Peter Part 20

And thus it had come to pa.s.s that within twenty-four hours thereafter the boy had shaken the dust of New York from his feet--even to resigning from the Magnolia, and a day later was found bending over a pine desk knocked together by a hammer and some ten-penny nails in a six-by-nine shanty, the whole situated at the mouth of a tunnel half a mile from Corklesville, where he was at work on the pay-roll of the preceding week.

Many things had helped in deciding him to take the proffered place.

First, Peter had wanted it; second, his uncle did not want it, Corinne and his aunt being furious that he should go to work like a common laborer, or--as Garry had put it--"a shovel-spanked dago." Third, Ruth was within calling distance, and that in itself meant Heaven. Once installed, however, he had risen steadily, both in MacFarlane's estimation and in the estimation of his fellow-workers; especially the young engineers who were helping his Chief in the difficult task before him. Other important changes had also taken place in the two years: his body had strengthened, his face had grown graver, his views of life had broadened and, best of all, his mind was at rest. Of one thing he was sure--no confiding young Gilberts would be fleeced in his present occupation--not if he knew anything about it.

Moreover, the outdoor life which he had so longed for was his again.

On Sat.u.r.day afternoons and Sundays he tramped the hills, or spent hours rowing on the river. His employer's villa was also always open to him--a privilege not granted to the others in the working force. The old tie of family was the sesame. Judge Breen's son was, both by blood and training, the social equal of any man, and although the distinguished engineer, being well born himself, seldom set store on such things, he recognized his obligation in Jack's case and sought the first opportunity to tell him so.

"You will find a great change in your surroundings, Mr. Breen," he had said. "The little hotel where you will have to put up is rather rough and uncomfortable, but you are always welcome at my home, and this I mean, and I hope you will understand it that way without my mentioning it again."

The boy's heart leaped to his throat as he listened, and a dozen additional times that day his eyes had rested on the clump of trees which shaded the roof sheltering Ruth.

That the exclusive Miss Grayson should now have invited him to pa.s.s some days at her home had brought with it a thrill of greater delight. Her opinion of the boy had changed somewhat. His willingness to put up with the discomforts of the village inn--"a truly dreadful place," to quote one of Miss Felicia's own letters--and to continue to put up with them for more than two years, while losing nothing of his good-humor and good manners, had shaken her belief in the troubadour and tin-armor theory, although nothing in Jack's surroundings or in his prospects for the future fitted him, so far as she could see, to life companions.h.i.+p with so dear a girl as her beloved Ruth--a view which, of course, she kept strictly to herself.

But she still continued to criticise him, at which Peter would rub his hands and break out with:

"Fine fellow!--square peg in a square hole this time. Fine fellow, I tell you, Felicia!"

He receiving in reply some such answer as:

"Yes, quite lovely in fairy tales, Peter, and when you have taught him--for you did it, remember--how to shovel and clean up underbrush and split rocks--and that just's what Ruth told me he was doing when she took a telegram to her father which had come to the house--and he in a pair of overalls, like any common workman--what, may I ask, will you have him doing next? Is he to be an engineer or a clerk all his life?

He might have had a share in his uncle's business by this time if he had had any common-sense;" Peter retorting often with but a broad smile and that little gulp of satisfaction--something between a chuckle and a sigh--which always escaped him when some one of his proteges were living up to his pet theories.

And yet it was Miss Felicia herself who was the first to welcome the reprobate, even going to the front door and standing in the icy draught, with the snowflakes whirling about her pompadoured head, until Jack had alighted from the tail-end of Moggins's 'bus and, with his satchel in his hand, had cleared the sidewalk with a bound and stood beside her.

"Oh, I'm so glad to be here," Jack had begun, "and it was so good of you to want me," when a voice rang clear from the top of the stairs:

"And where's daddy--isn't he coming?"

"Oh!--how do you do, Miss Ruth? No; I am sorry to say he could not leave--that is, we could not persuade him to leave. He sent you all manner of messages, and you, too, Miss--"

"He isn't coming? Oh, I am so disappointed! What is the matter, is he ill?" She was half-way down the staircase now, her face showing how keen was her disappointment.

"No--nothing's the matter--only we are arranging for an important blast in a day or two, and he felt he couldn't be away. I can only stay the night." Jack had his overcoat stripped from his broad shoulders now and the two had reached each other's hands.

Miss Felicia watched them narrowly out of her sharp, kindly eyes. This love-affair--if it were a love-affair--had been going on for years now and she was still in the dark as to the outcome. There was no question that the boy was head over heels in love with the girl--she could see that from the way the color mounted to his cheeks when Ruth's voice rang out, and the joy in his eyes when they looked into hers. How Ruth felt toward her new guest was what she wanted to know. This was, perhaps, the only reason why she had invited him--another thing she kept strictly to herself.

But the two understood it--if Miss Felicia did not. There may be shrewd old ladies who can read minds at a glance, and fussy old men who can see through blind millstones, and who know it all, but give me two lovers to fool them both to the top of their bent, be they so minded.

"And now, dear, let Mr. Breen go to his room, for we dine in an hour, and Holker will be cross as two sticks if we keep it waiting a minute."

But Holker was not cross--not when dinner was served; n.o.body was cross--certainly not Peter, who was in his gayest mood; and certainly not Ruth or Jack, who babbled away next to each other. Peter's heart swelled with pride and satisfaction as he saw the change which two years of hard work had made in Jack--not only in his bearing and in a certain fearless independence which had become a part of his personality, but in the unmistakable note of joyousness which flowed out of him, so marked in contrast to the depression which used to haunt him like a spectre.

Stories of his life at his boarding-house--vaguely christened a hotel by its landlady, Mrs. Hicks--bubbled out of the boy as well as accounts of various escapades among the men he worked with--especially the younger engineers and one of the foremen who had rooms next his own--all told with a gusto and ring that kept the table in shouts of merriment--Morris laughing loudest and longest, Peter whispering behind his hand to Miss Felicia:

"Charming, isn't he?--and please note, my dear, that none of the dirt from his shovel seems to have clogged his wit--" at which there was another merry laugh--Peter's, this time, his being the only voice in evidence.

"And she is such fun, Miss Felicia" (Mrs. Hicks was under discussion), called out Jack, realizing that he had, perhaps--although unconsciously--failed to include his hostess in his coterie of listeners. "You should see her caps, and the magnificent airs she puts on when we come down late to breakfast on Sunday mornings."

"And tell them about the potatoes," interrupted Ruth.

"Oh, that was disgraceful, but it really could not be helped--we had greasy fried potatoes until we could not stand them another day, and Bolton found them in the kitchen late one night ready for the skillet the next morning, and filled them with tooth powder, and that ended it."

"I'd have set you fellows out on the sidewalk if I'd been Mrs. Hicks,"

laughed Morris. "I know that old lady--I used to stop with her myself when I was building the town hall--and she's good as gold. And now tell me how MacFarlane is getting on--building a railroad, isn't he? He told me about it, but I forget."

"No," replied Jack, his face growing suddenly serious as he turned toward the speaker; "the company is building the road. We have only got a fill of half a mile and then a tunnel of a mile more."

Miss Felicia beamed sententiously when Jack said "we," but she did not interrupt the speaker.

"And what sort of cutting?" continued the architect in a tone that showed his entire familiarity with work of the kind.

"Gneiss rock for eleven hundred feet and then some mica schist that we have had to sh.o.r.e up every time we move our drills," answered Jack quietly.

"Any cave-ins?" Morris was leaning forward now, his eyes riveted on the boy's. What information he wanted he felt sure he now could get.

"Not yet, but plenty of water. We struck a spring last week" (this time the "we" didn't seem so preposterous) "that came near drowning us out, but we managed to keep it under with a six-inch centrifugal; but it meant pumping night and day."

"And when is he going to get through?"

"That depends on what is ahead of us. Our borings show up all right--most of it is tough gneiss--but if we strike gravel or shale again it means more timbering, of course. Perhaps another year--perhaps a few months. I am not giving you my own opinion, for I've had very little experience, but that is what Bolton thinks--he's second in command next to Mr. MacFarlane--and so do the other fellows at our boarding house."

And then followed a discussion on "struts," roof timbers and tie-rods, Jack describing in a modest, impersonal way the various methods used by the members of the staff with which he was connected, Morris, as usual, becoming so absorbed in the warding off of "cave-ins" that for the moment he forgot the table, his hostess and everybody about him, a situation which, while it delighted Peter, who was bursting with pride over Jack, was beginning to wear upon Miss Felicia, who was entirely indifferent as to whether the top covering of MacFarlane's underground hole fell in or not.

"There, now, Holker," she said with a smile as she laid her hand on his coat sleeve--"not another word. Tunnels are things everybody wants to get through with as quick as possible--and I'm not going to spend all night in yours--awful damp places full of smoke--No--not another word.

Ruth, ask that young Roebling next you to tell us another story--No, wait until we have our coffee and you gentlemen have lighted your cigars. Perhaps, Ruth, you had better take Mr. Breen into the smoking-room. Now, give me your arm, Holker, and you come, too, Major, and bring Peter with you to my boudoir. I want to show you the most delicious copy of Sh.e.l.ley you ever saw. No, Mr. Breen, Ruth wants you; we will be with you in a few minutes--" Then after the two had pa.s.sed on ahead--"Look at them, Major--aren't they a joy, just to watch?--and aren't you ashamed of yourself that you have wasted your life? No arbor for you! What would you give if a lovely girl like that wanted you all to herself by the side of my frog pond?"

A shout ahead from Jack, and a rippling laugh from Ruth now floated our way.

"Oh!--OH!--" and "Yes--isn't it wonderful--come and see the arbor--" and then a clatter of feet down the soggy steps and fainter footfalls on the moist bricks, ending in silence.

"There!" laughed Miss Felicia, turning toward us and clapping her hands--"they have reached the arbor and it's all over, and now we will all go out on the porch for our coffee. I haven't any Sh.e.l.ley that you have not seen a dozen times--I just intended that surprise to come to the boy and in the way Ruth wanted it--she has talked of nothing else since she knew he was coming. Mighty dangerous, I can tell you, that old bench. Ruth can take care of herself, but that poor fellow will be in a dreadful state if we leave them alone too long. Sit here, Holker, and tell me about the dinner and what you said. All that Peter could remember was that you never did better, and that everybody cheered, and that the squabs were so dry he couldn't eat them."

But the Scribe refuses to be interested in Holker's talk, however brilliant, or in Miss Felicia's crisp repartee. His thoughts are down among the palms, where the two figures are entering the arbor, the soft glow of half a dozen lanterns falling upon the joyous face of the beautiful girl, as, with hand in Jack's, she leads him to a seat beside her on the bench.

"But it's like home," Jack gasped. "Why, you must remember your own garden, and the porch that ran alongside of the kitchen, and the brick walls--and just see how big it is and you never told me a word about it!

Why?"

"Oh, because it would have spoiled all the fun; I was so afraid daddy would tell you that I made him promise not to say a word; and n.o.body else had seen it except Mr. Morris, and he said torture couldn't drag it out of him. That old Major that Uncle Peter thinks so much of came near spoiling the surprise, but Aunt Felicia said she would take care of him in the back of the house--and she did; and I mounted guard at the top of the stairs before anybody could get hold of you. Isn't it too lovely?--and, do you know, there are real live frogs in that pond and you can hear them croak? And now tell me about daddy, and how he gets on without me."

But Jack was not ready yet to talk about daddy, or the work, or anything that concerned Corklesville and its tunnel--the transition had been too sudden and too startling. To be fired from a gun loaded with care, hard work and anxiety--hurled through hours of winter travel and landed at a dinner-table next some charming young woman, was an experience which had occurred to him more than once in the past two years. But to be thrust still further into s.p.a.ce until he reached an Elysium replete with whispering fountains, flowering vines and the perfume of countless blossoms--the whole tucked away in a cosey arbor containing a seat for two--AND NO MORE--and this millions of miles away, so far as he could see, from the listening ear or watchful eye of mortal man or woman--and with Ruth, too--the tips of whose fingers were so many little shrines for devout kisses--that was like having been transported into Paradise.

"Oh, please let me look around a little," he begged at last. "And this is why you love to come here?"

"Yes--wouldn't you?"

"I would not live anywhere else if I could--and it has just the air of summer--and it feels like a summer's night, too--as if the moon was coming up somewhere."

Ruth's delight equalled his own; she must show him the new tulips just sprouting, taking down a lantern so that he could see the better; and he must see how the jessamine was twisted in and out the criss-cross slats of the trellis, so that the flowers bloomed both outside and in; and the little gully in the flagging of the pavement through which ran the overflow of the tiny pond--till the circuit of the garden was made and they were again seated on the dangerous bench, with a cus.h.i.+on tucked behind her beautiful shoulders.