Grace Harlowe's Golden Summer Part 14

"You may turn it toward the wall if you like." Grace sighed as she tore her gaze from the painting. "It's rather heavy, though, and you will have a hard time reaching up to it."

"Oh, that's nothing. There's a step ladder on the back porch. I noticed it the last time we were over here." Elfreda hurried from the room to wrest the ladder from its lowly haunt. Returning she set it in place before the painting and climbed the four steps to the top with joyful alacrity.

Grace followed the movements of her energetic companion with moody interest. She was glad yet sorry to watch the change Elfreda was about to make.

"I can't reverse it up here," grumbled Elfreda. "I'm afraid of dropping it. I'll have to get down from the ladder with it, then turn it around."

Carefully descending, she laid the so-called Jonah face down on the top step of the ladder, paused for an instant before completing her task.

"Oh, look!" Grace cried out, staring hard at the back of the picture.

Standing out on it in letters of blue a single sentence had been pencilled.

Elfreda peered curiously at the writing. "True love laughs at Fate," she read. "That's odd! Who in the world wrote that?"

"It was Tom." Grace drew a long breath. "Seeing his writing gave me a queer thrill for a minute. It was just as though out of the silence he had suddenly spoken. Then I remembered. When the painting was unwrapped we stood looking at it. Tom had a blue pencil in one hand. He had been checking off a list of our belongings. I said that the painting was beautiful but sinister, and that I hoped that no such terrible figure of Fate would ever overtake us. Tom laughed and said he would put a spell on the picture. So he took the blue pencil and scribbled that sentence on the back of it. Then he hung it on the wall. I never recalled the incident until this moment. I'm glad you suggested reversing 'Fate,'

Elfreda. I'd rather have it so. The very sight of his handwriting is a comfort."

"It's an omen," Elfreda declared solemnly, her plump face alive with superst.i.tion. "Yes, sir; it's an omen. I can see that it's a fore-runner of good luck."

CHAPTER XVIII

A GLEAM OF HOPE

Inspirited by Elfreda's emphatic prediction of good fortune, Grace left Haven Home in a livelier frame of mind than she had exhibited when entering the house. As they strolled down the walk she was further cheered by the sight of a single, half-opened rose, flaunting its crimson but lonely glory from a late-blooming bush. Elfreda, who was bent on lightening Grace's mood, soberly a.s.sured her that it was merely another lucky sign. Carefully plucking the fragrant token of good fortune, Grace breathed a prayer that this might indeed be true.

Tackling her role of comforter with a will, Elfreda enlivened the walk home with numerous accounts of signs and wonders which had visited friends and acquaintances of hers as heralds of great good fortune. "Of course, I'm only telling you what I've heard," she said humorously. "I can't say that I've ever had any direct manifestations that good luck was signaling to me. Once I went to a bazaar and paid a dollar for the privilege of drawing a number from a hat. I had a hunch that I'd win something. I also had my eye on a hand-painted chocolate pot, but my lucky number drew a toy velocipede instead. Still I was lucky to draw anything. Then another time I found a horseshoe in the road. I hung it over the front door and next day it fell down on Pa's head when he was coming into the house. That was a very unlucky day for me." Elfreda giggled reminiscently. "Pa raged like a lion. He declared I did it purposely and pitched the horseshoe into the street. I let it stay there. I wasn't much impressed with its lucky qualities. Just the same it didn't cure me of my belief in signs."

Grace's ready laughter held a merry note that was intensely gratifying to the narrator of the tragic horseshoe episode. She had succeeded even better than she had expected, was Elfreda's reflection. Then, too, the unexpected sight of Tom Gray's handwriting on the back of the painting, coupled with the finding of the rose, had brought a look of new animation to Grace's too-calm features.

"I am afraid I shall have to take back my promise not to go to Haven Home again soon," was Grace's half apologetic comment as the two emerged from Upton Wood upon the highway that wound its way from the outskirts of Oakdale through the open country beyond the town. "I feel now as though I wanted to go there often, just to read Tom's message. I like to think of it as a message. Strange that I never recalled the incident until to-day."

"It was not intended that you should," maintained Elfreda. "As for taking back your promise, you never really made one. If I were you, though, I'd stay away from that house as long as I could. But if I found that I was determined to go there, then I'd go."

"That is very wise and elastic counsel," a.s.serted Grace. "It can be stretched to cover all my moods and yearnings."

Arm in arm, the two friends swung briskly along the highway, following it until they reached the wide tree-lined street in which the Harlowe residence stood. When within a short distance of the house, their glance became simultaneously fixed on two childish forms racing toward them at full speed.

"Here come Elizabeth and Anna May Angerell." An indulgent smile curved Grace's lips. "They have spied us from afar. They are the dearest little girls. I can't begin to tell you what a comfort they've been to me this summer. They're such joyous youngsters. They fairly bubble with happiness. What a wonderful estate childhood is, Elfreda. Yet we never realize it until long after it has pa.s.sed away. I've often wished I could go back and live it over, even for one day."

"I'd rather be grown up," disagreed Elfreda. "I never had a very good time when I was little, because I was always grieving over being a prize fat child. The way of the baby elephant is pretty th.o.r.n.y. Well, well!"

she exclaimed playfully as the two little girls, laughing gleefully, ended their run by flinging themselves ecstatically upon herself and Grace. "What's the meaning of this onslaught? If we hadn't been very large, st.u.r.dy persons we might have tumbled over like nine-pins."

