SOPHIE'S STORY
I had to lay my journal aside last night before I reached the really
thrilling occurrence of Thanksgiving day, which was, strangely enough,
neither the dinner nor the ball, although each was in its own peculiar
way a decided success.
I have Evelyn's word that the ball was a success, for neither Sophie
nor I attended it, albeit Richard had, at my whispered suggestion,
sent Sophie a box of long white gloves from the city, getting them off
on an early train that they might reach her in time; and sending along
with this a box of roses--Maréchal Niel for Sophie, La France for Mrs.
Chalmers and Evelyn, while for me there was a great sheaf of American
Beauties.
But he did not come back in time for the ball, and I suddenly lost all
interest in the affair as the last train out from the city that
evening failed to bring him. Sophie had been suffering all day with a
frightful neuralgic headache, and, as night drew near, it became so
much worse that she declared that she could not go to the ball. The
lights and dizzy whirling around would be the death of her, she
decided, so she dropped down into a chair in the library after dinner
and said she would give it up.
"Then I'll stay with you," I volunteered, and, despite her own
protestations and feebler ones from Mrs. Chalmers and Evelyn, the
matter was thus arranged. There were always far too many girls at such
affairs anyway, they all knew, so that my absence would really be a
blessing.
Mr. Maxwell came into the room just as the matter had been thus
satisfactorily settled and when he heard of the arrangement his face
beamed with a kind of mischievous happiness.
"Now, that's what I call luck," he said, as the door closed upon Mrs.
Chalmers' retreating form and left us three alone together. "I'll go
with the ladies and stay long enough to see that Evelyn's card is
filled--then I'll take a sneak, and come on back home to see how the
headache is progressing."
His smile spoke immense approval of his own cleverness, but Sophie cut
it short.
"You'll do nothing of the kind," she said decidedly, looking up at
him as he stood by the library table, a folded newspaper in his hand;
"you'll stay and do your duty by the wall-flowers."
"Not I, sweet lady," he answered banteringly. "Life is too short. I'm
coming back here and entertain your headache away!"
And he did. He came in at about half-past ten, for the filling up of
Evelyn's card had been a matter quickly despatched, and he was in
radiant spirits over having "jumped the game."
"Mrs. Chalmers didn't mind at all," he explained as he drew a chair up
to the fire and lighted a cigarette. "I left her in a corner with a
few other fond mammas and she even insisted that I should not go back,
as Jim goes for them about two o'clock. All I'm to do is to go out to
the stables and punch Jim in the ribs and wake him up in time. So we
are going to have a jolly evening together."
"Oh, dear, what a pleasant prospect!" Sophie said, only half in jest,
as her hand went up to her aching head. "Now, if I could just get rid
of this one-eyed pain I might find life decidedly worth living."
"Isn't there anything we can do?" he asked solicitously, casting his
cigarette quickly into the fire as if he thought the smoke might make
her head worse. "Can't Miss Fielding and I make you a mustard
plaster--or something?"
"There is a little bottle of stuff in my bag up-stairs that sometimes
acts like magic in a case like this," she finally said with some
hesitancy, and I realized that she was hesitating because she disliked
the idea of having any one fussing over her. She is one of these
capable creatures who seldom ask even a small service of any one.
"Let me run and get it," I said starting up and resolving that I
should get the bottle, hand it in to Mr. Maxwell at the door, then
betake myself off to my own room and leave them alone together. I
imagined that he would enjoy the privilege of hunting about to get her
a glass and a spoon himself. And it would make them feel more at home
with each other for him to be rendering her these little services.
I went to Sophie's room and found a bag where she had told me to look,
in the closet on the lower shelf. I caught it up and moved across to
the bed, where I sat down and deposited it by my side; then I began a
wrestling match with the most obstinate catch that it has ever been my
ill-fortune to come across on an alligator-skin bag.
"I'll just have to take it down and get Mr. Maxwell to open it," I
finally decided, after I had worked with the thing until my strength
and patience were both exhausted. "It is provoking to see the ease
with which a man can subdue a thing like this after a woman has broken
off all her best-looking finger-nails over the task."
