know,” explained Dr. Ballard. “When you come back ten years from now you shall drive outside too. How was Essex Maid this morning?”
“She was all right, but grandpa took only a short ride. I guess he was a little–bit–afraid.”
“She’s the apple of his eye, or he wouldn’t have been so nervous over a trifle last evening,” remarked the doctor.
“Well, she made a great fuss,” replied Jewel. “She fell down in her stall, and everything like that.”
“Did she really?”
“Yes. Zeke said his knees were shaking.”
“But she was all right by the time Dr. Busby arrived?”
“Yes.”
Dr. Ballard looked at his small companion, a quizzical smile curving his mustache.
“I’ve never thought of taking a partner, Jewel, but I might consider a mascot. What do you say to sharing my office and being my mascot? Special high chair for Anna Belle, be it well understood.”
The little girl eyed him, her head on one side. It was her experience that all men were jokers. “I don’t know what a mascot is,” she replied.
“It’s something or somebody that brings one good luck.”
“Do you think I could bring you good luck?”
“It looks that way. Of course there are certain rules you would have to observe. It wouldn’t do for you to talk against materia medica to the patients in the anteroom.”
“What is an anteroom?”
“The place where my patients wait until I can see them in my office.”
Jewel lifted her shoulders and smiled. “I might read them ‘Science and Health’ while they waited, and then they wouldn’t have to go in.”
Dr. Ballard’s laugh rang heartily along the leafy street. “Is that your idea of mascoting a poor young physician?” he inquired.
Jewel laughed in sympathy. She didn’t quite understand him, but she knew that they were having a very good time.
Pretty soon her companion drove in at the gate of an imposing old residence, set back from the street where the trolley ran with an air of withdrawing from the intrusion of these modern tracks.
“I thought it wouldn’t injure your conscience to wait for me while I made a couple of professional visits, Jewel, eh?” he asked, as he jumped out and fastened Hector to the ring in the hand of a bronze boy. “I won’t be any longer than I can help, and don’t you go to hoodooing me, now, while I’m upstairs.” The doctor returned to the buggy and took the black case, frowning warningly at the child. “I have troubles enough here without that. This old lady used to trot me on her knee, and she wants to spend half an hour every morning proving that doctors don’t know anything before she’ll let me get to business.”
“It must be hard for doctors,” returned Jewel, “going to sorry people all the time, and nothing to give them except something on their tongues.”
Dr. Ballard gave his small companion a quick glance. If he secretly considered her beliefs as too richly absurd to excite aught but amusement, she evidently as honestly compassionated the poverty of ideas in his learned profession.
“Well, I’ll hurry,” he said, and vanished within the house. Time would not have dragged for Jewel had he stayed all the morning. To sit in the shining buggy in close proximity to the dappled gray Hector, and with Anna Belle for a sympathizer, caused the minutes to be winged.
When the doctor returned, a radiant face welcomed him.
“I thought I should never get away,” he sighed, “but you don’t look bored.”
He untied the horse, jumped into the buggy, and they were off again, Hector striding along as if to make up for lost time. “Now only one more call, Jewel, and then we’ll get back out of the dust again,” said the doctor cheerily.
“I haven’t noticed any dust, Dr. Ballard. I’m having the most /fun/!”
“Well now, I’m glad of that. It’s a great thing to be eight years old, Jewel.”
“That’s what cousin Eloise says. She says she’d like to be.”
“Indeed? How is the enchanting–excuse me–I mean the enchanted maiden this morning?”
“She’s well. She ties my bows now, so grandpa doesn’t have to.”
“Ties your–” The doctor looked at the speaker, mystified.
Jewel put her hand up to the small billows of silk behind her ear. “My hair bows. They were real hard for grandpa to do.”
Dr. Ballard repressed a guffaw, and then turned solemn. “Do you mean to say that Mr. Evringham tied your hair ribbons?”
“Why yes.”
“That settles it, Jewel. You must go into partnership with me and wave wands and things. Setting Essex Maid on her legs wasn’t a patch on that.”
Jewel regarded him questioningly a moment and then repeated, “But it was real hard for grandpa.”
“I can believe it!”
“And cousin Eloise is the kindest girl. She’s like grandpa about that. Her kindness is inside, too.”
“Is it indeed? You don’t know how much I thank you for telling me where to look for it.”
“Oh, she must be kind to /you/, Dr. Ballard!”
“Once in a while, once in a while,” he replied cautiously, but Jewel couldn’t get a look into his eyes, though she tried, he was so busily engaged poking an invisible fly from Hector’s side with the point of the whip. “If you’ll find a way to make her kind to me all the time, Jewel, then you will be my mascot indeed.”
“All you have to do is to know she is,” replied the child earnestly. “I felt the way you do, at first, but now I’ve found out just because I stopped being afraid.”
“Ah, that’s the recipe, eh? All I’ve to do is to stop being afraid.”
“That’s all!” cried Jewel, beaming at his ready comprehension. “You’ll find out there isn’t a thing to be afraid of with Cousin Eloise, and oh, Dr. Ballard,” the child smiled at him wistfully, “she’s getting so –so–unenchanted.”
“You just waved your wand, I suppose, and said ‘Presto change,’ ” returned the young man.
He turned Hector down a side street and drew rein under a large elm. “Here’s my rheumatic gentleman,” he added, as he jumped from the buggy and fastened the horse. “He won’t keep me waiting while he abuses doctors, so I shan’t be quite so long this time.” The speaker seized his case and went up a garden path to the house, and Jewel, with a luxurious sigh, set Anna Belle in the place he had vacated.
CHAPTER XX
BY THE BROOKSIDE
Scarcely had she seen the doctor admitted and the house door closed when an approaching pedestrian caught her eye. She recognized him at once, and a little more color stole into her round cheeks, while an unconscious smile touched her lips.
The gentleman had observed the doctor enter the house, and glanced idly as he passed, to see what child was waiting in the buggy. The half shy look of recognition which he met surprised him. Somewhere he had seen that rosy face. Going on his way and searching his memory he had left the buggy behind, when in a flash it came to him how, one day, that same shy, pleased smile had beamed wistfully upon him in a trolley car.
Instantly he turned back, and in a minute Jewel saw him standing beside her. He lifted his hat and replaced it as he held out his hand.
“We’ve met before, haven’t we?” he asked kindly.
Jewel shook hands with him, much pleased. “My mother and father have gone to Europe,” she said “and it seemed as if there wasn’t a Scientist in the whole world until I saw you.”
“Another proof of what I always say–that we should all wear the pin. I didn’t know that Dr. Ballard had any Science relations.”
“Oh, Dr. Ballard and I are not relations,” explained Jewel seriously. “I think he wants to marry my cousin Eloise; but he hasn’t ever said so, and I don’t like to ask him. He’s the kindest man. I just love him, and he’s letting me ride around with him while he makes calls.”
“Why, that’s very nice, I’m sure,” returned Mr. Reeves, smiling broadly. “Does he know that you’re a Christian Scientist?”
“Oh, yes, indeed. I had a claim, and my grandpa called him to help me, so then I told him, but he kept on reflecting love just the same.”
Mr. Reeves scented an interesting experience, but he would not question the child. “Nice fellow, Guy Ballard. He deserves a better fate than to bow down to false gods all his days.”
“Yes, indeed,” returned Jewel heartily.
“But, as you say,” continued Mr. Reeves, “he reflects love, and so we shall hear of his being a successful physician.”
“Yes, I want him to be always happy,” said the child.
“Who is your grandfather, my dear?”
“Mr. Evringham.”
“Is it possible? Then you are–whose child?”
“My father’s name is Harry.”
“Of course, of course.” Mr. Reeves nodded, trying to conceal his surprise. “And is he a Scientist now?”
“Yes, my mother is teaching him to be.”
“Well, I’m sure I’m very glad to hear this. Your grandfather is not unkindly disposed toward Science?”
“My grandfather couldn’t be unkind to anything! I thought you knew him.”
Mr. Reeves smoothed his mustache vigorously. “I thought I did,” he returned. “You spoke of your cousin. I knew your aunt and cousin were with Mr. Evringham now. Well, I’m glad, I’m sure, that you are so pleasantly situated. You must come to our little hall some Sunday where we have service, you know. It will be rather different from your beautiful churches in Chicago.”
“But I’d love to come,” replied the child eagerly. “I didn’t know there was one here. I’ll get grandpa to bring me.”
“Mr. Evringham!” The speaker could feel the tendency of his jaw to drop.
“Yes, or else cousin Eloise. She helps me get the lesson every day, and then she takes my book and reads and reads. She told me this morning she read almost all last night.”
Mr. Reeves nodded slowly once or twice. “Still they come,” he murmured meditatively.
“Would you–would you mind writing down where that hall is?” asked the child.
