The Tryst (Annotated) (Grace Livingston Hill Book) (39 page)

“Oh, I wonder if the old master can see it. I wonder now! What a comfort he would a-took with it setting in front of that fire, now wouldn't he, poor dear!” 

And evening after evening as John Treeves and the great man who was helping him in this wonderful operation worked away on the wide mahogany desk with their great sheets of drawings and plans, Hespur would stand behind Treeves's chair and watch and listen and assent. Now and then Treeves would ask his advice, and Hespur's eyes would shine and he would always answer with alert readiness to suggest, yet never for a moment lost his sense of their relation as master and servant. Nevertheless, underneath his dignity, old Hespur was never forgetting that night when John Treeves took him by the hand and called him “brother.” 

“You never told me,” said Miss Cole thoughtfully one morning about two weeks after Calvin Treeves's funeral, “what you did with the rest of your twenty-five dollars. You surely couldn't have spent it all on a dinner for that woman and flowers for the Italian girl. Of course, if it's private I don't mind, only if it isn't it would be interesting to know.” 

Patty smiled and looked worried. 

“I didn't tell you because I was afraid you might perhaps not agree with me about it.”

“What's that to do with it? I told you to spend it the way you wanted to, didn't I? Well, I meant it. Out with it!” 

Patty laughed. 

“Well, I suppose you'll think it was throwing it away, but I gave it to Mary della Camera to make a nucleus for a fund for getting her Angelo out of jail. She said if he could get out on bail he might be able to get some proof that would clear him. I knew twenty dollars wouldn't go far, but I thought it might start some lawyer till he got interested, and maybe someone else would help them out if they had a start.”

Miss Cole's eyes were on her thoughtfully. 

“Well, you seem to have done a good many things for other people out of that twenty-five dollars. But I'm sure I don't see where your holiday came in. However, it was a great thing to do, I should think. Why didn't you tell me sooner and let me help ? Suppose you go over and find out how they are coming on and see if they need more. If they do, I'll send my check.” 

“Oh, Miss Cole, that would be beautiful! But -- but I think maybe I ought to tell you that I don't think your brother would approve. I've been some troubled about it ever since lest maybe I ought not to have done it, living in his house this way. It wasn't well -- quite loyal to the family, but I somehow had to do it.” 

“Nonsense, why shouldn't my brother approve?” 

Patty told her how she had gone to him about the shooting and he had told her to keep still about it. 

Miss Cole sniffed. 

“H'm! Well, I don't always approve of him by any means. Bring me my check book. Now, get your hat and be ready to go. It's a bright spring day and you need a change. If that's your idea of a holiday, have another.” 

So Patty fluttered off quite happily. It was exciting to be the bearer of such a substantial check as Miss Cole had made out, and her eyes shone bright as two stars as she took the trolley for The Plant. 

It was a great welcome she received at the little gray shanty, and the family gathered around and touched her shyly, her beautiful dress, her coat, the bit of fur she wore around her neck. They looked at her hat and the little jewel that fastened the lace just below her white throat, and they looked at her lovely face. They said brokenly, “You nica lady!” And when Mary della Camera came from her office work at lunch time her eyes shone gloriously, and her pale cheeks grew the faintest rose underneath the clear olive. The eyes grew sad again almost immediately, however. 

“I thank you. But I am afraid it is no use. There are too many against it. Too many!” she sighed. “That Ivan. He hates him! He wanted to go around with me, but I wouldn't. I go with Angelo only, and he hates him! He would kill him if he got the chance. I don't like that Ivan! He is sly! He pretends to be a friend, but I think he is an enemy!” 

