CHAPTER XIIIA NEW BROOM SWEEPS CLEAN
Being an innately honest person it went sorely against the grain with Josie to pry into anybody's private mail, even though he be an arch-villain who was doing his best to keep two poor little children out of their heritage.
"He is so handsome I don't see how he can be really wicked," she mused as she endeavored to get order out of the chaos that reigned in the kitchen. Josie had determined to clean up in the kitchen and pantry first and then proceed to the other corners of the house. The succession of incompetent servants that had been employed by the present master of the old Waller house had left layers of dirt and grease, each according to to her lights. Josie was bent upon getting to the bottom of dirt as well as the mystery of what Chester Hunt was up to.
"The better I do my work the more he will trust me. I do so hate to steam open his mail," she wailed as there came a sharp ring and a thud of falling letters through the slot in the front door.
If Chester Hunt could have peeped in on the new servant and had seen her deftly sorting his mail, putting aside the advertisements and invitations, carefully pocketing an official-looking envelope postmarked from somewhere in Indiana and another sloppily written envelope from Chicago, perhaps he would have changed his mind about her lack of brains. The scouring of the kitchen must wait for a few moments while the new maid-of-all-work held these two letters over the steaming kettle just long enough to loosen the flaps, which she rolled back neatly and carefully.
The official-looking letter was from a sanitarium in Indiana. This Josie devoured greedily. It was merely a report from the physician in charge concerning one of his patients. That patient was Mrs. Waller.
The letter stated that the lady was quite normal except for the fact that she refused to believe her husband was dead. She spent much time writing to her children and trying to devise means of getting the letters mailed to them. She was evidently a far from meek patient and was giving the attendants a good deal of trouble. The owner of the sanitarium was willing to keep the lady longer if Chester Hunt, the person in authority, decided she must stay. The rate would be increased, however, as it was much more trouble to look after a normal person than one more or less demented.
The letter was a cold, businesslike one. There was something in it, read between the lines, that made Josie shudder. She no longer had any qualms about having steamed open Chester Hunt's mail. She made a quick copy of the letter in the cryptic characters taught her by her father, carefully noting the address and date. She then sealed the letter neatly and turned to the communication from Chicago.
As she had divined, it was from the faithless Dink. It was full of reproaches to her darling Ches for not writing oftener and of demands for funds. "These tiresome children are so extravagant," she wrote. "And now Polly has been ill with a throat that looked as though it might be diphtheria and I have had to have a doctor in. We have been in Chicago for the last week and I think I may just stay here. We have board in an excellent place, but of course it is expensive. Don't be such a tight wad, Ches. You know I am looking after these brats entirely on your account. If it wasn't for you I'd lose them fast enough. What do you expect me to do next? Whatever you want me to do, give me time to do it in." She ended with assurances of truest affection.
"So," mused Josie, "lying to each other, too! Chester Hunt thinks the kids are with Dink. He doesn't know how cheaply she has boarded them either. Not even honor among thieves! The plot thickens! Wheels within wheels! As father used to say:
"'Oh, what a tangled web we weaveWhen once we practice to deceive.'"
One thing that always amused Josie's friends was that she constantly quoted old saws and attributed them to her beloved father. According to Josie, Detective O'Gorman was the originator of half of "Poor Richard's Almanac" and the "Wisdom of Solomon" and many terse sayings of Shakespeare.
After Josie had copied the contents of the two important communications she sealed them neatly and placed them with the rest of the mail on the master's desk, carefully mixing the letters so that the two which had been tampered with did not lie together. After that she redoubled her efforts towards cleaning the kitchen. Into every crack and corner went Josie's broom and scrubbing brush. She rescued the clothes from the line in the back yard, and then ironed them and, folding them in a highly professional manner, placed them on the foot of Chester Hunt's bed,
"It is bad enough to have to spy on a man but at least I intend to earn my twelve a week or whatever it was I told him I asked."
Her cleaning mania then led her to the dining room, where such another upheaval occurred as seldom takes place in a mistressless home.
"Poor man! He has certainly lived in extreme discomfort." She found herself pitying Chester Hunt, but just then in the raid she was making on the shelves of the Sheraton sideboard she found two porridge bowls, one decorated with chickens and one with rabbits, which brought Polly and Peter back so vividly that her incipient pity was turned to rage. After that she wielded her brush and broom with pitiless fury. She rubbed the mahogany with the expression of one who might have been rubbing salt into the wounds of a bitter enemy.
"Thank goodness he doesn't expect to come home to luncheon today," she said to herself. "Those porridge bowls get my goat to that extent that my foot might slip again and I'd drop something worse than pepper on his food."
