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[Illustration]
NATALIE PAGE
BY
KATHARINE HAVILAND TAYLOR
AUTHOR OF
“YELLOW SOAP,” “TONY,” “STANLEY JOHNS’ WIFE,”
ETC.
HODDER AND STOUGHTON
LIMITED LONDON
_Copyright, 1921, by_
_George W. Jacobs and Company._
MADE AND PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
BILLING AND SONS, LTD., GUILDFORD AND ESHER
DEDICATION
TO
VERY DEAR “AUNT EVA”
(Mrs. O. F. HOFFMAN)
Contents
Chapter Page
I. HOW IT BEGAN 9
II. GOOD-BYES 22
III. MRS. CRANE’S STORY 31
IV. WHAT MARY ELINOR TOLD ME 47
V. NEW YORK AND MY NEW HOME 59
VI. THE SECOND BRACELET 73
VII. REAL EXCITEMENT 85
VIII. AGAIN AWAKE 99
IX. A STRANGE HAPPENING 106
X. WHAT MR. KEMPWOOD TOLD ME 119
XI. STRANGE NOISES ARE HEARD 131
XII. WHAT HAPPENED 152
XIII. BLUE MONDAY 164
XIV. EVELYN BLAMES ME 180
XV. WHAT OCCURRED 188
XVI. ALL SORTS OF BRUISES 198
XVII. WHO CAUGHT THE MOUSE-TRAP? 215
XVIII. HEART AFFAIRS 224
XIX. TWO SURPRISES 238
XX. CHRISTMAS FUN 255
XXI. S. K. FORCES MY CONFIDENCE 265
XXII. DETECTIVE WORK 278
XXIII. WAITING FOR THE HUMAN MOUSE 291
XXIV. WHAT MADE THE CHASE 304
Chapter I--How it Began
I think it is strange how the scenes surrounding big events stay in your
memory. And sometimes with years they become more clear than the
happening which impressed them. I know this, because I remember a big
four-posted bed, and a lot of people around it--crying. And then I
remember someone lifting me up to kiss the woman who was on the bed, but
I do not remember how she looked, and she was my mother. She died at
that time, and now I only recall the crying people and the big
four-posted bed, and thinking it funny that a bed should wear
petticoats. It had a valance on it, you see, and I evidently had not
noticed it before.
Just in that same way I remember coming to live with Uncle Frank
Randolph, who is my mother’s brother. And all I remember about that is
whiskers (they were miles long, I was sure!) and the fact that it was
raining. And now--somehow--when I think of home and saying good-bye to
it, all I can see is swirling yellow leaves and the dust and peanut
shells and bags that were flying in the wind around the station.
But I must start this story properly. It really all began the day I rode
a bicycle down the Court-house steps on a bet. At that time I saw
nothing wrong in doing this, and to be frank I was quite proud that I
could do it, for there are fifteen of those steps, and they’re quite
steep. After I did it I went over to the drug store with Willy Jepson
and had a soda, and then we rode down to the ball field, and I pitched
nine innings for the Red Socks, after which I thought I’d go home. I
usually went home, when I had a funny hollow feel under my belt. And
Uncle Frank didn’t mind my not being on time for meals, so it didn’t
matter. But when I got in that night I knew something had happened.
In the first place, Uncle Frank wasn’t reading any of his bug books
(Uncle Frank is very famous for his bug knowledge, as you probably
know--some people even calling him the “Second Fabre”), nor did he have
on two pairs of glasses. In fact, he was acting entirely unnatural and
quite as people of his age do when they are preparing to be
disagreeable.
“Ho hum! Where have you been?” he asked, as I sat down at the table.
“Down at the flats,” I answered. “Pitched nine innings against Corkey
McGowan’s Gang, and we licked ’em.” And then, feeling some pride, I
reached for the spiced peaches and chocolate cake and began to satisfy
my craving for food.
“Don’t you”--he began, hesitated, fumbled for words, and then went
on--“ah--like the--ah--gentler pursuit of maidens?”
I said I didn’t.
“Ho hum!” he said. And he wagged his head several times, which means he
is perplexed.
“How old are you?” he asked next.
I told him I was sixteen (I do every two or three days), and then I
asked him to pass the strawberry preserve, because I found that I was
still hungry. He did, and then he asked me whether I had eaten any meat.
I had always depended upon his absent-mindedness, and I was surprised to
see him so obviously upset and, truth to be told, also a little annoyed;
for I knew that my life would be one series of explanations, if he began
to notice.
I told him that I hadn’t felt the need for anything but chocolate cake
and preserves, but he wagged his head again and then he drew forth a
letter, and I knew by the shade and the address which was engraved on
the envelope that it was from Aunt Penelope Randolph James, who lives in
New York.
“Penelope,” said Uncle Frank, “intimated as much--where is it?--ho
hum--oh, here we are,” and then he read aloud this:
“‘With your erratic habits, my dear, she is probably growing up like a
young Indian, and I dare say she eats whatever she pleases, and does
whatever she likes.’”
