The Tryst (Annotated) (Grace Livingston Hill Book) (19 page)

The old man looked at his nephew speechless with rage, his small eyes open wider than John Treeves had ever seen them, his face purple, his lips twisted in a snarl. At last he managed a feeble trembling gesture of helpless disgust and croaked out: 

“Well, go, GO, GO! Do you HEAR?" mounting to a shriek with the last words. 

John Treeves, strangely sore hearted, yet knowing he was doing right, turned and went from the room, and did not see the helpless tears of the baffled old man upon the bed. 

With a feeling of finality upon him he went to his apartment, put his few effects together, and walked out of the place, looking neither to right nor left. He was as sure that the incident was closed as if a voice from above had told him. He knew that he had chosen aright, had not even a second thought about it, yet there was upon him a strange sadness as if he had just witnessed the last judgment of an immortal soul, and all day upon the train as he put his head back against the seat and closed his eyes wearily, there was that sense of having passed through an awful ordeal, and seen a terrible sight. 

Back in the hotel, at her curtained window, with troubled brow, Patty Merrill watched him out of sight down the road, with an unexpected sense of loss despite her relief. She knew by the set of his shoulders, by the way he carried his rather cheap-looking suitcase, that he was still John Treeves, of Maple Brook, and had not merged into the rich and admired nephew of old Calvin Treeves, the multi-millionaire. Somehow that gave her much comfort in the days that followed. She could not quite bring herself to think of John Treeves as Dunham Treeves, the society leader, that all the hotel gossips said he was to be. 

Back in Calvin Treeves’s luxurious apartment silence reigned after the young man had left. Old Hespur stood at the front window as still as an image staring out at the point where the road below emerged from the shadow of the porch, listening with senses alert and keen. On his face was deep anxiety, struggling with a light of admiration. 

On the bed the old man lay struggling with his tears that rolled weakly down his shriveled cheeks and dropped in a sobby pool upon the pillow. Walls and doors were strong and thick, but could not hide the sound of the closing door across the hall, nor the determined steps outside going toward the elevator. Breath was suspended till the elevator clicked open and shut its door and descended, and then another breathless space of suspense till Hespur sighted the tall figure below on the path. The old servant made no sound, yet something told the man on the bed he had seen him and that the worst was true. Out of sight and long after, old Hespur gazed after the young man into the blinding sun of the glorious autumn day, a figure that would forever stand in his memory as the type of what the family of Treeves should have been, and old Hespur’s face was wet, too, as he watched; wet still as he turned at last and came to the bedside as if he had been called and stood there unashamed without wiping away the tears. The old man opened his smeary eyes and viewed him through a blur. Then his bird-like claws reached out blindly, and ha groped his face into his old servant's hands and sobbed like a little child. And Hespur, like an old mother, knelt beside the bed and drew him close, patting his thin old shoulder and wiping away the tears. Both of them seemed to recognize that there had been finality in John Treeves's action. He would never return nor reconsider. Dunham Treeves, the young aristocrat whom old Calvin Treeves had sought to bring into being, was no more. Regret in great waves would roll up over the two as they thought of little things they had planned for him, how he would look and he and do, how he would play golf and ride and be admired, all the prideful things of a prideful life went past their sorrow like a panorama, and at each new thought the tears came anew until every hope had been reviewed and put away forever as hopeless and dead. Then a long silence came between the two while the servant cherished the old man and tried to think of a way of comforting him. 

At last the old man's voice, choked and meek, cracked forth: 

“Hespur, there's nothing so really un-respectable about it. You know the ministry has always been regarded as quite –respectable! It’s sissy-fied and effeminate, but it’s always been RESPECTABLE!” 

“Oh, sir; yes, sir!” the servant hastened to assent. “Quite respectable, sir I Always, sir I In fact, in my country they're very much looked up to, sir! And I’m thinking, sir, as how the young gentleman will never be effeminate, sir, nor yet a sissy, sir; he's a real Treeves, sir, and a chip off the old block, sir. I'm thinking you’ll be proud of him yet, sir, whatever he does.” 

“Oh, proud of him, yes!” said the old voice wearily. “But what good does that do? He won't be mine and he won't be here!” 

