Scarcely even for a passing glance did Elizabeth pause at the front door of the cottage although it stood open, as Miss Miranda had left it, with the lamp still burning cheerfully on her sewing table inside. Weary and breathless, she stumbled along the path, turned the corner of the house, and saw the brightly lighted workshop with its door also standing open to the warmth of the night. It was as she thought, the stranger was here, sitting on the high stool beside the table, talking volubly, thrusting forward his long-chinned, dark face and pounding on his knee to give emphasis to what he said. Mr. Reynolds sat opposite in the one arm chair the place afforded, looking white and frail and old in contrast to his visitor, very quiet, and listening with earnest attention. Like an image of carved ebony, Dick sat immovable on one of the posts of the back of the chair. The green-shaded light, with its brilliant, narrow circle of illumination, showed nothing else clearly, but gave only faint vision of wheels and pulleys, of shining glints that sparkled back from polished steel or ruddy copper, while through the whole room droned the slow song of turning wheels.
There was a step on the flagstones behind Elizabeth just before she mounted the doorstep. As she had hoped, David had followed her. Both men glanced up as the boy and girl entered, but there was no pause in the talk, since any new presence seemed to make no impression on the tenseness of the scene. Even Dick scarcely turned his head as he sat like some brooding spirit above his master.
“Can’t you stop those infernal wheels?” Donald Reynolds said, as they came in. “I cannot hear my own voice with them grinding away in my ears.”
“David!” said the older man in tone of request.
With quick obedience, David stepped to the end of the room, pulled a lever, jerked a protesting, crackling switch and brought the whirring song to an end. Without the familiar sound the place seemed uncannily silent as Donald went on talking. To the presence of David and Betsey he gave no heed, having apparently but one thought, to speak the words he had come to say before Miss Miranda should return.
“So I made up my mind that you should be told what a great wrong you are doing Miranda,” he resumed. “For ten years you have spent time and money on this worthless piece of work, pottering and tinkering and pretending that you really hoped to accomplish something in the end.”
“But I have accomplished something,” returned the old man gravely. “I am very near to success now and ten years is not long when you remember that I lost all my records and all my models when the house was burned. No, ten years has not been too much to spend.”
“It is not time alone that you have spent, but money, spent it like water when it should have been making Miranda comfortable. Have you stopped, ever, to think of how she works and saves and pinches, how she toils in that garden and fattens miserable fowls for the market so that you can go on with this game of yours?”
“Miranda chose to have it so,” Mr. Reynolds returned quietly, but the two onlookers could see him wince.
“Have you known Miranda longer than any of us and have not yet learned that she would give the breath out of her body to make other people happy? Would she complain or choose otherwise if she thought your desire was set upon this one thing, this machine that you call a life work, but that any one else would call a pleasant fad, a plaything that would never succeed?”
“If my recollection is correct,” Mr. Reynolds said, “she used to make some sacrifices for you, when you lived with us, that you might be happy.”
His chance shot seemed to strike at some more vivid memory than he knew. The other was silent for a minute, but then burst forth again, more sharply and bitterly than before.
“Is that any reason why I should stand by now, and see her robbed and cheated as you are cheating her? You are willing to spend your life following a dream, but you have no right to spend hers. You say that she is willing, but do you really know it? Do you notice how worn and tired and anxious she begins to look?”
Elizabeth would have broken in upon him, checking his words with a wild tumult of indignant protest, but David laid a hand upon her arm. This was a matter for their elders alone, his look seemed to say, and must not be interrupted.
“Suppose, Donald,” Mr. Reynolds was beginning gently, “suppose this affair were to turn out less of a dream than you think? We have followed dreams before, we and our forbears in this family, and they have led to success and—what appeals to you far more—to fortune. Miranda is, I know, looking worn and troubled; I think it is her home that she is grieving for. It is my belief that in a very little time she may have it back again.”
