THE DUNGEON OF DISAPPOINTMENT
IT was nearly noon when Lloyd wakened next morning. Her head ached, and
she wondered dully how anybody could feel lively enough to sing as Aunt
Cindy was doing, somewhere back in the servants' quarters. The sound of
a squeaking wheelbarrow had wakened her. Alec was trundling it around
the house, with the parrot perched on it. The parrot loved to ride, and
its silly laugh at every jolt of the squeaking barrow usually amused
Lloyd, but to-day its harsh chatter annoyed her.
"Oh, deah!" she groaned, sitting up in bed and yawning. "I feel as if I
could sleep for a week. I wouldn't get up at all if it wasn't for Katie
Mallard's pah'ty. I hate this day-aftah-Christmas feeling, as if the
bottom had dropped out of everything."
She dressed slowly and went down-stairs. "Where's mothah, Mom Beck?" she
asked, pausing in the dining-room door. The old coloured woman was
arranging flowers for the lunch-table.
"She's done gone ovah to Rollington, honey, with the old Cun'l. Walkah's
mothah is sick, and sent for 'em. I'm lookin' for 'em to come home any
minute now. Come right along in, honey. I've kep' yoah breakfus' good
and hot."
"I don't want anything to eat. I'm not hungry now. I'd rathah wait till
lunch. Where's Betty, Mom Beck?"
"Now listen to that!" ejaculated the old woman, sharply. "Don't you
remembah? She went off on the early train this mawning to that place you
all calls the Cuckoo's Nest. I packed her satchel befoah daylight."
"I had forgotten she was going," exclaimed Lloyd, turning to the window
with a discontented expression, which only the snowbirds on the lawn
could see. She had come down-stairs expecting to talk over all the
happenings of the previous day with Betty, and to find her gone gave her
a vague sense of injury. She knew the feeling was unreasonable, but she
could not shake it off.
The flash of the new ring gave her a momentary pleasure, but she was in
a mood that nothing could please her long. When she strolled into the
drawing-room, everything was in spotless order, and so quiet that the
stillness was oppressive. Even the fire burned with a steady, noiseless
glow, without the usual crackle, and the ashes fell on the hearth with
velvety softness.
Some of her new books lay on a side table. She picked them up and
glanced through them, catching at a paragraph here and there. But one
after another she laid them down. She was not in a mood for reading.
Then she took a candied date from the bonbon dish, but it seemed to lack
its usual flavour. After nibbling each end, she threw it into the fire.
Slipping her new opera-glass from its case, she went to the window and
turned the lens on the distant entrance gate. The road in each direction
seemed deserted. So she put the glass back in its case, and, after
strolling restlessly around the room, walked over to the harp and struck
a few chords.
"It's all out of tune!" she exclaimed, fretfully, thrumming the faulty
string with impatient fingers. "Everything seems out of tune this
mawning!"
As she spoke, the string broke with a sudden harsh twang that made her
jump. She was so startled that the tears came to her eyes, and so
nervous that she flung herself face downward on the pillows of the
long-Persian divan, and began sobbing hysterically. The strain of the
last few weeks had been too much for her. Miss Gilmer's prophecy had
come true. The ice had given away under the extra weight put upon it.
She was sobbing so hard that she did not hear the sound of carriage
wheels rolling softly up the avenue through the snow, and when the front
door banged shut she started again, and began trembling as she had done
when the harp-string broke. She was crying convulsively now, so hard
that she could not stop, although she clenched her fists and bit her
lips in a strong effort to regain self-control.
Mrs. Sherman, her face all aglow from the cold drive, and looking almost
girlishly fair in her big hat with the plumes, and her dark furs,
hurried in to the fire. The Colonel, throwing back his scarlet lined
cape, pushed aside the portiere for her to enter. He was the first to
catch sight of the shaking form on the divan.
"Why, Lloyd, child, what's the matter?" he demanded, anxiously. "What's
the matter with grandpa's little girl?"
Mrs. Sherman, with a frightened expression, hurried to her, and, bending
over her, tried to get a glimpse of the tear-swollen face buried so
persistently in the cushions.
