THE FIRST AND UNINVITED GUEST
For an instant the group was motionless from fear; then Jim made a
dash for the front entrance whence, apparently, the crash had come.
There had been no thunder accompanying the storm which now raged
wildly over the mountain top, and Alfy found sufficient voice to cry:
"'Tain't no lightnin' stroke. _Somethin's_ fell!"
The words were so inadequate to the description that Molly laughed
nervously, and in relieved tension all followed James forward; only to
find themselves rudely forced back by old Ephraim, gray with fear and
anxiety.
"Stan' back dere, stan' back, you-alls! 'Tis Eph'am's place to gyard
Miss Betty's chillens!"
He didn't look as if the task were an agreeable one and the lads
placed themselves beside him as he advanced and with trembling hands
tried to unbar the door. This time he did not repulse them, and it was
well, for as the bolts slid and the heavy door was set free it fell
inward with such force that he would have been crushed beneath it had
they not been there to draw him out of its reach.
"Oh! oh! oh! The great horse chestnut!" cried Dorothy, springing aside
from contact with the branches which fell crowding through the
doorway. Hinges were torn from their places and the marvel was that
the beautifully carved door had not itself been broken in bits.
Jim was the first to rally and to find some comfort in the situation,
exclaiming:
"That's happened exactly as I feared it would, some day; and it's a
mercy there wasn't nobody sittin' on that piazza. They'd ha' been
killed dead, sure as pisen!"
"Killing generally does mean death, Jim Barlow, but if you knew that
splendid tree was bound to fall some day why didn't you say so? We--"
with a fine assumption of proprietorship in Deerhurst--"we would have
had it prevented," demanded Dorothy.
Already she felt that this was home; already she loved the fallen tree
almost as its mistress had done and her feeling was so sincere, if
new, that nobody smiled, and the lad answered soberly:
"I have told, Dolly girl. I kept on tellin' Mrs. Calvert how that
lily-pond she would have dug out deeper an' deeper, and made bigger
all the time, would for certain undermine that tree and make it fall.
But--but she's an old lady 't knows her own mind and don't allow
nobody else to know it for her! Old Hans, the gardener, he talked a
heap, too; begged her to have the pond cemented an' that wouldn't
hender the lilies blowin' and'd stop trouble. But, no. She wouldn't
listen. Said she 'liked things perfectly natural' and--Well, she's got
'em now!"
"Jim Barlow, you're--just horrid! and--ungrateful to my precious Aunt
Betty!" cried Dorothy, indignant tears springing to her eyes. To her
the fallen tree seemed like a stricken human being and the catastrophe
a terrible one. "It's taken that grand chestnut years and years and
years--longer'n you or I will ever live, like enough--to grow that
big, and to be thrown down all in a minute, and--you don't care a
mite, except to find your own silly opinion prove true!"
"Hold on, Dolly girl. This ain't no time for you an' me to begin
quarrelin'. I do care. I care more'n I can say but that don't hender
the course o' nature. The pond was below; 'twas fed by a spring from
above; she had trenches dug so that spring-water flowed right spang
through the roots of that chestnut into the pond; and what could
follow except what did? I'm powerful sorry it's happened but I can't
help bein' common-sensible over it."
"I hate common-sense!" cried Molly, coming to the support of her
friend. "Anyway, I don't see what good we girls do standing here in
this draughty hall. Let's go to bed."
"And leave the house wide open this way?"
Dorothy's sense of responsibility was serious enough to her though
amusing to the others, and it was Monty who brought her back to facts
by remarking:
"The house always has been taken care of, Dolly Doodles, and I guess
it will be now. Jim and I will get some axes and lop off these
branches that forced the door in and prop it shut the best way we can.
Then I'll go down to the lodge with him to sleep for he says there's a
room I can have. See? You girls will be well protected!" and he nodded
toward the group of servants gathered at the rear of the great hall.
"So you'd better take Molly's advice and go up-stairs."
Dolly wasn't pleased to be thus set coolly aside in "her own house"
but there seemed nothing better to do than follow this frank advice;
therefore, taking a hand of each of her girl friends, she led the way
toward her own pretty chamber and two small rooms adjoining.
"Aunt Betty thought we three'd like to be close together, and anyway,
if we had all come that I wanted to invite we'd have to snug up some.
So she told Dinah to fix her dressing-room for one of you--that's this
side mine; and the little sewing-room for the other. She's put single
beds in them and Dinah is to sleep on her cot in this wide hall
outside our doors. It seemed sort of foolish to me, first off, when
darling Auntie planned it, as if anything could happen to make us need
Dinah so near; but now--My! I can't stop trembling, somehow. I was so
frightened and sorry."
"I'm sorry, too, and I'm scared, too; but I'm sleepier'n I'm ary one,"
yawned Alfaretta.
"I'm sleepy, too;" assented Molly; and even the excited Dorothy felt a
strange drowsiness creeping over her. It would be the correct thing,
she had imagined, to lie awake and grieve over the loss of Mrs.
