The Incendiary Part 24

"Mme. Violet interested me more," said Rosalie. "Rumor is linking their names, you know. I feel that she and I might become friends."

"She has just the saving spark of deviltry that you lack, Rosalie."

"It isn't every brother who can call his sister an angel so happily," said Mrs. Arnold.

"Nothing was farther from his thoughts than to compliment me, Mrs. Arnold. You should hear him abuse me in private. I am a philistine, a prude. But I grow accustomed to his taunts."

"Dear Rosalie, you are only not esthetic because you are so divinely moral. Just think, she objects to my marble cupids, that they are not ashamed of their innocence."

"Surely that is going far," interposed Harry, who had long been silent. "The modeling was capital. Most little cupids are just doughy duplicates of each other. But yours have character--baby-face wisdom--Puck and Ariel linking arms."

"Say two Pucks, Harry, or Rosalie will moralize. Ariel was a wicked little sprite. He used to go on bats."

Rosalie lifted a finger of reproof.

"But from my standpoint a dash of wickedness is just the sine qua non in art. How fascinating the Inferno is! And how tame the Paradiso! In art, do I say? In religion itself? What the horizon line is to the landscape--a rare pageant you have before you, Mrs. Arnold--such is the fall in the garden to the faith of our fathers."

"Do you mean that it separates earth from heaven?" laughed Harry.

"You would think, to hear this grumbler, it was his strait-laced sister and not his own laziness that prevented him from--" Rosalie hesitated.

"From amounting to something. Say it out. Ah, Rosalie, you have indeed achieved. Your Rosalind is divine, Carp says--and surely Carp knows."

"And Portia," added Harry.

"While my medallions----"

"Would be glorious if they were ever finished. But come," continued Harry, "I must dress for my wager. Where's Indigo?"

"He is about the house, Harry."

"What a name! Your valet, I suppose?" asked Tristram.

"And secretary. That is, he answers my duns."

"And so spares you the blues?"

"Punning again, Tristram," said Rosalie. "And you profess not to consider word-plays respectable."

"Right, always right, Rosalie."

The party pa.s.sed inside, and the Marches were escorted to their rooms, while Harry went in quest of Indigo. When he returned he found his mother alone in the front room. She seemed to be awaiting him.

"The rubies, mother?"

"They were mine. Sit down, Harry. I must speak with you."

Her manner was sad, and Harry thought in the strong light her face looked careworn.

"We are very much pressed for money--temporarily, of course. As soon as your uncle's estate is settled our income will be larger than ever; and even without that, Mr. Hodgkins has hopes----"

"But mother, you did not sell the rubies?"

"I have sold all my jewels, Harry."

Harry stood up. His mother gave him a long look. She had made this sacrifice for him. He understood and colored when he remembered the fate of the money his mother's rubies had brought. It was luck alone which had saved their name from a blot on the evening when McCausland raided the Dove-Cote.

"I must curtail my expenses," he said, rising to go.

"There is another matter, Harry," said his mother, still sadly but gently. "I saw Mr. McCausland in town today. He desires you to testify at your cousin's trial."

"Testify against Bob!"

"It is in relation to the will--the disinheriting of your cousin."

"Why, he admits that himself."

"He may deny it if his conviction hangs upon that point Mr. McCausland wishes to leave no weak link in the chain."

"Hang it, mother, I don't want to be mixed up in it. Think of the looks."

"All he wants is a word. You heard your cousin say he was disinherited under the will."

"Yes, that is--why, of course, I knew it. He told me at the jail that day."

"Then I will write to Mr. McCausland that your testimony covers that point----"

"No, but mother----"

Rosalie March re-entered at this moment. Her first glance was toward Harry and his toward her. Their thoughts had been traveling the same route and meeting half-way all during the talk on the veranda, when Harry was so unwontedly silent. Alas, he knew well that he was unfit even to look at her.

In their outward demeanor to each other he was embarra.s.sed and she reserved. The religious difference seemed likely to be permanent. For Rosalie was a Catholic, the daughter of an eminent Maryland family, as historic and proud as the Brewsters and more wealthy than even the Arnolds. But this barrier between them only acted with the charm of a material fence over which or through which a rustic couple are plighting forbidden troth.

"All ready to win my wager," cried Tristram, following his sister in. He, also, had changed his attire, and looked very handsome in his curling Vand.y.k.e beard of the cut which artists affect.

"What wager is that?" asked Mrs. Arnold.

"We pa.s.sed the river coming down, and I offered to canoe the rapids."

"And the river so low, Harry. It is rash."

"Would you have them set me down a boaster?" Harry was eager now. His mother knew "them" meant "her," and her heart yearned more and more to the son who was drifting away.

"Indigo!" he cried out the window to his valet.

"But the danger--was it not there the canoeist was drowned last year?" said his mother, anxiously.

"Hang the danger! It's the prospect of sc.r.a.ping the bottom off my new canoe that troubles me."

"Old age is privileged to prate, I suppose," said Mrs. Arnold, feebly attempting to smile.

"Cut the fingers off that lemon-colored mitten, Indigo, and get me some salve double quick. My oar blister's worse than ever."

Indigo sped up stairs for the scissors, and the party was soon on its way.

At the bridge Harry left them, proceeding alone to the boat-house, up-stream, while Indigo led the others to a rock below the rapids, where they were to witness the feat. To look at the long slope, nowhere steep, but white from end to end with foam, it did seem incredible that any craft could live through such a surge. The murmur was audible far away in the still countryside, and the air, even where the three onlookers stood, was moist with impalpable spray.

"Looks as though that wager was mine," said Tristram. "He might as well try to swim Niagara."

"Ought we not to have a rope in case of accident?" said Mrs. Arnold.

"By all means," cried Rosalie, and for an instant the two women were one in sympathy.

