Talbot's Angles

"And I'd lose you," returned Miss Ri ruefully. "Are you sleepy? No? Come in then, and let's talk over people and things."

"Let's leave out Berkley and Grace."

"Very well, we'll talk of your new cousin. By the way, if Berk has examined those papers he must know the relationship. Possibly that is just what is the matter."

"I don't think so, besides, I had the impression that he had not looked at them. But we weren't going to talk of Berk, you know. Tell me plainly, what do you think of my new cousin?"

"I think he is an out and out Yankee. Clever enough in some directions, rather whimsical, deadly afraid you will find out what he is thinking about, frightfully cautious of showing his feelings, with a conscience which worries him because his inclination isn't always to follow it exactly, wherein he differs from another who follows his impulses, and whose impulses are always generous ones. Your Mr. Jeffreys sits down and pros and cons for hours. Someone, whose name we don't mention, plunges out, impelled by an unselfish motive, and does the thing that the other deliberates over. Yet I won't say the cousin doesn't do fine honorable things once he makes up his mind it is right. Very likely he rises to his heights by a different process, and doesn't ever make the mistake of over zeal, of going at too brisk a pace like the unmentioned sometimes does. What the latter does is with his whole heart. I think he might almost perjure himself for one he loved; I know he would cheerfully die in the same cause."

Linda, leaning with elbows on table, thoughtfully tapped one hand with an ivory paper-cutter. "You are analytical, Aunt Ri, but probably you are right. Yet, after all if a man, through evolutions of reasoning, reaches a point where his conscience bids him do a noble deed, isn't he just as much to be approved as he who rushes out, never asking for reasons, and does a like noble thing? And isn't he more to be approved than the man who sacrifices his integrity, or does a wrong thing for love's sake?"

"Oh, yes, I don't doubt it though it depends largely upon one's view of the case. For my part I admire the spontaneous, intrepid man more than the deliberate one, but that is a matter of preference."

"Which do you think would be the easier to live with?" Linda balanced the paper-cutter on the tips of her fingers. "Wouldn't the impetuous man be more difficult, more trying, for the very reason of his impetuosity?"

"Yes, but he'd be vastly more entertaining, to my mind, because of his uncertainty."

"In perjuring himself, for example?"

"Oh, we needn't go so far as that, Verlinda. A really good man would never go so far unless – "

"Unless?"

"He felt the cause for which he criminated himself was a greater thing than his own state of well-being. I can imagine certain men who would sacrifice their immortal welfare for the sake of a sacred cause."

"And you think Berkley Matthews is like that?"

"No, I don't say so? I won't go so far in my estimate of him, though I do say there are few things he wouldn't do for one he loved. But you remember we were not to mention him."

"We don't appear to be doing much else. We are comparing him all the time with Mr. Jeffreys whether we mention his name or not. I agree with you in thinking Berk is capable of fine things, but so I believe is Mr. Jeffreys."

"Berk has the tenderest of hearts," continued Miss Ri, "and he has thoughtful little ways that please an elderly woman like myself. I could but notice the difference when I was walking with Mr. Jeffreys. Did he help me over a gutter, or up a steep curb? Not he. Not that I wanted help, but it was the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace that I missed. Berk watches out for your every step, makes way for you, as it were. If he wore a Sir Walter Raleigh cloak it would be mud from end to end so readily would he spread it for a woman's feet to tread on. He may not have the tall and graceful figure of your cousin, but he can bow like a courtier, and will stand with his head uncovered in any weather rather than wear his hat in a lady's presence."

"I have noticed all those things," admitted Linda. "So far, in your opinion, his side of the scales tip far, far below my cousin's, but then one must make allowances for your partiality. You've known Berk since he was born. Perhaps Mr. Jeffreys' mother may have had just so good an opinion of him."

"Being his mother she probably had. What have you to put in his side of the scales?"

"Oh, good looks, a very dignified bearing, and a perfectly well-trained conscience which wouldn't run away with him."

"You know I don't call that so desirable a quality as the impulsive generosity."

"But I do, so if you leave your impulsive generosity in the scales, I must have the well-trained conscience."

"Very well. Go on."

"Then, there's your mud-spattered cloak which I will balance with – let me see – "

"You can't find anything to equal that," cried Miss Ri triumphantly.

"Oh, yes, I can. There is a certain beautiful dignity and a certain indescribable charm; I don't know exactly wherein it lies, but it is there. Bertie Bryan has discovered it, too, and very probably it has not escaped you."

"I don't see it at all."

"There we are again, so you will have to take the courtesy and I'll have the dignity and charm. I haven't a doubt but if we knew Mr. Jeffreys better we should find a host of other things."

"He is not sympathetic in the way Berk is."

