HAPPINESS, AND ANOTHER SCHEME
The next morning Mr. Stuart left his hotel and went into New York with Mr. Le Baron. They left Kingsbridge at eight o’clock, and did not return until six. Half an hour later Mr. Stuart called at Laurel Cottage for Mrs. Thurston in his automobile.
“We will take Miss Barbara with us to the hotel,” he said to her mother, “if you feel it will not injure her ankle. She need do no walking. I should prefer that she be with you when you have an interview with your brother. He is to see you at the hotel to-night. You will dine with me first.”
Barbara’s foot being better, she and her mother asked no questions, but with trembling fingers made ready to go.
“What do you mean,” demanded Ruth and Mollie, “by going off on such a mysterious errand? Why, Mr. Stuart,” asked Ruth, “are Mollie and I not also invited to dinner?”
Mr. Stuart was obdurate. He offered no explanations. When Ruth whispered something in his ear, he answered quietly: “That will keep,” and Ruth said no more.
Mr. and Mrs. Le Baron bowed coldly to Mrs. Thurston and Barbara, when entering the hotel dining room that night, they found the mother and daughter dining with Mr. Stuart. But Gladys Le Baron stopped for a moment at the able to inquire after Bab’s foot. She was not the haughty girl she once had been. Since her return from Newport she had seemed strangely fond of Bab.
Barbara and her mother never knew how they got through their meal. But Mr. Stuart was a tower of strength.
“We will not discuss business matters,” he explained, “until we go upstairs to my sitting room. Mr. Le Baron will join us there at half-past eight.”
When Ralph Le Baron entered Mr. Stuart’s apartment to keep his appointment, he did not look into his sister’s face. He merely inquired coldly: “How are you, Mollie?” and sat down near the small wood fire which was burning cosily in the open grate. Not once did he glance at Barbara, though she kept her eyes fixed steadily on him. He was a tall, thin man, with high cheek bones and a nose like an eagle’s.
“Mrs. Thurston,” began Mr. Stuart, “your brother does not claim that he paid to you or your husband the five thousand dollars which he undoubtedly borrowed. When I first spoke to him of the matter he declared he had never been loaned any such sum. He had great difficulty in recalling the incident until I showed him his note which I still have in my pocket. He explained afterwards, however, that the matter had passed entirely out of his mind after your husband’s death.”
Mrs. Thurston looked at her brother questioningly. “It seems very strange to me, Ralph, that you could have forgotten,” she declared. “But perhaps it is all for the best! We need the money more now than we ever have before.”
Mr. Le Baron did not answer his sister.
“I think you will find it the wisest plan, Mr. Le Baron,” continued Mr. Stuart, breaking the silence, “to pay over this money to Mrs. Thurston and her daughters as soon as you conveniently can.”
Ralph Le Baron knit his brows. Barbara was watching him closely. There was no love lost between Bab and her uncle. She had long looked for some difficulty to arise out of his management of her mother’s affairs, but nothing so serious as this.
Mr. Le Baron’s voice sounded cold and hard as steel.
“Do not deceive yourselves,” he said, with a sneer. “I mean you, Mollie, and Mr. Stuart, who seems to be taking an unusual interest in your affairs. I have not the slightest intention of ever paying back the money!”
Mrs. Thurston’s manner changed. She spoke firmly. “I should be exceedingly sorry, Ralph, to have any trouble with you over the matter; but the law must compel you to pay your debt.”
“Not so fast, sister,” smiled Mr. Le Baron, sarcastically. “You are coming into a remarkable business knowledge all at once, but you do not yet know quite enough. The law does not compel me after six years to pay a debt which has not been presented to me within that time. Perhaps you have never heard of the statute of limitation. Perhaps your friend, Mr. Stuart, will make it clear to you. You should have asked me for this money five or six years ago. The New York law does not require a debt to be paid unless a request has been made for its settlement within six years after the time it was contracted. The money was loaned to me by your husband eleven years ago, as we all know by the date on the note. I have no further concern in the matter.”
“Great heavens, man!” cried Mr. Stuart, breaking in fiercely, “you cannot mean to play your own sister such a low-down, scoundrelly trick! You will not pay back the money to her which you confess to owing, simply because she has not asked you for it before! How could she ask for it when you alone knew of the debt and kept the matter a secret? I am not so sure how your law would stand in such a case. A pretty story it will make to tell to the men who respect your business integrity. Mrs. Thurston shall have a lawyer to inquire into the situation immediately!”
A low knock sounded at the door. Before anyone could answer, Gladys Le Baron walked smilingly into the room. She looked in surprise at her father’s dark, revengeful face.
“Is anything the matter?” she inquired, her face sobering in an instant. “I wondered why father ran off by himself to see Aunt Mollie and Bab. I thought you would like to have me join you——”
“Go back to your apartment at once, Gladys!” interrupted her father sternly.
Mr. Stuart turned upon him. “Ralph Le Baron, I am going to do something, to-night, that I never expected to do in my life. I am going to expose a father to his own child. Wait here a minute, Gladys.”
Mr. Stuart then told Gladys the whole story. She stood listening in utter silence, her face crimson with blushes. Barbara could only look at her cousin through a mist of tears. When Mr. Stuart had ended his story, he said: “I am sorry indeed to tell you this, Gladys, but you must have learned it some day. I do not know whether your father is right in regard to the law in this matter, but Mrs. Thurston will carry the case to court.”
Gladys went over to her father, who had never raised his eyes to look at her, while Mr. Stuart was speaking, nor did he make any denial.
“Is it true, father?” she asked him at last.
“It is in a measure true, Gladys,” her father answered, “but it is purely a matter of business, which you cannot be expected to understand.”
Gladys put her head down on the arm of the sofa, where she now sat by her father, and wept bitterly. There was no other sound in the room, except an occasional suppressed sob from Mrs. Thurston. Bab was far too excited and too angry to cry!
Finally Gladys raised her head. “Father, on my sixteenth birthday, you settled five thousand dollars on me in my own name!” She spoke in a low voice. “If you do not feel that you ought to pay back to Aunt Mollie the money you borrowed from Uncle John, won’t you please let me give her this money of mine? I must do it, father. I can’t understand the business side of it, but it just seems to me we owe her the money and that’s all there is to it! I have been horrid and haughty many times, but I can’t bear that we should seem—dishonest!”
Poor Gladys whispered this last dreadful word under her breath. Then she put her arms round her father and kissed him. “You are not angry with me?” she asked him.
If there was one person in the world Ralph Le Baron truly loved it was his only child, Gladys. Not for ten times five thousand dollars would he have had her a witness to the scene which had just passed between him and his sister. He meant, of course, to tell her and his wife what had happened, but he meant to put his own interpretation on the affair before they heard of it from anyone else.
Did his better nature move him? Perhaps it did. He looked around the room and answered testily: “The law certainly does not require that I return this money to my sister, and business is business with me. But since my daughter Gladys and my sister seem to look upon the matter as a case of sentiment, why I——” He spoke slowly. It was hard work for him to get the words out. “I will waive strictly business principles on this occasion, and return the money to my sister.”
“O Ralph!” cried Mrs. Thurston, as though a great load was lifted from her mind. Barbara rejoiced. But in her heart of hearts she thought it was hard to have her uncle act as though he were doing them a favor when he was only paying them their just dues.
A few minutes later Gladys and her father withdrew from the room. “I am so glad,” whispered Gladys to Bab, as she passed her cousin on her way out.
Barbara held her hand just long enough to murmur gently: “Gladys, dear, if I once did you a kindness, I think you have repaid me a thousand-fold.”
It was after ten o’clock when “Mr. A. Bubble” bore the travelers home to Laurel Cottage. Mollie and Ruth were waiting in the sitting room, with a fire burning cheerily in the grate and the candles lit over the mantelpiece. In front of the fire, they had mounted twelve marshmallows, which they were toasting to a beautiful brown on twelve hatpins.
“We thought you were never coming back, Mummy,” said Mollie, taking off her mother’s light wrap. “What has happened to you?” she asked as she viewed her mother’s shining eyes.
“Good news indeed, Mollie baby!” her mother answered. “We are five thousand dollars richer than we were when we left home. Now, perhaps Bab can go to Vassar, and things will be a little easier for us, even if the other money has gone. Mr. Stuart thinks we ought to have twenty-five dollars a month income from the five thousand dollars! Isn’t it too wonderful?”
“Have a marshmallow, everyone, do,” said Ruth, extending her hatpins. They were comfortably seated around the fire and the subject of the money had been dropped. “I want all of you to be eating marshmallows except me, so I can do all the talking. I think I have been a perfect angel. Father, you know I have kept a secret to myself for three whole days. Of course, I told Mollie to-night, when you left us by ourselves, but that doesn’t count.”
Mollie’s cheeks were glowing and her eyes dancing in the soft firelight. “Oh, yes,” she added naughtily, “Ruth and I can keep good news to ourselves as well as other people. At least,” she continued wistfully, her eyes turning to her mother, “I hope it is good news.”