“People like you are always hopeful,” returned Donald, “always declaring that with a little more time and a great deal more money, success will come. Can you not stop deceiving yourself, can you not give up and admit that you have failed? You have a handful of screws and wires and a few turning wheels here—” he waved his hand to include the whole workshop in the scorn of a person who knows nothing of mechanics—“but what do they signify? What do they count for compared to ten years of your life, or of Miranda’s?”
He leaned his elbows on the table, brought his face closer yet to his unhappy uncle’s and spoke with even fiercer accusation.
“You say that you will be able to give back to Miranda the house she loves, when all that you have ever done is to destroy it for her. Have you ever looked over the ruins, as I have, noticed that the blaze was hottest at the south end, and hottest of all where your workshop stood? That was where the fire began, there can be no doubt of it. Miranda says it was lightning that set the house on fire, but—” he lowered his voice—“I know better. A spark from one of your wires, a blaze in some oily packing, that is what brought about the tragedy. You mechanical geniuses are too much in the clouds to safeguard those you pretend to love. The burning of the house was due to your own heedlessness!”
“No, no, Donald,” cried the old man, driven out of his calmness at last, and with his voice betraying cruel pain. “I can’t—I won’t believe that it was my doing!”
“You may be certain that it was,” returned the other without mercy, “and I think, in your inmost heart, you have long suspected that it was so.”
Betsey was no longer to be silenced, not even by David’s insistent pressure on her arm.
“It’s not true,” she burst out. “We saw ourselves where the lightning struck, that began the fire. The chimney was split from top to bottom.”
“Yes?” assented Donald, turning to her and speaking in a tone of hard, cold quiet. “You can prove that, I suppose? You can show the marks to my uncle here? Real evidence would comfort him greatly.”
“No—no,” she faltered in reply. “We were exploring in the ruins and some of the walls fell. The marks of the lightning don’t show now. But we both saw them.”
“I will hold to my own opinion still,” answered Donald Reynolds, “and my uncle, though he would like to, will not be able to disagree with me. Isn’t it—hullo, there’s something wrong with the old man.”
For Mr. Reynolds was leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed, unmoving and unhearing. Betsey ran to his side and took up one of his hands. It was limp and lifeless, although she could feel the faint pulse still beating. Donald, in evident concern, was coming closer, but David barred the way and warned him off.
“You are an impudent pair of young ones,” exclaimed Donald. “Who are you and what is your business here, anyway?”
“We are friends of Miss Miranda’s,” Betsey explained briefly. “I think you have done her father some very great harm.”
“I thought it was only my duty to say a word or two to put things right,” the man answered. “It is not fair to Miranda that no one should tell her father the truth.”
“You did not speak one word of truth,” returned David heatedly. “You guessed about the burning of the house and you guessed wrong. And you did not even guess about the invention. You know as much of mechanical things as—as Dick does.”
“I am a practical man,” Donald Reynolds said, “and I have no patience with toys and dreams.”
He spoke with less bluster than was to be expected, for he seemed truly disturbed by the evident harm he had brought about. His words roused his uncle from the lethargy into which he had fallen for the old man spoke suddenly and very clearly.
“There are many idle dreams and some true ones,” he said, “and it is only through the true dreams that the world goes forward.”
Then he closed his eyes once more, drew a long sigh and sank lower in the chair. Donald Reynolds stood irresolute, troubled but unconvinced and ready to argue his case still.
“You had better go,” Betsey had the courage to tell him with blunt plainness. “Mr. Reynolds will be better when you are out of sight. There’s no use in your waiting to talk to Miss Miranda.”
Donald Reynolds, it seemed, thought the same thing. He took up his hat, began to say something, perhaps in apology or excuse for what he had done, made such small success of it that he gave up the attempt, and turned to the door. The two beside Mr. Reynolds paid little attention to his going, only Dick hailed his departure with a defiant caw.
“I suppose he is telling himself that he has acted for the best,” commented David bitterly. “At least he has sense enough to seem a little sorry for what he has done.”
“I see now why Miss Miranda has looked so worried,” Betsey added. “She has been afraid he would come here and say just such cruel, untrue things.”
When David had brought a glass of water for Mr. Reynolds and Betsey had propped him up with cushions, he seemed to feel better, altho............