Elsie was not to be found anywhere in all the rooms that were lighted and open that evening on the first floor of the house. “She’s just not down here at all, unless she’s somewhere in the servants’ wing,” Jack finally reported when they met by chance at the foot of the stairs.
Kate now went to her aunt who was having salad sitting between two dowagers, one of them Kate’s dowager. “I am looking for Elsie, Aunt Katherine,” she said. “Have you seen her recently?”
Miss Frazier shook her head. “Not for some time. I myself have been wondering what has become of her.” Miss Frazier’s dark eyes as she lifted them to Kate were clouded with worried surmise.
Mrs. Van Vorst-Smith laughed. As a laugh, it sounded a trifle unsure of itself and uneasy for a dowager person. “I had a few words with the child myself half an hour or so ago,” she volunteered. “Strangely enough, she took some offence at some remarks that were meant only kindly, and flounced off. Perhaps she is sulking somewhere about it.”
“I am sorry, Mrs. Van Vorst-Smith, if my niece was rude to you.” But in spite of the words Miss Frazier’s tone was not at all a sorry tone; it was rather edged. She herself had just been submitted to some remarks of Mrs. Van Vorst-Smith’s that were doubtless meant kindly, and as a consequence her sympathy was all with Elsie. But even so, if Elsie were sulking, she was undoing all that Miss Frazier’s efforts had built up in her behalf. That was a pity.
“Don’t apologize for the young person you call your niece,” Mrs. Van Vorst-Smith said, suavely. “We will lay it simply at the door of the times. There is no respect for age, say nothing of birth, in this generation.”
Miss Frazier paid slight attention to these acid remarks. She merely said to Kate in a concerned tone, “I’d go upstairs to look for her, Kate. Under no circumstances must the party be ruined for her by anybody. Do persuade her to come back and forget any hurts she may have received. Do your best.”
Kate flew away on the errand, her heart rejoiced that her aunt had answered the dowager exactly as she had.
There was no light in the girls’ suite. “She can’t be here,” Kate decided. But just to make absolutely certain she went through and, fumbling for it, turned on the switch just inside Elsie’s door.
The first thing that caught her eye under the shaded lights that blossomed forth so obediently at the pressure of her finger was the fairy green frock dropped in a heap exactly in the middle of the floor, the white sandals topping it! Elsie herself was undressed and in bed!
“Go away, go away,” she commanded, plaintively, not even looking to see who was in the room.
Kate stood dumbfounded. Then she remembered her aunt’s clouded, kind eyes, and the dowager’s haughty, skeptical nose. She braced herself. “I can’t go away,” she said softly, evenly. “Not until you get up and get dressed and come downstairs with me. How can you treat Aunt Katherine so?”
“I won’t get dressed. I won’t go down again. I hate the party! It’s your party, anyway. I’m not needed down there.”
Was Aunt Katherine right in the theory she had put forward at the Green Shutter Tea Room? Was Elsie simply jealous? But Kate rejected that thought almost before it had presented itself. In fact, she caught only the tail of it as it switched by! She spoke reasonably.
“Yes, it’s my party so-called. But you know perfectly well that Aunt Katherine means it even more for you. It’s so that you’ll get to be friendly with all the girls and boys who you say hardly speak to you. My being here was just an opportunity. Now if you vanish in the very middle of things, how do you think that will help any of us? It will be just unspeakable.”
“I want to be unspeakable. Go away.”
“Yes, perhaps you do. You are, anyway. But do you want Aunt Katherine to be ashamed? Could you ever forgive yourself for treating her so? She knows Mrs. Van Vorst-Smith has been rude to you, and she herself just now has come very near being rude to Mrs. Van Vorst-Smith on your account. Whatever all the fuss is about—honestly and truly I haven’t an idea what it is about myself—Aunt Katherine is all for you, Elsie. She’s your champion. You can’t go back on her now, right before everyone. It doesn’t matter whether you’re having a good time, not a bit. If you’re any good at all you’ll get dressed in a jiffy and go back down with me. You can pretend you’re having a good time.”
Kate finished. Her argument had exhausted her strangely. She found herself trembling with the intenseness of her conviction that Aunt Katherine must be saved from all embarrassment.
For a few minutes Elsie made no visible response to the harangue but lay perfectly still, her eyes shut, her head turned away. Kate stood in the middle of the room, the fairy green dress at her feet, waiting. “I’ve done all I can,” she told herself. “Now we’ll just see whether she has any sense at all.”
