceremony of polite society, a vague placating of a distant peril. But since she had heard John Treeves preach something had stirred within her, some consciousness of a need of her soul, and a great longing and crying out for something bigger and higher than human help could give. The Bible she had bought had been diligently read, although most ignorantly. She had treasured in her memory all that John Treeves had said and she was beginning to grope in a feeble way after the light. This stifled cry was the first real appeal to Heaven that her soul had ever made and after it she sat hushed for a long time with her face in her hands and a quieted feeling as if somehow some influence were near to comfort her. 

FOR some time she sat there thinking, looking out over the water, trying to find a solution of her difficulties. But at last the chill of the January day began to creep through her whole body, and in sudden alarm she shivered and got up, looking around to see what she should do next. How foolish to have sat here mooning so long I If she should take a cold and be sick it would be horrid, here among strangers. Besides, she was a working woman and had no right to be careless like this. 

She cast a glance down to the little empty wharf and out over the water. The low, fat ferryboat was chugchugging along nearly to the other shore, and it would be sometime before it returned. A survey of the immediate vicinity gave no hint of a nearby trolley line leading cityward. She would have to wait for that boat to come back. There were no houses in sight where she could go and get warm. The only one was so far down the road that she might miss the boat again, so she set out to run up the hill to get up a circulation. In a few minutes she was at the top darting in and out among the little pine trees, her cheeks as rosy as red apples, and her eyes bright with the exercise. After all, it was good to be living, even if one was all alone! And what a beautiful spot this was, with its crown of trees, and its resinous pines scattered here and there among the other bare ones. There were spots of ground pine, and places that looked as if arbutus and wintergreen berries might be found in due season, and there were lovely flat rocks cropping out. She wished she were a little girl to play house there with acorns for dishes, and moss for a carpet. What a wonderful site for a mansion! How strange that some one had not found it out and built there! But then perhaps they would object to being opposite The Plant, although that was far enough away not to be annoying or unsightly. 

She walked about on the hilltop until the squatty ferry-boat had nosed up to the opposite shore for a while, and then backed lazily and begun its slow crawl back again. Then she walked in a leisurely way down the hill to meet it, idly watching a small boat that had shoved out from the opposite shore and was dancing like a speck in the sunshine on the bright water. She wished she had a boat and might be out there, too. 

From the forward deck she watched the little bark dance along a few rods above the course of the ferryboat, and when they passed each other she could see the man who was paddling, his broad shoulders scarcely seeming to move as the long, smooth strokes of his paddle dipped the water. He reminded her of John Treeves, but of course it could not be for how would he be out here? And then he was dressed in workman's clothes. What a foolish notion I But she watched him till the little canoe slid in to the shore just above the landing she had just left, and the man sprang up the bank and climbed to where she had been sitting. He was silhouetted against the sky. The likeness to John Treeves was still marked. But she chided herself for always thinking of John Treeves. 

She deliberately walked to the other side of the boat and set her thoughts upon the money Miss Cole had given her. Somehow it must be spent in some unusual way that would please her. 

When she reached The Plant and started toward the station where she must take the trolley, the door of the little gray house where she had left the flowers opened and a slight young girl hurried out after her, bearing a long-stemmed carnation in one hand, and holding the blossom close to her lips. She was a pretty girl with wonderful dark eyes and hair like a dusky cloud. But her olive cheeks were pale and thin, and there were dark circles under her eyes, which were heavy with weeping. She wore a shabby little blue serge and her shoes were patched and worn. She hurried up to Patty eagerly: 

“Thank you for the flowers,” she said shyly. “ You were good to come.” Her voice was soft and gentle and her speech was not like the other women of her family. She had evidently been to school. Patty could understand how she was able to do typewriting. 

“Oh, you have come back!” said Patty turning with interest. “I am glad to see you? Have you got all over your wetting?”

“Oh, yes, I am all right,” the girl answered indifferently, watching Patty with sad admiration. 

“How did you find Angelo?” asked Patty eagerly. “Doesn't he think there is any way for him to get out?” 

The girl's eyes instantly filled with tears and she shook her head. 

“It costs a great deal of money to do things like that. Even then” --she brushed away the tears --“even then you have to have pull--! If Angelo could get out he might be able to find out who did it. He could get somebody, maybe, to prove him innocent. But” – she made a gesture of helplessness –-”it's no use!” 

“How much money would it take?” asked Patty thoughtfully. 

“Oh, I don't know,” said the girl wearily. “A great deal I'm 'fraid. They are hard on people when it's a charge of murder, you know. We have no chance. I work hard every day. I do some typewriting at night. I get a little maybe to pay a lawyer. Not a very good lawyer maybe, but a lawyer, some one to try and help!” She put out her hands with another despairing gesture. 

“Is there no one who will help you? Have you no friends? Is there not some one among your employers who would do something?” 

The girl lifted her shoulders slightly, one a trifle higher than the other, lifted her eyebrows, and brought her hands, palm upward, in that indescribable gesture of her people to express incredulity. Her motions were graceful as a feather, her scorn was bitter and resigned: 

“People no money! Boss too stinge! Friends --no good when trouble come!” she said, relapsing into common parlance. 

“Well, you've got to let me help a little anyway,” said Patty with a sudden idea bringing out two ten-dollar bills from the twenty-five Miss Cole had given her. There were still two more dollars left from the sum as the flowers had cost her but three. Perhaps Miss Cole might not like this, but she had distinctly told her to buy what she wanted with the money and she wanted to use it this way more than anything else in the world just now. 

