Life at High Tide Part 25

Norah could hear her chirping on, happily, while she laid away her hat in the bandbox and girt herself with a protecting ap.r.o.n.

The talk turned her cold. "It ain't only for myself I want it," she declared to an invisible suggester, "though I _do_ want something real. I never had a real gold chain, or even a real gold breastpin, in my life--or a ring. Oh, I did want one!" She looked scornfully at the gay prism gleaming from her pretty fingers (fingers as daintily kept as any lady's); they had flashed like rubies and sapphires and diamonds from the white velvet drifts of the show-case in the great department store where she bought them when she went to the city; but now they were cheapened and dimmed by her memories of the "real"

watch. She peeled them roughly from her hands.

She had no morsel of news ready for the hungry ears awaiting her. To her mother's questions she answered briefly that the only thing she heard was that Freda Berglund would have a great number of new votes in the evening.

Mrs. Murray tossed back a confident: _"Let_ her! I know some boys that's going to go this night, with a hundred dollars in their pockets each of 'em. Let her bring on her votes, I say. It's a good cause gits the money. But it's you'll be wearin' the watch next Sunday, and not Freda Berglund!"

Norah bit her lip. She was not used to silence, but she sewed silently (Norah, who was so sweet-tempered that she had been known to work a whole day with a machine that skipped st.i.tches, never getting cross, and stopping four times to wrestle with the bobbin before she subdued it). Her mother did not know what to make of her. Her own nickering complaints of Norah's "glumness" sank into dumb anxiety. She stole timid glances at the bowed black head and the frowning black brows; after a glance she would sigh, a prolonged, patient sigh. There are times when a sigh is to strained nerves like a blast of hot air on a burn. Norah jumped up and ran away from her own irritation before it exploded. She made a pretext of looking at her skirt (which was new) in the parlor cheval-gla.s.s; but in the parlor, behind the door, she did not give a glance to the picture in the mirror. The "pire gla.s.s,"

as Mrs. Murray called it, was a relic of the family's better days when Norah's father was alive and kept a grocery-store and owned a horse and wagon; its florid frame of black-walnut etched with gilt, its tall mirror, very little marred by water-spots on the back, long had been reverently admired by Norah; it showed that the family had "had things"; but she pa.s.sed it without a glance, just as she pa.s.sed the cabinet organ decked in flowered plush which she had bought with her own savings. Never until that day had she stood in the parlor without a sensation of pleasure over its fresh paint and paper and the many gilt frames on the wall; but to-day she went, unnoting, to the crayon picture of a man, and looked through tears at a plain, smiling, kindly face.

"I wish you hadn't died," was all she said; but the tears rolled down her cheeks and her frame shook with sobs that she forced to be noiseless. At last she dried her wet cheeks and tossed her head. "I don't see that _I_ need do _anything_," she muttered, while she hurried round the house outside, in order that she might reach the bedroom and efface the traces of her weeping. "I'm a great fool to think of doing anything," she declared. "I didn't put myself up, and I won't put myself down--and disappoint mother and all my friends. It's none of my business." Therewith she a.s.sumed a light and cheerful air, which she carried securely through the remainder of the afternoon.

The fifth evening of St. Kunagunda's fair opened with a stifling crowd. Protestants, Catholics, and Germans who never had seen the interior of an American church jostled the buyers at the booths, and the faithful dutifully ate turkey and cold rolls for the fifth time at the supper-tables. The outsiders did not linger at the booths; they were come to vote or to witness the voting, and their jests and comments buzzed noisily above the talk. Every moment the note of the buzz grew more hostile. More than a few ears were tingling; at every turn there were scowls and sullen eyes and ugly smiles. The matrons'

cheeks were burning; their eyes flashed; every now and again one of their voices shrilled defiantly above the hoa.r.s.e hum of the crowd. The young Irish girls were laughing, enjoying the excitement, and admiring the young men flaunting their banknotes with the swing of their father's shillalahs. The young German girls curled their lips and whispered together. There was a significant herding of the contending races apart, while the visiting Anglo-Saxons wore an air of safe and dispa.s.sionate enjoyment, such as pertains of right to the boy on the fence waiting for the fight.

Norah Murray had a circle of young men about her, who laughed rapturously at her sallies. She wore her chain and a new rhinestone brooch and all her rings. She looked very handsome with her flushed cheeks and bright eyes. She raised her voice to be heard above the din. Mrs. Murray's new bonnet nodded its red roses and black ostrich tips among the lace handkerchiefs and embroidery of the fancy table--she being enthroned on the step-ladder for lack of other seat--and her delighted eyes ran from her daughter to the voting blackboard. She waved a spangled fan and smiled buoyantly at every familiar face, whether turned towards her in recognition or not. Mrs.

O'Brien, who had slipped away from the kitchen to be sure the lamps were not smoking, stopped a moment beside her. Mrs. O'Brien looked tired and worried when she let her own smile of greeting slip from her face. A tinge of the same expression was on Father Kelly's kind old countenance, but the Vicar-General's features were as inscrutable as a doctor's. He had made a genial procession through the room, distributing the merited praise at each booth, and appreciably softening the atmosphere by his presence. He halted opposite Norah's party. Father Kelly's gaze grew anxious. "I mind me," said he--"I mind me of the child when her father died--not six she was--holding her mother's hand, not weeping herself, the creature, just stroking her mother's hand and petting her; and holding the baby, the one that's off to the seminary now. Her father was an honest man. He failed once, and then paid every dollar with interest--an _honest_ man. I mind me of little Norah at her first communion--"

The Vicar-General smiled. "Kelly, you're a good fellow," said he, not removing his glance from Norah's excited face.

"She'll come out all right, all right," said Father Kelly, with the hammer-like gesture of his right fist which his congregation knew well for a storm signal. "She's a good girl. This is no fault of hers, this foolish contraption to make money; I'm one with Conner, there; but the girls aren't to blame. Freda's a good girl, too. That's she coming."

The German heroine of this miniature Nibelungenlied was tall and slender, fair haired and fair faced. Her face wore a placid air; she looked perfectly serene and had a.s.sumed unconsciousness as a garment; she did not talk, only faintly smiled in return to the greetings that met her on every side. To right and left, before and behind her, walked her two aunts and her two neighbors, women of substance and dignity. They walled her about as might a body-guard, sending eye-blinks of defiance at the hilarious young Irishmen. Mrs. Orendorf, of the guard, went the length of twisting her head for a final glare of disapproval at Norah, in pa.s.sing. Norah laughed. "I used to know Freda Burglund last week," said she, "but I guess she has forgotten me."

"She's too busy with the blackboard, doing arithmetic," joked one of the young men.

"You ought to see old Fritz!" cried another; "he's clean off his base.

He's mortgaged his farm to Nichols. Nichols didn't want to lend, but he would have the money."

"Well, I guess we'll give him a run for his pile."

"He's mortgaged his farm!" said a third young man; when his voiced sounded, the very slightest of movements of Norah's head betrayed that she listened.

"I'd mortgage two farms if I had them," was the gallant comment from the first man, "if Miss Norah needed votes."

The third man felt the rustle of every dollar he had, drawn out of the bank that morning, and now bulging his waistcoat-pocket in company with a bit of ribbon that had dropped from Norah's hair; but it was easier for him to make money than talk; he was ready to push the last of it over the voting-table for Norah, but he wasn't ready of tongue; he put his big honest hands in his pocket, and lest he should glower too openly at the fluent blade, sent his eyes after Freda Berglund's yellow head and fine shoulders. Norah could see him. She stiffened.

"I don't think it very nice of her to _let_ her father mortgage his farm," said a fourth partisan of Norah's; "he'd better buy her a watch out and out; you can get a good one for ten dollars. She'd ought to stop the old man. Her mother would if she were alive."

"Fritz ain't so easy headed off," said the third man. "Miss Freda is a very nice young lady; I don't believe she knows about it."

He kept his eyes on the yellow head, this unfortunate bungler, who had been in love with Norah since he had worn knickerbockers, and Norah held her own head higher in the air. And she let Mr. Williamson, the new book-keeper at Conner's (he who would have mortgaged two farms for her), take her to the ice-cream table, leaving the bungling lover (christened Patrick Maurice, his surname being Barnes), to jostle dismally over to the ap.r.o.n table, where Freda was.

Norah laughed at Mr. Williamson's jokes, and asked him questions about the business college from which he had recently been graduated, and was the picture of soft animation and pleasure; and the while her heart was like lead, and she hated Freda Berglund. Sitting at the table she heard s.n.a.t.c.hes of talk, all tinctured by the strong excitement of the evening. "I can't help it if they do quarrel," she thought, angrily, answering her own accusation; not even to herself did she say that she hated Freda.

Her eyes wandered a second over the hall; they saw the Vicar-General's pale, handsome face, a half-head taller than Father Kelly's good gray head; they saw a square-jawed, black-haired, determined, smiling young man behind the ballot-box turning his eyes from Pat Barnes to an elderly man who held up his hand, waving a roll of bills.

"Ah, I see Berglund has arrived," said Williamson. "You are going to do a lot to build the church, Miss Norah."

Berglund was rather a short man; his hair was gray; he limped from the old wound received at Shiloh. Something clutched at Norah's heart as she looked at him. Williamson made some trivial joke; she did not hear it; she was hearing over again the words of the German woman to Mrs.

