An Alabaster Box Part 34

f.a.n.n.y was silent. She was wishing she had not asked Ellen to tell.

Then instantly her mind began to examine this new aspect of her problem.

"He didn't look so awfully pleased and happy," Ellen went on, "his head was down--so, and he was just scorching up the road. Perhaps they'd been having a sc.r.a.p."

"Oh, no!" burst from f.a.n.n.y's lips. "It wasn't that."

"Why, what do you know about Wesley Elliot and Lydia Orr?" inquired Ellen vindictively. "You're a whole lot like Jim--as close-mouthed as a mola.s.ses jug, when you don't happen to feel like talking.... It isn't fair," she went on crossly. "I tell you everything--every single thing; and you just take it all in without winking an eyelash.

It isn't fair!"

"Oh, Ellen, please don't--I can't bear it from you!"

f.a.n.n.y's proud head drooped to her friend's shoulder, a stifled sob escaped her.

"There now, Fan; I didn't mean a word of it! I'm sorry I told you about him--only I thought he looked so kind of cut up over something that maybe-- Honest, Fan, I don't believe he likes her."

"You don't know," murmured f.a.n.n.y, wiping her wet eyes. "I didn't tell you she came to see me."

"She did!"

"Yes; it was after we had all been there, and mother was going on so about the furniture. It all seemed so mean and sordid to me, as if we were trying to--well, you know."

Ellen nodded:

"Of course I do. That's why you wouldn't let her have your furniture.

I gloried in your s.p.u.n.k, Fan."

"But I did let her have it, Ellen."

"You did? Well!"

"I'll tell you how it happened. Mother'd gone down to the village, and Jim was off somewhere--he's never in the house day-times any more; I'd been working on the new curtains all day, and I was just putting them up in the parlor, when she came.... Ellen, sometimes I think perhaps we don't understand that girl. She was just as sweet-- If it wasn't for-- If I hadn't hardened my heart against her almost the first thing, you know, I don't believe I could help loving her."

"f.a.n.n.y!" cried Ellen protestingly. "She certainly is a soft-soap artist. My mother says she is so refined; and Mrs. Daggett is always chanting her praises."

"Think of all she's done for the village," urged f.a.n.n.y. "I want to be just, even if--"

"Well, I don't!" cried Ellen. "I just enjoy being real spiteful sometimes--especially when another girl gobbles all the men in sight; and I know I'm prettier than she is. It's just because she's new and--and stylish and rich. What made you give in about your furniture, Fan?"

"Because I--"

f.a.n.n.y stopped short, puckering her forehead.

"I don't know whether I can explain it, Ellen; but I notice it every time I am with her. There's something--"

"Good gracious, Fan! She must have hypnotized you."

"Be quiet, Ellen, I'm trying to think just how it happened. She didn't say so very much--just sat down and watched me, while I sewed rings on the curtains. But the first thing I knew, I piped up and said: 'Do you really want that old furniture of mine so much?' And she said-- Well, no matter what she said; it was more the way she looked. I guess I'd have given her the eyes out of my head, or any old thing."

"That's just what I told you," interrupted Ellen. "There are people like that. Don't you remember that horrid old what's-his-name in 'Trilby'?"

"Don't be silly, Ellen," said f.a.n.n.y rebukingly. "Well, I took her up to my room and showed her my bed and bureau and washstand. There were some chairs, too; mother got them all for my room at that old auction we've heard so much about; I was just a baby then. I told her about it. She sat down in my rocking-chair by the window and just looked at the things, without saying a word, at first. After a while, she said: 'Your mother used to come in and tuck the blankets around you nice and warm in the night; didn't she?'"

"'Why, I suppose she did,' I told her. 'Mother's room is right next to mine.' ... Ellen, there was a look in her eyes--I can't tell you about it--you wouldn't understand. And, anyway, I didn't care a bit about the furniture. 'You can have it,' I said. 'I don't want it, and I don't see why you do; it isn't pretty any more.' I thought she was going to cry, for a minute. Then such a soft gladness came over her face. She came up to me and took both my hands in hers; but all she said was 'Thank you.'"

"And did she pay you a whole lot for it?" inquired Ellen sordidly.

"I didn't think anything about that part of it," said f.a.n.n.y. "Jim carried it all over the next day, with a lot of old stuff mother had.

Jim says she's had a man from Gren.o.ble working in the barn for weeks and weeks, putting everything in order. My old set was painted over, with all the little garlands and blue ribbons, like new."

"But how much--" persisted Ellen. "She must have paid you a lot for it."

"I didn't ask mother," said f.a.n.n.y. "I didn't want to know. I've got a new set; it's real pretty. You must come over and see my room, now it's all finished."

What f.a.n.n.y did not tell Ellen was that after Lydia's departure she had unexpectedly come upon the photograph of the picnic group under a book on her table. The faded picture with its penciled words had meant much to f.a.n.n.y. She had not forgotten, she told herself, she could never forget, that day in June, before the unlooked-for arrival of the strange girl, whose coming had changed everything. Once more she lived over in imagination that perfect day, with its white clouds floating high in the blue, and the breath of clover on the wind. She and Wesley Elliot had gone quietly away into the woods after the boisterous merriment of the picnic luncheon.

