A Philanthropist Read online

to insinuating inanities was the price of his attention, shewould pay it. She had borne more than this in order to do good.

  So the readings continued, a source of unmixed delight to her lodger anda great spiritual discipline to herself.

  As the days grew milder their intimacy, profiting by the winterseclusion, led him to accompany her on her various errands. She was atfirst unwilling to accept his escort--it too clearly resembled a tacitconsent to his idleness. But his quiet persistence, together withhis evident cynicism as to the results of these professional tours,accomplished, as usual, his end; and the wondering village might observeon hot June mornings its benefactress, languidly accompanied by aslender man in white flannels, balancing a large white green-linedumbrella, picking his way daintily along the dusty paths, with a coveredbasket dangling from one hand and a gray-green volume distending onewhite pocket.

  There was material, too, for the interested observer in the picture ofMiss Gould distributing reading matter, fruit, and lectures on householdeconomy in the cottages of the mill-hands, while her lodger pitchedpennies with the delighted children outside. It was on one of theseoccasions that Miss Gould took the opportunity to address Mr. ThomasWaters, late of the paper and cardboard manufacturing force, on thewickedness and folly of his present course of action. Mr. Waters hadleft his position on the strength of his wife's financial success.Mrs. Waters was a laundress, and the summer boarders, together withMr. Welles, who alone went far toward establishing the fortunes ofthe family, had combined to place the head of the house in his presentcondition of elegant leisure. "I wonder at you, Tom Waters, after allthe interest we've taken in you Are you not horribly ashamed to dependon your wife in this lazy way?" Miss Gould demanded of the once memberof the Reformed Drunkards' League. "How many times have I explained toyou that nothing--absolutely nothing--is so disgraceful as a man whowill not work? What were you placed in the world for? How do you justifyyour existence?"

  "How," replied her unabashed audience, with a wave of his pipe towardthe front yard, where Mr. Welles was amiably superintending a wrestlingmatch, "does he justify hisn?"

  Had Miss Gould been less consistent and less in earnest, there were manyreplies open to her. As it was, she colored violently, bit her lip,made an inaudible remark, and with a bitter glance at the author ofher confusion, now cheering on to the conflict the scrambling Waterschildren, she called their mother to account for their presence in theyard at this time on a school-day, and for the first time in her lifeleft the house without exacting a solemn promise of amendment from thehead of the family.

  "I guess I fixed her that time!" Mr. Waters remarked triumphantly, as hesummoned his second pair of twins from the yard and demanded of them ifthe gentleman had given them nickels or dimes.

  The gentleman in question became uncomfortably conscious, in the courseof their walk home, of an atmosphere not wholly novel, that lost nostrength in this case from its studied repression. That afternoon, asthey sat in the shade of the big elm, he in his flexible wicker chair,she in a straight-backed, high-seated legacy from her grandfather, thewhirlwind that Mr. Waters had so lightly sown fell to the reaping of avictim too amiable and unsuspecting not to escape the sentence of anybut so stern a judge as the handsome and inflexible representative ofthe moral order now before him.

  Miss Gould was looking her best in a crisp lavender dimity, upon whosefrills Mrs. Waters had bestowed the grateful exercise of her highestart. Her sleek, dark coils of hair, from which no one stray lockescaped, framed her fresh cheeks most admirably; her strong whitehands appeared and disappeared with an absolute regularity throughthe dark-green wool out of which she was evolving a hideous and usefulshawl. To her lodger, who alternately waved a palm-leaf fan and dranklemonade, reading at intervals from a two-days-old newspaper, andcarrying on the desultory and amusing soliloquy that they were pleasedto consider conversation, she presented the most attractive of pictures."So firm, so positive, so wholesome," he murmured to himself, callingher attention to the exquisite effect of the slanting rays that struckthe lawn in a dappled pattern of flickering leaf-shadows, and remarkingthe violet tinge thrown by the setting sun on the old spire below in themiddle of the village. She did not answer immediately, and when she didit was in tones that he had learned from various slight experiments toregard as final.