“Certainly I will.” Mr. Reeves suited the action to the word, taking an envelope from his pocket for the purpose. “And if I ever see Mr. Evringham there”–he said slowly, “by the way, please tell your grandfather that we met and had this chat.”
“I don’t know your name,” returned the child.
“Why, of course. Pardon me. Reeves. Mr. Reeves. Can you remember that?”
The little girl flashed a bright look at him. “We can’t forget,” she reminded him.
“Of course,” he nodded. “Exactly. I’m very likely younger in Science than you are, little one. How long have you known about it?”
Jewel thought. “Seven years,” she replied.
Her companion gave a laughing exclamation. “There, you see. I’ve known for only one year. What is your name?”
“Jewel Evringham.”
“Good-bye, Jewel, till we meet again, some Sunday soon, I hope.”
They shook hands, and Mr. Reeves went smiling on his way.
“Seven years,” he reflected. “There’s the simon pure article. She can’t be over nine. I’ll wager Bel-Air Park has had its sensations of late. Evringham! The high ball, the billiard ball, and the race track, and now the reputation of being a difficult old martinet. Never unkind to anything! Why, she’s a little feminine Siegfried, that precious Jewel. Ballard and the cousin, eh? I’ve heard that rumor.”
When Dr. Ballard returned to the buggy, Jewel began loquaciously telling him of her pleasant experience.
“And he knows you, Mr. Reeves does, and he said you were a nice fellow,” she finished, beaming.
“Very civil of him, I’m sure,” returned the doctor as the horse started. “I distinctly remember his having a different opinion one night when he caught me in his favorite cherry tree; but I don’t yet understand the levity of his behavior in scraping acquaintance with the young lady I left unprotected in my buggy.”
“Oh, we’d met before in a trolley car,” explained Jewel. “I wanted to run right to him when I first saw that he was a Scientist.”
“A what? Mr. Reeves? Oh, go ‘way, my little mascot. Go ‘way!”
“Yes, he had on the pin–this one, you know.” Jewel touched the small gold symbol, and Dr. Ballard examined it curiously. “So we smiled at each other, and to-day he’s told me where I can come to church, and I’m nearly sure cousin Eloise will go with me.”
Dr. Ballard’s eyes grew serious as he turned Hector’s head toward the park. “I can scarcely believe it of Mr. Reeves,” he said.
“He says you are too nice to bow down to false gods,” added Jewel shyly.
“If mine are false to you, yours are false to me,” said the young man kindly. “You can understand that, can’t you, Jewel?”
“Yes, I can.”
“And we should never quarrel over it, should we?” he went on.
“No–o!” returned Jewel scornfully. “We’d get a pain.”
“But you can see,” went on the young doctor seriously, “that the more we cared for one another the more we should regret such a wide difference of opinion.”
“I suppose so,” agreed the child, “and so we’d–“
“You are going back to Chicago after a while, and so you understand that I can better afford to agree to differ with you than I could with some one who was going to stay here–your cousin Eloise, for instance.”
The child looked at him in silence. She had never seen Dr. Ballard wear this expression.
“For this reason, Jewel, I want to ask you if you won’t do me the favor not to talk to your cousin about Christian Science, nor ask her to read your books, nor to go to church with you.”
The child’s countenance reflected his seriousness.
“You can see, can’t you, that if Miss Eloise should become much interested in that fad it would spoil our pleasure in being together, while it lasted?”
The word fad was not in Jewel’s vocabulary, but she grasped the doctor’s meaning, and understood that he was much in earnest. She felt very responsible for the moment, and in doubt how to express herself.
“I feel sort of mixed up, Dr. Ballard,” she returned after a minute’s silent perplexity. “You don’t mind cousin Eloise reading the Bible, do you?”
“No.”
“You’re glad if she can be happy instead of sorry, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
Jewel looked at him hopefully. “There won’t be anything worse than that,” she said.
“Yes, many things worse,” he responded quickly. “You might do me that little favor, Jewel. I understand you go to her with your lessons, as you call it, and your questions.”
“Yes, she helps me; but she takes my books to her room. I don’t see how I can help it, Dr. Ballard.”
“Well,” he heaved a quiet sigh, “perhaps the attack will be shorter if it is sharp. We’ll hope so.”
“I wouldn’t do any harm to you for anything,” said the child earnestly, “but you wait a little while. When people come into Christian Science it makes them twice as nice. If you see cousin Eloise get twice as nice you’ll be glad, won’t you?”
The young man gave an impatient half laugh.
“I’m not grasping,” he returned. “She does very well for me as she is. Now,” he turned again to the child, who rejoiced in the recovered twinkle in his eyes, “you have my full permission to convert the error fairy.”
“Hush, hush!” ejaculated Jewel, alarmed. “We mustn’t hold that law over her.”
Dr. Ballard laughed.
“Convert her, I say. Let us see what she would be like if she were twice as nice. She’s a very charming woman now, your aunt Madge. If she were twice as nice–who knows? The fairy might spread wings and float away!”
They had entered the park and Jewel suddenly noted their surroundings. “We’re coming to the Ravine of Happiness,” she said.
“That’s the way it’s been looking to me ever since last evening,” responded her companion meditatively.
The child paid no attention to his words. She was watching eagerly for the bend in the road beside which the gorge lay steepest.
“There!” she said at last, resting her hand on that of her companion. Obediently the doctor stopped his horse. The park was still but for the bird notes, the laughter and babble of the brook far below, and the rustle of the fresh leaves, each one a transparency for a sunbeam.
The two were silent for a minute, Jewel’s radiant eyes seeking the pensive ones of her companion.
“Do you hear?” she asked softly at last.
“What?” he returned.
“It is cousin Eloise’s Spring Song.”
The doctor’s words and looks remained in Jewel’s mind after she reached home that day. She mused concerning him while she was taking off Anna Belle’s hat and jacket up in her own room.
“I don’t suppose you could understand much what he meant, dearie,” she said, her face very sober from stress of thought, “but I did. If I’d been as big as mother I could have helped him; but I knew I was too little, and when people don’t understand, mother says it is so easy to make mistakes in what you say to them.”
Anna Belle’s silence gave assent, and her sweet expression was always a solace to Jewel, who kissed the hard roses in her cheeks repeatedly before she sat her in the big chair by the window and went down to lunch. Anna Belle’s forced abstemiousness had ceased to afflict her. At the lunch table she gave a vivacious account of the morning’s diversions, and for once Mrs. Evringham listened to what she said, a curious expression on her face. This lady had expected to endure annoyance with this child on her grandfather’s account; but for unkind fate to cause Jewel to be a hindrance and a marplot in the case of Dr. Ballard was adding insult to injury.
The child, suddenly catching the expression of Mrs. Evringham’s eyes as they rested upon her, was startled, and ceased talking.
“Aunt Madge does love me,” she declared mentally. “God’s children love one another every minute, every minute.”
“So Mr. Reeves told you where you can go to church,” said Eloise, replying to Jewel’s last bit of information.
“Yes, and”–the little girl was going on eagerly to suggest that her cousin accompany her, when suddenly Dr. Ballard’s eyes seemed looking at her and repeating their protest.
She stopped, and ate for a time in silence. Mrs. Forbes paid little attention to what was being said. She moved about perfunctorily, with an air of preoccupation. She had a more serious trouble now than the care and intrusion of the belongings of Lawrence and Harry Evringham, a worry that for days and nights had not ceased to gnaw at her heart, first as a suspicion and afterward as a certainty.
When luncheon was over, Eloise in leaving the dining-room, put her arm around Jewel’s shoulders, and together they strolled through the hall and out upon the piazza.
Mrs. Evringham looked after them. “If only that child weren’t a little fanatic and Eloise in such an erratic, wayward state, ready to seize upon anything novel, it would be all very well,” she mused, “for Dr. Ballard seems to find Jewel amusing, and it might be a point of common interest. As it is, if ever I wished any one in Jericho, it’s that child.”
Jewel, happy in the proximity of her lovely cousin, satisfied herself by a glance that aunt Madge was not following.
Eloise looked about over the sunny, verdant landscape. “What a deceitful world,” she said. “It looks so serene and easy to live in. So it was very lovely over at your ravine this morning?”
“Oh!” Jewel looked up at her with eager eyes. “Let’s go. You haven’t been there. It’s only a little way. You don’t need your hat, cousin Eloise.”
Summer was in the air. The girl was amused at the child’s enthusiastic tone. “Very well,” she answered.
Jewel drew her on with an embracing arm, and they descended the steps and walked down the path.
Suddenly the child stopped. “Doesn’t it seem unkind to go without Anna Belle!” she exclaimed.
“Oh, nonsense,” returned Eloise, smiling. “You’re not going way upstairs to get her. We needn’t tell her we went. She’s been out driving all the morning. I think it’s my turn.”
