Chapter XVIII: Winding Up

So far as Hal’s debts were concerned, it was a rapid progress. He died in August, and promptly on the first day of September Jones appeared at the farmhouse, with his note for three thousand dollars. He had heard rumors of Harry’s insolvency, but it didn’t concern him. The deacon was on his paper, and that girl, who, he heard, had a big gold mine in the West, paying hundreds a day. She was bound as well as the deacon, and he wondered why the latter should have grown so old and worried-looking. “To be sure, paying the money might mean his farm and house, but the girl won’t allow that. They say she’s to marry Dr. Ken,” he thought, as he rode up to the farmhouse. Connie stayed mostly with Kitty, but this morning she was at the barn watching the cats eating their milk in the long trough, and talking to the deacon, who tried to seem natural, although his heart was very sad. He knew that Harry had scarcely left enough to pay his funeral expenses, and the note lay heavily upon his mind. He knew Jones, and expected him that day, but not quite so early, and he groaned aloud as he saw him hitching his old white horse at the gate and then come smilingly up the walk, while he and Connie went to meet him.

“Good-mornin’, deacon. Good-mornin’, miss. I am in luck to find you both together,” he said. “There’s that little matter of three thousand, with interest, lent to young Morris, with you two as sureties, and it is due to-day. I hear he wasn’t worth a red, and lived like a prince, with three or four niggers and a coachman, who wore a high hat and brass buttons, and the widder keeps up the same style, though the Lord knows how she is goin’ to pay for it all, with them other debts. She or’to be economical, but what can you expect from a Southern woman, who has never let one hand wash the other, and is too big for common folks.”

“If you mean Mrs. Harold Morris,” Connie said, stepping up to him, “I’d like you to speak more respectfully of her. As long as the creditors get their money, it’s none of their business what she does. They will be paid. You will be paid;—not this minute, of course. I don’t keep three thousand dollars lying loose in my pocket, but it is in the bank, and you are not to trouble Deacon Stannard. It is my matter.”

She motioned him off with an imperative gesture, which made him feel almost as if she had struck him.

“Beg pardon,” he said, walking away from her. “I allus thought you’d have to pay it. Let me know when you hear from the bank.”

He unhitched Whitey and drove away, while the deacon sat down upon the horse-block, white and trembling.

“Connie,” he stammered, “it don’t seem right that you should pay, but you don’t know how it has troubled me since I knew the boy had nothing. It has kep’ me awake nights, for Mary and me is too old to find another place.”

“Nor will you have to,” Connie answered. “The mine is paying well, and what is money good for except to help you, who have been so good to me? I’ve more than the mine. I am really quite a rich woman, thanks to you, who cared so well for my interests, restraining Auntie when she would have spent everything. I know all about it,—what leeches we were,—and wonder I had anything left. I am reaping the benefit of the mine investment.”

The deacon could scarcely speak, except to call her “an angel of mercy.” And she was one, not only to him, but to Kitty, who was nearly frantic when she learned the state of affairs, and bills of every kind came in from Millville and Albany, Rocky Point and Boston and New York,—gambling debts with the rest, and some of a more questionable kind, which Kenneth promptly burned.

“Let them sue,” he said; “they can get nothing.”

“But the house and furniture,—how much is it all worth?” Connie asked. “You know I am a simpleton, and wholly ignorant of what is to be done. How much will free the house and give Kitty and baby a home?”

Kenneth told her about how much, but added: “Kitty will have to live; the house will not support her.”

Connie had not thought of that, and looked troubled until Kenneth, who had been thinking seriously on the matter for some days, said to her: “How would you like to live in the villa,—with me, I mean? We are to be married soon, and it would be better to have a home of our own than to stay with father and mother. Kitty and the baby can live with us.”

