The Tryst (Annotated) (Grace Livingston Hill Book) (38 page)

The reporters besieged the old house and tormented the life out of Hespur, who met them all with the cool reply that his young master was out of town for a few days and it was uncertain when he would return. But Hespur knew more than he told them, more even than the most of the committee of the old New York church where John Treeves preached, for he had gathered up his hat and overcoat from a handy closet near the door, and quietly followed his young master at a safe distance out into the night. As it was not the first time that he had shadowed him, he had no trouble in keeping him in sight, and he came back later, having waited outside the little gray and white shanty until every light went out, and he was assured that the inmates were asleep, and having possessed himself of a list of those inmates by a careful questioning of a little boy in the street who accepted certain coins greedily in exchange for his information. Hespur was no fool. He put two and two together, and held his peace. He believed in the young master. Also, he believed in his Christ. 

He busied himself in setting the house to rights with the help of the servants who took care of it usually, and making it as it should be for the reception of the new master, but as he did it he questioned whether after all it was not a superfluous task. He doubted if that democratic young man would ever live and move and have his being among those costly surroundings. He had to admit that he would have enjoyed laying out fine raiment and serving him in lordly halls, but if his master saw things otherwise he was ready even to follow him down to that little gray and white shanty at the works and serve him there with thrilling hands. Was he not his master? Did he not love him well? Was he in turn not serving the same Christ to whom the old servant had but recently dedicated himself? 

Hespur went to church that Sunday and heard his young master preach, sitting in a quiet corner under the gallery looking as much a gentleman as any whom he had ever served. Sunday night John Treeves came back to the ancestral house. 

He had spent the week working in the shop, living with his fellow-workmen, and thinking. He had taken the noon train on Saturday out to Maple Brook and without stopping to accept Mrs. Burnside's hospitality, much to that good woman's distress, he had walked down the hard frozen road, across the bridge, and climbed the mountain to his trysting place. It was a long walk for a short stay, for it was very cold. But the stars were bright and the midnight train must be caught back to the city. John Treeves felt he could not decide what to do next without getting to this quiet place where he could almost feel God standing close beside him, where the presence of the Christ seemed to illumine the dark, and bring light to his soul and understanding to his mind. There was no other place in the world as still and alone-with-God as this, where his mother had been with him, and where he had first found Jesus. 

When he went back on the late train his face looked rested and quiet and the great purpose that had been forming in his soul seemed crystalized in his eyes. He knew now what he was going to do. 

Sunday night he and Hespur sat up late, and Hespur was telling him much about the old master, and about the effect of his own sermons on him. 

“And now, Mr. Treeves, master--” he looked at the young man with the utmost devotion-- “I'm ready at your command. I promised the old master that I would stick to you and care for you as I've cared for him and I mean to keep my word.” 

Treeves smiled a kindly appreciative smile: 

“That's good of you, Hespur, I'm sure,” he said, “but you see that's not necessary at all. I've never had a valet or a servant of any kind in my life and I wouldn't know what to do with one.” 

“That's all right. Mister Treeves, master, but there's plenty of things I can find to do to make it easier for you, and I'm quite used not to having to be told. I've served in the Treeves family for nigh on to forty years, take it all in all, and I'm not thinking to stop now. I come straight to Mr. Treeves's when I first come to this country. I was first footman, then butler, and then he took me for his personal.” 

“Yes, I know, Hespur, it's a long service and I'm sorry to break it up, but you see I'm not like my uncle. I wasn't brought up to this kind of life and I wouldn't be able to stay here.” He looked around on the costly trappings everywhere. “It is quite too grand for me. I don't know just that I'd want to sell the house, perhaps not. I haven't made any plans yet. I think I'd keep it though for the present at least. You see my father was born here. I should want to get to know and love the place for his sake.” 

Hespur's eyes softened. 

“I remembered your father quite well, sir. He favored you a great deal in his looks, sir, that firm set to his shoulders, too, but your eyes, I've heard say they were your mother's.” 