O'Brien that afternoon. Impulsively she sprang to her feet. "Will you excuse me, Mr. Williamson?" she exclaimed. "I have to go to the voting-booth one moment." She went so swiftly that Williamson had much ado to keep pace with her, besides overpaying the waitress in his hurry. Father Kelly swallowed a groan of dismay at the fresh strain on his faith when he perceived her beckoning a ring-laden hand at the custodian of votes; and the Vicar-General involuntarily frowned. They both with one accord pushed up to the table--to the visible relief of the young man behind it. "I don't know what to do," he confided to Father Kelly, before the latter could ask the question quivering on his tongue--"I don't know what to do. Miss Murray wants me not to take in any more money 'til I hear from her again. She'll be back. And here's old Berglund wants three hundred and fifty dollars' worth for Miss Freda, and here's Barnes with a big bunch for Miss Murray, trying to scare off the old man. What'll I do, Father?"

"I guess you better not do anything," said Father Kelly, with a twinkle in his eye. "Norah Murray is apt to have a good reason for her asking. Shut the booth down, and _I'll_ take charge while you go off for a cup of coffee."

The Vicar-General nodded approval.

"Well, just's you say, Father," said the young man; "it's kind of unprecedented."

"What do you suppose it means?" puzzled the Vicar-General, in an undertone, as the vote-taker disappeared; and the crowd fell back a little on Father Kelly's bland announcement that Mr. Duffy had been called off for a few minutes, and there would be a recess in voting.

"'Tis beyond _me_," said Father Kelly, "but watch the girl; she's gone straight to Freda Berglund. There, they're talking; they're going off together with Mrs. Orendorf. I can't give a guess, but she's a good girl. I'm hopeful."

Norah had indeed gone straight to Freda Berglund. She addressed her in so low a voice that only Freda and Mrs. Orendorf, bending across Freda's shoulders at that instant, the better to cheapen a darning-bag for stockings, could hear her words. "I want to see you, Freda," she said. "Won't you and Mrs. Orendorf come away somewhere so we can talk?

I have got something important to say."

"I--don't--know," faltered Freda.

"I want Mrs. O'Brien, too," said Norah, firmly. "It's all right; you'll think it all right, Mrs. Orendorf. Come, come; don't you see those men who have been drinking? Don't you hear them? Don't you see Mrs. Finn, who used to think there was n.o.body like Mrs. Conner, looking the other way so's not to see her? Can't you hear the quarrelling all round? They've stopped voting, but they haven't stopped quarrelling. Come!"

Although she had dropped her voice, the listeners were so close that they caught s.n.a.t.c.hes of the sentences, and craned their necks forward and hushed their own talk to listen. Mrs. Orendorf was not of a nimble habit of thought; but she felt the electric impetus of the Irish girl; besides, was _she_ not bidden? Could she not protect Freda from the machinations of the enemy?

"Dot's so, Freda," she concluded, stolidly. "Koom den, der only blace vere we can talk py uns is dot coal-closet wo is der eggstry ice-cream freezer. Koom. I see Meezis...o...b..een."

Amid a startling pause, every eye questioning them, the three picked up Mrs. O'Brien and sought the coal-closet. Then Norah turned. In the dim light her face shone whitely. Her full melodious voice shook the least in the world with haste and excitement. "We've got to stop this," said she, "and I know how. Freda, I am going to withdraw my name. I wish to Heaven I never had let them put it on. You may have the watch."

Freda's tall figure was only an outline in the shadow; they could not see her face; but the outline wavered backward. Her voice was stiff and cold.

"I don't think that's fair. You have more votes than I have."

Mrs. O'Brien opened her lips and shut them tightly. It was so dark no one saw her, or Mrs. Orendorf, as she sat on the freezer gulping down inaudible opinions regarding Norah's sanity.

"I sha'n't have," retorted Norah, impatiently, "when your father spends all his money that he mortgaged his farm--"

_"What!"_ cried Freda.

"She not know; ve keep it von her," muttered Mrs. Orendorf. "Fritz make me promise not to tell."

"Well, he didn't make _me_," said Norah. "_I'll_ tell. He raised the money, and he was trying to buy the votes, and I saw him. I haven't any father. I can't remember anything of my father except his leading me about when I was a little thing by the finger, and how kind his voice was; but I miss him--I miss him all the time; I know he was a good man, and loved me; and he'd have done anything for me, just as your father is doing; and I couldn't have borne it to have him, and I was sure you couldn't, either. Freda, it's all wrong, this spending more money than they can afford on us; I've felt it all along. Now let's stop it. The church has got enough."

"Is it true about papa?" said Freda, in German.

"_Ach Himmel_! Yes, my child. Dost thou not know thy father yet?

For all he seems still and stern, thou art more than all the world to him." Mrs. Orendorf spoke in the same tongue; her other listeners could not understand it, but they marvelled over the soft change in her voice.

"It's true enough, Miss Freda," said Mrs. O'Brien, gently. "And maybe you're in the right of it, Norah darling, though 'tis a bit hard to give in; but, yes, I'm sure you're right."