Phoebe Deane (18 page)

Nathaniel could be haughty, too, when he liked, and now he drew himself up to his greatest height.

"Miss Deane is quite a charming girl, Janet, and you would do well to make her acquaintance. She is a friend of Mrs. Spafford, and was visiting her last evening when I happened in on business and they made me stay to tea."

" That's no sign of where she belongs socially," said Janet, disagreeably; " Mrs. Spafford may have had to invite her just because she didn't know enough to go home before supper. Besides, Mrs. Spafford's choice in friends might not be mine at all."

" Janet, Mr. and Mrs. Spafford are unimpeachable socially and every other way. And I happen to know that Miss Deane was there by invitation. I heard her speaking of it as she bade her good-night."

" Oh, indeed!" sneered Janet, quite beside herself with jealousy. " I suppose you were waiting to take her home! "

" Why, certainly," said Nathaniel, looking surprised. " What has come over you, Janet ? You do not talk like your usual kind self."

His tone brought angry tears to Janet's eyes.

" I should think it was enough," she said, trying to hide the tears in her little lace handkerchief, " having you go off suddenly like this when we've scarcely had you a week, and you busy and absent-minded all the time; and then to have this upstart of a girl coming here with secrets that you will not tell me about. I want to know who wrote that letter, Nathaniel, and what it is about. I can't stand it to have that girl smirking behind me in church knowing things about my cousin that I am not told. I must know."

" Janet! " said Nathaniel, pained and surprised, " you must be ill. I never saw you act this way before. You know very well that I'm just as sorry as can be to have to rush off sooner than I had planned, but it, can't be helped. I'm sorry if I have been absent-minded. I have been trying to decide some matters of my future and I suppose that has made me somewhat abstracted. As for the letter, I would gladly tell you about it, but it is another's secret, and I could not honorably do so. You need fear no such feeling on Miss Deane's part, I am sure. Just meet her with your own pleasant, winning way, and say to her that I have explained to you that it was all right. That ought to satisfy both you and her. She asked me to explain it to you."

" Well, you haven't done so, at all. I am sure I can't see what possible harm it could do for you to tell me about it, inasmuch as that other girl knows all about it, too. I should think you would want me to watch and be sure that she doesn't tell—unless, indeed, the secret is between you two."

There was a hint in Janet's tone which seemed almost like an insinuation. Nathaniel grew quite stern.

" The secret is not between Miss Deane and myself," he said, " and she does not know it any more than you do. She found it open, and read only one line which told her it was absolutely private. She tells me she did not read another word."

" Very likely! " sneered Janet, coldly. " Do you think any woman would find it possible to read only one line of a secret? Your absolute faith in this stranger is quite childlike."

" Janet, would you have read further if it had fallen into your hands?"

" Well,—I—why—of course that would be different," said Janet, coloring and looking disconcerted, "but you needn't compare me "

" Janet, you have no right to think she has a lower sense of honor than you have. I feel sure she has not read it."

But Janet, with haughty mien and flashing eyes in which tears were scarcely concealed, swept up the stairs and took refuge in her room, where a perfect storm of tears and mortification followed.

Nathaniel, confounded, dismayed, after vainly tapping at her door and begging her to come out and explain her strange conduct, went sadly to his packing, puzzling much over the strange ways of girls with one another. Here for instance were two well suited to friendship, and yet he could plainly see that they would have nothing to do with one another. He dearly loved his cousin. She had been his playmate and companion from childhood, and he could not understand why suddenly she had grown so disregardful of his wishes. He tried to put it away, deciding that he would say another little word about this charming Miss Deane to Janet in the morning before he left, but Miss Janet forestalled any such attempt by sending down word that she had a headache and would try to sleep a little longer to get rid of it. She would only call a cool little good-bye to her cousin through the closed door, as he, mildly distressed, was hurrying down to the stage waiting for him at the door.

Meantime Miranda and Phoebe had hurried out past the old red school-house into the country road white with frosty moonlight, Phoebe all the time protesting that Miranda must not go with her.

" Why not, in conscience!" said Miranda. " I'll jest enjoy the walk. I was thinkin' of goin' on a lark this very evenin', only I hadn't picked out a companion."

"But you'll have to come all the way back alone, Miranda."

