1
When Louise opened her eyes she stared dreamily up at the slight
abrasion in the shingle roof through which morning blinked. There were
not many of these informal skylights, for the roof was not an old
one. But there were a few, as there are likely to be in most summer
cottages. When there was a violent downpour one had to hustle around
distributing pans and kettles to catch an often ambitious drip. But
this morning there was no rain. Louise's pretty face was not in danger
of an unsolicited bath. It was a radiant summer dawn.
For a moment she wondered how she had happened to wake so early. The
July birds were all chattering in the woods. But why should _she_
waken out of deep slumber unsummoned? Presently, however, the reason
for this phenomenon flashed vividly. Downstairs in the cottage living
room, on the chimney-piece, stood an old Dutch clock. This clock
possessed a kind of wiry, indignant tick, and a voice, when it was
time to speak, full of a jerky, twanging spite. Louise could hear the
sharp ticking. Then there came a little whirr--like a very wheeze of
decrepitude--followed by an angry striking. One, two, three, four.
And at the very first stroke she knew why she was awake at so almost
grotesque an hour. The remembrance brought its half whimsical shock. In
an hour Leslie would be cranking the engine of his little launch, and
they would be chugging toward Beulah.
However, even this did not impel the girl to spring out of bed.
Indeed, she arose quite deliberately and only after a brief relapse
into a dreaminess which was cousin to slumber itself. She allowed her
mind to explore, quite fantastically and not a little extravagantly,
the probable courses of the day just springing. She knew beyond any
question that it was to be a day packed full of importance for her.
Yet she proceeded with that air of cool possession which young persons
often elect to display when they feel that the reins are snugly in
their hands. As she looked up at the tiny point of aurora in the roof,
Louise smiled. There was almost no trace left of the old trouble--that
well borne but sufficiently poignant wound, which though her own, had
added new lines to the Rev. Needham's already pictorial face. Richard?
Oh, Richard was almost forgotten at length. This was as it should be.
Defiantly, but also a little slyly (because it could hardly be reckoned
a good Christian sentiment), Louise wished that Richard might somehow
be here now to observe her triumph; above all--for the wound had still
a slight sting--to see how finely calm she _had_ learned to be in these
matters.
There was a light step outside on the turf of the hillside. One
unalert might not have noted it, or might not have known it for a
human tread, where there was such a patter of squirrel and chipmunk
scampering. But Louise was alert. She might be calm, but she was also
alert. And she knew it was no squirrel out there. That was Leslie.
He was lingering about under her window, undecided whether he ought
to risk pebbles or a judicious whistle by way of making sure she was
awake. At the faint sound of his foot she raised her head quickly from
the pillow.
"Louise!" he whispered.
You might have thought it some mere passing sibilance of wind. But you
could not be expected to know Leslie's voice as she knew it.
The girl slipped softly out of bed. She did not want to rouse her
sister. Hilda was sleeping with her. Hilda had given her own room to
Aunt Marjie.
When Louise stepped out on to the bare cottage floor, her feet
encountered cool little hillocks of sand, the residue of sundry
bed-time shoe dumpings. One could not live up here beside Lake Michigan
without coming to reckon sand as intimately and legitimately entering
into almost every phase of existence. Indeed, she trod on sand more
or less all the way across to the single little window; then dropped
lightly on to her knees before the window and peered down through the
screen.
"I'm awake, Leslie," she whispered.
And the lad who had been eagerly gazing at this very window, vacant
till now, smiled faintly, nodded, and made motions signifying that he
would wait for her in the little rustic "tea-house." However, his smile
was very brief; and his manner, as he went away toward the specified
rendezvous, was manifestly dejected.
When Louise turned back from the window, Hilda was stirring. Hilda
lifted herself up on to an elbow and welcomed her sister with bright
eyes.
"Who's out there?" she asked.
"Sh-h-h! It's Les. Go back to sleep, Hilda."
"Is he going with you?" the younger girl persisted.
"Only part of the way."
"As far as Beulah?"
"Yes."
"Why doesn't he go all the way?"
