BUSINESS EFFORTS AND A DISCOVERY

The young ship builder by Sophie Swett is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. CHAPTER X

BUSINESS EFFORTS AND A DISCOVERY

“I knew I wa’n’t one that could do anything underhanded without being ketched at it, I knew I wa’n’t!” said Loveday, rocking violently in her aunt’s old-fashioned haircloth rocking-chair, just as she did in the kitchen chintz-covered one at Groundnut Hill when she was greatly disturbed in mind.

I had found her in a little dingy house in a narrow, stuffy street, that meandered down a hill, apparently into Ethiopia, for it swarmed, at the foot, whither I had wandered seeking, with dusky faces.

I was forced to the conclusion that Loveday was not glad to see me. She did not like to be “ketched.” She had not explained, at all; she had allowed me to think that she had come to the city merely to visit her aunt, until I confided to her that I knew about the race-course.

“No, I never found what I came for. I never found it, at all!” she replied, in answer to my eager question, and she said it in a tone of discouragement that was rare for Loveday. “I expect I’m an old crank. Mebbe the idee that ketches a holt of you between midnight and sun-up is some like a dream; that’s what I been a-thinkin’, as I set here a-rockin’.”

“Loveday, won’t you tell me what the idea was?” I begged.

Loveday drew a long breath and hesitated. “No, I ain’t a-goin’ to tell nobody,” she said, positively, at length—“that is, without I have to tell Hiram, for I ain’t a-goin’ to give it up entirely until I set Hiram on to it. He’s got to have a tunin’ spell, Hiram has, when he gets home from peddlin’, and then he’ll go to photographin’ ag’in. Goin’ round up country he may come acrost the man I want to find—that’s Alf Reeder. He’s a man that owns race-horses. I wrote to Hiram when I found that photograph and he didn’t ’pear to know anything about him, couldn’t even remember where the photograph was took. Even if the man is found I ain’t anyways sure that he’ll know what—what I want to find out. I see in a paper that Alf Reeder’s horse was a-goin’ to race, over to that terrible place where I went, to-day, and off I come and left Viola to make soggy pie-crust, and scorch the tablecloths! I’m an old crank and I know I be! I’d better ’a’ been to home, a-makin’ my soft soap, and darnin’ Leander’s pantaloons, that he’s a-sufferin’ for. I forgot that folk’s duty was apt to lay where the Lord had sot ’em, and as my grandfather used to say, their luck was apt to be a-straddlin’ the backyard fence.”

“O Loveday! you were so much better than the rest of us. No one except Estelle has tried to do anything for the poor boy. And you did help, Loveday; it was Providence that led you to that place!” And I told her about Ned Carruthers and how strongly he had been impressed by her sermon.

“I bore my testimony,” said Loveday. “I couldn’t do no less! The wickedness of it all was so bore in upon me that I most forgot what I come for. Yes, I did, all of a sudden! I never hardly knew what I was a-sayin’, but I reckon mebbe the Lord was on my side. They was a-hootin’ and a-jeerin’, but it got stiller toward the last. You don’t say the young man was really took hold of?—and the same one that told on our poor boy?” Loveday called him Mr. David, very respectfully, to his face, and to outsiders, but never to me. “That does look some like the Lord’s leadin’s—he don’t lead folks away from home so often as they think he does.”

“Loveday, did you ever say anything to David about what you thought or suspected?” I asked, for I had always a good opinion of straightforward methods.

“I tried it. But you can’t get a nearness to him when he ain’t a mind to let you; you couldn’t when he wa’n’t more’n five years old. ‘Why, what are you a-drivin’ at, Loveday?’ says he, and his handsome face that’s jest like his mother’s, got as red as fire. ‘Does it make any difference,’ says he, ‘what horse a fellow bet on so long as he didn’t win?’ says he. And he said it so kind of reckless that it made my blood run cold. For one of our boys to speak like that! And all the time he looked so manly and noble you couldn’t have no realizin’ sense that he was the mean and foolish kind that bets. When I come off and left him—it was down in the shipyard and he was hammerin’ away, all the time, and wouldn’t pay hardly a mite of attention to me—I turned back and out of the fulness of my heart my mouth spoke, ‘Mr. David, I don’t believe no such a thing!’ says I. ‘You’re the child of your sainted ma,’ says I, ‘and the grandchild of your sainted grandpa, and it ain’t noways likely that you ever done any such a thing!’ That ’peared to be reflectin’ kind of unfavorable on his pa, so I said, right off quick, ‘Your pa, too, he was a gentleman, if he was an artist, and he wouldn’t never a-done no such mean thing!’