They carried Patty around from house to house, showing her off, and she took the little babies in her arms and played with them, and found out all about the mother's troubles. They took her to Congetta's, to the house where Treeves boarded, and Patty had no idea that upstairs, treasured away in the bottom of his trunk, lay a snapshot of herself taken five years before with two long braids down her back and a big white hat tilted back on her head. If she had known that at this hour John Treeves usually entered that little gray door and sat down at that oilcloth-covered table for his dinner, she would have flown on swift wings away from the place and never gone back. But happily for her John Treeves had been suddenly called across the river in his little canoe to see about some point of question on the buildings, and had gone with- out his lunch that day and missed the sweetest sight he ever saw. Patty went happily on her angel way, promising a dolly here, a ball there, a strip of flannel for the old woman with the asthma and a pink bonnet for a new baby. It was all a joyous time to Patty and she stayed so long going from house to house and putting down in her memorandum what she had promised so that she wouldn’t forget, that she quite forgot there would be no time to go across to her bluff again and watch the boats go down the river awhile. So she had to hurry away. But she left a trail of sunshine in her wake, and they called her the pretty lady with the smiling face. John Treeves heard of her, and wondered. Tried to connect her with someone in the city church, wondered if after all Marjorie Horliss-Cole had forgotten herself long enough to accept his suggestion of doing something for someone else, and then forgot it again in his multiplicity of cares. But Patty went again many times with little gifts, some of them from Miss Cole, who was deeply interested in every detail of the visits, and one day she went to see Mary about something Miss Cole had suggested in Angelo's behalf, and finding her still at work doing extra time at the office, she, determined to take the ferry trip once more while she waited and discover whether there were violets on that bluff across the river. 

She stood watching the water wash in silvery laps away from the side of the old boat and it was not until they were half-way across that she raised her eyes to the opposite bank and discovered the little stone house peeping out between the hemlocks. 

“Why!” she said to herself. “I never saw that house before! How strange! Have I made a mistake and taken the wrong boat, or has the course of this ferry line been changed?” 

But, no, she could see the very log on which she had sat now as she looked to the little bluff. How strange I She got off the 'boat at the landing and danced up the hill on eager feet, standing shyly off by her log to look at the house, and discovering to her surprise that it was a new house, quite new, not yet finished. The workmen seemed to be still in it, fixing the window sashes. As she drew nearer, curious to see what it was like on closer acquaintance, she saw that there were other houses beyond, many of them, dropped here and there among the trees quite carelessly and naturally, as if they grew there and belonged. It was like a fairy tale, finding the empty meadow and woodside where she had wandered but six short months before all trimmed out with pleasant dwellings this way. 

There were walks laid out, too, and in some places men were spreading cement upon them, and setting out hedges, and shrubs of various kinds. Vines were growing here and there by porches, young vines apparently just planted. She turned to look another way and there before her rose a winding path of broad, low steps as wide as a city sidewalk, leading up in a great easy curve to a wonderful building on the very top of the hill, in the midst of the whole settlement, and now she saw that this was really the heart of the whole beautiful scheme, for each house, however it was set and wherever it was, faced toward this central building, half hidden from her eager gaze by the tail trees that were just putting out rich draperies of green. She turned into the winding stair and exclaimed in delight. At either side were broad stone railings or walls and men were working away at the front upper surfaces cutting letters in clear relief a sentence to a level, and sometimes one on the front of the stair rises. The first great curve of the railing swept around before her as she stepped up and the words that faced her, fully completed were “I was glad when they said unto me, Let us go up to the house of the Lord.” 

“Oh!” said Patty. “How wonderful! How beautiful! Who could have thought of it!” And then a memory came to her that brought a dreamy look to her eyes, that summer long ago and an afternoon on the vine-clad porch, an old engraving and a talk they had. The picture was of a temple set on a height, and children winding up a broad stair, singing as they went, and underneath the words: “I was glad when they said unto me, let us go up to the house of the Lord. My feet shall stand in the holy place.” How odd that this should be the same words! The talk had started when she had said that she hated to go to the school church it was so dull and uninteresting, and Mrs. Treeves had showed her this old picture and told her it had always been a kind of symbol of what she thought the Lord wanted His service to be to those who loved Him, happiness, and joy and willingness to serve. 

Patty went on up the broad stairs finding new verses at every turn. 

“Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord. Though your sins be as scarlet they shall be as white as snow, and though they be red like crimson they shall be as wool. The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin. The wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.” 

“Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn  of me for I am meek and lowly of heart and ye shall find rest unto your souls for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.” 

They wound along the staircase on either side. Such beautiful stone letters, wrought with vines and flowers now and then, a single thought on each level. Now it was salvation from sin, now it was rest to the soul, now it was hope and joy and peace to be obtained. Always in tiny letters below there were the references, and Patty stopped several times to note them down in her little book that she carried in her handbag, they were such wonderful words that she wanted to find them again. Then at the last turn she came out from behind dense growths of laurel and hemlock and pine, grouped like a portal, and there before her stood the church, a temple if there ever was one built upon earth, reminding one of the rare old cathedrals of the old world, yet with an air all its own that brought memories of the pattern given in the Mount. There was a great bell tower in which even then workmen were busy placing a chime of wonderful bells, and more stone cutters were chiselling away at the work about the entrance. 

“Jesus Christ the Chief Corner Stone.” 

“The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the Head of the comer.” 

That was what she saw on the great comer stone. 

And there were other verses chiseled here and there, standing out at you from the lily work on the pillars. Only lilies at first they seemed, and suddenly some word of God would stand clear to the eye, some startling promise. Oh, it was marvellous! What a brain and heart to have thought it out in these finest details! 

And then, as she stepped up to the wide doorway, there stood Hespur, looking down at a bit of mosaic flooring that had just been finished into which had been wrought the words in little golden cubes of stone, “I had rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God, than to dwell in the tents of wickedness.” 

There was deep feeling in the old eyes of the serving man as he looked up and saw her, and quite as if it were a natural thing to meet her there, he said in a husky voice, pointing to the words: 

“I’m thinking. Miss, that'll maybe be my job some day, and I'd like it rarely well, I would!” 

Her face kindled understandingly. 

“It would be great, wouldn't it?” she responded eagerly. What is this place, Hespur? Who built it? I just wandered into it. Is it private property?” 

“Oh, why didn't he bring you here, Miss? It belongs to the young master. He's building it. Miss, for his people. The people over there at The Plant where he works. But you mustn't tell anybody. Not a soul, you know. He's keeping it for a surprise. When it's done he's going to bring them over a few families at a time and rent them these little houses at cost, very low, Miss, less than cost, perhaps. He's not going to make any money on them, you know. And they're wonderful little houses, so cosy, so handsome, all different, fireplaces, little windows, bathrooms, quaint corners and seats and settles. Miss, you should go through them. He'll take you through, of course. But the people are not to know he's doing it. They will think some rich man has made the place. For he is just to be their fellow-workman, the man they know and love. He's figuring to preach to them here of a Sunday, but week days they'll work together just the same, and he’ll be one of them. That's his little house down there by the bluff overlooking the river. He'll live there, and I'm to keep house for him, and whatsoever sick or poor body he picks up to nurse for a while. We're going to move over next week. Down there is a school for the children, and over there is the hall where they'll have lectures and concerts and a band, and a place for the growners to study some, too, and over there that big pool; that's the swimming pool and gymnasium. Oh, it's going to be a fine little town some day. It's gladsome, it is, and I’m waiting to see their faces when they first give it a look over. He’s not got a name for it yet. He’s figuring on that now.” 

“It ought to be called Joyville!” cried Patty, eagerly looking around with a swelling heart and eyes that were starry with the wonder of it all. So this was what he was doing with his money! She might have known! 

“That’s the very thing, Miss! You’ll have to tell him. Miss. He’s about here somewhere. He’ll be here presently. He went in the church with the architect, something about the verses on the altar. He’ll be out and take you around. There's a lot more to see. The workmen's houses have every convenience, even to machines for working that run by electricity. You see he's figuring to make life a little easier for the women folks so they will have more time to bring up the children in the right way, and there's to be Mothers' classes to teach them how. I hear all the talk and it's wonderful, Miss. Step this way and we'll find the master!”