"Because I would rather go alone," replied the older girl with a quite
fascinating fusion of firmness and mystery.
But the manifest dignity of this response was slighted by Hilda, who
merely remarked, in an unemotional yet still significant tone: "Oh, I
see."
"Well, isn't it natural?"
"Isn't what natural, Lou?"
"Isn't it natural I should want to be alone when I meet Lynndal?"
"Oh, yes! I didn't just stop to think how it would be."
"Not that it would really matter about Les," the other continued,
slipping quickly into her clothes. "Les is only a boy, after all."
"Oh, do you think so, Lou?"
"Why, of course. Leslie isn't more than twenty, if he's _that_," she
concluded rather doubtfully, twisting up her dark hair and fixing it
loosely in place.
"Oh, he is!" protested Hilda as vigorously as whisper-talk would allow.
"Is what?"
"Les _is_ twenty."
Louise had turned away from the larger mirror in the dresser and was
trying to focus the back of her head with the aid of a small hand
mirror, as women do who are particularly concerned about appearing at
their best. She looked across oddly at her sister, who in turn blushed,
lowering her eyes.
"Well, then, as you say. You seem to be pretty sure."
"Les told me he was," cried Hilda, as though vaguely to shift some sort
of responsibility.
Louise relinquished the mirrors and sat down on the edge of the bed for
the purpose of tying her shoes. "Listen, Hilda," she said; "you ought
to go straight back to sleep. It's only four o'clock. Papa would be mad
if he heard us."
"Oh, but he can't," replied Hilda, with the air of one who knows very
accurately the acoustic properties of the house in which she dwells.
"But Aunt Marjie might," the other suggested.
"Oh, she wouldn't tell. Aunt Marjie's a sport! Besides," she added, as
though to place the matter altogether beyond dispute, "listen!"
Both girls did. They gazed in silence toward the three-quarters
partition beyond which Aunt Marjie was established. It was quite true.
There were unmistakable dulcet sounds from that direction. Aunt Marjie
had warned them she was a heavy sleeper. She had not deemed it urgent
to be more specific.
"Safe!" admitted Louise, with a sigh of mock-relief, adding, however:
"Even so, you ought to go back to sleep."
Hilda dropped on to her pillow, seeming without comment about to
comply. But she was right up again with an earnest question: "Where's
he now?"
"Who?"
"Les."
"Sh-h-h! He's waiting for me outside."
"Oh, Louise--I _wish_ you'd let me go with you!" The emphasis implied
that the petition had been put hitherto--perhaps persistently. "Please
_do_ let me go along--only as far as Beulah!"
The person so earnestly addressed was dusting her face and neck with
powder, which signified that she was about ready to depart. She flipped
open her handkerchief box with a scene from Dresden on its cover
and tucked a fresh handkerchief into her blouse. "Now be good and
don't tease," she pleaded a little petulantly. Louise took a certain
elder-sisterly attitude towards Hilda which had in it something of
selfish authority.
Once more Hilda dropped obediently back. But as she lay there, very
wide awake indeed, she couldn't help sighing: "Oh, how I should _love_
to go to Beulah!" And there was another sigh to set it off.
Now, it might be supposed, from the fervour of the young girl's tone,
that this Beulah, of which both had repeatedly spoken, must be a
wonderfully and peculiarly charming place. Yes, it must indeed possess
rare attributes to make a girl beg to be allowed to abandon her nice
snug nest at dawn for a mere sight of it. And yet, curiously enough,
Beulah was hardly charming in any actual sense: just a tiny, poky, dull
little hole of a town, a poor speck on a minor railroad. All things
considered, Louise's advice sounded very sensible: "You know you're
better off here on the Point."
However, Hilda by no means thought so, and she shook her head with
stolid vehemence.
"And I thought," her sister continued, paying very little attention to
her own words, "I thought there was to be a tennis match this morning."
"Yes, there is," admitted Hilda.
"Well, you know they couldn't possibly play without you."
