CHAPTER XXV
AUNT EUPHEMIA MAKES A POINT
Lawford Tapp did not appear at the store and Louise continued to wonder about it; but she shrank from asking Betty Gallup, who might have been able to inform her why the young man did not come again. However, on one bright morning the gray roadster stopped before the door and Louise, from her window, saw that the three Tapp girls were in the car.
She thought they had come to make purchases, for the store on the Shell Road was often a port of call for the automobiles of the summer colonists. Suddenly, however, she realized that L'Enfant Terrible was standing up in the driver's seat and beckoning to her.
"Oh, Miss Grayling!" shrilled Cecile. "May I come up? I want to speak to you."
"No," commanded Prue firmly, preparing to step out of the car. "I will speak to Miss Grayling myself."
"I don't see why she can't come down," drawled Marian, the languid. "I have a message for her."
"Why!" ejaculated the surprised Louise, "if you all wish to see me I'd better come down, hadn't I?" and she left the window at once.
She had remarked on the few occasions during the last few days that she had met the Tapp sisters on the beach, that they had seemed desirous of being polite to her—very different from their original attitude; but so greatly taken up had Louise's mind been with more important matters that she had really considered this change but little.
Therefore it was with some curiosity that she descended the stairs and went around by the yard gate to the side of the automobile.
"Dear Miss Grayling," drawled Marian, putting out a gloved hand. "Pardon the informality. But mother wants to know if you will help us pour tea at our lawn fete and dance Friday week? It would be so nice of you."
Louise smiled quietly. But she was not a stickler for social proprieties; so, although she knew the invitation savored of that "rawness" of which her aunt had remarked, she was inclined to meet Lawford's family halfway. She said:
"If you really want me I shall be glad to do what I can to make your affair a success. Tell your mother I will come—and thank you."
"So kind of you," drawled Marian.
But Cecile was not minded to let the interview end so tamely—or so suddenly.
"Say!" she exclaimed, "did Ford see you, Miss Grayling, before he went away?"
"He has gone away, then?" Louise repeated, and she could not keep the color from flooding into her cheeks.
"He wanted to see you, I'm sure," Cecile said bluntly. "But he started off in a hurry. Had a dickens of a row with dad."
"Cecile!" admonished Prue. "That sounds worse than it is."
Louise looked at her curiously, though she did not ask a question.
"Well, they did have a shindy," repeated L'Enfant Terrible. "When daddy gets on his high horse———"
"Ford wished to see you before he went away, Miss Grayling," broke in Prue, with an admonitory glare at her young sister. "He told us he was so confused that day he fell overboard from the Merry Andrew that he did not even thank you for fishing him out of the sea. It was awfully brave of you."
"Bully, I say!" cried Cecile.
"Really heroic," added Marian. "Mother will never get over talking about it."
"Oh! I wish you wouldn't," murmured Louise. "I'm glad Betty and I saved him. Mrs. Gallup did quite as much as I——"
"We know all that," Prue broke in quickly. "And daddy's made it up to her."
"Yes. I know. He was very liberal," Louise agreed.
"But mercy!" cried Prue. "He can't send you a check, Miss Grayling. And we all do feel deeply grateful to you. Ford is an awfully good sort of a chap—for a brother."
Louise laughed outright at that. "I suppose, though never having had a brother, I can appreciate his good qualities fully as much as you girls," she said. "Will he be long away?"
"That we don't know," Marian said slowly. Louise had asked the question so lightly that Miss Tapp could not be sure there was any real interest behind it. But Cecile, who had alighted to crank up, whispered to Louise:
"You know what he's gone away for? No? To get a job! He and father have disagreed dreadfully."
"Oh! I am so sorry," murmured Louise. She would not ask any further questions. She was troubled, however, by this information, for L'Enfant Terrible seemed to have said it significantly. Louise wondered very much what had caused the quarrel between Lawford and his father.
She got at the heart of this mystery when she appeared at the lawn fete to help the Tapp girls and their mother entertain. She was introduced at that time to the Taffy King. Louise thought him rather a funny little man, and his excitability vastly amused her.
She caught him staring at her and scowling more than once; so, in her direct way, she asked him what he meant by it.
"Don't you approve at all of me, Mr. Tapp?" she asked, presenting him with a cup of tea that he did not want.
"Ha! Beg pardon!" ejaculated the candy manufacturer. "Did you think I was watching you?"
"I know you were," she rejoined. "And your disapproval is marked. Tell me my faults. Of course, I sha'n't like you if you do; but I am curious."
"Huh! I'd like to see what that son of mine sees in you, Miss
Grayling," he blurted out.
"Does he see anything particular in me?" Louise queried, her color rising, but with a twinkle in her eye.
"He's crazy about you," said I. Tapp.
