He had solved his problem, and the solution was exceedingly simple.
What, indeed, but another little girl! A real little girl, a
flesh-and-blood little girl, a jolly, active little girl, who, as Mr.
Prescott inelegantly put it to himself, "would make Lily Bell, with her
ringlets and her pantalettes, look like thirty cents." Surely in the
circle of their friends and relatives there must be a little girl who
could be borrowed and introduced--oh, casually and with infinite
tact!--into their menage for a few months. Mr. Prescott, well pleased
with himself, winked a Machiavellian wink and sought his wife,
ostensibly to consult her, but in reality to inform her that he had
made up his mind, and that it would be her happy privilege to attend to
the trivial details of carrying out his plan.
In exactly three weeks Margaret Hamilton Perry was established in the
Prescott homestead for a visit of indefinite length, and in precisely
three hours after her arrival Margaret Hamilton had annexed the
Prescott homestead and its inmates and all the things appertaining
thereto and made them her own. She was the most eager and adorable of
small, fat girls--alive from the crown of her curly head to the soles
of her sensible little spring-heeled shoes. As Mr. Prescott
subsequently remarked in a moment of extreme self-appreciation, if she
had been made to order she couldn't have filled the bill better. Born
and bred in the city, the country was to her a mine of unexplored
delights. The shyness of Raymond Mortimer, suddenly confronted by this
new personality and the immediate need of entertaining it, gave way
before the enthusiasm of the little girl over his pets, his favorite
haunts, the works of his hands--everything in which he had a share.
Clinging to his hand in a rapturous panic as they visited the animals,
she expatiated on the privileges of those happy beings who lived always
amid such delights.
"I wish I didn't ever have to go away again," she ended, wistfully.
"I wish you didn't, either," said Raymond, gallantly, and then was
shocked at himself. Was this loyalty to Lily Bell? The reflection gave
a tinge of coldness to his next utterance. When Margaret Hamilton,
cheered by the tribute, asked, confidently, "May I play with you lots
and help you to make things?" the boy's response lagged.
"Yes," he said, finally, "if Lily Bell will let you."
"Who's Lily Bell?"
"She--why, she's the girl I play with! Everybody knows Lily Bell!"
"Oh!"
Some of the brightness was gone from the eager face.
"Will she like me?" she asked, at last.
"I don't know--I guess--p'r'aps so."
"Will I like her?"
"I don't know. You can't see her, you know."
"Can't see her? Why can't I see her? Doesn't she come here, ever?"
"Oh yes, she's here all the time, but--" The boy squirmed. For the
first time in his short life he was--_was_ he--ashamed of Lily Bell?
No; not that. Never that! He held his small head high, and his lips
set; but he was a boy, after all, and his voice, to cover the
embarrassment, took on a tone of lofty superiority.
"Nobody ever does see her but me," he asserted. "They'd like to, but
they don't."
"Why don't they?"
Verily, this was a persistent child. The boy was in for complete
surrender, and he made it.
"She ain't a little girl like you," he explained, briefly. "She doesn't
have any home, and I don't know where she comes from--heaven, maybe,"
he hazarded, desperately, as a sort of "When in doubt, play trumps."
"But she comes, an' no one but me sees her, an' we play."
"Huh!" This without enthusiasm from Margaret Hamilton Perry. She eyed
him remotely for a moment. Then, with an effort at understanding, she
spoke again.
"I shouldn't think that would be very much fun," she said, candidly.
"Just pretendin' there's a little girl when there ain't! I should think
it would be lots nicer--" She hesitated, a sense of delicacy
restraining her from making the point she so obviously had in mind.
"Anyhow," she added, handsomely, "I'll like her an' play with her if
you do."
Raymond Mortimer was relieved but doubtful. Memories of the extreme
contrariness of Lily Bell on occasion overcame him.
"If she'll let you," he repeated, doggedly.
Margaret Hamilton stared at him and her eyes grew big.
"Won't you let me, if she doesn't?" she gasped. "Why--why--" The
situation overcame her. The big, brown eyes filled suddenly. A small
gingham back rippling with fat sobs was presented to Raymond Mortimer.
In him was born immediately man's antipathy to woman's tears.