So I caught the bag up in one hand and my trailing skirts in the other
and wended my way back to the library. My load was quite heavy,
heavier than an ordinary traveling-bag I remembered afterward; and in
struggling with the lock I had at one time pulled slightly apart an
end of the stubborn opening. A whiff of drugs was borne to me in that
instant--a kind of combination of odors, none of which I knew by name,
but they were all strikingly familiar, for they were exactly like the
smells in Alfred's small black instrument case.
"I hope you don't take all these different kinds of dope for your
headaches," I thought with a quick little feeling of contempt, for I
don't have much patience with the headache-powder habit. I learned
this contempt from Alfred, of course.
Mr. Maxwell was alone in the library when I returned and told me that
Sophie had gone to get a glass of hot water.
"She says that is all she ever takes for these spells of neuralgia,"
he said, holding out his hand for the bag, when I explained to him
about the fastening. "But there is a little bottle of something or
other in here that she rubs on her forehead--and that eases the pain."
"Then why on earth didn't she rub it on early this morning?" I
inquired wonderingly.
"That's what I asked her," he answered with a slight laugh, "but she
says that the stuff burns the skin and leaves a red mark; and she
didn't want to be disfigured for the ball--I told her that she would
have looked just the same to me--red mark or no red mark."
He was smiling good-naturedly as he worked with the lock of the bag,
which after a moment or two came open with a lamb-like docility. He
was walking across the room to deposit it upon the table when Sophie
came in and saw him with the bag opened in his hand. She gave a little
startled exclamation and we both wheeled and faced her.
"That's the wrong bag," she said, speaking with such nervous haste and
her face wearing such a white, scared look that we both instinctively
glanced into the open case Mr. Maxwell held in his hands. "Don't!
There's something in there that I don't want you to see!"
Poor girl, if it had been a dynamite bomb or a counterfeiter's kit of
tools, she could scarcely have looked more frightened, for Mr. Maxwell
and I had already seen the contents. His face suddenly went white,
too, as he quickly strode across the room and laid the bag upon the
table.
"_This_ is likely the thing you didn't want us to see," he exclaimed,
reaching in and holding up to the light a glittering little object. It
was a hypodermic syringe!
When she saw the silvery-looking instrument actually in his hand and
observed the stern, harsh look in his eyes she gave a wild, hysterical
laugh and walked quickly across to him. She clutched the shining thing
from his hand and held it up before me.
"_Now_ you both know the 'disgraceful secret' which Aunt Ida has made
me keep so securely locked away from you," she cried, holding the
instrument in her hand and pulling the piston backward and forward
with a deftness born of long familiarity. "She made me promise to keep
it a secret, for she said that if her 'society' friends knew of it I
should be considered beyond the pale. Heavens knows that I am sorry
for it and ashamed of it, but there was a mighty--temptation."
She sat down in the nearest chair and began to cry, her face buried in
her folded arms, and her shoulders heaving convulsively. I went over
quickly and laid my hand upon her head.
"Don't cry, Sophie!" I begged, "it will make your head worse;
and--_this_ doesn't make the slightest difference in our feeling for
you. We are not 'society,' are we, Mr. Maxwell?"
I glanced appealingly toward him, but he did not see me. His eyes were
fixed upon Sophie's bowed head with a pitying, yet _horrified_ stare,
then the look of bewilderment which he wore at the first sight of her
came over his face, painfully intensified this time.
"My God!" he finally broke out, and I knew that he did not know he was
speaking aloud. "I have seen you before to-night with that thing in
your hand! I can even feel its sharp little sting in _my_ arm--but
where--_where_--I can't remember."
At his queer words Sophie looked quickly up, but he had already turned
his back to us two and was leaving the room. We heard him linger a
moment in the hall as if he might be looking for his hat; then the
big front door closed behind him.
"He still doesn't remember!" she said slowly, looking at me in
surprise. "I thought he would. I don't imagine that he has had much
experience with trained nurses, so I fancied it would all come back to
him when he found that I was one."