After a space of utter stillness Elsie stirred, threw back the coverlet, and sat up. “You’re right, I suppose,” she said, sulkily. “I’m just a pig, that’s all. I was only thinking of myself.”
She did not look at Kate but busied herself picking up her scattered clothes. When Kate started to leave the room, however, she called her back. “Do you mind helping me with these?” she asked almost humbly. “I don’t want to ring for Bertha. Do you mind?”
“Of course not. Let’s hurry. Everybody’ll be wondering.”
But now when Kate’s hands were needed she was recalled to the note still clutched in her fingers.
“Oh, I entirely forgot,” she exclaimed, dismayed. “Here is a note for you.”
Elsie unfolded the paper. If she had looked miserable before, when she had finished reading the few words on that paper she looked tragic. “Who gave it to you? How did you get it?”
Kate was amazed at the way petulance had turned to sorrow.
“I don’t know who, or even exactly how,” she confessed. “I was alone for a second on the terrace. A man appeared just out of the wind in a blowing, long cape. He had a singing voice at first so I hardly knew whether he was real. And he quoted ‘The King of the Fairies.’”
Elsie nodded. Nothing in Kate’s account surprised her apparently. The girls did not speak to each other again but silently worked together repairing the damage done to Elsie’s hair-dressing, getting her into the fairy green dress, and finally bathing away evidences of tears. Supper was just about over downstairs before they were ready to descend, and dance strains sounding. Jack had not given Kate up, however, but was faithfully waiting for her on the stairs.
He saw the girls the minute they appeared at the upper turning, and bounded up several steps to meet them. “Where have you been hiding?” he asked, laughingly, and without any signs of surprise whatever. “I’ve managed to save some salad for you both and ices, too, here in the window seat.”
It was a window seat on the stairs, halfway down the first flight. “Oh, thanks,” Kate said, heartily. “Have you had some yourself, though?”
“Hardly likely, not until you came. Didn’t you promise to have supper with me?” Jack looked feigned surprise and grief.
He was certainly making their return to society easier. Girls and boys glanced up at them rather curiously as they danced past the drawing-room door, and a few of the mothers, sitting where they had a view of the stairs and the landing, rather stared. But since the truants could laugh and talk with Jack, who was acting as though their absence had been in no way extraordinary, they had no time to be self-conscious.
But suddenly Jack’s face went queer right in the middle of some nonsense. It was half a laugh, half dismay that twisted his countenance. Quick as thought, he pointed up to the second turn of the stairs. “That’s a fine old clock!” he exclaimed. “Take me up and show it to me.”
Why they obeyed his command so docilely—put their plates down again on the window seat and went back up the stairs—they hardly knew. But they did go, like lambs. And when they had turned a corner and were out of sight of dancers and chaperons Jack stopped, not looking at the clock at all, and dropped his eyes to Elsie’s feet. Even Elsie laughed when she saw what he was calling attention to. In their hurry the girls had forgotten one item, and here was Elsie ready to appear in the drawing-room in her pink satin, swansdown-edged boudoir slippers. They were very dainty slippers, quite fetching in fact, but they were hardly in harmony with the fairy green frock.
“Run back and change while Kate and I admire the clock,” Jack advised. And Elsie ran.
When she returned the three sat on the window seat and ate their long-delayed supper. At first Elsie said she wasn’t hungry and couldn’t possibly eat, but Jack laughed her out of that. Soon Rose came up to join them, carrying her ice, and stopping to take dainty tastes as she came.
“This is the nicest situation of all,” she exclaimed, settling down beside Elsie. “And what a view it offers. Why, it’s like being in a box at the theatre. We saw you and Kate, by the way, at ‘The Blue Bird.’ We thought it very grand of you to have a whole box to yourselves.”
Others followed Rose, some of them with plates of ice cream. And Kate noticed that the ices and the ice cream were in every case in a stage of melting. She suspected then that Jack had overheard the conversation about the missing Elsie and had collected this little band, encouraging them to eat slowly. The realization of his tact and consideration wiped out for ever any lurking indignation toward him left over from the morning, when he had squirmed at the idea of her calling Elsie down to play tennis.
