The Tryst (Annotated) (Grace Livingston Hill Book) (29 page)

They stopped before one of the tiny gray and white shanties and the old mother with a curious arrangement of tiny plaid shawl upon her head came out to meet them with tears upon her cheeks. Her brother stood holding the door wide open, and two little sisters and a small brother crowded behind their mother's skirt all with a piteous, woebegone expression on their faces. 

Treeves was not gone long. He came out with a troubled look in his eyes: 

“I’ll go back to the place where I left my coat and hat, and then I'll not trouble you any more,” he said with a comprehensive smile that took in Patty's back. She felt it. But when he explained to Mr. Horliss-Cole that he was sorry not to be able to go back with them, but he had promised the mother of the girl to hunt up the young man and take a message to him, that gentleman raised his eyebrows in a way that showed he also was used to being obeyed and said coldly: 

“That is quite unnecessary, Mr. Treeves. There are plenty of people here to carry messages, and I scarcely think the fellow deserves any messages. He has made us a great deal of trouble and notoriety unnecessarily.” 

“I hope you can get him out on bail,” said Treeves anxiously. “It seems almost a matter of life and death with the girl. She is calling for him. They are soon to be married.” 

“That is quite impossible, Mr. Treeves,” said Horliss-Cole stiffly, freezingly, in fact. “You must remember he is probably a murderer by this time and must not be allowed to be at large. We should have all our discipline upset and murders in every quarter of the settlement if we allowed him to go free after what he has done.” 

Patty half opened her mouth with a little quick gasp and turned to speak, then remembered who she was, and thought better of it. If she had aught to say that would have weight this was not the place nor time to say it. She must wait and think. 

“Get in, please,” said Horliss-Cole commandingly. “It is getting late and I must be at Wall Street before closing time.” The tone said that the minister had delayed serious matters for trivial ones, but John Treeves stood back with a quick, graceful movement and bowed: 

“I beg your pardon, I won't delay you any longer. I must go back to that cottage again!” and before anyone could say a word he had swung off at his long soldier's stride down the street, shaking back his wet hair and placing his hat on his head. 

The back of the chauffeur's neck indicated amusement to Miss Cole's keen eyes that twinkled with sympathy. Mr. Horliss-Cole climbed solemnly, offendedly into his car, and gave the word to go, but Marjorie pouted and rebelled openly: 

“I think it is horrid. Papa, to leave him that way all wet. He'll get pneumonia, and then what will his old uncle say? I don't see why you couldn't let that poor man go, Papa. He had nice eyes, and you know if you would order them to let him free they would.” 

“My dear, we do not let our criminal classes roam at large because they have nice eyes,” said her father dryly, “and you do not know what you are talking about. This young foreigner had a grudge against the man he shot and has been heard to threaten to kill him before this. It seems the girl was quite nice looking and the foreman had taken a fancy to her; the Italian was merely jealous.” 

“Well, he had a right to be!” said his sister. “They were going to be married next week. He told me all about it. He talked very nicely. I was quite interested in him.” 

“My dear Sylvia,” said Horliss-Cole in that condescending tone that often drove his sister to Florida in winter or the mountains in summer. “You really don't know what you are talking about. I have had experience with these foreigners. They are all a bad lot and live like pigs. They can talk, of course. They are temperamental, and know how to work on the sympathies. But you should see how they live. The girl would have been better off in the office making her good pay than married to him to slave her days away keeping house! Now, let us drop this subject, I have been disturbed enough. I do not wish to hear any more about it.” 

Late that afternoon, in the hour before dinner, when Patty knew that Mr. Horliss-Cole was usually in the library and comparatively unoccupied, she tapped at his door. 

“Ah! Miss Fisher?” he said pleasantly as she entered. “You bring a message from my sister?”  

“No, sir,” answered Patty lifting brave eyes to the cold blue ones. “I came on my own account. I thought I ought to tell you something that perhaps you do not know, about what happened this morning. It may not be of importance, but I didn't feel it right to keep still about it, and I'm not sure anyone else noticed it.”

“What is it?” The words were uninviting. Patty could see his annoyance rising. 

