Loading...
HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Wingham Times, 1900-07-13, Page 7A► 4.6 R 8 A NAL �► <•ef-- o+A►o- --o+lo BY J'la•AaUNEY 4E N. WALSU1'10114U4U0 — e telesmeso Copyright, 1809, by Jeannette H. Walworth. "titer Itad taken otr ilia glasses, mpea ''them abstractedly and replaced them on his nose with nervous energy. In- stead of the direct answer her direct question invited, he looked straight over her head through the vine clothed bow window, frowning incidentally at the shr111ing, canary. "Is there no way of silencing that noise?" "Dick's yodeling? Certainly. I did not know it annoyed.you." She left the table long enough to in- -cert a lump of sugar between the bars -of the birdcage. Returning, she perch- ed on the arm of her father's chair, re - Seining her precarious vantage ground by clutching his coat Lapels firmly with cue hand. "Father, you must be working too hard. You are horribly nervous of late. I shall have to take you in hand.". She passed a caressing hand ever the lawyer's troubled forehead, '"There are at least a dozen new worry lines here. This will never, never do. But about Tom." • "What about Thomas?" Her caress- ing failed of soothing. He drew her hands down with almost a petulant gesture. "What are you going to do with him %ben he leaves college and comes Amine to live? You know we must tplan for it" "There is no immediate call for agi- tating that point, my love. Thomas -is to go abroad for two years after leaving college." "Does be want to go?" '1 want him to go." 'Of course, papa, as his guardian you may advise him to go, and I think every boy ought to travel. But bas Porti expressed any wishes of his own ,on the subject?" "I have not broached it to him as yet. I anticipate no objections on his part Isis father was a great traveler In his day. Indeed, I may say he was passionately fond of R." "Then you have not consulted hint about it yet?" The lawyer rose from the table with his hands full of letters. A. light frown contracted his forehead, bringing his bushy gray brows alinost into con-. tact with each other. He loved this 'breakfast hour above all the hours of the day. It was full of pence amt ' pleasantness. It was pleasant to loo across the table Into his chill's beano fill, spirited face, a face which alway .brimmed over with intelligence a'.• :With love for him; it was pleasant t look beyond her, out through the vine encircled bay window into the tangle .or beauty and perfume which 011ie called her garden; it was pleasant to contemplate 'the fact that this dear -child had but to express a wish and be was able to gratify it. Things had :gone well with him the last four years. Mien said: lie was waxing rich as no ;lawyer .• ever bad before 1tim. It was pleasant to prolong this -communion time. Presently he would go off to his of - lice, and the sweet music of his dar- ling's voice would be swallowed up in the harsher' tones of angry men chaf- fering for their rights. But just now Olivia was growing a trifle inquisito- rial, and it was that which sent him t shan't come of age but once in my :away from the table somewhat abrupt- lifetime, you know, papa." Ily. Her father looked overhead out of "No," he said, standing on the hearth the bay window into her garden and rug; "I have not written to him yet. I upon the grassy terraces intervening .iion't want the pleasant anticipation of between it and the cobblestone street. travel to get between him and the dos- I The Matthews cottage, perched upon ing exercises of bis college. I am some- its well kept terraces, was one of the .:what apprehensive that Thomas may show places of Mandeville, but its di - be lacking In energy." I mensions were by no means imposing. "I don't know why you say that, In land it was conspicuously cramped. papa. His reports from the very be- "A garden party, my love? I believe ginning have been just splendid. He that is your idea done in English. Do stands first in all of his classes and"— I you think our modest little yard"— "Oh, asa student Thomas has made a She interrupted him with a gay fair record, but I should prefer more laugh. "Oh, no, papa! That would be 11re, more vim, more fervor of andel- absurd, ridiculously so. Over at Tom's house is where I mean to hold my fete. We could give a lovely garden party among the grand old trees on Broxton lawn and such a delicious dance in the long, yellow parlor." "But the people?" "The Westovers are expected back from Europe on Monday. I should es• pecinily like them to see that one does not have to go abroad to know what to do on occasion. Ob. 1 want it to be very grand indeed, papal Miss Malvina Spillman will help me to make it just perfectly lovely. She can net chaperon too. I can mnke out quite a splendid list of guests." 