Out of the Air Part 18

Her thoughts flew madly ... suddenly her whole acceptance of things crumbled. Why! She wasn't Cherie and eight. She was Susannah and twenty-five; and the last time she had been anywhere she had been in New York.... Lightnings of memory tore at her ... the Carbonado Mining Company ... Eloise ... a Salvation Army woman on the street ... roofers.

Yet this was Blue Meadows. She did not have to pinch herself or press on her sleepy eyelids. It _was_ Blue Meadows. The trumpet-vine, though as gigantic as Jack's beanstalk, proved it. The painted furniture proved it. The Chinese toys proved it. Yes, and if she wanted the final touch that clinched all argument, there beside the head of the bed was the maple gazelle. This really was not the final proof. The final proof was human and it entered the room at that moment in the person of Mrs.

Spash. And Mrs. Spash--in her old, quaint inaccurate way--was calling her as Cherry.

Susannah burst into tears.

"Oh, I feel so much better now," Susannah said after a little talk; more sleep; then talk again. "I'm going to be perfectly well in a little while. I want to get up. And oh, dear Mrs. Spash--do you remember how sometimes I used to call you Mrs. Splash? I do want as soon as possible to see Mr. Lindsay and his cousin--Miss Stockbridge, did you say? I want to thank them, of course. How can I ever thank them enough? And I want to talk to him about the biography. Oh, I'm sure I can give him so much.

And I can make out a list of people who can tell him all the things you and I don't remember; or never knew. And then, in my trunk in New York, is a package of all Glorious Lutie's letters to me. I think he will want to publish some of them; they are so lovely, so full of our games--and jingles, and even drawings. Couldn't I sit up now?"

"I don't see why not," Mrs. Spash said. "You've slept for nearly twenty-six hours, Cherry. You waked up once--or half-waked up. We gave you some hot milk and you went right to sleep again."

"It's going to make me well--just being at Blue Meadows," Susannah prophesied. "If I could only stay-- But I'm grateful for a day, an hour."

Later, she came slowly down the stairs--one hand on the rail, the other holding Mrs. Spash's arm. She wore her faded creamy-pink, creamy-yellow j.a.panese kimono, held in prim plaits by the broad sash, a big obi bow at the back. Her red hair lay forward in two long glittering braids. Her face was still pale, but her eyes overran with a lucent blue excitement.

It caught on her eyelashes and made stars there.

A slim young man in flannels; tall with a muscular litheness; dark with a burnished tan; handsome; arose from his work at the long refectory table. He came forward smiling--his hand outstretched. "My cousin, Miss Stockbridge, has run in to Boston to do some shopping," he explained. "I can't tell you how glad I am to see you up, or how glad she will be." He took her disengaged arm and reinforced Mrs. Spash's efforts. They guided her into a big wing chair. The young man found a footstool for her.

"I suppose I'm not dreaming, Mr. Lindsay," Susannah apprised him tremulously. "And yet how can it be anything but a dream? I left this place fifteen years ago and I have never seen it since. How did I get back here? How did you find me? How did you know who I was? And what made you so heavenly good as to bring me here? I remember fragments here and there-- Mrs. Spash tells me I've had the flu."

Lindsay laughed. "That's all easily explained," he said with a smoothness almost meretricious. "I happened to go to New York on business. As usual I went to my friend Sparrel's apartment. You were ill and delirious in the next room. I heard you; forced the door open and sent at once for a doctor. He p.r.o.nounced it a belated case of flu. So I telephoned for Miss Stockbridge; we moved you into my apartment and after you pa.s.sed the crisis--thank G.o.d, you escaped pneumonia!--I asked the doctor if I could bring you over here. He agreed that the country air would be the very best thing for you, and yet would not advise me to do it. He thought it was taking too great a risk. But I felt--I can't tell you how strongly I felt it--that it would be the best thing for you. My cousin stood by me, and I took the chance. Sometimes now, though, I shudder at my own foolhardiness. You don't remember--or do you?--that I went through the formality of asking your consent."

"I do remember now--vaguely," Susannah laughed. "Isn't it lucky I didn't--in my weakness--say no?"

Lindsay laughed again. "I shouldn't have paid any attention to it, if you had. I knew that this was what you needed. You were sleeping then about twenty-five hours out of the twenty-four. So one night we brought you in a taxi to the boat and took the night trip to Boston. The boat was making its return trip that night, but I bribed them to let you stay on it all day until it was almost ready to sail. Late in the afternoon, we brought you in an automobile to Quinanog. You slept all the way. That was yesterday afternoon. It was dark when we got here. You didn't even open your eyes when I carried you into the house. In the meantime I had wired Mrs. Spash--and she fixed up your room, as much like the way it used to be when you were a child, as she could remember."

"It's all too marvelous," Susannah murmured. New brilliancies were welling up into her turquoise eyes, the deep dark fringes of lash could not hold them; the stars kept dropping off their tips. Fresh spurts of color invaded her face. Nervously her long white hands pulled at her coppery braids.

"There are so many questions I shall ask you," she went on, "when I'm strong enough. But some I must ask you now. How did you happen to come here? And when did the idea of writing Glorious Lutie's--my aunt's--biography occur to you? And how did you come to know Mrs. Spash?

Where did you find the little Chinese toys? And my painted bedroom set?

And the sideboard there? And the six-legged highboy? Oh dear, a hundred, thousand, million things. But first of all, how did you know that, now being Susannah Ayer, I was formerly Susannah Delano?"

"There was the miniature of Miss Murray hanging on your wall. That made me sure--in--in some inexplicable way--that you were the little lost Cherry. And of course we went through your handbag to make sure. We found some letters addressed to Susannah Delano Ayer. But will you tell me how you _do_ happen to be Susannah Ayer, when you were formerly Susannah Delano, alias Cherry--or Cherie?"