“Well, then again, sir, it ain't so bad when you come to think of it, to have one of the family sort of in with God like that you know. It might be right handy sometimes, you know, sir--” 

“You mean to bury me, Hespur!” the old voice croaked with a shudder. 

“Oh, no sir; far be it, sir!” 

“That's all right, Hespur, old boy, you didn't mean it, I know. But it's coming all right and I've got to get reservations ready somehow. You know, Hespur, you’ve always stuck to me, no matter how I treated you.” 

“I’ve always tried to be faithful, sir!” The tears were streaming down the ruddy cheeks and over the immaculate chin. 

“You old fool, you! Stop that blubbering! You know I can't stand any emotion and yet you dare -- you PRESUME to cry in my presence! You old reprobate!” and the old millionaire sobbed like a baby. 

“Oh, sir! Don'tee, sir! I was never crying. It's the warm of this room, sir. It's the radiators getting that hot, sir!” and he mopped his face with a corner of the pillow-case and tried to look unconscious of the fact that other tears promptly took the place of the tears that had been wiped away, 

“You was saying, sir, that preaching as a business was always quite respectable. It is, sir. In my country it's that respectable that some titled men's sons choose it in preference to any other business, sir, even not excepting politics, sir! It's really quite well thought of, sir. And of course if one had a bit of money, sir, it would be quite possible to choose one's living in a most respectable parish, sir!” 

“That's it, Hespur!” quavered the old man. “Now you're on the right track. I could leave him the money after all if I tied it up good and strong so he couldn't use it for other people.” 

“I'm thinking that wouldn't quite do, begging pardon, Mister Treeves, sir ; the young gentleman's quite determined, sir, being a chip of the old family block, as it .were, sir, and you heard yourself what he said, sir, begging your pardon -- I think he meant it. He'd use that money for his work.” 

“Hespur, I BELIEVE YOU think that would be a good thing!” 

“Well, sir, being as you can't take it with you and won’t need it when you get done with it, sir, there's really nothing like giving it to the Almighty, sir, who would know as well as anyone just what to do with it. I’m not sure but it might be more your own that way nor any other, and mayhap bring you more good out of it yourself, sir, for I’ve read somewhere, sir, a story about a good man who lost all his money and his friends asked him wasn’t he sorry he had made so free with it, giving it to the poor and building a church, and he said, no, that the money he had given away, sir, was the only money he had laid up in Heaven, sir; and Fm thinking, sir, that might be quite true of anybody.” 

The little old eyes sweltering in weak tears looked eagerly up at the serious face of the servant tenderly trying to quiet his charge in the best way he knew: 

“That's quite an idea, Hespur. Are you sure there's anything to it? You've been to church; have you ever heard anybody preach that? I'd be quite willing to give some away if I were sure it would be laid up for my use hereafter. Sort of buy me a home up there, you know.” 

The old servant looked troubled: 

“I don't rightly think you put it just that way,” he said hesitating, anxious to be true and yet tender. “You can't rightly buy from the Almighty, you know, as He had everything before us, sir, and it's best not to think what we're going to get out of it, sir, but it's safer with Him than otherwheres, I should think, sir. Now couldn't you try to rest, sir?” 

The old man lay silent, his eyes closed, thinking hard. The servant tiptoed softly about drawing down shades, pulling up a coverlet, moving a screen, and then settled down in a chair at the bedside, motionless, where the coursing tears could not be seen. Somehow his life was so bound with the old life on the bed, and the old millions in the bank, that he, too, had settled his heart on the hope of the new life in the younger man, and he felt the blow of John Treeves's decision almost as the old uncle had felt it. 

It was very still in the room, with only the sound of a bit of charred wood falling apart in the hearth fire. It seemed as though the old man was asleep. Suddenly his old voice cracked out on the silence: 

“Hespur, you know how to write letters. Get your paper and pen and write me a letter now. No, I don't want to wait till my secretary comes down to-morrow; I want it written now. Quick! Now, have you found the paper in the desk? And the pen? Well, write: 

“To Mr. Horliss-Cole, 

Fifth Avenue, New York City. 