"You took care of him when his head was hurt last year?"
"Yes. I nursed him from the night he was brought into the hospital
until he was almost out of danger--it was a long, tedious case, and we
thought for a while that we were not going to save him."
"And you really were telling some child about the little pigs going to
market one night when he heard you?" I asked, thinking how much
stranger than fiction this case was.
"Yes. That was after he was beginning to be better, but I was still
his 'special.' The baby's cot had been moved out into the corridor
just beyond his door--it was so hot--and I used to slip out there
occasionally and get the little fellow to sleep. But I came down with
malarial fever myself before Mr. Maxwell was entirely well. That's the
reason his memory of me is so hazy."
"Then why didn't you tell him plainly--when you first met him here and
saw that he remembered you?" I asked as she got up and opened the bag
wider to try to find the bottle of medicine she wanted, for her hand
went to her head in a manner which told me that all this excitement
had in nowise lessened the pain.
"That's what I am so sorry for and ashamed of," she answered simply,
as she lifted some of the contents of the bag out and placed them upon
the table. "I shouldn't have stayed here an _hour_ after Aunt Ida told
me I must sail under false covers, but--I said a while ago, in my
excitement, that there was a mighty temptation! I didn't intend to say
it, but--it is true."
"And the temptation was--"
We heard the front door open then and close again softly. Mr. Maxwell
had finished his walk out in the cool night air. I hoped that he would
come on back into the library as he heard our voices, but he passed
the door and in another moment we heard his footsteps on the stairs.
"They told me that _he_ was coming," Sophie said.
* * * * *
Four days have passed since the night of the Thanksgiving ball; and
at a house-party where four days drag there is a greater sense of
calamity than would be caused by a dreary four weeks at some other
time. For there is always the tormenting thought of how much hay one
might have been piling up if the sun would only shine.
Here are the three of us--Evelyn, Sophie and I--all at the age of Eve;
and all enduring such a period of gloom that I feel sure if the
original Eve had been half as badly bored she would never have waited
for a pretty snake to come along and amuse her--she would have started
up a flirtation with a _grub-worm_!
Richard is still away and I have not even had a line from him. Neither
has any one else on the place, of course, but his name appeared in the
society columns of the _Times_ the day after Thanksgiving. He had
attended the football game that afternoon with Major Blake's party,
the paper stated--and alas! I was in no position to dispute the
statement.
Now if there is _one_ thing a girl hates worse than having her rat
show in the presence of her beloved it is to have that beloved's name
appear in a society column when her own is not in the same line!
"Why the Blakes?" I kept wondering uneasily, as I read over the
hateful paragraph again and again; and I tried to fight down the
fierce feeling of jealousy which took possession of me. "Why couldn't
he have gone to the foot-ball game with some one else--or why couldn't
he have come home?"
I found upon this occasion that jealousy is a passion which makes me
physically ill, and I thought quickly of how tormented Richard must be
by his jealous disposition. I wondered if he had ever felt the quick
desire to strangle Alfred Morgan that I now caught myself feeling to
annihilate the entire Blake faction. They had no right to make Richard
leave home upon such an occasion as this; or they should have finished
their hateful business and sent him on back home for Thanksgiving.
They certainly had no right to take him off with them to a foot-ball
game for all the world to see--and have his name with theirs in the
paper next morning.
"Major Blake had with him in his car, besides Mrs. Blake, Miss
Berenice Blake, who returned last week from Denver, and Mr. Richard
Chalmers."
I knew the horrid words by heart, yet I read them over and over. And
even this was not the worst. On the front page of the _Times_ was a
cartoon representing Major Blake seated beside a little creek, angling
persistently for a fish in midstream--a fish with Richard's handsome
head and "Chalmers" printed in big letters across the side. The bait
was a bag of gold and a handful of glory; and beneath it was written
"Little fishie in the brook, can daddy catch him with a hook?"