"Oh, say," he begged, "don't cry; please don't." He approached the
gingham back and touched it tentatively. "She will let you play with
us," he urged. And then, moved to entire recklessness as the sobs
continued, "_I'll make her!"_ he promised. The gingham back stopped
heaving; a wet face was turned toward him, and a rainbow arched their
little heaven as Margaret Hamilton smiled. Her first triumph was
complete.
It is to be regretted that Lily Bell did not at once lend herself to
the fulfilment of this agreeable understanding. True, she appeared
daily, as of yore, and Margaret Hamilton was permitted to enter her
presence and join her games, but the exactions of Lily Bell became
hourly more annoying. It was evident that Raymond Mortimer felt them as
such, for his anguished blushes testified to the fact when he repeated
them to the victim.
"She wants you to go away off and sit down, so's you can't hear what
we're saying," he said to Margaret Hamilton one day. "I don't think
it's very p'lite of her, but she says you must."
This brief criticism of Lily Bell, the first the boy had ever uttered,
cheered the little girl in her exile. "Never mind," she said. "I don't
care--much. I know it isn't your fault." For by this time she, too, was
under the influence of the spell of convincing reality which Raymond
Mortimer succeeded in throwing over his imaginary friend.
"She does things Ray wouldn't do," she once confided to Miss Greene. "I
mean," hastily, as she suddenly realized her own words--"I mean she
makes him think--he thinks she thinks--Oh, I don't know how to 'splain
it to you!" And Margaret Hamilton hastily abandoned so complicated a
problem. In reality she was meeting it with a wisdom far beyond her
years. The boy was in the grip of an obsession. Margaret Hamilton would
have been sadly puzzled by the words, but in her wise little head lay
the idea they convey.
"He thinks she really is here, an' he thinks he's got to be nice to her
because they're such ve-ry old fren's," she told herself. "But she
isn't very nice lately, an' she makes him cross, so maybe by-an'-by
he'll get tired an' make her act better; or maybe--"
But that last "maybe" was too daring to have a place even in the very
furthest back part of a little girl's mind.
She lent herself with easy good-nature to Lily Bell's exactions. She
had no fondness for that young person, and she let it be seen that she
had none, but she was courteous, as to a fellow-guest.
"Pooh! I don't mind," was her usual comment on Miss Bell's behests; and
this cheerful acceptance threw into strong relief the dark shadows of
Lily Bell's perversity. Once or twice she proposed a holiday.
"Couldn't we go off somewhere, just by ourselves, for a picnic," she
hazarded, one morning--"an' not ask Lily Bell?"
It was a bold suggestion, but the conduct of Miss Bell had been
especially reprehensible the day before, and even the dauntless spirit
of Margaret Hamilton was sore with the strife.
"Wouldn't you like a--a rest, too?" she added, insinuatingly.
Apparently the boy would, for without comment he made the preparations
for the day, and soon he and the child were seated side by side in the
boat in which the old gardener rowed them over to their beloved island.
It was a perfect day. Nothing was said about Lily Bell, and her
presence threw no cloud on those hours of sunshine. Seated adoringly by
the boy's side, Margaret Hamilton became initiated into the mysteries
of bait and fishing, and the lad's respect for his companion increased
visibly when he discovered that she could not only bait his hooks for
him, but could string the fish, lay the festive board for luncheon, and
set it forth. This was a playmate worth while. Raymond Mortimer, long a
slave to the exactions of Lily Bell, for whom he had thanklessly
fetched and carried, relaxed easily into the comfort of man's more
congenial sphere, and permitted himself to be waited on by woman.
In such and other ways the month of August passed. Margaret Hamilton,
like the happy-hearted child she was, sang through the summer days and
knitted more closely around her the hearts of her companions.
With the almost uncanny wisdom characteristic of her, she refrained
from discussing Lily Bell with the other members of the family.
Possibly she took her cue from Raymond Mortimer, who himself spoke of
her less and less as the weeks passed; but quite probably it was part
of an instinct which forbids one to discuss the failings of one's
friends. Lily Bell was to Margaret Hamilton a blot on the boy's
scutcheon. She would not point it out even to him, actively as her
practical little soul revolted against his self-deception. Once,
however, in a rare moment of candor, she unbosomed herself to Mr.
Prescott.
