Two Departures
After dinner, which we didn’t have until nearly one o’clock on the
fourth of July, owing to Chad’s not getting the ice-cream frozen on
time, John surprised us all by saying that he was going to take the
sedan and drive down to Rattail for the mail.
I suspicioned, right then, that he was up to something. He could not
fool me into thinking that he would take a fifty mile trip—twenty-five
miles each way—through the desert heat for no other reason than to get
the mail. He couldn’t do any trading, since all of Rattail would be
off to the Telko celebration. When Danny seemed hurt and troubled
about him going, and when he went riding right off, anyway, I decided
that Sam must have sent him, expecting some word concerning
Canneziano. I was wrong.
We had had a stiff breeze, with a promising sprinkle of rain in the
morning; but it had died down about noon and, at two o’clock, it was
too tarnation hot to do anything but try to keep cool. I stacked the
dinner dishes, to wash in the evening, and joined the others, sitting
around in the living-room with the electric fans going full blast.
Sam, chess board in hand, stopped long enough by my chair to say in an
undertone, “What did I tell you, Mary? ‘It is always darkest, just
before the dawn.’”
That piece of optimism from him was due, in part, to the extra good
holiday dinner he had just eaten; and in part to a sense of quiet,
edging close to peace, that had pervaded the place since morning. I
had noticed it, too, with thankfulness, and had accounted for it with
the supposition that Gaby had spent all of her energy in meanness the
day before, and was obliged to rest up for a spell.
“That’s a nice little piece,” I answered Sam. “There is another one,
though, isn’t there, about a lull before the storm?”
That was not pure contrariness on my part. I was expecting, every
minute, to see Gaby break out again. She didn’t. She yawned around,
and fussed about, and then went and sat beside Danny, who was looking
at the pictures in _The Ladies Home Journal_, and put her arm around
her, and petted her up a little—a most unusual performance for her.
When Chad, who had been monkeying with the radio, got a rip-roaring
patriotic program from Salt Lake, the two girls went upstairs
together.
A few minutes later I had an errand upstairs—a real one, I wouldn’t
have taken myself up in that heat to satisfy any curiosity—so, out of
habit, I stopped at Gaby’s door to listen. I heard the girls giggling
in there; and, knowing no great harm is afoot when girls giggle, I
went on, got my scrap of pongee silk to mend Sam’s shirt, and came
downstairs again.
Sam and Hubert Hand were deep in their chess game. Mrs. Ricker was
tatting. Chad and Martha were playing dots and crosses. In spite of
the noise from the radio, there was a comfortable feeling about the
room that made me lonesome for the days we had all had together before
the Canneziano girls had come.
The radio program, which was to last from two until four o’clock, had
just that minute stopped. Martha, who when she didn’t forget it,
usually fed her rabbits about that time of day, had gone out to do it.
Gaby came downstairs, humming a tune.
She had on the tomato soup colored wrap that she had worn on the
train, and the hat to match the wrap. She was carrying a beaded bag.
She never dressed up like that, to go walking around the place; a
wrap, even such a light one, in the heat of that day, was downright
ridiculous.
Chad said, “All dressed up and no place to go?”
She tossed her head at him, and hurried straight down the room and out
through the glass doors. Chad followed her. They stopped together on
the porch. She stood with her back to me. Chad faced me. In a minute,
I saw his mouth bend up into a grin of bliss. Nothing would have
surprised me more. For this reason.
As that girl had walked through the room, I had seen that she walked
in mortal fear. In spite of her humming, in spite of her attempted
swagger, fear was in her widened eyes, in her drawn in chin, in the
contraction of her shoulders. Wherever it was that she was going, she
was afraid to go. But where could she go? John had the sedan. Except
for the trucks, which she couldn’t drive, and her pony—she surely
would not be dressed like that to ride horseback—there was no way for
her to get off the place. It must be, then, that someone was coming to
the place, and that she was going out alone to meet them. Who?
Canneziano? Not unless Sam had been mistaken about the time when he
was to be released from prison. Usually, when people think at all,
they think quickly. All this had gone through my mind while she had
walked the forty feet to the door. Before Chad smiled, I had spoken to
Mrs. Ricker.
“That girl,” I said, “is afraid of something.”
Mrs. Ricker darted her tatting shuttle back and forth. She moistened
her lips, with her tongue; but changed her mind and said nothing.
Gaby and Chad stood on the porch talking for two or three minutes—a
very short time, at any rate. Then she went down the steps, and Chad,
still smiling, came back into the room.
As he came in, Danny called down from the top of the stairway.
“Gaby—oh, Gaby?”
She knows where Gaby is going, and whom she is going to meet, and she,
too, is afraid, I decided, because of the queer, strained quality of
her voice.
“Gaby has gone out,” I called, in answer. And then, since I could
still see Gaby, walking down the path, “Do you want her, Danny? We
could fetch her back.”
