Hidden Creek Part 16

She had spent some of the rather large pay she drew upon coverings of French blue for the plush furniture, upon a dainty yellow porcelain tea-set, upon little oddments of decoration. The wall-paper and carpet were inoffensive, the quietest probably in Millings, so that her efforts had met with some success. There was a lounge with cushions, there were some little volumes, a picture of her father, a bowl of pink wild roses, a vase of vivid cactus flowers. Some sketches in water-color--Marcus's most happy medium--had been tacked up. A piece of tapestry decorated the back of the chair Sheila had chosen. In the dim light it all had an air of quiet richness. It seemed a room transplanted to Millings from some finer soil.

d.i.c.kie looked at the tapestry because it was the nearest he dared come to looking at Sheila. His hands and knees shook with the terrible beating of his heart. It was not right, thought d.i.c.kie resentfully, that any feeling should take hold of a fellow and shake and terrify him so. He threw himself back suddenly and folded his arms tight across his chest.

"You wanted to see me about something?" he asked.

"Yes. I'll give you some tea first."

d.i.c.kie's lips fell apart. He said neither yea nor nay, but watched dazedly her preparations, her concoctions, her advance upon him with a yellow teacup and a wafer. He did not stand up to take it and he knew too late that this was a blunder. He tingled with shame.

Sheila went back to her chair and sipped from her own cup.

"I've been angry with you for three months now, d.i.c.kie."

"Yes'm," he said meekly.

"That's the longest I've ever been angry with any one in my life. Once I hated a teacher for two weeks, and it almost killed me. But what I felt about her was--was weakness to the way I've felt about you."

"Yes'm," again said d.i.c.kie. His tea was terribly hot and burnt his tongue, so that tears stood in his eyes.

"And I suppose you've been angry with me."

"No, ma'am."

Sheila was not particularly pleased with this gentle reply. "Why, d.i.c.kie, you _know_ you have!"

"No, ma'am."

"Then why haven't you spoken to me? Why have you looked that way at me?"

"I don't speak to folks that don't speak to me," said d.i.c.kie, lifting the wafer as though its extreme lightness was faintly repulsive to him.

"Well," said Sheila bitterly, "you haven't been alone in your att.i.tude.

Very few people have been speaking to me. My only loyal friends are Mr.

Hudson and Amelia Plecks and Carthy and Jim. Jim made no promises about being my guardian, but--"

"But he _is_ your guardian?" d.i.c.kie drawled the question slightly. His gift of faint irony and impersonal detachment flicked Sheila's temper as it had always flicked his father's.

"Jim is my friend," Sheila maintained in defiance of a still, small voice. "He has given me a pony and has taken me riding--"

"Yes'm, I've saw you--" d.i.c.kie's English was peculiarly fallible in moments of emotion. Now he seemed determined to cut Sheila's description short. "Say, Sheila, did you send for me to tell me about this lovely friendship of yours with Jim?"

Sheila set her cup down on the window-sill. She did not want to lose her temper with d.i.c.kie. She brushed a wafer crumb from her knee.

"No, d.i.c.kie, I didn't. I sent for you because, after all, though I've been so angry with you, I've known in my heart that--that--you are a loyal friend and that you tell the truth."

This admission was an effort. Sheila's pride suffered to the point of bringing a dim sound of tears into her voice....

d.i.c.kie did not speak. He too put down his tea-cup and his wafer side by side on the floor near his chair. He put his elbows on his knees and bent his head down as though he were examining his thin, locked hands.

Sheila waited for a long minute; then she said angrily, "Aren't you glad I think that of you?"

"Yes'm." d.i.c.kie's voice was indistinct.

"You don't seem glad."

d.i.c.kie made some sort of struggle. Sheila could not quite make out its nature. "I'm glad. I'm so glad that it kind of--hurts," he said.

"Oh!" That at least was pleasant intelligence to a wounded pride.

Fortified, Sheila began the real business of the interview. "You are not an artist, d.i.c.kie," she said, "and you don't understand why your father asked me to work at The Aura nor why I wanted to work there. It was your entire inability to understand--"

"Entire inability--" whispered d.i.c.kie as though he were taking down the phrase with an intention of looking it up later.

This confused Sheila. "Your--your entire inability," she repeated rapidly, "your--your entire inability--"

"Yes'm. I've got that."

"--To understand that made me so angry that day." Sheila was glad to be rid of that obstruction. She had planned this speech rather carefully in the watches of the wakeful, feverish morning which had been her night.

"You seemed to be trying to pull your father and me down to some lower spiritual level of your own."

"Lower spiritual level," repeated d.i.c.kie.

"d.i.c.kie, stop that, please!"

He looked up, startled by her sharpness. "Stop what, ma'am?"

"Saying things after me. It's insufferable."

"Insufferable--oh, I suppose it is. You're usin' so many words, Sheila. I kind of forgot there was so many words as you're makin' use of this afternoon."

"Oh, d.i.c.kie, d.i.c.kie! Can't you see how miserable I am! I am so unhappy and--and scared, and you--you are making fun of me."

At that, spoken in a changed and quavering key of helplessness, d.i.c.kie hurried to her, knelt down beside her chair, and took her hands.

"Sheila! I'll do anything!"

His presence, his boyish, quivering touch, so withheld from anything but boyishness, even the impulsive humility of his thin, kneeling body, were inexpressibly soothing, inexpressibly comforting. She did not draw away her hands. She let them cling to his.

"d.i.c.kie, will you answer me, quite truthfully and simply, without any explaining or softening, please, if I ask you a--a dreadful question?"

"Yes, dear."

"I'm not sure if it is a dreadful question, but--but I'm afraid it is."

"Don't worry. Ask me. Surely, I'll answer you the truth without any fixin's."

Her hands clung a little closer. She was silent, gathering courage. He felt her slim knees quiver.

"What do they mean, d.i.c.kie," she whispered with a wan look, "when they call me--'Hudson's Queen'?"