Josie had reckoned without her host, as the saying goes. Chester Hunt did come home to luncheon. She had just put the finishing touch on the sideboard, having rubbed the massive old silver and scrubbed the beautiful Wedgwood pitchers so that the former shone with some of its pristine glory and the latter's little fat cupids and heavy garlands of roses stood out from their lavender background as they had not done for a year or more. She had taken down the dusty lace curtains and washed the dingy windows. The room was no longer dark and gloomy. The sun did not have to find its way through grime but came joyfully through the shiny windows and glinted on silver and polished mahogany.
"Now that's something like!" Josie exclaimed, stepping back to view her handiwork.
"So it is."
Josie prided herself on being steeled against surprise of any sort but this voice breaking in on her monologue was almost too much for her. Her heart lost a beat, but her habit of self-control was uppermost and she was able to turn on Chester Hunt her imperturbable countenance unlit by intelligence, her eyes dull and unseeing.
"You bane having dirty blacks for help," she ventured. "Is it lunch you bane come for?"
"I'm ill, Miss Josie Larson," he said with a whimsical look on his face, that Josie now noticed was drawn and white. "It's that devilish lumbago that has got me. I hope I did not startle you."
"Yah! I bane hearin ghosts all morning," Josie declared stoutly. "When I was scroobing the sideboard shelves and picked up two little porridge bowls, one with rabbits and one with chickens, I thought I heard the chickens crowing and the rabbits didn't make a sound but I thought I saw their mouths wiggling."
"Oh!" said the man, his expression changing, "strange ghosts to be fearing!"
"I don't bane afraid. I don't bane afraid of anything."
"Well, that's good! Any mail? I'll have to get to bed and I'll ask you to bring me tip a tray of food. Something quite simple, tea and toast or anything you can think of. This lumbago hits me every now and then."
"Where do you have lumbago?" asked Josie. "Is it in your face or your stomach?"
"Back, f——! Back!"
Josie realized her master had almost called her a fool and felt the compliment highly. "The bigger fool he thinks I am the better I am attending to my business," she thought.
"I bane sorry. Don't you want me to iron your back, sir? In my country we iron backs. I can iron very well, sir. You will see your laundry on your bed. I have ironed it so well I feel sure you could trust your back to me. I did not put your wash away, fearing you might think I bane meddlin."
"Oh, that's all right, my girl. I fancy what meddling you do will make no difference to me. Just don't get my papers mixed up."
"Sure, I bane careful with all such things. Your letters are on your desk."
"Well, bring them up to me when you bring my tea and toast. They will keep until then. I must get to bed." He walked with his back bent. Evidently every movement was painful.
"I'll feel sorry for him again if I don't look out," muttered Josie. "I think I'll keep these porridge bowls where I can look at them to keep myself from weakening. Polly, you stay there," she said, putting the rabbits behind a big silver pitcher. "And Peter, you can hide behind this fruit bowl. Don't crow too loud, little chickens, but just loud enough to keep me from being too sorry for that handsome wretch upstairs, with his noble brow and the lumbago in his back."
Josie arranged a tray for the sick man deftly and neatly. To the toast and tea she added a fluffy omelette and, with the letters carefully tucked in by the teapot, she tripped up to the master's room. He had piled the beautifully ironed shirts on a chair and was in bed, groaning from the extra exertion of undressing.
"Try to eat, sir," she said gently. "I bane cuked you something nice."
He did eat and felt refreshed. Josie noticed he looked over his mail and evidently took especial interest in the two letters that had also claimed her attention. He put them aside and told her she could remove the others, he would look at them later on. Slipping back into the room for the tray, Josie caught the master with his mask off, as it were. He held in his hand the two opened letters. On his countenance was an expression of mingled cunning and cold calculation.
"I'll trouble you to hand me my fountain pen," he said to the girl. "There is a portfolio of stationery on the table over there. In about an hour you may come up and get some letters I want you to mail for me. Do you know where the postoffice is?"
"Yah, I bane there for my mail which come to a window."
"Well, take my letters all the way to the post-office. You understand."
"Yah, I ain't bane no fool."
"Oh, excuse me," he said cynically. "Anyhow, you bane a very good cook and from my shirts I judge you are a very fine laundress, so when you get my letters safely deposited in the postoffice I will ask you to come up and try your hand on my back."
"All right, sir, I bane willing."
Josie permitted herself another grin and a gay pirouette in the lower hall.
"I only wish I knew some Swedish talk besides 'bane'," she said to herself. "I am not at all sure scroobing isn't Irish and cuke for cook might be any old language. The poor man has got an awful backache, Josie O'Gorman, and you ought to feel sorry for him."
