OUT OF THE PAST
The stranger was a middle-aged man with iron-gray hair. He was
carrying his hat in his hand and enjoying the beauty and fragrance of
the late evening in the woods.
As Tory rushed toward him, Miss Frean stepped back into a deeper
shadow.
The newcomer was Tory's uncle, Mr. Richard Fenton.
"How stupid of me to have been frightened!" she exclaimed. "I have
been taking supper with Miss Frean and she is walking back to camp
with me. You were coming to camp to see us?"
Mr. Fenton agreed, walking forward to speak to Memory Frean. Except
for an occasional meeting upon the streets of Westhaven, and one or
two brief conversations with regard to the Girl Scout camp in
Beechwood Forest, they had not seen each other in many years.
To-night in the depth of the woods, with Tory walking between them,
they talked as if neither of them recalled any past intimacy.
"I have been a little worried about you, Tory," Mr. Fenton said
finally. "You have not been in town to see me in a number of days. I
thought it was agreed that we were to see each other once a week."
Tory nodded.
"Yes, I have missed you dreadfully, but I have been so busy. I thought
if you became very lonely you would come and find me," she announced,
with the familiarity of a delightful intimacy.
By and by when Miss Frean and Mr. Fenton continued talking, the
barrier between them increasing, Tory scarcely listened, thinking
their conversation not particularly entertaining.
They were merely discussing the weather and the scenery.
In another quarter of an hour the lights of the camp showed nearby.
Darkness had not completely descended. Outdoors one could still see
one's way.
The chief lights appeared inside the evergreen cabin, while in front
of the door stood a large automobile.
Fearing that Kara had grown unexpectedly worse, Tory darted away from
her companions and into the cabin.
The car she saw was not Dr. McClain's.
Entering the room, notwithstanding the lateness of the hour, she found
it filled with people.
Kara sat in the center in her wheeled chair. She looked pale but
excited and interested.
Three visitors were standing near her. They were Mr. and Mrs. Jeremy
Hammond and the little girl, Lucy Martin, whom they had adopted some
months ago.
In the years at the old Gray House on the hill in Westhaven Lucy had
been Kara's special charge.
If Tory had been fascinated by the little girl's extraordinary beauty
in the past, she was more startled to-night. The room was lighted only
by candles and a single large lamp under a yellow shade.
Lucy wore a pale yellow dress of some filmy, soft material and a large
hat circled with a wreath of flowers.
She had removed her hat and held it as one would a large basket. Her
dark hair made a stiff aureole about her delicately cut face with its
pointed chin, large brilliantly black eyes and full red lips.
Then Tory was both startled and repelled by the younger girl's
expression.
She was staring at Kara with no suggestion of sympathy or affection;
instead, she looked shocked and frightened and even disdainful.
Kara was extending her hands toward the little girl with more
animation and pleasure than Tory had seen her reveal since her
accident.
And actually, with a faint shudder, Lucy was drawing away.
An impulse to seize the little girl by the shoulders and forcibly
thrust her out of the evergreen cabin assailed Tory.
She moved forward. In the meantime Mr. and Mrs. Hammond, becoming
aware of Lucy's behavior, were endeavoring to conceal her rudeness.
"Kara, Lucy has been insisting each day that we bring her to see you.
We did not know at first that you had gone from the Gray House.
Afterwards Mr. Hammond was away for a short time and we were waiting
for him," Mrs. Hammond remarked, speaking hurriedly but with extreme
graciousness.
She was a pretty, exquisitely dressed woman of about thirty years with
light brown hair and eyes. She appeared an agreeable society woman but
without any especial force of character. Evidently if she cared a
great deal for Lucy, the little girl in time would have small
difficulty in having her own way.
This would not be equally true with Mr. Hammond.
At present he was divided by annoyance with his adopted daughter and a
kind of puzzled curiosity.
He was staring about the gay room filled with girls and then at the
figure in the wheeled chair.
Kara appeared to be interested in no one save Lucy.
Now as the child shrank away from her, her thin hands dropped in her
lap, her face looked whiter and her gray eyes with the heavy dark
lashes grew sadder and more wistful.
A little murmur, not actually voiced and yet capable of being heard,
ran through the room.
This time Lucy must have understood the antagonism among the group of
Girl Scouts that her manner had created.
