In Apple-Blossom Time: A Fairy-Tale to Date. Clara Louise Burnham

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ for Rufus would be the bridge that carried you over!' Her voice was so cold and contemptuous! Daddy came to me and there was despair in his face. He put his hand on my shoulder while she went on talking: 'Many times since the day that Rufus saw Geraldine in the park,' she said, 'he has told me they would be glad to have her come out to the farm and live with them. I think you ought to send her. She isn't needed here and they really do need somebody.' The desperate look in my father's face wrung my heart. He did not look at my stepmother nor answer her; but just gazed into my eyes and said over and over softly, 'Forgive me, Gerrie. Forgive me.' I took his hands in mine and told him I had nothing to forgive." The young girl choked.

      When she could go on she spoke again: "A couple of days after that he died. My stepmother was angry because he left no life insurance, and she talked to me again about going to work, and again brought up the subject of the Carder farm. She tried to flatter me by talking of her cousin's admiration of me the day he saw me in the park. I told her I could not bear to go to people who had not been kind to my father, and she replied that what Daddy had said that day must have been caused by his illness, for Rufus Carder had befriended him times without number."

      The girl lifted her appealing eyes to Miss Upton's face as she continued: "Of course I knew that my dear father had been weak and I couldn't contradict her; so after trying and failing, trying and failing many times, as I've told you, I came to feel that the farm might be the right place for me after all. Work is the only thing I'm not afraid of now. It must be a forlorn place if they need help and can't get it. I think they said he and his mother live alone, but I shan't care how forlorn it is if only Mrs. Carder is like—like—you, for instance!" The girl laid her hand impulsively on her companion's knee.

      At that moment a man appeared in the wide doorway to the reception-room and looked about uncertainly. Instantly Miss Upton recognized the long, weather-beaten face, the straggling hair, the half-open mouth, and the revealing collar of her restaurant rival.

      She gave her companion a mirthful nudge.

      "He's right on my trail, you see," she whispered. "Adam's apple and all."

      Geraldine glanced up and the stranger's roving gaze fell straight upon hers. He came toward her.

      "Miss Melody?" he said in a rasping voice.

      She rose as if impelled by some inner spring, her light disdain swallowed in dread.

      "This is Mr. Carder, then," she returned.

      "You've guessed right the very first time," responded the man with an air of relief. "I recognize you now, but you look some different from the only other time I ever saw you."

      "This is Miss Upton, Mr. Carder, a lady who has befriended me very kindly while I have been waiting for you."

      "Yes, and who prevented me from havin' lunch with you," responded the stranger, eying Miss Upton jocosely; but as if he could not spare time from the near survey of Geraldine his eyes again swept over her hair and crimsoning cheeks. "I thought I felt some strong drawin' toward that particular table," he added. "Well, we'll make up for it in the future you can bet. That your bag here? We'd better be runnin' along. Time, tide, and business don't wait for any man. Good-bye, Miss Upton, I'll forgive you for takin' my place, considerin' you've been good to this little girl."

      Miss Mehitable's face was as solemn as lies in the power of round faces to be. At close quarters one observed a cast in Mr. Carder's right eye. She disapproved his assured proprietary air and she disapproved him the more that she could see repulsion in the young girl's suddenly pale countenance. She had time for only one strong pressure of a little hand before Geraldine was whisked away and she was left standing there stunned by the suddenness of it all.

      "I never asked where it was!" she ejaculated suddenly. "I've lost the child!" People began to look at her and she continued mentally: "The critter looked as if he wanted to eat her up, the poor little lamb. Unless the mother's something different from the son she'll be driven to desperation. No knowin' what she'll do." Miss Upton clasped her plump hands together in great trouble of spirit. "I believe I said Keefe more'n once. Perhaps she'll have sense enough to write to me. Why didn't I just tell that old rawbones that her plans was changed and she was goin' with me. Oh, I am a fool! I don't know what I'd have done with her; but some way would have opened. Let's see. Where am I!" Miss Upton delved distractedly into the large bag that hung on her arm. "Where's my list? Am I through or not?" She seemed to herself to have lived long since her wearied entrance into that restaurant.

      In her uneventful life this brief experience took deep hold on her imagination. As she rode out to Keefe on the train that afternoon she constructed the scenes of the story in her mind.

      The weak, handsome, despairing father begging his child's forgiveness. The dismantling of the home. The placing of Geraldine in a cheap lodging while her father's widow shed all responsibility of her and set forth in new raiment for green fields and pastures new.

      The shabby and carelessly put on suit in which Geraldine had appeared this morning told a tale. The girl had said she despised her looks. Her appearance had borne out the declaration. The lovely hair had been brushed tightly back; the old hat would have been unbecoming if it could: all seemed to testify that if the girl could have had her way not an element of attractiveness would have been observable in her. Miss Upton waxed indignant as she went on to picture the probable scenes which had frightened and disgusted the child into such an abnormal frame of mind. The memory of Rufus Carder's gaze, as his oblique eye had feasted upon his guest, brought the blood to Miss Mehitable's face.

      "I'll find out where she is if I have to employ a detective," she thought, setting her lips. "Now there's no use in bein' a fool," she muttered after a little more apprehensive thought. "I shall get daffy if I go on thinkin' about it. I'll do my accounts and see if I can take my mind off it."

      Meanwhile Geraldine with her escort was also on a moving train. A creeping train it seemed to her. Rufus Carder was trying to make himself agreeable. She strove with herself to give him credit for that. She had not lived to be a nineteen-year-old school girl without meeting attractive young men. Her stepmother had always kept her in the background at times when it was impossible to eliminate her altogether, quite, as Geraldine had said, like the stepmother of a fairy tale; but there had been holidays with school friends and an occasional admirer; although these cases had been rare because Geraldine, always kept on short allowance as to money and clothes, avoided as much as possible social affairs outside the school.

      She tried now to find amusement instead of mental paralysis in the proximity of her present escort, contrasting him with some men she had known; but recent bitter experiences made his probably well-intentioned familiarities sorely trying. There was a lump in his cheek. Geraldine hoped it arose from an afflicted tooth, but she strongly suspected tobacco. Oh, if he would but sit a little farther away from her!

      "So you've renounced the city, the world, the flesh, and the devil," said Rufus when the conductor had left them, and he settled down in an attitude that brought his shoulder in contact with Geraldine's.

      She drew closer to the window and kept her eyes ahead. "He is as old as Father," she thought. "He means to be kind."

      "There is not much chance for those at school," she replied. "School is about all I know."

      "Well, you don't need to know anything else," returned Rufus protectingly. "I'll bet Juliet kept you out of sight." He laughed, and his companion turning saw that he had been bereft of a front tooth.

      "I didn't see very much of my stepmother," she answered in the same stiff manner.

      "I'll bet you didn't," declared Rufus, "not when she СКАЧАТЬ