The question kept repeating itself, as if in spite of her.
"Comin' presently," Martha shied the point dexterously.
"I tried--last night ... 'square deal'---- Failed."
"Oh, no! you didn't fail. You mustn't be in too much of a hurry. Miss
Katherine'll see what you meant, give her a chance to get the right
squint at it. You got to be pationate with childern. Time goes slow for
them. Miss Katherine's a _good_ child!"
Madam Crewe raised her eyes, and fixed them full on Martha.
"Slawson--you're a _good_ woman."
* * * * *
It seemed to Katherine Crewe, trudging along the dreary stretch of road
on her way to the station, that there was no use struggling any longer
in a world where the combined forces were so obviously, so
uncompromisingly against her. Her one hope had been Mrs. Slawson. Mrs.
Slawson had failed her.
As she foresaw it, there was nothing in her meeting with Dr. Ballard to
promise better things. She had told him, once and for all, she would
never marry him. He had taken her at her word, and gone away. What she
had to tell him now, would only constitute another reason for her to
hold to her decision--another ground for him to accept it with easy
resignation.
Filed past, in slow procession through her brain, all the haunting
years, through which she had tried, and tried, and had had nothing but
disappointment, frustration, for her pains.
Dr. Ballard had assured her one could overmaster conditions.
Not when the blood of weaklings ran in one's veins.
Everything he or Mrs. Slawson had told her, that had seemed convincing
at the time, was negatived now, by her knowledge of what she was. Now
she knew why she had never been able to compel life to give her what she
demanded. It was because she was one of the "unfit," predestined, by
two generations of degenerates, not to survive. She could see nothing
but animus, as her grandmother's motive for telling her. The
accumulated, smoldering resentment of years, gathering force through
this crowning act of injustice, flamed up fiercely until it blinded her.
When, at last, she reached the station, it was only to find she had
missed the car she should have taken. She must wait an hour for another.
She almost smiled. The little incident was so of a piece with the rest
of her experience.
As she composed herself to sit out the hour, in the chill desolateness
of the deserted waiting-room, her thoughts still harried her, but now
she felt them less keenly. It was as if her wits were wrapped in
cotton.
At a touch on her shoulder, she started up, trembling, dazed. She had
not seen the station-master, until he actually stood before her.
"Did you want to take the next trolley to Burbank?"
"Yes," she answered, wondering why her eyes were so heavy, her head so
dull.
"Well, it'll be along in five minutes, now. I _thought_ you wanted to
take the last one, but you didn't stir, and come to find out, you were
asleep. I hated to rouse you now, only I thought, maybe, I'd ought to."
She had slept two hours.
Speeding through the country, her head became clearer. Not for that
were her thoughts less harassing. Another element had entered in, to
make them more so,--indecision. Little by little, bit by bit, came back
certain stray fragments of sentences she dimly recollected having heard
Mrs. Slawson pronounce. Sentences that, at the time, in her benumbed
state, had left her cold, making no conscious impression. She
remembered Martha's face, when first she saw her at the porch door.
What had she been afraid of? Martha Slawson, who was never afraid of
anything? The answer that had sprung to her own lips, was given without
deliberation. It had just naturally come in response to Mrs. Slawson's
look of dread. She had replied that her grandmother was "all right."
How had she known her grandmother was all right? She had not stopped to
inform herself, before she left the house. She had gone without a word,
without a look.
The last time she and her grandmother had come to grief, trying to
"understand each other," the old woman had borne a brave front until the
ordeal was over, then had quietly fainted away. What if she had done
the same thing now?--when no one was there to come to the rescue.
* * * * *
--"By your own say-so you ain't any of those things.--You got a mind o'
your own an' a conscience o' your own.... You're strong as they
make'm.... This hangin' on your antsisters, for good or for bad, makes
me sick.... Don't you fool yourself: It's every man for himself, these
days, thank God! ... Somethin' beautiful in all your blows, if you only
had sense to see. The hardest knock you ever got, you'd see
_stars_...."
* * * * *
Once, when she was a child, Katherine had been given a toy which, more
than all of her others, had filled her with delight and wonderment.
It was a large, circular box, set on a pedestal, revolving on a pin.
Perpendicular slits were cut, at regular intervals, all around its lower
wall, and within were coiled long, colored picture-scrolls, facing
outward. When the box, or drum, revolved, the scene depicted suddenly
sprang into motion.