“He laughed, but he looked queer, too; he looked real queer.

“‘Do you s’pose, Loveday,’ says he, ‘that I should ’a’ let myself be expelled and brought to this for somethin’ that I never done?’ says he.

“I was kind of beat, for a minute, then I said, ‘It don’t ’pear as if you would. There ain’t nothin’ in this livin’ world that would make it right for you to do it.’

“‘Isn’t there, Loveday? Isn’t there?’ he says, and he stopped hammering for the first time and turned and looked at me.

“‘There’s such a thing as sacrificin’ yourself for others in a way that’s ag’in sanctified common sense,’ says I.”

“You think he sacrificed himself for others, Loveday?” I interrupted. “Then it must have been for Rob. But I don’t see how that could possibly have been.”

“I don’t know as I do,” said Loveday, leaning back wearily in her rocker. “And yet I can’t bring myself to believe no evil of that boy. He was mischievous, some, when he was a child, and he would keep a-drawin’ things and pesterin’ his teachers, but the best of folks has their failures and that was born in him. But he was the honestest youngster and would look you square in the face and tell you jest what he’d been up to. His close-mouthed fits wa’n’t never about any of his own pranks. You never could get him to tell of anybody else.”

“But it couldn’t have been Rob,” I repeated, answering what I knew was Loveday’s thought.

“It doesn’t ’pear to be possible,” said Loveday. “But, then! when they go away from home you can’t tell how they’ll turn out. I shouldn’t wonder if some of them colleges was hot-beds of iniquity.

“‘Loveday, you don’t know the world,’ says the boy to me. ‘Palmyra ain’t the world!’ says he.”

Loveday rocked. Suddenly she leaned toward me eagerly. “And yet, I believe in that boy! I believe in him!” she said, with conviction, “and if I’d ’a’ been your uncle, or Cyrus, or anybody that had a right, I’d ’a’ gone to that college. I’d ’a’ gone to where them races was and found out more about how things was!”

“Dear Loveday, you have been more loyal to him than any of us—except his own sister!”

“Miss Estelle! She’s a child yet,” said Loveday, sententiously, and I saw that she did not like my exception. Even Loveday had her limitations and she could not realize that eighteen was grown-up; certainly not while one still made pictures. Loveday was going home to Palmyra soon, she said. The noise of the city “flew to her head” and Viola’s soggy pie-crust and Leander’s unmended pantaloons were a weight upon her mind.

The aunt, a mild, little, very old woman, with an incongruously big, guttural voice, came into the room and set forth many reasons why Loveday should stay with her, or visit her oftener, but Loveday was not to be persuaded, declaring that “the Lord hadn’t sot her where there was none too much of her and she wa’n’t one that could be hoppin’ back and forth like a parched pea.”

“She’s got property and plenty to do for her,” said Loveday to me at the door, “and I hain’t got a tallent for livin’ in the city, nohow. It roars like a bull of Bashan and there’s too much of it. I’m one that likes things in moderation, and it hurts my feelin’s to meet so many folks that I don’t know.”

I aroused Octavia, in the gray of the morning. “I’ve been thinking,” I said, “that you needn’t go about with me to-day. You might go with Estelle instead. You know she said she would call here before she set out.”

Now I had several motives in making this suggestion and they all seemed to me very good and praiseworthy ones. In the first place I felt that I could drive a better bargain in sage cheese and preserves, and possibly sausages, by myself, than with Octavia, who, I felt, had a mind above these things, and an unconfessed shrinking from such sordid traffic. Another motive was to foster the sympathy so suddenly developed between Octavia and Estelle. Octavia’s aloofness from “the aliens” had always caused me pangs.