CHAPTER XIVJOSIE JUMPS HER JOB
In less than an hour Josie was summoned to her master's bedside. "The letters are written, and a hard job it was, too, with this infernal lumbago getting me if I so much as lift a finger. Get them in the postoffice as soon as you can, my good girl. Don't stop for a thing."
"I bane have to stop to dress myself," said Josie. "Girls in service don't like to go by the street in uniform."
"Well, if you must you must, but don't stop to doll up," he commanded, "and be quick about it."
"Sure!" Josie smiled to think how quick she would be.
Again the tea kettle must play its part. First she opened the letter addressed to Miss D. Dingus. There was a check for a good sum enclosed. The letter was evidently written by a man with lumbago. The tone was impatient and critical, although he seemed to remember his manners before he finished and dropped a few endearing terms such as "darling Dink," "My own girl," "I am thinking of you constantly," etc. He begged her to be patient and put up with the annoyance of the children for a while longer, when everything would come all right. "You will be rewarded a thousand fold," was his promise.
"I don't believe a word of it," was Josie's decision, as she put the letter back in its envelope after taking a careful copy of it in her own especial brand of shorthand. "Dink is too common for such a fine gentleman as Chester Hunt. He could never introduce her to the elite of the Southland."
The other letter was addressed to the doctor at the sanitarium. In it he begged the physician to keep Mrs. Waller for a while longer. "I will make it worth your while. Don't let any of her letters get by. I will come to see her as soon as I recover from an attack of lumbago that has laid me low. I don't mind confiding in you that I am hoping to make Mrs. Waller my wife. We would have been married before if it had not been for this nervous condition that has made it necessary for her to be placed in confinement for the time being."
"Wretch! Miserable wretch!" stormed Josie.
"She, perhaps," the letter continued, "will not remember that she had consented to marry me after a reasonable time should have elapsed since the death of her husband. Part of her dementia was that she had never cared for me, when the truth of the matter was nothing but her wifely loyalty kept her from running away with me, even before Stephen Waller went overseas."
"Just a pack of lies! And so he is going to see her just as soon as the lumbago lets him up out of bed. Well, Josie O'Gorman, it looks as though you would have to change jobs again."
From the postoffice Josie went to a ticket office. After consulting a time table she bought a ticket, engaged a berth for that night, ran in to see Alice Chisholm and tell her that she must leave town immediately, giving her directions where to forward mail and repeat telegrams.
"Ask Miss Denton to keep my room for me indefinitely. I'll pay whatever it is. I may need it soon. Just tell her urgent business keeps me from the city.
"Tell me, Alice—you seem to know the ins and outs of Atlanta people—was there ever an affair between Mrs. Waller and Chester Hunt?"
"He was supposed to have courted her before she married Stephen Waller, but it was a well-known fact that she did not like him. It was astonishing to some of their acquaintances that Stephen Waller should have made his stepbrother his executor because of Mrs. Waller's evident dislike of him. Mr. Waller was devoted to him, however, and perhaps his wife never let him know how she felt about Chester Hunt."
Josie went back to her place of service. Armed with a hot iron she reported to the master.
"I bane come to press your back, sir."
"Can I trust you not to burn me?" the suffering man queried.
Josie wondered whether he could or not. "I'd like to make such a big blister on him he could not put on a shirt for weeks to come," she thought, but she put on an especially stupid expression and said dully, "I never have burnt anything yet, sir."
Gently she pressed the aching back with an iron just hot enough.
"Gee, that's fine! Do you know, Miss Josie Larson, there are some things better than beauty and better than brains at times?"
"Yah! Being a good laundress," declared Josie, "but that bane take more sense than you think, sir."
"Well, perhaps. Anyhow, you are a good girl. I'd like to do something nice for you—give you something for being so kind to me. What would you like,"
"I'd like to have the bowls with the rabbits and the chickuns on them."
"Take them! Take them, girl! Take them and welcome," he laughed, "ghosts and all!"
When Josie packed her suitcase she carefully put in the two bowls. From a drawer in the library table she purloined a photograph that she had discovered there when she had dusted the room in the morning, trying to make it a bit more presentable before the master came down to breakfast. It was a picture of a handsome, soldierly looking man in an officer's uniform, with two children snuggling up to him. The children were Polly and Peter—some years younger but the little Wallers without doubt. The officer must be their father.
"Stealing is not my forte," Josie said to herself, "but I fancy this photograph will never be missed by the present occupant of this house. I may need this in my business."
Josie arranged an attractive supper tray for the sick man.
"You'd better eat a plenty," she warned him. "It bane a long time before your breakfast." Then she took herself to task for cracking the quiet joke on him. It surely would be a long time—much longer than he had any idea of.
