QUEER CONFIDENCE
When the excitement died down, and Nancy found an opportunity to “look
Rosa over,” as she expressed her scrutiny of the cousin’s physical
condition, she found so many cuts, scratches, bruises and other marks
of violence, that she really wanted to call Margot in to attend to
their cleansing and bandaging.
“I tell you, Nance, they’re all right,” insisted Rosa rather
petulantly. “I don’t poison easily and those are all scratches from the
trees and bushes.”
“But just see that long cut on the side of your leg--”
“A wire, I guess it was a barbed wire--”
“That’s always dangerous,” interrupted Nancy. “The rust is one of the
worst things. Rosa, how could you be so silly?” Nancy’s patience was
by no means abundant. She hated to see Rosa’s skin torn that way;
besides, she realized the danger of it.
“Nancy Brandon!” called out the cousin in a determined voice, “you
have no idea what I went through. Orilla acted like a lunatic and I
was honestly afraid of her. She seems quite fond of you--” there was
sarcasm in this--“that is, she spoke of you as if you and she were
pals. Just another one of her oddities, of course, so I let it go that
way.”
Here was Nancy’s chance to tell Rosa why the girl considered her
friendly. But the hot flush in her cheeks warned her. Besides, there
was in Nancy’s mind a new thought. It came when Orilla had smiled at
her in the woods. Perhaps Nancy could help Orilla!
So the moment passed and the cousins continued to bathe and bind the
scratches. Rosa’s hands were cruelly torn and, as the girls talked,
Rosa gave Nancy an inkling of the whole absurd plot.
“I never expected she would ask me to chop down trees, of course,”
explained Rosa. “She had always insisted that what I needed was hard
work. She made fun of me for being soft, and I suppose that made me
mad. At any rate, she promised that I would lose five pounds a week if
I faithfully followed her advice.”
“Five pounds a week?” repeated Nancy, incredulously.
“Yes. And you see, if I lost twenty pounds in the month the folks are
in Europe I would be quite--quite slender when they came back,” and she
smiled so prettily that Nancy wondered Why she wanted to spoil those
dimples with trimming off their scallops.
“And she was going to do all that--with violent exercise?” Nancy
questioned in amazement.
“That and--starvation.” Rosa uttered the last word tragically. “I
didn’t promise to starve but--now, Coz, haven’t I been humble enough?
You don’t want to hear any more of the horrible details, do you?”
“Well, I’d like to know,” continued Nancy cautiously, “why she wanted
the trees cut down? What was she going to do with them?”
“That’s just what I wanted to know, too,” Rosa said in reply. “I knew
for a long time that she had some secret scheme; you know the night
I hurt my foot we saw that she had a hatchet in her car, but she has
never told me what the real plan was. I’ve known Orilla since I was
a baby, and I suppose I’m used to her ways, but I must say she is
secretive. And sly! I couldn’t find out the least thing, ever, that she
didn’t want me to know.”
“Yes, I think she is like that,” agreed Nancy, thereby dismissing for
a time at least the mystery of the plot. “But what we have got to do
now is to fix up her damages. Rosa, I do wish you would let Margot see
that big scratch. I’m no good at nursing and I don’t want to take the
responsibility--”
“I’ll be as beautiful as ever in a day or two--see if I don’t,”
replied Rosa, making desperate efforts not to wince as she poured the
disinfectant over her hands.
“But when Margot smells this drug store she’ll surely suspect,”
intimated Nancy, for, as she said, the disinfectants had made havoc
with the atmosphere of Rosa’s little dressing room, that adjoined her
bath.
“I’m always getting cuts on my hands,” replied Rosa. “All I have to do
is to hide the rest of me. Margot is pretty busy now, you know. If she
hadn’t been she would have heard old Pixley’s story. Can’t that woman
talk though?”
Nancy agreed that she could, and that led to further discussion of
Mrs. Pixley, Orilla, Mrs. Rigney and some other folks that Nancy had
recently become acquainted with.
This was to have been the evening of the dance at Sunset Hotel, but
there was now no possibility of the girls attending it. Not only did
Rosa’s battered condition make it impossible, but a heavy summer
storm had descended upon the mountains, and showed no indications of
subsiding.
Rain, wind, thunder, lightning! The girls watched the great spectacle
from a west window, and at times it seemed as if the heavens were
splitting asunder. The lightning flashed in a solid sea of fire behind
one great mountain, and this looked indeed as if the sky were rent and
another world was breaking through.
Somehow the storm seemed a fitting finish for the turbulent day that
Nancy and Rosa had just passed through, and as they watched the display
in the heavens they worried about Orilla. Was she safely under shelter?