"I went from here to Providence to live with a large family of cousins.

Their name was Ayer, and I was so often called Ayer that finally I took the name." Susannah paused, and then with a sudden impulse toward confidence, she went on. "I grew up with my cousins. I was the youngest of them all. The two oldest girls married, one a Californian, the other a Canadian. I haven't seen them for years. The three boys are scattered all over everywhere, by the war. My uncle died first; then my aunt. She left me the five hundred dollars with which I got my business training."

The look of one who is absorbing pa.s.sionately all that is being said to him was on Lindsay's face. But a little perplexity troubled it.

"Glorious Lutie?" he repeated interrogatively.

"Oh, of course," Susannah murmured. "I always called her Glorious Lutie.

She always called me Glorious Susie--that is when she didn't call me _Cherie_. And we had a game--the Abracadabra game. When she was telling me a story--her stories were _marvels_; they went on for days and days--and she got tired, she could always stop it by saying, Abracadabra! If I didn't reply instantly with Abracadabra, the story stopped. Of course she always caught my little wits napping--I was so absorbed in the story that I could only stutter and pant, trying to remember that long word."

"That's a Peter Ibbetson trick," Lindsay commented.

The talk, thus begun, lasted for the three hours which elapsed before Miss Stockbridge's return. Two narratives ran through their talk; Lindsay's, which dealt with superficial matters, began with his return to America from France; Susannah's, which began with that sad day, fifteen years ago, when she saw Blue Meadows for the last time. But neither narrative went straight. They zig-zagged; they curved, they circled. Those deviations were the result of racing up squirrel tracks of opinion and theory; of little excursions into the allied experiences of youth; even of talks on books. Once it was interrupted by the noiseless entry of Mrs. Spash, who deposited a tray which contained a gla.s.s of milk, a pair of dropped eggs, a little mound of b.u.t.tered toast.

Susannah suddenly found herself hungry. She drained her gla.s.s, ate both eggs, devoured the last crumb of toast.

After this, she felt so vigorous that she fell in with Lindsay's suggestion that she walk to the door. There she stood on the door-stone for a preoccupied, half-joyful, half-melancholy interval studying the garden. Then, leaning on his arm, she ventured as far as the seat under the copper-beech. Later, even, she went to the barn and the Dew Pond.

Before she could get tired, Lindsay brought her back, reestablishing her in the chair. Then--and not till then--and following another impulse to confide in Lindsay, Susannah told him the whole story of the Carbonado Mining Company. Perhaps his point of view on that matter gave her her second accession of vitality. He paced up and down the room during her narrative; his hands, fists. But he laughed their threats to scorn. "Now don't give another thought to that gang of crooks!" he adjured her. "I know a man in New York--a lawyer. I'll have him look up that crowd and put the fear of G.o.d into them. They'll probably be flown by that time, however. Undoubtedly they were making ready for their getaway. Don't think of it again. They can't hurt you half as much as that bee that's trying to get in the door." He was silent for a moment, staring fixedly down at his own ma.n.u.script on the table. "By G.o.d!" he burst out suddenly, "I've half a mind to beat it on to New York. I'd like to be present. I'd have some things to say--and do."

Somewhere toward the end of this long talk, "I've not said a word yet, Mr. Lindsay," Susannah interpolated timidly, "of how grateful I am to you--and your cousin. But it's mainly because I've not had the strength yet. I don't know how I'm going to repay you. I don't know how I'm even going to tell you. What I owe you--just in money--let alone eternal grat.i.tude."

"Now, that's all arranged," Lindsay said smoothly. "You don't know what a find you were. You're an angel from heaven. You're a Christmas present in July. For a long time I've realized that I needed a secretary.

Somebody's got to help me on Lutetia's life or I'll never get it done.

Who better qualified than Lutetia's own niece? In fact you will not only be secretary but collaborator. As soon as you're well enough, we'll go to work every morning and we'll work together until it's done."

Susannah leaned back, snuggled into the soft recess of the comfortable chair. She dropped her lids over the dazzling brilliancy of her eyes. "I suppose I ought to say no. I suppose I ought to have some proper pride about accepting so much kindness. I suppose I ought to show some firmness of mind, p.a.w.n all my possessions and get back to work in New York or Boston. Girls in novels always do those things. But I know I shall do none of them. I shall say yes. For I haven't been so happy since Glorious Lutie died."

"Oh," Lindsay exclaimed quickly as though glad to reduce this dangerous emotional excitement. "There comes the lost Anna Sophia Stockbridge.

She's a dandy. I think you'll like her. It's awfully hard not to."

The instant Susannah had disappeared with Miss Stockbridge up the stairs, Mrs. Spash appeared in the Long Room. Apparently, she came with a definite object--an object in no way connected with the futile dusting movements she began to emit.

Lindsay watched her.

Suddenly Mrs. Spash's eyes came up; met his. They gazed at each other a long moment; a gaze that was luminous with question and answer.

"She's gone," Lindsay announced after a while.

Mrs. Spash nodded briskly.

"She'll never come back," Lindsay added.

Again Mrs. Spash nodded briskly.

"They've all gone," Lindsay stated.

For the third time Mrs. Spash briskly nodded.

"When Cherie came, _they_ left," Lindsay concluded.

"They'd done what they wanted to do," Mrs. Spash vouchsafed. "Brought you and Cherry together. So there was no need. She took them away. She'd admire to stay. That's like her. But she don't want to make the place seem--well, _queer_. So, as she allus did, she gives up her wish."

"Mrs. Spash," Lindsay exploded suddenly after a long pause, "we've _never_ seen them. You understand we've never seen them; either of us.

They never were here."

Mrs. Spash nodded for the fourth time.