"Nothing's happened! No, I'm not sick," came in smothered tones from the
depths of the pillows. "It's j-just crying itself, and I--I--I c-can't
stop-p-p!"
A long shiver passed over her, and Mrs. Sherman, stroking her forehead
with a soothing hand, waited for her to grow quiet before plying her
with questions. But the old Colonel paced impatiently back and forth.
"The child _must_ be sick," he declared. "She'll be coming down with a
fever or something if we don't take vigorous measures to prevent it. I
shall telephone for Dick Shelby this minute."
He started toward the hall, but a wild wail from Lloyd stopped him.
"I won't have the doctah! I'm not sick, and you sha'n't send for him! I
j-just cried because the harp-string b-broke so suddenly that it
s-scared me!"
The Colonel paused and looked at her in amazement. Not since the time
when she, a five-year-old child, had flung a handful of mud over his
white clothes had she spoken to him in such a defiant tone. He answered
soothingly, as if she were still that little child, to be coaxed into
good behaviour. "Oh, yes, you won't mind the doctor's coming if grandpa
wants him to. He'll keep you from getting down sick, and spoiling all
the rest of your vacation. I'll just ask him to step up and look at
you."
"No, don't!" demanded Lloyd, as he started again toward the hall. "No,
you sha'n't!" she insisted, springing up and stamping her foot. "I won't
have the old doctah, and I won't take any of his nasty old medicine!
He'll make me stay home from Katie's pah'ty this aftahnoon and from the
matinee to-morrow--and there's nothing the mattah, only I'm cross and
nervous, and the moah you bothah me the hah'dah it is to stop crying!"
Then ashamed of her petulant outburst, she threw her arms around his
neck, and sobbed on his shoulder. In the end she had her own way, for
the glass of hot milk which her mother sent for, as soon as she found
Lloyd had eaten no breakfast, soothed her overstrung nerves. A brisk
walk to the post-office in the bracing December air gave her an appetite
for luncheon. Then she slept again until time to dress for Katie's
party, so that when the old Colonel watched her start off, she looked so
bright and was in such buoyant spirits that he wondered vaguely if her
crying spell could have been the remnant of some childish tantrum
instead of the forerunner of an illness.
He banished the thought instantly from his loyal old heart, ashamed of
having applied such a word as tantrum to anything Lloyd might choose to
do. Of course she had felt ill, he told himself. So wretched that she
hadn't known what she was saying when she stormed at him so angrily. He
resolved to watch her closely, and take matters in his own hands if she
showed any more alarming symptoms.
There was a matinee next day in Louisville, to which Mrs. Sherman took
all the girls in the neighbourhood. That was the end of the Christmas
gaieties for Lloyd. Doctor Shelby was at Locust on her return. He came
out of the old Colonel's den, where he had been sitting for several
hours, deep in a game of chess, and found her shivering in front of the
fire with a nervous chill, sobbing hysterically.
She stormed at him almost as she had done at her grandfather, protesting
that she was only tired and nervous, and that she would be all right as
soon as she had had her cry out. But she submitted meekly when he
ordered her mother to put her to bed. The old doctor had always indulged
her, but there was a sternness in his manner now that made her obey
him.
He called to see her the next day, and the next. But his visits did not
seem like professional ones. There was nothing said about medicine or
symptoms. He only asked her about school and the good times she had been
having, and the extra studying she had been doing. Then he sat and joked
and talked with her and her mother, as had been his habit ever since
Lloyd could remember. The third afternoon she was down in the
drawing-room when he came.
"We'll soon be having Miss Holly-berry back again," he said, playfully
pinching her pale cheek.
"And without taking any nasty old medicine," she answered. "I don't mind
doctahs when they can cure people without giving them pills and
powdahs."
The Colonel looked up sharply. "What's that?" he asked. "Haven't you
been giving her anything, Dick? It seems to me the child would get along
faster if she had a good tonic."
"I am going to prescribe one this morning," the doctor answered. "That's
what I came up for." He laughed at the look of disgust on Lloyd's face.
