"Oh, I don't mean that, of course. You couldn't be. You had a perfect
right to ask, of course."
"Can't I row back in a boat, please?" she pouted whimsically. "Don't
give it up yet. Not till I give you specific leave of absence. I suppose
I'm spoiled. I want my cake to keep and eat, too."
I was a little relieved at her recognition of her own inconsistency,
though I felt a queer hiatus somewhere. It was as if, mentally, I had
tried to go up a step where there was none. But I let the subject drop.
She took up the books on the stand and began to look them over.
"Don't you think Leah reads beautifully?" she asked.
"It's charming to hear her, but; if you don't mind, I prefer to hear
you."
She took all my compliments so graciously, without either embarrassed
denial or vanity, that I loved to watch her when I tried a gallantry.
Now she only nodded to me, sweepingly, with mock deference, and went on:
"Leah and I disagree somewhat. I have more manner, perhaps, and less
rhythm. We read a good deal together. I think she sees Browning much
more clearly than I. Perhaps I feel him more keenly."
"She's a remarkable girl--I was going to add 'for a negress,' but I
needn't qualify it."
"Oh, no! You don't _know_ how fine she is." Seating herself she added,
as if to herself, in a sort of sigh: "What that girl has done for me!"
"I am sure that she would say just that of you," I remarked.
"Oh, I try her a good deal, sometimes. Her mother was my nurse. When I
sent for Leah, I didn't expect to get anything more than, perhaps, some
of the hereditary devotion darkies have, even if I got that. But I got
a friend. You can't trust her too far, Mr. Castle, believe me! She's
pure gold."
It happened that, as she spoke, Leah herself came into the room with
letters for me. Miss Fielding took the girl's hand and pressed it
against her own cheek affectionately. As she did so, I noticed a
peculiar scar--a livid U-shaped mark on Leah's wrist. It was the sort of
scar that might be left from the wound of a carving-tool--one of the
narrower gouges.
"Was I very horrid yesterday, Leah?" Miss Fielding asked, looking up
into the fine brown face.
"Oh, _please_, Miss Joy!" Leah begged uneasily.
"Of course _you_ understand, Leah; I only want Mr. Castle to know I'm
sorry," Miss Fielding insisted.
"I need only to look at you to be sure you're sorry, and to look at Leah
to be sure that there's no need of it," I declared. "At any rate,
there's no need of my understanding. In fact that's just what I thought
you _didn't_ want me to do. Isn't it?"
Leah looked quickly from me to Miss Fielding, and back again.
"Yes, I suppose it is," Miss Fielding said slowly, thoughtfully. "Let's
get back on the island again. I'm sure it's big enough for us."
We stayed, therefore, "on the island" all that afternoon, touching, that
is, but lightly on personal topics. But though we did not go wide, we
went deep enough to make the talk hold us absorbed for an hour or more.
In quite another way, I think, we went far, as well. Miss Fielding was
a stimulating conversationalist. She made me feel at my best. She had
that happy way of meeting me on my ground every little while, then going
on, and giving me a hand up to hers, and so, by a series of alternate
agreements and divergencies, keeping the discussion both sympathetic and
various. In most of this quick give-and-take Leah was a passive
listener unless specially appealed to, at which times she often
expressed herself so succinctly and sapiently that Miss Fielding and I
looked at her, and then at one another with a comic expression of
admiration and depreciation of our own powers.
With such conversation the day went fast. In the afternoon Miss Fielding
read to me, and in the evening I spent two or three hours in passive
delight listening to her violin.
My pain had almost subsided, now, and I looked forward with something
more poignant than regret at being able to be up and about, knowing that
would mean the beginning of the end of our companionship.
*VI*
The next morning Miss Fielding slept late, and her breakfast order was,
as it had been two days before, prosaic. Then, also, she had slept
late. This coincidence struck me and gave me a presentiment. I looked
curiously for the first sight of her to confirm or destroy a theory that
I had been incubating during my long night hours alone. The fact that,
as I ate my breakfast, I could hear her whistling in her room helped
along my hypothesis. So did Leah's apparent mental detachment.
Miss Fielding romped into my room at about half-past nine, and with a
laugh and a "Good morning, Chet!" pirouetted up to my bed. My theory
instantly gained plausibility. Her manner was what I had anticipated.
Her dress, also, was significant.
She had on a fussy sort of silk waist, inappropriate, I thought, with
her cloth walking-skirt. Her hair was elaborately "marcelled," and she
wore bangles that clinked on her wrists; there was the same odor of
Santal that I had previously noticed. What was most suggestive was that
this get-up was apparently meant to impress me. At least, that was how
I interpreted her coquettish smile. I shouldn't care to say that she
showed actual poor taste--it was only, I thought, poor taste for _her_.
She needed such adjuncts of fashion so little!
"See here," she said, tossing her head and pointing at me dramatically,
"you're getting altogether too lazy! I think that you've been in bed
long enough. I'm going to get you down-stairs to-day. The doctor said
three or four days in bed would do, and now it's five. How do you feel?"
She shook the post of my bed with mock ferocity, as if to expend some
surplus energy. There seemed to be an extra ounce of blood in her this
morning.
"Oh, I'm game!" I replied. "Nothing would suit me better."
"I'll get the library ready, then; Leah and Uncle Jerdon will help you
down. Then you can watch me work, if you don't mind. I'm trying to
finish my coffret." She felt thoughtfully of her biceps. "I'll get
quite a muscle before I'm through. I shall have driven about twelve
hundred nails by the time it's done."
She walked to the door, swinging her arms, and called, "Leah! Come up
here! Quick!"
Leah appeared, out of breath, as if, for the moment, she had expected
that an accident had happened. She gave a quick apprehensive look
about.
"Leah, we're going to get Mr. Castle downstairs to-day. Is Uncle Jerdon
about?"
"Do you think Mr. Castle is well enough to be moved, yet?" Leah
ventured.
"Didn't I say he was going down-stairs?" Miss Fielding repeated
impatiently. "I think we can decide that question. You do as I say.
Go and get Uncle Jerdon, and be quick about it, too!"
"She's spoiled. She thinks she runs this house," Miss Fielding
complained to me, when Leah had left.
I said nothing, watching her closely. My theory was now pretty well
substantiated. I could not pass this scene off as merely one of the
"moods" that she and Leah had both mentioned. There was something
definitely wrong with Miss Fielding to-day--something more than a mere
whim of temper. There had been something wrong two days before, when
she had acted similarly. She was distinctly not herself, if her normal
self was the graceful, delicate, tactful creature who had first charmed
me.
It was not only her mood or her taste in costume that seemed different.
It was something not quite describable which seemed to permeate her
whole personality. She had taken a chair and sat with her right arm
cast up over the back. The angle of her raised elbow threw her into a
distinctly awkward position. Her gestures, too, were characteristic of
this mysterious difference. When they were not distinctly imitative, as
in mimicking Uncle Jerdon's table-manners, they were irrelevant, mere
spasmodic exhibitions of activity--as when she caught the fly, or swung
her arms with active tennis-like gestures. This spontaneous irrelevancy
she showed now in the way she doubled her fists and brought them
athletically to her shoulders, as she talked, or, raising her foot a
little, made circles with her toe, showing the slenderness and
suppleness of her ankle. I don't say that all this ebullition of high
spirits wasn't, in its way, charming. It was. But it was different from
the way she had acted yesterday. Perhaps I can best describe it by
saying that she seemed quite ten years younger.
She sprang up and, apropos of nothing at all, proceeded to dance or hop
sidewise across the room and back hilariously, in sheer excess of vigor.
It was what she called "galumphing," and, from time to time, during the
day, usually at the end of some little over-serious conversation, she
repeated the performance, to my great amusement and delight. It was the
absurdly meaningless gamboling of a kid, but it was so delicious in its
inconsequence that every time it provoked my laughter.
While we were talking nonsense there, Leah came up with Uncle Jerdon.
Uncle Jerdon was distinctly a New England type--the chin-bearded,
straw-chewing farmer, quaintly original, confident, droll. He was well
on in years, a dried-up, wrinkled, toothless bachelor with sparse,
straw-colored hair, long in the neck, and twinkling blue eyes full of
good nature. He wore overalls and reeked of the stable.
Miss Fielding introduced him, and I shook his skinny hand.
"Wall," he drawled, "thinkin' abeout movin', be ye? I guess Leah an'
me'll make a pretty good elevator. I'll help ye get dressed, fust-off,
an' then we'll take ye up tenderly, lift ye with care."
The two women left while I got my clothes on. It felt good to leave the
bed.
"We been a-tinkerin' on that air machine o' yourn, but it's a leetle bit
too much for us, I guess," Uncle Jerdon said. "You'll have to send
deown a man, I expect. I wouldn't ride in one o' them pesky things for
all the gold of Ophir, no sirree, bob! When I want to go to ride I want
to see the back of a good hoss--I know I'll get home by sun-deown."
He monologued away thus as he helped me into my clothes, and, when I had
finished, called to Leah.
She came in, and I took an arm of each, though I scarcely needed their
help. We descended a narrow, paneled stairway slowly but safely,
without causing me any pain, and turned into a door on the left-hand
side of the lower hall. There I found a morris chair ready for me,
drawn up before a wide brick fireplace where an oak log was burning.
Uncle Jerdon left me with a wink at seeing Leah placing a foot-stool for
me and drawing up a taboret on which were cigars and cigarettes. There
ensconced, I looked about with interest.
It was a large room, finished all in paneled unvarnished redwood, most
beautiful in color--a lighter red than mahogany, with more softness and
bloom. Two sides were lined with book-cases, except for the
chimney-breast; another was almost filled with a broad bow-window of
leaded glass with a deep seat covered with corduroy cushions. There was
a narrow shelf supported by carved brackets part way up, and a cornice
above that. Between the adzed beams of the ceiling were panels of old
Spanish leather, lacquered and stamped. The whole effect was a modified
French Renaissance worked out with many charming originalities of
detail. The pilasters, and the elaborate mantel with its ornamented
moldings and graceful consoles, showed handicraft of an interesting
sort. They seemed to have been carved by some artistic amateur, being
boldly cut without the machine-like regularity of the professional.
There was, besides the unusualness of the wood, much to interest me as
an architect.
The library was well filled without appearing crowded, and everything,
furniture and appointments, betokened, as had my chamber, not only
taste, but luxury. It was evident that Miss Fielding was very well off,
and knew how to use her money. It was as evident that she had a strong
personality, for there were details that were unique. A large prism of
rock-crystal, for instance, carelessly resting in the sunshine upon the
dull brown cushions of the window-seat, threw a prismatic spot of
splendor upon the ceiling. It was like a gorgeous butterfly pinned to
the leather. There was a silver cage of waltzing Japanese mice upon the
mantel, little grotesque, pied creatures that spun wheels, washed their
necks with their paws and nibbled at rice. The books, too, were
arranged upon the shelves apparently not as regards subjects, but rather
on account of their bindings, giving masses of color, green and red and
brown and black and white.
But it had all been indubitably so well lived in, its properties all
ministered so to one's comfort, and the tones were all so restful and
admirably composed, that I could imagine no more charming environment
for a rainy day with Miss Fielding.
A great library table stood in the center of the apartment, one end of
which was covered with magazines--everything from _The Journal of
Abnormal Psychology_ to the _Pink 'Un_. Upon the other end, resting on a
hide of ooze leather, were scattered tools and materials, and the
unfinished chest upon which Miss Fielding had been working. This was
covered with young calfskin, the soft hair still on, a pretty brindled
tan and white, and it was bound on the edges with brass strips. These
were fastened in place by close rows of brass-headed nails, which
accounted for the pounding I had heard. I was admiring the workmanlike
way in which the chest was made, when Miss Fielding came in.
"What d'you think of my 'bossy coffret'?" she said. "Isn't it going to
be a beauty? My own invention. Don't steal the scheme, and I'll show
you how."
She stood up to the table, and, taking one of the brass strips, laid off
the divisions and punched holes for the nails, and then hammered it on.
She kept up, meanwhile, a running fire of persiflage. Occasionally she
would stop to toss her hammer into the air and catch it nimbly by the
handle as it fell.
"I thought you were going to call me Edna," she said after a while,
pausing with some nails in her mouth to look over at me. "Don't you like
the name?"
"I thought _you_ didn't like it," I said, my eyes turning from her
brisk, clever hands, to her absorbed face. A wave passed over it as I
looked--that baffled expression I had noticed before.