Connie hesitated a moment. She had never quite forgiven Harry for his deception, and could not at once make up her mind to live in a house which had been his. Still, she could be happy anywhere with Kenneth, and it would be a home for Kitty. It was a beautiful place, with every modern improvement possible in the country. Harry was dead. He had tried to make amends, he was sorry for what he had done, he had named his baby for her, and— Yes, she would live there, she said at last, and Kitty should be their care until something better presented itself for her. This decision was received by Kitty with a burst of glad tears and regrets for the past, when thousands had been spent so recklessly, with a belief that there were thousands more to take their place, and now she was poorer than the poorest factory girl in Millville. She could not go to the obscure boarding-house where her father lived, and Tom had no place for her. She must stay where she was, with Kenneth and Connie, who were to be married soon in New York, for the countess would have it so.

She was not pleased when she first heard of Connie’s engagement to Kenneth. “She ought to do better than marry a common country doctor,” she said. But when she saw him, her opinion underwent a rapid change. He was a country doctor still, but not a common man, either in physique or manners, and she felt that Connie had chosen well. Of the man who called himself Harold Meurice she never spoke to Connie. He had passed out of her knowledge, and his secret was buried in the churchyard at The 4 Corners. The count, grown wiser, and perhaps fonder of his wife, with two years of matrimony, continued to treat Connie in a most fatherly manner, so that her few weeks’ stay with her aunt was very pleasant, enlivened as they were by daily letters from Kenneth and two or three a week from Kitty, who was longing for her to return.

The wedding, which took place in October, was a very quiet affair, with only a few friends of the countess present, and Dr. Catherin, who happened to be in the city. Kenneth was too popular a physician, and there were too many hands stretching out to him for help, to allow of an extended trip; and the last of the month, when the hills and mountains were putting on their autumnal dress, and the country was almost as beautiful as the early summer time, he brought his bride to what was henceforth to be known as the Stannard Place, instead of the Morris Villa. Kitty was there to receive them, very lovely and sweet in her widow’s weeds, and yielding her place as mistress of the house willingly and gracefully. She knew she was a dependant, for after matters were settled there was nothing left to her but the memory of her short married life and the baby Connie, who was the pet of the household and in a fair way to be spoiled until a year later, when a little boy came to divide the honors with her.

Kitty fancied there was a look in his face like her dead husband, and said so to Connie, adding: “Would you mind calling him Harold? It is such a pretty name!”

She could not guess how Connie recoiled from the thought of calling her baby for the man who had caused her so much pain, or that she would sooner give him the old-fashioned name of Ephraim, for the grandfather who came two or three times a day to see him, and with his wife was growing young in the happiness crowning his declining years.

“Yes, Harold is a pretty name,” she said, “but baby is to be Kenneth Elliott.”

It is more than a year since the baby came, and he is now a sturdy boy, disputing his rights with his cousin Connie, a little, delicate, timid girl, who always gives up to him unless his mother interferes to prevent what might become tyranny but for her judicious treatment. Should you be at The 4 Corners some wintry day when the sleighing is good and the sun is shining warm and bright, you may perhaps see the sled on which the first Connie once rode in the mud, and on which little Connie now frequently rides in the snow, with Dr. Kenneth in front. He has built sides and back to it, and sometimes, when the day is very fine, baby Ken sits on the sled, holding in his little hands the lines his grandmother knit, and to which he occasionally gives a pull, with the only words he can fully master, “Do on,” to his willing horse. Sometimes Connie is with them, and always a dog, whom they call Chance, and who is much like the other Chance, whose grave is on the ledge where Kenneth had his Christmas tree and Connie gave herself to him.

They are very happy, Kenneth and Connie, and no shadow, however slight, has ever arisen to dim their married life. Kenneth is constantly gaining in his profession, and many offers have been made him for a more lucrative position in larger cities, but he prefers to stay where he is. His father and mother are there, and it was there Connie came to him, stirring, as he believes, all the good impulses which have made him what he is. He likes the country, and says he shall spend his life there. And now there is nothing more to tell of the story commenced on the summer morning, when Jehu and Henriet took us up the long hill and we sat on the church steps at what was once and is still, in a way, the famous 4 Corners.

THE END.

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in spelling. 2. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed. 3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.