The child looked happily up into her cousin’s face. “I love to see you laugh, cousin Eloise,” she returned, and they strolled on.
The park drives were deserted. The cousins reached the gorge without meeting any one. Leaning upon the slender fence, they gazed down into the green depths, and for a minute listened to the woodland melody.
“Isn’t it just like your Spring Song?” asked the child at last.
“It is sweet and comforting and good,” replied the girl slowly, a far- off look in her eyes.
Jewel lifted her shoulders. “Don’t you want to get down there, cousin Eloise?” she asked, her eyes sparkling.
“Yes,” replied the girl promptly.
“Will it hurt your dress?” added Jewel, with a sudden memory of Mrs. Forbes, as she looked over her cousin’s immaculate black and white costume.
“I guess not,” laughed the girl. “Are you afraid Mrs. Forbes will put me to bed?”
She bent her lithe figure and was under the wire in a twinkling. Jewel crept gleefully after her, but was careful to hold her little skirts out of harm’s way as they climbed down the steep bank and at last rested among the ferns by the brook. Its louder babble seemed to welcome them. Nature had been busy at her miracle working since the child’s last visit. Without moving she could have gathered a handful of little blossoms. Instead, she rolled over and kissed a near clump of violets. “You darling, darling things!” she said.
Eloise looked up through far boughs to the fleece-flecked sky. “Everything worth living for is right here, Jewel,” she said. “Let’s have a tent and not give any one our address.”
“I think we ought to let Dr. Ballard come, don’t you?”
“Now why did you pick him out?” returned Eloise plaintively. She was resting her head against her clasped hands as she stretched herself against the incline of her verdant couch. Her companion did not reply at once, and Eloise lazily turned her head to where she could view the eyes fixed upon her.
“What are you thinking of, Jewel?”
“I was just thinking that if my mother made you a thin green dress that swept around you all long and narrow, you’d look like a flower, too.”
The girl smiled back at the sky. “That’s very nice. You can think those thoughts all you please.”
“That wasn’t all, though, because I was thinking about Dr. Ballard. He feels sorry. I couldn’t tell you about it at lunch, because aunt Madge –well, because–“
“Yes,” returned Eloise quietly. “It is better for us to be alone.”
Jewel’s brow relaxed. “Yes,” she said contentedly, “in the Ravine of Happiness.”
“Look out, though,” continued the girl in the same quiet tone and looking back at the sky. “Look out what you say here. It is easy now to feel that all is harmonious, and that discords do not exist. I think even if grandfather appeared I could talk with him peacefully.”
“I have thought about it,” returned the child, “and it seems hard to know what to say; but I love you and Dr. Ballard both, so it will be sure to come out right. He feels sorry if you are beginning to like to study Christian Science.”
“Really, did he speak of that to you? I think he might have chosen a man of his size.”
“Of course he spoke of it when he found out I wanted to ask you to take me to our church.”
“Where is the church here?” Eloise abandoned her lazy tone.
“They have a hall. Mr. Reeves wrote it down for me. Do you really care, cousin Eloise? You’ve been so kind and helped me, but do you really begin to care?”
“Care? Who could help caring, if it is true? I’ve been reading some of the tales of cures in your magazine. If those people tell the truth”–
“Why, cousin Eloise!” The child’s shocked eyes recalled the girl’s self-centred thoughts.
“I beg your pardon, dear. It was rude to say that. I’m not ill, Jewel. I’m so well and strong that–I’ve sometimes wished I wasn’t, but life turned petty and disgusting to me. I resented everything. It is just as wonderful and radiant a star of hope to read that there is a sure way out of my tangle as if I had consumption and was promised a cure of that. I don’t yet exactly believe it, but I don’t disbelieve it. All I know is I want to read, read, read all the time. I was just thinking a minute ago that if we had the books here it would be perfect. This is the sort of place where it would be easiest to see that only the good is the real, and that the unsubstantiality of everything evil can be proved.”
Jewel gave her head a little shake. “Just think of poor Dr. Ballard being afraid to have you believe that.”
“But who wouldn’t be afraid to believe it, who wouldn’t!” exclaimed the girl vehemently.
“Why, I’ve always known it, cousin Eloise,” returned the child simply.
“You dear baby. You haven’t lived long. I don’t want to climb into a fool’s paradise only to fall out with a dull thud.”
Jewel looked at her, grasping as well as she could her meaning. “I know I’m only a little girl; but if you should go to church with me,” she said, “you’d see a lot of grown-up people who know it’s true. Then we could go on Wednesday evenings and hear them tell what Christian Science has done for them.”
“Oh, I’m sure I shouldn’t like that,” responded Eloise quickly. “How can they bear to tell!”
“They don’t think it’s right not to. There are lots of other people besides you that are sorry and need to learn the truth.”
The rebuke was so innocent and, withal, so direct, that honest Eloise turned toward Jewel and made an impulsive grasp toward her, capturing nothing but the edge of the child’s dress, which she held firmly.
“You’re right, Jewel. I’m a selfish, thin-skinned creature,” she declared.
The little girl shook her head. “You’ve got to stop thinking you are, you know,” she answered. “You have to know that the error Eloise isn’t you.”
“That’s mortal mind, I suppose,” returned Eloise, smiling at the sound of the phrase.
“I should think it was! Old thing! Always trying to cheat us!” said Jewel. “All that you have to do is to remember every minute that God’s child must be manifested. He inherits every good and perfect thing, and has dominion over every belief of everything else.”
Eloise stared at her in wonder. “Do you know what you’ve talking about, you little thing, when you use all those long words?”
“Yes. Don’t you?” asked the child. “Oh, listen!” for a bird suddenly poured a wild strain of melody from the treetop.
“And just think,” said Jewel presently, in a soft, awestruck tone, “that some people wear birds sewed on their hats, just as if they were glad something was dead!”
“It /is/ weird,” agreed Eloise. “I never liked it. Jewel, did Dr. Ballard blame you because I am interested in Christian Science?”
“He said he wished I wouldn’t talk to you and go to church and everything.”
The girl bit a blade of grass and eyed the child’s serious face.
“Well, what are you going to do about it?”
“I asked God to show me. I wish Dr. Ballard would study with you.”
“That is impossible. He has spent years learning his science, and he loves it and is proud of it; so what next?”
“Very queer things happen sometimes,” rejoined Jewel doubtfully.
“But not so queer as that would be,” returned Eloise.
Jewel was pondering. This was very delicate ground, and she still felt some awe of her cousin; however, there was only one thing to consider.
“Do you love him better than anybody, cousin Eloise?” she asked.
A flood of color warmed the girl’s face, but she had to smile.
“Would that make the difference?” she asked. “Mustn’t we want the truth anyway?”
Jewel heaved a mighty sigh. She was thinking of Dr. Ballard’s pensive eyes. “I should /think/ so,” she answered frankly; “because if you just study the truth, and hold on tight, how can things be anything but happy at last? I wish I was more grown up, cousin Eloise,” she added apologetically.
“Oh no, no,” answered the girl, with a little catch in her throat. “I’ve had so much of grown-up people, Jewel! I’m so grown up myself! Just a little while ago I was a schoolgirl, busy and happy all the time. I never even went out anywhere except with father, and with Nat when he was at home from college. You don’t know Nat, but you’d like him.”
“Why! Is he a Christian Scientist?”
For answer Eloise laughed low but heartily. “Nat a Christian Scientist!” she mused aloud. “Not exactly, my little cousin!”
“Then should I like him as well as Dr. Ballard?” asked Jewel incredulously.
“I don’t know. Tastes differ.”
“Does he like horses?” asked the child.
“He knows everything about a horse and a yacht except how to pay for them, poor boy,” returned Eloise.
“Is he poor?”
“Yes, he is poor and expensive. It is a bad combination; it is almost as bad as being poor and extravagant. His mother is a widow, and they haven’t much, but what there was she has insisted on spending on him– that is, all she could spare from the doctor’s bills.”
“She needs Science then, doesn’t she?”
“Jewel, that would be one thing that would keep me from wanting to be a Scientist. What’s the fun of being one unless everybody else is? My mother, for instance.”
“Yes; but then you’d find out how to help her.”
Eloise glanced at the child curiously. She thought it would be interesting to peep into Jewel’s mind and see her estimate of Aunt Madge.
“My mother has a great deal to trouble her,” she said loyally.
“Yes, I know she thinks she has,” returned the child.
Again her response surprised her companion.
“I’ll take you as you are, Jewel,” she said. “I’m glad you’re not grown up. You’re fresher from the workshop.”
