Four Girls and a Compact Part 8

Laura Ann suspected, but for reasons of her own kept her own counsel.

She had begun to suspect, when Jane Cotton's Sam brought the little fish. At that time the "reasons of her own" had begun to influence her and she had omitted to mention to Billy and T.O. that the boy had stood on the doorsteps in earnest conversation with Loraine. Mentioning it to Billy might not, indeed, have mattered, since Billy was already an "outsider." But Loraine might not want T.O. to know, anyway.

It was significant that Laura Ann, in going in and out, now chose to ignore the gayly-illuminated placard that swung on the door--that she herself had adorned and hung there. But she did not go in and out as much now; for whole mornings she slipped away to a little attic room upstairs and busied herself alone.

It was getting grievously near the time to go back to the great city again. Emmeline Camp was coming back then.

All but T.O. mourned audibly the rapidly lessening days, but T.O. made no useless laments. One day she surprised them.

"Girls, I _want_ to go back!" she announced. "I shall be ready when it's time--now anybody can say what anybody pleases. Scoff at me--do.

I expect it! But I'm getting homesick to see a street-car and a--a policeman! It's lovely and peaceful here, but I've had my fill of it now--I want to go home and b.u.mp into crowds and hear big, stirry noises.

It's different with you girls--you weren't born in the city; you didn't play with street-cars and policemen and get sung to sleep by the noises!

I was tired--tired--and now I'm rested. I've had a perfectly beautiful time, but I shall be ready to go back. Honestly, girls, it would break my heart not to!"

It was so much like T.O., Billy said, to keep all her feelings to herself and then suddenly spring them on people like that, and take people's breath away. Billy did not keep things to herself.

Jane Cotton came up the kitchen path one day when all but Loraine were sitting on the doorsteps--Loraine had strolled nonchalantly down the street as her afternoon habit was.

"Well, I've found out!" announced Jane Cotton. She was beaming; her sallow face was oddly cleared and lighted--her lips trembled with eagerness to deliver her news. "I've _found out_! Where's the rest o' you?" She counted them over. "It's the rest o' you I want--well, you tell her I've found out. Tell her I hardly slept a wink last night, I was so happy! Tell her I _bless_ her, and I know the Lord will.

They didn't want me to know yet but I couldn't help finding out. And they won't mind when they know how happy it's made me--oh, I ain't afraid but he'll pa.s.s this time! I know he will--I know it! You tell her she's saved my boy." And without further delay the slender figure turned and walked jubilantly down the path. It was as if she marched to the melody of the joy in her heart.

They looked at each other silently, then at the Wicked Compact behind them. There did not seem any explanation needed.

"Another one dropped," murmured T.O. sighingly. But Laura Ann said nothing.

CHAPTER VI.

Laura Ann stole quietly away and went upstairs to the little attic room.

Close by the window was a rough little easel arrangement with a picture on it. Laura Ann stood regarding it thoughtfully. "I wonder"--she smiled at the whimsy of the thought--"I wonder if it looks like Amelia," she murmured.

It was not a wonderful picture. No committee would have hung it on a "line." There were rather glaring errors in it of draughtsmanship and coloring. But the face of the girl in it was appealingly sweet--brown hair, blue eyes, little round chin. Laura Ann had not dared to put in the dimples.

"Dimples need a master," she said, "besides, they only show when you smile, and I don't believe Amelia smiles very often!"

She sat down and took up a brush. The picture was nearly done, but she found touches to be added here and there. There might be a stray lock--there, like that. And a little bit more shade under the chin, and the wistful droop of the mouth relieved, oh, a very little bit! Amelia looked so serious.

"Poor little thing! Well, it's a serious matter to be a dream-child, with not an ounce of good red blood in your veins."

Laura Ann meant to slip back after they had started for the station, on the last day, and hang the picture in the little sunny dining-room. She did not want the girls to know there was a picture. But still--a new thought had begun to obtrude itself unwelcomely. Was painting Amelia's portrait a breach, too, of the Compact? She had undertaken it as a little "offering" to Mrs. Camp, to show her own individual grat.i.tude for her own share of the dear little green cottage all these beautiful weeks--T.O. had said Mrs. Camp had longed for a picture. But the fact that it had taken many patient hours of work "unto others," was not to be overlooked. If it had broken the rules of the Wicked Compact, and she went back to the B-Hive without letting the girls know of it--oh, hum!

of course that would be another "wicked compact"! She would have to let them know--and she didn't want to let them know--oh, dear!

Suddenly Laura Ann dropped her paints and gave herself up to laughter.

She had remembered that only T.O.--Thomasia O.--would be left now in the B-Hive! For all the rest had broken the Compact. Thomasia O., living all alone in the dear, shabby little rooms, presented a funny picture, for of them all she was least fitted to live alone. Even Billy could do better.

"The rest of us will live together," laughed Laura Ann. "There's nothing to prevent that, if we live outside the old B-Hive. We'll start a new B-Hive! Poor Thomasia O.!"

They would miss T.O. very much indeed--well, they could invite her in to tea and keep her all night! In spite of the wicked old Compact, they would keep together. "And we'll never," vowed Laura Ann for them all, "sign any more nefarious bonds!"