A few minutes later, when Miss Frazier came out into the hall with old Mrs. Van Vorst-Smith who was leaving and seemed to require her escort, she saw to her great surprise and relief that the very merriest part of the party was on the stairs. There were eight or nine girls and boys crowded about Kate and Elsie talking eagerly and interrupting themselves with the lightest-hearted laughter. No need to worry any more now because her girls were not on the floor dancing. This was an even better way of getting acquainted. Mrs. Van Vorst-Smith, feeling for an instant that she had lost the full attention of her hostess, followed her gaze upward. Kate was looking down, and their eyes met. Then old Mrs. Van Vorst-Smith did an amazing thing. At least, the few people who observed it were amazed. She made the motion of “good-night” with her lips to Kate, and blew her a kiss.
Both her grandchildren stared round-eyed. “I say,” Jack whispered, “you have certainly charmed my grandmother. What did you ever do to her?”
He looked at Kate, wonderingly respectful, with frankest curiosity.
When Miss Frazier returned from seeing the old lady out of the door, she stood for a minute within hearing of the conversation on the stairs. They were discussing “The Blue Bird” now, but presently it changed to “The King of the Fairies,” a book they all had read, apparently. She smiled inwardly, well pleased. “Katherine over again,” she told herself. But she had to admit, too, that Elsie was doing her share in keeping the subject at a high-water-mark of intelligent conversation. “Kate is certainly having an influence,” she reflected, “an even finer influence than I could have hoped for.” Then she passed on into the drawing-room, trailing her black scarf more regally than ever since she was so honestly proud of both her nieces.
When the last guest had departed Miss Frazier took an arm of each niece and led them toward the stairs. “It was all a great success,” she affirmed. “And it was you girls, yourselves, who made it a success. Kate, you were what a new girl—at least, any new girl worth her salt—ought to be, the belle of the ball. And, Elsie, you did me more than credit. I am, oh, so very proud of both my girls. Old maiden aunt that I am, I felt that I had two lovely daughters. Now I advise you to dash to bed and save all discussion of the party until morning. Breakfast is ordered for half-past nine to-morrow, so that you may sleep.”
“But sha’n’t we help you close up?” Elsie offered. “I heard you tell Isadora to go to bed.”
“No, thank you, my dear. I am going to stay down here awhile, finishing ‘The King of the Fairies.’ I was almost at the last chapter when Mrs. Van Vorst-Smith led the procession of arrivals. It is an enchanting story, just as you said. Now, good-night.”
For all its finality the “good-night” was spoken with greatest affection. In the last few hours Aunt Katherine had flowered into a serenely warm human being. Both Kate and Elsie realized the change in her, and each, for a different reason, was disturbed by it; Kate because now less than ever she understood how her mother ever could have let such a lovely person go out of her life; and Elsie—well, that concerns the secret of the orchard house.
CHAPTER XV
KATE ON GUARD
Kate was waked by the flapping of her window draperies. The rain that had held off during the evening was upon them now, a wild, windy, heavy rain, unusual for July. Kate heard it spattering on the floor of the balcony and pattering on the floor inside the tall windows. This last would never do. Much as she liked the fresh wet wind, full of garden and damp earth smells, she must close those windows or the room would be damaged. It was pitchy dark, and Kate could be guided only by sound and the direction from which the wind blew. Somehow she got the big door windows closed and fastened, simply by the sense of touch, and then turned gratefully bedward. But she did not go back to bed that night.
Elsie’s door had blown shut to only a crack, and light was coming through that crack. That was perhaps none of Kate’s business, but instantly she was concerned. She and Elsie had not said “good-night” to each other, but parted in silence. And Kate had gone to sleep wondering just how much Elsie was truly hurt by whatever it was that old Mrs. Van Vorst-Smith had said to her, and wanting, but lacking the courage, to go in and sit on the edge of her bed to talk it out and comfort her if she could. If she had heard Elsie so much as turn in bed she would have taken heart; but not a sound had come from the other room after the light was out. In the end Kate had gone to sleep still undecided as to what she ought to do.
Now the light drew her. Perhaps Elsie had not been to sleep at all. Perhaps she was too unhappy to sleep. Kate had no idea what time it was, and she did not think of the time. Her only anxiety was that Elsie might not be angry with her for trying to comfort. On bare feet she crossed the bathroom floor and pushed at the door.
