The Opened Shutters Part 54

"Well, it should," responded Edna decidedly.

They said no more, but reaching the ledges seated themselves in the lee of a sheltering rock, and read, and gazed, until the swift pa.s.sing hours brought them to a realizing sense that the anxious housekeeper would begin to be on the lookout.

"Well," remarked John with a luxurious sigh, "our friends don't know what they missed by scorning our invitation."

Edna said nothing, but the memory of her parting words with Sylvia began to be an uncomfortable one. The situation was emphasized by her guests' failure to join them here. She had not really supposed that Sylvia could feel easy to be with her again until they had been able to talk alone, but she told herself that she could not have left John to his own devices this afternoon. This evening she would surely make everything understood with Sylvia, show the girl how her behavior had appeared, and, she hoped, give her a new standard.

Miss Lacey and Judge Trent were seated on the piazza when they approached.

"Just in time," said Miss Martha.

"Where's that lazy Sylvia? Not down yet?" asked Edna.

"No," replied Judge Trent; "I was just telling Miss Lacey I should go up and knock on her door. She a.s.sures me that laziness is not one of my niece's characteristics."

"Decidedly not," returned Edna.

"Quite the opposite," said Miss Martha. "That is why, if she sleeps right through supper time, I knew Edna would excuse her. I can't forget how she looked when she came upstairs. All the life seemed gone out of her. Folks come to those spots, if they will keep themselves keyed up all the time."

Edna began to have very uncomfortable sensations. She pa.s.sed into the house and upstairs. Pausing before Sylvia's door, she listened. There was a little rapping sound within, all else was still. The girl knocked softly. There was no response. She turned the handle quietly. If, possibly, her guest were asleep, she would not awaken her. Slowly, slowly she opened the unresisting door, and her expression changed from expectancy to blankness as she perceived that the room was empty. The fair white pillow bore no imprint of a curly head. The curtain ring was striking rhythmically against the window sill in the breeze.

Edna walked in, and looked about the orderly apartment. An envelope on the dresser caught her eye. It was addressed to herself, and the contents were as follows:

DEAR EDNA,--With a thousand thanks for the hospitality you have shown me here, I am going back to the Mill Farm. I have known since yesterday that something was wrong, but I am glad I came back last evening to learn how wrong. There is no question of staying now, because no good could come of our attempting to talk. My thoughts are my own; no one else can have jurisdiction over them. I cannot think of one act of mine as your guest which you could disapprove.

Therefore there is nothing to discuss; but the grief it is to me to have offended you, you will never know. You can tell the others that this note confesses to you that I was suddenly overwhelmed with homesickness and felt I could not stay for argument. It will be the simple truth. They will set it down to my bad manners, and let it go.

We may never meet again intimately, and I want my last word to you to be heartfelt thanks for giving me the happiest experience of my life. We both know that Love will heal every hurt. I hope it isn't wrong for me to go in this way. I cannot stay.

SYLVIA.

Edna read the letter twice before she laid it down. She caught the reflection of her own face in the gla.s.s. More than anything else, it expressed vexation. Sylvia had crowned her unconventional behavior by the most annoying move of all. To a girl of Edna's traditions it was excessively mortifying to be obliged to own to others that her friend and guest had fled from her roof, even though they would have no suspicion that Sylvia had been driven away. In an instant she made up her mind not to destroy the comfort of the supper hour with the news, but to wait until later.

Hastening out into the hall, she softly closed the door again, and proceeded to make her own preparations for the evening meal. She could hear Dunham moving about in his room, and knew that he was forbearing on Sylvia's account from the whistling obligato which usually accompanied his toilet.

It would have been difficult for any average man to express irritability while discussing the appetizing dishes which Miss Lacey and Jenny had placed on that supper table, but the judge was displeased by his niece's non-appearance, and made it evident.

"I hope you're not spoiling the girl, Martha," he said. "If she's ill, say so; but if she isn't, don't let there be any carrying up of trays or nonsense of that kind."

Edna feared from Miss Martha's look that she was going to rise from the table and call the absent one, and she hastily interposed:--

"I a.s.sure you, Judge Trent, Sylvia is promptness itself. This is the exception that proves the rule."

"It seems to me that my niece is always proving rules in that fashion,"

he returned, glancing at Dunham. "Of course, you are a polite hostess, Edna, and wouldn't allow a crumpled rose leaf to annoy a guest of yours."

At these words Sylvia's note seemed to burn in Edna's pocket, and her cheeks grew warm.

"The fact is, I'd like to see something of the girl," went on the judge.

"I shall go up to her room the instant supper is over," responded Edna.

"Do have some more lobster Newburg, Judge Trent. Don't you think it's pretty good?"

"I think it's perfect; but I'd better not tempt Fate with any more."

"Oh, lobster here isn't the same as anywhere else. You can eat it right out of this sea as you can ripe apples out of an orchard."

"Indeed? The more the merrier, instead of the sadder?"

"Certainly," replied Edna with conviction, and the judge allowed his plate to be replenished. "You shall go out after supper to see my alterations," went on Edna. "Willis is going to let the other man come to-morrrow to finish up, for he told me he 'couldn't put off no longer goin' to Portland to have a tooth hauled.'"

The girl continued to keep the conversation in safe channels until the trying hour was over, then, asking Miss Martha to take the men around the house to exhibit her improvements, she ran upstairs again to Sylvia's room. Shutting herself in, she stood considering in what form she should put the news to those below. The gulf between herself and her guest still yawned; and, while she regretted to have hurt her, she felt that her words had not been unwarranted.

It was hard to forgive Sylvia for being so different from any girl of her own world, and yet to have strongly attracted so fastidious a man as John Dunham.

Edna caught herself up sharply. Was it possible that the least shadow of jealousy had influenced her treatment of Sylvia? She was given to uncompromising self-examination, and she knew that it had been a surprise to her to discover in the past days that she was not John's chief interest. She accused herself now of a sn.o.bbish inclination toward Sylvia, entirely aside from the perplexity and disapproval the girl had caused her. Edna knew herself to be accustomed to a pedestal.

She feared that she had come to taking it for granted that even among her peers she should be preeminent, and that, as for this Western protegee whom she had patronized for Thinkright's sake, it had been a surprise to find her considered, socially speaking.

Edna set aside the tangled web of unsatisfactory thought, to be straightened and corrected at a more convenient season. Miss Martha might come upstairs at any moment. She must decide what to say to them all.

She wondered if Sylvia had fled too hastily to take her few belongings.

She crossed the room to the closet, and opened the door. It was empty, but on the floor lay the pillow slip which Sylvia had defended from John so heatedly. Edna looked at the white bag with some repugnance.

There recurred to her the appealing look in the girl's eyes as she had hurried into the house yesterday noon. Edna stooped and lifted the bag.

It was heavy and stiff. She brought it out into the room, and opened it with some shrinking. What met her eyes were a number of sheets of brown wrapping-paper. She drew one partly out. It was apparently smeared with dark paint. Hastily pulling the paper from the bag, she beheld a sketch of Beacon Island. She hurried over to the bed, and with eager hands drew sheet after sheet from the bag and spread them out. They formed three rows of sketches on the white coverlet, and Edna's eyes sparkled with interest as she recognized the subjects. The work had apparently been done with some blunt instrument instead of a brush. The effects were broad, after the manner of a charcoal drawing.

Edna compressed her lips as she gazed. Suddenly she crossed to an open window and leaned out. Fortune favored her. John Dunham was strolling in sight beyond the piazza. She called him softly. He heard, and she beckoned him beneath the window. "Can you come up here," she asked, "without letting the others know?"

Dunham a.s.sented with alacrity; but thought flies fast, and he had time for many misgivings as he mounted the stairs in bounds. Was Edna about to have it out with Sylvia, and was he being called as a witness to face a culprit and prove a position? If so, he promptly decided to have an acute attack of paresis.

Sylvia's door was ajar, and Edna standing by the bedside. "I needed somebody, and I chose you," she said over her shoulder. "Come and see what Sylvia has done."

Her tone was excited, and Dunham's heart beat fast as he paused at the door. What had Sylvia done?

CHAPTER x.x.x

THE LIGHT BREAKS

"Come here," said Edna, and moving aside she indicated the sketches.

John drew near. "This is what was in that pillow slip yesterday."

Dunham regarded the rough work with large eyes. "By Jove!" he exclaimed. "She has it in her, hasn't she?"

"Just see the composition," returned Edna. "See the directness."

"What's it done with?" asked Dunham. "Not a brush."