She forgot her phrases as fast as she uttered them. She was ploughing
through her jewellery case for a certain brooch. It was one which
Richard had given her, and which had somehow been overlooked when
the other gifts had been sent back to him at the Rev. Needham's firm
request. She meant, if she could find it, to wear the brooch this
morning. It might be Lynndal would show himself too sure of her. She
_might_ want to impress upon him the fact that her life had not been
loveless. At length she found the ornament and put it on, with a
little toss of coquetry. Of course Louise didn't mean really to hold
off any regarding their engagement. Ah, no. That was a settled thing,
as a glance at the correspondence must amply prove. Nevertheless, she
decided on the brooch. Richard, with his faithlessness, had hacked two
years right out of her life. But Louise had a new lover! The earlier
affair was remote enough to stand a little harmless commercializing now.
Hilda modestly deprecated the enviable light in which her tennis
playing had been put by her sister.
"You know that's not true!" she said.
"What isn't true?"
"What you said about them not being able to play the match without me.
Besides," she concluded with a leap of thought which gave the words
themselves a queer stamp of irrelevance, "_he's_ going to play in it,
_too_."
"Who is?" asked Louise blankly, brushing some strayed powder off her
skirt.
"Leslie."
"Leslie? Well, I don't get the connection."
Hilda nodded quite violently. Her sleep-tossed hair lay richly about
her shoulders. One shoulder was bare, where the nightgown fell away
from it. She was fresh and pretty. Perhaps not so pretty as Louise. But
Hilda was only fifteen, just swinging into the earliest bloom of her
womanhood.
"Yes," she explained, "Les is going to play in the match. He told me he
would have to get back in time for that. So you see, if it's only the
tennis you're thinking about, you might just as well let me go along as
far as Beulah."
"Oh, he did?" asked her sister, rather sharply, it must be confessed,
for one who had been so abstracted a moment before. "He said he'd have
to get back?"
"Yes, Lou. Why? What's the matter?"
"Nothing." She thrust a pin into her hat.
Hilda regarded her sister's back a moment in silence--as though a back
might somehow reveal, if one but looked hard enough, what new emotion
was passing through a heart. But when she spoke it was casually, and
without further adherence to the theme.
"My, Lou," she said, "you look grand this morning!"
"Ha! My street suit!"
"I know, but all our city clothes look grand up here in the woods."
"Well, I guess Lynndal wouldn't recognize me in a jumper. Remember, he
hasn't seen me since last winter," observed Louise, with an evident
seriousness of tone which might almost lead one to suspect she really
meant it _was_ necessary to dress up in order to be recognized.
"Yes, but you've written every day," Hilda reminded her, renouncing
the subject of clothes and skipping light-heartedly along the way of
digression which had thus been opened up.
"It isn't so!" her sister assured her.
"Well, then, three times a week."
"That's a very different matter." Suddenly she thought of Richard, and
the fecund diligence, on her side at least, of their correspondence.
She scowled. And then she went and bent over the girl in bed. "Can you
see any powder on my face?"
Hilda said she thought she could see just a tiny little bit of rouge.
So Louise rubbed her face vigorously with a towel, by way of destroying
any possible trace of artificiality, and bringing thus a heightened
natural bloom.
There really was very little artificiality about the Needham girls.
The Rev. Needham was always nervously on the lookout for that. His
great horror was such episodes as are dear to the hearts of novelists:
episodes in which soul-rending moral issues appear. And he believed,
and often quite eloquently gave expression to the belief, that a subtle
germ of artificiality lay at the root of all emotional excesses.
Louise's unhappy affair with Richard, the Rev. Needham was pleased to
lay almost squarely at the door of Eastern Culture. To be perfectly
candid, the Rev. Needham did not know a great deal about this
so-called Eastern Culture. But he was persuaded--as are perhaps many
more good souls in the Middle West--that it was something covertly if
not patently inimical to those standards of sane, quiet living to which
he almost passionately subscribed. Why had they ever sent her East at
all? "It was that fashionable school that did all the harm," he would
say, with a sigh in which there was more than a hint of indignation.