Such a cartoon in Rufe's paper struck me as being pregnant with
meaning. What did it portend? Why did Richard leave home at this time
to spend Thanksgiving with old man Blake if it did not mean that he
was entangled with him? How deeply entangled--and for what? Major
Blake had some time ago given the anti-liquor forces to understand
that they had not money enough for their campaign to make a union with
them interesting to him. But the Appleton followers had been equally
unsuccessful in trying to gain his support. _Could_ it be that he and
Richard intended forming a separate faction where his own personal
popularity should cut a tremendous figure in gaining for him what he
wanted, and he could have the backing of Richard's friends among the
temperance forces? But where would Richard come in then? Why should
old man Blake give all the biggest portion of the plum to Richard,
when he had never been governor himself?
I thought over the matter and _thought_--until I grew dizzy with the
problem, yet I never found anything that could serve even as a
half-way solution. But enough of my own grievances.
As I have said, Sophie and Evelyn are both miserable, too, though in
entirely different ways. Evelyn is half ill, with a constantly
threatening pain in her right side--a trouble which she has had for
several years--and Sophie, poor girl, has stayed in her room most of
the time because she is so disappointed in the way Mr. Maxwell has
acted since he learned that she is a working-woman. Horrid cad! He has
watched Sophie every minute she has been in his presence since that
night, looking as if he were a detective and suspected her of carrying
concealed weapons about her. Yet all the time there is a look of dumb
misery in his eyes--sorrow and _incredulity_.
He has several times tried to get me off alone where he could talk to
me of the occurrence Thanksgiving night, but I have been careful to
avoid him, for I am as much disappointed in him as Sophie is. Each of
them has tried to leave, but Mrs. Chalmers has insisted upon their not
doing so. She is so upset over Evelyn that she needs Sophie's skilled
advice in nursing, although no open acknowledgment of the matter has
been made. And she has insisted that Mr. Maxwell remain at least until
Richard returns.
Meanwhile she has tried to get a message through to Richard in the
city, but she has been so far unable to find him. Altogether it is
rather a miserable household.
* * * * *
Another day; and it started so well and ended so queerly that I am not
going to try to sleep for hours yet--until I have written the whole
thing out so I can read it over and see whether or not it really
happened, for I find it so hard to believe.
To begin at the beginning, Richard called up from the city this
morning and explained to his mother that he had been on a business
trip down in the country--far away from a telephone station, he said,
and so he had not been able to communicate with her. He asked her to
call me to the telephone and we had as satisfying a little talk as
people in our position ever have over wires. He would be down home on
the first train in the morning, he told me, and he insisted that I
tell him something he might have the pleasure of bringing me.
"Oh, I'll excuse the olive branch," I replied in answer to this
question, "for I'll be so glad to see you."
Glad to see him? Ah yes, so glad! And in the joy of the thought I
forgot all about being jealous of the Blakes. With this restoration of
happiness the day naturally passed more quickly to me, and I found
myself wondering why Evelyn didn't get over that hurting in her side,
and why Mrs. Chalmers still looked so anxious and why Sophie and Mr.
Maxwell continued to eye each other so reproachfully when the one
thought the other was not looking. Richard was coming home in the
morning! Surely all would be well then!
Dinner was a dismal affair, for Evelyn was not any better--was not so
well, Mrs. Chalmers said, with a look of great anxiety, although the
doctor had not said positively what the trouble was. As soon as we had
left the table Sophie followed Mrs. Chalmers to Evelyn's room, thus
leaving Mr. Maxwell to a tête-à-tête evening with me.
There was a brilliant fire in the library and we both were attracted
toward its cheer as we crossed the hall. He lit a cigarette and sat
staring moodily at the little clouds of smoke which he puffed into
the air. Clearly he was not going to thrust conversation upon me. To
make sure that he should have no encouragement to do so I began
looking around vaguely for something to read. There was a pile of
fresh papers which had come by the night's train lying folded on the
table, but I have had little appetite for newspapers since the day of
the fishy cartoon. I should not read any more of the horrid tales
about him, but he should tell me all that there was to tell and I
would believe him. But not a question did I expect to ask. His
confidence should be entirely voluntary or not given at all.
