Читать книгу The Vanishing Comrade - Ethel Cook Eliot - Страница 4

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During the next few days of hurried preparation for the visit the Hart boys found themselves almost entirely left out of the life in the little barn house, the house that ordinarily served as a second home for them.

“No time for boys to-day,” Kate would call out crisply when they appeared at windows or door. “Woman’s business is afoot. We’re too busy even to look at you.”

And Katherine, who was usually so much more easily beguiled and quick to see their side in any argument, for once echoed Kate and upheld her in her determination to stick to the tasks they had set themselves.

In spite of all Kate’s protests, Katherine’s new white linen was ripped to pieces and remade for the traveller into a jaunty street suit. With a black tie and narrow black patent-leather belt, when it was finished it looked as though it might have come from some fashionable shop in New York. Kate could not help being delighted. The pink organdie, which had done Kate duty for best all last summer, and Katherine for best for several summers before that, was now freshened with new lace and decorated with narrow black velvet ribbon. It was not only becoming, but quite up-to-date, and when it was finished and Kate surveyed herself in it in the glass, standing on a chair to see it all, they both decided that Kate would be able to put clothes definitely out of her mind when she was wearing it, for it was quite appropriate for all the occasions it was destined to grace.

And finally, Katherine’s pretty bedroom was robbed of its month-old chintz curtains which, under her magic, in the space of two days only, became two simple but unique and pretty morning dresses for Kate. Now all that remained to be thought of in the way of clothes was the travelling suit.

“My navy blue silk will do perfectly,” Kate said. “If I’m a little careful, it won’t hurt it any, and next winter it will be as good as ever for your teas and things, Mother, unless I’ve quite grown out of it. Anyway, travelling won’t spoil it.”

When that was agreed upon it naturally followed that Katherine’s new spring hat must go with it; for it was a little navy blue silk hat, light and small and quite fascinating.

“What you’ll ever do for a hat I don’t see,” Kate worried.

“Never mind about me,” Katherine told her nonchalantly. “Here on this hill-top anything does so long as it gives a shade. And if ever I go down to Middletown I can wear your black tam.”

In the silk dress and hat and with her last spring’s blue cape with its orange silk lining Kate felt prepared to meet the eyes of even Elsie’s maid with equanimity. But imagine a girl of fifteen having a lady’s maid!

Katherine thought that was just a glorified title for nurse, probably. But Kate protested that. A nurse for a girl of fifteen would be even more absurd than a maid. Well, Katherine was sure Aunt Katherine herself wouldn’t have a maid. She was a New Englander with all a true New Englander’s scorn of self-indulgence. But she probably did need someone to keep Elsie mended and possibly to be a sort of chaperon for her, too; for Aunt Katherine, since her inheritance, had interested herself in social and charitable work and was a very busy and even an important woman.

The two had endless conversations about Aunt Katherine and the adventures awaiting Kate. And Katherine talked more than she had ever talked before about her own girlhood in Oakdale and the little orchard house where she had always lived and where she had been so happy.

“If it isn’t rented you must go into it,” she told Kate. And then she described the rooms for her and all the important events that had happened in them. Aunt Katherine’s big newer house she hardly spoke of at all, for Kate herself was so soon to see it and know all its corners.

All the planning and sewing and the long intimate conversations about Katherine’s girlhood and bits of family history that Kate had never heard before, kept her right up to the eve of departure occupied and excited. But as bedtime approached that night she began to be shaken by unexpected qualms. She had never before been away from her mother for even one night and they had always shared adventure. That now she was actually to go off by herself into an adventure of her own seemed unnatural and almost impossible.

They were sitting on the bench out beside the big front doors, breathing in all the cool night air they could after the last hot and rather hurried day. Their faces were only palely visible to each other in the starlight. They had been silent for many minutes when Kate said suddenly, and a little huskily, “Mother, may I take the picture of the boy in the silver, flowery, dragony picture frame along to Oakdale with me to-morrow? He’s a sort of talisman of mine.”