Louise herself, whatever she might think of the Culture, admitted
that half the girls in the school were deep in love affairs, most of
which bore every promise of turning out badly. The school was in that
paradise of schools, the nation's capital. It was a finishing school,
and a judicious indulgence in social activities was admittedly--even a
bit arrogantly--one of the features of the curriculum.
Ah, yes. That was just where all the mischief began. If she had
stayed home instead and received young men in her mother's own Middle
Western parlour, she might have been spared--they might all have been
spared--that terrible ordeal of the heart, with its gloomy envelope of
humiliation. In plain terms, Richard had simply turned her down. One
might argue about it, but one could not, in the end, really deceive
oneself. He had turned her down, thrown her over, jilted her, after
flirting desperately and wickedly--though in a manner which the Rev.
Needham strongly suspected was looked upon as innocent and even rather
proper by the decadence of that East he was always harping upon.
Louise, artless and unworldly, as she had been trained to be from the
cradle, found herself but poorly equipped to combat such allurements as
the dreadful Richard exhibited. It was an old tale, but none the less
terrible for all that. She believed everything he said to her, fatally
misconstrued his abundant enough ardour, fell madly in love, and wanted
to throw herself in the river when she realized at length that her
beautiful dream was shattered. Naturally, the Rev. Needham was shocked.
He was horrified when his daughter wrote of throwing herself in the
river. He did not definitely visualize the Potomac, which he had never
seen; it was the convulsing generality that gripped him.
Mrs. Needham's conduct, at that time, had proved much more
practical, if less eloquent, than her husband's. She went straight
to her daughter, determined to bring her back home; and she left a
distracted minister to make what progress he could with the Sunday
sermon--agonized, as he was, by fevered visions of his child's body,
gowned in an indefinite but poetically clinging garment, her hair
tangled picturesquely with seaweed, floating upon the surface of a
composite stream in the moonlight. Necessarily in the moonlight. The
effect was more ghastly that way. And certain immortal lines of verse
would ripple moaningly through his thoughts:
"The tide rises, the tide falls,
The twilight deepens, the curfew calls;
* * * * * *
Darkness settles on roofs and walls,
But the sea in the darkness calls and calls...."
The Rev. Needham was not himself a poet, but there was poetry in the
family. A brother had written poetry and gone to the devil. The Rev.
Needham didn't even read poetry very often any more (for of course he
never thought of looking upon King James's Version as a poem). In fact,
the Rev. Needham had almost a kind of sentiment against poetry, since
brother Will had disgraced them all. But it was curious to observe that
at times of intense inner tumult, appropriate metrical interlinings had
a way of insinuating themselves out of the vast anthology of his youth.
Thus, while Mrs. Needham was away looking after their broken-hearted
daughter, the clergyman, struggling to evolve his sermon, had to combat
such tragic dirges as:
"One more unfortunate,
Weary of breath,
Rashly importunate,
Gone to her death!"
And by the time the poor man got to those inhumanly personal stanzas:
"Who was her father?
Who was her mother?
Had she a sister...?"
he would be pacing the floor and not getting on one bit with his sermon.
Mrs. Needham had the good sense to wire back that Louise was all right,
and that she was bringing her home. The sermon was somehow completed.
But its text was "Vanity, vanity!" and there were allusions in it to
Culture which his congregation never truly grasped.
"Good-bye!" whispered Louise. She gave one last flying peep into the
mirror.
"'Bye, Lou," her sister returned, presenting her lips for a kiss. "I
hope he'll _come_ all right," she added, while Louise crossed the
sanded floor as noiselessly as she could. "And--I'm just _dying_ to
_see_ him!"
The other girl nodded back hurriedly from the door, and was off
downstairs.
Hilda lay down again. She even closed her eyes. But she did not sleep
any more. A horrid little fear clutched at her heart: What if he should
not come?
What if Lynndal Barry should turn out to be another Richard, after all?
2
Down in the kitchen Louise adjusted the generator of a small oil stove
on which most of the household cooking was done. There was an old
wood range in the kitchen also, but that was used only for baking.
It generally smoked and occasionally went out--sometimes almost
miraculously.