“Yes,” said Treeves gently, “they said my eyes were like hers. But she had wonderful eyes!” He was thinking now. 

Hespur's attitude said, “And so have you,” but his lips moved only to say “I'm at your service, master, however that may be.”

Treeves looked troubled. 

“Look here, Hespur, I'm really sorry to spoil your plans, but indeed I can't take you. Perhaps we could arrange to let you stay here for a while, and of course I'll see that you don't suffer financially.” 

“It's not necessary, sir, the old master he saw to that, sir. I've a stipend twice as large as need be for the rest of my natural life. I ask no wages from you ever. I only ask to stay and care for you, sir.” 

“Indeed, Hespur, this is devotion and I appreciate it, but --well-- you don't understand, of course. I'm not just a regular minister. I don't intend to stay in that big, wealthy church. It isn't my work at all. I amuse them and I antagonize them, but I'm not doing them a bit of good. I've got to get next to real men who are working and doing things. I've taken service under the heavenly Master, Hespur. You said you'd read some of my sermons, then perhaps you know what I've said there about it. I am trying to serve Christ and I feel He wants me to get down among the poor and needy could lead them to Him if I can. I live in a very plain way right among the working people, Hespur; there's so place there for a servant.” 

“Oh, I know, master, sir, I know,” said Hespur quietly. I've seen the wee shanty where yon sleep at night, and the starved little children that huddle around the table there at your meals. I know you're working in a factory at a machine, I know, and I'm not afraid. For, Mr. Treeves, master, sir, I've taken service under the same Jesus Christ, sir, and I'm ready to go with you into any little shanty you want, sir, only so I can stay and take care of you, sir.” 

The look on John Treeves's face changed into a glorified one. He sprang to his feet and put out both hands, grasping the other man's firmly, heartily: 

“Then we're brothers, Hespur, aren't we? Come on where you will. We belong together from now on, I guess. I hope you won't be worried at me. I'm afraid I'm quite different from what you'll think I ought to be.”

“I'll not worry, sir. I promised the old master I'd stick, and if you wouldn't let me, why then I'd stick anyway, and I'm quite proud to be your serving man, sir.” 

“But you must remember, Hespur, no servant about it. You are my brother, remember!” 

“Have it the way you like, sir, I'm taking care of you; that's all that matters to me, sir!” 

John Treeves stuck to his job at The Plant until closing hours day after day, and the men he worked with saw no change in him. But as soon as dusk came on he hurried into his street clothes and took his way to the city. He had transferred his belongings now for convenience from the cheap little boarding house to the big mansion uptown, but he kept his room in the boarding house and went there always to make himself more presentable for his evening's work, for he did not care to have the limelight on his life just now, and wanted to do everything possible to prevent talk, even among the few servants he had retained in his own house. 

And on that very first Monday evening after his talk with Hespur he went to work on the plans that had come to him for his work, while he walked under the stars that night on the mountain at Maple Brook and talked with God about his fortune. 

Before the end of the week he had bought a large section of land on the opposite shore from The Plant, covering several thousand acres of meadow and wooded land, and including the little hill overlooking the river, where Patty had sat on that day when she had gone by herself for a holiday. By Saturday evening, also, he had found the great man who was great enough to be small enough to understand what he wanted. Together they sat over pencils and papers, evening after evening, talking and planning and drawing and erasing and drawing again. Also, in the afternoons, as soon as Treeves was free from the shop he would shove out from the shore a little old canoe he had purchased from another work-man and paddle across the river to meet the great man over on Patty's hillside. Then the two would wander over the meadows, and through the woodland, and stop, point, measure, pace it off, drive little stakes, and wander on to do the same thing over again. 

There was no danger of anyone interrupting them, for the little village for whose convenience the ferry went across had straggled farther down the river and no one had come up over the brow of the hill to build. The land had belonged to a large estate, the owners of which would not divide. So there was nothing to invade or annoy and no one to spy on their plans. 