"It isn't bad," he assured her, with an indulgent smile. "Why, I know
dozens of girls who would say that the tonic I am going to prescribe is
the most agreeable that could be given. I've even had them beg for it.
This is it, simply to lengthen your Christmas vacation. Didn't I hear a
certain young lady wishing the other night that she could stretch hers
out indefinitely?"
Lloyd's dimples deepened. "How much longah will you make it? A week? If
I stay out much longah than that, it will be such hah'd work to catch up
with my classes that the game won't be worth the candle."
"But I would make it so long that there would be no necessity of having
to catch up, as you call it. You could simply make a fresh start in a
new class."
Lloyd looked up in alarm. "When?" she demanded.
"Um--well, next fall, let us say," he answered, deliberately. "Yes,
surely by that time you'll be well and sound as a new dollar."
"Next fall!" she gasped, her face growing white and her eyes strangely
big and dark. "You don't mean--you _couldn't_ mean that I must leave
school."
"Yes, that's exactly what I mean. You are overtaxing yourself and must
stop--"
"Oh, I can't!" interrupted Lloyd, speaking very fast. "I _won't_! It's
cruel to ask it when I've worked so hard to keep from falling behind
Betty and the girls. Oh, you don't _know_ what it means to me!"
The old doctor looked up in amazement at this unexpected outburst.
"No," he answered, slowly, after a moment's silence. "I don't suppose I
do. I had no idea it would be a disappointment to you. I would gladly
save you from it if I could. But listen to me, my little girl, and try
to be reasonable. You are on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Nothing
can mean as much to you as your health. What will keeping up with the
other girls amount to if the strain and the overtaxing makes an invalid
of you for life, perhaps?
"Mind you, I am not saying that the work itself is too great a tax.
Madam Chartley's is one of the best regulated schools I have ever
inquired into. Ordinarily a girl ought to be able to take the course
with perfect ease. But you see that little spell of la grippe left you
weak and unfit for any extra strain, and, instead of easing up a bit,
you went on piling on all that extra load of lessons and Christmas
preparations and vacation dissipations. It was like trying to walk on a
broken foot. The more you tried, the worse it got. The mischief is done
now, and there is no remedy but to stop short off."
Lloyd sat very still for a moment, staring out of the window in a dazed,
unseeing way, as if not fully understanding all he said. Then she turned
with a piteous appeal in her face to Mrs. Sherman.
"Mothah, it isn't so, is it? I won't have to give up school now! You
wouldn't make me, would you, when you know how I love it? Oh, it will
neahly _kill_ me if you do! Please say no, mothah! _Please_!"
Mrs. Sherman's eyes were full of tears. "My poor little girl," she
exclaimed as Lloyd threw herself into her arms. "I'm afraid we must do
as the doctor says. He would not ask such a sacrifice if it were not
necessary. You know how dearly he has always loved you."
Without waiting to hear any more, Lloyd sprang up and ran out of the
room. Rushing up-stairs, she bolted her door behind her, and threw
herself across the bed.
"It is the first great disappointment she has ever had in her life,"
said her mother, looking after her with a troubled face. "Couldn't you
make the sentence a little easier, doctor? Couldn't she go back and take
one study, just to be with the girls?"
He shook his head. "No, Elizabeth. She is too ambitious and high-strung
for that. One study wouldn't satisfy her. She'd chafe at not being able
to keep up in everything. She has nothing serious the matter with her
now, but it would not take long to make a wreck of her health at the
gait she has been going. There must be no more parties, no more regular
school work, and even no more music lessons this winter. She must have
the simplest kind of a life. Keep her out-of-doors all you can. A little
prevention now will be worth pounds of cure after awhile."
"I suppose you are right, Dick," said the old Colonel, huskily, "but I
swear I'd give the only arm the Yankees left me to save her from this
disappointment."
Lying across the bed up-stairs, Lloyd cried and sobbed until she was
exhausted. The handkerchief clutched in her hand in a damp little ball
had wiped away the bitterest tears she had ever shed. In her inmost
heart she knew that the doctor was right. It had been weeks since she
had felt strong and well. She remembered the way she had lagged behind
at the picnic, and what an effort it had been to talk and make herself
agreeable lately. Recalling the last few weeks, it seemed to her that
she had been in tears half the time. She admitted to herself that she
would rather be dead than to be an invalid for life like her great-aunt
Jane. To sit always in a darkened room that smelled of camphor, and to
talk in a weak, complaining voice that made everybody tired. Of course
if there was danger of her growing to be like _her_, she would rather
leave school than run such a risk. But why, oh, _why_ was she forced to
make such a choice? The other girls didn't have to. She had done no more
than they to bring about such a state of affairs.
They could go back to dear old Warwick Hall, but she would have to stay
behind. And she would always be behind, for, even if she went back with
them another year, it couldn't be the same. They would have done so much
in the meantime,--gone on so far ahead, made new friends and found new
interests, and she would have to drop back in the class below, and
never, never stand on the same footing with them again. It was so hard,
so cruel, that she should have to face a blighted life at only fifteen.
She unlocked the door presently at her mother's knock, but she didn't
want to be comforted. Nothing anybody could say could change things, she
sobbed, or make the disappointment any easier to bear. So Mrs. Sherman
wisely withdrew, and left her to fight it out alone.
The next time she peeped into the room, Lloyd was asleep, worn out with
the violence of her grief, so she tiptoed down-stairs, leaving the door
ajar behind her. The Colonel was pacing up and down the library.
"I declare I can't think of anything but that child's disappointment!"
he exclaimed, as she came in. "I can't read! I can't settle down to
anything. I have been trying to think of some pleasure we could give her
to make up for it in a way. A winter in Florida, maybe. Poor baby! if I
could only bear it for her, how glad I would be to do it!"
Mrs. Sherman picked up a bit of needlework from the table where she had
left it, and, sitting down by the window, began to hemstitch.
"I don't know, papa," she said, slowly, "but I'm beginning to fear that
we have done too much of that for Lloyd; smoothed the difficulties out
of her way too much; made things too easy. We've fairly held our arms
around her to shield her not only from harmful things, but from even
trifling unpleasantness. Maybe if she had had to face the smaller
disappointments that most children have to bear, the greater ones would
not seem so overwhelming. She could have met this more bravely."
The Colonel sniffed impatiently. "All foolishness, Elizabeth! All
foolishness! That may be the case with ordinary children, but not with
such a sweet, unspoiled nature as Lloyd's."
It was nearly dark when Lloyd wakened. She heard Kitty's voice down in
the hall, asking to see her, and Gay's exclamation of surprise and
regret at something her mother said in a low voice. She knew that she
was telling them the doctor's decision. Then Mom Beck tapped at the door
to ask if she would see the girls awhile, but she sent her away with a
mournful shake of the head. She was too miserable even to speak.
The low murmur of voices went on for some time. It grew loud enough for
her to distinguish the words when the girls came out into the hall again
to take their departure. Lloyd raised herself on her elbow to listen.
Kitty was telling something that had happened that afternoon at the
candy-pull from which they were just returning. A wan smile flitted
across Lloyd's face, in sympathy with the merry laugh that floated up
the stairs. But it faded the next instant as she whispered, bitterly:
"That's the way it will always be. They will go on having good times
without me, and they'll get so they'll nevah even miss me. I'll be left
out of everything. There's nothing left to look forward to any moah. Oh,
it's all so dah'k and gloomy--I know now how Ederyn felt, for I'm just
like he was, walled up in a dreadful Dungeon of Disappointment."
The fancy pleased her so that she went on making herself miserable with
it long after the door closed behind Kitty and Gay. Over and over she
pictured Warwick Hall, which just then seemed the most desirable place
in all the world. She could see the shining river, as she had watched it
so many times from her window, flowing past the stately terraces between
its willow-fringed banks. She could hear the breezy summons of the
hunter's horn, calling the girls to rambles over the wooded hills or
through the quaint old garden. She could see the sun streaming into the
south windows of the English room, with the class gathered around Miss
Chilton, eager and interested. All the dear, delightful round of
inspiring work and play would go on day after day for the others, but it
would go on without her. Henceforth she would be left out of everything
pleasant and worth while.