Dear Sir: I remember hearing not long ago that the old Avenue church is soon to lose the eminent divine who has so long filled its pulpit. I understand that you are a prominent officer in that church, and I am writing to say that the day your church installs my nephew, Mr. J. Dunham Treeves as pastor, I will give you my check for one hundred thousand dollars to be used in any way the church shall see fit. 

Yours very truly, 

Calvin Treeves.” 

The old hand quavered out the signature, when Hespur brought it to him to sign, and the little old eyes gleamed triumphantly as he dropped back among the pillows, like a withered leaf. 

“Now, sir, you'll feel better, sir,” chirped Hespur happily, as he folded the sheet and cramped his fingers to the pen for the address: “There's nothing like doing a good thing to make one feel better. That'll be fixing things nicely, I'm thinking. You've beat the devil around the stump this time. sir, begging pardon, sir, I'm thinking.” 

And at last the old man slept. 

When John Treeves received the letter from Horliss-Cole inviting him to fill the pulpit of the great city church for the next four Sundays in the absence of the pastor, he read it through wonderingly taking in every word of the brief, curt communication which included all directions and the fabulous price that he would be paid for the performance of the same, and then crumpling it into his pocket took his way out the old hill road and up to his trysting place to think and enquire of his Guide what He would have him to do. 

It did not seem to John Treeves that his experience had been a miracle, or anything out of the natural order of life. On the contrary, it seemed the most natural thing in the world. He had simply seen the Truth that had heretofore been hidden from him because he had reached out to it only half heartedly. It reminded him somewhat of the time when, in desperation over a difficult problem, he had gone at last to the teacher for explanation, and had been introduced to the system for obtaining the right answer. It had been a revelation in figures to him that had made bright the whole way through mathematics and taken from the study its perplexities. Farther back it reminded him of the time when after repeated trials he had learned to swim. What had seemed an impossibility became a part of himself, a natural action. And so, when he had once found God it seemed the most natural thing in the world that he should have done so. Every doubt had absolutely dissolved before the experience like ice before the morning sun. God was! Christ lived! He KNEW it! There might be arguments to prove that it was not so, but they were only theories reasoned out by man, perfect in their every step perhaps, but after all contradicted utterly by the fact. And the strange thing about it was that he now understood that only those who had truly sought with their hearts could ever see this. The world would probably go on with its elaborate and scientific arguments to prove that it was all utter foolishness, but there were those who had sought and found and nothing could controvert their knowledge. That was why the ignorant and unlearned often found the Light when the wise and great were left in darkness. It heeded the humility of the little child to find. It took the whole heart searching to discover the secret. The fine bulwark of words and reason wherewith he had sought to establish his unbelief stood behind him like a toy wall built of blocks before the strong light of knowledge that filled his whole being. He could go back over it word for word and understand with his mind how he had come to certain conclusions and it was every word and phrase true as he had seen things then, true according to modern theories and conclusions; and yet he now knew that it had all been as the prattling of babes before his present experience. He recalled how when great inventions and discoveries had first come out always there had been many to scoff and doubt until the invention or discovery had become a common fact of everyday life. How men used to scoff at the idea of a flying machine, and laugh at the poor fools who were trying to perfect such a thing! And yet what a common factor it had become! So common that even a child scarcely looked up any more to marvel when a mail plane sailed above his head, and thought no more of it than of the trolley car, or a passing bicycle. How marvelous and impossible had been thought the telegraph and telephone, and all the modern electrical appliances until some one had sought with all his heart and found each one and placed it at the service of the world. And it must be so with religion -- with finding God. It was all perfectly simple and understandable when one went about it in God’s way. Why was it that more people did not take hold of the promises and try them? Why were their eyes blinded and their understandings darkened? How was it that they could not see? But then, he had been that way himself, and he had been honest. The thing lay in the will; one must be willing to search, and give everything else up if need be until one found. And because he had found the promise true, and knew just where the trouble lay for a great many other people who had been ignorant of the truth like himself, he must be one to tell. Was this letter his call? Somehow it did not appeal to him with its business-like commands, as if the work of the Lord were to be run on a basis of pure efficiency and nothing else. And yet it had come and no other way was yet open.