Why did not her mother prevent her foolish work? And, Nancy secretly
wondered, what had that little flash of light meant which she had seen
flame up suddenly and then die out?
For days following this there was no sign of Orilla nor did any word
from her come to Fernlode. But this was in no way unusual, rather was
it regarded as a good thing for Rosa and Nancy.
Mrs. Rigney came around occasionally, Nancy noticed, and she was
surprised to find her a woman of intelligence. She appeared to be on
the best of terms with Margot and the other servants at Fernlode, and
this seemed to be cause for greater wonderment that Orilla should be
so antagonistic.
Rosa recovered quickly, as she had promised to, and she also
“reformed.” That is, she no longer kept secret trysts with the
“fat-killer,” as she now called Orilla, although Nancy knew that
letters, messages, and even bundles addressed to Orilla went out very
privately from Rosa’s room.
The arrival of a lovely white scales for Rosa’s bath room came as a
surprise one day, but a letter from Lady Betty presently explained it.
Rosa was to take long walks with Nancy, as she had promised to do; she
was also to follow some sensible advice in the matter of diet, and just
to keep up her courage she was to watch the scales!
This plan, which was really the fulfillment of Nancy’s written
suggestion to Lady Betty, brought the dove of peace to Fernlode, in so
far as Rosa’s conduct was concerned. For in the first week of her trial
of it she actually lost three and one half pounds.
“And no barked paws nor skinned shins,” she gayly announced to
everyone, including, of course, the Durands.
“I can’t see why you didn’t know that insistent exercise and cut-down
rations was the real cure,” argued Nancy, reasonably enough. “Even at
grammar school, and in the lower grades, babes, fat dimply little ones,
are walking miles to school and turning their backs on lollipops.”
“But I hate to walk and I love lollipops,” explained the shameless Rosa.
“And you loved the excitement of a woodland mystery?”
“Yes; I could just see myself in a movie cutting down trees and falling
away into skeleton lines. It was romantic now, Nance, wasn’t it,
really?”
“Very. Especially when we brought you back on a tray. All carved up
like a tatooed injun--”
They yelled at this, and Nancy was so relieved at Rosa’s change of
disposition that she, Nancy, began to get fat! Just as Lady Betty had
hoped!
Everything was so happy and cheerful; Rosa’s friends came almost every
afternoon and evening, numbers of them, girls and boys, and at last the
summer had opened up into a real vacation for Nancy.
They finally went to a dance at Sunset Hotel, and Rosa wore the blue
cape. It was a perfect evening and everyone was so happy that even
the sight of the cape upon Rosa’s shoulders failed to bring regret to
Nancy. Four car loads of young folks from their summer homes paraded
down the hillside road at nine o’clock. It seemed late to Nancy, but
she knew better than to say so.
“The hotel children have the ball-room from eight until nine,” Dell had
explained, “then the young folks swarm in. Don’t worry about being too
young, Nancy. You look like a young lady in that stunning rig.”
The “rig” was stunning, even Nancy conceded that, for it was a
flame-colored chiffon robe that fell down straight from her shoulders,
sleeveless, and with the fashionable high neck. Her dark hair set
the flame color off beautifully, as did the glints of her dark eyes,
and she really did look lovely. This costume was one of Lady Betty’s
presents.
Whether a girl was fourteen or nineteen no one could tell, for the
bobbed heads were so much alike and so ineffably youthful, everyone
looked very young indeed.
The hotel was fascinating to Nancy; its great posts and pillars flanked
with baskets of growing vines, the spectacular lights set all over the
ceilings, and the music!
It was a scene of gaiety such as Nancy had never before witnessed, and
when Gar had danced with her and had then taken her out to the great
porch to see the lake illuminations, Nancy Brandon felt like a girl in
a dream. Summer life at a fashionable resort was to her like a page
from a book, or a scene in a play.
“But I’d die if I had to stay at a hotel,” Gar assured her as she
commented upon the grandeur. “It’s all right once in a while, but you
would hate this artificial living as a regular diet.”
Nancy agreed that she might, but she also expressed her interest in a
sample like this. Rosa had a wonderful time also, the best part of it
being the number of compliments she received.
“Wasn’t she getting thin!”
The dance ended early for the Durand party, as Dell was a practical
chaperon, and she insisted upon returning to the hills at a reasonable
hour. But the memory of that first night stayed in Nancy’s mind just as
she remembered her own little party in the Whatnot Shop last year.
Only Ted and her mother had been there to make that first one really
complete.