"Oh! Is that why you and he disagreed?"
"It's going to cost him his home and his patrimony," the candy manufacturer declared fiercely. "I won't have it, I tell you! I've other plans for him. He's got to do as I say, or——"
Something in the girl's face halted him at the very beginning of one of his tirades. Positively she was laughing at him?
"Is that the reef on which you and Lawford have struck?" Louise asked gently. "If he chooses to address attentions to me he must become self-supporting?"
"I'll cut him off without a cent if he marries you!" threatened I. Tapp.
"Why," murmured Louise, "then that will be the making of him, I have no doubt. It is the lack I have seen in his character from the beginning. Responsibility will make a man of him."
"Ha!" snarled I. Tapp. "How about you? Will you marry a poor man—a chap like my son who, if he ever makes twenty dollars a week, will be doing mighty well?"
"Oh! This is so—so sudden, Mr. Tapp!" murmured Louise, dimpling.
"You are not seriously asking me to marry your son, are you?"
"Asking you to?" exploded the excitable Taffy King, with a wild gesture. "I forbid it! Forbid it! do you hear?" and he rushed away from the scene of the festivities and did not appear again during the afternoon.
Mrs. Tapp, all of a flutter, appeared at Louise's elbow.
"Oh, dear, Miss Grayling! What did he say? He is so excitable."
She almost wept. "I hope he has said nothing to offend you?"
Louise looked at her with a rather pitying smile.
"Don't be worried, Mrs. Tapp," she assured her. "Really, I think your husband is awfully amusing."
Naturally disapproval was plainly enthroned upon Aunt Euphemia's countenance when she saw her niece aiding in the entertainment of the guests at the Tapp lawn fete. The Lady from Poughkeepsie had come with the Perritons because, as she admitted, the candy manufacturer's family must be placated to a degree.
"But you go too far, Louise. Even good nature cannot excuse this. I am only thankful that young man is not at home. Surely you cannot be really interested in Lawford Tapp?"
"Do spare my blushes," begged Louise, her palms upon her cheeks but her eyes dancing. "Really, I haven't seen Lawford for days."
"Really, Louise?"
"Surely I would not deceive you, auntie," she said. "He may have lost all his interest in me, too. He went away without bidding me good-bye."
"Well, I am glad of that!" sighed Aunt Euphemia. "I feared it was different. Indeed, I heard something said———Oh, well, people will gossip so! Never mind. But these Tapps are so pushing."
"I think Mrs. Tapp is a very pleasant woman; and the girls are quite nice," Louise said demurely.
"You need not have displayed your liking for them in quite this way," objected Aunt Euphemia. "You could easily have excused yourself—the uncertainty about your poor father would have been reason enough. I don't know—I am not sure, indeed, but that we should go into mourning. Of course, it would spoil the summer——"
"Oh! Aunt Euphemia!"
"Yes. Well, I only mentioned it. For my own part I look extremely well in crepe."
Louise was shocked by this speech; yet she knew that its apparent heartlessness did not really denote the state of her aunt's mind. It was merely bred of the lady's shallowness, and of her utterly self-centered existence.
That evening, long after supper and after the store lights were out, and while Cap'n Amazon and Louise were sitting as usual in the room behind the store, a hasty step on the porch and a rat-tat-tat upon the side door announced a caller than whom none could have been more unexpected.
"Aunt Euphemia!" cried Louise, when the master mariner ushered the lady in. "What has happened?"
"Haven't you heard? Did you not get a letter?" demanded Mrs. Conroth.
But she kept a suspicious eye on the captain.
"From daddy-prof?" exclaimed Louise, jumping up.
"Yes. Mailed at Gibraltar. Nothing has happened to that vessel he is on. That was all a ridiculous story. But there is something else, Louise."
"Sit down, ma'am," Cap'n Amazon was saying politely. "Do sit down, ma'am."
"Not in this house," declared the lady, with finality. "I do not feel safe here. And it's not safe for you to be here, Louise, with this—this man. You don't know who he is; nobody knows who he is. I have just heard all about it from one of the—er—natives. Mr. Abram Silt never had a brother that anybody in Cardhaven ever saw. There is no Captain Amazon Silt—and never was!"
"Oh!" gasped Louise.
"Nor does your father say a word in his letter to me about Abram Silt being with him aboard that vessel, the Curlew. Nobody knows what has become of your uncle—the man who really owns this store. How do we know but that this—this creature," concluded Aunt Euphemia, with dramatic gesture, "has made away with Mr. Silt and taken over his property?"
"It 'ud be jest like the old pirate!" croaked a harsh voice from the kitchen doorway, and Betty Gallup appeared, apparently ready to back up Mrs. Conroth physically, as well as otherwise.