On Thursday Mr. Harton, the Armstrongs’ legal adviser, called up from town. He had been advised, he said, that Mrs. Armstrong was coming east with her husband’s body and would arrive Monday. He came with some hesitation, he went on, to the fact that he had been further instructed to ask me to relinquish my lease on Sunnyside, as it was Mrs. Armstrong’s desire to come directly there.
I was aghast.
“Here!” I said. “Surely you are mistaken, Mr. Harton. I should think, after–what happened here only a few days ago, she would never wish to come back.”
“Nevertheless,” he replied, “she is most anxious to come. This is what she says. `Use every possible means to have Sunnyside vacated. Must go there at once.'”
“Mr. Harton,” I said testily, “I am not going to do anything of the kind. I and mine have suffered enough at the hands of this family. I rented the house at an exorbitant figure and I have moved out here for the summer. My city home is dismantled and in the hands of decorators. I have been here one week, during which I have had not a single night of uninterrupted sleep, and I intend to stay until I have recuperated. Moreover, if Mr. Armstrong died insolvent, as I believe was the case, his widow ought to be glad to be rid of so expensive a piece of property.”
The lawyer cleared his throat.
“I am very sorry you have made this decision,” he said. “Miss Innes, Mrs. Fitzhugh tells me Louise Armstrong is with you.”
“She is.”
“Has she been informed of this–double bereavement?”
“Not yet,” I said. “She has been very ill; perhaps to-night she can be told.”
“It is very sad; very sad,” he said. “I have a telegram for her, Mrs. Innes. Shall I send it out?”
“Better open it and read it to me,” I suggested. “If it is important, that will save time.”
There was a pause while Mr. Harton opened the telegram. Then he read it slowly, judicially.
“`Watch for Nina Carrington. Home Monday. Signed F. L. W.'”
“Hum!” I said. “`Watch for Nina Carrington. Home Monday.’ Very well, Mr. Harton, I will tell her, but she is not in condition to watch for any one.”
“Well, Miss Innes, if you decide to–er–relinquish the lease, let me know,” the lawyer said.
“I shall not relinquish it,” I replied, and I imagined his irritation from the way he hung up the receiver.
I wrote the telegram down word for word, afraid to trust my memory, and decided to ask Doctor Stewart how soon Louise might be told the truth. The closing of the Traders’ Bank I considered unnecessary for her to know, but the death of her stepfather and stepbrother must be broken to her soon, or she might hear it in some unexpected and shocking manner.
Doctor Stewart came about four o’clock, bringing his leather satchel into the house with a great deal of care, and opening it at the foot of the stairs to show me a dozen big yellow eggs nesting among the bottles.
“Real eggs,” he said proudly. “None of your anemic store eggs, but the real thing–some of them still warm. Feel them! Egg-nog for Miss Louise.”
He was beaming with satisfaction, and before he left, he insisted on going back to the pantry and making an egg-nog with his own hands. Somehow, all the time he was doing it, I had a vision of Doctor Willoughby, my nerve specialist in the city, trying to make an egg-nog. I wondered if he ever prescribed anything so plebeian–and so delicious. And while Doctor Stewart whisked the eggs he talked.
“I said to Mrs. Stewart,” he confided, a little red in the face from the exertion, “after I went home the other day, that you would think me an old gossip, for saying what I did about Walker and Miss Louise.”
“Nothing of the sort,” I protested.
“The fact is,” he went on, evidently justifying him self, “I got that piece of information just as we get a lot of things, through the kitchen end of the house. Young Walker’s chauffeur–Walker’s more fashionable than I am, and he goes around the country in a Stanhope car–well, his chauffeur comes to see our servant girl, and he told her the whole thing. I thought it was probable, because Walker spent a lot of time up here last summer, when the family was here, and besides, Riggs, that’s Walker’s man, had a very pat little story about the doctor’s building a house on this property, just at the foot of the hill. The sugar, please.”