I said: “Why shouldn’t I?” And then, “Will you please pass the cake?”
for I realized that Uncle Frank was absorbed. He passed it to me as he
turned the page, and went on with: “‘Obviously, she must have two or
three years in a good school, and one here, after her coming out. I
think she will be happy with Evelyn and Amy, and we will love having
her. I want to know her, to have a few years of her, and a chance to do
whatsoever I can--because of Nelly.’”
And after that Uncle Frank stooped and stared down at the letter.
“Nelly” was the name of my mother, and everyone who knew her loved her a
great deal; so much, in fact, that they can’t speak of her easily. I
always wish, and so much, that it was hard for me to speak of her. But,
as I said before, I can only remember the big four-posted bed and the
crying people. And I never did think that was quite fair, for as I look
on girls with mothers I realize I have missed a great deal. I do think
that I at least might have been allowed to have a few years of mine.
But--that attitude doesn’t help me. In this world you have to make up
your mind to lots that isn’t happy. For, if it IS, all your complaints
won’t change it.
But--to get on. I was not impressed with my aunt’s letter. I knew I
wouldn’t have a good time with my cousin Evelyn, because I wear her old
clothes sometimes, and by their architecture I realize that our tastes
are not in common. They are very flossy. Usually she chooses the kind of
colour that soils when you shin up a tree, and they have lots of buttons
on them that sort of catch when you take any mild exercise, such as
sliding down a barn roof on your stomach (there are some ideal barns for
that in this section), and once, when I went down the spouting from the
Jepsons’ third floor (we were playing hide-and-seek), I got hung up by a
button three feet from the ground and had to scream for someone to
loosen me, and was consequently “It;” beside which I might have been
killed if it had been higher and the button had not held. This is all
mixed, but English is not my strong point. I like gym. work best of any
study, and do best in it.
Then, beside that, I have a photograph of Evelyn, and I realized from it
that we wouldn’t mean much to one another; also I have never got along
very well with girls.
So I said: “But I feel that my education is finished.”
My uncle didn’t think so, and he tried not to smile, which I think is a
very impolite habit of older people. I’d rather they would really smile
at you any time.
I went on. I said, and heatedly, I must admit: “I can say the
multiplication table up to the twelves, and what more can you ask?” And
just to prove it I did, up to “twelve times twelve is one hundred and
fifty-nine;” but even then he didn’t look convinced.
“There are other things,” he said. I asked what, but he wasn’t concrete.
“I love life as it is,” I said, and none too steadily. I couldn’t _bear_
to think of leaving Queensburg and Virginia! But uncle had got up and
was puttering around near the bay window, where a bookcase stands, and
so I knew he didn’t hear me. I tried once more to attract his attention,
but he was looking at a lot of coloured plates of the antennæ of some
sort of rare beetle, and I had to give up. But after I had eaten another
piece of cake and a little more preserve, I got up. I picked up the
dishes and went to the kitchen with them, for I always clear the table
for Mrs. Bradly, who is Uncle Frank’s housekeeper.
She was washing lettuce and splattering a good deal of water.
“Bradly-dear,” I said, “do you know about this letter?”
“Set,” she said, and waved toward a stool which stood before the back
window. I settled on it and looked out in the garden, which is a shabby
but dear place. The hollyhocks were beginning to sag, I remember, and
sprawled every way; and the zinnias positively blazed colour in the
first taupe shadows of the dusk. . . . It was pretty, and it made you
feel _still_, as if you wanted to close your eyes halfway and smile just
a little; but it made you feel sad. . . . I don’t understand that
feeling, but sometimes I have it. . . . Mrs. Bradly never had it, for I
asked her. But I think my mother would have understood it. . . . Pretty
things make it, and some kinds of music, and I don’t know whether
anything else does or not, but those are the only things that have made
_me_ have it. . . . I don’t imagine uncle ever felt it. One day I asked
him.
“Uncle Frank,” I said, “do you ever feel sort of sad, and _awfully_
happy, when it’s just hazy, soft-dark outdoors and the crickets squeak
and everything seems cosy and yet sort of lonesome, and you feel sort of
contented and yet--miserable, the way you do after you’ve eaten a big
Thanksgiving dinner----”
“Crickets?” he said, looking over his glasses. “Dinner? . . . Ho hum!”
And then he went and got some engravings that he bought in France, of
some sort of cricket who was _eating her husband_! They do it, quite a
lot of them. And although that does seem cruel, they are very bright and
intelligent in more ways than just that. Their husbands weren’t useful
and so they ate them, which is more than some women do. This is mixed,
but as I said, gym. work is where I star.
But of course I knew from that that he had never felt that poetic
longing, or whatever it is, that I felt that night when Mrs. Bradly was
washing lettuce and I asked her about the letter.
“High time,” she said, after I spoke, “that you was sent off! _I_ can’t
do a thing with yuh! . . . Playin’ _ball_, a great girl like _you_!”
“Oh, Bradly-_dear_!” I said. I hated displeasing her. But she did not
soften.
“Well, I’ll stop!” I said, after a deep drawn breath. I sighed, because
playing ball means a great deal in my life.
Bradly-dear sniffed and flopped the lettuce terribly.