The lamp by Elsie’s bed was burning, but she had placed her party frock over it to dull its glow, so the room was in a queer green light. That was what Kate noticed first. The bed was empty. But Kate found Elsie at once, her back turned to her, and still unconscious of her presence, at the farther end of the room bending over a suitcase which she was busy packing. Elsie was fully dressed, even to her hat. She was wearing the green silk of their Boston jaunt, and the same brown straw hat. It was perfectly plain that she was running away, running away in the middle of a black, stormy night.
Kate pushed the door all the way open. “What are you doing?” she whispered, loudly.
Elsie turned upon her. She had been crying as she packed, and even in the excitement of the moment Kate reflected how oddly tears and a set, tragic face went with the jaunty costume with its brave flutter of orange at the neck.
“You belong in bed,” Elsie whispered back. “And any one can see what I’m doing.”
“Yes. Running away!”
“Yes, running away. And no business of yours.”
The warrior in Kate straightened. This was a clear call to arms. She felt very old and wise. She certainly would never let that crying little girl go away like this into the rain and dark night. She couldn’t expect to walk out right under Kate’s nose!
“Is that what the note I brought you was about?” she asked. “Was it a plan for this?”
“No. It was telling me not to do this. But I’m going to, just the same. He didn’t understand—he couldn’t know.”
Elsie returned to her packing. Kate moved nearer to her.
“Do you think I’m going to stand here and let you run away right in the middle of the night like this?” she asked, curiously.
Elsie did not glance up at her. She simply said, “Well, what can you do to stop me?”
“Wake the house, of course. Call Aunt Katherine. Shout for her.”
Elsie stared at Kate in unfeigned surprise. “You’d tell on me?” she asked in an unbelieving tone. “I thought you weren’t like that. I thought you were decent.”
“I am decent. I don’t tell, not about little things, like the key. But this is entirely different. I should certainly wake the whole house if you tried to walk out with that suitcase.”
“You wouldn’t.” Elsie lifted the suitcase which was filled and closed now, and picking up her hand-bag from where it lay on the dressing table, took a step toward the door. But Kate reached it ahead of her.
“I’ll shout,” Kate warned.
“Kate Marshall, please, please, please don’t!”
“I certainly will.”
Elsie began to cry silently and stood with her suitcase in one hand, her bag in the other, and her face turned from Kate, ashamed of her tears. Kate’s heart softened, but not her determination.
“Get undressed and into bed, and promise you won’t get out again to-night, or I shall go right to Aunt Katherine’s room now and tell her,” Kate said firmly.
After a moment of hesitation Elsie began to pull off her clothes furiously. In about two minutes she was in bed, her face turned toward the wall. In silence Kate picked up the cast-off garments Elsie had scattered, and put them away. The green suit she hung up on a hanger in the closet and the hat she put away in the deep hat-drawer. Then the suitcase claimed her attention. Bertha had better not find it packed and standing by the door in the morning. Kate unlatched it and took out the things. “The King of the Fairies” lay at the bottom of them all, with a little New Testament. Kate put the two books on Elsie’s bedside table under the lamp. Still Elsie did not move or speak; she might have been asleep for any sign she made that she knew what was occupying Kate in the room.
But Kate spoke to her: “You’ve burned a hole in your party dress,” she said.
It was true. The heat from the electric bulb had been strong enough to scorch the flimsy material.
“No matter,” Elsie muttered from her pillow. “I’ll never wear it again, anyway.”
She had not taken the trouble even to look at the damage. That told Kate, if it still needed telling, how truly desperate Elsie was.
“I’m going into my room,” Kate announced, after she had hung the ruined party dress away. “But don’t think I’m going to bed, for I’m not. I shall be sitting up, wide awake, and surely hear you if you get up again.”
Elsie did not answer.
Kate did not mind that. If never before, now she certainly merited Elsie’s wrath. Elsie had hated her before without any cause. There was a certain comfort to Kate in knowing the cause of her present state of mind, a certain satisfaction in no longer being scorned for nothing, but for something. She could defend herself to herself now.
But could she defend herself adequately? Had she really any business to have so interfered with Elsie’s plans? Had she any reason so at a leap to have become a dyed-in-the-wool tattletale, at least to have threatened tattletaling? Yes, she thought she could excuse herself. She thought she was more than justified. Even so it was a hateful business.
Kate wrapped herself in her dressing gown and sat in a wicker chair by her reading light. She did not dare lie in bed to think for fear she would drop off to sleep. She gave herself up to pondering the situation, but kept an ear cocked all the while for the slightest movement in the other room.