The paper-cutter was at work again. "No-o," Linda admitted, "he doesn't seem to be, but perhaps he really is, inside."

"Then I don't see what use it is to anyone. Berk shows that quality in his eyes. He has dear eyes, I think."

Linda neither affirmed nor denied though she suddenly remembered the eager, tender look bestowed upon her that day in the postoffice when she gave back the newspaper after reading her little poem in it. "We certainly have discussed those two long enough," she said lightly. "How their ears must burn. What next, Aunt Ri?"

"I've been thinking I'd like to get some facts for you from some other source than Wyatt Jeffreys. There's our old family lawyer, Judge Goldsborough, who was your family's lawyer as well. He retired from active life long ago, and is a very old man now, but I believe he could tell us things. He knew your grandfather and all that. Some day we will go to see him. We'll make it an ancestral pilgrimage. He lives up in the next county where his son has a fine estate. On the way we can take in that old church where my grandparents were married; they were Roman Catholics, you see, and I have always wanted to see that old church. How do you like the idea of such a trip?"

"Immensely. You are very clever to have thought of it, Aunt Ri."

"Then some Saturday we will go. The judge will be delighted to see you, and me, too, I am not too modest to say. He is a dear old man and, though his memory is not what it was, the way back things are those he remembers the best. Now go to bed. We've talked long enough. Go to bed."

CHAPTER XIII

AN ANCESTRAL PILGRIMAGE

Miss Ri was not one to be dilatory when an idea once took possession of her, and she therefore began planning at once for the trip to "Mary's Delight," where Judge Goldsborough lived. It was a roundabout journey involving several changes, if one went all the way by rail to the nearest station, but was not nearly so far if one drove from Sandbridge to the point where a train could be had which would go direct to the little village of Mackenzie. Miss Ri finally decided upon the latter course, naturally choosing a Saturday as being the day when Linda could most easily leave. It was not a matter to be made secret, and Berkley was consulted as to the best method of getting to the desired point.

"You'd better take the train from Boxford to Mackenzie," he told them. "Of course you must drive from here to Boxford, and you would better send word ahead to Mackenzie to have some sort of vehicle ready for you there to take you to 'Mary's Delight,' unless you prefer to let the Goldsboroughs know you are coming."

Miss Ri shook her head. "I think I'll let that go, and trust to luck, for it might be a bad day which would prevent our going, and I don't want them to make preparations, as they might do; besides we want to stop at the old church, and I should prefer a hired team if we are to do that."

"Very well, then, suppose I drop a line to Mackenzie, to the postmaster there, he knows me, and I'll tell him two ladies are coming from Sandbridge. He will do all he can for you. You can go right to the postoffice, and then it will be plain sailing."

"You are a good thoughtful boy, Berk, to smooth our way so nicely," Miss Ri told him. "By the way," she added, "aren't you feeling well these days? You seem so serious. Anything wrong?"

The young man flushed up and turned over some papers on his desk. They were in his office where Miss Ri had stopped to consult him. "I'm all right," he replied in reply. "Working a little hard, maybe. I must, you know, if I want to get ahead."

"And that is why you don't drop in so often," returned Miss Ri. Then after waiting a moment for the answer which did not come, she went on. "Well, you know you are always welcome, Berk. I may bamboozle you, but you know it is all talk. Come when you can and thank you very much for straightening out this route. I did not want to go around the other way and be all day getting there, spending half the time waiting at stations to make connections."

"I find the most direct way is generally the best," he told her. "When you want to go across country you'd better drive instead of depending upon trains. Good luck to you, Miss Ri." And he turned to his desk as she went out.

Saturday furnished all that anyone could ask in the way of weather. It was almost too warm for the season, and a few clouds piled up in the west, but it could not be a finer day, as everyone declared with satisfaction, and the two travellers sat down to their morning meal in happy anticipation of what was before them.

"We're going to have a lovely time, Verlinda," remarked Miss Ri. "The judge will have some good tales for us, I know. I am sure he will be interested to know you are a great-niece of the Verlinda Talbot he used to know, and, if report speaks the truth, with whom he was much in love, but like the gallant gentleman he was, when she married someone else he made no sign though he was hard hit, and he was always a devoted friend to her and to your grandfather. His son Dick isn't unlike him. He has a nice wife and half a dozen children, some of whom are grown up by now." She was silent for a little while and then she said, with half a laugh and half a sigh, "I didn't expect to be visiting Dick Goldsborough's house in my old age."

Linda looked up from the coffee she was sipping. "That sounds very much as if there were a story, a romance hidden in your remark."

Miss Ri gave a little comfortable laugh. "Well, there was something like it once."

"Oh, Aunt Ri, and you never told me. Were you – were you engaged to Mr. Dick Goldsborough?"