The Tryst (Annotated) (Grace Livingston Hill Book) (34 page)

“You!” said the woman looking her over, and then “Me!” with contempt. “That's different.” 

“No, it's not different,” said Patty, shaking her head wisely. “We're both souls, and it's our souls that get discouraged, not our clothes, you know. You see this man – “well --he KNOWS God!” 

The woman looked at her strangely and was silent. 

“There's another thing,” said Patty, “you must give me your address, and I will tell the woman I am staying with about you. It may be she can find you something to do that will help you not to be so discouraged. I can't invite you to see me because I'm not living in my own home just now and I don't feel free to have guests, but I will write to you and let you know.” 

The woman wrote at Patty's request her name on a bit of card that Patty had in her handbag. “Ellen June, General Delivery.” 

“There! That'll reach me if I ain't succeeded in walking out and drowning or starving to death before you write to me,” she said as she pushed it toward the girl. 

Patty paid the check at the door and they parted, the woman coming back after a step or two and touching Patty's arm to say “Thank you,” and Patty went away wondering whether she would dare tell Miss Cole about her and try to get her some work. 

“Well, I've spent the two dollars, very nearly,” she laughed to herself, “but just to make it full measure I'll buy some candy with my own money.” 

So she went into the next big candy shop and bought a big box of the kind of sweets she loved best, the kind she used to buy in school when her allowance had just arrived. Then with it under her arm she sauntered on and on wondering what to do next for an adventure. One more adventure she must have, for she was pretty sure that she hadn't been quite measuring up to Miss Cole's idea of what she ought to do for amusement. 

“I may have to take in a moving picture show yet,” she laughed to herself as she walked on. She gazed into the shop windows and watched the people she passed, and wandered on, enjoying the freedom to go anywhere or nowhere as the whim took her. She had wandered thus a long way down toward the Battery, and taken a cross-street that brought her near Brooklyn Bridge. She was just a little frightened at the strange foreign faces she met on every hand, and the gibberish she heard talked and began to look around with half-frightened glances and wonder if it would be better to go bade the way she came or make a straight line over to the elevated road only two blocks away. She decided for the elevated, for she realized that she was suddenly very tired, and crossing a queer triangular block with high fences, walls, rough-looking people and many heavily laden trucks she saw with relief just ahead of her the rising stairway of the elevated station and hurried toward it. 

In the gutter, and over the curb, close under the great rumbling tracks of the elevated, were huddled a number of babies squabbling over a dirty pasteboard box that someone had thrown in the street. They were literally babies, some of them hardly able to toddle, and no older person in sight to be responsible for them. They were dirty and eager and dressed in rags, and their eyes were sharp and cunning, already out for possession in this cold, hard world where they had so recently arrived. 

Patty paused and looked at them in wonder and sorrow. Babies! and out on their own that way. One had a great shock of tangled golden curls and eyes as blue as the Irish seas where his parents were born. 

Suddenly an inspiration came to Patty. She broke the golden cord that held her bonbons, and opened the box. Before the astonished babies had even noticed her, she had showered upon them each as many wonderful pink and white and chocolate sweets as their dirty little hands could hold. 

They looked at her with great round questions in their eyes, and they looked at their hands and then they crammed the candy in their mouths. 

Then behold a miracle! For suddenly, from out the invisible air apparently there appeared more babies, babies toddling, walking, running, babies being carried, all swarming a little throng about Patty holding up their dirty little hands, hungry little mouths, great eager eyes to Patty. And Patty gave and gave and gave until her box was empty, and then wished she had ten pounds more. She laughed and almost cried for still the babies came like bees to honey. How did they find out? 

She tore herself away from their dirty, eager, little grasp and promising to come again, hurried away up the steps: 

“And now I must go home!” laughed Patty. “Oh, crazy, crazy Patty! Won't Miss Cole be satisfied with this, I wonder?”

