THE CAPTAIN OF HER SOUL
What a gay luncheon was that given in honor of the carpenters and
plumbers! The huge hamper produced such a variety of goodies and the
quantity was quite up to the quality, so that Josie, while she was
thankful that Mary Louise had not invited the Wrights to remain,
nevertheless wondered at her statement that there was not food enough
for the extra mouths. There seemed to be food enough for a whole
regiment, but when she saw how Danny and his friends attacked the
provisions, she realized that Mary Louise had not been guilty of the
polite fabrication which she feared.
Empty packing boxes were turned over and covered with white crepe
tablecloths and the table set with paper plates and drinking cups
and Japanese napkins. Piles of sandwiches, dishes of salad and cold
meats, pickles and olives were placed thereon and the center decoration
consisted of a great Lady Baltimore cake.
“It’s the birthday cake for the Higgledy-Piggledy,” explained Mary
Louise, sticking in the center a pink candle.
“But it’s not a year old yet,” objected Billy McGraw. “It’s just born,
I should say.”
“But this is a Japanese spread, you see,” laughed Mary Louise, “with
Japanese napkins and tablecloths, Japanese crab salad, and so forth,
and you know the Japs count their kids’ birthdays from the time they
are born and a new born Japanese baby is one year old.”
“I sit corrected,” said Billy. “When do we eat?”
“Isn’t he the limit?” asked James Drake, another one of Danny’s chums
who had fought with him in the Dorfield regiment. “I have never seen
the likes of Billy for feeding his face.”
“Some faces are meant to be fed,” suggested Bob Dulaney, the young
newspaper man who had made such an impression on Margaret Wright the
evening before at the dance. “Billy’s face is that kind of face, one
crying out to be fed. I was sure relieved when the armistice was signed
before Billy got a chance to catch a bomb in that mouth of his.”
Billy grinned delightedly at this sally. His mouth was large, but it
was saved from ugliness by thirty-two perfect teeth.
“What’s the use of my coming safe out of the trenches if you shoot off
your gab and hit me in my fatal spot, you old ink pot?”
Bob Dulaney was, like Danny Dexter, not a native of Dorfield, but
he had fought with that regiment during the war and after peace was
declared had drifted to the spot where so many of his friends lived
and, having obtained a position on the Recorder, had decided to settle
in the pleasant old town. He was a delightful young man, full of wit
and humor and quite as popular with the regiment as Danny himself.
He had joined Danny in his undertaking of doing the carpentering and
plumbing for the girls, although he was well known to have absolutely
no mechanical skill.
“The only nail Bob ever hits on the head is a verbal one,” Danny
explained, “but he hits them all right. He has come along to help lift
and carry, not that he is much on that, unless it is an argument which
is to be carried on.”
“He is some lifter too,” suggested Tim Turner, one of the other young
men.
“Right you are!” laughed James Drake. “Remember the old cock he lifted
off the roost that night on the outskirts of Nancy?”
“Remember it! I’ll never forget it, and how he went back for the ding
dong,” said Tim.
“What’s a ding dong?” asked Josie, innocently.
“That’s Tim’s French for turkey,” cried Billy. “He means dindon.”
“Oh,” blushed Josie, “excuse me!”
“Not at all,” said Tim, blushing in his turn.
“You mean you won’t excuse her?” teased Billy.
“I mean--I mean--Oh you dry up!”
“But when are we to eat?” persisted Billy.
“Laura Hilton and Lucile Neal were coming in to help us,” said Mary
Louise. “They will be along in a minute. It is really not quite time.
I’m sorry you are so hungry.”
“Sorry! I’m glad, terribly glad--in fact, I’m thanking God for the room
that is in me,” declared Bob Dulaney. “But let’s wait for the young
ladies if it takes all day.”
“I do wish Irene could have come,” sighed Mary Louise. “I hated to
drive off without her. She looked so sweet and patient sitting there
in her chair and waving to me as cheerfully as though she expected to
be one of the party. I left her in our garden where she loves to wheel
her chair.”
“Who is Irene?” asked Bob Dulaney.
“Oh, Irene MacFarlane is my very best friend,” explained Mary Louise.
“She is lame and has to spend all her waking hours in a wheel chair.
