III
John Barrington, the principal owner of the Candria mine, did not spend much of his time in Skinner Valley. Still, such time as he did spend there he intended to be comfortable. Indeed, the comfort of John Barrington—and incidentally of those nearest and dearest to him—was the one thing in life worth striving for in the eyes of John Barrington himself, and to this end all his energies were bent.
In pursuance of this physical comfort, John Barrington had built for his occasional use a large, richly fitted house just beyond the unpleasant smoke and sounds of the town. A tiny lake and a glorious view had added so materially to its charms that the great man’s wife and daughter had unconsciously fallen into the way of passing a week now and then through the summer at The Maples, as it came to be called in the family—“Skinner Valley” being a name to which Miss Ethel’s red lips did not take kindly.
Mr. Barrington’s factotum-in-chief at the mines, Mark Hemenway, lived at the house the year round. He was a man who took every possible responsibility from his chief’s shoulders and was assiduous in respectful attentions and deferential homage whenever the ladies graced the place with their presence.
To Ethel this was of little consequence, as she paid no more attention to him than she did to the obsequious servant behind her chair; but to Mrs. Barrington he was the one drawback to complete enjoyment of the place.
Mark Hemenway was a man of limited means, but of unlimited ambitions. Every day saw him more and more indispensable to his comfort-loving employer, and every day saw him more and more determined to attain to his latest desire—nothing less than the hand of this same employer’s daughter in marriage.
In a vague way Mrs. Barrington was aware of this, though Hemenway was, as yet, most circumspect in his actions. Mrs. Barrington was greatly disturbed, otherwise she would not have ventured to remonstrate with her husband that Sunday afternoon.
“My dear,” she began timidly, “isn’t there any other—couldn’t Mr. Hemenway live somewhere else—rather than here?”
Her husband turned in his chair, and a frown that Mrs. Barrington always dreaded appeared between his eyebrows.
“Now, Bess, why can’t you leave things all comfortable as they are? I like to have you and Ethel here first rate, but I don’t see why you think you must upset things when you stay only five minutes, so to speak.”
“I—I don’t mean to upset things, John, but—I don’t like him!” she finished in sudden asperity.
“Like him! My dear, who expected you to? Nobody supposes he is one of your palavering, tea-drinking members of the upper ten! He isn’t polished, of course.”
“Polished! He’s polished enough, in a way, but—I don’t like the metal to begin with,” laughed Mrs. Barrington, timidly essaying a joke.
Her husband’s frown deepened.
“But, Bess, don’t you see? I must have him here—it’s easier for me, lots easier. Why can’t you let things be as they are, and not bother?” he urged in the tone of a fretful boy.
Mrs. Barrington knew the tone, and she knew, too, the meaning of the nervous twitching of her husband’s fingers.
“Well, well, John,” she said, hastily rising, “I won’t say anything more,” and the door closed softly behind her.
As she passed through the hall she caught a glimpse of Ethel and her friend starting for a walk, and the strange unlikeness of the two girls struck her anew. Just why Ethel should have chosen Dorothy Fenno for a week’s visit to The Maples, Mrs. Barrington could not understand. Perhaps it would have puzzled Ethel herself to have given a satisfactory reason.
Ethel Barrington had met Dorothy Fenno the winter before on a committee connected with a fashionable charity, and had contrived to keep in touch with the girl ever since, though the paths of their daily lives lay wide apart.
“She is mixed up with ‘settlement work’ and ‘relief bands,’ and everything of that sort,” Ethel had told her mother; “but she’s wonderfully interesting and—I like her!” she had finished almost defiantly.
The girls leisurely followed a winding path that skirted the lake and lost itself in the woods beyond. They had walked half an hour when they came to the clearing that commanded the finest view in the vicinity.
Ethel dropped wearily to the ground and, with her chin resting in her hand, watched her friend curiously.
“Well, my dear girl, you——”
“Don’t—don’t speak to me!” interrupted Dorothy.
Ethel Barrington bit her lips; then she laughed softly and continued to watch the absorbed face of her companion—this time in the desired silence. By and bye Dorothy drew a long breath and turned to her.
“Isn’t it beautiful!” she murmured reverently.
Miss Barrington gave a short laugh and sat up.
“Yes, very beautiful, I suppose; but, do you know, I’ve seen so much I’m spoiled—absolutely spoiled for a scene like that? I’d rather look at you—you are wonderfully refreshing. I don’t know another girl that would have snapped me up as you did a minute ago.”
“Indeed, I beg your pardon,” began Dorothy in distress.
“Don’t!” interrupted her friend, with a petulant gesture; “you’ll be like all the rest if you do.”
“But it was very rude,” insisted Dorothy earnestly. “A view like this always seems to me like a glorious piece of music, and I want everything quiet as I would if I were hearing a Beethoven symphony, you know. That is why I couldn’t bear even the tones of your voice—but it was rude of me, very.”
Ethel sighed, and fell to picking a daisy to pieces.
“I used to feel that way, once,” she said; “I did, really.”
“I haven’t a doubt of it,” replied Dorothy, with a smile.
“But I don’t any more!”—the daisy was tossed aside.
“No?”
“No; I’m like a five-year-old that’s had too much candy, I suppose. I’ve seen the Alps and the Rockies, the Rhine and the St. Lawrence; and yet, the first time I looked at that view I felt just as you did. But now——!”
“You need something outside yourself to give zest to your life, my dear,” said Dorothy, her eyes on the town below.
Ethel looked at her narrowly.
“Now see here, my dear, I love you—and you know it, but I just can’t stand any of that settlement talk!”
“I never said settlement,” laughed Dorothy, her eyes still on the straggling cottages.
“I know, but—well, I just simply can’t! How in the world you stand those dismal sounds and sights and—and smells,” she added, with a grimace, “I don’t understand.”
“I suppose the miners live in those cottages,” mused Dorothy aloud, as though she had not heard.
“I suppose so,” acquiesced Ethel indifferently. “Others live over the hill in Westmont.”
“They don’t look as though they’d be very comfortable,” continued Dorothy softly.
“Oh, I don’t know; people like that don’t mind such things, I fancy.”
“Did you ever ask them?”
Ethel looked up in quick suspicion, but Dorothy’s face was placid.
“Of course not! How silly!”
“Suppose you do, sometimes,” suggested Dorothy, quite as a matter of course.
“I thought that was what you were coming to!” flashed Ethel. “My dear girl, you have no idea what those miners are,” she continued in a superior tone. “In the first place, I don’t think there is one of them that understands a word of English, and I’d be afraid to trust my life anywhere near them.”
“But the women and the little children—they wouldn’t hurt you. Isn’t there something you could do for them, dear?” urged Dorothy.
A rumble of thunder brought the girls to their feet before Ethel could reply, and a big storm-cloud coming rapidly out of the west drove the whole thing from her mind.
“Quick—we must run!” she exclaimed. “We can’t reach home, but there’s an old shanty just behind those trees over there. No one lives in it, but ’twill give us a little shelter, maybe,” and in another minute the girls were hurrying down the hill. Big drops of rain and a sharp gust of wind quickened their steps to a run.
Had Ethel not been running with her head bent to the wind she would have noticed the changed appearance of the shanty to which they were hastening. But as it was, she rushed blindly forward, up the steps, and pushed open the door, Dorothy close by her side. Once across the threshold she stopped in amazement, while Dorothy dropped breathlessly into the nearest chair.