“It was all so quiet and different in the great Fifth Avenue mansion that Patty could hardly believe she had been away, hardly believe that anything was but a dream. Miss Cole had not returned yet, but Marjorie was there and bored with herself. She wandered up to her aunt's room, and finding only Patty, sat down for a bit of gossip: 

“I'm almost ready to give up,” she confided. “I haven't had a letter from Al in weeks, and he seems so far away. It's all like a dream now. Life here is so different. Mother is keen on Dunham Treeves, and he is awfully nice. Next to Al, I like him best of any one I ever met. Of course he isn't a bit like the young N'yorkers, but perhaps that's what I like about him. Mother calls me perverse, and I suppose I am, but I really couldn't stand a man that couldn't do anything but dance. Of course I like to dance. But just look at the way Dunham Treeves jumped into the water that cold day to save that poor working girl! I admire a man like that. And he'll have stacks and stacks of money. His uncle'll die pretty soon and he'll have all that. I guess there isn't any one in N'york that has more money than Calvin Treeves. Of course it would be fun to go right into all that. It would be a position worth having. If it weren't for Al --but then he might come back some day and I couldn't help thinking about it. Of course, if I got tired of Dunham Treeves I could always get a divorce and marry Al. And I'd be my own mistress then and nobody could stop me. It might be a way out, you know.” 

“Oh! MARJORIE!” cried Patty, dropping the magazine she was trying to read and standing up white with horror, “Excuse me, but how perfectly frightful!” 

“Well,” said Marjorie, looking down half-shamed, “I know -- but then everybody is doing it now, and if they WON'T let me have what I want, I must take the best way to get it I can. I would TRY to be happy with Dunham Treeves, of course!” 

“Do you want to know what I think?” cried Patty with eyes ablaze. “I think you are not fit for anybody when you talk like that. I used to wonder whether this Al you talk about was fit for you, but now I am wondering whether you are half good enough for him. If you can't stay true to him till he has time to make good and come back, you surely haven't any kind of love for him, I'm sure. And as for the other man, have you no conscience at all? What kind of a life are you cutting out for him? He at least is a good man.” 

“Yes, and he's fond of me,” sighed Marjorie; “but as you say, I ought to be true to Al. That's what I'd like to be, but I sometimes ask myself what use it is. He's there and I'm here, and daddy and mother would have a fit if they know I was even thinking of him.” 

“Well,” said Patty thoroughly indignant, “you ought to either cast him out of your mind forever or else be true to him, one or the other; I'm sure of that!” and she gathered up her magazine and went to her own room. But instead of reading, she threw herself on the bed and had a good cry. For all of the experiences of the day this last brief interview with Marjorie was by far the most depressing. And the queer thing about it was she couldn't tell just why it was that she felt so terribly about it. 

From the first Sunday of John Treeves's advent in the New York pulpit there had been a reporter present whom no one had observed. He came early and slipped unobtrusively into the gallery, taking a different seat every Sunday, where he would not be noticed. He was not reporting for any of the city papers, nor yet for the religious weeklies, yet he did his work thoroughly. Not a word, not a syllable, not an inflection escaped him. He was an expert or he could never have caught it all; every rapid fiery sentence, the telling points, the very sound of the voice almost was described. For those were the most unusual demands that had come with his orders. He was to make those sermons live again on paper so that the reader would see and hear almost as well as if present. 

Early on Monday morning a thick typed copy of the short-hand notes started through the mail with a special delivery stamp on them to hasten their arrival, and regularly on Wednesday morning the reporter banked a good fat check in payment thereof. 

It was Hespur who received the package and undid it with eager fingers, bringing it to his master to look at and handle while he drew the shade up and arranged the coverlets carefully. Then he took the typewritten sheets and sat down to read. Somewhere Hespur had acquired the ability to read well, or else he was spirit taught, for certainly he read those sermons well, bringing in the footnotes just at the right place, so that old Calvin Treeves should see how his nephew's quiet words had held the fashionable city audience breathless, or had brought the tears to many proud eyes. 

The first sermon that he read lifted the old man into the seventh heaven of pride, for he merely listened for the roll of eloquence, the flow of language, the effect upon the hearers. It was his nephew speaking to his world, and pride soared high, for again he was having his heart's desire. But the second time he made old Hespur read it over the thoughts behind the words began to grip his soul and make him cringe. 

“W-w-w-wH-at's that! Hespur, read that line over again!” 

“How hardly shall they that have riches enter the Kingdom of Heaven, sir.” 