She gets around remarkably well, but can’t go anywhere unless there
is an elevator, as stairs are too much for her. I do wish Josie and
Elizabeth could have found a place on the ground floor, just for
Irene’s sake.”
“I wish we could have,” said Josie, “especially as Irene is almost a
member of our firm. She is to take charge of our needlework department,
but we shall have to carry everything to her.”
“If you only had an elevator,” sighed Mary Louise wistfully, the
picture of her poor friend still in her mind, sitting so patiently in
her chair, her fair smooth brow expressing peace and contentment when
she must have felt some chagrin at Fate that she could not join the
merry crowd at the Higgledy-Piggledy Shop.
“I forgot something important!” exclaimed Danny suddenly. “Can you put
off luncheon just about ten minutes?”
“Why, of course, if you must go,” said Mary Louise. “Laura and Lucile
will be here in two minutes,” consulting her tiny wrist watch. “Lucile
inherits too much efficiency from her father ever to be a minute late.”
“Just a minute, sweetheart,” Danny whispered. “I’ll be back before you
know I’m gone.”
“I doubt that,” smiled Mary Louise with a meaning understood by the
happy Danny.
“Come on, Bob! You are the person who has to help lift. You come with
me, please.”
“More bath tubs or another gas stove?” asked Bob as he raced down the
steps after Danny. The two young men jumped into the car and were off
and around the corner on two wheels before an excited cop had time to
read their fast disappearing number.
“My Mary Louise wants something and I’m going to get it for her.”
“I heard her say she wanted an elevator. Is that what you are going to
get?”
“Yes! When I can manage it, but that shall have to wait awhile until I
can make my plans. Now I’m going to get Irene and you and I are going
to carry her upstairs. She doesn’t weigh much.”
“Fine! I reckon we could manage her between us even though she weighed
five hundred. How did you happen to think of it?”
“Well, you see I feel so terribly unworthy of Mary Louise that I made
up my mind that the only way I could make up in the least little teensy
weensy bit to her for what she is and what she has done and is going to
do for me in marrying me is never to let her express a single desire
without trying to gratify it.”
“Mighty noble of you, old fellow, but mightn’t you spoil her if you
persist in such a policy?”
“Spoil my Mary Louise! Why, man, she is pure gold. You could not spoil
her if you tried. It would have been done long ago by her grandfather
and her friends if it could have been done. She never wants anything
for herself. It is always for others.”
“Well, I am glad to be doing something for Miss Burrows, but I am
pretty glad if we can help give the poor lame girl a lift too.”
When Irene saw Mary Louise drive off in her car with Dilsy, the
housemaid, sitting on the back seat holding the huge hamper of lunch
on her knees, it had taken all of her self-control not to show how,
for the moment, the realization of her lameness, her handicap, was
almost more than she could bear. She was able to keep an unruffled brow
and to smile bravely, waving her handkerchief until the car was out of
sight. Then she bowed her head and, in spite of her determination not
to give way, she wept a few bitter tears.
She said to herself:
“Irene MacFarlane, I am ashamed of you. The idea of your being such a
baby. I know you are missing lots of fun, about the best kind of fun. I
know you do miss a lot of things, but stop whining and think of all the
wonderful things that do come to you. Think of the joy of having such
a friend as Mary Louise. Think of the good health you have in spite of
your lameness. Think of all the books you can read. Think of the pupils
you get in music. Think of the new Victrola Mary Louise’s Grandpa Jim
gave you. Think of all the wonderful records you own and all you are
to own in future. Think of the mockingbird singing now in the hedge.
Think of Uncle Peter and Aunt Hannah and how they love you. Powder your
nose this minute so they won’t know you have been making a baby of
yourself!”
She produced from her work bag a tiny vanity case and carefully
powdered her exceedingly well formed nose, looking critically at
herself the while.
“You are not a bad looking person, Irene MacFarlane, but if you turn
crybaby you’ll be hideous. Hold up your head and behave yourself if you
have a spark of sense.” She laughed and held up her head and then in a
low tone recited Henley’s Invictus.
“It matters not how strait the gate,
How charged with punishment the scroll,
I am the master of my fate:
I am the captain of my soul.”
She had begun in a whisper, but as the poem clutched her heart strings,
as that particular poem always did, she spoke aloud. Her voice was
singularly clear and musical. She had not noticed a car stopping at the
entrance to Colonel Hathaway’s nor did she realize that two young men
were walking towards her across the close cut grass.