She could not have followed, had she tried, the subtle, involuted train
of association that led her back to her experience with the long
disremembered plaything. But, even as she thought of it, she saw
herself, as she had so often sat, a disappointed, bewildered child,
staring at the stupid, tiresome lengths of crude, static prints, which
her inexperienced hand had not learned to adjust, so they would become
significant, entertaining.
Like a sudden flash of light, came the suggestion that, up to this, she
had sat just so, regarding life. Seeing it in the flat, finding it dull,
stale, unprofitable. What if it were possible to learn the trick of
adjustment! What if it were possible to discover the dynamic pivot, by
which the great revolution would take place, the revolution that would
make life interesting, give it meaning? Had any one ever found either?
Instantly, she thought of two persons--the two who, more than any others
she had ever known, had got the most good pleasure out of life. Daniel
Ballard--Martha Slawson. Two very different personalities, in widely
different situations, yet with the same invincible courage, the same
curious capacity for inspiring others with their own faith in all that
is best. These two had the same wide vision, the same high purpose.
They both had looked on life, and found it good.
Long before her car reached Burbank, Katherine had determined to go
home.
She heard, with composure, the Junction "starter's" announcement, that
her car had gone out three minutes before. She must wait an hour, if
she wanted to take the next. In her present mood, she was glad of the
opportunity to try her new-found strength. Out of her depths of
depression she had leaped in one miraculous moment, to a height of
exaltation such as she had never known before. She was ready to fight
the world, in order to prove she could come out conqueror.
"No, ma'am, there ain't any other way of getting back, excepting the
trolley, unless you take an automobile. But I tell you what! The
Boston train'll be along presently. There'll be rigs here then, and
motors come to meet it, and probably some of them'll be going back your
way. They'd give you a lift, I dare say, if you're in a great hurry and
asked them."
Katherine considered. To sit in the station, tamely waiting for things
to come her way, was out of all line with her present impulse. She
could not endure inaction. She had a flagellant's ecstatic eagerness to
begin her own castigation. She would _walk_.
The starter did not confide to her his private opinion of her plan, when
she indicated what she proposed to do by asking directions as to the
way.
"There's a goodish stretch out of here, where the walking's easy. But
you'd have to get beyond that, before you'd be likely to be come up
with, by a rig, or a car, going your way. You see, the trolley-line and
the motors both use the road. Foot passengers ain't allowed to, where
there's so much traveling. It'd be dangerous. But once you get off the
main beat, going in the direction of your town, all you have to do is
stick to the road and you'll _get there_!"
Looking after her, as she started off gallantly enough, his skepticism
found vent in a long, low whistle and a muttered--"You'll get
there--_if_ you have luck."
But Katherine felt no doubt of herself. It was only after she had
covered "the goodish stretch," and come out on the road where the
walking was "heavy," that her elation dropped a trifle, her bag began to
prove itself subject to the law of gravitation. Still she plodded on
resolutely.
She had no hope that she would be able to outstrip the trolley, but at
least she was not meekly submitting to overmastering forces, as she had
done in the past. And if nothing better offered, she would take the
trolley, when it should come along, and so accomplish her purpose in the
end.
She did not know how far she had walked, when her ears caught the sound
of an approaching automobile.
The way, at that point, was narrow, and for a moment she hesitated.
Would it be better to step up on the bank, or proceed, as she was doing,
trusting to the chauffeur to guide and control his car so as not to run
her down? She chose the first course, glad that she had done so, when,
looking back the way she had come, she saw what an immense machine it
was bearing down upon her. Then all at once, her heart gave a leap.
It was the Ronalds' car.
A minute, and the chauffeur had seen, recognized her. The car came to a
halt.
The next thing she knew, Francis Ronald had sprung from the limousine,
taken her bag, given it to his driver, handed her into the car, and,
himself, taken his place beside his man. It was only then, that she
realized he had closed the door upon her, and a companion. A man. She
looked up. The car started into motion. She was in Daniel Ballard's
arms, being held very close.
She tried to wrench herself away.
"No, no!" she panted. "You don't understand! You don't know!"
Recapturing the hand she had freed, he pressed it to his lips, smiling
at her reassuringly.
"I know everything. It's all right. What do you think I care?"