“Mrs. Thurston,” inquired Ruth, “don’t you dearly love ‘The Automobile Girls’?”
Mrs. Thurston smiled. “I most certainly do,” she replied.
“Then all is well!” Ruth made her a low curtsey. “Anyone who truly loves ‘The Auto-Girls’ cannot fail to rejoice at my news. Mrs. Thurston, we cannot bear to be disbanded. We must get together again before I go home to Chicago. Mollie told me she and Bab wanted you to go on a visit to a cousin in St. Paul, but they feared you would not consent to leave them alone. Here’s where I come in! I want you to let me take care of your babies, while you go on your trip.”
Ruth gave an impudent pull at Mollie’s curls, as she went on with her request. “Father and I have planned another per-fect-ly grand trip for ‘The Automobile Girls!’ Now please don’t anybody object until I have finished. Here, eat another marshmallow! This trip is not to be in the least like the other one. What I want is to go for a month on a camping party in the Berkshire Hills!”
“Hear! Hear!” called out Bab, hopping up, and forgetting all about her sprained ankle.
“I have just had this letter from Aunt Sallie, father,” continued Ruth. “She is game! Of course, she started out by saying she thought the trip was perfect nonsense; she knew we would have pneumonia and various other diseases if we attempted it, but she ended by declaring that, of course, she could not be left behind if we were determined on the frolic. She is a darling! So, now, Mrs. Thurston, if only you will consent, in a few days we want dear old ‘Bubble,’ to make a start for the Berkshires. This is the perfect time of the year and the mountains will be simply glorious! Oh, I can’t talk any more, I am so out of breath! Do go on please, father.”
“Mrs. Thurston, our plan is not so wild as it sounds. Ruth will take the girls in her car up into the Berkshires. I have discovered that on one of the mountains some distance from the regular line of travel, is a well built log cabin. It has big fireplaces in it, and can be made thoroughly comfortable for September. Early in October, Ruth wants to go with the girls to the hotel at Lenox, for a week or two of the autumn sports there. The automobile can travel comfortably over most of the Berkshire roads.”
Mr. Stuart’s tones were as persuasive as Ruth’s. “But, when the girls come to the chosen place, they can store the car in some suitable garage, and take the trails up the sides of the mountain, either on horseback or afoot.”
“But Barbara’s foot,” insisted Mrs. Thurston weakly, in the first pause that gave her an opportunity to speak.
“Oh, Bab’s ankle will be all right, mother!” Mollie cried. “We have spoken to the doctor, and he says Bab will be jumping about as lively as a cricket in a few days.”
“Mrs. Thurston,” said Mr. Stuart, speaking in his heartiest voice, “I want to be allowed the floor in this conversation. I have something to propose on my own account. A party of friends of my sister’s and mine are going west on a sight seeing trip. Among them is a railroad president and his wife, and their private car is to be used for the tour. It would give me great pleasure to have you meet them and make your journey to St. Paul in their company. My sister wishes to assure you that you will find them thoroughly congenial and will no doubt enjoy the trip. To tell the truth, Miss Stuart has already written our friends to expect you, for I had determined that you should go at all events.
“As for our daughters,” he continued, “I am greatly interested in this camping scheme for them. I know, from my own experience, that nothing can be made more delightful than our modern fashion of ‘roughing it.’ I intend to make the necessary arrangements, and properly equip this camping party myself. I shall even run up to the Berkshires for a day or two, to look over the ground. I want to engage a guide for the party, and a woman to do the cooking. Then I must see if the little log cabin is all the circular says it is. It is rented out to camping parties all through the year. Come, Mrs. Thurston,” questioned Mr. Stuart, “don’t you think this is a good scheme for everyone?”
“Right you are, Mr. Stuart!” Bab called out rapturously. By this time Mollie and Ruth were both on the floor, with their arms around Mrs. Thurston.
“We do so want to lead ‘the simple life,’ dear Mrs. Thurston,” Ruth begged. “Think how splendid for us to have a month out of doors before we go back to hard work at school.” Ruth made a wry face. She was not fond of study, like Barbara. “We may spend a week or so in Lenox, to please Aunt Sallie. But most of the time we want to be right in the mountains. Let me see—there is Greylock, and Monument Mountain, and hosts of others not too far from Lenox. At least, we shall be able to see them from our mountain top. And we must escort Bab over to Rattlesnake Mountain, in honor of her well known fondness for those charming pets.”
“Oh, I’ll look after Bab,” Mollie spoke in superior tones.