One of John Treeves's stipulations had been that whatever was done should be done quickly, because he believed that now was the time to do a thing, not to-morrow or next year. And because there was no lack of money to back his enterprise, and because the times were hard and men were eager for work, prices being so high and people being afraid to buy or build or indeed do anything that they could help doing, the keeping of this stipulation was altogether possible. 

In the second week a small army of men arrived with picks and shovels, and the plans laid out by the little stakes and cords became a reality in neatly dug squares and trenches. Stone began to arrive in big automobile trucks from a quarry that had been discovered not many miles away, and to enter the new tract from above and beyond the hill, quite out of sight of the little village, and also hidden from the sight of The Plant across the river by a thickly wooded road which ran on the top of the bluff for some miles along the bank. 

The first work was done at the far edge of the new land, quite back from the river, and the men were brought in the morning and carried away at night by large truck loads so that none of the people in the settlement at The Plant ever saw or heard or guessed what was going on. That, too, was a part of the plan of John Treeves, who had worked it all out in detail as he ran his sheets of metal into his machine and turned out good work, and much of it, day after day. 

It is surprising how much can be done when there are workers enough, and money enough, and above all, will enough. In a very short time there had come a great change over the tract of land that John Treeves had purchased. It had been bought under the name of his lawyers, and the Treeves name did not appear in public at all, so that no one in that region had the slightest idea what was going on, or who was at the bottom of it. The people at The Plant knew that John Treeves often went out in a canoe on the river after his work was done, and they marvelled that he cared to exercise so hard after a long day's work, but they went no further in their curiosity about him. 

And then one day the army of workers broke through the sheltering screen of evergreens and came out to dig in full sight of the opposite bank. They looked like myriads of ants crawling over the bluff from the wharf by The Plants but no one noticed for several days. Then some one asked if they were fixing an auto road over on the opposite shore, and some one else said he heard the sound of sawing and hammering and wondered if they were thinking of putting up another manufactory opposite. Perhaps it would be in their same line and then Horliss-Cole would be mad. He wanted the whole shore to himself. Another idle speculator in gossip declared he had heard that a rich man was building himself a home; and so the matter passed for sometime and no one took the trouble to go over and see. Strangers passing on long-distance automobile journeys, slowed up and wondered at the clusters of beautiful little stone structures that were rising and wondered what the great cellar in the center was for, and the other one farther off to the right, and those two other large ones. Perhaps it was a hotel with private cottages attached. How charming! They must look it up when they returned, might be a pleasant place to spend the summer sometime when they couldn't get away from the city far! But no one from the region close around came to investigate until the preliminary work was all done. 

There was one especial little bungalow, just in the edge of the woods, with a glimpse out one way toward the river and over the little hill, and with a glance out the other toward the largest structure that was slowly rising stone by stone over in the very center of the big hill that sloped gently down to the river in front This bungalow seemed to suddenly spring into full-fledged houseship in a night, and one morning men from The Plant looked over as usual, and looked again, and then squinted their eyes, and looked a third time. Was that a house over there! A house! It must be the sunlight on the water creating a mirage. No, it was a little stone house with porches and a wide chimney on the outside running all the way up. There were hemlocks about it and it somehow had the air of always having been there. It was not large nor grand, but pretty and cosy. Oh, so cosy! A perfect dream of a little home where one might be happy! Men pointed it out to one another and couldn't understand it, and wished they had time to go over and investigate. It couldn't be that that house had been there all winter and they not have been it. It wasn't possible it was one of those patent hang-me-up houses. It looked substantial and as if it belonged there. It was built of solid masonry. 

It was this special house that Hespur came over every day or two in the car to watch, and advise about He made them put the butler's pantry in just the right spot, and planned all the closets and windows with a view to comfort and ease, and he watched the fireplace with a jealous care. And once as he stood with his hands behind his back musing over the mullion window that was being set in the stone in the peak of the roof, he murmured softly to himself: