Astra (8 page)

“That’s very nice then,” said the lawyer. “I’ll see what I can do with the judge this morning and will try and telephone your office, Mr. Cameron, around two o’clock. Will you be there then? Or perhaps half past one. And you can send those papers over to me as soon as they are copied.”

“Now,” said Cameron when they were down in the street again, “shall we go and snatch a bite, or would you rather wait until the copying is done?”

“Oh, I would rather get the copying ready first. We can eat any time, and it might make a difference somehow if he had it soon,” said Astra.

“That’s true, I suppose. Well then, I’ll take you over to my office. We have an extra machine there, and you will be undisturbed.”

He signaled a taxi, and they were soon at Cameron’s office.

The rooms looked as she would have expected Cameron’s office to look: pleasant, uncluttered, furnished with dignity, simplicity, and good taste. The secretary to whom she was introduced was a plain, sensible girl, brisk, cordial, and capable-looking. She at once put Astra at her ease, gave her a desk, uncovered the typewriter she was to use, indicated where to find paper, carbon, and erasers, and then she left her. There was no evidence of curiosity concerning a strange typist brought in. Astra gathered that the feeling in the office was one of great respect and confidence in their employer, and an interest a little more than the mere business relation between employer and employee. Her brief stay with her cousins in the west had stressed the questioning of all these matters, the formal things of the world, and made her wonder if perhaps she was wise in going with a stranger to his office. She knew that would be the first question her cousin Miriam would ask if she were here.
“What do you know about this stranger? How do you know he is respectable?”

So Astra was pleasantly relieved to find everything so altogether beyond question.

An hour later, when Astra went to Cameron’s private office with the completed papers, she noticed a silver-framed photograph standing on Cameron’s desk—a lovely elderly woman with wavy white hair and gentle lines about her mouth that showed she had met suffering and pain and come through unbroken. It was a strong face, with beautiful triumphant eyes that reminded her of the young man. She was studying the picture while he looked over the papers she had brought. Suddenly he looked up and saw her.

“That’s my mother,” he said gently, as if he were introducing her to royalty.

“She is lovely,” said Astra.

“Yes,” said Cameron. “And she was wonderful!” Then he added in a quiet voice that sounded as if it came from the tolling of a sweet bell down in his soul, “She went to heaven when I was twelve years old.”

“Oh!” said Astra, in a tone like a cool, comforting hand on a fevered brow. The two stood for a moment more looking at the picture, as one looks down at a sweet face in a casket with a background of gentleness and self-sacrifice and love and hard work, bordered by a wealth of pleasant flowers. Wistfully, with no regrets, and only a hopeful looking forward to another life and something precious that will never fade.

Then Cameron drew a quick deep breath and turned to her with a hover of a smile on his lips.

“Well now, shall we go to lunch? Perhaps we had better take these papers with us and make sure they get to the lawyer at once and without intervening hands. Is that all right with you?”

So Astra walked out with him, carrying in her mind the sweet expression of the pictured face on the son’s desk.

T
he Cameron family got a place for Charles in the town bank as soon as he was out of college. He was the youngest of the flock, and their father was old, near to the end. They considered themselves somewhat responsible for him, at least responsible that he should be a credit to the family.

They ignored their stepmother. In fact, they had always ignored her since she came among them, although she was a quiet, respectable, dignified woman with a modest fortune of her own, who did not need to be considered financially. There was nothing wrong with her, except that they resented anybody taking the place their own mother had occupied. It was a pose they encouraged in themselves.

They considered that they had done very well for Charles in getting him this position in the bank, where there was great possibility of his rising. He might even get to be president someday. He was bright and smart, and the Camerons never did anything halfway. They gave him to understand that they were expecting great things of him.

