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At The Sign of The Jack O'Lantern

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<h2>VII</h2> <h3>An Uninvited Guest</h3></div> Dorothy sat alone in her room, facing the first heartache of her married life. She repeatedly told herself that she was not jealous; that the primitive, unlovely emotion was far beneath such as she. But if Harlan had only told her, instead of leaving her to find out in this miserable way! It had never entered her head that the clear-eyed, clean-minded boy whom she had married, could have anything even remotely resembling a past, and here it was in her own house! Moreover, it had inspired a book, and she herself had been unable to get him to work at all. Just why women should be concerned in regard to old loves has never been wholly clear. One might as well fancy a clean slate, freshly and elaborately dedicated to noble composition, being bothered by the addition and 101 subtraction which was once done upon its surface. With her own eyes she had seen Miss St. Clair weeping, while Harlan held her hands and explained that he was married. Undoubtedly Miss St. Clair accounted for various metropolitan delays and absences which she had joyously forgiven on the score of Harlan’s “work.” Bitterest of all was the thought that she must endure it—that the long years ahead of her offered no escape, no remedy, except the ignoble, painful one which she would not for a moment consider. A sudden flash of resentment stiffened her backbone, metaphorically speaking. In spite of Miss St. Clair, Harlan had married her, and it was Miss St. Clair who was weeping over the event, not Harlan. She had seen that the visitor made Harlan unhappy—very well, she would generously throw them together and make him painfully weary of her, for Love’s certain destroyer is Satiety. Deep in Dorothy’s consciousness was the abiding satisfaction that she had never once, as she put it to herself, “chased him.” Never a note, never a telephone call, never a question as to his coming and going appeared now to trouble her. The 102 ancient, primeval relation of the Seeker and the Sought had not for a single moment been altered through her. Meanwhile, Elaine had settled down peacefully enough. Having been regaled since infancy with tales of Uncle Ebeneezer’s generous hospitality, it seemed only fitting and proper that his relatives should make her welcome, even though Elaine’s mother had been only a second cousin of Mrs. Judson’s. Elaine had been deeply touched by Harlan’s solicitude and Dorothy’s kindness, seeing in it nothing more than the manifestation of a beautiful spirit toward one who was helpless and ill. A modest wardrobe and a few hundred dollars, saved from the wreck of her mother’s estate, and the household furniture in storage, represented Elaine’s worldly goods. As too often happens in a material world, she had been trained to do nothing but sing a little, play a little, and paint unspeakably. She planned, vaguely, to stay where she was during the Summer, and in the Autumn, when she had quite recovered her former strength, to take her money and learn some method of self-support. 103 Just now she was resting. A late breakfast, a walk through the country, a light luncheon, and a long nap accounted for Elaine’s day until dinner-time. After dinner, for an hour, she exchanged commonplaces with the Carrs, then retired to her own room with a book from Uncle Ebeneezer’s library. Even Dorothy was forced to admit that she made very little trouble. The train rumbled into the station—the very same train which had brought the Serpent into Paradise. Dorothy smiled a little at the idea of a snake travelling on a train unless it belonged to a circus, and wiped her eyes. Having mapped out her line of conduct, the rest was simple enough—to abide by it even to the smallest details, and patiently await results. When she went downstairs again she was outwardly quite herself, but altogether unprepared for the surprise that awaited her in the parlour. “Hello,” cried a masculine voice, cheerily, as she entered the room. “I’ve never seen you before, have I?” “Not that I know of,” replied Dorothy, startled, but not in the least afraid. 