Louise turned up the wicks of the stove burners, made sure that the
fuel began soaking freely up into them, and finally applied the flame
of a match. Then she put on the teakettle and fetched a frying pan from
a hook nearby. Not even young ladies flying grandly off to meet their
lovers ought to go without breakfast.
Louise, though she might, perhaps, have been pardoned for overlooking
so merely sensible a detail as this, was really treating the
whole situation most rationally. It was part of her fine, mature
calmness--the calmness she so wished Richard might behold. Playing
now--and very convincingly, too--the rôle of cook, she measured coffee,
got out eggs, cut some bread. Yes, all this was part of her magnificent
calmness. It was indeed a pity Richard couldn't be here to see how
altered she was--how unlike the impulsive, unschooled, hyper-romantic
girl who had submitted to his fickle attractions. Her cheeks would
burn, even now, with inextinguishable chagrin, when she reflected how
painfully one-sided the wretched affair had been. Ah, it had constantly
been he who did the attracting, she who fluttered about like a silly,
puzzled moth. She would have gone without her breakfast every day in
the week for Richard. But with Lynndal, thank heaven, all was quite
different. Now it was obviously and admittedly she who was doing the
attracting. Of course she admired Lynndal tremendously, and loved him.
Oh, of course she loved him. She even loved him very much, else would
she be engaged? No, but the point was that this time her eyes were
open. They were wide open, as eyes should be. She wasn't, this time,
blinded by a fatal glitter of wit and the subtle persuasion of manners
other and more exquisite than any she had hitherto encountered. Lynndal
was totally unlike Richard. Lynndal steadfastly adored her. He even
worshipped her. He said so, though with homely and restrained rhetoric,
in his letters. Yes, she knew that Lynndal was deeply and lastingly in
love with her. So this affair couldn't, it was plain to be seen, turn
out the way the other had.
She sang, though very judiciously, under her breath, as she sped
about preparing the hurried meal. The water boiled in the kettle. She
poured it on the coffee grounds, tossed in an eggshell, left the
pot to simmer. Louise was really quite a skilful cook. Even the Rev.
Needham had to admit that this much, at any rate, had been gained from
the unfortunate Eastern schooling. She set some cups, saucers, and
plates on the kitchen table. Then she slipped out the back door of the
cottage and along a path to a little rustic pavilion which they called
a "tea-house"--though, as a matter of fact, tea never figured in its
usefulness. In the "tea-house" Leslie now was waiting. The path leading
to it had been blazed through thick forest growth. Dewy shoots and leaf
clusters brushed her as she skipped by. The sun was already up, but
under the trees, and especially down in the little hollow she had to
cross, all was dusky and still night-touched.
Leslie saw her coming and jumped up. He waited for her in the rustic
doorway.
"Good morning!" she called to him out of the tiny valley. "We mustn't
wake the cottagers," she cautioned, coming to him and dropping for a
moment, rather breathless, on one of the rustic benches.
"People ought to get up earlier," observed Leslie in a voice he just
noticeably wanted to keep quite as usual. "They don't know what they
miss."
"It is lovely, isn't it?" the girl agreed, abruptly turning and looking
off to sea.
The view from this perch was quite extensive. It was a nook
particularly popular with admirers of sunsets. At this early hour
the sun was not high enough to touch the smooth beach below, but it
lighted the sky, in a lustrous, haunting way, and flashed against the
wings of skimming gulls.
However, exquisite though the morning undeniably was, it did not seem
the proper occasion for any rhapsodising. Indeed, the occasion did not
afford even space for decent enjoyment at all. To Louise the morning
appeared busy rather than fair. She was still sufficiently young,
for all her esteemed calmness, to look upon life, and in this case
especially the operations of the natural world, with intensely personal
eyes. Nature was rather an adjunct, even a casual one at that, than
something infinitely greater than herself. She and her interests must
come first. If convenience permitted, the glory of the sunrise might
be saluted in passing. It could be said of Miss Needham that she had a
bowing acquaintance with the universe.
"I'm getting us a bite of breakfast, Les," she told him. "You don't
mind eating in the kitchen?"