  "Mr. Welles," she said, bending upon him that direct and placid regardthat rendered evasion difficult and paltering impossible, "things havecome to a point;" and she narrated the scene of the morning.

  "It is indeed a problem," observed her lodger gravely, "but what is oneto do? It is just such questions as this that illustrate the futility--"

  "There is no question about it, Mr. Welles," she interrupted gravely."Tom was right and I was wrong. There is no use in my talking to him oranybody while I--while you--while things are as they are. You must makeup your mind, Mr. Welles."

  "But, great heavens, dear Miss Gould, what do you mean? What am Ito make up my mind about? Am I to provide myself with an occupation,perhaps, for the sake of Tom Waters's principles? Or am I--"

  "Yes. That is just it. You know what I have always felt, Mr. Welles,about it. But I never seemed to be able to make you see. Now, as I say,things have come to a point. You must do something."

  "But this is absurd, Miss Gould! I am not a child, and surely nobody candream of holding you in any way responsible--"

  "_I_ hold myself responsible," she replied simply, "and I have neverapproved of it--never!"

  He shrugged his shoulders desperately. She was imperturbable; she wasimpossible; she was beyond argument or persuasion or ridicule.

  "Suppose I say that I think the situation is absurd, and that I refuseto be placed at Mr. Waters's disposal?" he suggested with a furtiveglance. She drew the ivory hook through the green meshes a littlefaster.

  "I should be obliged to refuse to renew your lease in the fall," sheanswered. He started from his wicker chair.

  "You cannot mean it, Miss Gould! You would not be so--so unkind, sounjust!"

  "I should feel obliged to, Mr. Welles, and I should not feel unjust."

  He sank back into the yielding chair with a sigh. After all, herfascination had always lain in her great decision. Was it not illogicalto expect her to fail to display it at such a crisis? There was a longsilence. The sun sank lower and lower, the birds twittered happilyaround them. Miss Gould's long white hook slipped in and out of thewool, and her lodger's eyes followed it absently. After a while he rose,settled his white jacket elaborately, and half turned as if to go backto the house.

  "I need not tell you how I regret this unfortunate decision of yours,"he said politely, with a slight touch of the hauteur that sat so well onhis graceful person. "I can only say that I am sorry you yourself shouldregret it so little, and that I hope it will not disturb our pleasantacquaintance during the weeks that remain to me."

  She bowed slightly with a dignified gesture that often served her as areply, and he took a step toward her.

  "Would we not better come in?" he suggested. "The sun is gone, and yourdress is thin. Let me send Henry after the chairs," and his eyes droppedto her hands again. They were nearly hidden by the green wool, but thelong needle quivered like a leaf in the wind; she could not pass itbetween the thread and her white forefinger. He hesitated a moment,glanced at her face, smiled inscrutably, and deliberately reseatedhimself.

  "What in the world could I do, you see?" he inquired meditatively, as ifthat had been the subject under discussion for some time. "I can'tmake cardboard boxes, you know. It's perfectly useless, my going into afactory. Wheels and belts and things always give me the maddestlonging to jump into them--I couldn't resist it! And that would be sounpleasant--"

  She dropped her wool and clasped her hands under it.

  "Oh, Mr. Welles," she cried eagerly, "how absurd! As if I meant that! Asif I meant anything like it!"

  "Had you thought of anything, then?" he asked interestedly.

  She nodded gravely. "Why, yes," she said. "It wouldn't be
right for meto say you must do something, and then offer no suggestions whatever,knowing as I do how you feel about it. I thought of such a good plan,and one that would be the best possible answer to Tom--"

  "Oh, good heavens!" murmured her lodger, but she went on quickly: "Youknow I was going to open the soup-kitchen in October. Well, I've justthought, Why not get the Rooms all ready, and the reading-room movedover there, and have lemonade and sandwiches and sarsaparilla, andKitty Waters to begin to serve right away, as she's beginning to run thestreets again, and Annabel Riley with her? Then the Civic Club can haveits headquarters there, and people will begin to be used to it beforecold weather."

  "And I am to serve sarsaparilla