Chester Hunt slept in a fool's paradise that night. Soothed by the ironing of his aching back and comforted by the tray of nourishing and appetizing food, he had dropped into a doze early in the evening from which he had only awakened to congratulate himself on the treasure of a Swedish maid he had at last found.
"She is almost a half-wit," he had said to himself, "but she can cook and clean and seems to have the kindest heart in the world. She wouldn't be bad looking if only she did not look so all-fired foolish." Even Josie's atrocious make-up couldn't blot out entirely her good looks.
At that very moment the so-called half-wit was boarding a train for the village in Indiana where a certain sanitarium was situated. Faithful in small things, according to her father's teaching, Josie had left her employer's abode in much better order than she had found it, in spite of having worked for the man only about thirty hours. The kitchen and dining room were spotless, silver and glass polished and china presses in order. She left a note on the hall table, which the infuriated Chester Hunt was to find after a morning spent in frantic pushing of the bell in his bedroom and vain bellowings over the bannisters for Josie Larson. It was only after supreme effort that he could get out of bed, but once he got on his feet it was not so difficult to walk.
"Josie! Josie!" he yelled. "Where are you? What do you think I am to do with no breakfast? This is a fine way to treat a sick man." His voice echoed down the hall. Hearing a noise on the street that he thought proceeded from the kitchen he called again, "Hurry up, you fool. I have been calling you for hours!"
There was no answer to this command. He leaned over the bannisters and spied the note on the hall table. Painfully and slowly, his dressing gown wrapped around him and his slippers flapping dolefully on the steps, he made his way to the lower hall. Josie had enjoyed greatly writing that note. It was difficult to do and for that reason great fun.
Respected Mr. Hunt:
I bane sad to leave you without more formal leave-taking, but you were snoring so happy when I went up stairs I bane had no heart to awoken you. I bear you no grudge for almost letting me know I bane a fool and am not leaving your service because of that, although it is not happy to know I can not hide what a fool I bane no matter how hard I work. I take the two bowls with rabbits and chickuns, the same you gave to me. I go from your service because in part the son of my aunt's father is dead. Because of my so sudden leaving I do not charge you for the work I have given you. It bane a pleasure to work for you. I more profit got from it than you I gave.
Yours devoted,Miss JOSIE LARSON.
"The son of her aunt's father," repeated Chester Hunt. "What relation would that be? What a fool the girl is anyhow! Why didn't she say her uncle? It might even have been her father," he laughed grimly. "Well, fool or no fool, Miss Josie Larson, you are the best servant I have had."
CHAPTER XVJOSIE VISITS INDIANA
When Josie arrived at her destination she went to the one small hotel the village boasted and, engaging the only room in the house with a private bath, she made herself comfortable for the time being. She needed sleep before she could engage in the adventure she was planning. A hotel or boarding house is a good place in which to pick up information and Josie wanted to pick up a little information before she proceeded.
The proprietor of the hotel was a sieve for gossip and in less than twelve hours Josie had not only had a good night's rest but she had learned several things she considered of importance. The host was a man of generous proportions and a loud emphatic utterance, with which he gave voice to a perpetual grievance he had concerning the high cost of food and the low price of board.
"Nothing in it! Nothing in it! I have been keeping this here hotel for thirty years and if it wasn't for the war I'd be in the poor house this minute. The war did whoop things up for me a bit. A camp within six miles meant I kept my house full to running over with wives and mothers and what-not."
"Did it leave off, this prosperity, when the war was over," asked Josie.
"Well, the hospital still hands me a bit of business."
"You mean the sanitarium?"
The hotel man snorted in disgust.
"Not on your life! That old skinflint, Dr. Harper, who is running the sanitarium, has a place he calls his Guest House, and when folks come to see their nutty relations he sees to it that they stop there. There is never a nickel that gets by that old gouger. I mean Uncle Sam's hospital that is yonder just over the hill. It's a place for nuts, too, the men that got done up during the war. Poor fellows! They make me feel right bad, but I am glad they have built the hospital near me, s'long as they have to have one."
"That is sad—as sad as anything in the world," sighed Josie. "Do the inmates of that hospital have to be confined?"
"Not all of them. Some of them have merely lost memory. There was a fellow in here yesterday. He is a real gentleman, but somehow in the shuffle of war he got dropped on the floor. He can't remember his name and nobody can trace his connections in the army. He was a prisoner in Germany for a long time—was ill there and had typhoid fever on top of shell shock and his captors didn't take the trouble to keep his identification tag and here the poor fellow is walking around in a kind of daze. He seems to be healthy and sane but just can't remember who he is or where he came from. He has a kind of job at the hospital because he is so trustworthy. They send him to the station to meet people who are arriving and they tell me he reads to the patients a lot. There's nothing like eddication. It will stick to you when everything else is gone. He has the saddest face you ever saw. That man gives me the willies."