No newspapers for me then this night; and I glanced around the room
for something else. Something forbidding-looking and very deep I
decided on as being best to keep Mr. Maxwell's conversational powers
in abeyance. I went to one of the book-shelves which lined the walls.
Running my hand along a line of Huxley's works I came to _Science and
the Christian Tradition_ and promptly decided that this was the very
volume I needed to impress Mr. Maxwell that I was reading something
very profound and needed all my wits about me.
Returning to my chair by the fire I sat down and opened my book, but I
was in nowise disappointed by finding that the leaves had never been
cut. There was a heavy pearl-and-silver paper-cutter lying on the
table near by, but I did not take the trouble to reach for it. What
did I care for a lot of prehistoric teeth and toe-nails dug up and
brought forward to prove that before "Adam delved and Eve span" the
baboon was a gentleman?
Mr. Maxwell continued to stare into the fire, and I do not believe he
ever glanced at the impressive three-quarters morocco binding I was
holding up so persistently for him to see. After half-an-hour had been
thus profitlessly spent I grew tired and decided that I would go to my
room and go to bed. Morning would come the more quickly this way.
As I started to cross the room to replace the book in its niche I
heard Mrs. Chalmers going up the steps again--it seemed to me fully
fifty times that evening she had made pilgrimages up and down those
stairs on her way to and from the invalid's room.
"Evelyn must be worse," I said aloud before I remembered that I was
trying _not_ to start conversation.
"Possibly so," he answered politely.
"I believe I'll go now and see if I can do anything to help Mrs.
Chalmers; she must be worn out."
I put the Huxley back where he belonged and had turned again to wish
Mr. Maxwell good night, when I found that he had at last unfastened
his eyes from the bright fire and was looking toward me appealingly.
"Miss Fielding," he began with an unwonted timidity.
I had already opened the door to leave the room, but I came back a few
steps, leaving the door wide open; and as I did so I heard, for the
fifty-first time, the sound of Mrs. Chalmers' footfalls upon the
stairs. She was coming down this time.
"Yes?" I said coldly in the direction of Mr. Maxwell.
"Miss Fielding, I am going away in the morning," he said rather
awkwardly, as he pushed up a chair for me again, but I did not sit
down. I leaned over a little and rested my elbows against its high
leather back. He stood upon the hearth-rug, and even the shaded lights
of the room brought out the troubled lines on his face. "I am going
away on the same train that brings Chalmers home," he repeated.
"Yes."
"And I was anxious to talk with you a little before I go," he went on
with considerable hesitation. My attitude was far from being
encouraging. "You seem to be on friendly terms with her still--with
Sophie, I mean."
"I _am_ on friendly terms," I said rather pointedly. "I am fortunately
not the kind of person who indulges in _seeming_ friendship."
"Oh, I say, Miss Fielding, don't rub it in on a fellow! Don't you see
that I have been half crazy ever since I found it out? Surely you
don't think that the matter hasn't made me feel worse cut up than
anything that ever happened to me before! A man doesn't get over a
shock like _that_!"
"Shock?"
"Certainly shock," he repeated earnestly. "If she had told me she is a
horse-thief I couldn't have felt worse. Of course a man could keep up
a sort of pitying friendliness after such an acknowledgment as that,
but--I had intended asking her that night to marry me."
He looked at me as if he might be beseeching me to speak a word of
comfort to him, but I stood there and said nothing.
"Miss Fielding, surely you understand that I couldn't marry a woman
who, by her own acknowledgment, is a--a dope-fiend."
"Dope-fiend!" I gave a little shriek.
He looked at me a moment as if he thought I had lost my mind, then we
were both startled by the abrupt entrance of Mrs. Chalmers at the door
which I had a few minutes before left open. She had evidently heard my
horrified exclamation and come in to investigate. She looked from one
to the other of us inquiringly, and there was no use trying to hide
the situation from her.
"Miss Fielding and I were talking about Sophie, Mrs. Chalmers," Mr.