" Well, what's that ? You don't s'pose anybody's goin' to chase ME, do yeh? If they want to they're welcome. I'd jest turn round an' say: 'Boo! I'm red-haired an' freckled, an' I don't want nothin' of you, nor you of me. Git 'long with yeh!'" Miranda's inimitable manner brought a merry laugh to Phoebe's lips and helped to relieve the tension of the heavy strain she had been under. She felt like laughing and crying all at once. Miranda seemed to understand and enter into her mood, and kept her in ripples of laughter till they neared her home. Then, suddenly sobering, Phoebe attempted to make Miranda go back at once, but Miranda was stubborn. Not until she saw her charge safe inside her own door would the faithful soul budge an inch.

" Well then, Miranda, I'll have to tell you how I got out," said Phoebe, confidentially. " There was a caller—some one I didn't care to see—so I went upstairs and they thought I'd gone to bed. I just slipped out my window to the low shed roof and dropped down. I'll have to be very still, for I wouldn't care to have them know I slipped away like that. It might make them ask me questions. You see I had found a letter that I knew Mr. Graham had dropped, and it ought to go to him at once. If I had asked Albert to take it there would have been a big fuss and Emmeline would have wanted to know all about it, and maybe read it, and I didn't think it would be best "

" I see," said Miranda, comprehensively, " so you tuk it yourself. 0' course. Who wouldn't, I'd like to know? All right, we'll jest slip in through the pasture and round to your shed, an' I'll give yeh a boost up. Two's better one fer a job like that, ef one is a red-head. I take it yer caller ain't present any longer. Beckon he made out to foller yeh a piece but we run him into a hole, an' he didn't make much. Hush, now; don't go to thankin', 'taint worth, while till I git through, fer I've jest begun this job, an' I intend to see it through. Here, put yer hand on my shoulder. Now let me hold this foot, don't you be 'fraid, I'm good an' strong. There yeh go! Now yer up! Is that your winder up there ? Wait,, hope to see yeh again soon. Happy dreams! " and she slid around the corner to watch Phoebe till she disappeared into the little dark window above. Then Miranda made for the road, looking curiously in at the side window of the Deanes's sitting-room on the way, to make sure she was right about the caller being gone, and to watch if they had heard Phoebe, for she thought it might be necessary for her to invent a diversion of some sort. But she only saw Albert asleep in his chair and Emmeline working grimly at her sewing.

About half way to the red school-house Miranda met Hiram Green. He looked up, frowning. He thought it was Phoebe, and wondered if it were possible that she was going to the village for a fourth trip yet that night. If she were, she must be crazy."

" Ev'nin', Hiram," said Miranda, nonchalantly, " seen anythin' of a little white kitten with one blue eye and one green one, an.' a black tip to her tail, an' a pink nose ? I've been up to see if she follered Phoebe Deane home from our house las' night, but she's gone to bed with the toothache an' I wouldn't disturb her fer the world. I thought I'd maybe find her round this way ? You ain't seen her, have yeh ? "

" No," growled 'Hiram, suspiciously, " I'd a wrung her neck ef I had."

" Oh, thank you, Mr. Green. You're very kind," said Miranda, sweetly. " I'll remember that, next little kitten I lose. I'll know jest who t' apply to fer it. Lovely night, ain't it? Don't trouble yerself 'bout the kitten. I reckon it's safe somewheres. 'Taint every one 's ez blood-thirsty's you be. Good-night." And Miranda flung off down the road before Hiram could decide whether she was poking fun at him or was extremely dull. At last he roused himself from his weary pondering, uttered his accustomed ejaculation, " Gosh!" looked up the road toward the Deanes, and down toward the vanishing Miranda, brought forth the expression he reserved for the perplexing crises in his life, " Gosh Ninety!" and went home to bed. He had not been able all day to quite fathom the mystery which he was attempting to control, and this new unknown quantity was more perplexing than all that had gone before. What, for instance, had Miranda Griscom to do with Phoebe Deane? His slow brain remembered that she had been in the store where Phoebe —it must have been Phoebe; for he did not believe he could have been mistaken—had disappeared. Had Miranda spirited her away somewhere ? Ah! And it was Miranda who had come up to Phoebe after church and interrupted their walk together! What had Miranda to do with it all? Hang Miranda! He would like to wring her neck, too. With such charming meditations he fell asleep.

