The Tryst (Annotated) (Grace Livingston Hill Book) (10 page)

Suddenly a voice broke the whispering silence of the pines, a voice that she could never mistake: 

“Patty Merrill! Is that you down there on the next path? I’ve been looking for you everywhere. Won’t you come down to the first patch of sunlight below you and wait for me? I’ve something to tell you.” 

Patty half started to her feet and lifted her eyes to the plumy wall of green above her, her lips parted to answer, a wonderful light in her eyes and a wonderful color in her cheeks. Then she suddenly remembered, and sank noiselessly back into her seat, turning fearful eyes in Miss Cole’s direction, every muscle tense, her very breath bated. But a reassuring more lurched suddenly and abruptly into line, and Patty relaxed a fraction, with another furtive glance upward, very, very cautiously. It seemed to her that the simple lifting of her eyelashes made a noise like thunder and her heart was beating so wildly it almost choked her. She felt so frightened and so deceptive, and so disappointed. How good it was to hear his voice again! If only she might answer! If only she could go down to him and they might have pleasant converse and wander about this lovely mountain as they used to walk in those good days so long ago! Was there any possible way she could explain her situation without involving the honor of her family? Her heart clamored wildly for permission to lead her willing feet down that sunlit piney way, but Duty, writ large, stood in her way. If what she was doing was questionable in any way, at least no one should ever find it out until her father knew it all and told her what to do. She could not explain and therefore she must remain unknown. 

The minutes beat themselves away, and she heard a strong quick step on the path above. She had to put her hand on her lips with one finger against her throat to keep from crying out, so eager was she to answer that call. And now it came again and made her heart leap up once more to answer: 

“Patty! Patty Merrill! I say, you are coming down, aren’t you?” And then his voice dropped away as voices did in that quiet nook, and it might have been anybody, calling to anybody else, and gone on by to meet item. If she sat quite still and went on with her reading, Miss Cole would never suspect that she had been called, not even if she had been awake. Patty settled back laboriously in her chair and tried to look relaxed and natural with her magazine open to an advertisement of brick houses upside down, but she was holding her breath and with every heart-beat something was crying out within her that she was letting the opportunity of meeting her old-time friend go by. She might never have it again on this earth. He had drifted out of her ken these five years. She did not even know where he was living now, for her old aunt had died the winter after her visit, and there were no other ties. For some strange reason the correspondence which they had promised each other had been broken up, partly by her mother, who had discouraged her writing to boys while she was so young, especially to that boy whom she styled as “back country,” and partly because of the lade of an answer to her own first letter. She had buried deep in her heart the hurt that had come after all the weeks and months of waiting for it, and tried to make pride hide her disappointment, but something in his voice, as he called, had obliterated all her resolves to be cool if she ever met him again. Somehow his voice had commenced just where they left off when they were children and in her lonely wandering state the appeal of it was very great. 

Nevertheless, she held herself quiet, and waited till she heard the steps no more. Waited longer till she knew he must have decided he had made a mistake and gone on, waited with white face and sad drooping lashes on her cheeks. 

Miss Cole awoke abruptly with a sort of snort, and looked at Patty keenly with a frown, as if she would read her through and through, but Patty arose and tried to cover her confusion by a bustling attention to shawls and pillows and a magazine that had fallen. 

Miss Cole wanted to go in at once. It was growing cold. She had stayed out altogether too long now. Yet she would go by the lower path, which was much longer, and when Patty with glowing cheeks and downcast eyes finally acquiesced and followed her bearing pillows and shawls and other paraphernalia, they arrived at the patch of sunlight below to find it uninhabited and lonely and Miss Cole puffed and scolded all the way back up the incline as if it had been Patty’s fault that they went down. 

