THE COMMITTEE DECIDE
The earlier days of summer were passing rapidly. And with their
passage Kate Seton's variations of mood became remarkable. There were
times when her excited cheerfulness astounded her sister, and there
were times when her depression caused her the greatest anxiety. Kate
was displaying a variableness and uncertainty to which Helen was quite
unaccustomed, and it left the girl laboring under a great strain of
worry.
She strove very hard to, as she termed it, localize her sister's
changes of mood, and in this she was not without a measure of success.
Whenever the doings of the church committee were discussed Kate's mood
dropped to zero, and sometimes below that point. It was obvious that
the decision to demolish the old landmark in the service of the church
was causing her an alarm and anxiety which would far better have
fitted one of the old village wives, eaten up with superstition, than
a woman of Kate's high-spirited courage. Then, too, the work of her
little farm seemed to worry her. Her attention to it in these days
became almost feverish. Whereas, until recently, all her available
time was given to church affairs, now these were almost entirely
neglected in favor of the farm. Kate was almost always to be found in
company of her two hired men, working with a zest that ill suited the
methods of her male helpers.
On one occasion Helen ventured to remark upon it in her inconsequent
fashion, a fashion often used to disguise her real feelings, her real
interest.
Kate had just returned from a long morning out on the wheat land. She
was weary, and dusty, and thirsty. And she had just thirstily drained
a huge glass of barley water.
"For the Lord's sake, Kate!" Helen cried in pretended dismay. "When I
see you drink like that I kind of feel I'm growing fins all over me."
Kate smiled, but without lightness.
"Get right out in this July sun and try to shame your hired men into
doing a man's work, and see how you feel then," she retorted.
"Fins?--why, you'd give right up walking, and grow a full-sized tail,
and an uncomfortable crop of scales."
Helen shook her head.
"I wouldn't work that way. Say, you're always chasing the boys up. Are
they slacking worse than usual? Are they on the 'buck'?"
Kate shot a swift glance into the gray eyes fixed on her so shrewdly.
"No," she said quite soberly. "Only--only work's good for folks,
sometimes. The boys are all right. It just does me good to work.
Besides, I like to know what Pete's doing."
"You mean----?"
"Oh, it doesn't matter what I mean," Kate retorted, with a sudden
impatience. "Where's dinner?"
This was something of her sister's mood more or less all the time, and
Helen found it very trying. But she made every allowance for it, also
the more readily as she watched the affairs of the church, and
understood how surely they were upsetting to her sister through her
belief in the old Indian legend of the fateful pine.
But Kate's occasional outbursts of delirious excitement were far more
difficult of understanding. Helen read them in the only way she
understood. Her observation warned her that they generally followed
talk of the doings of Inspector Fyles, or a distant view of him.
As the days went by Kate seemed more and more wrapped up in the work
of the police. Every little item of news of them she hungrily
devoured. And frequently she went out on long solitary rides, which
Helen concluded were for the purpose of interested observation of
their doings.
But all this display of interest was somewhat nullified by another
curious phase in her sister. It quickly became obvious that she was
endeavoring by every artifice to avoid coming into actual contact with
Stanley Fyles. Somehow this did not seem to fit in with Helen's idea
of love, and again she found herself at a loss.
Thus poor Helen found herself passing many troubled hours. Things
seemed to be going peculiarly awry, and, for the life of her, she
could not follow their trend with any certainty of whither it was
leading. Even Bill was worse than of no assistance to her. Whenever
she poured out her long list of anxieties to him, he assumed a
perfectly absurd air of caution and denial that left her laboring
under the belief that he really was "one big fool," or else he knew
something, and had the audacity to keep it from her. In Bill's case,
however, the truth was he felt he had blundered so much already in his
brother's interests that he was not prepared to take any more chances,
even with Helen.
Then came one memorable and painful day for Helen. It was a Saturday
morning. She had just returned from a church committee meeting. Kate
had deliberately absented herself from her post as honorary secretary
ever since the decision to fell the old pine had been arrived at. It
was her method of protest against the outrage. But Mrs. John Day,
quite undisturbed, had appointed a fresh secretary, and Kate's
defection had been allowed to pass as a matter of no great importance.