“But there’ll be Alice Yorke,” said Octavia, sleepily considering. “I think we’d better all go together, everywhere. The cheese and sage may be encouraging. I’ve seen the reception that the world gives to literature; it may be enlarging to know how it receives sausages.”

This was bitterly said, but Octavia laughed a little at herself, and added that of course she did not really think that “Evelyn Marchmont” was literature.

I did, and I believed that the world would yet confess it, but just then my mind was set upon the vending of my own plebeian wares. The trouble about Dave had been brought home to me afresh. I almost believed in his innocence, and the overthrow of his prospects in life and his uncongenial toil seemed suddenly more than I could bear. I was determined that his debt to Ned Carruthers should be paid at once; he should at least be relieved from that humiliation.

And on that morning I was resolved that I would, if it were possible, repair the family fortunes. If literature and art could not do it, then sausages must!

“We’ll all go,” said Octavia, as she made her toilet. It is generally Octavia who settles things. “And, oh, I do hope that poor child isn’t going to be altogether disappointed about her pictures!”

Estelle and Alice Yorke were eager to share the trading expedition. Estelle was evidently glad to postpone the ordeal of facing her art-editor.

In the great establishment where the Groundnut Hill sage cheese and quince jelly had found its market I received a most unexpectedly cordial welcome. The firm would give me a much larger order for the coming season, it would be glad to have other jellies and preserves of the Groundnut Hill brand; also cream cheeses, and butter in my tiny, clover-stamped pats.

I was paid for my last remittance of goods and I pocketed the delightful, little, rustling slip—the girls looking on—with an even keener thrill of pleasure than I had felt in taking it from the envelope in the Palmyra post-office. It was twice as large that was one reason, I had grown very mercenary. It was almost half enough to pay Dave’s debt.

“I knew it was a sordid world, but I didn’t think it was such a greedy one,” said Octavia, as we went out of the shop. “In Palmyra we don’t think so much of good things to eat.”

I had made bold to ask the man who was so polite to me about a possible chance to sell my sausages, and he gave me a letter to a firm in a great market. And down to the market we all trooped, Estelle with her large portfolio under her arm and a cloud of anxiety still upon her lovely face. I was light-hearted; never before had a check meant so much to me; and the others professed to think no scorn of sausages. Alice Yorke even regretted that Peggy Carruthers had not come, too; Peggy would have enjoyed it so much.

But I drew the line at Peggy Carruthers. She seemed too dainty and too like a society girl to condescend to the selling of farm products. Moreover, the feeling she had shown—perhaps not unreasonably—about Estelle’s little flare-up, still rankled in my mind. Estelle had seemed scarcely to observe it; she was too much absorbed in her troubles and her little will-o’-the-wisp of hope to have any thought for Peggy Carruthers.

They were only moderately civil at the first place in the market; they sent me around with my letter to several firms.

I think Octavia felt vaguely comforted, in spite of her sincere and hearty desire for my success, to find that sausages could be treated as badly as manuscripts!

But we at length found a firm that had heard of Groundnut Hill farm products and I immediately received an order for the sausages which I proposed to make. It was thought certain that something really “gilt-edged,” with the Groundnut Hill brand upon it, would sell. The man, rosy and good-natured, a typical butcher, who represented the firm, suggested sausage cakes and hogs’-head-cheese—at which Octavia made a little move.

I assented eagerly. Leander Green had a cousin with “a talent for hogs’-head-cheese,” as Leander had proudly boasted, a talent now lying fallow in the horse-clipping business. I foresaw the building up of a great business and my heart leaped for joy.

“Palmyra?” remarked the clerk, who took my address, in an aside to his superior. “Isn’t that where one of the designs came from for the old man’s yacht? Some o’ them shipbuildin’ towns.”

The others had wandered off to look at the beautiful display of vegetables and fruit in another part of the market. I listened with my heart in my mouth.

