THE SHADOW OF PARTING
“Oh, dear, dear!” sighed Isabel watching the retreat of Kathie and
Dolly, who stalked away so wrathily that “they looked as if their backs
were calling names,” Isabel said. “They are staying mad. I hoped they’d
be over it when they’d had a night’s sleep. Mother says never to let
the sun go down upon your anger, but they did, and they let it rise
again, and still they’re mad!”
“Well, I don’t think their not speaking is half as much consequence
as that voice that did speak,” said Mark, who could not get up great
interest in Kathie and Dolly’s doings. “I’d like to know who, or what
that was.”
“I should--think--so!” Prue spoke with slow and awful emphasis. “It
gets worse every minute I remember it. I just about can’t stand it!
Everything is getting so queer! I wonder if we’re asleep and dreaming
these things? It’s like a queer, mixed-up dream.”
“All of us asleep, and dreaming the same thing?” laughed Mark. “And how
could we know what the rest of us were dreaming?”
“We couldn’t. But we could dream we were all together and heard the
voice, and saw that little man. And then I’d only be in your dream, or
Isa’s, and you’d only be in my dream--Oh, mercy! I’ll go crazy!” Prue
clapped her hands to her head and shook it hard, burrowing her chin
into her neck wildly.
“And how could we tell which was the one dreaming?” Isabel cried
gleefully; she dearly liked this sort of game. “There’d only be one
real one, the other two would be the dream, and how should we know
which they were? And there’s Poppy.”
“Where?” cried Prue.
“I mean she saw the queer little man, and the only reason she didn’t
hear the voice is because she wasn’t there, so she had one-half the
dream and not the other half,” Isabel explained. “I sort of think that
proves we are awake, but I don’t know how it does it. First we saw a
queer little man without a voice; then we heard a voice----”
“Without a queer little man!” cried Mark. “It’s like Alice and the
Cheshire cat! She said she’d seen cats without a smile, but never a
smile without a cat.”
“If you don’t stop talking about crazy things I’ll go crazy myself!”
Prue warned them sharply. “It’s making me feel all crawly inside me. It
almost has sense, but it hasn’t any! It’s like trying to catch the wet
soap in the bath tub. I’m so scared when I think of that awful, awful
voice I could curl up and die. I declare I think Greenacres is getting
dreadfully funny!”
“It wasn’t an awful voice, though; it was a pretty nice voice, telling
us where to find Kathie’s coins,” Isabel reminded her.
“What puzzles me is why the man--or the beast, or the bird, or the
ghost, whoever that voice belongs to--stole the box, and then right
away told us where to get it! What’s the use?” Mark observed.
“Probably he didn’t steal it; just happened to find it and took it.”
Isabel clearly saw the difference in these two actions, though it might
seem to another much the same. “Where’s Poppy?” she suddenly demanded;
it was odd for Poppy to absent herself for so long.
“I don’t know; queer, isn’t it?” said Mark. “When we were coming up out
of the secret passage I just barely saw her tearing off through the
trees, ever so far down the middle path through the woods. ’Tis queer
she doesn’t come back, now I think of it.”
“Dare you to go home that way, Prue, and see what she’s up to,” said
Isa.
“I’m scared,” Prue admitted honestly, “but we’ve got to keep on going
into the woods, or else there wouldn’t be any use in living at all.
So I’ll go. You’re probably just as scared as I am, anyway, Isabel
Lindsay! And the way you’ll do is hold it down, and then not go to
sleep to-night.”
“Oh, well, I never pretended not to mind, and of course it’s much worse
to be afraid of something you can’t understand than of burglars, or
rats, or anything sensible,” Isabel did not shrink from admitting her
nervousness.
“Let’s go home through the woods, Prue. We can play we are pioneer
mothers daring wild beasts and Indians; that will help a whole lot. If
we put off going it will be much worse when we do go, as you said. And
let’s start _now_.”
“Mark, Mark dear, will you come here? I want you,” called Motherkins.