When they got back to the hotel Miss Cole said she would write some letters, and she sent Patty down to the office three times to see if the afternoon mail had come yet. Patty found it trying, but managed a roundabout way and used her eyes instead of her tongue, returning undiscovered. In fact, the young man who was the innocent cause of all this disturbance was walking several miles down the mountain very rapidly and trying to make up his mind what he would do next. He had made the experiment of calling out from the sheltered path after he had seen the girl who looked like his old friend go down in that direction, because it seemed a very good way to test out whether it was really his friend or only someone who resembled her, without making an embarrassing situation. She had not answered, and of course he had made a mistake, but somehow he felt more disappointed than the circumstances merited. After all, he had been very well content these three years he had been away in a foreign land. Why should he have such an ungovernable desire to see a girl who had not chosen to answer his many insistent letters, and who had so promptly forgotten him after their pleasant summer together? Of course she had been his beloved mother's admiration, and that probably was the psychology of the thing. He wanted his mother, missed her more every minute he stayed in this land of his birth, and his soul cried out for anything that had been dear to her or associated with her. He was foolish to think any girl could help fill his mother's place in his need! Perhaps after all it would be a wild goose chase to run away out West to find her. Why should he? Not now, anyway, not until after his tryst had been kept. Then he would know what he was going to do. That was only a week off anyway. Scarcely time for a western trip. He would get away to-morrow, if possible, or the next day at the latest. He had no relish for the sort of life his uncle was leading, and no love for the selfish old man who seemed to desire to own him body and soul probably to satisfy more selfish fancies. It disgusted him to be flaunted around like a hero, and stood up before the hotel ladies as a kind of tame pet. If it were not for the pitifulness in the old man's eyes sometimes he would go without hesitation, but something seemed to say to him that he must wait a little longer and fulfill whatever exaggerated duty had brought him here. Then he might go freely and without compunction. 

He walked far down the mountain that afternoon, until the long shadows fell into the deep pool of silence in the valley, and the fragrant darkness warned him that he must go back if he did not wish to be lost on the mountainside. 

He emerged from the quiet blackness of the trail at the top with a feeling of deep sadness upon him, and went straight to his room, where he found an anxious summons from the old servant. Hespur had been vibrating between his master's room and the nephew's for the last two hours, and his haggard face showed how hard his task had been. Treeves hurried to answer the call to his uncle's presence and found the old man writhing on his bed in a fit brought on by excessive anger: 

“You had no right, you young rapscallion!” he blustered furiously, his face growing purpler as he saw the young man at last. “You had no right to go off without letting anybody know --!” 

“There! There, Master! Mister Treeves, Master!” soothed old Hespur laboriously. "The young master he didn't realize how set you was on havin' him!” 

Treeves, furious at the injustice of the old man, yet alarmed by the condition into which he had worked himself, set himself to explain and soothe even as the servant was doing. He had wandered farther than he realized and dark caught him suddenly. The paths were obscure, and he had gone out of his way in returning. Unconsciously, as he went on talking in a gentle tone as one talks to babies and very sick people, something of the spirit of the serving man came upon him and he was able to understand how Hespur had stood all the abuse and toil during the years, and how the master had become an old child, his charge to love and protect even against himself. 

There was no going down to dinner that night. A doctor was summoned and the room settled into the quiet of a sick room until at last the old tyrant slept and his nephew and servant were free to go to their rest. 

After that experience Treeves decided to humor his uncle until he had recovered his former poise, and for three days he made himself as agreeable to the cranky old invalid as it was in his power to be. On the morning of the fourth day, however, matters came to a crisis. The old man announced that he felt better and that they were going down to the ballroom that night. There was to be a dance and he wanted his nephew to attend and make himself agreeable to his friends. His desire was to sit on the sidelines and watch his nephew dance with the girls he should pick out for him. 

Young Treeves, after listening with growing disgust to the program marked out for him, decided that the time had come to make a stand, and with as pleasant a manner as he could summon in his present state of mind, he endeavored to explain that he had already lingered longer than he had expected, and must leave that afternoon. He had an engagement to meet of long standing, and if he went at once he would barely have time to stop for a few hours in New York and give messages to the families of two of his associates abroad. He was sorry of course to disappoint his uncle, but it really was impossible for him to remain any longer. 