What should she do about things in the morning? Even if Elsie had failed to get off to-night, if Aunt Katherine were left unwarned, she would certainly plan so as not to fail the next time. Why, to-morrow morning itself Elsie might walk out of the house and never come back. If Elsie had any place to go to, Kate would not be so worried. But she knew that Elsie’s mother’s family, what there was of it, was living in Europe, and that not one member of it had ever shown the least consciousness of Elsie’s existence. Aunt Katherine had told her about that and marvelled at it. So Elsie had just no one to take her in if she did run away. There was the stranger in the garden! But he had told her not to run away. Kate was sure Elsie had spoken truth about that note. Who was the stranger in the garden? His note had turned Elsie tragic, whoever he was.
There was no way out of it that Kate could see but telling. Elsie must be protected against herself.
But half an hour’s more pondering brought Kate to the conclusion that she would not tell Aunt Katherine. Her whole instinct was against that. Aunt Katherine, charming as she was, and kind, was after all only an aunt, and an aunt who had said herself that she simply could not like Elsie. What Elsie needed was a mother. This was work for Katherine. Kate had perfect confidence that if her mother could talk with Elsie everything would come clear for everybody. Light suddenly dawned in Kate’s puzzled mind. Katherine might take Elsie home with her. They would all three go back to Ashland together, and there all would be made right for Elsie. Once with Katherine’s arms around her shoulders, and Katherine’s gentle, understanding eyes looking into hers, Elsie would confide. Kate never doubted for an instant that her mother would be overjoyed to take the beautiful, unhappy Elsie to her heart. Why, since Aunt Katherine had failed so to make her happy, and since she did not even like this foster-niece, it might become a permanent arrangement; Elsie would live with them. She would be a sister!
All this was rather wild dreaming. Kate straightened mentally and pulled herself back to hard facts. The facts were simply that Kate could not bring herself to the idea of delivering Elsie up to Aunt Katherine for judgment or help, either one. Elsie needed a mother more than she needed anything else in the world. Katherine was a mother. Katherine must come.
And only a few hours ago Kate had felt very far away from her mother, very independent of her! She smiled now, remembering. Well, she had never needed her more. Sitting alone here in the sleeping house, with rain and wind at the windows and Elsie lying hating her in the next room, Kate ached for her mother.
She decided to write her a special delivery letter. That would bring her day after to-morrow, or day after to-day rather, for it must be getting toward day now. For one day Kate could stand guard over Elsie. She was glad of her decision to write as soon as she arrived at it. It seemed automatically to relieve her from grave responsibility. Besides, the composition of the letter would keep her awake.
And so, mother darling, please come on the very first train. Your desperate Kate.
It had been a long, full letter. She had told Katherine just everything that had to do with Elsie and her strange behaviour from their very first meeting. When Kate looked up from her signature she found the night had passed; dawn was in the room, at least the gray light of a rainy morning.
Kate rose, stretched her cramped limbs, and yawned prodigiously. Then she crept to Elsie’s door. Elsie was not asleep. Their eyes met. There were dark circles under Elsie’s eyes, and her face in the gray light was almost paper-white. The girls stared at each other silently. Then Elsie turned her head away on the pillow.
“How she hates me!” Kate thought, as she stole back through the bathroom. “She’s a dreadful hater. I couldn’t hate any one that way, no matter what they had done.”
She turned out the light that was still burning by her bed. Then she took a cold shower bath and dressed in a fresh dress, the second chintz curtain one. She brushed her hair vigorously.
“Some difference,” she reflected, “between the party Kate and the morning-after one. Too bad I haven’t a magic cap for day-times!”
Perhaps she needed one especially to-day. For tired, sleepless people are rarely pretty people; and Kate’s eyes were almost as dark-rimmed as Elsie’s.
Her toilet completed, she stole again to Elsie’s door. Again their eyes met.
“If I were you I’d go to sleep,” Kate whispered. Elsie’s pallor bothered her. But Elsie did not deign to answer.
Kate, back in her room, with over four hours before breakfast stretching away ahead of her, curled up on the foot of the bed with “The King of the Fairies” in her hands. She opened it just anywhere, much as one opens conversation with a friend just anywhere. It is the presence you want. And the presence of the soul in this book did not fail her now. How it drove walls backward and pushed roofs skyward! And as for out-of-doors, it made that boundless, lifting veils and veils of air disclosing Fairyland or Paradise, in any case the realler than real.