“The young r-r-r-R-A-S-cal! He has no BUSINESS to say that! I'll teach him to libel--!” 

“But, sir, excuse me, sir, it's not his own words, I'm sure, sir. Those are the Holy Scriptures, sir, and you mustn't find fault with that.” 

“The SCRIPT-ure! The DEVIL! It NEVER says that in the Bible! The idea! Poppycock! Well, find it! FIND it, I SAY!” 

“I'll get the Concord, sir, it'll maybe be in it --riches, riches, yes, here it is, sir, just a minute --yes, here it is in--” 

“Well, you needn't READ IT again. I don't want to hear it. Anything like that I wouldn't listen to. As if you couldn't go to Heaven because you'd had a little money down here. I DON'T B-E-L-I-E-V-E it, Hespur, do you HEAR?”

“Yes, sir, but that won't change the facts, sir--” 

“HESPUR! Do YOU believe I'm going to hell? You do, Hespur. You DO! I never thought you'd go back on me like that.” The tears were coursing down. 

“Well, sir, I'm not saying just that, sir. It says 'how hardly,' sir. It means it's very unlikely, sir, considering, but not to say impossible, sir. Listen to the balance of the sermon, sir, if I remember rightly there's somewhat more on the subject, sir.” 

And so they would read and wrangle and soothe and storm, and over again, read and ponder and talk. And when the sermon was conned by heart so that each could take a phrase out of it anywhere and hand it back to the other in argument, they would turn to the Bible and hunt for more on the subject. 

And sometimes when his master was taking his nap old Hespur would be studying his Bible, trying to find something comforting, and then when the old man would wake up he would produce it. 

“I found a nice bit of saying, sir, in the place called John,” he would say. “Shall I read it out a bit?” 

The old man would growl assent, and Hespur would read: 

“Let not your heart be troubled, ye believe in God, believe also in Me--” 

“But I DON'T believe in God – Hespur! You KNOW I've NEVER believed in God! Blast you, Hespur, now WHAT did you read that to me for – that wasn't for me at all!” and before the distracted servant knew what was happening the old man was in a tremor of tears. As he grew weaker he seemed unable to control them, and it enraged him to know he was weeping. 

“Therey! Therey! Don't take on so, Master! What say we begins right now, sir? It's never too late to mend, as the saying is, sir!” 

“But how can we, Hespur, how CAN we?” and the old man pulled himself half up in the bed, grasping at his servant's arm. “Believing is something you've got to do, Hespur, before you can do it, you know.” 

“Oh, no, sir, the young master, sir, said different, sir, in his first sermon, you remember. He said as how believing was an act of the will. It was the assurance, sir, that was to come after, and with that we have nothing to do. You can decide to have faith in Him, sir.” 

The old man was still a long time and then he asked fretfully: 

“Well, then, who is this other Person that calls Himself ME? Read it again, Hespur. You know I want it read again, why don't you do it?” 

And Hespur would read again: “Ye believe in God, believe also in ME.' That, sir, I'm very sure, sir, is the Son of God, sir; Him that was Jesus on earth, sir. And listen to this, sir: 'In my Father's house are many mansions--!'” 

“Mansions! Mansions! That doesn't sound so bad--!” 

“I go to prepare a place for you, and if I go and prepare a place for you I will come again and receive you unto myself, that where I am there ye may be also--” 

The old man lay still, thinking: 

“Hespur -- what would He want with me? I've never had anything to do with Him?” 

The old servant shook his head and began to turn the leaves rapidly: “I couldn't just rightly say, sir; there's maybe some word on that question, sir--”

“You wouldn't suppose, Hespur, that He could do it for SPITE? Just want me there to get me in a corner and make me feel uncomfortable?” 

“Oh, no, sir, not that, sir. Not at all, sir. Not so I've been always given to understand, sir. Here, now is a bit. I knew I'd come on it. I marked it sometime back: 'For God so loved the world,' mark that, sir, worrrld, sir, that leaves out none, sir. Go so loved the worrrld, that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth on Him--” 

“There it is again!” snarled the old man, turning his head restlessly from side to side. “Believe, believe, believe, always believe! Well, what if I do?”