"How about the sanitarium run by this Dr. Harper?" asked Josie. "Does it have a good reputation?".
"About as good as Judas Iscariot!" exclaimed the hotel keeper with violence. "I'd just as soon put any of my nutty kin in the penitentiary and sooner. I betcher that Harper is going to get in trouble some of these days. There's a lot going on there that won't bear the light. Old skinflint! Never a customer has he sent me. He can't keep any help, either, just because he is such a one to squeeze a dollar until the eagle shrieks. He's always advertising for nurses and servants. I saw an ad only yesterday in a Chicago paper."
"Is that so? Are the nurses trained nurses?"
"Trained nothing! He doesn't give them as much wages as I give old Black Annie who scrubs the halls and porches at my hotel. He just picks up any woman or man who is willing to work for him and puts them in to nurse. He calls himself running a training school for nurses. Don't talk to me about that old Harper!"
As Josie was not talking to him but encouraging him to talk to her she could but smile and continue her questions. She had registered as J. O'Gorman, Dorfield, and had engaged her room for a week.
"
I may have to be away from town on business through the county, but I want to retain my room and get you to look after any mail or telegrams that may come for me," said Josie. She had telegraphed the Higgledy-Piggledies her whereabouts as soon as she was established, and written a long special delivery letter to Mary Louise, telling her as much as was pertinent about her adventures in Atlanta.
"It is a comfort to be registered as my own self and to be wearing my own clothes and hair," she confided to Mary Louise, "but the morrow, I hope, will find me assuming another character."
The morrow did. She applied to the sanitarium for a job as nurse and was taken on, without the formality of asking what experience she had had or even for the credentials which she had been at great pains to get up for herself.
The grounds around the sanitarium were well laid out and quite imposing, with large trees and well-grouped shrubs. The buildings were handsome but gloomy-looking. Dr. Harper was a benevolent-looking old man, with a long white beard and a voice, as Josie afterwards described it, like hot fudge. He always addressed everyone with some endearment such as, "My dear child," "My son," "My dear girl," or "Little one." Josie could hardly believe he was the same one who had written the letter to Chester Hunt, a copy of which she had in her note hook.
"What a lot a long white heard can hide," was her thought after her interview with the seemingly benevolent old gentleman.
Her job was secured. She was to look after those patients who were not so very ill but were to be watched and whose every attempt to leave the grounds must be frustrated.
"You are small, my child," Dr. Harper had said. "Are you strong enough in case of—er—emergency to take a hand in controlling a patient?"
"I think so."
"Well, we can but try," purred the doctor. "Be gentle with them, my dear child. Gentleness does more than violence. Many of them are not difficult at all. Just be patient."
"Yes, sir." Josie then received instructions from a head nurse, who was in reality a kind of matron. She was a hard-faced woman with a voice as unrelenting as Dr. Harper's was soft. "I'd trust her sooner than I would him," thought Josie.
"There is one patient here whose mind is cured, if there ever was anything the matter with it," the nurse said. "She is trying to get out, but her folks don't want her to yet. I guess they know their business, but I'm not one to leave all to the folks unless I know them mighty well."
"Which one is she?" asked Josie, her heart jumping with excitement.
"That delicate-looking lady over yonder, walking under the trees. She walks all the time, back and forth, no matter how cold it is. We can hardly keep her in the house. Her husband was killed during the war. She is a nice lady and tries to buck up for her children's sake, she says. Old Harper has it in for her because she uses her wits, but old Harper is a terrible old person to boss."
Josie noticed that nobody had any respect for the head of the institution. He was always spoken of as "Old Harper," or "The Old One," and one attendant who was a reader of Shakespeare always called him "Grey Beard Loon." The morale of the place was low in consequence of the lack of respect the employees felt for the head. Only the lowest and most brutal types of nurses and servants were willing to remain for any length of time at the sanitarium. The head nurse, from whom Josie had received her instructions, was an exception. She had a hard face and a harder voice hut somewhere, deep down in her heart, there was a soft spot and never was she cruel or unreasonable. Josie grew to feel that she stayed on at the place to keep Dr. Harper from doing more harm than he was doing. He evidently respected her and relied on her, in spite of the fact that she made no attempt to hide her dislike and contempt for him.
The delicate looking lady, who spent her time pacing up and down the gravel paths under the great trees, was none other than Mrs. Waller. Josie would have recognized her anywhere, not only from the photograph that little Polly had managed to keep with her through all of her wanderings but from the strong likeness Peter bore to her—the same great trusting eyes and sensitive mouth and the same set to the head, which was carried well up through any and all misfortunes.