At one time, and only a few months before, Kara had been everything to
her, sister and nurse and friend. A few months of wealth and she
seemed completely spoiled.
"You have many friends, Kara, but if there is anything Mr. Hammond and
I could possibly do for you, you have only to let us know," Mrs.
Hammond suggested at this moment, not very tactfully.
"You are very kind, but there is nothing to be done," Kara returned
coldly.
Apparently she had lost all interest in her guests, now that Lucy had
so utterly forgotten the old days at the Gray House on the hill. She
always had been an odd little creature, passionate, self willed and
self seeking. Still, Kara had never doubted her affection.
Not yet eight o'clock and Kara not expected to retire until nine,
nevertheless Tory looked about the room in search of Miss Mason. Kara
was being wearied. Better the room full of people be asked to go
outdoors. They could talk on in the deepening dusk.
At the open door Sheila Mason was talking to Miss Frean and Mr.
Richard Fenton. At the moment she was not thinking of Kara and the
three other visitors.
Trying to make up her mind to speak to Mr. and Mrs. Hammond herself,
Tory saw that Mr. Hammond suddenly appeared restless and at the same
time absorbed in thought.
"See here, Miss Kara, I wonder if you would like me to tell you
something? I am not perfectly sure and perhaps have not the right to
speak. Yet after all I am pretty well convinced that I am not making a
mistake and you cannot fail to be interested. You need things to
interest you these days, don't you?"
Mr. Hammond spoke abruptly. Tory considered that his manner was kinder
and he showed more interest in Kara than upon the day when he had come
to the old Gray House to seek the little girl he had rescued years
before. Then he had been fascinated by Lucy and Kara had been
disregarded.
Kara looked up now with slightly more animation.
"Yes, I do need something to interest me these days, Mr. Hammond. I am
afraid you will find me pretty difficult. Only a few weeks ago I cared
so intensely for our summer camp in Beechwood Forest and every one of
our Girl Scout occupations that nothing else appeared of the slightest
importance. Now when everyone is so good to me I don't seem interested
in anything. There are so many Scout subjects I could study when I
have so much time and I don't care to take the trouble. I really am
stronger perhaps than I pretend to be."
Kara's tone was so unhappy and listless that Mr. Hammond's agreeable
face clouded.
"Your state of mind is due to the fact that you have not recovered
from the shock of your fall. You won't feel like that always, sure not
to, a girl with the courage and good sense you have always revealed.
Still, what I am going to tell you is obliged to stir you up. I don't
believe you will object to the other Girl Scouts hearing what I tell
you. You are such devoted friends.
"Ever since I entered this pretty room I have experienced an odd
sensation connected with it. Somehow it seemed associated with you.
This may not appear remarkable, the room is now your sanctuary and I
am sure everything in it is for your service. But that is not what I
have in mind.
"I was haunted by an almost forgotten impression. As I drove up to the
cabin this afternoon, I felt that I had been in this vicinity before.
Here something unusual had taken place which had left a strong
impression upon me. I felt this more keenly when I entered this room,
although I never beheld any other room so gay and pretty and filled
with so many girls.
"The room was not always like this, Kara. You Girl Scouts must have
seen the room a little as I beheld it a number of years ago, when you
chose this spot for your summer camping grounds.
"Did I not once confide to you, Kara, that I discovered a tiny little
girl in a deserted farmhouse when I was a young man, riding along a
lane in this neighborhood? It looked more like an abandoned farm in
those days to a man who knew extraordinarily little about farms.
Perhaps the little house was never anything more than a cabin in the
woods, with farmlands in the neighborhood. If so, they have vanished.
Do you recall, Kara, the little girl I discovered and who she
afterwards turned out to be?"
At last Tory Drew felt her senses returning, and at the same time an
impulse to action. During Mr. Hammond's rambling story she had
remained quiet, listening and yet all the time knowing its conclusion.
Previously Dr. McClain had impressed upon her the fact that Kara had
been found in the little house in which she was living at present. If
Mr. Hammond had once called the cabin a farmhouse, Dr. McClain had
always been certain of its identity.
It was the doctor's opinion that Kara must not for the present be
excited or disturbed by any reference to this fact.
At last Tory was aware that she should have spoken sooner, that any
protest from her at present would come too late.
With all her listlessness vanished Kara was leaning forward, her eyes
on the speaker, while the other Girl Scouts appeared almost equally
interested.