CHAPTER XXI
AN EFFORT FOR TRUTH
When Eloise spoke in the ravine of talking with her grandfather, it was because for a few days she had been trying to make up her mind to an interview with him. A fortnight ago she would have felt this to be impossible; but subtle changes had been going on in herself, and, she thought, in him. If her mother would undertake the interview now and take that stand with Mr. Evringham which Eloise felt that self-respect demanded, the girl would gladly escape it; but there was no prospect of such a thing. Mrs. Evringham was only too glad to benefit by her father-in-law’s modified mood, to glide along the surface of things and wait–Eloise knew it, knew it every day, in moments when her cheeks flushed hot–for Dr. Ballard to throw the handkerchief.
The girl wished to talk with Mr. Evringham without her mother’s knowledge, and the prospect was a dreaded ordeal. She felt that they had won his contempt, and she feared the loss of her own self-control when she should come to touch upon the sore spots.
“What would you do, Jewel,” she asked the next morning, after they had read the lesson; “what would you do if you were afraid of somebody?”
“I wouldn’t be,” returned the child quickly.
“Well, I am. Now what am I going to do about it?”
Anna Belle, who always gave unwinking attention to the lesson, was in Jewel’s lap, and the child twisted out the in-turning morocco foot as she spoke.
“Why, I’d know that one thought of God couldn’t be afraid of another,” she replied in the conclusive tone to which Eloise could never grow accustomed.
“Oh, Jewel, child,” the girl said impatiently, “we’d be sorry to think most of the people we know are thoughts of God.”
“That’s because you get the error man mixed up with the real one. Mother explains that to me when we ride in cable cars and places where we see error people with sorry faces. There’s a real man, a real thought of God, behind every one of them; and when you remember to think right about people every minute, you are doing them good. Did you say you’re afraid of somebody?”
“Yes, and that somebody is a man whom I must talk to.”
“Then begin right away to know every minute that the real man isn’t anybody to be afraid of, for God made him, and God has only loving thoughts; and of course you must be loving all the time. It’ll be just as /easy/ by the time you come to it, cousin Eloise!”
The girl often asked herself in these days why she should begin to feel unreasonably hopeful and lighter hearted. Her mother no longer complained of her moods. Mrs. Evringham laid the becoming change in her daughter’s expression to the girl’s happiness in discovering that she did reciprocate Dr. Ballard’s evident sentiments.
“Eloise is so high minded,” thought the mother complacently. “She would never be satisfied to marry for convenience, like so many;” and considering herself passingly astute, she let well enough alone, ceased to bring the physician’s name into every conversation, and bided her time.
One morning Mr. Evringham, coming out of the house to go to town, met Eloise on the piazza.
“You are down early,” he said as he greeted her, and was passing on to the carriage.
“Just one minute, grandfather!” she exclaimed, and how her heart beat. He turned his erect form in some surprise, and his cold eyes met the girlish ones.
“She’s a stunning creature,” he thought, as the sunlight bathed her young beauty; but his face was impenetrable, and Eloise nerved herself.
“Were you thinking of going golfing this afternoon?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“I thought you said something about it at dinner last evening. Would you let me go with you?”
Mr. Evringham, much astonished, raised his eyebrows and took off the hat which he had replaced.
“Such a request from youth and beauty is a command,” he returned with a slight bow.
Tears sprang to the girl’s eyes. “Don’t make fun of me, grandfather!” she exclaimed impulsively.
“Not for worlds,” he returned. “You will do the laughing when you see me drive. My hand seems to have lost its cunning this spring. Shall we say four-thirty? Very well. Good-morning.”
“Now what’s all this?” mused Mr. Evringham as he drove to the station. “Has another granddaughter fallen in love with me? Methinks not. What is she after? Does she want to get away from Ballard? Methinks not, again. She’s going to ask me for something probably. Egad, if she does, I think I’ll turn her over to Jewel.”
Eloise’s eyes were bright during the lesson that morning.
“It’s to-day, Jewel,” she said, “that I’m going to talk with that man I’m afraid of.”
“Never say that again,” returned the child vehemently. “You are not afraid. There’s no one to be afraid of. Do you want me to handle it for you?”
“What do you mean, Jewel?”
“To declare the truth for you.”
“Do you mean give me a treatment for it?”
“Yes.”
“Oh. Do you know that seems very funny to me, Jewel?”
“It seems funny to me that you are afraid, when God made you, and the man, and all of us, and there’s nothing but goodness and love in the universe. Fear is the belief of evil. Do you want to believe evil?”
“No, I hate to,” returned Eloise promptly.
“Then you go away, cousin Eloise, and I will handle the case for you.”
“Oh, are you going golfing?” said Mrs. Evringham that afternoon to her daughter. “Do put on your white duck, dear.”
“Yes, I intend to. I’m going with grandfatehr.”
“You are?” in extremest surprise. “Oh, wear your dark skirt, dear; it’s plenty good enough. Do you mean to say he asked you, Eloise?”
“No, I asked him.”
Mrs. Evringham stood in silent amaze, her brain working alertly. She even watched her daughter don the immaculate white golf suit, and made no further protest.
What was in the girl’s mind? When finally from her window she saw the two enter the brougham, Mr. Evringham carrying his granddaughter’s clubs, she smiled a knowing smile and nodded her head.
“I do believe I’ve wronged Eloise,” she thought. “How foolish it was to worry. I’ve been wondering how in the world I was going to get father to give her a wedding, and how I was going to get her to accept it, and now look! That child has thought of the same thing, and will manage it a hundred times better than I could.”
Jewel stood on the steps and waved her hand as the brougham rolled away. Eloise had seized and squeezed her surreptitiously in the hall before they came out.
“I do feel braced up, Jewel. Thank you,” she whispered hurriedly.
“Is the man over at the golf links?” asked the child, surprised to see that Eloise and her grandfather were going out together.
“He will be by the time I get there,” returned the girl.
As soon as the carriage door had closed and they had started, Eloise spoke. “You must think it very strange that I asked this of you, grandfather.”
There was a hint of violets clinging to the fresh white garments that brushed Mr. Evringham’s knee.
“I would not question the gifts the gods provide;” he returned.
She seemed able to rise above the fear of his sarcasms. “Not that you would be surprised at anything mother or I might ask of you,” she continued bravely, “but I have suffered, I’m sure, as much as you have during the last two months.”
“Indeed? I regret to hear that.”
If there was a sting in this reply, Eloise refused to recognize it.
“In fact I have felt so much that it has made it impossible hitherto to say anything, but Jewel has given me courage.”
Mr. Evringham smoothed his mustache. “She has plenty to spare,” he returned.
“She says,” went on Eloise, “that everything that isn’t love is hate; and hate, of course, in her category is unreal. It is because I want the real things, because I long for real things, for truth, that I asked to have this talk, grandfather, and I wanted to be quite alone with you, so I thought of this way.”
“It’s the mater she’s running away from, then,” reflected her companion. He nodded courteously. “I am at your disposal,” he returned.
Subtly the broker’s feeling toward Eloise had been changing since the evening in which Jewel wrote to her parents. His hard and fast opinion of her had been slightly shaken. The frankness of her remarks on Christian Science in the presence of Dr. Ballard the other evening had been a surprise to him. The cold, proud, noncommittal, ease-loving girl who in his opinion had decided to marry the young doctor was either less designing than he had believed, or else wonderfully certain of her own power to hold him. He found himself regarding her with new interest.
“I’ve been waiting for mother to talk with you,” she went on, “and clear up our position; but she does not, and so I must.” The speaker’s hands were tightly clasped in her lap. “I wish I had Jewel’s unconsciousness, her certainty that all is Good, for I feel–I feel shame before you, grandfather.”
It seemed to Mr. Evringham that Jewel’s eyes were appealing to him.
“She says,” he returned with a rather grim smile, “Jewel avers that I am kindness itself inside. Let us admit it for convenience now, and see if you can’t speak freely.”
“Thank you. You know what I am ashamed of: staying here so long; imposing upon you; taking everything for granted when we have no right. I want to understand our affairs; to know if we have anything, and what it is; to have you help me, /you/; to have you tell me how we can live independently, and help me to make mother agree to it. Oh, if you would–if you /could/ be my friend, grandfather. I need you so!”
Mr. Evringham received this impetuous outburst without change of countenance. “How about Ballard?” he said. “I thought he was going to settle all this.”
There was silence in the brougham. The flash of hurt in the girl’s eyes was quenched by quick tears. Her companion reddened under the look of surprise she bent upon him, her lovely lips unsteady.
“No offense,” he added hastily. “Ballard’s sentiments are evident enough, and he is a fine fellow.”
Eloise controlled herself. “Will you take the trouble to explain our affairs to me?” she asked.
“Certainly,” responded Mr. Evringham quickly. “I wish for your sake there was more to explain, more possibilities in the case.”
“We have nothing?” exclaimed the girl acutely.
“Your father took heavy chances and lost. His affairs are nearly settled, and what there is left is small indeed.” The speaker cast a quick glance at the girl beside him. She had caught her lip between her teeth. Jewel’s soft voice sounded in his ears. “Cousin Eloise feels sorry because she isn’t your real relation.” An inkling of what the girl might suffer came to him.