1 A strange hesitation seemed to bind her fatitev's tongue. He, who Was gen- erally eager in his readiness to gratify her slightest wish,. stood mute and frowning In face of her very dearest one. "You have a guardian's right to Use �"'You stupid papa, --to wont.! a fretful, the house, papa, ' , hae n tou? puny baby always under your wink!" "Yes. Oh, yes, of course!" patten for the future, in se young a "And I know Tom would be only too man. He shows no signs of restless- gind. I shall write for his permission." *mss. That is to bad sign." Still that unfriendly silence. "My Olivia clianiptoned the absent with heart is quite set upon• It, papa." Warmth and decision. i Her father's surrender was sudden, "I think you are altogether mistak- but complete. "Then so is mine," he en, father, and inclined to underrate said almost violently, lifting her sweet worn. Ills letters to you, 1 suppose, are face near enough to kiss her on both more restrained and formal. I see cheeks. "So it is settled, We will have abundant evidence of ambition and of our garden party over at Broxton Hall, purpose. Torn is essentially well teal- and I will stop there this everting as 1 anced. 1 have seen plentiful signs of drive honie from ltosecllft to give or- restlessness," dots about having the house opened "I hope t have molded hint fittingly," and properly aired. A good ��deal of SAW the lawyer, with pions self gratin weed chopping will be needed. Ration. "yos, 1 think he may be called "Ob, l forgot court was in session! essentially well balanced." "He is just what 1 fancy Colouel Broxton was at his age," 011ie resum- ed, with unconscibus point, "He is not one of those tiresome boys who bore you to distraction with wordy vapor - tugs about what they are going to do anti be, winding up by doing and being uothtng. Moreover, the fact of his be- ing so rich would incline him to delib- eration. The spur of necessity Is not pricking him to select a career in wild haste. Tom is very rich indeed, !a not he, papa?" Some of his letters slipped from the lawyer's grasp. IIe stooped to recover them. IIis sallow face was deeply flushed when he straightened himself almost defiantly. Ile did not look at Olivia as he answered curtly: "By no manner of means. That is one of the current local fallacies, a great mistake. Thomas' personal ex- penses have been heavy, and sotno of his dear father's investments tur`ed oat very badly." 6111e soared superior. "lam rather glad to hear that Rich young men are so apt to waxa conceit- ed and worthless on the s.Fength of their father's hoarding. They lose the incentive to personal eudeavor." Her father rewarded tit s flight with a somewhat acid smile.,' "Your worldly wisdom becomes star• tliug, my love, I thiul I shall have to get you a new doll tq'dress." "Doll, indeedl" ;She mimicked his gravity. "Your capacity for insulting a helpless female b comes startling, my love. I think 1 shall have to get you a new pair of eyes the better to see, my dear." She came toward him, a slant, sparkling creature, and stood before him with crest uplifted. '?,Observe the length of .Ty gown, if you 'please, and the Psychic knot which tops my mature and classic head." Her father drew her to him almost rough1Y. "Olivia', you startle. me in earn It. You are a young lady. sae The fact has burst upon me in a sece d. I'e, , are no longer my loviug, trusting, taiquestioning little darling. You will be measuring your strength with thine, demanding your place at my side rath- er than under my wing. It frightens me." She laughed musically up into the furrowed face. "And it delights tae. You stupid papa—to want a fretful, puny baby al- ways under yogi • wing in place of a wise young wonian by'y our side! And, you naughty papa, to let my eighteenth birthday almost dawn without a breath touching appropriate celebra- tions!" "Celebrations?" He repeated the word perplexedly. "Don't you even know, father, that a girl comes of age when she is 18? She