That evening, as Miss Muller sat alone with Hero in her room (just as
the neuralgia was beginning), the door opened and Miss Vogdes entered.
The girl turned a harassed, worn countenance toward Maria, and
stumbled awkwardly over her words. It was not, certainly, because
she was conscious that she had used William Muller cruelly. She had
forgotten that William Muller lived.
She had been thinking of Maria all day. She was the woman whom Doctor
McCall loved. By the time night came Kitty had a maddening desire to
see again this woman that he loved--to touch her, hear her speak. She
had been used to regard her as a disagreeable bore, but now she looked
on her as a woman set apart from all the world. She had made a poor
excuse to come up to the Water-cure: now that she was there she half
forgot it. Maria's delicate face, her quick grace of motion, her
clear, well-bred voice, were so many stabs to Kitty, each of which
touched the quick. Maria's hair hung loosely over her shoulders:
it was very soft and thick. She wondered if Doctor McCall had ever
touched it. "Though what right have _I_ to know?" For some reason this
last was the pang that tugged hardest at Kitty's heart.
"I brought a message for Doctor McCall," she said, fumbling in her
pocket--"that is, for you to deliver to him, Maria."
Miss Muller turned her shoulder to her: "Doctor McCall is gone--I
don't know where."
She started forward: "Gone? To come again, you mean?"
"No--never to come back!" vehemently.
Kitty stood by her silent a moment: "William told me that you sent for
him, that he loved you, Maria--that you would be married some of these
days."
Miss Muller hesitated: there was no use in revealing her humiliation
to this girl: "There was an obstacle in the way. Doctor McCall is
peculiarly hedged in by circumstances."
"And you could not find the way of escape?"
"No." She did not see the flash of triumph on the girl's face, or
notice when she went out.
Kitty was human. "At least," she muttered going down the hill, "I
shall not have to see _her_ his wife." When she had reached the
Book-shop she took from her pocket a coarse yellow envelope containing
a telegram directed to Hugh Guinness in his father's care. She turned
it over. This was a bond between them which even Maria did not share:
she alone knew that he was Hugh Guinness.
"What am I to do with this?"
Doctor McCall was gone, never to come back. It was like touching his
hand far off to read this message to him. Besides, Kitty was curious.
She opened the envelope.
"Come to me at once. You will soon be free," without any signature
but an initial. The melodramatic mystery of it would have cautioned
knowing women, but Kitty was not knowing.
"If he had received this an hour ago, the 'way of escape' would have
been found. He would have been free to marry Maria." So much she
understood. She sat down and was quiet for half an hour. It was the
first wretched half hour of her life--so wretched that she forgot to
cry.
"It would make him very happy to marry Maria," she said, getting
up and speaking aloud. Then she opened the door and went up to her
chamber, her thoughts keeping time with her swift motions. It seemed
to her that she still spoke aloud. "If I were a man I could go to this
house in Philadelphia and receive this message, which will set him
free" (beginning to fold the dresses in her closet). "It will never
reach him otherwise. I could find and bring him to Maria. But I
never was five miles from Berrytown in my life, _I_ never could go"
(dragging out a great trunk and packing the dresses into it). "It
would be a friendly thing for some man to do for him. Maria could not
do so much" (cramming in undergarments enough for a year's wear). "If
I were a man! He'd not snub me then as he does now, when I am only
Kitty. If this could be done it would bring happiness for life to
him." (The trunk was packed as she had seen her mother's. She was
on her knees, trying to force down the lid, but her wrists were too
weak.) "He would come back at once. How lovely Maria looked in that
black lace mantilla! He would kiss her mouth and smooth her hair."
(Kitty, still kneeling, was staring at the wall with pale cheeks
and distended eyes. The lock snapped as it shut. She rose and began
putting on her gray hat and veil.) "No woman could go to the city
through that dark; and there is a storm coming. If I did it, what
would he care for me? I am only Kitty. I would sit in the window here
alone year after year, growing into a neglected old maid, and watch
him go by with his happy wife and children. I need not interfere. I
can throw the telegram into the fire and let them both go their ways.
What are they to me?" She had buttoned her sacque and gloves, and now
went up to the glass. It was a childish face that she looked at, but
one now exceptionally grave and reserved.
She walked quickly down and tapped at the kitchen door: "When the
porter comes for my trunk, Jane, give it to him. Tell my mother when
she comes it was necessary for me to leave home to help a friend. I
shall be back in a few days--if I am alive."
"De Lord be good to us, honey!" Jane stood aghast. Kitty came suddenly
up to the old woman and kissed her. She felt quite alone in the world
in beginning this desperate undertaking. The next moment she passed
the window and was gone.
Miss Muller, with a satchel and shawl-strap, would have started coolly
at an hour's notice alone for the Yosemite or Japan. But Kitty, with
the enormous trunk, which was her sole idea of travel, set out through
the night and storm, feeling death clutching at her on every side.
An hour after nightfall that evening the Eastern express-train reached
the station beyond Berrytown, bringing home Peter and his wife,
triumphant. Her money had covered a larger extent of muslins and laces
than she hoped for--enough to convert the raw school-girl Kitty, when
she was married, into a leader of church-going fashion.
Mrs. Guinness leaned back in the plush car-seat, planning the
wedding-breakfast. That was now her only care. Out in the world of
shops and milliners her superstitious dread of a man long since dead
had seemed to her absurd.
"I have had some unreasonable fears about Kitty," she said to Peter,
who was beginning to nod opposite to her. "But all will be well when
she is Muller's wife."
Another train passed at the moment they reached the station. Her eye
ran curiously over the long line of faces in the car-windows to find
some neighbor or friend.
She touched Peter's arm: "How like that is to Kitty!" nodding toward
a woman's head brought just opposite to them. The train began to move,
and the woman turned her face toward them: "Merciful Heaven, it _is_
Kitty!"
The engine sent out its shrill foreboding whistle and rushed on,
carrying the girl into the darkness. Behind her in the car as it
passed her mother saw the face of Hugh Guinness.