From the Housetops Part 38

"There is no other way, my friend," said Simmy earnestly.

Thorpe was silent for a long time, staring out over the dark waters of the bay. The sun had slipped down behind the ridge of hills to the south and west, and the once bright sea was now cold and sinister and unsmiling. The boats were stealing in from its unfriendly wastes.

"I had not thought of it in that light, Simmy," he said at length. "My grandfather said it might take two hundred years."

"Incidentally," said Simmy, shrewdly, "your grandfather knew what he was about when he put in the provision that you were to have twenty-five thousand dollars a year as a salary, so to speak. He was a far-seeing man.

He knew that you would have a hard, uphill struggle before you got on your feet to stay. He may even have calculated on a lifetime, my friend. That's why he put in the twenty-five. He probably realised that you'd be too idiotic to use the money except as a means to bring about the millennium, and so he said to himself 'I'll have to do something to keep the d.a.m.n'

fool from starving.' You needn't have any scruples about taking your pay, old boy. You've got to live, you know. I think I've got the old gentleman's idea pretty-"

"Well, let's drop the subject for to-night, Simmy," said Thorpe, coming to his feet. His chin was up and his shoulders thrown back as he breathed deeply and fully of the new life that seemed to spring up mysteriously from nowhere. "You'll spend the night with me. There is a spare bed and you'll-"

"Isn't there a Ritz in the place?" inquired Simmy, scarcely able to conceal his joy.

"Not so that you can notice it," replied Thorpe gaily. He walked to the edge of the porch and drank in more of that strange, puzzling air that came from vast distances and filled his lungs as they had never been filled before.

Simmy watched him narrowly in the failing light. After a moment he sank back comfortably in the old rocking chair and smiled as a cat might smile in contemplating a captive mouse. The rest would be easy. Thorpe would go back with him. That was all that he wanted, and perhaps more than he expected. As for old Templeton Thorpe's "foundation," he did not give it a moment's thought. Time would attend to that. Time would kill it, so what was the use worrying. He prided himself on having done the job very neatly,-and he was smart enough to let the matter rest.

"What is the news in town?" asked Braden, turning suddenly. There was a new ring in his voice. He was eager for news of the town!

"Well," said Simmy naively, "there is so much to tell I don't believe I could get it all out before dinner."

"We call it supper, Simmy."

"It's all the same to me," said Simmy.

And after supper he told him the news as they walked out along the breakwater.

Anne Thorpe was in Europe. She closed the house as soon as George was able to go to work, and went away without any definite notion as to the length of her stay abroad.

"She's terribly upset over having to live in that old house down there,"

said Simmy, "and I don't blame her. It's full of ghosts, good and bad. It has always been her idea to buy a big house farther up town. In fact, that was one of the things on which she had set her heart. I don't mind telling you that I'm trying to find some way in which she can chuck the old house down there without losing anything. She wants to give it away, but I won't listen to that. It's worth a hundred thousand if it's worth a nickel. So she closed the place, dismissed the servants and-"

"'Gad, my grandfather wouldn't like that," said Braden. "He was fond of Murray and Wade and-"

"Murray has bought a saloon in Sixth Avenue and talks of going into politics. Old Wade absolutely refused to allow Anne to close up the house.

He has received his legacy and turned it over to me for investment.

Confound him, when I had him down to the office afterwards he as much as told me that he didn't want to be bothered with the business, and actually complained because I had taken him away from his work at that hour of the day. Anne had to leave him there as caretaker. I understand he is all alone in the house."

"Anne is in Europe, eh? That's good," said Thorpe, more to himself than to his companion.

"Never saw her looking more beautiful than the day she sailed," said Simmy, peering hard in the darkness at the other's face. "She hasn't had much happiness, Brady."

"Umph!" was the only response, but it was sufficient to turn Simmy off into other channels.

"I suppose you know that George and Lutie are married again."

"Good! I'm glad to hear it," said Thorpe, with enthusiasm.