"Indigo," said Mrs. Arnold, "go over to Farmer Hedge's and procure a stout rope. If anything should happen----"

"Nothing will happen," said Indigo. But he obeyed her command, and departed in the direction of the nearest farmhouse. The moments were long drawn out with anxiety before he returned, until at last even Tristram's sallies could not draw a smile from the two ladies. So he coolly took out a pad of white paper, sharpened his pencil and sketched off the rapids.

"There he comes," cried Rosalie, peering up-stream.

"Harry!" murmured Mrs. Arnold, as her son rounded a bend of the river into view. Already he was coasting down without using his paddle. His brown arms rested on the handle before him and his muscles, seemingly relaxed, were tense for exertion.

A great log which had preceded him down had been whirled around like a chip and finally submerged, reappearing only in the clear water forty yards beyond. A similar fate surely awaited the light c.o.c.klesh.e.l.l which bore the beloved life.

As his canoe half-turned, Harry pushed his paddle into the water. Evidently it met a rock, for the prow righted at once and swept down a narrow channel where the rush was swiftest, but the foam seemed parted in two. Here again it caught, poised and spun around. It was fast on a ledge, and the young athlete was straining every sinew to push it off. While he was struggling in this peril, Indigo came down, staggering under a coil of thick rope.

"Indigo," said Mrs. Arnold, excitedly, "throw him the rope."

Indigo stood on the bank, but instead of obeying, ran farther down to a rock that jutted over the clear water where the rapids ended. On his way he heard the ladies shrieking.

"His oar is broken."

"But he has worked himself free," said Tristram, nonchalantly sketching. "He will win, confound it! Yet it's worth losing once to see that play of his right deltoid."

Harry's paddle had indeed broken in the last successful shove, but it was a double blade, and the half in his hand was used to good advantage. As he came sweeping down, his eyes intent on the prow before him, Tristram raised his hat and the ladies leaned forward, waving their kerchiefs. Harry answered their salute by standing up in the boat. It was a superb piece of bravado.

"He doesn't always wear a glove canoeing?" asked Mrs. Arnold of Indigo. Harry had just put ash.o.r.e an eighth of a mile down stream.

"No, the mate to that one's lost," replied the valet, "and Mr. Harry told me to cut it up for his hand."

"When lost and where?" said Rosalie.

"I don't know that."

"Let me tell you."

"What a sibyl!" exclaimed brother Tristram.

"It was on Broad street, the afternoon of the fire. Don't you remember, when we saw him crossing the street so hurriedly and I remarked he had only one glove on."

"You must be mistaken," said Mrs. Arnold. "Harry was ill at home all that day."

CHAPTER x.x.xI.

MATER DOLOROSA.

Honora Riley, who washed for Mrs. Barlow, lived in a ramshackle, desolate district of the city which was appropriately known as "the Barrens." Colliers, sooty to the eyerims, trudging home; ashy dump-pickers; women cowled in drab shawls from beneath whose folds peeped pitchers brimmed with foam like the whipped surface of the milk pail, but the liquor was not milk; such were the sights Emily noticed when she called at Mrs. Riley's to inquire whether it was a spell of illness that had prevented her from coming to wash that Monday.

"Come in," a feeble voice answered her knock. "Oh, is it you, Miss Barlow?"

Emily saw that the supper on the table, laid for two, was untasted, and that the eyes of the woman who sat on the chair clasping her knees before her, were red.

"We thought you might be ill, Mrs. Riley," she said.

"It is heartsick I am, and too broken-hearted to work, dear. Land knows I have good reason or I wouldn't fail your mother."

"It isn't the pneumonia again, I hope."

"Shame and loneliness have come upon me in my old age," said Mrs. Riley, wiping her tears with the corner of her tidy ap.r.o.n. "They've taken Walter away."

"Who took him away?"

"The officer came with a warrant this morning--and he my only child, and the kindest boy to his mother, with no harm or wickedness in him at all, at all."

Walter was Mrs. Riley's only child, the last of seven. All the others had preceded their father to the grave, narrowing the resources of the little family with continual illnesses and funerals. Finally her husband himself, an honest roofer, had been fatally injured in a fall and had pa.s.sed away, kissing the six-months' infant who would never know a father. This was long ago. For this child the good mother had provided by her willing labor, and he had grown to be her pride and hope, a promising boy of 14.

"'It was a bicycle he stole,' said the officer, 'away out in the country.' 'But I never meant to steal it, mother,' says Walter, and the boy was that truthful he never lied to a soul that breathes. 'I never meant to steal it, mother,' he says," repeated Mrs. Riley softly, her grief overmastering her.

"Did you say Walter stole a bicycle?" asked Emily, a vague reminiscence coming back to her.

"It was the bad company I warned him against, especially that Fenton boy and Mrs. Watts' little imp that has more tricks in him than a monkey. 'Keep away from them, Walter,' says I, but no, he would choose them for companions. And 'tis old Bagley, the junkman, I blame most of all. Upon my word, I believe he put them up to the trick. What would three little boys travel out to the country like that for, and ride away on three bicycles and then sell them to Bagley?"

"Walter sold it, then?" said Emily, thoughtfully.

"Indeed, Walter did not. 'Mine is safe and sound in the club-room,' says he; that's Lanty Lonergan's back kitchen he lets them use for a meeting place. 'It's in the club-room,' says Walter, 'and I wouldn't sell it, mother, but I was afraid to give it back; only I never meant to steal it.'"

"That I believe, Mrs. Riley, for I saw him take that bicycle."

Mrs. Riley's tears stopped flowing for a moment in her surprise. Then Emily related the story of her trip to Hillsboro and the conversation of the boys which she had overheard, not forgetting to explain her own share in frightening them away.