Katherine was used to Kate’s abruptnesses and seldom showed surprise at anything anyway. But now she did show surprise, and the voice that answered Kate quivered with more than surprise.

“The silvery, flowery, dragony picture frame? And the boy? What do you know of him, Kate?”

“Why, he’s always been in the little top drawer of your desk. He’s always been there. I’ve never told you how much he meant to me. I’ve made it a secret. But I’ve known him just about as long as I can remember. I was an awfully little girl and had to climb on to a chair at first to see him. But I didn’t climb to look often. I saved it for—magic. When something dreadful happened, when I was punished or lessons were just too hateful, or you were late coming home, then I’d climb up and look at that boy in the frame for comfort. I think it would be very comfortable to have it with me along with your picture, Mother.”

Katherine did not answer this for some time. She stayed as still as a graven image in the starlight. Finally, without moving at all, and in a voice as cool as starlight, she asked, “But why did you make it a secret? I don’t understand a bit. I didn’t know you even knew there was a little upper drawer. It’s almost hidden, and there is a secret about the catch. You have to work it just so.”

“Yes, I know. And I can’t remember how or exactly when I discovered how to work it. At first, I do remember, it was just the frame I loved. It is a little wonder of a frame! The silver was so shining, and then the flowers and the fruit and the dragons are all so enchanting. I traced the dragons with my finger over and over and played they were alive. I thought it was too mysterious and lovely, all of it! It fascinated me in a way I could never tell you.”

Katherine remained silent and Kate went on: “It was only when I was older I began to look at the picture and feel about that so strangely. I discovered what a wonderful face that boy has. I pretended he was the Sandman, the one who gave me my dreams at night. I always had such wonderful dreams, Mother! Remember?”

Katherine did not answer, and Kate felt somehow impelled to go on. She was surprising herself in this account of past childish imaginings. She had never thought about it in words like this before.

“He’d be just the person to have made those dreams for me. His face said he knew them all and thousands and thousands more! Then, when I got older I forgot about his being the Sandman, and anyway, my dreams stopped being wonderful and were just silly. Then I called him the ‘Understander.’ When I especially wanted an understander I’d open the secret drawer—I could do it without climbing on a chair by then—and there he was, looking up at me out of the dragons and the fruit and the flowers with understanding.

“It was all just a notion, of course. Oh, am I talking nonsense, Mother? And was it nonsense to keep it so secret and all, always?”

Katherine answered emphatically, “No. Not nonsense a bit. Only surprisingly—intuitive. For, Kate, he is just the sort of person who could have made up those wonderful dreams you used to have. And he was—and is still, I suppose—just a perfect understander. That is his quality. And it is startling to me, all you have said, for he has been a sort of a talisman to me, too, all these years. I’ve looked at him, at the picture, when I needed understanding. And that is surprising in itself, for once, when he was just the age he is in that picture, the very week the picture was taken, I did him a wrong, a great wrong. We quarrelled. Since then I have never seen or heard from him.”

Kate turned upon her mother with real exasperation at this disclosure. “Oh, Mother! How could you! Another quarrel!”

Katherine said nothing, and Kate instantly softened. She felt that she had wounded her mother; and that was a dreadful thing to have happened on this their last night! It was in an apologizing tone and humbly that she asked then, “And may I take him with me to-morrow?”

“No, I think you’d better not. Let him stay just where he is, in the secret drawer. I may need his magic more than you while you are away.”

So her mother wasn’t really hurt at all, or cross. She had spoken lightly, even airily. Kate sighed her relief. “I’m not asking you who the boy is, notice?” she spoke as lightly as her mother. “It might spoil the magic if I knew a human name for him. And I don’t believe you ever did him a wrong, either. For one thing, I don’t believe any one could do him a wrong. And you never did any one a wrong, anyway. I know it. You’re too dear and kind.— Look at those fireflies out there. Watch me catch one!”

Kate suddenly jumped up and ran away into the summer evening. Katherine stayed still on the bench, watching her quick motions, her leaps and runs and turns. “It’s very like a dance,” she thought. “Only there should be music.” And she began humming softly.