“Your mother and you have a claim upon me,” he went on. “I should certainly feel a responsibility of all my son’s debts, and the one to his wife and daughter in particular. I will try to make the situation easier for you in some way.”
“Manage for us to go away, grandfather. Haven’t you a little house somewhere?”
The beseeching in her tone surprised Mr. Evringham still more. What did the girl mean? Didn’t she intend to marry Ballard? He had believed her to be planning to preside in the Mountain Avenue mansion.
“Yes, it can be arranged, certainly,” he answered vaguely; “but there’s no hurry, Eloise,” he added, in the kindest tone he had ever used toward her. “Some evening we will go over the affairs, and I will show you where your mother stands financially, and we will try to make some plan that shall be satisfactory.”
Eloise gave him a grateful look, as much in response to his manner as to his words. “Thank you. The present condition is certainly–error,” she said.
“Well, we’ll try to find harmony,” replied the other. “Jewel would say it was easy. I should like to have you remain at my house at least as long as she does, Eloise. I should probably have to tie her hair ribbons again if you went.”
The two found themselves smiling at each other. The atmosphere was lightened, and the brougham drew up at the clubhouse.
Mr. Evringham handed out the girl, gave Zeke the order to return for them, and they went up the steps.
“I would drive back with him, grandfather, only that mother would wonder, and ask questions,” said Eloise. “Don’t let me detain you in any way. I’ll just sit here on the piazza.”
“Not play? Nonsense!” returned Mr. Evringham brusquely.
“Please don’t feel obliged”–Eloise began humbly.
“But I can’t help being obliged if you’ll play with me,” interrupted her companion.
Some men observed the confidential attitude of the broker and the beautiful girl. “What’s doing over there?” asked one. “Is Evringham beginning to take notice?”
“Why, don’t you know?” returned the other. “That’s his granddaughter.”
“His daughter, do you mean? Didn’t know he had one.”
“Not a bit of it. She’s Lawrence’s stepdaughter.”
The other shook his head. “That’s too involved for me. She’s a queen, anyway.”
“Going to marry Ballard, they say.”
“That so? Then I won’t go up and fall on Evringham’s neck. My bank book isn’t in Ballard’s class. She can play, too,” as he observed Eloise make a drive while she waited the reappearance of her companion from the clubhouse. “Isn’t that a bird!–and say, there’s young Lochinvar himself!” for here a light automobile whizzed briskly up to the clubhouse.
Dr. Ballard sprang out, for he had recognized the figure at the first teeing ground.
“You gave me the slip!” he cried as he approached.
“Oh, I just went with a handsomer man,” returned Eloise, smiling, as they shook hands.
“I didn’t know I could come until the last minute, then I went to the house for you and found I had missed you.”
Mr. Evringham and the caddy approached. “I cut you out for once, Ballard,” he said. “Well, we’re off, Eloise. I saw you drive. I doubt if he catches us.”
Jewel’s eyes questioned Eloise that evening when she reached home, and she received the smiling, significant nod her cousin gave her with satisfaction.
It was an apparently united family party that gathered about the dinner table. Mr. Evringham and Eloise discussed their game, while Mrs. Evringham fairly rustled with complacence.
As Jewel clung to her grandfather’s neck that evening in bidding him good-night, she whispered:–
“How happy we all are!”
“Are we, really? Well now, that’s very gratifying, I’m sure. Good- night, Jewel.”
CHAPTER XXII
IN THE HARNESS ROOM
“Mother, can I have three dollars?” asked Eloise the next morning.
“Were you thinking of a new riding hat, dear? I do wish you had it to wear this afternoon. Yours is shabby, certainly, but you can’t get it for that, child.”
“No; I was thinking of a copy of ‘Science and Health.’ I don’t like to take Jewel’s any longer, and I’m convinced.”
“What of–sin?” asked Mrs. Evringham in dismay.
“No, just the opposite–that there needn’t be any. The book teaches the truth. I know it.”
“Well, whether it does or doesn’t, you haven’t any three dollars to spend for a book, Eloise,” was the firm reply. “The /idea/, when I can barely rake and scrape enough together to keep us presentable!”
“Where do you get our money?” asked the girl.
“Father gives me a check every fortnight. Of course you know that he has charge of our affairs.”
Eloise’s serene expression did not change. She looked at the little black book in her hand. “This edition costs five dollars,” she said.
“Scandalous!” exclaimed Mrs. Evringham. “I can tell you this is no time for us to be collecting /editions de luxe/. Wait till you’re married.”
“I’m going to run in town for a while this morning, mother.”
“You are? Well don’t get belated. You know that you are to ride with Dr. Ballard at half past four. Dear me,” her brow drawn, “you ought to have that hat. Now I think that I /could/ get on without that jet bolero.”
Eloise laughed softly and drew her mother to her. “Have your jet bolero, dear,” she answered. “My hat isn’t bad.”
Eloise went to her room, and closing the door, took from one of her drawers a box. It contained her girlish treasures, the ornaments and jewels her father had given her from time to time. She took out a small diamond ring and pressed it to her lips.
“Dear papa! I love it because you gave it to me, but I can get with it a wonderful thing, a truth which, if we had known it, would have saved you all those torturing hours, would have saved your dear life. I know how gladly you would have me get it now, for you are learning it too; and it will be your gift, dear, /dear/ papa, your gift just the same.”
Jewel had to study the lesson with only Anna Belle’s assistance that morning, but she received the third letter from her mother and father. Their trip was proving a success from the standpoints of both business and pleasure, but their chief longing was to get back to their little girl.
It was very like visiting with them to read it over, and Jewel did so more than once. “I’ll show it to cousin Eloise as soon as she comes home,” she reflected. Then she dressed Anna Belle to go out.
Running downstairs the child sought and found Mrs. Forbes in the kitchen. The housekeeper no longer questioned her going and coming, although she still considered herself in the light of the child’s only disciplinarian, and was vigilant to watch for errors of omission and commission, and quick to correct them.
“Mrs. Forbes, may I have an old kitchen knife?”
“Certainly not. You’ll cut yourself.”
“I want it to dig up plants.”
Mrs. Forbes stared down at her. “Why, you mustn’t do any such thing.”
“I mean wild flowers for a garden that Anna Belle and I are going to make.”
“Oh. I’ll see if I can’t find you a trowel.”
There was one at hand, and as the housekeeper passed it to the child she warned her:–
“Be careful you don’t make a mistake, now, and get hold of anybody’s plants. What did your cousin Eloise go to New York for?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well I hope it’s for her trousseau.”
Jewel smiled. “My mother makes those.”
“I don’t believe she’ll ever make one for you, then,” returned Mrs. Forbes, but not ill-naturedly. She laughed, glancing at Sarah, who stood by.
“But I think she will for Anna Belle,” returned Jewel brightly, “when she gets older.”
The housekeeper and maid both laughed. “Run along,” said Mrs. Forbes, “and don’t you be late for lunch.”
“She’s an awful sweet child,” said Sarah half reproachfully. “Just the spirit of sunshine.”
“Oh well, they’d turn her head here if it wasn’t for me,” answered the other complacently.
Jewel was not late to lunch, but eating it tete-a-tete with aunt Madge was not to her taste.
Mrs. Evringham utilized the opportunity to admonish her, and Mrs. Forbes for once sympathized with the widow’s sentiments.
Aunt Madge took off her eyeglasses in a way she had when she wished to be particularly impressive.
“Jewel,” she said, “I don’t think any one has told you that it is impolite to Dr. Ballard to say anything about Christian Science in his presence.”
“Why is it?” asked the child.
“Because he is a learned physician, and has, of course, a great respect for his profession.”
“I have a great respect for him,” returned the child, “and he knows I wouldn’t hurt his feelings.”
“The idea!” exclaimed Mrs. Evringham, looking down from a height upon the flaxen head. “As if a little ignorant girl could hurt the feelings of a man like Dr. Ballard!”
Mrs. Forbes also stared at the child, and she winced.
“I do love them, and they do love me,” she thought. “I don’t remember ever speaking about it before the doctor unless somebody asked me,” she said aloud.
“Your cousin Eloise may ask you,” returned Mrs. Evringham. “Nobody else would. She does it in a spirit of mischief, perhaps, but I shall speak to her. She has a passing curiosity about your ideas because it is odd and rather amusing to find a child who has such unnatural and precocious fancies, and she tries to draw you out; but it will not last with her. Neither will it with you, probably. You seem to be a sensible little girl in many ways.” Mrs. Evringham made the addition magnanimously. She really was too much at peace with all the world just now to like to be severe.
Outwardly Jewel was silent. Inwardly she was declaring many things which would have surprised her companions.
“Does your cousin Eloise pretend to you that she is becoming seriously interested in your faith?” pursued Mrs. Evringham.
