Old Ebenezer Part 17

"Understand what, Uncle Buckley?" Lyman asked.

"Oh, nothin'. It's all right, I reckon. Young feller, jest keep on a shootin' your paper at me. We find some mighty interestin' readin' in it; and sometimes Lige he breaks out in a loud laugh over a piece, and he 'lows, 'if that ain't old Sammy, up and up, I don't want a cent.'

Well, boys, I've some knockin' around to do and I'll have to bid you good day."

CHAPTER XIV.

NOTHING REMARKABLE IN IT.

Mr. McElwin put aside his newspaper and paced slowly up and down the room, his slippered feet falling with an emphatic pat on the carpet.

His wife sat near the window, watching the swallows cutting black circles in the dusky air. Eva was seated at the piano, half turned from it, while with one hand she felt about to touch the nerve of some half-forgotten tune. McElwin dropped down in an arm chair.

"I wonder if this newspaper will ever stop talking about that fellow's story," said he. "I read it over and I didn't see anything remarkable in it. Of course it's all right to feel a local pride in a thing, but gracious alive, we don't want to go into fits over it. Now, here's nearly half a column about it."

"Let me see it," said Eva. He picked up the paper and held it out to her. She got off the piano stool, took the paper and stood near her father, under the hanging lamp.

"Can't you find it? On the editorial page."

"Yes, I have found it. But it is not written by the pen of local pride."

"It is in the state paper."

"Yes, but if you had read to the bottom you would have seen that it was from a New York paper."

"Ah, well, it doesn't interest me, no matter what paper it is from."

"What is it?" Mrs. McElwin asked, turning from the window.

"Something more about Mr. Lyman's story," the daughter answered.

"It appears to have stirred up quite a sensation," said Mrs. McElwin.

"One of those happy accidents."

"It was not an accident," the girl replied. "It was genius."

"Come, don't be absurd," said her father. "There is such a thing as a man finding a gold watch in the road. I call it an accident. I had quite a talk with him in my private office before our relations became strained, and I found him to be rather below the average. He surely has but a vague and confused idea regarding even the simplest forms of business. But I admit that his story is all well enough, and so are many little pieces of fancy work, but they don't amount to anything.

Educated man? Yes, that's all right, too, but the highways are full of educated men, looking for something to do. Sawyer is worth a dozen of him."

Mrs. McElwin glanced at her daughter, as if she had heard a footstep on dangerous ground. She was not far wrong.

"Sawyer is a man, ready--"

"He has not shown it," the girl was bold enough to declare. She stood under the lamp and the newspaper rattled as she held it now grasped tightly.

"Eva," said her mother, in gentle reproof, "don't say that."

"But I want her to say it if she thinks it," the banker spoke up, almost angrily. "I want her to say it and prove it."

"He proved it to me, but I may not be able to prove it to you. Mr.

Lyman called him a coward and he did not resent it."

"Lyman did? How do you know?"

"I heard him."

The banker blinked at her. "You heard him? When? And how came you to be near him?"

"It was on the Sunday after the mar--the foolish ceremony. As Mr.

Sawyer walked off with me from the church door Mr. Lyman joined us."

"Joined you! The impudent scoundrel! What right had he to join you, and why did you permit it?"

"He took the right and we couldn't help ourselves. At least I couldn't and Mr. Sawyer didn't try to."

"I wish I had been there."

"You were just in front, but you didn't look around."

"Well, and then what happened?"

"Why, during the talk that followed, Mr. Lyman called him a coward."

"Mr. Sawyer is a gentleman and he couldn't resent it at the time in the presence of a lady."

"He has had time enough since," she said with scorn.

Mrs. McElwin came from the window and sat down near her husband. The banker looked hard at his daughter, and a sudden tangling of the lines on his face showed that the first words that flew to the verge of utterance had been suppressed, and that he was determined to be calm.

"He has had time, but he has also had consideration," said McElwin.

"To resent an insult is sometimes more of a scandal than to let it pa.s.s. He hesitated to involve your name."

He was now so quiet, so plausible in his gentleness that the young woman felt ashamed of the quick spirit she had shown.

"Sit down," he said, and she obeyed, with her hands lying listlessly together in her lap.

"Your mother and I know what is best for you," he said. A slight shudder seemed to pa.s.s through the wife's dignified shoulders. "You have always been the object of our most tender solicitude," he went on. "And if I have been determined, it has been for your own ultimate good. I admit that there is not much romance about Mr. Sawyer. He is a keen, open-eyed, practical business man, with money out at interest, and with money lying in my bank. His family is excellent. His father was, for many years, the Clerk of the Court of Appeals, and his grandfather was a judge. And I believe as firmly as I ever believed anything, that he will be a very rich man. He is constantly widening out and will not confine himself to the buying and selling of mules.

His judgment of the markets is fine, and I repeat that he will be a very rich man. In looking over the field I don't know another man I would rather have a.s.sociated with me."

His wife, long since convinced by his practical logic, looked up with a quiet smile of approval. The girl sat weaving her fingers together.

She met her father's questioning eye and did not waver.

"I don't presume to question what you say," she said. "But I am no longer a spoiled child to be petted and persuaded. I am a woman and have begun to think. This marriage, though brought about in so ridiculous a way, has had a wonderful effect upon me. I have heard that marriage merges a woman's ident.i.ty with that of her husband, but this marriage has made an individual of me. It has freed me from frivolous company; it has given me something that I once thought I could not endure--solitude--and I have found it delightful. The hard and stubborn things that were beat into my head at school, and which I despised at the time, are useful pieces of knowledge now, and, viewing them, I wonder that I could ever have been so silly as to find my greatest pleasure in flattery."

Never before had she spoken at such length, nor with an air so serious. Her mother looked at her with a half wondering admiration, and the banker's countenance showed a new-born pride in her--in himself, indeed--for nothing in his household was important unless it showed a light reflected from him; and now, in his daughter, he discovered a part of himself, a disposition to think. This thought was seditious, and there is virtue in even a rebellious strength, and it convinced him that henceforth he must address her reason rather than a feminine whim. He was proud of her, admitted it to himself and conveyed it in a look which he gave his wife; but he was not the less determined to carry his point. Sawyer was a man of affairs. His judgment was sure, his spirit adventurous. Figures were his playthings, and who could say that he was not to become one of the country's great financiers? Once he had made a bid against many compet.i.tors acquainted with the work, to build a bridge for the county. Sawyer's bid was the lowest. His friends said that the undertaking would ruin him; McElwin deplored the young man's rashness.

But he built the bridge, made money on the speculation; and the first traffic across the new structure was a drove of Sawyer's mules, en route to a profitable market.