"I don't like her very well," she said, referring, of course, to Lily
Bell. "She's so silly! I hate to pretend an' pretend an' do things we
don't want to do when we could have such good times just by ourselves."
She buried her nose in his waistcoat as she spoke and sniffed rather
dismally. It had been a trying day. Lily Bell had been much _en
evidence_, and her presence had weighed perceptibly upon the spirits of
the two children.
"Can't you get rid of her?" suggested the man, shamelessly. "A real
meat little girl like you ought to do away with a dream kid--an
imaginary girl--don't you think?"
Margaret Hamilton raised her head and looked long into the eyes that
looked back at her. The man nodded solemnly.
"I'd try if I were you," he said. "I'd try mighty hard. You don't want
her around. She's spoiling everything. Besides," he added, half to
himself, "it's time the boy got over his nonsense."
Margaret Hamilton reflected, her small face brightening.
"Are you very, very sure it wouldn't be wicked?" she asked, hopefully.
"Yep. Perfectly sure. Go in and win!"
Greatly cheered by this official sanction, Margaret Hamilton the
following day made her second suggestion of a day _a deux_.
"All by ourselves," she repeated, firmly. "An' not Lily Bell, 'cos
she'd spoil it. An' you row me to the island. Don't let's take Thomas."
This was distinctly wrong. The children were not allowed to take the
boat save under Thomas's careful eye; but, as has been pointed out,
Margaret Hamilton had her faults. Raymond Mortimer struggled weakly in
the gulf of temptation, then succumbed and went under.
"All right," he said, largely, "I will. We'll have lunch, too, and
p'r'aps I'll build a fire."
"We'll play we're cave-dwellers," contributed Margaret Hamilton, whose
invention always exceeded his own, and whose imagination had recently
been stimulated by Miss Greene, who occasionally read aloud to the
children. "You hunt an' get the food an' bring it home, an' I'll cook
it. You be the big, brave man an' I'll be your--your mate," she
concluded, quoting freely from the latest interesting volume to which
she had lent an ear.
The picture appealed to Raymond Mortimer. With a manly stride he
approached the boat, helped her in, loosened it from its moorings, and
cast off. His brow dark with care, he loftily ordered her to steer, and
spoke no more until they had safely made their landing.
Alone on their desert island, the two children faithfully carried out
the programme of the day. With dry branches gathered by his mate the
intrepid male soon made a fire, and retreating hurriedly to a point
comfortably distant from it, they gazed upon their work. Fishing and
the cleaning and cooking of their catch filled the morning; and if,
indeed, the cleaning is something the mind would mercifully pass over,
those chiefly concerned were satisfied and ate with prodigious appetite.
"It's awful funny," said Raymond Mortimer, comfortably, as they reposed
under a tree after their repast, "but when Lily Bell an' I used to come
here--"
He stopped and gazed apprehensively behind him, as if fearful that the
unbidden guest was even now within hearing. Apparently reassured, he
resumed: "When Lily Bell an' I used to come we 'most always went to
sleep after awhile. I--we--got kind of tired talking, I guess. But when
you an' I talk I don't get tired."
Margaret Hamilton flushed with delight, but an excess of maidenly
modesty overcame her at the same moment.
"Why don't you?" she inquired, coyly.
"'Cos I like you better."
Margaret Hamilton gasped, sputtered, looked around her. Everything was
in its place; there had been no submarine upheaval. The boy was there
and he had said this thing, the full meaning of which burst suddenly
upon her. Rising to her feet, she hurled herself upon him with the
impetuosity of her intense nature.
"Do you really?" she gasped and gurgled. "Do you? Oh, do you? Oh, Ray,
I'm so glad!"
And she kissed him!
Disengaging himself with dignity from the clinging embrace of the
maiden, the outraged youth rose to his feet.
"Don't you ever do that again, Margaret Hamilton Perry," he said,
slowly, and with awful sternness. "Don't you ever. Lily Bell never,
never did such a thing!"
She retreated, but unabashed.
"It's 'cause I was so glad," she said, happily. "Real girls always do;
they're like that. But I won't any more. You like me best, just the
same, don't you?" she inquired, anxiously.
He came cautiously nearer.
