3.
Jill endured Sandringham for ten days; and, looking back on that
period of her life later, she wondered how she did it. The sense of
desolation which had gripped her on the station platform increased
rather than diminished as she grew accustomed to her surroundings.
The east wind died away, and the sun shone fitfully with a suggestion
of warmth, but her uncle's bleakness appeared to be a static quality,
independent of weather conditions. Her aunt, a faded woman with a
perpetual cold in the head, did nothing to promote cheerfulness. The
rest of the household consisted of a gloomy child, "Tibby," aged
eight; a spaniel, probably a few years older, and an intermittent
cat, who, when he did put in an appearance, was the life and soul of
the party, but whose visits to his home were all too infrequent for
Jill. Thomas was a genial animal, whose color-scheme, like a Whistler
picture, was an arrangement in black and white. He had green eyes and
a purr like a racing automobile. But his social engagements in the
neighborhood kept him away much of the time. He was the popular and
energetic secretary of the local cats' debating society. One could
hear him at night sometimes reading the minutes in a loud, clear
voice; after which the debate was considered formally open.
Each day was the same as the last, almost to the final detail.
Sometimes Tibby would be naughty at breakfast, sometimes at lunch;
while Rover, the spaniel, a great devotee of the garbage-can, would
occasionally be sick at mid-day instead of after the evening meal.
But, with these exceptions, there was a uniformity about the course
of life in the Mariner household which began to prey on Jill's nerves
as early as the third day.
The picture which Mr Mariner had formed in his mind of Jill as a
wealthy young lady with a taste for house property continued as vivid
as ever. It was his practice each morning to conduct her about the
neighborhood, introducing her to the various houses in which he had
sunk most of the money which he had made in business. Mr Mariner's
life centered around Brookport real estate, and the embarrassed Jill
was compelled to inspect sitting-rooms, bathrooms, kitchens, and
master's bedrooms till the sound of a key turning in a lock gave her
a feeling of nervous exhaustion. Most of her uncle's houses were
converted farmhouses and, as one unfortunate purchaser had remarked,
not so darned converted at that. The days she spent at Brookport
remained in Jill's memory as a smell of dampness and chill and
closeness.
"You want to buy," said Mr Mariner every time he shut a front-door
behind them. "Not rent. Buy. Then, if you don't want to live here,
you can always rent in the summer."
It seemed incredible to Jill that the summer would ever come. Winter
held Brookport in its grip. For the first time in her life she was
tasting real loneliness. She wandered over the snow-patched fields
down to the frozen bay, and found the intense stillness, punctuated
only by the occasional distant gunshot of some optimist trying for
duck, oppressive rather than restful. She looked on the weird beauty
of the ice-bound marshes which glittered red and green and blue in
the sun with unseeing eyes; for her isolation was giving her time to
think, and thought was a torment.
On the eighth day came a letter from Uncle Chris,--a cheerful, even
rollicking letter. Things were going well with Uncle Chris, it
seemed. As was his habit, he did not enter into details, but he wrote
in a spacious way of large things to be, of affairs that were coming
out right, of prosperity in sight. As tangible evidence of success,
he enclosed a present of twenty dollars, for Jill to spend in the
Brookport shops.
The letter arrived by the morning mail, and two hours later Mr
Mariner took Jill by one of his usual overland routes to see a house
nearer the village than most of those which she had viewed. Mr
Mariner had exhausted the supply of cottages belonging to himself,
and this one was the property of an acquaintance. There would be an
agent's fee for him in the deal, if it went through, and Mr Mariner
was not a man who despised money in small quantities.
There was a touch of hopefulness in his gloom this morning, like the
first intimation of sunshine after a wet day. He had been thinking
the thing over, and had come to the conclusion that Jill's
unresponsiveness when confronted with the houses she had already seen
was due to the fact that she had loftier ideas than he had supposed.
Something a little more magnificent than the twelve thousand dollar
places he had shown her was what she desired. This house stood on a
hill looking down on the bay, in several acres of ground. It had its
private landing-stage and bath-house, its dairy, its
sleeping-porches,--everything, in fact, that a sensible girl could
want. Mr Mariner could not bring himself to suppose that he would
fail again today.
"They're asking a hundred and five thousand," he said, "but I know
they'd take a hundred thousand. And, if it was a question of cash
down, they would go even lower. It's a fine house. You could
entertain there. Mrs Bruggenheim rented it last summer, and wanted to
buy, but she wouldn't go above ninety thousand. If you want it, you'd
better make up your mind quick. A place like this is apt to be
snapped up in a hurry."
Jill could endure it no longer.
"But, you see," she said gently, "all I have in the world is twenty
dollars!"
There was a painful pause. Mr Mariner shot a swift glance at her in
the hope of discovering that she had spoken humorously, but was
compelled to decide that she had not. His face under normal
conditions always achieved the maximum gloom possible for any face,
so he gave no outward sign of the shock which had shattered his
mental poise; but he expressed his emotion by walking nearly a mile
without saying a word. He was stunned. He had supported himself up
till now by the thought that, frightful as the expense of
entertaining Jill as a guest might be, the outlay was a good sporting
speculation if she intended buying house-property in the
neighbourhood. The realization that he was down to the extent of a
week's breakfasts, lunches, and dinners, with nothing to show for it,
appalled him. There had been a black morning some years before when
Mr. Mariner had given a waiter a ten-dollar bill in mistake for a
one. As he had felt then, on discovering his error when it was too
late to retrieve it, so did he feel now.
"Twenty dollars!" he exclaimed, at the end of the mile.
"Twenty dollars," said Jill,
"But your father was a rich man." Mr. Mariner's voice was high and
plaintive. "He made a fortune over here before he went to England."