"Hardly!" replied her companion, with the reckless air of one who would
possibly like to explain that even kitchens would lose any customary
odium which might attach to them, were she to grace them with her
presence. Of course Leslie didn't voice any such sentimental and
flamboyant thought. There was surprisingly little mawkishness about
Leslie, despite his dangerous age. He seemed a serious fellow, though
not perhaps exceptionally so. It was a seriousness which embraced all
the lighter moods. Leslie was the sort of chap who could converse
intelligently with older people, yet lure out the best laughs, too,
from a juvenile crowd. It was this fortunate poise that guarded him,
generally, against pitfalls of the heroic.
"I suppose we might have been able to get some breakfast in Beulah," he
said doubtfully.
But he smiled with Louise as she shook her head. Breakfast would be
more reliable in the Needham kitchen. And she rose and led the way back
down the path.
"You're sure the boat's in good condition for the run?" she asked
anxiously over her shoulder.
"Oh, yes."
"It would be awful to break down half way over and miss the train."
"It won't, Louise. You won't miss your train." He spoke a little
bitterly.
As a matter of fact, Leslie had been up half the night tinkering
with his engine--which accounted for his fine assurance. Louise was
painfully aware that the engine couldn't be consistently banked on. It
didn't, as a general thing, receive the most scrupulous sort of care.
The Leslian poise had its lapses.
They crept with admirable stealthiness into the kitchen, whose habitual
odour of spices and damp cereal products was now broken by the livelier
aroma of steaming coffee. There was only one chair in the kitchen. When
Eliza the cook received her young man, who was the porter of a resort
hotel in Beulah, it was invariably in what the Rev. Needham liked to
call God's Great Out-of-Doors--that most capacious and in many respects
best furnished of receiving parlours, after all. Invariably--that is,
of course, except when it rained. When it rained Eliza and her young
man had an entrancing way of conceiving the single chair sufficient.
Louise signified with a wave of the hand that Leslie was to go into
the dining room, ever so quietly, and fetch another chair. He did so,
and set both chairs beside the kitchen table, at the places marked out
already with plates, cups, and imitation silver. Then he sat down,
thrust his elbows on the oilcloth, and gazed ruefully between his fists
at the young lady who, still in the guise of cook, was fluttering about
in the manner of young ladies who do not perhaps feel quite at home in
their work, yet who would defy you to point out one single item not
accomplished according to the very best methods. He watched her with
a mournful intensity, which, had it possessed a little less positive
feeling, would surely be called a fixed stare. She turned round
presently and discovered his attitude.
"For goodness' sake," she whispered, "what makes you look at me that
way?"
He shifted his gaze to the still trees outside and began humming.
"I didn't know I was looking at you any special way. And anyhow, if
I was, you know why," he told her, with a slight effect of baffled
yet defiant contradiction which was immediately muffled by a renewed
humming.
"Leslie, you know we talked it all over yesterday."
"I know, I know."
"And you said it was all right. You said you understood. There wasn't
going to be any kind of misunderstanding...."
"There isn't any misunderstanding. Why do you jump on me? I didn't
begin talking about it."
This was manifestly true. However, she handled it deftly. "You don't
have to talk when you look that way."
"Sorry!" snapped Leslie, who began moodily tapping with his fingers on
the oilcloth. Without realizing it, he was tapping the same tune he had
just been humming.
She flushed a little, and felt a brief angriness toward him. Had
she given words to what was, for a moment, really in her mind, she
would have maintained, and not without honest warmth, that a man you
have jilted hasn't any right to feel hurt. But a moment later this
conception did not seem quite so honest. No, it didn't honour her. She
knew it didn't. And ere she had drawn three breaths she was thinking of
Leslie with considerably more tenderness. However, in this connection,
as with the momentary impatience, sentiment did not spend itself in
words. She merely asked him, in a very kindly way, how he liked his
eggs best.
"I don't care," he replied, employing the colourless masculine
non-assertiveness usual in such cases.
"Do you like them scrambled?"
He nodded drearily.