* * * * * * * *

Kate slept that night with the twinges of premature homesickness dulled by fatigue. And when morning came with the last bustle and scurry, any doubts that still lingered back in her mind were lost in the glamour of the adventure whose day had at last arrived.

“I’m going to take ‘The King of the Fairies’ with me to read on the train, Mother,” she called from her bedroom where she was putting the very last things into her bag.

Katherine came to stand in the doorway, a partly spread piece of bread for a sandwich for Kate’s luncheon in her hand. “But you know ‘The King of the Fairies’ by heart,” she said. “Why not take the mystery story Sam and Lee gave you?”

“I’ve packed that. I believe you want ‘The King of the Fairies’ yourself, just as you want the picture!” Kate said, teasingly.

“Perhaps I do. It’s without exception the nicest thing that has happened to us this year, I think. Bring it back safely, for I shall certainly read it again before the summer’s through. Suppose we had been so foolish as to decide we couldn’t afford it that day we stumbled on it in the bookshop and were lost at the first paragraph!”

Kate gasped at such a supposing. “I simply can’t imagine having missed it, never read it, can you? If that had happened, well, everything would be different. It has made so many things different, hasn’t it—reading it?”

“Yes, for us both, I think. That’s why I am sure it is a great book, because it does make such a difference to you, having read it or not. And I understand your wanting it with you to-day. Try to get Aunt Katherine to read it, if you can. She has enough literary appreciation to realize its beauty, and the rest of it, what it does to you—well, it wouldn’t hurt to have it do a little of that to her, too!”

At that minute Sam and Lee whistled from the road, out at the back of the house, and in a second they were around and in at the big front door calling for Kate’s bag and anything that was to be carried. Katherine hurried to finish the sandwiches and tie up the lunch, Kate gave her hair a last boyish, brisk brushing, put on her hat, took her cape on her arm, and they were off, hurrying down to Broad Street and the bus there waiting the minute of starting in front of the Hotel.

“Don’t let your father work Mother too hard on that old catalogue,” Kate besought the boys. “And do write me sometimes about everything, the tennis court and all.”

Sam and Lee promised that they would take turns writing, much as they disliked it, and Kate should not lack for news. “And bring Elsie back with you to repay us,” they commanded. “The Hotel has let us borrow the roller, and the court will be in fine shape. We’ll be all practised up, too. You’d better do some practising yourself while you’re there. Elsie is probably a shark, anyway.”

They reached the bus in good time and stood chattering a few minutes before the bus driver facetiously sang out, “All aboard!” Kate was the only passenger that morning. One quick hug and kiss passed between mother and daughter while Sam put in the suitcase and Lee dropped “The King of the Fairies” and the box of lunch in at the window. The busman himself had climbed into his seat and was sitting with his back to them. The Hotel piazza was deserted for the minute. There was no one besides themselves on the street. Sam kissed Kate on one cheek, and Lee kissed her on the other, quick, sound, affectionate, brotherly kisses. The driver blew his horn twice just to make sure no traveller was belated in the Hotel, started his engine, and the adventurer was off.

Kate stood in the little vestibule, hanging to the door and looking back as long as she could see the three people she was leaving. Katherine was between the boys, hatless, in a blue smocked dress; she was waving and blowing kisses. She looked like a sister to the boys, and not even an older sister from the distance of the speeding bus. Then the vehicle jerked around a corner and Kate sat down, faced about the way they were going, and contemplated her own immediate future.

In school she had often sat watching the big clock over the blackboard in the front of the room; just before the minute hand reached the hour it had a way of suddenly jerking itself ahead with a little click. That was what had happened on the instant of parting from her mother—time, somehow, or at least her place in time, had jerked suddenly and unexpectedly ahead. Now the hour must be striking, she reflected whimsically, and she was at the beginning of a new one. So much the better. She expected it to be a wholly fascinating hour, and Elsie the unknown comrade was waiting in it.