“Mother,” said Barbara earnestly, “you must accept Mr. Stuart’s charming invitation, even if you think it wiser for us not to go on the camping trip with Ruth. I know you need a change. You have had so much worry, and now your mind is at rest.”
“Ruth,” said Mrs. Thurston, looking as bright and happy as one of the girls, “accept my best wishes for the ‘Robin Hood Band’ of ‘Automobile Girls!’ I am sure they will soon rival that celebrated set of woodsmen. Only, I beg of you, confine your adventures strictly within the limits of the law.”
“Then you mean that Bab and Mollie may go!” cried Ruth in tones of rapture. “But we don’t intend to play at being an outlaw band. Kindly regard us as early Puritan settlers in the New England hills, compelled to seek protection from the Indians in our log hut. I wish we could run across a few Indians up there; we shall be right on their old camping grounds. There are still some Indian trails in the mountains, but the Berkshires are so highly civilized, these days, we shall never find even a trace of a red man, or a red woman either!”
“When do we start, Ruth?” asked Mollie. “I should like to be off to-morrow. Remember how fast the time is going. School begins the middle of October.”
“What about Grace?” asked Bab thoughtfully. “It would hardly be a real ‘Automobile Girls’ party if one of their number should be left out.”
“Oh, it is all right about Grace, of course!” Ruth answered. “Goodness me! Haven’t I told you? We have already talked our plan over with Squire Carter, who is delighted to have Grace go. He says a month out of doors will do wonders for her. He only wished he was not too old to join us.”
One week later, Miss Sallie Stuart and the quartette of “Automobile Girls” gathered at the station to speed Mrs. Thurston on her journey. Mr. Stuart was to accompany her as far as New York City, and see her safely established among his friends.
“Be good children, all of you,” urged Mrs. Thurston at the last minute. “And remember to keep your feet dry.”
“In case the camping outfit is not thoroughly satisfactory, Sallie,” counseled Mr. Stuart, “telegraph to New York for whatever you like. I believe everything is O. K. Remember to keep your camp fires always burning. You are to have the most trustworthy guide in the Berkshires, as well as his wife, to look after you, and you will never be far from civilization if you wish to go, Sallie?” he ended, for Miss Sallie was looking dismal at the idea of parting.
Miss Sallie nodded her head. “You know my views, Robert. If you will permit Ruth to follow any wild fancy that pops into her head, at least, I shall be near to see that she gets into as little mischief as possible.”
Mr. Stuart’s last whisper before the train started was for Bab. “Don’t worry about your little mother,” he said. “We will see that things are well with her. That copper stock she owns is looking up again. She is not to sell out.”
Mr. Stuart turned to find Ruth for his last kiss. “Remember, daughter,” he declared, “I rely on you and Bab to keep cool heads and clear brains in any emergency.”
As the train moved off, Mr. Stuart and Mrs. Thurston watched for a few moments a circle of waving hands. A little later their car swung around a curve and Kingsbridge was lost to view.
“The Automobile Girls” and Miss Sallie then repaired to the hotel. Grace, Mollie and Bab were to be Ruth’s guests until they started for the Berkshires. All was in readiness.
The week before, Mr. Stuart had taken the girls to New York for a few days’ shopping. If ever there were young women fitted up in the proper styles for mountain climbing they were. Each girl was presented with two pairs of thick, high boots and leather leggins. Ruth insisted that her heavy wool dress be made of the Stuart plaid. She then had a tam o’shanter designed from the same Scotch tartan. But Ruth’s proudest possession was a short Norfolk jacket made of the same leather as her leggins, and a knapsack to carry over her shoulders. Attired in her woodland costume, she looked not unlike “Rosalind” in Shakespeare’s play, when that maid comes into the woods disguised as a boy to seek for her father.
Barbara’s suit was of dark brown corduroy, with jacket and cap to match. Grace would choose nothing but her favorite dark blue. But her costume was the most striking of them all, for, with her blue skirt and blouse, she was to wear a coat of hunter’s pink and a smart, little hat of the same bright scarlet shade. Mr. Stuart selected the costume for Mistress Mollie. She at least, he insisted, should be arrayed in the proper shade of Lincoln green; and like a veritable “Maid Marian” she appeared.
For once Miss Sallie was entirely satisfied with their selection of costumes. “For me,” she argued in her most decided manner, “the most necessary garments are half a dozen pairs of overshoes, and the same number of mackintoshes and umbrellas. I shall also take an extra trunk of warm flannels. If the fall rains begin while we are camping in the mountains we shall surely be washed down into the valley before we can make our escape.”