"Then we'll have them scrambled," she announced with a cheerful smile,
breaking several eggs across the edge of a bowl, adding a little milk,
as carefully measured off as though it were vanilla for a cake, and
proceeding slightly to beat the combination. There seemed something
ungraspably and very subtly characteristic in the decision to scramble
them....
In no time the two were seated at breakfast.
She grew chatty. "I'm sorry there isn't any toast, Les. We can't make
decent toast over an oil fire. We've tried it," she expanded with
labelled significance, spreading butter on a rather dry slice of bread.
The bread that was dry today might be soggy tomorrow. It should be
noted in passing that up here in the woods the supplies showed a
tendency to grow either very soggy or very dry. In fact, the bread and
pastry boxes were often the most infallible of barometers.
Leslie perjured himself with an assurance that the bread was delicious.
"In town," she went on, pouring the coffee, "we have an electric
toaster. We have it on the table and make toast as we want it. I wish
we had it up here!"
"Could you make it work with oil?" asked her companion with sweet
maliciousness.
"Of course not," she sighed. "I always forget. I wish they'd run wires
out here to the Point. I have an electric curler at home, too. It's
such a bother sticking your iron down the chimney of a lamp."
"I should think it would be," agreed Leslie, stirring his coffee and
shepherding such of the grounds as floated upon the surface over to the
edge of the cup, where they were scooped up and deposited on the saucer.
They conversed for a time on casual and every-day topics, as people,
even involved in mighty issues, have rather a way of doing, after all.
She kept warning him, with pretty, prohibitive gestures, not to speak
above the safe pitch established upon their entry. The warning was more
picturesque than really necessary, however, for Leslie, just then,
happened to be in a mood far from boisterous.
"Oh, dear! I forgot to dash cold water into the pot before I took
it off!" she cried in some dismay, as she observed his slightly
exaggerated preoccupation with the floating intruders. "It boiled the
last thing. I thought the fire was turned out under it, but it wasn't."
"What difference does it make?" the lad protested with lugubrious
gallantry.
And he desisted from his efforts and drank his coffee down, grounds and
all, in rather impolite gulps.
Louise, just at this stage, turned her attention to her own cup. There
was one lonesome ground drifting aimlessly and forlornly round and
round in obedience to the impetus of a current set in motion by the
recent stirring. She had poured her own cup last, which explained its
being so much clearer than his.
"Oh, look here, Les!" she exclaimed, following the solitary coffee
ground in the air with the tip of her spoon. "There's just one. That
means a visitor, doesn't it?" She coloured a little, and lifted the
oracle up gently.
Leslie shrugged, conspicuously bored, and devoted himself moodily to
what remained of his share of the eggs. "I don't know," he said.
But she couldn't be swayed from her zeal. She was determined to be
agreeable--especially when it was possible to come upon such agreeable
speculations as this. "There's something about finding money on top of
your coffee," she embroidered, "though you can always make some come if
you hold the pot high enough as you pour. But you see you can't make a
_visitor_ unless there _is_ one."
And Leslie heroically refrained from suggesting that even visitors
might be warded off if one didn't forget the dash of cold water.
However, he did remind her that there needed no signs to tell her there
was a visitor on the way. And he added, with rather juvenile petulance:
"I guess he'd come if there weren't any grounds in the _pot_!"
But this riled her. "I don't mean to sit here and listen to you
speaking disrespectfully of Mr. Barry! He's much older, and you can't
treat him as you would one of the boys."
"I don't want to," her friend returned, vaguely, yet still somehow
pointedly.
She smiled, erasing the friction from their talk. "In the case of the
coffee grounds, as I understand it, if it seems soft it's a lady, and
if it's hard it's a man. Am I all wrong? Is it tea leaves I'm thinking
of? At any rate, we'll experiment!" She eyed her companion with coy and
almost vicious pleasure. "Perhaps this one's only Aunt Marjie, who's
already here."
She carried the problematical atom to her teeth. The test, which she
strove to make momentous, was one to which Leslie brought only a
melancholy interest. She set her teeth firmly together. There was a
little brittle crack. The indisputable fact that it was Lynndal Barry
thrust between them a short silence.