Maxwell explained after a moment of painful silence. "She acknowledged
to us, Miss Fielding and me, the other night the--the truth about this
unhappy condition."
"The truth?" Mrs. Chalmers' tone was questioning, although I knew that
she must have heard my startled cry as I repeated the hideous word he
had used a moment before.
"It was the night that we stayed away from the ball--we three--and we
found the evidence in her bag. She acknowledged that it was true. I
had expected to ask her to marry me that night--but she is a
drug-fiend."
Mrs. Chalmers started, but she did not speak. She made no effort to
correct him.
"So of course I am leaving in the morning. I should have gone long
ago, but--"
He looked at Richard's mother, who stood in the center of the room,
directly beneath the chandelier. The light shone down on her soft
white hair and changed it into a veritable crown of glory. She moved
her crown slightly as she nodded an assent to his suggestion of
leaving in the morning, but she did not lift a finger to detain him,
nor to set him right in regard to Sophie. Could it be that her desire
to get Evelyn married off to him was going to carry her to such
lengths as this? It seemed so; and I caught myself wondering quickly
if in so doing she might be carrying out a command of Richard's.
Likely he was very positive in bidding her keep Sophie's secret, or in
impressing it upon her that Evelyn ought to be suitably married. In
either case she would be mortally afraid to speak--she would _not_
speak. Then quickly upon the heels of this came the knowledge that if
she did not speak it was my place to do so, for I knew the truth as
well as she did--but it might make Richard angry! It would be sure to
if he had given commands that the secret should be kept! I might even
lose him--
"That train leaves at six-thirty, I believe?"
Again he looked at Mrs. Chalmers and she again nodded her head. But
she did not speak.
"Then I shall not have an opportunity of seeing you in the morning,"
and he walked over and shook hands with his hostess, making his adieus
in a wretchedly forced way.
She shook hands with him and allowed him to pass on to me. I gave him
my hand in a mechanical fashion, and my eyes were fixed upon Mrs.
Chalmers' face. She was evidently frightened at the thought of the
thing she was doing; but she was just as evidently going to see it
through.
"Good-by, Miss Fielding," Mr. Maxwell said simply, then turned toward
the door.
I was still looking at her as I heard the sound of his hand upon the
door-knob, but as I realized in that instant that he was really
_going_ and that neither of us had lifted a finger to set him right, a
sudden power over which it seemed that I had no control came and
caught me, almost physically forcing me out of my place. I ran across
the room.
"Mr. Maxwell!" I called.
He came back a few steps and stood facing us.
"You were leaving--that is, we were about to let you leave--under a
false impression," I stammered breathlessly, all the time a sense of
my doing something very much out of place strong upon me.
"False impression?" His eyes were glittering feverishly.
"Yes. It is true that we found the--the thing you mentioned in
Sophie's bag that night, but she is no--dope-fiend."
He stood still as if he were petrified.
"Physicians carry those things in instrument cases," I went on,
feeling that my explanation sounded very tame and inadequate.
"Physicians carry them and so do _nurses_."
He looked at me a moment in utter bewilderment, then, slowly,
comprehension dawned in his eyes. Even the understanding was going to
be bitter to him, for there would be the humiliating confession that
he would have to make to her that he had misjudged her.
As I said the word "nurses" Mrs. Chalmers moved a step forward and
held up a warning hand.
"Ann," she exclaimed in a frightened whisper, "Richard said that this
affair was _not_ to be mentioned."
"A professional nurse!" Mr. Maxwell cried, his face lighting up as a
hundred hazy memories came flooding over him. "In El Paso--my God!
_Of course!_"
He came up to me and caught my arm.
"This is what you mean?" he asked.
Mrs. Chalmers' eyes were fixed on me in a kind of fascinated wonder.
How _could_ any one go against Richard's expressed wish? But my own
eyes were meeting hers steadily as I turned to answer Mr. Maxwell's
pleading question.
"Yes, that is what I mean. Sophie belongs to the great army of the Red
Cross!"