The Reclaimers

Sitting there in the shelter of blossoming vines, the girl seemed far too dainty a creature, too lacking in experience, initiative, or ability, to manage anything more trying than a big allowance of pin-money. And yet, something in her small, firm hands, something in the lines of her well-formed chin, put the doubt into any forecast of what Geraldine Swaim might do when she chose to act.

Aunt Jerry wrapped the lacy tatting stuff she had been making around the pearl shuttle and, putting both away in the Japanese work-basket, carefully snapped down the lid.

"When Jerusha Darby quits work to talk it's time for me to put on my skid-chains," Jerry said to herself as she watched the procedure.

"Jerry, do you know why I called you your mother's own child just now?" Mrs. Darby asked, gravely.

"From habit, maybe, you have said it so often." Jerry's smile took away any suggestion of pertness. "I know I am like her in some ways."

"Yes, but not altogether," the older woman continued. "Lesa Swaim was a strange combination. She was made to spend money, with no idea of how to get money. And she brought you up the same way. And now you are grown, boarding-school finished, and of age, you can't alter your bringing up any more than you can change your big eyes that are just like Lesa's, nor your chin that you inherited from Brother Jim. I might as well try to give you little black eyes and a receding chin as to try to reshape your ways now. You are as the Lord made you, and Providence molded you, and your mother spoiled you."

"Well, I don't want to be anything different. I'm happy as I am."

"You won't need to be, unless you choose. But being twenty-one doesn't make you too old to listen to me – and your uncle Cornie."

In all her life Jerry had never before heard her uncle's name brought in as co-partner of Jerusha Darby's in any opinion, authority, or advice. It was an unfortunate slip of the tongue for Uncle Cornie's wife, one of those simple phrases that, dropped at the right spot, take root and grow and bear big fruit, whether of sweet or bitter taste.

"Your mother was a dreamer, a lover of romance, and all sorts of adventures, although she never had a chance to get into any of them. That's why you went skidding on that sideling bluff road to-day; that and the fact that she brought you up to have your own way about everything. But, as I say, we can't change that now, and there's no need to if we could. Lesa was a pretty woman, but you look like the Swaims, except right across here."

Aunt Jerry drew her bony finger across the girl's brows, unwilling to concede any of the family likeness that could possibly be retained. She could not see the gleam of mischief lurking under the downcast eyelashes of Lesa Swaim's own child.

"Your father was a good business man, level-headed, shrewd, and honest" – Mrs. Darby spoke rapidly now – "but things happened in the last years of his life. Your mother took pneumonia and died, and you went away to boarding-school. Jim's business was considerably involved. I needn't bother to tell you about that. It doesn't matter now, anyhow. And then one night he didn't come home, and the next morning your uncle found him sitting in his office, just as he had left him the evening before. He had been dead several hours. Heart failure was what the doctor said, but I reckon everybody goes of heart failure sooner or later."

A bright, hard glow came into Jerry Swaim's eyes and the red lips were grimly pressed together. In the two years since the loss of her parents the girl had never tried to pray. As time went on the light spirit of youth had come back, but something went out of her life on the day of her father's death, leaving a loss against which she stubbornly rebelled.

"To be plain, Jerry," Mrs. Darby hurried on, "you have your inheritance all cleared up at last, after two whole years of legal trouble."

"Oh, it hasn't really bothered me," Jerry declared, with seeming flippancy. "Just signing my name where somebody pointed to a blank line, and holding up my right hand to be sworn – that's all. I've written my full name and promised that the writing was mine, 's'welp me Gawd,' as the court-house man used to say, till I could do either one under the influence of ether. Nothing really bothersome about it, but I'm glad it's over. Business is so tiresome."

"It's not so large a fortune, by a good deal, as it would have been if your father had listened to me." Mrs. Darby spoke vaguely. "But you will be amply provided for, anyhow, unless you yourself choose to trifle with your best interest. You and I are the only Swaims living now. Some day, if I choose, I can will all my property to you."

The square-cut chin and the deep lines around the stern mouth told plainly that obedience to this woman's wishes alone could make a beneficiary to that will.

"You may be a dreamer, and love to go romancing around into new scrapes like your mother would have done if she could. But she was as soft-hearted as could be, with all that. That's why she never denied you anything you wanted. She couldn't do a thing with money, though, as I said, except spend it. You are a good deal like your father, too, Jerry, and you'll value property some day as the only thing on earth that can make life anything but a hard grind. If you don't want to be like that bunch of everlasting grubs that ride on the Winnowoc train every afternoon, or the poor country folks around here that never ride in anything but a rickety old farm-wagon, you'll appreciate what I – and Uncle Cornie – can do for you."

Uncle Cornie again, and he never had shared in any equal consideration before. It was a mistake.

"There's the four-forty whistling for the curve at last. It's time it was coming. I must go in and see that dinner is just right. You run down and meet it. Cousin Eugene is coming out on it. Your uncle Cornie is here on the place somewhere. He came out after lunch on some business we had to fix up. No wonder you missed him. But, Jerry" – the stern-faced woman put a hand on the girl's shoulder with more of command than caress in the gesture – "Eugene is a real artist with genius, you know."

"Yes, I know," Jerry replied, a sudden change coming into her tone. "What of that?"

"You've always known him. You like him very much?" Jerusha Darby was as awkward in sentiment as she was shrewd in a bargain.

The bloom on the girl's cheek deepened as she looked away toward the brilliantly green meadows across which the low sun was sending rays of golden light.

"Oh, I like him as much as he likes me, no doubt. I'll go down to the station and look him over, if you say so."

Beneath the words lay something deeper than speech – something new even to the girl herself.