“A drawing?” I faltered, interrogatively.

“Old Mr. Salter—Solomon Salter—that owns a good part of the market, he’s building himself a yacht, and none of the designs that the big fellows made appeared to suit him. He’s a man that’s got ideas of his own about most things. So he advertised for a design. Seems he got one from somewheres down your way. I don’t know much about it; he told Pollard something about it. Pollard, he’s been a sailor and calculates he knows all about navigation.”

“Are you sure that it was from Palmyra?” I asked nervously, addressing myself to the clerk.

Pollard was not by any means sure; he repeated vaguely that it was “one o’ them shipbuildin’ towns.” It was ’long in the winter that the old man told him about it; he had a stack of drawin’s as high as the Old South meetin’ house steeple. There seemed to be consid’able many folks drawin’ pictures of one kind and another nowadays; he expected a good many done it to get rid of stiddy day’s works. When you come to think that only one of the fellers that made them drawin’s was goin’ to get the designin’ of the old man’s yacht the designin’ business didn’t look very encouragin’. He happened to notice Palmyra—yes, it was Palmyra—because a nephew of his run his schooner ashore there once. But the old man was liberal; he’d pay—he’d pay when he did get what suited him and he could afford to.

The clerk was talkative but his information was not definite. I hurried after the others, trying to dismiss from my mind the idea that had seized upon it when the man said that a design had come from Palmyra. But it was so evident to me that I shouldn’t succeed in forgetting it that I turned back and asked him where Mr. Solomon Salter might be found. It was bold, but I felt that I had now the dignity of a business woman to support me.

The yacht owner had an office on State Street; he gave me explicit directions where to find it.

Estelle’s dreaded art-editor was a pleasant-faced woman, with a keen glance. She was reinforced by a very bushy-haired man with a “diminishing glass,” which he used to see how the drawings would “come down.” It took me some time to understand that he meant to see how they would look when reproduced for book illustrations.

She discovered all the good points in the drawings and he all the bad ones. Doubtless they each served a purpose in the welfare of the magazine, but when I saw the flush on Estelle’s face grow hotter and hotter I wanted to do something mean and revengeful to him.

Yet he was the one, after all, who suggested that Estelle should “submit” a design for the new cover that the magazine was to have. He agreed at last, without cavil, to his associate’s assertion that Estelle’s bunchy babies were original and altogether charming, and he produced the manuscript of a jingle and a story and asked her to try her hand at illustrating them. If the illustrations were satisfactory a price which he named would be paid for them.

Now the price was not at all in proportion to the price of sage cheese and sausages, but it sounded large to Estelle, who had been having forced upon her the conviction that they were worthless. She looked breathlessly delighted, as if she had stumbled upon a gold mine, and I felt my business bump expand.

“It seems a small price,” I said stiffly, “but I suppose if she is successful she will be paid more for the next drawings.”

“We have many young artists who are ready to work for less,” said the lady editor in a firm, but gentle voice.

Out in the narrow passageway Alice Yorke and I both hugged Estelle, by way of congratulation. Octavia was too dignified for such demonstrations but her eyes were full of tears.

“It is only for names that great prices are paid,” I said sagely. “It was only those who had heard of Groundnut Hill farm products who would have my sausages.”

“I am not sorry, Bathsheba, that you said the price wasn’t enough. I think it is too small,” said Estelle.

And I was quite thrilled by the idea that my experience would have a new use; Estelle would certainly need a business manager.

We planned to go back to Palmyra, Alice Yorke and all, by boat at five o’clock that afternoon; and we were all fairly light-hearted, except Octavia, who had left her child to the inquisitors.

She asked me, as we walked along the street, if I did not think she could help Leander Green’s cousin with the hogs’-head-cheese. We had all been invited to luncheon at Peggy Carruthers but had decided to decline the invitation. Octavia and I could not get over the sense of strained relations with the young man who had treated Dave so badly. And Estelle said openly that she never could bear to see him again till the money was paid. We went back to our boarding-place, and after luncheon, while the others were resting and making ready for the journey, I slipped out again.