The noon meal was on the table when Helen came in. Kate was at her
little bureau writing. The moment her sister entered the room she
closed the desk and locked it. Helen saw the action and almost
listlessly remarked upon it.
"It's all right, Kate," she said. "Bluebeard's chamber doesn't
interest me--to-day."
Kate started up at the other's depressed tone. She looked sharply into
the gray eyes, in which there was no longer any sign of their usual
laughter.
"What's the matter, dear?" she asked, with affectionate concern. "Mrs.
John?"
Helen nodded. Then at once she shook her head.
"Yes--no. Oh, I don't know. No, I don't think it's Mrs. John.
It's--it's everybody."
Kate had moved to the head of the table, and stood with her hands
gripping the back of her chair.
"Everybody?" she said, with a quiet look of understanding in her big
eyes. "You mean--the tree?"
Helen nodded. She was very near tears.
But Kate rose to the occasion. She knew. She pointed at Helen's chair.
"Sit down, dear. We'll have food," she said, quietly. "I'm as hungry
as any coyote."
Helen obeyed. She was feeling so miserable for her sister, that she
had lost all inclination to eat. But Kate seemed to have entirely
risen above any of the feelings she had so lately displayed. She
laughed, and, with gentle insistence, forced the other to eat her
dinner. Strangely enough her manner had become that which Helen seemed
to have lost sight of for so long. All her actions, all her words,
were full of confident assurance, and quiet command.
Gradually, under this new influence, the anxiety began to die out
of Helen's eyes, and the watchful Kate beheld the change with
satisfaction. Then, when the girl had done full justice to the
simple meal, she pushed her own plate aside, planted her elbows
upon the table, and sat with her strong brown hands clasped.
"Now tell me," she commanded gently.
In a moment Helen's anxiety returned, and her lips trembled. The next
she was telling her story--in a confused sort of rush.
"Oh, I don't know," she cried. "It's--it's too bad. You see, Kate, I
didn't sort of think about it, or trouble anything, until you let me
know how you felt over that--that old story. It didn't seem to me that
old tree mattered at all. It didn't seem to me it could hurt cutting
it down, any more than any other. And now--now it just seems as if--as
if the world'll come to an end when they cut it down. I believe I'm
more frightened than you are."
"Frightened?"
Kate smiled. But the smile scarcely disguised her true feelings.
"Yes, I'm scared--to death--now," Helen went on, "because they're
going to cut it down. They've fixed the time and--day."
"They've fixed the time--and day," repeated Kate dully. "When?"
Her smile had completely gone now. Her dark eyes were fixed on her
sister's face with a curious straining.
"Tuesday morning at--daybreak."
"Tuesday--daybreak? Go on. Tell me some more."
"There's no more to tell, only--only there's to be a ceremony. The
whole village is going to turn out and assist. Mrs. Day is going to
make an ad-dress. She said if she'd known there was a legend and curse
to that pine she's have had it down at the start of building the
church. She'd have had it down 'in the name of religion, honesty and
righteousness'--those were her words--'as a fitting tribute at the
laying of the foundations of the new church.' Again, in her own words,
she said, 'It's presence in the valley is a cloud obscuring the sun of
our civilization, a stumbling block to the progress of righteousness.'
And--and they all agreed that she was right--all of them."
Kate was no longer looking at her sister. She was gazing out
straight ahead of her. It is doubtful even if she had listened
to the pronouncements of Mrs. John Day, with her self-satisfied
dictatorship of the village social and religious affairs. She was
thinking--thinking. And something almost like panic seemed suddenly
to have taken hold of her.
"Tuesday--at daybreak," she muttered. Then, in a moment, her eyes
flashed, and she sprang from her chair. "Daybreak? Why, that--that's
practically Monday night! Do you hear? Monday night!"
Helen was on her feet in a moment.
"I--I don't understand," she stammered.
"Understand? No, of course you don't. Nobody understands but me," Kate
cried fiercely. "I understand, and I tell you they're all mad.
Hopelessly mad." She laughed wildly. "Disaster? Oh, blind, blind,
fools. There'll be disaster, sure enough. The old Indian curse will be
fulfilled. Oh, Helen, I could weep for the purblind skepticism of this
wretched people, this consequential old fool, Mrs. Day. And I--I am
the idiot who has brought it all about."