About a mile from Longwood, standing among ancient, beautiful trees, is
Mapleshade, Dr. Dan Fowler's place.
It was once a farmhouse, over a century old, but two and a half years
ago when Dr. Fowler bought it he fixed it all up, raised the roof, built
on a servants' wing and a piazza with columns and turned the farm
buildings into a garage. Artists and such people say it's the prettiest
place in this part of the State, and it certainly is a picture,
especially in summer, with the lawns mown close as velvet and the
flower-beds like bits of carpet laid out to air.
The Doctor bought a big bit of land with it--I don't know how many
hundred acres--so the house, though it's not far from the village, is
kind of secluded and shut away. You get to it by Maple Lane, a little
winding road that runs between trees caught together with wild grape and
Virginia creeper. In summer they're like green walls all draped over
with the vines and in winter they turn into a rustling gray hedge, woven
so close it's hard to see through. About ten minutes' walk from the gate
of Mapleshade there's a pine that was struck by lightning and stands up
black and bare.
When the house was finished the Doctor, who was a bachelor, married Mrs.
Hesketh, a widow lady accounted rich, and he and she came there as bride
and groom with her daughter, Sylvia Hesketh. I hadn't come yet, but from
what I've heard, there was gossip about them from the start. What I can
say from my own experience is that I'd hardly got my grip unpacked when
I began to hear of the folks at Mapleshade.
They lived in great style with a housekeeper, a butler and a French maid
for the ladies. In the garage were three automobiles, Mrs. Fowler's
limousine, the Doctor's car and a dandy little roadster that belonged to
Miss Sylvia. Neither she nor the Doctor bothered much with the
chauffeur. They left him to take Mrs. Fowler round and drove themselves,
the joke going that if Miss Sylvia ever went broke she could qualify for
a chauffeur's job.
After a while the story came out that it wasn't Mrs. Fowler who was so
rich but Miss Hesketh. The late Mr. Hesketh had only left his wife a
small fortune, willing the rest--millions, it was said--to his daughter.
She was a minor--nineteen--and the trustees of the estate allowed her a
lot of money for her maintenance, thirty thousand a year they had it in
Longwood.
In spite of the grand way they lived there wasn't much company at
Mapleshade. Anne Hennessey, the housekeeper, told me Mrs. Fowler was so
dead in love with her husband she didn't want the bother of entertaining
people. And the Doctor liked a quiet life. He'd been a celebrated
surgeon in New York but had retired only for consultations and special
cases now and again. He was very good to the people round about, and
would come in and help when our little Dr. Pease, or Dr. Graham, at the
Junction, were up against something serious. I'll never forget when Mick
Donahue, the station agent's boy, got run over by Freight No. 22. But
I'm sidetracked again. Anyhow, the Doctor amputated the leg and little
Mick's stumping round on a wooden pin almost as good as ever.
But even so they weren't liked much. They held their heads very high,
Mrs. Fowler driving through the village like it was Fifth Avenue,
sending the chauffeur into the shops and not at all affable to the
tradespeople. The Doctor wouldn't trouble to give you so much as a nod,
just stride along looking straight ahead. When the story got about that
he'd lost most of the money he'd made doctoring I didn't bear any
resentment, seeing it was worry that made him that way.
But Miss Sylvia was made on a different measure. My, but she was a
winner! Even after I knew what brought Jack Reddy in from Firehill so
often I couldn't be set against her. Jealous I might be of a girl like
myself, but not of one who was the queen bee of the hive.
She was a beauty from the ground up--a blonde with hair like corn silk
that she wore in a loose, fluffy knot with little curly ends hanging on
her neck. Her face was pure pink and white, the only dark thing in it
her big brown eyes, that were as clear and soft as a baby's. And she was
a great dresser, always the latest novelty, and looking prettier in each
one. Mrs. Galway'd say to me, with her nose caught up, scornful,
"To my mind it's not refined to advertise your wealth on your back."
But I didn't worry, knowing Mrs. Galway'd have advertised hers if she'd
had the wealth or a decent shaped back to advertise it on, which she
hadn't, being round-shouldered.
There was none of the haughty ways of her parents about Miss Sylvia.
When she'd come into the exchange to send a call (a thing that puzzled
me first but I soon caught on) she'd always stop and have a pleasant
word with me. On bright afternoons I'd see her pass on horseback,
straight as an arrow, with a man's hat on her golden hair. She'd always
have a smile for everyone, touching her hat brim real sporty with the
end of her whip. Even when she was in her motor, speeding down Main
Street, she'd give you a hail as jolly as if she was your college chum.