Calvert's beloved tree, which would now be cut into ignominious
firewood and burned upon a hearth; but--in five minutes after her head
had touched her pillow she was sound asleep as her mates already were.
Outside, the storm abated and the moon arose, lighting the scenery
with its brilliance and setting the still dripping trees aglitter with
its glory. Moonlight often made Dorothy wakeful and did so on this
eventful night. Its rays streaming across her unshaded window roused
her to sit up, and with the action came remembrance.
"My heart! That money! All those beautiful new bills that are to buy
pleasant things for my Party guests! I had it all spread out on the
library table when that crash came and I never thought of it again!
Nobody else, either, I fancy. I'll go right down and get it and I
mustn't wake the girls or Dinah. It was careless of me, it surely was;
but I know enough about money to understand it shouldn't be left
lying about in that way."
Creeping softly from her bed she drew on her slippers and kimono as
Miss Rhinelander had taught her pupils always to do when leaving their
rooms at night, and the familiar school-habit proved her in good stead
this time. Once she would have stopped for neither; but now folding
the warm little garment about her she tiptoed past old Dinah, snoring,
and down the thickly carpeted stairs, whereon her slippered feet made
no sound. Quite noiselessly she came to the library door and pushed
the portiere aside.
Into this room, also, the moonlight streamed, making every object
visible. She had glanced, as she came along the hall, toward the big
door, bolstered into place by the heavy settle and hat-rack; and the
latter object looked so like a gigantic man standing guard that she
cast no second look but darted within the lighter space.
Hark! What was that sound? Somebody breathing? Snoring? A man's snore,
so like that of dear Father John who used, sometimes, to keep her
awake, though she hadn't minded that because she loved him so. The
sound, frightful at first, became less so as she remembered those long
past nights, and mustering her courage she tiptoed toward the figure
on the lounge.
Old Ephraim! Well, she didn't believe Aunt Betty would have permitted
even that faithful servant to spend a night upon her cherished leather
couch; but the morning would be time enough to reprimand him for his
audacity, which, of course, she must do, since she stood now in Mrs.
Calvert's place, as temporary head of the family. She felt gravely
responsible and offended as she crossed the room to the table where
three chairs still grouped sociably together, exactly as the three
girls had left them.
Ah! yes. The chairs were in their places, Alfaretta's list of guests
as well, and even the little leather bag out of which she had drawn
the wealth that so surprised her mates. But the ten crisp notes she
had so spread out in the sight of all--where were they?
Certainly nowhere to be seen, although that revealing moonlight made
even Alfy's written words quite legible. What could have become of
them? Who had taken them? And why? Supposing somebody had stolen in
and stolen them? Supposing that was why he was sleeping in the
library? Yet, if there had been thievery there, wouldn't he have kept
awake, to watch? Supposing--here a horrible thought crept into her
mind--supposing _he_, himself, had been the thief! She was southern
born and had the southerner's racial distrust of a "nigger's" honesty;
yet--as soon as thought she was ashamed of the suspicion. Aunt Betty
trusted him with far more than she missed now. She would go over to
that window and think it out. Maybe the sleeper would awake in a
minute and she could ask him about it.
The question was one destined to remain unasked. As she stood gazing
vacantly outward, her hands clasped in perplexity, something moving
arrested her attention. A small figure in white, or what seemed white
in that light. It was circling the pond where the water-lilies grew
and was swaying to and fro as if dancing to some strange measure. Its
skirts were caught up on either side by the hands resting upon its
hips and the apparition was enough to startle nerves that had not
already been tried by the events of that night.
Dorothy stood rooted to the spot. Then a sudden movement of the dancer
which brought her perilously near the water's edge recalled her common
sense.
"Why, it's one of the girls! It must be! Which? She doesn't look like
either--is she sleep-walking? Who, what can it mean?"
Another instant and she had opened the long sash and sped out upon the
rain-soaked lawn; and she was none too soon. As if unseeing, or
unfearing, the strange figure swept nearer and nearer to the moonlit
water, its feet already splashing in it, when Dorothy's arms were
flung around it to draw it into safety.
"Why--" began the rescuer and could say no more. The face that slowly
turned toward her was one that she had never seen before. It was the
face of a child under a mass of gray hair, and its expression
strangely vacant and inconsequent. Danger, fear, responsibility meant
nothing to this little creature whom Dorothy had saved from drowning,
and with a sudden pitiful memory of poor, half-witted Peter Piper who
had loved her so, she realized that here was another such as he. In
body and mind the child had never grown up, though her years were
many.
"Come this way, little lady. Come with me. Let us go into the house;"
said the girl gently, and led the stranger to the window she had left
open. "You must be the odd guest I needed for my House Party, to make
the couples even, and so I bid you welcome. Strange, the window should
be shut!"
But closed it was; nor could all the girl's puny pounding bring help
to open it. Against the front door the great tree still pressed and
she could not reach its bell; and confused by all she had passed
through Dorothy forgot that there were other entrances where help
could be summoned and sank down on the piazza floor beside her first,
her uninvited guest, to wait for morning.