"Married two weeks after George went to work in that big bank note company's plant. I got the job for him. He starts at the bottom, of course, but that's the right way for a chap like George to begin. He'll have to make good before he can go up an inch in the business. Fifteen a week. But he'll go up, Brady. He'll make good with Lutie to push from behind. Awful blow to Mrs. Tresslyn, however. He's a sort of clerk and has to wear sleeve papers and an eye-shade. I shall never forget the day that Lutie bought him back." Simmy chuckled.

"Bought him back?"

"Yes. She plunked thirty thousand down on the table in my office in front of Mrs. Tresslyn and said 'I sha'n't need a receipt, Mrs. Tresslyn. George is receipt enough for me.' I'd never seen Mrs. Tresslyn blush before, but she blushed then, my boy. Got as red as fire. Then she rose up in her dignity and said she wouldn't take the money. How was her son to live, she said, if Lutie deprived him of his visible means of support? Lutie replied that if George was strong enough to carry the was.h.i.+ng back and forth from the customers', she'd manage to support him by taking in dirty linen. Then Mrs. Tresslyn broke down. Damme, Brady, it brought tears to my eyes. You don't know how affecting it is to see a high and mighty person like Mrs.

Tresslyn humble herself like that. She didn't cry. I was the only one who cried, curse me for a silly a.s.s. She just simply said that Lutie was the best and bravest girl in the world and that she was sorry for all that she had done to hurt her. And she asked Lutie to forgive her. Then Lutie put her arm around her and called her an old dear. I didn't see any more on account of the infernal tears. But Lutie wouldn't take back the money. She said that it didn't belong to her and that she couldn't look George in the face if she kept it. So that's how it stands. She and George have a tiny little apartment 'way up town,-three rooms, I believe, and so far she hasn't taken in anybody's was.h.i.+ng. Anne wants to refund the money to Lutie, but doesn't know how to go about it. She-er-sort of left it to me to find the way. Lordy, I seem to get all of the tough jobs."

"You are a brick, Simmy," said Thorpe, laying his arm across the little man's shoulders.

"Heigh-ho!" sighed Simmy. Later on, as they returned through the fog that was settling down about them, he inquired: "By the way, will you be ready to start back with me to-morrow?"

"Lord love you, no," cried Thorpe. "I've agreed, to help old man Stingley with the boat house. I'll come down in three weeks, Simmy."

"Lordy, Lordy!" groaned Simmy, dejectedly. "Three weeks in this G.o.d- forsaken place? I'll die, Brady."

"You? What are you talking about?"

"Why, you don't suppose I'm going back without you, do you?"

CHAPTER XXII

Anne Thorpe remained in Europe for a year, returning to New York shortly before the breaking out of the Great War. She went to the Ritz, where she took an apartment. A day or two after her arrival in the city, she sent for Wade.

"Wade," she said, as the old valet stood smirking before her in the little sitting-room, "I have decided not to re-open the house. I shall never re- open it. I do not intend to live there."

The man turned a sickly green. His voice shook a little. "Are-are you going to close it-for good,-madam?"

"I sent for you this morning to inquire if you are willing to continue living there as caretaker until-"

"You may depend on me, Mrs. Thorpe, to-" he broke in eagerly.

"-until I make up my mind what to do with the property," she concluded.

He hesitated, clearing his throat. "I beg pardon for mentioning it, ma'am, but the will said that you would have to live in the house and that you may not sell it or do anything-"

"I know," she interrupted shortly. "I sha'n't sell the house, of course.

On the other hand, I do not intend to live in it. I don't care what becomes of it, Wade."

"It's worth a great deal of money," he ventured.

She was not interested. "But so am I," she said curtly. "By the way, how have you fared, Wade? You do not look as though you have made the best of your own good fortune. Are you not a trifle thinner?"

The man looked down at the rug. "I am quite well, thank you. A little older, of course,-that's all. I haven't had a sick day in years."

"Why do you stay on in service? You have means of your own,-quite a handy fortune, I should say. I cannot understand your willingness, to coop yourself up in that big old house, when you might be out seeing something of life, enjoying your money and-you are a very strange person, Wade."

He favoured her with his twisted smile. "We can't all be alike, madam," he said. "Besides, I couldn't see very much of life with my small pot of gold. I shall always stick to my habit, I suppose, of earning my daily bread."