Where There's a Will - Mary Roberts Rinehart (best interesting books to read txt) 📗

When people went down to breakfast the next morning they found a card hanging on the office door with a half dozen new rules on it, and when I went out to the spring-house the guests were having an indignation meeting in the sun parlor, with the bishop in the chair, and Senator Biggs, so wobbly he could hardly stand, making a speech.

I tried to see Mr. Pierce, but early as it was he had gone for a walk, taking Arabella with him. So I called a conference at the shelter-house—Miss Patty, Mr. and Mrs. Van Alstyne, Mr. and Mrs. Dick, and myself. Mrs. Dick wasn't dressed, but she sat up on the edge of her cot in her dressing-gown, with her feet on the soap box, and yawned. As we didn't have enough chairs, Miss Patty jerked the soap box away and made me sit down. Mr. Dick was getting breakfast.

We were in a tight place and we knew it.

"He is making it as hard for us as he can," Mrs. Sam declared. "The idea of having the card-room lights put out at midnight, and the breakfast room closed at ten! Nobody gets up at that hour."

"He was to come here every evening for orders," said Mr. Dick, measuring ground coffee with a tablespoon, as I had showed him. "He came just once, and as for orders—well, he gave 'em to me!"

But Miss Patty was always fair.

"I loathe him," she asserted. "I want to quarrel with him the minute I see him. He—he is presumptuous to the point of impertinence—but he's honest: he thinks we're all hypocrites—those that are well and those that are sick or think they are—and he hates hypocrisy."

Everybody talked at once, then, and she listened.

"Very well," she said. "I'll amend it. We're not all hypocrites. My motives in all this are perfectly clear—and selfish."

"You and old Pierce would make a fine team, Pat," Mrs. Dick remarked with a yawn. "I like hypocrites myself. They're so comfy. But if you're not above advice, Pat, you'll have Aunt Honoria break her neck or something—anything to get father back to town. Something is going to explode, and Oskar doesn't like to be agitated."

She curled up on the cot with that and went sound asleep. The rest of us had coffee and talked, but there wasn't anything to do. As Mr. Sam said, Mr. Pierce didn't want to stay, anyhow, and as likely as not if we went to him in a body and told him he must come to the shelter-house for instructions, and be suave and gentle when he was called down by the guests about the steam-pipes making a racket, he'd probably prefer to go down to the village and take Doctor Barnes' place washing dishes at the station. That wouldn't call for any particular mildness.

But he settled it by appearing himself. He came across the snow from the direction of Mount Hope, and he had a pair of skees over his shoulder. (At that time I didn't even know the name of the things, but I learned enough about them later.) I must say he looked very well beside Mr. Dick, who wasn't very large, anyhow, and who hadn't had time to put on his collar, and Mr. Sam, who's always thin and sallow and never takes a step he doesn't have to.

I let him in, and when he saw us all there he started and hesitated.

"Come in, Pierce," Mr. Sam said. "We've just been talking about you."

He came in, but he didn't look very comfortable.

"What have you decided to do with me?" he asked. "Put me under restraint?"

He was unbuttoning his sweater, and now he took out two of the smallest rabbits I ever saw and held them up by the ears. Miss Patty gave a little cry and took them, cuddling them in her lap.

"They're starving and almost frozen, poor little devils," he said. "I found them near where I shot the mother last night, Minnie, and by way of atonement I'm going to adopt them."

Well, although the minute before they'd all been wishing they'd never seen him, they pretty nearly ate him up. Miss Patty held the rabbits, so we all had turns at feeding them warm milk with a teaspoon and patting their pink noses. When it came Mr. Pierce's turn they were about full up, so he curled his big body on the floor at Miss Patty's feet and talked to the rabbits and looked at her. He had one of those faces that's got every emotion marked on it as clear as a barometer—when he was mad his face was mad all over, and when he was pleased he glowed to the tips of his ears. And he was pleased that morning.

But, of course, he had to be set right about the sanatorium, and Mr. Sam began it. Mr. Pierce listened, sitting on the floor and looking puzzled and more and more unhappy. Finally he got up and drew a long breath.

"Exactly," he agreed. "I know you are all right and I'm wrong—according to your way of thinking. But if these people want to be well, why should I encourage them to do the wrong thing? They eat too much, they don't exercise"—he turned to Mr. Van Alstyne.

"Why, do you know, I asked a half dozen of the men—one after the other—to go skeeing with me this morning and not one of them accepted!"

"Really!" Mr. Sam exclaimed mockingly.

"What can you do with people like that?" Mr. Pierce went on. "They don't want to be well; they're all hypocrites. Look at that man Biggs! I'll lay you ten to one that after fasting five days and then stealing a whole chicken, a dozen oysters and Lord knows what else, now that he's sick, he'll hold it against me."

"He's not holding anything," I objected.

"Because HE is a hypocrite—" Mr. Sam began.

"That's not the point, Pierce," Mr. Dick broke in importantly. "You were to come here for orders and you haven't done it. You're running this place for me, not for yourself."

Mr. Pierce looked at Mr. Dick and from there to Mr. Sam and smiled.

"I did come," he explained. "I came twice, and each time we played roulette. I lost all the money I'd had in advance. Honestly," he confessed, "I felt I couldn't afford to come every day."

Miss Patty got up and put the baby rabbits into her sister's big fur muff.

"We are all talking around the question," she said. "Mr. Pierce undertook to manage the sanatorium, and to try to manage it successfully. He can not do that without making some attempt at conciliating the people. It's—it's absurd to antagonize them."

"Exactly," he said coldly. "I was to manage it, and to try to do it successfully. I'm sorry my methods don't meet with the approval of this—er—executive committee. But it might as well be clear that I intend to use my own methods—or none."

Well, what could we do? Miss Patty went out with her head up, and the rest of us stayed and ate humble pie, and after a while he agreed to stay if he wasn't interfered with. He said he and Doctor Barnes had a plan that he thought was a winner—that it would either make or break the place, and he thought it would make it. And by that time we were so meek that we didn't even ask what it was.

Doctor Barnes and Miss Summers were the first to come to the mineral spring that morning. She stopped just inside the door and sniffed.

"Something's dead under the floor," she said.

"If there's anything dead," Doctor Barnes replied, "it's in the center of the earth. That's the sulphur water."

She came in at that, but unwillingly, and sat down with her handkerchief to her nose. Then she saw me.

"Good gracious!" she exclaimed. "What have you done that they put you here?"

"If you mean the bouquet from the spring, you get to like it after a while," I said grimly. "Ordinary air hasn't got any snap for me now."

"Humph!" She looked at me suspiciously, but I was busy wiping off the tables. "Well," she said, holding up the glass Doctor Barnes had brought her, "it doesn't cost me anything, so here goes. But think of paying money for it!"

She drank it down in a gulp and settled herself in her chair.

"What'll it do to me?" she asked. "Mixed drinks always play the deuce with me, Barnes, and you know it."

"If you'll cut down your diet and take some exercise it will make you thin," I began. "'The process is painless and certain: kindly nature in her benevolent plan—'"

"Give me another!" she interrupted, and Doctor Barnes filled her glass again. "Some women spell fate f-a-t-e," she said, looking at the water, "but I spell it without the e."

She took half of it and then put down the glass. "Honestly," she declared, "I'd rather be fat."

Mr. Pierce met them there a few minutes later and they had a three-cornered chat. But Miss