IV
Next morning the postman delivered a letter at No. 93, addressed to Mrs. Nathaniel Journay, who was none other than the portly lady.
Dear Madam:
In order to avoid a misunderstanding which has often been a cause for dissatisfaction in our tenants, we beg to call your attention to that clause in your lease which restrains the tenant from driving any nails into the walls, or in any way defacing or marring the walls or woodwork of the premises.
Trusting that you find the house entirely as represented,
Very truly yours,
Cooper & Cooper, Agents.
“Humph!” said she, very much taken aback.
Lynn looked up from her breakfast.
“What is it, auntie?” she asked.
“Nothing,” said the other calmly. “Simply one of the necessary annoyances of a business career.”
She was prepared to say a good deal more than that to a certain person. She was by no means stupid. She put two and two together, and chalked up a mighty black four against that fraudulent carpenter. He was the talebearer. Very well—only wait until he presented himself again!
In the meantime the indomitable woman finished the carpentering herself. The noise of the hammering made her very nervous, but she made up her mind to defy Cooper & Cooper if they should appear. She had to have those shelves, and she would have them.
That afternoon a man came by, asking for work. He said he was a gardener; and after Mrs. Journay had cross-examined him until he was reduced to an abject condition, and she felt sure he was no spy, she set him to work.
The next morning she had another letter from Cooper & Cooper, pointing out to her that it was strictly prohibited to tenants to remove shrubs in the garden, to lop off branches from trees, or in any way to mar or deface the garden.
This time she wrote a tart answer, remarking that the garden was in a lamentable condition which no one could deface or mar, that the branches lopped away had been those which shut off light from the house, and that she would really be justified in sending the landlord a bill for this work. Nevertheless, she did not employ the gardener again.
For a few days she and her niece were invisibly busy within the house, but at last, one bright morning, they came out with a ladder, which Mrs. Journay held while Lynn climbed up it and hung out a glittering gilt signboard, lettered in black:
YE OLDE NEW ENGLAND BOX SHOPPE
The sign shone in the sun like a warrior’s shield. The two women regarded it with pride and pleasure.
“I believe the customers will begin coming to-morrow,” said the elder.
But the first thing to come the next day was a letter from Cooper & Cooper.
Dear Madam:
It has no doubt escaped your notice that the premises at 93 Sloan Street are upon highly restricted property, which restrictions forbid the use of the house or grounds for any business purpose. You will find this covered in the fifth section of your lease, any violation of which, if willfully persisted in, renders the contract null and void.
Very truly yours,
Cooper & Cooper, Agents.
“Let ’em!” she cried aloud, dismayed, but valiant as ever.
“What is it, auntie?” inquired Lynn.
“Never mind, my dear!” said the other. “You go on painting your boxes, and I’ll attend to the business arrangements.”
Mrs. Journay spoke in her usual confident manner, but at heart she was alarmed and not at all certain as to what she ought to do. She was certain, however, that her niece must not be worried by these unexpected developments. To protect Lynn was her chief duty on earth, and her chief pleasure, too. Terrible as she might be to others, to Lynn she was never anything but kind and generous and affectionate, in her august fashion.
“I’d rather know, auntie,” insisted Lynn. “I think I really ought to know. We’re partners, aren’t we?”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Journay. “Yes, I know that, but—”
“We can’t carry on our business,” Lynn continued, “unless we both know everything about it—can we, darling?”
She was now standing behind her aunt’s chair, resting her soft cheek against that imposing coiffure. Mrs. Journay frowned.[Pg 176]
“It doesn’t seem necessary,” she said.
She was already conquered, however. To tell the truth, her serious and quiet niece had always been able to wind Mrs. Journay around her little finger.
“Let me see the letter, auntie dear!” said Lynn.
She did see it, and the two former ones.
“It’s that man!” declared Mrs. Journay. “There’s no possible doubt of it. He came here to spy. Some one sent him. My theory is that some one knew we were going to start this shop, and, fearing the competition, determined to drive us out!”
Lynn stood looking down at the letter with a curious expression.
“I see!” she said.
From her face one might imagine that whatever it was she saw gave her very little pleasure.
They were both silent for a time, with their meager little breakfast forgotten between them. They had always been more or less poor, but never in this way. Until recently they had lacked neither dignity nor comfort. They had had their friends and their little diversions, and a cozy sort of existence, until something happened. It doesn’t much matter what the catastrophe was. The important fact is that their small income vanished, and here they were, gallantly prepared to make a new one for themselves.
And was this enterprise, into which the very last of their savings had gone, to be wrecked by Cooper & Cooper? Mrs. Journay would not permit it. Often in the past, when she had coldly ignored people, such people had disappeared from her sight—beneath the surface of the earth, for all she knew; and she decided to try this on Cooper & Cooper. She would scornfully ignore them. The shop should go on—it must!
She was about to say this aloud, when Lynn began to speak.
“Auntie dear,” she said, “let’s give it up!”
“Lynn! I am surprised!”
“Yes!” Lynn went on, with a sort of vehemence. “Let’s give this up and go away from here.”
“Lynn! Your boxes! The beautiful boxes you’ve painted!”
“I’d like,” said Lynn, “to see them all sailing down the river! Oh, auntie, do let’s go away! I hate this house and this place and—we’ll go back to Philadelphia, and I’ll take a position in an office, and—”
The girl stopped short at the sight of her aunt’s face.
“Oh, my dear!” she cried. “I didn’t really mean that! No—we’ll stay here, of course, and we’ll make a wonderful success of the shop.”
She sat on the arm of her aunt’s chair, and they talked with enthusiasm of their dazzling future; but they didn’t look at each other—not once. They talked, they even laughed, and after breakfast they went about busily preparing for customers; but all the time there lay over them the black shadow of this persecution. Why should any one wish them ill?
“I’d really be glad to go,” thought Mrs. Journay, “if it weren’t for Lynn; but I can’t and won’t have Lynn working in an office. I’ll make this—this disgusting shop a success!”
Lynn went on painting boxes all the morning.
“He was the only one who knew about the shelves,” she said to herself. “Out of petty, despicable spite against poor auntie, he went off and told the agents; and after he’d been so—not that I care, though. I knew all the time that he was one of those men who always—who always pretend to—to like people!”
Still, in spite of not caring in the least, it seemed to her that this incident was harder to bear than all her other misfortunes—harder to bear than exile from her old home and her old friends, than her desperate anxiety about money, or than the frightful tedium of painting boxes.
“Because it’s such a humiliation,” she explained to herself.
The admiration of young men was certainly no new thing to Lynn, but that a man should look at her like that, should speak as he had spoken, and then so basely betray her aunt and herself—
Her cheeks burned with just anger, or perhaps with shame, that even for a moment she should have thought so well of him.