People of the Whirlpool by Mabel Osgood Wright (reading in the dark .txt) 📖

red and a glitter of brass flashed in between the gate posts, grazing them, and barely escaping an upset, and then came plunging toward me. I screamed to the boys, who seemed to me directly in the path of the _Thing_, which in another moment I recognized as an automobile of the battering-ram variety, belonging to Harvey Somers, Gwendolen Burton's fiance, which for the past week had been the terror of father's steady old gray horses, owing to its constitutional eccentricities.

Mr. Somers was handling it single-handed, and though he was coming at a reckless speed, I expected that he would swing back of the house and come to one of the dramatic sudden stops, on the verge of an accident, for which he is famous. So he did, but not on the driveway!

The _Thing_ gave a lurch and veered toward the barn, spitting like a cageful of tiger cats. Somers was pushing the lever and gripping the brake with all his athletic might, but to no purpose. The children, who, wild with excitement, had by this time sought the safety of the open barn door, seemed a second time to be in the monster's path.

Another lurch! Surely man and machine would be dashed to bits against the substantial stable wall!

Then the _Thing_ changed its course, and showing a ray of flustered intelligence, made a mighty leap off the bank wall and landed hub deep in the soft, friable soil of the new strawberry bed, where, after one convulsive effort, some part of its anatomy blew up with the triple report of a rapid-fire gun, and after having relieved itself of a cloud of steam, it settled down peacefully, as if a strawberry bed was the place of all others it preferred for a noonday nap.

Harvey Somers was shot with a left-handed twirl directly into one of the hotbed frames, from which the sash was pushed back, and landed in a doubled-up position, amid a tearing sound and the crash of broken glass. Meanwhile, the boys, frightened at the cloud of steam, yelled "Fire!" at the top of their lungs.

As I flew to help him, I could for the instant think of nothing but the Lizard Bill's assisted progress up the chimney and into the cucumber frame, but as a rather faint voice said, "Not you; kindly call the Doctor," my mirth changed to alarm, which was not lessened when Timothy Saunders, hearing the uproar and the cry of fire, arriving too late to grasp the situation with his slow Scotch brain, and seeing me leaning over the plant frame, picked up the squirt and deluged the unfortunate man with whale-oil spray!

Coughing and choking, Mr. Somers finally sat up, but did not offer to do more, wiped his eyes, and said to me in most delightful and courteous tones, "Would you be so good as to allow your man to bring me either a bath robe or a mackintosh?"

I was at once relieved, for I knew that the lacerations were of trousers and not flesh, and at the same time I saw that the crash of glass was caused merely by the toppling backward of the sash, also that all my young heliotrope plants that were in the frame where the chauffeur reposed were hopelessly ruined.

Timothy brought out Evan's bath gown, and in a few moments Mr. Somers was himself again, and after surveying the scene of the disaster, he approached me with a charming bow, and drawing a crumpled note from his pocket said:--

"I promised Bertie Chatterton to give you this invitation for his studio tea to-morrow, in person, and I fear that I have rather overshot my promise. Best way to get that brute up will be from the bank wall,--will damage your fruit less. I will have a derrick sent up to-morrow, or if possible this afternoon. I'm awfully sorry, Mrs. Evan, but I think you'll bear me witness that the accident was quite out of my control. May I beg the favour of a trap home? I'm a trifle shaken up, that's all." And as if the accident were an everyday affair, he departed without fuss and having steadied my nerves by his entire self-control.

As I stood by the gateway pondering upon the matter and the easy manners of this Whirlpooler, Mrs. Jenks-Smith drove past. She had met Mr. Somers, and as her curiosity was piqued by his strange attire, she stopped to see if I could furnish a clew. She says, by the way, that he is not a New Yorker, but from Boston, and that his father is an English Honourable and his mother a Frenchwoman.

A gang of men with a sort of wrecking machine hired from the railroad company removed the _Thing_ next day, and towed it off, but of course the strawberries were half ruined; next a man from the florist's in town came with directions to repair all damage to turf and replace the smashed plants. Yet that is not all--the sense of peace and protection that I had when working in my garden has had a shock. In spite of the inhospitable air it gives the place, I think we must keep the gates closed.

Why was Jenks-Smith inspired to start a land-boom here and fate allowed to make fashion smile on it, when we were so uneventfully happy, so twinfully content?

* * * * *

Martin Cortright arrived on Wednesday, and is safely ensconced with Martha and Timothy Saunders, who could give him the couple of plainly furnished rooms he desired, and breakfast at any hour. For a man of no hours (which usually means he never breakfasts before nine) to forgather cheerfully at a commuter's table at 7:15 A.M. is a trial to him, and a second breakfast is apt to cause a cloud in Madam C.'s domestic horizon. Therefore, father allowed Martin to do as he suggested, live at the farm cottage and work here in the library or attic den, as suits his convenience. In this way he feels quite independent, has motive for exercise in walking to and fro, and as he is always welcome to dine with us, can mix his portion of solitude and society in the exact proportion of his taste, even as his well-shaped fingers carefully blend the tobacco for his outdoor pipe.

Dear old fellow, he seems so happy and bubbling over with good temper at having overstepped the tyranny of habit, that I shall almost expect to see his gray hairs turn brown again as the wintry pelt of the weasel does in spring.

If the Vanderveer boy is diagnosed as a case of "suppressed boyhood," then Martin Cortright's only ailment should be dubbed "suppressed youth!"

He was to have come earlier in the month, but a singular circumstance prevented. The old-time gentlewoman, at whose house in Irving Place he has had his apartments so long that a change seemed impossible, died, and he was obliged not only to move, but put his precious belongings in storage until he can place himself suitably once more. So that his plan of coming here bridges the break, and seems quite providential.

He and father walk up and down the garden together after dinner, smoking and chatting, and it does me good to see dear daddy with one of his old-time friends. I think I am only now realizing what he, with his sociable disposition, gave up in all those years before Evan came, that I should not be alone, and that he might be all in all to me.

It was quite cool yesterday. We had hearth fires all through the house, and Martin, rearranging some reference books for his own convenience in the little room that is an annex to father's library, wore his skull cap and Chinese silk dressing gown, which gave him an antique air quite at variance with his clear skin and eyes.

Lavinia Dorman had been due all the week, but worry with the workmen who are building in the rear of her house detained her, and she telegraphed me that she would take the morning express, and asked me to meet her over in town. So I drove in myself, dropping father at the hospital on the way, but on reaching the station the train brought me no passenger.

I returned home, hoping to be in time for our way train, thinking I had mistaken her message, and missed it; but the postmistress,--for every strange face is noticed in town,--told me that the lady who visited me two weeks ago walked up from the ten o'clock train; that she had a new bonnet and "moved right spry," and asked if she was a relative of mine. "An aunt, maybe, and was the pleasant new gentleman an uncle, and did he write a newspaper? She thought maybe he did because he was so particular about his mail." I said something about their being adopted relations, and hurried home.

The boys were industriously digging dandelions on the side lawn. I inconsistently let the dear, cheery flowers grow and bloom their fill in the early season, when they lie close to the sward, but when they begin to stretch awkward, rubbery necks, and gape about as if to see where they might best shake out their seed puffs, they must be routed. Do it as thoroughly as possible, enough always remain to repay my cruelty with a shower of golden coin the next spring. Bertel spends all his spare time on the other bits of grass, but the side lawn is the boys' plunder, where, by patiently working each day at grubbing out the roots at twenty-five cents a hundred, they expect, before the dandelion season is over, to amass wealth enough to buy an alluring red goat harness trimmed with bells that is on exhibition at the harness shop in town, for Corney Delaney. Yes, they said, Aunt Lavinia had just come, but she said they need not stop, for she could go in by herself.

There was no one in the hall, sitting room, den, or upstairs, neither had Effie seen any person enter. Thinking I heard voices in the direction of father's office, I went there and through to the library "annex," where an unexpected picture met my gaze. Martin Cortright, the precise, in stocking feet, skull cap, and dressing gown, perched on top of the step-ladder, was clutching a book in one hand, within the other he held Miss Lavinia's slender fingers in greeting, while his face had a curious expression of surprise, pleasure, and a wild desire to regain his slippers that were down on the floor, a combination that made him look extremely foolish as well as "pudgy."

Up to that moment, Miss Lavinia, who cannot distinguish a face three feet away without her lorgnette, thought she was speaking to father. Under cover of our mutual hilarity, I led her back to a seat in the study, so that Martin might recover his wits, coat, and slippers at the same time, for Miss Lavinia had stumbled over the latter and sent them coasting in different directions.

Yes, the postmistress was right, Lavinia Dorman had a new bonnet. Not the customary conservative but monotonous upholstered affair of jet and lace, but a handful of pink roses in a tulle nest, held on by wisps of tulle instead of ribbons.

"Hortense, who has made bonnets for years, said this was more appropriate for the country, and would show dirt less than black,--and even went so far as to suggest omitting the strings altogether," she