Kate was withdrawing from the chintz-curtained Kate on the bed. She was rising up out of that drowsy figure. She was floating. But the flowers from the chintz were still decking her, only they were living flowers now, smelling all the sweeter for the rain soaking their petals. And the birds from the chintz were with her, too, changed to living birds, soaring, floating, drifting with her, singing shrilly in the rain. The mysterious, many-coloured portals of sleep were opening to her far off beyond the last lifted veil of air.
It was nine-fifteen before she woke.
CHAPTER XVI
ONE END OF THE STRING
Breakfast was served in the little blue-and-white breakfast-room. A fire burned there cheerfully in the grate, making it possible to leave the doors open on to the rain-beaten terrace. The storms of the night had subsided into a steady, hard downpour.
“What a day!” Miss Frazier exclaimed when she appeared.
Kate had come into the room just ahead of her. Moved by an impulse of affection she went to her aunt and kissed her on the cheek. “Thank you for that beautiful party,” she said. “It was gorgeous.”
Miss Frazier was pleased. “Thank you, my dear, for paying back so, in being happy about it, the little that is done for you. ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive’ may be, but the art of receiving graciously is a rare and beautiful accomplishment. I hope Elsie’s experience with Mrs. Van Vorst-Smith didn’t entirely keep the evening from being ‘gorgeous’ for her, too. Where is she?”
“Dressing, I think.”
At this moment Miss Frazier was summoned to the telephone. “The same gentleman who wouldn’t give his name yesterday,” Isadora informed her.
“Don’t wait for me, Kate. I’m not having grapefruit.”
When Aunt Katherine returned it was plain to see that she was greatly stirred, though trying hard to be calm and matter-of-fact.
“I shall have to go to town,” she told Kate. “And I shall be gone all day, probably until rather late to-night. In spite of the rain I think I had better take the car.”
Then Elsie came in. She sat down languidly at the breakfast table and leaned her cheek on her hand. Everything that Effie offered she refused.
“Aren’t you going to have any breakfast at all?” Miss Frazier asked.
“No. I thought I could eat. But when I see things I know I can’t. I think I’ll be excused if I may.”
Miss Frazier looked at her keenly. “I am afraid you are ill. Come, let me feel your forehead. Yes, it is hot. You have a temperature almost certainly. And the shadows under your eyes! Is this what a party does to you? What a pity that I must leave for Boston at once.”
She turned to the maid Effie. “Effie, tell Bertha to get Doctor Hanscom on the telephone and ask him to come over here before office hours. Then she is to help Elsie back to bed.”
“Bed! Oh, no. Please! Please, Aunt Katherine!”
“Why, yes. Bed isn’t so terrible as all that! You may read or knit, until Doctor Hanscom arrives and gives other orders, anyway. Kate will sit with you so that you won’t be lonely. Yes, indeed, you must go to bed.”
Elsie was very much distressed at this turn of affairs. Kate saw dismay in her face, and she easily guessed the reason. Of course, being tucked up in bed and getting the attention and care of an invalid would make running away to-day almost impossible. But there was no question of Miss Frazier’s being obeyed. She expected obedience and she got it.
When Elsie had left the room Miss Frazier forced herself to take up conversation lightly and naturally for the remainder of the meal, but Kate did not fail to notice that her fingers shook slightly as she lifted her toast and that her dark eyes were unusually bright. Evidently the “gentleman who will not give his name” had had some news of importance. Kate felt confident that that gentleman was the detective, Mr. O’Brien.
“I finished your book last night,” Miss Frazier was saying. “I understand your enthusiasm. It is literature and much more. The author must have deep and even esoteric wisdom. One wonders very much who and what he is, the author. But whoever he is, even if this book is all he has to show, he is a great man. Has it occurred to you, Kate, how much, how extraordinarily, like your mother, Hazel, the girl in the story, is? It might be a direct portrait.”
Kate laughed. “Oh, have you discovered that, too? Even Mother had to admit it—that in looks, anyway, Hazel was exactly herself when she was that age. But I say she is still like Hazel, old as she is!”
“Thirty-six isn’t exactly aged, you know. One might very well keep some remnants of looks even until then.” Aunt Katherine was smiling. “But it is a strange coincidence how a person of the imagination can so echo a person in life. I was fairly startled last night when I realized how vivid the resemblance was.”