CHAPTER XIV

Nathaniel sat inside the coach as it rolled through the village streets and out into the country road toward Albany, and tried to think. All remembrance of Janet and her foolish pet had passed from his mind. He had before him a problem to decide. It was the harder because the advice of his nearest and dearest friends was so at variance.

He took out two letters which represented the two sides of the question and began to reread. The first was the letter which Phoebe had brought, torn, disfigured by the dust, but still legible. It bore a Texas postmark and was brief and businesslike.

"Dear nephew, (it read), if you are keen as you used to be you have been keeping yourself informed about old Texas, and know the whole state of the case better than I can put it. Ever since Austin went to ask the admission of Texas as a separate state into the Mexican Republic and was denied and thrown into prison, our people have been gathering together; and now things are coming to a crisis. Something will be done and that right soon, perhaps in a few days. The troops are gathering near Gonzales. Resistance will be made. But we need help. We want young blood, and strong arms behind which are heads and hearts with a conviction for right and freedom. No one on earth has a right to deprive us of our property, and say we shall not own slaves which we have come honestly by. We will fight and win, as the United States has fought and won its right to govern itself. Now I call upon you, Nathaniel, to rise up and bring honor to your father's name by raising a company of young men to come down here and set Texas free. I know you are busy with your law studies but they will keep and Texas will not. Texas must be set free now or never. When you were a little chap you had strong convictions about what was right, and I feel pretty sure my appeal will not come to deaf ears. Your father loved Texas and came down here to make his fortune. If he had lived he would have been here fighting. He would have been a slave-owner, and have asserted his right as a free man in a free country to protect his property. He would have taught his son to do the same. I call upon you for your father's sake to come down here in the hour of your Texas' need—for it is the place where you were born—and help us. Use your utmost influence to get other young men to come with you.

" Your uncle the Judge will perhaps help you financially. He owns a couple of slaves himself I remember, house servants, does he not? Ask him how he would like the government of the United States to order him to set them free. I feel sure he will sympathize with Texas in her need and help you to do this thing which I have asked.

" I am a man of few words, but I trust you, Nathaniel, and I feel sure I am not pleading in vain. I shall expect something from you at once. We need the help now or the cause may be lost. If you feel as I think you do go to the New York address given below. This letter will be sufficient identification for you as I have written to them of you, but it is most important that you present this letter or it will do no good to go, but BE SURE THAT NO ONE ELSE SEES IT, or great harm may come to you! There is grave danger in being found out, but if I did not know your brave spirit I would not be writing you. Come as soon as possible!

" Your uncle,

" Royal Graham."

The other letter was kept waiting a long time while the young man read and reread this one, and then let his eyes wander through the window of the coach to the brown fields and dim hills in the distance. He was going over all he could remember of his boyhood life in that far-away Southern home. He could dimly remember the form of his father, who had been to him a great hero; who had taken him with him on horseback wherever he went and never been too weary or too busy for his little son. There came a blur of sadness over the picture, the death of this beloved father, and an interval of emptiness when the gentle mother was too full of sorrow to know how the baby heart had felt the utter loneliness, and then one day this Uncle Royal, so like yet not like his father, had lifted him in his arms and said: " Good- by, little chap. Some day you'll come back to us and do your father's work, and take his place." Then he and his mother had ridden away in an endless succession of post- chaises and coaches, until one day they had come to Judge Bristol's great white house set among the green hedges, and there Nathaniel had found a new home. There, first his mother, and then Janet's mother, had slipped away into that mysterious door of death, and he had grown up in the home of his mother's brother, with Janet as a sister. From time to time he had received letters from this shadowy uncle in Texas, and once, when he was about twelve, there had been a brief visit from him which cleared the memory and kept him fresh in Nathaniel's mind; and always there had been some hint or sentence of expectation that when Nathaniel was grown and educated he would come back to the country which had been his father's and help to make it great. This had been a hazy undertone always in his life, in spite of the fact that his other uncle, Judge Bristol, was constantly talking of his future career as a lawyer in New York City, with a possibility of a political career also. Nathaniel had gone on with his life, working out the daily plan as it came, with all the time the feeling that these two plans were contending in him for supremacy. Sometimes during leisure moments lately he had wondered if the two could ever be combined, and if not how possibly they were to both work out. Gradually it had dawned upon him that a day was coming, indeed might not be far away, when he would have to choose. And now, since these two letters had reached him, he knew the time had come. And how was he to know how to choose?