She hung the picture of Amelia on the wall when they were all away, and then went away herself. She stayed away until nearly dark. Thomasia O.

went to meet her.

"I knew it all the time," she said quietly, without preface of any kind.

"It's a perfect likeness."

"You knew it?" said Laura Ann.

"Yes, I was prowling 'round one day, to see what attics were like, and I found Amelia. Only her hair and her eyes, then, but I knew her. I'm so glad poor Mrs. Camp will have that picture to help her bear her troubles!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE PICTURE WAS NEARLY DONE.]

"Poor"--"troubles." This was all enigma to Laura Ann. But she wisely waited to be enlightened. She had divined the moment she saw T.O. that the girl was unusually disturbed. This was true.

"I've had two letters--the first one came three weeks ago from her brother. I didn't want to spoil your good time, telling sad things, so I kept it to myself--Laura Ann, that woman _mothered_ me!"

Laura Ann stood still. "Do you mean Mrs. Camp? Is she--dead?" But the other did not seem to hear. She ran on in a low, troubled voice.

"She bathed my ankle, and said 'My dear,' and waited on me, when she'd never set eyes on me in her life before. How did she know but that I was an--an _impostor_? And she let us have her dear little house to live in--"

"Yes, yes--oh, yes, she let _me_ live in it!" Laura Ann interposed.

"You ought to have told us she was dead."

"She isn't dead. She's fallen downstairs and broken her hip. The doctor says it's so bad she won't ever walk again without crutches, her brother wrote. He said he wanted her to stay and live with him, but she wouldn't listen to it. She wanted to come home as soon as she possibly could. So she's coming--he's coming with her, to 'start' her."

T.O. fingered a letter in her hand in a nervous, undecided way, as if she were half inclined to read it to the other girl. It was not Emmeline Camp's brother's letter. It had come ten days ago, and she herself knew it by heart. How many, many times she had read it! She had cried over the wistful cry in it, and over Amelia's death--for the letter said that Amelia was dead.

"My dear," it said, "I've lost Amelia--you'd think she would have stood by her mother in her trouble, wouldn't you? But she hasn't been near me since. It seems queer--perhaps after people break their hips they can't 'feel' anything else but their hips! Perhaps it breaks their imaginations. Anyway, Amelia's dead, my dear. Sometimes I think mebbe I'd ought to be, too--a lone little woman like me, without a chick or a child. Old women with children can afford to tumble downstairs, but not my kind of old women. John is real good. He wants me to stay here, but I can't--I can't, I can't, my dear! I've got to be where I can limp out to the old pump and the gate and the orchard, on my crutches--I've got to see the old hills I was born in, and Old '61 marching past the house, and the old neighbors--I've got to die at _home_, my dear. So John can't keep me. I wish I was going to find you there. I keep thinking how beautiful it would be. You'd be out to the gate waiting, the way people's daughters wait for them. And mebbe you'd have the kettle all hot and we'd have a cup of tea together just as if I was the mother and you was--Amelia! All the way home I should be thinking about your being there. It's queer, isn't it, you went limping in that gate first, and now it's me? A good many things are queer, and some are kind of desolate. I've decided, my dear, that daughters have to be the kind that are born, to stay by a body in trouble. They have to be made of flesh and blood, my dear--and Amelia wasn't!

"I've written this a little to a time, laying on my back. Mebbe you won't ever read it. Mebbe I won't ever see you again, but you will remember, my dear, that I've loved you ever since I took off your stocking and saw your poor, sprained ankle. If the Lord would perform a miracle for me, I'd ask for it to be the bringing of Amelia to life and finding her you."

T.O. did not show the letter to Laura Ann. She put it in her pocket again, and they walked home slowly, talking of Mrs. Camp's sad accident.

At the supper table it was voted that they all write a joint letter of sympathy to her, and express, at the same time, their united and separate thanks for her kindness to them in lending them her home.

Loraine wrote the letter, Laura Ann copied it, they all signed it. Into cold pen-and-ink words they tried to diffuse warmth and grat.i.tude and sympathy, but the result was not very satisfying, as such results rarely are. Still, it was all they could do. Billy and Laura Ann went off to mail it.

"Do you begin to feel lonesome?" laughed Loraine softly, as she and T.O.

sat on the steps in the dark. "Thinking of being left all alone in the Hive, I mean? The rest of us begin to feel lonesome, thinking of being left out! We had a grist of good times all together, didn't we? Remember the little 'treats' when you always brought home olives, and Billy sage cheese? Laura Ann used to change about--sometimes eclairs, sometimes sauerkraut! Always sardines for me. Oh, _do_ you remember the treat with a capital 'T,' when we had ice cream and angel cake? And Billy wanted to divide the hole so as not to waste anything--there, I don't believe you've heard a word I said!"

She had not, for she was not there. Loraine put out her hand in the darkness, but could not find her. She had slipped away unceremoniously.

She was down in the road, walking fast and hard. The battle was on again.

"I thought I had it all decided--I _did_ have! Why do I have to decide it over again?" she was saying stormily to herself. "I said I'd do it, and I'm going to do it--what am I down here fighting in the dark for?" But still she fought on.

It was so still about her, and with all her girl's heart she longed for noise again--car-bells and rattling wheels and din of men's voices.