"Did I say so!" Her hammer was poised in mid air.
"Why, didn't you?"
"Oh, yes, I suppose so. It doesn't matter. Nicknames seldom stick,
anyway." She placed a nail in the hole.
"Oh, I don't object to 'Chet' at all."
"'Chet' goes, then." She drove in her nail with a frown.
Before I had thought of my promise, I said: "It's funny you don't
remember it!"
Bang, _bang-bang_! Another nail went in, driven viciously.
I fully expected that she would speak of "the island" again, but she
didn't. Instead, she dropped her tools, and said:
"I'm building a house, too!"
"Where?" I asked.
She laughed and galumphed across the room and back again without looking
at me, before she answered. Then she stopped at the door and called up
for Leah to bring down her bunch of keys. When these had come, she
knelt in front of the window-seat and unlocked a cupboard below it.
From this she brought out a little model house, built of pasteboard,
perfect in all its details.
It had windows of mica, behind which were white sashes and lace-paper
curtains. The house, an old-fashioned New England homestead, was placed
in a little yard of green velvet divided by paths of sandpaper, and set
out with toy trees. A child would have loved it. A fairy would have
appropriated it at first sight. As an architect, the model made a great
appeal to me. It had charm and atmosphere, good massing, good
proportions, detail and color. I complimented her enthusiastically.
She was poking about the little front porch and the platform in the
rear, where a miniature ash-barrel stood, adjusting the doors and blinds
with her slender forefinger, when she frowned and said:
"Why, some one's broken that tree in front! Leah, have you been
touching this house? There's a blind gone, too!"
"No, Miss Joy, I haven't touched it!" Leah protested.
Miss Fielding stamped her foot. "You must have! It was all right when
I left it here last. Who could have done it, if you didn't?"
Leah grew more and more uneasy, but stood her ground. "Indeed, I didn't
touch it, Miss Joy!" she repeated.
"You're all the time meddling with my things. I've caught you at it
before. You know altogether too much. Well, go back to your work now!"
Leah left in silence, and Miss Fielding put back the house and locked it
up. A hard look came into her face that I had not seen before.
Her temper passed off almost as soon as it had risen, and she was as gay
as before. So until luncheon-time, she worked while I looked over the
magazines and talked with her.
We sat, at luncheon, on opposite sides of the table in a long and rather
narrow room without windows, lighted by a huge skylight. The walls of
this strange place were covered with an old-fashioned imitation tapestry
paper whose fanciful patterns consisted of consecutive scenes from _The
Lady of the Lake_. Everything about the table was heavy, spotless,
valuable and old, from the yellow linen to the hand-made forks and
spoons. We were waited upon by King, a smiling, round-faced Chinaman
with a cue coiled up on top of his head, and wearing a snowy white
uniform. He moved like a ghost in and out. Leah and Uncle Jerdon I
noticed, when the door was opened, eating at a table in the kitchen.
Miss Fielding and I spent the afternoon together in the library. She
worked and talked alternately; it appeared that she could not do both at
once, and always had to stop with her tool in hand when she spoke to me,
like a child. Occasionally she would come over to my chair and seat
herself familiarly upon the arm as she joked with me. Then she would
spring up, to galumph up and down the room, sidewise, running her hand
mischievously through my hair as she passed. I took no notice of the
liberty, but I was a little surprised at it. It began to rain that
afternoon and by five o'clock it was so dark that Leah came in to light
the candles in the silver sconces on the walls. Miss Fielding's spirits
were gradually tamed. I asked her to play the violin for me but she
refused moodily without excuses.
Our talk fell to books, and I went back to Leah's surprising love for
Browning.
"Oh, Leah knows more than is good for her," Miss Fielding said. She was
on the window-seat, looking out at the steadily falling rain, her feet
curled up under her. "Leah's so educated that she's unhappy; it's a
great mistake, that. I can't seem to keep her in her place any more.
But really, I don't see any poetry in Browning, do you?"
"Why!" I said, "I thought you were fond of Browning--that you 'felt'
him, even if you didn't 'see' him. Didn't Leah do that for you?"
"Leah! Fancy! What d'you mean by 'seeing' and 'feeling' him, anyway?"
She turned to me with her chin resting on the curled back of her hand.
"They're your own words," I answered, testily perhaps.