She would not go down to dinner. She could not take such a puffed,
tear-swollen face to the table to make everybody else unhappy, and she
couldn't throw off her despondent mood. Maybe in a few days, she
thought, she might be able to hide her feelings sufficiently to appear
in public, but it would always be with a secret sorrow gnawing at her
heart. Just now she shrank from sympathy, and she didn't want any one to
cheer her up. It did not seem possible that she could ever smile again,
and she wasn't sure that she wanted to.
Mom Beck brought up the daintiest of dinners on a tray, but carried it
back almost untasted. As soon as she was gone, Lloyd undressed and crept
into bed.
Sleep was far from her, however, and she lay with her eyes wide open.
The room was full of soft shadows and the flicker of firelight on the
furniture. She could think of only one thing, and she brooded over that
until it seemed to her feverish, disordered fancy that her
disappointment was the greatest that any one had ever been forced to
bear.
"Why couldn't it have happened to some girl who didn't care?" she
thought, bitterly. "Some girl like Maud Minor, who doesn't like school,
anyhow. It doesn't seem fair when I've tried my best to do exactly
right, to leave a road of the loving hah't in everybody's memory, to
keep the tryst--"
That thought brought a fresh reason for grief. There was the string of
pearls. Now she could not finish her little white rosary. The fire
flared up and shone brilliantly for a few moments, lighting a group of
pictures over her bed. They were the photographs she had taken in
Arizona. There was Ware's Wigwam. The firelight was not bright enough to
enable her to read the lines Joyce had written under it, but she knew
the inscription was the Ware family's motto, taken from the "Vicar of
Wakefield": "Let us be inflexible, and fortune will at last change in
our favour." A shadow of a smile actually came to her lips as she
remembered Mary Ware gravely explaining it.
"Why, even Norman knows that if you'll swallow your sobs and _stiffen_
when you bump your head or anything, it doesn't hurt half as bad as if
you just let loose and howl."
And there was the photograph of old Camelback Mountain, bringing back
the story of Shapur, left helpless on the sands of the Desert of
Waiting, while the caravan passed on without him to the City of his
Desire. She remembered that when she hung it over her bed she had
thought, "If ever _I_ come to such a place, this will help me to bear
it patiently."
Then she thought of Joyce, how bravely and uncomplainingly she had met
her disappointment. Not only had she left school and given up her
ambition to be an artist, but she had had to give up the old home she
loved, all her friends, and everything that made her girlhood bright, to
go out into the lonely desert and work like a squaw.
The thought of Joyce brought back all the lessons she had learned in the
School of the Bees. But she sighed presently: "Oh, deah, all those
things sounded so nice and comforting when they seemed meant for othah
people. They don't seem so comforting now that I'm in trouble myself.
It's like the poultice Aunt Cindy made for Walkah's toothache. She was
disgusted because he didn't stop complaining right away, and said it
ought to have cured him if it didn't. But it wasn't such a powahful
remedy when she had the toothache herself. She grumbled moah than
Walkah. It's all well enough to say that I'll seal up my troubles as the
bees seal up the things that get into the cells to spoil their honey,
but now the time is heah, I simply can't!"
Nevertheless, what the School of the Bees taught did help. So did the
sight of the patient old Camelback Mountain, that had inspired the
legend of Shapur. And more than all the little group in front of the
Wigwam helped, as she remembered how bravely they had met their
troubles.
One by one her happy Arizona days came back to her. After all, it was
something to have lived fifteen beautiful years untouched by trouble.
She was thankful for that much, even if the future held nothing more for
her. If she couldn't be happy, she could at least take Mary's advice and
"not let loose and howl" about it any more. If she couldn't be bright
and cheerful, she could "swallow her sobs and stiffen." With the
resolution to try Mary's remedy for her woes in the morning, she lay
drowsily watching the firelight flicker across the picture of the
Wigwam.