"It's safe enough, as long as we follow the stream," f.a.n.n.y had a.s.sured him, piloting the way over fallen logs and through dense thickets of pine and laurel, further and further away from the sounds of shrill laughter and the smoky smell of the camp fire, where the girls were still busy toasting marshmallows on long sticks for the youths who hovered in the rear.

The minister had expressed a keen desire to hear the rare notes of the hermit thrush; and this romantic quest led them deep into the forest. The girl paused at last on the brink of a pool, where they could see the shadowy forms of brook trout gliding through the clear, cold water.

"If we are quiet and listen," she told him, "I think we shall hear the hermit."

On a carpet of moss, thicker and softer than a deep-piled rug, they sat down. Not a sound broke the stillness but the gurgle of water and the soft soughing of the wind through great tree tops. The minister bared his head, as if aware of the holy spirit of solitude in the place. Neither spoke nor stirred; but the girl's heart beat loud--so loud she feared he might hear, and drew her little cape closer above her breast. Then all at once, ringing down the somber aisles of the forest came the song of the solitary bird, exquisite, lonely, filled with an indescribable, yearning sweetness. The man's eloquent eyes met her own in a long look.

"Wonderful!" he murmured.

His hand sought and closed upon hers for an instant. Then without further speech they returned to the picnickers. Someone--she thought it was Joyce Fulsom--snapped the joyous group at the moment of the departure. It had been a week later, that he had written the words "Lest we forget"--with a look and smile which set the girl's pulses fluttering. But that was in June. Now it was September. f.a.n.n.y, crouched by the window where Lydia Orr had been that afternoon, stared coldly at the picture. It was downright silly to have carried it about with her. She had lost it somewhere--pulling out her handkerchief, perhaps. Had Lydia Orr found and brought it back? She ardently wished she knew; but in the meanwhile--

She tore the picture deliberately across, thereby accomplishing unhindered what Wesley Elliot had attempted several days before; then she burned the fragments in the quick spurt of a lighted match....

Lest we forget, indeed!

Chapter XVII

The day after the sewing society Ellen Dix went up to her room, after hurriedly washing the dinner dishes. It was still hot, but a vague haze had crept across the brazen sky since morning. Ellen's room looked out into cool green depths of trees, so that on a cloudy day it was almost too dark to examine the contents of the closet opposite its two east windows.

It was a pretty room, freshly papered and painted, as were many rooms in Brookville since the sale of the old Bolton properties. Nearly every one had scrimped and saved and gone without so long that the sudden influx of money into empty pockets had acted like wine in a hungry stomach. Henry Daggett had thrice replenished his stock of wall papers; window shades and curtaining by the yard had been in constant demand for weeks; bright colored chintzes and gay flowered cretonnes were apparently a prime necessity in many households. As for paper hangers and painters, few awaited their unhurried movements. It was easy for anybody with energy and common sense to wield a paintbrush; and old paper could be sc.r.a.ped off and fresh strips applied by a simple application of flour paste and the fundamental laws of physics. One improvement clamors loudly for another, and money was still coming in from the most unexpected sources, so new furniture was bought to take the place of unprized chairs and tables long ago salvaged from the Bolton wreck. And since Mrs. Deacon Whittle's dream parlor, with its marble-tops and plush-upholstered furniture, had become a solid reality, other parlors burgeoned forth in multi-colored magnificence. Scraggy old shrubs were trimmed; gra.s.s was cut in unkempt dooryards; flowers were planted--and all because of the lavish display of such improvements at Bolton House, as "that queer Orr girl" persisted in calling it; thereby flying in the face of public opinion and local prejudice in a way which soured the milk of human kindness before the cream of grat.i.tude could rise.

Everybody agreed that there was something mysterious, if not entirely unnatural in the conduct of the young woman. n.o.body likes unsolved riddles for long. The moment or century of suspense may prove interesting--even exciting; but human intelligence resents the Sphynx.

Ellen Dix was intensely human. She was, moreover, jealous--or supposed she was, which often amounts to the same thing. And because of this she was looking over the dresses, hanging on pegs along her closet wall, with a demurely puckered brow. The pink muslin was becoming, but old-fashioned; the pale yellow trimmed with black velvet might get soiled with the dust, and she wasn't sure it would wash. She finally selected a white dress of a new and becoming style, attired in which she presently stood before her mirror adjusting a plain Panama hat, trimmed simply with a black ribbon. Not for nothing had Ellen used her handsome dark eyes. She set the hat over her black hair at exactly the right angle, skewering it securely in place with two silver pins, also severely simple in their style and quite unlike the glittering rhinestone variety offered for sale in Henry Daggett's general store.

"I'm going out for a while, mother," she said, as she pa.s.sed the room where Mrs. Dix was placidly sewing carpet rags out of materials prodigiously increased of late, since both women had been able to afford several new dresses.

"Going to f.a.n.n.y's?" inquired Mrs. Dix.... "Seems to me you're starting out pretty early, dear, in all this heat. If you'll wait till sundown, I'll go with you. I haven't seen their parlor since they got the new curtains up."