"But you _don't_ know," she insisted. "I was coming to tell you. I was
on my way. And then I remembered how old she is, and weak and forlorn
and--I am going back to her--to comfort her. But I had been on my way
to you--to tell you--tell you what I am--what I've done. I'm----"
"Hush!" commanded Dr. Ballard gently. "Be still, and you'll find it's
all right. _She_ made it right, before I left to go to Boston. She
told me everything. What you had told her, what, I suppose, she has told
you. Everything. She asked me to wait until you had found yourself.
She said, you were an idealist--'Up in the clouds,' she put it. She
feared you would draw a storm down on yourself and me, if you were
trusted with your own life, at this juncture. She begged me not to
press on you any more problems than you already had. She wanted you to
profit by her mistakes, to have what she had missed--and to have it
untarnished by regrets. It was for that she tested you. It was for
that she denied herself necessaries, that, in the end, you might have
plenty. She said, she must make sure you did not set money above love,
as she, as--_others_ had done before you. Talk about idealists! She
managed it all very clumsily, but, at least, she tried to do right by
you, according to her lights. I told her, 'twas wrong to tamper with
human hearts. I told her, she had no right to try to direct human
destinies. But I'd better have held my tongue. The mischief was
already done. She had tampered. She had _tried_.... She was always
hoping you would come to see she had acted in good faith. You see it
now, don't you, sweetheart? You'll show her you do, when we get _home_,
won't you--if it's not too late?"
"Too late?"
The syllables rang out with cruel sharpness.
"You don't know, then, that she is--dying?"
Katherine gave him a terrified look.
"Oh, let us go fast--_fast_! Dan--_darling_--don't let it be too late!"
It was nearing sunset when the car drove into Crewesmere.
Martha heard it, but the sound carried no comfort to her heart. At
best, it could only mean that Dr. Ballard had arrived and--Dr. Ballard
was not Katherine! Katherine for whom her grandmother had been vainly
calling all through the day.
"She'll be here presently," Martha had answered. "She's gone out."
"She'll come in pretty soon, now." "I expect her any minute."
Once, the little old woman had made a mighty effort, gathered her forces
together, and brought out the question,
"Has she left me? Gone to Boston?"
Martha could not have escaped her searching eyes, if she had tried. She
met them squarely, and told her untruth as convincingly as if it had
been the truth. In the depths of her soul, she "had the faith to
believe" it was the truth. "Only, I'm bound to confess, it don't look
like it."
"Leave you? Gone to Boston? Not on your life. Miss Katherine's a
_good_ child. Even if she'd got kinda bewizzled-like, an' started off,
meanin' to go, she wouldn't 'a' went. She'd turn back, an' come home.
You can take it from me! I know Miss Katherine."
But the hands of the clock had slipped around, and Katherine had not
come home.
Dr. Driggs dropped in, like the rest of the neighbors, to "inquire." He
did not venture inside the sick-room, but when Martha described the
situation, Madam Crewe's hungry longing to keep up until she could see
her grandchild, he left something to be administered that, he thought,
"might help along, some, maybe."
It did.
After she had taken it, the wonderful little soul revived amazingly.
She beckoned Martha to her with a look, whispering out the difficult
syllables, as if on her last breath--
"If Katherine shouldn't come----"
"She will come, never fear," Martha reassured her.
"I've left you--a little keepsake. A thousand dollars.... It's down
... black-and-white ... in letter to Katherine. Promise ... take some,
and go ... with your Sam ... to New York ... alone ... honeymoon."
"Certaintly," said Martha, humoring her soothingly, without the
slightest suspicion she was listening to anything but the babbling of
aged weakness.
"Certaintly, ma'am. An' thank you kindly for the thought. Sam an'
me'll have the time of our lives."
"See ... you do!" ordered the little Madam.
The western sky was a blaze of glory when she spoke again.
"I'll meet you ... dearest Daniel ... when the sun goes down!"
"What, ma'am?" inquired Martha, instantly on the alert.
The lowered lids lifted. The lapsing mind leaped back to consciousness.
"Katherine!"
"She'll be here right off. She's on her way!"
An automobile drove up before the house.
"Dr. Ballard's come all the way from Boston to see you, ma'am," Martha
said.
A moment, and the door opened. A girlish figure flew across the room.
"Grandmother! Dear, _dear_ grandmother!"
Katherine knelt by the bedside, gathering up the little body in her
loving arms.
Dr. Ballard bent to lift the tiny wrist.
There was a gentle sigh, a flicker of the eyelids. Madam Crewe looked up
contentedly, over Katherine's bowed head, and her eyes fixed themselves
full on Martha.