Part 45 (1/2)

”You see what a cat I am,” she told March as they set out. ”I make her squirm without meaning to, and then, when she squirms, I scratch. Now talk to me until I can get in good humor with myself again.”

”I've two or three things to tell you,” he said. ”I saw Sylvia Stannard this morning. She came to rehearsal with the little Williamson girl, and carried me off bodily for a talk. She's had a long letter from Graham.

”He's quite well,” he went on swiftly, ignoring the gasp she gave, ”and doesn't want to be, as he says, fussed over.”

”Where is he?” she asked. ”I'll write him a letter, of course. Only you'll have to tell me what to say.”

”He's visiting a friend--a college cla.s.smate--on Long Island. And he's already had a job offered him by his friend's father, in an engineering office. He's a pretty good engineer, I believe. He thinks he'll accept it. Anyhow, he is definitely not coming back to Hickory Hill. Sylvia attaches some significance to the fact that his friend also has a pretty sister, but that's just the cynicism of youth, I suspect.”

This last suggestion silenced her--with another gasp, as perhaps he had meant it to do. He added, presently:

”As for writing, I've already done that myself.”

”You!” she exclaimed. ”Where's the letter?”

”It's already despatched. I wrote it as soon as the rehearsal was over.

But I'll tell you what I said in it. I told him I supposed he had heard of our engagement, but that I knew you wished him to be told of it personally. You were very fond of him, I said, and the only thing that clouded your happiness was a fear that he might not be able to share it.

I a.s.sured him that I was completely in your confidence and knew that you had been through a period of very severe nervous stress, verging upon a nervous breakdown, but that I believed you were on the way to a speedy recovery. And I ended by saying that I believed a line from him to you, setting some of your misgivings at rest, would hasten it. And I was his most cordially.”

She didn't try to pretend she wasn't aghast at this. ”But what an--extraordinary letter. Won't he be--furious? At you for writing?--Speaking for me in a case like that. Telling him you knew all about it!”

”Well, that was more or less the idea,” he confessed, with a rueful grin.

”He'll think I stole you away from him; he'll think I gave you the nervous prostration I hinted at. Heaven knows what he won't think! But, of course, the more of a villain I am the less you're to be held responsible. And there's nothing insupportable or--ludicrous about a grievance against another man. At all events it enables him to get round the statement you demolished him with. No, you'll see. He'll write you a letter, correctly affectionate but rather chilly, and after that you'll be off his mind. And if the pretty sister Sylvia alleges doesn't exist, there'll be another one along pretty soon, who will.”

She was obviously a little dazed by all this. It was the first time they had talked of Graham since that night in his room and he knew the bruise from that experience must still be painful to touch. So he hastened to produce his other item of news--also provided by Sylvia.

”This is a perfectly dead secret of hers,” he began. ”Told me in sacred confidence. She finished, however, by saying that she knew, of course, I'd go straight and tell you. So to justify her penetration, I will.

Sylvia has accounted for her father's amazing change of att.i.tude toward Hickory Hill. It seems she's persuaded her father to give Graham's share of it to her. She told him--what's obviously true--that she's a better farmer now than Graham would ever be. She hates town and society and all that, she says, and never will be happy anywhere but on a farm--anywhere, indeed, but on that farm. He was very rough and boisterous about the suggestion, she says, for a day or two, but finally he quieted down like a lamb and gave in. He never has refused her anything, of course.”

”But a partners.h.i.+p between her and Rus.h.!.+” Mary cried. ”It's perfectly impossibly mad. Unless, of course ... You don't mean...?”

”Yes, that's the idea, exactly,” March said. ”Only Rush, as yet, knows nothing about it. Hence the need for secrecy. Sylvia acknowledged to her father that she couldn't possibly own a farm in partners.h.i.+p with a young man of twenty-three unless she married him, but she said she'd intended to marry Rush ever since she was twelve years old. She's confident that he's only waiting for her eighteenth birthday to ask her to marry him, but she says that if he doesn't, she means to ask him. And if he refuses, she pointed out to her father, he can't do less than consent to sell the other half of the farm to her. She treats that alternative, though, as derisory.--And I haven't a doubt she's right. Evidently her father has none, either.

”Well, it accounts for the change in Mr. Stannard's att.i.tude toward the farm, of course,” he concluded. ”A son's supposed to thrive on adversity.

It wouldn't be good morals not to make things difficult for him by way of developing his character. But where a mere daughter is involved he can chuckle and write checks. Under his tradition, he's ent.i.tled to regard her as a luxury. Anyhow, your father has nothing more to worry about as far as Rush and Hickory Hill are concerned.”

”Life's a kaleidoscope,” Mary said. ”I'm tired. Let's sit down.”--They were half-way up the park by that time.--”Oh, here on the gra.s.s. What does it matter?” When they were thus disposed she went back to her figure. ”There's just a little turn, by some big wrist that we don't know anything about, and a little click, and the whole pattern changes.”

”There are some patterns that don't change,” he said soberly, but he didn't try to argue the point with her. He knew too exactly how she felt.

”Tell me,” he said, ”what it was that you wanted to talk to me about.”

She acknowledged that she'd been hoping he'd forgotten that, of the momentousness of his two items of news had left her, as her talk about kaleidoscopes indicated, rather disoriented. So he threw in, to give her time to get round to it, the information that both Sylvia and the little Williamson girl had decided they wanted to study music with him. ”I agreed,” he added, ”to take them on, when I got around to it.”

”Tony,” she said, ”I won't let you do that. Not music lessons to little girls. I won't.”

”Afternoons?” he asked gently. ”When I'm through the real day's work? It would be pretty good fun, trying to show a few people--young unspoiled people--what music really is. Dynamite some of their sentimental ideas about it; shake them loose from some of the schoolmasters' niggling rules about it; make them write it themselves; show 'em the big shapes of it; make a piano keyboard something they knew their way about in. That wouldn't be a contemptible job for anybody.--Oh, well, we can talk that out later. But you needn't be afraid for me, my dear.”

”That's what I said to Wallace Hood,” she told him; ”just before lunch.