"Ain't Mr. Reddy one of the happy family?" I asked. "Ah, here's the last
almond!"
"Oh, of course, young Reddy. I think it would be a good thing if she
married him. Everybody says he's a fine fellow, and I tell you now,
Molly, with Sylvia so willful and the doctor so domineering and Mrs.
Fowler being pulled to pieces between them, things at Mapleshade can't
go on long the way they are."
That was in May. At the end of June the Fowlers went to Bar Harbor with
all their outfit for the summer. After that Jack Reddy didn't come into
Longwood much. I heard that he was spending a good deal of his time at
the bungalow at Hochalaga Lake, and I did see him a few times meeting
his company at the train--he had some week-end parties out there--and
bringing them back in the gray car.
At the end of September the Fowlers came home. It was great weather,
clear and crisp, with the feel of frost in the air. Most everybody was
out of doors and I saw Sylvia often, sometimes on horseback, sometimes
driving her motor. She was prettier than ever for the change and seemed
like she couldn't stay in the house. I'd see her riding toward home in
the red light of the sunset, and as I walked back from work her car
often would flash past me, speeding through the early dark toward Maple
Lane.
Anne said they'd had a fairly peaceful summer and she hoped they were
going to get on better. There had only been one row--that was about a
man who was up at Bar Harbor and had met Sylvia and paid her a good deal
of attention. The Doctor had been very angry as he disapproved of the
man--Cokesbury was his name.
"Cokesbury!" I cut in surprised--we were in Anne's room that
evening--"why, he belongs round here."
Anne had heard that and wanted to know what I knew about him, which I'll
write down in this place as it seems to fit in and has to be told
somewhere.
When I first came to Longwood, Mr. and Mrs. Cokesbury were living on
their estate, Cokesbury Lodge, about twenty-five miles from us, near
Azalea. They had been in France for a year previous to that, then come
back and taken up their residence in Mr. Cokesbury's country seat, and
it was shortly after that Mrs. Cokesbury died there, leaving three
children. For a while the widower stayed on with nurses and governesses
to look after the poor motherless kids. Then, the eldest boy taking sick
and nearly dying, he decided to send them to his wife's parents, who had
wanted them since Mrs. Cokesbury's death.
So the establishment at the Lodge was broken up and Mr. Cokesbury went
to live in town. There were rumors that the house was to be sold, but in
the spring Sands, the Pullman conductor, told me that Mr. Cokesbury had
been down several times, staying over Sunday and had said he had given
up the idea of selling the place. He told Sands he couldn't get his
price for it and what was the sense of selling at a loss, especially
when he could come out there and get a breath of country air when he was
scorched up with the city heat?
I'd passed the house one day in August when I was on an auto ride with
some friends. It was a big, rambling place with a lot of dismal-looking
pines around it, about five miles from Azalea and with no near
neighbors. Mr. Cokesbury only kept one car--he'd had several when his
wife was there--and used to drive himself down from the Lodge to the
station, leave his car in the Azalea garage, and drive himself back the
next time he came. He had no servants or caretaker, which he didn't
need, as, after Mrs. Cokesbury's death, all the valuable things had been
taken out of the house and sent to town for storage.
It gave me a jar to hear that Sylvia Hesketh--who, in my mind, was as
good as engaged to Jack Reddy--would have anything to do with him. I'd
never seen him, but I'd heard a lot that wasn't to his credit. He hadn't
been good to his wife--everybody said she was a real lady--but was the
gay, wild kind, and not young, either. Anne said he was forty if he was
a day. When I asked her what Sylvia could see in an old gink like that,
she just shrugged up her shoulders and said, who could tell--Sylvia was
made that way. She was like some woman whose name I can't remember who
sat on a rock and sang to the sailors till they got crazy and jumped
into the water.
My head was full of these things one glorious afternoon toward the end
of October when--it being my holiday--I started out for a walk through
the woods. The woods cover the hills behind the village and they're
grand, miles and miles of them. But wait! There was a little thing that
happened, by the way, that's worth telling, for it gave me a
premonition--is that the word? Or, maybe, I'd better say connected up
with what was in my mind.