"Yes, I do," he said, coldly, "but don't you try that any more, or I
won't!"
Then they talked of cave-dwellers, and of the pleasant warmth of an
open-air fire on an August day, and of marvellous things they would do
during the coming weeks. And the absorption of their conversation was
such that when the faithful Thomas, having rowed after them, stealthily
approached and smote the boy upon the back, they yelled in startled
unison.
That no rancor lingered in the mind of Raymond Mortimer toward the
too-demonstrative Margaret Hamilton was proved by the careless remark
he made to his father when, some days later, that gentleman uttered a
jocund inquiry as to the health of Lily Bell.
His son stared at him for an instant, as one who seeks to recall the
snows of yester-year.
"Oh," he said, at last, "I haven't seen her for a long time. She
doesn't come round now."
Then, as his father grinned widely over these melancholy tidings, the
son flushed crimson.
"Well, I don't care," he said, hotly. "It's all your fault. Didn't you
tell me I had to 'muse Margaret? Didn't you? Well--I am. I ain't got
time for two. An', anyhow," he concluded, with Adamitic instinct, "Lily
Bell stopped coming herself!"
The exorcism of Lily Bell was complete. Unlike more substantial Lily
Bells of larger growth, she had known how to make her disappearance
coincide with a wish to that effect on the part of her gentleman friend.
III
HER LAST DAY
For some time--possibly an hour or more--she sat perfectly still,
staring at a wavering line made on the floor by a stray sunbeam which
had forced its way through the window of her hotel sitting-room. At
first she looked unseeingly, with the dull, introspective gaze of the
melancholic. Then she began to notice the thing, and to fear it, and to
watch for outlines of a quivering human face, and to tremble a little.
Surely there had been a face--she thought vaguely, and puckered her
brow in an effort to remember. It was half an hour before she realized
what it was, and the passing of fifteen minutes more had been ticked
off by a clock on the table near her when she lifted her glance enough
to follow the beam along the floor, up the wall, to the pane where it
had entered. She rose suddenly. It was long since she had made a
consciously voluntary movement, and she knew this. She drew a deep
breath as she stood up, and almost on the instant she experienced a
life-giving sensation of poise and freedom. The weight fell from her
feet, the blackness in which she had lived for weeks unwrapped itself
from around her like a departing fog, her lax muscles tightened. She
groped her way to the window and stood there for a moment, resting her
cheek against the cool pane and gazing up at the sky. Presently her
eyes dropped to the level of a distant water-line, and she saw the
river and the trees that fringed its distant bank, and the swiftly
moving boats on its surface.
She was better. She knew all that this meant, how much and how little.
For an interval, long or short, as it should happen to be, she was
again a rational human being. She abruptly swerved around from the
window and swept the room with her eyes, recognizing it as the one she
was occupying before she "went under," as she put it to herself, and
trying, from association with the familiar objects around her, to form
some idea of the length of this attack.
At the beginning of her breakdown the intervals between intelligent
consciousness and insanity had been long. She was herself, or was able
to keep herself fairly in hand, the greater part of the time, and
chaos, when it came, lasted only for a few days or weeks. Recently this
condition had been reversed. She had lost knowledge of time, but she
felt that centuries must have passed since those last flying, blessed
hours when she knew herself at least for what she was. She grasped now
at her returning reason, with a desperate, shuddering little moan,
which she quickly stifled. Some one must be near, she remembered, on
guard: her nurse, or a hotel maid if the nurse was taking one of her
infrequent outings. Whoever was in charge of her must be in the next
room, for the door was open between the two. The nurse would welcome
her return, the patient reflected. It was her habit--a singularly
pathetic habit, the nurse had found it--to refer always to her attacks
as "absences," and to temporary recovery as "returns."
She moved toward the open door and then stopped, feeling suddenly that
she was not yet ready to talk to any one, even the nurse, for whom she
had a casually friendly feeling based on dependence and continued
association. She wished to think--dear God, to be able to think
again!--and there seemed so much thinking to be done and so little time
in which to do it. Her heart dropped a beat as she realized that. On
how much time could she safely count, she wondered. A week? A few days?