It was an easy matter to approach this woman who had been in a manner put in her care. One look in her eyes assured Josie that she was perfectly sane. The mouth was sensitive but firm and Josie was sure that a person with that mouth could control her emotions unless under great stress, as she had perhaps been when the nervous breakdown had come upon her after the long anxiety concerning the soldier husband.
"Mrs. Waller," Josie said gently, "I have been sent to look after you."
"I am in need of nothing," was the dignified answer. Mrs. Waller continued to walk. Evidently she had no desire to engage in conversation with an attendant at the sanitarium. They were all alike, either coarse and brutal or stupid beyond belief.
Josie joined her, walking by her side.
"Mrs. Waller, I have news for you but you must be careful and not show any emotion while I talk with you." Josie's voice was quiet and firm. "I am your friend and am here at this sanitarium to see you. I have been engaged as a nurse by Dr. Harper, but am really here to give you news of—"
"My husband!" gasped the poor lady, trying to be as calm as Josie.
"No, dear lady, of your children."
"They are well?"
"Yes, well and loving you all the time and talking about you constantly. They are in good hands now."
"Ah—my Polly and Peter!"
Then Josie told the poor woman all that she knew of the two children. Her eyes flashed at the mention of the so-called Cousin Dink, but on the whole she controlled herself remarkably well during the recital—so well that Josie felt it was safe to go into detail concerning her visit to Atlanta, even to the ironing of Chester Hunt's back.
"Why, why didn't you burn him?" she laughed, "but thank you for the pepper you put on his chop." That laugh reassured Josie as to the sanity of Mrs. Waller.
"They have told me that my children have forgotten me and never asked for me. Chester Hunt has done his best to make me think that they are depraved beyond belief, always pretending to love me and condole with me because of their lack of feeling. My poor babies! Never have I doubted them—never for an instant!"
Josie then told her of the letter Chester Hunt had written Dr. Harper and of his intention to marry her willy nilly.
"Marry me! But I am married! Ah, I see you think I am demented because I say that, but my husband is alive. I know it as well as I know that I am here in this awful prison-like place and that you have come from outside to help me. I know it as I know that you are an honest, kind girl with more sense in your little finger than Chester Hunt and that wretched Dink have in their whole make-up. I know he is alive because if he had died I'd have felt it. We were so close, so in sympathy, that nothing could happen to one without the other divining it. There was and is a bond between us that is in a way supernatural. I know and feel at all times that he is unhappy, miserable and in trouble, but he is not dead.
"If he were dead this load would be lifted from my heart. I'd be glad again knowing that he was at peace and his troubles were over. If I could get out of this place I could find him. I know I could. Sometimes I think he is quite near me—not near like a spirit but in flesh. Once I ran through the grounds calling to him. I could not help it. Something urged me on, and then it was they put me in close confinement, declaring I was raving crazy.
"We often used to talk of that sympathy that existed between us. It was like second sight, only it seemed natural and normal. I was so dependent on him and he on me. Neither of us had any relations. This stepbrother of his was the only tie he had and of course that is not a blood tie. Chester Hunt was the only shadow that ever came between us. I always hated the man but Stephen loved him and I tried to conceal my feelings in regard to him. I wish I had been more open and honest about it now, because then my dear husband would not have put me so in the power of this wicked person by making him executor of his will."
"Well, now you know your children are safe and well and no matter what Mr. Hunt tries to make you believe concerning them, you will know he is lying," said Josie. "He is going to try to work on your feelings about them to make you marry him. Why have you not tried to get help through your friends, Mrs. Waller?"
"I have written and written but never an answer from a soul and now I realize the letters were always seized by this man Harper. When no answers came I felt I had been deserted by God and man and was to be left forever in this place—never to see my children or husband again. Now you have come, my dear, everything will be all right. To think I don't even know your name! I never can thank you enough."
"I don't need any thanks if I can just unravel the mystery—not that it is a real mystery—just a tangle. I was willing to do anything for Polly and Peter from the minute I saw them and now I am willing to do just that much more for their mother. Besides I shall be rather glad to get even with Chester Hunt for calling me so many kinds of fool."
CHAPTER XVIJOSIE GETS A RIDE
Josie made herself so useful to Mrs. Stark, the head nurse, that in a few days time she was high in that person's favor. Poor Mrs. Waller was so cheered by the news brought to her that she became much more tractable and less trouble to Dr. Harper and he, too, was grateful to Josie for this change that had been wrought in one of the patients.