Charles himself had been docile enough at first. He had taken his collegiate course seriously and had scarcely come out of its atmosphere as yet to realize that it was over and a new era had begun. His immediate thoughts were for his father, who had always been a strong, steady, dependable background in his life, the one to whom he was accountable, and for whose sake he was doing his best. It had never seemed as if his father would die. Of course all men die, but his father had been like a rock that never aged and was always there, wise, ordering, approving, almost never disapproving. And now that Charles was at home again, he suddenly realized that his father was soon going to leave them. There was a gray look beginning to shadow the beloved face, the same kind of shadow he remembered on his loved mother’s face before she left them. He had been a small boy when his mother was taken sick. He had hovered around her during her last illness and had watched the shadows gather. Now he recognized that they were gathering again, and his heart was grieved.

They had never been an outspoken family, always reserved, saying little of their personal affections. So Charles entered upon his new duties in the bank with quiet gravity and a youthful dignity that made a fine impression among his fellow workmen.

“Now Charles,” said his sister Rosamond, who had lived for a time in New York and had sophisticated ideas, “don’t forget that great things are expected of you. You are on your own, but don’t relax your vigilance upon yourself just because Father is too sick to keep watch over you. Remember, the Camerons are a fine family and have always stood at the top. Remember you’ve your fortune to make, and it wants to be a good one, too. You will, of course, get your share from the estate, but naturally, when it is divided among us all it won’t be so great, and you will need to understand that from the first and be on the watch to increase it. We want our youngest brother to be as wealthy and influential as any of us. We want to be proud of you, you know. And in your position in the bank you will, of course, have opportunities to know of good investments. So I say, be on the watch from the beginning to build up your fortune. Of course, you will save a little from your salary every month, and even a little can be the nucleus of a fortune if you are constantly on the alert. You are a young man and will want to go out socially, but settle it in your mind how much you are going to spend that way, and don’t let yourself be tempted beyond that, else you will have nothing ahead when you want to marry.”

Charles had looked at Rosamond with a mild perplexity as she delivered this worldly advice. Rosamond had always been the worldly-wise one, not at all as he remembered his mother, nor like his father, he knew. He and Rosamond had never had much in common.

“I shall, of course,” went on Rosamond, “do as much as possible to get you into the best circles. Fortunately, I am well acquainted with a number of girls and young men who will be excellent companions for you and serve to take the place of your college friends, whom you must miss greatly. You will be invited and be able to have some fun times. If you would like to come to the city and visit me next week, I could begin to introduce you to some of them. I could give a little dinner Saturday evening. Would you like that? There is an especially nice girl I’d like to have you know. She is wealthy and sophisticated and will help to put a polish on you that you really need, Charlie.”

Charles had looked at his sister with a quiet aloofness in his face.

“That’s kind of you, Roz, to plan for me, and I thank you,” he said, “but just at present, while father is so ill, I would rather stay right here and be with him as much as I can.”

“Well, that’s sweet of you, of course, Charlie, but I don’t think that’s a bit wise. You need to get out among people and brush off that solemnity of yours. It isn’t good for a young man to be around old, sick people much. It will break down all your cheerfulness. And a little cheerfulness is what you need. It will help you on in the world! It will help you in your business, it will help you socially, and it will help you later in life to get on with other men. You’d better come with me this weekend, Charlie.”

But Charles’s lips set in a pleasant firmness.

“Not now, Roz,” he said pleasantly. “I’m staying with Father. He said he likes to have me. I read to him now and then, sometimes I tell him about college, and sometimes he likes me to talk about politics.”

“Nonsense, Charlie,” said the sister. “Father won’t miss you. I doubt if he knows the difference between us half the time. He scarcely looks at me when I go in, and he never opens his lips to speak on any subject.”

“Nevertheless,” said Charles firmly, “I’m staying with Father as long as possible. Afterward, we will see.”

“Well, you’d better not put it off too long, brother. This perfectly wonderful girl may not be on the market forever, and if you have her for a friend, you’ll have something worthwhile working for.”

Charles had smiled.

“I’m not in a hurry for a girl,” he said. “That will keep. At present, I’m not in a position to waste my time going around with girls. And if I were, there are plenty of girls in our hometown.”