“Oh, I was going part of the way with you,” said Mark regretfully. “Now
I can’t, so good-by. I’ll see you after a while, maybe.”
“We’d rather not have you come; we’ve got to get used to being brave
alone,” said Prue. “Good-by. If anything should happen to us, why, you
know where we went.”
“Oh, gracious, Prue, don’t!” shuddered Isabel, profoundly disturbed by
the awful picture of herself and Prue lying wounded in the woods which
this suggestion at once called up.
Prue and Isabel wound their arms around each other for mutual support
in their adventure, but resolutely faced the woods and walked toward
them, not hurrying, but not loitering, with that steady pace that
betokens steady purpose.
“Let’s go the longest way, past Château Branche, then we’ll know we
didn’t get out of one thing because we were ’fraid-cats,” proposed Prue.
“Well, if here isn’t Bunkie coming to meet us!” cried Isabel surprised.
“I left him at home because he might get lost in the secret passage, I
always think. How could he know we were coming here when we didn’t know
it ourselves?”
The little dog came tearing toward Isabel, ears streaming backward,
tail wagging as fast as it could at the speed he was making. He leaped
up to his mistress with a great show of joy, gave Prue a rapid, but
cordial welcome, then turned in the direction from which he had come,
looking back to see that they were coming. At that moment the little
girls heard a sound of wailing and stood still.
“Now what’s that?” cried Prue sharply. “There’s something else awful,
and it’s quite new.”
“Doesn’t it sound horrible? But maybe it’s a panther--no, there aren’t
any! Maybe it’s a wild cat, and maybe they cry the way panthers do.
They say you can’t tell a panther from a baby; they fool hunters;
don’t you remember? In books I’ve seen that.” Isabel was trying to
be cheerful, though her teeth almost chattered, but Prue was not
appreciative.
“Yes, and maybe it’s an orphan asylum and they are real babies crying,”
she said scornfully. “There are just as many orphan asylums in these
woods as there are panthers and wild cats. Shall we go on, or do you
say to turn off right here?”
“I say to go on,” answered Isa, pale but heroic.
Their decision rejoiced Bunkie, who while they hesitated had been
imploring them by every sign he knew to come on.
The blood curdling wailing continued and grew louder as they advanced;
it took strong resolution to proceed. Prue clutched Isabel’s arm so
tight that she found it black and blue that night when she went to bed,
though she did not feel it then, while Isabel held Prue’s side in a
grasp that ticklish Prue could not have borne for a moment if her mind
had not been too fully occupied to notice it.
Slowly, trembling from head to foot, these Greenacres heroines
advanced, and their courage was rewarded, for in the midst of the
wailing two words came out clear, and these words were: “Oh gosh!”
It was Poppy! There was no mistaking the way she uttered her favorite
vent for her feelings, and Isabel and Prue laughed out in their relief,
though in another instant they began to feel troubled to find Poppy
like this, prone on her face, crying desperately, alone in the woods,
in which she, as well as Isabel and Prue, were beginning to feel afraid
to wander.
Bunkie darted ahead and up to Poppy, nosing her anxiously, but she
ungratefully pushed him away, not being minded to accept his pity then.
“Why, Poppy! Why, Poppy dear, what is it? Is anything the matter?”
cried Isabel and Prue together, running up and dropping on their knees
beside Poppy’s prostrate, sob-shaken little body.
At this Poppy’s crying began afresh, so violently that Isa and Prue
were frightened and there was no hope of getting a word from her.
“May as well wait,” said Prue, sitting back on her heels with a
resigned despair.
“Oh, try to stop, try to tell us what is wrong, Poppy!” begged Isabel.
“Is anything wrong?”
“Don’t you--don’t you know? Didn’t no one tell you?” Poppy managed to
gasp, losing her hold on English.
“No, indeed!” Isabel said. “Tell us, quick!”
“It’s settled!” Poppy moaned, and fell back into worse crying.