But though Kate heard and replied to all her aunt’s remarks during that breakfast, her mind was most of the time on other matters, and if Miss Frazier could have known, Kate under her calm exterior was hiding a heart as perturbed as her own.
Kate was glad when Miss Frazier rose. She assured her that she was very well able to amuse herself at home this rainy day, and that she would do everything for Elsie that she could. Yes, she would see to it that she stayed in bed! Yes, she would read to her, if Elsie felt like listening. Yes, Aunt Katherine was not to worry. And so Miss Frazier departed, and Kate was left virtually in charge of the house, the responsibility for things quite hers.
Of course, Kate knew perfectly well that Elsie would not want her to sit with her, no need even to ask about that. And Kate must hurry to send her telegram. Beyond the portals of sleep she had decided, or possibly it had been decided for her, that the special delivery letter would not make things happen quickly enough. Katherine must be wired for. She was needed to-day. Kate had waked with this determination full-blown. But how could she risk leaving the house now to send the wire, with Elsie in the desperate mood that was so obvious? How could Kate be sure that Bertha would not help Elsie to run away in her absence? Bertha adored Elsie, and Kate herself had reason to know that when Elsie pleaded it was easier to do her wish than not. She realized, of course, that a telegram may be given over the telephone; but her inexperience and shyness made her doubt her ability in such a complicated procedure. Besides, the bill would be charged to Aunt Katherine in that case.
“I shall just have to chance it,” she decided. “Elsie needn’t know I am out of the house at all, and I can hurry.” She would run up to her room and get her cape and hat as quietly as possible. She would have to slip down into the kitchen then and borrow an umbrella from Julia.
But Bertha, administering to Elsie, heard the door of Kate’s closet when a surprising little gust of wind banged it shut while Kate was inside reaching for her hat. When Kate had fumbled for the knob and opened the door, Bertha had come into her room. At once Kate noticed that Bertha, too, was labouring under great excitement. Her cheeks were on fire and she was simply quivering with suppressed emotion of some sort.
“Oh, Miss Kate,” she cried, nervously, looking at the hat in Kate’s hand. “Are you going out?”
Well, no help for it now. Elsie had heard, of course. But Kate was much bothered. “Yes, on an errand. I’ll be gone almost no time at all, though.” This she spoke loudly, meaning that Elsie should not miss it.
“Oh, if you are really going into the village could you do an errand for Miss Elsie?”
Ho, ho! Was this the thin ruse Elsie meant to use, to get her out of the way?
“Perhaps,” Kate said, noncommittally.
“That fixes everything nicely then.” Bertha took a deep breath of relief. “I would go myself but Miss Frazier expects me to see the doctor when he comes, in order to report to her. And then there is all my work. Wait a minute.”
Bertha hurried back into Elsie’s room and Kate heard a low murmuring between them. When she returned she had Elsie’s purse in her hand. “Here is some money. Miss Elsie says to use only that that’s tied in the handkerchief.”
So! Elsie was letting her pocketbook go. Last night, Kate remembered, Elsie had taken it when starting toward the door. And running away she would surely need it. Kate recalled her first motion to decline the purse and tuck the handkerchief with the coin tied in its corner into her own. With Elsie’s pocketbook in her possession, Elsie was just so much the safer.
“What does she want?”
“Half a dozen eggs. A head of lettuce. Some bread.”
Kate stared. Bertha stared back at her, nervously. But Kate restrained any exclamations and simply nodded. When Bertha realized that she was not going to be questioned, relief like sunshine overspread her flushed face.
“And will you be as quick as possible?” she asked.
Again Kate was pleasantly surprised. “Yes, I’ll be as quick as I can,” she agreed. “If Elsie will promise to stay in bed until luncheon time.”
Bertha looked at her in genuine astonishment at that. “But of course. Miss Frazier has ordered that she spend the day in bed.”
“No, she must promise me herself. You tell her.”
Elsie had heard. She called out now, “Yes, I promise. And do please hurry, Kate.”
Kate was deeply relieved. Now she could absent herself from the house without fear of finding Elsie flown when she returned. “And whatever you do, Kate Marshall, and whatever they say about it, don’t let them charge those things at the store to Aunt Katherine,” Elsie called again.
“You haven’t an umbrella,” Bertha said, bringing her Elsie’s, a gay green silk one with an ivory handle. “It’s a wild day for July, and I’m not at all certain Miss Frazier would like your going out like this. If you could only have the car—but it’s gone to town with her.”