“Oh mercy! Charlie! You don’t want to get a girl from around here. You are going to rise, you know, and become rich. You’ll want to go to New York, eventually, and get into something big in a money way. There’s more opportunity in a big city. And if you amass a fortune, you will want to find a girl who will know how to preside in a wealthy home and to guide your fortunes. You couldn’t marry a girl from a little country town and hope to rise anywhere.”

“Couldn’t I?” said Charles with a comical smile. “Then why rise?”

“Oh Charlie! You’re simply impossible!” said Rosamond.

Rosamond had been called away to meet a guest, and presently came Janet. Now, Janet was a sweet sister and had married a doctor. She also lived in the city.

“Charles,” she said, “you know we think a lot of you, and we’d like to have you run in and see us as often as you can. Before they got this bank position for you, I had sort of hoped you’d get something in the city and come and live with us awhile. I know Milan would like to have you. He said once if you didn’t get anything right away he’d offer you a place as office boy. You know he really needs someone to be there, especially evenings when he has to go sometimes. Of course, though, he couldn’t pay much. But you may be glad to know of it sometime, if things don’t work out here.”

“Perhaps, Janet,” said Charles. “That’s good of you. You know I’d enjoy being with you, if you’d just promise not to fling a lot of girls, or even a special girl, at my head the way Roz did!”

“Did Roz do that?” laughed Janet. “Well, I promise. But I certainly wouldn’t want you to bring any girl of Roz’s choosing into our family.”

It was the sister Marietta who came to Charles to complain about the stepmother.

“Charles, I’ve been worrying a lot about this house and what is going to become of it if anything happens to Father. Can’t you talk to him a little about it? It doesn’t seem as if our mother’s house, the house he built to please her when she was a bride, should go to that interloper!”

“Marietta, that isn’t a right way to talk. Our stepmother is no interloper. She’s our father’s honorable wife, and she has made a home for him during these years when his children have been away from him and he would have been lonely without her. She’s been a good stepmother to me, too, Marietta. I have no fault to find with her. She has always been kindness itself.”

“Yes, I suppose you would say that, Charles! You’ve always been a perfect saint the way you put up with her, and it’s been hardest of all on you. But you know perfectly well, Charlie, that kindness is no substitute for love. And besides, any one of us children would have been glad to come home and live and keep house for father if he asked us. John and I would have come, or Harold and Rosamond, or Elizabeth and Reamer and their horde of children. Especially Elizabeth. It would have been a real godsend to her. She hasn’t had any too easy a time, Charlie. And Mary would have come, of course; she and Joe would have been delighted and have made Father a good home, much more like it was when Mother was here. Though Elizabeth cooks more like Mother, and Father would have liked that. And of course, any of the boys would gladly have come. They always liked the old home, and their wives would have been tickled to death.”

“You forget, Marietta, that Father and I went on here three years together, without any one of them suggesting such a thing! And besides, Marietta, it was father’s right to do what he pleased. And our stepmother is really a fine woman.”

“Well, she’s got no right to take the old home from us. She ought to get out and give it to us if anything happens to Father, and I think it’s your place to suggest it to him or to her, if you prefer that. You have always been closer to her than any of the rest of us, and I think you should take it upon yourself to see that that is all arranged. Suppose you talk it over with Father when he seems to have a good day and make him see how we feel about it. It would be a great deal better, of course, if
he
would arrange it, not so awkward, you know, and I’m sure he could say something to his wife that would make her feel right about it. It isn’t as if she didn’t have property of her own and another house that belonged to her first husband. If she has any delicacy at all, she’ll think of it herself. Though I doubt it, unless Father arranges it, and the law can come in and make it easy for us all. Will you attend to that, Charlie?”

“No, Marietta, I don’t think that would be right. That would be entirely a matter for Father and our stepmother to arrange for themselves, and I should certainly not like to even suggest such a thing. I don’t think it would be in the least fair to her. She has had enough to bear already with the disdain of my sisters, and the cold looks and sarcasm.”