“For pity’s sake!” exclaimed Prue impatiently. “What is settled, Poppy
Meiggs?”
But Isabel had a sudden enlightenment.
“Oh, Poppy, is it really? Oh, Poppy!” she cried.
“Well, for pity’s sake!” Prue exclaimed again desperately. “Are you
going to be a puzzle, too! How _do_ you know what she means?”
“She means it is settled that Mr. Hawthorne has to lose the money that
Mr. Ditson left to him, and that they will have to give up that dear,
dear house, and Motherkins’ garden and everything, don’t you, Poppy?”
said Isabel pale to her lips over her shocking discovery.
Poppy nodded hard, raising her head to do so, and instantly burying her
face in the moss again.
“That’s not the whole of it,” she said in a muffled voice.
“Oh, not, not that they’re going away!” cried Isabel.
“They are, too!” Poppy sat up suddenly and spoke out of a gust of
anger. “We shall go away, away! Out of Greenacres! Mr. Hawthorne can’t
get anything here, he said--he means work. He’ll be poor; he must
work. They’ll go away, away! And I sha’n’t see you no more, Isabel,
my darling, dear! But Hurrah! They can’t take him along, my own, own
horse! They can’t feed him; it costs. And I love him more’n anything
in all this world, and they’ll leave him here. Oh, Hurrah, Hurrah,
Hurrah!” Poppy’s voice rose higher with each repetition of the name,
till it became a shriek, and had the effect of cheering.
But Poppy was far away from a cheer. She fell down again on the ground
and pulled up handfuls of mossy turf, kicking the while with such
violence that her striped gingham skirt fluttered as if it were in a
gale and one of her shoes flew off.
“There’s no use kicking, Poppy,” remarked Prue, picking up the shoe and
stooping to replace it. “Hold still, and I’ll put your shoe on again.
Goodness knows it makes me sick, if it’s true that Mark and all are
going away. How do you know it is true?”
“I heard Motherkins and Mr. Gilbert talking about it. They said the
lawyers had written a letter and said there wasn’t any show to help
it. And Motherkins kind of cried a little, then she said never mind,
Gilbert, because I shall not mind much, and I know you feel bad for
me. And that was worse’n her crying. Nearly kills me when she bucks
up brave that way! And they said they’d tell Mark’s soon as you two’d
gone, and now you’re here they likely telling him. And, oh, Hurrah,
Hurrah, Hurrah!” Once more Poppy gave herself up to the anguish of the
thought of parting from her horse, whose cheerful name so ill-fitted
this use of it.
“Now, Poppy, I’m going to tell you something,” said Isabel in her sweet
little womanly way, putting aside her own sharp pain over this news to
try to comfort Poppy. “If you don’t want to leave Hurrah, you needn’t.
My father and mother were talking about this, what would happen if
the Hawthornes had to give up the money, and father said--they both
said--that you could come to live with us, if you wanted to, and stay
right on in Greenacres, and keep on in our same school. And father said
he’d keep Hurrah for you; he said he was sure you’d feel perfectly
terrible to give him up. So now you know all about it. You needn’t give
up Hurrah, nor Greenacres, if you’d rather not. You can stay with us
and Hurrah’ll be yours just the same.”
Poor Poppy! She was in a bad state of nerves from grief and her
tempestuous crying, and at best she too easily flew into a temper.
Now she sprang up like a rocket, on her feet, and waved her arms up and
down, as if she wanted to hit something either in the sky, or beneath
it.
“I guess I won’t! I guess I won’t! I guess I won’t!” she screamed.
“What d’jer think I am! Leave Motherkins! Leave her! Didn’t she take
me in when she was poor’n poorhouses, and take care o’ me when nobody
wouldn’t, but her, but went and took all the rest o’ the Meiggses,
’cause there wa’n’t none of ’em red headed and freckled noses but me?