“She will tell you all about it,” returned Jewel.
Aunt Madge shrugged her shoulders and laughed a little. Her thoughts reverted to her daughter’s trip to the city. She had wondered several times if it had any pleasant connection with her sudden good understanding with Mr. Evringham.
To Jewel’s relief her thoughts remained preoccupied during the remainder of the meal; and as soon as the child could leave, she flew to the closet under the stairs, where Anna Belle often went into retreat during the luncheon hour, and from thence back to the garden she was making by the brookside.
When she returned to the house her eyes lighted as she saw two horses before the piazza, and Dr. Ballard standing beside one of them.
“How are you, Jewel?” he asked, as she danced up to him smiling. Stooping, he lifted her into the side saddle, from whence she beamed upon him.
“Oh, what fun you’re going to have!” she cried.
“I’d like to be sure of that,” he answered, his gloved hand on the pommel.
“What do you mean?” incredulously. “You don’t like that automobile better, do you? They’re so–so stubby. I must have a horse, a horse!” She smoothed and patted her steed lovingly.
“You ought to have–Jewel of the world,” he said kindly. “My bad angel!” he added, looking up quizzically into her eyes, and smiling at the widening wonder that grew in them.
“Your–what?” she asked, and then Eloise came out in her habit.
“I’m going instead of you,” cried the child gayly, “to pay you for staying away all day.”
“Did you miss me?” asked the girl as she shook hands with her escort.
“I tried not to. Anna Belle and I have something to show you in the ravine.” As she spoke, Jewel slid down into the doctor’s arms, and stood on the steps watching while he put Eloise up and mounted himself.
The child’s eyes dwelt upon the pair admiringly as they waved their hands to her and rode away. Little she knew how their hearts were beating. Mrs. Evringham, watching from an upper window, suspected it. She felt that this afternoon would end all suspense.
The child gave a wistful sigh as the horses disappeared, and jumping off the piazza, she wandered around the house toward the stable. There had been no rules laid down to her since the night of Essex Maid’s attack, and Zeke was always a congenial companion.
As she neared the barn a young fellow left it, laughing. She knew who he was,–one of the young men Zeke had known in Boston. He had several times of late come to call on his old chum, for he was out of work.
As he left the barn he saw the child and slouched off to one side, avoiding her; but she scarcely noticed him, congratulating herself that Zeke would be alone and ready, as usual, to crack jokes and stories.
The coachman was not in sight as she entered, but she knew she would find him in the harness room. Its door stood ajar, and as the child approached she heard a strange sound, as of some one weeping suppressedly. Sturdily resisting the sudden fear that swept to her heart, she pushed open the door.
There stood Mrs. Forbes, leaning against a wooden support, her forehead resting against her clasped hands in a hopeless posture, as she sobbed heavily. The air was filled with an odor which had for Jewel sickening associations. The only terror, the only tragedy, of her short life was wrapped about with this pungent smell. She seemed again to hear her mother’s sobs, to feel once more that sensation of all things coming to ruin which descended upon her at the unprecedented sight and sound of her strong mother’s emotion.
All at once she perceived Zeke sitting on a low chair, his arms hanging across his knees and his head fallen.
The child turned very pale. Her doll slid unnoticed to the floor, as she pressed her little hands to her eyes.
“Father, Mother, God,” she murmured in gasps. “Thou art all power. We are thy children. Error has no power over us. Help us to waken from this lie.”
Running up to the housekeeper, she clasped her arms about her convulsed form. “Dear Mrs. Forbes,” she said, her soft voice trembling at first but growing firm, “I know this claim, but it can be healed. It seems very terrible, but it’s nothing. We know it, we must know it.”
The woman lifted her head and looked down with swollen eyes upon the child. She saw her go unhesitatingly across to Zeke and kneel beside him.
“Don’t be discouraged, Zeke,” she said lovingly. “I know how it seems, but my father had it and he was healed. You will be healed.”
The coachman lifted his rumpled head and stared at her with bloodshot eyes.
“Great fuss ’bout nothing,” he said sullenly. “Mother always fussing.”
Something in his look made the child shudder. Resisting the sudden repugnance to one who had always shown her kindness, she impulsively took his big hand in both her little ones. “Zeke, what is error saying to you?” she demanded. “You can’t look at me without love. I love you because God does. He is lifting us out of this error belief.”
The young fellow returned the clasp of the soft hands and winked his eyes like one who is waking. “Mother makes great fuss,” he grumbled. “Scott was here. We had two or three little friendly drinks. Ma had to come in and blubber.”
“What friendly drinks? What do you mean?” demanded Jewel, looking all about her. Her eyes fell upon a large black bottle. She dropped the coachman’s hand and picked it up. She smelled of it, her eyes dilated, and she began to tremble again; and throwing the whiskey from her, she buried her face for a moment against Zeke’s shirt sleeve.
“Is it in a bottle!” she exclaimed at last, in a hushed voice, drawing back and regarding the coachman with such a white and horrified countenance that it frightened the clouds from his brain. “Is that terrible claim in a bottle, and do people drink it out?” she asked slowly, and in an awestruck tone.
“It’s no harm,” began Zeke.
“No harm when your mother is crying, when your face is full of error, and your eyes were hating? No harm when my mother cried, and all our gladness was gone? Would you go and drink a claim like that out of a bottle–of your own accord?”
Zeke wriggled under the blue eyes and the unnatural rigidity of the child’s face.
“No, Jewel, he wouldn’t,” groaned Mrs. Forbes suddenly. “Zeke’s a good boy, but he’s inherited that. His father died of it. It’s a disease, child. I thought my boy would escape, but he hasn’t! It’s the end!” cried the wretched woman. “What will Mr. Evringham say! To think how I blamed Fanshaw! Zeke’ll lose his place and go downhill, and I shall die of shame and despair.” Her sobs again shook her from head to foot.
Jewel continued to look at Zeke. A new, eager expression stole over her face. “/Is/ it the end?” she asked. “Don’t you believe in God?”
“I suppose so,” answered the coachman sullenly. “I know I’m a man, too. I can control myself.”
“No. Nobody can. Even Jesus said, ‘Of myself I can do nothing.’ Only God can help you. If you can drink that nasty smelling stuff, and get all red and rumply and sorry, then you need God the worst of anybody in Bel-Air. You look better now. It’s just like a dream, the way you lifted up your face to me when I came in, and it /was/ a dream. I’ll help you, Zeke. I’ll show you how to find help.” The child suddenly leaned toward the young fellow, and then retreated. “I can’t stand your breath!” she exclaimed, “and I like to get close to the people I love.”
This seemed to touch Zeke. He blushed hotly. “It’s a darned shame, kid,” he returned sheepishly.
“Mrs. Forbes, come here, please,” said Jewel. The housekeeper had ceased crying, and was watching the pair. She saw that her boy’s senses were clearer. She approached obediently, and when the child took her hand her own closed tightly upon the little fingers.
“Zeke, you’re a big strong man and everybody likes you,” said Jewel earnestly. “Isn’t it better to stay that way than to drink out of a bottle, no matter /how/ much you like it?”
“I don’t like it so awfully,” returned Zeke protestingly. “I like to be sociable with the boys, that’s all.”
“What a way to be sociable!” gasped the child. “Well, wouldn’t you rather be nice, so people will like to get close to you?”
“Depends on the folks,” returned the boy with a touch of his usual manner. “You’re all right, little kid.” He put out his hand, but quickly withdrew it.
Jewel seized it. “Now give your other one to your mother. There now, we’re all together. If your mother thinks you have a disease, Zeke, then she must know you haven’t. If you want me to, I’ll come out here every day at a quiet time and give you a treatment, and we’ll talk all about Christian Science, and we’ll know that there’s nothing that can make us sick or unhappy–or unkind! Think of your unkindness to your mother–and to me if you go on, for I love you, Zeke. Now /may/ I help you?”
The soft frank voice, the earnest little face, moved Zeke to cast a glance at his mother’s swollen eyes. They were bent upon Jewel.
“Do you say your father was cured that way, child?” asked Mrs. Forbes.
“Yes. Oh yes! and he’s so happy!”
“Zeke, let’s all be thankful if there’s /anything/,” said the woman tremulously, turning to him appealingly.
“I’d just as soon have a visit from you every day, little kid,” said the young fellow. “You’re a corker.”
“But you must want more than me,” returned the child. “God and healing and purity and goodness! If you’re in earnest, what are you going to do with that?” She touched the black bottle with the toe of her shoe.
Zeke looked at the whiskey, then back into her eyes. They were full of love and faith for him.
He stooped and picked up the bottle, then striding to a window, he flung it out toward the forest trees with all the force of his strong arm.
“Damn the stuff!” he said.
Mrs. Forbes felt herself tremble from head to foot. She bit her lip.