“I didn’t play at Parsons,” I went on. She didn’t reply.
“I wanted to frightfully,” I said. “It is quite an honour, Bradly-dear,
to pitch on a business men’s team. And they had to let Mr. Horner do it,
and he has a glass eye and let three men sneak in to third, because he
couldn’t see out of the glass one.”
I had wanted to play ball in Parsons. It is a town some ten miles’
distance where _all_ the trains stop. They claim that it has ten
thousand inhabitants, which, of course, makes it a city. . . . The
reason I didn’t play was because the minister, Mr. Diggs, called and
asked uncle not to let me. I don’t know why religious people are so
often disagreeable. Bradly-dear spoke again, and witheringly.
“_Fine_ life for the daughter of Nelly Randolph,” she said, “to set here
and _rot_! . . . The place is all right for your uncle--laws, he could
mash his bugs and put ’em on paper anywhere--but for a girl----” Again
she sniffed.
“But I love it,” I protested. “This sort of a life is all I want----”
“Your mother,” she went on, “spoke French and was a lady. She could
enter a room and talk high-falutin and entertain _anybody_. She could
wave a fan--and you”--she faced me and waved the lettuce quite as if
that were an ostrich plumed fan and she a court lady--“and you,” she
repeated, “you can wave a baseball bat, but enter a room? Why, you slide
your feet under every rug that isn’t _glued_ down, and you tangle up in
all the cheers, and you say ‘Hello’ when you should say ‘Howdy,’
and--well, it ain’t no ways fittin’ or proper that you should stay here
and act like you was training for to be Ringling’s star performer!”
I didn’t reply. There wasn’t anything to say. For all that Bradly-dear
had said was true. I am very awkward--but--I like being so.
“Your mother,” she said, slowly and solemnly, “would ‘a’ wanted you to
be learned right and proper manners----”
I stood up.
“All right, Bradly-dear,” I said, “if you really think she would--and
Uncle Frank thinks I should----” And then I stopped speaking. I had
never felt so miserable.
I went out in the garden, and Willy Jepson yelled over from the kitchen
roof where he was mending a fish line.
“Come over and play catch,” he howled.
“Don’t believe I can,” I said, sort of stiffly, I guess.
“Why not?” he yelled.
“I’m not going to tell the whole town!” I answered, and after that he
slid down, by way of a grape arbour, and came over to stand near the
fence.
“Why not?” he repeated.
“My last game of ball is played,” I said. “It seems--I am too old for
it, or something. They--they don’t want me to. At least not in big
games, and I couldn’t indulge as an amateur.”
“My gosh,” he said, “that’s fierce!”
I nodded. I almost never cry--in fact, I don’t cry any oftener than
Willy Jepson does, but I was near it then, so I looked down at the hedge
and broke twigs.
“Why,” he went on, “it’s _fierce_! You have the making of a big
leaguer--that is, if you’d been a man--I say, it’s fierce. Your drop
curves----” He paused, and that pause meant a lot.
“Just because you’re a girl?” he asked. I admitted it. I had to.
“That’s fierce!” he said again. His kindness helped me a great deal. And
his commendation was not a light thing, for Willy does the best spit
balls in our county. They are really dreams of poetic beauty and almost
never fail him. I looked up and said: “Thank you.”
And again he said: “My _gosh_, Nat, that’s _fierce_!” And I did feel
cheered up. Then I heard uncle’s voice--calling me--and I went in. I
found him mounting a black beetle.
“No more----” he began, and then looked perplexed. He scratched his head
and dislocated one pair of his glasses, and I supplied, “ball.”
“Why, yes,” he said, “that _was_ it.” And then: “You are to go to your
aunt’s the last of this month. . . . Mrs. Bradly thinks she can get your
clothes ready by that time. . . . We will miss you, my child. . . . Let
me see. . . . Ho hum! Long feelers _and_ hard back--page nine hundred
and twenty-seven.” I left him to his bugs.
I went to the kitchen, but I only stood in the door for a moment, and
then I backed away, for Mrs. Bradly was crying--awfully hard--her face
buried in the roller towel. And I knew it was because I was going
away. . . . I felt that way too, but I never cry, so I went up to my
room and got out my fishing tackle and tried to make a fly for a
shallow, shady stream out of some gray and green silk and a grasshopper
wing. . . . But it didn’t divert me much. . . . I didn’t think I could
exist very long in real civilization. I knew I didn’t want to. All the
loveliness that I felt earlier in the evening was gone, and all that was
left was an ache, a dull, sodden, gray, growing-larger-all-the-time
ache. . . . You see, I cared awfully for outdoors and the sports that
keep you there. They were all I really knew of life. . . . And my New
York relatives live in an apartment.
“I will be bored,” I thought, “and miserably, horribly unhappy!”
But--whatever else I was--I was not bored! Oh, my soul, no! Not for one
instant! Sometimes it was almost ghastly, that mystery which gripped and
held us all, and even now I tremble to think of phases of it; but it
gave more in the end than it took, which is the curious way of much pain
and discomfort. When I think that--but I mustn’t begin now. For that
part comes much later.