“Mr. Horliss-Cole, that shot was not fired from the other side of the water, it came from our side, just behind where I was sitting. The man who fired was crouched below the car door on the right, with his foot on the running board, and the bullet hissed so close to my ear that I almost felt it graze the skin. I put my hand up to my ear and saw the man disappearing and hiding the revolver under his sweater. He was a man in a red sweater, with dark hair and big eyes.” 

“Angelo has big eyes and dark hair,” said the gentleman offendingly. “What became of the man you saw?” 

“I cannot tell,” said Patty anxiously. “I was too excited. I think he rolled under the car and maybe got out at the back. There was such a crowd around just then that it was impossible to see, and it all startled me so that I didn't realize what had happened. Afterward I did not speak because I thought it best to tell you in private.” 

“That was very wise, Miss Fisher, very wise. You need say no more about the matter to anyone. Just forget it, please. You did quite right to come to me alone with it. That will be all!” And Horliss-Cole turned back to his evening paper and dismissed the matter from his mind.  

It had been a very annoying week. The foreman at The Plant had died and the papers were full of it. There were hints of riot and red terror in every editorial that appeared on the subject, and it had kept Horliss-Cole busy to turn the notoriety into laurels for himself; but he had done it, and the end of the week found him complacently surveying the field and finding himself victor at every turn. There was no longer anything to worry about. The girl was recovering from her wetting, and going about her work again with hollow eyes and dark circles under them. She had been given money and she would say no more. She didn't dare. Her father had lost his leg in a leather belt, and had signed off for a small sum, not knowing any better, and who was to feed the family if she did not keep at it? Angelo was safely housed in jail at a distance where she could not afford to go and see him. The money that he paid for his board was sorely missed. There was absolutely nothing else that Mary della Camera could do but go back to her work and say nothing. The owner of The Plant knew that if it became necessary to save talk, he could even get her to sign a paper for a trifling sum, saying that the foreman had never bothered her in any way and that she was not running away from him, but had determined to end her life because she was so unhappy. She was absolutely in his power, and he was content. He could now turn his mind to things of lesser importance, and among these latter was the young minister. 

He had been quite annoyed with him at the beginning of the week, but the young man had not returned until a few minutes ago, and somehow the matter seemed to have cooled down in his mind. Nevertheless he determined to have that talk with him cut once as it might have some influence on his sermon the next morning, and also, it might be as well to warn him against any reference to the occurrences at The Plant. It really would be good to get him interested at once in some kind of a course of study. It would use up that surplus energy of which he seemed to have such a store, and keep him doing strange erratic things. What a pity that such a brilliant young man should have such a tendency to meddle in matters that did not concern him. Well, he would have him in with a cup of tea, and give him a few more hints. It was only fair to himself and the congregation on the morrow. 

John Treeves said nothing more about The Plant or what had happened on Monday. He discoursed politely about the weather, the state of the country, the likelihood of a change in the policy of the administration at the next election, and the prospect before France and England. Somehow Horliss-Cole began to find it more and more difficult to get in what he had intended to say. At last he broke in upon a description of the appearance of Germany at the time of the Armistice, and put the matter baldly: 

“Mr. Treeves, I have been thinking about a suggestion I would like to make to you. Why wouldn't it be a good thing for you to take a little course of study here in one of our many fine institutions. There's Columbia, there's Union. Now I'd like to see you enter a post-graduate class in something at Union. They have big men there with advanced ideas. You said you had been out of Seminary during the war, and it would help to brush you up. Not that you seemed to need it, of course, only it will be hard for a young minister getting right into the work to keep up with the times without some such plan!” 

John Treeves narrowed his eyes and looked at his interlocutor steadily, searchingly, amusedly: 

“Yes?” he said at last lightly. “Well, now that is an idea. I shall think about it, of course. And that reminds me, how far is the Library from here? Only a few blocks down the avenue, isn't it? I think I would have time to run down before dinner, would I not? There's a book I very much want to consult before to-morrow, if possible. A few statistics I want to verify. If you'll excuse me I'll go at once.” And John Treeves set down his untasted cup of tea and took himself gloriously away from what was meant to be a neat little taste of the Inquisition. 