doesn't come Into a vote and all that sort of nonsense, but she comes out, and 1 propose to do that appro- priately." "Appropriately! Why, bless my soul, Yes, of course! What shall we do, 011ie?" "I should like a fete ebampetre," said 011ie grandly, "such a fete as the people of the country shall date back tele and from for generations to come. been In Rpsecll>X half au tiour ago. ant plug to send Reuben over with the ponies for Miss Aially. l am dying Le talk with ber all about the affair." And she dismissed him with a shower of kisses and the injunction; "Pou't be late in getting back, papa. There is so much to see about," The day held more time Its full quo- ta of trials for the iron nerved man. who never yielded a point to anything living but the soft dimpled child who held his very heartstrings. In her caro - less grasp, Night had fallen before he mounted his horse and turned its head home- ward. Seven lonely miles stretched bo- tweeu him°tend Mandeville. Eie gladly would have foregone the stop at Brox- ton Hall on his way home, but be bad promised Olivia, and that was enough. When lie reached the outer gate to the gloomy old mansion, lie dismounted and, flinging his bridle rein over the horse rack, made his way ou foot up the crumbling brick walk, slimy now from the dense shading of the untrim- med cedars. There would be much to do in order to make 011ie's birthday fete a success, but it should be done. The cellars must be trimmed up tomorrow and the brick walls all scraped eleau. Reaching the house, he made a cir- cuit around it. In a remote corner of the large back yard he knew lie should find the care taker and his wife. He would give them general directions foropeuing the house, sunning the rooms and clip- ping the cedars. That roust do for to- night, just by way of keeping his promise to Olivia. IIe was tired, harassed, unhappy; but, whatever befell, the shadows that sometimes crowded thick and fast about his own resolute bead should nut infold her. To make Olivia happy was the law of his life, the mainspring of his every action, his one earthly de- sire. The care taker and his wife bad closed Jheir cottage for the night and were preparing to retire when his knock startled them. He heard them draw the bolt witlf.reluctant caution to answer his summait. "What! Not abed thus mon?" "Not just abed, sir, but since the master's been gone Jess and me are jus' as villin as not to lock up early and shut things out. It be awful lone- some and gloomsonle here now. Mr. Matthews, and unless things brighten up when Mr. Tom gets through school - in I doubj.-df; Bess and me can hold ou at this gait" And then Mr. Matthews told Simon how lie was going to break the gloom spell by a garden party on bis daugh- ter's birthday, and Simon espoused his cause gladly. Broxton Hall used to be a happy and a gay house. "Auything to bring back the ofd gladsotneness, sir." 'Mr. Matthews gave his orders about opening the house, clipping the cedar's, etc. When he turned away, he heard the old man promptly bolt the door again, and as the wooden shutters were of solid boards the little cottage immediately offered but a dark, square bulk for observation. He returned as he had come. Making the circuit of the house from rear to front, by the side en which Colonel Broxton's study was 'located, involuntarily he glanced up- ward at the closed shutters, then start- ed and stood still, wondering. A faint light, rho faint that it might have been a phosphorescent glimmer, shone through the slats of the dark green shutters. • Whatever else his shortcomings, physical cowardice was not among them. Some one was In the Broxton house and in the colonel's study. To go ,,back for Simon would be useless. Se would not come. He must depend upon his own address and his stun nervy Stealing noiselessly„ to the front of the house, the lawyer mounted the low front steps and tried the front door handle softly. It was locked. With a strong grip he next seized one of the shutters of the long French windows that opened from the parlor to the ve- randa floor. It yielded readily. So did the sash. He slipped his shoes from his feet and sped with swift noiselessness across the hall. The study was at the rear of the house. It connected with the room in the parlor suit by the floors glazed with dead ground glass. Through the dim glass of these doors the pale