As Jerry left the arbor Mrs. Darby said, with something half playful, half final, in her tone: "You won't forget what I've said about property, you little spendthrift. You will be sensible, like my sensible brother's child, even if you are as idealizing as your sentimental mother."

"I'll not forget. I couldn't and be Jerry Darby's niece," the last added after the girl was safely out of her aunt's hearing. "My father and mother both had lots of good traits, it seems, and a few poor ones. I seem to be really heir to all the faulty bents of theirs, and to have lost out on all the good ones. But I can't help that now. Not till after the train gets in, anyhow."

Her aunt watched her till the shrubbery hid her at a turn in the walk. Young, full of life, dainty as the June blossoms that showered her pathway with petals, a spoiled, luxury-loving child, with an adventurous spirit and a blunted and undeveloped notion of human service and divine heritage, but with a latent capacity and an untrained power for doing things, that was Jerry Swaim – whom the winds of heaven must not visit too roughly without being accountable to Mrs. Jerusha Darby, owner and manager of the universe for her niece.

II

UNCLE CORNIE'S THROW

Jerry was waiting at the cool end of the rustic station when the train came in. How hot and stuffy it seemed to her as it puffed out of the valley, and how tired and cross all the bunch of grubs who stared out of the window at her. It made them ten times more tired and cross and hot to see that girl looking so cool and rested and exquisitely gowned and crowned and shod. The blue linen with white embroidered cuffs, the rippling, glinting masses of hair, the small shoes, immaculately white against the green sod – little wonder that, while the heir apparent to the Darby wealth felt comfortably indifferent toward this uninteresting line of nobodies in particular, the bunch of grubs should feel only envy and resentment of their own sweaty, muscle-worn lot in life.

Jerry and Eugene Wellington were far up the shrubbery walk by the time the Winnowoc train was on its way again, unconscious that the passengers were looking after them, or that the talk, as the train slowly got under way, was all of "that rich old codger of a Darby and his selfish old wife"; of "that young dude artist, old Wellington's kid, too lazy to work"; of "that pretty, frivolous girl who didn't know how to comb her own hair, Jim Swaim's girl – poor Jim!" "Old Corn Darby was looking yellow and thin, too. He would dry up and blow away some day if his money wasn't weighting him down so he couldn't."

At the bend in the walk, the two young people saw Uncle Cornie crossing the lawn.

"Going to get his discus. He'll have no appetite for dinner unless he gets in a few dozen slings," the young man declared. "Let's turn in here at the sign of the roses, Jerry. I'm too lazy to take another step."

"You should have come out with me in the car," Jerry replied as they sat down in the cool arbor made for youth and June-time. "I didn't know you were in the city."

"Well, little cousin girl, I'll confess I didn't dare," the young man declared, boldly. "I've been studying awfully hard this year, and, now I'm needed to paint The Great American Canvas, I can't end my useful career under a big touring-car at the bottom of an embankment out on the Winnowoc bluff road. So when I saw you coming into Uncle Cornie's office in the bank I slipped away."

"And as to my own risk?" Jerry asked.

"Oh, Jerry Swaim, you would never have an accident in a hundred years. There's nobody like you, little cousin mine, nobody at all."

Eugene Wellington put one well-formed hand lightly on the small white hand lying on the wicker chair-arm, and, leaning forward, he looked down into the face of the girl beside him. A handsome, well-set up, artistic young fellow he was, fitted to adorn life's ornamental places. And if a faint line of possible indecision of character might have suggested itself to the keen-eyed reader of faces, other traits outweighed its possibility. For his was a fine face, with a sort of gracious gentleness in it that grows with the artist's growth. A hint of deeper spirituality, too, that marks nobility of character, added to a winning personality, put Eugene Wellington above the common class. He fitted the rose-arbor, in "Eden" and the comradeship of good breeding. When a man finds his element, all the rest of the world moves more smoothly therefor.

"Nobody like me," Jerry repeated. "It's a good thing I'm the only one of the kind. You'd say so if you knew what Aunt Jerry thinks of me. She has been analyzing me and filing me away in sections this afternoon."

"What's on her mind now?" Eugene Wellington asked, as he leaned easefully back in his chair.

"She says I am heir – " Jerry always wondered what made her pause there. Years afterward, when this June evening came back in memory, she could not account for it.

"Heir to what?" the young artist inquired, a faint, shadowy something sweeping his countenance fleetly.

"To all the sphere,

To the seven stars and the solar year;

also to my father's entire estate that's left after some two years of litigation. I hate litigations."

"So do I, Jerry. Let's forget them. Isn't 'Eden' beautiful? I'm so glad to be back here again." Eugene Wellington looked out at the idyllic loveliness of the place which the rose-arbor was built especially to command. "Nobody could sin here, for there are no serpents busy-bodying around in such a dream of a landscape as this. I'm glad I'm an artist, if I never become famous. There's such a joy in being able to see, even if your brush fails miserably in trying to make others see."

Again the man's shapely hand fell gently on the girl's hand, and this time it stayed there.

"You love it all as much as I do, don't you, Jerry?" The voice was deep with emotion. "And you feel as I do, how this lifts one nearer to God. Or is it because you are here with me that 'Eden' is so fair to-night? May I tell you something, Jerry? Something I've waited for the summer and 'Eden' to give me the hour and the place to say? We've always known each other. We thought we did before, but a new knowing came to me the day your father left us. Look up, little cousin. I want to say something to you."

June-time, and youth, and roses, and soft, sweet air, and nobody there but blossoms, and whispering breezes, and these two. And they had known each other always. Oh, always! But now – something was different now, something that was grander, more beautiful in this place, in this day, in each other, than had ever been before – the old, old miracle of a man and a maid.