“No,” Danny answered. “Don’t bother. I’ll come down.”
I had to reverse my first decision about Danny’s being frightened. At
least, her voice was natural enough, now; I fancied, perhaps, a note
of relief in it.
It couldn’t have been more than ten minutes after that, when Martha
came running into the house, laughing and dancing, and wearing the
gold bracelet with the monkey clasp. Gaby, she said, had given it to
her, just now, out by the rabbit hutch.
While we were all still exclaiming over the monkey, and praising it
up, to please Martha, Danny came downstairs. She was freshly dressed,
and sweet smelling with the nice, quiet flower scent she used, but she
looked really ill. She said her headache was worse again, and she drew
the curtains at the windows beside the big davenport, to ease the
glare of the light, before she curled up on it.
I thought it was a good time to continue the conversation we had begun
the other evening.
“Danny,” I said, as I sat down beside her, “if you just could tell
John, or Sam, or me what is troubling you, I am pretty sure that we
could find some way out.”
“Bless your hearts,” she repeated. “You are all too good. I am afraid
I can’t tell you what has been troubling me. But I can tell you,
honestly, that I think now the worst of the troubles are over. They
never were really mine, you see; they were Gaby’s. And now Gaby has
decided to—well, stop being troubled.
“We had a good long talk this afternoon. She has made me some
promises. She is going to try to act differently, to be good—as she
used to say when we were little. She had a dreadful disappointment day
before yesterday. It made her act very badly—at first. She has decided
now to make the best of it, for there is a best of it to make. You’ve
noticed how much better she acted last evening and all of to-day? She
is making a fresh start. You see, she has even given Martha her
precious monkey. I am sure we shall all be much happier, from now on.”
“Do you know where she was going this afternoon?” I asked.
“For a little walk.”
“Why did she wear her wrap, and carry her beaded bag, just to go out
for a little walk?”
Danny sat up straight, pressing her hands to her aching head. “Her
wrap—to-day? Her beaded bag? Surely not.”
“That’s just what she did. Didn’t you see her before she left?”
“I was lying down. She came to my door and said that she was going for
a walk, and asked me if I cared to go with her. I said that my
headache was too severe. She went into her room, and from there
downstairs. I felt guilty about refusing to go with her, after our
talk. I thought that I should; so I called after her. But, when you
said she had gone, I was afraid she would be annoyed at being called
back. I had gotten up; so, since John will surely be home before long,
now, I came down. I can’t understand her wearing a wrap. It is so
silly, on a day like this.”
It sounded all right, but I was not quite satisfied.
“I thought,” I said, “that, when you called after her, you were
frightened, or worried, or—something.”
“Frightened? No, Mary, I had nothing to be frightened about.”
“Gaby was frightened,” I said.
“Gaby! She couldn’t have been. She was all right this afternoon.
Nothing could have happened since then.”
“I don’t know. Something was the matter with her when she walked
through this room. I’ll go bond that, wherever it was she was going,
she was afraid to go.”
“Mary, it must be that you are imagining this. Unless—Oh, it couldn’t
be that Gaby has not told me the truth about—about anything. I am sure
she was honest with me this afternoon. I am sure—— And yet—— Dear me,
I wonder where she went for her walk?”
“She talked to Chad, just before she left. Maybe she told him where
she was going.”
Danny called the question across the room to Chad, who was improvising
cheerful, happy music on the piano.
“Not a word,” Chad spoke above his music, “except that she was going
for a walk and didn’t want my company.”
“Gaby told me,” Martha piped up, from where she was sitting on the arm
of Sam’s chair, “that she was going to the cabin. She was in a big
hurry. She ran.”
“Up toward the cabin?” Danny questioned, though we all knew we could
not put a mite of trust in anything Martha said.
“Yes. Chad loves me better’n he loves her. Don’t you, Chad?”
“You are positive,” Danny insisted, and I couldn’t see why, for a
minute, “that she went to the cabin, or toward it? You aren’t fibbing,
are you, Martha dear? Are you sure that she didn’t go around the house
toward the road?”
When she asked about the road, her meaning was clear to me. Danny was
afraid that Gaby had gone to meet John, who should have been back from
Rattail before this. But, if she had hoped to get anything out of
Martha, she had made a mistake in her questioning. For anyone to
accuse Martha of a fib, was to make her stick to it like a waffle to
an ungreased pan.
“She told me she was going to the cabin,” Martha answered. “She ran.
She was in a hurry.”
Danny stood up. “I think I shall walk up to the cabin and see whether
I can find her. You’ll come with me, Mary?”
I said not in the heat. Besides, it would soon be five o’clock, and
time to be starting supper. She asked Mrs. Ricker to go with her. Mrs.
Ricker refused. I wondered why, when neither of us would go, Danny did
not go by herself. She did not. Had she, perhaps, guessed at the cause
of Gaby’s fear? Did she share it? Was she afraid to go to the cabin
alone?