Danny and Bob took off their hats and stood with heads bowed while the
girl finished her impassioned recitation of that gallant hearted poem.
“I felt kind of like I was in church,” Danny said to Mary Louise
afterwards when telling her of the occurrence.
“And so you were,” she had replied. “Somehow the Divine which is within
all of us is more apparent to the naked eye in Irene than in any one
else I know. And where God is, there is his Church.”
When Irene looked around and saw the two young men, she was devoutly
glad she had powdered her nose. Irene did have much of the Divine
within her but she also had enough of the feminine to wish to appear at
her best when good looking young men suddenly came upon her.
“Oh!” she exclaimed. “How do you do, Danny?”
“I do finely except that I am starving and I can’t eat until you
consent to come eat with us. This is my friend Mr. Dulaney, Bob for
short. And, Bob, this is our best friend, Miss MacFarlane, Irene for
all times.”
“How do you do, Bob for Short?”
“And how do you do, Irene for all Time?”
He took the lame girl’s hand in his and looked earnestly in her eyes.
The skillful use of the vanity case did not deceive him. He saw in her
eyes that she had been suffering, and that not many minutes before.
Powdering her nose had not thrown dust in his eyes if it did fool
Danny. He saw and understood. The calm peace of her brow he felt was
but a camouflage worked by an indomitable will to conceal the anguish
of soul the poor girl must often have suffered. His gaze was so kind
that Irene felt she had made a new friend.
“Will you go?” asked Danny. “Lunch in the shop awaits us.”
“But I can’t get up stairs,” faltered Irene. “You see, there is no
elevator.”
“Yes there is--a human elevator like this,” and grasping wrists the
young men formed what children call a basket and stooped invitingly in
front of Irene’s chair. “Mary Louise is sad without you and you know we
can’t let Mary Louise be sad.”
“So are we all, at least so am I, now that I have seen Irene for all
Time. Put on your hat and come on, please do,” Bob entreated.
“But I am too heavy.”
“Heavy! Why we have carried in a porcelain bath tub and a gas range. I
am no good except to carry on,” insisted Bob. “Must I tell anyone you
are gone?”
“No, I live right next door, but Aunt Hannah is out and she will know I
am with Mary Louise if I’m not at home.”
“Here is your hat, so tie it on,” he said, taking a pretty garden hat
from the back of Irene’s chair. “What a nice hat! I certainly do like
hats that have some raison d’etre. Now this hat really shades and still
one can see under it,” he laughed, peeping under the brim and, without
any by your leave, he stooped and picked Irene up in his strong arms
and started for the car.
“We don’t need a basket just now, I can tackle this burden alone.
Danny, you can climb in and get up steam.” Tenderly he deposited Irene
on the back seat and got in beside her and away they speeded for the
postponed luncheon.
“I think it is great for you to pick up and come without even having to
fluff up your hair or change your dress,” Bob said, looking admiringly
at the neat little lawn frock worn by his companion.
The first thing one noted about Irene MacFarlane was her exquisite
neatness and freshness. Her hair was soft and abundant and the glossy
coils gave evidence of much brushing. Her complexion was clear and,
while not rosy, still there was a soft glow of health in the oval
of her cheeks. No longer was the lame girl delicate but, under the
watchful care of Aunt Hannah and Mary Louise, she had thrown off the
fragility of her early girlhood and now could boast of almost perfect
health. Of course, her form of exercise was restricted, but what
gymnastics she could do she did religiously. The consequence was in
those slender arms and well formed shoulders there was a great deal
of strength and under the artistic tapering of her fingers there was
concealed a grip of steel. The lines of her figure were good. Nature
had meant her for a “perfect woman, nobly planned,” but the disease
which had attacked her in infancy had withered and enfeebled the lower
limbs.
Irene’s clothes were of extreme simplicity but her skill with a needle
was manifest in the well fitting frocks which she pressed herself with
the help of a lap-board and an electric iron. There was never a wrinkle
in Irene MacFarlane’s dress, but nobody ever saw her fussing over
her clothes. When she arose in the morning, she dressed for the day.
Mary Louise used to say her friend reminded her always of a narcissus
flower, not the hot-house kind but the ones that came up year after
year in Grandpa Jim’s old-fashioned flower beds.