I was walking slow down Main Street when opposite the postoffice I saw
all the loafers and most of the tradespeople lined up in a ring staring
at a bunch of those dago acrobats that go about the State all summer
doing stunts on a bit of carpet. I'd seen them often--chaps in dirty
pink tights walking on their hands and rolling round in knots--and I
wouldn't have stopped but I got a glimpse of little Mick Donahue
stumping round the outside trying to squeeze in and trying not to cry
because he couldn't. So I stopped and hoisted him up for a good view,
telling the men in front to break a way for the kid to see.
There was a dago scraping on a fiddle and while the acrobats were
performing on their carpet, a big bear with a little, brown,
shriveled-up man holding it by a chain, was dancing. And when I got my
first look at that bear, in spite of all my worry I burst out laughing,
for, dancing away there solemn and slow, it was the dead image of Dr.
Fowler.
You'd have laughed yourself if you'd seen it--that is, if you'd known
the Doctor. There was something so like him in its expression--sort of
gloomy and thoughtful--and its little eyes set up high in its head and
looking angry at the crowd as if it despised them. When its master
jerked the chain and shouted something in a foreign lingo it hitched up
its lip like it was trying to smile, and that sideways grin, as if it
didn't feel at all pleasant, was just the way the Doctor'd smile when he
came into the Exchange and gave me a number.
It fascinated me and I stood staring with little Mick sitting on my arm,
just loving it all, his dirty little fist clasped round a penny. Then
the music stopped and one of the acrobats came round with a hat and
little Mick gave a great sigh as if he was coming out of a dream. "If
you hadn't come, Molly, I'd have missed it," he said, looking into my
face in that sweet wistful way sickly kids have, "and it's the last time
they'll be round this year."
I kissed him and put him down and told the men as I squeezed out to keep
him in the front or they'd hear from me. Then I walked off toward the
woods thinking.
It was a funny idea I'd got into my head. I'd once read in a paper that
when people looked like animals they resembled the animals in their
dispositions--and I was wondering was Dr. Fowler like a bear, grouchy
and when you crossed him savage. Maybe it was because I'd been so
worried, but it gave me a kind of chill. My thoughts went back to
Mapleshade and I got one of those queer glimpses (like a curtain was
lifted for a second and you could see things in the future) of trouble
there--something dark--I don't know how to explain it, but it was as if
I got a new line on the Doctor, as if the bear had made me see through
the surface clear into him.
I tried to shake it off for I wanted to enjoy my afternoon in the woods.
They are beautiful at that season, the trees full of colored leaves, and
all quiet except for the rustlings of little animals round the roots.
There's a road that winds along under the branches, and trails, soft
under foot with fallen leaves and moss, that you can follow for miles.
I was coming down one of these, making no more noise than the squirrels,
when just before it crossed the road I saw something and stopped. There,
sitting side by side on a log, were Sylvia Hesketh and a man. Close to
them, run off to the side, was a motor and near it tied to a tree a
horse with a lady's saddle. Sylvia was in her riding dress, looking a
picture, her eyes on the ground and slapping softly with her whip on the
side of her boot. The man was leaning toward her, talking low and
earnest and staring hard into her face.
[Illustration: _Sylvia was in her riding dress, looking a picture_]
To my knowledge I'd never seen him before, and it gave me a start--me
saying, surprised to myself, "Hullo! here's another one?" He was a big,
powerful chap, with a square, healthy looking face and wide shoulders on
him like a prize fighter. He was dressed in a loose coat and
knickerbockers and as he talked he had his hands spread out, one on each
knee, great brown hands with hair on them. I was close enough to see
that, but he was speaking so low and I was so scared that they'd see me
and think I was spying, that I didn't hear what he was saying. The only
one that saw me was the horse. It looked up sudden with its ears
pricked, staring surprised with its soft gentle eyes.
I stole away like a robber, not making a speck of noise. All the joy I'd
been taking in the walk under the colored leaves was gone. I felt kind
of shriveled up inside--the way you feel when someone you love is sick.
I couldn't bear to think that Jack Reddy was giving his heart to a girl
who'd meet another man out in the woods and listen to him so coy and yet
so interested.
As far as I can remember, that was a little over a month from the fatal
day. All the rest of October and through the first part of November
things went along quiet and peaceful. And then, suddenly, everything
came together--quick like a blow.