The girl stood staring at the money, not offering to take it: 

“Oh, you give too much. You are too kind,” she murmured. 

“Take it please,” said Patty, “I have no use for it now, and I want you to use it to help your Angelo. It will be a little toward paying a lawyer, maybe a better one than you could get without it. I know it isn't much, but if you take it to a lawyer right away perhaps he will begin to work on the case at once. Do you know a good lawyer? They are sometimes not honest. You should be sure to get a good one.” 

“I ask that nice man, Mr. Tree; he offered to help. He brought me home that time when I jump in the water. You know him? He is a good man. He promised to come back.” 

“Yes, I know,” answered Patty quickly, the bright color flying into her cheeks; “yes, you ask him. He will tell you. Now I must go. I hear my trolley coming! Good-bye!” and in a sudden panic she turned and flew toward the trolley station. What if Treeves should come and find her there! She must not risk another minute. 

Back in the city she found herself hungry and stopped at a small restaurant she was passing. It was a quiet place and not one of the better class, but it looked clean and there were good things displayed in the windows. Somehow Patty was not in a mood to be finicky that day. She paused a moment childlike to decide which of the dainty pastries she would select for her dessert, and as she turned to go in the door she noticed a woman in a shabby coat trimmed with fur that was matted and worn to the skin in places. Her hat was little more than a shapeless contortion of a bit of black velvet so old that its texture was scarcely recognizable. But it was the woman's eyes, big and hollow and hungry, that attracted her notice. She paused with her hand on the latch and turned back, hesitating. As she did so the woman gave a deep sigh, and the hollows in her cheeks seemed to be drawn deeper. She looked white and ready to faint. In sudden impulse Patty spoke: 

“I wonder if you won't come in and eat lunch with me! I'm all alone and would like company.” 

The woman turned her dull eyes toward the girl: 

“Why?” she asked half in contempt. 

Now that the words were out Patty was almost frightened at what she had done, but she meant to stick by it. 

“Why, just to be friendly. Have you had your lunch yet! I know it's rather late. I stayed out in the country longer than I meant to do.” 

“No, I ain't had my lunch nor my breakfast nor my dinner last night nor my lunch yesterday, nor my breakfast then either. I don't know when I've had a good square meal, but I'm not the kind you want to invite in there with you, and I ain't a-going.” 

“Oh, yes, you are,” said Patty sweetly. “If you are hungry, so am I, and that's all that matters, isn't it?”

Patty put out a little gloved hand and laid it shyly on the woman's bare, bony hand. 

“Come,” she pleaded, “we're going to have a nice time together.” 

“I don't look fit,” said the woman looking down shamedly at the shoes that were out at the toes. 

“Oh, yes, yon do, come!” and Patty drew her inside. “Well sit down at this little table in the nookery here, and then we’ll be more cosy,” and she drew her into a high-backed seat beside a little white-covered table and put the menu before her. 

“Now, what will you have? Order anything you want. This is my party.” 

But the woman only sat dully and looked at her. 

“Don't you want to choose?” said Patty, drawing the card toward herself. “Well, then I will. Do you like soup first? Oyster soup. How does that sound?”

“Don't!” said the woman sharply. “I ain't had any oyster soup in so long I can't tell when, and if you say it again I'll faint.”

Patty smiled and drew a pencil and pad to her, beginning to write rapidly, “oyster soup, roast beef, mashed potato, peas, and beans, apple sauce.”  Then she shoved it out to the waiter: 

“There, I guess that will do to begin on. If we want more we can order it later.” 

They brought the oysters piping hot at once, and the woman with a kind of dazed wonder upon her ate in silence. It was not until the second course was nearly finished and there was talk of pastry and ice cream that the woman began to look grateful and say a few words about herself: 

“I was down and out,” she explained. My husband died ten years ago and my little girl died, too, and then I had typhoid fever, and when I got up it was a long time before I could get work. There wasn't anybody left much that I cared for and I just didn't care whether I lived or not. But I had to, you know. You can't just walk out in the river and drown; nobody won't let you. I know, for I tried it more'n onc't. 

But what's the use? Here I am eating roast beef and enjoying it and knowing I'll be just as hungry again to-morrow and no chance to get any. It's only when you're almost starved or drowned that anybody comes along and stops you. The rest of the time they don't care a hang what becomes of you.” 

“Oh, but they do,” answered Patty pitifully, “only they just don't think.” 

“Well, what good does that do, I'd like to know? But I don't want to trouble no one. I don't need to live and I don't want to live and I don't see why I should have to.” 

“Why,” said Patty opening her eyes wide and looking thoughtful, “That's just the way I felt once a little while ago. But things all came out right. I guess they will for you, too. There's a person I know would be able to help you, only I don't know how to tell you to find him. I don't know if he will be in New York again. Do you ever go to church?” 

“Church!” said the woman with a sneer. They'd put me out looking like this. What should I go to church for?” 

“Well, there's a man preaches in a church here --at least he has several Sundays now. He'll maybe be there again to-morrow. Suppose you go and find out. His name is Treeves, and he knows how to tell discouraged people what to do. Here, I'll write it down for you, and if you go and find him there, just wait after church and tell him how you feel about living. He'll tell you what to do. He is wonderful! He helped me.”