He had spent the first four days of that week in New York gathering up data, much of the time among the men of the Horliss-Cole Plant. He had been by the bedside of the dying man as well as in the neat little home where the girl had been brought from her semi-drowning. Also, he had been much at the jail where the young man Angelo was confined. He had entered into the lives of these people as one who was somehow related to them, and after the first few questionings, suspicious minutes when they stood aloof and eyed him as an intruder, they had opened their hearts and put their trust upon him. It was wonderful how far he had gone into their lives and motives during those four days. Then he had betaken himself back to Maple Brook and walked to his trysting place every day, where alone with the sky and his God he communed and asked counsel. No wonder that when he returned there was on his face a look that Moses might have worn when he came down from the Mount. Small wonder that Horliss-Cole had no chance with his platitudes that night. 

And Patty, with her new Bible, had spent a wonderful week. She had no excuse to offer that Sunday morning when Miss Cole quietly announced that they would again attend church. She was glad to go. 

“I will read the Sermon on the Mount,” announced the young preacher, after the choir had subsided from a marvellous rendering of “Unfold ye portals everlasting.” Then he proceeded to make the Sermon on the Mount live in new vivid terms before the astonished listeners. The blesseds, read with the term “O the happiness of” substituted, became a different thing. The people who had all their lives thought that pleasure and money and power had been the things to bring happiness, suddenly learned that spirits that were poor, hearts that hungered, lives that were persecuted, meekness, purity, righteousness, were far more things to-be desired and sought after. It was startling the way he read it. Each man secretly resolved to go home and read that Sermon on the Mount over again, for it seemed that surely this young upstart of a preacher had put things into it that were not there. “Let your light so shine before men --” began the clear, young voice, and Maxim Petrol began to bask contentedly. Ah, here was familiar ground. Now he could think of that last fat check to the hospital, and the memorial tablet he hid put up in the church to the boys who had fallen in the war. But-! What was this? He never knew that it read that way before: “Let your light so shine THAT THEY MAY GLORIFY YOUR FATHER! NOT YOU.” No one had spoken those last two words, yet the verse was so read that those words followed, ringing in the ears as clearly as if they had been voiced. 

The minister read the first nineteen verses of the chapter, and the service proceeded with music, prayer and collection. At last he stood up to preach: 

“I will take my text from the twentieth verse of the Sermon on the Mount,” he announced. Maxim Petrol cast a glance of approbation toward Horliss-Cole and settled back comfortably. But Horliss-Cole was wary. This was a slippery young man. After reading like that what might he not do with the good old Sermon on the Mount that had served to curb so many flighty young preachers. 

“For I say unto you,” thrilled out the words warningly, “that except your righteousness shall exceed the righteousness of the scribes and Pharisees, ye shall in no case enter into the Kingdom of Heaven!” 

Social service! There was plenty of it in that sermon, but it was made most plain that it would not be a passport to the Kingdom of Heaven. Modern efficiency Americanism, social uplift all were put under the searchlight of God's eternal test. Such service, well intentioned, efficient and of good results though it might be, was not an atonement for sin, could never take the place of repentance, and remission of sins. 

Then the service itself came in for examination. The young stranger had thoroughly possessed himself of the facts, and he did not hesitate to make them known. He had the statistics at his tongue's end. Did they know how many foreigners came into their city every year and what had become of them? Did they know how many of them had but vague ideas of the way to be saved and were losing what faith they had because of the inconsistent American Christians about them? He made some of the self-satisfied church members very thoughtful as he faced them with their inconsistencies. Then he told the story of a young foreigner who had been three years in jail for buying a stolen watch for five dollars. He took the watch to a jeweler to find out if he had been cheated and was promptly arrested. The man who sold it to him could not be found and he was put in jail. Three years lost out of a young man's life when he had been but five weeks in the new land, and had bright hopes of getting a good job and saving money till he could send for his girl to come over and marry him. And no one in the broad Christian land stepped forward to help him out of his awful situation.