I felt that I could not go home without knowing whether some one had sent a design from Palmyra for Mr. Solomon Salter’s yacht, and, if so, with what success the design had met. I had a wild idea that I might be able to carry some good news to Dave—Dave, whose patient endurance of the daily grind of uncongenial labor was beginning to seem to me nothing less than heroic, whether he regarded it as a punishment or not.

Only a few rods from our door I met Ned Carruthers. He had a thin package in his hand which he waved triumphantly.

“You can’t refuse to let me in with this!” he cried, in his boyish way. “It’s a drawing that was left in my sister’s studio. She sent me with it. I—I think it’s your sister’s.”

He said this with a blush and a stammer as if it were not a matter of course that it was Estelle’s. But perhaps it was natural that he should be a little embarrassed about the young woman who had treated him to such extremely plain speaking. I hesitated, knowing that it would trouble Estelle to see him. I didn’t want her delight in her hard-won opportunity to be spoiled by any annoyance.

And then, suddenly, a brilliantly business-like idea seized me—at least I felt on the instant that it was such. I shrank from going to see Solomon Salter myself. Although, as I have said, Palmyran conventionalities were different from those of the city, yet I felt that it was not quite proper for a young woman to seek a strange man’s business office on an errand of such purely personal interest that it might seem to savor of impertinence.

“Do you know Mr. Solomon Salter?” I demanded, eagerly.

“I know him, of course, every one does. He’s an inordinately rich old fellow—I beg your pardon—a man of great wealth, and he happens to be a trustee of the estate to which Peggy and I are heirs.”

“Would you—will you do me the very great favor of going to his office and asking him a question for me? I’ll give the drawing to my sister.”

His face fell. But he gathered himself together and said politely that he was quite at my service.

“I want to know whether he has had a design for a yacht sent to him from Palmyra; and, oh, I so much want to know whether if he has, it’s the one he’s going to accept!”

His face kindled sympathetically. “He—he draws, too! I understand,” he said. “You must know how glad I shall be if I can be of any service,” he added, heartily. “I’ll find out everything I can; but I warn you that Mr. Solomon Salter is called a dreadful old curmudgeon.”

He was so eager and so boyish that I could have defied any one to help liking him at that moment, even remembering how meanly he had behaved toward Dave. He seemed, however, to have a real desire to make amends to Dave—or to Dave’s sister.

The afternoon slipped away and he didn’t return to give an account of his interview with Mr. Solomon Salter. I had not told Octavia or Estelle, partly because I felt that my fancy that it was Dave who had sent the design had very slight foundation, partly because I feared they would strongly disapprove of my asking a favor of Ned Carruthers—as, indeed, I was inclined to do myself now that I had time for reflection.

We were on board the steamer; the shrill whistles had sounded and the bell had rung that was its signal for departure. We were about to slip away from the great, strange, homesick city, with its bull of Bashan roar; the beautiful blue ocean that stretched almost to our dear Palmyran shores invited us. But I hung regretfully over the railing and hoped against hope.

There he was! He had boasted of his sprinting, perhaps that exercise had something to do with the headlong rush with which he came down the wharf dashing aside porters and cabmen!

“It’s Ned Carruthers!” exclaimed Alice Yorke. “And how he looks! He’s all covered with dust.”

His foot was on the gangplank as the porter started to move it.

“A stack of them, six feet high!” he gasped—not quite as high as the Old South meeting house steeple! “He let me look through them and I found it, a capital design! I told him so. He said—— Here! wait a minute!” he shouted, suddenly, to the porter, and I, straining my ears, was forced to wait. “Allow me to assist you!” I saw him lift his hat; there was a tone of recognition in his voice.

It was a tall, awkward figure, in a cashmere shawl and carrying an ancient carpet-bag, that he helped upon the hastily restored gangplank even as the steamer’s wheels were ready to turn.

“If ever I’m ketched so far from home ag’in!” murmured Loveday, as she set her foot upon the steamer.

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