phosphorescent gleam came steadily. He would catch the thief red handed. His hands were planted firm- ly ou the silver doorknobs. He sent the sliding doors gliding noiselessly in their grooves with a resolute touch. Then he staggered and held fast by the lintel to keep himself from falling. Bending over the dead man's study table was a tall, shadowy form in white. The sound of scattering loose paper fell on his ears with a ghostly rustle. He saw a restless band three times distinctly. In a sighing whisper he heard the words, "Lost, lost, lost!" all this In a second of time. The night wind swept through the open front window. The pale intact was suddenly extinguished. The house lay In utter darkness. A faint, slow 'movement, like the rustle of garments, came near- er to the terror palsied man, passed by him, died a'tvay entirely. Iiow long he staid there he never couldhave told, norhow he evergrop- ed lila way back to the spot where he had left his shoes and from there to his horse. Once In the saddle, With the cold night air fanning his cheeks, bis Cour- age came back and with It a need of self contempt. "Bahl Am T in my dotage? he cried angrily. "Tomorrow I will investigate this ghostly trickery and run the trick- ster to earth." But he slept 'very little that night, nor did he run that ghostly "trickster" to earth on the morrow ter the next day nor zany day thereafter. early, Si- CHAPTEII V. 1'41r.P4.IIINQ Vett 'FILE SATE. Mandeville contessed1y never saw Its lll;e, never expected to see Its like again. There e were those in that conserva- tive village who flatly maintained that such magnificence was entirely out of place. They were surd history never recorded a greater ado made Aver the coronation of royalty or the Installa- tion of presidents. After all, Aandeville was only Man, deyille, and site in whose honor the world had fust been turned upside down was nobody but little 011ie Alat- thews, who had grown up among them with no particular claim to uni- versal homage, a nice enough girl, pretty, amiable, social, and all that, but "such doings over her coming of age was just nothing short of nonsensical." Mandeville possessed, among its an- tiquities, those whe remembered the very day when Horace Matthews first put foot in Mandeville, the only son of a poor widow music teacher whom Ru- fus 13roxtou's father befriended es he always befriended the needy ones of the earth. The antiquities shook their hoary beads and groaned inscrutably, "And look at him now!" Such a "coming out party" had never been dreamed of in the wildest fgneies of the most imaginative Mandevillian, "Coming out party" had sense and sound of its own. It meant what it sounded like, "Pete champetre" was a combination of the alien and the in- comprehensible. One language was more than sufficient for all of Mande.- villo's philological necessities. It frowned down all others. But there was no disposition to frown down the glittering fact that from fu- nereal gloom to dazzling hilarity the old Broxtou place had passed without the saving grace of an entr'acte—such a painting of fences, and trimming of long neglected shrubbery, and string- ing of lanterns, and planting of pallid statuary that rather made some of the oldest ladies blink with amazement, and grouping of tubbed exotics, and waxing of floors for giddy feet, and eartloads of crockery and glass, and a band of music in blue breeches with red stripes down their legs, and—and— Mandeville was absolutely 'breathless with excitement. There were those who said it was a good thing for the town, because it gave "jobs" to BO many idlers. Miss Greenfield, whose' dressmaking had been found good enough for Mrs. Colonel Broxton and for title very Miss Matthews' mother, didn't see where the good of the' town was being consulted when nobody this side of New York could make a good enough dress for the coming out heir- ess. That was what they called her, "the heiress," and Lawyer Matthews' reckless expenditure of money on the coming fete warranted any amount of wildness in the matter of nomencla- ture and conjecture. Miss Malvina had been retained as general superintendent of the whole magnificent business. She was to act as A11ss Matthews' chaperon on the oc- casion. She bad been privileged to se- lect the very sample the gown had been made from, all of which invested her with an importance