"The girl has a cheerful way with her that makes all the poor souls less miserable," Mrs. Stark told the doctor. "She is trustworthy too. I do hope we can keep her. She is not at all above doing maid's work. In fact, she asked to be allowed to take care of some of the rooms when she found we were short of servants. She is quick and orderly."
Of course Josie saw to it that Mrs. Waller's room was one to be cleaned by her. It gave her opportunity to talk to the poor lady in private and many times must she tell everything she could recall concerning Polly and Peter. Josie produced the photograph of Stephen Waller and the children and it proved a great comfort to the wife and mother. She had not been allowed to bring from home a single thing to remind her of her loved ones.
Josie had an afternoon off. She was anxious to inquire for mail at the hotel. Also to get some things from the suitcase she had left in her room. She had heard from Mary Louise, who reported all well at Dorfield and the Children's Home Society as flourishing. Polly and Peter were more and more beloved by all. There was a growing demand to adopt them but dear old Dr. Weston had refused to give them up, hoping for better things for them. The Higgledy-Piggledy Shop was flourishing in spite of the absence of a valued partner.
The sanitarium was situated about half a mile from the village. It was a pleasant walk in good weather, but on Josie's afternoon off it had set in for a cold spring drizzle, disagreeable enough to dampen the ardor of anybody but Josie O'Gorman, who scorned the excuse of dreary weather for the doleful dumps. Well protected with rubbers and raincoat, the girl paddled along the muddy road, busily going over in her mind a plan of action. She realized she must get from Mrs. Waller letters to her friends in Atlanta and they must be fully informed of the injustice that was being done her and take legal action for her release from this durance vile to which she had been subjected. Those friends, of course, had been told by Chester Hunt that she was crazy. They had taken his honesty for granted and had been hoodwinked by his seeming distress over the condition of his brother's wife. The question was, how soon must she leave the sanitarium and how proceed?
Josie's instinct was to go to Dorfield and there get help from Mr. Peter Conant and Chief Charlie Lonsdale. On the other hand, she did not want to leave the sanitarium until after Chester Hunt's promised visit to that institution. She found several letters awaiting her at the hotel. The host welcomed her cordially. Of course it was not a very regular thing to have an unattached, mysterious young woman engage the best room in the house, the one known as the bridal chamber, and then not occupy it but go cavorting over the county on some kind of unknown business, blowing in to the hotel occasionally for mail and inquiring eagerly for telegrams, but business was business and it was profitable to rent the best room with bath and then not have it occupied—no wear and tear on it at all, no change of linen or cry for soap and towels.
Josie realized it was an extravagance but she had a feeling she might need that room soon and need it badly and this was no time to be small about money. She took from the suitcase the two porridge bowls, determined to pretend to Mrs. Stark that she had bought them as a present for Mrs. Waller, feeling that they might be a comfort to the mother.
As she tramped back to the sanitarium, rather enjoying paddling through the puddles and feeling the cold rain on her face, she heard the sound of a motor. She stepped aside to let the army truck pass, but it slowed up and stopped beside her. There was nobody but the chauffeur in the car. He leaned from his seat and spoke to her in a gentle voice, with an accent unmistakably southern with a soft slurring of the final g and an almost imperceptible r—too subtle to be pronounced a dialect but still decided enough to place the man below the Mason and Dixon line.
"I believe I am going your way and I shall be very glad to take you to your destination," he said, saluting her. "It is a bad day to be walking."
Josie was sorry to have her walk cut short but the man's courtesy was not to be gainsaid. She climbed up on the seat by him, thanking him frankly. She had seen him before, where, she could not remember.
"Are you in the army?" she asked.
"I suppose so," he answered whimsically.
"They tell me I am, but I can't remember ever getting in it. I can't remember anything, in fact. I remember how to read and how to speak French and some German and whenever I get hold of a book I have read before the plot comes back to me if it happens to be a novel, but my past life is a blank. If I could get some inkling of it I believe it would come back like the plot of the novels. I am as well as can be physically and the alienists say I am as sane as anyone, but I might have been born yesterday, for all I know of my life before I became conscious in a vile German prison camp.
"But I wonder why I tell you all this! It seems hardly fair to pick up a young lady on the road and take advantage of her helplessness to pour in her ear my own troubles."
"Oh, please, tell me! I am very much interested. Do you never have any remembrance of your former existence? Do not odors or sounds or sights bring some vague impression of yesterday?"
"Why—yes! Violets seem to mean more to me than other flowers. Why, I don't know—but I have a feeling that someone I must have loved and who loved me is in trouble. I can't get rid of the feeling. But if it is so—if anyone does love me why doesn't he or she find me? I'm here—not really lost. If I only could get some clue—a name—an address—something, anything on which to build."