I guess I won’t live with your folks, not if I do love you cartloads,
Isabel Lindsay, and I won’t stay, not with no horse, Hurrah, nor
nobody, ’stead o’ Mis’ Hawthorne--Motherkins. So there!”
“Well, Poppy, I’m sorry,” faltered Isabel sincerely. “I didn’t mean to
make you mad. You said you loved Hurrah best of anything, so I thought
you’d like to know you might have him if you really did love him best.
That’s all.”
“Any gump’d know I didn’t mean Hurrah ’stead of Motherkins,” said Poppy
still disgusted and offended. Then with one of her sudden changes, she
threw her arms around Isabel and half crushed her in a tremendous hug,
crying, but with a new and gentler misery, as she did so.
“Oh, you darling Isa,” she moaned. “I’m the nastiest! I’m sorry, Isa!
And how shall I ever stand it without you?”
“Well, Poppy,” said Prue, who found Poppy trying, as she so often did,
“do you think you’re the only one feeling bad? Don’t you suppose we
care? Isn’t Mark--isn’t Mark--our own Jack--Jack-in-the-Box?”
Prue had great difficulty in getting to the end of her sentence, and
when she did haltingly reach it her own tears were flowing, but quietly.
“Shall we sit in Château Branche just a few minutes to get rested so
we can go home? I feel sort of weak,” said Isabel, and Prue saw that
she was as white as a white rose petal, even her lips colorless; it was
Isa’s way to take a blow silently, but with tragic intensity.
They climbed up into their house in the great pine, each one thinking
how beautifully Mark’s father had prepared this for them, as well as
so many other things which they enjoyed. And Isabel, looking off with
great tears on her lashes, her gray-blue eyes black from their dilated
pupils, with black hollows below them, realized how she and Prue might
come here by and by--provided they had the courage to come--and sit
here, as to-day, without Mark, forever without Mark. The thought was
unbearable.
Down went Isa’s head on her knees, which she was clasping with tense
fingers.
“Oh, it’s too awful, too awful!” she murmured. “It can’t be true! I’m
going to hope something will happen! I’m going to pray for it! Let’s
all pray for something to happen to let us keep our Jack-in-the-Box.”
“But it won’t,” said Prue dismally.
“It might!” cried Isabel, raising her head and tossing her hair out of
her eyes. “We must believe it will, and pray hard!”
“It could, couldn’t it, Isa?” cried Poppy, enkindled by the idea.
“Should we call this Church Branche, instead of Château Branche, and
pray and pray, right here?”
“Oh, here comes Mark! See how slowly he’s coming, and Semp marching
beside him! Oh, it must be true when he comes so very slowly!” said
Prue, before Poppy’s question could be answered.
“Are you up here?” asked Mark preparing to swing himself up into
Château Branche.
“We’re coming down, Mark,” said Isabel. “Don’t come up; we have to go
home.”
The three little girls descended, Mark quietly offering each his hand.
It was as if he had grown up since they had last seen him, so grave, so
kind, so gentle was his manner.
Isabel was last to get down. She stood where she alighted and looked at
Mark, and quietly Mark looked at her, his lips twitching.
“It is all true,” said Isabel slowly. “I hoped Poppy was mistaken. It
is all true that--that--you are going away, Jack-in-the-Box.”
“Hard luck, Isa,” muttered Mark. “But daddy has no chance at good
business here, and he has in Boston. Yes, Isa, it is true. Daddy and
Motherkins told me themselves. I--I--I’m horribly sorry, Isa, but we’ve
got to stand it the best that’s in us.”
“If we can stand it at all that’ll be the way we must,” said Isabel.
“It will take the best we can do even to live, let alone stand it!
Will--will you go soon, Jack-in-the-Box, dear?”
“About September first, daddy thought,” said Mark.
“Oh!” cried Isabel brightening; her mind had been keyed up to a parting
at once. “A lot can happen before then. We’re going to pray for
something to stop it, and that gives us time!”
She smiled quite cheerfully, as if the working of a miracle was made
more probable by allowing more time for it.