Her son turned back. “Getting near train time,” he added, not looking at his companions. “Guess I’ll go upstairs.”
When he had disappeared his mother stooped slowly and kissed Jewel. “Forgive me,” she said tremulously.
“What for?” asked the child.
“Everything.”
The housekeeper still stood in the harness room after Jewel had gone away. She bowed her head on her folded hands. “Our Father who art in heaven, forgive me,” she prayed. “Forgive me for being a fool. Forgive me for not recognizing Thine angel whom Thou hast sent. Amen.”
CHAPTER XXIII
MRS. EVRINGHAM’S CALLER
Mrs. Evringham was busily chewing the cud of sweet fancies only, that afternoon. Following the equestrians in their leafy woodland path, she pictured them as talking of their future, and herself built many castles in the air. “Ah,” she thought sentimentally, leaning back in her reclining chair, “how charming is youth–with plenty of money!”
She was roused from these luxurious meditations by the appearance of Sarah, bearing a card on a salver.
“A man!” she exclaimed with annoyance. “I’m not dressed.”
Lifting the card, she read it with a start.
“Mr. Nathan Wycliffe Bonnell.”
“Tell him I’ll be down soon,” was all she said; but her thoughts ran swiftly as she hurriedly slipped into her gown. “How in the world comes the boy out here? Just as well that Eloise is away. It would only be painful to her, all the old associations.” But old associations cropped up more and more enticingly for Mrs. Evringham as she made her swift toilet, and by the time she reached the drawing- room her eagerness lent her cordiality a very genuine tone.
“Nat, dear boy, how are you?”
The young man who rose eagerly to meet her would have been noticeable in any crowd. She gazed up into his smooth-shaven, frank face, with its alert eyes and strong chin, and felt a yearning affection for all which he represented to her. “What are you doing out here?”
“Visiting you and Eloise,” he answered, with the hearty relish which always characterized his manner when circumstances were agreeable. “Where is she?”
“Riding. I don’t know when they will come home, either. It’s such a charming day, isn’t it? So good of you to hunt us up, Nat. We’ve been out of the world so long. I can’t tell you what a rush of memories comes over me at sight of you, you nice, big boy. I do believe you’ve been growing.” She gave a glance of approval at the young man’s stalwart proportions.
“Oh, don’t humiliate me,” he laughed, as she drew him to a divan, where they seated themselves.
“How could you get away at this hour?”
“I’m changing my business, and get a week’s vacation thereby. Great luck, isn’t it?”
“I hope so. Are you going to do better?”
“Much better. It’s only a little matter of time now, Mrs. Evringham– automobiles, steam yachts, and all the rest of it.”
“Ah, the optimism of youth!” she sighed, gazing at the dancing lights in his eyes. “It’s very beautiful, and usually entirely unfounded. You look so radiant, my dear. Perhaps you have come out here to let us congratulate you. Have you found that desirable girl? I certainly should be the first to be told, for I always talked to you very plainly, didn’t I?”
“Indeed you did, Mrs. Evringham. You always kept my ineligibility before me strenuously.”
“A certain /sort/ of ineligibility, dear boy,” returned the lady with a flattering cadence. “Your capital did not happen to consist of money. Tell me all, Nat. Who is she?”
He shook his head. “She’s still not impossible, but improbable,” he returned.
“Oh, you are too difficult, my dear. Really, I thought at the time our misfortunes fell upon us that it was going to be Miss Caton. She would have been a great assistance to you, Nat. It isn’t as if you could even afford to be a bachelor. In these days so much is expected of them. How is your mother?” Mrs. Evringham made the addition in that tone of fixed sympathy which one employs when only a depressing answer can be expected.
“Very well, thank you.”
“You mean as well as usual, I suppose.”
“No, I mean well. Wonderful, isn’t it?”
“Really, Nat?” Mrs. Evringham straightened up in her interest. “Who did it?”
“She was healed by Christian Science.”
“You don’t mean it!”
“Indeed I do.”
Mrs. Evringham thanked her holy stars that Eloise was absent.
“Well! I never for one moment classed your mother as a /malade imaginaire/!” exclaimed the lady.
Her companion raised his eyebrows. “I fancy no one did who knew her.”
“You believe it, then?”
“I should be an idiot if I didn’t.”
“Do you mean to say she is out of her wheeled chair?”
“No chairs for her now. When she wishes to walk she walks.”
“Then she always could!” declared Mrs. Evringham.
“I think you know better than that,” returned the other calmly.
“How long since?” asked Mrs. Evringham.
“Three months.”
Silence.
“Aren’t you glad for her?” asked Bonnell with a slight smile of curiosity into the disturbed face. “I ought to have told you at first that osteopathy did it; then after your joy had subsided, break the truth gently.”
“Of course I’m glad,” returned the other stiffly, “but I’d rather Eloise did not hear of it at once.”
“May I know why?”
“Certainly. We have a very dear friend who is a physician. It looks very much as if he might be something nearer than a friend. It is he with whom Eloise is riding this afternoon. It is very distasteful, naturally, to have these alleged cures discussed in our family. We have had some annoyance in that line already. You can understand how doctors must feel.”
“Yes, so long as they believe a cure to be only alleged; but where one is convinced that previously hopeless conditions have been healed, and it does happen once in a while, they are glad of it, I’m confident. We haven’t a finer, broader minded class of men in our country than our physicians.”
“I think so,” agreed Mrs. Evringham, drawing herself up with a fleeting vision of the Ballard place on Mountain Avenue.
“But they are not the wealthiest at the start,” said Nat. “Is it possible that you are allowing Eloise to ride unchaperoned with a young physician?”
Mrs. Evringham did not remark the threatening curves at the corners of the speaker’s lips.
“Oh, this one is different,” she returned seriously; “very fine connections, and substantial in /every/ way.”
Her companion threw back his head and laughed frankly.
“We have to smile at each other once in a while, don’t we, Mrs. Evringham?” he said, in the light, caressing manner which had for a few years been one of her chief worries; “but all the same, you’re fond of me just as long as I don’t forget my place, eh? You’re glad to see me?”
“You know I am.” Mrs. Evringham pressed her hand against the laces over her heart. “Such a bittersweet feeling comes over me at the very tones of your voice. Oh, the happy past, Nat! Gone forever!” She touched a dainty handkerchief to her eyes. “I suppose your mother is still in her apartment?”
“She has taken a place at View Point for the summer, and has set her heart on a long visit from you.”
“How very kind of her,” responded Mrs. Evringham with genuine gratitude. “I don’t know what father means to do in the hot weather or whether he–or whether I should wish to go with him. Your mother and I always enjoyed each other, when she was sufficiently free from suffering.”
“That time is always now,” returned Nat, a fullness of gratitude in his voice.
His companion looked at him curiously. “I can’t realize it.”
“Come and see,” was his reply.
“I will, I certainly will. I shall anticipate it with great pleasure.”
A very convenient place to prepare a part of Eloise’s trousseau, Mrs. Evringham was considering, and the girl safely engaged, Nat’s presence would have no terrors. “You think you are really getting into a good business arrangement now?” she asked aloud.
“Very. I wake up in the morning wondering at my own good fortune.”
“I am so glad, my dear boy,” responded the other sympathetically. “Perhaps, after all, you will be able to wait for a little more chin than Miss Caton has. Of course she’s a very /nice/ girl and all that.”
Bonnell smiled at the carpet.
They talked on for half an hour of mutual friends over cups of tea, and then he rose to go.
“Eloise will be sorry!” said Mrs. Evringham effusively. “It’s such a long way out here and so difficult for you to get the time. It isn’t as if you could come easily.”
“Oh, I have several days here. I’m staying at the Reeves’s. Do you know them?”
“No,” returned the lady, trying to conceal that this was a blow.
“It is Mr. Reeves with whom I am going into business, and we are doing some preliminary work. I shall see Eloise soon. Remember me to her.”
“Yes, certainly,” replied Mrs. Evringham. She kept a stiff upper lip until she was alone, and then a troubled line grew in her forehead.
“It will be all right, of course, if things are settled,” she thought. “I can scarcely wait for Eloise to come home.”
Jewel had come from the barn straight to her room, where she thought upon her problem with the aids she loved.
At last she went downstairs to a side door to watch for Zeke as he drove from the barn on his way to the station to meet Mr. Evringham. As the horse walked out of the barn she emerged and intercepted the coachman.
Mrs. Forbes at a window saw Zeke stop. She wondered what Jewel was saying to him, wondered with a humble gratitude novel to her dominating nature.
“Wait one minute, Zeke,” said the child. “I’ve been wondering whether I ought to say anything to grandpa.”
“If you do I’ll lose my place,” returned the young fellow; “and I’ve never done wrong by the horses yet.”