"It's all gone. I got nipped," said Jill, who was finding a certain
amount of humor in the situation, "in Amalgamated Dyes."
"Amalgamated Dyes?"
"They're something," explained Jill, "that people get nipped in."
Mr Mariner digested this.
"You speculated?" he gasped.
"Yes."
"You shouldn't have been allowed to do it," said Mr Mariner warmly.
"Major Selby--your uncle ought to have known better than to allow
you."
"Yes, oughtn't he," said Jill demurely.
There was another silence, lasting for about a quarter of a mile.
"Well, it's a bad business," said Mr Mariner.
"Yes," said Jill. "I've felt that myself."
* * *
The result of this conversation was to effect a change in the
atmosphere of Sandringham. The alteration in the demeanor of people
of parsimonious habit, when they discover that the guest they are
entertaining is a pauper and not, as they had supposed, an heiress,
is subtle but well-marked. In most cases, more well-marked than
subtle. Nothing was actually said, but there are thoughts that are
almost as audible as words. A certain suspense seemed to creep into
the air, as happens when a situation has been reached which is too
poignant to last. Greek Tragedy affects the reader with the same
sense of over-hanging doom. Things, we feel, cannot go on as they
are.
That night, after dinner, Mrs Mariner asked Jill to read to her.
"Print tries my eyes so, dear," said Mrs Mariner. It was a small
thing, but it had the significance of that little cloud that arose
out of the sea like a man's hand. Jill appreciated the portent. She
was, she perceived, to make herself useful.
"Of course I will," she said cordially. "What would you me to read?"
She hated reading aloud. It always made her throat sore, and her eye
skipped to the end of each page and took the interest out of it long
before the proper time. But she proceeded bravely, for her conscience
was troubling her. Her sympathy was divided equally between these
unfortunate people who had been saddled with an undesired visitor and
herself who had been placed in a position at which every independent
nerve in her rebelled. Even as a child she had loathed being under
obligations to strangers or those whom she did not love.
"Thank you, dear," said Mrs Mariner, when Jill's voice had roughened
to a weary croak. "You read so well." She wrestled ineffectually with
her handkerchief against the cold in the head from which she always
suffered. "It would be nice if you would do it every night, don't you
think? You have no idea how tired print makes my eyes."
On the following morning after breakfast, at the hour when she had
hitherto gone house-hunting with Mr Mariner, the child Tibby, of whom
up till now she had seen little except at meals, presented himself to
her, coated and shod for the open and regarding her with a dull and
phlegmatic gaze.
"Ma says will you please take me for a nice walk!"
Jill's heart sank. She loved children, but Tibby was not an
ingratiating child. He was a Mr Mariner in little. He had the family
gloom. It puzzled Jill sometimes why this branch of the family should
look on life with so jaundiced an eye. She remembered her father as a
cheerful man, alive to the small humors of life.
"All right, Tibby. Where shall we go?"
"Ma says we must keep on the roads and I mustn't slide."
Jill was thoughtful during the walk. Tibby, who was no
conversationalist, gave her every opportunity for meditation. She
perceived that in the space of a few hours she had sunk in the social
scale. If there was any difference between her position and that of a
paid nurse and companion, it lay in the fact that she was not paid.
She looked about her at the grim countryside, gave a thought to the
chill gloom of the house to which she was about to return, and her
heart sank.
Nearing home, Tibby vouchsafed his first independent observation.
"The hired man's quit!"
"Has he?"
"Yep. Quit this morning."
It had begun to snow. They turned and made their way back to the
house. The information she had received did not cause Jill any great
apprehension. It was hardly likely that her new duties would include
the stoking of the furnace. That and cooking appeared to be the only
acts about the house which were outside her present sphere of
usefulness.
"He killed a rat once in the wood-shed with an axe," said Tibby
chattily. "Yessir! Chopped it right in half, and it bled!"
"Look at the pretty snow falling on the trees," said Jill faintly.
At breakfast next morning, Mrs Mariner having sneezed, made a
suggestion.
"Tibby, darling, wouldn't it be nice if you and cousin Jill played a
game of pretending you were pioneers in the Far West?"
"What's a pioneer?" enquired Tibby, pausing in the middle of an act
of violence on a plate of oatmeal.
"The pioneers were the early settlers in this country, dear. You have
read about them in your history book. They endured a great many
hardships, for life was very rough for them, with no railroads or
anything. I think it would be a nice game to play this morning."
Tibby looked at Jill. There was doubt in his eye. Jill returned his
gaze sympathetically. One thought was in both their minds.
"There is a string to this!" said Tibby's eye.
"Exactly what I think!" said Jill's.
Mrs Mariner sneezed again.
"You would have lots of fun," she said.
"What'ud we do?" asked Tibby cautiously. He had been this way before.
Only last Summer, on his mother's suggestion that he should pretend
he was a ship-wrecked sailor on a desert island, he had perspired
through a whole afternoon cutting the grass in front of the house to
make a ship-wrecked sailor's simple bed.
"I know," said Jill. "We'll pretend we're pioneers stormbound in
their log cabin in the woods, and the wolves are howling outside, and
they daren't go out, so they make a lovely big fire and sit in front
of it and read."
"And eat candy," suggested Tibby, warming to the idea.
"And eat candy," agreed Jill.
Mrs Mariner frowned.
"I was going to suggest," she said frostily, "that you shovelled the
snow away from the front steps!"
"Splendid!" said Jill. "Oh, but I forgot. I want to go to the village
first."
"There will be plenty of time to do it when you get back."
"All right. I'll do it when I get back."
It was a quarter of an hour's walk to the village. Jill stopped at
the post-office.
"Could you tell me," she asked, "when the next train is to New York?"
"There's one at ten-ten," said the woman, behind the window. "You'll
have to hurry."
"I'll hurry!" said Jill.