It had never been less than a week, until the last episode. She turned
from the thought of that with a sick shudder, but memory dragged it up
and ruthlessly held it before her--the hour, the moment, the very place
she was sitting when it occurred. She had been talking to a friend, who
unconsciously said something that annoyed and excited her. She saw now
that friend's face growing dim before her eyes--at first puzzled, then
frightened, then writhing and twisting into hideous shapes, she
thought, until in her horror she had struck at it. She must not think
of that, she knew, as she set her teeth and pulled herself up short.
She had a will of extraordinary strength, her physicians and nurses had
conceded, and she resolved that it should serve her now. With grim
determination she pieced together the patches of memory left to her.
She had had three days then--three short days. She dared not count on
even that much respite now, though she might possibly have it and more.
But one day--surely Providence would let her have one day--one _last_
day. Her friends and the specialists had begun to talk of asylums. She
had heard whispers of them before she succumbed to this last attack;
and though her memory of what occurred in it was mercifully vague, she
dimly recalled struggles and the shrieks of some one in agony--her own
shrieks, she knew now, though she had not known it then. It all meant
that she was getting worse and more "difficult." It all meant chronic
invalidism, constant care, eventual confinement.
Her brain was now abnormally clear, supernaturally active. It worked
with an eager deference, as if striving to atone for the periods when
it failed her. The little clock struck ten. It was early--she had a
long day before her, a beautiful spring day; for she noticed now the
tender green of the leaves and the youth of the grass. How interesting
it would be, she reflected, idly, to go out into the free, busy world
and mingle with human beings, and walk the city streets and come into
touch with life and the living. She would go, she would spend the day
that way; but, alas! the nurse would go, too--cool, kind, professional,
alert, quietly watchful. If she could in any way elude her and go
alone. ...
Her eyes narrowed and took on a look of cunning as she turned them
sidewise toward the open door. As stealthily as a cat she crept to it
and looked in. On a divan in the farthest corner the nurse lay
stretched in a deep sleep, whose unpremeditatedness was shown by the
book which lay on the floor, dropped, evidently, from her suddenly
relaxed fingers. The patient retreated as noiselessly as she had
advanced, and, going to a mantel-mirror in her sitting-room, turned on
her reflection there a long and frightened look. She saw a woman of
thirty-five, thin, pale, haggard, high-bred. Her hair had been arranged
in accordance with the nurse's conception of comfort and economy of
time, and though her gown was perfect in its fit and tailor-made
severity, the lace at her neck and in the sleeves of her silk waist was
not wholly fresh. Her lips curled as she looked. This was she, Alice
Stansbury, the wreck of a woman who had once had health and beauty and
wealth and position. The last two were in a degree left to her, but
what difference did it make how she looked, she asked herself, harshly.
Even as the thought came, however, she took off her waist and sewed
clean lace cuffs on the sleeves, replacing the collar with a fresh one.
Then she took down her hair and rearranged it, rapidly but with care.
It was a simple matter to change her slippers for walking-boots, and to
find her hat and coat and gloves in their old places. Miss Manuel, the
nurse, _was_ reliable, she told herself again as she put them on,
feeling a moment's gratitude to the woman for trying to keep her "up,"
even during her "absences," to something approaching the standard a
gentlewoman's birth and breeding demanded. Her money, or at least a
large part of it, for she did not stop to count it, she found in the
despatch-box where she had put it on their arrival in New York, and the
key was with others on a ring in the private drawer of her
writing-desk. Hurriedly she selected several large bills and put them
into a silver purse, pressing it deep into the pocket of her
walking-skirt with some vague fear that she might lose it. Then she
replaced the box and locked the desk, dropping the key in her pocket.
Her movements were extraordinarily swift and noiseless. In twenty
minutes from the time she had looked in on the nurse she was ready for
the street.
A second glance into the inner room showed her that Miss Manuel was
still sleeping. She regarded her distrustfully for an instant, and on a
sudden impulse sat down at her desk and wrote a message on a sheet of
the hotel paper.
"I am going out for the day. _I will return to-night._ Do nothing,
consult no one. I am quite able to take care of myself. Don't make a
sensation for the newspapers! ALICE STANSBURY."
"That last sentence will quiet her," she reflected, with cool
satisfaction, as she pinned the note to the side of the mirror. "She
won't care to advertise far and wide that she has temporarily mislaid a
patient!"