The old man raged and swore and raved, and then fell to begging in such a piteous wail, begging that the nephew would at least stay for that evening, the scant old tears actually coursing down his ghastly cheeks and the old servant lifted tortured eyes of appeal to his face. Here was the whole thing to go over again with the old tyrant. John Treeves's anger rose against it all It was the same spirit that had bullied his sweet young mother. Somebody ought to have spanked the old uncle years and years ago and taken it out of him. He half turned away in disgust, and then wheeled back: 

“Stop!” he commanded in the voice that during the war had always been obeyed, although he was not a commissioned officer. “Stop! You are an old coward! You have no control over yourself and no reason in your actions. You have just come out of a three days’ illness which you know might have been your last, brought on wholly by your own will, and kept up by your will. You are trying to bully me now into obeying your will just because you are too much of a coward to face the slightest opposition to your will. You have bullied people all your life, and I don't wonder that you are not very happy now. But didn't it ever occur to you that you never really get your way that way? You never can bully people into giving you real obedience. They may do a few things you make them do, but they hate you. You never have their love, or their real obedience, and that's what you want, isn't it? You can't ever get anything going at it that way. You've bullied a great many people in your time, but you're coming to the end, and there's God. You can't bully Him, you know!” 

His voice had grown quiet and steady now and he was looking straight and unflinchingly into the wild old eyes, holding them, controlling them, forcing them to keep quiet and listen. 

The old servitor with trembling hands was holding to the footboard, of the bed, and watching his master's face with sharp anxiety. This young man was standing out against the old tyrant, and the old tyrant was keeping still and listening, but what would happen next? This would kill the master, the poor -- old -- bad -- old -- master! 

From the first word Calvin Treeves had fixed his bright, bad, little eyes on his nephew's face as if fascinated. It was a new thing for anyone to stand out against him. A few had opposed him, but none had stayed to reproach him -- none had dared! And this young whiffed! This handsome, smart, courageous son of his own brother! This keen tongue that sounded not unlike his own in the cutting way it had of choosing words and hurling facts, whether true or false, straight into the soul of a man! Ah! This was something new. He gasped -- and listened! 

“And now,” finished John Treeves, his tone growing steadier and quieter, like! the passes of a mesmerist when he has gotten the subject under control: 

“Now you're going to rest a few minutes before you have your glass of milk, and then we are going to wheel you down the pine trail under the trees awhile in the sunshine and let you see how wonderful it is outdoors to-day. We'll have a pleasant walk and then we'll have lunch together, either up here or down in the dining-room, whichever you feel able for, and after that I'm going away. I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I have got to go. It is something important in my life --” 

“'Is it a girl?" The little old ferret eyes fairly stuck into him like pins in their eagerness. 

“No. It is not a girl!” said John Treeves emphatically. 

“Will you come back again?" The voice was almost a whimper now. The old man was cowed. Hespur relaxed his hold upon the bedpost and drew a deep breath, murmuring half aloud: 

“He's comin’ through. My great fathers! He's comin’ through! The young mister has got him an' he's comin' through!” 

“Possibly,” said the cool, casual, young voice. “It may depend a good deal on you. If you treat me to any more of these baby acts of yours, I’ll never come within a thousand miles of you again, if I can help it. If you want to be an uncle of mine you’ve got to act like a MAN!” 

“Now just listen to that!” murmured Hespur as he turned away weakly and looked out of the window. “Oh, my old master! He's got you.”

And it was so that Patty saw them, watching the trail from her window, where she was reading aloud to Miss Cole, who had acquired a severe cold and had been obliged to spend the last three days in her room much to her disgust. The old man muffled in robes and furs, peering meekly out on the splendor of the mountain, Hespur pushing the wheeled chair, and the tall, straight, young giant stalking by the side. Her heart gave a little spring of mingled gladness and worry. She had thought him gone away. There had been no sign of his presence for three whole days.