"We saw you coming away up the street," joyfully announced Anna May. "We just had to run. We've been watching at our gate for you quite a while."

"There's company come to see you, Miss Harlowe," burst forth Elizabeth excitedly. "You can never guess who. It's somebody you've known for a long time, but it's somebody you don't see very often. We aren't going to tell you who's on the porch. We want you to be surprised. Do hurry as fast as ever you can, for the person is anxious to see you."

"We thought we'd tell you the minute we saw you, and then we thought it would be more fun not to," explained Anna May wriggling with enjoyment of the great secret.

Elfreda and Grace exchanged lightning glances as they quickened their pace, a devoted worshipper hanging to an arm of each. Could Elfreda's prophesy of good fortune have been thus so quickly fulfilled?

"It's not Mr. Gray." Elizabeth had remembered that long ago Grace had answered her eager inquiry for "nice Mr. Tom" by saying that he had gone on a journey from which he might return at any time. She had remembered, too, how sad her dear Miss Grace had looked when she told her. When the two children had posted themselves at the gate to watch for Grace, Elizabeth had remarked confidentially to Anna May, "If Mr. Gray was sitting on the porch waiting for Miss Harlowe, we couldn't surprise her.

We'd just tell her straight out. We wouldn't want to make her guess that, would we?" And Anna May had replied: "No, siree. We ought to tell her the first thing that it's not him, so that she won't look disappointed when she sees who the company is."

The startled light that had leaped into Grace's eyes died as Elizabeth frankly excluded Tom's name from the guessing contest. She inwardly rebuked herself for thus clutching at every straw which the wind blew in her direction. On catching a first glimpse of the veranda, she cried out sharply. Relaxing her light hold on Elfreda's arm and dropping Elizabeth's hand, she darted to the gate, slammed it behind her and raced up the walk to the steps, an animated flash of blue on the autumn landscape.

"Jean!" she almost shouted. "Where, oh, where did you come from?" The next instant she held one of the hunter's rough hands in both hers, half laughing, half crying.

"Mam'selle Grace, it is of a truth the great 'appiness to see you," was the old man's sincere greeting, his small black eyes shining with feeling. "Jean has come far. Long way," he waved a comprehensive hand toward the west. "I come because I hav' learn that you hav' the trouble."

"But how long have you been in Oakdale and who told you about Tom?"

questioned Grace anxiously. "We have gone to your cabin in Upton Wood several times, in the hope that you had returned. The first time we went we saw the sign on the door."

"I put him there," nodded Jean, "because I go 'way for long time. Many weeks I stay in Canada. Only to-day I come back. Then----"

"Did some one in Oakdale tell you Tom was missing?" interrogated Grace, cutting almost impatiently into Jean's narrative.

"No, Mam'selle. Only I hav' speak the _bon jour_ to my frien's as I come through the town. Some days have pa.s.s since firs' I see this." Jean pulled a newspaper from a pocket of his weather-stained coat. Spreading it open and laboriously perusing the first page, he tendered it to Grace, pointing out a column in it.

Grace needed but to glance at it to recognize it as a copy of the newspaper recording Tom Gray's disappearance, which Hippy had brought her. "How did you ever happen to come across this, Jean?" Her query held a note of positive awe.

"It is of a truth strange," admitted Jean. "W'en I stay long time in Canada I come back to this country to Minnesota. I go to Duluth, w'ere I hav' ol' frien'. I spen' two days by him an' talk about many t'ings w'ich 'appen to us long ago w'en we hunt together. He tell me about a young man who come up north an' get los'. n.o.body can fin'. He show me this paper an' say, 'W'en I read this I t'ink you, Jean, can fin' this young man, because you great hunter.' Then I look an' see the young man is M'sieu' Tom, an' the paper is ol' one. So I leave my pack skins wit'

my frien' and come here quick on the train, because I know Mam'selle Grace will tell all. Then I go fin' M'sieu' Tom," ended Jean, wagging his gray head with deep determination.

"Talk about miracles!" burst forth Elfreda Briggs. "It's the most remarkable thing I ever knew to happen." Elfreda had lost no time in overtaking Grace on the veranda. The Angerell children had not followed, however. They had trotted on home, well satisfied with the result of their mission.

"It is truly marvelous. And to think that Mother isn't at home this afternoon to hear it. It was splendid in you to wait here for me, Jean."

Grace turned a glowing face toward the old hunter. "As for your going to find Tom, I am _sure_ that you _will_ find him. I was so amazed at seeing you, I forgot to introduce you to my friend Miss Briggs. She knows all about you, already."

Elfreda extended a prompt hand of welcome to the intrepid old trapper, who grasped it warmly, saying: "The frien's of Mam'selle Grace are also the frien's of ol' Jean."

"Jean, before I tell you all I know about Tom's disappearance, I think it would be better for the three of us to go on to Mrs. Gray's home and talk things over. She will be so glad to see you. She has suffered dreadfully. We have all suffered. But I feel now as though at last the light had begun to break."

CHAPTER XIX

THE LETTER

"And that is all the information that we can give you about Tom, Jean."

Grace sighed as she ended the recital of barren facts relating to the vanishing of the man she loved.

"It is very scant information on which to proceed," deplored Mrs. Gray.

"I confess that I made a mistake in keeping our trouble a secret. Since that newspaper spread the news abroad I have done my best to amend the error. I have seen to it that the sheriff of the county in which the camp is located took up the matter. I have also offered a large reward for the finding of Tom, or the positive proof that he is dead." Her voice dropped despairingly on the last word.