Sometimes she'd be alone but generally there was a man along. There were
a lot of them hanging round her, which was natural, seeing she had
everything to draw them like a candle drawing moths. They'd come and go
from town and now and then stay over Sunday at the Longwood Inn--it's a
swell little place done up in the Colonial style--and you'd see them
riding and walking with her, very devoted. At first everybody thought
her parents were agreeable to all the attention she was getting. It
wasn't till the Mapleshade servants began to talk too much that we heard
the Fowlers, especially the Doctor, didn't like it.
I hadn't known her long before I began to notice something that
interested me. A telephone girl sees so many people and hears such a lot
of confidential things on the wire, that she gets to know more than most
about what I suppose you'd call human nature. It's a study that's always
attracted me and in Miss Sylvia's case there was a double attraction--I
was curious about her for myself and I was curious about her because of
Jack Reddy.
What I noticed was that she was so different with men to what she was
with women--affable to both, but it was another kind of affability. I've
seen considerably many girls trying to throw their harpoons into men and
doing it too, but they were in the booby class beside Miss Sylvia. She
was what the novelists call a coquette, but she was that dainty and sly
about it that I don't believe any of the victims knew it. It wasn't what
she said, either; more the way she looked and the soft, sweet manner she
had, as if she thought more of the chap she was talking to than anybody
else in the world. She'd be that way to one in my exchange and the next
day I'd see her just the same with another in the drugstore.
It made me uneasy. Even if the man you love doesn't love you, you don't
want to see him fooled. But I said nothing--I'm the close sort--and it
wasn't till I came to be friends with Anne Hennessey that I heard the
inside facts about the family at Mapleshade.
Anne Hennessey was a Canadian and a fine girl. She was a lady and had a
lady's job--seventy-five a month and her own bathroom--and being the
real thing she didn't put on any airs, but when she liked me made right
up to me and we soon were pals. After work hours I'd sometimes go up to
her at Mapleshade or she'd come down to me over the Elite.
I remember it was in my room one spring evening--me lying on the bed and
Anne sitting by the open window--that she began to talk about the
Fowlers. She was not one to carry tales, but I could see she had
something on her mind and for the first time she loosened up. I was
picking over a box of chocolates and I didn't give her a hint how keen I
was to hear, acting like the candies had the best part of my attention.
She began by saying the Doctor and Miss Sylvia didn't get on well.
"That's just like a novel," I answered, "the heroine's stepfather's
always her natural enemy."
"He's not that in this case," said Anne--she speaks English fine, like
the teachers in the High--"I'm sure he means well by her, but they can't
get on at all, they're always quarreling."
"There's many a gilded home hides a tragedy. What do they fight about?"
"Things she does he disapproves of. She's very spoiled and self-willed.
No one's ever controlled her and she resents it from him."
"What's he disapprove of?"
Anne didn't answer right off, looking thoughtful out of the window. Then
she said slow as if she was considering her words:
"I'm going to tell you, Molly, because I know you're no gossip and can
be trusted, and the truth is, I'm worried. I don't like the situation up
at Mapleshade."
I swung my feet on to the floor and sat up on the edge of the bed,
nibbling at a chocolate almond.
"Here's where I get dumb," I said, sort of casual to encourage her.
"Sylvia Hesketh's a girl that needs a strong hand over her and there's
no one has it. Her father's dead, her mother--poor Mrs. Fowler's only a
grown-up baby ready to say black is white if her husband wants her
to--and Dr. Fowler's trying to do it and he's going about it all wrong.
You see," she said, turning to me very serious, "it's not only that
she's head-strong and extravagant but she's an incorrigible flirt."
"Is there a place in the back of the book where you can find out what
incorrigible means?" I said.
Anne smiled, but not as if she felt like it.
"Uncontrollable, irrepressible. Her mother--Mrs. Fowler's ready to tell
me anything and everything--says she's always been like that. And, of
course, with her looks and her fortune the men are around her like flies
round honey."
"Why does the Doctor mind that?"
"I suppose he wouldn't mind if they just came to Mapleshade or Longwood.
But--that's what the quarreling's about--he's found out that she meets
them in town, goes to lunch and the matinee with them."
"Excuse me, but I've left my etiquette book on the piano. What's wrong
about going to the matinee or to lunch?"
"Nothing's really wrong. Mind you, Molly, I know Sylvia through and
through and there's no harm in her--it's just the bringing-up and the
spoiling and the admiration. But, of course, in her position, a girl
doesn't go about that way without a chaperone. The Doctor's perfectly
right to object."