104 The young man who rose to greet her was not at all unpleasant to look upon. He was taller than Harlan, smooth-shaven, had nice brown eyes, and a mop of curly brown hair which evidently annoyed him. Moreover, he was laughing, as much from sheer joy of living as anything else. “Which side of the house are you a relative of?” he asked. “The inside,” returned Dorothy. “I keep house here.” “You don’t say so! What’s become of Sally? Uncle shoo her off the lot?” “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” answered Dorothy, with a fruitless effort to appear matronly and dignified. “If by ‘uncle’ you mean Uncle Ebeneezer, he’s dead.” “You don’t tell me! Reaped at last, after all this delay! Then how did you come here?” “By train,” responded Dorothy, enjoying the situation to the utmost. “Uncle Ebeneezer left the house and furniture to my husband.” The young man sank into a chair and wiped the traces of deep emotion from his 105 ruddy face. “Hully Gee!” he said, when he recovered speech. “I suppose that’s French for ‘Dick, chase yourself.’” “Perhaps not,” suggested Mrs. Carr, strangely loath to have this breezy individual take his departure. “You might tell me who you are; don’t you think so?” “Not a bad notion at all. I’m the Dick of the firm of ‘Tom, Dick, and Harry,’ you’ve doubtless heard about from your childhood. My other name is Chester, but few know it. I’m merely ‘Dick’ to everybody, yourself included, I trust,” he added with an elaborate bow. “If you will sit down, and make yourself comfortable, I will now unfold to you the sad story of my life. “I was born of poor but honest parents about twenty-three years ago, according to the last official census. They brought me up until I reached the ripe age of twelve, then got tired of their job and went to heaven. Since then I’ve brought myself up. I’ve just taught a college all it can learn from me, and been put out. Prexy confided to me that I wasn’t going to graduate, so I shook the classic dust from my weary feet and fled hither as to a harbour of refuge. I’ve always spent my 106 Summers with Uncle Ebeneezer, because it was cheap for me and good for him, but I can’t undertake to follow him up this Summer, not knowing exactly where he is, and not caring for a warm climate anyway.” Inexpressibly shocked, Dorothy looked up to the portrait over the mantel half fearfully, but there was no change in the stern, malicious old face. “You’re afraid of him, aren’t you?” asked Dick, with a hearty laugh. “I always have been,” admitted Dorothy. “He scared me the first time we came here—it was at night, and raining.” “I’ve known him to scare people in broad daylight, and they weren’t always women either. He used to be a pleasant old codger, but he got over it, and after he learned to swear readily, he was a pretty tough party to buck up against. It took nerve to stay here when uncle was in a bad mood, but most people have more nerve than they think they have. You haven’t told me your name yet.” “Mrs. Carr—Dorothy Carr.” “Pretty name,” remarked Dick, with evident admiration. “If you don’t mind, I’ll call you ‘Dorothy’ till the train goes back. 107 It will be something for me to remember in the desert waste of my empty years to come.” A friendly, hospitable impulse seized Mrs. Carr. “Why should you go?” she inquired, smiling. “If you’ve been in the habit of spending your Summers here, you needn’t change on our account. We’d be glad to have you, I’m sure. A dear old friend of my husband’s is already here.” “Fine or superfine?” “Superfine,” returned Dorothy, feeling very much as though the clock had been turned back twenty years or more and she was at a children’s party again. “You can bet your sweet life I’ll stay,” said Dick, “and if I bother you at any time, just say so and I’ll skate out, with no hard feelings on either side. You may need me when the rest of the bunch gets here.” “The rest of—oh Harlan, come here a minute!” She had caught him as he was going into the library with his work, thinking that a change of environment might possibly produce an acceptable change in the current of his thoughts. “Dick,” said Dorothy, when Harlan came 108 to the door, “this is my husband. Mr. Chester, Mr. Carr.” For days Harlan had not seen Dorothy with such rosy cheeks, such dancing eyes, nor half as many dimples. Bewildered, and not altogether pleased, he awkwardly extended his hand to Mr. Chester, with a conventional “how do you do?” Dick wrung the offered hand in a mighty grip which made Harlan wince. “I congratulate you, Mr. Carr,” he said gallantly, “upon possessing the fairest ornament of her sex. Guess this letter is for you, isn’t it? I found it in the post-office while the keeper was out, and just took it. If it doesn’t belong here, I’ll skip back with it.” “Thanks,” murmured Harlan, rubbing the injured hand with the other. “I—where did you come from?” “The station,” explained Dick, pleasantly. “I never trace myself back of where I was last seen.” “He’s going to stay with us, Harlan,” put in Dorothy, wickedly, “so you mustn’t let us keep you away from your work. Come along, Dick, and I’ll show you our cow.” They went out, followed by a long, low 109 whistle of astonishment from Harlan which Dorothy’s acute ears did not miss. Presently Mr. Carr retreated into the library, and locked the door, but he did not work. The book was at a deadlock, half a paragraph beyond “the flower-like hands of Elaine,” of which, indeed, the author had confessed his inability to write. “Dick,” thought Harlan. “Mr. Chester. A young giant with a grip like an octopus. ‘The fairest ornament of her sex.’ Never, never heard of him before. Some old flame of Dorothy’s, who has discovered her whereabouts and brazenly followed her, even on her honeymoon.” And he, Harlan, was absolutely prevented from speaking of it by an unhappy chain of circumstances which put him in a false light! For the first time he fully perceived how a single thoughtless action may bind all one’s future existence. “Just because I stroked the hand of a distressed damsel,” muttered Harlan, “and told her I was married, I’ve got to sit and see a procession of my wife’s old lovers marking time here all Summer!” In his fevered fancy, he already saw the Jack-o’-Lantern surrounded by Mrs. Carr’s former admirers, 110 heard them call her “Dorothy,” and realised that there was not a single thing he could do. “Unless, of course,” he added, mentally, “it gets too bad, and I have an excuse to order ’em out. And then, probably, Dorothy will tell Elaine to take her dolls and go home, and the poor thing’s got nowhere to go—nowhere in the wide world. “How would Dorothy like to be a lonely orphan, with no husband, no friends, and no job? She wouldn’t like it much, but women never have any sympathy for each other, nor for their husbands, either. I’d give twenty dollars this minute not to have stroked Elaine’s hand, and fifty not to have had Dorothy see it, but there’s no use in crying over spilt milk nor in regretting hands that have already been stroked.” In search of diversion, he opened his letter, which was in answer to the one he had written some little time ago, inquiring minutely, of an acquaintance who was supposed to be successful, just what the prospects were for a beginner in the literary craft. “Dear Carr,” the letter read. “Sorry not to have answered before, but I’ve been away and things got mixed up. Wouldn’t advise 111 anybody but an enemy to take up writing as a steady job, but if you feel the call, go in and win. You can make all the way from eight dollars a year, which was what I made when I first struck out, up to five thousand, which was what I averaged last year. I’ve always envied you fellows who could turn in your stuff and get paid for it the following Tuesday. In my line, you work like the devil this year for what you’re going to get next, and live on the year after. “However, if you’re bitten with it, there’s no cure. You’ll see magazine articles in stones and books in running brooks all the rest of your life. When you get your book done, I’ll trot you around to my publisher, who enjoys the proud distinction of being an honest one, and if he likes your stuff, he’ll take it, and if he doesn’t, he’ll turn you down so pleasantly that you’ll feel as though he’d made you a present of something. If you think you’ve got genius, forget it, and remember that nothing takes the place of hard work. And, besides, it’s a pretty blamed poor book that can’t get itself printed these days. <div class='ra'> “Yours as usual, “C. J.” </div> <div>112</div> The communication was probably intended as encouragement, but the effect was depressing, and at the end of an hour, Harlan had written only two lines more in his book, neither of which pleased him. Meanwhile, Dick was renewing his old acquaintance with Mrs. Smithers, much to that lady’s pleasure, though she characteristically endeavoured to conceal it. She belonged to a pious sect which held all mirth to be ungodly. “Sally,” Dick was saying, “I’ve dreamed of your biscuits night and day since I ate the last one. Are we going to have ’em for lunch?” “No biscuits in this house to-day,” grumbled the deity of the kitchen, in an attempt to be properly stern, “and as I’ve told you more than once, my name ain’t ‘Sally.’ It’s Mis’ Smithers, that’s wot it is, and I’ll thank you to call me by it.” “Between those who love,” continued Dick, with a sidelong glance at Dorothy, who stood near by, appalled at his daring, “the best is none too good for common use. If my heart breaks the bonds of conventional restraint, and I call you by the name under 113 which you always appear to me in my longing dreams, why should you not be gracious, and forgive me? Be kind to me, Sally, be just a little kind, and throw together a pan of those biscuits in your own inimitable style!” “Run along with you, you limb of Satan,” cried Mrs. Smithers, brandishing a floury spoon. “Come along, Dorothy,” said Dick, laying a huge but friendly paw upon Mrs. Carr’s shoulder; “we’re chased out.” He put his head back into the kitchen, however, to file a parting petition for biscuits, which was unnecessary, for Mrs. Smithers had already found her rolling-pin and had begun to sift her flour. Outside, he duly admired Maud, who was chewing the cud of reflection