“I know you haven’t. God has taken care of you, hasn’t he, Zeke? Do you think it’s right for me not to tell grandpa? I’ve decided that I’ll do whatever you say.”
It was the wisdom of the serpent and the harmlessness of the dove. Zeke, nervously fingering the whip handle, looked down into the guileless face and mentally vowed never to betray the trust he saw there.
“Then don’t tell him, Jewel,” he returned rather thickly, for the fullness in his throat. “You come out to the barn the way you said you would, and we’ll talk over things. I don’t care if the boys do laugh. I’ve sworn off. I believe you helped Essex Maid the other night. I believe you can help me.”
Jewel’s eyes were joyful. “If you know you /want/ help, Zeke, then you’ll get it. Mother says that’s the first thing. Mortal mind is so proud.”
“Mine ain’t strutting much,” returned Zeke as he drove on.
Jewel amused herself about the grounds until the phaeton should return with her grandfather.
When she saw it coming she ran down to the gate and hopped and skipped back beside it, Mr. Evringham watching her gyrations unsmilingly.
As he dismounted at the piazza she clung to his hand going up the steps. “Which are you going to do, grandpa, go riding or play golf?”
“Which do you want me to do?” he asked.
“When you ride it’s more fun for me,” she replied.
He seated himself in one of the chairs and she leaned against its broad arm.
“It’s rather more fun for me, too. I’m growing lazy. I think I’ll ride.”
“Good!”
“What have you been doing to-day, Jewel?”
“Well,”–meditatively,–“cousin Eloise went to New York, so I had to get my lesson alone. And I didn’t braid my hair over.”
Mr. Evringham looked startled. “She’ll do it, I dare say, before dinner,” he replied.
“If she has time. She has gone riding with Dr. Ballard. They just trotted away together. Oh, it was lovely!”
Mr. Evringham, leaning his head back, looked off under his heavy brows as he responded:–
“Across the hills and far away,
Beyond their utmost purple rim,
And deep into the dying day
The happy princess followed him,
“and all that sort of business, I suppose.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” said Jewel doubtfully.
“I should hope not. Well, what else have you done? Been treating any rheumatism? I haven’t had it since the sun shone.”
“You never asked me to,” returned the child.
Mr. Evringham smiled. “The sunshine is a pretty good treatment,” he observed.
“Sometimes your belief comes into my thought,” said Jewel, “and of course I always turn on it and think the truth.”
“Much obliged, I’m sure. I’d like to turn on it myself at times.”
“You can study with cousin Eloise and me, if you’d like to,” said Jewel eagerly.
“Oh, thank you, thank you,” rejoined the broker hastily. “Don’t disturb yourself. There must be some sinners, you know, or the saints would have to go out of business–nobody to practice on. Well, have you been to the ravine?”
“Oh yes! Anna Belle and I, and we had more /fun/! We made a garden.”
“Morning or afternoon?”
“Morning.”
“Well I wish to know,” said Mr. Evringham in a suddenly serious and impressive tone, “I wish to know if you reached home in time for lunch.”
Jewel felt somewhat startled under the daze of his piercing eyes, but her conscience was clear. “Yes, I was here in plenty of time. I wanted to surely not be late, so I was here too soon.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” returned Mr. Evringham gravely. “I don’t wish you to be unpunctual, but I object equally to your returning unnecessarily early when you wish to stay.”
“But I couldn’t help it, grandpa,” Jewel began earnestly, when he interrupted her.
“So I’ve brought you this,” he added, and took from his pocket an oblong package, sealed at each end.
The child laid her doll in the broker’s lap,–he had become hardened to this indignity,–and her fingers broke the seals and slipped the paper from a morocco case.
“Push the spring in the end,” said Mr. Evringham.
She obeyed. The lid flew up and disclosed a small silver chatelaine watch. The pin was a cherub’s head, its wings enameled in white, as were the back and edges of the little timepiece whose hands were busily pointing to blue figures.
Jewel gasped. “For me?”
Her grandfather smoothed his mustache. He had presented gifts to ladies before, but never with such effect.
“Grandpa, grandpa!” she exclaimed, touching the little watch in wondering delight. “See what Divine Love has sent me!”
Mr. Evringham raised his eyebrows and smiled, but he was soon assured that Love’s messenger was not forgotten. He was instantly enveloped in a rapturous hug, and heroically endured the bitter of the watchcase pressing into his jugular for the sweet of the rose-leaf kisses that were assaulting his cheek like the quick reports of a tiny Gatling gun.
“See if you can wind it,” he said at last.
Jewel lifted her treasure tenderly from its velvet bed, and he showed her how to twist its stem, and then pinned it securely on the breast of her light sailor suit, where she looked down upon it in rapt admiration.
“Now then, Jewel, you have no excuse!” he said severely.
She raised her happy eyes, while her hand pressed the satin surface of her watch. “Grandpa, grandpa!” she said, sighing ecstatically, “you’re such a joker!”
CHAPTER XXIV
THE RAVINE GARDEN
Mrs. Evringham tried heroically to look impassive when her daughter returned from the ride. There was barely time then to dress for dinner, and no opportunity for confidences before the meal, nor afterward until bedtime; but the look of peace and sweetness in Eloise’s face could have but one significance to the mother, who believed that peace lay only in the direction upon which she had set her heart.
Mr. Evringham took coffee with them after dinner in the drawing-room, while Jewel caressed her watch, never tiring of looking at its clear face and the little second hand which traveled so steadily its tiny circuit.
Mrs. Evringham looked often toward the door, expectant of the doctor’s entrance. The evening wore on and he did not come. Still Eloise’s face wore the placid, restful expression. A gentle ease with her grandfather replaced her old manner.
Her mother determined to try an experiment.
“You could never guess who called to-day, Eloise,” she said suddenly.
Her daughter looked up from her coffee. “No. Who was it?”
“Nat Bonnell.”
“Really!” The girl’s tone indicated great surprise, and that only. “I wish I might have seen him.”
The addition was made so calmly, almost perfunctorily, that Mrs. Evringham smiled with exultation.
She turned to her father-in-law. “Who would believe that Mr. Bonnell was Eloise’s brightest flame a year ago? ‘How soon are we forgot!’ ” she said lightly.
When Jewel had kissed them all good-night and gone upstairs, and Mr. Evringham had withdrawn to his library, Mrs. Evringham took her child’s hand and looked fondly into her eyes.
“Well?” she asked.
“Well,” returned Eloise, “do tell me everything Nat said.”
“After you’ve told me everything Dr. Ballard said. I supposed you’d fly to tell me, dear.”
The girl looked tenderly back into the eyes that were sharp with inquiry. “Dear little mother,” she returned, “it can’t be.”
“What can’t be?”
“What you wish. Dr. Ballard.”
“Have you–refused him–!” Mrs. Evringham’s face whitened, and unconsciously she stepped back.
“It didn’t have to come to that. Dr. Ballard is so fine–such a wise man in so many ways. I do admire him so much.”
“What did you say to him? I will know!” exclaimed Mrs. Evringham passionately.
Eloise was mute, and her eyes besought her mother.
“Speak, I say! Was it Christian Science? Did you dare, Eloise Evringham, did you /dare/ spoil your life–my life–our future, by scaring Dr. Ballard with that bugbear?” The angry woman was breathing fast.
“Mother dear, don’t give us something so painful to remember. Don’t, I beg of you. Dr. Ballard does not reproach me. He thinks I shall change, and he wishes to give me time to see if I do. Think of him, if you will not think of me. He would be so shocked to have you take it this way. If you could have seen how kind he was, how patient. Dear mother, don’t cry. It isn’t anything I can help, unless I should deliberately turn dishonest.”
But Mrs. Evringham did cry, and heartily. She hurried away to her own room as quickly as possible, and locked the door against Eloise, who lay awake for hours with a strange mingling of regret and joy at her heart, and a constant declaring of the truth.
At midnight the girl heard the door unlock and saw her mother emerge.
“Darling mamma!” she exclaimed, springing out of bed.
“Oh, Eloise,” moaned the poor woman, dissolving again upon her child’s shoulder. “I never went to bed without your kiss, and I can’t bear it. How can you be so cru–cru–cruel!”
“Darling, everything is going to come right,” returned Eloise, holding her close. “Nothing good would come of doing wrong. I never loved you so much as now. I never saw duty so plainly. Dearest, in one way I suffer for you, but still I was never so happy. I have grasped the end of the clue that will surely lead us safely through the labyrinth, no matter what life brings. You will see, mamma dear, after a while you will see. Don’t go back. Come into my bed.”
Disconsolately Mrs. Evringham obeyed, and in a few minutes, worn out with emotion, she had sobbed herself to sleep in her child’s arms; and although for many days afterward she wore a languid air, and declared that there was nothing to live for, she yielded herself to Eloise’s courageous and quietly joyful atmosphere, with silent wonder at her