3
It was a subject to which they had come round, almost automatically, at
intervals, ever since the letter arrived.
Ah, the letter, the fateful letter! The letter advising her that the
man to whom she was virtually engaged would put in an appearance on
such and such a day!
Upon its receipt Louise had proceeded with real candour. The letter,
or rather the important implication it contained, was discussed at
once. Oh, yes. She went at once to Leslie with her sinister yet
thrilling confession. Louise Needham was fundamentally an honest, an
even straight-forward young person. Fundamentally: though the roots
were not, it is true, always called upon. The mistakes she made were
rather faults of judgment than altogether of a slumbering conscience.
Indeed, there had been numerous occasions when her life would have
moved much more smoothly had she been less blunt, or had her personal
psychology possessed a few more curves. But this type of downrightness
had been sternly inculcated. It was in the blood. The Rev. Needham
maintained that a square, simple, stalwart attitude toward the world
was the very cornerstone of security and peaceful living; and he
had quotations out of the Scriptures to back it up. Yes, Louise had
gone to Leslie at once. True, she hadn't just happened to speak about
Lynndal before--that is, she hadn't quite painted the relationship in
its true colours, which naturally amounted to the same thing. As for
this silence--well, she would argue that it was in no real sense a
deception, because the engagement (there was no ring as yet) wasn't
public property. No, it was strictly an affair existing between herself
and Lynndal. In a way, Leslie ought to consider himself honoured to be
consulted at all.
"Well, he'll be here in a few hours now," mourned the honoured
individual as they walked along together through the woods toward
Crystal Lake and the little launch. "Then goodnight for _me_!"
"Les, please don't talk like that. You'd think we couldn't even be
friends any more."
"Friends!" He had been suffered to call her more endearing names
throughout the span of the past few weeks.
"I'm sure we'll always be the best sort of friends, Leslie."
But he couldn't see it. "I'm going back to the city!" It was about as
close to heroics as he ever verged.
And following this highly dramatic climax there was a little space of
silence. They walked on, side by side. Louise began to realize how
unwise she had been.
This walk through the forest of Betsey was ordinarily a very wonderful
experience. Of course, however, upon this occasion, neither of the
young persons concerned was in any mood to appreciate it. For her
part, if consulted, Louise would reply that she had no time. Still,
for all that, the experience was (potentially) a delight; for here one
discovered a true, unspoiled natural loveliness, even a kind of sylvan
grandeur. The way, all underneath greenery thickly arched, wound up and
down. From every eminence the neighbouring valleys appeared sunk to an
almost ghostly declivity; but from the valleys themselves, the uplands,
with their rich tangled approaches, soared grandly toward a heaven
invisible for leafy vaulting. At this early hour the summits were a
little dusky, while the depressions slept in deep shade. The full, fair
rays of the uprising sun shot across the exposed tops of the higher
levels of forest, and here and there even the loftier stretches of path
would be dappled with furtive annunciatory splashes. In the forest it
was cool and buoyantly fresh, though heat was already quivering up off
the open stretches of sand skirting the smaller lake. It promised to be
one of the warm days of a rather grudging season.
"Les," she said finally, "why do you talk about going back to the city?"
"Because I don't care to stay up here and...." If concluded, the
sentence would have run: "and see you together." But he thought better
of it. Poise saved him. He compressed his lips.
"Oh, Les, _don't_ make it so hard for me!"
"You didn't spare _me_!" he replied grimly.
"What do you mean?" Her eyes were a little wide.
"H'm...."
"Tell me, Les. We can't go on this way." She meant that she would find
it uncomfortable--a cloud for her present satisfaction with life.
"You knew how I felt. You knew all about it. Yet you didn't send me
packing, or try to drop me. You didn't even give me a hint of how
things were. Do you call that sparing a fellow?"
His arraignment was almost bewildering in its complexity. But she chose
one indictment and grappled with it valiantly. "Of course I didn't try
to drop you. I never treated any man that way!"
"Well," he replied dryly, "I wish you had."
"You wish I hadn't had anything to do with you?" Such a proposition
struck her as unpleasant, to a marked degree--even almost grotesque.