under a tree, created a panic in the chicken yard by lifting Abdul Hamid ignominiously by the legs, to see how heavy he was, and chased Claudius Tiberius under the barn. “If that cat turns up missing some day,” he said, “don’t blame me. He looks so much like Uncle Ebeneezer that I can’t stand for him.” “There’s something queer about Claudius, anyway,” ventured Dorothy. “Mrs. 114 Smithers says that uncle killed him the week before he died, and——” “Before who died?” “Claudius—no, before uncle died, and she buried him, and he’s come to life again.” “Uncle, or Claudius?” “Claudius, you goose,” laughed Dorothy. “If I knew just how nearly related we were,” remarked Dick, irrelevantly enough, “I believe I’d kiss you. You look so pretty with all your dimples hung out and your hair blowing in the wind.” Dorothy glanced up, startled, and inclined to be angry, but it was impossible to take offence at such a mischievous youth as Dick was at that moment. “We’re not related,” she said, coolly, “except by marriage.” “Well, that’s near enough,” returned Dick, who was never disposed to be unduly critical. “Your husband is only related to you by marriage. Don’t be such a prude. Come to the waiting arms of your uncle, or cousin, or brother-in-law, or whatever it is that I happen to be.” “Go and kiss your friend Sally in the kitchen,” laughed Dorothy. “You have my permission.” 115 Dick made a wry face. “I don’t hanker to do it,” he said, “but if you want me to, I will. I suppose she isn’t pleased with her place and you want to make it more homelike for her.” “What relation were you to Uncle Ebeneezer?” queried Dorothy, curiously. “Uncle and I,” sighed Dick, “were connected by the closest ties of blood and marriage. Nobody could be more related than we were. I was the only child of Aunt Rebecca’s sister’s husband’s sister’s husband’s sister. Say, on the dead, if I ever bother you will you tell me so and invite me to skip?” “Of course I will.” “Shake hands on it, then; that’s a good fellow. And say, did you say there was another skirt stopping here?” “A—a what?” “Petticoat,” explained Dick, patiently; “mulier, as the ancient dagoes had it. They’ve been getting mulier ever since, too. How old is she?” “Oh,” answered Dorothy. “She’s not more than twenty or twenty-one.” Then, endeavouring to be just to Elaine, she added: “And a very pretty girl, too.” 116 “Lead me to her,” exclaimed Dick ecstatically. “Already she is mine!” “You’ll see her at luncheon. There’s the bell, now.” Mr. Chester was duly presented to Miss St. Clair, and from then on, appeared to be on his good behaviour. Elaine’s delicate, fragile beauty appealed strongly to the susceptible Dick, and from the very beginning, he was afraid of her—a dangerous symptom, if he had only known it. Harlan, making the best of a bad bargain, devoted himself to his guests impartially, and, upon the whole, the luncheon went off very well, though the atmosphere was not wholly festive. Afterward, when they sat down in the parlour, there was an awkward pause which no one seemed inclined to relieve. At length Dorothy, mindful of her duty as hostess, asked Miss St. Clair if she would not play something. Willingly enough, Elaine went to the melodeon, which had not been opened since the Carrs came to live at the Jack-o’-Lantern, and lifted the lid. Immediately, however, she went off into hysterics, which were so violent that 117 Harlan and Dorothy were obliged to assist her to her room. Dick strongly desired to carry Elaine upstairs, but was forbidden by the hampering conventionalities. So he lounged over to the melodeon, somewhat surprised to find that “It” was still there. “It” was a brown, wavy, false front of human hair, securely anchored to the keys underneath by a complicated system of loops of linen thread. Pinned to the top was a faded slip of paper on which Uncle Ebeneezer had written, long ago: “Mrs. Judson always kept her best false front in the melodeon. I do not desire to have it disturbed.—E. J.” “His Nibs never could bear music,” thought Dick, as he closed the instrument, little guessing that a vein of sentiment in Uncle Ebeneezer’s hard nature had impelled him to keep the prosaic melodeon forever sacred to the slender, girlish fingers that had last brought music from its yellowed keys. From upstairs still came the sound of crying, which was not altogether to be wondered at, considering Miss St. Clair’s weak, nervous condition. Harlan came down, scowling, and 118 took back the brandy flask, moving none too hastily. “They don’t like Elaine,” murmured Dick to himself, vaguely troubled. “I wonder why—oh, I wonder why!” <hr class='major' /> <div style='margin: auto; text-align: center; padding-top: 2em; padding-bottom: 1em'> 119 <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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