she could never otherwise have achieved. The Spillman cottage became the most popular resort in the neighbor- hood. The few who had -been bidden and the many who only expected to en- joy the fete through the medium of their ears all found urgent call to the cottage. "Mother" Spillman's cottage was vir- tually on the Broxton grounds. It 'Lad originally been built for the por- ter's lodge to Broxton Hall by -a wealthy Englishman, who, having 1n - `rested largely in some tile factories on this side, fancied he should like tO live in close proximity to them. It was a fancy that died in its sari! MOMULIEN'S POULTRY NETTING� a°a LAWN FENOINOS are not surpassed in the WORLD. Their Woven Wire T'enciugs have stood stool over fifteen years of very sueoesaftt, testing on FARM and RAILWAY. Sp'.eial offers made this year On 004* FENCING. These' bods are all manufactured by They Ontario Wire Fencing Co., Limited, of Piston, Ont. For sale by the Hardwato Merchants and General Dealers throughout Canada.. Also by the Can, Hardware Jobbers. Gen, Agents—The B. Greening Wire Co., of Hamilton and Montreal, Agent for Railway Fencing—J•amss Cooper, Montreal. 01 -Correspondence with the manufacturers invited, n, A. Travelling GENERAL AGENT.. An experienced canvasser, or a man with good character and address, with the necessary ability to travel from towrt to towel and appoint agents. No canvassing. Salary and ex - infancy, and the lodge, with all that appertained thereto, passed into the ownership of the late Colonel Brox- ton's father, a stockholder In the same company. The Englishman returned to the country where porters and porters' lodges were a genteel necessity, and the little lodge was closed up. When the Rev. Isham Spillman was Called to preach and to teach in the neighborhood of Mandeville, the por- ter's lodge bad beet donated by Tom's grandfather for a parsonage. When the Rev. Isham died, full of years and honor; it was decided that his venera- ble widow should live on in the pretty cottage and call It hers. The womankind of the Broxton fam- ily and of the Spillman had always been the best of friends, and now that there was no womankind left in the .Broxton family Miss Mal•tua and her mother felt a hovering sort of interest in the lonely boy representative of what had once been the most impor- tant family in the county. It was nat- ural that Miss Malvina should have a hand in things connected with Broxton Han Mrs. Spillman held that nothing short of Tom's own marriage would have warranted such "a turning upside down of things," adding Indignantly, "I suppose all Mrs. Broxton's silver and china will be used just like It was their own," Miss Malvina sounded a placating note. "Oh, that's all right, mother. 011ie wrote to Tota that site wanted to have her birthday celebration ou his grounds, and he wrote back he wua:el be only too glad to have her chase the shadows out of the old house, to use everything as freely as if it was her own." • "Trust them for doing that; but, as for her chasing the shadows out, that's more'n she can do, Malvina--more'! anybody can do. They are gathering thicker and blacker and heavier, and the storm will burst over that poor boy's head Without one friendly voice to give him warning." "Dear Me, mother, bow you do worry over Total Ile's all right, Ills father trusted dr. Matthews If yen don't. Give hitt wanting of what?" MISS Malvina Performed as Many C.f penses paid. merit. Pbsition permanent and promotion according to The Bradley-Garretson, Co., BB, ANTTFORD, O11iT.. 1 Ti .1•111.0.Mmete In Office Stationery THE TIMES is Up -to -Date. A. superior stock Of BILL HEADS, • MEMORANDUMS, STATEMENTS, E VELOPES SHIPPING TAGS, CARDBOARDS, ETC. ALWAYS ON HAND. We employ skilled workmen, have the latest designs in type, execute first-class work and charge reasonable prices. Give us a trial for your next stationery. THE TIMES OFFICE. RIP*NS TAMES Doctors find A Ooo.. Prescription For mankind Ten for five cents, at Druggists Grocers, ltestaitrante, Saloons, Nuns -Stands, General Stores and Barbers Shops. They banish pain, induce sleep, and prolong life. One gives relief 1 No matter what's the matter. one will do you good. Ten samples and one thousand teal. monials sent by mall to any address on receipt of price, by the Ripens Chemical Co., to:Spruce St., New York City. Alsaismosomoortoormonsarstommakes.