He turned and looked at Josie. She met his gaze with a long wondering look.
"Stop the car, please, for a moment," she asked. He obeyed immediately.
"Mr. Waller," she said gently, "Don't you remember these little porridge bowls?"
She tore the wrappings from the bowls, disclosing the rabbits and the chickens. The man took them in his hands reverently. His lips pressed together to form the letter P.
"Yes," said Josie, "Polly and Peter! You lived in Atlanta on Peachtree Street. Your wife is Mary and your name is Stephen. You enlisted in the United States Army at the first call to arms. Your wife is well and so are your children."
"Mary! Mary!" he cried, and clasping the porridge bowls to his heart he wept—great sobs shaking his frame.
When he could control himself he begged Josie to tell him more. "Everything is coming back to me in leaps and bounds. It is just like the plots of the novels that I have read before. Now we must go and report to the Colonel. The funny thing is I remember now that I am a captain. At least I was. Perhaps I am dead in the eyes of the army. I reckon I was reported missing in action."
"Your wife believes you are alive." Then Josie must tell the poor man of all the trials his wife had undergone and of the perfidy of Chester Hunt. She did it in as few words as possible. He was deeply moved at the story of her sufferings.
"To think of her being so close to me all the time! Once I thought I heard someone calling me. I couldn't catch the name but there was a tone of voice that rang in my ears for days and days. It was while I was driving the truck, and bless me if it wasn't going along that road that leads near that sanitarium. I must report to the Colonel first and then I can go get my wife."
"Dr Harper may make some trouble, as his rule is not to let a patient out until the person who is responsible for her being there comes to remove her."
"We'll see about that," and his jaws snapped together much to Josie's admiration. She had great respect for a firm jaw.
"I am leaving my job now, as there is no use in my staying longer in the employ of the oily Dr. Harper. Perhaps I can help you. It is a pity for dear Mrs. Waller to spend another moment in this place where she has been so miserable. It would take some time for Mr. Hunt to reach here from Atlanta. When he comes he may make trouble about identifying you. He is so determined that you are dead, but I shall let your wife go into details concerning what that man hopes to gain by your death."
The Colonel was accessible and as delighted at the restoration of Stephen Waller's memory as Josie herself. Indefinite leave was given him and the Colonel advanced enough money from his own private funds to enable him to travel comfortably with his wife.
CHAPTER XVIIHUSBAND AND WIFE
"I have come for my wife. I am Stephen Waller."
Those words were simple enough but Dr. Harper seemed to find them most confusing. He wagged his venerable beard like an angry goat and said nothing at first, but like a goat he looked as though he might be gathering his forces for a mighty butting.
"I don't know what you mean. I know nothing of your wife."
"Nothing of a Mrs. Waller who has been in your sanitarium for a year or more?"
"Nothing!"
"See here! I am not going to stand any foolishness. Do you mean to say you have not a patient named Mrs. Waller?"
"I do not! I have such a patient but she is a widow and I am sure she knows nothing of you. How am I to know who you are?" asked Harper.
"You can get out of here faster than you got in. I have plenty of men here who can put you out and none too gently. Mrs. Waller was put in my care by a Mr. Chester and he, and he alone, has the authority to remove her from my sanitarium."
Josie had slipped up to Mrs. Waller's room when she left Captain Waller at the door and there, as gently and with as much composure as she could command, she told her of her husband.
"I knew it, I knew it all the time. I must go to him." Lightly she ran down the stairs and into the office, past the wagging beard of the angry Harper and into the arms of the shabby soldier.
"Stephen!"
"Mary!"
Even the incredulous Dr. Harper could but be convinced that they really were husband and wife.
"Well, she can't leave until her board is paid," he blustered. "It is months in arrears and I have no idea of losing it."
Dr. Harper had not noticed that Josie had come in the office behind Mrs. Waller. Josie had a way of being able to efface herself almost entirely—she stood so still and was so silent.
At Dr. Harper's words she made herself seen and heard, however. From her pocket she produced a small note book filled with cryptic characters and from it she read solemnly like a recording angel. First was the letter to Chester Hunt from Dr. Harper. Date and all she gave with businesslike precision. Then she read Chester Hunt's answer to that letter, with a copy of the check which was enclosed with it.
"You can't deny then," Josie said severely, "that Mrs. Waller's board has been paid and paid in advance and also that you have been conniving with this Chester Hunt in unlawfully detaining this lady in your institution after she has been entirely cured of any nervous malady she may have had."
Dr. Harper was speechless for a moment. He had tried to interrupt her but with a warning finger Josie had held him spellbound. At last he sputtered:
"You—you—why you are nothing more than a servant in my establishment. Get out of my office!"