“Yes, I know. And you needn’t feel responsible. I have an errand on my own account, you know.”
But Kate did wonder much about Elsie’s errand. “I think,” she mused, “it’s a wild-goose chase Aunt Katherine is on in town, and those detectives, too. Where they might do some good, and find some clues, is right here. Who was that man in the garden? Why all this buying of groceries? If there is a snarl of some sort that needs unravelling, and if Elsie has anything to do with it, the end of the string is right here. But how do I know the snarl ought to be unravelled by detectives—that it’s any of their business? Oh, heavens! I must run to the telegraph office. Mother is terribly needed this very minute.”
At the Western Union Station she did not study long over the wording of her message. Time was too precious, she felt, for even a minute’s delay, if Katherine was to catch the noon train from Middletown.
A mix-up here come first train nobody sick or dead Kate.
She was aware that those ten words would worry her mother unspeakably. But how, in the limits of a telegram (Kate had never conceived of the possibility of a telegram being over ten words in length!), was she to persuade her mother to take the next train if she was not to be worried? No, the only way to make absolutely sure of her coming was to frighten her into it.
The man who took the message looked at Kate curiously. He knew perfectly well who Kate was and wondered very much about the “mix-up.” He thought Kate peculiarly self-contained for a young lady who found herself in a situation that necessitated that message. If he had only known, however, Kate’s calm exterior was entirely assumed. She was more excited, perhaps, than she had ever been in her life before, and full of presentiments of even greater excitement to come. Sending the wire, though, was a great relief. In a few minutes Katherine herself, ’way off in quiet Ashland, would be concerned in the affair. With Katherine once “in it”, Kate was assured things must somehow turn out right.
Now for those puzzling groceries.
When she came out of Holt and Holt’s with her purchases, Jack Denton suddenly appeared at her shoulder. He was without an umbrella, but in a raincoat and felt hat that required none.
“May I walk along with you?” he asked.
Kate was very glad to see him. His high spirits brought relief from the strain and confusion in her mind. Gallantly, and with the air of courtesy that was so delightful in him, he took her bundles from her and then her umbrella. With laughter and exchange of party remembrances they started off together through the rain toward home.
But before they had gone half the distance Jack turned serious.
“Do you know,” he said, “at our dinner last night (Mother gave a dinner before your dance) some of us decided to go on strike, to stand up for our own ideas more practically against our elders. Younger generation stuff. We all used to like Elsie tremendously, and now we are going to treat her just exactly as though nothing had happened, if she’ll let us. I think she will, too. She was all right last night.”
Kate turned to look up at Jack under the umbrella. The brown eyes that returned her look had lost their easy laughter and were earnest with the glow of a cause.
“Granny’s had her way long enough,” he continued. “Our mothers and fathers never really cared a bit, you know. It’s just those more ancient ones. They barely survived the shock. You see their daughters and sons had been playing around with him, and any one of their daughters might have married him. Granny says her grandson (meaning me) is going to have the protection her daughter didn’t have (meaning Mother). It’s really just a joke. And we only humoured ’em because they were so rabid. Now we’re sorry we were so soft. I wanted to tell you.”
“I don’t understand,” Kate said, quickly. “Not one word. Can’t you explain better? What happened that was so awful? What was the thing that shocked them so? And what has it to do with Elsie?”
Until this minute she had not wanted such information, when it came, to come from outside. She had felt that to learn that way would be disloyal of her. But now that her whole mind was turned to helping Elsie she wanted to know all she could. She wanted to get hold of the end of the tangle, any way, and perhaps then there would be some chance of straightening it out. The information that Jack was apparently able to give her would surely constitute that end; once having that in her fingers she might unravel snarl after snarl for herself.
Jack, however, was not prepared for her questions. He whistled, startled. “Don’t you know what the fuss has been about?” he asked. “Don’t you know about anything? I thought you were only pretending yesterday.”
“No, truly. Not a thing. Aunt Katherine was surprised that I didn’t know, too. But she wouldn’t tell me. You tell me.”
“Why, it doesn’t seem fair. I thought, of course, you knew. But you did know there was something?”
“Yes, almost the first minute I got here. Elsie acted so queerly. And then she said she hardly knew you. And all the time there you were living right next door. It was puzzling. Now tell me.”
“Well, if they want you to live in ignorance it’s hardly up to me to enlighten you, is it?” Jack was very ill at ease.